If your considering going to the gym, or joining a fitness group, but you're still unsure if you should then here are 3 reasons why you should;

Exercising regularly keeps your body and mind active and most of all helps you feel more confident and happier with the release of Endorphins. By being more active and happier your less likely to binge on those junk foods the staff room has while your at work, and/or at home. Helping you to stay healthier and keep those excess calories from being stored in your fat cells.

We all live busy lives these days, one of the benefits of exercising reduces cortisol hormone levels in the body. Too much stress can lead to Anxiety and depression, Headaches, heart disease, memory, focus and concentration problems, digestion issues, trouble sleeping and weight gain. By taking part in regular exercise you'll help reduces the levels of the cortisol hormone and ultimately reduce the risks associated with it.

Great infographic comparing 5 Super foods to Regular foods, these will surprise you!  

To lose bodyfat you first need to work out your BMR and daily calorie intake which I discussed about earlier in another post. Once you've got your daily maintenance calories figured out, then the next step is to create a hypocaloric deficiency, generally take 15% from your total for example, if your daily maintenance is 2000kcal then simply multiply by .085 to get your new calorie needs.. in which case it would be 17000kcals if your daily maintenance was 2000kcal as mentioned before.  Then next step is your macros.. Which I'll discuss in the next blog post!... Make sure you follow me to be the first to read the post!..

Ever had that moment when you looked at your meal and it was chicken and rice again, and said to yourself "How many times do I have to eat this to achieve my goals?" Unless your looking to be competing in a physique/bikini bodybuilder competition or a high level sport athlete, then the good news is you don't need to have to be as strict with your meals. Studies have shown that by eating healthy foods and reaching your macros by doing so you don't need to take the rice n chicken road..

Put it this way if you have a high performance car that you was racing every weekend, you'd want to make sure that car had the high performance fuel, tyres, brakes etc... then again if you have a normal every day car, you probably wouldn't want to put tyres on for high performance or use the high performance fuel because it wouldn't really benefit you on getting to work faster in the morning. So why waste more money.  

Each and every recipe includes instructions on how to prepare and make the meals and as an added bonus they all include the macros and calories so you can add them to My Fitness Pal or any calorie tracker helping you to stay on track with your calorie goals!
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There is a ton of information online these days on calculating your daily calorie needs, and it confuses me too when I first started bodybuilding, but over the years I've managed to find out a simpler way to work out your calories that takes seconds too! 

Get your "true" bodyweight by measuring yourself first thing in the morning, the work out the lbs per kilos/stones for example to convert stones to pounds multiple the KG by 14 and if your looking to convert KG to lbs. then simply multiply by 2.2

Next lets say for example your a 200lb male simply multiply your weight in lbs. by 1.25 which would give us 250! 
Then multiply 200 by .035 which gives you 70!

Therefore your daily macros would be as follows:
Protein should be 250grams
Carbs should be 250grams
Fats should be 70g

As protein has 4kcal per gram this would account for a calorie intake of 1000kcal and so would carbs too as there the same ratio. Fats however have 9g per gram therefore the calorie intake for fats would be 630kcals giving you the grand total of calories being 2630kcal per day.

This would be sufficient for a person who trains 3-4 times a week with weights and is active during the day!

There's a lot of articles online and even personal trainers these days promote ways to burn fat fast, sound great right! But in all honest this is a myth.. You can't burn away fat cells like we are believed, the way you loose fat is by shrinking the fat cells within your body. Your body stores fat for energy, basically a human survival back up source incase you don't eat any food for days or weeks and with such every one has a set ration of fat cells within their body, which you can't change! This doesnt mean your meant to be overweight and fat.

You can lose excess "fat" in a multiple of ways, from a calorie deficit, by increasing your NEAT, cardio and weight lifting or by implementing all four. Obviously the more active you do with a calorie deficit the more weight you'll end up losing! ​

The BMR is everyone's individual internal body calorie requirements to survive for example your heart needs energy ( food ) to keep pumping the blood around your body. So this is important that you don't do what a lot of people do when they start a diet which is eat lettuce and lettuce and lettuce.. okay maybe soup too..  This is normally known as crash dieting, this isn't going to work! Granted people do say they've lost weight in the first few weeks, however sadly they've only lost water retention, muscle glucose and also muscle itself! Ultimately what happens is after you stopped dieting the weight flies back on faster than before and in some cases you end up weighing more than you did before you started, not ideally the best way to start right?

There are a few online calculators that will work out your BMR for you and also add the daily activity needs for example if your doing a physical job you'll need even more calories than your BMR.

A good simple BMR calculator to use is www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.html this will give you exactly the amount of caloires you need to stay at the weight your currently at.

The best way to start losing weight is to work out your daily calorie needs by using the calculator above, then simply subtract 500kcal from the total your given. Then the next step would be to work out your macros, which you can use with My Fitness Pal, ideally to start with set your macros to 40% protein 30% carbs and 30% fats within the settings and boom you now have a plan of action for what foods you can eat in a day that will help you lose fat.