I have heard the saying, “don’t say what you won’t do”. Have you ever heard it? I have some well defined boundaries about things I won’t eat or drink. I am sure there are things you just won’t eat or drink as well. For example, when I was a kid I had a tough time eating liver and when my grandmother would make it, guess who would run and hide? She told me many times how good it was for me, but I really didn’t care to hear it especially at the age of 10. I did have a cousin who loved liver and I would sit and gag as I watched him pour ketchup on it and eat it like it was his last meal before the electric chair. I have fallen in and out of love with different foods and drinks on my journey from a boy to a man. I still have my list of things I will absolutely not touch, but I have learned to open up to new and difference experiences as I have matured. Why am I telling you this? Stay with me… there is a method to my madness. I happen to have picked up an ebook from a fitness guru who happens to be a little off the cuff. What do I mean by that? This guys doesn’t follow the mainstream when it comes to fitness and he has some definite ideas about what people should be eating and drinking to rid their bodies of fat. I am half way through the book right now and I can tell you my ideas about eating were flipped upside down and turned inside out. It was like I was Neo from the Matrix trilogies and Morpheus was asking me if I wanted to take the red or green pill. You ever felt like that?

I wrote a blog post sometime ago on milk. Do you remember it? If not you can go HERE .  Two Fox News Reporters wanted to expose the milk industry for the unfit milk they were producing and selling for human consumption. The reporters were later fired because they were tampering with corporate america’s cash and that just can’t happen… corporate america controls everything and they care little about what is healthy for you. I’ll say it again, its all about profit. Ok… let me slide down off my soapbox and give you the real “diggy” about the post and why I am talking about milk! At the urging of the fitness guru I told you about earlier, I finally tried goat milk and I absolutely loved it! Hmmm… you might be saying goat milk, yuck! Well doesn’t your other milk come from a cow? I know we are “conditioned” to love cow’s milk but here are some bet you didn’t “knows” about goat milk:

• Goat’s milk closely resembles mother’s milk in human beings

• It can be digested in 20 minutes while it takes 2-3 hours for cow’s milk

• It contains trace elements, enzymes, and electrolyte

• It alkalinizes the digestive system

These are just some of the benefits of consuming goat’s milk. The main benefit for me was not gettting bloated and having gas like I do when I drink cow’s milk! If you have access to goat’s milk, open yourself up and try it… you’ll like it.
Darren McDuffie
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
Certified Nutrition and Weight Management Specialist
Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist

I live in paradise. South Florida is warm almost all year round and its a great place to live if you are health conscious like I am. One of the things I notice in my neighborhood every morning before I head to work are people walking. I see them walking along the street, walking in the parks, walking everywhere. Get the picture? I had a thought the other day and I wanted to share it with you. Is walking enough?  What do you think?

The body  can adapt to exercise very quickly. You have to vary the stimulus on your body over time to see results. If you are walking at the same pace every day, chances are you aren’t varying the stimulus enough to see greater results. I see most “walkers” going the same pace all the time and over a period of weeks they still look the same. There is no fat loss and there is no overall improvement in cardiovascular health. Walking at the same pace every day is just “maintenance” at best, but at least it is exercise. If you want to vary the stimulus on the body, then walk a further distance and vary your walking speed or even your weight. How can you vary your weight when you walk? You can carry a set of dumbbells or even buy a weight vest to increase your weight.  You might also try varying your walking elevation by walking up hills or if on a treadmill changing the incline. Walking is enough if all you want to maintain is your present levels of fitness, but if you want to improve you need to add something to it. Until next time, see you on the lean side.

Darren McDuffie
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
Certified Nutrition and Weight Management Specialist
Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist

I rarely watch the News. Why? I think the News is negative and I want to stay away from negative things. I do think things happen for a reason. I happened to be watching the news the other day and saw a report which commented on women and exercise. The report was quite disturbing as it put a negative spin on women and weight loss. In the report, it explained how women are likely to put on weight as they age. Hello! Men and women are likely to put on weight is they age. I know women may have some special circumstances such as childbirth and hormones that might work against them but maintaining and losing weight is realistic.

For the most part, we all live sedentary lives. Exercise is more important as we grow older and for women it can be the difference between gaining pounds or maintaining an ideal weight. Women will gain weight as result of childbirth and this is unavoidable but I think the female population suffers from a lack of knowledge when it comes to fitness. What do I mean by this? For example in the report I watched and later read, it made the point of convincing women an hour of exercise is too much. You might even think so as you are reading this but the fact is it really isn’t too much time if used wisely. How do you use it wisely?

As a woman ages, “strength training” becomes important. Many women are afraid to pick up a weight or lack the knowledge to use weight machines in an effective manner. This is why females are more susceptible to all the crazy diets. Here is the truth in simple terms. If women participate in a progressive strength training program it is much easier to maintain weight or lose weight if so desired. Women and men need to be educated about the right foods to eat and sadly most don’t have a clue when it comes to this. An hour a day is not too much to exercise if you have a plan and know exactly what to do. Time is a four letter word but when the time is spent wisely and not haphazardly its not a waste. We can find the time for anything we want, it just has to be made a priority. Until next time, see you on the lean side.

Read the article here

Darren McDuffie
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
Certified Nutrition and Weight Management Specialist
Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist

Every Year the city of Miami Gardens hosts a festival called, “Jazz in the Gardens” and I attended it yesterday. I got a chance to see Mary J. Blige and Robin Thicke. I am from the “old school”, so it was really great to see Teena Marie doing her thing at the festival as well. Jazz in the Gardens was complete with all the trimmings including vendors and food. This festival was attended by “grown folk” and even some younger adults. I don’t know if I am being a bit too critical and maybe its because I am a health nut but 90% of the people there were overweight. It was really sad and it left me worried and wondering why people don’t take better care of themselves. If you have the answer for me, please send me a comment because I really would like an answer. It is a known fact that obesity is now an epidemic and my eyes were really opened as a result of attending this festival. Is growing old a rite of passage to get out of shape? It seems that way by what I saw yesterday and I am starting to believe that people don’t really care. I even saw some younger adults in really bad shape. I wonder if this would have happened years ago?

I was very discouraged by what I saw out there. I carry my business cards with me all the time but I just don’t think I had enough cards to give out on this day. I could have given out 5,000 business cards easy at this event and still would have needed to give out another 5000. What is the problem with our society? Why is it not an option to have healthy snacks and healthy food at these events instead of fried foods and sugary drinks? I guess it is just not as enjoyable as the bad stuff. What do you think? Until next time, see you on the lean side.

Darren McDuffie
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist
Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Nutrition and Weight Management Specialist

I hope your week is off to a great start! An interesting thing happened to me last week while I was working out in my garage. I was doing a circuit of exercises back to back with no rest in between, it was a 8 total exercises to be exact. Its called the crazy “8” and was invited by Craig Ballantyne with Turbulence Training. You may think it is easy to do but think about this, you are challenging your body to cardio and resistance in the same workout. Its only eight exercise but I can tell you after I finish four rounds of “Crazy Eights” I am exhausted to say the least! Well, this isn’t about “Crazy Eights,’” although I am going to give you a link where you can get the workout and try it for yourself at the end of this blog post. This is about what happened in my mind as I continued to work through the circuit and got tired. I started to hear what I call “mind chatter.” Have you ever experience this phenomenon?

Mind chatter for lack of a better word, is the place within you that tells you to give up. I have experienced it on several occasions during some grueling workouts. I start hearing this little voice saying, “quit” and “its not worth it”. I am not going to lie it is hard to ignore it, but I do. Why? I like a challenge and I want to improve. What about you? Do you listen to your “mind chatter?” Has it ever gotten the best of you? I believe people listen to it way too soon and normally it occurs just before a major breakthrough, but its hard to fight through the pain, right? Yeah, it is… but it is in these times that you’ll find what you are made of and if you are going to sink or swim. Do you sink or do you swim? I would love to hear about your experience with “mind chatter” and whether you listened to it or ran right through it and how it affected you. Until next post… see you on the lean side.

Darren McDuffie

Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
Certified Nutrition and Weight Management Specialist
Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist

GET THE CRAZY EIGHTS HERE

Check out my new video! I am discussing women’s pushups and the philosophy behind why I do what I do with my clients. Pushups are a great overall body exercise but with the traditonal way women do pushups you don’t get much activation in the abdominal region. If you are a woman, do your pushups this way for more abdominals action and better results. I hope you enjoy the video. See you on the lean side.

Darren McDuffie

Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist

Certified Nutrition and Weight Management Specialist

Certified Fitness Testing Specialist

Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist

I am traveling this week! A few thoughts came to mind so I wanted to ask, “what do you do when you are traveling”? What do you do when you are thrown into an environment and its not what you are use to? Do you adapt or do you just let yourself sink and give up on your healthy eating habits and exercise?

In the past when I traveled on business, I was at my own mercy. I would fall prey to all the meeting snacks they put out during break which would include pastries, cookies, and even ice cream. I”m not sure what it is about meetings but the thought of sitting there listening to one person for an extended period of time made me sleepy. In order to   combat the sleepiness, I would eat just to try and stay awake. That was the wrong thing me for me to do! It gave me a sugar rush and it would temporarily keep me awake, but within a few minutes I would have to fight to stay awake even more due to the sudden rush of insulin. Once the meeting was over, I would run to my room feeling exhausted even though I didn’t exercise. Why wasn’t I exercising? It was probably because I thought I needed a gym at that time. I had fooled around in hotel gyms before and alot of them were ill equipped . What do I mean? They usually had one raggedy treadmill, no dumbells, and very few had any cardio equipment. So… what to do, what to do? I would usually go back up to my room kick up my feet and watch TV. Is that what you do now?

I think most of us give up when we are traveling because its easy to do. Its easy to eat all the bad food and skip working out because you are traveling isn’t it? What if you made the sacrifice to continue your exercise and eat healthy foods? Here’s what I did to make sure I didn’t skip my exercise routine and make sure I ate properly. I brought along my bodylastics resistance bands. I can attach those to my hotel room door for back exercises and also use them for a variety of other exercises. In addition, I packed some trail mix consisting of almonds, raisins, cranberries, and pistachio nuts. I ate that for a snack in between my regular meals. I bypassed the pastries in the morning, skipped the afternoon cookies, and told the ice cream goodbye with the evening meal. It made it easier that I prepared in advance and didn’t fall prey to self sabotage. Are you falling prey to self sabotage? See you on the lean side!

Check out Bodylastics

I had an interesting epiphany the other day…. it came at a crazy time. I am training a client and she happened to ask me why she isn’t seeing her weightloss on the scale? I told her not to pay attention to the scale. She gave me a crazy look as if to say, “What do you mean, don’t pay attention to the scale?”. It sounds odd to tell someone this especially when their primary goal is to lose weight or is it? I think there finally needs to be a clear line drawn between weightloss and fatloss. Follow me… I am going somewhere with this!

In case you didn’t know, there is an obsession with weight loss. I would be willing to bet you can’t watch TV for an extended period of time without seeing an ad for some pill or potion to lose weight. Companies capitalize off this, and implant in the mind weight, weight, weight. Am I correct? What about fat? Few if any of these commercials attack fat loss! I wonder why? It’s probably because the money is in the disease and not in the cure. What do I mean by that? All of these weightloss companies are out to make a buck and not necessarily to educate the consumer. Don King, the boxing promoter, says it best when he says, “ Only in America” because only in America can ignorance be capitalized on to make a quick buck. They want to make money and won’t tell you the truth, but I am going to tell you the plain truth about weightloss right here and now! weightloss is a myth, it is fatloss you want to shoot for if you want to look and feel better. How could that be?

Have you ever seen someone who has loss weight at a rapid pace? I have and I can tell you they still looked unhealthy! When you lose weight at a rapid pace, chances are you are also losing muscle. Muscle is something you just can’t have enough of because it keeps your metabolism humming along so you can burn calories. You need to burn calories in order to lose fat. If you replace fat with muscle, you’ll look damn good… more shapely, more toned, and then you’ll have something in the bank that will keep your fat burning furnace revved up. You could settle for plain ol’ weighloss where you lose weight only to gain it back. If I were you, I would pick up a barbell, a dumbell, or resistance band and start building some muscle today. What do you think? See you on the lean side…Dee

Darren McDuffie

Certified Nutrition Education and Weight Management Specialist

Why are we so afraid to change? Its the question I ask myself whenever I go to a “commercial gym”. What is a commercial gym, you might be asking? Its the gym you pay a monthly fee to use. I don’t do commercial gyms often but when I do, I always see the same thing. I bet you have seen this and if you haven’t you probably will at some point. Hell… the person I am going to describe might even be you! Here goes… I almost always see the same person doing the same workout they have been doing for months sometimes even years. This same person will inevitably complain about not seeing any results. I usually think “duh”… you are not going to see any results until you change your program and do something different. Why is that?

In case you didn’t know it, your body Will start to adjust to a workout the very first time you do it. This is why your workout actually starts to get easier unless you add more weight, more reps, or sets. I don’t care who you are, this is going to happen. This just doesn’t happen with the weight you lift, it can also happen with your diet. You may need to “tweak” your diet depending on caloric expenditure. You might try to rotate carbs, cutback on carbs, or even add more protein to your diet depending on what you are trying to accomplish. I guess you are getting the picture now, right?

Boooorinnnggg is what I call the same gym routine everyday! Mix it up a little bit. Did you know there aren’t just barbells and dumbells for exercise? You can use resistance bands, sandbags, and tractor tires. All of these methods are unconventional and require your body to adjust and in turn, you get better results. You don’t even have to use barbells or dumbells… what about bodyweight? Yup… those pushups you did in your high school gym class can help you shape a lean frame! There is so much which exists in the fitness world its ashame to waste it on a boring bench press and a barbell curl. I always change my routine and am always looking to challenge myself with something harder and the results are always good. Don’t be afraid to “switch your pitch up” every now and then. Have you changed your routine and got good results? I would like to hear about it. See you on the lean side….Dee

Darren McDuffie
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist
Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Nutrition Education and Weight Management Specialist
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist

Did you know there is a phenomenon called skinny fat? How could anyone be skinny fat? I’ll tell you how. Have you ever seen anyone that looks great in clothes, but when the clothes come off, you can see the belly fat around their midsection? There can also be fat around the thighs, hips, and back. Now… think really hard and I’ll ask you again? Have you ever seen someone who is skinny fat? I have seen many people who are skinny fat. I was even skinny fat myself a couple of months ago. The good thing about being skinny fat is…. its not that hard to get rid of it if you change your eating habits, and ramp up your exercise routine. If you’re skinny fat,  remember it doesn’t take much to lose that “baby” fat and get back to peak condition. If you start now, you’ll be in great shape by the time spring comes. Are you skinny fat or were skinny fat? I would like to hear about it. See you on the lean side…Dee

Skinny Fat

Darren McDuffie
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist
Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Nutrition Education and Weight Management Specialist
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist