Eat Like A Champion

Most people understand that working out is essential to building muscle and shedding fat. So with the unofficial start of summer just around the corner, there are more people jogging outside, boot camp classes are revving up, and the gyms are getting just a little bit more crowded. However, working out is only part of the battle and many people are winning in the gym, only to lose at their dining room table.

Your diet is just as, and arguably more important to how your body looks as your workouts. However, dramatic diet changes, such as cutting hundred of calories a day, can slow your metabolism and make losing weight feel impossible. Over-ambitious diet expectations can lead to big weight fluctuations and mental burnout. Instead of swinging for the fences your first time at the plate, focus on smaller steps that are easier to stick with and won’t slow your metabolism down to a crawl.  Follow these tips to shed those pounds and reveal the muscles that you have been working so hard to build all winter!

Eat More Protein: While I do not believe in completely eliminating foods that you enjoy, high-calorie, nutrient sparse foods like bread and chips should be limited to 10% of your daily caloric intake. Focus on increasing your daily protein intake. Depending on your level of activity, you should aim for 0.5-0.75 grams of protein per pound of your target body weight per day. This will maximize satiety, boost muscle growth, and elevate your metabolic rate.

Get Fruity: Increasing your daily fruit intake can help shed fat. Fruit provides your muscles with carbohydrates to fuel intense training. Fruits also full of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients to promote health.

Eat Before You Shop: Studies have shown that people who grocery shop on empty stomachs tend to load their carts with more high-calorie options. Grab a piece of fruit or a protein bar prior to visiting the supermarket to help stay on track!

Accuracy Is Key: Most people think that they eat healthier than they actually do. Meal tracking is a good way to truly hold yourself accountable of what is going into your body. Each day, write down everything that you eat and/or drink. At the end of the week, go back and give yourself an honest assessment of how well you stuck to your plan.

Leave Some Breathing Room: Picture your appetite on a scale of 0-100 with 0 being starving and 100 being absolutely stuffed. Your meals should leave you between 50-75. Eating before you are starving and stopping when you are satisfied, instead of stuffed, will help avoid overeating and the consumption of excess calories.

Follow these tips at the table and you will be well on your way to showing off those rock hard abs that you worked so tirelessly to achieve. Let’s go!

Spring Into Action!

Spring Into Action!

Birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, and slowly but surely the temperature is rising.  Spring is here!  Soon we’ll have no choice but to reveal the damage done by a winter full of comfort food and lazy afternoons cuddling on the couch.  But don’t fret! With 8 weeks to go until Memorial Day, I have a few exercise suggestions to add to your current training program that will help you become the fittest version of yourself in time to hit the beach!

• Sprinting:  Take your running and fitness game to the next level!  Sprint workouts are super effective — sprinting provides a full body workout and can be done in a gym, park, track, or your front yard.  Sprinting obliterates fat by increasing your metabolic rate and leaving your body in calorie burning mode long after your workout is complete.  Sprinting also provides great strength and body firming results for your butt, quads, core, and hips.

• Try this:
  • Perform 10 sets of 100 meter sprints

• Plyometrics:  Plyometric exercises, commonly referred to as “jump training”, are an awesome way to shed stubborn fat while increasing your strength, balance, agility and power.  These exercises require you to exert maximum force in a rapid or explosive manner over a short period of time.  Because the moves are quick and explosive, you will exert a lot more energy and in turn, burn more calories than you would in a typical strength-training session.

• Try this:
  • Perform 10 sets of 15 jump squats

• Swimming:  Swimming is an awesome way to build strength, endurance, and flexibility all while cutting the pounds necessary to make you summertime fine in no time!  Swimming will tone your muscles while keeping your heart rate up without the high impact on your body that sprinting and plyometric movements provide.  Swimming is perfect for anyone who needs a break from or cannot perform the more explosive movements mentioned above.

• Try this:
  • Swim as many laps as you can in 30 minutes.  Push yourself, but take breaks when necessary.

The 3 exercise types listed above are all staples of my own springtime workout regimen.  I typically use one of these 3 exercise types as the workout focus for a particular day.  That way, I incorporate all 3 exercise types at least once each week.  They are highly effective and a nice change of pace from your traditional strength and endurance workouts. So give them a try and let’s get ready for the heat!

Lift Like A Woman!

Lift Like A Woman!

Walk into most commercial gyms and you will likely see the same thing: most of the women are in the cardio area, while the men fight for open bench space in the weight lifting area.  The main excuse that woman provide for not lifting weights is that they fear getting “too bulky” and instead want to focus their training on “toning” and “shedding fat.”  While cardio is certainly a necessary part of any training regime, weight lifting is often times the fastest and most effective method for reaching your fitness goals.  Weight training, combined with cardio, will not only help create the shapely, toned body that so many females crave, but will also provide priceless health benefits.  Below are some of the many benefits of weight training:

• More Effective and Efficient Fat Burning:  One of the biggest benefits of weight training is your body’s ability to burn fat and calories, both during and after your workout.  Weight training causes your body to use more oxygen, thereby increasing your metabolic rate by requiring your body to expend additional calories.  The more lean muscle mass that your body has, the better your body becomes at using calories more effectively.  Further, while cardio burns both fat and muscle, weight lifting burns almost exclusively fat.

• Healthy Heart: Weight training helps combat the risk of heart disease.  Studies show that those who engage in weight training 2 to 3 times a week are less likely to have elevated blood pressure or glucose levels, dangerous belly fat, or high triglycerides.

• Fight Stress: Exercise in general is a great way to manage stress. Studies show that people who regularly weight train tend to manage stress better and experience fewer adverse reactions to stressful situations than those who do not.

• More Energy During the Day, Better Sleep at Night:  Weight training promotes an uptick in energy expenditure for several hours following workouts.  Further, weight training promotes better sleep quality by helping you get to sleep faster and into a deeper sleep state.

• Healthier Bones: With the passing of each year, our risk of bone density and muscle loss increases.  Postmenopausal women are at an even greater risk for osteoporosis.  Weight training promotes healthy bones, helps your body fight against the loss of bone mass and reduces the risk of osteoporosis.

Resistance training provides numerous benefits and often times provides the quickest and most efficient path to reaching your fitness destination.  So don’t let the men have all of the fun and reap all of the rewards!  Add weight training to your workout routine and jump start your journey to a stronger, healthier, more confident you!

Train Together, Stay Together!

Train Together, Stay Together!

Working out can create a lonely, isolated feeling.  And many couples complain about not spending enough time together.  So why not kill two birds with one stone? February, the month of love, is the perfect time to take your training to the next level with your significant other!

Working out with your significant other can do wonders, not only for your physique, but also for your relationship!  Studies show couples who routinely work out together report becoming closer emotionally and feeling more satisfied with their relationships. Also, the added energy and improved body image often leads to a greater sense of physical intimacy between couples.

Other couple workout benefits include:

•Encouragement and Support:  Because you are tackling this tough task together, having the motivation, encouragement, and support of your significant other can not only increase the intensity and frequency of your workouts, but also make you more likely to stick to your routine.

•A New Common Interest:  Working out together can become an activity that you both really look forward to.  And you can never have too many things in common with your significant other!

•Reduced Stress:  Stress can wreak havoc on any relationship.  Heightened stress reduces both physical and emotional intimacy.  However, working out regularly, improves our ability to handle the stress present in our daily lives.  Reduced stress improves moods and can lead to a happier and healthier relationship.

So whether its a group fitness class, weekend run, or strength training, try incorporating fitness activities into your relationship.  And watch the two of you grow closer, happier, and healthier together!

HIIT It Hard!

HIIT It Hard!

High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT for short, is by far my favorite style of training.   HIIT workouts require you to engage in a high intensity movement or exercise circuit followed by a brief rest period or low intensity movement.  The high intensity movement jump starts your heart rate and makes you feel like your body is on fire.  The low intensity movement or rest period calms the heart rate back down to normal. There are several benefits of HITT workouts, including, but not limited to:

• Quick and efficient: Performing 20 minutes of a HIIT workout can burn more calories and provide better results than 60 minutes of steady state cardio workouts.

• Long lasting caloric expenditure: Your body will continue to burn fat and calories for up to 24 hours after performing a HIIT workout.

• Increased endurance: HIIT workouts increase your overall physical endurance by pushing your body to the limit.

HIIT workouts, just like any other type of exercise, can cause harm to your body if not done properly or done too frequently. However, many of the dangers that can be attributed to HIIT training are the same dangers attributable to any type of exercise program.

• Overtraining: Most of the dangers associated with HIIT training result from overtraining. For most adults, two to three HIIT sessions per week is more than sufficient to achieve the desired goals.

• Poor form: The other notable danger results from lack of proper form as participants become more and more fatigued during their workouts.

Here are two great HIIT workouts that you can incorporate into your workout routine:

HIIT Workout #1 – Sprint for 30 seconds.  Then walk for 60 seconds.  Repeat 10 times.

HIIT Workout #2 – Do each exercise for 30 seconds with a 15 second break before going to the next exercise.  Complete 5 rounds.

Jumping Jacks

Squats

Burpees

Alternating Lunges

HIIT is a great way to help you reduce fat, boost your metabolism, and increase your aerobic ability.  When done correctly, incorporating HIIT workouts into your workout routine will lead to awesome results! Try it out during your next workout!

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Get Back On The Wagon!

Summertime is filled with days at the beach, rooftop happy hours, and cookouts.  Many people devote a lot of winter and springtime  hours getting in shape to look good during the summer months.  However, once the fun summer activities get started, a lot of people tend to throw their workouts on the back burner. Well, with the end of the summer and the start of the fall, its the perfect time to re-dedicate yourself to your fitness mentality and shed some of those excess summer pounds.  Here are few tips to help get you back on the fitness wagon.

1) Make your goals bigger than your excuses.  Whether your excuse is work, the kids, or you’re just plain tired, there will always be something that can distract your focus and give you an excuse to miss your workouts.  Because those excuses will always be there, you have to take control and remember why it is that you are working out in the first place.  Whether its just to stay healthy, shed a few pounds, or preparing for an event, find your “why” and make sure to constantly remind yourself that your “why” is more important than any excuse standing in the way.

2) Set attainable goals.  One bad meal will not make you fat, just like one good workout will not get you in incredible shape.   Remind yourself that getting back into shape is a process, not an overnight phenomenon.  There aren’t many things more frustrating than working hard and not feeling like you are making enough progress.  This frustration can lead some people to quit all together.  Start with smaller, short-term goals instead of focusing on larger, long-term goals.  For example, instead of setting a goal of losing 30 pounds, set a goal of losing at least 5 pounds a month.  Once you reach this goal, set another new goal and continue to repeat the process!

3) Take a step back in the beginning.  After taking an extended break from working out, a lot of people make the mistake of jumping right back into their previous workout routine. This often leads to frustration as we have quickly forgotten how long it took us to work up to our previous workout routine in the first place!  Our muscles very much follow the “use it or lose it” philosophy.  And if you have gone awhile without using your muscles, you can’t have the same performance expectations that you had before your workout hiatus.  Instead, ease back into your workout routine and give your body a chance to re-familiarize itself with the movements and workload.

Keep these 3 simple concepts in your mind as you jump back on the fitness wagon.  The only thing stopping all of us from obtaining the level of physical fitness that we desire is ourselves.  Lets get out of our own way and make this happen!

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