Thursday 5 January 2012

Fruit Fast - The final day!

Today marks the final day of the epic fruit fast. A most gruelling and painful challenge. As hard as, if not harder, than Ramadan ;-) lol.

Today's meal plan included about 3 bananas and a few apples for breakfast followed by 2 avocado for lunch and grapes for tea mmmmm.....

According to my scales and set of ripped abs ;-P I have lost 6lbs of body fat. Not bad in just 5 days....

As expected, the majority of symptoms i.e. headaches, stomach aches have diminished however i still feel a longing to eat something more substantial and little has been able to take my focus until this drive is satisfied.

I feel this was a very worthwhile exercise and I will look to do a short one in the summer and repeat the 5 day fast in the new year.

I hope you found this inspiring. My friend and I are creating a vlog of the fast, recording the progress across the 5 days.

It'll be shown here shortly!!

Lawrence



Wednesday 4 January 2012

Fruit fast day 4!

Today marks the 4th day of one of the hardest challenges I've ever attempted.

For 4 days straight my diet has basically been a wide host of fruits including blackberries, apples, bananas, grapes, pears, kiwi and coconut.

Why am I doing this:

- Loose Xmas body fat
- Build strong immune system
- Improve digestive system and overall health
- Increase energy
- Build discipline

The cons:

- Feel hungry most of the time
- Occasional migraines
- Extreme gas
- Lack of focus

These are the symptoms you should expect as your body cleanses from previous bad eating. I am confident that the sacrifice will be worthwhile!

One day left, and then my fruit fasting friend and I are off to Nandos to celebrate!

Boom!




Sunday 1 January 2012

How to build discipline, loose weight and get healthy with the 5 day fruit fast

Happy new year to you!!

With everyone setting new years resolutions me and my friend decided to embark on a 5 day fruit fast to cleanse the body, loose a bit of Xmas body fat and build some discipline.

Now the rules are only fruit and water. With day 1 almost at an end, I can honestly say this is going to be one of the most challenging things I've done yet.

The fruit fast was inspired by Anthony Bova, author of the Spartan Health Regime. This guy does a 5 day fruit fast every year and also does 2-3 days a month!

I'm going to blog the progress day by day. Today has been considerably tough. It feels like our stomachs have been empty the whole day, we have headaches and we're getting ratty at each other (all symptoms expected bar the last). As a reward however, we both have experienced a huge increase in energy. Probably due too both an increase in natural sugar intake and the elimination of heavy proteins and complex carbs that take a lot of energy to digest.

Speak soon

Peace!



Friday 2 December 2011

What are you doing at 6am on a Saturday morning?

Myself. A glass of water, 20min ab workout, 5min meditation, and 15min inspirational reading (mastery by George Leonard). Topped off with a fruit smoothie to start the day.

Me and my flat mate made a promise we would both rise at 6am to do Eben Pagans hour of success. My flat mate struggled to get up on this occasion. So I sat outside his room grunting as I came up for air mid stomach crunch, whilst playing inspirational Rocky and Ali recordings on my phone to motivate him.

He rose at 6:30am, a solid achievement considering it's a Saturday and 99% of people are hungover in bed.

Not only that but we have a marketing seminar to attend today in central London for the entire weekend.

Success is about creating positive habits. One by one you need to internalize them into your mind and do them everyday.

Try the hour of success as described in
Productivity part 1. This habit will keep you fit and healthy in mind, body and spirit for life.

Only focus on one habit at a time. Do it for 30 days to make it stick. The first 15 days might be challenging and it might take all your determination to get up.

But after 15 days or so you'll be coming down the other side of the mountain. And momentum will make you want to keep it going.

Don't focus on starting any other habit at the moment. Just concentrate on perfecting this one first for 30 days.

Peace out!

Tuesday 22 November 2011

The selfish human race

We are so damn selfish. Now this can be healthy when it comes to looking out for yourself and helping yourself to help others. Ralph Emerson said the most beautiful compensation in life is that one cannot help another without first helping himself.

Now that is great news. However, ever noticed how selfish humans can be in conversation with each other. If you want a serious brain fuck try this:

Spend a week listening to other peoples conversations and notice how they respond to one another. 99% of the time their response will start with a personal pronoun such as 'I' or 'My'. "I had a similar experience...", "I've done that before as well", "My brother does that as well" etc.

How bloody selfish!

Haha careful with this exercise because you will start hating people for a short while....

To make things worse we are normally thinking about this response whilst the other person speaks which means we weren't truly listening anyway!!

Spend a week observing this and then for every conversation you have, make a conscious effort to zone in on the other person. Put all personal agendas aside and put all focus on that person and what they are saying. Then respond with things like: "how did that feel?", "you must be so pleased", "what will you do next?".

If you can practice this and habitualize it, you will build much better relationships in business, and among your friends and family. People will feel that you are genuinely interested in what they have to say and you will be rewarded in return.

Happy listening like a superhuman. ;-)

Saturday 19 November 2011

Strength Training

Want to build strong lean muscle mass quickly? Course you do who doesn't.

Now there are loads of guides, books and texts out there that can teach you this. However I want to show you a way that is simple, time efficient and very effective.

I've recently ran in Men's Health Survival of the fittest. In training for this race I purely focused on running and subsequently dropped around a stone in weight down to 11 stone. I'm now back on the path to building some more muscle mass, something I've done successfully in the past.

It's simple, lift heavy, do low reps and do only 2 or 3 exercises max and make them compound (work as many muscles as possible in one exercise).

Isolated exercises i.e. peck deck, and tricep kick backs consume too much time and take too long to produce results.

My workout takes 30min max 3 times a week and will give you ripped, functional all-round muscle mass.

Here's the workout:

Monday
- Weighted chins ups (underhand close grip)
- Barbell curls (beach weights ;-) everyone wants big biceps)

Wednesday
- Barbell squats
- Stiff legged deadlifts (do not lock your knees)

Friday
- Standing Barbell Press
- Weighted Dips

During this workout, make sure you aim for 3 sets per exercise and aim for 5 reps with 3 reps as a minimum per set. Once you can achieve 5 reps for each set you need to up the weight. Try increasing it by 2.5kg each time you hit 5/5/5 reps.

Also, it's very important to rest for 3min between sets. Lifting this kind of weight will exhaust your muscles so you need recovery for the next set.

Now obviously your diet is important and the simple rule is just make sure you're eating plenty of protein in your diet, subject to the amount you eat will dictate the muscle size you achieve. However even eating just 3 average sized meals a day will still result in increased muscle gains (for most individuals). Foods to accommodate should be plenty of eggs, fish, meat and fruit for energy pre-workout (simple, natural, effective and will transform you into a muscle rippling beast!)

Oh yea, remember to get plenty of sleep, ideally 8 hours a night. It'll make a big difference.

Google exercises for more info or email me at lneal2@gmail.com and I will be happy to help.

Follow this simple program and you'll make heads turn and meat heads tremble.

Be better, live superhuman!

Burn Body Fat

I've always been very slim but when I went to University that all changed but not in a good way. Chicago Town pizzas and other pizza brands often found my kitchen fridge shelf. (i had half a shelf of space - student life ;-) ). During Dissertation time every second counted, and ease of cooking and exceptional taste mean't CT pizzas became breakfast, lunch and dinner. The only thing that stopped me from ballooning was playing basketball a few times a week, nonetheless I still became victim to a bit of a belly.

After Uni I went to Kavos with friends. I weighed 13 stone and had 20% body fat including man boobs.

This had to change.

The fruit diet began!

Everyday, fruit until lunch time. Large portion of fruit first thing or a fruit smoothie (add coconut milk - good fats) followed by grazing on fruit during mid morning to stave off the hunger for more "substantial" foods.

Come lunch time, the rule is proteins and greens, NO complex carbs i.e. pasta, rice, and bread. The proteins will keep you full. Aim to eat fish, and meats, eggs etc (unprocessed) with salads. Have two afternoon meals (lunch and dinner) and graze on fruit in between.

Just following this diet alone with limited exercise will burn body fat like crazy. You will literally see daily incremental results.

After doing this for a couple of months I could see my abs for the first time in a while, and within 6 months I had the best 6 pack going, in fact it was more like an 8 pack ;-).

Now you're probably thinking a couple of things "but fruit is high in calories!?" or "too much fruit is too acidic and bad for teeth etc". Bull!!

I said I wouldn't go into the complexities and I won't but if you're really keen on understanding the science google Anthony Bova and the Spartan Health Regime. Bova argues that our small digestive tract is designed to digest fruit easily and that fruit contain all of the nutrients the body requires. He said that our most healthiest ancestors made fruit the main part of their diet and as a result they had teeth like concrete and stacks of energy, damn I started going into detail.....

As a result of changing my diet. I saw a lot of benefits such as lower body fat probably around 10% maybe less! I also had a health test at a nearby gym and my results were up there with the best. One of the most interesting was my hip to waist ratio which was incredibly good, so much that it was off the scale. I had dropped in waist size from a 36inch to 29inch waist.

Superhuman experiment:

Try eating fruit until lunch for two weeks and eat proteins and salads for lunch and dinner. Watch your energy levels soar and your body fat drip off!

Do not eat sweet/desert type foods over this period if you do results will be slower. Two weeks of discipline people and you will see massive results!!

Live Superhuman!!