Goals/Planning

A lot of us like to make New Year’s Resolutions. A lot of us set new fitness, nutrition or weight loss goals. The #1 New Years Resolution Weight Loss Mistake is setting too many or too changeling or unrealistic goals. Or all of the above. I won’t put you off by telling you the percentage of people that are still going with their fitness/weight loss resolutions by February (or even mid Jan for that matter!) but suffice to say it doesn’t make great reading.

So in order for you to avoid falling into this trap what can you do?

Set Realistic Goals

You can split these goals into fitness and nutrition goals. What is realistic for you will depend totally depend on what you are doing currently. The key is to set goals that are challenging but achievable and maintainable. Exercising for 2 hours a week every week of the year consistently is going to get you much closer to you goals than exercising every day for a month then doing nothing for the next 2 months.

Similarly with food/booze, be realistic. If you cut everything that you enjoy out, of course you will probably lose weight pretty quickly but is it something you are every going to maintain or are you setting yourself up to ‘fall off the wagon’ at some point and put the weight back on?

Let’s say your current exercise regime is walking for 20 minutes, 3 times a week. Perhaps you goal could be to walk 20 minutes, 5 times a week and look to move a bit faster. On top of that you could do 2, 30 minute resistance training sessions a week.

Nutrition wise let’s say your pitfalls are alcohol and processed carbs. If you currently drink most days, you could set yourself a 2 day a week drinking limit. The weekend would make the most sense for this. If you eat some sort of processed carb, e.g. Biscuits, cake, crisps most days, you could set yourself a 2 day a week limit for this also.

If all goes well the plan would be after 6 weeks or so and set slightly more ambitious goals.

Make a Plan

The times I have heard people tell me when I have asked them have they exercised between sessions ‘I thought about it,’ or ‘I nearly did but…’ The reality is, in terms of your fitness/nutrition goals without action ‘thinking’ is useless. The problem a lot of people have is prioritizing their weight loss/fitness goals alongside the rest of their lives.

But the truth is that it has to be a priority if you are going to be successful. That doesn’t mean you have to spend hours a day exercising or never have a drink or treat, but it does mean you need to plan how you are going to go about putting your goals into a plan of action.

So whatever you decide your exercise regime is going to be, plan exactly when you are going to do this. Is first thing in the morning best for you? Or could you do it in your lunch hour? It doesn’t matter when it is, the key point is that you are planning it in advance. Of course occasionally something serious might scupper your plans but for the most part you should hold yourself to account and stick to it.

Similarly with food/drink plan when you are going to have your ‘treats’ and also plan what foods you are going to bring into your diet to replace those treats the rest of the time.

Conclusion – #1 New Years Resolution Weight Loss Mistake

Don’t throw yourself in the deep end and see if you can sink or swim. The stats show us the people that set realistic, achievable goals are more likely to achieve their ultimate goals in the long run. And don’t forget you can always set slightly more ambitious goals down the road, but do it gradually and you will give yourself a much better chance of sticking with it.

I have plenty of Christmas blogs on which foods are the most calorie laden, which drinks to avoid, some recipes etc. So this year I’m going to share a more general, practical strategy to avoid gaining weight over the festive period. It’s a simple tip you can implement right away but will give you maximum benefit from doing so. Here is my #1 Festive Season Tip To Avoid Weight Gain.

Season to be Jolly

Its goes without saying that at this time of year there are a lot more parties, dinners and social engagements than normal. That can be quite daunting for some people because its seems ‘impossible’ to keep control of your weight. Perhaps you have spent the last 3/6 months steadily losing weight, changing your habits etc, and this month things seem out of your control.
What can then happen is people develop what I call the ‘**** it’ mentality. This basically means saying to yourself, ‘there is no way I can control what I eat/drink this month. It’s totally out of my control. So I may as well forget about my healthy regime and goals entirely for now.’ And therefore you write the whole month off totally.

What can you do instead?

What I think can be quite helpful is to sit and down and write down all your social engagements from now until the New Year. This will obviously be different for everyone but let’s say you might come up with;

1 x Work Christmas Party
2 x Dinners With friends
5 x Drinks with friends/family
2 x Family/Christmas dinner celebrations

Now you could even take this a step further and estimate your calorie intake for these events.

1 x Work Christmas Party – 1000 calories
2 x Dinners With friends – 3000 calories
5 x drinks with friends/family – 2000 calories
2 x Family/Christmas dinner celebrations – 3000 calories

Total – 9000 calories

Again this is a rough estimate and will be totally different for everyone. But the point of the exercise is to give you an idea how many excess calories you may consume over the course of the month. Keeping in mind that 1 pound of fat equates to 3500 calories.

So in the above example you would be consuming just over 2 ½ pounds of excessive calories over the course of the month. Would it be the end of the world if you had 2 ½ pounds to lose in January? Looking at it rationally that’s certainly not weight will take too long to shift. The point of the exercise is to show you that’s its not THAT BAD. Perhaps in your mind the damage is potentially worse than in reality. And of course you can plan your food/drink approach around it to help minimize the impact. If you are going out in the evening, minimise the calories that day in the lead up. And/or get an extra workout in that day or the next.

Are you prone to panicking?

A lot of us panic and catastrophise when we are in situations that we can’t control as we would like. Hopefully by doing this exercise you will panic less about the potential weight gain effect of the month. And are therefore less likely to go off the rails the rest of the time which is the real key.

If you consume the above 9000 excess calories but also then start having a couple of drinks at home most nights, tucking into the mince pies, the celebrations, the cheese straws, the crisps etc. you can see how that figure of 9000 could easily treble, quadruple or even worse. Then you have actually done some real damage and have 10 pounds to shift in January.

Conclusion – #1 Festive Season Tip To Avoid Weight Gain

Its important to see that whilst some of the social events may not be in your full control, what goes in your mouth the rest of the time absolutely still is. Having the mindfulness to accept the social engagements and still eat well and healthily the rest of the time is the real key. If you are able to manage that, any damage you do will be relatively minor.

We all want to have a fun, merry time over the Christmas period. But we don’t want it to come at cost to our weight, health and wellbeing. I have talked a lot about what foods and drinks you should/shouldn’t be eating in previous Christmas blogs. This blog is going to focus more on exercise and how you can fit it in amongst all the festivities. These are my festive period fitness intentions.

So many people just sit around and eat/drink for days and weeks on end at this time of year. I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel lethargic, bloated, uncomfortable and generally pretty rubbish. Getting some exercise into your regime is absolutely key to overcoming this. And of course counteracting some of the additional calories that you may be consuming.

What Should My Intention Be?

This will be different for everyone. But at the absolute minimum get outside and go for a walk every day. Encourage family/friends to make it a group outing, but if not go out and do it yourself (and have a break from the madness!) Its vital for our mental health to get out into nature, and its amazing how many people barely leave the house at this time of year. And no, getting into your car to drive from one place to another doesn’t count!

But ideally you will add other exercise to that. For me I love getting into my gym and doing a workout, at least on some of the days. I know that I feel so much better for doing it, that it will benefit all those around me as well as myself so I don’t feel guilty about doing that. We all need a little space and time out to be the best versions of ourselves for those around us.

But I’m very lucky that I have my gym at home and I totally appreciate taking the time out to go to you gym at this time of year may not go down that well with others. So it’s the perfect opportunity to try one of my 5 minute workouts. There is a link to one of them here but loads more on the blog to try. There is no equipment needed, you can do them at home, and you can get it done so quickly you could do it without anyone really knowing you have gone.

Conclusion – Festive Period Fitness Intentions

Don’t write off exercise totally over the festive period. Your physical and mental health will not benefit from doing so. Make it your intention to get some exercise into your routine, even if its just a quick 5 minute workout.

Having strong, lean legs (and glutes) with good muscle tone is a key goal of most people’s workout regimes. But a lot of people make these 2 errors and therefore seriously limit their results. Check out my 2 Biggest Leg Training Mistakes.

1/ Isolation Training

The best way to get the best results in the gym no matter what body part you are targeting is to choose exercises that work multiple muscle groups at the same time. Let’s compare a squat to the adductor/abductor machine. (That’s the machine in the gym that you sit in and either squeeze your legs in or out). With a squat you exercise the inner and outer thighs, the quads, the hamstrings and the glutes. Basically everything from your core down. With the abductor/adductor machine you only hit the inner or outer upper leg muscles. So the number of muscle fibres recruited could not be more different. Probably 100 times more muscles fibre recruited with the squat.

This means 2 things;

a/ You are burning far more calories from the squat. Because you are recruiting so many more muscle fibres you use a lot more energy and burn a lot more calories.

b/ In addition to this your heart will have to pump far more oxygen to all these muscles fibres thus creating a much greater cardiovascular result. So you will get your heart rate up as well as training anaerobically. Which is good for you heart health as well as good for the calorie burn.

2/ Over-dominance on quads (thighs)

Its human nature to want to prioritise those muscles which we can see most easily in the mirror. In the case of legs it’s the quads. So most people’s workouts over-work the quads relative to the hamstrings and glutes. This is a big mistake as it will lead to muscle imbalances. These imbalances firstly look a bit odd if you have more lean muscle in one area compared to another. And secondly it can lead to pain and increased risk of injury. Weak hamstrings and glutes are one of the main causes of lower back pain for example.

It’s important to say that exercises such as squats, split squats, Bulgarian split squat and lunges do work the quads, hamstrings and glutes. However they are all quad dominant exercises. That is to say that the quads are worked most and it will more than likely be the quads you feel working and tiring more than anything else.

Let’s say you do 2 of the above exercises in your workout, you then should also have 2 hamstring/glute dominant exercises in the workout as well to balance it out. Probably one hip hinge exercise, so either hip thrusts, Romanian deadlift or glute cable pull through. And a leg curl exercise such as lying stability ball leg curls, slick floor curls or reverse Nordic curls.

Conclusion – 2 Biggest Leg Training Mistakes

Avoid these 3 mistakes and you will get far more out of your lower body workouts. You will increase muscle definition, burn more calories and protect yourself from injury.

BMI, short for Body Mass Index, is the most common way we tend to judge if we are a healthy weight or not. It’s usually just a measure taking your height and your weight and working it out on a scale from there. Some more complex measures will take into account your age, sex, ethnicity and activity level. But if the doctor works it out for you it will most likely be just based on age and height.

Is BMI a good measure?

It’s a good basic guide that anyone can easy work out themselves. But it really isn’t a good way to judge whether you are overweight or not. The main reason being it has absolutely no way of taking into account your level of muscle mass. So someone who has a higher level of muscle mass is always going to come out higher on the BMI scale.

It works the same way the other way round, you may be a naturally tall person with a lean body type and will therefore has a comparatively low BMI. This can be the case even if in terms of body fat you are overweight.

For example a body builder would come out as obese if not morbidly obese on the BMI scale. Even though by and large they have the bare minimum of body fat. This could be true in a less extreme way to you. I am 6 ft tall and 12 stones 4 pounds. And my BMI only just comes out in the healthy range. I would like to think my body fat percentage would be a lot lower than the majority of people with the same BMI. I certainly don’t do bodybuilding but I certainly do train a lot and a fair bit with weights so my muscle mass is a little higher than it otherwise would be.

What is a better way to measure being overweight?

Body fat percentage. Get yourself a set a scales that will measure your body fat percentage and base whether you are overweight or not on that. The scales don’t have to be expensive. At least then you will be able to enter all you vital statistics and get a more ‘measured answer.’ Not to say that the scales will give you a 100% accurate body fat reading. You would have to get into a water submersion tank for that. But you will a fairly accurate measure.

Conclusion

If you have no other way of measuring whether you are overweight or not BMI is a good guide. But I would certainly recommend trying to get a body far measurement for a more accurate result.

Visit the main page of my website here; Rob Bowman Personal Trainer Tunbridge Wells