​In the pursuit of better health, nutrition, and fitness, tracking your progress can be the difference between achieving your goals and falling short. Keeping a close eye on various aspects of your journey not only helps you stay motivated but also provides valuable insights into your body's response to diet and exercise. Let's explore the importance of tracking progress and delve into key measures that can greatly aid your success.

Body Fat: Unlike body weight, which includes all components of your body mass, tracking body fat percentage offers a more precise view of your body composition. This metric is particularly valuable if you aim to reduce body fat while preserving or building lean muscle mass. As you engage in fitness activities and adjust your diet, tracking changes in body fat provides an accurate gauge of your progress towards a leaner and healthier physique.
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Photos: Progress photos are a visual testament to your dedication and hard work. Sometimes, the most significant transformations are better observed through images rather than numerical data. These photos serve as tangible reminders of your journey, motivating you to stay committed. Over time, you can visually compare your starting point to your current state, witnessing the positive changes and reinforcing your determination.

Calorie Intake: Tracking calorie intake is the foundation of effective nutrition management. It allows you to monitor and control the calories you consume, ensuring they align with your dietary goals. Whether you're aiming to reduce calorie intake for weight loss or increase it for muscle gain, this metric empowers you to make informed decisions about your nutrition. It's an essential tool for achieving and maintaining a balanced and healthy diet.

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Resting Heart Rate: Your resting heart rate offers valuable insights into your cardiovascular health and overall fitness level. A lower resting heart rate often indicates improved cardiovascular conditioning, which is a positive outcome of regular exercise. Monitoring this metric can help you gauge the effectiveness of your fitness routine and assess your cardiovascular health. Significant fluctuations may signal stress, overtraining, or other health concerns, prompting necessary adjustments.



Blood Pressure: Regular blood pressure monitoring is essential for identifying and managing potential health risks. High blood pressure can have severe implications for your well-being, including an increased risk of heart disease and stroke. By tracking your blood pressure, you can detect any issues early on and make lifestyle adjustments to maintain optimal levels. This proactive approach is crucial for long-term health.


Lean Mass: Building and preserving lean muscle mass is key to enhancing metabolism and achieving a toned, fit appearance. Tracking lean mass provides valuable insights into muscle growth or potential loss. This information helps you tailor your exercise and nutrition plans to support your muscle-building goals. By monitoring lean mass changes, you can make informed decisions about your training and dietary strategies.

In conclusion, tracking progress in nutrition and fitness is a powerful tool for achieving your health and wellness goals. The measures mentioned, from bodyweight to sleep quality, offer valuable information that can inform your choices and keep you motivated on your journey.
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At our nutrition and fitness coaching program, we understand the importance of tracking these metrics, and we offer a convenient solution. Our dedicated app allows you to monitor all these key metrics in one place, making it easier than ever to stay on top of your progress. What sets us apart is that our experienced coaches can use the data you input to make informed decisions about what strategies to implement. This personalized guidance ensures that your fitness and nutrition plans are tailored to your unique needs and goals, increasing your chances of success on your journey to better health.
So, whether you're looking to lose weight, build muscle, improve your sleep, or manage your nutrition, tracking your progress with our app and the support of our knowledgeable coaches will set you on the path to a healthier, happier you.

​When trying to lose weight or change your body composition, the first things that come to mind are usually cutting calories and ramping up your workouts. But there's another important player in this game that shouldn't be overlooked: protein. By making protein a priority in your diet, you'll experience a bunch of benefits that will help you achieve your goals even better.

​Let's dive into why:

1. Say Goodbye to Snacking: One of the biggest benefits of protein is that it helps control your appetite. When you eat protein-rich foods, you feel fuller for longer and are less likely to snack on junk food. This makes it easier to stick to your calorie goals and reach your weight loss goals.
2. Build Those Muscles: Protein is also essential for recovery and muscle growth. When you exercise, you're breaking down your muscles, and protein is the building block that helps repair and grows those muscles. The more muscle you have, the more calories you'll burn throughout the day, even when you're just sitting on the couch.
3. Feel Satisfied: Another perk of protein is that it helps with satiety. This means that when you eat protein, you feel satisfied and don't feel the urge to eat more. This is because protein takes longer to digest than other macronutrients, so it keeps you feeling full for longer.
4. Keep It Simple: The best part about focusing on protein is that it's a simple approach. You don't have to worry about counting calories or measuring out portions. Just make sure to include a serving of protein with each meal and snack, and you'll be on your way to reaching your goals.
5. One Habit at a Time: Trying to change too many things at once can be overwhelming and unsustainable. By focusing on protein, you can establish one habit that will have a big impact on your weight loss and body recomposition journey. And once you've got that habit down, you can move on to other healthy habits.

In conclusion, prioritising protein in your diet can have a big impact on your weight loss and body recomposition goals. You'll enjoy benefits like appetite control, muscle growth, satiety, and simplicity by focusing on protein. And best of all, you can do it one habit at a time!

Nutrition science is an ever evolving, complex subject that takes into account so many factors. Nothing is set in stone, there will always be exceptions to the rule. Good nutrition however is pretty simple to achieve. Not easy, but simple. 
Regardless of your nutrition philosophies or beliefs, these principles will hold true. 

Focus on food quality, whole foods help us to:
- Regulate energy balance evenly
- Balance our hormones 
- Feel satisfied with our meals 
- Maintain normal blood sugar levels 

Being mindful around our food helps us to: 
- Control cravings 
- Avoid emotional eating 
- Know when to stop eating 
- Eat slowly for better digestion 
- Appreciate your food 

Good nutrition is not about short term goals. Its something you can carry on for the rest of your life. 
- its integrated into your lifestyle.
- Its easy to prep and plan for.
- it fits into your budget and schedule 

Good nutrition and exercise go together like lock and key. Good nutrition helps to: 
- Fuel workouts and sport
- Enhance performance 
- Supports recovery
- Builds muscle 

Good nutrition should not make you feel deprived or miserable. It should become a natural part of your life that you enjoy. 
Good nutrition should: 
- Make you feel happy about your lifestyle, body and food.
- Enable you to enjoy indulgence here and there without guilt. 
​- Be easy to maintain long term 

It's in the name, the Carnivore diet focus on eating meat and animal organs. It's basically the polar opposite of being a vegan.

The food you would mostly be eating on this diet include:
beef, chicken, pork, lamb, turkey, organ meats, salmon, sardines, white fish, and small amounts of heavy cream and hard cheese.
Many fitness influencers swear by this methodology, claiming that it leads to less inflammation, fat loss, muscle gain and more.
But what does the data say? Are there long term studies on this diet? Is it sustainable ?
Lets dive in a bit.

In the carnivore diet you will hear terms like “evolutionarily consistent” and “toxic plant compounds” as proof that the diet works.


Evolutionary consistency means eating the way our ancestors did.
There is research that shows a lot of hunter-gatherer tribes (yes, many still exist around the world) have much lower rates of the health problems that plague people who eat a standard Western diet.


However in truth most hunter-gatherer tribes eat more than just meat, they eat what is available to them in that season. Most research shows that plants make up most of what these societies eat or ate.


Toxic plant compounds refer to the idea that some plants contain substances that make humans sick. Advocates of the carnivore diet also believe plants aren’t as good for you as everyone says due to the chemical compounds they contain. One example is lectins, which are found in plant foods like grains and legumes, and essentially serve as built-in defense mechanisms against microorganisms, insects, and other pests. Some people are sensitive to them, and if certain foods aren’t prepared properly (like kidney beans), they can make you sick. However s long as you prepare lectins and legumes properly , they generally aren’t harmful.

Bottom line: There’s no scientific evidence linking the carnivore diet with good health.
It turns out we don’t have data on what happens to people long-term. That includes no long-term data on weight and body composition, the digestive system, metabolic health, or anything else.

To summarise:
But Brand! We’ve seen so much success stories of people on social media who are shouting from the rooftops about how much healthier they are, or how much weight they lost. In truth the carnivore diet is a lot like other popular diets that trend over the year like keto or vegan or intermittent fasting.

It is what all these diets have in common that is producing these results. It’s not so much the focus on meat (or veggies) that is leading to the results they are getting , it is the elimination of processed foods and excess calories.
The carnivore diet is basically an elimination diet.

Like all these diets, carnivore puts emphasis on only eating meat and meat products, so most likely you are not eating very many carbs, you’re cutting out many food groups and are probably eating less processed foods.

This eating style is super restrictive. Because of that, people end up drastically reducing the types of foods they eat. They are eating less processed carbohydrates, less sugar, less processed and calorie dense foods in general .
And that’s where the diet’s benefits really come from. Anytime you’re eating less processed foods , you are going to see benefits.

People who feel so much better on the carnivore diet are probably addressing an intolerance. Food intolerances can cause a whole range of symptoms: digestive troubles, chronic inflammation, and feeling sluggish.

So it’s not that the carnivore diet is magic. It’s that by omitting dairy, gluten, FODMAPs, and so many other foods, they stop eating what’s causing their problems.

End result: they feel better.

But is that sustainable ?

In summary
In principle, the carnivore diet isn’t so different from other popular diets. Again, It’s the stuff these diets all have in common that produces results: eating enough protein, and focusing more on minimally-processed foods and less on highly-processed foods.

While it may work for some people , it is not for everyone and can be very hard to sustain long term.
If you want to try the carnivore diet out, go for it! But use it as an experiment, not a long term solution. Try to include some fruits and other high fibre foods in there.

We need glucose to live. Our brain needs about 130 g of glucose a day. We can get this from our diet, or when carb intake is low (for example if you were fasting) we can get it from gluconeogenesis or ketosis, as long as we have enough protein and fat to process.


This is important to understand that while our body needs a certain amount of glucose, that glucose can come from several sources.


Just like there is no single “best diet”. There is no “correct” amount of carbohydrates that is the same for everyone all the time.

Carb intake will depend on factors like:

• How big or small someone is
• How big or small someone IS;
• How much lean mass or body fat they have;
• How active they are;
• How intense, long-lasting, and / or frequent that activity is;
• How old they are, and what stage of life they are at;
• Intake levels of other macronutrients;
• Genetics;
• What they want to do.

For example
The carbohydrate needs of a young muscular male athlete who trains twice a day will need a lot more carbohydrates than a sedentary 68 year old woman who does tai chi 3 times a week.


When it comes to carb intake, there is a distribution of how intake will vary. Most people will be somewhere in the middle, doing best with a moderate portion of carbs, especially from higher fibre, nutrient rich slow digesting sources such as vegetables, fruits and whole grains.

When it comes to carbs we suggest as often as possible stick to less processed, whole foods with slow digesting carbohydrates. keep it complex,but when thinking about nutrition as a whole, try to keep it simple.

Make sure you are eating the right foods, in the right amounts, for the right reasons.
1. how much food are you eating each day? are you eating the right amount for your goals?
2. how are you eating each day? are you slowing down to savor and digest?
3. why are you eating each day? are you truly hungry when-you eat?
4. what are you eating each day? are you sticking to mostly whole foods?
5. are you going #1 to #4 consistently? are you doing this 75-90% of the time?

Many of you may be familiar with this term, its used to market certain carbohydrate and grain products as being “better for you”
But what does it mean?
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The glycemic index (GI) is the measure of the rate of which an ingested food causes the level of glucose in the blood to rise. This tells us how much blood sugar goes up when we consume 50 g of usable carbohydrates from a particular food.
It is a relative measure determined against a specific reference food.

In general the less processed and higher fibre a food is, the more complex its carbohydrate molecules usually are. Due to this , these foods typically take longer to digest and have a lower GI.

High glycemic foods include sugar, candy, breakfast cereal and bagels. Lower GI foods include legumes, whole grains and vegetables.

When blood sugar goes up quickly, insulin is usually quick to respond. The amount of insulin released usually matches the amount of glucose present.

This had led to some people to suggest that a low GI diet is a healthy one.

While GI is an interesting measure of the physiological response to carbs in the diet, it does not tell the entire story.

1. We don’t eat most foods by them selves (for example you would not just eat bread on its own). Protein, fat and fibre all change GI  level , eating carbs as part of a full meal will change GI levels.
2. Many factors can affect how quickly a food is converted to glucose, including:
   when we eat that meal during the day
   Wether we have been active
   This can vary person to person, day to day and meal to meal.
3. The GI score can be easily manipulated by the TYPE of sugar in the food. Foods with large amounts of fructose tend to have low GI scores, because fructose does not immediately raise blood glucose levels. But that does not mean foods any healthier.
4. The GI index is based on a standardised amount of carbohydrates not a standardised amount of food. In order to calculate GI of carbohydrates we’d only need a small amount of sugar, but quite a lot of carrots for example. Making this an unrealistic comparison.

Researchers often use glycemic load as a more realistic measure. The glycemic load of a food is based on the GI X by the serving size of the food.
While this gives a better picture of how fast blood sugar may go up after a meal, GL still has some of the same problems as GI. And it does not take into account other elements like fibre, micronutrients, phytonutrients etc.

The GI and GL does not give us the whole story. Most people should not be using these (or any numbers) to dictate what and how they should eat and enjoy.
Nutrition is not black and white, carbohydrates and most foods are more complicated than this.

Barardi et all 2018 The Essentials of Sport and Exercise nutrition Third Edition.
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“Eat your veggies”
We are used to hearing this from our parents growing up but the importance of why and how never really stuck. As a nutrition coach, one of the most common habits I am assigning to my clients is for them to eat more vegetables.

Easier said than done.

Why? Because eating your vegetables can be boring. And the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about this, is how bland and flavourless vegetables taste.

​But I am going to teach you how to make this habit easier, and how to prep vegetables in a way that is actually palatable to you.
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Lets make eating vegetables for every meal a regular thing you for you :)

What to eat.
There is no point forcing yourself to eat vegetables that you dislike (at least at first). Start with the vegetables that you know that you can tolerate and like. When I started to improve my nutrition I literally ate only carrots as my vegetable source.

Because that was the only vegetable  that I kind of liked and could tolerate.

Once I became consistent in prepping and cooking said carrots, I started to experiment and try other vegetables.

I started to realise that veggies don’t have to be boring and bland, they can taste pretty good!

Fast forward to now, I regularly include:
Beans
Pumpkin
Egg plant
Bean Sprouts
Sping onion
Lettuce
Broccoli (frozen)
Capsicum 
Tomatoes (this is a big one because I HATED tomatoes)

And continue to experiment with veggies I can find on the island. Now don’t get me wrong there are still veggies I dislike and will not eat, like onions for example. But my range of whole foods has otherwise improved a bunch.

Make it easier for you to eat your vegetables by starting with your tastebuds.

HOW to cook:
Steam, boil , oven bake , fry, Grill
It is really up to you: 

• Steam them on the stove or in a microwave with a bit of water and salt
• Glaze them with olive or coconut oil and bake them for 20-25 minutes.
• Marinate them in your favourite sauce and grill them.
• Toss them into a pan with a bit of oil and seasoning and fry them for 10 mins.

​Personally I like to steam my vegetables with a bit of seasoning, because its really easy and it takes like 10 minutes. But its really up to you, give any of these methods a go and see which method you like.
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How much vegetables should I eat? (Portions)
1 portion of vegetables equates to 1 fist size. Generally you want to aim for 2-3 fist per meal for males and 1-2 fists for females.
Ideally most if your plate should be made up of vegetables.

The Benefits
Some general benefits that you may experience when including more plant foods in your diet are:

• Feeling more satisfied from meals
• Feeling energized all day
• Feeling clear headed and mentally coordinated
• Recovering well from workouts
• Having smooth moving digestion
• Maintaining a healthy weight

Vegetables are nutrient-dense and low-calorie, making them an ideal staple if you’re goal is weight loss. They’re a rich source of fibre and loaded with a variety of vitamins, minerals, and health-promoting phytonutrients. It would be difficult or impossible to get that amount and variety of nutrients from other higher-calorie food options.
Having a complete array of micronutrients (like calcium, magnesium and other electrolytes) is necessary for fully functioning body processes, like transporting oxygen and sending electrical signals to muscles. Vegetables are pretty important.
With the right amount and variety of vegetables, you'll feel effects in muscle coordination, appetite regulation, and mental clarity.

Conclusion
Including more vegetables (and other minimally processed nutrient dense foods) is going to improve so many things in your life. How you feel throughout the day, mental clarity, your mood etc. It’s not something that you’ll experience right away, usually people start feeling the benefits of eating more vegetables after a few weeks, which can be really motivating to continue on with it.


Because you have experienced what it feels like to operate at an optimal level, you’re less likely to want to go back to the way you were eating before. That’s not to say that you can’t enjoy the foods you used to, go for it!
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As long as you have eaten your vegetables for the day ;)

How does this work? How is it possible that even though all these diets are different, they seem to be effective in helping a person lose weight?

Instead of looking at their differences, look at what these diets have in common.

• They all promote eating mainly minimally processed foods.
• They focus on limiting the amount of food you are eating .
• They all focus on cutting a certain food group (or groups) from your diet.

By cutting out food groups, eating mostly minimally processed foods , these diets effectively put you in a calorie deficit. i.e. you are eating less than you are expending resulting in weight loss.

Godman, H. G. (2018, January 24). Lessons from “The Biggest Loser.” Harvard Health Publishing. Retrieved February 3, 2022, from https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/lessons-from-the-biggest-loser