The home gym you never knew you had

Being the biggest person in the gym is difficult. To be honest most of the other people in there don't give you a second glance, but in your own head it seems like they are judging your every movement. And lets not start with the public changing rooms.

So what's the alternative? Walking? With the glorious UK weather, the ability to exercise outside when you are lacking in motivation is less than ideal. Did you know you already have the makings of a basic home gym?

Stair-master: Unless you live in a single story house, you have a flight of stairs. These can be used in two ways. Haul you ass up and down the stairs for a medium intensity workout, just be careful on the down journey. Aside from slipping, your knees are under more pressure on the downward journey. The second method is to use just the bottom step as a step class. Put on your favourite high energy music and left up with the left foot, then step up with the right one, step down with the left and then with the right. To break up the routine, you could pause, then start with the right foot and repeat. Another variation would be to step up left, tap your right toe on the step, then down right, then down left. Once you get good at it and your balance has improved, add some over head two hand claps to work your upper body.

Weight lifting: One litre of water weighs 1kg, so plastic bottles filled with water make good free weights. The bigger the bottle the heavier the weight. When you get stronger supermarkets sell 5 litre bottles of water with handy handles.
When using free weights, you need to make sure your stance is good, back straight and feet shoulder width apart with your knees slightly bent. You can use the bottles for bicep curls, side lifts, forward lifts, over head chest press. Breath in on the lift, breath out on the way down.

Treadmill: Put the telly on, but don't head for the couch, stand in the middle of the room and walk in place. At first just concentrate on getting each foot off the floor, but as your strength improves, lift your knees higher on each step. You can also lift the opposite arm as if marching. When you get really good at it, hold a bottle of water in each hand as you march.

Tai Chi: If you are reading this on the net, you have access to Google. search for online tai chi video. The Tai Chi Wizard offers a free online course that's worth checking out. The good thing about tai chi is that it is very low impact and will work wonders for your core and balance.

Extreme Vacuuming: Find two strong and large plastic bags. Fill each with 1kg (or more) of rice, lentils or similar stuff. Seal the bags and wrap the bag round your ankles, securing with a scarf or something like it. The ankle weights will turn your cleaning chores into a workout. If you have a backpack you could put a couple of water bottles in to add more resistance. Make smaller weights for your wrists. You might want to avoid using flour or sugar, just in case the bag splits. Rice and lentils are much easier to clean up.

With a little imagination lots of things you already own can be used as fitness equipment.

As with any exercise, stop when you feel pain. As you get fitter you will learn what is just muscles having a bit of a moan and when your body is telling you to stop. If you can't remember the last time you exercised, you might benefit from a quick once over from your GP. Let them know your plan to start exercising and they will advise you how to proceed safely. The best advice is not to go mad the first day, little and often is the best way to start. Restarting exercise after injury is even harder than starting in the first place.

Go enjoy your new home gym.   

Peeing for Britian

Those of you who have been on diets, especially Slimming World, will understand the title of this post. You feel like you could win medals in the Olympics for your ability to pee. Not just frequency but distance and volume.

Ok, so this is considered, by some, a delicate subject; but in all honesty we all urinate so I'm going to explain what's going on with your plumbing.

The extra pee happens for a number of reasons. When you change your diet from unhealthy levels of salt and refined sugars to lots of wholesome foods, your body no longer need to protect you by holding on to more water to regulate your blood chemistry. Once your salt intake drops, your body starts to flush out the excess water. This accounts for the large weight loss most people experience in the first week.

Secondly the healthier fruit and vegetables you are now eating have higher levels of water than the McBurger and fries you were eating last month. Another factor is you probably try to drink the mythical 8 glasses of water per day. Your body does need water to survive, but any excess you drink has to go somewhere.

The reason you continue to pee like a fountain as you lose weight is down to chemistry. When you eat food, it gets broken down into basic building blocks that your body uses as fuel. Any excess fuel in our bodies is stored as fat. Once you start eating healthy food and your calorific intake drops below your energy needs, your body triggers the release of your stored fat. Various hormones trigger the production of enzymes that break the fat into the fuel chemicals our bodies use. When your body's cells burn these fuel chemicals the waste products are mostly carbon dioxide and water, both of which your body has to get rid of.

As you lose weight and get more active you need more calories to maintain your new activity levels. Your metabolism speeds up as well, this means that you burn more calories each day. The more fat your body breaks down, the more water needs to be expelled.

So next time you are cursing your bursting bladder at 3am, remember your body is just doing what you want and burning up all that fat.

Guilt free take out

Friday nights were made for Chinese take away and your favorite series on Netflix. Take out food is not usually an option when it comes to getting fit, so this inspired me to adapt one of the dishes I order regularly, Singapore noodles.

This recipe serves two, but it can be scaled up easily. It also requires the use of a good non stick frying pan or wok to cut down on the amount of oil needed.

100g fine noodles, partially cooked, drained and allowed to cool
1 clove crushed garlic
1 tbsp grated ginger
1 red chilli finely chopped
1 large onion, halved and sliced
1 red pepper, halved and sliced
1 small carrot, cut to matchstick sized pieces
20g snow peas sliced
20-30g bean sprouts
2 chicken breasts, cut to 1-2 cm cubes, seasoned with a dash of soy sauce
100g prawns
1 egg, beaten with a dash of soy

1 tsp oil
2 tsp mild curry powder
1 tsp turmeric

2 spring onions finely chopped
½ tsp sesame seeds

Mix your noodles, oil, curry powder and turmeric and set to one side.

Dry fry your egg into a thin omelet and set aside after cutting it into thin shreds. Then in the same pan fry off the chicken cubes. When the cubes are half way cooked add the prawns. Once the chicken and prawns are almost cooked, set aside with the omelet pieces.


Dry fry the garlic, ginger and chilli for a few seconds then add the onion, pepper and carrot. Once the vegetables are just starting to soften, add the noodles to the pan and keep stirring for two to three minutes. Add the chicken, prawns and egg to the pan for another minute or two. Once everything is cooked through, serve using the spring onion and sesame seeds as a garnish.

If you are not a fan of seafood, substitute the prawns for 100g of sticky pork. (Pork loin cut into strips, marinaded in dark soy, honey, a pinch of chilli powder or 5 spice powder, mustard powder and black pepper and then dry fried.)
 

Meat glorious meat.

If you like meat then you will love red days. Slimming World original plan, nicknamed 'red days' from the colour of the pages in the book, are a carnivores dream. All lean meat, fish and seafood are classed as free food on a red day. Combine meat with your free vegetables and you are set. You get to add one or two portions of dairy, called healthy extra A choices and two healthy extra B portions of pasta, potatoes, rice, cereals or bread, plus 5 - 15 syns.

Whilst it sounds like a dream plan, you must remember that you need to remove ALL visible fat prior to cooking. Unless they are less than 5% fat, sausages, burgers etc all contain syns. Some veg such as beans, peas and lentils are not free, but can be eaten as a healthy extra or as syns.

In my previous post I mentioned that I prefer green days, but have found that having at least one red day each week seems to boost my weight loss. Some of the dishes I really enjoy are;

All day breakfast: Grilled syn free sausages, bacon, grilled garlic mushrooms, sliced tomato, baked beans and a cheesy omelet with onion and bell peppers. As long as you cut all the fat off the bacon and grill everything, limit the cheese in the omelet to 30g and 150g of beans, you can be really extravagant with this meal.

Open club sandwich: Lightly toasted rye bread (60g), low fat mayo (1/2 syn / tbsp), mustard, pastrami, ham, sliced chicken, bacon, tomato, lettuce and spring onion. I like to mix a little English mustard powder into very low fat mayo for this sandwich, or add horseradish sauce if I add sliced beef to the sandwich.

Roast dinner: Roast beef, potatoes (healthy extra), roast squash, carrots, green beans and gravy (a couple of syns depending on brand) and horseradish sauce. If I have spare syns I will indulge in a couple of Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire puddings (3 syns each).  Any lean meat will work with a roast as long as it is as lean as possible.

Jacket potato with chilli: Grab a good size spud (230g raw) and toss in the oven. Make a beef chilli, with lean mince, onion, peppers and seasoning, but skip the beans. Once the spud is ready, split in half and pile on the chilli. Garnish with some grated cheese from your healthy extras. If like me you are not a fan of veg you can add finely chopped veg to your chilli, once they have cooked down, you hardly notice them in there.

Snacking on red days is easy too, in addition to your fruit and veg, you can grab a couple of slices of cooked meat, roll them up and snack. Slice up a couple of syn free sausages and add sliced apple. Wrap slices of ham around a stick of melon or just chow down on a chicken drumstick, but take the skin off first.

It's a green day

Back on track, day two...

I love carbs, so the green day on Slimming World's eating plan suit me best. Although I do suffer with the healthy extras. On the green day plan you can eat all the fruit, veg, pasta, rice and potatoes you like and must limit your protein intake. This is achieved by having one or two portions of dairy and two portions of protein, bread or cereal.

The main problem is that of all the carbs I love most, bread is my best friend. From simple toast and sandwiches to pizza, there are very few times I haven't found a new friend in a loaf of bread. It's unfortunate that bread is limited on this plan, but if it and I were not such close friends, I'd probably not have quite so much weight to lose.

Green days usually start with fruit and yogurt. Cereals are allowed, but they count as one of the two permitted healthy extra B choices. I usually use at least one B choice for protein and the second is flexible between bread, porridge or a second portion of protein. Snacking on green days is easy, fruit. Vegetable crudities are also an option for veg lovers, served with low fat tzatziki dip made from fat free greek yougurt, grated cucumber (with as much juice squeezed out as possible) 1 tsp olive oil (2 syns) and a clove of crushed garlic.

Lunch will normally be a pasta dish with either a healthy extra choice of protein. An easy favorite is Cheese, leek and ham pasta and sauce (Batchelors 1syn when made up with only water) with an extra 1/2 chopped leek and diced ham or bacon. Another simple lunch is pasta shapes served with a half a pepperami diced (3.5 syns) fried with diced onion, diced sweet red peppers and 200g passata, seasoned with garlic and basil. If all else fails, beans on toast.

Dinner choices are limitless, there is very little you can't do with veg, carbs and a portion of meat or fish, except for pizza. Staples are spaghetti bolognaise, chilli and cottage pie, but as long as your recipe doesn't contain oil and fats (unless synned) then you are covered. With syns you can even indulge in dessert or the odd tipple. Personally I'm happy to steer clear of the booze whilst on the plan, I'd rather spend the syns on making the most of the main meals and adding a little extra to the snacks.

The best part of this eating plan, is there is always food to eat, so you never feel hungry. It does however take willpower to break the junk food cravings in the first week or two. I find until I'm well in to the plan and have gotten the sugar rush / crash cycle out of my system, it's easier to not buy in treats like sweets, chocolate and my nemesis, biscuits. For me one biscuit is too many and a whole packet is not enough, so not buying them for the first month is hard, but it's harder to not sneak a couple or six at 2am. Once I'm firmly on the plan and the cravings have passed I'll start adding treats in occasionally. If you have to have your daily sweet fix, buy small amounts which will limit the damage in a moment of weakness. Better still, only buy enough for one day and take a walk to the shop to buy it. 

Red days explained next time.

Food Optimising

What is food optmising?

The nutritionists at Slimming World have created an eating plan that is supposed to take the hard work out of dieting and help re-educate you into eating a better and more balanced diet. The plan has evolved over the years, but the basic principal remains, eat lots of low calorie dense foods, minimise medium calorie dense foods and control the really yummy stuff with points.

Food is classified in three ways, free foods - which are most fruit and vegetables eaten whole. Purees and juice follow different rules and contain points. Healthy foods such as grains, pasta, protein and dairy and all the usually banned foods when dieting are rated with points they call Syns. There are two ways to food optimise,extra easy days and the older red and green days. The newer extra easy days were introduced to further simplify the plan and is simple to follow, 2/3 of your plate must be filled with the free food, and the remaining third can have any amount of the healthy food. The good part, is that as long as you follow the 2:1 ratio, you can go back for seconds, or even thirds, so you never go hungry. You are also allowed to have 5 -15 syns worth of the really nice stuff, which includes sweets, choccy, cake and booze.

The red and green days are slightly different as the free / healthy foods change depending what day you are on. Red days (the first eating plan - similar to Atkins diet) adds all lean meat to the free section, and the grains, pasta, potatoes and cereals are limited to 2 portions per day, along with 1 or 2 portions of dairy and your syns. The green day reverses this and puts the meat into the controlled group and allows you to fill up on carbohydrates as well as all the free foods.

There are some downsides to the plan, firstly, for me is I'm not a huge fan of fruit and veg, so I struggle with the extra easy days. Another problem with the extra easy days is the ability to still overeat. Whilst the large volumes of free fruit and veg fill you up and therefore limit your intake for the more calorie dense foods, it is still possible to eat after you start feeling full. You do need to police yourself with this and learn to listen to your body. Many of us with weight issues don't just eat the wrong food, but eat food wrong. Learn to listen to your body, eat slowly and only when you are actually hungry and stop a couple of mouthfuls before you feel stuffed.

The downsides to the red and green days are that you could in theory eat 'correctly' on the plan and never touch a piece of fruit or vegetable. I try my best to eat 5 - 10 portions of fruit and veg with the bare minimum of 5 portions per day.

I find it easier to use the veg as ingredients in meals, such as chilli, I add tomatoes, peppers, onion, courgette, carrot, celery and beans. When all cooked up with minced beef or Quorn mince and plenty of chilli, I get a good hit of veggies in a single meal. Fruit on the other hand can only be eaten whole and raw, as cooking it turns it from free food, to syns, as the fruit sugars are converted to nasty processed sugars. Juicing, pureeing and cooking also makes it easier to consume larger volumes of these high sugar foods. The example often used is that a glass of orange juice can contain 8 oranges. You could drink a glass of juice and then eat a large breakfast, you would struggle to eat the eight oranges. This basically is the whole Slimming World eating plan in a nutshell, fill up on low calorie foods and limit the high calorie foods.

The system is more than just the eating plan though, they also have body magic and image therapy, which I'll cover in later posts.

Slimming world

I seriously lost the plot with my weight loss and getting fit. Depression, pain and anxiety are not great for keeping your head in the right place for getting fit.

After nearly a year off I feel like I'm in a better place for getting fit. One thing I realised is that I'm missing out on is support. Whilst I know how to cook and eat healthy food, when I hit a low point I don't have the mental resources to always pick myself back up. So I have decided to join a weight loss group called Slimming World. I have been a member previously and lost a huge amount of weight, but fell back in to the old bad eating habits, then illness struck, food and comfort eating was my drug of choice. The plan is easy to follow and whilst I'll be mostly sticking to the plan, I will still try to only eat when I'm actually hungry, learning to listen to my stomach not my head.

The consultant at my local group is extremely enthusiastic and is the reason why I'm re-joining the group. Whilst she is very supportive and never judgmental, I know that the pressure of wanting a weight loss each week in class and to win that coveted slimmer of the week certificate will help spur me on. I found that the support from the other members is also great.

I realised after a lot of reflection on my last weight loss foray with Slimming World, is that I get a lot from helping other members. People have asked me for my recipes, to tell them how and what I eat on the plan and a couple of people have even thanked me for being an inspiration once I started to hit the bigger numbers and drop several clothing sizes. This might seem a little self centered or even big headed, but if that is what it takes for me to keep my head in the right place to loose all this weight, then it's what I will do.

My first class is tomorrow morning, I will be honest that I'm not looking forward to the first weigh in as I know I have put on the weight I lost last year, and maybe some more besides, but it will only be between me and the consultant. I'll also post the basics of the plan and what I'm eating on the blog and report in my weigh in results each week on the Wednesday posts.

I'm not employed or paid by Slimming World to write this blog. I am just reporting my own personal journey. Facts or Syn values are correct to the best of my knowledge at the time of writing. The eating / lifestyle plan is a proprietary product and information posted on this blog is published as a guide to help you determine if their plan would work for you. All recipes are my own work or that of other members and are published with permission. For details about food optimising, contact your local Slimming World consultant.