I am moving on up

I just wanted to share some great things that my Personal Training company; Perfect You, is currently experiencing.

1) Perfect You continues to provide world-class fitness lectures at the East Brunswick library. My last lecture brought in 51 participants. Every lecture I give is being well received and the numbers are growing.
2) The Sayreville library, upon hearing about the successful fitness lectures I was giving and the turn-out, have asked me to design their health and fitness lecture series for the year. I have accepted their offer and my first lecture will be on October 14th. I will be giving talks every Wednesday from 6:30pm to 7:30pm.
3) I have been asked to promote my lectures and personal training business on our local TV (TV3). I am super stoked about this one.
4) And finally a local paper (50,000 readership) has sought me out to have them write an article about me and my business - Perfect You.

I now have 40+ Personal Training clients and am starting to experience big growing pains as I am trying to manage and do it all.

Regards,

Eddie Camaroto CEO
Perfect You LLC

Your dog and you - a way to exercise together

How to elicit your pet into your exercise program

If you have a dog you have an eager and ready at a moments notice partner for your exercise goals. Below I will outline a few ways to utilize your dog into your exercise routines. You both will benefit from your partnership.

1) First, just walk your dog. Strive for a 3 – 5 mile trek (daily if your schedule permits). I suggest taking your dog to parks for the walks since it will be a more pleasant experience for both of you.
2) Take your dog to pet friendly beach or other secluded beach and run on the sand and from time to time run through the water as well. Your dog will go bananas for this one.
3) Play catch with your dog put after you throw that Frisbee or ball run after it as well. Challenge yourself to keep up with your dog.
4) If you have a bigger dog play some tug of war with a large towel and get some incredible core and legwork. But please let the dog pull the towel and do not pull towards you otherwise you may hurt your dogs teeth.

As you hydrate yourself during your exercises please make sure to bring plenty of water for your faithful companion as well and maybe even a few small treats. And if you dog starts panting heavily or looks tired let them rest. Dogs cannot sweat and their only method of cooling themselves off is through panting and in humid air this is very hard for them.

Though these are all simple ideas and you probably have heard of some of the before, don’t forget that a lot of things qualify as exercise and go a long way to improve your health as well as your pets.

As always - I am available for personal training either in person (if in NJ) or over the web. If you feel you have stalled in your pursuit of fitness and need some expert knowledge to get you on track reach out to me.

Regards,

Eddie Camaroto CPT
Perfect You LLC

Exercise anywhere

How to utilize your environment to exercise

There are many ways to utilize an environment to exercise in if you are creative. Below I outline a few to get you started.

1) Stairs – walk them, run them, do incline or decline pushups off of them, split lunges, do calf raises off of them, put your feet on them as you lie down and do crunches, jump on the first step and then off again for some muscle and cardio work, do mountain climbing off of them to name just a few.
2) Strong small diameter branches – do pull-ups off of them, hang from them and raise your knees to your chest for a great abdominal workout.
3) Chairs – do some dips off of them, chair squats for the legs, do some incline or decline pushups off of them, and if you’re strong enough do some hammer type curls with them.

Never feel exercise is limited to weights and machines. If you look around a little you will see that exercise opportunities welcome you from all directions.

As always - I am available for personal training either in person (if in NJ) or over the web. If you feel you have stalled in your pursuit of fitness and need some expert knowledge to get you on track reach out to me.

Regards,

Eddie Camaroto CPT
Perfect You LLC

How to make simple exercise equipment

Ways to create exercise equipment from everyday items

With the ever-growing economy meltdown and societies growing waistline exercise is becoming hard from all fronts.

Today I wanted to show some creative ways to create gym equipment from everyday items. Saves your budget and gets you exercising. No excuses.

Chest/arms/triceps/shoulders/core – basic pushups (no equipment needed).

Core – simple ab crunches (no equipment needed). Or hold a jug close to the chest and do some crunches.

Fill two empty milk containers (plastic gallon size) with sand and you will have each milk jug weighing 12.5 pounds each. Of course you can adjust the weight of the jugs by filling them up to your level of fitness.
1) Do some shoulder presses with the jugs for shoulder work.
2) Do some bench presses with them for a chest, arm, and shoulder workout.
3) Raise them in front of you (shoulder height) for shoulder raises or to your sides for lateral raises for a challenging shoulder workout.
4) Hold one jug in each hand and do squats or calf raises for legwork.
5) Hold one jug on one side of your body and do side bends for terrific Oblique work.
6) Hold one jug in one hand and do one-arm rows for Lat and back work.
7) Hold a jug in each hand and do some hammer curls for your bicep.
8) Hold a jug in each hand and do simulated punches for total shoulder work (make sure your shoulders can handle this and that you do not have any conditions that might be harmed by the motion).
9) Hold a jug in each hand and do shrugs for traps work.
10) Tie a small bit of rope around a jug and take a wood dowel (about 1 foot long), drill a hole thru it and tie the rope to it and you have a great device to increase your forearm and wrist strength. Hold the roller in front of you and move your wrists to roll it up to your shoulders then back and then repeat. The burn you will feel will be incredible. I have one of these at home that I made as well.

Wow, look at that you CAN get a total body workout by just using common household items. Of course there are many more I could of stated but I hope you get the picture.

Now there is no more reason to not exercise (at least from a monetary standpoint).

By the way if you fill the jugs with water instead of sand they will weigh roughly 8.5 pounds instead of 12.5 pounds.

As always - I am available for personal training either in person (if in NJ) or over the web. If you feel you have stalled in your pursuit of fitness and need some expert knowledge to get you on track reach out to me.

Regards,

Eddie Camaroto CPT
Perfect You LLC

Fitness theme for the month of August

Creative ways to exercise
Week 1: Ways to create exercise equipment from everyday items.
Week 2: How to utilize your environment to exercise.
Week 3: How to elicit your pet into your exercise program.
Week 4: How to elicit your kids into your exercise program.

Regards,

Eddie Camaroto CPT
Perfect You LLC

Diet plans

Current diet plans

This week I wanted to touch a little upon some current diet plans. By no means could I touch upon all of them since there are literally hundreds.

As a Personal Trainer it is my duty to coach my clients in proper nutrition. After all I can train them to success but if they go home and eat three pizzas a night they will never see true results.

I do need to state to you all that while I am very knowledgeable about nutrition I am NOT a certified nutritionist or dietician. We all need to protect our liability. Please take any of my advice and confer with your doctor or nutritional expert.

Weight Watchers:
All and all the best diet plan I have seen and the one that all of my clients have seen success with. It is also the one I see the longest weight loss with.
Pros:
1) Actually teach their members how to eat and match foods.
2) Great meeting support system.
3) Great website loaded with great recipes and support channels to help your success.
4) Allows one to eat normally (within a point range) thus boosting acceptance to new eating patterns.

Cons:
1) Their packaged food is very high in sodium and even Weight Watchers admits this and states to use their food in moderation.

South Beach:
Many have had success with this program but not as much success long term like the Weight Watcher approach.
Pros:
1) Attempts to teach its members about food sources and nutrition.
2) Great website with many tools to help you succeed.

Cons:
1) Expects its members to eat from their packaged food (most times). In my opinion the food is way too high in sodium and once one stops eating the pre-packaged food they are left with the possibility of eating wrong again and misjudging portions.
2) Food from them is expensive over the long haul. Take that money and use it for a gym membership and you will see more permanent weight loss.
3) A high percentage of clients regain their weight after 2 years. Some even more then when they started.

Atkins:
Based on a low-carb diet and this diet scares me very much. It forces you to eat more protein sources then most older people can handle due to liver and kidney issues. I DO NOT recommend this diet for anyone. Your body needs carbs. In fact the recommendation is 150 grams of carbs a day and optimally up to 350 grams a day. Your muscles use carbs as their primary energy source (glucose break-down) and this diet limits your energy for muscle growth.
Pros:
1) People do lose weight on this diet – especially in the first 1-2 months but then it slows and success rates start to falter.
2) It is rather easy to follow and makes eating more pleasurable. In this diet meats are good.

Cons:
1) Very risky for a big slice of the population. Could cause health issues.
2) Does a poor job at teaching “correct” eating habits.
3) In my opinion is based on pseudo-science. Yes, you will lose weight limiting carbs but the potential health risks far out weigh the diets pluses.


Lets do Lunch:
This is a new diet one of clients has started and it really has some appeal to it. Though I have not researched it enough to give an opinion on it yet. I do like what I have seen and read about it. Plus my client is loosing a phenomenal amount of weight with it in a very healthy way. I will report on it later when I feel more comfortable with its success.

Grapefruit, Pineapple, Cabbage soup, Mickey Mouse surprise:
Please if you are doing any of these crazy un-sound diets please stop. Yes you will loose weight in the first two weeks or so because of their nature but these diets are silly and over time you will only do you body harm.
P.S. No there is no Mickey Mouse surprise diet but I thought I would throw it in because the other diets are just as silly.

I am sure I will see rebuttal about how some of these diets did work for some of you. But whenever I hear that I always ask about the exercise routine, the healthier habits they started while dieting, etc. In must all cases it is these other changes that truly made the difference.

The point is if you just watch what you eat, eat a variety of foods, and keep a food log all of you (except in rare cases) will see weight loss.

The reason you always hear this same message for all of these years is because it WORKS.

As always - I am available for personal training either in person (if in NJ) or over the web. If you feel you have stalled in your pursuit of fitness and need some expert knowledge to get you on track reach out to me.

Regards,

Eddie Camaroto CPT

Perfect You LLC