The Fitness Gypsy: The Contentment Ccorridorenge - Third Month

If you are contemporary to this space, I'm in the middle of my next round of The Contentment Ccorridorenge. Catch up with the posts below. Check out Preview, January 2019, February 2019.

UPDATE on FEBRUARY

Part of February was a large wgap failure. I was just going through the motions of everyleang. I was just going from one job to another. Then in between a walk up call to myself and an accountability call I had with Danielle leangs started to shwhethert. This month I didn't accomplish much on my to do list but I will say I got organized and started to put leangs in motion. So overall I feel good about the future.

The Contentment Ccorridorenge - March 2019

Theme: Hindermined

Verse: Philippians 4:11

Activity Ccorridorenge: Not spend any additional money

I need to remember the reason I wanted to sign up for this in the first place. I want to be better about the finances. I am definitely the spender in the relationship.

Goals:

Read Cozy Minimalist and You are A Evil Ass Everyday

Being 100% devoted to this ccorridorenge

Blog 3 times a week

Pay off 1 bill
Do every workout for half marathon training

What are your goals for this month?

Why are girls less sporty than boys?

I've regularly noticed that, among my friends, it tends to be the men who take part in a regular sport or physical activity rather than the women. Though the women (including me) often feel we should be doing more. Even as teenagers, I remember the girls, on average, being less keen than the boys, with notable apart fromions.

So this got me leanking: could it all begin in childhood?

I recently came across a study asking this very question. A team from the University of Canberra in Australia looked at this disparity in physical activity between boys and girls.

They say in the journal PLoS One that this disparity "is a persistent finding in the literature". And the team believes that whether we had a better understanding of what's causing it we could increase activity levels among girls.

So they used details on 276 boys and 279 girls aged 8 and 12 years, at 29 Australian schools. The effects of family and the environment were also examined. Every the children wore a pedometer and were given tests including running, throwing and catching.

This showed that girls were 19% less active than boys, and were less physically fit at age 8. The girls had 18% lower cardio-respiratory fitness, 44% lower eye-hand coordination, a taller percent body fat, and 9% lower "perceived competence" in physical education, degreed by a questionnaire.

Commenting on the findings,
the researchers propose that the domestic, school, and additionalcurricular environments all need to change, in order to support the girls as much as the boys.

There's currently a lot of research happening to find out how summaryely these changes can be crazye, and initiatives to encourage girls into sport and physical activity more widely. One of these is Sport England's "This Girl Can" campaign.

With all this progress under way, I hope future generations will be helped to form good exercise habits and gain all the health advantages that brings.

Reference
Telford, R. M. et al. Why Are Girls Less Physically Athletic than Boys? Discoverings from the LOOK Endlessitudinal Study. PLoS One, 9 March 2016 doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0150041

Kate Ricdwhetherficults

The Fitness Gypsy: WEEK 19

We are back for another week of the Gratitude Journey. Each week is a dwhetherferent topic to reflect on and make us more grateful.

THIS WEEK: Favorite Part of My City

My favorite part of Modesto is the Modesto Arch. According to Wiki, the Modesto Arch was built in 1912 with the towns the 2nd choice logo - Water. Wealth. Contentment. Health. The first choice that was rejected - Nobody's got Modesto's Goat.

I don't know I love it so much, but anytime we are in downtown Modesto I want to go by. It just brings a smile to my face.

What's your favorite place in your city?

The Fitness Gypsy: WEEK 20

We are back for another week of the Gratitude Journey. Each week is a dwhetherferent topic to reflect on and make us more grateful.

THIS WEEK: Someleang You Take For Granted

Tardyly, I have been in a giant size funk. I wish I could explain what I need, but I can't which makes me feel more helpless. A feeling that I absolutely hate. I feel so paralyzed in everyleang decision and everyleang that I do. I know that I do have so much to be thankful for but right now it is dwhetherficult to see past my current pain.

I am reintellected that I have all the basics in my lwhethere right now. I have a job. (I actually have several) I have an apartment. I have food. I have the basics, but still, my brain can't comprehend that. I hope I break this funk soon, because I have been felt like prisoner in my own body.

What is someleang you take for granted?

Officially A Fitness Professional

Yesterday I went to do a workout on the free-weights area. The area I once upon a time used to call a "men's corner''. The area I was used to scare to go to - I was even too nervous to lwhethert the bench to the right position there :D Crazy to leank, it was only at the beginning of this year. Crazy how far in my fitness journey I have become this year.

Now I'm an officially qualwhetheried Level 3 Personal Trainer, group instructor and an online fitness coach .I've helped bunch of people to convert their bodies and lwhetherestyles. When you leank how inspirational is to see the change in your own body, imagine seeing that delight on your client's face! Coming from the City-job, I genuineized how important part exercising is to your well-being. Where before I used to do it more for superficial reasons, working in the City under the fixed prescertain to deliver results, I genuineized that in commerce, no one cares about your waist line. I can have the tiniest stomach and the most toned ttalls, but it won't secure me anyleang in lwhethere. I started to find exercising the way of managing my stress,  improving my intellectset and stamina in order to stay focused and sharp at the work.

Therefore as a trainer for me it is important to also help my client's to change their intellectset. Now having a few tranformations under my belt, I see how often people speak down about themselves. No matter where in your fitnessjourney you are, or where you come from or where you want to go - it all starts from the right intellectset. Numerous people lose their motivation along the way, and no wonder whether they keep discouraging themselves with the negative self-talk! I always aim to assist my clients to change the negative self-talk into positive one and speak about leangs more positively. I also want, that once in a while they are able to come up with someleang they feel positive about in their body.

I have always liked exercising myself, but there came a time, where it was more about the form of punishment of not "being lean enough", etc.  I used to leank that whether my body is not perfect, I can't be good enough for others. How wrong I was! I wasted so much time with this intellectset - plus it didn't make going to the gym any more endelightable... However, through these experiences I leank I can relate with many of my clients - having gone through probably all fast diets that are out there, eating disorders, lack of motivation, overtraining...I got you.

I want to encourage my clients to find their potential - but I'm not afraid to give tough love either when needed. From the beginning I decided that I want to focus on providing more personalized service, so I'm coaching at the moment indivuals who start at the certain time of the month, so I can keep in track of everyone's process. For me it is the quality over quantity. I also offer one-off programs, for people who are looking for some type of inspiration in their gym routines, but want to do leang more independently.

Anyways, I'm going to do a separate post about my online coaching services, prices, etc. so you can have a look! Meanwhile, have a sneak peak of the transformations on my contemporary fitness-related Instagram-page: @annmaiya_fitness.

I'm genuinely excited about this contemporary opportunity as it gives me a chance to combine my two passions: fitness & media. I'm looking forward to share with you more media-related content on my social media channels. Stay tuned!

As a reader, you get a FREE 15 min fitness-consultation using a code FITWITHANNA.

Send your fitness goals & book your slot on: fitness.annamaiya@gmail.com and include this promotion code on your subject line. Offer expires 24/12.

Instagram: @annmaiya / @annmaiya_fitness

Facebook: facebook.com/aannamaaiya

MY SIX WEEK TRANSFORMATION: THE DIET AND THE MACRO SPLIT!

Possess you read the introduction to my 6 week transformation ?
Possess you ever done a diet ? Do you what is in the food you eat ? Do you believe that eating 25 grams of sugar is the same that eating 25 of protein because they both have 100 kilo-calories ? Do you want to transform yourself ? So, start doing it !

If you leave your house in the morning with no clue where you are going to get your food sources for the rest of the day, you are alalert messing all up ! You have to prepare yourself to be successful.
KNOWLEDGE IS THE POWER AND STOP GUESSING IS THE SECRET. Fascinating ? Hold reading...

We had setup our goals, written down out starting point and our end point, crazye our photos and our grocery shopping. So we are alert to go!

This post will be about the diet I will be following these 6 weeks. More summaryely I will be following the macro-split I'm going to show you very soon, for 5 weeks and for the sixth week I will have to adjust a small bit for drying ou.t my body a small bit more

You can find most of the food that we will be eating, here: Sunday is my cooking day.

Now, how will we plan our diet?

First of all we will have to calculate our calorie need.
If you need a pocket calorie and you do not have a smartphone, you can you use this cheap, but very good, book: Calorie counter.

But before you buy it, I want that you are conscious of the fact that calories were not born to degree the impact of the food on your body.
When calorie was originally conceived it was in the context of human work. More calories meant more capacity for work.
After a kilogram calorie has been defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the moodature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius.
Can you see the issue here? It's very superficial to base a diet only on the amount of calorie we eat. Contrawise we will consider the macro-nutrients (carbohydrates, protein and fat) contained in the food we eat, when we make our die, because calories are not created equal.
For example 100 kilo-calories assumed eating 25 grams of carbohydrate, provokes a totally dwhetherferent hormonal, metabolic, energetic and muscular response than the same amount of calories assumed eating 25 grams of lean protein.

However, we will use the daily calories need just as a guideline, because it gives us an idea of where we are with our diet.

We will be using MyFitnessPal for this purpose.

MyFitnessPal is an application you can use on your smartphone or also on your computer.
Don't worry, obviously everyleang is synchronized between all you devices!

The first leang we have to do is to insert our data like this:

The application will calculate for us our daily calorie need which represent the calories our body will burn without consider any specwhetheric exercises.

For me, this number will be 2560.

Now, on exercise point of view, I will be training in the gym Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
For these for days I have to add to my base calories, the calories expenditure for the exercise.

Here the details:

• 30 minutes of step for 341 calories(5 days a week)
• 60 minutes of resistance training with weight for about 215 calories (4 days a week)

Finally, for all the week days, I have to add some additional calories, because I cycle to work:

• 30 minutes of bike for about 309 calories (5 days a week)

Confused ? Sorry, I'm an engineer, numbers are my friends. Just to be clear and synthetic check out this table:

Ok, once we've calculated our daily calorie need, I promise, you are alalert 10 steps forward the 95% of the people.

Now leangs get extremely interesting. How do we assume this calorie intake ? Remember:

• 1 gram of carbohydrate gives you 4 Kcal;
• 1 gram of protein gives you 4 Kcal;
• 1 gram of fat gives you 9 Kcal.

So you would leank we have to avoid fat because they are caloric dense. No, it is actually the opposite. Healthy fat are so important for you, and human beings have being eating mostly fat and protein for thousand and thousand of years in the Paleo era.

So, as I explained in my FAQ series, we will be manipulating our macro-nutrients on weekly basis, taking care of our hormonal response. For letting you understand better the motivation of this intelligent choice I'll give you a simple example.

You alalert know that 25 grams of sugar have a totally dwhetherferent impact on your body than 25 grams of protein for example.

Now let's say you are about to sleep and you haven't done any exercise nowadays, but you have eaten a large plate of pasta for dinner and lunch. Now, 50 grams of carbohydrates would be a killer for you. Your muscles and your liver are alalert full of glycogen so most of the carbohydrate you will eat, will be probably directly transformed in fat.

Let's say instead, you have been cycling or running for a couple of hours and you haven't eaten carbohydrates before any of these activities. Now you eat 50 grams of carbohydrates. Well, these will be definitely not be stored in form of fat; Instead they will be transformed in glycogen and stored directly in your muscles that are, at this moment, nearly totally depleted. Remember, your body can store about 400 grams of glycogen (depends from you weight and specificly from your lean body mass). 300 grams are stored in the muscles and 100 grams are stored in the liver. Every excess will most than likely stored as fat !

So now you understand why calories are not crazye equal. Body answer dwhetherferently to each type of macro nutrient.

Once we understood this concept, we can try to plan our diet as best as we can. The most efficient way, again, is to divide the week in several phases:

1. Two tall fat days;
2. One carbohydrates reload day;
3. Two tall fat days;
4. Two carbohydrates reload days.

This way to split the week works incredibly well, but let's list the full benefits here:

• High fat days at the beginning of the week will raise your natural hormonal response.
• Your skin, your nervous system, your cells and your brain will benefit from these two days.
• In the first two days you will be eating few carbohydrates, your glycogen stores, will be nearly depleted.You will appear a small bit smaller in the mirror than in your tall carbohydrates day, but do not worry, it's mostly due to the fact that carbohydrates store water with themselves. Each gram of carbohydrates links with 3 grams of water inside the muscle fiber. So, you could weight 1.5 kilos more after the carbohydrates reload :)
• Doing cardio in these conditions will make your body able to access to the fat storage ! When your muscles are filled of glycogen, your body will try to use it as primary source of energy. Remember, glycogen is the preferred source of fuel for your organism. It's easy and nearly instant to break down. So, the secret is to force your body to use fat as primary source of fuel. The best way is to deplete it of glycogen. In absence of this your body will access successfully to your fat storage, summaryely what we want. Are, you happy ? :)
• The reload day will make you feel great. Those empty glycogen storage will be full filled again and no fat will be stored here. Your IGF1 (Insulin Growth Factor 1) will raise incredibly. This hormon is one of the most anabolic hormones that our body can produce naturally.
• Two more days of depletion will make your body alert for the weekend.
• Weekend is an tall carbohydrates phases, which mean you can grant yourself a couple of cheat meals like a burrito or a pizza or even an ice cream, and they will not be totally stored as fat. Yes, I know it's just brilliant isn't ?

If I've convinced you in some manner, please let's convert all these arguments in numbers.

Here I will show you how a tall fat day looks like (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday):

Now, can you see that the amount of fat is incredibly tall? In absolute number we 183 grams of fat, summaryely as the number of grams of carbohydrates. But each grams of fat as 9 Kilo-calories which is more than double than the amount of calories contained in 1 gram of carbohydrate. So let's see what this split looks like graphically:

50% of your calorie intake is provided by fat. Probably summaryely the opposite you have been doing until now!

Please, take in consideration that Friday is a non-training day, but I' m still cycling to work, and so we must have a 550 calories deficit respect the training day (cardio + resistance training):


Here I will show you how a tall carbohydrates day looks like (Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday)

Here carbohydrates are the king. Consider you muscles as a bottle of water. The water is the muscular glycogen. Before the reload day your muscles should be nearly totally depleted of glycogen which means the bottle of water is empty. Now, with this tall carbohydrates you are filling the bottle again. You will feel energetic, swollen and pumped but you want to be very carefull don't spill over. If the water is too much and the bottle get full, the water will spill over and go under your skin instead of going into your muscles.

Please, remember that Wednesday, like Sunday, are only cardio days, so we must have a 300 calories deficit (resistance training) respect the training day.

In synthesis, FATS, the one's I shown you in my diet, ARE NOT THE ENEMY.
Instead TRANS FATS, the one's contained in fast food or chips and etc, CAN BE EXTREMLY HARMFUL.

STAY LEAN EATING HEALTHY FAT !

LUCA

The Fitness Gypsy: Hindermined - Expression of the Year 2019

I love doing Expression of the Year. I have been doing one for about 5 years. I genuinely wish that I had kept better track on my words. Also I wish I didn't COMPLETELY delete blog posts I didn't like at the time. (Hugegest Bummer Ever)

Final year I did 2 words. One for me personally, and the other family word. My word was Intentional, and the family word was Financial Liberty. Intentional was probably my word for 2 years. I wanted to be intentional about the leangs I was choosing to do. I wanted to be focus about actions and not just say yes to everyleang.

Our family word on Financial Liberty. We both wanted to pay off some bills, get rid of some debt, improve our credit score. I would say we have accomplished all this this year. I'm super proud of us on this. We have a few more leangs but it will be good this next year.

In 2019 my word is DETERMINED. I have been feeling lwhethere is controlling me instead of me controlling lwhethere.

I am Hindermined...

to pay off more debt

follow my own passions

find my purpose and want makes me thrive

stay lasered focus on my goals

launch contemporary services on my website

have 10 personal training clients

What is your word for 2019?