If improvements in the way you look is your goal- (which is perfectly fine by the way and not something you should feel the need to hide or mask with another reason through fear of being judged as vein or shallow. Everyone has insecurities with their appearance, and although its important to be able to accept your imperfections and not feel pressured to conform to societies expectations of what a good physique looks like. If it improves your self confidence and has the benefit of improving your health at the same time (which in most cases it should) then there is nothing wrong with wanting to change the way you look) -performing some sort of weight training is key. Muscle is what provides tone and shape to your body, as well as keeping joints and bones healthy and protected from injury. And if your fear is of getting 'too muscly' or 'too big', let me assure you that adding muscle to your frame is an extremely slow and long process. It is not something that will happen overnight. Ask someone you know that has a very muscular build and guaranteed it would have taken years of consistent eating and exercising to achieve. Don't avoid the weight machines in the gym through fear of waking up like the hulk- it won't happen.

Most of us know what we should and shouldn't be eating. And as much as some health professionals like to overcomplicate diet, the fundamentals of healthy eating are not all that difficult to grasp. � Something a lot of us struggle with however is a good level of self awareness when it comes to our eating habits. Just how much are we actually eating each day? How big are our portions at meal times? How many unplanned snacks sneak their way into our diet? And how much fruit and veg are we really eating? A great way to build awareness is to use paper food logs or online apps like myfitnesspal to track our food and drink intake. Sometimes the problem here is misestimation of portion sizes, or an under appreciation for how much food we are really consuming- words and numbers on a sheet of paper or a screen don’t often have the same level of impact a picture does. This is where you camera can help- and with the vast majority of mobile phones having built in cameras you should find this method quite convenient. This method becomes a lot more long winded when having to take your roll of film to be developed! Try keeping a picture food log for a few days. Before eating or drinking anything just take a quick snap shot of it and after a a few days of pictures spend 5 minutes looking through the evidence you've gathered. You may be surprised! Larger or smaller portions that you remembered? A lot less vegetables than you think you eat? How many biscuits? This may be the eye opener you need to kick yourself into gear and make some changes. Give it a go and let me know how you get on! Follow the link (below) to be added to my mailing list and remember to tag or share with anyone who you thing would find this useful. Looking forward to welcoming you aboard! http://eepurl.com/ctOHYP

Tea time! 😋😋 jackets and tuna.. simple but delicious!

Finally getting round to sorting some branded clothing... what do we think?

Quick tip to help form new habits... use a 'cue' to prompt you to perform your new habit in the early stages until it becomes ingrained and automatic- habit formation can take some time, especially if it is a complex habit. I'm currently monitoring my diet and scale weight more closely so a reminder on my bed side table acts as a cue to weigh myself first thing in the morning.

Fish and spinach pie anyone? 😋😋👌👌👌

Saturday morning feed before hitting the gym for legs. Who else is training today and what are you doing? 👌😆😎😋

What are the worst foods for Fat Loss?

Day to day decisions when you're trying to improve your diet... The main things i focus on when working with people to tailor their way of eating to hit certain goals are.. Number 1- CALORIES. If your goal is to lose fat or gain muscle, your calorie intake must be set appropriately. However healthy or unhealthy you think your diet is, getting the portion size and calories correct is one of the most important things to first establish. Number 2- PROTEIN. Probably the most important food type when it comes to improving the way your body looks. Ensuring you are eating enough each day- ideally spread evenly across all meals- is essential. Knowing that these 2 elements are the most important to focus on means when out and about and faced with difficult and often confusing decisions in regards to what to buy for lunch, as long at it hits a rough calorie and protein target then its probably been a pretty good decision! Obviously choosing the more 'nutritious' of the options should always be a priority where possible (vegetables, salads, fruits etc) The items pictured came to just over 500kcal, over 35grams of protein and cost £2.75. Not bad all round!

Hands up if you love coffee!!!! 💪💪😋😋👏👏

My go-to breakfast at the moment. Whole meal toast, scrambled eggs, spinach leaves and beetroot. High protein and very filling! What's your breakfast of choice at the moment?

The weighing scale. Sometimes your best friend, a lot of the time your worst enemy! A quick, easy, non invasive and cheap way of seeing whether or not your bodyweight has changed. A weighing scale will measure and tell you what you're current Body Mass is. Now what we must appreciate here is that body mass includes everything from your bones and organs, right through to how much water you are currently retaining. So straight away we can see that fluctuations in body mass are going to happen all the time. You eat a meal- your body mass goes up. You drink some water- your body mass goes up. You go to the toilet or sweat a lot during a workout- your body mass goes down. There is therefore a lot of room for error. Foods like pasta, breads, cereals, sweets, crisps and chocolate all contain a large percentage of carbohydrate. Now the interesting thing about carbohydrate is that it acts much like a sponge and absorbs and stores water when consumed (around 3grams of water for every 1gram of carbohydrate to be more precise). effectively quadrupling its stored weight! A very common time to see this is if someone goes on a carbohydrate restricted (or low carb) diet and then has a blow out and eats and drinks a lot of high carb foods (ciders, pizza, chocolate) there scale weight will jump by several lbs! Now this doesn't necessarily mean that they have put on that much fat (they have probably put on a little if they have overdone it on their calorie intake). But Its more likely its a temporary spike in fluid retention and therefore body mass. As they get back to their normal way of eating they should see that weight come down relatively quickly. One of the reasons why low carb dieters lose so much within the first few weeks. As we said, scales measure total body mass. But the goal for most people isn't actually to lose body mass but to lose body fat (the stuff that increases our risk for all sorts of serious health conditions and negatively impacts our physiques). So how do you know if the weight you’re losing or gaining is in fact body fat? truth is, short of using an extremely expensive piece of medical equipment you don’t. But there are methods we can use to make more accurate observations. Generally speaking the more overweight you are (the more fat you carry) the more reliable weighing scales will be. See when you cut your portions, increase your exercise and start losing weight your body can take it from a few different places. The main ones being either stored fat tissue or your bodies own muscle mass. Your body is very clever, it knows that if you have a tone of extra fat tissue sitting around not doing anything that it should use this to burn for energy when losing weight. Very overweight people have a higher proportion of fat tissue to muscle tissue and so their body uses what it has a lot of. The leaner you are however (lean meaning a lower level of body fat) the lower that ratio becomes between fat tissue and muscle tissue meaning the more at risk you are of burning muscle for energy rather than fat. The conclusion we can draw from this then is for very overweight people using a weighing scale to monitor progress can be a fairly accurate means of tracking. But the leaner the individual the less reliable weighing scales will be, and they should look for alternative means of measuring progress. So what else can we do? Measuring your body in different areas with a measuring tape is a great method for monitoring changes (especially the waist area from a health perspective as this is where the more visceral- more damaging internal fat- will surround the organs). If your waist measurement is going down consistently but your scale weight is going up it is a safe bet your are adding muscle tissue as a-posed to fat. Clothes sizes. Just a less invasive way of keeping a track of body measurements give us a great way of monitoring changes to your shape. Progress pictures. Taking pictures of yourself on a regular basis is a good idea for leaner individuals as they cant rely as heavily on the weighing scale to give them accurate feedback. Pictures (providing they are taken in the same environment at the same time of day) can give a slightly more accurate means of comparison. Take home points- Your body mass will fluctuate a lot day to day. If you are using weighing scales make sure you use the same set, on the same day, at the same time of day (ideally in minimal clothing) every time to make it consistent. If you have a weekend of higher calorie and higher carbohydrate foods and drinks expect a jump in scale weight over the next few days due to increase in stored carbs and water. Don't let this surprise you and de-rail from your healthy eating and exercise plans. The more overweight you are the more you can rely on what the weighing scale says. So if you have 6 stone to lose, using the scales on a weekly basis can be a good place to start. The leaner you are or if you are aiming to add muscle the less you can rely on the scale. Make sure you are using other methods such as measures and pictures to assess your progress along with scale weight. To track your body weight most accurately try weighing yourself first thing every morning, add up 7 days of weights and divide by 7. This will give you an average for the week. You can then compare each weeks average. Remember- If your goal is fat loss or muscle gain then you are more than likely going to need to monitor your scale weight (amongst a variety of other things). But weighing scales simply tells you your current body mass. Not necessarily how much fat or muscle you are carrying. How healthy you are. Your sleep quality, stress levels, energy or performance day to day.