Progression for results

Clients John and Tammy are seeing real success in the program. They’re checking in once again and have taken another round of measurements. Both are down ½-inch across the board.

John even has shorts that don’t fit anymore. He recently got his A1C blood test done to review his blood sugar levels. In the four months since his last test, he dropped 2.1 marks. His doctor was so impressed that he feels John will be off his medication in three to six months and under 200 pounds in six months. John now has a goal to reach 180 pounds. He can see what’s possible and what he is capable of achieving. He’s setting slightly bigger goals and placing milestones along the way. He understands what is coming next in the natural progression of his health and fitness journey.

Tammy has seen a shift as well. She has noticed her mindset changing as she is building new habits around healthy eating. She is no longer looking for the quickest meal, but finding the healthier option. She knows she has a choice to make and is using her willpower to make the right choice. She can even consider planning ahead and packing a lunch. She is encouraged by the fact that her measurements went down as well. Her hip measurements went down by almost three inches!

John and Tammy are true examples of patience, perseverance, and progression. They know the weight usually comes off faster in the beginning, but are prepared to stay the course. They are truly seeing their progression and know that they can accomplish anything with the help of patience and perseverance.

Tweaking to fit

Discussions about sleep

Music used for the podcast Intro and Outro: http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

4 fitness modalities that matter

When beginning a fitness journey, people often need to lose weight and may only be focused on what the scale says. In reality, different fitness modalities need to be considered to help you achieve all of your fitness goals, which should be so much more than just weight loss.

Here are four important fitness modalities to consider:

Cardiovascular

Many people assume cardio is essential to fat loss, but it’s not always one of the most important modalities in the equation. It simply needs to be sustainable and work with your diet. Some examples include running, walking, or riding a bike. Perhaps the most effective way to get to a high level of fitness through cardiovascular exercise is by cross country skiing. As long as you’re moving and getting your heart rate up, you will see the real benefits of this fitness modality.

Balance

As you get older, you lose that brain-muscle connection and run the risk of falling. Working to improve your front, back, and side to side balance will help you in the long run.

Mobility

You want to be able to move through a full range of motion so you can continue to have the ability to do things for yourself. As you improve your mobility, you will feel more flexible and capable. Just be careful not to injure yourself.

Strength

Building muscle will keep you healthy. You will be less likely to injure yourself and have the ability to move something heavy in one direction or another. Improve strength by doing resistance exercises. Add in free weights and machines if you’d like. Challenge the muscle and then rest the muscle.

Find a good cross-training program that includes all of these important fitness modalities. Then pair it with a good diet to build and fuel your body. Soon enough, you will be in much better shape.

Message me to get our guide – The 7 Health and Fitness Measures That Matter. It will give you some guidance to know that you’re focused on the right things with your health and fitness program.

How is your mobility

Music used for the podcast Intro and Outro: http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

Nutrition is personal

The concept of personal nutrition has been kind of a hot topic in the nutrition field, bio-hackers, and health advocates alike. This study found is that individuals react to food slightly differently based on their genetic profile and their lifestyles in the past.

A 2015 study on “Personalized Nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic Responses in Cell” examined 800 individuals, 60 percent of which were female with mean age of 43. The study sought to understand the blood sugar response relative to certain foods. Another goal of the study was to come up with a predictive model to allow people to manage their blood sugar. They monitored the blood sugar of 800 people in five-minute increments. Over the period of the study, the participants were encouraged to eat different types of food. After a week of examination, another 100 people were examined through the same process. When the algorithms of both examinations were compared, the individuals were, in fact getting highly predictable blood sugar results. There was a correlation between the algorithm and participant results. The results went beyond the genetics of the study participants.

There are companies now that will evaluate your gut microbiome. But there are easier and less expensive ways for you to do something similar yourself. You can purchase a blood sugar monitor and test strips. You can test your blood sugar before you eat and again 15/20 minutes after you eat. You may even want to take another reading 90 minutes afterward. This way you can see how your blood sugar rises with that particular food. Some food items like cake, cookies and alcoholic drinks can give you a surge in blood sugar, pretty much no matter who you are. Once you know how particular foods affect you, you can modify your diet to keep your blood sugar stable. This will help you lose fat much easier.

Conduct an experiment of one and identify the food that best suits your body.

For health and fitness, sugar is the devil

Music used for the podcast Intro and Outro: http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

Be a lab rat to find health and fitness

Patty’s health choices

Patty was on a quest to change her health. But it wasn’t just weight she wanted to lose. Patty also needed to kick her smoking habit. In her 40s, Patty was morbidly obese, topping the scales at 350 pounds. She was on four different medications and was smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes each day. She knew she needed help.

Patty’s daughter saw the My Fitness Pal app and encouraged her to download it onto her phone. It sat untouched for two or three months. Truthfully, Patty was scared to begin. Once she did, she found exactly what she needed—information and support.

She started eating less and moving more. She began with walking and religiously tracked the food she ate and the exercise she did through the app. After a while, it even became easy. She has the tools at her fingertips.

In her first year, Patty lost 115 pounds simply by eating less and moving more. By her second year, she was off all of her medications. This was great, but she knew there was one more hurdle to overcome—quitting smoking.

She had been wanting to quit smoking for so long. When she first tried to run, she couldn’t breathe and her lungs hurt. She made the decision to quit and after two months of not smoking, she ran her first 5K and felt great doing it.

Her biggest tip is that even if you think you can’t be successful, you can be. You have to want it bad enough and have a strong reason as to why. For Patty, it was being able to be active with her grandchildren.

Though she did put on a little more weight after quitting cigarettes, she now knows how to take it back off and will do so. Now, Patty knows that adopting a health and fitness lifestyle is forever and she is committed to staying healthy for life. To get in touch with Patty directly, contact her through My Fitness Pal as Pattydi.

Julie gets fit

Music used for the podcast Intro and Outro: http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

Self love for health and fitness | Kim Knight

Today, we have Kim Night. Kim is a health and personal transformation coach living in Auckland, New Zealand. She shows people how to identify and resolve the absolute root cause of chronic physical pain or fatigue without medication or supplements. She also specializes in stress and anxiety with action. 99 percent of her work with clients is carried out remotely over phone, through online webinars, and online self-help programs. Her professional training and client experience are extensive.

Unable to work for over 10 years, her own recovery from CFS, anxiety and clinical depression led her to try over 160 different therapies on her journey back to health.

Kim says she dealt with a lot of people and she includes herself in that list. When she was a kid, she loved doing sports. She talks about limiting beliefs deep in the unconscious that make her feel bad. She thinks our limiting beliefs limit us from being happy or healthy. That’s why she feels it’s important to identify these limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs such as “I am unworthy” kind of destroy us. I am unworthy and I am not good enough are common limiting beliefs among many.  That’s why she believes we need to re-empower ourselves. We are designed to be happy, healthy and joyful. That is our natural state. If you have these limiting beliefs running in the subconscious, it does not matter what you say in your conscious level and will stop us every time.

Kim believes we need self-discipline and willpower to push ourselves through into good practice and do whatever makes us happy. She says we need to understand it’s about self-love and self-respect. When we do good things for ourselves like eat well or exercise, we are loving, caring and respecting ourselves.

So, when we want to achieve something or anything, we have to have self-love.

Here are relevant links:

Qigong website: www.taohealthqigong.com

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/KimKnightArtofHealth

The love diet | Dr. Connie Gutterson

Music used for the podcast Intro and Outro: http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

Tweaking to fit

In this client episode, John and Tammy evaluate their progress thus far and consider tweaking their program just a bit. They’re making progressions and improving their form, but they realize that alcohol consumption is also part of the equation. After all, alcohol calories are sugar. In the future, they will need to look at their volume and manage it against what other sugars they are consuming. Another important factor to consider is water consumption. They will want to keep drinking water to counteract the dehydrating effect with alcohol.

When evaluating their diet, John and Tammy recognize they are eating a lot of basic carbs—essentially eating a basic American diet. This will be one of the areas to tweak. They will reduce their carb intake, and once they start lifting weights, shift more to protein consumption than the carbohydrates.

Regarding their exercise plan, John is noticing his knees are more flexible and he’s having less pain at work. He’s doing push-ups, but would like to do more upper body work. Another tweak will involve starting push-ups in the standard position, not on his knees, and then dropping to his knees when he begins to struggle with his form.

Tammy mentioned she was having a bit of trouble with squats. While she is holding onto a chair to keep her balance, she will now try using the chair as part of her squat. She will adjust her positioning so that when she squats, her bottom will touch the edge of the chair, which will help take some of the pressure off her legs.

The key is to build the basic foundation and continue tweaking along the way. In the beginning stages, it will seem like progress is limited when you can only complete a small set. However, as progression grows, John and Tammy will be able to take on more reps and see a real improvement.

John and Tammy commit to health and fitness

Progression for results

Be a lab rat to find health and fitness

Want to know how you can get the best results for you? Become a lab rat to find your path to health and fitness! You can evaluate study data to see what might work best for you. Be wary of advice you see in the press or attention-grabbing headlines. Some of this is often based in fear-mongering to grab your interest. To be successful, you need to reflect about the true nature of the study. Usually, there is a test and control group to do a compare and contrast of results, from which statistically valid conclusions are drawn.

Some studies are metastudies. This is where several studies are evaluated and data is extrapolated to develop a new conclusion or bolster a prior conclusion. Look at how they were designed and pick apart why one was different than the other.

Some studies may have general assumptions. Analyze the data and think critically about the information that is presented. Some studies may include a very limited number of participants. The backbone of a good study will have a large pool of participants. Other studies may have bias or influence. In fact, some supplement companies will pay for a clinical study to be done. Be cautious of this as well.

All this being said, you have the opportunity to do experiments on yourself to be well-controlled. First, you must define your experiment. Determine how you will go about it and what your criteria will be. Do you want to lose five or 10 pounds in four weeks? Write that information down and keep track of your data. Want to try a low fat diet? Be clear on what that means to you so you can assess properly.

In the end, if you use common sense and do your research, you will be able to apply study findings to your own journey. Test something that you can sustain over time. If it works for you, systemize the program and make it a part of your daily life. Think of yourself as your own experiment—a lab rat on a journey to better health and fitness!

When what works for them doesn't work for you

Music used for the podcast Intro and Outro: http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music