Craig Ingham Fitness

Is it actually protein???

Just because something says protein on the label doesn’t mean it’s suddenly a high-protein food.

This Babybel version has just 0.2g more protein than the light version and for more calories.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means the word “protein” on the front is just marketing.

Check the actual nutrition, don’t just trust the front of the packet.

This is pretty much what my food shop looks like most weeks.

Nothing fancy. No magic foods or perfect trolley. Just stuff we like eating that makes it easier for me to eat well through the week.

I try to make sure I’ve always got plenty of protein options, some easy carbs to build meals around, fruit and veg we’ll actually eat, and a few convenient things for the days when everything’s a bit hectic.

And yeah, there are snacks, sauces and other stuff in there too because I actually want to enjoy what I eat.

I think people make eating way more complicated than it needs to be.

A big part of it is just making sure there’s decent food in the house.

Because when I’m busy or starving, I don’t really want to be making loads of decisions about what I should eat. I want to be able to open the fridge or cupboard and throw something together pretty easily.

It’s not about having a perfect diet.

It’s just making the choices you want to make a little bit easier.

Start thinking of calories as a budget rather than labelling foods as “good” or “bad”.

Some foods are simply more expensive than others for what you get from them in fullness, protein and nutritional value.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have them.

Sometimes they are worth the spend.

The skill is learning where you want to spend your calorie budget while still enjoying food and making progress.

Tracking calories isn’t automatically obsessive.

For a lot of people, it’s simply a way of understanding what they’re eating and making more informed decisions.

Just like budgeting and tracking your spending, it gives you information you can use to improve.

You can make progress without tracking. But if you are struggling to understand why progress isn’t happening, having some data makes things a lot easier.

If your workouts are mostly based on whatever machines are free or whatever you feel like doing that day, this is potentially your aren’t seeing any progress.

Rather than starting with individual exercises, think about the main ways your body needs to move across the week and structure your sessions around these movement patterns.

This will help you build a much more balanced program, avoid overloading one area while neglecting another, and make it much easier to see whether your training actually covers your whole body.

A simple 2-day full body routine could be structured like this:

Workout 1
Squat - goblet squat / back squat / leg press
Horizontal Push - DB bench press / BB bench press / Push Ups
Horizontal Pull - cable row / chest supported row / inverted row
Carry - farmers carry / suitcase carry / front rack carry
Rotation - cable rotation / Russian twist / land mine rotation

Workout 2
Hinge - Romanian deadlift / deadlift / hip thrust
Lunge - reverse lunge / split squat / step up
Vertical Push - DB shoulder press / BB overhead press / machine shoulder press
Vertical Pull - Pull ups / lat pulldown / assisted pull ups
Anti Rotation - plank shoulder taps / pallof press / cable anti rotation walkout

Pick one exercise from each movement pattern that matches your ability, equipment and goals then focus on progressing it over time.

Across the two sessions you’ve trained your whole body, covered all the movement patterns and now have a clear structure to follow.

For a lot of people, especially if time is tight, two well planned sessions of less than an hour will be much more productive than 4 or 5 random workouts.

The goal isn’t to make training complicated.

It’s to make sure the time you do have in the gym is actually being used well.

Most people wouldn’t try to manage their money without knowing what anything costs.

But that’s still what a lot of people do with calories.

You don’t need to track forever, but understanding what you’re actually eating and how much foods “cost” can take a lot of the guesswork out of fat loss.