I’m going to the Asylum on April 15th!

Yes, this is it.  I know I’m crazy so I am commiting myself to do Shaun T’s Asylum program starting April 15th.  It’s only March 30th as I write this post.  I need time to prepare. So for the next next two weeks I will be kicking my own butt at the gym, jumping rope, practicing my Heisman routines, Shaun T’s ever-famous “In & Out Abs”, and a whole bunch of agility stuff that I really, really need to work on if I am going to be ready for this craziness.  And believe you me, I WILL  be ready!

Does anyone care to join me? If you do, check out the program on my Team Beach Body Coach website at http://beachbodycoach.com/FitnessP50

Listen, you don’t have to join this program if you feel you are not ready.  There are so many others out there.  In fact, I have Chalean Extreme waiting for me and also I ordered Shaun T’s Hip Hop Abs Deluxe program to do at a later time.  It’s all about challenging the body doing different exercise routines.  I am so excited to start Asylum and all of these other programs too.  I just want to enjoy being physically active because if we think fit we can be fit!

A – D – V – E – R – T – I – S – E – M – E – N – T
Proskins US

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Another plateau

I know it has been a long whole since my last post, but my absence has been for good reason. I have been diligently hitting the books, studying towards achievement of my Personal Trainer Certification. I have to say that I did not put in the study time that I should have though. In fact, just finished reading all of my materials up until test day, today, March 22nd. But my goal was to achieve Personal Trainer status with a passing grade, and I did that. And I am more than happy about that. I am ecstatic!

So why did I do this? It’s probably not for reasons many might be thinking, which is to start working forwards making lots of money as Personal Trainer. Because I don’t think of this as a get rich quick business. This is more of a spiritually rewarding endeavor for me. Because, as my FP50 followers know, I have been on a mission to inspire and motivate others towards achieving their utmost fitness goals, via my own personal fitness story.
It has been an uphill battle with my own fitness problems and one day I decided that I had had enough and I wanted to live a happy and healthy lifestyle. That meant giving up a lot of the bad stuff I was subjecting my body to in order to reap the wonderful rewards of fitness.
So as I venture towards the next half of the century (50 is just around the corner for me!) I am so excited for the wonderful plans that life has to offer. I aim to live a healthy life and to ask others to join me in doing the same. This is all I want to do. It’s a beautiful thing.
Happy Fitness everyone!

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Guest Post: Weight Loss Tips

Guest Post by Drew Stegman: 6 Great Weight Loss Tips

There are dozens upon dozens of diet plans out there that all promise to help you lose an incredible amount of weight in a very short period of time. Unfortunately, the end results are often not what was hoped or expected. I’ve tried a few of these so called “fad diets” and from personal experience, I can tell you that the results are not as joyful as you might think.

The one thing you DON’T want to do when trying to lose fat is follow these fad diets. Some of these include the juice diet, Atkins diet, Twinkie diet and on and on and on. Fad diets not only leave you malnourished, but they can also slow down your metabolism and make you gain the unwanted weight you lost back.

Since many people are starting to realize that these ridiculous diets don’t work, they are leaving the whole fad diet craze and are searching for new ways to improve their weight loss success.

Let’s be honest though – most people want to lose weight incredibly fast but unfortunately, I’ve got news for you.

If you’re serious about losing weight in a healthy and practical manner, it’s actually a painfully slow processs. In fact, you can expect to lose no more than 2 pounds per week. I don’t mean to despair you, however.

There are many methods and tips that you can use to your advantage to aid in the weight loss process and today I want to share 8 of them with you.

Weight Loss Tip 1

Never skip breakfast. If you don’t eat breakfast in the morning, you are much more likely to splurge later on in the day and this will result in failure.

Weight Loss Tip 2
Never eat a carbohydrate filled meal before going to bed. When you consume carbohydrates, your body releases a hormone called insulin, which makes it easier to store fat. In addition to this, human growth hormone is an incredibly important fat loss hormone and it is released in the greatest quantities when you’re sleeping. If you’re consuming a high carbohydrate meal before going to bed, your human growth hormone production will definitely be interrupted.

Weight Loss Tip 3
Never eat while sitting in front of the television. We all know that we tend to not pay attention to how much were eating when we’re preoccupied with something else and when watching television, I personally find it very easy to go through an entire extra large bag of potato chips by myself. Whenever you eat, you should be focused on one thing – eating.

Weight Loss Tip 4

Instead of eating candy, you should replace that candy with fruit instead. This one is fairly obvious. We should know by now that candy is not good for our health since it is high in sugar. And although fruit contains sugar, the type of sugar fruit contains is fructose, which is a slow digesting sugar that has almost no effect on blood sugar levels. Just make sure you stick to real fruit and stay away from fruit juices, which are often loaded down with processed sugar.

Weight Loss Tip 5
Increase your vegetable consumption. Vegetables are high in essential vitamins and minerals that keep nearly every single thing in your body functioning properly. When your body is functioning at an optimal level, your body is going to naturally find it easier to burn fat.

Weight Loss Tip 6

Workout at least 30 minutes per day 5 days per week. It’s common knowledge that exercise burns additional calories and increases your metabolic rate, so it makes sense that working out can help you lose weight as well. It doesn’t matter what you do in the gym; the important thing to make sure of is that you’re simply getting active. You could run on the treadmill, ride on a stationary bike or even lift weights. Just make sure you’re working out at a moderately intense level and elevating your heart rate into your target zone if you want to see any benefits from doing so.

There is nobody stopping you from losing weight but yourself. So stop making excuses, get your butt off the couch, apply these 6 tips and start shedding body fat. Today!
End Guest Post.

Thank you, Drew for your wonderful and educational information on weight loss tips.  Keep it coming! Good stuff!

To my FP50 readers, you can find more information from Drew on his website at: http://how2gainmusclefast.com/
You can also find listings of guest post websites in my blogroll.

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Guest Post: Using Exercise as a Tool Against Cancer

Guest Post by Melanie Bowen:
 ”Using Exercise as a Tool Against Cancer”

Cancer is one of the most feared diseases in the world, and it is easy to understand why. While we all know that there are many factors that can contribute to development of cancer, some of us fail to take these considerations as seriously as we could. Since obesity and poor health play a role in the development of cancer, it makes sense that physical fitness can help prevent cancer from occurring. Here are some of the ways in which people can use physical fitness to prevent, fight and fend off re-occurrence of cancer.

- How does fitness prevent cancer?
Obesity has been linked to a number of different types of cancers and clearly physical fitness can help fight obesity. In addition, poor general health is believed to be a contributing factor to the development of cancer, and physical fitness is, by definition, a valuable tool in fighting poor health. Furthermore, some believe that cancer requires poor health to develop and that physical fitness can stop cancerous activity before it spreads. While the exact mechanisms of how physical fitness can prevent some instances of cancer are not fully understood, the fact that fitness is prophylactic against cancer is widely accepted.

- Can physical fitness cure cancer?
Physical fitness cannot cure cancer, but it can help in the battle against breast cancer, mesothelioma, prostate cancer and many other forms of cancer. Although some say that the effects of physical fitness become somewhat limited after cancer has developed, maintaining good overall health is important. Most patients will find it difficult to maintain their exercise schedules after they have started cancer treatment but despite this, many people have a stretch of time in between being diagnosed with cancer and beginning treatment where exercise can help them prepare for chemotherapy and other treatments. Most people find their energy levels to drop significantly while being treated; exercising before undergoing these treatments can help them maintain their energy and a positive attitude.

- Does fitness help once cancer is gone into remission?
While the scientific data is unclear as to whether physical fitness can help prevent the re-occurrence of cancer, most experts believe that fitness does play a valuable role. Since fitness can sometimes prevent cancer from developing in the first place, it would make sense that fitness can also prevent cancer from reoccurring. It should be noted, however, that physical fitness is just one factor among many that affects the development and treatment of cancer. It is important to research and incorporate healthy habits to have the best chance of fighting cancer successfully.

End Guest Post
Please visit Melanie’s blog
From Bev of Fitness Pushing 50 to Melanie Bowen:

Thank you, Melanie, for this insightful and educational article.  I know my readers will enjoy this and find it to be tremendously helpful.

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Week 4 – Insanity Restart Challenge

Well, just wrapped up week 3 and I am very excited to get started with the last week of Insanity month 1.

As you all know, I have challenged myself and all of you to join me in the Insanity Restart program, wherein I am doing round 2 of Insanity to get it right, in terms of form and consistency.  And most of all I am preparing to challenge you all for the INSANITY-ASYLUM program.  I will be adding this challenge to my FitnessP50 Challenge page on Facebook soon.  But for the meantime, check out the 60 day offer up there in the left hand corner! Shaun T is waiting for you to join the craziness and so am I!  C’mon, let’s do this together!

Happy Fitness everyone!

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Maltodextrin, I’ve got a beef with you!

I was having a conversation with a friend about “Maltodextrin” the other day when we were reading the ingredient label of a brand of peanut butter. And I later thought this would make for an interesting post for FP50.

So, firstly, what is Maltodextrin AND is it bad for you? Basically, Maltodextrin is a “starch-based or derived filler” that is often used to replace fat or to enhance flavor in certain foods or make them taste sweeter. Using our peanut butter topic as an example, the jar that we were looking at was a “reduced-fat” version. So……the manufacturer extracts some of the fat from the peanuts, and then replaces that lost fat with this filler.
Ok, on to the next question, is this bad for you. Well, my subjective answer to that is “It’s not good”. But the reason I say this is not because I am an expert or anything. It’s from my personal feelings against any synthesized or processed foods. And putting some logic into the thought process in our peanut butter scenario, why mess up a good thing anyway? You have perfectly good peanuts filled with healthy oils, naturally free of trans-fats and cholesterol-free and then you want to extract some of that good stuff to replace with a form of sugar???? In fact I was just reading on “Livestrong.com” that Maltodextrin is very easily digestible and actually can end up stored as fat faster by our bodies; basically , it’s a sugar. Personally I don’t need the extra carbs in my diet. I think I get enough as it is….too much in fact. So I prefer not to have it in my peanut butter as an additive in the guise of making something seem less fattening.

But don’t take my word for it. Draw your own conclusions. Meanwhile, here is the link to the Livestrong article I mentioned. You might find it interesting.
Livestrong Article on Maltodextrin
For more nutritional tidbits, be sure to subscribe for updates!

Happy Fitness!
Bev of Fitness Pushing50
If we think fit, we will be fit….

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Fit Test F/U

Bev of Fitness Pushing FiftyHello FP50 blog readers. As promised from my previous post, see pic below of my Fit Test results from Dec 30th when I took the Insanity “Retake” Challenge.  As I said, the last time around, I only did the fit test once, so I only have those one set of numbers to compare with.  The objective is to do as many of each of the moves in 1 minute—timed by Shaun T.

At first it seemed like I was getting off to a very slow start; but as you can see from the numbers, my fitness level now, compared to October 2012 is off the charts for me.  I am so glad I did Insanity the first time around and so excited to finish the program this time with even better results.  But I am going to do the Fit Tests every two weeks, as the calendar dictates, no skipping.  I want to moniter my progress along the way because I have to get in peak shape.  I have to because I have something motivating me–It’s that beautiful white box staring at me every day called – “INSANITY-THE ASYLUM”.  Inside that box is more craziness and I am going to be ready.   Happy Fitness everyone.

See Fitness Test pics below.

Fit Test Side 1

Fit Test Side 1

Fit Test Side 2

Fit Test Side 2

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Beachbody Programs for All Fitness Levels–Comparison Chart

Hey everybody!  Check out this fantastic Comparison Chart that gives a synopsis of all the Beach Body programs for ALL FITNESS LEVELS! BeachBody Program Comparison Chart for All Fitness Levels

Once you decide the program that is right for you, go can select the program of your choice.  You can even take the BEACHBODY CHALLENGE right here!

The idea is to get moving, folks!  C’mon, let’s get our exercise on!

Happy Fitness everyone, from your Beachbody Independant Coach

http://beachbodycoach.com/FitnessP50

 

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Take The Insanity (Retake) Challenge with me-Try It Risk Free!

C’mon folks, I’m not playin’–Let’s get the new year started right and get to moving and grooving.  Now’s your chance to take the Insanity Challenge with me–risk free!  Listen, I’m so hooked, I’m doing it a second time around just so I can get into peak shape for Asylum!

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Insanity Retake – Day 3: Cardio Power & Resistance

Me-Jan1 2013

Just finished Insanity Workout–Sweatin’

Ok, so I am totally pooped, but feeling great because I just burned a whopping 401 calories in 39 minutes.  The crazy thing about it is that the last time I did this routine (Cardio Power & Resistance) was back in Week 4 – Month 1 of the program when I ran through Insanity the first time.  That day I burned 310 calories in the same amount of time.  This tells me that I am working harder and more efficiently, which is my goal this time around.  I need to get myself in peak shape to prepare for the mama ship coming into my living room—–and that is Asylum!  I have that white box filled with all of my workout toys, just waiting for me to open it. But not yet…..I’m going to get better first, so when it comes time for Asylum, I plan to kick butt, my own that is!  lol.

Happy Fitness everyone!

Join me today—Get your Insanity on–you will see Shaun T right there on my website at http://beachbodycoach.com/FitnessP50

Happy Fitness, everyone!

- – - – - A D V E R T I S E M E N T – - – -

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