Arin Lindauer

I sincerely mean that when I typed, how a 3-day food journal can save your life.

Let me explain.

When people start our program, we ask them about their goals, health history and current eating habits.  We get them set up in workouts, then we want to see a few days of what they eat and we start working our accountability plan.

 

Some clients are able to document this relatively easily in an app called My Fitness Pal.

Others for whatever reason have trouble providing this information.

Now before all the daggers come out, I understand, this takes time and we are all limited on time.  We get that.

What a food journal does is gives us information to help us help hold each person accountable, give recommendations, find potential gaps or reasons they may not be seeing results.

Now, this is not forever.

Personally, seeing about 3-days’ worth of food is all we need.  It can be written down on paper, sent in an email at the end of the day or in an app like My Fitness Pal.

More than anything it helps bring awareness to what is being consumed.

It is so easy to eat 300

calories and not so easy to burn 300 calories!

When you track what you eat for a few days, you will be surprised at what each food item contains from a nutritional value.  Some things are huge bang for your buck while others you get so mad cause you can only have an ounce…like cheese!  (Yummy salt and fat!)

The first place we look is how many total calories are being consumed daily vs how many calories are being burned daily.  If weight loss is the goal we have to create a caloric deficit of 300-500 calories per day.

We can’t be too deep into a deficit because your body will think it is starving and will hold on to everything storing it as fat.  On the flip side if we have too many calories you will see weight gain.

This is where consistency comes in.

We see people do well Monday through Thursday, then Friday, Saturday, Sunday-Funday comes in and it wrecks what started as a perfect week.

So how does a 3-day food journal save your life?

It starts the process to better health.  It gives awareness to what you are currently doing and does it support your current goals?

This is the title I saw on a popular women’s fitness site, and instantly I became very ANGRY.

It’s very upsetting to me and the TFW team that people in the industry will continue to promote these myths in the hopes of making a quick buck.

Most of the time these sites are trying to sell you some kind of workout plan, diet plan, or product.

When scientific study after scientific study repeatedly show that targeting fat loss to specific areas of your body is next to impossible, the notion that it is possible is continually perpetuated. Most scientific studies are performed on either the arms or the abdominal regions. Most of these studies have one group of individuals exercise for 6-8 weeks and another group do no exercise at all.

At the end of these studies performance increases in the workout group, meaning they can do more sit ups, bicep curls, or tricep press downs than the group who did nothing but local fat mass does not change. To prove this even further, a group of researchers gathered up a bunch of tennis players. The reason being in tennis you only use 1 arm, so 1 arm is trained for years and the other is left untrained.

What they found was that the players had significantly more muscle mass and girth on their playing arm, but when the researchers looked at fat mass it was equal between the playing arm and non-playing arm.

If years of dominant arm training shows no loss in local fat, we surely can’t spot reduce in exercising 3 times a week. The truth is you can’t spot reduce. Science proves you can’t just lean out your arms, or your hips, or your thighs. Your body will remove fat from areas at its own discretion. The only way to reduce fat in these areas is with an all-encompassing approach.

You need to train often and consistently. You need to dial in your nutrition and eat clean foods, and you need to spend time on your recovery making sure you are sleeping and taking care of your body.

That’s my rant, hope you enjoyed. 🙂

Take care,

Arin

We all want to be healthy. We want to eat healthy, feel healthy, and have healthy relationships. There is no lack of articles on how to be healthy. In fact, one could argue there are too many articles telling us the “secret” to feeling good.

You’ll read the generic stuff about eating whole foods, getting 8 hours of sleep each night, and drinking plenty of water. And don’t get me wrong. This is all good advice, but it’s so general and so… non-specific.

Today I want to share 3 very specific things that you can do to move the needle towards being healthier than you were yesterday.

1. Eat a veggie omelet every day for breakfast. Eggs are inexpensive to buy, fast to make, and are packed with protein. The secret here is to throw in any leftover veggies that you have. Doing this will make the omelet taste different each day while ensuring you get rid of leftovers and that you’re consuming your veggies. The other benefit is by simply eating the same thing for breakfast you remove a temptation of choosing an unhealthy food. When we remove choice the struggle of picking between healthy and non-healthy becomes vastly easier.

2. Write a personal note to someone each and every day. A major part of feeling healthy is to feel connected to those we care about and love. This doesn’t have to be a long hand-written letter to a long-lost friend (although it can be just that). You can simply write an email to an old colleague, send a text message to your best friend, send your wife a card… the point here is that you take time out of each day to connect with someone in your personal life for no other reason than to connect. Doing this will help you stay in touch with people that you care about and believe me, they’ll take notice. We are all craving more connection.

3. Do something in nature every day. Some of you reading this just rolled your eyes, but hear me out. Being outdoors and getting some sun is good for us. It not only feeds our soul but it feeds our vitamin D levels and that alone makes us feel better. I said I’d give you some specific things to do so here they are: fill up a bird feeder, weed the garden, take a walk around the block with your dog, play tag with your kids, go for a run, drink your morning coffee on the porch… it doesn’t have to be a major event. Just taking 5 minutes a day is better than nothing.

Each of these very specific things, if done each day, can have a profound change on your life over time. You’ll be implementing healthy habits in a slow, non-threatening way. When we try to change something we tend to go overboard and create a new way of living that is unsustainable. We try to run a mile every day when we are super-stressed for time and haven’t run in 5 years.

Simply eating a veggie omelet, being intentional about connecting to one person a day, and committing to at least 5 minutes outside is something we can all do and it moves us closer to being healthier and happier.

Take care,

Arin

You may wonder why I’m telling you a story of 2 monks. After all, monks aren’t what you think of when you think of weight loss, nutrition, or working out.

But I promise that it will give you something to think about.

A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. At one point, they came to a river with a strong current. As the monks were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman also attempting to cross. The young woman asked if they could help her cross to the other side. The two monks glanced at one another because they had taken vows not to touch a woman. Then, without a word, the older monk picked up the woman, carried her across the river, placed her gently on the other side, and carried on his journey. The younger monk couldn’t believe what had just happened. After rejoining his companion, he was speechless, and an hour passed without a word between them. Two more hours passed, then three, finally the younger monk could contain himself any longer, and blurted out “As monks, we are not permitted a woman, how could you then carry that woman on your shoulders?” The older monk looked at him and replied, “Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river, why are you still carrying her?”

This lesson is such a great reminder to live in this moment and let go of the past – especially when it doesn’t serve our current mission.

Most of us have a weight loss journey that resembles the latest roller coaster ride from Disney. It has ups and downs, thrills and scary moments, and even some times when we’re feeling upside down.

But when the time comes for you to start your new weight loss or fitness program, one thing that doesn’t serve you is the past. We can all use a lesson on focusing on this moment and letting go of past failures.

After all, this time around you’re doing something different, right? You’re gonna reach out to me, right? I hope so because I love talking about health and fitness, but more so because I know I can help you reach your goals.

Shoot me a message back and we’ll set up a time to talk.

Take care,

Arin

This message today hits home on so many levels. I have had the opportunity to speak to several women over these past couple days about joining our program and there has been a resounding theme.

First, we all want to lose weight and tone up, myself included.

We want more energy, we want to look in the mirror and like who we see, we want to sleep better and dang it overall, we just want to feel good…

Is that so much to ask!

Now I know this is not one sided, men feel this way too.

Research has shown that women today are less happy than they have been over the past 40 years. Why?

Several reasons can be concluded, but I think it comes back to taking time to care for ourselves.

If you have ever gotten into a really good rhythm working out meaning for months on end you consistently workout 2-3 days per week you know how well you feel.

I had my own Mom tell me to go get my hair done and she would watch the kids. It had been over a year since I had my hair cut!

To be honest it was not a priority and personally I hate sitting in the chair so long, but once I got it done man I instantly felt good. Then consequently each morning I feel like it looks so much better which is a huge boost.

So simple yet I have neglected taking a couple hours for me.

This leads me to wonder, was it guilt I felt?

I needed someone else to watch our kids so I could take time to do something I consider a luxury and genuinely I did not want to ask for help.

I felt like there were so many other priorities I should be done like work, getting groceries, etc.

I know I am not the only one feeling these things, women tend to run more of the household and we don’t want to inconvenience our partner.

So, I know I am talking more to the ladies right now, but I am hoping our other halves read this and encourage us to take time for ourselves. We are worth it and need it and so do they!

We may not voice what we need and honestly, we may not even realize we need “it”.

So, ladies, take time for you, whether that is a work out, coffee with a friend or shopping alone. To our partners, make sure we are both having some high quality me time, it’s important.

When it comes to taking care of yourself weekly such as working out, make that appointment with yourself 2-3 times per week and be consistent. You will be amazed at how good you feel.

I found 5:45am to work M/W/F because it did not disrupt my husband or son at the time. Yes, I had to go to bed earlier and I did not necessarily love 5:45am, but it was a time I could consistently commit to myself.

Now post having our daughter I have had to find a new groove. Noon M/W/F works because we have childcare. Yes, there are a million other things I could be doing for those 45 minutes, but I feel so good when I am done and the scale is showing some good things too!

Take time for you and if you need help finding time shoot me a message back.

I would be glad to help!

Arin