MAB Adventures & PT: The Power of Choice

Imagine what’s possible if you used your ‘Power of Choice’.

Can you relate to this scenario at all? 

Your motivated and pumped to get fit and healthy and then someone puts a piece of cake in front of you at morning tea at a work meeting. Or you say you are going to walk every morning and before you know it, you have missed three mornings. Before you know it, the motivation you had when you first started on your mission has depleted? Or you are feeling happy and amazing and then something challenges you and completing changes your mood?  If you relate to these or a similar scenario you are like majority of people, YEP truth!

The truth is Motivation doesn’t last, it fades, through helping men and women achieve greatness nearly 10 years has really taught me so much about being ‘Mindfit’. I believe we all need to focus on the Mind & Body to be the best we can be, what’s the point of getting fit and healthy ‘short term’? So the million dollar question……. How do you become Mindfit?

It all comes down to ‘Power of choice’

I am grateful I discovered the ‘Power of choice’ so I can share the tool that helps me on a daily basis to be the best I can be. To help you understand the power of choice I want to share how I discovered it. It was through challenges in life from as early at the age of 14, with a severe bicycle accident where I lacerated my liver nearly in ½ which ended with major surgery. Then more major surgery at the age of 25 from a bowel obstruction from adhesions from the scar tissue. I have also ended up in a hospital bed for 5 nights because I pushed my limits too far in a ½ marathon, the biggest challenge of all was when life didn’t turn out how I expected it to be. Thankfully that moment when I hit rock bottom was the moment of awareness that I could choose how I wanted to respond. I could of chose to be stuck in a pity party or I could of chose to get back up and create the life I wanted to live.

I chose to live a happy, healthy, active, adventurous life full of love, I chose to use ‘Power of Choice’ and how awesome I can share this amazing tool with you all. When you own, you create your reality by the choices you make you then open up the power within.

Mel’s 5 tips how to use ‘Power of choice’ within:

1.   Choose to see the gift in every situation, positive and negative  (there is always a gift). With my bike accident at such a young age, the gift was ‘life’ I got to appreciate my life so much more because I nearly lost it. With this tool, write down a list of any situation that is or has challenged you and look for the gifts, if you look hard enough you will find them and it will give you peace around that challenge.

2.   Choose the life you want to live, be clear on who you want to be. You may choose to be a happy healthy active person: write a list of what that means. What does being happy mean to you? What does being healthy mean to you? It is not about what it means to me or anyone else, it is what is means to you. Then write down a list of the opposite- who you don’t want to be, maybe a sad, unhealthy lazy person. When you are clear on who you want to be, its actually only one choice to make when you have options in front of you

3.   Choose to be clear on your 'why'. Write down your why you choose to live your life a certain way. When you have a big enough reason why, it helps when you have someone putting cake in front of you, or helps you stay strong when you have to adapt to challenges.

4.   What would love do? This is the biggest powerful tool ever. Choose to ask this question and it will lead you to the best option that serves you for the greatest good. Some mornings I will ask myself what would love do and some mornings I do need to rest because I have pushed myself too much the day before, or some mornings I trust my body needs to get outside and feel the sun on my face.

5.   Choose to trust it is what it is. The fact is, many things in life you cannot control, and if you can trust the things you cannot control, simply is what it is. It will give you peace in your inner being.

Start with these 5 tips and watch how your world changes, become aware of your inner peace and contentment and also become aware of the change that happens. Remember nothing ever stays the same, you either evolve or dissolve, I hope you choose to evolve and embrace the gift of Power Of Choice.

Mel x

OFFER -

1. Book in for a private mindfit session special $99 CODE---- SCH&FOFFER

or choose to had some fun fitness into your life because fitness can be fun

2. Unlimited Bootcamps for one month $99 CODE---- SCH&FOFFER

Website: www.mabpersonaltraining.com.au

Facebook: facebook.com/MABPT

Instagram: @mabptadventures

Ph: 0401286200

Sunshine Coast Dietetics (SCD): Carbs

Carbs get a bad wrap – pun intended.

This is the sad truth because the world we live in would be a far happier place if we could all embrace glorious carbohydrates as they are. In all their hearty, doughy, grainy glory.

Carbs are one of the main three macro-nutrients that provide us with energy to sustain life. Some would argue that carbs are the most important macro as they are the preferred energy source for our bodies over proteins and fats. They are so important that we recommend that 45-60% of your total energy intake comes from carbs.

Before we all go celebrate the good news with pasta and garlic bread, let’s first understand that not all carbs are created equal.

You may have heard of the scale ‘the glycaemic index’.

To put it simply – carbohydrate rich foods with a low glycaemic index, or GI, will be released into the blood stream as energy at a slower and more sustained rate than foods with a higher GI. Foods that have a higher GI are typically foods that give that sugar spike and crash that we are all familiar with.

Some examples of low GI foods include: beans, lentils, some fruits (pears, berries, grape fruit) and wholemeal pastas and breads. High GI foods include: some fruits (dried fruit in particular), some white breads and some white potatoes.

It’s not recommended to exclude high GI foods, rather enjoy them in moderation with a focus on an intake of low and moderate GI foods.

So here is the short list on why we love carbs and shouldn’t be afraid of them:
1.    They are our body’s main source of energy – for literally everything. Our muscles, our brain and everything in between.
2.    They don’t make you gain weight – this myth has been busted by several studies. Enjoy your carbs as part of a balanced diet and you will be sweet (pun).
3.    They can even help you lose weight – enjoy high fibre, low GI carbs that will help you feeling fuller for longer. Legumes, beans and whole grains should be your new besties.
4.    They are full of essential vitamins, minerals and nutrients – iron, B vitamins and dietary fibre. Win.

The Sunshine Coast Dietetics Team
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SCDietetics
Snapchat: @dietitianlife

GUEST BLOGGER: Kaye Vlachos (Soul 2 Soul Wellness)

I’m Kaye Vlachos, a positive mindset coach inspiring aspiring elite athletes here on the Sunshine Coast to live their dreams and help them get there with my heart-centred guidance and super inspirational "Athlete Empowerment" School Holiday Workshops.

What qualifies me to inspire the athlete in your family?
I have always been passionate about health & wellness.　
As a teenager & young adult, I was fortunate to play football (yes that’s right- soccer) & represented NSW/Australia during my 15 year sports career. My involvement in the world of elite sports, became the turning point for my journey into combining elite athlete ideals with a holistic approach to a well-rounded lifestyle.


I partner with elite athletes for a variety of outcomes, from improving their confidence to managing nerves & anxiety leading into competition. Elite athletes are under extreme pressure to perform consistently, so it is imperative I teach them how to balance their sporting, school & work　commitments effectively. Providing elite athletes with the knowledge on the benefits of fuelling their bodies combined with a positive vision for their performance, will enable them to consistently perform at their best during competition, in most cases blitzing it!

In the Level 1 "Athlete Empowerment" Workshop here in Currumundi, you can learn how to:
+ Master your Mindset
+ Peak Performance Tips
+ Visualization 4 Success
+ Fuelling your Body 4 Performance
+ Mind Relaxation Tools
+ How to Prepare 4 Competition

I share with you my rise to sporting success, how I managed to overcome the stumbling blocks which appeared from time to time and the amazing life I’ve created beyond football.

You may also be interested to know that I also run MOTIVATIONAL TEAM BONDING workshops for your sporting team & mentor athletes who prefer more personalised attention regarding a specific concern perhaps related to confidence or nerves via skype.
I’m not only your cheerleader, I will arm you action packed tools that you can start implementing immediately into your day to day life, to master your athletic pursuits & fast track you on your way to sporting success.


Some of my Soul2Soul Athlete’s who have worked with me privately & through my workshops have already achieved for themselves include –
+ International Representation – Football
+ International & Interstate Dance Scholarships – Ballet & Contemporary
+ National & State Representation – Calisthenics & Cross Country
+ National & State Championships Success – Calisthenics & Cross Country
+ Regional & Districts Representation – Rugby, Tennis, Surf Lifesaving, Athletics, Oztag, AFL, Football, Basketball, Netball & Gymnastics


If you’d love to keep in touch with me, please come & say hi on my social media tags below or send me an email if you’d like to come along to my upcoming workshop or work with me in my private coaching practice.

Kaye Vlachos

Instagram - @kayevlachos_soul2soulathlete

Facebook – kayevlachos_soul2soulathlete
Email - kaye@soul2soulwellness.com.au

Sunshine Coast Dietetics (Hannah): Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and FODMAPS

Accredited Practicing Dietitians are one of the most successful practitioners at relieving symptoms from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). IBS is a chronic disease which can cause lower abdominal pain or discomfort, bloating, wind, alternating bowel habits (diarrhoea to constipation) and distention. The diagnosis of IBS if given by a medical practitioner once other investigations have revealed no abnormal pathologies. IBS affects one in seven Australians, and it can greatly impact your quality of life.

Some sufferers will state that they are anxious about travelling or going to new places where they can’t guarantee they know where the bathroom is, or that the pain is so debilitating that they need to take time off. To make it more difficult, there isn’t a clear cause of IBS, it is very individual as to what the triggers are. The main two candidates are usually stress/anxiety, a dietary intolerance, or a combination of these factors. The combination of dietary management and counselling offered by dietitians helps a lot of sufferers every day to get their lives back.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a cure or specific medication that helps to alleviate the condition. But this is where dietitians shine. Treatment options include increasing dietary fibre, reducing common gas producing foods, and establishing eating routines. However, a group of carbohydrates called FODMAPs are also strongly linked to symptoms of IBS, and a reduction in FODMAPs under the supervision of a dietitian has yielded many fantastic results.

FODMAP stands for Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides and Polyols. They are a large group of dietary sugars that are found in lots of common foods such as dairy foods, fruits, vegetables, wheat containing products and sweetened products. The low FODMAP diet aims to reduce the total load of FODMAPs for a short period of time (2-6 weeks) at which point each FODMAP is reintroduced slowly to monitor your tolerance. This is best done with your dietitian so you get clear results. You may react to only one FODMAP, or a couple, or find that no one FODMAP is the cause, but rather too much is the issue.

Importantly, the low FODMAP diet is never meant to be followed long term as this can cause nutritional deficiencies. With your dietitian, you can find a balance that enables you to eliminate your symptoms, but still meet your nutrition requirements. Meaning you can live a healthier and happier life.


Hannah Roberton – Accredited Pracitising Dietitian
Sunshine Coast Dietitains
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SCDietetics
Snapchat: @dietitianlife

Paul's Body Engineering: Sugar & Snacking

In simple terms, sugar is a part of everyday life. Sugar can be found in nearly everything we eat and drink, and is a major contributor to the current obesity epidemic. Sugar can impact our lives in so many ways, especially when consumed in excess.

 

So how do we reduce our sugar intake?
It is harder than one would think. A simple diet with the reduction of sugar is not that easy to maintain. For years and years, without as much knowledge as we have now, we have consumed copious amounts of processed sugar in our foods and drinks. Through years of this consumption, we have developed, over time, a primal addiction to sugar. Trying to simply cut it out of one’s diet completely is very difficult to do and even more difficult to maintain over a longer period of time. Therefore, simple reductions and changes in one’s diet is the best approach to reducing your sugar intake.

 

For example, cutting down on soft drinks, chosing clean cereal options over packet cereal, including more fruits and vegetables in your diet and less canned produce.
Another example, if you are a coffee drinker and have two cups on average per day with one teaspoon of sugar per cup, that equates to 14 teaspoons of sugar per week. Swap each teaspoon of sugar for a natural sweetener and you have immediately reduced your sugar intake by 56 teaspoons per month. It is the simple changes that you can make in your diet that will inevitably create a healthy and more energetic lifestyle.

 

We all fall victim to searching for those late night or mid-morning sugar hits (i.e snacks) and it is these snacks that cause our sugar intake for each day to exceed any limitation we may have intentionally set for ourselves. Therefore, in order to avoid these temptations follow some simple rules;

• When you have finished dinner and any desert brush your teeth.
• If you feel the need to snack and don’t have a healthy option available have a big drink of water, cup of tea or coffee and go for a walk.
• Always distract yourself with chores, tasks etc when you feel the need to snack.
• Always swap chocolate, chips etc for healthier options such as rice cakes, greek yoghurt, homemade protein balls etc.
• Support a healthy diet with regular exercise. If you should indulge do an extra session to make up for it.

 

Education is key when it comes to sugar.

 

Sugar is a carbohydrate. On all packaged groceries bought from a supermarket is a nutritional chart that identifies how many carbohydrates are in each product. To ensure you buy the healthiest version of the product you desire, look over each of the nutritional charts to see which one has the lowest carbohydrate content. Obviously quality products should supersede the ‘cheap and nasty’ however once you have done this a few times with your regular shopping you will start to learn what products are cleaner than others thus removing excess sugar from your weekly diet.

Again it is the simple changes that can be made that will make a huge long term difference in your diet and your family’s diet. The less sugar in your diet now, the better your health long term.

Paul Hooper
Paul's Body Engineering

Email: paul@paulsbodyengineering.com

Phone: 0466 587 643

Facebook: www.facebook.com/paulsbodyengineering

Website: www.paulsbodyengineering.com

Instagram: @paulsbodyengineering

MAB Personal Training and Adventures: Introducing Amy Woods

Name: Amy Woods
Business: MAB Personal Training and Adventures
Age: 33 Years
Years In The Industry: 12 Months
Qualifications: Cert III & IV in Fitness
Interests: Lifting weights, cooking yummy food, art, being creative
What Makes Me Passionate About The Fitness Industry: Knowing that people can overcome depression, addiction, sickness and everything that goes with that through fitness and looking after their bodies. I love seeing someone working hard and achieving results, its amazingly rewarding in that respect.

Being a busy mum of 4 kids, I understand how hectic life can get some times. After getting everyone ready for school, doing the school run, cleaning up, washing, folding, working, cooking, somehow squeezing 25 hours out of a 24 hour day, I understand the last thing you think you have time for is exercise right?

Well think again. Everyone has the time to exercise it just needs to become a priority. Think of it like brushing your teeth, you wouldn’t go to bed without doing it because it keeps your teeth healthy, well guess what? Exercise is vital to keep our bodies healthy.

Getting up at 5am in the morning to train is not everybody’s cup of tea. It’s early, it’s cold, my bed is really comfy and quite frankly the desire to just curl up into a snug ball and fall back to sleep is incredible. So why then do I get up?

Because I have promised myself to make no excuses, I have made my ‘why’ stronger than my ‘why not’ and I just don’t have time to beat around the bush about it all. Just do it.

Sometimes the only time I have to train is in the middle of the day, outside, when my son is asleep. It’s stinking hot, I don’t have a home gym and I have limited room but I do it, because that is my time for me so I can be the best mum that I can be.

If, like me, you only have a small amount of time to train daily, try these tips:

• Do some high intensity training – eg 5 minutes of burpees.
• Go for a walk at night after dinner. Take the whole family.
• Find your fun, something you love doing and just do it.
• Get up 30 minutes earlier – even if it is cold or set aside 30 minutes each night for exercise.
• Exercise while your watching TV at night.
• Have heaps of sex – yep that’s right, it’s classed as exercise
• Make exercise a priority.

Remember that each and every one of you deserve to be happy and healthy. It is your right to take time out of your busy days and do something for yourself. Make exercise a priority. You are all awesome and deserve awesomeness in your life.


Amy Woods
MAB Personal Training and Adventures
Website: http://www.mabpersonaltraining.com.au/
Instagram: @mabptadventures
Email: amy@mabpersonaltraining.com.au 

AmSo Fit and Healthy (Danica): Protein

Protein. It seems to be common knowledge now that if you train, you need protein. But what doesn’t seem to be understood is what we need it for, how much we actually need and where we can get it from.


Why is protein important?
Protein is made up by long chains of amino acids, some of which the body can make itself, but others must come from foods and are consequently known as ‘essential amino acids’. The body takes these chains of amino acids, breaks them down, separates them and restructures them to become body proteins and uses them for a number of things, including:

• Transporting oxygen around the body (heard of haemoglobin?)
• Building bones, tissue and cartilage
• Creating hormones and enzymes
• Repairing tissues
• Source of energy

How much protein is enough?
You’d be surprised to know, based on the current hype around protein, that you don’t really need a lot. An 80kg male needs little more than 65g of protein each day and a 65kg female less than 50g. Now these amounts are based on every day healthy adults (19-70years) and requirements will increase based on the amount and type of exercise you’re doing but with most people meeting or exceeding their daily requirements already, it’s not that much extra. Think about the rump steak you’d have at the local pub, sometimes around 300g yeah? Well that one steak, without anything else, will give you over 70g of protein. More than enough for the average person for the whole day!

Now you’re probably thinking that eating more protein, especially after a high intensity strength session, means more gains and bigger muscles. This isn’t the case. After a session, the body can only use 20-25g of high quality protein to repair and build muscle, any more than that provides excess energy which can lead to excess weight gain.
But this doesn’t mean that you have one protein filled meal/snack after your workout and then forget about it. After a high intensity workout, body protein breakdown is elevated within the next 24 hours while the building of body proteins remains priority for 48 hours. What this means then is that if you’re doing regular strength sessions, your protein intake should be well distributed throughout each day for the whole week.


Where do we get protein from?
Protein shakes yeah? Well if you’re an elite athlete and you’re struggling to meet all you requirements from food alone then yes, protein shakes are for you. But for the everyday person, why spend loads of money on supplements that often taste like sh*t when you could just eat delicious real food?!

Instead of getting your 20-25g of protein after your workout from a scoop of protein powder, you could have a bowl of Greek yoghurt with nuts, seeds and fruit. Or a delicious peanut butter and banana smoothie. Or even a tin of tuna on crackers. All will give you the required amount of protein but plenty of other useful nutrients. People often forget about carbohydrates in their post-workout snack but it’s important to replenish the glycogen stores that are burnt for energy in exercise and eating carbohydrates can do that. 


Take home messages
Protein is a controversial topic these days and one that could be discussed at length for hours. Keep an eye out for future AmSo Fit & Healthy blog posts that will dig a little deeper but for now, remember:

• Protein is essential for more than just building and repairing muscles
• Most of us are already getting enough protein on a daily basis
• More intense exercise will increase the need for protein but not by a lot
• Protein supplements are okay to have if you can afford them, if you like them and if you’re not already meeting your daily protein requirements

 REMEMBER: excess protein = excess energy = excess weight gain

- Danica

AmSo Fit & Healthy - Student Dietitian

0458 001 848 | danica@amsofitandhealthy.com.au

www.amsofitandhealthy.com.au | facebook.com/amsofitandhealthy

Instagram@amsofitandhealthy

DISCLAIMER: Recommendations for requirements made in this blog post are based on Nutrient Reference Values for Australia and New Zealand (NRVs) and are designed for healthy adults. Requirements will change based on a number of factors. Contact Danica for more information or a Sports Dietitian for your individual needs.