A Quick [and Hard!] Workout

I came up with this because I wanted to get in a hard workout but I had to skip the gym when my son was being fussy. It's a push workout (movements that involve pushing motions) that will get your heart rate hiked and work your whole body. Promise, this'll help your fitness endure.

Time: 10 minutes or less

Moves: burpees 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 supersetted with shoulder press (keep your core tight and don't arch your back!) 20-18-16-14-12-10-8-6-4-2
The numbers are your reps. So do 10 burpees and follow it immediately with 20 shoulder presses then 9 burpees and 18 shoulder presses, 8 burpees... you get the idea. Set your timer for 10 minutes and shoot to finish the workout before the alarm goes off. Each time you do the workout try to do it faster.

Photo courtesy of galacticconnection.com

Birth Announcement and a Few Pregnancy Nutrition Tips

Birth Announcement

I recently gave birth to my first child.  He's now 7 weeks old and after having an emergency c-section, I've been cleared to workout again.  It's my goal to get back into shape and really live up to this blog's name: enduring fitness.  First, I wanted to share 2 blog entries I had written at the beginning of my pregnancy.  I had planned on blogging through my whole pregnancy but I was so obsessed with getting the blog entries perfect that I ended up getting none of them done!  But in any case, I'm back and blogging my road to getting back in shape.  And why not start from the beginning!

Pregnancy Nutrition

"8/3/13

Today I took a pregnancy test.  I couldn’t believe my eyes: pregnant!  So many thoughts flooded my head as happiness flooded my heart.  After I had showered and had time to think a little more I thought of something else.  For weeks I had been working on getting my body into prime condition, and just finally I had gotten where I wanted it to be: 6-pack showing through, defined obliques, definition through my legs, and vascularity through my shoulders and arms...and then it hit me: this is the best I’m going to look in probably 12 months!  I don’t say this as though I’m selfishly lamenting...it just helped re-inspire me to have a fit and healthy pregnancy, lose the baby weight and get back where I was and share my journey along the way to inspire, help, and inform other women that are thinking about getting pregnant, are currently pregnant, or have had their baby and are now trying to get their pre-baby body back (or maybe even improve on what they had before!)  I’m a personal trainer and have a degree in nutrition and dietetics and every day I help women so why not help with my own story and journey too!

I’m overjoyed to finally be pregnant!  Today I worked out as usual and took my Juice Plus as usual (studies have linked taking Juice Plus during pregnancy to higher birth weights, lower incidence of c-sections, and less frequency of preterm births) AND I made myself not have the mentality that I can eat whatever I want because I’m “eating for two” (it’s amazing what the positive test does to your willpower!)  I also began feverishly researching and refreshing on pregnancy nutrition needs.  I found that during the first trimester a woman’s BMR (basal metabolic rate) increases only 5%, increasing my needs by only about 85 kcal/day.  So that test doesn’t REALLY mean I’m eating for two, just yet ;)  Also, I need to be consuming at least 400 micrograms of folic acid or folate a day in order to prevent neural tube defects (which can cause serious mental or physical deformations and even stillbirths) and help prevent low birth weight.  Since we’ve been trying to get pregnant for a little over 3 months, I’ve been focusing on this nutrient already (and it’s found in Juice Plus).  Another nutrient that I am going to have to focus on more is iron: needs nearly DOUBLE during pregnancy because I will have more red blood cells and, therefore, more hemoglobin (the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to other parts of the body) which is reliant on iron for production; on top of that, the woman (oh my Gosh, that’s me!) has to provide iron for the baby (oh my Gosh, my baby!) to produce its own blood as well.  We pregnant ladies need to be shooting for 27 milligrams a day according to most studies and articles I read.  

Maybe just as interesting as what we SHOULD eat is what we need to stay away from.  Some things, like unpasteurized soft cheeses (these may contain the bacteria listeria, usually harmless to most adults but can cause spontaneous abortion in pregnant women) and alcohol (no amount of alcohol has been proven healthy or safe for a fetus and over-consumption of alcohol can result in fetal alcohol syndrome which causes heart issue, facial abnormalities and mental retardation), I expected to see on the list, but others I was surprised at or didn’t think of.  Let me give you the rundown.  Most of us know we need to avoid caffeine, though studies conflict, most show that caffeine is able to cross the placenta and can increase fetal heart rate and some point to increased risk of miscarriage.  A generally recognized safe amount of caffeine per day is around 200 mg of caffeine (or about 2 cups of brewed coffee).  Something that was more surprising to me is the recommendation to stay away from herbal teas; I feel like many pregnant women would want to turn to them as a way substitute for coffee, but apparently there is little research on the effect on the fetus and obviously since we have a little life growing inside us we want to err on the side of caution.  Another important one to remember is to stay away from fish that are high in mercury, especially shark, tilefish, swordfish, and king mackerel (the bigger and older the fish the better chance it has a high mercury content).  Stick with smaller fish and 12 oz/week.  Some fish that are considered safe to consume while pregnant are shrimp, salmon, crab, tilapia, catfish, and canned LIGHT tuna (stay away from white and albacore tuna which tends to be higher in mercury).  Mercury can cause nervous system damage to developing babies.  Obviously avoid raw or undercooked poultry, beef, pork, eggs, or seafood.  Interestingly be careful with processed deli meats such as hot dogs and bologna, cook it until it steams or don’t eat it at all because these, too, can have listeria in them (yikes!).  Avoid foods high in naturally occurring vitamin A (not beta carotene, that’s a precursor to vitamin A and over-consumption of this can be flushed by the body) such as organ meats.  Too much vitamin A stores in fatty tissue and can cause neural tube defects, cranial neural crest defects, and general deformations.

Okay!  Enough of of what we can’t have!  Especially for the first trimester, just focus on eating healthy clean foods from a variety of food groups (lean proteins, healthy carbohydrates, fruits, vegetables, and healthy fats).  I’m so excited about this journey and I’m excited to inform and inspire others along the way!  I still plan on writing general articles on nutrition and exercise, but for 9-12 months I will be even more focused on pre, during, and post pregnancy fitness programs, nutrition plans, and other research.

8/8/13

This one is going to be short.  It’s another nutrition related post.  I was inspired to write it after a couple questions I got.  One question was: when you found out you were pregnant, did you completely change how you ate?  NO! (Well, not really.)  Why would I when I eat clean and a lot of nutrient-dense foods and rarely have simple sugars except in moderation; these are the things that both my changing body and my growing baby need!  I was surprised when I was asked the question.  I think she was thinking now that I found out I’m pregnant I would just start eating whatever I felt like whenever I felt like it.  But the best things for nausea, exhaustion, and mood swings that are so prevalent during the first trimester are small, frequent meals full of nutrient-dense foods that come from different food groups (protein, complex carbs, fruit, vegetables, dairy, and healthy fats)."

Women and Weight Lifting



My first post (finally)!  I'm pretty excited to be back in the blogging world; you might remember Skinny Fat Fitness if you're into fitness and health blogs and I was part of that team.  So something finally fired me up enough to actually create a post.  I'm going to try to leave my opinion out of this as much as possible and keep it fact and research-based, but it's probably going to creep in involuntarily.  So!  What's the topic?  Women and lifting.

I'm a trainer, therefore all day every day I'm in the gym atmosphere.  And I will tell you there is nothing more disconcerting than having a woman tell you how they want to look (and sometimes use your body as the example) but then turn around and tell you they don't want to lift heavy because they don't want to get big.  News flash: it doesn't work that way, if it did I would be a hulking 300 pound woman rather than a diminutive 135 pounds.  Okay, rant over, now on to the facts.

Even Men Have a Hard Time "Getting Big"

If you look at the typical gym setting and ask most men what they are trying to achieve they usually have the same answer: "get big."  In the gym, you will see men working and working HARD to layer on muscle and it is a slow process.  And here's the thing: they're at a physiological advantage for gaining muscle mass because their testosterone production is much higher than that of an average female.  Testosterone is one of the main hormones involved in gaining muscle mass.  Now the main sex hormone in women is estrogen (not a main hormone in muscle production), and the two have a counterbalancing effect, meaning: more estrogen equals less testosterone.  "As a result, female bodybuilders can do the same amount of training as men, and with the same intensity, without achieving the same results. In other words, women work just as hard but get less bang for their buck. Talk about frustrating."  So if you already have less testosterone than men who work really hard to get big, what makes you think you're going to? (1, 2, 3)

What About Those Professional Bodybuilding Women?
Unfortunately the awful truth of the matter is most of these women have "pharmaceutical help" with gaining the amount mass they do.  The prevalence of anabolic steroid use among female bodybuilders is rampant (although an exact figure is unknown due to the secretive nature of its use).  The amount of muscle these women gain is, and I don't mean it in a derogatory way, unnatural.  Even with the use of anabolic steroids these women have to follow a strict diet and spend hours every day in the gym; think you're gonna be doing that?  Yes, some women are blessed genetically and able to bulk up faster, but for the most part female bodybuilders are quite literally working against their bodies to gain that amount of muscle and be that lean (estrogen not only inhibits testosterone production, it also makes fat loss more difficult).  So ya, you might gain some muscle but you're not going to get that crazy hard physique either (what some women fear as well as muscle gain). (3, 4)

Gaining Muscle

Here's the long and short of it ladies: it takes a lot of intensity and consistency in the gym to gain even a little muscle and in order to gain mass of any kind there's another important factor: calories.  You can't just gain weight and get big by touching weights.  Since most women aren't going to eat the literally thousands of calories it requires daily to gain muscle mass, the fear of getting big is a misconception at best.  "There are critics who have considered weightlifting to be, well, unfeminine. This idea has been perpetuated by a bunch of old myths which have stood the test of time. The biggest is simply that lifting even the lightest weights will turn a woman into a manly, muscle-bound she-male. But, in reality, no amount of weightlifting would create super muscle mass in the average woman. Strength, definition and tone -- yes. Big, bulky muscles -- no. Women don't have enough natural testosterone for that to happen.  But this image-related public-relations disaster is likely traceable back to the three decade-long heyday of steroid use by Eastern European countries at the Olympics in the 1960s-'80s, especially by the former East Germany, whose women's teams became comical references/stereotypes for a masculine-looking female athlete. They won tons of medals, but the dude-like ladies were all anybody remembered." (3, 5)

So there it is ladies: gaining muscle isn't as easy as people think, lifting heavy doesn't mean you're immediately going to turn into a she-man, and, as a matter of fact, building lean muscle will help you look more feminine and toned (by changing your shape and helping to burn body fat) rather than a shapeless blob.  So stop with the excuses and just lift!

Sources

1. http://www.bu.edu/today/2013/women-and-weight-lifting-its-good-for-you/

2. http://bodybuilding.about.com/od/womensfitnesstopics/a/womenmyths.htm

3. http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/5-reasons-you-should-support-womens-bodybuilding.html

4. http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=132677&page=2

5. http://espn.go.com/olympics/story/_/page/hopefuls-holleymangold/2012-london-olympics-why-holley-mangold-weightlifting-rock-star