5 Things to Change Today: For the girls...

After a couple of requests this weekend, I have decided to write a post for the women who follow the blog. I will lay out a couple of things that women do poorly (not all women, but most), and then some solutions.

1. Not eating enough protein. Almost all of the women I have worked with are way to low in their consumption of protein.

2. Too much steady state cardio. Steady state cardio is the type where you hop on an elliptical, or stair stepper and go at the same pace for 15 minutes or longer.

3. Not doing any weight lifting and being afraid that weights will make you big and bulky.

4. Eating way too few calories.

5. Having the wrong goals.

Solutions:

1. Pretty easy fix. Start eating more protein. A few easy ways to do this would be to eat eggs in the morning, and then make sure to have some lean protein at every meal. Chicken, fish, meat, turkey, etc are all good choices. If you still are too low, think about a protein shake once or twice per day. This will not make you fat or big.

2. If you must do all of the cardio you currently do, you have to change it to intervals. Try an interval where you exert some serious effort for 30 seconds, then you slow the pace to a recovery pace for 1 minute. Repeat for 6-8 times and you have just performed a much more beneficial cardio session.

3. Weight lifting will not make you big. People don't put on muscle by accident. Think about how stupid that sounds, woops I got too big. Plus most of you wouldn't work hard enough to put on serious muscle. Weight lifting will however burn a ton of calories and make you look much harder. If you don't know how have someone show you the basics like squats, pullups, pushups, presses, etc.

4. If you are currently training hard, you probably aren't eating enough calories. A perfect recipe for looking like you have an eating disorder would be to do a ton of muscle wasting, steady state cardio, and then eat nothing but salad. You want to preserve your lean muscle, this is the stuff that makes you look attractive in the first place.

5. If you are skinny to begin with, you shouldn't be trying to lose weight. You should try to build some lean muscle, you will look way better. If you are trying to add some lean muscle, you should make sure your training program is correctly structured to help you reach your goals.

If you need help, drop me a line at tssullivanjr@gmail.com