health

How Much Salt is Too Much?

Salt is very important to our diets, in nature sodium and chloride are found together to make our favourite table condiment “Sodium Chloride” or Salt. Excellent at enhancing the flavour of our foods, it’s also plays an important role in maintaining water balance in the body for muscle & nerve function.

Certain physiological reactions and illness including excessive sweating, burns, server vomiting and diarrhea and kidney damage can lead to a loss of salt in the body which should be quickly replaced as low levels of salt in the body can lead to dizziness, muscle cramps and exhaustion and if not treated may lead to life threatening shock.

Salt however is generally not a problem, it’s in many foods especially processed meats, snacks and fast food. High levels of salt contribute to high blood pressure and heart disease. 

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The Truth About Eating Late!

If you have been on a diet or if you are on one now, trying to eat healthy of just lose want to lose a few pounds then more than likely you have heard someone say ‘don’t eat late at night’. This could be true for most of us, however it is important to take into context of the individual concerned. The important factor here is when you normally go to sleep and for most of us the following statement will largely be true. If you work daylight hours, going to bed and waking at what most would consider a normal time then eating & snacking past 7pm is a horrible idea, especially if you are trying to manage your weight.

You know this right!? well’ here is why!

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WHY you don’t have time to exercise!

Finding the time to do things that you want to and need to do, can be one of the hardest things we have to plan around. A busy job and long hours don’t really help us either, if you want to exercise, if you want to get fit and if you want to start leading a healthy lifestyle then “I don’t have time to exercise” is just not good enough. It’s essentially a decision already made up, the statement implies you have little intention to try or plan to exercise. The truth is the things in life we do, we do because we want to do them and therefore have MADE time to do them. If you want to do something, you need to make the time to do it.

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3 Reasons to Hire a Personal Trainer

Is having a personal trainer a luxury? well sure it’s easy to come to this conclusion when for many, it’s expensive and something they don’t have to have. For years personal training has indeed been seen as a luxury reserved for the high income individual or celebrity but that’s just not the case anymore. The personal training market is booming, there are many more personal trainers than there once were, for the consumer this generally means cheaper and more choice when it comes to hiring a personal trainer.

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Why Breakfast Is The Key to a Healthy Lifestyle

Eating breakfast is nothing new, I’m sure you have heard it all before, it’s likely someone has told you “you really should eat breakfast if you want to lose weight” a smart person they are too. The advice is often not received and I am baffled as to why? It makes no sense not to eat breakfast, well perhaps it’s knowledge that is the problem so let me help fill that gap and hopefully make some better decisions with your diet & nutrition.

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4 Reasons why you should be Stretching

Stretching is thought of as a component of warm ups and cool downs and indeed, it plays an important role in these phases of preparing the body for actions about to take place during a workout and lengthening muscles post workout back towards their original state. However Stretching is not just a component of warm up and cool downs, its a fundamental component of ‘fitness’ thus true fitness is not achieved through muscle building and aerobic exercise alone. 

Depending on your goal, be it health related, function or for sport and performance, flexibility training will play an important role in all these. Adaptations to FITT principles, Frequency, Intensity, Time and Type to achieve the desired result. 

 

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How to set an achievable January Fitness Goal

Maybe you do and maybe you don’t, maybe it’s a waste of time and maybe it’s just hopeful thinking but either way, with the right thought process, making new years resolutions can be the difference between starting and not starting. If you never start, you’ll never know.

Sometimes making a new years resolutions can seem like hopes and dreams and if you don’t stick to it, then ‘oh well’. The key is to turn your resolution into a definitive goal, it needs to be;

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable 
  • Realistic & Relevant
  • Time Framed
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Lung Function Peak Flow Test (PEF)

Quite simply, your peak flow is the maximum flow rate during a forced expiration, this gives an indication of the size and power of your lungs. Commonly used for the diagnosis and treatment of asthma. It can also be useful in understanding a person’s lung function ability and progression. Having a good level of physical activity helps to increase your lung function. It is impaired by smoking, if you have a cold or various pulmonary disorders, or as mentioned, Asthma.

Your Peak Flow reading is taken and recorded as part of the Kiss Fitness Health MOT, part of the personal training consultation.

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Waist to Hip Ratio (WHR) Test

While body mass index (BMI) is a good way to tell if you’re a healthy weight. This does not however tell us much about where the fat is stored which can be a greater concern to our health. We store spare body fat under the skin, and also around the vital organs in our abdomen. We now know that this fat around the abdomen causes more health problems than, say, fat carried around the bottom or on the thighs. Having a large amount of tummy fat (when compared to having fat around the bottom or thighs) makes you more likely to develop type 2 diabetes and heart problems. If you carry excess weight around your abdomen, that means you’re an “apple” shape. Those who carry excess fat around the bottom and thighs are “pear” shaped.

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