Nutrition For REAL Fat Loss

Do you struggle with sticking to a serving size? Do you think that portion size is the same thing as a serving size? If you are having trouble with these questions I am hoping to answer them with this blog post.  There is really a big difference between a serving size and a portion size, but too often we aren't paying attention to this.  So now you're asking what's the difference?

• Portion Size: is the amount of a single food item offered in the packaging of prepared foods, the amount given to you at restaurants, or the amount a person chooses to put on his or her plate.
• A Serving Size: is a standard unit of measurement usually in cups or ounces, as recommended by the USDA.

Most of the time the portion that we choose to eat are much larger than the standard serving sizes.  This problem is classified as "portion distortion".  Portions at restaurants, at home, what you buy at the store are much larger than they ever used to be, and many times people aren't paying attention to the growing sizes.  Some portions actually have 2, 3 or more servings!

So... What are the Serving Sizes?

• 1 serving of meat = 3oz (about the size of a deck of cards)
• 1 serving of fruit = 1 cup fresh fruit (the size of a tennis ball)
• 1 serving of veggies = 1 cup fresh, or 1/2 cup cooked vegetables
• 1 serving of grains = 1 piece of bread, 1 pancake, 1/2 bagel, 1/2 cup rice/pasta/or cereal
• 1 serving of dairy = 1 cup milk or yogurt, 1oz cheese (about the size of 3 dice)

Why is this important?

• When dining out and eating at home, portion sizes are often larger than recommended serving sizes.
• Studies show that when faced with a larger portion of food,people tend to consume more calories, fat and sodium.
• Consuming more calories can lead to weight gain and obesity!
• Serving sizes, not portion sizes, are how calories, protein, fat and nutrients are measured.  You need to know how many servings you are having of foods to watch your waistline, your cholesterol, etc.

How can you watch your portion sizes?

• Order smaller portions at restaurants.  Appetizers can make a great meal because they are usually smaller servings.  Split larger entrees with a friend or split half to go.
• Eat your meals on smaller plates and use smaller cups.  The smaller your plate and cup, the smaller your portion.  You also won't be tempted to fill your larger plate with unneeded, extra food.
• Don't eat directly out of the bag.  Divide contents of large packages (chips, cookies, etc) into smaller single swerving size portions to avoid over eating.  Pre-portion your snacks at the beginning of the week that you will take with you to work or school
• I just pre-portion the entire package after I buy it and stick the snack or portioned baggies right back in the big bag for storage
• If you are on weight-watchers, take your points calculator and a pen to the grocery store with you and write how many points per serving on the box right when it goes in your cart, so that you don't have to spend time doing it later. Or even just eating in then figuring out the points later, because by then you may have already eaten too much.
• Eat before you go out.  Have an apple, cup of veggies, hard boiled egg, or low fat cheese stick to hold you over.  This way when you arrive to a party or even, you won't feel the need to eat the first unhealthy thing you see
• Eat slowly. It takes your brain a few minutes to get the message that your stomach is full.
• Don't eat while distracted.  Eating while watching TV, driving, or on the computer may lead to overeating.

While portions continue to grow beyond your control, what you need to do is learn the proper serving size so you can make better food choices.  Don't let large portions hold you back from losing weight.

Getting Back In It

It's that time of year again when people begin to think, "What do I want to accomplish this year?" It is time to set your goals and REACH them. Working at a gym I see many people come through my door with weight loss in mind.  Talking with some of our members that have been around the gym for many "new year’s resolution" times, they say that the gym will be busier until the end of February or early March.  This is the time when the New Year’s resolution people start to give up.  Either because it's too hard, or they made one major slip up and they think there’s no getting back in it.  It is my goal to see the people who sign up for a membership in January to stick it out for the WHOLE YEAR!

You need to understand just a few simple things to make this "Do-Able" for you.

1) Each of your goals must have a WHY!

I always ask in my fitness consultations why is this your goal. What does this goal mean to you? What does this goal mean to your friends or family? How will you reward yourself once you reach your goal? 
The WHY is what is going to give you that drive, to reach your goal?

Many people say that the why is just to feel better, or to live a healthier life.  But we all know that everyone just wants to look better.  Look deeper inside yourself, what really made you walk through that door and sign up for this membership, what are you really looking to accomplish in the next 12 months. Is it so that you don't have to worry about missing out on playing with your kids, doing activities with your family, feeling comfortable in that bathing suit on the beach on a family vacation? Is it so you can hopefully get off your blood pressure medications or reduce your risk of diabetes?

If you are able to find a good enough reason to stick it out that reason alone will be your motivation to reach your goal.

2) Force yourself to sit down and write your goals out on a pad of paper.

The goals that you want to accomplish don't always just have to be fitness related goals.  Do you have any spiritual, emotional, personal or professional goals? You should be writing all of these goals down so that you know exactly what you are setting out to accomplish.  Writing them out is like writing up your own contract to yourself.  Once you have written up your goals for this next year, try to think more long term.  Write out a 5 year and a 10 year goal. It is fun to look back on the past year and look how far you have come to reaching or surpassing one of your long term goals.  Maybe it’s getting married or having kids, buying a house, buying your first car, Losing 30lbs by December of 2012, getting your blood pressure to a healthy range, etc.  But, writing your goals down is going to make you think harder about what you would like to do this year and years to come.

3) Having a positive support system

Having people that believe in you and believe that you can accomplish your goals if you stick with them.  The people in your support system will be able to keep you on track because they care about you and your health.  Sometimes it’s nice to find that person who has goals similar to yours because then staying on track is even easier, because you are no longer trying to do this by yourself. At Anytime Fitness we do our best to create a family like atmosphere for our members.  We get to know each and every person that walks through our doors.  It is our goal to see each of our members reach or surpass their fitness goals.  Having a supportive staff and people that you are comfortable asking questions is very important in helping you reach your goals.  I would love to be part of your support system!

4) Create both outcome based and procedural goals

Most of the goals that we tend to create are all outcome based.  Such as, I want to make more money; I want to lose more weight, etc.  All these goals are strictly based on outcomes.  If you set up steps (or procedural goals) you will be able to track your progress and reach those outcome goals.

If my outcome based goals are to do 30 full pushups and drop 30lbs in the next year, you will need to set "action" steps in place to accomplish these tasks.  So you might want to start with telling yourself that you will do 250 workouts over the next year and put together a push up program. Then try changing one small thing about your nutrition each week to help with the weight loss goal.  Try this for example "I will only have 50 cheat meals over the course of the next year." This ensures that every other meal will follow your plan.

5) HAVE A PLAN!

The biggest mistake that people make is not creating themselves a plan. You can't just write them down and expect all your goals to be reached.  You need to put a little time and effort into accomplishing these tasks.

For each individual goal write a plan on how to accomplish the goal.

Example: I hope to drop my body weight to 130 from 160 in the next year.

Action Steps: I will make one positive nutritional change each week for the next year. I will start by eating breakfast every day.  Then I will make sure to increase my vegetable intake.  I will cut out all starchy carbs unless it is during a post workout meal.

I will make sure to get in 4 workouts per week for a total of 16 per month.  At least 2 of these workouts will be metabolic workouts and 2 will be strength training workouts.

I will make sure to do one active thing on the weekends to help with fat loss.

I am going to begin a supplement routine to support my fat loss.

I am going to hire a trainer to get me started on my goals.

If you are able to follow these 5 simple steps I can guarantee that you will find fitness success in 2012!

Tis the Season :)

We all know that Christmas is right around the corner... seriously! Are you ready? I definitely still have some shopping to do, and I know that shopping can be a workout in itself.  However, getting to the gym should still be high up on your priority list.

An average American will gain between 7 and 10lbs between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Do you want to be a part of that statistic? I DON'T THINK SO! I know I don't, that's for sure.

Since there is about 10 days left till Christmas, I'll give you 10 Tips to stay fit over the holidays!

1. Make time for yourself: we all tend to get overwhelmed during the Holiday season. We are so busy thinking about everyone and everything else that sometimes we forget about ourselves. Try to find at least 5 minutes to relax! Do some deep breathing exercises if you are getting over stressed. (In through the nose out through the mouth)

2. Don't set unrealistic exercise goals: As I said before our workout time gets cut shorter during this time of year.  Set a goal of working out for 15-20 minutes each day, so that you are not disappointed when you aren't able to stay for that 45-60 minutes.

3. Holiday activities instead of Holiday COOKIES: We all know that our mom's and grandma's are busy in the kitchen making the delicious Christmas cookies that we all enjoy eating.  Now I'm not telling you that you can have one here or there, I'm telling you not to over-indulge. Try to start a new holiday tradition like a family football game, or family sledding or snowman building.  Anything fun you can think of the include and encourage the whole family to stay active.

4. Find a friend for motivation and encouragement: Working out with someone always makes the workout better and more fun.  You can get encouragement, ideas and motivation! If your a competitive person you can make a friendly competition from exercise to exercise :)

5. Don't try to necessarily lose weight over the Holiday, but try to maintain!: Trying to have a super stricked diet over the holidays is going to be really hard and frustrating for most of us. We all have our weaknesses! Mine is definitely caramel corn! I could eat it all day long... BUT I don't! I am trying to stick with my healthy meal plans and regular workout routine just to stay on track over the holidays and that's what I would recommend for all of you!

6. Drink plenty of H2O: I know it's not summer and were not sweating as much and getting dehydrated as easily. However you still need to have your 64-120 oz of water daily. Drinking water helps counter the feelings of dehydrating effects of traveling and drinking alcoholic beverages.  Drinking water may also help you feel less hungry, many people mistake the feeling of being hungry and being thirsty. Most people are more inclined to grab the food before they would grab a glass of water.

7. Don't over do it with alcohol or caffeine: Having to much of the stimulants could actually add to your stress level, and that's the last thing that you want.

8. Spread out your meals: When families gather around the dinner table for Holiday feasts they always try to fill up every ounce of their plate.  Try using a smaller dinner plate so you aren't taking as large of a portion.  Also it is good to take a little break between eating the main meal and then having dessert.  It's good to get everything cleaned up so you have a decent amount of time to let your food settle. You may find yourself eating less dessert and not getting so many stomach pains from being over stuffed!

9. Don't aim for perfection, and enjoy the imperfections: I know that I come from a crazy family and we always say that it's not a family holiday till somebody cries.  But it's so true, we all try to have these images of perfection in our head, when in reality we know that perfection is impossible! Nothing is ever going to be perfect, so relax and don't stress out if something doesn't go the exact way you think it should this Holiday.

10. LAUGH! Laughing is a great tension reliever. It also burns calories, reduces stress and usually means that you are having a good time! Keep a smile on this Holiday and enjoy the people that you get to celebrate with.  Even if parts of your family are far away you know that you will always be thinking about them.  Well, at least I know that I will.

I hope these 10 Holiday Tips help you get a little more out of this Holiday season.  Keep your eyes pealed for my next few posts I'm thinking about posting Tips on how to grocery shop!!

STRESSED OUT!

I can't believe it's only Wednesday.  I feel like so much has happened this week. It sucks because I have been so busy I was unable to have the time to update my blog for the past couple of days. This time of year is when I feel like many of us are at a high stress level.  Students are coming up on the end of their semesters so FINALS are knocking at their doors. Parents are running around like crazy trying to make sure they can get everything ready for Christmas and holiday events. I've been so busy at work I haven't even had the chance to get a decent workout in this week and the week is halfway over :( Sometimes getting that workout in can be a great stress reliever because its that short little window of time that you can spend focusing on just yourself.  It's a little mini break that you get to take during your long stressful day. Being able to take just 20 to 30 minutes could make a world of difference in the way you feel throughout your day.  Exercising can actually give you that energy boost because your body releases a good amount of endorphins while exercising and your body actually produces twice as much ATP (ENERGY) that your body needs to complete a workout so the left over ATP is what your body uses for that energy boost.

Take a look at the following metabolic workout ( this is a workout that should take less than 30 minutes to complete but you are building your cardio in with your weight training to cut the time in half that you have to spend at the gym!)

1) Push Up x 12 reps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh00_rniF8E&feature=fvsr

2) Body weight Row (TRX Row)x 12 reps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTk5ns4CKGI&feature=fvsr

3) Plank x 45-60 seconds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKPTt8TJWIs

4) Kettlebell Swing x 24 Reps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u_nqSnM2S8

5) Jump Squat x 24 Reps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utQShuge6Vk&feature=related
(Don't mind the British accent in this video! LOL)

6) Side Plank x 30-40s each side
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm1QxM9lehY

Rest 60s

Repeat this sequence up to 5 times

please use the instructional videos to view the exercises if you have questions on how to do any of the exercises listed. If you have further instructional questions or you maybe cannot perform one of the exercises due to a joint or bone problem, let me know and I will give you a secondary option.

** Reminder if you don't have access to a Kettlebell you can use a dumbbell instead**

Sunday...a Day of Rest

Everyone needs an off day. Sundays are good days for that because this is when you can finish up those household chores, or just sit around and watch football all afternoon. When you are creating a workout program don't forget to assign one of those days as a "rest" day.  Your body needs time to recover.  You don't want to over work or over stress your body because this can actually have adverse effects on your immune system. You can end up getting something called "overtraining syndrome" and this is something that you definitely don't want.

Overtraining syndrome is what happens when their is an insufficient amount of rest in your training program.  If this happens then regeneration cannot occur, and performance will also start decreasing.  Don't get me wrong overtraining doesn't occur right away, it's something that develops over time. Overtraining can best be defined as the state where the athlete has been repeatedly stressed by training to the point where rest is no longer adequate to allow for recovery. The "overtraining syndrome" is the name given to the collection of emotional, behavioral, and physical symptoms due to overtraining that has persisted for weeks to months.

For example I workout six days a week.  Monday, Wednesday and Friday are dedicated to weight training and Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday are dedicated to active recovery (cardio days).  That leaves Sunday as my "recovery day".  Also, know that because I'm working out six days a week doesn't mean that I am working out for hours each day.  Most of my workouts are between 25 and 35 minutes.  If you workout at a high intensity for a short period of time you are going to burn the same if not more calories as you would when you are doing a workout for an hour or longer.  By taking shorter rest period throughout your workout it automatically builds that cardio component into your workout and therefore increasing the amount of calories burned.

I hope that you as readers are finding this information helpful. I will always try to post information that is useful to you.  If their are any topics that you want to know more about leave me a comment about it and I will do my best to address it in a later post.

Have a great rest of your weekend and remember to REST!

Saturday's a Cleanin' Day!

I'll I have to say is that CLEANING is DEFINITELY a WORKOUT!

My apartment is officially as clean as it was when I moved in over a year ago! Living room, kitchen, bathroom, spare room, bedroom CHECK! It's all done and it feels great.  This is exactly what rainy Saturdays were meant for. Ask yourself... "how long has it been since you did a full... and I mean full cleaning of your house or apartment?" I have to tell you that it feels great to have a fully clean space to live in. Now, don't get me wrong I'm not usually really dirty. I do spend at least a day out of my weekend every weekend to do the normal household chores. However, today I was feeling super inspired to just deep clean my whole apartment.

I worked up a good sweat! It all started with cleaning the pots and pans in hot water in the kitchen.  Standing over the sink with bubbles up to my elbows, scrubbing the dishes really got me warmed up. I moved right along to the bathroom where I got down on my hands a knees and scrubbed the floor (picture Cinderella).  Getting up, getting down, scrubbing, organizing, etc. after a while that is a lot of squatting and/or lunging, which is the beginning of a good workout. Those of you who workout know that when you use your larger muscle groups your body has to work a whole lot harder, since their is a lot of blood that needs to flow through those muscles. Next, it was time for the laundry.  I gather it all up, separate it into loads, and head down stairs, load the washers and head back up stairs. I think overall I went up and down 4 flights of stairs at least a dozen times...add it all up and you have CARDIO! When the wash is done it's time for a little shoulder workout; FOLDING! I know, I know every one hates the folding and putting away part, but if you try to do it with a little speed behind it you end up holding your arms up and shoulder height for just the right amount of time to feel a little burn. I also moved a lot of furniture today so that I could vacuum everywhere. I'm sure everyone has moved at least once and knows how good of a sweat you get from picking up and moving furniture! That's precisely what I did.  So, as you can see I did basically a full body workout today with out even trying and all I did was clean my apartment and do some laundry.  Remember just because you may not be able to make it to the gym everyday, their are things you can do in the comfort of your own home to get yourself a pretty decent workout.

Here are some more pointers for at home workouts. Do you have a sturdy coffee table? You can use this as a step, to get a little lower body burn/cardio workout.  Do you have a wood or a tile floor and a pair of socks? You can do things like mountain climbers, or pike ups if you have the socks on your feet. Switch it up and put the socks on your hands you can do single arm layouts, or sliding push-ups. Only have carpet? Do you have paper plates or plastic glad-ware lids? The same exercises that I listed above you can do on carpet with these two items. Do you have a chair or a couch? You can do tricep dips or incline/decline push-ups. Everyone has a floor of some sort doesn't matter the surface texture, you can do planks, push ups, sit ups, etc. on the floor alone. Try doing some of these exercises during the commercial breaks of the show that you are watching.  Most 30 minute television shows have at least 10-12 minutes of commercials.  That's 10-12 minutes of exercise that you just created for yourself.  Challenge yourself with this over the weekend! Leave me a comment and let me know how it went for you!

FRIDAY FIT CHALLENGE!

So as you all know I work at the Anytime Fitness in Oshkosh WI. Every Friday we have a "fit challenge". This Friday's challenge was to take a load off and do a wall sit! We challenge all the Anytime Fitness's that Karmen owns to participate (that's 10 clubs). The winner of these challenges gets to pick the next weeks fit challenge.  It's pretty awesome because we usually get a lot of participants (people are crazy competitive). We post all of their scores on our facebook pages and it's fun and friendly competition! :)

So I was thinking I used to do wall sits all the time! Our basketball coach in high school used to make use do them for almost 10 minutes at a time... how hard could it be? Well, turns out it takes a lot of mental strength to hold that position for a long period of time, because after about 2 minutes your quads are ON FIRE! Unfortunately I only made it to 3:20, I let my legs get the best of me.

So I decided that this would be a cool thing to add to my blog every Friday.  So if you are a follower of my blog feel free to participate in the Friday Fit Challenge.  The longest some one held it today was 7:03! Think you can beat it?! Post your Name and Time in my comments box and let me know how you did!

Rules: Thighs must be parallel to the ground and your hands should be behind your head!