Oct 23

Staying Healthy During Day Light Savings Time

It’s getting to be that time of year where the sunrises and sunsets are beautiful, but the weather gets cold and the days grow short.  Usually when there are less hours in the day, people want to get inside sooner.   When it’s dark and cold, we must do things to keep warm, which usually means staying inside our cozy homes.  This change of season can put a damper on dietary decisions.  In addition, “comfort food” is a popular culinary trend that can lead to detrimental effects on our dietary and fitness efforts.  Nutritional awareness can be haltered by the need to get out of the dark, cold nights.

Who wants to go to the store after an hour-long commute in the dark?  Staring at headlights on the way home from a long commute on the highway in the nighttime can be enough to make anyone go stir crazy.  When it comes to food decisions, that last thing we want to do is go to the store.  A quick fix solution we hear from our personal training clients in Napa is going to the local Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods to get a premade salad, microwaveable dinner, or get something ridiculously over-priced at the hot food bar.  If anyone has ever gone through the Bel-Aire plaza at rush hour to go to Target, Trader Joe’s or Wholefoods in Napa during rush hour after work, you will start to relate to feel like you are in a can of sardines.  This parking lot that has many grocery store needs.  However, the problem is that half the town of Napa goes here all at once after their long, strenuous days of work.  Add in the cold, wet, dark climate of the winter season, we have contributing factors to increased stress coming home from work. This increases the desire to get the day over with and neglect awareness of healthy foods.

An issue to daylight savings time is the lack of sunlight we experience while losing an hour throughout the day.  Nightfall occurs as soon as 4:30 PM.  Our bodies naturally want to slow due to lack of sunlight and decreased temperature.  Lower physical activity leads to lack of motivation to adhere to healthy food decisions.  Take out food such as Chinese food or pizza delivery are popular options because making food is not required.  It’s made for you in a matter of seconds and the effort from your end is all based on the payment you give to acquire this food.  While this is convenient and alleviates having to go to the store and make you own food, takeout and delivery usually offer ingredients that are detrimental to our life time fitness efforts.  Additionally, the hot food bar at Whole Foods does have healthy salad and veggie options.  However right beside the salads are “comfort” foods such as mashed potatoes, rice, enchiladas and other easy to acquire foods that will wreak havoc on your metabolism.

What can we do about this shunt of energy that is created by this aggressive change of climate in the upcoming day light savings time and winter weather?

A solution that we offer to our clients is to apply the weekly tactic of going shopping for foods that can last in the fridge once per week.  Planning weekly grocery trips to acquire hearty fall veggies that can stay fresh in the fridge are great options to have in your inventory to create healthy dinners.  Fall vegetables such as carrots, butter nut squash, and Brussel sprouts can last in the fridge for a few days.  More importantly, creating a healthy meal out of these veggies takes just a little bit of effort and is an easy clean up.  In addition to purchasing veggies once a week, we suggest purchasing proteins once per week such as fish, chicken and eggs.  Eggs are a convenient source of protein that can be utilized at breakfast or dinner and can hang out in the fridge for a weeks’ time.  Storing meat in Ziplock bags in the freezer and taking them out to thaw the night before is another efficient technique to ensure that healthy food options are readily available.

An easy dish that we recommend is chopped onions, garlic and carrots drizzled in olive oil.  Wrap this medley up in some tin foil, sprinkle salt and pepper on it, and let it roast at 450 degrees for 30 minutes to produce a healthy tasty meal.  In addition, you can put some fresh fish drizzled with olive oil and seasoned in parchment paper at the same time the veggies are in the oven.   Before you know it, you have a healthy, balanced dinner that is easy to clean up and ready to consume.  The time it takes to create this dish versus the energy it takes to get takeout or wait for a delivery pizza equals out to be the same, if not less time.

So why go through all the hardships of running to the store after a long day of work in this change of season?  Perhaps we can embrace the warmth of the inside of our house while using the oven and still support life time fitness with a little bit of planning and nutritional awareness in this change of season.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Oct 15

Healthier Breakfast Options: Nutrition at Home!

We’ve all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  Waking up from a 6 to 8-hour slumber without any food, the first meal of the day is a prime time to restore the nutrients in your body.  Optimal sleep is one of the most beneficial practices to ensuring the body manages stress, fends off illness and recovers the physiological components of the body that keeps bones and muscles healthy.

But what happens if we eat some breakfast that doesn’t necessarily support that great sleep we have had?

Deciding what foods to put in your body during your first meal of the day will either make or break how the body will react throughout the day.  Not only could breakfast decisions affect the body throughout the rest of the day, but weeks and months in the future.  Learning about what foods to put in your body at this critical time of the day will help us maintain lean muscle, lose fat, and perform at an elite level throughout the day.

One of the most common issues that we come across during our nutritional consultations with our personal training clients in Napa is the misunderstanding of what a “healthy” breakfast is.  We hear about granola with non-fat milk, yogurt, breakfast sandwiches from Starbuck or McDonalds, or a delicious breakfast pastry from our favorite coffee shop in town on the way to work.  The two elephants in the room here that make insulin spike through the roof and create a party in your fat cells are the consumption of dairy and processed carbohydrates.

Yes, it’s true that the pastries and breakfast sandwiches are delicious. Especially if we stop by Model Bakery here in Napa and order one of their famous English Muffin breakfast sandwiches (probably the best English Muffin in the world).  However, once we consume these foods on a regular basis, the detrimental effects of insulin concentration in the blood and fat from the clarified butter in the English muffin adds up.  Before we know it, we’re having two, it not three breakfast sandwiches each week.

But what if we replace the god of all breakfast sandwiches for something a little healthier?

A common solution that hear from our clients is that granola and non-fat milk or low-fat yogurt sound like a better option. Unfortunately, the truth is that granola usually has extra sugar added to it in the form of honey.  In addition, granola is a has many baked grains in it made up of a substantial amount of simple sugars that are responsible for increasing insulin levels.  Add in the dairy from the yogurt or non-fat milk, you now have another type of sugar added to the equation in the form of lactose.  Not only will the increased simple sugars from the cooked grains in the granola spike insulin and lead to fat storage, but the lactose from the dairy products will cause an inflammation response in the digestive tract, slowing down digestion and leaving the body feeling bloated.  If we think about it, granola and yogurt have similar ingredients to pizza.  Grains and dairy vs flour and Cheese.  We can understand that pizza is not the healthiest option.  Sometimes the breakdown of our usual breakfast routines is like other decadent foods.  As a life time fitness specialist, I don’t recommend pizza for breakfast.

Some solutions that we offer to the convenient “on-the-go” breakfasts are to fix your own breakfast at home.  Making the effort to control what goes on your plate rather than seeing what randomly comes to mind while getting your coffee on the way to work makes a big different.  Being able to choose healthy items from your pantry or fridge are great method to get some healthy foods in your body.  You are under control about what goes into your body.  Some heathier options that you can make at home omit the likelihood of too many processed carbs or an over abundance of dairy into your diet.  For example, having fresh fruit in the morning with some scrambled eggs might be a better option than bread.  Perhaps having some oatmeal with chia seeds and shaved almonds for protein and fresh or dried fruit for flavor would be a better option than granola and yogurt.  By making your own breakfast, you can control what types of sugars, fats and proteins enter your body.

We aren’t saying to never have an amazing Model Bakery English muffin breakfast sandwich ever again.  However, it’s important to be aware how the ingredients in some common breakfast foods effect your body and life time fitness goals.  Perhaps having a few breakfasts at home that you create from your own efforts a few times out of the week would help benefit your body during the most important meal of the day.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Oct 08

Procrastinating from Fitness: Managing Your Time for Exercise

We all want to become a fitter version of ourselves.  Who wouldn’t want to lose a few pounds, gain some lean muscle, recover from an injury and reap the benefits of becoming a more healthful version of ourselves to live a longer, happier life?  The answer is should be obvious.  There’s one problem here, we must allocate fitness somewhere into our busy day full of tasks devoted to our professions and family.  Additionally, that time sitting on the sofa watching some Netflix after a 10-hour workday sounds nice too.

The act of exercising is physically and mentally challenging, making it very easy to procrastinate and put other tasks before getting some physical activity.  In addition, finding a time of day to fit an exercise routine is no easy task either. Especially for individuals who have families and work lives.  We run into this issue all the time when coaching our personal training clients in Napa on how to efficiently fit exercise into their schedule.  A very common issue is that there is simply not enough time. This “not enough time” reason translates to procrastination.

We all have 24 hours in our day.  It just matters where we allocate our efforts throughout the day.  A coaching tactic to support our clients achieve adequate exercise throughout the week is discussing their weekly schedule.  First, we look at weekly tasks that require the most amount of attention and energy.  Going to work, tending to family, and relationships usually take up most of the day from the morning until the late hours of the night.  While these are all components of our life that create a fulfilling and exuberant experience in our life, fitness gets put on delay.  The dedication to these important factors in our lives can leave us losing track of our schedule throughout the day.  An underutilized remedy to losing track of your schedule is to write down  when you will be doing these tasks.  Once the truth of your thoughts have been transcribed onto a tracking device, such as calendar, the chance of openings to fit in blocks of time for fitness usually open up.

A time of day that we see has openings in schedules that clients agree is available is in the morning.  This could be time before you hop in the shower for work, the hours before the kids wake up for school or before running morning errands.  By devoting time to exercise first thing in the morning, you haven’t given any of the other tasks you have to devote your time and energy to a chance to consume your mental capacity.  This is a time that you can put the phone away and turn the computer devices off.  CNN and ABC news aren’t going anywhere.  Your email will still be waiting for you.  You will also be happy to know that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram won’t shut down operations either.  By dedicating this time to yourself before the stimuli of the world has a chance to distract you and lead you to procrastinate from exercise, you can devote some valuable minutes to your fitness.

Of course, it might be challenging to roll yourself out of your warm, cozy bed.  However, by devoting at least 15 minutes of exercise to your morning will improve the productivity you give to your top priorities through out the day.  You will be able to concentrate on a more fine-tuned level because of the efforts you are putting into your body via exercise to make you an elite performing human.  You will feel more confident because of the positive reinforcement efforts toward improving the body make a person feel better about themselves.  With all of these positive results received from fitness, it seems like waking up first thing in the morning and fitting exercise into your busy schedule now seems more like a gift not only to yourself, but also to you job, families and loved ones.

Give yourself the permission to exercise so you can improve your life and the lives of the people around you.  Your job, the news and your phone will always be there.  However, the quality of our life time fitness can be stowed away fast by procrastinating from exercise adherence.  Give yourself, your job and the people you love the gift of a healthier version of you by developing a schedule and devoting some time to exercise throughout the week.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Oct 01

Weight Loss Goals and Business Lunches

“It’s really tough to eat healthy when my job requires me to go out to business lunches and drink wine.”

Sound familiar?  As life time fitness coaches in one of the most successful food and wine meccas in the world, this is not an uncommon struggle that we come across with our personal training clients in Napa who want to achieve weight loss goals.

A common challenge is the requirement of going out to business lunches and dinners as part of their jobs.  While out to eat and converse about business, there are some decadent options on the menu that can hinder weight loss efforts.  Add in pairing food with Napa’s exquisite wine, we have a dual threat in absorbing calories from alcohol along with large portion sizes of a delicious variety of foods rich in carbohydrate and fat concentration.  While going out to consult with peers about business at lunch, it’s easy to order some delicious pasta, a fine cut of meat with mashed potatoes on the side, a sandwich with bread from one of Napa’s amazing bakeries, or some pizza.  These all go great with red wine as well.  As a native of Napa, I have been brought up to appreciate the fine restaurants and wine that surrounds this valley.  Bistro Jeanty, Morimoto, or the Oxbow Public Market to name a few.  Who wouldn’t want to take an associate out to one of these amazing restaurants to talk business?  While the food is amazing, the weight gaining effects of over indulgence can happen sooner than we think.

Many of our personal training clients work in the wine industry.  While this is a fun and fulfilling job that creates a successful lifestyle for many people, frequent meetings out to lunch and sampling wine occur on a regular basis.  Some jobs require meetings over lunch with different samplings of wine to pair with specific foods and have their wine on the menu of a restaurant.  In order for this to be a successful experience, food must be consumed, and wine must be drank.

Something that we hear is, “I can’t say I won’t eat the red meat because or drink any wine, I’m watching my diet.  That would be awkward if I’m promoting my wine to be part of this restaurant’s menu.”  This is a true statement.  However, instead of trying to avoid eating delicious rich food from a great restaurant, why not focus on some other manageable variables that hinder weight loss efforts.

A subject that helps clients mitigate the effects of having to eat at fine dining restaurants is to focus on what type of physical activity has been done before going out to eat.

Has it been a low physical activity day (LPA) of a high physical activity day (HPA)?

Days that we call LPAs, or low physical activity days, mean that an individual may have been sedentary and has not engaged in exercise that day.  Perhaps it has been a day at the desk or there are deadlines that need to be met that has put exercise on the back burner.  HPAs, or high physical activity days have had an exercise session at the beginning part of the day or some form increased movement, like walking or engaging in a game of tennis.  We educate our clients on tactics focusing on awareness of their current physical activity status.  This technique dilutes the threats frequent business lunch outings can cause on weight loss efforts.

Performing an exercise routine in the morning on the day of a business lunch will put the body into an accelerated metabolic state.  Resistance training exercises that focus on compound upper and lower body movements, balance, mobility and cardiovascular exercise will put a person in an HPA status.  A simple resistance training session at a local gym, Yoga class, or a brisk walk in the morning will put you in an HPA state.  Muscles will be ready for repair and convert into lean muscle mass.  Blood flow will coarse more efficiently through the body to deliver oxygen to the brain and heart.  Positive stress hormones such as dopamine are produced via exercise to enhance your mood and interactions with others.  The body will be in a primed state to absorb some of the extra calories from a business meal into the stressed muscles for repair.  More importantly, exercising has been shown to put people in positive mental attitudes and enhancing social experiences.  The dopamine response exercise offer boosts confidence, friendliness and mental acuity.  Who wouldn’t want some of that before going out to promote your wine?

We can still take our clients, co-workers and peers out to some of the great restaurants surrounding us for business lunches.  We just need to ensure that regular exercise is part of our lives, especially on days that we might be going out to dine at a phenomenal restaurant, such as the ones in Napa that offer some of best food.  Great food and dining experiences in social and work setting will always be around us.  Let’s use the gifts exercise gives to help us live strong, happy and healthy lives and enjoy some of the great food with our friends and colleagues.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Sep 24

Muscle Soreness: Follow up Chaser Workouts!

Exercise adherence to maintain health and fitness is just as important as fending off the flu.  When we experience flu like symptoms, we must take atrocious tasting cough syrup to fend off flu like symptoms.  Surely, Nyquil does not taste like a milk shake.  My 12-year-old son would rather pull weeds in the backyard that drink cough syrup. The taste makes them gag.  A technique I do with my son when he is sick and must take a shot of cough syrup is to make sure he has a “chaser” to go with it, such as a lime to suck on or a glass of milk.  That’s right, just like what we do as adults when we are taking a shot of Don Julio at the bar with our friends and suck on a lime after taking that shot to tame the ferocious bite hard alcohol gives, I tell my son to do the same thing to stave off the wretched tasting cough syrup.  Cough syrup is important to aid in reducing the detrimental effects of staying home and suffering through flu like symptoms.  We use a similar approach with our Napa personal training clients to support their efforts to remain strong, healthy and active in their life time fitness efforts at the gyms in Napa.  Just like the chaser that cuts the bite of icky tasting cough syrup, we implement a similar coaching strategy called a “chaser” workout session.

We guide our Napa personal training clients through challenging exercises called compound exercise sessions during weekly coaching sessions.  Large compound strengthening movements such as the squat, pull up, bench press, dead lift and various core movements supersede other exercise during our coaching sessions.  These are critically important movements that deliver optimal results in strength, coordination, balance and help to burn fat efficiently.  The contradicting issue is that compound exercise sessions are very challenging.  Acute muscle soreness is a direct effect of performing these types of movements.  Like the revolting taste of cough syrup or a shot of tequila, the sensation known as delayed onset muscle soreness can cause a similar perception following a challenging exercise session.

Delayed onset muscle soreness can make movements challenging the following day.  A technique we promote our clients to decrease soreness following a challenging exercise session is the addition of a “chaser” workout.  A “chaser” workout can be done the day immediately following a challenging compound workout.  Chaser workouts can be completed in the form of walks, stretching, mobility, regenerative exercises to previous injuries or simply performing “gun show” exercises to work the triceps, biceps and abs.  Performing simple exercise routines that are a fraction of the intensity of a compound exercise routine helps keep the body moving.  Additionally, having a simple workout the day after a challenging session will strongly influence more exercise throughout the week.  A sample exercise routine with chaser workouts might look something like this:

  1. Monday, compound exercise session #1: Personal training session focusing on squats, bench press, pull ups and core
  2. Tuesday, chaser workout #1: 5 minutes of stretching, 3 sets of 10 bicep curls, 3 sets of 10 triceps extensions and 10-minute walk with a friend.
  3. Wednesday: No exercise.
  4. Thursday, compound exercise session#2:  60-90-minute hot yoga class
  5. Friday, chaser workout #2: 10-20 minutes of physical therapy rehab exercises focusing on injury prevention from past injuries.

Compound exercise sessions are critically important because the increased amount stress imposed up on the body will elicit the greatest adaptations of building lean muscle, increased strength, improving coordination, assist in balance and help to burn more calories from fat.  In addition to all the positive physical results transforming in the body, increased workouts serve as a form of meditation and self-improvement to help decrease psychological stress.  The downside of too many compound exercise sessions is the cause of overuse injuries.  In addition, becoming too sore from challenging exercise sessions can steer a person away from exercise completely.

A challenging question that we always ask ourselves as life time fitness coaches and personal trainers in Napa is, “How can we keep people exercising?”  A viable solution has been to manage the effects of challenging exercises and creatively introducing techniques to switch up the routines, so exercise does put people in so much pain from delayed onset muscle soreness that it hurts so much to go back to the gym. Introducing tactics such as chaser workouts that are simple yet easily attainable yields optimal results.

Just like getting that gross taste cough syrup leaves in your mouth by drinking some milk, a chaser workout helps taper down muscle soreness compound exercises put on the body.  When you have an amazing workout session that really challenged your mind and body, don’t stop there.  Follow it up with a chaser workout to help keep your body and mind finely tuned to improve your overall quality of life.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Sep 16

Improve Confidence with Life Time Fitness Goals

Having confidence is one of the most powerful tools to perform at an elite level in our every day lives.  A confident mindset helps us excel at our jobs, day-to-day interactions, and our decisions involving the future.  When beginning a program with our personal training and life time fitness coaching clients in Napa, we interview them about what goals they would like to improve upon.  A frequently seen goal is to improve confidence after having success in their program.

Elaborating further into that topic, we ask “what does improved confidence look like to you?”  Common answers include:

  • “How I feel in my own skin.”
  • “I need to be at the top of my game at work and life.”
  • “I’m training to apply for a position at a job, school or academy. If I’m capable, healthy and strong, I’m more likely to get the position.”

We make sure to check in through monthly interviews with our clients.  A very common improvement we see in their lives is the increase in confidence.  A helpful tip that significantly improves confidence in our clients consistently checking in to ensure exercise is performed 2-3 times per week.

Why is that so good for you? Having some form of physical activity for 10 minutes throughout the day will put the body past its comfort zone.  This promotes adaptations in the body to increase lean muscle mass and burn calories from fat.  Even if you’re tired and can’t get a full workout in, any challenge to the body will give a physiological response throughout the body to improve its performance.  Ensuring to perform physical activity 4-6 weeks consistently means that conscious decisions are being made to improve oneself.  Struggling through the comfort out of low physical activity to completing a challenging workout will improve confidence in stressful situations.  For these reasons, situations that might appear intimidating or create anxiety will not seem as bad by exposing oneself to some form of challenging exercise.

Physical activity throughout the week can be as simple as performing the common plank exercise for 15-30 seconds, taking a 10-20 minute walk, or stopping by a local health club do a few of the resistance training machines.  Ensuring to do these simple activities 2-3 times per week puts the body and mind in challenging conditions that it may not be used to.  Once there is competency achieved in ensuring at least 2 challenging physical activities on a weekly basis, we can confidently manage even more challenging interactions in our everyday lives.  When giving this tip to our clients, we see improvements in confidence and reductions in stress almost immediately.  We get reports that these tactics are ingrained after a few weeks of checking in to ensure clients are adhering to challenging physical activity 2-3 times per week.  Transforming the mindset of understanding what is too easy and comfortable to asking the question “what’s next?” is a critically important factor to improving confidence in everyday life experiences.

If you struggle with feeling depressed, insecure, or insufficient somewhere in your life, then why not get up and move around a little bit?  Moving past your comfort zone will improve positive thoughts, feelings and actions throughout your everyday life.  Most importantly, situations that pose a challenge can be handled with confidence because you have trained yourself to endure stress with regular physical activity and exercise.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Sep 09

Have you counted how many Starbucks drinks you’ve had lately?

Living a healthful, happy and disease-free quality of life requires a balanced understanding of food choices.  During our nutritional consultations with our personal training and life time fitness coaching clients in Napa, a common deterrent to achieving weight loss goals is the amount of excess sugar present in their daily food intake.  One of the biggest the threat of too much sugar is the grazing of sugar treats, sugar coffee, and sodas throughout the day. At the office, it’s common to have small candy treats posted at a desk or around the office, making grazing on tasty chocolates easy to do.  Before you know it, you’ve consumed 3-6 candies throughout the day, which can be the equivalent to a half or even a full Snickers bar.  Sodas are loaded with empty calories, leading to an insulin spike and excess fat storage.  The tastiness of sugary beverages can lead to addictive and habit-forming tendencies, contributing to the tendency to devote a certain time of your day to order a caramel Frappuccino from Starbucks 30 minutes before your work day or during work breaks.

An overlooked behavior is soda consumption at lunch.  When going out for lunch, it’s easy to get a soda added to your meal.  In fact, at sandwich shops and other chain restaurants, they even add that as a package deal to your purchase.  The soda fountain machine is even freely available for customers to get as many refills as they want, making the possibility for soda consumption to be doubled.  It’s easy to see how soda consumption when going out to lunch can be doubled or even tripled through out the week.

A common blip in the radar when coaching our clients to refine their dietary habits is the ritualized stop by the Starbucks or Drive Thru Coffee stands to order a latte, mocha, or blended coffee milk shake before heading into work.

What gets ordered?  Lattes, Mochas or coffee milkshakes (Starbucks call them Frappuccinos).

During work breaks, it’s easy to walk to a coffee shop nearby and order another leading to drinking 1-2 of these sugary coffee beverages per day with a net total of 5-10 per week. These are loaded with calories from processed sugars and fats.  In addition, you have the option of adding whipped cream, caramel, or chocolate syrup on top, further concentrating the amount of sugar and fat content to your coffee drink.  We enter a dual threat of increasing insulin and putting an over-abundance of sugar into our bodies.  Processed sugar in the syrups and whipped cream wreak havoc on the metabolism. The addition of milk causes inflammatory responses in the body while super charging the insulin releasing reactions of shuttling sugar to the fat cells in the body, causing fat cells to swell up in size.  These beverages are an unhealthy threat to the body not only because of their ingredients, but also the portion sizes ranging from 16 to 32 oz. containers, which can equate to a liter of sugar, fattening fluid.

Teaching awareness of how many drinks are consumed is a primary tactic we use to create healthy revisions to a diet.  We literally lay out the amount of sugary drinks that are consumed per week.  After we have clarified the truth of sugary drink consumption, we ask the question, “What can we do help this?”

A common answer is, “Stop drinking Starbucks” or “Not drink as many of them.”

While we would prefer the first answer, the second one is more realistic.  Perhaps we could benefit from the 12 oz. size as opposed to a 16 oz. or higher size beverage.  Instead of having a whole milk beverage, maybe it would be a good idea to try non-dairy options such as almond milk lattes or cold brew coffee using a dash of cream added to it yourself.

A powerful lesson we offer our clients when discussing these issues is to be aware.  As life time fitness coaches, we cannot be at your side the entire day, but we can influence mindfulness of the foods going into the body. It’s important to understand that with the above listed possibilities of consuming readily available foods with additional processed sugar added to them, we can drink a total of 10 Starbucks sugar bomb drinks, 15 cans of soda, and a couple bars of chocolate throughout the week.  The truth hurts but put those items in front of you and you will be convinced on how the overabundance of these commonly consumed foods has influenced the overweight epidemic in our culture.

Let’s be aware of how much sugar we have each week.  Once we come to the truth of this, we can make progress in tactics to support our life time fitness goals and decrease the amount of additional sugar consumed.

Aug 28

Deep Breaths and Meditation: Become an Elite Performer in Everyday Life

Stress puts us in a confined state of mind in which we feel like we have nowhere to go and we stay stuck in stressful states of anger, depression, anxiety.  We can find ourselves feeling stagnant at work, sitting or standing for hours.  Similar to the way our bodies adapt to become stronger after weeks of regular exercise, maintaining an optimal quality of life requires your mind to be constantly percolating and striving for adaptation to efficiently deal with stress.

How do we keep our mind percolating and striving for the next best thing that’s in front of us?  A technique that we teach our clients is a little bit of meditation that I learned in a college Psychology course.  We constantly talked about what an elite performer in an athletic event must go through to be successful in their competition.  We connected the practices athletes must do to perform at an elite to how the general population could be elite performers as a parents, friend, or employee.

Something that is commonly taught to athletes before they execute an event is to take deep breaths.

Taking deep breaths slows down the heart rate a few beats per minute and decrease the amount of stress hormones that are telling the heart to beat rapidly.  There is a physiological correlation to taking deep breaths and reducing the stimulation of the nervous system.

For example, Marksmanship athletes participating in biathlons competitively ski downhill at high speeds, aim, and shoot at a target that is 50 m away with a rifle.  Skiing downhill to immediately shoot at a target 150 feet away while their heart is racing and stress hormones are overstimulating the body poses a substantial challenge.  Similarly, professional Baseball athletes are taught to take a few deep breaths before going up to bat against a pitcher throwing a ball 90 MPH.  Taking deep breaths helps these athletes to become a better performer because they can focus on the task at hand that takes a high amount of dexterity and concentration in order execute successfully.

Even though everyday life   does not involve the challenges professional athletes deal with, stress can hit us the same way.  For example, having a bad day at work can affect a person’s mood negatively, leading to a decreased desire to exercise, eat healthy or go to sleep in a timely manner due to increased stress and anxiety.  The stimulus of getting yelled at by the boss or meeting certain deadlines will increase circulating stress hormones, blood pressure, and heart rate responses.  This stress stimulus is very similar to the challenges athletes experience that increase their stress responses. A solution to this stress is identical to how athletes center themselves utilizing deep breathing techniques.  By taking deep breaths, one can apply similar heart rate recovery, concentration, and an overall decrease in the amount of circulating stress hormones in the blood stream.  This is a method in which we can become elite performers and adhere to a healthier lifestyle.

A simple form of meditation we teach our personal training clients when stress takes over is to take a few deep breaths.  This is a technique that I was taught by one of my favorite Psychology teachers in my college career:

  1. Find an inanimate object outside (like a tree, the horizon, or some clouds)
  2. Look at that object. Close your eyes. Take one long, deep breath.  Fill your lungs to full capacity. Take your time and keep your eyes closed.
  3. Let that breath out. Keep your eyes closed
  4. With your eyes still closed, take another long and steady deep breath. On the exhale, open your eyes and slowly let out your breath. Take as much time as you need.
  5. Take One more deep breath with your eyes open, still looking at the object you initially picked out. Exhale one more time and start looking at other objects that strike your interest.

Feel free to try this technique when things get rough.  Not only will taking deep breaths improve focus during an athletic event, but this technique can also help reduce stress in our everyday lives.  This is a technique we teach to some of our personal training clients in the Napa Valley because there are so many amazing things to experience in this beautiful area of the world. Trees, vineyards, hills.  Stress is always a threat to slow us down.  However, the beauty around us is always present as well.

Take some time out of the stressful part of your day and look at something pretty.

It will be alright, if we just take deep breaths.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Aug 19

Reasons Personal Trainers are Important!

Personal Training is a service sought out to refine health and fitness.  Popular interests in acquiring personal training services include losing weight, gaining lean muscle, and becoming stronger.  Creating solutions in developing a fitness program that supports life time fitness goals and avoids injuries is a common reason to reach out for personal training.  Maintaining physical strength and mental acuity while adhering to an exercise program is critical to living happily and healthy.  Additionally, individuals struggle with regular exercise due to failed attempts leading to injury, boredom, or falling back into old habits leading to suboptimal physical activity.  The services of personal trainers and other fitness professionals help create solutions to these issues.  However, it’s important to be aware of important components in your personal training outreach to ensure you are entering a safe and efficient time investment.

The benefits of exercise into our lives is well known.  However, we hear that people simply don’t have time for exercise.  The reasons can span anywhere from family commitments, finding daycare for the kids, or just being bogged down by too many work hours.  This makes the benefits of a regular exercise program obsolete and leads to the deleterious effects of decreased physical activity.  Acquiring the guidance of a personal trainer helps to remedy this issue because appointments will be made specifically for the participant to attend at a designated time frame.  Nothing else can interfere with this appointment because both the personal trainer and the participant have carved out a portion of the day to devote to each other in this unique coaching dynamic.  This means all work obligations, cell phones, grocery store trips and other attachments have now been set under the priority of this hour of one-on-one time of exercise instruction devoted to you.  Furthermore, most personal trainers, along with small group fitness classes, require that you pay before the training session.  If you miss this session, you still must pay for the time you agreed to devote to yourself.  This shouldn’t be a financial accountability test.  However, utilizing positive reinforcement of being accountable for your motives of seeking out personal training will further support your life time fitness goals.  During these training sessions, you have someone to report your health and fitness progress that is dedicated to your success.  Furthermore, setting this time aside can also serve as an advanced form of meditation in which your efforts are focused solely on the proper execution of each exercise technique to support a successful exercise session.    Our personal training clients in Napa know that they are expected to show up to each training session ready to go and strive for this success.  Various other services such as small group fitness classes, boot camps, or Yoga classes expect the same thing from each participating member of their program.  Having an accountable fitness professional to report to is a very useful tool to ensure that you are dedicated to your specific health and fitness goals.

A discouraging factor when contemplating the start of an exercise program is the possibility of injury from exercising incorrectly.  Unfortunately, injuries from joining a gym and exercising ineffectively can leave participants injured for a few weeks and even years at a time.  This should never be the case because local health clubs are a place to improve mental, physical and emotional health.  Most gyms have personal trainers on staff that usually offer a training session free of cost.  These complimentary training sessions are meant to answer any questions to clarify the proper use of the training equipment around the gym.  Personal trainers can also clarify what a good muscular engagement is and what pain feels like when exercising.  In addition, personal trainers will be able to tell you what exercises need to be performed initially before other exercises.  For example, we always teach our personal training clients that work with us at Napa Tenacious Fitness to perform more technical exercises first and finish with less advanced exercises to focus on a safe and effective conclusion to the workout.

Personal trainers, fitness class instructors and other fitness professionals are here to help.  They are passionate individuals who have embraced success within life by prioritizing health and fitness. It’s important to seek out a qualified, educated and experienced professional.  Before signing up for the services of a fitness professional, it’s highly recommended to screen the potential coach.

What housing organization are these trainers certified through?

Do they have a college degree in a biological science?

How long have they been a trainer?

Perhaps you can perform a Google search on your potential exercise leader to ensure they are an upstanding person in society.

Utilizing the services of a personal trainer will effectively promote exercise adherence.  A strong team chemistry between participant and a personal trainer has the potential to build a positive team dynamic to promote successful life time fitness goals.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Aug 10

“Do I need to do a ton of Cardio?”

Weight loss is one of the leading factors for individuals to begin a fitness program.  A common theme is to “burn” fat by performing cardiovascular routines.  Our personal training clients in Napa frequently ask the question “Do I need to do a ton of cardio to get rid of fat?”  This statement is usually identified as going to the gym, hopping on the treadmill, elliptical or stationary bike and use that machine for 15 to 30 minutes.  While it’s true that cardiovascular exercise assists in burning fat calories and contributing to overall weight loss, there is common misconception that performing hours of cardio is the most efficient way to decrease fat.  There is a need for clarification regarding alternative ways to efficiently train the body to utilize fat as a fuel source without only hopping on a cardio machine at the gym.  There are more efficient and invigorating techniques that decrease fat while controlling weight to improve health without doing a ton of cardio.

First off, it’s important to understand the term cardiovascular.  The “cardio” portion indicates activity that is occurring in the cardiac muscle of the heart.  The “-vascular” portion refers to activity in the blood vessels such as arteries, veins, arterioles, venules and capillaries.  Combine those terms to create the term cardiovascular.  Cardiovascular exercise is commonly understood as “cardio”.  Therefore, any activity that occurs within the cardiovascular system form the stimulus of exercise falls into the category of cardiovascular exercise, or “cardio.” This means that any utilization of fats, carbohydrates and the delivery of oxygen throughout the organs of the body are being used to aid the body in exercise.  As heart rate increases, so will these interactions occurring in the body which will help burn fat, increase blood flow and improve the condition of cardiac muscle tissue in the heart.

Increasing heart rate is not the only method to increase cardiovascular activity.  It’s important to understand that interactions occurring in the blood vessels as an integral portion of optimizing cardiovascular exercise.  Increasing blood flow can come in the form of resistance training, mobility exercises such as Yoga, and basic leisurely walks.  Safe practices of lifting weights influence the contraction of muscle cells and influence the influx of oxygenated blood to the muscles.  Poses in Yoga will elicit lengthening muscle fibers and breathing techniques that facilitate oxygen into the blood.  Simple acts of walking from your house to the store for 15 minutes or more will cause increases in blood flow and increase heart rate responses anywhere from 5 to 20 beats per minute.  When the body is introduced to the condition to increase the volume of blood flow from physical activity, distribution of oxygen to muscle cells occurs.  As oxygen travels from the blood to working muscles, fat is utilized as a fuel source. This demand for more blood being called to the working muscle will ultimately lead to an increased heart rate and stimulate the cardiovascular system.  In addition to finding alternatives to the cardio equipment at the gym, training in various forms of exercises like lifting weights, practicing Yoga or walking more offer benefits to increasing strength, improving mobility and stimulate the mind.

Embracing cardiovascular exercise is critically important ideal in supporting our lifetime fitness journey.  However, hopping on a cardio machine at the gym and staring at a TV monitor is a monotonous and time inefficient use of time.  It’s true that these machines are very useful to aid in fat loss and improving physical activity.  The problem is that individuals feel the need to devote countless hours of attention to these machines.  Eventually, diminishing returns of getting bored and developing attachments to these cardio machines can occur.  This can put us in a state of dependency and threaten to close off our minds to other beneficial forms of physical activity that will improve our efforts toward our health and wellness goals.

Challenge the mind by performing a variety of exercise.  Introducing new physically challenging exercise activities stimulates the mind to welcome the opportunity to experience more thoughts, feelings, and actions.  This can serve as a unique form of meditation to keep ourselves not only in great physical shape, but also able to become more refined in the physical, mental and emotional realms.

Take a break from the treadmill, elliptical and stationary bike at the gym and unglue your eyes from the TV.  Ditch the idea of performing a ton of cardio to burn fat and embark in the various offerings of physical activity by performing resistance training, taking fitness classes and getting out to walk more.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

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