Losing Weight With Our Cleanse?

I have been getting a few phone calls with questions concerning weight loss with the weeks cleanse. I personally call the program a "cleanse", because that's it's intended purpose, however, taking into consideration the typical amount of calories we take in per a day, if you follow this "cleanse" you will be taking in significantly less. Therefore, we will notice a drop in weight numbers, I can't give a specific number as we all do different things, some may stay with the program, and some may alter it to fit better with their lifestyle. For me personally, I will probably experience any where from 3-5lbs loss. I feel that I need to stress that this program is to help purge our bodies of the unhealthy beings populating within us. You may also want to add a traditional cleanser to the mix, if you choose to do that, remember water and plenty of it is needed to help rehydrate you body.

This program is not an easy one, especially when it's being sprung upon you. If you are trying this cleanse and are experiencing frequent hunger, it could be that you are not eating enough. You may need to carry with you a number of snacks in the "fruit department", such things as nuts and other dried fruits (apricots, mango, raisins, etc.) will help fill you up. For those of you who still find it difficult to curb your appetite, you may want to include a regular meal, if you are eating twice the amount of veggies, and fruits that you would typically eat on average that's always a great move.

Please keep commenting and sharing your experiences, remember to get at least 30 minutes of exercise each day. Have a healthy rest of the day.

Try My Cleanse!!!

I am on a quest to cleanse my body this week, lately i have been indulging in foods that most would consider unhealthy. Consequently, I have been feeling completely bloated and walking around heavy, tired, and sick. So, I have decided to amp up on the water intake, and consume only fruits and veggie the entire week, with the exception of Greek yogurt. Before I start, I should mention that i will be doing a traditional cleanse, it's a tea, if you want to participate you can use whatever cleanse you are use to or can find.

So here's an example of what I be doing.

Breakfast:
Greek yogurt, strawberries, an apple and unsweetened green tea.

Snack:
Nuts (palmful of peanuts, almonds etc.), grapes, and celery sticks. Water (20oz)

Lunch:
Spinach salad ( yogurt as a dressing, sliced strawberries, nuts, canned tangerine etc.) water (20oz)

Snack:
dried apricot, raisins, and nuts (enjoy a tall glass of water)

Dinner:
grilled or broiled vegetables and fruits (squash, carrots, pineapple, corn etc.) curried chickpeas with spinach, and a baked sweet potato. (water)

This is a program that requires innovation, so eat what you enjoy and find ways to make it interesting. I look forward to hearing ideas of making veggies interesting, so please share and stay healthy.


Disclaimer
What I am about to share with you has not been tested or researched by a professional. This program is my personal interpretation of a cleanse and isn't necessarily meant to promote weightloss. Anyone participating is doing so at their own risk.

Happy Memorial Day!!!!

Today my day is field with activities, I have started with a workout and I am taking the kids horse back riding. We are going to end out day at the pool, it feels good to be out and about.

I you incorporated some strength training throughout the week I want to hear about it. For those of you who went out and bought the resistance bands, please put it to use, and thank you for listening.

Enjoy your memorial day weekend, stay safe, and have a healthy weekend.

Resistance Bands.....Anyone?

Have you ever used resistance bands before? Most people don't like them, I was guilty of that, until I realized that I can get just as much of a strength training exercise as if I was using free weights. Resistance bands comes in several resistant weight, most time they are color coded, each color representing a different resistant weight.

Why use resistance bands? If you want to shred away fat and have a low impact strength training program, resistance band should be a staple in your workout. The key with these bands is to hold the stretch for 5-15 seconds each time you do an exercise, by doing this you engage the muscle just as if you were using a free weight.

Each of us sport muscles through out our bodies, of course with fat on top it is impossible to see it. When losing fat muscles play a vital role, as muscle burn more calories than fat. Adding in strength training with your cardio will help maintain and build necessary muscles that will boost calorie burning and melt away fat.

Hope everyone's challenge is going well, share your experiences and thoughts. Have a healthy day.

Welcome Strength Training

I have heard people say, "I don't want to build muscles, I just want to slim down", or "muscles on a woman isn't sexy", or maybe their husband said it. So maybe building a bulk of muscles isn't for you, and I'm talking about women here, unless you're in a body building competition there's really no reason to sport that kind of muscle mass. However, as we age our bodies tend to lose muscle mass, which leads to a loss in body strength. (If you look back in a previous post I did, you will see how strength training helps burn calories).

Getting older causes havoc on our bodies, but that doesn't mean you just roll over and let it have it's way. We will experience fat increase, decreasing bone size and decrease in muscle strength and size, these are just a few of the things aging brings. Strength training is one way of fighting these changes, as it will prevent or even reverse these things.

So you don't own any weights, not an excuse, grab a can of vegetables and start curling. If you look around you will notice that sum bells are really quite inexpensive, for most women a 3-5lb dumbbell is a good start. I will be posting some simple upper body strength training exercises later in the week, so look out for that.

Challenge

This week is all about incorporating strength training into our exercise routine. Start with 3 days a week, in addition to your cardio (which should be done prior to strength training). If you are not sure what to do refer to our exercise page and follow the link for upper body strength training.

Share your thoughts and experiences, stay healthy and blessed.

Week in Review

We are at the end of another week, time waits on no one. Hopefully, everyone took the opportunity to reflect on how stress might be affecting them, the ideal outcome would be that you have made some changes that would reduce the amount of stress you're experiencing. Exercise is a great way of reducing stress, we spoke of yoga earlier in the week, and I am happy that some people have taken the initiative and bought a yoga DVD, now the challenge really begins. We have to make setting aside specific times for exercising, I have heard so many excuses as to why someone was not able to workout, I listen, and sometimes I won't even say anything, in my mind though, I am saying BS. If you want to experience weight loss you have to cut out the excuses and exercise, change your eating habits, and reduce or control your stress levels, until you get serious about these changes weight gain will always be an issue.

Truly enjoy the rest of your weekend, and join me for a new challenge next week. Stay healthy, and blessed.

Yoga Can Help

Staying on the subject of stress, I wanted to talk about YOGA as an option for relieving stress. It has been said that yoga by itself will probably not result in weightloss, reason being that the exercises do not raise our heart rate, which is a very important element in fat burning.

Meditation, control breathing, and stretching are some of what is found within yoga, and they are key elements to conquering stress. One major point I wanted to mention, is that yoga helps reduce cortisol levels (mentioned in the previous post). A person can do any amount of abdominal workout, but if that person is highly stressed, chances are that you will maintain fat in the mid section.

Yoga is a great option to incorporate into our lives, it will help with flexibility, stress control, sleep, anti aging, the list goes on and on. If you are stressed or just want to add some zen into your life try some yoga. Stay healthy guys.

Weightloss Stress

So you've been working out, eating healthy, and you are still not losing weight, or you've seen some change but only for certain areas, others not so much. You might be thinking this isn't working for me, and the desire to continue on is slowly coming to an end. Please don't give up!!!. It is never a bad idea to workout, or eat healthy, so why stop. Before you make the leap to deciding that a certain exercise program, or diet isn't working out for you read today's post.

STRESS, which one of us can say we are not under some kind of stress each day of our lives. The society we live in is consumed with stress inducing information, from our weight, education, cost of living, the list goes on. In our fight to lose weight stress can play a vital role, and it's never good. Most times people believe that when they're stress they would probably lose weight, truth is that's a myth, stress promotes weight gain!

Within our bodies are two Adrenal glands, these glands help fight or control stress, however, if our bodies are under extreme stress these glands can go into a state known as adrenaline overdrive. It's not that the glands are malfunctioning, but more or less, working overtime to keep the body going, in doing that they produce a chemical called CORTISOL.

Cortisol has been linked to a host of issues when it is released into our bodies, but we will focus on how it affects our weight. In simple terms cortisol causes our bodies to store fat due to it's effect on our blood sugar levels. In addition, it slows down our metabolic rate, studies has shown that cortisol is the culprit behind our increase belly fat.

All this because of stress, for most of us our weight loss journey is a source of high stress, but that stress is at times what causes us not to lose the weight we want to lose in the first place. Give stress a break, think about getting healthy instead of losing weight, trick your mind. This week there's no challenge, lets just focus on peace and tranquility. Get plenty of rest, drink lots of water and do something special for yourself, get happy that's the first step in reducing your stress. Good luck and stay healthy.


P.S.S check out the stress reducing product ads above.

Saturday

It's the last day of the week, I am hopeful that each of us is a bit healthier than we were when we started the week.

Next week we are going to focus on emotional factors that affect weight loss, and promote weight gain. I should say that a friend posed this subject to me, and ask for me to address it, which by the way is an excellent idea. So thank you friend.

On that note I will like to say that if anyone has an idea of a topic they would like for me to talk about feel free to let me know. Additionally, if you feel like you have material to share, write a post and send it to me.

Weight loss at times takes team work, and it's not always in the form of working-out together, we can all share what works or worked for us. I want everyone to stay healthy throughout the weekend, and enjoy.

P.S Happy Mothers Day to all moms out there!!!!!

Lets Work-out/ Contest Winner

Greetings all, i am excited to announce the winner of our contest today, that will be done at the end of this post. Thanks to all participants, there will be lots more contest to come so stay with me.

I wanted to focus on working out today, as it's been a while since I've mentioned it. A couple of days ago i saw a woman speed walking while her kid was practicing flag football, and i thought to myself, isn't that a good idea. So many of us make the excuse that we can't find the time to workout, and it's getting old, the truth is we do not make working-out a priority, therefore it's never on our list of things to do. If we wanted to work-out it'll happen, in our spare time, on our lunch break, when spending time with the kids, these are all opportunities to do something physical that will benefit us health-wise.

I suppose i can sit behind my computer all day typing about working-out, but if you don't have the time, you just dont have the time. So why not just get proactive about this issue, the goal is not to become a fitness buff, it's about taking care of your body. Fitness professionals have developed so many tools to help assist in the area of working-out, you have to find what speaks to you, it could be a piece of equipment, or a video, whatever it may be theres something out there for you. So you can't go to the gym, that's fine, can you do  20 minutes of walking around your neighborhood, can you walk up and down the stairs, can you get up and do jumping jacks during t.v commercials? something, anything?

Do your body a favor, God knows for some of us our bodies has been through the ringer with us. So, get up and do something physical, get your heart rate up, break a sweat, get sore, just do something please.


 Contest Winner

Camilla Winthrop!!! All the way from Germany, congratulations and thank you for participating. 

Keeping an Eye on What You Eat

I'm back!

Sorry about the long pause with posting, i had a very busy week, it was very productive though. I meet a few people that could be potential clients, and made some friends over the last few days. All in all, it was a great, tying week.

This week i want us to continue on the path that we set out on last week, we started out with sleep and making note of everything we eat. I hope everyone got adequate sleep, and is feeling energize for whats to come. The exercise of writing down what we eat is so important, especially for those of us who eat based on emotion, for instance eating when bored, sad, or happy. Over indulging in foods as healthy as that food may seem can sabotage the goal of losing weight. As mentioned in an earlier post, understanding your BRM (check post on counting calories for info.) and how it relates to your weightloss should be made first priority. Losing weight is not about starving or depriving yourself of the foods you love, it is more about knowledge and discipline.

Challenge

Continue to write down everything you eat and the quantity, this week though, i want you to review last weeks log and pay close attention to when you are eating the most. We are going to look for "the problem times" of the day so to speak, meaning the times when you find yourself eating not because of hunger. In addition to that, you are going to eliminate two foods from your list that is unhealthy, and replacing them with fruits and/or water. Stay healthy and have a super week.

Contest

Only two days left on the contest, i am happy with the participation, and look forward to announcing the winner on Wednesday.

Checking In

The last few days have been really hectic for me, hence my lack of posts. I have been receiving contest submission and I want you guys to keep up the great job. Stay healthy everyone.

Change to the contest start date

Hey everyone, I have decided to push back the start of the contest date to Wednesday 2nd which is tomorrow and it will end on the following Wednesday 9th. I have been contacted by a few people concerning not having viewed my post until last night, which would be an automatic lose for them as they were unable to submit a report for yesterday.

This contest in itself is a challenge for you to really see where you need help, in terms of what you eat and the quantity, along with how sleep or the lack there of might be affecting your weight loss.

All requirements for the contest remains the same. Any questions can be emailed to me or left in the comment section.