“Every bride wants to look their best for their big day. The hair, the make up and of course, the dress. But all of that won’t make you feel complete unless you’re comfortable in your own skin,” says personal trainer Joe Bygrave from superiorperformance.co.uk. Most brides want to get in shape for the big day so they’ll look and feel fabulous in their special dress and honeymoon bikini. Joe reveals his top tips for achieving your bridal body goals…
Nutrition
The first thing I look at is nutrition. This is essential to reaching your goals. You won’t achieve the results you crave with exercise alone – your nutrition must be spot on.
My first piece of advice is don’t diet. Diets never work in the long term, they’re often based on sketchy research and severe calorie restriction, which can result in a serious lack of vitamins and minerals, which are essential to good health. This, in turn, causes havoc with your body’s natural metabolism, the effects of which you will see long after you have finished the diet. Other possible negative effects of dieting include a reduction of muscle tissue and nutritional deficiencies, which can cause hair loss, poor skin and nails, fatigue and many other things.
These diets can’t be sustained for long periods, which is why when one goes back to their old eating habits, the weight goes straight back on. Only now there is less fat-burning muscle tissue and a less-effective metabolism, which is why most ladies on these type of diets end up heavier than when they first started. So what happens next? Yes, you’ve guessed it, you’re back on the diet and the whole cycle starts again.
The caveman lifestyle
To stay healthy, have low body fat and bundles of energy, we need to adopt the habits of our ancestors.
Countless studies show them to be the healthiest people, ever. There were no food allergies, heart disease, obesity or diabetes. Why? Because they ate what we, as humans, were designed to eat – natural whole foods such as meat and game which was hunted, seafood, fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds.
Now I must point out that this is not a faddy diet, it’s a lifestyle that is very easy to maintain. It’s effectively a high protein, high fat diet, eliminated of carbohydrates and simple sugars. If your food didn’t run, swim, fly or grow from the ground you shouldn’t be eating it.
Paleo diet menu
Breakfast
3 whole eggs fried in coconut oil with a large handful of spinach (wilted). 1 green tea.
Lunch
1 grilled chicken breast. Mixed salad. 1/2 an avocado
Dinner
Sirloin steak pan fried in organic butter. Grilled Mediterranean vegetables. 1 green tea
Snacks (optional)
Small handful of raw nuts.
Exercise routines
What do we have to do to look better than we do now? It’s simple – we need more muscle and less fat. So swap your long, steady state jogs and your gimmicky gym classes, for interval training and resistance exercises to lose fat and create a great shape.
Go to your local park, map out 30-50 metres and run it as fast as you can. Walk slowly back and repeat. Another great way of doing this are hill runs using the same principle. Build up the volume of work each workout.
If you have access to a gym ask a personal trainer to take you through some free weight exercises like deadlifts, push presses and rowing variations for the upper back. Also, kettlebells used correctly achieve fantastic results but I would highly recommend you are shown how to use them by a competent and qualified kettlebell coach.
So there you have it. To stay healthy and look amazing you need to eat like a caveman, sprint some hills and do some squats. Easy, right?
