A fat loss training post by Cambridge personal trainer Callie Durbrow
Are You Really Happy?
Welcome back to the Ultimate Cambridge Training Fat Loss Challenge. Thank you so much for following along with me on this journey, which is really for you to develop a lifestyle that supports healthy eating, fun and effective training, and helps you develop a mindset that you CAN lose fat and be happy in your own skin.
So I’ve kind of become a little bit of an Oprah follower, I never used to watch her show but now I find it set on my DVR every single day. Weird.
Anyway, I was watching an episode yesterday about how happy Americans are and they had all these questions about different types of happiness. They visited one town in California called San Luis Obispo. They were examining what made this town so happy and one comment was made that the residents didn’t just wake up happy, they made a conscious decision to create an environment that enhances happiness. They opened outdoor cafes, they widened the sidewalks and created tons of bike paths so everyone is always outside and interacting with their neighbors and being active. They also mentioned that a lot of the people own their own business, work for themselves and can make their own schedules.
While this may not be a reality just yet for you, think about the concept. It was a conscious decision to CHANGE their environment. Something cool to think about there, you can’t just say “Okay I’m going to exercise and eat healthy.” Nope, you must change other things too.
1. Surround yourself with people who support you
2. Get away from negative energy suckers
3. Flush out the junk food in your house to avoid temptation
4. Spend a few minutes each day reflecting on what’s great in your life
5. Shut off your phone, computer, tv, iPod for just 10 minutes and sit in silence (crazy, but it works)
Just these simple changes can help your entire environment and a healthier, happier environment equals a more productive fat loss routine. Now, back to the actual training stuff…..
My one tip of the day is to QUIT CARDIO. Seriously, long and slow cardio is so boring, so worthless and it’s such a time sucker. If you want to get toned, lean and drop body fat you must perform some type of metabolic intervals. What I mean here is that you won’t change your body composition (how much fat you have) by doing long distance running or elliptical training.
Instead you want to perform some higher intensity interval work. Here’s a quick example that I want you to try out and let me know how it goes. (You should be doing workouts like this 2x per week in addition to the other stuff we’ll get into later on)
Bike Sprints:
Warm up ride for 3 minutes, little or no resistance
1 minute sprint as hard as you can go, medium resistance to keep speed up
1-2 minute recovery depending on your fitness level, lower the resistance and ride slowly
Repeat this 1 minute on, 1-2 minutes off for 10 rounds for a total of 20-30 minutes
Cool down for about 3 minutes
You can also perform this outside in a sprint/walk fashion but give the bike a try since it’s February after all 🙂
Question of the Day: How did the intervals feel and what was different between those and the steady cardio that you usually do?
Let me know your answers below in the comment section!