Imagine Fitness

Does your upcoming vacation have you worried about your waistline? You should be.

The average person gains almost a pound a day while on vacation.

But that doesn’t have to be you. Most of the time extra pounds sneak up on you when you least expect it, so decide right here and now that your vacation will leave you slimmer than when you left.

All you have to do is have a plan.

As you embark on your next vacation adventure, use these 6 tips to come home fitter than when you left.

Trick #1: Cut Your Carbs
Vacation days are notorious for carbohydrate rich meals, and it’s a well-known fact that too many carbohydrates will quickly add up to unwanted pounds.  Combat this fat-trap by choosing one meal per day to go carb-less.

• Breakfast: This may be the most effective meal to use the carb-less trick, since breakfast often involves breads, pastries or pancakes. Skip the toast and fill up on egg whites and lean breakfast meats.
• Lunch: A great carb-less lunch is a salad with lean meat. It’s so filling and satisfying that you won’t even miss the bread.
• Dinner: Since you’re on vacation, you don’t want to feel deprived, so dinner is the hardest meal to go carb-less. But if you’ve indulged at breakfast and lunch then make it a point to cut the carbs at dinner. Stick with veggies and lean meats.

Trick #2: Be Active
If your travels keep you too busy for a workout, or if your hotel does not have an exercise room, make a conscious effort to be active everyday. Go on a brisk walk after your day’s activities. This is a great way to see a new city, and also a great way to burn off extra calories. Take the stairs instead of elevator in your hotel and any other buildings you visit. Go on a short jog in the mornings or evenings of your stay. If your hotel has a pool, swim a few laps each morning or evening.

Trick #3: Indulge with Control

Eating out is a must while on vacation. Whether you’re visiting 5 star restaurants or fast food diners, you are faced with the same problem: large portions. While the easiest thing to do with a large portioned meal is to simply eat it all – you are on vacation after all…right? – that isn’t the best for your waist.

When you order your meal ask the waiter or waitress to bring you a to-go box. Take half of your meal and place it safely into the box before you even begin to eat. This gives you no choice but to eat a healthy portion. If you would rather not carry around a to-go box then ask that your entrée be made into a smaller portion. If it is dinnertime ask for the lunch-sized entrée.

Trick #4: Don’t Eat Late
One of the easiest tricks for preventing weight loss is to simply stop eating 3 hours before you go to bed. This is especially effective while on vacation. So skip that late night indulgence and wake up looking and feeling great.

Trick #5: Snack Healthy
Have you ever noticed how travel days create the perfect opportunity for snacking? A coffee and muffin before your flight, a snack on the plane and then before you know it – it’s lunch time! Taking a road trip? This opens up even more opportunities for regrettable snacking…rest stop vending machines, gas station quickie marts and of course the never ending string of fast food restaurants along the highway.

This summer cut unhealthy snacking off at the pass by brining along your own healthy options. Dried or fresh fruit, unsalted nuts, health bars, cut veggies and low fat crackers are a good start. By filling up on these healthy snacks between meals you will end up eating less when presented with a less-than-healthy meal.

Trick #6: Avoid Fried Foods
While fast food restaurants are definitely convenient, with their low prices and quick service, this convenience is not worth the additional pounds brought on by chips and fries. As you enjoy your vacation keep this in mind: avoid fried foods. While this is always good advice to follow, it is even more important to abide by while traveling.

While vacationing you will likely burn fewer calories each day than you would burn at home, and you are consuming more calories due to your schedule of eating out. You are walking a fine line, and eating fried foods would throw you right over the edge. A gram of fat contains 9 calories as compared to the 4 calories that proteins and carbohydrates carry – so you can see that consuming fried foods will drastically increase your caloric intake.

If I still haven’t convinced you to pass on the curly fries, keep in mind that heartburn and indigestion are never fun…especially while on vacation!

So enjoy the summer weather in Calgary, and with a little planning you can make it your best summer ever.

Shelley Healy

Last issue of my newsletter I talked about the advantages and disadvantages of low carb diets. If you were paying attention the negatives outweighed the positives.  So how can you eat a lower carb diet and still lose weight? Here are 2 methods that can help you stick with the plan without the low carb diet side effects.

1. Moderate Carbohydrate Reduction

Our bodies use a combination of carbs, protein, and fat to get energy, Since the majority of people eat a day-to-day diet that is high in carbs, it makes it impossible for our bodies to burn all the carbs eaten, let alone the protein and fat.  The result? The leftover carbs are converted to sugar and fat for storage. Studies have also shown that diets higher in refined carbs can lead to disease such as diabetes. Whereas moderate carb reduction can help with weight loss.

Rather than saying ‘no’ to all carbs, focus on moderately reducing them. Meal consisting of roughly 50% of complex carbs, is a good place to start. Since everyone is different you may need to play around with this and find the balance of carbs, protein and fat that ultimately work for you.

2.  Carbohydrate Cycling

For those who have reached a plateau with regard to weight loss, this approcah may work for you. With this method you dramatically reduce carb consumption for 3 days.  This reduction should be at a level that would make it difficult to maintain for daily living. Follow that with a raise in carb levels for 1 day. Then repeat the cycle again. By cycling with the 3day/1day, you will avoid the side effects that kick in when carbohydrate stores are depleted.

This method also prevents your body from kicking in to the starvation mode, where you are actually slowing down your metabolism. Our bodies are smart, if you continue to long with limited carb stores, your body will adapt making it even harder to lose the weight. Remember this rule: keep your body guessing, to keep your metabolic rate up.

An easy way to get started is to cut out starches in your evening meal.  This will leave you with green fibrous carboyhdrates and lean protein.  If you do this, your meal will automatically shift towards less carbs and higher protein.  It is an easy technique and yet it can make big progress in your results.

Ultimately I believe there is no food group that should be eliminated entirely. Our bodies are designed to work best in a synergy, with a little practice and persistence you can find the best way of eating for you.

Shelley Healy

This weeks topic is all about common myths many of us believe about dieting.Their is so much information out there that we don’t know what to believe anymore. Here are the top 3 common myths about weight loss.

1. Myth: In order to lose weight, I must eat less.

Fact: Eating less than our bodies daily requirment, actually helps us to gain weight. If we skip meals our body starts to slow down its metabolism and go into survival mode. Then when we do eat, our body greedily stores everything as fuel because it does not know when the next meal will come. Prolonged eating like this teaches our body to be a fat storing rather than a fat burning machine. Eating small regular meals throughout the day is the best way to go.

2. Myth: A calorie is a calorie

Fact: There is huge difference in how our bodies burn different types of calories. For example, fat takes only about 3% of our digestion to process, whereas protein and carbohydrates take about 10-20% of our digestion to burn.Therefore, if you eat a meal high in fat about 3% of it will be burned for fuel and the other 97% will nicely slid right into your existing fat cells. If you don’t burn off the excess.

3. Myth: I don’t need extra protein to lose weight

Fact: Anyone who excercises needs more protein to lose weight. Muscle tissue demands protein to build. If you are working out on a strength training program you need that extra protein to rebuild and repair your muscles. Otherwise you will never build enough muscle to be able to burn fat. The results of your tissues not repairing themselves is fatigue, and burnout. Remember, after you workout is the time to feed your muscles. Try to consume some high quality protein and a complex carbohydrate within 1 hour after working out to replenish yourself.

Try this 3 simple tips and you may be surprised at the results you see.

Shelley

For many who are trying to lose weight, or even just maintain their  present weight we are interested in how to boost our metabolim. That is the rate at which our bodies burn calories. Faster metabolic rate = more calories burned = weight loss.  So how can we keep our bodies a calorie burning machine? As a Calgary personal trainer, here are a few bits of advice I want to pass along.

I don’t advocate fat burning supplements or resorting to unhealthy gimmicks, but there are a few tips of what you should and should not do that can imapct your metabolism.

Metabolism DO’s

1.  Don’t reduce calorie intake to low. Commonly known as starving yourself. When you drastically reduce calories this messes up your bodies chemistry and it actually begins to slow down your metabolism in order to keep you alive.

2. Don’t skip meals.  If you are like me, life can get pretty busy, as a trainer working in  a city like Calgary, it can be easy to miss a meal.  However, studies have shown that up to 10% of our daily calories are actually burned through thermogenesis. That is the process of converting calories to energy. That means that regular eating, such as 4-5 small meals a day actually keeps your body burning calories all day long without any drop in your blood sugar levels, so you have more energy for longer and have the capacity to burn stored fat.

3.  Don’t forgo sleep. Research has shown that sleep is essential for your body to repair itself. Sleep actually triggers an increase in the hormone called ‘leptin’ which is our hunger curbing hormone. Just 1 hour of sleep less a day can drastically effect your weight loss efforts.

So now you know what NOT to do, stay tuned for my next newsletter when I will reveal tips on how to BOOST your metabolism.

Stay motivated,

Shelley

Are you getting enough fat? What? You are wondering why would I ask a question like that, I mean isn’t virtually everyone trying to cut back on fat?

I am talking about the good fat that your body requires for optimal health, and to lose weight.  Omega 3 is an essential fatty acid that is absent from most diets.  Omega 3 fats helps our bodies to fight against inflammation and can help to lower cholesterol.

Good sources of omega 3′s can be found in flax, flax seed oil, almonds, walnuts and cold water fish. This good fat has been shown to raise our ‘good’ or HDL cholesterol and lower the ‘bad’ or LDL cholesterol.  You can see that these foods are not the most popular today, and therefore the typical diet will not contain enough good fats to help our bodies.  These fats are very sensitive to heat, light, and processing. Therefore, the more natural these fats are, the better.  Try adding a tablespoon of flax oil to your morning smoothie or stir it into some yogurt, you will barely notice it at all.

So while it is critical that we eat a  low-fat diet, don’t carry this fear of fat to far.  Instead, begin by replacing the bad trans fat and saturated fat. replacing them with  the good fats. Eating healthy fat will not make you fat, eating the wrong food and the wrong amounts is what makes us fat.   By adding good fats to your diet your body will reward you with improved health and overall  performance.

Yours in health,

Shelley Healy

“Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do you really know what you are eating?

Now this may sound like a strange question, since most of us are conscious of the types and amount of food we eat. We know not to eat most white refined foods, like white bread, white pasta, white crackers and so on. We try to eat some fruit and veggies daily. But what about when we open a package of food? Whether it be a can of soup, or dressing for our salad, did you stop and read the nutrition label BEFORE buying it?

Reading the label requires a little detective work. First, what is the portion size that the label states? Is it for the entire container, or only a small portion of it. In order for the numbers to appear lower in fat and calories many companies drastically reduce the serving size to make the numbers look better. In fact most serving sizes are measured in 1/2 cup or 30g sizes, in reality most people would eat twice that amount.

For example low fat frozen yogurt, a serving size listed on the label is 1/2 cup. Now who eats just a half a cup of frozen yogurt? Nobody I know has that amount of willpower to actually measure out a half cup, and put the rest back in the freezer. More likely we will eat easily 1 cup or more. However, if you went by the label you would feel good about yourself thinking you only had 100-120 calories, when in reality you had a 200-300 calorie snack. Then you wonder why the weight is not coming off.

Another example is cereal. Most labels list a serving size as 3/4 cup. If you have ever taken a measuring cup and poured in 3/4 cup you realize that is not enough to fill you up. So you do what most of us do, you grab a bowl and start to pour in the cereal until it ‘looks’ about the right amount. You may be surprised to find out that you have poured in about twice the serving size.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read the labels on packages, you should ALWAYS take a moment and read what it is you are really eating. Be aware of the serving size and take into account what you really eat, then when you total up your food at the end of the day you have a realistic idea of where your calories are coming from. Try this for a week and you may be surprised to find out that you have been suffering from portion distortion. Don’t be fooled, be smart, a little knoweledge really can go a long way.

Shelley Healy

Remember: If you can imagine it, you can achieve it!

Eat Delicious!

Everyone is looking for the magic way to eat that will burn fat, keep you feeling full, not feel deprived and be sustainable for life.

Does such a ‘diet’ exist?

I say it does, but it’s not a diet, bur rather a simple way to eat for a lifetime.

5 Tips for eating healthy:

1. Eat small meals, every 3 hours.

• This prevents you from ever feeling hungry.

2. At every meal have some protein and carbohydrate.

• Think lean protein such as chicken or fish, whole grains and fresh vegetables.
• The combination of the 2 will leave you feeling satisfied.

 



Eat Healthy!

3. Don’t follow the latest diet faze.

• If you cannot sustain a way of eating for more than a month or two you are on the wrong program.

4. Learn what a portion size is.

• Many people simply eat too much at a given time.
• They feel that if they don’t eat enough they will be hungry. See tip #1.

5. Read food labels.

• Don’t assume a food is good for you by the advertising on the package.
• Read the label to determine how much fat, calories and/or sodium really hiding in your food.