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Cory’s diet & fitness tips

Cory Everson Diet and Fitness Tips Cory is pleased to share some of the valuable knowledge she has acquired over the past several years of fitness training and competition. Today Cory continues to maintain a healthy and fit body while leading a very busy and productive life, including raising her two young children. Cory has been a health and fitness activist for many years, with a special focus on fitness and nutrition for the whole family.

• Eleven easy ways to cut 100 calories
• Five easy ways to avoid “easy foods” (ie: junk foods)
• Obesity is on the rise!
• Are you putting yourself at risk?
• How do you know if you weigh too much?
• Why haven’t traditional weight loss methods worked for me in the past?
• Diet, exercise and nutritional supplementation – keys to weight management
• Foods to enjoy daily
• Foods that contain carbohydrates and should be limited
• Suggested meal options
• Lifetime maintenance: now that you’ve lost the weight, keep it off!
• Maintenance tips

Physical activity is one of life’s most individual pursuits. Even with the help of a trainer or a class, some people find that getting fit – and staying fit – is more difficult than they expected.

Many times the difference between success and failure is doing something nearly right …or doing it exactly right. In other words, if you are going to put forth the effort you will get better results if you do it the right way! Learn the correct postures and movements, etc. for each exercise and do them correctly every time. “Results” are the best motivation for sticking with a workout program – when you can actually see and feel the difference, you are naturally more likely to continue working out because it makes you feel good all around.

Workload is the key to fitness. We call it F.I.T.
• Frequency – how often you exercise
• Intensity – how hard you exercise
• Time – how long you exercise

All three combine to give you “workload”

The latest research shows intensity to be the most important. Interestingly most people tend to exercise with too much intensity. When you exercise at a level too intense, you go from aerobic fat burning into anaerobic carb burning. Actually the easier you go when starting a new exercise program, the better the odds that you will be exercising on a regular based after a few months.

The intensity of your workout is measured by your heart rate. Your maximum heart rate is a number that is unique to you, and may decrease slightly as you age. Use the highest level you have ever reached on your monitor to determine your maximum heart rate. If you don’t have a heart rate monitor, try a stress test. Or a less efficient determination is 220-age. Mine would be 220 – 50 = 170

Beginners should try to train four days a week at the Healthy Heart Zone (50-70% of max) Three of those days should be at the 50-70% range but the fourth day should be in the Fitness Zone (70-80% of max)

Gradually increase the amount of time you are training in the fitness Zone until you are spending all of your four training days there. Then add a training day or go up to the Performance Zone (80-100% of max) one day a week.

If you are a beginner, work out at about 55% of your max heart rate for warm-up and recovery cardio sessions. For the higher intensity sessions, work out at 65% of max heart rate.
Intermediate/advanced should work out at 65% of your max for warm-up and recovery cardio sessions. For the higher intensity sessions, go up to 75%.

Always warm-up with easy activity and stretching for 10-15 minutes at just above your ambient heart rate (walking pace). Main workout should be 20 min. or more in your target zone. (You can increase this by 5 min. a week until you are comfortably working out for 45 min.)

Cool down with easy activity for 10-15 minutes just above your ambient heart rate.

In scientific research interval training has been shown to increase your metabolism post exercise much more than when you do steady state cardio. Steady state cardio is what most people usually do-keeping a certain pace going the entire time, like 6 dots up on the stairmaster or a 4.6 pace on the treadmill. Doing interval training can elevate your metabolism for 12 hours or more. When you just do steady state cardio, which is the majority of what people do, your metabolism stays elevated for maybe half an hour afterwards.

Slow, long distance aerobic exercise is commonly recommended to women because a high percentage of fat is burned in this type of training. However, if you do the numbers, a high intensity workout burns more calories even though a lesser percentage of those calories come from fat, in the end, the total fat calories burned are about the same. Intense interval training boosts your metabolism postexercise; elevated metabolisms burn more calories. To lose a pound of fat, you need a deficit of 3,500 calories. If you are burning more calories through interval training, and you are eating the same amount as you were, you’ll have a net decrease in calories, which will contribute to fat loss.

Most of us are guilty of either undertraining or overtraining- either way results are hindered. If you have been undertraining a heart rate Monitor will zip you into shape and you may be surprised by how hard you can actually work…without pain or discomfort. You may even start to experience the exercise high form endorphins that come with a certain level of intensity. If you‘ve been overtraining you may feel fatigued. Lack energy to exercise and you put yourself at risk for injury and sickness. You will discover that an effective workout doesn’t necessarily include pain, and your overachieving self will have that beeping buddy to keep you in the proper zone.

I know we have always been taught “No Pain No Gain”. Certainly for competitive world competition level sports this may be true, but for the average person, less pain means more gain because you’ll actually stay consistent with the exercise program and, by monitoring our heart rate, you’ll burn more fat and calories more efficiently.

To lighten your load, do Boot Camp. You’ll do cardio and weights in the same workout, all the while keeping your heart rate up in your target zone. The cardio consists of interval training, wherein you alternate intense periods with slower recovery modes. In between cardio sessions you do a weight circuit, which means going from one exercise to another with no rest in between and using compound movements to incorporate the maximum amounts of muscle action at once.

For Boot Camp workouts, you’ll workout between 55-75% of your maximum heart rate, depending on your level of fitness. Beginners need to stay in the lower range and gradually work up to higher levels. To determine your range, first subtract your age from 220, which gives you your approximate maximum heart rate.

If you are pregnant, out of shape, or have any chronic illnesses, check with your doctor to determine your appropriate workout intensity.

Always breath normally during your workouts. This will help increase your endurance levels and give you the maximum benefits from each workout.

Be sure to increase your fluid intake whenever you increase your physical activity – before, during and after a workout. Eight glasses per day is not enough if you are physically active.