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Working out hard is an essential part of any fat loss plan. It sculpts your muscles, raises your resting metabolism, whittles down your waist and gives you functional strength and endurance.

The only catch is that you can seriously slow, or even reverse, your results by eating poorly. There’s nothing quite as frustrating as when you are working out like a champ only to face the same belly rolls each morning.

To keep you from giving up in frustration, I’ve put together the following 3 Easy Food Hacks to amp up your results.

Easy Food Hack #1: RICE

Rice is a big part of many a meal. There’s white rice, brown rice, stir-fried rice, sticky rice, wild rice, and the list goes on. All of these kinds of rice (yes, even brown rice) are packed with carbs and calories. This is great, if you are a growing child or an athlete, but not so great for someone like you with a fat loss goal.

Rather than give up rice completely, because that would make your veggies and meat look really lonely on a half-empty plate, let’s turn to Easy Food Hack #1.

CAULIFLOWER RICE: Now, don’t get skeptical on me until you give this food trick a try. To make rice from cauliflower first wash it and trim the leaves and stems. Chop into small pieces and then run those pieces through a food processor with the grating attachment. This will result in a rice-like consistency. Place the cauliflower rice in a large skillet with a Tablespoon of olive oil and cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and you are good to go. Serve your normal vegetable and meat dishes over a bed of cauliflower rice just as you would traditional rice.

Easy Food Hack #2: NOODLES

Have you ever noticed that when you crave your favorite pasta dish, you’re actually just craving the sauce? Noodles alone are bland and unspectacular. The magic, as well as the protein, is in the sauce.

Noodles, like traditional rice, are packed with calories and carbs that get in the way of your fat loss results. So, rather than just eating a bowl of sauce, try Easy Food Hack #2.

ZUCCHINI NOODLES: Again, try this trick before you knock it, I’m guessing that you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Wash a zucchini, and then run a vegetable peeler down its sides, creating long, wide noodles. Stop when you reach the inner, seedy part of the zucchini. These raw, zucchini noodles do not require any cooking, simply throw them onto your plate and top with your favorite pasta sauce. (Of course, I’m assuming you’re not going to use a white, cream-based sauce, but that’s another article for another day.)

Easy Food Hack #3: BREAD, BUNS, TORTILLAS

Cauliflower rice and zucchini noodles are all find and dandy for those meals that you prepare at home, but what about your meals eaten out? Many restaurant meals revolve around bread, buns or tortillas. These things are tasty, yet filled with calories and carbs that add to those annoying belly rolls.

That’s when you turn to Easy Food Hack #3.

THE LETTUCE WRAP: This trick is more popular than the first two, so you may already be familiar with it. How does it work? When ordering your meal, be it a sandwich, burger or tacos, ask that it be wrapped in lettuce in place of the bread, bun or tortilla. Most places are really cool about it, and you end up getting to eat the good part of the meal – the meat and flavors—without the carb-filled extras. If for some reason the restaurant is unable to wrap it in lettuce for you, then ask for the filling to be placed on a pile of greens and eat it with a fork.

Try these 3 Easy Food Hacks out for the next 30 days, and see how quickly your fat loss results ramp up. The improved results will motivate you to workout harder and more consistently, which will then add to an even greater level of fitness.

If you aren’t yet one of my clients, now is the perfect time for you to start. My focus is to get you to your goals using my results-driven method.

Simply call or email me today to set up your first workout.

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If you’re exercising regularly and still not seeing results then it’s time that you look closely at your diet.

One of the biggest obstacles that prevents you from losing fat and getting into awesome shape is all that processed food that you’re still eating.

And I can’t blame you, with the way more and more processed foods are being marketed as healthy, even the health savvy are being fooled.

Take a walk through the local natural foods market and you’ll see nearly every form of junk food that you’d find at the supermarket – only with things like ‘gluten free’, ‘organic’ and ‘zero trans fats’ on the packages.

Those are all great – being gluten free, organic and trans fats free. Fresh, organic veggies, fruits and meats could all boast the same. But when those words are stamped on a package of cookies, chips or the like, then eating them is going to seriously slow your fitness results. Gluten free or not.

Here are the top 5 ‘healthy’ processed foods that you’re eating that are killing your results and keeping you from attaining your goal weight:

Healthy Cereal

Have you seen the cereal aisle at the natural foods market? Its shelves are lined with dozens of cereal boxes, all with bold health claims. There are gluten free cereals, cereals with no corn syrup, cereals with heart healthy grains, cereals with whole grains and even cereals with added vitamins.

Those all sound healthy, right? Well, sure those cereals are technically not as harmful as the brightly colored cereals from the supermarket, but as far as your fat loss results are concerned, the two are really about the same.

Cereal is a dense source of calories, which means it’s almost impossible not to overdo it when enjoying a bowl. If your goal is to lose fat, then cereal, even organic, gluten free cereal, should stay off your daily menu.

Healthy Packaged Snacks

There is a brand of ‘healthy’ popcorn that literally has fit in its name. With branding like that it’s no wonder people are getting confused and eating food that destroys their fitness results.

Popcorn, and other crunchy, packaged ‘health’ food snacks are filled with carbohydrates and calories. Two things that you should be cutting back on when working towards a fitness goal. These snack items are habit forming, so you may tell yourself that it’s just a once-in-awhile treat, but soon it becomes a daily occurrence.

Here’s the simple, unchanging fact about packaged snack foods: No matter what benefits are broadcasted on the package, it’s always going to promote fat storage. Yes, even if it has fit right in its name.

Healthy Energy Bars

The energy bar aisle at the health food store is a colorful, wonderland of beautifully packaged, seemingly healthful snacks. The bars contain nuts, fruits, protein and even goji berries. What’s not to love?

All that sugar, for starters. Manufacturers are clever enough to call sugar ‘evaporated can juice’ or ‘natural cane sugar’ or even ‘rice syrup’ but that sugar reacts in your body just the same as any other sugar. It encourages fat storage.

The next time that you reach for an energy bar, consider all of the calories and sugars. Look for bars that are low in sugars and high in protein, and if you’re eating it in between meals consider eating just half the bar.

Healthy Bread

Have you ever spent time in the bread aisle, reading labels and trying to figure out which is the healthiest? It can be pretty confusing. There’s wheat, whole wheat, gluten free, and sprouted grain. How can you tell what’s the healthiest?

The unfortunate news, for all you bread lovers, is that when it comes to losing inches all bread is a problem. You see, gluten free bread is filled with just as many calories and carbohydrates as wheat bread or sprouted grain bread.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you have a free pass to indulge in bread when it’s the ‘healthy’ kind. Your body will convert that healthy bread into fat quicker than you can say burpee.

Healthy Trail Mix

Trail mix is a tricky one for healthy food shoppers. It’s made with nuts and seeds, which we know to be healthy. It’s also often dotted with chocolate, sweetened dried fruits or other treats.

Nuts can belong in a fat loss diet, within certain parameters. For example, a small handful of raw almonds makes a wonderful in-between-meals snack. It’s filled with fiber, protein, good fat, vitamins and minerals.

A half a cup of trail mix, on the other hand, is packed with two or three times the calories in addition to having added sweeteners and extra salt. Not to mention, trail mix is hard to stop eating once you’ve started. When working towards a fat loss goal, it’s best to stay away from even the healthiest of trail mixes.

Never take a packaged food item based on the claims and benefits printed on the labels. When you’re looking to transform your body, you must guard what goes into your mouth. Packaged foods, even those from the health store, are going to derail your results ever single time.

Speed your fitness results by becoming one of my clients. I’d love to get you to your goals using my results-driven method.

Simply call or email me today to set up your first workout.

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If I were to award a single food item with the title of ‘Fastest Way To Pack On The Pounds’, hands down the winner would be refined sugar.

Today we eat 20 times more sugar than people did 200 years ago! No wonder we are bigger than ever…

One of the reasons that your diet is filled with so much sugar is that some form of refined sugar is included in virtually every single processed food. This is yet another reason that it’s important to cut those processed and packaged convenience foods out of your diet.

Cutting sugar from your diet is easier said than done. Once it is a part of your daily diet, cravings strike, causing you to eat it even more frequently. But there is hope.

Here are 7 Ways To Crave Less of that Sugar that you’re eating that’s killing your results and keeping you from attaining your goal weight:

Eat More Protein

A diet rich in protein keeps you full, satisfied and less likely to crave sweets. A great way to make sure that you are getting enough is to plan each meal and snack around a protein. Plan breakfast around eggs, lunch and dinner around baked chicken breast, and make snacks hard boiled eggs or baked meatballs. Try the recipe below for a protein-packed, sugar-busting snack.

Avoid Artificial Sweeteners

One of the biggest fitness myths out there is the idea that calorie-free, artificially sweetened beverages don’t impact your fat loss results. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the truth is that the diet soda you’re sipping is making it harder for you to reach your goal weight. While the diet soda itself doesn’t contain calories, it has been proven to cause cravings for sugary foods. Put down the diet soda and instead pick up a refreshing bottle of spring water.

Steer Clear Of Saboteurs

The sad truth is that people in your life will try to sabotage your low sugar diet. You’ll run into that pushy person at the office who insists that you eat a donut, the well-meaning family member who dishes you up a bowl of ice cream, and the friend who comes over with a plate of her home-baked cookies. The best avoidance strategy is to sincerely thank the sugar-pusher for their gift, tell them you wish you could eat it, and then blame me – your trainer – as the bad guy who says that you need to cut back on sugar.

Try Dark Chocolate

For those moments when your sweet tooth is relentlessly badgering you for something sweet, ditch the super-sugary candies and stick with a small square of very dark chocolate. Chocolate that is 70% or higher in cocoa content should be the only candy that you keep on hand. The benefit of the cocoa, in addition to the lowered sugar content, makes dark chocolate an occasionally justifiable treat.

Stick With Fruit

What’s sweet, colorful and comes in hundreds of flavors? Organic, seasonal, fresh fruit, of course! As you remove refined sugar from your life, feel free to add in some natural sugar by way of fresh, local fruit. It’s amazing how satisfyingly sweet fruit is – it’s truly nature’s candy.

Change Your Palate

As you begin to limit your intake of refined sugars, you’ll find that your tolerance for sugar decreases. This means that something that didn’t taste sweet before – say a green apple – now has uncanny depths of sweetness. What’s happening is that your sweet receptors are becoming more finely tuned, now that you’re not overwhelming your palate with sickly-sweet refined sugar.

Workout Like You Mean It

A regular, challenging exercise routine will not only get you into amazing shape, it also reduces your cravings for sugar. The endorphin rush brought on by vigorous exercise is an even more powerful feel-good-feeling than the pleasure gotten by indulging in sugary foods.

Make challenging, consistent exercise a part of your life by signing up for my fitness program. I’d love to get you to your goals using my results-driven method.

Simply call or email me today to set up your first workout.

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There are two distinctly different approaches to losing the fat and getting into amazing shape. One of these approaches works. (Every. Single. Time.) And the other approach fails. (Every. Single. Time.)

I call these the Fitness Short Game and the Fitness Long Game. Let’s find out which game you’re playing…

Fitness Short Game: Those who choose to play short are looking for the quick fix. They are looking for the program that will give them dramatic fat loss results in the shortest amount of time. They want results, they want it NOW, and they don’t play to stick with it. This is the instant gratification crowd.

Fitness Long Game: Those who choose to play long are focusing on making lifestyle changes to sustain for the long haul. They are working on steadily adapting healthier habits and putting in the time and effort to maintain these improvements. They are patient and focused on their end goal, knowing full well that gratification will be delayed, and results will be permanent.

Which of these two strategies to you think leads to pounds lost and muscles sculpted? There’s no question that playing the fitness long game is the only way to successfully transform your health and your body.

Let’s take a closer look at what it means to play the Fitness Long Game…

1) Create a Long Term Vision

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step…and also with a selected destination. The first step in playing the fitness long game is to have a clear picture in your mind of what the success you are striving for looks like.

What will you look like when you’ve hit your fitness stride? How often will you exercise each week to maintain your fab new body? What foods will you eat to support your muscles and aid your fat loss? How many hours each night will you sleep? Who will you spend your time with?

The clearer your vision, the steadier your path, and the more likely your chance to succeed.

2) Learn to Delay Gratification

As you read above, no one attains a hot body through quick, miracle fixes. This means that as you strive towards your goal you will need to practice the art of delayed gratification.

This is not to say that there won’t be victories along the way, to fuel your fire and give you a boost of motivation. Pay attention to every little victory, such as every single pound lost, each size down, and compliments from friends and family. Learn to derive gratification from each inch of progress towards your goal.

Imagine how sweetly gratifying it will be to achieve your long term vision and lean into this feeling when the going gets tough.

3) Fall in Love with the Process

Why is it that you aren’t in tiptop shape right now? Because you’ve fallen in love with the process of being out-of-shape. You’ve fallen in love with the hours on your couch, the comfort food, the late night desserts and the extra hours of sleep in the morning.

Playing the fitness long game means falling in love with the process of getting fit. You must fall in love with the early morning wake up, the muscle pain, the sweaty clothes and the clean foods. Remember, this process is part of your long term vision for your fit life, and so accepting the new habits now, rather than later, will get you to your goals faster.

Won’t getting and staying in shape be that much easier if you LOVED the habits and actions necessary for your success?

4) Take Notice of All Progress

On week 2 of a 12-week challenge you will not wake up looking like a fitness competitor. You’ll wake up sore, tired, and probably hungry. The scale will tell you that you’ve lost a modest number of pounds, and you’ll mentally calculate the percentage left to lose. You’ve barely scratched the surface.

I’ll bet if you tried you could find half a dozen signs of your early progress. Sure, these may be undetectable to everyone else, but it’s your body so you can feel the change before anyone else can see it. Take the time to stop and congratulate yourself on every inch of progress in your journey.

No step is too small to celebrate.

5) Focus Less on What You Want and More on Who You Want to Become

What you want is to look a certain way, to feel a certain way, and to have others look at you in a certain way. It’s easy to imagine what you want. However, it’s who you become that dictates what you get.

Spend time focusing on the kind of person who achieves the things that you want to achieve. What are their daily habits? What do they do differently than you do? What can you learn from them? By focusing on the kind of person that you need to become, you will automatically achieve the success that you want.

Transform your daily habits to those of the person who has achieved the things you wish to achieve.

Are you ready to transform your body once and for all by playing the fitness long game? Call or email me now to get started!

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Here are my 5 personal lifestyle rules. Stick with them at least 90% of the time to keep your body healthy and hot.

Lifestyle Rule #1: Don’t Eat Just To Eat

There is no place in your healthy lifestyle for mindless snacking. I’m talking about a tub of popcorn at the movies or a bag of chips in front of the TV. All the calories ingested from mindless snacking have to end up somewhere…and that somewhere is around your waist or on your thighs.

Snacks are fine when you are aware of how much you’re eating in order to balance it with the rest of your meals for the day.

Lifestyle Rule #2: Stand (And Walk) When Possible

Have you heard the saying sitting is the new smoking? The idea is that a lifetime of sitting all-day-every-day is as harmful to your body as smoking. Think for a moment about how much of your day is spent sitting.

You wake up and sit down for breakfast. You sit on the drive to work. You take the elevator up. You sit for most of 8 hours at work. You take the elevator down. You sit on the drive home. You sit to eat dinner. You sit to watch TV.

That’s quite a bit of time spent sitting! Now imagine if you consciously stood for some of this time each day and took the stairs instead of the elevator. Over weeks, and months, it really adds up in calories burned, muscles engaged, and overall fitness and health.

Lifestyle Rule #3: Avoid Sugar

I might sound like a broken record about this one, but that’s OK, I’ll keep harping on this point until more people listen. Our bodies weren’t designed to ingest large amounts of sugar on a daily basis. When you regularly take in excess sugar the results are always the same. You. Gain. Weight.

The tricky part is that sugar is all around us, so avoiding it takes real vigilance.

Start with your morning beverage of choice. Does it have sugar in it? Most of the beverages that are blended and brewed at coffee shops are simply vehicles for ingesting sugar. Find a beverage that you enjoy without any added sugar and stick with the rule of not drinking sugary beverages throughout your day.

Lifestyle Rule #4: Keep Dinner Light

Who says that dinner should be the biggest and heartiest meal of the day? Instead, focus on enjoying light dinners that are centered around protein and veggies and avoid starches and carbs in the evening.

The recipe below for Beet and Grapefruit Salad is a great example. Add a grilled chicken breast to a serving of this vibrant, fiber-filled salad and you have a nutritious dinner that’s light and healthy.

Lifestyle Rule #5: Always Exercise

How often do you brush your teeth? Do you sometimes take a few weeks or months off brushing your teeth? Um, no. That’s gross. You brush your teeth everyday as an ongoing habit because you know that the benefits outweigh the slight inconvenience.

Can you see where I’m going with this? 🙂

Exercise only truly works when you do it as an ongoing habit because you know that the benefits outweigh the slight inconvenience. It’s part of keeping you healthy. It’s part of who you are.

I’m here to make your daily exercise habit fun and effective. If you aren’t yet my client then call or email today to join now.

Let’s do this!

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What’s the big secret that they know about losing fat, getting lean, and looking amazing?

The answer is as simple as it is difficult: Avoid Sugar.

While you do your best to eat healthy, do you know how much sugar you are actually consuming everyday? The answer will surprise you.

The average American consumes over 80 grams of sugar everyday, an amount that’s easily three times more than is safe and healthful. How much sugar do you eat? Write down the sugar count on everything you eat for the next few days and then find your average sugar gram intake. Now work on slashing this number.

Part of the problem is that food items are often sneaky about how much sugar is really hiding within. Deceiving messages on the packaging imply that the contents are beneficial, causing us to ignore the high sugar content. In the end whatever supposed benefits being advertised are overshadowed by the negative effect of the sugar.

What’s the big deal about taking in a lot of sugar? Well, you won’t achieve a lean body while consuming a lot of sugar. So if you choose to indulge in sugar then forget about strutting your stuff on the beach this year.

Aesthetics aside, a high sugar intake is detrimental to your health as it causes your cells and organs to become acidic and a breeding ground for disease.

Going back to that guy or gal that you know who is perpetually lean…you can bet that their diet is extremely low in sugar. A low sugar diet is the key to keeping lean and it’s not had by simply avoiding the high sugar items, like candy and cake, it’s had by avoiding items with even low amounts of added sugars.

Take the next week to cut out all added sugars from your diet. Check in with your weight and your energy levels at the end of seven days and note any difference. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how quickly you’ll see results in both your weight and energy levels by making this simple, conscious move to avoid sugar.

Diet is only half of the equation when it comes to having a sexy, fit body. Exercise is the other half of the coin, and that’s where I come in.

Call or email me today to get started on an exercise program that’s designed to transform your body once and for all!

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The thing holding you back

The thing holding you back is something that you have complete control over: it’s the intensity with which you exercise.

Intensity is something that’s difficult for the outside observer to measure but is felt within your body as you go through the motions of an exercise.

• It’s how hard you push yourself to go as heavy and as quickly as possible.
• It’s picking up a weight that feels hard to handle.
• It’s putting a boost behind each stride as you run.
• It’s resisting the urge to simply go through the motions.
• It’s outdoing your efforts from last time.

Now I understand the urge to put out token effort in your workout, going through the motions while cutting corners along the way. We all have days when the weights feel extra heavy and our energy stores feel depleted, and those days will naturally be less intense.

However, when low intensity workouts are your norm, you simply won’t ever achieve the results that you’re hoping for. And this is something that you completely control.

So, as you go into your next workout, think about the intensity that you’re bringing. Are you pushing yourself with each rep? Could you go heavier? Could you be faster?

Fight the urge to be comfortable while you exercise. There’s plenty of time throughout your day to feel comfortable, just not while you’re working out.

Does this make sense?

Attack your next workout with 100% intensity and set a new standard for yourself to continuously push to become stronger, faster, leaner and more fit.

You’ve got this!

And if you’re not yet one of my awesome clients then call or email today to join the family. Together we will get you into your best shape yet!