How do you get ready for battle?

Just to give a bit of info about me -- I'm a mother of three beautiful girls (5, 3 and 7 months), been a dietitian for about 10 years, and training for 4 years. Sometimes I wonder how I get my teeth brushed and out the door much less eat right and get my exercise in.

As far as my exercise goes, I feel that it's crucial to stay healthy and sane with mommy duty all day so I make it a point to do something active most days of the week. I'm lucky enough to get a few strength training days during the week before my early a.m. clients come in otherwise I'll workout at home with my KB, TRX or take a run.

As far as nutrition goes -- a bit more planning comes into play. Because I find it challenging to bring 3 kiddos to the grocery store, I send my hubby on Sunday with a long list of things to get for meals and snacks for the entire week.

Here are some tips that I use to keep my nutrition in check that you may find useful:

1) Be prepared, very prepared! You must get ready for the week on the weekend before.
2)Have your grocery list ready by the end of the weekend and get groceries prior to Monday. Make sure to stick to the list.
3) Always have fresh veggies and fruit around for snacks and to add to meals (wash & cut so you don't waste time during the week. I make an enormous bowl of colorful salad mix to eat throughout the week. That way I just grab a couple of handfuls and add some lean protein and I'm set for a meal.
4) Always have extra protein cooked to add to salads, snacks, kids plate. This could be chicken, fish, turkey, lean meat (honey baked chicken and turkey burger patties are our staples).
5) Don't buy things that you know you don't need! I have a major sweet tooth so if I make homemade chocolate chip cookies, I will eat them, all of them :) Studies show that if you have stashes of your favorite junk foods around the house (even if you hide them from yourself) you will eventually give in and eat them!
6) If you know you have some travel days ahead of you or long hours at the desk make sure to get things that can go in the desk drawer, office refrigerator or briefcase to keep you on track(i.e. almonds, walnuts, fresh fruit or veggies, Greek yogurt, string cheese, almond butter).

Recipe for Honey Baked Chicken

1-2 pounds of chicken breasts (depending on how much extra you want)
2T or more of olive oil (add a tad more if you buy extra chicken)
2-3tsp of honey for each chicken breast
sea salt
fresh ground pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Put chicken on pan lined with aluminum paper. Add olive oil, sea salt and pepper to chicken and toss to cover both sides of chicken. Add honey on top of each chicken breast. Cook for 30 minutes or so turning at least 5-6 times throughout cooking process to cover with sauce. Should be brown to get the best flavor. Add on top of a big colorful salad (so good you don't need salad dressing) or serve with cooked veggies. My entire family loves this chicken!

Enjoy and I hope you get ready for your battle (or week ahead) and set you and your family up for good nutrition!

Natalie

I'm Out

Well folks, I'll be firing up the bike at 5 am tomorrow and heading out for nearly a month. I'm going to Myrtle Beach, New York, Indy and then home. Some family fun, visiting old friends, some business and some good ole ridin!

Natalie, our RD, super trainer and general bad (meaning good) momma, will be blogging on my behalf while I'm out. Based on her nutrition background, you are bound to get some good info about your eats.

On that note, here is a link Natalie sent me regarding the benefits of taking vitamin D supplements. Cliff Notes- just freakin take it!

I have received several questions about my trip. Eating, sleeping, bathing and general navigation seem to be topics of interest. Since I am more of a visual learner and coach, here are some pics from previous trips to help answer questions:







Fine Dining







Navigation System








Bath Tub








Restroom








Alarm Clock












Take care and train hard!

RM

Biggest Loser- Good or Evil?

The Biggest Loser makes an easy target for folks in our industry. Let's face it, the coaching by the trainers is not stellar. Then again, there is no denying the results. Or is there?

You be the judge:




RM

I call bull***t!

In response to my last post about an extended motorcycle trip, I received several emails stating,"man, that's awesome. I'm going to do something like that someday."

I get the same response when I am on my annual guys motorcycle trip in the fall. Someone will approach us at a gas station in the middle of nowhere and pronounce, "now we're talking! I'm going to do the same thing as soon as ...."
As soon as what? Pigs fly? The cows come home?

I call bull***t. If you really want to do something, just make it happen. I can tell you that a camping trip by motorcycle is not terribly expensive and 1 week away won't completely destroy your daily life upon return.

From the book 5:

What happened to spontaneity? At what point did you lose the right to do something in your day just because you feel like it at the moment- just because you're alive?

Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in and no one can stop it. When the doctor slaps your behind, he's ripping your ticket and away you go. As you make each passage from youth to adulthood to maturity, sometimes you put your arms up and scream, sometimes you just hang on to that bar in front of you. But the ride is the thing. I think the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair is messed, you're out of breath and you didn't throw up

So what's on your list? Build a deck on your home? Take a mission trip? Learn a martial art? Take cooking lessons? Lose 10 lbs?

In Mickey's words to Rocky, "What er ya waitin fer."

RM

Monthly Minute- Travel Workouts

I am just a few weeks away from a 3+ week motorcycle adventure. I'll be leapfrogging my family from one place to another and slipping in a few work related side trips.

I have just begun to plan my route, where/who to visit and what to see along the way. Another concern is how to stay in shape while sitting on my butt for 6-8 hours a day. I plan on packing a TRX for pulling movements, running/jumping and doing all sorts of push-up variations. These types of workouts, while simple, can really work you.

Below is an example of a couple of workouts that I have used in the past.

Workout 1- Do AMAP in 10 minutes

TRX BW Rows x 10
Push-ups x 10
Sit Outs x 10

Finish with Tabata (20 seconds on/10 seconds off) sprints for 4 minutes

Workout 2- 50 Burpees AFAP

Quick and effective. Feelin froggy? go for 100!

Check out a quick demo of both



If you don't own a TRX, buy one here.

Knowledge Bombs from Providence

I have had a few days to collect myself after the training summit. It was the best seminar that I have attended thus far and that's saying something, after last year's event!

I originally planned to write this post as a recap of the weekend's event. After reviewing my notes, I realized that I could write a post for nearly every lecture that I attended. Instead I decided to give you a brief overview and discuss the one non-fitness presenter that was featured.

PerformBetter is by far the leader in health and fitness education and useful equipment sales. I had the good fortune of attending the presenters party at Chris Poirier's (CEO) home and meet most of his team. I can say that from the top down they are one solid company. Great folks doing great business. Also, it was a privilege to meet the presenters and talk a little shop. Again, a dynamic group of folks with more letters behinds their names then I could recognize.

There was a buzz about our Sunday morning speaker. His name is Thomas Myers and he is an expert in fascial research. Say what? He basically spends his days carving up cadavers in search of answers to how our fascial tissue works. As it turns out, it does a lot more than we (I) thought that it did. Not only is our entire body "held together" by fascia, but apparently it is an integral part of our physical makeup. Thomas explained it this way, "gross anatomy tells us that we have some 600 muscles in our body. I would say that we have 1 muscle and 600 compartments of fascia." Slide after slide of cadavers, MRI's and microscopic pictures revealed that we can't really see where one muscles ends and another begins. In his book, Anatomy Trains, Myers discusses the fascial connections in our body.

Example from Mike Robertson's blog:

The superficial back line has probably been the most talked about line from Myers' Anatomy Trains text - a book that details the fascial continuity of several lines or "trains" in the body - with trainers constantly showing the importance of this line to clients by having them roll the bottom of their foot with a tennis ball.

The "trick" goes like this:

Reach down and try and touch your toes.
Roll the bottom of each foot for about sixty seconds.
Reach down and try and touch your toes again to see if you improved your range of motion.

The goal of rolling the foot is to address the plantar fascia, since the plantar fascia starts this line, which in turn would have a positive effect on the entire superficial back line creating greater extensibility and allowing you to bend over further.

This back line runs from the back of our heads all the way down to the bottoms of our feet!

Myer's presentation was highly scientific, yet riveting for exercise nerds like myself.

Take Home- the body is just really one unit and we should consider it as such. The idea of muscle isolation is completely wrong and we would be better served looking at how our exercise programs effect our muscles/bodies as a whole.

RM

Donuts or Abs? What Do You Really Love?

A good friend of mine once told me, "Say what you want, but I can tell what you really love by looking at your schedule and your checkbook."

I couldn't agree more. Never is this more true than with our health and fitness.

What do you love more? The thought of looking great this summer or sweets? If you are binging on cookies while stating that you would love to look good on the beach this summer, you don't love the thought of looking good as much as you love sweets. Your actions clearly prove this.

Want to live a longer, more vibrant life, but you are too busy at work to make time for exercise? You love your work more than you love the thought of living life to it's fullest.

Want to start a flexibility program to help your nagging back pain, but you choose to watch TV at night instead of doing your mobility work? You love TV more than a pain free back.

I know I sound like an overbearing, egotistical trainer, but it is the cold, hard truth and it can apply to much more than just health and fitness. You'll see these same types of examples in finances, parenting, religion and many other aspects of life.

Hey, I get it. We are all human and thus, we are not perfect. But we need to make sure that our goals are aligned with our habits. If not, we are setting ourselves up for frustration and failure.

Here is a piece by strength coach Charles Poliquin:

There is no such thing as discipline. There is only love. Love is the most powerful creative force in the universe. You are the result of what you love most. You either love finely etched muscular abs more than donuts or you love donuts more than wash board abs you could do your laundry on. It is as simple as that. Don’t beat yourself up that you have no discipline or further drown yourself in a sea of refined carbs. Admit that you like crappy food more than you love strength. Or ask yourself this, what do you really love? Self-esteem is the reflection of self-judgment. One of the best ways to raise self-esteem is to make truly loving choices that lead to increased strength of body and mind. For example, if you truly love yourself in the gym, you choose the full squat with chains over the leg extension machine. At the restaurant, if you truly love yourself, you pass on the heavenly smelling basket of bread and creamy butter, and ask for some more limes for the water.

RM