Cardio Conditioning Circuit 2!

Hi guys,

Was going to do the same circuit I've already posted about but decided to switch it up a little bit so here is the workout I done today. Do each set three times. For the last set on the second set of exercises, I did each exercise for 20 seconds with no break between each exercise as a kind of 'burnout' and it certainly burned me out. I'm dead. 

17th October HIIT:

Warm up:

5 minute bike

40 seconds work, 20 seconds rest

Set 1:

1. Lunge jumps

2. Bicep curls with overhead press with 6kg dumbbells

3. Squat press with log

4. Hot hands

5. Mountain climbers

Set 2:

1. Box jumps

2. Press ups

3. Squat jumps with medicine ball

4. Plank to push up

5. Mountain climbers

Want to get 'toned'? Want to start weight lifting but don't know where to start?

Hi guys,
So I get comments quite often from people asking how to even begin weight training, because there is so much information out there, it can be really, really daunting. So, I thought I'd take the time to just give you some basic tips on how to get started.
How I got interested in 'weight lifting' was through the Les Mills Body Pump class. If you're not sure what Les Mills is, it's basically a company who offer a variety of different cardio/weights/abs classes. Google it to check if your nearby gym has it, I love the cardio classes for my morning cardio!
The reason why I put weight lifting in the speech marks is because it's not really weight training, it focuses on high reps and low weights which I think was a really good way for me to start.
The workout incorporates all the basic (compound) movements that are really important when starting weight training; deadlifts, squats, rows, presses etc. I definitely feel like Body Pump helped improve my form and has definitely helped me to start weight training.
I then was interested in it as I liked the feeling of getting stronger and adding extra weight so I looked it up myself and basically just googled a beginner's weight training schedule and that was me sorted for a while. It's good to start with basic exercises so you can get your form correct and properly work your muscles out.
I've found one on bodybuilding.com which is really simple and I think would be a great place to start (also I love bodybuilding.com, I'm constantly reading their articles);
http://www.muscleandstrength.com/workouts/3day-beginners-workout.html
I think 3 days would be enough so that you can fit it in to your schedule and get used to weight lifting every week.

The key things you HAVE to remember when starting weight training:
1. You have to work out each body part once a week, you can't skip one of the days and expect to get proper results.
2. In order to get the results you want (more toned and lean) you have to push yourself hard. If you're doing a weight that you can go higher than 12 reps on, your weight is too low!!
3. You need to have proper nutrition to support your weight training. You can't expect to lift weights, eat 1200 calories and do cardio every day to see results. When you're weight lifting, you need to give your body enough rest from cardio and eat a good amount of calories a day (this depends on your personal goals etc hence why I am not giving a number).
4. You need to be consistent. You can't do it for a few weeks and then stop and expect to see results.
5. As mentioned in a previous point, remember to REST. Your body can be overtrained and this severely effects strength gains. If you want to build strength, you need to go in to every workout with a ton of energy and push yourself to the limit.

Okay, hopefully these tips have helped you understand about how to get in to weight training a little more. You should know the masses and masses of benefits of weight training by now (and if you don't, google it) and women, noooooooooooo it will not make you bulky!!! How many times do people have to tell you that weight training will help you get your ideal body, it is practically impossible to get as big as men due to testosterone levels and such sciency things.
One last thing, your diet needs to be fresh and clean, lots of healthy proteins and good fats in order for you to see results. You cannot eat a McDonald's after your workout claiming it has lots of protein.

Now get to it!!

Conditioning Cardio Circuit

Hi guys,
Want to switch it up from just running on a treadmill? This cardio circuit absolutely killed me today so I thought I'd share since you're always asking for what I do for cardio. I just found a spot in the gym, gathered all the things I needed and started! It does involve a lot of equipment you'd only probably get in the gym so it's not really an at-home workout. If your gym doesn't have one of the items, simply substitute the exercise that uses it for another i.e. if you don't have a medecine ball, hold a kettle bell or dumbbells.

Warm-up, two sets each with five exercises.
30 seconds on exercise
10 seconds rest
Do each set 3 times
Works out at around a half hour workout :)

Things you will need:
- dumbbells (I used 6kg)
- medecine ball (I used 8kg)
- 8kg log (if your gym doesn't have this, you can use dumbbells)
- a box of some sort (the one I used was about half a metre tall)
- 8kg kettlebell

Warm up:
5 minutes on the bike, go fast and hard and you should be sweating by the end of the warm up.

Set 1:
1. Push-ups (I managed to do 5 full ones before I had to go on my knees hehe)
2. Crunch stand-ups (basically do a crunch, and then stand up, then lie back down)
3. Box steps with 8kg medecine ball
4. Squat and press with 8kg log
5. Mountain climbers
**Remember to do this three times before moving on to the next set of exercises**
Also by the end of the first time through this, I was sweating!


Set 2:
1. Squat jumps with 8kg medecine ball
2. Curl press with 6kg dumbbells (basically do a bicep curl, then an overhead shoulder press, then squat and then do it again! Really good and works lots of muscles. Thanks ShayCarl!)
3. Lunges holding dumbbells
4. Kettlebell swings
5. Crunches (sit fully up, none of your pussy crunches haha)

So hope you enjoy. As I said at the beginning, if you find you don't know one of these exercises, simply switch it for another one. If you're doing this, try to switch it for an exercise that also works that part of the body. For example, not much point in switching crunches for more squats because the point is you work out your whole body!

LOVE YOU xoxo

14th October 2013 - Q and A

So I sent out an Instagram post asking if you would like me to answer any of your questions to which I got some replies. So here goes;

1. How many calories did you eat and how much did you exercise when you first started losing weight? by @ladyleahlincoln
Okay, gonna be honest and say I did way too much cardio and ate way too little. When I was really serious about it, I was eating about 1200-1400 calories a day and doing over an hour of cardio a day, with maybe a rest day a week. I was pushing myself way too hard and it really didn't do me any good. As soon as I stopped doing that, I put about 5lbs back on.
Now, I'm doing weights, eating 1700-2000 calories and doing HIIT cardio 2-3 times a week and feeling much healthier and stronger.

2.What's been the hardest part to get rid of? I've also lost 25lbs and I am at my dream weight but I can't get rid of my stomach which always makes me feel like I'm still fat! by @amara_s
I totally know how you feel. Around my midriff or my stomach is definitely the last place to lose it for me too. The problem is, you can't spot reduce areas of fat on your body, you have to just lower your body fat percentage overall and that's why it's so important to eat clean to get rid of these problem areas. Remember ABS ARE MADE IN THE KITCHEN!

3. Sometimes you don't seem to eat a lot of food, would you be interested in doing a collage of what you eat in a day? by @choosingclean
You're right, it looks like I don't eat a lot because I don't post everything I eat. I post my main meals but I'm basically always snacking on nuts, grapes etc. I also take way too many teaspoons of peanut butter during the day hehe. But my metabolism stays up this way, I don't think people would be interested in a handful of nuts every couple of hours though, I try to keep Instagram as interesting as possible.

4. How much and what do you have on a cheat day? I want to know how much is too much. by @the_pledge
Okay this has changed a lot over the past couple of years for me. More recently, when planning my cheats to one night a week, I don't limit myself. The point of it is that I know during the week I can have what I want that one night so I think limiting myself would defeat the purpose of the idea of cheating (my personal opinion anyway). Even more recently, I've been having healthy 'cheats' where I basically eat as much of the healthy foods as I like. For example, natural popcorn, natural peanut butter, bananas, dates etc. And I much much prefer this type of cheat because I know I'm getting the goodness in but I'm still getting the refeed kind of feeling you get from cheating.

5. I work out and I have a balanced diet although I don't lose weight, what can I do? by @maria_delelec
Well this is a bit of a broad question to be honest! What you need to do is educate yourself on proper eating and nutrition and incorporate effective workouts in to your routine, not just running on a treadmill for an hour, that will not do much in the long run. Honestly I can't answer this question, it's way too broad and it depends on yourself personally, everyone is different. I'd google proper nutrition and perhaps a beginners weight training scheme to start :)

6. I have an eating disorder and haven't worked out for three weeks! I'm going nuts that I can't work out and am being treated in a hospital soon due to my eating and excessive workouts. I'm only on 600 calories and under a day because I'm under strict orders not to move around. What can I eat that will help my stomach be flatter? Any tips on what you think I should do? by @francescapetropoulos
Thanks for confiding in me of your ED and I'm really sorry to hear you're struggling. I know my advice is not very loud compared to others but you need to focus on overcoming your ED and getting healthy. Having a flat stomach does not mean the whole world and there's much more benefits of living a healthy, active lifestyle, eating lots of nutritious, high calorie foods than restricting yourself. You only get one body and you're malnourishing it and mistreating it by eating so little and working out so much. I know I'm probably not the first to tell you and I know you might not listen but if there's anything I can do to try and punch it in to your head that having an ED and eating that little a day is not good for you then I will. Please realise healthy is sexy, fit is sexy. Super skinny is not. I hope you recover and I send love to you.

7. Do you have any ideas for what I can eat for lunch? Because I can't find anything interesting to eat and then I start to binge eat. by @tinap0408
I get you. Lunch is a difficult one for me too, I much prefer breakfast and dinner. Honestly, recently I've not been having lunch and just eating smaller portions of food every hour or so inbetween breakfast and dinner like bananas, nuts etc. But if you want to have a meal, try making a nice pasta (spinach and pine nut pasta is so good and different) or make your sandwiches more adventurous with different types of meat. Also, try new things like hummus if you haven't or lamb/duck meat etc. I try to think of lunch as just another dinner and try to get lots of protein in!

8. What are some exercises to get ride of or tone love handles? by @mikastuckey
Well I kind of touched on this above on one of the other questions. Unfortunately, you cannot pick an area and reduce the amount of fat from that area even if you did 1000 different variations of crunches a day. What you have to do is lower your body fat percentage which is done by eating right (lots of good proteins and fats) and doing effective cardio workouts (like HIIT, weight training etc). Unfortunately, you need to keep eating right and working out, you cannot pick and choose where you would like to lose the weight sadly.

9. I love to eat healthy but I always seem to steer in the direction of binge eating unhealthy foods! How do you cope with this? by @daniwenger10
Again, touched on this in one of the other questions but I found that making one day a week where I could cheat and eat what I wanted allowed me to focus on eating healthy the rest of the week and I knew that I'd have 6/7 days completely clean. As we all know, it's about eating clean 80%-90% of the time, noone expects you to eat clean 100% of the time, it's pretty impossible, there's gonna be slip ups. I've also recently, for my cheat days, allowed myself as much healthy 'cheats' as I like. This involves lots of banana and granola eating and lots of popcorn haha! You just need to push through the temptation.

10. Is it absolutely essential that I keep track of how much kcal I burn per day, hence buying a new HRM? by @syarinahabd
I think yes and no to this question. I think in cardio terms, it's not important. The amount of calories you burn is not really important, it's about the quality of the cardio. For example, doing 20 minutes of high intensity interval training has shown to be much much more effective than spending an hour doing a fitness class/running on a treadmill. Obviously, you burn more calories in the hour but with the 20 minute HIIT session, your body continues to burn calories for 24-48 hours later and your metabolism is high at that time so it's much better.
But, in terms of weight training, I prefer to have my HRM because I can see how well I'm performing. I can tell when I'm slacking and when I've pushed myself so it helps me in that term.


So guys, thanks if you read that all it's just a tad lengthy haha. I will say this on my Instagram but if you have any other questions you would like me to answer just let me know and I will. I know it's always good to have someone who has been through it answer so just comment on my instagram post about this and I will answer in another blog post.
Thanks to @ladyleahlincoln, @amara_s, @choosingclean, @the_pledge, @maria_delelec, @francescapetropoulos, @tinap0408, @mikastuckey, @daniwenger10 and @syarinahabd for the questions :)

Fasted Cardio Truths and How to Maximise Benefits from doing it!

Hi guys,
Been saying I want to do this post for a while so here goes.
First of all, for you people that don't know what fasted cardio is I'll quickly explain. Basically, it is doing cardio exercise without eating before. The ideal time to do this is in the morning, which I will explain later. Anyway, I'm probably going to get really sciency in this article just to prove my points.

First of all, it's a very important part of my workout routine. I try to do it 4-5 times per week and now that I'm back in to a routine with University, I've found it a really good way to start my day and get my head focused to do some University work and I really want to share the benefits of it. A lot of what I'm writing has been taken/adapted from articles online which have provided scientific evidence behind what they're saying, I will cite these below.

A lot of bodybuilders add in fasted morning cardio in to their routine in order to 'cut' which is essentially cutting fat (also in most cases whilst trying not to lose muscle mass). Fasted morning cardio is extremely well known for dropping fat fast.

**Science behind this**
"When you wake up your glycogen stores are very low so your muscles have to tap into it’s fat stores for energy. Insulin levels are also very low so this facilitates fat oxidation. Keep in mind that your body will also resort to burning amino acids (muscle) for fuel." 

The last part is important there, that you will also go in to muscle, which is why it's REALLY important to not go too intense.
Everyone knows the benefits of HIIT and your heart rate going above 85%-90% of your maximum heart rate but not fasted. If you're going that high, your eating in to your muscle mass, not your fat mass. So classes that involve HIIT like metafit, spin classes and really intense classes are a no-no for a morning.
I would even consider body attack a little high, I'll probably eat a handful of nuts if I was doing body attack in the morning just to give myself a little boost but I would never do HIIT or spin without eating because I don't want to lose my gains.
So keeping your heart rate within the 50% - 75% range is the most beneficial for fat burn. 
Personally, for my morning cardio, I like to jog to the gym then walk on a high incline for 20 minutes then jog back to my flat, or body combat is a good choice (especially this release as it's not too hard) or using the rowing machine etc. Something that's going to get you sweating and breathless but not to the point where you're pushing your body to the limit and can't speak because you're probably eating in to muscle mass. 

Now, I'm not an idiot, I've read up quite a bit on this and there's a lot of articles that go against this type of cardio and say it makes no difference but I see a much larger difference in my own body personally. Sure you could have breakfasted then workout an hour and a half to two hours later and THEN get on with your day but I mean who really wants to wait just for your breakfast to settle, I'd rather get active from the get-go and start my day in a good way. I literally feel 20x better during the day when I start my day with a workout, I feel so refreshed and when I'm eating my banana on my way home, I feel healthy and happy and just good because of the endorphins swimming around me.
You don't have to follow or listen to my advice but I just want to share what I've found helps me burn fat and start my day off well. Also, I've find that I am still making gains with my weight training and I've increased my weights/reps at a good rate whilst still doing fasted morning cardio, so personally, because I'm not doing it too intense, it's definitely working for me!

In conclusion, in order to get the maximum benefit from fasted morning cardio, comply with the following (which is what I've found helps me):

• Exercise as soon as you get up before breakfast (as in start 10/20 minutes from waking up)
• Drink a lot of water - with this one, I find I'm so much thirstier if I haven't eaten and go through a good litre during a 45-60 minute workout.
• Do steady state cardio, don't let your heart rate go too high as this eats in to your muscles a lot more.
• Personally, I wouldn't exercise for longer than 60 minutes on an empty stomach.
• As soon as I'm finished with the cardio, eat a balanced meal of protein and fats and include a reasonable amount of carbs to replenish glycogen.

Love you guys!!

Websites quoted:
http://extremebodyfit.com/fat-loss/is-fasted-morning-cardio-really-more-effective-than-normal-cardio

p.s. I'm not a nutritionist or fitness expert in any form, I am simply sharing what has worked for me.