Instead of dropping back to square one, start off right by insuring your body is not only fueled properly but is adequately rested. You should aim to get 7 to 8 hours of shut-eye every night. That gives your body the time it needs for sleep to take care of you.

Rest is a main element to be factored into every workout plan, and here’s why:

Aids Recovery

While you sleep, your brain triggers the release of hormones that encourage tissue growth. This can help you recover from injuries such as cuts or even sore muscles from your last workout.

Keeps You Healthy 

Getting at least 8 hours of sleep can improve immune function and help your body fight off any common ailment (cold & flu etc). Quality ZZZs also helps your body defend itself. During sleep, you make more white blood cells that attack viruses and bacteria, says Sunita Kumar, MD. (Co-Director at the Center for Sleep Disorders at Loyola University Medical Center.)

Lowers Stress

Your blood pressure dips as you snooze. That may give your heart a break. There may be other heart health benefits, too. Your body tweaks your stress hormones during sleep. This, in turn, may curb inflammation, which is linked to heart disease, diabetes, and many other conditions.

Better Weight Control

Getting enough sleep could help you maintain your weight — and conversely, sleep loss goes along with an increased risk of weight gain. Why? Part of the problem is behavioral. If you’re overtired, you might be less likely to have the energy to go for that jog or cook a healthy dinner after work. The other part is physiological. The hormone leptin plays a key role in making you feel full. When you don’t get enough sleep, leptin levels drop. Result: people who are tired are just plain hungrier — and they seem to crave high-fat and high-calorie foods specifically.

More Energy

It keeps you in top form at the gym. Quality sleep is like nature’s sports supplement, improving your speed, hand-eye coordination, reaction time and muscle recovery. Thing is, even short-term sleep deprivation messes with these, throwing off your performance at the gym. A 2013 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that sleep deprivation reduced muscle strength and power the next day, particularly if your workout was later in the afternoon.

Boosts Brain Function

Stumped about something? Then hit the hay; and you may wake up to a new way of looking at it. It’s true what they say, you should sleep on big decisions. You need to get enough sleep for clear thinking. It’s the difference between firing on four and all six cylinders. Good sleep has been shown to improve problem solving skills and enhance memory performance of both children and adults.

Improves Mood & Positivity

Poor sleeping patterns are strongly linked to depression. Researchers believe that poor sleep affects our ability to recognize important social cues and process emotional information.

Take Home Message

Along with nutrition and exercise, good sleep is one of the pillars of health.

You simply can not achieve optimal health without taking care of your sleep.

 Ciaran

Athletic Performance

For those of us who are involved in sports, the consumption of alcohol can impair reaction time, balance and hand-eye coordination. Hydration is also affected as alcohol acts as a diuretic, thereby promoting the loss of fluids and electrolytes that your body requires for proper hydration. Marry this with increased dehydration and you’ve got a recipe for poor performance.

Weight Gain

Alcohol contains approximately 7 calories per gram.  Consider most pints of larger and ale range from 180 to 210 calories per pint.  6 plus pints on a night out and you have consumed more than 1000 additional calories which is definitely going to lead to fat gain, primarily around the stomach region.

Reduced Muscle Growth & Recovery

I order for muscles to recover and grow, we require protein for maintenance and development.  Alcohol tends to impair protein synthesis in the body, thereby interfering with the ability to grow, maintain and repair muscle. Drinking also causes a drop in testosterone levels while increasing cortisol, a hormone that destroys muscle.

All the issues mentioned above generally are the beginning of larger and more serious issues.  Additional weight (fat) gain along with reduced muscle tissue can make the body more susceptible to high cholesterol which can lead onto diabetes, heart disease and so on…

Ciaran

This one should be blatantly obvious to most of the readers at this stage.  We all know that you can lose weight by literally eating nothing.  However, the effect it has on your health and metabolic system can be drastic.  I am a big advocate of intermittent (or controlled) fasting but completely starving yourself is a big no no.

Perform too much cardio and not enough weights

In my opinion, from a fat loss point of view, the benefits of weight training far out-weigh those of steady state cardio.  If performed correctly, weight training can place a much larger demand on your body thereby creating a state of change which usually leads to fat loss.

Pick short-term goals

I have spoken about this before on a few occasions.  In my opinion and from my experience in working with numerous clients, focusing on a short-term goal like getting in shape for your wedding or holidays etc… tends to work out fine initially, however once the event is over, the person is usually left scratching their head because they cannot seem to achieve the same results that they did initially.  The reason – the initial motivation is no longer there.  As I mentioned in last month’s blog – the key is to make working out and eating healthy a core part of your lifestyle that does not require you to have motivation to get results because in 99% of cases, motivation will eventually dissipate.

Yo-Yo dieting/exercising

Jumping from one diet to the next again is a big no no.  The same can be said for jumping from one workout regime to the next.  Firstly, with the dieting, these kinds of eating patterns send your metabolism into a frenzy that usually leads to weight gain or loss of muscle tissue.   With the exercise, I have found that when people are not getting results they tend to blame the type of exercise they are doing.  Whether this is denial of the real issues or not (usually poor nutritional habits or mind-set), who knows, but in 95% of cases exercise is never the real issue.  Sticking to an exercise regime long enough to allow it to work in conjunction to eating healthy is vital to success.

Purchase ridiculous fat loss remedies

In recent years the health market has been flooded with various remedies promising you incredible results in super super fast time.  As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true it usually is and the majority of these products are no exception.  The suppliers of these products like to prey on peoples vulnerabilities by promising them these amazing results.  Usually to make it more appealing they make the product appear very exotic – a very rare plant root from the Philippine’s etc.…

• Stay strong and active

Incorporating a weekly strength program for developing the muscles around the knee is a great way to keep your knees healthy and injury free.  Strong and healthy leg muscles provide a good structure for your knees and help in preventing injuries.

• Stay mobile

A lot of knee pain or injuries are usually not caused by a particular movement but rather due to stiffness or weakness around the knee capsule.  Due so specific activities such as jogging, certain muscles such as the IT band may become overly stiff or tight and can tend to pull on the knee capsule, thereby creating pain.  Incorporating a 10-15 minute mobility program into your lifestyle twice per week will help counteract this.

• Drink more water

Water is vital to knee maintenance. All knees contain cartilage: soft spongy tissue that lines the ends of our joints and enables pain-free motion. Cartilage is comprised mostly of water — up to 80 per cent when we’re properly hydrated. But the older we get, the lower the water content gets (to as low as 70 per cent), which can result in unhealthy cartilage, hastening the onset of degenerative joint disease.

• Take glucosamine and turmeric

Both glucosamine  and turmeric have anti-inflammatory properties. The National Institutes of Health state that glucosamine sulfate is “likely effective” for treating osteoarthritis. Turmeric is a well-studied and historic natural remedy, and recent research found it eases pain as effectively as ibuprofren.

• Check your posture

A lot of people have poor posture due to their occupation or in many cases, since birth.  When it comes to your knees, large muscle imbalances can create a number of issues including knocked or bowed knees.   Over a period of time these imbalances can put a lot of pressure on your knees and could eventually lead to permanent damage to the knee capsule.  The next time you need to visit a physio maybe have them take a quick look at your knees to make sure there are no major issues….

To you Health & Fitness

Ciaran

I’ve been meaning to write this blog for quite some time now and I think the start of the week is an appropriate time to do so.

So why am I writing this??

As we approach the halfway point of 2017, the hype that surrounds the start of a new year and a new you can sometimes tend to become a distant whisper.
So what are the reasons we lose this initial motivation and find it so difficult to stick with our fitness plan?

“Motivation gets you started, habit keeps you going”

What I have found over the past several year of working with clients is that we all need some reason to begin a workout program or to eat healthy.

These reasons can vary widely depending on the person;

• I want to fit into my jeans I bought 2 years ago
• My doctor gave me a wake-up call
• I am recovering from a serious illness and finally realize it is time to get my life in order
• I want to be able to feel good about myself
• I have a big event coming up that I want to get in shape for
• Holidays are only around the corner and I NEED to be in shape
• I want to be able to play with my kids without feeling so out of breadth all the time

No matter what the initial reason is, they all begin with an initial motivation.
We all need motivation to do things in our lives, and this is fine but, what I have learned is that motivation eventually fades for the majority of us.
The problem, in my opinion with using motivation solely as a tool to achieve your goals is that it is too short-term and as most of you who are reading this know, PROPER health & fitness goals are usually slow to achieve, never go in a straight line to success and never usually as we want them to go…

So what is the solution?

The solution in my opinion is that we have to make a mind-set shift and incorporate patience and persistence and focus on the long-term.  What I mean by long-term is to make regular exercise and eating healthy a part of your life, just like going to work is, or waking up in the morning is – and do not settle for anything less.
Once you make this mind-set shift you will notice that things will start falling into place very quickly, and, more importantly, very easily.

• Working out will no longer be a chore, rather something you love to do as it makes you feel good
• Prepping and planning your week food wise becomes easy and second nature
• All the old excuses you used to have disappear

I have seen many clients go through up and down periods with their fitness goals, but overall they persevered, because this way of living is part of their life now.  These are the people who inevitably ALWAYS reach their fitness goals.

So let me leave you with this thought;

Your desire or willingness to achieve your health & Fitness goals is directly related to the excuses or lack of excuses you make which in turn is directly related to the quality of habits you have…

To your health & Fitness

Ciaran

In recent times the benefits of eating a moderate to high protein diet are becoming more mainstream and understood…

• Protein keeps your metabolism running efficiently.
• Protein is the building block of our muscle tissue so is vital for muscle growth and repair.
• It helps you LOSE weight.
• Protein helps increase satiety, thereby keeping you feeling fuller for longer, thereby reducing the risk of overeating and snacking.

In the fitness industry protein seems to have become the latest buzz word in the fitness industry – why you may ask?
Well, in the last number of years there has been a big shift in people’s views on exercise and nutrition and not necessarily in a bad way either…
Women are starting to slowly venture into the weights rooms in their local gyms after realizing the benefits of strength training and how it can dramatically change their physiques, AND THEIR HEALTH.
With this new gym culture comes slogans like –

“Strong is the new skinny”
“Strength is not only for men”
“Lifting weights doesn’t make women huge, cupcakes make women huge”
“Look like a beauty, lift like a beast”

The days of long bouts of cardio, pounding the pavement or the treadmill have almost become a thing of the past.
Because of this new focus on a different kind of training, more emphasis has also been put on the protein and the importance of it in our diets.

So how much protein do we actually need?

Well, the average person will require around 0.5g of protein per pound of lean body mass.
However, people who exercise a lot (especially strength training) will require more – usually anywhere between 1-1.5g per pound of lean body mass.
So let’s take a 25 year old female who has recently started an intense weights training program.
Her overall weight is 126 lbs (9 stone) with a lean body mass of 91lbs (6 stone 7 lbs).
Her goal is to increase her lean tissue to get more lean and toned.

This would put her at the higher end for daily protein intake.
So if she started at 1g of protein per pound of lean body mass, this would put her daily protein intake at 91g.
How could she get this in through her diet??
Well, if she aimed to eat 6 small meals/day the protein could come from the following sources;

Breakfast: 3 eggs (In an omelette): 18g protein
Snack: Protein shake: 20g protein
Lunch: Tuna/mackerel (in salad format): 20g protein
Dinner: Chicken/turkey fillet (with veg): 20g protein
Snack: Protein shake: 20g protein.

Here are some signs to look out for if your current diet is low in protein (especially if you are training hard);

• Anxiety/depression (amino acids fuel the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine that prevent depression and anxiety)
• Poor injury recovery (protein fuels muscle recovery and regrowth)
• Hair Loss/Breakage (protein supports collagen production in the hair, skin, and nails)
• Inability to focus (amino acids support brain performance)
• Constant muscle pain (protein helps muscle recovery and aids in repair)
• Brittle/Breaking Nails (protein supports collagen production in the hair, skin, and nails)
• Poor muscle tone, even with exercise (protein builds and maintains lean muscle mass)
• Constantly fatigued (protein is needed for a healthy metabolism)
• Digestive issues (protein aids in digestion)

However, it is important to get balance in our diets.  I find, as humans that we can tend to go to extremes and  the food industry happily follows suit in response to our demands.
For example, fats were and are still to a large degree deemed bad and are the cause of fat gain.  Peoples response was the cut fats from their diets completely (which has its own health implications) and the food industry followed be offering numerous products that are low in fat or contain zero fat.
Then followed carbohydrates which led to gluten free and low carb products filling supermarket shelves.
You can already see with protein where things are going.  Producers are coming up with anyway they can to label their products a “high protein product”.  We now have a high protein Weetabix shake for breakfast, high protein milk, high protein mars bar…..I mean, where does it stop??

Protein is essential for health and longevity but don’t get too fixated on it as the solution to your health problems.  Yes, it plays a vital part but it is not the ANSWER all on its own, just like cutting carbs and fats isn’t either.
Learn to understand and listen to what your body needs and use the warning signs above to monitor your protein intake and adjust accordingly.

To your health & fitness
Ciaran

• But I have been really GOOD the past few days…
• I don’t have the TIME to workout and prepare healthy meals…
• Monday is the START of a new week and a new me…
• I STRUGGLE in the evenings with snacking when I get home from work…

I am here to tell you that you are by no means on your own or on the wrong path.
We live in a word of abundance (fun, entertainment, food, beverages etc…), a world that has created a faster pace of life with marketing campaigns and social media all fighting for our attention.
Inevitably, the world doesn’t want you to reach your fitness goals, whether it to lose weight and/or build muscle etc.….

Think about this for a moment

How many businesses do you think would not exist if everyone was a fitness mad??…the fast food industry would be wiped out overnight, not to mention all the so called “Quick Fix” solutions to getting in shape that prey on people’s insecurities.

I am here to tell you that not being “Perfect” is OK!!

You can still achieve your fitness goals and still live in the real world, the world where it is OK to binge every so often, to eat your favourite foods, the world where restriction and deprivation are myths.

Now let me be 100% honest with you – this does not mean that making excuses, partying every weekend, putting in minimal effort with your workouts and not taking responsibility with what you eat will suffice….
You get out what you put in…

This counts for all aspects of life (Business, Work, Relationships, Health & Fitness etc…)
I have been guilty of pushing restrictive diets and regimented work out programs on clients in the past only to realize the hard way that this does not work in the long run.
To create a healthy lifestyle, good habits have to be implemented and become part of your life, they have to become part of who you are and be as important as eating to stay alive – and let me tell you right here right now that if you are one of those people who is looking for that quick fix solution, you are on the wrong path….

99% of us are not elite athletes, bodybuilders etc… we just want to look good and feel good in who we are without completely sacrificing our lives to the cause. Let me tell you that making a structured workout program part of your life and eating a healthy but enjoyable diet will achieve this- but only if you think long term.

So here are some tips to help get you on the road to SUCCESS;

• Think long-term – quick fixes simply don’t work  because they don’t FIX the correct habits in place
• Don’t be too restrictive with your diet – life is to be lived, learn to enjoy what you eat and how it makes you feel
• Make a structured workout program part of your life – focus on getting stronger and/or improving your technique with a particular exercise in each workout.  These act as LITTLE WINS that help keep you mentally focused, especially if your goal seems so far away from being achieved right now
• Have a specific goal – to lose weight and tone up is not a goal.  How can you know where you would like to be if you cant actually see what it looks like at the end.  This step is VITAL

If you feel you are FINALLY ready to make the right changes in your Health & Fitness, please fill out the form below to book your free consultation.

To your Health & Fitness
Ciaran

Here are my top 5 Fitness Myths Exposed:-

Myth 1: Spot Training Helps You Burn Fat in Specific Areas

This is one I get a lot. Some people believe that focusing exercise to certain muscle groups and parts of the body can help burn fat in those areas. Unfortunately, fat loss doesn’t work that way.
For example, doing any form of core (abdominal) exercise will certainly help strengthen and tone the abdominal muscles, however, it will not burn fat specific to that area.
Fat is distributed relative to the individuals unique body type, therefore, the pattern of fat gain or loss has more to do with each person’s unique body than it does with the type of aerobic exercise or spot training exercise they perform.
Does this mean that you should not perform these spot training exercise? Absolutely not.
Muscle will still tone and develop when hit with a certain stimulus from exercise. The key is to incorporate the correct type of diet for your body type in order to burn the fat around those problem areas.

Myth 2: Eating Carbs Makes You Fat

The latest thing in the fitness world is that fat no longer makes ‘Fat’, CARBS do.
This is complete nonsense to a certain degree.
Here are the reasons why in my opinion –
Some people are more fat dominant than others. What I mean by this is that they utilize fat more efficiently than carbs as an energy source
On the other hand, some people are more carb dominant than others.
The problem arises when an excess of carbs, primarily the wrong carbs are consumed by someone who is fat dominant and vice versa.
Also, if an individual consumes a lot of fat and carbs in their diet, naturally they are going to put on weight.
For carbs to make one fat, they would need to work in concert with a poor diet and lack of exercise which makes those latter two more readily blamed.

Myth 3: Eating Fatty Food Makes You Fat

Even though it may seem obvious that eating fat makes you fat, this is not necessarily true. Fat in moderation is a necessary part of any healthy and balanced diet. Fats are essential for cellular function.
Putting on more weight in the form of fat is a result of energy imbalance. In other words, too many calories in relative to calories required. You will gain weight if you take in more calories than you burn. Fat is a concentrated source of calories, but it is not necessary to eliminate fat from your diet completely.
Fat can make you fat, but so can carbohydrates and (to a much lesser degree) protein; it just matters that you over-consume the source of calories. Granted some fats are seen as ‘better’ than others (such as coconut oil and fish oil relative to trans fats) which accounts for some variability in weight gain, but weight gain will occur when ‘excess’ is consumed (whatever that may be to your body).
So fat won’t make you fat, unless you eat too much of it.

Myth 4: The Scale Is a Good Way to Help You Manage Your Fat Loss Progress

When you diet and exercise, you want SOME proof that your efforts actually matter. Traditionally, we’ve stepped on the scale to see our weight decrease and considered that progress. For a variety of reasons, your weight will mislead you. You’re made of a lot more than just fat—water especially—so losing a pound can mean progress or it can mean nothing at all.
Using the scale is not the best way to track the progress of a healthy diet and exercise. The scale treats both fat and muscle the same way – a pound of fat is the same as a pound of muscle. If you’re strengthening your muscles during your exercise regimen, you might actually see a small amount of weight gain rather than weight loss, which is not a bad thing. A better way to track the progress of diet and exercise is to monitor how you feel and how you look.

Myth 5: Muscle can be turned to fat

Think about how ridiculous this statement is! There is no biological pathway for muscle to “turn into fat”. Like all myths, this one has a grain of truth. If you stop working out you lose strength and muscle mass, no mystery here. Exercise uses calories, if you stop working out and don’t decrease your food intake then you get fat. Put those two facts together and you see why this myth got started.

If you feel you are FINALLY ready to make the right changes in your Health & Fitness, please fill out the form below to book your free consultation.

To your Health & Fitness
Ciaran

Our Fitness Centre is for like-minded people who don’t want to workout in a traditional gym.This program is for the average go-er, steady guidance to help them finally get the health and fitness results they deserve.

Have you ever felt a little out of place in a gym?

Perhaps you’ve felt a little unsure of what is the best form of exercise to build lean muscle while burning serious fat at the same time? Maybe you’re unsure of what foods you should eat to get these results as quickly and effectively as possible?

Ciaran, owner of 360Fitness.ie is a specialist Transformation Coach and has decided to unleash a program specifically for women and men who want to burn serious body fat and build lean tissue and FINALLY get in the best shape of their lives.

If you’re ready for a HUGE change, the guidance, help and support needed to get on track and are finally ready to get real help, then this could be for you…

This is a 16 Week RESULTS driven programme which consists of:

• 4 x Sessions per week that are done in 4 week blocks, so after each 4 weeks things are changed up to help accelerate results. These sessions include strength training days and HIIT days for a complete body and fitness overhaul.
• A step by step Nutrition Basics Programme – Often diets are made too complex, we’re going to give you JUST what you need to get started and on your journey, without starving you, giving you shakes OR having you go cold turkey
• Weekly assessments with your coach
• Guidance, Support and Accountability

You’ll become part of a like-minded team of people who are driven for common goals.The programme usually costs €640, but we have a SPECIAL OFFER for the first ten people who book get this for €599. Book here today!

Applications close soon so apply now!

However, either way, the big question is, is it as beneficial as the majority of us think or has it become an addiction for many of us in recent years?

Firstly, lets look at what (in my opinion) counts as effective exercise?

To really understand PROPER exercise requirements for a strong and healthy body we firstly need to firstly look at what I call ‘The PH of Exercise’

We are all familiar with the PH scale for foods – what is acidic or harmful to the body and what is alkaline or good for the body. On the same scale, not all exercise is necessarily good for the human body and it is important to get a fine balance or remain neutral.

So what do we need for this?

In my opinion, a healthy (Not excessive) mix of strength, high intensity bursts, explosive speed and mobility. SIMPLE.

We are all familiar with the phrase ‘fight or flight’. As humans we are designed to hunt, gather, fight and/or sprint out of danger, plain and simple.

In the words of Mark Sisson author of The Primal Blue Print;

“lift heavy things and sprint once in a while”

If you look at most fitness fads now, they are all designed on these basic principles.

• Crossfit is basically a strength and high intensity endurance programme that is smartly married with a community/family feel.
• Circuit classes and bootcamps:- a mix of short duration strength training and high intensity endurance training.
• Zoo:- a mix of flexibility, mobility, bodyweight strength and high intensity endurance that mimics animal movements.
• Kettlebells:- strength and short term endurance.
• And so on…..

Is there much difference between these fitness programs? The simple answer is no, they all follow the same basic principles and that is why, if followed consistently they will all work.

So, back to my original question, is exercise as beneficial as the majority of us think or has it become an addiction for many of us in recent years?

For many of us we have this dying belief with exercise that the more we push ourselves, the more we endure, the more we suffer, the better it is for us while for others, exercise will always remain an uncomfortable necessity.

Certain forms of exercise have nearly become an addiction, the modern day COCAINE or HEROIN. People seem to get a great release from doing them but they may undoubtedly be playing havoc on their health. For others, it has become a daily battle of trying to motivate ourselves to do something that has been genetically built into us, however, the world always seems to get in the way – too much temptation, too much comfort, too many food supplements, pills, and diets offering quick results, too many EXCUSES… In other words, the NECESSITY TO SURVIVE is no longer the motivating factor.

We have become more domesticated and comfortable in our lives, and in turn have completely forgotten the basic principles of exercise and what is beneficial to the body.

What I mean by this is, firstly, why do we even need to give it a label, i.e. Exercise, as if it is something alien or foreign, not something that has been built into our DNA from day dot to help us survive and thrive?

Simply put, we all have our own Health & Fitness demons that we need to conquer.

So, on a final note – Let’s try not to change what we were genetically designed to do. Exercise does not need to be a chore or a painful experience. Once you understand the basic principles of what works best for the human body it can become exciting as you feel yourself getting stronger, fitter, more lean and all this does not require hours and hours pounding the road or in the gym.

If you feel you are FINALLY ready to make the right changes in your Health & Fitness, please fill out the form below to book your free consultation.

To your Health & Fitness
Ciaran