Baltimore Fitness Boot Camp | Burn Fat, Build Muscle

Quick Fix Vs Lifestyle change
We have become a nation of instant gratification. Thanks to technology, we expect things to literally be at our fingertips at any given moment. Because of this, when we don’t receive the favorable results we’re after, we tend to think it’s not worth it and move on.

But some circumstances take time, in fact, they take an entire lifetime.

A healthy lifestyle is not something achieved in a matter of moments, that is why it’s a lifestyle. A diet is not a lifestyle it’s a temporary fix for a permanent issue. There will always be a temptation to eat, or an excuse not to work out, but when we change our way of thinking and view it as a lifestyle change we’ll see daily gratification in our new habits.

There are a few things you need to ask yourself and truly understand before diving into a healthy lifestyle change.

What is your motivation to improve your life? Do you have kids and want to lead by example? Or do you think if you lose weight and keep it off, it opens the romantic possibilities?

What has stopped you from making these changes before? Do these obstacles still exist? How can you eliminate them? If you can’t, how do you move forward?

When you’re faced with temptation, how do you handle it? Do you have the ability to stay on course or do you cave?

Am I happy? What makes me happy? How do I get there?

If the thought of these answers overwhelms you, you may not be ready and that’s ok. It’s a lifetime of work and dedication.

Go back in a month and ask yourself again. Taking the first step is always the hardest, but once you do, you won’t look back with regret.

Stop exercising, start training!

Clean Eating 101

You’ve heard it on TV. You’ve read about it on the internet.

But do you REALLY know what eating ‘clean’ actually involves?

Let me break it down for you.

Our bodies need fuel in the form of protein, carbohydrates, and good fats in order to perform properly. Much like a vehicle, the cleaner the fuel, the better our performance. Balancing clean eating with important nutrients is an essential part of a training program.

Clean eating is simply enjoying real food. When you surround yourself with real food you’re more likely to receive the vital nutrients and less likely to have to count calories. Clean eating and obtaining those nutrients is critical to maximizing your fitness results.

When you eat whole grains, vegetables, fruits and beans you get a healthy dose of carbohydrates to fuel your muscles. As I write this I’m using carbohydrates. My body is breaking down carbs into sugars and storing them in my liver and muscles. However, if you eat too many carbs your body runs out of storage room and the excess becomes fat in your body.

Protein is known as the building block of life. Protein helps repair cells and create new ones. Meat, seafood or plant-based proteins such as tofu or tempeh, provide a complete protein that builds muscle. Muscles help your body absorb glucose from your blood which helps protect you against diabetes.

Fat sounds like a bad word in a healthy lifestyle, but your body needs fat to help absorb the fat soluble vitamins, like Vitamins A, D, E and K. Fat also serves as an insulator and keeps your body warm. Trans-fats are the kind of fats that should be avoided. You should look for your healthy fats in avocados, nuts, wild-caught sustainable fish, olive and coconut oils and free-range animal products like butter, cheese, and yogurt.

Changing your relationship with food gives you control over what you put in your body and simply eating more real foods helps maximize performance while keeping cancer, diabetes and heart disease at bay.

It’s a win-win.

Who’s hungry?

These Block Fitness Results

There are many complex reasons that make fat loss a challenge, reasons that go deeper than simply calories-in versus calories-out.

I’m talking about the life issues that get in the way of your success %FIRSTNAME%.

Here are 5 things that block fitness results along with the solutions to unlock your best body.

1. You are crazy busy.

Let’s face it, you work too much, commit yourself to too much and don’t even get enough sleep most of the time. The fast-paced way you live leaves you exhausted, stressed and hungry for comfort food. You even begin to feel too busy to take care of your health.

It’s time to reprioritize.

Let go of your perfectionist standards and remove a few commitments from your schedule so that you are able to cook healthy meals, exercise and get a good night’s sleep.

Remind yourself that taking care of your health is not a luxury—it’s a necessity.

2. You don’t want to wait for the good stuff.

Just as you wish to avoid pain, you are also an expert in seeking out pleasure—namely food. This served the cavemen well, but these days it ends up as extra pounds around your waist and thighs.
There’s good news: extra calories are not your only option to stimulate the pleasure centre of your brain. Find an activity or two that make you smile and indulge in those regularly.

A walk outside
A good book
A night out to the movies or theatre
A spa day

You can also retrain your brain to crave the pleasure of exercise-induced endorphins. Talk about weight gain kryptonite!

3. You don’t want to be bothered.

It’s in your DNA to avoid pain and seek out pleasure.

Unfortunately, this works against you when trying to get fit. In your mind, it’s painful (or at least uncomfortable) to deny yourself the tasty food that you crave and to exert yourself with exercise.

There’s a simple way to work around this obstacle: Find something painful about being out of shape to motivate yourself towards healthy eating and exercise.

Focus on the negative impact your current shape has on your health, self-esteem and lifestyle. Convince yourself that the pain of being out of shape is much greater than the discomfort of losing the fat.

4. You don’t deserve it.

I don’t agree with it, but you sure act like you don’t deserve to live the good life in the body of your dreams. Take a moment to think back on all the times you have self-sabotaged your weight loss efforts.

If you don’t believe deep down that you are worthy, then you’ll never give yourself a chance at a fit body.

I believe that you deserve to have a healthy body—and I urge you to dig deep down to uncover why you don’t. Once you conquer your feelings of unworthiness, getting on an exercise and healthy eating plan will be easy.

Take the time to take care of yourself.

You DO deserve it.

5. You are afraid.

You’re afraid to start because you just might fail, and wouldn’t that be embarrassing?

You’re also afraid to start because you just might succeed, and change makes you uncomfortable – even if it’s change in the right direction.

When you decide to get fit you will need to go through a bunch of changes:

New diet
New exercise routine
New friends at the gym
New clothes
New self-image

Focus on all of the ways that shaping up will make your life every day Envision that better life everyday so that it goes from being new and scary to familiar and comfortable.

I want to personally help overcome every obstacle standing between you and your ideal body.

Call or email today to get started on a program that will change your life and body forever…in the best way!

Want Your Kids To Eat Healthy?
Our kids are eating too much junk.

And who can blame them? Junk food tastes great.

The good news is that healthy food also tastes great.

Here are simple ways to help your kids eat healthier:
1) Choose Whole Foods

Processed foods are the biggest problem with our modern diet. Packaged and refined food products are devitalised and filled with empty calories that quickly lead to weight gain. Unfortunately, processed foods make up a large portion of the diet of many children.

Offer your kids whole foods, rather than packaged ones. Whole foods are foods that are in their natural state. An apple. A piece of sprouted grain bread spread with natural peanut butter. A piece of hormone-free chicken. A bowl of beans. You get the idea.

2) Add Colour

Adding bright and colourful fruits and veggies to your child’s plate will get their diet on the fast track to health. Fresh fruits and veggies are filled with fibre, vitamins and minerals that are essential to good health.

Make it fun!

Serve veggies with salad dressing as a dip. Cut fresh fruit in the colours of the rainbow and place them on a skewer. Serve a colour themed meal – all green, all red or all orange. Use your imagination and you’ll come up with an endless number of ways to make fruits and veggies fun to eat.

3) Make Smart Substitutions

Kids love pizza and pasta and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and that’s not going to change any time soon. Rather than fight your kids on their favourites, try making smart substitutions to make their favourites more nutritious.

Pizza: Up the nutritional content of your pizza by opting for wheat crust over white, adding veggies to the toppings and sticking with lean meat toppings. You could even make “Pizza Eggs” by adding marinara sauce, cheese and pepperoni to an omelet and avoid the crust altogether.
Pasta: Make spaghetti with veggie noodles
PB&J: A PB&J, made with white bread using sugar-filled peanut butter and corn syrup-filled jelly, is fairly void of any real nutritional value. Instead make a PB&J with sprouted grain bread, pure peanut butter (with only peanuts and sea salt), and fruit-only jam.

This will provide real wholesome fuel for your child’s day.

4) Ban Sugary Drinks

One of the best things that you can do for your child’s good health is to instill in them a love for water rather than sugary drinks. Soda pop, juices, smoothies, and blended coffee drinks are filled with empty calories that cause weight gain.

The easiest way to do this is to stock your house with lots of pure, filtered water. Don’t have fruit drinks or soda pop readily available so that they grow accustomed to drinking only water.

While I presented these tips as improvements to be made to your child’s diets, these tips will also do wonders for your diet. Practise these tips for 30 days and I guarantee you’ll look and feel better.

Parents all want good things for their children. Now how about doing something good for yourself as well?

You are your child’s biggest role model on how to live, for better or worse.

Treat yourself right by calling or emailing today to get started on an exercise programme that will change your life for the best.

Do you ‘Diet’?
At least once per day, someone asks us to write him or her a diet. The interesting thing is that there is much more to the question then you think.

Just FYI, we all struggle with eating. Every single one of us wants to eat yummy food that is probably not good for us daily.

The struggle is real as we often say as a joke but it is.

So what’s the difference? Some of us actually do and some of us don’t.

We all know when some food is good for you and bad for you obviously. Maybe you don’t know all the nutrient ratios and calories contained in food but we are not that ignorant.

Sugar-bad
Fast food-bad
Trans fats-bad
Alcohol-bad
Processed food-bad

Chicken breast-good
Broccoli-good
Grilled fish-good
Nuts-good
Yams-good
Brown rice-good

You see my point. So, what is the difference? HABITS

Some of us have developed good habits with eating and some of us not so much.
Some of us have developed knowledge of food choices and some not.
Some of us have developed self-control, some of us not.
Some of us have developed discipline and some us want what we want when we want it.

How do the successful lean, strong, fit, healthy people do it? They learn through experience. This is the goal of our food journaling system.

It teaches: