W.O.W. March 1st, 2011

Workout Of the Day

Warm up on the treadmill for 5 minutes then increase your speed and run hard for 3 minutes. Drop your speed and increase the incline to 10% and run for 2 minutes.

Hold one dumbbell up in your RIGHT hand, so it's overhead with a straight arm. Lunge forward and back with the RIGHT leg. Repeat 10X on each side for 4 sets.

Run fast for 3 minutes, decrease your speed and increase your incline to 8% and run for 2 minutes.

On the cable machine. Adjust a single-grip pulley about waist height. Step back and lunge forward with your LEFT foot and hold the lunge. Make sure the lunge is deep and static so don't move. Grab the handle with the RIGHT hand and pull it back in a row to your waist. The weight should be heavy enough that you feel off-balance. Repeat 12X on each side for 4 sets. The illustration on the left shows a one arm cable row and the height that I want but her feet are not in the position I want. If she puts her left foot forward and right leg and bends both knees she will be in a static lunge position.

Run fast for 3 minutes, slow down, increase incline to 6% and run for 2 minutes.


Perform decline push ups (feet on a bench or a couple of stacked plates, depends on how easily you do push ups). 4 sets of 20 reps.

Jog easily on the treadmill for 5 minutes.

And yes, stretch. Again I know it is highly unlikely that you will stretch on your own but please, stretch at least your low back, hamstrings and chest (see illustrations below).

Hamstring Stretch

Chest Stretch on the left, low back stretches on the right.

Nutrition For February 25th, 2011

A lot of women ask me how to control bloat. Our weight can fluctuate 5 lbs either way, on a daily basis. It is discouraging to weigh yourself and see that you are up 3 lbs when you have been working out like crazy and eating a healthy diet.

The way to control bloat is to watch your refined carbs. One gram of starchy carbs holds four grams of water, which is one of the reasons I adhere to a lower carb diet. I mainly stay between 50-100 grams of carbs a day and I stay far away from anything starchy (rice, bread of any kind, potatoes, etc. Oh yeah and SUGAR!). I do eat Fiber One every morning but the amount of fiber in that cereal lowers the the amount of carbs that you count toward your daily total. I'm sure you have heard the phrase 'impact carbs'. The amount of impact carbs in any given food is grams of total carbs - grams of fiber. For example a serving on Fiber One is 1/2 cup. It contains 25 grams of carbs and 14 grams of fiber. 25 - 14 = 11 grams of impact carbs.

Here is my nutrition intake for 2/25/11:

On this particular day I took my kids out for lunch so it shows what you can do if you do the same thing.


Breakfast
Muscle Milk Protein Bar
Snack
100 calorie pack of almonds
2 ounces of cheddar cheese

Lunch
Triple stack hamburger
3 pieces of American cheese
1/2 a hamburger bun

Snack
2 chicken thighs (just the meat from a teriyaki place that I had left over from the day before)

Dinner
2 fried chicken wings
1/4 cup rice
1 Bourbon and soda

Total calories: 2,277
Total carbs : 57 grms
Total Protein: 176

I am not suggesting that you eat the way that I do. A couple people commented on the fact that I eat no fruit and almost no vegetables. That's true. I do try to get more leafy greens in my diet on a daily basis. I manage to do that about three times a week in the form of spinach, broccoli and lettuce. Yes, you should eat vegetables but I do suggest that you are careful with how much fruit you eat. Research shows that the body still recognizes fruit as sugar.

Workout Of The Week February 17th, 2011

W.O.W.

Warm up:
5 minutes of jogging

50 jacks
25 push ups
15 pull ups

Sprint on the treadmill for 3 minutes

50 burpees
25 renegade push ups - when you come up out of the push up reach out with one of your arms and lift the opposite leg (at the same time)
15 chin ups

Sprint on the treadmill for 3 minutes


50 fast feet and drop - do the fast feet with feet wide
25 decline push ups - put your feet on a high or low bench
15 tricep push ups (elbows stay close to your rib cage)



Sprint on treadmill for 3 minutes

Jog for 5 minutes

Stretch

Nutrition for January 24th, 2010

Here is a more typical day for me. I am going to post random days and you will notice some trends (Brie is one of them) and (some would say), crazy (hamburger with no bun, layered with a slice of ham, cheese and an egg - super protein, right?). My calories also fluctuate because I think it's good to have higher and lower days, it keeps your body from going into starvation mode.

Breakfast
3 scrambled eggs
3 pieces of Canadian bacon

Snack
1/2 slice of flat bread pizza (a pretty darn small piece)

Lunch
Sandwich thins
A very large portion of deli sliced pan-roasted turkey breast
About 1.5 ounces of Brie

Snack
About 2 ounces of cheddar cheese
A package of almonds (those 100 calorie packets that you can buy)

Dinner
1/2 cup of rice
6 ounces of lean beef

Total calories for the day: 1,708 Carb count: 77g Protein: 160g

Wonder what I eat?

Clients and class participants often ask me what I eat, especially when I am asking them to eat more protein (over and over again). So I have decided to occasionally (or maybe more) list what it is that I eat. So here it goes....

For Monday, January 17th, 2011

Breakfast
Sandwich thins with 2 slices of cheddar cheese

Snack
14 almonds (in snack packs) and 1 ounce of cheddar cheese

After workout
8 ounces of low fat chocolate milk

Snack
1 package almonds

Lunch
1 can of sardines in mustard sauce and 4 Milton Crispy Sea Salt crackers

Snack
1 ounce brie and 4 Milton crackers

Dinner
Small flour tortilla, 3 ounces of lean beef, 1/8 cup refried beans and 8 ounces of red wine

Total calories - 1,957
Carbs - 145g (high for me)
Protein - 115g (low for me)

I don't really care about how many grams of fat that I ingest, fat keeps you full longer, nor do I pay much attention to calorie intake. Also you'll notice that I graze all day long. There are rarely more then 3 hours between meals (or snacks). I normally would not eat crackers, sandwich thins and a tortilla all in the same day even though all of those items are fairly low in calories.

Tabata Interval

If you haven't tabata'd yet, you better!

Here's a great one:

Do each drill for 10 secs and repeat 8 times = 4 minutes.

#1 Wide squat hops with hands on head
#2 Squats (no hop)
#3 hold a deep squat

Your thighs will be on fire, I guarantee. I did it in my class tonight (and with several clients) and they totally hate me now. If your feeling brave you can follow it up with a 20 minute cycle interval workout - 20 secs hard, 10 secs recovery. I think you'll be sufficiently done. Literally.

High Carbs VS High Protein....Again

In order to fatten cattle quickly they are fed a diet high in refined, simple carbohydrates made up primarily of corn and grain bi-products. They are also kept in a pen to inhibit movement. That pretty much describes the majority of Americans.



You guys need to eat more friggin' protein if you want to get lean. Low fat, high carb diets don't work well. I'm not suggesting you should adhere to the Atkins Diet. I am suggesting that you plan meals around a solid source of protein. You'll get the carbohydrates you need, trust me. Also, don't worry so much about the fat. Notice that they don't feed the cattle a high fat diet in order to fatten them up. Don't drown yourself in fat but use it to cook and flavor foods. I also tell my clients to get rid of foods that aren't supposed to be non-fat. Those foods have all sorts of other crap in them to make them taste good.

Our bodies were designed to move so do it. The average working American sits for more then 12 hours a day. 12 hours! One hour of focused, intense exercise will help combat the negative affects of that sedentary lifestyle. Also try to add in more non-exercise activity. I know you've heard it a million times but take the darn stairs, walk the dog a little bit farther then you normally do, walk to anything that's within a mile or two. Seriously. It doesn't take that long.

So here it is again: Lower your simple carbohydrate intake, increase your protein intake and move your body. That's the magic formula. And it's not very magic.