Today’s Tip:  Power through your workout with protein

While there are good and bad sugars, healthy and unhealthy fats, your body hasn’t met a protein it didn’t like. The fact is most proteins are equal in terms of their nutritional value and superior in their role as building blocks for muscle creation.

What you eat and when, has incredible influence over your exercise experience. Eat too much right before exercising and you’re likely to feel sluggish, even nauseated, because your body is competing with itself to fuel your digestive system and your workout. Skipping your pre-workout meal, on the other hand, can leave you feeling light-headed, weak and slow to react.

The exercise experts at Life Fitness recommend having a protein-packed snack a few hours before a workout to provide proper energy without taxing your body, followed by another small, high-protein meal within two hours of exercising to help the body repair itself.

So before hitting the gym grab your grocery list and add these protein powerhouses to the menu:

·  A three-ounce serving of roasted, baked or grilled meat, poultry or fish

·  An 8-ounce glass of low or non-fat milk

·  A handful of unsalted almonds, walnuts or pecans

·  A tablespoon of peanut butter spread over celery

·  A cup of black bean salad

·  One hard boiled egg

A Registered Dietician can help you to create a customized nutrition program that works for you.

Fit Tips are provided by Life Fitness, the leader in designing and manufacturing high-quality exercise equipment for fitness facilities and homes worldwide. For more information on FitTips and other fitness advice and expertise visit www.lifefitness.com or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/lifefitness or join our facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/lifefitness.

Thank you LIFE FITNESS for a great tip this week.

Now a question for my awesome blog readers…..

What is your favorite pre workout meal or snack?

7 Keys to a Successful 100 Days Challenge

1)  Always move forward

Don’t think about the past, start new TODAY

2)  Do what worked before

Were you successful with weight loss in the past?  If so, share some things you did that worked before and be specific.

For me it was portion control, exercising more and eating out less.  I am thinking about starting a food journal again and I would like to choose one more unhealthy thing to give up.  In the past I gave up soda and Oreos. What’s next? hmmmm

3)  No more excuses

Why haven’t you been making progress?

Health issues, injuries, too tired blah blah

4)  Create a finish line

Visualize how things will look when you meet your goals.  How will you feel in 100 days?

I’m pulling out the jeans and swim suits.   Hope to fit in those again ASAP!

5)  Kick the roadblocks

Identify anything that has held you back before, write them all down and kick them to the curb.

6)  Line up a support system

Do you have anyone that can cheer you on?

I have my awesome hubby, Kevin and of course all of you my cool blog readers and online friends.  I am very lucky to have a great support group.

7)  Learn and grow forever

How could you continue with your personal growth?

I would like to at some point hire a personal trainer!  Hopefully I will find a new class at the gym that I like and of course I’ll be training for a 1/2 marathon.  I have a lot of healthy living books still left to read so I will do that as well.

Are you fired up for what’s to come the next 100 days?

Please feel free to expand on any of the 7 Keys listed above here in the comments.

Just wanted to do a quick check in and say I am healthy once again and back to working out! I’m so excited.  Today was the 1st day back to the gym in 3 weeks and it was nice.  Went to spin class and burned a wonderful 654 calories in 1 hr. 5 min. Last night I had what felt like a pulled muscle in my back doing dishes and I was so bummed.  I did not want to miss spin so when I woke up this morning and was in total pain we whipped out the heating pad and I slept on that for about an hour and we were off to the gym.  I did good and although it still hurts a bit I am going back tomorrow to start running again. YEA!

Will keep ya’ll updated on how the week goes.  It’s been a crazy week with traveling back and forth to downtown Chicago for doc visits with my stepdaughter.  She flew back home this weekend and posting might be intermittent for the next few weeks as she will fly back in town for more doc visits, procedures and surgery.  It will be busy and I’ll most likely be traveling to and from the city quite a bit.  If you are so inclined, please do keep her in  your prayers! It would be much appreciated.

How did your workouts go this past week?

P.S. Be sure to drop by my Facebook fan page and connect with others who want to live a healthier lifestyle!
photo credit: fontplaydotcom

March is National Nutrition Month and the 2010 theme is “Nutrition From The Ground Up”.

National Nutrition Month® is a nutrition education and information campaign created annually in March by the American Dietetic Association. The campaign focuses attention on the importance of making informed food choices and developing sound eating and physical activity habits. Registered Dietitian Day, also celebrated in March, increases awareness of registered dietitians as the indispensable providers of food and nutrition services and recognizes RDs for their commitment to helping people enjoy healthy lives.  source

Today’s tip: Choose one thing you will change this month when it comes to better nutrition for yourself

“Nutrition From The Ground Up” to me means eating more natural whole healthy foods.  This means focusing on eating more fruits and veggies of course but also much less to no processed foods.

I have been talking a lot lately about possibly wanting to live a more vegetarian lifestyle and I think this is the perfect month to do so.  I would like to make one healthy nutritional change in my life kind of like I did when I gave up soda almost 5 years ago or maybe giving up one item like I did with Oreo cookies that long ago.  I’m trying to think of what I struggle with the most and I’m leaning towards something having to do with dessert ha!

Here are some helpful nutrition websites:

http://www.mypyramid.gov/

http://www.nutritiondata.com/

http://www.nutrition.gov

Will you join me during National Nutrition Month and make one healthy lifestyle change? If so, what will it be?

photo credit: kalyan02

Here are the 10 reasons why I want to lose weight and maintain success.

1)  Be healthier

2)  Wear cute bathing suits

3)  Have easier workouts

4)  Be fit to teach a fitness class

5)  I want to fit comfortably on rides at amusement parks

6)  Comfortably run a 1/2 marathon

7)  Fit in cute jeans/other clothes

8)  Set an example so I can share my success with others and fully support them

9)  Feel strong

10)  Have more self confidence

Keep your eye on your goals and always refer back to your list if at anytime you feel like giving up. You might go one step further and try to envision yourself  fitting in to those cute little jeans or how you might feel when you fit into them.

Over on my Facebook fan page, we are sharing just a few of our reasons with each other.  I think that connecting with others in the same boat as yourself will really help as far as accountability on our path to weight loss success.

What are some of your reasons for wanting to lose weight?

We all know that when it comes to weight loss, real life can get in the way and many times we fall off the wagon right?  Well, Linda Spangle, author of 100 Days of Weight Loss agrees and has set up an approach that I think can help us all stay focused and consistent.

Over on my new Losing It and Loving It Facebook fan page, we are going to be following her book and every day I will be posting one of the daily assignments from the book for you to focus on.  You are more than welcome to open up and share your thoughts with everyone or just keep it to yourself.

I’m asking that everyone find a notebook or journal and sign up for the 100 Days Challenge online as well.  The whole goal is to keep you on track with your weight loss/fitness goals for 100 days! There are a lot of great charts, reports, calendars, etc. to help you along the way.

Your 1st step should you choose to accept it, is to create a vision for the future.  Think about and write down in your notebook/journal at least 10 reasons why you want to lose weight and maintain your success.

If you want to purchase the 100 Days of Weight Loss book, you can do so for the low low price of $6 (as of 3/1/10).  I purchased the original book a while ago so the cover for the one online looks different than the copy I have but it seems to have the same information.

I’m looking forward to following your success and sharing mine as well!

Hope you’ll join us and participate on Facebook!

This week I have come across some great blog posts, giveaways, new websites and more!  Hope you enjoy.  And do feel free to share in the comments any great links you came across this week as well.

Let’s start Friday off with this cool giveaway over at Jennifer’s Watch My Butt Shrink blog!  She is giving away the Magic Bullet mixer which I love and use all the time.  Lots of fun ways to enter!  And she has a fan page on Facebook too which brings me to my news.

This past week I started my own Facebook fan page.  Here is the long awaited Losing It and Loving It Healthy Weight Loss and Fitness fan page. YEA!  I started with a goal of 50 new fans by Monday, March 1st and I’m almost there.  Won’t you join us and invite your friends?  And while you’re there be sure to tell me what you would like to see.

Kimberly talks about the important supplement we all need, Vitamin D!  I just love her blog and isn’t she so pretty?  Kimberly always provides excellent info on her blog so I hope you’ll check it out.

Another one of my favorite bloggers is Sabrina from Rhodey Girl Tests and she has a giveaway going too!  Check out the Delicate Soles post to read all about it.  You can find some awesome healthy recipes over on her blog and I just love her positive energy and of course her great relationship with her hubby.

News Nugget from Sahar about how interval training can cut exercise hours dramatically.  Can’t wait to learn more!

And lastly some of my friends started a new blog over at Plus Size Bloggers that you might want to check out. It’s all about staying accountable with your weigh in’s.  I stopped weighing in there for a while because I want to focus more on eating healthy and inch loss but I know looking at the scale every so often will help me stay on track so who knows I might join in at some point but I wanted to let you know about since I think it might be a fun way to stay accountable for some of you! You can sign up for the tracking contest here.

Hope you enjoyed the links this week!  It’s been a challenging 2 weeks not being able to workout due to pneumonia but I am hoping that Monday will be the start of a great week. I have to go back in slowly so I’m going to try for 3 days of spinning.  Can’t run for at least another week due to one of the meds I’m on but when I can start again, watch out LOL

Have a great weekend and Happy Friday!

*photo credit

photo credit: knitsteel

But I am just going to try to get better.  Lots of rest this week!

So here are the stats for the one day that I did work out.

Monday-

*Treadmill
Time: 46 min.
Miles: 2.53 (7-one minute intervals and 1-one minute 15 interval)
Calories burned: 500

I was struggling with the running so at the end I bumped it up to incline 6 and walked that way for about 5 min.

Tuesday-Sunday nada

So there you have a very short update.  Hope everyone else did well with workouts this past week.

What are your plans for the coming week?

I honestly don’t have any until I get better but I am itching to get back to the gym for spin and running.  Did you ever think I would say that? LOL

Have a great week,

So the winners are as follows and I have emailed you so please respond soon.

The Eat Clean Diet Recharged book winners

#5 Linda Robinson

#10 Tishia (No More Plus Size)

#9 Scorpio Woman

#3 Mari

#4 OOPS looks like Tishia won this book twice so I’ll have to draw another number (sorry it won’t be on video but you can trust me). OK, then I chose #8 Scorpio Woman who already won as well, so next pick is

#12 Danielle

The winner of the Eat Clean Diet for Family & Kids book is

#2 Terry Johnston

Fun giveaways!  Tosca’s PR company will be sending out the Recharged books and I’ll send out the Family & Kids.  I need to hear back from the winners within 2 days or I will have to do a re-draw.

I also wanted to be sure to update you on the rebounder/trampoline challenge I had mentioned a while back. I still want to do this but I’m just not prepared for it yet so you all have time to get yourselves prepared if you would like to take the challenge.  I’m looking at the middle of March as of right now and will definitely keep you updated.

Congrats to the book winners!

Don’t you just love these perseverance posters?

Here are some perseverance quotes that I found today at Quote Garden and I found them to really touch home when it comes to my running and hope they will help you too!

1)  The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running Author Unknown

2)  Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.  Walter Elliott, The Spiritual Life

3)  I may not be there yet, but I’m closer than I was yesterday.  Author Unknown

4)  Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.  William James

5)  Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it.  The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.  Earl Nightingale

*I really don’t like to put quotes on my blog that don’t give authors proper credit so if you find that you actually know of an author for the above Author Unknowns, please let me know.

Don’t you love these quotes?  Feel free to share any perseverance quotes you have come across!