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I remember being 4 weeks out from my first body building comp, looking in the mirror and almost crying beacuse 'I wasn't lean enough'. Compliments flowed about the physique I had achieved through months of hard training and energy restriction and yet I couldn't press two 9kg dumbells over my head (where these days 60kg push press is the norm). My menstrural cycle had stopped, I was lethargic, short fused and my enjoyment of training has all but faded away. What was looked like 'peak health' was quite the opposite, but I had to hang on until comp day.  Fast...

There is a lot of information out there on how to lose fat and build muscle. A simple google search on ‘how to gain muscle’ will bring up over 300 million hits on the topic. Google how to ‘tone up’, and you will get another million or so hits, with many being dieting teas or other money-wasting potions. So, this article is here to give you the cliff notes you need to know to make the most out of your training and hit those body composition goals. We shall start with a big question- how is muscle built? Let’s get...

I see you scrolling. We all do it—that absent-minded late-night wandering of the mind in a bid to zone out from the day’s events. However, if you are trying to reign in your diet and are not including your sleep patterns into the equation, you need to listen up. It’s time we stop seeing sleep as an optional extra and start looking at it as one of the most potent wellbeing tools we have- especially if you are looking to drop some unwanted kilos. Although sleep requirements are different between individuals, the consensus is that we should be hitting in...

You don't need to consider yourself a full 'athlete' to get something from this blog- or even female for that matter. What we are looking at here is the concept of fuelling for training. There are more advanced training facilities than ever before, and people are more interest than ever in partaking in high level, structured training. When I started school, the options for training were running, organised sport, and if you were really into 'fitness', you would hit up a body pump class. The good news is that in the last ten years we have seen access to high...

Do you need a meal plan? The first question many people ask is ‘can you write me a meal plan?’. But this is putting the cart before the horse in many cases. Meal plans can be useful for some, and yet, without context and guidance, they disastrous for others. Let’s start by focussing on what a meal plan actually is.In the world of nutrition, there is a lot of information. Information is great! Except, it is critical to understand that not all information is useful to YOU! As a trained nutrition professional, it is a dietitians job to understand this...