5 Fitness and Weight Loss Mistakes You’re Probably Making Right Now
5 Fitness Lifestyle Mistakes
1. You Don’t Drink Enough Water
You need at least 100oz of water per day. Many people fall woefully short. Being dehydrated slows down your metabolism and increases your appetite.
2. You’re Eating Out Too Much
They will always find a way to add salt, sugar and oil to your food. The only way to be 100% on point is to prepare all your own food or have your meals prepared for you.
3. You Don’t Get Enough Sleep
Being short on sleep cuts into your recovery process and increases cortisol, which is bad.
4. You’re Under Too Much Stress
Once again, stress increases cortisol, which makes you lose muscle and hoard fat, mostly around the midsection. You can’t eliminate stress, but you can learn how to deal with it better. I use meditation, you can learn that, or try yoga, which helps a lot of people. The supplements L-Theanine, Phosphatidylserine, and Glutamine help to reduce cortisol too. Get that stuff through my store
5. You’re Still Doing The Same Workout
Your body will adapt to your routine. Mix it up, change your split, rep scheme, tempo, type, intensity and duration of cardio, and or add or change activities. You’ll find you get more sore than usual which is a sign that you’ve made a good change.
Add More Activity for Weight Loss
Kristina looks younger after!
Everybody knows that if your body uses up more calories than it requres then you’ll lose weight. The most effective ways to achieve that goal is to transform your eating habits and exercise regularly. Such lifestyle changes require professional help, which I can provide as your personal trainer.
Even before you consult me, however, you can begin your journey to fewer pounds by adding the following simple activities to your life.
3 Simple Steps to Easy Weight Loss
1. Always take the stairs. If your office is above the ground floor, consider yourself lucky. You have an activity you can perform twice a day that takes almost no time. Rather than take the elevator, use the stairs both coming and going. If you find that climbing more than a floor is too taxing, take the stairs only when you go down. And even then, start by taking the stairs to the next floor down – you can then ride the elevator from there. As you become more fit, add more floors.
2.Park far away. When you go to a movie or go grocery-shopping, your first impulse is to park as close to the entrance as possible for convenience. Force yourself to walk more by parking in the furthest corner of the parking lot. The extra steps will burn more calories. As a bonus, it’s generally easier to find parking further away because that is the last place people want to put their cars.
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3.Stand up to compute. If you sit down when you use your laptop, either to work or play, don’t be surprised if your bottom starts spreading out. To cure that ill, stand up whenever you use your computer. A stand-up desk is ideal for such a purpose. But if you don’t have one and can’t convince the boss to get one, put your computer on top of the break room counter, which usually requires standing for use. At home, use your laptop on top of a kitchen counter, dresser or bureau.
If you want more ways to add activity to your life, please call me. Such relatively minor changes can form a useful foundation for a more rigorous exercise program.
Weights, cardio and fat burning logic from your personal trainer
Weight training is anaerobic exercise, which creates energy from carbohydrate and protein. Medium intensity cardio is aerobic exercise, which creates energy from carbohydrates, fats, then proteins.
If you do cardio first you are setting up your body to burn more calories from protein rather than fat. That means you’re burning muscle instead of fat. I shouldn’t need to tell you that you don’t want to do that. Muscle is what shapes your body and revs your metabolism. Don’t worry, you can’t build massive muscles by “accident.”
For the best possible fat burning and body shaping results, you should do your weights first, followed immediately by your cardio. The weight training will use your stored carbohydrate in your muscles, liver and blood (glycogen). You will usually deplete your available glycogen in an hour of weight training.
Next hop on your cardio to start burning fat right away. After 60 minutes you’ll usually start getting diminishing returns and your body will start pulling energy from protein (muscle). These time estimates are variable according to your intensity level.
Drink your way to a flat tummy
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What if you were told that there is a magical drink out there that can help you lose weight, make your body lean and improve your health. Would you be surprised to know that it’s free and you can have as much of it as you want? What is the drink, you’d ask. It’s water!
German researchers studied the impact of water on weight loss and have concluded that drinking water increases our metabolic rate, which helps us burn the calories. The study showed that the metabolic rate increases by 30% within 10 minutes of drinking water and peaked after 30-40 minutes. The increase comes from the body’s attempt to heat the ingested water. And the best part is that by increasing your water consumption by only 1.5 liters a day will help you shed at least five pounds. And that’s without diet and exercise.
When it comes to other drinks, here is what you should know:
1. Give up Soda
Americans get more that 7 percent of their calories from soda! That’s insane! You could be 10 pounds lighter in six months by swearing off all sodas. Substitute your soda cans with sparkling water.
2. Avoid Juices and Juice Drinks
There is practically no juice on the market without added sugar or sodium, even those that claim to be 100 % juice have problems. But most juices are just water and corn syrup so do your body a favor and stop abusing it. Drink a glass of water instead and add a flavor with a slice of lemon, lime or orange in it.
3. Swear off Coffee Drinks
Americans love their Lattés and Cappuccinos, but every time you are in line at Starbucks think twice; that blended coffee drink might taste yummy in the afternoon but it will set you back about 240 calories on average. Choose regular coffee or tea instead and you will be on your way to losing more weight.
4. Drink 8+ cups of water a day
Kathy lost 5 inches off her waist!
Drinking water not only fills you up when you are about to consume calories you don’t need to, but it also helps you burn calories. How amazing is that? Another study, at the University of Utah, found that people who drink most water have the highest metabolism. And if this is not convincing enough, check out these facts that could make you a believer in the magic of H2O:
- Water can help prevent headaches.
- Water prevents water retention.
- Water helps with joint pain.
- Water helps you stay younger by diminishing facial lines and keeping your skin clean and hydrated.
- Water is an appetite suppressant.
5. Give up Alcohol
This seems to make the most sense but so many people still think they can have a glass of wine or a martini, and it will not affect their waistline. The important thing to remember is that when you drink alcohol, your body is burning the calories from the alcohol first so it takes much longer to lose the unwanted pounds.
Here’s A Tip From A Personal Trainer: Processed Food Is Not Food
You could spend a significant amount of time reading diet books and websites to educate yourself on the proper way to eat. Let me save you a lot of effort with this one truth: Processed food is not food.
Over thousands of years, our bodies have evolved to need things that actually grow — vegetables, fruits, lean meats and whole grains. These foods contain the vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber your body needs to grow and function properly. So, when your body is given something made from a laundry list of unpronounceable ingredients, it doesn’t know what to do with it.
A lot of ingredients in processed food, like high-fructose corn syrup or processed flour, just don’t do you any favors, nutritionally speaking. Furthermore, there is a growing amount of evidence that some substances commonly put in food may actually be harmful (not just not beneficial) because they can lead to diabetes, obesity and other health concerns.
Now, learning the proper way to eat is a process and sometimes people need help. Working with a certified personal trainer and sports nutritionist who has been educated on and has experience with helping people develop a proper diet is one way to help.
At Santa Monica Personal Training, me and my trainers pride themselves not only on coaching our clients about exercise, but on diet and nutrition as well. Exercise and a proper diet work together to create optimal levels of health; it’s hard to reach your health and fitness goals by working only on one and not the other.
If you’d like to talk about exercise and nutrition with LA’s best personal trainer, please feel free to contact me.
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