Tania Upton - Personal Trainer

27/05/2026

08/08/2024

Brilliant advice

So of course, do what you want.

But often snacks have been habitualised in the diet and can stall weight loss efforts as they are additional calories you just don’t need. 🤷🏻‍♀️

👉🏻 If you have a relatively sedentary job, then you probably don’t need a morning or afternoon snack, especially if you aren’t exercising that day.

👉🏻 Most snacks or ‘grab and go’ are higher carbohydrate and can lead to blood sugar spikes and dips that then can lead to over eating on calories.

👉🏻 The requirement to snack is typically out of habit, or ‘hangriness’

AND Sometimes we snack because we are afraid of being hungry. So, a lot of people eat ‘just in case’ they get hungry.

👉🏻 We associate hunger with this inability to control subsequent behaviour around food, we are worried we will end up eating too much at their next meal, and we don’t like the resulting blood sugar drops that can occur because the meal before was low in either protein and/or fibre.

👉🏻 Really though, a balanced plate will allow you to feel hungry but not lose complete control of your emotions and become reactive and irritable.

👉🏻 If your hunger is more like ‘hanger’ then you definitely need to sort your meal composition out. It’s not a ‘normal’ response, despite how common it is.

👉🏻 If you eat enough (and enough protein and fibre, which are great for satiety) at your meal times, you can find that your blood sugar levels don’t drop to a level that then instigates hangriness. 🥩🥓🍗🥗🥦🥬🍅🥑🍳

Instead of wondering what a good snack is, focus on eating enough at your meals so you don’t need a snack.🤩👏🏼

👉🏻FWIW people who count their calories and macros are different in their ability to account for calories and are way less likely to overeat - they have a handle on what is going in and can adjust accordingly. They can maintain a calorie deficit, snack or not.

👉🏻Those that don’t are better off just not snacking. 👌🏼

25/07/2024

Love this! 🤩

11/07/2024

11/07/2024

I've talked about the importance of fueling before your workouts; now let's talk post-workout fueling. Getting enough to eat in the right time frame following your workout plays a huge role in your recovery and training progress. And when it comes to fueling after exercise, I bet there's little surprise that women are different than men. Here are a few things to keep in mind if you're trying to maximize your recovery: 👇
💪 Women's metabolism comes back down to baseline within 90 minutes after exercise whereas men might take 3+ hours, depending on the exercise.

💪 We need to eat protein (aim for 30-35 grams with 3 grams of leucine) with a bit of carbohydrate as soon as possible after exercise - especially if you're doing a depleting exercise like cardio. Ideally, aim to eat within 30-45 minutes after finishing your workout.

💪 If you delay calorie intake, you stay in a breakdown state. In short, your body won't start repairing until you take in some food.

💪 Even if you eat enough in the rest of your day to meet what your body needs, not eating post-workout acts the same as not eating enough.
I've heard from many women who have admitted to skipping their post-workout snack in order to cut their daily calorie intake, but remember: losing weight does not simply mean calories in < calories out! Cutting food in and around training will only hurt your ability to make adaptations and gains. If you're planning to make diet adjustments, consider implementing them outside of your workout fueling - your body will thank you!

Fuel for what you're doing, and fuel for the recovery that your body needs afterwards.

https://www.drstacysims.com/blog/restricting-carbs-hurts-performance-and-health

04/04/2022

Some awesome info

I mean, if your parents are tall, you are going to be tall. If they are fair, you’re likely going to be 👱 👱‍♀️ too.

But high 🩸 cholesterol?
A ‘slow’ metabolism that makes it difficult to lose weight?
A poor sleeper 💤 ?

These don’t have to be ‘how things are’ for you, though people mistakenly have a defeatist (or dismissive?) attitude when it comes to risk factors that are totally modifiable through what you day-to-day.

Your genes are not your destiny, and that is pretty empowering right?!

Your cholesterol might be high, but you can do something about your overall lipid profile that ⬇️ your cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk (i.e. the reason we care about cholesterol in the first place).

Triglycerides (more important IMO than cholesterol) ⬆️ with excessive🍺 🍷 and 🍞 🥯 🥨 intake - ⬇️ these, your trigs ⬇️ and with it your CVD risk. (Omega 3 fats from fatty 🐠 and fish oil supps also can help here).

Your metabolism might seem ‘slow’ but you can totally change the number of calories you expend in a day and with it, improve your ability to lose weight.

Start lifting weights 🏋🏼‍♀️ , prioritise your protein 🥩🍗🍖🍳 intake, eat your vegetables 🥗 🥦, ⬆️ the number of steps 🚶🏻‍♀️ you do each day outside of structured activity and - 💥- over time you will lay down lean muscle tissue 💪🏼 , feel fuller and less likely to snack on junk food 👉🏻👉🏻 lose body fat.

Your ability to fall to 😴 and stay asleep is largely governed by your circadian rhythm and the sequence of events from the time you wake up to the time you fall asleep - and you have complete control over that.

Earlier exposure to light ☀️ in AM, being active (not too close to bed time), dimming ‘junk’ light 💡 at night, putting down devices💻📱 90 min before bed and not eating too close to bed (for some) can really move the needle on ability to fall asleep and stay asleep 🛌 . Your parents may not have been good sleepers but this doesn’t mean you can’t be.

Perhaps the most important change to make is to your mindset 🧠 . There’s a lot that you can control, and knowing that can completely change your outlook, your behaviour and your health landscape. 💪🏼

Go be awesome 😎 this Monday.

21/10/2021

What's with celery juice? 🧐

I mean, celery has fibre and it’s as close to a zero calorie food as you’re going to get.

As a filling vegetable it is awesome. Adds bulk to your diet. Contains potassium, calcium, vitamins and antioxidants... and you can juice it if you want… but there is literally no evidence to support some of the common claims you hear about celery juice.

🥬 Fights auto immune disease – very broad. Celery is healthy of course, but there is nothing to suggest that celery itself is going to contribute to overall disease status. It contains antioxidants sure, and doesn’t contain proteins that are likely to trigger the immune system, but this is a feature of many many foods. Not just celery.

🥬 Eradicates bacteria – the dose required to eradicate bacteria would be infinitely higher than what celery juice would provide. It may have antibacterial properties, as do so many other vegetables and fruits.

🥬 Helps with bloating – it could well do that! 💩

🥬 Critical for acid reflux – um, an appropriate level of stomach acid is important for you to digest and break down nutrients. Acid reflux is often experienced when you don’t have enough stomach acid. There’s no research to support celery juice has a specific role in resolving acid reflux. Zinc and digestive enzymes – these might help in that regard.

🥬 Helps restore adrenals. 🤷‍♀️ Nothing whatsoever to support this. At all. And what does this even mean? Issues with energy are often blamed on ‘adrenal fatigue’ which in itself is an ambiguous term that we now know is an oversimplification of problems within the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis.

As a selling point on the medical medium website (he's not a doctor, btw), it even clearly states there was no scientific evidence to back up the claims of celery juice as a super food. (There's no emoji for celery either, JICYWW) 🧐

There are, however, thousands of testimonials - but the thing with diet is, if you start doing something like - juicing your celery - you are also more likely to be changing other nutrition behaviours that make a big difference to health. THAT is something we do know from science. 🤓

You can totally juice it if you want, but actually roasting your celery with olive oil and salt and pepper is delicious. You could try that too 🤩

01/07/2019

Check out our amazing local school getting amongst this awesome idea !!

Photographer Michael Cunningham captured the day.

12/02/2019