90% is still an A

Changing your eating habits is crucial to fat loss. In fact, it is more important than exercise (use caution with that statement!)


But far too many people make radical dietary changes and then expect to follow them 100%. The truth is that changing 20-30 years of dietary malfunction is not going to occur over night. So you have to keep some of those special treats in your diet to keep you progressing and to keep you from thinking that you'll never taste ice cream again.

You're going to miss meals, you're going to go out for lunch and "bomb" your diet. It's okay. Get back on the horse and get back to riding.


What's that you say? You don't get equestrian analogies? Don't worry, just keep chewing on it and it will begin to make sense.

Here is the truth: If you're looking for a reason to not lose weight or change your lifestyle, you'll find one. What is needed instead is to simply find ways for yourself to succeed. And if that means having a cheat meal 3-4 times per week, then by all means have what you like. But don't dwell on it. You obviously ate it because you liked it and thought it would be satisfying. The next step is to simply return to your modified eating habits. 

Having a cheat day can actually be beneficial for you if you hit a plateau! When you have a cheat meal it acts to reset your metabolism and thus can get you back into fat burning mode! So even if you need to, schedule in a cheat meal. 

For example, last night my wife and I went to Tahoe Joe's for dinner. We had a calamari appetizer, house salad with Italian dressing, then a steak, mashed potatoes and green beans. Did I eat all of it? You bet! Was it outside of my normal eating habits? Absolutely. I normally would have eaten the steak, salad and green beans, but probably would have stayed away from the calamari and potatoes. But it was one of my cheat days.

But this morning I hopped back on my eating plan and had scrambled eggs, black beans and cheese. I enjoyed last nights dinner as a cheat meal and then moved on. You can't dwell on it as if your hard work and dietary changes are now undone. Simply move on!
____________


In other news...

A brand new study out showed that those people who keep track of their calorie intake using a PDA or cell phone application lost more weight than those who attempted to record meals using the paper and pencil method. 

So what's the take home? Find an application for your iPhone, Droid or whatever, that allows you to input your food intake and start recording it! You can't change what you can't see!

Do you know how much you need?

The first week of February's Hi-5 is now over. And the biggest question is still how do I successfully lose fat? And the answer is relatively short.

First off, the Hi-5 FitCamp is a fitness program that increases strength, lean muscle and raises resting metabolism to increase total caloric use over the course of a given time period.

So the exercise part is there. Every body in the class has gotten stronger, faster and although we don't measure other characteristics of health such as cholesterol, blood pressure and resting heart rate, I would be willing to bet that these all have improved as well.

However the place where probably 95% of fat loss programs fail is in the changing of eating habits.

Most people don't know how many calories their body requires, how many it is getting and how many it is using over the course of the day. Here are 3 steps you MUST take to get your diet tuned for fat-loss.

1. Know how many calories you need. If you don't know how many you need, how do you know that you need to restrict calories? Perhaps instead you actually need to eat more! Start a free account at www.caloriecount.com and then go to their metabolism meter. Plug in your variables and get an estimate of your total caloric needs. Even if it is off by 100 calories, at least you have a ball park figure to start from.
2. Know how many calories you are getting. Now that you have opened an account with calorie count, start tracking your food intake!! You'd be surprised at how much you are getting. START MEASURING YOUR FOOD! If you think you are eating 3 oz of meat and are really eating 8 oz that is going to be a problem. Accuracy is key!
3. Adjust calories as needed. Once you see how many calories you are getting, you will start learning how big a serving is; what 3 oz looks like and what a tablespoon of butter looks like. Most people have no idea what these amounts look like! The goal is to educate yourself.

Get these things in order and be consistent! If what you are doing isn't working, make a CHANGE! If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got.

Do your eating habits match your exercise habits?

Granted most of the group is doing well and changing their eating habits. As a result we are losing weight and getting MUCH stronger. The changes you made in your eating habits to lose weight 10 weeks ago at the beginning of December will not yield the same results now as they did then.

As a result, you're going to have to modify your caloric intake if you want to keep losing fat. Just keep in mind that whatever your goal weight, your caloric intake must be enough to maintain that weight.

So here are 2 things you need to remember when putting together a weekly menu (YOU are doing that, aren't you?):

1. Make sure you are not dooming yourself on the weekends! On the days you exercise, you will need a few more calories. Not much, but about a 5% increase from your total is good. Likewise on the days you don't exercise, you need to decrease your caloric intake by about 5-10%.
2. The time at which you eat is important. Eating late at night is not a good idea because you don't need that much energy later in the day. Instead, make breakfast and lunch your largest meals. These are the times you NEED energy to sustain work performance and mental clarity. At night when your body is about to be restored, you need quality foods, not quantity. A protein (chicken) vegetable (asparagus) a whole grain (basmati rice) and then fruit for desert (strawberry/blueberry mix).
   

Remember that you cannot out exercise a bad diet. This means too many calories as well as not enough.

If you don't know how many calories you need then head over to www.calorie-count.com and FIND OUT!! You won't know how many to eat to lose weight if you don't know how many you need to keep your weight!

Enjoy your day and get ready for another blasting tomorrow!!

Thanksgiving Day Massacre

No doubt many people ate way too much yesterday. I did. Let me give you the rundown on my eatings so that you don't feel too bad.

Breakfast (7:00 am) - Half short stack of pancakes and 1 egg over medium, 2 cups of black coffee
Mid-Morning snack (10:30 am) - 1 cup of homemade granola (oats, raisins, almonds, honey) with 1/2 cup of milk
Lunch - No lunch
Afternoon Snack (2:30 pm) - 2 pumpkin-cranberry chocolate chip muffins, 2 glasses of 1/2 water-1/2 cranberry juice
Afternoon Snack 2 (3:15 pm) - i slice of pumpkin pie
Dinner (6:00pm) - 1 twice baked potato (1/2 the potato with mashed potatoes in the skin), 1 dinner roll, 1/2 cup of whole wheat stuffing (my step dad stuck some bacon in there), 6 asparagus stalks, medium goat cheese/cranberry salad w/ balsamic vinaigrette dressing and enough turkey to fill both of my hands, all washed down with water.
Dessert (7:30 pm) - 2 slices of pumpkin cheesecake

Now obviously you can see that I consumed way more calories in the evening than I did earlier in the day. This goes against what I have always preached to the group. We want our calories evenly spread throughout the day to minimize caloric overload at any point throughout the day.

So although my day was probably a C on the healthy scale, it does not mean that the next day has to be as bad. I will start today right up with a bowl of oatmeal, some blueberries and get ready to get some movement in. Not so that I can try to work off all of those calories I ate yesterday, but simply because I had one off-day and now its back on the wagon.

Thanksgiving does not have to be the diet and body changing massacre it is made out to be. Get back on the horse!! And to give you a quick boost, here's a quick 15 minute circuit.

1. Plank 1:00
2. Single Leg Squat x :45 each leg
3. Push-ups :45
4. Stick ups (back and arms against the wall, arms slide up and down) :45.
   

Rest for :45 then do it again, x 3.

See you all on Monday with a special surprise!

Recipe for the weekend

For all you fans of the Crockpot out there, this one is for you.

From our friends at www.coreperformance.com, this is a terrific meal that will fill you up and combines veggies, quality grains, and protein all in one.

It's the crockpot stuffed bell peppers. And they are fantastic!! If you've never tried a stuffed STUFFED PEPPER, it is time to wake up and smell the goodness!!

Again, here is the link for the recipe >> www.coreperformance.com

Also, earlier this week I mentioned that we might be outside on Friday. Well it looks as though that isn't going to happen. We will be inside this week and the next 4 weeks. So I will see you all inside this Friday.

Also, if you have been thinking, and thinking, and thinking some more about joining our Hi-5 FitCamp at Pair & Marotta, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??

Get rid of the excuses and get with the program!! We hope to see some more new faces this next week!!

Training Tip of the Week
When working with weights, make sure the resistance you are using is high enough. Too many people think they are going to change their body by sticking with the same old light weight high repetition scheme. Use a weight that is between a 7-8 on a difficulty scale of 1 - 10 (easy-most difficult), Heavy breathing and moderate muscle fatigue will accompany this level of effort.

Put up a fight this time!!

The last 3 months of the year are the toughest because we've got some pretty big celebrations planned. We've got Halloween with all its candy that seems to be tempting us at every corner, desk and household. Thanksgiving shows up about 3 weeks later and Christmas is here.

Even worse, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas we are constantly going to parties or various functions to celebrate the end of the year. I am sure you know and see all the temptations that are put in front of us during that time. No wonder the average weight gain is about 3.5 pounds between Thanksgiving and the end of the year.

But lets be honest, we can have control. We can exercise discipline. We have a choice: Which person are you going to feed?

Pardon the pun, but you can feed the person inside of you that will cave in to any temptation and is constantly saying, "I'll start on Monday" or you can feed the person inside that says, "I have a goal and I am sticking to my plan." The mindset you feed is the one that grows. If you are constantly caving in, it will only get easier and easier to cave to temptation.

So as I talked about this morning in class, if we have a goal we are aiming for we must not only know how to get there, but also how much fuel to bring along. The way to do this with our body is to either directly measure our caloric requirements or to estimate our caloric needs. The place I want you all to go to get an estimate of your calorie needs is www.calorie-count.com

Calorie-count.com is a great place to find out how many calories you need (go to "Tools" and click on "Burn-meter") but also a place to hold yourself accountable. Start this week!! Heck you can even setup the program to work with your cell-phone so you don't have to be near a computer to track your eating habits.

If you have any questions about it, please send me an email and I will do my best to help you out in getting things set up!!

Eating to live, or living to eat?

As a culture, we eat for a variety of reasons. We eat when we are bored, when we are busy, when we are depressed, when we are happy, when we are celebrating and when we are mourning. Our culture seems to center around food. This is causing us to be overweight, over-fat, under-muscled and flat out dragging tail.

So what are these reasons and what can you do about it? First off, reflect on why you are eating. One of the most disastrous things we do as a country relates to our inactivity: WE EAT BECAUSE WE ARE BORED. Which in turn makes us lethargic, unmotivated and less likely to move. And in return eat even more. It is a vicious cycle.

There are two ways of looking at food and life. Ask yourself this question and be as honest as you can be: Do I eat to live, or do I live to eat? Enjoying the food you eat is certainly not a bad thing. But can you control how much of it you eat/drink?

Just some food for thought.

Remember, we start a new round of our Hi-5 FitCamp on Monday Aug. 31 so be there and bring a friend. For more information visit our website www.pairmarotta.com/fitness or email me, Aaron@pairmarotta.com

See you on Monday!

Surefire ways to keep FAT by your side...

Now that I have had the weekend to cool down from my heated tirade about how irresponsible Time magazine is, I have a few things to share with you.

First off, please do not take what I said last week as bashing nutrition. As I mentioned, how you eat will ultimately decide the effectiveness of your weight loss/muscle building exercise program. But realize that THEY ARE BOTH PART OF THE EQUATION. That is why I was so frustrated last week.

If you do any of the following you can pretty much be sure you won't lose weight...

• Eat fast food with any regularity
• Skip breakfast with any regularity
• Drink Soda
• eat white breads, bagels and pasta's
• fail to drink at least 4 glasses of water on a daily basis
• eat donuts and coffee directly after you exercise (or eat them on a regular basis at all)
• avoid eating fruits and vegetables
• fail to know how many calories you are eating on a daily basis

These are just a few of the things. But notice many of these things are popular choices Who doesn't enjoy a bagel, soda or skips breakfast. Some of thesewere touched on by Diane Campbell, our Registered Dietician (RD) who has answered even more of your questions about weight loss in our series of interviews below.

AG: Lots of people really like frozen meals that are already prepared, such as Lean Cuisine. Although easy to make, are they really that healthy for us?

DC: There are many frozen entrees to choose from. Some are low fat and some are extremely high fat (i.e. Hungry Man). The portions in the low fat ones are usually small which is what makes them low in calories. They are okay to have as a sometimes food. A salad and fruit should accompany it. Also, frozen entree's are usually high in sodium and have many additives and preservatives. A better choice would be to bring leftovers from a healthy meal made the night before. Whole natural foods are always a better choice

AG: As you mentioned, fruit is often considered a staple in weight loss diets. But is it possible to actually eat too much fruit?

DC: Yes. Remember that just because a food is healthy for us, overeating any food can cause unwanted health conditions, like obesity. The recommendations for most people are to eat 5 servings of fruit a day. The serving size of a fruit is smaller than you think. A serving size of an apple, orange or pear is to be the size of a tennis ball and 1/2 of a banana is equal to one serving of fruit.

AG: We have talked and made it clear the importance of journaling our food intake. When people are writing down what they eat in a food journal, how accurate are they really with what they eat? And how can we make sure we are as accurate as possible with the amount of food we are eating?

DC: Most people who start a food journal do really great for the first week and then slowly stop doing it. Food journaling is so important when trying to lose weight because it helps keep you accountable. Without it, most people underestimate what they eat by AT LEAST 500 calories, and maybe even more. Here are some simple tips to help you be successful.

1. Always keep a little notebook with you and write down your food intake right after eating a meal or a snack.
2. Food journal with a friend who is also trying to get healthy. Ask to see each others journal every day.
3. Your food journal should contain the time you eat, what you eat and how much you eat. For more precise servings you may want to purchase a food scale and/or go to www.mypyramid.gov. This website tells you what is considered a serving size for all foods.

So there it is guys. Take these notes and really apply them to your life!! CHANGE THE WAY YOU LOOK AT FOOD and you'll see a big difference in when you eat and how much you eat. Food is fuel. You only need enough to do what you are asking your body to do. Any extra will be stored as F-A-T.

See you tomorrow!!