10 Ways to Beat the Holiday Bulge

1. Eat a healthy snack prior to attending social events so you’re not ravenous when you see temptations everywhere, never go to a party hungry.
2. Look at the holiday as a day, not a week or a month. Allow yourself to splurge on one day-not for two months.
3. Exercise. You will most likely eat more calories around the holidays due to the parties, large family meals, and gifts of chocolate and cookies! Therefore continuing to exercise throughout the holidays speeds up your metabolism to burn the extra calories faster.
4. Drink 3 liters or 96-ounces of water daily, it aids in digestion and will keep you feeling full longer.
5. Get outside, even if it’s chilly, bundle up.  Take a walk the fresh air will do you some good.
6. Make time to relax; this is a stressful time of year for most of us.  Make sure you pencil in some YOU time, read a book, get a massage, take a bath, whatever gives you a much needed break.
7. Avoid the mentality that, “It’s the holidays so I can eat whatever want and splurge just because.  Stick to the 80-20 philosophy (80% of our food should be nutrient rich, while 20% can be less nutrient rich).  Oh, and limit your alcohol, just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean you need those empty calories.
8. Get out there and shop!  Park further away at the department stores, walk the mall with a friend and get gift ideas.  Move your body!
9. Remember what the holidays are all about. Focus less on the food and drinks and more on celebrating the special season and the company of the people you love — your family and friends.
10. Give yourself the gift of health this holiday season.  It’s never to early to start your “New Years Resolutions”.  Make this the year to really get your health back on track.  Maybe you’d like to lose the last 10 pounds, or maybe you need to get a handle on your weight and health once and for all.  Wherever you may be, recognize that this is your chance to turn it all around.  If you are ready for a change, give Unite Fitness Retreat a call today and let us show you how our personalized fitness and weight loss program can transform your life forever. 866-589-5615

Happy Holidays from your friends at Unite Fitness Retreat!

Yesterday You Said Tomorrow

Does this sound like you?

Boot Camp Workout

Ready to Sweat?

Fitness boot camps never go out of style for good reason: The military-inspired workouts burn serious calories.

Built on three fundamentals of training—cardio, strength, and agility—boot-camp workouts require little more than your body weight to get result. They’re more intense than any fitness class and more fun than traditional gym workouts.  Fitness boot camps never go out of style for good reason: The military-inspired workouts burn serious calories.

Stick to Basics

Put aside your stability ball: Boot camps are all about bare essentials, starting with the moves.

By stringing together exercises like jumping jacks, pushups, and squats into circuits that go from one move to the next with little or no rest in between, these workouts turn your body into an uber-efficient resistance machine. The moves target muscles throughout your entire body.  They’re much more effective than equipment-based exercises that isolate one single muscle group at a time.

Follow the Clock

Set a time limit for each exercise— think 20 to 60 seconds. It keeps you from pushing too hard and from slacking.  If I told you ‘Do squats until I say stop,’ you wouldn’t give 100 percent. But if I said ‘Do squats for 30 seconds,’ you’d work harder because you’d see the end in sight.

Take It Outside

Without fancy equipment or complicated moves, you can do a boot-camp workout anywhere—a park, a playground, even a parking lot.

And taking your sweat session outside has some serious perks: When researchers compared the mental benefits of an outdoor workout with an indoor one, 71 percent of the fresh-air exercisers felt less tense afterward, while 72 percent of the cooped-up crew felt even more stressed.

Buddy Up

One key to success is camaraderie. A group makes you accountable to show up, and the support helps you push through an intense workout.

When it comes to fitness, the power of your peeps is well documented: One review of 87 studies on nearly 50,000 subjects found a clear link between social support and exercise. Enlist a small group of friends who have similar fitness goals and pick a time and place. If you’re a no-show, next time they’ll make you drop and do 20.

Referene:  Woman’s Health Magazine

Obtaining a Healthy Diet and Sticking to It

#1 Plan for Success

To set yourself up for success, think about planning a healthy diet as a number of small, manageable steps rather than one big drastic change.

Simplify

Think of your diet in terms of color, variety, and freshness. This way it should be easier to make healthy choices.

Start slow and make changes to you eating habits overt time.

Changing everything at once usually leads to cheating or giving up on your new eating plan. Make small steps, like adding a salad (full of different color vegetables) to your diet once a day or switching from butter to olive oil when cooking.

Every change you make to improve your diet matters.

Don’t let your missteps derail you—every healthy food choice you make counts

Drink More Water

It’s common to mistake thirst for hunger, so staying well hydrated will also help you make healthier food choices.

Exercise everyday

Find something active that you like to do and add it to your day.

The benefits of lifelong exercise are abundant and regular exercise may even motivate you to make healthy food choices a habit.

#2 Moderation is Key

People often think of healthy eating as an all or nothing proposition, but a key foundation for any healthy diet is moderation. The goal of healthy eating is to develop a diet that you can maintain for life, not just a few weeks or months, or until you’ve hit your ideal weight. So try to think of moderation in terms of balance. We all need a balance of carbohydrates, protein, fat, fiber, vitamins, and minerals to sustain a healthy body.

For most of us, moderation or balance means eating less than we do now.  More specifically, it means eating far less of the unhealthy stuff (unrefined sugar, saturated fat, for example) and more of the healthy (such as fresh fruit and vegetables).

Try not to think of certain foods as “off-limits.”

When you ban certain foods or food groups, it is natural to want those foods more, and then feel like a failure if you give in to temptation. Start by reducing portion sizes and not eating them as often. Later you may find yourself craving them less or thinking of them as only occasional indulgences. Think smaller portions.

When dining out, split a dish with a friend, and never supersize anything. At home, use smaller plates, think about serving sizes in realistic terms, and start small. If you don’t feel satisfied at the end of a meal, try adding more leafy green vegetables or rounding off the meal with fresh fruit.

Healthy eating is not about strict nutrition philosophies, staying unrealistically thin, or depriving yourself of the foods you love. Rather, it’s about feeling great, having more energy, and keeping yourself as healthy as possible– all of which can be achieved by learning some nutrition basics and using them in a way that works for you. You can expand your range of healthy food choices and learn how to plan ahead to create and maintain a tasty, healthy diet here at Unite Fitness Camp. Give us a Call today!

Leah Britt
Certified Personal Trainer/Nutritionist