Merry Christmas to all

As we just made it through the first part of the holiday bustle, remember to enjoy yourself. You should take the time to enjoy the family time and forget about your diet. We all need time to enjoy ourselves and it is futile to beat yourself up about breaking your diet during the holidays. By the way, I left my diet on the back burner till after the first of the year. However, after the season is over you have to have the discipline to work the weight back off. This is where a good personal trainer is helpful. ;-)

I will be beginning my annual vegan fast on January 7th for the next 21 or possibly 40 days, I haven't decided yet. This is a great way to cleanse your body of all the toxins from the previous year and stay with a fresh engine this year. I also use the time for some spiritual development and vision casting. It is amazing how you can hear the Creator when everything else is taken out of the way. For all of you that are interested in trying this with me, I will be posting meal plans and encouragement in the weeks to come. Let me know on here how you are doing and let us encourage one another. Believe me you will need it about a week in.....lol.

Try it and GO TRAIN HARD.

Success in Exercise and Life

How often have you heard this story? A person gets a membership to a gym and goes for a month and then ends up paying for a membership that they never use. Or you buy some new fad exercise program to do at home and after a few weeks it never gets played again. Even better is when you buy that next great new piece of home exercise equipment and it becomes a big clothes rack, but it never gets used as an actual piece of exercise equipment. How many of you know someone like that? How many of you are that person?

This is why it is so important to have help. We are social people and always live better in community. Not only are we happier, we are healthier, more successful, and more fulfilled in every area of our lives. When ever you are lonely you tend to be distant, depressed, and miserable. Is it any mystery, when we get depressed we want to be left alone and sulk in our own misery. This is because we were created for community and it changes our entire demeanor and attitude, when we have positive community in our life.

This all bleeds into exercise and fitness. This is why it is so much easier to go to a gym and workout when we have a friend that is doing it with us. However, to be effective we need someone who is knowledgeable in fitness if we want to see measurable results. You can go run on a treadmill or elliptical everyday at lunch for 30 mins and still not have the success that you are looking for. After a while the enthusiasm will drop off and we will end up finding excuses to not train. This is where a personal trainer comes in. A person with expertise that can not only motivate you, but also switch up the training methods to shape and sculpt your body to the desired result.

However, this all starts with you. The first thing that you need for success in any area of life is DECISION. You have to make up your mind that you are going to do it. Whatever your goal is, you must decide that you are going to achieve it. Whether it is losing 50lbs and running a marathon or getting a new job that pays you $100,000 a year. It all starts with decision.

The second thing you need to do is take ACTION. This may mean that you need to go back to school, get a personal trainer, or talk to your boss about a raise. Whatever the goal is, you need to take some action steps to move closer to that goal. This is going to take sacrifice and possibly some difficulty for a time, but the payoffs will be huge.

After you take action, the next step is to make that action MEASURABLE. A person once said that things that are measured improve. This is absolutely true. We must measure our success if we truly want to see the achievement of our goals.  This way we can celebrate the milestones of life and grow the passion that drives us to achieving the goals that we desire for ourselves.

The last step that we need to take is to CONTINUE dreaming. We must constantly review and renew our dreams. Make them bigger and broader than you can ever imagine. Then and only then will you find true fulfillment in life.

So if you want to lose 50lbs you must:
1. Make a DECISION
2. Take ACTION
3. MEASURE the results
4. CONTINUE dreaming

If you can do all of that, while remaining positive, and getting into positive community in your life. You will find success, happiness, and more abundance than you can even imagine in every area of life.

NOW GO AND TRAIN HARD!!!!!

Scorpion Style Personal Training @ BGV Holiday Event

Tomorrow night from 7pm - 10pm Scorpion Style Personal Training will be running a table at Great American Ballpark for the Bad Girl Ventures Holiday Event. It is going to be a great time. We will be answering lots of questions about health, fitness, and yoga. We will also be doing demonstrations and having a few contests for some free personal training sessions. Plus we will be having some great deals on gift certificates for all your holiday needs. So stop by, have some fun, and get your ticket to a new body after the holiday festivities.

Check out the link to the BVG Holiday Event Page
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fconta.cc%2Fv3At9Q&h=AAQEWy8mHAQHAYxi7SZEcri5NAv0a9aPGi9Whxw9XtSRSjg

HYDRATION!!!!

In the last post we talked about nutrition and our eating habits. It is very important to eat healthy but if we don't include the drinks we ingest in our diet plan, it will eventually catch up with you. Our body is made up of around 72 to 85 % water. Women should drink at least 9 cups of water a day and men should drink 13 cups a day, this is at resting. You should add one cup to your water intake for each 30 minutes of activity on average. If you are working out very vigorously you should add more.

When we work out we loose our water weight first. It is not healthy to purposefully dehydrate yourself ever! You must hydrate your body! Nothing that contains sugar hydrates your body. Your body does not process it as hydration, it will be filtered through your body and the only part of it you will retain is the sugar. If you drink one 12 oz. can of Cola you are ingesting 140 calories, 45 grams of sodium, and 39 grams of sugar.... you should only eat 32 grams of sugar in your whole day!!! Not to mention that the carbonation in any soda dehydrates you. Soda is not good for you and will not help you loose weight or get in shape. The worst part of soda is that the soda companies have made "diet" sodas to convince us that we are doing something healthy by drinking the "diet" version of their soda. Diet sodas are worse for you than the traditional soda. The artificial sweeteners in "diet" soda further dehydrate you and are now known to be one of the causes of a whole list of health problems with obesity  and diabetes topping that list!

There are healthy ways to ingest drinks containing sugar, such as Gatorade, Powerade, and natural juices. Juices should be consumed in the morning with breakfast or your early meals since this is when your body breaks down fruit the best. Sports drinks are good for when you are working out and you are trying to rehydrate fast. They will also help bring your blood sugar levels back up after a hard workout. They should be an after workout recovery drink more than a replacement for water though.

Also, often when our body is craving something during the day, we assume it needs food. Often this is wrong. If you make a habit of drinking a glass of water every time you feel a craving, or like you are hungry you will find yourself eating a lot less snacks. Our body tells us it needs water, we just tend not to listen.

I challenge you to try changing to consuming mostly water for one week and drink a glass of water when you feel hungry throughout the day. After one week see how much keeping yourself properly hydrated makes you feel.

Nutrition: Fueling Your Body the Way It Needs

There are so many differing views on nutrition and fad diets out there. We need to understand that even though metabolism and body mechanics differ there should be a baseline to judge or nutrition from. I am of the opinion that we should strive to be as natural as possible. If our goal is to have our bodies work at optimum levels we should make it as efficient as possible for our body to break down the food we ingest.

With all that said, any steps that you take to make your diet better are steps in the right direction. I am in no way promoting a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. I personally feel that animal protein is a needed staple of a diet, but to each his own. I do see the value in such lifestyles and take a month every year to cleanse my body and go vegan myself.

One of the first things you have to do is eat more meals to jump start your metabolism. 5 to 6 meals a day, spread out every 3 to 4 hours. What I like to do is split my breakfast and lunch into two sessions and then have a good dinner after evening training.

The formula that I follow is pretty simple and here it is:

Breakfast: heavy carbs and fruit

Lunch: moderate carbs and low protein (no fruit or fruit juices after 330)

Dinner: high protein, vegetables, and good fats (no carbs)

***If you are an athlete make sure you have protein at every meal and supplement as needed.***

The reason I use this formula is because this is how your body naturally burns those foods. In the morning your body needs the carbs to get it started and keep it running. When you eat fruit in the morning you are able to get the nutrients from the fruit and still give you time to burn off all the natural sugar you ingest.

At lunchtime you need some more carbs to keep your body fueled for the second half of the day. Also if you have an afternoon or evening training session you will need the carbs to help you make it through the workout.

At dinner you want to cut out all carbs because as you sleep your body does not process carbs, but works on repairing. This is why it is good to have good nutrients from your vegetables and lots of protein. Your body will break down the protein and use it to repair the body, but takes that time to turn sugar into fat and than store the fat. In saying that, you also need to make sure that you are also getting good fats (olive oil, avocado, nuts, etc.) this helps balance your diet and helps to break down the protein that you are eating.

Remember this is a basic diet and nutrition plan, you also have to take in consideration your own dietary issues and how your body works. The key is balancing your diet (carbs, sugars, proteins, and fat). There are so many diet plans out there that want to restrict certain elements from your diet. This may work in the short term, but for long term overall health they can often have disastrous results. Please use caution before beginning any diet regimen.

So go out there eat healthier and TRAIN HARD.....