When it comes to exercise, one thing I am not is self-motivated. You’ll never see me heading to the gym on my own or sprinting out the door for a run. And even though I have several sets of hand weights at home, they’re covered with a thick layer of dust.

And yet, I exercise almost every day. That’s because I recognized my weakness and built a support system that will help me get out and get moving, even when I don’t feel like it. Here’s how I did it, and how you can too:

1. Hire a trainer.

I’ve been training with Karen for over two years now, and she’s a miracle worker. In two half-hour sessions per week she takes me through a full resistance workout — and she makes it fun. I love being able to chat with Karen while I work out, and having a set day and time makes it less likely that I’ll bail (especially since I paid for the session!).

The best way to find a good personal trainer is to ask at your local gym. Personal trainers should be certified through a reputable certifying body such as ACE (American Council on Exercise) , ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine), or NSCA (National Strength and Conditioning Association). Trainers can be expensive, so if you can’t afford a full hour-long session, ask if they offer half-hour sessions, or give discounts if you purchase several sessions at once.

2. Take a class.

My trainer offers a fitness yoga class, which I take every week. Again, having a set date and time when I’m expected to be there (and the fact that I already paid for the class) inspires me to get out the door. It’s also motivating to know that I’ll be spending an hour with a group of fun people while getting fit.

You can find classes in aerobics, yoga, spinning, kickboxing and more at the YMCA, through your local gym, and in private studios. Health Club Directory lists fitness centers nationwide, though they don’t have them all. Also, try Googling for “exercise class” and your city, or checking your Yellow Pages or newspaper classifieds.

3. Get a buddy.

Three days per week, I get up earlier than I would like and hit the gym with my friend Shawna. We work out on the treadmill and elliptical trainer, then do free weights and the weight machines. (And sometimes we go to Starbucks afterward!) Knowing that a friend is expecting me to accompany her to the gym keeps me from hitting the Snooze button and logging in another hour of Zs.

If you don’t have a friend who would like to go to the gym or out for a power walk with you, look for people interested in getting fit with others on www.meetup.com or www.craigslist.com.

4. Get a VIRTUAL buddy.

This isn’t fitness-related for me, but it really helps up my motivation for work — and it could help YOU up your motivation for working out: Every week I have a “boot camp” session with a writer friend of mine. Each hour, I call her and we tell each other what we accomplished in the last hour, and what we plan to do in the next hour. Knowing that we’ll have to answer to one other motivates us to get done what we said we’d get done.

This can work for exercise as well. For example, you can schedule three days per week where you’ll call a friend and tell each other about the workouts you did that day. You can also set goals; for example, you both may want to lose five pounds in a month, and every week you can update each other on your progress.

5. Twittercize.

If you aren’t familiar with Twitter, it’s a micro-blogging platform where people keep in touch with their “followers” by posting tweets of 140 characters or less. If you follow someone, that person’s tweets will show up on your Twitter home page, or you can use free programs like Tweetdeck to organize the tweets of the people you’re following into convenient groups.

So why am I waxing eloquent about Twitter? Because my buddy Ron Doyle has developed something called Twittercize. If you follow him at twitter.com/twittercize, you’ll see that he tweets one-minute exercise that you can do right then and there. At any given time, you might end up doing 30 calf raises, one minute of “Twitter Feet,” or 10 “Sky Frogs.” When these tweets flash across your screen, you’ll be inspired to get fit one minute at a time!

Stay healthy,

Linda

Posted in Linda Formichelli | COMMENT ON THIS BLOG

For the longest time, I was a breakfast person: Every morning I would make whole wheat toast with peanut butter and berries, scrambled eggs, whole wheat French toast, or multigrain blueberry-walnut pancakes.

Then, one day, I suddenly couldn’t stomach the idea of eating in the morning. And I was also too busy for lunch, so I would get up every day, skip breakfast and lunch, and not eat until around 4 pm — and then pig out on fatty foods because I was ravenous.

You’d think my weight would go down from eating one meal per day, but if anything, it went up. That’s because when we don’t eat, our body thinks it’s fasting and slows down your metabolism, so we’re burning fewer calories than usual. In addition, we tend to make up for skipping meals by overeating later in the day (like I did).

In a National Weight Control Registry study of people who have successfully lost weight and kept it off, 78% are regular breakfast eaters — so breakfast is clearly important. But what you eat is also important: According to an article in the Washington Post, recent research found that sedentary, obese women lost almost five times as much weight when they ate a big breakfast with carbs and lean protein as they did when eating a restrictive low-carbohydrate diet. The “big breakfast” included milk, three ounces of lean meat, two slices of cheese, two whole grain servings, one fat serving and one ounce of milk chocolate or candy (to help reduce cravings for sweets later in the day).

And in a study in the International Journal of Obesity, one group noshed on a bagel every morning for eight weeks while a second group had two eggs every morning for eight weeks. At the end of the study, the egg group showed a 61% greater reduction in BMI, a 65% greater weight loss, a 34% greater reduction in waist circumference, and a 16% greater reduction in percent body fat.

It’s clear from these studies that a healthy breakfast needs to have enough lean protein, fiber, and fat to keep us full until lunchtime — but all of this information isn’t much help when the thought of food in the morning makes your stomach turn. Why do some of us just not want to eat in the morning? My life coach theorized that I might be too stressed in the morning to be hungry, and the Washington Post article states that we may not feel like eating because our levels of the brain chemical serotonin are highest in the morning, which means our craving levels are at their lowest. (When serotonin levels dip during the day, cravings start.)

But whatever the reason for not wanting to eat, it’s important to have something to start off the day. I developed this recipe for an easy-to-digest smoothie that has enough protein, fat, and fiber to get me through to lunch:

Linda’s PB&J Smoothie (Makes 2 smoothies)

Add to the blender:

1 banana
2 heaping tablespoons natural peanut butter
1 tablespoon honey
2 teaspoons ground flax seed
1 1/4 cups frozen blueberries (frozen cherries also work well if you can find them)
3 cups 1% lowfat milk (or more depending on how thick you like your smoothie)

Blend on High for 1 – 2 minutes, pour, and drink!

Are you a breakfast person? What’s your favorite healthy breakfast? If you’re one of those can’t-eat-in-the-morning people, what do you do to keep your energy up until lunchtime? Please add your opinions and experiences to the Comments below!

Stay healthy,

Linda

Posted in Linda Formichelli | COMMENT ON THIS BLOG

The Breakfast Dilemma

For the longest time, I was a breakfast person: Every morning I would make whole wheat toast with peanut butter and berries, scrambled eggs, whole wheat French toast, or multigrain blueberry-walnut pancakes.

Then, one day, I suddenly couldn’t stomach the idea of eating in the morning. And I was also too busy for lunch, so I would get up every day, skip breakfast and lunch, and not eat until around 4 pm — and then pig out on fatty foods because I was ravenous.

You’d think my weight would go down from eating one meal per day, but if anything, it went up. That’s because when we don’t eat, our body thinks it’s fasting and slows down your metabolism, so we’re burning fewer calories than usual. In addition, we tend to make up for skipping meals by overeating later in the day (like I did).

In a National Weight Control Registry study of people who have successfully lost weight and kept it off, 78% are regular breakfast eaters — so breakfast is clearly important. But what you eat is also important: According to an article in the Washington Post, recent research found that sedentary, obese women lost almost five times as much weight when they ate a big breakfast with carbs and lean protein as they did when eating a restrictive low-carbohydrate diet. The “big breakfast” included milk, three ounces of lean meat, two slices of cheese, two whole grain servings, one fat serving and one ounce of milk chocolate or candy (to help reduce cravings for sweets later in the day).

And in a study in the International Journal of Obesity, one group noshed on a bagel every morning for eight weeks while a second group had two eggs every morning for eight weeks. At the end of the study, the egg group showed a 61% greater reduction in BMI, a 65% greater weight loss, a 34% greater reduction in waist circumference, and a 16% greater reduction in percent body fat.

It’s clear from these studies that a healthy breakfast needs to have enough lean protein, fiber, and fat to keep us full until lunchtime — but all of this information isn’t much help when the thought of food in the morning makes your stomach turn. Why do some of us just not want to eat in the morning? My life coach theorized that I might be too stressed in the morning to be hungry, and the Washington Post article states that we may not feel like eating because our levels of the brain chemical serotonin are highest in the morning, which means our craving levels are at their lowest. (When serotonin levels dip during the day, cravings start.)

But whatever the reason for not wanting to eat, it’s important to have something to start off the day. I developed this recipe for an easy-to-digest smoothie that has enough protein, fat, and fiber to get me through to lunch:

Linda’s PB&J Smoothie (Makes 2 smoothies)

Add to the blender:

1 banana
2 heaping tablespoons natural peanut butter
1 tablespoon honey
2 teaspoons ground flax seed
1 1/4 cups frozen blueberries (frozen cherries also work well if you can find them)
3 cups 1% lowfat milk (or more depending on how thick you like your smoothie)

Blend on High for 1 – 2 minutes, pour, and drink!

Are you a breakfast person? What’s your favorite healthy breakfast? If you’re one of those can’t-eat-in-the-morning people, what do you do to keep your energy up until lunchtime? Please add your opinions and experiences to the Comments below!

Stay healthy,

Linda

Posted in Linda Formichelli | 2 Comments

Hi! My name is Linda Formichelli, and I’m the newest blogger on the Designer Whey blog.

I’ve gone through a lot of life changes lately: I recently turned 40, and my husband and I adopted a baby boy. As an “older mom” (though I don’t feel old), I’m interested in both boosting my energy and in keeping off the pounds that tend to creep on with age. My challenge — as for many working moms and dads — is time. It’s hard to find time to exercise and cook healthy meals when you work all day and take care of a baby at night. In this blog, I plan to explore ways to fit fitness into even the most hectic days.

Right now, I have even more of a motivation to get fit: I’ll be profiling a martial artist for a major magazine, and as part of the article I’ll be attending a couple of very intense martial arts classes next month. I have five years’ experience in the martial arts, but I quit last year when I hurt my back — and since then, my cardio has consisted of — well, pretty much nothing. As a point of pride I’d like to kick some butt in these classes, so I’ve made it my mission to build up my endurance and add some lean muscle — and to keep going even after my article is done.

Another challenge for me: nutrition. I’ve been writing about health, fitness, and nutrition for newsstand magazines since 1997, so I know what I should and should not be eating. But knowing and doing are two different things! I love eating at restaurants, and I’m sure you know how difficult it is to eat healthfully when you’re confronted with a menu full of creamy sauces, fried foods, and desserts that are bigger than your head.

My final challenge: I have an anxiety disorder, and it’s easy for me to get overwhelmed with stress. Stress has been implicated in causing health woes (like irritable bowel) and in making illnesses worse (like asthma). Stress also makes it difficult for us to lead healthy lives — after all, when we’re feeling stressed and rushed, it seems much easier to pick up a burger and shake at the drive-through than to create a healthy meal — so I’ll incorporate healthy mind-body tips into my blog posts.

I’ve already started making positive changes, which I’ll talk more about in future posts — and I’ve lost seven pounds in the last month!

My blog posts won’t be all about me: As a health writer, I have access to a lot of studies and experts, so I plan to include information you can use in every post. As I get healthier, hopefully you will too!

Stay healthy,

Linda

Posted in Linda Formichelli | 6 Comments