Blog
Home-Based Total Body Workout with your Kids, Fit Moms!
If you are a mom, you are on a mission in life, daily to raise effective, proactive, grounded, and happy children. That doesn’t come from spending time away from home. The best way a mother can guarantee her children’s best upbringing is to be around them as much as possible. That’s why I started doing a lot of workouts that would help me spend more time with the kids.
If you have no free weights at home, then the best thing to do for your butt and upper legs is walking lunges. You can do these with weights if you’d like, but they are really effective at shaping up your butt without weightlifting. You can even have the children do them with you! Remember to push through the heels and keep your chest up and shoulders back, along with keeping your core tight! If your children workout with you, a tight core and proper form is essential for safety, so be sure to instruct them on effective exercise form and core-centered focus as well. Go for at least 8 per leg, per set, but eventually, you should be able to do up to 25 per leg, per set (if you’re not using weights). Uphill makes it even more effective and challenging, if you and the kids are up for extra challenge in your fitness feats!
Walking Lunges
Another great workout to do is calf-raises to tone and shape the lower half of your leg. At the base of your stairs or even on a curb, place the ball of your feet on the edge and stretch your heel down for the beginning of the movement. Then, raise your heels above toe level till you are on your tippie-toes! This will burn after just a few, but it’s great calorie burning while shaping up your lovely legs into those fitness model calves you see in the magazines! Remember, burning calories means your body is going into the fat-burning zone! Stay with it, fit moms!
Fit Mom Calf Raises
For your upper body, I swear there is nothing more effective for killing that ugly arm fat that slops over the back of the arms like push-ups, fit moms! Be sure that on all exercises, you are inhaling when you release the muscle and exhaling when you contract the muscle. In the case of the pushups, fit moms, you can remind the children to breathe during the exercise. People tend to hold their breath during a new exercise when they are concentrated on the new movement. Fit moms often need the instruction ourselves, but we learn more when we teach. Moms, and all parents of course, feel free to use the time with the kiddos to educate them in safe and optimal health and fitness while you strengthen your knowledge base. It certainly helps us to ensure our children’s safest measures during exercise while helping the whole family create good habits. With push-ups, start with maybe 5-25 per set, depending on your strength.
Lastly, don’t forget the core. There are a lot of exercises to do for your core. In this case, I’d suggest planks. Pull your belly button into toward your spine, as if you are “snapping” it (like when you snap a snap). Keep your back and legs totally straight. Breathe, remember fit moms, breathe, please! Hold it as long as you can but set a goal for 30 seconds or more on each set.
- Planks for the Core
So there you have it, fit moms and everyone else, you can spend time with the family, have fun, be active and be at home, while still working your whole body out! Keep it up!! Be Phenomenal, You are Worth the Work!
The Will Power for Fitness
I just don’t have the will power is a commonly heard phrase in fitness. Whether it’s a client, a fitness newbie, or someone who just explains why they refuse to even try getting fit.
Long ago, when we finished writing our book, FIT FOR COMBAT, my fitness co-author JD and I started cataloging what makes fitness, figure and bodybuilding competitors different from everyone else. Will power was at the top of the list. Will Power leads to self-discipline. When you want something badly enough, you will for it. In fitness, it’s no different. When you have the will for something, you CREATE the discipline to get what you want. If you want to be leaner, if you want to get into better shape, if you want to compete, or if you just want to be more active and feel more fit, will power is the doorway that leads you into manifestation of that goal.
It makes sense that self-discipline and will power would play a role in being able to stick to the diet and training program required to get into competition shape. We initially thought it would be the real difference between those who succeed in mastering their bodies and everyone else. As we studied what self-discipline really is, we realized that we had fallen into a common trap that social scientists call fundamental attribution error.
Every person has a reservoir of will power to draw on, like a will power battery, but the amount in that reservoir is not fixed at a set level. Research, by Professor Roy Baumeister at Florida State University, shows that our will power battery can be depleted by repeated acts of self control and decision making. Newer research by professors at the University of Chicago shows that our reservoir of will power is affected by whether we think there is a set amount of it or that it is unlimited.
The classic experiment by Baumeister, which has been replicated in hundreds of variations, asked student test subjects to eat radishes while being tempted with a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Baumeister then asked the students to solve an impossible puzzle. The students did not know the puzzle was impossible to solve.
The real purpose of the experiment was to see how long the students who had to overcome the temptation of the cookies would work at solving the puzzle when compared to students who sat down, ate some cookies and then worked on the puzzle and a control group who just worked on the puzzle with no cookies or radishes involved. The results show that the students who had to overcome the cookie temptation gave up on the puzzle quickly. Their battery of will power and resolve was depleted by fighting the temptation to eat the cookies. The students who had to overcome the cookie temptation, used up their reservoir of will power, their reservoir of resolve, and gave up on the puzzle in less than half the time of the other two groups and made far fewer attempts to solve the puzzle. Baumister calls this effect ego depletion. The experiment shows that when we use will power for one thing, overcoming the temptation of a cookie, it drains a little of that energy from the battery making it harder to exercise the will in totally unrelated things like trying to solve a puzzle.
Baumeister showed the energy depletion of decision making in an experiment where students, prior to working on the impossible puzzle, were either forced to make a decision about a task or were assigned a task. The students who had to make the decision gave up on the puzzle faster and made fewer attempts to solve than the students who just carried out an assignment.
So, in fitness, we note that a general 9-5 lifestyle tends to lead to the attitude that “I just don’t have time” or “By the time I get home at night, I don’t want to eat a chicken breast and salad. I just want a quick snack, a TV and a bed.”
In our fitness data research, JD and I found that most people have a lot of power. However, most people’s will power is just all used up with the demands of their jobs, running a household and raising two young girls. Every act of will power, every decision, drains the battery a little bit more, but the battery is not fixed, it is rechargeable and we can have more will power if we want it, just by thinking we have it.
The point being that, Yes, You Do have the Will Power! You are just in need of a budget of your will power! It’s about management of your energy resources, and not about your lack of energy. For fitness, you do have the energy, yet, you have been lacking knowledge. Gaining more fitness knowledge, working out to gain awareness of your body, and learning to listen to your body’s language in terms of what to feed it to stimulate energy is the only real way to go. You can stop blaming your will power for your fitness disasters or your state of health and wellness. The key I have found as a mother, is that fit moms have just learned how to start managing the will power better.
When JD and I first thought will power was the difference between the physique competitors and everyone else, we were making a fundamental attribution error, an error that is endemic among humans. Fundamental attribution error is when we use a psychological or personality based explanation for a behavior instead of the situational explanation. We were too focused on the personality trait of will power and thought that the competitors must have larger reservoirs of mental energy—a bigger battery. When we went back and studied Baumeister in depth, we found a better, situational, explanation for the seemingly large reservoirs of will power of the competitors.
Fitness, figure and bodybuilding competitors are cooler toters, especially when preparing for a contest. Their meals are planned and timed and they carry them around with them. They know what they are going to eat and when they are going to eat it. It is all scheduled and becomes a routine. When something becomes a routine it no longer involves a decision. When it is no longer a decision, it does not require any mental energy.
The physique competitors did not have a larger battery of will power than everyone else, they just used less will power by making many decisions about eating a routine. It was easier for them to stick to the diet because the decisions that take mental energy were removed. The situation, the eating plan to get into contest shape, makes them just appear to have more will power.
When we started looking at the lives of successful physique competitors they nearly all had a structured daily or weekly routine. The diet and training demands precision, the only way to be that precise is with a pre-determined structure. Once the structure and routine is set, there were fewer decisions to be made leaving more in battery to handle temptations as the cropped up.
Most fit moms have figured out the secret. Women tend to be better planners, but that’s not limited to women only, just happens to be a general statistic. What I see in fitness and in the general population of fitness enthusiasts is that fitness minded individuals plan what they’ll eat and make it a routine. With those decisions removed, people are then expending less will power and found that they had more energy. Most of these fitness people and fit moms have ready-made forms of protein around their house, in their car and at their office. JD and I found that common possessions among the successful fitness enthusiasts included powdered whey protein, shaker bottles, water gallons, tuna packs, and pre-cooked skinless/boneless chicken, among the most common possessions. Even if routine is disrupted, there is always an automatic back-up that did not require a decision, like an apple and a can of tuna or a ready to drink protein shake. And of course, every one of them owns some kind of fat-loss grill for their chicken and fish
Removing will-power draining decisions is one way women figure competitors maintain their diet, another is the actual nutritional content of the diet.
A lot of people never even try to get into their best shape because they think they don’t have the will power to do it. They make the fundamental attribution error and think the competitors have more will power than they do. As the research shows, if you don’t think you have very much will power, then you will not have much will power.
The only true act of will power was taking the time up front to set the schedule and routine. After repeating the routine it becomes automatic. Women figure competitors don’t have a larger reservoir of will power than everyone else, they just expend less of it by having a structured routine and fuel their brain with ketones from fat.
For More Fit Tips and Great Articles on how to stay in shape, go to the Fit Tips Blog at NitasWorld.com
Burn Fat Naturally Fit Moms!
Hollywood’s Anti-Aging Secret: The Natural Way to Fat Loss, Youth, and Fitness Longevity for Everyone
Two years ago Dr. Patricia Wexler let one of Hollywood’s fat loss and anti-aging secrets out of the bag–Growth Hormone. “Actresses use it to slim abdominal fat and increase muscle tone and libido,” Wexler said.
http://shine.yahoo.com/
Actresses with insider connections to discreet doctors may inject their way to a youthful, fit and sexy body, but you can boost your own growth hormone naturally without any side effects by exercising smarter, Fit Moms and friends!
Human Growth Hormone is naturally secreted by the pituitary gland to regenerate cells, strengthen bones and make the immune system stronger. Its biggest effect, the ones the movie stars are after, is fat burning, which leads to a lean, fit, sculpted and beautiful physique, of course. Growth Hormone turns your body into a fat burning machine. Most women produce less than 10 nano grams of GH per milliliter of blood. A nano gram is one-billionth of gram, which means a little GH goes a long way.
The natural way for all you Fit Moms and Friends to boost your natural GH levels, and get the same effects as the starlets, is to ditch the pink dumbells and treadmill for sprints and real weights. Yes, weight training can lead to fat loss, Fit Moms, without leading you to a “bulky” physique (which is a common misconception that Fit Moms and most of our female friends have yodeled for years!). Weight training is the key to fat loss, anti-aging, and even well-maintained weight loss! Fit Moms and Friends, read more to learn the key to unlocking that potential in your body through weight training and sprints!
The results of an experiment on the effects of sprinting on women published in Oxford University’s journal Acta Physiologica found “Women elicited a greater response of serum GH to sprint exercise” than men. They always say men are the stronger gender physically, but it seems that in this trend, nature is possibly trying to bring ladies into a balance in this sense. Even the body’s nature is to bring balance between the sexes! The swedish scientists who conducted the experiment concluded, “this may contribute to explaining the earlier observed muscle hypertrophy in women in response to sprint training.” If you want toned, shapely legs, Fit Moms and Friends, well, even the doctors and scientists are suggesting that you run sprints. If you don’t run, then look at our other fat burning articles on interval training, which will yield similar results.
Yes, this is Empowerment for Everyone- Mother nature has in some ways leveled the playing field. We Fit Moms can get stronger with this work as we continue to do it, without gaining the muscle that a man will. Women cannot get big, bulky muscles from natural GH, but they get larger percentage increase from GH boosting exercises than men and a few extra nanograms will deliver a flat stomache and tight butt fast.
The quickest way to boost GH is to run sprints (as I stated earlier, check the fat burning category of articles at http://nitasworld.com/blogs for further articles on interval training, which will deliver similar results). The research shows that they key to effective sprints are the intensity, the speed you run, not how many you do or how far you sprint. When I use the word “effective” I am relating the “effective” results of sprinting or interval training to how well this exercise style will burn fat, helping the body look and feel sculpted and lean and beautiful, which is what every woman is striving for when we do any workout. Am I right, Fit Moms? I mean, seriously, which one of us wouldn’t kill (or sprint) to have Selma Hayek’s killer calves, and that Fit Mama’s fit and sexy thighs?
Do you think that it’s inconvenient to do sprints? Well, it takes less time than cardio to burn the calories you can burn in just a few minutes of sprinting, so time is not an issue, Fit Moms. And all you skeptic friends and fit moms are sure to realize that location is easier with sprints than going to the corner store. You already take your kids to half the places you can sprint, fit moms, and all the pet owners take their “kids” (pets) to the other places. None of this is rocket science. Not one of these places is an inconvenience Fit Moms and Friends, because you already go there!
Fat burning Sprints can be done anywhere: An empty parking lot, a low-traffic residential street, the play ground on the weekends at our kid’s school, the park while the kids play, or the sports field or running track at your teenager’s high school at night or on weekends. If you haven’t sprinted recently, don’t jump in head first running as hard as you can the first day, start by doing strides at a pace faster than a jog for four repetitions of 50 to 100 yards. Gradually increase the speed you sprint until you can do four of them all at all out racing speed. When you can do four at full speed, add an extra sprint every week. To make sure your intensity stays high, use a stop watch to time your sprint workout and push yourself to get them done in less time.
By running sprints three times a week and adding some negatives to your weight training, you can boost your natural Growth Hormone levels, burn more body-fat than you do with cardio, and save more time while you preserve your joints and bones, since sprinting is better for your bones and joints than jogging.
Here is a clip of my business partner and co-author JD Johannes running sprints:
http://www.youtube.com/
As good as sprints are, the scientific research shows the super GH booster is lifting heavy weights.
An experiment conducted at the University of Virginia found, “For each incremental increase in exercise intensity, the fractional stimulation of GH secretion is greater in women than in men.”
That means the heavier weights you lift, the more GH your body produces. The biggest boost in natural GH came when women used weights that were heavier than they could actually lift. When you use a weight that is heavier than you can lift up with good form, but that you can control on the way down, your GH levels skyrocket. These types of lifts are called negatives and
an experiement published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that heavy negatives boost natural GH more than anything else. Pull ups, curls, squats, lunges and other types of weight training are really effective for this type of effect, and all these exercises will help you get a sculpted, toned, beautiful physique.
Weight lifting makes us fit moms feel more Powerful!
beginners start here, but you can work your way up to military style, which is the goal
fit moms can get sculpted, fight cellulite and look more beautiful with squats! www.nitasworld.com
And Dr. Patricia Wexler does not approve:
“Human Growth Hormone is unsafe. I know dermatologists and actresses who use it to slim abdominal fat and increase muscle tone and libido. But it can accelerate also a hidden cancer to grow. It can cause funny bone spurs to grow and enlargement of the heart … just to name a few of the many reasons why I consider it unsafe.”
Women get more out of sprints than men. More GH, etc. “Women elicited a greater response of serum GH and insulin to sprint exercise. This may contribute to explaining the earlier observed muscle hypertrophy in women in response to sprint training.”
Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research
“The findings suggest that the acute metabolic and GH responses in the 90/70% condition were more favourable compared with the 70/70% condition, and a significant correlation between the optimal ECC load and 1RM per BM-ratio was observed.”
Heavy eccentric load produces best hormonal response…heavy negatives
University of Virginia, Journal of Applied Physiology
“For each incremental increase in exercise intensity, the fractional stimulation of GH secretion is greater in women than in men.”
The Fitness Illusion Syndrome
There is a species of gym-goer that must be addressed, and this article is meant for exactly that person. Is that person you? Are you a mom who has tried to be fit mom, a man who has tried the fitness workout of the week in your muscle mag, or that chick that diets and cardios herself like crazy to be the ultimate fit chick?
For years and years you have been told by many fitness articles, hot fit workout pictures, instructional workout videos, and so on, not to be that gal/guy who will work out hard, but not smart. You are taught to grind out workouts, but never really made to understand a pragmatic approach to your personal fitness to make any progress. The saving grace of that gal/guy is that she/he does workout hard and keeps at it. Being that gal prevents people from ballooning up to a bloated version of no energy, saving us from our own DNA, yet, it does not teach us how to be optimal with even less work than the “that gal/guy approach.”
The gyms of the world are not only filled with that gal/guy, the gyms of our world, especially in American fitness culture, they are filled with the blood and money-sucking fitness vampires whose biggest concern is customer retention rather than your best and most practical approach to fitness. Their advice is more of a strategy most often delivered with the intention of giving you the most impractical approach to fitness advancement, so that you will be chasing your tail and ever-spending as you chase your quest for the better physique. On top of it, society is telling us women, “Hey, if you’re too muscular, you’re too manly.” Hence, “that gal” syndrome ensues.
That girl says “I don’t want to get too muscular.” The key word being “too.”
What that girl (which describes 90% of the women who own gym memberships) doesn’t realize is that muscle burns fat, and you won’t gain it doing 2 hours of cardio every day. I’ll return to this point and complete it shortly, but keep it in mind and read on.
First off, when you go to a gym, the sales people are not trainers, and the trainers are salespeople. Remember that. Most especially in corporate fitness facilities, you will see this business model because it is the foundation and driving force of fitness industry revenues in a gym. Gyms are businesses, and the people who run them have to do good business to keep up with the competition.
Now I’m not saying you should view corporate gyms with a paranoid perspective of conspiracy, but what I am saying is that it is important to learn to think for yourself when it comes to advancement of your own personal fitness. It is important as fitness consumers to stay informed on not only the latest or oldest tried and true technologies, but it is just as important to improve with what TRULY works for each of us individually. Everyone is different, but yes, there are some rules of thumb for everyone in fitness that are universal. As well, you will notice that those universal fitness truths are contrary to a lot of the workouts that we are instructed to do in the “business” of fitness.
Again, fitness industry business moguls are not the enemy. They are what they are. We need to be responsible fitness consumers and practitioners and actually learn what works for us and work smarter to get there. For instance, men, there is more to life than that pompous trainer who insults you during workouts happens to state. Ladies, no, there is no such thing as a woman being “gross” or “masculine” because she has muscle.
In fact, when women see me in a fitted dress, they all compliment the way I look. No woman likes having cellulite or flabby arms. Women love backless clothes and pretty dresses, but we loathe back rolls and bra roll fat hanging over.
We want to be fit moms, fit chicks, fit hotties. We all want something like this. It’s inviting, energizing and we live a fuller, more expressed life in a fit state. We have the energy to.
When you have a leaner physique (yes, with muscle) you do not struggle with these things. Muscle on women is good, “too much” muscle is unattractive, but yes, again I’ll say it, muscle on women is good.
There is a great response to that girl. “If you ever get leaner than you want, or more muscular than you want, that is an easy problem to solve. Eat more fat and carbs, cut back on the training a bit.”
The “I don’t want to get too muscular” line is a psychological defense mechanism to justify training and dieting half-assed. It is a method of self sabotage- an excuse to fail and a reason to do it the way that the magazines and fitness DVD’s instruct us to. For whatever reason, we are afraid of thinking for ourselves and taking the alternative routes to test what is best for us.
That girl likes working out. She enjoys going to the gym. She would like to look like a fitness model or just a lot better than she appears now, but she is not sure how to do it or even if she can do it. So, she constructs an internal monologue, “I want to be in-shape, in better shape than most women, but I don’t want to get too muscular.”
The fear is not in becoming too muscular, the fear is aimed from and at a disappointment in herself. But, if she makes it okay to fail, if she makes okay to not achieve her goals, then she will not be disappointed in herself. Sound twisted? It is, and it’s confusing. It’s so bamboozling that we just give up altogether whereupon we can escape back to our so, so health with the reasoning that justifies it. On top of that, we can feel better doing it like our co-workers who bring bagels to work and drink beer after work. We can get “comfortable” again, sitting in the bowels of mediocrity and non-compelling drive that requires us to think more. After it is said and heard enough times, it becomes true.
To overcome the psychological self sabotage, you must be honest. I looked at pictures of the top fitness models when I was a chubby girl, and I had to be honest with myself at some point. I was capable of being that fit, but I was just not willing to do what it took to achieve it. That admission of my fitness mindset freed me to achieve a lesser goal, and I then could realize, “Ok, I am being mediocre about my health. I feel like crap, and I am actually willing to half-ass it here, not think for myself, and just sit with my own lame energy.”
Once I admitted it, my journey began. I was actually thinking for myself right then, rather than being a rat following the scent of cheese only to find out it was a foam object set in a trap. Our lack of thought allows us to live in illusions and maintain a level of complacency that will never allow us to be progressive in our health and fitness. We continue relying on the masses (which are driven by philosophies that will have us chasing our tail), and we do the 2 hours of cardio a day and a bunch of aerobics classes, and then we are dumbfounded at our lack of progress, so we eat more, and eventually, we work out less, and ultimately we get worse.
The root of this psychological defense mechanism is the fear of failure. Because we are often afraid to fail, we set an incredibly high standard, determine it cannot be reached, come up with excuses it cannot be reached and don’t even try. The only way to change this is to think for ourselves. Try learning to adapt to your own individual fitness needs by measuring your body’s response to certain workouts. If you want to get more fit, live longer and play with your grandkids in the park without breaking a hip, the key to your best fitness is in thinking for yourself. Study, Do, Observe your body’s response, and Progress accordingly.
Be well, Be You, BE PHENOMENAL.
-Nita Lee Marquez
Fitness Empowerment Author
Miss National Fitness
IFBB Pro Fitness Athlete
Proud Mother of Three
A Fit Mom to Follow- meet Melissa Hale-Naulin
After the birth of my daughter, with the proper nutrition and a consistent weight training/cardio routine, I sucessfully lost 75 pounds (40 from pregnancy, plus an additional 35 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight) and 20% body fat. I am not only a fit mom, but I am also aspiring to become a licensed nutritionist, and I’m even helping transform my family’s fitness habits. We are a fit family!
Fit Mom Melissa Hale-Naulin
I am in the best shape of my life at 37 years old. I’ve proven to myself that it doesn’t matter how old you are, if you have had children, or if you don’t have model perfect genes. With hard work and clean eating you can absolutely attain the physique you have always dreamed of and bring your health and quality of life to a whole new level!
This journey hasn’t been easy for me with a baby and husband to take care of, a household to keep in order, and running my own skin care business. It has been difficult at times to keep a consistent workout schedule, as well as spending countless hours in the kitchen, planning and cooking meals for my family.
Our health is very important to me and, above all, I want to set a good example for my daughter. My fitness transformation has been a wonderful experience even with all the challenges, and I offer many thanks to the support from my husband for that. My husband is also an amazing father! He has always been there when mommy needed to squeeze in a workout, or stay late for clients at work. On top of all of this, he has gotten into the fitness lifestyle with me. He himself has also benefited from a cleaned up diet full of veggies, lean protein and complex carbs, losing 25 pounds in 5 months!
My incredible fitness trainer, Jamo Nezzar of Jamcore Training, has been the core of my fit physique success. He is a constant source of workout inspiration, exercise and nutrition guidance, fitness knowledge and overall fitness motivation. He has helped me in so many ways to become more powerful, not just in fitness, but also in other areas of my life. Through getting more fit, I gained more power in my life in all aspects. I have discovered a strength in myself that I never knew existed, and I attribute that to the habits and determination that I retained throughout my fitness journey. Because of the advancement I found in my fitness lifestyle, I feel strong and confident, and I look forward to each and every workout with my trainer as well as my solo workouts.
I want to continue the fitness lifestyle forever! Thank you Jamo, for changing my life in such a positive way. You are more than a fitness coach. I am thankful for your impact on my lifestyle choices for being more fit, setting goals, and learning to develop the habits and determination to reach them.
On December 3, 2011, I reached my ultimate fitness goal, competing in my first NPC Bikini competition! It was an unbelievable experience, sharing the stage with some incredibly fit women.
My goals for 2012 are to continue to condition my physique and possible do another show in May. I would also love to earn a degree in nutrition and to help others change their body and their health through better food choices. Cooking and collecting recipes has become a hobby of mine! I love transforming unhealthy, fat-laden recipes into clean, delicious meals that fuel your energy and keep your metabolism running at it’s peak. Eating healthy doesn’t have to be boring and tasteless! Here I will share quick & easy recipes to support a fit lifestyle, as well as training (based on my own experience) and motivational tips. Thanks 
Please join me and Nita Marquez in the Fitness Empowerment Movement on the following links on Facebook:
My Favorite Facebook Group: America’s Hottest Fit Moms
Fit Moms, Runners, Cardio Does Not Work!
Bodybuilders don’t run, and nor do obese people. But I’m not a bodybuilder, or an obese person. I’m a fitness chick, a fit mom, and a fitness personality. My goals are obviously different from a bodybuilder’s goals, and definitely, I have a different lifestyle choice than a person whose main goals involve constant fulfillment of my taste-bud compulsions.
At this stage in my life, my goal is always to become truly fit and achieve prime longevity. As one point in my career as a fitness competitor, I was running a lot and lifting weights with an extremely high carb, high protein diet, and only then I was starting to resemble a bodybuilder. People who didn’t know better thought I was one.
But you know what kind of fit physique athletes have a lot of muscle, and are really lean, with Olympic level stamina and power? Women’s Fitness competitors.
They run. They run a lot. They do weekly sprints, middle-distance, plyometrics anything that will get their heart to the bursting point.
And if these women can carry body-toned muscle around, while running and with the power and stamina to do our fitness routines—well they are worth at least probing into the minds of. Where I learned about my own fitness interval training from was from my ex-husband, who was basically my trainer before I met my trainer of 13 years, Tim Sparkes, at Die Hard Gym in Arizona. My ex-husband was a former track and football star in high school and college.
What I learned from my ex-husband is that I was doing my running all wrong. First of all, I jogged, and I did so very lazily. I loathed the cardio work, so I dragged myself through it. It didn’t matter that I was a fit mom, a fit chick, or a fitness athlete in training. I was thinking about my cardio conditioning the wrong way, as most of us do for the first few years of our fitness quests.
Just about every fitness center has some serious runners as members. These “fitness” people log 20 to 40 miles a week and are in great cardio vascular condition—but most of them look remarkably average. They do not have much muscle and many of them are skinny fat. Sure they have strong hearts, but some of them store more body fat and subcutaneous water than the person who is walking into a gym for the first time. These runners are not in poor health, but their shape is generally not of the optimal fitness aesthetic grade considering the fitness workload they are undergoing. I believe in running, I do. I also like working out smarter, and distance running for fitness is definitely the harder path, if you’re trying to look better and even feel better.
The best explanation for this phenomena may be controversial, but the facts are right in front of us. Cardiovascular exercise DOES NOT WORK to lose body fat long term, period!!
Why is this? Let’s take a hypothetical individual: Female, 30 years old, 145 pounds, sedentary. She decides she wants to be fit and “get toned” (keep in mind, everyone has a different idea of this word, so it’s subjective). So she takes up running on the treadmill for an hour a day 5 days/week. Nothing else in her life changes, her diet and lifestyle remain the same. In the first week she loses 5 pounds. If she maintained her consistency 5 days a week, would she lose 250 pounds this year? Of course not, and why is this?
Firstly cardiovascular activity is very efficient at chewing up muscle tissue, the steps are as follows:
1. Conversion from fast twitch muscle fiber to slow twitch muscle fiber, by
acquiring mitochondria and relinquishing contractile protein. Smaller fiber, less
RMR.
2. Excessive Cortisol released in response to the damage to the fiber as a result of the exercise. Cortisol acts as a natural analgesic, but severely hampers protein synthesis and muscle repair. It also damages the immune system, and ultimately will contribute to all of our deaths – so I’m not sure why anyone would do anything that would accelerate this process.
3. It has been shown that high volume cardiovascular exercise can completely deplete satellite cells in muscle fiber, which means no new fiber can grow or existing fiber be repaired, and as we age, we have a natural propensity to lose muscle as well as bone density. Muscle helps our metabolism and enhances bone density.
4. Growth Hormone levels decline with high volume cardiovascular exercise, which also hampers the repair process. Low growth hormone also accelerates aging.
5. To sum it up, you can’t train all day, and you can’t stop eating, but you can always build a bit more muscle, so quit the cardio and concentrate on the weight lifting.
Secondly, after all these details about how cardio fitness training eats up muscle, you must know that the first week of ANY fitness program, and likely the first month even, you will lose weight with rapid results. That’s water weight dropping off because you are actually getting off of your butt. That’s not the “weight” you are losing, it’s the water. You are not really getting more fit, but your body is filtering out a bit so that it can set a better foundation for you to start getting fit.
Your weight-loss will look more like 8-12 pounds monthly if you’re doing it right and if you expect it to stay off. If you’re an athlete or you’re training for an athletic event, your body requires more training than average, and more extreme dieting than average, but that’s not average for a person who is just trying to lose weight and just starting to get fit.
That was a very strong argument for not doing cardio. But I need to be able to keep up with kids, work, training clients, caring for my household, and still having stamina in the gym. Cardio conditioning is a must for me. Plus, I need strength and power.
The solution was to train like a professional female fitness athlete—specifically, one that always wins the fitness routine portion of the contest. And what does the fitness athlete woman do? Sprints.
For women who run, but they want a great physique:
With high-intensity interval training you “sprint” on any cardio exercise for short bursts that go for less than two minutes, and then you slow to moderate, and sometimes even low-intensity pace for a short burst. You want to go high intensity to kick your heart rate way up, and then you drop the intensity to less your body rest, while not giving your heart rate enough time to drop out beneath a fat-burning zone. If you do this for short bursts of time, you don’t give your heart rate a chance to drop severely, and therein, you are able to keep your body burning fat, burning calories, and staying hard at work, even though you won’t feel like you’re working hard while your body recovers during your lower-paced durations.
Like cardio, this too can strengthen your heart, and keep you from feeling sluggish. On the other hand, in comparison to cardio, interval training burns fat for longer periods of time. You will burn fat for up to 13 hours post-workout with intervals, whereas with cardio at a constant moderate rate will only burn fat efficiently for up to 2 hours post workout. So, why would you spend more time and burn less fat, much less want to gamble the possibility of kicking out cortisol? This is why many fitness professionals who know what they are doing will not recommend long dull high, low or medium-intensity periods of cardio.
The best way to gain cardio conditioning and maintain muscle is to do what all fat-burning physique athletes does—sprints.
As sprinting becomes the core of your cardio conditioning program and distance running becomes the ‘functional’ training, so you do it for form, awareness, and monitoring. It’s a means for measurement when needed, but it’s not necessary for the actual progress.
When I started doing sprints in the morning for my cardio, my strength gains in the gym accelerated a little bit and I started to get leaner without really trying, and my husband noticed an extreme difference in how my body was responsive to my diet and weight training. My lines and cuts in my muscles showed up and they never had before I started sprinting. My workouts were more exhilarating and I could produce more within them because my fitness level and stamina was increased through sprinting.
Now I was able to get more in my fitness routines, I could run with my daughter in her stroller for better bursts so I wasn’t gasping for air. I was stronger than I would ever need to be on the fitness stage or in the gym. I had burst speed and explosiveness and I had the stamina and endurance to keep up with any of the guys at the gym.
So, I am not advising the novice to average fitness person to sprint, but I am encouraging those of you who run– just try this for 6 weeks and see how rapidly and extremely your fitness levels, your energy, your stamina, and your physique changes. See how lean you get and watch a sculpted physique appear that you never knew you had.
As for the fitness enthusiast who is new to the world of fitness and fit physique training, try intervals, we have more blogs on the Fat Burning Workouts categories to your left here in the blog at nitasworld.com. Check it out. Be well, Be You, BE PHENOMENAL! You are worth the work!
-Nita Lee Marquez
America’s Hottest Fit Mom ™
Fitness Empowerment Author
Miss National Fitness
Proud Mother of Three
Get Rid of Christmas Bloat
The fitness of a woman who is trying to stay fit but live a normal life doesn’t change in one day of eating poorly. If you’re wondering why you gorged yourself on Christmas day, and how you can get that lean fit physique back, fit moms & fit chicks, and fit guys: There is a perfect combination that is simple and very doable to help you get that beautiful progressively fit contour back in your body lines. There are a lot of solutions out there, but this is by far the most optimal, practical, tried and true method of fitness execution that you can possibly reach your fitness results through. When you think about the way you feel normally, and then you think about a day after drinking a whole lot of alcohol, you think of a hangover. Yes, we can all relate to that word: hangover- the consequence of “too much.” With food, it’s no different. We are very naturally wired to be moderate, and thus, even with food or fitness, our body sounds off alarms when moderation is botched. Thus, the food hangover.
Fitness Buffs are familiar with this, as we’ve all experienced food hangovers in our quest for perfect dietary balances. We have eaten perfectly for weeks on end, training for our stage presentations in fitness competitions. Then, the second we come off stage, GORGE! We proceeded to eat like garbage disposals for the next 24 hours. It’s part of what people do to learn balance. ”The path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” Thus, as a fitness personality myself, having gone through this in my first few fitness competitions (yes, it subsided with repeated episodes that taught me it feels like utter crap, so I quit doing it), I have learned what my colleagues in the fitness competition industry do. We have all, our entire fitness population of athletes, gone the gorge route, and felt like crap the day after. It’s a load up of sodium and sugars and fats and foreign things that our bodies are not used to on a daily basis that makes our fitness levels, mental acuity and energy feel completely extinguished. Fitness people know that it’s just a food hangover, and we know how to cure it, based on our own experience.
Hydration is key here. I normally drink about a gallon of water a day, so I stay hydrated. Yet, the day after an episode of gorging, I have learned that water will balance my body back to it’s normal fitness state within a day, when combined with even mild activity. When you drink a lot of water, you flush out the toxic buildup of those excessive properties you added in when eating too much.
So, whether you are fit, or whether you are somewhat out of shape, if you’re experiencing a food hangover, water and walking will fit your body back into it’s normal mold. Take a walk in the morning with some water in your system. Flush by drinking approximately 4 liters of water if you are not one to hydrate extremely on a daily basis. If you’re into fitness, chances are you drink a lot of water, so you will want to double your normal intake in that case. For me, I normally drink a gallon (because it’s normal for my fitness lifestyle, and athletes typically acquire that 1-gallon habit), so if I eat too much, I’ll take in 1.75 or 2 gallons of water for a day after eating in a way that was not only excessive, but also not fitness oriented in it’s ingredients. Everyone has cheat days, and they should. Those girls who walk around eating perfect all the time, well, they’re never happy. Being “perfect” isn’t the key, it’s “perfect balance” that impacts our fitness lifestyle in the most effective and empowering ways.
You are worth the work. Be Phenomenal.
-Nita Lee Marquez, Fitness Empowerment Author, IFBB Pro, Miss National Fitness, and Proud Mother of Three
Get in Shape Fit Moms Burn Fat!
Fit Moms looking to burn calories, burn fat, and get leaner, listen up. Cardio is cardio because, yes, it's generally good for strengthening your heart, and if you have medical conditions that prohibit you from high intensity workouts, exercise of all types should take place more safely through caution so as to fit those needs for a low to moderate intensity. Test your limits, fit moms, but be aware of your body.
Speak to your physician to see if you're as fit of a mom as you think. Note your body's current limitations, they may not stay where they are in terms of your fitness level, because with time and consistent exercise you will adapt. However, whatever fit mom's limits are at this time, pay heed. Don't over-do it fit mamas! Moderation and consistency is key until you grow into your capacity to challenge yourself with intensity. But eventually, sooner than later no doubt, you will want and need to challenge yourself with some intensity. Cardio alone will not do the trick when it comes to burning calories effectively, much less burning fat.
Cardio, is not the be all end all to losing weight, despite the common misconception most fit moms, and people in general seem to have. Keep in mind I am not shunning cardio, but I am simply telling people that if you are working hard already, mom or not, you lift or do various other activities, you want to burn fat specifically. If you are trying to burn fat specifically, there is a more intense, effective, time-efficient and fat-burning workout than cardio. As I said, Cardio is not the Be-all End-all!
When I am training fit moms, or anyone other types of clients who are working to get into their most fit condition, we are hitting the track, the treadmill, and a lot of fit moms step or do the eliptical. They are either warming up on the scene or doing high-intensity interval training. While I have encouraged people to do intervals when they are wanting to gain lean muscle and break down fat at the same time, I also suggest people start small and build up.
Starting off slowly in any exercise program is always heavily advised so as to issue protection from injuries. When you do a high-intensity interval training workout, however, you must have already gotten to a point where you have the ability to go hardcore, and you want to break through a threshold or fat-barrier.
Look fit moms, chasing kids is definitely cardio at times, and sometimes even anaerobic, but know that your greatest strength physically is going to come from true intensity, so work your way up. You are worth the work, and the fat-burning information and fitness instruction is available to you. If you’re looking for strength, go hardcore, but if you’re just looking to lose fat and burn some calories, this is the story… start off slowly, but start doing intervals immediately. Condition your body to the process of changing intensities. If you can’t go really hardcore, then stick to the machines like the stepmill or the bike or even the elliptical.
As you are the catalyst to fatburning in just getting off the couch and doing something at all, you obviously have a work ethic with
which to reach your goals, and you know that you can and will go as hard and long as you need to in order to reach that goal. With
high-intensity interval training you can go for less time, more intensity (in spurts) and stay consistent in your body’s abilities
to use fat for fuel, which is what everyone wants.
With high-intensity interval training you “sprint” on any cardio exercise for short bursts that go for less than two minutes, and
then you slow to moderate, and sometimes even low-intensity pace for a short burst. You want to go high intensity to kick your heart
rate way up, and then you drop the intensity to less your body rest, while not giving your heart rate enough time to drop out beneath a fat-burning zone. If you do this for short bursts of time, you don’t give your heart rate a chance to drop severely, and therein,
you are able to keep your body burning fat, burning calories, and staying hard at work, even though you won’t feel like you’re working hard while your body recovers during your lower-paced durations.
Like cardio, this too can strengthen your heart, and keep you from feeling sluggish, which moms who are fit or not can all totally understand. We need the energy to do all that we have to for our kids to keep them moving, motivated and constantly evolving. We can obtain the right energy levels from proper hydration and interval training.
On another note beyond what has to do with energy increase, in comparison to cardio, interval training burns fat for longer periods of time. You will burn fat for up to 13 hours post-workout with intervals, whereas with cardio at a constant moderate rate will only burn fat efficiently for up to 2 hours post workout. So, why would you spend more time and burn less fat, much less want to gamble the possibility of kicking out cortisol? This is why many fitness professionals who know what they are doing will not recommend long dull high, low or medium-intensity periods of cardio.
True fitness professionals understand and push the many benefits of interval training workouts over cardio. From energy gains to fat loss, and from high calorie burns to lower impact on joints, intervals are the supreme workout when weighed against cardio. An added benefit for us fit moms: intervals will target cellulite better than cardio ever could!
Work safe, start slowly when needed, but work smart and work your way up into higher intensity levels. Challenge yourself, Be Phenomenal Fit Moms & Friends, You are Worth the Work!
America’s Hottest Fit Moms are Taking Over! Workout Mamas!! Fat Burning Tips for the Fit Mom…
If you’re like me, you love your babies, but you also love your alone time. Fit mothers, like many women, are over achievers, and we want it all: the strong mind and spirit, the healthy body, but more than anything a Fit Mom wants to keep the balance between family time & the healthy time for her fitness goals.
How can we balance it? Being a fit mom, and then just being a fit woman in solitude when we need to? Well there are a few simple ways that I’ve found worked for me and many women who were fit and super, beautiful, powerful moms. I decided to list a few things here for all the fit moms (and maybe some dads, too!) who are really amped about having their solitude, although, most fit mamas love their fitness time with the family also! If you’re anything like me though, girl, you NEED the solitude! I get mine as often as possible, and with three children, as a single mother who works, the mommy-solitude-time is hard to come by!
Finding this solitude has helped me maintain my sanity on many a day though. Even as fit as you get, however, you still need that personal time. Especially all us single parents! If you don’t get personal time, and make time for your fitness goals, you will drive yourself crazy losing your identity in full-time parenting and a full-time career. You have got to make time for yourself, and fitness during that time is the most effective way to create more power and effectiveness in all that you do, while at the same time, fitness brings you clarity on yourself, and elates your state of mind.
Single moms who work for a living find it especially challenging to stay fit, and I get it. If I wasn’t already “in the industry,” sure, yea, I would imagine that finding the balance would be difficult. The good news is that finding time for your physical fitness isn’t impossible. The even better news is that finding time will help you gain more energy, more patience, and more resourcefulness; because the more activity you perform, well, the more energized you will feel. Let yourself use fitness to stay in balance.
When I absolutely feel like pulling my hair out, I can maintain my composure, because I know I will have that treadmill to take it out on later. Or maybe I’ll get to do sprints out in front of my house. Perhaps I will be lifting weights at the gym next time I go. Either way, I get into the zen-zone by going to the gym or going for a run when begin to feel frustrated. Fitness is that answer to all our issues.
Unlike getting tanked (which makes us smell like something crawled into our mouths and took a dump, if you ask me), fitness will help me produce more effective outcomes and powerful outputs. With drinking or sitting around watching tv to escape my life’s challenges, I solve nothing. When we work out, we think more, we get more clear with a more fit and active body, so we are more likely to go into problem-solving mode rather than cowering in our issues.
Look, I have had that week where the rent was a month late and the collectors were calling about my car payment. I see more possibilities and an end in sight when I’m working out rather than sitting around. Fitness is cheap, easy, and accessible, and it makes you feel more powerful. It’s free to go for a run in the neighborhood or run some plyometrics and push-ups at the park. My kids can come with me to the park and play or read while I work out. We can go to the track together. Either way you play it, being a fit mom is the best way to be a mom if you are working toward building a better life and being in a half-way decent mood while building your empire.
There is nothing more refreshing than knowing you are the fittest you can be, and even better knowing that you are doing the best you can. When you stay fit, you stay optimal. And if your fitness is family-first fitness, well all the better. Here are a few more tips from my friends:
1)Yoga classes to stretch and relax the muscles and ease tension in your muscles and mind. Stay empowered, do yoga Fit Moms!
work the yoga, fit moms!
2)Weight lifting makes you feel stronger, more powerful, and unconquerable. Conquer your problems with strength and clarity Fit Moms!
Weight lifting makes us fit moms feel more Powerful!
3)Push-ups, right when you wake up make you go through your day feeling like a champ. Resolve to do push-ups before the kids wake up, stretch and then go run the day and let life know that it can’t run you, Fit Mama!!
beginners start here, but you can work your way up to military style, which is the goal
4)Run in the neighborhood, doing interval training for a refresher before the kids get up. Just jog, walk and sprint in cycles up and down your block so your house in view and you can open your lungs, your mind, and your soul to rule the world you live in for the day, so it’s problems cannot rule you Fit Mom!
Fit Moms!! Save Me from Christmas Junk Food Cravings!
The past few holidays have been fairly easy to get through as we have been living in Los Angeles away from the family, since it’s just me and the kiddos out here. That being the case, we are usually traveling during the season of giving. The hustle and bustle doesn’t seem to support fitness goals, so a few years ago, I started some holiday habits that have helped me to stay prepared for fitness among chaotic times like these.
These tips have helped me to learn more about fitness every season, and even get leaner some seasons. There is no gift greater to me than my health and longevity, so I strive to make choices that help me to still enjoy my time, but have more of it in the long run to enjoy!
From fatloss during the holidays, to having more energy, these few little tips have helped me to emphasize that age-old adage that having an “attitude of gratitude” adds to all the joys of the holiday, and not to mention, that eases up the tension that tends to build at this time of year when I do have to go to the malls.
1) Every day is a gift, not an obligation, so on weekends when we have Christmas prep to do, I wake up in the mornings and go out for a walk or I run beside my kiddos while they ride their bikes. Fitness Energizes Everything, but also, it keeps our spirits up! Enjoy the holiday, kick it off with a little workout with the family!
2) Drink water, it will keep your system cleansed, heighten your energy levels, help your mood, and curb your cravings!
I carry a 1-liter bottle of water at all times (BPA-FREE, OF COURSE), and I just refill it throughout the day to keep up the effects of feeling fit and empowered. Fit moms usually have some kind of items on hand for the kids to stay fed, why not carry around a bottle to keep yourself prepared?
3) There is nothing I won’t do to avoid those sweets in the holiday season, but I keep them to a minimum and stay fit by keeping protein around the house at all times.
No matter where we travel, I can always walk to the store (although, I’ll drive if it’s too cold!), and get some eggs to boil. I personally love tabasco on mine, but paprika and Himalayan salt is also very good for stimulating the metabolism on your eggs.
4) I keep deli cold cuts rolled up and in the fridge or around the house for the little ones (I don’t eat poultry, but they love it!), and that keeps those little fit kids super fit with protein-enriched snacks instead of cookies and pies everywhere.
I can’t control the other environments’ provisions of food, but where we are sleeping and waking and working out, I always keep protein around for all of us!
5) My favorite way to start a holiday morning: the Peppermint Chocolate Protein Breakfast Shake! Yummy!!!
2 scoops of MRM Dutch Chocolate Protein Powder
1/3 cup coconut milk
2/3 cup reverse osmosis water (I use alkaline water)
1/8 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup oats (dry)
3 drops of peppermint extract
a tad of ice
Instructions for Nita’s Favorite Fitness Shake:
combine ingredients in a blender and blend medium to puree for 45 seconds. If you want more consistency, add ice. For more liquidy consistency, add water. lastly, DRINK UP AND ENJOY your fitness protein power packed with deliciousness!
Fit Moms! At Christmas time, use that fit mind for family first fitness tools as well as for sprinting through the mall to shop for everyone! Sometimes, the best gifts come through the things we give up. So make this Christmas a protein-packed power Holiday for you and your fit family and love the joys of the holidays in strength, while giving up some of the sweets. (I didn’t say all of the sweets had to go, just cut back a bit, and work out a little more 
) America’s Hottest Fit Moms, YOU ARE WORTH THE WORK! BE PHENOMENAL!