WIN A YEAR’S SUPPLY OF HEALTHY GOODNESS WITH SPATONE®
With the sun shining and temperatures starting to rise, it's the perfect time to start getting fit for summer. Personal trainer Ashton Turner reveals his top tips for getting in shape and how to make the most out of your workouts.
What are your top 3 tips for active women wanting to exercise effectively at this time of year?
1. Now that the weather is starting to change and the sun is starting to come out again, it's a great time to get out of the gym and hit the park. Not only will being outside in the sun help to increase your levels of vitamin D but the fresh air will do you good.
2. Find a local group class such as Barry’s Bootcamp so that you are able to push yourself as well as having that added element of competitiveness.
3. Try your hand at yoga or pilates. Not only are these great for reducing stress levels but they will also work on the often overlooked elements of training such as mobility, core and posture.
What's the best approach to fitting regular exercise into a busy lifestyle?
Exercising doesn’t have to take hours to get results. If you are short on time try a HIIT workout (High Intensity Interval Training). This will spike up your metabolism and keep you burning fat for longer. Try 30 seconds of sprints followed by a minute of walking recovery for 20 minutes. You’ll soon realise why it is so effective.
What advice can you offer women about the best diet and nutritional support needed to stay fit, healthy and active at this time of year?
Diet is an absolute minefield of misinformation these days and is often the one thing people get wrong. The most successful diet is one that you can stick to. Make it too restrictive by drastically cutting calories or demonising certain food groups and it is a sure fire recipe for failure, and can also cause long term issues. It isn’t fats or carbohydrates that make people fat, it's overeating. Plan your diet to consist of 80-90 per cent clean, single ingredient, nutritious foods such as chicken, sweet potato and kale. Then, allow yourself 10 per cent of your diet to come from the foods you love such as dark chocolate and red wine. By working these into your diet it stops you craving them and then binging on them undoing all your hard work. Life is too short to not enjoy yourself from time to time.
What are your top 3 motivational tips to help women keep up with their exercise regime?
1. Keep it varied. Repeatedly doing the same thing will get boring and you are more likely to give up.
2. Take progress photos. The scales won’t ever make you happy but by comparing photos you can see how far you have come.
3. Set yourself a goal and work towards it. If you've always wanted to run a marathon, enter it. If you want to learn a new skill such as gymnastics, there's nothing stopping you. Always having something to work towards will stop you becoming bored.
If you love to exercise but find you can’t get your iron requirements from dietary sources alone, then taking a food iron supplement like SPATONE® is a gentle and effective way of maintaining healthy iron levels, and can help reduce fatigue and tiredness, so you can keep up the good work!
WIN A YEAR'S WORTH OF HEALTHY GOODNESS
Spatone® Liquid Iron is offering one lucky reader the chance to win a year’s worth of Spatone® Apple as well as a weekly box of organic fruit and vegetables from Able & Cole., and a personal nutrition consultation with Emma Wight-Boycott – worth £1,200!