BluePrint Cleanse: Kale Juice - Get Ready to Rumble

6 POUNDS of Veggies in this one bottle!

I picked this up at Whole Foods a couple of weeks ago... for no other reason than I had heard celebrities 'love this stuff' and I was curious about it. Though not quite sure why, I fell in love with the Kale juice (pictured). It's like my BODY liked it more than my taste buds and I could not stop drinking it!  I felt great for the rest of the day; refreshed and full of energy... I thought it had to be the BluePrint Cleanse juice!  I could not wait to go back to Whole Foods later that week to get another!  Later the next day I started to notice the powerful effects of this kale  juice... there was a definite "cleansing" going on that had me running to the ladies room... a lot!

Later that week I returned to Whole Foods for more only to find the shelves bare. The young man in the juice isle said they absolutely can not keep the Kale juice on the shelves, they sell out pallets of it in just a few days! Pallets of $9 juice in days?  Gosh that is impressive!! I immediately panicked; I don't want to be left out of the Kale movement frenzy, and ordered a case for almost $100 and picked it up the next day when they received delivery.

So for the last 2 weeks I have started my mornings with the BluePrint Kale Juice. It gives me such a great burst of energy I have actually stopped drinking my k-cup coffee, and enjoy my kale, apple, ginger (etc) drink instead!

So what I wanted to share with people is that I love this drink for many reasons.

1) Get regular. It is quite effective in purging (for lack of a better word) built up "stuff" in your body.  This does a better job then Senna tea for me!  But be aware - the first few days I visited the bathroom 7-8 times each day. Now it's only 4-5 a day.

2) Clean, beautiful energy. I can't describe they way I feel... but no other drink or juice has ever made me feel so darn good. I even drink it at dinner sometimes in place of wine.

100% Juice

3) It's RAW. I have no time to eat Raw, but I believe in it's principles. This juice is 100% natural, has never been heated nor flash pasteurized.  This bottle has SIX POUNDS of veggies that came from organic produce. Yum.

4) My friends has been asking me, "what are you doing different - your skin is GLOWING." I told them all about Blue Print - and now they are all drinking this magical juice too!

Just to clarify,  I am not doing a full cleanse... I am just adding one bottle a day to my normal diet which varies from day to day. Even though I still eat bad some days (hamburger, pizza, cheese, egg salad), I feel that there are positive benefits from drinking this beverage.  Though I know my low carb friends would faint at the 24g carb and 25g sugar count on this juice offensive - too bad for them.

BluePrint Cleanse juices are available at select Whole Foods and on their website for home delivery: http://blueprintcleanse.com/

The Ultimate Fat-Burning, Butt-busting, Belly Toning Secret!

Are you looking to lose pounds of body fat, lose inches off your belly and waist, and get a nice, sexy, beach-ready body? Here’s the secret…. There is no secret!

The #1 absolute key to losing weight and looking great simply put is hard work! You may be working hard and busting your ass in the gym, but that is only part of the equation, the major part of the solution is DIET, DIET, and DIET. The only thing that you need to know to lose weight is that you must expend more calories than you consume. Your body needs calories or in other words, energy from food, just to function and perform at optimal levels; these functions include but are not limited to, heart function, brain function, digestive function and more, even breathing requires calories. The average human body needs anywhere from 1500-2000 calories a day just for maintenance, and it gets this energy from either food or stored energy in the body.  This stored energy can come in the form of fat, glycogen, muscle proteins, or a mixture of all three.

When losing weight the proper way to go about it is to target and reduce mainly body fat, this way you’ll look good, feel good, and be healthier. Though if you eat too little, starve yourself, and/or workout too hard you can actually keep your body from burning mainly fat and instead it will target muscle proteins and glycogen; you’ll still be losing weight but mainly skeletal muscle and you could end up looking what’s called “skinny-fat”.

The proper and safe way to go about losing the weight is to aim for a loss of 1-2 pounds each week (a little more if you’re on the obese side of things, and a little less if you’re already fairly lean). A pound of fat consists of approximately 3500 calories, so in order to lose one pound of fat a week you’d need to be in a calorie deficit of 500 calories a day for 7 days, make sense? 500Calories x 7Days = 3500Calories, so if you’d want to drop 2 pounds every week you’d need to be in a calorie deficit of 1000 calories per day to add up to 7000 calories (and no more) or 2 pounds of that lovely fat by the end of the week. This is the best approach to attacking weight/fat-loss for average to overweight individuals; it’s safe, effective, you’ll be able to function at almost 100%, and you’ll lose little to no muscle at all if you follow this route. If you get impatient, if you go too hard into diet mode, if you spend excessive time in the gym killing yourself doing cardio, you’re not going to get 100% of the results you want, you’ll feel like crap, you’ll drop a lot of strength and muscle, you’ll most likely plateau at some point and stop dropping the pounds and possibly even reverse weight loss.

In the next articles to come I’ll continue to go more in depth about these details, certain diets, why they work/don’t, and for a lot of you ladies out there I’ll talk about why it’s important to have and spare muscle because you’ll actually burn more calories with it!

                                                                    

Feeling Run Down? Feel a Cold Coming On? Try This.

Need a quick boost of vitamin C? Get a lime/lemon or
two, cut into halves or quarters and squeeze as
much juice as you can into a shot glass

With an alarming number of clients coming in sick the past couple of weeks I thought I’d drop a little history lesson on you; as well as a little trick you can do to that may prevent you from getting sick when you’re feeling run down and tired. Maybe you've heard of the term “limey” before, it originated sometime in the early 19^th century and referred to British Sailors in the Royal Navy. Back then with the horrible living conditions, sickness, filth, poor diet, and an array of other things accompanied with sailing, one condition that many sailors got was Scurvy due to vitamin C deficiency.

 During long journeys beyond the time that fruits and vegetables could be stored they had to rely on foods lacking many important nutrients such as grains, and dried meats. The Royal Navy soon made lemon and lime juice apart of a sailor’s daily ration because they had good amounts of vitamin C which helped prevent Scurvy among other things. Eventually it was found out that lime juice, with its 29mg of vitamin C (35% daily value) wasn't as effective as lemon juice, with its 53mg (64% daily value) for preventing Scurvy, but the name “limey” stuck.

Vitamin C plays an important role in the human body including but not limited to protection against immune system deficiencies, cardiovascular disease, prenatal health problems, eye disease, and even skin wrinkling. It can even shorten the lengths of colds and limit their severity.

The name limey has since lost its connection with military sailors, but if you’re feeling adventurous, spontaneous, and you need a quick boost of vitamin C, here’s what you do… Simply get a lime/lemon or two, cut into halves or quarters and squeeze as much juice as you can into a shot glass and pound that baby down matey!

Quick, Easy, and Solid Meals: Oatmeal with a Scoop of Whey Protein

My Dad used to do this ever since I could remember, so years later when I got into the gym I followed his footsteps. I’m surprised to find though that many people have never heard of this idea; many times when I eat this I get so many responses from people along the lines of, yuck, gross, ew, that’s disgusting, why would you do that, and so on, but the real question is why wouldn't you?

Oatmeal is a great meal for anyone whether you’re dieting, trying to lose weight, trying to put on lean mass, or if you just need an overall quick healthy meal; it’s loaded with slow digesting carbs and fiber to keep you full and fueled longer. The only problem with oatmeal is that it is pretty bland, but no matter what your fitness goals are one thing you’ll learn sooner or later is that you have to make some sacrifices when it comes to food in terms of flavor. You won’t always feel miserable about it, sooner or later you’ll enjoy eating healthy, it’ll taste good to you, and you’ll look forward to eating oatmeal believe it or not! One thing you can do though if you can’t stand plain oatmeal is to throw a scoop of whey protein in it. Whey protein will dissolve well in the oatmeal and add it will also add a good amount of some quality protein to the primarily carb dense food to help balance out the macros. I use 100% Gold Standard Whey from Optimum Nutrition, they’re great company, and the product has won many awards for the best whey. I've tried chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry-which is the best tasting one by far in oatmeal.

I put about 1.5-2 cups of Quaker Oats in a bowl and put a lot of water in it, about half an inch above the oatmeal and throw it in the microwave for around 55-65 seconds. The oats will still be pretty raw at this time, so if that’s not too your liking you can microwave them a little longer, just make sure there’s enough water for the protein powder to dissolve in. After the microwave throw in a scoop of whey or your favorite protein powder, stir it in, and enjoy!

Also Quaker now makes “Quick 1-minute” oats, which are the same thing as regular old oats they’re just cut up a little more making it easier to eat, which I like a lot. Just be sure though in either one you choose that you take the time to chew each spoonful really well to get those digestive enzymes going; it gets very easy just to chew each bite a few times and gulp it down especially when you want to hurry up and get the bowl down.

The Formula for Power

This formula can be used by anyone looking to improve their strength and power, from a serious weightlifter, to an athlete, to just an occasional gym goer or someone in between. Basically the formula for power, and many of you may already know, is… POWER = FORCE x VELOCITY or P=FxV.

Force referring to the load, or weight being moved and velocity being the speed at which it is moved. Here’s the part that I like, increase either one, force or velocity, and you in turn will have more power! An example, if you were trying to get more power into your bench press, to move more weight, you’d have to work both on the force and velocity aspects separately. For force you would load the bar with 85%-100% of your 1RM (one rep max) and try it push it as hard and fast as possible for 1-5 reps; in actuality you wouldn’t be moving the weight fast at all, but your muscles would be in a constant and maximum state of recruitment and excitivety, and you would be working very hard to move the load. For the velocity or speed aspect of power what you’d want to do is the same or similar exercise this time with only 50%-70% of your 1RM move it both concentrically and eccentrically (up and down basically) as fast as you can control for 3-5 reps. 

I didn’t know about this little formula for such big results in the gym until I read my NASM CPT 4 book. Ever since though, I’ve applied it and made it the foundation of my training for the next 6 weeks and have seen great results; I’m definitely getting stronger. I go by a 5 set, 5 rep scheme for each exercise, and usually hit 3-4 different exercises for a body part(s) and they’re all compound movements. I prefer to work in one specific area, either work on force production or work on building velocity I don’t interchange them too much in a session. I definitely recommend anyone with some experience in the gym under their belt to give this a try, it may be something different and you and your body will benefit from it! Let me know if you have any questions and how it goes!

Low Carb Diets

Low carb diets have always been the way to go for people looking to go on those crash diets to lose weight and fast, but do they work? The Answer is yes and no… The reason for this is because yes you’ll lose weight and fast, but it’s not going to be the weight you want to lose. You see when you eat foods dense in carbohydrates your body holds more water, approximately 3 grams of water for every 1 carbohydrate gram. So once you go on a low to no carbohydrate diet your body’s glycogen stores (the form in which carbohydrates are digested and stored as) will deplete pretty fast depending on how low you go; and along with that goes all the water that was being held leading to rapid weight loss, rapid water weight loss that is.

So if you were 180lbs. at 25% body fat, and you start eating a low carb diet and within two weeks you lose an incredible 15lbs. and weigh in at 165lbs. chances are that 90% of the weight lost was from water. Another reason why people like low carb diets is because the body’s preferred choice of fuel is from carbohydrates, so cut back on the main source of fuel then the body is going to have to move onto something else for energy and the belief is that it starts to target body fat. What a lot of people don’t realize though is that your muscle proteins are just as much of a target for fuel as your fat is, so the weight you lose beyond just water could be just as much muscle proteins as body fat. So to combat excessive muscle loss during low to no carb dieting is to always get adequate protein through food and supplementation spread out through 4-6 meals per day and especially after exercising.  That is only half of it, what many people don’t know is that carbs are in fact muscle sparing! So if you’re considering going low carb if you’re going to eat any carbs make it before and immediately after exercise; generally you’d want to eat slow digesting carbs before a workout (oats, yams, black beans, etc.) and immediately after a workout eat fast digesting carbs or foods that have a lot of sugar like fruits, juice etc. Doing this should allow for minimal muscle loss while dieting and exercising  no matter what method of dieting you decide to do.

Remember though, more importantly though, it doesn’t matter what method of dieting you do, it won’t work unless you’re in a calorie deficit, ideally no more than 500-1000 calories (less than maintenance) a day which adds up to 1-2 pounds of weight lost a week. If you have any questions feel free to email me.

Static Stretching - When You Should Do It, and When You Should Not!

Maybe you’re familiar with stretching but you've just never heard the term Static stretching, basically there are three major types of stretching – Static stretching, active-isolated stretching, and

dynamic stretching. Static stretching is generally the most used and is basically when you hold a single, stationary, and isolated stretch for at least 30 seconds; for example a bent-over, straight leg hamstring stretch. What many people don’t know that there is right time to static stretch and a wrong time as well. There have been a lot of studies that show that static stretching, especially that of the legs, before exercise can actually decrease your force output; or simply put your lifts will be lower. The right time to static stretch is immediately after exercise to loosen and relieve the tension of the muscles you just put through work.

The only time when static stretching is in fact recommended before exercise is when you’re working on corrective exercise techniques to fix muscle imbalances, overactive muscles, and altered force-couple relationships; if you’ve done any of the NASM certs like the CPT or CES you’ll know what I’m talking about. Basically though lets say you or your client has a horrible squat form, which 9 times out of 10 most first timers do. During the eccentric movement of the squat they lean forward excessively, they have lower-crossed syndrome (excessive hyper extension of the lower back), and they almost always have all of their weight on their toes rather than their heels causing the knees to go over and way passed the toes putting a lot of dangerous tension onto the knees.

 One of the prescriptions to try and fix this problem is to lengthen or stretch out the overactive or tight muscles causing the poor form and we do this through SMR or foam rolling and static stretching of the overactive muscle. So one of the reasons which cause a client to lean forward too much during a squat as well as be on their toes are due to tight hip flexors (groin area), and tight quadriceps (muscle group in the front of the thighs). So before exercise you’d static stretch these areas specifically to weaken so to speak the tight muscles allowing for the under-active muscles to get stimulation and grow stronger; in the case of a squat we’d stretch out the quads in hopes that we could get the hamstrings (muscle group behind the thigh) and glutes (butt muscles) to be stimulated and grow stronger and thus fixing the postural distortion and poor squat form.

When giving my new clients the overhead squat assessment and I see that they have some of these poor movement patterns and poor form, one of the things I have them do is to stretch out each quad 2 times for 30 seconds each and then try the squat assessment again, and almost always does their form improve drastically if not almost 100%. I too began to static stretch my quads before my leg days in the gym once I realized I didn't have the best of form, my knees would hover over and go beyond my toes at some points. I kid you not within two weeks my squat went up 50lbs, from 200 to 250lbs for 6 reps.

So for a brief summary hold off on the static stretching until after a workout session, unless you find that you have poor form with certain movements which can eventually lead to injury. If you don’t know what to look for ask a reputable trainer at your gym to give you a squat assessment, and ask him or her to tell you about any imbalances, distortions and poor form you might have and what you should do. I’ll go into other forms of stretching and foam rolling in another entry, until then if you’re struggling with your squat try static stretching out your quads and see if that helps!