by IcennaEmach | Jan 24, 2011 | Uncategorized
Lifestyle change is about progress not perfection. Today is the 15th day of a 6 -week journey on the path to feeling good, looking good, and performing great at any age. We begin the 3rd week of our trip by exploring today’s mind connection- progress not perfection. But pause for a moment before continuing and ask yourself these 3 questions –
+What cardiovascular exercises have I engaged in this week?
+What muscular strength training exercises have I begun?
+What stretching exercises have I incorporated into my day?
Congratulations to those of you who are actively following
by putting healthy living into action! You are doing well!
Get Focused Review your commitment to the following powerful instigators of lifestyle change. Use a 1 to 5 rating with 1 being a low level of commitment and 5 a high level.
Tally each category.
Use the following to assess your commitment to changing your lifestyle behaviors –
n
Total of 20 – 25 Signifies a high level of commitment to lifestyle change. I am confident you will improve nicely on your own. If you feel the need for technical training, have fitness questions that need addressed, or if you believe you are ready for huge gains in physical fitness and energy levels, then seek out a health coach/trainer. Motivation can wane so seeking a trainer/coach is always an option if needed.
Total of 15 – 19 Indicates you have potential for making some improvements on your own, but should consider a health professional if a minimum score of 20 is not obtained within 3 weeks.
You are motivated but too little for big changes to occur. Often people whose motivation is at this level tend to vacillate between seeking the help of a professional and not seeking help. When opting for the latter, discouragement abounds and feelings of a failure often cause further inaction. Hiring a professional is an option to be considered sooner rather than later.
Total of 14 or Under Signifies a lack of motivation. Do not despair. Often an experienced coach will help you work through finding motivation. While it is true that only you can do the work, similar to many important tasks in life, the support of a trained professional can make the difference between success and failure. So if you lack commitment, if you lack motivation, consider continuing along the road to lifestyle changes by enlisting the aid of a trusted coach/trainer
Rate Yourself In Each Area Use movement as inspiration – Rating 1 – 5
Think progress not perfection – Rating 1 – 5
Focus on what really matters in weight loss Rating 1- 5
Weigh Yourself Daily Rating 1 – 5
Live Joyfully While Getting Fit 1 – 5
Total _______________
Be reflective. Be frank with yourself. Rate yourself now before focusing on this week’s mind connection number two.
Progress not Perfection Too often we expect perfection when seeking to lose weight.
“I’m going to lose weight. It’s going to be all or nothing. I do nothing halfway and this includes weight loss!”
These people typically fail. Complicating matters, this approach is often used as an excuse to stop trying to lose weight and get healthy.
“I’m a capable person. If I’m going to do this, it will be with gusto – exercising 2 hours a day and eating nothing but clean food. That’s just the way I am!”
Heroic? Questionable.
Perfectionism need not be used as an excuse for not persevering through lifestyle changes. We all fail in fully living up to our own ideal expectations. Those that assess and adapt their behaviors without judging too harshly will do well. Weight loss is not about being perfect. A persevering mindset is what matters.
This Week’s Plan/Review Assess your commitment, and act on plan by using the rating chart above. Continue designing a plan implementing the three types of activity; cardiovascular, muscular strength/endurance, and stretching. Remember, this is simply a beginning. There’s no hurry to figure things perfectly. You will figure it out as you go along. Most importantly, assess and revise -have fun-and eat less. I’ll see you back here soon.
by IcennaEmach | Nov 29, 2010 | Uncategorized
Clients often ask me what is the best way to burn calories when exercising. There are several variables that can enhance fat burning and calorie expenditure increases such as intensity and duration of the cardiovascular activity. Such concrete factors as intensity and duration aimed at energy expenditure and weight loss are easy to figure once I have a cardiovascular baseline for a client. However, I am often reluctant to encourage a several times a week prolonged and intense workout for clients because what typically happens with those who desire the most intense and prolonged cardio programs aimed at weight loss is one of three things:
1. They typically eat an increased amount to reward themselves for the increased effort,thereby gaining weight instead of losing weight.
2. They cannot sustain the increased intensity and duration daily, and quickly become disenchanted with exercise all together.
3. They become injured predisposing themselves to a sedentary lifestyle and weight gain while the injury is healing.
In all three examples, even though the intent is to lose weight, the outcome is either weight gain or discontinuation of an activity that is not only helpful in controlling weight, but is also heart healthy.
If this is you, think about this, “How can you improve your health, while losing and or maintaining weight?” If you think about this question and answer honestly, you should conclude that weight loss is more than just working out as hard as you can day after day. Weight loss is about sensibility. It’s about meeting yourself where you are at now and progressing forward in a sensible manner that builds your level of confidence in losing weight.
There’s nothing new in this thinking but somewhere along the way of trying to transform ourselves into fit healthy, lean beings, we have given in to one sided approaches. Don’t let this be you.
Healthy living and weight loss is about living joyfully in the context of healthy progressions. You can start from wherever you may be and smartly implement common sense approaches that never fail. We all know what these are. They include portion control, moderate exercise, an emphasis on vegetables, fruits, whole grains and moderate amounts of lean meats, healthy fats, beans and fish.
You can do this. I will help. I’ll be happy to answer questions. E-mail me at [email protected]. I’ll look forward to it!
by IcennaEmach | Oct 31, 2009 | Uncategorized
High intensity interval training, also called HITT, is a specific type of interval training that in the past was practiced mainly by athletes at the highest level of sports. Today, it is implemented commonly by athletes and non athletes alike who desire obtaining the most, lean, athletic, and sinewy physiques that are “possible for them.”
Emphasis on, “possible for them”, is placed because it’s important to understand that we have innate body shapes that make becoming lean more easy, or more difficult,depending on genetic factors. There are three body types:
Ectomorph
Body types are naturally lean and thin skinned. They will see quicker looking body fat results than the two other body types, mesomorphs and endomorphs.
Mesomorph
Body types are characterized by dense musculature. They will see results less quickly than ectomorphs, but have greatest lean muscle looking potential.
Endomorph
Body types are characterized by softness and fatty areas throughout body. These individuals respond to high intensity interval training less quickly than ectomorphs and mesomorphs, but results of fat loss percentages are more pronounced than the former two groups.
The Truth of the Matter
Think you are an Endomorph? Think again! Go back to your childhood, and recall what body type you were at age 10. This is what you are today, even if you feel a little soft.
EPOC to Super Charge Metabolism
When you exercise using the high intensity interval system, your body consumes considerably more oxygen. And the more oxygen you expend, the more calories you burn. However this increased oxygen during exercise is not really what fuels what we all desire- a higher metabolic rate, it’s the after-burn, or what is called EPOC, and more descriptively, excess post exercise oxygen consumption that fuels our metabolism. It works like this. The more energy your body uses during training, the higher EPOC. EPOC works in increasing metabolism by telling our body to get back to balance or what is referred to as homeostasis.
Getting back to homeostasis takes energy though, and this energy burns calories for several hours if not days afterward. That’s why hard working athletes who consume thousands of calories still find it difficult to sustain their weights. Their bodies are calorie burning machines even when they are at rest. How would you like to have even a fraction of their speedy metabolisms? You can. Next week we’ll go over specific high intensity interval training techniques to get you started on EPOC. In the meantime, think about this:
1. Training without good nutrition is nothing.
2. Over eating is not good.
3. You can do what you want to do.
4. Now is the time.
5. Control your destiny by managing your health.
by IcennaEmach | May 17, 2009 | Burn Baby Burn, Uncategorized
What happened to her?
She wants me to walk 14 miles a day to lose weight.
I’m worried about her!
I better tell her she’s taking this weight gain thing far too seriously!
Such is the feedback to my last two weight loss issues. Now I know how the playwright felt when a review read “There was only one thing that weakened the play. They opened the curtain.” But, there was an objective to the direness I wanted one to feel in reading the past two issues.
The objective was to point out that it is easy to gain weight, but hard to lose weight, and because of this, we would be wise to utilize preventative weight gain measures such as weekly weighing and logging of caloric intake. The illustrations were intended to expand awareness of what occurs when one gains weight quickly yet expects to lose the added weight just as swiftly. It appears I accomplished this! I even have death threat e-mails to prove my astuteness in bringing full awareness to my Fit Through the Ages readers.
In part, our problem with weight loss has to do with our expectations. It is easy for all of us to consume additional calories. Eating a delicious pie ala mode may take only 5 minutes, and is pure enjoyment, but burning the calories will take two hours of what some term exercise misery! If we gain a pound of body fat in a short period of time by consuming too many calories, should we expect to lose the pound in the same amount of time it takes us to gain it?
The explanation in the last two blogs on weight loss frankly illuminates how much one needs to exercise, or reduce calories by, to lose a pound in 3 short days was certainly preposterous. However, consider the irony of this with our own weight loss goals. That is, that many of us expect to lose weight as rapidly as we gain weight. Who is going to walk 14 miles daily for three days in addition to working out in the gym for an hour daily, and all the while consuming only 1,100 calories on each of three days? Unfortunately, this is the reality when the goal is quick fat weight loss.
Viewing typical information in different ways helps to put things into proper perspective. Weight loss is about putting things into this proper perspective.
Think about this:
It is easier to gain weight than it is to lose weight.
It is easier to maintain weight than it is to lose weight.
And, it is easier on the body, mind, and spirit to maintain weight loss when done slowly, deliberately, and smartly than it is to lose weight quickly only to gain it back. The days of quick weight loss with no sense of sustaining lifestyle changes will soon be a perspective of the past. Our challenge is to act smartly, and with a sense of continual progressive lifestyle changes that deepen our convictions to do more for ourselves than just lose weight.
by IcennaEmach | May 14, 2009 | Burn Baby Burn, Uncategorized
How can we burn a maximum amount of calories in a minimum amount of time?
Last week’s article answered this question for the “newbie” calorie burner and this week we’ll look at what the intermediate level fitness calorie burner can do to more rapidly enhance his fat burning capacity.
First, a comment from a reader who writes, “You should check the latest research on fat burning. You suggest that LSD is the way to go for newbies. But that’s not what the new information says.” Well, the reader is correct, but….. read on.
Why Not Skip LSD Training and Get Right to the Best Calorie Burns?
If you are new to fitness, or have not been doing cardiovascular exercises such as walking, swimming, jogging, elliptical training, biking etc., then the suggested long slow distance training with minimal emphasis on heart rate intensity is used to build a base of endurance for furthering harder intensity calorie burning zones. Think of this slow long training as a necessary “evil” for furthering fat burning ability. A long slow distance base of training aids in the formation of new life changing habits, primes the muscles, ligaments, and tendons, as well as the cardiovascular system for a lifetime of increased fat burning ability and a speedier anti aging higher metabolism by reducing the occurrence of injuries, as well as the occurrence of premature overzealous training which often leads to failure.
Fat Burning Zone Explained in Brief
In order for a muscle to function it needs energy. There are three options that a muscle has to use fuel:
1 Carbohydrates
2. Fat
3. Protein- only used by muscles under depleted circumstances. Consider carbohydrates and fats as the two main sources.
When using energy our muscles use a mix of carbohydrates and fats, this is based on a number of factors, one of them being intensity and duration of activity. Fats require more oxygen than carbohydrates to burn. As a result, as exercise intensity increases and less oxygen is available, the body shifts form a fat burning zone to using carbohydrates for energy in order to maintain the activity. This doesn’t however mean that less fat is burned. In low intensity exercise the fat being used is coming from the blood stream and this was traditionally called the fat burning zone. In order to understand the whole picture though, we must look at where the source of the fat being used is coming from.
Energy Source Paramount in Increasing Fat Burn Ability
With increased intensity and duration of an activity, the muscles need more oxygen and energy, so our hearts beat faster to get blood to the muscles quicker. In medium intensity long duration activities the blood stream gets overloaded with work, including the job of providing an energy source to the working muscles. When looking to increase our fat metabolism, it’s necessary to get to this point of overloading our bloodstream’s energy sources. By doing this, the overloaded blood stream must turn to its own body’s muscle fat – namely the primary muscle mover’s fat (triglycerides) and glycogen (sugar) stores- which provide energy to the working body. Obtaining a state of moderate intensity training, where the body is working harder and the heart rate is being taxed at a perceived exertion of 6 out of a 10 point scale is when fat burning is amplified beyond just a simple calorie burn. To translate this into a target heart rate, achieve a heart rate of approximately 80% of your maximum heart rate and continue for duration of 20 minutes and preferably 30 – 60 minutes continuously.
How to Figure Target Heart Rate at 80 Percent
-Take 220 minus your age.
-Multiply this number by .80.
-Your number is your THR for an increased and more efficient fat burning zone
-Maintain heart rate range for 20 – 60 minutes in an activity that uses the muscles of the legs such as biking, jogging, skating etc.
Next week, you’ll be surprised at how fat burning can be optimized further. It has to do with high intensity interval training and it’s what all the fitness magazines are writing about. You’ll learn how to use it correctly, as the secret lies in what is called the after-burn. It breaks all the rules applied here, but you’ll see why it’s absolutely necessary in obtaining a lean more muscular look that includes the difficult to diminish waistline. You can do it! Stayed tuned and I’ll help you out. It’s what I love to do!
