Top 5 reasons why posture affects your health

Today was day 3.

Everyone is doing really well although there were a couple of slip-ups on the diet down to not reading the banned list properly! Well the mistakes have been weeded out now and everyone is bang on track. Those who did it properly lost around 4 lbs in 7 days, those who slipped up around 2, so all in all not bad.

Today we talked about the importance of optimal alignment or posture. We all know that posture is important and that slouching is bad for us but we still don't take too much notice of it. Well maybe if we understood exactly what dysfunctional posture does to the body we might take a little more care of ourselves.

1) A constant pain the neck!

Number one is the obvious one. Bad posture means that your muscles are pulling your skeleton out of alignment. This can happen because we adopt a certain posture for excessive periods of our day, e.g. sitting in the office at the computer for 10-12 hours a day.

Our bodies adapt quickly making sure we're very efficient at the task at hand so most of us now fall into the category of sitting athelete. We literally train our bodies to sit for around 10-12 hours daily!

What happens when we train a muscle to do something repeatedly? It adapts to the stimulus.

So now we've told our bodies to tighten up the hip flexors, shorten the quads and hamstrings, tighten up the pecs and work really hard in the upper back shoulders and neck.

Now whilst you're doing all this sitting around, the bottom and the core mucles of the stomach, start to get bored and switch off. After all, what's the point in being constantly ready for action when it never comes? Plus because all those muscles mentioned above have become so efficient, they might as well take over and do everything else while they're at it.

This is where we start to see pain syndromes and injuries start to set in. The sitting muscles become really overworked and get far too tense causing pain and limited mobility. The muscles that should be working to help you walk, twist, flex and extend have gone to sleep so someone else, (like the back), has to compensate and take the load. All of a sudden you've got low back pain, shoulder pain, neck stiffness and headaches, all from not using your body correctly.

2) Stand straight, be happy!

That's right, posture affects your mood. Have you ever noticed that when you feel a bit down or tired your posture is the first thing to go? Whereas when you're happy and confident you'll walk down the street with your head high, shoulders back and smiling at the world!

Have you ever seen a politician give an address? They exude confidence and gain our trust, (or try to!), by standing tall and proud, chest high and indicating a pillar of strength upon which we can depend.

Try it yourself. Think of a situation that made you uncomfortable or affected you in a negative way. Try and feel what you were feeling at the time, see the sights and smell the air around you.

Now stand up straight, throw your shoulders back, lift your head high and out a silly grin on your face. Try and imagine that same situation. I bet your feelings towards the memory have changed. It probably feels more distant, like you can't identify with it as strongly? Your posture is inherently related to emotions.

3) I feel sick!

Although you may not realise it, your health is seriously affected by bad posture. Our bodies are complicated machines, which when treated with care and respect can do amazing things and will last a lifetime. However, if you leave them untended, forget to run them properly and leave them idle evey day they will stall and bigger problems will appear.

Imagine your dream car. Think about driving that car and what it would feel like.

How does it sound?

How responsive is it to your commands?

How fast can it go?

What does it look like?

Now imagine that car waiting at the lights ready to go when 2 articulated lorries pull up either side and squash it a little bit,(please don't cry).

The chassis is now bent so the car won't track properly on the road.

The engine has a limited space in which to work.

The cylinders won't fire properly and get all jammed up.

The fuel line is squashed and the fuel doesn't feed the engine properly.

The radiator can't cool the engine properly.

In fact everything is now functioning at around 50% capacity.

This is exactly what we do to our bodies. We squash our visceral cavity, (the space in the torso where the organs sit), through bad posture by letting the chest sink in and the spine round forward. Your stomach now has less space to digest, your liver and kidneys less space to flush toxins, your pancreas less room to produce hormones. Everything is working slower and less efficiently. So now you are more prone to digestive disorders, like IBS, because your metabolism has slowed down and you're not producing enzymes as well as you should be to break down food.

Asthma is exacerbated by limited space in the respiratory system .

Male Pattern Baldness is in part caused by limited blood flow to the head. If you have forward head posture from sitting at the computer, muscles in the neck and shoulders will tighten up restricting blood flow to the head. If the body has a choice between sending blood to the brain or the scalp, it's going to the brain.

So suddenly posture becomes somewhat more interesting!

4) I feel slimmer already!

We've all done it. You put on that great outfit for a night out, you check yourself out in the mirror from all angles and automatically pulled yourself in, dropped your shoulders back and stood taller. Magically you've lost 5lbs!

When we are properly aligned everything is stretched out meaning we appear longer, leaner and slimmer.

5) Posture affects fat loss

OK this is the golden egg! Remember we were talking about the digestive system having limited space and not working properly? Well if your metabolism slows down and you become sluggish you will burn less fat.

Correct your posture and your organs will function more efficiently, speeding up your body's metabolic processes and turning you into a much more efficient fat burning machine!

So next time you brush off posture with a backhanded, I know I should do something about it but...., think again. It will change your life!

Day 2

So today was psychology. The essence of goal setting and how important it is in the fat loss cycle.

We had a really good session. We got right into everyone's goals and the true desires underneath the mask of, "I want to lose weight".

The thing is how many times have you started on a weight loss journey and not really understood exactly how, when and why it was going to happen?

You wouldn't just jump in your car to travel through Europe without an exact plan!You'd want to know how it was going to happen, what route you were going to take, when you're going to get there, how much it will cost, before you decide to go ahead and do the trip.

So why do we think the journey to any other goal in our life will just magically happen?

Unless your fat loss journey is specific and detailed you'll never get there. The simple fact of knowing that this is going to be a reality is a great motivator. When you are that focussed on an outcome, that you've planned for every single step of the way, it's going to happen!

Day 1

What a great start to bootcamp!

Today we talked through the elimination in depth and discussed all the pitfalls of processed, manufactured and refined foods and why they are so heavily responsible for obesity, IBS, food intolerance, diabetes, fat retention...the list goes on.

Everyone took the diet on board with full acceptance straight away. There was the usual, what about this food or that food but once everyone understood the reasons behind the rules, it was clear that to get results you need to make a change!

If you always do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always had!

So guys, today is day 1 on elimination. Make sure you're strict and filling out your Power Journals, (download on the site). Fill these in religiously.

A few other tips:

Eat every 3 hours - (no sooner than 2, no longer than 4)
Eat protein with every meal/snack
Drink 1ltr of water per 50ilbs of bodyweight
Limit your carbs after 3pm (read no starchy carbs if you want to lose a lot of fat fast)
Check all packaging and labelling on food religiously!
Make sure your food is fresh and organic (you can buy non-organic fruit and veg but wash it thoroughly and peel if you can)


Good Luck,

Message me if you need help!