Challenge Workouts

I’ll tell you that it’s plenty hard to eat well while traveling. I just returned late last night from almost a week of travel. It was great to connect with biz friends and get pumped up about how to help my clients best, but it’s a challenge to eat well. I mean why wouldn’t I want to indulge in a New York pretzel or Philly cheesesteak? I’ve never had those things before and it seems crazy NOT to try them right?

So, I ate a few things NOT typically on my nutrition plan over the last few days.

I’m happily sitting in my window seat at home now, with my usual coffee and Sev at my feet. It’s great to be home with my own kitchen (even with my horrible cooking), but at least I have better control over my food intake.

(This is my view right now – fall is here in Canada, I’ll head up those stairs with Sev to the off leash dog park right after I press send on this email.)

Have you been to New York? It’s a crazy place, so much energy. People everywhere, and food literally on every corner.

I was in NYC for a Fit Body Boot Camp function but got to enjoy a little of the sights and sounds. I met my pal, Fat Loss Accelerator creator: Kate Vidulich for coffee both days. We sat out in the New York sun chatting while I enjoyed people watching. I’m sure it was ‘same old same old’ for Kate who lives here, but what an eye opening experience for me.

Then last night I hung out with good friends, fellow Fit Body Boot Camp owners Kathy and Ahmed Tafti. They live in Long Island so they knew just where to go. They took me to ‘Little Italy’ to the ‘best’ pastry shop around. I  had to have New York Cheesecake and a latte – not my  average intake for 10 pm on a Wed night.

Good thing I use Shaun Hadsall’s carb cycling tricks to ensure that those calories weren’t directly deposited on my  belly.

You see, I use carb cycling to help me stay lean year round.

Carb cycling strategically rotates carbs in and out of your diet. Look, carbs are not all bad, but too many carbs at the wrong time will definitely add to your waistline.

Carb cycling will help stimulate the right hormones to aid in burning body fat and will prevent metabolic slowdowns that are the cause of plateaus. You can double the fat burning effect of exercise when you carb cycle as well.

The bonus is that when you carb cycle, you can enjoy carbs without feeling guilty. So if you find yourself in New York City with a big piece of New York Cheesecake staring you down, you can dig in guilt free.

Now, while cheesecake isn’t the ‘best’ carb source, I can indulge in a cheat meal on a high carb day and make up for it with a no carb and a low carb day.

When I rotate three eating protocols I alter my hormonal environment to maximize fat loss and muscle gain. A cycle looks like this:

• no carb day
• low carb day
• high carb day
  
• no carb day
• repeat

Check out his 4 Cycle Fat Loss and save 62% before this Friday.

Time to get back to Sev and the kids and my quiet little Calgary bubble.

Here is a muffin that is truly packed with fiber. Whole wheat flour and wholesome cooked quinoa combine with almonds and cranberries for a moist and delicious treat. Cooked quinoa can be used in place of some of the flour in almost any recipe to increase protein and fiber.

Servings: 36

Here’s what you need:

• 1 cup unsweetened rice milk
• 1 Tablespoon ground flaxseeds
• 1/4 cup safflower oil
• 1/3 cup pure maple syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• zest from 1 small lemon
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup ground almonds
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1 1/4 cups cooked quinoa
• 1/3 cup finely chopped dried cranberries
• 1/4 cup organic turbinado raw cane sugar

1. Preheat oven to 370 degrees F. Place 12 muffins liners in muffin pan and set aside.
2. In a medium sized bowl combine the rice milk, flaxseed, oil, maple syrup, vanilla, almond and lemon zest.
3. In a separate bowl combine the flour, ground almond, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and cardamom. Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ones and fold in the cooked quinoa and chopped cranberries.
4. Use an ice cream scooper to fill each muffin liner 3/4 full. Sprinkle the turbinado raw cane sugar on top of each muffin. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden.

Nutritional Analysis: One serving equals: 55 calories, 2.5g fat, 8g carbohydrate, 1g fiber, and 1g protein.

Are you a carb-o-holic? Do you just LOVE carbs? I mean who doesn’t LOVE carbs? They’re the easiest ‘grab and go’ food, they’re delicious and they‘re everywhere. You’re likely getting mixed messages about carbs. Should you eat them? Avoid them? What’s the perfect combination of carbs? When is the best time to eat carbs? Can you actually eat carbs and get lean?

Here are three tips to help you eat carbs and manage your waist line:

Avoid Insulin Spikes

This is how your body works: eat carbs = get an insulin spike. Why is this bad? Well, it FORCES your body into a fat storing environment. You can NEVER lose fat when you have insulin in your bloodstream. Remarkably, as soon as simple carbohydrates hit your mouth, digestion begins and you’ll start storing body fat. This is why you NEVER want to eat carbs exclusively.

The solution? Combine your carb intake with protein and a fibrous vegetable to slow down absorption and moderate the insulin release in your body. This will allow your body to use those carbohydrates as energy before they’re shuttled away into storage for a rainy day.

The cool thing is, you can actually INTENTIONALLY cheat on carb based food when you use a carb cycling strategy that my friend Shaun Hadsall can show you here.

STOP Carb Based Fat Spill Over

If your energy intake is high and your energy output is low (face it, we eat too much and go sit on the couch on occasion) your body will over fill your muscle and liver storage and your body will start to store unused energy as fat. There are three simple stages of carb usage and if you understand how this works you can eat carbs and ‘beat the system’ so that you don’t store fat.

Here’s how the body utilizes carbohydrates:
First of all, carbs can be burned as immediate energy.

Second, your body stores carbs as gylcogen in the muscle and liver as to be used as an energy source later.

Lastly, when your muscles and liver are ‘full’, then the ‘spill over’ energy is stored as fat.

This ‘spill over’ effect with carbohydrates happens far too much. There’s a simple proprietary nutrition protocol that helps you STOP stage 3 carb-based fat spillover, you can read about it here.

STOP Eating Carbs at the Wrong Time

95% of folks gain weight back after a weight loss program due to eating carbs at the wrong time. There are good, better and best times to eat carbs:

GOOD: When you metabolism is highest, this is when you want to eat carbs. For the majority of folks, this is first thing in the morning. Insulin sensitivity is peaking at this time of day. Your energy tank is lowest due to fasting over night so there will be minimal fat storage. This works best when you exercise first thing in the morning.

BETTER: A better time to consume carbs is a couple of hours before you exercise to make sure that the carbs consumed is burned off during your workout. These carbs will increase workout performance through enhanced energy; this will help you burn off more fat and calories through the increased intensity of the workout.

BEST: There is a window of opportunity right AFTER your workout and this is the BEST time to consume carbs. Your muscles act like a sponge to soak up the energy from your favorite carbs.

So timing your carb intake will allow you to enjoy them without storing them as fat.

Simply put, if you eat carbs at the wrong times, you’ll STORE fat, but if you eat carbs with the right foods at the right times, you’ll BURN fat.

You can read more details about how to time your carb intake on this page.

If you’d like to learn exactly how to eat more carbs while you BOOST your metabolism, reset your fat burning hormones, then there are some answers for you on this page.

You can TURN ON your fat-burning metabolism in as little as 7 short days.

It’s scientifically proven, it’s unusually efficient, and it’s one of the easiest and safest ways to visually SEE your belly get flatter in as little as 7 days WITHOUT strict, complicated diets or the pain and suffering of traditional crash dieting.