Joy Fitness #5 - Progress Update/Body Fat vs Weight

          Hey everyone, hope your weekend went well..haven't posted since last Wednesday, feels good to be back writing again. Today I wanted to update you on my progress thus far on my individual goal of dropping 25 lbs of body fat by July 7th. As of this morning, I've dropped 5.5 lbs since my last weigh in 16 days ago. Seems about right...I always encourage people to not get so caught up on their "weight" as opposed to their body fat. In most cases, as their weight drops, so does their body fat. But there does come to a point where measurements may go down, such as waist or hips, but your weight actually goes up. This is a tell-tale sign that even though your weight increased, your body fat is dropping. Measurements, such as these, are far more indicative of how successful someone's diet and fitness program is going, rather than weight alone. So why am I weighing myself? Well I'm not one of those people who gets caught up on my weight as a number...if I drank two bottles of water and then got weighed, I understand that my weight will be higher but not my body fat. It doesn't affect my confidence because I know I am sound in my other areas of my program. I know how many calories I want to take in daily for fat loss to occur, how many times a week I want to weight train, and how many times a week I want to do cardio. Because I know for certain that I am doing what it takes to scientifically drop my body fat, why should the weight matter? It doesn't. The weight will take care of itself if your other parts of your program are organized and accurate.
          The other issue I want to touch on today is urgency. The definition of urgency: 1) The quality or condition of being urgent; pressing importance/ 2) A pressing necessity. No matter what challenge an individual undergoes in life, without a sense of urgency, there will be a chance of failure. It's tough to always be on top of your game, always have that extra motivation, always have that eye of the tiger. But when it comes to diet and fitness, people need to find their sense of urgency when it doesn't exist at the moment. For instance, tomorrow is May 1st. Any time I think of May, I think of summer. I'm sure most people my age think that way, just because we've been used to finishing our spring semester around that time. Use these types of strategies to remind yourself how important your goal is to you, and how you felt last year when you weren't able to achieve your goal. Think and visualize how much progress can be made in the month of May alone prior to summer even beginning. Every day is a new day, and empower yourself by creating a sense of urgency!

Joy Fitness #4 - Exercise Intensity

          Hey everyone, hope the week is going well so far..only a couple more days until the weekend so hang in there. The weather hasn't been too comforting lately; just reminds us all that although we had a warm winter and a hot spring thus far, we are still technically in April. So for those of you who haven't gotten to where you would like to be yet, there still is a significant amount of time to make progress! On another note, I was able to mess around with my blog and make it look a lot better by switching the background and picture display, so hopefully you guys like it..it was actually pretty easy, blogger.com is relatively simple for me, and I haven't had much experience doing this type of stuff either. Anyway, I want to discourse about exercise intensity. Basically, how hard you are working when you are doing your weight lifting or cardio. The reason I want to address this topic is because so many times, I always see people at the gym doing the same exercise at the same level of intensity. Granted, I don't know what their personal goals are, but I could bet that they would want to lower their body fat, as most people strive to do. Now like I stated in my other post, any exercise is better than no exercise. Find something you enjoy doing, and keep doing it. But to those of you who already have been working out on a permanent basis, I encourage you to switch up your exercise intensity. For example, one of my clients is a great long-distance runner. She runs 5-6 miles daily, and even entered herself into half-marathon events on a few different occasions. However, her one main goal was to reduce her body fat to an amount that she was comfortable with and liked seeing herself in the mirror. Now when I look at her cardio routine, I definitely altered 2 of her 6 days of cardio from a 5-6 mile run, to a 20 minute sprint/walk session. This is also called HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). You can also do this type of cardio on a bike, elliptical, treadmill, anything you choose..It's basically just elevating your heart rate to a certain point (working harder), and then coming back down to a slower heart rate for a period of time, then repeating. The human body adapts so quickly to stress it's unbelievable; this is why I needed to add sprints to her routine. After adding sprints and some different types of strength training routines, she was able to drop an additional 3 inches from her waist and 6 lbs of body fat. The point here is, there's two energy systems in your body...aerobic (exercising but can still breathe somewhat normally), and anaerobic (gasping for air). The best way to drop body fat is through a combination of both energy systems, a.k.a. your exercise intensity!

Joy Fitness #3 - Preparation

          Good morning everyone! Hope you're enjoying your weekend so far, the weather has been great lately. Today I want to touch on a single word that often gets swept under the rug when pursuing diet and fitness goals..this word would be "preparation." Bumping into obstacles along the way when attempting to reach specific goals is inevitable; there is no way to completely avoid obstacles, but you can certainly prepare for these circumstances. This goes for both your diet and workout routine. For instance, I know on Saturday, May 5th I will be going out drinking with friends...and I also know that I am going to drink a little more than I normally would, so this definitely needs to be accounted for prior to indulging in a large amount of empty calories. Is this the best way to continue my quest for lowering my body fat? Absolutely not. However, I want to be able to live a normal lifestyle while shedding my body fat. So what I will have to do is a combination of 2 things during the days prior to May 5th. One, increase my cardio throughout the week...if I'm normally doing 30 minutes of cardio, bump it to 45 minutes, and so on...and two, decrease my caloric intake slightly throughout the week. The problem lies when an individual waits until the night or day of the event without accounting for the surplus of calories they are about to consume, and then proceed to spoil themselves. Treating yourself is not a bad thing, but you must prepare for it. This way you will be able to enjoy yourself while continuing your progress with your diet and fitness goals & not feel guilty for it! Just like anything in life, you have to prepare in order to be successful. Eye on the prize, people!

Joy Fitness #2 - Making Fitness a Lifestyle

          What's going on everybody, today is my second blog entry and I'm going to talk a little bit about how to make exercise a lifestyle while attaining your goals. I'm sure you know someone who talks about getting down to a certain weight or reaching a specific goal, only to discontinue their program after a short time period. I certainly have done this a few times before, and I know quite a lot of friends who have done the same exact thing. Most of the time, people will be gung ho for a week or so, and then ultimately stop exercising completely. The most popular time of year this occurs is following New Years Eve. Goals are made but not achieved...Trying to do too much too soon is definitely a reason why an individual abandons their workout regime. However, there is a profound reason why this cycle occurs...that person isn't enjoying their exercise! Why run on the treadmill if you absolutely dread running? Think about your alternatives...anything that burns calories is considered physical activity. If your goal involves reducing your caloric intake by 500 calories per day through diet, and also burning an additional 300-500 calories through weight training and/or cardio, it doesn't matter what you do! This could be dancing, running, skipping...personally I enjoy curling milk gallons in the grocery store, but that's just me. Seriously though, a college instructor once told me that the most important thing in any exercise routine is actually enjoying what you do. I've run on treadmills for countless hours, only to be bored to death by the second week...I thought about what my professor said, and I love playing basketball. My cardio now consists of playing pick-up basketball games a few times per week, and when my legs are sore from that, I'll listen to music and do the elliptical on the other days...no more running on the treadmill for me! The main point here is to enjoy your exercise, and you'll be able to get a flat stomach and enjoy the process while doing so! Until the next blog, curl those milk gallons!

Joy Fitness #1 - Goal Setting

          Hey everyone, so to get started let me just say that this is my first attempt at making a blog. I decided to call this blog Joy Fitness because I thought it was clever to make "Joy" stand for Judge Only Yourself..pretty good, right? Not to mention my last name is Judge..damn I'm good. Anyway, the reason I'm making this blog is to write my thoughts and knowledge on the topics of weight loss and fitness through my daily encounters. My current fitness goal is to drop 25 lbs of fat in effort to lower my body fat to about 10% by July 7th when I leave for Ocean City Maryland with some friends..should be a good time. Setting specific goals is probably the most important task in determining success when it comes to diet and fitness. If you don't have specific goals, then how can you prepare to reach those goals if you don't know what your aiming for? You can't. This is definitely the most overlooked aspect of health and fitness among people. Anyway, that's it for my first blog. I'll post a link onto facebook for those who want to check it out..until the next one, hope you guys stay discipline with eating and keep working hard!