What's Right For Me? A Thoughtful Tip On How To Get Fit

There are of course many ways to achieve your dream physique, from simple cardio like long-distance running and team sports such as football or rugby, to disciplined martial arts practice or the tried and tested formula of lift, eat, sleep, repeat. There is no one right way though, at least not for everybody - that depends on your fitness goals. Perhaps you want to torch the belly fat away, maybe you want to put on mass for a buffer body, or you may just want to improve your cardiovascular fitness for the benefit of your health rather than just a bigger chest or more chiseled abs.

When beginning your fitness journey, choosing which path is for you can be a difficult decision, especially when you hear or read conflicting arguments claiming which activity is best to get to where you want to be. I too was confused when I started paying attention to my own health. I used to be one of the awkward academic ones who would accidentally on purpose forget my kit for P.E. I didn’t ever join a club or do any extra-curricular activities. For me, school was a place where in the six hour day I’d disappear into the shadows of more capable sportsmen and just keep my head down until the 3.15 home-time! Now though, I can cast as a big a shadow as any of my secondary school friends. Fitness changes you in every way, and now I stand tall with confidence which I never had before. You may presume that getting in shape will only change your exterior, but you’ll actually find that you gain a lot of self-respect and become a lot more confident on the inside too. 

All of this came in time though - time in which I spent a great deal just trying to figure out what exactly to do to get myself in shape. It started when I was about 15 and my older brother saw just how timid I was. He was a Royal Marine, so was having none of that! He took me to a local muay thai boxing gym and my life changed from that point on. It was the best thing my brother could have done for me. That gym wasn’t necessarily the start of my fitness addiction, as it was more of a causal once-a-week thing I did, but I certainly recognise it as what had spurred me on into the life I now lead - as something that made me appreciate fitness rather than shy away from it. I continued to practice muay thai for about 5 years, but never got into the cycle of a six-days-a-week workout that I’m now used to.

Now, I own more than a thousand pound’s worth of equipment in my parent’s garage! It started with a simple punch bag and speed rope to compliment the fitness I did at boxing, and slowly escalated until you couldn’t really call it a garage anymore but rather a home gym. I now own an agility ladder, resistance bands, a pull-up bar, a bench and an olympic weight set, and most recently have bought myself a huge set of dumbbells amounting to nearly 400 kilos. It’s fair to say working out is now an addiction for me. It’s almost too much equipment to know what to do with! But lifting weights, bodybuilding, getting bigger and stronger, that’s what my regime is all about now. There’s nothing like the pump you get from pushing 10 more pounds from the previous week or pulling another rep or two before failure. Some other fitness freaks may disagree, but as the boxing might suggest, it hasn’t always been that way for me either - I’ve tried out various ways to get fit, and the obsession began with Insanity, another home fitness programme.

For 30 gruelling days I challenged my body, and mind, more than I ever have before. With that programme, it wasn’t just about the workouts, it was about eating the right food and following a strict schedule - learning how to be disciplined and push yourself through plateaus, or say no to biscuits with your tea or even the standard two teaspoons of sugar! In fact, caffeine altogether, which I’ve since learnt to steer away from given its energy-boosting effects and subsequent disturbance of your sleeping pattern.

In essence, my point is that you need to identify what it is about yourself you want to change. Why is it you’re wanting to get fit? Is it simply because you can’t run a few paces before losing your breath and so want to improve your stamina? Or is it that you’re not happy with your weight and want to slim down? Or, it could even be the opposite. After boxing, Insanity and nothing but high intensity cardio, I found myself feeling like Captain America before he was injected with that super serum! I ended up disappointed with my scrawny body shape and so decided instead to bulk out and gain more mass, and maybe that’s what you want to do too. It’s no good saying you want to get fit and then immediately pay for a gym membership and go swimming the very next day or just hit the treadmill for a couple of hours. Think hard about what getting fit is all about for you, and then you can make the right decision about what type of routine will help you get there.

Staying On Track With The Post-Summer Blues

Last night the September equinox was upon us, and with it, we see the beginning of Autumn and the gradual colder, darker days that ensue. Luckily for me, all that means is that I have to put an extra layer on when I workout in my badly-insulted home-gym, but for others the problem can be worse as they can find themselves demotivated from doing any exercise or eating healthily altogether.

Personally I can very much empathise with this as I too was once that someone who just thought “sod it” when these chillier months came around. As these post-summer blues take their toll, it’s easy to look for any excuse, like the Halloween treats and the Christmas dinners, to justify the unhealthy choices we substitute for our usually better, more nutritious habits. What else could those new-year resolutions be if not a cleansing period in which we rid ourselves of the toxins for a week before becoming indulgent again?

Of course, here I’m actually jumping ahead in time a bit and being all pessimistic about it too, but it is unfortunate and has to be noted that this is the truth for many people - there’s something about us as a species that procrastinates and passes off the blame onto something else. Really, however, the consequences will only ever be on you, and that harsh realisation was what made me change my ways.

So when those chocolate advent calendars, Christmas dinners, and new-year’s drinks come around, don’t pretend like that’s everything keeping you from maintaining a balanced, healthy lifestyle for the remainder of the time. I’m not saying for once don’t indulge in these traditions - I want to stress that I don’t mean to write all my posts from an angle at which the healthiest choices should be prioritised at the expense of happiness and general wellbeing. I consider indulgences (on occasion!) to be part of what makes us happy as well as healthy. But what must be understood, is that they should be just that - a part, and a small part at that.

I realise that being healthy and happy at the same time can be contradictory, but it’s more about how you balance them both. These treats now and again mustn’t control you, and as long as you keep it that way there won’t be any need to have resolutions at the beginning of next year! Resolutions shouldn’t be a new-year thing. They should be an ongoing, everlasting year-round way of making ourselves better tomorrow than we are today. So eat those 25 tiny advent chocolates in December if you must. Share those new-year drinks with that girl you want to intoxicate into kissing you at midnight. But don’t for once fool yourself into believing that every day in your life you can be as forgiving. Remember, you’re the one who has to live with the consequences.

Meal Of The Day

Seasoned Chicken, Red Potato Wedges, Mixed Vegetables.

By no means am I an accomplished chef. The concept my parents have of cooking is to just bung something in the microwave! So naturally I’ve grown up with a rather limited knowledge of what a real, nutritious meal should taste like. Now I am discrediting my parents a bit here - they did the best job of raising me and my poor dad even sacrificed most of his garage space so I could have a place to put all of my home gym equipment! But as my mum’s favourite magnet says on our home fridge / freezer which is packed full of ready-meals, “If it fits in a toaster, I can cook it!”

I think this is relevant to a lot of people who want to get in better shape - there’s this preconceived idea that you’ve got to be some celebrity cook or at least have a book which Waterstones recommends in their food and drink section, if you are to have any chance of living more healthily. The truth is that you don’t have to be Jamie Oliver’s protégé in order to cook a decent meal. In fact all you need to know is where the fresh food sections are in your supermarket of choice, and which dial in your kitchen works the oven.

One of my favourite lunches I make for myself at home, which takes five minutes to prepare and 20-25 minutes to cook, is chicken, roasted red potatoes, and a cup to two cups of any couple of vegetables of your choice. Personally I love onions and peppers together with this meal. It may not sound like something as exciting as you’d find on the menu at Barbecoa, but actually, it only takes a few more seconds to season your chicken and potatoes with some sea salt, pepper and a few spices and herbs, to disguise it as something not too dissimilar to a Jamie Oliver dish.

Firstly you preheat your oven to about 200°, or gas mark 6, and then oil a baking tray or use some non-stick foil. Chop a 5 ounce red potato up into wedge-like chunks, and then finely chop your vegetables. Put it all on the baking tray with your chicken, and season with whatever you fancy. Personally I have a taste for spicy food so I add a dash of paprika as well as sea salt and pepper. In the oven it goes and in 20-25 minutes you couldn’t have made a healthy meal any simpler. Optionally, if you have more time to spare, you can always pan fry your vegetables so you have more control over the temperature and cooking time, but either way the result will be downright tasty!

Macronutrients: What They Are And Why They're Important

I’m surprised by how little the coverage is of macronutrients in the pages of health and fitness magazines, given that it is one of the most critical things to learn about when it comes to your eating. Fortunately, it’s very easy to understand. Made up of carbohydrates, protein and fats, macronutrients are simply the primary food groups that need to make up your daily food intake if you are to eat a fully-balanced and nutritious diet.

It’s a simple concept, but one which I believe is imperative. You can have the cleanest, most minimally processed diet in the world, work harder than everybody else in the gym, but still if you’re not getting enough of any one of these macronutrients you will be inhibiting your results. If carbs dominate your every meal but your plate is short of protein, your body simply wont have enough amino acids to repair itself. And yet if you’re eating three chicken breasts a day but not fuelling yourself with things like potatoes, oats, or rice, your workouts will be a complete bust because you simply wont have the energy you need to push through those last few reps. Fats are also essential in a daily diet. Now, I’m not talking cupcakes and chocolate brownies, but unsaturated fats which you can get from nuts, seeds, oils and fish, or oily fish, all provide energy as well as certain vitamins. They also help reduce cholesterol and fight against inflammation.

Depending on your own body type, the amount of macronutrients you need will differ from everybody else. No two people are the same, and just as you wouldn’t expect a 200lbs bodybuilder to eat the same ratios as a welterweight boxer trying to cut down for the weigh-in, you will have your personal goals to meet too.

Much of what I have learnt in fitness and nutrition has come from BeachBody’s home workout programmes, and particularly Body Beast, the bulking programme devised by two-time Mr Israel and world renowned bodybuilder Sagi Kalev. Now I don’t claim to be a health or fitness expert myself at all, but his approach to macronutrients comes from his 26-years of experience, and I stick by his opinion religiously. You too can find your personal, accurate nutrient needs online with calculations concerning your own weight and body fat percentage. It sinks my heart when I see someone trying to lose weight but is eating, for example, way more fruit than what they should be allotted. Yes, fruit is good for you, but it can still do more harm than good if you overload yourself with all that sugar, even if it is natural - you wouldn’t eat jars of honey in one go so don’t eat punnets of strawberries either! Same applies to every other food group. So make sure you get this right and you will succeed!

Down To The Specifics

On this drab September day as I drive home from the supermarket, I notice a couple, each with an ice cream in their hand, and not only was I perplexed as to why they were eating such a thing on a grey day like today, but I was also puzzled at how this far into my blog I haven’t yet shared the specifics on what I actually eat on a daily basis. Having just been for my grocery shop, I thought now would be a good time to shed some light on this.

Although my palate may seem as drab as the dreariness of today’s weather, given that I tend to eat the same food day to day, it’s the easiest, most cost-efficient way of eating what you need, not necessarily what you want. If there’s one thing I’ve tried to make clear about nutrition up to this point, it’s that food should be seen as the sustenance that it is, not a pastime! Having said this though, I think my palate is actually rather vibrant both in the rich colour of the foods I buy, and the downright tastiness of how they turn out cooked into one hearty meal. It is possible to cook a plate of food that’s both nutritious and absent of anything artificial, no matter how much those sweet-craving tastebuds may try and fool you!

Granted this isn’t my full weekly shop, I tend to go to the supermarket intermittently throughout the week to keep my food fresh, as a lot of what I buy is fruit, vegetables and meat which of course is the last thing you would want to eat past its use by date! So I buy my groceries here and there rather than in one bulk.

Here you can see I literally have a mixed bag, which as I said before is crucial because you want to get your nutrients from as many food groups as possible. And don’t twist my words here, you know what I mean - chocolates and biscuits are not food groups! Protein, carbohydrates, unsaturated fats, fruit, vegetables and some dairy are all important and reduce the risk of you depriving your body of any one of these essential nutrients.

For me the milk is one of the most important ingredients I buy, as it is very versatile by being able to go with many of the meals I eat. It can be mixed with the shakes I have post-workout, and put in with porridge for breakfast as a more appetising alternative to water (which, personally, I hate with my oatmeal) and of course, it’s common to just drink milk on its own. It’s a convenient way of both hydrating and providing your body with the calories and nutrients it needs - this is also why I go for the semi-skimmed milk because I can meet my own calorie needs. Feel free to choose the milk you most enjoy, however, or if you don’t like milk or are lactose intolerant there are of course alternatives such as almond milk for instance, which even I have additionally to the dairy milk (as in cow’s milk, not the Cadbury bars!). The yogurt accounts for much the same, but unlike milk it’s of course more for eating than drinking, so it mixes well with fruit for a nice, light snack, with which I usually have the raisins you can also see in the picture (the green packet).

Aside from the dairy, today I also bought some red potatoes, kidney beans, 100 percent orange juice, a ribeye steak, onions, peppers, and Dove care body wash for men, because smelling as fresh as your food tastes is just as important for maintaining a healthy body and mind! That, or I just forgot to take it out of the bag before I took a picture of what was just supposed to be my groceries!

The kidney beans are also quite flexible in their usability, and so I find myself cooking these for various meals from a tuna salad sandwich to a hearty autumn / winter turkey chilli - with which I’d also have the peppers and onions I bought today too. The ribeye steak is more of a treat as I only have red meat on occasion, instead favouring poultry or fish which is more beneficial to your health. With this I tend to have some delicious roasted red potatoes which I season with a dash of sea salt, pepper and herbs and spices. Lastly, the orange juice I buy is 100 percent juice. I have this over squash for the obvious reason of it being untouched by added sugars. I tend to have this in the morning with my oatmeal.

There is no magic pill or specific ingredient you’ve never heard of - much of the food I buy is as simple as you’d imagine a healthy diet to look like. The difference is the unnatural foods you must cut out if you are to see these nutritious meals take effect and get you the results you want from a healthier lifestyle. The less processed an item of food is between it having been picked from a tree, out of the ground, or from the sea, and put onto your local supermarket shelves, the better. If your diet is packed full of purely whole foods with nothing artificial added, you’d have to try really hard to go wrong! Just take notice of how often you eat your food (every two to three hours is best), and eat five to six small / medium meals a day depending on your individual needs as far as calories are concerned and the target weight / goals you have. Just stay focused, keep motivated, and carry on moving forward, and the results will come in time.

A Personal Feat and The Greatest Incentive

Yesterday a good friend of mine asked a favour of me - a favour, as it turns out, that was not in the same selfless manor in which most favours are done for, but in fact something beneficial to us both. What my friend didn’t realise was that he was helping me as much as I him.

This friend, like many of us in the modern day, has been used to taking a more tolerable approach to the way in which he treats his body, both with the amount of exercise he does and the types of food he eats - I’ve witnessed it first hand and the amount of crinkly chips he has with an otherwise relatively healthy meal is not pretty!

However, also, like many of us, the ratio of that large portion of chips in comparison with a perfectly nutritious chicken breast or steak, represents the huge disproportion in our understanding of a healthy living against the actions that was actually take. By this, I mean the easy route - the Costa Coffee lunch, for instance, or the egg McMuffin breakfast when in a rush to get to work on time, over something much better for you that you could have cooked on the weekend whilst you were instead binging on popcorn and watching Saturday night TV!

The favour he asked of me was that he wanted my help in getting him back in shape, or at least, for now, just a workout or two a week. What he doesn’t realise though is that the least is not something I settle for! And this was an enlightenment for me. I’ve been passionate about fitness since I started paying attention to my own health a year ago, but I’ve always been passionate about helping others. I hate seeing friends unhappy or in need of help, and so naturally I try to be there when I can.

So what I didn’t anticipate was that as soon as we stepped foot inside my home gym, I actually felt the urge to disconnect from our friendship, for that can be damaging to the integrity by which I needed to treat him if I was going to get him results, and this was of course the favour he asked of me - my passion to help. To be kind, sometimes you have to be cruel, and I pushed him as much as I believed he could go, and I must say he abided well! Towards the end of the tough chest workout I put him through, he pushed almost every last set to failure, and was sweating buckets by the end of what was about 50 minutes of intense exercise. The irony is that I felt I had to put our friendship aside in order for me to be a better friend, for it was a favour not in need of someone close but of someone that was going to put him through his paces, and by doing that I could help him a lot better.

I felt this was something very important to acknowledge, even though yesterday was like any other day for him but for just a workout thrown in. My friend doesn’t realise that for me it was much more of a milestone, as at last not only is my passion for fitness fuelling me, but for the first time I can see it fuelling others too. I believe that is truly one of the great incentives of getting into better shape - it’s not just the results you’ll see in yourself, but also the inspiration you didn’t even know you’ve given to others. And that could be either the most selfish or selfless thing to treasure!

So don’t give up on your newfound strive for greatness, you’ll not only be helping yourself but you will also be affecting the good people who surround you, and you might not even know it. So thank you, friend, as you actually did me the favour.

A Little Motivation

The amount of times I’ve said to myself in the past, and perhaps will again at some point in the future, is, “I can’t.” Those two words can detriment all your motivation when trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle. When you’re eating lean and clean, and your work ethic is 100 percent, be it on your morning run or on the weight bench, it’s normal at times to look over and see someone running that bit faster or pushing that bit heavier and think, “Why aren’t I there yet?” The thing is, no matter what category in life, not just exercise, there are going to be people both above you and below you.

However, you have got to drown out those sinister voices and only listen to that same part of you that’s been spurring you on as far as you’ve come up to now already. There’s a reason you’ve been running all those miles every week or hitting the gym at any spare moment you have - you want to improve. And the “you” in that sentence is key. Not everyone can be Mr Olympia or an Olympic Gold Medalist. But is there any reason, really, why you cannot ever be that one person who does have that title to your name?

To be the best, you can’t worry about beating the best until you’ve first beaten your personal best. Don’t put limits on yourself, because only then can you achieve anything you want. So next time, if you have to look over at the next person who you might think is faster or stronger than you, consider instead whether they’re going as hard as you’re pushing yourself - if you’re putting in that 100 percent I mentioned above, how can they? Be your own champion first before trying to impress others, and eventually, you will get to where you want to be.

How To Start

Before even evaluating your diet or level of activity, I believe the best way to make a change to your lifestyle is first to fully understand your personal situation and then go at it slow. All the articles about extreme dieting or month-long workouts to the perfect summer body are just false promises. The cruel lesson you must learn is that it takes commitment. There’s a reason why most of the test subjects that these magazines use for the fads they claim work are the people actually employed by the mag. These people are getting a massive amount of assistance from PT’s, nutritionists and other health experts to help them get the most out of those few weeks and achieve that summer body they promise. For most of us though it’s quite a bit harder.

I’m just over a year into my own fitness journey and I still haven’t reached my goals - that’s because I’ve realised the journey lasts for your whole lifetime. That month-long workout I mentioned above implies that you’ll do everything you can to make a change to your body in four weeks but then just go straight back to your old habits when you’re done, so don’t think of it as a diet or a workout programme, think of it as the rest of your life, because once you start seeing results why would you ever want to go back?

As well as this, going in all-guns-blazing with unrealistic targets could actually inhibit your performance, or worse, just make you never want to put your Nike Airs on again. I’m not saying don’t aim high - a positive attitude will sometimes be all you have to keep you going back to the gym or stop you from picking out baked beans drowned in artificial tomato sauce over the kidney beans in water on the next shelf. But the simple fact is, it’s going to take time to get where you want to be, otherwise you’d see everybody you walk past flaunting a cover-model body. It’s not that easy! It’s a hard lesson I had to learn too - when I bought my first set of weights I expected to wake up with arms like Arnold the day after back and biceps!

So what I’d say is throw out that magazine showing off the latest fad diets that guarantee you the same body as the model on the front-cover. I’m 100 percent sure that that model has never dieted as extreme as some of these fads are, not just because it’s unrealistic, but because it’s also unhealthy - think of the amount of essential nutrients you’d be depriving your body of if you only ate a few hundred calories a day like they tell you to.

Instead, I’d ease into a new routine by gradually incorporating healthier alternatives to the foods you eat already. Whether that be by removing the fatty yolks from your eggs and just sticking with the protein-packed whites, or switching from white bread to wholemeal when you fancy toast for breakfast. In fact, right there, scrambled egg whites on wholemeal toast, a healthy snack is as simple as that. Once you do this for every meal and have altered each mouthful of food a day to a healthier alternative, you soon wont recognise the new eating plan you’ve created for yourself when you compare it to the processed, unnatural food you used to eat. It may be difficult to adjust for the first couple of weeks, but it gets easier for sure, and eventually you’ll be craving roasted red potatoes with your steak rather than a bunch of ‘death-by-salt’ french fries.

Taking A Stand

I live in Cornwall - home of pasties and ice cream, so you could say I’m a victim to a lot of temptation here at the seaside. But the same goes for everyone. Really, no matter where you are, it’s easy to just give in to the many unhealthy choices that surround us. But they are just that - choices.

I understand how it may be more difficult to adjust to a healthier lifestyle - there’s a reason why snack shops are called convenience stores - they’re convenient - but you will thank yourself later when you walk straight past your local bakers or ice cream parlour and into a health food shop instead, especially if you live in a seaside town like me and want to walk along the beach unashamed of your body.

I believe nutrition is the most important factor in leading a healthy lifestyle, even more so than working out. Each and every one of us lives inside a complex, intricate body, where all our cells work together like clockwork - and you wouldn’t mistreat your £10,000 Rolex so why do harm to your priceless body? You can easily buy a new wristwatch but you’re stuck with the body you live in forever.

What Makes Me Qualified?

So what makes me qualified? Well, in truth, I’m not. I’m not a certified nutritionist and I don’t have a diploma in physical education (although that is something I’m looking into for the future). However, I do still have experience. Experience in once being that couch potato who had enough with his slovenly life and decided to make a change.

Just over a year ago I started to notice and become inspired by some of the ripped guys in the TV shows I was watching whilst sitting down being that very couch potato I speak of. And now for the first time in my life I’ve started to become happy with my own body, lifestyle and overall wellbeing, and I wanted HashtagYou to be a place where I can share this experience, even if it only helps one more person to change their eating habits or get their old running shoes on again.

About HashtagYou

HashtagYou is the number one place to come where nothing else matters but you. Isn’t that what looking after #1 means - putting yourself first? Good health and wellbeing is the key to a happy life, and this all depends on lifestyle. HashtagYou is where you can learn how to take care of your body and your mind, with my personal tips and advice about fitness, nutrition and becoming the best person you can be. I want this blog to be a place where I can help you help yourself. After all, it is all about #you!