Our top tips to help you burn your baby weight away…

Now that the weather is starting to warm up, if getting in shape for Summer is something that is on your mind check out our top 10 tips to help you along the way with a tried and tested action plan…

Get your head in the right space

It’s important to think about where you want to end up, to have a clear focus of what you ultimately want to achieve.

How will getting to this point make you feel?

Have you ever looked this way before?

How long have you wanted to achieve these results?

Are you really prepared to put in the work that will be required to get to your goal?

Often when I come across temptations, I ask myself “will eating this help me achieve my goal?” The answer was generally No so that gave me the drive not to eat it.

Tell the fork to fork off

How many times have you sat down to eat and eaten until you are completely stuffed! Think about your last bowl of pasta or even the last meal that you just couldn’t get enough of.

This is a little tip I tell my clients to help them listen to their body and to know when they are full and it’s so simple…

Eat your meal, enjoy it, savor it and appreciate the nutrients that you are putting into your body. Then once you have finished, stop and wait.

Wait for 5, maybe 10 minutes and the food you have just eaten will have started being processed by your body, I guarantee you that your mind will be telling you that you are full and you don’t need any more food.

Give it a go, I can almost promise you that it works every time and as an extra hot little tip, don’t snack on your kids leftovers. Some mums I chat to say that eating their kids food can actually mean a whole extra meal in their day and is one of the big reasons they don’t achieve their goals.

You need to be a strong mumma!

Muscles do one of two things, they either shrink or grow…

Now before I continue, ladies don’t freak out. When I say your muscles will grow, I don’t mean you will look like Arnold Schwarzenegger when your muscles grow – quite the opposite actually.

Any woman that does strength training will tell you exactly how hard it is to gain any kind of muscle. The female bodybuilders out there have to (ironically) work their butt off for their physique.

Females are NOT hormonally set up to gain a huge amount of muscle, so mums don’t worry!

Ok, now that I’ve cleared that up, how do your muscles shrink or grow?

Hold onto your hat, here is the bad news…

From the age of approximately 30 years, when you don’t strength train, your muscles start to waste away – it’s as simple as that.

I have a saying with my women clients: “If you don’t use it, you lose it”

What is even worse is that muscles can waste away at a rate of up to 0.5kg per year – arghhhh!

When you strengthen your muscles, your body turns into a fat burning machine.

When I talk about strength training this could mean anything from body weight exercises or weight training – basically any kind of movement where your muscles are put under load.

Don’t be a carb-hater!

With the rising popularity of diets like Atkins and Paleo (that’s been made popular by Paleo Pete) it’s not surprising that people are confused.

I have heard it all from my clients in the past, “Carbs are bad! Carbs are making me fat! I’m going to cut out all carbs, I don’t eat carbs after 3pm” and the list goes on… BUT do you actually know that your body needs carbs to function!

It is true that if you read the pages of popular trashy gossip magazines you will read that Hollywood stars can easily whip themselves into red carpet shape by simply eliminating carbs.

So should we get rid of carbs from our diet altogether? The simple answer is NO but it does depend what type of carb you are eating.

The truth is, you can have your carbs and eat them too—you just have to know how to choose them.

The trick is to avoid processed simple carbs like sugar and white pasta, and to be very careful of foods pretending to be “healthy,” like cereals that are full of sugar and granola bars.

A quick trick is to look at the label and avoid anything that has more grams of sugar than fiber or protein. Instead, fill your plate with a variety of whole, unprocessed starches which will provide nutrients vital to brain health.

I am a huge fan of sweet potato, quinoa and brown rice as my main source of carbs to add to my meals.

Argh… These scales must be broken!

Have you ever jumped on the scales after being really good with your nutrition for a week and then thought; “WTF, these scales must be broken”.

You wonder how you could possibly weigh the same or (shock bloody horror) higher when you have been eating all the right foods and exercising.

Here is a big tip, make sure you read on…

The scales are the worst measure of success. That’s right, throw them out, get rid of them otherwise they will do your head in.

I feel programs like The Biggest Loser show us completely unrealistic weight changes, sometimes with the contestants losing up to 12kg in a WEEK. Now I don’t know about you, but when I see extreme, fast weight loss like that on TV I instantly feel like the next thing I will see is a heart attack.

Your weight as a woman is heavily dependent on fluid, muscle, fat and hormones which is exactly why the scales aren’t always helpful.

To keep things extremely simple in this area I always ask my clients how they feel in their favorite jeans. While it’s not a super accurate measure it’s a “feelings based measure” and something that I know every woman can relate to.

I have a pair of jeans that I’ve had for at least 5 years, they are my favorite and I know that when I put them on and they fit me like a glove I am feeling good. If I’m struggling to do them up, perhaps I’ve been indulging a bit much and I need to get myself back on track.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. Keep it simple and do what is going to work for you.

Ditch the diet cycle

Ok, lets be honest who has had these thoughts before?

1: Your not happy with your body and you want to lose weight. Simple I’ll go on a diet…

2: You deprive yourself for what seems to be forever, you eat minimal food and limited calories to get fast results.

3: You hit your “goal weight”

4: Woohoo! You then go crazy, you eat every food you have been starving yourself of during those 8 weeks or so. You start drinking wine with your dinner, you snack on a bag of chips, you eat all the bread in the house and you binge on chocolate.

5: You eat it all and feel terrible because you have lost control, you have broken your plan and now your body can’t handle these foods.

6: Your bowel movements become irregular and now you feel even heavier than before.

7: Starting tomorrow you will get “back on your diet” and the horrendous cycle continues…

So you’re sitting there thinking – yep I’ve done this before, but what I want you to see is that it’s a vicious cycle that doesn’t get you anywhere.

Now the question needs to be asked; what are you going to do about it?

My advice to all of my clients is not to think about food with a “deprive” mentality. At the end of the day we are all human and we are all going to eat things that aren’t that good for us. It’s going to happen so I coach my clients to embrace it.

There is nothing wrong with having a treat as an occasional food. If chocolate is your weakness, don’t say to yourself – no more, ever! Instead tell yourself that you will have some chocolate at some point in the week but it will be a small amount and you will know in your mind that it is a treat and you should feel good about eating it.

Think about kids, the second we tell them that they can’t have something, what do they do? They want it more than ever, tantrums, hissy fits, I think you get my point.

Don’t deprive yourself, don’t diet, just keep everything in moderation. Eat the foods you love and enjoy – just remember, you need to make this conditional when you are really trying to get to your goal. For example; if you love to have a glass of wine, then make it one night a week, as opposed to five. See what I mean? Remember to compensate with your activity and don’t feel guilty about the glass of wine.

Just effing do it

Procrastination gets you no-where, I always say “Imagine how good you will feel in just a few weeks if you start today”

Believe me when I say I know it’s not easy. You are generally sleep deprived, your kids have sapped all of your energy and you don’t have a lot left in your tank, but if you get started the more you do it, the easier it will become.

You need to be honest with yourself and work out the reasons why you need to do this, how is it going to make you feel and what positive impacts will there be for your family?

If you work out your WHY, it will make it so much more achievable to stick to your plan.

Don’t be the one to hold yourself back from achieving the body and the life that you have always wanted – you are the one that can make it happen, starting today!

I hope you enjoyed these tips and can incorporate some or all of these steps into your life today!

If you are wanting to come along and try out Pram Fitness, check out our free pass offer, we look forward to meeting you soon!