Jordan Strauss/AP
Emilia Clarke may be fighting for power on “Game of Thrones” as Daenerys Targaryen, but she embraces her trainer and cookbook author James Duigan’s approach to health and fitness.
Duigan, the author of “Clean and Lean for Life: The Cookbook,” has been giving interviews recently that reveal how the mother of dragons stays in such great shape, as first spotted by The Daily Mail. Here’s the approach he takes to keep her fit and make Emilia’s kitchen “very happy.”
Keep your food simple and balanced.
, Duigan advocates for sustainable and realistic healthy eating practices. “The only thing that works is balance,” he said. “The minute you begin to weigh your food, count your kilojoules, or beat yourself up for going out for dinner, it’s over.”
He suggests not fighting your cravings and “making it a battle.” Instead, he recommended ditching the diet mentality and focusing on what works for you and your body, a principle he highlights in his book.
Clarke credits it in an Instagram post: “Allow me to introduce the key to my very happy kitchen. This book. And this dude [that] wrote it.”
Make your workouts mobile.
Celebrities like Clarke are always traveling and have packed schedules. This isn’t an excuse to not workout — it’s an opportunity to get creative. “This means that we need to tailor the training to be super-efficient as well as achievable anywhere in the world,” Duigan said.
He recommends easy to pack gear like resistance bands when traveling. He’s also a fan of lifting weights but notes that they aren’t often available. That’s when body weight movements requiring no equipment, like planks and push ups, come into play.
Your diet and exercise shouldn’t be a punishment.
Duigan spoke with Healthista about how his workouts are designed to help the body feel good, not push people to injury like some other workout programs. “The pay off of exercise is to energize you and make you feel good, you don’t want to be dragging yourself out of a class with a sore knee,” he said.
” Let’s just say for argument’s sake someone wants to lose weight, the best way of doing that is focusing on your health and looking after your body, not punishing and working against it because your body will slow down and hold on.”
Recovering should be taken seriously.
Cooling down after a workout helps your body recover from your sweat session and allows your muscles to repair. This is often forgotten or pushed aside after finally completing your workout, but you shouldn’t be so quick to do so.
“One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to not warm-down after a workout,” Duigan said. “A cool down will help to gradually push the lactic acid out of the muscles, whilst allowing the blood to circulate throughout your body and carry important nutrients and oxygen to your muscles and cells and assisting in the growth and repair of muscles.”
This tip speaks to Duigan’s overall approach to health. Focusing on treating your body with kindness and compassion is refreshing compared to the hard core workouts and strict plansthat have been popularized over the years. While this plan might be out of character for Daenerys, Clarke herself seems to be loving it.
Source: thisisinsider
