Preheat your oven to 180 degrees.

Step 1: Because I like the flavour it gives this dish, I will go to the extra effort of peeling & slicing the sweet potato and then roasting the slices (using ghee) in a hot oven until they are golden & a little caramelly. I cut the slices about 1cm thick. If you’re short for time however, you can simply peel, slice & microwave the sweet potato until it is mostly cooked through.

Step 2: While the sweet potato is roasting, I then slice the eggplant lengthways and lay it under a hot grill, brushing it with the basic salad dressing. Flip the slices once golden & a little charred, brush with a little more dressing, and cook the other side.

Step 3: Slice your sprouts in half & steam them – and if you’re turning up your nose at brussel sprouts, you could use broccoli florets, green beans, snow peas or any other favourite green veggie.

Step 4: Pop your ricotta into a bowl & throw in the sliced semi dried tomatoes. If you’re having trouble getting these two ingredients to combine nicely you can add a tablespoon of milk to get a nice consistency.

Step 5: Now for the fun part – assembly! Grease a high sided dish (I use a 20 x 30cm pyrex dish) and start with a nice even layer of half the roasted sweet potato. Next comes the sprouts/steamed green veggies, over which I crumble the feta cheese. Then follow with an eggplant layer followed by the olives, on top of which I put the semidried tomato ricotta, using a spatula to smooth it over. Finish with a top layer of sweet potato.

Step 6: Whisk the eggs together with the milk in a jug, seasoning the egg mixture with some cracked black pepper. Then pour the egg mix slowly over your frittata, allowing it to filter down through all the layers. Bake in the oven for at least 30 minutes, perhaps a touch longer. It can be a little deceptive from just looking at the top (which will look cooked after 10 minutes), so make sure you give it a good ‘wobble’ and check out the sides too (benefit of using glass or pyrex).

Makes enough for 6, but once cool will freeze really well too.

This week has been an interesting one, involving some fun new workouts and a couple of days in which I made a significant diversion from my nutritional guidelines.

In the past I would have felt quite guilty about my ‘slip’ and proceed to place harsh dietary restrictions and an even more gruelling workout regime on myself but this time around it is different.

This time around my l have a much longer term goal in mind, to become:

Lean and Muscular for Life.

Not to lose “20kg in 10 weeks” or “get ripped fast” but to slowly, surely and sustainably develop my awareness of my body and reduce my body fat. In that context a few days where I do not eat what I usually eat is not a drama, and a slight increase in size and weight is no problem, provided that in the long term my progress continues in the right direction.

Apparently I was content with being fat for 10 years, so a few extra months to reach my ideal body does not matter, especially when I am doing it in a way which is helping to develop positive habits, making staying lean forever an effortless task.

Feelings of restriction and denial are indicators that you might be heading for a rebound, possibly a rebound so big that you will end up in a worse state than before you started, leading to that awful but ever-present phenomenon of yo-yo dieting.

If you are craving foods that are not helpful to your goals then it is best to satiate your cravings with a (small) indulgence rather than risk a massive blowout later down the track which might put an end to all the momentum you have worked hard to develop. Learn to see a divergence not as a ‘setback’ but as reality, as life. There is no need to punish yourself. If you stick to your guidelines 80% of the time and are getting results then you are doing incredibly well!

Back to me, while I did enjoy my couple of days of wining and dining, today my body was pretty much screaming for some super nutritious food and a bit of a detox, which I have happily given it and I am starting to feel the benefits already.

The results, as you might expect after 3 days of indulgence, have gone up in all departments. As I have talked about before, some of this will be stored body fat, some will be stored water and some will be bloating (which I am prone to if I overeat). But, as I have said above – don’t worry, be happy and keep going!

My Photos (Click for a larger version)

My Measurements

My Strength Stats

Summary

So no suprises here, my muscular endurance goals have come to a bit of a plateau so I may need to put in a bit of extra work to get them moving forward.

As I mentioned last week I am going to experiment with intermittent fasting (IF) this week. IF has been shown to not only reduce your overall caloric intake, but also to increase your sensitivity to the hormone insulin (a good thing for fat burning) and increase the production of growth hormone (a good thing for both fat burning and muscle building).

I am going to do a 24 hour fast on Thursday, with the idea to incorporate one or two 24 hour fasts into my weekly routine. I will start the day with a decent sized, high protein breakfast (protein has been shown to decrease hunger) and then it’s just water and green tea until the next morning. Between now and then I am going to ensure that my body is nutritionally satisfied in order to minimise any hunger cravings I am sure to have, in fact I am looking forward to seeing how I react and how hungry I actually get – hopefully teaching myself what true hunger feels like.

It is worth noting that unless your body is conditioned towards burning fat (i.e. you have been dropping body fat for a few consecutive weeks) then fasting is not a good idea and can actually promote an increase in your body’s ability to store fat. So if you are just beginning your transformation then take it easy and get your nutrition in order first, then you can have a think about whether fasting is right for you.

Be sure to check out the article I wrote last week on getting people to support your transformation, something which is easy to do and can play a crucial role in your transformation being a success.

Kate has put up a couple of very simple recipes for Home-made Dips & Veggie Sticks, an awesome snack to throw in your bag for the day and you can pre-prepare lots of it at a time.

Look out for my article on nutrition, a massive topic that is full of controversy and opinions, of which my own is one.

Finally, Kate is going to teach you all how to put together a Sweet Potato Frittata, make sure you try this one out, it is a taste sensation!

Keep it real and keep it going!

Kendall

Now, I am all for telling people what your dreams are, but I believe you should do it for a very different reason.

That reason is support.

Having people who care about you and are fully supportive of what you are trying to do can make all the difference between achieving your goals and letting them slip through your fingers.

Getting people to support you as opposed to telling them what you are doing just to make yourself accountable fosters a more positive and encouraging environment for you to push forward with your transformation (or any goal for that matter) without fear of judgement or failure.

Accountability on the other hand, stipulates that you tell someone that you trust, and that will actually hold you accountable if you stray from your plan. While this may work from some people, the principle centres itself on negative emotions that when faced with the challenges of lifestyle shift and behaviour modification, are often less than helpful.

So rather than get a friend to tell you off if you drop the ball, take some time to explain your situation and what you are trying to achieve, put it to them clearly so they understand what it is, why you are doing it, how important it is to you and what impacts it is going to have on your (and possibly their) lifestyle. Explicitly ask them for their support and request that if they do see you struggling they can encourage you to push on, and remind you of what you are striving for and how good it is going to make you feel when you get there.

Personally, I know that there is no way I would have been able to do what I have done, not only in my own transformation but also in many other areas of my life (becoming a qualified personal trainer for one), without the unequivocal support of my partner Kate. On top of that, we both relish in and are inspired by the support given to us by our families and a few of our closest friends.

So don’t keep your dreams to yourself – don’t be afraid to put them out there! In fact if you do tell someone about them, not only will it help to crystallise exactly what they are and what they mean to you, but the support it brings will undoubtedly make your path that much easier to tread.

Why not take this opportunity to let me know what your goals are and get some Fitness Monk love!

Kendall

- green beans
- capsicum
- carrot
- celery
- cucumber
- snow peas
- blanched asparagus
- even a tart apple like a Granny Smith, just to mix things up!!

Artichoke Hommus

Ingredients

(makes about 1kg – eg. fills a yoghurt tub)

1 jar marinated artichoke hearts
400g of cooked chick peas
1/2 cup grated parmesan
1 tbs chopped flat leaf parsley
1 large tbs tahini paste
3-4 tbs olive oil

Step 1: Drain artichokes & put them in the bowl of your food processor. Add the chick peas, parmesan, parsley & tahini and give it all a whizz until everything is combined.

Step 2: Turn the motor down to “low” & drizzle in the olive oil slowly, which will start to create a smooth “dippy” texture.

Step 3: Season to taste with salt & pepper, & serve with a drizzle of olive oil over the top.

Spinach & Feta Dip

Ingredients

(makes about 1kg – eg. fills a yoghurt tub)

1 big bunch English spinach
250g ricotta cheese
200g feta cheese
4 spring onions
2 tbs lemon juice
1 clove garlic

Step 1: Wash the spinach really well, & with water still on the leaves place them in a large saucepan over high heat to wilt. When just wilted, transfer the spinach into a colander to drain & cool.

Step 2: While the spinach is cooling you can put into the bowl of your food processor the spring onions (chopped roughly), then crumble in both cheeses, crush in the garlic & add the lemon juice.

Step 3: Using your hands squeeze as much liquid out of the spinach as you can, then put it in on top of all your other ingredients. Whizz it up until everything is smooth & well combined. Season to taste.

This week was a really good week for me. My ability to listen to my body is developing swiftly, I am allowing myself and my body to use the energy that I have provided (food) as well the energy that I have stored (fat).

How am I doing this? It’s simple really…..

Basically, every time the thought of food pops into my head, or it is ‘time to eat’, or someone offers me food – I ask myself the following  question: “Is it my mind or my body that is asking for this food?” If the answer is my mind then I don’t eat (most of the time). If it is my body then I eat, but I make sure I always eat something that is healthy, with a whole lot of nutritional bang for its caloric buck.

Of course, if the answer is my mind and I don’t eat, but my mind keeps saying eat, eat, eat!! then I have found that a few nuts, a strawberry or some Home-made Dips & Veggie Sticks do wonders towards getting my mind to be quiet.

I don’t think I have actually felt true hunger yet. In fact now I am not sure whether what I thought was hunger is just the feeling of my stomach without food in it. In order to further understand the messages by body is sending me, next week I am going to experiment with fasting, so I can learn what it does feel like to be truly hungry. I’ll keep you posted.

Moving on, it is time to change my workouts. For the past 5 weeks I have been doing High Intensity Interval (HIIT) style workouts split roughly into an Upper Body (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) and a Lower Body (Tuesday, Thursday) emphasis. When I say roughly, the leg workout was not completely isolated and included some upper body and a lot of core work, and vice versa.

When I first did these workouts 5 weeks ago they were super tough and I struggled to get through them, but after 5 weeks, while still challenging they are nowhere near as taxing. This is because I have adapted, and as stress equals adaptation, I need to create new stresses that will allow me to progress further.

As I have a small amount of masochism in me (doesn’t everyone?), I love writing workouts that push me to my limit and I am excited by the ones I have written for the next 4 weeks.

I will continue to do HIIT workouts (I love HIIT, no counting reps, just go as hard as you can, rest and then repeat) and I will still be doing two seperate workouts however this time they will both be working my full body. The first one (Monday’s and Thursday’s) will be more cardio oriented and really get my heart going while the second one (Tuesday’s and Friday’s) will be focused on strength and mobility. I will also be doing one mountain bike ride (a childhood passion I have recently rediscovered) and a jog (I have a running goal coming up in a few weeks) every week.

Turning to the hard data – there are some great results this week. I think the photo is the most revealing, but the measurements are once again doing all the right things.

My Photos (Click for a larger version)

My Measurements

My Strength Stats

Summary

Last week my measurements went up on average but I dropped 0.6kg. This week is the opposite – my measurements went down by a whole 4.5cm but my weight only dropped 0.2kg.

Whether this is because I have put on muscle mass and dropped body fat, or I am holding water because of the delicious chicken pasta I had at a friends dinner party last night (probably a combination of the two), this result illustrates the importance of using more than one type of measurement (especially when your weight is one of them) to track your progress.

Using just your weight as a gauge for how you are going can lead to disappointment and you may be missing out on some really good news if you looked at things from another perspective. Measuring just weight is unreliable for a number of reasons:

• It is the combination of your body fat mass and your muscle mass (along with everything else). If it is rising, you may be gaining muscle mass, or fat, or both. On the flip side, if it is down, you may be losing muscle mass, or fat, or both. Girth measurements and photos help to clarify what is actually going on.
  
• It can fluctuate significantly from day to day, so if your measuring day is a day on which your weight is ‘up’ then your progress will be less than it may have been the day before (or after).
• Weight (particularly with people who are significantly overweight) is highly emotionally charged. Just one negative result can lead to despair and all sorts of other unhelpful negative emotions and consequential actions such as punishment, fasting and binge eating.

So give yourselves a reality check, and seek multiple perspectives on your progress so you know how you are really going.

OK, back to me.

Like I said, a great week and I am really happy with the physical results. I am also inching closer to my pushups goal of 50 in a row and while there has not been much progress on the chinups side of things I am confident the new workouts I have written will move things along in that department.

Check out my article on a couple of types of emotional eating and look out for the one coming up on rallying support, something which can make all the difference to the success of your transformation.

Finally, Home-made Dips & Veggie Sticks is a great snack that is easy to prepare, portable and perfect for when those “between-meal” cravings come along. You can see Kate’s recipe here.

Train hard, chill out and have fun!

Kendall

Why do you eat? Why should you eat?

Surely you only eat because you are hungry. Why else would you eat?

The truth is we all eat for reasons other than just because we need energy and nutrients. In fact for many people, it is rarely because of these reasons. It is not that they don’t need energy, the fact is that for a lot of people in the western world, the bountiful supply of food available means they rarely give themselves the chance to be hungry.

Eating for any reason other than providing your body with the necessary energy and nutrients can be loosely defined as emotional eating.

The subject of emotional eating is a complex labyrinth of psychology, expectation, dogma and biology. It encompasses a vast spectrum of reasons to eat ranging from boredom to clinical eating disorders.

In this article I want to explore two types of emotional eating. They are Routine Eating and Social Eating.

They are both simple concepts and if you eat for either of these reasons, becoming aware of the fact that they are occurring is a powerful step towards tuning in to your own body and taking control of your habits and your health.

Routine Eating

We should be eating three square meals a day right? Said who? There are many good reasons for having a significant and healthy breakfast, but why do we eat lunch? Or dinner? Or afternoon tea?

Convention says that at lunch time you should eat, but should you eat even if you are not hungry?

The feeling of hunger is your body saying – “I need energy” or “I need nutrients”. If this is actually the case then you should eat. However if your body is not saying this, or it is actively telling you that you don’t need to eat then it sounds like it is going along just fine without you feeding it. Who knows, you may even be tapping into that wonderful source of stored energy that many of us carry around all day long, ready to be used whenever necessary – our body fat.

So when it becomes – ‘Time to eat’ – ask yourself, or more importantly, ask your body if it really is time and if your body replies in the negative then don’t. Of course, if it screams back at you “feed me you lunatic, what the hell are you doing starving me to death!? Without me you are nothing!”, then it is safe to say it is time to eat.

Social Eating

Social eating is purely the act of eating because the social situation you are in calls for the consumption of food.

It could be that you are at a party, one of those really good ones where there is a constant supply of delicious finger food passing you by. It could be that you are out to dinner but you had a big lunch and are now faced with a three course meal. It could even be that you are at work, not thinking about food at all and a colleague offers you some custard slice or a piece of chocolate and without thinking you just grab some and eat it.

Whether it be out of politeness, or a desire to not stand out amongst the crowd (who are probably eating to their hearts content), it can be very difficult to say no to food in these circumstances. What we can do though is eat in moderation.

You don’t have to go out to dinner and sit there with an empty plate in front of you just because you are not hungry, or that you should refuse that yummy mini-quiche as it drifts by just below your nose. If you are not hungry and find yourself in either of these situations then regulate yourself – choose to have two rather than three courses, or you can have a delicious salad for your entrée or even for your main. You could have just one mini-quiche, or hold off until a healthier, more nutritious (and probably equally as delicious) option comes drifting by. Just acknowledge that you are eating for emotional, not nutritional, reasons and then enjoy yourself. It is by no means the end of the world and you almost certainly have not ruined all your hard work and progress in just one sitting!

Addressing these two emotional eating issues is often just a case, as it was with me, of being aware that they exist and being honest with yourself. Imagine if you were overweight purely because you ate to a routine, or just because the people around you were eating too. Imagine that this was the only reason you do not have the body and the health that you desire.

Give yourself the chance to be hungry. Listen to your body. Eat when you need to eat and eat how much you need. Just give it a go and see what happens!

Don’t forget to leave your comments below and let us know how you go!

With focus, energy and balance

Kendall

PS – This article has just scratched two of the many sides to emotional eating. There are often serious psychological reasons for the eating habits of many people and if you feel that this might be your situation then please don’t hesitate to seek the help of a qualified health professional with experience in eating disorders and dysfunctional eating.

The thing about your humble spud is, while delicious, it remains pretty humble in all aspects right down to it’s nutritional value. It falls into the food category of “empty carbs”, which is a term that refers to foods that are high in carbohydrate but lack most other nutritional content such as vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, amino acids or dietry fibre. My golden girl sweet potato however, makes up some serious ground on the humble spud when it comes to goodness. Check it out:

The numbers speak for themselves when for exactly the same amount of carbs, you get a whole lot more bang for your buck eating a sweet potato over an ordinary old spud. This is based on a comparison of 100g potato baked with it’s skin on & the preparation/cooking method will always vary the nutritional values a little.

So let’s get cooking – I’m hungry!!

Baked Sweet Potatoes

Serves 4

Ingredients:

4 x 200g pieces of sweet potato
1 qty House Made Beans

Any (or if you’re like me, all!) of the following toppings:

Fetta or parmesan cheese
Baby spinach & rocket
Diced tomato, cucumber, capsicum
Beetroot, pineapple, gherkins
Tomato salsa, natural yoghurt
Olives, sundried tomatoes, artichoke hearts
Corn kernels, peas, green beans
Chives, chopped parsley, chopped coriander
Chilli flakes, cracked pepper

After that it’s pretty simple!

Step 1: Bake your golden sweetie spuds in the oven until cooked & soft (180 degrees for about 40 minutes).

Step 2: Pop one in the bottom of a deep noodle bowl & start piling the fresh goodness on top.

Sep 3: Grab a fork, & DIG IN!!

Until next week, happy munching!!

Kate

I have been trying to become more aware of my body and only eating when I am hungry.

This has required much more focus than I originally thought.

I was attempting to cut down on my portion sizes and only eat when I was hungry but it just was not happening! I was not eating large amounts of food but I was never hungry and consequently I almost always felt full after a meal.

And then it hit me. I was eating emotionally.

It may seem obvious but that realisation has changed everything. It has become clear to me that aside from hunger there were two main factors that have been driving me to eat:

Routine – For a long time my dietary day has gone something like this – breakfast (7:00am) – mid morning snack (10:30am) – lunch (1:00pm) – afternoon snack (4:00pm) – Pre dinner snack (6:30pm) and then dinner (8:00pm). When it got to somewhere around these times my mind would just say – “time to eat”, and I would, regardless of whether I was hungry or not.

and

Other people were eating – if I was in an environment where other people were eating, or if someone offered me something to eat, providing it fit within my nutritional guidelines, I was not saying no, whether it be for fear of missing out, or for standing out I am not sure (it could be a bit of both).

Once I acknowledged that this is what was going on and that there was no reason why I needed to be eating this way things became easy. I started being more critical of my hunger and saying ‘no’ to both myself and to others. I am already feeling happier and more content with my diet. The shift really has been a revelation.

Moving on – like a wombat – the stats are heading slowly and steadily in the right direction.

My Photos (Click for a larger version)

My Measurements

My Strength Stats

Summary

Interestingly this week my measurements went up on average but I still dropped 0.6kg.

A decent change in the photos. I thought I would throw up a ‘flex shot’ so you guys can see the change in definiton. It is worth noting that in the last 4 weeks I have got much, much angrier. It could be the lack of sugar or maybe the steroids………….that’s a joke. I couldn’t be happier with how things are going!

I missed a couple of days training while I let my hip recover and then began to ease back into the workouts mid-week. There are still some exercises I cannot do but I am being careful not to aggravate it and it seems to be healing well.

Possibly due to missing the early week workouts there was a small (pushups) and negative (chinups) improvement in my strength stats but no worries. Strength is a skill and must be practised. Something I will continue to do.

Thats is for this week. In light of my own experience I am going to put together an article on emotional eating this week, to help you guys discover why you might be eating more than you really need.

For the sweet tooth’s out there, Kate has adapted a recipe for Flourless Orange Cake, a yummy treat that is absolutely guilt free. Guaranteed.

Coming soon is a guide to one of my favorite meals and also one of the easiest to prepare – Baked Sweet Potatoes.

Stay fit, stay healthy.

Kendall

I have started off with the skeleton of a recipe from Jon Gabriel, an American born Perth based health practitioner who developed The Gabriel Method. Incredibly, Jon Gabriel lost over 100kg without dieting, through his methods of visualisation & also without restricting what he ate with rules, calorie counting or serious feelings of “missing out”. This is a big hurdle for me, because although I’m committed to eating healthily I don’t like missing out on my afternoon tea!! And needless to say, most baked goods are heavy on the sugar, butter, chocolate etc. But there are always healthy options, & when I discovered a recipe that turned my usual 3 o’clock guilt trip into a completely guilt-free delicious indulgence, I just had to share it!! Try it for yourself with all the trimmings – you’ll know what I mean!!

Ingredients
2 oranges
100g almond kernels
200g almond meal
¼ cup honey
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cinnamon stick
6 cloves

Set your oven to 190 degrees Celsius.

Step 1: Lightly grease a medium sized slice or lamington tin. Then stud your oranges with the cloves, put them in a saucepan with the cinnamon stick & cover them with water. Bring this to the boil & then simmer for at least 1 hour – 2 is even better.

Step 2: In a food processor, whizz your almonds a few times until they are coarsely chopped. Set them aside, & toss in your oranges (cloves & all – discard the cinnamon stick) which you have quartered & allowed to cool. Blend until really smooth.

Step 3: With the motor running really low, crack in the eggs one at a time. Throw in the chopped almonds, almond meal, honey & vanilla, and mix until everything is combined. Pour mixture into your greased slice pan & bake for 45 minutes, checking the cake after 30.

This delicious, moist flourless orange cake is perfect for afternoon tea, & if I’m feeling extra indulgent, I’ll serve it warm with hot berries & a dollop of natural yoghurt. It’s packed full of protein too, & with only a little bit of honey to sweeten there is absolutely nothing to feel guilty about when eating this cake. YAY!!

Until next time, happy cooking!

Kate

If you want to get fitter, stronger, more flexible and lose body fat, you can’t go wrong if you follow these 10 tips to more effective workouts.

1. Make it Fun

This has to be the most important tip I can give.  Your exercise has got to be fun! Why? If exercise is fun then you will want to do it! And keep doing it. You will look forward to doing it and you will be well on your way to developing a lifestyle that keeps you fit, strong and feeling energised.

How do you make it fun?

• Do it with a friend, you can share experiences, motivate each other and go an grab a healthy bite to eat afterwards!
• Play games – whether it be sport or group fitness classes, games can make you forget how hard it is and the time flies by!
• Incorporate challenges to test yourself, if you have little goals within your workouts then you are constantly striving for something, and hopefully achieving it, which gives you that extra little bit of satisfaction.

2. Be Prepared -  The Warmup

You need to warmup before every workout. Period. To just hook straight in to your exercise, particularly the sort of exercise I talk about below, without a decent warmup then you are basically asking for an injury. The best workout routine in the world is no good if you can’t do it because you are injured.

It is important to let your body know what is coming, a warmup gets the blood flowing to the muscles, making them more supple and prepared for movement. Your heart rate elevates and you quickly become more efficient at getting oxygen into your bloodstream.

And you don’t just want to get physically warm either; you need to use the muscles and the joints you are going to be using during your workout. Incorporate some mobility exercises and full range of motion (ROM) movements at a low-moderate intensity to develop some elasticity in your tendons and connecting tissue.

3. Cut down on Cardio

What? Cut down on cardio? But what if you want to lose weight?

The truth is that long, medium intensity cardio such as running can have detrimental effects on your fat loss effort.

I am not saying don’t do it at all. If you like running then run, if you like riding your bike then ride. If you are training for a marathon, then you gotta run. You don’t have a choice.

But. If your goal is to be fit, strong, lean and healthy, cardio does little to help. Why?

• It takes too long – who can find an hour to go for a run every day?
• Exercising to burn calories is almost pointless – do the math. If you run for an hour and burn 500 calories that means you will have burnt 55 grams of fat. If you did this four times a week you would have burnt 220 grams of fat, assuming your body is 100% efficient at burning fat, which it is not. Not much for 4 hours of running!
• Injury from constant and repetitive stress to muscles and joints. You gotta give your body a break.
• Adaptation – your body quickly adapts to the stresses you place on it. To increase your fitness quickly and efficiently, you need to go beyond your anaerobic threshold. That means going as hard as you can, harder than you could sustain for 2 minutes, let alone an hour.
• Loss of muscle mass – slow, steady state cardio can cause you to lose muscle mass, and since more muscle mass = a higher metabolism, you definitely don’t want that.
• Negative effects – long cardio at a moderate intensity can even make you tired and hungry! That is not what you want! You want to be energised!

4. Short, Intense Workouts

In almost all aspects of fitness, your body responds much better to short bursts of intense effort, followed by a recovery. Your strength and cardiovascular fitness will improve and your metabolism will get faster, which means you will be burning more energy all the time.

Your workouts do not need to last any longer than 20-30 minutes, and if you are working out intensely enough, you won’t want them to. In fact, in the effort phase of your workouts you should be aiming for a rate of perceived exertion (RPE) of around 9 out of 10.

You can put together these short workouts in heaps of different ways to suit the style of exercise that you like.

• Sprinting – either on foot, on your bike, in the pool, on the rowing machine, whatever, as long as you go as hard as you can.
• High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) – involving intense bursts (for 20, 30, 45, 60 seconds) of exercises such as battling ropes, burpees, sandbell slams, jump squats etc.
• Lift Heavy Weights – lift heavy things using functional movements (see below). The weights should be heavy enough so your sets do not last more than about 10 repetitions (i.e. you pick a weight that you cannot lift more than 10 times with correct and safe form).

5. Use full body – functional movements

Your body is not designed to work in isolation. In everyday life you never use only your biceps, or only your quads or lift heavy things while sitting or lying down. You use lots of different muscles in lots of different directions and movement (squatting, pushing, pulling, twisting etc).

Your workouts should mimic these movements, not only will it increase your real world strength, but because you are using more muscles, your body needs to burn more fuel to feed them. In fact not doing exercises this way can cause serious imbalances and an inability to move your body the way it is supposed to.

There should also be an element of instability in your exercises too. Our bodies are supposed to be self-supporting, however as most of us spend most of our time sitting or lying down, our core strength and stability is often lacking. Using exercises that challenge us to keep our balance helps to develop our core, and a stronger core means the rest of your body is also stronger.

Using full body movement across different planes of motion can also increase your flexibility and range of motion, as we spend lots of time sitting and lying, our muscles can become short and stiff or long and weak.

Simple examples of functional exercises are

• The Squat (Lifting heavy things, boxes, children, my cat)
• Pushups (ummm, pushing things)
• Rows (Pulling things, opening doors, starting the lawnmower)
• Step Ups (Climbing stairs, getting into the car)
• Woodchops (Chopping wood……or anything that requires you to twist your body, like lifting the shopping out of the car)

6. Resistance Training

And I say resistance training, rather than weight training, as this doesn’t have to mean going to the gym and pumping iron (apart from when I was training to be a fitness instructor, I have never lifted weights in a gym). You can use your body, resistance bands, sandbags, a TRX, a block of wood, a bag of rice, etc. to create the resistance.

The point is that by using one of these methods to resist the movement you are trying to complete, your brain and muscles adapt to moving with that weight, so when you go to do the movement without it, it takes much less effort. As we get older our strength naturally diminishes, with a resistance training program we can slow down, stop and even reverse this decline!

Resistance training is the recommended exercise style for people with osteoporosis as it encourages an increase in bone density. It can also be used to correct postural deficiencies, target weak muscles due to inactivity or injury.

In short, if you have never incorporated resistance exercises into your routine, now is the time to start!

7. Listen to your body

Your body is your temple and you are a disciple. It has an amazing ability to communicate to you what it needs and the more you listen to it, the more in tune with it you become. Over time, your body can tell you how to work out, how often, how hard and with what exercises, how to recover, what to eat and when to stretch.

Basically, if you get really good at listening to your body, you will not have to think about any of this ever again!

For now though, it really comes down to common sense. If you are a little sore then go for a walk, get a massage and scale it back for your next workout. If you are really sore then wait until you have fully recovered before getting back into it.

On the flip side, if you are feeling strong then take the opportunity to give it everything you have got! If you feel like you want to work out hard then do it!

8. Recovery

A fitness routine is not a balanced one without a decent recovery. In fact, without an adequate recovery you are missing out on much of the potential benefit you could be getting from your workouts.

Recovery gives your body the time and resources it needs to adapt to the stresses placed on it during exercise.

Good basic recovery involves four main components

a. Flexibility – you should stretch after every workout, incorporate mobility exercises and get a massage or use a foam roller to release tension and toxins in your muscles and tissue, getting them ready for your next workout!

b. Rest – Your body needs downtime. If you are smashing it all the time it starts to get stressed. You become overtrained, lose motivation, energy, performance and injuries happen. Sometimes it is easy to get too excited by your new found love of exercise but just chill out for a bit, you can rest easy knowing that you are allowing your body to adapt to what you just did to it, so it can do it even better next time!

c. Sleep – Sleep is like taking your car to the mechanic, you leave it with them and they get to work fixing the problems. When your body is not busy doing all the things you ask it to do during the day it can get to work on making sure it is operating at an optimal level for the next day – whatever that brings!

d. Nutrition – Your body needs nutrients and energy to operate and if you are depleting it of this fuel on a regular basis, you need to make sure you are refuelling what you lost. This is particularly true when it comes to protein. Protein makes up the building blocks of our body and is an essential part of any exercisers diet.

9. Mix it up

Ever reached a point in your training when it just seems to stop making a difference? You are not getting any faster, you are not getting any stronger and you are not losing any more fat?

It may be time to mix things up a bit.

I have talked about adaptation a lot in this article, as this is the lynchpin in the progression of your fitness, but it is also the achilles heal. Because your body is so good at adapting to the stresses you place on it, if you don’t change what you are doing then soon enough your workouts will not be stresses anymore and your development will plateau.

But never fear! There are heaps of ways to get back on the progression train!

• Exercise variations – If you have been doing pushups, then start doing staggered pushups, or elevated pushups. If you have been doing chin-ups then change your grip and do pullups. This will force you to recruit slightly different parts of the muscle to what you are used to.
• Less is More and More is Less  – If you have been doing 10 – 15 repetitions per set then start to do 6 – 8 or do 15 – 20. Just make sure you choose a weight that means you come close to failure within that rep range.
• Get unbalanced – adding an element of instability makes any exercise harder. Doing a squat with a Barbell instead of using a leg press machine or doing a pushup on a swissball makes it more unstable which in turn makes you recruit more muscles and different muscles.

10. Just do it!

Consistency is the Holy Grail of fitness. Working out once in a while is not going to get you anywhere.

Above are some tips to make your exercise and workouts more effective and therefore make your results come sooner. But if you remember tip number 1, it has to be fun.

So whatever it is, whatever exercise you are doing, whatever you are training for. Just get out there and do it. You will feel better for it. I promise.