F4L Blog
Getting the Most Out of Your Workouts: More Than Just Pushing Harder
We’ve all been there: standing in the gym, mid-set, or halfway through a run, and that little voice pops up, “That’s enough, call it a day.” The classic advice is often to grit your teeth and push harder. Sure, there’s a time and place for that. But if we reduce...
🚨 New research has raised some serious questions about erythritol — the sugar substitute often found in “low-carb” and “sugar-free” products.
A University of Colorado Boulder study has shown that even amounts similar to what you’d get in one sugar-free drink may negatively affect blood vessels in the brain. Reduced nitric oxide (less vessel relaxation), more endothelin-1 (vessel constriction), impaired clot...
When Our Values Clash: Understanding Internal Conflict
When Our Values Clash: Understanding Internal Conflict When most of us hear the word conflict, we picture arguments with other people, a disagreement at work, a tension in a relationship, or frustration in a team. But there’s another type of conflict that’s just as...
When Values Don’t Align: The Hidden Path to Burnout
We all know the usual suspects when it comes to employee burnout – workload, deadlines, and poor work-life balance. But there’s a quieter, often invisible driver that organisations underestimate: value misalignment. Shalom Schwartz’s research into personal values...
Speaking into Their Listening – Bridging Value Differences in the Workplace
Shalom Schwartz's work on personal values is the most studied and peer-reviewed in that field. The science tells us there are 10 principal values, sitting within a framework that can help managers and leaders easily identify where their team members are ‘coming from’...
Movement Matters, Whatever Your Size
Let’s clear something up right from the start: you do not need to be a particular size or shape to benefit from exercise. In fact, some of the biggest wins I see as a coach come from people in what’s often called the “a bit heavier than ideal” body category (though...
The Health Coach’s Crispy Pork Belly Recipe
A guilt-free way to get that crunch Pork belly isn’t usually something you’d expect from a health coach, but hear me out. When it’s done right, it’s not just a treat for the taste buds, it can be part of a balanced, real-food approach to eating that respects quality,...
“My Cholesterol Went Up – But I’m Not Worried. Here’s Why.”
So… I got my [annual] bloods back the other day. Total cholesterol and LDL? Up. Triglycerides? Down. Now, if you stopped reading there, you'd be forgiven for thinking alarm bells should be ringing. But I'm not worried — and here’s why. Back in April, I did something a...
🧠 Cognitive Load Coping – The New Fitness Frontier
If you ask me what the main game for the next decade is, I’d say this: learning how to manage cognitive load. Yep, not weightlifting, not macros, not mobility (though they all matter). It’s about how we use our brain, how we think, how we focus, how we recover...
Iceland’s Four-Day Workweek: Gen Z Was Right All Along
Back in 2015, Iceland kicked off a workplace experiment that raised a few eyebrows: a four-day workweek with no cut to pay. At the time, critics were ready with their usual warnings, lower productivity, rising costs, and a drop in service standards. But nearly a...