Aloha Friends

Well folks I am off to Hawaii. I hope you have a wonderful February! Thanks as always for reading, I'll have some new material March 2.  

And the grand total is.....drumroll please!

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had outlined a fitness program back in September until our trip to Hawaii...well we leave on Saturday and I just completed my last workout. I'm spent, I can't do anything else. So what do the final numbers look like?

September 13 - February 10 (22 weeks)
Half Marathon - 1  (why not start with a bang)
Hot Yoga - 57 (60 - 90 min classes)
Kickboxing - 35 classes
Spinning - 14 classes
Crossfit - 11 sessions
Weight Training - 28 sessions
25 km Bike Ride - 1 sore ass
Run (5 - 12km) - 35 runs
Squash - 1 match (75 mins)

In the past 22 weeks I have spent 163 hours exercising, this doesn't include twice a day walks with my dog, these are just the structured workouts. An average of 8 hours a week. Ok I think I can chillax a bit.

It is very motivating to put all your workouts on a calendar and mark them off as you complete them, finding balance is the tricky part. For the next two weeks in Hawaii I will workout, but only when I feel like it, not because I feel like I have to. Maybe I won't feel like exercising at all...I'm going to really try to be okay with that. When I come back I'll start training for another half marathon but I'm letting a lot of the other stuff go. No more frantic runs to and from kickboxing until my legs feel like they are going to fall off because I needed to get a run in and didn't want to miss out on kickboxing. No more waking up at 5 am to squeeze in a weight training session before work because I have to run after work and then follow it with a spinning class.  I'm going for quality not quantity on my next schedule...with...brace yourselves....actual rest days! Someday I hope to not be so manic about this stuff...baby steps.

Do you lllloooovvvveeee it?

Before I buy anything I ask myself...."Do you loooove it?" if the answer isn't a resounding "YES" then I don't buy it. Sadly this only works with clothing and accessories, I have yet to meet a brownie I didn't love. I was talking with a friend the other day who loves working out as much as I do and how our husbands don't get it.  If I had a day off and I could do anything I wanted, exercising would be at the top of my list. No I am not holding a crack pipe.

Can you learn to love exercise? From personal experience I say YES. When I was morbidly obese I hated exercise but started to break a sweat in order to lose weight. As the weight came off and I found activities I enjoyed I started to look forward to it.  As I got better at activities I enjoyed I became more competitive and started to push myself to try harder every time, and before I knew it I was madly in love with exercise. Believe me it was a slow burn that took a few years but I'm happy it did.

Most fitness experts talk about joining a gym and doing your 2-3 weight sessions a week and cardio 3-4 days a week, that sounds exciting (insert sarcasm font)! What if you hate the gym, you are uncomfortable working out in a crowd, don't know the equipment and are too shy to ask? Getting healthy isn't about signing up for a gym membership and slogging away the hours, hating every minute, if you want to be successful you need to enjoy what you are doing! I'm a personal trainer who does not have a gym membership, not because I don't need one but because even if I had one I wouldn't use it.  I have some basic equipment in my basement (treadmill, free weights, stability ball, TRX) where I can do hundreds of exercises, but what I really love doesn't happen in a gym. I love hot yoga, kickboxing, running and Crossfit.

I only use my treadmill for sprint intervals between weight training sets, the thought of running for even 15 minutes on a treadmill makes me want to pull my hair out. I have the attention span of a fruit fly and running in place on a machine is my idea of hell. Even if its -25C I'll run outside, its awesome.  Find something you enjoy doing, indoor rock climbing, badminton, swimming, skiing. You never know where it will lead. Did I think the first time I managed to run for 90 seconds that a few years later I'd have run five half-marathons and dozens of 5 and 10km races? No!

Go find something you looove!

Sports Nutrition

I attended a very interesting Fitness Conference this past weekend in Montreal. I love these types of events where you are surrounded by like minded people interested in learning more about health and nutrition for ourselves but also for our clients. Well except for the chick eating MacDonald's in the lobby. 


I spent two fantastic hours listening to Scott Josephson, MS, RD from the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida talk about nutrition. His seminar was called Eating for Energy and it completely changed how I think about fueling my body. http://www.hippocratesinst.org/   I highly recommend checking out the site. I was able to speak with him after and he was so knowledgeable about every aspect of fitness and nutrition it was astounding. I explained to him how I needed to lose 5-10lbs and he said to me "You don't need to lose 5-10 pounds, that is a personal weight-loss goal not a medical one." That made me smile, to hear a fitness expert who works with the best athletes in the world tell me that felt like a giant weight lifting from my shoulders. I needed to stop being fixated on the "weight" and really start treating my body like an athlete's. We talked about my exercise schedule and how many calories I consume, always with a focus to lose weight. He used an example of a 125 female doing twice a day workouts like me, burning an average of 300 calories per workout. For her to properly fuel her body and get the most from her workouts she had to eat over 2500 calories a day!  In my ongoing quest to lose weight I had cut my calories back to 1400 and the scale hasn't budged in over a month. We talked about pre-workout carbs/protein, post-workout recovery and adjusting my carb/protein/fat ratio based upon the type of exercise I do (intense cardio and high rep/high weight training). Turns out I should be eating another 500 calories a day! Can we say Merry Christmas? 


I love talking about nutrition, exercise and developing plans. I downloaded a handy little app called Calorie Count by FatSecret. I've always tracked my calories in a notebook but now that I am looking at food as fuel and making sure to time it according to my workouts and really monitor my carb/protein/fat intake, this little app is amazing. I also picked up a great book called Vegetarian Sports Nutrition by D. Enette Larson-Meyer PhD, RD http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all-products/vegetarian-sports-nutrition which follows the same guidelines as Scott's presentation. 


I know only a handful of people are really interested in this stuff like I am but I wanted to share. 

What Size Are You?

Does anyone really know what size they are? I have clothes in my closet from size 0 - 8, xs - large. There is no rhyme or reason to it. Some designers cut their clothes bigger, some smaller. Try shopping in another country and you'll either be dancing a jig or on the change room floor in a puddle of tears.

I remember feeling so excited after losing a significant amount of weight, I had slowly gone from a size 20 down to a size 10 pant and they were getting pretty baggy. In order to not look slovenly everyday I decided to go shopping. Dropping from double digits to a size 8 was going to be a huge milestone for me, no pun intended.  I entered the change room with my coveted size 8's, heart racing, a smile on my face....and then I couldn't get them done up. DAMNIT! It was like watching a slow leak in a balloon. All that work, all those pounds lost, that feeling of excitement, gone. I almost cried. There was no way I was going to purchase another pair of 10s...I had earned the right to wear an 8! Or maybe I hadn't, maybe my clothes had stretched, maybe I was delusional. It's funny how an article of clothing made halfway around the world by strangers can carry such emotional weight.

Sure we can blame the media and fashion magazines about the idealized size 8, 6, 4, 2, 0 but when I was in that change room I wasn't thinking about the latest issue of Vogue or the runways in Paris, I was thinking about celebrating all my hard work with a pair of pants in a size I hadn't worn since high school. How is it possible that all my clothes were too big yet the next size down was too small? Frustrating.

I left the mall and didn't buy anything. I wish I could go back to that girl crumpled up in the change room and tell her that number on the tag was not a reflection of how far she had come. I could go on about cuts and styles and how there is no set sizing but it wouldn't matter. It's funny, I remember that day of not being able to fit into a size 8 for the first time like it was yesterday yet I have no recollection of the day I did actually fit into a size 8 for the first time. Hmmmmm

Taco Bell: A Love Affair

An oldie but a goodie reposted for our new readers....


In 1994 I started a relationship which would last over a decade, though an unhealthy relationship it was one I was hesitant to end.  There are still moments of weakness when I wonder what it would be like to rekindle our romance, but alas I know it was for the best that we parted when we did.

Two Double Decker Tacos and their ever so complimentary side dish, Nachos Supreme, were my Scarlet Letter.  Dripping in intoxicating hot sauce created by perfect evil geniuses, I devoured dozens, even hundreds of these meals.  Each clocking in at a staggering 1030 calories, 51 grams of fat and over 2200 mg of sodium, its no wonder I broke into a sweat unwrapping each hefty taco.

Step One of Weight Loss:  Stop Eating Garbage
Though Taco Bell didn't taste like garbage it provided little to no nutritional value, over 70% of my required daily calories, my entire daily fat intake and more than the recommended sodium intake...in one meal.  Did I mention I'd wash this down with a large Dr. Pepper? Add another 300 calories. In order for me to burn off this meal I'd have to run 15km at a pretty good pace, at this time in my life it would have taken me the better part of a day to walk 15km.  So the fast food had to go, insert melodramatic music, tears and one sordid farewell meal. http://tacobell.ca/Nutritional-Information

Exercise is encouraged as a part of any weight loss program for a number of reasons, it burns calories, improves cardio fitness, improves bone and muscle strength, improves mood etc...but no matter how much you exercise you cannot exercise enough to undo the damage of a poor diet.

 The guys at Turbulance Training did an interesting experiment proving exactly that:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rULrxuiqU2I

Killer Workout

We've discussed my love of working myself into the ground so I'm going to share some tricks with you to spend as little time in the gym as possible and still get an amazing workout. Puke bags are $2 each.

1. Cut your cardio time by doing intervals. They can be any duration but instead of spending an hour on the treadmill spend 30 minutes...ie. 1 min sprint, 1 min jog....you'll torch more calories than you will at your usual slower pace in half the time. And yes I know people talk about that magic fat burning zone of 60-70% heart rate, well that doesn't mean squat if you aren't creating a calorie deficit everyday. So get your ass moving.

2. Add cardio to your weight training. Skip, do jumping jacks, jump on a bike, run etc. Instead of standing around for 1-2mins between sets pump out some cardio. If you do 10 exercises and do cardio between each set you can sneak in almost 20 mins of cardio in the same amount of time you would have spent sitting on a weight machine. FYI do you know what infuriates me? People who sit on the weight equipment between sets!

3. Up the weights. Don't be delusional ladies you are not going to bulk up. If you are lifting 5lbs 15-20 times no problem try lifting 10lbs and do 8-10 reps instead. Cut your time lifting weights by lifting heavier weights. Fatigue your muscles, stop wasting your time!

4. Doing 100 sit-ups takes a long time and only build up the muscles on your abdomen, yes I said build up the muscles...do you want a larger midsection? I didn't think so, switch to planks which engage deeper muscles that act like a girdle and narrow your stomach. Hold a plank for :10 to a minute and you'll accomplish more than those sit-ups.

5. Try something new. Our bodies are like very intelligent machines...they adapt quickly. If you always get on the elliptical get on the rower, treadmill junkie, get your ass on the stair stepper. You will use new muscle groups and see results faster.

Ignore all of the above if you love hanging out at the gym.

Groundhog Day

It's Groundhog Day and only Bill Murray finds it funny. Is it the start of February and your New Year's Resolution is a faint memory and you are back to your old habits?  Maybe make this Groundhog Day different from every other Groundhog Day and decide to make a change and stick to it! They say it takes 28 days to make a habit stick, well look at that, February has 28 days...if you start today on March 1 you'll be the one laughing.

So get your sweet ass off the couch, make a plan and get moving!

Don't Let the Door Hit You in the Ass on Your Way Out!

I don't know about you but I am so happy to see January in the rearview mirror. We only have seven weeks of Winter left and I couldn't be more excited. February is going to be an awesome month!

So what are your plans for the month? I'm going to finish up my training program on Feb 11 then hightail my ass to Hawaii. Woohooo. When I return it will be a new month and warmer temps. I'm looking forward to relaxing, giving my weary muscles a chance to rest and come back home tanned, healthy and ready to welcome spring with open arms.  My goodness I am waxing poetic today. I can't help it, I feel change in the air...and the sun is shining!

Set an intention for February, one thing you want to accomplish this month. My intention for the month of February is to put things into perspective. Stop stressing the small stuff and learn to cut myself some slack. Maybe that's three things.