Select Page
Eating your way to a Healthier Heart!

Eating your way to a Healthier Heart!

by | Sep 18, 2017 | Food, Health

Eating your way to a Healthy Heart!

What’s this Cholesterol business all about then?

When it comes to our health there are a lot of things to think about. We want to maintain a healthy weight and look and feel good, and we also want to be healthy on the inside. But there’s a lot of information out there and it can get a bit confusing trying to sort out the facts.

Thankfully, here at LemonBody, we know the truth about healthy eating and today we’re talking about Cholesterol and eating your way to a healthy heart.

When it comes to looking after your heart, understanding cholesterol and knowing how to lower Cholesterol levels is the key. Having some basic Cholesterol knowledge and being able to apply that in your everyday life can make a big difference to your long term health – and it’s not difficult when you know how!

All you need to know about Cholesterol!

Over half of all UK Adults have raised Cholesterol levels which can cause Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) as fatty deposits build up inside arteries and restrict, or even block, blood flow around the heart.

Coronary Heart Disease is the biggest cause of premature death in the UK amongst adults under 65, but this needn’t be the case. A few simple things can make a big difference.

You can get your Cholesterol levels checked by your Doctor or your Pharmacist and it takes just minutes to do. There are no needles – just a small pinprick on your finger! Ask your pharmacy for a free Health Check and find out your Cholesterol level. This is especially important if you have a history of high Cholesterol in your family.

Even if your Cholesterol levels are low, keep them that way by following the advice below:

Eat more ‘Good’ Fats and fewer “Bad” Fats

It’s important to understand the different types of fat in your diet because your Cholesterol levels are partly determined by the fats you eat. Replacing bad fats with good ones will help lower your Cholesterol levels and keep your heart healthy.

You’ve probably heard of Saturated Fats – these are the bad guys.

Saturated Fats come from animals and are found in things like fatty meat, butter, milk and cheese. That means they’re also in a lot of processed food such as cakes, crisps, biscuits and flapjacks. A lot of fried food is also high in Saturated Fat – think of sausages, fatty bacon etc.

Unsaturated Fats come from plants and are usually in the form of oils such as olive oil and rapeseed oil. These are the good guys and found in found in natural ingredients such as avocados and walnuts. Your body needs “good” fats to function correctly.

Suggested Fat Swaps

Eating more good fats and reducing the bad ones is the first step.

Have a think about what you usually eat and jot things down if it helps. Do you have butter on your toast in the morning? Could you replace this with an unsaturated alternative like Flora Proactive? Flora Proactive is clinically proven to help reduce Cholesterol levels by around 15% when consumed regularly and I use it every day on my toast and in my scrambled eggs!

What about your lunch? Rather than a cheese sandwich, perhaps try an oily fish like sardines instead? These are delicious with some rocket and a big dollop of chutney.

Monitoring and Planning makes a big difference!

When it comes to eating your way to good health, planning and monitoring is everything. If you’re new to this why not start with a food diary? When you’ve written down a week’s worth of food you could go back and highlight in different colours the Saturated and Unsaturated Fat items. This will give you a real insight into where you’re getting these different nutrients from. After trying to do some fat swaps for a week, go back and do the same – highlighting what kinds of fats you’re eating. You’ll be fascinated by the results.

Read the Label!

Food labels are better than ever in helping you see what’s in your food. Learn to read them and get into the habit of checking what you’re putting into you body! Avoid things high in Saturated Fat and cut down on Sugars too.

Remember that other factors are important to long term health too!

Don’t smoke! It’s a killer!

Watch what you drink – not more than 14 units a week is the recommended limit and most of us are way above that!

Taking some healthy exercise at least 3 times a week is vitally important too! It’s the second biggest killer in the UK (smoking comes tops!). Who’d have thought that sitting around was so dangerous? So get along to BootCamp!

Next week, look out for my article on The Silent Killer and how you can protect yourself and your family!

Not had your Free Trial yet? Click here!

Felix

Felix

Founder

Captain Felix Deer joined the Army in 1985 and served in a number of Training Officer roles, qualifying as a Unit Fitness Officer in 1986. Since leaving the Army in 1994, Felix has sold property, built houses and flown airliners for a living, but has always maintained his keen interest in Fitness.

FREE TRIAL
Post Holiday – Beat the Bulge

Post Holiday – Beat the Bulge

by | Sep 5, 2017 | Food

Losing that holiday weight . . .

Holidays are amazing. Whether you’re spending 2 weeks at an all inclusive resort in Mexico or exploring a city somewhere in Europe, we get to relax with our loved ones and recharge the batteries. Holidays are about enjoyment (of course) and so not many people want to be spending their time exercising or counting their calories. This is great for relaxation but of course we can end up coming home with a few extra pounds of fat. This is normal and is certainly nothing to stress over, especially seeing as how I’m going to give you the best ways of dealing with it when you come home and get back into your normal routine.

Firstly don’t go crazy! When I was younger and came home from a holiday I would throw myself into a crazy training routine and diet straight away, hitting the gym before work and after work every day and cutting my calories drastically.

This is a terrible idea as you will most likely make yourself very tired and quite possibly ill. A much better idea is to be patient, it took a certain amount of time to gain the extra fat and it will take a certain amount of time to lose it. If you normally exercise intensely 4 times per week I would suggest starting with just 2 or 3 moderate to intense sessions in your first week back and then 4 moderate to intense sessions in your second week back and then finally back to normal in your third week home.

Similarly with food, there’s no need to go on some kind of extreme detox/starvation diet. A simple return to how you ate before will most likely reduce your calories (unless you eat as indulgently at home as you do on holiday of course) and will see you gradually (and healthily) losing body fat.

We also need to make sure that we don’t let any holiday weight gain make us frustrated or unhappy. It’s very normal and almost unavoidable. I recently returned from my Honeymoon and am around 6 lbs heavier than I was when I left and this is all fat gain. The important thing to remember is that it’s not forever and if you’re consistent, in a few weeks it will be gone.

If you want to know more about calories or dieting, please feel free to ask us via email or our Facebook Page. Or you can check out all of our articles on fat loss and food:

To work out how many calories to start dieting on, CLICK HERE.

To see how to choose your foods when trying to losing weight/body-fat, CLICK HERE.

Remember don’t get frustrated if you think results are slow. The best and healthiest way to drop weight is at a speed of about 2lbs per week. The next time you decide to try and lose some weight, make sure you choose something maintainable and give yourself 6-12 weeks to stick to it. I promise, results will come.

1000 Calorie BootCamp – Fitness and Fatloss made simple

Like this article? Click here for more 

Not been to your FREE TRIAL yet? Click here.

Felix

Felix

Founder

Captain Felix Deer joined the Army in 1985 and served in a number of Training Officer roles, qualifying as a Unit Fitness Officer in 1986. Since leaving the Army in 1994, Felix has sold property, built houses and flown airliners for a living, but has always maintained his keen interest in Fitness.

FREE TRIAL
The Secret to Fat-Loss – Sean reveals everything. . .

The Secret to Fat-Loss – Sean reveals everything. . .

by | Jul 7, 2017 | Exercise, Food

The Secret to Fat-Loss . . .

 

 

So first of all let me start by saying that this isn’t really a “secret” but it is probably the most over looked part of success when it comes to losing fat/weight or achieving your health and fitness goals, and that is. . . consistency.

 

It sounds simple and obvious but if there’s no consistency there’s also likely to be no results. Your body is a reflection of what you do consistently over days, weeks, months and years. If you workout consistently you will get fitter and stronger, not immediately but over the course of time. If you control your calories consistently over weeks and months you will lose weight, more importantly you will lose body fat.

 

The trouble is that we aren’t good at being consistent. How familiar does this scenario sound:

 

You want to lose weight for your holiday in 6 weeks. You decide to go low carb (I wouldn’t recommend but I know a lot of people choose this option). You stick to it religiously for the first week and its great. You lose weight (this is mostly water weight in the first few days) and you feel like your losing body fat. But come the second week its getting hard to stick to, your energy is low, your hungry a lot of the time and you can’t stop thinking/dreaming about some delicious carbs. Not only that but your progress has slowed down, the scales aren’t going down as quickly any more and you’re getting frustrated. This seems like a lot of effort and you only have 4 weeks left until holiday now. Let’s give up/try something else.

 

This was me many times and I wondered why I couldn’t see results. The truth is that there is no magic way to lose weight/body-fat. You need to be in a calorie deficit (spending more energy than you’re taking in) and you need to do it consistently for weeks. The best diet is the one you can maintain/stick to over those weeks.

 

To work out how many calories to start dieting on, CLICK HERE.

 

To see how to choose your foods when trying to losing weight/body-fat, CLICK HERE.

 

Remember don’t get frustrated if you think results are slow. The best and healthiest way to drop weight is at a speed of about 2lbs per week. The next time you decide to try and lose some weight, make sure you choose something maintainable and give yourself 6-12 weeks to stick to it. I promise, results will come.

 

1000 Calorie BootCamp – Fitness and Fatloss made simple

 

Like this article? Click here for more 

 

 

Not been to your FREE TRIAL yet? Click here.

 

Felix

Felix

Founder

Captain Felix Deer joined the Army in 1985 and served in a number of Training Officer roles, qualifying as a Unit Fitness Officer in 1986. Since leaving the Army in 1994, Felix has sold property, built houses and flown airliners for a living, but has always maintained his keen interest in Fitness.

FREE TRIAL
Intermittent Fasting and Fat-Loss

Intermittent Fasting and Fat-Loss

by | Jun 5, 2017 | Food

 

Intermittent Fasting and Fat-Loss, everything you need to know. . .

 

Anyone who has done any reading on fitness or weight-loss is likely to have heard the term Intermittent Fasting. But what is it, how does it work and most importantly how can someone use it if they are looking to lose some weight, drop some body fat or just maintain a healthy lifestyle?

 

Intermittent fasting is a term that describes periods within your day where you “fast” (eat nothing at all) and then feed (eating your daily calories spread out between as many meals as is practical). The times in which you fast or feed are often referred to as windows, so for example I could decide that I will fast from bed time (sleep is included in your fasting window) until 4 hours after I wake up. If I sleep for 8 hours (like all good boys and girls should) then my fasting window is 12 hours and my feeding window is 12 hours.

 

Of course that is just an example. You can be as extreme with this method as you would like with some people choosing to have a 20-22 hour fasting window and a 2- 4 hour eating window. I personally don’t think this is practical and in terms of spacing your calories out (especially protein) it’s certainly not optimal. The most common split you will find is a 16 hour fasting window and an 8 hour eating window but if you want to try Intermittent fasting I suggest playing around and finding what works best for you.

 

So that’s what it is, but why do it? Firstly I want to say that fasting isn’t magic. There are a lot of people out there that would have you believe that intermittent fasting will turn you into a demi-god of fat burning, anti-aging and energy. Whilst that’s not quite true, it can be a great way to strategically ration your daily calories. Let me explain. We have covered in an earlier article that the most important part of fat loss is creating a calorie deficit (you can find that article here). But how you spread those calories throughout the day is a really personal choice and doesn’t affect your weight-loss as long you remain in a calorie deficit. If we have 2 people that both diet on 2000 calories per day we can spread their calories out very differently and still see weight/fat-loss over time as long as their total daily calories remain under 2000.

 

How should you use it? Well taking the example above I would identify which is your favourite meal of the day/time of the day to eat and allow yourself your feeding window and more of your daily calories around that time. I’ll use myself as an example so you can see how I use fasting when I’m trying to drop body fat:

 

I usually have between 7-8 hours of sleep and then when I wake up I will have around 1 litre of cold water and a small black coffee. I won’t eat my fist calories until 4-6 hours after I have woken up. My daily calories are around 2,250 and my favourite time to eat is dinner. I know that if I don’t save myself a decent amount of calories for my dinner I will be hungry and tempted to eat which will take me over my calories. So I will save myself around 1,250/1,500 calories for dinner and throughout the day I will eat 750-1000 calories spread over 2/3 small meals (mostly protein and veg). I finish eating around 1-2 hours before bed which means my fasting window is between 13-16 hours and my eating window is around 8-11 hours.

 

That’s how I use it, but the great thing is that you can adapt it to make it suit you. If you love breakfast then you can do the opposite to me and as long as you stay within the daily calorie total you will lose weight. Try it out and see want you think! To workout a starting point for your daily calories to lose weight, click here.

 

1000 Calorie BootCamp – Fitness and Fatloss made simple 

 

Like this article? Click here for more

 

 

 

Felix

Felix

Founder

Captain Felix Deer joined the Army in 1985 and served in a number of Training Officer roles, qualifying as a Unit Fitness Officer in 1986. Since leaving the Army in 1994, Felix has sold property, built houses and flown airliners for a living, but has always maintained his keen interest in Fitness.

FREE TRIAL
How to Eat to Lose Weight

How to Eat to Lose Weight

by | Apr 27, 2017 | Food

                                             Eating to Lose Fat:

 

How do we eat if we want to lose weight, or more specifically lose fat? In some ways the answer is very simple: however you want – as long as you’re in a calorie deficit. Yes that’s right. As we have covered in a previous blog article (which you can find here) the most important thing for losing weight is that you are burning more calories than you are taking in.

 

That is still absolutely true and no matter how good you think your food choices are or how “clean” you are eating you will not lose weight if you don’t create a calorie deficit. Even if all you eat is chicken and broccoli (how depressing). So if you haven’t seen it yet, I’d recommend checking out our blog article about how to work out how many calories you should be eating to lose weight/fat, which you can find by clicking here. Then onto our article about how much of those calories should come from Protein, which you can find by clicking here.

 

Done that? Good. So if it’s that simple, why do we need to really think about what food we eat when trying to lose weight/fat? Firstly because we want to be healthy (most of the time) which means choosing some foods that give us vitamins, minerals and micro-nutrients that help us to keep healthy and our bodies and immune systems strong. If we use up all of our daily calories on chocolate, we won’t be getting much Vitamin C (or any others for that matter). The advice on this is fairly simple, aim to include lots of fruits and veggies in your diet. A couple of pieces of fruit per day and 2 to 4 portions of Veg is easy, affordable and packed with healthy benefits.

 

Another huge factor in why the food we choose when dieting is so important is consistency. Results will only come if you are consistent and when it comes to Fat/Weight loss that consistency needs to be maintained over weeks not just a couple of days. So a lemon water cleanse might seem like a good idea when you start (it’s not) there’s no way you’ll keep it up because other than being tired, hungry and unsatisfied all the time, no food eventually leads to death (or so I’m told by medical professionals). On the flip side if you choose to spend your daily calorie allowance on foods you know you enjoy and you’re happy to eat daily for 6 weeks plus then you have a much higher chance of being consistent and succeeding.

 

The danger comes when we start to choose very calorie dense foods every day (think foods that have a lot of calories per 100g like chocolate or Peanut Butter). Those foods aren’t “bad” but they won’t leave you feeling very full or satisfied if that’s all you eat. For example 200g of chicken breast has approx 280 calories compared to 200g of Peanut Butter which has around 1200 calories(!!!!)

 

This is where the term “Flexible Dieting” comes in and is a life saver. The idea is that you get 80% of your daily calories from foods that fill you up but don’t contain many calories (like fruits, veg, protein and fibre rich foods) and then we can get the other 20% of our calories from higher calorie foods that we enjoy and crave (ahem ice cream ahem). This balance should mean that we feel full and satisfied after we eat, we are getting our vitamins and minerals and that we are enjoying food. Pretty good right? Yep 

 

1000 Calorie BootCamp – Fitness and Fat Loss made simple!

 

Like this article? Click here for more 

 

Not been to your FREE TRIAL yet? Click here.

 

Felix

Felix

Founder

Captain Felix Deer joined the Army in 1985 and served in a number of Training Officer roles, qualifying as a Unit Fitness Officer in 1986. Since leaving the Army in 1994, Felix has sold property, built houses and flown airliners for a living, but has always maintained his keen interest in Fitness.

FREE TRIAL
Take this super healthy snack to work – just two minutes to make!

Take this super healthy snack to work – just two minutes to make!

by | Jan 8, 2017 | Food

One of the best ways to eat more healthily is to take food to work, rather than buy it on the go!

Try this chicken and guacamole wrap – just two minutes to make and tastes great! Even I can’t mess this up…

Take a wrap, lay it flat and add two tablespoons of Guacamole. Now add half a pack of Flame Grilled Chicken Pieces (or sliced chicken breast that you cooked yourself!) – about 100g or 4 ounces. 

Roll it up and it’s ready! A high protein, high fibre snack – perfect for lunchtime.

Vital Statistics:

Calories 375

Healthy Protein 29g

Just 2.5g of Saturated Fat

Healthy Fibre 6g

Like this article? Click here for more 

Not been to your FREE TRIAL yet? Click here.

 

Felix

Felix

Founder

Captain Felix Deer joined the Army in 1985 and served in a number of Training Officer roles, qualifying as a Unit Fitness Officer in 1986. Since leaving the Army in 1994, Felix has sold property, built houses and flown airliners for a living, but has always maintained his keen interest in Fitness.

FREE TRIAL

Pin It on Pinterest

Calorie_BootCamp_Transparent logo
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.