Ok, I have a job offer for you. I would like you to design me a work-out schedule. I am extremely out of shape and rapidly becoming MORE out of shape since I’m not leaving my house. I am also extremely self-conscious, so I don’t want you to watch me do my workout, but I do want you to check in with me frequently to guilt me into actually doing it. What would be your rate for such a thing?

I love this because the person who sent this is 100% aware of their need to exercise while safe at home and is also aware that they are uncomfortable exercising in front of someone. I totally get this! There can be so many emotions wrapped up with exercise that doing it in front of another person is overwhelming, but dang if I want to turn into a potato while at home.

Of course, I said that I would do it and I’m going to offer anyone reading this the same deal I gave the person who sent the message. As a monthly package you will receive:

1. An emailed weekly workout routine that progresses as you do and includes warm up, strength training, stretches, and agility if it is appropriate. (4 workouts in a month)
2. Links to videos demonstrating the exercises
3. Cardio suggestions if you want them
4. Scheduled text check-ins twice per week. You’ll give me feedback on how you are doing with the exercises, so I can progress them for you properly, and I’ll give you nudges to help with motivation. And probably an unscheduled text or two because contact is important.

The cost for this package will be $100 per month while we are physically distancing and maybe for a bit after. Let me know if we can work together to help keep your spirits up! We can get started right away! Seriously. I have the time.

I’m still going to post exercise videos to Instagram, so you will always have access to those for free! Move for stress relief. Move for pain relief. Move because it is what bodies are supposed to do.

The post Workout While Safe at Home appeared first on NBS Fit.

Today is the first day of IDEA Personal Trainer Institute West and I’ve already been reminded of why I do this. Why I train people and why I write. I care about you. I really do. I want you all to be happy and healthy. I want you to know that starving yourself and over-exercising is not the sustainable way to change your body for the better. I want you to know that you can make positive changes to your life even if the scale never budges.

The first class I went to today was a lecture presented by Nardia Norman. She speaks a very similar language to mine and it made me all sorts of happy.She spoke of “weight loss” versus “fat loss”, hormone imbalances and sleep deprivation. If you are my client, we have probably had conversations on at least one of these topics.

One of the tools she presented was a Win Board. You have a list somewhere on which you write at least one thing that you did that day that you consider a win. Maybe that was just getting out of bed and into the shower. Maybe it was clearing out your inbox. Maybe that was getting in 5,000 steps. Maybe it was getting into the gym for a third time in a week. Maybe that was getting in an extra glass of water. Whatever it was, if it was a positive, it was a win and it goes on the board. Whenever you are feeling like you aren’t making progress or just need a little motivation, take a look at your Win Board.

I’m going to start a weekly Win Board with each of my clients. Maybe you can do this for yourself. You are doing the work and you deserve to give yourself credit for it.

You got this.

The post It’s Been A While appeared first on NBS Fit.

I have always suspected that there was something wonky with my metabolism, but I was pretty certain that I had messed it up even more from the years of restrictive eating and over-training, so I made an appointment at the OHSU Human Performance Lab to have my Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) tested.  It’s a pretty easy test. You put on this neoprene mask that is hooked up to a computer and lie down, maybe nap. While you are lying there breathing into the mask,  the amount of oxygen you consume over 30 minutes is tracked and averaged. The amount of oxygen consumed is directly related to how many calories you are burning.

RMR is the number of calories a body burns by just being alive. It is dependent on age, sex, muscle mass and weight. If you were to wake up in the morning and not move for the rest of the day, your RMR is the amount of calories you would need to sustain your current weight while  just lying in bed. According to the information I received from the testing lab this morning, “RMR comprises approximately 75% of total calories burned per day for normal healthy individuals.” That is to say, all of the moving around we do in the day gets added on to our RMR to determine our total calories burned in a 24 hour period. The more you move, the more you burn. There are several different formulas used to determine RMR and they will all return a number within about 200 calories of each other. The quickest formula is just 10 times body weight, so if we go by that one I should have an RMR of about 1260. According to the formula that the OHSU lab used, I should  have an RMR of 1311. Not even close. The test showed it to be 779, about 500 calories or 40% lower than it should be for a “normal healthy individual.” That sucks in a big way.

This explains why I’ve continued to gain weight. I’ve been using 1200-1300 calories as an RMR for determining my calorie needs, when in fact I should have been using about 780. It also explains why I had those poppin’ back muscles when I was eating 1600-1700 calories per day. I had gained some muscle and my body fat was about the same. I was really hoping that I could continue to see strength and muscle mass gains while eating a little more (1800-2000) because food is awesome, but the only way that can happen with an RMR of 780 would be for me to increase my activity levels. I’m already pretty active, so I’m not certain that I’m up for that.

Normally a doctor would prescribe increased exercise including weight lifting if a patient wanted to increase their RMR. I already do that, so I asked the doctor if there was anything beside building more muscle, which burns an extra 30-70 calories per day per pound, that would help me increase that number. After hearing about the history of obesity in my family, and my current food and exercise schedule he concluded that in addition to having possibly depressed my metabolism through calorie restriction, that I was born with a lower metabolism and that I have genes that would have been great 1,000 years ago. He said that it isn’t fair and that there probably isn’t a lot I can do at this point to increase my RMR.

The yellow line is my predicted oxygen consumption.

My actual oxygen consumption as reported is an average of the bottom three lines.

Click for a bigger picture.

While that is a disappointing conclusion, at least it is a hard number I can work with. I just got back from the lab a couple of hours ago, so I haven’t figured out what exactly will be my next move. I’m really happy with my energy levels and everything else that has accompanied my increased calorie intake, but with the extra body fat, there are certain types of exercises that are not as easy as they were only months ago. Maybe I’ll go have my VO2max tested to see how many calories I actually burn while working out. That would be another interesting piece of data to add to all of this. I can tell you one thing I will NOT do. I will not restrict calories back to the 1200-1400 range ever again. If I have to hold on to a little extra fat to be happy, warm, have energy, and not be a general grump, then that is exactly what I will do. My emotional health is way more important than how I look.

12/3/13 UPDATED TO ADD:

I went and had a second test this morning at a different facility and the results were very similar. This one only tested for 15 minutes in stead of the 30 minute the OHSU test took, but the results are comparable. This test brought back and RMR of 835. It’s the number in the big orange box.

The post Eating the Food and Metabolism…A Continuing Saga appeared first on NBS Fit.

I’m eating between 1800 and 2200 calories depending on my hunger which is usually dependent on how intense my workout was that day.   I’m training four or five days per week, two heavy lifting days, two 20 minute HIIT workouts and one long HIIT, usually 50-70 minutes, which is nowhere near as awful as it sounds. The last 20 to 30 minutes of the workout is a cool down during which I listen to audio books and this makes me immensely happy.

I feel so much better about life! It’s kind of ridiculous, actually, but in a good way. I’ve noticed several awesome changes. I’m warm! I’m considering buying a thermometer just to check out where I am because I have always held steady in the 97 degree range when measured at the doctor’s office. I would bet money that I’m sitting happily at 98.6. I’m awake! And asleep! I have no problems falling asleep anymore and waking up is no longer a chore. Unless I’m expected up before 7:30am. I’m pretty certain that is never going to change. My periods have returned to normal! Before more food, my cycle was erratic. I was having one little period about a week before my full period. I saw multiple doctors about this and had several tests performed to figure out what was wrong. Not one of the doctors asked me how much I was eating. I had no idea it was connected, but I really think they should have. I have energy! I’m over here getting stuff done and not constantly going for coffee. I’m no longer afraid of food! This is huge. Huge. I used to not have bars of chocolate in the house because I was unable to eat just one serving and save the rest for later. Now I can. I can have any food in the house and not binge on it. No longer do I categorize food as forbidden or bad or toxic, it’s just tasty food that I can have whenever I want. The weight off my shoulders is immense. Chocolate and other foods I used to crave have no control over my thoughts anymore. I had no idea this was possible.

Another important change is my weight. When I first began eating more food, my weight initially dropped a couple of pounds then it went up again. I’ve been at 120 pounds and about 24% body fat for about three weeks now. Here is the cool part of those numbers:  When I started, I was 115 pounds and 25% body fat, so I have gained five pounds (seven if you count the two I lost at first) but I’m at essentially the same body fat. That means I’ve gained a bit of muscle since I started eating more food, which was exactly my goal in the first place! Did you see the photo of my back I posted last month? It never looked like that when I was eating 1400 calories per day and it never would have because I was not eating enough food to fuel muscle growth.

It seems everyone has noticed a difference and I’m embarrassed to admit that more than one of my clients has mentioned that they prefer this new Brandie who eats more. One of them noted this past Saturday morning that I had more energy than she had ever seen in me without coffee. SWEET!

The next step for me is to see if I can get my body fat down a bit. I would like to be between 20-22% body fat. Now that I have leveled off and am not gaining or losing weight, I’m going to wait one more week then move on to the next experiment: Will holding my calories steady at 1950 will work for fat loss for me. According to this calculator, it should be. It will not be a fast fat loss and that is totally okay with me. I’m in this for the long haul. I want this to be something I can maintain for a long time. When the body fat is in my goal range, the plan is to increase my calories slowly again and keep lifting heavy things. Hopefully, I’ll continue to build muscle and keep my body fat in a range that makes me happy. I’ll keep you updated!

The post UPDATE: It Isn’t Always About the Number On the Scale appeared first on NBS Fit.

When you see a muscular female-bodied person, what do you think about them?

Really.  What do you think?

The post Muscular Females appeared first on NBS Fit.

Get yourself a set of resistance bands that comes with the strap for rigging the band to a closed door. Loop the lowest resistance weight through the door strap and shut the strap in the crack between the door and the jamb. Go turn on some music that moves you. Come back and pick up a handle in each hand. Step back from the door, bringing some tension in the band. At this point you can sit down (wheelchair, remember?) or you can stay standing. Bend your elbows to a 90 degree angle so that your forearms are parallel to the floor and alternate pulling back and releasing forward with each arm. Do as many as you can until you are winded. Break for 60 seconds and do it again! Repeat until you are too fatigued to continue.

I like to call this Arm Cardio. It *will* get your heart rate up!

Click on either one of the photos to see about buying the equipment you need to get started.

The post Effective Cardio Using Just Your Upper Body appeared first on NBS Fit.

NO.

Bob Harper of The Biggest Loser went on the Today Show yesterday morning touting his new book “Jumpstart to Skinny”.  He advocates an 800 calorie diet for women and a 1200 calorie diet for men and says that you can lose up to 20 pounds in 3 weeks. You might. You might also be cranky, sleepy, cold, weak, lose your sex drive, feel foggy headed, be unable to concentrate, potentially slow your metabolism and you certainly shouldn’t try to exercise while eating that few calories.

I’m glad his book is called Jumpstart to Skinny, because it absolutely isn’t Jumpstart to Healthy & Fit. He is promoting disordered eating, even if it is for a short time.

Food is fuel. Eat it.

The post Bob Harper: The Biggest Loser Trainer Wants You to Starve… appeared first on NBS Fit.

THERE IS NO ONE PERFECT LOOK and there is no one definition of what it means to be female. You do not have to insult other humans to feel better about yourself. I am 5’2″ and kind of curvy with a splash of muscles and a couple of tattoos. That makes me exactly as female as the six foot tall runway model and the completely ripped figure athlete and the mom running around town with two kids in tow wishing she could grab a latte and a tummy tuck in one stop.

We are all in this together, so just stop. Every single one of us has issues that we deal with every day. Work/life balance. Food. Getting to the gym. Taking care of families. Taking care of ourselves. Bills. Crap! Did I leave the stove on? There is always something.

Be kind to each other. Support each other. Be kind to yourself.

Seriously.

You Got This.

Pass it on.

Orignially posted on my Facebook account.

The post We Are ALL Real Women appeared first on NBS Fit.

Everybody screws up once in a while and sometimes it takes a while to realize there was a screw up. It took me almost four years to realize that I was making the same mistake every day. Every freaking day. I was starving myself.

I wasn’t not eating, but I was eating 1200 to 1400 calories per day and that just isn’t enough for me. I am only 5’2″, so I don’t need a ton of calories, but I am a personal trainer who moves almost all day, every day and I do need to eat enough to fuel that activity. I started eating 1200 to 1400 calories per day after I had a shoulder injury that prevented me from moving my arm at all for about six weeks. In that six weeks, I gained eight pounds. Not a lot, but not an inconsequential amount on a small frame like mine. I help other people get fit for a living, so walking around with the extra pounds was not acceptable to me. I already knew how to train, but I wanted more help with how much I should be eating. I entered some numbers into an online calculator and it told me to eat 1200 calories on days I didn’t train and 1400 on days I did. I trained most every day, so I ate mostly 1400. I lost the eight pounds in four weeks. I was actually kind of astonished. I didn’t think that I would lose the weight that fast.

Even though I had lost the weight, I still wasn’t happy with the way I looked. I didn’t have the muscle definition that I felt I should have considering my training schedule. I thought that if I lost a bit more fat, my awesome muscles would show through, so I kept eating 1400 calories. And didn’t raise it for three years. I ate more on days when I was really hungry, but I always came back to that little number. Always eating as organic and homemade as much as possible. Healthy eating became almost an obsession. In three years, I did not get rid of that last couple of pounds and I didn’t gain any more muscle. I was tired most of the time, cold all of the time, didn’t sleep well, rarely broke a sweat, even while leading group BOSU classes, and I was often cranky. I was too busy helping other people to notice that I wasn’t reaching my goals.

What I did notice and found to be bothersome was being tired constantly. I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought I had anemia or hypothyroidism or adrenal fatigue and was looking to make appointments to get myself checked out when I had a brief conversation with my husband. About five months ago, he looked at me and said, “You don’t look like what I think someone should look like who works out as much as you do.” After a couple of seconds thought I replied, “You’re right.” This two-sentence exchange sent me into a tailspin, though I didn’t realize it at the time because the badness didn’t happen until about two weeks later, when the full force of what he said sunk in. I had been working my ass off in the gym lifting weights or doing HIIT five to six days a week and I still looked the same and my body fat percentage wasn’t changing. I started to stress and when I get this kind of stressed, I stop eating because eating makes me want puke and I hate puking. This lasted for a little over a month.

At this point, I wasn’t even eating 1000 calories per day because I just couldn’t and I still wasn’t losing weight. Then two things happened that changed everything. First, my husband took me out to dinner. Second, I read a blog post.

The dinner was a tipping point for me emotionally because when he told me where he made reservations, an awesome Italian restaurant, my initial reaction was to freak out. Why would he make a reservation at a pasta place?!? He knows I don’t eat pasta anymore! Fortunately, he knew this was going to be my reaction. We talked about it and I decided that I was no longer “almost” obsessed with “healthy” food, I was completely obsessed and should calm myself down and eat the pasta. I did and it was brilliant. I even had a glass of wine. And dessert. AND THE WORLD DIDN’T END. In fact, I felt much better than I had in a long while and was happy to have been able to eat food. Yay, food!

I read blogs from other fitness professionals all of the time, but most of them are not overly useful and I file them away in the recesses of my brain so that I will know what my clients are talking about when they ask me about The Warrior Diet or whatever is the hot thing that month. This blog post from Amber of GoKaleo was not like the others. It was like a Dwarven war hammer to the side of the head. It really was that heavy. (I’m a geek like that.) In it, she writes about when to eat for weight loss and when to eat for body recomposition. Eating for recomp means that you eat more food to fuel the building of muscle versus eating for weight loss where you want to restrict calories a bit. Her first two tips are that you should eat for recomp when, “You’re at, or close to, a healthy weight, even if it’s higher than you wish,” and, “Your weight loss has stalled and simply won’t budge no matter what you do.” I thought to myself, “Holy crap! That’s me!” Then I sat and wondered about what I had been doing to myself and I got pissed. Even while I was starving myself, I was helping other people lose weight and build muscle. I was doing right by them, but I was treating myself like a weight loss client instead of a body recomposition client. At 115 pounds, my weight was just fine. What was wrong with my brain and why did it take reading the same information I have given to clients in someone else’s blog for it to apply to me? At this point, I got really mad at myself because I know exactly why: I come from an overweight family and I was terrified that if I let my guard down, I would become obese overnight. My mom is 5’3 and was 225 pounds at her heaviest. My grandmother was 400 pounds when she died and at that weight, it doesn’t even matter how tall she was. Most of my maternal aunts and cousins are overweight, too. My mom has always struggled with her weight and I internalized every one of her negative cues about food and size. This sounds like I’m blaming my mom. I’m not. She didn’t force me to become obsessive about food and my weight, I did that all on my own.

These two events, the dinner and the blog post, happened about three months ago and everything has changed since then. I visited a different calorie calculator and got a pretty good estimate of how much I should be eating to gain muscle. I became my own science experiment. I raised my calorie intake by 100 calories week until I reached 1800 calories. Because this was for science, I didn’t change anything else. During the month of not eating, I dropped my workouts to four times per week, so I kept that schedule. I ate the same foods, just more. I lost two pounds and 3% body fat in no time. I am headed for that muscle definition I’ve always wanted. It’s pretty awesome to get to eat so much food and look the way I think I should. I’ve noticed other changes, too. I sweat during workouts. I’m not so cold anymore, not even my nose! I’m not tired all of the time. I sleep restful sleep and getting up in the morning isn’t so hard. I’m a lot less cranky. At least I think so, my clients may have other things to say.

I was on my way to 1900 calories when, thanks to my dog and a mud puddle, I injured my shoulder again. When that is healed up and I can get back to lifting heavy weights, I’ll give 1900 a go. Based on the calorie calculator, I’m guessing my best muscle building intake will be around 2050, but that is just a guess and I’m excited to do the science and find out!

TL;DR – Don’t starve yourself. Learn from my mistakes. Eat real food. Unless you have a medical condition, there is no reason to not eat any particular type of food, even pasta stuffed with mascarpone cheese and lobster then covered in a butter sauce. For real.

The post Weight Loss Isn’t Always About Eating Less and Exercising More appeared first on NBS Fit.

5.3 oz Oikos = 120 cal

Banana  = 100 cal

Trader Joe’s Middle Eastern Salad, 8oz   = 310 cal

Dark Chocolate Caramel Wedge  = 30 cal

Whole Wheat Sandwich Think (probably Oroweat)  =  100 cal

Laughing Cow Light Blue Cheese  = 35 cal

3 Slices  Ham  = 50 cal

1 tablespoon mustard  = 15 cal

5 baby carrots =  35 cal

That is a grand total of 795 calories for the day. And she reports doing a 20 minute Tabata workout, as well. This is not a healthy way to lose weight. In fact, I’m surprised she had any energy to drive to TJ’s to pick up her lunch, let alone do a high intensity workout like Tabata.

The post Worst Meal Plan Ever appeared first on NBS Fit.