With Boot Camp in full swing for summer, I am often asked what’s the best exercise I can do to work everything in my body at the same time.  My recommendation is always the tried and true, old-school, non-innovative, push-up.

I love doing these!  They make me feel like Wonder Woman.  Back in April we held our Pushups for Charity Event (we raised just under $2,000 for Wounded Warrior Project).   And, I did a short video on how to do a pushup.  If you’re working on this at home, have a look at the video first to make sure you’re doing them safe and effectively .

How many pushups can you do?  Tell me your glory story below.

Hopefully by now you know that you should be getting 5-9 servings of fruits and veggies into your diet daily. That’s right, 5-9 per day, not per week. What is a serving size? How can you possibly fit all of that into a single day? It’s not as bad as you think. Each serving is only 1 cup or sometimes only half of a cup. How can you figure out which is which? Believe it or not, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a great website that give you all of the details.

Visit: http://www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov/index.html and you will find everything you need to know about fruits and veggies. You can enter your age and gender on the home page to figure out how many servings you need. There are recipes (and they’re really easy to use), tips and even a veggie of the month.

My favorite page is the color wheel. It lists out fruits and veggies by their color, so you can pick and choose and combine whatever you want and make sure you’re getting a wide variety of colors and flavors into your every day food.

Have a look at the site and let me know what you think. Post your responses on our below.

Have a great week!

Next week, we have lots of Boot Camp additional fun events, including our 1-hour nutrition class (Wednesday at 7:30pm), supermarket shopping tour (Thursday, 7:30pm) and Anchorage Yoga (Friday, 6:15pm). More details on all of this on Monday.

To your health,
Ginny Grupp
www.AlaskaFit.com
“It’s not just about getting into shape,it’s about getting into life!”

P.S. Want to improve your nutrition plan? Sign up for our Nutrition KickStart plan and start changing your life today. Find out more at http://ww.AnchoragePersonalTrainer.com/nutrition/

Welcome to the final installment of “Eating to Fuel Your Workout.” So far, we’ve covered Nutriiton 101, What to eat in the 1-hour window before your workout and what to eat post-workout.  This week, it’s what to eat if you have a little more time before your workout.

Ticking the clock back a little bit, I’ll now discuss what to eat 1-4 hours before your workout. You have more time for food to clear the stomach, which means you can take in a greater amount of energy and you can eat more energy-dense foods.  This is the time to incorporate some fat and protein into your meal.   These foods take longer to clear the stomach, you will feel full longer.

Remember to avoid anything that will clear your stomach too quickly as you could then find yourself feeling hungry just before your big race or before your workout.  This hunger will, at a minimum, distract you from focusing on your goal.  Worst case, it will impede your performance.

Studies have shown that consuming 200-300 grams of carbohydrate four hours before exercise improved performance by as much as 15%.¹. Composition of the meal will vary with how much time you have until you are exercising . . . more time, more energy intake.  Marie Dunford, PhD, RD recommends 1 gram of carbohydrate/ kg of body weight 1 hour before exercise, 2 grams of carbohydrate 2 hours before exercise, etc.¹ Longer times between meal and activity also allow you to add a little bit of fat and protein to your meal, to help that full feeling last a bit longer.¹

Don’t forget the fluids. You will want to consume about 2 cups (16 oz.) of fluid in this window to prevent dehydration. Add another 1-2 cups if you will be exercising in hot and/or humid conditions.

In terms of real food, think Subway-type sandwiches.  Two slices of turkey, one slice of cheese, lettuce, tomato on a 12-inch sub.  Add a banana and 2 cups of water, juice or non-fat milk and you have your meal.  You could also try a salad made of greens, 2-4 oz. pasta, 4 oz. of chicken, light dressing, banana and fluid.  You will be looking for a light meal that has some staying power, but not something to weigh you down. This means burritos and pizza are generally not going to be on your menu.  The high fiber content of beans and the fat content in the cheese overload your system and will not clear the stomach fast enough to give you energy.  Instead, they will sit on your stomach as your digestive system does its work.

As with the one-hour window meal, experiment.  Different foods will work for different people.  What works for you may not work for your training partner.  That’s ok.  That’s what training is for.  To figure out what works and what doesn’t before the big competition.

1. Advanced Exercise Nutrition Version 1.1. Dunford, M.  Human Kinetics www.HumanKinetics.com

P.S.  Want to know more about nutrition?  Check out our KickStart Program.

P.P.S.  August Boot Camp begins Monday…have you registered?