BCD Fitness

This one’s an oldie but goldie.

Truth is, there’s no such thing as a “good” or “bad” carb.

But it’s important to know what benefits what.

What micronutrients are some high in, and what’s going to keep you full for the longest.

But also remember. Variety is KEY to keeping a BALANCED diet, as well as stopping you getting bored 3 weeks in.

Save this for when you fancy a change up!

Three lunch traps at the buffet, same holiday, same rules.

1. Burgers, specifically the bun. The patty is fine. It’s protein, it’ll keep you full. The bun is the bit that adds a few hundred calories and does almost nothing for you. Half the time it’s dry, sitting there getting warm since breakfast, and you’re eating it purely because it came with the burger. Take the patty, leave the bun, nobody’s watching.

2. Pizza. Again. Yes it’s back at lunch. That’s exactly the problem. If it’s on the counter at lunch and dinner and you have some at both, that’s two extra meals a day for a week. It’s not one decision, it’s fourteen.

3. Ice cream. Free ice cream at 2pm feels like a win. It’s also 300 or 400 calories that leave you hungry twenty minutes later. Also I’m lactose intolerant, so for me the real cost isn’t the calories, it’s the fact that I’d be spending the rest of the afternoon somewhere other than the pool. Worth it? Never has been. Do I still think about it every single time? Absolutely.

The theme across all three: they’re there because they’re cheap to serve, not because they’re what you actually came for.

Have the things you’ll remember. Skip the things you’re only eating because they’re in front of you.

Save this for your next trip. 📌

Three breakfast traps at the buffet, and the buffet is where the day gets decided.

1. The sausages. Look, I’ve been optimistic about hotel sausages more times than I care to admit. It is never the sausage you get at home. It’s a mystery tube that’s been under a heat lamp since six in the morning, it’s half rusk, and it’s swimming in whatever the tray below it has been collecting for two hours. Have eggs. Eggs are almost impossible to ruin and they’ll actually keep you full until lunch.

2. Pastries, especially anything creamed or rolled in sugar. These are dessert wearing a breakfast costume. Four hundred calories, gone in ninety seconds, and you’re hungry again by ten. Which is fine on holiday, but be honest that you’re eating cake at 8am rather than telling yourself it’s a light start.

3. Anything fried. The hash browns aren’t cooked in oil so much as rescued from it. You can watch one drip for a full ten seconds before it reaches the plate. That’s not a moral failing, it’s just several hundred calories of oil you didn’t taste, didn’t enjoy, and won’t feel any fuller for.

Build breakfast around protein and fruit and you’ll cruise to lunch without thinking about food once. Build it around pastries and fried carbs and you’ll be back at the counter by half ten.

You’re on holiday, not on a diet. But the buffet at 8am sets up the whole day.

Save this for your next trip. 📌

Five things I’d change first. None of them require a new diet.

1. Actually hit your protein. Most people think they’re eating enough and are miles off. It’s the single biggest lever for staying full and holding onto muscle while you lose fat.

2. Get your fibre up. Fullness, digestion, blood sugar. It’s the least glamorous item on this list and the one people feel the fastest.

3. Eating out? Grilled, not fried. Same meal, same restaurant, same enjoyment, often a few hundred calories different. You don’t have to stay in to make progress.

4. Look at your caffeine. Not because caffeine is bad, but because six coffees a day is usually covering up bad sleep and blunted hunger cues. Fix the sleep and the appetite signals start telling you the truth again.

5. Stop being scared of weights. Lifting a few times a week is not going to leave you “bulky” that takes years of deliberate effort. What it will do is keep the muscle you’ve got while you’re in a deficit, so you end up looking how you actually wanted to look.

None of these are hacks really. They’re just the boring things that work, which is why nobody’s selling them to you.

Save this one and pick the one you’re worst at. 📌

Three buffet foods that quietly do the damage, and it’s not because they’re “bad”.. sort of.

1. Pizza. Lets face it, there is no nutritional value in pizza. And three or four slices go on the plate alongside dinner, not as dinner. That’s a full second meal you didn’t register eating.

2. The mini cakes. They’re small, so your brain scores them as nothing. Five of them is a dessert. Six is two desserts. The tray makes it feel like sampling rather than eating.

3. The little potato tots and croquettes. Deep fried, no protein, no fibre, gone in three bites and you’re no fuller than before you started. Pound for pound the least filling but arguably the most satisfying thing on the whole buffet.

The pattern with all three: calorie dense, easy to eat fast, and they leave you no fuller, so they stack on top of everything else instead of replacing any of it.

I’m not telling you to avoid them. It’s your holiday. But if you build the plate around protein and veg first and then go back for what you fancy, you’ll eat what you actually want rather than what happened to be nearest the tongs.

Save this before you fly. ✈️

Ashwagandha is having a moment. Here’s what it actually does.

The evidence: modest reductions in perceived stress scores in some trials. KSM-66 has the best data of the bunch. That’s a real, if small, effect.

What it doesn’t do: shift where your body stores fat. There’s no meaningful evidence for it redistributing anything, and “cortisol belly” won’t be solved by a capsule.

The things that actually move chronically elevated cortisol are less marketable — consistent sleep, not undereating aggressively, training hard enough to progress but not so hard you never recover.

If you’re already doing those and want to try it, fine. If you’re using it instead of those, you’re paying £30 a month to skip the part that works.

Save this before your next supplement order. 📌

I have no right posting this at my height… but here I am 😂