Displacing Good Calories with Convenience-Food Alternatives

I Can't Drink All that Green Juice

GRAB & GO
MAKE & TAKE

I hear it all the time from my clients,"I can't get down all that vegetable juice. I can't finish it all. "We can chug down a 20-ounce big gulp and slam a pilsner of beer but we can't drink a serving-sized plastic cup of veggie juice...So why do you think that is?" I ask.

We spend much of our days rushing from here to there in the hopes of getting everything done and still workout in order to stay healthy, trim, and fit. 

Does this sound like you: Got to get to the gym early in the morning so I'm going to stop at Starbucks after my exercise class and grab a quick coffee and breakfast sandwich because I can't be late to work. Or is this you -- Taking a couple courses at school to further my education or get ahead in my career so I'm going to jump out and grab Chipotle so I can squeeze in a couple sets at the gym or catch that 5:45pm spin class. No, then perhaps this is you: The kids need to get picked up from daycare or aftercare, therefore, I'll just drive through the golden arches and grab a chicken wrap and then high-tail it over to karate. 

Rush, rush, rush. Many of us are in such a hurry that we think we only have time to grab something QUICK to eat and drink in order to stay on time for everything else we have to accomplish on any one given day and still get our exercise in somewhere. We've talked ourselves into believing that this is what we must do to get everything done and still have time to stay fit and healthy but what we are really doing is counterproductive to your goals and many of us are clueless. 

You are trying to get thin or stay weight stable but what you're actually doing is sabotaging your gains and weight-loss success by displacing the good calories you could be eating that are better for your body with other less-valuable food calories in the hopes of saving yourself some time and money. 

That stop at the Buck in the morning is costing you $8 and 20 minutes of your time. It is also simultaneously filling up your stomach with a quick source of energy (caffeine) along with a bunch of fat you don't need, some not-too-great overly-processed protein, and more carbs than your body needs to get four hours of work done before the lunchtime meal arrives. With that same eight bucks and fourth of an hour, you could juice five pounds of carrot and an entire package of celery. Yes, you really could. 

I have timed this same scenario out hundreds of times in front of the women and men I've worked with in order to show her or him that in the 20 minutes it takes for them to drive to their local coffee shop and throw down some cash, they could have juiced all that produce I just mentioned and wash their juicers, providing themselves with vitamins, minerals, anti-aging antioxidants, power-packed protein, easily burnt-off carbs, and the healthiest forms of essential fats in the same amount of time. 

The human adult stomach is only about the size of a medium-sized fist. Generally on average, the stomach has a volume of approximately one liter which is about a quart. However, the stomach does possess the capacity to STRETCH and hold more food -- up to about four liters or an entire gallon.

Whether your stomach can hold one liter or a gallon, SPACE is LIMITED. If you drink a large coffee with cream and sugar and chow down on a breakfast sandwich, there goes room for a 16-ounce green juice at your local juice bar. 

It doesn't take a nutritionist, dietitian, or a weight-loss specialist to tell you what you already know which is that a giant glass of fresh-pressed vegetable juice is healthier for you than a gigantic cup of Joe and 3-minute microwave egg and cheese biscuit. You will undoubtedly feel better, think more clearly, and have more energy to leap over tall buildings in a single bound if your FUEL of CHOICE is lean and green than black and comes in a sack.

In conclusion, do the mathematically computations and stopwatch your "supposedly-necessary" time saver you call breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner. When you take the few minutes to reflect on your behavior and decision making process, you may find out that what you thought was cheap and easy is actually expensive in respect to your healthy lifestyle and training program.

Thank you for your time and valuable support. You help me feel necessary in the overall scheme of things.

-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

Are You Allergic to Restaurant Bread or Store-Bought Cupcakes?

Diet Baseball

Three Strikes and It's Out

As a Weight-Loss Specialist I have grown to HATE the weekends. Like a priest, I hear confessions from morning until night on Saturdays and Sundays. Admissions of guilt that sound like this: "I ate too much, I drank too much, I had dessert, and I didn't exercise."

Week in and week out I teach my clients how to lose weight and get rid of their fat. Drink enough water, limit your starches, exercise regularly, avoid processed food, fill up half your plate with vegetables, eat no more than two pieces of fruit per day, measure your nuts, and don't eat unless you're physically hungry. I sound like a broken Bride of Chucky Doll to me.

I go over the diet maintenance rules with male and female clientele until they can recite them in their sleep. The dieting boundaries I prescribe will become, I hope, second nature to them. Nobody wants to be on a "diet" forever. What you consistently eat, must become the way you live your life, a lifestyle that's automatic, something that you don't even have to think about anymore. 

But it never ceases to amaze me that after 4 to 8 weeks, 3 to 6 months, or even after an entire year of learning what good, clean eating habits, figuring out what works for them, and discovering which foods just DON'T, that those same individuals who have lost 20, 30 50, and well over 100 pounds go back to eating the same kinds of food that contributed to their weight gain (the same foods that I took out of their diet) to begin with. 

Some foods cause negative effects in the bodies of certain people for one reason or another  -- bloating, gas, cellulite, water weight gain, and fat deposition. I like to describe it as a metabolic food allergy.  It's not a "real" food allergy like being allergic to shellfish or nuts that cause ones throat to swell shut or the skin to break out in hives. It's a physical weight-gaining phenomenon  that takes place every single time Miss or Mr. XYZ eats PQR.

Specifically, I am talking about going to a nice restaurant with your beloved, having a couple pieces of bread and oil before dinner, and then blowing up like a balloon on the scale the next morning. Maybe for you it's alcohol. Does a glass or two of chardonnay with lunch cause you to unbutton your pants by night fall? Or perhaps the fat-gaining Satan in your life is a baked good like a mini cupcake or chocolate-chip cookie. A nibble of just one of these sweet treats send you into your closet to pull out your sweat pants with the adjustable waist band for several days. 

It's been my professional experience that there are just some kinds of food that don't work metabolically with some people for whatever reason. (The reason doesn't really matter.) This is where the Diet Baseball Rule of Three Strikes (XXX) comes into play. Let's say you've been doing great on your diet -- losing 2-3 pounds per week, your clothes are getting looser, your fat stomach is disappearing, and your chicken wings are firming up and no longer flapping in the wind when you wave to a friend. One day you get forgetful or over confident (cocky) and think that after losing 20 pounds you can have a couple slices of sausage pizza and a glass of chianti with a girlfriend. Your girlfriend can eat Italian and not gain a pound, but you can't. 

The next morning like clockwork, you're 5 pounds heavier on the scale and you call me screaming, "What happened?" I could explain to you about carbs holding approximately 3 grams of water per carb gram or give you a speech about inflammation and alkaline/acid balance but doing that just causes me to use up my valuable saliva and you to think that your 5 pound gain is only temporary, but I know it's probably not. You're drifting back toward the diet rat wheel and in another week or two you will have repeated the same kind of unclean eating behavior and gained more weight until pretty soon you are back where you started -- fat and unhappy.  

When you have achieved real weight loss, not lose a pound/gain two pounds, but really won the battle of the bulge and reset your weight set point, there are foods at this new weight-weighing low that you can no longer eat and stay where you're at. No body wants to hear that though. Whether or not it's true doesn't really matter to most people who have been overweight and then diet down and get thin.  This is the point where I usually get into a tug-of-war with my client as to whether he or she is going to listen to me or their stomachs. 

So here's how the Three Strikes Rule works. You want to eat pizza, I tell you that maybe you can eat a couple bites of pizza every now and again but your days of devouring several slices are over unless you want to tie yourself to the stairclimber for 2 hours. You don't believe that you can't eat pizza anymore so I let you try it your way and you have pizza. The next couple days I ask you to text me your weight. You gained 2.5 pounds. Strike ONE. We both make a mental note. A month goes by and your craving for cheesy pizza comes back so you give in to your desire and stop at the local pizzeria and chow down. The next morning you are 3 pounds up. Strike TWO. You are starting to believe me now but not quite yet. It usually takes this third time for you to admit what I have been saying all along. This next dietary slide occurs two months after strike two and just as morning follows night, you ate pizza and you gained 3.5 pounds. Strike THREE and now pizza eating is OUT. 

Maybe weight gain happens when you eat cereal or oatmeal for breakfast several days in a row. Perhaps it's avocados in your salad or fat-free frozen yogurt after dinner that makes you blow up. It can be something different for everyone but what actually matters is what foods don't work with YOUR unique metabolism. 

The 3 Strikes Rule (XXX) -- borrow it from me and use it to help you stay at your ideal body weight from here on out. Get off the weight lose/gain merry-go-round for good.

Thank you for reading my blog and making me feel like I'm doing some good in the world.

-Bell Gia

Nutrition and Fitness Expert

YOUR DIET IS AFFECTING YOUR DAUGHTER AND YOUR GRANDDAUGHTER WHETHER YOU REALIZE IT OR NOT

Your Dietary Habits are Shaping the Next Two Generations

Think, "Big Picture" for a moment...The food you eat is fuel or energy your body needs to do physical stuff like blink, snap a selfie, do a couple dozen squats, or carry in the groceries from the car. Your Greek yogurt, can of tuna fish, handful of nuts, ice-cold apple, and bowl of piping-hot broccoli all contain amino acids, carbohydrates, and healthy fats that your body requires to create all the cells, tissues, organs, muscle, hair, and blood in your body. 

The amino acids you get from your meals and snacks build proteins and those proteins help make and mark your DNA. What? You don't think of your breakfast burrito, your lettuce wrap, or your Frappucino like that? Maybe you should start.

Your eating habits aren't just about feeding your cravings, trying to stay at your ideal weight, or about looking great for summer. What you deem sustenance isn't a matter of following a particular diet like Paleo, being a lacto- or ovo-vegetarian, or trying to save innocent animals from suffering by going all-out vegan which is highly commendable. The majority of what you eat is used by your body to create new parts when the old ones wear out and to fix whatever inside or outside of you gets damaged or broken. 

Your body's processes of renewal and repair can be best summed up like this: "You are what you eat." You've heard that before, right? But have you read about the latest research that's suggesting that if you're a woman of childbearing age that well-know expression becomes: "Your granddaughter of the future is what YOU eat"? 

It turns out that if you are of the female persuasion, (Fellas, I will get to you and your epigenome in another post) what you nosh on or choke down can have even farther reaching affects than your current level of health and well being. As a woman, what you eat today can affect who your daughter of tomorrow may be and your diet also has the power to dictate in large part who your future GRANDDAUGHTER may become.  

There's two ways that this is possible. 

As a female, anywhere from the age of first menses to menopause, you and the foods that you eat create the baby that will by-planning or by-surprise begin to grow in your uterus when you get pregnant. What you have eaten and continue to eat -- good, bad, or even worse -- will, if your child-to-be is a girl, create her lifetime-supply of eggs or approximately 6 to 7 million oocytes that will be created and afterwards stored in her ovaries at around week 20 of gestation. 

The chemical substances that you are ingesting, processing, absorbing, and utilizing on a fairly regular basis are placing biochemical markers on top of your DNA called epigenetic marks that can and in many cases will be passed on to your progeny or offspring and their offspring. Scientists are currently discovering that more than just eye color, height, ear attachment, and some diseases are passed along in our sex cells or germ line to the children we create. Your body's sensitivity and ability to process sugar, how much fat your body stores, and your metabolic rate may all be handed down to your daughter and granddaughter.  

In practical terms, what does this mean ultimately? 

If you are throw back shots of tequila on the weekends with your spouse or make a habit of sharing romantic bottles of wine on the beach with your dates and you get pregnant as a result of your friskiness, those ounces of alcohol you slam and the four-cheese stuffed calzones you chow-down on at midnight along with all the other not-so-great food-like substances you digest frequently are the building materials your body is going to use to form the baby-making eggs that will one day become your grandchild just as your oocyte that was just fertilized by your lover's sperm was formed inside of your mother when she was a growing fetus inside of your grandmother's womb. Your regular consumption of sugar and fat, alcohol, and drugs are affecting your DNA and therefore possibly impacting your offspring's future by marking their genetic information with many of your biochemical predispositions.

You not only have the power to create a newer and better you by what you choose to put into your mouth and bodily system each day, you also have a huge opportunity to radically change the future of our planet by populating Earth with a human being who can think outside the box, run like the wind, feel empathy for others, and live to be over 100 by your eating lean, clean, and green. 

Thank you for reading what my super-charged neurons were currently meditating upon today and thanks giving me a reason to wake up in the morning.

-Bell Gia

Nutrition and Fitness Expert

FRUSTRATED WITH YOUR STOMACH - CAN'T GET DEFINED ABS

HOW CAN I GET ABS?

Whether or not your abdominal muscles show or DON'T has a lot to do with three things primarily -- One, your current percentage of body fat. Two,  the size of your abdominal muscles' muscle "bellies." Three, the difference in your abs depends upon the length of your abdominal tendons.

Your percentage of body fat has everything to do with whether or not you can see your tummy muscles in the mirror after a really good workout or just rolling out of bed.
I started training professionally when I was 17 years old. I have worked with over 1,000 women and men. In all my years of experience this is what I have consistently observed: Men start showing their abdominal muscles somewhat at 15% body fat. At 12% body fat, a man's abdomen clearly begins to show muscle separation between the rectus abdominis muscles, a little bit of the external obliques begin to peak out (more obliques show at 10%), and the transverse abdominis is flat. In order to see the coveted six-pack abs that have earned their bragging rights, a fellas needs to be at 8% body fat. Between 6-8% body fat, the inguinal ligaments that display the really great "V" taper going downward into jock-wearing area appear. Congratulations!

A woman has a tougher job ahead of her when trying to get her abdominal muscles to show when she is sporting her bikini at poolside due to evolution's great idea to have women pad extra body fat for childbearing. (Thanks, Mother Nature.) Between 16-20% body fat, a woman begins to have a stomach that she is proud enough to wear a tank top in but not until most women hit 15% body fat based upon my professional experience does a woman get to see her external obliques peaking out enough where she can clearly see where her rectus abdominis muscles stop and wear her side obliques begin. At 11-13% body fat, a woman's abdomen is completely defined, six-pack abs are showing, and her torso is smooth, extremely linear, and desirable.

Now, let's suppose you have your body fat percentage just where you want it. Obstacle number two when it comes to creating a chiseled stomach are your muscle bellies. This is the middle of your muscle anatomically, the part where it is the biggest or widest. Some people are just born with thicker muscle bellies than other people. Your muscle bellies make your abs look more pronounced or outwardly instead of flat since you possess higher peaks on each one. If you have thinner muscle bellies on the other hand, your abdominal muscles will lay flatter and you may even possess an inward appearance in your abdomen (like Arnold Schwarzenegger). This is due to your muscle peaks being lower or not as bulky at their centers.

Your abdominal muscle tendons are the last hurdle a person striving to get beach-ready abs must consider when putting together their ab-training program. Your tendons are the connective tissue that unite your muscle to other muscles or connect a muscle to bone. Your body's unique tendons have a huge role in whether or not you have washboard abs or NOT. Your tendons are either longer or shorter. The longer ones will show larger gaps between your abdominal muscles. If you have shorter abdominal tendons, your ab muscles will have smaller gaps, will show more muscle striations, and your tummy appear more washboard-like than someone with longer abdominal tendons.

I hope your take-away from this article is that everyone is uniquely different. Take the time to learn about your body, study it as you would your major in school or an important aspect of your job. Love the body that YOU ARE IN. You are going to be in it for a long, long time HOPEFULLY.

Thank you for reading my thoughts. I appreciate you giving me a reason to think.
-Bell Gia
Nutrition and Fitness Expert

WHAT IS THE COST OF GOOD HEALTH

Good Health Comes at a Cost 

"You don't get something for NOTHING!" We've all heard that saying and if you're over 12 years old, you KNOW that it's true. Everything comes at a COST and that includes GOOD HEALTH.

"What is the price of good health?" you ask. Good health will cost you 3 things -- TIME, ENERGY, and MONEY. 

Possessing good health doesn't just happen. Come on, you know that's the gospel truth. If good health and a great body didn't cost you some of your very limited time, we would all wake up gorgeous and ready to run a marathon every single morning. But that doesn't happen, does it? No, it doesn't and that's why coffee machines and cars were created.

Feeling good inside your body is going to take an investment of several hours each and every week of your time. Time you're going to have to CUT out of your television watching, game playing, social chatting, and just sitting around doing nothing. 

The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans released by the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommends that Americans need AT LEAST 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity in addition to performing muscle-strengthening exercises 2 or more days per week. Notice that the HHS said, "at least 150 minutes" of moderate-intensity exercise per week. They suggest, however, that Americans who want additional and more extensive health benefits should increase their aerobic physical activity to 300 minutes a week PLUS 2 or more days of muscle-strengthening activities that involve all major muscle groups. 

It appears, according to the HHS, that GOOD physical health comes at a cost of 5 HOURS per week plus a couple days of lifting weights. 

If the first cost of good health is time spent in the gym then you know that Cost Number 2 has to be ENERGY because working out 5 plus hours per week (the plus is for the 2 or more days per week of strength training) you are going to need a whole lot of energy to accomplish that task. Where are you and I going to get all this energy from pray tell? We are going to get it from getting a good night's sleep so we are fully rested when we get up each and every morning and from following the 2015 United States Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) that tells us to drink WATER, which has absolutely zero calories, instead of sugary drinks. The DGA says water should be one of the primary beverages consumed. Sleep, water, and nutrient-dense foods are going to give us the energy we need to possess good health. Just like we put gas in our cars and trucks to make them go, the human body needs fuel also to carry out the activities of daily living. 

The food-for-fuel we consume brings us to Cost Number 3: MONEY.

There is a financial cost to owning good health. Good health does kind of grow on trees but those trees are owned by Big Agriculture and they want their money for growing the food that gives you and I good health. I'm not going to tell you that you must buy all organics because, frankly, the scientific research doesn't say that. It is suggested by the Environmental Working Group that you should try to purchase when possible the following organic produce due to the heavy use of pesticides by growers: apples, celery, cherry tomatoes, collard greens, cucumbers, grapes, hot peppers, kale, nectarines, peaches, potatoes, nectarines, snap peas, spinach, and sweet bell peppers. 

Besides purchasing the above-referenced 15 fruits and vegetables organically, good health is going to cost you when you eat out as well. If you want good health then you aren't going to be able to eat out at the fast-food restaurants that offer that lunchtime hamburger for $.99 or that burrito/taco for under $1 buck. There has been enough published research on the negative health effects associated with fast food consumption that you know that running to the border or driving under the golden arches is not going to bring about good health. You are going to have to spend some extra hard-earned money on a variety of colorful vegetables, fresh in-season fruit, lean sources of protein, low-sodium legumes, and healthy-heart fats like Omega 3 from fish, flaxseed, or algae sources. 

The cost of good health is time, energy, and money. Three resources we are all fortunate enough to possess to some varying degree. It is up to you and I to decide for ourselves whether or not good health is worth the personal sacrifice of our minutes and hours, dollars and cents, and precious calories. This is America. We are each free to choose. Cast your vote for good health. 

Thank you for reading. 

-Bell Gia

Nutrition and Fitness Expert