Finding your foodstyle

When it comes to fitness, it’s not just about exercise. We all know we have to “eat right” in order to see the changes we want to make in ourselves. The question is, what does it mean to “eat right?” Is there really only one right way to eat?

The answer is no. There is no one set way to eat that is right and all others are wrong. There is, however, a right way to eat for your own personal body and lifestyle, and it’s up to you to figure out what works best for you.

For me, what works best for me to feel healthy and keep fit is being vegan (eating no animal products including meats, cheeses, eggs and other dairy products), avoiding high fat oils, sauces and additives, eating mostly fresh or frozen produce, and steaming or oven baking most of my foods. I also have some non-negotiables in my diet that I will not budge on: low calorie mini blueberry crumb pies, breads, and melon. They make me happy and they aren’t too horrible for me, so I will eat them.

I have found a balance and it works best for me, inside and out, but it certainly won’t work for everyone. You have to find what foods make you feel better on the inside and which foods to avoid in order to stay healthy and keep in shape. If eating only whole grains and avoiding sugar altogether works best for you, that’s great. There are plenty of natural no-calorie sweetener substitutes now that Stevia is on the mass market, and almost every food now has a whole grain version. If eating meals that consist of lean proteins and greens, avoiding many processed carbohydrates is what helps keep your weight at your desired level, then by all means eat this way. It’s all about finding out what your body needs to function at its best.

When you have your new nutrition lifestyle down, the next step is to balance it with the rest of your life. Do the foods that work best for you fit in your life? If you’re a mom or dad with a full house, can you find foods that are easy and fast to cook that are also nutritious a delicious enough to serve to the whole family? If you’re a busy college student or working professional, you may eat out and get take out all the time. Can you find the foods you need on the go? These are important things to consider, and the best way to figure this out is to ask questions, check menus, research recipes and try new things.

There is no book, no formula, no secret of the trade that will tell you what this is. You simply have to try new things, change things up a little at a time and figure out what combination your body responds best to. And once you have it, don’t forget to treat yourself every now and again. It’s not a failure, it’s not falling off the wagon and it’s not giving up completely if you have a slice of cake or a chocolate covered strawberry. It’s human. It’s delicious. And it’s okay! Just don’t do it all the time. ;)

Dance Floor Fitness

Burning calories I mean. This is gonna be a short entry because I just wanted to tell all my readers and fans out there something that should make you all smile.

On the dance floor at a club, whether you're a frequent at a night like Blue Monday or a top 40 dance party, you can be burning up to 1000 calories all night long! It's equivalent to taking zumba class! If you only take short breaks off the dance floor for water every song or so, you may burn between 300 and 600 calories per hour! (Actual amount of calories burned depends on individual weight and intensity of dancing).

So go out, enjoy yourselves and dance the night away! You'll sweat off some pounds without even realizing it!

Changes are greater than a number

I can feel my body change, get stronger. I can feel my body tighten up and I can see my muscles growing, my skin firming. I can see these changes right before my very eyes...

So why am I so concerned about how much the scale says I weigh?

Technically, I'm "putting on weight." SCARY!!!

But when I really think about it, it isn't scary at all. In fact its a really good sign that I'm gaining pounds because that means that I'm working out hard enough to build muscle!! I should be ecstatic to see the numbers climb!

But I still have that anxiety that we feel when we see our body "get larger" in any form. So today I want to share my feelings and resolutions with you all, whom I'm sure have felt this way at one time or another when you start working out and weight training. It feels like this:
"I'm working out so hard!! How am I still gaining weight??!?!?"

But it isn't like that. It's not that you're gaining weight. Your body is changing. It is morphing into a well oiled machine of muscle and strength. You are gaining power and losing weakness. You are building a core instead of letting it all hang loose. This weight, is good weight.

I have started to see these changes in the last two weeks, ever since I started taking weight training and other exercise classes at my gym. It's incredible, the changes I am seeing in the mirror. But what's more amazing is the change I can feel. I can lift things that used to be too heavy for me (like carrying a 25lb bag of cat litter up three flights of stairs at my apt), I can work through an hour of hardcore ballet training and go straight into my next class without my legs feeling weak, and I have more energy than I ever have.

It's the best thing I've ever done... short of marrying David, of course... >.> lol

Don't be afraid to gain weight if it's the right kind of gain. Gain strength. Gain muscle. Gain power. And lose your dependence on that number. It really is just a number and it really is what's inside that matters.

Revamped

My workouts have gotten quite a makeover in the last week. I discovered something awesome that, to be honest, I had only feared and avoided before:
Group Exercise Classes.

Yeah, I know that's weird for a person who is certified to TEACH group ex classes to be scared to take them. I just worried that I wouldn't last the whole class or that I'd look stupid trying to keep up with people who were stronger, faster, better, etc.
It's very similar to a fear that a lot of people have when first joining a gym. They are afraid to go because they don't want to look stupid or fat in front of the other members, who they envision as super buff and never sweating.

That simply is not the case. These classes and gyms are filled with people just like us. People that just want to be fit and healthy and enjoy the exhilaration and camaraderie of working out with others. I truly had nothing to worry about, and neither do you.

So I've been amping up my workouts in a new way. I had started to plateau a little with just doing the same workouts all the time, so I decided the only way to switch things up was to force myself to push harder. The best way of doing that is to have someone else do the pushing. I am now proudly and happily a group-ex junkie!

I take group weight training classes three times a week, core cross training three times a week, pilates on Tuesday and Spin class on Sundays. These are all classes I was so afraid to even try before, and now I can't get enough of them! I can feel the changes in muscles, even after just one week.

My dad suggested that part of the reason for my fatigue might be that I need to weight train. This seemed weird to me at first, but once I started adding weights into my workouts, I can feel such a difference. My body is undoubtedly getting older, and the older we get, the more important weight training and muscle building is! Now that my body is building more muscle, it actually has the energy to, you know, use them!

Whatever you need to do to revamp your workouts to get your body doing what you want it to, go ahead and do it! Don't be scared to "look silly" in front of anyone. They're all doing what you're doing, and they're feeling as silly a you are!

Blame and Change

"It's because I live in a dorm"
"It's my kids food. I have to keep it in the house for them"
"I don't have any say in what my parents/wife/husband/family feeds me"
"There isn't a gym nearby"
"I just don't have time to diet and exercise"
"It's genetic"

Those might be pretty familiar words to a lot of us. We like to place blame when it comes to any shortcomings. It's human nature. And sometimes, there is something to blame for our unhappiness with our bodies. But for many of us, the only way to shed the pounds is to shed these excuses.

It's not about blame. It's about taking responsibility for your own body and how you treat it, regardless of who or what is "at fault" for what is making you unsatisfied with yourself. The only way to make a change is to admit that there is something that NEEDS to change.

Weight gain, muscle reduction and fat storage are natural parts of aging, something everyone on this planet is going through at all times. I'm not asking you to cheat time, but there are ways of finding a balance as time progresses. You have to change your actions in order for your body to change. And even if you're in a good place with your body at the moment, you can't just stay with what has worked before or even what is working now. You body learns to adapt, and before you know it, what was working is no longer producing any results.

Switching up your diet can be dangerous, so make sure you consult a medical professional before you do anything drastically different with diet. Easy changes you can make are:
-Nix the soda
-Drink more water, overall
-Switch to whole grains (avoid white, processed grains
-Lower your portion sizes and eat more often
-Try going organic

Switching up your exercise routine is just as easy. If you're an elliptical junkie like me, try to throw in a spinning class or some zumba for a change in cardio style. Your body will respond to the difference, I promise. If you're a weight training connoisseur and never really go for cardio, try doing fast paced circuit training in super sets to keep the heartrate up instead of your regular workout. If you can get a good rhythm, you'll be killing both the weight training and the cardio fitness birds with one stone.

The most important thing to realize is that something, or a lot of things, needs to change in order for your body to change the way you want it to. It might be physical change. It might be mental or emotional change. Whatever you think you need to modify in your life to get the results you want, give it a try. Trial and error is definitely an okay way of figuring your body out. Just make sure you do it safely.

Small Start = Big Results!

If you're just starting out with a workout plan, don't expect to start at an hour. If you're not used to doing cardio exercise, you have to start small. You also should appreciate, every little amount of exercise that you do, even if you just run for five minutes, that's five minutes more than your used to doing right now, and that's a big deal.

Don't think that just because you only worked out for 5 minutes at a time that it doesn't have any effect. It can all add up to huge calorie burns if you keep up with it. If you can only run for 5 minutes on your first day, that's fine! It's 5 minutes of cardio you didn't get the day before, and that's a big step. If you want to go a bit further, but you cant handle more than 5 minutes before you get out of breath, do it in intervals. Do 5 minutes, then rest. Then get back on for another 5 minutes before resting again. Repeat until you feel that you've met your workout goal for the day. It doesn't have to be all in one sitting. Just add it all up at the end. Now that's making math work for you, lol!

Example:
A 150lb person burns about 50 calories in just 5 minutes on the elliptical trainer. Do just 4 sets of 5 minute runs on this machine and you've burned 200 calories. Not bad, huh?
That same 150lb person can burn 25 calories doing low-resistance cycling, 40 calories speedwalking on a treadmill, or 35-55 calories swimming (35 for laps, 55 for treading water). All these seemingly little numbers can really add up if you do a little at a time.

Believe it or not, when I started working out, I could only run for three minutes before getting too tired (interestingly enough, most songs are only three minutes long, so that's how long I would dance at a time in class and on stage lol). I knew that it wasn't a very long time to run, but I had to be proud of myself for those three minutes. And I was even prouder when I pushed it to five. I felt so good about myself when I could do ten minutes without stopping. It took me months to get to twenty minutes, and when I did, I stayed there for a while. It became my twenty minute morning run for almost a year, until I was ready to push myself even further.
You gotta do what your body can, and know when to push yourself and when not to.

Do what works for you, and you WILL see results. It has taken me years to get to the workout load I take on now, and some days, I still have to break my workouts into little bits just to get through it. It's okay to take small steps, and even the smallest step can lead to big results. <3

Support systems

Been a while. Sorry about that. Can't begin to explain why, but let's just move on to the real good stuff: workouts! :)

Earlier this morning I mentioned teamwork and peer pressure as a great means of motivation for working out and getting fit, and I cannot stress this enough. Finding a gym partner, a workout group, a class or anything that brings you into a group dynamic for working out is the BEST way of making sure you stick to your workouts.

It's really hard to motivate yourself. It is, I promise. Even the most dedicated fitness enthusiasts need outside motivation sometimes to stay at the gym, get through a whole class or even get up in the morning in time for a workout. We need the support of our friends sometimes to drive us through to our fitness goals.

Sometimes finding a gym partner or a class can be hard, I know. I wish my friend Raven lived near me so we could be gym rats together. It's hard for me to find anyone who wants to go to the gym super early like I do. But I'm kind of hoping that I can be that friend for some of you and you guys can be that friend for me through this blog.

I plan on posting some video blog entries soon featuring yoga poses, stretches, exercises and dance moves. Any thoughts on that? Would you guys like to see some of that? If so, do you want me to do anything specific? I'm completely open to anything fitness related that my readers want to see and learn. I am here for you, and your support is absolutely amazing to me. Thank you. :)