After many years of helping women, I’ve learned that the most important component for overall, permanent fat loss is strength training! Not only can weight training be cardio, it can be flexibility training, strength building and toning.

Research shows that when women are faced with a calorie-restricted diet, and they do a lot of cardio, they tend to lose muscle. This is where strength training comes in, it helps stimulate muscle. Strength training is required to stimulate muscle fibers and it helps your muscle know that they are needed. Strength training is going to allow you to keep lean muscle as you diet.

Women should realize that it is extremely difficult to build excess/bulk muscle. In my 25 years of training, I have only seen 2 women (out of two thousand) that have gained additional muscle. In the first 3-6 months, it is normal to gain 1-2 pounds of muscle. In other words, it’s extremely difficult to build excess/bulk while doing strength training.

So, how is weight training vital for fat loss? It is the only way to ensure that you keep the muscle that you have. It helps keep the strength that is needed while dieting and applying intensive cardio workouts. Also, it is the only thing you can do to ensure your curves and shape.

“I have been fit most of my life however after turning 40, it became extremely hard to stay motivated due to job stress, hormonal changes, and just being complacent. Unfortunately in the process I gained 50+ lbs. from being at my ideal weight.

I had tried many times to get back on track but after 3-4 days, I would find any excuse to cheat and be back where I was, feeling more discouraged. Yes, it was the true version of insanity… doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

After being totally disgusted and ready to try anything at the beginning of this year, I surrendered and joined the “Fitness Diva’s 90 day Challenge”. To be honest, I didn’t really think I would be able to stick to it but I became more and more motivated after seeing consistent results week after week. I followed Pam’s plan for nutrition and work-outs for 90 days. I lost 15 lbs in one month and a total of 34 lbs and 25 inches after 90 days. My cholesterol level also decreased 40 points.

Because of the intensity and style of Pam’s work-outs, I saw results very quickly. Pam and her staff’s work-outs challenge me and my body in a way I could not do for myself. The intensity of the work-outs provide cardio benefits as well which I consider a more efficient use of my time. After the 90 days, 34 lbs, and 25 inches, I don’t see my body as just a smaller version of the same shape but a transformation in progress which motivates me to continue working to achieve my goal weight.

Fitness Diva is an upbeat all female environment with women of all sizes with different goals. Pam’s extensive knowledge along with the positive environment, make Fitness Diva a very unique offering in the arena of personal trainers and facilities. She has seen and heard all the fad diets and work-outs but consistently teaches nutrition and trains the way she knows is proven to achieve permanent results.

Thanks Pam, for helping me get back on track and on the way to getting my groove back!”

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Follow these 11 tips and you will be summer ready!

- You need to get rid of all the junk food in your house!

- Get rid of the alcohol.

- Move your body more than a 20 or 30 year old woman.

- Do 10-20 thousand steps a day. (You don’t need to get a pedometer, but you do need to be moving all of the time.)

- Double your water intake.

- Cut out as much carbs as possible.

- Eat 2 fruits and vegetables a day.

- Do strength training 4 days a week. For day 1: work on your upper body Day 2: focus on your lower body. Day 3:Rest and take the day off! Repeat this workout cycle.

- You can take your weekends off, but you need to stay extremely active.

- Take L-carnitine and CLA every morning.

- You can take a fat burner pill, but keep in mind that they are not magic pills. If you are extremely active and have good eating habits, they will help curb your appetite.

It is vital to workout to retain bone mass, maintain strength and maintain energy. Since I’ve been an athlete my whole life, I have witnessed and experienced what happens to our bodies when we turn 40. One of the main aspects that I have discovered is that as our hormone levels decline, and everything starts to soften and deteriorate. This leads to a decrease in strength.

If you wish to get fit and help maintain a healthy body, I often suggest some stringent guidelines:
-Go to the doctor and have your hormones checked and replaced as necessary.
-Focus on strength training!
-If you really enjoy cardio, you can make your strength workout cardiovascular- they work together!
-Make your workout fast paced. You will be getting your body in shape without wasting any time.
-Alternate between moderate to heavy weights and light weights.
-Mix up your workout and constantly change what you are doing.
-Focus on lower body exercises and core work.
-Train your abs like a muscle to protect your lower back.

Strength training has been the answer for most of my clients over the age of 35. If done properly, combined with the right nutrition, recovery and a few supplements, you can have great results! From the proper workout, you can get strength training, flexibility, balance/coordination work and cardio!

Ingredients:
1. Vanilla Dessert Protein
2. Vanilla Extract
3. Skim or soy milk
4. Banana (this gives the ice cream a creamy texture)
5. Water
6. Ice

Directions:
In a blender, add the first 5 ingredients and blend them until they are smooth. Feel free to play around with the amount of ingredients. Once it tastes to your liking, add in the ice. You are looking for a thick, slushy consistency. When it is thick and slow, you know it is ready! Put the mixture in bowls and put them in the freezer for 45 minutes to an hour.

Yummy!

You may be thinking to yourself, how in the world will I manage to eat all of this protein? We have busy lives and protein shakes can get monotonous in taste, right? Below are a few recipes that will help spice up your plain protein shake.

I recommend several ways for changing up your typical protein shake. Here are my top 7 things to make with protein powder:

1. Mix vanilla whey protein with diet Mountain Dew. This is a delicious alternative to the traditional milky tasting shake.
2. Mix in fruit, oatmeal or ground flaxseed oil into your shake for flavor!
3. Mix your protein with cottage cheese and fruit.
4. Add a soup of protein into your oatmeal. You can also add in some cinnamon and vanilla for extra flavor! You can even add almond or walnuts on top for some extra crunch!
5. Mix your protein with ricotta cheese.
6. Protein pancakes- these are very delicious and are as easy to make as normal pacakes
7. Protein ice cream- this is a great treat for summer! (Stay tuned for our next blog when we teach you how to make it!)

Now that you have all these great ideas, your imagination can go wild. Think about adding your favorite flavoring to any of the options above. If you don’t have any protein powder at home, consider making this a staple item in your pantry. Take a look at a few of my favorite protein powders

1. Dessert- This protein was made for women and is #1 for taste!
2. Nitropro Whey – This protein is pricier but your body absorbs it the best.
3. Elite naturals

Are you excited to get your protein-on!? Call us at 404-531-5000 if you have any questions.

Hydration is extremely important for metabolizing, or burning body fat. You cannot metabolize body fat if your body is in a dehydrated state. Did you know that you can drink water all day and still be dehydrated? If your body tissues are dehydrated, your body cannot physically metabolize fat. Keep reading to find out more about metabolizing fat and how water can help you lose weight and keep it off.

Where does the fat go when you lose it? It does not just poof into thin air. What happens is, your body goes through a metabolic process and you excrete the fat through sweat, urine and feces. All of these activities require water to function properly and efficiently. So, if your body is not in optimal hydration, how can you metabolize fat? You cannot! It is physically impossible!

If you working out, but do not properly hydrate your body, your body will burn something, but it will not be your fat. In fact, your body will burn muscle instead! Remember, your goal is to build muscle to further burn fat, the last thing you want to do is burn your muscle. Just because you are working out really hard does not mean that you are burning fat. It is really easy to burn muscle. If you skip a meal, don’t eat enough protein, don’t drink enough water, or are stressed out, your body will burn muscle as a source for energy during your workouts, rather than fat.

Make sure you are not only getting enough protein, sleeping enough and working out, but also be sure that your body is fully hydrated. In my opinion, you need to be drinking close to a gallon of water a day! Yes you can drink tea and crystal light if you want to change up the flavor.

When you first get up in the morning, your body is already dehydrated! You have gone all night without putting any water in your body. When you first get up, drink 2 big glasses of at least 8 ounces of water. This will get your body going and your metabolism started. If you wait until later in the day when you are thirsty, it is too late. You are so far dehydrated that you are never going to be able to get hydrated for that day.

Lets tackle the exercise portion first! You need to train your abs and stomach muscles the same way you train any other muscle in your body. This does not mean getting on the floor and doing 5 minutes of crunches! You need to train them with weight, like you are lifting a heavy load! A great way to do this is by hanging in stirrups on parallel bars in the gym! Another great exercise is using an incline bench and doing reverse crunches. These are two of my favorite exercises that create a nice load on the abdominal muscles. If you want a little six-pack, make sure you are training your stomach like it is a muscle. I would recommend doing 8-10 sets! It may seem like a lot, but in reality it is only going to take you about 15 minutes.

Now lets address the nutrition aspect! Belly fat comes from high insulin! Even if you have a healthy diet and you do not eat any insulin promoting foods or simple carbs, if you have stress in your life, it leads to the secretion of insulin. You need to find ways to reduce the stress. Meditation and exercise are great ways to reduce stress and help burn your fat. You need to make sure you are not getting any extra sugar with the drinks you are drinking and the processed foods you eat. The best eating plan you can use is eating organic and natural foods! Also, make sure you eat small meals rather than large ones!

Get rid of the stress in your life or at least do activities that relieve the stress, eat a healthy diet and workout, and you will get rid of your belly fat! For some people, it may take longer but if you really push your body with the right exercises, in 2-3 months you will get a slim and sexy stomach!

With the rise in obesity, lack of productive physical exercise in teens, and our American fast food diet, it is extremely necessary to have fun, challenging, sweat promoting, and effective workouts for teen girls looking to lose excess body fat and feel empowered! They need to learn how hard to workout and how to do it safely NOW in order to develop healthy habits that will last a lifetime. This is why we’ve worked hard to develop a Teen Boot Camp at Atlanta Fitness Diva! We cater to teen girls with safe and effective boot camp workouts that produce weight loss in girls ages 12-19. Our facility is designed with machines that fit the female body and are safe to use by girls as young as 12 years old.

I come across many teens who are not given enough direction or encouragement to live successfully healthy lives. I’ve found that teenage girls need to implement successful strategies for fitness, control their weight and improve their self-image. Teen girls are constantly bombarded with media that imposes the commonly accepted picture of “beautiful.” Unless a teenage girl is enrolled in weekly sports programs and is active outside of school, she not well equipped and is probably not exercising enough. She may not understand the importance of the foods that she is eating and the detrimental effects to her fitness and her developing shape.

Here at Atlanta Fitness Diva, we have designed a program for teen girls that is not only effective but also super fun for them. It is challenging yet it is perfect for the teenage age group. It is perfectly safe and they are going to build body strength in the right way. Being a female-specific gym, we consider the teen girl’s shoulders and upper body, where young girls and women tend to lack strength and promote safe posture and activity they’ll love.

We are really going to emphasize their core and their lower body like we do with our older women except these workouts are more fun the typical workout. Teen girls have such a short attention span that we want to keep focused and engaged in the fun workout. Our trainers are positive and will not allow them to slack off or be lazy during the workout. We really push them to work for the feeling of success and we foster a supportive environment where the girls learn to positively encourage each other.

When they finish the Teen Boot Camp, they are going to feel empowered which is very important for teens. They are going to have a better body image and they are going to see and feel the changes over time.

Women’s metabolisms are tricky! They slow down for a number of reasons including: losing muscle mass due to aging or loosing muscle mass due to inactivity. If a muscle is not used, it senses that and decreases in size. Essentially, the muscle goes to sleep and it is no longer eating calories.

When trying to increase your metabolism, some things are genetics, which we have no control over. On the other hand, a great number of these factors are things we do have control over!

So how do we increase a woman’s metabolism permanently? The only way to do it permanently, is to increase your lean muscle mass. Lean muscle mass is metabolically active tissue so it burns calories 24/7. Fat does not do anything but sit there and take up space. Now we know that fat is damaging to your veins and to your health because it turns into an organ on your body and emits estrogen.

Your goal should be to increase your good lean muscle mass! It is difficult for women to do this due to our lack of the hormone testosterone. What we want to do is stimulate muscle fibers. Annihilate them, and work them very hard in the gym! Break them down so that your body senses damage and it wants to rebuild it. If you do not eat correctly, you wont be able to rebuild the muscle. We teach you that here at Atlanta Fitness Diva.

Rebuilding your damaged muscle tissue comes down to timing your ingestion of protein and carbs. You need liquid protein and carbs within 30 minutes of finishing your workout. Then you should eat another small meal within an hour of completing your workout. You can have chicken and half of a regular or sweet potato. These meals are going to start that rebuilding process.

In the process of breaking down muscle through intense weight training, specifically the lower body, and then rebuilding the muscle through rest and the ingestion of nutrients at the right time, your body starts an anabolic cycle. An anabolic cycle is when your body rebuilds muscle tissue. In this process, you make set your metabolism on fire and burn calories 24 hours a day! That is the biggest way to increase your metabolism permanently!

Do you have questions about what types of workouts you should be doing? Contact Pam at 404-313-5326!