New Year, New You! How to Stick to your Resolutions.

January is an interesting time of year for those of us working in the fitness industry.  Each New Year that comes, fitness professionals see a resurgence of energy and self-motivation that transpires simply from the turn of the calendar page. With it, the ability to start over, to shed ourselves of our old skins, to start afresh simply because it’s January 1^st, seems effortless. 

However, how many actually successfully stick to their New Year’s resolutions in the long term? And why do so many fail, and eventually creep back into their old patterns, be it smoking, eating poorly, or continuing to live a sedentary lifestyle?  Put simply, behavioural change, especially for adults who are very much already set in their ways, is difficult to achieve in the long term unless small, gradual steps are made.  What I often see as a fitness trainer at the turn of each New Year, are a fleet of newly motivated individuals, so eager to change their ways, and get started on their new path toward health and fitness, that they do everything all at once.  For example, if your New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, quit smoking, drink more water, exercise more regularly, and to eat more healthily, one of these changes alone could cause you unexpected disruptions to how you have become accustomed to living.  Planning for too many changes at once, can be too much for you to take on and could cause you to give up all together. Your best chance for success is to give yourself a long-term plan of attack that begins now, but includes small individual mini-goals to achieve in your own good time. Set all your desired changes as long-term, and plan to get to them by accomplishing very specific small, short term goals, such as quitting smoking alone, or by simply cutting out on fatty foods, or by committing to one set day for exercise per week.  What ever your resolution, achieve it by taking small steps towards it.  This way you do not become overwhelmed, overworked, and discouraged by shooting for everything all at once.  Work on one thing to change at a time, the one that is most important to you and your health, let your body and mind adapt slowly before you introduce another challenge.  

Behaviour is not an easy thing to change, but it is possible if you do it with patience, persistence and with a good progressive plan that follows sequential steps or mini-goals that ultimately lead toward your target goal.

Enjoy the New Year and all the motivation that it brings, but take things in stride, set your goals high, and plan to reach your goal by successively taking small baby steps toward it.

10 Fun Ways to Stay Fit Over the Holidays Without the Gym!

If you think that your only option for maintaining fitness over the holidays is a long boring hour on the treadmill, or mindlessly running through your usual sets at the gym, I challenge you to think differently.  Exercising outdoors is an invigorating way to share time with friends and family, while being fit.  Here are the top 10 fat-burning, calorie-consuming activities that anyone can do over the holidays.

10) Ice skating – Ice-skating can be an excellent exercise, not only is it good cardio, but it also works the large muscle groups of the legs, butt and core.  One hour of ice-skating can burn between 400-700 calories.

9) Tobogganing – Hauling a sled uphill, especially one carrying the load of a rosy cheeked child on it, and gliding effortlessly downhill afterward, creates the perfect rest/effort combination, like that of interval training, without you even realizing just how much you’re working. A good hour of sledding can burn 300- 550 calories.

8) Downhill Skiing – This well known winter sport tones the muscles of your hips, thighs and calves and burns 470 – 800 calories per hour.

7) Snowshoeing – An excellent outdoor cardio, allows you to explore some great untouched winter wonderlands.  Take the road less travelled and burn 420-670 calories per hour.

6) Road Hockey - This fun-spirited outdoor game is great to play during family holiday get-togethers no matter what your age or level.  A good hour of road hockey is excellent cardiovascular activity and can eat up between 400-800 calories.

5) Cross Country Skiing - The perfect full body workout!  You won’t feel a touch of the cold during this activity as cross country skiing has you burning 400-700 calories in a one hour bout.

4) Snow Ball Fights – whether organized into teams with specific battlefield rules or just random snowball tossing, a good snow ball fight will have you running, ducking and throwing hard.  Burn between 300-600 calories with this activity.

3) Snowman Making – This light-hearted activity will bring you right back to the days of your youth…and the squatting, rolling and lifting will bring your body right back there as well.  This winter pastime burns 200-300 calories.

2) Shovelling the snow – The least fun activity of the list but the most necessary.  Snow shovelling works the muscles of the upper and lower back, arms and shoulders, burning between 450 – 1230 calories depending on the size of your walkway and the heaviness of your snowfall.

1) Making Snow Angels –Clearly the most effortless and short lived exercise of the list, yet still an excellent addition to any of the above activities, as all four limbs move in unity, burning 200-250 joyful calories per hour… a smile on your face is guaranteed during this one.  

Embrace the winter this year!  Break a sweat outside.

Water…Your Key to Health and Weight Loss!

Did you know that many people live day to day in a dehydrated state? Our bodies are made up of 75% water and 25% solid matter. The average male needs to 3.7 litres of water everyday and the average female 2.5 litres of water in order to properly lubricate  joints, prevent kidney stones, to maintain good healthy skin, to ward off colds, flu and other winter ailments, as well as to maintain proper organ function. Most importantly, it keeps us from poisoning ourselves from our own waste.

Water is also the key to weight loss. Without water, vital chemical reactions aren’t present in order for proper digestion to occur, so your body won’t metabolise fat properly without it.  Paradoxically, by not having enough water, your body retains fluids in an effort to keep a reserve, and can cause ankle swelling and other conditions that make you appear bloated, overweight and unhealthy.

Exercise, salty foods, caffeine, and alcohol dehydrate the body. Drinking a full, pure, 8 oz. glass of water first thing upon waking is an excellent way to rejuvenate the body and reactivates your sleeping digestive system. Carry a refillable bottle of water with you and sip it throughout the day. Drink 500 ml of water an hour before any physical activity, then another 200 ml 20 minutes before, and then again every 15 minutes during activity and enjoy another 500 ml post workout.  

If you find it difficult to put back so many glasses of water, try drinking with a straw.  This facilitates ingestion as the water goes down much more quickly and easily.  Always keep it on you, and never let yourself get thirsty.  At this point you’re already dehydrated.

Remember that the well-known 8 - 10 glasses per day is the bear minimum to avoid dehydration.   Add an extra glass for every 25 pounds you are over weight.  If you are physically active or live in a hot or a cold dry climate, you can nearly double this amount. If you’re not currently drinking close to the recommended amount of water, slowly and gradually add a glass of water per day so that you don’t over work your kidneys all at once.  Stay healthy by staying hydrated.

For more information on how to stay healthy and fit, go to www.fit-anywhere.com

Are You Starving Yourself Fat?

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When it comes to weight loss, eating habits and proper nutrition play an enormous role in your success.  You can train hard everyday, but if you’re not fueling yourself properly, it will be impossible to get the results that you’re looking for.  What is the number one mistake that the average working person makes with regard to their eating habits?  Nope, it’s not one too many happy meals, but rather skipping meals all together. 

When it comes to weight management, cutting back your calories is certainly a good remedy for trimming the waistline, but how you eliminate those excess calories is just as important as what you eliminate.  Counting calories has never been a practice that I’d condone as a personal trainer.  However, being mindful of your body’s daily caloric needs is very important when it comes to having a healthy weight.  Your body needs calories in small amounts regularly in order to keep your metabolism up and working to burn the calories that you consume.  However, skipping meals, especially breakfast, can greatly affect how your body uses the fuel that you provide it.    

Imagine that your body’s metabolism is like that of a campfire.  In order to keep the fire burning without going out, you must continuously maintain it with sticks and twigs and small fire logs, keeping the flame hot by regularly adding more good fuel to it.  Forgetting to add more wood to the fire would result in a weak flame, or could even put the fire out, leaving you merely with smouldering embers.  Once you realize that it’s time to add more fuel to the fire, it could be rather difficult to get a hot flame back.  Your tendency might even be to add a rather large log in a desperate attempt to get it going.  However, you needn’t be a scout to know that an oversized fire log will take days to burn over embers. 

The same principle applies to your metabolism.  If you skip a meal, or let yourself go hungry for too long, your “fire” will diminish as well, since it’ll have nothing to sustain it. Once you do decide to eat again, chances are that your body will have placed itself in a starvation mode, slowing the metabolism down, storing up energy in the form of fat.  This is the body’s means of survival since it doesn’t know when it will eat again, and therefore conserves whatever fuel it had last.  Unfortunately, it conserves it as fat on your body.

What also happens, is that when you skip a meal, you choose to overeat at the next meal, so not only does your body store extra energy as fat as a response to being starved, but overeating at one sitting stretches your stomach so that it will need all that much more to feel full the next time you decide to eat.  You stomach is the size of a fist, keep that in mind when you’ve heaped a mountain of food on your plate.

You can avoid such detrimental eating patterns by eating small meals and snacks every 2-3 hours 4-6 times per day, with a cessation 3 hours before bedtime.  After a good grocery shop, take a little time afterward to prepare snacks, cutting up vegetables and fruit, rationing portions of nuts and other snacks so that they are ready when you need them.  Never let yourself go hungry!  Keep your fire burning with regular, balanced meals and healthy snacks.

If you’d like more information on how to maintain a healthy weight by eating properly and regularly, contact me at www.fit-anywhere.com