Diets

Remember the Atkins diet? Well, the Atkins diet was all about how evil carbs are and that you should avoid them and you will lose weight. Guess what, if you cut anything out of your diet you will lose weight. This does not make it a healthy diet. You could cut out all protein and carbs and you would lose weight only eating fat. This is obviously a very unintelligent idea. Our bodies are made up of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates and needs all 3 of those things to function properly. Studies were done on the atkins diet versus the normal healthy low fat diet and in the first 6 months people on the atkins diet lost weight fast so it could be known as a fast diet. But after a year the weight loss was no different than the normal way. But what does this mean? Someone on the low fat diet would see steady weight loss over a year which is motivating month after month. The person on the atkins diet would see good results the first 6 months and then the results would greatly decrease causing them to quit the diet soon after 6 months and go back to their normal eat patterns. That's because the Atkin diet is just that... a diet. You can't eat like that forever, so it is only a matter of time before you go back to your old ways and gain the weight back. The normal "diet" can actually be sustained thoughout your whole life making it an eating lifestyle change where you are able to keep weight off forever.

Mobile Fitness

I keep seeing a commercial and it bothers me a lot. It's a commercial for some state college that is advertising how you can go to there school to become a personal trainer. You don't need to go to a school and pay them thousands of dollars to become a personal trainer! That school is robbing people of their money by misleading people to think that they need to pay a few grand in education to become a personal trainer. If you are interested in being a personal trainer, you should buy a book that teaches you about it, read it, implement it and then go take a test to become certified. There are many different certifications that will all give you title of personal trainer and most gyms don't care which one you get so long as you have one. Some of the best known and most accepted certifications are ACSM and NASM. Every gym accepts those 2 personal training certifications. ACSM deals a lot more on the physiology of the human body than on actual workout routines and the test is probably the hardest to pass of all the personal trainer certifications.
It's amazing how misleading and deceiving an organization can be just so they can make some money. Don't be deceived by schools offering fake degrees that they made up so that they can earn some extra money from students.

Yoga

If you have never been to a yoga or pilates class I would recommend going to both. Don't just go once and decide you don't like it, make sure you try them both at least twice. I say this because you need to try them both out with different teachers/instructors. My first time to pilates I loved it and then i went back and it was a different teacher and it wasn't very good. So make sure you try out different styles. Yoga can change your life in more ways than just physically. One great thing I learned from yoga is how inflexible I really am. I had no idea that the muscles in my right leg were so much tighter than the ones in my left. And, after analyzing every movement possible, I have come to the conclusion that the tightness of the muscles in my right leg are a huge reason for the problems in my right knee. I might be able to save myself a lot of money from not having knee surgery if I continue to stretch my right leg muscles more. So, you could say that going to yoga class saved me from knee surgery. I might just go get some yoga pants and continue doing yoga.

Organic Schmorganic

This new trend of everything being "Organic" is getting really annoying.
If I learned anything from all the Chemistry classes I had in college it's that ANYTHING containing carbon is organic. And all foods are made mostly of organic (carbon-containing) compounds. Companies have taken advantage of how ignorant people are and they simply put the word organic on any of their existing products and they sell way more at triple the price. People think just because it has the word organic on the package that it is good for you.
Originally foods were called organic because they were grown without pesticides or fertilizers but companies have taken this word to the extreme. Don't always believe the words on a label. A perfect example of this would be wheat thins. Whoever thought of that name was very smart because it fools everyone into thinking they might be good for you because they contain 2 words that we associate with being healthy. But they aren't any better for you than any other cracker on the shelf with lots of fat/saturated fat.

Where is the fittest city in America?

Men's fitness magazine listed Salt Lake City as the fittest city in America. And BYU has been ranked as number 1 for the fittest University for a few years now. Mormons must be doing something right. Stay tuned for the answer to the question should women take protein?

Some foods to stay away from

I was just reading on Yahoo's home page and there was a link for some of the worst foods you can buy. I thought it was interesting so im going to put some of them here.

Worst Candy Bar = Twix!
There are 11 grams of SATURATED fat!!!! That's horrible! I wouldn't recommend eating 11 grams of saturated fat all day. That's as much saturated fat as 11 strips of bacon. So don't use Twix as a stocking stuffer.

Worst Cereal = Quaker 100% Natural Granola, Oats, Honey & Raisins
This cereal has 420 calories and 30 grams of sugar.... not good for you.

Yoga

Shoulders

Lateral Side Raises
Stand with weights at your side, arms straight. Raise your arms until they are parallel to the floor and then slowly lower them back down to your side. You are going to have to use a light weight for these so that you can do 12 reps.

Rear Delt Raises
Same as Lateral side raises but you will be bent at the waist the whole time so that your body is parallel to the ground.

Front Raises
Stand with weights at your side and lift them in front of you with straight arms until they are to eye level then slowly return to starting position.

Shoulder Presses
Do these with the better biceps workout

Calves

Today you are simply going to do 500 calf raises. For the first 100 stand with feet shoulder width apart and toes pointing straight ahead. Go all the way up on the ball of your feet as high as possible, hold for one second and then all the way back down. It's best to do them on the edge of a step or somewhere where you will be able to have your heel go lower than the ball of your foot. The next hundred do them with toes point out at 45 degrees. The next 100 do them with toes pointing in towards each other. Make sure you do at least 50 reps in each set. You have all day to do them so space them out however you would like. Strength through doing exercise will improve your fitness.

Workout #3

Obliques
Okay today is an easy workout and all you need is some kind of stick... a broom will work fine.

Following are 3 exercises for obliques with a broom (or any other stick long enough)

1. Sit on the floor and lean back until your torso is at a 45% angle with the floor.
2. Hold the broom across the back of your shoulders. (The same place the bar would be if you were going to squat with it.) Your hands should be at each end of the broom handle so that they are outstretched.
3. Twist from side to side touching the end of the broom handle on each side of you. The handle is going to touch behind you. Make sure you are twisting your torso not just dropping your shoulders from side to side.


Next you will do the same thing but instead of leaning back to a 45% angle you can sit on a chair straight up and twist with the bar still resting across you shoulders. You want to make sure you twist only your torso and not your pelvis. Keep you head straight and focus on using your obliques to turn.

And the 3rd exercise is another variation of the same. With the broom resting across your back/shoulders you are going to stand with feet shoulder width apart and bend at your waist as far as you can, which will be 90 degress for some people. Then you will twist all the way to one side and hold for 2 seconds then twist to the other. Remember to keep your pelvis from moving.

I know reading these it seems like it wouldn't be a good workout but trust me it is.. you will feel it.

Utah Home Fitness

Hello, this blog is my mobile fitness blog, also known as home fitness. I am a personal trainer in Utah and hopefully this blog will help you with your personal fitness.