It is the perfect gift… the gift of health. Help yourself or a special person in your life stay healthy and lose weight, give the gift of personal training this holiday season.

You have been looking for a meaningful gift, you certainly cannot get a more meaningful gift than 3 personal training sessions. Personal training is the perfect way to help someone begin their journey into health and fitness, or it is the perfect way to invigorate exercise routine of someone who works out regularly.

Personal Training can help anyone who is trying to lose weight by creating a fitness routine that helps build lean muscle. But, even better, personal training sessions help you stay motivated and boost your confidence. When you know what you are doing with machines and equipment, when you have weight loss goals established for yourself it is easier to be excited about going to the gym. When you are being held accountable because you have an appointment, it is not easy to make excuses.

Contact Answer is Fitness in your area for more information on personal training for you or as a gift.

Thanksgiving is upon us, and just thinking about it makes many of us gain weight. Are you trying to figure out how to lose weight this holiday season?

Determination, motivation and a healthy fun environment is how you do it. If you are having fun and enjoying yourself, losing weight is no problem right. Well, join us at Answer is Fitness. Not sure you can or want to make the commitment? Don’t worry about it; sign up for a free 30 day pass.
 
Offering Group Exercise Classes including Group Kick, Group Power, Group Step, Cycling and more , as well as a Cinedrome Movie Theater with 90 Cardio Machines, a Sauna and Steam Room, 200+ Circuit Training Machines, and yoga and pilates.

Contact Answer is Fitness in your area for help losing weight this holiday season.

With so many weight loss and weight management plans on the market why are so many people struggling to lose weight?  Because we cannot just go on a diet, lose weight, and expect to keep it off.  We need to find a way to integrate weight loss, fat loss, building muscle and weight management into our everyday life. We need a healthy plan.

At its most basic, losing weight is about burning more calories than you eat. Sounds simple right? If it were that simple, we wouldn’t be overweight. The real secret to weight loss is to make small, lasting changes. The key is to forget about instant results and settle in for the long run.

To lose one pound of fat, you must burn approximately 3500 calories over and above what you already burn day to day. That’s a lot of calories, and you can’t burn 3500 calories in one day. But if you take it step by step, you can do it.

Obviously, exercise is a key component in any weight loss program. The best way to lose weight is with a combination of cardio, strength training and a healthy diet. But how do you pick an exercise that will maximize calorie burn? The best cardio exercise for weight loss is one that you will do regularly.

• Impact cardio exercise like walking, will boost your heart rate quicker than no-impact exercises like swimming or cycling.
• High impact cardio exercise like running or jumping, burns more calories than lower impact cardio.
• Whole body cardio exercise, exercises that involve the upper and lower body, like step, group kick and group groove make it easy to get the heart rate up, and keep it up. This is a great way to burn excess calories.

 Contact Answer is Fitness in your area for more information on a weight loss program.

Have a blast doing cardio, burn calories and lose weight like never before when you groove to lose weight. With Group groove you get a body and energy boost.
 
Increasing your cardio activity helps you lose weight of course. Use more calories than you take in. The trick is finding the exercise that you will keep on doing and that you will fit into your schedule.

For those of you who are just bored on a treadmill try a group exercise. Group exercises provide a community feel, everyone trying to attain a similar goal. Classes generate followings, and those who go to the same exercise classes become friends and help each other lose weight.

Another trick to staying committed is joining a fun group exercise class, that you enjoy and that you can look forward to.

In Group Groove you will experience a fusion of club, urban and Latin dance styles with motivating chart topping hits and retro classic tunes.  Supportive, funky, easy going instructors help you slim down and shape up.  

Contact Answer is Fitness in your area to lear more about Group Groove.

Conventional wisdom tells us that we need to raise our heat rate for an extended period of time in order to lose weight. Therefore, many would say we cannot lose weight through yoga. But we beg to differ.

Of course there are many benefits to incorporating yoga into your daily life. Once you have established a regular routine of yoga, you begin to feel better about yourself and your body becomes stronger and more flexible. Does yoga help you lose weight? We say yes.

There are many benefits to doing yoga regularly. Yoga allows you feel better about your body as you become stronger and more flexible, as you tone your muscles, reduce stress, and improve your well-being. But does it help you lose weight?

Power and Vinyasa yoga classes can get your heart pumping, which causes a greater calorie burn than slower yoga classes. But, your perceptions change, you take better care of your body with regular yoga as part of your life.

Through Yoga you achieve mind/body awareness. As a result you treat your body differently, take better care of it and are more careful about the foods you eat; as a result, having a daily yoga practice results in weight loss. Contact Answer is Fitness in your area for information on yoga and weight loss.

Most people know what they need to do in order to lose weight. Eat less and exercise more. Believe it or not, diet is often the least challenging part of the equation for many. The issue comes down to finding an exercise that you like to do and that you want to squeeze into your busy schedule.

When we hear, “I just don’t have time to exercise”, let’s face it, if you loved it, you would find the time. Zumba is that exercise.  Inspired from Latin Dance, the word "Zumba" comes from a Colombian word that means to move fast and have fun.

Zumba is a high energy, cardio group exercise program that allows you to have fun while dancing while raising your heart beat, allowing you to burn calories. It is an optimal fitness choice, mixing cardio intervals with resistance training. An interval program with a resistance and cardio combination maximizes calories burned, fat burning, and toning.

The best part about Zumba is that it is fun with easy-to-follow dance steps.  A dance party with great music and uninhibited movement, it is so easy to do that you will want to squeeze it into your busy lifestyle. People forget they are working out during a Zumba class, the perfect choice for weight loss.

Lose weight with Zumba.  Effective body sculpting movements allows you to exercise longer, and burn more calories. Contact Answer is Fitness for the schedule of Zumba classes near you.

Will Pilates help me lose weight?  Although you don’t usually break much of a sweat during a session, Pilates can still help you with your weight loss goals.

Anyone who commits to a Pilates workout will create a trimmer appearance, and many will lose weight. Pilates creates long, lean, fit bodies. There are many ways that doing Pilates supports weight loss and a trimmer appearance.

Creating muscle mass is one of the best ways to increase your how many calories you burn. Pilates can help you accomplish this. Essentially,  Pilates is strength training. We work with resistance to increase strength and therefore, muscle mass.

So, yes, Pilates is supportive of weight loss. In the beginning, a Pilates class is enough to jump start weight loss. However, as with any exercise program, you need to increase your work out level as your body gets accustomed to the routine.

Pilates can help to build and maintain lean muscle mass while you are losing weight, help to realign posture, and promote long elegant posture while keeping you centered and energized.

Because Pilates focuses on major muscles groups and slow, intentional movements, Pilates has become widely popularized as a weight loss exercise.  However, it may be that many people are successful losing weight with Pilates because they are more aware of their bodies so they begin to treat them better and make better food choices.

Contact Answer is Fitness to find out about Pilates classes near you.

Most People associate weight loss with cardio work outs and weight lifting with increasing muscles. Unfortunately, this causes people to not reach their potential results when they don’t understand how weight lifting relates to weight loss.

Weight lifting can be a very effective method for losing weight, when you do it the right way. Weight lifting increases your metabolic rate in the short and long term. Immediately after a weight-lifting session your metabolic rate will increase. But weight lifting also helps you maintain lean muscle mass, which creates a permanent increase in your metabolism. Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat.

With cardio training, your metabolic rate will increase, but only for a short time during and after your workout.

Now, while cardio will definitely help you lose weight, weight lifting will help you lose body fat, so you are changing your body composition. When you lose weight with cardio, you don’t look different, just smaller, because you may have lost 10 or 20 pounds. This is because you still have the same proportion of muscle mass to body fat.

Through weight training the way you look will change, because you will have in a sense replaced fat with muscle. This makes you look healthy and fit. This is when people will say to you, “you look great, have you lost weight?”

Weight training for weight loss is a great alternative to cardio and will give you better, more visible results.

Choose weight lifting as an avenue for weight loss, and get help in designing a routine that is right for you from the personal trainers at Answer is Fitness.

It has happened to plenty of people, maybe even to you. Diet and lose weight, come off the diet and gain the weight back. But who wants to diet forever? There is a way to lose weight without a special diet plan, books, or medicine.

Do you want to lose 5 lbs, 10 lbs or 50 lbs? How much weight your lose and how fast you lose it is determined by only one set of principles. We learned that principle when we learned first grade math. Our body weight is determined by the amount of energy that we take in as food and the amount of energy we expend in our daily activities.

Calories are energy. So if you do not gain weight, it isn’t that you do not or cannot gain weight. Rather, you are probably taking in the same amount of calories that you burn each day. If you're slowly gaining weight over time, most likely your caloric intake is greater than the number of calories you burn throughout the day.

Our intake of calories in any given day is completely within our control through the amount of food we eat.  To a large degree, we can control the number of calories we burn each day. The number of calories we burn depends upon the number of calories our body burns just being alive, and our physical activity.

Our weight does determine how much energy (or calories) we burn at rest. Keep in mind that muscle mass burns more calories than fat. So while many say cardio, cardio, cardio is the path to weight loss, a strong muscular body burns more calories, so you should have a plan for both cardiovascular exercise and weight bearing exercises in your fitness program.
 
Lifestyle and work habits partially determine how many calories we need each day. For people who do not have jobs that require intense physical activity, exercise or increased physical activity can increase the number of calories burned.

An average woman 31-50 years of age who leads a sedentary lifestyle needs about 1,800 calories per day to maintain a normal weight. A man of the same age requires about 2,200 calories. Keep in mind this is a very rough estimate. Participating in a moderate level of physical activity (exercising three to five days per week) requires about 200 additional calories per day.

Click "weight loss program" for more information from Answer is Fitness.

When trying to lose weight, most of us have been repeatedly told try to avoid saturated fats. Saturated fats have been put on the "bad for you" list by nutritionists and experts for a long time. However, did you know that there are over 15 types of saturated fats ... and some of them are actually heart healthy? A lot of people will be happy about this since for high fat foods really taste good.

Here are six snacks (well, 5 foods and a drink) that deserve some reconsideration.

Pork Rinds

You think they are bad...These puffy snacks are cut from pigskin. Then they're deep-fried.

But... A 1-ounce serving contains zero carbohydrates, 17 grams (g) of protein, and 9 g fat. That's nine times the protein and less fat than you'll find in a serving of carb-packed potato chips.

Even better, 43% of a pork rind's fat is unsaturated, and most of that is oleic acid—the same healthy fat found in olive oil. Another 13 percent of its fat content is stearic acid, a type of saturated fat that's considered harmless, because it doesn't raise cholesterol levels.

Alcohol

You think it’s bad...It has little nutritional value and is the reason we need the term "beer belly."

But.... Harvard scientists discovered in a study of over 18k men that those who had an average of two drinks every day, 5 to 7 days a week, had the lowest risk of heart attack. And researchers at the University of Buffalo found that men who consume that same daily amount have lower levels of abdominal fat than those who drink only once or twice every 2 weeks but down more than four drinks each time.

Beef Jerky

You think it's bad...It's unhealthy meat that's loaded with preservatives.

But...Beef jerky is high in protein and doesn't raise your level of insulin—a hormone that signals your body to store fat. That makes it an ideal between-meals snack, especially when you're trying to lose weight. And while some beef-jerky brands are packed with high-sodium ingredients, such as MSG and sodium nitrate, chemical-free products are available. If you have high blood pressure, check the label for brands that are made from all-natural ingredients, which reduce the total sodium content.

Sour Cream
You think it's bad...you know 90% of its calories are derived from fat, at least half of which is saturated.

But...The percentage of fat is high, but the total amount isn't. Consider that a serving of sour cream is 2 tablespoons. That provides just 52 calories— half the amount that's in a single tablespoon of mayonnaise—and less saturated fat than you'd get from drinking a 12-ounce glass of 2 percent reduced-fat milk.

Coconut

You think it's bad...ounce for ounce, coconut contains more saturated fat than butter does. As a result, health experts have warned that it will clog your arteries.

But...even though coconut is packed with saturated fat, it appears to have a beneficial effect on heart-disease risk factors. One reason: More than 50 percent of its saturated-fat content is lauric acid. A recent analysis of 60 studies published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports that even though lauric acid raises LDL (bad) cholesterol, it boosts HDL (good) cholesterol even more. Overall, this means it decreases your risk of cardiovascular disease. The rest of the saturated fat is almost entirely composed of "medium-chain" fatty acids, which have little or no effect on cholesterol levels.

Chocolate Bars

You think they're bad....: They're high in both sugar and fat.

But...Cocoa is rich in flavonoids—the same heart-healthy compounds found in red wine and green tea. Its most potent form is dark chocolate. In a recent study, Greek researchers found that consuming dark chocolate containing 100 milligrams (mg) of flavonoids relaxes your blood vessels, improving bloodflow to your heart. What about the fat? It's mostly stearic and oleic acids.

Information from Men’s Health