Health and Fitness Foundations

When I first launched 40+ Fitness Podcast, I posted an episode each Monday for the first ten weeks that was a lesson that touched on each of the health and fitness foundations in my Forever Fitness Personal Training Program.  These are the principles I share with my clients to help keep them progressing and meeting their health and fitness goals.

Commitment

I start with commitment because without it, you'll never see success.  Willpower fails, motivation wains and resolutions are dropped.  When you know your “why” and a vision of what health and fitness looks like for you, you can put these together to make a vow.  This vow paired with self-love makes all the difference.  If you really want it, go past making a decision and commit.

Sugar

We get fat because of sugar.  The average American eats 150lbs of sugar per year.  Sugar raises your insulin, which is the core hormone for fat gain.  The only way to successfully lose weight is to reduce your sugar intake.   Aim for 50 grams or less per day and you're going to see great results.

Success Keys (Persistence, Progression, Patience)

Persistence is what keeps you going, Progression is what keeps the results coming.  Patience is where you're going to face this challenge over the long-term.  Applied together, these three keys are what all successful people have.

Sleep

Our body goes through some very important functions while we're asleep.  Our hormone cycle is driven by our sleep.  Memory development and muscle repair also occur during this time.  You'll want to get 7 – 9 hours per night, but focus on quality rather than quantity.

Water

The liver is responsible for dealing with toxins.  It makes its job easier by pushing the toxins into the fat.  Now that we're losing weight (aka burning fat), we're releasing these toxins and the liver is forced to deal with it.  Beyond not adding more toxins, it is important to give the liver plenty of water.

Our brain, joints and skin all use water to perform well.  If you are dehydrated you're going to look and feel worse.  Your

Plateaus

Our bodies were built to find balance.  For this reason, we will often find ourselves hitting plateaus. You can build in strategies to break through plateaus or avoid them all together.  Periodization can be effective particularly in muscular strength, muscle mass, or endurance.  Or you can look for a way to push past it.  Just don't quit.

Lab Rat

You are a unique individual.  As a result, what works for someone else may not work for you.  Don't be afraid to experiment to find the things that will work for you.  Take the time to educate yourself and then apply and tweak your programming and food.

Fitness Modalities

Recognize that there are different fitness modalities and you should consider most of them.  Focusing on one at the detriment of the others will keep you from meeting your goals or accomplishing your vision.  A few fitness modalities to consider follows:

• Muscular strength
• Muscular mass
• Mobility
• Endurance
• Balance
• Agility
• Speed

Strength

Of all the fitness modalities, the one I almost demand my clients do is strength training.  Strength is the most important factor to being healthy and fit.  Heavy lifting boosts testosterone production (libido) and helps maintain strong bones.

Lifestyle

Once you've seen success, it is important to shift from this being a project to it being a lifestyle.  If you've made good healthy habits, this becomes easy.  Avoid language like diet.  Diets are temporary and when you go back to eating the way you did before, you'll go back to what you were.  Health and fitness is a continuum.  You can always get better.

Health and fitness is a state of being, not a destination.

We are 100! Best of the past.

 

Susan’s Success Story

Susan, a Forever Fitness client, comes to the 40+ Fitness Podcast to share her success story.

Susan reflects on her decision to work on her health and fitness when she turned 43.  She started by walking during her daughter's practiced volleyball.  She progressed from that to a group class after a friend won a free boot camp program and gave it to her.  She discovered that being in a community made doing the exercise much easier.

When she began focusing on weight lifting, she noticed how seeing others working hard gave her motivation to push herself.  She joined Forever Fitness Personal Training when she was looking to accelerate her progress.  She didn't always like the recommendations but she saw the results. Having a coach motivated her to push on.

Having a thyroid issue has always made it easy for her to gain weight.  Through managing her food and exercise, she managed to lose 40 lbs.  Her doctor was very impressed.  Her blood work looks much better and her need for thyroid meds has reduced.

 

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

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

Patterns of success in weight loss

Terry has a passion for fitness and helping others succeed in weight loss. As the founder of Real Bodies Real Results, he started his career in fitness years ago. He began offering fitness coaching and tips to friends and family, who later asked for his help in losing weight. After working with clients in this area, he knew these success stories would be valuable to those starting on this path.

Enter Real Bodies Real Results, a website with a mission to tell weight loss success stories in a deeper, fuller way to inspire others and share tips to be used by those undergoing their own journey.

A few of these tips include:

It's a lifestyle

Fitness and weight loss is a journey. Hard work is key. Only make the changes you intend to live with the rest of your life. Think of this as the new way you’re going to live your life, not just a diet. Fad diets, pills, and wraps are not sustainable.

Eat less move more

There is no one size fits all solution. You may need to reduce portion size or possibly eliminate some foods entirely. You need to do what’s right for you.

Motivation comes from within

Nobody will do it for you. Desire may be motivated by others, but ultimately it must come from within. You must love yourself enough to make the commitment.

Weight loss is not linear

Don’t let it discourage you. Consider this quote from Brandon on the Real Bodies Real Results website, “Will it be hard? Maybe. Will you be discouraged? Perhaps. Will you slip up at times? Most likely. Will it be worth it? Most definitely.”

The truth is, weight loss is a mental game. The main reasons that people decide to lose weight all have emotional ties. It is this emotion that gives people the motivation to continue or stop.

Remember, success in weight loss is a slow process. Keep at it and you will see success. For more information, check out the website at http://www.realbodiesrealresults.com/ or email realbodiesrealresults@gmail.com.

 

https://40plusfitnesspodcast.com/secret-successful-fat-loss-fitness/

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

For health and fitness, sugar is the devil

So you have made the commitment to your health and fitness. Now what? We’ll need to take a look at sugar, as it can be the single most damaging thing for your health and fitness. Is sugar really that bad? The short answer yes, though we do need some level of glucose in our body to function properly. Unfortunately, though, we get far too much sugar in our daily diets. In short, sugar is the devil.

Excess sugar intake can manifest itself in various ways, such as the onset of diabetes, tooth decay, and an increase of inflammation within our bodies. In addition, and according to a study, consuming 17-21% of our calories from added sugar increases the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease:
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/HealthyEating/Nutrition/Added-Sugars-Add-to-Your-Risk-of-Dying-from-Heart-Disease_UCM_460319_Article.jsp#.V7I3pfkrJdi

Keep in mind, when we talk about “added sugars” we are referring to those sugars that are added to foods and beverages during processing and preparation. It is important to read food labels, as sugar can be disguised as:

• agave syrup
• beet sugar
• cane juice
• cane syrup
• high fructose
• corn syrup
• honey
• lactose
• malt
• dextrose
• galactose
• glucos2
• sucrose
• rice syrup
• fructose
• and others..

Keeping a food log will help you track the amount of sugar consumed. Eating whole foods will provide some level of sugar, but will also provide fiber and nutrients. And while sugar is the devil, monitoring and even lowering your sugar intake will help you to look and feel a lot better.

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