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Archive for November, 2009

Why Try Yoga?

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Guest Article From Julie Winterton
L2 Coach At My Islington Studio

Don’t know if yoga is right for you? Want to know what all the fuss is about? Think yoga is just a load of stretching?

Then, think again.

Yoga can be a physically challenging non-impact form of exercise that contains a cardio workout, core strength work, as well as targeting specific areas to sculpt the body and achieve dramatic results.

Yoga is a complete form of exercise, working the body inside & out. It provides a work out for your internal organs, stimulating your digestion & immune system, offering health benefits unlike any other exercise program.

A lot of importance is placed on the use of the breath & breathing techniques in yoga. These provide the body with renewed energy, de-toxing the body, increasing stamina, enabling you to achieve more than you possibly thought.

Working the mind, body & the breath simultaneously boosts focus, energy levels & mood.
Some of the benefits students can expect are increased flexibility, muscle tone, weight loss, improved posture & general well-being.

Here are my 7 top reasons to practice yoga.

1. Posture – Our sedentary lifestyles contribute greatly to muscle weaknesses or imbalances in the body, creating poor posture. Abnormal flattening or curving in the spine commonly develops into common issues such as kyphosis & lordosis, and pain syndromes such as headaches, joint injury, muscle strain and disc problems. Re-learning optimal alignment in the body can relieve many pain syndromes, improve mood, relieve pressure on internal organs & body function. The asanas (poses) within a structured yoga practice work together

2. Weight management – Not only is the physical exercise itself a benefit to weight loss by burning calories, but the psychological benefits of the practice of yoga can reduce stress & lower cortisol levels; major factors in weight retention. The “mindfulness” that yoga promotes teaches us to control our mind, rather than the mind controlling us, helping us to deal with food cravings or emotional eating habit, such self-awareness also makes us more conscious of our bodies, and about what we put in it, how it feels after eating bad foods, and what the body needs nutritionally. Correcting postural issues through yoga can also affect where the body retains weight. As the posture is corrected it enables us to lose stubborn fat in key areas. Furthermore, asanas (poses) such as sarvangasana/ the shoulderstand can stimulate the thyroid gland. A sluggish, or underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism) is a major cause of weight gain.

3. Breath – Yoga teaches the individual to breathe more fully. Most people tend to breathe paradoxically or poorly. Clavicular breathing (the shoulders & collarbone are raised, and the stomach contracts on the inhalation) is shallow, and creates tension in the shoulder, neck and upper chest. The deeper breathing techniques in yoga promote relaxation, core engagement, increases lung capacity, triggers the body’s relaxation responses & can help lower blood pressure.

The deeper breathing techniques used in yoga also promote good posture. It is difficult to breathe fully when slumped over. However, when the shoulder blades are pulled back, and the spine erect, there is lightness in the abdominal area and we can breathe more deeply. Learning to breathe correctly can banish problems such as insomnia & depression.

4. Flexibility – Yoga helps increase flexibility and mobility, strengthening the body in a wide range of motion, stretching ligaments & lubricating joints. The sun salutes move the spine in various directions and promotes flexibility. As a muscle group tightens, this can pull the body out of alignment, creating weakness in opposing muscles, leaving us prone to injury & pain issues. Opening out the body allows the blood to flow freely, aiding the body self-reparation mechanisms, and encouraging blood flow to the body’s vital organs, and moving oxygenated blood to the body’s cells more efficiently.

5. Muscular & strength training – Yoga uses the whole body, activating all the key muscle groups. Yoga stimulates the muscles, strengthening and then stretching. Because yoga helps the blood & oxygen flow into the muscles, it flushes out the excess lactic acid which causes muscle soreness & stiffness. Holding poses increases the muscular endurance. Many of the movements & poses in yoga offer total body conditioning, and encourage the body to work effectively in different angles. Poses such as plank are taking the full body weight on just the hands & toes, and some of the key balances, such as crow/bakasana are performed on the hands alone.

6. Stress Relief – Yoga can reduce both the psychological & physiological effects of stress. By encouraging relaxation, yoga reduces raised cortisol (stress hormone) levels, lowers blood pressure & heart rate. It can also bolster the immune system which is negatively affected by stress, aid digestion, better sleep, reduce anxiety, depression, alleviate fatigue and insomnia, promoting a sense of general well-being & inner peace.

7. Cardiovascular conditioning – The sun salutes are the warm-up at the beginning of a yoga practice, they alone can be a cardio-vascular work out. Further benefits of yoga are its ability to lower blood pressure & resting heart rate, increased endurance & improve the uptake of oxygen during any form of exercise.

There are so many positive effects on both mind & body health with yoga, but these are some of the key benefits for me. Yoga is a total workout, promoting general health throughout the whole of the body. So maybe it’s time to rethink that yoga is not for you. Call your local yoga teacher now & book your first class.

Julie Winterton is a Level 2 Health Coach, Yoga Siromani & Kinetic Chain Assessment Specialist at the Dax Moy Personal Training Studios, Islington, London

London Personal Trainer Reveals The Hidden Sugar In Everyday Foods

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Being the author of a well-known diet program I get a lot of stick from people for some of the advice I give.

Especially when it comes down to asking people to avoid certain foods that they may be attached to. No, scratch that, ADDICTED to.

Chief among the areas for complaint are caffeine and sugar, two of the most highly addictive substances in the human diet and two which, if left unchecked can seriously impact upon your health too.

Today let’s look at sugar.

Do you have any idea at all about how much sugar there is hidden in ‘everyday’ items that you probably put in your shopping basket every time you go to the store?

Take a look and you’ll be shocked, I’m sure!

Look, sugar is crazy stuff. It’s messes with so more body functions than you’d ever believe and seriously compromises your health.

I’ll tell you more about this tomorrow, but for now share this with your friends and family and tell ‘em all to grab their own free copy of the elimination diet from up there at the top right of this page.

It’ll tell you exactly what to do about sugar in order to look, feel and perform better than you have in years.

Get to it!

dax signature

Dax Moy

London’s Leading Personal Trainer

and Fat Loss Expert

P.S – I’m not telling you NOT to eat fruit. Just be aware that if you’re eating a lot of the stuff you’re still consuming a lot of sugar in the form of fructose which may not help you lose the fat as fast as you’d like or make the serious improvements in your health that I know you want.

London Personal Trainer Reveals The 7 Rules For Gaining Fat Fast (Ignore Them At You Peril!)

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

So, you’ve decided to give up.

You’re fed up of all the diets that have promised you great results yet left you hungry, tired, irritable and weak.

You’re fed up of all the ‘wonder workouts’ that have promised you amazing strength, fitness and flexibility ‘in just minutes a day’ but that have left you feeling tired, sore, stiff and, truth be told, no firmer or less flabby than you were before.

But most of all, you’re fed up of all those fitness ‘experts’ out there who tell you how easy it is, how little time it takes and how amazing you’re going to look if you follow THEIR program (ONLY theirs, mind you, no-one else’s will even come near to what they’re offering).

So you’re quitting.

You’re giving up the diet and exercise ‘thing’ and have decided that you’ll just go with the flow and see what happens to your body when the experts aren’t poking their noses into your business and ramming their idea of healthy down your throat.

What a great idea!

No more ‘eat this’ or ‘don’t eat that’, no more ‘don’t forget your cardio’ or ‘weights is better’.

In fact, no more interference of any kind from the countless do-gooders who seem to think that it’s ok for them to advise, nag and bully you into following all kinds of fat loss and fitness advice… as long as it’s theirs.

Good on you!

But before you take the quitters route that most people take, doesn’t it make sense to quit in the right way?

Sure it does!

There’s a science to quitting too y’know and I’m just the person to share it with you : )

So here’s the deal. If you want to quit and quit fast, if you want to pack on pound after pound of soft, warm, figure-blurring bodyfat then you’ve got to have a strategy.

You’ve got to have a plan.

MY plan is easy, straightforward and six-year-old-simple to follow and consists of just seven rules that, if you follow them, will guarantee you the maximum fat gain in the shortest time frame.

It consists of just 7 rules

Rule one: Only eat processed foods

If you’re truly serious about packing on some serious fat-pounds, you’ll follow this rule faithfully.

Without a doubt, processed foods are the No.1 friend to fat due to their denatured, sugar-loaded and mostly synthetic nature.

With most of the vitamins and minerals removed from processed foods, the highly calorific and mostly indigestible remain, creating a massive storehouse of both calories and toxins for you to bury deep within your already overloaded fatty tissues.

Better still, the toxic nature of most processed foods mean that you’ll gain not only fat but a whole lot of subcutaneous water too as your body tries to ‘dilute’ the impact of all the extra toxins you’re holding onto, meaning that you’ll put on extra scale weight and look soft and squidgy into the bargain.

Great stuff!


Rule two: Cram in as many starchy carbs as you can

Starchy carbs eaten in isolation or, better yet, with sugary carbs are an absolutely fantastic way to accelerate the battle of the bulge and gain both fat and body weight at a more rapid pace.

Eating carbohydrates in isolation allows your hormones to engage in a free-running form of guerrilla warfare where insulin levels raise through the roof and, in doing so, command your body to store fat.

A word of warning though; whatever you do, don’t mix your starches with fats or proteins. This reduces both the amount and the effect of all that lovely insulin and will definitely scupper your chances at serious fat gain.

Rule Three: Get to bed as late as you can

If rapid fat gain is your greatest desire, then make sure that you get to bed as late as you possibly can, with the ideal scenario being that you stay up so late every night that you fall asleep on the sofa.

Doing This will ensure a steady supply of the stress hormone cortisol into your bloodstream to help you break down all that energy-consuming lean muscle tissue that’s slowing down your fat gain.

Just don’t ruin the effect by getting to bed by 10:30 or you’ll find that the cortisol levels drop far too low to cannibalise your muscle and you may even find that you lose all your precious fat!

Rule four: Steer clear of water

Drink too much water and you’ll not only do away with your body’s false food cravings (meaning that you won’t eat unnecessarily), but you’ll also create a freer flowing route for the digestion of the foods you’ve eaten.

Obviously, this is a bad thing as it means you won’t keep undigested foods in your stomach long enough for them to go putrid and add to the overall toxic load on your system.

Remember, anything that speeds up your metabolism is bad!

Instead, use coffee, tea and soda to ‘mix up’ your metabolism and increase toxicity.

Rule five: Don’t forget the alcohol!

Alcohol is just about as pure a sugar source as you can get and is absolutely jam-packed with calories that contribute nothing to the function of your body.

Better still, alcohol adds to your toxic load meaning that you’ll hold a large amount of water too!


Rule Six Use the microwave for all of your cooking

Microwave’s are great!

During the heating process they vibrate the molecules of your food so fast that they actually change their structure, meaning that when you eat nuked food, your body has no idea about how to cope with them, let alone extract nutrition from them.

This is fantastic for your fat gain quest because you’ll be adding to your toxic load AND creating a surplus of non-nutritional calories, meaning that you’ll get hungry again very soon after eating and have another opportunity to stock up on calories.

Rule Seven: Avoid all unnecessary movement

There’s no getting away from it, movement of any kind costs you valuable calorie-energy and robs you of the vital fat building stores that’ll be necessary for your quest.

Stay as still as you can to conserve as much energy as possible and commit to using as many labour-saving devices as you can find. Things like remote controls, stair lifts, escalators etc all serve a valuable role in the creation of your fat stores, so use them.

If you are forced to move, then whatever you do, don’t engage in any form of activity that might lead to an increase in strength or muscle mass as this’ll speed up your metabolism and rob you of calories. Instead, engage in steady-state, slow aerobic activities as these are energy efficient and have the added benefit of increasing cortisol and, in doing so, breaking down that calorie-robbing muscle tissue.

So that’s it!

Your seven rules that, if followed, will absolutely guarantee that you pack on fat faster than you’d ever believe possible and allow you to thumb your nose and poke your tongue out at every personal trainer or diet guru who ever promised you a rapid result from following their plans.

Follow just one or two of them for even a short time and you’ll see a rapid softening of the waistline and an appreciable gain in scale-weight. Follow them all and you’ll gain so much weight that you’ll be stunned by the reflection staring back at you within a month.

Give it a go!

Note: If you’re one of those wierdo’s who feel that you’d like to take the extreme approach of actually losing bodyfat then just reverse the rules above to see equally rapid fat loss… I don’t know why you’d want to though : )

dax signature

Dax Moy
www.mylondonpersonaltrainer.com

P.S – While you’re here, grab yourself a FREE copy of my Elimination Diet in that box up there on the right : )

Can This Personal Trainer Help London Lose 1 MILLION Pounds Of Fat In 30 Days…. BEFORE Christmas?!

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

“One MILLION Pounds!”

Ok, here’s the deal.

We’re now officially 59 days out from the end of the year.

59 days til New Year when, according to tradition, we all panic about the state of our relationships, our businesses, our lives and, of course, our health.

At that time, after engorging ourselves with food, wine and sweets galore we ‘try’ to put ourselves on the straight and narrow path by going through all the usual ‘New Year, New You’ malarky and hope against hope that this year things will be different and that we’ll get to look, feel and perform at our our best.

But, well, it’s a long-shot, right?

Rather, it is normally : )

But this year’s going to be different!

This year I’m going to take those who are serious about looking and feeling great BEFORE Christmas and New Year through 30 days of cleaning up their diets, dropping weight, melting fat and getting into great shape… for FREE!

Starting next Monday, November 9th I’m going to lead THOUSANDS of Londoners through my new improved Elimination Diet program on a 30 day test drive of this amazing dietary system.

Remember, there’s no calorie counting, no weighing and measuring foods and none of those ridiculous diet rules that tell you that there’s no difference chocolate cake and broccoli as long as you keep to the ‘points’ system they lay down.

This is simple, straight-forward and seriously effective fat-burning at its best without the ridiculous rules that most diets put you through.

Follow the program for just 30 days and I guarantee you’ll be AT LEAST a clothing size smaller than you are right now though, to be honest, you’ll probably lose a good bit more than that.

This means, of course, that when it’s time for the Christmas party ‘little black dress’ season to start you’ll already be in great shape, meaning that you can afford to let your hair down, indulge and have a little of what you fancy during the holiday season and still start 2010 looking amazing.

So, how’s this sounding?

If it sounds good then all you have to do is put your name in that box up there to the right and you’ll be at the front of the line for the new version of the diet when I release it later this week (you’ll get a copy of the existing version of the diet today too).

Remember, this is all 100% FREE.

You don’t have to pay a penny for the full 30 days of support you’ll be getting. It’s my Christmas present to you : )

But I do want to ask you a favour…

I want to get as many Londoners as possible to get onboard my Great London Diet Experiment so that they can achieve something amazing this year. In order to do that I need you to help me spread the word : )

If you could email, tweet, poke and nudge as many people as you can to come and collect their copy of the diet that would help me immensely. See, I want to see if I can help London lose at least 1000,000lbs of fat before Christmas.

By my reckoning, that’d be 100,000 people losing just 10lbs each to meet that goal.

This is easily do-able.

I’ve already had 42,000 people use the Elimination diet so far and I did that with my own efforts. With your help this’ll be easy : )

Look, I know that this may sound like a crazy goal. 1 million pounds of fat loss in 30 days is, by anyone’s standards, a crazy goal to aim for but hey, that’s the kinda guy I am : )

I figure that if you’re going to have a goal, have a big one, right?

The way I see it this is win/win.

I get to achieve my BIG goal of helping London to achieve something special and you get to achieve something special. What’s not to like? : )

Sure, I know that it’s traditional to leave the dietary challenges til the New Year but this idea of getting into great shape BEFORE the Christmas festivities begin makes much more sense, don’t you think?

Use my free program for 30 days and you’ll still be able to enjoy the holiday season and all it has to offer, only you’ll be thinner, firmer and lighter than you are right now and look absolutely amazing at all those parties you’ll be going to.

So, wanna play?

If you do, just tap your details into the box up there on the right and you’re in!

Help me get to London to lose 1000,000 and this’ll be an amazing Christmas indeed.

C’mon then, get to it! : )

dax signature

Dax Moy
London’s Leading Fat Loss Expert

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