“Can I eat this?”
“Can I eat that?”
“What about this..?”
“But I don’t like broccoli!”
“I want to find something the whole family will enjoy, so I don’t have to cook two or three different things every night!”
These are the statements and questions we hear ALL the time – when you’re ready to change your eating habits from ‘full of junk’ to ‘nice and clean’, it can be a little disheartening when you picture endless weeks of eating chicken breast and broccoli!
But it really doesn’t have to be like that at all – of course, if you love chicken and broccoli, then you go for it every night for weeks and weeks! – because there are hundreds and hundreds of super tasty and healthy recipes you can cook up.
Our expert contributor, Dave Ruel, aka ‘The Muscle Cook’, is the author of Anabolic Cooking – it’s a recipe book we stumbled across a fair while ago and where some of our favourite meals and snacks come from.
We’ve got a copy of Dave’s FREE Top 10 Anabolicious Recipes mini recipe book to give everyone for free 🙂
We really recommend you give his Baked Crispy Chicken Nuggets a go – they are seriously scrummy, everyone who’s tried them loves them (including Sarah’s mum!) and they’re included in this mini recipe collection.
We can also tell you that any of the High Protein Muffins go down a storm – if you have kids in the house you’ll struggle to keep up with demand for them! As soon as you download your FREE recipe book, you’ll be able to whip yourself up some Apple and Cinnamon High Protein Muffins for yourself.
For a more grown-up dinner, you’ll be able to put The Muscle Cook’s (famous) chilli to the test. And for snacks? Well, there’s a fabulous recipe for High Protein Fudge Bars too.
These recipes are our free gift to you, courtesy of Dave (thank you Dave :-)) To get your copy just click on the picture at the top of this post – the recipe book will open in this window (you’ll have to click back in your browser to come back here) and then you can save it to your computer for future reference (and/or print it out, if you like to print things and put them in a folder).
If you like the 10 free recipes and want more, then the complete Anabolic Cooking recipe book is a book you’ll want to add to your kitchen library.
In the meantime, enjoy the free recipes!
My old laptop had years of ‘junk’ on it – you know the files I’m talking about, the ones you really don’t need to keep, never intended to keep but just haven’t round to deleting yet.
It had software on it that I just don’t use any more, and a TON of picture files that could be binned and never missed.
It’s slowed down over time and really could have done with a complete re-install of the operating system ages ago – blue screens of death with various error messages but, to be honest, that’s such a mammoth task so whilst it was working ‘okay’ I decided to just carry on do the best I could with it.
Eventually, various events conspired against me which resulted in having to buy a new laptop.
I have a clean and shiny new hard drive and have turned over a new tech’ leaf – I’m NOT going to fill it with rubbish and junk that’s just going to slow it down and decrease its rather whizzy performance over time!
THAT’S what I’ve been doing over the last couple of days that’s kept me away from being online much AT ALL – setting up my new machine and keeping it all tidy! It’s always ‘scary’ when your tech goes wrong and you NEED it to be able to work; it means you NEED it to be able to earn a living, and you need to be able to earn a living to be able to LIVE.
Our BODIES are our technology!
Our health and bodies are our Operating Systems – we get infected with the odd cold and flu virus now and again, that takes a little while to sort out and get rid of, but we’re usually back up and running again pretty quickly.
We can pick up injuries that range from a not serious sprained ankle to a life-threatening broken neck and the state of our OS will determine how quickly we are able to recover from them – if at all, at the very serious end of that spectrum.
Our brains are our hard drives – we download all sorts of junk onto them in the form of doubt, bitterness, resentment, limiting beliefs, buying into other people’s negative assessments of us and their opinions. ALL of this can very quickly corrupt anything positive on that hard drive and negatively affect our overall performance and choices.
We install all sorts of other junk too – fast food, too much sugar, too much alcohol, too much fat, TOO MUCH of everything that’s not good for us in general.
This all serves to slow down our high tech’ bodies; they just cannot perform well and process all of that at the same time, eventually we find ourselves faced with a major crash and, sometimes, blue screens of ‘death’.
We can’t just nip off to ‘Body World’, choose a new body off the shelf and start again all clean and shiny and in perfect working order and shape – can you IMAGINE!
BUT we can perform a complete re-install of our operating system, reformat our hard drives and choose only to install what we need and that which is GOOD for us.
By making the decision to change things for the better, you’ve re-installed your operating system.
When you work out your reason WHY, put together some affirmations, source visualisation images, and have a proper nutrition plan in place, you’ve reformatted your hard drive.
Now all you need to do is decide to only install things that are good for you, and keep your files in order with some daily housekeeping <— aka training!
Good nutrition and exercise, plus positive affirmations and daily gratitude, is your antivirus software and personal firewall that will protect you from, and keep out, all that’s bad so YOU can enjoy running at peak performance and stay looking shiny and new.
You are an AMAZING piece of technology, don’t ruin yourself by installing rubbish and junk!
If I had to choose just one thing to have as my Six-Pack for Girls signature dessert then this Six-Pack Pavlova, that I’ve created and perfected, would have to be it.
It’s fool-proof, takes no more than 10 minutes to make, tastes AWESOME and each one is LESS THAN 100 CALORIES.
I’m not one of those people who needs to wrap up dinner with dessert, but when I do I want to make sure it’s a six-pack friendly dessert (well most of the time anyway ;-)) and there are occasions when an apple just won’t do!
If you have guests coming for dinner you don’t want to miss out on dessert but you don’t necessarily want to dive into cake, ice cream or whatever else you choose to put on the menu; you don’t want to deprive your guests who aren’t following your six-pack plan either.
This Six-Pack Pavlova will come to your six-pack dessert rescue!
Six-Pack Pavlova
INGREDIENTS
- 1 egg white (15 calories)
- 12g Total Sweet (30 calories) or similar sugar replacement OR 9g of Agave Nectar (27.4 calories)
- 50g fat free Greek yoghurt (28.5 calories)
- 50g of chopped apple (25 calories) OR 50g frozen blueberries (16 calories) OR 50g frozen mixed berries (17 calories)
- Lemon juice or vanilla extract
METHOD
- Pre-heat oven to 180C/356F
- Separate the white of an egg into a clean, dry bowl and whisk with an electric whisk until it forms firm peaks
- Add the Total Sweet or Agave Nectar and whisk again to combine
- Spoon the meringue onto an oven-proof plate and form a nest shape
- Place it in the middle of the oven and set the timer for five minutes if you like pale meringue, or seven minutes if you like them with more colour
- Weigh the fat-free Greek yoghurt and mix in a splash of lemon juice or vanilla extract, if you want to
- Weigh the frozen berries or chop your apple and weigh out 50g
- Take the meringue nest out of the oven
- Spoon the Greek yoghurt into the middle
- Top with your chosen fruit and ENJOY!
You can serve your Six-Pack Pavlovas hot or cold – both are lovely, but I think they’re best when the meringue is still warm. The soft warmth and subtle sweetness of the meringue, with the cool tart tang of the Greek yoghurt and the cold sweetness of the fruit is just AWESOME.
JUST SO YOU KNOW…
I’ve tried making Six-Pack Pavlovas with liquid egg white and, for whatever, reason it didn’t work as well as white from a fresh egg; it just wouldn’t whisk into firm peeks, so fresh eggs are better.
Total Sweet isn’t a Six-Pack for Girls sponsor, it’s simply my preferred sugar alternative from the all the research I did. It doesn’t contain anything artificial, is aspartame free, only has 25% available carbs, won’t rot your teeth, is suitable for diabetics and has a low GI rating – you can read more about it here if you’re interested.
Using a sugar alternative or Agave Nectar won’t result in a crunchy meringue (it’s the caramelisation of cane sugar which produces that) BUT it is lovely and light and mallowey on the inside.
For those times when, and for those people where, you don’t need to worry about keeping the calories and fat content low, you can replace the yoghurt with ice cream or Mascarpone cheese!
TRY THEM FOR YOURSELF!
These Six-Pack Pavlovas are SO seriously good that you won’t believe something can taste this good and still be totally compliant with the FiCX programme the girls are following!
Have a go at making one (or some) yourself, ‘like’ this page and let us know what you think; ENJOY!
If you like messing around in the kitchen and want to try out some other fabulous FiCX friendly recipes, then check out Dave Ruel and The Dessert Angel, Helen Wong’s, fab recipe books and freebies on their websites.
Do you know know what your resting heart rate (RHR) is, should be, and why it’s important?
We all know that in order to burn fat and calories we need to get our heart rate up, but get it up from what?
Your resting heart rate is the number of times your heart beats each minute when you’re resting and haven’t done anything overly physical for a while.
This morning, before I got out of bed, my resting heart rate was 47 beats per minute (bpm) – this is good news for me
- It means I’m pretty fit – 47 isn’t too shabby in the realms of resting heart rates; due to training my heart has become stronger and more efficient at pumping oxygen around my body, so it doesn’t have to work as hard
- It means all is well, so it’s game on for training today – anything between 45 and 47 beats per minute is normal and average for me
The average resting heart rate for Joe and Joanne Blogs is dependent on various things – age and gender being the main two.
The charts below will give you a general idea as to where your resting heart rate should be
Now, I say the charts will give you ‘general idea’ because your resting heart rate is also affected by many things including your fitness level, your lifestyle choices, such as smoking, your current state of health and over training.
Your Fitness Level Affects Your Resting Heart Rate
Dougal is over 60 and he has a resting heart rate that rarely goes about 35bpm – if you look at the chart for men, his RHR is well below what’s considered to be athlete level.
I’ve just hit my 40s, and if you look at the RHR chart for women in my age range you’ll see that my heart rate is also well below the athlete range (I like this!).
Dougal has been physically fit and active for his entire life; surfing, swimming, being a soldier in the Army, running marathons, competing in triathlons and Iron Man competitions and training in the gym over many years have resulted in him having an incredibly strong and efficient heart – one that is much lower than that of even the 18-25 age range.
Resting Heart Rate Is Affected By Your Lifestyle Choices
If you smoke your heart rate is going to be elevated.
The carbon monoxide in cigarettes decreases the oxygen levels in your blood and so your heart has to work harder to make sure your body gets all the oxygen it needs. In addition to that, nicotene causes surges in adrenalin which also causes your heart to beat faster than normal.
Your lungs become less efficient at processing oxygen; their capacity becomes impaired causing you to be breathless which forces your heart to have to work harder still.
Caffeine elevates your heart rate.
My heart rate can increase by up anything up to 5bpm after a cup of coffee, depending on how strong it is. Elevation due to caffeine isn’t always a bad thing and is known to help improve performance during training – it was, in fact, any Olympic athlete found to have caffeine in their systems were banned until the World Anti-Doping Federation (WADA) removed it from their banned substance list in 2004.
In 2008 athletes were tested for caffeine and only banned if they were found to have above 12mg per millilitre of urine; athletes competing in the 2012 Olympics won’t be tested for caffeine at all – that said, caffeine remains on WADA’s radar and continues to be monitored for potential abuse in order to gain an advantage.
Stress, lack of sleep and alcohol
Stress, drinking alcohol and not getting enough sleep (not necessarily all at the same time!) can also cause fluctuations in your RHR.
Dehydration
Failure to maintain proper hydration levels also has an impact on your resting heart rate; it makes sense really, we’re mostly made up of water and if those levels drop all major functions are going to start to having to work harder or shut down.
Colds, Fever, Flu And Your Resting Heart Rate
If your normal resting heart rate is higher than usual this can be a sign that you’re not well – your heart rate will increase by 10 to 15 beats for every degree that your temperature goes up. If you don’t feel well and your RHR is 10bpm above normal, DO NOT TRAIN!
If your immune system is busy fighting of germs, bugs and viruses, it simply cannot cope with the additional demands of intense training too.
Whilst it can be frustrating having to put your training programme on hold to recover, it’s far better to take a week off then push through, when you shouldn’t, making things worse and taking yourself out of the game for three weeks or more.
Overtraining
More is rarely ‘more’ and this is also true in the world of physical training.
Yes it’s tempting and, yes, most of us have done it: if I just throw in an extra weight session per day, plus a 5k run, then I’ll get the results I want a lot quicker! But too much more is nothing but a fast route to overtraining and all that comes with it:
- Lack of results
- Hitting a plateau
- Decrease in motivation
- Lack of strength and energy to complete your workouts
- Seem to be catching colds more frequently
- Change in sleeping patterns
- You ache more often than you don’t – in fact, you don’t remember what it’s like not to ache somewhere!
You can only keep annihilating your body for so long before it refuses to take any more, and an RHR above your average is a tell-tale sign that you’re pushing yourself a little too hard.
What Should My Resting Heart Rate Be?
Well, it depends on all of the above!
The numbers in the charts can guide you to a certain extent,but your number will be personal to you. Don’t compare your RHR to mine, or anyone else’s; simply compare it with your own on a regular basis and build a picture of what is normal for you.
When you have a good idea of your average RHR you’ll know what’s normal for you and what’s not – you’ll be able to monitor improvement in your cardiovascular fitness, spot when you should back off and when you don’t have any business training at all!
Everyone in the self help business advocates as one of the necessary steps – TAKE MASSIVE ACTION. Whilst that works for some it may not work for everyone. I mean, what if you just can’t take massive action. What if you are so stuck in wherever you are, that you can’t move.
I heard a great line in the movie LEGENDARY with John Cena, which fits the bill in this instance: “When you show up, things happen!”
All you have to do is make the decision to do things differently and then ‘just show up’. I mean, you have to be there anyway, don’t you? So just be present. You don’t have to take massive action right now, not when you are stuck in quicksand with, what you think, is no way to go.
You see, EVERYTHING, starts in your head. Any kind of decision making process begins there. It is just as simple to make a positive decision to move forward as it is to remain stuck…or go backwards. Which way would you rather go? It’s a no-brainer, really, isn’t it!
If you are in a bad place right now, think about possible solutions and then DON’T take massive action. Just ‘show up’ and you’ll see things start to happen.
Life is wonderful, if you choose to make it so.
Well, Easter chocolate madness is upon us again and wow it can make people behave strangely!
I went to the supermarket with my daughter today and the Easter Egg and chocolate aisles (yes, plural) were jam packed with people pushing and shoving each other to get to the chocolate eggs which were flying off the shelves at an alarming rate.
Forget panic buying of petrol here in the UK, due to the threat of petrol tanker drivers going on strike, this was panic chocolate buying on a grand scale – what if all the eggs went and someone didn’t have a trolley full of them!?
Whilst watching this interesting display of human behaviour, I came up with a radical idea: how about NOT eating any chocolate this weekend?! *GASP*
I know that eating chocolate until we feel physically sick is what’s commercially expected of us, but how about bucking the trend and doing something different? I know, I told you it was radical 😉
Instead of an overpriced chocolate egg, that may or may not come with a novelty mug or soft toy, go and buy yourself something that isn’t edible – a new t-shirt perhaps; a new shade of nail polish (I was drooling over a rather lovely metallic Royal Air Force blue colour today, and would have bought it if it wasn’t for the fact I already have a very similar shade at home); something that will make you feel you’ve treated yourself a little bit and doesn’t contain any calories.
Try it – I guarantee you’ll feel liberated and won’t be full of remorse, counting extra inches on the hips, come Tuesday when Easter has been and gone!
Happy Easter everyone – enjoy the holiday 😀
Since the creation of Six-Pack for Girls back in September 2010, we’ve received hundreds and hundreds of emails and messages from girls all around the world.
It’s not uncommon for us to be left stunned and in tears after reading your stories that are either full of hope, full of despair, and everything in between.
Whether you’re in a place of hope and excitement right now, or the complete opposite – seeing nothing but darkness and despair and feel you’re drowning in your own life – we’d like you to meet Nick Vujicic.
There are hundreds of videos of Nick Vujicic on youTube and we’ve chosen this one to share – just a word of warning though: we’ve watched it many, many times now and, without fail, it makes us smile and cry. You might want go and get some tissues…
Have you got some?!
Great – hit play and be inspired, uplifted and blown away by the truly wonderful Nick Vuijicic 😀
The challenges in our lives are there to strenghten our conviction; they are NOT there to run us over – Nick Vuijicic
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A very good question has been asked over on our Facebook Fan Page:
[quote author=”- Ming”]I do my weight training or cardio usually at night time; should I consume some carbohydrate as part of my dinner, or only protein and veg? I heard different opinions about carb consumptions at night for obtaining a six pack…Thanks for your advice![/quote]
Before we go any further I’d like to say something – vegetables are carbohydrates too! They aren’t a fourth food group bringing up the rear behind protein, ‘carbs’ and fat.
Ming is asking whether or not she should include starchy carbs, such as brown rice or potatoes, in her post-workout meal.
Keeping starchy carb consumption confined to the early meals of the day and avoiding them during afternoons and evenings, if you want to get ripped and show off a six-pack, is a well documented approach used by many.
However, consuming starchy carbs after resistance training is also necessary for restoring muscle glycogen levels and inhibiting the loss of muscle mass.
BUT wait!! What of the widespread belief that eating (starchy) carbs at night will make you fat?!
You can see Ming’s dilemma!
The answer to her question is this:
[message_box type=”info” icon=”yes”]Hi Ming
Yes you should add some form of (good) starchy carbohydrate to your post resistance workout meals (this isn’t necessary after cardio workouts), along with some protein and leafy/fibrous vegetables; the starchy carbs are necessary to refill your muscle energy stores and allows for the repair and recovery of muscle tissue.
Because you’re exercising in the evening your body is primed for nutrient absorption at this time, because it needs them.
The body doesn’t have a carbohydrate good/bad switch that it flicks on and off. Carbs that were okay to eat in the morning don’t suddenly morph into evil fat-depositors of doom when the sun goes down.
Excess calories, from a combination of all foods, cause weight gain and keep six-pack abs hidden – not eating the correct amount brown rice, whole wheat pasta or potatoes after 6pm.
Hope that helps x[/message_box]
Questions like Ming’s stem from the MASS of conflicting information about carbs: which ones to eat, when to eat them, when to avoid them like the plague and when those same ‘don’t ever eat them’ carbs can actually work for you and so on.
Here’s a quick Carb 101, for you, to make things a little clearer…
A Biology Lesson
Just like a car, our bodies need fuel to function and its fuel options are: glucose, fat and protein (although, protein is a muscle builder and we really don’t want it being used as fuel at all, if we can possibly avoid it.)
Fat fuel comes from our reserved fat stores, but what about the glucose?
It comes from carbohydrates – chains of sugar molecules in food that are broken down by the liver to produce glucose. This increase in glucose triggers the pancreas to release insulin which transports the glucose to your cells so it can be used as energy.
Produce too much glucose and the body will store it in your liver and muscles as glycogen, ready to be used when we need an extra quick burst of energy; excess glycogen, that can’t be stored in the liver or muscles, is safely stored away as fat for future energy use.
Our muscles can store approximately 400g of glycogen (1,600 calories) and your liver 100g (400 calories).
Good Carbs, Bad Carbs
Carbohydrates can be divided into different groups and categories; some are good, some are not so good and some are just downright bad:
- Simple and Complex
- Refined and Natural
- Complex starchy and complex fibrous
- High and Low Glycemic
Simple and Complex Carbohydrates
Simple carbs are absorbed quickly because their chain of sugar molecules is short (one or two); they will produce a rapid rise in blood sugar levels and trigger a surge of insulin to balance it.
Consume too many simple carbs and you’ll soon be storing all that extra glucose as fat; you don’t have to cut out simple carbs completely (unless they’re refined ones, see below), just be mindful about the quantities you consume.
Complex carbs contain chains of sugar molecules joined together in their thousands. The body has to work much harder to break them down so digesting them takes far longer than for their simple cousins.
Due to this slow absorption, energy is released at a steady rate which helps to stabilise blood sugar and insulin levels.
- Examples of simple carbs: fructose (natural sugar found in fruit), lactose (natural sugar in dairy products), glucose (blood sugar), sucrose (the sugar you put in coffee)
- Examples of complex carbs: potatoes, brown rice, wholewheat bread, whole grains and vegetables
Refined and Natural
REFINED CARBOHYDRATES are the bad guys and should be avoided at all costs if you want to get into shape, stay in shape and carve yourself a six-pack.
Refined, or processed, carbs – wholewheat flour refined into white flour, for example – have had all their complexity removed and, consequently, have exactly the same effect on the body as simple carbohydrates.
All the digestive hard work has been done for them and their mass of calories will very quickly send you crashing though your calorie ceiling – your fat cells will love you for it, your jeans and six-pack won’t!
NATURAL CARBOHYDRATES are those that haven’t been tampered with and remain as nature intended; if it grew that way, it’s a natural carb. When was the last time you saw a jam doughnut tree on your travels..?
- Examples of refined carbs: cakes, chocolate, doughnuts, pastries (anything made with white flour, in fact!), crisps/crisps, white rice, white pasta, white sugar etc
- Examples of natural carbs: anything that grows in the ground or can be picked off a tree or plant!
Complex Starchy and Complex Fibrous
COMPLEX STARCHY CARBS are your resistance training friends. They provide necessary fuel for training, replace the fuel you burned during training and release their energy slowly to keep you feeling fuller for longer after you’ve eaten them.
All the energy in starchy carbs can be absorbed by the body, making them very calorie heavy; you don’t get vast quantities of starchy carbs for your calorific money and it’s very easy to over-eat within this group, so be careful.
- Examples of complex starchy carbs: potatoes, cereals, oats, brown rice whole grain pasta, whole grain bread and beans
COMPLEX FIBROUS CARBS have numerous benefits and you should eat plenty of them!
The body doesn’t absorb all the available energy (calories) from fibrous carbs because a lot of it is contained in the plant’s fibre, which we can’t digest; green leafy vegetables, in particular, are very low in calories and you can eat a ton of them without reaching anything close to your calorie limit.
As a result you’ll be adding a lot of beneficial fibre to your diet, will feel fuller, for longer, on fewer calories which, in turn, reduces the probability of late-night snacking; awesome!
- Examples of complex fibrous carbs: broccoli (my BFF – Best Fibrous Friend!), cauliflower, cucumber, lettuce, cabbage, watercress, green beans, spinach,
High Glycemic – Low Glycemic
The Glycemic Index assigns foods a number depending on how quickly the body converts their energy into glucose – the higher the number the faster it’s converted.
But just to really muddy the carbohydrate waters, some complex carbs have a high glycemic index number even though they’re in the, typically, slow release energy group.
Potatoes and carrots are two such examples of complex carbs (one starch, one fibrous) that have a high GI because the body converts them to sugar very quickly – years ago I was told/read (I can’t remember which) that carrots actually have a higher glycemic index rating than ice-cream (please, no abandoning carrots in favour of ice-cream!), apples, on the other hand, have a very low GI rating.
I must confess to never having paid more than scant attention to the individual GI numbers of the combined foods I eat; when combined with other foods, high GIs can be reduced and trying to work it all out is, quite frankly, enough to make your brain hurt!
A popular example I’ve come across often is ‘the rice cake with peanut butter’ (just reading the names of those two foods alone is almost enough to make my six-pack disappear!) Rice cakes have a very high GI rating, even though they’re low in fat, adding a bit of peanut butter (PB) to one brings it’s GI number down as the fat in the PB slows down the carbohydrate absorption.
Tom Venuto provides a very clear illustration of this in his book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle: he explains how mashed potato has a GI rating that’s almost the same as pure glucose (I love mashed potato too, well I DID!) but if it’s combined with chicken breast and broccoli then the GI rating of that meal as a whole, is lower than the GI of the mash on its own.
MAD!
The Bottom Line…
Carbs, other than refined ones, are NOT the enemy.
Ditch the refined carbs, NOW!
Go easy with foods containing simple carbs, like fruit; moderation is key.
Eat starchy and fibrous carbs on resistance training days.
Eat plenty of fibrous carbs EVERY day and
Eating starchy carbs in the evening, after training, WILL NOT MAKE YOU FAT!
Still not convinced? You have SEEN my pictures, haven’t you..? 😉
If you have a training or nutrition question you’d like us to answer, pop over to Six-Pack for Girls on Facebook and post it on our wall.
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Do you need to get back on track after the weekend?
What did you get up to? Anything, something, nothing?
I was away from home for the weekend back in the town I grew up in for a 22-year high school reunion; the friend I stayed with was under strict instructions from all the other girls I went to school with to ply me with cake, crisps, and all things I generally don’t eat and drink!
She was never one to shy away from a challenge and I have to say she did a pretty good job 😉
Here are my top tips to help you out, just in case you need a bit of help to get back on track after the weekend.
Tips To Get Back On Track After The Weekend
Stop Beating Yourself Up!
Whether you planned to eat off your normal beaten track over the weekend and went a bit over the top, or just gave in to temptation, if you’re beating yourself up about it now – STOP!
You can’t un-eat and drink things you did, what’s done is done and you need to move forward. Berating yourself and bemoaning the fact you weren’t going to eat this and that will just make you feel worse and has the potential to see you diving into the food deep end again to make yourself feel better…temporarily.
I promise you won’t have undone every single bit of calorie-burning, fat-shedding work you’ve ever done in your entire life over one 24 – 48-hour period. There’s no need to give up altogether, it’s simply time to MOVE. ON!
Reconnect With Your Goals
Setting solid goals and staying connected to them is one of your biggest allies when it comes to getting back on track after the weekend.
Without solid goals you’re far more likely to wander down temptation alley and along overindulgence road, eventually ending up right back where you started or beyond!
Use visualisation picures to help you see what it is you’re wanting to achieve.
Write a new set of affirmations (in the present tense) to help you focus on what you want to do and how you want to live ie:
- I eat clean food
- I drink enough water every day
- I train six days a week
- I get between six and eight hours sleep a night
- I love living a healthy lifestyle
Clear The Fridge And Cupboards
If you’ve still got ice-cream in the freezer, crisps/chips, cake and chocolate in the cupboard and beer or wine in the fridge – GET RID OF IT!
Only with the BEST will-power in the world will you be able to get back on track after the weekend with all of that lot hanging around, it will call to you when you’re feeling at your most vulnerable and will be incredibly difficult to resist.
Couple that with the very common ‘it would be a shame to waste it/I can’t bear to waste it’ notion and you’re all set for a collision course with your body fat calipers!
If you can’t bring yourself to dump everything in the bin, either give it away to people who doesn’t share your fitness goals or get someone else to ditch it for you.
But whatever you do, make things easy on yourself and don’t keep your weekend indulgence leftovers in the house!
Take Positive Action
Do something other than listen to the ‘I want to eat ice-cream voice’.
My most tried and trusted tip for this is to put some music on and dance around a bit – a full-scale workout later in the evening is a bit serious for my taste, dancing around the way you did when you were a teenager in your bedroom is much more like it and can work wonders!
Turn the volume up, press play, engage in a bit of crazy not-taking-yourself-at-all-seriously shufflin’ and see if you don’t feel a bit brighter after!
It’s so daft you can’t help but smile; it’s quite energetic, so your heart will be working just a little harder, and I guarantee the sudden rush of endorphins, along with a dash of seratonin, adrenaline and dopamine, will very quickly kick that little ice-cream ‘whisper’ into touch.
And Finally…
These are just some of the tips and tricks I’ve used to successfully get back on track after the weekend, I hope you find them useful 😀
If you have some get back on track after the weekend tips of your own, pop over to our Facebook page and share them with everyone – Facebook.com/sixPackForGirls