What type of person are you?

To me there are two types of people,

Type 1:  The constantly motivated and will punish themselves if they ever miss a gym session type.  These people strive to beat their personal bests every time.

Type 2:  The type who make up excuses after excuses not to get fit, “Exercise isn’t for me”, “Exercise makes you look stupid”, “It’s raining”, “It’s too late”, “I’m too tired today but I will go tomorrow”, “I will start next week”…The list goes on and on.

Having said this, both types of people have a choice, a choice on which foods to eat or not to eat.  However even with the choice do you actually know what is good for you?  Is it that low fat yoghurt or that full fat Milk?  Well unfortunately most low fat products have increased sugar content.  Or if not increased they generally have an unhealthy amount of sugar per 100g.  Below I compare low fat yoghurt to full fat yoghurt.

For example, using nutritional information from Rachel’s Organic Yoghurts found on their website.

Low Fat Plain Greek Yoghurt (per 100g).  Serving size 150g.

Carbs – 8.0g
Sugar – 8.0g (just over 2 teaspoons)
Fat – 0.1g

Normal Plain Greek Yoghurt (per 100g).  Serving size 150g.

Carbs – 4.9g
Sugar – 4.9g (just over 1 teaspoon)
Fat – 9.6g

Now you will all be thinking well… I should pick the low fat version.  Wrong! Let me let you in on a few not so well known facts.

1.   Carbohydrate and sugar is the link to hear t disease and a rise in Cholesterol.  Fat on the other hand has not been found to have a link to rising cholesterol levels and heart disease among all other forms of disease currently believed to be caused by eating Fat.  Including Obesity.
2. Eating Fat does not make you fat.  Contrary to popular belief it actually does the opposite and helps you lose weight.  The term you should use instead of lose weight, is lose Fat.  When working out at the gym you are likely to lose weight but sometimes if you are building muscle by training with weights (which helps you drop dress sizes faster than cardio training) you will sometimes end up not losing weight, but losing inches which is ultimately what we all want.

As you all know, losing fat (or losing, “weight”) involves taking up regular exercise be it brisk walking, skiing or anything in-between.  The truth is that to lose fat you need to adjust your diet first.  75% of losing fat comes from “Clean” eating; only 25% comes from regular exercise.

The bottom line is, to lose weight and be healthy you need to increase the amount of healthy whole foods in your diet, increase the good fats which come from Extra Virgin Olive Oil and nuts, increase the protein in your diets (you can find out how much protein in Grams you should be having by using an online calculator) and also cut way down on the processed carbohydrates and yes this includes Hovis best of both and your cheesecake after dinner.

Handy tip for the girls who like to booze:

Calories in 25ml’s (1 shot) of plain Vodka: 55.5

Calories in 25 ml’s of Stella:  11.25

So maybe next time you will drift towards the bloke’s drinks! Don’t get me started on the amount of sugar that is in a bottle of WKD.

If you would like to know more about what I have written here please do get in contact, leave me an email or drop me a txt via the Gymgem website.  I am happy to get back to you about anything that concerns your nutritional health and wellbeing!

Thanks for having me Abdul!

And thanks for reading,

Gem,

Gymgem.

http://www.gymgemfitness.co.uk/.