Real Fit or Fake Fit

Conforming to Your Image

Did you ever notice that you can't lie to or con the person in the mirror?

You can Ponzi your partner, scam your spouse, or maybe even do slim shady your live-in lover but you can't put on or bend the truth a smidgen with the reflexion that's glaring back at you from the aluminum-coated glass you shave in or put your morning makeup on in front of. The image returning your glance knows the real YOU.

And that brings us to the subject of today's post: "Are you Real Fit or Fake Fit?" Do you even really know anymore?

In so many areas of our lives, you and I have to augment our authentic selves to suit someone else or to be the most effective in the situation that we're in regardless of the ultimate cost. Today's social and business arenas oftentimes demands that we give 110% all the time and perform whether or not we're sick, tired, or just burnt out.

We feel constrained to jack ourselves up on quadruple espressos or artificial stimulants just to be that super charged, always positive leader, mentor, or salesperson that's always on the ball. The mega-dose of caffeine we ingest six days out of seven disguises our natural proclivity to get up slowly,  expands our normal attitude to larger than life in order to accomplish the goal that receives our achievement or captures the sale that must be penned, and amplifies our voice tones to a heightened crescendo above their usual evenness.

Might I offer a cautionary warning of "Buyer beware" to those who fake it on more days than they're living authentic self image?

My friend, there's a real danger in conforming to a portrayed or phony persona too often. While trying to please or achieve for ourselves for monetary reasons or for others in order to secure a career advancement, you and I lose our truth and compromise our future health. Our authentic self image blurs and well-being eventually vanishes.

In my area of expertise which is health and fitness, I find myself meeting one person at an initial consultation, hearing all about their personal life, work, dietary habits, exercise routine, and weekend hobbies only to become very well acquainted with someone entirely different after four to six weeks of diet monitoring under my watchful guise and an electronic scale who only tells it like it is.

The individual who originally contacted me for dietary guidance and assistance that described themselves as self disciplined and said that he or she only had one cheat day per week and ate clean on every other day really flip-flopped their real dietary intake. They ate clean just one day a week and filled their bellies with boxed, bagged, and wrapped food almost everyday.

And I don't just get the p.c. answer when it comes to eating, I get flimflammed in the area of exercise too. The man or woman who identified and likened themselves as an athlete, always making it to the gym to do at least 30-60 minutes of fasted cardio on five days out of seven and who rarely had one or at most two alcoholic drinks over the course of a weekend didn't have the cardiovascular capacity to walk up a flight of stairs carrying their daily mail but, strangely, was called by their first name at the neighborhood bar.

It's important to live who we really are most of the time in order to avoid losing ourselves and then, as a result, drown our self loathing in drugs and alcohol, permanently screwing up our metabolisms with weight-loss pills or steroids, and being diagnosed by our GP as having blocked arteries similar to the Hoover Dam, possessing skyscraper high blood pressure, or owning a total cholesterol number that looks more like the Power Ball Jackpot winnings than it does a serum blood fat amount.

So how do you and I stay authentic in the airbrushed, edited world that we find ourselves in?

What works for me and for many of the people I coach is to consistently address on a daily and weekly basis the five areas of our lives that we commonly lie to ourselves and other people about. The five spheres of life that make up who we are.

1.) Nutrition. We are what we consume each and every day. The food and drink that passes through our lips make up the cells, tissues, bones, and organs of our body which is ultimately you and me.  Eat as close to nature as possible at every meal.

2.) Mental Health. Learn to cope with the high stress of life, love, and work by putting yourself to a self-control test regularly, might I suggest weekly, where you can talk yourself down from off the ledge without chemicals. By doing this on a regular basis, you and I learn that in the hard times we can truly stand without bending or breaking. Hot yoga is one of the best ways to test ones mental strength. Putting yourself in a room that's heated to 105 degrees with mirrors reflecting back how unbalanced you are when a single droplet of sweat is about to drip off the tip of your nose while attempting to stand on one foot is a mental test like no other.

3.) Physical Fitness. I'm going to have to say it, "Leg Day." Sorry everybody. No one likes doing wall sits, weighted squats, cheek-to-cheek sprints, or walking lunges but almost everyone needs them and not one of us does enough of them on a regular basis (at least two days per week). Making yourself do the really hard stuff, the garbage you hate to do, defines you and having an awesome butt and set of legs can't hurt either when life goes on the skids.

4.) Environmental.  You and I are exposed to air toxins that can cause cancer as well as other serious health effects like reproductive and birth defects. We're exposed to toxic chemicals overtime with the air we breathe along with the toxic substances found in our water and soil, therefore, it's important for us to detox as much of these toxins as possible through the largest organ that we have -- our skin. Sweating is one of the best ways in my opinion to accomplish this so get outdoors and burn baby burn.

Hate the heat, then how about getting in subzero temperatures in a cryotherapy chamber. Cryo businesses are opening up in many major cities and their research speaks of reducing systemic inflammation, relieving muscle and arthritic pain, and improving nerve conduction velocity.

5.) Financial. You can't live very long without realizing that money matters. You can't be healthy mentally or physically without a balanced checkbook, credit cards that are max'ed out, or a mortgage payment that's late again. Being in the financial red is taxing on the mind and the body, eventually affecting the health of your brain, organ systems, and heart. Learn to live within your means and you'll feel better I promise.

At the end of our life, you and I wind up leaving this world solo so we might as well start getting familiar and really comfort with who that person truly is since we'll be spending the rest of eternity with them.

Thank you for reading and inspiring me to be genuine.

Bell Gia
Nutrition and Fitness Expert

Maintenance Exercise Following Weight Loss -- Do I Have to Keep Working Out So Hard or As Often?

Maintaining Lean Muscle Mass After Losing Weight

You accomplished your goal of losing your unwanted weight. Congratulations! Losing weight isn't easy and if you've dropped 5, 10, or more pounds and kept it off. You should be extremely proud of yourself. I know that I am of you for it.

Now that you've gotten rid your additional weight burden supported by your knees, hips, and shoulders, you probably want to know IF you have to keep exercising at the same intensity level you were when you were dieting or do you have to exercise for the same duration or length of time? According to substantial statistical research, your weight maintenance depends upon you doing just that. 

The National Weight Control Registry is the largest prospective investigation of long-term weight loss maintenance, established in 1994. The NWCR reports on their website (www.nwcr.ws) that they are currently tracking over 10k individuals who have lost considerable amounts of weight and have kept it off for an extended period of time. This continued research study has over twenty-two years worth of diet and exercise questionnaires and annual follow-up surveys collected from both men and women over the age of 18 years who were once overweight but then dieted to obtain a BMI in the normal range (18.5 - 24.9). 

The average National Weight Loss Registry member has lost 33 kg or about 72.6 pounds and has maintained their weight loss success for greater than 5 years. To maintain their weight loss, NWCR registrants describe engaging in high levels of physical activity related as 60 minutes of exercise. If NWCR members are to be believed, 94% of them report increasing their physical activity above what they had previously done before losing their unwanted weight and 90% disclose that they engaged, on average, in about one hour of "exercise" per day. 

I have worked in the healthcare professional in one capacity or another for twenty-five years. Two decades of experience helping over 1,000 people lose weight, eat healthy, get physically fit, and either gain muscle or maintain what muscle they had has provided me with lots of statistical data of my own. I will tell you that the majority of my female and male clients had to continue to workout regularly "almost" as hard and nearly as lengthy in duration as they did while they were in the process of losing weight. In order to stay at their desired size, they needed to maintain about the same amount of lean muscle mass they had added to their bodies while they were dieting and their weight maintenance also required the continued caloric expenditure or calorie burn produced as a result of exercising or physically moving. 

Physical activity or exercise helps with weight loss due to its metabolism boosting effects and its caloric expenditure. Physical activity or exercise that requires an additional weight burden upon the body's musculature causes an increase in muscle size -- you build more muscle. A pound of muscle has more energy requirements THAN a pound of fat, therefore, the more lean muscle mass you possess, the higher your basal metabolic rate typically. The higher your BMR, the more calories you burn throughout the day and night. 

If a certain amount of movement or exercise enabled someone to lose their excess weight, it is scientifically unreasonable to think that about the same measure of physical activity isn't going to be necessary to keep off the lost weight due to that person's requirement of a higher basal metabolic rate to process AND USE UP the food they put in their bodies in the form of breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner as energy as well as to construct the molecular building materials for their cells and tissues.

I hope this post answered the maintenance exercise question. Thank you for reading.

Until next time,
Bell Gia
Nutrition and Fitness Expert

How to Get A Great Butt

What Kind of Butt Are You Looking For?

What do you think of immediately when you hear the names Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj, and Jennifer Lopez? 

Great butts! Right?

Butts that are worth millions of advertising dollars to the women who sport them. From brand sponsorship, sports car ads, clothing-line endorsements, and everything salable in between, it's no wonder why J. Lo insured her mega-money-making bootie for supposedly $27 million dollars. BUT those BUTTS belong to celebrities and what matters to you, frankly, is YOU. So, let's you and I discuss YOUR derrière. 

What kind of butt are you looking for? Do you want to look great in a pair of ripped jeans?  Is your desire to break hearts at the pool or while walking down the beach with a butt worth killing for? Or would you be satisfied with a butt that just didn't sag down onto the backs of your legs?

When you're young, regardless of whether you're male or female, it doesn't take much to have a fantastic looking backside as long as you aren't too heavy. A good butt in your youth just kind of happens without very much effort from its owner. You wake up in the morning and BAM your bootie looks awesome. But as you get a little bit older, around 27-30, or if you gain too much weight, 10+ pounds or put on the Freshman 15, above what's ideal for your height and gender, your butt can become your least liked body part right next to your apparently large feet or misshapen toes.

The difference between a butt worth COVETING or worth COVERING is the amount of fat and muscle your bootie possesses. More muscle means a rounder, fuller filled-out pair of jeans or bikini bottom. A butt that contains a lesser degree of lean muscle mass is a bootie that has too much skin that will sag onto the backs of ones hamstrings. A butt that's well-padded with fatty deposits or subcutaneous adipose can look voluminous, voluptuous, and worth squeezing as long as that fatty tissue is attached to a descent amount of gluteus muscle. However, a backside that's stuffed with unflattering fat or lumpy deposits can show cellulite dipples and dents when NOT concealed in a pair of Spanks or spandex-containing workout pants.

I hope I have convinced you that the difference between having the butt of your dreams or the bootie of your nightmares is MUSCLE. On your next trip to the gym or during tomorrow's outdoor run, why not interrupt your normal exercise routine or pattern and workout your glutes? With regular, repeated gluteal training, four weeks from now you'll be taking selfies of your beautiful butt more than you do now of your pretty face.

Thank you for your continued support. I appreciate you taking the time to read my blog on a daily or weekly basis. You give me reason to speak which is priceless.

Bell Gia
Nutrition and Fitness Expert