Fitness Safari

This post is a continuation of Fasting and Food, Part 1 which you can read here . CALCULATING CALORIES AND MACROS You use energy no matter what you're doing, even when sleeping. The BMR Calculator will calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR); the number of calories you'd burn if you stayed in bed all day. You may have noticed that every year of your life it becomes harder to eat whatever you want and stay slim. You've also learned that your BMR decreases as you age. Likewise, depriving yourself of food in hopes of losing weight may also decrease your BMR, a foil to your intentions. However, a regular routine of cardiovascular and strength exercises can increase your BMR, improving your health and fitness when your body's ability to burn energy gradually slows down. Find your BMR here: http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ Unless you are sick or just get too busy on occasion, NEVER eat below your BMR. Now, once you know your BMR, you can calculate y...

"Hi, thanks for adding me to the group. I started 16:8 fasting. Does this look like a good eating plan? This is what I'm eating: 1200 pm - protein shake 12:30 pm - gigantic salad with chicken or fish 3:00 pm - light snack of Greek yogurt 6:00 pm - dinner, another gigantic salad with chicken or fish I see some form of this post in the Facebook group (Fierce Fit Fearless 2.0) just about once a week. There is no cut-and-dry answer to this. Without knowing some key pieces of information, there is no way to answer this question. How old are you? How tall are you? How much do you currently weigh? What do you think is a realistic goal weight for you? What are your goals - Fat loss? Muscle gain? body re-composition? Other? What is your BMR? TDEE ? Tell me about your fitness program - do you lift? What do you do, how much of it do you do and how often do you do it? Answer these questions and then, and only then, can we can get started with your meal plan. The fir...

How long should I fast? This is probably the most common question I see among women new to Intermittent Fasting. Unfortunately there is no hard-and-fast definitive answer to this question. We all react to stress differently. Yes, I said stress. Fasting is a stressor to the body - especially the female body. Like money worries, relationship drama, and exercise, fasting will cause the body various levels of stress which can, and often will, result in negative consequences regarding our health. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing most of you have jobs and financial responsibilities, relationships, some of you have children or are care takers of family members. You probably rarely get eight hours of sleep and, let's face it, who has time to meditate daily when living in the real world? All of these things are life's stressors. Now, add lack of sleep, job and family/relationship stress to a boiling pot of intense daily e...

Hi everyone! I'm back. It's been way too long. I didn't realize how much I missed writing to you all here. Life, as it seems to do, has been throwing me curve after curve and finding the time to THINK let alone write just doesn't happen often. My old laptop was basically dead and I hate blogging from my phone, so I just pushed off keeping up with this old girl here. Good news! I recently bought a shiny new laptop and have no more excuses. If I can sit on my ass on the couch, I have time to share some thoughts here. So, what have you all been up to? I've been super busy at work, keeping up with my teenager, and spending time with the hubs. He had a setback earlier this year when his cancer returned, so his surgery and recovery really took over our lives for most of this year.  I'm not bringing that up for sympathy. Everyone has shit in their lives they're dealing with - and he's a fighter. He's doing ok now. I'm bringing this up because, while...

Exhibit A It's one month until Christmas and my friend Whitney has more to celebrate than usual. See Exhibit A above - a small mountain of clothes that are now so big and loose that she's finally letting them go. She's now four months into her training and happier than ever. Don't believe me? Read her testimonial below and get it straight from the source. Whitney : There are some things I can do now that I felt I couldn't before I started training with Jenn. One was to simply go into a gym and feel comfortable. I've also found that I have much more stamina and confidence going into my workouts. For example, when we started, I struggled to just get through the 10-minute dynamic warm-ups.  Now I I can get through it without feeling out of breath and having the overwhelming desire to give up before I even start.  On the physical side, I have been able to lift more weight, complete more reps and have seen the length of time I can train without rest in...

The idea for today's topic came to me after an interesting situation presented itself to me this morning. First, a brief history - I am a strength and conditioning coach at All Star Sports Academy in Toms River, NJ. We do a lot of youth athlete training at our facility and this includes team training where an entire hockey team or basketball team will come in to train with us one night a week. A few weeks ago, while I was coaching a group of young teen male hockey players, one of the owners of the gym was observing. The players were about as bad as my 14-year old daughter with their gossip and slacking off when they were supposed to be pushing through a conditioning session. The owner said to them at one point, "Somewhere there is a team getting their work done. You'll know them when you meet them." I printed a couple of flyers, featuring last year's local high school hockey regional champions with the words "Are You All In", and left them on his...