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Weight Management is More than Nutrition

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Weight Management is More than Nutrition How Stress, Exercise and Sleep Affect Weight Tara Johnson - CFL2 Managing your weight and overall wellbeing is a trifecta of Nutrition, Training and Recovery. How we approach stress,  Stress can be a major contributor to weight gain. Stress can trigger cortisol release, and that little bugger of a hormone, meant to give you energy to survive back in the caveman days, causes the modern, not a caveman human to simply store fat around the middle. Stress can also make you crave comfort foods,  the quick carbs  that release dopamine while giving you energy to respond to a fight or flight reaction your body may be having in response to stress.  Sure, your brain may know that your stress reaction isn’t because you’re being chased by a lion, but your body doesn’t. When I feel like I’m not in control of things happening around me (hello global pandemic) I could control what I was putting in my mouth, and a giant bowl of Fruity Pebbles® was just the tic
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  Checkup from the Neck Up Locus of Control By Tara Johnson, CF-L2 Your mind is your most valuable tool! It can springboard you toward success or it can throw you into the pits of despair and really undermine your efforts. Good thing you are in control of your mindset eh!? Locus of control  is a psychological concept that refers to how strongly people believe they have  control  over the situations and experiences that affect their lives. You can’t control the weather, but you can prepare for it! Every facet of life falls under the same concept. You can’t control a lot of external factors, but you absolutely are in control of your preparation for them. You are absolutely in control of your reaction to them. This is the most critical concept to develop when preparing to adjust your lifestyle, whether the change is focused on your training, nutrition or both.  Just like your muscles, your locus of control can be trained. Training your mind to focus on the things you can change, and your
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  Why Calorie Restriction Doesn’t Work for Long Term Weight Loss By: Tara Johnson, CF-L2   Calories in and calories out is a true mathematical statement when it comes to weight gain and loss. That said, restricting calories will work, but for long-term weight loss, an individual with obesity following a calorie-restriction diet only may not have long term success. Google the study of all The Biggest Loser® participants- yes, that weight came right back. Think about the fight you saw unfold on TV – they worked their asses off – literally. They wanted it bad enough, and the most successful of them stayed successful... but only to a degree and only for a little while. Why didn’t it stick???? There are a few reasons, and most importantly, with a little help, you can outsmart and outwork them! Weight Set Point Enter weight set point. Everyone has a weight set point, the point at which the body considers itself to be at homeostasis. Think of this as your internal thermostat - thi
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How to Turn Burnout into Turnout!

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  Workout Burnout Is Real... How to Turn Burnout into Turnout! By Tara Johnson, CF-L2 and Personal Coach Training sucks. Like really sucks. If you’re one of those people that hop out of bed, super stoked to workout – stop reading. You are the outlier, count your lucky stars and run some laps or pump out some reps. If you’re like me, ideal life consists of sugary cereal, pizza, diet coke, couch surfing and craft beer joint hopping with my buddies. It’s a crime that you can’t do these things and still be able to wipe your own can, or reach it for that matter in no time flat. So, you eat clean and train dirty, and for some of us, it’s as routine as brushing your teeth (if it’s not, give me a call – helping you get there is kinda my thing). Occasional workout suckfests (a boring monotonous workout here, a frustrating lift session there) is one thing. Total workout burnout—the kind that triggers chronic exhaustion, lapses in workout scheduling, and technique inefficacy- aka “phoning y
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What do you mean, "have a Healthy Lifestyle" ? Look at a day in your life – what does it look like? Here’s mine 5:25am – Alarm, agony, why do I do this to myself, blah, blah, blah. Brush teeth. Start coffee, feed furbabies, mix up amino energy drink, grab laptop, prep mentally for the day. 5:45am – Class starts, Aimee is mid warmup run passing by garage gym entrance with a “good morning!” I wonder how she’s so peppy this early Every. Damn. Morning. Class ensues, sweat drips, awesome is achieved. Clean garage gym. Now on to the rest of the morning   7:00am – Wash, prep tomorrows workout, pack lunch for kid, drive kid to school. 8:00am – Time to pay the bills = 7 hours of work for my day job, which is currently in my foryer/home office chained to laptop. Eat something quick between calls. 3:00pm – Pick up kid, afternoon snack, more day job work until volleyball practice, game, or whatever extracurricular activity du jour. 7:30pm-ish – Feed family (usually consisti
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Shifting Towards Balance from the Failure Cycle

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  “Habits will form whether you want them or not. Whatever you repeat, you reinforce.” - James Clear CrossFit's new mission to become "The world's leading platform for health, happiness and performance."- Eric Roza CF CEO is refreshing and inspiring! This is a shift from “Forging Elite Fitness”, a mantra that only applied to a much smaller population. This elite culture painted a warped picture of mainstream reality. The beautifully muscled CrossFitters were in some ways just as unattainable as the pencil thin model on the cover of "Vogue" magazine. They omitted the reality that genetic makeup plays in each of us as a human creation, as well as the nutritional poop show that our general culture has pushed for the past 100ish years. We've formed some serious bad habits across our culture by choice and circumstance, and they won't be broken overnight! While imagining our society and culture one day evolving from healthy to fit to freaky fit woul
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