Only ONE Shake A Day?!

This is a question I get a lot. The way it's asked varies but it's still the same premise: How do you lose weight if you only do Shakeology ONCE a day?

Answer? Without secretly starving yourself.

I usually hate math but it helps make my point so *deep breath* here it goes...

The average person probably needs to eat a minimum of 1500 calories a day to LOSE WEIGHT at a healthy rate. That might be higher for you if you're more active or have a higher Basal Metabolic Rate. But we're going to stick with 1500 because it's in the middle.

That means if you eat 3 meals a day they should each be 500 calories. What's an example of a 500 calorie meal?

Click for recipe

Seared Chicken with Apricot Sauce
1/2 steamed broccoli with lemon
1/2 steamed spinach with lemon
Cheesy broccoli potato mash
Banana pudding pop


Okay, back to the shakes!
Those 2 a day shakes usually run 90 calories. The instructions say to eat a sensible dinner. So let's use our 500 calorie dinner above as our "sensible dinner."

90 + 90 + 500 = 680 calories

Not even one thousand calories for the ENTIRE DAY. That, ladies and gentlemen, is starving.

Even if you have a couple of snacks, and assume those snacks are 100 calories each, you still don't hit 1000 calories.

That's why people gain weight back after they stop their "shake diet." Your body has been starving and when you start truly feeding it again (with your healthy 1500 calories) it will hold on to everything because it's in a panic. When you go from eating 600-800 calories back to 1500 it doesn't matter how healthy you're eating...your body freaks out.

How does this change with Shakeology?

The big point is that Shakeology is more calories. We've been drinking the Chocolate Vegan so I'll use that in this comparison. It's 170 calories. Plus, the nutrition can't be beat! Check out the ingredient list!!

We want you to learn to eat healthy food! That means ACTUALLY EATING! So if we go with the "500 calorie healthy meal" assumption the math looks like this:

170 + 500 + 500 = 1170

MUCH closer. You could easily maintain this for a few weeks to jumpstart your weight loss and then add in healthy snacks to bump up to where you need to be for calories. Going from 1200 to 1500 isn't going to be as much of a shock to your system!

To learn more about the awesomeness that is Shakeology click here! Remember that I'm not a medical professional and I can only speak from experience!

Baby Steps to Better Health

I've been meaning to do this one for awhile. I know when I started changing my lifestyle I floundered a bit. "Where do I start?" is a big question. It's hard to know how to get started STRONG without inviting burnout.

If you go through and toss every junk food in your house, replace it with healthy food, and tell yourself you'll NEVER EAT BAD FOOD AGAIN you'll probably do fine for a few days. Some of you will do fine for a week or two. Eventually, though, you'll resent not being able to eat your favorite foods. You'll binge, feel like you failed, and give up for a few weeks only to do it all over again. It's common!

So here are a few baby steps to get you started!

1) Food Journal. When you start out don't worry about calories. This is more for volume and type of food. Put times on here. You may realize that your "weak spot" is in the evening (it is for me) or that you eat most of your calories at dinner after barely eating all day. Track for 1 week and put "bites" in there. 1 bite of a cookie throughout the day isn't a big deal...10 bites throughout the day is a serving of cookies and a bigger deal.

2) Choose Water. You can have your coffee but try to avoid fancy coffeehouse drinks. Those are LOADED with fat and calories and you should only have them if you work it into your plan for the day. (They're TREATS for me) Making your coffee at home will also save you money! Stop drinking sodas and juice! No one NEEDS juice! If you want a serving of fruit have an actual piece of fruit! You should be drinking 1oz per pound of body weight in water. Yep, that's a lot! You can add lemon/lime/cucumber to it for flavoring but try to ONLY drink water.

3) Protein Breakfast. Eat breakfast! This was the HARDEST for me. Try to eat close to 400 calories for breakfast and make them mostly protein. When I first started out I had to eat in shifts. I would make breakfast, eat half of it, wait an hour, and eat the other half. Now I devour breakfast! This is going to jumpstart your metabolism for the day!

4) Make Smart Swaps! Click on that to get 10 things you can swap to make healthier choices!

5) Get Sneaky. Top 10 Ways to Sneak in Exercise.


Those are 5 things to get you started this week! Next week we'll do "Toddler Steps To Better Health!"

Come on over to Kas Fitness and check in with us! Do you need advice or motivation? We're there for you!!
https://www.facebook.com/KasFitness

Bad Habits, Blog Series, and RevAbs

Bad habits are HARD to break. I'm not even talking about things like smoking or whatever...I'm talking about emotional habits.

I have a history of depression and anxiety. Over the years I've come to fight against it a lot. But, honestly, a lot of it is ingrained habit now. When I have a hard day, get bad news, get frustrated, etc... my first instinct is to curl up in a ball and WALLOW in that feeling. Truly, I have so much to be thankful for and, if I fight, can avoid giving in to the wallowing...but the feeling is still there. It's a habit just like anything else! Did you know you can have EMOTIONAL Habits?

Moving on...

I get a lot of questions about what I eat and how much we spend. Basically, we try to keep it at about $500 per month for the 4 of us. That does NOT include eating out money. That is an entirely different fund. Our Food Budget includes raw milk in it so the amount spent at the grocery store is less than that $500.

So, I've decided to do a blog series for July where I track our purchases and meals made with those purchases. Yes, this means you'll get to see when I sneak in junk food and when I throw up my hands and say "I'm not cooking tonight" at the end of a hard day! No, I don't buy totally organic produce (I don't even stick to the dirty dozen...I know...fail) but if you're on a super tight budget this series will be for YOU. Hopefully I can help you make some healthy choices and learn to shop a little more efficiently.

The first post will include a list of things I ALREADY HAVE. I'll tell you right now that the shrimp and chicken breasts were on SALE when I bought them...normally those are too expensive for my taste. Are you excited?

Expect some photo updates every 30 days or so as you follow my and my husband's RevAbs journeys. I'm loving this workout so far. Brett has charisma even through the screen. I'll tell you that phase one is already changing my body and I'm only about a week into it.


Which update are you most excited about?

Hungry But Not Starving

I'm hungry...all the time.

I'm also eating...all the time.

I'll be honest and tell you that this is sort of weird for me.

The last time I was hungry all the time I was eating 500-800 calories a day. Now I eat a minimum of 1700.

I have a metabolism. I'm not sure I've had a functioning metabolism for the last 10+ years. No, I'm totally serious here.

How did I do it? How can you replicate it?

1) Eat a filling, protein rich breakfast.
You should aim for 400 calories. A wrap with egg whites, avocado, potato, and veggies is perfect (just measure things out so you're in your calorie range) The first WEEK I did this I couldn't finish it. I'd eat half, wait an hour or so, and then eat the other half. Now I easily inhale my breakfast and wake up HUNGRY!

2) Eat every 2-4 hours.
Yep, even if you're not hungry. Eat SOMETHING. Even if you just eat an apple or have a small glass of milk. Think of hunger like a scale of 1-10. 1 is so starving you think you're dying and 10 is so full you could puke. You want to stay in the 4-6 range as much as possible. If you get to 2-3 you're more likely to overeat and end up in 8-9. (okay, enough numbers!) Eat frequently.

3) Stay hydrated.
Seriously. Drinking 8 glasses of water a day isn't enough for everyone. Aim for 1oz per pound of body weight. More if it's hot or if you're working out or if you just feel thirsty!

4) Exercise regularly.
Once you fuel the fire you need to keep it running....by running (or weight lifting or dancing or or or...just MOVE)

5) Give it time.
If you eat tomorrow and wake up the next day and don't feel hungry don't think you've failed. It takes time. Just keep at it!

Bonding over Health

When my husband and I got our first apartment our diet was terrible...LOTS of processed foods. One thing we LOVED was chips and dip. We got caught in, what I call, the "chip-dip-cycle." That's the one where you  run out of chips but have dip leftover so you buy more chips so the dip doesn't go to waste. You finish the dip but have chips left so you buy more dip...and so on.

Except not this glamorous looking...

We would sit and watch "TV" (our computer) and eat chips and dip...it's how we bonded. We worked at the same place but didn't spend a lot of time together during the day so we would bond over House MD, LOST, Heroes, etc...and chips and dip.

Bonding...right?

We gained weight. We felt awful most of the time.

Now we know better!

Today we start RevAbs TOGETHER! We're going to bond through exercise. We've worked out together before and I love it. He pushes me to work harder, to finish out a set, and to keep pushing when I think I'm done. Yes, there's a bit of competition there! It's a healthy competition that pushes us each to be our best.

I want that for you!!

I want YOU and your significant other to BOND OVER HEALTH.

Which is why I'm starting a Couples Only Challenge Group on July 9th!

Get healthy with your main squeeze

If you want to get healthy together message me NOW https://www.facebook.com/kasondra.morin  Spots for this kind of thing fill up FAST!

No More Sugary Soda?

I recently began reading "Reshaping It All" by Candace Cameron Bure (you remember DJ from Full House?)

It's amazing. I knew it would be. I can relate to parts of her story, especially when she gets into her eating disorder.

One thing that stood out to me recently was this:

"One problem with our overweight society is that we've been trained to look at food as the problem rather than our approach to appetite. Food as become the focus of our culture with fast-food signs adorning every street corner. In hopes of fixing this obsession with food, we find diet plans that offer twice the binge at half the calories or we reach for pills that will quickly shed the pounds."

She put into words what I've been thinking for sometime now. After New York's Mayor decided to ban sugary drinks 16oz and larger I had mixed feelings.

Health is important to me. I want people to make healthy choice. Notice that sentence: I want people to make healthy choices. I did not say I want the government to make healthy choices for people.

BUT, some of you are yelling, what about people that just don't know any better?

Educate them.

It's kind of like school and children. If SchoolChild doesn't know how to do a skill and you do it for them without teaching them THEY WILL NEVER LEARN.

We should be teaching people how to make healthy choices, teaching them how to SHOP on a budget (I hear "healthy eating is too expensive" too much), teaching them how to prepare healthy meals with limited funds/resources, showing them how to get a good workout without a gym and trainer, etc... We should NOT be making choices FOR people.

We, as a society, need to learn moderation and self-control...not government babysitting.

Dear Americans, WAKE UP!!!

This article on toxins in our food made its way onto my Facebook newsfeed today. My favorite part has to be the leading paragraph:

Yesterday, in the face of a just-released report by the National Cancer Institute that showed a 9.4% increase in childhood cancer between 1992 and 2007, the FDA let moms and dads all across America down. Instead of making the long overdue move to do something serious about getting rid of toxic food dyes so ubiquitous in our food supply, they instead fell back on those two simple words so often used to stall, delay and deny: "more research."

There once was a time I thought my son had Sensory Processing Disorder. He fit the bill. We even had him in regular therapy to help all of us deal with his "sensory issues."

I don't remember exactly what happened, but he was improving and I decided to leave therapy. Having people over to my house frequently was more stressful than dealing with his possible SPD. And he was doing SO WELL and seemed to be getting better. However, there was one weekend I realized his behavior was going downhill and he was sensory seeking (touching everything, throwing himself around, etc) like CRAZY. As I sat and sobbed to my husband about how overwhelmed and helpless I felt we tried to figure out what had changed in the last week or so. We figured it out...

We'd introduced gummy fruit snacks into his diet.

I'd read the articles about high fructose corn syrup and artificial dyes. I didn't go out of my way to avoid them but we did when we could find an alternative. I never questioned feeding my son bag after bag of these snacks.

We did a full purge and removed all HFCS and artificial dyes from the house. We read labels on our next shopping trip (it's shocking what has this CRAP in it! Food dye in jelly and jam. HFCS in CRACKERS)

A few weeks later a change happened. I realized I was cleaning his hands more frequently than ever. He seemed to be seeking out mess. This is the child that ate his 1st birthday cake with poise like the Queen of England. Now he was seeking out things to squish and get messy.

Right after cutting out HFCS and Dyes...

The sensory stuff was almost GONE. He wasn't spinning, he wasn't throwing himself on the floor (he still jumps but not like he was), he wasn't running his hands over every surface as he walked...and he was pleasant to be around.

When he had a single popsicle on vacation it all went back to how it had been before....the explosive anger, the sensory seeking...all because of ONE dose of that junk.


Have you cut anything from your diet or your family's diet? What changes did you notice?

But I worked out! I can eat it! Right?

This is a common belief! "I did X workout! I can eat an extra helping/slice of cake/candy bar!"

Source: cooklisacook.blogspot.com via Kasondra on Pinterest

Not if you want results.

The average INTENSE workout is going to burn 500-600 calories (average woman); the average dessert is double that.

Did you REALLY do yourself a favor there?

This is another thing that Beachbody handles for you! If you become a Club Member you get all sorts of neat discounts AND they'll do a meal plan for you! So, not only will they figure out how many calories you need to be eating, but they'll tell you WHAT you need to be eating too. It also makes up a shopping list! How cool is that?

I figured out that to LOSE WEIGHT doing P90X I still needed to be eating 2400 calories a day..but it had to be the right foods. I can't eat 2400 calories worth of Oreos and expect results. There's a protein/fat/carb ratio involved.

Have you signed up as a Club Member? Would you be interested in a meal plan and discounts?

"Eat Every Few Hours" But WHY?!

It's on every diet website: Eating every few hours (instead of 3 squares) can help you lose weight!

But how?! Wouldn't eating more food mean more calories and, therefore, more weight gain? Well, yes...but then you're not doing it right.

Beachbody actually cleared this up for me!

Think of hunger on a scale. 1 is STARVING and 10 is STUFFED. Ideal is 5-7. Most people wait until they're at 2-3 before they eat and don't stop eating until they're 9 or above.

Eating every few hours means that you always stay in the 6ish range. You're not STARVING so you're not eating a ton and if you stop after a moderate amount you're not eating until you're STUFFED. Believe it or not, you'll actually start eating less food!

How many times do you eat a day? Do you pay attention to how hungry you are and how stuffed you feel?