In an effort to provide you guys with the best choices possible when eating on the go.  I went Mexican today that is Taco Bell.  I don’t recommend fast food, however I do understand it’s inevitable at times and rather than being a food snob I would rather give my fitness boot camp members good recommendations that help move the scale and tape in the right direction.

Taco Bell surprisingly has some good weight loss options for folks eating on the go.  For instance, the sausage A.M. griller is an excellent breakfast choice on the go.  It provides just 230 calories with only 16 grams of carbs.  Many of the items on the main menu surprised me with the low calorie count, but the carb count knocked them off my list.  Pushing sugar and insulin levels down is the key to burning fat so I moved to the gorditas.

The chicken and steak supreme gordita provide 280 calories with just 29 grams of carbs.  Other options would be the Fresco chicken or grilled soft taco.  These tacos have approximately 150 calories and only 18 grams of carbs.  You could have two chicken soft tacos and barely break the 300 calorie range and only 32 grams of carbs.

The drinks are not friendly.  All of them are loaded with sugar and range from 400-1100 calories dependent on size.  Drink water or you will be killing any good food choice made.

The key to weight loss is maintaining total caloric intake to 1200 -1800 calories per day dependent on your current weight and activity level.  This means the caloric need at each meal will range from 300-400 calories per sitting.  In addition, if too many of your meals come from restaurants make sure you’re taking a liquid or gummy multi-vitamin daily.

Helping you lose fat & stay fit,
Jeff

Weight loss and getting fit are great, but the whole reason for losing weight and getting fit is to improve your overall health.  I want to help all my clients and people who read my newsletters and blog improve their overall health.  I spoke to one of my neighbors a few months ago about the importance of probiotics and adding fermented sauerkraut to his diet.  He stopped me today to tell me what a difference it’s made for him and his wife and their auto-immune issues.  They take turmeric as well.

Everyone should eat sauerkraut or some other fermented vegetable every day.  Why?  Most Americans don’t have enough good gut bacteria and as a result sits us up for a health problem called leaky gut syndrome.   What you need to know is leaky gut syndrome can cause a host of autoimmune diseases to include arthritis, psoriasis, IBS, and others.  Improving your good gut bacteria is the first step to re-taking your health.

Fermented sauerkraut contains about 20 times more probiotics than pills and works far more efficient at restoring gut health.  Make sure the sauerkraut you eat is fermented and don’t cook it.  Cooking it will kill the bacteria that help you.

Below are just a few other reasons sauerkraut should be a part of your diet.

Sauerkraut
• Contains Vitamin A which is assist with healthy vision, teeth, skeletal tissue and skin
• Contains Vitamin C which contributes to immune health, is an antioxidant, and assist with wound healing
• Uncooked/Unpasteurized sauerkraut contain probiotics that’s extremely beneficial to the digestive tract replacing good bacteria
• Helps synthesize B vitamins for use
• Great source of fiber that protects the body from heart disease and cancer
• Good source of Vitamin K; needed for blood clotting, helps build strong bones, potentially lowers risk for heart disease and cancer
• Contains iron which increase O2 carrying capacity, increases energy, brain function and muscle function

Have you ever seen an overweight athlete or body builder?  Probably not!  Why can boxers or UFC fighters cut weight in a hurry?  The answer is high fitness level.

The higher the fitness level, the easier it is to burn fat.  Fat cells are living organisms with enzymes that store fat and release fat.  The higher the fitness level the more fat releasing enzymes the fat cells possess.  Fat releasing enzymes grow larger and larger and this means more fat is released and burned as energy both during exercise and while at rest.

Increasing fitness level requires increasing intensity of exercise, the harder you work the more your fitness level will increase, this means working hard for 20-60 seconds then recovering similar to the way we train at fitness boot camp.  This may require lifting heavier weight, doing more reps or moving faster.
Start doing short bouts of hard exercise and start burning more fat today!

* If you have health conditions like heart disease, hypertension or diabetes check with your doctor before increasing exercise intensity.  If you have not exercised in a while start slowly.

Over the past two or three months I’ve taken notice to a common theme around fitness boot camp.  The theme is life is very busy and as a result you don’t have time to plan meals and even cook dinner on a lot of nights.  It’s easier to go through a drive through and pick something up.  With that said, I want to help you make better choices when eating out.

There’s no secret that my 4:30 PM class has a fondness for Sonic.  So let’s visit fastfoodnutrition.org and find some things you can eat at Sonic and still lose weight.  I’ll be honest I went into this thinking that finding something at Sonic would not be that big a deal, but it was.  A regular Burger with a bun is between 600-700 calories dependent on what you put on it.  The enlarged buns they use carry a whopping 200 calories of nothing more than 46 grams of pure simple carbohydrates ready to drive up sugar and insulin levels and be stored as fat.  So what do you do?

You basically have about 4-5 not so great choices. You can go with the regular burger and have them put it on lettuce instead of a bun.  Now you’re down to 400-450 calories which is doable for most.  You could have the Jr. Cheese Burger for 380 calories or remove the bun and lower the carbs 32 grams and calorie count to 260.  The grilled chicken wrap could work but it’s still 430 calories and 42 grams of carbs.  The Jr. Breakfast Burrito could work at 280 calories and 23 grams of carbs.  On the drink side of the house you basically have water and milk with everything else loaded with sugar or artificial sweetener.

Let’s just say Sonic is not weight loss friendly with most meals ranging from 600-1400 calories and all are loaded with simple carbs which spell disaster for weight loss.