How to Eat Healthy with a Hectic Schedule

Consistently eating a healthy diet is challenging. We all work long hours, family and friends demand our time, the house chores are never-ending, our exercise programs require a few hours each week, and heaven forbid we have a little time to ourselves. However, the key to eating healthy on a regular basis is to plan and prep. (I struggle to eat healthy when I don't do this.)

When you create a routine, eating healthy isn't such a chore. Below are additional tips for prepping food for the week: 

• Plan what you are going to eat so you know what food to buy at the store. (It's also a good idea to plan when you will cook your meals.) 

• Go through your fridge and pantry to see if you need to restock your "staple" foods (i.e. the foods you eat on a regular basis for snacks or meals. It's also not a bad idea to buy frozen fruits and veggies. They still maintain their nutritional value and they are easy to prepare if you are in a pinch.)

• When you cook, cook enough food so you have enough leftovers for a few meals. You can even go the extra mile here and portion the leftovers into containers so they are ready for you to grab before you leave for work.

• Ask for help from your roommates, significant other, or kids. Doing this will turn a chore into a social activity, and it reduces the amount of work and time it would take if you do it alone. You can make it even more fun by turning on some music and jamming out while you prep.

• If you just really don’t have the time or energy, there are a lot of meal prep services that can help, such as Power Plate Meals, Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, etc. (These aren’t always quite as healthy of meals as I normally recommend to my clients to cook, but it is better than getting fast food or eating at a restaurant every day.)

Bottom line, if you don't make meal prepping and planning into a routine, it will be very difficult to maintain a healthy diet because life always has a way of getting in the way. If you're serious about making healthy eating a lifestyle, this is a must!

All About Foam Rolling

Have you ever heard of self-myofascial release (a.k.a foam rolling)? If not, read closely because this is a must-use piece of equipment to incorporate into your exercise routine. 

Foam rolling massages out the soft tissue, helping improve both the flexibility of muscles and mobility of joints. For example, muscle tightness reduces a joint's range of motion. As a result of muscle tightness, joint motion is changed, thus altering normal neural feedback to the central nervous system. This leads to compromised neuromuscular efficiency, which results in improper movement patterns, causing premature fatigue, and eventually injury.

Foam roll before or after every workout. Stretching alone cannot remove all the knots that form in your muscles, foam rolling can. For those of us that wish we could get a professional deep tissue massage every week, this is the next best thing! It's the "poor man's massage." Foam rolling is good for everyone, not just athletes and gym rats. Foam rolling can help prevent injury, and improve flexibility, function, and performance. It' also a great way to de-stress!

Additional Benefits of Foam Rolling:
• Corrects muscle imbalances
• Improves joint range of motion
• Relieves muscle soreness and joint stress
• Decreases muscle tightness
• Improves neuromuscular efficiency
• Maintains normal functional muscular length

If you don't have one at home or your gym, I suggest getting one. They are an inexpensive piece of equipment and they make a big difference in performance and recovery. If needed, your local personal trainer or YouTube are excellent sources to learn how to use this great tool. Now, get rolling!

Content credit: PerformBetter.com

Photo credit: Amazon.com

The Table Push-Away

More than two-thirds of adults in the United States are obese or overweight. This is a result of many factors such as overeating, poor food choices, lack of exercise, stress, boredom, low-income, etc. Today’s focus is just going to be on the overeating part of the problem.
 
I sometimes joke about how being a “good American” means to eat until you feel like a stuffed chicken. Even though I joke about this, it’s really not that funny when you think about how many people do this on a regular basis. Whether is it out of mindlessness, sadness or because it’s a holiday and you want to “celebrate”, consistently overeating can pack on the pounds in a hurry.
 
From a young age, many of us are also taught to eat everything on our plate or we can’t have dessert and/or leave the table. Since being taught this at such a young age, it’s no wonder why it seems like so many people’s “stop” button is broken.
 
Regardless of the reason why you may eat beyond the point of comfort, it is crucial that you try forget about past habits, what your best friend, or even how your husband/wife is choosing to eat. You must take charge of your actions and make your own choices.
 
One way to do that is to practice the “table push-away.” First, you should eat slowly, so your body has a chance to signal when it is starting to get full. When you feel satisfied or about 80% full, pack-up or put away the rest of the food on your plate. Then, don’t eat until you are hungry again. This will help you prevent your weight from rising, waistline from expanding, and you will feel more in control. (Plus, the cool part about not finishing your plate is that you now have leftovers and get to eat that delicious food again!) It may be challenging at first, but keep practicing and soon it will become habit.
 
Even if you do overeat, don’t get down on yourself. Figure out why it happened, learn from it, and come up with a solution to prevent it from happening again. Just move forward and stay positive. A bad meal doesn't have to turn into a bad day, week, or month. You can turn things around immediately at your next meal.
 
Additional ideas to prevent overeating:

• Don’t go back for seconds

• Don’t bring dishes of food to the dinner table, leave them on the counter or stove

• Eat slowly; chew each bite for about 20 seconds

• Set your eating utensil down between bites

• Don’t watch TV while you eat

• Drink a glass of water with your meal

• Sit while you eat

• Eat with other people

• Eat appropriate portions (How do you know what the right portion size is? Eat with your hands - Women: one palm of lean protein; a fist of vegetables; a thumb of fat; a cupped hand of starchy carbs;Men": double serving sizes)

The Importance of Recovery Days

You could say this is the easiest part of a training program, but it is often neglected (how ironic!). Recovering properly from exercise is equally as important as the workout itself. 

Your body doesn't actually get stronger or leaner while you are training, it does while you are recovering. For weight training, you should give the muscle group(s) you trained 24-48 hours of rest before you train them again. This allows the muscle fibers time to repair themselves and become stronger. However, on these "off days" you can perform HIIT or aerobic activities. 

Individuals who work hard, but don't allow their bodies time to recover will eventually develop overtraining syndrome ("burnout" or "staleness"; exhaustion that persists even after recovery periods and can cause moodiness, difficulty sleeping, or depression), plateau, or become injured. Ultimately forcing them to take an even longer break from exercise. 

Here are some recovery strategies:

• Adequate sleep (7-8 hours is best)

• Proper nutrition

• Staying hydrated

• Stretching post-exercise 

• Yoga/meditation

• Massage (if a real massages is too expensive, try "poor man's massage" a.k.a foam rolling!)

• Epsom salt baths

You won't hear your trainer telling you to rest or "take it easy" often, so take advantage of it and get some quality rest!
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