Lets Exercise :)

Yesterday we covered how you should start to implement your meals into your daily routine and we touched in very vague detail on the nutrition you should strive to feed your body. As you may have noticed I have been feeding you very light details in a step by step action oriented way. 

I want you to stop reading and start performing, as you follow my website and this community of fitness families you will have no choice but to continue learning. As we start the steam engine rolling and start incorporating a healthier lifestyle I can then start to get you to improve upon more things that may in fact have a bigger benefit to you. 

Proper form during exercises, better nutritional strategies developed for specific goals or maybe a understanding how certain supplements, herbs, and natural remedies can in fact make a positive impact on your health. But if I don't get you started we fall into the crowd of "Conventional Wisdom" thinkers and get rapped up in a state of Paralysis by Analyses.

Now that you can visually see what your day looks like and understand when you have time to yourself lets add in sometimes that we can exercise at. The minimum amount of time you must open up in your schedule will be two days and the maximum will be six days. I like to leave at least one day for full recovery, my actual training   habits lean toward three days a week of HIIT met con (cross fit style) followed with a less intense full body circuit that allows for more of a aerobic training zone. For now don't get stuck on making the right choices I just want you to chose what just seems to fit your preferences, we will fill in the gaps later. 

If I was starting out from scratch and wanted to condition by with the best foundation I would go back to the best basic movements our bodies know. Come on, I know you know what they are! 

Thats right. Push ups, Squats, Pull ups, Presses, and Planks, I call them "The Fit Five" lol.... I know it may sound elementary to some of you, but I learned this lesson when I was 12, reading a book about the famous Bo Jackson (my favorite athlete of all time) who avoided the weight room like the plague because he hated how it effected him for days after the workouts (DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness). He made a deal with his coaches while growing up, that he would workout on his own and for whatever reason if his conditioning was not up to par with what they felt was needed for the team, then he would hit the gym. HE was able to run a 4.1 forty ,lighting speed and still considered to this day one of the fastest verifiable times at the NFL combine, and did I mention he weighed 225 lbs of solid muscle, so needless to say Bo never made it to the gym and went on to win the Heisman trophy at Alabama and become the first major athlete to play both professional football and baseball.

Should I go onto to talk about Hershel Walker? Who was well known for setting out to perform 100,000 push ups, crunches and sprinted thousands of miles in a year. Oh, did I mention he was 12 years old when he started out on his mission? Can you even imagine a 12 year old considering this feat as a New Years Resolution? I sure can't!  I personally read about both these stars when I was young and I have to say with regret that I didn't have what it took to do what they were able to.  They possessed sheer dedication and determination in my opinion. But one thing these two Greats shared was a incredible work ethic and a love for keeping things simple, using only there body weight and surroundings to accomplish unheard of feats.

So again, if I were to start over and build a solid foundation then "The Fit Five" is where I would start for strength training exercises. In fact, lets do this right. For those of you who have not purchased a routine you are looking to use during your transformation and are looking to incorporate the best alternative to spending money on one or a gym membership. 

Lets start at ground zero, using our own weight to get fit. We have the rest of our lives to purchase programs that I have personally reviewed and found true to there word. I know the holidays are coming so lets work on perfecting our blueprints for the next two weeks. Since December is my B-day month and we are all over achievers, will begin our "life style makeover" December 1st, 2010. Why not? I dunno about you but I feel a sense of excitement while finishing this post, ants in my pants, I think I have just lit a torch to a trail ahead that I can't wait to travel along. Lets get ready.

You have two HW assignments this weekend. 1) Every time you eat this weekend, don't worry about what it is yet, I want you to be aware of how long it takes you to feel satisfied. 2) Take a walk and see how long you can last (for time, or distance) and then write it down.

Monday we will talk about the progressions to "The Fit Five" and how to figure out what exercise is the right exercise to start with. 

Enjoy your weekend :)

Nutrition Blue Print

OK, yesterday we got started by mapping out your day to a typical work week and I am sure you did great :) I mean who knows your schedule better than you do. If you need a reminder on how it should look, take a peek at my Google calendar example right here to the left (the image will display larger if you click on it). Well lets get back to our planner or calendar that you are using to write your schedule on. Now that you have your day planned with when you wake up, go to work, when you get your breaks, get off work, typical errands needed to be done throughout the week, and when you go to sleep.

I want you to now plug in when you will be eating. Now I know you want to start asking all the typical questions like, Shawn but what should I eat, how much, how often, whats best, whats the worst, blah blah blah... Listen, we will get to all of that just relax, and be open and honest with yourself, it wasn't the last few weeks that caused you to be where you are at was it? "Conventional Wisdom" will cause you to second guess all of this planning you are doing and when that happens just remember that there are over 18,000 diets available today and yet 66% of America is overweight, half of whom are considered obese.

See, if we make a blueprint the right way this plan will last us for the rest of our life because it will always be able to transform to our life's current circumstances. Don't fall for one of those cheap well marketed headlines saying, "Lose 10 lbs in 7 days, Guaranteed". It just simply won't happen and if your anything like me and my family you will just keep the product without ever returning it, then it becomes a fancy paper weight with a new title called-Good Intentions to Get Back In Shape. You don't want that, do you?

With that being settled, let's start to understand how our nutrition dictates your well being. It all starts with the building blocks of our body, macro nutrients and micro nutrients, which is simply what you know as protein, fat, and carbohydrates (macro), then you have vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals (micro). Now over the next couple weeks we will get into great detail about nutrition and roles it plays, but for today and simplicity purposes on getting you started with your plan lets just say your body needs over 40 nutrients to support life, and that's just the ones we know about so far.

There are many foods that are good sources of these various nutrients, but no single food provides everything! Let me say that again, there is no single food that stands above the rest. This is precisely why Variety is the Spice of Life. Eating a Variety of foods, preferably in their whole form, is the best way to get all the nutrients your body needs. Some of these nutrients require others for optimal absorption (we will cover this later), but excessive amounts may result in health problems. What does that mean? I like to think of that old saying, to much of any one thing can be bad.

So lets get back on track. In order to rev up our metabolism so that we are consistently in calorie burning mode and staying away from fat storing we must incorporate two things into our lives. 1) We must eat small regular meals so that our body feels satisfied and safe which translates into burning fat. The body won't hold onto access weight unless it feels it needs it, simply because the more weight you hold on your frame the harder your body has to work. 2) We need to workout regularly so that we activate muscle tissue so that we raise the metabolism which translates into more energy needed to survive, making the body pull energy from fat.

Everything we have just talked about doesn't make sense until right now, I want you to take your calendar and write down the time you eat breakfast in the morning, if you don't then start too, remember we need the metabolism to stay high which means after 6-10 hours of sleep with no food we really need a pick me up in order to rev it back up to fat burning mode. Now that you wrote down when you eat breakfast, write down when you eat lunch and dinner on a regular basis (the two most commonly eaten meals).

Done? Great.

So now we have a regular schedule of 3 square meals, thats awesome. We want to aim to get in 4-6 small meals a day (5 seems to work best for me, 3 meals 2 snacks), so take those times your wrote down for breakfast, lunch, dinner and add in a snack between breakfast and lunch, then between lunch and dinner. This will give you 5 times to eat throughout the day and ensuring that our metabolism stays high. Make sure to only eat until satisfied which takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to let you know, so just be conscious of what and how much you are eating.

Here is a rough example of what my day may look like (underlined when my meals and snacks are):

Stay tuned tomorrow where I show you how to implement and schedule in your workouts, whether you want to workout twice a week or six times, it wont matter how often.

Mapping out our Blue Print

So lets start to build our blue print to a healthier life, shall we?
First you need a calendar, so you can do what I do which is use Google calendar (I use Google for everything :) or run off to your local Staples or Office Depot and grab a appointment book.

Now that we have our calendar in front of us all I want you to do is look at one day, your average day, something that will replicate our weekly life (work runs us all so your work week tends to work perfect).

Lets start with when you go to bed and when you wake up shall we. So if you typically go to sleep at 9pm then write 9p, if it is 3 am because you work in the restaurant industry (like I did for 9 years) then that is fine too. remember this is a blue print that will help you control your life, not your neighbors, not your familys, and def not your favorite movie star. Represent sleep time with Zzz if you want, or be a little more creative :) just have fun with it, it is your plan and I don't think anyone likes being boring.

So during your work week you tend to have daily habits (we are all creatures of habit, especially me), that means you tend to wake up at the same time daily, follow the same tasks (brush your teeth, take a shower, eat breakfast, etc.) in the morning. That will be our first step, take the time you wake up and right that down next to the time that your alarm goes off. Some find that writing side notes can help but for now you can be as general or as detailed as you would like.

After you have woken up a bit I want you to write down when you leave your house for work and when your work day starts. Remember your schedule is your schedule and it is a part of your life, so don't think what your writing down is wrong, it is not, only you can know what your typical day looks like.

Now from here I want you to add in your Lunch break and any other breaks you may get (cigarette breaks don't count, we are here to get in shape) and the when you get out for the day. If your break varies then thats fine, just put a time that it will be sooner or later, this blue print can be a floating plan if you have a floating schedule.

After work we all get time to enjoy what we call life (lol, that's funny right) whether it is totally full of adventure (like scaling the Statue of Liberty) or whether you like to keep to your self and stay at home and relax. We all go to the grocery store (I hope, please no fast food) and we all shop for our necessities, whatever that may b so write down the time you would typically do this as well.

If you are hesitant on what you should right down don't be, this is your personal calendar and I don't know many people that go around showing others. Just as a example I'll show you a rough copy of mine. Just click on the image to see it.

Tomorrow we will talk about when and how we should eat in order to maximize our metabolism, stay tuned and keep your daily calendar handy.