Winners Of Our “Cookbook With A Heart” Contest!

Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you to all who contributed to our upcoming “Get Fit NH Bootcamp” cookbook, which we are producing to help you eat lean and green, but also to help raise money for a special little boy with autism, Joshua Ohman.

Our contest to fill that cookbook up with some of your favorite healthy recipes was a smashing success, as we received dozens and dozens of great recipes.

As promised, we randomly chose three people from all the contributors, and here are your winners:

Judy Swain

Anne LaForce

Robin Weddleton

These ladies will get there choice of one Sweatshirt or T-Shirt from our crazy good looking apparel line! 🙂

But don’t be dismayed if you didn’t win, as our fall order for sweatshirts and fleeces will be making the rounds soon – get ’em while they are hot!

Congratulations and Thank-you Ladies!

Lunch Box Chicken Salad

Try this super easy and tasty recipe for in your lunch box or anytime!

½ cup plain yogurt
4 teaspoon Dijon style mustard
Dash of pepper
2 Tablespoons orange juice
1 cup cooked green beans
5 ounces chicken, turkey, ham, or even tuna
½ cup shredded carrots
2 Tablespoons sliced green onion

For dressing, mix yogurt, Dijon mustard, pepper, and the orange juice. Add green beans, carrots, green onions, and meat toss with dressing. Divide it in 2 containers. Chill overnight for best flavor.

Vary the veggies with whatever you have on hand. Peas, green and red peppers, broccoli, snap peas – The varieties are endless. Enjoy!

Good Foot Health Is No Small “Feet”

Each morning before I step onto the floor I make sure my feet are more awake than I am.  Getting my feet ready to support my body weight with a quick massage and stretch is just like doing the big arm stretch right after I get out of bed.  You know, feet work so hard and they really take a beating so I like to take the time to honor their work and let them know I’m grateful.

Did you know that your feet have 26 bones, 33 joints and over 100 tendons! And that’s without mentioning the ligaments and muscles in your feet.

So I think we should honor our feet!  (knees will have to wait for their time in a later blog). After all, remember Neil Armstrong’s quote as he “stepped” onto the moon. “That’s one small step for man and one giant leap for all mankind.”

First of all, lets see what your feet can tell you about your health.  If you have a pain in your foot your gait changes, and when your gait changes your entire body is affected which can create back pain, hip problems, sore leg muscles – even aching shoulders and neck.

Remember if you act like a heel to your foot it can come back and kick you in the butt. (I’m cracking myself up with all these puns)

So whenever you find yourself with a pain in the foot please pay attention, because it can be the beginning of a multitude of problems.

In fact, any sign of foot trouble may be the start of other problems.  For instance, chronic pain, calluses that go unchecked, very dry skin, swelling, redness or discoloration in the toe nails all are problems that need to be addressed.

Now, get this…the foot has over 250,000 sweat glands!  So, wash your feet!  Clean and dry between the toes; this will get rid of the moisture and bacteria that cause feet to stink and creates nasty skin problems. Don’t be average adult who doesn’t reach their feet with a washcloth or other abrasive material that can eliminate dry skin and fungus.

Most ingrown toenails are due to improper nail clipping.  Cut the nails straight across, no cute little angles on the sides that can cause the nail to grow improperly causing a painful toenail and a doctor’s appointment to correct it.

Feet change and spread over the years so it’s important that you measure. Most adults don’t bother with it. They assume that the size they got last time they bought shoes will do this time as well. Maybe another reason why so many people end up with sore feet.

Don’t keep your feet in old worn out shoes.  There should be a thumb size space between the end of the toe and the end of the shoe. Not having the correct shoe size can result in runner’s toe, calluses, ingrown nails, fungal nail infections, and hammertoe deformities. (I’m not saying who has toes that look like mushrooms)

Now you know Dean and I love our Vibram Five Fingers. Here is what Vibram says about their footwear.

“Wearing FiveFingers during strength and fitness conditioning can increase your comfort, balance, performance and overall sense of control. That’s because many of the poses and exercises you perform during strength and fitness training rely on flexible yet stable support from your feet and legs.” (the support is not coming from our shoes but from our own body)

Whether you chose traditional sneakers or back to barefoot basics we need to treat our feet like they are important.

So there you have it.  Take care of your feet and they will take care of your body and sole. ( I just had to get one more pun in)

Coach Nancy

Can You Touch A Coin?

Try this little experiment. Place a coin on the floor. Stand about 6 inches away from the coin. With your eyes open, attempt to touch the coin with your big toe (it doesn’t matter which foot). Now close your eyes and try it again.

If your ‘proprioception’ is in tune, then you should be able to touch the coin or at least get very close to it. However, if your proprioception is not functioning at a high level, then you will miss it by miles. The more times you repeat the same movement pattern the better it is ingrained on your nerve endings and you’ll soon find you can hit the coin each time even with your eyes closed.

So what is ‘proprioception’? Why is it important, and how do we train it?

Proprioception can be defined as “ an unconscious perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli within the body itself.”

Balance is not an example of proprioception. Balance control comes from the inner ear and not the body senses. However, the balance systems are intertwined heavily with the proprioceptive systems. If you’ve been at Get Fit NH Bootcamp for a while then you’ve played our warm up game “Get up and balance” This warm up is an example of how balance and proprioception are related.

Common examples from everyday life:

• Walking in a dark room in the middle of the night
• Catching a ball
• Eating whilst reading the paper

Where does proprioception come from?

Our muscles, ligaments and tendons are filled with nerve endings and receptors that allow us to perceive where our limbs are in space. These receptors send messages to our central nervous system (CNS) and the CNS in turn relays information to the brain. This information is compared to the information received from the eyes and ears, which in turn allows us to co-ordinate hand/foot-eye coordination as well as balance.

Why do people have poor proprioception?

The two  main groups that suffer from poor propioception are the injured/ill and the elderly. With any injury, the damage tissue alters the pain mechanisms that feed our brains. The messages tend to ‘fog’ up the nerve cells in the brain so that we don’t have such a defined sense of position anymore. Injuries to the knees or ankle tend to make us feel unstable. The elderly have ageing nerve endings and their nerves do not conduct information as effectively as younger people. They have more trouble with activities requiring body awareness and as a result often bump themselves easily and falls can result.

Can we improve our proprioception?

Absolutely! Proprioception can always be improved through training. The learning of any new skill involves training our proprioceptive sense and re-organizing the nervous system to suit the new activity. The nerve endings and sensory fibers in our muscles, ligaments and tendons become more effective at picking up changes in body position. In turn, the nerves become more efficient at transmitting the information to the brain, and the brain becomes better at responding to this information.

Practice, Practice, Practice is training our proprioception. Learning a new exercise and training our bodies to perform it will increase the use of that nervous system pathway. That is one reason it is so important to perform a movement pattern correctly from the start. We are training our muscles which are taking their cue from the nervous system. New movements will keep our brains working and increase our proprioception.

Proprioception is a fancy word but knowing we are keeping our body fit along with our brain is a great reason to practice this word literally over and over.

To your health,

Coach Nancy

Why Do You Do It That Way?

Is a question we love to hear at Get Fit NH Bootcamp!

When someone asks us that, we know we have an engaged member who wants to make the most of his or her training, and has a true desire to get better. In fact if you have a question please ask!

We are also happy to get any feedback and suggestions regarding bootcamp, but I will caution you, we aren’t always going to adopt those suggestions when it comes to your training!

TRAINER FAIL!

Outrageous? Not really, and here’s why.

We have a unified system of training, and while we are certainly always learning and seeking to improve training methods as scientific and empirical evidence proves them effective, we aren’t into “fads”. The tools we use (KB, TRX, Bands, Dumbells, etc.) have proven themselves over and over. You are not going to see one-footed dumbbell curls while balancing on a bosu ball at Get Fit NH Bootcamp! Tires, sleds and sledgehammers are cool tools and can be very effective, but you won’t see them everyday. Icing on the cake, so to speak.

Like you, we have seen “Bootcamps” popping up everywhere, and while there are some good trainers out there with good programs, we work hard to make sure Get Fit NH Bootcamp is second to none. Just because it has “bootcamp” in the name doesn’t mean it is an effective program.

So why are we any different than anyone else? Besides the reasons above,  let me share some of the core principles we adhere to:

1) If you are injured you can’t train. That doesn’t mean we can’t work around and with pre-existing injuries or conditions. We work together with your physician, physical therapist or chiropractor to make sure we understand any injuries you may have and get you better. What is does mean is that we are going to do the necessary mobility and flexibility work IN CLASS to promote joint health and range of motion. The ability to perform movements with correct form through a full range of motion is critical to your long term health and helps you get the most from your training. Our recovery weeks are also designed to promote lifelong progress and health.

2) Your training will be balanced. Sometimes we get requests for more of this or that – ab work for instance. We spend hours every week carefully designing your program to allow for a proper training/recovery balance, and sometimes “more ab work” isn’t in the plan. Not because they aren’t important, because a strong “core” is critical, but because your abs need recovery too. We are also going to make sure that we work the “go” muscles, like the scapular retractors and hamstrings, not just the “show” muscles like biceps and chest. This is crucial for shoulder, hip and knee health.  Refer back to #1!

3) Your training will be fun. Now I know sometimes our members think my definition of “fun” is a bit different than theirs, but I think they will also agree that cranking through a killer workout and achieving more than they thought possible is fun too! Our training programs are designed to be “totally unboring” – providing the progressions our more experienced members need and also providing a high level of coaching to those new to the program.

4) Ultra-Flexible class times. I don’t know of any bootcamp anywhere that has more class times – 8 per training day, 32 per week in our two locations! Is more necessarily better? It is in this case! We leave virtually no reason why you can’t make a class or make one up. This is huge!

5) Some added bonuses you need to be using. If you are a member and not actively using your Fitgoal.com account – get to it, particularly the food logging portion. We added this at no additional cost to you, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth anything! In fact we are seeing that our members who actively use their account are making the best progress toward their goals. Read the newsletters and subscribe to the blog. Every week there are articles, recipes and more. Invest a few minutes each week to educating yourself on your health and fitness.

So there you go. Just a few reasons why we “do what we do”. Remember we want your questions – we are ready and willing with the answers.

Thanks for choosing to train with us! (And if you aren’t yet – Make It Happen!)

Dean & Nancy

It’s Go Time!

By now your body is enjoying the fruits of recovery week and is getting a little bit antsy to get back in the gym and get back to work. You have reaped the rewards of hard training, and staying out of the gym too much longer is out of the question. Hang in there – Tuesday is almost here!

The best thing is that over the last few weeks you know why you are getting better. You are seeing the benefits of feeding your body premium fuel – lean protein, complex carbohydrates and healthy fats. You have cleaned out your cupboards of junk food, because you know that even if the kids “like it”, it’s not good for them either. You start every day with a healthy breakfast of lean protein – eggs, yogurt, or in a pinch a protein shake. Your new habit of drinking only calorie free beverages has taken a few hundred unwanted calories out of your nutrition plan, and you don’t even miss it.

Your habit of eating every few hours has stabilized your blood sugar and you aren’t having the late morning/early afternoon energy crashes anymore. Your forays around the perimeter of the grocery store has led to the discovery that there are hundreds of tasty fruits and vegetables available. How come mom only fed me corn and peas, you wonder?

You have established the habit of planning your splurge meals, knowing that strategically relaxing your nutrition leads to better progress and less craving. You are in charge of your eating, and you have stopped letting your emotions plunge you headlong into overeating and regret.

You never miss a bootcamp class, and it shows. You are earning the strong, lean and healthy body you have always wanted. Your friends want to know your secret, and it spurs you on to making even better progress.

Only a few more days until you keep making all this happen – Can’t Wait!

Are You A Sugar Addict?

Tired all the time? Grumpy and can’t shake the blahs? Do you have trouble losing weight? Do you walk around in a fog? What about digestive issues? Constantly battling a stuffy nose?

Major health issues like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and auto-immune diseases are dramatic examples of how sugar can wreak havoc in your life. There are less dramatic ways sugar affects our bodies before we experience major problems.

Addictions come in different forms.

• The Energy Shark feels chronically tired and needs hits of sugar and caffeine.
• The Feed-Me-Now type have exhausted their adrenal glands.
• An overgrowth of yeast in the body leads the Sneak-Around-for-Sugar addict hiding to get another hit of sugar.
• And the Depressed & Craving Carbs type desire for sweets is linked to hormonal shifts.

What type of addict are you?

Do you often feel tired and achy? Do you need coffee to get going in the morning? Does your energy fade by mid-afternoon? Do you get frequent headaches?

You may be an Energy Shark.

Do you find you are often thirsty and need to use the restroom? Do you get recurrent sore throats and swollen glands? Do you sometimes get dizzy when you stand up? Is life a crisis for you?

You may be a Feed-Me-Now type.

Do you have chronic nasal congestion? Do you have irritable bowels? Have you been clinically treated for acne? Do you clear your throat a lot? Often an overgrowth of yeast internally will cause the sugar cravings like those who are

The Sneak-Around-for-Sugar addicts.

Chronically depressed, fatigued, battling insomnia and a loss of libido might have you classified as a Depressed & Craving Carb addict. Your sugar cravings are caused by fluctuating hormones.

No matter what the type you can fight your way out of your sugar addiction. Nutrition is the key to locking up the addict inside you.

1. Choose high-protein foods such as meat, eggs, and seafood and foods that score low on the glycemic index.
2. Eat small meals frequently during the day.
3. Eliminate “energy drinks” loaded with sugar and caffeine.
4. Exercise for 30 to 60 minutes a day, outside if possible.
5. Get seven to nine hours of sleep a night
6. Supplement your diet with a quality vitamin.
7. Take a fish oil supplement.

Each addiction has its own issues but don’t let your addiction control you. Furthermore don’t let the addiction you have today bring damaging diseases in your future.

To your health,

Coach Nancy

Reference – Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, author of Beat Sugar Addiction Now!

The Healthy Kitchen

It all starts here. Nutrition is not half the battle, it is the battle! What we eat is the single most important factor when it comes to how we look and feel. With today’s busy lifestyles, it is more important than ever that we learn to make the best choices to support our healthy goals.

The choices we make when feeding our bodies have both short and long term consequences. Did you know it’s possible to eat too much food and be undernourished? Not only do we become overweight, but are also more susceptible to disease because we are not receiving the nutrients we need for optimal health. It is important to remember that the primary reason we eat is to give our body what it needs to function optimally. A growing number of studies show that Americans do not receive the nutrients they need from their dietary intake.

There are a number of reasons for this. Our crops themselves are not as nutritious as in the past, probably due to soil depletion and the overuse of fertilizers. Fast food restaurants and prepackage foods in our supermarket shelves make it all too easy to consume a large amount of calories with nearly no nutritive value. While such food choices may be fast and convenient, there is no doubt they contribute to obesity and disease.

Over-consumption of grains, particularly refined wheat (eg. white flour) and corn, has also contributed to our growing problem with obesity. Too many grains and not enough variety of vegetables in our diet leads to excess calories and nutrient deficiencies.

While fruit has many critical nutrients and should be enjoyed, it may be helpful to think of it as “nature’s candy” because of the high sugar content. Refined grains and fruit juices can also make controlling blood sugar difficult.

It does take more work to prepare healthy meals, there is no doubt about it. Doing so is a small price to pay when you consider the negative health consequences of eating poorly. Most people do not think about the future, only the here and now, but the cost is greater to fight disease than to prevent disease. Eating for optimal health is the foundation of living well.

Recently we unveiled Fitgoal. Take advantage of all it offers.

• Daily food log so you know exactly what you are feeding yourself.

• Reports so you can monitor your fitness progress after each “Test Day”

• Visuals like charts and graphs for your food intake

• Write out personal goals so you know where you want to go and how you plan on getting there

• A journaling section to list important factors that give insight into your well being.

• The ability to directly contact your trainer through Fitgoal.

We are here to help you reach your goals,

Coach Nancy

Zucchini Boats

Here’s a favorite of Anne from the 8:30 Concord class.

In keeping with the zucchini theme:

Zucchini Boats (makes 8 boats) Preheat oven to 400 degrees

4 medium (8″) zucchini
1 medium onion, diced
2 Tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts
8 oz low-fat or non-fat cottage cheese
paprika, salt and pepper to taste

Cut zucchini in half lengthwise.  Steam over steaming basket in large pot for about 10-15 minutes. 
Zucchini should be firm but able to be scooped out.  Scoop out pulp with spoon and chop, leaving a zucchini shell or boat.

Sauté onion until soft.  Add soy sauce and chopped zucchini, keep over medium heat for 5 minutes.

Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Put boats in baking dish and fill each zucchini boat with 1/8 of the mix.  Sprinkle paprika on top, if desired.

Bake in 400 degree oven for 10 minutes or until hot.

New Contest and a Cookbook with a Heart

You amazed us last year with your willingness to support Carrie Cates children after she was hit and killed by a hit and run driver last October. You rallied your support and raised over $3000 to give to her kids.

Get Fit NH Bootcamp would like to help another local family whose son needs some specialized equipment. Six-year-old Joshua was diagnosed with Autism-Spectrum Disorder just after his 2nd birthday. Autism is a developmental disorder that impairs a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others.

“Something changed,” said Joshua’s mother. “He started talking less and less and lost interest in people and toys. It was as if our little boy went away.”

For the last three years Joshua has undergone numerous treatments and therapies to combat his autism. He’s made progress, his mother said, “But it’s been excruciatingly slow.”

Joshua and his parents are looking forward to a new therapy that is expected to increase his vocabulary significantly and improve his communication skills. But the therapy requires a touch-screen computer that will cost $1,500. But with current therapies and medical bills costing as much as $12,000 a year, Joshua’s parents are hard pressed to afford the new computer.

“Joshua is an affectionate boy. He loves to run, swing and climb,” his mother said. “He understands so much, yet it is difficult for him to express it. His inability to talk and communicate is deeply frustrating for him.”

We would like to solve two needs at one time: a way to fund Joshua’s therapy computer and introduce more people to a healthy way to eat.

Many of you have asked for recipes and ideas on how to eat nutritiously. We have been working on our Get Fit NH Bootcamp cookbook for quite awhile, but we want to include some of your favorite healthy recipes as well. This will help us get the cookbook finished, printed and available for sale. One hundred percent of the profits collected for the cookbook will help fund Joshua’s computer and other therapy needs.

So here’s the deal: For every healthy recipe you submit to us your name will be entered into a drawing to win some cool Get Fit NH Bootcamp gear. We’ll choose three names at random to win the T-shirt or Sweatshirt of choice.

To submit your recipes, please click here or send us an email. Contest ends September 15th!

Thanks for all you do!