Hey Friends!

Hope this finds you well and healthier then the day before. Did you enjoy the Olympics? I love the winter Olympics. It just amazes me the incredible things people can do on skis, snow boards and skates. I am also glad my favorite show is back on…The Biggest Loser! Did you know that there is also The Biggest Loser Show in Australia? I did not realize that Bob and Jillian are also there. What dedicated people.

Well, I have taken a leap of faith and am applying to be on the Biggest Loser Show. I am going to the Detroit open casting call March 13. For me the Biggest Loser is my hope and I want to have the opportunity to share that hope with others who are bound by their obesity like I am. See, I have never been thin…never ever…I do not know what it feels like or what I would look like thin. I have not been able to connect the eating, exercise and lifestyle to get it to work for me. I believe if I got the opportunity to be on the show I could connect it all together. Believe me I have tried…I have been on diets since I have been 8 years old…that is 34 years of my life! Do you know what happens to obese children? They become obese adults and tend to have their own obese children. It’s a vicious cycle to live in. It’s not my effort and yes I have a million excuses to go along with why I am fat.

It would be so cool to be drinking the Designer Whey Biggest Loser Protein Powder while on the show! I would be so geeked to do that! Whether I get on or not is not what matters. What matters is that I draw inspiration from the crowd of people who have just as much chance as me to be on the show. I heard in Chicago that 1000 people tried out. I think there should be Biggest Loser Shows in every town. This program brings miracles to desperate people seeking answers and hope. What’s sad is that our insurance companies will pay for us to have gastric bypass and not set up programs like the biggest loser ranch.

Oh it’s been a beautiful sunny week here is Michigan. So glad to say to my kids “Go out and play!” Opened up a few windows to let some fresh air in, felt so good. I have to admit to my friends who read this… I have not been to the gym in over 2 weeks! My excuse…I was in charge of our school carnival and was extremely busy. But now that the carnival is over, I got to get back to the gym! I have to figure a way to get some equipment at home so on the days I don’t have the time to go to the gym I could at least do a workout at home, I suppose I could do that anyway and should. One of the Biggest Loser winners, Bill Germanakos suggested like on the ranch get a doctor, therapist, nutritionist and trainers…just do it. Something to consider…putting together a team of people to help us. Of course my program must include Designer Whey. Designer Whey has supported my weight loss journey for a long time now and even though I have struggles with my weight all along they have always been there to suggest and give advice… Love these guys!

I need to keep going, get back on track, and figure this out. I am about to send my oldest off to college with my eating habits and my exercises habits and I am afraid for her. She is already 30 pounds overweight. We visited the campus…let me tell you these kids have the best food available from 7 am until midnight, 7 days a week. All the ice cream they want…huge portions…all the soda pop they want…all the desserts they want…I am scared for my daughter that she will follow my footsteps…
So my friends on March 13 I hope you send me a special thought as I wait for my turn to have the opportunity of a lifetime so that I can bring that hope back home to my daughter, family and friends.

Take Care,
Camille

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Recent life situations have given me every reason to run off into a corner and pout. And yes, I did. But during that time I remembered hearing a speech that inspired me then and is helping me now.  And because I think the statute of limitations is up, it’s safe to tell this story.

Back in high school there was a very prestigious basketball camp up in Pennsylvania. But in order to get into this camp, you had to get a recommendation from a coach that WASN’T from your school. So on our applications, we created a fictional Coach named Red Jenkins, and a fake school called Union Hills Prep where he coached. They bought it and we were in.

We had a chance to see if we could hang with the best players in the east, and the answer was a resounding no.

But the featured speaker the first night was a little known college coach from the Midwest. He spoke about “saving yourself” and how it was death to an athlete. We have all fallen into the trap of saying, “I’m gonna go hard tomorrow so I’ll save myself today”, or “Next year will be my big year, so I’m going to take it easy this season.”  His message was “train like a champion today, and practice and play like it’s your last day.”

That coach was the guy we now call Dickie V, ESPN analyst Dick Vitale.  And that message can be applied to us as we try to win at the game of losing weight. We have all said, “I’ll have the Double By-pass Burger and the stroke fries today, because tomorrow it’s all salads.” Or “I’m going to hit it really hard tomorrow, so I’ll take it easy at the gym today.”

When in reality, if we’re going to diet tomorrow, why couldn’t we start today. And if we make the effort to walk through the gym door, why not go until failure, like tomorrow really isn’t there. And above all else, “Train like a Champion, Today.”

Posted in John Roberts | 1 Comment

I’m here today to talk about giving up on your goals.  It’s almost mid-February, which probably means that most of us have hit that point when our New Year’s Resolutions have hit quite close to home in how hard they are to obtain. Yeah, I want to lose 100 pounds this year.  Almost impossible unless you sit in the gym for 5 hours a day, every day, AND take a bunch of fat-burning pills AND go on a ridiculous diet.  Granted, some goals that we have have set in our champagne-induced deliriums may seem out of reach.  I’m not here to debate that.  I am here to tell you that the mind-frame you were in on the wee hours of Dec 31/Jan 1 were not necessarily impossible.  Just because you promised to change your entire lifestyle and didn’t follow through, that doesn’t mean your healthy new lifestyle doesn’t have to go to the wayside and wither and die.  Now is the time to re-affirm your decisions for a healthier and more pro-active lifestyle!  Think about it.  It’s almost Valentine’s Day, meaning that ONLY 6 weeks of the 52 have passed.  That’s still a very long time to turn your New Year’s Resolution into Fact.  Just because you’ve hit the after-New Year’s hump, as I call it, doesn’t mean that you have to quit working out and eating better.

KEEP AT IT!

I almost guarantee that you feel a little worn out from the more healthy diet and lots of exercise that you’ve been working on and have started to let go of.  Well, now is the perfect time to double your efforts! What better time than the holiday lull to start working out with your partner? Invite him or her to join you for a jog around the block (or hopefully 3 blocks by this time).  You might surprise yourself with their stamina, either strong or weak.  Invite them to a challenge of bench-pressing abilities, or to make it more exciting, a dinner date for the winner of a circuit challenge of lifting abilities of every muscle your gym has to offer.  Use EVERY machine in your gym for the purpose it serves, and see who lifts the most OVERALL weight, the total of the individual pounds lifted by each person.  The loser buys the winner a health-conscious dinner out, and maybe a movie, now that Awards season has hit us.  I hear both Applebee’s and Chili’s offer calorie & cost-conscious persons a decent menu.  A little competition never hurt anyone, and you might be shocked by what your partner is able to do after working out for 6 weeks.  So add a little competition to your diet and set some romantic stakes on the proverbial grill to spice up both your romantic and health lives.  Because although your weight loss should be mostly for you and your health, you loved one benefits just as much as you do. Let’s make the world a better place, with a little more love and a lot more healthy.

Posted in Nathanael Mulder | COMMENT ON THIS BLOG

So I just have to start by saying thank you to everyone who came out to see me and share your stories with me @ the Hi Health event in Mesa, AZ. I must say this is the best part of my journey that I have been on the past few years. I love getting the opportunity to share with all of you and acknowledge the daily battles and triumps we all have.

I am constantly trying to come up with new things to keep my diet and exercise routines interesting so that I don’t get bored and get tempted to go a astray. I know most of you can relate to that! Being that it has been colder in most parts of the country and I been traveling a lot, I have started mixing my vanilla and chocolate protein in with my oatmeal a lot but I also wanted to share with you that I have also been putting it in with my coffee. I know some of you might be thinking GROSS! However I promise you for me it makes me feel as if I getting a vanilla latte or a mocha drink from a local coffee shop.

So I’m not sure if any of you know but I am training for the Boston marathon and as a result of this I have found that I am constantly hungry. Which as you can imagine for me is a little scary. I do however realize that my body is just telling me what it is that I need so I’m OK with it. One thing that I have noticed however, and if any of you are feeling the same way it might help, is that whenever I increase the ways that I add my protein into my diet it prevents me from experiencing as often. So get creative and share with me as well because Lord knows I can always use the help!

I have a lot of really fun things coming up this summer so I hope you will continue to follow my journey as I share my ah ha’s, struggles & triumps.

Till next time- Ali xo

Posted in Ali Vincent | 2 Comments

Well, today is a great day.  Even though it rained mostly all day, and has been raining for several days now, it’s a great day because my roommates and I are finally getting settled in to our new apartment.  Yeah, we spent all last weekend moving.  Which is quite the workout, let me tell you.  6am-10pm on Friday, followed by a couple of hours on Saturday and Sunday and about 10 hours on Monday left me feeling completely exhausted.  To be completely honest, the only thing that kept me going in those long hours of heavy lifting and continuous movement was Protein Water. With everything up in the air between the 3 apartments (my roommate’s girlfriend moved in with us into the new apartment) I never really knew where to get a great thirst-quencher.  So I would grab the one thing I knew would both cool me down and make me feel like a million bucks: Protein Water.  You know, moving can be a great excuse to not follow your diet.  It’s so much easier to just stop at some fast food joint and grab a couple of $1 double-cheeseburgers then to worry about something decent to eat.  But just because you’re really busy with something is no excuse to throw your diet and all your hard work away.  If your pots and pans are packed away, at least hit up Subway and grab a healthy 6″ sandwich.  That’s what I did, and they kept me energized until I could finally go to sleep.

So think about that the next time you’re moving, or your friend asks for help moving.  Moving is a LOT of exercise and is great for your whole body, utilizing a lot of different muscles as well as a very decent cardio routine.  So don’t waste the money on expensive movers, call up a couple of friends, make sure you have a case of Protein Water to keep you hydrated and energized the whole day, and do it yourself! In the end you’ll feel so much better because you accomplished everything all by yourself, you didn’t pay someone else to do your work for you, and you got a really great workout out of it too.  Just keep at it, even when it’s physically and mentally draining.  You CAN finish that project, you just have to keep pushing yourself.  That really goes for everything in life.  That extra mile you want to walk or run? YOU CAN DO IT! Just push yourself a little harder, and when you succeed (yes, WHEN you succeed) you’ll be so proud of yourself, even through the pain.  Thanks for joining me again, and until next time, keep at it!

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That’s right, James Ellis is here to give you an awesome new tip to eating healthy. Add a little Designer Whey protein to your SALAD!!

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Adding and Subtracting for Health

Getting healthy — and staying motivated to get healthy  – requires the right balance of adding and subtracting things from your life.

For example, my life coach, Kristin Taliaferro, is big on eliminating energy drains from your life. Taliaferro recommends deleting what the coaching world calls “tolerations” — those little annoyances that make you feel resentful and demotivated, such as “The dog keeps jumping on the bed,” “I hate the way my phone rings,” and “My nails look terrible.”

Make a list of 100 of your tolerations (and believe me, it’s easier than it sounds), then pick three to get rid of this week. You’ll find that many of your tolerations have very easy solutions! When you start clearing out your tolerations, you’ll start to feel lighter, more energetic, and more motivated — the perfect state for living healthy. I did this in February and then stupidly let it lapse until just now. I deep-sixed a dozen or so tolerations and felt incredibly energetic. This week, I revamped my list and plan to remove three more tolerations.

You can also subtract activities that suck your time and your energy. If you watched one hour less of TV every night, what else could you be doing — maybe exercising? If you surfed the web one less hour a day, you’d have time to prepare healthy meals. Find out what’s holding you back and bringing you down — and subtract it.

Then there’s adding. One thing I’ve learned in my nutrition writing is that if you want to eat more healthfully without feeling deprived, concentrate on adding good foods to your diet instead of subtracting bad ones. For instance, make a deal with yourself to eat one salad a day for the next week (something I’m doing right now). And make it delicious, with grilled chicken, dried cranberries, nuts, whatever it will take for you to love your salad! Just by adding a daily delicious salad, you’re automatically eating less junk. Salad for lunch means no fast food fries, no cookies-for-lunch, no nachos loaded with sour cream and cheese.

What foods would you like to add to your diet? More water automatically means less Coke, and you can add lemon or a splash of juice to make it tastier. More healthy fats means you dip your bread in olive oil instead of slathering it with butter, that you add nuts to your salad instead of bacon bits, and that you layer avocado on your sandwich in place of mayo. And you don’t feel deprived because you’re adding yummy foods to your diet.

So: What things can you add to or subtract from your life to get healthier?

Stay healthy,

Linda

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   Recently I have been on this kick to try and find different workouts that allow me to accelerate my personal physical achievement levels while at the same time renewing my enjoyment of going to the gym on a daily basis. My main goal is to steadily increase my body and muscle mass while maintaining a solid physical appearance, which so far is going great. But I have found that if I don’t constantly mix up my routines I physically peak and the burn out rate sets in. Now you may call it something else, but everyone faces that burn out rate at some point or another. Its that pivotal moment(s) when you have come home from a ten hour day at work and still have other important things to do like studying, making time for that significant other in your life, grabbing a beer because you need one, or even catching a show that you like, and you need to decide if you want to go to the gym or not. This moment is huge, because you know you will feel like crap if you don’t go but you have no real motivation to go because it is the same old song and dance every time you go to the gym. Well, I found something as of late that has not only been a good motivator for me when this decision pops up but also an extremely effective workout tool, and that is immediate muscle compression workouts.
   One of the main reasons why this workout cycle is so appealing to me is because it gives me a break. Normally, I do heavy lifting six days a week, targeting different muscles each day. But with IMCW’s (we are moving this into an acronym) I only have to do three or four days of heavy lifting. Here is how it works. IMCW’s are simple they are just workouts that target your complementary muscles in a single more effective, more intense session. For example, normally I would work back (secondary biceps) one day and chest (secondary triceps) the very next because they are complementary muscles, and by working these muscles this way you are causing a compression on the body which slowly after time increases muscle mass. But IMCW’s are different, because you would be doing both chest and back in the same day rotating from one set of one exercise on back immediately followed by one set of one exercise on chest. You would then do this until you finished up your sets on both exercises and then move onto two more exercises, and then so one and so fourth. Then the next day you have off, to do cardio or abs or legs or just simply have it off (it is absolutely imperative that you do not work any of the muscles that you worked the day before, as you risk permanent muscle damage: work other muscles the next day or simply take the day off). I usually try to get four sets in on each exercise and about ten exercises per workout (five exercises per each of the two complementary workouts). Sometimes these workouts are referred to as blitz workouts because that is what you are doing; you are blitzing/shocking your system. Now because of this I would recommend throwing one of these cycles in a month as a break from the ordinary routine. Some people’s bodies can handle these on a constant basis, but other’s can’t so it is important to find that balance. You can do this with all the different complementary muscles in your body, like triceps and biceps, back and chest, etc. It is in fact effective and you will see results if it is done right (depending on diet and nutrition of course). Remember I am by far no expert, just an average Joe who likes to go to the gym and try new things and with anything new, I recommend that you do a little research first and make sure that this type of workout will yield the results that you are in fact looking for. Also, make sure you ease into these workouts, you will probably be at the gym for about an hour and fifteen minutes or more, and you will be working out the entire time, because there really is no rest.

Posted in Lucas Hart | COMMENT ON THIS BLOG

DW Weight Control French Vanilla

Hey Friends,

I am so sorry to have disappeared on you all. I know I had some of you wondering. All is well, Friends. I have had the busiest 3 weeks ever! I could not even find the time and energy to blog and that is NOT like me. It has been one thing after another. End of the year school things, party after party it seems, death in the family bomb…bomb…but things are looking better and I am finally feeling less stressed. I thought I would gain everything back! But I am glad to say under all the pressure and stress I stayed the same weight since I last posted. The good thing is my biggest size pant (28 Plus Size) now can be slip off with out being unbuttoned. YAY!

I could have not made it with my weight control powders.  I start every day with a glass of milk, 1 scoop of vanilla flavored weight control and 1 scoop of chocolate flavored weight control powder. Grab some fruit and coffee and I am good to go for the morning. I still carry in my car the 2GO packets. Every where I go the 2GOs go too!

I have to admit it has been hard. I am working by cleaning houses, kids school events, even selling some stuff on the worlds largest E auction site, trying to keep it all together and organized has put a lot of stress on my plate. I have to get back to my free diet plan exactly like I had it the first time I lost 8 pounds. I tweaked it too much! I was trying to be perfect and am finding I just need to stick to the plan that was working and not try to have everything perfect.

Oh geez, today I mixed up my morning breakfast and forgot it on the counter so I stopped at a gas station and they had those be slim so fast drinks…I used to love those OMG YUCK! It coated my tongue, extremely sweet, slimy in my throat and I felt sick after drinking it. I used to buy the ready made cans by the case…no wonder they never helped me.

Designer Whey Powders are pure tasting, they never leave a film on your tongue and all the powders are great tasting as well. I will never go back to anything else. I would be better off skipping the meal then drinking those awful ready made in the can get you slim very fast garbage!

Cool thing, my husband said I am looking good! I am like, huh?, I was not good looking before?? You know us girls can be touchy about that stuff! But it felt good that he commented.

I am not even sure if I posted a comment about the “Biggest Loser” Finale. I thought for sure Mike was going to win but Helen, the little turkey, pulled it off! Good for her, my fellow Michigander! I saw Helen and Tara on the cover of a magazine showing off! I would too. Oh, did you know that Jillian the trainer was ‘The Fat Kid’ in school? My daughter is reading one of her new books about hormones and metabolism. I would have never known that.

Well friends I will try not to be so few and far in-between posting! It’s not fair to you and it’s not good for me. I need my friends cheering me on.

Drink your whey it’s the only way! 

Blessings to you,

Camille

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Hey Friends!

Well it’s Monday and weight in day. Can you guess the number of pounds I lost??? If you guessed 2… nope, higher. If you guessed 4… nope, higher. If you guessed 6… nope, higher. Ok I can’t stand it. You’re taking tooooo long guessing. Drum roll please… da..da..ta..da I lost 8.5 pounds this week!

Ok I will tell you my start weight, which I hate to blog because I am embarrassed. On 4-13-09 AM I weighed 284…YIKES 12 pounds more then when I weighed before Christmas. 2 pounds off, 4 pounds on, has been a pattern of mine for a long time. When I got on my scale this morning I was doing the happy fat loss dance it read 275.5!

I contribute the weight loss to Designer Whey’s great free diet plan. It was so easy to follow because I created it for me; my schedule and my life! The plan can only fail if I let it. I was not hungry; I had good energy and was able to stick to it. In my plan I use the weight control powders and the lite and lean powders. All the flavors are great!

Remember this regime. Fuel, Move, Rest. The fuel part is the eating plan that you create, get moving simply means get your heart rate up higher then your sitting rate, rest…put your feet up for 10-15 min, go to bed at a reasonable time, get 8 hours of sleep each night. It worked friends and if it works for me it can work for you!

Take care, friends. Hope to see less of you soon. Don’t forget to watch “The Biggest Loser” this week. Let’s see who can be the biggest loser among those reading this. Post your results in the forum or comment here! Share each others success!

Camille

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