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Enjoy the holidays while staying on track with a few handy tips and tricks. The holiday season is a joyful time of the year, it's full of festivities, celebrations with loved ones, and lots of delicious food. Being able to indulge in good food and some extra treats is a given during the season, but it's also important to maintain a balanced approach to eating that supports your overall health. You shouldn't fear certain foods, all food can be enjoyed in moderation, especially

Are you someone who struggles to drink enough water throughout the day? Keep reading to find some hydration hacks to help boost your water intake. Staying hydrated throughout the day is vital for our overall health as water plays a key role in many bodily functions. Water helps bring nutrients to the cells, gets rid of waste products, protects and lubricates joints and organs, and helps maintain body temperature. We lose water throughout the day via breathing, sweating, and u

Balancing a busy life and work schedule while also working toward your health and fitness goals can prove to be a challenging endeavour. Fuelling your body with nutrient-dense foods that support your fitness goals is one of the most important aspects, good nutrition will not only fuel your workouts but also promote recovery and help build muscle. Finding time to cook healthy meals each day can often feel overwhelming and time-consuming, however, this is where meal prep comes

Have a holiday planned soon? Let's talk through some tips for staying active while travelling and on holidays. As we start to approach the warmer months and head toward the end of the year, the travel season is in full swing. Staying active while away from home doesn't have to be complicated, there are many ways to keep moving and feel great during your travels. If you are going away anytime soon, you may want to start thinking of ways you can stay active while still enjoying

How do you know if you are on the right track if you don't track your progress in some way? Understanding how to measure your progress helps you assess whether you are making improvements or have possibly hit a plateau in your health and fitness journey, it also helps to keep motivation levels high. If you don't measure progress in any way, you won't know if you are doing the right things to get you to your health and fitness goals. There are many different ways to measure pr

The "I can't" attitude could be holding you back from achieving your health and fitness goals. Have you ever caught yourself being a negative Nancy and constantly starting sentences with "I can't" when it comes to your health and fitness? "I can't stick to a diet" or "I can't find the time to exercise", are thoughts that can easily become self-fulfilling prophecies if we let them. Reframing these challenges with an "I can" mindset may be the key to helping you overcome these

Understanding the nutrition panel on packaged food can be a little confusing, let's break it down together... Understanding food labels can be an extremely helpful tool on your fitness journey, but also in regards to your overall health. By understanding how to read nutrition labels, we can ensure we are making informed choices when it comes to the food we eat. If you are currently flexible-dieting, reading nutrition labels will help you determine the caloric and macronutrien

So you want to lose weight and are in a calorie deficit. Here’s what you can expect… I’m just going to get straight to the point with this one… If you are truly in a deficit, you are going to be hungry at some point in time. This is something you need to accept if you want to lose weight. If you are hungry, chances are your deficit is working. Being hungry is a part of the process. Your body is using more energy than it is taking, therefore, you are in a successful deficit. T

Have You Ever Wondered What to Bring to the Gym? Let’s talk about some essentials to take to the gym for each workout, and some other handy items to consider keeping in your gym bag… For some this may seem like a pretty obvious question. However, if you are new to the gym, it is nice to feel prepared on your first visit and I hope to give you some guidance in regards to that. Before signing up for a new gym, you want to try and check it out beforehand. It is always a smart id

Have you ever seen people in the gym wearing lifting straps or a weightlifting belt and wondered if they make a big difference to their training? Let’s talk about some different accessory options and what they are designed for…. If you are interested in powerlifting and have been exposed to that style of training, you would have likely seen people using accessory equipment when lifting. If you are just beginning your gym journey, you may not have encountered these pieces of e

Mind-muscle connection has seen a bit of hype recently and rightly so! Let’s talk about what it is, how you can apply it to your training, and the benefits! Your mind-muscle connection relates to your ability to focus on actually feeling each rep of an exercise in the correct target muscles. It is a psychological aspect of training that can help ensure you are recruiting the correct muscles when you train. They say to make every rep count! And this is true! We should be aimin

You may have seen an increase in awareness around our daily steps and general movement, but let’s increase our knowledge around the benefits… Getting your body moving in some way, shape or form daily is so important! We see so many health benefits from just ensuring we are active on a daily basis. So many people these days work office jobs - This means the majority of people in these jobs are sedentary, and do not do much movement outside of work. So what exactly is the defin

You may have heard that you need to be progressively overloading in order to make progress in the gym, but what exactly does that mean? Progressive overload put simply, means to gradually increase the intensity or difficulty of your strength training over time. This promotes the development of muscle mass. This is due to the fact that our body needs to adapt and get stronger in order to keep up with the increased load and demand. The progressive overload method helps to ensur

Are you getting enough sleep at night? Do you actually know the side effects of little sleep and how this can affect your training performance? We all know that we need sleep each night in order to function properly. But how much sleep should we actually be getting per night? And why is sleep really that important? How much sleep do we need? Sleep is one of the most vital factors in our recovery from training. It is recommended that adults sleep between 7-9 hours each night,

Which order is more optimal for your goals? Let's discuss... A common question I get from clients is “Should I do cardio before or after weights?” Now there is no simple answer to this question. The more optimal combination is very dependent on your current goals . So let’s dive into this a little deeper… If your current goals are strength-focused then ideally you want to do cardio after your weights session, or alternatively split your cardio into a completely different sess

Do you know the difference between muscle soreness and pain? Don't get them confused. In our last article, we spoke about muscle soreness. If you have not read my post on “Is soreness an indication of a good workout?” Then I would highly recommend it! Continuing on from this, we are going to explore the difference between muscle soreness and pain, and how pain can be a sign of injury. It is important to note the difference between muscle soreness and pain, as they are two ver

We all get sore from time to time when training, but does soreness actually indicate a good workout? Being sore after working out is totally normal and we have all likely experienced this before. As a beginner lifter, you are more likely to be sore on and off after your workouts for some weeks, until your body adapts to the style and intensity of the training you are doing. However, being sore after every single workout after you’ve passed the newbie lifter phase is not a sig

What to do when the gym is busy and your go-to equipment is taken. Depending on the time of day that you train, a super busy gym will be more of an issue for some of us than others. If you train during peak times, e.g. 5 am-7 am or 5 pm-7 pm, you would have most likely experienced getting to the gym, looking around, and thinking “Great everything I need is taken”. So what now? Do you just turn around, walk out of the gym, and leave?? NOOOOOO!! You have just made an effort to

We all deserve to love the body we are in both inside and out... As we only get one! Body image has become an increasing topic of interest since the days of social media. However, even our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on were exposed to the concept of Body image and how this can have such a huge impact on our mental health. Many tend to admire those who love their bodies both inside and out, and wonder how people can have such a positive Body image. The t

We have all been there. Yes, even those crazy fit and muscular guys and girls in the gym, we all started somewhere. I can assure you, no one came into this world lifting weights straight out of the womb. Just like when we are young, we need to learn and acquire skills. Not everything comes to us naturally, we have to wire up our brains to complete certain tasks in certain ways. Just like taking our very first steps, heading into the gym for the first time can be scary. The di