Peter Petrou fitness is a personal & group fitness training company based in Rydalmere. My approach to training combined with my desire to provide my clients with affordable personal training that is still of the highest quality available led to Peter Petrou fitness being named as one of the top three personal training companies in Sydney in 2011. As well as providing top quality personal training I want to try to help educate people by providing them with professional exercise advice and basic diet and nutrition advice.
As a personal trainer who sees and speaks to clients on a day to day basis I find that one of the biggest problems I seem to have in educating my clients in regards to exercise, diet and nutrition is reeducating them. With the main problem being that I have to reeducate them due to the fact that everyone seems to have family and friends who have no idea about diet and nutrition or exercise but seem to give them advice and what is even worse is the fact that companies who want to sell you their wares, spend millions of dollars telling you that their product is the answer you have been looking for and it must be true because it is on TV.
Breakfast drinks, breakfast bars and snack bars are one such product. You are always being informed that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and you know what, it is!, you need to eat a good breakfast to ensure your body has the calories it needs to make it through the day. By eating a good breakfast you get your metabolism out of hibernation mode and ensure it starts burning calories readily. Actually I am constantly telling my clients that they need to wake up and make themselves a big breakfast and explain that as the reason why and I feel that breakfast drinks and breakfast bars, in my opinion may as well be breakfast substitutes.
Look, first of all we have all heard the saying, exercise is only half the picture! If you want to make a serious dint in your weight you need to eat correctly. In regards to diet and nutrition the one issue I am constantly trying to advise my clients on is the importance of eating a big breakfast. You will notice that I said big breakfast and omitted the healthy part. That is because I think we should address one issue at a time and getting into the habit of regularly eating a big breakfast is the first issue. Once you start doing that regularly we can start worrying about just how healthy it is. Breakfast bars and breakfast drinks in my opinion although they may be a great money making idea are one of the worst ideas a company could ever have had nutrition wise for the general public. As they are encouraging people to have what in reality is something that should only be had as a snack in between meals and they are using this snack as a replacement for what should be your biggest meal of the day.
While I think everyone could do with getting up 15 minutes earlier in the morning in order to cook themselves a big breakfast, these convenient meal replacements are saying you can avoid getting up early and sleep in and eat our product on your way to work instead of a quality breakfast. They don’t phrase it like that obviously but they are working on the basic human nature, laziness and are saying that it is okay for you to get that little bit of extra sleep, hit the snooze bar ya lazy bastards and just drink our breakfast drink or eat our overly processed breakfast bar. You’ll be alright and look this expert who we have paid half a million dollars to tell you that this is a suitable alternative to a real breakfast wouldn’t lie to you just because we have paid him would he. Because in reality he isn’t really lying, he is just omitting pieces of information.
That is not to mention the health benefits you are missing out on by eating a processed energy or breakfast bar compared to the health promoting vitamins, minerals and antioxidants to be had by eating a freshly made breakfast.
The one positive thing I can say about breakfast bars or drinks is that they sure are a much better option than people hitting the Mcdonalds or Hungry Jacks drive through in the morning but really, is that glowing praise?
Peter Petrou
Peter Petrou fitness Pty Ltd
Remember: it’s easy to get fit, it’s just hard work