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Health & Fitness

A Winning Fitness Combination for the Holidays!

The simple truth about fitness and nutrition. Consume high-quality or nutrient dense foods. Secondly, strength train your muscles.

I have a question for all of you; “what does the number 168 represent”? While you’re pondering that, I’d like to share with you how you can start getting in shape this holiday season. It’s simple: good nutrition and strength training.

How is this simple, you ask? Let’s first look at nutrition. When a person eats lower-quality food (grains, cereal, pasta, bread, soda, etc.) they create a clog in their metabolism that causes chronic weight gain. People can be plenty active, but if their diet includes the lower-quality foods, they become clogged and gain body fat. Weight gain is determined by food and exercise quality, not the number of minutes spent moving.

Eating fewer calories does not cause your metabolism to burn body fat.  It causes the body to slow down your metabolism because it senses an energy shortage (famine). When people diet and cut calories they are telling their metabolism that they are starving and the body responds by holding onto the stored energy (fat), and instead burns muscle tissue. Do not merely eat less. Instead eat more natural foods and exercise your body’s muscles more deeply.

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This brings us back to the question I asked you at the beginning. The number 168 represents the number of hours in a week. Science now shows us that by regularly working our muscles or muscle fibers more deeply, the body’s only response is to adapt and change. If you’re working your muscles at their optimal capability, physically, you can’t do it for very long. This can be accomplished in as little as two, twenty minute sessions; or, in less than 1% of your time each week.

Remember; eat high-quality (nutrient dense) foods and begin high-quality exercise. Stay tuned for future articles where I delve more deeply into these and other interesting fitness topics!

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Carol Coleman is the owner of The Exercise Coach in Palatine. For more information, please contact the studio at 847-221-5980. We are located at 303 E. Northwest Highway in Palatine.

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