Shakeology Clense - Day 3

I knew day 3 would be the hardest day for me for a couple of reasons. The obvious was it was the 3rd day with no junk, no sugar, and not alot of calories. The second was that on Tuesday I have to get up earlier than normal and don't get home until later in the evening than normal. But I made it!

Breakfast - Shakeology with water and ice (140 calories)

AM Snack - apple with 12 almonds (about 170 calories)

Lunch - Shakeology with water and orange (220 calories)

PM Snack - Shakeology with water (140 calories)

Dinner - Salad (spinach, mushroom, celery, carrots, tomatoes, green pepper, onion) with grilled chicken and 2 TBLS fat free italian dressing (about 250 calories)

Overall, I am so glad that I did the 3 day Shakeology clense and that I did not cheat. I lost a little over 4 pounds and feel great. I am re-energized and my tummy is definetly flatter today than it was on Sunday. I hope I can continue to keep the sweet cravings away and stay away from so much processed food. I know I got rid of some serious goo over these 3 days!

Shakeology Clense - Day 2

Well, I am amazed that my body can actually survive on so few calories. According to myfitnesspal.com I only had around 900 calories yesterday and really didn't feel hungry much until bedtime. Here is the breakdown of Day 2:

Breakfast - Shakeology with water & ice (140 calories)

AM Snack - apple and 12 almonds (170 calories)

Lunch - Shakeology with water & ice and an orange (220 calories)

PM Snack - Shakeology with water & ice (140 calories)

Lunch - Salad with grilled chicken & 2 TBLS of fat free italian dressing (250 calories)

Wow, I really am not believing how great I feel. I can't wait to weigh in tomorrow morning. I can already tell that my tummy has shrunk a little and I great. The sweet cravings are gone, so hopefully that will continue after the clense.

Stay tuned tomorrow to see how this thing play outs.

3 day Shakeology Clense - Day 1

I started the 3 day Shakeology Clense yesterday. Here is the breakdown of what I ate and how I felt:

Day 1

Breakfast - Shakeology mixed with 1 cup water and 1 banana and ice in the blender. (about 240 calories)

Lunch - Shakeology mixed with 1 cup water and ice in the blender. 1 celery stalk, 1 carrot, and 12 almonds. (about 250 calories)

Snack - Shakeology mixed with 1 cup water and ice in the blender. (140 calories)

Dinner - Salad (spring mix lettuce, carrots, green pepper, onion, mushroom, squash, brocolli) 4 oz salmon with 2 TBLS fat free italion dressing (about 300 calories)

I felt great on day 1. I was not hungry at all throughout the day and had tons of energy. I did about 40 minutes of Zumba and then did 40 minutes of yoga before bed.

Check back later for Day 2 updates!

7 Key Foods to Help You Get the Most Out of Your Workout

Karen Tonnis

At some point in your hooked-in, hard-core Beachbody® experience, or even if you're just getting started, this thought may cross your mind: Wish I could get results even faster.



Well, now you can. Here's a list of dynamic foods that bring a lot to the table. Not only do they fit within a healthy nutrition plan, they're capable of sending your lazy taste buds a nice wake-up call.

1.Tomatoes. Make the lowly tomato your best friend and you could potentially up your chances of staying healthy and recovering faster. They're loaded with vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytonutrients. And because they're particularly rich in vitamin C and carotenoids, they may boost heart health, fight oxidative stress, protect against a variety of cancers, and combat inflammation. Tomatoes also contain potassium, an electrolyte that helps maintain fluid balance.




2.Fish. A powerhouse of lean protein, fish lets you load up without blowing your calorie budget. The very leanest choices include white-fleshed fish like flounder or tilapia, as well as most shellfish, including lobster. Even dark-fleshed fish like tuna and salmon are considered lean, and the fat they provide (in the form of fish oil) can help regulate hormones and metabolism and reduce inflammation.

Of course, all this muscle-building power won't show up as a six-pack if you're not careful about how the fish is prepared. Watch out for calorie bombs like deli tuna salad and deep-fried fish or calamari.

3.Açai berry. What look like ordinary small, purple berries are actually one of the best superfoods in the world. Açai berries contain one of the highest concentration of antioxidants of any known food, along with fiber, iron, amino acids, and healthy omega fatty acids. Add them to your diet in the form of juice or pulp and you can expect a load of benefits, including increased energy, faster recovery rate, boosted immune system, stabilized blood sugar levels, and more.

4.Dark green leafy vegetables. Breaking news: Popeye was right about eating spinach. Especially if you want to build muscle FAST. The antioxidants found in dark green vegetables help counteract the oxidative muscle damage that comes with heavy training or exercise. So vegetables like broccoli, collard greens, lettuce, kale, and our hero spinach should be high on your list.

5.Blueberries. Mom could've said, "Eat your blueberries and you'll grow up strong." This miniature superfruit is chock-full of nutrients and antioxidants. So if you're involved in strenuous activity, a daily cup or two of blueberries can help reduce cell damage. They also promote healthy blood pressure and contain complex carbs and fiber to help sustain energy and keep you in the game.



6.Eggs. When you're trying to add muscle, protein is as important as any dumbbell or training buddy. Most important, you want increased "clean calories" from whole, natural, unprocessed foods—like eggs. Eggs are one of the most perfect proteins for growing lean muscle. By incorporating egg whites into your diet (with a small amount of egg yolk), you can get a high amount of protein for a relatively low number of calories. Six egg whites will give you 99 calories and 21 grams of protein. Now that's a deal.

7.Green tea. If you're working out regularly, giving your body a constant supply of antioxidants can promote quicker recovery on a cellular level. And drinking green tea is a good way to vary your antioxidant intake. On top of its antioxidant properties, green tea can help protect the cardiovascular system, increase metabolic rate (which supports weight control), and may provide some anticancer and blood pressure–reducing benefits.

Add these 7 foods to your oxidant-fighting arsenal.
Go ahead and rev up your engine with these heavy-hitters for quicker results. But don't neglect your regular exercise program and healthy eating plan. Those are the real key. Start with a sound regimen, then add these seven for extra kick.

Eat More, Lose More. (Really?)

By Justine Holberg

You work out practically every day and you're feeling good because you've lost some weight. Until a week or so passes and you can't get the scale to budge. It's like an invisible wrench has been thrown into the works. Now what?

You start second-guessing everything you're doing:

Maybe I'm eating too much?
Should I work out harder?
Do I have to live on parsley and hot water?



So you restrategize. You slash calories and step up the intensity of your workouts. Unfortunately, after another week, you're still not losing. Now you want to give up altogether. But before you throw in the towel, ask yourself this:

Am I eating enough?
Contrary to popular belief, sometimes you have to eat more to lose weight. While that may sound counterintuitive, it often does the trick. Here's why:

1.Metabolism is the key to weight loss. If you don't eat enough, or often enough, your metabolism slows to a crawl and weight loss becomes more difficult, especially when you're exercising. That's why skipping meals isn't a good idea if the goal is to shed pounds.



Tip: Always eat breakfast to kick-start metabolism and try eating mini-meals throughout the day to keep your metabolism fired up.

2.To keep your metabolism up, you MUST eat. Conventional wisdom dictates that when you first start dieting, the less you eat, the better. While it's true that you often should eat less, eating too little can backfire over time. As your body composition changes, your body will think it's starving, which can make it hold on to fat. (The process actually has to do with excessive release of a hormone called cortisol, but you don't need to know the details, so we'll just call it fat.) To avoid this, most experts agree that over time, you shouldn't eat fewer than 1,200 calories per day for women, 1,500 for men. If your daily diet consists of fewer calories than that, consider eating more.

Tip: Keep a food diary to track calories.

3.You need more calories when you work out. If you're exercising while following a low-calorie eating plan, you'll need to take into account the calories you're burning. That's because it's now easier to enter starvation mode. Let's say you're burning 400 calories and only eating 1,200 to 1,300 calories per day. This means you're really only taking in 800 to 900 calories per day before you begin to calculate how your body composition is changing. Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat does, so as your body changes, you need to eat more to keep the weight loss coming.

Tip: Drink an after-workout recovery drink like P90X Results and Recovery Formula®. After hard workouts, its calories are utilized so quickly by your body, some people refer to them as "free calories." They really aren't, but those calories will ensure that your muscles (and metabolism) recover quickly.
And remember this:

Figuring out to what to eat, how much to eat, and when to eat isn't easy. That's why people often refer to losing weight as a journey. It takes a few different paths to get there. Sometimes you have to adjust your ratio of protein, fat, and carbs to start losing again. Or adjust your calorie level, which can include eating more to lose weight.

Tip: Use the Team Beachbody® Meal Planner. It can make figuring out your calories much, much easier. You can personalize an eating plan that takes your workouts into consideration.



Finally, if you're still on the fence about needing to eat more to lose weight: You might be thinking, "How come I know some really skinny people who barely eat?"

The answer is this: You can eventually lose weight by not eating. It's called starving. Reduce calories enough and your body will start breaking down its muscle tissue, and this will result in weight loss. However, it makes your body increase its emergency hormonal responses, which also causes your body to be stressed and hang onto fat, making it.very easy to gain the weight back again.

So I hope you take this thought away with you today: The idea is to keep your metabolism revving and running. This will help you get healthy and stay strong. Eat the right amount of food to help your body continuously burn calories, and you're more likely to shed those unwanted pounds.

Crash Diets vs. Discipline, Motivation, and Lifestyle Change

By Stephanie S. Saunders

Elvis Presley, the king of rock 'n' roll, pelvic thrusts, and peanut butter and bacon sandwiches, was rumored to have once heavily sedated himself for 2 weeks in an attempt to continually sleep and lose weight. While he might have removed the bags from under his eyes, Elvis' crash diet did nothing to help him cram into that jumpsuit, and he ended up gaining 10 pounds. As far back as the binge-and-purge bacchanalias of ancient Rome, people have been trying to lose weight in the fastest and sometimes strangest ways. With tactics ranging from subsisting on baby food to ingesting live tapeworms, crash diets promise quick and efficient weight loss, but at what price?



What is a crash diet?
A crash diet is any nutritional plan that severely reduces calories, is nutritionally restrictive, and is supposed to promote quick weight loss. Often the diet focuses on one food group or type, and is not usually intended for long-term use. Any diet that goes below 1,000 calories a day is considered extremely dangerous, and just one step away from starvation.

What is the benefit?
Do crash diets actually work? According to Dr. Susan Roberts, a professor of nutrition and psychiatry at Tufts University, crash diets are (at least temporarily) effective for "disinhibited eaters," or those who are easily tempted by food. (That's all of us, isn't it?) According to her study, by dropping weight quickly, those who are easily discouraged by slow and steady weight loss get instant gratification, and therefore, results. The problem, of course, is that you can't maintain a crash diet forever. Donald Hensrud, chairman of preventive medicine at Mayo Clinic, said: "People could eat nothing but jelly beans and if they were eating just a small amount, they would lose weight. You might be able to get away with it for a period of time, but the more restrictive the diet is—and the longer you follow it—the greater the risks."

What are those risks?
The first issue is usually nutrient deficiency, as one cannot get all of the nutrients he or she needs from a bowl of cabbage soup. It is difficult to get a sufficient amount of calcium, vitamin D, or iron on a very low-calorie diet. You can do permanent damage to your organs by not providing them with their required fuel. If you lose too much fluid, you can damage your electrolyte level, and become easily dehydrated. We know low levels of potassium and sodium can cause cramping, fainting, and even heart failure.

The next thing you're looking at is a slower metabolism. Your body is an extremely efficient machine and will slow down its resting metabolic rate in order to survive longer. This is how our ancestors made it through famine, floods, and sometimes, just winter. Over time, you will lose lean muscle without the proper nutrients to maintain it, which will lower your metabolism even further. With that slower metabolism comes decreased energy. Not only will that affect your home and work life, it will destroy your workouts.

Should you continue on the super low-cal path, you are likely to suffer catabolic reactions. You would expect to lose weight as long as your metabolism uses up more chemicals and energy than it is replacing, right? In fact, weight loss may occur for a short period resulting not from fat loss, but from breakdown of cell structures, organ tissue, bone, and muscle. The body then uses up structural proteins in order to survive. So, yes, your body will begin to consume itself.

Your emotional state will usually alter with the lower number on the scale, which is not quite low enough to compensate for how yucky you feel. Irritability, depression, and lack of patience are very common with calorie restriction. Your sleep state will be affected, as severe caloric restriction often disrupts sleep patterns and can cause insomnia. Lack of sleep, in turn, will not assist in muscle recovery, your mood, or your energy. And eventually when you return to a rational eating plan, your body will be all the more likely to store everything you eat, as it thinks it has been starving for the last few weeks.

Why, why, why?
So, why on earth would anyone do this to themselves, especially if it means only drinking lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper? The quick fix. We are a drive-thru nation that believes instant gratification is our birthright. If we can get it in a pill or hire someone to do it for us, we will. We also live in a culture obsessed with thinness, and we seldom take into consideration how much lean muscle can actually do for us, and how much better it looks than "skinny fat." So we torture ourselves with the "path of least resistance" and end up right back where we started, often before that high school reunion or Christmas party actually happens. And we still can't fit into that darn dress.

What is the answer?
The answer is, as it has been for centuries, to make a decision to change your life, and then to have the motivation and discipline to stick with it. Eat a clean diet, somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 calories depending on your needs, split up over 5 to 6 meals a day with an appropriate balance of protein, carbs, and fats. Perform intense exercise that burns 500 to 800 calories a day, creating a greater caloric deficit, and speeding up your metabolism. Drink lots of water; get 8 hours of sleep; and try to avoid alcohol, refined sugar, and processed foods. Losing 1 to 2 pounds a week is not really hard to figure out, but it does take hard work and commitment to a plan.

Conclusion
Cyril Connolly, the famous writer and critic, once said, "The one way to get thin is to reestablish a purpose in life." And truly, that is the kind of commitment it takes. If weight loss were easy, everyone in the world would pop a pill, subsist on only bananas, and walk for just 30 minutes a day. If weight loss were easy, we would not be inundated with Jenny Craig® commercials and weight loss-based reality shows. If weight loss were easy, all of those New Year's resolutions would have come to fruition. But diets alone, especially the crash variety, do not work. So stay off the diet merry-go-round and stay committed to the control of your health and your appearance. Just because Elvis couldn't lose weight without extreme means doesn't mean you can't. Of course, you probably can't get paid thousands to wear a rhinestoned spandex jumpsuit, so it evens out.

10 Ways to Break Bad Health Habits

By Amy Ludwig

Choosing a healthy lifestyle is not, unfortunately, one of those "set it and forget it" decisions. Don't we all wish it were? Instead, it's a result of many smaller choices we make every day—with every meal. Every snack. And every workout.



You always start the day with the best intentions. You eat a thoughtful breakfast. You pack a sensible lunch, and even remember to bring it with you to work. But then comes mid-afternoon, a dip in energy, and lowered self-control. If you're already in that weakened state and you hear that there are cupcakes in the office for someone's birthday, well, in the words of Donnie Brasco, "Fuhgeddaboudit."

Healthy habits only become habits when you do them more than once.

Instead of setting yourself up to fail, you can set yourself up to make good choices by planning ahead. That will give you a fighting chance to succeed. So where do you begin?

Identifying your weaknesses is the first step. Figure out where you're likely to slip up, and you can take action to prevent it. Here are 10 common problems that derail many of us, and suggestions for how to fight back.

1.Avoid eating late at night. Your metabolism slows down when you sleep, so late-night calories are harder to burn off.
Fight back: Eat small meals or snacks every 2 to 3 hours throughout the day. Time your meals so that you stop 2 to 3 hours before you go to bed.

2.Don't grab fast food on impulse. You're already on your way to avoiding this one if you're eating regular small meals and snacks. You'll keep your brain fed, so it doesn't shut down.
Fight back: Pack healthy snacks and bring them with you. These can be simple—a small handful of raw almonds is a better choice than a greasy burger.

3.If you shouldn't eat it, don't put it in your shopping cart. Seriously. If you put it in your shopping cart, it comes home with you. And you know it's there.
Fight back: It's much harder to eat junk food in a moment of stress or weakness if it's not in your house.

4.If you're tempted by junk food, look in the mirror. Think it through—those calories will go somewhere. And probably somewhere you've spent hours in the gym trying to slim and shape. So a bad choice now will just mean more effort later.
Fight back: Reach for a piece of fruit instead.

5.Don't eat for comfort. If something gets you stressed or upset, take a breath, not a bite. Knowing that you're taking good care of yourself, even when you're down, will help you to feel better more quickly.
Fight back: Try calling a friend, taking a 10-minute walk around the block, or playing with your pet. Or working out.

6.Find healthy versions of your favorite guilty pleasures. Stock your kitchen with those instead.
Fight back: Craving ice cream? A creamy low-fat yogurt could hit the spot. Want the crunch of chips? Try snacking on fresh red peppers, sliced jicama, or baked kale chips (they're easy to make, and astonishingly tasty).

7.Pay attention to portion size. You don't need to eat heaping helpings.
Fight back: If you absolutely must have ice cream, grab a teacup instead of a bowl. You'll get the taste you crave, but in a much smaller serving.

8.Make exercise a priority. It's easy to let it feel optional and get lost in the shuffle.
Fight back: Plan your workout schedule for the week and stick to it. If that feels too daunting, start by committing to 1 day. Then try planning for 2 days, and build from there. When you start seeing results, you won't want to stop.

9.Just work out—don't ask yourself if you want to. Most people (myself included) would answer "No."
Fight back: Just commit, get in your workout clothes, and Push Play. You'll be sweating, happy, and proud of yourself before you know it.

10.Must have chocolate? Reach for chocolate Shakeology®.strong> It's made with real cocoa, so it hits that chocolate nerve—as well as providing essential vitamins and minerals to nourish your body, and cleansing prebiotics to gently eliminate built-up toxins from eating processed foods.
Overall, keep your larger goal in mind: to live a healthy, fulfilling life. Let that aim inform your individual choices. They'll transform from problems into stepping stones on your path to success.

A great way to remind yourself to make good choices throughout the day is to start it off with Shakeology for breakfast. Not only is it a nutritious, healthy meal, it will help curb your cravings and increase your energy.