I hope your feeling on top form and not suffering from any of the problems below, but if you are these symptoms could point to a more sinister problem called adrenal fatigue, which could be scuppering your weight loss, motivation or even causing you depression.

Put a mental circle around any of the below that you are suffering from;

• Difficulty getting up in the morning don’t really get going until 10am
• Continuing fatigue that’s not relieved by sleep
• Craving for salt or salty foods
• Lethargy
• Feeling that everyday tasks required an increasing amount of energy to complete
• Decreased sex drive
• Decreasing ability to handle stress
• Increased time to recover from injury or illness
• Light headed when standing up quickly
• Mild depression
• Decreased enjoyment or happiness with life
• Increased PMS
• Symptoms increase if meals are skipped or inadequate
• Thoughts are more fuzzy and less focussed
• Memory less accurate
• Decreased intolerance
• Afternoon low between 3 and 4pm
• Feel great after your evening meal
• Decreased productivity

If you have circled several there is a chance that you may have an adrenal problem getting the way of your health. It also gets in the way of weight loss.

One more question;

Are you putting on weight round your middle giving you a spare tire or the, I swallowed a beach ball look?

Your adrenal glands produce hormones that enable you to handle the stresses of everyday life, from handling inflammation to keeping your blood sugar in check.

Adrenal fatigue = Low Blood Sugar = Weight Gain

Adrenal glands produce cortisol in response to stress demands on the body. If the stress demands are too high for too long the adrenal glands can become fatigued. When they become fatigued you may start to suffer some of the above symptoms, many of them are due to low blood sugar, hypoglycaemia caused by low cortisol levels due to the fatigue. Low blood sugar in its self is a stressful situation for the body further draining your adrenals.

If you are in this situation you are probably reaching for high calorie foods and drinks to pick you up, coffee, cola, sugary foods. These foods all drive the adrenals leading to further exhaustion. These foods are also highly fattening leading to weight gain. To much cortisol can also lead to weight gain, when eating and drinking stimulants you give your adrenals a good kick causing the to produce to much cortisol for a short while, this leads to further fat stores around your middle!!!!

The road to recovery

Recovery is simple but not easy!

Step one is to seek dietary advice, NOT calorific intake advice! You need to be eating to your metabolic type. This will bring your body back into balance.

Step 2 would be to get some coaching to make sure that you get balance into your life or to help you look at the causes of your stress, Emotional stress, Physical stress or Mental stress and find ways to reduce or cope in a healthy way with these stresses.

Small steps you can take right now

1. Slowly reduce and eliminate stimulants from your diet
2. Take out process and junk foods (bread and pasta ARE processed foods)
3. Base your food decisions around meat and vegetable
4. Eat little and often
5. Think about what’s stressing you out. Except that it is and then work out how to change the situation to make it less stressful for you

Committed to your success

Keith and the Team

Hey, I hope that you day is going awesome,

One of the questions I get asked and emailed time and time again is;

What should I have to eat?

Now I know that this sounds like a really easy question to answer and I’m going to give you some guidelines at the end but I need to explain that it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Did you know that the failure rate for diets is about 80%?

Yep it’s a big failure rate and means that you need to ask WHY this happens?

You may have noticed with your friends, family or colleagues that one diet that works really well for someone makes someone else feel awful and actually gain weight.

Have you also noticed that when people participate in one size fits all guidelines their ailments do not improve in fact, they often get worse!

What do I mean by ailments? Headaches, muscle aches, digestive issues such as reflux, bloating, cramping, pains and IBS.

Again the word WHY springs to mind… They are on a diet, surely that means they are getting healthier!

The problem is that many diets are not healthy…. I know what you’re thinking…… “Thanks Keith, that’s great. I have come to your blog and all you have told me is what I knew already!”

Yep I know, it obvious that just eating cabbage or just drinking milk/soup or doing shakes is not healthy or cutting your calories down to 1000 per day and yes that is commonsense, but let’s look at the problem in a little more detail.

Hippocrates was an early observer of the importance of food to your health he equated food to medicine. Some foods can be toxic to your body, slowly poisoning you even though you may not be aware this happening, we call this a chronic degenerative pathways and is the reason why ‘one man’s food can be another man’s poison’ or for us one persons diet can be another persons poison!

Steak for instance makes some people feel really good and others feel really tired. I, myself start the day with a piece of steak as it will but me in a great mood and make me feel full of energy for the day, but I can’t give this guideline to someone else as their body might not like it! They could go the opposite way, tired and grumpy…..

One needs to eat to ones type!

I am, what’s known as a parasympathetic fast oxidiser….. Mmmmm sound complicated right, but this just describes how my metabolism is functioning at the moment. In reality it means basing my diet around carbohydrates would be a very BAD idea and difficult for me to stick to. I used to be a carbohydrate monster being a Personal Trainer and a competing Sportsman, it’s what I was told I had to eat for energy. (How wrong could they have been!) I was grumpy and tired almost all the time and never felt properly well and energised and I was in my early 20’s!

Once I started eating to my METABOLIC TYPE (MBT) or eating genetically correct foods for me I felt awesome having increased, sustained energy, maintaining a lower body fat percentage and all the little aches and pains that I was suffering from in my gut cleared up.

Eating to your MBT is possibly the single most important thing you could do to gain and maintain a healthy weight and overcome health issues at the same time.

Click here to find out your metabolic type and how to implement it into your life

Here are 7 top tips to get you started in the right direction.

1. Experiment with your food and listen to what your body is telling you about it. Have a day where you eat Carbs at each meal, a day where you eat lean protein at each meal and a day where you eat a high fat content at each meal. 2 hours after each meal ask yourself, how do I feel? Full/hungry, tired/energised, grumpy/happy etc. You’ll soon find out which foods make you feel the best and therefore what to eat at each meal to get the best results for you. This is far from your metabolic type but is a place to start before you come on the nutrition course with us.
2. Base your diet around real whole foods. Meat, fish, vegetables, nuts and a small amount of fruit.
3. Avoid processed foods, grains and COW’s dairy for at least 7 days. Add cows dairy back in on its own and see how you feel and then try adding in SMALL amounts of grain and see how you feel.
4. Sip water throughout the day. Although this will not directly help you to lose weight it will help your detoxification systems which will help your weight loss. It has also been shown to reduce the symptoms of back pain, arthritic pain and digestive issues.
5. Get some fresh air and sunshine everyday
6. Exercise at least 3 x per week at a high intensity
7. Come on the nutrition course and learn a little bit about how food works in the body so that you are in control of hunger, cravings and your weight loss rather than them being in control of you.

Committed to your success

Keith, Clare and the Team

But never fear, we’ll not leave you with out a training session. No excusses not to keep the new years resolution going.

Below are video work out for you to follow. You don’t need any equipment just the space of your front room or spare room.

The first film is a warm up, the second a leg work out to tone and sculpt those thighs, the third film is a core training workout to flattern the belly and then we have a cardio vascular film and finally a stretch.

The work out should take about 45 minutes and will burn fat from your frame.

Film 1 The warm up

Fast Tube by Casper

Film 2 The leg workout

Fast Tube by Casper

Film 3 Core training

Fast Tube by Casper

Film 4 Fat burning CV workout

Fast Tube by Casper

Film 5 Stretch it out

Fast Tube by Casper

Once you have completed the work out text me and let Clare and I know how it went!

Good luck,

Committed to your success

Keith, Clare and the Team

P.S. If you want to find out more about the fit body boot camp click here and get all the facts;

www.fitbodybootcamp.co.uk

As neither you nor I have been able to make it to boot camp over the last couple of days and this evening I lost my car in the snow on Warners end hill coming back from the town, Clare and I decided that there was no excuses for you not to work, out when we can tell you what to do and you can do it in your spare room or living room.

No excuses!

So here it is the Fit body “home” weight loss work out!

Fast Tube by Casper

Once you have completed the work out text Clare or I to let us know how it went. See you Wednesday at bootcamp I hope!

Keith