Enough was enough. You made the decision to make a change. To get serious. Something motivated you to start and so you did. You were nervous, excited, fired up and off you went.

That motivation that got you going kept you going, at least for a while.

You’ve been here before. You’ve gotten this far more than once.

But now the motivation is fading. It’s getting difficult to be disciplined now that the honeymoon is ending and the work still needs to be done.

You’re thinking of throwing in the towel and quitting. Again.

Should you quit? Should you give up?

Before you do, ask yourself a few questions. The things that you tell yourself will give you your answer.

If you’re reading this you probably have some interest in health and fitness. You might have even taken steps to get in shape by exercising. For some this might mean taking the stairs instead of the elevator and for others it might mean going to group classes several times per week. You might remember those first few weeks and months of fast progress where you were stronger every time you stepped into the gym and likely even saw some changes in the mirror pretty quickly. But then progress slowed down and those quick gains didn’t come so quickly. Months might of even gone by without you noticing any changes in the mirror.

We know what the problem is because we've been in your shoes and we've seen it play out in ourselves, friends and client’s lives time after time.

You’re fighting a losing battle by working against yourself every hour that you're not in the gym. It’s a “two steps forward, one step back” thing. It’s not that you’re lazy, it’s just that you don’t see what you’re missing because you’ve never been taught the importance of one thing and then put that knowledge into practice.

I’m talking about your nutrition. The food you eat and the drinks you drink.

I know what you might be thinking… “But I work out!” Or maybe you’re thinking “Yeah yeah, I know… Don’t eat pizza. Don’t eat bread and certainly don’t have alcohol”.

This is the lack of understanding that I referenced earlier.

You don’t even know what you don’t know yet.

You don’t know what and how much to be eating to see the physical changes that you want.

Got a bad rotator cuff? How about a “torn” rotator cuff?

Do you even know what the heck the rotator cuff is?

There seems to be a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding surrounding the rotator cuff out there. Heck even some people who have a diagnosis from a doctor or even have surgery don’t really understand the anatomy of the shoulder or what their problem really is.

Let’s clear up the mystery today once and for all.

We’ll talk about shoulder anatomy, the muscular of the rotator cuff and some common issues and treatments for rotator cuff symptoms and injuries.

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?