If I had a magic wand I would wave it make and make all of our clients lose their initial pounds in their bellies and thighs.

We’d have a never ending stream of praise and testimonials and we’d raise our prices to $1,000 per month because of this superpower. Then Blakley would buy a new MasterCraft Ski Boat and I would buy the fanciest T-shirts on the Rogue website.

Ok, back to reality.

The fact is that often times the places we want to lose fat the most are the places that it seems to melt off of last.

For men that tends to be our bellies and our love handles. Even at my leanest at ~8-9% body fat I could grab some fat on my love handles even though the rest of my body was pretty lean.

Ladies tend to lose their last few lbs of fat in their hips and thighs.

So why the heck would this be?

One thing we commonly see across nutrition clients is that they are under eating protein.  It definitely takes work to get in all of the protein grams your body needs in a day especially if your goal is to maintain a healthy body mass and it is even more important as we age.

We want to challenge YOU to 14 days of getting in 20g of protein at breakfast.

As they say, breakfast is the most important meal of the day and kicking your day off with a healthy serving of protein sets you off on the right track for whatever else your day brings.

We’ve got a few ideas for you. 

We know that calories are our energy source.  

The main factor in weight gain or loss is calories in vs calories out (it’s really that simple).

If you want to maintain your body weight you need to eat around the same number of calories that you are burning.  

If you want to gain muscle you need to be eating more calories than you are burning.

If you want to lose fat, you need to be eating less calories than you are burning.

Even though we know all of these things we still may not know how much and what to eat!

We’ve been working-out a lot lately. I’m not talking about lifting weights or doing pull-ups, I mean that since we sold our house and haven’t moved into our new place in Boise we’ve been working from a lot coffee shops and breakfast places.

We’re oddly productive when working out of coffee shops despite all of the distractions. Anyway, you get to do some pretty good people watching / observing in these places. As nutrition coaches we are always noticing people's choices when it comes to the foods that they go for.

From what we see, a common breakfast for people is a pastry and a sweetened coffee drink. The pastries are usually something like a muffin, croissant, scone or donut. The coffee is usually a mixture of coffee and cream (or milk) and a sugar or honey sweetened syrup mixed in.

Let’s talk about why this is a suboptimal breakfast routine.

The global supplement industry is poised to bring in an estimated 220 BILLION dollars by 2022. That’s BILLION, with a “B”.

If that many supplements are being sold around the world then that probably means that you should be taking some right?

Here’s the deal.

You don’t need supplements.

I mean, even the name tells you that. If you needed them they’d be called “necessaries” or “mandatories”.

So why are they so popular and obsessed over?

Today is the day.  New adventure is awaiting.  

I’m writing this from Houston, TX.  

It’s our last day here before we set off on a new adventure that’s taking us to Boise, ID with a few stops along the way.   

We’ve been in Houston for a long time.  Blakley for over 30 years and Jonathan for over 20.  We met here.  We got married 18 years ago here.  We’ve owned homes here.  We’ve had beloved pets born and pass here.  Our friends of over 20 years are here. Blakley’s parents and brother are here.  Our beautiful baby niece is here (you have seen Blakley holding her).  We’ve had careers here and started our own businesses here.  

We have roots here. 

But without change, there can be no growth.  That’s what growth is after all.  A change.   

I’d like to say that we had some grand master plan for this new chapter of our life and that we’ve executed flawlessly to make it come to fruition but that is far from the truth.  It’s been an evolution that has unfolded step by step and opportunity after opportunity no doubt orchestrated by God.  

OH. MY. GOSH. THIS. CAKE. I. MADE. IS. AMAZING.

You have to have a piece.

“Thank you so much but I’m already pretty full from dinner.”

“No, I’m serious. You HAVE to have a piece.”

“You know, I’m trying to cut back on my sugar.”

“One piece won’t kill you.”

“I’m really trying not to eat when I’m not hungry but thank you!”

“PLEASE, I went to a lot of trouble to make it.”

“Ok.”

Has this happened to you? Was it a friend pushing you to eat something that you didn’t want to? Was it your spouse? A parent or grandparent?

It doesn’t really matter who it was. What it boils down to is a situation where you’re faced with a decision.

I’m not here to tell you which decision to make. I’m not in your shoes and don’t know your friends/family.

But what I can tell you is that you do not need to own that guilt that others try to put on you.

This article was born out of our own curiosity on the subject. We’ve taken ibuprofen (Advil) for years for things like aches and pains, muscle soreness and cramps. We don’t take any other medications so we thought it would be smart to dig into the research a little and see what the short and long term effects of taking ibuprofen are.

Getting fit, losing fat, and gaining muscle are simple. It’s a completely linear process. If you tracked your progress on a graph it would be a perfectly straight line headed from the bottom left to the top right with no deviations. One day you’d decide to reach your goal and eventually you would get there with zero issues.

Annnnnnd cut!

THAT was the Hollywood movie version of what it looks like to get healthy.

Let’s get real here.

We’re human.

We’re busy.

We get sick.

We get distracted.

We go on vacation.

We get off track.

Other people demand our attention.

There’s a constant stream of things in life that can easily thwart our plans for progress. Inevitably ALL of us take a couple steps back somewhere in our journey. It’s just part of the process, and that’s ok. So what should you do if you need a reset or to get back on track?

The best advice I can give you is to start small.