One of life’s realities is that significant improvements take time, they do not happen overnight. Yet when it comes to health and fitness we have been convinced that great results can occur in only 8 weeks or 12 weeks! How often do you see marketing on social media, in magazines and on TV for fitness challenges to get you in your best shape in 12 weeks? Today’s modern world is moving so fast and technology has allowed us to get things at the click of button that we have come to expect instant gratification in just about everything we do. And when it doesn’t happen people become discouraged very quickly and try one of two options. They try to cut corners and try extreme methods to speed things up or they simply give up. And it is not just the people trying to lose weight or get fit, we also see this same mentality with people suffering injuries that require a great deal of rehabilitation and work on their behalf. Many see this work as being too hard and taking too long and search for something to provide instant relief or someone to “fix them” instead. This short term approach only serves to create a much bigger long term problem. In this article I explain why long lasting results with health and fitness take considerable time and as a society we must begin to change our mindset to the way we look at exercise, nutrition, and changing lifestyle habits.

One of the most overlooked parts of improving health and fitness is how we eat our food. We place a huge focus on the type of foods and when to eat but pay little attention to how important the process of chewing our food is to providing the numerous benefits to our health. When you eat slowly, you digestion improves and your body can easily extract the essential vitamins and minerals from the food to allow it to function at its optimal capacity. You feel more satisfied with each meal allowing for better energy throughout the day and this also prevents over-eating helping you to maintain a healthy weight. However, if you eat too quickly your digestion suffers in a big way and this can cause havoc to not just your waistline, but can cause headaches, joint pain, skin problems, and even disease! Meals end up becoming stressful to your body as opposed to being a time for it to refuel and recharge. Add on top of this is how you feel sluggish and bloated and unable to stop over-eating and sabotaging your exercise efforts. Your food choices might be perfect but the fact you are eating too fast is your problem. For many people this becomes a bad habit and they do not even know they are doing it. In this article we are going to explain exactly what happens when you eat too quickly and some simple strategies you can use to prevent this bad habit from ruining your health goals.

Most jobs do not require a fitness test to be eligible for employment but for people entering into the occupations of emergency services such as police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and even army recruits, the need for fitness testing is vital. In order to effectively assist the public in the dynamic situations they are called to engage in, that are often physically awkward and demanding and pose injury risk to their own body, fitness training is critical. To be accepted into any of these organisations all over the world all applicants must go through a selection process that compares your current level of fitness versus a baseline number determined to be acceptable by the organisations testing protocol. The fitness testing for each of the organisations vary slightly, with some specific tasks relevant to certain occupations. To be a successful applicant you MUST pass the minimum result across the various tests specified by the organisation meaning this will require training on your own before applying to complete the test. This is where we see people make some big mistakes that could potentially derail their career before it has even begun! In this article we will explain what these are so you can avoid falling into the trap.