The start of a new year (or even a new season) is a great time to recharge and refresh your fitness resolutions. Your health is about more than aesthetics, but hey, a fit body is sometimes just the motivating goal you need. Recently one of our coaches was featured on the funny and informative podcast Gordocast, where hosts Dom, Anth & Joey discuss their diet challenge and what it is like being a “gordo”. As a Wellness Coach, Mauro shared tips and tricks for losing weight, feeling healthier, and staying on track, while the podcast hosts shared their stories and hints for embracing “the gordo”.
All About Cheat Days
On Gordocast, we broached the subject of finding the balance of cheat days and the difference between “moderators and abstainers”. When considering having a cheat day, it’s important to know yourself: can you have one cheat meal and get right back on track, or does a cheat meal often turn into a cheat weekend or cheat week? Moderators are able to have a taste of a “cheat” and move forward, while abstainers find that even a small cheat can send them spiraling off course. For abstainers, the best course of action is to focus on only the foods that can be considered “Green light” and are hard to overeat. There are also “Yellow light” and “Red light” foods. Suffice to say, that with practice you will know if you can have these so called “cheats” in small moderate amounts or if you have to develop a traffic-light system (or similar) to classify which foods you have to avoid or be weary of.
Tracking & Staying On Track
Do you use tracking apps to stay on top of macros or calories? The Gordocast hosts had their own methods of keeping up to their plans. We sometimes recommend tracking to those just starting a fitness lifestyle change in order to build awareness. Why? It’s can be eye-opening to get a sense of what you are eating or how calorie-dense some foods could be! You may be eating healthy, but sometimes the tasty healthy foods will cause us to overeat. Tracking will help you to asses both the quality and quantity of your food intake. Once we get a handle on real amounts and values, we can make the informed decision on the next steps to take.
Working Out: How To Be Efficient
Hitting the gym should always be part of your healthy lifestyle in one fashion or another. That does not mean it is the only way, but involved all aspects of fitness (cardio, flexibility, strength, etc.) are important. Our coach discussed his schedule where he would be in the gym 3-4 days per week, outside to do more leisurely cardiovascular exercise, and looking for opportunities to remain active during the day. Dom and Anth named treadmills, lifting and the sauna as some of their favorite ways to burn calories. Our coach recommended adding weight lifting supersets (two exercises on opposing areas of the body, performed back to back with no rest in between) or even triple sets (three exercises performed back-to-back, often with cardio as the third exercise) to boost calorie burn and get the most out of your time at the gym.
You can listen to this episode of Gordocast and learn more tips here: http://thegordocast.buzzsprout.com/148693/652776-gordocast-episode-3