Category Archives: Health & Fitness Blog

Are you over it?

Well, we’re over a month into the New Year. Are you ‘over’ your New Year resolutions yet? Have you tried once again to get those holiday pounds off, vowing to get out and exercise everyday, eat right and not succumb to the many temptations that come along every day? Well that’s no way to live. What I’m after, and many of you probably are to is balance. How can we live a balanced life, be at a healthy weight and still enjoy life?

I’ve come to the conclusion that that it’s a lot easier than you may think. First of all assess what you are eating. Do you know that your fat loss success is mostly due to what you put in your mouth? Do you know how many calories are taking in every day? Most people think they eat less than they actually do. If you start logging on MyFitnessPal.com or Livestrong.com/Myplate, you can quickly and easily see how many you’re eating.

Next, decide what you want your weight to be. Are you taking in account your lean body mass? You can find out what your body fat percentage is on Linear-software.com/bodyfat. All you need to do is put in your age, height, weight, neck, waist and hip measurements. Set a healthy goal of increasing your lean body mass and decreasing your fat pounds. The scale weight may vary depending on how much you decide to weight lift. Did I mention weight lifting is the number one exercise you should concentrate on when you’re trying to lose fat? Well it is. Don’t go overboard on cardio. Learn to love the weights. All you need are a few dumbbells and you’ve got it made.

I found a really good resource for those who have tried to diet and failed over and over again. His name is Layne Norton and you can search for him on YouTube.com. His video log #16 and 23 are particularly insightful. Check them out and learn why you have not had the success you’re after. It has changed the way I eat. In fact I’m eating more now and dropping fat faster. No more yo-yo dieting for me. This is a lifestyle not a diet.

Balance is the best way to live.

New Year ~ New Goals

So, have you written down your goals for 2014 yet? If not, now is the time. Life gets busy and before we know it the year has gone by. Why not spend some time thinking and praying about what God would want you to do this year. Maybe create some new habits in your nutrition and fitness. Maybe it’s time to look to see where you can give more of your time. Being involved in something outside of yourself is a great way to spend your life. People are happiest when they are giving, reaching out, being a part of something bigger than just themselves. Look to see what your church is involved in and see if that might be where God might want you to serve. Is there a need in your community that you see needs help? Volunteer and become part of the solution. Life is way too short to be self absorbed. Why not look around and see if there might be a place that only you can make a difference. Why set goals? It helps you to focus and dream and work toward something. It brings purpose to your life. It gives you a sense of accomplishment when you reach it. It just makes life more exciting. Take some time and set a plan in place. If it’s not exactly where God wants you to go, He’ll steer you in the right direction. Just get moving forward. He can’t steer a ship that’s not moving. Make it a wonderful, healthy and blessed New Year. Set some goals!

Affirmations

Here is an excellent affirmation written by Zig Ziglar. well known motivational speaker and author.
“I,_______…am a person with integrity, a great attitude, and specific goals. I have a high energy level, am enthusiastic, and take pride in my appearance and what I do. I have a sense of humor, lots of faith, wisdom, and the vision and courage to use my talents effectively.  
I have character, and am a smart, talented person. My beliefs are strong, and I have a healthy self-image, a passion for what is right, and a solid hope for the future. I am an honest, sincere, and hard-working. I am tough, but fair and sensitive. I am disciplined, motivated, and focused. I am a good listener and am very patient. I am an encourager, a good-finder, and a forgiving person. I am caring, unselfish, and committed to doing the right thing.
I am family oriented, open minded, and an excellent communicator. I am a student, a teacher, and a self starter. I am obedient, loyal, responsible, and dependable. I have a servant’s heart, am ambitious and a team player. I am personable, optimistic and organized. I am consistent, considerate, and resourceful.
I am intelligent, competent, persistent and creative. I am health conscious, balanced and clean. I am flexible, punctual and thrifty.
I am an honorable person who is truly grateful for the opportunity life has given me. These are the qualities of the winner I WAS BORN TO BE, and I fully intend to develop these marvelous qualities with which I have been entrusted by God.
Tonight I am going to sleep wonderfully well. I will dream powerful, positive dreams. I will awaken energized and refreshed, and tomorrow’s going to be magnificent.
God, my family and my true friends love me no matter what!”

Healthy Living

“Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings; for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, through which those who were so occupied were not benefited,” Hebrews 13:9 says.

For many of us the quest for ‘Healthy Living’ is an ongoing process. Our bodies are so unique in the way we process and digest foods. We’re individual in our tastes and how our bodies respond with a particular way of eating.

One thing that keeps coming back to me over and over and over again are these three principles taken from the book, “What The Bible Says About Healthy Living” by Rex Russell, M.D.

1. Eat the Foods God Created for You.

2. Don’t Alter God’s Design.

3. Don’t Let Any Food or Drink Become your God.

Keeping these three principles in mind, you can move forward and create ANY eating plan that will serve your body well. I love that God keeps it so simple. There is NEVER any confusion when you go to Him and allow Him to flow in and through you with wisdom, understanding and knowledge. His ways are so much higher, but He shares His ways by giving us the Mind of Christ.

Press into Him. Seek Him first. He will add everything else you need if you do.

Matthew 6:33

The Power of being Thankful

I’m reading a book that mentions another book by Deborah Norville called “Thank you Power” Making the Science of Gratitude Work for You. In it she tells a story about a man named David, who found himself discouraged. He had moved to Manhattan with high hopes of landing a well-paying job and living in a nice apartment, only to end up with a meager salary as an assistant and living with a friend because he couldn’t afford a place of his own.

One Saturday morning, while out on a job assignment, David decided to start counting things that made him happy. He started by smiling at the sight of a mother walking her baby, then realized seeing a jet make its way across the sky made him happy. He noticed fabulous aromas from cafes he passed and enjoyed bright, colorful displays in store windows. By the time he completed his assignment, he was once again happy-and he was actually thankful he had moved to New York.

More than twenty years later, David is a successful entrepreneur, but he’s never forgotten the day that turned his life around–the day he learned about the power of being thankful.

Get out a piece of paper right now and start listing things you have to be thankful for. Keep the list and add to it frequently. Make it a point to think about the things that you’re grateful for when you’re out and about. You can only learn the “power of thank you” by practicing it.

excerpt from Joyce Meyer’s “Power Thought” book.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Attainable ~ Maintainable ~ Sustainable

These three words have been rolling over and over in my head lately. I’m wondering how many people have achieved their goal weight only to find that it’s not maintainable over the long haul. I did some googling and found this to be a major challenge in the weight loss world. What is a maintainable and sustainable weight? Who determines it? How can you hold on to the gains you’ve made in lean body mass, if you’re weight lifting and keep those wretched fat pounds off?

Much has been written about this I’m sure. For me, in my second half of life, I want to live in a body that I’m happy with and one that will sustain me into my latter years. This means I’m going to be eating foods that nourish my body and won’t do it harm. More fruits and veggies, less processed and packaged foods. I’m juicing more green vegetables as a way to get more of the good stuff in. What I’ve found is that when I drink green vegetable juice, I’m less hungry. I’m feeding my cells, nourishing them and the hunger disappears. Wow, what a concept. Feed the body what it needs and it will automatically turn off the hunger switch! Too many eat more calories than needed and don’t even come close to satisfying the cravings. Only intensifying them and turning on the “feed me” switch with a vengeance.

Give your body what it needs. It’s smart. It will respond and treat you well. I can live on fruits, veggies, grains, beans and nuts. Trying to live on processed, packaged or dead food will only lead to disease and early death. I’m going for a more attainable, maintainalbe and sustainable approach. Feed me live foods and live the abundant life!

Ongoing Lifestyle Choices

A few of us in our church and several hundred on an on-line health and fitness site just completed a 14 week Summer Challenge. The goal was not just to lose weight, but to change your body composition. Therefore, weight lifting was incorporated as well as cardio and a huge part of the program is about nutrition. Now that the official challenge is over, the goals need to be re-set so the fat doesn’t come back on. I’ve been involved in 6 of these challenges over the past 3 years. Over and over again I see some who had worked so hard put the weight right back on because they go right back to their old ways of doing things. This has happened to me too. So what can be done to change that this time? How can we hold onto the gains we’ve made, or should I say the losses we’ve accomplished?

The secret is in the goal setting. A huge part of this program is the mental game. When we continue to set life changing goals and continue to work toward those goals, we can continue to see improvement from ‘challenge’ to challenge. Life long self-improvement and personal development. Isn’t that what we all want? Not just physically, but spiritually, emotionally, educationally and in every other area of our lives? A vision or mission has no end date. Get a big one. Seek God, asking Him what His purpose for your life is. Don’t put limitations on what God wants for you. Then go about setting small, mid range and long term goals to get you there. That’s the secret of any success in this life. And don’t forget to stay surrendered to God. Keep your dreams and desires fully surrendered to Him and He will give you the desires of your heart, since it’s Him who puts them there in the first place.

Getting Enough Calories?

This is a question that I struggled with when a coach asked me this back a few months ago. My target calories were 1300 per day. I was bound and determined to lose some fat and thought that this would do it. Well now it’s July and I have finally realized that I wasn’t eating enough calories! Since then, I’ve started eating around 1800 calories for most days. I eat a plant-based vegan diet getting around 100 grams of protein a day. I eat a lot of green leafy veggies, as well as high protein grains, beans, lentils, soy, almond butter in small quantities, some nuts & seeds and rice, hemp and pea protein. I’ve been watching my measurements move in the right direction. The scale is irrelevant to me so I only use that as a tool to check my body fat. This coach also helped break my scale addiction as well. I’m so thankful for the support and encouragement to get my head wrapped around the higher calories, dump the ‘ideal’ scale weight and hit the weights HARD AND HEAVY!

I’m starting to see some definition and I KNOW I am fueling my body, building muscle and melting the fat off. I have more energy than when I was in my 20’s and 30’s! This was a huge revelation to me. My moods are no longer affected by a dumb number on a scale and my clothes are nice and loose! Thank goodness for the sale racks. I just found a pair of new jeans for $26.00 after a $10.00 off coupon! 

All things are possible with God! You just gotta believe Him!

I’m 52, soon to be 53, and there is no turning back from this lifestyle. I LOVE it!

Anyone struggling with the question of calories? Try fueling your body with high quality foods, hit the weights and see what happens. Know that your body will try to hold on to every bit of fat it can when it thinks you’re in starvation mode. Avoid that at all cost! Build up some muscle and the fat will fade away when you get the balance right.  Feel free to email me with any questions.

Goals & Challenges

Summer is upon us. I have been involved in fat loss-muscle building challenges since the fall of 2009. This Summer Challenge is my sixth. Why?, some may ask, and have asked. For me to have a goal and be working toward something brings meaning to my life. It just makes me happy. I’m constantly seeing how I can improve, have more energy, feel better and be stronger than the year before. Since March of 2011, I’ve been eating strictly vegan. Partly as an experiment and partly because it just makes me feel good.

I’ve incorporated some green drinks (Amy’s Hippy Dippy Green Drink aka Green Lemonaide) and some live food smoothies into my nutrition plan. I try to eat at least fifty percent of my food raw. I believe as we put living food into our systems, we will feel more alive and our bodies will be repairing at a much faster rate. Live food in = life. Dead food in = well you get the picture.

One of the goals for this Summer Challenge is to gain muscle. The goal is to gain 5 pounds of pure lean muscle while at the same time lopping off five pounds of fat. Not an task, but it has been done. The main thing to focus on is eating enough calories so you don’t lose lean body mass but not too many as to add unwanted fat. This will be accomplished by eating 5 or 6 mini meals a day and cycling the calories. Shooting for 1600 on my low days and bringing them up to 1950 every fourth day. These numbers are different for every person. You can google Katch McArdle Calorie Calculator to determine what these figures are for you.

My first meal is oatmeal with soy protein. Meal 2 is Hippy Dippy Green juice or live food smoothie. Third is a large green salad with a variety of raw veggies and lentils, beans or quinoa. Meal 4 are protein balls or protein drink, the last meal is some form of protein and vegetables, either cooked or raw. I taper down on carbohydrates during the day which helps a great deal with hunger. I workout early so I bracket my workouts with the highest carbohydrate meals. It’s important to fuel your workouts. I’m logging everything I eat so I know how many calories I’m consuming.

Speaking of workouts, I’m lifting pretty heavy weights 4 days a week doing a split routine.  Which consists of one day training chest & biceps, one day of legs & abs, one day of back and calves & abs and one day of shoulders & triceps. For cardio I’m running with my running buddies on Tuesdays and Thursdays incorporating high intensity interval training. On Friday or Saturday I usually get a long bike ride in with Dan.

After just one week I’ve lost 1.67 pounds of fat and gained .07 pounds of lean body mass. for a total of a loss of .83% body fat. Not to mention the half inch off my waist and a quarter inch off my hips!

With a bit of discipline, some hard work and a determined goal, you can reach your health goals. Won’t you join me in getting in the best shape of your life, no matter what age you are?

Recipes listed under the Forums tab.

 

Nourishment for your soul

I was reading Psalm 103 this morning and it struck me how nourishing the word of God is to my soul. Just as our body needs an occasional cleanse from all the sugars, additives and preservatives in the foods we eat, so our soul could use a ‘detox’ from media, T.V., or whatever else is poisoning our souls. Take time and refresh yourself in the word of God. Psalm 103 is a great place to start. Feed on God’s word. Rest in His love. He will bring healing and nourishment to your entire being.