Many women have noticed that as they get older, keeping off the weight becomes more difficult. A new study published a few weeks ago in the most recent edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, confirms this fact, and suggests that middle-aged women who want to keep their figure must exercise at least an hour a day.
This study confirms what many women have long suspected, critics say the JAMA research report has some holes. 1. all the data was self-reported, which always means there will be some errors in the data, since people often under-report what they eat and misunderstand exercise.  2. it collected dietary information only at the beginning of the thirteen year study period. As a result, changes in diet, which happen inevitably over the years, were not accounted for.

In any case, the study was one of the most comprehensive and thorough observational studies on women’s fitness to date. The results also noted that women who participate in intense thirty minute work outs ever day accrue the same benefits from a one hour-a-day exercise regimen. Also, many times light to moderate exercise can be included in even the more mundane tasks that women often engage in, like the physical energy expended in taking care of children.

In the final analysis, the study underscores the fact that exercise is an essential in maintaining one’s health, especially as a middle-aged woman. And that is something all of us women who juggle a career or family but still find time to exercise with enthusiasm can celebrate.

Conclusion, if you can't find an hour per day to exercise then at least try to find 30 minutes.  If you can't find 30 minutes everyday then find 30 minutes every other day.  Exercise is an absolute must for women to stay healthy for a lifetime.

If you aren't sure what exercises that you should be doing please let know and we can help

One of the most common themes in the fitness industry is "How does a mom get her old body back?"

Some of the changes that come from pregnancy are somewhat easy to return to your pre-pregnancy you.  Some are not so easy.  Some you may have to live with forever.  So let's go through some of the science and get you on an appropriate plan.

Body fat - It is important for a pregnant mother to gain some body fat for their baby.  It protects the baby from damage and ensures that the baby will have plenty of calories both during the pregnancy and after during breast feeding.  This body fat can disappear and is not necessarily permanent.  It is important for your baby, if you are breast feeding, that you not diet too soon after pregnancy because you do not want both you and your baby tapping into those energy stores to aggressively at the same time.  If you diet too hard your breast milk will be low in calories and your baby may suffer.  Assume that you are burning 300-500 calories per day during breast feeding and eat those extra calories above your normal diet calories.  Once you are done breast feeding then you can take the gloves off and diet more seriously.

The Body Migration - When you are pregnant your hormones change to prepare you for childbirth.  One of those changes is a loosening of ligaments.  This change is relatively permanent.  You may find that your rib cage is slightly expanded, that your feet and hands are a bit bigger or that your knees and elbows are just a bit sloppy in their movement.  You cannot reduce the size of your ribs, feet or hands, but you can regain all of your pre-baby body control through proper exercise.

The Boobies - We all know that breast feeding can take some of the luster out of your breasts, but it is not all the babies fault.  IThe hormones that cause your breasts to grow larger during pregnancy also cause stretching and tugging, which can result in loss of elasticity.  Sadly these changes are relatively permanent, but will be much less noticeable as the body fat is reduced because there will be less weight pull them south.

In the end - You have put your body through stress relative to being shot with a gun!  You need to know that severe trauma on the body will take a long time to recover and may never be the same in a similar fashion to a scar, BUT if you stay consistent and focused you gain look better than ever.  For some women having a baby was just the motivation needed to get them in the best shape of their life!  Remember that having a baby is not an excuse to let yourself go, rather it is a reason to be more focused on your health than ever.  Be the best mom that you can be by being proud of yourself and being there for your kids for a long, long time.

If you want specific diet or exercise advice please submit the form above.

Whether it has been 2 months or 5 years your body may not have returned to what it was before.  There are some specific exercises that you should be doing to help restore those pre-baby curves.

1. Oblique crunches - When you have a baby your abs separate to make space for your belly to grow forward.  We need to pull those together by putting lateral stress on the area between the ribs and the pelvis.  Oblique crunches add just the angle that you need to tell the body to tighten up that space.  Regular crunches allow those muscles to stay wide and apart.
2. Chest Presses - As you know the breasts may lose some of their original... perkiness.  Help keep that area in place by using the Pectoral muscles, which are right below the breasts.  The more fit that the pecs are the less sag you will get.  Chest presses, push-ups and Chest Flys will give you the best breasts that you can have.
3. Lunges - When you are pregnant the hormones cause your ligaments to loosen up.  That includes your groin/inner thigh and glutes/butt.  When you do lunges you activate all 3 glute muscles and use your inner thigh to stabilize the knee, keeping it from dipping in and out.  This will also help return your rear-end to its best prerkiness level.
4. Rows - When you are pregnant and your breasts grow it effects your posture because of the adder weight and stress up front.  You need to get that to return to normal for life long health.  Do rows, of any kind, and those posterior muscles like your rear delts, rhomboids and traps will tighten up and pull you back into proper postural alignment.
5. Back Extensions - When you are pregnant your lower back takes a lot of stress.  It not only has a lot of new pressure/weight on it but also the ligaments will have been impacted by the same hormones that effected the rest of your body.  You need to tighten up the muscles that support your lower back, which is the part of the whole core complex.

If you are not doing these exercises already then please add them to your workout.  If you are already doing them, and still do not have the result that you want it is likely that you need to up the intensity on them.  Please remember, you need to lose the baby fat to see what is underneath, so add these exercises to your proper nutrition plan for best results!

Did you know that the average American Adult watches 1745 hours of TV per year?  That is over 4 hours per day?  If you exercised in those hours and only burned 300 calories per hour, which is relatively low, then you would burn off 145 pounds of fat in that same time?

Did you know that the average American kid watches 1456 hours of TV per year? Remember when you were a kid did you watch 4 hours a day of TV?  Is it any wonder that in some area of the country it is estimated that up to 40% of our children have, or will get, type 2 diabetes?

Did you know that the average American adult female exercises for 1 hour or less 70 days per year?  And if you are a guy you exercise 79 days per year.  It is estimated that we could reduce adult Diabetes and heart disease in 1/2 if we simply doubled the workout days in a year and exercised every other day!

Did you know that each year, an estimated 80 million Americans go on a diet, spending more than $30 billion annually on all types of diet programs and products.  That is an average of $375 per person just to eat less...

Finally, did you know that the average American waits around 18 months before they join a gym or fitness program?  If they simply joined immediately, worked out 3 times per week and burned 450 calories per workout the would burn a whopping 105,300 calories, which is a little over 30 pounds while most people were thinking about it.

Getting in shape can seem intimidating but when you break it down and stick to it your body can change by simply getting started!

Every Trainer on the planet will be mad that I released this secret, but well known within the fitness industry, list to the public.  Exercise may not be a good idea for you!  Here is why

1. Exercise is hard
2. You would probably rather be doing something else
3. You can get sore
4. You don't know what you are doing
5. OK, that is all that I could think of.

So now that you are here you may as well learn something useful.  You need to start paying attention to what your heart is telling you.  The way that your heart speaks is through heart rate, or speed.  There are 2 main ideas that you need to understand.

First, know your resting heart rate.  That is the idle speed of your body.  In general a lower RHR (resting heart rate) is better than a higher one.  If you continue to exercise then you should notice a decrease in your RHR.  That means that your heart is beating less to do the same amount of work.  That means that you heart is healthier.

Second, you need to know what your heart rate is when you exercise.  Sometimes your HR will go up and down in succession, sometimes it will go up and stay up.  Those are 2 unique and specific ways to train and you should know which you are doing and whether that is getting you to your goal or not.

Sorry I cound't find more excuses, I mean reasons not to exercise!

Making time for exercise can be a real challenge.  Whether you are a stay at home mom with 3 kids full time or you drive taxi 16 hours per day, making this time for yourself can be extremely challenging if not impossible.

I have 2 distinct responses to this issue.

The long-time hard core trainer in my says, "You had better find time, because each day, hour and minute that you don't you are doing damage inside your body that will become permanent, if it already isn't."  This is an important frame of mind to have because many, many, many people end up using their jobs, families or anything as reasons not to exercise instead of using them as the reason that you need to exercise.  You want to be a grandparent someday, you want to avoid an early heart attack.  You would probably even love to look into the mirror and say "WOW, I look really good!"

BUT, the father of 3 young kids in me who happens to be a trainer has a different response.  It is this response that I would say is more reasonable.  First off, you have to find time to exercise vigorously for 30 minutes no less than 3 times per week.  Even the Surgeon General of the United States tells us that being obese (above 21% body for a man and 35% for a woman) is more dangerous than smoking.  Exercising can be a family affair though.  Go for a bike ride, a hike, play soccer, almost anything will help.

You can make exercise part of your job as well.  Get rid of that office chair and sit on an exercise ball, use the stairs instead of the elevator, go for a walk on lunch.  I used to train a taxi driver who would go to the gym while he was waiting for clients for his taxi.  You can make time if you have to, and the Surgeon General says you have to.  Now the harder question is, "Do you really want to?"

Most estimates are that 95% of diets fail, and the MOST conservative estimates are that 80% of diets fail.  It has got to make you wonder why.
The problem is that when we achieve the specific milestone that we wanted out of the diet we return, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly, to the habits that we had before the diet.  In the worst case scenario our diet had a negative impact on our metabolism and we now gain weight easier than ever, and our previous eating habits are now catastrophic!
The problem is programming.  We are programmed to eat according to our need for calories and nutrients.  Then we develop habits that ensure that we get those calories and nutrients.  When we diet we follow a plan that is designed to get us to lose weight, and not do what we need most!
What you need most is not to remove carbs, or stay away from ice cream for the rest of your life.  What you need to do is reprogram your brain to want only what it actually needs, rather than wanting a surplus.  This is easier said than done and we can really screw ourselves up trying to get down to that perfect diet.  Let me give you the easiest example to understand.  Anorexia.  The habits of Anorexia destroy your metabolism, so once the individual, for whatever reason, would like to try and return to normal eating habits they gain weight eating an extremely restricted calorie intake.
To reprogram your body and go on the perfect diet you must know this 1 thing is more important than anything.  Do not diet to lose weight!  Diet to reprogram your body.  Once you have created the environment where your metabolism is increased it is then that you can slightly restrict calories and get great results from that.  Many of my clients are now eating more food than ever and still losing weight because the first thing that we did was to make them eat more.  I know that this seems counter-intuitive but for many people the best thing that you can do is eat more, let the body get used to the extra calories and start improving the way the body reacts to food.  If you add or intensify exercise while you eat more you can even avoid most of the weight gain that can come from eating more.
Here is what you need to do, step-by-step:

1. You need to track what you are currently eating.  I know, I am so mean because you keep hearing (reading) me saying this, but you have to know what you are doing before you can know how to improve what you are doing.  Track your food for an entire week including the weekend.
2. Look at the macro-nutrients (carbs, fats and proteins).  Look at the one that you are getting the least calories from.
3. Decide how you could gain some, just a few to start, calories in that lowest category.
4. Then do.  Eat more of that type of food only.
5. Increase your exercise slightly to help offset the increase in calories.  Keep tracking your food.
6. A week later look at your food tracking and repeat the process of steps 4, 5 and 6.  Repeat over and over until you see a 1 pound weight gain for more than 3 weeks in a row.

I know that this sounds dramatic and scary but if you want to permanently change your programming this is the only way.  You can expect to gain a few pounds the first week but do not freak out.  You are simply replenishing your empty stores and that will have weight to it.  This quick weight gain should be a short process.  If you continue to gain weight for more than 3 weeks then you are ready to start the weight loss process.  This is the best way for you to lose weight permanently this is the best way but it requires a long term attitude and patience for it to work.  If you are scared to death of gaining a pound then this is not the right diet for you.

Going uphill can help you win the uphill battle. 

Do you wonder why?

• Walking on an incline (uphill) burns approximately 15% more calories than walking or running on a flat surface.
• Going uphill burns a greater % of body fat calories versus food calories.
• Walking at a 16% incline burns 30% more fat calories than a flat surface, but at the same heart rate.
• Walking at a 21% incline burns 70% more fat calories than a flat surface, but at the same heart rate.
• Incline training recruits 20-40% more muscles than on a flat surface.
• Walking uphill can get you the same cardiovascular gains as running on a flat surface.
• Less joint pain than flat surface exercise because a lower body intensity can achieve the same cardio respiratory challenge.
• Lower risk of injury due to the lower intensity.

Mix it up.  Try doing more than just walking or running uphill to get maximum results.  Do 2 minutes of side shuffles on each side, run backwards, do some karaoke running and do some skipping.  That additional exercise will shock the system and get you some fantastic results!
Give us your feed back for questions, issues or anything that you would like to learn about!

If not, maybe you should.  Functional Training takes a comprehensive approach to training, reconditioning and rehabilitation as it pertains to your fitness.

Functional Training is shown to be the most effective way to build strength and LBM (Lean Body Mass) that translates directly into your life.  Functional Training is designed specifically to decrease body fat while increasing LBM, increase energy and endurance, and improve balance and flexibility.  Unlike traditional resistance training, with functional movements you will find very little bulk will be added to any single muscle because most muscles in the body are integrated into each movement, giving you a long-lean look.

• 58% greater increase in strength over fixed isolated movements
• 196% improvement in balance over fixed isolated movements
• 30% greater reported lessening of joint pain
• Up to 400% increase in calorie burn over fixed isolated movements depending on the exercises compared

So what is Functional Training?

Functional Training is a multi-planar, multi-dimensional, proprioceptively enriched exercise movement.  That means that you are in an unstable environment, like standing on 1 foot, and you move a weight through space at more than 1 angle and in more than 1 direction. 
Because of the complexity of the movement many muscles will be part of the motion and you will find that the weight that are able to move is relatively light compared to traditional weight training where you are in a stable environment and move a weight in a single plane with limited muscles.

The addition of all the muscles increases overall calorie burn and has a greater impact on you metabolic rate.  It also decreases the risk of overuse injury and tendon strain because of the light weight.

Disclaimer.  Functional Training is a highly effective way to exercise, but the movements tend to be more complex than traditional weight training.  In that complexity you will involve most muscles and joints in the body.  Make sure that you are with someone coached in these exercises before you try them to avoid the potential for injury.  Use a high degree of caution when starting out and do not worry much about the weight that you are lifting as it is far more important that you use proper form than a heavy weight.

Give this a try and then give us your feedback!

The hot-word when it comes to fitness has been for years "TONE".  Everyone wants to tone-up their body, not bulk-up, sometimes shape-up, but always tone-up.  Where people screw up their program is when they say, "I don't want to lose weight, I just want to tone-up." There is no such thing as a tone-up workout.  Learn why that confusion will stop you from getting you to your goal of the toned-up look.

What most people do not understand is what they are really asking for to be tone, so first let me describe what most people mean by it.  Imagine lean arms where you can make out the muscle shape, but not so buff that you are veiny.  Imagine shapely legs that have nice smooth transitions and show a slender ankle and look athletic, but not like an Olympic track star.  Imagine abs that look nice and flat, and you can just make out the shape of the muscles but not so much that the ridges are like hand-holds when you are rock climbing.  If that is what you think of as tone then this article is for you.

To get that tone look you need to know why you don't look that way now.  First of all, you have muscle on that body.  The problem is that it is hidden beneath body fat.  No matter how weak you may think that you are you do have muscle that would look tone if only you could see it.  Also, you may not have enough muscle to give good muscle shape so that as you do lose the body fat you may have to get extremely lean before you see much of the muscle.

The solution is to increase your muscle, and decrease your body fat.  You need to lessen the distance between your muscle and your skin.  You want, to some extent depending on your body, your muscles to grow out towards your skin.  The you want your skin to move in towards your muscle.  What lies between the two is body fat (lose weight).  So never say that you want to tone-up but not that you don't want to lose weight because it is the fat weight that is keeping you from being toned.  You know what it takes to lose body fat, eat less calories than burned.  Next you need to improve the muscle.  Give them shape and clarity.  Combine those two and you will have the toned-up body.

So what you need to do is figure out why you aren't losing body fat or gaining muscle before you can get that elusive toned-up look.

DO YOU:

• Have a willingness to change what you are doing to get results?
• Do exercises that burn the most calories that you can handle?
• Get in cardio exercise at least 4 days per week?
• Use the FITT principle to keep your body confused and those results coming?
• Lift some weights, at least 3 days per week?
• Have an expert and ask for help if you aren't getting results?
• Have a NO-QUIT attitude?