The #1 Weight Loss Habit

If you know anything about Mint Condition Fitness, you know this: we are all about habits. You can do anything for the next six weeks and make tremendous progress toward your goals, but if you have not established the habits necessary to keep you moving in the right direction, then all your work will go to waste. Of all the habits you could work on, however, there is one that lies above the rest. It may not be sexy, but if you become good at this one thing, you will not only find yourself at the weight you want, you will be able to achieve any goal you set your mind to. What are we talking about here? Planning.

If there is one thing that separates those people who find success from those who do not, it is their ability to plan. This becomes clear when we think about how most people attack weight loss goals. First, they feel inspired and motivated to change. They know that there are five different things that they need to work on to reach their goals and so they jump in head first and try to change all of these things at once. Then, when it becomes too much to handle, they get frustrated and give up. Or maybe they reach their goal, but realize that they cannot sustain these changes, so they slowly revert to their old ways. Either way, their lifestyle (and eventually their weight) has not changed much from the time before the changes.

Action Without Planning…

The first and most important issue comes down to willpower…of which humans have very little. The power of the will is highly overrated and you will find the more you try to will yourself to do anything, the harder you will fall. Once we accept that willpower is not the answer, it becomes a matter of planning that will make the difference in the end.

So let’s think through how we might better PLAN our weight loss goals. Step one, what do you want to achieve? Let’s say it’s losing 10 lbs (or even better, losing 2 pants sizes). Okay, what needs to be done? Exercise more, eat better. Excellent, how are we going to do that? To exercise more, I will find a gym that is close to home and I will find a buddy to go with, to keep me accountable. I will make sure that the timing will fit into my schedule and I will put it on my calendar so that I do not overbook myself and end up missing my workout. To eat better, I will plan my meals for the week. I will think about what I need for those meals, go shopping on Saturday, and cook half of my meals on Sunday. I will then cook the other half on Wednesday. I will plan to go out to eat two times per week, where I can loosen up on what I eat. I will not buy any junk food to keep in the house. If I get hungry for a snack, then I will figure out what snacks I want to have available. If I am out and am not able to have the meal that I had planned, then I will make sure that I know a couple restaurants where I can get a good meal at.

As you can see, there is a lot to think about when you start planning out how you are going to achieve a goal, but what is the alternative? If you really want to reach your goal, isn’t it worth putting in 1-2 hours on a Sunday, thinking through how you might actually get there? It’s not enough to just think of a goal and start taking action; there are too many obstacles that will come up. Why do you think you are where you are in the first place? Because of obstacles! So here are a few questions that you should run through before starting to work toward any goal:

1) What is my goal?

2) When do I want to reach my goal?

3) What has kept me from reaching this goal in the past?

4) Have I tried to reach this goal before and made progress? If so, what worked? If not, what did not work?

5) What obstacles will I face that could keep me from making progress?

6) What are my backup plans for getting around these obstacles?

7) What about my current situation do I not like? What would be GOOD about changing?

8) What about my current habits do I like? What would be BAD about changing?

9) Who can I turn to for support when things get hard? Who will keep me accountable?

10) How can I change my environment to support my goals?

11) What will I do, once I reach my goal?

12) What about my current life am I unwilling to give up?

If you can take the time to think through these questions, you will be fully prepared to attack whatever goal you may set. As you will notice, two of the questions focus on the good and bad side of making the changes you are about to attempt. This is important as you must first understand why you do what you currently do and why you want to do something different before you can hope to make lasting changes. Self-awareness is often overlooked in the habit changing game, but it can be the most important.

Too Many Changes

The second issue that comes up when making changes is our inability to judge how much we can handle. While making a few simple dietary changes and adding in exercise may sound simple at the start, there are countless barriers that come up for which we cannot plan for. If you are trying to change too many things at once, this will usually just lead to more frustration and disappointment than actual change.

The other issue with changing everything at once is that even when you do reach your goal, you are unable to keep up with your new habits. And that’s just the point: change must be sustainable. I can’t tell you how many people say, “I’m going to just drop the weight and then maintain.” That’s like saying, “Let me just cheat on my entrance exam and THEN I will start studying.” It doesn’t work that way. Because even if you do lose the weight, how will you have any idea what it means to maintain? Maintenance implies that you have healthy habits already in place, and this takes consistency over a long period of time.

Game Plan = Game Change

So this is it. You have your goal; you have answered your questions; you have a plan. Now it’s time to take action. Once you start, though, you must go back and use your newly developed game plan to guide you along the way. New obstacles will arise, unforeseen barriers will hold you back, but keep looking over what you wrote and modify it as needed. It has taken years for you to establish the habits that you have today, so don’t think that this is an overnight transformation. If you really want to change the game, know that you will have to adapt your plan as well. But know this: as long as you decide today that your life will be lived on purpose, and not by chance, you will find success in whatever it is that you strive to achieve.

The Not So Sweet Side of Agave Nectar

One of the hot new “healthy” sweeteners is agave nectar. It is produced from the agave plant (the same one used to make tequila!) and has been marketed as a healthier alternative to sugar and other sweeteners. In this article I will be explaining why this is false and why other sweeteners like Agave nectar should be avoided!



The Glycemic Myth

The main reason Agave nectar is promoted is because of its low glycemic index and load. The glycemic index measures the increase of blood glucose after eating any form of carbohydrate. The glycemic load takes this measurement and accounts for the amount of food needed to produce a given glucose response. The most important thing to know is that they both measure glucose in the blood. 

While this can provide some information for diabetics to better control insulin (increased glucose means elevated insulin levels) it does not tell us the whole story about the foods that we eat. You see, glucose is only part of the picture when it comes to sugar. Sugar (sucrose) is in fact made up of two molecules: glucose and fructose. While glucose goes into the blood and can be used by all your muscles, fructose is sent straight to your liver for processing, therefore it does not show on the glycemic index. 

This explains why Agave nectar has such a low glycemic index: it is almost 100% fructose. This does NOT, however, mean that it is a healthier choice. Once fructose hits the liver, it is broken down and used to replenish and fuel the liver. Once the liver is replenished, fructose has no more useful function. So what is to be done with extra fructose? It is stored as fat! 

Fructose = Fat

Until recently, fructose was mostly found in fruits, honey, and some vegetables. In quantities available in nature, you would normally consume no more than 15 g of fructose per day or 12 lbs. per year. Today in America, the average person consumes around 62 g of fructose per day or 50 lbs. per year! What makes this particular form of carbohydrate so unfavorable is that because it cannot be fully used by our bodies, it generally turns straight to fat! 

We already mentioned that only your liver can utilize fructose. What we didn’t mention was how little your liver actually needs. Besides the fact that the liver can actually use any kind of sugar to help keep it fueled (fructose is not the only kind needed), it also takes a lot of work to even deplete liver fuel stores in the first place! Unless you work out vigorously for an extended period of time, consuming no carbs in the process, it would be hard to deplete the sugar stored in your liver. With moderate workouts every day, it would take 2-3 days of having zero carbs. 

Unless you are dealing with one of those two scenarios, you are probably doing just fine. And if your liver is doing just fine, then any fructose you eat will turn straight to fat. Now some of this can be used as fuel, but if you are relatively sedentary, you can bet that a good amount is being stored as fat.

(This diagram is showing that both glucose and fructose can be metabolized in the liver, but that once glycogen stores are full, fatty acid synthesis goes in full swing. There is no reason for the derivatives of fructose to move up the chain to help with storage. All efforts toward creating more fat!)

The Game Plan

While you do not have to cut out ALL fructose from your diet, there are some things that we would recommend to keep your sugar levels in check:

1a) Start reading labels! If you buy ANYTHING that has a label on it, see what is in it. If it has Agave nectar, it might not be a winner. Other high fructose sweeteners include HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup), sugar, beet sugar, cane sugar, or just straight fructose.

1b) Don’t buy things in packages! If you really want to be sure you are staying clear of fructose, just avoid packaged/processed food altogether. NOTE: bread, yogurt, deli meat, and even some soups can be just as bad as cereal, potato chips, and candy bars.

2) Keep away from caloric beverages. Soda and juice have a significant amount of sugar, and coffee and tea are usually filled up with sugar. Remember, “raw cane sugar” has the same amount of fructose as HFCS.

3) Eat in. You would be amazed at how much restaurant food has sugar added. Well, I guess it’s not that amazing, that’s why it tastes so good!

4) Limit fruit. This is always a hard one for people to accept, but it is important to understand that you do not NEED much fruit. This doesn’t mean you have to completely cut it out, but if you are having 4-5 servings a day, you are consuming a serious amount of sugar and fructose. If you do decide to include fruit, 1-2 servings are plenty and it is best to emphasize berries.

(NOTE: If you are working to lose weight, 0-1 servings is best. You can still get all of those vitamins and minerals from veggies. Did you know that one spear of broccoli has just as much vitamin C as an orange?)

5) If you MUST sweeten, use Stevia or a small amount of local honey. While even these can easily be over used, we must still respect the need for alternatives.

Wrap Up

If you are looking to lose weight, or more appropriately, lose fat, you must consider your fructose intake. Regular exercise can help tremendously, but it takes limiting the amount of sugar you eat to really make a difference. Agave nectar is particularly bad because it is almost all fructose, but other sugars are not much better. In the end, it is all processed, so we must continue to work toward providing our bodies with whole, natural foods if we hope to truly be healthy. And that’s the goal anyway right? So let’s watch our sugar, drop some pounds, look better, and feel better in the process!

Breathing Your Way Out of Back Pain

I want you to stop whatever you are doing and think about what your body is doing right now. Are you standing, sitting, or lying down? Is your back straight or hunched over? Do you have pain anywhere? Where are your shoulders? Are they up around your ears from stress, or are they relaxed? Finally, how are you breathing? Are you taking long slow belly breaths or are they short and up in your chest. Do you feel your shoulders move up and down every time you breathe?

If you are like most people, you probably just corrected about 10 things you noticed were not optimal for your posture or your functioning. The scary thing is, if you had not just thought through that, how many more hours would you have been stuck in that position before you finally moved? It has been shown that keeping a static posture for just 20 minutes can take up to 60 minutes of motion to “undo” the postural changes you have created. This means that if you sit at a desk for 2 hours then stand up and move around, it could take up to 3x as long for your body to fully regain its mobility.

Now think about what your typical day looks like. Do you sit for 20 minutes then move around? Or do you sit for 4 hours, walk to lunch, sit down to eat, walk back, and sit for another 4 hours? Or do you not take a lunch at all?! If this sounds like you, hopefully it is clear that in a short period of time you will quickly lose mobility and function. This means less ability to participate in day-to-day activities, and a much higher risk of pain or injury.

The Pain Epidemic

Did you know that 80% of people will experience some form of back pain in the next 10 years? You may be suffering from back pain right now! What is interesting to reflect on, however, is that back pain is very poorly correlated to joint or disc issues. Most people, if given an MRI on their back, would show some sort of bulging disk or degeneration. The odd part is that those people with bulges are just as likely to experience back pain as those without any issues at all. So if it is not the structure that is leading to all that back pain, what is?

If we think back to our 20 minute model, we can see that there may be other factors at play. If you put yourself in a poor postural position for most of the day, stressed out, and breathing poorly, you have a high likelihood of aggravating your back. Not because this activity is “strenuous” like picking up something with your back, but rather because the position is taxing on your nervous system. When you combine this with a stressful job, your body becomes locked in this tense state that makes moving very difficult and can make even bending over to tie your shoe an all-out effort. This is why some people will throw their back out just by bending over to pick up a pencil…their nervous system was not able to respond!

Just Breathe

Right now Americans spend about $26 billion dollars on back pain therapy. While this is a huge amount to begin with, what is disturbing is that we don’t see the back pain issue getting any better. What we are starting to learn is that while certain rehabilitative techniques can help relieve people of back pain, they are not very good at preventing future episodes of pain. Luckily, we are also starting to discover what DOES help keep people out of pain for the long run. One of the most overlooked strategies for long-term back health is optimal breathing.

Here is a link to a study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16053121) looking at how breath therapy compared to physical therapy over a six-month period. What they found was that both of the groups that were studies improved about the same amount with those using breath therapy having a quicker response time. This is crazy to think about, but let’s think about the role of breath in back health.

1) Proper breathing reduces stress. Stress leads to muscular tension, making it harder to move properly and also promoting tightness in all muscles. Avoiding this is key in keeping the back, as well as the rest of your body, working at its best.

2) Better breathing means more oxygen for your muscles. Muscles must have oxygen to function and when your breathing is shallow, your ability to fuel your muscles is limited as well. This can lead to more pain and fatigue in any given area, but again, the back is already susceptible, due to all of the stress you are putting on it.

3) Possibly the most import role that breathing plays in low back health is allowing for proper core functioning. When you breathe with your chest, you are actually using your shoulders and neck to lift your rib cage. This is why people think they “store stress” in their necks—their neck and traps have been working all day to help them breathe! While this is an issue in and of itself for shoulder and neck health, it is also a huge problem for the low back. When you use your neck to breathe, you are also using your shoulders to brace your spine. If you have ever done a push-up or row exercise and found your shoulders at your ears, this is what has happened. You took an improper breath and now your neck is locking down to protect your spine. The problem is that these muscles are a long way from your low back and while you are trying to hold your abs tight, they have nothing to brace against. All of your air is up in your chest and your abs and low back are left to fend for themselves.

Let’s compare this to what happens when you take a proper breath before moving/lifting. When you breathe correctly, your abdomen and sides expand. Think of your midsection as if it were an inner tube. When you achieve this type of breath, you now have created pressure within your abdomen which you can use to brace against. It is your very own weight belt! This type of breath is what allows people to lift hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds without hurting their backs. It’s not just that they have big muscles, they have big breaths too!

The Fix

The biggest difference between those with low back pain and those without is breathing. If we combine poor breathing with extended periods of poor posture and stress that further promote this type of breathing, it’s no wonder so many people have back pain. So what do we do?

The first thing I would encourage people to do is to learn how to breathe. We talk about breathing a lot, so check out this previously posted article where we show you a low level breathing exercise that can really help to teach you proper breathing. Once you know how to breathe, start thinking of ways to incorporate it into your daily routine. Maybe you put a little note on your computer saying “just breathe”. Maybe you try to take a break from sitting once an hour (or more) and just move around and take 10 deep breaths. At the very least, if you do currently exercise, you should never lift another weight without learning how to take a proper breath.

If you can start building this into your routine, you will find that your back pain will start to take care of itself and that your posture and stress will improve as well. It’s amazing how simple it is sometimes. Now we just have to take action. 

The Top 5 Core Exercises You're NOT Doing

Everyone loves talking about the core and core training, but how do you know if the exercises you do are really effective? I am here to tell you that what most people do is NOT effective. Crunches, reverse sit-ups, bicycles; these are all “core” exercises that actually do little to get you the look that you desire. They are more likely to leave you with a sore back and a hunched over posture than a six pack.

So what does it take to get that toned look? We’ve said it before and we will say it again, diet is always #1! But there are some great exercises that can help you in the process without straining your back and that will help burn fat in the process. (ALERT: Crunches and other similar activities burn very little fat…so stop doing them!)

Let's Get Moving!

Today we are going to show you five movements that will not only work your abs, but will work your body as a whole, meaning more potential for fat loss. To the workout! 

1) The Goblet Squat

 

The goblet squat is so effective as a core exercise because of the position of the weight. By holding it in front of you, your core is forced to engage much more than in a traditional squat. Load this up as heavy as you can hold (and still come back up from) and you will feel the full body work it provides. Goal: 2-3 Sets x 8-12 reps.

2) Renegade Rows

Renegade rows provide a unique combination of planking with single arm rows. This not only forced you to hold a plank for an extended period of time, but also challenges your core to resist rotation. Any time we can perform "anti-rotation" movements, the core is going to get worked. So load this one up as much as possible while maintaining control of your shoulder and hip position. You should feel as if you could hold a cup of water on your butt and upper back and not spill. Goal: 1-2 Sets x 10 reps each arm. 


3) Squat to Lift

Here we combine a squat movement with a rotation, again challenging the core to not over rotation. The goal here is to keep your belly button straight forward the entire time, while your shoulders rotate the medicine ball (or other weight) in a diagonal direction. Goal: 1-2 Sets x 10 reps each side. 

4) Anti-Rotation Lunge (Increase difficulty by raising bar overhead)

The Anti-rotation lunge is another winner due to it's positioning of the weight. Use a TRX Rip trainer (as seen in the photo) or a cable machine and hold the bar out in front of you with the cable only attached to one side. This will force you to stay straight as you lunge out and will challenge your whole body in the process. You can also increase the difficulty of this exercise by raising the bar over your head. Goal: 2-3 Sets x 12-15 reps each side. 

5) Kettlebell Swings

Possibly one of the best full body exercises, the Kettlebell swing works your core in the most pure sense of the word. You see, you core is technically any muscle that attaches to your spine or pelvis, running all the way from your hips to your neck. This exercise challenges all of them and creates a huge metabolic demand in the process! Goal: 2-3 sets x 20 reps.

Wrap Up

As you can see, these exercises look very little like your traditional “core” movements, but once you try them, you will see that not only do your abs get worked, the rest of you does too! And this is really what getting toned is all about, doing full body movements that force your body to recover and adapt. Try them out in your next workout and let us know what you think!