2. Keep yourself busy. People eat more than they need to when they have nothing else to do. Create and maintain a specific daily eating plan that requires you eat at specific times every day. This will ensure you eat only what you plan to eat and keeps your metabolism going by teaching your body to expect small frequent meals.

3. Unrealistic long and short term goals are a major reason for people failing with their weight loss goals. Ensuring your goals are challenging yet achievable will keep you motivated.

4. Avoid Eating or drinking to reduce stress. Many people use the excuse of having a busy or stressful week to binge. Eating or drinking in this manner will make you feel worse and will give you less energy for the next week. Go for a workout or treat yourself to a health treatment to de-stress instead. Stay away from sugar, put down the candy bar that you think will make you feel better when you are stressed.

5. No accountability measure with rewards and consequences. Make your self accountable. Committ to achieve and you will. It is important to reard yourself for achieving. An example of this would be shouting yourself a spa package or a new outfit for completing all your planned training sessions for the month.

6. Inconvenient or time consuming plan. Exercise doesn’t have to take hours.
Short sharp sessions with high intensity boost your metabolism and make you a fat burning machine! Use full-body strength movements and super high cardio intervals to get the most out of your training sessions in a short amount of time.

7. Injury from incorrect exercise technique is a common excuse for not training. Get a trainer to help teach you how to correctly do your exercises and also to come up with a program to help you achieve your goals. Good trainers have helped others achieve the same goals you are after. Trainers are also a great way to make you accountable.

8. Make your weightless plan a habit. Implement and plan what exercise you are going to do, what you are going to eat and when you are going to train.

9. Try cooking your meals at a specific time during the week. If you plan to eat healthy you will. If you don’t you are likely to choose the unhealthy option.

10. People being too stressed or busy to exercise and eat well. As a business owner I understand how one’s work/life balance can easily get out of wack. Time management and prioritizing are the key. Learn to manage your time so you are only doing one task at a time, don’t try to do everything at once but instead chunk and delegate your time. It is also important to factor in half to one hour of downtime or personal time each day for relaxation. This is a big key toward having a positive, stress-free mindset. Remember: healthy body, healthy mind.

People often start out with good intentions. Initially they get great results but this only lasts for a month or so. The novelty begins to wear off and attaining their health goals becomes more of a chore than a way of life. They start to miss a night or two of exercise or deviate from their eating plan. One day’s missed exercise can quickly turn into a week and then into a month. Eating plans can also slip in the same way.

Then one day the find their missing piece of the puzzle to fat loss and results are almost instant!

“LOSE WEIGHT FAST AND KEEP IT OFF” is about finding your missing piece of the puzzle!!!

More Info…

In the past people used to get all the exercise their bodies needed from working on a farm, walking long distances, carrying heavy loads, etc. Today, we need to be scheduling exercise at least 3 times a week to make up for a lack of manual living.

Exercise should be a combination of huff and puff (cardio) and push or pull (resistance). This will greatly improve your physical, emotional and mental state.

Staying active:
- Boosts your metabolism
- Decreases risk of injury
- Boosts your endorphin levels
- Expends excess energy intake which decreases chances of putting on body fat
- Minimizes health issues

More muscle mass and an increased metabolic rate decreases the chance of putting on body fat. So get active and start feeling fired up!

Here are a couple of tips to help you pull through!

1.Firstly you must realize that if you stick with your healthy eating plan your cravings will subside significantly. Cravings are your body’s way of telling you that you are not getting something that you need and if you are craving sugar, you may need more carbs…healthy carbs that is. If you are craving salty, you may need more fat…healthy fat that is. The key here is to give your body what it needs. Never starve your body but rather replace bad types of food e.g fats or car with healthy forms of these foods like good fats and lower G.I carcbs

2. The less sugar and and high G.I foods you eat, the less you will crave them. it usually only takes about 3-5 days of staying away from the bad stuff before your body forgets the formerly craved food.  On the flip side if you fall off the wagon know that your body will go back into a cycle and you will crave again in the next day or so. If you can try to commit to at least 3-5 days of clean eating, keeping away from the ugly foods, you will notice a massive difference of your frequency and intensity of your cravings. Out of sight out of mind!

When coaching my clients about nutrition I find informing them about what way food will effect the body empowers them.

They are in charge and often knowing that eating that sugary treat will only lead them to craving another sugary treat stops them from falling off the wagon.

Hopefully this little bit of information will do the same for you.

Good luck!

Goals are results we aim to achieve in our life. They can be related to health, relationships, financies, career, travel, family, education, public service or whatever is important to you. Our goals can be shaped by the environment we live in and the people around us.For example, a goal of a CEO living in Brisbane in 2008 may be to buy a new luxury car, whereas a student in Taiwan may be primarily concerned with achieving high grades to be accepted into university.

Our goals are often affected by what our peers’ goals are, societal expectations, and the media. The media has a large influence on what society expects and therefore has an imperative role in shaping our goals.

Why are goals important?

Goal setting gives direction an purpose to work. People too often get stuck on identifying their problems and complaining about them and never actually start working on the solution. By helping put things into perspective, goal setting enables us to focus on important tasks and creates accountability. Making tasks time-bound also greatly increases the likelihood of success.

A good example of why goals are important is the failure of new years resolutions. A lot of people make resolutions for the new year but don’t go through with them due to a lack of goal-setting. This is also commonly seen in the health industry. How many new years resolutions have you set and how many did you actually achieve?

So why do so many people fail in achieving their goals?

The 6 most common mistakes made when goal setting:

1. Setting goals that are too far away or too long-term
2. Setting too many goals at once
3. Setting goals that are too vague
4. Choosing goals that are unattainable
5. Failing to create emotional attachment or setting goals that are not a high priority
6. Failing to create an action plan (most common mistake people make when partaking in goal-setting)

Results will not simply just happen. A step-by-step accountable process must be used to ensure success.

For information on how to set goals and achieve them stay tunes or contact aaron@fitaz.com.au.

Get active for better health and performance!

What you need to know about exercise…

Did you know?

Physical inactivity contributes to the risk of 6,400 deaths per annum from coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and colon cancer. Up to 2,200 more are due to other conditions, including breast cancer and stroke.

Physical activity is an independent risk factor, so when neglected it causes all sorts of problems physically, mentally and emotionally. Exercise can modify other risks such as hypertension, obesity, high-density lipoproteins and total cholesterol.

So how active are people these days?

• Over 70% of Australians aged 15 and over are classified as sedentary or having a low level of exercise.
• Of these about half (48%) do no or very little exercise in two weeks, and the rest do a low level of exercise.

What’s up with that!

Let’s look at why this is happening in society and how we can fix it. The shocking level of inactivity today is due to the change in our lifestyles over the past hundred years or so. Each day our relationship with mother nature grows weaker. What do I mean by this?

Our bodies were made to move! I can’t emphasize this enough. We are not designed to have fantastic inventions do things for us. The invention of cars, computers and TV, on which we rely so heavily now has had the greatest effect on society becoming so sedentary in nature.

Our manual tasks are done for us or made easier by inventions. We move less than ever before. Coupling this with processed, high energy food can only promote one thing. FAT – our biggest enemy in the fight for good health.

Structured exercise has taken the place of incidental human activity. Walking long distances to get somewhere has been replaced with jogging on a treadmill. Carrying heavy loads on foot is replaced with 30 minutess resistance training. Failing to recognize the importance of substituting our manual activity with structured exercise will lead to compromised health. Or rather has lead to compromised health.

The most important thing you should get out of this article is identifying YOUR current situation and ways in which you can improve your health. So how do you rate your current physical activity level? Are you expending more energy than you’re putting in?

Push n Pull

This is resistance exercise using weights. Both men and women should be pumping some iron. There are different ways of training to achieve certain results but benefits are universal. Benefits include increased muscle tone, strength and a faster metabolic rate.

Huff n Puff

Exercise which gets your heart rate up, sweaty and out of breath. Also known as cardio exercise, it includes activities like running, aerobics, boxing, swimming, and stepping. These exercises boost the body’s endurance, stamina and vitality. It is also good for the heart – strengthening the muscle and reducing chances of heart problems in the future.

Flex n Bend

Exercises which focus on flexibility and stretching. Some examples are pilates and yoga. They are great for your core strength and flexibility and help you become more aware of your body, elevating your propreo reception. Flexibility also reduces risk of injury. Try yoga and pilates exercises for relaxation and improved posture.

Incidental

Incidental exercise is unplanned exercise which you can include during your daily activities. A good example is to take the stairs instead of the lift. Park a little further from work or the shops so you gain a few extra steps in your day. Maybe ride a bike or walk to work if it is possible. Taking little opportunities to increase your activity is great for your general wellbeing.

Here are some quick tips for being more fired up about exercise to gain the best results from your time:

1. Analyse situation and set goals

Before you start, ask why are you getting active. Is it to be fitter, live longer, sleep better, fell happier, be more focussed, look better, lose weight…?

Based on this, make specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time-bound (SMART) goals. For example, don’t just say ‘I want to lose weight’. Say ‘I want to lose 5kg by the end of next month’.

2.   Create emotional ties. Think about how much you want that goal to come true, how you will feel when it does, how it will make you feel in your everyday activities etc. Get emotional about it and when you’re feeling discouraged, go back to that feeling.

3.   Adopt and enforce a healthy, maintainable, habitual activity plan. A personal trainer or gym consultant would be able to help you work out an activity plan that is right for you.

4. Revisit goals and analyse progress.

5. Join a group or sporting team or get a trainer to enforce a commitment factor.

And remember…

• Pump some tunes. Whether it’s something up-beat, 80’s dance music or some rap R&B that works for you, music has been proven to actually change your physiological state. Listening to music while you exercise lowers percieved exertion and stress on the body so toxins and amino acids are worked out more effectively. You get a better workout, recover faster and don’t even realize you’re working so hard!
• Set goals. Setting specific, measurable, important goals, creating an emotional attachment to them and then working out how you can achieve them. Goal setting is very effective in motivating productive exercise.
• Just a little more. Remember, you are always physically capable of so much more than you think. So push yourself, break that mental barrier and be surprised about how far you can go.

Come on it’s easy! Start getting active today and see how easy it is to be happier and more fired up for life.

PHYSICAL

It is no secret that exercise is good for your body. It reduces blood pressure, toxicity and fat in the body and gives improved hormone levels and energy. Other physical benefits of specific types of exercise are previously mentioned.

MENTAL

Physical avtivity enhances mental focus and performance. Studies have found that an exercise break during a working day boosts time management, mental performance and ability to meet deadlines. Exercise also provides a performance boost because it makes workers more focussed and better able to process information.

Elite athletes and competitors have been shown to view problems more constructively and be driven to solve them and not get discouraged. Pushing yourself physically can actually improve your problem-solving skils, resillience and drive.

EMOTIONAL

Nicely stated in the movie Legally Blonde, “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands”. Scientific studies have shown that exercise stimulates the release of the endorphin hormone, which elevates one’s mood. You really do feel happier from doing exercise. Exercise is also shown to reduce anger and features of depression in addition to improving people’s moods.

PSYCHOLOGICAL

Regular exercise improves psychological wellbeing. People who are sedentary or exercise at a low level are more likely to be classified as having a high or very high level of psychological distress than those with moderate to high exercise levels. Studies have found that exercise can help reduce enxiety, stress, tension and fatigue.

Psychologists often use exercise to treat patients. Many psychologists recommend a daily 30-minute walk or some other form of daily exercise before even going into psychological counselling. This is because a healthy mind always starts with having a healthy body.