Low Carb Lunch in a Hurry!

It's that time again, summer is upon us and many of you have already started and many more are sure to follow with the dieting! Trying to clean up your bodies and shed some of that winter flab you've accumulated. One of the popular diets people like to go on is the low carb or ketosis type diets because they're generally believed to yield faster results; I myself am guilty of this trend to sometimes as I do find that it does help lean me out a lot faster. I usually will low to no carb diet for only 3-4 days and then then gradually reintroduce carbs back into my diet at the right times and ensuring that they are all quality complex carbs (oats and yams being my favorite). I find that by doing so I don't deal with all the pains and risks of living the low carb lifestyle, and I still get a lot of the benefits, but I will get into that at another time! Today was very busy for me and I didn't have tine for hardly anything let alone to eat so I rushed over across the street to pick these things up and still stick within my low low carb regimen at the moment, not bad right? Just keep an eye out for your sodium intake as the rotisseries have a lot of salt in them. Also finding precise calorie information for a rotisserie chicken is a little difficult, I found several different calorie amounts for the same thing... the average was about 150 calories for 3oz of the breast meat.

8.5oz of rotisserie breast meat and 4.5 tbsp. of guacamole = ~750-800 calories

Cutting Back on Your Sleep? Then expect to Gain Weight!

My dog, Xena, knows all about the importance of getting enough rest!

Caught an interesting little tidbit in this months issue of Men's Health... Basically all it said was that in a study where people only got 5 hours of sleep each night in a 1-week period, gained ~2lbs of bodyweight. Now whether that was fat, or just the body holding onto water the study didn't say, personally I don't think the body can put on that much fat in such a little amount of time. Keep on practicing bad sleeping habits though, and the fat will surely creep up on you! This is why sleep, rest, and recovery, are such a critical part in the renovation of your body no matter what your fitness
goal(s) is, losing fat, gaining muscle, becoming healthier, getting in shape and so on... On average the recommended amount of sleep you should get each night is 8 hours; if you're trying to lose weight you'll find that getting the right amount of good quality sleep will actually help you to burn more fat! So do whatever you have to do in order to get your straight 8!

Get Out There and Make Some Friends... It's Summer!

Caught a neat little bit in a health magazine the other day titled, "Social Interaction Prevents Obesity" the entire thing is super short here it is word for word...

"Loneliness increase the risk of obesity, cancer, and premature death. A study on mice from the Ohio State University showed that social stimulation helped the animals convert energy-storing white fat to energy-burning brown fat. Consequently, the animals lost weight. Researchers achieved greater social interaction by housing 15-20 animals together rather than in individual cages. If these results apply to humans, you should strive for more social interaction rather than communicating with people on the computer or cell phone. (ScienceDaily, September 6, 2011).
<"Social Interaction Prevents Obesity." Fitness Rx Jan. 2012: 22. Print.>

So get out there either with your friends or by yourself and make some new ones! If you live on a coast then there's no better place then the beach this time of the year!

Is Insomnia Making You Fat? Get To Sleep With Lemon Balm.

I have read studies before about how insomnia or sleep deprivation can hinder weight loss efforts.
I know this is true for me because when I am exhausted... I crave crap. I will go to the diner and order a Cheeseburger or I will salivate for a salty pizza. Items that I don't usually crave seem to get stuck in a lusty loop of desire in my head whenever I am sleep deprived.

The Tincture Tastes
Mild in Water...
Light Lemon Flavor

Insomnia has been my cruel mistress for a while, and it recently became exacerbated after using prescription Phentermine for three months (I did lose 25 lbs, but my phentermine experience is a whole new blog).

Like millions of others, I recently saw the Dr. OZ show about all natural cures for ailments and he mentioned lemon balm. Lemon balm is used to help control anxiety, but it also has a natural and mild sedative effect.  It is also supposed to help improve overall sleep quality so that you awake having had a good level of sleep.

I had heard about lemon balm before, and a friend of mine described it as, "All natural Xanex".  So after the show I picked some up a tincture of it at Whole Foods.  I have been putting 30 -40 drops in a 16 ounce bottle of water I keep next to my bed.  This way, when I wake up at 3:00 am  (always my witching hours for insomnia), I chug a few swallows and get lulled back to sleep pretty quick. Could it be a placebo effect? Maybe, but I totally don't care because I am thrilled to be sleeping so soundly!  I have also taken it before bed and find myself dead asleep about 1 hour later.

There is also a lemon balm tea, but I found it completely ineffective.  I highly recommend lemon balm tincture for some good zzzzzzz's.

Weighing Yourself; Don’t Be Afraid of the Scale

One mistake many people make when they’re trying to lose or gain weight for that matter is to weigh themselves every day. For many starting out a new diet or exercise regimen they don’t step on the scale but once every 2-3 weeks. So when they do finally get on the scale and realize to their dismay that their weight has barely changed, if at all they get discouraged, or they get aggravated and impatient. Now the discouraged person is likely to give up or quit soon without the proper help, and the aggravated or impatient person is likely to go into overkill mode and drastically cut out calories and exercise twice as hard; both are bad situations. The first situation is bad because obviously as a trainer I don’t want anyone giving up on their fitness goals, and the second situation is bad because that person is likely to start dropping too much weight too fast. This in turn would lead to the burning off of muscle for energy and use by the body while it held onto the fat; especially in all the problem areas like the stomach, love handle region, butt, and legs.

Remember though in any situation you don’t want to lose more than 1-2lbs a week. Doing this ensures that the body is burning off primarily fat; anymore additional weight lost over 2lbs in a week has a great probability of being muscle. So what should you do so that you don’t run into his problem yourself? Go and buy a scale, they’re cheap, and weigh yourself every morning upon waking. Don’t drink anything don’t eat anything until you weigh yourself; if you have to go to the bathroom beforehand that’s fine. Now, you log and track your weight every morning on a piece of paper or whiteboard, and every 7 days you take the average and write it down with a big circle around it! You will see that on a day-to-day basis that your weight fluctuates; meaning one morning you could be 200lbs, the next day 197lbs, and the next day 202lbs. This does not mean that you lost 3lbs of actual body mass, or that you gained 5lbs of mass either; what it means is that one day you could’ve been holding more water and food in your intestinal tract, or you could’ve been sweating the night before and believe it or not you could’ve lost 2lbs of water through perspiration, yuck!

So keeping track of your average every 7 days you should be seeing which direction your heading in by week 3, and be able to make the proper adjustments to your diet and or exercise routine to better increase your weight loss, or weight gain. Also keep in mind people who are trying to lose weight and get lean, just because the number on the scale isn’t going down, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not losing fat! You could be building lean muscle mass and burning the fat right off, muscle is a lot more dense then fatty tissue, so you could be skinnier but weigh close to the same. Which brings on the topic of another great and crucial tool that can help you, a body fat measurer or caliper, which will be able to tell you if you’re losing fat even though the number on the weight scale isn’t moving too much, but I’ll talk about that next time.

Why You’re Not Losing Weight

Are you putting in all of the hard work but not seeing the pounds come off? Whether you just started dieting and exercising to get healthier or you’ve been dieting for a while and the progress has slowed to a stop; here are several possible scenarios:

1) You’re eating too little…  A lot of people today don’t realize that they actually don’t eat that much,

" Eat 4-6 Smaller
 Meals a day"

and what they do eat is usually crap. It’s understandable, it’s a busy world today, some people work 2 jobs, some people have kids, school, and so on; a lot of the time it’s hard to get a decent meal in, or exercise for that matter, and many just opt out for fast-food or something similarly unhealthy. So what happens when you have a primarily sedentary lifestyle (sitting in an office all day, minimal movement, watching TV), and consume little calories, and from poor sources (processed foods, foods high in fat, fast food etc.), overtime the body’s metabolism will slow down to accommodate the lack of energy (calories). So when a person in this scenario decides to start dieting, eating fewer calories to lose weight, they don’t realize that they’re only making the situation worse by slowing the metabolism more. Eventually the body can go into starvation mode and virtually store and hold all the food you eat, stopping you from losing weight, and possibly even causing weight gain.

The solution is to roughly track your calories for a week or so; and if you’re eating fewer than 1,000-1,500 calories a day depending on your size, weight, and so on you could be putting your metabolism in danger of slowing down severely. What you need to do is spike your metabolism and get it going again, think of it as kind of like jumping a car when the battery goes out. To do so you need to gradually up your calorie intake, and try to make the source as healthy and “clean” as possible. Another way to help up your metabolism and keep it elevated is to eat 4-6 smaller meals a day anywhere from 400-600 calories a piece, rather than the conventional 3-meal breakfast, lunch, and dinner routine. This coupled with anywhere from low to high intensity exercise which gets the heart rate going faster, will in turn get your metabolism churning again and burning more calories allowing your body to start shedding some pounds! There are also special “fat-burning foods” and meals out there that are good for upping the metabolism and getting you to burn more calories but I’ll get into that another time.

Fruits are great... In
Moderation

2) You’re eating too much… Yeah no kidding captain obvious some of you may say, but today there is so much bull poop surrounding weight-loss. A magic pill or herb comes out every other week claiming to be the key to burning fat and losing weight, or people think that they can’t lose weight because they have some disease or disorder that they heard about on Dr. Philoproz, and so on. Now for some they may have a genetic disorder or disease that makes them gain weight and keep it, but I highly doubt that it’s everyone having trouble to lose weight; simply put you’re eating too much! The mistake that many make is not considering what they DRINK has calories as well. A 12oz. can of soda has around 140 calories as well as 40 grams of sugar and caffeine too, which will only make you feel more hungry; the same with juice. Alcohol as well holds many calories and it can also suppress the oxidation of fat (use of fat for fuel), it can mess with your hormones, and it can stimulate your appetite making you feel more hungry. So when you’re at dinner and you have a couple of glasses of wine you’re probably going to be inclined to eat more of your food. Another biggie is snacking, you may not realize just how many extra calories you’re building up every day by snacking; and also you need to remember that fat has more calories per gram, 9, while proteins and carbs only have 4 calories per gram. So if you eat or snack on foods with high fat content you’re going to be getting in more calories.

The Solution… Cut back a lot if not completely on all flavored drinks, and replace them with water, try to minimize if not cut off snacking especially if it’s crap food, evenly spread out and distribute your meals into 4-6 meals a day at 400-600 calories per meal. Track your progress, weigh yourself every morning upon waking and take the average every 7 days to determine if you’re losing weight. Remember no more than 1-3 pounds a week otherwise you could end up in something similar to scenario 1 up above. If you’re still not losing weight then continue to gradually reduce your calorie intake and or up your exercise intensity. Just remember one thing folks, nothing happens overnight, you have to be patient, I promise you if you take your time and do it the right way you’ll be way better off and looking better in the long run! These two reasons are the biggies when it comes to weight loss, but there are many smaller variables that can affect it as well such as lack of sleep, stress, and so on, which I’ll get into soon – stay tuned!

Welcome to the Renovate My Body Blog!

Hello and welcome to Renovate My Body! My name is Jordan Cromeens, and I am a big health and fitness enthusiast. I’ve taken my passion for exercise, nutrition, and helping others and turned  it into a lifetime career by becoming a certified personal trainer through one of the top, nationally accredited organizations, NASM.

I created this site because I feel the need to help others reach their fitness goals, live healthier lives, and to educate on proper exercise science and movement. Whether you’re an occasional gym goer, a top of the line athlete, an experienced lifter, someone working on weight loss, a person just looking to feel better and live a healthier lifestyle, or someone in between, this is a place for all to learn!

As time goes on, I’ll be regularly posting articles on a wide variety of topics such as, the progression of my personal training career, product reviews, corrective exercise, diets, myths, weight loss and the list goes on! If you ever have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me through my email address: jordan@renovatemybody.com - your feedback is always appreciated!

See you at the gym!


Jordan Cromeens
NASM Certified Personal Trainer (CPT)

NASM Corrective Exercise Specialist (CES)
http://www.renovatemybody.com