Super Fit Gladiator Warrior speaks about his training regime and how he had to change his eating habits to get the very best out of his Super Fit Body!

Warrior, you are obviously now a lean mean fighting machine. Have you always been as fit as you are?

Quite the contrary! Although I have always been an active individual playing sports on a social level, it was only at a level of general participation. It was not until I came into my teens that I really started to get interested in health and fitness. So I started to educate myself, and finally I felt being able to practice what I preached to a much higher standard.

When you were younger, what sort of sports or exercise did you take part in?

I was an absolute Football fanatic, playing at every opportunity in organised school matches and of course a general kick around the field with friends. I will not divulge the team I support as I may lose fans! I also liked to play tennis and a good old fashioned game of “tag”. Then I moved to full contact rugby.

Can you tell us a little bit about your exercise regime when you first started to seriously train?

I began to seriously train whilst I was at college and took a part time job at a health club. The way I saw it was that if I was giving the public advice on how to lead a healthy lifestyle, I should follow it myself. I was into serious fitness instruction then - I was teaching Spinning classes 4 x a week, Body combat 3 x a week. Oh yes, this 18 stone behemoth could perform a jumping front kick!. I was also following my own personal training program - performing resistance exercises 4 x a week. I stayed mainly with what are called “Compound Olympic lifts”. It was so difficult to consistently build muscle mass when combining the amount of exercise I was doing with my calorific intake at that time. I did not want to risk over training – it is important to keep everything in balance. If you don’t, it is as bad as leading a sedentary lifestyle.

And what about now as Super Fit Warrior – how much exercise (and what types) do you have to do to keep your body well conditioned?

At present I am training to compete in my first body building competition and this requires both muscle and stamina. Building muscles alone will not keep you fit and healthy at the end of the day. I am doing a lot of the “old school” bodybuilding training techniques. This includes all of the usual bench presses, bent over rows, dead lifts, pull ups, squats, and so on. I have to do these 5 days a week. However, I do know the importance of working cardiovascularly, so I also do 1 hour of moderate cardio on the treadmill every day

I will then be moving on to functional training for overall conditioning and optimum performance. This will involve a lot of core work (Plank, Stability ball training), Plyometrics (Box jumps, hurdle jumps, ski jumps) along with endurance and sprint training.

This is a must as I will be starting to do professional wrestling again after my competition. Supplely and agility are the name of the game!

Have you ever thought about how many calories you burn up every day?

That’s something I don’t like to think about purely as it makes me think about my food bill! I am very fortunate that Premier Meats provide all of chicken and steak treats that I need – this saves me a fortune. Good quality protein is important for all of us – whether you are body building or not. It is just quantity. I would really suggest to everyone that they try to find a good local wholesale butcher providing top grade, high quality, fresh meat. If you do, and build a relationship, it is much better value than the supermarket.

Being over 18 stone, packed with muscle, and getting regular health checks, I am aware that my resting (basal) metabolic rate is around 4000 calories! So that is me at rest, but when we add two or three vigorous workouts I probably need about 5000 calories a day. This is high, of course, compared to the average male, but all of the research is suggesting that the majority of the public do not get enough protein now to meet their daily needs.

How often do you eat each day?

Would it surprise you to hear “8 times a day”? I like to say that our body’s are like a furnace. If you are eating the right things, and put in small amounts frequently, it is like oxygen – it will fuel the fire and keep it burning forever! Physiologically, this means that our metabolism will probably increase and therefore we will burn more body fat and store less excess carbohydrate.

So what about your diet? Have you always followed a healthy nutrition plan?

No. As a young child I never could have imagined that one day I would gracing the television screens, as a larger than life, super fit Gladiator!

Like most young children, “diet” and “nutrition” were concepts that were just accommodated – for obviously physical reasons like being alive! But like many kids, I was brought up in a working household, so we did turn to convenience foods because these were quick and easy and caused much less stress to prepare.

What were your favourite foods when you were younger?

Oh, there were lots. I loved the Marks and Spencer Meat and Potato Pie. I ate lots of oven chips and coleslaw, chicken nuggets and beans. And of course all the sweet stuff – Kit Kats, Clubs and any type of cookie. All of these were tasty meal time favourites and snacks. They did taste pretty good, but of course I now know that consuming this sort of thing on a regular basis is not an ideal nutritional choice.

It took me a long time to change. At Junior School and Comprehensive School, I was quite active, but I still had niggling bad habits. For example every lunchtime, I would go to my local newsagent and load up on chicken tikka pasties and meat pies with a very contradictory diet coke. At the time it was a tasty quick fix – it all made me feel good for a short time.

What do you think the most challenging things were when you started to change your approach to diet?

I came to realise that I needed to start to make the right choices for the healthy of my body and to properly support my exercise regime. Much of what I was eating before were “empty” calories – they just were not providing my body with what it needed – good carbohydrates, proteins and fats, full of vitamins and minerals. I was eating a lot of sugars and starches that all tasted good but just were not supporting my lifestyle and not providing me with sustained energy.

I think like a lot of people I thought that changing and eating “healthy” foods would equate to “boring” and that was part of the challenge. So it was really important to expand my knowledge and know how and to experiment. The other big challenges were about thinking ahead – preparing in advance. If you don’t do that, then you will rush to the bad snacks again if you are feeling a little peckish. The other really big challenge is always to make sure you make the time to eat – this is really difficult trying to fit it around a hectic schedule. Again, if you don’t make time to eat properly, you will turn to the convenience foods again because they are quick, easy and readily available.

What made you start to change your diet?

It was in the latter years of my comprehensive education period when I really started to take interest in my diet as I began to play basketball more competitively. By picking my PE teachers brain on good foods along with paying attention in my science classes specific to my purpose, I started to learn about all of the alternative sources of food that were better suited to active lifestyle.

Did you make a sudden overnight change or was it gradual?

I guess it was more gradual. I tried to be realistic in my changes knowing that small adaptations were going to have an increased chance of sticking, rather than making drastic changes that had a higher risk of me falling back down a slippery slope. If you start cutting out lots of things you like too quickly, you just run the risk of craving for them and when that happens you tend to rush off and binge on them. So, yes, I would advise gradual – make a change every week or two.

Tell us about some of the changes you started to make then?

Well, instead of a snack of chocolate or a pastry, I changed it to a Cereal bar full of oats and nuts. It was amazing how quickly I managed to curb my sweet tooth – get over the addiction – because that is what it is. We get addicted to the great feeling we have from the sudden sugar rush and high – but forget that our metabolism then crashes afterwards. So, in doing so, I was providing my body with a good source of slow releasing energy from the oats, and with some protein and good fat from the nuts!

For main meals, the biggest change I made was going for whole foods instead of processed fast foods like pasties and burgers. I would opt for rice (preferably brown) or pasta and some form of meat alternative. I know that can be difficult sometimes. If you are still at school, you have to take what is on the school cafeteria menu, but a move to white rice with some chicken is a great improvement from eating processed pasties or burgers!

Are you now obsessively strict with yourself?

To begin with, I was just trying to be “realistic” and “sensible” but as I have got older and my knowledge has increased, so it has become easier and easier to follow a good nutritional plan. It has just become a way of life, so I don’t think about it as being super strict. But it is important to treat yourself now and then – keep an open mind about food and drink – experiment and live by the principle that “a little bit in moderation is fine”.

Even now I'll experiment with flavours, herbs and spices. We only don't like what we don't know. The best time to find out is when you are young – our parents are our role models and it very much depends on how they bring you up with food. But having said that, you are never too old to try something new.

So what are some of your favourite snacks and why?

I’m a larger than ordinary individual and I absolutely love food and it is important to keep snacking but on the right sort of things. Some of my favourites, which are healthy and keep be ready to take on anything are:

Natural Cereal/Nut bars - all natural ingredients, sweet and satisfying
Cashew nuts - a good protein sources for a snack and with good dietary fat
Almonds - again a good protein source for a snack and with good dietary fat
Bagels with Peanut butter - quick hit of Carbs, a little protein and good fats from the nuts
Elevenses Bars - Made of oats and honey, all natural and slow release energy

And what about your main meals?

That varies, of course, from day to day, but some options include

Diced turkey, brown rice, light soy sauce and mushrooms - containing protein, complex carbs and vegetables
Chicken Stir fry with lots of vegetables - Quick, convenient and can be made according to taste
Home made Burgers, Lean Beef mince burger patties - McDonalds but healthy at home – with added pickles and sauces to flavour and a side salad
Oven baked potato wedges use mostly nearest the skin - Low fat and a great alternative to fried chips

Do you indulge in deserts?

Yes, of course I do. The sort of thing I might have would include:

Fresh Fruit - great healthy choice – but if you want to be a bit naughty then
Skinny cow ice cream - low calorie and great flavours (Choc, Mint choc, strawberry swirl)
Low fat rice pudding with cinnamon - great, warm and delicious
Various low fat Healthy Living favourites - Spotted dick, Jam roly poly all have the low fat alter-egos!

If you had to come up with a few pieces of advice for younger people about their diet and nutrition, what would they be?

1) PREVENTION IS BETER THAN A CURE!
2) Start to really understand nutrition – not just food – it is different!
3) Take small steps to change toward nutrition
4) Have a treat a day at first then eventually reduce it to a treat a week
5) Keep thoroughly hydrated – at least 1.5 litres of water – not soda or coke!
6) Look for inspiration!
7) Take things that help the joints every day - joint formula can be great

Interview by Lee Latchford Evans, Ex Steps Star turned Celebrity Personal Trainer