Shame to say it – any monkey can take you through a workout providing you with entertaining variations on simple exercises, leaning on your ‘empathy’ buttons between sets and whilst draining your back pocket with very little in terms of hard and fast results to show for it.

The spectrum is getting wider and here is how to spot the right personal trainer.

1. They can deliver results

More often than not you will hear about a good personal trainer through a friend’s positive experience. This is a good start. It reveals a trust and standards that your friend is willing enough to share with you.

However, it can’t stop there. Your personal trainer or Dublin Personal Training company must be able to prove that they can match your needs and deliver the results you are after.

Where are the testimonials?

2. To this end they put their money where their mouth it

In this climate, offering a guarantee for personal training services reveals true professionalism. It reveals a company or an indivudual geared towards results rather than figures. They can back this up by guaranteeing their services 100%.

3. They truly walk the walk

Your trainer will be your coach. How can you respect him or her if they are a walking sign of ill-health or stink of coffee the minute you meet them? Personal training is not a hobby. It is a lifestyle. You will not meet a more passionate and determined group of practioners who can help you with your fitness goals.

In essence your personal trainer is not your ‘friend’, more your coach there to inspire and take you to levels you never thought were possible.

4. Their Application of Knowledge stretches beyond ‘counting reps’ and ‘barking orders’

There are plenty of opportunites for personal trainers to upskill and develop their knowledge base. A good personal training compnoay will be constantly doing this within the realms of functional medicine (therefore knowing the red flags to look for in what may be preventing cloients from losing body fat and achieving optimal health), functional anatomy, psychology, nutrition and lifestyle management.

This is then imparted directly to the client.

At Sphere our trainers intern and surround themselves with some of the sharpest minds in the health, well-being, nutrition and medical field. We learn of the best so that the best is delivered to the client.

There may even be the case where we need to call upon these experts to help you reach your goals quicker.

5. Your personal trainer can deliver a tried and tested system of delivering results

It takes years of hands on experience to truly understand the profession – not a weekend of training leaving with a certificate.
Personal training is our business. We have developed a system here at Sphere that delivers a tailored health and fitness experience.

From initial assessment stages and ascertaining your needs and goals, to a tailored nutrition and health programme and finally to the implementation of methods, including training, that we feel will yield the greatest results for you. This isn’t our hobby or part-time cash add on.

You will have a programme geared to you – not the remnants of a health and fitness magazine or ‘whatever your trainer feels like doing on the day’.

John Lark is a personal trainer in kildare, Ireland.

Visit his website – Sphere Fitness and downoad your free fat loss report

To make this easy I want to make this as simple as possible.

Here is a list of what I believe to be the best steps you can take this year to improve your health and fitness levels.

Take one action item from this list. Do it. Do it hard for a week or however long it takes you embed.

So without further a due.

Write down your goal. You are far more likely to achieve it.

Match your behaviours to your goals. If your goal is to run a marathon this year then you need to get running. Likewise the same goal wont be met if you are constantly in the behaviour pattern of sitting on your arse every day. Equally if you want to lose weight then pick five behaviours that you know will help you lose weight and do them every day.

Find your ‘why’. Why are you doing this? This has to be strong.

Focus on improving your health rather than shrinking your waistline. With health comes fat loss. With health comes abundant energy and balanced moods. With health comes performance in life, sport and work. Living should be fun and easy not a chore.

Keep a grateful journal. Each day spend 2-3 minutes and wrote down what you are grateful for. Turn off the news and do this. You will sleep better and wake up looking forward to the day rather than thinking about the next ‘drama’ that you have to tackle.

Improve your sleep by investing in blackout blinds. Your hormones and immune system will thank you for giving them a good night’s sleep. If you struggle to nod off hop into an Epsom Salts bath. They work brilliantly.

Eat raw foods with every meal. Stick a salad or lightly cooked vegetable soup next to your meal and eat it first.

Drink more good FILTERED water. The best thing you can do for you and your family’s health is to use reverse osmosis or water ionisers. 3-4 litres every day.

Replace your paraben-laden cosmetics with organic versions. Likewise stop spraying aluminium next to your armpits. These are carcinogenic and the health shop have excellent replacements that are in most cases cheaper. No brainer.

Get your mercury fillings removed and then follow up with a good nutritional chelation protocol (like the one we can offer). This is another no brainer. Mercury is poisoning you 24-7. If your dentist says that this is not worth doing then thank him for his/ her opinion and find another one. He/she does not have your health at heart.

Stick to exercise at first (if you are new to this) that you will enjoy and keep at. Sweating and using oxygen  is at the heart of most beginners to exercise Nutritional and lifestyle changes will make the biggest difference so just get sweating and moving!

Use an Infra red sauna. These are great for your health. Sweat removes toxins and again makes strides to build your health.

Want power is more powerful than will power.

Learn how to weight train.

Eat les animal and diary protein. It is making you sick and tired.

Eat more fruits and vegetables. Simple. Effective. Cheap.

Buy a vegetarian cookbook and learn how to ‘dress up’ these once boring and tasteless items.

Start supplementing your diet with Sodium Bicarbonate, Lugol’s Iodine, Magnesium and Vitamin D. These are power houses and will not fail to improve everyone’s health. A year’s supply of all of these items will set you back about 100 quid. What a bargain. In fact – let’s start an experiment. Use them and see how many visits to the Doctor you need this year. Let me know in December.

I hate ‘detox’. It is far more complicated than that. Our bodies are well adjusted to deal with it. However, it needs help. Especially in this day and age. We have not quire evolved to deal with the environment that burdens us day in day out.

Do you think our caveman ancestors worried about what skin care product to use?

There is plenty here to get you going. Health comes from in to out. Stress, poor nutrition, toxic overload and lack of exercise will all be reflected on the outside. You are your own canvas.

Where do you begin and more importantly what are you aiming for or looking to achieve?

Like training and any fat loss goal, it pays to have the end result in mind.

Nutrition is goal dependent and habit based. Fat loss nutritional strategies will differ to health specific strategies. Sports nutrition will differ to aiding ladies through the menopause.

There are, however, common threads that can be applied in any strategies.

Habits underpin good nutrition. How many of us undergo a diet programme and attempt to change everything over-night? We hope to mystically transform our entire approach to nutrition over-night and follow a ‘eat this don’t eat this’ approach.

Here’s the thing – It doesn’t work.

Instead of ‘going on a diet’ think of ‘building your health’.

Why would you do this?

Well a) immediately you have taken the pressure of yourself to always be ‘losing weight’ and therefore creating unnecessary pressures and stress b) you get hooked on the feeling rather than inches, pounds and stones and c) the stick rate is much higher whilst delivering the same result.

Here’s how it works in the real world. Firstly you have to throw away the scales. These are for the pros. They are about as much use as a chocolate fire guard. Secondly, you have to use the mirror, clothes and your energy levels as a guide.

The first week you may set yourself the goal of 1. Drinking a glass of lemon water 15 minutes before each meal alongside 2.Taking time out 10 minutes every day to reflect and relax. Now do it. Each day write it down that you achieved these actions.

Here are a few more habits that should be deployed with most nutritional programmes. In an ideal world, you should consult a professional to find a nutritional programme tailored to your needs.

1. Eating vegetable and oil based breakfast with a small amount of protein on some mornings.

2. Following a Caveman approach to nutrition. Keep your foods as close to nature as possible. The further you move away the closer you move to disease.

3. Keep a journal. We all tell a few white lies to ourselves you know the ones that start with the words ‘This wont hurt’. Well it does. It all adds up particularly if you are looking to get healthy. Keep a food journal and you are 80% more likely to hit your targets. Not a bad little habit to keep.

4. Preparing your food in advance. Develop a little ritual the night before where you bring some foods with you to work or in the car. Trying to eat healthy snacks in this country is like asking finding a needle in a haystack.

5. Drinking water as your source of fluids. Consider that most of your body is made up of water and you can see how important it is to stay hydrated. Coffee, Tea and other hot drinks tend to be water-robbers. Water – pure and filtered is the best. There really is no comparism. As a guideline, consume your bodyweight in kg x 0.033 to find your ideal amount in litres. The only real exception is green tea. Shoot for 3 cups a day of this mighty beverage. As a personal trainer this is the biggest mistake I see people make.

7. Consuming veggies with each meal. Everytime you feed there should be a source of vegetables. Spinach in omelettes, salads, chopped veggies, grilled (a really great way to sweeten veggies) and stir-fry and ‘Greens Drinks’ are all great ways of getting more veggies in to your nutrition.

8. Get the skinny on fat – fat can make you thin. Fact. Did you know that supplementing your diet with fish oil is a sure fire way to get those fat furnaces burning fast. Coconut oil, rich in SATURATED FAT, can also help you get leaner. Fats are your friends. Now I am not talking about those artery-clogging fat found in fried foods, cakes, biscuits and take-aways. You would be best to avoid anything on the packet that has ‘hydrogenated’ on it like the plague.
Instead shoot for fats that are rich in Omega-3. These include fish oil (pharmaceutical grade only), flax seeds, hemp oil, nuts

and olive oil. Cook with coconut oil.
9. Take your energy from vegetables and dietary fats rather than bread, pastas and starches. Have them as a treat. However, if they are appearing in every meal you may be setting yourself up for ill-health.

John Lark is a Fat Loss Specialist providing tools to help you get healthier and leaner – faster. He can be contacted at 01-5052131. Download your free fat loss report at www.spherefitnessstudio.com
**

Let’s face it. You can let life get in the way or just make better choices.

If you think like the opening then of course you will fall flat on your face over Xmas.

Lighten up! Live! Enjoy the Xmas and all that it brings.

We are always making choices. Of course you never eat anything by accident.

‘Whoops I slipped on the carpet and fell upon a plate of donuts’

Or

‘Who put that cake there for me to eat the whole thing?’

Those kind of choices will get you in trouble. Hwoever, in the health improvement journey – a ‘good’ choice is sometimes all that is needed, rather than an ‘excellent’ choice.

So here are some good choices without needing to turn up to the relatives with Tupperware and a strict ‘No’ without doing too much damage.

Firstly, accept that dramatic transformations are going to be tough if you fall off your best intentions more than 20% of the time. Personal trainers aren’t perfect. Accept it. Build a bridge. Do not stress over it. The next meal, make up for it. You can actually make some serious inroads into your health this route because rather than trying to be Little Miss Perfect you accept you are human.

Stick to 3 splurges over the course of a week. Keep these splurges as meals. Save for them. Plan for them. Xmas day is sure to be one. A few drinks is bound to be another. Leftover meringue is bound to be another. If you want more – fine. Just don’t expect the body to thank you.

Trying eating up your veggies at the start of the meal. A big dose of fibre, alkaline minerals and vitamins and minerals awaits you. If you can add in a salad to each meal you will be doing really well. (I think most personal trainers are veggie obsessed)

Take a big glass of water about 30 minutes before any big meals. You will stop the cravings and eat less. In addition you will be nice and hydrated.

Sip on water throughout the day as much as possible. Add in some Himalayan Salt to every litre of water you drink.

What about Take Vitamin D and a good mixture of Ascorbates? These little powerhouses will keep most flus and nasty bugs at bay. If you learn how to ‘alkalise’ at our seminar in January you will be sure to see your health soar (For more information – make sure you sign up on the main page of our web site AND you get a free report on healthy fat loss)

Don’t skip meals either. Eat a breakfast, lunch and dinner and then one snack either mid morning or mid afternoon depending on when you need the blood sugar boost.

When you start skipping meals you tee yourself up for fat storage. Skip breakfast and you will eat more, particularly sugar. Skip lunch and you will feel like a sloth come 3 o clock and again reach for the kit-kats for pick-me-ups. Skip dinner altogether and you will be ravenous come 9pm and knock back a tub of Hagen Daas. You need to stay in control of your blood sugar and not let it control you.

The other nice thing about this is that you will, over time actually lose weight if you eat like this. Every time you leave huge gaps between meals you a) end up binging on crap when you do eventually eat and b) release hormones that tell your body to ‘hold onto fat’ because  ‘we are not sure when we are seeing fuel again’.

You may find you are eating out a lot over the Xmas period leaving you vulnerable to other people’s food and drink habits. Eat according to your habits just before you leave. Either that or become resilient to your own standards rather than bow to other, probably less informed, standards.

It is your choice. You know what Christmas brings. On the most part a lot of fun. Focus on staying healthy rather than ‘eat this, don’t eat this’. Experiencing great health should be everyone’s goal.

However, over Xmas it becomes even more apparent. I mean do you want to be the neurotic stress head in the corner that no-one talks too because you haven’t eaten in days and are hung-over for the 5th day in a row.

Not my idea of fun. But then again I enjoy charades alongside classic Bond Movies and cooking the contents of Jamie Oliver Books.

John Lark is a personal trainer in dublin

Visit his web site www.personaltrainingindublin.com for a free fat loss report and

As always it depends. It will depend on your goals – figure athlete or general health and well-being? Sports athlete or armchair athlete?

I have NEVER seen anyone get results without 5 Hours of exercise a week and 90% compliance with their nutrition.
Five hours may seem daunting at first but this can and should be made up of a variety of methods including weight training, high intensity metabolic training, low intensity training and activity.

Getting this balance and inclusion into your weekly schedule will take time. Quit making excuses. Get off your fat to burn the fat.

So how would you make sure that you are getting enough?

If you are new to the exercise game then ‘transition’ is the name of the game. Build up small steps over time. If your idea of exercise is a forward shift from couch to remote then 3 walks a week would be a good start.

On the other hand if you are seasoned veteran of the gym, knowing the staff by their first name then I would begin with weight training 3 times a week for a total of 3 hours. This will ramp up your metabolism by building muscle. Hormonally it will also bring balance to your body. Your moods, energy, motivation and well being will be dramatically improved.

The best way to do this is to learn a few of the movements that encompass a good weight training programme and work through them, without resting, for 8-12 repetitions at a time. Add weight if you feel you can do more.

In the days in-between your weight training sessions, pop out for a walk or better still perform a high intensity interval session. 2-3 walks of 60 minutes suddenly becomes the holy grail of 5 hours!

Add in taking more active roles with your kids, spouse and friends and you are well on your way.

But what happens if you are really on the quest for something special? I am talking very low body fat scores for males and females and a healthy and balanced body.

Well you had better make sure your nutrition was good 90% of the time. What I mean is that if I gave you a recipe for apple pie and you make rhubarb crumble with it then the plan is no-where near where it should be!

Stick with the rules of good nutrition 90% of the time and do not waiver! Plan for the 10% where you cheat a little.

So, if you plan to eat 5 protein, vegetable and dietary fat based meals 7 days a week that is 35 meals. 10% margin would allow for 4 meals that you either skip or forget one of the elements.

Our nutrition plans have calculated no-rules feeds that actually help you burn fat. However, the devil is in the detail.
This is the most overlooked concept of any health and fitness programme.

It is human nature to bend the rules to suit your own lifestyle. Often taking on a health and fitness programme is uncomfortable. It makes demands on your time, body and mind. But the results are huge.

You have to accept there will be sacrifice.

Unfortunately your exercise habits of 5 hours a week is not going to cut it if dramatic results are what you are looking for.

Alongside this the intensity with which you had train better be right up there.

Most athletes will train for between 10-15 hours a week sometimes twice a day.

Now before I hear you all moaning about how tough this is with kids, work and a life stop reading – this isn’t for you. And this isn’t meant to put you off starting exercising either.

I am just trying to put a touch of realism on this.

Building a lean physique is tough – really tough.

On the other hand, building health is not. The best by-product of getting healthier is becoming leaner! Have you ever seen a healthy fat person? They don’t exist – no matter how much you think dried apricots diced on special K are ‘good for you’.

It boils down to how much you want to do it. You have the same 24 hours as anyone else. What do you do with them?

It also boils down to generating momentum. One new habit leads to another and so on. The giant snowball brings giant rewards.

So start your journey now. Not tomorrow, not Monday (aaaahhhh!!!!! – my pet peeve) – now. In fact what are you doing reading this! Get moving!

How much exercise is enough? My answer to you is this – More than you are probably doing now but enough to start a wee snow-ball.

John Lark is a personal trainer in ireland

I believe we are. And seeing through this will mean a) less stress in trying to get to your target weight and b) LIVING rather than worrying about the scales say minute by minute.

The time is to focus on getting healthier. I mean ask yourself this – are healthy people overweight? No. Do they leave themselves open to degenerative disease? No.

Get healthy, and your problems will melt away. I guarantee it. And guess what? The journey is a lot smoother and more enjoyable. The pressure to ‘lose’, ‘tone’, firm-up’, ‘tighten’ is gone. The focus moves to drink more water, eat better quality foods, get some sleep etc etc. All of which are a lot easier to achieve.

One of the most enjoyable by-products apart is weight loss (if you are overweight), energy levels, lowered stress levels and a positive outlook on life.

Compare this to your quick fix fat loss programme. Weight loss – yes. However, with this will come the stress and negativity of the ‘will I or wont I make it?’.

Experts in body composition changes (losing fat and firming up muscles to create that lean and slender look) are experts in health and call upon allied health professionals to get results.

I mean if you are eating like a Spartan, drinking more water than a dolphin, training with the effort of a Olympian but sleeping 4 hours a night and going through a messy relationship break-up we all know that results will be hard to come by.
Sometimes it is not a case of pushing down harder on the accelerator, more a case of releasing the hand brake. A personal trainer will be able to find your handbrake.

Have you ever wondered why you find it hard to exercise or at least find it hard to muster the motivation to exercise?

The answer lies in the status of your health. In essence it is not your fault. Address your health and suddenly the clouds part and the will power appears in abundance. Brain chemicals and neurotransmitters are working against you rather than with you.

Low levels of dopamine and serotonin will scupper any well-intentioned plans.

Now that is not to say that you start blaming your malaise and lack of energy on good ole dopamine. Far from it. After all, it wasn’t an accident that that biscuit ended up in your mouth (and another one and another) or you chose to do nothing about the ever expanding waist line.

Get up, have a good breakfast, drink more water, take your fish oil and vitamin D and you will feel better almost immediately. Then the excuses will truly fly out the window.

Try training with any intensity dehydrated, devoid of sleep, pounded with stress on top of a lunch comprising of what your local service station’s a-la-carte of ribs and chips.

Yet 99 per cent of gym goers do this. End result – you drag yourself to ‘train’, workout with the intensity (what is needed to actually get a result) of a damp squib and get frustrated with your lack of results.

Get healthy THEN get fit. Don’t try and do this the other way round.

The beauty is that you will feel immediate gains in your health if begin with the big guns – drink more water, drop the animal and dairy proteins from every meal, consume more veggies, sleep and take time to release your stress boilers.

There is so much more to ‘getting fit’ than just ‘doing the work in the gym’. The bases need to be covered first before most of us even set foot in the gym.

Get my free report by signing up on my web site. Then take the few pointers in there and implement one-by-one.

Train as hard as you can on your nutrition as you do your body and you will find the new you very quickly.

Next week I will address some of these in more detail including a handy tip sheet that you can use to address your health immediately. The journey is far more important than the destination.

John Lark is a personal trainer in dublin.

www.spherefitnessstudio.com

Is there more to the old adage that to lose weight you must simply eat more and do less writes Dublin Personal Trainer, John Lark. In this article we explain how a simple strategy could literally knock pounds off you without doing anything dramatic to your current nutritional habits

Well, yes and no.

Consume fewer calories than you expend by performing activities and exercise is a great place to start.

In fact if you are embarking on any fat loss project, I strongly recommend that you verify your calorific intake for 4-5 days.

The best way to do this is to grab a pen and paper and write down everything that you drink and eat (and I mean everything) for 4-5 days.

If you are more computer savvy then use a free online resource such as www.fitday.com where you can gain more information and see exactly how many calories you are consuming.

To lose weight effectively and find your ball park figure reduce your daily average that you have found by 10-20 per cent.

Then do the following – nip and tuck. Take your food and apply the nip and tuck. Don’t eat the whole meal. Eat one slice of bread with your sandwich rather than two. Eat half a chicken breast rather than the whole thing.

To begin with this is an excellent place to start if you are looking at making a change as painless as possible. Notice there is no counting calories.

Why I am so against counting calories, points, records and stars? Because a calorie is not just a calorie.
There is so much more to take into account once we eat the foods that we do or drink the drink that we do.

Hormonally, some foods will have a vastly different effect on the body than other foods.

Take for instance an orange and a Jaffa cake. Both are low in calories and fat and rich in energy or ‘carbohydrate’. However, one is full of fibre, vitamins and will not spike your insulin levels the other is full of nothing but air, zero fibre and will send your insulin levels through the roof.

For an individual who does not tolerate carbohydrate or sugars very well ( witnessed by the spilling over of fat from our jeans) then they would be best to avoid certain foods that have a negative effect on our sugar hormone – insulin. These include bread, pasta, rice, spuds and cereals.

And what about the thermic effect of foods? Simply put this is what is takes in energy to digest, absorb and assimilate your food.

It explains why those individuals despite consuming the same amount of calories lose more fat on a high protein, high fat diet than those on a carbohydrate diet.

Think about it – how easily do you think that your stomach reacts to digesting a bowl of cereal compared to an eight-ounce rib-eye steak?

One will require much more energy than the other.

Then we take into consideration the whole acid-alkaline load that foods placed on our bodies. Many people in the health and well-being profession are now pointing to the fact that health can be maintained IF we maintain an optimum ‘pH’ within our bodies.

Simply put ‘pH’ is a measure of how acid vs. our alkaline we are. Acidosis prompts a cascade of ailments because our body’s cells are designed to operate within a nice and cosy pH of 7.3. When this drops – trouble occurs.

So what drives us into a state of acidosis? Well aside from the obvious culprits such as stress, lack of sleep, alcohol and smoking, scientists have identified certain foods that create an acid load on our bodies.

These include amongst many grains, diary, sugar and meat. Meanwhile fruits and vegetables are great for driving us into the vibrant and healthy alkaline state.

So think twice before consuming that low-fat ham and cheese sandwich and look for the veggies to balance your intake out.

It is not anyone fault that our attention is on the calorie.

For years the food pyramid has dominated our thinking in terms of weight loss alongside making sure we don’t eat over our calorie budget.

But there is far more to this than meets the eye. Besides if you want to count your calories and turn into a neurotic lunatic with a eye for crossing every ‘t’ and dotting every ‘I’ then fine.

Instead I urge you to focus on forging good habits one at a time.  Get in the habit of hitting the gym three times a week or shopping twice a week instead of once.

What about upping your intake of lean protein and making sure you balance your dietary acids with some alkaline forming vegetables and fruits?

There is far more to the fat loss conundrum than just ‘stepping away from the table’.

For your Free Personal Trainer’s Guide to Fat Loss then visit

www.spherefitnessstudio.com

Imagine if there was one strategy that could literally ignite your fat loss efforts and required little more than putting your head down on a warm, snug and inviting pillow and getting some zzzzs.

Hard to imagine isn’t it.

But this is the key with  fat loss.

Rather than worry about the small things in our plan of attack i.e. how much, how often and or what to eat, drink, take, sip or chug. Why not concern yourself with the bigger picture.

After all this follows nicely with the whole 80-20 principle that works a treat with fat loss success. That is, 80 per cent of your results will come from 20 per cent of you actions.

I will say though that it is the twenty per cent performed consistently that brings the rewards.

In this case, sleep is one of those heavy hitting strategies and certainly one of the more pleasurable tools to fat loss.

Imagine that each night you plug a set of batteries into the wall to recharge and each night you take them out half way through their charge. Sure they will give you a kick into action, but certainly far from long lasting.

Now allow those batteries to take a full charge. They will go all day for you. No matter what you do.

The same can be said with regards your sleep habits. Ignore them at your peril. Sleep is crucial to your health, well-being and vitality. It is time when our hormones recharge, our immune system obtains further fuel to fight our increasingly toxic environment. With both of these firmly in place, fat loss is a nice by product.

From a personal experience there is a positive correlation between those who are night owls and those who suffer from weight gain and excessive weight changes.

Do you sleep less than 8-10 hours night? Do you find it hard to wind down at night and seemingly get everything done? (I used to be like that) or do you sleep for four hours a night, dog it out everyday and then come the weekend or holiday time sleep for the week? Do you wake up in the night?

If you answered yes to any of the questions then, life aside (kids etc), then you may have a sleep issue.

We really need sleep. I remember when I was a young buck being privy to some really exciting experiments back in university.

They had a ‘sleep lab’ there. I was one of the rats. In this particular experiment they shone a light over our bodies as we slept and monitored our response to sleep.

This is all whilst we slept. They recorded how we responded to say having a light shone on the sole of our foot (no where near our eyes). Interestingly enough, this light or exposure to light was enough to drag us from the land of nod and into semi-consciousness.

I am glad I did that experiment. It wasn’t until I was training between exercises with one mum that she remarked that she was having sleep problems. Indeed, the whole family were. The children were wakening, the mum woke feeling like she was drugged every morning and the husband was tired and ratty.

I asked her what the room was like and if she left the light on at night.

“Yeah…we leave the landing and bathroom light on for the kids…my room is pretty bright too”

A lightening bolt descended (not really but it adds to the dramatic nature of this ‘awakening’)

“How about turn all lights off and black out your room completely?”

So amidst the protestations about Jonny tripping over the cat to get to the bathroom and Annie hitting her toe off the skirting boards, she tried it. It worked. Immediately.

It didn’t work for the husband though so I recommended some foods and nutrients that she could explore to help him with this.

Imagine, no more kids waking up and fresh as a daisy in the morning.

I couldn’t help but laugh. Here was me feeling like I had just ‘done my bit’ for all of humanity by sacrificing a nights sleep in a ‘sleep lab’ then to share my experience positively with a lady in dire straights.

Sweet Dreams.

For your free personal training asessment at locations in kildare and dublin call us now at 01-5052131.

www.spherefitnessstudio.com – Personal Trainers in Dublin

Are you ready for the great unveiling or is there a bit more sculpting to be done?

Or are you resigning yourself to hide underneath shades of black, overcoats and baggy clothing.

Do not fear, as I will be sharing with you a few tricks to tighten up the waistline and leave you feeling proud of what you can do.

So, put that ‘accidental slip on the mat and falling face first into the biscuit jar’ behind you and move on.
Here are a few key points in order of importance:

1.    Tighten up your diet

If you fill your stomach with junk your body will repay you with excess fat.  It is really that simple.
We use a compliance grid if you need to tighten up your nutrition. What this means is that if you ht around 90 per cent compliance for the week you will see progress with your waistline, hips, backside (fill in the blanks).

How to score this is to divide your day up into opportunities to make a good or bad decision. You may have 3-4 opportunities that you need to ‘get it right’ by eating a meal that adheres to good fat loss behaviours i.e. not a mars bar. Multiply this by 7 to give you 21 opportunities through the week. Your 10 per cent could be a couple of glasses of wine on a Saturday, a dessert. All in all you have 2 ‘tokens’ to deviate off the plan. The rest of the time you are on!

Every meal should have the following items: some form of protein, raw or lightly steamed veggies and some dietary fat. Keep the grain choices to immediately after you train.

2.    Give yourself 28 days

I like this number. It is short, intense and long enough to give you good results. Most people give up after 4 so if you are going at it for 28 days then great! The bottom line is this – rapid fat loss is all or nothing. If you want to get in shape quickly then you can’t be dilly-dallying over wanting to tuck into your ice-cream fund or wonder if you have the energy to train today. Those that do-do. Those that don’t, don’t.

That is why your nutrition is so important. Believe it or not, some foods can actually lift your mood to give you the motivation to train. In here excellent book, The Mood Cure, Julia Ross outlines several strategies to give you that extra va-va-voom to get up and actually do some exercise without dreading it!

These include upping your intake of protein at every meal ( yes that includes breakfast ) avoiding the white flour products COMPLETELY and supplementing your nutrition with a liberal dosing of specific amino acids, vitamin D and Omega 3 oils found in plant based products and fish oil.

3.    Get some exercise!

It is a good idea to actually break a sweat every day. This is our way of using what our bodies are designed for – movement and also the perspiration acts in excreting acid waste build up for overall health and vitality.

I would recommend a minimum of 30 minutes exercise 3 times a week. This could include a brisk walk, jog or a run. Alternatively you could break a sweat playing sports, hitting the bike or the pool.

4.    Train

There is a difference between ‘exercise’ and ‘training’. Training involves taking you out of your comfort zone. Training involves pushing your beyond what you think you are capable of doing to elicit the ‘stress’ response. When this happens you improve.

You can become fitter, stronger, more toned.

The key is to get the right amount of stress through training to spark this response. Too little and nothing happens (so put the pink dumbbells down – they are doing nothing for the bingo wings) and too much and you will burn out (so twice a day for an hour is really unnecessary in most cases).

5.    Specific Training

I would recommend 3 training sessions a week combined with a 90 per cent compliant approach with your nutrition. Your training session could be a mixture of heavy weight training and ‘interval’ type training leaving some room for direct abdominal work (if you REALLY have to).

Here is one exercise to tighten you up and give your back a boost. Lie on the floor face down. Now raise up on your toes and pick your hips up too. Rest your weight on the blades of your forearms and hold this position for up to a minute. If you find it hard at first keep with it but build it up in 15 second intervals, beginning with a 15 second hold.

Simple guidelines with simple principles. There is one that we haven’t mentioned. Hard work – and lots of it.

John Lark is a personal trainer in dublin. Why not try out our services? We are offering all subscribers to our free newsletter a 14 day trial to our facility? Pop your email in the box and find out for yourself

“Never give in. Never. Never. Never. Never.” – Winston Churchill

“Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.” – Samuel Johnson

These quotes all say the same thing. No matter how many obstacles you run into, what matters is that you’re able to overcome each of them, one at a time.

“Two steps forward, one step back” is usually a negative term to describe someone who is having trouble making progress. But switched around, “1 Step Back, 2 Steps Forward” means that instead of grousing or feeling guilty about a misstep, you can still come out ahead if you put your head down and push forward.

And it is about this time of year that the early New Years enthusiasm begins to really be tested.

Steps back can take many forms: a family vacation, breaks in your routine, personal tragedies, injuries, or that lost weekend in front of the tube.

A big mistake people make when trying to get healthier is that when they fall off a bit or something happens, they think they “have to start over”.

Wrong! When missteps do happen, a better strategy is to simply take two steps forward. You’re still ahead of where you were before, far beyond the starting line.

In tennis, losing one point isn’t the end of the world. It happens to the best of them. In fact, if you can consistently win a few more points that you lose, you may end up in the hall of fame.

With healthy eating and exercising, as long as you’re consistently out-stepping your steps back, you’re ahead of the game. If you expect perfection (and many of us do), you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and guilt.

That is why trying to chase 100 per cent compliance is futile. We have found that 90 per cent is enough. Is that taking a step backwards? No. It is setting yourself up to take a step back allowing you to recharge your batteries and go at the diet train again the following week.

Guilt can be debilitating to your healthy habits. When you mess up (or even when things are messed up for you), it’s natural to feel guilty. At that point, you have a choice: to let that guilt plummet you into a cycle that could spit you out worse off than before, or to accept the step back and say “where do I go from here?”

Of course, consistent success is still something to strive for. You don’t want to roller-coaster up and down.

That’s an “old” habit, remember? And the 1Step/2Step strategy doesn’t lessen the need to do your best. You should still work hard to keep those steps back from happening. But it helps to be prepared with a plan and a positive attitude for when they do happen.

Many times, this means a rededication, a refocusing, and a recommitment. You might want to look at your program and see why it’s allowing those landmines to stick around. Use it as a learning process. Ask how you can keep that misstep from happening again.

* Take a walk in the woods to clear your head and regroup.

* Have a personal “bounce back” motto that will re-energize you. Put it everywhere.

* Take a break if you think you’re trying too hard.

* Return to the basics. Are you making it too complicated and tough on yourself?

* Plan ahead for irregularities in your schedule, call ahead to healthy restaurants, pack healthy snacks.

* Stay aware of what you’re doing. One meal mess up can turn into a one day mess up, a one week mess up if you’re not careful.

* Remind yourself of your success so far when you need a boost.

Unlike people who run 10 miles today because they should have run two yesterday, “2 Steps Forward” doesn’t necessarily mean doing a lot more to make up for a blunder. Just make a commitment to do things as right as possible as much as you can.

Download your free fat loss report, sample workout and menu plan at www.john-lark.com your personal training in dublin team