Check here to see if our Memorial Day workout is cancelled.

If I don’t post, we are on at 8am!

Congratulation to Trisha for winning the 12 week Transformation Contest. Trisha wins a $350 gift card to use to get new clothes for her new body.

Trish is a mother of 3 and lives in Waterford! When I first met Trish, she was frustrated because she “never loses any weight”! Trish made the commitment to coming in Mondays after work on her drive home. She also implemented the 5 for 5 weight training series in her home workouts and does cardio at the WAC. She preps healthy food at home and brings lunches to work. Her breakfast used to be a bagel with peanut butter, but now it is a protein filled breakfast of baked egg cups that she makes in advance. Not only did Trish lose 8 pounds in the transformation contest, but she has lost 25 pounds since she has joined Andare Fitness. Congratulations Trish! YOU ARE AN INSPIRATION!! I hope you enjoy shopping for a new wardrobe!

#2 Trish
Pounds lost: 8
Body Fat Lost: 2.2%
Inches lost: 10

How many of us get to bed by 10pm?  Not seeing many hands raised.  Well did you know that you are missing out on major recovery time?  Going to bed early is vital to our recovery.  For all you night owls, you are missing out on elavated anabolic (building) hormone levels that aid your body in recovery.  This starts at 10pm and goes until 2am and you want to maximize your time in this zone. 

Why?  Because for many of us, our lives are extremely stressful and catabolic (breaking down).  This constant catabolic state is due to too much stress from lifestyle, emotion/mental issues, poor food quality, environment, lack of sleep and even exercise.  The result of this is punishing our adrenal glands and creating too much cortisol.  Having too much cortisol in our body is not a good thing and often leads to accumulating body fat and other poor health issues.  So for many of us who have fat loss goals, our lack of sleep is inhibiting our success and diminishing our health. 

So what do you do?  Get your buns to bed.  Ideally you want to sleep from 10:00pm to 6:00am.  Plus or minus 30 minutes.  This will allow optimal time for your body to rest and recover.  If you’re a night owl, force yourself to get up early and I bet you’ll be tired out by 10pm.  Other tips for getting good sleep are the following:

Avoid sleeping in front of the TV

Avoid Caffeine after 12pm (I find when I skip it all together I sleep even better)

Avoid to many sugars and carbs before bed, they can keep you up.

Eat a high protein snack before bed.  The tryptophan can be very helpful in putting you to sleep

Avoid the computer too close to bed time.  That bright light can be very stimulating

Get that room nice and dark.  Our bodies can be very sensitive to light and can wake us up. 

 Enjoy a great nights rest and the benefits that come with it. 

We sit at our desk. We sit in our cars. We sit on our couch. More and more our society is becoming more sedentary and it show in our posture. I see it all the time. People come in with rounded shoulders, forward head position, and tight hip flexors. And what does this all lead to? PAIN!

Often I hear complaints of neck pain, shoulder pain, back pain and knee pain which all can be a result of sitting way to much and muscles getting way too tight and others getting way too weak. So what do you do if your are a chronic sitter.

1) Take stretching breaks during the day. Stretch your pecs, your anterior scalenes, your hips flexors and hamstrings. The best time is at night when you are winding down. Instead of sitting on the couch and watching TV, get on the floor.  Stretch and watch TV.

2) Adjust your posture while you are sitting. Do you feel your body going into slouch position? Well, sit tall. Pull those shoulders back and down. Tighten your tummy muscles. And untuck your pelvis. Sometimes sitting is inevitable, but how you sit can be changed.

3) Change your sitting apparatus. Sit on a ball or by an ergonomic chair. If you have a crappy chair, it will make sitting proper very tough.

4) Streghth train the antagonist muscles. Strengthen upper back muscles and the back of the shoulder muscles to pull those shoulder back. Stregthen the butt muscles that are often weak from sitting all day. The TVA is very important for good posture. Throw in some planks to get that muscle stronger.

Chronic sitting can be the cause of many aches and pains. If you can’t reduce your sitting time, then make sure you do things to counteract the effects of the sitting you are doing. I encourage you to get creative and think of ways that you can eliminate the amount of time you spend in the seated position.

The focus is always on calories in versus calories out.  But if you focus on when you eat, that can aid in better energy levels, mental focus and fat loss. 

Often people think skipping breakfast or a small light breakfast is the weight to go for weight loss.  However, this is the furthest thing from the truth.  After a long night of sleep, our body’s natural cortisol levels are highest from 6am to 9am.  What does that mean?  Our body is ready to eat and we should to maximize our metabolism.  Eating a solid breakfast is a great way to elevate your metabolism and boost energy levels for he day.   Ideally, we should shoot for about 25 percent of our daily calories at breakfast. 

Following breakfast we want to eat every 4 to 6 hours to keep our metabolism high and our blood sugar constant.  Healthy snacks are great to haave and if you’re choosing to snack don’t forget the protein.  Lunch should be a medium sized meal and dinner should be a light meal.  Imagine an upside down triangle.  Your meals should go from largest to smallest like this triangle.

Now imagine the body that you want.  I would rather have it look like the upside down triangle, with strong shoulder and smaller bottom half.   Than a regular triangle with a big base.

 When you eat can impact the look of your body.