1 – GET NUTTY!

Instead of going for a side of potato chips at this weekend’s potluck, instead, help yourself to a handful of nuts. Although nuts can be high on the calorie scale, they’re rich in protein and fatty acids, which help balance your blood sugar and curb your appetite so you’re not constantly nibbling.

2 – JUST KEEP CHEWING

You already know that whole foods are at the top of the charts when it comes to best foods for your waistline. It turns out, people who ate foods that require you to chew had significantly leaner waistlines than those who generally consumed processed, easy to chew foods.

3 – EAT YOUR FRUIT JUICES

Compare this…drinking one cup of apple juice contains 117 calories, 27 grams of sugar, and zero fiber.  But, one whole apple 95 calories, 19 grams of sugar, and over 4 grams of fiber.  Fewer calories, and more fiber to slow the sugar flow into your bloodstream is a win-win combination.

4 – BE AN EARLY BIRD

Early birds, rejoice! A study found that people who exercise BEFORE breakfast burn between 260 and 280 more calories throughout the day than people who exercise at other times of the day. Set that alarm clock, and head outside for a walk!

5 – GET ON VODKA’S SIDE

When you do decide to indulge in a cocktail, it’s important to understand that your choices – right down to the mixer – can determine whether or not you’re adding dozens of empty calories to your day. Traditional margaritas are among the worst offenders, packing a whopping 700+ calorie count, and often much of those calories are coming from high-fructose-corn-syrup-laden sweet & sour mix. Instead, try a vodka with club soda and just a squirt of cranberry juice for a touch of sweetness.

6 – GET SASSY!

Jazz up a party with a few pitchers of infused water, or have a gallon in your refrigerator at home. I love drinking water, but sometimes get a little bored with the flavor. I like this recipe, when I keep a pitcher around, I’m constantly sipping on the water, and less likely to snack on empty calories.

Sassy Water
8 1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1 medium cucumber, sliced thin
1 medium lemon, sliced thin
12 leaves spearmint

7 – EAT MINDFULLY

Eating mindfully and with a purpose doesn’t need to be anything complicated, formulaic, or even religious. Simply inhale — express appreciation for the meal — and exhale with the same sense of gratitude. Rather than leap in to your meal, pause, be thoughtful, and purposeful. It will help you eat less.

8 – LET ZZZ BE YOUR FAVORITE LETTER

Yes, bedtime have does have an impact on eating. Research shows that the most detrimental snacking happens late at night. Also, lack of sleep causes stress, and is linked to greater weight gain. You can fight stress and eat less by getting to bed earlier.

9 – QUENCH YOUR APPETITE

Getting water into your system is the perfect way to slash your appetite in half. If you fill up on a glass of water at least 30 minutes before your meal, you’re virtually guaranteed to eat less.

10 – GIVE YOURSELF A LINE

If you’re tempted to break your healthy habits, sometimes all you need to stay on track is a repeating sound advice to yourself. Some of my favorite mantras to repeat aloud are:

“Progress, not perfection!”
“I can do hard things.”
“Slow and steady wins the race.”
“I may not be where I want to be, but I’m better than yesterday.”

What’s so bad about carbs?

By now we’re all well aware of the low-carb diet craze, and many have tried to skip the bread from time to time, often with mixed results. Most of us are still left asking:

What exactly is all the fuss about?

When you munch on a muffin, here’s what happens to the carbs that you just put in your mouth: they’re converted into glucose, which is essentially the body’s energy. The problem is that there’s only so much glucose that you actually need. The rest is converted into glycogen and stored in the liver and in your muscles. When glycogen storage reaches full capacity, all the extra carbs are converted into fat.

 How Much is Too Much?

When it comes to carbs, there’s a range, depending on several factors. First and most importantly, how much time you’re putting in on a treadmill or at the gym is crucial. An elite athlete needs more carbs to fuel her lifestyle than someone who spends most of her day sitting at a computer.

Here’s a ballpark range of what’s appropriate, safe and effective, depending on your level of activity:

0-50g Carbs Per Day: Accelerated Fat Burning Zone

If you’re trying to lose a lot of water weight in a couple days, cut your carbs below 50/day. This isn’t easy to do, and very restrictive, but any professional model or bodybuilder knows it’s the fastest way to lean out in a short amount of time.

This is when your body goes into ketosis, a metabolic state where you’re burning your own fat as a main source of energy. But ketosis doesn’t come without its risks – so talk to your doctor before making any major changes in your diet.

50-100g Carbs Per Day: Weight Loss Zone

If you’re staying in this range, chances are good that you’ll achieve healthy weight loss.

I like the way my friend Mark Cisson (creator of the popular blog Mark’s Daily Apple) describes this range: “The primal sweet spot for effortless weight loss.”

100-150g Carbs Per Day: Weight Maintenance Zone

This supports healthy weight maintenance, because it allows optimal fat-burning and muscle development based on body weight and activity. Here, you get to enjoy ample amounts of vegetables and fruits while avoiding grains and sugars.

150-300g Carbs Per Day: Weight Gain Zone

Even though this is represents the low end of a typical American’s daily carb intake, the truth is that this number can lead to gradual weight gain (depending on the types of carbs you’re eating, and your activity level).

Over 300g Carbs Per Day: DANGER Zone!

If you’re eating in this range, you’re almost guaranteed to experience continuous weight gain. Mark aptly describes this as “The Danger Zone.”

How to Read Your Carb Label:

The carbohydrate count of the food you eat is usually right there in plain black lettering. If it contains over 30 grams in a small serving, with little to no fiber content, you might want to try a healthier option. Remember, the higher that fiber count is within those carbs, the better. (I could go on about the benefits of fiber, but that’s for another newsletter. For now, just know: Carbs with a high fiber content are generally considered the “good carbs.”)

A Carb Cutter’s Cheat Sheet

Here are a few carb-count examples of some typical foods:

1 Slice of whole wheat bread: 13-16 g/slice
1 can of soda: 35.6 g
1 slice of chocolate cake: 35 g
Mocha Frappucino: 44 g
Cinnamon Raisin Bagel: 65.1 g
1/2 cup of All Bran Cereal: 23.5 g
8 oz. Low-fat Blueberry Yogurt: 48 g

For comparison, here are some carbs that are combined with a little more fiber, which helps you digest them more slowly, and doesn’t create that unfavorable blood sugar spike (which leads to weight gain) caused by other carbs:

1/2 cup of Oatmeal: 12 g (2g of fiber)
1 small Banana: 23.1 g (2.6g of fiber)
1 medium Apple: 19 g (1.7g of fiber)
8 Asparagus Spears: 5.2 g (2.4g of fiber)
1/2 cup of Steamed Kale: 3.6 g (1.3g of fiber)

Take The Next Step:

Due to years of consuming a diet full of processed carbs, most people have grown quite insensitive to one of the most important hormones in our body—a hormone that can either be a huge asset to your body transformation goals, or a total fat loss and health-derailing nightmare.

Its name is insulin.

And insulin’s function is to help your body keep blood sugar at bay, clear it quickly from your bloodstream after a carbohydrate meal, and (hopefully) shuttle that blood sugar to muscle tissue for energy instead of fat.

I say “hopefully” because that’s actually the exact opposite of what occurs when most people eat carbs. Going back to insulin sensitivity and carbohydrate tolerance, due to a diet full of processed, insulin–and blood–sugar-spiking carbohydrates, most folks are suffering from some level of insulin resistance, a state in which insulin is no longer able to efficiently remove blood sugar from the blood stream.

The result? Dramatically reduced fat burning and increased fat storage.

Break out your blender and grab some ice! This lemonade-inspired smoothie is decadent, and is the perfect chilling concoction to bring to a pool on a warm, summer day.

The ruby red raspberries in this shake are packed with Vitamin C, quercetin and gallic acid that fight against cancer, heart and circulatory disease and age-related decline.

Ready for a sweet treat?

Ingredients:
1 serving vanilla protein powder
1/4 c. unsweetened coconut water
3/4 c. water
1 freshly-squeezed lemon
1 cup frozen raspberries
1 tsp chia seeds

IT’S TIME TO U-TURN YOUR WORKOUT with this 15-min density circuit to tone every inch of your body.

What’s a “density circuit?” It means that you include just a few moves in your circuit, so you can pack a lot of movement into your 15 minutes!

Doing this lets your body train longer with less fatigue and more movement quality. And you know what that means…the more moves you can fit in during a 15-minute pre-shower workout, the better your metabolism-boosting results.

What makes the workout a U-Turn?

You start the workout off by doing 5 moves in sequential order. For the next round, you reverse the order, or in other words, you U-Turn.

Here’s how it works..

1. Complete 15 reps of each move
2. Do two rounds. Here’s where the U-Turn comes in…For the 1st round, complete moves #1-5. For the second round, do the sequence backwards and complete moves #5-1
3. Repeat for 15 minutes!

1. Start in plank position, but this time, rest on your elbows instead of your hands. Be sure to keep the shoulders depressed back and down and the neck nice and long throughout the movement.
2. Keeping your abs engaged, slowly swivel the hips underneath you to the right. Feel your obliques driving this motion as you swivel to the other side with a slow, controlled motion.

1. Holding a dumbbell in each hand, step your left foot directly behind you, taking a wide stance, and bend your legs, lowering your torso down into a lunge. Be sure and maintain that core stability to prevent injury.
2. While in lunge position, keep your shoulders over your hips, back knee slightly bent, front knee in alignment with your front toes, shoulders back and down.
3. Feel your weight in your right (front) heel as you push yourself to standing.
4. As you return to standing, do a tricep kickback: Reach your arms back behind you and extend, feeling a squeeze in the tricep.

1. Stand with dumbbells in each hand in hammerhead position, with palms facing each other.
2. Step out to the right side, with a wide stance. Bend the right leg and lower your hips down as you keep the left leg straight out to the side, feeling a slight stretch in the left inner thigh.
3. Pressing off the right foot, keeping your core engaged, push yourself back up to standing.
4. As you return to standing, curl the weights up toward your shoulders, squeezing the muscles on the front of the arms for a bicep curl.

1. Rest dumbbells on your hips as you place your left foot behind you. Instead of stepping directly back, the left foot should move diagonally back, with the back knee bending down directly outside the right foot
2. Fire up the core muscles as you squat down with the right leg, feeling the emphasis on your right glute (weight placed firmly in the right heel) as the left foot lightly supports you.
3. As you return to standing, bring the left foot forward, landing with a wide stance.
4. Punch the right hand across your body, toward the left wall, allowing your right foot to rotate as your torso twists to the left, engaging your right glute.

1. Squat down to rest both hands on the floor, similar to the Mountain Climber move. But instead of lunging one leg back behind you, jump both legs at the same time into a plank position.
2. Return to standing, and reach up to the sky.

This week in the Washington Post, my daughter Kate Grace spoke about how over the past six months while preparing for the Olympic trials, doubt would unexpectedly pass through her mind….doubt that she couldn’t qualify for the Olympics.

Each time she met with this thought, she greeted it with the same three words….

“I’m an Olympian.” She would repeat it aloud to herself.

And here she is, an Olympian, through years of hard work and practicing techniques to break free from negative thought patterns.

As Kate has experienced, shifting your mind-set is a powerful choice. And because it doesn’t always look like a choice, people often miss it.

To be successful, it’s important to adopt the proper attitude to react to ever-changing circumstances. Knowing how and what you picture in your mind will create the mood you’re in and the kind of behaviors that follow.

Remember, the quality of life is determined NOT by what happens to you, but rather by what you do about what happens.

My attitude has always been that you need to pay attention to the chatter in your mind, and when it starts bad-mouthing the world, respond accordingly.

(To learn more about how to shift from negative to positive thoughts, listen to my podcast with Dr. Patrick Porter!)

I also like to use affirmations to shift my mindset and keep me on track.

Here’s the affirmation from Destination Satori that I’ve been saying lately. Sometimes I just recite “I am impactful” out loud, and sometimes I’ll rehears the whole affirmation.

I Am Impactful
I carve a path that impacts the vibration of others
and makes a difference in the world.
As I move through time and space,
I am influencing the course of everything
in front and behind me. By going forward,
I leave behind a changed environment
that ripples out in all directions.
I choose to make a positive impact on the world
with my thoughts, words and actions.

QUESTION: Every once in a while I get bloating and gas. It’s uncomfortable and embarrassing. What can I do to get rid of it?

Here’s what Anne Fabiny, MD and Editor in Chief of Harvard Women’s Health Watch says…

“Gas and bloating are tough to talk about, but we’ve all have had to deal with these afflictions at one time or another. Although they’re not pleasant, there are things you can do to prevent and treat them.”

“Most gas and bloating stem from your diet. When you eat, bacteria living in your gut feast on the carbohydrates your body can’t digest. They release hydrogen, methane, and other gases, which swell up your belly. Eventually your body expels the gas in the form of flatulence.”

“Gas also can be caused by air you swallow. Try eating smaller meals and chewing slowly, so you don’t inhale extra air. Avoid carbonated drinks, which can increase belching. Most of the time gas is more of an annoyance than a health issue.”

If you want to maintain a flat tummy, it’s IMPORTANT to keep your gut in a healthy zone.

Here are 4 foods that are easy to digest and will keep your gut lining on track.

1 – Liquid Gold (aka Bone Broth) – When made from scratch, bone broth is almost deceptively simple….water and animal bones simmered for hours into an immune-boosting, protein-rich stock. The benefits of the brew seem to be endless…from strengthening the gastrointestinal tract, while giving your body amino acids and important minerals such as potassium, proline and glycine.

2 – Good Fats – Don’t be afraid of fat! Eating avocado each day keeps the doctor away! Okay, maybe I made that saying up, but in moderation, healthy fats promote gut healing. My favorites are avocado, coconut oil, and salmon. 

3 – Fermented Foods – Foods that are fermented (such as sauerkraut, kimichi and kombucha) contain probiotics that help destroy bad bacteria (like candida), which helps your gut health. Probiotics are actually the “good” bacteria — or live cultures — just like those naturally found in your gut. These active cultures help change or repopulate intestinal bacteria to balance gut flora. This functional component may boost immunity and overall health, especially GI health. They also help balance the pH of your small intestines and stomach.

4 – Steamed Veggies– You already know by now that eating a hearty amount of vegetables is forefront in getting fit and staying healthy. But, steaming non-starchy veggies such as asparagus and kale is also an essential part of having a healthy gut lining. Try steaming a few pieces of asparagus and wrapping it with a lean slice of turkey. This will help curb your hunger throughout the day and keep you satisfied.

Eliminate These 4 Inflammation-Boosting Foods:

1 – GMO – Research from the Journal of Environmental Sciences shows that GMO foods cause organ inflammation and  destroy the probiotics in your gut.

2- Gluten – It’s tough to digest, unless it’s gone through a sprouting or sourdough process.

3 – Dairy from Cows  – Go for unsweeteened almond milk instead!

4 – Sugar – “Sugar, not fat, is the real villain that steals our health and sabotages our waistlines!” – Mark Hyman

More Tummy Trimming Exercises Here!

Here’s How To Do The Hollow Body Roll:

1. Lay on the ground with your hands above your head and your legs straight out. S
2. Slowly lift your legs and your arms, keeping your abs contracted. This is called “hollow body” position… a challenging position, because it requires your entire core to activate at once.
3. With a controlled motion, slowly lift your back while bringing your knees to your chest and your hands to your knees.
4. Hold this position for 2 seconds.
5. Lower your back and your legs to hollow body position (step 2) and repeat 10 times.