The Calorie Burning Fairy Tale

courtesy of Favim

Even those of us who only have a cursory understanding of weight loss know that increasing the amount of calories we burn on any given day will help shed unwanted kilos, but it is important to be realistic about just how many we are burning. Many figures we are quoted are tall tales of embellishment and fallacy rather than anything to do with real energy outputs. The fitness world likes to toss about 'general' figures but unfortunately there is no one size fits all amount when it comes to calories burned. You are unique and so it your energy expenditure. There are zillions of aps, tables and guidelines that will give you approximate figures for calories burned on any given exercise. There are nifty little devices on the gym equipment too. Many of these give you a figure you think you can take to the bank when you really should have taken it to the bin along with that donut you think you can have because of the 20 minutes you just did on the treadmill.

Women especially, yeah sister I'm talking to you, are led up the proverbial garden path because many of the quoted figures are based on men with much larger muscle mass.

For example yesterday I went for a walk. Nothing strenuous. I walked for 1 hour and 16 minutes and Runkeeper told me I burned 471 calories - yay for me. The heart rate monitor I was wearing concluded that in fact it was much less - just 330 calories. That is quite a difference!  It could be the difference between you looking good in your bra and knickers or not. Are you picking up what I am putting down? Because what I am putting down is that you may have been misled, lied to, fed a load of rubbish. I once had a spin class teacher tell me I had definitely burned 900 calories in the 45 minute class. I'm very short and small and I've worn heart rate monitors to Spin classes on occasions and I had barely managed half of that. It's a little bit like clothing sizes - there is no regulation, no pinpointing the unique things about your body that put you outside of forementioned size or range. 
For a better idea a heart rate monitor will help you understand your body's unique energy expenditures but unfortunately they aren't cheap. At the very least be mindful of the possibility that the number being handed to you at the end of your workout (whether from human or electronic source) may be staggeringly off the mark.

If you want to be better understand your unique energy needs go here.

Do You Know How To Be Vulnerable?

Recently I was watching the 2013 MTV Awards and while Rebel Wilson's crack about Megan Fox was memorable to say the least it was Emma Watson's Trailblazer Award acceptance speech that stuck with me.
You can watch the full speech above but for those of you who don't have time to fuss about with You Tube links right now I have quoted the important bit:

"Becoming yourself is hard and confusing and it’s a process. I was completely the eager beaver in school. I was the girl in the front of the class who was the first to put her hand up. So not cool to be the person who puts themselves out there and I've often been teased mercilessly but ultimately if you truly put your heart into what you believe in, even if it makes you vulnerable, amazing things can and will happen." 

I don't think many of us would disagree with Ms Watson but allowing yourself to be vulnerable might well be the key to changing your life and letting ‘amazing’ things happen it is much easier said than done.

Dr Brene Brown, author of 'Daring Greatly' defines vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.

Opening yourself up and putting yourself out there is as terrifying a thing as most of us can think of. Highlighted by the fact that more people site public speaking over death as their greatest fear.

If I am going to be honest and all vulnerable-like I will tell you that for me being vulnerable socially, at work or even here on this blog is a fear that stops me from acting too often. To put myself out there and for it not to work seems like a hurdle too high to jump over.

For example clicking ‘publish’ on this blog is not easy. I mean you might be as crazy as a sock full of frogs and I may not care for you in the least. Hell, this is the internet, you could be a million miles away and I will never meet you but I still want you to think I'm cool, smart, funny, pretty and talented. It’s the fact you may think I’m a boring, self-righteous wanker that prevents me from posting. I was buoyed to read another bloggers similar fears and thoughts on fearing to post. You can read it here

At the end of the day the fact is it is just so much easier to stay safe and not take the risk. It is easier not to post my thoughts so you can't judge. It's easier for you not to go to that PT session and look awkward while you do burpees.

Its way easier to not go to the party with all those people you don't know and stay home in your slippers and eat toast. It also isn’t easy living with the nagging feeling that your dreams will never be but the immediate discomfort seems to win out and we do nothing.

One of my favourite self-help gurus and author of A Road Less Travelled, M Scott Peck writes that there can be no vulnerability without risk. But risk by definition is a scary proposition. Why risk? High risk for high return? Oh yes but the return is not guaranteed. Leaping with only faith that you will land on your feet is what leads to inaction. We hit ‘like’ on those motivational memes and read all the self-help books but we do it from a safe distance where nothing but a dream is required. It is just easier not to.

So how do we go from standing in the wings to centre stage? How do we force ourselves to be vulnerable?

I have been researching this for some weeks and for all the commentary on the subject there are few practical pieces of advice on how to let yourself be vulnerable. Eckhart Tolle makes the link to living in the moment. When you focus neither on your past or your future you are not guided by vulnerability and are connected to who you really are. Interesting, but still not a step-by-step. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no manual, no course or set of rules that tell me how to release the fear and be myself. Like so many things I need to just find my own way but I did learn one extraordinary thing from researching vulnerability that I would like to share because it just might help you out: collectively we criticise and punish vulnerability but it seems that secretly we all admire those of us who dare to be ourselves.

They may not tell you to your face but when you leap without a safety net the crowd is mighty impressed. Emma Watson may have been teased but at the MTV movie awards the crowd were on their feet applauding. So try to push past the fear, take yourself beyond the doubt and continually remind yourself that the applause is there even if you can’t hear it.

I would love to hear your stories of vulnerability!

Mia Freedman: Renegade Collective

From a young age I really liked magazines. When I could afford to buy them I went overboard. I collected them. I moved states several times with more magazines than furniture (insane). When I worked for the largest publishing house in the country I was in my element. Looking back I wondered how I got it so wrong. I now find magazines boring. Over a year ago  I imposed a ban on magazine buying and haven’t missed the glossies one bit.

But Renegade Collective is a magazine and I confess I did fork over the $9.95 instead of waiting to read it at the Doctors in two years time. But I needed to read the article on Mia Freedman and as it covered more than 4 pages I wasn’t going to be able to speed read it in the Newsagency before putting it  back on the shelf and commending myself on yet another successful week without mags.

So I bought it.

Why did I need to read about Mia Freedman?

Well you see for girls who love mags and aspired to work in the glamorous Packer- founded stable on Park Street Mia Freedman is an icon. The former Cosmopolitan Editor is to my generation what Ita Butrose is baby boomers: a woman with her finger on the zeitgeist.

I’ll admit that Freedman has been on occasion a tad annoying and her ups (Cosmopolitan, Mamamia) have been just as spectacular as her downs (Channel Nine, ) but love her or hate her the one thing Mia Freedman continues to be is exposed. I have been thinking and writing plenty on vulnerability lately and how you let go and be whoever it is you are. I feel like whatever else Freedman is she is real. She has put herself on the line, sometimes impaled herself on the fence but somehow she manages to pull herself off, scramble over it and just keep going. If someone was ever going to write anything about me I would hope they would say I had great hair, fabulous shoes and that I was kind and stuff but most of all I hope they would say I was real.

Mia Freedman you are real so congratulations on the website and thanks so much for making me break by magazine ban – you owe me 10 bucks!

Chicken In A Bag

Chicken in a bag is one of my favourite recipes mainly because it is a throw-it-all-in style recipe and these are always helpful to have in your culinary repertoire. They save time both in preparation and in the cleaning up phase but even more importantly they disguise lack of kitchen skills - bonus! The other great thing about a recipe like this is you can add and take-away without the dish being effected making it something you can make your own.

The Bag:
Before we get into the recipe itself let's get clear about the bag we are making out of tin foil. Take a piece of tin foil about 60cm long and fold it in half. With the fold at the bottom fold in the side edges about 1cm, fold them again and then again a third time. You are making a pocket. When finished folding the sides fold the bottom up once. Be sure to run your fingers purposefully along each fold to help seal your handy work. Set the aside your bag and lets get cooking.

Ingredients:
1 chicken breast, scored deeply as shown
1 chilli, thinly sliced
1 stick of lemongrass, broken
a bunch of coriander, chopped
Any Asian greens you like, chopped
1 cup coconut milk
Salt and Pepper
Rice or noodles

Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Put all ingredients into bag except coconut milk and leaving out some coriander leaves. Pour in the coconut milk. Add two pinches of good quality salt and a few twists of Freshly ground Pepper.Seal the top of bag by folding it down. Fold as many times as needed. Carefully place bag on baking tray and place in oven for 30 minutes.
Place your rice and noodles in a bowl. With tongs remove chicken, chilli, coriander and greens from bag. From bag pour in as much as the coconut milk as desirable into bowl. Add fresh coriander. Discard Bag.

Some More Tips
Be careful when handling the bag to avoid spills.
You can add as many Asian greens as you wish.
I used Slim Pasta with the above recipe and it works fantastically.
You can substitute the chicken for fish.

The Great Coconut Water Experiment!

Okay so this is more of a taste test than an experiment and it has come about because I'm retesting my like or more to the point my dislike of the stuff. You see I don't like Coconut water, in fact I would go very far out on the limb all by myself away from the hype and majority and say I really hate the stuff. You see coconut water has been around for a while. I remember reading in a weekly glossy that Sienna Miller was drinking it and as I was going through a bit of Sienna phase (you know around the time she launched and her hair had just got long again after, anyway I searched high and low for it. Found some, tasted it, spat it out, said a bad word and ultimately concluded that Sienna had great hair but questionable taste in beverages. 

As the coconut water supporters have become more vocal I have stayed silent comfortable in the knowledge that I don't like it and so therefore will stay off the bandwagon and on solid ground. BUT I got to thinking that tastes change and brands vary and maybe I judged coconut water too harshly too quickly?

So hence The Great Coconut Water Experiment!

In an experiment you are supposed to prove or disprove a hypothesis, control the variables and record your findings and truly, this WAS the intention. But after an hour of searching for coconut water on a hot day I got a bit thirsty and cracked one open on the way to the car. I also misplaced my pen for a bit (was under the couch) so my notes were not necessarily taken promptly after the actual tasting but you get the general idea.

So here are a few thoughts about Coconut Water:



1. I don't hate it but I wouldn't say I like the taste. Much better cold!

2. All brands contain sugars!

3. All brands have calories and remember how water does not? Just saying…

4. There are SLIGHT taste variations between brands. Notice the caps lock used in previous sentence.

5. All brands contain potassium 

6. It does not make you look like Sienna Miller

Some useful applications I have found for Coconut Water:

1. It adds some sweetness to smoothies

2. It hydrates quickly. I say this because I drank a couple recently while moderately hungover and felt much better quickly.

3. If all the normal water in the world suddenly went missing and you were a bit thirsty it is a better choice than Coke, Gatorade, PowerAde, Wine and Lemon Solo.

Coconut water is what it is. I’m grateful for the knowledge just in case I ever find myself stuck on an Island like the Swiss Family Robinson or Tom Hanks but other than that I probably won’t bother much with the stuff….unless I’m hungover!

What's Her Secret?

courtesy of http://howskinny.wordpress.com

Recently I happened across a great blog by an equally great gal, How Skinny is essentially the story of Georgina and her successful weight loss journey, but it is compelling reading not because of her success, but because of the honest, never-give-up account of the ups and downs of a girl who makes the tough to decision to change her body and her life.

It can be hard to find people who are honest about weight loss. So many a success story leaves out the dark days, the disappointments and the slips. Not here.

I LOVED the goals: 77kg -  Shellac mani
                              67kg -  Mimco Bag

The recipes are fabulous, the realisations so relatable and the success so inspiring. This is a girl I needed to know better so I asked her a bunch of questions and just as I thought, I loved the answers!


Holly: You have been very successful with your weight loss – congratulations! What do you attribute your success to?


Georgina: Thank you, I attribute my success to willpower, dedication and motivation. It is about getting yourself into a routine and sticking to it. Cutting out a lot of bad foods from my diet and also focusing on portion sizes has been helpful. I am a member of the Ashy Bines Bikini Body Challenge (Ashy Bines Bikini Body Challenge) so recently that and the added combination of calorie counting has aided in further weight loss.


Holly: There has been so much buzz about clean eating in health and weight loss circles recently and you have mentioned how it has helped you to lose weight. What advice would you give to someone who was interested in going clean?

Georgina: I would definitely say ‘Don’t go too hard too soon!’ …. Clean Eating is a lifestyle change and you really will hate it if you stop eating chocolate, bread, pasta, soft drinks etc all at once (you will probably also have some really harsh withdrawals and feel ill depending on how much of the “bad”stuff is currently in your diet). Start by subtly introducing small changes. There are also many clean versions of normal recipes going around so don’t deprive yourself! If you feel like pizza, Google some alternatives and start that way. I have a few on my blog that are simple and easy that would help anyone just starting out.

Holly: What did you learn about yourself as you slimmed down? What  effect did the weight loss have on your mind and feelings?

Georgina: I learnt a lot about myself, my journey has been 3 years in the making so far so its safe to say its been a complete mind trip … as well as a physical change. I have also changed mentally and emotionally – I realised I can push a lot harder, my willpower is a lot stronger and I am very determined and motivated person who is committed to self improvement.
Obviously though, the main effect it had on me was that I felt more confident.

Holly: If there were no calories in food what would you eat a lot of?

Georgina: You may have picked it up in the second question - definitely Pizza! Although since going clean I have come to love a good clean pizza on pita bread with loads of veggies more than I actually enjoy the oily mess that comes delivered in a box!
Also, anything that combines chocolate with peanut butter is also a winner in my books!


Holly: Do you feel external pressure to be slim?

Georgina: Very much so, since losing weight to become healthy I feel more socially accepted – it’s very hard when you feel such pressure to be so slim, especially when you are just starting out like I was and I would look at these skinny people and think “I will never get there."
Some people can take it too far and that’s what concerns me, people are missing the fact that it is about being healthy and strong not skinny and sick.


Holly: What is your favourite weight loss meal?

Georgina: I have so many of them! My blog has quite a few recipes… anything that involves a Quinoa Salad is a winner for me. On weekends it’s definitely clean pizzas and healthy burgers – it’s great to be able to indulge by thinking you’re being naughty but really you are still coming in under the calorie goal for the day!
Chickpea Curry is my current fave!


Holly: Why do you "fall off the wagon?" What sort of thing is going on in your life and your head when you do?

Georgina: I find that I fall off the wagon when I stop training… if it’s raining or I had a late night and I sneak out of training to stay in bed and catch up on extra sleep (I'm strict on the 8 hours!). If I don’t start the day with exercise I usually tend to pick up a little piece of chocolate, and once that has happened it’s the end of me for the day! But, every day is a chance to make a change! If you have a little chocolate, so what! Everything in moderation, just wake up and start again!


Holly: Any spectacularly good products you have discovered for losing weight or staying healthy that you would like to share?

Georgina: Nothing beats a healthy diet and exercise for weight loss, I wish I could recommend a potion or a food that I find really helps but really, it’s simple for me, and we have all heard it a million times but it can’t hurt to hear it again:

1. Enough Sleep


2. Heaps of Water


3. Lots of Veggies – load up on those greens!


4. Portion control


5. Exercise

6. SMILE!

To visit Georgina's blog and read more go here
You can also follow Georgina on Instagram @ georgielouise85

Just Do It! ANYWAY!

Back in the eighties, global footwear powerhouse, Nike, kicked off the spectacularly successful 'just do it' campaign. A campaign which has seen the footwear giant stamp its superiority over its competitors. 3 simple little words that  anyone donning a pair of sneakers and starting down the track of fitness, weight loss and sporting success well know. Whether it is walking around the park or taking centre court at Flushing Meadows, the crux of one's success is to just do it.

We seem to have a habit of complicating motivational messages. We seek a deeper meaning as to why we struggle to embark on activities we know will make us stronger, fitter, better, faster and hotter. We comb magazines, self-help books and websites for answers to our lack of motivation. We blame external factors like the weather, the kids or time for our failures. But it isn't complicated. We need to hear the message that Nike have been hitting us over the head with for over 20 years: Just Do It!

But why haven't we heard the message or more correctly, why hasn't it sunk in? It's not like it isn't everywhere now is it? Perhaps our slow grasp of the 3 little words is because in order for it to pack the marketing punch it did, it was over simplified  just a smidge. I can't help but wonder if the famous slogan needs another little word to help us truly understand the sentiment.


I'm sick!
Just do it anyway

I'm tired!
Just do it anyway

I'm scared!
Just do it anyway


I had a really hard day at work!
Just do it anyway


I would really much prefer this glass of wine!
Just do it anyway

Because there will never be a time when you feel like it. There will never be a time when it is easy. There is no book, meme or Instagram picture that will suddenly transform you from serial exercise avoider to running devotee, yoga enthusiast or amazingly, buffed hot chick. You won't feel like it, you won't want to, you will grumble whine and generally be all annoying about it. Whatever excuse you have, whatever it is you think is holding you back, whatever reason you think is justified in avoiding the tough stuff I have three four words for you.

JUST DO IT! ANYWAY!