Healthy Eating Tips | Clapham Gym

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Got Stress? Get Moving!

Stressed out? Exercise is a simple solution to get you feeling good fast.

This is because every time you exercise your body increases its production of endorphins, which are responsible for that feel-good euphoria you get after a great workout or while chomping down on a piece of chocolate.

BUT, before you turn to chocolate and skip the gym, remember the end result of each and choose which one will help you reduce stress in the long run. (Hint: It’s not the chocolate!)

About David & Carol Petersen

David & Carol Petersen run Results by Design Personal Training - a personal training gym in Clapham at 292 Battersea Park Road SW11 - Call 020 3551 6739 today to schedule your free, no-obligation consultation session and discover how we can help you or complete the blue form on the right hand side of our blog and we will call you. We provide one to one personal triaining, group personal training, classes as well as bespoke healthy eating plans and more. We help our clients lose body fat, tone and sculpt their body and look great outside while feeling great inside.

Two Choices For You

We know why you’ve been reluctant to jump on the fitness bandwagon, and we’re not blaming you for it.

Because fitness is hard.

Want to know just how hard? Here’s a glimpse into the Fit Life:

Fit Life Truth #1: Exercise Counts
Lace up your shoes and hit the gym instead of getting extra sleep, watching TV or doing whatever else it is that you’d rather be doing. Do this 3-5 times each for 30-60 minutes.

Fit Life Truth #2: Nutrition Counts
Choose your meals based on the nutritional makeup rather than following your taste buds. Limit your intake of simple carbohydrates and get lots of protein and fiber in each meal.

Fit Life Truth #3: No Room For Junk
Turn down your favourite junk foods –even when you really, really want it. Cut simple sugars and harmful, processed fats out of your diet completely.

Fit Life Truth #4: Push Harder
Push your body to be stronger, faster and better during each workout. Don’t simply go through the motions in your routine – consistently challenge your muscles to do more each day.

Fit Life Truth #5: Calories Count
Limit your total calories to within an appropriate range for your size and goals. Remember, even healthy calories can add up to weight gain when you’re not careful.

That’s just the basics on what it takes to enjoy a fit and healthy body. Pretty hard, right? Now let’s take a look at with the NOT-Fit life looks like…

NOT-Fit Life Truth #1: Be Sedentary
Spend your spare time being as sedentary as possible. The less that you use your muscles, the more aches, pains and mobility limitations you’ll experience. Oh, and if you’re consuming more calories than your natural metabolism burns then you’ll steadily gain weight.

NOT-Fit Life Truth #2: Eat For Taste
Eat whatever sounds and tastes good. The human palate is naturally drawn to items that are high in sugar, salt and fat. Your eat-whatever-diet will be filled with these fattening foods and will be lacking in protein and fiber. You’ll find your weight increases, and your energy levels plummet, accordingly.

NOT-Fit Life Truth #3: Just Say Yes
To your favourite junk food, that is. As mentioned above, your favourite foods are likely high in sugar, salt and fat. Or, more likely, your faves are high in all three! Your indulgent eating is going to raise the number on your scale higher, and higher, and higher.

NOT-Fit Life Truth #4: Get Comfortable
Your goal is to be comfy. This means use as little muscular strength as you can on a daily basis. When you don’t use your muscles they begin to atrophy (shrink!), leaving you with less lean tissue. Since lean tissue raises your metabolism, a drop in lean tissue means you’ll be burning fewer calories at rest than ever before.

NOT-Fit Life Truth #5: More Is Better
There’s no limit on how much you eat – in fact more is better. As a result you often feel sluggish from your overloaded digestive system. And your motivation to exercise and turn your NOT-Fit Life into a Fit Life gets dimmer and dimmer.

So which life is harder? The Fit Life? Or the NOT-Fit Life?

The truth is that both of these lifestyles are hard. Just depends on which hard you’d rather deal with.

The Fit Life’s hard has to do with discipline, motivation and determination. It’s about doing the right thing rather than the easy thing. Most of all, the Fit-Life is about constantly striving forward.

The NOT-Fit Life’s hard has to do with excess fat, aches, pains and physical limitations. It’s about avoiding doing the hard thing now and ending up with a body that’s just plain hard to live in. Most of all, the NOT-Fit Life is about NOT taking action.

Which hard do you choose?

If you’d like the Fit Life then take action now by calling or emailing us today to get started on a fitness program that’s going to be hard.

The best kind of hard.

About David & Carol Petersen

David & Carol Petersen run Results by Design Personal Training - a personal training gym in Clapham at 292 Battersea Park Road SW11 - Call 020 3551 6739 today to schedule your free, no-obligation consultation session and discover how we can help you or complete the blue form on the right hand side of our blog and we will call you. We provide one to one personal triaining, group personal training, classes as well as bespoke healthy eating plans and more. We help our clients lose body fat, tone and sculpt their body and look great outside while feeling great inside.

How To Gain Weight Eating at Subway

It’s been over 10 years since Jared Fogle captured the world’s attention by losing over 200 pounds eating only at Subway. Here’s a recap of his famous story:

Back in March of 1998 Jared was a college student with a problem. He weighed a staggering 425 pounds. That was a lot of weight for anyone to handle, let alone a busy college student. So one day Jared made the decision to change his life.

He knew that his diet would need to change drastically but also wanted to keep things simple so he could stick with it. A Subway restaurant near his home caught his eye. Sandwiches were healthier than burgers, right?

His simple plan was to eat the same thing everyday:
• Breakfast – coffee
• Lunch – “I ate the 6-inch turkey, tons of vegetables, including hot peppers and a bit of spicy mustard.” He left off the mayonnaise and cheese and had a bag of Baked crisps and a diet soft drink
• Dinner – Footlong veggie sub – again no mayonnaise or cheese.

You probably know the rest of the story. His Subway diet, along with exercise, got Jared to drop over 200 pounds. He then became a spokesperson for Subway, sharing his story and inspiring millions of people.

And suddenly Subway became synonymous with healthy eating.

Have you looked at a Subway menu? It lists 7 of their lighter sandwiches. Then at the bottom it compares these sandwiches to the Big Mac and the Whopper, burgers that hold 31 and 40 grams of fat, respectively.

The Subway meal is much healthier, right? Well, yes and no.

Go back to your menu and read the small print. The 7 sandwiches listed are calculated with only bread, veggies and meat. So if you add cheese, mayonnaise, or oil (as most people do) then you need to recalculate the numbers.

We’ve done the math for you, with a 6″ Roasted Chicken Breast sandwich.
Menu Item Fat Calories
6″ Sandwich (bread, veggies and meat) 6 342
Cheddar Cheese (2 slices) 5 60
1 Tbl Mayonnaise 12 110
1 Tbl Oil 15 135
Totals: 38g Fat 647 Cal

Let’s not forget the side items that most people add to their meal…
Menu Item Fat Calories
Wild Rice with Chicken Soup 11 210
1oz Bag of SunChips 6 140
Chocolate Chip cookie 10 210
Totals: 65g Fat 1,207 Cal

Wow, just like that your ‘healthy’ Subway meal has 1,200 calories and 65 grams of fat!

Sure, you probably don’t get all of the extras when you eat at Subway but that’s not the point.

The point that we’d like you to take away from this is that you shouldn’t classify any restaurant as ‘healthy’.

You could gain weight eating anywhere, just like you could lose weight eating anywhere.

Jared’s weight loss happened when he drastically cut calories and started to exercise. He could have done this at any restaurant. In fact, last year a woman from Virginia claimed to have lost 75 pounds by eating exclusively at Starbucks.

Your weight loss success all comes down to choices.

Each day you make choices that directly influence your weight. Do you get mayonnaise on your sandwich? Will one cookie hurt? Will one missed workout really make a difference?

You decide.

At some point you reach your breaking point. For Jared it was 425 pounds. For you it might be when you buy the next size up. Or when you feel new aches and pains. Or when your doctor sits you down to have the talk.

Sooner or later you will decide that you are worth it. You’ll decide that your health is important. You’ll decide that you deserve to look great. And you’ll dig down deep to do what it takes to achieve amazing results.

About David & Carol Petersen

David & Carol Petersen run Results by Design Personal Training - a personal training gym in Clapham at 292 Battersea Park Road SW11 - Call 020 3551 6739 today to schedule your free, no-obligation consultation session and discover how we can help you or complete the blue form on the right hand side of our blog and we will call you. We provide one to one personal triaining, group personal training, classes as well as bespoke healthy eating plans and more. We help our clients lose body fat, tone and sculpt their body and look great outside while feeling great inside.

Easy Baked Meatballs

Want something different for dinner? These meatballs are packed with protein and veggies, making it the perfect snack, breakfast, lunch or dinner. Make a quick batch on the weekend, and then enjoy throughout your week. Makes: 24 Meatballs

Here’s what you need…
• 2 lbs ground pork
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground fennel
• 1/4 teaspoon ground sage
• 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• dash of pepper
• 2 teaspoons coconut oil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 2 celery stalks, finely chopped
• 2 carrots, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup pecans, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped

1.Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
2.In a medium bowl combine the ground pork with all of the spices. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty!
3.Place a skillet over medium heat and warm the coconut oil. Add the garlic, onion, celery, carrots, pecans
and parsley. Cook for about 3 minutes, until soft. Set the mixture aside to cool.
4.Add the vegetable mixture into the ground pork and combine well. Use your hands to form golf ball sized meatballs.
5.Place the meatballs in an oven-safe baking dish. Bake for 30 minutes, or until cooked all the way through.

Nutritional Analysis: 77 calories, 4g fat, 76mg sodium, 1g carbohydrate, .5g fiber, and 8g protein

About David & Carol Petersen

David & Carol Petersen run Results by Design Personal Training - a personal training gym in Clapham at 292 Battersea Park Road SW11 - Call 020 3551 6739 today to schedule your free, no-obligation consultation session and discover how we can help you or complete the blue form on the right hand side of our blog and we will call you. We provide one to one personal triaining, group personal training, classes as well as bespoke healthy eating plans and more. We help our clients lose body fat, tone and sculpt their body and look great outside while feeling great inside.

Cleansing Snacks

You’re not supposed to eat packaged foods for a few days, so what should you snack on? Try these cleansing snacks…

• Cucumber
• Avocado
• Beetroot
• Asparagus
• Cabbage
• Blueberries
• Celery
• Grapefruit
• Kale
• Lemon

About David & Carol Petersen

David & Carol Petersen run Results by Design Personal Training - a personal training gym in Clapham at 292 Battersea Park Road SW11 - Call 020 3551 6739 today to schedule your free, no-obligation consultation session and discover how we can help you or complete the blue form on the right hand side of our blog and we will call you. We provide one to one personal triaining, group personal training, classes as well as bespoke healthy eating plans and more. We help our clients lose body fat, tone and sculpt their body and look great outside while feeling great inside.

Recover From Your Crazy Weekend

You know how it feels to wake up on Monday morning after a weekend of less-than-healthy eating. Your body is puffy and bloated. Your joints are achy. Your clothes feel tight.

Maybe you are feeling that way right now.

We’ve outlined the 5 steps below to get you back on the fitness fast track.

Step One: Get Focused.
Your crazy weekend happened. You ate things from your “never eat these” list, you drank more that you should have, but now it’s over.

Draw a line in the sand. The bad eating stops now.

If you’re serious about your fitness goals, then this weekend was the exception, and not the rule. Maybe it was your birthday, or your friends and family were gathered for a celebration, and the peer pressure to partake in unhealthy food was too much for you to resist.

Don’t beat yourself up for falling off the fitness wagon this once. Simply get back up, dust yourself off and get re-focused. Leave the past, and your slip-ups, in the past.

Step Two: Get Hydrated.
While bad eating can take on many forms, the end result is most often dehydration and water retention. The only way to restore balance is to get hydrated.

Your first priority in getting back on track is to drink plenty of water throughout your day. Start with a tall glass of water in the morning, and carry a water bottle with you.

Don’t add artificial sweeteners or stimulants to your water – these will work against your hydration efforts. To add flavor, slice fresh fruit, herbs or vegetables to place in your water, just like at the spa.

Step Three: Get Picky.
For the next few days be extra picky about what you eat. Stick with only whole, real foods like fruits, vegetables and some lean meat. Whole, real foods will quickly help to restore balance.

Don’t eat packaged foods for the next few days. This means saying no to snack foods, processed meat slices, dairy, baked goods and alcohol.

Try the recipe for roasted broccoli below – this is a wonderful, whole food dish.

Step Four: Get Juicing.
Making your own juice can be beneficial when recovering from a weekend of bad eating. The key is to use ingredients that will hydrate and nourish your body and to avoid ingredients that are high in sugar.

These ingredients are fantastic for your recovery juice: fresh ginger, spinach, cucumber, kale, green apple, lemon, and celery.

These ingredients should be used sparingly, due to high sugar content: carrots, oranges, red apples, melons or pineapple.

Step Five: Get Moving.
So you’ve put an end to the eating madness, you’ve hydrated, you’ve eaten only whole foods and you’ve enjoyed a recovery juice…it’s now time to sweat it out.

Lace up your gym shoes and put on your favorite gym clothes. When you start your workout, ease in slowly. Take the time to warm up and stretch your muscles before powering up to a solid 30-minute exercise routine.

We have just the exercise plan for you – one that will not only help you recover from your wild weekend, but will help keep you motivated and going strong in the future.

If you haven’t joined yet, now is the perfect time to start. Together we will get you focused on your goals with my results-driven method.

Simply call or email today to set up your first workout.

About David & Carol Petersen

David & Carol Petersen run Results by Design Personal Training - a personal training gym in Clapham at 292 Battersea Park Road SW11 - Call 020 3551 6739 today to schedule your free, no-obligation consultation session and discover how we can help you or complete the blue form on the right hand side of our blog and we will call you. We provide one to one personal triaining, group personal training, classes as well as bespoke healthy eating plans and more. We help our clients lose body fat, tone and sculpt their body and look great outside while feeling great inside.

Identify and Avoid Trigger Foods

It happens to the best of us: you’ve eaten right and exercised hard for weeks, and then one slice of cake at a party sends you into a downward spiral of eating too much and exercising too little.

It’s common to experience temporary relapses back to unhealthy ways of eating and lack of exercise, especially while a healthy, active lifestyle is still new.

But what triggers these relapses? Finding out the answer to this question will equip you to avoid future relapses altogether.

Anatomy of a Trigger Food

Trigger foods come in all flavours, shapes and sizes but nearly all contain one (or all) of the Big Three. 1) Salt, 2) Sugar, or 3) Fat.

Processed foods are the most powerful triggers. These foods are literally made with your brain chemistry in mind, factoring in the addictive qualities of salt, sugar and fat. When the desire for sweets feels unbearable your body is literally craving more.

That’s why one slice of cake can lead to an entire weekend binge.

To avoid a relapse, steer clear of packaged foods that are high in salt, sugar and fat. See the Wholesome Cravings tip below for snacks to eat when cravings strike.

When you do fall victim to a trigger food, use the following 3 steps to get right back on your feet, and back to eating and exercising right.
1. Draw a line in the sand. Decide here and now that your relapse is over. Stop the self-destructive behaviour and enlist the support from the important people in your life.
2. Remove the triggers from your home. Clean out the cupboards, freezer and the stash under your bed. Get these foods out of your home and out of your way. See these items for what they really are—obstacles that prevent you from getting what you really want out of life.
3. Refocus your goals. Why were you eating healthy and exercising in the first place? Because you have goals. You have a vision of the healthy, fit body that you’re working to achieve. Focus your mind on your most desired goals and unleash your inner work ethic and determination.
Now is the time to reap all the benefits of a fit and active lifestyle.

About David & Carol Petersen

David & Carol Petersen run Results by Design Personal Training - a personal training gym in Clapham at 292 Battersea Park Road SW11 - Call 020 3551 6739 today to schedule your free, no-obligation consultation session and discover how we can help you or complete the blue form on the right hand side of our blog and we will call you. We provide one to one personal triaining, group personal training, classes as well as bespoke healthy eating plans and more. We help our clients lose body fat, tone and sculpt their body and look great outside while feeling great inside.

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BodyMetrix System

Our first step in helping you to improve your health through exercise is to carry out a one-on-one analysis that tells us where you are right now and we measure that against where you need to be to remain fit and healthy. This consultation is followed up with a Movement Assessment to discover more about your range of motion and flexibility. This short assessment helps us to gauge the baseline of your programme. To do this we use state of the technology - a piece of equipment known as the BodyMetrix System. Click the link to find out more about our assessment using the BodyMetrix System

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