Water - My Dream Drink

Water is critical to our health. Water is used to flush impurities out of the body, transport nutrients, aid digestion, circulation, and more.
For peak physical performance and outstanding energy, the human body requires that we drink half of our desired body weight in ounces of water each day. If your desired body weight was 150lbs, that would mean 150 ounces or about 4 liters per day. If you exercise in extreme heat, you can lose up to a pound of water per hour. Studies have shown that to release body fat you require a minimum of 10 glasses (2.5L) of water per day. Herbal teas and mineral water can be substituted for water.
Oxygen is carried to our muscles through the blood. If our blood become thick from dehydration that means all of our muscles will decrease function. Breathing becomes more laborious, and the body begins to overheat.

If you find it difficult to drink water, try adding a squeeze of fresh lemon or lime juice, a tiny pinch of celtic sea salt, or a greens powder. You can experience many physical miracles by regularly consuming adequate amounts of water. Many people find that adding a pinch of sea salt to the water also reduces frequency of urination.

It's unfortunate that as living beings totally dependent on the earth for our survival, we have polluted almost every single water supply in the world! Nearly all municipal water supplies are contaminated by agricultural chemicals. It is estimated that there are nearly 30, 000 hazardous and unregulated pollutants regularly occuring in our drinking water. It is very smart, worthwhile and proactive to purchase a whole-house filtration system to minimize exposure to heavy metals, chlorine, and other toxins. To quote Paul Chek, "if it's on your skin, you're basically drinking it". Consider that the water you bath in should be as clean as the water you drink. Since our bodies are 75% water, we are wise to seek out good quality water.
Cheers,

Sarah Heipel
Holistic Fitness Coach
Good Energy Studio
357 Hurontario Street, Collingwood
705-444-ENRG(3674)

Time Management. The silent saboteur.

Good time management can make you fit.What I mean is if you can make time on a regular basis to ensure; there is healthy food in the house to create balanced meals, that those meals are being made, and that you are completing your planned workouts, than you are going to meet with fitness success unlimited. It is my experience that a lack of good time managment can sabotage even the most elaborate, professional, customized fitness and nutrition program that can be created. Even the highest quality foods and equipment will go to waste if we fail to find the time to use them.
I'm sure everyone has experienced this senario. What are we to do? I believe it all comes down to priorities. We have to commit to making time for the activities which will lead to the results that we are driven to acheive. We have to be willing to ruthlessly hold ourselves to our time commitments of face failure. I know of a client who schedules her cardio workouts with a friend so she is forced to show up so as not to let her friend down (and ultimately herself). Others will invest in hiring a coach to get them through their workouts. One personal stratagy that has worked for me is to register in a competition. I find that this gives more purpose and passion to my training. In the end, all of these strategies are about creating the "bigger picture". It's often not compelling enough for us to accomplish every scheduled meal and workout just for the sake of it. After all, there's always "tomorrow", right?! But when these actions become vital steps towards growing a friendship, or reaching a qualifying time, now that's motivating.

Sarah Heipel
Holistic Fitness Coach

Snowshoeing

Snowshoeing has quickly become one of my favorite winter sports. It's one of the few activities you can do outside this time of year and still keep toasty warm from head to toe.

It's also a great way to get and keep fit. When using poles, it is a total body workout strengthening the heart, lungs, legs and arms.

The other thing that I love about snowshoeing is that you can do it anywhere you can find snow, and it doesn't require a lot of skill or equipment, which makes it a very accessible activity for anyone.

I can't think of a better way to get sunshine, fresh air, exercise, and a chat with a good friend all at the same time.

I'll see you outside!

I'll Take It Raw!

If you believe in the universal adage, “you are what you eat”, than could it could be possible that we are literally cooking the life out of our food, and out of us.

We don’t have to look far to find someone who is chronically fatigued or who is nutrient depleted from a diet of processed foods or stressful lifestyle.

Science tells us that the life giving enzymes in raw fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, and grains are completely destroyed when food is heated above 118 degrees F for more than 20 minutes. Most conventional ovens don’t even turn on below 200F.

It is interesting to know that we are born with a limited number of digestive enzymes. When we eat cooked food our body has to use up some of our enzyme reserves to break down the nutrients to be used by the body. When our enzyme reserves run out, our digestion is significantly compromised and we become unable to assimilate the nutrients we need from our food.

Raw food naturally contains all of the necessary enzymes needed by the body to be digested. Eating in this way, we feel more energized and satisfied after eating, instead of sleepy or uncomfortable.

Science has discovered new vitamins and minerals which are essential to the body, are only available when fruits and vegetables are consumed in their natural state, uncooked.

In the brilliance of nature, everything that we need for our bodies to thrive comes from the earth already in is perfect form. The more often we choose this perfection as our diet, the more often we can experience thriving energy, health, and wellbeing.

A powerful illustration of the power of raw foods is to picture a raw almond and a roasted almond. If we were to plant the roasted almond nothing would grow. But, plant the raw almond and you get an almond tree producing thousands of new almonds. Now imagine that life force at work in your body.

Please, pass the almonds.

Sarah Heipel is a certified personal trainer and raw-vegan foodist. Sarah is also the owner of Good Energy Personal Training and Nutrition, in Collingwood. To book a consultation or to inquire about upcoming Raw Fitness Boot Camps, and Raw Food Workshops call or email her at (705)444-ENRG(3674) or info@goodenergycoach.com

Resolution For Keeps - 7 steps to acheivement - Jan 1, 2010

This is a brand new year, a new decade and new opportunity to achieve exactly what you want so let’s go for it and make 2010 the year you discovered just how magnificent you truly are.

Step One

Set the goal. Create a goal that is measurable, emotional and meaningful. Instead of saying ‘I want to lose weight,’ instead say, ‘I am easily releasing fifty pounds so that I can chase after my children, be a true role model and live into the beautiful body I am meant to have.’

Step Two

Interview people who have achieved what you are resolving to do. Do you want to quit smoking? Interview people who have done it. Do you want to make six figures this year? Interview people who have created residual income of six figures or more. Ask them how they did it. Find out what steps they took. Ask them what books they read, what courses they attend, how they set their schedule and what they did to overcome self doubt.

Step Three

Create a vision board around the resolution. If you want to lose weight then cut out pictures of how your healthy body will look. If you want to make more money then cut out pictures of what that lifestyle will be like. A great place to put your vision board is in your bathroom. Why? It is the first thing you see in the morning and the last thing you see at night.

Step Four

Schedule for your goal. If you want to lose weight then schedule in time to exercise and make healthy meals. If you want to make more money then set aside time to develop an extra stream of income. Yes, it takes some work but it is worth it.

Step Five

Develop a plan and build a team. At some point we all need help. Do you need a financial planner? Do you need a coach? Do you need a support system for quitting a bad habit? Create a plan and get your team in place. Your team can also include good friends and loved ones. Let them know your goal, why it is important and tell them exactly what they can do to support you. You can also find likeminded people throughsocial networking sites. Where there is a desire, there is support.

Step Six

Stay in the game. Often, our goals allude us because we quit too early. Not one person, who has ever released weight and kept it off, gave up after they plateaued. Stay in the game. Your success is often on the other side of a challenge. My mentor taught me that the only way to fail is to quit. Don’t quit...period.

Step Seven

Be grateful for every small step forward. If your goal is to make an extra $50,000 this year then be grateful for every $1 extra you create. If your goal is to release 100 pounds then be grateful for every pound. Your gratitude is your latitude. The more grateful you are the faster the victories come your way. Take time to be grateful every single day, write down your gratitude list and watch how fast your resolution manifests.

You are capable of keeping your resolutions this year. Know that you are magnificent and in achieving your goals you will be a role model of excellence for everyone around you and inspire people to be more in their own lives. Go for it and remember that at Good Energy we are cheering for you.

Sarah Heipel
Holistic Fitness Coach
Good Energy

Fat Loss - December 15-09

There is much misinformation regarding fat loss.
This is a great article written by one of my fitness mentors on real fat loss. (not the fake kind!)
If this sounds like what you need, check out my next fitness boot camp starting January 2010.
Visit Good Energy Coach.

Get off your fat and get the fat off! by Paul Chek

Originally published in New Zealand Fitness.
There are many fads and fallacies regarding fat loss. The bottom line is this; you will not lose fat if you cut calories dramatically, and you will only lose body fat (and keep it off) if you burn calories through regular exercise! It really is that simple. The part that everyone finds so challenging is figuring out this balance between calorie consumption and calorie expenditure; what do I eat, when do I eat it and what kind of exercise will optimize fat loss. Then the only hurdle is actually doing the work!
One thing I know for sure after years of clinical experience treating back pain patients who had become overweight from inactivity secondary to pain:

DIETS DON’T WORK!!

This is particularly true with females. In the book “Outsmarting the Female Fat Cell”, Debra Waterhouse makes it very clear that females come equipped with significantly more lipogenic (fat storing) enzymes and significantly less lipolytic (fat releasing) enzymes than their male counterparts. She also cites studies showing that a female’s lipogenic enzyme count increases and lipolytic enzyme count decreases after a calorie-restricted diet, making it increasingly harder to lose weight with each and every successive diet!

A man’s body doesn’t appreciate dieting either. I have seen many male back pain patients undergo hospital directed diets, lose 60 pounds, and gain it all back in as little as a month. Coming off a diet to start eating “normally” again is like the tide coming in!
Instead of starving your body to shed fat, a more effective method is to increase the amount of energy you expend. Muscle cells are fuel hungry machines. Consequently any exercise that increases the size of muscle cells and makes them work more often will increase metabolism for optimal fat loss. Sounds to me like resistance training tops out again! It is well known among strength training professionals and researchers that there is a significant post-exercise elevation of metabolism, lasting up to 3-4 hours after your weight training session ends. This is an important consideration when deciding between cardio work or resistance training for fat loss. Since cardiovascular exercise provides very little post-exercise elevation of metabolism, your cells stop burning extra energy when you get done with your run, bike, swim, etc. Compare this to a good, solid weight training session where your metabolism keeps nibbling away at that fat for hours.

To see this in action, look at any group of athletes whose predominant exercise consists of resistance training, or short, high intensity sprint work. Sprinters are some of the very leanest athletes in the world. Olympic Weight lifters would rather be castrated than go for a run, yet they are predominantly a very lean group. Bodybuilders, by simple observation, are far leaner than those trying to lose fat by aerobics alone.

When visiting New Zealand, I filmed a special on the PUMP program at Les Mills World of Fitness for my video magazine. PUMP (or Body Pump as it is called in the USA) is a highly popular free weight training class choreographed to music and taught in a group setting. I was amazed at the incredibly lean, fit looking bodies in the room. If you view an aerobics class, you just don’t see the same thing. In fact, IDEA released a study a couple years ago indicating that aerobics instructors had an average body fat of >20%, which is suprisingly high for what could be considered a professional athlete.

The whole physiology of someone who lifts weights is geared up to burn calories. The opposite is true of aerobicisers, whose physiology is like that of a Honda Civic; stretching a gallon of fuel for 40 miles. When you want to lose fat, you want to be like a Cadillac or a Hot Rod; you want to be fuel inefficient! Therefore you want to do exercises in such a manner that fuel efficiency is sacrificed. When serving as Trainer of the US Army Boxing Team, I used to implement weight lifting circuits of 12-18 exercises performed at maximum speed and effort for 30 seconds with intensities of 50-60% 1RM. The fighters hated me for it, but I assure you they were strong, could handle lactic acid build-up in the third round, and were lean, VERY LEAN!

In the past three years I have had very good results using a circuit concept I learned from Charles Poliquin: 5 compound exercises back to back with < 1:30 rest. The rest periods become progressively shorter as the clients’ condition and tolerance for lactic acid improves. Initial weight loss may be due to the fact that they are woofing their cookies between circuits, but within a few sessions clients learn to come rested and with less in their stomachs! This format causes huge caloric expense during and after training because the exercises chosen are predominantly closed chain with free weights. This type of program causes your body to reach states of near meltdown, which activates your thermo-regulatory system, burning even more calories. The program is done 3-4 times per week with intensities of 70-80% 1RM, cycling various exercises in and out to prevent injury.
Another useful method I used to keep the US Army fighters lean was not letting them eat dinner within three hours of going to sleep. I highly recommended a large protein-rich breakfast, a well-balanced lunch, and dinner as the smallest meal of the day for those needing to “shake some weight”.

So there you have it, if you want to lose fat, do the following:

DON’T DIET! Eat a nutritious well balanced diet to discourage “survival” fat storage.
Make your first two meals of the day the largest. Eat snacks as needed to convince your body you’re not starving, so you don’t activate lipogenic enzymes
Eat your smallest meal of the day for dinner, remembering to give three hours between eating and hitting the sack.
Use resistance training to increase muscle mass, increase cellular metabolism and become FUEL INEFFICIENT
Apply periodic cycles of high intensity circuit training. Format your circuits with 5 compound exercises, short rest periods, bring a towel so you don’t sweat all over everyone!

Sarah Heipel
Holistic Fitness Coach
Good Energy Coach Web Site

Good Energy Studio
357 Hurontario Street, Collingwood
705-444-ENRG(3674)