Planning for Your Health and FitnessAre you thinking about starting an exercise routine and improving your health and fitness? If you are, then one of the most important things you should do before you get started, is spend a bit of time thinking about what you are aiming to achieve. I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of things going on in my life. I want to make sure I’m using the precious time I’ve put aside for exercise as effectively as I can. Making sure you’ve really identified what you want out of your fitness plan can save you a lot of unproductive time. Once you’ve worked out your goals, then it’s just a matter of working out the best way of achieving them. Even if you are already exercising, regularly reassessing your plan is a must. Identifying Your GoalsThere are a lot of reasons people decide they need to start an exercise program:
Breaking It DownLet’s say your goal is to run a marathon. If you’ve never ran before, that’s a massive goal. Breaking it down into smaller more easily achievable pieces will give you a much greater chance of eventually running your first marathon. An example of how you might break it down is by signing up to run a 5k and training for that. Next you might enter a 10k and so on, until the final jump to the 42k marathon isn’t so massive. Another example might be you want to lose some weight. If you don’t want to overwhelm yourself and lose motivation, break it down into small achievable mini weight goals. Each time you reach one of your mini goals you’ll feel a sense of achievement, which will help keep you motivated toward. Best Path to Your GoalThis is where it can start to get tricky and confusing. Be careful that you don’t waste time following the wrong exercise plan or falling for the latest fad. Choose carefully where you get your advice. This will save you a lot of time and may be the difference between you reaching your goal or not. There’s a lot of health and fitness information out there for you to digest. Often the simplest plans are the most effective. If it’s too complex, it’ll usually be hard to maintain over the long term. Health and fitness and well-being is an ongoing process, so it needs to be sustainable. If you’re just starting out remember that like most things in life, improving your health and fitness is a process, so don’t be in too much of a rush. You don’t want to build a house of cards, which might collapse at any moment. Choosing Where to Get Your Health & Fitness InformationThere are a lot of self-proclaimed guru’s around, especially since the onset of the internet and social media. Don’t just follow blindly. If you see someone on the internet that you think might be able to help you, do some research. Checkout their background, experience and qualifications etc. If you can get a recommendation from a friend who has had a good experience with a trainer that’s always a good start. This might not always work though. Your goal might be a lot different than your friends goal, so still check if their trainer has experience in what you’re trying to achieve. It’s also important that your trainer understands that it’s your goal and not theirs. It’s super important that your trainer understands and is fully onboard with your goal. Remember it’s about you, not the trainer. What’s NextRandomly choosing an exercise plan can very quickly waste your time, and have you end up not heading toward your goal at all. In future articles I’ll give you some ideas of what a training plan might look like for some specific goals, or you can contact me if you would like some help planning for your fitness.
Question: Why are some fats considered good and some bad?
Answer: This post is a follow up to my previous blog post “How do nuts fit into a healthy diet?” In my last blog post I mentioned that nuts contain monounsaturated oils and the polyunsaturated omega 6 and omega 3 oils. These oils have been shown to have real health benefits. I won’t go into the chemistry behind what makes these oils unsaturated, but will say that the shape of these fatty acids makes them liquid at room temperature. Unsaturated fats are an important part of a healthy diet. Saturated fats on the other hand, should be kept to a minimum. There is a lot of evidence linking them to heart disease. The shape of saturated fatty acids allows them to stack more tightly together which is why they are solid at room temperature. Saturated fats have been linked to high cholesterol. This is because saturated fats raise Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL) levels in our blood. LDL is a transporter of fats, in this case that happens to be cholesterol. The problem with LDL is that it’s not only a transporter of cholesterol, it also deposits cholesterol. In the right amount this is a good thing! Most of the cholesterol in our body is produced in our liver, it has many important uses. We use it to produce hormones and bile acid and it is the structural component of cell membranes, so we definitely need cholesterol. However, if your LDL levels are too high you’ll start to get cholesterol deposited in places that you don’t want it, the coronary arteries!! That’s a good enough reason to limit the amount of saturated fats in your diet. The foods that contain saturated fats are predominantly animal products. Having said that, it’s also found in some plant based foods such as coconut and palm products. As usual with the food and diet industry there is always some new trend around. Coconut oil seems to be the latest trend. Just be aware that coconut oil is actually more saturated than the fat found in animal products and like all other fat is high in kilojoules, so it’s not necessarily the healthiest choice. Having said that, you don’t need to exclude it from your diet, you just need to be aware of what it is and use it sparingly. Trans fats are another type of fat that you should try to minimise in your diet. They raise LDL in the same way that saturated fats do. In high intakes they lower HDL as well. Trans-fats also appear to increase inflammation and promote insulin resistance. Trans fats occur naturally in small amounts in some foods, but are generally produced by some sort of food processing. The process of making polyunsaturated oils into margarine produces trans fats although the technology used in Australia limit the amount produced. Some manufacturers now offer non hydrogenated trans-fat free margarines. Now let’s get to the healthy fats! Monounsaturated oils tend to have the opposite effect on cholesterol compared to saturated fats. They have been shown to raise the level of High Density Lipoprotein (HDL) in your blood. HDL is also a transporter of cholesterol, but unlike LDL it doesn’t deposit cholesterol in your arteries. HDL picks up cholesterol from around your body and transports it back to the liver to be recycled or excreted. This is the reason it’s important to have the correct ratio of LDL to HDL in your blood. They both have really important jobs to do and when they work together in the right amounts, they keep things working how they should. The polyunsaturated fatty acids Linoleic Acid and Linolenic Acid need to be supplied in our diet. They are essential fatty acids. They are essential because our body doesn’t have the ability to produce sufficient amounts to meet our physiological needs. We can however produce the longer chained polyunsaturated oils EPA, DHA and arachidonic from these essential oils. The long chained omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids EPA and DHA are needed for normal growth and development, especially for the brain and eyes. EPA and DHA can also be obtained directly from certain foods. Good sources of these long chained polyunsaturated fatty acids are fatty fish like salmon, tuna, mackerel, sardines and herring. The omega 6 oils are found in vegetables and seeds. They have been shown to have an effect on lowering both LDL and HDL. The omega oils also play a role in controlling the inflammatory response in our body. You’re probably thinking great! Now I not only have to worry about how much fat I have in my diet, I have to make sure I’m getting the right amount of the good fats and limiting the amount of bad fats!! The diet and weight loss industry has done a really good job of confusing and over complicating what a healthy diet looks like! It’s pretty simple really, eat a variety of fresh produce, don’t over eat and keep highly processed and packaged foods to a minimum. That’s basically the Australian Dietary Guidelines and if you eat in line with these guidelines you’ll be ticking all the right boxes as far as healthy fats and not so healthy fats go. If you found this story interesting or useful, please share it with your friends on facebook and encourage them to like follow us. If they aren’t on facebook all our blog stories are available from our website www.astutefitness.com.au Thanks Daryl Question: How do nuts fit into a healthy diet? Answer: Nuts are a great food to include in a healthy diet. They are a great snack, and are packed full of nutrients. Nuts are an excellent source of mono unsaturated oils which are important for heart health. They are a good source of the essential polyunsaturated omega 3 and omega 6 oils. I don’t have enough space in this article to let you know all the benefits of these oils to your health, so will save that for another post. Nuts also contain a range of important micronutrients. The thing to keep in mind though, is that you don’t need to eat many nut to add a lot of kilojoules to your daily intake, so serving size is very important. All fats contain 37kJ per gram (even the healthy ones) compared to carbohydrates at 16kJ per gram and protein at 17kJ per gram. That’s over twice the energy content of carbs and protein. Just like all the food groups, serving size important. In the Australian Dietary guidelines, nuts are part of the Lean meat, poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, seeds and legumes food group. The recommended serving size for nuts is 30g. You have to keep in mind that women only need 2 ½ serves and men only 3 serves from this group each day. Having to many nuts as a snack will mean you need to reduce the quantity of other foods in this group. This could mean that you would need to reduce the serves of lean meat, chicken, fish or other protein foods in your main meals. For this reason, I would suggest a ½ serve for snacks. Compared to other packaged snacks nuts are relatively un processed. In most cases the only processing is roasting. Try to stick to un salted! You’ve probably heard of the trend of eating activated almonds. This appears to be based more on opinions than science! But if you like the taste of activated almonds then why not. They still have all the same nutrients. Figure 1, gives you % RDI for some of the micronutrients found in a few of the more common nuts we snack on (including peanuts which are actually a legume). You can see that for a relatively small serve they can contribute a lot of nutrition to your day. Figure 1: Figure 2, shows why you have to make sure not to overdo it with nuts! For a small serve they contain a lot of energy. Figure 2: Even though nuts are a great food, for people with nut allergies they can be very dangerous. If you ever have some sort of reaction to nuts, or to any other foods for that matter, don’t self-diagnose, go and talk to your GP about it straight away!
The Australian Dietary Guidelines are a great resource for anyone who is interested in maintaining a healthy diet. The main message is to eat a variety of fresh produce in the right amounts and include at least 30 minutes of exercise each day. Do this and you’ll be giving yourself the best chance of having a long and healthy life. For most people nutrition is pretty simple really, don’t fall into the trap of following the latest fad! Keep it simple!! If you found this article interesting and useful, please tell your friends. Follow Astute Fitness on facebook or go to www.astitefitness.com.au to keep up with our latest stories.
This eating plan is based on the Australian Dietary Guidelines for women aged between 19 and 50. These plans give you the recommended number of serves of each of the food groups to lower the risk of a number of preventable diseases.
This plan would be suitable for someone who is reasonably active, doing a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise per day. If your goal is to lose some weight you may need to reduce the quantities a bit and increase the amount of exercise. If you need help with this let me know! My goal is to make these plans easily fit into your lifestyle. Including foods and recipes that you like to eat (within reason!), is important if you want to have a long term sustainable plan. If you have recipes that you think are healthy send them in and I’ll take a look and see if I can add them as options to the eating plans. ![]()
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You can download the eating plan and recipe by clicking on the links above.
As always if you have found this post helpful please share it with your friends on Facebook or share the link to the Astute Fitness Blog www.astutefitness.com.au/blog to help use get our message out,
Thanks, Daryl
This week I have an eating plan for men aged 19 to 50. These eating plans aren’t a way of losing a lot of weight in a short period of time. They are based on the Australian Dietary Guidelines, to give a healthy dietary intake. The kJs in these plans should maintain healthy body weight in someone who is moderately active (at least 30 minutes of exercise per day). Over time this would bring you to a healthy body weight if you are currently over weight. There isn’t a one size fits all solution to dietary intake, but this gives you somewhere to start. You may need to decrease or increase the amount of food depending on your size and activity level.
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To down load the eating plan or the salad recipe, click the links above.
Remember to send in any healthy recipes you have and I will break them down into the number of serves of each food group per serving. Over time we should end up with a good library of healthy recipes that will slot right into the eating plan template. As always if you have found this post helpful please share it with your friends on Facebook or share the link to the Astute Fitness Blog www.astutefitness.com.au/blog to help use get our message out, Thanks, Daryl
There isn’t a lot to say in this week’s post. It’s just an updated version of the sample daily eating plan from last week. There are just a couple of differences for women over 50. Women between 51 and 70 only need 4 serves of grain instead 6 serves, but need 4 serves of dairy. Apart from those 2 changes it’s the same as the 19 to 50 age group plan.
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You can download a copy of this plan by clicking on the link above.
Remember to send in any healthy recipes you have and I will break them down into the number of serves of each food group per serving. Over time we should end up with a good library of healthy recipes that will slot right into the eating plan template.
As always if you have found this post helpful please share it with your friends on Facebook or share the link to the Astute Fitness Blog www.astutefitness.com.au/blog to help use get our message out, Thanks, Daryl
Below is a sample eating plan that will give women aged between 19 and 50, the number of serves recommended by the Australian Dietary Guidelines for each of the 5 food groups. I’ve gone a bit overboard with the information in my table, but I thought you might be interested to see the details. You really just need to use the column on the left that has the meals, foods and quantities. The second column from the left shows the variety (how many different types of foods you would consume if you follow this plan). The variety column is a great tool when judging if you have a super diet or not. The higher this number the better. I’ve also added a column for processed foods. It’s pretty difficult to totally eliminate processed/packaged food from your diet, but it’s a good idea to minimise them if you can. At the bottom of the variety and processed columns I’ve given a target to aim for. With variety a score greater than 18 is good, the higher the better and with processed a score under 7 is what you should aim for. Processed is a bit subjective because even cooking is a type of processing, so it’s mainly concerned with foods that contain additives like preservatives, flavour enhancers etc or that have had things removed like fibre for instance. The columns from grain through to meat show you how many serves for each food group. Finally, the kJ and Cal show the amount of energy consumed.
The small table below the main table give a breakdown of macro nutrients. You don’t really need this bit of info, but I thought you might find it interesting. ![]()
You can download the table by clicking the link above.
You need to know that this plan is for someone who is moderately active, so you would need to be doing a minimum of 30 minutes per day of exercise/activity. That’s the minimum everyone should aim for to maintain good health. That’s just the minimum remember, so feel free to do more!
I’ll be putting more of these plans up from now on. Next week I’ll add a version of this one for women over 50 years. I’m also working on some recipes that will slot right in to the plan, so you can mix and match breakfasts, lunches and dinners. That will give you freedom to build a plan to suit you. If you have any recipes that you think are healthy meals, send them in and I’ll work out the serve size and number of serves of each of the food groups that a single serve of your recipe has. As always if you have found this post helpful please share it with your friends on Facebook or share the link to the Astute Fitness Blog www.astutefitness.com.au/blog to help use get our message out, Thanks, Daryl Photo: @underarmourwomen instagram I had an article published in a blog called The Juice Daily and the age online last Friday. Due to a lack of space they had to edit it down a bit. Below is the complete un-edited version. With so many fad diets around these days it’s no wonder everyone’s so confused. Don’t get caught up in the hype, there’s so much marketing and misinformation around, it’s easy to get mislead. There’s a lot of information out there with little or no evidence to back it up. If you can stick to their restrictive diet plan you will probably lose some weight, but statistically most people are back to their starting weight or heavier within 2 years. The good thing is, all the information you need is free and available online in the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating www.eatforhealth.gov.au The guide gives you all the information you’ll need to build a healthy diet from the 5 food groups.
Unlike fad diets, this is all backed up by a tonne of scientific evidence. Your aim shouldn’t be to remove food groups as suggested by a lot of diets, but to add more variety to your diet. Don’t believe the hype on superfoods...but rather you should aim to have a super diet. That is, a diet that is made up of a variety of fresh produce from the 5 food groups (listed above). My 10 tips for reaching a healthy body weight: 1.Try eliminating as much packaged food from your diet as you can.
2.Have a healthy breakfast every morning
3.Try getting about 70% of your dietary intake from plant based foods
4.Shop around the outside of the supermarket. That’s where all the fresh food is!
5.Don’t make weight loss your main goal! Adopting a healthy lifestyle is key to your success.
7.Keep it simple!
8.Break your goals down into realistic short term goals!
9.Don’t be too hard on yourself!
10.Remember that drinks can also contain a lot of kJ’s.
If you mostly eat good fresh food in the right portion sizes, exercise regularly and keep a positive attitude you’ll be surprised at the results you’ll achieve, not only with your weight loss but also with improved general health. If you need a bit of help with the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating, check out my blog at www.astutefitness.com.au/blog
This week we’ll go through the how the Dietary Guidelines apply to men 19 years and older. It’s really just the number of serves per day of each of the food groups that change between men and women.
Serving Sizes: The serve sizes are the same for people of all ages weather male of female it’s just the number of serves that vary. For meat, fish and poultry the serves are generally in grams. This isn’t usually too hard to work out because generally these things are sold by weight. A serve of red meat for example is 100g raw, so if you buy 500g it will give you 5 serves. A small can of tuna is about 1 serve of fish. So if you had 1 small can of tuna for lunch and 1 ½ serves of red meat for dinner that’s that food group covered. A serve of nuts or seeds is 30g. 30g of nuts is about one hand full and 30g of seeds is about 2 tablespoons. For vegies, legumes, dairy and some fruits the serves are in half cups or cups. Below are a few things that are around the same size as a half a cup. If you picture those things as you serve up your meals, you won’t go too far wrong. A little bit either way won’t make too much difference, just be as close as you can. The table below gives you the number of serves per day for each of the 5 groups for men. Well that’s about it for The Australian Dietary Guidelines. I hope you’ve found it useful. As I said last week, I'll begin putting up some sample daily eating plans and recipes soon. If you have any healthy recipes that I could analyse and share over the blog, let me know. As always if you have found this post helpful please share it with your friends on Facebook or share the link to the Astute Fitness Blog www.astutefitness.com.au/blog to help use get our message out, Thanks, Daryl Now that we’ve covered all the food groups I need to give you an easy way to put it all together! This week we’ll go over the info women aged 19 to 50 will need. There are just a couple of changes for women 51 to 70 and 70+ which I will include. Serving Sizes: For meat, fish and poultry the serves are generally in grams. This isn’t usually too hard to work out because generally these things are sold by weight. A serve of red meat for example is 100g raw, so if you buy 500g it will give you 5 serves. A small can of tuna is about 1 serve of fish. So if you had 1 small can of tuna for lunch and 1 ½ serves of red meat for dinner that’s that food group covered. A serve of nuts or seeds is 30g. 30g of nuts is about one hand full and 30g of seeds is about 2 tablespoons. For vegies, legumes, dairy and some fruits the serves are in half cups or cups. Below are a few things that are around the same size as a half a cup. If you picture those things as you serve up your meals, you won’t go too far wrong. A little bit either way won’t make too much difference, just be as close as you can. The table below gives you the number of serves per day for each of the 5 groups for women. That gives you an easy way to construct a healthy eating plan that suits you! To get results though, you’ll need to be consistent. This should be part of a long term lifestyle change.
I will start putting some sample daily eating plans and recipes on the blog in a few weeks! As always if you have found this post helpful please share it with your friends on Facebook or share the link to the Astute Fitness Blog www.astutefitness.com.au/blog to help use get our message out, Thanks, Daryl |
AuthorDaryl Maddern Archives
July 2019
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