Seb Robinson PT

“It’s the weekend, it’s fine”

Have you ever used this a way to justify overeating and drinking on the weekend?

This is completely cool if its GENUINELY what you want to do after a long week.

But is it really what you want if you know you’re going to regret it on Monday morning?

After a stressful week at work, maybe what you truly want is genuine connection with your peoples

Escape from draining Zoom meetings

Constant demands from your colleagues

Surface level office small talk

Or just some you time away from the kids.

For most of us, food and drink is going to be a part of that connection with friends, family and other halves

But it doesn’t need to become the main focus of the occasion

Or about how much food and drink you can get down you.

Instead of the whole bottle of wine and 3 courses when you’re eating out

Would you enjoy the evening any less with a couple of glasses, a starter and a main

Along with some sick conversation and laughs?

It takes a slight change in mindset, but if its something you can get your head around

You’ll be approach Monday morning more with a feeling of personal gratification than guilt.

Do you find that social occasions on the weekend are your downfall?

Let me know down in the comments!

If you’ve seen fast drops in weight on the scale in a short space of time

You can be pretty much certain that it isn’t body fat that you’ve lost

This is usually the case when using unsustainable dieting methods

Ie juice fasts, low calorie diets such as 1200 cals a day (which NOBODY should be on), the Keto approach etc etc

The drop of weight on the scales is likely more so from the reduced volume of food in the gut

Less water retention due consuming less carbs

And if you’re working out loads, you’ll see the weight drop by losing water through sweat during your workouts!

This drop in weight does not automatically = reduction in bodyfat

If your goal is fat loss, slower drops in the scale are more indicative that you’re on the right track

And you can be more sure you’re losing body fat, whilst retaining/building your muscle tone (which is also super important - but thats a post for another day!)

At the same time

If you’ve seen a quick increase in the scales overnight

(Which might be the case if you’ve enjoyed yourself over this bank holiday weekend!)

Don’t panic, because it’s extremely unlikely that its body fat that you’ve gained

You may just have more food in your stomach that hasn’t digested yet

Or if you’ve had a couple of takeaways or eaten out more, your salt intake has probably gone up

Meaning that your body will hold onto more water

Both of which will show up on the scales, and not tell the true picture of what’s going on

In this case, you just need to get right back on track and I promise you things will level themselves out!

If you’ve found this post helpful, make sure to share it with a friend or family member that may need to hear this!

I don’t know who needs to hear this

But if you’ve had one day where you’ve gone over your calorie target

You haven’t failed

And you don’t need to “start again”

If you’ve gone 200, 300, 400 or even 500 calories over your target on one particular day because Deborah from accounts bought in some M&S brownies for her birthday

You’re still going to be in a calorie deficit overall for that week

Technically speaking, it takes 3500 calories ABOVE your maintenance calories to gain just 1lb of body fat 🤯

So if you’re consuming 2000 calories a day, you’d need to have consumed 5500 calories before you gain any body fat

And on top of that, the calories in vs calories out equation doesn’t run on a 24 hour clock

Your body composition isn’t decided by what you do on one day, but is a representation of what you do over an extended duration of time!

So stop worrying when you have that day where you go off track

Draw the line, take back control, and get back to it at the next opportunity

SHARE this post with a friend that might need to hear this, and give it SAVE as a reminder the next time you feel down about going over your calories

A question that I get asked a lot when setting up new clients is whether or not they’re going to get a meal plan as part of the programme

And when I explain that it’s not how I operate, it’s usually met with a “oh, I thought this was how it worked”

See I could give you a meal plan, and if you stuck to it you’d more than likely see results from it

But the problem is you’d learn sweet FA from it

Getting a meal plan to follow is like using a Sat Nav to reach your destination

You’d get there, but you don’t take note of the surroundings and landmarks

So when you try to get to that same destination without the sat nav, you just end up lost

Same thing with your diet and nutrition, as soon as your done with your meal plan and you try to go it alone

You end up lost because all you’ve learnt is how to eat from limited amount of foods that’s probably just been dictated to you

What you need is to be put in the drivers seat and be empowered to make your own choices around food

Along with the right education, and support along the way to guide you down the right path

Not told to just eat chicken breast, brown rice and broccoli and deal with it

The aim should be to learn and fully understand your nutrition, so that when you eventually go it alone, you’re confident in your choices and maintaining your results

And a big part of this comes from the choices you make coming directly from yourself

So the next time an influencer tries to palm you off with their latest meal plan, RUN A MILE.... or make them run it (No Chris Brown)🏃‍♂️

For all coaching enquiries, head to the link in my bio or you can DM me!

If you are heading to the gym or working out this morning

Do it because you’re working towards a goal and this is just another session that brings you one step closer to achieving it

Do it because you want to kick off your Saturday feeling good

Because it feels good to feel good 🤙🏾

If you’re anything like me, you’ll still be heading out to a restaurant today even though the weather is s**t because the rain can’t kill the vibe!

Enjoy that meal out/takeaway with your friends/family/partner without feeling guilty or that you’re going to have to “burn it off on Monday”

Because thats a one way ticket to a poor relationship with exercise and food and just sucks the enjoyment out of either!

Enjoy your weekend peeps!

✌🏾

Have you ever found yourself thinking this?

You might be confused or feel thats something is up with your body

But I can assure you that in 99% of cases, you’re FINE!

At the end of the day, it all comes down to energy balance, calories in vs calories out

Here’s a few points to think about and why you could actually be consuming more than you think!

▪️Are you under eating 5 days of the week and then over eating on the other 2 days (probably the weekend)?

It might not seem l like it, but those 2 days of indulging on the weekend are enough to take you out of a calorie deficit and put you into a surplus which = weight gain!

I’d recommend having a calorie target for the week rather than individual days, that way if you know you’re going to eat more on the weekend, you can plan ahead for it and maybe reduce your intake on a couple of days in the week to facilitate consuming more food over the weekend!

▪️Or you might be on an extremely low calorie diet that is completely unsustainable

For the record NOBODY should be on a 800 calorie diet, or even 1200 calories for that matter!

These diets are super restrictive and if you’re consuming 1200 calories 4 days a week and 3000 the other 3 days because you’re missing your favourite foods, thats going to equal one thing - weight gain!

You can probably eat more than you think you can, and still drop body fat! That way, you’re going to stick with it longer, feel less need to binge and have a healthier relationship with food! If you’re unsure about how to work out your calories - reach out to a coach for assistance!

▪️Are you tracking your food using teaspoons/tablespoons/ cups?

These measurements are subjective! One persons tablespoon could be a levelled spoon while another could be a heaped!

If we use peanut butter as an example, there could be as much as a 150 calorie swing in either direction! Use weight as a measurement rather than volume as this takes the subjectivity out of it!

Do any of these resonate with you? Let me know in the comments!

Head to the link in my bio for coaching enquiries or DM me the word “START”

“It’s been 3 weeks since I’ve seen the scales move, I need to change something”

I’ll start off by saying that not seeing the scales go down for for 3,4, or even 5 weeks does not mean you are in a plateau

If you’ve not seen the scale go down but you’ve seen a drop in your measurements, you’re not in a plateau

If you haven’t seen the scale go down but you’ve noticed a difference in your progress photos, you most definitely are NOT in a plateau.

This is why its so important to have alternative ways to measure your success and as my clients have come to realise, the scales do not paint the whole picture

In fact some of them do not even use the scales, and have found this to be very freeing whilst still enjoying their progress and not having their success tied to an arbitrary number!

(Side note; if you’ve not seen progress in any of these areas, before making changes, a good place to start is to ask yourself if you’ve genuinely been consistent for AT LEAST 3 weeks)

If this post has helped, make sure you give it a SAVE the next time you tell yourself you’ve hit a plateau and SHARE it with a friend who may need to hear this!

PS - Is it just me that struggles to spell plateau properly first time round? 😂

So I was talking to a member of my gym earlier this week

And she was asking me what cardio machines I’d recommend her to use for a good workout, and how I train my clients to get the progress she’d noticed they’d made

I asked her what her goals were (to drop some weight and tone up), so I recommended that she tried resistance training

To which she said “Oh no, I’m not at the level yet, lifting weights is too advanced for me”

And that response got me thinking, just how many people sheer away from picking up weights because they feel they’re “not at that level yet”?

I’ll start off by saying that you absolutely do not need to be “advanced” to pick up some weights and resistance train

And secondly, if your goal is anything like this particular gym members, dropping some body fat and toning up, then lifting weights and resistance training is going to be an absolutely essential part of your efforts to achieve your goal

If you are just starting off with resistance training in the gym (or at home), you don’t have to be doing anything fancy, in fact performing the basic movements such as your squats, leg press, chest press/push ups, shoulder press, seated rows are going to be ALL you need to get the results that you want

If you are just starting off, I’d recommend going into the gym with a plan of what exercises you are going to do, so you have an idea of how your session will flow

And you don’t need to go in there and have the “perfect” routine from the off

You could start by just committing to doing 2-3 exercises, get competent at them and then build from there!

And if you’re unsure on how to build out a structured training program, or a little unsure on your form, reach out to a coach you feel you trust to get that additional support and guidance!

Give this post a save as a reminder for the next time you tell yourself that you’re not at the right level to resistance train!

Do you place all of your efforts to burning fat into that hour you have dedicated towards working out?

To then get frustrated that you feel as though your efforts are not getting you anywhere nearer towards your goals?

How active you are during the rest of your day plays a bigger part in dropping fat then what you do in that one hour of your workout!

Now I’m not saying that you need to do multiple workouts during the day, because this would be counter productive

But getting more movement in during the day is going to have a greater impact on losing weight, then your actual time spent working out. This is also known as your NEAT (non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), which accounts for the calories you burn from activities that do not count as planned exercise

Ie - Going for a walk and getting your steps in, tidying around the house, using the stairs instead of the escalator in the supermarket

The amount of calories burnt during a workout only accounts to up to 5% of calories burnt in a day vs up 15-20% burnt through upping your NEAT! 🤯

So if you’re working out consistently, but then spend the rest of your days sat behind a desk at home/in the office - you can quickly see that you might not be expending anywhere near as much energy as you may think you are!

If you struggle to get your steps in, start by planning what gaps you may have in your day to get a little walk in.

It might be 10-15 mins on your lunch break round the block, it might be that you get up half an hour earlier to get 15-20 mins in before work, it might be that you get a little walk in after work!

Or when you’re on that zoom meeting for work (where no-one seems to put their cameras on) stand up and pace around the room!

These efforts sound small, but they really do compound over time and will have a MUCH bigger impact on your efforts to lose weight compared to your time spent working out!

Use your time working out to get stronger and fitter, and your activity throughout the day to drop body fat!