Keeping your food fresh ‘n new and inspiring your taste buds to keep you dieting is hard. It’s hard to vary green vegetables to the point where they begin to look like hot fudge sundaes. That takes talent.

And who wants to troll around the produce section of a store, looking lost, while searching for new and exciting things like: vegetables? Umm…not I said the pig. Plus, what if it tastes bad or even worse, isn’t that good for me.

Alright, alright…pipe down, already. The following are some veggies that you may have forgotten all about or never really paid attention to that are not obscure or unheard of that will surely give your diet a kick in the arse:

Cabbage: Sure, I know what you’re thinking. Thanks Jo, I just emptied a small convenience store in one swoosh. Not only are you not helping my cause, but you are creating mass destruction in the mean time. Ok, sorry. But cabbage, specifically red cabbage, is yummy and is stuffed full of antioxidants for beautiful skin and shiny hair. There are a bunch of different varieties of cabbage to choose from so you don’t have to stick with the red version, but it is my fave.

Cooking it: Saute it. YUM!

1 small red cabbage
1/3 cup chicken broth
2 T Olive, flax or udo’s oil
2 T lemon juice, divided
Clove of garlic, chopped or pressed

Cut up cabbage and let it sit for a minute. Sprinkle with 1T of lemon juice to preserve color. Steam cabbage in a pan with the broth for about 5 min. and then transfer to a separate bowl. While it is still hot, toss with the rest of the ingredients and enjoy.

Shiitake Mushrooms: I know, your freebies are mushrooms of every kind alongside trough size amounts of onions and peppers. Bear with me, will ya? You most likely buy the button mushrooms which are great for you, but they’re not shiitake. These babies are high in nutrients (iron, cholesterol lowering compounds, immune building phytonutrients) and come in a few different varieties as well. Not sure which ones are good ones? Grab the ones that are firm, plump and dry.

Cooking it: Saute it! Another YUM!

Same as above minus the lemon. However, make it into a soup after and it’s to die for.

4 cups boiling water and a ¼ c of miso paste and some sautéed onions and you are good to go. Let that simmer for about ten minutes and enjoy.

Lastly,

Swiss Chard: If you’re anything like me you are thinking: What in heaven’s name is swiss chard. Well I’m glad you asked…it’s a leafy green. Mmm, Jo. Just what I need (rolling your eyes), another leafy green. Oh stop it. This one tastes different. Like earwax with a sweet flavor. But don’t take that from me, try it yourself. Good stuff!

Ok, all kidding aside. It is different in taste that it is a bit on the bitter side, but its texture is what gets you. It’s nice and crunchy and also juicy. Good stuff all around. Plus, it’s not spinach.

Cooking it: Saute it! How’d you guess?

Only this time, no chicken broth. Use olive oil only and sauté it up with everything else. THEN, add 1 diced tomato, 6 black olives, ½ c crumbled feta cheese and 1 tsp fresh or ½ tsp dried oregano. This is different b/c it is warm and cold mixed together and the tanginess of the recipe adds just enough kick. Have fun!

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…do it at your own pace and do it for real.

Are you fatalistic? All or none? In it to win it or you just couldn’t care less?

If you or a family member is like this, you are not going to go very far in the heart healthy arena.

Yes, you can psycho diet and hit your goal quickly. You’ll be down 20 pounds in 8 weeks and aren’t you fabulous? Where will you be 6 months from then, though? You could still be down in weight, but odds are you won’t be any healthier.

The AHA doesn’t want you thin, they want you healthy. Having you lose the weight and the bad habits is not about making you look good in your room. It’s about keeping you alive in your room. Nothing is worse than getting excited about your new body and possibly having a heart attack because of it. Let me clarify that statement, too, because I think it will be lost on many. When you lose weight without investing in the process, you run the risk of having a weak heart but a lighter, faster body. This is dangerous stuff and you see this with people who want to just “lose the weight first” and then bring in the good habits second. The thing is, you strengthening everything—including your heart—when you do it the right way and leave yourself weakened and vulnerable when doing it the wrong way. Commit to at least one good habit every 2 to 3 weeks and you will be more likely to keep them.

Here are 3 of the easiest changes that you can get your mom, aunt, cousin, friend or whomever to buy into without them feeling backed into a corner:

1) Movement attached to something enjoyable. Typically shopping. Go with them to a mall and make them move at least once a week. While you’re doing that, ask them their schedule and have them tell you when they have periods of downtime. Give them examples of how they can fit 10 min. of exercise into those spaces. Things that do not count as exercise: running late, giving you the run around, jumping to another topic, etc.

2) One colorful food per day: Tell them they must eat one colorful fruit or veggie per day and they cannot have the same one two days in a row or more than 2 times in a week. That’ll make them a bit mad but they’ll get over it and begin to change or they’ll eat red peppers every day and tell you to MYOB. Beware of the latter.

3) A glass of water at 3 meals/day: You’re not saying every meal. You’re not saying they can’t have their precious diet Coke. You’re saying I just need you to have 3 glasses of water every day. If you can do that for me, I will {fill in the blank here: mow the lawn, pay your taxes, stop growing hemp in the basement, whatever} and they will be more likely to adopt this habit as well.

They say it takes 21 days to make a habit (and 3 min. to locate the nearest Coldstone Creamery—keep the away from Google!) so stay close to them for a while and encourage.

You know someone who is worth it to you. Help them along wouldja?

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…if so, you could be in trouble…

I am a true offensive driver (read that as off-fensive, not oh-fensive,lol). I know where I want to go, I take the shortest route to get there, I drive over anybody in my way I do not lally gag while driving, I know the rules of the road and I exercise common sense. Now it bears mentioning that this has been since I am older because when I was younger, the world was my NASCAR testing ground and it wasn’t pretty. But I can say that my dieting reflects my driving experience: I was a jackass dieter when I first started out and wisdom and total failure common sense have tempered my spirit. My question to you is, how closely does your driving reflect your dieting?

Turning left to go right. What is this? Unless you are driving a Duck Tour bus you need to get over yourself and stop thinking you have a 36” diameter steering wheel with passengers in the back. Take the turn for Heaven’s sake!

Dieting: Starting on Monday, Tuesday, next day…whatever. We have all done this one at least once in our lives. Some of us just did it this past weekend. “I’ll start again on Monday. In the mean time, I’ll behave like a Survivor at a buffet from Thursday to Sunday and hope no one notices the 5 pound gain.” Going up 5 to lose 7 is exhausting. Reign this one in.

Not knowing how to properly yield. I don’t understand this one. It’s a yield sign, not a stop sign. If there is no one there, you slow down and keep going–you do not stop. If there is someone there, you do not bomb through and drive over them and act like they were in the wrong by slamming on your brakes after you cut them off or tailing them for a half mile with your high beams on. It’s called YIELD.

Dieting: It’s a cheat meal not a cheat day, cheat week, birthday week, splurge, endless vacation or what have you. It should be a meal. Eating a full meal *while* making your plate is a sure fire sign that things are going downhill fast. With that being said, are you too conservative? Are your cheats things like smelling the food at the bakery across the street or licking the spoon after someone has ice cream in the house? Come on now, you have to have something that makes you feel good and you may have it more than once a week. Call it whatever you want, just use some common sense and YIELD to the desire but not overindulge or undercut your meal.

“Deer caught in a headlight” with cones/cops/cars on side of road: You get the point here. You’re driving down the highway at a good clip and the car in front of you slams on his brakes and drops 20 mph in less than 2 seconds. You’re thinking there must be a corpse in the road b/c why else would someone defy the laws of inertia in such a careless manner. Nope. Cop on the side of the road, has someone pulled over. Umm…ok. He’s busy. What do you think you’re a better ticket so he’s going to drop what he’s doing, hop in the car and go flying after you? Use some common sense folks. That’s actually a great time to practice slalom training or test out the acceleration in your 300 hp vehicle—not anger the 8 cars behind you that are now fishing their hearts out of their throats because they just saw their lives flash in front of them. If you see lights on the side of the road, exercise caution but no knee jerk reactions lest you kill someone behind you.

Dieting: You’re on fire and making progress. Your clothes fit better, people are complimenting you left and right, Maybelline just asked you to be their spokes person for their mascara, it’s on right now. Then you step on the scale and you have only lost 2 pounds in 4 weeks. Suddenly, everything stops. All your progress seems for naught. Now you feel fat, you remember you have been bloated, you may be in a plateau, oh the drama. No, you are letting a box dictate your life/results. There is more to dieting than the scale and you most likely lost bodyfat during that time and it does not show up on the scale the way you would like it to. Stop stressing everyone out, you are progressing, keep your eyes on the prize, get off the brakes.

Mismanaging four way stops and rotaries: Oh boy. This is a tough one and can be incredibly painful to watch. If you do not understand the basics of a four way stop (one direction goes, then the other) or the complexities of a rotary (the people inside have the right of way), stay home because there is always somebody out there like me who is ready to pounce on you. It’s an ugly scene all around and when you have folks coming at you from every direction, it’s really easy to become a piece of blubbering jello in the middle of the intersection.

Dieting: Leaving the house unprepared with food thinking that you can make it up as you go along. Oh boy. At the first sign of trouble you are going down fast. If you think you can survive a drive through making healthy choices or hold out until you find something healthy, think again. Once you’re in the middle of it, you are going to panic and make a wrong choice. Know where you are going and what you’ll need before you go and you will have a much better experience while dieting.

So here’s your homework. Do you do any of these things? Either dieting or driving for that matter, fix it now. These are setbacks on the road to your goals. And at the very least, they add at least 10 min. on average to your commute each day. Regardless, get it together and get more on the ball, will ya? We have some goals to meet this year.

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****Warning: Language may not be suitable for those in denial. No sugar coating in this article at ALL.****

If you have recently lost a large amount of weight and find yourself with your own built in hammock on your tummy (no, I’m not being funny, I’m being serious here) and are wondering (translate that as ‘panicking while searching for answers’) if there is anything you can do about it there is…wait a while. In time, it will resolve itself. Make sure you are eating right and exercising and it will begin to tighten. However, if you have not recently lost a large amount of weight and have gone through the waiting period and that kangaroo pouch (again, if you have never seen this you need a visual to understand how upsetting this can truly be) is still there and now you are no longer fervently searching the web but instead slowly searching for a real solution because you are tired of the gimmicks…read on.

Excess skin on the tummy is unsightly and frustrating. When you first started out on your journey to being hot you honestly thought the only obstacle you had was being fat (however you want to dress that up, go ahead, and trust me—I can relate). Suddenly, you find yourself at your goal weight but now instead of being hot, you now have your dream body with parts of a shar pei stuck to it. Not fun.

Loose skin is a combination of dieting, muscle loss, genetics and deficiencies. You can do something about 3 of those issues, I’m sorry but I have no cure for who you have as parents, but you also have to realize that you may not be able to achieve all of what you would like so be ready for that.

The most common place for loose skin to appear is on the tummy, in the gluteal fold or on the back of the arms. (For all intents and purposes in this post, we’re going to tackle the skin on the tummy.) Usually I see a woman frantically performing hundreds of crunches in the gym in an effort to change the appearance of loose skin and I am always amazed at where this myth came from. If you want to rid yourself of that skin, doing crunches isn’t going to do anything for you so please stop thickening your waist and wasting your time. Instead focus on your food choices, supplementation, water consumption and attention to detail. The girl who can dot her I’s and cross her T’s is going to cross the finish line faster than anyone else in this race. Let’s pick apart what you need to do and why:

1) Give it more time: What? Girl, if I am reading this then I have qualified myself as one who has “gone through a waiting period” so stop yanking my chain! Well I beg to differ. Have you really been patiently waiting? Have you been on point the entire time and have seen no change? Are you tracking your body fat percentage accurately? Did it take you 3 months to lose 70 pounds and now 2 months later you think you should look amazing? Has it been longer than 6 to 9 months at your current weight with steady changes in body fat levels? Are you dotting your I’s and crossing your T’s? Do you know what you are eating daily and do you track what you do in the gym? No? Ok, take a ticket and step aside. I’m serving #2 right now and your number is 1015. It’ll be a small wait.

Honestly, changing body composition on a level such as this can take upwards of a year of consistent dieting and exercise. Not weight loss dieting, just healthy maintenance eating.

2) Lose more body fat: Are you kidding me? I look like an accordion was fastened to my stomach and you want me to increase that more by losing more fat? Yes. And notice I said body fat and not weight. Big difference and also why I said above that you had to wait some time before you really had exhausted all of your avenues. Losing body fat takes time and the leaner you are, the more resistant your body is to giving up the last little bit. It can take months for your body to re-compose itself and during that time, you will see your skin slowly but surely tightening. You cannot control where your body loses fat so if you want a particular area to have less body fat, then you must lose it overall. Sometimes this is easier said than done. Your best defense: increase your lean body mass. Who wants me to go through this rant again? I didn’t think so. Get to liftin’, girl, and you will see your body comp change magically—but not overnight.;)

3) Something’s fishy about this article: Yeah, it’s printed on salmon colored paper with olive colored ink. You know where I am going here and if you are new to reading my blog (welcome, btw) you will soon find out that I am obsessed with good fats. Why? Because they are the fountain of youth! Our skin is composed of layers and as we age the fat cells in some of the layers begin to thin out causing wrinkles, drooping, loss of elasticity, etc. EFA’s fill in the gaps and help skin to have a smoother, tauter appearance. Want that dewy skin we had when we were kids (some of us had; some of y’alls just didn’t wash regularly therefore lacked a dewy look but we can bring that up another time), then start throwing back flax oil like it was Zarex in black plastic bottle and you’ll be on your way.

If you are severely lacking in EFA’s (and many of you are), you will notice a difference when you eat more than the normal 1 serving per day of omega 3. Some of you will see great results just going up to two servings in a day. Some of you may need to put a piece of salmon in a bong and smoke it like crack because you need so much. Make sure it’s Wild Alaskan when you stuff it in the jar…

4) Supplement for success: Again, you may not know how I feel about calcium (and if you go here and throw in your email addy, you can pick up my free report on it) because you are new, but if not you know in my past life I was married to it. Calcium, fish oil, magnesium, BCAA’s and multi vitamins are your best secret weapons in the fight against stubborn body fat. All of them in some way, shape or form increase your metabolism—some of them on the cellular level way down deep inside. That’s some good stuff right there and when you are talking about losing more body fat, needing your body operating at optimum levels or requiring top conditions for cell production/skin regeneration, you need all the help you can get.

Hold up, though! Do not go to the Vitamin Shoppe, pick up a ton of vitamins and start popping them like candy. No, find out from your doc what’s good for you and what’s not first. From there, do your homework and be responsible.

5) Exfoliate and massage the skin regularly: This is number 5 for a reason. Although worthwhile, it’s not a deal breaker. But exfoliating and massage cause your skin to have to regenerate at a faster rate. If you begin to be incredibly regimented about the amount of water you drink, the fat you consume and the overall healthy diet filled with endless variety while scrubbing and rubbing yourself silly, you will be on the right path to a smoother belly and should truly see some progress within 3 months or so.

The following steps are what you need to be doing for at least 3 to 6 months religiously before you can even say you have done all that you can and throw in the towel. What’s missing in this article? What NOT to eat when you are trying to tighten the tummy and/or any other kind of loose skin and we will get to that soon enough. Woop woop!!:o)

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“No one has ever made it to their goal and thought to themselves, now how did I do that?”
T.D. Jakes

If you are keeping up with the BetterU program like I am, you know they are now talking about tracking what you are eating and what you are doing exercise-wise so you know how you are doing and what to change if you are not getting the results that you want. This is like music to my ears.

Tracking for many seems cumbersome in the beginning and so many don’t want to do it but I wish I had a dollar for every smile that I receive when I tell a client that they are X% stronger, faster, lighter, healthier and so on. Tracking shows you progress. Your progress. As you embark on an endeavor as big as this, you need all the extra encouragement you can get because the road seems long and unending. The biggest mistake is to make the scale your only form of tracking. Seeing how your diet has evolved over the length of this program and how your workouts become easier and more frequent is rewarding. It’s cool to see things like that.

If you are helping someone else through this program, you know how important it is to give a word of encouragement to your mom, aunt, cousin, friend and so on. When you help them to track, you give yourself something to be able to use to keep them going through the weeks. However, they may not and you may not know things that you can track that show progress other than the scale. Here is a list for you:

Food choices. Let them know that they have been eating:

more good than bad
more fruits and veggies than refined carbs
more good fats
better timing with meals
more meals
drinking water
not drinking soda
drinking less soda

Exercise

more days working out than not
lifting once per week
lifting twice per week
lifting three times per week
going up in the weight
learning more advanced moves
can do “this” now when they couldn’t before
can workout longer
can walk faster
can walk longer
can walk longer AND faster

When you see it written out this way you realize there are a myriad of ways for you to keep track of your progress without having to step on the scale. What are you going to use as your litmus?

Have fun and don’t forget to track it all in your fitbook!

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This is for my ladies!

You know I am coming after my girlfriends who smoke, do not exercise or eat unhealthily. I know you all read my blog—you tell me so all the time—so I figure I would sneak in a post about your heart health and see if you noticed I was talking about you.

I just entered the “club” (as TP says, lol). That would be the 40 year old club. This means many of my girlfriends are right behind me—although I have heard that some of them are bypassing it and going straight for the 21 club. Umm…yeah. But for those of us who are brave enough to enter the club, we have more to think about now than wrinkles and “cougar” status. Heart health is key!

If you have been reading my blog, I am representing the AHA Better U program for the month of February and into March and April. Every week I will have a post on this topic giving you the lecture of a lifetime good information about how to be heart healthy. And you need to listen. (By the end I know I will be calling y’alls out by name.)

During week 2 of the Better U program it calls for you to follow Your Personal Course of Action. OH I LOVE THIS!

Let me break that down for you:

Your Personal: This means this is yours. Not mine. Yours. YOU decide what it’s going to be—so no pressure here. Go at your own pace. YOU put it into action—this means there’s some accountability on your part but it’s worth it. Lastly, YOU reap the benefits—not your doctor, not me, just you. There is a personal reward in this for you—Heart Health!

Course: This word implies plan with a known destination. You are going to PLAN for your success. There is a road to be charted, paved and followed. No mystery involved. And because it is Your Personal course, you set your own destiny, your own pace, if you want someone on the course with you, how long the course will be, etc.

Action: DO something! Quit smoking, eat better, exercise, pay your bills (Ooo, sorry. Did I just put someone out there? Bwahahaha, j/k) I don’t care what it is, just put something in action! This means to move. To head toward a result. Let’s just do this and get it over with, shall we? It must be horrible to be healthy, live a long life, enjoy your children and so on so let’s just try to make the best of it while we can.;)

Ok…that’s my heart healthy lecture of the day. Thanks for joining me in the fight for a healthy heart. I know I will reach you all soon enough. The stakes are too high. Love you!

Woop woop!:o)

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You know I have been talking about training a lot this week (and I have some good examples coming your way, too) so there’s no need to switch it up now and talk about something else. I think I hear something—wait, I think it’s a dead horse being beaten in the back room. Poor fella.

Ok, all kidding aside, Bertha is back in the gym and we need to hit her up for some more stuff.

I have been focusing on switching up your training and providing your body with some much needed fuel for change (that’s what switching up provides) so that you can either increase your fat burning or move through a plateau. I have already spoken of using confusion or demand and within demand I spoke of tempo. So I have put some stuff out there for you to sort of chew on and I am going to add to it today with functional training.

This is really being addressed to my major “gym-heads” who just can’t seem to walk away from the 3, 4 or 5 day splits.

I love a good split, you love a good split, everyone at some time in their lives has really enjoyed a good split but for the love of all that is holy…DIVORCE THE SPLIT. Ok, I’m sorry…I’m back now. Took a sip of water and walked around a bit. ;o)

Changing up the way you work out between full body and body parts is a great way to add to your training tool box without having to think too hard. Now say you are not ready to fully adopt the full body routine and giving up the split almost gives you hives. How about adding some functional moves between your current split to add a new dimension of caloric burn to your workout? Bodyweight exercises and functional based moves add a level of intensity that is not always present in every weight workout.

Say you are doing a push/pull circuit. Let’s take a vertical push and vertical pull routine. Although you can kill yourself in it, you are not going to burn as many calories as you would if you moved your entire body. BUT, you are not willing to give up your back and shoulder day or your chest and shoulder day and etc. SO, let’s have some fun with those days instead. Take your OH Press/Lat pull down superset and make it a tri-set by adding on a set of burpees. First, you just added a “wind-sucker” to your set so you’ll be sucking wind in no time. Two, you just added another demand to your shoulders so you’ll be feeling that. And three, you’re going to round out the look of the body because functional moves use every muscle, not just this little itty bitty one over here when you move your arm like so.hehe I’m being a wise guy but what I am saying is that functional exercises round out the muscles by hitting them from every direction. You are not frontal plane only or sagittal plane only. You are all 3 planes of motion depending on the move and that’s what we’re really shooting for isn’t it?

Moves such as transverse lunges, burpees, pike push ups, weighted bridges, split jumps, unsupported rows with movement, rotation of any kind and so on can be strategically placed in your workouts to add difficulty, a cardio deficit and variety. Now that boring split isn’t so boring anymore and you are hitting every part of your body without giving up your split or sacrificing too much extra energy. Make sure that the exercises you add do not add much in the way of time. While I want you to experience something new with your workout, I am still a huge advocate of ‘get in and get out’. If you make a 40 min. workout into an hour plus because you added too much stuff in, that’s not cool.

So Bertha has now learned to lift a bit heavier, slow it down a tad and add a functional component into her splits for an added benefit. Soon we’ll be tackling that loose skin on the belly… OH BOY!;o)

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I wish I could listen to music all the time. I mean everywhere I go. Never turn it off. I would jam all the time.

I’d have to change up what I listen to and all (you ever listen to one too many dance beats and want to hit yourself over the head with an anvil?), I don’t want to get sick of genre or anything. But I do want to be submerged in music. It has energy…fun…optimism…wreaks of creativity and most importantly, rhythm (aka tempo).

Everything in life has a rhythm. I know what you thinking right now and I just laughed out loud thinking it too, “Oh no, I don’t and you do NOT want to see me dance.” That may be true but you do have a natural rhythm about you. When you get up, when you go to bed, when you eat and etc. It’s inbred into your system and can take an act of God to get you to change and at times it is necessary to change. If I sent you to the weight room right now without thinking about what your goal was and I handed you a weight and said, “Go”, you would most like lift at a certain rhythm/pace that you have been forever. There is no reason to change. The move will feel familiar to you; the speed will feel familiar. You could trace your movements in the dark.

Now on the one hand, that’s good stuff. Who wouldn’t want to be that confident in the weight room? On the other hand, that’s a huge problem. Your body is tired of you. Bored with you. Knows all about you and has moved on. You are like John and Kate to your body—so yesterday’s news.

I promise I won’t start on my ‘you need to lift heavy rant’; instead I will help you to gain more out of your lifts than you may be now.

A simple weight lifting tool that can make an exercise go from bearable to pukeable is Tempo. It is one of my favorite things to play with and can give you the most gains. Here is a perfect example of when tempo is a gift from Heaven:

Side raises. Love them or hate them they are a great burn. If you are lifting a weight that is nearly impossible to go up from (say you can do raises with 15’s, 20’s would KILL you) then you need to find a way to make them harder. Tempo will do this for you. So what is it exactly?

Typically written as 3 numbers, but can be written as 4, tempo will show up on a program like this: 301, 211, 3111, etc. What does it mean? The amount of seconds you are to lower the weight, pause at the bottom, lift it and then pause at the top. This is great stuff when you want to convey to someone that the lift should be powerful—not slow. You would have them perform it at a pace of 201 or 211. If you wanted it done explosively, then you would denote that as 20X or 31X.

Why would you ever want to do this? Well, to beat your own arse obviously! Take a walking lunge. Feel free to just aimlessly walk around the gym for a while with some weights in your hand and call it effective. The first time you did it, it was. Now, a year later and in the middle of your plateau—not so much. How can you take an effective move like that and make it fresh again? Start the walking lunge with a BB on your shoulders and in the standing position. Step out and *quickly* sink into the lunge (you almost look like you thought there was a step there or something and missed it—but don’t fall;). PAUSE for 1 full second. In fact, say the word pause. Shift all of your weight to the forward leg. Push your heel into the floor and lift yourself up on a count of 3. Your tempo for this move is now 311. I call these Moonwalks and they hurt like heck. Go heavy while doing it and you cannot walk the whole gym like you used to. You should be able to do 6 to 8 of them. Walk on only one side at a time and you’ll really hate me.

So here it is again: 2210

Lowering the weight 2
Pause 2
Lifting the weight 1
Pause 0—this one is often left off of the count

To give you an idea of how fast you are lifting now, you most likely are lifting at a tempo of 101 right now if not very heavy, 102 if heavier. Adding a second onto the lowering and a pause at the bottom will change how many reps you can do and will most likely shorten it. Try it next time you lift.

Tempo has been around for a long time. I, myself, have been writing programs with tempo for ages and during that time I have gotten a good amount of feedback about it. There are 2 common threads that you will hear about tempo: it’s complicated and it’s hard to think about speed, form, etc. all at the same time. In other words, it detracts from the lift. I beg to differ on the first one, can understand on the second one. This is just another tool in your toolbox. It shouldn’t define you any more than it should limit you. Try it and see how much it changes your lifts but don’t get all wigged out about it and throw a weight across the gym. That could get you in jail and then you’ll have nothing but time on your hands to learn tempo there. Use some common sense and ease into it slowly by just trying to vary the speed at which you lift. When you feel good about it, begin counting. Soon you will be kicking your own behind and thinking you are the mack. Hey, whatever gets you going, you know?

Tempo really is an easy way to increase demand without having to add more weight or cut out any more cals. If you are signed up on my blog, I will be sending out a program this week with ways for you to try this out (sure, when I learn how to use the function…bwahahaha). You’ll get to see how tempo really feels and you’ll have a great template to follow when you want to add it in on your programs. I am going to use all basic exercises so you won’t need a glossary to figure out the moves. Feel free to email me at jodiojo@comcast.net if you have any questions or just reply off of the blog blast. Looking forward to hearing how you do…

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Back in the day, and I mean back in the day (cuz man I’m old;), I used to troll the internet for training and nutrition information. Not so much the theory, because I hope if you are starting out in this field you are getting your theory from books first and people second, but for down in the trenches information. I looked for the kind of stuff you won’t find in a text book but more from the guys at the gym who really have changed their bodies—not just talk about it. Since you were limited to the folks at your own gym in terms of exposure, I was smart enough to know there were a whole lot of other people out there who had some good knowledge to share, too. Back then it was much easier to find than it is now simply because there were less people on forums giving out erroneous information than you have today. Now you have folks who become mayors on forums and take it over with some of the most outlandish info you have ever read. I had to give up reading that stuff about 5 years ago and I haven’t looked back since.

There is something to be said for experience. A perfect example of that are grandparents. Are they not the most unbelievable information resource available to you? At one point in your life you probably bled them of everything they know about “the homeland”, their mothering stories, how their labors went, how granddad fed a family of 8 on a salary meant for 2 and so on. You can look up all that info in a book but it’s not going to tell you what 75 years of their lifetime can.

So that brings me to this post. I recently read a book (which is funny for me to say that because right now I am averaging 2 books per week) on nutrition for athletes that completely made me wanna kick some body’s behind. Let me preface this statement by first saying it was a well written book with some valuable information so the theory wasn’t the problem. My issue with this book stemmed from a ton of theory but no application info. I HATE THAT! More importantly, he actually says in the book that this is a one of kind book (I beg to differ) and no one else is addressing this issue (he isn’t either) and he’s going to tell you how to do it (but he doesn’t), yadda, yadda, yadda. The book left me wanting to schedule an interview with him so I could pummel him into the floor with application questions because that’s what I wanted to know.

So, in the interest of ‘wanting to know’, there will be a few posts this week that discuss things that happen when dieting or the result of dieting that no one else is ever going to tell you. This is important stuff so come with an open mind because I am most likely going to tell you things that are contrary to everything you may be reading about on the ‘Net. Some will be nutrition related and a lot will be training related because it’s just as important as nutrition. So let’s start with some definitions, explanations and statements that need to be qualified:

It’s 80% diet and 20% training: Yes…for the folks who have a high bodyfat and are new to training. But if you are lean (1st definition: lean = 18-20%) wanting to be leaner (leaner = anything below 18%), training is everything. Why? Because you have already cleaned out your diet and you’re not going to have this miraculous drop from food.

Let me set up this scenario for you:
Bertha has been dieting steadily for 2 months. She has lost about 12 pounds and is a decent body fat now (18%). She loves her size but what Bertha wants now is to lose more body fat, tighten up her bum (it’s at her ankles) and fix the loose skin on her tummy (she could hold fruit with it). Her diet is on point and she sticks to it religiously (meaning she has cheats when she wants and is on track at least 90% of the time) but she is not satisfied with the results so far.

Bertha trains 4 days per week, does cardio 5 days per week and yoga one time per week. So far everything looks good and you’re thinking, “Well Bertha just needs more time dieting and she’ll be fine” right? Well let’s see…flash forward 6 months. Bertha has now lost an additional 4 pounds and is 16% bodyfat and if you look at her you think she looks great. In fact, she does! But Bertha wants more because her bum still touches the floor and her tummy still looks like an accordion only she can’t diet any harder. What more can she take out of her diet? Should she drop her cals to the point where she is starving? Wait, it must the be the fruit. Let’s take all the fruit out her diet? Umm…no. How about those pesky starches? I knew brown rice was bad. Umm…no again. Ask her what she’s doing in the gym.

What causes your body to burn body fat (forget weight) when it doesn’t want to? Confusion. Keep your body guessing and it will keep burning. Once you become stagnant in your eating and your training, your body becomes comfortable. It knows what you’re doing, when you’re doing it so it is not going to give you more than it needs to no matter how badly you want it to. Also, demand. This is a trickier one to master than confusion because it takes a bit of savvy and trust on your part—both of which elude the frustrated dieter. Lastly, resolve. Beyond elusive, downright scarce when talking about dieters, resolve is when you may try something unconventional but smart (raise cals, cut back on cardio, etc) to kick start the process again even though you think it will make you blow up like a tick on a dog.

Confusion: The hot topic right now for everyone and typically written as metabolic confusion. Read this as interval training, Tabata method, circuits, crossfit, kettlebells and any other kind of “kick-my-butt-until-I-feel-as-if-I-could-puke” training methodology that promises major fat loss when you do it. Does it work? Yep! Should I do it all the time because it works? Nope!

There is a time and a place for everything and confusion is a great weapon in the arsenal to be used in two scenarios: you have a ton of weight to lose (read that as 15 pounds or more) or you have only a little bit to go (no longer can measure your progress on the scale, it’s all about the mirror). If you are outside of this window, see demand. Why? Because you cannot burn the candle on both ends for too long so this will stall you after about 3 to 4 weeks if you are in between. And if you are in between, you’ll need more time than that.

Demand: I always start here because this is where most women fail themselves. Demand means you are asking more of your body than you were before, only you are not going to feed it more so it’s going to have to go into your reserves to help you out. This has nothing to do with increasing cardio. In fact, quite the opposite. This is all about as my girl Heather puts it, “grunting, farting and spitting” in the gym. LIFT HEAVY. And I mean heavy. And when I say this I do not mean low rep only. I mean whatever rep range you may be lifting at, make the last 2 reps feel like death! Lift with intention. Lift like you mean it. TRACK what you lift b/c if you have not raised the weight in some time, I’d want to know why. I cannot tell you how many times I have had a conversation where I am trying to “diagnose” the plateau and I found out that the client is not lifting heavy. Not because they haven’t been told, but because it’s either hard, boring, hard and boring, scared, nervous, don’t have a spot, need a trainer, yadda, yadda, yadda.

If you are worried about injury, get a trainer. If you can’t lift it to use it, get a spot. If you just can’t get into it, get over it. But no matter what, GET TO LIFTING HEAVY. If you have been using the same weights long enough that you recognize the wear pattern in the handle, then that’s a problem. Can’t go up in the weight because of the huge jump with db’s? (15# db to 20 db# is a big jump) Buy platemates! These are 1.25# magnets that you add to your weights. I don’t care if you hold a 15# and a purple 2#’er with it—GO UP IN THE WEIGHT. Like my rant? You should hear it live, it’s even more animated.

No such thing as an easy program, you just didn’t want to kick your own arse that day! As all of us fitness professionals always say, make every rep count.

Resolve: This is when experience kicks in and you need to find someone who can speak some sense into you. This is much harder to sum up so it might get its own post, but basically you went one step too far and now you need to back up. To do this, you are going to have to trust food is not the enemy and endless motion is not the answer. This needs a post. I’m on it.

So what is Bertha to do? Change up her lifting. Start by lifting a small car and progress to a van when she feels like she has the hang of it.;) Do not increase cardio, do not cut cals, just lift like you mean it and you will begin to see changes again. You know there’s more to it and we’ll get to it, I promise.

We’ll be kicking Bertha around for a couple of posts. There are other things we can help her with like, true plateaus, body weight exercises and their benefits, using fat to change your body, etc. Tons of things no one ever tells you but you should know.

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I am old enough to remember one of the best underground era’s for music: house music. Yes, there was punk and grunge and what-have-you, but for my culture—it was house music. Some of the BEST workout music came out of the 90’s with this movement which brings me to today!

Today is BLOG YOUR HEART OUT DAY and Fitlosophy, the American Heart Association and all of us Fitbloggers want you to join in. We want you to add a pep in your step today and make the Go Red For Women Campaign your mantra today. How?

MOVE JUMP JACK YOUR BODY and STOMP!

MOVE!
Get your family involved. Yes, you work out—now get them there. Have them join the Better U campaign and get moving!

JUMP!
On to Facebook, twitter (use #goredforwomen and #blogyourheartout to find us), Linked In, Buzz (What is this one about? Do we need another? OY!) and promote the Go Red For Women Campaign today. Also, link your blog to as many BYHO bloggers as you can (or to at least one to start a chain).

JACK YOUR BODY!
It’s time to make your family’s health a priority, too. Encourage your mom, your aunt, your sister and whomever to get involved in their health and get moving. Tell them to wear red today. YOU wear red today. Let’s do this ladies!

STOMP!
Out heart disease! This is so preventable! My girl Angela at Fitlosophy has all the stats and all the reasons why we need to do this. Check her blog out, get a fitbook and join in! While you’re at it, enter to win a gift card from Starbucks from my fellow BYHO blogger Joanna and tell all the people behind the counter about the Go Red movement, too!

Girl I heart you, girl I heart you, girl I heart you, MOVE JUMP JACK YOUR BODY STOMP!

Ahhh…brings back memories!! You need to sing that to the tune from the 90’s, Move Jump Jack Your Body. Now I need to go find an outrageous pair of pants, some humungous dolphin earrings and a beeper. Haha!  See you on Twitter!!

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