I recently received an email from a client asking what I recommend most for staying lean and fit. I posted the answer on my Facebook page 'Health Coach Penny', and got more 'likes' than any other post, so I thought you might like to take a look at my recipe for staying lean, fit, happy and healthy. 1) It starts with sleep. I need at least 8 hours, yours may be a little less or a little more.  Read to learn why sleep is so important.  2) Eat veggies, fish, meat, fowl, eggs, nuts and seeds, and a little fruit (mostly berries). That's it. You can't exercise off the weight. If you believe in the 'burn off the calories with exercise to lose weight' theory then you will have to run 35 miles (approx. 100 calories burned per mile) to burn 1 pound of fat!! If you do try to exercise like this to lose weight you end up hungry (and probably injured due to overuse), and will usually make up for the small amount of calories you burned by eating more than you would have if you hadn't done chronic cardio (not to mention the muscle tissue that is degraded due to excessive cardio).  Remember the most important fact: 80% of your body composition is DETERMINED BY WHAT YOU EAT--not by exercising! 3) 2-3 weight training workouts each week. This can be done in the gym, at home with minimal equipment, or with body weight exercises. Exercise activates the muscle tissue, which in turn keeps all of your organ systems functioning at their optimum capacity because the organs are supporting … [Read more...]

During a recent seminar someone asked me, "How much water do you drink each day?".  They gasped when I said I drink one glass a day, sometimes two.  I also mentioned that it depended on the day.  If I sweat, exercise, or feel thirsty, I drink more.  Also, that is 'water' ingestion...I drink other fluids in the form of green tea, coconut milk, and kombucha.  No, I don't get thirsty. No, my urine isn't totally clear. No, I'm not going to die of dehydration!  As a matter of fact, it is a MYTH that we all need 6-8 glasses of water per day. That got me wondering, where did this myth come from?  To me it makes perfect sense to drink when I'm thirsty and that our ancestors survived just fine (they were actually stronger, healthier, taller, and had less cavities...but that's another post), without guzzling gallons of water. I discovered that this is another one of those 'flawed conventional wisdom"  concepts that gets construed as truth by the sheeples (you know, those people that just follow the crowd and don't bother to think on their own). After much digging, all I could come up with, to even remotely support this theory, is that the water myth was first mentioned by Dr. Fredrick Stare, founder of Harvard's Department of Nutrition. He wrote Nutrition For Good Health in 1974 in which he said: "How much water each day? .. for the average adult, somewhere around 6 to 8 glasses per 24 hours".  But as I read further I found he clarified this statement with, … [Read more...]