6 Ways To Build Lean Muscles

You want a body shaped with lean muscle and backed by a nutritious diet. You want to stay fit and healthy in the midst of all the fatty foods and unhealthy diets. Building lean muscle isn’t impossible with the right exercise and dieting program in place. Here are some great ways women can build lean muscle.

1. Eat Nutritious Foods

Stock up on foods that help keep your muscles lean and firm. Beef is a good source of protein, zinc, and B vitamins while brown rice, eggs, spinach increase muscle strength, endurance, good digestion, and longer-lasting energy. Just remember to select only fresh and wholesome foods when creating your diet.

2. Reduce Carbs In Your Diet

Women have the upper hand when it comes to burning fat to carbs, so stick to a low-carb or no-carb diet in order to burn the fat and gain toned muscles.

3. Strengthen Muscles With Exercise

Exercise regularly in order to stretch and strengthen your muscles, but make sure to focus on exercises that promote lean muscle throughout your body. Squats, deadlifts, and lunges are just some of the many exercises that target your legs, back, abs, and obliques.

4. Remember To Drink Your Water

Always have plenty of water to drink as you work through the program. An intake of at least 8 glasses of water not only keeps you hydrated, but it curbs mistaken hunger pains and prevents overeating. And with every intake, your body is able to flush out toxins inside your body, making you feel lighter and healthier.

5. Control Your Calorie Intake

Calorie control is essential in building lean muscle. By taking in too many calories, you gain excessive weight. This makes it difficult to tell if it is lean muscle or just a layer of body fat. But a lack of calories lessens your chances of gaining and building lean muscles. Set a target calorie count that is just right and that produces results.

6. Rest

Make sure to give your body enough rest. More than to cool down from the workouts, rest allows the body to repair the muscles. What’s more, because the muscle is metabolically active, it burns calories even while the body is resting. Consider a day off for every week.

It takes a lot of effort and self-discipline to build lean, mean muscle, but the results are worthwhile. To be sure, consult a health professional before implementing any diet or exercise program.

If you are in New York City and interested in joining an all women boot camp or fitness boxing classes please visit NYC ADVENTURE BOOT CAMP, mention that you found us through our blog for and extra 15% off a membership. Come work out like a GIRL!!!

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UNDOING THE KNOTS

Have you ever asked yourself what are your intentions in life? Whether it is your career, your love life, fitness goals or perhaps it is your finances or spiritual goals. What are your intentions?

We should all start by defining our intentions. The broad definition of intentions is “an aim or a plan” of something. We all know without an aim or a plan our goals are a lot harder to achieve. Defining our intentions can help us streamline our lives. Just think about your intentions as your “Whys”.

Why do I want to be a CEO of a company? Why do I want to lose 20 pounds? Why do I want better communication with my mom? Why do I want to run a marathon? Knowing your feelings about your whys and streamlining your intentions will assist you in taking greater control of your life.

Understanding your aims can transform your dreams into reality. It can transform your plans into action. It can even transform your fears into hope and possibilities. It can turn your will into results.

Tomorrow, when you start your day, ask yourself what are the things that you DON’T want to do today? I am pretty sure if you start your day by asking yourself the things you do not want to do, you’d be more inclined to refine the things you want to do.

Now that you’re clear about your intentions, set a plan that excites you. Something that will make you smile and make you feel as if you made today count! Look forward to it everyday; even if you only have 20 minutes to dedicate to it and see how your life becomes more rewarding each day. Intentions are a powerful tool to living your most authentic life.

If you are in New York City and interested in joining an all woman’s boot camp please visit NYC ADVENTURE BOOT CAMP, mention that you found us through our blog for and extra 15% off a membership. Come work out like a GIRL!!!

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Ladies, are you getting your vitamins?

You’ve heard about how important it is to take vitamins. Nowadays, the typical woman’s diet consists of prepared meals and convenience foods, and it’s very difficult for women to actually get the nutrients their unique female bodies need. However, many women still don’t know what vitamins are essential and which ones do what – and sometimes, they even skip their daily multivitamin. Vitamins are critical for women! So ladies, are you getting the vitamins you need?

Zinc

Zinc is essential for healing and protecting the skin, and it has also been shown to help reduce the symptoms of PMS. So you definitely don’t want to be skimping out on the zinc when that time of the month rolls around!

The best sources for vitamins are fresh foods as opposed to capsules or vitamin tabs. You can get more zinc in your diet by incorporating more lean beef into your meals, crab, and chicken (dark meat has more zinc than white meat). If you don’t consume meat, snack on sunflower seeds or cashews instead.

Folate

Folic acid is absolutely essential for expecting and nursing women. However, even if you aren’t pregnant or breastfeeding, folate is still something you need to get enough of. Folate helps you make red blood cells, which keeps you from being anemic. Women are very susceptible to anemia, which can make you feel very tired and dragged down. If you don’t have enough folic acid in your diet, you’ll also feel more irritable and be more forgetful.

Get more folate in your diet by eating peanuts or peanut butter, spinach and broccoli. For something sweet with folic acid in it, treat yourself to a juicy papaya.

Calcium

Calcium is one of the most important nutrients for women, and you probably already know it helps you build strong, healthy bones. However, women are prone to osteoporosis as they age, which makes your bones brittle, weak and susceptible to breaking or fracturing.

Boost your calcium intake with low fat dairy products like milk and yogurt, or opt for almonds, leafy greens and soy milk if you don’t eat dairy. Fish such as sardines, salmon and tahini are also excellent sources of calcium if you enjoy seafood.

There are many more vitamins that are important for women, so make sure you take your daily multivitamin and keep your diet full of a variety of fresh fruits, vegetables and other whole foods. Anytime you can swap convenience foods for something fresh, you’re doing something wonderful for yourself!

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Why Diet Pills Don’t Work

Diet pills are a dime a dozen. Walk into any drugstore or supermarket and you’ll see at least fifteen different kinds of diet pills, all promising to do the same thing – suppress your appetite and make the pounds melt off. It almost seems too good to be true, right? The truth is, it is too good to be true.

Diet pills aren’t much more than cleverly marketed supplements, and at best won’t do much to help you lose weight without modification of your diet and integrating exercise into your daily life. At worst, dangerous ingredients in diet pills can do more harm than good, causing increased heart rate, sweating, nervousness and other adverse health effects. Long term use of diet pills has been shown to cause more serious side effects, such as heart problems.

But do diet pills actually make you gain weight?

In a way, yes.

Do They Really Stop The Food Cravings?

Many diet pills have ingredients that work to suppress your appetite, or stop you from craving food. This may seem great at first, but it’s not doing you any favors. Diet pills don’t address the real problem people have with food. They don’t address overeating, or poor nutrition. They don’t tackle the root of the problem – they are simply a Band-Aid solution. When you don’t take the diet pills, chances are, you are really going to want those cheese fries.

Do They Really Increase Your Metabolism?

Most diet pills use some kind of stimulant to boost the metabolism, like caffeine or ephedra. These are the components that can cause you to feel jittery or nervous, or cause heart palpitations. Honestly, you aren’t burning that many more calories just because you’re on a crazy caffeine high. What often happens is your body uses up your blood sugar stores quickly, leading to a fast drop in your blood sugar. This, in turn, triggers your body to want to eat, and to eat now. So while you may have done well in the morning with your yogurt and granola bar, by lunchtime, your body is going to want protein, carbs and sugar. Likely, in the form of a McDonald’s value meal.

When The Weight Comes Back With A Vengeance

Whenever you stop taking diet pills, you will gain the weight you lost right back, and usually you will gain more. This is because you never learned how to truly lose weight. Healthy weight loss involves learning to eat well and exercise regularly. When you learn to change your lifestyle and the way you look at food, it’s a permanent change. Diet pills? They’re just a fad.

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Winter Workout Tips

Working out in the winter can be tough. It’s cold, you really don’t want to go outside and curling up on the sofa under a blanket with a cup of hot cocoa sounds way better than donning your yoga pants and getting your exercise on. However, if you don’t keep your fitness level up through the winter, it will be that much harder to get back in the groove when it warms up and when you actually do want to get out there and stay fit.

Here are some easy ways to get your butt into gear during the winter when all you really want to be doing is snuggling up next to the heater with a good book.

Light Therapy

Light therapy is commonly used for depressive disorders, especially Seasonal Affective Disorder – a disorder in which many people become depressed or notice depressive symptoms in the winter, when they don’t get out as much or are stuck in the house. Light therapy uses a solar lamp to deliver white light for a specified period each day. While it is primarily used for depression and other similar disorders, you can use it to help you get motivated to exercise. Because it can help boost mood during times that there is less natural light available – like during the winter – you can use light therapy to fool yourself into feeling revved up just like you do when the sun is shining outside.

Vitamin D Caplets

The sun increases your body’s available Vitamin D, and in the winter, we naturally get less vitamin D because we are exposed to less natural light. If you can’t get a solar lamp, consider supplementing your diet with vitamin D caplets during the winter. You can also use vitamin D supplementation in addition to light therapy. Vitamin D can help you feel more energized during the winter, instead of tired and lethargic.

Bite The Bullet

Getting out of bed or off the couch and working out is the hardest part – once you’re actually up and doing it, it’s no big deal. Working out makes you feel fabulous for the rest of the day. Even if it’s a blizzard outside, you’ll feel great all day and have the energy to power thorough your “to do” list. So just bite the bullet, get up and exercise. Flip on your winter workout DVD and go to town, even if you can only stand to do 10 minutes of it. Throw your hair up, slip on your tennis shoes and get in the car before you can talk yourself out of going to the gym. It’s hard getting going during the winter, but once you’re finished, you’ll be glad you did it.

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