I’m now 2 full weeks into prep and feeling pretty good. My food is high, my appetite has come back and I’m enjoying my new training split. I often find that these first few weeks are where some of the biggest changes occur and I don’t just mean physique-wise but more so with my mindset, focus and routine. You guys know, I’m all about routine and love my daily rituals for morning cardio, meals, training, ways of working and my night-time routine. And whilst I follow a structured approach to all of these things during my non-competitive season – I do allow for a little flexibility when it comes to meal timings, staying up later or snoozing my alarm before cardio in the morning. But for me, when prep starts – I aim to be stricter with these things and follow a more rigorous and consistent approach. Here is where I find it makes a MASSIVE difference. When embarking on a prep the aim is to gradually drop body fat whilst maintaining and growing muscle – it’s a slower process than you think and I would never take a harsh approach to this phase by drastically dropping calories or introducing hours or cardio a that start. I like to play the long game and allow for my diligence and discipline over time secure my progress and the end result. These last two weeks my focus has been meal timings and recovery. So I’ve been working hard to set a strict schedule for when I wake up, go to sleep, eat all my meals and the time I train every day. It’s not just about ‘ticking the boxes’ for me – but executing every single tick with precision and excellence. This might sound crazy to most – but I’ve learnt over the years that these things make a difference. If I have a super late night out and don’t get my last meal in until 11pm – when I wake at 5:30am my body is in a different state in the morning compared to the days I got my final meal in at 9pm and asleep by 10pm. My food has digested fully, I haven’t slept the same amount of hours and I don’t feel the same the next morning compared to when I get a full 7-7.5hrs sleep.  I’ve even recorded a FULL day of eating for YouTube this week to share with you my meal timings and the importance of this for me right now…

 So with this being my current focus – it seemed only right for me to record my latest podcast episode with this in mind… I feel like so many would benefit from understanding the reasons why we eat, the types of eating we experience and how we can adjust our mindset moving forward if we feel we have a particular relationship with food. In this episode, I share the theories behind the four types of eating – fuel, joy, fog, storm eating – and then explain how and why I think these occur, including how to combat them. Let me know if you tune in and if it helps you in any way!