“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!

Like a cold, death-like fog settling in on small, quiet town the talk comes….”You’re 30/40/50 now, your metabolism really drops off with age, it gets really tough to keep the weight off.” And you’re scared to death because you see the impending doom of this statement coming at you like a freight train. You think, “it must be true! - look at the older people around me, they really do have a hard time keeping weight off! I’m so screwed.”

Here’s the deal gang. Listen up. At the core of weight loss or weight maintenance, you have to maintain an equation: create a caloric deficit to see weight loss/don’t eat more calories than you can burn off to avoid weight gain. There is way more to it that gets really specific, but suffice it to say that without the caloric deficit part, you’re not going to get far with weight management.

But your metabolism is not as flighty as you’ve been led to believe. You lose 2% of your metabolic rate (the amount of cals you need to do basic life function i.e. how many calories you should eat) each decade. So from age 20 to age 70, you only have a 10% reduction in caloric needs. Considering nothing yet about your workout level, this means that if your metabolic rate at age 20 was 1700 cals, when you’re 70, you still need 1530 cals. NOT the huge drop off the cliff you were imagining gang.

The real reason people tend to gain weight with seemingly greater ease as they age is because they don’t exercise enough, and they get comfortable eating more than their metabolic rate requires.

And then they do themselves no favors by trying bunches of weight loss plans that keep the caloric intake at 1200 calories, despite having no clue how many cals you actually need. The problem with this is by cutting your caloric intake to 1200, or some number close to that, if that number of cals you intake is LESS than what your body actually needs to survive, you will trigger a response from your body that says, “hm, we’re not getting enough cals to even do our life functions…we better slow everything down & hang on to the fat we have since we know then we’ll have energy to survive since we aren’t getting it from food.”

So with a 1-2 punch, you just successfully slowed down your metabolic rate even more, making it tougher to lose weight, & you trained your body to hang on to fat as a survival mechanism.

Not what you were going for?

Here’s what you need to do. Decide NOW – no matter your age – that you’re going to take your metabolism into your own hands. That’s what’s amazing, you really can do this! I just completed my certification as a New Leaf Metabolic Testing Specialist – a high tech assessment we can give to a person to assess their actual resting & exercise metabolic rate. Its measured through the exchange of gases as you breathe & was originally used in hospitals for things like measuring how many cals someone in a coma needed to be fed. Now it has been adapted to help everyone trying to embrace health & fitness & we can do these assessments in Barone Performance, the wellness facility where I’m a part of the team.

To me, it seems like common sense, but I know that all of your minds have been infiltrated with wrong beliefs thanks to food, diet pill & exercise equipment producers who want you to believe that their single product is your ticket to metabolic success. So here’s the key things you need to do to help your metabolism along!

(Part of what we learned at our training was how to use exercise & food intake to increase your metabolic rate so you burn more calories & have an easier & more successful time with losing weight. In addition, we learned how to help someone become a better fat burner – because just because you’re burning calories, it doesn’t mean you’re burning fat. We’ll cover this in more detail in next week’s tip, “It’s all about your metabolism – Part 2″.)

Here’s what you should do right now since you just decided that NOW is the time you take control of your metabolism & get out from under the diets & “get-slim-quick” ideas that have done you no favors:

1) Move enough to break a sweat most days of the week. Most as in 6, not 4x/wk. Seriously, if you’re sitting down for the better portion of your day, you’re not burning very many calories. My job as a trainer is considered “light active office” in terms of caloric burn. So don’t over-sell yourself on how many calories you’re burning as you make your way through your day. Making sure you move enough to sweat will ensure you send signals to your body to tap into its’ stores of fat. It’s as simple as you can make the exercise equation – although with specificity comes greater results, and we will get more into that next time.

2) Lift heavy things in a dynamic way. Unless you’re going for the “Ahhnold” muscle-head look, doing traditional seated strength training makes little sense, either for your body’s functional ability or for your metabolism. You DO need more muscle in order to have a higher metabolism. But you will achieve a greater caloric burn during & after the workout if you ask multiple muscles to work at once, as in the “1-Leg Squat to Press” exercise. Here’s a good rule of thumb: Support your own weight for your whole workout! No sitting! Stand, squat, hold your self up by your hands & toes a la pushup position. If you’re sitting, you’re simply mimicking what you already do all day – stand as much as possible – or be on your hands & toes in pushup position

3) Eat regularly – at least every 4 hours – definitely within 2 hours of your workout & absolutely within 1 hour of completing your workout. Think working out on an empty stomach is a good idea? Think of it as a guaranteed way to ‘bonk’ early in the workout – you don’t have to eat a lumberjack slam pre-workout (or ever!) – but a piece of fruit & a few slices of deli turkey will ensure you have a steady level of blood sugar so you can release energy for all those pushups & planks you want to do! And post-workout is KEY!! You have 1 hour to get nutrients into your body post workout, protein to help you re-build your muscles, carbs to replenish your blood sugar, and a little fat to help with absorption. Skip this & you’re skipping a critical part of getting results from that workout!

There’s a whole intricate dance that goes into aging healthfully, but do yourself a favor & get these basic steps down right so you don’t become just 1 of many who let excess weight limit their life.

Next time we’re getting more dialled in to how exercise & nutrition relate to your metabolism!

People who lose limbs are able to adapt their bodies to walk without legs or use what’s left of an arm as a type of hand. People who lose a kidney can adapt to function without one. And people who lose focus on their health & wellness are able to turn their bodies into things that look & function nothing like they were designed by God to, and yet, onward they go – although with much greater health risks.

I was originally thinking of this tip because I’m increasingly shocked by how a persons’ body will adapt to excessive weight, chemical ingestion from garbage-y processed foods, and laziness toward exercise. And to me, it’s truly shocking because I think to myself, “man, that body was NOT intended to function that way” and the body figures out a way to do it, for a while. But the more I thought about it, I chose to take a different approach. Yes, our bodies can handle serious alterations to their desired function (take a heroin addict who is actually worse off health-wise without the heroin than with!) but that alteration will directly impact the quality & longevity of a persons’ life. And if our highly evolved body can deteriorate and still function, what if you took the other things about being highly evolved and used them to go in the opposite direction? Toward optimal health & well-being!

Kind of a “How to make evolution work for you in 2 simple steps” deal:

1. Suffering forces you to do 1 of 2 things, change or breakdown…either you grow or you flame out, but when you suffer, one thing is for sure, you won’t stay the same. Suffering is an experience, and one that you should aim to grow from. Pushing your muscles (safely!) to new levels of burning in a workout? The muscle most certainly grows, and your mental will power grows along with it. You are now equipped to handle greater intensities of workout that will net you a bigger return on your exercise investment. Eat junk-y foods after a long hiatus from them & feel sick to your stomach after? You’ll either change the behavior and learn that it wasn’t worth it, and felt gross, so you’re not doing that  again, or you’ll repeat the cycle & breakdown every goal you’ve met to this point.

2.Evolution includes lots of adapting to grow stronger. ”This is how my family’s always been”, or “I’ve never been one to ____fill in the blank of the healthy habit you’re avoiding.” Based on research science, the species of monkey, fish, plant, etc. that survived are the ones that adapted to the environment. Are you a lemming willing to follow any comfortable ideal that has permeated your family or friends for a generation or two? Or are you willing to adapt yourself so that you are the strong one that survives? I was just struck by the thought of my mother (and probably every other mother saying at some point), “If everybody else jumped off a bridge would you do that too?” Man that was annoying…but true!

When you do something outside of whatever your ‘norm’ is, you create a ripple in yourself & others that is going to have an effect. It’s easy to be just like everyone else (8 out of 10 are overweight or obese) – it’s the real deal when you stop outside of that & use your ability to adapt to a new environment to become something more.

We’ve got incredibly complex bodies given to us. So…

What are you doing to make yourself grow more healthy & fit?

Are you suffering in order to grow at all right now? *Suffering could be getting up at 5am to get the workout in, using all your focus to avoid the 3pm candy bar, or working right through your internal voice telling you tomorrow would be a better day to get off the couch.

Will you grow & evolve into something stronger, more vital, more optimal or risk being the species that’s just like all the others that doesn’t evolve long-term to pass along strong healthy genes? It’s never too late to change your genes! Seriously. Get on it gang. You can do it.

“Can you be healthy at any size?”…that’s what Women’s Health magazine asked recently…as they outlined the recent 21st century trend of “fat acceptance”. And the writers of the Women’s Health article did what we do way too much in the world today – find the farthest extremes and jump on them. A former 95lb model is quoted talking about how much she hated life eating only veggies & coffee to maintain her model-figure. Well duh.

The “fat acceptance movement” is a group of people pushing for the acceptance of overweight & obese people in society. And any group that ‘s for the acceptance of others is a kick-ass group in my book (unless you’re for the acceptance of Nazis or something …then you’re just strange). However, there’s a real problem with telling people it’s OK to be something that has such clear health risks associated with it. Would you tell a pregnant woman it’s ok to chain smoke while boozing her day away? There’s equally as obvious health risks with both situations.

If you are overweight or obese, you will cost yourself & others lots of money – the latest figures put the cost of being overweight/obese in America at an extra $147 billion with a B per year. That’s INSANE! If you choose to remain at an unhealthy weight and fitness level, you will predispose yourself for health risks & diseases you’d otherwise have a very low likelihood of developing.

And with weight being the main measuring tool, this is where the argument for fat acceptance gets messy – a big part of the movement encourages us to stop using BMI as a measuring tool of health – and they are dead on correct! BMI is a less than reliable indicator of overall health & fitness since a person who has lots of muscle & low body fat may weigh on the scale heavier than someone who has less muscle & more body fat. BMI is measured by taking the ratio of weight to height. But another almost as large part of the movement wants fat acceptance to be about letting someone eat with reckless abandon, sit down for the vast majority of their life, and trash their body however they feel like it. Not ok.

We can accept any person who has good human qualities regardless of their size, but no one has to accept unhealthy fat that could very well kill that person with all those good human qualities. And if we accept it, it says that we don’t mind that the fat may win out in the battle for a long, happy, healthy life.

No one should feel expected to be a twig or a bulging muscle man – but somewhere in between those two ends are a whole lot of fit, healthy people carrying around the right amount of weight & body fat. And they got there by making the right choices for their body every single day. And if they chose to make a less than optimal choice, the next choice they made was right back on track and then some!

Make the right choices every day and your body will show you just how much fat and weight you need. It will give you energy you need. It will boost your mood. It will digest how it’s meant to. It will clear its skin to be fresh & bright. All you have to do is make a good choice for your body.

Eat breakfast. Every day. Not from McDonald’s. Cut the crap & eat more vegetables. Learn how much a serving of meat is & stick to that size. For God’s sake, save yourself a dime (and your waistline) & learn to cook. Learn to channel your emotions through activity, not food or couch potatoing. Suck it up and go sweat. It won’t kill you. Not doing it? That may kill you.

So can you be healthy at any size? And the truth is, when it comes to comparing people of a healthy body fat % to those with a high % of body fat, the answer is a flat NO. But if you do the right things for your body on a consistent basis, you can be healthy at the size your body was made to be – whether it be lean, muscular, athletic, trim – your body is smart, it will figure out where it needs to be when you send it the right signals.

We’ve been finishing a huge new project at the Performance Center that is going to change a lot about how we interact with all of you in the community. I’m totally pumped about it and can’t wait to share this new project with you, which I’ll be doing very soon, but suffice it to say that I’ve worked more hours in the last few weeks than I care to count.

I’m not going to give you my sob story, but suffice it to say that these have been grueling days of work that started very early, didn’t end until very late, and included many moments of “ah, my body would really like to just keep laying on the floor with my client while I show them their stretches.” All of which could create the perfect storm of The Stress Feels Like a Workout So Why Workout At All-Itis.

And not once did I consider not working out. Because not working out = early death in MANY studies that have been done & thanks but my boss and I would both like me to be around for a long time to come. And it just feels bleh to skip exercise once you’re on the bandwagon. Not on the bandwagon yet? Read on!

Despite health recommendations that all adults complete a minimum of 30 mins of fairly vigorous physical activity most days of the week, 62% of adults over age 18 lead completely sedentary lifestyles. That’s shocking if you think about it – it means only a small percentage of Americans are out seeing the world, using their amazing bodies to get around, see things, and do the stuff that creates memories. That’s a lot of memory-making that’s going un-done by Americans!! In addition, that’s a WHOLE LOT of Americans who are getting lethargic, sick & weak from their choice to skip getting physical in their day.

You learned last week that sitting around builds fuzz in your tissues that makes movement tough & pain levels rise. And there’s a million scientifically backed studies showing you that if you don’t move, bad things happen to you – and yet many still sit. And sit. And sit. At the end of the day, you’ve got to just make the decision to be a Nike shirt & ‘just do it.’ But here’s a few more things you can do to get yourself in the habit of moving regularly – your butt will thank you.

1. One of my faves: the Daily 100 – pick one movement, exercise or stretch & do 100 of them throughout your day; maybe its 10 bent over toe touch stretches each hour, or 25 pushups on your desk before you sit down spaced throughout the day. If you do this every day, you’ll make a big jump in your activity level.

2. Don’t allow yourself to sit down on the couch until you’ve done 15 mins of something moderately intense – like yard work, rough-housing with the kids, heavy duty housework that requires bending, twisting, lifting, etc.

3. Take yourself to the park (kids/grandkids or not) and swing on the swings, climb the jungle gym steps, do assisted pull ups on the kiddie monkey bars (your feet will still touch the ground, so use your legs to help yourself pull your chin up near the bar.) Think you’ll look like an idiot? You’re forgetting that the majority of adults are totally sedentary so either they won’t even be at the park to see you, or they will be there sitting on benches getting envious and/or inspired watching you climb around!

These 3 things are simple to do and just take a moment of ignoring your inner “I’m too tired” voice to get your feet moving toward those recommendations for daily physical activity. Try them asap & start reaping the benefits of an active life today!

For real, movement during the day is good for your heart & muscles, good for your boss (more productivity out of you little worker bees), & good for your brain. It simply takes someone taking a stand & going against tradition to bring movement into the day – and often – you hard workers tend to chain yourself to your desks in the spirit of a long, hard, honest days work.

I work with a group of office workers whose head honcho decided a few years ago with his team to bring me to their offices to conduct a 1 hour workout session, 2 times per week, on the lunch hour. It started with them asking if we could make it a light stretching/resistance training program so they wouldn’t get too sweaty & has evolved into the perfect combo of challenging resistance & cardio work with lighter core & stretching – and yes – they sweat. And they like it because for being a little tired & looking a little worn out (in a good way!) they net a benefit in their work productivity & in their health. Win win!

“But Kate, I don’t even take a lunch to be able to workout!” Do you remember the time before email & blackberries? Work got done when it got done. If you don’t take a lunch & aren’t working out or doing some kind of movement during your day (walking to the coffee maker does not count!), you’re guaranteeing yourself a rap sheet of health issues coming your way. Prioritize your day, work efficiently, and commit yourself to moving now so you’re not unable to move later.

If you can’t get a workout in during your day, no worries! Even simple movements are good – check out what Naperville High School did! (Thanks to my office workout group for alerting me to this story!)

Naperville decided to experiment on their kids to see what would happen if movement really was a priority in their day – not just an afterthought gym class that included walking around a track with your friends for the hour, ignoring the whistle-blowing gym teacher. Every kid started the day with gym class where they did square dancing, functional fitness, cardio, and many other kinds of movement. Then, teachers kept balls & tools in their rooms that would help them give their kids a “brain break” during the class. Simple things like stability ball movements and power yoga stretches done for a few minutes in between classwork helped the students to re-focus & accomplish their work successfully.

The result? Reading scores up almost twice as much & math scores up by a factor of 20. That’s no small potatoes!! Consider how movement & exercise affects the brain – it gets neurons firing so that material coming in is held on to better, ability to focus increases, essentially,the body & brain are being sharpened like a knife when movement is worked into the day.

Here’s your challenge to incorporate movement into your day:

- Get a pedometer & find out if you’re achieving 10,000 steps per day. That’s the average for healthier individuals.

-Every two hours (every 1 hour would be better, but some of you are deep thinkers so you’d throw me out if I told you to do this every 1 hour) get up & do 25 repetitions of something *pushups, *yoga stretches *stability ball squats against the wall *plank holds, etc. Make it your goal to get 100 reps of that movement within your work day. Pick a different move tomorrow & do it 100 reps that day, and so on.

- Work efficiently so that you can push back at the lunch hour & go exercise or go for a walk. If you’re going for a simple walk, intersperse it with lunges, pushups against a wall or park bench.

- Sit on a Stability Ball at work (for at least part of the day, you may have to build up to the full day) – when your mind starts wandering, instead of clicking over to TMZ to see what the papparazzi caught Lindsay Lohan doing, roll down onto your back & do 1 minute of crunches – one makes your mind sharper, the other most assuredly, does not.

- Send this to your boss highlighting the section about significantly improved reading & math scores, with a note asking if he’d like your math skills to be better the next time you bill out time to your clients….‘yep, it was 43.72 minutes so technically, we can call that an hours worth of billable work’

(thanks ajc.com for image)

Want 'em? Go get 'em. Active rest is one good training tool.

 you sit & wait for the time to pass (how much time was supposed to pass again? 30 seconds? 60? when Oprah goes to commercial?) then do another set of machine leg press before you walk over to the dumbbells to do standing bicep curls followed by another Oprah rest period before the next set is the worst way to spend your time in the gym.

You do know that right?

So since you know that, you’re probably going to the gym to do….what? Just what are you doing at the gym these days? One thing you may not be doing that you really should work into your next program at the gym is the Active Rest Workout. If you Google ‘active rest’ you get a bunch of articles about taking a rest day during your workout week but still doing something movement based, like a stretching class or a low intensity bike ride. That’s good, but it’s not what we’re talking about here.

Active rest workouts are really easy to do, and make a measurable difference in your fitness level, abilities & results. Active rest is a ‘rest’ period after a set of “The Exercise”  but this rest period is not a chance to stand around & watch Oprah or even to stretch the muscles you just worked. A solid active rest is a rest period where you do a less dynamic, more controlled/focused, and probably slower exercise. It may not be an “easier” exercise, but it may look like that. The reason is you won’t need heavy weights, powerful/fast movements, or a high heart rate for the exercise to be effective.

A good example of an active rest would be doing Kettlebell woodchops as your ‘exercise’ followed by a single-leg bodyweight deadlift as the ‘active rest’. The exercise incorporates big muscle groups, gets the heart pumping & should fatigue you by the last rep. The active rest movement is still an exercise but here uses only bodyweight & a movement that focuses on more stability & control of the body via the core & smaller muscles.

The end result is you can do TONS more in a workout than you would with a typical workout and thus get more out of it because you are training your body to do more work without needing an all-out-do-nothing rest period. This means your muscles will have better endurance, you burn more calories & you burn more fat – thus giving yourself a boost in the Results Department. And! It’s not boring! So that’s a bonus! There is really no chance for you to sit & think, “Man, this is boring,” because you won’t have a minute to think about anything except what exercise is coming next.

So what exercises make good ‘active rest’ exercises?  Single-leg stabilization exercises like the single-leg squat, core exercises like the plank hold, light boxing with a reaction bag, light bodyweight cardio like ice-skaters. Again, all of these exercises are not requiring major stress on the cardiovascular system or are major muscle movements. Unlike a circuit training workout where you may do several strenuous, big-muscle exercises in a row, using active rest allows you to still focus your energy to the primary goal of the real exercise (like the woodchop that requires all your attention to accomplish) but still get benefits by making good use of your rest period.

So next time you go workout, pepper in some ‘active rest period’ & see what it does for you! Remember, the ‘exercise’ is the big muscle, big heart pumping, HARD exercise. The ‘active rest’ movement is the one that focuses your attention to your core, stabilizer muscles, smaller muscles, or balance & that lets your heart rate not go through the roof while doing it. And don’t forget, there’s no time to watch Oprah when doing a workout that includes active rest!

I don’t wear lipstick, and rarely wear colored gloss. To all you women who regularly do, I salute you. But I do work out. I like working out. 97% of the time, I want to go workout & workout hard. The other 3% of the time I’m either fighting something off, beyond sore because I didn’t stretch enough, or overly tired from not finding 8 hours to sleep a night. But I know others don’t always feel quite the same way. Just like I don’t feel like wearing lipstick to go run errands.

But I tell you, every time I see a lipstick commercial, it hits a part of my brain that says, “ooh, I think I might need to get that,” even though, again, I do not wear lipstick. The shimmery lips, the clear pictures of just how moisturized my lips will be, it’s all so enticing, and on more than one occasion in the past, I’ve gone out & bought said lipstick in the thought that “this time, this time!, it will be exactly what I need to complete my beauty routine!”

Working out needs the lipstick marketing team to create an ad campaign hit on those same “need to” parts of a persons’ brain. Should there need to be a commercial motivating someone to go workout? No- it should come from an internal drive to better oneself, but we can all agree that works only so-so for anyone trying to make fitness a part of their life. But, I’m telling you, if the lipstick marketing people made commercials for exercise like they do for lipstick, every person would be venturing off their couch to go after that workout & to see if they really will get all the beautifully pictured benefits of the workout, as displayed by that amazing marketing team.

The only difference would be that while it’s a hit or miss if the lipstick brand and color will ‘complete me & my beauty routine’, it’s a guarantee that once exercising has commenced, the exerciser really will benefit from the effort. So while most women have an abundance of lipsticks long-forgotten in their make-up drawer, commercial promises not fulfilled…exercise will begin to fulfill promises from the very first workout, and will continue to build from there. It just may take a good lipstick marketing team to get a few of you off the couch.

Nobody ever regrets it. So…yeah, that’s true….when it comes to fitness/wellness stuff. “Darn, I wish I hadn’t eaten that salmon & roasted veggies- I really regret it. Now I’m going to have leaner, stronger muscles. Bummer!”…nope, pretty sure no one says that. Now, when it comes to not healthy/fitness-y stuff…you can almost always regret the decision if its taking you further from your goal, further from who you intend to be as a person, and further from health/closer to death. Going to an early grave due to cigarette smoking, processed food eating, or lack of movement in daily life – yeah, you can definitely regret that.

(Booming bravado voice) “I don’t regret the way I lived my life, even though I’ve now died from a preventable heart attack at 40.” Yeah, nope, doesn’t work as a true statement. At least not for those who want to have a purpose in life. That’s why it makes me laugh when those contestants on Biggest Loser or whatever life-makeover show happens to be on & they’re on tape saying, “It’s hard to go to the gym when you’re kid is saying, ‘dad please play trucks with me instead,’ how can I leave my kid for an hour or two a day to go exercise?”

First of all, your kid, your spouse, your friend, your mother-in-law….none of them would appreciate you dying early from something totally preventable by exercising regularly. So don’t be an ass & do that to them.

Second of all, your kid is just that. Their cognitive reasoning isn’t highly developed yet. It’s your job to teach them about what you go to the gym for, & why you serve healthy dinners for the family. If your kid can say the above statement to you, then you haven’t done that yet. It doesn’t matter their age, scale it down appropriately, and they’ll get it. Kids are just kids, but kids are smart.

Third, you’ll still find time to play trucks with your kid, or have dinner with your friends, or hang out with your spouse, or whatever it is that you’re worried you’ll no longer have time for if you were making time for regular, strenuous workouts. Seriously. Athletes find time to do a ton of stuff in their day. Because they’ve figured it out - that if you schedule & compartmentalize your time, and view it as a “requirement” of your day rather than a “maybe,” you get a ton done. Your workout should not be a waste of time, if it is, you won’t want to do it. So you’ve decided to go workout – you better do something that’s going to have an effect. Don’t know what to do? That’s a different story & you can get started on learning good workouts by heading here to get pre-made workouts to do in your home or in the gym. They are mixed in with the other tips of the week, so as you go looking for workouts, you’ll find helpful tips on other parts of living a healthy life!

Did you know that a new report on health came out & the startling statement was this, *40 is the new 35*. Oprah was famous for always celebrating whatever decade age she was turning & saying it was “the new 40,” meaning that 40 used to be so old, but now, women who are 40 aren’t old – they’re hip, fun women – who  certainly act younger than their mothers did at 40. Well, this is the unfortunate opposite of such a statement. It’s not an honor to have the life or body of a 40 year old when you’re only 35.

The majority of our country now has gotten so unhealthy that they have the health & body of a 40 year old, 5 years before they actually turn 40! You guys!! Come on!! What is it going to take for you to not send yourself to an early grave via a sickly life? The top three killers of Americans today (Heart Disease, Cancer, & the Medical System-are you confused by the 3rd one? Hang on.) are PREVENTABLE. Preventable!! Here’s what does a lot to prevent these killers: 1) exercise – cardio, resistance training & stretching  2) eat high-quality healthy foods; how often are you doing these things? 

Ok, to back track about that 3rd killer in the top three: it’s true. Between botched surgeries or hospital stays, misdiagnosis, & pharmaceutical drugs - the Medical System is the # 3 leading killer of Americans. Read this to learn more. Doctors can help you in life-threatening situations, to be sure. But – we have been trained to take pills for everything under the sun – not good!- to consider an angiogram something that’s almost a ‘routine’ part of growing older – no way!- and to just expect “aging” to happen in the form of breakdown & disrepair – not true! I’ve said it before & I’ll say it again…you must be your own advocate & you should consider doing considerable research about any drugs, treatments, and procedures doctors want to do to you. If those things are your only option left, then you go for it. But, more than likely, there are going to be lifestyle changes you can make that will make a huge impact on the quality of your health. If you’re not doing those, then your skipping a valuable & more natural step in treating your health.

So take a look at your level of health & fitness. If you continue on the path you’re on, will you regret it when you get to the end of your life? Will you wish you’d had less sickness or more energy? Will you wish you’d been around for your grandkids or great grandkids? What you won’t do is regret the sweat, burning muscles & the active fitness level that come from working out regularly. You won’t regret the happiness that comes from having a body that works for you.

Nobody ever regrets it.

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!