When it comes to your fitness and fat loss, you might be making the same mistakes over and over without knowing. (Most people do!)

If you downloaded my free, 5 Steps To Rapid Fat Loss infographic, you know that step #5 in my fat loss system is ‘Raise Your Results (via Feedback).’

It’s real-time feedback – from a knowledgeable fitness professional – that helps you catch mistakes quickly and get you back on the right track so that you don’t waste time. Otherwise your results will suffer, and you’ll keep on struggling to lose weight and build muscle.

Yes, feedback is very valuable, and it’s why I do weekly one-on-one video check in calls with my fitness coaching clients, as part of my BodyHack90 transformation program.

If you’ve read this far, you’re in for a treat. In the video above, you will get a ‘sneak peek’ into  my real-time coaching feedback.

Watch the above video of one of my fitness coaching calls to see how quickly I fix some of the mistakes my client Chet was making.

Specifically, you will get answers and insights into the following questions:

1. Should you work out in the morning?
2. Should you eat after your workout?
3. If so, what should you eat?
4. What should you eat if you’re short on time?

If you’re struggling to get fat loss results, it might be because you’re making mistakes of which you are not aware.

How would you like a trained fitness professional to look out for you and fix mistakes you’re making?

Then, email me directly (my email is in the footer below) and I’ll tell you what to do next.

Let’s ‘raise’ those fitness results via feedback!

If you celebrate Thanksgiving, you know that it’s a time for expressing gratitude and spending quality time with friends and family.  It’s also a time for big dinners, sinful drinks and yummy desserts.

Eating, drinking and being merry at Thanksgiving is fun and is a treat to in which to indulge. At the same time, it can lead to overindulgence and the start of what I call the ‘holiday belly bulge.’

Many people end up enjoying Thanksgiving so much, they end the day feeling guilty and weighing more.

Indeed, if you’re focused on either maintaining a healthy weight, or working towards a fat loss goal (like the participants of our FastBurn28 Fat Loss Challenge, which is in progress), Thanksgiving can cause a real setback to your aim of looking and feeling your best.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could enjoy Thanksgiving without feeling like Miss Piggy? What if you could eat, drink and be merry without putting on unwanted weight?

Well, I’m here to tell you it’s totally possible!

The six steps below will help you enjoy Thanksgiving, while avoiding the guilt that comes with having overindulged.

In fact, these steps can be used for ANY event where you anticipate a lot of eating and drinking – weddings, galas, birthday dinners, etc.

1. Sleep Well The Night Before

Sleep plays a much bigger role in keeping a healthy weight than you may realize.

Lack of sleep throws off numerous hormones, including spiking Cortisol (which increases fat retention), increases Ghrelin (which is our hunger hormone, making you hungrier) and suppresses Leptin (which is the hormone that tells your brain you’re full and cuts your appetite).

So, sleeping well the night before Thanksgiving is essential to balancing hormones that will keep your weight steady. This might be particularly challenging to do, because the night before Thanksgiving is notorious for being a big party night in many cities.

But if you can get your Zs on Thanksgiving Eve by either going to bed at a good time or at least sleeping in the morning of Thanksgiving, this will help you do better on Thanksgiving Day.

Also, keep alcohol to a minimum on Thanksgiving Eve. In addition to the unwanted calories, alcohol affects quality of sleep. (more on how to handle alcohol on Thanksgiving Day below).

2. Create A Calorie Deficit During The Day

You want to create calorie deficit prior to your Thanksgiving dinner by:

1. Eating less during the day
2. Exercising on Thanksgiving

A. Eating Less Before Thanksgiving Dinner

Like most of us, you’re probably going to consume a lot of calories at your Thanksgiving meal.  A lot more than you would at your usual dinner.

This can cause you to easily blow your calorie budget for the day. But if you under eat during the day, you’ll have more budget left over to absorb the bigger Thanksgiving dinner that awaits.

By under eating, I do NOT mean starving yourself during the day and eating nothing. You definitely want to start the day (i.e. breakfast) by eating something in order to get your metabolism going. Otherwise, if you eat nothing all day your metabolism will slow down and then it will have to process an avalanche of food at dinner, which can lead to indigestion. (more on prepping your metabolism and digestion for Thanksgiving below).

The goal is to keep carbs and fat low during the day so you can have stuffing, gravy and dessert later.

I recommend you have one serving of slow burning carbs in the morning and some low-fat protein. A great and easy option here is sugar free oatmeal (you can add cinnamon, a couple of nuts, etc.) and boiled egg whites.

This will get your metabolism going and provide you with some protein, which you will need for your Thanksgiving day workout.

Get some veggies at lunch or have a serving or two of my favorite green veggie superfood powder: Organifi.

3. Exercising On Thanksgiving Day

You can work out on Thanksgiving Day any time you can fit it in. Preferably, after you’ve eaten something but if it’s first thing in the morning on an empty stomach that can work too.

Either way, have breakfast as described above either before or after your workout.

As far as how to exercise, an intense workout will serve you best. You can do a HIIT cardio session with the Motion Traxx app, or you can do a full body weight training workout that incorporates compound movements. Ideally, you can do weight training and HIIT cardio together that day.

Intense workouts like these will help you burn fat and rev up your metabolism. This will help you absorb the onslaught of calories heading your way later that day.

4. Enhance Your Digestion

Now that you’ve created a caloric deficit, prime your digestive system to better handle the food and drink coming its way.  Alcohol, fats and sugars all cause inflammation and require our digestive system to work overtime to process them.

Make sure your digestive system has the proper enzymes to digest the Thanksgiving feast by taking a serving or two of probiotics before you start eating.

Another good supplement that helps digestion is ginger (either fresh or in capsule form). As an added bonus, ginger has been shown to boost testosterone, which helps burn fat and build muscle.  

5. Sip Slowly

Alright, you’ve made it to Thanksgiving dinner.

It will probably start with drinks, so let’s tackle the subject of alcohol. Many people love to have drinks at festive events such as Thanksgiving. I will not tell you not to have alcohol but I will inform you to the tradeoff you’re making when you do drink alcohol.

Quite simply, alcohol is the most challenging thing for any weight loss or fitness goal. Besides the long term health effects of drinking, alcohol causes inflammation, raises estrogen (which stores fat) and spikes insulin, which means it gets stored immediately as fat.

If that wasn’t bad enough, it also results in decreased willpower, which usually leads to poor food choices. Besides having to convert the fast-burning calories in alcohol into fat, your body also has to deal with the additional calories you eat when you’re feeling merry. That’s a lot for your body to handle.

To have alcohol in a way that is sustainable for your aim to drop fat or stay lean, use techniques that result in drinking less.

One such technique is to have a drink only when someone makes a toast. This helps you make the obligatory toast, while also keeping a limit on how much you imbibe.

Alternatively, have a target number of drinks in mind and don’t exceed it. Obviously, this becomes important for other reasons such as the need to be in good shape to drive home after dinner.

6. Have Just One

You’ve made it through dinner, so let’s talk about ‘surviving’ dessert.

If you downloaded my 5 Proven Hacks for Consistent Weight Loss eBook, you learned that you can reduce the impact of sinful food and drinks with a technique I call ‘Have Just One’.

This means having just one bite of dessert, one sip of a drink, one taste of something indulgent.

This requires some discipline but will help you enjoy dessert a bit while keeping the impact on your waistline minimal.

By following the six steps above, you can enjoy Thanksgiving  – and weddings, brunches, birthday parties and another big eating events – while controlling the impact they can have on your fitness and fat loss goals.

So, go ahead and indulge without worrying about the belly bulge.

P.S. I teach fat loss techniques like this as part of my BodyHack90 transformation program. It can help you reclaim your edge and be your fittest and best self in 90 days, without spending your life in the gym or the kitchen. It features personalized meal and workout plans, and weekly one-on- one coaching calls for accountability. Drop me a line to learn more (my email is below).

It’s that time of year again.

The time where people enjoy the festivities with all the gift giving and feasting to your heart’s content.

Unfortunately, that also comes with a more casual adherence to you fitness plans and if we are not careful, it can bring about the dreaded result I like to call the ‘holiday belly bulge.’

This is more likely to happen with the myriad of events going on and the large amounts of high caloric drinks available.

The holiday belly bulge can be caused by a number of factors but here we list the 3 most common mistakes people make that cause weight gain.

1.You fall off track.
Due to it being the holidays, people act like they are on vacation. They may say, ”I can just relax now. I don’t have to workout, I’m excused.”

Unfortunately, this type of thinking can cause us to neglect the fitness plan in general and cause your momentum to take a nosedive, making it even more difficult to get back to working out once the holidays are over.

What do we do to combat this? Well, just do something.

Even if it is something small, like a 5 minute walk or taking on that extra flight of stairs, it still counts. It is a lot better than doing nothing at all and all those little actions add up. Plus, it will be easier to get back into the groove of consistency once the holiday chaos has passed.

Check out this blogpost to find more ways to fit fitness in.

2. You Overdo it.
Holiday events are everywhere this time of the year. From the office parties to happy hour specials at the bar, there is no escaping the holiday cheer. They are also filled with the most delicious (but also unhealthy) foods that make it easy achieve the ‘holiday belly bulge.’

While I am all for you guys having fun this season, it is important to have a bit of discipline and self control to maintain the progress you have been making the entire year.

You can achieve this by setting limits to how many drinks you can have (1 to 3 at most) or how much food you can consume before putting the plate down for the final time that night.

3.Unrealistic expectations.
The holidays are such a busy time of year that people sometimes underestimate the how hectic it can be. This can cause some derailment in your fitness plans if you don’t plan ahead.

For example, I spent Thanksgiving with my family where we interacted with each other and ate the holiday fest together. Towards the end, we had a surplus of food that ended up going home with me to my cupboard. And this food is the stuff cravings are made from (apple pie, brownies, cookies).

This surplus of good food creates temptation that can certainly cause a dent in my fitness progress. In order to not be caught off guard and give in to it, I am going to do a cupboard check and see which foods I can keep and which ones I can give away. When I do consume it, I will pace myself and have it on days where I can afford to do so (mostly on workout days).

So these are the 3 common mistakes people make around the holidays and hopefully ones’ you can now better avoid.

One thing to help avoid these 3 mistakes is the practice of affirmations where you train your unconscious mind you want something by constantly telling yourself about it..

If you focus on the affirmation, the mind starts to bring ideas in order to make the desire happen. You can say something like, “I will maintain my fitness level this holiday season” and eventually, your mind will find ways to make it happen.

One thing that can help achieve this is the Motion Traxx app.

Good luck with maintaining your fitness level. Hope you have an amazing holiday season and keep making strides towards your fitness goals!

As the saying goes, a year older, a year wiser.

I’ve learned some key lesson in the areas of fitness and weight loss in 2018 and I’d like to share them with you. This way, we can grow together.

But first, some quick reflection.

THE YEAR I DOUBLED-DOWN ON FITNESS

This was a special year for me because it’s the year I recommitted to being a leader in the fitness industry.

Back in 2016, life changes and financial challenges forced me to take take a slight step back from my beloved Motion Traxx. After two years of doing random consulting work and ‘soul searching’, I decided in 2018 to double-down on my passion for fitness and trust that it’s where I’m meant to be.

I started coaching people with their fitness and weight loss goals. I’m finding it very fulfilling and am happy to say that all of my clients are succeeding in losing weight, looking great and feeling awesome.

I’m especially proud to have helped my client Carita, a mother of two, lose 33 pounds in just 3 months and totally get her life back. Now, she can play sports with her kids again, can fit into her favorite clothes again, and is getting a CRAZY amount of compliments on her transformation. (If you’d like to see how excited she is, here’s a funny video with her beaming about her success).

I FINALLY ACCOMPLISHED THIS FITNESS GOAL

In addition to refocusing on fitness as a career, I also refocused on my own personal fitness journey, and was able to accomplish something I had never been able to do before: bulk up.

I was able to gain close to 10 LB of muscle in just 6 weeks, while reducing body fat, by getting smarter about how I timed my carbs. (more on that in a future post).

By coaching people on their fitness goals and achieving a personal fitness goal, I learned some important lessons.

Here they are now.

TOP TEN LESSONS LEARNED

1. Worry Less About What The Scale Says

There are many reasons to not stress so much about what the scale says. One big reason is that your ‘scale weight’ only gives you part of the picture. To really get a sense of where you are, measure your body fat, take full body progress photos and see how you feel in your clothes.

This is particularly true if you’re training regularly and building muscle. If you add a pound of muscle and lose a pound of fat, the scale will tell you that you haven’t made any progress, when in fact you’ve made HUGE progress. (you can see this in my own transformation I had this summer; I looked leaner, healthier and more muscular but I was 8 LB heavier; so if you only judge by the scale alone, you miss what’s really happening).

Oh, and this is why when I work with clients, I measure their progress in terms of ‘fat loss’ not weight loss.

2. Don’t Weigh Yourself Everyday

Because your scale weight doesn’t give you the whole picture, it’s best NOT to weigh yourself every day. I hear a lot of fitness folks suggesting you should weigh yourself every day but I think all this will do is make you anxious.

There are many factors that determine what we weigh and weight can fluctuate from one day to the next due to things beyond our control (e.g. sodium intake, hormones, inflammation, etc.). Which means your weight can be down one day and up the next, even though you’re doing everything ‘right’.

If your mood and motivation fluctuate with the number on the scale, this will set you up for failure because you will expect instant results and will want to quit when you don’t get them.

Instead, weigh yourself just once per week, on the same day, and take the other measures of progress as well. (i.e. body fat and body photos).  

3. Train Around Injuries Not Through Them

I did myself a real disservice this year by pushing through an injury that I should’ve rested instead. I’ve been battling elbow tendonitis, on and off, for two years now. This summer, while on my bulking program, I kept doing the exercises (included weighted pull ups) that were aggravating my injury.

While the warrior in me was able to ‘tough it out’ I was only making things worse on my body. It got to the point where I had to go for an invasive treatment called PRP, and now I can’t use my hands to lift weight at all during a 12-week, post-procedure recovery. (Can you say ‘frustrating’?).

In hindsight, I should have found ways to do exercises that did not aggravate my elbows, rather than trying to push through the pain. Might sound like common sense, but my stubborn side caused me to make the injury worse. Remember: work around injuries, NOT ‘through’ them.

4. Ashwagandha Is Close To a Miracle Supplement

This year, I learned about Ashwagandha, which has a wide range of amazing benefits. Used forever in Ayurvedic medicine, and considered an ‘adaptogen’, Ashwagandha helps with overall health and has a powerful effect on weight loss by reducing cortisol (our fat storing hormone), increasing testosterone (our fat burning hormone) and speeding up your metabolism through improved thyroid function.

I take Ashwagandha regularly through a supplement called Organifi Green Juice. It’s one of the best-tasting greens powders I’ve ever tried (in over 10 years of trying many brands) and includes a slew of other great ingredients, including Wheat Grass. It’s not the cheapest on the market, but it is one of the best.

I put all my clients on it and have partnered with Organifi. You can use this link to save $10 on this awesome supplement.

5. Building Muscle Requires Both Protein and Carbs

For many years I was only focused on protein as the most important macronutrient for building muscle. While I was able to gain some lean muscle with a protein-focused diet, I was not able to pack on the kind of mass I packed on this summer when I upped my intake of carbs.

Now, this may not apply to you if your main goal is to lose weight / lose fat. But if you’re looking add some muscle mass to your frame (guys), learn to take in the right amount and right types of carbs and watch your gains take off! 

Which leads me to…

6. Carbs Are Not The Enemy

I’ve been hearing way too much about the Keto diet this year (which is basically Atkins 2.0). This diet requires you eating a ton of fat and protein and almost no carbs.

I’m not a proponent of this diet for many reasons. It’s generally not fun, not sustainable and not optimal for quality of life, in my opinion. Carbs are the body’s preferred source of energy. Yes, the wrong kinds of carbs can be stored as excess fat, but the right carb strategy can help you achieve your fitness goals, while having all-day energy and without the need to starve yourself.

7. High Volume Training Sucks (For Most Of Us)

The program I followed this summer was a High Volume training program. This style of training involves doing lots of sets – 20 or more per body part. High volume training may work for some (namely, professional bodybuilders who have no life outside of the gym), but, overall, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Two things that suck about high volume training: 1. You don’t go to failure and 2. It takes way too long.

Not going to failure on a particular set robs you of muscle-building potential. You have to take each set to your max if you want to improve your strength and add muscle tone. With so many sets required with High Volume training, it’s impossible to go to failure because doing so exhausts the muscle quickly (and that’s what you want!).

Because you’re doing so many sets with High Volume training, the workouts take way too long. I was spending 2 hours in the gym each time (shoot me now!). The legendary bodybuilder Mike Mentzer said you can either train long or you can train hard. I prefer to train hard and get out of the gym quickly so I can move on with my life.

It’s why I designed The Sharp Body Time-Slicing Workout Plan. It can be done in just 2 hours per week! Download it now for free with this link.

8. Meditation Can Help You Lose Weight

One of my favorite and most consistent clients was a school guidance counselor named Marsha. She was a hallmark of consistency. She never missed a meal, never forgot to send progress photos and followed my program to a tee.

So, no surprise, then, that she would lose weight and add muscle tone to her body every week, like clockwork. I asked her what her secret was to such amazing consistency in her habits and her weight loss.

She said she meditated every single day for an hour. This helped her be grounded, present and beat stress. This consistent meditation practice allowed her to be consistent in all areas of her life, including her fitness habits.

Who knew that getting mindful regularly can help your waistline. Check out this video now to hear more about Marsha’s success, in her own words.

9. Enroll Help With Your Weight Loss Goal

Losing weight consistently is hard for most people. So don’t be down on yourself if you’re struggling (most people do).

A study released this year sought to identify the factor that made a group of dieters succeed, while the other groups had failed. The one thing successful dieters all had in common was this: They had someone supporting them. Someone who they would meet with weekly.

In short, the researchers recommended the following: ‘Don’t Diet Alone’.

This is also supported by the finding that having an accountability partner helps improve your chances of meeting a goal by 95%. So, to have weight loss success, don’t try it alone, get help.

Having the right support can help you transform your body and become the best version of you. Which is why…

10. I Love Helping People Transform Their Body (and Their Life!)

Having been a fitness coach now for the last 6 months has given me the opportunity and the privilege to help people with one of the most important areas of their life: fitness.

I believe that being fit helps us live our greatest life. I’m on a mission to help people experience the benefits of being fit so they can live their highest potential.

In January 2019, I will be launching my new brand, The Sharp Body. It will feature online fitness programs to help driven professionals find their edge in life by being their fittest and best, in 90 days, without spending their life in the gym.

To learn more about how I can help you find your edge by attaining the body and life you crave, drop me a line.

Here’s to being another year wiser.