Martin Moylan - Personal Trainer

14 Mar

MIND SET SERIES – MOTIVATION

Even with the best exercise and nutrition advice out there, it still takes a powerful mind set to follow through with your plan to get fitter and healthier. This mind set series will show you the path, it’s up to you to walk it.

Motivation

If someone is truly motivated to make changes, to get into great shape, they will sail through any workouts and stick to any nutrition plan. If someone lacks motivation, they struggle. However, the fact you’re reading a health and fitness blog means you’re already heading in the right direction. It’s very important to pinpoint exactly what your motivation is and where it’s coming from. Whatever that motivation is to lead you on a new health and fitness path, you need to make sure that is strong enough to keep you going both on the good days and more importantly, the bad days.

Always remind yourself why you’re getting up early for a tough training session, why you’re changing your nutrition for the better, why you’re pushing weights instead of the remote control. If you can’t express your motivation in one sentence, you need to take some time to look inside yourself and find out what it really is. Ask yourself why you’re doing this and be completely honest with yourself. Are you in this to improve your health? How you look? Are you competing with someone or trying to impress a guy or girl? Whether it’s positive or negative, realistic or not, keep reminding yourself of your why. It’s nobody else’s, it’s your motivation, milk every ounce of it and let it drive you on.

Use a fear factor if you have to. I had one client who had a history of heart disease in their family and they were determined not to go down the same road as relatives before them. Maybe you know someone suffering of obesity and don’t want to end up the same way. It could be the fear of having skinny legs at the beach or flabby arms in a dress. Any motivation will work if it spurs you on to make positive changes. The fear factor might not be the nicest thing to think about but it often gets the message across.

A young Arnold Schwarzenegger was so insecure of his calves that he once stood in a pond for a photoshoot to hide them. He then cut off the lower half of all his bottoms so his calves would be on display to everyone, including his bodybuilding competitors. This motivated him to work on his calves and bring them up to par with the rest of his physique. The photo idea seems to work on a lot of people by accident. People scrolling through photos of the night out before. “Who’s the fatty in the back of that photo!?…..Oh wait” and they realise it was them. If you’re unhappy with the way you look, take a photo from the front, back and side. No sucking in, flexing your muscles or changing the lighting to enhance the photo, take some honest photos and let them motivate you to change.

Not all motivation is sunshine and rainbows or positive waves all over the place. Sometimes we need a kick in the ass and a slap in the face. The question is are you ready to slap yourself? If so, hopefully you’ll start making changes for the better using the tips on this blog or if you feel you need extra help in the form of personal training in person or online contact me here http://www.thefiteffect.ie/contact-for-free-consultation/

Professional, flexible and affordable training which guarantees results.

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09 Mar

Consistency

What is most important for someone to reach their goals? Exercise? Nutrition? A gym with all the best equipment? The best trainer? (Obviously yours truly) While all those things are great, none of them are the most important.

Consistency

Taking everything into account, consistency will be the biggest factor that will lead you to success. Every year we have the New Year’s Resolution folks chomping at the bit to get going. They’re fed up of being unfit, unhealthy or whatever else they decide to resolve. When the determined folks among us want to change something they don’t wait around until it’s the cool thing to do, they just do it. The reason some people have the same resolution each and every year is because they lack consistency. If they truly stuck to whatever it was they decided on doing for more than just the first couple weeks in January they’d be far along the road to success.

You could come to me asking to give you a fantastic exercise plan, detailed nutrition to follow or join a gym but that’s absolutely useless if you don’t follow the plan or actually go to the gym. And everyone knows someone who got a gym membership before only to go a handful of times. People need to stop quitting on themselves and stop making excuses. “I don’t have time to exercise” or “Training with a PT or a getting a gym membership is too expensive” Yeah because you’ve no time when you’re sitting on your ass scrolling through Facebook feeds in front of the TV all night. And good quality food or a personal trainer is too expensive but the junk food, takeaways and possible packs of cigarettes you buy aren’t!? Sorry for the rant but as you can guess I don’t have a lot of time for these people who point the finger and blame everything else instead of having a good hard look at themselves.

But back to the point. An average exercise or nutrition plan will produce better results if someone sticks to it every day, every week for every month of the year compared to the best program done half the time or less.

Being consistent doesn’t have to be hard. Pick something that you know will be very easy to be consistent with. If you know you can’t exercise every day of the week then make your training flexible enough for when your week is busy. “I will exercise 2 or 3 times this week” That’s realistic but flexible enough to deal with the demands of family, work etc. If eating vegetables with your dinner every day isn’t possible try to have them at 1 or 2 meals a week. And instead of saying I’ll eat more vegetables, give yourself an actual amount. Say “I will eat 1-2 cups of vegetables twice a week”, it’s more specific and you’re more likely to do it.

Start small, cut out the crappy excuses and make the goal to be consistent every day. Every little step will lead you to where you want to go.

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08 Mar

Fat, A Quick, Need To Know Guide

Fat, The Truth

I heard some stupid, annoying ad on the radio yesterday about some butter now being made lower in saturated fat. The people in the ad joked about how it’ll keep them alive longer or some rubbish as if saturated fat instantly made everyone obese and clogged up our arteries. Seriously, this type of marketing preys on the average person and keeps them in the dark to what the truth about fat actually is. That’s where I come in. Unfortunately my message won’t be heard by the majority of people out there but hopefully those of you who read the blog will get some help and spread the word.

Good and Bad Fats

Let’s start off with the good guys. First up is monounsaturated fat. This type of fat is found in avocados, pistachios, almonds, walnuts and cashews as well as in olive oil. It helps to lower bad cholesterol and increase good cholesterol. Win win!

Polyunsaturated fats also fight bad cholesterol. It can be found in foods like salmon, fish oil, sunflower oil, seeds and soy. This fat contains Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids which are largely processed out of food nowadays. The ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6 in a western diet is around 1:15. It should be much closer to 1:1. We’re way off and this is why eating oily fish like salmon and tuna is a great idea or taking a fish oil supplement.

Both the mono and polyunsaturated fats are our good guys. Where the media goes crazy is with saturated fat.

Saturated fat isn’t as good as the two I’ve mentioned already but it definitely doesn’t need to be held in such a poor regard. The haters of saturated fat point to studies saying it gives people heart disease. These studies were done in the 70’s and 80’s on people who didn’t exercise at all and anything taken to excess will obviously look bad. Saturated fat also has been shown to increase cholesterol in the blood stream. Before you shoot me down saying that’s awful, it’s really not as bad as you’ve been led to believe. What you haven’t been told is cholesterol also acts as an antioxidant against dangerous free radicals in our blood and is needed for the production of hormones which help fight against heart disease. Cholesterol rises when we eat too many bad fats, unhealthy foods and large amounts of sugar to fight these substances. The saturated fat isn’t the problem it’s the rest of a person’s crappy diet that is. Foods containing saturated fat include dairy, eggs, red meat and some seafood. It’s not exactly a good fat but if you eat reasonable amounts of those foods you’re absolutely fine! Eat the ones you like and avoid the ones you don’t.

And lastly we have trans fats. This fat is most definitely the WORST fat. It’s found in deep fried foods, crisps (potato chips to any North Americans reading), pie crust, margarine, frosting, microwave popcorn, biscuits, cakes and crackers to name a few.

There are traces of trans fats found in some meats and other food which are naturally occurring but for the most part but they are generally man made in the examples above.

They’re made by a chemical process called partial hydrogenation where liquid vegetable oil (a decent monounsaturated fat) is stuffed with hydrogen atoms and converted into a solid fat (and over to the dark side) It’s perfect for the food industry with a high melting point, smooth texture and it can be reused over and over again in deep fat frying. If your food is pre-packaged, it probably has a fair amount of trans fat. If you’re serious about your goals you’ll limit (or eliminate) the consumption of this fat.

So there you have a quick need to know guide on fats. Hopefully you’ll eat some more of the good guys, eat less of the trans fat and you’ll hit the next idiot with some knowledge who starts talking rubbish about saturated fat.

If you’d like me to write about something you’re unsure of or would like more info on a particular topic, leave a comment on our Facebook page after I post this or email me using the address on the right side of this page. Knowledge is power.

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03 Mar

Shape Up For Summer Part 2

Summer

Part 2 is here and it includes some more strategies you can implement right away to get you closer to summer body shape. There’s also one advanced strategy that can be done if everything else is adhered to perfectly.

Do a mix of all training types, resistance, cardio and recovery.

Resistance training or strength training helps to build and maintain muscle, burn calories and improve your glucose tolerance. Cardio exercise improves the health of your heart, burns a lot of calories and can improve recovery by getting blood pumped around the body. If you’re tired of doing your cardio in the gym, try to get outside nearer to Summer time for a jog, cycle or some other outdoor activities. Recovery work, including foam rolling, walking or yoga helps to keep our muscles from getting tight, loosens us up and can help flexibility. It also helps to relieve stress; this can be very beneficial as the stress hormone cortisol really slows fat loss.

Increase non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)

Don’t worry about the term, all it means is increasing your calorie burn outside of your actual fitness training. Try to take more stairs rather than the lift, park further away from a building you’re going to rather than parking right outside, try a stand up desk or a small walk during lunch etc. This will be much easier as we get closer to Summer as the weather gets better (hopefully!) All of these add up if done consistently.

Get more quality sleep

Sleep is often an overlooked part of someone’s training or fat loss plan. With a lack of sleep that stress hormone cortisol is higher during the day. If someone is eating fewer calories or training hard this hormone can be raised already, what we don’t need is excessive amounts due to not getting enough sleep. Poor or lack of sleep also increases hunger and appetite leading us to grab the wrong foods when we’re in a pinch or just eat more calories than we wanted. We recover from our training during sleep, our muscles rebuild and we’re ready to train again at a high intensity. Try to get at least 7 hours when you can. You’ll feel better, your mind will be sharper and you won’t have as many cravings for the foods we’re trying to avoid when getting in better shape!

Advanced Strategy – Cycling calories and carbohydrates

Only use these next strategies when you’re already pretty lean and need that extra something. If you’re not using any of the other strategies outlined above or in Part 1 then do not start with these. Use the simpler ones, see results and work away with those consistently.

If you’re an athlete or you’re in pretty good shape already and looking to get very lean, sometimes you can’t rely on linear dieting. Periods of really low calories or carbohydrates are hard on the body and mind when done for a long time. Cycling carbs is used to prevent a fat loss plateau and to maintain your metabolism and workout performance. It’s only used by those whose nutrition is adhered to perfectly and should only be used for a short time.

Carbs are lower for a period of time and a refeed day is chosen where we eat more carbs during an 8-12 hour window. Proteins and fats are kept relatively the same and so the reduced carbs will reduce a lot of calories. Carb cycling like this affects a metabolism regulating hormone called leptin limiting how much it drops or giving it a little boost on the refeed days and in turn we keep our fat loss going. There a few methods you can use, a big refeed every 1-2 weeks during a low carb phase, a refeed every 3-4 days or just taking in a moderate amount of carbs during a low carb phase so you stay away from the extremes of a big refeed. Make sure to eat high fibre foods and have plenty of water during lower carb phases. As with everything experiment and see what works best for you!

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01 Mar

Shape Up For Summer Part 1

Summer Is Coming!

Summer

It’s the 1^st of March. We have just 3 months until summer officially kicks off on the 1^st of June. Do you have any plans? Summer holidays, trips abroad, days at the beach, maybe you’re going to a wedding. Are you happy with how you look? We all want to look great in the summer. No doubt there’ll be plenty of people thinking how they’ll shape up for it. It’s easier said than done and there are better ways to get there than others. With that in mind let’s cover the best strategies to lose fat and keep it off. Crash diets over a few weeks losing a ton of weight won’t be here. I don’t count losing a lot of water weight as successful. Here we go!

Eat more protein.

Protein is crucial for fat loss. It helps you hold on to your lean body mass (including connective tissues, organs and bone as well as your muscle). Protein increases your satiation, meaning you feel fuller for longer after meals. A meal higher in protein usually stops you eating too much and your body actually burns more calories because of the increased thermic effect of food. (Explained in a previous post here on our blog) For an easy measure of your protein, aim for a gram of protein per pound of body weight. Or for a visual aid men should aim for 6-8 palm sized servings of protein every day and women should aim for 4-6.

Fruits, vegetables and healthy fats.

Fruits and vegetables contain vitamins, minerals, water and fiber. They help fill you up during your meals, stop you snacking on unhealthy foods between meals, are healthier and help you recover from your workouts. It is recommended for men to get 6-8 fist sized servings, 4-6 for women.

Fats help our hormone production, boost the immune system, suppress inflammation and taste good. Recommended servings are 6-8 thumbs of healthy fats for men, 4-6 for women.

Your fat loss changes as you progress, meaning your intake must change also.

If somebody loses 10 pounds over a number of weeks they have to lower their calorie intake further to keep progress coming. A smaller body burns fewer calories and we’re always adapting to change. If your fat loss slows down try to remove 1-2 handfuls of carbs or 1-2 thumbs of healthy fats. See how that goes and continue. These things take more than a couple days to see if they work or not so don’t make any drastic changes when they may not be needed.

Stay the course.

Fat loss is hard, in an ideal world we’d lose that perfect 1 or 2 pounds every single week. But it’s rarely even close to ideal. Some weeks are good, people lose weight. Some weeks are bad, people may even gain some weight. Our body composition isn’t just about calories in and out. It’s influenced by your individual body and it’s make up, your psychology, lifestyle etc. If you’re on the go all the time you’re more than likely going to eat food that’s not been perfectly prepared like you’d want. If you spend time around people who don’t eat as well then the chances of you having the takeaway they’re ordering is higher. All of these things affect us. What’s important is that we keep working towards our goal, take the good with the bad and don’t give up. Fat loss should be slow, aiming to lose 0.5 – 1 percent of body weight per week. We hold on to our muscle mass this way and our body’s metabolism doesn’t respond as negatively. It takes much longer to hit a plateau and faster weight loss normally results in loss of muscle without much extra fat loss. Our metabolism also adapts much quicker to this type of weight loss making it harder over time. If you lost 15 pounds really fast, 5 pounds each of fat, muscle and water is it really that good?

Make sure to come back and check out our next article when I’ll go over some advanced strategies in our quest for a lean summer body shape. To your health, Martin.

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23 Feb

Drink More Water, Lose More Fat

The very first tip I give to clients for fat loss? Drink more water. Pretty easy but how many people actually drink enough? Here’s where science proves my point.

Water

Water and Weight Loss

Researchers in the UK split 84 people into 2 groups. After initially getting a 30 minute weight management consultation the participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first group had to drink 500ml of water 30 minutes before each main meal of the day. (Breakfast, lunch and dinner) The second group just had to imagine having a full stomach before their meals. The study lasted 12 weeks and the results were fantastic.

Over the 12 weeks people who drank water before meals lost an average of 9 and a half pounds. 9 and a half! And if drinking water before meals is somehow too much hassle for you, the other group who just visualized being full before eating lost over 6 and a half pounds!

An older study looked at the effects of a lower calorie diet vs a lower calorie diet including increased water intake. Again, participants were split into 2 groups. Women on this study had 1200 calories a day with men having 1500 calories a day. The group with the added water were instructed to drink 500ml 30 minutes before the 3 main meals again and the results showed massive support for the group drinking more water. Both groups lost a lot of weight over the 12 week period. The low calorie diet group lost an average of 5-8kg (11-17.6 pounds). The low calorie diet plus water group lost a further 2kg on average or 7-10kg (15.4-22 pounds)

This really is compelling evidence that should encourage anyone trying to get in better shape to add more water into their daily routine. It’s a no brainer. It’s not always about cutting things out; sometimes it’s important to add things in. Fruit and veg, exercise and with the results of these studies, definitely water. It’s simple, effective and really takes no time at all.

My clients have had great success with this one trick alone and then they’ve the benefit of my personal training and other nutritional advice also. If you’re even a little interested, get in touch and I guarantee I can help.

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Reference: Parretti et al. 2015. Efficacy of water preloading before main meals as a strategy for weight loss in primary care patients with obesity: RCT. 2015; 23(9): 1785-1791.

Dennis, E., Dengo, A., Comber, D., Flack, K., Savla, J., Davy, K., & Davy, B. (2009). Water Consumption Increases Weight Loss During a Hypocaloric Diet Intervention in Middle-aged and Older Adults Obesity.

18 Feb

5 Tips For Better Workouts

Consistently working hard in the gym or with any exercise you’re doing?

Great! You could be seeing results but sometimes working harder doesn’t lead to the results you’re after, what you need to do is work smarter. Here are a five tips to do that and keep the results coming your way. This is not one of them!!

tips

1. Warm up more effectively.

Your warm up is important to prepare your body to get the most out of your workout. If you’ve a shoddy warm up, you leave gains in the gym. Your warm up shouldn’t take forever. It should raise your core temperature, activate your muscles and mobilise your joints. Do this by foam rolling, light cardio, bodyweight exercises, dynamic stretching and finally ramping up sets using lighter weights until you reach your working weight.

2. Order your workout to do the big movements first before the smaller ones.

Compound exercises (exercises using more than one major muscle group) should be done before the smaller exercises like biceps curls or calf raises. Compound exercises include deadlifts, squats, bench presses, rows for example. These exercises use more muscles, help gain more strength and burn more calories. Do these first when you’re fresh and can put the most effort into them as they take a lot more energy and have a bigger effect on your nervous system. The goal should be to get stronger in these main lifts or exercises.

3. Train the pulling movements before pushing movements.

This relates more to the shoulder joint and in particular a small group of muscles called your rotator cuff, which helps stabilise your shoulder joint. The shoulder joint is the most mobile joint in the body and therefore also the most at risk to injury. Pushing movements rely on and can compromise the stability of the rotator cuff. By doing pulling movements, such as rows, pull-ups, and deadlifts, you’ll warm up and activate the cuff muscles surrounding the joint and help reduce your risk of injury.

4. Plan your core training better.

Core work is thrown into a workout all over the place as people think a stronger core will help everything else or they think training their stomach will make it smaller and shrink the fat there. (I’ve busted that myth in a previous blog post) The big compound moves I mentioned earlier require a strong core, but if we do sets of stomach exercises between sets, we fatigue the core and can’t perform those moves as well. Meaning we don’t get as much out of the exercises that would give us the most benefit. This is bad. Do your core training on a separate day or at the end of your training session.

5. Don’t expect every session to be amazing.

So many things affect how well we feel on any given day. Hydration, amount of sleep one had, what food you ate, hormone levels. The list goes on and on. Some days we feel like crap, our body or a muscle just hurts for no reason and other days we feel awesome. Your training session might require you to do a predetermined number of sets or reps in a given exercise but if you just had a big hen or stag party the day or two before don’t have a meltdown if you’re not at your best. Learn to listen to your body, take down the intensity a couple notches and pat yourself on the back for still training when others wouldn’t make time to try and better themselves.

Use these tips in your next workout and keep getting stronger, fitter and healthier.

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15 Feb

Strength Training For Women

Here are a few points on why women don’t need to shy away from strength training and how it’s so beneficial for all you ladies out there!

It’s great for your confidence! Anytime I speak with women about the benefits of lifting weights, increased confidence has always come up. I’ve seen it in the female clients I’ve trained and any other women I’ve spoken to who’ve started training with weights. When women begin to lift heavy things or do things in a gym they once thought they would never be able to do, the confidence boost is clear to see. That confidence spills over into all parts of their lives also.
It changes a negative mindset to a positive one. A lot of the time women think about losing this much or cutting that out of their diet. “I’ll never be able to do that, I’m not strong or fit enough” This negative thinking doesn’t help anybody. We need to change the negative mindset to a positive one in chasing performance based goals instead. Being able to do more push ups, squats or getting that elusive chin up! When we focus our energy on performing better and eating in a way to help us accomplish these goals, our physique will follow.
It helps gain lean mass and decrease body fat. Gaining lean mass or muscle helps to maintain a healthy body weight and can decrease body fat levels as muscle increases the metabolism and burns more calories. As we get older our bodies lose muscle mass (a condition known as sarcopenia) and weights training can slow this down and offset some of the losses if we actually gain some muscle.
Increased bone density. Strength training also increases bone density and prevents bone loss as we age. Low bone density or osteoporosis increases your chance of breaking or fracturing your bones, which is no fun when you’re young, and can be devastating as you get older.
Because it’s awesome.Being able to lift heavy stuff off the ground, pulling yourself up over a Chin-up bar, being able to jump higher and run faster are all pretty cool. When you know you don’t need help moving furniture round the house or lifting all the shopping you’re in a pretty good place!

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08 Feb

The Fit Effect Mission Statement

Our Mission Statement

thefiteffect_ipad_144

I set up The Fit Effect because the health and fitness industry is becoming a joke. Anyone and everyone who does any type of training can call themselves a trainer without any knowledge or certification and if they have the money they can set up a gym. The problem is worsened when some people who actually get a qualification are still absolutely hopeless but just passed an exam. These people call themselves experts and spout nonsense to whoever will listen. They make incredible claims about exercise and nutrition without ever having studied the research.

We have trainers nowadays who are into bodybuilding so they make all of their clients follow a bodybuilding way of training. With a strict plan the clients lose weight but put it all back on as soon as they adopt their normal way of living again. You’ve got trainers who do nothing but cardio so they don’t ever teach their clients the importance of strength training and push their clients (who should not be running) to do couch to 5K’s or half marathons. People actually go to places to be electrocuted while they exercise! Some trainers can’t even name or perform some exercises let alone teach them correctly and expect their clients to do them. Sadly I see this happen all the time.

The TV shows we all know well from America and also here in Ireland wrongly make viewers believe that losing weight on the scales is the only thing that matters and the only way to quantify success. When the participants don’t hit the numbers for the week, the “experts” berate them in their lycra clothes. If the participant loses their target number of pounds that’s great but if they don’t, it’s a failure. All this does is spread the wrong mentality and keeps viewers in the dark as to what real success is. How is it a success if someone was to lose two or three pounds in water weight or worse in some muscle and hasn’t lost any fat at all? How is it also a failure if that same person didn’t lose any weight but gained some muscle, lost an inch here or there or really started using a healthy habit every day?

To lose a couple pounds in a couple days all I have to do is avoid any carbs and the stored carbohydrate in my muscles (known as glycogen) will be used up and I’ll weigh less. My muscles will look like crap but I’ll weigh less. Will that be better or make me look any fitter?

Absolutely not. A weighing scales is one of the worst ways to track your progress. Ever notice that the people who follow the TV shows plans are the same people who do it every year? Surely if it were a good plan they’d have been successful in their fat loss and wouldn’t need to follow it when the next series came round?

The Fit Effect exists so I can help my clients and people who are willing to listen, through educating them on health and exercise properly. I really care about my clients and take an interest in both their family life as well as their work life. I celebrate my clients’ successes in and I also feel their losses. I am passionate about my work and the methods I use are backed by research and proved with experience. I don’t call myself an expert because doing so would be saying I know absolutely everything which is impossible. What my clients can be sure of though is that I am always getting better every single day. I preach that to my clients and live that way myself. I learn and gain more knowledge all the time so that I can give the best service possible. I stand with the trainers who strive to give their clients real, long lasting results and education and oppose the trainers out there who pull the wool over people’s eyes, taking clients’ money all while not teaching them a single thing. Check out our Testimonials section to hear what my clients have to say. I guarantee professional health and fitness training and coaching. If you’re serious about reaching your goals, I will help you get there.

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05 Feb

FAT LOSS MYTH SERIES – NO.5

You need to give up carbs for fat loss.

Fat Loss Reality

This one is probably becoming more and more popular by the day. It wasn’t always that way though. Fats were first labelled the enemy years ago leading to low fat diets and fat free foods. Eating fats doesn’t make you fat, eating too many calories does! Foods containing fat form a vital part of a healthy diet. They help maintain lean body mass, assist with the function of our metabolism, are responsible for hormone production, lubricating joints and many other health and muscle building factors. Dietary fat can be broken up into monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, saturated and hydrogenated fat. Eating the right amounts of the healthy fats and avoiding the bad fats is the trick. I say the right amounts of healthy fat as fats contain more than double the amount of calories as carbs and protein. 1g of fat = 9 calories, 1g of carbohydrate = 4 calories and 1g of protein also = 4 calories. This is why a lot of people may be overweight while eating healthily. If I need 2000 calories to maintain my weight and I eat more than that number even with the healthiest of foods, I will still gain weight.

Carbs and fats are both needed for us to be healthy and to aid in fat loss. More recently though, carbs have become the new enemy but they too have a significant role in fat loss. Our body needs glucose, (broken down carbohydrate) to work! Some argue that we don’t need carbs but many of the body’s basic functions decrease in performance if we don’t have enough. Our brain in particular needs glucose to function at its best. If you ever tried a really low carb diet you possibly experienced mental fog or headaches. Your brain was crying out for some precious glucose! When trying to lose fat, carbohydrates should serve as fuel for your workouts or to replenish your muscles after your workouts. Better workouts mean more strength, increased fitness and fat loss. If you eat an excess of carbs or calories, your liver converts them to fat and then returns them right into the bloodstream. By keeping carbs lower on days that you’re not training you avoid this.

Decreasing protein is a big no-no. Protein is the building block of all our cells. It helps build and repair muscle, makes you feel fuller for longer and our bodies actually burn more calories digesting protein than it does digesting carbs or fats.

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