Shopping List Magic

Many fitness programs that come with a nutrition manual are a lot of work that make you prepare everything from scratch and often make you have to seriously change what you are eating. If you have time and ability for that, YOU WILL EXCEL. 

Let's say you are in a different situation and you need fast or portable options that are easy to shop for or that you are used to shopping for. The information below may help you get your portions right for meals you are already eating while you slowly transition to healthier options one meal at a time.

If you look at your diet over the last month there is probably a manageable list of things you are used to eating, am I right? We are all creatures of habit and I think that's especially true of diet. That's why it's so hard to change what we eat!

The P90X Diet Guide, Insanity Elite Nutrition Guide, and Turbo Fire Fuel the Fire are trick nutrition plans; no doubt about it. Their goal is to teach you to eat like an athlete... the time factor is very expensive. If you stick with it, we all know the results you will get. If your schedule or lifestyle means you have to modify, Tony, Shaun, and Chalene will understand.

Here's what I recommend as a starting point:

1. Make a list of all your regular meals (recipes) weather you eat in or take out.
2. Run the numbers on them real quick. Excel can make fast work of the math. Yes, I mean counting calories, fat, carbs, and protein... sodium if you take-out often.
3. Start planning meals from this list that first meet caloric requirements, second, meet macro-nutrient requirements. More later.
4. Plan your meals for the week. I can pencil this on a note pad in 2 minutes. Another 3 minutes and the accompanying shopping list is DONE.
5. When I don't forget something, shopping takes me one and a half hours per week for a family of four. I'm the family cook.

This works for the regular home life but yours may be a special case. Use it where you can.

What does this list look like...?

Monday- Lunch:
------------ Dinner:
Tuesday- Lunch:
------------ Dinner:
Wednesday- Lunch:
------------ Dinner:
Thursday- Lunch:
------------ Dinner:
Friday- Lunch:
------------ Dinner:

Shopping List:

Notice: No breakfasts or snacks! These things are super common; you know what you need to keep in your pantry for these things. Check your fridge as you make your list and be sure these breakfast and snack items are stocked. This will keep you from grabbing non-healthy items.

Notice: I leave a couple days out. Odds are I will be in a super hurry one night and eat left-overs or make breakfast for dinner. Keep it simple, baby!

Add to your list the needed items from your meal list above. Now make sure to take into consideration the needs of other members of your family. Odds are your kids aren't on your nutrition plan! They don't have your goals! So take their needs into consideration, but focus on yours. You can't help nor inspire anyone if your fat and dead.

I can tell you that for a family of four, I spend an average of $150/wk on fresh healthy groceries. Add to that my shakes, bars, and vitamins and my family is likely at $200/wk. Is your health worth that? I figure it will save me many illnesses and injuries in the long run to spend this cashola on preventive health.

Now you're like, "But I said I don't have time to count!" I got it. Do it once and start getting into the habit of keeping your portions that same size to reach your caloric needs. Do it periodically to help build your skills and calibrate your portion-sizer in your brain.

My biggest success has come from eating as lower carb foods and as many fresh veggies as I could. I didn't sweat a lot of macros (fat, carbs, protein). I am bound to get hate mail for this by the way. I did keep a small sheet in my weekly planner where I could jot down rough numbers so I could know when I had plenty or needed more. I get busy and lose track of time often. I travel a few days per week, but I do get to pack a cooler in my truck.

You have a caloric needs calculator on your Team Beachbody Website. If you don't have one get with your Team Beachbody Coach and we will set you up and walk you through it. Figure out how many calories you need per day and divide that by how many meals you will eat in a day. I suggest 5. I actually liked six meals... Meal #6 was ice cream! More hate mail. 

For busy people, I am as concerned with you getting too few calories as too many. My bigger concern is nutrient density. Be sure you are taking a good multivitamin. Look into Shakeology for a meal replacment shake that will fit in your purse and packs the nutrient equivalent of 14 trips to the salad bar. Also available through your Team Beachbody Account. Your body will tell you that you're hungry when you really just need more vitamins. Your body doesn't have any way of telling you the difference! Does that make sense or do you want me to get more sciency?

Then you have portable snack options like the P90X Peak Performance bar. About 250, calories 33% protein, and so good you feel like you're cheating. Did I mention it fits in your purse? Or book bag for guys reading this later...

Here's some quick ideas that you may be able to kit up for your road-warrior like day:
Hard Boiled egg: 140 calories, 12g protein.
P90X Bar: 250 calories 20g protein
Shakeology: 140 calories, 18g protein
Yogurt: 200cal, 8g protein (varies)
Apple: 80 cal, varies
Fat Free Cottage Cheese (1cu): 160cal, 38g protein
---add Dole Tropical Fruit Cup for 60 sweet calories!

So lets say you need 2000 calories per day to tone up with P90X (varies with many factors). Get yourself a good breakfast, good dinner, pack a P90X bar, packet of Shakeology, Cottage Cheese+Fruit, and maybe 2 HB eggs (750 cal so far), and you can find a fruit vendor in walking distance to your office... maybe some yogurt but then you've may have just over eaten! Snack on this stuff two or more meals during your day and you win!

Can it be done? Yes. You may just need a phone relationship with a good coach.

I am here if you need me. Friend me on Facebook and I will help anyway I can.
Coach Jeff
Facebook.com/coachjeffay

GMOs Making America Fat

There are lots of problems with our food. Here is just another to watch out for.

Journal It! Nutrition Edition

Stuck in a rut? Not feeling like you are growing any? Are you writing it down?

I know, I know! I said that already in the other Journal It blog post! It just seems so catchy and in your face.

The mind is a powerful thing. When you are sick or tired, or sick and tired, your body will tell you that it needs more energy. It tells you this with a hunger response because you obviously aren't listening to your your body telling you to get some rest. Some people also eat when they are stressed out. Others fall to peer pressure from a well meaning spouse or friend who makes them cookies or cake... I prefer Pie!

There are lots of reasons you will eat that wont help you reach your goals. If you are here, though, shouldn't your goal have a little something to do with diet? Are your goals specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely (S.M.A.R.T.)? If so, how are you measuring your diet? I will tell you how: you are going to have to write it down in some way, shape or form... or just follow someone Else's canned diet plan.

At a minimum, I recommend you track your calories over time. You should be aiming for about five meals per day, each about 1/5th of your daily caloric needs. Use the caloric needs calculator on the TeamBeachbody site. It uses the time tested Harris Benedict Equation that I know you love! Then, it's time to start counting.

Column 1: Time
Column 2: What you ate
Column 3: How many calories
Column 4: Running total of calories for the day

This will help you budget your daily calories to keep you on track. If you are eating 5+ times per day, it will help keep your blood sugar consistent and turn you into a lean fat burning machine!

Want to take it to the next level? Add columns for tracking the following:
Column A: Fat grams or calories. 1 gram of fat equals 9 calories
Column B: Protein grams or calories. 1 gram of protein equals 4 calories
Column C: Carbohydrate grams or calories. 1 gram of carbs equals 4 calories
Column D: Alcohol grams or calories. 1 gram of alcohol equals 7 calories. Okay, you shouldn't, but if you do, at least know the numbers!

Using columns A through C, you can determine your percentage of carbs or protein [(grams*4)/calories]. You can determine percentage of fat [(grams*9)/calories], and I am not helping you with your alcohol problem! Find a meeting.

Many of our programs have diet tracking sheets you can print daily and insert into a three-ring binder. Feel encouraged to use that! I have a little 8x5 notebook that works fine for me and I can take it everywhere.

Several of my college classes required a dedicated lab book. It helped me learn things and convert knowledge into wisdom so that this stuff just made sense and started to come naturally. Your body should be the most important lab you have. Without it, you can't live on this planet! So pick up a notebook, find a computer program, set some meaningful SMART goals, and get to it!

WRITE IT DOWN! PUSH A LITTLE HARDER! The results will come.

Forums Link

SMARTER Fitness Goals

A brief note about SMARTER Project Management:

General fitness over a lifetime is a program. Starting a new fitness plan is a project. Projects should have goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound (S.M.A.R.T.). At defined points during the time-frame, goals need to be Evaluated, and Re-evaluated making your goals S.M.A.R.T.E.R.

My goals for current project were to go from 17.44% body fat to 12% body fat in 60 days using a new fitness program called Insanity implementing 500 calorie daily deficit.

Examples of SMARTER Goals:
Lose x% body fat in 3 months
Gain x inches in my arms in 6 months
Lose x inches in my waist in 2 months
Decrease resting heart rate 5 beats per minute in 60 days
Lose 8 lbs by Valentine's day

Examples of NOT SMARTER goals
Look better
Bench press more
Run faster
Pass a fitness test

Are you seeing the pattern here?

One of the things I love about all of the dvd programs I use such as P90X and Insanity is that you don't really even have to think about it to get all these things. If you follow the program, the program is going to do all this for you! All this teaching and rambling on that I do helps you understand how it works and, if you are one of the people out there not using a pre-established program, helps you know how to engineer your own program. I will say though, even with a pre-established program, you should have a SMARTER goal in mind to help keep you motivated toward that goal.

A brief note on scale:
Some of my goals are daily but reporting them to my accountability group is weekly. For simplicity, I like to break this down to a 5 point scale with cool words that put it in perspective:

Exercise Goal Scale:

1. Poor = Did not meet goals
2. Satisfactory = Did not meet goals but still worked out at least 4 times this week
3. Good= Did not meet goals but still worked out at least 6 times this week
   
4. Excellent = Met goals
5. Outstanding = Exceeded goals by working out more than planned
   

Dietary Goal Scale:

1. Poor = Did not attain a weekly caloric deficit
   
2. Satisfactory = Did not meet goals but still attained at least a 2000 calorie weekly deficit
3. Good= Did not meet goals but still attained at least a 4000 calorie weekly deficit
   
4. Excellent = Met goals
5. Outstanding = Exceeded goals by an extra 1000 calorie weekly deficit

Hope it helps!

How diet soda causes weight gain

Ok: I know I am behind on my Insanity posts. The holidays threw me off and I am doing doubles right now to make up for it. Bear with me and I will tell you about it soon.

I have been worried about diet soda again but for different reasons than it making me fat. Still, this seemed interesting to me when my Bro-in-Law brought it up while home from school where is is learning a lot about medicine.

So I did what anyone does for research these days: I checked what YouTube had to say about it. Turns out Phosphoric Acid leaches many useful things from your body.

This is cause for concern. I need to cut back on coffee...