“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”

Since May of 2010, endurance running has been my focus. Iceland 1/2 Marathon (Aug 2010), Urbanathlon (Oct 2010), Cary 1/2 Marathon (Mar 2011), Soldier Field 10 (May 2011), and Batavia 1/2 Marathon on Aug 28 2011. Each race has seen me improve my time, taking 15 mins off my 1/2 marathon time, &  I’ve even gotten confident enough with my running to join a local track team – which I LOVE!

But it’s been a long time focusing on the same thing. I’d run 4 days a week, and tried to lift 3 days a week, but as I got more into track workouts (which almost kill you every week) & more focused on my long runs, I simply couldn’t make that 3rd day of lifting happen. It was for the best anyways since the 3rd day really wouldn’t be that effective since I was sore from the ‘in-season’ running stuff.

Off-season? Lifting 3 days a week is extremely beneficial for making performance & strength gains, and for kicking up fat loss (a recent meta-analysis found that people who did a 3x/wk strength training program lost more fat than those who strength trained 1x/wk). But in-season for cardio-based sports, 2x/wk strength training is more appropriate so the body can be strong for the key cardio workouts.

My body & my brain were both saying, ‘it’s time for a change.’ Besides, I’m not much for 5K’s and that’s about all there is come fall/winter in Chicagoland. So what would I like to do now? Get stronger. Change my physique. Get more flexible. Be able to do more powerful things. 

You can only be so strong & powerful when you’re an endurance athlete. You could school a non-endurance athlete at number of reps performed, or time under tension, but in terms of actual strength – an endurance athlete will not win that game. It’s not their goal! They shouldn’t be the strongest they possibly can be because then it would be impossible for them to be as good at endurance. They are two different energy systems and require different approaches for training (both cardio & strength training).

While I’ll always be an endurance athlete at heart, even the best endurance athletes should cycle their training so they improve different aspects of their performance. There was a great quote on Twitter today…very timely:

You're not really serious about sport performance until you start training to improve your limiters.—
Joe Friel (@jfriel) September 13, 2011

Absolutely. You can’t always train what your good at, or always train the same thing. That’s not how fitness & performance works – you’ve got to cycle through various performance goals in order to become a better athlete & more fit. For a runner like myself, off-season is a great time to focus on strength, mobility, & power. When trained properly, those gains made in the off-season will set the framework for even more gains when it comes time to improve endurance again for the running season.

For instance: I’m going to grow my muscles to be stronger. In doing so, I’ll increase my glycogen stores within my muscles. These are little storage sites within the muscle that hold glycogen, a form of energy released during workouts. The more glycogen you can store, the more you are benefited during a run since you’ll have more stored energy than someone who doesn’t have big glycogen stores. This also means that I would need to take in LESS calories on my run than an athlete without big glycogen stores – an important factor for every runner whose ever had to suck down multiple gels on a run!

So here’s what I’m going to be doing for the next 8 weeks at least – I’ll re-evaluate at 8 weeks & see where I need to head next. And yep, I’m still eating Paleo & making it work for me!

Lift heavy things: 4x/ week….Following a true strength program doing Olympic lifts, pullups, pushups & other heavy-lifting exercises

- I’ve never done O-lifts so this is an awesome challenge in and of itself! Week 1, I fitness tested myself & I was NOT good at some key elements of strength. Hello limiters!….I could kick anyone’s a** at # of TRX Suspended Lunges done without stopping, but being able to deadlift my bodyweight? Hardly. And that is really cool to see because what I’d trained for, I was good at, and what I’m going to be training for, there’s a lot of room for growth in!

- From this I will gain: increased % of muscle tissue & the strength of the tissue, increased glycogen stores within the muscles, increased metabolic rate & my physique should change as I develop muscles that are currently not as developed

- Track workout: 1x/wk….4-5 miles of whatever the coach prescribes

- This is the time when I can simply follow directions and do the work. I don’t have to design the program, I don’t have to be the motivator (although I do try to stay positive throughout the workout…no one’s holding a gun to my head telling me to run so why not stay positive about it!) To really stretch yourself, it will eventually get VERY uncomfortable & working out with my track team allows me to focus on my work, on keeping up with the faster people & the camaraderie is extremely helpful when all you need is someone giving you a shot of encouragement as you bust your butt.

- From this I will (continue gaining): increased muscle fiber strength, increased aerobic capacity (work ability), increased muscle mitochondria (the main energy production center in muscle), increased insulin sensitivity, & increased natural growth hormone production

- Long run: 1x/wk….6-1o miles through Oct 15th when I run the Urbanathlon, which is 9.75 miles of running + obstacle courses

- This will help ensure I maintain some level of endurance so I can complete the Urbanathlon. In addition, the low, slow cardio work hits a different energy system than the lifting & sprinting does.

- Gymnastics moves: 2x/wk @ end of strength workout….yep, gymnastics – no vault or beam, but we have bars, rings & mats in the gym

- I lovedlovedloved gymnastics as a child. And NO ONE offers adult gymnastics classes – hello? any gymnastics training center owners out there I’m talking to you! – & gymnastics moves are an awesome ‘skill’ that is completely different from your typical fitness routine. There’s a segment of the fitness pro population doing gymnastics & I’m excited to be adding it into my program too!

- I’ll be working on:
Rings skills – L holds, muscle-ups (that one will be down the road tho!), dips.
Floor skills – back bends, back walkovers, handstand variations, forward & backward rolls.
Bars skills – kipping, kipping pullups & whatever other fun things I can do.

So, there you have it. This is what I’m going to be doing to make sure I grow my limiters, get better as an athlete & get some things out my body that I have never gotten before! Make fitness fun folks, you’ve only got 1 body – you may as well do what you can with it!

It’s called the ”Central Governor Model” and it plays a fairly important role in how you perceive the difficulty of your exercise. What it says is that while there are definite physiological cues that can limit exercise (think lactate build-up) there is another factor at play that YOU are in control of- your perception!

Here’s the details on the Central Governor Model – exercise performance is controlled centrally, by the brain. It says that (read this slowly) the rising perception of discomfort produced by exhausting exercise progressively reduces the conscious desire to over-ride this control mechanism, which, if it (the Governor) were to be reduced, would lead to the recruitment of more motor units.

Think about that – the more you THINK that your level of exercise is hard – the less recruitment of ability you will have. Woah.

This model implies that there are subconscious decisions that are being made by your brain based on how you consciously perceive what you are doing – whatever pace you want to keep will be determined by conscious data you’re taking in – think “this is too fast/heavy” your brain will reply with reduced output ability to match your perception.

When the Central Governor Model has been put to the test, it has been found that runners who see their pace and think the pace may be too fast for what they can do, their body responded by slowing down based on the perception they felt of “this is too fast.” But think about this with lifting a heavy weight for a certain amount of time, or for doing x amount of jumping jacks – you perceive it as “too heavy” or “too many” and your body responds with “yep, too many/too heavy, slow down.”

At its essence the central governor model holds that the brain continually monitors all of the body’s systems and uses the data to calculate the maximum rate at which exercise can be performed while preserving and protecting the body from irreparable harm or death. This is very different from traditional models of exercise fatigue – that say lactate build-up (for example) are what cause the ultimate slow-down or failure of the exercise, so as to avoid a total physiological implosion.

Total physiological implosion is rare, so no real need to worry about that, but breakdown before true physical limit is far too common. Consider – you may be the one causing your own breakdown.

A super triathlete & coach I work with wrote a great article this week reminding all of us to feel the signals our body is sending us, instead of always relying on a heart rate monitor, rep count or set time to tell us what’s happening. I took her advice today for my treadmill hill run designed by the wonderful Jen Harrison, and while I did wear my monitor, I vowed to only look at the data after the workout was over.

I covered up the treadmill speed/pace display with thick paper & just pushed up and down arrows to match my goal for each segment of the workout. When I felt like I was getting too high in the zone I was designated to work in, I slowed down a bit. When I was in a recovery phase, and I felt recovered, I pushed the up arrow to speed up and hold a higher but still comfortable pace. And check it out – post workout, I had the BEST data I’ve had to-date on a hill workout day!! I also had the BEST mental awareness at the end of the run – I even ran long  because I was in the sweet spot of “this feels right” and didn’t want to end it! I’m not fast, I won’t pretend to be, especially not on hills – but if I can string together more workouts like this one, I’ll have put in more time with a positive physiological and mental result – and in the middle of competition, that’s all I need!

So go see about overriding your Central Governor just enough to get you farther along in your exercise. Pay attention to feel instead of just rep counts or pace. Realize that your self-determined end-point of ability is probably nowhere near your true physical end-point and adjust your mental focus accordingly.

I finally completed my 12 week program of base-building for heart rate…which is a necessary evil of proper program design. Base-building is done by training the lower heart rates of your “Zones” so that you become a more fuel-efficient machine i.e. you burn more fat & your HR stays lower for longer. I hate this time of year. I love this time of year, it’s awesome. No really, it’s awesome – especially because I see the results on my frame…bodyfat starts falling off where it did not during the season…my HR stays lower for longer meaning I can go longer using fat as fuel…my run form improves because I’m actually thinking about & practicing the coaching I’ve gotten on running form.

I just hate being slow. And I’m slow compared to what I’d like to be.

But! There was success in the 12 week base-building program! (which I did from my most recent metabolic testing profile & programming) My average HR is lower. My 1st 2 miles are at a lower HR than last year. I have less bodyfat. I look much more comfortable as a runner & I am more efficient in my economy.

But I’m slow & tire quickly. Because I haven’t run more than an hour in 10 weeks. So give me 60 mins and I’m golden! 60 + 5mins? Eh.

Going fast is fun. Going hard is fun. Going fast AND hard – oh my, so fun! But doing that forever gets you A) injured B) overtrained C)stuck. If you do the same thing forever, your body adapts & goes on auto-pilot. You’ve heard it with strength training – change it up so your body is always guessing. Same goes for cardio – there needs to be an ebb and flow to the year so you’re not always drilling yourself into the ground.

So I’m not fast yet. It bothers me. And I’ve got to run with fast women next Sat. I may just need to give myself the pep talk that I would give my male clients when I worked at the big gym…”get over your ego, it doesn’t matter if their weights (speed) are bigger (faster) than yours…you’re here for you, just keep focused on your end goal, and forget about them.” I’ll be saying this over to myself next Sat at 7am as we hit the trails!

Second, if you’re looking at that age-based chart, and you’re 39 – the chart assumes that you and Lance Armstrong burn fat at the same HR, since he’s also 39. Anyone want to try biking up the French Alps to tell me if you’re the same fat-burning fitness level as Lance? Didn’t think so. So don’t go off age-based charts to know if you’re burning fat.

There are also equations using numbers like 220-age to determine the best HR zone to exercise in. But why is there a “Best Zone” at all? Isn’t just getting your HR up good enough? Sure – walking around the block is better than sitting on your butt. But it’s not going to make your heart stronger, and it’s not going to burn bodyfat, or increase your endurance, or your speed. In reality, there are better HR zones - zones where you burn fat as a primary fuel source, and also HR zones where you will burn no fat at all as a fuel source. So while there truly isn’t 1 “best HR zone” – there ARE multiple different zones that, when utilized, create faster results and better performance.

I became certified as a Metabolic Technician – which means I can test a person’s Resting Metabolic Rate & their Exercise Metabolic Rate. Yep, you’ve got 2 metabolic rates, not just the one you think of when you think of calories in/out. And when I determine what yours are, I can train your metabolism to burn more fat during a workout, burn more fat while at rest, burn energy efficiently during a workout so you get faster/have better endurance, and teach you how to eat to have energy, lose weight & getting lean.

So when we got certified, Drew tested me so I’d have my metabolic rates, and I’ve committed to following my Metabolic program for 10 weeks to achieve my fitness goals. (In the past, I would get tested, but then would keep training the way I wanted i.e. fast & hard because that was fun & I didn’t realize the value I’d get from actually getting uncomfortable with my training so I could improve to become faster, stronger, leaner - just call me young and dumb back then - sigh)

 And in doing so, I never really saw my body start using more fat for energy. But now? Check this out – it’s a screen grab from my personal e-newleaf website where I can view/print/log my workouts & see exactly how I’m doing with my fitness goals!

Look at the pie chart on the right. In this workout, I saw that I burned 59% of my total calories from fat stores. My pie chart used to look like this. See that little sliver? That’s how much fat I used to burn – which one do you think will bring better results?

Learning to burn lots of fat during a workout does a few things:
1) get lean because you burn off excess fat
2) increase endurance so you can go longer with less stress or perceived effort
3) increase speed or power or recovery rate, depending on how you train your zones

So how do you burn fat effectively?  Make sure you do not follow any equation that assumes your age and gender are ideal markers for fitness. Check this out: In Health Magazine this month, they showcase a new equation to find out what a “womens’ best HR zone” is.

They say to “take your age x 0.88, then subtract that number from 206. Stay within 65-85% of that ‘peak HR’ to get the best results.” I did the equation on myself & here’s why this equation is a load of garbage: This equation puts my ‘peak HR’ at 180 – if they mean peak is like your max HR, this is off by more than 20 beats as I know my HR can reach 203 in extreme conditions. They then say to stay between 65-85% of that number, which puts my ‘best zone’ at 117-153.

Take a look at the actual chart from my Metabolic Test & notice that my zone 1, which is a warm up zone, doesn’t even begin until 153, the very top number of where the equation thinks I should workout! If I worked out within the HRs given from the equation in Health Mag, I’d never get into any kind of fitness shape. For me, Zone 2 is where I’ll burn lots of fat, Zone 3 is where I’ll push my threshold up & Zone 4 is used mostly for power training. Each persons’ HR Zones will be different, and the benefits in each zone will vary slightly based on the person’s fitness level as well. But if I just went off an equation, I’d be mistakenly exercising at way too low of an intensity for quality & timely results.

So the 1st thing for you to do is avoid following equations to determine your best HR zones for exercise. Then, the best thing you can do is get your Metabolic Profile done - if you live in the Chicagoland area, or are venturing here for a day, I can profile you & help you get set up with your training- visit the “Contact Me” page to request info. If Metabolic Testing isn’t in your near future, then the next best thing you need to do is get a Heart Rate Monitor so you can begin understanding exactly where your HR is during your current workouts. Taking this steps brings attention & focus to just how hard (or easy) you are exercising, and if that’s making a measurable difference in your fitness. If you’re not seeing measurable body fat losses in 8 weeks, or seeing measurable gains in endurance or speed in the same time frame, you’re not using your HR to its most effective end.

Your heart is your most personal & important piece of biofeedback information you can get. Use it to its’ fullest potential & get all the results you’re capable of!

So you ever go to workout but then hate it because you’re just. so. sore. from it? Like you almost felt better before working out than during or after. That’s not me, but I have tons of clients who say this, and today I’d like to tell you part of why this happens, along with why those of you who just feel stiff & old way sooner than you should feel that way, and what you can all do to make sure that you move better, feel better, and function better moving forward.

Here’s what’s going on inside all our bodies – we’ve got muscles all laying up against one another. Wrapped around all of it is tissue that is like plastic wrap, called fascia. When that fascia is functioning properly, it slides smoothly so that the muscles it’s encasing also slide smoothly. When that fascia is not taken care of, it gets sticky like honey that is dried to the table, and wah-la, Youv’e got fuzz. And it really does look like fuzz!

But it’s microscopic, so how can I say I’m able to see your fuzz? I can see your fuzz when you move with stiff movements, when you have aches & pains in your muscles, and sometimes even when you talk about your joint pain. The reason? Because when you have fuzz, your muscles cannot slide & move the way they are meant to – which means you don’t move with ease as you’re supposed to, you force your joints to grind and grate in a way they are not supposed to, and your muscles give you more pain as they are pulled and tugged by you but are surrounded by fascia that doesn’t move as well.

And the crazy thing is that this fuzz begins forming after just one nights’ sleep, so imagine just how fuzzy the body is of someone who has been sedentary for years, or who works a job where they sit hours and hours on end? Yeah, like Big Bear fuzzy – not good! So if this fuzz begins forming overnight when our muscles squish together while we lay in bed, how are we supposed to ever get ahead on the fuzz game?

Good news! It’s so simple! MOVE!! That’s the easiest thing you can do to remove the fuzz from your fascia. And this does not mean walking into Starbucks for your double skim latte vs. doing drive-through. It means moving – really moving! – every day. The standard for daily physical movement is 30 minutes, but if you need to change your body composition, that number bumps up to 60 minutes most days of the week.

And if you’re already working out? You need to remember this when you do that workout that makes you ‘ugh-so-sore’ and the thing that feels best to you is sitting because you just don’t know how your legs are going to lift up to get you to the gym. Staying sedentary in the days after a tough workout is going to only allow that fuzz to grow more, thus making the ‘I’m-walking-like-John-Wayne-because-I-did-bootcamp-yesterday” stick around longer because you’ve got sticky fascia & muscles!

There’s another important thing to do to get rid of the fuzz – and athletes & non-athletes like need to be doing it. Myofacsial release & stretching are KEY to seeing improvement in your fuzz level. When you stretch, you’re lengthening the muscle and moving it slightly BUT! if you’re not doing a form of massage, like myofascial release, you’re not really getting into the fuzz and getting it out. Myofascial release feels like a deep tissue massage, and works much the same way - by releasing the tender points where fascia is stuck – and it’s something you can do on yourself with a foam roller, your hand, or tools like The Stick or The Cane.

When you work at un-doing the fuzz from your fascia, your muscles are going to slide smoothly, like there’s baby oil between them. This is going to allow your joints to move better & avoid unnecessary deterioration, as well as allows you have to have a better workout through a body that can stretch, bend, twist, pull, push & squat just as you ask it to during that killer workout you’re planning to do tonight. So before you dive headfirst into your workout, give yourself a de-fuzz…your body will thank you for it!

Enter coach Mom. Teaching you to say please & thank you. And here comes Coach Dad. Teaching you to pull it together & toughen up when you skin your knee on the sidewalk. I’ve been a coach for 8 years now, serving as everything from personal trainer, fitness programmer, nutrition educator, personal motivator, sport program designer, adventure trip fitness trainer, and all the other things a personal trainer becomes for their clients. I’ve never had a personal coach for myself before – team coach for some sport, sure- but not one focusing on me & me only…and I’ve always wondered what my clients thought about having a personal coach in their life.

Now I know. And I can tell you, I’ve always known that having a personal coach makes a huge difference in the quality & result of your program, but I can tell you today that it is CRI-TI-CAL to work with a coach when trying to get better at some part of your life that you’re not the expert at. Why do I know now? Because today, for the first time ever, I had a coach train me on something fitness related – running. Running…you’d think, “that’s fairly simple, why do you need a coach? Left foot, right foot, etc.” Phsssth – please! There’s a ton that goes into running if you want to be good at it! And I do! Which is why I spent this afternoon feeling like my brain had been toggled in the salad spinner a few too many times after a training session with an elite triathlete & coach, Jen Harrison.

As some of you know, I’m training for a 1/2 Marathon in Iceland at the end of the summer. That’s right – Iceland. Woo! But I’ve been out of the middle distance scene for a year so thinking of a 13.1 mile run is well, scary. Not “can-I-do-this-scary” because there’s no question I could finish, but “I’d-like-to-actually-finish-well-and-I’m-pretty-sure-I-don’t-know-how-to do-that-scary.” And lucky enough, I train Jen, who’s a monster triathlete & beyond good at all things swimming, biking, and running (and mothering, business owning, and overall being cool). She’s a Tri coach for tons of athletes, but she’ coming to me because I do TRX Performance training, and I do it well. You see?? Regardless of how awesome you are at something, there’s going to be something that you’re not the expert at, and then you should go an expert & get their advice, guidance & coaching so you can be even better at all the things you’d like to be even awesome-er at.

So today, we ran. For less than an hour. And I burned more calories than I normally do in that same workout time block, was WAY more exhausted than I normally am after a sub 1 hour workout (the office rowing machine contest didn’t help that), and thought about more things in 1 hour for myself than I’d thought about since first learning to swing a golf club (and not look like an idiot while doing it).

Jen saw right away things that I couldn’t pick up on my own. The stuff that made my running style feel like an amateur runner, not someone with speed, skill or expertise. After a few warm-ups up & down a parking lot of an office complex where office workers were staring at the two crazy girls working out on lunch as they went on their way to Jimmie Johns’ for their lunch. One warm up included me running with my arms crossed over my chest like I was going to do sit-ups. Office workers, meet nutjob runner who’s grabbing her chest & running as ridiculously as you’re picturing a person running with their arms strapped to their chest – ya, it felt as idiotic as it looked.

Then we went for a run to put together the things that Jen wanted me to work on – swinging my arms more - watch out, arm swinging coming through! And breathing – you know how you’ve always breathed Kate? Let’s go the opposite of that from here on out when you’re running. Umm. Sure. Now I get it when clients just don’t “get it” when I tell them to tuck their butt without curving their back – totally unnatural because you’ve never done it! That’s what a good coach does! Makes you do things you’ve never thought about doing before so that you can better on the other side for it.

So, arm swinging in full force, backward (to me) breathing puffing away, we set out on our little journey. From about minute 2, I wasn’t interested in talking much since my mind was working on overdrive, which was in turn pushing my heart rate way higher than normal. Jen was chatting away as she was practically able to walk at my pace (remember, elite triathlete means on her worst day she still runs a few minutes per mile faster than my best day). But it was great to have someone reminding me of what to do & to yell at the car that nearly ran our feet over as we approached the curb to cross a driveway.

And by the last 1/4 of the run, I had to cut into Jen’s wonderful nonstop stream of consciousness to let her know that my shoulders were ON FIRE from all the big arm swinging that was happening on this run. I’m not kidding, my arms – they wanted to fall off. Not my legs, they felt great, my arms felt like they had been doing lateral raises for an hour straight. To which I got a chipper, “Great! You’re doing it right then!” Ah, yes, a trainer getting a taste of her own medicine. Love it!

After we pulled in for the end of our run, Jen wanted to teach me some drills to do to help my running get stronger, and thus, faster. Even after stopping running, and only doing about 50 yards of each drill, my heart rate was still racing from the new workload on my body. A workload only someone looking in from the outside could provide. Everything I did today, I could not have done on my own. I needed the assistance of someone who’d been there, done that, learned all about it, decided that they would become the expert at it.

If you own a business, you probably hire consultants who are good at social media, advertising or something of the sort, right? And you do that because while you’re awesome at running your business, you’re not as awesome at a field that would help your business. Or, you don’t have time to learn everything about the field that will help your business, so why not hire someone who DOES make the time for it because it’s their passion?

So why would you treat something that does require some level of skill -i.e. your fitness- any different? Admit that it’s not as simple as calories in/calories out or we’d all be thin & trim. Admit that there’s a level of fitness that you don’t know how to achieve or you’d have done it already. Right? So after this girl’s 1st coaching session, I’d like to re-confirm to you that working with a personal coach makes all the difference in the world. And it will be well worth your time & money if you follow what they tell you to do. Work with a coach to learn what’s right for you, and you’ll be the smarter one in the room when you’re back in your field of expertise.

Yes, we found a sushi bar in Mexico & yes, it was good.

No this does not totally describe me right now. Not totally. Too many margaritas? Yes. But I like to workout, vacation or not, and I just can’t eat crazy things like many people would do on vacay due to the Gluten-Free thing & because I just wouldn’t eat until I was stuffed…ever.

But coming back from vacation where workout schedules, nutritional profiles, and vitamin/supplement routines were anything BUT routine – this is my chance to share with you exactly how to get your body back to “optimal” after it’s been bombarded by alcohol, extra calories, too little water, and only a few workouts to balance all the laying on the beach.

Does this only work after you come back from vacation & are ready to get on track? Nope! In here you’ll find the perfect Tips for getting back on track after any absence from ‘optimal’ i.e. when the New Year is looming quickly & you are realizing you need to get truly serious about your health, wellness & fitness.

Bouncing Back to Optimal: The Guide

1. Start sending breakdown & repair signals as soon as possible. i.e. go for a workout – cardio or weights – it doesn’t matter which.

• If your body has been sedentary for days or weeks, simply getting a renewed signal to it that says “Hey, there’s some extra workload now. We better burn off a few of these calories. While we’re at it, we better break down this old decaying stuff & start rebuilding with newer materials!” will be the catalyst you need to start boosting your metabolism again.
• What to do:
  • Go for 35-60 mins at a pace of strength training or cardio that you can do throughout, but DON’T go at the same pace the whole time. Break up the intensity like a rolling hill, rising then recovering then rising again.

2. It’s critical to re-balance your gut – failing to do so will decrease the effectiveness of any healthy food or supplement.

• Any period of time of excess – drinking, eating – not only adds lbs., it can massively affect your gut health (your stomach & intestines). Your gut is only secondary to your brain in quantity of nerves & vital functions. Mess this up & the whole kit-and-caboodle is messed up i.e. functions you’d never relate to your gut go hay-wire. 
• Commonly, in a gut that has taken on the excesses of food & drink, you’ll find an overgrowth of Candida(a yeast normally found in the gut, but when allowed to over-produce, it wreaks havoc throughout the body), an imbalanced pH, & possibly even a development of food allergies/sensitivities.
• Candida overgrowth result in a myriad of symptoms: recurrent yeast infections, oral thrush, brain fog, congestion, stomach upset, skin irritations, and more things than I can list on this page.
• pH balance regulates your entire body – get the wrong pH going in your blood, and you die. Imbalanced pH in the gut messes with the body’s functions for producing energy & water – the two things you need to survive.
• Food allergies/sensitivities can develop from an overconsuption of a certain food or food type, or from the body missing out on key vitamins & minerals to break down said food & thus the body views it as an inflammatory response & attacks, rather than befriends the food.
• What to do:
  • **Getting on a probiotic as soon as possible will help re-populate the gut with friendly flora, thus leading your gut ecology closer to a balanced atmosphere where the good flora can do their thing & keep the “bad” flora to a minimum. And as I’ve said before, Activia does not count – that’s just a sugar-filled yogurt dressed up in a savvy-marketing dress.
  • **Consider taking digestive enzymes. When taken at the start of the meal, they send the proper enzymes to the gut, who may not be making enough of their own, & help to break down the food as it comes. This is important because if you’re eating a banana, or a piece of chicken, if you want to absorb the nutrients from the banana or chicken, you need enzymes in your stomach to break them down & use them.
  • Get on your vitamin/supplement schedule ASAP so that a complete spectrum of nutrients is getting into your body & assisting every single function in your body.

3. Run to the foods that will feed your whole body, not just your craving. You got to do enough ‘craving’ in your “off-time.”

• Eating sweets, salty foods, and fatty foods WILL create an increased desire for more of those foods in the future. This is what every food producer knows & thus why most foods sold in fast-food & sit-down places are some combo of sweet, salty and/or fatty.
• Choosing certain foods will provide ample amounts of key vitamins & nutrients that will help you to balance out your body & manage down your cravings for unhealthy foods.
• What to do:
  • Eat the superheroes of nutrition - beets, kale, broccoli, spinach, salmon, blueberries/raspberries, organic pastured eggs, coconut oil, colorful vegetables like red peppers, asparagus & red onion – along with lean/clean proteins & healthy fats from olive oil, real butter, & real dairy.
  • Avoid any foods that promote inflammation (head over to the ‘nutrition’ section for articles on inflammation & food additives for more info).
  • DO NOT SEVERELY CUT CALORIES. You’ll only gain weight in the end. Eat enough to be 80% full at each meal & be sure to eat every 4 hours, at least.
• The superheroes of nutrition all help balance your pH by creating an alkaline environment in your body, as well as bring you great nutritional properties such as:
• …beets - full of K2, which sends calcium everywhere it’s supposed to go (the bones), and nowhere it’s not supposed to go (the heart), as well as play a role in supporting the adrenals & thyroid…
• …kale- rich in vitamins A,K, & C and acts as an internal detoxifier & has been shown time & again to lower the chance of getting cancer.
• …coconut oil- rich in lauric acid, found also in mothers’ milk, it helps support a healthy metabolism & acts as an anti-fungal, anti-viral, anti-microbial…can’t think of a better way to boost immunity than this!
• …real butter & dairy - NOT “I Can’t Believe it’s not whatever” & not not-from-nature-pink yogurt – the real deal foods are where you’ll find the healthy properties of high protein (yogurt), lauric acid & easily absorbable vitamin A to assist in adrenal function (butter), even more probiotics to boost gut health (yogurt), lecithin- which assists in cholesterol metabolism & Activator X-which helps in mineral breakdown/use in the body (butter).

4. ASAP make a date with your Blackberry/iPhone/PDA to set dates to sweat almost every day of your life, till death do you part.

• I can’t stress it enough people, your body needs regular, repeated signals of exertion to trigger the flood of rebuilding chemicals in your body & to slow the decay chemicals. Every species on the planet is here today because they evolved through actions or non-actions; had we been lazy a million years ago, and not taken action in life to hunt, gather, and run from killer animals, we’d probably not look like the humans we see today. If the rate of overweight & obese people in this world continues to rise, humans a thousand years from now will either cease to exist or will exist as something new- fat, slothenly walruses types.
• I’m proud of you if you start by taking a walk around the block, but remember, you must work hard enough to break a sweat. It doesn’t have to be a buckets of sweat workout, but enough to perspire & feel like you’re working. It’s called a WORKout for a reason. If it were called a RESTout, it would be easy. It’s a workout folks, make it hard. If you don’t know how, search this site for workouts in the Tip of the Week section, the fitness section, and/or contact me directly for personal coaching.

Start on these things immediately & you will begin to feel a change in your body in 24 to 48 hours – IF you get your mindset right. If you do this kicking & screaming the whole way, then don’t even do it because you won’t feel any different except to feel deprived. But! If you want to feel great, look great, and live an optimal well life – then I say, welcome back! Let’s get this baby going!

**While writing this week’s tip, it hit me how much more I have to say on this topic. Keep checking back for follow-up Guides, or possibly even an e-book, depending on just how much I really do have to say on just these 4 Tips (and I can already think of a bunch of other things to off-shoot to you from here) so I hope you’ll stay connected to Fit For Real Life as we finish out 2009 & swing into 2010!

So here’s a workout for those of you not getting out to shuffle your stuffing in a 5K & for everyone who would rather avoid the ridiculousness that will be your gym’s parking lot. You can do this workout at home, with minimal equipment…if others are around, tell them you’re unreachable for the next bit of time, and if they want to see the light of Thanksgiving meal, they will give you your peace until that you finish said workout. Or, if it’s family members you know won’t laugh at you, but would actually sweat it out with you, invite them to join you for your workout!

One last thing about family before we get to the workout; you may be sitting around talking to family today. If you’ve been following my blog or just the Tip of the Week, and you’ve been helped by something I’ve taught you, please share my site as a resource for any family who is struggling with, or working toward, better fitness, health, & wellness. I appreciate all of you who’ve done that already, and would simply encourage those of you sitting across from a cousin or uncle or parent who is moving away from or sitting static on the road to optimal wellness, that you bring up the topic with them…in fact, you can remain totally neutral by bringing up how you go to this site to get health & fitness news & tips & they should check it out too. Then you can leave the “alright-sister-let’s-have-a-talk-about-that-2nd-piece-of-pie-&-you’re-optimal-wellness” conversation to me! You never know whose life will be changed or saved by a conversation you have with them & a direction you point them in. Today is someone’s lucky day!

Now! Onto the workout! Happy Thanksgiving, many blessings to you all. I count you in my blessings, thank you!

- Warm up: If you want to add weight anymore, go for it! Do your best to keep going the whole time!

- Standing knee to chest pull: 60 sec (lift one knee to chest pulling with arms around knee)

- Jog in place: 60 sec

- Standing straight leg toe touch: 60 sec (kick leg straight out, knee straight!, touch toe)

- Jog in place: 60 sec

- Forward lunges: 60 sec

- Plank hold: 60 sec

- Workout: All time is 45 sec unless noted otherwise!

- Pushups

- V-Ups

- Squats w/ hands straight in front of body

- 1 Leg Balance Reach (stand on 1 leg, bend @ waist, reach arms forward, and leg back, return to standing w/o putting leg down) Do 45 sec on L & 45 sec on R.

- Jump Rope

- Repeat this series than rest 90 sec or less if you feel recovered quicker.

- Cobras (lay face down, keep feet on ground, raise upper body, arms, & hands off ground turning thumbs up & out away from body)

- Plank Climbers (either on toes or knees; start in plank form, put 1 hand on floor under shoulder, push up on that arm & take other hand to ground- you should look like you’re doing a pushup now- place 1 elbow back on ground, then other- you should be in plank form again; keep repeating, leading with both arms, keeping hips steady throughout)

- Reverse Lunge w/ arms straight out at sides (step back & down into a lunge, as if you’re genuflecting); beginner = alt. legs for time, int./adv = all 1 leg, then all other leg 45 sec each

- Straight Arm Plank, Knee to Elbow (pushup position, bring one knee in to touch that sides’ elbow, repeat on other side, alternating)

- Jumping Jacks

- Repeat this series than rest 90 sec

- Cardio Blast finisher: all done for 60 sec: - jog in place, -side to side shuffles, -jog in place,                    -burpees/squat thrusts or power jacks (if you don’t know how to do a burpee/squat thrust, now is not the time to start- power jacks: same as a jumping jack but arms go from chest straight up to ceiling then back to chest)

**If you do not have a heart rate monitor and/or have not done metabolic testing to determine your fat-burning zones, you can use a version of ‘perceived-exertion’ until you get the proper tools. You can estimate if you’re burning fat by how your breathing is while trying to say a sentence. If you say, “the older I get the more I like to eat chocolate cake,” and take a breath mid-way, you are possibly on the high-end of your fat-burning ability. If you can’t say the sentence at all or can say it with ease, you’re going too hard or too easy. Remember though, talk-testing & perceived exertion is not very scientific at all, which means it’s not very precise & so your results from using such methods will be not very precise as well. Use it if you need to but know that heart rate monitors are key to long-term success in your fitness & health goals.

Here’s why a workout such as this is important – when you find out the heart rate you’re supposed to workout at, many people find it hard to stay at that heart rate for the duration. Namely, because of the fact that your body is not conditioned to maintain a certain workload and a certain heart rate to match it. Over time, the heart rate will start creeping up despite the workload (speed, intensity, incline) being the same. This happens because the body is fatiguing it’s “efficiency ability” and so the same amount of work takes a little more out of the cardiovascular system…IF you are untrained. But check it out, if you train accordingly i.e. use this workout as part of your program, this won’t happen to you nearly as significantly as it does to the rest of the population.

I used this workout to help me get faster while maintaining a lower heart rate. This means I can burn more calories, more fat, and in less time than before. It will help you do the same, as well as help you build your overall endurance to maintain your fat-burning abilities for a longer duration workout. You won’t get as out of breath, you won’t feel as worked as early on, and you’ll find you may actually enjoy spending 40+ mins on a treadmill!

Here’s your workout:

• Set your treadmill at 1% incline or your bike at a low resistance. Never flat on a treadmill & never a zero resistance – you need to always have some kind of resistance.
•  Warm up for 3 mins, walking. *This lets your body know it’s time to be a fat-burning machine.
• Spend 2 mins working at your most efficient fat-burning zone. *If you’ve done metabolic testing, this would be your zone 2. You may still be walking to achieve this, but you may also go to a jog/run.
• Recover for 1-2 min depending on your fitness level.
• Work for 2:30 at your zone 2, most efficient level.
• Recover for 1- 1:30 depending on your fitness level.
• Work for 3 mins at zone 2.
• Recover for 1:30.
• Work for 3:30.
• Recover for 1.
• Work for 4.
• Recover for 1-2.
• Work for 4.
• Recover for 1-1:30.
• work for 3:30.
• Recover for 1.
• Work for 3.
• Recover for 1.
• Work for 2.
• Cool down for 2-3 mins and finish with stretching. 40-45 mins of cardiovascular fat-burning, done!

doesn't everyone workout without a shirt on?

If you’re going to take the time to workout, you may as well do right, you know? Otherwise, talk about wasting time! All that work, and nothing or very little to show for it. And who wants to do something & get nothing out of it? Not me!, and not you I hope! If you know a little about how to train properly, you’ll get a lot farther with this whole workout thing.

Did you know that your body burns more fat at some heart rates and little to no fat at other heart rates? You burn calories from three different storage units – fat cells, glycogen/glucose (sugars in your blood stream & liver), and muscle. Depending on the heart rate you’re exercising at, determines where you’ll burn calories from. Work out at a super high intensity all of the time?…and you’ll miss key fat-burning opportunities & will burn mainly sugars. Work out too low in intensity & you’ll also miss the chance to burn lots of fat calories per minute.

The most important tool you can possibly have to help you know if you’re “in the zone” to burn fat during your workouts is a heart rate monitor. I wouldn’t even wait to ask for one for Christmas – think of all the holiday meals you’ll be stuck carrying around in your fat cells if you aren’t optimally burning fat during your workouts. I’d go get one right now, they are reasonably priced for a basic one & quite nifty for what the higher-end ones can do. We’re talking about those high-end ones that do everything except tell you when to go to the bathroom, although that may not be far off.

Some people go off of “perceived exertion” to determine if they are working hard enough, but just like when people are tracked during a food journaling study – they overestimate how much they move, and they underestimate how much they eat. The chance is pretty great that you’ll over- or under- estimate just how hard you’re actually working. So do yourself a favor & get a heart rate monitor.

With a monitor you’ll be able to see what heart rate you’re currently at, and from there the features on the watches are endless. You can choose to see how many calories total you’re burning, how far you’re going, how long you’ve been in one zone or another, you can have alarms that go off when you’ve gone too fast or too slow, and you can choose watches that store data in them for review or that let you download the data to your computer. Then, once you’ve got your watch, no matter what you’re doing – walking, jogging, cycling, kickboxing, playing a sport, swimming, doing housework – doing anything at all, you’ll be able to see that you’re burning fat stores & working as efficiently as possible.

Because you don’t like to waste your time & you want to actually see a result from your workout. Working out with a heart rate monitor will help you to see if it’s times to push a little harder or if you need to recover & back off a bit. Your body will learn to become efficient at burning fat at many different heart rates & your overall calorie count and fat calorie count will go up, and you’ll see results quicker. And you’ll be on your way to being a fat-burning machine.

Part 2 of this post will include a workout to improve your fat-burning abilities.