All About Abs

Like most girls I fear my bikini body is somewhat lacking. Not that it hugely matters this summer, with the end of university (and all sense of purpose and direction in my life) i'm scraping the pennies and a holiday is out of the question. English weather doesn't hold much promise for bikini weather either so technically I, along with the rest of the impoverished nation, have a get out of jail free card where bikinis are concerned this summer!

Unfortunately, along with the lack of things to occupy my time post university and exams, I also have a depleting amount of excuses for why that bikini perfect body is so hard to come by. It is difficult for girls to get that washboard stomach and perfect abs, we carry more fat naturally in the tummy area then guys so the temptation to throw my hands up in the air and wail that i'm destined to have a jelly belly for ever is strong. But, I am no quitter and I have a bunch of free time on my hands right now! So for the next few months my focus is all about the abs.

Bikini Body Action Plan 

(Disclaimer: all these exercises and nutrition information come via my pt Danny Dogget-Short website referenced below)

1) Nutrition

 Macros Macros Macros

The first step of getting that perfect body is nutrition! Admittedly, i've been slacking in this area with the stress of exams taking my full focus. But now, post exams,  hitting those macros has to be high on my priorities. At the end of the day, if you want muscle, and abs ARE muscle, you need to be hitting your calories. A lot of us female fitness wannabes are pretty bad at this and it can be really easy to associate increasing your calories with increasing your weight. The trick is to eat lean calories, not to binge on Maccy Ds and pizza! Fish, Chicken (oh god chicken, I love chicken!), nuts, vegetables and complex carbs like brown rice. To get that perfect bikini body you need to perfectly achieve your protein, carbs and fats. Skimp out and the journey is going to be a lot more difficult!

2) Exercise

I've put together some of my favourite abs workouts (all of which can be done from the safety and anonymity of your home!) that i've learnt over my sessions with Danny.

Crunches:

The old traditional favourite, everyone knows that crunches are a must for getting that fat free tummy.   A little technique Danny taught me is to hold your legs in the air whilst your crunching so that your engaging all of your ab muscles. Make sure you really squeeze and tighten those muscles throughout the workout.

Reverse Crunches:

Like crunches but, you guessed it, in reverse. The idea is that your bring your legs so that their bent at 90 degrees with your knees at your chest and curling your hips up off the floor.  Then lower your legs back down ensuring you maintain the control and tension and that your legs don't touch the ground in between. This exercise is brilliant for targeting that lower tummy pudge which is a nightmare to shift!

(Image taken from http://www.realsimple.com/health/fitness-exercise/workouts/stronger-abs-in-fifteen-minutes-00000000022852/page8.html)

Plank Up and Downs:

These were a new addition I learnt at the end of my session with Danny yesterday. He suggested we do something fun before throwing this into the workout. Now me and Danny clearly have a different definition of fun because these were lethal, I felt like I was going to die. However, saying that, I have fallen in love with this little exercise and will be utilising it to my full advantage in my quest for a perfect bikini body.  The idea of the activity is that you hold your body in a planking position for 20 seconds before coming up onto your hands and back down into the plank 5 times, after the 5 up and downs you resume the plank for another 20 seconds and you do it three times before you're allowed to collapse in a heap, muscles crying! The great thing about this is it doesn't just work your core but your arms as well so the pain is totally worth it. 

V Ups:

V Ups are an old military style workout which impact both the upper and lower abs. Lying on your back, with your legs straight in the air, you attempt to touch your toes. This is a high intensity exercise so the movement needs to be fast for optimum effect. 

Squats:

I have a genuine hatred for squats. I look like an idiot when I attempt them and i'm forever fighting my body's desperate attempts to throw me on the floor under the weights. But, horrible as they are, squats are a brilliant all round workout. Not only will they give you toned thighs and a peachy bum for in that bikini but amazingly they also work your core and help to build those abs that we're so desperate for. I refuse to do squats in the gym without Danny to hide behind but they're certainly an exercise I cannot avoid in my home workouts if i'm serious about getting that bikini body!

(Image taken from http://fitnesswithjlee.com/2014/02/07/day-26-love-your-body/ as no one needs to witness me attempting squats!)

So there you go, some of the key elements in my mission to get that bikini ready body! If you have any other must dos for getting the bikini body, or are on your own mission for the perfect summer body, tweet me at @a_life_on_fire or drop us a line in the comments! I'd love to know about everyone else's fitness journeys this summer!

Sources

http://ddsfitness.co.uk

The Miracle Cure for Exam Stress

I, like students everywhere right now, am smack bang in the middle of exam period. The stressful time of year where you swing between being so jittery from energy drinks and coffee that to sit still for more than a few minutes is torture fighting urges to start up obscure new hobbies that just cannot wait (one year I developed a random obsession with Katy Perry during exam season which evaporated with the exams), to wanting to curl up under a pile of blankets in bed and deny the world exists. The level of physical and mental stress we put our bodies through during exam season is torturous and I have been dependent on my traditional exam season staples:

Unfortunately, a diet of coffee, smokes and diet coke does very little for your health, mood or mental abilities. As what felt like my 100th late nighter in the library hit, my will to live was fast dissipating and every bus was beginning to look like a feasible get out of exams clause!

I was not in the best of moods when I left the house for my session with Danny this week then, to say the least! I'd had three hours sleep and i'd worked myself into such a state of stress over the exam that even the thought of food was making me want to grab a bowl. I was torn between a desire to cancel it and crawl back into bed, the knowledge I should probably be locked away in the library rather than escaping to the gym, and in a mood so black I wasn't sure I could handle being around people without biting someone's head off. One of those moods where if someone so much as gives you a funny look you explode in an unstoppable rage.

It's well known that exercise is a good stress relief. It releases endorphins in the brain which deplete stress and help you to achieve a more positive view of the world! It's also a great way to dispel that pent up energy which being restricted to the library, or a desk, creates such a build up off. Moreover, exercise improves your ability to sleep which further reduces stress. Sleep is something which students certainly fall short of in exam season (which is why the amount of sleep we get the rest of the year is totally justified!).

Now I, like the majority of the population, already knew all this. I knew the great scientific benefits of exercise for stress and i've frequently hit the treadmill to relieve some anger on previous occasions. But I was far from convinced that the gym was going to do anything for the black cloud currently above my head, as far as I was concerned nothing short of a bus a high ledge or the apocalypse was going to improve my mood until my final exam was out of the way (5 days to go now: is that a blessing or a curse?!).

We began our session with the usual leg circuit: squats, lunges, jump squats, jump lunges before moving onto arms. Just hitting the weights again gave an incredible release. I hadn't realized quite how much i'd been neglecting my body's need to exercise over the last week. What I really love about my sessions with Danny is that he always knows the right activity for me to be doing and is quick to shake things up if it's going to help (If you're in the Nottingham area check out his website linked at the bottom of this post, you won't find a better personal trainer around here!). So this week he suggested we break out the gloves and pads in an attempt to work out my aggression and improve my mentality. This was the miracle I had been waiting for all week. Words cannot describe how much of a stress relief hitting something is. I may have got a bit carried away and there were a few near misses between my glove and his face! But after 20 minutes of imagining everyone and everything that had been fueling my rage that morning was on the centre of those pads, the cloud lifted and suddenly the world looked like a slightly rosier place. The exams would be over in under a week, if I fail its not the end of the world, and all of a sudden I actually had some restored motivation and energy to focus on the revision which had been blankly staring at me all week. There was hope that something might click in my newly relaxed brain!

Whether it's exams, or work, family or friends causing you stress. There is nothing I recommend more as a stress relief than hitting the gym. If you get the opportunity, I strongly suggest breaking out the gloves and pads and throwing some boxercise in there, the therapeutic benefits of pummeling those pads cannot be underestimated. From now on, I for one will be swapping my exam season staples:

Sources
http://www.stress.org.uk/Exercise.aspx
http://www.adaa.org/living-with-anxiety/managing-anxiety/exercise-stress-and-anxiety
http://ddsfitness.co.uk/

Shame free snacking

The place where most people fall down when attempting to cut their calories, or their waist lines, is snacking. It doesn't help that all the health and diet advice out their recommends fruit and nuts as their low calorie snack replacements. The majority of us crave high fat high sugar snacks and a handful of fruit and nuts, nutritious as they are, just do not seem to cut it! So here are my top six alternative snacks which will satisfy those junk food cravings without hurting your diet:

1) Ben and Jerry's Frozen Yoghurt.

This is the highest calorie out of my top six snacks but at 180 calories and 5g of fat per 100g (Stawberry Shortcake Flavour) its a far cry from the 280 calories and 15g of fat in the same flavour of ordinary Ben and Jerry's ice cream! Not only is sinfully low in fat but it tastes delicious, every bit as good as the real icecream. I haven't experimented with other brands, being a Ben and Jerry's girl at heart, but if you're in the mood for ice cream any frozen yoghurt is going to be a much healthier alternative.

2) Metcalfes Topcorn

Now plain popcorn isn't particularly unhealthy for you anyway, but once you start adding all those delicious flavourings the calories, and the fat, soon add up. Most frustratingly, most bags of popcorn claiming to be low cal, say 100 calories per serving, contain about 5 servings in a bag. I really struggle with will power with popcorn, once the bag is open i will eat the entire bag regardless of how many servings in it! Metcalfes Topcorn is perfect then because when it says 108 calories per serving it means 108 calories per bag. I enjoy the salted flavour but for around ten calories more you can get salted sweet which is equally irresistible. It's delicious, hits those cravings, and is very unlikely to make you pile on the pounds.

3) Snack a Jacks

Sticking with the salty theme, i frequently crave crisps but can never justify there high fat quantity. Snack a Jacks are the perfect alternative boasting only 7% fat and with the majority of their flavours coming in at under 100 calories a bag. My personal favourite is the salt and vinegar which never fails to satisfy however, experiment to find the flavour that best hits your crisp cravings!

4) Weightwatchers Dessert Flavour Yoghurts

At under 60 calories a pot these yoghurts were an absolute god send to me when i found them. They taste like heaven. They're little pots of goodness tasting almost exactly like the desserts they attempt to mimic. The Rhubarb crumble flavour left me feeling as guilty as if i'd eaten a real crumble, but at 56 calories and most significantly only 0.1 grams of fat these yoghurts are far from the guilt trip their dessert alternatives would be!

5) Options Hot Chocolate

When i'm really craving a sweet treat and a chocolate fix, which lets be honest every girl does on a regular basis, there is nothing better than an options hot chocolate. If you make them with water they are only 38 calories, however, i see no harm in adding a dash of skimmed milk to cream it up a tiny bit. I mean who is counting calories here? Embarrassingly my favourite thing to do with this drink is eat it out of the mug with a spoon like chocolate soup to really make the satisfaction last longer! The mint flavour is my personal favourite but orange is also incredible and butter scotch is certainly worth a taste!

6) Hartley's Jelly

These jellies really are a wonder coming in at just 10 cal a pot. I was incredibly ambiguous buying them as surely no dessert can taste good for 10 calories. I was even warned that they were lacking in sweetness and flavour which is obviously to be expected for 10 calories. But boy were the critics wrong. I can taste very little difference between these little pots and real jelly and i seriously wonder why anyone would ever opt for the high calorie alternative!


I will be transferring this post to its own page in due course so that as i discover more incredible low calorie, low fat snack replacements i can add them to the list for you all to see. In the mean time, if any of you have any nuggets or discoveries of your own please drop me a line and i will add them to the list!

Is your lunchtime salad hurting your health?

It has almost become common knowledge that the salads in McDonalds can contain as much, if not more, fat than their burgers. A crispy chicken and bacon salad, with a low fat Caesar dressing, contains 21g of fat! This is almost double the 12g of fat in the cheeseburger! Even adding chips to your cheese burger meal would not equal the amount of fat in the salad.

But whilst the public has become reasonably educated in the health dangers of McDonalds salad, there is a general assumption that any other salad is a healthy option. This leads people to grab their prepacked supermarket salads without checking the nutritional information meaning that the high levels of fat often contained within goes unnoticed!

One Prawn salad sold at Morrisons, as well as other supermarkets, contains 66.3g of fat, almost 6 times as much fat as in that McDonalds cheeseburger! In fact, if you were to eat a Big Mac, a large portion of chips and a chocolate brownie McFlurry, you would still be eating less fat than in this one salad at a grand total of 61g. Moreover, the average woman is recommended to eat no more than 70g of fat a day so this 'healthy' prawn salad contains almost 100% of the daily fat intake! An M & S Pasta with Tomato & Basil Chicken salad or even a Tesco Tuna Layered Salad would set a person back the same amount of fat as if they were to eat 6 creme eggs or nearly 14 Domino's cookies!



Unfortunately it is not just the fat content in these pre-packed salads that we need to be aware of but also the levels of salt! One study found that one in ten salads contained more salt than a Big Mac and that the majority of salads had more salt in than a packet of crisps!

However, fat is not entirely a negative thing and our bodies need a certain amount of it in order to be healthy. Indeed the World Health Organisation recommends that we eat 32g of healthy fats as a minimum. Fat aids our bodies in the absorption of the nutrients in vegetables and thus is highly important to the diets. Not all fats are created equal and so we should not just be avoiding all fats with a blanket ban but become slightly more discerning about which fat is in our food. Salad dressing is not therefore a sinful creation to be avoided at all costs, we just need to ensure that it is not saturated fats which it is high in. Indeed many of these salad dressings, can be high in polyunsaturated fats, fats which help to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease.

So what's the answer? Don't abandon that salad as a lost cause but instead pick out ones with lots of greenery and vegetables as well as foods high in the good fats such as avocado, eggs, nuts and fish. Pay close attention to levels of trans and saturated fat to make sure that the fat you are eating at lunch is the healthy kind, the NHS recommends a woman has no more than 20g of saturated fat a day.



Sources

http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/content/ukhome/meal_builder.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-299653/McDonalds-salad-fatty-burger.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1306536/Is-lunchtime-salad-healthy-Big-Mac-Mars-Bar.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/shop-salads-have-more-fat-than-a-big-mac-1718050.html
http://www.helpguide.org/life/healthy_diet_fats.htm

Cardio vs Weight training: how to spend your time in the gym!

 A huge proportion of girls avoid weights at the gym at all costs for fear of getting over muscly and butch. Or there's those of us who avoid them purely because of the macho guys continuously loitering around the machines making any girl who wonders into their territory feel slightly out of place! The big question for female fitness fanatics is cardio or weight training? In the battle of fat burning workouts which comes out as top dog?

On a minute by minute basis, cardio burns more calories than weight training making it the fast track to weight loss. However, a huge benefit of weight training over cardio is that it builds muscle. This makes you slimmer and leaner then you would be at the same weight if your exercise routine had been 100% cardio. One study found that a group of dieters lost 21lbs irregardless of whether they performed cardio exercise or strength training. Unfortunately for the cardio group, around 6lbs of this came from muscle whereas those doing weight training lost almost pure fat (Fetters 2013)! A combination of cardio and weight lifting then would ensure that a high number of calories were burnt but equally, that it is fat not muscle which is lost! Weight training will help you look and feel better in those crop tops and high waisted shorts than if you take the cardio only route.

Furthermore, simply having muscle in your body increases your metabolism consequently burning more calories. This effect isn't only present when exercising but continues after exercise has finished so even activities such as standing or sitting in front of the tv will burn more calories with muscle than fat! This is great news for anyone trying to lose weight as it means that your BMR will increase and the calories you eat are more likely to be used for energy as opposed to stored as fatty tissue in your body. One study found that 1kg of muscle burns 50 extra calories a day in comparison with 1kg of fat which only burnt 3 (Hawkey as cited in Harris)! Cardio, whilst effective for burning calories, doesn't have this same benefit on the metabolism. Moreover, it's unlikely to make a huge change to your overall body shape or leanness unless combined with some weight training!

Scarily, fat isn't just external but can grow around your internal organs and even in your bones. This can be hugely detrimental to health. In other words, you may look skinny after weight loss but that doesn't mean there isn't still visceral fat circulating inside your body damaging your liver and other vital organs! Even more scary is the fact that it is visceral fat, not the fat we can see, which increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, liver damage, heart disease and high blood pressure among other things! It is therefore a health threat which cannot be ignored!One study in the UK found that more than half of those studied with a normal BMI had excessive deposits of far around their heart and liver as well as streaked through their muscles! Consequently, fitness shouldn't just be about weight loss but lowering your body fat percentage. Weight training certainly trumps cardio here as it specifically burns fat whilst maintaining muscle; it will not just make you lose weight but help to reduce that dangerous visceral fat which puts your health at risk! The solution, make sure to include weight training in every work out you do in order to ensure you are not just losing weight but losing fat!

Cardio is still incredibly important to not just weight loss but health in general. Getting active and getting fit is not just about weight loss but about that overall fitness factor. Cardio exercise enables your lungs to process more oxygen with less effort, improves the rate the heart pumps blood at and increases supply of blood to the muscle. It thus reduces the risk of heart disease and vastly improves our respiratory systems. Furthermore, cardio exercise has been linked to a reduced risk of stress, anxiety and depression and an improved immune system putting you less at risk of physical illnesses such as colds and flu as well! For anyone looking to make a healthy, permanent lifestyle change, rather than just a diet then, cardio must be incorporated into the workout routine. The best benefits to fitness will come with a combination of cardio and weight training on a daily basis.

Don't worry girls, you don't have enough testosterone in your body to get butch without taking steroids or other supplements! The health benefits of weight training however, cannot be ignored! We therefore, need to ensure that we brave that masculine arena to venture into the weight machines to truly reap the awards of our fitness efforts!

(Credit to my lovely friend Emma Dean for these photos of me at the gym! Visit her beauty blog: http://dinosbeautydiary.blogspot.co.uk/ )


Sources

Much credit to my personal trainer Danny for giving me the foundation of this knowledge: http://ddsfitness.co.uk/
http://www.webmd.boots.com/fitness-exercise/guide/cardio-vs-strength?page=2
http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/exercise/cardio-vs-weight-training.htm
http://www.womenshealthmag.com/weight-loss/cardio-vs-weight-training
http://lowfatcooking.about.com/od/healthandfitness/a/bodyfat.htm

Cocktail Calories

All of us love a drink from time to time, some of us like more than one!As a student I am a particular fan of shotting tequila (sometimes a bit too much tequila!) and I can certainly match my guy friend for pints of lager.  Alcohol is a great stress reliever and a huge part of social life in Britain. There are some that argue that alcohol doesn't do any harm, its empty calories which the body cannot absorb. However, the vast majority of fitness experts argue it can be detrimental to weight loss and diet! My personal trainer refers to two of his clients who go out for drinks every weekend and come back on Monday 2 pounds heavier.  

The knowledge that a glass of wine has the same amount of calories as four cookies, whilst a pint of beer has the same amount of calories as a large slice of pizza is slightly concerning. Indeed, in one episode of Secret Eaters it was revealed that one of the women consumed 2000 calories a day just in alcohol! Two bottles of beer contain the same amount of calories, and far less nutrition, than a sirloin steak! A huge issue with our love of alcohol then is that we do not make allowances for the alcoholic calories in our daily calorie allowance. The average woman needs about 2000 calories a day in order to maintain her weight. Therefore if we intend to drink 500 calories worth of alcohol in a night we should reduce our food for the day likewise. This however, can have a negative impact on nutrition as we are replacing food packed with nutrients we need, with the empty calories and toxins in alcohol.

Research has suggested that alcohol does not make you gain weight because your body physically cannot store the calories from it. In fact one study found that non drinkers put on more weight than those who frequently drank a moderate amount of alcohol. The argument is that when calories in food were worked out it was by burning it to test for energy, clearly alcohol burns fast and so it was given a high calorific factor. However, the calories in it have as much point as if we ate coal. The body cannot process or absorb them. 

Although I am not convinced by this argument alone, there are further flaws to add to it. A problem with alcohol is the fact that it tends to make people hungrier. It is a staple part of a night out to take a 3am trip to Mcdonalds or Marylands adding up to 1000 calories onto what has already been consumed in the day! Now don't get me wrong, nothing tastes better than crispy Maryland's chicken or a greasy fat kebab when you're crashing on the sofa after a particularly insane night out. The temptation to avoid fatty and sugary food when drunk is understandably extremely difficult to resist and this a real danger to look out for! A huge way to reduce the damage done by alcohol to weight loss then will be to avoid the draw of the fatty fast foods!

A further problem is that when the body is absorbing alcohol it is not absorbing the food we have eaten. The processing of alcohol takes priority over anything else as the body rushes to get the toxins out of the body. This means that your body will stop processing the dinner you ate before the night out in preference of sambucca you just shotted. Then, to make matters worse, it will ignore the kebab you wolfed down to focus on freeing your body from that last triples vodka and redbull. Not only does this slow down your metabolism and inhibit the absorption of real nutrients, it increases the liklihood that the food you eat will be stored as fat rather than used for energy. 

There are a lot of myths surrounding alcohol and it is difficult to know exactly what to believe. What can safely be assumed however, is that anyone who is serious about getting fit and healthy needs to keep an eye on those liquid calories and limit alcohol fueled nights to a special treat!

Sources

http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/check-the-facts/health-effects-of-alcohol/appearance/calories-in-alcohol?id=457cd0de-167b-4c76-bcfb-70b1084e7d94#calories

http://exercise.about.com/od/healthinjuries/a/alcoholandweightgain.htm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2512850/Drinking-doesnt-make-fat-A-startling-new-book-claims-nightly-glass-wine-wont-straight-hips.html

http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/fitness/weight-loss/how-alcohol-affects-metabolism.html#b

http://ddsfitness.co.uk/