The Importance of tracking your workouts.

 

Peter Ferdinand Drucker was an Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation. Most are thinking why this matters well he said:

 

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure”

 

And this stuck out significantly to me, if I don’t measure the efforts I’m putting in how am I going to know how well I’m doing or not!

 

Measuring your progress helps in a number of ways:

 

1. It will keep you accountable and stay on track

2. Milestones are important, once you’ve hit your goal weight/ fat it will make you feel a sense of achievement

 

3. Prove your point – you know you can do it so write it down and do it

 

There are a number of ways in which you can track your workouts.

 

1. Old school Pen & Paper

 

2. Apps such as strong, fitnotes – these apps are extremely sophisticated and allow you to measure your progress daily.

3. Photos – as simple as it is an image of yourself before you started can go a long way when you compare yourself every month

 

Research (unverified) shows that 80% of people that start a plan quit within 2 months (sounds like the new year new me lot tbh) so tracking your progress can go a long way in ensuring that you stick to it.

 

What should I measure/ track?

• Weight
• Body fat
• Sizes, neck, back, arms, bicep, hips, waist, thighs
• Food yes FOOD (but we will talk about this separately)

 

What do I do with the information?

 

1. Celebrate success – you will only know you have done it if you have tracked it

 

2. Push harder – if you’ve managed to do 30 push-ups, you should do 31 the next day track that PB (personal best)

 

3. Know what works for you

 

Once you see results you get addicted

 

 There is so much truth in this statement give it a try and let us know how you get on!

Are you looking for BBQ meats this summer, stay trim with the below:

Grilling is one of the lightest ways to cook, but to keep it that way, you want to pick leaner meats. Find out which cuts to look for.

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The truth is there is no set answer for any individual, you have athletes that train between 5-7 days a week, whether this is heavy or light and then you have non-athletes that can train once a week or even once a month and ‘look’ healthy.

 

The reason I say they ‘look’ healthy is because an individual can look great on the outside but still be unhealthy.

 

When answering the question how many times you should work out per week we have a few observations below:

1. What you eat?

Did you know that what you eat is more important than how many times you work out, we stick by the motto 70% nutrition and 30% exercise meaning that the majority of time should be spent ensuring you are eating towards your goal? If you spend 6 days a week in the gym but eat terribly for breakfast, lunch and dinner it will be very hard to achieve your goal.

 

2. What your goal is?

 

It is also about defining what your goal is, do you want to get lean, bulk up, tone up. The reason we ask this is because this will define how many times you need to do a specific workout for the goal, an example could be if you want to lose weight going running three times a week will help significantly versus once a week.

 

3. How badly do you want it?

 

Now you’ve got to think about how badly you want to achieve your goal, does it bug you to breaking point or is it a passing goal, like a moment in time where someone else is looking good and you feel bad or do you have a deeper reasoning. For me personally The Gym has been like a second home to me a place where I spent a lot of time with friends when I was younger.

 

4. Pick something you enjoy

A lot of people think that the gym is the only way to achieve your fitness goals whereas there are a number of sporting activities that are a lot more fun and you can enjoy the same amount of calorie burning. This way you’ll do the sport once or twice a week and have fun doing it.

 

5. Do your work life commitments allow it

 

Don’t get bogged down with thinking you need to be exercising at a specific venue as the time you have simply won’t allow that to happen, instead think about whether you can ride to work, or walk two stations instead of taking the train or even walk to work. It’s the small steps that count to bigger goals.

Get to working out!

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The Gym Kitchen

#foodtofuel

 

The sugar tax is here!

We are a few weeks into the new sugar tax which is latest big thing to impact the FMCG industy,trend. It was on the X date that manufacturers have to pay a levy on the high-sugar drinks that they sell.

The great news is that it had an impact long before the go live date with many companies taking measures to reduce the amount of sugar in their drinks, but will this be at the detriment of sales.

The likes of Fanta, Ribena and Lucozade have cut the sugar content of drinks, but Coca-Cola has decided not too due to have a wider range of diet coke and coke zero.

How does it work?

The lsugar tax amount is being applied directly to manufacturers, due to the minimal margins being made in retail it is likely that they will then pass this onto the retailers who in turn will pass this onto the customers.

Drinks with more than 8g per 100ml will face a tax rate equivalent to 24p per litre.

Those containing 5-8g of sugar per 100ml will face a slightly lower rate of tax, of 18p per litre.

Pure fruit juices will not be included as they do not carry added sugar, drinks with a high milk content will also be exempt.

The UK government has said that the income generated (estimated at £240m) will be invested in school’s sports and breakfast clubs.

Products such as cakes, biscuits and other foods are not covered by the tax, although a separate initiative is encouraging manufacturers to reduce the sugar content of those items voluntarily.

We do wonder whether this will change in the near future.

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