Getting Fit Naturally

Hi everyone,

I hope this week is starting off great for you all.

I thought I would start a weekly theme for some of my posts relating to music. I will post two types of categories of music each week. On Monday’s, beginning today, I will post a set of 5 songs you can add to your music library that will really maximize your workout efforts.

Music is definitely an important element in life. It can either sooth us, or it can energize us. Music can even have an effect somewhere in between those two reactions; you may feel happy, you may feel sad, or the music may make you feel angry. The power of music is incredible.

The reasoning that music has such an effect on us is multifaceted really. In one aspect, it’s all psychological. However looking at it in a different view, music I would say without a doubt has a physiological impact on us, and is not simply limited to a purely psychological response. In fact, music has an impact on us on both the physiological and psychological realms.

And I can explain an example that can reinforce that hypothesis. Let’s say that you opened the track Down on the Corner by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

So you can follow me, and intimately understand this theory, here is a clip of the track you can play.

What I want you to do, is play this clip. As you listen to this clip, let me ask you something. Within seconds, did you start to tap your foot, maybe your finger? Now think about how you felt. Did the clip make you feel happy, joyful, maybe a little refreshed?

Now, let’s look at the opposite side of the spectrum. Below is a clip by Pantera titled “The Great Southern Trendkill”.

Play this clip now. After listening to it, how did it make you feel? Different people will have a different reaction. Perhaps it made you feel energized, and pumped up. Or maybe it made you feel angry, tense, and anxious. Both reactions are completely normal. On the physiological perspective, did any body movement occur?

Now that you’ve listened to both clips, you can understand this theory that music has both a psychological and physiological effect on us. It is absolutely amazing how something so simple in essence, can be so powerful.

With that said, I would like to start this series of posts off with suggesting a music set that will help boost your energy while you work out. Add these tracks to your music library, and you’ll be enthusiastic and pumped up for your next workout.

Here are the five tracks for this week.

1. Green Day – Good Riddance (Time of your life)
2. Marilyn Manson – Beautiful People
3. Linkin Park – Crawling
4. Daft Punk – One More Time
5. Cypress Hill – Insane In The Brain

Here are the clips for you to listen to and enjoy.

I will also be featuring an album each Wednesday that I recommend to add to your music library to maximize your workout efforts that I have personally enjoyed listening to during many workouts over the years.

And on Fridays, I will feature a set of five tracks geared towards relaxing you, and boosting your spirits. Typically by Friday, we’ve all had a long week, and some good relaxing music can do us all some good.

Until next time, have a great day.

This is the information age, people share knowledge, experiences, and data across multiple mediums including the Internet. Today we are much more informed than any other era in history, yet all this information leads to a lot of misinformation unfortunately. Thus, misinformation causes ignorance, therefore causing individuals to go back to square one of not knowing.

The specific area I want to talk about today is food labels.

Let’s face it; we all have to eat. And because we have to eat, we have to acquire the food either from a grocery store or from some sort of restaurant (this includes fast food restaurants). I first want to focus on grocery shopping. This is the area that we have most control over, and therefore is the area we can really understand what we are eating the most.

So let’s go through a typical day of grocery shopping. First you must get from “point A” to “point B”. Point B of course being the store. From there, you grab your shopping cart or basket, and start glancing at your shopping list. Let’s say this list is fairly simple, and you have the following items on the list:

• Peanut Butter
• Jelly
• Cheetos

You’re probably thinking this is a somewhat odd combination of items for a typical grocery list. I wanted to cover all the items and warnings a food label could offer that will arise. Therefore, lets pretend that we already did our big shopping trip for the month, and we just happen to be getting low on these select few items at home.

Alright, so you are walking around the store, going up and down the aisles. The first item you run into are the Cheetos. Now, I would imagine on a typical day, you would simply grab the bag and toss it in the cart. But not this time! You grab the bag, and turn it around and look at the label.

Here is the label:

Cheetos Food Label

Now, we can see here that the serving size is 1 oz, or spelled out, one ounce. This is telling us that we are consuming 160 calories for every 1 oz. of Cheetos we eat out of this bag.

Looking further, we see that we will consume an average of 10 grams of fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 290 milligrams of sodium, 15 grams of carbohydrates, and 2 grams of protein, for every 1 ounce of Cheetos we consume.

It tells us that we will get an approximate 6% of Vitamin E, 4% of Riboflavin (a B vitamin), 2% of Phosphorus, 2% of Iron, 4% Thiamin, and 4% Niacin (another B vitamin). This assumes we were eating a 2000 calorie diet everyday.

So that’s fine and all, but now we look over to the side and examine the ingredients. All we see is a bunch of preservatives, and some familiar items that even a two year old could identify: Salt, Cheddar Cheese, Milk, Sour Cream.

But there are two terms that are quite alarming that you should be made aware of.

Hydrogenation

The first is a term called hydrogenation. Now, I don’t want to bore you with the deep down scientific explanation, so I’ll briefly explain the abridged version.

Hydrogenation happens when extra hydrogen molecules are added into the substance. The substance being the oil of some kind. In this case, the substance is Soybean Oil.

The result of hydrogenation is Trans Fats, or short for Trans Fatty Acids. But wait, on the front bag says 0g Trans Fat! What’s the deal? This goes back to serving sizes, which I will cover a bit more in depth shortly.

The problem with trans fats are they are chemically modified on the atomic level, which its benefit is longer shelf life. Its harm, is influencing benign cells (cancerous cells) to be produced over time on our bodies. Because the amount per serving is a fraction of a percent, they are allowed to say it has 0 grams of trans fat.

You might be saying, well if the amount is that small it wouldn’t matter right? Wrong. Although, looking in the present term, the amount is relatively minuscule. However, I can guarantee that this one bag of Cheetos has not been the only bag you’ve ate in your life, and this is not the only food you’ve ever ate with hydrogenated oils.

What this means to you, is the more hydrogenated oils you consume, the more it accumulates in your digestive tract, and absorbed into your bloodstream, and distributed through various organs. This is not say you will get some form of cancer tomorrow or next week per se, but you are greatly increasing your chances of your body producing benign cells.

When a label says “Partially Hydrogenated” as opposed to “Hydrogenated”, this just means that the hydrogenation process was minimal, but still occurred to lesser degree. Regardless of the degree of hydrogenation that took place, try to avoid products with hydrogenated oils as often as possible.

The second item to raise alarm is a preservative called Monosodium Glutamate, or MSG for short.

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)

Monosodium Glutamate is very common preservative found in foods. Sadly, there is a large percentage of consumers that don’t realize MSG is in turn short for Monosodium Glutamate. When they see it in food labels, they don’t make the association.

Let’s discuss what Monosodium Glutamate really is, and why it is so bad for you. MSG simply put, is a flavor enhancer. It makes things taste better. Just as in Cheetos, you’ll see this in many other chips such as Doritos. It is what really allows for artificial flavoring in foods.

The harm MSG brings, is it is a “neuro-excitotoxin”. What that means is, the chemical composition of the MSG causes your neurons (brain cells) to become over-stimulated, or “excited” if you will. This is very bad. Over time, this will cause neurons to in simplest terms, “explode”. Brain damage will gradually occur over the span of your life. In which will furthermore, lead to neuro-degenerative diseases being produced.

I welcome you to read more about neuro-excitotoxins. We should all strive to maintain a healthy brain. There is an excellent book you can check out that explains them in detail titled Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills written by Russell L. Blaylock. Click the image to the right to read more about it.

Serving Size

Let’s discuss what Serving Size is, and what is means to you. A serving size is a specific portion size of the product you are consuming. This is a form of measurement, that allows the food manufacturers to measure it’s contents in each package.

Serving size is one method food manufacturers can manipulate food labels. The USDA and FDA sadly allow this to occur, by not enforcing more strict regulations.

But let’s put this in the scope an average consumer could understand; a can of soda. So you pick up this can of soda because on the front it says “1/3 less calories!” You think that sounds like good. You then turn the can around, and see that the serving size is 4 oz. Then it follows by saying “Servings: 3″. This tells us that by drinking the entire can, that we are going to consume 3 times the amount of everything on the table (Calories, Fat, Carbohydrates, etc…). So in the end, it is indeed not 1/3 less calories, unless you only drink 1/3 of the can or 4 oz. of that 12 oz. can.

Serving sizes are how food manufacturers will manipulate the label so the USDA and FDA will allow that statement to be made on its packaging. Be aware of this.

Daily Value (%)

The daily value percentages are based on an assumption of a 2000 calorie diet, which is a neutral medium of caloric intake for the average person. So these percentages in fact are not exact, and will vary from person to person.

The remainder of the food label are fairly self explanatory. Fat is an average of all fatty acids in the food product; a total of all saturated, unsaturated, and polyunsaturated (trans) fatty acids. Cholesterol is the total amount of triglycerides, and Carbohydrates are the total of saccharides (monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides) found.

Ok, so now that we’ve fully examined our first food label in the store, we decide we probably don’t want to get the Cheetos. On a side note, Frito Lay did take the time to remove MSG and the hydrogenated oils from their “NATURAL” line of products.

Sodium

Before we completely get off the subject of the table that breaks down the items described in a food label, I want to discuss sodium. As I’m sure you may know, some may not, but sodium is the primary molecule found in table salt. However, sodium itself is not salt per se. Ever heard of something called electrolytes? I bet you have.

A very popular product that boasts boosting electrolytes for athletes is Gatorade. Which really, it does. But let’s get some clarification here. Electrolytes are nothing magical, nor are they anything more special than a carbohydrate or a fatty acid.

Electrolytes are two types of nutrients: sodium and potassium. They both counteract one another on the cellular level. I won’t bore you with the details, however just know that too much of either puts stress on your cells, and can influence adrenal fatigue, which at its worst, results in complete exhaustion.

Now, there is a recommended daily amount of sodium that everyone should adhere to. The recommended amount is 1500 milligrams, and a maximum of 2500 milligrams. You should try to stick to the lower amount when possible. One of the primary reasons for this aside from cellular exhaustion, is the fact that when the amount of sodium in your blood is too high, your body will retain water.

When your body retains water, it will hold on to that water for more than 24 hours typically. This can last for days if your sodium levels are too high on a day to day basis. Perhaps you are wondering why you’re eating right, and exercising, but not “losing weight”. This is probably why.

Alright, so now we have put down the Cheetos, we move on to the next aisle. Next, we see the peanut butter. We pick up the generic brand to save some money. On the front label, it again, says 0g trans fat. We flip over the label, and there we see hydrogenated oil in it. We put it back on the shelf.

Now you are probably asking, is all peanut butter made this way? Absolutely not. Look for a bottle of natural or organic peanut butter. There are lots of no stir peanut butter products that are minimally processed. Good brands include Skippy Natural, Adams Natural, etc…

We decide to buy some Skippy Natural peanut butter and we spot the vast assortment of jelly, jam, and preserves. We are looking at the prices, and we pick up the bottle of Smuckers squeezable grape jelly, and flip around the bottle. We look at the label, and in the ingredients we find another item that should alarm us; High Fructose Corn Syrup.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

High Fructose is an artificial sweetener put in many foods and snacks these days because it’s cheap, and mass produced. This saves the manufacturer money because it takes much less to sweeten the same amount of that substance than regular sugar would. The problem with it, because it is what the name suggests, corn syrup with a very high amount of fructose in it. Fructose in it’s most natural form is found in fruit and vegetables. In it’s natural form, it is great for you. However, in this form, fructose is added at very unnatural rates.

The chemical composition of fructose is a monosaccharide much like glucose, which are simple carbohydrates. But fructose differs from glucose in the sense that your body has the ability to absorb and utilize glucose more efficiently, whereas fructose can only be used by the body in a limited amount. The remainder that is not immediately used by the body get’s stored as glycogen in the liver. The liver only needs a limited amount of glycogen stored in the body, and the rest goes through a process of being stored as fat.

So simply put, too much fructose will generally lead to unwanted rates of fat storage. Furthermore, because High Fructose Corn Syrup is a GMO, or Genetically Modified Organism, the natural genes of how the fructose should interact in the digestive tract has been modified. Recent research suggests that excessive amounts of high fructose corn syrup has substantially influenced the growth of benign Pancreatic Cancer cells in the body in several patients.

If you would like to learn more about GMO’s, there are several excellent articles across the web, as well as many books on the subject. One book I’ve came across that you may want to take a look at is GMO Free: Exposing the Hazards of Biotechnology to Ensure the Integrity of Our Food Supply written by Mae-Wan Ho and, Lim Li Ching. You can read about it, by clicking the image to the left.

For reference, there are plenty of jelly and preserves that are completely natural. Smuckers in fact makes a line of products called “Simply Fruit” that uses Fruit Sugar, meaning it takes the natural fruit sugars from different types of fruit to sweeten it. This is still a form of fructose of course, but in very small amounts, as opposed to mass amounts, and there is no genetic modification that takes place.

Alright, so we have finished our grocery list. We decided to get some more natural chips, natural peanut butter, and natural jelly. Who would’ve thought going to the grocery store would have been such a learning experience?

Now that we have everything on the list crossed off, we check out, and go home. After all this reading, we decide it’s time for a nap!

In closing, I’d like to note, that all of these items have one thing in common. They have all been modified in unnatural ways either in genetic or chemical modification. The general rule of thumb to follow is, don’t put something into your body that was not produced in a natural way. Why should you be some large corporation’s science experiment or test subject? That is all it simply is, science experiments gone bad to make a profit, and those who are ignorant to the fact are those who suffer.

I hope you enjoyed this article, and it was both entertaining and educational. I apologize for the short story length of the article, as I usually try to keep my posts as brief as possible. None the less, I am glad I took the time to share this knowledge with you.

Until next time, have a great day.

Here is an interesting thought that has came to mind this week.

I feel confident in the workouts I’ve been doing over the last few months, as it has resulted in muscle growth, fat burn, and weight loss.

However, even though I have been doing a lot of strength and metabolic conditioning, I still seem to be packing around this little belly around with me.

Wednesday earlier this week, I went to a Muay Thai training lesson, and my trainer had me do the usual 3 rounds of jumproping warmup, then 2 rounds of shadow boxing.

Now in between those rounds, he had me do 10 pushups each time, which wasn’t a big deal.

Following that, we hit the heavy bag, and I did some punch, kick, elbow, and knee combos.

After it was all said and done, my trainer had me do 300 sit-ups on the bench that goes on a downward slope with the padded bars to hold your feet in front. I figured since I had quite sufficient core strength, it wouldn’t be too bad. Well, needless to say, I did the 300 sit-ups no problem.

The problem was the next day, when my abs and legs hurt so bad from the soreness! Now, as the saying goes, “No pain, no gain”, but that really opened my eyes. I can see now that I really could be challenging my body a whole lot more, considering the phenominal shape I’m in now.

So here is a question to ask yourself? Are you pushing yourself hard enough? Work out and not see the level of results you anticipate? Perhaps evaluate your exercise regimen, and see what areas you can improve.

As for myself, I need to start focusing on cardio in more of a plyometric sense. Because the fact of the matter is, I get very winded when I try to run for longer than 30 seconds. Same with jump roping.

So the approach, I’m going to take, is changing my workouts to focus in on particular muscle groups each day, 3 days a week, and apply HIIT principles to each one. I am going to evaluate how this impacts my overall workouts, and see if I start seeing different results. Doing it this way of course has both advantages and disadvantages, as to be expected.

On the upside, this gives my body more recovery days, allowing muscles to rebuild after being tore down, which is how muscle growth occurs.

On the downside, focusing on muscle groups will bring that group of muscles to near absolute failure, and will cause a high level of fatigue. In the larger scope of things, that is actually a good thing, as it brings a higher challenge, but I will most definitely have to adjust to it.

Secondly, I’m going to really start to improve on my cardio by doing more plyometric exercises including jumproping. I am going to start with 6 30 second intervals of roping, and build up to 3 rounds of roping.

My next goal is to acquire a heavy bag and some good 16 oz gloves and shin pads so I can start more bag training at home. That will be highly beneficial.

And then after that, I’d like to get some good Thai Pads so I can train that way as well.

So I hope my insight has helped you perhaps reevaluate things to get to where you want to be!

Until next time,

Justin

Hello All,

So I just wanted to post something here, since I know it’s been a while since I’ve last posted anything. For all my regular readers, I first apologize for the delay in putting another post up here. Let’s just say it’s been crazy trying to keep everything in check with school reintroduced into my life.

So whats been going on with me lately? How have I been doing with health and fitness? Well, the answer to those questions is, I have been doing great for the most part. The last couple weeks, numerous events have came up that have prevented me from working out everyday as I have been, but when you have kids especially, sometimes that happens.

The biggest area I have been remotely struggling has been nutrition. There was a while where I just had a hard time keeping to a good nutrition regimen, due to lack of finances, but I have since discovered new innovative ways to eat healthy, yet cheap. What I’ve been doing thus far is doing what a lot of people do; buy “healthy” TV dinners like Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice, Smart Ones, etc… But that was still costing a lot of money, mostly because they are on average $2.50 a pop.

So to remedy that, I have instead starting buying meats and then cooking them at work such as steak, chicken, and fish, which are high in protein, but generally low in fat, and cholesterol. I also bought these cups of individual personal portions of veggies like green beans, and peas, and then bought some cups of apple sauce as a 3rd course. Which in the end is much cheaper that way, plus I don’t get all the starches, and extra sugars that those TV dinners usually provide.

If you are able to invest in a George Forman grill, I would definitely suggest doing so. Depending on the size of it, you could easily take it to work with you, or just buy one to leave at work, and cook your meats in the breakroom.

Aside from that, I have been going to Muay Thai lessons twice a month which has been really go0d. I wished I could afford to go to lessons more often than that, but for now twice a month will just have to do. To aid in that, I really need to invest in some Thai Pads, but I just can’t seem to find them locally. I have another lesson on the 22nd, so I’ll have to ask my trainer then.

I have been doing my gameday training still, so I can be ready for the Turkey Bowl in November. I’m definitely looking forward to that.

For the record, I have been weighing around 213 lately. Today I weighed in at 213.2, so that’s good.

To switch things up a bit, I have also made a video blog of which I posted to my YouTube channel. It is embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

Hey Folks, so I just checked out the new workout video from Fitness Anywhere titled, “TRX Multi Sport Strength”.

The quality of the content of the video was great. The person taking you through the workout is very knowledgeable and friendly.

My only complaints towards the video is how she communicates during the video. Throughout the workout, I feel she lacks in enthusiasm in contrast to people like Fraser Quelch and Todd Durkin who just get you completely pumped up during the workouts they instruct. Furthermore, she changes her tone throughout the video between speaking in the 1st and 3rd person. Now, considering this was her first instructional video, I can definitely understand not having superior communication skills right off the bat; communication skills is an art, which takes time to adapt.

To playback the video, may or may not give you some hassle trying to play. The video format itself is in the .M4V format, which is designed to play in either Apple Quicktime, or Apple iTunes. Being I have a Mac, this was not an issue whatsoever, as both of those pieces of sofware are native to Mac. But for a Windows, or even Linux user, I could see some potential for frustation in having the ability to playback the video, particularly if you don’t want either application installed on your system.

Now, you can easily install either Quicktime or iTunes on Windows for free, but not everyone likes installing things they will rarely use.

The workout itself is great though. She walks you through a number of upper body, lower body and core exercises, in a short period of time so you’re not exercising forever and getting bored with it.

So, to sum it up, it is an excellent workout, and definitely worth buying and watching.

Thanks,

Justin

So I made a 3rd circuit for her to do during the week. It contains all the elements of the previous 2 days; however I added 2 more elements to really mix it up. I added Tae Bo and Pilates here and there.

She seemed to find the movement of some of the Tae Bo exercises challenging, however with a bit of focus and patience, she got the movement down and prevailed.

I especially like Tae Bo movements, as it contains elements of multiple martial arts disciplines, which provides an all body workout simply using rhythmic body movement.

I think she is doing exceptionally well so far, and foresee a great deal of progress in the near future.

I plan to write the day 4 circuit tonight. So we’ll see how it goes tomorrow!

Thanks,

Justin

Well today was day number two of my one year challenge. It was a great big hard workout. It took alot of time and there were a few hiccups. But over all it was great and I feel energized after working out. I was having a hard time while working out because my muscles were very sore from yesterday’s workout. But I just pushed through and somehow made it to the end without quitting. I give most the credit to my husband. I love him being there helping me through the workout. It helps me more than he will ever know. To know that someone cares so much about me, that they took so much time and energy to put together a workout routine just for me. I love you baby!

Today was also fun because we switched it up and bit and I worked out while my kids were awake. It was rather interesting but it turned out fun. Our two year old son was trying to do the workout that mommy was doing. It was really sweet because at one point I was crying out in pain and after I got done with that exercise my son climbed up on my lap and gave me hugs and kisses as if to tell me it was OK. He is such a cute little man. He was trying to do pushups on the perfect push up, trying to jump rope with the jump rope, and trying to do some exercise on the TRX. It was the cutest. Then when I was doing some jumps my daughter kept squealing with laughter when I jumped into her sight. She thought I was playing peek a boo with her. All in all it was a brutal awesome workout and I had a lot of laughs along the way.

I am excited to begin this process. And I can’t wait to see the end product when I am finished. That is all for today but thanks for reading.

So my husband started this for me. I will say I suck at blogging. I just get to the point and then it is over. Today was a good workout. My husband kept it fun but challenging. I love working out with him there to help keep me motivated. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow has in store. Just a little background info on me.

I am 25 yrs old. I have been overweight all my life. I did really start gaining weight and becoming obese until after I got married. When I got married I weighed 180 lbs and I was in a size 14 pant. Now almost 6 years later I am in a size 20/22 and weigh 228 lbs.

I weighed in at 220 when I got pregnant with my first baby. I ended that pregnancy at 250. I got pregnant again 5 months later and had not lost any of the weight. I went up to 270 when I was pregnant with my second child. After I had him I went back down to 250. Then I started trying weight watchers after he was 6 months old. I got down to 232 at one point. I stopped doing WW and a pushed back up to 250. When our second child was 1 yr old I got pregnant with our third child. I started that pregnancy out at 250 lbs and got up to 262 lbs. When I came home from the hospital I was 237 lbs. But over the course of a month I went up to 253 lbs. There was alot of stress in that month. We were in and out of the hospital with the new baby. And my kids kept getting sick.

It was right around that time that my husband started his weight loss journey. I started with him at first. We were going full on. And I was losing weight. But I burned out quickly. I got bored and things with the new baby were hard. So I quit exercising with him. Then I got a little motivation, again due to my husband losing weight. So with him by my side we started doing another workout together. Again I got burned out and gave up. It was hard because if he wasn’t there by my side doing it with me I just wouldn’t do it. And it was easy to not do it when I had a little baby to use as an excuse.

So here I am now at 228 lbs just 8 lbs away from my pre pregnancy weight from my first pregnancy. And I am determined to lose that 8 lbs and then go on to lose 20 more. And then get to my ultimate goal of 150-155. I know that with all the time that my husband put into creating this workout I just have to stick to it. And in time I will get the results that I am seeking. If I don’t meet the weight goal I would like to at least meet a goal to be in a size 10 by August 2010.

Hello All,

So as you know since April, I started a fitness challenge to lose 60 lbs in 60 months. I have been exercising and practicing good nutrition whenever possible. I have so far lost 30 lbs, but built up a lot of muscle, so its hard to say whether I will lose that other 30 lbs since its not all fat now as before.

Well, my wife has been wanting to lose weight and get healthy again, but just hasn’t had the motivation, and when she did, she’d get bored with it.

So over the weekend, I wrote two days worth of circuits for her, and wanted to see how they went, and then I’d write some more. Well, I took her through Monday’s circuit today, and it went exceptionally well. I combined elements of cardio, strength, flexibility, and plyometrics using natural bodyweight, aerobic exercises designed by Leslie Sansone, TRX, Perfect Pushups, and Exercise Balls. I also used movements used in life, although not used frequently either outside childhood or abnormal circumstances. For example, Army Crawls, jumping over a ditch, hopscotch, etc…

When I wrote these circuits I had creativity in mind. Since my wife is the type that gets bored with “the norm”, I got creative, and made something fresh and innovative to get her excited, and keep her motivated. She had a lot of fun doing it, and still got an awesome workout. I can’t wait to see how it goes tomorrow.

So after the workout, I sat down with my wife and helped her set a goal of what she wants to acheive in her fitness quest. She thought about it, and said to lose 75 lbs in a year. Which is a very reasonable goal. I foresee her meeting that goal sooner, but only time will tell.

So starting from today, she set a goal. Her goal for the record is to lose 75 lbs by August 17th, 2010. Both her and I will update our progress, and I will provide commentary and insight on her progression.

For the record, she right now weighs in at 228 lbs. So if she is serious about her goal, she should be down to around 153 lbs on August 17th, 2010.

Here is her starting pictures:

Melissa 228 lbs 8/17/09 - Front Shot

Melissa 228 lbs 8/17/09 - Side Shot

Hi Folks,

Just realized I forgot to post last week!

For all my readers, much apologies. Between last week and this week, have made some good progression here. I have dropped down below the 220’s!

Last week got to 218 lbs, but over the weekend, as they are my recovery days, I tend to be rather sedentary, so I ended up back at 220 lbs again on Monday earlier this week.

I started doing a performance workout, which has helped kick me into high gear! I am getting ready for this football game that LANDesk does every year called the Turkey Bowl. I played last year and couldn’t walk for 4 days. So this year, I am getting body up to 250% so this time I’ll be cracking skulls along the way!

The first portion consists of applying metabolic conditioning on the treadmill. I rotate medium pace for 5 minutes to a high pace for 2 minutes. I keep doing this until I get up to the high speed interval 3 times, then I’ll spend 5 more minutes at medium pace, and then cooldown, and then breakout the TRX.

Since I started studying Health & Exercise Sciences, I must say it ends up breaking up my day much more efficiently to go the gym (which I had to get to take some classes since the school has a lack of certain equipment) go on the treadmill, and then wrap the Suspension Anchor around a free Smith Machine, and start tearing it up! I’ve been going earlier in the morning around 6am or so, so I can have it all wrapped up before class starts each day. So by the time I get home, I’m free to do what I want. And that definitely helps my wife.

I became a moderator for Fitness Anywhere, and they hooked me up with some sweet goodies! They asked me what I needed, and I told them some DVD’s, the Extender, and a T Shirt. I particularly wanted the Train Like the Pro’s DVD.

Well they sent me the Train Like the Pro’s DVD, the Ropes & Straps Bootcamp DVD, (yes, the name of it is highly sick and twisted by its nature, I know (if you had that thought cross your mind just now…)), the TRX Extender, a T Shirt, and a cool Fitness Anywhere water bottle.

I watched Train Like the Pro’s yesterday so I can get the feel for it, it looked pretty awesome. But, I plan on watching Ropes & Straps today at work. I really wanted that one for my wife to help mix things up because she has the problem of getting bored with workouts when I becomes repetitive. So, I’m going to put different elements into a circuit everyday for her with something new and different to keep her excited and motivated.

I plan on transitioning from the All Body XPress circuit as my regular workout to the Train Like the Pros workout, as it still contains an all body workout, but at a new level.

My fitness is going great and I’m pumped! I think I’ll try to post twice a week to keep you guys updated a bit more frequently, but not everyday like I was doing, because it got to a point where it was too repetitive with the same things over and over…

So I’ll plan on posting around mid week I anticipate. Until then, have a good day.