Check out how Maggie lost 6 lbs in just a few weeks!

Hi Michale,

I wanted to let you know how great I am feeling and the changes I have observed. I’m on Day 18, lost 6 lbs, have more energy😁, and sleeping between 8-9 hours per night. I feel great. I keep a daily journal 📒 and can see the changes with my sleep ⏱, water amounts, and how some foods react to my body in a negative way. I am finally, doing something positive for Maggie. When I made the decision to have the full consultation and committed to your program, I instantly, gained a sense of self-worth. This new awareness made me look at my past life of doing so much for others and therefore not taking care of Maggie. Wow, what an awakening. Today, day 18, I look forward to acknowledging myself as worthy enough to do this incredible program of self-care, health, fitness, walking in the sun🌅, weight training💪 (I bought a used at home gym), and I am getting stronger every single day. So “Thank-you Michale”. Your program is so easy, I am never hungry and not one single craving for sweets (a miracle). You have given me Hope and you have given me, my life back.💕

With gratitude, Maggie O

Ready to kickstart your health? Book your FREE call and start your journey to Fit n Healthy! Michale’s Calendar

Exercise as Medicine – Best Workouts for Best Results

by hartteuser Leave a Comment

‘Eating alone will not keep a man well. He must also exercise”

…….Hippocrates

Exercise as a prescription for health and disease prevention has roots that began in antiquity more than two millennia ago.

Susruta of India was the first “recorded” physician to prescribe moderate daily exercise, Hippocrates of Greece was the first “recorded” physician to provide a written exercise prescription for a patient suffering from health problems associated with obesity, diabetes, and inactivity.

Back in the day (400 B.C), doctor’s main goal was to keep people healthy. They knew that diet and exercise were the best ways to do that.

Fast forward to today’s doctors visits. Due to the rise in ‘sick care’ our doctor’s primary focus has shifted away from diet and lifestyle to treating disease.

Now, more than every, the onus is on us to take care of out bodies. Exercise as medicine.

Despite public awareness on the health benefits of regular exercise, only 20% of Americans get the recommended amounts. Moreover, over 50% of the baby boomers report doing no exercise whatsoever, and a whopping 80.2 million Americans over age 6 are entirely inactive.

These grim numbers where recently reported and published in the latest special edition of Time Magazine ‘The Science of Exercise’.

Good news is, anyone can change their health status for the better. Your genes are not your destiny.

A recent study in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, reported that researchers took 10 pairs of male identical twins in their 30s. Each pair had similar eating and lifestyle habits except that one in each pair had stopped exercising regularly in adulthood. After just 3 sedentary years, they begun to develop insulin resistance (precursor to Diabetes type 2), had more body fat and lower endurance.

Same set of genes, different outcomes. Just a shift from being active to sedentary.

Sure, we can all get busy, however, understanding the power of exercise, may be all it takes to put your work down for a quick workout instead.

Save time and get the best results possible – Learn the best workouts for best results below.

Take a goal-orientated approach and match your goals with your workouts.

If you want more energy….do any kind of exercise 3 to 4 times per week

Researchers from University of Georgia demonstrate that only 20 minutes a day is all that’s needed to improve energy in as little as 4 weeks! The study authors found that only low to moderate intensity was all that’s needed to reap these benefits (exercise like biking, walking, and strength training).

How this works

Exercise evens out your fluids and salt balance, using the available sugar in the bloodstream and burns fat.
Physical exercise increases the size and number of your mitochondria, the energy centers in your cell.

If you want to limit your doctor’s visits…..count your steps with a Fitbit

Tim Church, a professor at Louisiana State University’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center recommends 7,000 steps a day to really improve your health.

How this works

Increases blood flow to the brain and releases chemicals to improve mood and dull pain.
Protects telomeres, the tiny end caps on your chromosomes that appear to slow the aging of cells.

If you want to ease chronic health problems….see a pro and go slow

Those with ongoing health problems may feel it’s safer to avoid exercise, however experts advise otherwise.

Stella Volpe the chair of the department of nutrition science at Drexel University recommends to avoid injury and burnout, begin slowly, “Start with 10 minutes, or even 5, several times a week. You want to build strength and endurance over the course of several months.”

How this works

Exercise eases the symptoms of many chronic conditions, such as arthritis. It can even reverse high blood pressure and diabetes type 2.
It can reduce pain by delivering blood flow to the area and feel good hormones like endorphins.

If you’re trying to lose weight (or keep it off)….combine strength training and cardio

Cedric Bryant, the chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise recommends a combination of aerobic exercise and strength training.

Best to find a strategy that you like and can keep doing for the long term.

Also important to ‘change it up’ as you change to avoid health and fitness stalls as your body adapts to your current exercise regime.

How this works

Aerobic exercise burns calories that would otherwise be stored as extra pounds.
Strength training builds and preserves muscle mass, allowing you to burn fat at rest. Very helpful during menopause when metabolism tends to slow down. Think of muscle as your best anti aging tool.
Aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise a week. But if you do high intensity workouts, like running or spinning, you can cut that amount to half.
Do at least 2 weekly strength training sessions as well by lifting weights or body weight exercises like Pilates, yoga or resistance exercise (think planks and push ups). You can perform a great workout using just an exercise ball and maybe some bands.
If you want to combine aerobic exercises with strength training, for weight loss, best to save the aerobic part to after your strength training. Only 20 minutes of both are needed in this case for a total of 40 minutes (not including your 5 minute warm up and 10 minutes of stretching on either side)

If you want to be less stressed or depressed…..exercise regularly – but not too hard

Bradley Cardinal, co-director of the Sport and Exercise Psychology Lab at Oregon State University says, “The real reason to get excited about exercise is because it makes you feel great”.

Women who engage in regular physical exercise tend to be less stressed, less anxious and have higher self esteem than those who do not.

How this works

Exercise takes you out of your head (aka troubles) and into the movement. It is harder to worry when you’re holding a yoga pose or hitting something (like kickboxing).
Exercise increase mood enhancing brain chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine, while lowering the levels of stress hormones like cortisol.

No time to exercise? The miracle 1 min exercise study

Meet Martan Gibala. He’s the exercise researcher out of McMaster University Ontario and author of The One Minute Workout.

Dedicated to prove how little time people really need to spend exercising, while reaping extraordinary health benefits.

One of his studies, where he compared the benefits seen in people who did a 1 minute workout to those who spend a full 45 minute one.

Showed these remarkable results:

Both the 1 minute activity and the 45 minutes one where found to be of equal benefit!

Holy, moly! Less time, same results!

He is quoted to say, ‘I continue to be surprised and amazed by the potency of this type of training.”

His research has shown that if people work out hard for short bursts of time, they can have similar health improvements as if they did a longer workout (45 minutes to 1 hour).

The KEY? Exert yourself at your highest possible level during the active intervals.

Basically, you need to push as hard as you can. Take a quick breather and go again. For full benefit, 30 minutes seems to be the magic number. However, science demonstrates that even 1 minute of hard exercise really makes a difference.

Researchers at Karolinska Institute in Sweden have taken biopsies of people doing high intensity interval training (HIIT) and found that when muscles are stressed during extreme exercise, certain chemical channels in muscle cells that regulate calcium are broken down. Since calcium is important for cell signalling, extreme exercise can urge the cell to adjust how it produces energy and make it become more efficient.

HIIT is then an ideal way to get the health induced benefits of exercise in the shortest period of time.

Don’t like HIIT workouts? Do ‘interval walking’. Increase the pace for a bit, then lower it for a bit.

It’s actually that easy.

The truth about Weight Loss (this may shock you)

When it comes to weight loss, do you think a better strategy is to ‘eat less and exercise more’ or ‘eat more and exercise more’?

Well, it’s a bit of both.

The KEY is to emphasize either eating less and moving more or eating more and moving more,on one given day.

You can also play with eating less and moving less (like while traveling) and eating more while moving less (boosting metabolism).

I’ve written about this strategy here

Eat more, weight less and get healthy

How do some people eat more and stay lean?

My advice is to just keep it simple and don’t take on more than you can handle. Taking on too much at one time has proven for most to lead to a complete halt to all efforts and subsequent weight loss stalls.

Instead, consider these tips as your guide to slim, strong, and sustainable.

Focus on diet first, then exercise next

You can’t out exercise a bad diet. For those embarking on a weight loss regime you can stick to, choose diet first, exercise next.

Multiple studies have proven a diet that trains the body to use fat as fuel instead of sugar all the time, will yield the best ‘weight loss’ benefits.

Take for example the ever popular Ketogenic Diet. Individuals are reporting steady weight loss with little (if any) risks or drawbacks.

A ketogenic diet is a diet low in carbs, with moderate protein and slightly higher in fat. A ketogenic diet done right emphasizes lots of fibrous, non starchy carbs as it’s carbohydrate source with high quality proteins and fats.

A word of advice – make sure you go in and out of ketosis by ‘carb cycling’. If not, it can lead to future hormonal imbalances.

Which is exactly why I incorporated this strategy into my Slim, Strong and Sexy Diet Plan.

The Slim, Strong and Sexy Diet has a proven track record with my clients where they enjoy steady weight loss with incredible health rewards.

You can find it here Eat to Get Slim, Strong and Sexy for Summer

Clients report an average of 1-2 pounds of weight loss per week when done right.

Once diet is on point, combine diet and exercise for long term results

A meta analysis of studies in the journal Health Technology Assessment found that the combination of diet and moderate exercise for people on long term programs yields the best results.

Cardio burns calories, but resistance training helps you drop fat, while maintaining or building muscle.

If you’ve been on the treadmill trying to lose weight, my best advice is to focus more on resistance training with some cardio.

Exercise to maintain your weight loss

Studies have shown that people who stay on a regular exercise plan are nearly twice as likely to keep the pounds from creeping back on, according to the American Journal of Preventative Medicine. Other research shows that 90% of people who have kept off 30 pounds or more do 1 hour of exercise a day.

For those struggling to keep on an exercise regime, focus more on how it makes you feel than a sense of deprivation.

Being consistent with your exercise routine will allow you to stay lean for life.

Which is what we all want, right?

If you’ve enjoyed this article and found your best workout, please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

Need help with diet and exercise? Get one on one help here.

Need quick to make recipes that get you slim and feed you family well. Go here for 30 free downloadable recipes (you’ll find the ones I use as my pre workout snacks for my best workouts)

Avoid (the dreaded) Holiday Weight Gain: My Top 5 Tips

by hartteuser Leave a Comment

Looking to Avoid (the dreaded) Holiday Weight Gain? Then NOW is the time to plan and prepare.

If you’re like most people, the time between Halloween and Christmas is when you’re most likely to put on the dreaded ‘jelly belly’.

In fact, a A Prospective Study of Holiday Weight Gain took 195 subjects and weighed them during 3 critical periods: Pre-Holiday (from late September to mid-November), Holiday (November to January) and Post-Holiday (January to March).

In the summary, they concluded that it was the Holiday period when the highest amount of weight was gained.

Not only that, the study went on to report that this extra holiday weight gain was not reduced even after the following spring and summer months.

This spells double trouble for long term fat loss.

However, there are things you can do, starting today, to Avoid (the dreaded) Holiday Weight Gain.

I personally follow the strategies I am about to share with you, which is how I am able to stay at my desired weight (and health) all throughout the year.

The best part is I don’t feel deprived in anyway or that I’m missing out and You can too!

How DO I eat the large meal at Christmas or New Years without gaining?

Find out and follow my Top 5 Tips below so you can maintain your weight this season too!

Avoid (the dreaded) Holiday Weight Gain: My Top 5 Tips

Below are my 5 Tips to keep the extra weight off during the Holiday Season.

Tip #1: Tap into your WHY

Tapping into your WHY, means really thinking about WHY you want to be Fit and Healthy.

What is YOUR reason? To help figure this out, do this 5 Step exercise:

5 Step Exercise to figure out your WHY to getting (and staying) Fit n Healthy.

To do this exercise, grab a pen and piece of paper, notebook or journal and it have next to you.

Step 1: Close your eyes and think about what your life would be like being Fit and Healthy.

What are you doing?

What do you look like?

Who are you influencing?

How are your relationships with your loved ones?

Who is complementing you?

How do you feel?

How are you handling your day to day stress?

Step 2: Open your eyes and write these thoughts down under the heading

My life being Fit n Healthy

Step 3: Now close your eyes again and think about what your life would be like NOT being Fit and Healthy.

What are your thoughts, first thing in the morning?

How do you look?

How does your body feel?

Are you the role model you’d like to be?

How are you handling your day to day stress?

Step 4: Open your eyes and write these thoughts down under the heading

My life NOT being Fit n Healthy

Step 5: Where do you want to be starting now?

See it, believe it, be it now!

For me, I personally like to feel strong, have energy from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed, and be a great influence for my family and others.

I also like to feel good in my own body.

This is my WHY. What’s yours?

Next up to Avoid (the dreaded) holiday weight gain: My Top 5 Tips – is Tip #2

Tip #2: Fed Well, Fast Well

Feeding well, the Fit n Healthy way, means focusing on a ‘nutrient-rich’, seasonal way of eating.

Here’s why I don’t focus on calorie counting.

Let really take a good look at it……

It’s coming into the winter season, the snow has just fallen and I want you to think of how you feel, sipping on a rich bowl of creamy chicken vegetable soup.

Now, think of how you would feel with consuming 2 pieces plain, regular toast.

Both contain roughly the same amount of calories.

Compared to the 2 pieces of regular toast, the bowl of creamy chicken vegetable soup is jammed packed with mineral rich gelatin, health promoting vegetables, and strength building protein.

Whereas the 2 pieces of plain, regular toast are an irritant to your gut, quickly raise blood sugar to increase your waistline and likely not satisfying or satiating to say the least!

Bottom line: it is not about the ‘calories’ that the food contains.

It is about what information the food gives to the body that really matters.

This information is in the form of what path the food actually takes in the body. Calorie counting is NOT how we get to optimal body composition and health.

Instead, it is about the quality of foods you take in, along with when and how much.

For a more detailed description on how to feed your body well, read my article , How to Eat to Get Slim and Sexy for Summer and pay close attention to my section on ‘Create your Healthy Meals in 4 Simple Steps’.

So, after we’ve FED OURSELVES WELL, WE NEED TO FAST OURSELVES WELL

Fasting well means a time when you don’t eat.

Practice Intermittent fasting.

Setting a daily practice of Intermittent Fasting is one of the easiest and fastest ways to become a long term, efficient fat burner. When you are fasting, you’re essentially relying on your own body’s extra fat stores to be used for energy.

There are many ways to practice Intermittent fasting, but I find the easiest way is simply not eating for 14 to 16 hours from DINNER to BREAKFAST.

For more ways, check out Jason Fung’s new book, “The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal your body through intermittent, alternate day, and extended fasting“.

It turns out, amazing things happen when we don’t eat for 14 + hrs. Our body has a chance to do some ‘housecleaning’ otherwise known as autophagy.

Autophagy literally means the, ‘destruction of damaged or redundant cellular components occurring in vacuoles within the cell’.

Autophagy makes way for new, healthy, vibrant cells to be born.

Not only that, our weight loss, anti aging hormones (growth hormone, glucagon and adiponectin) go up.

When this happens, our fat storage hormone goes down (glucose), which is exactly what we want.

When glucose goes down, so does our stored body fat.

With no glucose kicking around for fuel, your body then looks for a different fuel source.

That fuel source is ketones. Ketones have gotten a lot of publicity these days, and for good reason.

Research shows ketones heal the brain, reduce inflammation and turn on our SIRT1 longevity gene.

I did a whole 2 part article on how Inflammation is the key driver to unsightly belly fat. So check it out!

Bottom line: getting into ‘ketosis’ burns fat, fuels our brains, and helps us look and feel more youthful.

An easy way to get the benefits of ‘ketosis’ is to keep yourself fasted by including MCT or cold pressed, virgin coconut oil in with your organic coffee or organic green tea. Doing so keeps you IN ketosis for all the benefits that I’ve just described.

Next up to Avoid (the dreaded) holiday weight gain: My Top 5 Tips – is Tip #3

Tip #3: Talk a morning walk (on an empty stomach)

Another easy way to step up your weight loss, or avoid holiday weight gain, is to start the morning with a 20 min walk on an empty stomach (fasted).

Walking, in a fasted state keeps you burning fat for longer.

Taking your walk, especially after your morning coffee or green tea, has been shown to increase your metabolism by up to 11% Practicing this a few times a week can really make a difference to your long term fat loss goals.

Doing so also is a great way to train your body to use ‘fat as fuel’ instead of using the other source – glucose,

Being able to switch between these two fuel sources (fat and glucose) is KEY for long term fat loss.

Just be prepared that up regulating your metabolism to burn fat can take time (roughly 4-6 weeks) and doesn’t happen overnight.

It’s a process called, fat adaptation. However, be patient with yourself. Being consistent with your new found healthy habit is how to Avoid (the dreaded) Holiday Weight Gain.

Next up to Avoid (the dreaded) holiday weight gain: My Top 5 Tips – is Tip #4

Tip #4: Have a protein rich breakfast and save your ‘starchy’ carbs for your evening meal

When it’s time for breakfast, choosing a protein rich breakfast can help to keep insulin, our fat storage hormone down. Adding about 1 to 2 tbsp of added healthy fats like coconut oil or grass fed butter will also help here too.

Insulin is our ‘fat storage’ hormone, so anytime it’s elevated, your ability to burn fat stops right in it’s tracks! Period!

Insulin is highly responsive to glucose. So anything that drive glucose up (grains, fruits, sugar, pastries, low fat milk or yogurt, bread, etc) will also drive up your weight.

Some are better then others (ie whole fruits better then whole wheat bread), but they ALL go to glucose in the blood.

Independant to insulin, your body does an incredible job keeping blood sugar stable through a process known as gluconeurogenisis (the regulation of blood sugar through your liver).

Evidence points to how our body doesn’t actually have any requirements for carbohydrates. This concept was the genesis to the popular Ketogenic Diet, successfully used on patients with Diabetic Type 2 and Epilepsy.

The idea is your body can do just fine with a diet full of quality proteins (15-30%), quality fats (70-80%) and some carbohydrates (5-10%).

I do believe there is value in adopting a Ketogenic Diet, at strategic times, and incorporate it into your seasonal way of eating.

December will be jam packed with details on the Ketogenic Diet where I take a deep dive into what it is, how to do it, and when to incorporate.

So, to keep things simple and avoid the dreaded holiday weight gain, have a good amount of protein (at least 25 grams) with some added fat (about 1 tbsp) for breakfast. Add in a little carbohydrates from plants, just make sure these are ‘above ground’ veggies (like kale or broccoli) or ‘low sugar’ whole fruits (like blueberries).

Some good breakfast examples include:

Organic, free range eggs with or without added pasture-raised bacon + a side of last nights stir fried veggies or colorful salad rich in healthy fats.

Or, a smoothie made with colorful berries, coconut milk, and a couple scoops of protein powder.

For a great smoothie recipes that burns fat, check out my Berry Delicious Green Smoothie.

Eating protein and fat during the day and saving the carbohydrates for your evening meal will allow your glucose to drop, ketones to rise and you to enjoy the benefits of burning fat for energy.

However, if you do the opposite and have some carbs at breakfast and lunch and then a big evening carb meal, you will NOT get the lower glucose numbers and elevated ketones.

Which, in the end, you continue to be a ‘sugar burner’ and not the desired ‘fat burner’.

If we look back, historically, we have been focusing on eating our larger meal around dinner. This is when everyone gathered around at the end of the day, connected and all ate together.

The next day was a smaller breakfast, sometimes even a simple siesta around lunchtime, and again, a larger meal at dinner.

This was the typical way with the Romans, Greeks, and most European cultures.

In fact, this is the preferred way with my family as well (all electronics OFF the table and put away please!!!).

The science behind a big meal at night: Eating properly stimulates the parasympathetic system (our ‘rest and digest’ part of the nervous system), which drops our cortisol levels to relax and put us in sleep mode. Having a deep, restorative sleep means we burn fat while we sleep too.

Keeping in mind, we don’t want to eat TOO much, drown in artificial light (TV, computers, phones), have a hot bath or work out right before bed time.

Here is the caution: if you do begin practicing intermittent fasting and don’t eat a bigger meal at night, then your body thinks it’s starving, keeps you up and you end up staying at the same frustrating weight.

So make sure you eat a good sized meal about 3 hrs before bedtime by following my healthy eating guidelines found in my article , How to Eat to Get Slim and Sexy for Summer

Next up to Avoid (the dreaded) holiday weight gain: My Top 5 Tips – is the final Tip #5

Tip #5: Detox

Detox is one of the most important steps you can take to Avoid (the dreaded) Holiday Weight Gain.

Just think about it. A lot of excess waste is being accumulated from all your food intake and it’s literally located behind your belly button.

So, if you want a nice attractive waist line to fit in that gorgeous holiday dress or handsome suit, you’ve got to make sure that you’re not all backup in there causing belly bloat!

DETOX is very simple:

Make sure you start your day with 1 litre of filtered water BEFORE or along with your morning organic coffee or organic green tea. Drink your water always away from meals.

To allow for 1-3 good sized bowl movements per day, incorporate non-starchy, fibrous carbs (just think of above ground vegetables like kale, radishes, peppers (all colors), broccoli, and celery). Remember to save your starchy carbs for your evening meal (think of below the ground veggies or properly prepared grains, beans or legumes).

Enjoying a little fermented foods prior to your evening meal will also aid in proper bowel movements along with about 300 mg of magnesium. I like magnesium glycinate.

Above and beyond using foods, I highly recommend doing a safe and easy detox. The one that I perform regularly is using a method called Biotherapeutic Drainage.

I found such great benefit from incorporating it into my own health strategy (for optimal immune, body composition, and hormone balance) that I became a Certified Biotherapeutic Drainage Practitioner

I include it as part of my Nutritional Programs for my personal clients and have been practicing this form of detox for about 7 years now with remarkable, fast results. The UNDAS (homeopathic detox drops) work right away to clear away the toxins so the body can do it’s own healing.

Many clients find it easier to drop their weight, let go of their body pain, and fix their digestion. You can find many success stories here.

For more information on Biotherapeutic Drainage and how I can help you with a safe and easy detox, click here

Toxins are pretty scary = they are all around us, they are invisible and can cause a lot of harm if we don’t take steps to eliminate them from our bodies. The great news is there are ways to detox where you actually FEEL GOOD while detoxing and even better after.

Just a word of caution: if you have done a detox and you’ve felt horrible, that is a detox that has gone wrong! Properly done detox is when you free up your liver, kidneys and gut to get the toxins OUT! Feeling horrible is a sign that the toxins, that you are attempting to get out, are actually staying IN. Not what you want!

Well, that’s it for now.

I truly hope you’ve found this article: Avoid (the dreaded) Holiday Weight Gain: My Top 5 Tips helpful.

If so, please share this with your friend and family or write your comments below.

Here’s to having a Fit n Healthy Holiday Season!

Michale