New Year New Challenges
Part of the reason of setting up this blog was to educate and inform about nutrition, health and fitness, as it is relevant to the general population. One thing that has never ceased to amaze me is the willingness of others to follow a fitspo regardless of the fact they often have no qualifications except for being genetically blessed. Just because someone looks like a Greek God or Goddess does not mean that they know what they are talking about when it comes to your health

Mentoring
To be successful there are a number of factors that you need to do display. These include dedication, tenacity, planning, focus, discipline, confidence and a mentor who is able to guide you. Normally what happens is when one is successful is that they tend to stop listening to their mentors and to believe that they can do it by themselves. At this stage if systems and processes have been well set up then that person will continue to be successful. However if they have not b

Are you getting the right advice?
One of the key factors in achieving performance improvements is a knowledge of nutrition and supplements. It is relatively easy with a beginner to obtain results as they will adapt to almost any stress placed on their body as it is a new and novel stimulus. So the body will adjust to this stimulus and will cause physiological adaptations to occur. Once you have been training for a period of time it gets more difficult to change body composition and/or improve performance unl

Undervalued
One of the frustrating aspects of working in the fitness industry is that everyone thinks that they are an expert yet they also are more then willing to seek free advice. People tend to believe that because you are just talking about meal plans and what to do training wise that you should, at any given social function, provide them with answers to their questions for free. Do you ask your friend who is the mechanic to service your car for free? Do you ask your friend the doct

I am a Strength Coach not using Theories to Shape my Training!!!!
Recently I was having a look at some suggested Facebook pages that people wanted me to like. One of them I looked at and thought this sounds interesting so I looked into the page a little more. What I found was very typical of today's fitness industry. Here is a young coach just finished their PT course and has completed two other courses since graduating. This is a young person on a mission. The tag line was No bullshit, Results based, Science based Strength and Composit

TO LOSE WEIGHT YOU MUST EAT LESS EXERCISE MORE - What a load of rubbish!!!!
If you want to lose body fat eating less and exercising more used to be the mantra provided to you by health and fitness professionals. However we know this does not work. If it did there would be no need for personal trainers, nutritionists, food coaches and weight loss companies. Only a very few people will lose weight by following this old school protocol. Blaming weight gain on eating too much has been occurring for centuries. However it does not take into account bio

How do you measure how Fat you are?
Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) There is a range of ways in which to measure body fat levels. These range from the most accurate which would be upon death removing all of your body fat from you and weighing it to using Body Mass Index as the least most accurate. One of the more popular tests coming into the consumer market now is that of bioelectrical impedance analysis. How does BIA work? In conventional BIA, the following information is required, the person’s weight

What do politics and nutrition have in common?
What does nutrition and politics have in common? Everyone has an opinion on both subjects, even armchair critics who have only a little bit of information. Everyone has an opinion about nutrition and as a result there is a lot of misinformation and misinterpretation. One of the key aspects of nutrition is that there are a number of assumptions which are based on little or out-dated scientific evidence. One of the key areas where this occurs is the use of supplements where a

What is a food coach??
There is a rise of people in the wellness industry at the moment called food coaches. Why do we need another profession when this is something that is adequately covered by dieticians and nutritionists who spend between 3-4 years obtaining their qualification versus a two-day intensive workshop and 5 subjects studied via correspondence? The rise of another profession in the health and fitness industry will lead to once again another watering down of the industry by providing

Healthy Living Food Pyramid
The Healthy Living Food Pyramid According to this pyramid the more we move the more calories we use from the food we eat. Now this makes sense at a baseline level for the general population. However it assumes that all movement in calorie expenditure is equal. Now this is not the case as it depends on movement efficiency as well as the level of intensity of the exercise itself. The next level in this pyramid is what is classified as eat most. On this level we have plant ba