Interview: Cassie Rose Carnahan

Name – Cassie Rose Carnahan

Company – Beauty First in the Brentwood Promenade, St. Louis, MO

Position - Personal Trainer / Cosmetologist

Link - http://www.blogcass.com/

How long have you been in the wellness field?
I worked at my first gym in 1998

How did your experiences there impact you?
I knew I was hooked on weight training! I loved everything about the gym. It was my second home. I also started to teach aerobics classes and realized I'm a good at training the members on the equipment which lead to me becoming a personal trainer.
Physically I started to develope nice muscles within a few months of weight training and after my first year of weight training I had developed into a buff 15 year old! The rest is history. I've been hitting the gym since then. I worked at Fountains Gym all throught High School and became a Personal Trainer soon after I graduated from High School. I started working out of gyms and now am and Independant Contractor.

What are your wellness staples?
weight training, cardio, healthy diet. All 3 are equally important to me.

How to you keep fit? Any routine?
Weight Training, Muay Thai Kickboxing, Road Bike Cycling

Which is your favorite?
Weight training is my favorite. It always has been. I have a passion for Muay Thai and Cycling also. It's too hard to pick a favorite, but have love for each of them.

Any wellness goals?
To someday a bike race or another Physique Competition or both!

Sounds interesting, tell us about your physique competition.
I compete in Figure Competitions now. It's a form of Bodybuilding. I have photo's on my website Gallery.

What is your wellness motto?
Baby steps to fitness will lead to life long health and fitness

That's a good one. What was the first baby step you took?
The first babystep I took was walking around my highschool track and weight training at my highschool gym with the football players.

Who are your wellness inspirations?
Pretty much all of the Olympic Athletes, Figure and Fitness Competitors, and Bodybuilders

Piece of advice for those looking to get healthy/fit/well?
Start with small changes when you are replacing unhealthy habits with healthy habits. The all or nothing mentality will get lead to failure. When in doubt of yourself. Pray!

www.CassieRoseOnline.com

Trans Fat Truth

Hi Readers,

I just wanted to give a quick label-reading warning to all.

We've all heard about trans fats in the news recently. This is the unhealthy and dangerous fat that's found in many processed foods. Many products are now labeling their trans fat content on their packaging. This seems like a good idea, but is very misleading. These food manufacturers are tricksters.

PLEASE NOTE: The products you see that say 0 Trans fats may not actually be trans fat free!

When you look closely, the 0 Trans fats, actually says: 0g Trans fat. Meaning zero grams. However, there may be several miligrams of trans fats in the food.

To check if a food is truly trans fat free, look at the ingredient listing. If you see Partially Hydrogenated oils of any kind...STAY AWAY!

Check your cupboards when you can and let me know what products you find that say 0g trans fats, but contain partially hydrogenated oils. Leave me an email or a comment, I'd like to put together a list of those tricky products to help make more people aware.

(Thank you for your message Tanya)

Interview: Lindsey of YummyFitness

Name – Lindsey McGuire

Company – Yummy Fitness

Position – Co-Founder

Link – http://www.YummyFitness.com

How long have you been in the wellness field – Fitness and wellness have been part of my life from a very young age, but the bizarre part is that I didn't even know it at the time. In junior high and high school I was extremely active in wrestling and I was also a national level Judo competitor.

I had a ton of fun with those sports and never really thought about how they directly translate to fitness, wellness, weight loss, building muscle, etc. (I now realize and acknowledge the lessons I learned.)

Not realizing that my skills in wrestling and Judo also applied to fitness I began to gain weight after graduating school. My weight soon shot up in rapid fashion. I hated "working out" and diet foods and restrictions were no fun, so it seemed that I was in real big trouble.

Luckily my future husband Sean Bissell and I met. Sean also knew a great deal about nutrition and fitness. Sean's technical approach and my more intuitive knowledge melded together and we almost accidentally came up with a way that made fitness integrate into our lives seamlessly.

Now we try and make nutrition and fitness a part of our lives, instead of making our lives fit around our fitness and nutrition. We tried the other way around for awhile… and that didn't work to well to say the least.


What are your wellness staples – Honestly, having fun is my biggest staple. Having fun could mean running across town for the sake of getting breakfast, or taking a hike instead of a run, or even making sure to "cheat" in a way that works for you, it's all fair game.

How to you keep fit? Do you have a routine?– Routines are no fun, I think you should stay consistent, but routines for me can get very repetitive and boring. When something becomes boring, you lose motivation, and when you lose motivation, you stop… Or you just become miserable, and that defeats the purpose of fitness, which is to feel great in and about yourself.

Do you have any wellness goals? – To make it feel like I'm just living and not working.


What is your wellness motto? – Make your fitness work for you, don't work for your fitness.

Who are your wellness inspirations? – My inspirations are those people who are "naturally" healthy, and that don't need to obsess about their routines. People who have found a way to make fitness integrate into their lives in a way that truly makes them happy.


Piece of advice for those looking to get healthy/fit/well? – Small changes are the best, you don't need to do everything all at once, if you make one small change a day, or even a week then very soon you will be much further ahead than you would have ever thought possible. If you make huge changes all at once then it will be too difficult and feel out of place with your current life. When you change too much too quickly it is motivating for a little while, but when the motivation wears off and when you get tired it will be extremely easy and tempting to quit. And if you quit, you'll never truly get ahead. One of the big "secrets" is small consistent and steady changes is the key to long term, sustainable, and real success.

The Omnivore’s Hundred

The Omnivore’s Hundred

I found this fun little item over on the AlmostFit site, and decided to play, just for kicks. You should do the same! Let me know your 'score'

"The site Very Good Taste posted a list of 100 things that they felt every good omnivore should try at least once in his or her life.”

So which foods have you, or would you, eat?

Instructions:

Bold all items you’ve eaten.

Cross out any items that you would never consider eating. (i used italics instead)

Here’s my list:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart - Never Again lol
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream - allergic, otherwise I would
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float -
36. Cognac with a big fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly - now THIS sounds like a treat
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal - I've actually never eaten a big mac (99 hamburgers are a diff story)
56. Spaetzle - don't know what this is, and not in the mood to google it
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian- I’m up for any fruit
66. Frogs’ legs - tastes like chicken
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake - all yes, yes, too much, yes
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain - staple in my youth
70. Chitterlings or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost or brunost
75. Roadkill - c'mon
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie - never appealed to me
78. Snail - i love these lil guys
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake -

I've tried a bit, have a lot left to experiment with. I eat fish but not meat/poultry so that knocks a bit off of my 'to try' list

Which foods are on, or off, your list?

Ways To Be Happy

This is a little gem I found on the Steve Pavlina forums. It was written by a life coach and forum member named Tim Brownson. He calls it: Ways To Be Happy. Enjoy

Ask more questions, not the same questions more often
Recognize you can be whatever you desire to be
Know that performance does not equal identity
Realize that you are the equal of everybody
Realize that you are the better of nobody
Appreciate you did the best you could
Face the future, live for the moment
Understand suffering is part of life
Accept you will make mistakes
Breathe from your diaphragm
Smile when things get tough
Always be kind to yourself
Think before your answer
Visualize Your Success
Take time for yourself
Make time for others
Listen with interest
Suspend disbelief
Embrace change
Still Your Mind
Be curious
Exercise
Laugh
Love
Cry
Be

Interview: Jen & Erin of Fit Bottomed Girls

I found a great blog site called Fit Bottomed Girls. Below is an interview of the two co-founders:

Name – Jenn and Erin

Company – Fit Bottomed Girls

Position - Co-founders

Link - http://www.fitbottomedgirls.com/

How long have you been in the wellness field?

Jenn has been working as a fitness professional for the past seven years and has a lot of letters in her alphabet soup: certified personal trainer, lifestyle and weight management consultant, and group exercise instructor. Erin has years of workout experience and is well versed in fitness news and trends (aka she reads Fitness, Self and Shape religiously and through sheer osmosis has learned a lot during three years of carpooling with Jenn to their former Office Space-esque job), but vows to never take the step to fitness-instructorville.

What are your wellness staples?

Regular daily activity that we enjoy, stuffing our faces with loads of fruits and veggies, enjoying the occasional glass(es) of wine and always eating a piece of dark chocolate when the need arises (which, for the record, is often).

How to you keep fit?

Because we review an exercise DVD on every Thursday for Fit Bottomed Girls, we do A LOT of exercise DVDs, ranging from dance-based workouts to Pilates to hard-core weight lifting. Other than that, it's walking our beloved pups (Erin has a lovable/hyper pug and Jenn has a sweet/mad mutt), running outside, hiking, lifting free weights or the occasional gym workout. In addition, Jenn is a tennis fiend. We're your normal everyday girls--not Gladiators or Olympians.

Any wellness goals?

Jenn has self-diagnosed exercise ADD, so she's always switching up her wellness goals. But on the whole, she aims to workout most days of the week, always have the cardio endurance to run at least three miles, regularly spend time outdoors, keep stress at a minimum, follow intuitive eating principles and generally just enjoy life. Because Erin is a Jenn-twin, her goals are almost exactly the same. Except for the running. Erin hates running.

What is your wellness motto?

Keeping a lid on the junk in the trunk. We both live (and write!) by it.

Who are your wellness inspirations?

We both can't get Michael Phelps or Dara Torres out of brains following the Olympics, but Jenn is a huge fan of Angela Bassett (have you seen How Stella Got Her Groove Back?!) and Madonna (she's 50 now, which is just INSANE). Erin loves reading success stories about people who have made and maintained lifestyle changes to improve their health. And we both adore Bob Harper from the Biggest Loser, but that may be more eye candy than inspiration.

Piece of advice for those looking to get healthy/fit/well?

Don't strive for perfection. Make fitness fun. Laugh at yourself. Stress less. Eat according to your hunger. Try new things. Do what makes sense for you. Live! And lastly, and most importantly, love your fit bottom--no matter what size it is!

Ask ZenFitChick - Q&A

This is a question sent in yesterday by a ZenFitChick reader named Christie:

I was wondering...I'm 5'11 and 245 lbs and would like to lose 82 (I good weight for me is 163). What is a realistic time frame to lose that kind of weight? Does it solely depend on how much exercise I do and how clean I eat?

First off, thank you so much for reading ZenFitChick and I appreciate you taking the time to write in!

Okay, so for weight loss it will depend on the amount of cardio you do and what you're eating.
Weight training is great and good to do, but for fat loss cardio/diet is the most important.

If you stay diligent with your cardio and get your diet under control you'll probably lose 2lbs a week for a while, then 1lb a week and 1/2 lb a week thereafter. (the bigger we are, the more calories we burn through exercise)
Start doing cardio!!! Try to just get in the habit of doing cardio daily, before you start to make other changes. I recommend to people who want to lose: start cardio daily, keep your diet moderately the same but just switch out everything u drink with plain water (or water w/ lemon) this will slash crazy amounts of calories without you having to 'diet'
Just this one simple step for a month is a good beginning... the second month you can ramp up your cardio so u don't get bored, and start making diet changes.

Some people are diligent dieters though, if you're one of those people, I'd suggest getting a quality meal plan made. If you want to try both diet/exercise all at once (at times this is a recipe for disaster due to high expectations and high failure rate / burnout) then definitely do cardio daily for AT LEAST 30 mins, switch all drinks for water, and begin having big breakfasts, medium sized lunches and small dinners.

One of my clients has actual full "dinnertime" meals for breakfast, a typical "lunch" in the afternoon, and "breakfast" for dinner... We just did what worked well for her.

I hope this is a helpful response for you... I can't give you a definite timeframe for weight loss. If i were your trainer and was consistently working with you and monitoring your diet I could, but this is just general with the stats you gave me.

IF you take only one thing away from this: DO CARDIO DAILY for at least 30 mins and watch the weight go bye-bye.