How Today’s Habits Will Impact Your Health Tomorrow

Many people think that the reason for my energy levels, my health and fitness condition, my mobility and strength is the young age. Yes, age is important and it does make a difference.

However, I ask you this: do all young people my age have high energy levels, strength, fitness and no health conditions, no vitamin deficiency etc? No, actually many people my age have big health problems. And in many cases they are caused by poor habits repeated on a regular basis over an extended period of time.

For years I haven’t taken supplements and every year I do all my tests and nothing changes, no deficiencies, no internal organ problems. Just by being consistent with my habits and making exceptions very seldom. That is no necessarily true for everyone. Some need supplements and vitamins.

Remember this Food Discipline™ lesson: exceptions should be just that, exceptions. If you make too many exceptions they will become habits.

The real reason I am this way is because I have created habits for myself when I came out of eating fast food and drinking fizzy drinks. Read here about my story.

Since then I’ve been consistent in nurturing my body, keeping it strong and fit inside and out. Sure I cannot claim to be perfect and I make my exceptions, but I have rules and I respect my own rules. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Don’t think now that I struggle and force myself into eating only certain types of food. No, not at all. I just go used to not having them that I never need them so it’s very easy for me to ignore them as food altogether. There is not struggle, no craving or strict regime.

Age does matter. But what you do when you are young matters even more. The things you do in your 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, those daily, weekly and monthly (un)healthy habits will impact our life in your 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.

I’m not saying that this is the case for every single person, but in many cases it’s long term small, damaging and overlooked habits that cause the greatest health problems.

Thus, stop postponing changing your habits. Stop finding excuses and making exceptions every day and every week. You only hurt yourself and no one else.

Of course you will not see the damage this year or next, look further into the future, you might feel the damage 10 years from now.
Build strong, lasting foundations which you can keep for a lifetime. This what I stand for.
And if you cannot do it alone then seek guidance.

August 1, 2015August 1, 2015

Insight Into My Personal Nutritional Habits

I think every one of my clients ask me the same question at one point in our coaching journey: Alex, what do you eat?

So I thought I would write some of my habits and answer this question for them and everyone else. They are neither the best habits nor the worst. Choose the ones you believe can benefit you.

I will talk about things that I do and things I do not do in terms of nutrition. And I will try to keep it real and tell you about the less good things as well hoping you will find something to learn from this.

Consistency

I have sustained this type of diet and lifestyle for many years. A few exceptions were made when I moved from country to country, when the first 3-6 months were a struggle to adapt to the local food.

However, my body is very well adapted to this kind of diet and lifestyle. So if you try any of these habits and you find they do not work in the first 3-6 months that means that either your body needs more time to adapt or this is not the right thing for you.

Just bear in mind that a lifetime of poor habits takes more than just a few months to change and for the body to adapt. You need patience and perseverance, be committed to your daily habits and don’t make exceptions after exceptions.

After all, exceptions made on a regular basis are actually habits.

Exceptions from my rules

Since we mentioned exceptions I make exceptions one day a week, and many times not even that. I don’t do this because I have to, but because I do not need to make those exceptions.

Many times we make exceptions because friends and family urge us to “have a break”. I don’t allow this to happen, and if I do I am very controlled no matter how much I like what I am eating.

I have developed this control over the years. It’s not something I’ve always done.

Fuel

Food for me is fuel for my body. Thus my food choices follow this rule. Taste is just an awesome add on.

Processed stuff

I used to have a pot of chocolate ice cream a month. I haven’t had for the past 3 months. But if I want it I will have it. I usually don’t want it, because I don’t really need it. Can’t think of anything else I have.

Dairy

Yes, I have dairy. Maybe a little too much sometimes. However I am aware of the quantity I have.

It is important to be mindful of your habits as this way you will be able to control them.

In my case dairy is cheese, white cheese (you find this in eastern Europe more), goats cheese (not any goats cheese) and yoghurt. That’s pretty much it.

Meat and fish

I grew up eating meat, all sorts. I am not vegetarian today but I eat meat very seldom. I do have fish 2-3 times a week.

Fruit

Every day. I don’t particularly like bananas for two reasons: there is not much water in them, they are pretty dry for me and they have a lot of sugar.

Since I don’t have a lot of sugary foods, bananas for me don’t taste that awesome. On the other hand I have them if I have no other choice of fruit.

I don’t have dried fruit. It’s again the taste of high sugar that I don’t like. This happens because I don’t have sugar in general so when I do have it’s too much.

Fresh vegetables

Every day. Every day I either have a big salad with each of my meals or I have them cut on a plate and I just have them like that, with cheese, or next to eggs, or whatever.

I always have my salads with: vinegar (not vinaigratte, but wine, apple or plum vinegar), olive oil and salt.

Drinks

Water. How much? Don’t know. I drink throughout the day, I have it next to me and in my back pack and I just drink.

Unsweetened tea. Not every day.

Warm water with lemon and ginger every morning and sometimes during the day. It’s not a “trend” thing though. I like lemon in general.

Grapefruit juice I make myself. By the way, have the pulp, the best things are in the pulp.

Coconut water….once in a blue moon when water and tea become useless for hydration. That’s it really.

Snacks

Baby or plum tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers.

Fruit. Depending on the season: strawberries, oranges, nectarines, sometimes grapes.

Nuts and seeds. I used to have every day because they are convenient, particularly when I coach several consecutive sessions.

But I was beginning to have too many so now I seldom have them. Although nutritionist advise us to have fruit with nuts, that just makes me not eat either. The combination for me is not great.

Natural yoghurt

I have every day: diary (that;s cheese and natural yoghurt), legumes: beans, peas, broccoli etc; quinoa and other similar stuff, warm water with lemon (every morning! ), fruit, vegetables

Other things I probably have 1-3 time a week: rice, eggs, honey, humus, broth or soups, meat, fish.

Every 2 months or even less often: these are more like treats: cereal (with the least sugar i can find) with rice milk, home made rice pudding

Twice a year …or 3 times maybe, I go “crazy” and I have: pizza or chips

Other habits

I don’t eat after 6-7 pm. I like to go to bed with my stomach calm.

I eat when I am hungry.

I finish eating when I am still hungry, 80% full. Remember the Food Discipline lessons I wrote the other day? Check them out.

I eat little and I get hungry more often. So I eat little and often. The fact that I have my own business gives me the possibility to live on my own terms. Having little food as often as I need to is very important for me and I can do that now. So you can say I am lucky….made my own luck really.

Discipline. I have my own food diary. I know what I have had in the week and month and I am mindful of the quantity of food I eat.

So there you have it. A summary of my habits. There will always be ups and downs but I respect my rules, if not 100% then very close to that anyway. Why? Read The Story Of How I Changed My Relationship With Food to better understand

Questions? You know how to find me.

July 23, 2015September 12, 2016

Food Discipline Lessons To Live By

We all know why we gain weight, why we feel bloated or unwell. We all know that nutrition is what keeps us alive, healthy and in peak performance.

And we also know if the quality of the food we eat is not high quality then the way our body functions will not be either.

And you know very well, I am sure, the kind of food you should eat to allow your body to thrive and the kind of food your should avoid. We all know this.

However, for some reason, a lot of people still struggle to develop healthy habits. We make exceptions so often that they begin to look like regular habits rather then exceptions.

We blame it on sugar addiction and while it is true that once you start eating sugar it’s difficult to stop, I do not agree that sugar should be compared with drugs.

Many people, including myself, come off sugar and you don’t see us hitting our heads against the wall. Yes, we may be grumpy in the first 3-5 days after we stop eating sugar but once it’s out of the system it’s out. Until you bring it back that is.

Some cases I more difficult than others but, in the end, no one forces a tablespoon or ice cream down your throat. You do it yourself.

Looking back at my life, how I changed my relationship with food I realized that it was not the knowledge but the discipline that made the greatest difference.

If I didn’t have the discipline all the knowledge and nutritionists in the world wouldn’t have been able to change my habits. Your life cannot change until you decide and commit to change it.

So I dug deep into my personal habits and came up with Food Discipline lessons for my clients. And today I will share with you some of those lessons:

Lesson 1 – Eat high quality when craving otherwise

When you crave sweets or unhealthy snacks and foods think whether you have actually eaten a proper meal that day.

Many times we crave those things because we are actually hungry. Surely we don’t actually need them. Once you eat a proper meal you will find that you don’t crave them anymore.

Eat high quality food when you crave unhealthy options.

The choice is yours.

Lesson 2 – Don’t have them when you crave them

Don’t give your brain the satisfaction of giving it what it craves, when it craves. It will never stop craving because it will learn that craving/asking also means receiving. So it will always crave.

Instead, if you do what to have that treat then have it when you do not crave it.

You have the power to decide what you are going to eat. You are in control of the decisions you make in your life.

Make a conscious choice not to have unhealthy foods when you crave them. You may realize that is a passing phase anyway.

The choice is yours.

Lesson 3 – Never twice

This is particularly important if you want to lose weight but also if you want to maintain it and also if you don’t want to feel bloated and….well it’s good for everyone really.

Sometimes we eat healthy but we overeat. And this itself prevents us from losing weight or makes us gain weight, as well as making the digestive system overwork.

One way to control the quantity of food you eat is to never serve yourself twice. Once you’ve eaten what was on your plate that’s it.

Lesson 4 – 30 Minutes

After you eat your meal don’t jump straight into dessert, even if it’s a fruit. Make a habit of waiting 30 min. It’s roughly the amount of time it takes the feeling of fullness to reach your brain.

By the end of the 30 min you might realize you don’t need to have anything else anymore.

And so you save yourself from feeling bloated, eating too much, feeling too full and of course calories for those of you who are looking to lose weight.

You can have your fruit later on, as a snack if you still want it. But give your digestive system time and room to breathe even if you really, really want to have that piece of fruit.

The choice is yours.

Lesson 5 – Fuel

Look at food as fuel for your body. Because, if we leave aside the love for food and it’s taste, that’s what food does.

That’s the purpose of food, it is not to satisfy our taste buds, although it’s nice to have both of course. However Its purpose is to keep us alive, to fuel us, our brain, our muscles, organs.

When you begin to understand this, really understand it, your food choices will change and you will begin to give your body good quality fuel.

And it can be tasty in the same time. It’s a win win.

This is one of the first things I did when I changed my relationship with food. If you haven’t read my story yet check it out here.

There are so many other habits and lessons I take my clients through on an individual basis, but for the moment 5 lessons are enough to get you started.

How to put them into application:

I always say focus on one thing at a time as it will make a greater difference.

Thus, you have 5 lessons. Each week focus on one lesson and one lesson only.

Tip: take a post it note or a piece of paper and stick in on your fridge so, throughout the week, you are constantly reminded about the Food Discipline lesson you have for the week.

After you so each lesson a few times they will become second nature and you will not need support.

Remember The choice is only yours. You are in control.

If you are considering implementing Food Discipline lessons in your life, or you’d like a different approach and different habits I can help you.

If you book a call for this purpose there will be no sales or pitching, instead I will help you with a plan to implement habits and Food Discipline lessons into your life starting today. Book a free call here.

July 15, 2015July 15, 2015

The Story Of How I Changed My Relationship With Food

This is one of my stories and one that will shed some light on why I am the way I am, why I know the things I know and why I coach the way I coach.

It is the story of how I built healthy habits that stuck for a lifetime. It’s long but I tried to make it easy to read.

And I actually had to talk to my mother to remember when everything began. Everything as in me eating healthy and being aware and caring about the fuel I gave my body to work with.

The Beginning

I began practicing Martial Arts in 1995. My diet mostly consisted of broths, home cooked meals, sandwiches at school, I didn’t grow up with breakfast cereal.

However, believe it or not when I was a child and through part of my teenage I used to drink Coca Cola and Sprite. I used to drink a whole 2l bottle sometimes in just one day. Seriously.

That was until one day when I threw up after drinking coca cola and eating a sandwich. And it was not the sandwich that got me sick. That was the end of that for me.

I also used to eat fast food. I didn’t do that all the time but it was on a weekly basis. Fast food was on the menu frequently, again in between those broths I didn’t like then and now I love.

However the fact that we, my family, would not generally eat take aways, or go to restaurants or visit too many people, it kinda levelled up the toxins I’d put in my body a couple of times a week. I was extremely skinny though. I didn’t end up obese, somehow. Anyway, let’s just say I wasn’t always like you see me today with regards to food.

In 2003-2004 (if I remember well) I was at least 10kg heavier that what I am today. That’s 22 lb. Seriously…again.

Nonetheless I went onto a difficult journey.

The Downfall

When you are an athlete training 6 days a week and competing at international level you don’t really care about the amount of food you eat, even if it’s healthy. You just eat and burn everything straight away.

But…when you stop training, or go from 6 sessions a week to 3, and you still eat a lot of food and you also start eating more garbage food, well that changes your life….and weight, and not for the better.

I went to France with a friend to visit my family. For 2 months we ate burgers and chips at unusual hours, 1 am, 2 am, it didn’t matter. Now I’d never do either of those.

Long story short, I got home and I was 10kg heavier. Yes, I felt fat, that was fat for me and we all know how it can go further and further if you don’t wake up and do something about it.

From being slim and toned to clothes not fitting me anymore. I didn’t feel good in my own body anymore. The transformation was incredible, in all the wrong ways.

The Commitment

Soon after, I made a decision… no, I made a COMMITMENT to myself that it was time to change. That I was going to lose the weight and get back to myself again where I felt strong in my body, and moved freely and gracefully, I made a commitment that I would fit in my clothes again.

That meant training again and eating better, better than even before the weight gain.
So bread was out. For years I didn’t touch it, now I do a couple of times a month, even less than that. No pasta, no pizza, no breakfast cereals, less rice and less potatoes. I still had the later 2 but only 2-3 times a week.

No more sweets, or ice cream or anything that wasn’t supposed to be there. Not even dark chocolate, which I hated by the way. Now I learnt to like it…kinda. And no more homemade jams or pastries or Christmas family food and so on.

In 2007 I took up running and since then I never looked back.

Can I also say that when all this started to change and I found my balance through nutrition and training the friend I went on the wrong road with disappeared from my life. It’s as if she was there to show me a different way.

Once You change your environment automatically changes as well. It all comes from within you. But I didn’t know that then.

The Struggle

It was difficult, not only because I was changing habits and refusing to give my brain what it craved and when it craves but because no one would understand why I would say no to grandma’s jams and my cousin’s awesome pies and desserts. And why I wouldn’t make exceptions.

They did not understand that making exceptions every day will turn that into a habit rather than an exception.

So they would offer me and ask me if I wanted foods they knew I loved. No one understood how difficult it was for me to say no, until I got those toxins out of the system and then it got easier and easier.

Sure, I had my “let go day” but that was once in a while.

And the first 3-6 months were the worst. That’s why today my coaching programs are 3 or 6 months. It takes time to build habits that last for a lifetime.

I did it myself, been through it and now I guide others. Of course it is down to each of us to put the work in. As my Sensei once told me: we [coaches] open the book for you but we cannot read it for you.

The Result

The result was that by changing what I ate and train up to 6 days out of 7, by building healthy habits that would stick for a life time, by taking my time (1-2 years), be patient, and focusing on the process every day, instead of weighing myself every day and seeing myself fat, was that I went from 60+ kg to 49 (3 kg thinner than today)!! To the point that people thought I wasn’t eat.

What they didn’t know was that I would eat a lot of the right foods and train every day. Not walking, training. Not exercising, training. Training to get better at running. Training to get stronger and more flexible. Training with a purpose, to learn and to develop.

I was the strongest and fittest and healthiest than ever before. And I was working in an office 8 hours and after than I had my Masters courses. Before work and after the courses I would run and ice skate or take my waveboard out.

There are many, many habits I changed in those 2-3 years. And they stuck with me and they will be part of my life forever.

Today I am in a place where I have control over my life, I am aware, more disciplined and able to guide others on their journey to building Food Discipline and foundations that last for a lifetime.

The Lessons

I learnt so many lessons I teach my clients today and probably the most important ones have to do with creating habits and a lifestyle that will last forever through discipline and strong foundations.

In the end I don’t get you healthy and fit for summer, I teach you to be and stay healthy and fit for the rest of your life.
This is my story. What’s yours? Are you committed to change your life like I did? If so, book a FREE call with me and let’s see how we can make than happen by building strong foundations to last for a lifetime. Book here.