In the bustling lifestyle of Nashville, the demands of family, work, and social obligations often eclipse your own personal fitness and health desires. However, the journey towards better health doesn’t have to be daunting. By focusing on building new habits and reforming old bad habits, you can achieve a healthier, more balanced life – even while you juggle kids, jobs, and the never-ending To Do list! Understanding Habit Building When you’re trying to implement new healthier habits, you have to understand the habit loop: Cue/trigger -> Craving/desire -> Response/action -> Reward This ..read more

Glycemic value is a measure of how fast the carbohydrates of a particular food enter the bloodstream. The value assigned to a particular food is an average blood sugar response of various subjects tested. Foods with a higher Glycemic Index rating enter the bloodstream more quickly. As a general rule for fat control, avoid eating too many high-glycemic carbs. Extra insulin triggers body fat storage and leads to diabetes. ATTENTION DIABETICS: Glucose response to a particular food is highly individual. Combinations of different foods can produce unexpected results. Also, the way food is prepared ..read more

By Nashville personal trainer Dan DeFigio Dietary supplements for fat loss are usually a waste of money. There are a few worthwhile products on the market, however, and L-carnitine may be one of them. L-carnitine controls fat use because it transports fatty acids into the mitochondria of the muscle cells to be burned as fuel. Supplementing with oral carnitine will increase muscle carnitine levels and insure maximum fat burning potential. Nutrition textbooks will tell you that carnitine is made by the body, making supplementation unnecessary. A sedentary person on a decent diet doesn’t need a c ..read more

by Nashville personal trainer Dan DeFigio Sometimes hypertrophy (which is the technical term for muscle tissue growth) is difficult to achieve. Metabolically, muscle tissue is very expensive — it requires a lot of energy to maintain, and from a survival standpoint, extra muscle is unnecessary so our bodies are not eager to keep any extra! Proper nutrition is vital to muscular gains, so here is some basic information about nutrition for muscle growth: 1. Eat a combination of protein and carbohydrates every 3-4 hours. Eating protein often enough is vital to muscular growth. The amino acid pool ..read more

by Nashville personal trainer Dan DeFigio 1) STAY OFF THE SCALE. A scale is a very poor indicator of health or fat levels. Lots of things affect your weight – muscle mass, bone density, water retention, stomach content. You shouldn’t be concerned with how heavy you are, you should be concerned about how fat you are. Use a bodyfat test to ensure that your training and nutrition regimens are stimulating your body to utilize fat and not to lose muscle. Remember, the scale means nothing – if you want to lose fat, then measure your body’s fat content so you know if what you’re doing is working. 2 ..read more

Few supplements that promise fat loss can actually assist the process. There are some supplements, however, that have been proven to be effective in aiding body fat loss. Thermogenic aids Thermogenesis is just a fancy name for raising body temperature. Thermogenic supplements are stimulants, mostly herbal in origin. They actually work pretty well in boosting the metabolic rate and assisting the uncoupling process (below) via beta-agonists. Some common thermogenic products are Ripped Fuel, Thermadrene, and Metabolife. How They Work The main ingredients for most of these fat loss or “energy” sup ..read more

Encouraging good children’s nutrition can be challenging. Here are a few tips to help teach your kids to eat healthy: Get Them Involved Next time you have your children at the grocery store, ask each one to select two or three favorite vegetables to include at dinner. Kids are more likely to eat foods they’ve chosen themselves. Teach Them Where Good Food Comes From Take them to a Farmer’s Market and talk to some local farmers about how they produce food. (You should find out for yourself too!) If you can visit a local farm, even better! Plant a windowsill vegetable or herb garden. The childre ..read more

by Nashville personal trainer Dan DeFigio It amazes me how many people completely shut off any sensibility or moderation around food during holidays. When they give themselves permission to indulge in some holiday sweets, an all-or-nothing mentality takes over, and they go completely overboard, gobbling down every single sugar-filled treat they can lay their hands on — usually with the promise that at the beginning of the new year they’ll start their diet, get back to the gym, or whatever other promise they make to themselves every year. It’s almost like they’ve entered a contest in their mind ..read more

Osteoporosis is a degenerative bone condition afflicting millions of people. Post-menopausal women are especially vulnerable, because low estrogen levels tend to accelerate bone loss. Excessive caffeine or sugar intake has been shown to exacerbate this condition. Preventing osteoporosis requires proper nutrition and exercise. The first line of defense against loss of bone tissue is proper calcium nutrition. Calcium is used for numerous functions throughout the body, and if your calcium levels are low, your body will break down bone tissue to get what it needs. Not good. The best sources ..read more

By Nashville personal trainer Dan DeFigio Dietary supplements for fat loss are usually a waste of money. There are a few worthwhile products on the market, however, and L-carnitine may be one of them. L-carnitine controls fat use because it transports fatty acids into the mitochondria of the muscle cells to be burned as fuel. Supplementing with oral carnitine will increase muscle carnitine levels and insure maximum fat burning potential. Nutrition textbooks will tell you that carnitine is made by the body, making supplementation unnecessary. A sedentary person on a decent diet doesn’t need a c ..read more