fruits

Is there really such a thing as bad food?

Posted on March 15, 2018March 15, 2018 by LetlerFit

In a world where so many people think healthy means protein and veggies only because carbs (including fruit) are bad for you, I decided to dedicate this post for everyone who suffers from labeling foods as good or bad and those who follow restrictive diets.

Did you know that eating a diet that only consists of protein and vegetables can lead to health issues in a different, yet equally dangerous way as a diet consisting of processed foods, salt, and sugar? Crazy, right?

For this post I wanted to tackle some of the foods most labeled as bad:

Foods high in sodium always get labeled as bad because high salt intake has been linked to high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke. But did you know if you eat a few foods a week high in salt and the rest of your diet has adequate salt intake and you stay hydrated…those small spikes of ingested sodium WILL NOT MAKE YOU HAVE A HEART ATTACK
Another food labeled as a diet “no no” for many is sugar. But did you know that processed sugar (whole fruit is not processed sugar) once a week is NOT GOING TO GIVE YOU DIABETES. Did you know that you can do “damage control” on that sugary cheat that is high in carbs and very low in fat by consuming is within 1 hour of an intense workout? Not saying to eat it first and then punish yourself with exercise after, I’m saying if you want to go out for ice cream, donuts, or cookies and not see as much short term weight fluctuations enjoy them after you’ve worked out (again, don’t abuse this).
Fried foods are oh so delicious but oh so restricted when people go on diets, but did you know that consuming 1 fried meal a week with multiple healthy whole meals, that bad food IS NOT GOING TO GIVE YOU HIGH CHOLESTEROL.
Fiber is one of those diet worshipped foods. But did you know that if you consume high fiber vegetables/foods post workout it can become a bad food? You want fiber before or during the day not after a killer workout (messes with recovery-i’ll do a whole post on that some other time).

Moral of this blog: BALANCE and food timing is key!

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10 Simple Diet Mistakes that make your Calorie Counting to be far Less Effective

Posted on November 21, 2017 by LetlerFit

Mistake #1: Calories are not created equally. 200 calories in chocolate is not nearly as dense as 200 calories in a colorful salad with protein. We need more good quality calories that bad quality calories in order to lose weight
Mistake #2: You are forgetting about macronutrients. Carbohydrates, fats, and proteins make up calories. Carbs and protein yield 4 calories per gram while fats yield 9 calories per gram. The goal is to eat the correct amount of each eating 1400 calories out of your 1800 calorie day in just one macronutrient is not good. Each macronutrient has a purpose and requirement in our body.
Mistake #3: You are forgetting about Micronutrients. While a donut does contain carbs, fat, and protein (usually 1-2g), the calories are empty. When you consume food the goal is to look at food and think “What kind of energy is this going to give me? and what kinds of vitamins and minerals will it give me?” Vitamins and Minerals are equally as important as macronutrients….the good news is they do NOT directly add to the calorie count.
Mistake #4: Consuming too many calories. Trying to lose weight? At the end of the day weight loss is having less calories in versus calories out. Meaning we need to eat less than what our body burns in activities each day.
Mistake #5: Not consuming enough calories. Trying to gain weight? You need to be consuming more than what your body burns in activities each day.
Mistake #6: Most people do not know how many calories they should even be consuming. Advice: My fitness pal does a decent job at giving you calorie needs based on goals and activity.
Mistake #7: Overestimating calories burned while exercising. The calories the machine tells you, is wayyyyyyyy more than reality because it goes off of the machines RPM and not your body’s work.
Mistake #8: Assuming all lasagna at a restaurant is the same. Luckily most restaurants are registered with my fitness pal and give you calorie, macronutrient, and micronutrient breakdown. However, when a food from a menu does not pop up, it’s hard to find an exact match as recipe and portion size really make a difference.
Mistake #9: No Plan. Meal prepping is a must!! I know my entire week’s menu before it has even started…helps me stay focused and organized. Plus i control what goes into my food and then it becomes easier to track if need be.
Mistake #10: Drinking calories. Most people have no necessity for juices. Skip the liquid calories and go for water!

Eat Pretty: A Book Review

Posted on November 17, 2017November 17, 2017 by LetlerFit

I just got done reading this book by Jolene Hart, entitled Eat Pretty. I definitely give this one an A in the category of educating those who have no formal education in nutrition.

We are always taught that choosing healthy foods leads to weight loss and overall a more “attractive” physique. Some people are lucky enough to get taught that good nutrition helps prevent or control diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, etc. Very few people are actually taught how the foods we eat affect our complexion.

This book does an excellent job at classifying the foods that give acne, skin rashes, and more as beauty betrayers, while those those that promote a healthy complexion are deemed beauty foods. The other great job the other did was classifying the foods by season, because as most of us know, not all foods are available year round.

The other also dedicated a section to non-nutritional factors that may affect our weight and complexion like stress, sleep, water, and hormone function. Factors many people tend to look.

My favorite part about this book is how the author goes into how she perceives balance, which to me is the most important. So many books stress restriction and don’t that they miss the overall point of a balanced lifestyle.

If you are interested in learning what foods and how they contribute to our radiant skin, I definitely recommend you Buy the book here, you won’t regret it!

6 Habits That Destroy Your Otherwise Healthy Lifestyle

Posted on October 23, 2017 by LetlerFit

Creating a healthy lifestyle is all about habit. Just like good habits, there are also bad habits. Some of them are killing your healthy lifestyle journey, and you may not even realize it.

Lack of Sleep: Sometimes, life requires you to lose sleep, and that’s ok. The problem is not a few nights of lack of sleep, the problem becomes too many nights without adequate sleep. Sleep is so crucial. I know we all know how awful it feels after consistent sleep deprivation. What many people may not know is that lack of sleep triggers an increase of cortisol hormone to be released in our bodies, which may cause us to bloat and have difficulty losing weight. Without Sleep our bodies cannot properly repair the muscles we just worked out.
Restriction: Leading a restrictive diet, leads to binges and constant yo-yoing and that’s not what we want. I’ve said time and time again it’s about establishing a balance of consuming more health foods than junk foods.
No Exercise or No clean foods: Sometimes eating clean is the easiest part of the nutrition and fitness equation. For others exercise is the easy part! But they go hand in hand! Not exercising or not eating clean but doing the other is only half of it and yields not so great results.
Alcohol: Going ham on the drinks during the weekend, EVERY weekend, is KILLER to your healthy lifestyle.
Not reading nutrition labels: Never go by the front of the packaging, read the label and pay attention to the ingredients!
Not Meal Prepping: Buying “healthy” foods from restaurants is no where near as good as prepping and cooking your own foods where YOU control everything. Sometimes the cleaner options are still loaded with hidden salt or sugar.

5 Simple Ways To Cut Out Junk Food

Posted on September 27, 2017 by LetlerFit

Like I’ve said in so many of my previous posts, I never like to take extreme sides as I’m an advocate for balance. Junk food is something we need to cut down on, but don’t need to completely cut out. Here are 5 simple way to cut out junk food that work for me and many of my clients.

Do not buy junk foods at the grocery store. Keep good food in the fridge and you only eat good food.
Do not buy sodas, juices, etc. at the grocery store. We do not want to drink our calories while we are at home. Replace those beverages with water!
When you are eating out, choose between eating your calories or drinking your calories, but not both. Doing this helps you to cut back on total empty calories consumes.
Limit how many times you purchase a meal on the road or at a restaurant to 2x a week max
MEAL PREP: It doesn’t have to be complicated! Most o my meal prepping for the week takes 60 minutes to do on a Sunday. Not only does it save you money, but you are controlling what goes into your food.

4 Pieces Of Common Health Advice That Are False

Posted on August 24, 2017August 24, 2017 by LetlerFit

Eat this, not that. This is the magic potion. Drop 10 pounds over night with this. We’ve all heard it! Here are the 4 most common health advice that I hear, that are actually false!

High Fat and Protein, Low Carb is the way to go
- Actually, 45-65% of your daily requirements to feed your central nervous system, your brain, your body, and your muscles come from carbohydrate! When you eat high protein, low carb, your body is forced to make carbohydrates out of proteins. Your body HATES to do things that make it’s life harder, which I would agree with. It does enough for us, like breathing without us having to think about it, why should we want to force it to work harder? The problem with carbs is the same problem with fats and proteins. Too much of ANY carbohydrate gets stored as fat. The key is to eat just enough of each macro nutrient to hit your goals and keep your body happy!
Snacking is bad
- We all know that crash between each meal that we get, or the lack of focus at work between lunch. Well it’s our brain telling us it needs a little boost of energy (especially glucose). Snacking between meals keeps us from feeling hangry, keeps us from over eating at lunch and dinner, and keeps our bodies energized! The problem with snacking is the same problem with over eating carbs…too much is NOT good. (see the pattern?)
Counting calories is how you lose weight, because a calories is a calorie.
- Of all recommendations I hear non health professionals give to people seeking health advice its calorie counters I hate the most.
  - 1 gram of carbohydrates and protein yields 4 calories
  - 1 gram of fat yields 9 calories
  - 1 gram of alcohol yields 7 calories
- So tell me again how all calories are the same? Overall calories are incredibly important and I don’t discredit that. However, it is what makes up those calories that is MOST important! For example, an average adult consuming 2,000 kcal a day should consume
  - 1000 calories from carbs (250g)
  - 460 calories from protein (115g)
  - 540 calories from fat (60g)
Everyone should be on a gluten free diet: This one is real quick….ready? If you are not gluten intolerant….you do not have to specifically look for gluten free.

Have you watched any Netflix health docs lately?

Posted on July 17, 2017July 17, 2017 by LetlerFit

What the Health?, Forks Over Knives, Fed Up (personal fave), Food Matters, Vegucated, are just a few of the Netflix documentaries you can find on food. There are plenty more, but those are the ones I’ve seen recently. I must admit I have a love-hate relationship with most of them leaning more towards the hate than the love.

Here’s what I do love:

I love how they are bringing awareness to fruits and vegetables and how we need to increase the amount we are eating. The majority of us don’t even get half our recommended daily dosage.
I love how they shed light on the atrocities of the meat slaughtering industry, because regulations NEED to happen. The real animals are us humans, who choose not to find more humane ways to put down the meat that we do eat. Personally I am a vegetarian, I believe in doing my part, but I also do not believe everyone needs to go vegan. I’m a realist who believes it should be a personal choice as to whether or not someone decides to consume meat, and because I am a realist I know not everyone will remove or decrease the amount of meat in their diet, which is why more humane treatment of animals needs to be put in place.
I love that they shed light on the amount of garbage they are adding to meat, poultry, and farm raised fish.
I love how are they are raising awareness to the amount of added sugar the majority of us eat without realizing it
I love that they bring awareness to how food can help prevent more health issues than the pharmaceutical companies want you to believe. YOU NEED A BALANCE PEOPLE!

Here’s what I don’t like

How EXTREME and one-sided they are. The ones pushing people towards veganism more so than the ones warning people to stay away from wheat and sugar. At least the one’s I have seen about wheat frequently give the disclaimer that the negative effects of wheat more so impact the gluten intolerant. The documentaries about sugar also frequently express the need more consuming added sugar in moderation. However the ones that promote veganism, never once touch base on the idea of grass-fed or organic meat and poultry alternatives that are worth the investment due to significantly less pesticides, etc.
I do not like how they neglect to go over the differences between complete and incomplete proteins and how animal proteins are complete proteins where as plant based protein usually requires 2-3 different sources to reach the complete protein status.
I do not like how they neglect to mention that for athletes looking to get stronger, IGF1 only found in red meat is a legal and natural “steroid” in the sense that is helps our strength gains. I’m not saying you won’t get stronger if you only eat vegetarian or vegan because that is not the case. The gains can come faster though with the help of red meat, but I opt out of that natural boost.
I don’t like how they neglect to talk about the dirty dozen (aka the most contaminated fruits and vegetables) that everyone should prioritize as buying organic because of the amount of pesticides found in them.
- Peaches, Apples, Bell Peppers, Celery, Nectarines, Strawberries, Cherries, Pears, Grapes, Spinach, Lettuce, Potatoes
I don’t like how they do not touch on the subject of how easy it is to also be overweight and have health issues has a vegetarian or vegan. I personally know way too many overweight, anemic, or overall unhealthy vegetarians and vegans

Overall for people who do not have extremist personalities and tendencies I would recommend educating themselves with these documentaries, however also keeping in mind that there are 2 sides to every story. I wish they would make them with less of a bias. I believe they’d have more success reaching larger audiences if they did. I also believe they would make meat-eaters understand the POV of vegans and vice versa. We all know that vegan or meat eater that tries to make the other side feel like terrible people for choosing to eat or not eat meat. We need to educate people on both sides and THEN let people decide and respect their decisions! The lesson continues to be that everything in MODERATION is key!

Day 12: How to fight Burnout

Posted on June 12, 2017June 12, 2017 by LetlerFit

So this post is supposed to be advice on how to handle summer blogging burnout, but since I do not by any means consider myself a blogger, I’m going to write about summer fitness goal burnout.

Because this society views fitness in short term, versus long term, people spend the first 3-4 months of the year shedding their holiday wait and prepping for the summer only to slowly fall into a downward spiral to repeat the same toxic cycle over when the new year hits.

So, how do you break the cycle? I get that summer is hard because you have more BBQs, More vacations, more time to go to the beach, go out, but what about the goals you’ve worked so hard to achieve? How do you keep them in Check? There’s no need to avoid going out in order to avoid gaining weight.

10 Tips to Making you Summer body, your winter Body:

Keep Alcohol to 1-3 drinks a week
Don’t drink your calories in juices, sodas, etc.
Make healthy choices at restaurants! Most places have a light and fit menu with more realistic portion sizes.
Request cutting the salt a restaurant uses for the dish in half, or excluding it altogether because chances are they hide salt in the sauces without realizing it.
Don’t skip your workouts!
Replace a meal with a healthy shake! I’ve been drinking the same meal replacement every day for 4 years now and love it! Definitely helps keep me in check when I’ve gone too far passed moderation! Click here for more info!
Don’t forget your water! Avoid retaining water, skin break outs, and dehydration from the summer heat!
Swap the fried for the grilled!
Swap the processed sugars for REAL sugars found in fruits, vegetables, and grains.
It’s ok to eat the pizza and have the slice of cake! It’s just not ok to eat more of that than you do whole foods!

Health = Success

Posted on March 20, 2017 by LetlerFit

This past weekend I attended the 10X Growth Conference put on by Grant Cardone. Aside from all of the information that was given to help with our sales and overall business, one thing that really stuck to me was said by one of the speakers, Lewis Howes. He said that one of the things we really had to focus on in order to reach our goals was our health. As a fitness coach, I view health as a necessity for quality of life, preventing diseases, etc. He did not even touch on that. His perspective was if you’re body is not functioning at 100%, you cannot produce at 100%.

I agree 100% I reflected on the times I got lazy, or was half assing things (aka being lazy) it had a direct correlation to my diet. I was off my game eating tons of artificial sugars, making poor choices, and naturally I felt lethargic. Not only did I feel lethargic, but I felt embarrassed from all of the weight gain, which kept me from promoting what I do. Where as the times i’m on fire my diet is clean, I’m eating energy yielding foods, and I feel good. That feeling gives me energy and motivation to keep going, expand, reach out to more people. Health really does equal wealth, not just for the usual reasons given by people.

Reflect on yourself for a second: Do you think your current health status is affecting your success levels, your drive, etc? Do something about it! I am more than 100% happy to help! Whether its through fitness or nutrition guidance, maybe even both! I’ve got your back! Shoot me an email! LetlerFit@gmail.com

The Importance of Snacking

Posted on March 8, 2017March 8, 2017 by LetlerFit

The general rule of thumb for healthy snacking is 200-300 calorie healthy snack in between breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

The problem is most people skip out on the snacks or go for unhealthy fatty snack foods. I’ve coached over 100 people in the last 2 and a half years and I would say 50% of my clients initially skipped snacks, 25% opted for unhealthy snacks, and the other 25% were snacking the right way.

A few advantages to snacking include:

Prevention of over eating: Do you ever find yourself come 12pm about to rip your hair off from hunger? Which prompts you to go out to lunch eating with your eyes. It happens to the best of us. When we have our healthy snack, we can nip that hunger in the butt and hold off our stomach until our next major meal. Plus that overeating usually happens with carbs, and when most people scarf down an extra serving of food for lunch due to the extreme hunger, they’re met shortly after with fatigue from over spiking their insulin. Also, something we want to avoid.
steady blood sugar levels: The last statement about crashing after a meal has to do with the blood sugar levels. spiking our blood glucose level excessively over and over again can overtime lead to weight gain.
Provides nutrients: Healthy snacking provides healthy nutrients. Both macro and micronutrients. Healthy macronutrients give us energy, and who can say no to mid morning and mid afternoon natural energy boosts?

Because snacking can get boring and confusing I designed an ebook with 25 of my favorite snack creations called snack like letler to help you! All 25 recipes of mainly vegetarian snacks for only $2.99. Click here to download your ebook!