Healthy 716- Connecting the 716 to Healthier Living

  Here are my 5 personal lifestyle rules. Stick with them at least 90% of the time to keep your body healthy and hot. Lifestyle Rule #1: Don’t Eat Just To Eat There is no place in your healthy lifestyle for mindless snacking. I’m talking about a tub of popcorn at the movies or a bag of chips in front of the TV. All the calories ingested from mindless snacking have to end up somewhere…and that somewhere is around your waist or on your thighs. Snacks are fine when you are aware of how much you’re eating in order to balance it with the rest of your meals for the day. Lifestyle Rule #2: Stand (And Walk) When Possible Have you heard the saying sitting is the new smoking? The idea is that a lifetime of sitting all-day-every-day is as harmful to your body as smoking. Think for a moment about how much of your day is spent sitting. You wake up and sit down for breakfast. You sit on the drive to work. You take the elevator up. You sit for most of 8 hours at work. You take the elevator down. ...

Raise your hand if you love a “how am I doing?” quiz. (I know I love them!) I’ve got a little fitness & health self-audit for you today to help keep you on track with your healthy habits. This can be a good self-check to see if you need to double down on your healthy habits after the past few months. How to take this quiz:  Think about your past week, then answer the questions based on your actions (vs. your intentions!), and keep track of your “score” as you go. Over the past 7 days, how many days did you: 1.  Work out for 20+ minutes 1 - 0-1 days 2 - 2 days 3 - 3 days 4 - 4 days 5 - 5+ days 2. Get 7+ hours of sleep 1 - 0-1 days 2 - 2 days 3 - 3 days 4 - 4 days 5 - 5+ days 3. Drink at least 8+ glasses of water 1 - 0-1 days 2 - 2 days 3 - 3 days 4 - 4 days 5 - 5+ days 4. Eat fruit and/or veggies at every meal 1 - 0-1 days 2 - 2 days 3 - 3 days 4 - 4 days 5 - 5+ days 5. Avoid sugary, fried, and/or salty food 1 - 0-1 days 2 - 2 days 3 - 3 days 4 - 4 days 5 - 5+ days 6. Work ...

  What’s the big secret that they know about losing fat, getting lean, and looking amazing? The answer is as simple as it is difficult: Avoid Sugar. While you do your best to eat healthy, do you know how much sugar you are actually consuming everyday? The answer will surprise you. The average American consumes over 80 grams of sugar everyday, an amount that’s easily three times more than is safe and healthful. How much sugar do you eat? Write down the sugar count on everything you eat for the next few days and then find your average sugar gram intake. Now work on slashing this number. Part of the problem is that food items are often sneaky about how much sugar is really hiding within. Deceiving messages on the packaging imply that the contents are beneficial, causing us to ignore the high sugar content. In the end whatever supposed benefits being advertised are overshadowed by the negative effect of the sugar. What’s the big deal about taking in a lot of sugar? Well, you won’t achi...

  That can’t be true! How could it be? I’ve always heard you need to eat less and move more. Let me explain. In order to lose weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit. A calorie deficit doesn’t mean 0 calories… A calorie deficit means that you need to burn more calories than you consume. Here’s where most people get it wrong though. Your body needs a MINIMUM number of calories to function properly. Your heart beats. Your lungs breathe. Your organs function. Your brain thinks.   This all requires fuel (aka calories). If you eat too FEW calories, your body will regulate in order to protect itself (survive) . Your metabolism will slow down, you will burn muscle for energy, and your body will want to store more fat.  Fat is the longest, slowest burning energy source that we have. Will you lose weight this way?  Absolutely. But the goal isn’t to weigh 0 lbs… The goal is to be strong, lean, and toned. FOR LIFE! So eat the amount your body needs and get better resul...

Do you know one of the TOP reasons people have for NOT being able to commit to a regular fitness routine?   It’s because they say they “don’t have enough time.” So in this email, I’m going to break down some ways you can find that time! This quote pretty much sums up why this matters: If you don’t make time for your wellness, eventually you will have to make time for your illness. Even committing to JUST 5 MINUTES can help transform your routine. Over time, after that 5 minutes takes root, it can grow to 30 minutes that you enjoy and look forward to. 10 Ways to Find Time for Your Fitness Get up first thing in the morning and go for a walk or do a cardio session. Take a walk or do a workout during your lunch break. Do strength exercises while watching TV at night (planks, bridges, squats, etc.). Turn household chores into a cardio session by turning up the music and moving fast enough to get your heart rate up. Turn your date nights into “fun” nights – go skating, hit the batting ca...

Mondays matter more than any other day of the week. This is because your actions on Monday set the tone for your entire week. Start out on the wrong foot and it could take days to get back on track. Mondays are like mornings. If you win your mornings, you're usually going to win your day.   Starting out with a healthy, balanced breakfast that avoids sugar and is full of fiber and protein gets you primed to eat healthy again at lunch, and again at dinner. Likewise, when you exercise on Monday, you're going to set yourself up to have an active and fit week. When you show up prepared and rested on a Monday, the rest of the week flows with successes and wins.   Fact: When you get that Monday workout in, you're 4 times more likely to get in a Tuesday workout... and that Tuesday workout leads to getting workouts in the rest of the week. On the flip side, when you don't show up on a Monday with your A-game then you're left chasing the rest of the week and playing a game of...

  The thing holding you back is something that you have complete control over:   it’s the intensity with which you exercise. Intensity is something that’s difficult for the outside observer to measure but is felt within your body as you go through the motions of an exercise. It’s how hard you push yourself to go as heavy and as quickly as possible. It’s picking up a weight that feels hard to handle. It’s putting a boost behind each stride as you run. It’s resisting the urge to simply go through the motions. It’s outdoing your efforts from last time. Now I understand the urge to put out token effort in your workout, going through the motions while cutting corners along the way. We all have days when the weights feel extra heavy and our energy stores feel depleted, and those days will naturally be less intense. However, when low intensity workouts are your norm, you simply won’t ever achieve the results that you’re hoping for. And this is something that you completely control. S...

  Want to know the #1 roadblock that’s stopping people from reaching their goals? This is based on my years of experience, but there’s plenty of science to back it up. The #1 thing – not mindset-related – that stops people from reaching their fitness & health goals is … drumroll … Eating ultra-processed foods. By that I mean: frozen or prepared meals, instant noodles, and soups baked goods, (pizza, cake, cookies, packaged bread, etc.) processed cheese products, ice cream, candy breakfast cereals chips, crackers, and other packaged snacks processed meats (sausages, fish fingers, chicken nuggets, processed ham) sodas & other sugary drinks   If you have serious fitness goals, these foods are NOT your friends (even if they fit your macros). Not only do these food products contain less fiber, vitamins, and minerals than whole (unprocessed) foods … But they also contain unhealthy added sugars, fats, and salt. AND: they are  engineered  to make you want to eat MORE ...

  D o you remember Whac-A-Mole?    You know, the arcade game where a mole keeps popping up in unpredictable spots and it’s your job to smack it on the head? Well, that’s kind of like how stress works. Except you are the mole … and when stress gets out of control, every time you make a move, it keeps bopping YOU on the head. Not only do you feel out of control, but it can also make you feel too tired or distracted to get in a solid workout. Even worse, it can derail your workouts entirely (which sucks, because working out is a great stress reliever). This is why it’s SO IMPORTANT to have a plan to manage stress before it manages you.  I came across this list of 6 different kinds of stress a while ago and thought it was eye-opening.    Since most of us deal with more than one kind of stress at a time, you can see how it really adds up! Physical stress:  bad night of sleep, being sick, hungry, or injured Mental stress:  rough day at work, too many de...

  Are you still looking forward to the day that you’ll be lean and fit? Do you tell yourself that you’ll start living healthy tomorrow? Or next week? After you’ve had just one more pizza dinner and one more lazy day on the couch… Then you’ll commit yourself to eating healthy and exercising daily, right? It’s time to realize that this way of thinking is a sneaky little trap. One that has fooled all of us at some point. You see, when you put off healthy living to some designated day in the future, you’re putting the responsibility of action on your future self. Tricky, since your future self doesn’t even exist yet. Only you , in the present moment, are capable of making action happen. Being fit and lean is the result of thousands of healthy choices – all made in the present moment. So give your future (fictional) self a break and start making real, tangible progress towards your goal – right now, in this moment. Begin right now by calling or emailing today to get starte...