Should You Be Doing Keto?

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It seems like everyone is jumping on the keto band wagon lately. They all awesome that keto is the end all be all to all your weight loss struggles. 😑⠀
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Well me being someone that did keto for 2-3 years I’m here to tell you that keto ❗️IS NOT❗️the end all be all. And ❗️IS NOT❗️ something you should marry. ⠀
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Can everyone benefit from a period of ketosis? Yes of corse. Re-sensitizing your body to glucose and carbohydrates can be very beneficial. ⠀
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But unless you have a serious medical issue that ketosis can help mid agate or fix your ketogenic is not the holy grail. ⠀
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If your an athlete, hard training individual, or someone that does CrossFit, your most likely not gonna be doing yourself any good. ⠀
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These training modalities are glycolytic in nature so they will need carbohydrates for optimal performance. ⠀
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Some bodybuilding can be performed on lower carbs and maybe even a TKD (targeted keto diet) approach. ⠀
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But I won’t classify that as keto. It’s more just carb cycling. Or targeted carbohydrate intake. ⠀
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True ketosis is the elimination of carbs for an extended period of time to make your body switch metabolic functions and burn fat for fuel. ⠀
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Ketosis has its place in the right application… ⠀
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☝🏼 if your someone that is pretty sedentary and doesn’t training for hard or very little. ⠀
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✌🏼 If your someone will blood sugar dis regulation and crashes from eating a heavy carb meal. ⠀
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But in any other situation I could argue that a balanced diet with optimal amounts of protein accounted for will yelled you just as much benefit if not more. ⠀
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Just remember these two things. ⠀
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☝🏼 protein is the most thermogenic food. ⠀
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✌🏼 carbohydrates have the biggest impact on increasing metabolic activity and athletic performance.⠀
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Building Muscles

What does it take to build muscle??⠀
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☝🏼 Adequate protein with a caloric surplus.⠀
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✌🏼 Consistent increases in volume/work load.⠀
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🖖🏼 Intensity during training.⠀
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A caloric surplus with optimal amounts of protein is gonna be one of the biggest driving factors to weather or not you can build a substantial amount of muscle or not.⠀
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As muscle sparing nutrients (carbs & fats) start to increase is will take less protein to aid in recovery.⠀
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For someone looking to build muscle I still never recommend less then 0.8g of protein per pound of body weight. ⠀
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If your someone that does not track your workouts/weight lifted, understanding how much total volume you actually lifted that day is gonna be a game charger for you.⠀
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Volume is: Weight x Sets x reps⠀
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If your not consistently increasing this number your gains are gonna be very slow and minimal.⠀
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Now none of us are able to just consistently increase volume for the rest of our lives.⠀
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But this is were proper exercise programming and periodization come in to play in order to make sure your still make consistent progress.⠀
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Training intensity isn’t talk about very much now a days but there is someone to be said for it.⠀
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This is basically how hard you are training.⠀
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Are you reaching your desired number of volume by doing 1,000 reps with 10 pounds? Or are you getting there doing 5 heavy sets of 5 reps?⠀
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Which one do you think is gonna build more muscle?⠀
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Now I don’t want you driving yourself into the ground and not being able to walk after every workout. (More about this later😉)⠀
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But you still need to make your sets hard!⠀
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You need to push yourself and you need to send that signal to your body that it NEEDS to grow.⠀
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Implementing these three variables is gonna be the key to long term, consistent, muscle growth.⠀

Diet After Diet

How do we lose body fat and achieve our ideal physique? ⠀
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We gotta get serious about what we put in our body’s. ⠀
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Now for the sake of this post we are gonna use the word “diet” but we all know this word isn’t the best representation of the lifestyle change that needs to happen.⠀
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When your looking to change your physique and achieve that ideal look we have to go on a “diet.”⠀
Restrict calories (primarily fats & carbs), and increase activity. ⠀
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But what happens once we reach your goal? Your done, it’s over, you got back to the way you were eating before or the stay in this restricted state forever?⠀
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DEFINITELY NOT!! This is only gonna set you up for disaster and put you down a path of yo-yo dieting.⠀
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The “diet” after the “diet” becomes just as, if not MORE important then the “diet” its self.⠀
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You must come out of that restricted state properly. One to maintain what you worked so hard for but two so you come back to a place of optimal health.⠀
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This can be tricky and take some planning so hiring a coach that can help you properly “reverse diet” could be the difference between you maintain all that hard work or bouncing back to square one. ⠀
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But at the end of the day whether you decide to hire someone or not you must remember that once you reach your goal, the “diet” isn’t over. ⠀
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You still have A LOT of work to do. And you still need to be diligent about how you come out of the “diet.” ⠀
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And the still need the work back towards a place of maintenance. ⠀
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Wanna learn more about how to properly “diet” and then come OUT of the diet?! Shoot me a DM!! ⠀
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I’d love to chat with you and see if we can set you on the right track towards success!!🙌🏼⠀

Eating Before Bed

Diet ,eating , sleeping — Many people believe that anything you eat before bed will automatically turn into fat. However, this isn’t exactly the case. Our bodies are in a constant state of protein turnover aka making new proteins and breaking down the old ones.
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Eating a meal that is high in protein before bed can help your body remain in this muscle-building phase as well as increase the amount of muscle protein synthesis. Eating before bed is not “bad” but there are definitely better choices that you can make at this time. Your snack/meal at night should HELP with your goals not hinder your progress. Aka eating cookies or snacks that are high in sugary carbs might not be the best option.
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Eating a small sized meal prior to bed consisting of protein, carbs and fat will help to keep you satisfied and possibly help you fall asleep as our brains turns carbs (complex) to serotonin. Eating a larger meal may either keep you up or disrupt your sleep.
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Dairy products such as greek yogurt are typically slow digesting and allows your body to enter the muscle building phase while you sleep. Choosing foods that are high in healthy fats (avocado, almonds), can be helpful as well since fats also slow down the rate of digestion.
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There are other factors to keep in mind as well such as what types of foods you ate throughout the rest of your day and whether or not you just worked out. If you just worked out and it’s late at night, eating some carbs or fruit to replenish your glycogen stores would be fine along with some protein. If you haven’t eaten much throughout the day, choosing some healthier carbs to eat is not going to harm you.
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Fueling your body with the proper nutrition that it needs should always be a number one priority. By keeping this in mind, you will start making choices that will help fuel your body instead of harming it.

Exercise & The Menstrual Cycle!

Exercise & The Menstrual Cycle!
Read & TAG A FRIEND👭

It is very common for females who train intensely and diet to lose their period or have it become irregular. Every month ovulation occurs and with this, hormonal changes arise. Having a very strict diet especially missing meals or working out for multiple hours in the day leads your body to identify this negative energy balance as a risk. When this happens, the body turns off the body process known as reproduction.
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A hormone known as leptin gets produced when there is body fat. Not having enough body fat decreases the amount of leptin in the body, which reduces the action of the hypothalamus (which starts off your menstrual cycle). Stress is also a major factor that may lead our sympathetic nervous system (SNS) to be overworked. When our stress hormones are constantly at high levels, our body believes it’s not safe to reproduce.
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Losing your period means that something must be “off” hormonally. Here are some tips as to what you can do:
-Reduce the amount of exercise that you’re doing and increase your calories
-Ensure you’re getting in enough good quality sleep
-Try adding in slow-digesting carbs at most meals (everyone is different but this may be helpful to reduce stress and deprivation in our bodies as most females believe that carbs are “bad” for them).
-See your doctor to tune in to the exact cause.” )

Are You Loosing Weight But Looking Fat?

Not possible😱⠀
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How in the world can someone lose pounds on the scale but look worse!?!⠀
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Because fat loss & weight loss are NOT the same!!🤭⠀
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Weight can come from a lot of things; fat, muscle, bone, water, hair, etc.⠀
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Just cuz the your “weight” went done on the scale doesn’t always mean it came solely from fat.⠀
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But how does this happen?⠀
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Caloric reduction WITHOUT the focus on macronutrient profile is the biggest contributor☝🏼.⠀
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Yes, to lose weight you need to reduce calories. The probably is no one was every taught where those calories should come from!⠀
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A majority of people look at “reduce calories” and they will simply cut out everything. Protein, fat, and carbs.⠀
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Causing the scale to go down but they only look like a smaller version of themselves.⠀
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I’m order to actually change your body composition and lose mostly fat, calories do need to be reduced.⠀
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BUT! Those calories need to come primarily from fats & carbohydrates.⠀
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Keeping protein high (1g-1.3g per pound of body weight) will ensure what you keep most of your muscle mass during a fat loss phase.⠀
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I only say most because it is inevitable that your gonna lose some muscle mass.⠀
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But we can DRASTICALLY reduce this by make sure protein is adequate. ⠀
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Take your macros.⠀
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Understand what your food consists of. ⠀
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If your goal is cosmetic and you wanna look a certain way this is essential.⠀
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Do you have a friend that is constantly yo-yo dieting and needs to track there macros!?!? ⠀
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Tag them below and help spread the word!!⠀

Being Healthy Is Habits & Lifestyle.

Being healthy doesn’t have to be complicated. Often the simplest of things can make the biggest impact. .

Have you ever wondered why things which on paper seem pretty fricking simple actually end up being the hardest things to do.

Walking to a tap filling a glass with water and drinking it a numerous times a day isn’t like trying to climb mount Everest.

Eating a few portions of veggies with every meal isn’t like building and launching a rocket.

Yet still so many people struggle to do them either consistently or at all.

Why?

Well mental resistance to doing new things isn’t unusual.

In all honesty the only way to break through the resistance is to start small and then be disciplined with achieving the small things.

Over time these then become your habits.

Maybe you’re attaching all kinds of negative stories to you about
👉🏻your abilities

👉🏻your worth

All of which can lead to sabotaging behaviours

Maybe you’ve been telling yourself in order for something to be impactful and worth doing it must be fancy and complicated.

Or perhaps you don’t believe the true power of;
👉🏻positive environments
👉🏻laughter

👉🏻working on loving yourself

Maybe your life mission is to try and find a more complicated way of getting healthy.

Maybe in your mind you think healthy means you must live a miserable existence cutting out everything you enjoy

You run with an abundance of
👉do’s, don’ts

👉evil this,evil that

Rather than putting your moderation pants and context hat on and know you don’t need to live like a nun!

Oh and let’s not forget your compelling need to have everything yesterday.

You want fast and easy

I get I really do there’s loads of stuff in my life I would love to happen quicker and without the work but that’s just not real life.

But looking for fancy pills, going on crazy detoxes or other fads hoping for a quick fix is a waste of your time.

What you really need to do is;
🙏🏻Work on your main driver (the mind)
🙏🏻Then make nailing these basics your focus

Value Your Vitamins D3

Despite the name, vitamin D is considered a pro-hormone and not actually a vitamin.⠀
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Vitamin D can be synthesized by our body when sunlight hits the skin. ⠀
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15-20 minutes 2-3 times a week allows most people to produce sufficient amounts of vitamin D. ⠀
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The only downside is that is breaks down quickly, meaning stores can run low.⠀
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Especially if your someone that is inside all day or during the winter times.⠀
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My typical recommendation for a client is 15-30 minutes daily to just stay ahead of the game.⠀
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Or you can supplement 2,000-5,000 IUs daily if your unable to get out side. ⠀
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👇🏼☀️Some benefits of the sunshine vitamin☀️👇🏼⠀
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🔸Helps maintain healthy bones and teeth⠀
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🔹Supports the health of the immune system, brain, and nervous system⠀
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🔸Regulates insulin levels and aid diabetes management⠀
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🔹Supports lung function and cardiovascular health⠀
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🔸Helps fight disease⠀
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🔹Reduces depression⠀
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🔸Boost weight loss⠀
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🔹Regulate and balance hormone production⠀
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🔸Increase energy and overall feelings of wellbeing⠀
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🔹Reduces stress and feels of anxiety⠀
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Vitamin D and the sun have been market to us as this cancer causing death trap the should be avoided at all costs.⠀
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And yes while to much of anything can be bad, vitamin D and the sun play a vital role in our overall health and longevity.⠀
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Deficiencies in vitamin D can cause serious side effects and can lead to chronic disease.⠀
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I always recommend the holistic rout and to get your vitamin D natural from the sun. ⠀
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But whatever your method of getting it is. Don’t neglect the power the sunshine vitamin can have on your overall health and fitness. ⠀

Is Fasting For Fat Loss A Bad Idea.

Fat loss

Now I know what you’re probably think, “fasting is a great way to lose body fat, of course it’s not a bad idea.”⠀
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And yes while science does support that fasting does help mobilize more body fat during that fasting period there is a more deeper reason why it probably isn’t the best idea.⠀
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80% of people that are wanting to try fasting or more specifically Intermittent Fasting are wanting to do it because they heard from somewhere that it’s great for fat loss.⠀
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These same individuals have never dieted before. They have never tracked food before. And they have zero understanding of what a proper intake of food looks like.⠀
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When these people decide to start a fasting protocol in hopes to loss weight they are basically setting them selves up for a horrible relationship with food and a possible eating disorder.⠀
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Real quick fasting can go from, “fast & feast” to “starve & binge”.⠀
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And mentally this are two TOTALLY DIFFERENT approaches to food.⠀
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“Fast & Feast” is controlled restriction with controlled feeding.⠀
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“Starve & Binge” is forced restriction with uncontrolled eating.⠀
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So if you’re starting your fat loss journey focus more quality food intake, improve macronutrient ratios, eat more micronutrients (veggies), drink more water, & exercise regularly. ⠀
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All these things are gonna benefit you way more in the long run then trying to force yourself into restricting all food for 16+ hours. ⠀

Maintaining Blood Sugar Level.

“Balancing blood sugar levels is important in maintaining long lasting energy throughout your day. When we consume carbohydrates, our body converts this into sugar to get energy. However we are able to control our blood sugar levels by eating the right types of carbohydrates, focusing on proper portion sizes, and eating properly combining macronutrients.
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Why is it important to control blood sugar spikes?
When our blood sugar levels get too high or they happen too frequently throughout the day we may feel fatigued, experience sweet cravings, insulin resistance, an increase in appetite and a hard time with weight loss.
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Consuming carbohydrates is beneficial as it can provide the body with energy, however our bodies only need a small amount of glucose. When we consume too much glucose, our bodies store this versus using it for energy. We don’t need to cut carbohydrates out of our diets. We just need to ensure we are eating whole foods and combining our carbohydrates with protein and fat.
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