For those of you that don’t know me I’m Shane’s girlfriend, Justine. Shane and I met almost 3 years ago when I started working at Fitness First – I was 18, single, and thought “oh yeah, I don’t have the “perfect body” but it’s ok.”

I’d always sort of wanted to work in a gym as I always had a keen eye for health and fitness but also I think mostly I liked the idea of a free membership. I thought it was the easiest way to keep in shape/to lose weight.

Throughout high school, I struggled with being happy with the way that I look ( like most teenage girls do these days.) When I was in year 8 I went on this huge “health kick”. I’d go for a run up to three times a day – probably running a total of 6-7kms per day, completely minimized what I was eating – for breakfast I had 1 weetbix with 1/2cup skim milk , for morning tea which HAD to be at 10.30 I would have 1 apple, at lunch time which HAD to be at 12.30 I would have 2 rice cakes- with tuna (sometimes) and then for afternoon tea at 3.30pm I would have another 2 rice cakes. Dinner was always around 6.30 and I always had to have what mum would cook because I didn’t want her to think I was trying to lose weight -but it was usually something like meat, potato and veges.

I distinctly remember one Saturday morning opening up the fridge to get out an apple after I had been on a run “ wow this is so easy, I can do this!”. And it was. The weight felt like it was just dropping off me I felt much skinnier and was getting compliments left, right and centre.

I probably lost around 4kg and then it just wouldn’t budge. I was still running and I had no idea why the weight had stopped coming off… I thought to myself that I was still eating too much…. SO, what I had decided to do was stop eating at school all together. I’d have breakfast in the morning (still the weetbix and skim milk) and then just wouldn’t take anything with me to school. Sometimes mum would question what I was doing but I was always saying that I was taking my food or that I was buying my lunch. I’d get home at around 3pm and it was always SO hard then. Mum would always ask me what I wanted but I was always “not hungry”. I became addicted to diet soft drinks because they would fill me but have hardly any calories and my need to chew was satisfied by chewing gum…. I decided to have a shower everyday when I got home from school as it would keep me occupied and out of the kitchen. As soon as I would get out of the shower I’d weigh myself. I always felt lighter after a shower… that way it kept my mind focused on my need to feel skinny and I was so used to always having a shower before I went to bed so it subconsciously took my mind off food. Once the shower thing stopped working and it was no longer taking my mind off the food, I decided to adopt what I read in a magazine that Mariah Carey had said. She used to brush her teeth every time she felt hungry and then she would do 100 crunches.

The hardest part was always at dinner time. Mum would have always cooked enough for everyone and I didn’t want her to suspect anything so again, I had to eat dinner! I felt sick eating I kept thinking to myself I shouldn’t be doing this I'm not going to lose any weight… but, I was wrong!!! At this stage, I probably dropped about 15kg, my period had stopped and I weighed about 47kg. – my goal was 40kg!!

I was thrilled by the idea that I could still have a meal and it wasn’t affecting me. It got to a stage now that Mum and Dad were getting suspicious because I was getting so thin. They didn’t know I wasn’t eating at school but some friends at school had sometimes asked “where’s your food Justine”. They weren’t suspecting anything at all, but I was incredibly paranoid. So, to keep everyone from questioning me, I started to eat little bits and pieces again. I’d have rice cakes most of the time because I knew they had only like 20 calories MAX in one or 2. Now, in one week I hadn’t really put on any weight so I was stoked. But in saying that I hadn’t lost any weight either. I was SO envious of my friends that were able to eat SOOOO much food (not really “sooo” much, but that’s how it felt to me) and not put on any weight. One day, I got home from school and mum had gotten out the rice cakes for me. I sat down at the table and started eating. I ate one, then two and before I knew it I had almost had half the packet. I felt so bloated and disgusted with myself. I wanted to cry and felt as though I had undone all the hard work I had been doing.. I just needed to get it all out of me.

I went to the bathroom and was sick.

I felt SO much better; I was so relieved and satisfied at the same time. I had just managed to satisfy my need to eat, but also satisfy my “need” to feel skinny. To me it was a win/win situation.

By Now, I was in year 9. Every day I would go home and the same thing would happen. I would eat almost a whole packet of rice cakes and be sick…. This got progressively worse and worse. From one packet of rice cakes, it went to bread, saos, icecream (haha notice the trend here)… I was eating it all, and convincing myself that It was ok because I wasn’t actually allowing my body to process all this. I didn’t want anybody to suspect ANYTHING so I started eating again at school. It was only small but again, the same thing would happen, I’d eat then purge. I felt so uncomfortable, hated what I was doing to myself but I just couldn’t stop. I thought I was so in control… but how wrong I was… I was spiralling out of control and just didn’t know how to stop myself. The worse it got, the more people didn’t suspect anything. I became more of an extrovert and I started to gain a few kilos…. My family and friends had no idea.

I started abusing laxatives, reading up on how I could get thinner looking at different diets and exercise. I absolutely hated myself and what I was doing. I was now at a point where I was purging after every little thing I ate, my oesophagus was incredibly irriated and I could purge on call (a few stomach contractions and I could literally push the food back up.) My weight was now hovering at around 54kg and to me I was obese. I had started learning about health, and eating disorders at school and realized what I was doing to myself could potentially kill me.

I was in the middle of year 10 and was in a terrible state. Mum and dad were now questioning me as to, why I would binge eat and then eat nothing and why I would go to the bathroom immediately after I ate. I was furious with them for questioning me and was humiliated that I was leaving “evidence”.

I kept making commitments to myself saying this is the last time…..but It never lasted… I think the longest I went was like a day. I was moody all the time, had terrible skin and was so depressed I hated what I was doing to myself and just couldn’t stop. All I ever thought about was food and how I wanted to be skinny.
I started googling ways to get help, there was no way I could admit to anything with my family and friends… but the only thing it ever said was to tell someone about it. I even remember ringing the kids help line saying to them “I think one of my friends have an eating disorder and even they said to me “you need to tell someone.”

I was now in year 11. Still binging, still wanting to be skinny and still depressed. None of my school friends suspected ANYTHING but my family suspected everything but couldn’t speak to me about it because I would just deny EVERYTHING and get so incredibly angry…

One Wednesday night I was on the computer, again trying to google ways to get myself out of a hell I had created. I went to the bathroom after some icecream I ate and did the usual thing…. I have no idea what it was that came over me but I thought to myself. Why the F am I doing this and started crying my eyes out. I went into my sister’s bedroom and told her EVERYTHING. I didn’t want to live like this any more. I hated the fact I couldn’t enjoy eating anything, I hated the way I felt about myself, I hated the way I was treating my family and I hated feeling as though I would eventually need to be hospitalised because I was going to get so sick. My sister hugged me and cried with me and said she would help me but I needed to tell my mum and dad. I didn’t want to tell them as I knew my mum would feel as though it was her fault even though she had nothing to do with it…

it was everything I had created for myself. After crying with my sister for almost 2 hours, my sister convinced me to go and tell my parents everything. I honestly think it was one of the hardest things I had to do. I was so ashamed of what I had been doing to myself but deep down knew I needed to do this to get better and I was going to need their support to be able to do it. When I told them I just could not stop crying. The look on my mums face I knew she felt so helpless and didn’t know how to help me. She cried and cried and said she was sorry. All she could do was hug me and tell me she was going to help me. I felt so bad that I had made my mum and dad feel this way.

The next day my mum and I went to the doctors. I got a referral to the eating disorder clinic at Nepean hospital and was seeing a psychiatrist. I had to tell these people EVERYTHING about the types of food I was binging on, what started it, when I started how long it was going for and how I would purge. The psychiatrist pinned it down to stress. Stress was my “trigger” and it was the only way I felt in control… I could control exactly what I was doing to myself and I was in control of the way it made me feel. I was off school for weeks and in all honesty it’s all a bit hazy. It was such an emotional rollercoaster. I wanted to get better so badly, but found it hard to stick to everything I had to do. Eg- I wasn’t allowed any soft drinks or caffeine as this would increase my stress levels and increase my inclination to binge but I was so addicted to it. After seeing the psychiatrist, I was also seeing a nutritionist as well. The day she weighed me and said this one thing to me, I never looked back. She thing she said was “you realize that even when you purge, your body will hold on to a lot of the food” it knows what you are doing to it and is trying to keep you alive. I was so upset as I had done this for the last 3 years and it felt like it was for nothing but I finally understood why it was now so hard for me to lose any weight. My metabolism had slowed right down and it was holding on to every last bit it could get. As hard as it was to hear, this was the point where I said to myself I am not going to kill myself, I want to live I am going to get better. – I know that sounds very extreme but at the end of the day it drilled it into my head that if I didn’t stop now, I could potentially die.

I had a set routine that I had to stick to. When I got home from school, I had to take my dog for a walk. Then I could come home and have a snack. I had to write EVERYTHING I did down from school work, to eating, to going out with friends, to going to the bathroom, to bed time absolutely EVERYTHING.

I continued seeing the psychiatrist for about a year and they “helped” me with my nutrition. They made it very clear to me as I started eating again I was probably going to put on weight, but it was something I had to deal with. And that I did. My weight went back up to around 62 kg…. but I finally felt normal again. I remember one specific day when I was at the end of year 12 I was so incredibly excited the day I felt hungry again. I hadn’t felt hunger pains in a VERY long time because I had always ignored the signs of being hungry – I ate, felt satisfied and didn’t feel the need to purge… it was that point that I said to myself im normal again.

The following year in March is when I started at fitness first. I was 18 years old, going out all the time, drinking, eating bad food and loving my life because I was “normal”. Obviously though, eating bad food, my metabolism being slow and drinking alcohol, I started gaining weight. Although it didn’t bother me as much as it would have previously, I wasn’t thrilled about it. I kept trying different things to try and make it shift but it just wasn’t working for me. I kept following the guidelines that the nutritionist set out for me eating my whole grain toast, sandwiches, rice, pasta, low fat dairy and sparing amounts of protein and I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t come off.

One day Shane came home with some Real milk. It was full fat, unpasturised and unhomoginsed. I was really weary about trying it but I gave it a go because Shane said it was really nice and explained to me all the nutritional benefits… and boy was he right, it was delicious (to bath in lol)! From that day, I went back to full cream milk. It all started there. I then started eating more meat, more eggs and then started having shakes with raw eggs, coconut oil and milk. Everything that my nutritionist DIDN’T tell me to do. At first I doubted it, I put on a kilo or two because I was actually feeding my body enough and my body wasn’t used to that. Then suddenly the weight just started falling off me – and I was still eating PLENTY of food and only training 4 times per week for 45 min at most. Over the past 2 years I have made SO many changes to my diet by increasing my fat and protein intake, reducing my carbohydrate intake and making changes to my training regime minimizing the amount of cardiovascular exercise I do. I now weigh a healthy 60kg with a body fat percentage of 18.5%.

Shane really has shown me how I can be fit, healthy, happy and strong. He is so incredibly good at what he does and is going to make a difference in the world. He puts so much effort and time into ALL of his clients and gets such a buzz when he sees them working hard and achieving results. His goal is to make a healthy and happy community and I know he will get there, just look at all the people he has already helped and the many more still to come. I am now his girlfriend and so it is easy for me to sit here and talk about him and how good he is at his job, but living the lifestyle he preaches to people from where I was before, I know it works. I wouldn’t have the knowledge I do now if it wasn’t for him. I know there are people out there that think we are a bit extreme with what we do with our nutrition but we know it works and we feel fantastic for it.

I’m now a personal trainer and absolutely love it. I hope to be able to inspire people to get fit, healthy and strong. When people use the excuse that it’s too hard to eat healthy or its too hard to exercise, I know it’s hard, it’s scary and it’s frustrating, but it’s so much harder looking in the mirror each day knowing you could potentially die if you continue to do the things that you are currently doing. I don’t know what it is like to be incredibly overweight, but I sure do know what it feels like to FEEL fat and to feel uncomfortable in your own skin and to hate what you see when you look in the mirror. From a girl who hated steak and would eat a whole bowl of MICROWAVED vegetables for dinner who now orders a steak to be cooked rare and eats the fat from grass finished and free range sources, smearing butter from grass fed cows all over it, I have come a very long way. Yes it’s been a journey and a half but it has been well worth it.


Justine Beath

Get to know your food: Polyculture or Monoculture?

Monoculture & Polyculture: What's the Difference?

Most will remember the basic principles of the food web from highschool - plants are eaten by herbivores, which are then consumed by carnivores, which eventually die and provide nitrogen for plant growth, etc. What many people don't realise is that a similar mutually beneficial environment occurs botanically. Plants (in this case, those cultivated for human consumption) thrive in a biodiverse setting in which multiple crops are grown in the one area - the term given to this form of cultivation is rightly named Polyculture. The contrary to this is Monoculture, which became more widely used after the rise of the 'Green Revolution' in the name of efficiency.


Monoculture's Uses and Effects



The Green Revolution started in the 1940s in an attempt to industrialise food production and increase efficiency in harvesting. This was when synthetic pesticides started being widely used on hybridized plants, arranged in crops with no other types of plant to make for quicker harvesting. The link between exposure and consumption of treated foods and poor health goes without saying; a simple google search will show a plethora of information on the topic. The other downfall of monoculture is that the plants don't receive the same amount of minerals for growth and are often nutritionally deficient, and contain far less nutritional value than their traditional counterpart. The problems caused by this mass-production of crops could be solved by avoiding foods grown in monocultural crops.

Polyculture and the Benefits of Biodiversity in Food Cultivation




Plants naturally thrive in a biodiverse environment due to the mutually beneficial relationship they have with other plants. This has been used successfully in numerous traditional cultures, for example, in pre-modern Indian cultivation, farmers often included a combination of tomatoes, onions and marigold in crops (this is called "Multicropping"). The marigold and onion would act as a natural repellent against majority of insects that fed on the delicate flesh of the tomato. Another study shows that rice grown in polycultures had a higher yield of 89% with a 94% decrease in disease spread. One of the most important reasons that polycultures are superior is due to the higher nutrient content. Constant leaf fall from a greater abundance of plants provides a nutrient-dense soil composition; this nourishes the crops and gives them a far greater nutritional value than the latter.



So, with less disease, lesser-to--no need for pesticides, higher nutritional value, less soil erosion, it's clear that polycultures would not only assist us in living healthier lives, but would also be kinder to the environment with less waste and spoilage. The next question most would ask is "How do I know the produce I'm buying has been grown in polycultures?". The answer is simple. The only way to know what is going into your food is to know where your food is coming from. Always buy from locally grown, fresh, organic sources when possible and build a rapport with the suppliers providing you with this produce.

In Radness & Health,





Rhys Choake

Food for Thought - Further Reading Material:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T6X-3RH6GTP-V&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F1997&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1655807159&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=685f396779f9b89eebc70f8d100356bf&searchtype=a


http://www.new-ag.info/01-1/perspect.html


http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Rice-Diversity-Yield.htm

http://true-progress.com/monoculture-vs-polyculture-farming-methods-84.htm


http://www.foodforest.com.au/Agroecological%20analysis%20of%20a%20polyculture%20food%20garden%20on%20the%20Adelaide%20Plains.pdf

Special Offers!

Specials: Valid Until 20/2/2011



Option 1: One Hour Group Personal Training - $15pp (Should have AM and PM sessions available)



Option 2: 25% off First Personal Training Session (One on One) - Limited to first 5 People.








Option 3: 50% Off first Buddy session. Offer valid for first 4 Contacts.



To Claim? Email smjrichards@hotmail.com or Facebook MSG me your name & contact details + option you have chosen.







In Health & Happiness,



Shane Richards
Holistic Foundations

Define yourself ??

I have seen a few things this last week that got me thinking!

Who do we define ourselves as?
What do we stand for?
What won't we stand for?



Are you the party animal? The comedian? the victim? the passive one? The aggressive one? The over weight one? The smoker? The healthy one? The fit one? The drunk one? ect

These things will create us, define us. Give us direction.
The reason that I bring it up, is simply because if we change our perspective, we change our life.

Don't you agree that if you see yourself as the person who doesn't like training, hates movement and trying to eat well, then you will become what you perceive.

You start to become someone who is not healthy, doesn't like to train and won't eat well or make healthy decisions because that's not how you see yourself deep down.

Does it not make sense then to change your definition of yourself when trying to make change? Create a big enough WHY/NEED to change and you will.

If you don't have a big enough WHY/NEED for change then you will rely on will power. Will power alone does not work all of the time. Only the extremely disciplined will be able to have enough will power to make change for life.

So what does this mean? I guess what I'm saying is that when I deal with some clients or even friends and family I get a lot of these people telling me what they are, rather then creating who they want to be. They tell me, "I can't eat like that or train that hard or give up drinking, it's just not me!"

That's spot on! They are correct. They have fulfilled there perception of themselves so why would they need to change.

When you see yourself in a different light, you have a bigger WHY/NEED to change.

I see myself as a non-smoker, healthy eating, and movement enthusiast. So if I DON'T include these things in my life daily and make them a strong CORE of who I am then I would not be fulfilling my perception of who I am and feel that I needed to change!

This is STRONGER then will power. This is who you are, what you are. Your core!

Start to think of your self as the things you want to be. If you want to give up drinking or smoking then tell people you are a non smoker or drinker, tell them that that's not who you are and that it's not what you do. You will become this, because it's apart of who you are!




If you keep energising the things you don't want in your life you will get more of the same. Focus on creating the change from within, from who you are, your core values, what you stand for, what you will die for (tad extreme but important).
This will give you a greater chance of success for change!

To wrap it up: We live who we believe we are. If you believe you're healthy, in control and focused on what you want in life. Then you are healthy, focused and in control!!

If you believe that you're overweight, you're a smoker, you're pretty lazy and you can't do that because that's who you are. Then you have defined who you are and what you are. Why would you change when you're, in your mind already the person you want to be.

Anything is possible, there is always a way to do what you want to do. You just have to own what you want!

Post who you define yourself as to comments!! :)

In Health and Happiness

Shane Richards :)

Health & Happiness!

What makes you


HEALTHY & HAPPY?

Add your thoughts to comments!

7 Nights By Candle Light

Hey everyone,

Join in on a great experience. Hopefully one day it might even be a world event. Time will tell.

I thought up this crazy plan when I looked at my recent electricity bill. There was NO NEED for it to be the amount of usage that it was.



The idea:

Starting Monday for 7 days DON'T USE YOUR LIGHT SWITCHES.
Tape them up, put post-it notes on them, do what ever it takes to remind yourself that for the next 7 days you will do everything in your power to NOT use unnecessary power!








Get some good quality candles, open the blinds, let the moon shine in!
Do what ever it takes.

Don't over complicate it. Just for now, start with the light switches. Then we can move to bigger better things later!

This will be a fun experience. I think some benefits I'll see are increased energy. Increased mental awareness. Better recovery from work, training etc and a connection with my surroundings and the earth.

How cool!!!

So, are you going to make this apart of your week?



leave your progress in the comments.

Interested to get as many people in on this as I can.

We can do it :)

Shane Richards

CAUTION: PLEASE BE CAREFUL and think about WHERE you put your candles. Candles are a big cause of house fires.

Fats and Oils

Welcome to 2011!

After having a little time away from the website it's time to bust back into 2011!

What better way to do this then to chat about fats and oils.
If you're doing a spring clean on the kitchen cupboard you might want to think about what you throw away and what you stock back up on. Maybe the below article will help shed some light on some good fats and not so good fats and oils.



Oils: When picking Oils. Organic is best, pick oils extracted via a cold pressing process. Cold pressed oils are oils that are extracted through very minimal heat. When you use high heats to extract oils (or chemicals) you damage and denature the product making it more rancid and oxidising the fats and oil.

Fats: When picking fats go for Free Range, Organic, Sustainable for the environment and the soil. Pick fats from animals that were grass fed, grass finished, happy and healthy. Check the source of your animals home, go to the farms. With fat, you want to be sure you're getting the BEST, cleanest source possible as fats attract toxins. If your animal was not very healthy and was toxic then the fats would correlate with this type of living.



Saturated fats to eat:
Coconut oil
Palm Oil
(these oils are very good to cook with as they have a high heat tolerance)
Butter
Ghee
Lard
Tallow
Full FAT dairy (don't go any low fat, skim products as it's just extracting more valuable resources from the original product)
Meats with fat from grass finished sources (cooked at a low temperature. Under 120 degrees for longer periods of time)
Fish (hard to find good quality, look around)

Unsaturated:
Avocados
Seasame Oil
Olive Oil
Nut Oils
Flaxseed Oils
Nuts and seeds (activated is best)

(As stated above. Cold Pressed is best from organic sources. Ideally you would consume these oils WITHOUT heating. As in a salad dressing etc and not cook with these oils. If you want to use an oil to cook with, look towards coconut oil and palm oil, as these oils are more stable under high heat)



Saturated fats to avoid:

Margarine
Trans fats (pretty much in anything that comes in a packet)
Hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils
Fats that are from poor sources. Such as commercially raised animal fats (if commercially raised animal meat is all you have access to, avoid the fat as the fat is where the toxins will be be stored in an unhealthy animal)


Unsaturated fats to avoid:

Soybean Oil (85 - 95% of soy beans are genetically modified)
Grapeseed Oil
Canola Oil
Corn Oil

(generally these types of oils go through a massive process from soil to seed to produce. These oils generally would have been extracted through a high heat type method to get maximum amounts of oil to be sold.)



As always own your own decisions on any food you decide to eat. We are all 100% responsible for ourselves. Don't follow, lead with strong educated decisions on your own health. Your body is wonderful and amazing in all that it does. Be in tune with it!

In health and happiness,

Shane