Davison - Eat Yourself Fit: Make Your Workout Work Harder

Eat Yourself Fit

EAT
YOURSELF
FIT

ROSANNA DAVISON

GILL BOOKS

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

BACK TO BASICS

Take care of your body. Its the only place you have to live.

JIM ROHN

Eat Yourself Fit combines good food, easy-to-follow recipes and functional nutrition with fitness information and practical tips to help with stress management and emotional well-being. I have focused on bringing together body and mind in a unique holistic approach to create a sustainable and health-promoting lifestyle.

We live in a busy, stressful and often demanding world in which our own health and wellness needs can be pushed down the list of priorities to make room for family, friends, work, study and life. Many of us need to find a way to re-establish that elusive balance between mind, body and spirit and to discover a way to take better charge of our own physical and emotional needs by listening to the signs our bodies share with us and becoming more tuned in to them.

It may take some time to really learn about how your body works once you start paying attention to its subtle signals. Im a strong advocate of following the lifestyle that suits you best because were all biochemically unique individuals. Yet there is a powerful interconnection between body and mind in all of us and I firmly believe that full health, wellness and contentment within ourselves is best achieved by taking the time to nourish both.

In this book, I have created a food for fitness plan that will help achieve real results. You will get more from the food you eat, helping to boost your energy levels, reduce body fat, improve muscle tone, lift your mood, manage stress and even enhance the quality of your sleep.

I explain all you need to know about the most effective foods and exercises for maximising your workouts, sculpting your body and ensuring that you feel strong, fit, healthy and confident.

Packed with information on health and fitness, recipes and my favourite tips and secrets, this book has everything you need to help you reach your health and fitness potential, whatever your own personal goals may be.

I hope you enjoy reading my story, trying out my fitness tips and food plan and tasting the wide range of delicious recipes as much as I have loved sharing them with you.

In fitness and health,

Rosanna x

PART 1

MY FITNESS STORY

Living a healthy lifestyle will only deprive you of poor health, lethargy and fat.

JILL JOHNSON

I have always loved sports and fitness. As a pony-mad little girl, I dreamed of being a professional show jumper, representing my country on a feisty chestnut mare. At 11 years old, I was building fences in the garden with bamboo poles and jumping the family black Labrador over a pretend show jumping course while dressed in my jodhpurs, boots and riding hat. It was quite a sight. I went on to own a pony for five years and I enjoyed riding her in many gymkhanas and show jumping competitions.

This led to a love for hurdles and high jumping, so I joined an athletics club at the age of 15 and competed for my school and club at both Leinster and all-Ireland levels, bringing home enough hard-earned medals to just about satisfy my bouncy competitive streak.

Throughout my primary and secondary school years, I held a place on the hockey, netball and cricket teams between taking tennis lessons and even badminton too.

At the age of 18, I took up Pilates in a new studio close to my family home. It wasnt long before I sat my Leaving Certificate exams, and I found that the twice-weekly classes really helped to give me the focus and mental clarity I needed amongst the chaos and stress of exam prep. It was a different type of fitness than I had been used to, much more slow and controlled, with a focus on core strength, posture, developing long and lean muscles, mindfulness and body awareness. That started my long-term love of Pilates and it still plays an important role in my fitness regime.

With all the running I did for hockey, netball and athletics training after school and the matches every weekend, I never even had to think about my weight or what I was eating. In fact, we would refuel after a hockey game with copious quantities of digestive biscuits and sugary lemonade. I was on the slightly lanky side as a teenager, all awkward coltish limbs, a self-conscious lopsided smile and plenty of zits.

It was only when I began my first year at university in Dublin that I began putting on weight and I really noticed my body shape changing. In that first year, like many of my peers, I was spending too many afternoons and evenings downing sugary blue alcopops in the student bar, then soaking it all up with chips and crisps. I wasnt exercising to nearly the same degree as I did during school, and with my newfound freedom, student nightclubs and bars had replaced the hockey pitch.

Looking back, I was a serious sugar addict. Early lectures were eased with a sugary cappuccino in hand, I reached for a processed cereal bar for the mid-morning munchies and sweetened yogurts were a frequent afternoon snack. I had even been known to guzzle syrupy, caffeinated energy drinks to power me through exams.

By the end of my first year in college, I had managed to return to my normal weight, partly from joining the college gym and partly from a girly holiday to Greece in which we endeavoured to exist on 5 a day. This meant that more money was spent on cheap ouzo than nourishing food. Definitely not to be recommended, but a lot of fun for a 19-year-old student with very few responsibilities.

Later that summer, I was thrown headfirst and without much warning into the glossy, glittering world of beauty pageants when I won Miss Ireland in August 2003. This led to me winning Miss World 2003 in China that December. The Miss World Organisation stipulated that my weight (and hair colour) must remain the same throughout the year.

For a young woman in a whole new industry, that felt like a lot of pressure. I became much more aware of my diet, fitness and lifestyle habits. At that stage, I had figured out that I had more energy and generally felt better by eating a vegetarian diet. Plus choosing veggies, salads and soups over heavier animal-based foods when I was home and eating out meant that I was finding it easier to maintain my weight, my energy levels improved and my immune system strengthened too. Gone were the frequent niggling coughs and sore throats, and I had all the energy I needed for the often gruelling long-haul trips to China for a weekend of Miss World charity events.

Of course, that was just my personal experience and not everybody will react in the same way to a change in diet and lifestyle. This book is by no means about trying to turn you into a vegetarian. Rather, it is designed to encourage more of an awareness of the relationship between nutrition, body fat and fitness, your mood, emotions and even your sleep. As I will explain in the following chapters, this book is about fitting together the pieces of the puzzle and the various elements that lead to a balanced, healthy and happy lifestyle, and increased body confidence too.

My weight remained pretty stable throughout my early twenties, bar the usual slight hormonal fluctuations. I maintained a balanced diet and stayed active, running regularly in charity events. I completed my first half marathon in under two hours.