Whenever you eat something, look at the portion, or serving sizes on the nutrition facts panel. Most of the nutrition facts themselves are easy enough to understand, but what many people fail to realize is that when they are eating something with, say, 100 calories per serving, they often don’t look at the part that says one serving equals such and such cups. It may say two or even three servings per package if the item is a drink or snack. That means if you eat or drink the entire package in one sitting like many of us do, that 100 calories per serving just turned in to 200 or 300 calories. What is bad enough already is that serving sizes are almost twice as much as they were 30 years ago on average. A regular cup of coffee or a bagel now days have two to three times the calories they used to.

So, make sure that you are aware of serving sizes when eating items out of packages and don’t trick yourself into thinking you are only consuming one-third the actual amount you actually are consuming. Don’t be a victim of portion distortion!

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The most common was still water and gatorade but there were also votes for Powerade, Vitamin Water, Propel, Arizona Tea, and more. There is a tremendous amount of research about what best hydrates the body while you are exercising. The one that has always worked without fail is of course water. I have often found it interesting as I walk down the beverage isle at the local grocery store that there is well over 30 different types of water to choose from.

Is this really necessary or are they more or less all the same? Each of them have their own reason for why you would want to purchase their water as opposed to one of the other many choices. Someday I would like to visit some of these amazing springs that all these bottled waters come from. Did they really make a plant right there at the spring to capture the water? I personally think it is just as likely it is coming out of some persons faucet in their backyard. It is also interesting to see how many different types of shapes to the bottle and designs on the label their are. I'll be honest I have bought a water before because it had the best looking bottle. With my luck that water came from a toilet somewhere but at least I had a sweet bottle.

So what do you typically drink while you work out? For me it is usually water. Most other drinks leave that sugary film in my mouth that makes me more thirsty than I was before.

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The final results came out like this:

Ability to Run without Getting Tired – 9 Votes, 47%

Ability to Eat Anything Without Side effects – 8 Votes, 42%

Ability to Lift Extreme Amounts  of Weights – 2 Votes, 11%

Working with the guys at train2move is always interesting when the new polls come out since I am in my mid 30's and most of the other guys are around 20. They of course would have either voted to lift heavy weights or run without getting tired, so would I have when I was that age. However, now that I am older I can much more appreciate how important eating right is. Gone are the days of being able to work out for 4-6 hours a day like I did in High School only to stop for lunch and get my 2 Big Mac's for 2 Bucks deal at McDonalds.

Nutrition is getting more and more difficult. Thanks to some changes I have made over the years I have been able to stay more or less healthy from the standpoint of weight, cholesterol, and other health factors that can relate to our eating habits. The ability to eat whatever we want without needing to worry about how it is going to impact our bodies is by far the most obvious choice of the 3.

I look at how easy it is to pack on ten pounds or how drastically we can impact every system in our bodies with poor eating choices and I wish it was just easier. It used to be. Think of how we ate 200 years ago. Lack of options for sure but at least most of them were not causing many of the health issues we face today.

So the choice was easy for me but I would love to be able to run without ever getting tired. Check out our new poll and let us know your thoughts.

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A simple tip this week, yet it is very important. Breakfast is the most often skipped meal of the day. Unfortunately, I miss breakfast occasionally due to a busy schedule, but especially if your goal is to lose weight, breakfast is not the meal you want to cut out of your diet. First off, you shouldn’t be skipping meals in order to lose weight, but never skip breakfast if the goal is weight loss.

Breakfast is the meal that wakes up your metabolism. The body has been asleep for a number of hours and your body has slowed the rate of energy usage. Breakfast starts up that whole process again. If you skip breakfast, your body will kick into starvation mode and begin to conserve. This is opposite of what you want it to do if your aim is to lose weight. Now, your breakfast shouldn’t be three doughnuts, two bowls of sugar puffs, and a chocolate muffin. Aim for more like toast with jelly or butter (not margarine), whole grain cereals, oatmeal, fruit, orange juice, all the breakfast classics.

You will feel like you have more energy to start the day when you eat a good breakfast, and that’s because your body is really waking up. If you have a busy schedule like me and have trouble getting up early enough to get breakfast, try finding breakfast items that don’t take long to prepare or you can take with you and eat on the way to wherever you are going. Don’t go another day without getting a good breakfast, and if your breakfast isn’t exactly the healthiest, start small and make changes in what you’re eating. Just like anything else, it has to become a habit. Definitely make this a habit from now on.

Loren Sheets

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First is to realize that the odds of you doing much after your meal are fairly slim so take the time to do a workout before you eat. It does not have to be much but even a little stimulus to the muscles throughout the day can make a major difference. If you are not sure what to do, follow some of these links to free workouts we have given you in the past. Here is a warm-up. Here is a strength training routine. And finally here is a general yoga style routine.

If you have the time, do all 3!

Some other useful tips we can share with you are to drink a lot of water before, during, and after you eat. The amount of food we eat and the types both can be brutal on our digestive system. Water is a major asset to your digestion so do yourself a favor and drink some. Try starting early in the day and shoot for 40-60 ounces before you eat. Then have some water with you as you are eating. When finished have another 15-20 ounces an hour or so after you eat.

Now let's assume you want to get up and move some after you eat. Make sure to give yourself a good hour before you do. When you do get ready to move choose something light like a nice walk to get away from the In-laws, or take them along, whichever seems necessary. Feel free to do some of the exercise routines we provided above as well.

And one final piece of advice to help lessen the damage to your body today is go easy on the appetizers! If you are like me you will eat a signifcant amount of food long before the main feast arrives. This will drastically increase your calories and make you less likely to take in the better calories to be had later. Look for the fruit and veggies when eating your appetizers!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone.

The Train2move Crew.

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The cardio equipment in most gyms also seemed to cause many people to be consistently thinking about their calories burned. Each piece of equipment would tell you how many calories you were burning. I always had to laugh when people would literally use this as a guide to how much they could then eat. Never did they stop and think that it was a bit far fetched to think that a machine knowing only that you put in a certain body weight could tell you how many calories you were burning.

It was not up to the machine, it is up to your current level of muscular efficiency. Calories are explained really well in this article but in simple terms they are a unit of measurement as it applies to energy. The muscles require fuel in order to work and therefore the more muscle you are using pr placing demands on that would require it to need fuel, the more calories will be used up. Therefore the exercise that burns the most calories would be the one that requires you to use the most muscle.

Most studies that have been done actually show that running burns more calories than most other activities including swimming. The typical reason is that running requires you to place demands on a greater amount of muscle than swimming since in the water you are in a supported environment which limits the demands on your muscular system. I agree with this statement for the most part but I think your individual abilities within the exercise you choose also plays a role in this.

During a Bi-Athlon of running and swimming, lets say an athlete does each of these exercises for an hour. What if they are an extremely efficient runner but a terrible swimmer. In this scenario would the athlete then burn more calories swimming? I have always thought this to be the case but I am no scientist and have not yet got around to doing the research on this.

All things being equal however, I think running is still King when it comes to burning calories. Here is a link from the Mayo Clinic to a chart that discusses various exercises and the approximate calories they burn. Again read it with a grain of salt since it is not able to take into account your current level of efficiency and how much that would impact how hard your muscles need to work.

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If you are currently needing to live a gluten free lifestyle or know someone else who might be I highly recommend you go and check it out. He has a tremendous amount of information to share and a passion to share it with anyone else who is living with the disease.

I have been competing in athletics as long as I can remember and in 2nd grade something changed. I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. The treatment for Celiac Disease is to follow a strict Gluten Free diet (Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, barley and oats). Being a Celiac athlete has its advantages and disadvantages. First off, a lot of food that is considered "bad" for athletes contains Gluten so naturally it was easy to stay away from those. Donuts and fast food for example would be something that you would want to stay away from if you were an athlete at any level. Both of those usually contain Gluten. One of the disadvantages was not having easy access to food where ever our teams traveled and I could not just grab food from a friend. Living with a Gluten Free diet forced me to follow a much stricter, healthier diet that helped me out as an athlete in the long run.

I wanted to share some tips for athletes following a gluten free diet preparing for an athletic event or a workout.
Pre-Workout
Prior to physical activity it's important to have a source of fuel in your body. One of my least favorite things about working out is feeling hungry during it. I need something in my stomach or else I feel lousy. Choices for workout snacks vary among each individual and the type of workout being done but I will share my favorites. I prefer to eat some sort of fresh fruit before working out. Apples and bananas are a great idea. Also a Gluten Free bagel with peanut butter is a good option. There are some Gluten Free protein bars that can be eaten either before or after a workout. You do not want something that is too heavy that will affect your performance so make sure it is something you can easily digest.
Post Workout

After working out it is important to "refuel". If you are looking for a post workout meal that offers a lot of protein, chicken, burritos (with corn tortillas), salmon and hamburger patties have a good amount of protein in them. I would choose one of these choices over a protein powder with dozens of ingredients I have never heard of but that's just me. If you are into protein powder I would recommend calling the manufacturer and getting as much information as you can about the production of that product and the chances it will become contaminated with Gluten. If you find just a basic whey or soy protein powder and want to give it a shot try mixing it with fruit to make a good after workout snack.

Final and most important thought..
Drink water! That will be one of the most important things whether you have a food allergy or not. Again..Drink water!
Check out GlutenFreeSpot for tips, reviews and other great information and everything else for those following a Gluten Free Diet.

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One of our loyal readers, Duane sent this New York Times article to us recently and it once again brought to our attention. This particular article was relating it to our athletic performance. Researchers are doing their own studies now in regards to various athletes and athletic abilities and how they are affected by low levels of Vitamin D.

There were a few statistics that jumped out at me but one in particular was in regards to kids and their vitamin deficiency. It went like this, "A major study published online in the journal Pediatrics last month concluded that more than 60 percent of American children, or almost 51 million kids, have “insufficient” levels of Vitamin D and another 9 percent, or 7.6 million children, are clinically “deficient,” a serious condition."

Whenever I see these statistics about the kids in our country I instantly become concerned about the future health of the upcoming generations. Having 3 kids of my own, my wife and I work hard at trying to keep them as healthy as possible. It seems that with the internet we know have as incredible amounts of information at our fingertips yet we still continue to become more and more unhealthy as a society and more importantly the health of our youth continues to decline.

I hope that we are able to take all the information we have been gathering and continue to gather and use it to improve the overall health of our society. Make sure you are taking the time to learn what you can and incorporate as much as you can into your own personal health and that of your kids.

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The premise behind the book is to compare choices you can make in various types of foods. It goes from general topics such as the Best and Worst Foods in America to specific topics like food additives and foods for your cholesterol and blood sugar.

The book is laid out nicely and gives you grades for many popular restaurants. Then in many different categories it breaks down the best and worst that you will find. I like how direct these guys are and the fact they take pride in the fact they have made changes in the world of nutrition. This is a great read that I highly recommend you pick up. The amount of useful tips in it makes it worth the small cost. I have been working with young athletes for many years now and I am always looking for additional tools to use with them to help them make better choices. This book works great since it is not telling them they cant eat at certain places, it is telling them the best thing to eat at those places.

Follow this link if you want to check the book out.  Eat This Not That

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There was a study done that is explained in the article that is complete alignment with how we feel about weight loss and exercise. We tell our clients all the time that to actually lose weight and in most cases the real goal is to lose fat, that it is far more important to focus on what you are putting into your body.

We have been talking about the 4 major laws of training and again the first and second tell us that our bodies are designed to react and respond to stimulus and that depending on the type of stimulus you are giving your body will anatomically change. We have been mostly using this example in regards to exercise but it is true of all stimulus, including what we eat. If the stimulus you give your body is high amounts of Sugar, your body will respond to that by storing it as excess body fat.

The article continues to discuss how little impact has on changing how thin we are and sites several recent studies to support the claim. Exercise mentality is typically looked at the wrong way in my opinion. Now that I have been out of the traditional gym world for about ten years it is fun to look back and realize how silly most of the work done in there was. I do not want to take away from the hard work that people have put in over the years and all of the great classes that people took but we do need to stop looking at exercise as a weight loss tool. exercise is the stimulus our bodies need in order for our muscular systems to continue to perform at their highest level.

That is why the type of exercise you choose needs to directly relate to the goals you have. If you are not giving your body the type of exercise that is capable of allowing you to maintain full range of motion in your joints, keep your balance and coordination skills up, and enable you to be strong enough to perform your daily tasks, why are you doing it?

Our goal has been, and always will be to give you the education to understand how to train your body in the most successful manner to achieve success whatever physical goals you have while all the while keeping to the 4 laws of training that will help to ensure your success.

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