healthy and beautiful

The last ten pounds can be a struggle. The scale stops budging and frustration has taken over. The stress of it all is putting the adrenal glands on overdrive. A cortisol rush is the last thing our body needs when trying to lose the last ten pounds. Studies show chronic stress and cortisol release hinders our ability to lose weight. Plateaus are normal for all of us living a healthy lifestyle . Many don't realize food intake and exercise programming require constant review and change. If the plan doesn't work, change the plan but never the goal.  Remain positive and progressive with your fitness regardless of what the scale says. Many factors are at play when the body stops showing results. Usually, a simple review and program change are all that's required to gets things moving again.  Things to consider:  Are you eating enough? The body knows when it's not getting enough fuel. If we restrict too many calories, our body will refuse to give up any fat stores. The body ...

Losing 12 pounds is not only a realistic goal, but can be done in a short amount of time. I'm not talking about a fad diet or weight loss gimmick. I'm referring to healthy weight loss accomplished with appropriate methods. Being more specific: consistent healthy eating , exercise, increased water intake, limited alcohol intake, and plenty of rest.   Application of a healthy lifestyle in all areas will allow for approximately 1 ½ pounds on the lower end and up to 3 pounds on the higher end of weight loss per week. Working successfully with clients who use my healthy eating guidelines supplied with their workout routines are losing in the middle range of 2 pounds per week.  Think about what this means in terms of time. Realize this is only six weeks of sticking to a consistent fitness program. There is no diet but eating lots of amazing healthy food and exercising at least four to five times per week for a minimum of thirty minutes. Sodas are eliminated and alcohol is lim...

Babies use nutrients to build and develop a healthy body. They have a built in alarm clock every two to three hours that cries out to be fed. They will also stop eating when they feel full eliminating the need to count calories. Babies eat to live naturally. As adults, we can learn much from our precious infants. The nutrients they consume are usually quality coming straight from Mom’s milk, or formulas containing everything a growing body needs to be healthy. If we could only implement this nutritional strategy , we would be on our way to adopting a healthy lifestyle. Sadly, the majority of eating is no longer about growing a strong healthy body . Quality nutrients have been replaced with processed fake food linked to obesity and disease. We don't pay attention to our full barometer and consume too large of portions. We also fill our stomachs with foods that lack in nutritional value. Eating processed foods lacking in nutrients promotes inflammation in our blood stream, the root ...

If you're procrastinating with your Monday to do list, let me help you continue. Carolyn and I have been working away at our Foodtrainers.com   NEW WEBSITE . It has been some time and we needed something fresh. One of my favorite parts of the site is a Q andA we did on our bio page . Please check it out. Let us know what you think and if you haven't be sure you sign up for our Monthly Morsels newsletter. What do you look for in a website? Do you look at sites on your phone or mostly on your computer? And while I have you favorite part of our new site? A thank you to Scott at Bellina Creative for tweaking this until we got it right.

If you read our manifesto, The Little Book of Thin, from cover to cover like you better have (wink wink), you know sleep is one of lauren’s 10 Steps to Svelte. When you sleep your hunger hormones recalibrate. We’ve known that less sleep generally means more hunger but a recent study found that sleep deprivation could trigger eating similar to the “marijuana munchies”.   Uh oh.  In the study, participants slept for different amounts of time (8.5 hours vs 4.5 hours). On the 4.5-hour nights, subjects report significantly higher scores for hunger and a stronger desire to eat. On the sleep-deprived nights, they ate about 400 more calories and almost twice as much fat when they were given access to a buffet full of cookies, chips and candy. What does this have to do with POT? Sleep deprivation produces higher peaks of a lipid in our bloodstream known as an endocannabinoid that seems to make eating more pleasurable – our endocannabinoid system is the same one ta...

We have a questionnaire new clients complete before coming in. We ask all the basic, annoying questions name, address, height and age. Buried in the list is my favorite question, “on a scale of 1 to 10 how content are you with your physique?” The answer to this question has little to do with what you weigh (something we don’t ask) but it says a lot. It’s important to revisit that question as sessions progress because that number, despite progress, can be stubborn. Last week, I had a client in my office. She’s incorporated all sorts of healthy foods into her day, her energy and mood swings are better but she told me about something that happened recently that concerned me. She saw some friends she hadn’t seen in a while. This is a somewhat competitive group of friends as she described them. Despite her improvements and weight loss she felt insecure in their company. In that moment on a scale of 1-10 she’d be lucky to give herself a 5. For years with clients I’ve call these modes we have...

8 Proven Weight Loss Tips  By: Beth Scott  There are a lot of “crash” diets out there that promise that you’ll drop a considerable amount of weight in days or a week.  I have tried a few of these, and in my experience the weight always comes back on, just as quickly since the weight loss tips given are not something that will work with your body.  One thing you don’t want to do if you are actually serious about losing weight is to follow these fad diets and their ridiculous weight loss tips.  After their ineffectiveness has been proven time and again, people will start to wise up to that particular diet, and will head off in search of a new craze.  Lets be honest, people are always searching for new weight loss tips because they want to lose pounds and they want immediate results, but this is just wishful thinking.  To lose weight permanently and effectively it will be a rather slow progress, all depending on your metabolic rate and how much you need ...

Why Drinking Water Really is the Key to Weight Loss by Maia Appleby Don't roll your eyes! The potion for losing that excess body fat is all around you. It covers two thirds of the planet. If you eat right and exercise at the intensity, frequency and duration proper for you, but still can't get rid of a little paunch here and there, you're probably just not drinking enough water. No need to get defensive. You're actually quite normal. Most people don't drink enough water. Most people are also carrying around a few more pounds than they would be if they did drink enough water. If you can't seem to get that weight off, try drowning your sorrows in nature's magical weight-loss mineral. It works, and here's why: "What on Earth is 'metabolism', anyway?" People use the term all the time, but ask them what it means and you'll get all kinds of answers. Merriam Webster defines it as, "The process by which a substance is ha...