You wouldn't put shite fuel in your car, so why put it in your body?

I find myself more and more amazed at how many of us really don't understand how to eat right, the more I watch my husband working with people to help them with their nutrition. 

There is far too much information 'out there' on what you should and shouldn't eat causing us to do fad diets week in week out. Just the other week one of my friends who I thought was pretty clued up on what she eats as she's in good shape and trains regularly said she was about to do the 5:2 diet along with her colleagues at work. She spoke to hubby, who quickly talked her out of it by explaining how she could reach her goals much quicker by eating in the right way. She's since told me that her pals who did the diet gained all the weight they lost as soon as they ate normally, whilst she is steadily still losing it. 

I'm no expert, but I'm going to do my best to break it down here from what I've learnt and see if you learn something. Plus share some of the awesome things my hubby does with breakfast!

You NEED to have breakfast within 30 min of waking up otherwise if you wait longer your body will store what you eat as fat. Make sure it includes some protein. This means if you wake up and have cereal, porridge, toast you will store fat. If you have some eggs or yoghurt and fruit or maybe add some nuts to your porridge these will help your body build muscle. 



 The next part it to eat every 2-3 hours not the massive gaps we are guilty of leaving due to being too busy. If you do this what happens when you eat is your body has a massive sugar spike as you'll probably eat something carb based like a sarnie, soup, a pot noodle! All of which your body will store as fat. You need to make sure you have some protein with each meal. Your aim is to have a ratio of 4:2:1 in your day. This means 4 - 5 meals a day (depending on your size) 2 litres of water and 1 type of exercise each day.  Do-able? 

If this has made you ask more questions you need to speak to my husband as he's the pro. You can tweet him @lifestyledeluxe 

If it makes you think, how on earth can I fit in that amount of food as I don't have the time of the money then you need to open your mind to a different way of looking after your nutrition. 

These boxes are common place in our household as my hubby is a Herbalife distributor. 

I've been using the products for over a year during which I've changed my body shape, lost body fat and despite getting up at 4am each day to do my day job and I'm more productive than I've ever been. I don't have to spend ages preparing my food when I leave the house, I always have something on me so I don't have to buy crap. My fitness is great, my health is great - I might get one cold a year. The main benefit is I really understand how to fuel my body. I still use them as an everyday part of how I live my life, because they're so easy. Not because I'm on a diet

I've been reading about Psycle the new spin class in London which is tailored to you with music to suit you and you get nutrition advice - it sounds great. Finally a fitness craze which also prides itself on making sure people understand how important they fuel their body pre and post training. After all 80% of what you do is WHAT YOU EAT.... 20% is your exercise. 
On the Psycle website they have a Nutrition page where they recommend the following sites https://detoxkitchen.co.uk/packages and http://www.purearth.co.uk/

Detox Kitchen looks amazing if you have £35 a day to spend on your food intake. Pure Earth is approx £65 for one of their programmes. 

Maybe you are happy to spend this kind of money but most of us don't. My point is, you don't need to spend a fortune to have a healthy diet day to day you just need to be open to learn what you actually should be eating because most of us are getting it wrong. 

For more information on what my husband can help you with click here http://www.goherbalife.com/richardsilverman

Making a showreel!

How adventurous are you, when it comes to what you can do online? I'm trying to get better at all the free stuff we have access to. A few weeks back I wrote about boosting your profile, so I thought I'd make myself a little 'showreel' from some of the highbrow pieces I've done to a camera seeing as I now have a You Tube channel. I actually managed to put a few clips together using the You Tube editor.. it's almost foolproof and much easier than I thought.

I'm not entirely comfortable in front of a camera which is why I purposefully chose to work in radio. People often say to me, why not do TV but I've never been that fussed with it, I don't think I could handle the pressure. I worry enough about how I look in a picture, never mind on film. My face does odd things that I can't control. Then there's the whole thing of how much weight the camera adds..  Then along came You Tube and we started filming more videos for the radio show, so I had to do more and I realised it could be fun. 

I have now learnt how awful chewing gum looks on the screen ( my mum was right), and how I still do strange things with my face. The other day we made a video after making some food which we had to taste and I was trying to get the food out of my teeth with my tongue, whilst we were filming! No joke (how did I not think you could see me doing that!)
My co-host at Heart is Stuart Miles, who you'll recognise from Blue Peter. These days he's regularly reviewing the papers on Sky News on a Saturday morning and just always looks good on screen. He's got the knack.. 

But I tell myself, you gotta start somewhere, so mine is here on my blog. I'm going to put my face out there a bit as well as my voice. If I can do it, you can too. Why not - make something with your videos. I'm no Spielberg but it's handy to learn a new skill and realise you can do anything if you try!

Hear how a 12 year old Simon Cowell sounds!

listen to ‘Hear how a 12 year old Simon Cowell sounds!’ on Audioboo

Can you identify your other half by their pheromones?

listen to ‘Can you identify your other half by their pheromones? ’ on Audioboo

Would you call your baby Fanny?

Do you like your name? I remember growing up I didn't, mostly because I couldn't say it properly. Then there was the phase where I shortened it to 'Natty' all my friends names ended in 'y' - Vicky, Chessy, Izzy, Lucy. As I got older I made my name shorter to Nat. Then decided it was too familiar so I try to use it in full now.

Friends have done similar things - a Vicky from school always introduces herself as Victoria, yet my pal Giancarla gets her name shortened to GC (something I think she introduced due to being fed up with incorrect pronunciation)

Now we are at an age where the responsibility to pick names for our children lies upon us. A friend is in a dilemma as to what he will call his next child. To me it seems an exciting and somewhat extraordinary privilege but terrifying for others. There's always lists of the most popular names, but today it has been revealed the names that are dying out. 

Cecil, Rowland, Bertha, Blodwen, Fanny, Gertrude, Gladys, Muriel and Margery or Marjorie are also names that were very popular a century ago but are now believed effectively to be extinct, according to analysis by the genealogy website Ancestry.co.uk.

There are certain names that just sound old, but is that by association eg, your Nan was called Gladys or the lady at the end of the road where you grew up was Margery. I had an Auntie Fanny and and Uncle Willie growing up - and whilst it caused many a snigger amongst me and my cousins it was pretty common. Fanny was also once a staple of Enid Blyton books and apparently Margret Thatcher said of her deputy 'Every Prime Minister needs a Willie'. Yet no Willies have been listed on recent birth certificates.

When you hear about celebs calling their children stupid names, you can't help but feel sorry for the kid. I have visions of Moses Paltrow being picked on at school - maybe in a swimming lesson where his peers will ask him to part the chlorinated waters!

How do you decide on the right name? Maybe you've grown up not liking yours, so you're adamant to pick well when you have children. Would you go retro or just play it safe?