Sweat Angels Fitness Blog

Can Wii Fit get you fit?

2009-11-11T08:03:00.000-08:00

I just read the review of a study on the effects of using Wii Fit. The American Council on Exercise (ACE) did a study on 16 volunteers (20-24 years of age) and measured how much energy they used while playing. The results showed that the two most active games that they tested burned about 5.5 calories per minute, more or less. This isn't really too many when you consider that "passionate kissing" can burn nearly 6.5 calories per minute. However, the researchers were quick to point out that if you were to do the same Wii Fit activity but in real time (as in go outside for a run or take a step-aerobics class instead of doing it on the board) you could burn nearly twice as many calories...per minute anyway.

So here's what I'm thinking about this. A large percentage of Americans are overweight. A large percentage of Americans were (or are) overweight as children and never learned that activity could be fun or rewarding. I think alot of people think that exercise is uncomfortable because you get hot, sweaty, maybe even sore. If you're unaccustomed to these natural physical reactions to exertion I can understand that they may seem unpleasant! Whereas if you ran around the yard or park like a maniac when you were little until the sun went down, you may be more inclined to enjoy doing the things that make you sweaty!

For those who don't think that exercise is that fun, Wii fit is a great idea! I hope it catches on like a "gateway" drug; people starting with Wii Fit and moving on to long hikes and gym classes!
While Wii Fit may not be able to get fit people fitter, if it can drum up INTEREST in physical activity then go forth Wii Fit!

And to cover all bases here, Wii Sports was mentioned in the conclusive article also. While they didn't get the stats, the researchers recommend playing Wii Sports if you want more of a calorie burn (this is an assumption based on the fact that there is an observed increase in movement without the confines of the WiiFit board). I recommend playing it with others for even more calorie burn! Anyone who has played tennis or boxing with friends can attest to this. I'd be willing to say that there's a good number of us out there that have woken up sore the next day from Wii Tennis, Boxing, or even Bowling. I'm not sure you can get stronger this way. But I'd love to see people saying, "hey, this boxing/tennis thing is fun...I think I'll try it for real."

yeah. That's what I'm hoping for.
You can read the article here: http://www.acefitness.org/getfit/default.aspx

Passion in the unlikeliest of places...

2009-10-21T11:02:00.001-07:00

Hmm, apparently some people feel VERY passionate about their chemicals! I received two comments on my last post that were... informative. I published them both if you'd like to read them.

So to sum up, there are two (possibly one) person or company that thinks I'm an idiot for not following the pack on this. But you know, it IS possible for someone (namely myself) to have indeed read the research and can STILL believe that this product is harmful to some people. Indeed, I think it's harmful to ALL people. Just because the studies didn't seem to find anything namely wrong with the subjects does NOT mean a product is harmless.

I am referring to sucralose here, not the drink Celsius. [To creators of Celsius; I am sure your test subjects did lose weight and all the other jazz that is listed on your website and in your comment. I was only concerned that your can design tries to persuade me that you have a completely natural product. No, you are right it doesn't say that, but by proudly stating you don't include HFCS and aspartame you INFER that your product is all natural, but then you add sucralose to it. Why not use honey and tout the benefits of B-vitamins? Oh, because then if you add enough honey to make it sweet enough it'd be too many calories? Yeah, so this brings up a problem rampant in America; God forbid it's not sweet!]

I am aware there have been studies done on sucralose. And I am aware that the FDA has cleared sucralose. But you see, I dont trust the FDA to make decisions entirely free from per$ua$ion of the big ol' lobbies. If you aren't aware, sucralose was discovered when researchers at London College were testing for new insecticides. Sweet!

As far as the studies on sucralose's general safety is concerned, it is indeed impossible to monitor every living cell in the body, so don't you think something may have started to deteriorate or go awry that the testers didn't test for or notice? Do you take someone elses summary of a study and take that summary as gospel? Maybe if you don't want to read the study, but then don't go blasting others for not being up to date with their science. Even if you google 'is sucralose dangerous' you will bring up plenty of posts by people that have had troubles with it in addition to scientists that disagree with it having been labelled 'safe'.

I personally cannot stop people from using sucralose. However, I will tell people that I know three people that can, with little doubt, link their particular (and all different) health troubles to sucralose. One of them is myself. Seven painful months missing days at work, in and out of the hospital taking a battery of tests from STDs to cancer to no avail until one day my mother told me to stop using sucralose and BAM! I started having relief in less than three days although it took upwards of a year to heal thoroughly. So pardon me if I dont bow before the summaries of these studies that claim this product is safe.

If one person reads this and stops using sucralose I will be satisfied.

What constitutes "Artificial"?!

2009-10-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

So I was just scanning through a Women's Health mag at the gym I work at. An advertisement for a new calorie-burning soda caught my attention. Of course, I go to the website and look at their science and ingredients. Regardless of whether or not I think this beverage is a good idea or if it works, looking at the drinks marketing made me wonder what constitutes "articial" and "flavor"?

On the website for the drink Celsius, you can see the image of their lovely can and then turn it around to get the whole "picking it up in the store" effect. Great. So it says (along with check marks so that we can be sure they're referring to their own product) "No Sugar. No Carbs. No Aspartame. No High Fructose Corn Syrup. No Artificial Colors or Flavors." But they DO use sucralose, the artificial sweetener from hell.

I am SO mad when marketers use the No-this, No-that technique to show how wonderful their product is.

But if I wouldn't want Aspartame in my drink, why for **** sake would I want to drink Sucralose?!! DUH!!
If I refuse to drink Artificial colors or flavors, why would drinking Sparkling Orange flavored chlorine molecules be alright? Um, it ISN'T!

If you have a natural product it's natural and there' s NO bs in it. If you have a fake-o product, don't dress it up to be natural. One dreadfully poisonous ingredient is enough to ruin all your natural ingredients. And yes, in case you missed my previous rants, Sucralose is an awful poisonous sugar alternative that I think will have major lawsuits in the future. While I dont expect the Celsius makers to change their ways (because they don't care how good your health-report card is as long as you keep purchasing their product) I would like you to steer clear of products that are no good for you.

If you want to burn 100 calories go walk a mile. The 100 calories the can claims it can remove will NOT help your cardiovascular system get stronger. It will not help you build muscle and therefore shape...yeah, all those sexy dips, curves and lines you like are created by muscle.

Personal training is the only magic weight-loss ingredient I can think of that's genuine. Your trainer helps you to lose weight (or gain if that is your goal), build confidence, balance, strength, agility, coordination and helps you continuously long after you've met your initial goal. Why? First because its rewarding, second because its fun as hell to help folks learn about themselves and their bodies.

Your trainer loves you!

Now put that celsius ad down and go for a walk!

Weight Loss Secret Revealed At Last!

2009-09-17T07:07:00.001-07:00

I feel like I have an okay idea of what's going on as far as fitness, food and health are concerned, so whenever I hear that there's a "secret" my ears perk up. I wonder, what kind of silliness are they going to sell me? or I wonder, is there something new?

So when I was driving back from Bradley International Airport in Connecticut the other morning I heard on the radio, "Stay tuned, the best secret to losing weight and keeping it off is coming up next!" I had to stay tuned in! Then they added a clue in their next teaser, "what your mother told you when you were little is true!" So immediately I thought they were going to tell us the secret was to eat our vegetables. I'd agree with that, as long as you don't consider french fries to be vegetables (Dont laugh too hard, plenty of americans DO consider them to be vegetables! For nutrition purposes, they aren't!)

So what was this miraculous secret weight loss tip? "Eat slower!"

I nodded, it's true. Americans eat too quickly! We have been trained to shovel food into our pie-holes as quickly as is humanly possible. We chew chew chew for a couple bites and load our fork again before we have even swallowed the last mouth of food.

Slow down people! Breathe, chew, enjoy! But it's not that easy is it?! The average person chews their food about 10 times before swallowing, but we should be chewing upwards of 30 to 40 times per mouthful! But again, it's not as easy as simply chewing MORE. Different foods require different amounts of attention, ie raw carrots vs Wonder White bread. For fun, try timing yourself in real time eating a white bread bologna sandwich versus eating sliced roast beef and a few cups of home made cabbage/broccoli slaw. A little different huh?
P.S. By the way, I in no way condone the eating of white bread or american bologna.

So here's a problem: If we can lose weight by eating less by chewing more (and thereby allowing our bodies those 20 minutes to register the food in our belly and tell us we're full), what happens when the food we're eating is DESIGNED to dissolve after only 5-10 chews? Wouldn't you be mad if you found out that there are food scientists out there designing "diet food" for you that you can wolf down easily? Wouldn't you be mad to know that they design food that is SCIENTIFICALLY irresistible? You know what? These scientists exist and are paid VERY well to make foods that will sell (because they promise heart health, antioxidants, low fat etc) but that will hook you and are designed to be eaten quickly and therefore to keep you fat!

The lesson to be learned? Don't be fooled by labels, look beyond the buzz words and slogans and pretty colors! Eat real foods, ones that are designed by nature. Remember, earth doesn't grow bread, pastries, cake or even diet food! Seeds, fruits, vegetables and meat all take a good number of chews to adequately liquify. These real foods that are complete and whole were designed for nutrition, not to pad the bottom line! You won't even have to count your chews, which if you've ever tried is actually quite irksome. You will just have to keep chewing or you will end up swallowing your food whole...and you are no snake!

No matter HOW enticing a box label is, remember that Nature made her food perfect for you the first time! The fewer ingredients your diet has the better you will feel and the more you will be able to do!

Good Article alert!

2009-07-10T11:19:00.000-07:00

I found this article on MSN.com while I was reading about Mongolia's current status and their not-so-secret disatisfaction with China. Anyway this article is about how the food industry tries to, as the author calls it "hijack your brain". I think you should read it if you have ever asked why it was that you were craving potato skins SO BADLY! Or if even after your completely satisfying dinner salad (no cheese or croutons, dressing on the side) you couldn't help but give in to the siren song of the peanut butter brownie sundae! I thought I was partially mad when I would look at advertisments images on t.v. showing fried chicken, corn, mashed potatoes and biscuits and translating it as fat-salt, sugar-salt, sugar-fat-salt and more sugar-fat-salt. Now I know it isn't just me! This writer is crazy too!

Oh, and if you have ever eaten the KFC grilled chicken thinking you were doing something good then this article is worth a read for you too.

The Magic (Sweaty) Bullet Is Not for Sissies!

2009-07-02T12:56:00.001-07:00

There is no "magic bullet" for health and fitness per se. But that doesn't change the fact that we know what needs to be done to have good health and to be fit; eat well and exercise. So it's really more like a path than a bullet. A family member asked me recently, "hey michelle, can you write down how I can be as skinny as you? But it can't include eating too differently or exercising at all. I hate to sweat." Ooooh kaaaay.

Do you hate to sweat? That's kind of like saying you hate to pee. Sorry, it's just going to happen regardless of how you feel about it and the longer you don't do it, the more upset your body is going to be! Sweating is what your body does in order to cool itself down. As your body temperature rises, several things occur. In order to maintain a constant internal temperature your body will direct blood the surface of your skin to expose it to a circulating air current to cool it down. That is why your skin flushes when you get hot or you exercise. Similarly, your skin will allow moisture out to in order to let it evaporate. It's not the sweating itself that cools the body but the evaporation of that sweat that helps to cool us down.

If you started exercising after a long time of not exercising you may be confused by sweating. It is possible that you might not seem to be sweating for quite awhile into your workout. But then as you become more and more adjusted to exercising frequently you might start to sweat more and more often and sooner into your workout than you did at the beginning. What's going on?! Well, research has proven that folks that exercise more or who are more acclimated to hot temperatures start to sweat sooner then those who don't or who aren't. Their body's internal temp starts to rise and the body says, "Alert! Steady temp increase noted, due to recognizable pattern expect increase to continue. Initiate cooling system: sweat!" So the sooner into your exercise session that your body starts to sweat, the better and more efficient the cooling effect will be. Sweating is not a sign of weakness. Sweating is not a sign to others that you are unfit, or whatever you imagine. No one at the gym or on the trail is thinking, "Eew, that guy is TOTALLY sweating! That's gross."

So now that you're over the whole sweat thing, you should know that because your body knows what to do and is going to sweat more you need to keep your eye on your fluids! If you are thirsty, you are already dehydrated! As you start to work out in the sun and heat more make sure you slowly adjust to it. Start your workouts shorter and less intense then usual and gradually add time to your workouts, but don't add intensity for a bit. It's a fluid flux; add more time first, then shorten your workout and up the intensity a bit and so on. It's like if you went to Denver, you probably wouldn't expect to do the same workout you normally do at the same intensity etc until you were adjusted to the altitude right? Instead of altitude this is heat and humidity.

Does this sound sissy to you? Maybe it'll seem important when I tell you that this slow adjustment is important for your heart. You've already learned that your body has to move a greater quantity of blood to the skin's surface when you are exercising in the heat. Think of how much work your heart has to do to shuttle a higher volume of blood through all those tight little capillaries in your skin.Now figure in your body temperature itself and figure in the 10 beats per minute that your heart beats for every single degree that temperature rises. Okay, so then add the added stress of working out, your heart is beating to keep your muscles supplied with blood! This is a boat load of work that your heart has to do!

It doesn't sound so sissy now to warm up and to take your time to acclimate yourself to higher temps, more humidity and more exercise. Exercise is crucial to your health, hopefully you will see that taking the time to warm up and strengthen your heart (even though you cannot see it) is just as crucial!

If you need more information regarding proper hydration and what quantities are adequate for you, I would recommend using a search enginge to find more information about your particular scenario (hydration while hiking, cycling, swimming, etc). If you need a general jumping off point, you can visit the hydration calculator!

Happy sweating!

Summer; no excuses!

2009-06-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

I was just contemplating the weather and the season. Most of us have just spent winter all bundled up and trying to minimize time spent in the driving wind and snow. Now it's getting warmer outside and the snow has gone. The trees have unfurled their last new leaf and the spring bloomers have fallen. It's officially summer now (officially as in on Sunday, June 21st) and with the winter chill should go your inhibitions about working out.

Okay, so you don't belong to a gym.
Okay, so maybe you don't have alot of equipment, or any equipment!
Okay, so you think you've "tried everyth..." Stop, don't even try it!

So does all this mean that you're condemned to being a slug? Gosh, I hope not! Then you're pants really WON'T fit! So now it's early summer. The weather is bright (unless you live in Connecticut in which case it's pretty rainy). All of us are able to find some grass somewhere and a big park if you're fortunate! So go out there and get moving.

How you ask? Well, what better way to find out what you like to do then by being unburdened by rules?! You know about pushups and sit ups, walking and running, walking lunges and some others. Start with what you know! Go for a walk or a run and work these other things in. There are no rules when you're on your own listening to your own body! Do what you feel!

You can run zig-zags on the trail, you can run sideways even!
Run to the light post and then do walking lunges to the next one. Repeat.
Run backwards for 20 paces, then do 10 pushups, run forward to the next tree, then do 10 situps.

I find this kind of "play" very rewarding because there aren't any rules! It's almost like meditation because you are making up your workout as you go simply by being aware of what your body is telling your brain instead of the other way around! Nice swap for a change huh?

Don't think this entry is aimed at children because it involves fun, I'm aiming it at YOU! If you can learn to have fun in this one body of yours, you will find it hard to spend much time on the couch in front of the tube.

P.S. Don't worry about the weather either. Some of my favorite hiking and running memories have come from being rained on; and we're talking drenching driving rain! Even hot & humid days have their place. If you expose yourself to this type of weather then your body adapts to it so that future humid days won't seem quite as ugly as they used to seem! You know how you can't ever wait for the perfect moment for any one thing because then it will never come? Same thing here. Don't wait for the perfect weather because you will never notice how perfect it is until you get out into it! Enjoy!

Edit Your Shopping Cart, Edit Your Diet!

2009-06-18T11:34:00.000-07:00

I admit it, there are some things that I buy at Costco. I know! I know it sounds so wrong! But with a careful eye there are actually some very good deals. It's like shopping at Marshall's or Goodwill, you have to be patient, open-minded but particular. If you go in LOOKING for inspiration then you will walk out with everything useless under the sun. Costco is a warehouse built by siren song. Or is that Walmart? Anyway.

The Costco near me sells whole organic chickens and ENORMOUS bags of organic baby spinach in addition to 5lb bags of frozen wild blueberries. I maintain hope that I will one day find some sort of free-range meat there, but until then I will settle for organic & antibiotic/hormone free. So my entire membership fee for the year supplies me with several bags of veggies, blueberries and chicken a week...thanks guys :)

However, it is not MY shopping list that is worth discussing. You hear about that often enough! What I like to do when I'm at Costco is scan through other people's shopping carts. It's a weird grocery store form of voyuerism, but I know you do it too! Or at least I recommend that you start. You can tell so much about people by what they are buying!

Then a light went on! People go to Costco and other such stores in order to get thing that they use in bulk. You don't buy 100 snack bags of fritos just for fun...usually. So the things that people put in their carts are what they primarily subsist on, or use, in their every day life. These particular items are used/eaten so often at home that it makes more sense to buy in bulk than it would be buy several times over at the grocery store. So if you are unhappy with your weight or health, then a good stern review of your grocery cart could yield an answer as to where you have gone wrong! If you are to look back at what you ate today, you may forget to list the 8 M&Ms you stole from your coworkers candy dish right? But if you look at your grocery cart with a critical eye you might catch wind of a pattern that is much worse than stealing from your coworkers candy dish!

Cart #1: HUGE multi-pack of toilet paper, 24-count bagels, 3lb cream cheese, double box of granola bars, huge shampoo pack, rack of ribs, 2lb package of sliced cheese, large quantity of deli meat, large box of frozen lasagna, double bag of white loaf bread, large box of those breakfast croissant things, triple pack of spaghetti sauce, double box of brownie mix

So you can probably guess what the person pushing this cart looked like (oh yeah, I am oddball enough to commit cart content to memory). It was being manned by a rather large (read obese) woman who was probably in her mid-40s. To be fair it is possible that this cart was being packed to prepare for a party, even though it was Tuesday afternoon.

So let's play and try to arrange thse foods to get a peak at how her family might eat in a typical day.

Breakfast: Microwaved sausage, egg, and cheese on a buttery croissant OR bagel & shmear

Lunch: White bread sandwich of deli meat and cheese (I can hope for lettuce & tomato)

Snack: Granola bar (or two)

Dinner: Pre-made meat Lasagna

Post-Dinner snack: Brownies!

Okie dokie...this would be what NOT to do. If you read my blog you probably know how I feel about this plan already. But this is SO typical for our country!!! I look at this and see sugar, sugar and sugar, with some bad fat thrown in for good measure...and a delicate smattering of protein. I am aware that I cannot see what this woman had in her crisper, but seeing as how all major meals were accounted for without stretching my imagination I feel like the above layout is probably not too far from the truth. I hope that there is a salad eaten with the lasagna and that the sandwich is piled high with cucumbers and grated carrots, dare I dream for sprouts too?! Her entire grocery cart that accounts for MANY meals tallied up a grand total of 20g of fiber (that is for both full bottles of spaghetti sauce). So you know no one is getting their daily allowance of this important component of a healthful diet.

So next time look at your grocery cart. What are you picking up? Does your cart look more like you ran into a cart at the farmer's market or in the Frito-Lay stock room? Are you looking at waxed skins or cardboard boxes? Unprocessed cuts of meat or meat with ingredients? Sometimes it's good to step back and be critical before you start wondering where it all went wrong!

[I may sound mean, but I actually do wish this woman that I am picking on (her family as well) a lifetime of good health. Let's all hope these folks see the dietary light!]

All-natural Jerky on Etsy

2009-06-06T14:40:00.000-07:00

As you know, I'm a Caveman.

Sometimes I need to get going in the morning and I just don't have time to make myself the proper Zone balance Caveman breakfast! Along time ago I let go of the notion of 'correct' breakfast foods and now I'll pretty much eat anything for breakfast. But it needs to be easy (and of course yummy). So I brainstormed and came up with JERKY!!

I have been making beef and turkey jerky for awhile now and boy, is it fun! I love trying different things then seeing what works and what doesn't. I haven't had too many dislikes yet, honestly. I have a good eye and hand for cooking.

So I've listed my favorite jerkies on Etsy so I can share them with others! I don't have a supply just laying around; every order will be made when ordered so I can assure you an absolutely fresh product.

Breakfast Style Jerky: This is so easy to eat and isn't chewy in the least (but please still chew it)!The awesome texture on this one was created by ground meat, crazy lean beef and crazy lean turkey ground together with spices, marinated and then formed into sausage patties. I was inspired by the lovely flavors that make breakfast sausage so good; fennel, coriander, a little agave for sweetness. There's a touch of red pepper as well, mmmm. I think you'll love it!

Steak Jerky: Have you ever had a piece of jerky that actually tasted like meat instead of marinade? They all taste like teriyaki, pepper, smoke...which is perfectly tasty and fine most of the time. Attempts to make Plain-flavor jerky fall flat when people just throw plain meat in the dehydrator. I've created a secret marinade that locks in the steak flavor! This tastes more like the steak you had last night for dinner than any jerky you've ever had!

Both of these are sold in Half-Pound bags and are awesome for meals or snacks on the go.
There is only enough salt to work with the heat to properly cure the meat.
NO artificial flavors or bogus tenderizers, curing agents etc etc. Simply put, no b.s.
Absolutely Caveman friendly jerky. When I DO use sweetener I use honey, agave, or stevia and never more than 2Tb (or equivalent) per pound of meat pre-dry! Any sweetener is listed in the description and can be swapped out or removed altogether at request.

Check it out at Etsy.com right here!

Newest Weight-Loss Supplement...

2009-06-03T12:05:00.000-07:00

The companies haven't come right out and stated that taking their product will help you lose weight, but all their ads suggest that it will! Slender women dancing around in the morning light, a woman seeing her bikini and realizing that summer is quickly approaching and on and on.

Fiber.

That's right! Fiber seems to be the newest drug-free weight-loss supplement and I think it's SO STUPID! Fiber is not a supplement, it's a component of the foods we should already be eating. If you are eating right you DON'T need fiber supplements to poop. If you DO need to supplement then whatever you may think, you are not eating right. Sorry, you're just not (unless you have some diagnosed medical situation in which case you are excused).

Does it really sound realistic to say that you can lose weight and continue to eat white bread egg and bacon sandwiches for breakfast, sugary cereal bars for snacks, big processed meat sandwiches on cunningly labeled multi-grain breads for lunch with sugary soda, greasy processed chips for a snack, then white pasta with sugar-added pasta sauce for dinner with alcohol and then follow it all up with ice cream JUST AS LONG as you add a fiber supplement to your day? I'm praying you said no.

You've heard about soluble and insoluble fiber already in numerous t.v. commercials and magazine ads I'm sure. Real natural foods already contain both soluble and insoluble fiber in addition to quite a bit of water. Consider your average apple okay? This little pocket-sized orb of nutrition is actually about 84% water and has more than 3 g of fiber! So let's really look at this fiber thing.

Insoluble Fiber is the fiber that your body cannot break down and will go through your system without much change. This fiber is going to help "move things along", because it is not terribly processed there isn't much reason for it to stick around. So it absorbs a tremendous amount of water and moves quickly through your digestive system. It helps clean you out in other words. And contrary to what you may be thinking, this type of fiber does not cause gas. Repeat, does not cause gas. The bacteria in your system are actually what cause gas, but they cannot feed on this type of fiber and therefore cannot give off any gas of their own. This fiber is found in your fruit and vegetable skins, so do yourself a huge favor and just stop peeling your potatoes and cucumbers! (The skins will not give you gas!)

Soluble Fiber is the stuff that will gel up in your tummy and make you feel full. It's soluble in water, hence it's name. It also slows the emptying the contents of your stomach into your intestines which actually slows the digestion of the sugars and starches that were in your meal. This is extremely good news for diabetics who can help to control blood sugar spikes by making sure their meal includes soluble fiber! This fiber is the one that may cause you gas, and that is because this guy will ferment. Don't think it's gross, it's a good thing! This process results in the creation of short-chain fatty acids which help to lower bad choleseterol in the blood (think back to all those oatmeal and cheerios commercials) and will do all sorts of good things for your immunity cells, intestinal pH, and helps feed the happy GI bacteria. Soluble fiber is the type that you find inside your fruits and veggies, below the skin. It's also found in oats and such, any plant product that kind of gets gel-y when wet (think cooked oatmeal).

Water is not a fiber but it is such a crucial ingredient to add to make sure that the fiber categories I listed for you work properly in your system. Think about it, the fiber categories are named based on how they react to water. It's that important. With or without fiber, if you do not drink enough water then your body will be MAD at you and will punish you in every way that it can. Lack water and you will be tired, moody, headaches may set it and your bowels will be pissed off. This is your body's in-house memo system: "Dear Brain, We are having trouble working under these conditions. Please deliver water or all systems will strike and you will be sad. Thank you, Bowels"

The following has been copied from the MiraLAX website. Please note how it is that all these laxatives work.

Osmotic laxatives draw water back to the digestive tract,
replacing lost water, enabling a normal, complete bowel movement.
Bulk-forming (Fiber) laxatives: add psyllium (insoluble)
fiber to the stool. These can be used to supplement the fiber in your diet. However, they can sometimes ferment and cause gas.
Stimulant laxatives stimulate the walls of the intestine, causing the muscles to
contract and clear the bowel. They work quickly, but can sometimes cause cramps.
Lubricants, such as mineral oil, lubricate the walls of the
intestine so that stool can pass through more easily. They can sometimes
interfere with vitamin and nutrient absorption.
Saline laxatives work by pulling water into the intestine. These laxatives can
remove electrolytes.

Wow. Fun huh? Notice how they all are trying to get water back to your digestive tract? That's because if you need one of the above mentioned supplements then you are lacking BOTH components in your diet, water and fiber. Please recall the apple I previously mentioned which has insoluble fiber in the skin, soluble fiber in the flesh and is 84% water? Yeah, that apple is looking pretty good about now, right?!

But okay, to be fair, fiber supplements aren't laxatives. But consider that same 1-serving apple that has about 3-4 g of fiber depending on it's size (and including the skin of course). Comparably, one serving of Benefiber has...drum roll please...1.5 g of soluble fiber. So you're still going to have to get your insoluble fiber somehow and it's pretty tricky to get insoluble without soluble because they are normally a joint package. So if you eat white bread and drink Benefiber, don't you think it just may be better for you to eat real whole-wheat bread and save your Benefiber pennies?

By eating unprocessed and whole un-messed with foods you are getting everything that you need in easy little nature-made packages! I was made by Nature, so I'm pretty sure that Nature knows how to most efficiently supply me with all the macro and micronutrients that I need. So I will eat from Nature.

But if you were made by a factory then by all means eat over-simplified boxed factory food and load up on supplements that replace what was originally removed in the processing. I'm sure the factory knows the best ways to provide you with your ideal weight, boundless health and vitality. Sure.

Shorty

2009-05-26T11:15:00.001-07:00

This is a short one, but this is important for perspective.

My mother has two of her own chickens. She keeps them in her yard and they eat what insects they can find in the green grass under their claws. She occasionally tosses in some seed, worms that she she finds on the walkway when it rains and the odd handful of corn when she feels like feeding them for fun. They aren't crammed into cages, beaks chopped off so they can't hurt any of the others, never to see the sun, and fed cracked corn which is not part of their natural diet. All in all these chickies have a pretty respectable diet, certainly as chickens go. She loves them because she has always loved chickens (and her kids gave them to her). In return for a happy chicken life, they give her each one egg a day for a total of over a dozen a week! Not a bad gig, huh?

Recently one of her hens laid a behemoth double-yolker that my mom passed onto me. The picture here is of this double-yolker next to a single-yolker that I bought from the grocer. Keep in mind that the single is an Omega-3 happy, cage-free, organic feed chicken egg. STILL note the difference!

And you thought the difference between real and organic-but-still-commercially-grown wasn't that great, uh huh! The yellow to orange color of the egg yolk is created by carotenoids, the same you would find in carrots (lutein and zeaxanthin to be exact). Commercially produced eggs are made yellow by adding synthesized carotenoids to the chicken feed. The deep orange color of my mother's chicken's egg is caused by carotenoids that are naturally occuring in this bird's diet as well as it's exposure to real sunlight. Eggs from free-range chickens have been shown to have higher levels of Folic acid, Vitamin B12, and Omega-3 fatty acids!

It's amazing what kind of nutritional difference occurs when an animal is permitted to eat what it would eat on it's own time in it's own real environment. Think about that and then think about what you are eating. Is it food that you are eating or is it just merely edible?

A lesson on Brussels Sprouts...they're GOOD!

2009-05-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

If you cook them right that is! My goal here is to get you started on the road to enjoying, if not loving, these funny little guys.

Brussels Sprouts are members of the brassica family of vegetables and happen to be amazingly, ridiculously, almost disgustingly good for you. Brussels sprouts are actually mini cabbages that grow on tall stalks. Thankfully we can find them sans-stalk (less work when you get home, but not by much) and it is admittedly kind of fun to buy a giant stalk of sprouts. Other members of this group of veggies are broccoli, arugula, beets and cabbage.

So let me try to sway you first with science. Brussels sprouts are really a nutrient powerhouse. One cup of sprouts (plain) has just 38 calories and has so many vitamins and minerals this would be a very tedious read if I listed them all. For short, here are some of them:

Lutein, Zeaxanthin, beta Carotene, phytosterols, Vitamin K, some Vitamin E, Vitamin A (664 IU!), Potassium (342 mg), Phosphorus, Magnesium, Iron, Calcium, Vitamin C (about 75 mg) and you will be glad to know that several components of brussels sprouts & their family members have been shown in studies to inhibit the growth of cancerous cells. (yay!)

As for why you don't like them, it's the sulphur. It is the high sulphur content that is in most of these vegetables that give them that distinctive odor and in most cases flavor that you may find off-putting. It may also be the texture if you cook them too long! So follow me to better buds...

Brussels Sprouts

1 package of sprouts (the tinier & more tightly closed the better)

2 Tbsp butter (for beginners) and 1 Tbsp Coconut oil or olive oil for the rest of you

First rinse your sprouts and slice off the discolored bottom, only a little slice though. You want to keep most of your sprout! Next slice them in half length wise. Throw them all into enough water to cover them and boil them 6-8 minutes (you can steam them also). You want them to turn BRIGHT green, but not get mushy.

Drain them out and while they're dripping heat your butter or coconut oil in a large saute pan. When it's hot enough to sizzle (test by tossing in a sprout leaf and make sure it sizzles at you) toss the sprouts in. Toss around to coat in your fat of choice and then let 'em sit on one side. You want to brown them, get 'em crispy! Flip and toss to brown other sides, letting them sit for a minute or two on each side. They will be browned as they are in my picture.

Keep the heat high and don't over cook. When they are mistreated for too long they will emit the sulphur compounds we don't like! Also, if you really are trying to like them and are starting from hate, add bacon. I'm not a bacon eater, so I don't know, but bacon eaters seem to be adamant that it makes everything taste better. So throw some pancetta into the pan and see what happens!

Please let me know if you try this and what your results were!

Carbs for cave dwellers

2009-05-03T13:49:00.000-07:00

I just received a question about carbohydrates and I think that it's a good topic to address. So here it is;

"Where do we get our carbs from now? I was getting all of my carbs from whole
wheat pasta, grains, and beans. Where do I get them now?"

So a quick question to you would be, what do you think vegetables and fruits are made of?

I think we have all been misled to believe that we will all shrivel and die if we do not consume the 6-11 servings of grains a day that the Food Pyramid recommends. Just for curiosity's sake I search-engined various grains and pastas to get an idea, on average, of how many carbs were in one serving of a generic grain product. I looked up beans, pastas, corn, rice and so on. It seems that a rough average is about 35 grams per standard recognized serving. If you eat all 6-11 servings of grains that are recommended, then you are getting 210 to 385 grams of carbohydrates per day. This translates into 840 to 1540 calories per day, EEP! I'm no scientist, but this sounds a might bit...okay, outrageously high!! Supporters of the Paleo diet seem to dwell happily in a carbohydrate range between 100 and 200 grams of carbohydrate per day (some go below 100 grams but this is particularly for fat loss, not for body weight maintenance or for optimal physical performance). It is not the amount of calories alone that concerns me, but the amount of calories that are left (of the 2,000) to spend on lean proteins and antioxidant-rich vitamin and mineral sources!

Quick story: I lived with a group of Australian Aborigines for two months after I graduated college as part of an Anthropology research trip. We were there to study the hunting and gathering techniques that the people used. I, of course, followed along with the women. One morning (and only once) we started with black tea and a piece of seed "cake" that we had prepared the day before. Five hours of gathering thousands of seeds (similar in size and color to poppy seeds) followed by 4 1/2 hours of grinding and pounding on a real stone mortar to create a seed paste which, when poured onto hot clean sand and buried with coals, baked into a "cake". Not really an effective use of time; ten hours of processing for one "cake" about 8" across to feed 6 people? Put your hands 8" apart and you can see that isn't much for 6 people for breakfast.

Then we would head out into the desert to hunt lizards. Along the way we would nibble on wild tomatoes we found. Sometimes we found larvae of various sizes and we would eat those also. We did not eat the lizards until we got back into camp at the end of the day and everything got roasted together and evenly distributed. Most often there was left over wild tomatoes and such and those were eaten for breakfast when there was no seed "cake", which was often. The vast majority of our carb intake for the day was from wild fruits (in this case tomatoes), seeds and berries. As you can see, there was no pasta or italian bread to fuel us along as we walked for miles hunting and gathering. Please note that homo sapiens had been living this particular way for thousands of years before the advent of fettucine!

I think that if you approach the Paleo diet trying to make sure you get the same amount of carbohydrates you get eating grains, then this will goof you up, even if you have the best of intentions. I feel the Paleo diet is much more about nutrition. This diet is about FEEDING your body with nutrients, not drowning your body with mere substance. I have read many blogs trying to get a feel for people's physical reactions to starting this diet. Some feel a little weak for about a week, and that seems to be normal as your body is adjusting to being fed properly (or more efficiently anyway). All your hormones are adjusting, blood sugar is balancing out and your muscles too are getting adjusted. Personally when I first started I felt good for one week and then a little weaker for a few days during the second week. That weakness, however, was only apparent when I tried to lift heavy weights. A weight I had pressed overhead 10+ times the week prior now felt almost impossible to lift. The rest of the time I felt really good! The next week however I was back to lifting that weight and more. Now my sweet tooth has diminished, my desire for coffee has waned (in part thanks to the teeccino distraction), I sleep more soundly and I can still run!

It is true that the need for carbohydrates is going to vary from person to person and that will also change for whether or not you are active. For instance, I feel better eating a banana after an 8 mile run than I do eating one on a rest day. Please do not sabotage yourself by thinking that there is some sort of grain-carb to veggie/fruit-carb equivalance tabulature. If you have been following the Paleo guidelines for awhile and you feel good then you are likely doing it well! If you feel tired then you may indeed need to increase either the amount of carbohydrate you consume each day OR you may need to just the amount of fat you are eating instead!

Yeah, fat is an energy source! This is especially true if you are following the Paleo style of eating. Some folks still hold onto the '90s notion that dietary fat is the devil and they have a hard time adding it into their diet when they go Paleo. Nuts, fish oil and coconut oil are your friends my friend! [They make your body happy and energetic and they make your hair, skin and nails pretty too!]

Americans typically have a skewed sense of how much vegetable matter is adequate, especially in the absence of bread. And you may be suprised to find out how much fat you can eat! If you need some help determining how much you should be eating I would recommend going to the Zone Diet website (http://www.zonediet.com/) and using their block calculations to help get you going. First use their block calculator to get an idea of how many blocks you would need to eat in a day. Then write down what you typically eat each day, or write down what you just ate for the last meal. Include rough estimates of how much of each component there was. For instance, how many cups of lettuce in your salad? How much meat did you eat? Was there a dressing or oil on your meal? Then compare this to the Zone block method and you should see if you are short on veggies or fats.

Start strictly and then do not be afraid to tweak your diet to see what works! You may find out what works straight out of the gate, you may not. If you decide to add or subtract something, give your body a week or two to adjust before you rule it in or out. Be flexible and listen to what your body tells you. Make sure you drink plenty of clean water (unflavored) so that you do not misinterpret thirst for hunger. Eat when you're hungry, stop when you're done. That's probably the hardest part!! There are days when I feel I have grossly over eaten but when I look back on it I realize, "I ate what, too many apples? Too many walnuts? Too much spinach?" Please. Just imagine your cave-dwelling tribe just found an apple orchard and happily gorged; eat fewer tomorrow!

The Promised Coffee-Alternative Review!

2009-04-28T06:50:00.000-07:00

Here it is! Are you ready?

Okay, the product I found is called Teeccino. While the sound 'tea' is in the title, there is actually no tea in Teeccino. I suppose that is why they used two 'e's. Anyway, they have blended roasted chicory, barley and other items in order to come up with a full line of coffee alternatives. You buy it and brew it the same way you would with coffee but without the downsides of caffeine. They claim their product is high in potassium and soluble fiber (from the chicory), is alkaline forming, and is free from the chemical residues you typically find in coffee (especially flavored and decaf).

Their claims sounded so good I couldn't help but try it! I purchased their Mocha Herbal Coffee (they say that one is good for beginners because of the familiar chocolate flavor) and the Mediterranean Java Herbal Coffee. Yesterday I came home to find them waiting for me on my doorstep, yay! So of course I was anxious to try them. I decided to try the Java first because I wanted to know if I'd like it before making it for my morning commute. I didn't want to be cursing at a whole cup of "gross" on the way to work.

Anyway, I have a Keurig machine and found that this herbal coffee substitutes scoop for scoop like regular coffee. (Awesome, easy!) I brewed it and it came out that lovely dark brown that coffee does with a little bit of a creamy brown froth. So I took a sip of it black to get the full effect. Complex without being complicated, much like coffee is. It also tasted thick, which is one thing that I couldn't ever find in tea and that I liked so much about coffee. It was slightly bitter, but I think I can correct that by using slightly less in the brew pod. So I put a dash of milk in it to counteract that bitter and voila! I had a real cup of joe! It was dark and strong, complex and delicious and without any caffeine! I know that part is true because I fell asleep on the couch not more than 4 hours later!

This morning I made my travel cup of joe: I used 2 tsp of my regular coffee and then filled the rest of the brew pod with the Mocha (which smells so good I kind of want to chew it). On their website and on each bag of brew they mention that you should wean yourself off of caffeine slowly, even if you don't consume too much now. So that is why I blended the two this morning. Also, who wants to waste? I hate wasting food I've already purchased (referring to the bag of coffee inmy fridge). The combination was delicious; smooth, full and satisfying. Actually, it tastes more like coffee than coffee from Dunkin Donuts. I realized that as I passed a billboard.

I really would like to not have to drink coffee. I really do love it though, but where all the coffee characteristics I cherish can be found in this Teeccino stuff, I wonder if this will be my new juice? I also wonder if, after a couple weeks without coffee, I'll notice a difference having been freed from my daily cortisol-jolt. Am I sensitive without knowing it because I'm so accustomed to it? I dont know! But I'm curious to find out!

*Is this paleo? The ingredients include roasted barley, which we know is not on the list. But I dont think Father Caveman would begrudge me this coffee alternative. I think the water in which the barley has soaked would be better to consume than eating the barley itself or simply drinking coffee. And if we put all these on a scale, I believe Teeccino will lie as the lesser of these evils.

If you are interested in purchasing Teeccino please visit:
www.teeccino.com

Quick update...

2009-04-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

I have quite possibly reached a turning point. I woke up this morning NOT wanting coffee! I find this odd considering my last post in which I was waxing poetic about it! I woke up with so much energy at 7am that I just couldn't face a cup of joe! I was concerned it would put me over the edge...no one wants to see me in person then!

Who knows, maybe tomorrow I'll want to dive into the bold syrupy depths of a steamy cup. But today no way! It's now 2:30 in the afternoon and I have had no desire for coffee. I have had two cups of green tea today, spaced several hours apart, but that is not nearly the same.

I'd like to accredit this change to the PaleoDiet, but only time will tell I think. I'm now at the point at which I can absolutely feel a difference if I eat something non-Paleo. I can also tell that it screws you up for several days if you do not get back on the bandwagon instantly! I don't know if this is true for everyone, but it is for me at this point of my experiment.

That's the news for today! Just an update, like I said! Enjoy the spring rain that will bring us all May flowers!

Is Coffee Good, Bad or Both?

2009-04-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true. I mentioned in my last post that while I was following the caveman diet and doing pretty well, I was still indulging in my morning java. I have looked myself squarely in the eye and have asked myself if I was addicted to the brew, and I really do not think that I am. I do not drink it because I get a kick, I drink it because I love it's delicious qualities. If I could find a tea that was ballsy in the same way as coffee I would drink that. Tea is too watery to be a good substitute and then something like hot chocolate (which is not paleo anyway) is too thick and gives me headaches. Coffee is JUST right! I love it's texture, aroma, taste and it seems to be a harbinger of the new day in a similar way to my cat sitting on my chest begging for breakfast. See? Similar.

So a friend of mine and I were discussing the Paleo Diet, and in particular what was not permitted. She gave me a funny look when I said coffee and I nodded in agreement and then confessed to continuing to keep that on the menu. Today she calls me to tell me she is trying this new diet plan and then poses the following question:

"Doesn't coffee have cortisol in it?"

Cortisol is not actually an ingredient and you are not going to 'get it' in any food or drink you consume. Cortisol is a steroid! It is commonly known as the "stress hormone" and recently has gotten tons of bad press with various corisol-blocker diet aids on the market. The truth is that Cortisol is not all bad because it helps to make sure that our brain has enough energy to function, regulates blood pressure and regulates the functioning of our cardiovascular system. It's the effect it has on how our body uses proteins, carbs and fats that has people up in arms. Many studies have shown a direct, positive correlation between cortisol and abdominal fat (ie more stress = more cortisol = more abdominal fat). bummer. And as we know, there is also a correlation between abdominal fat and risk for heart disease, diabetes and more.

But how...and why? Unfortunately this flight-or-fight response instigator causes abnormally increased appetite ALL the while suppressing your metabolic rate (aka thermogenesis). Nice combo huh? But imagine you're a REAL caveman and there's a natural disaster; what do you do to prepare yourself? Eat everything you can, because you don't know when you will be able to eat again, and then store it the best you can. Cortisol is meant to be helpful, but with so many situational (work sources, business, children, family, taxes etc) stresses nowadays that our bodies are working overtime to create cortisol.

Alright now we can get to the coffee cortisol connection. We know now that we are getting too much stress from external stimuli, and then we go and drink our stress also! I'm talking about caffeine which is a biochemical that stimulates the stress reaction in your body! Weird but true.

So while this all sounds bad, and it is do not get me wrong, I will still drink my am cup of joe. However, there are some days that I know I won't appreciate it's flavor and I pass on it, looking to herbal, green or red tea to fill the hot beverage void. Are these the words of an addict? Hardly. But I certainly look differently at an afternoon cup of coffee. I suppose it really isn't that relaxing is it?

I did find two papers that I think you may find interesting. One explains the effects of caffeine and stress on the body. The other is a small study that studied whether cortisol responses could be reduced by familiarizing the body with caffeine on a regular basis. [Hint: They found, in their study anyway, that the cortisol response to caffeine was reduced, but not entirely eliminated, in healthy young people who consumed caffeine on a daily basis.]

http://www.teeccino.com/PDFs/stress.pdf
http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/cgi/reprint/67/5/734

*Also, you may have noticed recently several articles in fitness magazines claiming that coffee can bolster your performance during a workout or race. Remember, caffeine is a stimulant that triggers your 'fight or flight' reaction. If you're sensitive to caffeine then sure, it can get you amped for your workout! So all the information previously stated is still TRUE.

Stay Tuned, a Review is Coming!
I stumbled upon a brand of coffee alternative that looks like it may be the real deal! I have tried the chicory coffee-tea, Celestial Seasonings Morning Thunder and haven't been impressed. I will let you know what I think and give a full report :)

Food Food Paleo-Food Everywhere!

2009-04-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

Before I get into the meat of today's entry, I'd like to give you some background in case you aren't terribly familiar with what I do. I happen to be terribly interested in nutrition and while I am of course interested in the truth I am also fascinated by food propaganda, food culture, and the emotional and psychological attachments we have to foods. Very interesting stuff! So in the name of science I have tried various diets to see why it is that they are popular. I have never tried Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or anything like that because they focus primarily on calorie limitation, I'll call it. What I get interested in is things like Raw Food, Detox Diets, Vegeterian, Zone...diet methodologies that are almost religious in their nature and have vast followings. Their followers swear that these diets not only assist weight loss but enrich their lives, make them better athletes, cleanse their souls and some even say they cure cancer and many of the big scary diseases plaguing our nation today. Each one has solid scientific data to support it. So I have tried all the methodologies I just listed. I wanted to know what it felt like to do each of these for myself. I wanted to know what each one would do to my spirit, energy, body and performance? I wanted to be 'in their shoes' to see for myself.

Well, I am trying a new one now. I have been on the Caveman or Paleo Diet now for two weeks. I should, maybe, have planned a little better because I allowed Easter to fall on my very first Paleo weekend. Oops.

Now, to give a quick lesson in Paleo without too much detail let's start with what it is. The idea here is to eat like human beings 10,000 years ago ate. The theory is that our bodies have not evolved as quickly as our food and science has, so our digestive systems, not matter how adaptable, are not able to digest foods that only became available due to agriculture and animal husbandry. The 'non-paleo' foods include all grains (wheat, oats, barley)and grain based foods (bread etc), corn and corn by-products (corn starch, corn syrup), all beans, legumes (inlcuding peas and peanuts), sugar, alcohol, coffee, and dairy products of all kinds. What I found is that if you look at this list of can't-haves and you panic wondering 'what will I eat?' than you need this diet badly. If you panic it means that you can't imagine your day without bagels, bready sandwiches, cookies, and pasta and that means you CLEARLY do not eat enough fruits and vegetables to start off with!

After doing alot of reading about going Paleo, it doesn't seem that there were many negative side-effects to start off with. If you don't have many vegetables in your diet already, I could see how it may take a couple weeks to adjust fully to the influx of fibrous food sources. The other side effect was a sensation of weakness or lethargy in the first or second week as the body apparently adjusts to fueling itself using more complicated carbohydrate sources as well as healthy fats. No more sugar rushes to fuel you through your afternoon, but supporters state that there is no need for that because once you free yourself from the bloodsugar spike/fall roller coaster you will have a much steadier sense of alertness and energy (similar to the Zone).

So how is it going thus far? Of all the diets I have experimented with I like this one the best! I am currently feeling a slight weakness, I have been able to continue my regular personal workout schedule that includes at least 3 runs a week (including a 6-miler a couple days ago) and CrossFit workouts. To be honest, it's just this week when I felt a little wimpier (instead of strict presses I had to do push presses in order to keep the weight). So I am experimenting more with quantity and focusing much more on nutrient timing (ie banana comes AFTER the workout as opposed to it being a mid-morning snack).

I haven't in recent memory remembered getting a sugar rush. I have to admit that I don't very often recognize the effects of a blood-sugar spike, but I don't too often eat extremely sugary/simple carb foods. I have certainly felt nauseas post-dessert before but I always attributed it to being too full rather than to blood sugar. WELL, I will tell you this. My mother sent me home from Easter dinner with a canister of kosher chocoloate chip macaroons...which I love. So Monday night, against my better judgement I had four of them after dinner. About 10 minutes after finishing the fourth little yummy thing, I could feel my heart rate increase. I could feel my heart pounding when I put my hand on my chest and I started feeling a little bit pukey too be honest! Even when I had my cheat day on the Zone I did not feel this bad! [To be completely fair I may not have done the Zone 100% correctly because of the calculating and measuring I may have goofed a couple recipes, meals, or days up. So I am totally aware that I may have done the Zone incorrectly and therefore cannot completely compare it accurately. I can only report my own personal experience, slanted or not.]

So, to confess I do still drink coffee in the morning...and I do put a tablespoon of milk in it. I do mix a tablespoon of chocolate chips into my blueberries with coconut milk for dessert, but I'm finding I like them less and less. So while I'm not 100% paleo here, I am making strides in the right direction and am satisfied with what I've experienced thus far. Check back because I'll be keeping you posted! But don't be too surprised if future recipes are grain/bean/dairy free!

Eat cheaply NOT poorly!

2009-04-08T10:01:00.000-07:00

I just found an article this morning regarding this new little recession of ours, maybe you've heard of it? Anyway, the article title stated a question, "Will this recession make you fat?" The answer is, only if you let it! Just like at any OTHER time!

Many studies have been done (I can give you a list or you can google it) that show that there seems to be a trend between lower levels of income and higher rates of obesity. So the theory here is that people that once had higher incomes will begin to get heavier as their income gets slashed. The assumption here is that people that ate well (or moderately fine) before will now start turning to McDonald's and macaroni and cheese to fill the belly-void. And that's where the trouble is.

First, don't panic. Our bodies are built to store fat to protect against adversity in it's many forms. Even if your budget is down to $15 a week, you can still make it work...but my advice is to AVOID what I affectionately call "bullshit foods". If you really enjoy a fresh bowl of salad for lunch with some sliced grilled chicken and carrots why would it, all of a sudden,make sense to jump over to McDonald's for a high simple-carb, high cheap-fat, low nutrition meal now that you have less money?

First plan of attack: thoroughly look at what you typically eat during the week.

What are the obvious cut backs that you can make? Maybe changing over from a name brand milk to a store brand? Those few dollars can end up making a difference.

Second: MEASURE!

Yeah maybe it's a pain to start off with but you'll get better at it. Instead of eyeballing how much pasta to make, or how much chicken to serve, measure it! Measure it into the pot and then divide amongst the family accordingly, predetermine how many pieces of chicken each person gets. It will help avoid throwing away that last cup of -insert food item here- because you already planned well enough to save enough for your lunch tomorrow.

Third: Become familiar with new cooking techniques as well as volumetrics to help satiate the urge to chew and to assuage the fear that one isn't eating enough!

It's not just the quantity of the calories you eat, it's the nutritional QUALITY! Your body seeks NUTRITION, not simply calories.
For instance, 1 cup of cooked spaghetti (which is considered one serving)has 221 calories, 8g protein, 2.5g fiber, and 43g carbohydrates. That's alot of simple carbs right there. To get the same amount of calories you'd have to eat more than 5 cups of cooked spinach! But just 1 cup of cooked spinach has 5g of protein (almost as much as the pasta!), 4g fiber (almost twice as much as the pasta), and only 7g of carbs. Not many people will eat all 5 cups and that's okay. Why? Because with the higher quality and quantity of nutrition in the spinach, your body doesn't need the extra calories!

Okay, which can you eat more of faster: carrot sticks or boiled carrot slices? It takes a bit more time to eat the raw carrot, so maybe start steaming your carrots for just a few minutes to warm them. But don't cook them so long that they lose their chew! There, now by eating the less soggy carrots you are taking more time actually eating thereby giving your body time to send out and receive the signal that you are getting full. Voila! You've just eaten less than you would have before, and it was just by cooking less! Easy!

Fourth: Take refuge in your freezer section!

Maybe that sounds odd, but the good for you things that usually hang out in the produce aisle have frozen, nutritionally-similar (sometimes even better) counterparts here. As soon as a veggie or fruit is removed from it's home (stalk, soil or branch) the produce starts to degrade losing valuable nutrients. The fresh produce spends time being shipped and stored, all thewhile losing nutrients while those meant for the freezer get their nutritional value frozen in time. Big BONUS here, frozen veggies/fruits are CHEAP! And they won't spoil in your crisper drawer :) I recently just found a 3lb bag of chopped broccoli for $2.50! That's certainly cheaper than if I bought fresh broccoli for $2.99 a head! Also, places like Costco and even WalMart sell ENORMOUS bags of frozen veggies for an even better discount...good if you have enough freezer space for them.

Lastly: Use your imagination, and start experimenting! Start discovering how you can get alot of flavor out of only a few ingredients!

You don't need 5 courses, or complicated recipes or even recipes with more than 5 ingredients in order to make a meal satisfying! For instance, try this: 2 cups of frozen spinach, 1/2 cup frozen zucchini, 1 sliced carrot, 1 can of tuna, a good squirt of mustard, a shake of red pepper flakes, a dash of garlic powder in your tupperware container. After all morning in the fridge at work and it should only take 1 minute to warm it all in the microwave!
When you're cooking at home think simply also. A can of tomatoes, some diced chicken, a chopped onion, some zucchini, and some seasonings and you can have quite a nice meal on only a few ingredients. You don't need to add cream cheese, or cream of mushroom soup or anything. Simple can go a long way. Start googling recipes and you will find that MOST of them aren't complicated, but PLEASE do not google 'easy' recipes. You will find casseroles filled with zillions of canned fake ingredients, and 'cream of cheese soup recipes'. Gross. Think finer-taste and you'll find the simple ingredients, you'll just have to discover new uses for old spices!

Enjoy!!

I have to share this...

2009-04-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

This was written by Jon Gilson of againfaster.com. It's good to put things into perspective!

Dedication

You think you know pain, but you have no idea. The heart thumping, chest expanding, lactic acid burn of your last workout was a walk through the meadow.

Somewhere, there’s a guy who did it in half the time it took you. He suffered. Plasma forced its way into his lungs, causing him to hack on repeat. He choked down bile halfway through, and ended on his back, pupils dilated to the size of dimes.

While you were walking around, telling your friends how hardcore your workout was, Guy Number Two was still collapsed, the prospect of driving home as daunting as climbing K2 during a snowstorm.

When he finally stood up, he didn’t say a word.

CrossFit is a decidedly masochistic pursuit. To be any good at it, you have to enjoy the pain. You have to push back the threshold day after day, until last year’s traumas feel like an hour-long rubdown at the Canyon Ranch. One day, you find a threshold that takes the whole thing just a little too far, and you get scared to go back.

The men and women that decimate your times are not superhuman. They’re not particularly genetically gifted. Hell, most of the top CrossFitters in the world would get absolutely pummeled in your standard game of rugby, buried by larger athletes begat by larger parents.

What differentiates these individuals is not a gift, but an unreasonable desire to push self-imposed suck beyond its logical limits. What comes out the other side becomes legendary.

Like any human pursuit, we seek ways around the hard part. Limited range of motion and new techniques. Dropping the deadlift from the top, bouncing it off the floor. Squatting above parallel and not standing up all the way. Chicken-necking above the chin-up bar, and reviewing the tape to see if we made it.

We want the reward (speed) without the sacrifice (pain).

This is not conscious cowardice. It’s pure out-and-out rationalism. Atsomepoint, the next threshold is the one that takes it too far, leaving us in an exercise-induced hallucination that lasts a few moments too long. Our hearts bounce around our insides for one beat too many, and our lungs beg to explode for an unwanted extra second. Every exhalation coincides with a constriction of vision, and the cold taste of copper.

No sane human being would enjoy such a feeling.

Still, the glory beckons. Surely, with enough training and the right supplements, there’s a way around the Hard Part. Enough sleep and enough vitamin B will get you the sub-whatever time without the attendant pain. There’s no need to redline your heart rate or pop capillaries. No need to ache so badly at night that you can’t sleep. Surely, there are ways around this.

Fortunately, the steroids are a no-go, and the exercises are done correctly or not at all. The only way to legend is through ever-mounting piles of pain. The meadow has to tilt at 45-degrees, and he rubdown at the Ranch must be done with Brillo Pads. If you can talk, you’re not trying hard enough. If your nerves aren’t frayed and ready to rebel, you’ll never get there.

Do yourself a favor, and realize that there’s no technique in the world that will save you. There are no pills, no secrets, no passwords on the path to greatness. You’ve got to embrace the pain, push the threshold, and feel the suck, and then you’ve got to muster the courage to go back six times a week.

After all, the world is a lot brighter when your pupils are the size of dimes, and massaging your sternum with your heart starts to feel good after a while. The plasma finds its way out of your lungs, and eventually you’ll be able to drive.

Sometimes, lying on the floor is its own reward.

If you can't relate to this article in any way, how much progression in your fitness do you think you've made in the last year, or even the last month? Maybe, if you can't relate at all, you should rethink your current plan.

Get out of my own way!

2009-04-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been noticing a trend. Lots of us need to get out of our own heads before we can do certain things well. Overthinking can lead to poor form, hindrance of coordination, and the dreaded "I can't do this"! At some point we ALL fall victim to it, but we can't let it dictate all of our workouts or endeavors. Sometimes all it takes is a little distraction to get around it!

Case and point? This past weekend's 5-mile Mudders & Grunters Mud Run in Yorktown, NY. I had been sick and had not run since TWO mondays before the race...that's a long time to not run and then dive into a 5-miler! I wasn't concerned about my time or the distance so much as I was concerned about the running driving all the phleogm out of my chest and then there was the fear of a relapse. Okay, maybe I was a little concerned about the distance. If it was a 5k I wouldn't have been too concerned.

Anyway, it was the most entertaining 5 miles that I have ever run. While it was the most physically demanding run that I have ever had the pleasure of completing, it was one of the easiest mentally. The entirety of the race was mud, so there was no time to think about anything else but foot placement and the ever increasing weight of my shoes! I also ran it much faster and more easily than I thought I would given my lack of training.

It just goes to prove that once you remove your "I can't"-brain from the equation you can do quite alot! Once you remove the nay-sayer you can let your strong body do what it does best; move! Your body knows how it should move, you just have to let it do it's thing! So next time you are trying to do pullups, pushups or trying to run a longer distance or at a faster speed, get rid of the nay-sayer. If you can distract yourself long enough to get the work done then you can prove to yourself that you ARE indeed capable of that task.

*However, please don't distract yourself to the point of endangerment! The point is to avoid the momentary thought of "can't" when faced with a daunting task. The point is not to fade out, not to lose focus, not to be mentally absent. Good luck!

Recipe Rut Breaker!

2009-03-20T09:48:00.000-07:00

We ALL get into the cooking rut sometimes, where we make the same easy thing over and over and over until it seems that you've forgotten how to make anything else! That's where I found myself recently, stuck in a rut with zucchini! Regardless of how much I enjoy zucchini, I had cook something without it so I started searching the web for inspiration. I'm not much for following recipes, but I whole-heartedly enjoy inspiration. This is what I came up with...full of protein, fiber, potassium and anti-inflammatories!

Lentil-Quinoa Salad with Pumpkin

Salad:
1/2 cup quinoa, uncooked
1 cup brown lentils, uncooked
3 scallions, chopped
1 can pumpkin
1 large tomato, chopped

Dressing:
2 Tb Extra Light Olive Oil
6 Tb Lime juice
1 tsp coriander
2 Tb curry or your own curry mix (add garlic powder, salt to taste)
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp tarragon
1 tsp ground ginger

Directions:
Cook quinoa as directed (2:1 water:quinoa ratio). Cook lentils as directed until tender. Drain and return to cooking pot and fold in pumpkin (to help warm it and make it easier to mix. In a large bowl put scallions, tomato and quinoa together. In small bowl whisk the dressing ingredients together. Finally put lentil/pumpkin mixture into large bowl, drizzle in the dressing and fold it all together. Let sit for at least 10 minutes before serving to meld flavors. Can be served as a warm salad or chilled. It's up to you!

This is a totally refreshing, lovely combination of flavors. The sweetness of the pumpkin picks up the lime and relaxes the curry. You can also substitute avocado for the pumpkin if you would like to (and the lime juice helps keep the avocado from turning brown)! Each serving is also chock-a-block full of complete vegeterian-source protein, fiber, potassium, zinc, iron, antioxidant beta-carotenes lutein and zeaxanthin, vitamin C and magnesium and more!

Let me know what you think or how you altered it to incorporate what you happened to have in your fridge!

Biggest Loser commentary

2009-03-11T10:58:00.001-07:00

So maybe this isn't going to be the MOST scientific entry I've ever made, but as I sat watching the most recent episode of the Biggest Loser I knew I would be writing about it today!

As a quick & dirty synopsis, last night was the episode in which the Black Team won 24 hours of luxury (during which they hurled themselves off the proverbial bandwagon). Once confronted by Jillian about their mistakes, Filipe flipped out on her for having not worked him out during their most recent workout time etc. Then he went back to Bob's side and worked with him for the rest of the day.

When the Black Team won their 24 hours of luxury, they threw ALL caution to the winds. When it was time for dinner not one of them knew what they were doing and that could be forgiven to a certain degree. But a double tequila shot? Followed by more calorie-desnse drinks? And then Filipe tossing all good intention out the window with his order of chicken fingers and french fries...yes that is AFTER he had already eaten dinner! What really aggravated me was that he had the nerve to blame Jillian for his failiure. When he got up on the scale, all he could say was how he had let Jillian's attitude keep him down. No. That's a lie. You can see that he was so crazy disappointed in himself that he couldn't stand it. He had to throw the blame onto someone else; he needed a scape goat.

But this isn't a blog entry all about Filipe. It's about how to succeed in weight loss. If you make a bad decision at dinner one night, fine! Enjoy your cheat meal; every...single...bite. [That means putting off the alcohol..you'll lose sensation and it'll be much easier to lose self-control and end up ordering chicken fingers!] If you aren't achieving your weight-loss goals, you absolutely CANNOT blame anyone else for that! YOU are the only person responsible for what goes in your mouth. Would it make sense to say that it's your own personal success whenever you win, but it's someone elses fault whenever you lose? How can that be possible? You have to take your share of both so you can learn and get better. Filipe essentially tried to blame Jillian for making him order chicken fingers and french fries and then eating them. Of course it isn't her fault! I understand that he was upset with her for the missed workout, but to blame her for eating too much is absolutely absurd.

Should you splurge on the Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple Cheesecake at The CheeseCake Factory (933 calories per slice by the way, 531 of them are fat), then own up to it! If you feel sick afterwards that is your body telling you that you did something it didn't approve of. Now you know, so don't do it again! Now that you've learned your lesson it will be easier to say "No" to a temptation later on. That confidence and knowledge of yourself will make the road to weight-loss success tons easier! But don't test your limits with cheesecake-sized splurges too often please!

Respect your body; love it for better or for worse! And without that cheesecake you'll be loving it for the better ;^)

Why HFCS is no good...

2009-02-23T11:36:00.000-08:00

I remember my sister and I staring at the television slack-jawed...were we really seeing what we thought we were?! The boy and girl sitting on the picnic blanket in the park, she pulls out an ice pop and offers it to the boy. I could not believe it when it turned into a Corn Growers commercial supporting High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)!

Okay, so what is the real make-sense-to-me deal with the stuff? First off, it's a seriously altered product. Yes it's made from corn, but I kind of liken that statement to saying "yes, I was made by my great great great great grandfather's DNA". Yeah, it's that far off.

Take corn...and not the GOOD stuff that you eat raw in summer because you love it so... and make it into cornstarch (which is a large percentage glucose). First they treat it with an enzyme (a genetically modified enzyme made by bacterium) in order to break it down into smaller chains of sugar molecules called polysaccharides. Next another enzyme (this one made from by a fungus) breaks the polysaccharides down to make glucose. The last GMO enzyme messes with the glucose and converts some of the molecules into fructose so you have a little more than 40% fructose now and about 50% glucose. But we need more fructose!! So now the product is sent through a liquid chromatography step (complicated lab stuff) that brings the percentage of fructose up to roughly 90%! This almost pure fructose syrup is then blended with some of the less pure syrup to bring the fructose ratio back down to a bit over 50% (52-55%).

So how is it different to your body? And isn't fructose (aka the fruit sugar) good for us? Good question.
In studies, fructose has been found to not stimulate insulin secretion the way that other carbohydrates do. Fructose also doesn't need insulin to be routed into your body's cells! Fructose actually skips the normal carbohydrate/sugar metabolism step called 'glycolysis' and uses another pathway. So it sounds like a good way to get a sugar rush AND sneak around the body's sugar defenses, right? Well, except for the fact that we need an increase in insulin levels in order to let our brain know that we're full! Insulin isn't a bad guy, it's a regulator and transporter. So without the insulin release it ends up being much easier to over eat HFCS-filled candies than it would be to over eat regular sugar-filled candies.

The next not-so-hot result of eating HFCS laden goodies is that because of HFCSs odd-ball method of dodging the regular metabolic pathways, it ends up floating around in our system as acetyl CoA. Usually acetyl CoA is used to make ATP for energy, but when insulin isn't around to metabolize it this little guy goes directly to the liver to be made into fatty acids, triglycerides and is then stored in adipose (Fat) tissue.

This is my more simplified understanding of how this all works. So in the end, if you really want to eat a real cookie that you make at home instead of ripping open a back of ChipsAhoy!. You'll also make your house smell nice if you bake 'em up on your own!

Can boyfriends make you fat?

2009-02-11T09:51:00.000-08:00

lol, in some cases yes! That is, if we let ourselves get carried away!

To give you some background, my boyfriend lives a good distance away so that we can only see each other on weekends. Over the summer his work took him far enough away so that I only saw him every 3-4 weeks or so. So this particular topic has just come up after my having gained a couple pounds of pure flab over the last couple months. The problem? THE BOYFRIEND! lol, no not really. I can only blame myself!

I was reading through some information online today when I stumbled across some interesting percentages. eDiets conducted a study to see how relationships affected weight. As is true for me, they found that an amazing 74% of those surveyed were more tempted to eat so-called bad foods when they were with their partner. And 75% found it easier to maintain their diet when they were single.

Oh yes, I can agree. I come from a family that used food for social events and gatherings. So even now I feel this tremendous urge to make things for him that don't exactly fall onto my list of health foods! I find myself thinking BIG along with DESSERT! Or when we go out I suddenly feel that it's okay to order what he's ordering...and eat it all! I have to wonder, where do our brains go when we sit down to dinner with our man? It must be somewhere decorated with chaise lounges for napping!

So what do you do when you realize that you've let this comfort food/comfort zone thing get a bit out of control? Just re-adjust. The benefit to having gained a few pounds is that I'm now VERY aware of what I do, and of what I shouldn't keep doing! So now, not to sound anal, I am planning our meals for this weekend. I'm looking at it as similar to planning to eat a snack before grocery shopping so you don't come home with cookies (even if they ARE Newman's)! One or two weekends of planning ahead will help me stay on track and keep me from feeling icky when Monday comes!
My goal is to break myself out of this pattern I've developed and start to bring it back to real life. MY real life in which I weigh a couple pounds less!

Another good point in the survey was that "roughly three-in-four respondents said their partner was supportive of their weight-loss efforts". YAY! And I have to say that is true for me and because it hasn't ALWAYS been that way (previous relationships) I know that unconditional support is a beautiful thing that is to be very much appreciated!

Good article...

2009-02-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

I found an article today on msn.com that I liked, so I thought I'd pass it on to you too!

When I take a scan through the racks of women's magazines, I see headlines like, "how to make your butt firmer NOW," and "lose 10lbs in 5 days," and so on. Lately though there has been a new trend towards articles about how being overweight isn't your fault. Oprah has gotten alot of attention talking about her thyroid not acting properly. Let me tell you, I'm tired of these stories and I'm MORE tired of the proliferation of these articles! Come one, if I gain 10 lbs it's my own fault. (And we're not going to even discuss here whether or not blame should be part of this discussion at all. That's a topic all of it's own!)In then end, only I have the power to choose a cupcake over a cup of tea or doritos over celery.

What I like about this article is that it describes a condition that is common amongst people that are obese. Normally tasting food releases dopamine, which as you may know, makes you HAPPY!! Studies have shown that this reaction is blunted in obese patients. Therefore, it is more difficult for the obese patient to reach the same level of satisfaction from food as it is for the normal-weight patient.

HOWEVER! There's a however, which is the part that makes me like this article. It goes on to say that it is POOR eating habits (high-fat, high-sugar) that has stunted this satisfaction system in the first place. So while you chemically need more to feel satisfied, try engaging the LOGICAL portion of your brain to say, "I know that I have eaten enough food for this meal. I may FEEL that I need more, but i KNOW that I do not." Yeah, I know. Easier said than done. But practice makes perfect they say!

And while studies are being conducted regarding the reversal of this gland de-sensitization, they say to eat a clean diet. Work on changing your taste buds to enjoy and accept pure, clean flavors. That they know can absolutely be done!
So read the article, I liked it!

http://health.msn.com/weight-loss/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100231212

PS should you feel a wave of "it's not my fault, maybe it's..." coming on, step back. Take a deep breath and think about how that doesn't matter an iota. Not really! If you think you can blame external forces then please google Sarah Reinertsen.

Lunch wars

2009-01-29T08:17:00.000-08:00

I love wandering through the frozen section at the grocery store, browsing all the bags and boxes. You probably remember that frozen prepared foods were limited to boxes of compressed chopped spinach, pierogies, fish sticks and pizza! TV dinners were a big deal but not much happened again until the microwave-meal BOOM! We were given microwave-in-the-bag cheesy broccoli, microwavable crispy pizzas, diet meals, fully prepared bag meals that we just simmer and so on! The extent to which we have prepared and frozen our foods is astonishing.

Unfortunately, most of these foods with high-tech prep are also chock-full of fake-o ingredients. I read ALOT of ingredients lists and even I'll find ingredients I've never heard of before. That really makes me cringe! I would never worry about this too much before, but with the ever-tightening wallet, the siren-song of the cheap frozen meals has become louder! What are we to do? Think and fight back! Don't let fake-o ingredients win out! Here's a delicious, easy and CHEAP lunch idea.

Easy Shrimp Scampi with Spinach
Ingredients:

6 frozen pre-cooked shrimp (thawed, tails removed. Just rinse 'em and leave 'em in your tupperware lunch container overnight, then you can get the tails off easily)4 cups of rinsed baby spinach
1 cup grape tomatoes, halved
garlic powder
salt
olive oil
apple cider vinegar
1 small navel orange

Directions:

Night before: choose a medium, microwaveable lunch container. Take 6 frozen pre-cooked shrimp and rinse them under cool water. Put them in the container in the fridge overnight.
Morning of: The shrimp will probably still have an ice coating but the tails should be easily pulled off now. Chop each shrimp into thirds (optional), and place back in container. Cover with all 4 cups of rinsed baby spinach. If you can jam more baby spinach into your container, I think you should. Chop your grape tomatoes and toss on top. Give a good sprinkle of garlic powder (about 1/4 tsp), dash of salt, 1.5 tsp olive oil, 1 tsp apple cider vinegar. Done for now.
Optional: Add a Tablespoon of Parmesan if you like.
At Lunch: Pop the lid just a little and microwave for 1 minute and 10 seconds. You want to JUST wilt the spinach, warm the tomatoes and heat the little shrimps. DO not overcook or the shrimp will turn to rubber and the spinach will disappear.Toss it all up and there you go!
Easy, good-fat, scampi for lunch! Eat the orange just after for dessert and to balance it all out.

It can be easy to eat well and cheaply! This recipe takes all of 5 minutes to prepare and it's delicious! And you can get baby spinach and grap tomatoes from Costco nowadays...even organic ones!

ENJOY!

Brilliant marketing. Destructive idea.

2009-01-26T12:42:00.000-08:00

Anyone hear about the DSRL? I have been hearing about it relentlessly on the radio stations that I listen to as I drive to work in the morning. Then I see it advertised on the television. If, by some chance, you have not heard of this it is the Double Stuf Racing League. What you're supposed to do is buy Double Stuf Oreos and then race your friends to see who can twist, lick the cream off, and then re-sandwich and dunk in milk and eat the Oreo the fastest. I don't have a problem with games. I don't have a problem with healthy competition. I DO have a problem with this not-exactly-healthy competition.

If children in our country treated Oreos as occasional treats then this campaign might be alright. But I think that this campaign encourages children to eat their cookies as FAST as is possible. As is apparent by the growing obesity epidemic our country's children do not know when to say when. I am certain that modifications on the racing rules are being made everywhere; I thought of them, so why wouldn't children? How fast can you twist, lick, dunk 2 cookies? 3 cookies? 2 cookies at a time?

I am also uncomfortable with very high-profile athletes supporting this campaign, making it seem "cooler" to do. They have Eli and Peyton Manning (football) and Venus and Serena Williams (tennis) as their mascots. I'm a little disappointed that these two families have chosen to support this marketing campaign. Let's call it like it is. It isn't a sport, it's a marketing campaign designed to move product in a crumbling economy.

Despite myself, I must say that the DSRL is a brilliant marketing campaign. When people are cutting back on costs any which way, Nabisco is making sure that if a family is going to buy cookies that they are going to be Nabisco cookies. And then the campaign is going to make sure that the children in that household eat those cookies as fast as is possible, which will then hopefully warrant a call to buy more. It is actually quite smart...but at the same time despicable.

I think that the Mannings and the Williams should recognize that their popularity should be used to educate, not fatten and sicken. They wouldn't have gotten to be at the top of their games had they sat at home scarfing down Oreos all through their childhood. They aren't doing any children any favors by being the faces of this campaign.

I think that Nabisco should shoulder some of the responsibility of our overweight nation and provide at least a caution on their DSRL site. I'm not saying that Nabisco is directly responsible for the obesity epidemic, that would be ridiculous. I am saying it would be nice to see them being responsible and saying, "Hey, this is a fun game to play occasionally. The rest of the time you should eat responsibly and mindfully, making sure to get your recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables" or something like that.

I don't think it's too much to ask!

SPRING CLEANING!

2009-01-20T10:20:00.000-08:00

Today I posted to Craigslist requesting the attention of THREE women for the Spring Cleaning Special. I need THREE women that are friends and are currently dissatisfied with their workout regimen (or lack thereof).

I need THREE women that really want to get in shape. These women must be willing to dedicate themselves to two weekly sessions for 3 months starting in February. That's 24 total sessions that will lead you into Spring!

To paint you a picture of what to expect: You and your two friends arrive at the small private gym in Stamford. You warm up; go through our stretches and get all the blood moving. Then you will move on to the workout. The workout will be intense; fast and powerful. Your body will learn to sweat and recover. Skills will be learned, balance and coordination will improve, strength will increase. You will get better, continuously all the time better! Once we're through you will be led through a variety of stretches and cool down exercises. Then you go home and take it easy until the next appointment.

And the price, yeah, that's of concern right now of course! For 24 sessions with a personal trainer it could cost the three of you $5,760...but it won't! Sign up for this Special Offer and you will get it for $3,625 which is less than $51 a person per session!

Friends, fitness, a whole bunch of laughs and a lot of success is a powerful way to do some mental/physical Spring Cleaning! Call or email me now for more information. Remember, it all starts in February, so call me now!

Too cold to work out?

2009-01-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

Not always! I went ice fishing this past weekend with my boyfriend and some of his friends. I didn't mean to be, but I ended up being "the cold one". There has to be one person that's colder than everyone else and it happened to be me this time! Okay, every time. Now truthfully I did get a case of frost-bite while I was in Mongolia (very cold in the winter) and so now the circulation in my toes and fingertips is a little sensitive to the cold. So we had to do something other than sit at a hole and jig the fishing line.

A little CrossFit workout was JUST what we needed! A quick circuit of overhead squats with the bait bucket and pushups was perfect for getting our blood pumping.
This just goes to prove that a workout doesn't have to be complex. A workout doesn't have to take 3 hours. Just use what you have at your disposal, in this case a bait bucket, and go to it.

No excuses. Of course use discretion; I wouldn't recommend running on icy streets. But what I did say was work with that you have. If your imagination needs a little inspiration then drop me a line and we'll see what we can find for you to work with!

Happy New Year!

2009-01-06T08:57:00.000-08:00

First I'd like to wish all of you a bright and productive New Year!
Second I'd like to issue a warning to be not lose sight of the journey in favor of the goal. Huh?

While watching television I have noticed an increase in the number of diet ads; diet programs, products, pills, meal replacements, cleansing products etc and so on. If you have made the resolution to "get fit" I have a couple recommendations for you.

1) Don't worry about "getting fit". What the hell does that mean anyway? How do you define that? Using amorphous phrases as goals sets you up for failure because your goal is loosely defined. Rein it in ALOT and don't be afraid of numbers; 10 pushups straight, 3 mile run without stopping etc.

2) Be thankful of the journey. So you can't run huh? And your goal is run 3 miles without stopping? Be THANKFUL when you can run 1 whole mile and walk 2 miles. Be THANKFUL that you have two legs to run on and be THANKFUL for any progressions that you make.

!! 3) DON'T give in to fads hoping to cut corners and reach your goal quicker (this especially goes for weight loss and 'get healthy' goal people). You won't learn a thing by skipping meals to cut calories or by eating b.s. diet foods. Treat your body with respect. It really does know the difference!

4) Make STICKING to your resolution part of your resolution! Most people poop out in February. Maybe actually penning in gym-time into your planner seems extreme now, but once going becomes habitual you'll be thankful that you were strict with yourself in the beginning! Remember, when you're trying to change a set routine anything different will feel extreme! So don't give up!

What inspired this? Watching all those ads that I disagree with! My big gripes are when a diet suggestion comes in the form of substituting real foods for low-calorie 100% artificial products. I won't call them foods. Case and point: Low-calorie pancake syrup. Does it make sense to you to slather your white-flour sugar-pancakes in sugar-free syrup? Um, no. It doesn't. Don't think that a sugar-free product is healthier than the original. That doesn't make the original healthy necessarily, but real maple syrup does have minerals in it. And your body can recognize this stuff whereas the low-calorie fakeness syrup is all chemical that is detrimental to your system in a variety of ways and in NO way beneficial.
Okay, so you need a substitute now that I've taken away your sweet moistening agent?
Take a small saucepan. Add a cupful of frozen (or fresh) berries (Mmm, blueberries!). Add a Tablespoon of water and heat on medium-low for a little while. Gently mash them when they're warm. Add 2 Tablespoons of REAL maple syrup or honey. Add a dash of cinnamon or nutmeg (or both even!). When the whole deal is warm it'll be perfect for drizzling over your pancakes.
Just please make them whole wheat! :^)

pH balance does matter!

2008-12-12T11:34:00.000-08:00

Today an article was published by HealthyDay on MSN Health & Fitness regarding the importance of fruits and vegetables to bone health.

FINALLY!!

pH balance diet proponents everywhere are yelling, "DUH!" at the screen right now. It's true, there have been studies but rarely are so-called radical ideas brought into a mainstream forum. It seems like if a study isn't sponsored by Kellogg's or the American Council on Nutritional Lies to Tell Americans (okay, one of these isn't real) then the study won't make it into our hands. Unless we REALLY search...hard!

If you haven't been in the loop, there is the 'theory' that a diet that incorporated large amounts of animal products and grains were a primary cause of mineral loss from our bones. The 'theory' goes, meat/dairy/grain break down in the body into acidic remains. This acidity is no good for our bodies and our blood. In order to bring the body into balance the system leaches a bunch of good guys OUT of our bones (good things like calcium!) that help to alkalize the blood and body. So now we're neutral again, but at the cost of healthy bones.

Bummer.

So what's being said is that it doesn't matter if you are doing box jumps while eating mega-calcium-Vitamin D-enhanced cheese. You'll be offsetting the bone-building goodness with all the acidic remains of the dairy. Your balance is zero. Eat some wilted spinach and kale instead :)

So they are recommending that you eat more fruits and vegetables and try to limit your animal product and grain intake. Ideas?
~Spaghetti squash in lieu of regular spaghetti,
~Bean / tofu chili instead of beef chili,
~Herb-crusted cremini mushrooms in place of meatballs in italian dishes
and so on. And you will make your body so happy!!

If you want to read the blurb article:

Stress-busting foods...to not eat?

2008-12-09T07:15:00.000-08:00

I have MSN as my home page, so I can see a bunch of different articles listed out for me in one place whenever I sit down. I really like to check on their nutrition/fitness articles and I am amused how the topics are constantly recycled.

ANYWAY, there was a slide show put up the other day that was so awful that it was STAGGERING! That is possibly why I cannot find it now. I have checked the archives and can't find it. If you do, please link it to me! I'm kicking myself for not grabbing the link when I had the chance.

This slideshow was suppose to show us how to eat to avoid stress and/or anxiety during the day regardless of the situations in which we find ourselves. Okay, sounds good right? Great, until you notice that the author recommended snacking on nothing else but SUGAR all day. Graham crackers were listed as a great mood-boosting snack...on their own sans protein or healthy fat. The author actually went so far as to say that you should NOT rely on fruit sugars as they won't boost your blood sugar the same way as (processed) carbs will.

Um...

So this article said "Don't eat fruit. Eat bullshit packaged sugar foods that have no nutritional content." Awesome..who the heck let this slide show get uploaded?!

Can we take a moment and review what it is that has made America obese? Oh that's right, SUGAR. And when I say sugar I am including sugar incarnates such as graham crackers, hard candies, white breads (also 'whole/7 grain' breads, partial whole-wheat breads, etc), crackers, biscuits, cookies, chocolates, just as well as corn syrups, evaporated cane juice and so on. I don't know, but isn't being 200lbs overweight a pretty good stresser (on the body AND mind)?

This article had basically suggested spiking your blood sugars repeatedly all day long. So why not MAINTAIN your blood sugar level instead? That way you completely avoid the low-blood sugar bomb that makes you feel like crap. Stay away from it and you won't feel the need for a spike! And you'll be happier in the long run. Not to mention less hungry.

Not trying to be mean here, but I can see this person's credentials...AND their blood work?

So how do you maintain a constant blood-sugar level? Eating every two to four hours (depending on the size and/or quality of the preceeding meal or snack)can maintain blood sugar levels as can proper nutrient combining. You will see what works best for you if you pay attention. If you eat 200 calories you should probably not be hungry for about 1.5 to 2 hours (rough estimate, will be different for different activity levels/metabolism/body types). If you are hungry in 40 minutes then it wasn't balanced properly for you. A good place to check out balancing like this is www.zonediet.com.

Try not to eat bullshit foods please! Everyone will be better for it; you, your bowels, your family, your friends, your coworkers, and your planet!

Episode 2: Veggies = super easy soups!

2008-12-04T07:52:00.000-08:00

As promised, easy vegetable lentil soup!! I know that lentils make a great nutritious soup on their own with the standard carrots, onion, and tomatoes. But why not just take it a step further, eh? Again, you can use a mixture of fresh and frozen to make this work for you. Whatever you have on hand and however much time you need to shave off your prep time guide this one.

To start out I chopped up 3 large Carrots, 1 Yellow Onion and sauteed them with 2 minced Garlic cloves in some Extra Light Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Just to get things going you know.
After the onions were softened and a little browned, I poured in one regular sized can of No Salt Added Stewed Tomatoes, about 6 cups of water, 2 Bay Leaves, a couple shakes of Red Pepper Flakes and two Teaspoons of Vegetable Bouillon paste. Then our star ingredient gets stirred in, 1 bag (roughly two cups) of Lentils. You can use green or brown, but the red cooks exceptionally fast due to its smaller size. If you use red, then cook the carrots a little longer first.
After about 30 minutes of your soup being covered and on an active simmer, stir in 2 cups of sliced frozen (or fresh) Zucchini and 2 cups frozen chopped Kale. If you use fresh leafy greens cook accordingly. Fresh Kale should be tossed in with the Lentils. Something delicate like fresh Spinach should be added JUST before serving in order to wilt, but not all out slaughter and slime-ify. That's a technical cooking term. You can look it up.

I think this one turns out lovely, very flavorful! If you want it a little spicier, you can add a couple dashes of Tabasco Chipotle sauce. Mmmm!
Hope you're having fun experimenting (healthfully) in the kitchen!

Veggies = super easy soups!

2008-12-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

I absolutely LOVE love love soup! So much so that I'm going to tell you all about it!
Vegetable soup is almost impossible to goof up! As long as you think about how long it takes to cook the vegetables and plan accordingly, you should get a good result. Ie: if you want browned onions, throw 'em in before the broth. Carrots and other roots take a bit to cook, so those should be added at the beginning. Anything pre-cooked or frozen should be added at the very end so that these items don't get over cooked and soggy. ick. Added too many veggies? Oops, now you have stew. Still tastes good. See? Hard to goof up.

I have made soup for dinner the past two nights. Each recipe was warming, delicious, nutritious, filling, and so very wallet-friendly!! I got two meals out of my first veggie soup and I'm going to guess that I have leftovers enough from soup two for about 3 more meals. YAY!

Soup 1: A very easy skillet-soup that was made from what I had laying around. Some days are like that. You can also call it a fridge-cleaning-soup if you like, but that doesn't sound so appealing :^)
All I did was saute about half an Onion and a clove of minced Garlic in roughly a Tbsp of light Extra Virgin Olive Oil (light because you don't want the particulates of my unfiltered Olive Oil to burn while you're sauteeing...no good) until the onion was soft. Then I poured in about 1/2 cup Tomato Juice (left over from a can of tomatoes I had strained out the night before) and enough water to cover everything and leave enough room in the skillet for boiling bubbles. I really like Vegetable Broth Bouillon paste, the kind in the jar, so I put a little of that in there for seasoning along with some Tarragon (awesome!), Red Pepper Flakes , for that extra warming factor, and a Bay Leaf. When the broth was simmering, I tossed in 1.5 cups of sliced frozen Zucchini and half a pint of Grape Tomatoes that I sliced in half, as well as about a cup of already cooked and chopped Kale. Then I realized I had some leftover Thanksgiving Turkey in my fridge that should be used instead of wasted, so that got diced and thrown in also. All these I put in at the end because all I want to do is heat them through, not recook them all! I like when the flavors are bright, clean, and simple!

I'd hate to overwhelm you with goodness all in one sitting, so I'll tell you about my beautiful Lentil-Vegetable soup tomorrow.

I hope you have fun cooking soup tonight! Let me know what you cook up and if it was good!!

Giving thanks for it all!

2008-11-25T07:02:00.000-08:00

It is the week of Thanksgiving and all the health blogs are a buzz with ways to avoid overeating this holiday. Want to hear my ideas? If you know me at all, you will know that I support eating habits that don't demonize foods. If you really want a cupcake then share it with someone, or eat the whole thing if you want! Just don't do it all the time, and make sure it's a REALLY good one you know? Make sure it's high quality made with real ingredients; none of these grocery store bakery excuses for baked goods that come from huge plastic vats. Gross. Moderation, as you know, is key.

Anyway back to Thanksgiving. I'm going to give you the back up story so you don't get confused when you hear my advice and misunderstand me. On a regular basis I have a tendency to eat lots of vegetables and beans. I really enjoy my one-pot veggie-bean concoctions! I use one pot because I do not enjoy doing dishes, and I prefer to eat meals from a bowl all mixed together. So it makes sense to make lots of soup-like meals. That's just me though. And I really enjoy eating nutritiously because it tastes great and makes me feel good. So Thanksgiving, for me, is a time when I am presented with a large variety of singular dishes. My mother is a phenomenal cook, so I know that all the dishes will be flavorful and still nutritious; being made from whole foods. So therefore I am excited to try EVERYTHING that she has made.

Without trying too hard I will have my plate loaded with little spoonfuls of all the dishes. I will not clean my plate by any stretch, but I am not going to nit pick my way through my mother's Thanksgiving day dinner either. I will try everything and focus on my favorites. I will also keep in mind that there is delicious pie (made by me) for dessert and no amount or quality of stuffing can be substituted for a slice of quality pumpkin pie.

By the end of the night I will be full and happy. I will not be sick. I will not regret my choices. I will feel satisfied in all regards and will look forward to having leftover brussel sprouts and chestnuts with homemade cranberry-orange relish the next day. I will also be thankful that Thanksgiving meals come only once a year. If it was more often then I thoroughly believe that they would not be nearly so special.

So my advice is this: Eat foods that come from the ground on all days of the year, but on Thanksgiving eat what you like! Don't put yourself into a food coma for God's sake, but eat heartily if that is what you want to do. Just make sure that you return to normal the next day!

Hopefully the weather on Thursday will be nice enough to enable a family walk or hike before or after dinner. Let your body care that you aren't going to let it fall into disrepair because of one meal! Remember to hit your gym or the trail this weekend and maintain your physical activity!

Be thankful for your health, your friends, your family, and simply be thankful for life lived your way! I wish you and your family all the best this Thanksgiving!! Have fun and enjoy!

You say I'm HOW fat?!!

2008-11-18T06:42:00.000-08:00

One of my clients asked me the other day about the scales that measure your body fat. She wanted to know if those were accurate, and then how they compare to the BMI measurement that is always referred to in articles about heart health.
So of course, that sparked a great conversation amongst all us girls.

First, BMI (Body Mass Index) is a measurement used to calculate your Body Mass and therefore the likelihood of weight related risks. But if you have ever Google-d "BMI calculator" you'll have noticed that you also get alot of comments voicing concern. Many people say, "I'm fit, but this says I'm so fat!" You need to keep in mind when you check your BMI that it is NOT the be-all, tell-all about your health. This calculation cannot take into account your muscle-mass. Two men the same height and weight can look very different; one can be a very trim body-builder and the other can be a large couch potato. But they'll have the same BMI.

BMI can be helpful if you need a frame of reference to help view your reality. People that live in very large communities (not a reference to populace)can easily lose track of a healthy-weight reference point. So if you weigh yourself and the number doesn't mean much because you aren't sure of what it should be, then you can calculate your BMI and get a more complete picture.

But to give you an idea, if I calculate my BMI I fall in the high "Normal" range with a 20.7. Then I can go home and use my scale which has the little magic foot spots that enable what's called Bio-Electrical Impedence (measures body fat percentage and hydration level). According to that I got anywhere from 19% to 22.5% Body Fat in a single day. Why? Hydration level. If I measure myself first thing in the morning after I first pee, then my body fat percentage is very low and so is my hydration level. After laying down all night, the water in my body is distributed differently through my body than if I give myself 8 hours of gravity to push and pull it around.

So these are all helping measures, but none of them are gospel. If you really want to know what your real numbers are then you have to get out the big guns. You have to contact a local university or hospital that has a hydrostatic weighing tank.

Now the next thing to discuss are those Caloric expenditure calculators. My advice is stay away. If you know that you're consuming 9,000 calories a day or you have been told that you are seriously obese, then these calculators can give you an IDEA as to how much you probably should be consuming each day. However, these calculations also need to be approached with care.

The main problem I have with them is their Activity Level options. Moderate daily activity includes 'carry a load' and heavy activity includes 'basketball' but nothing about how heavy a load, how intense the game of basketball or anything about duration! So I plugged in my age, weight, and gender, selected 'heavy' (because that option best described what I do each day) and it says I should eat 2894 calories a day!!!
Do you have any idea how much zucchini and kale that is?!

Moral of this story is: Don't stress these numbers! If you're hungry, eat a little nutritious something. If you're not hungry, don't eat. And there's very rarely a bad time to drink water, so take a couple swigs whenever your mouth feels like it should be busy.If you're feeling sluggish, get moving to push your blood around and get a little adrenaline going.
Know yourself. If you're not sure, then use these calculators to give you an idea or maybe to start dialogue with your doctor or personal trainer. Best of health to you!

So much good stuff!

2008-11-14T09:58:00.000-08:00

Today is World Diabetes Day, if you aren't already aware! It is a worldwide movement to raise awareness about the warning signs of Diabetes as well as to get support for those diagnosed individuals that cannot easily access care and treatment. This year's them is Children and Adolescents due to the increasing numbers of young people being diagnosed with Diabetes I and II. Most of the information on the website (www.WorldDiabetesDay.com) has to do with Type I. So if you have frequent urination, are losing weight, are excessivly thirsty, and/or have a serious lack of energy, then you may want to check out this website.

My only gripe with the website is that there is no mention of how to manage Diabetes on a daily basis other than with drugs. They infrequently mention "a healthy diet", but as there are so many books in the Diet section of my bookstore I'll wager that there's some confusion as to what that really means. I would think that teaching people to balance their blood sugar and tame insulin spikes would be a worthwhile project. I would think that a food graph showing what is "sugar" and "not sugar" would be helpful. Teaching about meal-balance would be important too I would think; eat protein, some fat, and some fiber with your sugar and it doesn't quite hit so hard. Oh yeah, defining "some" would also be worthwhile. :)

And just so that ALL corners are dusted, check out www.RawFor30Days.com. It's a documentary that follows six Americans that have what their doctors had called "incurable diabetes". Some have Type I and some have Type II, and all had CRAZY improvements in their health. They lost weight, got off their meds, and felt healthy and energized for the first time in God-only-knows how long. It's really an amazing video and they have a very good trailer if you're curious.

Happy and Healthy Eating everyone!

Translation to real life...

2008-11-13T11:04:00.000-08:00

So being strong is great right? But having actually work for you is even BETTER! Afterall, lifting dumbbells doesn't help me cook dinner!

So about a month ago I purchased a customized coffee table for myself online. It is one of those rustic log tables, it's just half a log! So when it arrived via mail I had to bring it up to my apartment. Ah yes. So it came in a 4.5' tall box about 2' wide on each side and it weighed about 45 lbs. Yes, this is not terribly heavy but as you know it is substantially more difficult to maneuver an odd shaped weight. Or in this case, something almost the same size as my own self!

To make it more fun? Add 4 flights of narrow stairs! YES! Now we're talking!!

As I tried to get just the right grasp on this thing and get it up the stairs I thanked my workouts for helping me train for real life. That is after the rain dampened cardboard ripped and it went cartwheeling down one flight (I suppose I then had to take a moment to thank foam). So for the 3 flights plus one repeater, I had to wrangle it. But I'm thankful because I'm stubborn and did NOT want to leave the not-heavy box in the foyer for 3 days until my boyfriend came to bring it up. That would have been defeatist thinking and on the whole an unthinkable act.

This way I dont have to ask for help to do things...unless of course it's something car or electric related.

Perseverance. Better than just strength.

Obama's on to something...

2008-11-05T12:43:00.000-08:00

Obama was quoted in Men's Health Magazine as saying that fitness is a key to success.
He may be on to something. Afterall, he just won the Presidency!

I could be wrong, but I think now-President Obama is the first candidate to have been on the cover of Men's Health Magazine! I think it's great! In this age of lack-of-healthy-perspiration having our President be a fit role model for the people is phenomenal! So let's give a pause to consider how busy this guy is...on his campaign trail also...whew. Wife, two kids, campaigning for a little office called President of the United States of America...yeah, he might have his hands full. So what does he do? He knows that his fitness is important and not negotiable, so he works out for 45 minutes 6 early-mornings a week. It's not so important to me WHEN he works out just that he does. And that he doesn't compromise his health.

When you're as busy as this man is, do you have time to be ill or under-the-weather? Probably not, productivity falters if you're constantly blowing your nose and your head is pounding right? With all the research (and inherent knowledge given to us by our forefathers) we know that health, fitness, and proper diet go hand in hand and um..hand.

So the more practicing, fit & healthy role models we get onto the streets the better!So are you fit and healthy? Then get out there and flaunt it! Jog where people can see you and be proud!

So yeah. I can tell you that I am very hopeful for good changes in the upcoming years. Especially with all the exercising hotties taking to the streets! :^)

What's the point?!

2008-11-03T10:20:00.000-08:00

So one of the MOST commonly asked questions is, "Why are you making me do this?!" Usually it comes in an breathless tone during a rest period during the workout.

We are so accustomed to the globo-gym workout method now that when we are asked to do something real it's both difficult and strange. You can see it at your gym, just watch the person on the leg-extension machine giving funny looks to the dude doing squats. Problem is that the leg-extension machine doesn't train you in context (amongst other inherent problems with the machine, but we'll save that for another time). So if you always train your muscles individually, they are never learning to work together. This is a hugely important distinction and it should be obvious why training muscles in context is more beneficial to our lives and athleticism than is isolation muscle training.

Another thing I hear is, "Why do I need to exercise to do my daily tasks that I can already do?" Alright, valid point...ish. My sister put it best when she said,

It's like always driving your car, from the second you learned to drive, in second gear. You can get around just fine; from point A to point B and back. Driving is good. Then all of a sudden you find you can put your car into 3rd. Oh my God! You never knew the car could work SO well! It's more powerful on hills, it's faster and so much smoother!

That is what this type of exercise program can do for you! Some people notice the difference when they go grocery shopping and realize the 50lb bag of dog food doesn't give them the same trouble it once did. One girl realized it when she out lasted her classmates in her Fencing class; everyone was winded and needed to take a break and she was still standing and ready for more!

Almost immediately you feel a change in your wind and in your strength. Over time your daily tasks become less taxing which ends up making each day less stressful, both on your body and on your mind. It's really so very nice :)

Not-so-great Halloween Candy Debate

2008-10-29T09:50:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is that blessed holiday that allows children (and some adults) to dress up as their favorite ghoul or character and march happily around in public! Just for some icing on top of their cakes, they are also encouraged to visit stranger's homes and ask for sweets! What a great tradition, huh?

With childhood obesity on the steady rise, there has been a push from toy companies to give out toy treats instead of caloric ones. Nutritionists say to avoid dishing out candies and instead give boxes of raisins (which are also sweet like candy, they argue). Now, when I was 5 I would have been very happy to receive a package of Play-Doh! So I am not saying that these suggestions are absurd, don't misunderstand me. But have you ever recieved a box of raisins in your huge bag of loot? Even if you enjoy raisins every other day, it's like finding a cat turd in your bag! It's just AWFUL and they'll get thrown out with the open wrappers and Necco wafers. ugh!

I appreciate that the idea behind the raisins is "have a more healthy holiday, and don't forget that fruit is nature's candy!" But a single box or two of raisins mixed in with 6 pounds of candy bars isn't going to save a child from diabetes. The natural raisin sugar will be digested as a simiple carbohydrate just like the ones in the Twix. No different. The 1/2 oz of fiber found in that box of raisins is also, not likely to help(as in WON'T) balance blood sugar.

So what do you do when you and your conscience are standing in the grocery with a JUMBO mixed bag of candy in one hand and a bag of boxed raisins in the other? My advice is to get the bag of candy. I'm going to be strung up by my nutritionist cohorts, but I'm sticking to my guns on this one. I do not see it as the responsibility of the neighbors to give out healthful treats, not when the goal is to acquire a mountain of garbage, as my mother always put it.

I believe it to be the responsibility of the parents to have rules at home regarding what, how much, and when the loot can be eaten. My brother and I always worked very hard to get as much candy as we could, but then my mother allowed us to only eat a certain amount that night. We would spend more time dividing it all into piles and trading with each other. Over the next few days she kept her eye on it and soon the allure of the candy waned. By Thanksgiving we still had more than half of what we had brought in, and it was by then that we had to throw out the rest. I think she told us that it had gotten too old. Very tricky, way to go Mom!

From this I had learned that it was more fun to dress up and GET the candy than it was to actually eat it all. After one or two bad stints during which I snuck 10 too many pieces and got ill I learned that the dream of the eating all the candy was much nicer than the reality. It's a very important lesson to learn and to carry with you forever!

But that's just MY opinion. If you want raisins you'll have to go next door because I'm giving out chocolate bars.

Have solid, tangible, quantifiable goals.

2008-10-20T09:44:00.000-07:00

This past weekend has to have been one of the most beautiful that I have seen in quite some time! The leaves were gorgeous, the air was brisk, the sun warm, the sky crystal clear. I was just a giddy grinning fool all weekend!

Saturday was one of my best friends' wedding. Just stunning! Autumn theme, so we wore truffle brown gowns and carried bouquets of yellow, orange, red flowers and real fallen maple leaves. After the ceremony and all the pictures were taken, the bridal party and groomsmen all went back to our own seperate reception room while all the rest of the guests were enjoying their cocktail hour. The selection of food we were offered made me think about how we are contstantly defending our beliefs.
In this case, what one believes is healthful to eat. But this applies to lots of things. Anyone ever say you were crazy for working out 3 times a week or going grocery shopping every other day?

Sometimes it's very tough to stick to your guns. With mozzarella sticks, fried ravioli, sesame chicken bits, meatballs and spanikopita looking at you it can be difficult. What seems to be MORE difficult to me is having others eating the hors d'ouevres! It's a social cue that eating now is appropriate and for some reason it's easy to feel that if you don't take part it will be misconstrued as rude. Why?! Gotta love cultural and social cues that are embedded in our brains right?

I think that is why it's extremely important to have a real reason for the way you choose to eat, or a real goal in mind. It is easier to avoid the fried ravioli if you know them as health saboteurs that will make you feel sick (too much frying for me, makes me feel ill)then as something that you need to avoid because they'll make you fat. We can all dispell the latter argument easily, "ONE fried ravioli never hurt anyone."

So if your exercise goal is "to lose weight" you need to sharpen that up. How much weight? Think realistically and take muscle gains into account. If your goal is "to eat clean for one month" as a diet jump start then that's a quantifiable goal. That approach would make it easier to avoid that mozzarella stick!

Does this make sense? If you're not really sure what I'm getting at just write me a quick email and let me know what your goal is. I'll give you examples of how to sharpen it up so they can be really achievable! It'd be nice to check those off your to-do list huh?

CrossFit CERTIFCATION COMPLETED!

2008-10-13T12:41:00.000-07:00

Happy Monday to you!
I just spent my weekend in Toronto at the CrossFit Certification Seminar. I can say that we all had a great time and learned such an incredible amount! It's all extremely applicable and we also learned how to pass it on to our clients as well as to ourselves. All of us, we're all should always be in a state of improving and active learning right?

Toronto is, from my experience, a tremendously friendly and inviting city. I think I'd go there over NYC if given the choice. I did notice though, how much slimmer overall the population of the city was. I had lunch one day in a mall food court, did some people watching and there was a NOTABLE difference! I got talking to a woman I partnered with in some groups and she said, about a trip she had recently taken to the States, "I was surprised at how many heavy children there were." Not even adults, which she was also surprised by, but more specifically the children were whom shocked her. I agreed. Childhood is a great time to learn skills that we get too afraid to do as we get older: knee swings on the junglegym, cartwheels, tree-climbing etc. We learn that running around and getting sweaty and tired makes us feel good!

Exercise is to make us fitter for our lives. If someone gets winded walking around the grocery store, they aren't fit enough for their life-demands. We learn how our bodies move when we are young; running around the playground and throwing ourselves down hills. That may sound silly but can you skip across the room without putting alot of thought into HOW to skip?

This Certification Seminar weekend involved ALOT of moving. And I had an absolute blast. I'm sore today, but I know it's from having done something good. Let's all work to make sure the youngest generation grows up knowing that active movement brings good things and that being sedentary is just no fun :)

Hugs,
Sweat Angel

Feel like hibernating?

2008-10-08T10:55:00.000-07:00

It's autumn for sure now! A most notable sign of the season is the changing leaves, the cool breezy days (with bright warm sun) and the evenings are downright cold!
So maybe you're feeling the urge to hibernate! I get hit with various autumnal-desires: snuggling with a book under a big blanket letting my nose get a little chilled, cooking hearty stews and apple pies, and napping. I'd be a great bear I think, I know what to do!

But now is a GREAT time to be active OUTDOORS...or start if you haven't been all summer. During the summer it may be hard to motivate yourself to get outside when the humidity has turned the world into a damp sponge. It feels a little icky when it's like that, I can't lie! Autumn in New England is usually pretty dry, cool and breezy though. You won't get the same overheating feeling from going for a hike as you would during the summer, so you may last a little longer on the trail!

One of my favorite parts of Autumn is the trail running! Just like for hiking, it's cooler and dryer so you can go a little bit further or longer. And getting to a special vista can be so rewarding when the trees are all lit up for the season.

A little safety note though, the top two.
Bring WATER with you please. Just because you're not sweating like you would on a 96 degree day doesn't mean you aren't! Rehydrate while you're out exercising ALWAYS!
Also, if you got it alone tell someone where you're heading off to and how long you expect to be out.

If you have a favorite trail that you already hike in the summer, make sure you visit it during the other seasons and see how it changes during the year. You be disappointed! If you DON'T have a favorite, try going to www.mountaintravelguide.com and type in your area and get a recommended listing. You can also hook up with the Appalachian Mountain Club for your local chapter and their recommended hikes. They're a great group of folks and have a lot of hikes to choose from!

I personally enjoy Mianus River Gorge near the Stamford/Bedford, NY border and Pound Ridge Reservation in New York. If you have a recommended hike nearby Stamford, CT, please let us know!

Browsing through magazines...

2008-10-07T07:28:00.000-07:00

You bet, I absolutely adore wandering through the periodicals and browsing the fitness/health magazines. I love reading the articles on how to "lose that last 10lbs" and in the men's magazines how to "add inches to your biceps". (haha yup, I will also read the guy magazines. If you need a giggle ladies, pick one up and look at the ads!) Unfortunately, I don't always agree with their recommendations.

Over the last year or so the mainstream women's magazines have started to pick up on the new trends in fitness. They are incorporating more multii-joint exercises and recommending tougher and shorter workouts. I commend this nod to progression! One particular magazine this month had a workout system that looked pretty good and real...the exercises included a deadlift with push press! So I was impressed at first. THEN I looked at the weight and rep suggestions. It said "use an 8-20 lb bar or weight".
Um...
Do they mean per hand? No! Total! Who is it that they're trying to firm up with that suggestion?

Okay, before I go nuts I'll say that I realize that the company may want to avoid legal issues from all the somebodies out there that don't really know what they're doing and that could get hurt. That's fine. But that's not an excuse to me when next to this mag that's playing it safe you have the men's mag that's saying go as heavy as possible! This just doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Okay, yes there are people out there that this recommendation is a real work out for. That's GREAT if they do this then. But my point is that this magazine says it is geared towards women that are living the fit life. So maybe they should also gear the workouts they suggest to the women that are living the fit life? Just maybe!

They often will have the cardio workouts scaled for beginner up to more fit. They should especially do that for workouts where they're suggesting weights. That way women out there that use these magazines as they're primary source of connection to the world of health and fitness aren't deluded into thinking that a 20lb deadlift is difficult or as heavy as you should ever go. Worse would be having women out there buying this magazine, doing the workouts as prescribed, not seeing results, then getting frustrated and depressed not knowing what else to do. THAT is giving the wrong impression that fitness is only for "other people".

If you see an exercise in a magazine that you'd like to try out and aren't sure how to perform it correctly or what weight YOU should be using, contact me and we'll get you set up right!