Any time you commit to healthy living and a regular workout regimen, whether on your own or with a trainer, at some point most people plateau, and that’s where it’s dangerous because it’s tempting to quit.

That’s when it’s good to challenge your body by shaking things up and confusing it. When you get in a rhythm over several weeks—same days, the same exercises, the same timeframes, and the same rest between sets—your body adjusts and begins to predict exercise habits. So, that’s why it’s critical to shake things up, to blast through plateaus. You want to do what’s referred to as muscle confusion. Keep your body guessing and challenging and stimulate it in different ways.

Interval training is a great way, as well as combining rest periods. Take a stopwatch and say, “I will bench press for 1 minute straight.” Or if you’re used to resting for one minute between sets, your next few workouts try mixing it up and rest for only 15-20 seconds between sets. Maybe even consider, between sets, doing periodic wind sprints, push ups, or box steps to change it up make it fun, keep it interactive, interesting, and to keep your body guessing so you can continue on your results.

Your body will respond extremely well and emotionally, you’ll avoid getting bored and unmotivated too!

In my recent blogging I shared the importance of getting enough sleep, and how much sleep is enough sleep depends on a few factors I shared.

However, I get a lot of client questions through my training team, as well as our weekly radio shows and blogs, about sleep aids like Lunesta and other drugs.

Here’s my perspective: Any time you can achieve something naturally without relying on a chemical, you’re better off for a lot of reasons. So there’s a few great, natural alternatives I’ve found work for me (and I’m a go-getter, on the go a lot, and have trouble winding down!). One is melatonin. It’s a natural supplement and I take 5-6 milligrams (consult your family physician first, of course). Another, strangely enough, is a glass of chamomile tea before bed. Great way to relax yourself, unwind, so you can wake up the next morning and kick butt, without the side affects of medication.

However, BEFORE you consider a sleep aid, consider what you do immediately before trying to fall asleep. For instance, I know a lot of our Type A personality clients who have had to change their pre-sleep routine. They take 35-40 minutes out and go to a dark room, and unwind. Having no television in the bedroom is another way. Some have found great help with meditation or yoga before bed. The key is to figure out what works for you, to gear your body and mind down, almost like you do when you gear yourself up for a workout.

There was an interesting article that one of our callers into our weekly radio show on the K180 Wellness Network brought to our attention. The article was one she found on www.sciencedaily.com, which referenced the fact that sleep loss limits fat loss, and how conversely, a lack of sleep affects your weight loss goals.

Why is this? Most people think they get stronger in the gym and that’s wrong, your body actually gets weaker in the gym. Not true, actually. In fact, it’s when you rest and sleep that your body rejuvenates itself. If you are not sleeping enough your body doesn’t get a chance to repair itself, so it stays in a more catabolic state and it changes your hunger hormones, adrenaline levels, lepta levels, serotonin and dopamine levels in your brain.

It affects your internal chemistry because your body is not having a chance to gear down and reset itself for the next day. REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is the deep sleep you may have heard of; it’s when your body produces your GH levels, growth hormone levels, igf1, testosterone, through which the body heals itself, resets itself and rewires. When you’re not getting that deep sleep, you are literally changing your body chemistry and composition, and not putting your body in the best position possible for the optimum active lifestyle.

The old adage was to get 8-10 hours of sleep each night. I think that depends. I’m an entrepreneur, type A personality, and ADD, so to me sleep always seemed like the cousin of death. Truth is, it’s critical to optimum health. I heard a doctor address it once by these terms: Try going to bed and waking up at without an alarm the next morning for a few days. On average, the amount of sleep your body automatically takes is what it’s saying it needs. That makes sense: We all have different chemistry and metabolic rates, so we all have slight variations in the amount of rest required.

Last blog, we addressed why most people get nauseated at times during a workout. Today, let’s address the second part of this question we get a lot from clients through our trainers, radio network and blogs: Why you might experience lightheadedness.

The lightheaded feeling is almost always a result of low blood sugar. This is very common, in fact, with people who work out first thing in the morning. They roll out of bed and go to the gym, but then they get light headed because they exert themselves before they’ve had the chance to eat. So, their blood sugar drops and they get sick or dizzy, or feel like they are going to pass out. It’s all about proper nutrients fueling your body at the right time, sending the right amount to fuel your body for the activity that you are trying to do.

I equate it to a car because it’s a simple-to-grasp example. You wouldn’t hop in your car with a quarter tank of gas thinking that you are going to drive to California. Why would you think you are going to have a 90 min workout and have great energy if you haven’t eaten in 12-14 hours? Conversely, why think you’re going to have a great workout right after you eat? It’s all about nutrient timing.

The general rule I tell people is to wait about 90 min after you eat to work out. If you are going to work out first thing in the morning, you should eat a simple carbohydrate about a half hour before you work out, one that can be digested very quickly, and fill your fuel tank and blood sugar levels for a good workout. Then you can have a healthy, larger breakfast after your workout.

This is a great question we get a lot through our trainers on the floor in our facilities as well as our weekly radio network and comments on our blogs. It’s something that most people, from time to time, have experienced whether they’re working out again for the first time in years, or are lifetime health nuts and simply trying a new level of workout experience.

The answer is, it’s actually two separate questions. Today let’s talk about getting nauseated; there could be several factors. It could be the timing of whenever you ate, affecting your blood sugar levels. Maybe you ate too soon or not soon enough before your workout. Maybe it’s what you ate. There are a myriad of possibilities, and a lot tie back to nutrition intake and timing. Our blood moves through our body and goes to different organs as our body places demands on the blood. Right after you eat, most of your blood moves to your stomach to digest you food. So if you eat, the half hour immediately following the meal, if you go try to work out you are going to have a higher propensity to become nauseated because all your blood is in your stomach trying to digest your food, but you are in essence fighting your own body, trying to work out and push blood from your stomach to your muscles.

So, your body is really working against itself. Timing is key. Give your stomach a chance to do its job, before you put an equal and opposite demand on your body. It’s all about nutrient timing. The general rule I tell people is to wait about 90 minutes after you eat to work out. If you are going to work out first thing in the morning, you should eat a simple carbohydrate about a half hour before you work out, one that can be digested very quickly, and fill your fuel tank and blood sugar levels for a good workout. Then you can have a healthy, larger breakfast after your workout.

The last couple weeks we’ve been talking about quick, small changes and ideas that make a big difference in helping you stay on track and accountable to your fitness goals.

Here’s another one: Smell the roses along the way.

Here’s what I mean: Most people attach a big reward to the achievement of a major milestone. “When I lose these 60 pounds, I’m going to treat myself to a new wardrobe. Until then, new clothes would be a waste of money.”

Actually, I disagree. Imagine how motivated you’d be, after losing the first 20 (typically where clients then hit a ‘wall’) if you spent a little money on a couple new outfits, and allowed yourself to begin to see yourself in sizes and patterns you never thought possible? Most people would agree, “seeing is believing.” As much as we want to believe we have great faith and are determined to stay on track, there’s something about seeing the fruit of our labor that makes us want to press forward and not give up.

That little bit of money spent now is nothing compared to the money you’d spend starting over! And, what better feeling than to lose another 1/3 of your goal and have to give the couple outfits away because you out-shrunk them?

Don’t underestimate the emotional and psychological power of finally getting a glimpse of feeling the feeling of being comfortable in your own skin for the first time ever.

I’ve been sharing a lot lately about how to break down long-term goals into bite-sized accomplishments along the way. However, another critical principal in attaining big goals is keeping your goal visible. In other words, keeping the vision of what you see in your mind visible, so it constantly reminds you it’s tangible, real and attainable.

Here’s a great, simple and effective tool to help keep you on track: Make your goal visible. Where do you look every day? Maybe it’s a picture on your refrigerator, or your bathroom mirror…or both! Maybe it’s a motivational quote on your dashboard, or a screen saver on your computer or mobile device.

Whatever it is, it’s important to remind yourself how far you’ve come, and what your goal is, to keep you motivated and accountable. So here’s your assignment for this week. What’s on your refrigerator and mirror at home? The drawings your kids made? Important! Pictures of friends and family? Priority!

But…in the midst of all that remember, you’re on your journey to better health because without your health, your life, your family, and all other areas suffer. So: How about putting “before” pictures up on your refrigerator? Or a written-out commitment to yourself in a couple sentences or less, or simply a statistic sheet that outlines total weight loss goal, body fat goal, etc.?

Problems that get resolved are the ones that stay visible. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. What you make visible you’ll make a priority.

When we set out to change our health forever starting with a big goal, which is typically what we see with most of our clients—lose 40 pounds in 12 weeks, get off medications, those types of big life-altering goals—it’s tough to stay motivated.

Here’s a secret to sustaining motivation our trainers teach clients: Build, and build upon, momentum.
Momentum is powerful. One of the benefits of our program, as is with any good program, is that clients see very significant results very quickly; usually in the first 10-14 days, in fact. When you see change very quickly, whether it’s a good amount of energy, weight loss or strength (depending on what your goals are), helps to build momentum.

Momentum is one of the most powerful forces in the world. Once you build momentum you are going to get exponential benefits, not just 1 +1, but also 1 to the power of ten. In other words, success breeds success.

That’s why setting small goals along the way and celebrating them at each mile marker is critical. It allows you to break down big “lose 100 pounds this year” goals into things like “20 pounds this month” or “a third of the weight loss by the end of this season.”

Accomplishment breeds accomplishment, and before you know it, you have rebuilt a new belief system of “I can do this.” There is something that happens in our mind when we have a goal; when we start we don’t make steps toward it, most of us start by taking a big leap. Our mind reacts, with, “Wow, this awesome!” That momentum actually starts working with our belief system: “I really can lose 10 pounds! I can rehab my hips; I can accomplish this.

What we’re saying, internally, is we finally believe that this goal isn’t outside our reach because we saw the fruit of our initial steps, and we begin to build that momentum that helps us move forward.

Set small goals along the journey to your BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal—thanks Jim Collins, “Good to Great” author). Remember…the best way to eat an elephant (as long as it’s a low-sodium one!)…is one bite at a time.

I typically don’t use our K180 blog to promote or sell services; strictly to educate, inform, and provide insights to optimum health. However, we’ve had a lot of people, planning for the upcoming summer vacations and kids being out of school, ask us about their concerns of irregular schedules and lack of available prep time in the kitchen to pre-cook and freeze meals especially before trips, and for summer months.

So, just a quick reminder, several months ago we launched a service that has literally saved some of our clients’ lives. It’s easy, takes 60 seconds and ensures pre-cooked, fresh or frozen low-sodium, low-fat, low-cholesterol meals delivered in bulk to your home or office. And, they’re all K180-approved.

Here’s the link, you can order online, and if you’re headed on a family vacation pack a cooler. If you’re flying, they can be shipped to your destination hotel, we do it all the time for our business clients who travel and want to avoid hotel menus or temptation.

Here you go. Happy, healthy eating! http://www.shawnkephart.com/catering/

When our clients begin the K180 Fitness nutrition plan, as much flexibility and creative recipes we have between our catered meal plans, our cookbooks, and other resources—we get asked a lot about the secret to staying on the plan. As is with any healthy habit in life, the key is the little foxes. No, we don’t have a little fox entrée in our cookbooks, with vegetables on the side. Working on it (kidding!). However, there’s an old (biblical) saying, that it’s the little foxes that ruin the vineyards.

How true.

The little things make a huge difference: The sauces on your meats, the way you cook your vegetables, your willingness to make little adjustments like drinking coffee black vs. with creamer, no-sodium ketchup vs. the regular ketchups loaded with sugar and sodium, and many more.

If you’re trying to make significant changes long-term in area of your life, you have to make sure everything you do is lining you up to move in the right direction. Just a little more preparation will make a huge difference. Preparation is key; plan what you’ll do with money before you get it, and you’re spend it more wisely. Learn how to have a healthy relationship before you’re in one, and your relationships will be far healthier.

Nutrition is the same way. Here are a few simple DINING-OUT tips that make a huge difference:

1) Plan ahead…it only takes a minute! Most restaurants these days have menus online, and choosing your restaurant BEFORE you get in the car will eliminate temptation to pull into the wrong place.
2) Have it your way. It’s 2011. Most restaurants will take a few minutes to prepare your food the way you request it.
3) Stand up for your rights! ☺Don’t be Embarrassed. Most clients get embarrassed the first time they have to ask a server to prepare their food differently from the menu. Reality is, hardly anyone orders straight off the menu, as is, anymore. Gluten-free, allergies, low-fat diets, low-sodium diets, heart patients, you name it—everyone, it seems, is realizing the power of lining their food prep up with their medical conditions and health goals.
4) Keep it off your plate. If it’s not on your plate (like not having unhealthy food in your pantry), you won’t be tempted. Speak up for your health, don’t be afraid of ordering, for instance, your entrée’s protein (chicken, steak, fish) plain, no seasoning, steamed or broiled but no sauces or seasonings. Same goes for your veggies. Dressing on the side for your salad, and ask them to keep the sauces, garnishes and other non-essentials off your plate. And no rolls!

Believe me, you’ll find out quickly if someone wants your business. And in this economy, most restaurants are more than willing to make special requests; customers are tough to get, even tougher to keep.