It has been a while and we have both been asked a number of times ‘so how is it going?’ so here goes:

The answer to that is great! No six pack yet but the target is still in sight and not forgotten and ignored. 2011 was a year where physical fitness was top of both our priorities and it was an awesome year. 2012 has brought other priorities to the top of the daily task lists making it even more interesting balancing work, family, fitness and everything else life has to offer.

Most fun last year was the number of people around us both who have had a heightened awareness of diet and exercise in part we would like to believe through our subtle and discreet way we approached our brads body idea and challenge.

We have no end of gym buddies around the country and are more aware than ever of peoples efforts than ever before.

One of the nicest things is when people who encouraged us want help it is nice to be able to just say yes so that is why Stuart is riding for Sports Relief with a customer of his who felt challenged to raise a little money for charity and start the process of getting fit again! His customer Toby Brett @banwellhouse sent out the following letter so please do feel free to sponsor the whole team on his sports relief link :

Hi all

Here is the grovelling email.

As a bright idea last month I decided that my managers and I would do a circular bike ride around my three pubs.

When I looked into this it is 35 miles so how hard can it be???

Well very for the reasons below:
1. While writing this I am contemplating checking that the bike is still in the cellar, I know that it will need some air in the tyres and some oil.
2. I am seriously unfit, I can not even remember the last time I did any exercise let alone rode a bike.
3. I am very over weight and the thought of me on a bike is worth a couple of quid to anyone.
So I can guarantee this will be not easy for me and if anyone wants me to suffer I am confident that I will be walking like John Wayne for days to come.

So please follow the link, give generously but not so generously that I will feel guilty!

The participants are:
Me
Tom – Duke
Tony – Duke Chef
Lee – Duke Assistant Managers Fiance (tenuous I know)
Ben – Three Horseshoes
Stuart – Our IT guy

Thanks in advance.

http://my.sportrelief.com/sponsor/tobybrett

Toby Brett
Managing Director
Banwell House Pub Co Ltd
www.banwellhouse.com

The problem

The problem we have is we’ve turned eating into a social occasion. Dinner with friends, lunch out with clients. I always think of my wife’s horses. They eat the same boring food every day and just drink water. They are incredibly fit animals and know no different. They don’t get to socialise down the pub! So stop thinking of meal times as a social occasion – instead remember; you’re fueling your body with exactly what it needs to get and keep you in the best health and shape possible.

Most people eat 3 times a day – breakfast, lunch and dinner. Stuart and I however, have been eating 5 times per day, adding 2 more meals to our daily schedule. These 2 new meals are the “in-between” meals – what you will eat between breakfast and lunch, and lunch and dinner. The challenge with these 2 meals is that for most people they land smack in the middle of work or during some other really inconvenient time when you’re busy. To make this work so that you can keep your metabolism burning will require some thought, but it is easy if we plan ahead.

The case for eating 5 meals a day

Most people eat 3 meals a day and will snack on anything they fancy between meals. If someone brings in a box of donuts to the office to share – it’s yummy tummy time. This is not the best way to feed the body, and studies have shown that eating every 2-4 hours is a key strategy for improving body composition. Eating at regular intervals helps to boost the metabolism, balance blood sugar levels and helps conserve lean muscle while giving the body a reason to burn off extra fat. This is a key strategy for getting lean and something that you need to seriously think about adopting.

Strategies for hitting the “in-between” meals

Let’s  assume that you have your breakfast and dinner at home. Lunch can sometimes be an in-between meal if you are on the run, or if you are at the mercy of whatever lunch special food services has prepared that day. Lets take a look at strategies for hitting these 3 meals.

Preparation

Eating healthy meals takes thought and discipline, and getting used to eating 5 meals a day takes time and planning. It really begins with the food, so making sure that you are stocked up on what you will need is the first thing you need to do. You need to ensure you’ve thrown out all the easy to grab, unhealthy snacks like crisps and biscuits and bread. Make sure you do a weekly shop and get all the healthy food you need for the week ahead. Some people like to prepare all of their meals for the week on Sundays and then have everything arranged in containers so that all they have to do is grab it and go, and if this strategy works for you then great. Personally I like to do things one day at a time, planning what I’m going to have each day. But I do have a regular list of my favourite meals to choose from.

Interval Eating

If you’re mega busy during the day like most people it is defintely worth setting an alarm every 3 hours to remind you it’s meal time. I’ve recently invested in a Gym Boss interval timer for when I’m doing High Intensity Interval Training and this can be used for your meal time intervals too.

At Work

If you have a communal fridge at work then make sure you get a space in there for your food. Buy some compact Tupperware boxes and take your meals to work with you. If you don’t have the option of a fridge at work, then the next best thing is to buy a cool box and take it to work with you. Tuck it under your desk and set your timer. This option works really well for people who spend most of their working days in their cars.

The meals

When we say meal we mean 1 palm size portion of complete lean proteins  and some chopped veggies and medium size fruit. Thats it. This is healthy food on the run, not a sit down dinner where you have to carve a roast dinner. Think about it – fresh baby carrots, some celery, some greens, a diced up tomato, an apple all in a Tupperware box neatly organised in your cool box. A chicken breast, some canned tuna, turkey slices, salad etc.

Protein Shakes

You can use supplements too. Fresh whole foods are always best, but you can also ake a quality protein shake that mixes instantly with water. See our blog post on Whey Protein for more details. I tend to take a protein shake after a workout session and often in the middle of the afternoon. 2 protein shakes between 3 smaller meals is a good example of 5 meals.

Eating at Restaurants

If your job involves a lot of entertaining then start thinking off the menu. Ask for things that are not on the menu. Most restaurants will let you customise your order. If you see a grilled salmon breast go by your table covered in bearnaise sauce ask for a plain grilled salmon and side salad or vegetables. So ask for the healthier alternative and remember, not all salads are healthy. Ask for a plain garden salad or mixed green salad and avoid the fattening salad dressings.

No Diets just a New Way of Life

So don’t think of all this meal preparation as hassle. Yes, it’s going to mean getting organised, but once you’re in the flow it’s really easy. The simple thing to remember is that each meal needs a portion of lean protein and vegatables and complex carbohydate. And of course, each meal MUST be smaller than a normal meal.

photo courtesy of Light and Day Photography

Often we are asked how difficult it is to stay focused and eat properly especially when socialising – honestly, it is easy. Why is it easy? Mainly because of friends. If this was a solo effort done quietly without telling anyone of our intentions then the offer of a slice of cake or a chocolate bar would be hard to resist as the only person who it would affect would be yourself. Having friends aware you are trying to achieve something and having a friend doing the same gives a lot more reason to look at the treat as a delay to achieving the goal at best. Often it feels more like you have been offered a lump of toxic sludge (so not very appealing at all).

Does this mean we need superman like iron wills? Not at all. If you picture for a minute eating a chocolate (or your favourite treat). It tastes great. Slowly it slips down your throat and makes you feel happy! Now picture having a second… and a third…. By the time you get to the tenth the sweet taste is more sickly and as your stomach is full to bursting imagine having to really swallow to get it down. Now try to imagine your desire for another one!

Clearly this is a favourite treat but it just is not at all appealing in this circumstance so although you may like the treat you do not necessarily have to have an iron will to avoid them – you just need a new perspective.

Friends help give us perspective like this and they are essential to the weight loss and getting fit lifestyle we are growing into. The positive comments on how much you have lost and how well you look and even the “You must feel much better” comments are fantastic to the ego and help you keep going through the times that the mind tries to come up with reasons to avoid the changes.

More than that the whole gym experience which was always intimidating is not scary with a friend. To spell it out I would never visit a gym in the past for a number of reasons:

With friends this experience is not only bearable but you can have a laugh together. What you don’t remember your buddy probably does. As you are there having fun other people smile and laugh with you and suddenly aren’t so intimidating.

Unfortunately the testosterone factor in the weights section is just something we need more ladies to come and join in to help to disperse!

We’ve been using Whey Protein as part of our nutrition program since November 2010 and it’s had a profound affect on our weight loss and muscle gain over that short period of time.

It comes in powder form and we mix it with water or milk to form a healthy, nutritious shake. It comes in a wide variety of flavours such as chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, peanut fudge, cookie dough, chocolate mint, banana etc. We’ve both got our different favourites.

Dickie loves peanut fudge and cappuccino.
Stuart loves cookie dough and raspberry ripple.

We eat too Much Carbohydate
We realised early on in our lifestyle change as we make the transformation towards a body like Brad Pitt’s that we eat way too much carbohydrates in our daily diet. Everywhere you go most meals contain way more carbohydrate than protein. Go into a coffee shop and all their snacks are mainly carbs based – muffins, croissants; sandwiches, toast, tea cakes, biscuits and so on. It’s the same when we go out for lunch or dinner. Pasta, pizza, burger and chips. Most of our meals contain too much carbohydrate and not enough protein.

But to transform our fat bodies into leaner, muscular bodies like Brad Pitt’s we need to be eating more protein and not as much carbohydrate.

We’ll add a blog post in the next week or so about the different types of carbohydrates and which ones we should be eating.

So Protein shakes are a great supplement to our daily nutrition plan to get the extra protein we need.

What is Whey Protein?
Whey Protein is derived from milk protein. But whey protein does not contain fat or lactose sugar. Whey protein is the best form of protein to take as a supplement because you get all the advantages of protein without all the unwanted stuff such as fat and lactose.

Why we use whey protein

• It’s really convenient
• It has many vitamins
• It helps to build muscles
• It helps to speed up recovery time
• It can help to lose weigh

But not all protein shakes are the same. So you do need to do your research before buying it. Some are aimed at those wishing to add extra weight, some contain creatine for those looking to bulk up and some are manufactured from different sources of proteins. Some also have more sugar than others so if you’re trying to lose body fat you need to choose wisely.

We buy ours from a specialist supplier who has done all the research. We do not recommend buying Whey Protein from high street health food stores. If you want to ensure you are using the right one then ask us and we’ll be happy to supply you with the best one.

Stable Blood Sugar Levels
One of the great things about Whey Protein is the amino acids in protein help keep your blood sugar levels stable. We often crave food and sweet food when our blood sugar levels drop. If your diet is too high in carbohydrates your blood sugar levels go though peaks and troughs. You go from feeling really energetic and feeling full to a drop in energy and being hungry. In addition, if you’re trying lose weigh, getting 17 grams of protein from a protein shake that only has 110 calories is better than getting your protein from a big meal with hundreds of calories.

So keeping our blood sugar levels stable is important because it keeps you feeling good all day and stops the craving for food that occurs when your blood sugar level drops.

When is the best time to take a whey protein shake?
We now tend to eat smaller meals and more often throughout the day so we eat between 5 and 6 meals a day. But 2 or 3 of these meals is a protein shake.

Here are the times when we take our protein shakes just as a guide:

1.Right after a workout – Within 30 minutes of your work out is best. This is when your body goes into recovery and growth. Having the amino acids that make up the protein is key at this point.

2. First thing in the morning – because your body has just gone through 8 hours of sleep and not had any food – so your protein levels are way down.

3. Before you go to sleep – this helps prevent the protein breakdown that naturally occurs when we sleep. If you are not trying to build muscle mass then this protein breakdown is fine. But if you are working out – you want to try to minimize any losses you suffer when you sleep and your protein metabolism slows down.

4. Mid-morning and/or mid-afternoon – we love having a shake at these times just to keep us going and it really helps to stop any hunger pains.

We travel around with a shaker container with a couple of portions of whey protein so that even if we are out and about we can still have one of our nutritious shakes. All we need is to add water and our shake is ready in seconds.

So if you want to start adding some quality proteins into your nutrition, then please get in touch and we’ll point you in the right direction.

Water is essential to life AND performance. By performance I mean ALL performance – not enough water and your body does not at a cellular level do what is needed just to live so the effects of nutrition and exercise are severely hampered!

Consider a farmers wheat fields. Studies have shown that fields produced 70% less crop with 10% less water. Naturopaths regularly say that one of the leading causes of people feeling ill is dehydration. EVERY fitness and nutrition expert starts with this as the most important part of your life so don’t neglect it!

The fact of the matter is we do not have a sensor built in to tell us when we are hydrated enough so it is easy to not drink enough. Coupled with the plethora of coffee shops and soda drinks on sale may people never drink plain water ever. I don’t need to point out coffee and alcohol do not hydrate you and you should have extra water to make up.

So what is the solution?

Plan your hydration like military campaign for 4-6 weeks till it is an ingrained habit and you dont need to think about it.

Weigh yourself and drink the equivalent of no less than 33ml of water per kilogram of weight daily (15 ml per pound)

For example if you weigh 50 kg – 50 x 33ml = 1.65l of water a day

For someone who weighed 9 stone or 126 pounds this would be 126 x 15ml = 1.89l

In either of these cases I would recommend filling a 2 litre bottle full of water and ensure by the time you go to bed you have finished it daily.

The other thing to do is start the day with 2 glasses of water. 7-8 hours sleeping will have left your body dehydrated so swig them down when you wake. Some people wake, shower, get ready for their day, go downstairs and make a coffee and have breakfast. Considering the above information you can imagine why this little change might have a massive impact on their lives as their bodies can suddenly function at a cellular level. In fact some people report this little activity alone has helped them be more productive, more positive and achieve more in life.

Last few points to note are to bear in mind in dry weather (central heating!) or warm weather or with exercise you may need more so consider this a minimum not a target!

The only way you can actually monitor this is to look at your urine Clear or pale yellow at most is the colour you want to see. Dark yellow is dire.

Happy drinking and if this helps you please do let us know!