Living Life with Fitness and Nutrition
Throughout the last twenty years I have worked out no less than five days per week utilizing weight training, cardiovascular conditioning, stretching, and outdoor activities which has taught me more than anything what works for me! The thing that I find most fascinating is that there are huge discrepancies among people and what they do or don’t do in the gym and with their nutrition. Fourteen years of personal training has also led me to these beliefs.
The three general classifications of people with regards to exercise are
-workout rarely (0-1 times per week)
-workout sparingly (2-3 times per week)
-workout all the time (4 or more times per week)
Which one do you fall into? I believe that exercise is the best medicine and the key to living a healthy life and actually living. Let’s face it nutrition is the number one thing you can fix to lose weight or improve your internal health, but external health is a direct result of what you do to improve your muscle function, and muscle strength. What I mean by this is if you want to actually live (move better, run, walk, pain-free, get up off the floor quickly) you need fitness as an active part of your life. To start you need to access where you are at now and then work your way to four or more workouts per week. Workout routines must include all components of physical fitness (body composition, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and cardio-respiratory fitness).
Nutrition is a vital part of how fast you see results whether you are trying to build muscle, burn fat, or climb a mountain, and there is no subject in the world more confusing than nutrition. Everyday you see advertisements for KETO, LOW CARB, HIGH FAT, CAVEMAN, HIGH PROTEIN, NO DAIRY, NO SUGAR diets which leaves you wondering which direction you should actually go.
The three classifications of people with regards to nutrition
-Eat randomly with no rhyme or reason, whatever they want whenever they want
-Eat a relatively balanced diet with some fruits and vegetables and filling in the rest with whatever they want
-Eat a strategic diet based off of their goals and tracked to make sure they are falling in the correct ranges that they need to reach their goals.
Again, much like the weight training and working out section you must look where you are now and strive for the strategic diet designed specifically for you.
I wanted to write this blog to open up your mind to seeing how close or far away you are from your long term goal. The key to longevity in life will be an evolution of your workouts and your nutrition to keep you moving towards improvement. I always push the concept of trying to get one percent better daily, or three hundred and sixty-five percent better every year!
In closing through the years I have tried to stay neutral to diet trends and let them have their spotlight, unfortunately I have seen many friends, family, and clients fall victim to diets that cause them to lose mass amounts of weight only to gain it all back in a short period of time. Sometimes they gain more weight than where they started. I have personally tried many of them to be discerning but in closing I will share with you what works extremely well for me.
I am a 220lb bodybuilder (non-competitive) ex athlete who has had many injuries and setbacks which force me to do things a certain way, but my goals are to stay strong as hell and be pain-free. Previously I wanted ten percent body fat and have six-pack abs, but at 33 years old that matters much less to me now.
I do intermittent fasting where I start eating at noon or one pm daily and then I stop eating at seven pm at night. This is a six or seven hour feeding window. Sometimes I have breakfast with my wife, and sometimes I don’t fast, but primarily I do 95% of the time. During my fasting window I consume black coffee with Ceylon cinnamon to give my body antioxidants, caffeine, and keep me moving forward. When I break my fast I will usually do a protein shake with Opti-greens 50 and Opti-reds 50 which includes digestive enzymes, fruits and vegetables, probiotics, and more to start my day off feeling great. This gives me the five servings of vegetables I need for the day and any more is just bonus. Throughout the rest of the day I will generally have two snacks, the first is nuts and a banana, and the second is raisins and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or overnight oatmeal with all kinds of bonus super-foods. I will than have a lunch which varies from week to week and a dinner that changes nightly but generally is 6 ounces of protein with some vegetables and a carbohydrate source. Once dinner is over I stop eating for the day.
I workout with a heart rate monitor and I make sure during the workout I earn at least 120 my zone performance points and I get my heart rate raised to 85% of my max for at least ten minutes. It is scientific, backed by research and works very well. My five day per week workout included five or six bodybuilding movements for sets followed by a few three or four exercise circuits for sets, followed by ten to twenty minutes of steady state cardio or intervals depending on the day. I also stretch and foam roll post workout almost daily, aim for seven to nine hours of sleep, and get a one hour massage every three weeks. That is just some of what I do to stay healthy and moving forward always. If you ever want to find out more about what I do, do not hesitate to ask. I am here for you. Make sure to enjoy your life focusing or progress over perfection, but keep moving forward and keep getting better!
Onward and upward always,
~Mike CEO FORMAL FITNESS TRAINING
Michael Hartman
My mission is to give personal training participants a safe and effective workout designed specifically for their goals. Dealing with many sports injuries over the years taught me how to come back stronger every time. The competition is with yourself... Strive to bring out your best self and get better every day!
