Health and Fitness Coach

Fat Facts 1 of 5 – What is Body Fat?

5 March 2009 5:33 pm

Welcome to my five part Fat Facts video series. Here I will be exploring fat in our bodies and fat in our foods, how it affects us and whether there is such a thing as good fat.

Part 1: What is body fat, explains what exactly body fat is, why we need it and the 2 main types of body fat, subcutaneous and visceral. I hope you learn something new today and stay tuned for parts 2-5.

Posture – How You Can Improve Your Posture

28 November 2008 12:36 am

Editors Note: This is a guest article written by Industry veteran Ryan Hogan who works and writes for the Australian Fitness Network.

Picture this; a beautiful girl decked out in designer clothes with perfect makeup and hair – but something is wrong. Her head pokes forward, her shoulders round over and there is a slight hump on her upper back – and this is when she is sitting down. It gets worse. She stands up in her patent heels and her backside sticks right out and the arch in her lower back looks very uncomfortable. You’ve seen this girl before at the gym and working with a personal trainer on the weights floor, but all of her efforts have not addressed a very important factor of fitness: POSTURE.

Poor posture is a common occurrence that we can all suffer from to some extent. The continual inappropriate use of muscles, both in stillness and in movement, affects the musculoskeletal system. Sometimes poor posture or alignment may arise from congenital factors or injury, but more commonly it is caused by a lack of awareness and poor use of the body. Poor posture is defined as the body not being in optimal anatomical alignment, and may take the form of a forward-thrusting head; sloping, hunched or rounded shoulders; humped upper back; overarched or flattened lower back; protruding abdomen or hyper-extended knees. People often think that they are destined to have poor posture forever, but this is not true.

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Tagged As: body shape, exercise, Posture

Posted by Amelia Burton in Health and Fitness | 3 Comments

5.5 Ways to Change the Shape of Your Body – Fast!

14 September 2008 8:22 am

Heidi Klum Snapped back into shape just one month after giving birth

Heidi Klum - One month after giving birth

So we know that the only way to make a big difference to our body shape is long term lifestyle adjustments with eating and exercise, but that doesn’t help for next week’s big event does it? I am constantly asked what the tricks are to change one’s body shape fast. Heidi Klum had just one month after her baby was born to get svelte enough to model Victorias Secrets lingerie range or she’d lose a 2.5 million dollar deal – no pressure!

Follow these 5.5 ways to change your body shape fast. I can’t promise you’ll have a stomach like Heidi Klum’s, but it’ll be an improvement on what’s poking out now!

No bread before bed!

Although I am not a fan of low carb diets long term, there is no doubt that reducing your carbohydrate intake slims you down short term and does wonders for flattening a stomach and increasing muscle definition.

There are a few fascinating reasons low carb diets work short term. Firstly, they rid your body of unwanted excess fluid. In order to digest simple carbohydrates (bread, pasta, rice, potatoes), the body requires a lot of fluid to break this down. In addition many people are intolerant to gluten and their bodies react by retaining even more water and giving that bloated look that we all try to avoid.

Secondly, by eliminating one massive component of a person’s diet, ie carbs, often the total calories consumed each day are reduced. This will also help to flatten the stomach (less food in there) and shed excess body weight.

Before you decide to eliminate carbs all together, I suggest taking my metabolic typing quiz. If you are a carb or a mixed type, I would not suggest eliminating carbs altogether.Â It’s not worth the pain and anguish you will put loved ones through. You might look good, but you’ll be a cranky bugger!

I suggest: having some carbs for breaky, such as porridge or toast, and then avoiding them for the rest of the day. Instead, increase your complex carbohydrates (coloured veggies) through salads, and increase your protein intake whether it be through lean meat or legumes. You can follow any of the low carb diets if it’s easier (Zone, Atkins etc), but I simply tell my clients, if it’s white and fluffy, or packed with sugar don’t eat it!

Cardio Boxing

There is something about cardio boxing that changes body shapes fast. It might be the fast push/pull action of Click here to continue reading…..

Tagged As: body shape, fitness

Posted by Amelia Burton in Nutrition and Weight Loss | 9 Comments