Need an Expert? Become Your Own!

I consider myself an expert in my field.  Am I a certified personal trainer?  No.  Am I a registered dietitian?  No.  Am I trained chef?  No.  I am NONE of these things, but definition of an expert means:

Ex·pert  - A person with a high degree of skill in or knowledge of a certain subject.

Ok…I do have a high degree of skill and knowledge of eating clean, cooking healthy, weight training, and workouts.  I've been doing this for several years now, so yes, I DO consider myself an expert! 

Because I wanted to change my body from the inside out, I educated myself on the proper food or “fuel” for my body first.  After I got that down, I focused on the proper way to lift weights and what muscle groups each worked. I did this through many different avenues…online, videos, books, and magazines.

But, if you really want to get to KNOW an expert, talk to a professional bodybuilder.  Now, I’m not saying that this would be the healthiest way to live the rest of your life, (it is very strenuous on your body over time) but if anyone knows how to control the way that their body looks with food and weight training, it’s them!  They truly are the experts on how to manipulate the human body with protein, carbs, weights, and cardio.  They have mastered it to the “T”!  They know exactly what to do, and when to do it, to make their body look and perform the way that they need it to.

For anyone who feels like they have not mastered it just yet and still feels like it’s a guessing game or that you’re just flailing through life trying to make sense of the eating and exercise game, become your own expert.  Do this by educating yourself on how to properly fuel your body with non-processed healthy foods, how to properly workout with weights and cardio, and how to sculpt your body into how you want to shape it.  

YOU become the expert of YOUR own body inside and out.

Take charge, learn, know, and DO! :)

Eating Clean…the common bond!

I just finished competing in my second NPC Bikini competition.  I know…what the heck is a 48 year old doing in bikini competitions?  I decided to do it again because it is a really good goal for me both with my training and nutrition.  Nothing puts a flame under your rear like knowing that NPC officials are going to judge your body in a bikini in front of an audience!! I didn’t walk away with a trophy this time, but had an awesome experience and feel great about how my body looks. 

There’s a ton a prep before a show like this, but there’s also some downtime between the prejudging and finals when you have a chance to meet and talk with other competitors.  One of the common themes of conversation was about our diets.  Even though we were all on hard-core cut-to-the-bone strict competition diets, everyone ate clean in their normal everyday life.  All the women agreed that hardly anyone in their lives were very supportive of their “eat clean” lifestyle.  One girl said that she was constantly ridiculed by her friends because of it.  We all could relate to each other trying to eat clean in a world of garbage food and sugar pushers.  It was a conversation that could’ve gone on for hours.

I’m so glad that I had the chance to have that discussion with the other competitors and discover that all eat cleaners have experienced some of the same comments, attitudes, and been treated like we were aliens on dumb fad diets.  

Eating clean is not always easy, it’s not always inexpensive, and it can be more time consuming to shop and cook.  One thing is for sure; you cannot deny how it will help you look in your best achievable body combined with weight training.  You don’t have to compete to look like a bikini competitor after eating clean, but if you want to, skies the limit!  

Stand strong eat cleaners!  We are not weird, just the ones who “GET IT”!! J

Are Cardio Machines Lying to You?

It can be very satisfying to see the calorie counter on the cardio machines at the gym sore up to the highest number you can push it to.  After all, you do actually want to see some immediate results from your blood, sweat tears.  Unfortunately, those machines may not be telling the whole truth.

According to Alex Hutchinson, author of the book, “Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights”, cardio machines at the gym count calories based on research from the “average” user.  The counter numbers are based on how many calories per pound of body weight is burned at different intensities. But none of us is “average.”  

Here's the breakdown:  If you have more body fat than average, you’ll burn fewer calories per pound of total body weight. That means the number on the treadmill (or elliptical or exercise bike) is an overestimate. If you’re less aerobically fit than average, on the other hand, you’ll burn more calories than the treadmill thinks. Other factors like height, age and sex also skew the results – not to mention more obvious things like using the handrails to support some of your bodyweight, which is a common cheat on the elliptical and treadmill that the machine doesn’t take into account.

But all of these factors are relatively minor compared to the most misleading part of exercise machine calorie counts: the difference between gross and net calorie burns. For example, a 176 lb. person walking for an hour at 2.5 mph will burn 240 calories, according to the treadmill counter. But if they had spent that hour lying on the couch, they would’ve burned 80 calories just to stay alive – so they really burned an extra 160 calories by exercising. That’s an overestimate of 50 percent!

The lower the intensity of the exercise, the bigger the difference between gross and net calorie numbers. If you want to make a back-of-the-envelope correction, you can subtract 1 calorie for every pound of bodyweight per hour of exercise from the cardio machine’s number. Still, that’s just going to give you a very rough estimate. For meaningful feedback, it’s probably better to focus on things like how far you went, how fast, how hard – and how it made you feel.

It's always nice to see that BIG number on the machine when you're finished, but if you're not seeing results that you expected from your cardio, now you know why.