Justin G. Walls, Certified Personal Athletic Trainer

A Few Ways to Maintain or Lose Weight Fast These short activities can add up every day to burn more calories More than half of everyone who joins a gym or other workout facility leaves after their first year, even with a strong commitment to weight loss. We've discovered that there are a few things that can increase your everyday calorie burn, improve your body's energy consumption, and maintain muscle tone even though you're not making it in to the gym or seeing a trainer right now. 1. Stand up at least once every 30 minutes Standing up increases the pressure in your circulatory system, and this helps to reinforce the pressure of this system. Small changes in blood pressure are a way to stimulate cardiac (heart) muscle and arterial walls, as well as the valves responsible for maintaining blood flow. Having reduced pressure in the circulatory system can lead to cardiovascular problems, such as shortness of breath when walking or other moderate activities. It ...

One of the challenges of weight loss is managing your calorie intake during the day. It's not feasible to go without snacking all day long, so the best bet is to find satisfying foods with low calorie contents. Here's five suggestions you can make at home. M L XL S ​ ​ 1. Bananas - Th ese are a great snack anytime, especially first thing in the morning. During the day, you can make your own frozen bananas dipped in chocolate to help you get through the day M L XL S ​ ​   2. Avocado Wrap- take a small corn tortilla, some avocado or guacamole, a little bit of Jane's Crazy Mixed Up Salt, and some shredded cheddar for a quick nutrient boost M L XL S ​ ​   3. Small Chicken Salad - grab a handful of chopped romaine or mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, and a few slices of grilled boneless chicken breast with some balsamic vinegar and olive oil for some midday protein infusion and a low-sodium option M L XL S ​ ​   4. Hard Boiled Egg - simpl...

Enjoy the foods you already like to eat! It's about taking things you would normally have and use them more effectively 1 Start using butter again! Butter has gotten a bad reputation for over a generation as being a leading cause of heart disease related to its saturated fat content. Studies and books have been recently published challenging the idea that saturated fat only has a downside. When properly incorporated into your diet, foods like butter, cream, sour cream and cheese can contribute to a greater feeling of satiety than low fat foods full of fillers and sugar 2 Try to have fish, meat, or chicken with your meals.  Animal proteins have the highest amount of protein per serving, and that helps you feel more full when eating a meal. You'll want to eat about a fist size of food to get enough protein for your body to build lean muscle, and that can help manage your metabolism and burn calories all day long.  Photo courtesy: Guard your Health ...

A review of a recent article  challenging how we think heart disease develops http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317118.php

I've regularly discussed the risks of abandoning meat in one's diet in favor of grains and legumes. Another author was kind enough to publish a well sourced article about it and I'm sharing it my readers here Follow this link to read it

Studies have shown that, after following participants from ages 70 - 85 for 2.7 years, walking can reverse many of the limitations associated with aging. The study suggests 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise, coupled with two weight strength sessions each week. http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/26/495477531/walking-fends-off-disability-and-its-not-too-late-to-start

Is Butter Better? Read On! AHA Guidelines May Not Be Based On The Best Research  New Book Casts Doubt On Years Of Common Methodology Investigative reporter Nina Teicholz has just released a book this week challenging our thoughts about how we structure our diet. In a WSJ article , Ms. Teicholz outlines her issues with AHA guidelines  that recommend less animal fat (or saturated fat) as part of ones diet. She contends that the reduction in saturated fat has led to the increased consumption of carbohydrates, which has cascaded into another entirely different set of health issues such as type 2 diabetes. Her book is available at http://www.thebigfatsurprise.com/ Here's a few other articles that support this contention From NPR:  The Full-Fat Paradox: Whole Milk May Keep Us Lean Why Milk Is The Ultimate Post Workout Food Butter Is Back Behind The Headlines: Saturated Fat and Heart Disease 'Uproven' Is Beef Bad For You? Or The Envir...

The Best Thing About Five Minute Workouts... ...Is That You Can Do As Many Rounds As You Want! Exercise #1 Body Saw You'll need a little bit of equipment for this, like  Glidders  or any furniture mover, or even just a towel if you are on hardwood. Start off in a solid plank position ( I discussed good form for planks in an earlier post ). Extend your forearms forward to slide backwards and tuck your hips under you so as not to squeeze your low back for balance. You abs and lats should start to become more active and you should bring your shoulder blades to the front of your body as you extend the arms to engage your lats even further. Pay particular attention to how his shoulder blades come forward to stabilize the body. Proceed through this exercise slowly for :30 seconds Exercise #2 Opposite Side Toe Touches From the plank position, raise up into a straight arm plank. Swing your left leg under your body as straight as possible until you can touch your l...

ACSM's Most Popular Fitness Trends For 2014 Which one are you going to try? One of the biggest problems with fitness is workout boredom. Therefore, we shouldn't be surprised that in the "vine" generation, we are seeing a resurgence of interval training, specifically high intensity interval training ( HIIT ). You can read the ACSM press release  for their top ten trends, which seem to follow a specific pattern: Get the workout done fast Get the best possible results for your investment Use as little or as simplistic (perhaps inexpensive) equipment as possible Have a certified professional guide your workout Workout in groups Put the "fun" in functional It shouldn't be a surprise that two of the most popular fitness trends are CrossFit and P90X, with their emphasis on basic exercises with minimal equipment. It should be noted that the "basic" exercises in CrossFit are actually quite challenging, including many Olympic style l...

Every once in a while (or for some of us, it's every weekday), we're up late and feel the need to eat something, and it's just too hard to say no. Well, fortunately, we don't always have to withhold ourselves from those late night munchies. According to a short article from  Women's Health , the expert advice is to eat something that won't spike blood sugar, make you more hungry, or be too calorie rich. Sorry Jimmy, that just won't do The best snacks are kept to about 100 calories, with no more than 15 grams of sugar, and about 3 grams of fiber. It's also good to wash it all down with a little water (flavored slightly with either lemon juice or another splash of fruit juice flavor- it helps curb the cravings). Some suggestions are: One cut up fruit in a 1/2 cup yogurt or sour cream A cup of berries in that same 1/2 cup of yogurt or sour cream 1/4 cup salsa and about 10-12 corn chips (low-sodium is better)  6-8 carrot or celery sticks with h...

There are some serious studies being conducted to confirm the efficacy of tree nuts as a weight maintenance food. The Purdue University study (you can read about it  here ) is testing to see how such a calorie rich food can help control appetite and contribute to weights loss. There are the obvious suggestions that it is rich in fiber and protein which help satiate, but the study is trying to see if there's some neurological or sociological response to their consumption which can keep people coming back to them instead of going for  candy bars. Another diet trend has its roots in ancient practices.  A new trend to weight loss, blood glucose maintenance, and a possible Alzheimer's reducer, is to conduct fasts twice a week. This practice is referred to as 5:2 fasting. The Wall Street Journal recently talked about it , and you can read about it's implementation here . Basically, it's about having zero to 500 calories on fasting days twice each week and eating no...

Over the years, we have thrown around words like 'VO2 Max', Resting Heart Rate, Oxygen Intake, and so on. I actually blogged about this about a year ago  How to ACTUALLY go from Couch to 5k , and I had some funny pictures of Homer Simpson running and a cool chart showing oxygen intake and deficit relationship. Today, I am going to give you some tools on how to calculate VO2 Max, make it meaningful to you, and have you start making any necessary changes to your lifestyle to get you feeling your 'fitness' age. What's your fitness age? Let's start with VO2: this is the volume of oxygen your body will use in one minute. It's the ratio between the amount of oxygen in the air you inhale divided by the amount of oxygen in the air you exhale, all during the course of one minute. To save you the thousands of dollars it would cost to measure this with specialized equipment, some fantastic sport scientists have developed some simple formulas that you can use to...