Stop craving Sugar
By · CommentsI don’t know about you but every now and then I crave something sweet. I also know sometimes its good to give into your cravings especially if its something you want to enjoy on your “cheat” day. Yeah… its good to enjoy those sweets every now and then but if you are enjoying them all the time, I can bet you won’t lose any fat. So what can you do about it? Take a look at this video and it will help you curb the sugar cravings so you can lose fat. See you on the lean side!
Darren McDuffie
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist
Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Nutrition Education and Weight Management Specialist
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
My Fitness vs. Your Fitness
By · CommentsMy fitness vs. your fitness
I hope you are enjoying your President’s day holiday! If you didn’t have a holiday today well, I can only sympathize with you. I like having an extended weekend as it helps me to catch up on things. What about you? Anyways… I subscribe to other fitness newsletters because as a personal trainer, I figure there is always something out there I can learn but can you learn to much? I think this is possible because I notice quite frequently I’ll receive emails from other fitness gurus and they sometimes seem to contradict each other. So who’s right?
Fitness can be overwhelming in some aspects if you let it. All the fitness experts want to see you use their method or supplement because they want to make money. So who do you listen to and how do you know what they are telling you is right? I don’t have the answer for you but what I can tell you is learn the basics. There are basics to everything and they will work but for some reason fitness experts are intent on making things a bit harder than what they should be. Are you doing too much cardio? Are you doing too little cardio? Should you even be doing cardio? It goes on and on. It’s enough to make anyone confused so again, what do you do?
Find out what works best for you… and stick to it! There is no need to jump on the latest fitness program, the latest gadget, or the latest diet. Learn the basics first and listen to your body because your body knows what works. You may need to “tweak” something every now and then and that is to be expected but jumping from one thing to another only keeps your results delayed. What do you think? Until next post, see you on the lean side!
Darren McDuffie
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist
Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Nutrition Education and Weight Management Specialist
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
When Sweet goes bad
By · CommentsHey… its Superbowl Sunday!!!!! I know most of you will be sharing this day with friends and family, and consuming lots of food and drinks! If you remember, I discussed consuming sodas in a post a couple of months ago. You can read that here. In that article, I made a comment regarding diet sodas and how people think they are better than regular sodas. This is a myth! Diet sodas and even nutritional supplements contain a artificial sweetner call Aspartame. Aspartame has been linked to brain tumors and other ailments. Have a look at this documentary done by a woman who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis after years of aspartame consumption. If you are a consumer of diet sodas, please consider not drinking them anymore. See you on the lean side… and enjoy the Super Bowl.
Darren McDuffie
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
Certified Fitness Testing SpecialistCertified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Nutrition Education and Weight Management Special
Do you unravel when you travel?
By · CommentsI 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!
Weight vs. Fat… Do you know the difference?
By · CommentsI 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 Strength and Conditioning Specialist
Certified Fitness Testing SpecialistCertified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Nutrition Education and Weight Management Specialist
