Blog

Health & fitness articles to enlighten and entertain

Jamie’s Glorious Roasted Pumpkin Soup

This Roasted Pumpkin Soup is a hearty, warming and healthy meal option for those chilly winter nights ahead. Ladle into bowls, sprinkle on some roasted pumpkin seeds and serve with my lovely courgette bread.

read more

Easy Peasy Falafel Salad with a Cucumber and Dill Dip

Serves 2 For the falafel: 1 x 400g can cooked chickpeas, drained and rinsed 1 small red onion finely chopped 2 tsp ground cumin ½ teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon coconut oil or rapeseed oil 1 tablespoons finely chopped parsley 1 tablespoon chopped fresh coriander or...

read more

Talking To Our Children About Weight

…so it can therefore be tricky for us as parents to remember what a sensitive subject weight gain and obesity can be for school age children. What do we do? Do we talk about it, ignore it? Leave healthy eating leaflets in their school bag? Join chat rooms, forums, the queue at the GP, stalk netmums, ban biscuits, invite skinny children for tea? What?

read more

Why Do We Crave Carbohydrate Rich Foods When We Are Tired?

If you’ve been working late, partying hard or just had a rough night with the kids, the following day can be a challenge in terms of healthy eating. As you struggle through a day punctuated by yawns and wooziness, you find yourself craving foods which you can usually resist. Your brain goes into overdrive to try and keep you awake, and it finds help in the form of Tryptophan.

read more

Vitamin D, Sunscreen and Wrinkles

This is a bit of a dry blog. You know… informative… but heavily lacking in jokes and frivolity… so apologies in advance. It’s an at-a-glance look at how best we can protect ourselves (and our family) from the sun and minimise the ‘sun-drenched lined’ look. I’m going right to the heart of the matter and starting at the very beginning (as they say in the Sound of Music…).

read more

Is There More To “Blast” Than Just Shaping Up?

One of the wonderful things about running the 21 Day BLAST Plan is hearing people’s discoveries about their own body. As they get to grips with the Blast eating plan and embrace its wholesomeness, the changes to their daily lives take them by surprise.

read more

My Sister Gill’s Crusted Fish with Lime and Coriander

Recently I joined my sister Gill and her husband for a few days walking in the Lake District. Flipping long way to drive but it was so worth it. Those hills! The landscape was like nothing I had seen before… I almost felt like I was on the moon. They had hired a cottage and as my sister is not one to pay through the nose for dodgy pub food, she brings half the house with her. To my benefit! She’s a very good cook and this was a dish she served up one evening after a particularly gruelling days’s walking.

read more
Muscles… And The Menopause

Muscles… And The Menopause

Last weekend I spent the day in the company of an old friend of mine. We hadn’t seen each other for, oooh, at least a year, so the chat, the laughter (and the chilled Chardonnay) were all flowing nicely. She’s just turned 50, so much of our talk was along the lines, “Where did that go?”, and, “Who’d have thought…”, and, “Wouldn’t it be great if…”? Then, as she downed her fourth glass, we hit a rock. We landed on the sticky subject of her weight-gain which then spiralled into a heartfelt discussion about diets, exercise, self-esteem, lethargy, marriage, men, the menopause… you name it, the whole nine yards.

read more

Oh No! Not Puffy Ankles… What To Do About Water Retention

If you’re a habitual dieter and love nothing better than to beat yourself up by stepping on the scales, then the number you see rising or decreasing may have nothing to do with fat levels. It could be your body is holding onto more water than it should.

read more

Stress, And Its Effect On Fat Stores

Cortisol is a hormone and is produced by the adrenal glands and it influences and regulates many of the changes which occur in the body in response to stress. It also soothes the path for some other important hormones to get sorted (testosterone, oestrogen, insulin). So when cortisol production is controlled and steady, then the others can be tickety-boo too.

read more

How To Get Strong And Defined Abs

Summer is coming and we are going to be baring more flesh. Hence, there is a tendency amongst all of us to aim for less wobble and more tone. It is the defined torso which seems to be the mark of success – it reeks discipline, focus, sweat and ‘treat deprivation’. No-one looks at legs. It’s the ‘ripped’, ‘shredded’ and ‘super lean’ abs, not thighs, that are all over Instagram.

read more

The Female Chest: How To Encourage The Uplift

In our early forties, our once lovely breasts start to lose their roundness, their fullness and their ‘have me, I’m yours’-ness. This is in part due to our  breast tissue starting to become less glandular and more fatty which makes them feel less firm. Declining oestrogen levels at the onset of the menopause can make breast tissue dehydrated and less elastic. Hence it’s less of the perky and more of the murky.

read more

The BLAST Shopping List

Having a place on the 21 Day BLAST Plan means you follow the BLAST eating plan. And yes… you do some workouts too. Short and sweet. Anything between 20-30 minutes long.

read more

Put-A-Spring-In-Your-Step Salad

I didn’t want to make a run of the mill salad. No. I wanted to create a tasty, heart-warming, get-stuck-in salad. An offering to surprise and delight the family which is nutritious but not too worthy. Moreish and not goody-two-shoes. And here it is. Lets fill our boots.

read more

Turmeric: The Little Orange Spice That Delivers Big

No. Sorry to disappoint. This isn’t going to be about curry. More about one special ingredient – the health benefits of turmeric. From my research it looks like turmeric is THE ingredient to include in our daily, yes – daily, eating routine. It has major benefits for body and brain. Almost too good to be true, in fact. Move over antibiotics, let the orange sunshine spice strut its stuff.

read more
Annie Deadman Training

Stay Informed

Join our mailing list for news on training, Pilates courses, special discounts, offers and free online workouts as well as news about the 21 day online fitness and fat-loss programme, the BLAST Plan.

You Have Successfully Subscribed!