One of the biggest nutritional mistakes people make outside the gym is focusing on getting lots of protein for muscle recovery and starches for energy but then not getting enough fruits and vegetables.

I’m sure when you were a child your mother always told you to eat your fruits and vegetables! Why was this so important? This was so important because she new and was taught that fruits and vegetables were so important for you to grow up healthy and strong.

Now that you are older and full grown many of you have abandoned the fact that you still NEED your fruits and vegetables every day!

Why are fruits and vegetables so important? Lets take a look at some of the health benefits of fruits and vegetables:

-Fruits and vegetables are LOADED with fiber, vitamins and minerals that are crucial for tissue growth, repair and many other important body functions. The fiber, vitamins and minerals in fruit and vegetables are also shown to help treat, and prevent many chronic diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and stroke!

- Fruits and vegetables are full of many phytochemicals that are important for optimal mental function. Do you suffer from depression, or attention disorders? Eat your fruits and veggies!

-Fruits and vegetables provide an alkaline load to the blood. Since proteins and grains present acids loads to the blood. Eating fruits and vegetables every meal will help prevent an acid/alkaline imbalance. Too much acid and not enough alkaline means loss of bone strength, and muscle mass, which means more body fat!

- Fruits and vegetables will help fill you up and control your appetite and blood sugar which in turn will help with maintaining energy and fat burning.

Make sure to get a healthy variety, think color. Eating fruits and vegetables of different colors gives your body a wide range of valuable nutrients, like fiber, folate, potassium, and vitamins A and C. Some examples include green spinach, orange sweet potatoes, black beans, yellow corn, purple plums, red watermelon, and white onions. For more variety, try new fruits and vegetables regularly.

You can not go wrong with eating fruits and veggies every meal! I recommend 2-3 servings (1/2 cup) of fruits and vegetables at each and every meal. This would be around 10-15 servings if you eat frequent supportive meals.

“Yeah right!?” “How the heck can I get 10 servings of fruits and veggies every day?”

Fresh and frozen fruits and veggies are ALWAYS recommended. But the next best option is VGF 25 +. This not a multivitamin this is a whole food super pill with 25 fruits and vegetables, antioxidants, essential good fats, and amino acids.

This is usually everything your body is lacking if you’re not eating healthy frequent meals, if you’re lacking fruits and vegetables, or even if you think you’re eating healthy. VGF 25 + will fill in all those nutrition gaps most people suffer from. That’s why I personally take it myself 3 times a day and have and put my name on the line recommending it to my clients.

This supplement was designed to fill in nutritional gaps that most suffer from. it was designed by registered dieticians, and nutritionists.

Just a reminder if you take a Centrum or Meijer vitamin you are getting synthetic vitamins made in a lab with lots of chemicals! YIKES!

You can not go wrong with VGF 25+ all natural whole food vitamin.

You can read more about VGF 25 + and its benefits below.

for women click HERE

for men click HERE

Your Fitness and Nutrition Coach,

~David Modderman

2) Cutting Out Carbs with no strategy in place.

The low carb diet craze has been in effect for over decade. Some of the more popular diets like Atkins and South Beach were two of the better known diets where you eliminate the majority of starchy carbohydrates in your diet and some things like fruit as well. This is a major mistake as an effective solution to long term fat loss. Why are carbs so important?

Carbohydrates are your bodies preferred source of energy. Meaning for you to have steady energy and blood sugar throughout the day you need to have carbohydrates in our diet. Why have the low carb diets worked so well for people to lose weight in the short term?

When you eat carbohydrates your body will use them for immediate energy/fuel and also store them as glycogen in your muscle in your liver for reserved energy. Most people are not aware that glycogen holds and attracts water. For every gram of glycogen your muscle holds it attracts 2.4 grams of water.

So when you eat carbohydrates your body will instantly hold more water. When you suddenly just stop eating carbs your body will hold less water. Make sense? So people who weigh themselves daily after cutting out carbs will see a 5-10 pound weight loss in just a few days. So in your mind Carbs =make you fat. However, you’re not losing fat your losing water. Water is temporary and meaningless in regards to weight loss. Your goal is to lose that ugly fat around your waist and behind and not just weight correct? Then you need to stop just cutting out carbs and have a real strategy to lose fat and keep it off.

The first strategy of carbs is to make sure you are getting the right ones. There are some carbs that are very healthy for you and needed and some that are very bad for you. You want to get all natural non processed carbs which are high in fiber and low in sugar

Good sources of carbs are foods like: sweet potatoes, apples, old fashioned steel cut oatmeal, and broccoli. (almost all fruits and veggies)

Bad sources: candy, potato chips, donuts (pretty much any food with simple sugar and white flour)

What if I told you carbs are essential for long term fat loss? There is no magic to just cutting out carbs. Just cutting out carbs with no strategy in place can really backfire.

A few things will happen on a very low carb diet:

1) Lose water weight (which is temporary and meaningless)
2) Mess up metabolism and lose lean muscle mass which will lead to more fat storage
3) Slow production of thyroid hormone

I educate my clients on how to eat the RIGHT carbs the RIGHT way to reach whatever goal they have whether it is to lose lots of fat or gain lots of muscle. Eating carbohydrates to see the best results and reach your goals requires proper knowledge and strategy. Do you know eating the right carbs at the right times during the day on a fat loss plan can accelerates fat loss by 50%? You need to learn not how to cut carbs but HOW to strategically manipulate/cycle them for the best results.

Contact me now to learn how to cycle and manipulate carbs to increase fat loss by 50%!

Your Fitness and Nutrition Coach,

~David Modderman

Those who know me and have trained with me over the last 12 years know one thing for sure I am all about efficiency and balance with the workouts and nutrition plans I give my clients.

Clients come to me because they want to:

1) Lose Fat
2) Build or Tone (maintain) lean muscle

The exercise question I have seen debated over the years is the order you should perform your cardio/aerobic exercise and resistance training if your goal is fat loss.

I have heard the argument you should do your cardio before using the weights because it will warm up your body. I have also heard the debate that if your goal is to increase endurance and stamina you should do cardio before your weights. These are both reasonable debates.
I agree with the first debate you should warm up your body before doing weights. However, that doesn’t mean long or intense aerobic exercise is the most efficient way to warm up your body and prepare it for weight training. I do however recommend a very light 2-5 minute cardio warm-up followed by some dynamic (moving stretches) stretches before doing weight training. This will get your body’s blood flowing and muscle warmed up to prepare it for using resistance and lifting weight.

If your goal is endurance and stamina doing cardio before weights will give you more energy for that cardio session. However, doing weights after long or intense cardio is not an effective way to build strength or lose fat and in my opinion it’s counterproductive and a mistake.
If you’re running marathons or training for endurance races then weight training can help you with endurance and performance. However, I wouldn’t recommend even doing weights and cardio back to back. I would recommend either doing them on separate days or doing those 6 hours apart. This will allow you to get the full benefits of both without risking energy/strength crashes or risk of muscle loss.

Getting back to why most people are doing resistance training and cardio in the first place is to build muscle and burn fat.

If fat loss and building muscle is your goal then the order you do weight training and cardio is crucial for seeing the best and most efficient results.

Let’s look at the science of what happens and what fuels sources your body uses during weight and cardio sessions.

During aerobic exercise there is a lot of oxygen present and you can use two things as a fuel source stored sugar (glycogen) or fat.
During strength training even though oxygen is present your body doesn’t need it to perform this activity because your blood vessels are constricted and oxygen is not being used very much if at all. Therefore during strength training you can NOT use fat as a fuel source it is not an option so you can only use glycogen.

If you are doing aerobic/cardio exercise first you will burn mostly glycogen as its your body’s preferred source of fuel. Follow with weight training and there is much less glycogen to burn therefore muscle will become a source of fuel once the workout becomes intense.

However, if you flip that and you do your resistance training first you will use your stored glycogen for energy (which is your only option) follow it with cardio now your body’s only remaining option is fat.

In simple your body will use much more fat for a fuel source doing cardio after weight training than doing it before.

Does this mean people can’t lose fat or see results doing cardio before weights? No, it just means it’s not the most efficient way and your workouts have a much greater chance of being more effective and productive by doing resistance training first. I always tell my clients it’s not always about training harder or longer but training smarter. Making things more difficult when you don’t need to and doing something that can be less effective in regards to someone seeing the best results will always be a mistake in my opinion.

So I would recommend the following in regards to doing weights and cardio:

1) Do weight training and cardio on completely separate days

2) If your goal is fat loss and building/maintaining lean muscle mass and you want to do them back to back always do your resistance training
before cardio. Also, try to keep your cardio to a maximum of 30 minutes after weights.

3) Separate your weight training and cardio sessions 6 hours apart. This will allow some muscle recovering and allow you to refuel your body.

4) Have a proper supportive meal a 60-90 minutes before exercise and proper meal/recovery shake within 30 minutes after exercise. This will allow energy for your body and will assure you have plenty of fuel for your workouts and not risk using muscle for energy over time.

Look for Mistake #4 coming soon!

Your Fitness and Nutrition Coach,
~David Modderman

As stated in mistake number one resistance training is crucial to your success no matter what your fitness or weight loss goal might be. Any form of resistance training like free weights, bodyweight, resistance bands, and weight machines can help you a great deal. Unfortunately, when people join a gym they are usually always set up on the weight machines. Now don’t get me wrong, someone who is just beginning resistance training using the machines might actually be good for them to get them comfortable isolating certain muscle groups and learning the movements safely and effectively to start. However, I see way too many people depending machines as their only source of resistance training for months and even years.

The benefits of weight machines are:

1) They are great for isolating muscle groups
2) They are usually safe and stable for beginners to learn the movements
3) They can help you increase strength at first

The Major disadvantages of weight machines:

1) They use the same path of motion over and over and can lead to connective tissue damage because they are putting stress on a single joint.
2) They don’t usually activate the stomach and core muscles, and stabilizer muscles you use in the real world correctly or efficiently because they are too supportive and stable.
3) Only work one muscle at a time

Even though using weight machines have their benefits and disadvantages in simple they are still not the most effective or most efficient way to see the best results. When using weight machines most seem to focus on just the movements and not the actual muscles they are working. I always find it humorous when I ask someone the routine they are doing and the can show the movement they do but cannot tell me the muscle they are working. (ie. I do this one, and this one) Ninety five percent of the clients I work I will start them out using their bodyweight, dumbbells, resistance bands, cables, and the stability ball.

Why do I feel it’s crucial for people to get off the machines? If you think how you move in the real world you walk, run, get out of bed, squat to pick something or a small child off the ground, push a lawn mower, pull on a car door, shovel snow, put something on a shelf over your head. Most sit in a chair or desk all day at work and never use their core muscles (your stomach, lower back, pelvis muscles). Why would you go to the gym and sit down again and train your body the same way? If you want to see the best possible results in how your body looks and feels, and performs every day then you need to get off the weight machines and challenge your body with more free motion natural movements.

The advantages of body/free weight training are the following:

1) If used properly will strengthen your entire body as a whole. Free weights and bodyweight training will strengthen your core (your body’s center of gravity) and work all the stabilizers muscles in your body because these muscles must stabilize the free motion of the weight and body. This will allow your body to move naturally through every plain of motion, like squatting, pushing, pulling, and rotating.

2) They will be easier and safer on your connective tissue and joints. While most weight machines are single joint exercises because you are using a stabilized piece of metal. Free motion exercises work multiple joints to help stabilize the weight there for will put less stress on connective tissue.

3) Will make you work harder and help you burn more calories. Studies show your body burns more calories in a standing and unstable environment.

4) Are more versatile and will allow you to have more variety because you will be able to do unlimited amounts of exercises with very little equipment.

In summary any resistance training is beneficial however if you get dependent on only using weight machines you are doing your body a disservice and you will probably never reach your full potential in regards to fat loss, strength, and positive changes in body composition.

GET OFF THE MACHINES AND TRAIN YOUR BODY THE WAY IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE TRAINED!

Look For Mistake #3 “Doing Resistance Training and Cardio in the Wrong Order” coming soon!