Ended the day with a killer kettlebell class, still have to take the dogs for a quick walk before bed, but I’m sure the freezing cold air will do us all some good lol.
Food – 1/4cup basmati rice with 1/2 cup chopped peppers and 6oz sirloin steak, 3 pieces of both pineapple and cantaloupe and 2 hot pepperettes (help curb and sweet tooth cravings that I might have).
I know it doesn’t seem like a lot was done or accomplished today, but it is consistency of effort that matters in creating a habit of a healthy lifestyle.
see everyone tomorrow and I hope that you take the small, necessary steps to create your healthy lifestyle.
not much in the way of exercise today, just walked 1.5-2km with the dogs and then did some fitness testing, about 15-20 minutes.
food – 30g protein drink, 3 pieces of organic bacon, 10 pieces of pineapple & cantaloupe, 1 banana, 1/4cup cashews
still have a kettlebell class tonight and a few more meals, on the right track, but the first day is always easy for everyone 🙂
6 1/2 weeks until vacation in the Dominican Republic, so I guess it is time to turn up the intensity and motivation on my personal nutrition and exercise program. In light of the quick deadline I have decided to post my measurements as means to increase my motivation and have everyone keep me accountable to achieve my goals. We have a bio-impendence scale that measures body fat %, water, weight, and a few other things as well, but I will just post the important numbers and my end goal result.
height – 5′ 6.5″
weight – 204.8lbs
BMI – 32.6
BF % – 15.8%
Fat lb – 32.4lbs
FFM – 172.4lbs (fat free mass)
TBW – 126.2 (total body water)
My target body fat percentage is to get down to 11-12%
My Predicted weight – 192lbs
Predicted Fat mass – 22.6lbs
There are only a few numbers that I or anyone should actually care about. The first one is the fat mass, which is the total amount of fat sticking to my body dragging me down. The second is total body water, more importantly the comparison of my total body to my total body weight. To be optimal we want to be in between 50-70% water. So, we take our weight and divide it in half and want to have more water than the difference. For me it is 102.4lbs, so, as we can see I am well over 50% water and should have all of my organs working optimally.
I’m going to be posting all of my workouts, exercise and food choices everyday to show everyone what it takes to reach and smash a fitness goal once it has been established.
I have been writing blogs for about two weeks now, but I have never actually introduced myself or why I became a blogger in the first place. My goal is to help 100,000 people make a positive impact on their health and lifestyle in the next 18 months (July 2015)!
I have been a certified personal trainer and health coach for almost 18 years (will be 18 years in July 2014) and have been helping people with exercise for as long as I can remember. There was one major problem however and that was that I could only help people one hour at a time during our sessions. I have always wanted to help people and when I started running bootcamp classes 10 years ago, I felt as if I was making more of a difference to more people, but then I was still only helping them on a hour to hour basis and you can only fit so many people into the class…If you do the math it would take a hell of a long time to help 100,000 people if I continued to travel down the same path.
There was another turning point in wanting to help and educate more people and that was when one of my clients asked me what aspartame was made of. I could honestly tell him that I had no clue and didn’t really give it much thought, so he told me and it was one of the most disgusting things I had ever heard…I mean, fucking gross (no I’m not going to tell you in this article, but will soon). But, that one question lead to so many other concepts that I had never really given much thought to, so I started digging and doing research and the more I discovered the more pissed off I became. Outraged would be a better word for it, not as much because of what I found out, but more because it is allowed to happen. Let’s be realistic, businesses are in it to make money and they don’t care about health issues if it is going to affect their bottom line. I would like to make a note that there are some pretty incredible businesses out there that are more focussed on helping people then exploiting them for a hefty profit and they should be commended and rewarded for their ideals and convictions. I’m pissed off and the more I think about it the more pissed off I get because the government approves or turns their back on regulations because they get their pockets lined with cash….sorry, I will rant of the government later!
I am making it my mission to educate and enlighten people on the products that they are consuming even though they make think it is healthy and to give them exercise tips and advice to help them live a healthier lifestyle.
I’m pretty sure that I’m going to piss you off, make you question almost everything that you have been told, educate you and hopefully give you a few laughs along the way. I also hope that you gain some benefit, knowledge and insights and if any tips, advice or comments I have made help you to reach your goal or help you in some way of living a healthier lifestyle then I’ve done my job.
Please feel free to ask any questions or share any comments and I will help you the best way that I can.
Kyle
How To Fix Your Health
I’m having a really hard time understanding everyone’s obsession with losing weight, and, no, I’m not advocating people to get fat and unhealthy. I am merely concerned with people wanting to lose 5lbs or 10lbs or 50lbs and not for the obvious reasons one might think.
Let me ask you a question. What would you do if you lost your keys? You know exactly what you would do; you would turn your house upside down and find those fucking keys (you know that you would and you would probably drop a few “eff” bombs along the way as well). So, why are we so focused on LOSING weight, doesn’t that just imply that we are going to want to find it again??? What happened the last time you lost weight? I’m will to bet all the marshmallows in your lucky charms that you found it again and maybe found more then you were looking for and it wasn’t until you started to focus on gaining your health and a healthy lifestyle that you made a positive impact in your life. Make a goal of something that you want to gain from exercising and eating healthy nutritious whole foods like a tighter ass, stronger back or higher sex drive. Guess what will happen when you get your tight ass or better yet, what do you think will happen if you lose your tight ass??? Please tell me that you understand this concept and said that you will find it again because you worked like a rabid dog to find it…
It really can be anything that you want, but you need to focus on what you do want, not what you don’t want. I personally want to gain a few pounds of muscle and gain a fit, rock hard healthy body. If I happen to eliminate fat in the process all the better because if it is eliminated it isn’t coming back and the end/working result will be the fit body and healthy lifestyle that I want to gain.
Remember: Focus on what you want to gain and expect great things to happen because they will.
How To Fix Your Health
I find that Thursday is that day the most of my clients and myself start to fade with our motivation to keep going, be it with our exercise, nutrition, our job, anything. So, I would like to share a you tube video with everyone one of my favourite speakers/video on keeping yourself going.
You don’t have to watch the video, but you do need to hear it, so LISTEN and remember to leave your tank on “E”
As I look out my window and write this, I wonder, out loud (I have dogs and I swear they understand me lol) what did we do to deserve such a shitty winter? We have been absolutely slammed with a killer polar vortex, not once, but twice and so much snow that even skiers are getting sick of it….and before all of this deep freeze we were nailed with a freezing rain storm that left many people without power for days. We’re Canadian, I thought everyone liked us, but apparently we have pissed off Mother Nature and she is taking it out on us with fury. It is as if we cheated on her with a younger hotter weather girl and she is exacting her revenge, and I love winter!
I’m serious, I actually love winter and all of the things it brings. I grew up skating on a backyard pond and playing hockey until the coyotes started to howl and even then we didn’t want to come in. We (my brother and I) were fortunate enough to have large hills to toboggan down or use our crazy carpets (a thing sheet of flexible plastic with two holes for handles…and, yes, it was bloody fast. Think of the Olympic sport, the Luge, but without helmets), we would even play summer sports outside because we had so much fun in the snow. I even enjoyed shovelling the snow as a kid (I know, bullshit, right) and still do to this day. There was always just something so magical about winter and the snow to me…but, I woke up this morning (at my usual time of 4:30am) to get ready for my first clients of the day to find another few inches of snow on my car and no end in sight to the snowfall and I thought, “when is this shit going to end?”
After getting home from my morning sessions I wasn’t sure if I should start shovelling to keep on top of it or just wait for the storm to subsided when my 11 year old son said, “I love all this snow!” to which I responded by saying, “good, then you can shovel.” I know, “what an asshole.” I don’t want him to dislike winter; I want him to love it as much as I did/do, so I will have to find a way to make it up to him when he gets home.
I’m sad, it actually makes me sad to think that about winter, so I decided to take a deeper look as to why I feel the way I do and the answer jumped out at me…I’m NOT getting enough Vitamin D, even though I go outside often (usually to shovel) to walk or play with the dogs, to bring in firewood, the sun just isn’t shining or breaking through the constant cloud cover that we have been having. I don’t ever remember suffering from seasonal depression in my life, but I find myself at the onset of it and need to drastically increase my Vitamin D level, so I braved the onslaught of snow and went to the health food store (it isn’t far from my house) to purchase Vitamin D drops to increase my levels and am going to be booking a time at the tanning beds to get some more artificial Vitamin D. Don’t get me wrong natural sunlight is way more beneficial for you, but as sailors will tell you, “any port in a storm.”
There are far more benefits from getting enough Vitamin D then just feeling rundown or having seasonal depression such as: weight management, respiratory health, skin health, reproductive health, healthy moods, eye health and proper digestion. For more info on benefits and recommendations please read http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01/04/why-this-vitamin-is-better-than-any-vaccine-and-improves-your-immune-system-by-35-times.aspx. Dr. Mercola has quite a few articles on his site that you may enjoy as well.
So, if you are like me and suffering from a lack of sunshine and want to get a “fake and bake” do yourself a favour and make sure you go to a tanning studio where the beds are producing UVB light and if you are going to take a Vitamin D supplement then go with D3. Ideally you would like to get 8000 IU’s daily (that is an average of course and each person is different), but don’t try and get it all at once especially if you know that you are down – meaning don’t go for a 20 minute tan because your ass will burn, that isn’t a metaphor, your ass will actually burn, be responsible and put some sunshine back into your smile J
How To Fix Your Health
Reasons to not eat sugar (this could be 100 reasons)
10 – Causes pre-mature aging
Your body has to take existing water from your cells (muscle, skin) to move and process sugar throughout you organs leaving your cells empty and starving.
9 – Doesn’t cause satiety
Have you ever opened a big bag of M&M’s and grabbed a handful and popped them into your mouth? Did you put the bag down after that? I didn’t think so, me either. The reason is because sugar has absolutely no nutritional value what-so-ever, therefor it doesn’t give your stomach a reason to believe there is anything in it until you have over consumed and then feel shity.
8 – Tooth Decay
Sugar rots your teeth and unless you want to look like a hockey player without his dentures in, I suggest you stop eating it.
7 – Leads to depression
It has been suggested that blood sugar imbalances is the leading cause of depression because your brain runs on glucose (sugar breaks down to glucose). Too much glucose has an adverse reaction within your brain which leads to various issues; most common is depression.
6 – Raises cholesterol and causes heart disease
Forget about what you thought you knew (or were told by or wonderful governments) about saturated fat causing heart disease and high cholesterol. Researchers are now finding that over consumption of sugar, and this includes everything with a high glycemic index such as breads/cereals is the leading cause of cholesterol imbalances and actual change the muscle protein in the heart.
5 – Contributes to the growth of cancer cells
Instead of writing anything too technical here, please read the following report http://www.mercola.com/article/sugar/sugar_cancer.htm and you can judge for yourself.
4 – Causes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is an inflammation of the liver cause by fat deposits in the liver tissue. In the majority of cases the reason is because of obesity, diabetes or both. Sugar makes you fat and leads to diabetes…see below.
3 – Makes you fat
Nutrition 101 states that any carbohydrate (sugar) not used by the body for energy gets stored as fat. Our bodies can only handle/process a certain amount (it is different for everyone) of sugar before it has to defend itself from the onslaught. When sugar hits your bloodstream insulin is produced (which is a good thing) to defend against its effects and counter act it, but when the amount gets to be too much our body needs to put the unused energy (sugar) somewhere, so it stores as safely as it can and creates fat cells.
2 – Causes insulin resistance leading to diabetes
So, we have established that sugar causes the body to produce insulin, but when we over consume and our body has to produce too much then the bad stuff really starts to happen. The simplest definition can be found here http://www.diabetes.ca/diabetes-and-you/living/just-diagnosed/type2/ . Drinking just one can of (non-diet) soda per day can raise our risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 22%, (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/259604)
1 – Addictive
94% of rats that were already addicted to cocaine preferred sugar and actually worked harder to get sugar then they did cocaine. It has the same chemical reaction in your brain as heroin! Do I really need to elaborate more on this???
I know that it is two days post Superbowl, but that is how bad the effects of the day had on me. I would love to say that I ate a ton of chips and bags of chocolate, but it was so much worse than that…..every year we have a pre-game football game regardless of the weather, yet we have aptly named it the frostbite bowl, because the very first year we had it, we all froze our goody bags off. We play 4 downs to the field and it is just touch, but our first down marker is a really, really big bottle of booze and this year it was Jack Daniels. The reason we use the booze is because it is reward and punishment for either making a great play or for a terrible play, so there is ample opportunity to take a shot during our football game. Apparently this year I was on fire and made a few too many good plays – 17 to be exact, k, maybe 1 or 2 bad plays in there, but either way I had 17 shots of Jack Daniels while running around and playing a “fun” game of football. Not only that, but we managed to have 2 or 3 pre game beers and then 2 or 3 beer breaks during the game….we were working up a sweat and had to rehydrate (that’s my excuse anyway). If that wasn’t bad enough, each person who comes has to bring a hot dish of food for our Superbowl buffet (the usual, meatballs, pizza, wings, chilli etc.) and I am allergic to onions, so that eliminates some of the items and I am gluten sensitive…meaning that wheat should not be consumed at all.
Needless to say, after all of the booze, I was a little on my ass and needed some food in my stomach before things became problematic. Everything had wheat, so I was stuck with either eating and suffering the consequences or not eating and suffering the consequences….so, I ate and ate and ate and then ate some more. I am happy to say that I made it through without suffering a hangover what-so-ever, but my stomach was so bloated that I must have gained 10″ in circumference and it hurt so much. My stomach just couldn’t handle all of that food and all of the wheat and had to take a ride on the porcelain bus in order to get some relief (in case you aren’t familiar with that term, I yaked, HARD). My stomach is still sore two days after the fact and I have been eating nothing but fresh fruit and veggies.
The moral of the story is that sometimes it takes a day like this or an event like this to truly appreciate eating well, exercising and living a healthy lifestyle and keep you motivated to stay healthy….and that it is ok to allow yourself some indulgences without feeling guilty for it (you just have to pay the price). Will I ever let myself fall in to this trap again? I’m going to have to say yes….there is a Superbowl every year lol
Cheers to your health
After watching almost every single one of my female clients struggle, and I mean struggle with doing at least one chin-up, I decided that it was time that the family started doing chin-ups every night (almost every night). my partner, who is a very strong girl could only do one dead hang chin-up (and yes, this is the only chin-up there is, every other version is cheating) when we started, our 3 boys couldn’t even get 5 each and they are active in 5 or 6 different sports and I was stuck at 7/8 depending on my energy levels. so, every night we went into our gym and everyone had to perform 10 dead hang chin-ups before they were allowed to leave or do anything else. It was a slow go in the beginning, but after 6 weeks my partner had improved to getting 4 full dead hang chin-ups in a row and the boys could all do at least 7. My achievement was pretty substantial as well, by the end of 6 weeks I could do 10 dead hang chin-ups (palms facing face) and 10 wide grip pull-ups, so I decided to start doing plyometric wide grip pull-ups and after another 2 weeks could perform 10 dead hang plyometric wide grip pull-ups.
I wanted to share this with you to show you that dedication, perseverance and setting a goal can be accomplished quicker then you may think. So, then next time you want to achieve something, believe that you can do it and don’t stop until it’s done.
how to fix your health! 