The Boards Better Body Super Challenge 2011

Preparation is going to be the key if you want to meet your goals during the challenge. Eating healthily and exercising is all about making the choices, so give yourself a helping hand and make the right choices the easiest option available. Some suggested equipment:

1. Tupperware, lots and lots of Tupperware! It doesn’t have to be fancy fandangled tubs - plastic soup tubs are fantastic for freezing home-made soup or double portions of stews for example. Pre-make your lunch the night before and simply carry it into work the next day - microwaveable tubs can even be nuked for a couple of minutes to reheat your meals. Relying on your canteen or the local Spar will make choosing the right foods very hard, so make it easier on yourself by pre-preparing your food, that way all you have to do is reach for your lunchbox and enjoy.

2. Measuring tape. In order to be able to take your measurements properly you’ll need a dressmakers tape-measure. Callipers would be advantageous too, but not essential; I use the Accumeasure Digital Calipers which came with a handy tape-measure – it’s not a perfect method of bodyfat detection but my readings are consistent and I pay less attention to the numbers are more attention to the direction they’re going! Similarly some weighing scales will be needed for body mass measurement – we’ll be paying the lease amount of attention to this reading though as it’s often an inaccurate reflection of “fitness”.

3. Food weighing scales. This one is a strongly suggested investment. A huge (and literally at that) problem that people have with their diets is underestimating portion size and restaurant and shop portions are typically double what a normal portion size should be. So to help you stay in control of what you’re eating some weigh scales (digital ones are super-easy to use) will help you to teach yourself just how much you should eat at any given time. After a bit of practice you’ll be able to tell by sight what 30g of nuts should look like or 100g of chicken.

If you’d rather not buy a scales here’s some tips to help you understand what true portion sizes should be.

4. A protein supplement. This one will be a hotly debated one, but hear me out. There are times when you know that cooking up a big meal just won’t be possible or preferential – you may not be hungry enough, you may not have time, you may not have the ingredients or you may just not be arsed. A whey protein supplement will serve as a perfect every-so-often meal replacement supplement to help you out, it’ll give you much needed quality protein to stave off catabolism and satiate you until the next mealtime. Put it this way, it’s better to drink a shake than eat a store-bought flapjack, but a hard-boiled egg and a piece of fruit would be even better. For the guys I’d highly recommend ProMatrix and for the girls I’m a big fan of SlenderPro.

5. A comfy pair of trainers, a decent pair of tracksuit bottoms or shorts and plenty of t-shirts. Sounds simple, I know, but do you have all of these things easy-to-hand so that if you wanted to go for a walk or a run or just go and kick a ball around with your mates would these things be easy to get your hands on, clean and ready to wear? With the weather getting brighter in the mornings a brisk run before work is a perfect way to wake up and face the day energised and alert. Lay out your running gear before you go to bed and have fruit and yoghurt waiting in the fridge for a quick energy booster when you get home. I always pack my gym bag last thing in the evening too so that it’s ready to go when I leave the house and I don't have to worry about it.

6. A spreadsheet - keeping track of your measurements is going to be an instant motivation booster and proof of how your hard work is paying off. I’ll be pulling together a ready-to-go spreadsheet over the coming days that you’ll be able to download and fill in with your own details.

7. Prepare your head. There may be, no actually scratch that, there will be times over the 8 weeks that your will-power will be tested beyond belief. Friends will be going out boozing, you may have parties to go to, you’re not always going to want to eat healthily… but it really is ONLY 8 weeks out of your life. Hardly a blink when you consider the bigger picture. And if it means making some sacrifices then so what – you’re doing it to feel better about yourself, you’re doing it to push yourself where other people give up after a week, you’re doing it to look better than you’ve ever looked before. You’re doing it for you and if other people have an issue with it, that’s their problem. How many people have the guts to step outside their comfort zone and rise to a challenge like this?

This may sound kind of silly but if you can find a picture of someone who you’d really like to look like or have the abilities of. Stick that picture somewhere that you will see it all the time – beside your PC, on your fridge, at your desk – make sure that this picture plagues you and reminds you of what your potential really is.

The Official Stuff
NB – at this point in the challenge description it’s really important to point out that if you have never embarked on a fitness scheme before, there are a few things to consider. Although physical activity is perfectly safe for most people, it may be necessary to get a doctor's OK before you exercise.


Talk to your doctor before you start an exercise program if:
• You're a man older than age 40 or a woman older than age 50
• You've had a heart attack
• You have a family history of heart disease before age 55
• You have heart, lung, liver or kidney disease
• You feel pain in your chest, joints or muscles during physical activity
• You have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis or asthma
• You've had joint replacement surgery
• You smoke
• You're overweight or obese
• You take medication to manage a chronic condition
• You have an untreated joint or muscle injury, or persistent symptoms after a joint or muscle injury
• You're pregnant
• You're unsure of your health status*

If you have all those bases covered, then let’s move on...



Why Exercise?
It may sound like a rhetorical question, but why should you exercise? Seriously, why?? I’d happily bet a months’ wages that more than half the responses would be “To lose weight!”. Obviously that’s a great side effect of exercise but this isn’t always enough of a reason to keep you motivated. But aside from weight-loss, there’s some amazing reasons why we should keep active, and it’s actually those reasons that I tend to turn to when I’m questioning why I should bother getting my arse in gear…

1. Exercise improves your mood
It promotes the release of endorphins, the body’s “feel-good” chemicals and helps beat stress. And another side effect of looking and feeling better from exercise it’ll also boost your confidence with your new-found super-body. No matter how crappy I feel before I leave the house, I know that ten minutes into my training I’ll feel on top of the world and it’s always worth the initial effort to get that feeling.

2. Exercise combats chronic diseases
Regular exercise can help you prevent/ manage high blood pressure, boosts HDL (good) cholesterol and lowers LDL (bad) cholesterol, and helps prevent type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and certain types of cancer. It can also help combat depression and keeps your mental health in check.

4. Exercise strengthens your heart and lungs
Your heart is a muscle, and like all muscles benefits from regular exercise. Exercise delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues encouraging your heart and lungs to work more efficiently, so you'll have more energy to do the things you enjoy.

5. Exercise promotes better sleep
Regular exercise can help you fall asleep faster and deepen your sleep. The timing is up to you — but if you're having trouble sleeping, you might want to try late afternoon workouts. The natural dip in body temperature five to six hours after you exercise might help you fall asleep.

6. Exercise can put the phwoaaarrrr back into your sex life
Regular exercise can leave you feeling energized and looking better, which can have a positive effect on your sex life. It’ll also improve your circulation, which can lead to more satisfying sex. And men who exercise regularly are less likely to have problems with erectile dysfunction than are men who don't exercise, especially as they get older.

7. Exercise can be fun! Seriously!!!
Exercise doesn't have to be drudgery. Take a dance class. Check out a local climbing wall or hiking trail. Join a MA class (*cough* PM Roper). Exercise with friends (*cough* ask Colm O’Reilly for something new and different). Play footie with your mates. Go for a long walk and a gossip with your girlfriends. Find an activity you enjoy, and go for it. If you get bored, try something new. If you're moving, it counts!


Types of Exercise
You’ll often see fancy terminology being used to describe exercise on the board so I’ll use it here to make these discussions more approachable when you see them again. They’re really just posh ways of describing very simple things if truth be told Please note, I am not saying that any one of these methods is any better than the others and if I looked hard enough I could find studies that show each one of them is superior in some way to the other methods. What you need to do is figure out which one suits your goals the best – most often it’s quite simply the one you’ll stick to

LIT – Low Intensity Training
Just as the name suggests this is training that requires the least intense effort. Slow jogging, brisk walking, any cardio activity in fact that’s done to moderate effort (so that you feel your heart rate rising but you aren’t out of breath and you can still hold conversations) is generally considered LIT (aka steady-state cardio because you use the same pace constantly for your exercise duration. HIT can also be steady-state cardio, just at a different intensity).

Why use LIT?
It’s easy. Stick on a pair of comfy shoes and go walking. If you’re on a calorie deficit (which many of you will be if your primary goal is to lose weight) you may not have the energy to do high intensity exercise and the thought of an 8 mile run will send you straight to bed. A brisk walk on the other hand is manageable and effective.

It’s low risk. Even the most out of shape person can usually do low-intensity cardio training safely. While this is certainly appropriate advice for novice trainers, it does not necessarily apply to the more experienced trainer when it comes to effective training. For the more fitness minded of you out there, be wary of only using LIT to meet your goals – you may be kidding yourself into thinking you’re reaching your true potential when really you’re capable of a LOT more.

It burns a higher percentage of calories from fat. But unless you’re walking for 3 horus a day this is a bit of a “technical” Pro!!


HIT – High Intensity Training
This can apply to both cardio and strength training. High Intensity training generally refers to steady state cardio with high effort involved – prolonged runs or cycles for example. With regards to strength training it was a technique originally hyped by Arthur Jones and later popularised by Mike Mentzer involving training hard for short periods and still remains one of the most popular ways to effectively build muscle.

Why use HIT?
It works. High Intensity Training is probably the single most “proven” ways to get results for both cardio and strength training. If you want to get quicker, run faster. If you want to get stronger, lift heavier. But recognise the stress that you are putting your body under and rest accordingly. A lot of newcomers to training unwittingly burn themselves out by taking the exercise bull by the horns and going flat-out in the beginning, leaving them little or no energy to finish their time goals.

It burns more fat. Technically LIT will burn more calories from fat (with the muscle being the other source. Ideally we’d like all our energy to come from burning fat whilst maintaining all that lean mass we’ve accumulated) but the actual calories burnt from an LIT session will be relatively low. Say, for example, walking for 20 minutes burns 100 calories. Then 50% of 100 calories is 50 fat-calories burned. Now say 10 minutes of high intensity training burns 160 calories. Well, 40% of 160 calories is 64 fat-calories burned. By doing the high-intensity work, you've just burned 14 more fat calories in half the time.

The thing is though, high-intensity training really will burn you out fast. So if you do choose to go down this route (or using HIIT as will be discussed in a moment) be sure to rest adequately and don’t overdo it. 2 to 3 sessions per week should be plenty (and perhaps only 1-2 if you’re just starting out).


HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training
Imagine taking the best of both LIT and HIT and putting them together. The result is HIIT – quick maximum effort, minimal time-input, great results. It works exactly as the name suggests, by doing intervals of light and high intensity exercise. Generally it’s done in a 2:1 rest: work ratio, and for it to work the work portion really has to be “kick-your-ass-so-hard-you-feel-like-crying-after-three-rounds” tough. HIIT won’t work if you put anything less than 110% into it.

Why use HIIT?
It’s fast. An effective HIIT session usually lasts between 12-20 minutes. You’re in and out of the gym in minutes. How many of us genuinely can’t commit 20 minutes to exercise twice a week?

It’s effective. While LIT will only burn calories while you work out, HIIT ramps up your metabolism for up to 24 hours afterwards, so you burn extra calories even as you’re sitting at home after your session!

It’s easy (to plan and execute!). You don’t necessarily need a gym for this: if there’s a park nearby you can do sprint intervals. If you have an available stretch of road you can do cycle sprint intervals. You can do swimming intervals in a pool, rowing intervals, skipping intervals, cross-trainer intervals or you can do weight intervals (Google “Tabata” for the last word in 4 minutes of resistance training hell…). You can even do it at home with dumbbells if you have them (DB thrusters are evilly efficient).

I hope I haven’t lost anyone so far… so now you know of what the available exercise options can be, where do you go next?



One word: move.



Seriously, even if you forget everything I’ve just said just make sure you do one thing: for 30 minutes per week, every week for 8 weeks in total, move.

Given that this is a getting-in-shape-for-the-summer challenge, I’d hazard a guess that for most of you fat-loss will be a primary goal. In order to do that your diet will actually be the most important component of the efforts you put in, but exercise will come a close second, and a commitment to exercise will make it much more likely that the weight sill stay off.

The weirdest thing happened when I started to write this portion of the challenge: I was lost for words. Seriously, me, a fine purveyor of waffleishousness, couldn’t think of something to write Well actually that’s not quite true, the problem was more that I found I had too much to say and no idea how to start saying it.

It’s no wonder people get so confused with their dietary requirements – it’s a bloomin’ minefield out there, where do you even begin to start looking for answers to the common questions?! What foods will help me lose weight? What’s the difference between high-carb, low-carb, high protein, low-fat, calorie restricted, cutting, bulking and performance diets? When should I eat? What should I eat? How important are vitamins and minerals? What’s the difference between good fats and bad fats and will they make me fat? Why the heck is protein so important and what foods are it in? How do I plan for meals? How do I get a balanced diet? Aaaaghghghhghgh!!!

It's enough to send you crying into a cream-topped, marshmallow laden full-fat milk bot chocolate. But the thing is, if I was to try and explain everything I’d like to explain I probably wouldn’t finish this sticky in time for the start of the challenge and you wouldn’t finish reading it before the end of it. So instead I’m going to try and cover the very basics - no matter what diet plan you follow, or what your goals are, if you follow these guidelines you’ll be moving in the right direction.

Irrespective of whether you want to lose fat or gain muscle (or even *shock, horror* do both), your diet will be the most important tool you can use to achieve those goals. Exercise will provide additional support for reaching those goals, but what you put into your body dictates how much “weight” your carry around. The exercise you do helps dictate whether that weight is constituted mostly of fat or muscle.

At the end of the day there’s one very simple idea that each and every single one of us can abide by:

Calories In < Calories Out = Weight Loss

Calories Out > Calories In = Weight Gain


Honestly, it’s that simple. But (and there’s always one of those…) in an ideal world the “weight” we want to lose will be fat and the “weight” we want to gain is muscle, so how do we optimise the chances of that happening?

Your body likes to be supplied a constant supply of fuel – small regular meals keep your appetite under control, keep your blood sugar in check, keep your energy levels constant and keep your moods regulated. Eating regular meals is as simple as eating breakfast, a mid-morning snack, lunch, a mid-afternoon snack and dinner.

If you want to read a more comprehensive breakdown of what your food is made up of and what it will do for you there’s lots of information in the diet and nutrition sticky but for now I’m going to keep it simple:

I’m not usually a fan of listing “good” or “bad” foods as there’s room for everything in moderation in a balanced diet but I think this challenge could be a great opportunity for us to stop looking at food as just stuff that tastes good, or stuff that you use to feed an appetite, and instead look at food as our body’s fuel - good fuel in the sense that it will postively impact our health and bad fuel that in that it will have no positive effects. Food not only keeps us alive, but if we eat the right foods it can help us fight disease, help us have healthier and stronger nails, hair and skin, help us recovery from injury and illness quicker, and help us to sleep better and live longer.

I guess one of the problems is that some of these “good” foods may on the surface seem quite boring, but please trust me on this – beauty is all in the eye of the beholder. Put the immediate gratification of your taste-buds aside for a moment - which of these foods will make you feel better and do your body more good?




All it takes is a couple of weeks of junk-free eating to notice your energy levels sky-rocketing and your body feeling great. When food makes you feel that good it’s hard to go back to eating badly. In few weeks time you'll look at those photos again and I can virtually guarantee which one you'll levitate towards. Eating well is its own reward and creating a healthy diet as part of your daily habits teaches allows your body to develop it's own sense of well-being. When you eat foods to enhance that well being you'll naturally continue to crave them and junk will be a thing of the past.

Still need convincing? Ok.

Hands up who here enjoys a bit of a sugary treat. I know I do o/ the thing is though, I'm not really sure why sugar is called a "treat" at all. Surely a treat is something that' meant to do you good, or makes you feel good? But here's the thing: sugar has absolutely no nutritional benefits. None. Nada. Zilch. There is absolutely nothing of nutritional benefit to your body from eating sugar. It has no vitamins and no minerals. “But what about the energy it gives you?” comes a shout from the back. Oh yeah, a great big energy rush… which is swiftly followed by an even greater, bigger energy crash half an hour later as your blood sugar levels come freefalling down leaving you groggy, tired and moody. How fab.

All joking aside, refined sugar has no great merit in our diets. That’s not to say that all sugars are bad, or that we have to eradicate sugar from our diets if we want to be healthy, simply that we need to recognise sugar for what it really is: all sugars are not created equally but are a non-essential element to our diet. If you were to cut out sugar and sugar-laden products from your diet it would do you no harm at all, in fact it would probably make you physically healthier. So the next time you want to eat a bar of chocolate or a bag of jellies (my personal downfall) ask yourself if you really, really do want them. Are you acknowledging you’re about to eat it simply to satisfy a passing craving? Will you actually feel better after eating it or will you feel a little bloated, and perhpas a little guilty? Nine times out of ten when I stop myself and ask myself those questions my brain takes over from my taste buds and I reach for a piece of fruit instead – it satisfies my cravings but provides plenty of healthy goodness my body can use.

Instead of hot chocolate choose tea; instead of jellies choose dried apple pieces; instead of ice cream have fruit salad; instead of jam have natural peanut butter; instead of a sugary fruit-flavoured yoghurt have natural yoghurt with a chopped up banana or pear in it – make the right choices, you are in control of your diet after all.

And then there’s the other junk food comforter: fat. Chips, greasy take-aways, doughy, oily pizzas, cheap mayonnaise-laden burgers… (I must make a disclaimer at this point: I’m not talking about all fats, just bad fats. Common senses will tell you that in general junk food usually = bad fats, naturally occurring oils and fats = good). If you take an apple and dunk it in caramel, coat it with chocolate and sprinkle it with hundreds and thousands you can’t really call it a healthy food any more can you? Well essentially that’s what happens in a lot of these highly processed foods. Their fats are modified to such an extent that they become "bad" or hydrogenated and trans-fats as they’re also called. Much like refined sugars, hydrogenated/ trans fats have absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever.

So there you have it, the two worst things you can eat in your diet – refined sugar and processed fats. Both of them good foods gone bad. The moral of the story? Steer clear of processed foods. Do that and you've already improved your diet by at least 132%*

Up next, sorting out the good from bad in your shopping trolley…



* May or may not be statistically accurate

Okay, okay g’em, get to the good-stuff: meal planning.

Attached is a weekly food plan to help you keep track of what you’re eating (it’s been estimated that we eat around 500 extra forgotten calories per day – a biscuit here, a piece of chocolate there, it all adds up – so by writing down everything you eat, it’ll help you keep track of things. Plus there’s a huge amount of gratification when you can look at a weeks’ worth of eating and see just how much of an effort you’ve been putting into to changing your diet around.

I know it may seem a little problematic at first but ideally you’ll try and eat a little, often. Here’s some ideas…

Breakfast is, of course, a MUST. Study after study has shown that breakfast eaters eat less and carry less fat than brekkie-skippers, and a good, hearty, healthy, nutrient rich meal in the morning will set you up for the day. This is an ideal time to eat starchy, carbohydrate-rich foods that will break-down slowly and provide you with lots of extra energy…

• porridge oats (with yoghurt/ chopped fresh fruit/ dried fruit/ cinnamon/ honey/ milled flax seeds…)
• wholegrain cereals like wheetabix or muesli (sugar-free varieties)
• wholegrain toast with natural peanut butter and a piece of fruit
• eggs (scrambled, poached, boiled) with wholegrain toast and/or beans
• half a multigrain bagel with low-fat cream cheese or cottage cheese & pineapple

Note: sugary cereals will be considered junk food and therefore aren’t allowed. If in doubt, just ask on the discussion thread.

Snacks: a lot of people will find it difficult to last four or five hours between meals without eating, and if you don’t plan for that and eat well the likelihood is that you’ll run to the nearest vending machine for a quick sugar-laden pick-me-up. Instead you want to snack on wholefoods that won’t play with your blood-sugar and avoid the mid-morning and mid-afternoon slumps…

• a piece of fruit & a handful of nuts (a handful = 15 small/ 10 medium/ 5 big)
• a tin of tuna with pineapple or sweetcorn
• cream cheese wrapped in deli ham (try it, you’ll be pleasantly surprised! Roll it and skewer with cocktail sticks for lunchbox storage)
• a hard-boiled egg
• natural yoghurt with fruit
• homemade protein bars or a whey shake
• hummus and mini-wholemeal pita bread

Nutri-grain bars, chocolate bars, low-fat crisps, muesli bars, Special-K bars, and chocolate covered nuts (or similar) are all junk and not allowed.

Lunch and dinner will more than likely be the “big” meals you have during the day. But if you’re eating frequently throughout the rest of the day, you can probably afford to eat smaller meals at these times so don’t use the lunch and dinner labels as excuses to overeat!! There’s a tendency for most people to base all their meals around carbs (pasta, rice, spuds, bread) but instead try to get into the habit of basing your meals around vegetables and salads. Then add a protein source (a chicken fillet, some sliced meat, some smoked salmon slices, some pulses like chickpeas or red kidney beans, a sliced egg) and finally, if you really need to add a small palm-sized portion of pasta or rice or a mini wholegrain roll.

Healthy meals needn’t be complicated: some mixed green leaves, a chicken fillet, some walnut halves, a chopped orange and a drizzling of walnut or almond oil makes a stunning summery salad that’s light and refreshing but filling too.

• meat/ fish with salad or veg
• vegetable soup
• stir-fry
• roasted vegetables

Pepper, mustard, salsa, tomato-based sauces, nut and seed oils and soy sauce can all be used liberally to liven up your meals. Oils in particular will help you get your good fats in (walnut oil goes great with cooked veg, sesame oil is perfect for stir fries, olive oil is good for general cooking, almond oil goes wonderfully with eggs and macadamia nut oil gives salads a kick) so try and use them at least once a day in one of your meals.

Whether or not to calorie count is completely up to you – some like it, some find it tedious, but either way there’s room on the spreadsheet to help you do it. You can also use on-line food diaries like www.fitday.com, www.lowcarber.org, www.thedailyplate.com, www.sparkpeople.com and www.calorie-count.com

But here’s the thing… no matter how much information I put up here, there will always be more I could provide. The most important thing now is just to get started. You have a list of “good” foods, so start planning a shopping list. You know you have to do 5 sessions of exercise a week, so start thinking about how you want to plan that activity. You know you need to give up junk food so start clearing out your cupboards.

If you want to rise to a challenge, create an environment that maximises your potential to succeed. You’ve been given the tools to plan and prepare, all that’s left to do is now is go ahead and do it. So go on, get your healthy on!!!

ok everyone, a new challenge thread has been established

So... what are your goals??