Home Sweet Home

Two years of college down... seems almost surreal to me. I am now a rising junior at Rutgers University and it seems to me that I was just a junior in high school. I got home yesterday and as I went over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, I rolled down my windows and let the salty ocean air flood my nostrils, and at that moment... I knew I was home. One thing that I love about Virginia Beach are all the restaurants... small, little local places are the main food fare of vb, with one or two chain restaurants but it's the local places that keep people coming back. Today, my mom and I went to one of my favorite places called The Leaping Lizard. It's a little place off of Shore Drive, but the parking lot is always packed and you are lucky if you don't have to wait for a table. All of their food is as fresh as it gets and the fruits and veggies they serve are all organically grown by them. They even have a produce barn out back where you can get the best fruits and vegetables you have ever eaten. It's the local places like Leaping Lizard that make me feel like I'm home.

Fresh strawberries, my crabcake lunch, and the produce barn at The Leaping Lizard.

Of course, no day for me would be complete without my workout! If you click on the actual name of the exercise I listed, it will send you to link that will show you step by step how to perform each exercise :)

Wide Grip Lat Pulldown (on the last rep of each set: pull the bar down so that your chin is just above the bar and hold as long as you can) 

Front Squat 

One Arm Incline Lat Raises

Leg Press

Skull Crushers

Hanging Leg Raises

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Pictures That Make Me Smile

A Girl's Best Friend

Sooo today's blog isn't really about fitness or nutrition, but I guess you could say it's about happiness and realizing how important best friends are in your life. Sammy, my roommate for the past two years and best friend at rutgers is going to be moving to Paris for her junior year, which is amazing and I am so excited for her but I would much rather set the entire country of France on fire or release some sort of deadly plague on them so she can't go. What's even more amazing is that she is not just doing a study abroad program through Rutgers... no, she applied to a French university and is literally transferring out of rutgers and will have to apply to transfer back into rutgers for her senior year... which, if you knew Sammy, is completely something she would do. She's from cali and I'm from virginia and we both ended up going to school in new jersey, and becoming random roommates our freshman year. Random roommate situations are very tricky and you never know how it's going to end up... I got very lucky because sammy ended up being my best friend and we roomed together another year. I can't think of a better friend to have than sammy. She has helped me through some really hard times dealing with my dad's cancer, took care of me when I had swine flu, yelled at me when I tried to go to the gym whenever when I was hurt or sick, we've stayed up late complaining about our boyfriends (and then talked about how much we love them the next day), helped each other come up with ultimate methods of procrastination during finals, threw me the only surprise birthday party I have ever had, we've stayed up late just being hyper and listening to christmas songs for hours, and we have told each other things that we would never tell anyone else. I really don't know what I am going to do without this girl next year. Someone better come up with a teleportation device or I better win the lottery so I can get my own private jet, because experiencing Sammy withdrawals is going to be ugly. So here's to you Sammy, my strong, beautiful best friend. I love you and I know we really will be best friends for the rest of our lives no matter where we are in the world.

A Balancing Act

A picture of today's lunch for me at the lovely dining hall (not really...but I make it work). I try to create a balance between all my macronutrients at every meal. Macronutrients are nutrients that our bodies need a relatively large amount of in order to function properly... Carbs, fats, proteins, and water! A glass of milk, apple, handful of mixed nuts, and a whole wheat pita filled with hummus, turkey, spinach, and some spices give me a good balance of all my macros, and will keep me full until my next meal. I eat about 5-6 small meals a day and I plan them ahead so I always know exactly what I am going to eat and will not be tempted to stray from my plan once I get to the dining hall. Being organized and planning ahead is key to making sure you get enough calories everyday and that all your daily requirements are met.

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Thintervention

Let's pretend you have a daughter (or maybe you already do)... Eventually that little girl is going to say, "I want to be just like _________ when I grow up!" (If you are lucky they will say YOU)... Now, what are that chances that she will fill in that blank with names like Brandi Chastain, Laila Ali, Gina Carano, Holly Holm, Venus or Serena Williams, or Allison Stokke? Chances are, unless you read her fitness and sports magazines before bed every night or ESPN is the only channel on your T.V... she probably has no idea who any of these women are, and most likely neither do you! All those women by the way, happen to be on a list called "15 Female Athletes That Could Snap You Like A Twig"... And they are all beautiful... Just sayin. It is more than likely that your young daughter would come back with a reply like "Hannah Montanna, Lady Gaga, Ashley Tisdale, or some other pop star or 20 year old playing a 12 year old on the Disney Channel. The fact is, the media plays such a huge role in our lives today that it's hard to escape it, and unless you can explain to girls that those stick thin models in ads, commercials, on billboards and the cover of magazines, are not what healthy women look like... then they are receiving very mixed messages. I'm not saying that the media is the devil or that you should boycott T.V, because in the world we live in today, it is impossible to escape the media. Technology and the media have done many things in society that are positive, but there are also negative sides, just as there is in every aspect of life. When young girls are constantly exposed to images of models that are too thin and pop stars that are wearing too little clothing and too much makeup, that is what they are going to aspire to be whether it happens consciously or unconsciously, which is why issues of anorexia, bulimia, and poor body image and low self-worth are more common among young females now more than ever. This can be stopped with a little intervention from a parent, a positive female role model, or anyone that cares to take the time to tell a little girl that strong, healthy girls grow up to be the most beautiful women. 

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Carb Controversy

Have you ever thought that the key to losing weight was to eat as little as possible? Maybe just suck on an ice cube and gnaw on some celery to get that body you always dreamed of? I mean, that's how all the "fit" people got to where they are, right? WRONG! So so wrong. Starving yourself will result in lack of energy, dehydration, loss of muscle mass, and the tendency of your body to HOLD weight instead of shedding it. Ok, I'm about to get a little scientific on you, but I am gonna try to keep it as simple as possible, so stay with me!

... Glucose is vital to everything our bodies do. Cells cannot operate without it, and you may have noticed that if your blood glucose level drops below a certain level, you feel tired, weak, dizzy, and shaky. Too much glucose is also just as bad as too little glucose, and the careful balance of glucose is regulated by hormones created in your pancreas called insulin and glucagon. Glucose is a carb, so when we eat more carbs our blood glucose level rises, signaling the release of insulin to take up that glucose to be used in cells, transformed into glycogen OR transformed into fatty acids to keep the blood glucose level from rising too much. SO, if glucose is transformed into fatty acids and glucose comes from carbs, I won't gain weight and get fat if I avoid all carbs, right?! Not exactly. Stay with me here... glycogen (which we just learned comes from glucose) is stored in the liver or in our muscles. Blood glucose levels increase right after we eat and begins to fall around 3 hours after eating (which is a good reason to eat small meals every 3 hours instead of just 3 big meals everyday)... once those blood glucose levels fall, the glycogen stored in your liver will break back down into glucose to be released into your blood. The source of glycogen in your liver has a limit and is completely depleted after about 24 hours. So, once your body has gotten all the glucose it can from the liver, where will it get the glucose it needs to function? The glucose that was stored as fatty acids??? Unfortunately, no. Unlike the glucose to glycogen transformation, which is reversible, glucose to fatty acid transformation is IRREVERSIBLE. SO, when your body needs more glucose, and can't get it from the liver, it will start to take glucose from the glycogen in muscles, which is NOT good. To lose weight we want to lose fat, definitely not muscle!

SO WHAT THE HECK DOES ALL THIS MEAN?!

A. Starving yourself decreases glucose availability...
B. When your body needs glucose it goes to the liver first and then will start to breakdown muscle
C. Fat is the LAST thing you will lose if you starve yourself or consume a diet with extreme calorie restriction

But what about all these low carb diets??? Low carb diets appear to be good in the short run, but not in the long run. Most of the weight loss seen in low carb diets is water loss. Why?

Every 1 gram of glycogen is bound to 3 grams of water, so when glycogen is broken down, it is mostly WATER that is being lost.

There are lots of different diets out there, but I believe that the best way to achieve a healthy body is all about moderation. A diet too low in carbs is not healthy in the long run, but neither is a diet high in carbohydrates. Trying to find a balance with a moderate amount of carb intake is the best option, and getting your carbs from good sources is another important point. Sugar is a carb, but that is not where your carbohydrate sources should come from. Whole grains, fruits, and vegetables are the best sources of carbohydrates. Moderation is a good thing to remember for all aspects of life, not just nutrition.

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ARMageddon (ok, I know it's not that creative)

Today was an arm workout for me... specifically biceps and triceps, but you can't really workout the bi's and tri's without also working other muscles because our muscles are all connected in one way or another! As a Taekwondo athlete since the age of 6, I have spent most of my life using lower body strength, which is probably why I love leg day so much because my legs are used to be worked really hard. For me, it is the upper body workouts that I dread the most because my upper body is my weakness, which is an even better reason to work it out! My upper body strength has been improving with every workout and the progress I can see and feel is amazing motivation. Today my weight training routine went like this...

Pull Ups
Bench Dips
Push Ups
Triceps Pushdown
21's  (7 reps from bottom to midway, 7 reps from midway to top, and 7 reps in the full range of motion)
Skull Crushers (I promise it only SOUNDS scary)

...And there you have it! An awesome workout to get you one step farther away from shapeless, "skinny-fat" looking arms, and one step closer to beautiful, strong arms! These exercises are easy to perform. There is nothing fancy or unusual about them, but you you don't have to stray far from the basics to get the results you want. There is no magical or secret workout that fit and healthy people are keeping from the world... It's just consistency and effort that make the difference between people who are successful in their fitness goals and those that seem to constantly be at battle with themselves. Just going to the gym, however, is only half of the equation to a healthy body. You can spend all the time and effort in the world at the gym, trying to sculpt every muscle, but if you leave the gym and stop at McDonald's on the way home, everything you just worked for has gone out the window. Diet and exercise go hand in hand. Diet without exercise or exercise without diet is like having a cell phone with no battery or a bike with only one wheel... IT JUST DOESN'T WORK! Flipping your world upside down and changing everything you have ever done is hard at first, but soon becomes a habit just like anything else  and the physical, mental, and emotional rewards you get from living a healthy lifestyle are going to by far outweigh those fast food meals you might miss.

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Need a new summer read?

This book, "The New Rules of Lifting for Women," is a great choice for a summer read because unlike all those romance novels women usually reach for as their book of choice for poolside reading, this book will actually improve your life. Granted, you may not follow or believe each suggestion or claim about health the author of this book makes, but it is definitely worth reading. Gabe got me this book for my birthday, and I haven't been able to put it down. The author takes an honest, straightforward approach to health, fitness, and nutrition without making foolish claims of going from fat to fit in two weeks by simply taking a diet pill that has been endorsed by a celebrity. The truth is, there is no, miracle, fast track, or secret to achieving a fit and healthy body. If you do the work and stay consistent, you will get the results. This book makes a lot of sense, is easy to follow, and I promise you will learn something new no matter how many health and fitness books you have read. This book explains in detail everything you need to know before throwing you into a new fitness and eating routine, provides amazing, REALISTIC recipes for every meal of the day that you won't need a personal chef to successfully create, and 6 months worth of workout routines that will challenge your body and keep your mind engaged and interested. There are step by step illustrations and instructions for all the exercises so that even the newest women to the world of weight training will feel confident and comfortable doing them. Do something great for yourself by reading this book and making your body more beautiful than it already is!

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The Final Stretch

Signs of final exam weeks are beginning to show around campus... Libraries are open around the clock and signs that people have been posted up in the library for days are becoming more evident- tables strewn with stacks of papers and books, dozens of empty coffee cups, 5 hour energy bottles, monsters and other beverages that promise a sleepless night, takeout containers, and of course the bloodshot eyes and tired-looking skin.... If you have ADD or ADHD chances are you have had more than one person ask to buy your adderal in a desperate attempt to study like a manic so that they can pass their finals. Anger that facebook exists is also at an all time high among college students during finals because it is irresistable when trying to do absolutely anything to avoid studying. Most of finals week is a blur where everyday seems to run together into one giant, sleepless, stressful mega-day! So as final exams approach, I say BRING IT ON... I will not allow these tests to affect my sanity or smiley personality... I think. :)

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