From Heavy To Healthy
Going from heavy to healthy doesn’t have to be a chore. In fact, it can be both fun and revitalizing. Anyone can do it, but they have to be willing to pay the price. The price is hard work, healthy eating and determination. Don’t let that fool you into thinking it will all be work. When you use boxing as one of the vehicles to get fit, you get lots of bonuses. No, you don’t have to spar with large cuts of beef or get up at the crack of dawn to run around town like Rocky Balboa, but you will have to stick with a program designed to get you to your goal.
Where you do it, how you do it and who you do it with makes a difference.
While getting fit isn’t easy, it’s far easier when you have a supportive environment than it is doing it on your own. It’s just to easy when you’re on your own to slip back into old habits and skip today’s workout, until there’s no workout at all. If you’re like most people I’ve trained who wanted to shed pounds, you know exactly what I’m talking about. A supportive friendly environment is one where you share common goals with others. They care about your success as much as their own and you feel a sense of belonging.
Setting a goal necessary.
You can have several goals at once. That’s right. While your primary goal may be weight loss and fitness, another goal will be improved performance. One reason people love boxing is that they tend to forget about losing weight and focus on getting better at boxing. Getting better at boxing means getting fitter, stronger and losing weight in most cases, by focusing on footwork, form, strength, reflexes and more. It’s all exercise, but you quit thinking of it as exercise and the drive to get better keeps you going so there’s no “bored out of your mind” waiting to finish reps or watching the clock intently to get done as soon as possible.
You won’t be fit if you use the wrong fuel.
Nutrition plays a huge role in getting fit and slimming. There are no top-notch boxers that earned titles while eating fries and burgers during training. Having the right nutrition does not mean dieting. It means eating healthy. There’s no starvation, no hunger and definitely no junk food. Sure, you can occasionally indulge, but only occasionally. Once you get into the spirit of boxing, you won’t even want do that. You’ll want to find all the ways to become your best and win, not only in the ring, but in life.
– The mental side of boxing is ultra important and accounts for the successful weight loss of most participants. It teaches mental toughness and the drive to succeed.
– Whether male or female, you’ll find you have a whole new confidence about yourself. You’ll know you can handle anything and even defend yourself in a tough situation.
– You’ll notice the pounds coming off, but the real victory will be in the boost of energy, improvement of strength, newly gained flexibility and agility.
– You’ll make friends who are also hungry for victory against excess weight. They’ll not only provide motivation to continue, they’ll often share experiences and even some healthy recipes that they’ve learned on their journey.
Questions You Should Ask Before Starting A New Workout Routine
If you finally decided to get up off the couch and start a new workout routine, you need to start with one important question. How is my health? While you need exercise to maintain good health, overdoing it if you have a health condition already can be disastrous. Get a check-up first to determine if you need to approach any areas with caution. High blood pressure, diabetes, joint problems and risk factors for stroke or heart disease need to be considered when creating a plan. I want to know about your special needs and adjust for them, but if you don’t know, you can’t tell me. Check with your health care specialist first.
Is this the best workout for me?
You may have read about the workout all the celebrities do or the latest craze at the gyms and decided to try it. Because something is popular, it doesn’t mean it’s the best for you. One of my clients is almost 70 and while she needs a lot of work on cardiovascular exercises, she’s stronger than women in their 40s and far more flexible than most women in their 20s. Her workout is not what normal women her age require. Everyone is different and that’s why personal trainers take the time to assess each person individually.
Am I overdoing or slacking off when I do this routine?
That question is one of the reasons many people choose to work with a personal trainer. Judging your own fitness level can be difficult. Some people push well beyond their ability and make two potential mistakes. They either are too sore to continue the routine for a week or two or injure themselves because their form suffers when trying to do more than their body can handle. On the other end of the spectrum are the people who pamper themselves and quit just before the exercise is most effective. Again, this is why a personal trainer is important and can help provide the guidance necessary to get the results you desire.
Is this routine going to be the best to help me achieve my goals?
If your goal is to shed weight, but you don’t have any strength building exercises, it will help you reach your goal, but not as much as if you included strength building. Anyone who needs to improve endurance, still needs some flexibility, strength and balance exercises, but not as their primary focus. As a trainer, I want to know your goals first, before I create your program. It’s part of the process to achieve the best workout for your needs.
– Am I going to have time to do this type of workout? If you’re planning a two hour a day regimen and only have a half hour a day, you won’t achieve your goals. Tone it down and get realistic.
– Does my schedule accommodate this workout routine. This is different from having time to do the routine. If you choose a gym that only is open while you’re at work, you’ve eliminated five possibly six days when you can exercise.
– Am I motivated to stick with the program? If you’re exercising on your own and decide running is the way to get fit, but you hate running, you’ll fail. Switch to something you like, such as biking.
– Can my budget afford it? I do believe that exercise is so important, but not if it jeopardizes putting food on the table or paying a mortgage. That’s why I have so many different types of classes and even some free ones. There’s even one that’s slightly more than $2 a day. Reduce your stress and keep fitness workouts affordable.
Undo the Weekend (48 hour recovery)
What a weekend that was! You went out, you ate and drank and had a blast! And now the fun is over and the consequences are setting in…you feel terrible. You woke up with a headache, an overall feeling of bloating and a sluggishness that you can’t shake.
It’s time to undo the damage brought on from that epic weekend. Here’s how…
- No More Junk! It may sound obvious, but the first step to recovering from all that fun you had is to stop the damage. No more naughty foods. No more alcohol.
When you are vacationing or partying it’s easy to remove your mindful eating and drinking mechanism, and to replace it with the anything-goes mindset. This makes sense for party-mode, but once you come back home and get back to real life it’s important to firmly put an end to the junk food and calorie-laden beverages. If you don’t then your weekend diet may continue into your week, resulting in tons of extra calories that quickly add up in unwanted pounds.
- Flush Your System. For the next 48 hours your main mission is to drink as much water as possible.
All of those poor food and drink choices result in dehydration, which manifests in a pounding headache and a feeling of sluggishness. Plan to sip on water throughout the next two days, adding in fresh sliced fruit, cucumbers, mint or basil to add a refreshing and rewarding flavor.
- Get Some Rest. End the party or vaycay Sunday afternoon so that you can get into bed early in preparation for the week ahead.
It may not sound super exciting to plan an early-to-bed night at the end of your weekend but, come Monday morning, you will be functioning much better with a little rest under your belt. Plan to get to bed early the next couple of days as well, and fit in a nap if possible.
- Eat Cleansing Foods. You’ve stopped eating junk, now fill your diet with small light meals consisting of fiber and a serving of protein. Stick with only whole foods for the next 48 hours.
Fruits and fresh veggies should make up the bulk of your calories as you recover. Asparagus, leafy greens, citrus fruits, and raw veggies are all wonderful items to enjoy in addition to high quality, low fat protein.
- Avoid Going Extreme. Yes, you ate and drank a LOT this weekend, but swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction isn’t actually going to help. Overcompensation is rarely a winning idea.
Fight the urge to skip meals or to over-exercise in response to your indulgences. Going from one extreme to the other creates a bad cycle that leaves you feeling even more tired. In addition, taking your body from feast to famine will actually make you more prone for fat storage.
Getting and staying in great shape will not only help you bounce back from the weekend faster, it will also help you achieve healthy habits that will stick with you even as you party and vacation.
My programs are designed with your overall lifestyle in mind and I’m here to get you (and keep you) in your best shape ever!
Call or email me now to get started on a fitness program that’s specially designed for you. Let’s do this!
What You Should Teach Your Kids About Nutrition
Anyone that’s struggled with extra pounds often found out the problem came from poor eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle. As a mom, I want my children to get the best start in life that’s possible and I know most of my clients that are mothers feel the same. Knowing what to teach your kids about nutrition is often one of the problems parents face. But it’s one that’s easily solved.
Set a good example for the kids.
Kids learn to eat by what they’re served at home. Sure you’ve always got the picky eater who won’t touch the broccoli and tries to feed his or her Brussels sprouts to the dog, but with so many healthy recipes and healthy choices, you’re bound to find something that fits their palate as well as yours and is low in calories and high in nutrition. We tend to eat what we know, so make sure all snacks and meals are healthy and they’ll not only get a healthy start, it will probably continue the rest of their life.
Make it a rainbow and unicorn meal.
Okay, maybe unicorns aren’t part of the meal—especially not the meat part! The plates can be filled with a rainbow of color that will provide a wealth of nutrition. Choosing a fruits and vegetables in a wide variety of colors is a simple way to not only create a great looking plate of food, but one that’s packed with loads of different vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients.
Make eating healthy a game.
You can make it like a scavenger hunt, collecting and eating different vegetables and fruit. Keep a scoreboard listing the different vegetables each child that ate during the week and/or day. Creating fun displays like a whale from a watermelon stuffed with a mix of watermelon and other fresh fruit in its mouth. A pineapple porcupine and vegetable flowers make eating healthy more fun.
Have healthy snacks ready and in the refrigerator. It’s easier to eat healthy when there’s no effort involved. If it’s all ready to eat, the kids will help themselves.
Have them help you cook and make healthy meals. There are some simple tasks that don’t require knives or have anything to do with fire that young children can do. Older children can even find recipes and help create new delights for the meal.
Grow a garden. Even if you don’t have yard space, many vegetables can be grown in pots. Those will be more desirable to eat than store bought food. Find a U-pick and take the kids along if you’re just getting started and a garden is out of the question.
Take the kids to the grocery to help you shop. Show them how to pick healthy food. Teach them to read labels for ingredients and if they can’t pronounce the words or it sounds like a bad science experiment, it’s time to find something else to eat.
Fruits That Are A Sweet Treat
Once you develop the habit of eating healthy, you’ll look forward to fruits that are a sweet treat, rather than the baked goods composed mostly of sugar and lard. They leave you more refreshed and actually have flavor, unlike some of the cardboard tasting treats you were used to eating. When you need a boost in the afternoon and a sweet snack sounds like it would hit the spot, try a medjool date stuffed with a teaspoon of organic unsalted almond butter. Medjool dates are large and super sweet. The combination will boost your energy level without spiking it, then suddenly dropping.
Get a cool summer frozen treat that’s both healthy and yummy.
How does a frozen chocolate banana sound? Pretty delicious, but also pretty fattening. Don’t worry these are made with dark chocolate, and each one is less than 100 calories. These are the perfect summer snack and made by cutting a banana in half. On the cut side, slip a Popsicle stick into the center to create your banana pop and freeze. When it’s frozen, it’s time to melt mini dark chocolate chips. Hold the banana over the bowl and spoon two teaspoons on each banana half. It should harden immediately and create this delicious treat you’ll want to have ready when hunger hits.
Fruit is getting a bad rap.
You hear lots of celebrities talk about cutting out the fruit from their diet because of the sugar, but it’s still a great diet choice in my book. You’ll be more apt to eat an apple rather than celery if you’re hungry for a candy bar and find it fills the bill. A sugary sweet slice of watermelon will keep your sweet tooth satisfied. While it’s true, there’s sugar in fruit, it comes in a package that contains other benefits, such as fiber, antioxidants and other nutrients. Blueberries contain anthocyanins to help prevent colon cancer and mangoes have a substance that prevents, slows and stops the growth of both breast and colon cancer cells.
Fruit is great for a snack before working out.
You’ll get plenty of fuel and energize your body when you have a fruit snack before you exercise. A study that compared sports drinks to eating a banana before cycling at top speed, found the banana superior in several ways. It triggered the release of dopamine faster and provided far more nutrition than the sports drink. Raisins, the grandmother of grapes—actually, it’s more like the reverse, but grapes are so shriveled!—did just as well as bananas, but had even more minerals and the prebiotic inulin.
Just because fruit is good for you, it doesn’t mean you can go overboard. Try to stick with just two servings a day, but when you have a huge work load that requires a little more energy, one more piece of won’t hurt and may really help.
You’ll get antioxidants from fruit that can keep your skin looking younger and keep you healthier by protecting the cells from damage, including sun exposure and pollution.
If you’re counting carbs, the number vary from fruit to fruit. Bananas and grapes are on the high end with cantaloupe and berries on the low side.
The best way to have fruit is whole fruit. Juice doesn’t fill you as much and has less fiber. A cup of juice has far more calories than a cup of the fruit it came from.
It Will Be Worth It Tomorrow
No matter how tired I get during a workout, I keep one thought in mind, “It will be worth it tomorrow!” In today’s world where everyone wants instant results, it’s hard to keep going when something takes more perseverance and dedication. Getting fit isn’t a one time shot or even an easy goal to accomplish. It takes dedication and continual striving to reach a goal. That isn’t to say you won’t see results within a few weeks, because you will. Just not the final goal or results you want…but it will be good indication of what is coming.
When you’re ready to quit before you’ve finished a workout or skip the workout entirely, keep tomorrow in mind.
You’re never going to have this day again, so make it count. Push yourself to accomplish what you wanted from this day, whether it’s working out in the gym or cleaning out a closet, and tomorrow you’ll be happy you did. Goals are accomplished one day at a time and unfortunately if you skip one day, it often becomes too easy to skip another and then another. Before you know it, that beautiful goal you created is no longer.
Do something toward your goals each day.
Each goal deserves some attention every day. If you want to lose weight, exercise, shop for healthy foods, remove unhealthy foods from your home and get moving. Even if it isn’t a day for the gym, turn on some music and dance through the house to burn a few extra calories. This is true for all goals, not just fitness. If a clean closet is the goal and you don’t have a lot of time, find one or two outfits that you no longer want or do one other small job that takes only a few minutes and before you know it, that huge job will be a lot easier.
Learn to appreciate everything you do to reach the goals.
Sometimes our goals are huge and it seems like we’ll never hit them. When I run up against that, I create smaller mini-goals that stair-step me to larger ones. I’ve learned to appreciate both the larger and smaller steps that take me where I ultimately want to be. While you need to remember how much you’ll appreciate your actions tomorrow, sometimes, you also need to appreciate what you did today.
When you need a little motivation, reach deeply for more resolve. If that doesn’t work, we’re always here for you to believe in you until you can believe in yourself.
Before you order that burger and fries, think about all the hard work you’ve already done. Wait and get a healthier meal or better yet, have healthy snacks and meals ready so you won’t be tempted.
You won’t fall off the wagon forever. One indiscretion does not negate all the hard work you’ve put into getting fit. If you’ve missed a workout or ate far more junk food than you should, it shouldn’t end everything. Get right back to work on your road to fitness the next day.
Have fun with your workout and support those around you. That comradery adds to your resolve to succeed. Getting fit may be hard, but it still can be fun.
How to Strengthen Your Will-Power
Wilting Will-power? Strengthen That Muscle!
Has your will-power muscle been getting a worXout? Had this conversation with a client and thought I’d share…
Have you been neglecting your will-power muscle without realizing it? What do I mean by that? Well, your will-power is just like a muscle. You have to put it to work in order to strengthen it but not too often because it does need to recover.
If you’ve been letting your will-power take a rest too often lately, saying yes to ice cream more nights than you should or yes to that extra drink, too many chips or bread before dinner…
If you don’t have that uncomfortable feeling of saying “No Thank You” on a regular basis and training yourself to get comfortable being uncomfortable (and you aren’t where you want to be physically yet!) then think about this…
• Every time you say no thank you when you really want to indulge in eating or drinking something you are strengthening your will-power muscle.
• Every time you show up for your worXout even when you are tired and don’t feel like it you are strengthening your will-power muscle.
• Realize you may have had to use your will-power muscle throughout your day and by the end of the day your will power muscle is sapped. Which makes sense why you are more likely to blow off your workout at the end of the day and indulge in something you hadn’t planned.
The key to building up your will-power muscle is to do it gradually just like any other muscle. You wouldn’t just start with lifting 300lbs. You start with 5-10lbs, then 20lbs, etc. progressing slowly over time.
As you go through your day today think about what kind of worXout your will- power muscle is getting and then exercise it at some point to say no thank you to something you normally would have said yes to…have one less drink or only 2 cookies or go for a walk or do something active when you least feel like it. You can do it!
When your friends say- “Stay for one more drink!” and you say “No Thank you not tonight” or you sit at dinner with the bread basket or chip basket in front of you untouched you can rest assured knowing I’m giving my will-power a worXout!
Gradually as you start to exercise your will-power muscle you’ll find that it’ll get stronger and easier to use more often rather than having to grit your way through the day. You got this!
If you’re serious about giving your will-power a good workout and really strengthen it and you are ready to build long term habits, join us at The WorX By Maia for a FREE week!
If you’ve been stuck in a rut, let us help you break out of it! Questions? Give us a call at 540-421-8527 or email info@theworxbymaia.com
Define Yourself
If someone asks you to define yourself, they might want a more explicit definition of what you’re saying or are asking you to tell them more about who you really are inside and what you think is important. In the gym, when we say “define yourself,” it can mean workout to add definition to your muscles and give them that rippled six pack look. It also means identify the type of person you are and prove your dedication to making your life better by accomplishing your fitness goals and encouraging others to do the same.
Actions speak louder than words.
If you really want to get fitter, taking action is the most important step. No matter how much you talk about getting fit and how many videos or books you read on the subject, nothing happens until you start working out and eating healthier. What you do to accomplish goals also affects all areas of your life. I like to think that the work we do at the Worx helps keep people motivated to do their best and accomplish those goals. Not only does the staff help encourage others, encouragement comes from other members of the team working toward their goals. Starting is the most important action you can take.
You’ll define yourself and become the person you want to be when you stick to your dream with persistence.
I don’t take a commitment lightly. When I make one, whether to another person or to myself. I do everything possible to stick to it. I believe that it’s what defines me as a person. While keeping a commitment to another is important, keeping a commitment to yourself is just as important. If you’ve made a commitment to fitness, I’ll back you a 100% to ensure that you can succeed. That’s my commitment to you. As you persevere each day, it builds the mental toughness to insure not only this goal and promise to yourself is accomplished, but also new goals down the road are reached.
You’ll define every muscle in your body on your path to reach your ultimate fitness goal.
There’s nothing more attractive than the sculptured lines of a healthy body, whether it’s on a man or woman. While women don’t bulk up like men do, they still build the sinewy muscles that toned and strong, while shedding extra pounds that hide that progress. When you define yourself mentally and take on the challenge of getting into shape, you’ll develop definition and strength in your muscles.
Take care of yourself. You define who you are by the way you care for yourself. Self neglect isn’t noble. In fact, it’s far from it. When you’re healthy and in good shape you have the strength to take care of others. When you’re not healthy, they have to take care of you.
You are what you eat. Of course, that’s figuratively said, but true. When you eat healthy, you are healthy. Choosing to say “no” to unhealthy food, defines you.
The body is about 50 to 75% water. When you workout, don’t forget to replenish your supply.
We believe in you and your ability to achieve anything. Let us help you make your dream come true.
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