EstimatedEst. Read Time: 7 minutes

holiday fitness giftsNew here?  Like Athlean-XX for Women on Facebook to stay up to date with new posts, great fitness and nutrition articles, motivations and inspirations, fitness challenges, Q&As, giveaways and more!

Gift giving season is here, and you’ve probably got at least part of your shopping done already.  But, have you already thought about what YOU want this year?  Ask Santa for a fun, useful or relaxing fitness-related gift this year!  New ‘toys’ are a great way to stay motivated with fitness goals and reward yourself for last year’s efforts and accomplishments.

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EstimatedEst. Read Time: 4 minutes

vitamins weight lossNew here?  Like Athlean-XX for Women on Facebook to stay up to date with new posts, great fitness and nutrition articles, motivations and inspirations, fitness challenges, Q&As, giveaways and more!

Vitamin D, known as the ‘sunshine vitamin’, is crucially important to our health.  It’s estimated that 85% of Americans are chronically deficient in vitamin D, and your probability of being deficient is even greater if you have dark skin.  In fact, even if you do live in a sunny area year-round, there’s a good possibility that you don’t get enough sun exposure for your vitamin D needs.  Working indoors and covering up or using sunblock also prevent us from taking in the sun’s UVB rays that would allow us to naturally manufacture our own vitamin D.

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EstimatedEst. Read Time: 6 minutes

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We all know that the best way to eat healthy as much of the time as possible is to prepare and eat meals and snacks at home.  But despite our best efforts, it’s simply inevitable.  At some point, we’re going to end up needing breakfast or a snack on the go (especially if you’re eating the 5 – 6 times per day we recommend at Athlean-XX), and if Starbucks is the only option, it’s actually not such a bad one!  If you ignore the pastry case, there are some reasonably healthy and low calorie snack options at Starbucks.  Be aware that not all are as healthy as they might look, but the list below will help you choose the best.

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EstimatedEst. Read Time: 5 minutes

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Protein is a crucial ingredient for any woman’s weight loss plan, and is all the more important to build lean muscle.  Protein is used by your body to repair muscle tissue, which is why it’s so important to get some protein in right after your workout.

It can be a challenge to fit in all of our protein requirements each day.  At Athlean-XX for Women, we recommend that women get .75 to 1 gram of protein for each pound of body weight per day.  That means an 135 lb woman would need to eat at least 100 grams of protein.  In my recent blog post on Protein Powder Supplements for women, I illustrated just how tough it can be to meet that requirement with food alone.  Protein powder can be very helpful in helping you supplement your dietary protein intake each day.

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EstimatedEst. Read Time: 4 minutes

too much cardioNew here?  Like Athlean-XX for Women on Facebook to stay up to date with new posts, great fitness and nutrition articles, motivations and inspirations, fitness challenges, Q&As, giveaways and more!

For women, cardio exercise is touted as the holy grail of weight loss.  We’ve heard it all our adult lives. Want to lose weight?  Do cardio!  Want to lose more weight faster?  Do MORE cardio!  There are enough creative, colorful cardio class options to fill a candy store…dance, kickboxing, aerobics, hoola hooping, you name it.  And if you don’t like those, there’s good old fashioned running and cardio machines at the gym.  We LOVE cardio because it’s exercise we don’t really need to think about.  With cardio, it’s possible to ‘forget’ you’re exercising, whether that means watching TV while on the elliptical or doing a class where you just follow the instructor’s moves.

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