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Entry 12: my experience with low-carb/keto

 Hey team, I'm really excited about this weeks topic so I'm just going to dive right in! As part of my studies to become an accredited sports nutritionist, I have been undertaking my own personal challenge for 12 weeks.  This consisted of picking a diet or style of eating and trying it out for 12 weeks. For this, I chose to do a low-carb, high-fat/protein diet with a little bit of fasting in there as well. I didn't do traditional keto; instead, I opted for a max of 25% from carbs and then about 35-40% from fat and the rest from protein. My main goals were to lose body fat percentage and to hopefully even out my energy levels and I was able to smash both these goals! For those of you who dont know, keto-diets are essentially an extremely low-carb diet (under 5% of your daily intake from carbs) and they are typically high in fat.  The whole idea behind keto diets is to encourage a process that we call ketogenesis. with all the K words, this can get a little confusing so I...
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Entry 12: my thoughts on cardio

 Hey team, What a week it has been! I'm currently on my first placement for my physiotherapy degree - this first placement is with older adults in a hospital setting and it's been really interesting so far. Sports and musculoskeletal physio is what I want to go into but learning different bits and bobs from all areas is really interesting so I'm trying to be a sponge and soak it all up! I hope you've all had a great week whatever you've been up to and are looking forward to the next week. Have you got anything exciting or challenging coming up? Let me know!  This week, I wanted to talk about cardio training and what my thoughts are on it. Like lots of things in the fitness industry, cardio is a hotly debated topic, with people often sitting firmly on 1 side or the other. So what do I think? I think... don't skip your cardio guys.  I know a lot of people hate it but cardio is so important and one that shouldn't be avoided. But I don't endorse it for the c...
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Entry 11: strength programming basics

 Hey guys, Another Sunday, another blog post.  So continuing on the theme of trying to make this blog as helpful as possible for people, this week I thought I'd chat about the basics for strength programming.  Believe it or not, the number of reps and sets your trainer is telling you to do isn't just made up for fun. Whether you're training for endurance, hypertrophy, strength or power, there are recommended set and rep ranges to work in to achieve these adaptations.  When we are training for strength, we want to be pushing our body pretty damn hard in order to get the right physiological adaptations that result in increased strength.  And this is reflected in how many sets and reps we program, as well as our rest time, training frequency and percentage of our max lift amount. This will all make sense once we start unpacking it and you will also start to see how they are all very much connected.  _____________________________________________________________...
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Entry 10: my top 3 tips for preventing injury

 Hey guys, I wanted to put my physio student hat on and touch on what my top 3 tips would be for preventing injury in the new year.  Coming towards the end of Feb, I'm sure there are a fair few of you who took advantage of the New Year motivation and got stuck into some form of exercise and if you did, it may be around this time that some of you are starting to feel a bit sore or over it.  So this week I wanted to touch on what you can do to prevent injury but these tips can also translate into ways you can ensure your exercise habits stay consistent and don't fizzle out as the year goes on.  Tip #1: listen to your body So fun fact, your body is actually really good at communicating with you if you listen to it.  If your body is really really stiff and sore and you're unsure if you should work out that day, you probably shouldn't.  If you feel super tired and barely have the energy to get through the day, taking a day off or doing a lighter activity might b...
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Entry 9: all about macros

Hey team, Happy Sunday! I hope you've all had a great weekend and feel ready to smash another week coming up. Feel free to comment or message me with something exciting you did this week or something that's coming up soon, I'd love to hear about it.  A few weeks back, I posted an entry about tracking calories but something I've been wanting to chat about since is macronutrients and where they fit into all of this.  The total amount of calories you consume each day are really important but so are the macros and how much of each you're getting. But a lot of people tend to focus (probably too much) on the calories and not as much on the macros, which can actually hold you back from achieving your health and fitness goals.  I'm sure you all know the 3 macros: protein, fat, and carbohydrates. And in this entry, I'm going to take you through each of the macros, explain what they do and why they are needed. __________________________________________________________...
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Entry 8: meal prepping 101

 Hey everyone,  So while we're still in the thick of the new year feels, I really want to dive into meal prepping because it has honestly been instrumental in my fitness journey and I'm hoping that some of you might also be inspired to try it out as well.  Not only is it helpful for saving time and ensuring you're always got a nice cooked meal ready for youy at lunch or after work but it can also help you to save money. By taking the time to plan your meals out and getting everything in one shop minimises the likelihood of extra supermarket trips during the week in which you're likely to leave with some extra goodies.  So lets get into it. Tip #1: invest in some good tupperware! Please please please learn from my mistake and get good tupperware/storage containers from the get go. You'll thank me when your food doesn't spill in your bag and ruin a new top... :(  And hey, it doesn't need to be super expensive. I hit up good old PaknSave when they had a special...
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Entry 7: do I track my calories?

 Hey guys, I hope everyone has had a great week!  This week I thought we'd dive into something else that I get asked a lot and that is whether or not I track my calories, and if I do, how do I do it?  I want to start this off by saying that my way of doing things is by no means the "right" way or the only way of doing it and to be honest, the "perfect" way of doing this doesn't exist.  Something you will hear me say a lot is that it's not a one-size-fits-all and that's because basically nothing is. We're all so different, from our thoughts and opinions to even our anatomy. So in essence, what works for one person might not work for someone else.  Having said that, hearing about what other people do or have tried before can be a great tool for figuring out the right fit for you so hopefully some of you may find my method helpful in some way!  ___________________________________________________________________________________ So to answer the first...
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