Blinco Built personal training

Category: weight loss

  • Looking to clean up your nutrition? Start here

    Looking to clean up your nutrition? Start here

    Just started planning our first nutrition challenge in the new gym and I thought it would be a good time to share the nutrition philosophy we follow here at Blinco Built

    It’s simple, but crazy effective

    1) Eat whole foods
    2) Prioritise protein
    3) Veggies with every meal
    4) Slow down
    5) Fats are not the enemy
    6) Eat with intention, not emotion

    Breaking that down a little

    1) Make sure 80% of your calorie intake is from unprocessed foods

    That ensures you are eating nutrient dense foods that will be more filling and have less calories than processed varieties and it also gives you enough to leeway to enjoy a meal out with friends, or the odd bit of toast, pasta etc

    2) Protein is important!

    It helps maintain muscle mass, which keeps metabolism up while losing weight and is also really filling, think eating a steak vs eating a bowl of pasta, one is easy to overeat, one is not

    3) Food quality!

    This one’s simple, at least 1 fist of veggies with breakfast lunch and dinner, 2 fists for professionals 👊

    4) Eat slowly!

    It takes around 15 minutes for the signals to go from your stomach to brain to tell you that you’re full, if you finish your meal in 5, go back for seconds and finish that…

    You can see why that’s a problem, you want to stop at satisfied, 80% full and not 100% full for most meals

    5) Fats don’t make you fat!

    They are essential for a huge list of functions, prioritise less processed fats such as olive oil, avocados, nuts and coconut oil

    6) Foods aren’t good or bad

    They either move you towards, or away from your goals, it’s that simple

    Using foods to make yourself feel better is a slippery slope, it’s better not to start doing that

    However, if you have a poor relationship with food already it’s definitely advisable to seek help with that

    It doesn’t have to be anything major, but changing the conversation from how food makes you feel emotionally to how it makes you feel physically can be really helpful

    Eating with the intention of fuelling the body I.e “will this give me energy and vitality or make me sluggish” rather than eating to feel less sad

     

    Book your free initial phone consult to see if you qualify for our 28 Day Kickstarter!

    https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=17216574&appointmentType=13896304

     

  • Are you trying to be perfect?

    Wabi Sabi. 
    Acceptance of the imperfection and the incompleteness of nature, even our human nature
    It’s a beautiful concept, in a world where machine learning and mass production are becoming more and more pronounced, there is something beautiful about the concept of imperfection
    Think about the power of accepting yourself, as imperfect as you are, and then the power of celebrating that imperfection

     

    Those steps would give you so much more hope when you tackle hard things

     

    Too often when we try something new we have an image of perfection in our minds
    “I’m going to do this transformation and I’m going to train 5 days a week, and I’m going to going to follow this meal plan 100% of the time for the next 6 or 8 weeks and it’s going to be amazing!”

    If that does happen, it won’t happen every time, and the expectation of perfection from yourself is more likely to set up a fall that you won’t have seen coming, no matter how many times it’s happened before

     

    Now, this isn’t to say you shouldn’t try your hardest, or that you shouldn’t set your sights high, it’s the idea that in the pursuit of great, you will fall, you will stumble, you won’t be perfect, and how good is that? 

     

    Even better, the journey never stops

     

    It’s beautiful, because it makes it interesting, it makes it worthwhile, if anyone could do it, there’d be no reason to pursue it at all 

     

    Embrace Wabi Sabi
  • Are you playing the infinite game?

    Are you playing the infinite game?

    Are you playing the infinite game or the finite game? 

    Hopefully your answer is: it depends

    Finite games have their place, these are the games you can play to win, like Monopoly (imagine the horror of playing Monopoly forever…) 

    Infinite games cannot be won, hopefully you are playing a finite game with your relationships, or your health

    You don’t want to play a finite game with your health

    This isn’t to say that finite games can’t be included in your infinite game of health

    Workouts should be finite

    Anyone that’s done a 5km row will know that sometimes it can feel infinite

    However, too often people take a finite view of their health, you may have done this yourself, I know I have

    “Oh I’ll start in January”

    As if your health doesn’t matter for months at a time

    “I just need to go 100% for the next 3 weeks”

    That sounds quite finite

    “I need to feel like I’m absolutely wrecked after a workout, otherwise I don’t feel like I’ve done anything”

    Sounds like you might need a properly planned program that includes regular testing to show your progress

    Health doesn’t stop, you can’t tell your body to ignore what you do to it for periods of time and hope it doesn’t matter, it all matters

    Which might sound depressing, or it might sound empowering

    Depends on whether you’re playing a finite or infinite game 😉

    A good way to move your view on this is to think about meeting your grandchild for the first time, are you going to be able to get on the floor and play with them?

    Will you be able to play with them when they’re 5 or 6 years old?

    Will you see them have their own kids?

    If that’s the case, it’s time to start playing the infinite game, because there probably won’t come a time when your health isn’t important

  • Looking to lose fat? This is your number 1 priority

    When looking to lose weight, your number 1 priority is eating less calories than you use. Simple

     

    That principle cannot be circumvented, it’s obvious too, think about the absurdity of doing the opposite of this principle, eating as much calorie dense foods as you can in order to lose weight, it doesn’t make sense

     

    Once you have that principle in place, it’s simply a matter of measuring the result and seeing if what you’re doing is adhering to the principle or not

     

    If, over time, you are losing weight, then you are clearly adhering to that principle, if you are gaining weight, then you are not

     

    Over time is a key factor here, this is not measuring weight changes from day to day and adjusting from one day to the next. Weighing in daily and then getting a weekly average (weigh in Monday-Sunday and divide by 7 to find average) is an incredibly effective method of tracking progress, I won’t go into the why here, I have done a post on this previously. However, it gives you snapshot and then you can look at each 4 week block and see whether you are trending down, staying the same, or trending up over that period

     

    You then adjust intake accordingly. The principle is that simple. How you adjust calorie intake is up to you

     

    Some people find keto works well for them, others find a low fat higher carb approach works well, or intermittent fasting, or a combination of those, or veganism, or carnivore

     

    These are all strategies that will only work when the first principle of eating for weight loss is followed, you cannot eat in excess of what you use and hope to lose weight

     

    The benefit to knowing this and keeping this clear in your mind is that you can try all these different strategies and find the one that allows you to stick to the principle of weight loss with the least amount of effort. Why would you want to use more effort than you need? 

     

    If you try one and find it impossible, maybe you can’t stick to keto, no problem, you’ve got hundreds of other strategies that will work better

     

    You might also find that the feeling of failing isn’t nearly as bad because you know what you need to do, it’s just a matter of finding the right approach for you at this point of your life

     

    Protein intake, vegetables, satiety, all important factors when finding the right strategy, but only if the principle of weight loss is followed first

     

    Try not to make things more complicated than they need to be, life is already complicated enough, make your health as easy as possible