We all love the holidays. It is the one a day we all sit around the table enjoying friends and family and stuff our selves silly, and then go back for seconds and try not to feel guilty. In order to help you alleviate some of that guilt and refrain from putting yourself back to the starting line with your fitness goals, I am going to offer you some healthy alternatives to your traditional Thanksgiving feast. These flavorful options will not only satisfy your Thanksgiving taste buds, but also help you cut down on calories and fat and help you return for seconds guilt free!
Starters: Turkey Apple Slices and Dip
I love this fun and festive turkey idea for a pre-dinner snack. Apples are full of fiber, vitamins and nutrients that are sure to keep your crowd pleasantly pleased as you put the finishing touches on your Thanksgiving feast. Simply slice various types of apples and put a small dish of dip in the center of a plate. A super easy apple dip is all natural raw almond butter. For a little more protein try putting plain non-fat Greek yogurt in a bowl and mix with cinnamon and stevia. Yum! Always a crowd favorite!
Sweet Potato Casserole
(Serves 9)
- 2 1/2 lbs peeled and cubed sweet potatoes
- 1/4 cup fat-free half and half
- 1 egg white
- 1/4 cup sugar free maple syrup
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- cooking spray
- 1/4 cup oat flour
- 1/4 cup Splenda brown sugar blend
- 4 1/2 tsp cubed Smart Balance 50/50 butter
- 1/4 chopped pecans
- 13 lb turkey
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
- 2 tbsp dried parsley
- 2 tbsp dried rosemary
- 2 tbsp dried thyme
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 2 tsp sea salt
- 2 tsp minced garlic
- 2 chopped stalks celery
- 1 chopped yellow onion
- 1 peeled orange, cut into rings
ATTN Ladies: Are you being scammed at the gym?
As an Atlanta personal trainer, I work with a variety of clients, primarily female, that vary in age, size and shape. Despite the variety of clientele, many of my personal training clients upon beginning training have one common area they would like to focus on, legs. More specifically, generally women want to focus on those tough to tone inner and outer thighs (saddle bags) to create long, lean appearance to their legs adding length and height to their physique. Acquiring the thighs of your dreams is achievable. It does take a combination of weight training, sound nutrition and cardiovascular training. The underlying scam falls into the category of toning through weight training.
Myth busted…use the abductor and adductor machine to help tone the inner and outer thighs.
It is a HUGH misconception that swarms the fitness community that you can spot tone fat away. When we hear personal training clients say, “I wan to tone these areas”. Ideally they mean remove fat and reveal the lean muscle. Though you can focus on an area of muscular growth, you can not spot remove fat and create lean toned muscles by performing strength exercises alone. That is one reason I strongly discourage the use of the hip adductor and abductor machines in a leaning a toning strength routine. These machine DO aid in helping to building and strengthening muscles in these areas; however if you are not simultaneously following a strict nutrition plan and intense cardiovascular routine you run the risk in building muscle under the already stubborn fat and in return having larger thighs than you began with. So, STAY AWAY from the weighted machines that focus on these areas of your legs and pick up the intensity through a dumbbell focused routine and by adding segments of high intensity cardio burst between leg exercises.
Try this plyometric (quick and powerful exercises) lower body routine for developing longer leaner legs:
Exercise Circuit 1 Circuit 2 Circuit 3 Circuit 4
Box Jump 20 20 15 15
Bench Step-Up 20 20 15 15
One-leg Bench Squat 20 20 15 15
Exercise Ball Hip Lift 20 20 15 15
Calf Jumps 30 30 25 25
*between each circuit, complete 5 minutes on treadmill, step mill, or elliptical at 70-75% of your maximum heart rate.
**adapted from muscleandfitnesshers.com
Home for the Holidays
Don’t let your fitness commitments go out the door as your friends, family and holiday parties begin to flood in. Between decorating, cooking, wrapping and shuffling from here to there remember to make room to squeeze you fitness routine in. By continuing with your regular workouts, you will have a jump start on reaching your New Year goals. This workout makes use of compound movements–exercises that use multiple muscle groups for maximum results–and its is designed for speed so you can finish it in 30 minutes without compromising your time invested in holiday festivities OR most importantly your results.
All you need is a dumbbell (10-15 llbs.) or medicine ball. Do as many reps as you can in 20 seconds. Rest for 10 seconds before moving on to the next exercise. Repeat the circuit 4-8 times.
1. Jump squat
2. Dumbbell single leg dead lift with a row (20 seconds each side)
3. Mountain climber
4. Walking lunge with torso twist
5. Alternating lunge jump
6. Dumbbell squat/front raise/press/curl
7. Jumping jack
8. Explosive pushups
9. Overhead Dumbbell crunch
10. Burpee
**As you become more proficient at this workout, you can bump up your interval to a 30 seconds on/15 seconds rest and after that 40/20 intervals.
Written by,
Mandy Malool ISSA-CFT, SFN
As one of Atlanta’s top personal trainers at Brad Kolowich Jr’s Personal Training Studio we frequently are asked by clients, “How to I get flat Abs?” Getting flat abs has a little to do with performing abdominal exercises yet obtaining flat abs also involves implementing these other key factors into your daily routines. Below are six quick rules to help you acquire that flat midsection of your dreams.
Flat Ab Rules
1. Try something new–our abs are just like any other muscle. You need to vary training exercises, reps and sets to continue to see progress.
2. Do Not Procrastinate–take a moment to think about not only how you train your abs, but when you train them. If you have always trained them after a weight or cardio workout, while that’s not wrong, at the end of the workout you may be short on time, energy and strength. If you feel that may be your struggle, try adding them in at the beginning of your workout.
The exception–if you are new to exercise or have a weak core, wait until the end of your workout. Otherwise, those muscles may be too fatigued to keep your body in proper form during other exercise.
3. Be stingy with the reps–just like other muscle groups, abdominals need to be strength trained. Try adding some weights and decrease your repetitions. Also, like other muscle groups, you should rest your abs for 48 hours between training sessions to allow for full recovery before training them again.
4. Find stability–abdominals need not to only be trained for mobility by doing crunches and sit-up variations, but also for stability with exercises like the plank.
5. Eat wisely–working out your abs alone will not give you the flat abs you are seeking. You must follow other healthy lifestyle habits such as eat carbs early, choose your fats wisely (no-to-low saturated fats are best), add less salt to food. As a personal trainer and nutritionist in Atlanta I often hear clients say, “I hear it is 80% what you eat and 20% what you do in the gym”. I am not sure where this misconception began but, it is 100% what you eat and 100% what you do in the gym!!!! Without complete dedication to both your workouts and diet you will never reach your full potential!
6. Get some “vitamin I”–add “intensity” to your workouts. Try decreasing rest time between sets, add burst of sprints to your cardio sessions, supersets to your lifting program, etc. All these strategies will help you put your body into that fat burning mode and help to shed some weight off your midsection.
Our moto in this gym, in order to reach the goals you wish to achieve, roots from the biblical story of Nehemiah and the work he committed to in building a wall. In Nehemiah 6:3 he says, “I am doing a great work and cannot come down.” Building the abs of your dreams must take the commitment Nehemiah did to the wall. You must climb your wall and not come down until the good work is done. So pick a rule one day at a time and climb that wall and don’t stop until your work is done. Just keep going until you’ve achieved your best!
*****IF you struggle or want to learn how to better incorporate these rules into your workout habits and lifestyle, join us for Ab-Attack on Tuesdays and Thursdays @ 6:30. Atlanta’s top personal trainer and fitness model, Brad Kolowich Jr. models and teaches these habits each session!
Written by,
Mandy Malool
ISSA-CFT, SFN
info@bradkolowichjr.com
KoloFit Training Studio
1465 Chattahoochee Ave.
Suite 800
Atlanta, Ga. 30318