How to lose 5 to 10 pounds in less than 14 days.

Follow three simple rules for 14 days, YOU will feel great and lose those unwanted pounds.  Get ready to FEEL amazing!

1. Don't eat white bread, pasta, sugar, white rice, tortilla's and most milk products. 

2. Don't eat anything with the word wheat in the ingredients list. Even if it's whole wheat, absolutely no Wheat Products ZERO, ZIP!  It's only 14 days you can do this.

3.  Only drink water, and herbal teas without sugar or dairy products added. You create a total imbalance in your body when you use these empty calories.
Stop Drinking Soda Pop and unhealthy energy drinks!

You know that soda pop isn't good for you...and yet you still drink it. I understand that plain water gets boring – especially when you're having a party or gathering.


Use the recipes for "Spa Water" below and quickly turn plain water into an exciting and refreshing treat without added sugar or chemicals:

• Citrus: Slice an orange, lemon, and lime into a large pitcher of water. Add ice, allow to chill for 1 hour before serving.
• Raspberry Lime: Slice a lime into a large pitcher of water, add a handful of raspberries. Add ice, allow to chill for 1 hour before serving.
• Strawberry Basil: Slice 10 strawberries into a large pitcher of water, add 5 leaves of basil. Add ice, allow to chill for 1 hour before serving.
• Watermelon Rosemary: Place 1/2 cup of small watermelon chunks into a large pitcher of water, add two sprigs of rosemary. Add ice, allow to chill for 1 hour before serving.
• Pineapple Mint: Place 1/2 cup of small pineapple chunks into a large pitcher of water, add 15 mint leaves. Add ice, allow to chill for 1 hour before serving. 

Guilt-Free Strawberry Ice Cream

Here's a recipe that allows you to indulge in something sweet, cold and creamy without the sugar rush. Non-fat Greek yogurt is packed with protein, which makes this delicious snack even more beneficial. Feel free to add Stevia In The Raw to increase the sweetness as described below.
Servings: 4

Here's what you need...

• 20 organic strawberries
• 2 cups non fat Greek yogurt
• optional *1/4 cup Stevia In The Raw*

1. Wash and hull the strawberries. Mix in a blender until smooth.
2. Add yogurt (and Stevia In The Raw, if using) and blend well.
3. Pour into an ice cream maker and run until yogurt is frozen and creamy.

Nutritional Analysis: One serving equals: 87 calories, 0g fat, 53mg sodium, 9g carbohydrate, 1g fiber, and 13g protein. 

Saying “Sugar is bad for you” is an understatement.

Sugar is considered empty calories because it doesn't have any vitamins and minerals. It is no wonder you feel so sluggish and heavy all the time when this lifeless ingredient is found in so many of the foods you eat.

Sugar is rapidly converted in the blood to fat (triglycerides), which increase obesity, risk of heart disease, and diabetes. Sugar greatly increases the risk of dental decay. It is devoid of vitamins, minerals, or fibre; it is an empty food.

Here's what happens to your body when you eat sugar:  First the body goes into a "sugar shock" spiking insulin levels and creating a brief energy rush. After the body recovers from the shock, it starts working furiously to recover its internal balance by the raiding of vital nutrients in order to process sugar. This can lead to our bodies becoming acidic. In other words... sugar can alter our entire blood chemistry research shows that just two teaspoons of sugar can throw off your chemical balance.



How Interval Training Can Help With Losing Body Fat & Weight Loss.

I have many people ask me, "What is Interval Training?"

Interval Training is defined as high-intensity intermittent exercise.


High Intensity Interval Training without question, is one of the most effective ways to lose body fat and improve your cardiovascular conditioning.  Not only do you stimulate your metabolism to a greater degree, but you burn many more calories than with lower intensity training, which can result in fat loss.


How to Perform High Intensity Interval Training:

Interval training is based on a very simple concept: go fast then go slow. Repeat. It sounds easy, but within this simple formula lies a tremendous number of possible variations and strategies you can use to take full advantage of the power available to you.

If you enjoy walking you can try this interval work, if you're in good shape, incorporate short bursts of jogging into your regular brisk walks. If you're less fit, you might alternate leisurely walking with periods of faster walking. For example, if you're walking outdoors, you could walk faster between certain mailboxes, trees or other landmarks.

Interval training can be performed on almost any cardiovascular machine (including the treadmill, stair machine, stationary bike, elliptical trainer, etc.) as well as almost any type of cardiovascular exercise (such as cycling, swimming, running, etc.).

Maximal High-Intensity Intervals
Maximal Intervals are much shorter than Aerobic Intervals. Generally, the longest you'll be able to perform a maximal effort is around 30 seconds so all the work intervals are 30 seconds or less.

Here are some examples of a number of different intervals you can use in your training:

Example 1

Steady Pace       Maximal effort
2 min.                  30 sec.
3 min.                   1 min.
3 min.                  45 sec.
2 min.                   1 min.
5 min.                  30 sec.

Example 2

Steady Pace       Maximal effort
2 min.                   30 sec.
3 min.                   45 sec.

4 min.                     1 min..
3 min.                   30 sec.
5 min.                     1 min.

One of my favorite Interval workouts is to jog 4 minutes then sprint all out 30 to 45 seconds and repeat 6 times.. 

Repeat this 6 times for a great workout.

Tabata one of the most effective workouts, want to lose weight?

Tabata is a form of high intensity interval training method that offers more health benefits than traditional cardiovascular exercise. It’s short, efficient and can fit in almost any fitness program. 
There are many different forms of workouts out there and each workout will give you a different result. Some increase muscle mass, some increase strength, others help you lose weight and so forth.
Cardiovascular (cardio for short) exercises are a popular brand of exercise designed to improve endurance and stimulate fat loss. Cardio exercises can be anything from long distance running, skipping, biking or even power walking. All of these usually fall under the category of moderate intensity training because they tend to last anywhere from a half hour to more than an hour going at the same pace.

“Tabata” is the name of a particular type of workout program that provides similar health benefits to that of cardio workouts, but Tabata has a bit more spice. Instead of hours upon hours or exercise, Tabata can be completed in 4 minutes. Tabata falls under the category of high intensity training or high intensity interval training. Today I write to explain to you the history of Tabata and exactly what it is.

How did Tabata come about?

Tabata was founded by a Japanese scientist named Izumi Tabata and fellow colleagues at a department of physiology in Japan. Izumi and his fellow scientists decided to conduct a study to compare moderate intensity training with high intensity training.

He conducted the tests on 2 groups of athletes; 1 of the groups used the moderate intensity interval training and the other using high intensity interval training. In group one; the athletes were training in moderate intensity workouts (70% intensity) for five days a week for a total of six weeks with each training session lasting an hour.


Group two trained in the high intensity workouts for 4 days a week for a total of 6 weeks with each session lasting 4 minutes, at 20 seconds of intense training (170% intensity) and 10 seconds of rest.

Here are the results of the tests

Group 1 had a significant increase in the aerobic system (cardiovascular system). However, the anaerobic system (muscles) gained little or no results at all.

Group 2 showed much improvement in all their athletes. Their aerobic systems increased much more than group ones, and their anaerobic systems increased by 28%.

Conclusion? Not only did high intensity interval training have more of an impact on the aerobic systems; it had an impact on the anaerobic systems as well.

So what does a basic Tabata training design look like?

Any exercise can be incorporated into the Tabata training. However the basic outline of the Tabata training method are as follows:
•     4 minutes long (whole Tabata Session)
•     20 seconds of intense training
•     10 seconds of rest
•     Total of 8 sessions or rounds

Some great tabata ideas at youtube.com just search Tabata Workouts!

Fitness Tips, Stay Healthy and Fit

   

It's important to remember
 YOU are in charge of your health.

It's NOT the doctors, it's NOT the government, and it's NOT your spouse. 
YOU can change your health....only you can choose to eat healthy and exercise.

A healthy lifestyle is a choice...

The Power of Interval Training...
"It's not how hard you train. It's how smart you train."  Because if you train
SMARTER, you get FIT faster!


Whether you are trying to lose weight or just get in shape, incorporating
interval workouts into your routine will help you maximize your results.
Interval workouts will help you burn 30% more calories per workout and can
leave your metabolism elevated for up to 12 hours after each workout. When you
think of this in terms of the extra weight you could lose or the major increase
in fitness you could accomplish, it is a no-brainer that intervals should be a
central part of your workout routine.

Doing intervals not only works your heart and lungs, strengthening them along
the way, it also elevates your metabolism so that your body burns more fat for
up to 12 hours after each workout, making it extremely effective as part of a
weight loss program.

Are you using exercise as an excuse to eat more?

Unfortunately, exercise does not burn as many calories as we might think. What you may not realize is that thirty minutes on the elliptical, for example, cancels out only one Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

Key to weight loss is to EAT SMALLER PORTIONS at least 6 times a day!  Make an effort to control your desire for junk food by eliminating it entirely.

If you’re training for a sporting event, you may need to eat more to fuel your workouts—otherwise, consider regular exercise a keep-it-in-check tool, not a free pass to eat whatever you want.

Fuel your body with healthy eating.  The right combination of proteins, complex carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables—as well as adequate hydration with water—can also add a kick to your energy levels.

While cardio exercise won’t completely burn away a weekend binge, it does benefit health by increasing energy and lowering your risk for heart disease.

Stress Can Cause Weight Gain & Effect Your Health Here's How.

Today’s life is faster than ever, filled with constant change, uncertainty and stress.





Because of the constant demands placed on us at work, at home, or we may really be in danger, our bodies respond like we're about to be harmed and need to fight for our lives. Our bodies respond to this need with a burst of energy, shifts in our metabolism, blood flow, and other changes.

STRESS not only affects your weight, but your health.

The stress hormone called cortisol is one of the reasons. While under stress, the fight or flight response is triggered in our bodies, leading to the release of various hormones.

We've known for a long time that depression and chronic pain are closely related in many ways. Both conditions share some of the same underlying biochemistry (related to stress hormones such as cortisol and inflammatory compounds such as cytokines) and people with depression tend to experience more episodes of chronic pain (and vice versa). Indeed, physical pain can undoubtedly make psychological pain (depression) worse - likely due to the finding that inflammation is known to worsen and perhaps evencause depression in many people. You might find it interesting to know that cytokines (inflammatory hormone-like chemicals produced in the body)

Conventional wisdom would suggest that controlling depression might also help to control pain - and that reducing pain would help to alleviate depression. However, the research findings in the PNAS article suggest that painkiller drugs may actually interfere with the activity of antidepressant drugs - potentially making depression worse.

4 ways Chronic stress can raise cortisol levels which contribute to weight gain and effect your health are:

Metabolism -- Too much cortisol can slow your metabolism, causing more weight gain than you would normally experience. This also makes dieting more difficult.

Blood Sugar -- Prolonged stress can alter your blood sugar levels, causing mood swings, fatigue, and conditions like hyperglycemia. Too much stress has even been linked to metabolic syndrome, a cluster of health concerns that can lead to greater health problems, like heart attacks and diabetes.

Fat Storage -- Excessive stress even affects where we tend to store fat. Higher levels of stress are linked to greater levels of abdominal fat. Unfortunately, abdominal fat is not only aesthetically undesirable, it’s linked with greater health risks than fat stored in other areas of the body.

If you remain in the state of chronic stress for a long period of time your health becomes at risk. One being high blood pressure, a potentially dangerous health condition.
“Stress can actually cause weight gain, particularly around the tummy,” Why? Because physical and emotional stress activates the release of cortisol, a steroid that slows metabolism


When your body is under the stress response, your cortisol and insulin levels raise. These two hormones tend to track each other, and when your cortisol is consistently elevated under a chronic low-level stress response, you’ll likely notice that you have difficulty losing weight or building muscle.


Food Cravings -- People experiencing chronic stress tend to crave more fatty, salty and sugary foods. This includes sweets, processed food and other things that aren’t as good for you. These foods are typically less healthy and lead to increased weight gain.

Other Ways Stress and Weight Gain are connected.

Emotional Eating – Not only can increased levels of cortisol make you crave unhealthy food, but excess nervous energy can often cause you to eat more than you normally would. Have you ever found yourself scouring the kitchen for a snack, or absently munching on junk food when you’re stressed, but not really hungry?

Fast Food -- One of the big reasons we’re seeing more obesity in our society today is that people are too stressed and busy to make healthy dinners at home, often opting to get fast food a the nearest drive-thru instead.

Too Busy to Exercise -- With all the demands on your schedule, exercise may be one of the last things on your to-do list. If so, you’re not alone. Americans live a more sedentary lifestyle than we have in past generations, yet our minds seem to be racing from everything we have to do. Unfortunately, from sitting in traffic, clocking hours at our desks, and plopping in front of the TV in exhaustion at the end of the day, exercise often goes by the wayside.

Today’s so-called solutions including prescription drugs, energy drinks, coffee, etc. aren’t combating the problem, they’re compounding the problem.
Fortunately, there are things you can do to reverse the pattern of weight gain and actually reduce your stress level and waistline at the same time. I recommend you take a yoga class 3 times a week, meditation on a regular basis and lots of good deep breathing.

A natural solution without side effects, Eleviv is NOT A DRUG
Learn more about Eleviv click here.

Eleviv is a combination of 4 herbs that work synergistically together to bring your body back into balance. Not a false energy, like many energy drinks or stimulants Under Stress Your Cortisol and Insulin Levels Raise.

How to Stay Motivated to be Healthy and Fit.

Nothing is a better motivator than a positive attitude. 
If you feel good about yourself and your ability to accomplish things it will be much easier to make the choice to exercise when you may not feel quite up to it.  

Muscle burns fat…..that’s why starvation diets don’t work.  They depleat your body of escential muscle that will burn the calories we consume.

To be healthy and fit people "really know what to do" but it does take commitment and changing habits.  It does take a lot hard work and effort.  Great advice from NIKE 3 words  " Just DO IT."

If you find your workouts are hit-or-miss and that you give in to temptation a bit too easily, your weight loss may not be happening.   For exercise to work, you have to do it on a regular basis. Once your body adapts to your program, you then need to change it to keep your body challenged.   If you skip too many workouts, it's almost like starting all over every time.


Do you know anyone that has worked out for years and looks exactly the same?  They are pushing themselves day after day and not making any positive changes.  There is a reason for this, they may not be working hard enough, or they may be working too hard. 

One thing many people don't understand about exercise and weight loss is this: you have to work hard if you want to change the shape of your body. That means a balance of medium-high intensity cardio exercise along with challenging strength training workouts.   Our Diets are a key factor in weight loss.

Cardio
For weight loss, you'll need to get about 3-5 cardio workouts each week at a medium-high intensity for at least 30 minutes. If you're a beginner, it's best to start slow and work your way up but, if you're in good condition-challenging yourself with harder workouts is the best way to burn more calories.   Interval training is a good choice because studies show you continue to burn calories even after you've stopped exercising.

Strength Training In addition to your cardio workouts, you'll need to lift weights for all your muscle groups at least 2 non-consecutive days a week. And, by lifting weights, that means using enough weight that you can ONLY complete the desired number of reps.  For example, if you're doing 12 bicep curls, you need to use enough weight that you can only do 12 bicep curls and not one more. Most people don't lift enough weight to really challenge their muscles. If that sounds familiar, check out Weight Training 101 and my Workout Center to learn how to lift weights and get some workout ideas.


Sticking with exercise starts with finding a program you enjoy and that fits in with your lifestyle, goals and needs. That means being realistic about what you'll really accomplish each week rather than going by what you think you should be doing.  If you know you are not going to be consistent going to a fitness club, then learn what you can do out home out for a walk or jog and include strength training outdoors or in your home.

Some common reasons for plateaus include:

·                        Doing the same workouts over and over. Your body needs to be challenged to progress, so make sure you're changing some part of your program every 4-6 weeks.

·                        Not eating enough calories. If your body doesn't have enough fuel to sustain your level of activity, you can actually stop losing weight.

·                        Overtraining. If you exercise too much, the body sometimes responds by decreasing the amount of calories you burn during the rest of your day.

Healthy eating has to  become a lifestyle.  

Why Starvation and Yo Yo Dieting Doesn't Work!

STOP STARVATION AND YO YO DIETING

Here's why:
The body reacts to weight loss as if it were starving, in response, slows our metabolism.
When your metabolism slows, you burn fewer calories -- even at rest. So it makes it almost impossible to lose weight.


If you continue to take in fewer calories, you will either stop losing weight as quickly as you have been, or you'll stop losing weight altogether.


After starvation diets, eating under 1400 calorie per day diets, when you increase your calorie consumption, you may actually gain weight more quickly than you have in the past.  The most devastating effect of a very low calorie diet is the loss of muscle tissue. Once the starvation alarm is triggered, your body begins looking for ways to conserve energy. Muscle is metabolically active tissue. Getting rid of it is the body's way of decreasing energy expenditure.

The solution is to increase your physical activity and eat 5 small nutritious meals a day. (Skip sugar, white flour and empty calories that don't fuel your body)


Doing so will counteract the metabolic slow down caused by reducing calories. A regular schedule of exercise raises not only your energy expenditure while you are exercising but also your resting energy expenditure -- the rate at which you burn calories even when the workout is over and you are resting.


With each repeated bout of dieting, your metabolism becomes less and less efficient and you can actually become progressively fatter while eating less food.

Don't be fooled by miracle weight loss, magic pill, etc. No Quick Fix to Weight Loss,

“There is no quick fix”.

Overeating brings fat and fat brings regret and makes us feel less about ourselves. Feeling this regret can then bring extra efforts and most possibly over training with all its consequences. It's a kind of a vicious circle.  Learn to control your food intake.

The most important thing you can do is to "believe in your self, believe in the process, stay the course, and you will look the best you ever looked before!"





8 important things you can do daily for your good health.

1. Drink plenty of water.

2. Don’t skip breakfast.

3. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants, eat less food that is processed and manufactured.

4. Live with the 3 E's -- Energy, Enthusiasm and Empathy

5. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day

6. Sleep for 7 hours.

7. Take a 10-30 minutes’ walk daily.

8. Smile more!

How to increase your metabolism for better fitness results!

It's important for you to understand that our metabolism slows as we age – by as much as two percent a year!

But there is something you can do to counterbalance nature.

“Muscle is the single most important factor for how well you metabolize your food, how well you burn calories 

and burn body fat.”

Metabolism is affected by your body composition. By body composition, I mean the amount of muscle you have versus the amount of fat. 

Muscle uses more calories to maintain itself than fat.

People who are more muscular (have a lower percentage of body fat) they have a higher metabolism than others that are less muscular.

For example, let's say you have two people who are the exact same height and weight. One exercises on a regular basis with weights, in addition to aerobic exercise, and has a low percentage of body fat. The other never exercises and has a higher percentage of body fat. The first person who exercises will have a higher metabolism than the second person. What this basically means is that person #1's body will use more calories to sustain itself than person #2.

Strength training with dumbbells or resistance bands at least twice a week is essential to boosting your metabolism. I Repeat – essential.

Your metabolism stays pumped for many hours after you finish your workout.

 When I'm out for a run or a walk I find a park bench to do push ups and triceps dips, add a few more each time to increase your strength. When your watching TV, use your chair and do the same thing!