Shaun – Page 2 – Catalyst Nutrition

In a past life I paid a chap to do a meal plan for me, the aim? Be ripped for our holiday to Fuerteventura! This led to me eating 7 meals a day for 5 months which sounds great on paper but these were the same 7 meals, every day. Let that sink in; Salmon, Chicken, Greek Yoghurt and Steak every day it cost me a bloody fortune and if I ever see one of Aldis Salmon pieces again it’s too soon. Long story short I failed to achieve my goals, the diet was just too strict, there was no flexibility at all. What about if I wanted to go out with friends or take Becki out for dinner? God forbid go to the cinema and have nachos! Because of that rigid approach when I did fall off and binge I really, really binged! I always spout on about how the best diet is one that you can stick to and that just was not a good diet.

I’m already speaking about Flexible Dieting before but I wanted to show you what flexible dieting actually looked like, how you could still live your life and lose weight…

So here we have Denise. After chatting with Denise about her daily habits and taking into consideration her height, weight, and age we know that to put her in a Calorie Deficit she can take in 1,600 calories a day or 11,200 a week. Here are three ways Denise could use her calories and maintain being in a deficit and therefore lose weight.

Absolute Machine

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun
1,600	1,600	1,600	1,600	1,600	1,600	1,600

Total Calories consumed = 11,200

Weekend Warrior

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun
1,300	1,300	1,300	1,300	1,600	2,200	2,200

Total Calories consumed = 11,200

The Booty Pump

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
1,500	1,700	1,500	1,500	1,800	1,500	1,700

Lift Weights Lift Weights Lift Weights

Total Calories consumed = 11,200

The possibilities are endless, like Denise you make the calories work for you and never the other way around! Stop having your curly wurly and grapes at night (if you know what that means, you know ;)) and give yourself a chance at succeeding.

Health

Energy Balance – What’s it all about?

Shaun Health

Some of you may have seen this phrase thrown about, others may not. But it is the one fundamental factor in all diets whether that is weight loss, muscle gain or just maintaining where you are right now, energy balance is what affects it all.

What a lot of people do at this stage is make it all sound very complicated but energy balance breaks down to a simple equation of energy in vs energy out. Imagine a set of scales with one side having energy in, so that’d be what you consume through to eat and drink – carbohydrates, protein, and fats – and the other having energy out which is made up of your BMR (Basic metabolic rate), NEAT (Non-Exercise activity thermogenesis) and EAT (Exercise activity thermogenesis)

So if the scales were showing that your energy in was higher than what you were using your body would store that energy for a rainy day this would lead to fat gain.

Whereas if the scales were showing that the energy out was higher than what you were taking in your body would need to use that energy it had stored for such an occasion, this would lead to fat loss.

“But Shaun what happens if they’re both the same” – well, in that case, you would simply maintain where you were.

As I mentioned this is THE fundamental factor in all weight loss diets. If you were ever to peer behind the veil and see why it’s working for that person. For example, if your friends have gone Keto and lost a shed load of weight, it isn’t because their body is learning how to burn fat as is so often advertised. They have simply removed an entire macronutrient in carbohydrates so as you can imagine that is going to seriously affect how much energy they’re taking in… they’ve removed so many food groups it’s unreal! Or we all have them, friends, one is on Slimming World doing absolutely amazing and the other cannot for the life of them figure out why it isn’t working. I’m just going to throw it out there, maybe, just maybe that ‘free’ food they’re consuming on mass actually contains energy and therefore is throwing their scales from the fat loss side all the way to the other!?

Once you wrap your head around this simple but very important premise suddenly life becomes flexible, you can eat some toast at night time if you want, you can go out for a drink or two you’re your mates after work, welcome to a world where all diets become options. And what about if I told you breakfast was not the most important meal of the day!

Health, Lifestyle

Cheat Meals? Or work them in?

Shaun Health, Lifestyle

“Sundays are for Carbs, Cuddles & Cheat Meals”

Or are they??

One of my clients messaged me the other day asking if he could have a cheat meal, he said he’d worked really hard, been really strict with himself and deserved it.

This chap is working with me to lose some body fat so I wanted to know first of all why he thought he needed a cheat meal. I reckon he’d been way too strict with himself and was at breaking point. I pulled him up straight away and asked why on earth he’d let himself get here. He told me that he thoughts what dieting was, starve myself and then reward later.

Hell no! That’s why most diets fail, had he spoken to me at the beginning of the week my advice would have been to pull the calories back ever so slightly over the week and then enjoy whatever it was that he wanted to go have. He was absolutely right he did deserve a reward, guy had smashed it but not like that. He’d wound himself up so tightly that the thought of having a Nandos was taboo so we had another chat about how so long as he doesn’t exceed his weekly allowance of calories and maintains his protein intake per day he could go get that butterfly chicken with peri peri chips (I’ve made myself hungry now) and not feel any guilt or that he’d cheated at all!

So, if you’re wondering about having to give up your favourite foods by working with me, think again! I firmly believe in the individual approach, no one person is the same and treat them as such will only mean it won’t work for them. We’ll make it so you’re living your best life, enjoying food and not feeling as though you’ve sinned, “gone wrong” or cheated anything.

Health, Lifestyle

4 Burners of Priority

Shaun Health, Lifestyle

4 Burners of Priority

“It isn’t about having time, it’s about MAKING time”
Lots of people

This week I found myself thinking about priorities and how mine has changed over the years and I thought about how that could be applied to health and what it meant for people.

Obviously we only have so many hours in the day so we have to prioritise accordingly right? I mean the greatest gift you can give anyone or anything is your time, after all it’s the only thing you will definitely never get back.

How we do that though is so individual, so let me talk right to YOU… imagine that we have 4 burners on a hob each representing a different priority; Health, Friends, Family & Work. You can have the all burning equally, having your life in perfect balance but life often doesn’t that way. There are times that’ll you have to choose and depending on the circumstance those priorities change. Maybe it’s a friends birthday or they’re going through a hard time, turn that burner up! But the other 3 must suffer because of that. There’s a tight deadline for an important project at work, turn that burner up! But what seems to have happened though along the way is that poor little ‘health’ burner over there in the corner has been extinguished, other things have taken a front seat in your life and as much as you try you just can’t find the time to get your health back on track and get your health burner back on, there’s only so much gas damn it!

So you have a choice to make, do you maintain the status quo and allow things to remain the way they are and if you’re happy then that’s exactly what you should do! But I imagine that if you’re on my site, reading this article then there’s something you know you need to change. Get that health burner going again, give it a chance, and give it some gas! Sure it’ll mean making the other 3 less of a priority whilst you coax your health back to where you want it but is that really so bad. Look at those 4 priorities, really look at them… 3 are you helping or benefiting other people and they’re the three we let burn bright with only one of them being solely for you and that one suffers.

I say turn it up, burn it bright, focus on yourself allow yourself to make time and be your own priority. Have a read of some of the articles on here, download my free eBook – The 4 best known secrets in weight loss – and hell, if you’re going to go for it properly drop me a message and lets work together.

Previous page 1 2

Your last first step...

Author Archives: Shaun

Flexible Dieting in Action!

Energy Balance – What’s it all about?

Cheat Meals? Or work them in?

4 Burners of Priority