I'm a Contributor!

Hey everyone!  For a few weeks now, I've been a contributing writer on another blog, Women Who Do It All.  I have been picked to write bi-monthly on living a healthy lifestyle.  Check it out now!

My New Mural - Bath Junkie

Here is my latest mural job.  This was done over at San Tan mall in Gilbert, AZ at a store called Bath Junkie.  This is a really unique store that has all types of bath products, soaps, lotions, cologne, shampoos etc., as well as house cleaning products and products for your pets.

The unique part of this store is that you pick the product, and then there is a wall of different scents to choose from.  You can mix up to three to four scents to customize your product!  They even have a menu of mixed scents that you can try out as well.  This is by far the coolest store to come around in a while.

They also host parties.  Princess parties for girls, nights out with the girls...any occasion really.  So my job was to paint a life-size french-style bathtub for the party goers to stand in front of, and receive a picture to take home with them. 

You can see the party table to the right, and the wall of scents on the left.  Above the bath tub I painted a chalkboard with a fancy frame.  Bath Junkie will write the name of the birthday girl or their scent of the month on the chalkboard.

I used gold paint for the frame, faucet and mirror.

The owner wanted extra foo foo-ness so I added glitter to the bubbles.

Details.

This was a really fun project. The total size was 4.5 x 6.5 feet.

Alpha-Elite-est, The Gym Month 5

It's been 5 months since I started back at the gym.  I've done hundreds of burpees, box jumps and mountain climbers.  I've shed blood from doing planks, as well as shedding sweat and tears.  I've suffered jitters from fat burners (my idea), sand in my eyes from sandbag cleans, bruised pinkie fingers from boxing and an occasional midnight binge, polishing off boxes of ice cream.  Is it worth it?  You bet.

The Alpha Elite Training team is a personal training duo, Kimberly Elliott (my trainer), and Andrew Hangartner (who've I trained with in the past.  Their philosophy is based off of education and motivation.  They educate their clients to make them more inclined to continue on a successful path of fitness and nutrition.  Their clients learn what to do and eat and why.

Kimberly and Andrew don't just run you through a killer workout to burn calories, (in fact don't even dare mention calorie counting to them!)  They actually sit down with each individual client to find out who they are and what they envision for themselves.  They then create a plan of action to help clients obtain their goals.

The Alpha Elite team is definitely NOT "one-size-fits-all" trainers.  But you have to be willing to do the work necessary to obtain your goals.  It's not easy and it is a TON of work, but when you see your results, the  self gratification is more than I can explain.  I've been training with Kimberly 3 times a week, as well as going to my gym on the off days.

The top 10 things I have learned and obtained from training with Alpha Elite:

1) Everyone is different.  Alpha Elite follows a carb-cycling diet.  However it WILL be adjusted to fit your body, and how  your body reacts to the food.  For instance, my body loses more fat eating (complex) carbs at every meal, I eat 5-6 measured meals a day-depending on how late I stay up.

2) Boobs are the first thing to go.

3) I've doubled my weight used in bent-over rows (20lbs each hand), reverse flys (10lbs), seated rows (60-70 lbs), and lateral pulldowns.  I've also increased weight in dumbell curls and overhead presses-basically my whole upper body.

4) I hate leg workouts.  I've struggled for a year with my legs.  Anyone who knows me from high school knows that I was NOT an athlete.  Therefore my legs had never really built any muscle in them.  The result is in training my legs and trying to build muscle, there is no "muscle memory" for my legs to fall back on.  So I'm basically building muscle from scratch and will take longer to do so than an ex-athlete.

5) The area where the top of your back thigh meets the bottom of your butt is affectionately called a 'bu-thigh" or a "thass".

6) Water is essential to losing weight.  If you are an active person, you want to drink at least a gallon a day.  It sounds like a lot, but after a while, your body starts to crave it.  FYI, 8-500ml bottles equals a little over a gallon.

7)  THROW YOUR SCALE AWAY!!! Your body goes through weight changes throughout the day and throughout the week.  Especially women, who gain a lot of water weight once a month.  The true test of losing weight and inches, is how well your clothes fit.  Buy a goal-outfit and measure yourself against that and how well you fit into it.

8)  I've lost major visible size in my stomach area and I've leaned out in my back and shoulders.  I can actually start to see definition in my arms and shoulders.  I'm in-between sizes right now.  I was a 13-14, but now I fit in-between a 10 and an 8!  Major success!

9) A tan really makes you look skinnier.

10) Food=Fuel.  Just like your car need gas to go, your metabolism needs food to go.  The more you eat, the more you will lose.   Sure, crash diets may make you lose weight, but if you're like me, the weight ALWAYS comes back.  Following a food for fuel diet teaches you how to eat correctly and lose weight the correct way, and how to keep it off.  I now know how to read my body, and what to do to adjust my food to produce results.

These past months have definitely not been easy, but with a trainer like Kimberly, I've stayed motivated, worked past the difficulties and feelings of wanting to quit.  I've even begun running intervals, which I've always maintained in the past that I would never run unless it was for my life.  I actually have some girlfriends who want me to run a 5k with them, (3 miles).  Maybe I'll do it.  Kimberly seems to think it would be a breeze for me.

We'll see!

What's Better? Low-Fat Yogurt

source

Today is the 5th of 7 installments of an article I read in Muscle and Fitness Hers magazine.  It's about myths of certain foods you think are better for you.  Today is low-fat yogurt.

The Dirt:

A serving of low-fat yogurt may contain a petty sum of fats, but it is weighed down by about 17g of sugar - which makes it slightly redundant.  According to a 2009 study published in Circulation, you should consume no more than 100 calories of added sugar per day.  A cup of low-fat yogurt chews up nearly 70 of these calories.  Unless you're consuming these simple carbs immediately post workout, that amount of sugar will rattle your clean-eating efforts.

The Clean-Up

Low-Fat Greek Yogurt

Although Greek yogurt starts out the same as regular yogurt, its consistency thickens through processing and, depending on the brand, results in twice the protein and about half the carbs.  However, Greek yogurt sacrifices something in the process - whey, which leaves you with mostly slow-digesting casein protein and a a little less calcium.