Decide. Act. Outlook change. Fit Life
Have you experienced starting an intense workout program, diligently sweating and working your butt off every day, and then gotten on the scale and seeing the number stay the same, or even go up? The Sedentary Athlete and Compensatory Eating saboteurs may be to blame. They go together like a couch and potato chips !
On a weekly basis I update my meal and exercise plan google sheets so you can see real time what I eat, drink, and how I move. You can download the templates and customize them for your own meals and workouts. And I have a rolling update of my fast and simple recipes HERE. Tips of the week: I have my Trader Joe’s shopping list for you here, to compliment my recipes. All designed for those of us who are busy and want on the go meals. Non-exercise activity, or NEAT, really makes or breaks your fitness. It is quite possoble…
In order to survive a professional career and be domestic, I have become a “Trader Joe’s chef”. Which means, I buy stuff at Trader Joe’s that I can throw together in rando combinations and somehow make it delish. It’s a skill I developed after years of shopping at the Trader Joe’s in my neighborhood (the West End, in Washington, DC) on Friday nights when I was single. I’d leave work around 7 or 8pm (#consulting life) and take advantage of the fact that the Trader Joe’s would be empty so that I could do my shopping and explore the aisles…
You may have noticed in my meal plan for last week I had a lot of fruit on the menu for breakfast. Well the reason why is that I decided to try the “food combining diet.” In this post I will cover what that is and what my experience was. In my post overviewing different diets, ,I didn’t cover every diet under the sun. There is always something new to discover, and I did that just last week when I ran into the “food combining” diet. I tried it for a week, and I am writing about what happened.
Earlier we explored what kinds of foods you can eat a lot of without gaining weight. Now let’s turn to the stuff that makes the food GOOD – the condiments. Sauces, dressings, and syrups can make or break a meal. Especially if the food you are eating is low on fat, oil, or sugar, something extra to enhance the flavor will help you derive better satisfaction and get less hungry later.
First, let me qualify that the purpose of this post is NOT to rain on your parade and tell you that any of these foods are off limits. As you can see from my 80/20 post, I am all for balance and enjoying favorite foods in small doses. The purpose of this post is to expose foods that masquerade as healthy “80” foods, leading us to believe that we are making healthy diet choices when we are really eating the equivalent of liquid candy. Under the false belief that these foods are harmless health foods, we are more likely to…
On a weekly basis I update my meal and exercise plan google sheets so you can see real time what I eat, drink, and how I move. You can download the templates and customize them for your own meals and workouts. And I have a rolling update of my fast and simple recipes HERE. Tips of the week: Now is the time for cardio, cardio, cardio. Spring is coming, and the weather is getting warmer. It is the perfect time to do calls outside, as you are walking. Salads are back in style. Definitely check out my post on 30 calorie…
We are getting warmer weather, and you know what that means – BIG SALADS! We can’t talk about salads without talking about salad dressing. If you want a healthy salad that achieves your goal of keeping your meal low-cal, you have to make modifications to what you find in the grocery store aisle. Otherwise, your dressing may be be more calories than the salad. If you are like me, you don’t want just a measly drizzle – that’s not the point of dressing! Dressing shoudl bathe the chopped veggies and greens in a yummy, zingy, salty and sometimes sweet goodness….
On a weekly basis I update my meal and exercise plan google sheets so you can see real time what I eat, drink, and how I move. You can download the templates and customize them for your own meals and workouts. And I have a rolling update of my fast and simple recipes HERE. Tips of the week Now that this is the Equiox and first week of Spring, this is a good time for renewal. One part of that is the “deload” act of resetting your body. Deloading simply means tapering off an intense workout routine to allow your body…
First of all, I am not talking about myself. I wish. I will be the first to admit I have to work hard to be fit. After a while, it becomes more effortless because the habits are so integrated into my day-to-day routine that I don’t even give it a second thought. Some of the habits I have learned are from my “naturally thin” friends. Who are these “naturally thin” people? These are people (who we hate) who always seem to stay thin without putting too much effort into diet or exercise, or who may not work out at all….
On a weekly basis I update my meal and exercise plan google sheets so you can see real time what I eat, drink, and how I move. You can download the templates and customize them for your own meals and workouts. And I have a rolling update of my fast and simple recipes HERE. This week, I feature my Salad Cream and Banana Bread Bowl Recipes.
If your wedding is coming up, or if you just got engaged and want to look amazing on your wedding day, you are in the right place. I have been through the trenches of training and adjusting diet for the big day. Especially losing the weight you inevitably gain when you fall in love. Why is that? Decadent dinners, wine, ordering pizza with your boo while Netflixing. And then the rude awakening – a looming wedding and all the baggage it comes with.
On a weekly basis I update my meal and exercise plan google sheets so you can see real time what I eat, drink, and how I move. You can download the templates and customize them for your own meals and workouts. And I have a rolling update of my fast and simple recipes HERE. This week, I feature the Ezekiel BLT and my Zoodle recipes. Note that I also endorse intermittent fasting, including the 5:2 method, which I describe here. I overnight fast on a case-by-case basis, meaning I usually eat my first meal at 11-1130am. What drives this approach…
Failing to read or properly interpret nutrition labels can be a handicap for your goals. And it’s not your fault. I will arm you with knowledge to screen out when a “healthy” food is actually healthy or whether you are being gaslighted.
As part of this series, in the interest of full transparency AND possibly giving you some great ideas, I will provide a tracker of all my meals and workouts for the week. Each week, a new exercise and meal plan will be published. I keep a repository of recipes HERE. DAOFitlife Meal Plan -Week 1 This plan will change week after week. As a static constant, it will embody principles from the following articles: The DAO approach to food , eating, and meal planning – keeping it simple, variety cycling, and keeping ready to go meals and snacks on hand; The 80//20…
The “new normal”. Our worlds, once so big, have gotten very small. It’s almost the one year anniversary – the worst.anniversary.ever. Gyms and workout studios are closed (or closed, reopened, closed and kind of reopened). Peloton sales have gone UP. App sales have gone through the roof – the fitness industry, besides the toilet paper industry, is a real winner in these “uncertain times”. There also have been winners and losers in the fitness sphere on the consumer side. I hear binary feedback from my audience – either they got in the best shape of their lives, or suffered from…
The Whole30 is a popular diet to start in the first quarter of the year, so you may be thinking of doing it right NOW. It is a reset, a new chance, a way to “cleanse” the system and purify your approach to food. The question is, is the Whole30 a “challenge” or a “fad” diet? Let’s break down the basics.
The Paleo diet is the “sexy diet.” Definitely would be Samantha, if it were a Sex and the City character. The Paleo diet evokes images of ravenously devouring meat – sexy, right? I have been to Paleo-land and will definitely visit again. Here is what you need to know.
Unless you have been living under a rock, you have heard of the “Keto” (short for ketogenic) diet. Just what is it, and does it work? What are the upsides, and the downsides? And where can you find all the resources in one place? HERE, in this executive summary. I will update this post as I come across more material, so definitely come back to it. What’s the skinny? This article will tell you what you need to know before deciding to try the “Keto” diet. After an overview and how it works, you will get guidance on the difficulty…
We all associate salads with diet food or a boring meal. It doesn’t have to be that way. With the right ingredients, your salad will go from boring to badass. But you do have to watch out – attempts to make salads less boring can detonate unintended calorie bombs.
