I was recently talking with a regular client of ours who just started to wear a pedometer to monitor how much she actually moves around (steps walked) in a given day. She made the decision to wear this device due to health problems she has been experiencing as well as by a recommendation of her personal trainer.  So the very first day that she wore the pedometer it showed her that she just walked 1200 steps and well she was aghast. She could not believe that she really only walked so little. She was under the understanding that she was walking all the time but NOOOOO not so. She now recognizes that she must move a lot more. She must set time aside everyday to move because her day job is sitting at a desk all day long. It was a “wake up” call or an eye opening moment for her.

What impression are you under? Do you believe you will live forever? Do you believe shoveling in all that sugar will not effect you or eventually give you diabetes? Do you believe your Dr. when he tells you  to watch your cholesterol or high blood pressure? Do you hear wide awake or are you still sleeping? Do you realize that all that extra fat you are accumulating may KILL YOU.

Another client of ours has a family history of dying young from heart disease. All males in this guys family have died before 50 years old. He currently is close to 40 and about 40lbs overweight. He is training to help him make friends with food and live a more active lifestyle. Hopefully this will break the health trend his family currently is living. He is learning to eat healthier food and lose some of the bodyfat that is weighing him down. He is listening and responding to his families history. He knows he must make some changes. He lives daily with his “wake up” call.

Are you aware that 68% of this country is overweight. With a third of the population being obese and unfortunately even with all the education and scare tactics the statistics are getting worse. Heading into this holiday season if you just don’t know how to take care of this unique gift we are all given called our bodies then make it a point to find out. NOW before you get a rude “wake up” call that you might never recover from. 

Find out if you are doing it right.Pay attention to what you are eating on any given day. Look into how much you really move around. And so what if everyone around you is fat and eats junk. Does it make it OK or even right for you to be fat or unhealthy and eat junk just because everyone you know behaves that way or is that way?

I just started telling my kids when they say to me…

“But Mom, Stephanie’s Mom and Dad let her do it!” and I say “I don’t care what Stephanie’s family is allowing her to do. This is what our family is doing.”

“But Mom..all the other kids get cookies and chips in their lunches. Why can’t we?”

“Because in this family you will have fruits with your lunch..and occasionally some pretzels.” (believe me me kids have junk sometimes…we are balanced here not extremists)

So just because 68% of everyone around us all is fat or obese it DOES NOT MAKE IT OK for you…not unless you make it so. Please don’t make it so. Understand you are responsible for your decisions and the decisions you make for your children.

Today is what matters. Evaluate where you currently are and make changes for where you want to go. So make it happen for you and your family.

Always interested in your comments, suggestions or questions…I’m listening!

God Bless You,

Evey

Can the cellulite be gotten rid of? Can you ever be free of the “cottage cheese” thighs? “Pock marked” butt? “Dimpled” arms (yes nowadays even the arms are getting cellulite)? Some would have you believe that once you get it…you never can lose it. Can you really NEVER lose it? Is it  truly a chronic condition?

First we should understand exactly what cellulite is…. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cellulite our online dictionary states that cellulite is “a condition that is claimed to occur in most women where the skin of the lower limbs, abdomen, and pelvic region becomes dimpled.”  Merriam-Webster ( www.merriam-webster.com/definition/cellulite ) defines cellulite as “deposits of subcutaneous fat within fibrous connective tissue that give a puckered and dimpled appearance to the skin surface.” Wikipedia  also states towards the end of the entry that a few researchers feel that “there really is no cure for cellulite” as if it were a disease.  Basically we all know what cellulite is and most definitely what it looks like…

Personally we here at Fit Transformatins believe that losing cellulite is a lot like losing fat. Seeing as cellulite IS fat and when you lose fat you shrink those fat cells down and they no longer take up space in your body then….low and behold….you really CAN lose cellulite. Well I’ll be. This unbelief in being able to lose your cellulite is right up there with the person coming in the door not even believing they can actually lose 5-20 lbs of fat. Which, of course, can really, really happen. 

After perusing several websites claiming to solve your cellulite problem with lotions and surgeries among many treatments …we are still of the mindset that this cellulite circumstance is another issue that can be minimized if not out right solved with a program with three lifestyle components in it. Can you guess what I will write next? Yes cellulite and lifestyles do tend to have correlations. Those folks that eat healthy foods, weight train and do cardio tend to decrease their bodyfat and minimize the cellulite. Yee Haw I say…

From personal experience, having been fat after both pregnancies and having gained weight recently after my husband’s illness I have cellulite. Everytime I focus on my eating habits, get regular cardio and weight training  I slowly but surely lose the cellulite. In fact a little over a year ago, when I had my bodyfat down to 14 percent (I also was 41 years old) I did not have one dimple in my butt and all I can say is YES!!!!! There is light at the end of the tunnel. It can be done.

It just takes a focus, a want and a plan to get you to your end result. So whether that end result is modest and you just want alot less cellulite all the way to the other end of the spectrum and you don’t want even one dimple on your butt I say go for it. Give it 100% and keep giving it 100% till you get there. Have fun on your journey…it is well worth it.

Please feel free to share your experiences, thoughts or opinions…I’m listening!

God Bless You,

Evey

Quite often we have someone show up at our personal training studio saying “I just need to lose this!” as they point to their rear end, big belly, or jiggle under their arms. Then they say, “Can we do lots of abs today because I just have to get rid of this, I can’t stand how fat my stomach is.” Are you one of those people who go to the gym and make a beeline for the abs class or the adductor/abductor machine to work you inner and outer thighs with the intention of whittling the fat away through exercise? You keep saying if I only do 1000 crunches everyday I will have great abs like that girl on the fitness magazine cover or if I only work my huge thighs more they will get smaller so I can fit into my favorite jeans.

Unfortunately, still to this day many, many people remain under the assumption that working a particular body part will get rid of the fat in that area and somehow make that problem area smaller. Not sooooo….in fact you will probably push your fat out more if you just so happen to put muscle in that area from working it, before you drop any bodyfat. Then you will look bigger in your problem area….. (at least momentarily until that muscle goes to work for you). Uh oh! So then how do you lose that big belly, big butt or jiggly arms or cellulite?

There are three components to transforming a flabby, sloppy out of shape body into a firm, strong and healthy body. The first component and perhaps the most important is how and what you feed your body. Are you eating junk with no nutritional value and expecting an incredible body? Do you eat live from the earth as God made it food or are you slamming McDee’s every morning? These are important questions that have to be addressed before anything else. What you eat, how much you eat of it, when you eat it, how it’s prepared and so on is such a big topic that it is definately a topic for another entry. Suffice it to say that you should be eating 5-6 small meals through-out the day. Every meal should have a quality protein source and carb source and of course veggies and fruits should be part of your meal planning.

After you have your healthy eating under control your next focus will be weight training. So you want to be firm and strong….well then weight training it will be. You can not get muscle without actually working that muscle out. So you must lift weights or do some kind of resistance training to challenge your muscles to grow. Your muscle is a big factor in your metabolism and probably is still one of the most misunderstood parts to getting fit and healthy. In a nutshell, it will help you to lose the unwanted fat by speeding up your metabolism as in more muscle, more calories needed to support that muscle. Bigger muscle groups have more potential to grow alot bigger hence require alot more calories to sustain them, unlike abs which are a small muscle group and will only grow so much and never require a substantial amount of calories to keep them their size. That is why many, many fitness people often say…”ABs are made in the kitchen.”

So here you have all this unawanted fat and you decide to try to get rid of it as Fit Transformations recommends so you start watching your food intake, start lifting weights and you WILL start noticing some small changes but to take in to the next level and speed things up you must add your third component which is cardio. Cardio on its own, even without looking to drop bodyfat as a goal, is so important for a variety of reasons. Cardio is great for your heart, blood pressure, to relieve stress and on and on it goes… and it’s a must to lose the big butt, oversized thighs or jiggly arms. So get out there and work up a sweat doing something, anything you enjoy because you will burn some calories and in turn lose some bodyfat.

There you have it…the basic elements or three components to getting a firm, strong body versus a large, fat and flabby body. So what are you waiting for? Make your plan using these basics and you can achieve anything…

Always interested in your comments or thoughts….

God Bless You,
Evey

Wow…this is such a major, big topic and has so much influence on people that it has been known to steal the joy out of whole days in some folks lives. Incredible that an inanimate object that records numbers that represent our personal weight can have such an impact on our lives. How did this happen? Where did this start? More importantly when will it end…this insane focus on the numbers on “The SCALE”. What are those numbers and what do they represent for us?

With a little bit of research I discovered that scales have been around for thousands of years but the act of weighing ourselves came about in the United States in the early 1900’s and became extremely popular during the Great Depression with coin operated scales used as big money makers. By the 1940’s our love affair with scales was in full force when bathroom scales became regular household items.

From then until now our fixation with the numbers on the scale has only intensified to the point that some people will do darn near anything to get those numbers to go down. As evidenced by surgeries and drugs and other unnatural ways to drop weight. So what exactly does that number on the scale represent? Maybe to some people it represents who they are socially or economically but really the numbers on the scale are simply YOU. Your bones, muscles, organs and bodyfat. That’s it… just all the parts that make up the physical being of YOU. And your saying…”Is that it? Bodyweight is just my organs, muscles, bones and bodyfat? Then why do I lose my mind over the numbers on the scale everyday and sometimes many times a day?” Maybe you give those numbers on the scale a little too much power over you, your life, your moods, your days… and that is just not healthy. So stop doing it.

Stop focusing on your scale weight as the means to some end that you may not even be aware your using for an ends. How often have you thought.”If only I looked like her/him? Was as small as them? Could fit into a size 2? If only I could lose 15-20lbs I would be so happy!” Is that you? You are looking for an ends to make you fullfilled, happy or just different than the person you are right now. The scale is NOT going to do that for you…but I think you already know that. And that is definitely a topic for another post.

So with that in mind back to the subject at hand. Do you get upset when you don’t lose the weight on the scale that you feel you should lose because you’ve PUT IN SO MUCH EXERCISE and good eating that that scale had BETTER be lower this week? If so…welcome to my world. This has got to be the number one discourager for most of our clients. They weigh themselves..which we advise against up to a point, and of course the number on the scale is never as good as they think it should be from all the time and energy they put in for the week and they say…”WHY do I even try? What is the point? This isn’t working…and on and on it goes. I call it the process of talking yourself out of getting fit and healthy. Getting fit and healthy actually takes time and evergy that hopefully will extend throughout your life so who cares if you stayed the same weight this week. You goose egged on “The Scale”! It didn’t move at all or worse yet you put a pound on! YIKES! It might feel like the end of the world but it is not.

In fitness the best way to measure your success with getting healthy and fit is NOT “The Scale” but by bodyfat measurement. When you get your bodyfat measured it is measuring your Lean body mass versus you Fat. It will tell you how much of your weight is purely fat and from there you can determine how healthy or unhealthy you are becoming. Most people trying to get fit start to weight train and do cardio and lots of changes occurr in your body from these efforts. With the best change being putting muscle on and therefore lighting up your metabolism.

Always when a person comes into our studio to lose weight before anything else we figure out where they are right now. We do this several ways with one of those ways by doing their bodyfat analysis. We want to know how much Lean Body Mass(LBM) versus bodyfat(BF) they are carrying around. There are several ways to measure bodyfat with most having a small margin of error. The important thing is to get it measured regularly and to use those results as a gauge to determine if you are losing fat and/or putting muscle on. So when someone walks into our studio and says “I want to lose 70lbs.” they are probably referring to scale weight but we will in turn determine their bodyfat and propose for them to shoot to lose such and such amount of bodyfat and also put on such and such amount of muscle.

It is important to remember that muscle weights 21/2 times fat. So when you start weight training you WILL put some muscle on and hopefully also lose weight so initially there may be no change on the scale, in fact you might even gain weight on the scale. And your like “Holy Cow” but I came in to lose weight….and yes you did. But if your are weight training you will have put muscle on so on “The Scale” it might appear as if you have actually gained weight but instead what probably happened is that you put muscle AND dropped bodyfat. That can be answered with a bodyfat ananlysis. So make sure you get your bodyfat measured and try to use that as your measurement tool instead of just “The Scale” to determine if you are heading in the direction you want to go. For most of us that direction is losing bodyfat.

Remember that Rome was not build in a day nor did God make our world in one day so please, have reasonable expectations for your fat lose. Assume it will take you as long to lose the fat as it took to put it on. Good luck and know that it can be done. All great endeavors take time and isn’t your health and fitness worth it?

God Bless You,
Evey