Health and Fitness Talk with Fitness Together, the world leader in private personal training

Click on the "Why you need a trainer"

2009-10-28T16:11:00.002-05:00

Be sure to click on the "Why you need a trainer" to view the youtube.com link

Why you need a trainer!

2009-10-28T16:05:00.001-05:00

Since our blog has been paused for the past couple months, I thought we best get this thing started again with a laugh!

Fitness Together is in the Dakota County Tribune

2009-09-10T16:39:00.002-05:00

Maintaining good financial health

4dct spotlight 9 10.pdf

"Spill Over Effect"

2009-04-01T15:05:00.002-05:00

Many of you may have read or listened to the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and I must say I was impressed by its content. Of course my favorite part was in chapter 34 of the audio book when Stephen Covey speaks about participating in a regular exercise regime and the "spill over effect" that it has in one's life. Many of our clients come to us with goals of weight loss, muscle strength, increase muscle (toning up), diet education, and the list goes on and on.... What about the intangibles, or better yet the "spill overs?" Perhaps some of the most important effects exercise has on someone is the feeling of taking control of their life again. Exercise has a big impact on self-esteem, confidence, hormone balance, and again the list goes on and on... Combine that with proper nutrition and getting back to fueling our body with essential nutrients, we can rid ourselves of sickness and disease and pursue healthy, energized lives!!!

How has exercise and proper nutrition "spilled over" into other aspects of your life?

Get Motivated To Get A Life

2009-03-29T23:53:00.003-05:00

One of my dearest friends emailed me this speech 3 years ago by Anna Quindlen. I found it today right when I truely needed to run across an inspirational boost and a harsh reality check. I really would like everyone to take a look at this and please take this to heart as much as I have.

I cannot tell you how easy it is for me to get caught up in work, work, and more work. My favorite quote:

"No man has ever said on his deathbed, 'I wish I had spent more time at the office."

“I’m a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don’t ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk or your life on a bus or in a car or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul. People don’t talk about the soul very much anymore. It’s so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter’s night, or when you’re sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you’ve received your test results and they’re not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and them to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true. You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here’s what I wanted to tell you today:

Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you’d care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger. Get a life in which you are not alone.

Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter.

Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids’ eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby’s ear.

Read in the back yard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived”.

[Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.]

You Can't Out Exercise Bad Nutrition

2009-02-25T07:26:00.004-06:00

I pride myself in being a man of many quotes, but this time I cannot take the credit, (Thanks Amy). I cannot think of a more appropriate way to make this statement. For years I've said that it is much easier to lose weight through nutrition than it is from burning the poor nutrition back off when doing cardiovascular exercise. Here's how it works:

Eating food = 100% control of both the good and the bad food entering your body. You just have to decide what goes into your mouth. Everything passes through your mouth and through your digestive tract whether you like it or not.

Burning calories = up to 50% efficiency in burning the fat back off.
When you burn calories, you have many different energy systems designed for different tasks. Even in your most "efficient" fat burn zone, the one designed to burn fat, you are not burning fat calories alone. In fact, your lucky to burn roughly half of the calories from stored fat sources in your body.

Let's put it this way. Here's a scenario. I know of many of you that have one particular food, or treat that you find it is hard to give up. For today's purposes, I will use cheesecake as an example:

Low Carb Cheesecake, the "healthy version":

Amount per Serving

Calories 610

Calories from Fat 513

% Daily Value *

Total Fat 57g

88%

Saturated Fat 29g

145%

Cholesterol 270mg

90%

Sodium 410mg

17%

Total Carbohydrate 39g

13%

Dietary Fiber 12g

48%

Sugars 4g

Protein 16g

32%

Either you can opt out of this insanely unhealthy pleasure, or you can feel free to burn the 513 fat calories back off by spending over an hour sweating on our elliptical machine. You decide, but it takes 3 minutes to eat the cheesecake and have to spend over 60 minutes to burn it back off? That's a bad investment in my eyes. Think of the problem you face if you simply eat one piece of cheesecake and make 2 more bad food choices in that week.... Now you are up to 3 hours of cardio, just to end up where you were before you decided to indulge. Last time I checked, most everyone I know exercises to get ahead, not just to compensate for bad choices.

FT Client Competition

2009-02-21T10:57:00.003-06:00

The new client competition is now a week old. I would like to give you, the clients an opportunity to express your thoughts. Tell me what you like and don't like. I'm open to suggestions for new events to add to the competition. After all this is your competition. Hope all are having a safe weekend.

ANOTHER WEIGHT LOSS RECORD SET!

2009-02-19T14:52:00.000-06:00

I cannot believe this , but here I am having just gotten off of the phone with the same person who set our 2 week weight loss record....

Today I learned that she has now dropped 19.5 lbs in 30 days! That is 5 pounds per week! Again, it's times like this that make the sweat and hard work all worth while.

WELCOME

2009-02-06T13:05:00.000-06:00

We would like to welcome Jessica Joyce to the Fitness Together family. We have grown to an eclectic team of 4 certified personal trainers just in time to celebrate our 3rd anniversary! We are proud to be growing in a tough economical climate. If anyone is going to do it, it's FT Apple Valley!

A record has been broken at FT Apple Valley!

2009-02-05T17:46:00.000-06:00

In the first week of February, Fitness Together's 2 week weight loss record was shattered with one of our newest clients who lost 11 pounds in her first 2 weeks of training with us! I would give anything for the opportunity to show everyone I know what her reaction was when Joe watched her weigh herself that day... She jumped off of the scale and without hesitation, turned to Joe lunged towards him and gave him a bear hug ! Please remember, this client has only been with us for 2 weeks... Imagine what the future holds for her in 2 months, or even 2 years! These are the priceless moments that everyone deserves to have and we will have many more moments just like this one more than likely this month and every month after that.