Toned for ‘Mother of the Bride’ Dress

Hi everybody, so I am two days away from being mother of the bride and that is all good except that I've worked out that having a wedding shortly after that big feasting period over the new year and over Christmas is probably not the ideal time to have a wedding, particularly as I'm somebody that just lets rip over the Christmas period. So I ate everything that there was to eat, loads of Christmas cake and plum puddings and loads of food, had friends around on Boxing Day and more on New Year's Day. So I ate and ate and ate, knowing that I was still going to be mother of the bride and so I got to post-Christmas and I thought, oh my gosh, it was a few weeks later I found out that my clothes were a tad tighter and I didn't want that because I had this gorgeous dress to wear with a bit of a cutout in the side and so I really didn't need for my clothing to be tighter than what it already was beforehand. So moral of the story, if your child's going to get married, ask them if they can get married before Christmas. But failing that, we'd already put the date down.

So I just want to talk to you today a little bit about how I was able to trim down without buying weight loss powders, without buying, without going ultra kind of, you know, starvation mode or onto any specific diet because there's ways and means to do it and I want, I just want you to know how I did it. So everything at the moment, all my normal clothing is feeling lovely, not loose, but it's certainly not tight. It feels really good and I feel probably the most lean I've been for a while and that is because of two things.

My two little things that I did were resistance training, so strength training, so resistance training and increasing my protein intake as well and probably if you look at on the third part of that was taking away all the junk I normally have or I did have one or two days in the last few weeks where I have had junk like corn chips and chocolate but on the whole taking those away entirely. So I've really cleaned up my diet as well and that has allowed me to, now I had one go on the scales and my weight was up but I knew that my fat percentage was down so I haven't got back on the scales again because again and I'll reiterate this again and again and again, scales tell you nothing about whether you've lost muscle mass, fat percentage, water, it just gives you a blanket weight and that weight could be anything. I am a nurse on a cardiology ward and it is amazing how tiny little ladies with heart failure of some kind will lose three kilos in a night because we're actually giving them water tablets or injecting fluid tablets, fluid inside, you know what I mean, they're on things to get rid of the water and so they can lose three kilos a night and yeah and they can be tiny anyway. So don't rely on the scales, they tell you sweet stuff all and in fact my body is the most lean it's probably been over the last year and my weight has gone up on the scales because I've built up more muscle is what I've done because of my added protein I've done and my increased strength training sessions I've done, I normally do about two a week and bike ride in between but I've upped those to about four a week and so that has changed, has shifted how much of the muscle I've got while it's decreased and helped to decrease my fat percentage.

Does that make sense? I hope it does because it makes sense to me. So yeah, so some key strategies for me as I said were to just clean up my diet a bit and do those things I've just told you about and it is amazing when you increase protein as well it helps to preserve your muscle mass and so if I've done a hard workout, I've done a workout, it doesn't need to be hard, it can just be one where your body works doing all sorts of weight equipment.

Some of the weight equipment I use for resistance training will be kettlebells, suspension trainers which are TRX suspension trainers, I may use resistance bands, I've got these rip sticks that I use at the moment, body weight as well and after that within about half an hour after that I make sure I have my protein drink. Now normally I'm really bad with protein, I've got protein in my cupboard but do I use it? Nah, I may kind of go two or three months and I'll have one drink and then I'll go two or three months and have a drink.

So this time I've been a tiny bit more strict, I still forget it but I've been far better at it. So probably three times in the week, four times in the week I will have my drink of protein after I've done a strict training session, a resistance training session. So how do I know that I've lost fat percentage?

How do I know that? Well I know that myself because my clothes have become looser but I've also when I'm doing street stuff there's my body still has maintained the actual muscle, you'll see it's all still there, you know it's not gone so it's still there, you know I don't like posing too much but yeah it's all still there. But the other thing is that I have just made sure that I've eaten high protein food and so I'm having that more often than I would and I'm taking this protein so I know I've retained that but the fact is that my clothes are looser lets me know straight away that my fat percentage is decreased so it's quite a big thing.

So many people I see I just wanted to touch base on that quite a few people I know that are on weight loss products have no idea about not losing their actual muscle. So the fact is that if you do lose the muscle you start to look so you start to look not healthy you start to look like you you are not as well as what you were when you're carrying some more weight. So be very very very careful if you are trying to lose weight and you are losing your muscle mass as well because you won't have you won't have that healthy look that you previously did just be careful you don't start to look poor because it's not a great thing.

So yep losing muscle as well can slow down your metabolism so you end up burning fewer calories just hold on got my friend behind me she's scratching away I just needed to stop for a moment so all good so I'll keep going. So losing muscle can also slow your metabolism so you burn fewer calories so that the the amount of muscle you keep and you have is key to your metabolic rate so if you have a fair bit of muscle you can keep the metabolic rate up there and continue to burn calories so it's actually quite important and for long term we want to get rid of the muscles when you need those muscles to help you to continue to burn calories.

Now many studies have also shown that resistance exercise so strength training and eating extra protein at the right time will preserve your muscle so you can have that protein before you work out during the workout or immediately after kind of half an hour to an hour after you work work out and and that's going to help you to preserve that muscle so it's a good thing.

So so I've said before when I do resistance exercise what does that involve well it involves anything that makes my muscles need to work so it can be that I'm doing body weight work on the floor or that I'm suspending myself from a suspension trainer and doing stuff on there or it can be that I work with resistance bands or a barbell whatever it may be all of that is resistance training and when you make your muscles work they also start to build up so they get stronger they are able to do more things for you but they make your body also look nice and look as well plus they're very very practical if you build up some muscle these muscles as the mother of the bride are going to help me to drag about I've got some big boxes of lemons and leaves and stuff I've got to take to the um the place tomorrow to the reception place tomorrow and so it's going to help me to drag things around as well so it comes in handy not just for looks but there's so much more to having muscle also supports your joints just think you know this is veering off a bit but if you're the mother of the bride and you say have this elbow that's been sore for a while you might have a tendon somewhere in here that's you know strained just by having all this strong around my biceps and triceps and right through my forearm can help to support that joint or if I've got a sore knee having you know the muscles contracepts hamstrings calf muscles or strong can also help to support it as well so you know it's not just for looks it's also practicality on the big day you want to be able to help out as much as you can you don't want to be having pain that's for sure so by having strong muscles you can support those joints and so yeah so it can be all sorts of stuff.

So some of the factors I've got here is one to get enough protein in so I've kind of had one drink per day after I've worked out and I've increased as I said before my intake of foods such as lean meat fish I've never eaten so much fish in my life eggs and yogurt all those sorts of things that are high protein and for dinner we should have at least one palmful I think it's a palmful not this one palmful and guys two palmfuls each meal and also to add to that you need carbs there's been this big black mark on carbs for a while but you need good carbs because carbs help fuel your body and without fueling your body if you're on a low carb diet you may find that you lack um you lack you know I can't hear the word but you just feel fatigued you feel lethargic it doesn't give you fuel if you don't have carbs so having your good healthy carbs which include whole grains fruit starchy vegetables etc that fuels your body so you can do the resistive training that without those you will feel fat and tired and the protein needs it's good if you have carbs because protein can do its job of building up the muscle rather than putting it into energy stores so we don't need both carbs and protein I eat quite a bit of fruit as well so I don't think I can ever go on any sort of a diet that told me I can only eat one piece of fruit a day but serving this there's no secrets to weight loss there's no secrets to it you just um decrease the amount of junk you're eating at the moment decrease the amount of calories.

I've continued on with my intermittent fasting which goes overnight so I haven't changed that so that's 16 hours I have or I don't eat and I eat in the space uh time period of eight hours before I even go into my fasting mode again and I'm not always strict with that but you know on the whole I've been quite strict with that as well and then to be able to add your protein and just keep um yeah keep up with the strength training if there's one thing one thing that will make your body the best looking it can ever be the best it can ever be in every way shape and form the best it can be in being able to haul big bags overseas the best in being able to put your bag up on an overhead locker the best at being able to I've had a beer the other day I wanted to clean out my house before the bride-to-be came and so that bin was heavy probably weighed 60 kilos I would say with the amount of stuff we had in there and it's one of those extra big bins and um you know being able to wheel those along with all the stuff and then it kept falling down into the ditch so it pulled up out of the dish it fell in the ditch pulled up out of the dish and I did that about eight times so you know having muscle is more than just looks but boy does it give you a nice defined look as well and so it is so good for so many things so yeah if you're going to be the mother of the bride or you have an event about to come up where you need to look your best I would say about six to eight weeks beforehand start to get a tiny bit strict and looking at your the junk stuff that we had and for some of you it can be the alcohol you consume at night can have loads of calories in it and then just looking at adding protein and look looking at um working out up more than what you do at the moment I reckon four times a week would be great and I only need to go for half an hour three quarters of an hour reducing strength training you'll be amazed what it does for your body and particularly as we get older and our metabolism starts to slow down all that can just boost it up again and you can feel

like a 20 year old and look like one maybe not 20 but you know you can look good as well so also cleans up your skin for normal use nice clean eyes so have fun with that and tell me if you've

got an event about to come up with that do you think so this is Cherie from Spice Fitness