Tag: macronutrients

Hump Day Humor

Leave a comment

Lol here is some hump day humor for my followers!

I think it is important to note that this can be very serious too though. If you eat a lot of junk food you may find yourself suffering from diabetes in the future. A majority of my older family members are all suffering from diabetes, and they are forced to use insulin and/or check their sugars on a daily basis.

You don’t have to choose that path! If you start changing your habits little by little, you will be amazed by the changes in your body and your health a year from now.

I challenge you to do something today that will create a brighter future for yourself and your family. 

Feel free to email me at hfmxj@stu.ca with the subject line “Transform my body” if you would like to make some changes, and you just aren’t sure where to start. I would love to work out a long term plan with you that can help you achieve your health and fitness goals.

You are also invited to join my FREE Health and Fitness group! 

What is Shakeology and why should you drink it?

4 Comments

Since I’ve spoken to a bunch of people in my Bikini Bootcamps and Challenge Groups, I have had numerous people ask me “What is Shakeology?” Many of you seem to be wondering if you can skip the challenge pack and just go straight for the program to save money, and you can, but I just wanted to share this so that you can see the true value behind the challenge pack.

I am a firm believer in the value of Shakeology, because I have felt the effects firsthand. Those of you that know me personally would know I used to promote Visalus back like 3 years ago, so you are probably skeptical, and I totally wouldn’t blame you one bit. However, I stopped promoting Visalus for a reason.. I gained all of the weight that I had lost back as soon as I stopped using the product.

I was super skeptical to try shakeology myself when I started P90X for the first time, and it took my coach a few months to finally convince me to give another meal replacement shake a try. I bought shakeology after being told of the bottom of the bag guarantee, where if you don’t find that shakeology works, you can send it back for a full refund – even if the bag is completely empty. I’ve been drinking shakeology daily ever since.

I find that it gives me a boost in energy, helps with regularity, makes me feel healthier, and because I make it in a way that I LOVE, I’ve found it has helped curb my sweet tooth cravings. If you asked any of my family members, they would be able to tell you that growing up I was always pretty sickly. I would get sick multiple times a year. Since I started drinking shakeology, I RARELY ever get sick because it has boosted my immune system.

Shakeology is NOT a weight loss drink. It is a nutrition dense shake that helps get your system functioning normally, which ultimately does help with weight loss. Even if you are not ready to get into fitness, I would strongly recommend you at least give shakeology a try – not just for weight loss, but for your overall health.

Click Here if you would like to learn more about Shakeology.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired?

Leave a comment

Are you feeling tired and sluggish all of the time? Are you getting a lot of sleep, but waking up and going through your day STILL feeling exhausted? If the answer to those questions is yes, I would like you to answer these questions honestly – even if you just admit it to yourself. Are you eating a lot of junk food or unhealthy foods? Are you exercising regularly? Are you sleeping more than 8 hours a night?

I know how it feels to be tired and sluggish day in and day out, because I’ve been there. What I have learned over my own health and fitness journey is that it comes primarily from your diet and lack of exercise.  I have found that eating a lot of junk food, failing to exercise, and sleeping more than 8 hours a night actually keeps your mind a bit foggy. It is a feeling that doesn’t really go away, kind of like trying to see through cobwebs. It doesn’t completely block your view (or in this case your mental capacity), but it does keep you tired and drowsy.

I honestly didn’t even realize how bad that fog was until I started eating better, working out, and not sleeping in until noon every day. It was only then that my mind got back to running normally, without those cobwebs keeping me from being my best. Exercise depletes your energy in the short-term, but what it actually does for you long-term is way worth it. When you work out, you are actually releasing endorphins into your body that I like to think of as mood enhancers! If I am mad or upset over something, all I have to do is throw in one of my high intensity interval training or kickboxing workouts and I feel so much better by the time I’m done.

I’m only human, so I have fallen off the wagon a couple of times and gone on binges where I ate a ton of junk food – usually on holidays or vacations. What happens when I do that though is the fog starts creeping back in. I’m not a scientist or a doctor, so I can’t say with any certainty that something in the junk food is causing this to happen, but I would bet money that it is!

Another instance where I feel this fog coming back is when I sleep too much. You need to get a decent amount of rest, especially if you are exercising because that is when your body heals itself from the strain and builds muscle. However, the longer you exceed 8 hours in sleep, the higher the chances are that you’re going to wake up feeling groggy. This happens to me sometimes because I work overnight shifts here and there that really mess up my sleep schedule. I will only get 4 or 5 hours of sleep for a few nights, and I’ll let myself sleep for like 10-12 hours on a day off to make up for it. On days that I have done that I just wake up feeling worse.

My point here is that if you want to get rid of this feeling, you need to start eating healthier, exercising regularly, and only sleeping as much as you have to. Once you start losing weight and you start feeling the positive effects of the exercise, chances are you’ll come to understand what I mean.

Click Here if you’re ready to make this commitment to change your life for the better.

Post-workout treat

Leave a comment

It never ceases to amaze me, but I know that a lot of people actually think this way! Some people will workout and then they think that it earns them a meal from McDonalds afterwards. They will then come to me wondering why they don’t see results. Well, the answer is simple. You NEED to eat clean, and you need to exercise.

If you work out for an hour and then you go to a fast food joint for supper immediately after, you are negating all of that work you just put in. You cannot expect to lose weight by treating yourself to junk food after a workout. The biggest part of weight loss is actually your nutrition, so if you want to be successful in losing the weight you have got to start eating healthier.

Click Here if you would like access to some recipes for healthy meals and snacks.

Don’t let failure keep you down

Leave a comment

I agree with this quote 100%! As coaches we are in this business to help others be successful, not to shove our success down people’s throats. Sometimes I see people get upset or angry when they see people with fit bodies, and they say things like “well that person probably never had a weight problem to begin with”. You CANNOT make that judgment without knowing a person’s story. I know plenty of people that were really overweight, and went on to compete in fitness competitions after a TON of hard work. Do you think they let small setbacks keep them down? Definitely not.

You can’t let failures or setbacks get you down, because if you fall into that trap you won’t see the progress that you’re hoping for. Everyone has small failures here and there. We are only human, so you are bound to slip up in your diet at some point or skip out on a workout. You have to learn to forgive yourself for those mistakes and not let it keep you from moving forward. Sometimes people have a tendency to think “well I messed up, I may as well go all out”. Then they binge for the day on all of the junk they’ve been missing out on, and that cheat day can easily turn into a cheat weekend, which can turn into a cheat week, and so on.

What you need to remember is that ONE bad meal and/or missed workout is not going to make you GAIN weight, just like ONE good meal and/or workout is not going to make you LOSE weight. Don’t get upset over a setback and let a little mistake turn into a big mistake. Try to stay positive and always push yourself to be better than you were yesterday.

Click Here if you are ready to start working toward your own success story.

What will YOU choose?

Leave a comment

You can choose to change nothing with respect to diet and exercise, and expect no positive change in your body. OR, you can choose to make good choices with respect to diet and exercise and start seeing progress in your body, strength, and overall health!

The first week is the hardest when it comes to diet. Once you find healthy meals and snacks that you like it becomes a whole lot easier! After you’ve been eating healthy for a bit and you get all of those chemicals and processed foods out of your system, your body won’t crave the junk food as much. Instead, you’ll find yourself craving your favorite healthy snacks.

Just try to always keep in mind that the time will pass regardless, so you might as well make the best of it!

Click Here if you are ready to get started!

My Fitness Pal

2 Comments

Hey Everyone! I have had a couple of people in the group approach me about meal plans, so I wanted to write a blog post for everyone in case anyone else had the same issues with nutrition. I am going to do you one better than simply give you a meal plan. I am going to do for you what my coach did for me when I started getting into fitness – show you how to use myfitnesspal. This is an AMAZING tool because it takes all of guesswork out of counting calories and macronutrients (carb/protein/fat). I strongly advise each of you to create an account at www.myfitnesspal.com because it will be super helpful for you to keep track of your nutrition and make sure you’re on track. After I explain a bit about myfitnesspal and how to use the features, I will then discuss macronutrients and the levels you should be focused on depending on your goals, and then I will get into some healthy meals and snacks that you can use on your plans. Honestly, this method works SO much better than anyone simply providing you with a basic meal plan to follow day after day. Anyone can give you a meal plan, but you are GOING to get sick of the foods on the plan and you are most likely going to give up. With MFP, YOU are in charge of what you are eating and are able to change it up from day to day as long as you stay within the calorie and macro limits. You’ll fluctuate a bit in macros from day to day as you change things up, and that’s okay, as long as you are around the numbers you are supposed to be using.

Okay so how do you get started? Like I said above just go to the link, and create an account by either signing up through facebook or email. I believe it will ask you some information about your current weight and stuff like that just to help determine a calorie level. Once you’re logged in, you’ll see the “My Home” page automatically. This is where you can track your progress and see how many calories have yet to be consumed each day. Honestly though, I recommend filling out your meal plan for the day the night before. This way you can shift things around a bit to make the macros match up, that way you get them closer to the goal than if you were doing it as you ate your meals. Under the Home tab you can also visit Goals, which is where you update your calorie limit if you want it changed as well as how many workouts you do and your macro targets. If you want to change anything you just hit change goals, and then go to the Custom option to set your own fitness goals. If you have lost some weight or seen a decrease in measurements, you can track that under the Check In tab. The rest of the subtabs for home are all self-explanatory, so I’ll move on to the Food tab. This is where you do all the work! You just click the day you want to prepare, and it automatically has 3 meals and 3 snacks set out for you to update with foods. You just click “add food” and it brings up a database where you enter the food you want, click the right food and the proper amount, and click “add checked” to add it to that meal option. Once you’ve been using it for a bit there will be a bunch of foods listed under the tabs “recent and frequent” to make it easier for you to use. You can also save meals if you plan to be eating the same kinds of meals more frequently to make it easier, instead of having to repeatedly search for those ingredients or items every time you make it. If you’re making something completely original, you can visit the Recipes tab to log in all of the ingredients. This works AWESOME if you are making soups or chili or anything like that with multiple servings because all you do is put in the ingredients used and the amount of servings it makes, and MFP calculates how many calories and macros are in each serving!! Lastly, the only other thing you really need to know about MFP is the Exercise tab. This is completely optional, and I honestly don’t care if you use it or not! It is totally up to you, but if you are running or walking or doing some kind of physical activity and you want recognition for it – by all means, log it in!

Now that you know how to use MFP, let’s focus on calories and macros. This is going to differ depending on weight and size, and if you are doing workouts on a regular basis. However, as a ballpark number for those of you not doing fitness programs, I would say somewhere between 1300-1500 calories. You DO NOT want to go below 1200 calories a day. If you do, your body can enter what is called “starvation mode” and it will be completely counter-productive. A lot of people seem to believe that if you just don’t eat that much you will lose weight, but in reality your body will start storing the foods you do eat as fat because it will think it isn’t being fed enough to function properly. If you’re working out on a regular basis you will want to add 400-500 calories to that calorie range to create a deficit for the calories burned off in your workouts. Again, this will depend on your size and weight. As for macro nutrients, if you want to be on a fat burner diet I would aim for 25% carbs 25% fat and 50% protein. Everybody is different though, so if you are finding that you are sluggish and totally grouchy on that plan, you may need to modify. If that happens to you it is just because your body needs more carbs, so just bump it up in increments. So start the next day at 30% carbs and 20% fat with protein staying at 50%. If that still isn’t working for you, and it may not be when you’re just starting out, modify it again to 40% carb 40% protein and 20% fat. Once you’ve been doing your plan for a few weeks I would suggest bumping it back down and seeing how you fare. It could be that the first method was too drastic of a change starting out, but once you’re used to eating better it may be easier for you to manage the other level.

Okay so now that you know how to use myfitnesspal and you know what kind of a range you should be focused on macro- and calorie-wise, I am going to give you a list of meals and snacks that I like to have on my own plan to help you figure out some healthy foods you can be eating yourself. Keep in mind that you will want to measure everything out with measuring cups or count the chips or whatever you have to do to make sure you’re getting the amount you’re putting in to MFP – otherwise, the calculations will be off.

Meals:

-Homemade soups: You can throw in just about any vegetable you want with spices and bouillon cubes for flavor. Just try to pick something with a lower sodium content. Add some chicken if you want for a better protein source.

-Homemade chili: Throw in tomato paste and diced tomatoes with lean ground hamburger, kidney beans, chili powder and any spice you want for flavor, and whatever else you like in your chili.

-Omelet: cook a couple eggs with some egg whites (you can buy little cartons with egg white so you don’t have to waste your eggs getting the whites) and throw on chopped veggies when it is cooked.

-For meats I prefer lean ground beef and boneless skinless chicken breast. Lean ground turkey is also an option, as well as haddock and some other fish. You can add your choice of vegetable to this with white rice, sweet potato, or regular potato. Good veggie options include carrots, celery (really good for a snack if you have the munchies – people into fitness comps eat a lot of this when trying to lean down), asparagus, cucumber, peppers (any color really), and broccoli.

-Greek yogurt with fruit mixed in. I prefer to chop up strawberries, but you’re welcome to add whatever you like. Plain yogurt is better, but I can’t stand the taste so I use vanilla and just measure it to make sure the calories are the same. If you want to use plain yogurt and don’t like the taste, you can skip the fruit and add a serving of peanut butter or Nutella for flavor.

-Cheerios with almond milk.

-Shakeology with almond milk. I personally like the chocolate shakeology with vanilla flavored almond milk. I also mix in some frozen strawberries for flavor, and if I am using vanilla shakeology I mix in a teaspoon of Nutella.

-Ezekiel bread with a serving of peanut butter or Nutella.

-Stir fry: Dice up some boneless skinless chicken breasts and throw the pieces in the frying pan. You can add whatever veggies you want, some rice, and seasoning or soya sauce for flavor.

Some meals I like to have ONCE a week as a cheat meal:

-Nachos: Organic nachos (Kirkland brand, comes in a big brown paper bag at Costco), salsa, and tex mex cheese.

-Homemade pizza: You can find healthier pizza crusts at the grocery stores so you just have to go searching for one. I add pizza sauce to mine (measured out), pepperoni, pineapple, and tex mex cheese.

Snacks:

-Fruit: apple, banana, strawberries, blueberries, grapes. Try to limit yourself to 1-2 servings of fruit because they are high in natural sugars. I personally just have an apple a day and then have the strawberries in my shakeology.

-Greek yogurt as a bedtime snack.

-Plain rice cake with a serving of peanut butter or Nutella.

-Protein shake: I prefer Gold Standard chocolate whey protein from GNC. You can get cheaper stuff at Costco and other places though I am sure.

-GoGo Quinoa chocolate chip cookies: These are vegan and gluten-free, and you can purchase them at Costco.

-Skinny pop popcorn: You can find this at Costco and it is a great alternative to chips. I would recommend just having this on weekends if you are craving junk food. Measure out the proper amount. It is only 39 calories a cup, but you still want to measure so you know how much you’re eating. Trust me lol I know from experience that it is easy to eat way more than you’re supposed to with this stuff if you don’t measure :P

-Almond and unsalted roasted cashews are good in moderation, but you don’t want to have too many.

There you go! Now with the snacks I would recommend having 2-3 snacks a day that are between 100-200 calories and then your meals in between. To make it easier on yourself for on the go snacks, you can get little Ziploc baggies and measure out those amounts in whatever snack item you want and put them in a basket on the counter so that you can easily grab and go on the fly! There are tons of other healthy foods out there as well, but this is just a template to get you started from my own personal diet. I hope you find this useful. Please feel free to comment on this thread with any questions that you may have or if you need clarification on anything. I stopped using MFP for a while because when you’re eating the same foods all the time you kind of get used to the macros lol, but I will be starting up again soon. You’re welcome to add me as a friend on there if you want (handle is jsajm) to review my food journals in the days to come once I start using it again. If you’re not sure you’re on track, you can also just tell me to visit your page and check out your food diary.

Click Here if you would like to take me on as your coach!