Achieving Balance in your life can be a challenging task whether you're a workaholic, a diehard member of an amateur sports club or just working to stay in a certain level of condition that allows you to feel good about yourself and your health. Through television, radio and the internet we are being increasingly bombarded with images and ideas of what is physical perfection and or beauty.
There are so many various schools of thought and professional opinions around now its nearly impossible to know who to listen to or what to believe when it comes to information regarding training and nutrition.
So here is a true story from a trainer (me) who is working in the fitness industry for almost 9 years who was fit and lean, got fat, gone lean again, got fat again and now I am working on getting lean AGAIN!!!
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| 80kg |
Almost 2 years ago I had cracked my ribs badly and was unable to partake in any kind of exercise apart from light walking and stretching for almost 12 weeks while I recovered which was highly frustrating to say the least. So the weight piled on, my weight went from 80kg up to
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| almost 100kg ooh NOT A GOOD PHOTO AT ALL!!! |
almost 95kg in the space of a month and a bit. I was still eating the way I would have as if I training 6 days per week. To make things worse my Summer holidays were booked for 1 month later. During my holidays my t-shirt did not come off at the pool as I felt conscious of my physical condition which i had never felt before. "So this is what it feels like to be a beginner to exercise" I thought. However my attitude was "No big deal I will enjoy my holidays, so what if I am piling on the weight, I will work on things when I get back" So my plan to loose weight was an extreme one and it worked. Long story short I became a vegetarian, refused to eat dairy, sugar chocolate, abstained from alcohol or anything that was processed and white crusty bread fresh from the bakery in the morning time which i loved!!! I did made this drastic change in one day. Complete cold turkey. I had a migraine to beat the band which felt like it lasted 2 days without letting up, night sweats that required the bed to be changed three times in the space of 4 days, the shits like you would not believe and I was an asshole to live with for say the best part of a year, (my girlfriend told me)
Flick forward 12 months later it's my next holiday and I am fit and lean. I am also uptight and still limiting my food intake drastically. I am up every morning in the hotel gym at 7am to get a workout in to the dismay of my partner who is ready to commit me for psychiatric evaluation on arriving home. Day two of our holiday I snapped and went on a complete bender and ate like a pig, meat for breakfast lunch dinner and snacks, washed down with beer red wine and cocktails. This continued until the day we went home.
Now I know that's what holidays are for you say but I did it for 10 days 24/7 and I kept up the 7 am gym sessions which consisted of doing high intensity interval training on a cross-trainer for 1 hour and 1 hour weights to follow. I was burning the candle at both ends if you will, not good....
This time I came home just over 95kg and had developed some seriously unhealthy habits and my gut was in tatters as I had been a veg e for almost a year and a "pioneer"
In 10 days I had consumed more meat, junk and alcohol than I would have consumed in two months before I was a vegetarian.
The moral of the story is too much of anything "good" or "bad" is bad for you so find a happy medium for yourself. If you are 100% all the time in anything you do you have a higher potential to fail from over working your body or brain over long periods of time, if you are 0% you are dead so don't worry about it. Somewhere in-between those two numbers is good that way you can push on for short periods of time to get ahead then level off and maintain integrity before you overwork your system.
Keep a food diary for a week and it will show you what your possibly overindulging or
under-indulging in.
Use three different colored pencils to indicate different food groups. This means at the end of the week you can quickly identify where you could improve your eating habits.
Use the food reference sheets below numbered 3,6,9 to make the right choices for you
3= GREEN- all you can eat (don't overdo the protein intake as it taxes the kidneys)
6= RED- eat sparingly (sugars and proceeded food)
9= ORANGE- fast energy release foods
Check back next week for part 2 of Balance in Nutrition and Exercise where I will share examples of training plans that will go along with this information.
Fergal Lawlor is a health and fitness professional/personal trainer and the owner of Apeiron Fitness
He also runs a martial arts Dojo Called Mugendo Martial Arts Academy which has locations in Trim, Athboy, Kells and Navan in County Meath, Ireland.
for information on personal training with Fergal
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