Spokane Fitness Blog by Amy Hunt

It’s started. 

As summer approaches, healthy eating and exercise have been kicked in to “high gear” as people try to suck those final few pounds off.

If you’re worried about not looking your best when you hit the beach, the good news is you still have plenty of time to lose some weight and tone your physique. The two keys to getting the summer body you want are creating a sensible eating plan and adding the right types of exercises to your routine.

1. Plan, Plan, PLAN!

One of the most common reasons people don’t get the results they want is because they fail to adequately plan. If you have fitness goals that are too general, it will be nearly impossible to reach them. The reason is you won’t have a set of specifics to use as a frame of reference.

Spokane Fitness Blog by Amy Hunt

Your initial reaction to this question was probably “absolutely not!” While this seems like a cut and dry issue, there’s actually more to this question than most people realize.

How in the World Can Exercise Make You Fat?

If exercise makes it possible for you to burn calories, then how in the world can this cause you to get heavier? As you may have already guessed, it’s not the exercise itself that can cause you to gain weight.

Instead, the problem comes from people overestimating how many calories they burn while working out. Although we believe otherwise, we’re all very bad at estimating accurately. This has been confirmed time and time again across a wide range of studies.

One of the areas where this trait can impact people is in how they choose to eat after working out. After they’ve worked up a sweat during a 30 to 90 minute workout, most people believe that they’ve burned off a ton of calories. As a result, when a friend calls them up and asks them to go out for lunch or dinner, they have no issue with eating a large meal. In fact, there’s a good chance they will actually say something along the lines of “I just worked out, so it’s fine for me to eat this.”

Spokane Fitness Blog by Amy Hunt

Have your weight loss efforts stalled? Do you feel like you’ve hit a road block?

If you’re not losing as much weight as you want, your efforts are likely being held back by one or more common obstacles. It’s not unusual, especially if you HAVE experienced large amounts of weight loss in the past, to hit a plateau.

A few things you should watch for to get over that hump are…

1. “Diet” Foods

Companies have spent a lot of money convincing consumers that if they want to lose weight, they need to eat food with words like “reduced” or “fat-free” on the label. However, are these really the foods that are going to help you lose weight? In most cases, the answer is no.

The problem with most “diet” foods is that they’re highly processed. This means they’re commonly packed with sodium and contain a lot of ingredients that are anything but natural. Not only would most people agree that processed foods aren’t ideal for a healthy body, but another big problem is they commonly leave people feeling hungry.

Spokane Fitness Blog by Amy Hunt

Some of us love a piece of grilled salmon or halibut…some of us gag at the thought.

Did you know one of the best ways to complement the time you spend working out is to make fish a staple of your diet?

I read once that Sylvester Stallone consumed a diet of mostly tuna while training for some of this tough guy movie roles. Body builders and those who are trying to trim and tone muscle mass will consume high protein, low fat options like fish as well. So if those guys can do it, why don’t we??

If you’ve heard this advice before but aren’t exactly sure why and how you should follow it, here’s your answers:

Spokane Fitness Blog by Amy Hunt

It would be great if there actually was an instant solution for weight loss.

I mean, wouldn’t it be awesome if you could just close your eyes real hard, think like crazy, open your eyes and voila!– instant sexy body?? Talk about a dream world. BUT… anyone who’s been ripped off by the instant weight loss type of product knows it’s nothing more than an empty promise.

Although those products don’t work, that doesn’t mean there aren’t simple keys to weight loss. While it may initially sound too good to be true, there is a single word that can help you achieve weight loss success.

Ready for it???