Hi Fusers! We are diving in at day number 3 and I hope you all are staying on track. It has been difficult for me so far being a vegetarian because my meals are a bit limited and I have to keep track of my protein intake.

Since I am a vegetarian I do eat quinoa and full fat greek yogurt as in level 1. Other than that I have cut out all sugar and stick to veggies, lots of eggs, quinoa, almonds, paleo bread and yogurt for my protein. I have also been eating a lot of fat such as avocado, coconut oil and natural almond butter (no sugar and manufactured only with other almonds-no soy or other nuts).

In the beginning I was moody with headaches and hungry. I realized I wasn't eating enough so I added more snacks full of fat, veggies and protein.  I also take a daily live women's multivitamin and a probiotic to enhance absorption of vitamins and minerals and support healthy digestion. Now I am satiated and sleep like a baby! However I still miss my daily banana, (ripe-not green) with almond butter and Trader Joe's black bean/quinoa tortilla chips with hummus :(

So today this is what I inhaled:

Breakfast: Two organic omega-3 scrambled eggs in coconut oil with spinach, onions, garlic, cumin, cracked pepper, pink Himalayan sea salt, thyme and cayenne pepper. I also made quinoa flakes with cinnamon and chia seeds with a cup of three ginger tea. Oh, and did I mention I also miss my green tea full of caffeine?! Well I do.

Snack #1: Full fat greek yogurt with cinnamon and chia seeds.

Lunch: Broccoli and kale salad with tomatoes, avocado, boiled eggs and cucumber. I make my own dressing with fresh squeezed lemon, olive oil, thyme and pink Himalayan sea salt and ground pepper.

Snack: #2: Toasted coconut paleo bread with natural almond butter and cinnamon with a side of spinach salad.

Dinner: 1 cup of garbanzo beans, brussel sprouts and a kale salad with the same dressing as above with garlic and onions added.

Snack #3: Toasted coconut paleo bread again with coconut oil, 1 hard boiled egg sliced on top with fresh spinach and avocado.

Whew! I'm tired just typing all of this. But I have to say I do have more energy and sleep like a baby, but I crash earlier than usual--bed time is 10pm now.

Here's my advice to you. Make sure you plan and prep your meals ahead of time. It will seem tedious in the beginning, especially if you are cooking for several family members like myself. Although I am a vegetarian, I do cook fish and chicken for my husband and 7 year old daughter, so I understand that our time is precious. But once you have your grocery list, meals and recipes planned you will be good to go.

Okay, enough about me I'd like to hear how this detox is going for you! Please share your journey with us!

Let's go Team!

Yours In Health,

Pascha

Hi Fusers! Happy May! What gorgeous spring weather we've been having :) Summer is just around the corner, and let me tell you, I couldn't be happier about that. Today's blogpost is written by our resident guest blogger, Beverly Aabjerg. Enjoy!

Get Ready for More

In April we encouraged everyone to "Just Give Up" one bad habit. Here at The Fuse Fitness, members gave up everything from chocolate to Facebook, kettle corn to junk T.V. With April behind us, the results are in, and most people have kept their promises! Why have Fuse Fitness members been so successful? Is it because they posted their commitment publicly? Or perhaps because they are checking in with each other so frequently. Or maybe because people are encouraged by participating in this challenge with a group rather than struggling alone. Is it "misery likes company" or "the more the merrier", or a bit of both?

If you accepted our April challenge, good for you! Give yourself a pat on the back and keep up the good work. Think about whether or not you might want to continue keeping this "bad habit" out of your life. Look at the pros and cons of continuing to moderate this behavior.

May Challenge

Now in May, we encourage everyone to adopt a behavior that they know will increase their health and/or quality of life.  Some ideas Fuse members are thinking about include working out one more day a week, taking yoga classes, meditating everyday, getting a long-avoided physical exam, eating at least four servings of vegetables a day, and drinking green tea. Now is as good a time as any to take hold of your life and do something you know would be good for you.

Don't Go Alone

This challenge is not something you have to do by yourself. Enroll your friends and family to take the challenge with you. Post the challenges on the fridge and check in with each other a couple times a week. Acknowledge and encourage each other. And have fun living well!

Yours in Health,

The Fuse Fitness

Hi Fusers!

This is not an early April Fool’s Day joke, what we mean is just give up one bad habit.

"Give It Up!" is April's fitness challenge. The challenge for all of us is to give up one bad habit for 30 days.

At Least One Bad Habit

We all have at least one habit that undermines our health and fitness goals. The challenge is to give that habit up for 30 days. If after 30 days you want to return to your old ways, it is your choice to do so. You can give up any bad habit you want, such as a bad eating habit, like giving up chocolate, or a behavior, like watching TV while you eat. Think about the one thing that you know you want to change, big or small.

One at a Time

We know it is hard to change behaviors and most experts agree that by making one change at a time, you are more likely to succeed in both the short and long run.  It takes only a few weeks to train your brain and body to adjust. The goal of this challenge is to break free of a habit that you know does not serve you. At the end of the 30-day challenge, ideally you will have accomplished the following:

1. Establish your change in behavior as a habit itself.

2. Break your addiction/unconscious reactionary thinking to your behavior.

3. Feel empowered to continue to challenge yourself in making other changes.

To keep your mind from short-circuiting, remember this is only a 30-day challenge. After 30 days you are free to go back to your old ways if you choose. Hopefully you will use moderation :)

You might not want to start with giving up your most challenging habit. If you smoke daily and every night you eat cookies, pick the behavior you are most likely to be able to give up right now.

If you fall off the wagon, get right back on! One or two slips means that you are 85% effective at reaching your goal.

Remember, you do not have to go it alone. Ask friends and family to take the "Give It Up!" challenge with you. Many people at The Fuse Fitness are ready to give up a bad habit as well. So drop by the studio and see our wall of "Give It Up!"  With support it is always easier to kick a habit.

So tell us, what is one of the bad habits you are willing to give up? Do show and tell.

Good luck!

Yours in Health,

The Fuse Fitness

Post written by Beverly Aabjerg

Hi Fusers :) Hope you're having a great week thus far!

Most of us made some health and fitness goals a couple of months back. Wasn't it easy to be gung-ho at the beginning of the new year, when we were motivated to have a fresh start, work hard and keep a positive attitude?

Life Happens

However, life happens and sometimes we get derailed off our path toward our goals. Often  it is a short series of small derailments that topple us, leaving us feeling defeated. We're here to encourage everyone revisit your goals. Take an honest look at where you are right now and let's get back on track!

Be Forgiving

First and foremost, forgive yourself if you haven't quite stayed the course with your goals. We are all human, nobody is perfect. Both life's enjoyments and stresses can lead us to make not-so-healthy choices. Take a moment to recognize this and keep it in mind. It is not how far we fall, but how we get back up that makes the difference in life.

Realistic Goals

Maybe your goals were not quite realistic. Remember that if you completely deprive yourself of your greatest pleasures (wine, chocolate, etc.), your body will not feel satisfied and you're more likely to end up bingeing. Keep your goals realistic. Cut back so that you can still meet your goals, but allow yourself some room to relax and enjoy. Quality of life and good mental health are also very important.

Hold Yourself Accountable

Share your goals with someone! By putting yourself out there and using the buddy system for motivation, you're more likely to stay on track because you'll be checking in with someone about your progress.

Be Honest with Yourself

This is very important. We all know our weaknesses, and it's far too easy to make excuses for them. Eating out too often? "Well, you know, I just don't have time to cook...." Indulging in your sweet tooth too much? "Well, I just needed some instant energy because I haven't been sleeping well...." Do these excuses sound familiar? Identify your weaknesses and keep them in check.

We're all in this together. We all get off track and lose motivation, but let's encourage and inspire ourselves and each other to be the best version of ourselves we can be.

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness

Hi Fusers!

Our dear friend and fellow Fuser Beverly Aabjerg has written an awesome guest post regarding heart healthy eating. Thank you so much Beverly!

Good heart health is gained or maintained with exercise and the food that we eat.According to the Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, research has found that omega-3 fatty acids are essential to the well-being of our bodies. Eating a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids does appear to decrease the risk of stroke and heart disease. These polyunsaturated fats carry acids that help control blood clotting as well as building cell membranes in the brain.

We cannot manufacture these on our own, so we need to get them from the food we eat. Omega-3 fatty acids are commonly found in marine and plant oils. Here is a list of foods containing omega-3 fatty acids:

Almonds, walnuts and, flaxseed (ground) eaten raw or in recipes are a good way to get your daily dose of omega-3 fatty acids.

Oatmeal is also rich in omega-3 fatty acids; as well as magnesium; potassium; folate; niacin; calcium; soluble fiber.  The less processed the oats, the better. Steel cut oats have the highest nutritional value where as instant oats the least. Oatmeal-and-raisin cookies are a heart healthy treat.

Black or Kidney beans contain omega-3 fatty acids  as well as B-complex vitamins, folate, magnesium, calcium and fiber, plus niacin. These beans are great to add to soups and salads for extra flavor and heart-healthy nutrients.

Fish such as herring, halibut, sardines, tuna and salmon are excellent sources of omega-3 fatty acids. (Make sure to buy wild not farm-raised salmon.)  American Heart Association suggests eating one or more of these fish at least twice a week.

Research shows, that besides heart disease, a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids can help with cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, and other autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

What is your favorite omega-3 fatty acids food?

Yours in Health,

The Fuse Fitness

Hi Fusers! February is heart disease prevention and awareness month.

The Bad News

Did you know that heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, killing more than 600,000 Americans each year? Pretty scary, huh?

The Good News

Did you also know that you have a lot of power in protecting and improving your heart health? That's what we're here to talk about.

What is Heart Disease?

First, let's quickly discuss what heart disease is. Your arteries supply blood to the heart, carrying oxygen and nutrients to this very important muscle. When plaque builds up on the inner walls of your arteries, it causes hardening and narrowing, thus reducing the blood flow to the heart. When plaque buildup becomes so severe that blood can not reach the heart, heart attacks occur, causing permanent damage and sometimes death.

Risk Factors

Now, let's go over the risk factors for heart disease that are in your hands. High cholesterol, high blood pressure, smoking, obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, diabetes and high stress levels all significantly increase your risk of heart disease. However, you can control these risk factors and The Fuse Fitness is here to help you take control of these risk factors and ensure that your heart is healthy.

No Smoking

First, schedule a physical to have your blood pressure and cholesterol levels checked. If you smoke, ask your physician for help quitting. This is crucial! Cigarette smokers are two to three times more likely to die from heart disease than nonsmokers. Next, determine whether your weight, and even more importantly, your body fat levels are healthy.

Height and Weight

Body mass index (BMI) is your weight in relation to your height, and is a helpful measurement in determining whether your bodyweight is healthy or not. Have your body fat measured, especially focusing on visceral fat, which is abdominal fat located around your vital organs. Think "beer belly" or "muffin top." Make sure that you are exercising at least 30 minutes daily and that your diet consists of lots of fresh vegetables and fruits and whole foods that are as minimally processed and organic as possible.

Here to Help!

The Fuse Fitness wants to help you reduce your risk of heart disease and help get you healthy! We will be doing a 6 week body fat loss challenge beginning the first week of March.

We will measure your body fat using our Fat Loss Monitor with Scale, which sends a safe, low-level electrical current through you body to calculate the amount of body fat tissue, known as the Bioelectrical Impedance (BI) Method. We will take the measurements at the beginning and end of the challenge.

Get Started Now

We offer a wide variety of fitness classes for all levels, sign up HERE, as well as personal training, which gives you a more individually designed and structured program. Let us help you in getting your minimum 30 minutes of exercise per day! You just need to take the first step by signing up HERE and NOW.

As always, please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns. We are here to support you!

Yours in health,

Kristin at The Fuse Fitness

Hi Fusers! My business partner and great friend Pascha Brown wrote a valuable piece on how to stay on track and maintain your fitness goals. Her post really reminded me of this week's motivational quote from Oprah, "We can't become what we need to be by remaining who we are." We can't reach and maintain our goals by slipping back into bad habits. We have to stay committed, focused and consistent, but not beat ourselves up for slipping every now and then. Here's Pascha's article...

After setting your goals, working towards and achieving some visible results, how do you maintain them?

We often sabotage ourselves when we are nearly there. Why? Because we have started to look and feel fitter than we were before, leading to increased self-confidence. At this point it's easy to go right back into our old habits, such as eating too much unhealthy food and starting to skip workouts.

When this occurs it is very difficult to get back on track because we compound the breakdown by getting upset with ourselves. A great strategy for combatting a set back and a potential psychological tailspin, is to realize and plan for the likelihood of ups and downs. Acknowledge now what the potential setback triggers are for you and then plan what you will do in case you do lapse. In other words, what will you do if you have a bad day to let it go and move forward to create a good day?

Here is a checklist to get you through your maintenance phase.

• Consistently work on your eating habits though they will never be perfect. If you fall off the horse, just get right back on.
• Vary your workouts so your body does not reach a plateau. This is why as instructors we are always changing up our workouts and why we offer a variety of classes.
• Don't feel that you have to achieve a high level of fitness in order to achieve results.
• After you have completed one major goal, quickly move onto the next goal. Fitness doesn't stop after weight loss.
• You do not need to work out several hours a day and live on salad and protein shakes. Avoid over-training and getting burned out.
• Have an accountability partner or take group classes to stay consistent. We offer many awesome, diverse and well programmed classes here at The Fuse Fitness. Check out our class schedule here.
•  You have to do what is necessary to achieve results, and that takes commitment and consistency.

Share with us, what do you do to stay on track?

Yours in Health,

Kristin and Pascha at The Fuse Fitness

Hi Fusers!! Happy weekend to you all! Extra bonus: it's 3 days long! Awesome :)

I hope last post got you to thinking about your fitness goals; I know it did for me. Which is why I want to talk a bit more in-depth about the importance of setting specific goals and how to set them, and why this leads to success. I will also share my personal fitness goals--nothing like putting your goals out there to the world to help hold you accountable!

First of all, setting goals gives you focus and clarity for the long-term, and also inspires and motivates you day to day. Specificity is really important when setting goals; it creates a clearly defined goal and a time frame in which you want to achieve it. For example, if your goal is simply to lose weight, there's very little motivation or focus there to push you. However, if you specify that you want to lose 8% body fat by May 1st of this year, now you're talking. You've got something quantifiable to achieve and a deadline that you want to hit this goal by. The SMART acronym is a perfect guideline to help you make goals that will be successful.

After creating a time frame for yourself, it's much easier to break that up into smaller periods with smaller goals set to help reach the big goal. Much more manageable than just saying I'd like to lose some weight this year. A really important part of setting these smaller, stepping stone goals is rewarding yourself. Whether it's a massage, a new outfit, whatever it is that feels like a reward, this is really motivational and a key to success.

I'm going to share with you my fitness goals for this year. This will help hold me accountable and keep me in check. First, and most important for me, is that I will spend more time this year making sure I have enough recovery between workouts. I have found that my body is overtrained, feeling tight and injured, and I know that I am working out too much. Without proper recovery, you actually stall your improvements, and it has a negative effect on the body. I need to really focus on this, which is very difficult for me, because as many of you know, I want and love to work out with every one of my classes.

My next goal is that I want to add weight to my pull-ups. By May, I'd like to be able to do 5 strict pull-ups with an 8lb kettlebell attached to my body. Let the pull-up training begin for me! I will keep you posted on this goal :)

Last, I must bring back my post-workout protein shakes!! I will do another post on this soon (including a video of me making my shake so you can see how easy it is), but for now, you can read my last one here. This is so important, and I have completely dropped the ball on this. Beginning this week, it's on!

Enjoy the beautiful weekend everyone!

Yours in Health,

Kristin at The Fuse Fitness, www.thefusefitnessstudio.com

Hi friends! Happy New Year! Now that 2011 has wrapped up, here's to 2012 being a year that brings good things to you and your family!

The holidays have been a whirlwind this year, lots of fun, and lots of crazy :) Here's a quick recap of mine in photos....

I'm sure we all indulged more than usual, but don't let it bum you out. We work hard all year long, we deserve to have some indulgent behavior :)

Now, time to get your booties back into The Fuse.....let's get this new year started with a bang! We're kicking it into gear this month with our New Years Specials and our fitness challenge.

There are two specials--the first is for all members, a 2 for 1 deal--you bring in a workout buddy (spouse, friend, partner, etc), you both receive 50% off a monthly unlimited package AND you have someone to motivate you (reg. $150 each, now $75 each). The second deal is for new members only, which is $50 off a monthly unlimited class package (reg. $150, now $100).

And the challenge for this month....the dreaded/loved burpee....dreaded by you, loved by us, dreaded because they're tough, loved because they get results. The most burpees (no push-up on the burpee) in 90 seconds wins. The prize? A $75 gift certificate to Lululemon...a little something toward showing off your hard-earned, toned muscles.

And that's a wrap. Happy New Year!!!

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness, www.thefusefitnessstudio.com

Hi everyone! Happy end of the week! I know, it's been a little too long since my last post...sorry, things have been busy!

Let me fill you up on what's been going on around the studio....

Last month was a great month, thank you to all our members and clients! We really love what we do, thanks for being a part of it! We got some new equipment (exciting for us, possibly scary/exciting for you :) )...more kettlebells, medicine balls, a dynamax ball, a sandbag, balance disks and a body-fat scale. That's right, more stuff to torture you with ;)

Our donation boxes have continued to fill up with food and warm clothing. Again, thank you all for your kindness and genorosity!

As we're all aware, the holiday season is in full swing! We are really looking forward to our Holiday Cocktail Party, which will be at our studio on Friday, December 16th, 7-8:30pm. We got our mini tree yesterday and will be hanging our lights and decorations today and tomorrow. Pictures of said decorations will follow :)

Either Pascha is really in the holiday mood, or she just lost her water bottle....maybe both :) She's been using this awesome Christmas mug these days....

Our little holiday wreath, waiting to be hung....

This time of year is always really busy, there seems to be lots of birthdays as well as holiday parties, shopping to do, visitors stopping by.....while lots of fun, its often really stressful. It's easy to get off track with your health, missing workouts to run errands or indulging in too many treats. While it's important to allow yourself to indulge, it's a good idea to keep it in check. Decide what's really worth it to you and go for it....for those things that aren't quite worth it, skip it. Try to stick to your workouts so that your stress levels stay in the sane level and the scale stays in the sane level too :)

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness, www.thefusefitnessstudio.com

p.s. If you'd like to sign up for our newsletter, go to this link: Fuse Fitness Newsletter