For me September always signals change.
Change in your laid back summer attitude, kids going back to school, the return of traffic (at least here in Boston). So why not take this time to change your breakfast. What do you typically grab for breakfast? It is highly CARB based — bagel, fat free or low fat muffin, just coffee or heaven forbid NOTHING!

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and by adding a few more grams of protein, it will keeps us from indulging in sugary snacks later in the day.  Here are some snack ideas:

• Scrambled egg whites with spinach and Ezekiel toast — don’t have time? microwave eggs while in the shower and stick in the toast
• Add some egg whites — don’t judge eggs are in all baked goods, why not oatmeal or protein powder to your oatmeal
• Plain Greek yogurt or cottage cheese with some fresh or frozen (non-sugar added) fruit or wheat germ.
• Whole wheat waffles and egg whites or Greek Yogurt or cottage cheese.

If you have any more breakfast ideas, I would love to hear them just post them in the comments below.

I teach a number of group fitness classes that require 2 sets of weight. (1) heavy for your lower body and (1) lighter weight for your upper body. It never ceases to amaze me how many women under estimate their strength or better yet think that lifting heavy will cause them to BULK UP so they grab 3 pound dumbbells. Seriously ladies if I were to take your backpacks, laptop bags or purses and put it on a scale it would weigh more than 3 pounds.  In fact the average women’s purse weighs about the same as a sack of sugar. PS> Sugar comes in 5 pound sacks.

So the next time you reach for the 3 pound weight think about this: If you don’t have a regular strength training program in your 20s, you will lose appx 5 pounds of muscle every decade! That means that by the time you are 70 you will bearly be able to lift a sack of groceries, a gallon of milk or even your grandkids.

So come ladies reach for the big weights the benefits of strength training are amazing, sides would having Madonna arms really be that bad? PS … She didn’t get them from just doing yoga.

I have worked in the Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood for a number of years and have always wanted to go to the Copley Square Farmers Market, but for some reason I never had the time.  Looking back it makes me laugh because the market is open Tuesdays and Fridays 11-6 so why couldn’t I sneak over and check out what they have to offer. Well I FINALLY made it over to the market and it was awesome. I picked up the best corn on the cob, the juiciest tomatoes and the best blueberries. I could go on and on and on.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve picked up some of the best and freshest produce I have gotten in years. The farmer’s market runs until November and according all the warm weather that we have been experiencing in New England has produced bumper crops this year.

The farmers market has had such an influence on me that I’m considering joining a CSA farm, community supported association. That means that each week during the main growing season and bi-weekly during the winter month I would receive local produce or meats.  Gotta go, it’s Friday and I want to make sure I get the best selection and a parking spot.

This has been the topic of discussion this week, with a number of my clients. Many are asking about making more improvements with their body composition. I know what their workouts look like, but I don’t know what they are doing in the kitchen. When we go through their food journals we realize that they are not getting enough protein in their diets.

When I ask can we add a little more protein in your diet, they say oh do you mean nuts or beans, NO I don’t mean nuts or beans. Nuts and beans are great, but they are NOT your best sources of PROTEIN. Yes they contain protein, but they aren’t the quality protein that you will find in lean meats, eggs or fish. Also a small amount of nuts pack a ton of calories. Quick comparison –

• 1 oz. almonds 164 Calories, 6 gram Protein
• 1 oz chicken 47 Calories, 8.8 grams Protein

If you had to add protein to your diet and wanted to lose weight which would choose?

So why do I harp on protein? Protein is one of the major building blocks of the body, in fact 50% of our bodyweight consists of protein. Here are a few other things to consider why you should make sure your taking in your fair share of protein.

1. Feel fuller longer — when you couple protein with carbs and fats, your body is busy digesting so you feel fuller longer
2. It takes more energy to digest protein than carbs and fats, so you’re keeping your metabolic torch going.
3. Protein helps repair and rebuild muscles.

It’s recommended that the average person take in .8 grams of protein for every kilogram of your body weight. Here is a nice list of protein choices.

• Fish
• Lean beef
• Eggs — whole or whites only
• Chicken — breast or thighs
• Turkey — not the kind from the deli counter, real turkey
• Greek yogurt
• Cottage cheese — have a little fact in it — no fat doesn’t contain enough niacin.

This does not include processed or highly fatty meats — bacon, sausage or deli counter meats.

If you a vegetarian, vegan or someone else who doesn’t eat meat, we can discuss your choices.

So many people ask, how do you do it? Here are a few easy weight loss tips. I TRACK EVERYTHING, I have been writing down my food and my workouts for years. Some may say really or I just don’t have the time. My response is how will you know what is going on when you don’t lose weight or you’re not increasing your weight in regular increments.  What is your track record? I look at this as my fitness bank account. I wouldn’t just write checks without keeping track of the checks I wrote, and some how you have time to write that down. Think of this in the same way.

Now you don’t need anything fancy to track your workouts, I just use a plain notebook that I purchased a Staples. As you can see I just write down my exercises, the date and weight I lifted. I also track my cardio as far as time and mileage if I were running.

As for food, everything that goes in my mouth I write down.  I use a product called Fitday. It has most of the foods that I eat, I’m able to customize it to the exact amounts that I eat in a given meal. If the food doesn’t appear, I can construct it or go out to Calorie King and look up the food. Worse case scenario I will cut out the nutrition label on the food and manually add it to Fitday. If you are an iPhone user, there are a few products that are getting alot of buzz. Check out this NY Times article, Losing Weight the Smartphone Way, With A Nutritionist In Your Pocket.

So the secret to weight loss is OWNING what you put in your mouth and being accountable. Trust me when you start writing it down you will be surprised at how much or little you eat in a given day. You’ll also become a bit of a food snob. You’ll start to look at food and ask is it worth the caloric intake.

If you have any other weight loss tips, just let me know below.

That’s right, drinking chocolate milk after a HARD work out will aid in helping your muscles recover. Now let me reiterate HARD workout, if you just went a did a light workout and didn’t break a sweat, you won’t need a post workout recovery.  But if you did come back from a long bike ride, run or hike chocolate milk will help you recover better than some of those other high beverages. Why??

• Plain water just replaces the water you sweat out during your workout
• Carbohydrate laden beverages just builds and replaces your glycogen (stored muscle carbs)
• Carbohydrates and Protein combination not only replaces the glycogen but studies have that you see a double % increase in glycogen, plus the protein also helps your muscles to recover and repair.

I am a big advocate of using whole foods, but for post workouts chocolate milk will do the trick.  Just remember you need to be in a hard workout to earn the chocolate. In honor of National Chocolate Milk Day go out for a hard workout and enjoy!!

I am once again running the Falmouth road race with my husband. Last year was our first year, now we’re thinking about making it an annual thing.  We are just a little behind in our running schedule, but we’re planning catch up this week. My first run was last Saturday night when the temperature was roughly 85 degrees. FUN.. Which is really funny given the last time I ran any long distance (January) we were looking to see when the warmest part of the day was going to be.

So the run we good but really hot, we ran again yesterday and the 3.5 miles felt much better. I am experiencing so side stitches, need to work getting my breathing in synch as well as my food timing. I think the last two times I had large meals that didn’t fully digest before I went for my run.

We’re suppose to run tonight to make up for our missed run on Sunday, but mother nature had another plan for us. It’s POURING, so we’ll be running both days this weekend to play catch up.

I’ll keep you posted on our progress.  Goal this year is to run 7.1 miles in less than 1 hour.

It was hard break up, but it had to happen. About 2 months before my last fitness competition I was reduced to 4 yellow packets,  REALLY ARE YOU KIDDING!!! Prior to that those yellow packets and I were BFFs make the VBFFs. Like the Frank’s hot sauce commercial, I put those packets on EVERYTHING. Breaking up was hard to do, but it had to be done, I need to drop some weight and those yellow packets weren’t doing anything to help me.

Now that I am done with my competition and my diet is more open as they say, I thought I’d go back to  my old ways, but surprisingly I have not.

Sorry to say BFF we’re through, if you haven’t broken up with your yellow packet BFF read more about why you should.  This posting appeared in the Huffington Report. http://huff.to/9lgm1m

This blog was inspired by a NY Times article, Bidding Farewell to Ghosts of Pain

Yes, I am or at least when it comes to taking medicine. When I grew up we didn’t go to the doctor unless you were bleeding from the eye. Do you remember from My Big Fat Greek Wedding when the father thought Windex cured everything. In my house a band-aid and a kiss did that. I’m serious.. I have to have a MAJOR issue to go to the doctor. I’m still that person, there has to be something really wrong for me to go.

Not that I don’t believe that doctor’s don’t help I truly believe in the profession, I just think that now a days everyone wants to pop a pill and cure EVERYTHING. Let’s face it, every other commercial on TV is about a pill that cures you insert the alignment and people are willing to take it despite the CRAZY side effects.

This may surprise you, but this past winter I did 6 weeks of acupuncture and massage.  I had an issue with my elbow that was just not going away. I rested it as much as I could, applied ice and heat but the pain just wouldn’t go away. Yes, I did put a band aid on it and asked my husband for a kiss and NOTHING. So I figured I had nothing to lose. Guess what it worked! I am a believer.

I am pain free!! Without having to pop a pill or self medicate.

I just returned from my 2nd Women’s Tri Fitness and it was just as exhilarating as it was last year. I didn’t win any hardware, but I did beat my times from last year, which is all that matters to me.  Well — that and after all the events my husband who is the most supportive person to me throughout my training turned to me and said he was so proud of me. That made it well worth all missed activities and times spent at the gym vs spending quality time with him.

This time instead of rushing off to the next thing, I did take time to celebrate my accomplishments while I was in Las Vegas, we lounged by the pool at the Monte Carlo hotel which was a balmy 102 (there was humidity and the natives were freaking out) UMMM you don’t know what humidity is and hung out at our very favorite restaurant Mon Ami Gabi in the Paris Hotel. Now I’m back to reality and its time to set some new goals.

This year I’m planning to:

1. work on my legs — would love to have a nice quad sweep
2. increase my speed and agility
3. increase my bench press — I’m getting 50 reps in next year’s Tri Fitness