It’s what the world is made of, it’s what we’re made of and it’s going be the deciding factor in whether we succeed or fail in our health and fitness goals.

What am I talking about?

Energy, pure and simple energy.

Doing what I do, I hear all the excuses in the world for why people “just aren’t doing it” most of the room put up their hands.

When we look closer at what is going on, it all boils down to one thing - energy.

“Oh, Im so tired after a day at work, my job is so exhausting, I just want to collapse in front of the TV when I get in” Whats the issue? Energy.

“Im rubbish in the mornings. I press snooze for an hour and then have to rush to get ready. I need a coffee firstnthing in the morning but I do not have time for breakfast.” The issue - Energy.

“It gets to four in the afternoon and I need chocolate!” What do you really need? Energy.

By not treating the body right, but not feeding it with the right fuel or by draining it of it’s very last drip of energy, we end up running on empty. We rarely take the time to refuel, to give ourselves an MOT. We treat our bodies and minds worse than we treat our cars. We know the effect it has on a car when you try and run it on empty, yet we do this to ourselves on a regular basis.

This week I had no energy for most of the week, well that’s what it felt like anyway. I have no one to blame for that but myself. Luckily I was in a position that I had very little to do and in fact I could take some rest. Had I been at home, living my normal life I would have seriously struggled.

That was the whole point, I had used up my energy and it was time to conserve it. The body knew intuitively what I needed and when I gave it the space, that’s exactly what it did, took the opportunity to recharge the batteries.

That was the actual results of my detox, I realised this as it came to my final days. It wasn’t about the body composition analysis said although I was pleased with my results. It was about how I felt afterwards and what was going to happen from here.

Looking at my results at first I was surprised and a little disappointed. Did I come out fitter? No. Not in the sense we would usually regard fitter. My resting heart rate was up slightly, as was my blood pressure (these were very low when I started though). Did I lose immense amounts of body fat? No only about a percent.

Did I get what my blood needed? Yes absolutely. For me, I did not really need to get fitter or leaner. I needed to relax and recharge and when I gave my body the chance to do it’s stuff, it intuitively knew what to do.

It needed me to stop “doing” and enjoy “being” for a while.

It took me a while to get this and it was in this process of “being” that I was able to rebuild my energy. I did this through yoga and meditation, breathing practise, spending time in nature, getting some amazing treatments but more importantly taking time out. Out of my busy body and out of my busy mind.

Over here in India they refer to this energy as “Prana” or life force and it is everywhere, both within us and outside us. Everything is about maintaining our prana and we can do this by leading a simple disciplined life or just by putting in small rituals to each day that help replace our lost energy.

I think most of us are guilty of using up our vital energy with all the other things in life that we see as important. Or wasting it with things like TV which we do not realise are still robbing us of our energy.

So many of the people I coach easily solve their issues through something simple like getting to bed earlier, having an evening routine that involves sitting down at a table to eat slowly and mindfully having bedtime rituals like a bath and a good book, instead of TV plus a bottle of wine and all the nibbles that go with it.

Or simply walking or cycling to work, instead of more rushing around to get to the gym after work. Or getting up when the alarm goes off and having a good start to the day. Or getting out of the office at lunchtime and actually taking a break.

Whatever it is we need to make sure we are regularly paying into the energy bank instead of just withdrawing all the time.

Then just maybe we will have enough left to do the things we really want to do.

If you’ve been on one of our Fit Farms weeks, you will know that we often refer to it as the “kickstart” to a healthier lifestyle, and that I talk about the fact that the first part of the change process can be a bit “uncomfortable”.

You may recall some of that discomfort, but by the end of the week you realised that it was a necessary part of the process, and that it’s just your comfy “old slippers” have been taken away.

I’m experiencing that for myself again this week. I decided the first week of my adventure, I needed a kickstart, a controlled environment where all my usual comforts were taken away. Where I couldn’t just slip into my old habit of “pleasure-seeking”, as a reward for working hard. Yes, I do these things too!

I was also intrigued about whether strict detoxes actually work, and how they approached this in the East. I’m in a Wellness Retreat, doing their detox programme, and I have been introduced to some pretty uncomfortable new slippers, in the shape of juice fasting and coffee enemas.

Now those seasoned Fit Farm people will know that the key to success, where you actually change behaviours, just lies in wearing
in the new slippers. There’s no quick fix, because there is no magic food or exercise that you can do that will actually change your habits. Not in a week.

So you might say I’m getting a taste of my own medicine here, but I wanted to try something different.

There are three zones we can be in at any one time:

1. Our comfort zone, where we feel at ease, where everything is familiar and therefore feels nice and comfy.

2. Our stretch zone, where we are being challenged, it is requiring something new of us, we are growing and evolving and it can feel quite exhilarating, but not as comfortable at first.

3. Our stress, or panic zone. This is when we are way out of our comfort zone, we are scared, anxious and our body goes into “fight-or-flight”, thinking we are in danger physically and therefore producing the stress response.

You can probably guess which zone is the ideal for most of the time. Stretch. We literally need to “stretch” ourselves on a regular basis, then what happens is that we are more resilient to things which come along that throw us into the stress response (which if triggered on a regular basis makes us fat and tired).

So what happened with me recently, which I know is common is a lot of people, is that I spent too much time in the stress zone, that in order to balance things out, I had to spend the rest of the time in the comfort zone. This meant I was never in “stretch”, which can lead to you being dissatisfied, fatigued, and stagnant.

We sometimes have to bite the bullet, make a decision and take the leap, going through a bit of discomfort in order to make positive changes. Eventually you’ve got to led go of those comfy old slippers and do something different. Only then do we start to increase our “stress threshold”, our ability to deal with stress.

I realise this isn’t going to be an easy ride, but I have faith that what will come out of it will benefit me, and others. This is “delayed gratification”, not the “quick fix”, and if you like you can follow my journey on here, as I’ll be sharing all of what I’m learning along the way.

For now, I’ll leave you with a thought for the day:

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone”.
Neale Walsh

So here I am in beautiful Goa on an adventure to discover how the East approaches health and wellbeing, in particular, how they manage stress and stay so calm and happy.

I must admit that, although I am fairly fit and healthy in many ways, a peaceful mind has still eluded me. Recently, I became exhausted, adrenal fatigue they told me, which would also explain why I gained a stone in weight when i had changed nothing.

My diet was healthy, and I did more exercise in a day than most people did in a week. It just didn’t seem to make sense. Ok, I knew a little about the cortisol connection to weight gain, however, it is something hadn’t experienced first hand.

As I started to study more about this stress response, and research the people who had come on Fit Farms, it became more and more evident that the body’s biochemical reactions to our lifestyles was a huge factor in many weight problems.

Most of the men and women I speak to with weight issues, it’s not as simple as that they just started eating more, or stopped exercising. It’s a much more complex issue, and the weight is just a symptom of something being out of balance. This may be a lifestyle factor, a demanding job, or one the road all the time. It may be an emotional issue, we are dissatisfied with our lives, and as we have been brought up to reward with food, we are using food to give us pleasure. It may be the type of food itself that is causing the problem, as so many people rely on stimulants, most notably sugar to get them through the day.

Stress and other factors throw the body out of balance. This now seems to have reached epidemic proportions in Westrn society.

Through my own experiences, being let down and disillusioned by Western medicine, I have over the years looked outside of the norm for the answers. I healed my fractured spine with The Alexander Technique, and I believe that our health is in our own hands.

This time I wanted to find a cure, an antidote for stress, and what better way to learn that discovering it for yourself.

I had a feeling that yoga and meditation are a crucial element of this, and where better to learn than in India. So here I am, taking this journey, ironically after one of the most stressful weeks I have had at work in a long time.

By keeping this diary, and just sharing my experiences, I hope that my learning will help others take responsibility for their stress, and their health, and do something about it.

Without our health, we have nothing.

Do you want to live longer? Then reading the article of Jane E. Brody in New York Times entitled “Even More Reasons to Get a Move On” is worth of your time. The message of the article is very straight forward –  daily exercise can prolong your lifespan. It also protects you from common illness of old age such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases.

The first sentence of the article is really striking as the author shares one of the comments from a reader in her previous article related to exercise and long life. It is about an 86 years old reader who conveyed a message that she has been walking everyday of her life. Interesting, right?

How many of you take for granted the benefits of exercise such as a simple daily walking exercise? Majority of the people nowadays have been living a sedentary lifestyle. Perhaps it is about time to move up and to start incorporating exercise in their lifestyle.

Read the full article ‘Even More Reasons to Get a Move On’ from NYTimes.com

It is quite common for us to take for granted breakfast meal because of various reasons.  We always rush in the morning to catch the bus or we don’t have time to prepare a hearty breakfast meal because we wake up late. Though we are aware that breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day, we hardly pay attention to this fact. Instead we grab the easiest and convenient breakfast which can either be coffee, donut, croissant, and fat-rich breakfast items.

That is why reading the article in CNN Health entitled ‘Breakfast Can Help Keep You Lean’ is very striking.  Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, and with the help of American Dietetic Association’s experts, reviewed few of the most popular breakfast meal and accordingly graded it into A, B, and C.

The idea is to pay attention to what you eat in the breakfast. A good choice is a combination of protein, carbohydrates and fiber, and the ideal breakfast concoction is comprised of oatmeal with skim milk, a half-ounce nuts, berries and orange juice.

Also, according to the article it is essential to consume significant calories for breakfast and a recommended amount is 500-calories for an average person.

You can click here to read more about the article, ‘Breakfast Can Help Keep You Lean’ from CNN.com - Diet and Fitness.

Walking is a great start off to weight loss and fitness. On top of that, it is free and does not require any special gears. So why not take advantage of walking workout now? Let’s get rid of our endless excuses – expensive gym membership, hectic schedule, and so forth - for not exercising.

Sarah Bowen Shea has written a very helpful article entitled ‘Plan Your Ideal Walking Workout’. She outlines the ideal plan for three categories – an occasional walker, everyday walker and the athletic walker.
She also suggests walking tips that will help you to carry out the walking workout effectively. Goals such as adding 5 minutes every week or becoming a hiker to heighten your walking workout benefits are set too for every level as it aims to improve your fitness level.

The steps in ‘Plan Your Ideal Walking Workout’ are actually easy to follow and this is ideal for those who want to seriously consider walking workout for fitness and for beginners who wish to gradually progress to athletic walker.
So are you thinking now of how to plan your walking workout?

Read the full article, ‘Plan Your Ideal Walking Workout’ from CNN.com - Diet & Fitness.