No Excuses: 4 Ways to Get it Tight this Month

For many of us, getting a solid workout in five days a week just isn’t doable. While getting your ass kicked in an hour and a half long plyo class is a great way to get fit, there’s a lot of things you can do to get a hot bod without having a crazy workout regimen. Try these out for an efficient way to tone up without killing yourself.

1. Take 20 minutes

Short workouts are effective, especially when the thought of an hour at the gym is more daunting than the Monday after Coachella. Just commit to twenty minutes of cardio, Pilates, abs, yoga, whatever. There are amazing workouts all over the Internet you can do from the comfort of your home, so look some up and see what you like. Udaya.com has a great selection of yoga classes with varying lengths and focuses.

2. Multitask

Put the treadmill on a super steep incline and climb while you catch up on that proposal you have to read by Thursday. Have an interesting talk you’ve been meaning to listen to? Put it on and take a jog around your neighborhood. Do your arms while you’re on the treadmill so that you have to spend less time at the gym. One to two minute holds with light weights while walking will lengthen and tone your muscles really nicely. It will also help get your heart rate up higher so you’ll get more out of your cardio.

3. Stretch and breathe

Whatever yoga poses you know, start practicing them now. Yoga elongates all of your limbs and your spine, and the twisting poses are great at carving out your core. It also connects you deeply with your body and helps eliminate toxins that build up over time.

Physically, breathing deep into your stomach strengthens your core, and tones your abdominal and pelvic muscles. It’s also great in reducing stress and anxiety, and helps increase your energy and focus.

4. Eat light and easily digested foods before and after exercise

A semi-recent trend has been to workout on an empty stomach. While this can be harmful to your body and your workout, eating light before and after you exercise can be very beneficial to you.

Try having something light but nourishing about thirty minutes before exercise, like dates, a grapefruit, or a banana. The nutrients will be absorbed quickly, and become readily available to fuel your workout without weighing you down. After working out try a juice that has kale, spinach, and ginger. The greens will re-oxygenate your blood and organs, and the ginger will reduce inflammation. Because it’s a juice, your body will easily assimilate the nutrients while actively and quickly recovering.

Food Combining

Have you ever eaten a really healthy meal like wild rice, fresh wild caught fish, and a big salad but then felt groggy and tired afterwards? Why are you feeling sleepy and slow after eating a meal that should give you energy? Probably because you are combing the wrong types of food!  Kimberly Snyder, clinical nutritionist and author of The Beauty Detox Solution introduced me to the theory of food combining.

Our bodies digest enzymatically, means different enzymes are used to breakdown the different types of macronutrients: protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Unfortunately, we don’t have one universal enzyme that can digest everything. Since it takes so much energy to digest our food, food combining helps take the burden off of our bodies and allows that energy to be used elsewhere like burning fat or detoxing heavy metals. If you don’t properly combine your food, it will get stuck in your digestive tract and the undigested food stays there and putrefies, creating a toxic environment that makes your blood more acidic and allows yeast, viruses, cancer cells and parasites to grow inside you. In short, it makes you more prone to illness. Proper food combining is a system of eating foods that combine together efficiently to assist digestion so that your digestive tract does not have to work so hard to give you the nutrients you need for energy. It is the easiest most non-restrictive way to get rid of bloating, drop some pounds, and allow your skin to glow!

 Here is how is how it works:

 Proteins + Starches = do not mix

Proteins + vegetables = mix

Starches + vegetables = mix

Different starches = mix

Different proteins = do not mix

Fats + protein = do not mix well, pair moderately

Fats + starches = do mix

Fruits = ALWAYS eaten on an empty stomach

Fruit + raw greens = mix

Bagels and cream cheese, egg sandwiches, sushi rolls, meat and potatoes are all bad food combinations! In the stomach, protein requires an acidic environment in order to break down, whereas a starch requires an alkaline environment. When an acid and an alkaline are put together they neutralize each other.  Since these enzymes neutralize each other, the food is not breaking down naturally but your body continues to try to break it down with more enzymes and this cycle results in exhaustion. All of your energy is going to this process and it’s not making any headway. Other side effects can include gassiness, bloating, or heartburn. Now this food is passing through your digestive system very slowly, and since our bodies are a warm 98.6 degrees, this allows the food to literally rot. Improperly digested foods have no nutritional value which means all that work was for absolutely nothing!

Vegetables are very easy for our body to digest and are great to pair with protein. Fruit is the quickest for our bodies to digest so should be eaten first, on an empty stomach.  It passes through our digestive tract in about 20 minutes. That means if you eat fruit after eating say, scrambled eggs, it is going to get stuck behind food that is going to take a lot longer to digest. This gives the fruit time to rot and putrefy.

 A simple way to think of it is eating light to heavy. This is the order of fastest digesting foods to slowest:

 Fruit

Greens

Non-Starchy vegetables

Starches

Protein

So start with your salad, then eat your rice, and finish with your grilled fish. This will give your optimal results and not create any digestive issues or drain your energy. Remember, this doesn’t mean you can’t have something, it just means you need to change the order in which you eat it. Obviously, we can’t be perfect and eat this way all the time. Don’t stress yourself out but give it a go and see how you feel. I promise that it works!