Have you ever wondered what the difference is between eating real food, taking real food supplements, and taking herbal supplements? 

Let me discuss with you how each one has it's own super power, and why the symphony of them all working together is so powerful.  

Join me for the 9th annual Turkey Trot Bootcamp! "Burn the Bird" before (or after) your Thanksgiving Feast with this 10 minute bodyweight workout!  This year's theme: Mantra, Movement, Meditation.

Mantra: My Digestion Flows with Ease

Movement: 10 Minutes (45 seconds of exercise, 15 seconds rest, x10)

1. Gator Step with a Twist
2. Walking Lunges with Overhead Reach
3. Childs Pose to Pushups
4. Kneeling Lean Backs
5. Lunge Pulse to Knee (or toe, or jump) Right Leg
6. Lunge Pulse to Knee (or toe, or jump) Left Leg
7. Side Plank Hip Dip Right
8. Side Plank Hip Dip Left
9. Side Lunges
10. Goal Post Arm Movement Flow

Meditation: Join me in a comfortable seated or lying down position for a guided visualization that will help prep your body for optimal digestion for your Thanksgiving feast! 

And since digestion is the name of the game this year, make sure you don't miss my top digestive tips from this past Tuesday At Two Facebook Live.   Stop carrying around Tums and learn HOW to help your body digest...

I'm going to let you in on a little secret.  Your body is powerful. It wants to heal itself. It constantly reminds us of this as aches, pains, and illness.  But often we don't listen until it's too late or the illness has become too debilitating. Today, let me share with you a small secret about food, and how important food is to heal us, and how we can use it to our benefit NOW, as preventative medicine, before we have to use it as treatment for disease.  

Every cell in your body, essentially, is made up of the food we eat.  What we eat has a direct impact on our health. So, how can we reduce our risk of certain diseases like cancer? The trick is to grow healthy cells on repeat. So, listen in as I share my top 3 tips to increasing your resistance to cancer. 

Tip #1: Reduce Sugar! Not only does sugar increase inflammation, but cancer cells thrive off of sugar! Listen in to the video for more details on this!

Tip #2: Increase your cruciferous...

 Before I knew better, I would just got to the gym and hop on an elliptical machine, and flow down the row of selectorized weight machines (you know, the ones you sit on and they move in only one direction to work one specific muscle).  BORING!  But, that was what I knew. So that is what I did.  

After I got so totally bored with that, I ventured into taking group fitness classes. Back then, it was a mix between Hi/Lo dance aerobics, and Step classes (in the 1990s).  But the good thing was, I just had to follow along. Why? Because the instructor had the plan! I didn't have to think of what exercise came next. I just had to watch and repeat.

Then, early on in college, I became a group fitness instructor, where I learned that for every class I taught, I needed a plan! If I didn't know the kickboxing moves that came next, or what water aerobics exercises to do with the music, I felt like I was gypping out the class of their workout, and the 45 minutes...

I am not a proponent of taking prescription medications. In fact, my entire career, mission, purpose, journey, etc,  is about helping individuals get off their medication by creating health from the inside out through clean nutrition, movement, and through empowering the mind. So why am I asking you to take your MEDS today? 

Last week, I was sitting down to create plan to keep me focused and to make sure I get done what needs to be done during my husband's deployment.  It's way too easy to get wrapped up in reacting to life, instead of being proactive to life. So, I sat down and created a calendar on a piece of paper for the number of days that he will be deployed for.  In each daily box is four letters.  M.E.D.S.  What it boils down to, are the four things that I need to do daily, so that I don't forget to take care of me, during, not only this deployment, but through this holiday season, and new year.  

These are the four things that I need to do...

For as long as I can remember, I would describe nutrition  to my clients  using a continuum.  The  example I would use is: "In the ideal nutrition world, you would choose the organic apple.  If you can't do the organic apple, then choose the conventional apple.  The conventional apple is still better than the candied apple."  Everything worked along that continuum, and you would just aim to get the best you could, at that time, in that place.  Of course the candy apple isn't a health food, and I don't recommend eating them, but you get the idea.  The conventional apple, while not the best, is still better than the candy apple.  The same thing would go for a potato: choose an organic sweet potato first and the  conventional sweet potato as your second choice.  Both would all be better than the french fried potato.

But there is a slight hiccup in my theory, and now, I cannot use that example for all fruits and veggies, like...

This week, I want to share with you what happened to me when I stopped monitoring my coffee shop (budget) behavior!

Here's a little back story: Last month, our TBP wellness practice was to manage what we monitor.  When you know better, you do better. So if there's a behavior you are thinking of  changing, the first step is to monitor it in order to decide if it's worth changing or not.  I chose to monitor the amount of money I spent at the coffee shop.  

At the end of the month, I deemed the amount of money I spent at the coffee shop to be appropriate, and that I did NOT need to make any behavior changes.  Fast forward to this month, and I have already spent double(ish) what I did last month when I was monitoring! And we still have 9 days left in the month!  

DID I SPEND LESS BECAUSE I WAS MONITORING THE BEHAVIOR LAST MONTH? OR DID I START SPENDING MORE BECAUSE I WAS NO LONGER MONITORING AND TRACKING? 

Do you have chronically tight hips like I do? (I swear it's from years of marathon running).  If so, try out this exercise that I call the "Gator Step with a Twist."  

In the video above, I describe how you can do this exercise as both a stretch, or an active warmup/mobility movement.  Give it a try and let me know how it feels!

-Abby

If you're like me, sometimes you need as much motivation as you can get to fit in a workout.  Let me share with you one of my secret weapons that works like a charm (most of the time).  Here it goes:

Super simple. I don't get to shower until I've gotten in my workout!  I don't know about you, but once I shower, there's no way I'm going to get in a workout. I sweat like a beast and would have to shower again! And who's got time for that?  So, if I'm going to workout, I do it before a shower. 

Let's say, for example, I have a meeting, or an event to attend, and I know I need to shower before it. I tell myself that I have to get in my workout BEFORE that shower! So, if showering for you is a daily ritual (I hope it is), then this is the opportunity to make exercise a daily ritual.  

If it's a rest day, I don't use this rule, as I embrace the rest and shower whenever I want. But on the other 5-6 days of the week, I absolutely schedule my workouts...

Let's chat for a moment today about why we should NEVER exercise to "work off" the food we eat.  I'm going to start right off by saying that the mindset of doing that is one of punishment.  You're using exercise as a punishment for eating the food.  No wonder exercise gets such a bad reputation and has such a bad PR problem! 

For years, I thought of exercise as simply a means to (try to) control my weight.  I would use the exercise machines and furiously watch the calorie counters on them to see if I burned enough to make up for the ice cream, or snack I ate.  Funnily enough, it never worked. (big surprise).  

Let's change our thinking from using exercise as a means to burn calories, to a tool that helps us feel better.  Exercise is medicine for our bodies, it's not a punishment for the food we eat.  Plus, when you stop exercising, you actually burn even more calories due to the post exercise "burn." So, calories from...