I’m the first to admit I am no expert in this department, so if you are, let me know where I’m going wrong.  But the guidelines are 60 pages long, so here are some of the bits that caught my eye, and my personal comments in brackets… 

Health risks for obese women and their babies.

Weight management when pregnant.

If your BMI is 30 or above, you and your unborn child have higher risks of: 

• Impaired glucose tolerance and gestational diabetes.
• Miscarriage.
• Pre-eclampsia.
• Thromboedolism.
• Maternal death.
• Gestational hypertension.
• Induced/longer labour.
• Instrumental delivery.
• Caesarian section.
• Spending longer in the hospital during delivery.
• Fetal death.
• Stillbirth.
• Congenital abnormality.
• Shoulder dystocia.
• Macrosomia.
• Obesity in the child later in life.

General guidelines.

These are general guidelines for all women who are/have been/will be pregnant.  Note that they are identical to the guidelines for all populations.  They are: 

• Diets should consist of less junk food and more “real” food.  (take a look at what a “healthy” diet should look like by clicking here, or by following these simple rules here…These healthy diets are the same for everyone, not just women.)
• Don’t go mad on portion size.
• Increase your Background Activity levels.
• Use behaviour changes to bring about changes in your weight (instead of “quick fixes” that have little long term value.  To help change your behaviour, click here.)

Before Pregnancy:

If you are planning on getting pregnant, try to ensure you fulfill the following: 

• Having a BMI of less than 30 will reduce risks to both the mother and baby (risks include those outlined above).
• Having a BMI of between 18.5 – 25 is even better.
• Even a weight loss of 5-10% of your weight will have significant health benefits.

During Pregnancy:

• The mothers weight before pregnancy is a better health indicator than the weight gain during pregnancy (so try to be a healthy weight before you get pregnant).
• Dieting during pregnancy is not recommended, but eating healthily is recommended.  (Remember, eating healthily is not “going on a diet”.)  Lose any excess weight after the delivery.
• There are no evidence based UK guidelines on weight gain during pregnancy.  It varies widely between people.
• Moderate intensity activity, eg swimming, quick walking and strength conditioning, will not harm the mother or baby.
• Aim to maintain fitness, rather than reach peak fitness.
• If you have never done exercise before, start with 15 minutes of continuous exercise 3 times a week.  Gradually move towards 30 minutes of continuous exercise every day.
• If you regularly do exercise anyway, you should be able to continue with no bad effects.
• There is no need to “eat for two” when you are pregnant.  Your energy needs do not change for the first 6 months, and only increase by about 200 calories a day (only equal to a 4 finger Kit Kat!) for the final 3 months.
• It is important NOT to be sedentary.  Start/keep walking and take stair instead of lifts (when possible/practical), and avoid sitting for long periods of time.
• Do not weigh yourself repeatedly.  Only if there is a clinical or nutritional concern (you have more important things to be thinking of).

After Pregnancy:

• If the pregnancy and delivery was ok, then “mild” exercise such as walking, pelvic floor exercises and stretching can begin immediately.
• After a complicated delivery, check with your care-giver during your first check-up, 6-8 weeks after delivery.
• Avoid “high impact” activities too soon after delivery.
• Increase your Background Activity levels again.
• Eating healthily and taking regular exercise will not effect the quantity or quality of their breast milk.

If this has been of any interest to you, a while back I listed more specific recommendations for exercise during pregnancy.  You can take a look at them by clicking here… 

And if you really like what I’m writing, you can even subscribe to this blog by clicking on either the email or RSS thingy at the top right of this page. 

And if you think the sun shines out of my bum…and you live in or around Skipton, you can even hire me to train you.  Click here for details…

I highly recommend it to anyone with a passing interest in food and where it comes from.  One of my favorite quotes from the film was the very last line.  It was spoken by a farmer upset by what he was forced to do to make a living…

“People have got to start demanding good, wholesome, food of us.  And we’ll deliver, I promise you.  We’re very ingenious people”.

• He goes to the gym to keep active and watch TV that he does not normally see.
• I do my Karate training to keep my brain awake and get the adrenaline surge I do not normally get.

We both exercise for very different reasons and we probably don’t fully “get” the other persons reasons…but that does not matter!  As long as we are both getting the consistent exercise in, it doesn’t really matter that much why.  And we probably wouldn’t do it if we had to follow the other persons reasons.

I learned this valuable lesson from idiot PE teachers who simply had no concept of the fact that people might not love the same sports as they did.  And I try to keep this in mind when I coach people.

It is not my job to make clones of myself and slag off anyone who does and thinks differently.  It is my job to see and recognise what the person in front of me does/doesn’t have.  Then build on that until they reach their personal goal.

Not only does this mean that I can keep my life nice and easy, but I also find that simple things make the biggest differences in life.  Especially when it comes to food, drink and weight control. 

So probably the simplest thing that any of us can do to improve our health and give our bodies the resources they need to perform at a high standard, is follow this healthy eating pyramid:

Healthy Eating Pyramid - Click to see a big copy.

It is a more visual way of showing the 10 simple rules of healthy eating that I try to drum into people.  So download a copy of this pyramid, print it off and stick it to your fridge/cupboards etc.  I don’t care if you are overweight/underweight, an exercise virgin or an elite athlete…we should all be following these guides for health, life and performance.

Now I know almost everyone of you are thinking

“Its ok, I eat like this anyway.”

If this is so, then you won’t be afraid to do a food diary to prove it!

What parts of the body are involved?

Because they are an upper body pushing exercise, the main working muscles are: 

• Pectorals (chest muscles)
• Anterior deltoids (front of the shoulders)
• Triceps (back of the arms, or “bingo wings”)

But many other muscles are also involved, mostly in supporting roles, including your abdominals. 

Why are pressups so good?

• They are a big, compound move (they move more than one joint at a time).
• They match basic, everyday, practical moves, where we push something/someone away from us (one of my friends imagines she is pushing blokes away in the pub!)
• They can help teach the body to move in a more coordinated fashion.
• They can help increase bone density in your arms if you are at risk of osteoporosis.
• Depending on your current abilities, they can increase your muscular strength or endurance.
• They are free and you don’t need any equipment to do them.
• They are a good Keystone Ability.

How to do the ideal pressup.

First of all, remember that I am describing an “ideal” pressup here.  None of us are “ideal”.  I know I’m not.  But that shouldn’t stop us from trying our best.  If you have difficulty with an “ideal” pressup, don’t panic!  Just don’t stop trying either and you will get there in a few days/weeks/months.

The start.

Support your weight on the floor with your hands and toes. 

• Your hands should be directly beneath your shoulders, but a couple of inches wider than shoulder width.
• Your arms should be vertical when seen from the side.
• Your whole body should be dead flat from your head to your heels, with no bends/kinks in the spine or hips.

Good Pressup - Body flat with no kinks.

Bad Pressup - Back and hips are bent all over the place.

The descent.

• Keeping your body rigid at all times, bend your arms until your chest is nearly touching the floor.  Remember, no sagging/bending/kinking at the belly/back/hips.
• At the bottom, your hands should be roughly in line with your nipples, your forearms dead vertical and your upper arms making a roughly 45 degree angle with the side of your body.
• Your shoulders should be tucked back and down.  In other words, they should not be hunched.

Good Pressup - At the bottom of the pressup, your body should still be flat and rigid.

Good Pressup - Your upper arms should make a roughly 45 degree angle to the side of your body.

Bad Pressup - The body is arched, hips are too low and arms not bent.

 

Bad Pressup - The upper arms are stuck straight out to the sides.

 

The Ascent.

• Keeping your body straight and rigid, push your hands into the floor and return your body to the start position. 
• Make sure your body moves as one, single unit
• Don’t let your hips or your head/shoulders lead the way.

How to make them easier.

• Do everything exactly the same, except put your hands on a step/ledge/box so they are further away from the floor.
• The higher the step, or the greater the incline of your body, the easier it becomes.
• As you get better/stronger, use a lower step.

The greater the incline of your body, the easier the pressup becomes.

 

How to make them harder.

 

• Do everything exactly the same, except put your feet on a step/ledge/box so they are further away from the floor.
• The higher the step, or the greater the decline of your body, the harder  it becomes.
• As you get better/stronger, use a higher step.

The greater the decline of your body, the harder the pressup becomes.

 

Now everyone go out there and do some pressups.  They are good for you! 

Click here for the full story.

4 of these 5 slimming pills have no evidence to back up their claims...

The 5 pills are:

• Adios
• Alli
• Biosynergy Hoodia Gordonii
• LIPObind
• Slim Nite

I should say right now that I have no experience with any of these products, so everything I am saying now is based on my own random knowledge.

Only one of them had any actual research to back up their claims.  One claimed that it speeded up your bodies metabolic rate.  Well, our metabolic rates speed up and slow down all the time throughout the day.  If you sit and have a cup of coffee or a can of Red Bull, your metabolism with shift…but that does not mean they can be considered “diet drinks”.

With so many people in this country classed as obese, we certainly need a wide range of effective tools to deal with the problem.  But the important word there is “effective”.  These tools should actually work.  We shouldn’t be cluttering up our tool box with junk that is not going to help, but simply diverts people away from the tools that actually do work.

And the biggest and best tools in our toolbox are:

• Eating/drinking far less processed/man-made foods.
• Eating many colours of vegetable at every main meal.
• Increasing our Background Activity every day.

My favorite quote from the story comes from NHS dietician Ruth Kander…she says:

“People want a quick fix in their life, they want to lose weight really quickly, and they don’t want to give up their favourite foods, they don’t want to work hard at what they’re eating.  But that’s not real life”

For more information to help you lose weight, click here, or just contact me by leaving a comment below, or clicking here.

Click here to read the whole news article.

Childhood obesity

Here are the conclusions of the study:

Conclusions Physical inactivity appears to be the result of fatness rather than its cause. This reverse causality may explain why attempts to tackle childhood obesity by promoting Physical Activity have been largely unsuccessful.

In other words, for the children in the study, being fat caused them to be less active, rather than being less active caused them to be fat.

So if in activity was not the cause of obesity in these children, what was?  The only other culprit can be the food/drink they ate.  As I say to all the people who come in asking for help to lose weight, a couple of times in the gym isn’t going to do it!  If you want to lose weight, you need to change your diet…and in some cases, your whole lifestyle!

I’m trying to put together a little article with lots of lovely graphs (God!  I love a good graph!) to illustrate the impact that exercise, and changes in your diet, have on your waistline.

Exercise is good, fantastic and everyone should do it for a better life and to make you fitter and stronger.  But it is not the ideal tool to lose weight.

It can be used to make you lose weight, just like you can use a screwdriver to hammer in a nail…but its the wrong tool for the job and you are better off using it for something else.

In the meantime, if you are wanting to lose weight, click here for the basics, and if you want/need more help and life in the Skipton area, contact me today!

Exercise Workshop

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, I had plenty of positive feedback (all of which was “good” or better!) and I think everyone learnt some new and important things over the 2 hours.

In fact, the only problem was my usual one of not keeping an eye on the clock (if you have ever trained with me, you know what I’m talking about!), so I had to rush through the last couple of exercises a bit quicker than I would have liked.

Exercise Workshop

Apart from that teething trouble (which I will have fixed by next time), we managed to go through everything I wanted.

The most important thing was the concept of Midline Stabilisation and various exercises to identify and develop the muscles to needed to maintain it.

Then we moved on to the 8 main, fundamental exercises of the workshop.  These were:

• The Plank
• The Romanian Deadlift (RDL)
• The full Deadlift
• The Squat
• The Lunge/Split Squat
• Barbell Row
• The Pressup/Bench Press
• Shoulder Press/Overhead Press

Exercise Workshop

I chose these exercises because they are big, compound moves that involve much of the body all at once.  Many of them can be classed as Keystone Abilities, and all can improve everyones performance in the gym, in their sport or just their everyday life.

We went over how to do these exercises, and importantly, some of the more common mistakes to avoid.  And the part that I tried to emphasise the most (hope this came across) was how to maintain the all important concept of Midline Stability during these exercises.

But at the end of the day, I had a fantastic time, I was asked some really good, relevent, questions and I think we all came away knowing something new.

Thank you once again for making it a success!

But there are good and bad ways to go about this.  One of the best ways is to work from the general to the specific.

This means you spend time getting the fundamental, foundation principles right before worrying about the minute details.  Get good at the general stuff first, then move on to the specifics.  For example:

• In the gym, make sure you have all-over, full-bodied, balanced strength and the ability to move correctly.  Have this before you start over analysing how many reps of bicep curls and tricep kickbacks you should be doing, or god forbid, which muscle head you are “hitting”!
• In Karate, make sure you can move forwards and backwards without tripping over yourself, and you can actually hit a target without busting your wrists/elbows/shoulders.  Then start worrying about your flying kicks.
• In your diet, make sure you are consistently eating the right things in the right amounts, before shelling out for diet pills/protein powders.
• If you want to be a brain surgeon, you got to spend years of hard graft on the wards before you go poking around a skull with a scalpel.

The important thing to remember is:

“Don’t try to run before you can walk”

And don’t over analyse and worry about the minute details, and end up missing the obvious.

“Don’t miss the woods for the trees”.

Examples of the general to the specific for the 3 main reasons people do exercise are:

• Getting Fitter - Make sure you can last at least 10 minutes at a steady pace before you even think about heart rates or being in the “fat burning zone” (the most pathetic programme on any cv machine!)
• Getting Stronger - Make sure you are consistent and competent in full range, compound (multi-joint) moves such as standing shoulder press, pressups, rows, squats, lunges and deadlifts.  Before this, any small, isolation (single joint) moves such as curls, kickbacks or flies should be done last and take up no more than 5 minutes.
• Losing Fat - make sure that at least half of every main meal is colourful vegetables, and the other half should not be processed or man-made food.  Only after you are consistently doing this should you start thinking about meal frequency or timing or any pills/potions.

Do you know what carbohydrates, proteins and fats are? 

What do they do?

Where do we get them from?

If you want to know the answers to these basics, download and proofread my booklet, Carbs Protein Fats.  I’ve put just the basics down in simple black and white, but need your help to make sure I haven’t made any glaring spelling mistakes or cockups!

Find out the basics of the food we all eat, and help me improve my writing skills at the same time!  Click here:  Carbs Protein Fats