High Protein Pancakes 
1cup whole wheat pancake mix (any variety will do, as long as it’s whole wheat)
2 heaping scoops of vanilla Advocare Muscle Gain Protein Powder
3/4 cup lowfat cottage cheese
3 egg whites (1/2 cup)
3 tbsp flax seeds
1/4 cup water
Prep Time – 20 minutes Difficulty Level – Easy Servings – 2

Place the egg whites, cottage cheese, flax seeds and water in a blender and process until smooth. Mix the wet ingredients together with the pancake mix and protein powder in a large bowl. Cook the pancakes any size you like them in a skillet coated with olive oil cooking spray over medium low heat. After pouring the pancake batter into the skillet, they will be ready to flip after bubbles form around the edges (about 5 minutes).Calories: 288
Calories (k/cal) 576
Protein (g) 50
Carbohydrates (g) 60
Fber (g) 2
Sugars (g) 17
Fat (g) 9

This shake fits all the high-quality nutrition you would get from a normal health meal in an easy-to-make, easy-to-drink shake you can take with you on the go. Here we use a Advocare greens supplement to get our veggie component in — and the almond milk, ice and berries make it taste delicious.

1 cup unsweetened almond milk ½ cup ice 1 cup frozen blueberries 1 cup frozen strawberries 2 scoops Advocare Muscle Gain va
nilla protein powder 1 serving Advocare greens

Nutritional Information
(per serving)             Large   Small
Calories (k/cal)          380    190
fat (g)                           6         3
Saturated (g)              2         1
Monounsaturated(g)0         0
Polyunsaturated (g)  0         0
omega-3 (g)                0         0
omega -6 (g)               0         0
Carbohydrates (g)    44         22
fiber (g)                       8         4
sugars (g)                   26         13
Protein (g)                 38         19

Cardiovascular training is exercise with the purpose of developing cardiovascular or aerobic fitness. Cardiovascular fitness is a good measure of the heart’s ability to pump oxygen-rich blood to the muscles.

Cardiovascular training generally involves exercising at a constant moderate level of intensity, for a specified duration, during which the cardiovascular system is allowed to replenish oxygen to working muscles. Typical activities include walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, jump rope, stair climbing and rowing.

Why is cardiovascular training so important?

It plays a vital role in human health and performance. With regular cardiovascular training, one can expect numerous metabolic changes.

These include:

Increased cardiac output

Increased oxygen uptake

Increased blood flow to active muscles

Decreased sub-maximal respiratory rate

Increased blood volume

Improved thermo-regulation

Increased mitochondrial size and density

Increased oxidative enzyme concentrations

Increased capillarization in muscle bed

Lower rate of all-cause mortality

Lower rate of cardiovascular disease

Lower incidence of type 2 diabetes

Lower rate of total body fat

Lower rate of colon cancer

Lower rate of breast cancer

Lower rate of osteoporosis

Introducing just a small amount of regular cardio training can greatly improve overall health, but if your goal is FAT LOSS we need to be really specific with your cardiovascular training.

Many clients we work with will ask question about cardio such as:

“How much cardio should I be doing?”

“When’s the best time to do my cardio?”

“I want to get leaner — should I do more cardio or more weights?”

“I hate cardio. Do I need to do hours and hours to achieve my goals?”

Based on all these questions about cardiovascular training, it showed us that we are a little confused on how to use this tool to reach a specific goal.  Most people are pretty clear about what they are doing and why, but is seems to be that they are using cardio inappropriately.

Before we get into how to use cardio more appropriately and how it can have detrimental effect on the fat loss journey we will take a look at the different types of cardio and the energy systems used.

All cardio is not created equal.  In order to understand why and how cardio types can differ, you have to have a basic understanding of the body’s three energy systems:

1. Anaerobic-alactic
2. Anaerobic-lactic
3. Aerobic

The main difference between energy systems is the duration, intensity of the exercise and the type of energy source the body uses to fuel the activity.

What many people describe as “cardio” — long-duration, relatively lower intensity movement — works the third system, the aerobic energy system.

Now,  there’s a place for this in training, especially if you’re an endurance athlete, or looking for some active recovery — or even just a nice way to unwind with a pleasant jog outside in the fresh air.

But despite what the “aerobics” craze of the 1980s told us, aerobic activity is not necessarily always the best choice for fat loss, athletic performance, or body composition.

We like to use anaerobic training for our programming at Transformation Fitness and Wellness and if FAT LOSS is your goal it is a must.

Anaerobic means without oxygen and it is the energy system that uses glycogen as a fuel source.  For this blog we will not get into the specifics of the anaerobic system, but we will hit on some of the benefits of using it as a training tool.

Using anaerobic training can produce the following benefits:

• Reduction of body fat (while retaining lean body mass!!!)
• Strengthening the cardiovascular system
• Developing sport-specific energy systems (e.g. training for that Olympic hockey team)
• Developing “work capacity” (i.e. the ability to tolerate a high level of intensity for a longer period)
• Improving fat and carbohydrate oxidation in skeletal muscle
• Developing “mental toughness”
• Challenging the fast twitch muscle fibers — the fibers that are great for strength, power and looking toned

Most people do not like training the anaerobic system based on the high intensity component.  When training the anaerobic system you will want to use intensities that can be up to 90% of your vo2max and most of the time people are not discipline enough to perform a workout at this intensity.  Plus it can feel pretty uncomfortable.

With anaerobic training or many people label it high intensity training, you will get a bigger training effect with less time spent.  You will also produce a better hormonal response for fat loss and overall conditioning.

Here’s a brief review…

• A small amount of cardio is okay if you enjoy it, but it’s really not necessary for fat loss.
• At its worst, excess cardio “eats” lean muscle and creates a destructive pattern of slow metabolic rate and a yo-yo’ing body weight.
• Excess cardio leads to muscle loss which inhibits natural hormone production.
• Aerobic workouts also elevate cortisol levels.
• Strength training raises the metabolic rate for longer periods of time than aerobic work.
• Walking has many of the benefits and none of the drawbacks of traditional cardio. With the right diet and weight training, walking is all you need to lose fat.
• Using anaerobic or high intensity training is the best use of time and energy systems for fat loss.
• Resistance training is a must if you want to drop body fat and improve overall health.

We hope this information helps guide you with your fat loss journey and remember you must use cardio more specific if you want to obtain specific goals.   Also, the number one competent in a fat loss journey is linked back to NUTRITION.   If you do not have your nutrition dialed in you will not hit your specific fat loss goals.   If you need more guidance with your workouts and nutrition please take a few minutes and request a consult today.

 

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I want to first start out by saying both strength and cardiovascular training are very important in a well-balanced workout routine.  Also your goals drive where you put most of your focus.

For today’s discussion I would like to focus on the goal of weight loss, since this is what most of our clients are focused on in some capacity, but we look at fat loss to be the ultimate goal.

One of our biggest pet peeve in the weight loss industry is that weight loss is the measurement for success.  For example, here are some other ways to lose weight:

• Amputation
• Osteoporosis
• Stomach flu (though intestinal parasites will do in a pinch)
• Shaving all your hair off
• Loss of muscle mass
• Starvation

Thanks, but I’ll pass on all those ways for weight loss!

I hope this gives you some clarity on why we do not set goals for weight loss with our clients.  We really focus in on the fat loss component.

We use a few modalities for our methods of fat loss and today we will be looking at why we use strength training as a major component of our programing for fat loss.

Strength training is defined as using muscular force against resistance.   Muscles adapt to any type of resistance, and the resistance can be a heavy object, one’s own body weight, elastic resistance from bands, or other types of machine resistance from pulleys or hydraulics.  The heavy object can be free weights, kettlebells, sandbags, logs, rocks, kegs, and even another person.

Why is strength training so important?

The most obvious answer is that it makes you stronger!

Well strength training does make you stronger and it does this in several ways, including:

• building muscle tissue
• improving inter- and intra-muscular coordination — in other words, the ability to coordinate your moving parts
• improving rate of force production — how quickly you can generate force to move against the resistance
• strengthening connective tissues such as tendons

It can also make your muscles bigger while creating a demand for blood delivery, engaging the cardiovascular system.  Strength training also has a plethora of other benefits including:

• Preserves and enhances muscle mass
• Preserves and enhances metabolic rate
• Improves bone density
• Improves glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity
• Lowers risk of injury
• Improves ability to engage in daily activities
• Improves balance
• Improves self-esteem
• Enhances strength and endurance
• Enhances speed, power, and agility
• Improves overall body composition
• Decreases bad cholesterol levels
• Decreases blood pressure
• Improves aerobic capacity

When muscle metabolism is altered, it can influence the development of many chronic diseases. Maintaining muscle mass with strength training can help to prevent some of the most common and increasingly rampant health conditions, including obesity and diabetes.

But muscle can also help you lose fat and stay lean!

When you increase your muscle mass you will have an increased basal metabolism.  Actually, to be more exact, you will have a higher resting energy expenditure.   Since your resting energy expenditure is the biggest part of your total energy use in a given day, it can change how many calories your burn.

Have you ever wondered why muscle uses energy when you’re doing absolutely nothing? Seems like a waste.

Well, muscle is always up to something.  It’s constantly being broken down and re-constructed, or synthesized.  In fact, all tissues, to one degree or another, are constantly being remade.  It takes about seven days to completely regenerate your skin, and seven years to replace every cell in your skeleton.

What makes muscle special is that you can make more of it – a lot more.  In other words, unlike bone and skin cells, muscle generation is, to some extent, within your control.  Whereas after puberty, you can’t make a lot more of other tissue.  Except fat!

With this information we now know that muscle is consistently using calories during the break down and repair process.  These extra calories can really add up and help you drop body fat with a proper nutrition plan.

In terms of what’s possible,  an 11 pound weight gain in muscle works out to an extra 250 kcal burned per day.  If you keep your nutrition dialed in then that extra 250 kcal burned per day could add up to 5.3 pounds of fat loss per year.  This is just from the resting muscle!  This does not include extra calories used for exercise or walking to your car.

So, with all these benefits of strength training and now understating how muscle adaptation can help with your energy expenditure, why would you not have resistance training part of your workout routine?

Remember our goal is fat loss not weight loss because there is a big difference in the two.  Plain weight loss really can have detrimental effects on your metabolic process and cause you to gain more unwanted fat.

I know we were going to get into the cardiovascular portion but, we are running a little long today so stay tuned for part two!

By looking at the benefits of strength training you can understand why some people call it the fountain of youth!  If you need help and guidance with fat loss then you can request a consultation today.

We help people through their fat loss journey and we can help you!

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