Welcome to Francesca's Fitness

For Some Women, It’s Weight Loss. For ME – Energy and Bloat Bugged ME!!!

The buzz is always about weight loss.  Many fitness trainers, wellness people always lead with weight loss.  But yet there are other problems that could be bothering you and even to the point of embarrassing you!  I know.  I was there.  Embarrassed!  Frustrated!  A trainer with a lump… strange.  And I exercise and do all the right things, so I thought.  Read for more of my struggle and how I overcame.

Here’s another struggle I had, Weight Loss Challenge…

Over 40 and 50 women have less energy and bloat… The reality for women over 40 and 50 and older is a lack of energy.  It happens.  In my life, I couldn’t let it happen and not do anything about it.  While I could chalk it up to age, I couldn’t life that low energy life.  I’m an older mother with 2 very young and very active children.  I give them activity and I also give many adults their exercise programs.  I also enjoy my own exercise, such as cycling and running.  I need a lot of energy to go around to my kids, adult exercisers and my pursuits!  Never mind the house, my work and so on.  Figuring that nutrition and exercise were impacting my lack of energy, I looked into both.

Nutrition can either help or hurt your energy.  A calorie is simply a unit of energy but not all calories healthfully contribute to a good energy level. Some foods tend to drag us down and some lift us up.  The key is to find out which is which.  I did some research, some reading, some experimenting, and talking with people who know about nutrition.  I did a lot of changes and then included a specific nutritional cleansing program with the protein coming from New Zealand, cold processed.  All of this totally changed my life!

I have more energy to do all I want to do and more!  This added energy even impacted my cycling, since I could now ride faster with more energy.  It just felt good!  Also, having more energy allows us the ability to workout faster and harder, burning more calories so if weight loss is important then energy is important too!  Through the nutrition tweaks, I also conquered the bloat I was experiencing for many years!  Finally, I can predictably know that my belly will stay flat when I go out and have fun.  That wasn’t the case for many years.  I even had to suffer through painful bloat while teaching exercise classes and personal training clients!  Absolutely the worst pain!  Now, I’m older and bloat and pain free.  So much better!

Exercise can also impact energy.  Like nutrition, it’s about calories.  In the case of exercise, we use the calories to fuel exercise.  The problem is when exercise is so long that added calories are needed to still keep energy at least at a moderate level.  If you ignore this, it will come back to haunt you later and for some of us, sooner than later.  Your body needs food to replace energy used during exercise.  So in order to retain energy, you must have your nutrition top notch and periodically all day, depending on what you need to do.  Sometimes, I teach 5 exercise classes in a day!  How do I do this?!  I have to fuel the exercise sessions in advance and if I have back to back classes, I eat something, such as a banana or a part of a bar.  Additionally, I also coach the classes to help people get healthy form and to keep me from burning out.  I can give anyone the specifics of how to fuel before and after cycling or other longer exercise, with periodic snacks during the event.  Feel free to contact me with any questions regarding nutrition and exercise, so I can help you.

You can absolutely have the energy you need and want to live the life you want to live at any age!  Even if you eat a very healthy diet, I promise, a few tweaks can still change things.  I went from healthy diet to changed healthy diet.  It is all done in small steps with each step producing noticeable results.  When you revert to old habits that don’t serve you, take the lack of energy or bloat as a reminder of what not to do.  I’m no angel with my diet but if I keep tweaking it in the favor of energy most of the time, I feel really good.