The Pavilion would like to welcome our new Wellness Coach, Lisa Artuso!  Lisa is compassionate but strong and will find ways to keep you on the path to achieving your fitness and wellness goals.

Click here to read more about our Wellness Coach, Lisa.

If you would like to book and appointment with Lisa, simply call 905.763.9180 ext 330 or via email at lisaa@thepavilion.ca.

]]> http://www.thepavilion.ca/join-now-for-as-low-as-39-95-per-month/feed/ 0 http://www.thepavilion.ca/take-your-workout-with-you-this-holiday-season/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=take-your-workout-with-you-this-holiday-season http://www.thepavilion.ca/take-your-workout-with-you-this-holiday-season/#comments Fri, 16 Dec 2011 07:48:06 +0000 ThePavilion http://www.thepavilion.ca/?p=206 The Holiday season is upon us and that means that many of us are going to be traveling for an extended time to visit family and friends.

Here are some quick easy tips to make sure you do not miss out on your workouts for the entire trip and loose all those hard earned benefits.

Fitness Club Guest Passes

Call ahead to the people you are staying with and see if they or other family members and friends can get you a couple of free guest passes to the local fitness club to work out with them while you are there.

Bring the Bands
Don’t leave out your fitness equipment when you are packing. Bring workout clothes, and et some resistance bands. You can create a real quick and easy workout that you can do anywhere at anytime.

No Equipment? No Problem!
You may not be able to get to a fitness club and it may be too cold to get out for a run but a great way to keep the exercise up is to set a daily goal for push ups, crunches and sit ups, dips and deep squats. You will be amazed at the workout you can get just using your own bodyweight.

Below are a few holiday eating tips we have put together for you, stay healthy, have fun and don’t deprive yourself of all that is good in the holiday season.

• Don’t Go Hungry: one way to avoid over indulging at all the parties is to eat a healthy meal before you go and be full, then you can pick and choose a few treats.
• Smaller Portions: try a little bit of lots of treats rather than a big portion of your favorite, be adventurous and remember to keep your portion sizes smaller through the night.
• Avoid the Fat: try and limit those high fat items if you can including, deep fried food, cheese-fillings, pies, salami and sausages, pastries and baked goods.
• Try other versions of alcohol: instead of beer, Bailey’s and cocktails, try dry wine, Cesars or spirits with diet mixes which have fewer calories.
• Water, Water, Water: try drinking a glass of water in-between alcoholic drinks it will keep you hydrated and slow down the rate at which you drink helping you consume less calories.
• Keep Active: most important of all is to try and keep up with some exercise rather than doing none through the holidays.  Look at every workout as a way to earn those extra treats.

New exercisers often see quick fitness results such as weight loss and increased muscle strength while engaging in the same workout day after day. However, after several weeks following their fitness routines they often become frustrated as the gains begin to dwindle. Eventually dieters scales become frozen on the same number or weight lifters are stuck at the same weight size.  They hit a plateau.

A plateau typically is the direct consequence of a fitness rut – when an exerciser performs the same workout over and over. The human body is very efficient and quickly adapts to work. Once the body practices the same activity repeatedly, it grows more proficient at performing those moves. So that means it requires less energy and therefore also burns less calories.

Instead of celebrating their body’s improved fitness capabilities, exercisers often abandon their workouts. And who can blame them? After all, they no longer are seeing the results they desire and become increasingly bored with their workouts. Plus, hitting a plateau not only can halt fitness gains, but it can even reverse previous successes. But, with just a few simple steps exercisers can easily break-through that brick wall and continue to reap all the rewards of regular physical activity.

Serving size:

It is important to pay close attention to the serving size and to be aware of how many servings you are consuming. Sometimes the number of servings in the package is double or triple what is on the nutrition facts, therefore eating the whole package means you would have to double or increase the caloric intake. A “serving” of potato chips might only have 200 calories, but maybe the serving size is only 10 chips. Eating the whole bag could equal more than 1000 calories!

Percent Daily Value:

The percentages that you see on food labels are based on recommended daily allowances – meaning the amount of something a person should get each day to prevent nutrient deficiency diseases. For instance, there’s a recommended daily allowance for fat, so the food label might say that one serving of this food meets 10% of the daily value. Daily values are based on the needs of an adult, not a child.  The needs of a child are often similar, but children may need more or less of certain nutrients, depending on their age and size. Some percent daily values are based on the amount of calories and energy a person needs. These include carbohydrates, proteins, and fat. Other percent daily values – like those for sodium, potassium, vitamins, and minerals – stay the same no matter how many calories a person eats.

A quick reference to % Daily Value (%DV) is to keep in mind that under 5% is low and over 20% is high. Nutrients List: Nutrients to Limit Calories and Calories from Fat: Calories tell us how much energy we are getting from a serving of this food. Many people eat more calories than they need without getting the recommended intakes for a number of important nutrients. This is where understanding the food label comes into play. Another important part of the label is the number of calories that come from fat. It is important to look at this because it’s good to limit fat intake. Calories in food can come from fat, protein, or carbohydrate.

Total Fat:

The total fat is the number of grams of fat contained in one serving of the food. Fat is an important nutrient for growth and development, but you don’t want to eat too much. The different
kinds of fat, such as saturated, unsaturated, and trans fat, may be listed separately on the label.

Cholesterol and Sodium:

These numbers tell you how much cholesterol and sodium (salt) are in a single serving of the food. They are included on the label because some people need to limit cholesterol or salt
in their diets perhaps because they have high blood pressure, etc.

Total Carbohydrate:
This number tells you how many carbohydrate grams are in one serving of food. This total is broken down into grams of sugar and grams of dietary fibre.

Protein:
This number tells you how much protein you get from a single serving of the food. Your body needs protein to build and repair essential parts of the body, such as muscles, blood, and organs.

Nutrients List:
Nutrients you want

Vitamins A and C:
These list the amounts of vitamin A and vitamin C, two especially important vitamins, in a serving of the food. Each amount is given as a percent daily value. If a food provides 20% of the
RDA for vitamin A, that one serving of food gives an adult one fifth of the vitamin A needed for the day.

Calcium and Iron:
These list the percentages of calcium and iron, two especially important minerals that are in a serving of the food. Again, each amount is given as a percent daily value. If a food has 4% of iron, you’re getting 4% of the iron you need for the whole day from that serving.

Lacking true intensity

• The purpose of weight training is to exhaust the muscle being trained, so that it is overloaded and must adapt and become stronger and more efficient.  When you stimulate your muscle to more weight, volume, duration, decreasing rest, adjusting tempo, the chance of muscular fatigue is increased.  Remember, your muscles only understand what they feel, they do not care nor can they read how much weight is on the plates.   It is only when the muscle is exhausted ‘more’ than the previous workout that maximum growth can occur.
• Here are some time-tested principles to apply for continual ‘intensity’:
• Do more ‘work’?  Work can mean, do more sets but keep the weight the same or keep the number of sets the same but lift more weight.
• Increase the weight, but if you are not doing the same range of motion as with a lighter weight, you will be doing the same amount of work, or less.
• Expose your muscles with more time under tension.  Perform the same weight and same number of sets but slow the speed of tempo – basically, move the weight slower. Don’t be surprised if you have to actually decrease the weights with this simple technique.
• Do the same amount of work in half the number of sets.  This is difficult but possible.  If it takes 8 sets to fully fatigue your triceps, than try and fully fatigue them in 4 sets.
• Reduce the amount of time you spend resting between sets.
• Overall, shift your mindset to intensity instead of volume – focus on a lower number of sets and a shorter time in the gym, but with a higher degree of focus, I’m confident that you will make continual muscle gains by applying these principles consistently and honestly.

Lacking true intensity
The purpose of weight training is to exhaust the muscle being trained, so that it is overloaded and must adapt and become stronger and more efficient.  When you stimulate your muscle to more weight, volume, duration, decreasing rest, adjusting tempo, the chance of muscular fatigue is increased.  Remember, your muscles only understand what they feel, they do not care nor can they read how much weight is on the plates.   It is only when the muscle is exhausted ‘more’ than the previous workout that maximum growth can occur.

Here are some time-tested principles to apply for continual ‘intensity’:

• Do more ‘work’?  Work can mean, do more sets but keep the weight the same or keep the number of sets the same but lift more weight.
• Increase the weight, but if you are not doing the same range of motion as with a lighter weight, you will be doing the same amount of work, or less.
• Expose your muscles with more time under tension.  Perform the same weight and same number of sets but slow the speed of tempo – basically, move the weight slower. Don’t be surprised if you have to actually decrease the weights with this simple technique.
• Do the same amount of work in half the number of sets.  This is difficult but possible.  If it takes 8 sets to fully fatigue your triceps, than try and fully fatigue them in 4 sets.
• Reduce the amount of time you spend resting between sets.
• Overall, shift your mindset to intensity instead of volume – focus on a lower number of sets and a shorter time in the gym, but with a higher degree of focus, I’m confident that you will make continual muscle gains by applying these principles consistently and honestly.

Detoxifying is also important to rest our overloaded organs and allow them to catch up on past work.  An effective detox program can increase energy, reduce weight and eliminate subtle and mysterious chronic symptoms of non-optimum health.

When is the best time/season to Detox?
Choosing a good time to begin a detoxification program can sometimes be a challenge.  It is important to incorporate nature’s cycles with our own cycles.  At certain times of the year you may notice regular periods of congestion, and may reduce or prevent these by beginning a detoxification program.  A period of congestion may include the start of a cold, at which time exercising, sweating, saunas or steam, drinking lots of fluids, taking vitamin C, and a good night’s sleep, can be a good time to begin the detoxification process.

What changes can I expect?
The effects of the detoxification diet vary from person to person.  Making even small changes to your current diet may produce some responses, but more dramatic dietary alterations will produce a much more profound detoxification.  Remarkable things can happen when you improve the quality of food you eat and take better care of your body and more specifically, your organs.  At this time, more rest and sleep is often needed.  It is also imperative to avoid stimulants of any kind, which will abort and defeat the regenerative process.  Remember the body isn’t getting weaker. It’s simply using its energies in more important internal work, rather than external work involving muscle movements. With patience and diligence, a person will soon feel more energy than before.

When you stop drinking coffee or chocolate you may begin to experience headaches and a sense of fatigue.  Your body begins discarding toxins such as caffeine and theobromine by removing them from the tissues and transporting them through the bloodstream. However, before toxins are eliminated, they register in our consciousness as a headache. These symptoms are part of a healing process that is constructive even though unpleasant at the time.

As time goes on, these symptoms will be milder and pass more quickly, as long as you get more rest and sleep.  The body becomes healthier by eliminating waste and toxins.  These stored toxins eventually would have brought about illness and disease, thus causing greater pain and suffering.

Finally do not expect to improve your diet, and feel better and better everyday, until you reach perfection.  The body is cyclical in nature and your health returns in a series of gradual diminishing cycles.