Lady Hormones and Making Gains

Can Aunt Flo bring you more than just bloating, cramps and an extra sharp 'bitch face'?  It may be just so!  Ever since I read an article in Muscle & Fitness Hers from this past January called 'Harness Your Hormones', I have paid very close attention to my strength and energy levels week to week and they may be on to something!


Now I know this may sound crazy, but apparently ladies, our strongest days in the gym are the weeks our period starts.  Yup, THAT week.  But aren't we supposed to curl up under a blanket and eat ice cream?  Hell no!  Get your butt to the gym because you are about to hit some PRs!  How so, you ask?

 Well, testosterone and estrogen levels are at their lowest the week before you start your period, so when it starts, those hormone levels start to rise and cause an increase in energy and mood.  

        I know... that sounds crazy doesn't it?  I know everyone is different, and some of you may have really awful periods and feel like total shit that week, BUT if you don't and it's just a nuisance like it is for me, than try taking advantage of some gains!  EVERY single month, this week is the week I hit PRs.  Squat, bench, pull ups, curls... you name it.  If I have hit a PR, it's been with Aunt Flo spotting me!  No pun intended....ok maybe a little on that one. 

Week two (or the week after your period), your testosterone and estrogen levels are still pretty high so you can still kick ass in the gym.  Doing high intensity circuits or sprints are great during this week to maximize your fat burning potential with the extra energy you got going on.


The following two weeks energy levels take a big dip.  Firstly due to ovulation occurring around this time which bring on the bloat and irritability.  Or at least this happens to me. ;)  I ease off on the weight load I'm lifting this week and the following one and go for more moderate loads in the 10-12 rep range.  The week right before our periods, hormone levels are at their lowest which means energy, and therefore strength are, as well.  I take this as my recovery week and spend more time doing cardio or bodyweight/lightweight circuits.  That way my body has a chance to really prepare for the ass kicking week that lies ahead and there is much less risk of over-training.



Of course like I said before, we are all different, so what works well for one may not do jack for another.  My fitness journey has been one of never ending trial and error.  Ladies, pay attention to how you feel in the gym over the next few weeks.  It's a commercialized myth that you should be curled up eating Pamprin and Breyers during the week of your period.  Nonsense.  You're actually a crimson Superwoman!!!  Now get out there and get those gains! :)

Choose Your Hard

Plenty of things in life can be hard....or are hard.  But there are so many beautiful things in life that it makes all the hard crap worth it.  Parenthood is a great example.  I KNOW parents can relate.  Parenting is some HARD stuff, but then there's those sweet moments among the chaos that make all the tough parts seem not so tough and totally worth it.

Kate helping our dog eat his dinner

Losing Weight Is Hard & Being Fit Is Hard

I look at fitness in much the same way.  I'm not going to sugarcoat it.  Losing weight is hard.  Building muscle is hard.  It requires a lot of work physically, mentally and emotionally. You may think you're going to drop dead after your first week(month) of training.  You may feel like your lungs will literally explode right out of your chest.  You may puke.  You may feel hungry.  Resisting food temptation is hard.  It requires constant monitoring.  After all, those living the fit life are recovering sugar addicts and are constantly on the verge of relapsing...or at least I am.  Will power is much like a muscle, and the more it is worked, the stronger it gets.  It's hard, too, but the benefits of strengthening your will power and your body FAR outweigh the hard that comes along with it.

Because of being fit, breaking down and tossing a 30 lb jogging stroller in the back of my car isn't a wind-sucking, red-faced task.  I can do it with ease and not miss a beat, all while holding my 11 month old who weighs as much as a sack of potatoes (lucky for her, chunky baby thighs never go out of style).  Because of being fit, unloading a full load of groceries

doesn't take forever, and I can usually get them all in 2 trips. ;) Because of being fit, I know I am setting a good example of what health and loving your body is for my girls.  They are learning early on the importance of eating healthy food to fuel their body, not learning to indulge in junk food to drown their emotions.

Because of enduring the hard of being fit, I know that I'm doing everything I can to ensure I am here for my family as long as possible.  Not only am I ensuring my longevity, but I'm insuring that my quality of life is optimal for those years.  What good is living until old age if you can't get out and move around and enjoy it?  That only happens by getting in shape and staying there.  You can't be in shape without giving a damn about what goes into your body and that also takes hard work.  Eating clean and eating for fat loss are both hard.  Food prepping is hard.  Researching the right foods to eat is hard.  Taking the time to try new recipes is hard.  So is being fit hard?  Yes, but is it worth it?  ABSOLUTELY HELL YES.  

Being Fat Is Hard
Being overweight is also hard.  I know, I have been there.  I was never morbidly obese, but I was 201 lbs after having my first daughter and on my 5'4" frame, that wasn't a pretty site.  I had never been that big before.  In high school and college I fluctuated between a size 4-8, 120 lbs-145lbs.  I had never truly been on the other side of the weight fence (despite feeling like I was fat everyday of my teenage and college life).  I have felt the discomfort of thigh chafing.

Obesity makes driving hard.

I have felt like an over-sized giant in my car. I have avoided the mirror completely getting out of the shower.  I have hated every article of clothing in my closet.  I have avoided shopping (and that killed me!).  I have been nearly snubbed next to young college girls in a sub shop line.  I have been ignored by construction workers (and that's hard to do).  As nice as it was to not hear a whistle and an 'owww!', it kinda hurt too.

When you're overweight, it's hard to be on your feet all day.  They feel bruised after six hours.  It's hard to feel out of breath going up 10 stairs...or for so many, it's just going 10 feet.  It's hard to have Diabetes and have to manage it--and pay for it-- on a daily basis.

It's hard to take time off of work to be sick and laid up in a hospital room.  It's hard to afford and take medication everyday for high blood pressure and cholesterol.  It's hard to deal with the digestive issues the Standard American Diet gives you.  It's hard to tell your kids you can't play with them because you are too big or too tired or can't run or have bad knees.  It's hard to see their disappointment.  It's hard to hear them say they don't want to be fat like their parents.

Photo credit + article on
obesity's relation to arterial stiffness

It's HARD to be overweight.  And what are the benefits of being overweight?  What's the reward at the end of the day?  There isn't one.  Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.  It takes a lot of hard work to be fat and what do you get in the long run?  An early death.  A gazillion medications to pop every day to keep you from keeling over.  Is being overweight hard?  Yes, but is it worth it?  ABSOLUTELY HELL NO.

Choose Wisely
There are plenty of things in life that are hard.  Many of those things should be hard so that we appreciate them more.  If a workout wasn't called a WORK out, it would just be an easy out. The hard work is rewarding in the long run because it benefits you and everyone who loves you. Conversely, the hard associated with obesity is empty.  You get nothing out of it in the long run but lost days, lost memories, lost time.  Choose your hard, and choose it wisely.  

6 Foods With Hidden Sugar

It's amazing what can happen with your body when you eliminate, or really cut back on your sugar in-take. I never realized how many foods have hidden sugar until I found clean eating. Soft drinks are one of the biggest culprits. One soda a day is like eating 21 Tablespoons of sugar a week. It adds up and can make a huge difference in reaching your goals. Below is another exerpt from the P90X Newsletter, written by Joe Wilkes. There's such great info in them, I can't help but to share it. Look through them all here if you're curiosity gets the best of you.

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The average American eats approximately 1,500 pounds of food every year. Of that, 160 pounds are primarily sugar. Of course, sugar is delicious, and I know I'm happier for its existence, but of all the things we consume, it has the least nutritive value. In fact, except for the energy in its calories, there's not much to recommend about sugar. It's a prime source of empty calories, and for those of us who are trying to lose weight, sugar's the first thing we should start trimming from our diets. But here's the problem—despite our best intentions to remove excess sugar from our diet, the food industry has found more and more devious ways of slipping us the sweet stuff. Whether the food industry calls sugar by another name or adds it to foods we never thought would have needed it, our sweet tooth is constantly being bombarded. Fortunately, with stricter labeling laws, we have a fighting chance at cutting back on sugar.

Why does the food industry want to fill us so full of sugar?

It's basically the same as any other industry. For the oil industry to make more money, it needs us to use more of its product by driving more miles. The food industry needs us to use more of its product by eating more calories. The problem is that the American food industry is already producing around 3,900 calories per person per day, which is way more than we need. One solution to this surplus is to sell the food cheaply overseas, which the industry does. The other solution is for Americans to eat more calories. And sugar and its corn-sweetener brethren are great calorie delivery systems, as they pack a huge caloric punch without causing much satiety or feeling of fullness. Most people would probably stop eating steak after they reached 1,000 calories, because they'd be stuffed, but after you drank 1,000 calories from your Big Gulp® cup, there'd still be room for dinner. The other reason the industry pushes sugar so hard is that it's cheap to produce, and the cheaper the calorie, the larger the profit margin.

Sugar in labels—hiding in plain sight.

One of the best ways to disguise the amount of sugar in a product is something the government already requires—printing the information in grams. Most Americans only have the foggiest idea of how much a gram is, because we're unaccustomed to the metric system. So when we pick up a can of soda that contains 40 grams of sugar, we pretty much shrug our shoulders and pop the top. And that attitude is all right with the soda industry! But what if the label said that it contained over 10 teaspoons of sugar? If you saw someone ladling 10 teaspoons of sugar into their morning coffee, you'd think they were crazy, but that's how much people consume in a typical 12-ounce can. A 64-ounce fountain drink you'd get at a movie theater or a convenience store contains more than 53 teaspoons of sugar—almost two cups! Naturally, people would probably think twice if the nutritional information on products was given in measurements that were meaningful to them. But until our heavily food industry–subsidized government decides to change its policy, it's a metric world, we just live in it. But we can take note that four grams equals one teaspoon. So when you check out the label, divide the grams of sugar by four, and that's how many teaspoons you're consuming.

Sugar by any other name would taste as sweet.

Another strategy the sugar pushers use to get us to consume more calories is to rename the offending ingredient. We know to stay away from sugar, but how about molasses, honey, sorghum, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup (HCFS), glucose, fructose, lactose, dextrose, sucrose, galactose, maltose, or concentrated juices like grape or apple? Another path to profit that the food industry has discovered is that instead of harvesting relatively more expensive sugar cane and beets, they can produce sweeteners in a laboratory more cheaply and with just as many calories as beet and cane sugar. And with some sweeteners, especially the popular HCFS, it is believed that your body will be less likely to reach satiety than with sugar, so you can consume more. Mo' calories, mo' money. Another advantage to these doses of -oses is that, aside from the fact that many people won't guess they're just different forms of sugar, they can be spread out in the ingredient list required by law, so it won't be as obvious that what you're consuming is pretty much all sugar. When you look at a list of ingredients on a product, the manufacturer is required to list them in order of amount, from highest to lowest. So they can bury a quarter cup of fructose, a quarter cup of sucrose, a quarter cup of dextrose, and a quarter cup of corn syrup in the middle of the list, so you won't be as likely to notice that when you add them all up, the main ingredient in the product is sugar.

Hide and seek. You're it.

So, if you're like me, you may have sworn off soda except for special occasions, and turned the candy bowl into an unsalted-almond bowl. No more sugar, no more problems. Except for this problem—the food industry has cleverly snuck its sugars into products where we never would have thought to look for sugar. It's good for the manufacturer. It jacks up the calorie load, can enhance the product's appearance (high fructose corn syrup gives hamburger buns their golden glow), and can keep our sugar jones simmering at a low boil, in case we ever decide to go back to the real thing.

Here are some types of products whose labels could bear more scrutiny.

Spaghetti sauce. A half cup of store-bought sauce can contain as many as three teaspoons of corn syrup or sugar. While some of the naturally occurring sugar in tomatoes and other vegetables will show up on the nutrition label, most of the sugar is added. Look for brands that don't include sugar or its aliases or make your own from fresh or canned tomatoes.

Ketchup. Ketchup can be 20 percent sugar or more. Not to mention that you'll get 7 percent of your daily sodium allowance in one tablespoon. Look for low-salt, no-sugar brands, or make your own, using pureed carrots to add flavor and texture to the tomatoes.

Reduced-fat cookies. Most brands of cookies now offer a reduced-fat version of their product. Nabisco® even offers its own line of low-fat treats, Snackwell's®. But while you're patting yourself on the back for choosing the low-fat option, check the label. The sneaky food manufacturers did take out the fat, but they replaced it with, you guessed it, sugar. Many times, the reduced-fat cookie is only slightly less caloric than the one you want to eat. And because there's no fat to make you feel full, you'll be tempted to eat more "guilt-free" cookies. And just because there's less fat, it doesn't mean you'll be less fat. Fat doesn't make you fat. Calories make you fat.

Low-fat salad dressing. As with low-fat cookies, manufacturers have taken the fat out of the dressing, but they've added extra salt and sugar to make up for it. Check the label to make sure you're not replacing heart-healthy olive oil with diabetes-causing sugar—because that's not really a "healthy choice." Your best bet? Make your own vinaigrettes using a small amount of olive oil, a tasty gourmet vinegar or fresh lemon juice, and some fresh herbs.

Bread. Most processed breads can contain a good bit of sugar or corn syrup. As always, check the ingredient label, and consider getting your bread at a real bakery or a farmers' market—it's the best idea since, well, you know.

Fast food. Needless to say, fast food is generally not good for you. But even if you're staying away from the sodas and the shakes, everything from the burgers to the fries to the salads is a potential place to hide sugar. Check out the ingredients carefully at your favorite restaurant. You may be getting more than you bargained for.
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So remember these things and if you cut out sugar, I bet you'll see a big difference!!