Fitness Tip #5

This week was SO much better!

I'm in the "push" month with Chalean and man does she know how to kick your butt!

It makes you feel so good though when you can pick up a larger weight than you could the week before and conquer those reps:)

I'd like to thank Targhee for being so supportive of my workouts.

He knows how important this is to me so every morning he takes Leilani and entertains her for those 30 minutes.

Thank you so much honey!

After having a discussion with my mom about my frustrations with weight loss she helped me see that my family's bodies are made a little different than your regular person and that if we are really serious about losing weight we really need to cut back on our carbohydrates. 

Like I've said before, this is not a fad diet or short term fix it for me.  This is a way of life that I plan to be able to do for the rest of my life.  So completely eliminating things from my diet doesn't sound very realistic to me, and if you know me at all you know nobody's gonna take away my cereal!

Which brings us to our next tip.

Fitness Tip #5

Fight the White!

Products made of white flour are cheep, tasty and convenient, but your body doesn't have to work at all to get the energy from them.  Crackers, pretzels, cereals, breads, pastries, pasta, tortillas, crusts- these are staples to our culture, but are viewed as sugars to our body and go straight to our belly and hips.  Choose whole grain products instead, but use them in combination with lean proteins and your body will respond.  When you don't get the choice, eat half the bun; leave the pizza crust on your plate.  Remember, less is best.

My sister helped explain this to me so well.  The carbohydrates are the energy that your body needs to keep going, but carbs by themselves burn quickly and we are left feeling hungry.  When we eat protein along with our carbs, the protein helps stabilize our metabolism and carries out the energy across a longer period of time.  We should always try to have an equal amount (in grams) of "good" carbs (remember we're fighting the white) with protein.

Top 10 Whole Grains

1. 100% whole-wheat bread

2. whole-wheat spaghetti or pasta

3. brown rice

4. old-fashioned rolled oats (or instant regular oatmeal)

5. High fiber cereal (at least 5 grams of fiber per serving) 

Examples: All bran, Raisin Bran, Shredded Wheat, Grape Nuts, Kashi Go Lean

6. wild rice

7. bulgur (this is simply a cleaned, pre-cooked, dried, and ground form of whole wheat that can be used in place of rice; in stews, salads, casseroles, and baked goods; or as a breakfast cereal)

8. barley

9. Kashi Pilaf hot cereal (this is a great hot cereal that can be eaten at any meal; it contains healthy grains that we dont' often eat or know how to cook such as barley, triticale, buckwheat, whole rye, and whole hard red winter wheat)

10. Popcorn (not butter-coated movie popcorn, but plain old-fashioned popcorn)