One of the easiest things you can do to begin losing weight with virtually no effort is to cut out high sugar and high calorie sodas and drinks.
Did you know that if you drink just two cans of soda a day now, and you cut that out of your diet, you would lose about 32 pounds in a year? That’s 32 pounds gone without changing anything else!
Now if the idea of giving up your soda all together is too tough how about replacing just one of those sodas with my all natural diet soda. I made a really quick video to show you my “diet soda” that I drink several times a week. It’s really refreshing and there are hundreds of flavor possibilities.
Check out my diet soda here
Add a strength training workout 3 times a week and a daily metabolism boosting breakfast to this small step and you could shed about 8lbs in just 6 weeks. That’s pretty darn easy.
This Sunday, April 25th the Skinny Jeans Transformation challenge starts. If you haven’t heard about it, it is a 9 week challenge that will get you into your Skinny Jeans guaranteed! All the info is here Get Me In My Skinny Jeans! I am so excited to be bringing this to you and my boot camps are definitely buzzing.
During the 9 weeks the challenge covers, we will all be uber focused on our nutrition and daily workouts but I know as much as you do that those sugar craving are going to hit at some point and we’re going to need a fat-loss friendly way to satisfy them. So I am compiling a list of the tastiest sweet treats under 200 calories and then I’ll put them all in a special report for you to keep handy.
Ever wonder why losing weight is called the Battle of the bulge?
Because it’s just that…a battle.
And like in any good fight, you need strategies to help you proclaim a victory.
As a personal trainer for over 12 years, I have a LOT of strategies, but today I’m going to tell you my absolute #1 strategy. The one that if I had no other fat loss “weapons” I’d like to have in my back pocket.
Nothing Beats the Power of Whole Body Workouts, Making Your Body The Terminator of Fat:
This means doing a Five-Exercise Circuit focused on your upper and lower body and everything in between. Do this at least three times per week with a day of rest between workouts and you’ll be wondering when you’ll be starring in the next 300 movie.
Here’s the plan: We’ll call this the 50-10 Split. For 50 seconds, I want you to work as hard as possible, busting your butt off each set. For the first set, you’ll have your double-leg exercise (the squat); the second set, you’ll have your pull (the renegade row), for the third set you’ll have your single-leg exercise (the lunge); for the fourth set, you’ll have your push (push-up) and for the final set you’ll have your core (the Plank).
The 50-10 Split
50 seconds of Squats
10 seconds of Rest
50 seconds of Renegade Rows
10 seconds of Rest
50 seconds of Lunges
10 seconds of Rest
50 seconds of Push-ups
10 seconds of Rest
Lastly, 50 seconds of Plank
Rest for 10 seconds
Repeat 4x, starting back at Squats
Perform up to 4 rounds without rest in between for a killer 20-minute total body workout, leaving you drenched in sweat and shedding away your gut, leaving you looking like a Greek statue.
Intervals, Did Someone Say You Look Like Your 20?:
Want to burn 9 times more body fat than running on a treadmill for 45 minutes and keep it burning for 48 more hours afterwards? Spend 20 minutes doing Intervals and not only will your heart be thanking you in the future, but so too will your body when the weight starts dropping like flies.
Here’s the plan for intervals:
Preparatory Period for those who like Running: On the first week, 3x a week, I want you to be able to work up to jogging at least one fourth a mile. I don’t care how long it takes, as long as you can do the entire ¼ mile without resting. The next week, I want you to do the same thing, except work up to half a mile. On
the third week, I want you to put all your effort into running a full mile. This gives your body a good-prep period before you start the hard work to help avoid shin splints and all the other nasty injuries that’ll keep you from
losing weight.
If you choose to do something else besides jogging, say rowing. Keep the plan the same way, just substitute jogging for rowing.
Preparatory Period for those who like Jump Roping: Oh, and if you wanted to do jumping roping. Here’s a separate plan. On the first week, 3x a week, work up to jump roping for 10 straight minutes. Make sure your arms aren’t flailing, and only your wrist is spinning the jump rope. The next week, jump rope for a total of 20 minutes. On the third week, make it all out effort of 30 minutes. Just like the jogging program, this will give you the prep period and endurance to make sure you really give intervals your all.
The real fun begins after those three weeks. On your non-exercise days, the full body workouts I gave you earlier, do some cardio intervals three times per week.
Here’s how they work:
Select a cardio exercise of your choice. The top choices are running, rowing (if you gym has one), or jump roping (a prerequisite is being able to jump rope for 30 minutes). Now, this 20-10 split is simply 20 seconds
of INTENSE work, following by ten seconds of active rest. Now, repeat eight times, for four minutes total. Active rest for one minute, and repeat the entire thing for up to 20 minutes
If you want to do this at home, do it with jumping jacks, jump squats, or burpees. Use the preparatory period, I wrote for jumping rope for any of these exercises, and you’ll be a lean, mean, fat-burning machine in no time.
TOP 2 DIET TIPS
You thought you could get away from Eating, just because you’re late for work:
Eat Breakfast when you wake up. Don’t avoid it please. You need to eat every two to four hours to help starve the fat and feed your protein grubby muscle. By constantly feeding the worker bee (your muscle and stomach), they will constantly be revved up through the day, making sure that you don’t eat a hearty meal that will knock you out for the rest of the day – food coma anybody? Enjoy those meals with animal protein (meat, eggs, cheese, milk, etc.) and your body will thank you.
The Broom of your body, Eat it with Carbs and Watch Your Body Melt Before Your Eyes – Just the bad stuff of course: Fiber is your friend, eat lots of green veggies to fill your bell during and between meals. To keep your fat-burning furnace running like a berserk boar, eat simple carbs like fruit, rice, and white bread to within 1-2 of your workout when your body best uses starches and sugars.
Eat an unlimited amount of fibrous, cruciferous green veggies to fill your belly both during and between meals. For optimal fat-burning, try to limit fruit and other carbohydrate consumption to within 1-2 hours post-workout when your body best tolerates starches and sugars.
With these 2 training and nutrition rules, it’ll look like you’ve found the fountain of youth. Your body will transform faster than any of the robots in Transformers and no doubt you’ll be proud of all that you’ve
accomplished, guaranteed.
Stay focused,
Sarai Jones
PS- Please forward this blog post to anybody that you know
who can benefit from it!
The correct answer to the following question will shock you.
Would you survive longer on a diet of just water OR on a diet of water and refined sugar?
The answer: You would survive longer on just water.
Sound impossible? Just ask the five sailors who were ship wrecked in 1793.
The ship was filled with sugar, thus giving the marooned five a diet of sugar and water. When they were finally picked up, nine days later, they were in a wasted condition due to starvation.
The story of the five sailors intrigued French physiologist Francois Magendie to conduct a series of experiments in which he fed dogs a diet of sugar. All of the dogs died.
Magendie proved that as a steady diet, refined sugar is worse than nothing.
How can sugar be worse than nothing? Plainly put, refined sugar is an anti-nutrient.
It starts out as sugar cane, and then goes through an extensive refining process that destroys all of the enzymes, fiber, vitamins and minerals. What you’re left with are empty, naked calories.
The problem is that your body needs the enzymes, fiber, vitamins and minerals that were taken out in the refining process in order to metabolize sugar and use it as energy. So it takes those nutrients from your own body.
So while you are enjoying that chocolate bar, sugar is draining vital nutrients from your body. Like a sweet parasite.
And it doesn’t end there…
Sugar creates false hunger (as a result of the insulin rush and then ensuing plummet in your blood sugar levels), which makes you overeat. This means a constant struggle with your weight in which you never seem to achieve your ideal size.
Sugar promotes aging (due to the advanced glycation end products, or AGEs, that occur when insulin levels are consistently elevated as a result of eating too much sugar). Sugar has even been dubbed the negative fountain of youth.
Sugar weakens your bones – making you vulnerable for osteoporosis, and weakens your teeth – making you vulnerable for cavities (both due to the calcium being pulled from your bones and teeth in order for your body to process sugar).
Sugar in excess is stored as fat (after your liver has no more room to store it, sugar is converted to fat and deposited on your belly, thighs, hips and the backs of your arms).
Sugar can impair brain functioning (as a result of depleted B-vitamin production).
If you’re still not convinced of the danger of sugar here are more ailments linked to its overconsumption: varicose veins, constipation, hormonal imbalances, ADD and ADHD, increased emotional instability, depressed immune system, increased risk of cancer and degenerative diseases.
The average modern person consumes 46 teaspoons of sugar every day. That comes out to roughly 175 pounds of sugar each year.
And it’s no wonder, since sugar industry is big business. They sneak sugar into any product that they can.
Go through the foods in your home and you’ll see that sugar has been added to everything from ketchup and spaghetti sauce to crackers, oatmeal, peanut butter and even ‘healthy’ items like weight loss bars.
Where does this leave you?
You are in a unique position. Your personal judgment determines the foods that you eat and the foods that you avoid. It is my hope that you approach sugar with new eyes.
While all other foods offer you caloric energy PLUS some nutritional benefit, sugar doesn’t. Sugar is simply caloric energy with a sweet habit forming taste, and a hoard of health risks.
Use your judgment wisely and limit your sugar consumption – you’ll love the benefits of low sugar living.
And while you’re at it contact me to start a training program that will turbo-charge your results.
(Oh and if you’re ever in a ship wreck with only sugar and water at your disposal – just drink the water!)
Spring is here and that means one thing – it’s time for spring cleaning.
The word alone conjures up the image of a garage too filled with junk to walk through, let alone park a car, and closets filled to capacity.
When things get this out of hand it’s easy to just give up.
Why put your shoes on the rack when you’d have to climb over a stack of newspapers to reach it? It’s easier to throw them down by the door. Why hang your coat up when the closet is a disaster area? It’s easier to drop it over the back of a chair.
What does this have to do with fitness and weight loss? It’s actually a striking analogy for where many of my clients are before they find me.
They’ve given up.
Why eat a salad when you’re thirty pounds overweight?
I don’t know about you, but I have always had a serious sweet tooth!
And I mean SERIOUS. I love sweets, always have, always will. When I was a teenager I could kill a whole carton of ice cream in about 2 days.
I could get away with that when I was a teenager and even in my very early 20’s but not anymore. One of the things I knew I had to get under control as an adult was my sweet tooth. Especially since I knew I wanted a career in fitness. I realized I needed to conquer my sugar cravings.
My plan of attack to conquer the sweet tooth…
The first thing I had to do was re-train my taste buds.
When you’ve been eating foods made with processed sugar and lots of it, it’s hard to just up and switch to dark chocolate over milk chocolate, to enjoy fruit as a treat instead of candy. It’s even hard to get used to some mineral waters instead of lemonade or iced tea.
So I began to slowly switch things out of my diet, substituting lower sugar alternatives to my high sugar regulars over time. I knew that if I did it all at once I might not stick. It didn’t take long before I found myself truly enjoying things with a lot less sweetness.
But the biggest step I had to take to really pull the reigns in on my sugar cravings was to get off artificial sweeteners.
Even though these are considered healthier by some because of the lower calorie count, they still keep your taste buds conditioned to like the taste of super sweet things. And as long as you keep giving this artificial sweetness to your taste buds you will always crave the real thing. Now there are a lot more important reasons why I gave up artificial sweeteners but we’ll talk about that in another post.
So after I got my body used to the low sugar lifestyle I still had to come up with some alternatives to when the sugar bug bit and would not let go. I’ve compiled a list of a few of my favorites.
1. I love the 100 calorie 70% dark chocolate bars from trader Joe’s. It’s made with smooth Belgian chocolate and it is soo tasty.
If you don’t get to Trader Joe’s just make sure the dark chocolate you buy is at least 70% dark chocolate. If it’s less it usually has too much sugar. And watch your portion sizes.
2. Frozen banana/chocolate blender ice cream:
(I ran across this recipe online and I think it’s great)
This is more of an ice cream consistency rather than a smoothie. Put
1 frozen ripe banana chunked into a blender with 1/3 cup milk, 2 tbsp
non-sweetened cocoa powder, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, and a sprinkle of
stevia to sweeten. 1/2 scoop of protein powder is optional too.
Blend it all together to an ice cream consistency. This is a much
healthier, lower-calorie, lower-sugar alternative to ice cream, and still delicious!
Stevia is an all natural sweetener that you can get from Trader Joe’s also.
3. My most recent healthy sweet fix is from a company called Prograde. They are called Cravers. I like the Peanut Butter flavor. It is truly delicious! And it’s 100% organic; with dark chocolate and other healthy ingredients… it makes the perfect healthy dessert or snack during the day without an overload of calories… only 180 calories.
You can get your Peanut Butter Prograde Cravers from…
www.wholelifefitness.getprograde.com
I hope you enjoy these healthier dessert ideas!
Let me know what you think.
So as some of you may know I have started my Dress Size Reduction Diet today www.30dayjumpstart.com and as I look over my menus for the next few days I see there are lots of vegetables but no salads so far.
This caught my eye because usually as soon as you utter the word diet, salad usually follows.
But the truth is MOST salads you find at restaurants and fast-food joints are loaded with more fat and calories than a cheeseburger and fries. Really. In fact most of the time when I see someone eating one of those salads I wonder, did you really want that or did you really want a cheeseburger but setteled on the “healthier” salad?
I was out to dinner with a friend this weekend and she ordered a salad. Not only was it HUGE but it was loaded with “crispy” (fried) chicken, bacon, at least two kinds of cheese, fried croutons, and loaded with what looked like creamy (and delicious I must say) ranch dressing!
I looked up the nutritional value on the chains website and the salad came in at a whopping 970 calories! And that does not even include the dressing, bread basket and beverage.
Add that all up and for most women that is close to a full day’s worth of calories.
Even if you went with a more sensible sounding salad like a chicken Cesar or a chef, the calories still add up to well over 500 in most cases. So what should you do?
Next time you’re thinking about ordering a salad when you’re eating out follow these three tips:
1) Ask for the dressing on the side and dip your tongs in the
dressing and then pick up some salad. It gives you just enough
flavor and keeps the calories under control.
2) Choose a salad that has grilled protein in it such as chicken or
fish. The lean protein will help increase the thermic effect of
the meal thus burning more calories.
3) Ask to hold the cheeses and bacon bits. In place of these ask
for more fibrous vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower. The
increase in fiber will help burn calories as well as control any
rise in blood sugars in case you happened to sneak some bread
before your salad arrived.
I know sometimes this fat loss journey can be tricky. I’m here to help!
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