When I was at the height of my sugar addiction I was with my sisters and daughters in Ashland, Oregon for the Shakespeare Festival. We had stopped at the local chocolate store before a play.  My sister, Gigi and I each bought the same thing and while we were eating it she said, “It’s too rich!” I thought [...]

“He who waits until circumstances completely favor his undertaking will never accomplish anything.” Martin Luther If you want to banish belly fat, you’ve got to do something fairly counter intuitive: eat. Research shows that dieting too intensely or tracking every morsel too closely creates the perfect conditions for adding belly fat, not subtracting it. A [...]

Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.  -Buddha Back in the late 80’s when the “fat free” weight loss trend was just starting to get a good hold my sister-in-law said to me, “Fat makes you fat.  You can’t get enough fat out of your diet.”  It sounded so logical [...]

  FitMania’s LEAN for LIFE 90 day Challenge Final Judging in Progress Challenge Celebration Sat June 1 at FitMania Attend the Challenge Celebration Sat June 1 at FitMania to: – Find out winners in multiple categories – Enjoy a FREE all-comer’s boot camp outside at 9am. Bring shoes! – Enjoy FREE food Friends and family [...]

The best kept secret to losing weight is to eat.  For decades we have thought to lose weight you had to eat less. That is a bad idea.  If it worked everyone would be thin because everyone has tried cutting calories at least once right? The real secret is not how much you eat but [...]

One of the keys to weight loss and over all fitness is to eat, eat, eat! Being hungry is bad. When we get hungry we are more likely to reach for the wrong things.  Especially if we are busy.  It is important to eat just before you are hungry.  That means we eat 5 – [...]

Unless you have had your head buried in a Big Gulp you probably already know that there are a litany of reasons why soda is bad for you. It’s nothing but sugar water. It’s devoid of any nutritional value. It leads to obesity and diabetes.  Here are things you might not know. Drinking non-diet soda [...]

“All of us are self-made, but only the successful are willing to admit it.”   Earl Nightingale All food falls into one of the three macronutrients :  protein, carbohydrates or fats.  Today’s topic is protein, whey protein in particular, but I want to be clear about carbohydrates first.  Vegetables are carbohydrates as well as fruits and [...]

  Diets* don’t work.  We know it and yet they are ubiquitous.  It seems that every other person you know is dieting and the book stores always have a new program on display.   Let’s look at why they don’t work and offer an easier alternative. Main Reason Diets Don’t Work:  Going without enough food is like [...]

“Nothing great has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances.” – Bruce Barton 1. DO NOT DIET!  Finding and maintaining a healthy weight is not about eating less, it’s about eating more—more nutrition-dense food, to crowd out the empty calories and keep you full all [...]

Dieting? One of every four pounds you lose is probably muscle. Studies show that this is what happens to people who just cut calories as well as people who cut calories and do cardio exercise (you know, walking, running, cycling, hiking, etc). Not dieting? You still may be losing muscle. Adults lose 1/4 – 1/2 [...]

As I counsel with people and their eating habits one of the most surprising things I have learned is that most people are not getting enough protein. Especially people who are very active and/or are trying to lose weight.  Let me see if I can convince you to step it up.  CONVINCER #1 Protein has a [...]

My friend has a glass cookie jar with a loose fitting lid and a few left over sugar cookies.  These cookies are 13 years old and look exactly the way they did the day they were bought.  Not even mold or insects wants them.  If you put a carrot, or egg or chicken breast in [...]