Tag Archives: personal trainer

Fitness Accountability: The Secret to Achieving your Fitness Goals This Year.

What’s going to keep you on track this year?

Yesterday was officially the first real day of the New Year.

Sure we’ve technically already had 5 other days, but given that our holidays fell in the middle of the week this year most of us were probably still on Holiday until Jan 6th.

So here’s a question for you.

Did you work out?

Did you start that new healthy meal plan?

Are you waiting until tomorrow or next week once you get back into you routine?

If you answered yes to the first 2 questions, GOOD FOR YOU! Nice work?

How long will it last?

I say that, not to doubt you or be pessimistic. I’m being realistic.

Most of our lives are very busy. Every day we are pulled in a million directions.

Some obligations physically keep us from keeping up with our most genuine fitness goals, getting rid of stubborn belly fat, while often they just provide convenient excuses as to why we fall short.

So eliminate the excuses this year.

Hold yourself accountable!

Accountability can come in many forms.

My fitness goal this year is to be able to do Handstand Scorpion. In order to this, I’ll have to work each day on my strength, back flexibility, and balance.

One of the ways I plan to stay accountable to this goal is to post a picture a day to instagram. You are my accountability!

What will be your fitness accountability?

Here are a couple options:

Get a Workout Buddy

The easiest way to hold yourself accountable is to find yourself a workout buddy.

I’m not talking about asking your best friend to workout with you. That could work–if your friend LOVES to workout, but if they are going to convince you to go grab a beer instead of hitting the gym, your best friend is not your workout buddy.

A workout buddy should be of the same fitness level. If one person is always holding the other back, the relationship will fail. A personal of similar physical abilities will push you to preform your best, but will also allow you to have success so you don’t feel defeated at the end of your workout.

Make a Calendar Plan

If your workout time is your time to yourself than a good way to keep yourself on track is to use the calendar system.

I’m a big fan of writing down the workouts I need to meet my goals on a calendar and posting it to the fridge, at my desk at work, or on the mirror in your bathroom. The goal is to post it somewhere you will see it everyday and make sure to cross off each day as you do the work or stick to the plan.

If you feel comfortable writing your own workout plan, GO FOR IT! Just make sure you stick to it.

There are also plenty of online resources out there to get you started.

Check out my 7 Day Healthy Eating Guide or 1/2 Marathon Training Program.

Hybrid Athlete is also a great resource for training programs.

Hire A Professional

If you a complete newbie to this whole fitness world or just want someone committed to helping you reach your goals, think about hiring a professional.

They will teach you what you need to do so you don’t hurt yourself as you get started as well as provide personal one-on-one attention and accountability.

If you belong to a gym look into meeting with a trainer once a month to lay out a plan. If you have someone you need to report to once a month, it’s more likely you’ll stick to your goal. Better yet if you can afford it, meet once a week so that you keep yourself on track at more frequent intervals at gyms in Lafayette CA if youre local.

If you don’t belong to a gym find an option online. Skype with me online and we can develop a plan for you. Meeting online can often be more convenient because you don’t have to go anywhere. We can develop a plan that will work for you in your home!

Regardless of how you do it, accountability is a must to hit your fitness goals this year!

What’s your preferred Method of Fitness Accountability?

Share below to help keep other readers accountable for their health! 🙂

Yoga For Athletes: 6 Reasons Why You Should Do Yoga to Enhance your Athletic Preformance

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One of my favorite viral images was this one to the right that started getting passed around about a year ago.

“I can’t do yoga because I’m not flexible enough.”-The Many Athletes out there not doing yoga.

Athletes can do amazing physical feats but it’s so funny how often they shy away from the things that don’t come easy to them.

Many athletes snub their nose at yoga before they even try saying it’s too easy and not a good enough workout.

Sam says, that the irony in that is the ones who do try a class don’t continue because they can’t twist into a pretzel like the girl in the front row.

Most athletes are used to being naturally good at something. Yes an athlete then works very hard to improve those natural skills, but it’s funny how quickly they quit something that doesn’t come naturally easy.

Very quickly major professional athletes are beginning to catch on yoga for athletes.

As an athlete if you can let go of your ego, you too will find that yoga can do amazing things to improve your athletic performance.

6 Reasons Why Yoga Will Improve Your Athletic Performance:

Evan Longoria

1: Flexibility

Most athletes have tight hips, shoulders, hamstrings, calves, feet the list goes on and on. Some athletes take the time after a workout to do a regeneration session using foam rollers and/or trigger point massage therapy, but these sessions are usually hurried through so one can get home and get a good meal.

A yoga class sets aside time specifically to stretch. A hot yoga class provides the heat necessary to prime your muscles for stretching helping increase flexibility even more.

As athletes know flexibility is important for proper range of motion, increased muscle recovery time, and injury prevention. At least one yoga class a week provides time specifically for these benefits.

Pada Hastasana

2: Isometric Strength Training without Breaking Down the Body

In order to actually improve your ability to do many yoga postures, you are actually preforming an isomeric muscle contraction.

Take Pada Hastasana (Hands to feet Pose) for example you use your biceps, quadriceps, latissimus dorsi, and abdominal strength to open up tight hamstrings.

While doing this posture, not only do you strengthen the muscles you are using, open up and stretch your tight hamstrings, but you also train the body to be able to use multiple muscle groups at once while relaxing other muscles groups gaining more body awareness a very important aspect of elite athletic performance.

Yoga not only increases your muscular strength and awareness, but it does it in a low impact way. Many athletes don’t actually hurt themselves on the field, but rather in their training. Yoga provides a low-impact cross training that will help an athlete get stronger without further breaking their body down.

Standing Bow combines Balance with using your strong glutes and quads to open up hamstrings. A posture an athlete can quickly become better in when they focus their energy correctly.

3: Balance

Many yoga postures incorporate balance, improving ones ability to be stable on one leg.

The more stable you are on 1 leg, the better you will be on 2.

All sports involve balance in some way, yet many take the time in practice to improve it.

Working on your balance in a yoga class will give you an upper edge on the sports field. Here are some other practices that may help you work on your mental and physical balance.

4: Injury Prevention

We’ve already mentioned that yoga is good for increasing flexibility which also leads to decreased probability of tearing muscles.

Yoga can also help prevent common sports injuries such as torn ACLs, Minicuses, Rotator Cuffs, ankle strains and sprains.

When you do yoga, you learn to recruit the smaller supportive muscles that you don’t activate when doing tradition strength training. These supportive muscles not only make you stronger, but also are the ones that will help protect your joints while your power muscles are performing athletic movements.

If it’s good enough for the 8-1 Seakhawks it might be good for you!

5: Focus and Concentration

It isn’t any secret that the more you focus on any particular task, the better the performance.

When you take a test, the teacher provides a quiet environment. This isn’t the case when you’re on the field. There are fans, coaches, and opponents creating constant distraction, yet few sports team take the time to train their athletes to focus.

Focus is a key component to yoga. Not only will the focus learned in yoga help you have more body awareness and control improving balance and injury prevention, but it will also make your reflexes quicker allowing you to be one step a head of your opponent.

Most athletes quickly transition to shallow breathing as soon as their heart rate increases. Yoga trains you to use your full lung!

6: Breath

The first step of any yoga posture is breath. A good instructor will tell you if you can not maintain normal breathing (long slow inhales and long slow exhales) you aren’t actually getting the benefit of the posture.

Controlled breathing reassures the brain that you are in control. It also decreases circulating carbon dioxide a trigger that causes your heart rate to increase. Controlled breathing naturally allows your heart rate to decrease allowing you to actually work harder.

Yoga trains you to be comfortable maintaining normal breathing.

When you take longer inhales, you actually breathe into the deeper bronchial branches of the lung allow more surface area for your blood stream to take up oxygen (fuel for your muscles). Your working muscles then utilize that fuel turning it into carbon dioxide. When you take a longer slower exhale you are able to get all the metabolic waste out allowing a larger percentage of oxygenated air to get in with your next breath.

The physical presence of more oxygen to fuel your muscles with the mental perception that you aren’t working as hard when you heart rate decreases allows you to have a larger work output than you would otherwise.

Over time as you develop this skill in the yoga room, it transfers over to any other endeavors that increase your heart rate making you much more efficient at breathing and providing the oxygen your muscles need to function. If you are planning to workout at home with a recumbent bike, these are the things to consider when choosing a recumbent bike.

Now that I’ve convinced you need yoga as an Athlete, here are some important things to keep in mind:

Go in with an open mind. If you think yoga is a waste of time, it will be for you.
Breath. The first step of every posture is normal breathing. If you can’t maintain long slow inhalations and long slow exhalations your body isn’t relaxed and you won’t be able to get the full benefits of the posture.
Take it easy, Leave the win or lose mentality at the door. As long as you are trying your best and breathing you will get benefits. The first law of yoga is non-violence and that starts with yourself. If you are forcing yourself into a posture you are liking to tear a muscle causing injury…the exact opposite of what you’re looking to achieve.
Enjoy the relaxation. Don’t fight it. Relaxation is built into yoga to help clear and focus the mind.
Make yoga a regular routine. Treat your yoga practice the way you would treat any other aspect of your training. If you don’t do it regularly you won’t get the benefits.
Listen. Don’t take corrections from a teacher negatively. Teachers are meant to help you. If a teacher tells you to relax you probably aren’t following the first 2 bullet points. This is often the case when athletes first start yoga.
Smile as you practice. It makes the experience better.

Working to Avoid the Skinny Fat

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For those that follow me on my and my husband’s blog Far Away Reasons, you know that we’ve hit New Zealand and were immediately shocked to discover how ridiculously high the cost of living in Aucklund is.

Keeping with the theme of my post last week, I have since become my own worst client having every excuse in the book not to follow my own healthy eating plan.

In trying to stick to my budget, I’ve found it nearly impossible to eat as frequently as I would like, nor maintain the food quality nor macro nutrient consistency I would like. That being said, here are my solutions to eating cheap and sticking to plan.

The first night we were in town we strayed away from restaurants, not because of the food quality, but because of the cost.

Thinking we would do better buying our own food and cooking in the hostel, we headed to the grocery store.

We quickly discovered the options weren’t much better there. Produce and Proteins were scarce.

Feeling discouraged about our ability to stick to budget and feed ourselves for the next couple months, we settled for some cheap Ramon ($5.99 for 5 bags) and splurged for some steak ($12 for 1/2 a lb) –the only protein we could find.

This was obviously an attempt to stick to our 1:1 or 1:2 protein to carbohydrate ratios, and while we were successful, I normally wouldn’t recommend eating Ramon noodles. The sodium content is much too high and Ramon noodles are far from the healthy types of carbohydrates that I normally like to consume.

We quickly learned our lesson from our poor eating choice, when my husband got food poisoning after this meal. We cleaned up our cooking by instead making a stir fry of eggs, frozen veggies, and steak. This may not sound like the most glamorous meal, but our bellies thanked us.

Another solution I’ve found to sticking to my budget is to eat the local meal deals, filling up on one to two large meals a day. I’ve found $4 pizzas and $10 Indian Meal combos. These deals, however, do come at a cost–THEY ARE NOT ON PLAN. Both meals are run heavy in carbs and either lack or contain very little protein.

I’ve found the days that I eat out, my calories are actually pretty low. Remember though, maintaining a too-low calorie diet isn’t good. The body needs fuel to function. If you don’t provide the body the fuel it needs, it begins to break down your muscle for fuel since muscle costs more calories to maintain than fat.

I’ve found low calorie/bad nutrient diets to be the general trend here in Aucklund which would explain the very large population of “skinny-fat” I’ve noticed.

For those of you who haven’t heard the term “skinny-fat” before, urban dictionary defines it as:

“1. When someone is thin and looks great in clothes, but is all flabby underneath

2. A physique, while not overweight (and possibly underweight), lacks any visible lean, striated tissue. The term is often NOT used or understood by the uneducated, untrained eye. To the uneducated, untrained eye, a skinny fat female may appear to have a physique of the same caliber as an individual who is comprised of significantly more lean tissue. The term is particularly relevant while eating at Denny’s and discussing how unappealing the waitress is. You can always resort to getting traditional weight loss surgery mexico, but going out and using the gym is the best alternative to avoid the issue.

Miley Cyrus at the VMA’s: another example of skinny fat

3. A person who is not overweight and have skinny look but still have a high fat percentage and low muscular mass. Usually those people have a low caloric diet, that’s why they are skinny, but are not involved in any sports activities or trainings and that’s why they don’t have any muscle. Since between the bone and the skin those people only have fat, the skin can be deformed easily because the skin layer is located on an unstable matter (fat).
Skinny fat woman look sexy from a certain distance but they have soft jelly skin and still have some cellulite even if they are in there early 20.”

Skinny Fat does have an official medical term, metabolically obese normal weight or MONW, but according to the dr grawe reviews it is not easy to change, specially if the person decides to undergo surgery.

Besides the physical appearance ramifications one runs risk of by becoming skinny fat, being such is also one step away from Type II diabetes. (I realize there is a comical air to what I’m writing, but this is a serious topic. Check out Mark Hyman, MD’s post.)

Besides diet, one way to combat the skinny fat is exercise.

Since arriving in Aucklund, I have been able to stay on track with my exercise, averaging over 20,000 steps a day. There are gorgeous parks all over the city, but the trick is to taking advantage of these parks and getting outside.

I’ve loved having access to so many trails to run, but even walking around these areas is good for combating skinny fat. I recommend getting a fitbit so you can start monitoring your daily activity! You should aim to have at least 5,000 steps a day, even if you exercise regularly and 10,000 a day if you don’t.

Unfortunately, I’ve noticed most people choose to drive around the parks and craters we’ve visited rather than explore them on foot. Once again explaining the skinny fat population here in Aucklund.

In a more optimistic light, I can gladly report that Bikram Yoga East West in Aucklund has a very large population of regular practicing yogis. I saw by far the largest population of fit people that I had seen in the city dropping in to take yoga classes at their studio!

Luckily for me, I’m leaving Aucklund tomorrow and heading up North. I’ve been told that once out of the city, fresh veggies are much more abundant. I’m hoping there will also be a better selection of protein, but even if there isn’t we could eat better just with some more fresh vegetables.

Regardless, the good news is a couple days of poor diet won’t kill me, especially since I’ve kept my exercise up!

It can be very easy to allow yourself to become skinny fat, but if you follow these simple rules you can quickly avoid this.

Simple Rules to Avoid the Skinny Fat:

Eat Protein as much as possible!–Remember, if you are traveling, a couple of days of a poor diet won’t kill you, but do the best you can to pick nutrient rich options. If you can’t eat healthy one meal, don’t use that as an excuse to eat poorly the next. Each meal is an opportunity to fuel the body to be strong!
Click here to get a workout for home or travel!
Maintain your exercise! Hit up local classes such as yoga, crossfit, and cycling! If you can’t afford them or the times don’t work with your schedule do a workout you can do in your own home or in a hotel room if you’re traveling!
If you still can’t find the time to workout, make sure you maintain a high level of activity. Track this with a pedometer, or Fitbit. This is a great tool to keep you on track in your daily life, especially if you travel frequently.
Eat frequently so your body relies on healthy food to fuel itself so it can build muscle, not eat away at it! If you don’t know how to do that, here is a meal plan you can follow!

What’s your favorite way to avoid the skinny fat?

The Psychology of Personality: How Knowing Yourself Better Can Keep Your Fitness Goals On Track

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Gretchen Rubin

I recently attended The World Domination Summit (WDS) in Portland, Oregon. The conference was 3 days jam-packed, full of lectures and workshops all led by entrepreneurs, writers, and artists. One of the of the many great speakers I heard was Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project.

In her lecture, Gretchen pointed out that in order to be happy you must first learned key features of your nature. You have to learn about yourself and the systems your brain by default uses to function before you can actually identify the things that make you happy. So, rather than search for what makes you happy, Gretchen has identified a way for us to evaluate our own personalities so we can better structure our actions to live a happy life.

In her blog, Gretchen writes about different avenues of getting to know yourself better that can improve your life. For example in What’s Your Personality Type for Play Gretchen explains how she was able to develop a career for herself based on her interests as a child.

More along the lines of fitness and exercise Gretchen’s work can help you better understand if you are an Abstainer or a Moderater. A very important distinction to understand about yourself especially when trying to stick to a diet.

Gretchen says,

“You’re a moderator if you…

– find that occasional indulgence heightens your pleasure – and strengthens your resolve
– get panicky at the thought of “never” getting or doing something

You’re an abstainer if you…
– have trouble stopping something once you’ve started
– aren’t tempted by things that you’ve decided are off-limits”

When starting a diet it is very important to identify what type of personality you have.

If you are a moderator it can be important to allow yourself some treats, as long as those treats keep you within your diet ratios and calories! Without the wiggle room to cheat every now and then a moderator will give up on a diet altogether.

An abstainer can eat just one!

An abstainer on the other hand needs to make sure all temptations are out of the house. An abstainer needs the black and white to stay on plan.

Whether or not one chooses to follow through with their fitness plan is also based upon personality type.

Gretchen divides all humans personality archetypes into 4 categories:

Upholders
Questioners
Rebels
Obligers

Each role describes the most basic ways in which people put priority into their actions. Knowing your personality is great for learning how to best meet deadlines and accomplish goals including how to stick to your fitness and health goals.

Upholders:

An upholder loves rules.

It doesn’t matter who creates them, upholders will live by them. If this is your personality type, you probably don’t have a hard time sticking to your diet and exercise plan, because it is a plan. You have been given the rules. If you are an upholder; I bet you get in your exercise 5-6 times a week, meal track like you are supposed to, and like following a specific meal plan for your health. For the most part you are good as long as you follow that routine and keep your health in check. If you ever need to store things like smoothies or healthy beverages I recommend these guys for storage needs

The one drawback to being an upholder, however, is that you can often find it tough to question which exercise program is the best because you want to do them all.

You may try following too many workout plans and find you never actually stick to just one. Upholders can also find that because they never allow themselves budge room to cheat, an exercise routine can become exhausting. Rather than not stick to the rules 100% many of my upholder clients tend to be all or nothing. At the times they commit to exercise and healthy living they do great, but when work or life doesn’t allow them to fulfill their goals 100% they stop altogether so they don’t have to admit they didn’t follow through.

If you are an upholder give yourself some budge room when it comes to exercise. Even small movements accrued throughout the day are better than nothing. Don’t allow the guilt of an incomplete workout week keep you from getting any exercise at all.

Questioners:

If you are a Questioner you need to know why you are doing something.

It isn’t enough for someone to tell you what to do, you need to know the reasoning behind what you are doing and then you will have no problem following through.

The best bet for a questioner is to hire a personal trainer. You can constantly be reading books to reinforce your knowledge and desire to exercise, however, if you are looking for a reason not to hit the gym I’m guessing you don’t want to spend your reading time on that topic. A good personal trainer should have the knowledge to convince your questioning mind to make exercise a priority.

If you don’t have the financial means to hire a personal trainer, a webinar I recommend is The Smarter Science of Slim. It used to be available in book format, but has been taken off of amazon until The Calorie Myth comes out in January of 2014.

Rebels:

A rebel personality tends to think (and go) against the grain.

If someone tells you to do something, you are likely to do the opposite. Obviously you won’t respond well to someone telling you to exercise.

If I was training a rebel, I would encourage them to try something everyone else thinks they can’t do. For example I might plant the seed to a rebel that they couldn’t run a half marathon. The idea that they couldn’t do something is the exact motivation a rebel mind needs to inspire them to train for one.

If endurance training isn’t your thing, try looking into another extreme sport such as snowboarding, mountain climbing, MMA, or mountain biking. The extreme nature of the sport might be what initially attracts you, but you will soon find that in order participate at all or well you need a consistent workout routine to maintain the physical ability to do your activity.

Obligers:

An obliger tends to put others expectations before their own goals.

If you are an obliger, your biggest excuse for not exercising is probably your family, job, or social commitments. You may have been a star athlete in high school when you HAD to be at practice, but probably find it very difficult to make yourself go out for a run on your own.

An obliger is best off building external motivation. Find a running buddy. Join a parks and rec team. Hire a personal trainer. Do something to hold yourself accountable to your exercise because if you are an obliger you won’t get it done on your own.

So What Are You?

Obviously not every category is 100% perfect, but there is a good chance that you identify with one of the four.

Once you figure out where you fall, don’t try to fight your personality. Your nature is out of your control. Stop fighting the way your brain best functions, but rather use it to your advantage. If you would prefer to be another way you can use the knowledge of you nature to build systems around it, don’t try to change it.

I for example am an upholder, however am I am also very drawn to pleasing others so I have a heavy obliger nature as well. I often commit myself to too many things (classic symptoms of an upholder) so I have learned to build external motivation into the things that I know I need to get done.

Exercise and fitness is very important to me, but between all the other commitments I set up for myself often times it can get pushed aside. Rather than set up coffee or lunch dates with people, I often set up an exercise dates. (A good system for obligers to use) That way I can kill two birds with one stone.

What personality type do you identify with the most? Have you set up any systems in your world to better use your personality to accomplish your goals? Please share below! 🙂

Getting Back On Track: What You Can Expect From Mastering Health and Fitness in the Upcoming Year

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Missing my Nashville studio and Yogis!

Hi Fitness Friends!

I apologize for my hiatus from posting. It has been a crazy couple months.

My then fiancee Tom Morkes and I packed up all our belongings at the end of June and road tripped back to Washington State where we just got married 2 weeks ago on August 3rd.

I’ve spent the past couple months since I posted planning our wedding, keeping up with my own training to stay in shape for the wedding, and teaching classes at Bikram Yoga at The Yoga Element in Bellevue, WA and Bikram Yoga Redmond in Redmond, WA.

Wedding workout plan was successful!

Now that all the wedding craziness is over, it’s time to get back to work and one of my number one priorities is getting my blog back on track. I’m looking to really revamp it within the next couple months and would love some feedback on what type of information my readers find helpful!

Working as a personal trainer I’ve realized many people are very capable of establishing a routine. The problem is many of us don’t have lives that are the same every day. We have obligations at all hours with work, kids schedules to build our own routines around, and business or personal travel that throw even the best intentions out the window sti testing since its always good to be on the safe side and have that done every once in a while for you health.

Starting August 21st, my husband Tom and I will be setting out on an adventure to travel the world! We just purchased tickets to visit San Francisco, Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Belize in the next 11 months.

My goal for our travel along with seeing and experiencing as much as possible is to research and share with you how to stay fit on the road. This includes:

Eating out in restaurants
Finding cheap gyms
Workouts you can do in hotel rooms
Eating local fare while sticking to your ratios

This is a short list of the challenges I expect to encounter, but I will be blogging, vlogging, and facebooking on the obstacles that come up and how you can tackle them.

Fitness can happen anywhere!

What I’m planning to do:

I still plan to write about a blog per week on a fitness topic I find interesting. However that being said, I love having topics to research. If you have an inquiry about fitness please send it my way!
I’m looking to revamp my youtube channel! (Subscribe! You’ll get notifications when I post new videos!) So far it’s mostly been a medium where I posted the exercise of the day. I plan to start posting those again by next week, but I also have some other cool ideas to make the channel a resource for anyone looking to stay fit, especially those who spend a lot of time on the road.
I’ll be posting full length workouts! I miss teaching group fitness so I’m going to start posting workouts! You can stay in shape with me from all the places I travel!
I’m going to start the exercise of the day back up! Many of us have an all or nothing mentality when it comes to fitness. We either do our full workout or nothing at all. This attitude can quickly lead to weight gain. Even on the days when you are traveling you have a couple minutes before you shower to whip out 100 squats, or 15 toes touches, or 15 frog jumps. Check out the exercise of the day to mix things up and get in some activity even on your busiest days!

These are just a few of the ideas that I’m starting to work on. My goal is to create a resource for you. So feel free to give me feedback! Ask questions. No question is dumb. If you struggle with a certain aspect of your fitness I’m sure others do too. Send me your fitness questions to cjdought@gmail.com!

Last but not least Tom and I also plan to keep a travel blog. I don’t want to clog this site with my personal travel accounts (especially the ones non fitness related.) Our new site Far Away Reasons will showcase what life is like on the road. Topics will include, but aren’t limited to:

How we travel between locations
How we continue to do our work despite location
Really cool pictures of sites around the world
Adventures and Stories of the cool things we encounter.

Hopefully some of my upcoming work interests you! Remember reach out to me! I’m here to answer your fitness questions! 🙂

Savory Green

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This Savory Green smoothie is a bomb treat on a rainy day.

Add a little more lemon juice though and it is perfect treat any day!

Ingredients:

4 ounces Aloe Vera Water
6 baby carrots
1 persian cucumber
2 stalks celery
10 cilantro leaves
1/4 cup pineapple chunks
6 chunks frozen mango
1 handful of kale
1 scoop Met-Rx Protein Vanilla
1 tbsp almond butter
1 tsp. cloves

Combine all Ingredients in a blender. I have a ninja blender and love it!! Juicers are bomb, but so is all the good fiber you get from the pulp!

Calories: 330 Carbs: 35g Fiber: 7.1g Protein 39g Fat 9g

If you save old kombucha containers, you have a nice glass jar to drink your smoothie from!!

Cashew Chicken Salad

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There are plenty of yummy things you can eat while still maintaining protein and carb ratios for maintenance or weight loss. The problem is they all contain veggies and lean protein and preparing these items mid day can be a challenge.

That’s why a big batch of Cashew Chicken Salad is a great idea for weekday lunches!

If you take the time on Sunday to combine a bunch of yummy healthy flavors you can have a whole foods quality grab-and-go lunch in your own fridge!

Saves money and calories if you do it yourself!

Ingredients:

5 Chicken Breasts
3/4 Cup Quinoa
2 cups cabbage
3/4 cup shredded carrots
1 red onion chopped
1/2 cup green onion
1 yellow pepper
3 tbsp olive oil

dressing:

1 tsbp sesame oil
1/2 cup peanut butter
3 tsps shaved ginger
6 tbsp reduced sodium soy sauce
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Prep:

Coat chicken in olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Bake chicken for 40 min at 350 degrees, set aside let cool then chop into fine bite size pieces.
Cook Quinoa (usually has 15 min cooking time). Set aside and cool.
Chop and combine cabbage, carrots, red onion, green onion, and pepper.
Add Chicken and Quinoa
Prepare dressing by sauteeing sesame oil, peanut butter, ginger soy sauce, and apple cider vinegar over low heat. Add water for desire consistency.
Pour dressing into mixture stirring until evenly distributed.

Makes 8 Servings

Calories 388 Fat: 23,3g Carbs: 20.3g Fiber: 4g Protein 29g

4 Reasons You Should Do A 30 Day Challenge

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Spring has finally arrived–which means summer is just around the corner. It is time to up the workout ante!

Challenge yourself to complete a 30 Day Challenge.

Your challenge can be whatever you want.

You can do the 30 Day Squat Challenge which should only take 2-5 minutes out of your day.
You can challenge yourself to run or walk a mile or more 30 days in a row.
You can do a yoga challenge, committing 60-90min a day to yourself.
You can Crossfit 30 days in a row.

Whatever sort of challenge you decide to do, here are 4 reasons you should do a 30 Day Challenge.

1. You do have the time. Find somewhere during your day to take a break for yourself. If there isn’t space in the middle of your day, tack it to the beginning or the end. You can always wake up 10 minutes earlier, or skip the hour (or more) of television you watch each night. You’ll start to realize when you set aside time to focus on yourself, you’ll be able to preform your other tasks and obligations more efficiently and more effectively.

2. You will have set a new goal. Broadcast this goal! Let others know what you are doing! They might do it with you! The more the merrier. It’s harder to break a commitment when others know you have one.

3. You’ll push your boundaries. It is easy to find an excuse to back out of our workouts when we are tired. When you push through fatigue, your body is forced to rebuild itself back up stronger. Your brain often fatigues before your body. Teach the brain how strong you can be! You’ll surprise yourself with how much you can improve in an activity when you work on it each day for a month!

4. You can eat more food! Obviously if your goal involves losing weight, you shouldn’t completely offset your exercise with extra food. However, if you do a 30 Day Bikram Challenge, or push yourself to run 3-5 miles every day for the month of May, you will find you need to fuel your body better for this endeavor. Your body’s cravings can teach you what vitamins and minerals you’re lacking in. Once you’ve identified the vitamins you need it’s just a matter of visiting LuckyVitamin or going to your local Walgreens. The cleaner you keep your system and the more you ask of it, the more it can accurately tell you what you need. You will probably find your body actually craves lean meats and veggies! You will learn the food you eat is fuel for your hard working body!

Give it a try!

Push yourself!

See what you can do!

If you decide to hop in on the 30 day challenge, talk about what you are doing below!

The more of us that join in the more support we have!

Curried Chicken Salad

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Ingredients:

6 Chicken Breasts
6.5 oz diced shallots, garlic, and onions (mix from Trader Joe’s)
3/4 Cup Yellow Raisins
1 1/2 cup Chopped Cashews
1 Cup Greek Yogurt (Fage is the best!)
3 stalks celery chopped
4 Tablespoons olive oil
2 tsp pepper
4 tsps curry seasoning
1/2 Bottle yellow curry (from Trader Joe’s)

Prep:

Put Chicken in a baking pan.
Coat with Olive Oil, Pepper, Curry seasoning evenly.
Cook at 350 degrees for 45 min.
Let Chicken cool, then dice into bite size pieces.
Combine Yogurt and Yellow Curry in Blender to make the dressing.
Chop Celery
Add Celery, dressing, shallots, garlic, onions, and raisins to chicken. Stir well and store in fridge. The longer it sits the more flavorful it is!

Curried Chicken salad is the perfect meal to make on Monday so you have lunch for the rest of the week!

Makes 10 servings:

Calories: 260 14g. Fat, 17g Carbs, 1.9g Fiber, 22g Protein

To Sit or Not to Sit? What Sitting in Bikram Yoga Says About You

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Every day your practice is different.

Ok, you are no longer a beginner to this yoga thing.

Or, maybe you are, but you struggle every day to continue pushing through every posture.

My question to you is, “Why are you struggling?”

The second you begin to struggle, you are forgetting the first step of every posture, which is normal breathing. Yes, this breathing rate might be faster, but you should never feel like you can’t breathe.

Sitting in Bikram Yoga can actually deepen your practice.

“Bikram says to to ‘kill you self””

Killing your “self” means to kill the ego telling you to have the best posture.
Killing your “self” means you don’t care if you are the only one sitting. Your body needs the break today.
Killing your “self” means to avoid reaching for the security blanket of your water. Do you really need it? (If you do, you should have drank more water before you came. I know–it’s not always easy. I reach for my water bottle too, but it’s always my goal not to!)
Killing your “self” means accepting the body you brought today. You may be getting sick. You may not have drank enough water. You may have drunk too much wine the night before. Whatever the reason, listen to your body.
Killing your “self” means you can look into your own eyes for 90 minutes. You spend the rest of your life trying to live up to the expectations and demands of others. Take the time in yoga to see what you need.

Part of learning to kill the self is learning to focus only on yourself.

I realize it can be tempting to sneak a peak at the girl in front’s standing bow, to grab some water, to make faces to your friend. (And there are days where this is part of my practice, but it isn’t what my practice should be.)

This is not being present. There is so much going on within your own body that you are missing when you focus on anything other than yourself in the mirror. In fact, you may be struggling because of your lack of focus. Days when I am actually able to stay fully present I find that I work harder than I have ever worked, have a larger pool of sweat on my mat than normal, and yet I find I was able to keep my heart rate lower and a smile on my face.

I am relaxed while also killing myself and my self!

Next time you start to feel uncomfortable in class, don’t reach for water. Don’t wipe your sweat. Don’t look to your feet. Don’t make a face to friend asking if it’s hotter than normal. If fact, don’t even ask yourself that question. It doesn’t matter. What you should do instead is look to yourself for answers.

Stare into your own eyes.
Take a long slow inhale.
Take a longer slower exhale.
Give yourself a smile. It’s hard to have negative or anxious thoughts with a smile on your face.
Repeat this process as much as you need.

Some days you may have to take it to the floor from here, but still work to look into your own eyes.

Part of the practice and part of the yoga is getting in touch and accepting yourself. Your body. Your thoughts. Your actions. Your Present.

Today’s present and practice might be harder than yesterdays You don’t know what tomorrows will bring, but today you will get more out of your practice remaining calm.