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Tag: education

Fast & simple beginner’s fat burn home workout

So I had a chat with my mum on Skype the other night. She told me she's started doing 50 sit ups a night to improve her fitness. I had to stop for a second to realise I'd failed to talk to mum about some very important basic fitness principles, and how sit ups are not the answer. I am ashamed. I've had hundreds of private clients over the years who know better than my own mum?!

She's going to fly over to visit us from Finland next month, and I'm sure as hell going to make sure she leaves a week later being a lot more educated. In this post you'll find out exactly what she'll learn.

Now, most people will take on doing ab work at home because they want their waist to be smaller... Correct? Yep, well working on your abs will do very little, if anything. They might even make matters worse if you're doing the exercises wrong. Loads of people have got ab work induced lower back pain, which is not fun and can take a long time to get rid of. Also, if your breathing is wrong you can be encouraging your belly to actually push out, not get any slimmer.

Like this guy, he's ripped but he's been doing a lot of exercise whilst his belly's been pushed out... Not ideal if you want to look slim, right?

So instead, focus on a full body workout where you use all of your biggest muscle groups. That way your body will burn the most calories (and fat), and since you cannot target fat loss, it'll burn off the most overall fat and tone up your body in all of the problem areas, including your waistline.

Here's your exercises for an effective beginner's home workout:

  • Squat (standing up and keeping your heels on the floor, lower your bum down as if you were going to sit down on a chair. Keep your knees aligned with your toes. Your hands can come in front of you for balance as you squat down. Aim to get your thighs parallel to the floor.)
  • Push up (keeping your knees on the floor [and feet uncrossed] whilst resting on your arms, lower your chest down until your arms are parallel with the floor, then push back up whilst breathing out at the top. Make sure your arms are aligned with your nipples, not your neck!)
  • Seal (or 'lying back extension'. Lie down on your stomach, holding your hands by your temples. Lift your chest up controlled off the floor as high as you can, hold for a second at the top and lower back down to where there is still tension in your back muscles. Repeat. If you want the extra benefit of working out your bum too, just lift your feet up off the floor whilst squeezing your glutes at the same time as lifting your chest.)

Do 3 sets of 15 repetitions of each of these exercises. That's it! These exercises also train your core when you make sure your posture is good throughout, so no need for specific ab work unless you're already lean or have a particularly weak core.

50 crunches every night

3 x 15 squat, push up, seal every night

Make it into a daily routine and soon you'll start seeing much better results than you would from doing sit ups .

 

Good luck,

/Erika

 

P.s. If you've got any questions, just drop me a message

The secret behind EVERY successful diet

Low carb, 5:2, the alkaline and blood type diet, bullshit “detoxes & cleanses” (Forever, Juice+, Cambridge etc), paleo……. you name it.

None of them are ‘good for’ you and most likely only make you gain weight afterwards.

But here’s the secret as to why “they work”:

YOU

ARE

ON

A

CALORIE

DEFICIT.

 

If a diet makes you lose weight, it’s simply because your body is burning more than what you’re eating, no matter what the method

Some of you may have tried eating a shit ton of vegetables once and noted that you can in fact eat more and lose weight. This is true, because vegetables are not calorie dense foods

[a kilogram of carrots = 410 kcal, whereas

a kilogram of vegetable oil = 8,115 kcal]

Which also makes them a great food group to have when you’re trying to lose weight (on top of the fact that they’re packed with vitamins).

 

So STOP giving shitty diets credit, when in fact it’s nothing to do with

what you eat

but rather

how much energy you consume (vs. burn)

 

Then there’s what I hear all the time… “I know what I need to do to lose weight, but…..”

Yep yep. There’s just one thing that might come as a shock to many - even healthy eating does NOT guarantee weight loss. Shocking, right? It’s definitely a wise idea to make your eating habits healthier and include a lot of colour in your diet, but……. too much of any food can make you gain weight. I remember watching this documentary when I was young on a morbidly obese woman who did not understand why she was dying because of her weight… seen as she had 52 (!!!) oranges a day. They’re healthy, right?? This is an extreme example, but just let me tell you

that in 52 average oranges

there are 3,796 kcal and

884 GRAMS of sugar

That’s close to a fucking kilogram of pure sugar!!!

So yeah, fruit is not bad for you

as long as you have it in moderation

just like anything else

 

There’s a BIG problem if you follow diets that others have made for you without knowing anything about your general eating habits and preferences

And the problem is that you’re not going to be on that diet for the rest of your life, so it WON’T WORK [here’s why]

 

So the solution?

Learn what’s in your food

Start tracking your calories today by downloading MyFitnessPal

And no matter what you eat,

if you stay under your average needed calories you will lose weight.

(Check how many you need here)

You can achieve anything you want. Just decide you're going to do it, and figure out why you want to do it. Then go get it!

 

Good luck!

What is FLEXIBLE DIETING?

First of all…. Flexible dieting is not your regular ‘diet’, but rather a lifestyle. It’s a fantastic protocol that not only effectively helps you get to your dream weight, but also automatically educates you on the foods you eat. It is by far the best way to guarantee long term weight loss success as it takes the guess work out.

As we’ve established, dieting doesn’t work so it’s time you take control and finally stop yo-yo’ing. Flexible dieting will enable you to eat all the foods you love and still lose weight. This is because all you need to do is stay within your energy needs.

To maintain your current weight you have to eat a certain amount of calories (calculate yours here). To gain weight, you need to eat more than what your body burns. To lose weight, you need to eat less. It’s as simple as that. And the reason your past shitty diets have worked is because no matter what the diet, you’ll have been in a calorie deficit. And afterwards you put the weight back on because you returned to eating exactly like you did before the diet, without learning anything or changing your habits.

So with flexible dieting you simply log your foods on a tracking app like MyFitnessPal. Take 10 minutes to learn the app, how to log your foods easily, how to set your calories and so on. You can check out my YouTube tutorial video —> here <—. It’s very easy to use and anyone can do it. If you want to lose weight, all you need to do is make sure you’re on average eating less than your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure), which you can calculate on my website.

To begin with, you don’t need to worry about your macronutrients (protein, carbs and fats), but do try to build your meals around a source of protein. And eating good quality ‘clean foods’ (single ingredient foods) will help you feel full.

What are you waiting for? Go after that dream body of yours and start with flexible dieting today. I dare you. You can thank me later ;-).

// You can watch my quick video —> WHAT IS FLEXIBLE DIETING? <— on Instagram //