golf

Gaining weight

Gaining weight

7 Sneaky Reasons You’re Gaining Weight

Are you plagued with unwanted pounds, despite your best efforts to eat healthy and get fit? You’re not alone. Millions of others across the globe, just like you, are struggling to shed weight in an uphill battle.

Here are 7 Sneaky Reasons You’re Gaining Weight…some of these might surprise you.

Sneaky Weight Gain #1: Sucking on Cigarettes. You may think it’s common knowledge that smoking helps you stay thin. However, you may be surprised that this is actually a common misperception. Recent research has shown that contrary to the long-believed lie that smoking keeps you thin, it actually leads to weight gain. This happens by interrupting your body’s metabolic function and causing it to be insulin-resistant. Interestingly, the same is true for those exposed to second-hand smoke.

Sneaky Weight Gain #2: Working Nights. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and for some, this measure is working the graveyard shift. While it may provide a boost to your pay (third-shift workers often get paid more than others), it wreaks havoc on your body. From messing up your sleep cycles to putting you in a position that requires less movement to eating more out of boredom, working through the night is full of weight-gaining risks.

Sneaky Weight Gain #3: Having Too Many Choices. If you’ve ever eaten at a buffet, you know what happens. There are so many options you don’t know what to pick. So you get a little bit of everything. Putting yourself in a position to be surrounded by food—even if there are plenty of healthy options—can be very dangerous. Even if you go with healthy options, it’s easy to eat too much of a good thing. When the options overwhelm you, stick to your guns: a small portion of lean meat and appropriate portions of a couple fruits and vegetables.

Sneaky Weight Gain #4: Overestimating Your Routine’s Intensity. Yes, you’re sweating up a storm when you make your way to the locker room for a shower. And your wobbly legs are the result of the squats and running you just combined in a single workout. But don’t use your routine as an excuse to eat everything in your path. To maintain a healthy weight or lose weight, you can’t eat more calories than you burned. Still feeling hungry after eating? You may not need to eat more. You may need to eat smarter.

Sneaky Weight Gain #5: Chilling On Your Backside. Everyone needs downtime. But if you’re not careful, you can wind up spending too much time on your rump. Between workouts, take a look at your daily routine. Do you work an office job? Does family time center around watching television shows together or playing board games? It may be time to make a change. No, don’t quit your job. But walk down the hall to talk to the person you’re about to email. And when family time comes around, use movie night to go on a scavenger hunt around the neighborhood.

Sneaky Weight Gain #6: Beefing Up Your Snacks. To stay healthy, you’ll need to eat something between meals. Otherwise, it’s very easy to overeat and put on extra pounds. However, you’ll need to watch what you eat for a snack. It’s easy to make a snack that is as large as a meal. But remember the purpose of your snack: to eat a little something before your next meal. It is not to fill yourself, but to knock the edge off your hunger. Keep your snacking light by drinking plenty of water.

Gaining weight

Sneaky Weight Gain #7: Chasing Beer with Food. You go out to eat and there are no tables ready. So you grab a beer and hang out, waiting for an opening. Unfortunately, you just made a belly-busting boo-boo. Because research has proven that drinking beer before you eat will result in you eating more than you would have otherwise. On top of eating more calories for dinner, that beer you guzzle is full of calories, which means before you even take the first bite of your food, you’ve already sucked down quite a few calories.

One of your best defenses against unwanted pounds is to participate in a consistent, challenging exercise routine. That’s what I do for my clients to keep them filled with energy and in fantastic shape. And that’s what I’d love to do for you.

Give me a call, or shoot me an email, and let’s get started on getting you into the best shape of your life.

www.placentiapersonaltraining.com




The truth about 10 min workouts


The truth about 10 min workouts


The latest trends in fitness are leaning toward the ‘shorter is better’ philosophy…but do dramatically shortened workouts really get the job done?

No one can deny that the days of spending hours running, biking or doing any other number of slow, cardio-based exercise sessions (Jazzercise anyone?) are long gone. We simply don’t have the time, and have come to realize that these long, drawn out workout sessions don’t give us the best return on our time investment.

But how much of this desire for short, efficient workouts stems from shortened attention spans or just plain laziness? Is there true science behind the claims that 10 minute workouts deliver results?

In fact, there is a slew of new research that points to the true benefits of short, intense bursts of exercise.

This is great news for all of us with hectic schedules, especially during these crazy holiday months. Short, intense workouts are manageable and even enjoyable.

Here are the top 3 reasons that 10-minute workouts are worth your time…

#1. It Burns Fat
Multiple studies have proven the effectiveness of both Tabata and HIIT exercise sessions. These techniques take short bursts of activity and create a heart-pounding workout in 10 minutes or less. The key to making these workouts as effective as possible is to crank up your intensity to the max.

#2. It Makes You Happy
We all know that exercise releases endorphins, which makes us feel oh-so-good in the aftermath of a great workout. But don’t fret if you only have 10 minutes to exercise, studies have shown that an intense 10-minute burst of exercise is enough to get those feel-good juices flowing.

#3. It Protects Your Heart
According to researchers in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, people who get just 7 minutes of intense exercise each day are 45 percent less likely to die from heart disease. It’s also worth noting that people who maintained their exercise routine for six years or longer saw the greatest benefit.

the truth about 10 min workouts

I hope that I’ve convinced you of the value of an intense, 10-minute workout. In this busy holiday season it’s so crucial to our health and physiques that we make time to exercise – even if it’s just 10 minutes.

Call or email me today to get started on a fat loss program that that will make all of your fat loss dreams come true in the New Year. Make 2015 your best year yet!

The truth about 10 min workouts

www.placentiapersonaltraining.com


Lean eating rules

9 New Rules of Lean Eating

Lean eating rules:

You’d like your eating plan to work for you – to get you the results that you want without lots of complicated steps. The good news is that lean eating does not mean complicated eating…it just means eating smart.

Read on for the NEW rules of lean eating that will make fat loss second nature. And don’t worry, lean eating can still be very delicious. In fact, you’ll find many of your new, lean meals to be better in flavor and more satisfying than your old, fattening eats.

1. Eat the RIGHT Type of Carbs
There is a hierarchy for which carbs have a place in a lean diet and which carbs will only fatten you up. The success of your eating plan rests squarely on which of these carbs you regularly include in your diet.

  1. Green Vegetables
  2. Non-Green Vegetables
  3. Fruit
  4. Whole Grains and Starches
  5. Refined Grains
  6. Foods with Added Sugar

The top 3 ranked carbs are where 90% of the carbs in your diet should be coming from…in order to get that lean physique that you want. Immediately cut out the bottom 2 (refined grains and foods with added sugar) and on occasion include a limited amount of Whole Grains and Starches.

2. Track What You Eat
The only way to improve upon your diet is to actually know what you’re currently eating. Keep a food journal, or download a free food tracker app, and input all of the calories that you consume over the course of a week. This will give you a broad look at where your low quality calories are coming from (high sugar, empty calories).

Your first step will be to eliminate these fattening calories and to start replacing empty calories with nutrient-filled whole foods.

Lean eating rules

3. Space Meals Apart
Much has been said over the past decades about the importance of eating small frequent meals throughout the day. This is old, outdated science. New research has proven that there’s more harm than good to eating more frequently than every 4 hours.

Stick with 3 meals each day, and fill in a protein-based snack if your meals are going to be more than 4 hours apart.

4. Never Restrict Calories to the Extreme
There’s a certain allure in the idea of temporarily restricting calories to the extreme. The idea that one can drop a down a size or two in just as many weeks is quite tempting. I hate to be the one to burst your overambitious bubble, but extreme calorie restriction NEVER WORKS. It’s terrible for your body and it is not something that is sustainable (namely because you’d starve to death) so the pendulum inevitably swings in the other direction, resulting in binges.

The key to being lean for life is to eat in a way that you can sustain forever. Eat whole foods. Eat a moderate amount of the RIGHT calories. Every day, ongoing, forever.

5. Eat Veggies First
This may go against all of your instincts, but hear this one out. When you sit down to a meal first eat all of the veggies and salad, before moving on to the main dish. This simple strategy helps to fill you up with lower calorie foods first, before moving on to the higher calorie items.

By making this a habit you’ll naturally and effortlessly consume fewer calories at each meal, which will add up in a big way.

6. Include Protein at Every Meal
Each of your meals should be built around a healthy serving of protein. This protein could be meat (chicken breast, fish fillet, roasted turkey, braised beef etc) eggs, or protein powder.

Having protein as the focal point of your meal is important for two reasons: 1) You’re fueling up in a way that builds muscles rather than stores fat and 2) By default, you’re avoiding high calorie main dishes, which are what really cause most weight gain.

7. Ban Liquid Calories
Liquid calories have no place in a lean eating plan. No place at all. Anytime that you are drinking calories, it’s safe to assume that you’re adding inches to your waistline. Put down the beer, just say no to the blended coffee drink, and forget about fully loaded soda pop.

Filtered water and unsweetened tea are both wonderful alternatives to calorie-laden beverages.

8. Avoid Prepackaged Foods
Prepackaged foods and snacks have no place in a lean eating plan. These processed foods contain numerous fattening ingredients such as refined sugar, sodium, grains, fillers and other artificial ingredients.

If you are currently eating packaged foods on a daily basis, then cutting these items out will quickly translate into pounds lost.

9. Swim Upstream
As a society we are overweight. We are riddled with obesity related ailments. We are uncomfortable in our own skin. We are craving weight loss.

So…it’s safe to say that whatever you see the masses around you do, when it comes to food and exercise, you should aim to do the opposite.

See a line wrapped around that fast food joint’s drive thru? Do not enter. Instead, eat a simple meal made with vegetables and lean protein.

See all 5 people ahead of you in line at the coffee shop order a sweet drink? Do not follow suit. Instead, order an unsweetened drink.

See the movie theatre parking lot packed to the brim, and the gym parking lot empty? Skip the movie and hit the gym.

Swim upstream, be different than the masses by living in a desirable, healthy, lean body.

Lean eating rules

Call or email me today to get started on a fat loss program that really works.

www.placentiapersonaltraining.com