Quick and simple chicken salad wrap

One of the biggest excuses people make for not eating a better lunch is that it takes too much time. Today I’m going to give you a quick idea that takes less than 5 minutes to make and cost less than $2.

Combine this wrap with a yogurt and glass of water and you’ve got a great lunch!

The ingredients list below is about what you’d find in one wrap. In the video below, I use a little more cheese and salad dressing because I’m maxing enough for 6 wraps. But, I’m not using 6 times the amount of cheese and salad dressing as is shown below so those two numbers are likley a tiny bit higher in the ingredients list and nutritional breakdown that what you’ll find in the actual wrap. That’s a good thing, but the difference in the end is small.

• Chicken (2 oz., canned-1/2 can)
• 6″ wheat tortilla
• Cheddar cheese (1 T.)
• Tomato (diced, 1 oz.)
• Light salad dressing (1 t.)

1. Mix the chicken, cheese, salad dressing, and tomato in a bowl.
2. Place on the center of the tortilla
3. Fold ends and roll the tortilla.
4. Enjoy!

• Calories: 170
• Fat: 3.5g
• Carbohydrate: 16g
• Sugar: 2g
• Cholesterol: 27mg
• Sodium: 570mg
• Protein: 18g

I’m not going to try to get into all the details of how each additive in these drinks and potions you find at the checkout line of every grocery store, convenience store, gas station, etc. affects your body in negative ways.  I’ll let the professional researchers tell you about the safety issues associated with consumption of commercially available energy drinks.    We’ve all heard the news stories of high school and college students mixing this stuff with alcohol and dying.  In this case, they didn’t even need the alcohol.  Here’s a study supporting the pattern of energy drink consumption explaining the enhanced risk of both caffeine and alcohol toxicity in youths.  If you’ve ever read the label on a can of this stuff, you’ll find that you can’t pronounce half of the ingredients.  Do you really want all those chemicals inside you?  Are you still waiting for the reasons we SHOULD be drinking this stuff?  Yea, me too.

How else can we get the energy we need to keep going?

You guessed it. 

Proper nutrition, with real food. 

Food is fuel and provides energy.  Many people lack energy because they’re eating crap.  Rolling through the drive-through for a greasy burger and fries doesn’t count as quality food.  Grabbing lunch from a vending machine will kill you over time.  I was in a drug store the other day and noticed that the bag of licorice has “A Fat Free Food” printed on the package.  Wow, really! That must mean it’s good for you right? Wrong.

A fire requires wood and oxygen to burn, right?  There’s the fuel.  Stop adding fuel and the fire dies out.  Add wet fuel or choke off the oxygen and the fire can’t get going.  Your body and your metabolism work the same way.  Add quality food and your metabolism burns hot. 

Get lean.

Notice that I didn’t say get thin.  There’s a difference.  Thin simply means weigh less.  Do supermodels look healthy? That’s thin. A diet might make you thin, but it won’t make you healthy and won’t give you energy.  Most diets result in less food, which means less fuel, which means less energy.  

I’m talking about adding more lean muscle to your frame.  You don’t have to have the freaky huge muscle that makes you look like 200 pounds of marbles in a 100 pound bag.  Think Olympic sprinter or gymnast lean and muscular instead.  Muscle is active and helps you move more efficiently.  A stronger body with less “baggage” will move better and require less energy to perform basic efforts. 

Stop spending $2 per can and you’ll have more than enough for a fitness membership at LifeStyles Fitness Center and still have almost $40 at the end of the month!

It’s really simple.  I don’t know how to make it more complicated, so here’s the answer to getting more energy, and not from a can:

1. Eat smart
2. Move more
3. Develop a stronger and more efficient you

Need help?  Here’s a way to get a great start on Your Fitness Journey!

I read the food label on everything. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m far from perfect in what I eat, but I like to know what I’m eating.  I use that label to make my choice.  Eat this or that. Which will help me get closer to my goal?  What should I stay away from at all costs?  Which items am I eating that don’t help me get closer, but satisfy a craving, and how can I factor that into my overall intake? 

What's in a label?

The information on the food label can help you understand and make better choices.  Here are a few key things I look at when reading a label:

• Serving size: Many people mistakenly believe that they’re eating one serving when in reality they’re eating more. Take the label below. It’s from a bagel. If you’re eating a bagel, you would expect that the serving size is a bagel. In this case, the nutritional profile is for a serving size of 1/2 bagel. If you’re eating the whole bagel, double everything.
• Total Fat: Limit the saturated fat and trans fat. These are the bad fats that clog your arteries.  Unsaturated fat is the better fat that helps lower cholesterol, reduces triglyceride levels, and lessens inflammation in the body.
• Cholesterol: Limit this to less than 200 milligrams per day.
• Sodium: Limit this as well.  Common recommendation is less than 2300 mg per day for adults and less for kids.  
• Total carbohydrate: This one’s often mistaken as the enemy. It’s an easy scapegoat.  Carbohydrate is your body’s primary source of energy and is needed for proper brain function. It’s also required for fat metabolism.  Here’s what to look for in this area.
• Dietary fiber is good. Fiber fills you up and aids in intestinal health. The current recommendation is 38g daily for males and 25g daily for females.
• Sugars should be limited to no more than 10% of total calories in most cases. The exception is when you’re taking in carbs for quick energy, in which case you’ll be fine with a higher percentage.  Keep in mind though that as part of a balanced diet, sugars aren’t really adding much benefit.
• Other carbohydrate includes the number of complex carbs, excluding fiber. A higher number here generally infers a more nutritious carb profile.
• Note: The wider the difference between total carbs and sugars the better. If there are 28 total carbs and 14 are sugar, 50% of the total carbs are added sweeteners and therefore aren’t going to do much for you.
• Protein: Protein is comprised of amino acids which are the building blocks of muscle.  This macro nutrient is also the more difficult for the body to digest, meaning that it has to work harder and you use more calories in the digestion process.  Recommendations vary on the percentage of protein needed.  A commonly used figure is to shoot for 0.4 to 0.8 grams per pound of body weight per day.  That may or may not work for you though depending on your dietary requirements and restrictions.
• Vitamins: This section will tell you the percentage of key vitamins and minerals contained in the food.
• Ingredients: The list of ingredients will be listed in order of the content. For example, of water is listed first, there is more water than any other ingredient.  Look for ingredients that you can pronounce. The fewer things that you can’t pronounce the better.

That’s the back of the package.

There are a few things you should consider on the front of the package as well.  Food producers are marketing masters and they’ll take every opportunity to capitalize on the latest public fad. 

I was in a store the other day and noticed the words “A Fat Free Food” on the front of a package of licorice. Someone might be tempted to think it’s better for you than another licorice not using that same label.  Take a look at the back of that package though and you’ll find that it’s almost all sugar. 

Here are a few guidelines, some might even consider them loopholes, related to marketing claims on the front of the package:

• Calorie free: Less than 5 calories per serving.
• Cholesterol free: Less than 2 mg cholesterol and 2 g or less saturated fat per serving.
• Enriched or fortified: Nutritionally altered so that one serving provides at least 10% more of the Daily Value of a nutrient than the comparison food.
• Extra lean:Less than 5 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, and 95 mg of cholesterol per serving and per 100 g.
• Fat free: Less than 0.5 g of fat per serving.
• Good source (as in “a good source of”): One serving provides 10-19% of the Daily Value for a particular nutrient.
• High (as in “high in vitamin C”): One serving provides at least 20% or more of the Daily Value for a particular nutrient.
• Lean: Less than 10 g fat, 4 g saturated fat, and 95 mg cholesterol per serving and per 100 g. 
• Low calorie: 40 calories or less per serving.
• Low cholesterol: 20 mg or less cholesterol and 2 g or less saturated fat per serving.
• Low fat: 3 g or less per serving.
• Low saturated fat: 1 g or less saturated fat per serving and 15% or less calories from fat.
• Low sodium: 140 mg or less per serving.
• More: One serving contains at least 10% more of the Daily Value of a nutrient than the comparison food.
• Reduced: A nutritionally altered product which must contain 25% less of a nutrient or of calories than the regular or reference product.
• Salt or sodium free: Less than 5 mg per serving.
• Sugar free: Less than 0.5 g of sugars per serving.
• Unsalted: Has no salt added during processing. (This does not mean it is “sodium free” unless it is naturally sodium free.)
• Very low sodium: Less than 35 mg or less sodium per serving.

Sources:

• HealthierGeneration.org
• Colorado State University, Understanding the Food Label, J. Anderson, L. Young and S. Perryman
• American Heart Association, Reading Food Nutrition Labels
• Cleveland Clinic, Heart and Vascular Health & Prevention

Which do you want to be? It's your choice.

“I can’t lose weight because I have a slow metabolism”.

You know what…you may be right. The sad truth is you’ve likely caused it to become slow.  Now do something about it.

First, what does that term mean?

Metabolism: the sum of the physical and chemical processes in an organism by which its material substance is produced, maintained, and destroyed, and by which energy is made available. (source: dictionary.com)

In simpler terms, metabolism is the process your body has to go through to power itself throughout the day, maintain your current energy levels, weight, and body composition. It’s how hot and efficient your engine runs.

Your metabolism is directly influenced by the amount of food you take in and the amount of movement you perform.  If you have a slow metabolism, it’s probably because you’ve made it slow.  Fortunately, that’s an easy problem to fix.  Here are three things you can do:

1. Increase your activity.  If you’re sitting down right now, stand up. There, you’ve just significantly increased your metabolism. Anything you can do sitting, try to do it standing. 

Talking on the phone? Stand up and walk around.

Holding a meeting at work? Remove the chairs from the room. Not only will everyone’s metabolism wake up, but the meeting will be shorter. Awesome!

2. Increase lean muscle. Your body has to work harder to maintain lean muscle than it does to maintain body fat.  Add more lean muscle to your frame through resistance training and you’ll increase your metabolism.  I know a great fitness center in Bolingbrook and a personal trainer in Bolingbrook too!

3. Eating increases your metabolism. When your body has to digest food, it uses calories. When you deprive yourself of food, your body slows down to conserve energy.

Slashing calories too low isn’t the answer.  The key here is to strike the balance between eating too much, which most people do, and not eating enough to support your goals. You also need to be eating the right amounts of the right foods. 

Your body uses energy (calories) to digest food.  You use more calories to break down and digest protein than carbohydrate and fat. As long as you don’t have a condition that limits your protein intake, consider upping those levels.  The Mayo Clinic suggests getting 10 to 35% of total calories from protein (assuming you do not have any dietary restrictions).

The truth is that everything except calorie balance is an excuse.  We’re not gaining weight because we’re not eating enough.  Show me one person who died of starvation and was also overweight.

Although your metabolism influences your body’s basic energy needs, it is ultimately your food and beverage intake and increasing your physical activity that determines how much weigh you lose.  Stop blaming your metabolism and recognize that you need to create an energy deficit by eating fewer calories and increasing the number of calories you burn through physical activity.

Happy Turkey Day!

I read recently that the average Thanksgiving dinner contains an estimated 4500 calories.  And that’s just the meal proper.  That doesn’t include all the junk you eat before everyone gathers at the table or the turkey sandwich you eat after the family has packed up and headed home. 

That’s enough calories for two to three days! 

With that in mind, I’d like to describe what I believe to be the best exercise anyone can do to prevent holiday weight gain.  It’s a really simple exercise, but one that many have trouble performing.  There’s very little equipment required.  In fact, you’ll put down any equipment that you’re holding on to immediately prior to performing the exercise. 

Here are the steps:

1. Begin seated in a chair. 
2. Position yourself approximately 8 inches from the edge of a table.
3. Place your hands, palms facing away from you, at the edge of the table.
4. Forcefully push against the table to slide your chair away from the table.
5. Stand up.
6. Walk away from the table.

 I call that exercise “The Pushback”.

It’s that simple.  Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not advising that you skip your traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  Enjoy your family and a nice meal, but do so in moderation.  Here are a few ideas to help you manage your holiday calories.

• Drink water with your dinner. In fact, drink a big glass of water before dinner and you’ll eat less.
• Eat more turkey and less of the other stuff.  Your body has to work harder to digest the protein and it makes you feel fuller faster.
• Go for the salad first.  The fiber will fill you up faster, leaving you less likely to eat the calorie-dense foods.
• Go light on the gravy. Many of the calories and fat are found in the gravy and sauces.
• Chew your food. The longer you take to eat one helping, the less likely you are to go back for a second (or third).

Happy Thanksgiving!

You won't find your six pack abs here

In search of your own six pack, you spend time on the floor doing endless reps and sets of sit ups and crunches from every direction. You may have even purchased the Ab Roller, Ab Doer, Ab Rocket, Ab Lounge, or some other ab contraption. How’s that working for you?

Let me tell you a secret. We all have six pack abs. They’re just harder to find on some people. Read on because I’m about to help you find yours. Here’s another secret. The answer doesn’t lie in all those contraptions. Even the pieces of abdominal equipment alone at the gym won’t bring out the six pack.

One of the biggest myths in fitness is that of spot reduction. To be blunt, the idea that you can work a specific area of the body with a specific exercise and melt the body fat in that area isn’t true. Now that it’s out in the open, how do you bring out the washboard in you?

First, abs are made in the kitchen. Eat better, move more. Notice I didn’t just say to eat less, although for many people that’s really important too. Instead, you need to eat enough of the right stuff to keep your body fueled, but not so little that your body thinks it’s starving.

The mistake many people on a weight loss journey make is to rely solely on diet and slash their calorie intake to the point your body begins storing energy as fat instead of using it to perform daily functions. When that happens, your metabolism slows, you lose energy, and eventually run out of gas. If you give your car less fuel than it needs what happens? If you give your car cheap low octane gas, what happens. Right, sluggish performance. Your body runs the same way.

Fuel your body with enough quality proteins for muscle growth and rebuilding, carbohydrate for energy, and fats for vitamin transport and hormone production, and you’ll be heading in the right direction.

Next, get the big muscles moving to burn more calories. Let’s go back to the car example. Which uses more fuel: Hummer or a Honda Civic? It takes more fuel to move the big car, so use the same principle with your exercise program. Bicep curls or squats? One exercise uses the little tiny muscles in your arm a nd the other uese the calorie-hogging muscles like the glutes and hamstrings. Those big muscles will bun more calories during the exercise and they have to work harder to recover after the exercise to rebuild. More work equals more calories used.

Now, back to the washboard stomach. With the elimination of the myth of spot reduction we know that sit-ups and crunches aren’t going to do the job. The key is to get rid of the body fat to see that six pack hidden in all of us and the best way to do that is to use more calories. To get you started, here’s a short video showing a four exercise full body complex. If you need more help, I know a good trainer for you.

The answer is…sometimes, sort of, and never.

Let me explain how your body uses energy. When you ingest carbohydrate, your body converts that to glucose to use it for energy. Glucose that is not needed for immediate energy is converted to glycogen, some of which circulates through your body and some is stored for later use. Your body uses the circulating glucose for immediate energy and once that’s depleted it goes to the glycogen stores. When you’re sleeping, your body is still using energy and since you’re not taking in any food, your body uses those glycogen stores. If you wake up and do your morning low to moderate intensity exercise without eating, your body goes to the next preferred source of energy which is body fat.

Should you eat breakfast?

However, this process can work if the exercise is at a low to moderate intensity. During high intensity exercise your body doesn’t process oxygen and instead prefers to use stored or circulating carbohydrate. In absence of that source and without oxygen, your body isn’t as efficient at burning fat as fuel and instead turns to attacking muscle. High intensity exercise is fantastic and should also be a part of your workouts regularly, but you also need to make sure you’ve got enough fuel to keep yourself going during that workout. Losing muscle is bad news.

I started this article saying I sometimes skip breakfast and I’d like to clarify what this is really about. Sometimes I skip breakfast before my workout, but I always eat breakfast either before or after my workout. Fasted state workouts are a solid strategy for those on a weight loss journey, but one that should be used sparingly. Once or twice weekly is enough. Make sure you eat a real quality breakfast very soon after your exercise sessions to refuel yourself. That means real food with a mix of protein, carbohydrate, and dietary fat. Not a donut or a cup of coffee. That’s not breakfast. On your other exercise days, eat a small meal 45 to 60 minutes prior to your workout to allow time for gastric emptying while giving you energy for the upcoming session. Follow it up with another meal to help your body rebuild effectively. Ultimately, the answer is never skip breakfast.

Give it a try and get ready for the results.

7 weight loss secrets

I get lots of questions about weight loss and I give lots of information.  When it comes down to it, we already know this stuff.  It’s just putting it into practice that’s the hard part. 

Get my latest special report:

7 Secrets to Successful Fat Loss

You can download it for free, but get it quick because it’s only going to be available for a short time. 

Before you download this killer free information that you can use right now, I have one favor to ask.

All I ask is that you leave me a comment below and let me know what you think of the report and how you’re going to put these strategies in play today!

Back away from the chocolate!

While there are a fair number of people that believe they can crank away for an hour on the elliptical machine and that somehow will cancel out the mammoth hot fudge sundae they’ll eat on the way home. I believe that there are as many or more people who stick to their guns and eat better because they don’t want to cancel out the benefits of their workout.

Without evidence to back it up, I’d guess at the following possible reasons:

1. The obvious reason would suggest that those who are at the gym more often are just naturally more interested in their health. They’ve built exercise into their lifestyles and better eating goes hand in hand.

2. You’re probably less likely to spend time at the gym only to go and undo all that effort with junk food.

3. They have a clear and attainable goal in mind and a solid plan to reach that goal. This is one that a lot of people miss. People often have fuzzy goals, unrealistic goals that set them up for failure, or no plan to really reach their goal and they go about their exercise haphazardly.

So, if you’re focused on weight loss as a primary goal, go to the fitness center more frequently. Sure, you could do 3 sixty minute workouts per week. But, I’ll bet you get better results with 6 thirty minute workouts because you’ll be more likely to tie in better nutrition.

Try it out and let me know what happens.

Cold water

Eat that sugary snack cake that you picked up in the checkout line at the gas station and you will have wasted 500 calories. There’s nothing in there that will do you any good. No muscle building proteins. No complex carbs to keep you fueled. No healthy fats keep testosterone levels up. Just simple sugars that will spike your insulin levels and shut off the body’s ability to burn fat as fuel.

The same holds true for what we drink. One huge source of empty calories that many people have a hard time giving up is soda. Most people who think they’ve given up soda do so by switching to the “healthier” diet soda. As if a diet soda has fewer chemicals.

I ran across a University of Texas study recently about diet soda’s impact on weight loss. The study followed 1,177 diet soda drinkers who were either normal or just overweight, but not obese. “On average, for each diet soft drink our participants drank per day, they were 65 percent more likely to become overweight during the next seven to eight years, and 41 percent more likely to become obese,” said Sharon Fowler, M.P.H., faculty associate in the division of clinical epidemiology in the Health Science Center’s department of medicine.

Those aren’t very good odds, as far as I’m concerned.

If that’s not enough, the study goes on to present an additional finding. The more diet soda that a participant drank, the higher their incidence of weight gain. Those who drank the most soda gained the most weight. A direct correlation between drinking soda and gaining weight.

There are many theories on why this is the case. A couple of the most common include:

• By drinking diet soda you’re tricking yourself into believing that this is a healthier option and that you deserve to eat more of other foods to balance things out. How many times have you heard or seen someone order a salad and drown it in dressing? When you’ve loaded it down with high-octane creamy dressing, it ceases to be a healthy choice. That one calorie diet drink suddenly turned into a few hundred wasted calories. Good job!
• The diet soda tricks the mind into thinking it’s getting the sugar it desires and you create a negative hormone response. The body becomes confused and shuts off the fat burning mechanisms and increases cravings for sweets.

So, what should you do instead?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, and again, and again. WATER.

Not flavored water.
Not sports drink.
Not coffee (after all it’s water based, right? Sorry, it doesn’t count)

Plain old cold water. That’s right, its boring. But would you rather be a little boring or a lot heavier?