How long does it really take to get in shape?

This is a question clients put to me all the time; unfortunately, it's hard to answer. That's because, even though I know they're looking for a quick answer like "4 months" or "8 weeks," the truth is it depends on a lot of different things.

First, there's your background. Are you a former athlete used to hitting the weights, or a reformed couch potato who is new to working out? Your past and existing fitness levels can dramatically affect the time you need to get up to speed.

Plus, everyone has a different definition for what "in shape" means. To some, it's being able to play in a tennis tournament or run two miles without stopping; for others, a marathon or just looking good on the beach is the goal. Without having an idea of what you want to achieve, it's tough to know what kind of progress you're making.

With that fine print laid out, however, I'll offer an answer that's probably closer to what you're looking for: it takes most people, on average, about 10-12 weeks to start seeing noticeable gains in their fitness program. They might start to feel more energetic right away, or detect changes like weight loss earlier, but 2-3 months seems to be the point where most people can tell that their physical appearance is changing.

But, as I mentioned before, you may or may not think of that as being "in shape." If your goal is to compete in a running, swimming, or biking race, you might want to plan for closer to six months, or a bit longer if you're shooting for something even more ambitious.

There are probably two other things I should point out here. The first is that you can't rush results. Like a "crash diet," a workout routine that doesn't allow enough rest or recovery isn't going to do you much good. In fact, it could lead you to a very serious injury or illness, so resist the urge to go above and beyond what your doctor or trainer recommend.

And secondly, remember that your time working out is just part of the equation. Working hard is great, but it won't do a lot for you if you have terrible form, or if you finish your exercise by eating a box full of sweets. Rest and nutrition are very big parts of the process, and how well you incorporate them along with your strength and cardio training can easily mean the difference between making progress and hitting early plateaus.

Even though there might not be one set answer to the question of how long it takes to get in shape, there is one thing I can promise you: if you make a commitment to working on your fitness, hire a quality trainer to help you get started, and take advantage of your time to rest and eat in a healthy way, then it won't take more than a couple of weeks for you to start feeling better than you have in years.

Slipping on your New Year's Resolutions?

As the clock struck midnight on New Year's, tens of millions of Americans pledged to themselves that this would be the year they finally got into better shape. Surveys show that this is overwhelmingly the most popular New Year's resolution out there... and also, unfortunately, the one that usually gets abandoned the quickest.

Chances are, you know at least half a dozen people who planned on getting fit in 2010, but haven't made very much progress so far. You might even be one of them yourself. If you are, that's okay – it's a common problem, and you're fighting some very powerful psychology. It isn't that you don't want to get into shape, it's that getting into shape takes a lot of hard work over a lot of time. It's very easy for your brain to trick you into settling for something else that feels better in the moment. In other words, being fit feels good later, but ice cream and pizza do the trick right now.

This is all just a way of saying that resolutions are hard because habits can be nasty things. But the good news is that there's still plenty of time to reach your fitness goals for this year. You just need to get moving today, before they become another thing you never got to.

Here are a few pieces of advice to help you gain some momentum:
Use habits to your advantage. We all know that bad habits are hard to break, but what most people forget is that good ones are, too. Make it your goal to do a light workout every day for a month. Even if you spend just a few minutes on the treadmill, you'll find that it will quickly become part of your daily routine – and much easier to stick with going forward.

Make it convenient. It's hard to muster the enthusiasm to go to the gym when it means driving half an hour, finding your workout clothes, locating some of your favorite music, and so on. Make things easy by planning ahead; find a place and time that are convenient to exercise, and then gather everything you'll need beforehand. Having your workout set to go removes a lot of the last-minute excuses we find to just stay home.

Remember Pavlov. A lot of us remember the story about Pavlov and his dogs – the ones who salivated automatically at the sound of a bell – from high school. What we tend to forget is the underlying lesson: rewards and punishments are powerful things. For every day that you make your workout, give yourself a treat; if you miss your time at the gym, fine yourself a couple of dollars, or put off watching your favorite television show. It might sound simple, but it can help you set new habits quickly.

In less time than you think, we’re all going to be looking forward to 2011. The question is: will you still be dreaming about getting into shape, or thinking about what you can accomplish once you are?

Cardio Workouts That May Even Make You Smile

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You already know that one of the most important things you can do for your weight loss goals is regular cardio exercise. You also know that cardio workouts are indispensable to an effective training program and general good health. But, did you know that you don't have to suffer through boring cardio workout experiences day after day?

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Check out this post on PersonalTrainerz.com for Five Fun Cardio Workouts to Trim Your Body. These are great ideas for getting out of an exercise rut.

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If I have to spend ONE MORE minute putting one foot in front of the other on the treadmill or gliding on the elliptical, I think I'll explode. Honestly, I'll become the very first victim of B.C.B. (Boring Cardio Burnout), and I'll simply vanish into thin air. I have tried everything to make these monotonous cardio workouts exciting...magazines (print is too small to read while in motion; gives me headaches), books (too loud in the gym to concentrate; book won't stay open on the little magazine rack), books on CD (expensive to buy, horrible selection at the public library; too embarrassed to carry my old CD walkman), cell phone (not cute to carry on a conversation while breathing heavily)...Get my point? Today, I'm vowing to stop the madness. No more boring work outs for me!

About Cafe Physique:
The mission of Café Physique is to help clients reach and exceed their personal fitness and nutrition goals. If you’re in need of an a nutritionist in Atlanta or an Atlanta personal trainer – Café Physique is the perfect solution. We offer Atlanta yoga instruction, Atlanta prenatal workouts, and Atlanta personal training. We also have private sessions of pilates that Atlanta residents are raving about. We invite you to let a member of our Atlanta registered dietitian staff or personal training team develop and implement a realistic and healthy lifestyle plan to meet your personal goals.

13 Healthy Eating Tips

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Developing healthy eating habits isn't as confusing or as restrictive as many people imagine. The first principle of a healthy eating plan is simply to eat a wide variety of foods. This is important because different foods make different nutritional contributions.

You should also try to maintain a balance between calorie intake and calorie expenditure—that is, don't eat more food than your body can utilize. Otherwise, you will gain weight. The more active you are, therefore, the more you can eat and still maintain this balance.

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The following basic guidelines are what you need to know to construct a healthy eating plan.

1. Eat plenty of high-fiber foods—that is, fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains. These are the "good" carbohydrates—nutritious, filling, and relatively low in calories.

2. Make sure to include green, orange, and yellow fruits and vegetables—such as broccoli, carrots, cantaloupe, and citrus fruits. The antioxidants and other nutrients in these foods may help protect against developing certain types of cancer and other diseases. Eat five or more servings a day.

3. Limit your intake of sugary foods, refined-grain products such as white bread, and salty snack foods. Sugar, our No.1 additive, is added to a vast array of foods. Just one daily 12-ounce can of soda (160 calories) can add up to 16 pounds over the course of a year.

4. Cut down on animal fat. It’s rich in saturated fat, which boosts blood cholesterol levels and has other adverse health effects. Choose lean meats, skinless poultry, and nonfat or low-fat or nonfat dairy products.

5. Cut way down on trans fats, supplied by hydrogenated vegetable oils used in most processed foods in the supermarket and in many fast foods.

6. Eat more fish and nuts, which contain healthy unsaturated fats. Substitute olive or canola oil for butter or stick margarine.

7. Keep portions moderate, especially of high-calorie foods. In recent years serving sizes have ballooned, particularly in restaurants. Choose a starter instead of an entrée, split a dish with a friend, and don’t order supersized anything.

8. Keep your cholesterol intake below 300 milligrams per day. Cholesterol is found only in animal products, such as meats, poultry, dairy products, and egg yolks.

9. Eat a variety of foods. Don't try to fill your nutrient requirements by eating the same foods day in, day out. It is possible that not every essential nutrient has been identified, and so eating a wide assortment of foods helps to ensure that you will get all the necessary nutrients.

10. Maintain an adequate calcium intake. Calcium is essential for strong bones and teeth. Get your calcium from low-fat sources, such as skim milk and low-fat yogurt.

11. Try to get your vitamins and minerals from foods, not from supplements. Supplements cannot substitute for a healthy diet, which supplies nutrients and other compounds besides vitamins and minerals. Foods also provide the "synergy" that many nutrients require to be efficiently used in the body.

12. Maintain a desirable weight. Balance energy (calorie) intake with energy output. Exercise and other physical activity are essential.

13. If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation. That is one drink a day for women, two a day for men. A drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 4 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof spirits. Alcoholic beverages can add many calories to your diet without supplying nutrients.

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Following these basic steps doesn't mean that you have to give up your favorite foods. As long as your overall diet is balanced and rich in nutrients and fiber, there is nothing wrong with an occasional cheeseburger. Just be sure to limit how frequently you eat such foods, and try to eat small portions of them. A healthy diet doesn't have to mean eating foods that are bland or unappealing.

* From MediZine Wellnessletter: 2009

About Cafe Physique:
The mission of Café Physique is to help clients reach and exceed their personal fitness and nutrition goals. If you’re in need of an a nutritionist in Atlanta or an Atlanta personal trainer – Café Physique is the perfect solution. We offer Atlanta yoga instruction, Atlanta prenatal workouts, and Atlanta personal training. We also have private sessions of pilates that Atlanta residents are raving about. We invite you to let a member of our Atlanta registered dietitian staff or personal training team develop and implement a realistic and healthy lifestyle plan to meet your personal goals.

Health Benefits of Drinking Tea

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Drink more tea. When the whole Starbucks craze started, I always felt left out when my girlfriends wanted to meet for coffee because while I love the aroma of fresh brewed coffee, the taste makes me gag and cringe. But then a friend turned me onto hot tea, and things have never been the same since.

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I love hot tea for many reasons. For one, it has turned out to be my herbal Xanax. It calms me when I'm feeling anxious, and comforts me when I'm having a rough day. I'm known for being freezing cold at all times, so I enjoy holding a hot mug while reading a book or people watching. These are all of my emotional reasons for drinking tea, but here are 10 health reasons to make the switch!

1. Tea contains antioxidants that protect your body from the ravages of aging and the effects of pollution.

2. Tea has less caffeine than coffee. An eight-ounce cup of coffee contains around 135 mg caffeine; tea contains only 30 to 40 mg per cup. If drinking coffee gives you the jitters, causes indigestion or headaches or interferes with sleep -- switch to tea.

3. Tea may reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke. Drinking tea may help keep your arteries smooth and clog-free, the same way a drain keeps your bathroom pipes clear.

4. Tea protects your bones. It's not just the milk added to tea that builds strong bones. One study that compared tea drinkers with non-drinkers, found that people who drank tea for 10 or more years had the strongest bones, even after adjusting for age, body weight, exercise, smoking and other risk factors.

5. Tea gives you a sweet smile. Tea itself actually contains fluoride and tannins that may keep plaque at bay. So add unsweetened tea drinking to your daily dental routine of brushing and flossing for healthier teeth and gums.

6. Tea bolsters your immune defenses. Drinking tea may help your body's immune system fight off infections.

7. Tea protects against cancer. Thank the polyphenols, the antioxidants found in tea, once again for their cancer-fighting effects.

8. Tea helps keep you hydrated. The only time the caffeine becomes a problem as far as fluid is concerned is when you drink more than five or six cups of a caffeinated beverage at one time.

9. Tea is calorie-free. Tea doesn't have any calories, unless you add sweetener or milk. If you're looking for a satisfying, calorie-free beverage, tea is a top choice.

10. Tea increases your metabolism. Green tea has been shown to actually increase metabolic rate so that you can burn 70 to 80 additional calories by drinking just five cups of green tea per day. Over a year's time you could lose eight pounds just by drinking green tea. Of course, taking a 15-minute walk every day will also burn calories.

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Clients frequently wonder which tea is better - green, black, or white? To be honest with you, there really isn't enough difference to get overly excited about. All teas generally contain the same amount of flavonoids. Green and black tea come from the same plants, but green tea is dried for a shorter time and doesn't go through a fermenting process used for black tea.

About Cafe Physique:
The mission of Café Physique is to help clients reach and exceed their personal fitness and nutrition goals. If you’re in need of an a nutritionist in Atlanta or an Atlanta personal trainer – Café Physique is the perfect solution. We offer Atlanta yoga instruction, Atlanta prenatal workouts, and Atlanta personal training. We also have private sessions of pilates that Atlanta residents are raving about. We invite you to let a member of our Atlanta registered dietitian staff or personal training team develop and implement a realistic and healthy lifestyle plan to meet your personal goals.

You WORK too much

By sprout wellness at growhealthywithsprout.com - A borrowed post that says everything that I've been thinking but never took the time to say:

so i’ve been thinking about how awful it is that more and more people i come across no longer take a lunch break at work. they eat at their desks, go to the vending machine, or sometimes skip lunch altogether. i could maybe maybe maybe get on board with this new shift IF people were working from like 11 to 3 or 4 (or even just making their own hours and schedules). but when you’re working from 8 or 9 to 5 or 6, that’s absurd. how and why are people just letting this happen? i mean, i don’t really get how we allow a lot of things to happen. but being worked into sickness is on a really weird level, because NO one i talk to has any problem with it. at all. they think it’s no big deal. um, really?

i stumbled across this article that makes all of the points i would have. here you go:

• Almost a third of working Americans (28 percent) took no vacation time at all; half took a week or less; and two-thirds got less than two weeks off. The median vacation time: 8.2 days, far below the three weeks most cited as the needed amount of time-off to prevent burnout.
• The eighth annual Expedia.com vacation survey backs that up, reporting for “the eighth consecutive year, Americans received and used the smallest amount of vacation time among their (European) counterparts abroad.”
• Even worse, despite reporting an average of 14 paid vacation days again this year, about a third of employed U.S. adults will not even use all the vacation days they do get.
• “Again this year, employed U.S. adults will leave an average of three vacation days on the table, in essence giving back more than 460 million vacation days in 2008. Despite these statistics, Americans do see the value in vacation, with more than one-third (39 percent) reporting they feel more productive and better about their job upon returning from vacation and 52 percent claiming to feel rested, rejuvenated and reconnected to their personal life.”
• And even when Americans do take vacation, 24 percent “report that they check work e-mail or voicemail while vacationing.” That’s up from 16 percent in 2005.
• Men who don’t take regular vacations are 32 percent more likely to suffer from heart disease than those who do, and women are 50 percent more likely.

and the worst part by far was actually written in the comment section, by a man named mike burns:

“I have not had a vacation for nine years. My employer can’t afford to give us any. I work for the Oil and Gas industry. In that time, I have lost a family through divorce, and had two heart attacks. I had a quadruple by pass surgery on my heart.
All I did wrong was work. I am still working. Right now, my plan is to die on the job. I am 54. Work is all I have left.
I am living the American dream. I will not hold my breath for O’bama to do anything different. I lost my first marriage when Clinton was in office and that is when I had my first chest pains. The reason? I worked. I am still living the Reagan Revolution. I don’t think the Reagan Revolution will die before I do.”

it’s heartbreaking. but on some level, it’s our own fault.

Find Your Motivation

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Motivation will not magically happen. Your motivation will change from day to day. You have to recommit to your goals each day, tweak them to fit changes in your lifestyle and attitude and find new ways to motivate yourself over the course of your life.

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If you're sitting on the couch watching Oprah's Best Life episodes while eating Kashi cookies dipped in melted Hershey's kisses from Halloween (don't even laugh - it happens) and waiting to feel "motivated" to head to the gym, you are fooling yourself.

Motivation is not something that happens to us. It's something that we have to create for ourselves. Since each person is motivated by a unique set of factors, it really is up to you to find what will make you eat like you give a damn (Sorry, Mom).

- Does spending money in this tight economy make you feel like you have an undie grundie? Well, consider the fact that diseases caused by unhealthy living, and their necessary medications, will make your healthcare costs skyrocket! And what about the crazy costs of having to buy a new wardrobe when your "normal" clothes don't fit anymore?

- Are you a complete sucker for your grandkids? You certainly won't be able to do anything fun with them if you have no range of motion (completely inflexible) and are out of breath by the time you hit the end of the driveway.

- Thinking about starting a family? Your new baby will be your most prized possession, so do you really want to treat him/her to a 9 month incubation period filled with Krispy Kreme donuts and second-hand cigarette smoke? Not at all. You want to give your baby the absolute best from the point of conception.

These are just a few examples of how you can motivate yourself to live a healthy lifestyle by finding something else that you really, really want out of life and linking them both together.

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Studies have shown, and I tend to agree, that people who give "looking good" as the sole motivating factor for exercising and eating well do not stick to healthy living as long as their counterparts who give less superficial reasons. The problem with only being worried about how you look is that you will have no motivation to make smart choices on the days that you're fitting into your "skinny jeans." Also, when you find yourself in an environment when you feel that you look better than most everyone else, you'll tend to slack off. Find something more meaningful to motivate yourself...something that you care about deeply...something bigger than just yourself.

About Cafe Physique:
The mission of Café Physique is to help clients reach and exceed their personal fitness and nutrition goals. If you’re in need of an a nutritionist in Atlanta or an Atlanta personal trainer – Café Physique is the perfect solution. We offer Atlanta yoga instruction, Atlanta prenatal workouts, and Atlanta personal training. We also have private sessions of pilates that Atlanta residents are raving about. We invite you to let a member of our Atlanta registered dietitian staff or personal training team develop and implement a realistic and healthy lifestyle plan to meet your personal goals.

Diets Don't Work

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Diets Don't Work. Stop wasting your time following someone else's plan for you. Make your own plan based on realistic changes because if you can't follow your chosen diet for the rest of your life, you're wasting precious time.

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Most people who go on diets gain back any of the weight that they've lost. This is because it is very difficult to maintain a strict eating regiment and because dieting often disrupts our bodies' natural metabolism.

We often start diets with the thought that we will suffer through some type of unnatural eating plan for a set period of time and then we will go back to our old habits after losing the weight and finishing the diet. In these cases, we haven't really addressed our underlying reasons for why we eat and how we view food and self-care.

In terms of metabolism, when we follow strict diets that don't meet all of our body's needs, our body makes metabolic adjustments that make it increasingly difficult for us to lose weight. Our body becomes very efficient, and we then have to eat less and less and less in order to continue to lose weight. The fact that the same diet becomes less effective over time, makes it nearly impossible to stick with.

So, if diets don't work, what is the answer? The key lies in making lifestyle changes (not temporary quick fixes) that honor your body. This is not an easy process, but it is fulfilling and life-altering.

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Whenever I say that diets don't work, I worry that people will interpret that to mean that they should just eat whatever they want and hope for the best. That is not the case at all. I have simply found that scripted diet plans rarely ever result in permanent weight loss. I've witnessed the disappointment and embarrassment that typically accompany failed weight loss attempts, and I've also seen the wonderful life changes that result in self-care and making peace with food.


About Cafe Physique:
The mission of Café Physique is to help clients reach and exceed their personal fitness and nutrition goals. If you’re in need of an a nutritionist in Atlanta or an Atlanta personal trainer – Café Physique is the perfect solution. We offer Atlanta yoga instruction, Atlanta prenatal workouts, and Atlanta personal training. We also have private sessions of pilates that Atlanta residents are raving about. We invite you to let a member of our Atlanta registered dietitian staff or personal training team develop and implement a realistic and healthy lifestyle plan to meet your personal goals.