Fitness
Hawke’s Bay fitness couple's health secrets: 'There are no bad foods, just bad portions'
Better Yourself is owned and run by Bridget Hicks and Pierce Ward.
Yoyo diets, workouts, gyms, jogging.
Most of us have been on the treadmill at some point in our life, looking for a quick fix to fit into an outfit or worse, trying to fix that feeling of helplessness when we look in the mirror.
It’s hard going it alone. Many of us quickly fall back into old habits and quite frankly, it can be depressing.
There is no easy fix. However, a Hawke’s Bay couple are on a mission to help people live a healthy and fit life.
Better Yourself is owned and run by Bridget Hicks and Pierce Ward.
Bridget says “unfortunately our world is bombarded with quick fixes, fads and extreme approaches to get results fast with zero regard to health or keeping results long term”.
“That’s our point of difference. We ensure our clients have a sustainable and balanced approach to get results and maintain them long-term, prioritising their health.
“We create custom workout plans and nutrition plans for every individual. Each plan is personalised to the client’s needs, preferences and goals.
“For example, workout plans can be designed for at-home or in-gym, set to their achievable amount of days and duration they can realistically commit to, their goals and abilities.”
Better Yourself designs nutrition plans to cater to all dietary needs such as dairy-free, gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan.
“The meals are easy-to-prep and budget friendly and cater to your likes, dislikes, allergies, preferred amount of meals per day, individual caloric and macro requirements, goals and meal flexibility.
“We do our best to stay accessible and affordable so our plans are delivered via our easy-to-use app from only $40 per month.”
Clients from around New Zealand follow their custom plans and Bridget says it’s great to see people improve their lifestyle and prioritise their health and fitness.
“However, because we are based in Hawke’s Bay, we want to make a big impact on our community so we have ventured into corporate wellness.
“We are looking after a large local company with regular boot camps. Their staff have access to custom plans via our app. They love it so much they all show up at 5am, three days a week.”
Better Yourself’s latest project is pretty exciting.
“We want to help someone in Hawke’s Bay who needs a massive lifestyle change to save their health. So we are offering an Ultimate Lifestyle Transformation.
“Applications are open and the winner will receive more than $6000 worth of help to transform their health and body.”
Better Yourself will provide workout and nutrition plans, personal training sessions and more.
Other local businesses have come on board with Flex Fitness Hastings providing the winner with a 12-week gym membership and Evolt Body Scans, a private cooking lesson with Kieran, owner, chef and nutrition coach of The Shredded Kitchen and Raiseys Supplements will be supplying supplements to help start the winner’s journey!
Bridget says it’s a massive giveaway and has the potential to change someone’s life.
“We want to document the winner’s journey and share it to inspire others to make healthy lifestyle changes. Seeing someone else do it can be very inspirational and motivating.”
Bridget qualified as a personal trainer in 2009, and achieved further qualifications in sports nutrition, pre and postnatal exercise and nutrition.
Pierce gained his qualifications in personal training about the same time, in his home country Canada.
They joined forces in 2021.
Bridget says the biggest mistake people make when it comes to health and fitness is choosing a diet approach that is not sustainable.
“Heavily restricted diets are not sustainable for long-term results. People fall off the wagon when it gets too hard and they realise eating in that way makes them feel miserable and it’s not worth it.”
The couple have always been sporty and fit.
“We have had a passion for health and fitness for as long as we can remember. Pierce and I started training in gyms at high school and have never stopped. We clicked so well when we met because of our shared passion and values in health.
“We knew when we started our business it could be a slow start. The industry is very saturated but our passion for helping others improve their well-being is what motivates us and things have fallen into place nicely.”
Asked how they stay motivated to eat well and stay fit, Bridget said motivation did not play a part in whether they eat well and stay fit.
“Motivation is something that gets you started but habits are what keep you going and our daily habits reflect a healthy lifestyle.
“We exercise because we enjoy it and how it makes us feel and because we value our health. We eat well simply because of long-term habits.
“We would feel physically and mentally rubbish if we were to eat a poor diet long term. I think understanding the effects on your health and longevity from living an unhealthy lifestyle helps keep us accountable too – once you are educated on the matter, it’s much harder to turn a blind eye.”
But that’s not to say they don’t treat themselves.
“We absolutely do. We live a balanced lifestyle and understand it’s about what you do most of the time and not about what you do some of the time. So most of the time we eat clean and sometimes we have treats.
“We don’t restrict ourselves to the point of being unhappy. We all get cravings and we will satisfy them when we do. It’s all things in moderation in our eyes. There are no ‘bad foods’, just bad portions.”
To find out more or be in to win the Ultimate Lifestyle Transformation go to www.betteryourself.co.nz
- Linda Hall is a Hastings-based assistant editor for Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 30 years of experience in newsrooms. She writes regularly on arts and entertainment, lifestyle and hospitality, and pens a column.
It is difficult to hang from the ceiling in an inverted position, because your focus shifts, and there is a blood rush in the head. But, the Bigg Boss 15 winner managed to do it!
Tejasswi Prakash, just like many other celebrities, loves to sweat it out at the gym. But, instead of working out with dumbbells, kettlebell, weight plates and other gym paraphernalia, she loves to challenge herself with a yoga asana or two in order to stay fit and in shape. The Bigg Boss 15 winner loves to collaborate with celebrity yoga and holistic wellness expert Anshuka Parwani from time-to-time, and she was once again seen exercising at her yoga studio. The actor performed inverted aerial yoga first, which was followed by splits. Take a look at her session here.
Tejasswi made it look effortless, as she hung upside down from the ceiling, while performing inverted aerial yoga. While keeping her feet together, she locked her hands behind her head. Then, she folded her upper body in a way to bring her head closer to the knees. It is a great exercise for those who want to strengthen and shape their core.
Benefits Of Doing Inverted Aerial Yoga
Any kind of core routine requires a lot of practice. Doing it while hanging from the ceiling in an inverted position is all the more difficult because your focus shifts, and there is a blood rush in the head. But, inverted aerial yoga is extremely beneficial. When you exercise upside down, you allow your body and mind to release all the stress. It is extremely beneficial for people who may be suffering from anxiety issues, or even mood swings. According to aerialyogacademy.com, inverting can reduce tension in the muscles and enable you to sleep better at night. Additionally, aerial yoga allows your body to release happy hormones like endorphins and serotonin, which can fight stress and depression.
It also strengthens your core muscles, improves flexibility, and improves your focus.
Benefits Of Doing Splits
Tejasswi, 30, was also seen acing splits that require a lot of practice and come with many health benefits. Not only does it activate key muscle areas in the body, especially around the thighs, a split exercise can do wonders for your joints and flexibility. It enables one to become more focused and balanced, by forging a connection between the mind and the body.
While there are two different types of splits — side splits and front splits — Tejasswi was seen doing the latter. She did take the support of a pillow that was placed beneath her front leg, so as to avoid injuries. You may also do it in the presence of a fitness expert, who can guide you through it.
Tagging the actor, Parwani appreciated her efforts. She wrote in the caption that her client is ‘levelling up her core game and nailing those splits’.
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Fitness
'We need to be really concerned': How fitness influencers are creating 'a false sense of the world' for young boys
“Alright dumba**, welcome to lesson two here at fat f*** university.”
So begins one of the countless fleshy blurs of locally-produced fitness content pumped algorithmically into the feeds of Australian Instagram, TikTok and Facebook users.
It’s the sort of engagement-baiting approach that yields viewers and followers — designed to push men out of some apparent masculine malaise and into retaking control of their body and masculinity, usually via paid workout programs, products or supplements.
It’s also the type of content increasingly filtering into the phones of teenage boys.
While there is a more developed conversation about idealised images on social media and body image pressures on young girls, experts say research is less advanced when it comes to boys.
“I think boys are now objectifying themselves like never before and we do need to be really concerned,” said Danielle Rowland, Head of Prevention at national eating disorder charity the Butterfly Foundation.
“The intensity of training advice, nutrition and misinformation is greater than ever.”
Feeds serving up different diet
When Anthony Lee started high school in regional Victoria six years ago, social media had a different feel to it.
“In Year 7, it was just basically a way to keep up with your mates,” he said.
By the time he finished Year 12 last year, the feeds of his classmates had changed. So too, the surrounding culture.
“There is a growing problem with men having that feed of perfect body content,” he said.
“There are people who will see influencers on social media and say, ‘I’ve got to have bigger arms, toned legs, I got to have calves the size of mountains’.”
Linger on one Instagram reel showing off a set of dumbbell exercises, and you’ll likely get five more videos zeroing in on how to get “boulder shoulders”, or some protein-heavy diet advice from a shirtless influencer.
Josh Ward travels to schools in Sydney and around regional NSW, hearing from young boys as part of his work as a facilitator for men’s mental health organisation Tomorrow Man.
“There’s been a huge jump in the last two to three years in the amount of boys opening up in workshops around their body,” he said.
Mr Ward believes there’s no coincidence it’s occurred alongside a “big spike” in the amount of fitness and gym influencer content turning up in their feeds.
“If someone was in school walking around with a fitness mag in their pocket, bringing it out every recess or lunch, you’d think ‘that is some strange behaviour’. But that’s what [teenage boys] are celebrating now,” he said.
“The danger for young people is they don’t realise they’re actually the pioneer generation in terms of that exposure.
“In the last five years there’s been a crazy amount of fitness content, but that’s just what they’ve always been exposed to, so they don’t realise how strange it is.”
‘It creates a false sense of the world’
For many teenage boys on the path through puberty, working out in gyms has long represented an accelerated part of the journey into manhood.
Images of muscle-ripped celebrities and athletes serving as aesthetic inspiration, if not an unattainable physical ideal, is nothing new either.
But it’s the nature of that exposure — the type of content and the saturation of it — that has experts concerned.
“It’s that ‘in-your-face, all-the-time’ aspect of it,” said Associate Professor Ivanka Prichard from Flinders University.
“It’s seeing something on Instagram when we’re perhaps not in that frame of mind, making a comparison to this really fit person and have that influence the way we might feel about ourselves.
“We’re fed a whole range of things through those algorithms that we would never have had exposure to before and would never have sought out.”
Multiple experts the ABC spoke to reported seeing digitally-altered and even AI-generated images of supposedly naturally-fit bodies on social media.
Ms Prichard, a former fitness instructor whose research sits at the intersection of psychology, social media and exercise science, believes the constant barrage of perfectly sculpted bodies could destabilise the mental health of some teenage boys.
“For young people shaping their identity, it creates a false sense of the world,” she said.
Of the estimated 1.1 million Australians who had an eating disorder last year, one in three were male, according to the Butterfly Foundation.
For over a decade, Scott Griffiths has studied body image and psychological disorders, with a recent focus on male eating disorders, body dysmorphia and particularly, muscle dysmorphia.
“Muscle dysmorphia is a psychological disorder. It’s not just being a gym junkie,” said Mr Griffiths, an associate professor and lead of the Physical Appearance Research Team at the University of Melbourne.
“It’s a preoccupation. You are always thinking about food, training, your appearance. It’s on your mind all the time.”
According to the Butterfly Foundation, people aged between 15 and 19 are 2.7 times more likely to experience an eating disorder. It makes social media an animating and potentially potent driver.
“It can reinforce in your mind that your worth is very closely tied to, if not wholly dependent upon, your appearance, which is not the basis for healthy self-esteem,” Dr Griffiths said.
“[TikTok and Instagram] are more likely to feature influencer bodies you are extremely unlikely to be able to achieve without performance enhancement, or a level of commitment to dieting and exercise that would overcome most people.”
Blurred lines at the gym
Joshie Glover, 27, has seen just how profoundly positive a gym environment can be for young boys.
In his work at young men’s mental health charity Man Cave, he estimates he’s facilitated over 170 school workshops of more than 5,550 students.
In that time, Mr Glover has witnessed countless examples of the physical and mental health benefits that a gym can provide, as well as the connection between mates working out.
It’s when those workouts veer toward the obsessive that problems emerged.
“With gym habits, it’s very blurred lines, which is why it’s quite insidious,” he said.
In Man Cave workshops, boys often speak about being bullied over their weight, only to reframe it as a positive.
“A lot of them will say, ‘I’m actually really grateful that I’ve been teased about how [fat] I was, because it motivated me to get to go to the gym and get big’,” Mr Glover said.
“The line of when it goes from a positive social thing, motivating each other, doing something physically, to slipping into a pressured, coercive kind of motivation by ridicule, it’s really blurred.”
Andrew Tate and the problem with ‘discipline’
Another online fixation that routinely comes up in workshops is Andrew Tate, the disgraced misogynist content creator currently awaiting a criminal trial on allegations of rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.
Mr Glover said there was an uneasy through line between the much-discussed appeal of Tate, who used to be a professional kickboxer, and the growing obsession with social media gym culture.
“Many boys are so confused as to what it means to be a man, who are the role models?” he said.
“One thing they’ve really latched onto is that a man is disciplined. Whenever you ask, ‘what’s the good bits about Andrew Tate?’, they’ll say, ‘he’s disciplined’.
“The main way that discipline can play out is attending to your physical body. There’s not really much desire for discipline in schoolwork or discipline in any other areas, it’s manifested in the gym.”
The irony that past generations have decried a lack of discipline in today’s kids is not lost on Mr Glover — but he said the dangers lie in its interpretation.
“The toxic, maybe unhealthy, part of it is that there are so many different kinds of bodies that a teenage boy would have, and they’re all being channelled into this one kind of mould of what the body of a disciplined person looks like,” he said.
The influencer credibility gap
Where parents and teachers may try, often in vain, to ward young boys away from specific individuals like Tate, telling them to ignore an entire social media ecosystem is even harder.
Fitness influencers and gym content creators have argued they are merely promoting healthy physical habits and dieting advice.
Some accounts function almost as communities of collective support for people trying to reach their goals, while many frame workout content through the lens of positive mental health.
Recent studies co-authored by Associate Professor Ivanka Prichard have analysed the content and credibility of fitness accounts on Instagram and TikTok.
The research found two-thirds of the accounts audited on Instagram “lacked credibility or contained potentially harmful or unhealthy content”, while exercise and diet advice promoted on TikTok was often at odds with national health guidelines.
In late 2022, US fitness content creator Brian “Liver King” Johnston suffered an ignominious fall from grace after admitting to spending tens of thousands of dollars on steroids and performance-enhancing drugs.
The Liver King had previously maintained his improbable physique was the result of hard workouts and eating raw meat, and that others should aspire to do the same.
Ms Prichard recommended seeking out content creators with relevant qualifications or failing that, the accounts of athletes and those who emphasise physical performance over aesthetics.
“From a user perspective, red flags are anything that has quite a lot of skin on display, is sexualised or is hyper-focussed on the appearance of the body,” she said.
“I would definitely encourage parents to also just talk to young people about what they are viewing on social media.”
At a recent barbecue, Danni Rowlands bent an ear toward a conversation her 10-year-old son was having with a few boys his age.
“They were looking at each other’s calves and deciding who had the veins popping out,” she said.
“They ranged from 10 to 12. One was saying ‘here’s my six-pack’.”
Ms Rowlands, who played netball at an elite level and has her own lived experience with eating disorders, knows an obsessive focus on physique can affect mental health, school participation and relationships with friends and family.
“I think it gets minimised and oversimplified — that it’s just a teenage thing — but there’s a real danger for a young person’s self-esteem, their identity, their mental health,” she said.
“It’s not wrong to want to take care of ourselves, but the pursuit of perfection, because we think that is the answer to all of our problems, is really setting ourselves up in a negative way to move through adulthood.”
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