Suzanne's Final Update

As the challenge nears the end, I am feeling that the 3 month diet plan has transformed my way of eating and living. As far as the food goes, I have pretty much followed the plan exactly and it has been easy to do. The 4 cheats a week allow me to go out to dinner and enjoy a meal of pasta or add bread or potatoes to a dinner. I usually pay for eating like that with an upset stomach but it is worth it while I am eating it. When I first started this diet on the 2 week challenge last year (I actually did it for a month) I felt sick when I started to eat healthy. I had such poor eating habits that good food made me feel bad! Now, the occasional unhealthy meal I eat really makes me feel awful. I am so thrilled because it is much better to feel bad when you eat unhealthy food than when you eat healthy! I still have not become the gourmet paleo cook but as my busy fall winds down, I plan to explore more recepies so that I will be eating more interesting food.

I also have seen the importance of strength training during this challenge. Paul pushes me hard during the workouts. I often dread them right after a busy day of teaching but I always leave feeling 100% better than when I started. I plan to keep up working with weights along with cardio. I don't think that I look much different than when I started but my skinny arms are definitely less wiggly and more toned. I know that at 6 feet it is hard to put on muscle mass but at least the arms don't shake anymore!

Looking ahead to the holidays, I feel that I will be able to maintain the healthy eating plan. Thanksgiving shouldn't be hard as long as I go easy on the sides and Christmas should be the same. After all I did make it through Halloween with MUCH less candy than usual. Thank you Paul and Dawn for introducing me to this great way of living. I feel better than I have felt in years and hope to stay this healthy forever!

A Vegetable Favorite of Ours - Collard Greens with Peppers

We get a lot of questions about how we cook our vegetables and hope to get up more posts about food preparation in general. Here is a step by step version of one of our fall green staples.

We like to use coconut oil when cooking our vegetables.  I got this jar from the Vitamin Shoppe. Heat two heaping spoonfuls of coconut oil in a pan.

Chop up your peppers.  Here I have a combination of sweet peppers I got from Costco and a couple of jalapenos to spice things up. 

Wash and chop your collard greens or cheat like we did and buy the bag of chopped collards.  But still wash them.

Throw everything into the preheated oil  and toss or stir a few times.

Continue stirring as it cooks until the greens reach your desired tenderness.  We like ours slightly crispy so we cook them for a while.

There you have it.  An easy and awesome side of vegetables.  You just need a hunk of meat and a little fat and you are good to go.

Martina-week 8 reflection

 

Encouragement definitely helps.  There is nothing more helpful than someone yelling at you: "You can do it!" while holding forty five pounds over your head and hoping you having the strength to do it again.  There were times in the middle of my sets that I thought I would collapse like a telescope and injure my brain with a dumbbell.  The whole time Dawn is standing there yelling at me to move forward.  She instantly makes me feel as if I can keep going and her encouragement is priceless.  She will correct me when I am doing it wrong and as a result, my muscles correct themselves when I work out alone.  My posture is key and I find myself correcting it more now than ever.  It will only help strengthen my core. 

 

There is a huge difference between going through an extremely confusing and often stressful life change by yourself and having guidance in the form of a trainer and or nutritionist.  We are discovering so many things about the human body every day.  One person alone at night doing research on the Internet is never going to be able to decipher the amount of information out there the way a professional trainer/nutritionist would.  There are specialists who exist for nearly every ailment out there and we are referred to them by our trusted doctors.  Yet not one of the many doctors I saw during that awful time in my life (where getting out of bed took all of my strength and pain was a daily torture) looked at me and thought about my nutrition.  Not one said: "Get some exercise".  Not one thought that my "mysterious" ailments might be linked to food allergies. 

 

Whenever I have tried to go it alone, I thought to myself: "How hard can it be, its just food?"  That was always my problem.  I have never really liked food.  Like I said before, the process from the grocery store to the table is annoying to me.   There is nothing I hate more than being out and about, trying to get many things done at once, and have to think about my rumbling stomach.  As a result, I always ate the wrong food.  Drive-thru anyone?  Now I am better prepared.  I would not be able to make it without Larabars or a bag of almonds in the car.  It stops me ordering from that fateful menu of fast food death burgers. 

 

As I move through this challenge, I see so many changes in my body that I never could when I was on my own.  I am learning the triggers to my pain.  My muscles are moving correctly for what seems like the first time in my life.  After training with Dawn yesterday, I did notice that I do not have enough of a thigh waddle to pinch anymore.  If that isn't the best kind of encouragement, I don't know what is. 

Meals in Pictures 3

                                           Megan's mexican dump soup

                    Grilled chicken with sundried tomatoes and olives

             Shrimp with sundried tomatoes, brussel sprouts, and garlic

Deli turkey and sandwich pepperoni fried up with olive oil, peppers, brussel sprouts, and broccoli

                                     Turkey Chili with peppers

                             Grilled Skirt steak with guacamole and Kale

Leftover homemade chicken fingers and sausage fried up with spinach and Kale

                  Trader Joes meatballs with carrots, broccoli, and kale

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New Exercise

One leg stiff leg deadlift is a great exercise to improve hip, hamstring, and glute strength as well as strengthen your core.  Midline stabilization is a key factor in this functional movement and is necessary to execute the exercise properly.  To perform this movement, take a dumbbell in each hand.  Stand up straight with your shoulders back and your chest up squeezing your stomach and glute muscles. With your arms slightly in front of you, bring one leg up and back as you bend at the waist.  Do not stop the movement until your leg is parallel to the floor.  Your other leg should be straight with a slight bend at the knee.  Bring your legs back to together to a standing position, keeping the core tight and spine locked in extension and repeat with the other leg.

Give this exercise a try in your next workout.

Daira

                                                                               Pete

2nd Annual Warrior Dash

Before we get into the details of the 2nd annual Warrior Dash.  Let us give you  reasons why you need to sign up today and share some pictures of Dawn competing in the Linganore Winery 8K Run Through the Grapevine.  It was a very challenging 5 mile trail run over some wicked hills on a chilly morning.

Dawn at the start

Looking strong heading into mile 2

If you look close you can see the runners winding their way through the vineyard

Still strong at the finish

10 reasons you should sign up for a 5k race or any other fitness competition.

• It gives a focus to your training
• It takes you slightly outside of your comfort zone
• Once you sign up you are committed
• You feel a sense of accomplishment when you are finished
• You are making a committment to do something good for yourself
• You get a cool tee shirt
• Chances are strong you won't be the first person to finish or the last
• No matter how well you do you always think you can do better and that motivates your training
• There is always an awesome sense of community
• Free bananas and water!

Now that we have you talked into trying out a 5k, we have the perfect event for you.  The Warrior Dash is coming to Maryland.  On May 21st we are going to be competing in our second Warrior Dash.  We have registered for the 11am heat and will hang out most of the day to watch people cross the finish line.  We already have a large group going with us and we are encouraging all of our clients, friends, blog readers and their significant others to join us in this fun event.  You can find more information and register for the event by clicking on any of the links to Warrior Dash.

Martina-week 7 challenge reflection

I am a Halloween Hypocrite.  I spend most of the year telling my kids it's not okay to constantly eat candy.  Then, when the 31st hits, we parade around a neighborhood filling their bags with enough sugar, food dye, and corn syrup to create a toxic landfill.  Fortunately, one of my daughters has severe food allergies.  I say fortunately because she also has food phobia which although difficult during most of the year, is extremely beneficial during Halloween.  She likes to inventory her loot from the night, but will only eat cherry lollipops.  This year she got two.  My other daughter has no allergies.  She will eat candy all day long.  I have to hide the bag or dole it out to her using an incentive system.  Then I kick myself mentally for participating in this tortuous ritual in the first place.  What am I saying as a parent?  It's ok, just this once to break the rules?  It's bad for you, but it's ok today?  I wonder what the consequences of this lesson are in the long run?  That even though it is bad for you, just do it for the sake of the holiday?  At my youngest daughter's pre-school parade, I gave out Halloween scrapbook supplies.  They were little paper ghouls and monsters and other Halloween appropriate pieces of decorations that they can recycle if they want.  I just didn't want to participate in the sugar express.  The real question is:  how do we get entire neighborhoods, full of extremely busy people, to not buy that bag of candy and instead get stickers or pencils or paper goods to hand out instead?  I had to scour the stores just to find those scrapbook supplies.  I was only looking for a roll of Halloween stickers.  How can we petition regular stores like Wal-Mart or the any grocery store chain to carry bags filled with the things I just listed?  Will they even listen? 

This is the start of the end of year, holiday, stress, and struggle.  There will be plenty of articles about how not to pack on the holiday pounds, how to save calories in your casserole, how to keep exercising, how to, how to, etc.  I have decided one thing is for certain:  no matter how good it tastes, it is not worth it.  My birthday battle with the s'mores (which I lost) taught me that.  I don't see the point of stuffing myself with food that will only hurt my body.  I felt so good and awake and for once, healthy.  Then I poisoned myself with sugar and only now I am starting to feel good again.  We always say the holidays are about the family, so let's forget the green bean casserole and cook something Paleo.  That still includes turkey.  But seriously, stuffing?  Do you realize where it gets cooked? 

Dawn has made me write down everything I've been eating.  We started to realize that oddly enough, I'm not eating enough.  Part of the problem is my body needs more of the good stuff.  Even though my husband told me I looked good, I still have a long way to go.  I have lost some, but really do not want to evaluate myself until the end.  I haven't stepped on a scale, but my clothes are getting loose.  I have a little muscle definition, which shocked me.  It's all motivation to keep going.  I had a set back, but I'm marching on.  It's a process, but it's also a blessing. 

What does Clean eating mean to you?

Paul and I have moved away from the term Paleo because of the negative reaction people immediately have towards it.  We now refer to the way we eat as healthy/clean eating because that is what it actually is.  We are not eating meat, lots of veggies, good fats(nuts, seeds, coconut, and avocado), and fruit because we think cavemen did and we think they were the pillar of health.  We are eating this way because of the way it makes us feel.

I enjoy not having asthma, sinus issues, and allergies.  My life revolved around these annoyances for a long time and now I avoid the doctor altogether.  It is very exciting that I no longer have to go have a mammogram every six months because the lump in my right breast is gone.  Ultrasounds 4 times a year are also a thing of the past since my uterine fibroids have completely disappeared.   All of this occurred when I changed my eating habits.  I wake up and am ready to conquer the day because I have so much energy and am excited about what the day holds for me.  Training people and watching them transform themselves both mentally and physically really gets my blood flowing.  I cherish every moment with my kids and there is nothing better than being active with them and seeing how leading a healthy lifestyle gives them confidence and drive. 

Eating clean is different for everyone.  Some people can still have dairy or whole grains(plain oatmeal, ezekial bread, etc) in their diet with no issues while others like myself have a very bad reaction to both.  It is a different journey for everyone, but I encourage you to experiment with clean eating and adjust your eating habits accordingly.  Don't sit back on the sidelines in your own life. Make the commitment to change your eating habits and find what works for you.  Once you get the hang of it, it is one of the easiest and best ways towards living a happy, healthy, and active life!

Suzanne's Latest update

I am way overdue for a post but life has been so crazy the past few weeks that I have not come up for air each night till at least 10:30 and then I am just too tired. Last week I told Paul that I was very frustrated because I did not have a great eating week. I had been doing so well and feeling great too but my schedule was just so busy, that I cheated on the diet a couple of times. Friday night I went out to dinner with my husband and it had been such a nonstop week that I just felt like eating anything I wanted. I had already used 2 cheat meals during the week (I usually save them for the weekend) so I was a bit worried to have used 3 out of 4 by Friday night. Saturday I was gone all day and had a setback again. I had to go to an event in DC and left early in the morning without eating breakfast. By 11:30 I was starving and the only food option I could find was a cheeseburger (with the bun because I was sooo hungry!) I knew this was my last cheat meal for the week and was not thinking that I had to leave the event in DC and drive straight to my son's football game where the only food options were burgers and pizza. Needless to say, I did not eat well Saturday night either. I was feeling terrible physically and mentally. I had promised Paul that I would make it through the 3 months without cheating and I had!Not only did I feel badly about cheating, I also felt bad because I had not really eaten well all weekend. Sunday night when I was totally beating myself up over this, I realized that cheating now had become MUCH healthier than before. I was eating burgers with the bun instead of chips, candy and other junk foods that I had lived on in the past. By Tuesday when I met Paul for the workout, I was back on track and feeling much better.


Last week went pretty well. I did a big grocery shop and bought plenty of food so I would not have to cheat during the week (this works best for me as I enjoy my cheats on the weekend). I went out with friends Friday night and ate pasta and then went out to a Bar Mitzvah Saturday night and had my second cheat. I actually only had 3 cheats this past week which made up somewhat for the week before. Halloween was a bit rough because candy is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE junk food. Because my kids are 11 and 13, you can imagine the amount of candy in my house! I had a few candy bars after dinner on halloween but have stayed clear since then. I told Paul that my kids food had not been a temptation for me but candy is a different story. It is really hard to not grab a candy bar and say 'what will one hurt?' I know myself and if I do that I will not stop so I have remained strong! I am looking forward to a hard workout tomorrow. i love how much I hurt afterwards (still!!). Paul has realized how competitive I am and he really pushes me. Sometimes I am nrt in the mood after a long day but once I start, I feel great. Definitely need a big meal after those workouts!!!!

It's funny, we can always tell when a client has fallen off the wagon, because the communication stops and that silence always tells whats going on.  The important thing to understand is that it is predictable, it's life, it happens and it needs to be taken into account.   At some point, you are going to fall off the clean eating wagon.  Punish yourself in any way you see fit and move on.  The worst thing you can do is take the "I already cheated, might as well enjoy the next few days and I will get back on it next week/month/year" approach.  This will send you into a depressive spiral and sets up what should be a helpful, healthy thing(clean eating) as the bad guy that won't let you succeed.  We want you to look at eating clean not as drudgery that you are putting yourself through, but as a treat to make you feel better.
 
Another huge step that Suzanne highlighted above was that as you progress in changing your eating habits your cheats change as well.  Initially you would go on a weekend binge of cheetos and beer.  You now feel the effects on your body of that mini snickers bar you stole from the kids Halloween bag and don't have another one.  Because you are more in tune with your body and the results of the fuel you are putting in it, you are more likely to find ways to satisfy cravings with real food that has all of the macro-nutrients we are looking for and still tastes great.

The Evil Chair

Do you ever stop and think about how much time you spend each day in a completely supported position?  This could include watching T.V., working, driving, sleeping, computing, eating, working out.  The list goes on and on, but the point is that we spend way too much time not using the muscles of our body in the way they were intended to be used. 

I recently came across an interesting article in The New York Times that looked at the consequences of our time spent in these seated positions.  The article was a fresh look at some old research done by the Cooper Institute in Dallas back in 1982.  In that study researchers were looking at the exercise habits of a group of well educated, affluent men, but also asked about their "indolence"(a great word for laziness).  They asked the men how much time they spent watching television or sitting in a car.  A study published this May in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, took a fresh look at the data from this study.  As to be expected, those who watched more tv had a greater chance of dying from heart disease.  What was noteworthy about their review of the data was that those who sat long hours and developed heart disease also exercised regularly, considered themselves fit, and led active lifestyles.  The hour spent on the treadmill or elliptical at the gym was not enough to offset hours of inactivity during the day.  Keep in mind this study was done in 1982.  The technology available today has almost certainty caused our time spent in a seated position to rise.  Researchers are just starting to look at the physiological consequences of the amount of time we spend sitting. 

The take home message is that you can't rely on regular workouts alone to counteract the amount of time spent sitting.  So what can you do about it?  Simple.  Don't sit for long periods of time.  In my office at work we set a timer to go off every ten minutes and we would stand up for a while and move our limbs.  It got annoying, but you realize how quickly you can accumulate time siting.  I have recently taken a more drastic step and put together a new workstation that makes me stand while on the computer.  I was amazed at how sore my hips and legs were the first few days. 

Start to look at how much time you spend sitting each day and look for ways that you can break up that time sitting.  Your heart will thank you for it.

My New Workstation

Martina-week 6 challenge reflection

I will have to admit.  I did have a tough week.  So tough in fact, I did not want to write my update.  I did not want to admit to Dawn and Paul that I went overboard on cheats because of the birthday rounds that I was making.  I didn't want to admit to myself how bad I felt.  When you work very hard at something, it is crushing to see that work go down the drain because of your own foolishness.  It was my birthday and my husbands and we gathered with friends and family.  There was no cake for us, but plenty of beer for my husbands party.  Oh, and the dark chocolate dome covered in rasberry sauce from P.F. Changs for me.  I did eat clean, but it was the extras that killed me. 

 

For my celebration, my husband and I went to P.F. Changs.  We ate from their gluten free menu.  Just because the chocolate dome is on the gluten free menu, that does not make it okay.  It was sooooo gooood, but I had to check and make sure my teeth were still in my head.  For my husbands party, we gathered our friends for a night of s'mores around the fire pit.  This is where I took a dip in the deep end of the cheat pool.  What was one gonna hurt?  After three, I started to feel bad.   My head was aching and I swear I felt more stiff.  I thought it was the gluten free beer. I ignored the signs and kept talking, laughing, drinking and eating.  It's amazing how one can get so caught up in the cruise, they didn't notice the ship was on fire. 

 

I am now on the slow boat to recovery.  Dawn coming over and taking my measurements definitely reminded me that the target is still out there.  I will still have to be responsible for what goes in because as my birthday reminded me:  I am an adult.