Monthly Archives: January 2018

Cut the Crap!

Nutrition/ Diet, Weightloss, , , , ,

I’ll shoot you straight.  There’s no “short cut” to weight loss.  It takes consistency and hard work!  One of the questions I get asked most from clients is “What are some easy things I can do to lose weight?” You’ll still need to work hard in the gym and stay consistent with a clean diet to really change your physique, but here are some simple ways you can “cut the crap” and make minor changes that will save you hundreds of calories that can add up to some major pounds dropped!

1.) Rethink your coffee—did you know that most flavored coffee creamers have 20 (up to even 50 calories!) per a 2 tablespoon serving?  Not to mention that they’re packed with sugar and fat too!  Most coffee drinkers probably use more than two tablespoons (basically a shot glass) in just one cup of their morning joe!  That adds up quick—upwards of hundreds of calories and a day’s intake of sugar!  I’ve mentioned in previous posts that a typical Starbucks latte has upwards of 300 calories!  Don’t get me wrong—I LOVE coffee, and I love mine with a creamy delicious flavor to it!  Your better option is to get the SUGAR FREE coffee creamers—unfortunately they don’t come in a ton of flavors, but they save you lots of calories and (hooray!) have no sugar!!  I love Coffeemate’s Sugar Free French Vanilla, Caramel, and Hazelnut flavors and it is a HAPPY HAPPY DAY when the sugar free seasonal flavors of Pumpkin Spice and Peppermint Mocha come around!!  You can also opt for fat free half and half (20 calories per 2tbs, no fat, no sugar) and some Splenda or Stevia instead of real sugar.  That’s my other go to!  You can also use the Torani sugar free syrups too!  You can find those at World Market or Amazon, and they also are great in egg whites or oats or plain Greek yogurt!

2.) Juice and “regular” soft drinks and sweet tea are NOT your friends— read the nutrition label, pay special attention to the sugar content and the ingredients.  SUGAR is the enemy here.  Absolutely no nutrition value, and those calories add up super quick!  Fruit Juices are laden with added sugar—you’re much better off just eating an orange or an apple instead of drinking the juice of them!  Coke, Dr. Pepper, Sprite, Root Beer, etc. a large fountain drink of one of those will easily put you at close to 500 calories and 50 grams of sugar!!  That’s two days worth of sugar and easily almost a third of an average female’s daily caloric intake.  NOT WORTH IT FRIENDS!  If you have a die hard soda habit, cut it down as much as you can and swap it for sparkling water or tea (unsweet, but you can use Stevia or Splenda).  You’ll feel better and will be more hydrated too!  Those bottled and fruit smoothies can go in this category too—tons of sugar in those too!!

3.) Candy, cookies, cakes, JUNK—If you’re not around it, and it’s not in your house, you won’t eat it!  I can guarantee that if you portion out these sweet treats and enjoy them once or twice a week in moderate amounts, you will ENJOY them so much more!  A sugar craving is hard to kick, but you’ll never truly be successful with weight loss unless you can get it under control.  Pay attention to how you’re feeling when you reach for candy or chips or cookies—ask yourself if you’re eating it out of hunger or cravings or because of your emotions.  If you’re truly hungry, try to pick a more healthy, satisfying option!

4.) Fruit—I love fruit!  Especially when it’s fresh and in season!  Honeycrisp apples are my JAM, but I also love bananas and berries and pineapple!  Fruit is GOOD for you!  It’s packed with vitamins and nutrients, and even fiber!  But it also has a lot of natural occurring sugars, which can make it high in calories.  Try to keep your fruit intake to 1 or 2 servings per day.  If you’re really serious, keep it to half a serving to one serving per day.

5.) Alcohol—I LOVE wine, and margaritas, and craft cocktails just as much as every other lady out there.  BUT, when it comes to weight loss, alcohol is the absolute enemy.  Yes it’s delicious, it helps you unwind, and it often leads to fun times and good memories, but that comes at the expense of hundreds (even thousands!) of calories!  A bottle of wine easily packs a 500 calorie punch—that’s three large glasses!  A frozen drink?  You’re looking at 400 – 600+.  Even just a light beer comes in at around 150.  It adds up!  And most alcohols have tons of sugar too!  That’s where the calories come from!  If you consume several alcoholic beverages a week, you’re without a doubt offsetting the work you’re putting in in the gym.

Nothing worth having comes easy.  Like I tell my friends and clients all the time—this “being healthy” thing is a lifestyle.  It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy treats or sweets or wine any more at all, but it does take being cognizant of your intake!  3,500 calories burned equals one pound of fat.  Small changes that save calories add up to big results!  You can do this!!

 

Till next time,

-Mere

The Best Exercises to Build a Booty!

General Fitness, Workouts, , , , ,

Hi friends!  If you’re like 90% + of women out there, you want a nice, round, perky butt!  Believe it or not, the glutes (butt) are one of the hardest muscle groups to work, and one of the top body areas both men and women want to change in their physiques!  Most of us have either a.) alot of fat in the butt area or b.) have really underdeveloped glute muscles leading to a pancake or flat butt!  When I first started training several years ago, my booty was really lacking muscle development, and was one of my weakest body parts on stage.  I’ve spent the last few years training glutes at least twice a week, and they have improved SO much thanks to alot of repetitions of these exercises below.  Here are my favorite exercises to train my glutes that will help you build that booty just in time for summer!

1.) SQUATS!! Bottom line (Ha! Pun definitely intended!) this movement is the KEY to really developing that round, booty shelf look that comes with a great butt!   There are SO many types of squats!!  Mix these up every time you train legs– plie squats (feet wide toes out, using either a dumbbell or body weight– these will target your inner thighs more), jump squats, hack squats, front squats, sissy squats, Bulgarian split squats, pistol squats, air squats, bosu ball squats, heavy barbell squats at the squat rack or on the Smith Machine, and high rep lighter weight squats too!  The great thing about squats is that there are so many variations with equipment, foot placement, intensity, etc., that you can incorporate several versions of them into every leg workout.  Here’s a great link to a bodybuilding.com article on different versions of squats.

Squat Variations from Bodybuilding.com

2.) Leg Press-  Leg Press, ooohhhhhh Leg Press.  I have a love hate relationship with this machine.  It literally kicks your ass.  And hams, and quads, and can get your heart pumping SUPER fast when you go really heavy with it.  It’s one of the oldest machines around, and looks really intimidating, but it’s not.  Most gyms have both a plate loading version and a pin weight version.  Personally, I prefer the plate loading type.  Foot placement can really change which muscles are doing the work in the movement.  If your feet are higher on the platform, you’ll feel it more in your upper hamstrings and glutes.  Wider feet will incorporate more inner thigh, narrow feet more outer thigh, and lower feet more quads.  Easy, right?  Try moving your feet around next time you’re on the Leg Press.  Be CAREFUL not to lock your knees out when you’re pushing the sled back up–you can break a knee that way dude!!

A traditional Leg Press

3.) Glute Kickbacks- These are AWESOME.  Personally, I love to do high volume repetition sets of these at the end of a workout as a finisher.  They’ll give you a great pump!  You can do them on either the glute kickback machine, or on a cable with an ankle band.  If you go the cable route, be sure to keep the weight low enough to keep good form.

One of my very first progress pictures taken in October 2014! No butt at all here!!
Took this last week after a crazy leg day!

4.) Lunges!!! I’ve done a bazillion of these over the years.  They’re not easy, but I’m convinced that next to squats, they are the building blocks of a great ass!  Like with squats, there are so many variations of these that you can really change it up.  Some of my favorites– weighted walking lunges with a barbell or dumbbells, uphill lunges (outside on a hill or ramp), lunge jumps, split lunges with foot on a bench and dumbells, curtsy lunges, and reverse lunges.  Change it up and do a few different versions in your next workout!   A tabata (HIIT session–try the tabata timer app; 20 seconds all out effort, 10 seconds rest for 8 rounds) of lunge jumps and squat jumps will definitely work your legs!  Try it as a finisher!

5.) Glute bridges.  You can do these with our without weight, banded, etc.  I prefer them with a barbell and a squeeze/hold at the top.  You’re gonna feel the burn for sure!

Amanda Latona- She’s the “Booty Queen” and is known world wide as the Queen of booty moves and glutes! #glutegoals

I hope that these exercises and ideas encourage you to experiment more with your typical workout routines.  Remember that muscles take YEARS to develop.  If you keep working hard, and you eat a clean diet consistently, you WILL see results!

I’m always here to answer questions, help, and encourage you, so feel free to email me at meredithlynchfitness@gmail.com, or DM me.

Till next time!

-Mere

2018—Get it Started on the Right Track!

General Fitness, Living the Fit Lifestyle, Nutrition/ Diet, , , , ,

 

I can’t believe we’re already coasting through January!  I hope you all enjoyed the holidays and your 2018 is starting off well!  We’ve all heard it.  New Years comes with a ton of promise.  January is full of resolutions—people wanting to do better, feel better, get better, etc.  The number one New Year’s resolution?  You guessed it—losing weight!  Here are my top tips on how you can get your year started on the right track to make some major changes and lose those last few pounds for good!

1.) Awareness.  The first step in making changes in diet and fitness is being AWARE of what you’re eating.  It means paying attention to portions, labels, skipping meals, behavior patterns, etc.  The first thing I typically make new clients do is keep a food log or journal for EVERYTHING they ate and drank for at least 7 days, including times and amounts.  Most people don’t really pay attention to what they’re eating, and that’s where problems start.  If you don’t know where you start point is, then it’s really hard to figure out a gameplan.  Pay attention to emotional eating, alcohol intake, eating out, even those little handfuls of snacks here and there at the office and at home add up, sometimes even to hundreds of extra calories a day.

2.) Activity.  Not every gym rat came out of the womb a gym rat.  It sometimes takes years to develop behavior patterns that result in spending multiple hours a day in the gym.  What I always tell my clients is to find a form of activity that you ENJOY and ultimately you will be more motivated to do it!  It’s NOT going to be easy, especially when you’re first starting out or have a lot of weight to lose, but every bit of activity is a step in the right direction.  Maybe it’s just a walk around your neighborhood, or a yoga class at the Y, or just parking a few spaces futher out at the mall.  Aim to be active as much as you can every day.  Make a list of active things that you enjoy— I promise you that you will look forward to doing those activities!  It doesn’t even have to be the gym (although obviously that’s what I recommend the most!!), it can be hiking, the zoo, running, bicycling, dance lessons—you name it, there’s a TON of ways all around you that will give you an opportunity to be active and burn calories!  You can even go with a friend and it will make it that much more enjoyable!  Just get out there and get moving!!

3.) Consistency.  There’s a saying that it takes 4 weeks for YOU to see your body changing, it takes 8 weeks for your close friends and family to see, and 12 weeks for the world to see your changes.  Rome wasn’t built in a day!  True weightloss and transformation comes from being CONSISTENT with nutrition and exercise day after day for several weeks.  Can you have pizza or a cheeseburger every now and then, OF COURSE!  But at the end of the day, it comes down to making healthy choices on a daily basis.  You can’t expect to see major changes in just a couple of weeks.  In fact, most doctors and nutritionists advise against losing any more than 1-2 pounds per week!  If you have 20-30 pounds to lose (which is most people just starting out) then do the math!

4.) It’s a LIFESTYLE.  Newsflash: There’s not a pill, a 21 day fix, a pink drink, a wrap, or a shortcut that will help you have true, lasting, successful weight loss.  It may work in the short term, but unless you truly begin to understand what it means to have a healthy lifestyle, I guarantee you’ll succumb to a lifetime of yo-yo dieting.  THOSE THINGS DON’T WORK!!! You can’t expect to do the “whole 30” for thirty days, or eat clean for 21 days, or drink a pink drink or Shakeology when you remember to, and go right back to your old habits and not gain the weight back.  You have to make true changes in how you approach choices in what you’re eating and the activity that you’re doing.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m here to help!  I love working with people to educate them on how to be healthy and fit!  We all start somewhere.  I’m taking clients on a part-time basis right now and would be honored to work with you and help you start your fitness journey.  Feel free to email me at meredithlynchfitness@gmail.com, or message me for more information.

Thanks for spending a few minutes with me reading this post today.  Cheers to a wonderful 2018!!

Till next time,

-Mere