RIO Fitness Chicago® Tip:

How much FIBER do you have daily? If you want to prevent body fat gain, you should have it daily. Fiber helps to slow down the digestion of the sugars we eat. That's a good thing, because the faster those sugars are digested & absorbed, and if not burned immediately, they're stored as body fat. A general rule is that what you're eating should have 8g of fiber or more.

RIO Fitness Chicago® Tip:

If you have just three sodas, juices, or sports drinks a day, you're consuming over 16,000 tablespoons of sugar a year! All that sugar = body fat gain, because 1) if excess sugar is not burned immediately, it is stored as body fat & 2) it spikes our insulin (blood sugar) levels which triggers the body to raise levels of the body fat producing hormone cortisol. Start drinking more water! At least 80oz/day, and closer to 120oz if you exercise regularly. Water has zero cal/fat/sugar, and also will help prevent overeating, because many confuse that hungry feeling for the body wanting a meal, when instead that hungry feeling is the body saying it's dehydrated.

RIO Fitness Chicago® Tip:

Most people, when they know they're going to have a large meal, or after they've had a huge meal, won't eat anything else that day. That's the worse thing we can do, because we've already over-consumed calories = body fat gain; then by starving the body the rest of the day, we slow down our metabolism (how fast we burn calories) = more body fat gain. Instead, eat something SMALL (unsalted/raw nuts, a banana, or plain Greek yogurt mixed with fresh fruit), every 3hrs to keep the metabolism fast.

RIO Fitness Chicago® Tip:

Summer is only a few short weeks away! Time for swimsuits, shorts, Summer dresses, and showing more skin! Are you doing cardio properly to be maximizing body fat loss?

Four to five times per week start doing cardio properly to be burning majority calories from fat, not energy. Doing more than 30 minutes of cardio is going to be majority energy calories; more than an hour is going to burn muscle. To do cardio properly to burn majority fat calories do just 25 minutes of 60 second high then low intensity intervals of cardio.

Cardio example (treadmill):

Warm-up 60sec @ 3.0 speed
Minute 1 - Speed 5.0
Min 3 - Speed 5.0
Min 5 - Speed 5.0
Min 7 - Speed 5.0
Min 9 - Speed 5.0
Min 11 - Speed 7.0
Min 13 - Speed 7.0
Min 15 - Speed 7.0
Min 17 - Speed 7.0
Min 19 - Speed 7.0
Min 21 - Speed 9.0
Min 23 - Speed 9.0
Cool-down 60sec @ Speed 3.0

That's it just 25mins of cardio to burn body fat! All the even numbered mins (2,4,6, etc) you come down to Speed 3.0. This is just an example, adjust it to your fitness level.

There's no wrong time to do cardio, but the two best times are: as soon as you wake up before consuming calories, and after strength training.

RIO Fitness Chicago® Tip:

Getting enough sleep each night is essential to getting/staying in-shape. Lack of sleep causes: the body fat producing hormone cortisol to increase, decreases growth hormones that help us recover from exercise & our day, increases the cravings/appetite hormone ghrelin, and decreases levels of leptin which suppresses appetite.

RIO Fitness Chicago® Tip:

Hot news story yesterday. This is a zero carb & starvation (800cal/day) diet. Zero carb diets only help us lose water weight, because 1g of carb carries 4oz of water, so by eliminating carbs we don't have that extra water, but once we eat carbs again we gain it all back plus some. Anybody who consumes under 1200cal/day puts their body into starvation mode: 1) the body holds onto the fat it already has, 2) anything we do consume is auto-stored as fat for future energy, 3) if done consistently daily, the body will start consuming muscle as fuel, which slows down our metabolism, causing more body fat gain. THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR DAILY EXERCISE & HEALTHY EATING FOR TRUE, HEALTHY, LONG LASTING RESULTS.

Watch this Good Morning America video for more on this terrible nutrition example:

http://gma.yahoo.com/k-e-diet-brides-using-feeding-tubes-rapidly-080053646--abc-news-health.html

RIO Fitness Chicago® Tip:

This is the most effective fat burner there is! Taking Perfect ISOPURE after we exercise will help us to build lean muscle tissue, which helps us burn more calories all day long. 1lb of muscle burns 50cal/day at rest, so 10lbs of muscle will burn an extra 500cal/day on top of what we burn during exercise. All you do is mix 1 scoop with 10oz of cold water, and consume after any kind of exercise. Taking this will turns a body into a calorie burning machine!

Go to www.bodybuilding.com/store/nb/perfectisopure.html to see more info.

RIO Fitness Chicago® Tip:

There is NO substitute for exercise & eating right daily if we want to see long lasting results in a healthy way. Diet pills sold by Kim K., or pregnancy hormone starvation diets (HCG) are all just short term solutions that are ineffective or only help us water weight/muscle. Striving to lose "weight" instead of body fat, keeps us as yo-yo dieters that gain then lose, gain then lose, which is extremely damaging to the heart.

RIO Fitness Chicago® Tip:

The battle to get in-shape is more psychological than physical. We just have to say, "today, I'm going to do ____________ to get into shape!" Whether it's a Zumba or kickboxing class, going for walk along the Lakefront Downtown, or riding a bike to work/to do errands/to a friends house, make a pledge to do something active TODAY & every single day this week! Once you do you'll feel amazing!

RIO Fitness Chicago® Tip:

How are your energy levels morning to night? If low, do you take a multi-vitamin daily? If not, you should be. With all the processing food goes through before the store, and then when we cook it, it gives up all it's vitamins and minerals. So to get the amount of v & m we need that's where a multi-vitamin is essential.

Recommendations on a multi-vitamin:

1) If possible, have it be a soft gel pill, because those digest & absorb better.

2) Regardless of soft or hard, ALWAYS take pills AFTER you eat, not on a empty stomach.

3) Best time to take a multi-vitamin is after breakfast, because we just went 5-8hrs during sleep with no nutrients, so to get jump start take after breakfast.

RIO Fitness Chicago® Tip:

The body can only consume so many calories (approx. 500) before the rest is stored as fat. Also, the body can only burn so many calories with exercise (approx. 400) before you're just burning energy/muscle. So if you're on a machine or using a heart rate monitor and they say you're burning over 600cal, you're not accomplishing anything besides burning energy and them muscle, which is putting you further from your goal because the more muscle we have the more cal we'll burn all day long.