Bikinis and Board Shorts: Get Your Summer Abs Ready

StrongBoard Balance Board Abs Partner Workout
Summer is a little over a month away, so if you haven’t already, now is a good time to start working on your abs. Before we get into exercises you can do to strengthen abs, it’s important to know diet trumps exercise when trying to get a six pack. While working out and strengthening ab muscles will make them larger, if you eat poorly and accumulate belly fat than it won’t matter how many ab exercises you do.

For those out there who eat whatever they want, don’t exercise, and still have a six pack, you have won the genetic lottery and don’t need to continue reading this blog.

One of the great things about StrongBoard Balance is it forces your core muscles to contract in every position. Having to balance on a surface that never stabilizes engages all those abdominals – you tone, and tighten while burning calories.

A great way to directly work on your core is through the full plank. Check out the video here:

Another great way to engage your core is the reverse plank:

Finally, we have an ab workout you can do with a partner (or by yourself):

Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube Channel for additional videos on how to engage your core!

Healthy and Balanced Diet: Cooking Oils

Cooking Oils For a Healthy Diet

Trying to maintain a healthy and balanced diet? Are you using oils when cooking and meal prepping?

Cooking oils are confusing. Vegetable oils are good, right? You would think so, since they do extract the oil from vegetables, but sadly they are not. Vegetable oils are linked to cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, because they use partially hydrogenated and hydrogenated oils. Avoid corn oil, sunflower oil, peanut oil, soybean oil, palm oil, and grape seed oil.

Some healthy oils to use are coconut, almond, olive, and flaxseed. While high in fat content, there’s no reason to be afraid, as it is the healthy fats they contain. Combined with Omega 3s, these oils help support brain function. It is best to get these oils cold or expeller pressed, also known as “unrefined oils,” as they use mechanical methods to extract oil, instead of extreme heat or chemical solvents. Mechanical pressing keeps in all the nutrients and doesn’t oxidize the oil, which keeps it free of toxins and free radicals. Toxins and free radicals can cause havoc on the body, causing all sorts of health problems. Cooking with these oils will get you well on your way to eating a healthy meal, and maintaining a healthy and balanced diet.

Sleep and StrongBoard

Sleep

You’ve been working hard on your StrongBoard consistently, and you’ve also been eating super foods while avoiding unhealthy junk food. Yet, you still feel like you could be seeing more results. What could be in your way? If you’ve been eating right and exercising, then the answer is sleep. Sleep is the bedrock on which all health and fitness goals rest on. Sleep’s importance cannot be understated. Think of sleep, exercise and diet as three points on a circle. All are tied together, so if something changes with one, it affects the other two.

How you sleep affects the quality of your workout, and how your body recovers. Willpower is also greatly affected, so it can be much harder to resist that donut on four hours of sleep than a full night’s rest. Getting a good night’s rest will have you feeling motivated and inspired to workout instead of groggy and dreading your workout. The good thing about eating right and exercising is that it improves your ability to fall and stay asleep.

How much rest should you be getting? It varies depending on the person, but between seven to ten hours, with eight to nine hours being average. A dark, quiet, cool room is optimal. Keep exercising and eating right, you should be well on your way to a good night’s rest.

Your Body and Sugar

Sugar and Your Body! StrongBoard Balance Board

The holiday months tend to be the worst for our diet, and mostly because of the increased amounts of refined and processed sugar available to us. Cookies, cakes, pies, and other holiday treats tend to overwhelm our homes and work spaces. We tell ourselves it’s a special occasion and suddenly we’re way off track from eating clean- promising ourselves that come January 1st we’re back on the wagon. Well, as you can gather, this isn’t what a healthy, balanced lifestyle looks like. Here are some facts on sugar and how we can wean it out of our diets without feeling deprived.

At four calories per gram, sugars are naturally present in fruits, dairy products, and vegetables in the form of fructose, lactose, and glucose. These natural, unprocessed, and unrefined forms of sugar are easily recognized by the body and broken down in the small intestine to deliver energy and nutrients to support various cells in our bodies.

Refined sugar has quite the opposite effect on our bodies and is added to MOST processed foods including sauces, spreads, beverages, dried fruits, and other packaged foods. Refined sugar is chemically treated and engineered. Some example are high-fructose corn syrup, table sugar, and maltose. However, our bodies don’t get the same nutritional benefits, (fiber, calcium, vitamins and minerals, etc.) when we consume them.

All sugars are difficult to digest and in excess can cause disruption in our digestive system and because they contain no health benefits our bodies simply store them at various fat sites, commonly the waist, thighs, and chest. According to the American Council on Exercise, an excess of sugar in our diets can not only increase our risk of obesity but has also been known to impair memory, concentration, increase appetite, increase joint inflammation, decrease energy levels, and is directly correlated as a leading cause of Type 2 Diabetes. It is recommended that the average American consume no more than 30 grams of sugar per day. Here are some tips to help you cut back on sugar.

1) Don’t go cold turkey! Snack on fruits and allow yourself some dark chocolate for the first couple of weeks while your body adjusts.

2) Get lots of rest. Typically when we cut out sugar, we can get cranky and irritable- just like withdrawal from many drugs. Give yourself an extra hour of sleep while you adjust your energy levels naturally.

3) Stay hydrated. Often times when we need a “pick me up”- we’re simply dehydrated. Always keep a bottle of water on hand, and if you’re tired of water- try sparkling water with lemon or unsweetened iced-tea. Avoid using unnaturally flavored waters or chemical-sweetener because they cause the same glycemic effect as sugar and can have been found to increase sugar cravings.

4) Get it out of the house. Toss or donate any candies, cookies, or sweets so they aren’t around you and replace with healthy and low-sugar snacks.

5) Up your fats and proteins. Fats and proteins when combined with carbohydrates keep you full and slow down the absorption of the sugars in carbohydrates. Stick with whole grain carbohydrates (brown rice, sprouted wheat, sweet potato) because they have more fiber that will also slow down the absorption and help you feel fuller, and less likely to reach for sweets.

6) Limit consumption of processed foods, (avoid anything out of a can, bag, or jar). Sugar is used to make processed foods taste better. Sugar can be found in soups, beans, and many pre-packaged “healthy foods”. Try using spices to add flavor and make your own foods. Replace pasta sauce with actual tomatoes or use lemon or non-balsamic vinegars to top your salads or lean meats.

 

What Are Calories?

A look at 200 calories! StrongBoard Balance Board
A look at 200 calories

For those looking to lose a few pounds or maintain their current weight, counting calories can be a great way to stay on track. There are hundreds of applications and websites that are incredibly helpful with tracking calories on a daily and weekly basis. Yet still, what do all these numbers mean? Is it really a good idea to eat broccoli all day to save for four cups of pasta at dinner to hit a 1,500-calorie goal? To smother everything in jam instead of almond butter to cut down on the calorie count? Not always. Here are some nutrition basics as recommended by the FDA to keep you on track.

Basic facts
A calorie is defined as a measurement of food energy. There are 3 main energy sources we consume called macronutrients. They are carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Each of these macronutrients get broken down into the body and used in various ways to support life function. Protein becomes amino acids, carbohydrates become glucose, and fats are broken down into lipids. Without the bare minimum requirements of these macronutrients, we would not survive. It is recommended that out of all of our calories we consume, 45-65% come from carbohydrates, 10-35% come from protein, and 20-35% come from fat (depending on individual nutrition needs). Each macronutrient has an assigned number of calories per gram. A gram of protein and carbohydrate will each have 4, and a gram of fat has 9 calories. Alcohol, though non-essential to life function yet also supplies energy, has 7 calories per gram.

A food is distinguished as being one of these macronutrients by analyzing the most contributing calorie source per gram. For example, an ounce of cheese has 110 calories total, with 9 grams of fat, 7 grams of protein, and under 0.5 grams of carbohydrate. Simple math can determine that 81 calories come from fat and 28 come from protein, with only 1 calorie of carbohydrate. Therefore, a cheese is labeled as a fat because most of its calories come from fat calories.

One calorie contributor that is NOT a macronutrient because it is not essential to live function is sugar. Sugar contains 4 calories per gram and is often added to processed foods for additional flavor. For example, one can of soda contains 35 grams of sugar and no macronutrients. Different sources of sugar will be broken down into different forms of glucose. Glucose is used as a main source of energy for the body; we all need at least 100 calories of glucose just to support brain function. However, once the body has used the glucose it needs, it stores the rest.

Most humans require at least 1200 calories to perform vital functions such as breathing, thinking, digesting, blinking, etc. Those of us who are more active will need more. An over-excess of calories can result in obesity, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and a Pandora’s box of other health issues that lead to an early death.

So, what we can learn from this that even though it is important to use calorie counting to maintain a healthy weight, we can also look at our macronutrient intake within our individual calorie needs as well, to see if there is a healthy balance in our nutrition. When totaling your intake at the end of the day, take a look at sugars and whether your carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are within the recommended guidelines. If you need additional help or have a specific goal you’re working towards, consult with a registered dietician to help tailor your goals.

Stay Balanced.