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One of the biggest problems with losing weight, especially if you’re working out on your own, is plateauing. The best way to deal with a plateau is to avoid it in the first place. You can push through the plateau if it occurs and knowing what caused it helps. Plateauing occurs when the body becomes efficient at making the moves of an exercise. It happens when you don’t vary your workout enough. As a trainer, I vary clients workouts enough so your body is always working at maximum.

Initially, losing weight is easier.

No matter what your workout program, the longer you do it, the harder it is to lose weight. Think about it. If you’ve lost weight, going from 170 pounds to 140 pounds, you’re carrying 30 fewer pounds around everywhere you go. Even if you’re burning more calories because you have more muscle tissue, your body still won’t be working as hard. It’s like carrying a 30 pound weight around for months and then putting it down. You simply won’t work as hard. Your body will require fewer calories. That’s one reason many people suggest your weight loss goal be a percentage of your body weight.

What if you’ve switched out your workout and doing everything right, but still are plateauing

No matter how hard you workout and how much you change your workout, if you’re not seeing progress, maybe there’s another problem or no real problem at all. The scales sometimes lie. That’s right. They may say that you aren’t making progress when you really are. Remember, muscle tissue weighs more per cubic inch than fat tissue does. It’s like comparing metal with feathers. The container holding a pound of feathers will definitely be bigger. If you haven’t lost weight, but find your clothing is now looser or way too big, you’ve lost inches! That’s also progress.

If your workout is varied and you’re not losing inches or weight, there’s another problem.

Sometimes, people forget all the food they eat throughout the day. Maybe it’s something as simple as grabbing a few M&Ms as you walk by the candy dish or you’re not counting what you drink. Soft drinks have calories, too. Even if you opt for diet soft drinks, while it doesn’t have an effect on your weight, studies show that people who drink them end up with more abdominal fat. Scrutinize your eating habits carefully and see if there are hidden calories you’re not counting.

• Never give up. Each person is different. Not everyone’s body has the same time schedule for weight loss. Sometimes, there’s a difference based on when you weigh yourself. There are daily fluctuations in weight, too.
• Don’t focus as much on how much you lose, but more in the joy of losing it. Feel how great it is to be able to move comfortably through the exercises and notice how your endurance, flexibility and strength has improved. Enjoy the moment and know the weight will come off if you keep it up.
• Make sure you’re tracking yourself when you workout and tracking what you eat. Remember, portion control is also important. If you’re working out with a trainer, he or she probably will find out the cause with a few questions or modify your workout.
• Keep active even if you’re not working out. Park further from the store and walk. Take the stairs. Ride your bike to the store or walk, rather than take a car if you’re close. You’ll save gas and get more exercise.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

You can’t beat a healthy diet if you want to lose weight. In fact, no matter how much you exercise, you won’t shed a pound if you’re eating a lot of high calorie junk food. However, exercise boosts your weight loss. Weight loss isn’t magic. It’s all about math. If you eat 3500 fewer calories than you expend, you lose one pound. While exercise burns a lot of calories, you’d have to workout for over two hours to burn off a Big Mac meal. To work off the calories in a white chocolate crème Frappuccino from Starbucks, you’ll have to go at high intensity for 50 minutes. You can see that, while exercise helps, eating healthy is top priority.

When you exercise, you’ll give your metabolism a boost.

While diet is important, you really need exercise to help take off weight and keep it off. When you use diet alone, the weight you lose isn’t always just fat. You can lose lean muscle tissue, too. Exercise not only helps burn calories but also builds muscle tissue. The more muscle tissue you have, the higher your metabolism is. That’s because muscle tissue also requires more energy for maintenance than fat tissue does. It means you’ll be burning more calories 24/7 and have more energy to be more active and burn extra calories, too.

Stress can mean belly fat.

That’s right! The hormones of stress, cortisol in particular, are associated with abdominal fat. When you workout, you’re burning off the stress hormones that cause the fight or flight response. It does more than that. It helps you relax, boosts your overall mood and makes you feel good. It can eliminate the need for stress eating and comfort food. Comfort food often includes high calorie things like ice cream, while stress eating may include crunchy food like potato chips. You can see that eliminating those can be a huge benefit.

Why do you want to lose weight? You want to look thinner, of course.

Sometimes, the scales aren’t the ultimate answer when you’re measuring your success. Sometimes, it’s inches, rather than weight. Exercise builds muscle tissue. Muscle tissue weighs more per cubic inch than fat tissue does. A container holding a pound of fat would have to be bigger than one containing a pound of muscle tissue. It’s lie comparing a container to hold a pound of steel to a pound of feathers. When you exercise, even if you don’t lose one ounce, you’ll still be thinner as your body builds muscle tissue. That’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it?

• What’s the best type of exercise? While aerobic exercise burns loads of calories, but those calories come from both fat and muscle tissue. Strength training also burns calories, while also building muscle tissue that boosts your metabolism.
• The body has two hormones that control appetite, ghrelin—the hunger hormone and leptin—the one that makes you feel full. Exercise reduces the amount of ghrelin the body makes.
• The longer you do your workout routine, the more efficient the body becomes and the fewer calories it burns. That’s why varying your workout regularly can help prevent plateauing.
• Exercise increases your energy level, so you’ll be more active even when you’re not working out in the gym. That means you’ll burn more calories even when you’re not trying.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

Can you be your healthiest if you have only a healthy diet, but no fitness program of regular exercise? The answer is no. The same is true if you workout regularly, but fill your body with junk food. You need both a healthy diet and a program of regular exercise to look and feel your best. There’s a saying that you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. That’s true whether you’re trying to lose weight or just get healthy. You need the proper nutrition and controlled caloric intake that a healthy diet provides.

Eating healthy means making smarter choices.

Eating healthy isn’t really dieting. Once you learn how to make smarter choices, there’s no calorie or carb counting. There’s no magical food and you can still eat your favorite foods, just not as frequently and with portion control in mind. No matter how hard you’re working out, if you stop at the pizza or burger shack afterward for a burger, fries or pizza and a beer or shake, you’ll still gain weight! You’d have to workout for hours to burn all the calories in that meal.

Eating healthy provides all the nutrients you need to build the body you want.

If you want to build muscle tissue faster, you won’t do it by eating candy bars. You need a good source of protein in your diet to help you do it. Everyone has different goals and while eating healthy has some basics, we help you choose the food you need for the nutrients to attain your goal, whether it’s shedding weight, putting on weight or building muscles and getting fit.

That doesn’t mean you don’t have to exercise.

Healthy eating is a top priority, but it won’t keep you in shape as you age and won’t give you all the benefits exercising regularly offers. Those include lowering the potential for serious conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and even osteoporosis. In fact, one study shows that exercising not only helps maintain bone density better than some medications for osteoporosis, but it also can help reverse some of the changes and make them stronger.

• Living healthy also means getting adequate sleep. While you’ll sleep better when you workout, sticking with a sleep schedule is also important. Adequate sleep helps with weight control and lowers the risk of heart disease.
• What you drink also counts toward a healthy diet. Soft drinks and sugary drinks provide empty calories and can even add to the risk of serious conditions. Even diet soda can cause visceral fat. It’s fat around the abdomen.
• Make sure you stay hydrated and drink plenty of water. You need at least eight 8-ounce glasses each day. Sometime, dehydration makes you think you’re hungry when you’re really just thirsty.
• If you’re choosing a healthier lifestyle, focus on all the benefits and how good you feel, not on what you have to give up. Body Sculptors can help you with a healthy menu of delicious food that will make you glad you chose healthy eating.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

There are a lot of reasons people take supplements . Older people that find it hard to eat all the food they require to get adequate nutrition, whether because of lack of appetite or because of poor absorption where more nutrients are required, may need to supplement their diet. Some people use supplements to help build muscle, while others mistakenly think that taking a supplement is all that’s necessary and they can continue eating a bad diet. Taking supplements can even cause health issues, especially if used recklessly.

Nothing can replace healthy eating.

One of the worst reasons people take supplements is that they think they can stay with their bad dietary habits and solve the problem with supplements. The truth is, it’s not only the worst reason for taking supplements, it doesn’t work. When you eat junk food, you’re consuming junk that man wasn’t meant to eat, like preservatives and other additives. Supplements also don’t contain the phytonutrients you find in food, such as anthocyanin that gives the color to red, purple and blue fruits and vegetables. Whole food provides nutrients that work together to make the body healthier.

You can get too much of a good thing.

Watch out for taking too much vitamin A, D and E. Those are fat soluble vitamins that can build up in your body if you take too much and cause serious conditions, such as liver damage. Even water soluble vitamins like vitamin C aren’t risk free. It can cause diarrhea, vomiting, heartburn, nausea, headache, cramps and even insomnia. Even though you need calcium for strong bones, too much calcium can actually weaken the bones.

Vitamin and mineral deficiencies are real.

Most people are aware that pregnant women and seniors often require more nutrients, but many other people may also require them. For instance, one study showed that vitamin D deficiency is rampant and it’s primarily due to the increased use of sunscreen. To prevent the problem, start a program of smart tanning and wear sunscreen the rest of the time. It’s especially important for pregnant women, women pat menopause and children, since vitamin D plays an important role in building and mineralizing stronger teeth and bones, it keeps you mentally more alert and boosts your immune system. It helps reduce abdominal fat, provide stronger hair and improves heart health.

• Protein supplements or protein powder may help you lose weight and tone muscles, but it’s not a miracle supplement. It’s excellent added to a smoothie made of fresh fruits and vegetables. Taking too much isn’t good for your health.
• Consider checking with your physician and get tests to see if you need supplements. Also, supplement can exacerbate some health issues and interfere with medication, which is another reason to discuss it with your health care professional.
• Supplements from natural source are normally better than those made in a factory. Krill oil or fish oil, for instance, are both natural and provide a source of healthy Omega-3 fatty acids.
• You can adjust your diet to increase your intake of certain vitamins and minerals and we can help. If you have special needs and want a dietary guideline, we’re ready to give you that help.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

Have you considered coconut oil for weight loss? Some of my clients in Louisville, KY have been asking whether it should be a consideration for their weight loss plan. When I hear these types of easy weight loss aids, I always tell people to stop and consider both the pros and cons of using anything. First of all, coconut oil is a fat and it’s 90 percent saturated fat. That type of fat plays a negative role in heart health and raises cholesterol levels. It increases the bad LDL cholesterol.

Proponents of coconut oil say it’s different from other saturated fats.

The author of the book, The Coconut Oil Miracle, certified nutritionist Bruce Fife, disagrees. He claims that the fat in coconut oil actually can help the body burn fat. It’s a medium-chain triglyceride—MCT—that doesn’t follow the route most saturated fat takes, which then makes it compete with glucose—a simple sugar—as the energy source. He says it then increases the metabolism and aids in weight loss in specific areas, such as burning belly fat.

Just like any fat in your diet, coconut oil can make you feel fuller for longer.

There’s some evidence that oils that are MCT does aid with weight loss. One study shows that consuming it rather than long chain fatty acids, such as avocado oil or soybean oil, can actually help you burn more calories. The body’s metabolism increases for as long as 24 hours when the cells use these types of oils for fuel instead of glucose. It’s true of all MCT oil. Unfortunately, coconut oil isn’t pure MCT. Only 13.5 percent of it is MCT. That means that to get the 10 grams of MCT, you’d have to consume 80 grams of coconut oil or almost 6 tablespoons of it daily. That’s a whole lot of fat!

A small study shows that it can blast stomach fat, but is it healthy.

Studies comparing weight loss by consuming either coconut oil or soybean oil, found both groups lost weight, but those using coconut oil lost belly fat, but the amount taken in both cases was twice as much as recommended for good health. It can be your go to oil for salads or other types of cooking, but shouldn’t be increased in your diet just for weight loss. Instead, eating healthy should be at the top of your list for weight loss.

If you’re going to use coconut oil, use organic, unrefined, virgin coconut oil. It has more of a coconut smell and taste, but is healthier.

The feeling of fullness brought by coconut oil is also the reason that low fat foods don’t satisfy your appetite.

There is no miracle food that you can take that will help you lose weight without changing to a healthy diet and regular exercise.

Whether you opt for private sessions, small group or online help, Body Sculptors can help. No matter where you live, our online nutrition training can help you with a healthy fat loss program that costs less than a dollar a day.