Improve your sleep

Get more sleep, change your life (really)

If there’s one investment in your health that gives you the biggest bang for buck, it’s improving your sleep.

It’s always our approach with clients to snatch the low-hanging fruit first.

Get the simple, high impact basics right first, before you start fussing over macro breakdowns and what muscle groups to train on what days.

Changing your sleep if you’re not getting enough one of the most effective shifts you can make.

Get your sleep right, and you improve everything. Just changing this one pillar of your health has a huge flow-on effect for just about everything, from stress management, to productivity and even body composition.

Sleep is recovery.

Recovery is essential to muddle through the mental and physical exhaustion that we accrue during our extended workday. Sleep plays a vital role in our development and recovery.

So how much is enough sleep, and how do you get more of it?

The National sleep foundation recommends 7-9 hours sleep for adults up to 65 years old and 7-8 hours if you’re over 65.

Your overall night of sleep is made up of several sleep cycles consisting of four sleep stages. You may go through four to six sleep cycles on a typical night, with each cycle lasting about 90 minutes. Sleep cycles can vary each night for everyone.

Each stage is important for better physical health, physiological and cognitive function. By sorting and filtering memories, the sleep stages prepare the brain for learning new information the next day and cope with different experiences in the future.

Here’s a summary of what happens in each stage of sleep (and they’re ALL important)

Stage 1
This is the ‘dozing off’ stage, as the changes in your brain prepare you to fall asleep. You only spend 1-5 minutes in this stage.

Stage 2
Muscles relax and your body temperature drops, while brain activity, heart rate and breathing slow down in this stage. As the night unfolds, each sleep cycle has a longer stage 2. Almost half of the total sleep time is spent in stage 2.

Stage 3
Your body relaxes even more and you’re in deep sleep. During this phase, restoration and recovery occurs. Deep sleep is associated with creativity, insightful thinking and memory consolidation. Typically, deep sleep lasts for 20-40 minutes in a cycle and gets shorter in each cycle during the night.

REM sleep
Brain activity picks up almost as if you are awake. REM sleep is crucial for important cognitive functions such as memory building, creativity and learning. Vivid dreams are common during this phase. REM sleep makes up 25% of your total sleep time.

Good sleep helps you recover and re-energise

During the deep sleep phase is integral to repair, human growth hormone is released, and this is essential to adaptation and recovery at a cellular level. A good night’s sleep can also reduce your perception of exertion and fatigue the following day, so that you feel more energetic and productive.

Sleep makes you smarter and happier

A good, deep sleep also helps you consolidate any new skills and knowledge you acquire during the day. This helps your learning process and assists your brain to develop new pathways.

Quality sleep can help improve mental awareness and alertness, cognitive function, and mood. Every parent knows that a poor night’s sleep makes for a cranky kid the next day. Adults are no different! Good sleep is the ultimate mood booster and helps you cope emotionally with the ups and downs of daily life.

Sleep helps you train harder

An important benefit of the interactions between the physiological mechanisms that only happen while you sleep is enhanced training performance that helps you achieve goals like lift more, run faster and build endurance.

Sleep is protective against disease

Quality shut eye also promotes cardiovascular health via the breathing and heart rate changes observed as you progress through the stages of sleep. Additionally, the specialised immune markers called cytokines released while you sleep play an important role in fighting off infections and keeping you healthy.

On the flipside, lack of sleep and tossing and turning increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, depression and other medical concerns. Poor sleep also has negative repercussions on cognition such as an impaired ability to focus and make safe decisions in your own best interest the following day.

Having a hard time falling asleep?

The body regulates sleep by two vital systems:the sleep-wake drive and circadian alerting system.

The sleep-wake drive is the balance between awake time and sleep time. In simple terms, the longer you’re awake, the more you feel the need to sleep.

Circadian rhythm is your body’s biological clock and is regulated by exposure to sunlight.

These complex processes are intricately managed by several parts of your brain including the hypothalamus, thalamus, pineal gland, amygdala, brain stem and cerebral cortex.

Your sleep can be influenced by a wide range of external factors such as light, noise, and temperature.

Try these sleep hygiene tips to help you sleep better

Make sleep your priority

Aim for a set bedtime and ensure you’re ready for bed around that time every night, including weekends. This means no more bedtime procrastination. Avoid time-sucking culprits like Netflix binges or instagram scrolling!

Build a routine and keep it consistent

Budget 20-30 minutes to wind-down. For example, you might brush your teeth, put on your PJs, pick up a book, listen to pre-bedtime music, and do some light stretching or meditation – anything that helps you calm down.

Put away the electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bedtime to cut out blue light exposure. Blue light alters your circadian rhythm and suppresses melatonin, a hormone that signals the brain to sleep.

Create a sleep environment

The ideal room temperature for sleep is cool yet comfortable. Dim the lights and close the curtains to block out street light. Make your bed a sanctuary by choosing a supportive and comfortable mattress and pillows, and indulge in quality bedding you love.

Get sunlight exposure

Spend some time outdoors. Sunlight exposure during the day, particularly before 10am, helps regulate your body’s circadian rhythm that helps with sleep. Be sun-safe and pick a time when UV rays aren’t at their peak by avoiding exposure in the middle of the day.

Physical activity and nutrition

Regular exercise ensures good sleep. Reduce alcohol consumption and avoid large meals closer to bedtime. We also recommend you limit your coffees to before midday because an afternoon caffeine hit can also keep you up at night.

Aim for small changes as you incorporate these daily routines and habits to help you optimise your sleep quality.

Sleep Well!

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Steps to your ideal body

4 Steps To Your Ideal Body: Start Here

There are generally two schools of thought in the fitness world.

One goes something like this: “Go hard, no pain, no gain”. Ouch.

The alternative sounds like this: “It took you a lifetime to get where you are, so don’t expect to change in a couple of weeks.” That’s hardly inspiring either.

After over a decade of guiding normal, busy people to great results, my belief is that real change exists somewhere in between. Changing your behaviour in a big way takes time, but we are all capable of making incremental and lasting change. And this does take some level of effort. 

The biggest barrier to change? People always want to go all in, or not at all.

There’s a prevailing mindset that unless you make a huge upheaval and start on a really strict diet or hardcore fitness routine, you won’t get results. The general response after a few of these efforts is to not do anything at all, and continue on a path of decline. 

That’s just not how habit change works.

Here’s the boring, unsexy truth.

To create lasting health and change, you have to implement changes that you’re willing to do just about every day, for the rest of your life. Otherwise they just won’t stick.

I like to recommend small shifts in behaviour. Changes that are a small step up from where you are now, but just one step at a time.

The shifts I recommend are all geared towards managing the most important pillars of your health that make a real difference to how you feel and look. Changes that create not just a longer life, but make the days in that life more enjoyable and fulfilling. 

As your coaches, our ultimate wish for you is that you: 

  • Stress less
  • Eat better 
  • Move more
  • Sleep better
  • Enjoy life more

Any change is going to create some level of discomfort as you break a current habit and replace it with a better one. Our bodies and brains are always going to resist this because we have a natural bias towards staying the same. 

That’s why we invite you to start with small, incremental levels of discomfort and allow yourself to adjust to that as your new normal. Soon, what was once hard becomes just what you do. Then you also feel proud of yourself knowing that you CAN make changes, and you become inspired and motivated to expose yourself to further small levels of purposeful discomfort. 

As you move through the different changes, you practise each behaviour by repeating it daily. As you stack other healthy behaviours on top of each other, soon you develop your very own system that takes the stress and decision making out of looking after yourself. 

Take a look at the behaviour changes listed in the Levels below and ask yourself: Where can I start that is a small step up from what I’m doing now? 

Level 1 Changes

  • Eat slowly and mindfully – this will help you discover what hungry and full actually feel like in your body. Eat less with no feeling of deprivation. Slow down, breathe between bites. Put your cutlery down. 
  • Set a bedtime and wake time.
  • Add vegetables to one extra meal a day. For example, if veggies currently don’t feature in any of your meals on a regular basis, start adding them to your dinner. Our guide is half of your plate, but I’ll settle for any if you’re currently eating none. If you normally eat veggies at dinner, start eating some at lunch too. If you’re already doing both, add some berries or wilted spinach or tomato to breakfast. 
  • Add 10 minutes of walking to your day

Level 2 Changes

  • Develop a simple nighttime routine. You already have a set bedtime, so you might decide an hour before that you switch off all screens, have a bath, and read a book before lights out. I know this feels like we’re treating you like a child, but these routines work on kids for a reason! 
  • Establish boundaries eg no email or social media scrolling checking after 8pm.
  • Trouble-shoot stressors. Identify one or two habits that add stress and work towards reducing or eliminating them.
    • Some common culprits:
        • Too much booze
        • Too much social media
        • Constant email checking
        • Too much caffeine
  • Automate one daily health decision. This reduces your cognitive load by taking a decision off your plate, and freeing up that precious brain power for other things!  For example:
    • Have the same breakfast every day
    • Exercise at the same time daily
  • Add a protein source to each meal: palm-size portion
  • Aim for 30 minutes of movement most days of the week. Walking is the best exercise that most of us can do. 

Level 3 Changes

  • Add some stress-relieving practices to your routine. These shouldn’t feel onerous, so pick things you like. You might have to step out of your comfort zone and do some unfamiliar new things. Set aside just 10 minutes a day for a stress-relieving practice that works for you. What you enjoy isn’t what I enjoy! Some ideas:
    • Reading fiction
    • Warm bath with candles 
    • Nature walks
    • Positive affirmations 
    • Journalling 
    • Stretching
    • Colouring
    • Listening to music
  • Pick once practice to try. Commit to spending 10 minutes on this activity for a week and notice how you feel. Writing down your mood and energy levels in the morning and evening is a great way to track this. 
  • Lock in 10,000 steps every day. 
  • Add some resistance training to your weekly regime. This can be as simple as completing a routine of body weight squats, pushups and some core exercises. This can also be a great time to seek the advice of a personal trainer to design sessions that will get you the most bang for your time buck in the gym. 

Level 4 Changes

  • Use our plate model for every meal. Try to stick to three solid meals a day and one healthy afternoon snack when you need one
  • On top of your 10,000 steps daily, aim for 3 resistance training or gym based sessions a week
  • Schedule all your health behaviours on a Sunday for the week ahead. Plan some basic go-to meals ahead of time, put your gym sessions and walks in the diary. You should already have your bedtime and waking times locked in, but make sure around these times you’re allowing for the morning and evening routines which set you up for productive and relaxed days. 

What stage are you at? And what changes can you implement right now to create change?

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Returning to exercise

Our Top Tips for Returning to Exercise

Whether you stayed active during the restriction period or not, returning to exercise will feel foreign.

When our clients came back to New Image, there was a general feeling of excited trepidation. 

Will I have lost fitness? Is it going to hurt?!

If you’re getting back into it, or you’re inspired post-isolation to get started on a health and fitness routine, my first piece of advice is the same: EASE IN. This is not a time to just randomly get stuck in, balls to the walls.

We want you in this for the long haul, so I want to help you make exercise safe, effective and even enjoyable. 

Here are our top tips to get you back to movement successfully. 

Schedule it

Most things in our busy lives have appointment dates and start times. The kids’ school bell, your dentist appointment, knock off time at work and even the TV program you watch with the family every evening. 

When an activity’s scheduled, we prioritise it. 

So why, in your busy day, would you expect time for exercise to just appear. Or even worse, wait to feel like it?! 

You MUST book it in for it to happen. This is especially important when you’ve been out of the habit of regular exercise, and other activities have crowded out the time you once carved out for it. 

Schedule your exercise regime! You don’t need to block out hours of your day. In fact you may only schedule 30 – 45 minutes to get a walk in, perform some body weight exercises at home or attend one of our 30 minute customised training sessions at New Image. 

Just schedule it in and keep the booking with yourself.

Start easy

Keep it simple and easy to start with. Set yourself up to win and feel accomplished with small, achievable goals. 

The feeling you get when you tick items off your list is very empowering. In fact it’s proven that there’s a dopamine – or feel good – release when we complete action items we set for ourselves. This inspires you to take further positive action and creates a snowball effect of goodness.

On the flip side, if you make that list too hard to achieve or the exercise sessions are too intense, you may feel a sense of failure when you don’t stick to the plan. 

Start off with a simple routine like this:

  • Brisk walking or low intensity cardio sessions to build an aerobic base (cardiovascular fitness). 
  • 2x short and sharp strength training sessions per week. These could be a series of bodyweight exercises like squats, push ups, lunges and front planks. Primal movements will help your body make friends with resistance training. Then you can start adding external resistance such as weights, bands or a suspension trainer. 

Rest and recover

It’s always important to listen to your body. But this is especially vital when you’re getting back into it, or getting started. 

I don’t want you to go hard, hurt yourself or burn out, and then give up all together. Your goal should be longevity. 

Build easier, unloading days into your week. In these sessions, you might just go for a walk and do some light stretching or pilates movements. 

At New Image, we actively build recovery into your program to protect your body as you build it. 

Keep going

The great thing about keeping it simple to start is that you can build your exercise regime progressively as you go. 

As is always the case with exercise, consistency trumps intensity every time. It’s what you do day in, day out over time that makes the real difference. 

With a solid foundation of aerobic exercise and body weight exercises, you can now start to intensify your workouts or add more volume (time under load). 

You can do this simply by adding time to your walks and runs, increasing the speed of your efforts or adding some weight to the existing body weight exercises by holding some dumbbells.

Whether or not you increase the load or volume, just KEEP GOING. Before you know it, you’ll be sticking to your schedule, checking off sessions and developing a sustainable and healthy exercise habit. 

Want some extra guidance getting back into it? Or ready to get started on your active lifestyle? We’d love to help you. Click here to book a free session with one of our trainers. 

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Blueprint for fat loss
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How to get an effective workout in 30 minutes

I get asked this question by potential clients almost daily.

Our 1-on-1 PT sessions are usually 30 minutes long, and our team training sessions are 45 minutes. Apparently this just isn’t long enough to get results!

Many of you have this idea that we have to train for an hour in the gym 5 times a week to see results.

Our clients’ outcomes fly in the face of this common misconception. We see people completely transform their health, fitness and physiques with just two to three 30 minute personal training sessions a week.

If you’re convinced you don’t have time to train, the question I ask you is: why do you think your sessions need to be longer? And is your belief that training requires such a huge time commitment keeping you stuck and preventing you from getting started at all?

Most people are easily distracted in the gym, neglect to plan their sessions and are unfocused. Many perform less than optimal exercises or have a scattered approach which makes their workouts inefficient.

So how do we get a highly effective and efficient session completed in just 30 minutes?

The best way to get great results for the least time investment is by working with a highly skilled trainer. A good trainer will design sessions highly customised to your goals, so that every exercise selected in every workout is specific to getting you results.

But there are definite strategies we use to optimise your time in the studio, and you can use these yourself to get the most bang for buck out of your time in the gym.

Always have a plan

All our clients’ sessions are carefully planned ahead of time, and all yours should be too!

Go to any gym and you’ll see people wandering around aimlessly, tinkering around from one machine to the next. My guess is you don’t have time for this.

Just as we advise you plan your food, you need to plan your gym sessions too. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. You can have your sessions designed for you by a trainer, or simply jot down your plan beforehand. This might be around a few big strength exercises, or you might plan to roll through some cardio.

Either way, know what you’re going to do BEFORE you start training to avoid time wasting at the gym.

Use big compound movements

Compound exercises recruit multiple joints and muscle groups at once. Think squats, deadlifts, overhead presses and barbell rows. These exercises force the whole body to work as a system, so you build more muscle mass and burn more calories. 

 

Designing your resistance training sessions around compound exercises will help you achieve more in less time.

Stick to a couple of big exercises for each muscle group instead of lots of exercises that target that muscle group and really push yourself with the intensity when completing that exercise. This is more effective and efficient than banging out lots of exercises that attack the same muscle group but without the intensity.

And there’s no need for compound movements to get boring as there are so many variations to these exercises!

Use supersets to reduce rest time between sets

A superset is a mini circuit of a few different exercises performed consecutively and then repeated. This is instead of completing several sets of one exercise, with rest in between, before moving onto the next set.

Performing supersets allows your muscles time to recover from a certain exercise while completing an exercise that focuses on another body part before you repeat that movement. This allows you to hit more body parts in a shorter amount of time. It also keeps your heart rate up and increases the intensity of the session. This is something we’re going for if we want to keep your sessions shorter.

Do full body workouts

If you split your body up into parts you will be in the gym more days a week just to make sure you knock them all off. You can get great results with three full body workouts a week. By hitting all the body parts in one session you cut back your overall gym time commitment.

No distractions

One of the reasons our clients can fit so much into a 30 minute sessions is that there are no distractions by design. We keep our clients on task by minimising the amount of chat between sets, and of course there is no stopping to look at phones!

In your own sessions, be disciplined about staying away from distractions. Put your phone away, keep the chat to a minimum and try not to get distracted by the TV.

Reduce cardio time in the gym

This one is all about optimising the time you spend OUTSIDE the gym (the other 23 hours of the day). Cardiovascular exercise is an extremely important aspect of your training, but it might not give you the best bang for buck when time in the gym is tight.

Instead of devoting your time in the gym to banging out long cardio sessions, focus on upping your step count outside of the gym. Find every opportunity to move your body throughout the day. Walk as much as you can, take the stairs, run around with the kids – it all counts! Use a tracker like a FitBit, Garmin or Apple Watch and aim for at least 10,000 steps a day.

When you do cardio, stick to HIIT

If you want to do cardio in the gym, make it effective and efficient by using a High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) protocol. This involves training at a high intensity (80-90% of max effort) for a shorter period of time (10-30 seconds) and resting for longer periods of time to recover appropriately (50 seconds – 2 minutes).

This will help to improve speed, power, strength and fitness. And these sessions are rarely longer than 20-30 minutes long. Bonus!

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Meal planning to save time, money and energy

It’s saved me time, money, and from poor food choices when I’m ravenous.

On the flipside, NOT planning because “I don’t have the time” inevitably leads to wasting money on takeaway and putting food in my body that I know isn’t good for me.

When you’re busy, you shouldn’t be worrying about food choices. I can’t think of a bigger waste of your energy, willpower and precious decision making than mulling over what to eat 5 times a day.

As part of honouring your health and your time in 2020, one of the best habits you can implement is planning your food. 

Clients really freak out when I start talking about meal planning. They envisage their fridge piled high with containers of dry chicken and soggy broccoli. Gross. I don’t want to live like that either.

Meal planning is simply knowing what you’re going to eat ahead of time and having your choice ready to go. That’s it! Wouldn’t that be liberating?

But I want to be spontaneous! 

And how’s that working for you?

You should know by now that after work on Friday you like to have pizza and three glasses of wine. Maybe if you planned for it, you could enjoy it guilt free and perhaps even stop at the second glass.

If you know you’re going out for dinner, it takes two seconds to have a think about what you might like to have, and write it down.

The only way healthy lifestyle changes are going to work – and by “work” I mean you can do them forever – is if they’re enjoyable and don’t get in the way of living your life. 

I want you to eat out, go on holiday and try everything. But I want you to do it in an intentional way, with a view to including healthy choices most of the time.

If being spontaneous and up for anything robs you from feeling amazing in your own skin, how fun is it really?

When you make decisions for yourself ahead of time, you’re using your higher, rational brain that knows what’s best for you.

Make choices in the moment when you’re STARVING, rushed and stressed? That decision making beast is not looking out for your best interests.

If you have health and fat loss goals, a little less spontaneity may be the one thing that gets you there.

So we all agree now that planning your meals is a good idea. Right? Right.

Here are some simple steps to start meal planning. 

 

Define what meal prep means to you

 

You don’t have to splurge on 20 glass containers and spend hours on Sunday making all your food for the week. That sounds completely overwhelming, and you’ve got better things to do.

The best place to start is to simply write down ahead of time what you will eat. Start with the next 24 hours, thinking about what’s on the next day. It should take no longer than five minutes.

Then you can graduate to loosely planning out the week ahead.

This is as simple as:

  • For breakfast this week, I’ll have yoghurt, oats and fruit.
  • For lunch, I’ll make wraps with BBQ chicken and salad. Apart from Tuesday and Thursday, when I have client meetings so will eat out.
  • Dinners will be one of these three options (a, b, c). These are the veggies that I will include this week.
  • Snacks will be a protein bar/a muesli bar and a coffee.

Then you head off to the supermarket, with a firm view to what you’re actually, realistically going to eat, and buy what you need. And delight in how easy it is to shop when you have a plan!

Use the plate model

The simplest way to plan any meal is using the plate model that we teach our clients. It’s your guiding light for planning your meal, and also works when you consider your day and a week as a whole.

For each meal, you want to fill half your plate with veggies and a bit of fruit, then add a palm size serving of protein, a fist size portion of carbs and a little bit of fat.

Think first: what veggies would I like to eat this week, and how can I make them easy to grab? You could pre chop some salad veggies, trim some beans, and chop broccoli into florets.

Then think about protein sources. Maybe you’d like a bit of BBQ in there one night. A roast chicken is so versatile and can be a lifesaver. And cans of good quality tuna (we like the Sirena variety with chilli) are delicious tossed through a salad.

The point is to pick foods you enjoy eating, that are good for you and aligned with your goals, and then make them easy to go to with a little bit of organisation.

Make it yummy

Know yourself. If you’ve packed a lame sandwich for lunch, you’re just not going to feel like eating it when 1pm rolls around and you’re hanging for something hot and delicious.

Put in your plan foods you know you enjoy eating. Don’t get hung up on making it as lean and low calorie as possible.

The best lunch time meal prep in the world is leftovers from dinner! This is one of my best tips for being excited about what YOU’VE prepared for lunch. Just make extra dinner, and when you serve up, pop tomorrow’s lunch in a container ready to reheat. Easy!

Learn a couple of tricks to make your food taste good. If it’s not yummy and a little bit exciting, your meal prep will end up in the bin.

Avoid too much variety

Have a range of go-to meals that you know you love and are easy to prepare. Having something different every single day for every meal is overwhelming and is only for people with private chefs.

Have the same breakfast most days and rotating between a few healthy lunches that you enjoy will make life so much simpler.

Once you know your go-tos, you can keep staple ingredients on hand so you can always throw a meal together quickly. We always keep on hand a bag of salad mix, cherry tomatoes, tuna, microwave rice and bbq chicken for easy peasy meals.

It’s not boring if you like what you’re eating and getting results. Plus, you can stop thinking about food all the time and redirect all that energy to something else worthwhile!

Get help if you need it

If preparing healthy meals feels too hard, the alternative doesn’t have to be fast food. There are services that make preparing your own meals easy, or that do all the work for you.

We’ve tried a range of services from time-to-time when life gets busy, and they’ve been a lifesaver. You can go for full meal prep services like Food Goals (a local Hills business), My Muscle Chef or Thr1ve. Or if you enjoy cooking but want to skip the planning and groceries bit, you can try a meal kit service like Hello Fresh or Marley Spoon.

The bottom line is that no one is too busy to plan their meals. With just a little forward thinking and getting into the groove with organising your food, you’ll save yourself a ton of time, money and energy.

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Make time for yourself in 2020

Last weekend, I had a rare moment with my wife Liz when we could actually talk without a (lovely) little person asking for something or whining “I’m booooooored”. (We’re at that point of the school holidays where that little sentence has taken on a fresh level of whine).

We spoke about what’s hard at the moment. I’m working long hours, Liz is holding the fort at home and squeezing in work.

We both know how much better we feel and perform when sleep and training happens, but neither is getting a big enough priority at the moment. We have purpose, but the days often feel like a struggle.

And when we get to the end of the day, there’s that niggling question: “What about me?”

We decided that this year, in 2020, we will prioritise creating EASE in our lives wherever possible.

We will prioritise our health and happiness, in small daily ways. For me, this starts with getting to bed on time so I can get enough sleep. Scheduling daily movement. Carving out five minutes in a day that’s just for me and my thoughts.

Every single client at New Image is a busy person. To varying degrees, we all feel rushed. And for many of us, it’s a chronic state. We are so attached to “busy-ness” that we neglect our own needs.

And I’d say mums suffer the most from this.

Whether you’re a working or stay-at-home-mum, I find that most mums are amazing at meeting everyone else’s needs and terrible at carving out time for themselves. Even when they’re exhausted, the default mode is to be a tireless caregiver.

Feeling strapped and stretched is a horrible feeling. I want more for you! Over the next few weeks, I’d love you to follow along with me as we explore how you can create more time for yourself, put yourself first (at least for a part of the day) and get bang for buck out of the time you do spend on yourself.

Here are my top 4 tips for creating more time for yourself in 2020.

Set boundaries around work to make more you time

Flexible working arrangements are a wonderful thing. In theory, we can spend more time with our kids, work from home or our favourite cafe, and duck out to appointments during the day, knowing we can catch up later.

The problem is, most of us now have very blurred boundaries when it comes to work and personal life. We’re always on.

Checking and REPLYING to emails at midnight or on Saturdays is no big deal. And if we don’t get an immediate acknowledgment to an email we’re almost pissed off.

No down time is good for no one, and we’re all guilty of lax boundaries around our work schedules. An indefinite work day encroaches on your personal time, leaving you in a constant state of low. And when your time to complete tasks has no limits, this also tanks your productivity.

Have a start and finish time for your work, including when you do work outside of your normal work hours. For example, no emails checking after 8pm. Or no laptops on the couch.

Of course, if you narrow the window you have to complete your work, you’ll have to be more productive. This means planning out your work day, tackling one thing at a time and being very realistic about what’s achievable for you.

Schedule time for daily activity

Carving out time for yourself in any way is going to improve your health. But of course, we’re personal trainers and we want to get you MOVING!

The easiest way to fit exercise in is by making it a daily practice. Even if it’s 20 minutes a day, I want you to commit to moving your body daily. We’ve talked about why this is important in a previous post (read here).

I’ve seen that when people do this one thing, it has a huge flow-on effect to other areas of their time. When you honour your body with exercise, you grow in self-respect, you fuel your body better and you also get better at teaching others your own boundaries.

Exercising daily is a wonderful self-love practice that gets you out of your head and the stresses of daily life and reconnects you with your body.

Make your time in the gym count

When we design our personal training sessions, we are ruthlessly focused on making sure you get bang for buck of your time investment. Having a personal trainer who really knows how to get results is the best way to do this.

A good trainer knows how to program your sessions effectively to help you reach your goals, when to push you and when to pull back. Most importantly, we take every measure to ensure you don’t injure yourself – the ultimate time water.

Our clients train for 30 minute sessions. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but trust me. They get the job done. For people who are really strapped for time, training in a small team or 1-on-1 with a great trainer is by far the most efficient way to exercise.

Have a set bedtime and routine 

We’re biased towards the benefits of exercise, but I will stay say that sleeping is the best bang-for-buck thing you can do for your health.

The easiest way to start having better sleep and more of it is to have a set bedtime and a little routine around bed.

This doesn’t have to be elaborate. I’m not asking you to burn incense and meditate for half an hour. Your routine might be as simple as this:

  • Phone off at 8:30pm
  • Shower at 9:00pm
  • In bed and reading at 9:30pm
  • Lights off at 10

Prioritising your routine may feel awkward at first, or like you have to rush to get everything done in time, but the payoff for your health is huge.

I challenge you to try at least two of these action steps this week.

And notice your thoughts around allowing yourself more time: are you resisting it? Do you feel like you should be doing something else? Observe yourself being uncomfortable with carving out time for yourself, and do it anyway!

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Daily movement

Why daily movement should be your goal

If I asked you to exercise every day of your life, would that strike you as extreme?

Most people would say YES. Only proper fitness obsessives would torture themselves daily with exercise. Surely that can’t even be good for you?!

If I could change just one message from the fitness world that’s lodged itself into our psyche, I would completely reframe the notion of exercise.

We know we “should” exercise more, and most versions of this idea include a lot of straining and no paining, no gaining. I would be the first to tell you that most people shouldn’t be doing intense exercise every day. Especially not when you’re getting started.

When I talk about daily exercise, I mean something different. I mean getting up and moving your body in natural, gentle ways. Like it was meant to do! Most people can tolerate this concept better when I call it “daily movement”.

I believe EVERYONE can commit to moving their body daily. And I’m also certain that we all benefit from finding ways to INCREASE our daily movement.

Ditching the perfectionist mindset

Somewhere along the way, we got the idea that if we can’t get in a 45 minute workout, then anything at all is a waste of time. You know we love a good structured sweat session at New Image, this can be an intimidating starting point. (If this sounds like you, read our post on the pitfalls of all or nothing thinking here).

With exercise, perfectionism is well and truly the enemy of good enough.

What if I told you just to get up and walk for 10 minutes today. Does that sound achievable? Could you possibly squash that defeatist voice in your head?: “10 minutes? What’s the point! No one can get results in 10 minutes a day!”

I promise you, something is ALWAYS better than nothing. Why not challenge yourself to do a little bit, actually get it done, and then feel great about yourself?

Daily movement is habit forming

If you promise yourself that every day you will move your body purposefully – even if only for 10 minutes at first – you become an exerciser. (You can read more about habit formation in this book one of our favourites!) Every time you keep that commitment to yourself, to your body, to your health, you are reinforcing exercise as a daily habit that you just do.

And guess what? This habit is naturally rewarding, because moving your body gently feels good!

You become a person who can keep promises not just to everyone around you, but to yourself. When you honour your word by following through daily and honour your body by caring for it, you actively grow in self esteem. And with every day that you build upon your habit, this surge in self belief compounds.

For most people, the biggest barrier to moving is the thought of it. The hardest part is to put your comfy clothes and runners on. If you can commit to doing this bit daily, the 10 minutes (that’s my initial ask!) is easy.

Moving your body is just good for you

It’s not just the huffy puffy sweaty stuff that’s good for us. Numerous studies show that regular exercise (we’re talking walking) is one of the BEST single things you can do for your health. It even has a preventative effect for a range of lifestyle related conditions.

Want to feel better and mentally clearer? Get moving. Want better sleep? A morning walk in the sunshine makes you feel tired at nighttime when you’re supposed to. Digestion feeling sluggish? Daily movement will help get things regular too.

For people suffering depression and anxiety, things get a little more complicated. But we know that exercise is highly effective as part of a treatment plan. Small bursts of movement (again, we’re talking a 10 minute walk) is a less daunting place to start and can have a big impact.

We weren’t designed to sit still for hours looking at a screen. We’re built to be out in the sun during the day, moving in different directions and and resting at night in a dark and cool environment. This is not the reality for many of us who work sedentary jobs and have long commutes. So we need to build an element of these factors into our lives somewhat artificially.

For now, I challenge you to make daily movement your goal.

You can make a MASSIVE difference LONG TERM, that’s right, LONG TERM if you focus on small bouts movement throughout our days.

I know and YOU know that we have windows of time, sometimes five minutes, 10 minutes and possibly 30 minutes when we’re in between tasks at work, waiting for our kids to finish school or training, during ad breaks on TV or we simply have downtime to get some movement in. You just need to prioritise and have an idea of what to do.

We want to support you

We’re so passionate about the benefits of daily movement that we’ve designed a 21 Day Challenge to get you to do just that! I get that committing to exercising every day for the rest of you life is a leap right now, but could you make a promise to yourself, for yourself, to move for 21 days straight?

We start our 21 Day Challenge on Monday September 16 and everyone is welcome! We’ll guide you through it with daily programs you can complete at home. We designed our programs to inspire you with doable sessions to build mobility, fitness, strength and all round wellbeing. But more importantly, you’ll finish each and every day feeling productive and like you’ve really achieved something!

All you have to do is make the commitment. It’s all about building momentum, and Spring is the best time to get out and enjoy the sunshine and get those natural feel-good rewards for your efforts.

You can register for the Challenge from Thursday September 5. Contact me on sean@newimagept.com.au if you’d like to learn more.

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Nail Fitness Goals

Top 6 Obstacles to Nailing Your Fitness Goals

I’m not going to sugar coat it: most of the fitness kicks people invest time and money into fail.

If you’ve tried to change your lifestyle for a decade or more, chances are you’ve consumed more than enough info to know how to eat and exercise.

You might be wondering: I know what to do, so why can’t I do it?

Few of our clients are fitness pros, but almost everyone “knows” enough to be fitter than most of the population and be at a healthy weight: eat more vegetables, watch your booze intake, minimise junk food, and exercise regularly.

But then there’s the “actually doing it” piece.

That’s the hard stuff. And THAT’s what we need to help you figure out.

We all have a general idea of what we should eat and that we need to exercise. So why is it so hard to change our habits?

When we see clients achieve the most rewarding results, it’s because they’ve learnt to do one skill really well. And it’s not perfecting their squat technique, or even having the perfect diet.

Clients who get life changing results TROUBLE SHOOT!

Yes, you need to eat well and train effectively to change your body. But trouble shooting is all about what’s standing in your way to achieving those two key pieces.

That’s why the relationship we have with our clients is not just about training them. We dig out the obstacles and help them find solutions that will work for them.

In the past 12 years of seeing clients at New Image, there are six main obstacles to making change that keep rearing their ugly heads.

Have a read and see if you can spot any of these culprits in your own life, and apply our tips for what you can do to smash these gremlins out of your path.

1) All or nothing mentality

Either you’re on the bandwagon, or you’re waaaaaay off it. And in between is a vast wasteland of sensible compromise that you won’t even consider as a viable option!

There are no immediate consequences to screwing up with your diet or missing a workout. What counts is what you do consistently.

The trick when you slip up, and it’s REALLY tricky, is to experience that disappointment that you didn’t stick to your plan for a moment, and then MOVE ON. Don’t tell yourself that you’re a loser or a failure, or that you’ve blown it now so you might as well PROPERLY go to town on the sweet and crunchy stuff. Just make the next best decision and keep going.

You DO NOT need to stick perfectly to a plan to see results. What you do need is to be pretty consistent over the long term, and just improve on what you’re already doing. That’s it!

We all suffer to some extent from the “I’ve blown its”, but let’s be rational. If you ate a piece of bread that wasn’t on your plan, is eating a whole packet of Tim Tams while vowing to start Monday going to help?

2) Emotional eating

This is a huge topic and well beyond the scope of our expertise as personal trainers and exercise physiologists. If you feel emotional eating is a big problem for you I highly recommend engaging a psychologist or psychotherapist.

Emotional eating in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. We all eat for non-hunger reasons to some extent. One of the best things in life is celebrating with food, enjoying a meal with family, having a little treat or celebratory glass of champagne. And there’s no getting around it: my Mum’s lasagne really DOES make me feel better – it’s like a big warm hug!

But automatically turning to food as your go-to coping mechanism at the first sign of an uncomfortable feeling can make healthy eating hard.

One way we help clients take control of this issue is to keep a food journal. Just doing this for a week can uncover so many habits and triggers. Write down:

  • when you ate
  • what you ate
  • what you were doing when you ate, and
  • how you felt BEFORE and AFTER you ate.

This is a judgment free zone, so be honest! Try to be an objective observer of your own behaviour. From there, we can really start to trouble shoot and come up with solutions.

Again, please ask a psychologist or other specialist for help if this is a big issue for you. Treatment is very effective if you seek it out!

3) Failing to plan

We see huge results with our clients when they schedule their workouts and loosely plan out their meals! Most of us don’t do this, but it makes a big difference.

If you want to be successful, you need to make a plan. We can help you, but only YOU know your lifestyle and what you can stick to.
You absolutely have to plan your meals (because you need to eat a few times a day) and you need to book your training sessions into the diary (because you’re busy and you’ve got other things to do!)

If you don’t plan meals, that’s when you find yourself ravenous and subject to making poor choices. Keep things simple, and know yourself!

If you really don’t have time or don’t enjoy cooking, healthy food delivery services are cost effective and take the thinking out of things. At home, we’ve been giving meal planning services a crack and they’ve definitely made life easier.

Don’t be fancy. Pick one or two breakfasts you like and are quick to prepare, and buy your ingredients on sunday. You can also rotate between a few simple lunches and dinners. Prep as much as you can on the weekend. Or if you have the time to cook daily, at least write out a rough plan the night before so you have some idea of what will go into your mouth.

Your workouts NEED to be in the diary if they’re going to happen. We’re appointment only at NEw Image, and even the fact that our clients have to book in a meeting with us (and themselves) like every other commitment in their lives makes a huge difference to making it happen. Even if your current plan is just walking every day (a great plan, by the way), make sure you plan at the beginning of the week and every evening when you’re going to fit this in.

4) Out of control stressing

This is a BIG one. Your ability to manage stress and how you respond to stressful situations is CENTRAL to your health and habits. New Image clients are busy, successful people! And many of you are chronically stressed.
We’re working longer hours, commuting further, doing more for our kids and sleeping less.
A little bit of stress is ok. In fact I’d dare say that if you’re not experiencing occasional stress, you’re not trying hard enough! Mild stress motivates us to achieve and complete tasks and perform better. Stress helps us meet deadlines and push ourselves through mild discomfort.
At New Image, we even design our training programs to stress your body, and then allow for recovery. This is how we instigate change.
But stress becomes a problem when it’s chronic. Our stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline are supposed to increase in times of short-term stress and then return to normal.

One of the first things you need to do to be on top of stress is fixing your sleep.

Simple steps you can implement to promote more, better quality, sleep include:

  • Go to bed by 10pm every night
  • Turn electronic devices off 1 hour before bed
  • Dim the lights at night
  • Have a warm shower or bath with epsom salts
  • Drink herbal tea with chamomile or lavender
  • Find ways of relaxing that you enjoy. Meditation might not be for you (or it just might!), but perhaps a long bath at the end of the day winds you off. Or taking a five minute walk outside when things get stressful at work can give you some fresh perspective.

If stress is a problem for you, I highly recommend you see a mental health professional to get on top of it.

5) Eating out a lot

We want you to have a life. I’d be really bummed out if a client felt they had to miss out on parties or meetings or lunches to reach their goals.

But the fact is that it’s harder to eat well and stay on track when you eat out. When you prepare food yourself, you have complete control over what goes onto your plate and portion sizes. At a restaurant or a function, temptation is everywhere. The yummiest foods are usually high in fat and salt and alcohol is free flowing. And the portion sizes are usually much more than what you need.

The first thing you can do is to simply eat out less. Don’t miss out, but be choosier about when you do. Instead of eating out for every lunch and grabbing pizza on a night when the fridge is empty, pick one or two occasions a week that you will enjoy or that you have to attend for work.

And when you do eat out – guess what? You’re still in control of what goes into your mouth! Our healthy eating guidelines are all about giving you a system to use in any situation.

Learn some simple tricks for keeping on track when out and about. There are no hard and fast rules, but here are some of the tricks our clients find helpful:

  • Choose a meal packed with veggies (aim for half a plate)
  • Have lean protein
  • Pick your spot – if you’re going to have a glass of wine, skip the bread basket. If you want dessert, have a few bites but avoid drinking.
  • Have a two drink limit
  • Eat slowly

6) Overcomplicating things

When we’re trying to lose weight, most of us jump straight on a meal plan, or a new diet, or a full on regime. This is usually a HUGE leap from what you’re currently doing and sets you up to fail.

Smart, busy, successful people (ie New Image clients) haven’t got to where they are by dumbing things down and simplifying.

Many of our clients who are thriving in their careers also have this terrible habit of overcomplicating their health and fitness. They devour health and fitness information, can tell you everything about the latest fads and trends in the fitness world, and are COMPLETELY overwhelmed by it. It’s paralysing.

Most people who are not athletes will see enormous gains by keeping things verrrry simple and getting right back to basics. This, for most people, will mean three balanced meals a day, booze only on the weekends, and a walk every day. Making these simple changes for 80% of the population will make a big difference.

Get the basics right first, and then we can tweak and optimise to really amplify your results.

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Training for Fat Loss: The Basics

Fat loss is almost without exception the No 1 goal for clients when they start at New Image. No surprises there!

While we want all our clients to pursue other fitness related goals during their time with us, getting lean if you’re carrying too much body fat is one of the best things you can do for your health.

Weight loss and fat loss are NOT the same thing! When someone is obsessed about the number on the scales, you have to consider: at what expense? Weight loss can be achieved in many different ways including loss of muscle, dehydration, decreasing bone mass and of course, fat loss. What we’re looking for when helping clients achieve a body composition goal that helps you look great AND be fit and strong is FAT LOSS and muscle preservation.

At New Image, we really hone down on the basics and make sure we’re doing that correctly.

How do we lose body fat?

  1. Boost metabolism (energy expenditure)
  2. Create a favourable energy balance (energy in VS energy out)
  3. Build more lean tissue (muscle)

Ultimately, fat loss boils down to number 2. In order to lose fat, you must expend more energy than you take in. But by manipulating all three of these factors, you can lose fat and preserve muscle without too much suffering!

YES, you can lose fat with diet alone, but this is not ideal for preserving muscle. Also, on the “energy in” component of the equation, you ultimately need to continue to reduce the amount of food you eat in order to continue to get results. Working on the “energy out” side of things allows you to lose fat without feeling too hungry, which will help you stay compliant with your plan.

Today we’ll focus on the training/movement aspect of the three strategies mentioned above.

1. Boost metabolism (or the sum of reactions that take place to build up and break down the body)

You always hear people talk about their slow metabolism and their friend’s fast metabolism.  Yes, some people do naturally metabolise energy more efficiently than others BUT, you DO have control of your metabolism. Our bodies are using fuel all day and night whether we’re sitting down, sleeping, walking, talking, running or working at a desk.

Each of these activities with have different metabolic effects, but the bottom line is this: the more active you are, the more energy you’ll metabolise (use as fuel).

Look for opportunities to move EVERYWHERE. That means walking as much as possible, but also standing instead of sitting, sitting instead of lounging, and even learning to enjoy household tasks that get your body moving and expending energy. You may notice that your friends that appear to be “naturally thin” or have fast metabolisms are constantly on the move – they even tend to be the most fidgety!

2. Improve energy balance (energy in VS energy out)

I’m not going to focus on the “energy in” aspect of this. All you need to know about energy in is everything you put in your mouth contains energy, some types of food are more energy dense (contain more calories) than others. Be mindful.

Let’s work on increasing how we can use the energy. As well as improving our metabolism by moving more and moving often (see above), we can increase calorie expenditure through structured EXERCISE. Dedicate 20-60 minutes every day to exercise for an enormous impact on fat loss.

FAT LOSS TIP #1: Move more and move often. This is the best, easiest, cheapest fat loss tip you will ever hear.

The more you move, the more energy you’ll use.

There are a variety of types of exercise I recommend for fat loss. I’d love you to complete them all if you can as they all have such a wonderful mix of benefits.

They are:

  • Brisk walking for 30 – 60 minutes. This can used as a daily foundation to keep that fat burning consistent.
  • High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). I recommend 2-3 sessions at the most per week.
  • Strength Training. Lift weights (body weight included) 2-5 times per week.
  • Aerobic Conditioning (cardio). Walking might fall into this space for you however dedicated aerobic work using the cross trainer, rower, treadmill, pool, bicycle and air dyne bike (there are plenty more) gets your heart rate into an aerobic zone and assists to mobilise lips (fats) to be used as energy. I recommend at least two sessions per week at a minimum of 30 minutes per session. The intensity should be 6-7/10 (60-70% effort).

3. Build more lean tissue (muscle)

Let me make this simple. The bigger the muscle = more and bigger mitochondria (organelles that supply the cell’s energy). That means, the more muscle we have, the more energy we use which means we METABOLISE more energy and improve FAT LOSS.

Building muscle will increase strength and improve your body composition (ie the amount of muscle you have vs fat) making you look toned, defined, healthy and a lot better naked!

As mentioned above, to increase muscle size, lift weights 2-5 times per week and focus on rep ranges between 6-12 reps per set with the intention of fatiguing towards the last rep of each set.

EG: WEEK ONE: 3 x 12 reps, WEEK TWO: 3 X 10 REPS, WEEK THREE: 3 X 8 REPS, WEEK FOUR: 3 X 10 REPS, REPEAT!

Overwhelmed? Start where you are, and build from there

Does this sound like a lot of training to you? What I’ve described above is the optimal formula for maximising energy output for fat loss while preserving muscle. However, if you’re fairly sedentary right now, just adding in the daily walking will make a HUGE difference and you WILL lose fat. Even just increasing your daily, unstructured activity through the ideas mentioned in Step 1 will have an impact.

As you become more advanced in your efforts to lose fat, and closer to your ideal body composition, that’s when we really need to add in those other components to get results.

So as always, with any habit change, my advice is to start with small changes that you can make STICK, and then incrementally build more movement into your routine.

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Improving brain function with exercise

How you can improve your brain with exercise

Thanks to our trainer Mitch O’Brien for writing today’s post on staying active to maintain a strong mind as we age – a big area of interest for Mitch!

Most of us associate the ageing process with the weakening of the mind, and many consider this decline inevitable.

However the science tells us that there’s actually a lot we can do to maintain our minds as we age, and structured regular exercise has a big role to play.

The facts: Ageing, your brain and exercise

In 2010, more than 24 million people worldwide were suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia, and these numbers are set to double every 20 years. These conditions are incurable. We’re living longer lives, and we all want our “golden years” to be vibrant and independent for as long as possible. 

The research tells us that moving your body in a structured and purposeful manner can make a BIG difference to maintaining cognition. 

  • Any physical activity that gets the blood pumping increases the strength and flexibility of the mind and improves mood in short bursts
  • Exercise increases blood flow to the brain, as it strengthens and creates cognitive connections and speeds up processing. This stops thoughts getting bogged down in a traffic jam in the busy hub of the brain.
  • You may even be able to IMPROVE your brain. A 2016 study found that the brain even starts creating new links with regular low-intensity walking programs of six months. Instead of these brain links breaking down or simply stopping, some new connections were beginning to be made.

What can you do to improve your brain health?

Great news: you can get these cognitive improvements without huge amounts of training or a crazy disciplined diet.  

In a six-month program of multicomponent training, patients suffering from mild or moderate cases of Alzheimers saw great improvements. This program included 2 weekly sessions of 45-55 minutes with exercises targeting posture, muscle resistance, flexibility and aerobics. All exercises were simple and don’t  require little equipment and supervision.

Working towards a daily step count, say of 10,000 steps, is a great way to keep active. Throw in a couple of sessions a week with a personal training or exercise physiologist and you’re well on your way to taking charge of your brain health as you age.

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