As you have heard me say before, losing weight can be boiled down to basic math.  Calories in versus calories out.  Burning the calories can sometimes be the toughest part.  Here are some common and not so common ways of burning calories and the associated calories per minute BURN (FYI…these are based on a 135 lb woman, according to Self magazine)

• Low impact aerobics  5.3
• High impact areobics  7.5
• Step  10.7!!
• Sex 1.6
• Beach volleyball  8.6
• Leisure biking  6.4
• Folding laundry 2.1
• Boxing 9.6
• Dancing  5.1
• Ironing - 2.4
• Zumba  6.9
• Moderate Elliptical  6.9 (vigorous 8.2)
• Mowing lawn  5.9
• Golf  4.8
• Hiking  6.4
• Playing with he dog 5.3
• Inline skating  13.4!!
• Jumping rope 12.8 (have a little fun with your kids!!)
• Shopping 2.4 (MY FAV!)
• Pilates  3.2
• Racquetball  7.5
• Washing dishes  2.7
• Rock Climbing  8.5
• Rowing  12.8
• Vacuuming 3.7
• Running 10.7 (6mph)
• Spinning 12.3
• Mopping  3.2
• Swimming - 10.7
• Tennis 7.5
• Changing a diaper 3.2
• Walking 8.5 (5mph)
• Vinyasa Yoga 7.1 
• Cooking 2.1

Hi! If you are like me you are on a constant journey to flatter, tighter abs.  My wine intake actually hurts me more than anything.  Booze in general just sabotages any efforts you make to get a 6 pack…heck I would take a 2 pack:-)  So while I know that I have to cut back on my wine, I also know that there are a few foods that can actually help you get closer to having fabulous abs.  This list is not long, so it won’t overwhelm you….here it is….

• Avocados - help stop blood sugar spikes that tell your body to store fat
• Bananas - packed full of potassium which helps limit the amount of belly swell you get from sodium in your body
• Berries - antioxidants improve blood flow, making that cardio blast class easier, helping you burn that layer of fat around your mid section
• Chocolate Skim Milk - promotes muscle building, so drink post workout
• Green Tea - 3 cups a day can rev your metabolism and help you burn an extra 30 calories/day. 
• Oranges - vitamin C can help you zap up to 30% more fat during exercise
• Whole Grains - the filling fiber helps keep insulin levels low and there is speculation that this helps shrink fat cells
• Yogurt - this stuff encourages the growth of good bacteria in your stomach, crowding out the icky bugs that can cause bloating

Here are some slimming tips that will help you navigate your kitchen and your food!

Have a fit day and a fit 2011!

1. Clear your kitchen of packaged snacks!  - don’t make it easy to rip open a bag of chips…even the baked ones!  If you have to prep your snack you may be less inclined to eat and if a delicious red apple doesn’t seem appealing….then maybe you are not that hungry after all?

2.  Don’t drink you calories! - I stick to water and tea, with a few exceptions…..occasional wine and diet soda when I have mixed drinks….come on people I am not a saint :-)

3.  Stick to one high calorie item per meal - If you make a sandwich with lean meats and on whole wheat bread you can have mayo, cheese or avocado…..just not ALL 3.  Just enough indulgence at each meal will keep you from going hog wild at the next.

4. Deglamorize food - food is fuel….treat it as such.  I know, I know, there are the special occasions where we celebrate with yummy food, but out side of that, make healthy food choices.

5. Think about it - If you see something really tempting, ask yourself if you can easily get that food again in the near future. If it is easily accessible, it may not seem as tempting.  Now there are times when you  must indulge….like once a year at Christmas I get to scarf down Uncle Doug’s homemade mac and cheese  :-)

6. Don’t be hard on yourself - So I hogged down some homemade mac and cheese (it is freaking awesome!) Big deal….the VERY next food choice you make should be a healthy one.  Just because you slipped up doesn’t give you a hall pass to eat one of everything on the buffet. 

Some “diet” foods may be your worst enemy. That’s because they’re tricking you into eating too many calories. So what are some of the worst offenders?

1. Sushi: Fish wrapped in rice and seaweed. Not a diet food? Yep, that’s right. It’s not always as “light” as it seems. Some sushi has calorie levels so high it might just shock you.
   
   Diet Shocker: One eight-piece serving of Philadelphia sushi roll is the caloric equivalent of 1 medium bagel with plain cream cheese—close to 500 calories. It’s the cream cheese that gets you. And what about spicy tuna and other mayo-based rolls? They can contain as many as 450 calories and 11 grams of artery-clogging fat per serving. Eat too many of the “wrong” rolls and you’re in Big Mac® calorie territory.
2. Wraps: You order the whole wheat veggie wrap thinking it’ll put you on the skinny track. But is it actually the fat track? For some reason, wraps have been viewed as a healthy upgrade from a sandwich, but this isn’t always the case.
   
   Diet Shocker: The tortilla holding your wrap together can easily contain the same number of calories as four slices of bread, not to mention more carbs and twice as much fat. Many kinds of wraps you get at a deli have at least 300 calories. And that’s just the tortilla, not the contents. You also have to factor in the fillings—and keep in mind that a wrap has more surface space to spread these calorie-boosting culprits:
   • Dressing
   • Cheese
   • Mayo
   All told, one healthy-seeming wrap can easily trick you into eating hundreds more calories than you planned.
3. Granola: When you’re having granola, you might think, “It’s healthy. The fiber and all those little pieces of dried fruit are so good for me.” Truth is, although it’s got good stuff in it, it also packs in the calories.
   
   Diet Shocker: A half-cup serving is what’s often listed on the nutrition label of prepared granola. But who eats just half a cup? For most brands, there are more than 400 calories in a one-cup serving of granola. And when’s the last time you actually measured? If you keep filling your cereal bowl with this stuff, it’s no wonder you’re not losing!
4. Bran Muffins: The kinds sold at many bakeries today aren’t the little 3-inch muffins Grandma used to bake. They’re much, much bigger. And just because they’re made with “healthy” bran doesn’t mean they’re a diet food, either.
   
   Diet Shocker: The average bakery muffin can contain as many as 630 calories. You might be slightly better off with a bran muffin than, say, a banana or blueberry one because of bran’s extra fiber, but most of them are still packed with sugar and butter. Eat one bran muffin from Dunkin’ Donuts® and you’ll be consuming 480 calories, 13 grams of fat, and 46 grams of sugar. OMG.
5. Dried Fruit: The more fruit you eat the better, right? Not when it comes to the dried stuff.
   
   Diet Shocker: You could boost your calorie count as much as four times (!) by choosing to eat the dried version of a fruit rather than its fresh counterpart. Check out these calorie comparisons based on a 100-gram (about 1 cup) serving:

Fruit (about 1 cup)FreshDriedGrapes70 calories(Raisins) 300 caloriesApricots50 calories240 caloriesBananas90 calories(Banana chips) 350 caloriesPlums45 calories(Prunes) 230 calories

6. Pumpkin-Flavored Baked Goods: Pumpkin is nutritious, but these baked goods can be a dieting disaster. Like bran, pumpkin has lots of stuff that’s good for you. So if you see pumpkin on a baked-goods label, it’s easy to think you’re eating something that’s lower in calories. Not the case, though: Pumpkin doesn’t mean diet food.
   
   Diet Shocker: Dunkin’ Donuts strikes again. Their pumpkin muffin has 630 calories and 28 grams of fat. OMG again! Want to switch bakeries? It won’t help much. A pumpkin muffin from Panera Bread® has 530 calories and 20 grams of fat, and the pumpkin scone at Starbucks® has 470 calories and lots of fat too—22 grams’ worth. You might as well be eating pie with whipped cream!
7. Olive Oil: It’s a good fat and helps you burn fat. However, you don’t need a lot of it to get the benefits. Two tablespoons a day can do the trick. And overdoing it can backfire.
   
   Diet Shocker: Olive oil served with bread at a restaurant is heart-healthy, but high in calories. You can easily sop up a quarter of a cup. That’s 478 calories, not including the bread. Or the rest of the meal you’ve ordered.
8. “Healthy” Salads: That’s what some restaurants want you to believe in their “lite” section of the menu. It must be diet-friendly, right? Not always.
   
   Diet Shocker: Listed under “Healthy Options” on the T.G.I. Friday’s® menu, their pecan-crusted chicken salad, which contains mandarin oranges, dried cranberries, and celery, has 1,360 calories. Meanwhile, their cheeseburger and fries combo weighs in at 1,290 calories. Say it ain’t so.

So what’s a dieter to do in a world filled with “diet” traps?

Ask about nutrition and read food labels. After a while, you’ll be a pro at it and enjoy the weight loss that comes with it. You won’t even have to give up the foods you like. That’s because you’ll know how to work them into your food plan the right way.

This article is re-blogged from the Beachbody website.

When a guy wants to drop a few pounds he just cuts soda out and loses 10 pounds in 1 week…ok maybe that is an exaggeration, but seriously…don’t you feel like guys don’t have to try as hard as women to lose weight?  What is their secret?  I was reading an article in Self magazine that seem to answer just that.  According to this article it is all about mind-set.  Guys tend to be better at taking little steps a rewarding themselves along the way. Most women have an “all or nothing” approach to weight loss and we don’t give ourselves enough credit for little achievements.  For example, if you have a healthy breakfast and a healthy lunch do you tell yourself “Alright! I am eating great today, I should be proud!”? Nope…women tend to stress about dinner or other things that prohibit them from celebrating the small stuff.   Feeling good about intermediate goals encourages you to keep moving toward the larger weight loss goals.  (of course you can apply this thought process to any other areas of your lifeJ)

So instead of shedding only sweat and no pounds on that treadmill every day, here are a few things to keep in mind that might get you losing weight like a guy.

1.       Have a one track mind – pick your worst diet habit and focus only on that for a 30 day period.  Let’s face it, most women try to eliminate, soda, dessert, pizza, go vegan, etc….all at the same time….this is just setting you up for failure.

2.       Act oblivious – men worry less about physical appearance….help your worries by looking hot in some new workout duds.

3.       Feed your ego – work out with a super fit friend and don’t let her out exercise you…..then maybe politely brag about it later…even if it just to yourself.

4.       Ditch dinner drama – when a guy sees that he is having pizza for dinner he thinks “sweet!  Pizza”… when a women thinks about this, she starts to freak out because it is her #1 food weakness.  When our emotions play a part in our eating….which is a total disaster.   Treat food as fuel, take bites because you are hungry and think about what your food choices will do to your body.

5.       Pump iron – simply put…women need to lift weights

6.       Eat real food – see many guys eating 100 calorie snack packs?  They typically east foods with more nutrients and avoid sneaky saturated fat by fueling up on whole foods.

7.       Be a bit studly – Guys rarely ever doubt their ability to succeed, even when they have setbacks.  Women on the other hand beat themselves up over a missed workout or a chocolate binge.  Ban that way of thinking!  Tell yourself that not every day will be a great “fit/healthy” day.  Get back at it the next day without beating yourself up.

So give it a shot! Try a few of these, see if it makes a difference.

When planning your fitness program you need to establish a plan of attack for your training regime. Unless you know what you are going to do next, you are liable to start floundering around and miss workouts or worse still, give up all together.  The best way to decide on a workout plan is to prepare a program that is not only designed to achieve the results that you are after, but also to fit in with your lifestyle. If you devise a fitness program that is complimentary to your lifestyle then you are more likely to continue doing it and getting the benefits that you require. If you work particular hours at a job, then you need to know that you will have the free time to exercise without it encroaching on other aspects of your life.  Once something becomes difficult to maintain, it is unlikely that you will continue to do it for any length of time.  While you might like to have a gym membership and workout for 2 hours every day, that might not be possible with your other commitments and rather than doing nothing at all you can still benefit from something more convenient that you can do regularly.  You might only have the time for a half hour walk every second day and that is OK because you are still getting exercise and it is adding to the quality of your life.  Any exercise is better than none at all.  Constant improvement no matter how small can lead to major changes over the course of a year.

Do you want to get the most out of those 35 minutes on the treadmill, or any kind of cardio exercise? You maximize the benefits of cardiovascular activity when you exercise in the zone of your target heart rate (THR). In general terms, your THR is 60-80% of your maximum heart rate. The Karvonen Method of calculating THR is one of the most effective methods to determine target heart rate because it takes into account resting heart rate. Here’s how to find your THR.

Step 1 : Find your resting heart rate as soon as you wake up. You can do this by counting your pulse for one minute while still in bed. You may average your heart rate over three mornings to obtain your average resting heart rate (RHR). Add the three readings together, and divide that number by three to get the RHR. For example,

Step 2: Find your maximum hear rate and heart rate reserve

o    Subtract your age from 220. This is your maximum heart rate (HRmax). For example, the HRmax for a 24-year-old would be

220 - 24 = 196.

o    Subtract your RHR from your HRmax. This is your heart rate reserve (HRmaxRESERVE). For example,

HRmaxRESERVE = 196 - 78 = 118

Step 3 : Calculate the lower limit of your THR.

Figure 60% of the HRmaxRESERVE (multiply by 0.6) and add your RHR to the answer. For example,

(118 * 0.6) + 78 = 149.

Step 4 : Calculate the upper limit of your THR.

Figure 80% of the HRmaxRESERVE (multiply by 0.8) and add your RHR to the answer. For example,

(118 * 0.8) + 78 = 172.

Step 5: Combine the values obtained in steps 3 and 4 and divide by the number 2

For example,

(149 + 172) / 2 = 161(You can get the same result by simply multiplying HRmaxRESERVE by 0.7 and adding to it RHR).

Now get out there and make the most of your workout!!! 

Just a quick story from a freind of mine….too good not to share!

“I wanted to let you know about an article that I read in Glamour about a girl who chose for one week to eat foods that were advertised on TV - she found when she ate processed foods that she craved more, her doctor told her it was because she was eating more but getting far less nutrients from her food. Too bad she didn’t know she could just drink Shakeology and have more nutrients in 140 calories than in a full days supply of fast food. Great eye opener.”

Thanks Judy!

coachjend:

This is a great read by my friend Jen……good stuff people….read up!

Don’t drink your calories!!!

What have you had to drink today? Did you have a big glass of orange juice w/breakfast? Or just the juice? Did you stop at Starbucks and get a venti drink of your choice? Or you might enjoy a smoothie from your favorite smoothie chain. Maybe you drink black coffee…