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Do you have a fav body part to train?

Is it the one you’re best at? The area that needs most work?

My fav body part to train is butt. I LOVE that a previous problem area is now an asset.

Back in the early 90’s I’d get around with not one but two jumpers tied around my waist to hide my butt….

At my first job in a silver service Italian restaurant the boys in the kitchen would break into song whenever I turned around & excited the kitchen, it was a Sir Mix-a-lot number: “I like big butts…” 

In todays Month In Review show I’m discussing:

3 Keys To Trade In Your Buts For Booty Love!

I’ll also chat a little food and I’ll share what’s been rockin this past month and what’s been a tad more struggle street. Above all, my intention is to make this content applicable to YOU and creating and keeping a fit, healthy plant strong body.

Let’s get rolling with those 3 Keys To Trade In Your Buts For Booty Love:

Key 1. FOCUS: Ensuring Your Mindset Is Working For You.

• As with other aspect of your health goal if you’ve been focusing on what you don’t want – you’ll have been getting more of that!

Action Step: Source a picture that inspires you and put it somewhere that you get to see it repeatedly every single day. 

• Now you have the inspiration it’s time to eliminate any negative language that you may be in the habit of using when you describe your body or your ability to achieve your goal.

Action Step: Take the time to think of everything you currently say, feel, think that is not supportive. Manufacture an alternative for each to be switched to immediately each time you start that old thought. 

• Harness your focus in every rep of every set when you are training. The mind-muscle link is widely acknowledged. Your ability to focus 100% on the muscle you are training will increase muscle fiber activation and maximize the results you achieve.

Action Step: Many people find it easier when starting training to actually lightly touch the muscle they are focusing on to assist with accurate muscle recruitment. At the very least make a conscious effect to focus on the target area as you work it, think ‘firm butt’…

Key 2. GREAT GLUTES WEIGHTS: Ensure You Target Your Glutes Twice A Week.

• Form is always more important than lifting a heavy weight. Having said that, you need to be working hard – at the end of each set if you feel like you had more reps in you the intensity needs to increase! Either the weight needs to go up, the speed needs to slow down, increase your range of motion, decrease your rest period or superset/tri-set 2-3 exercises back to back without rest.
• Include 2 days rest between working the same muscle group for adequate recovery.

Some of my fav lower bod exercises to sculpt Booty Love…

A1. LOW BARBELL LUNGE 
A2. SINGLE LEG KETTLE DEADLIFT

B1 STEP DOWN 
B2 SIDE PLANK LEG RAISE

C1 BB DEADLIFT 
C2 SUMO IN OUT JUMP SQUAT

D1 SPLIT SQUAT or WALKING LUNGE
D2 PISTOL SQUAT

Key 3. EAT CLEAN: For Booty Emphasis All Other Areas Need To Stay Lean!

• Prioritize one ingredient whole food to utilizes the thermic effect of food, Protein has the highest at up to 30%.A general rule is the more natural the food is, the harder your body will work to process it. Fake, processed, sugary and fatty foods elicit the lowest thermic effect at around 3%.
• For optimal strength during your weights workouteat as necessary to fuel your session or avoid food prior if that is how you train your strongest. The main thing is to avoid being so hungry you have a weak session and also to avoid dumping a heavy meal on your body just before training as it’ll be utilizing energy to metabolize that meal instead of to power through a strong workout.
• To fuel your muscles consume Protein within 30-45 minutes of finishing your weights session. The easiest option is a plant based protein shake.
• Consume plenty of Cruciferous veg.Our stress filled, toxin filled world is rampant with substances that mimic the effect of estrogen in our body. If estrogen gets outta whack it can lead to extra fat storage in estrogen sensitive areas such as HIPS & THIGHS (and flabby hips and thighs aren’t going to flatter your booty!) The cruciferous family of veg have super abilities to create a balance again. Your cruciferous friends? Kale, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, brussels.

Let’s move onto FOOD… and today I’m sharing my Top Dining Out Tips For Fat Loss.

Although really these are also exactly the tips I follow when maintenance is my body composition goal. It’s about ensuring your meals are delicious, nutritious, informed choices… rather than disappointing convenience-based concessions. 

Once you’re armed with the tips it’s your choice whether you choose to follow them or not. I know food IS fun and there to be enjoyed – however a fit, healthy body is also fun so these tips are geared towards that healthy middle ground of having some of the food and all of the body.

The most important component in dining out and not derailing all the great work you’ve put into your eating and exercising this week actually happens before you even take a peek at the menu.

Here are 3 key points to apply to any meal you eat out:

1. Plan what and where. Don’t end up at a burger joint and expect you’ll be ok with a boring, unsatisfying green salad while everyone else chows down hearty burgers and crispy fries. The more input you can have in choosing a restaurant with great #plantstrong food options, the better.
2. Be fine with moving if it’s not what you expected. What? You’re not down with letting the people you choose to spend time with see how you prioritize giving your body the fuel that keeps it healthy? You teach your loved ones how to treat you. It’s 100% your choice what standards you set and keep for your body and the fuel you give it… they will follow your lead.
3. Ask for adjustments to the menu. Be polite, be appreciative, and be fine with your fussiness!

Ordinary or ‘normal’ is now unhealthy, unfit and over-weight. If you want extraordinary or simply just healthy whole foods plant based, it’ll take extra-ordinary behaviour. I like to think the more I (and you) ask, the sooner our preferences will be available as a standard (fuss-free!) order.

For a whole lot more info on healthy eating out tips check out show 329: 101 Ways To Cut Carbs When Eating Out.

A couple of caveats here:

First:  I hope you know me well enough by now to know I’m NOT a carb hater!

In fact I’m very much a carb LOVER. It’s just that cutting refined carbs is the simplest way I’ve ever experienced to lose fat, gain energy AND still be able to enjoy lovely generous, delicious meals.

Second: I put together this show when I was vego not vegan however I believe the content is still super applicable to wherever you sit on the vego – vegan – animal product eating spectrum.

So far as who’s inspiring me right now that’s super easy: Earthling Ed who gave an incredibly passionate speech at the end of the Official Animal Rights March in London last weekend. Around 10,000 vegans marched in London and 1,000’s more all around the world. Although our Sydney march was relatively small scale, everything counts!

To quote Ed: “Pity will not save these beings. These animals need us to fight and stand up for them and take action.” 

We’re with you Ed! I would almost workout to this speech it was that dang inspiring and hopeful.

Titled ’The Change That Is Coming‘ the speech is being shared like wildfire across the socials and Ed has just posted it to his YouTube. To check out in my opinion the most effective, articulate, intelligent, calm and powerful activist right now search Earthling Ed on You Tube.

My recommendation this month is the documentary: A Plastic Ocean. You’ll find it on Netflix or via http://aplasticocean.film/

It’s both terrifying and galvanising. After seeing dead sea birds dissected to reveal they died from nutrient deficiency because their stomaches were literally bursting with plastic I haven’t bought another plastic bottle. I buy glass when I need to and have reinstated my soda stream. They are small steps however again, everything counts! Especially when you consider that every single piece of plastic ever produced still exists.

To quote the films own trailer: A Plastic Ocean is an adventure documentary shot on more than 20 locations over the past 4 years. Explorers Craig Leeson and Tanya Streeter and a team of international scientists reveal the causes and consequences of plastic pollution and share solutions.

My struggle street this month is the disappointing realization that there is a camp of people resigned to the mindset: “What’s the point?” and “What impact can one person have?” and “It’ll never change so why bother?” Thankfully in the opposing eternally optimistic camp, there are also people steadfast in the belief that: “We will never stop” and “Everything counts” and even “Whether change will happen or not, compassionate, informed humans still have the moral responsibility to stand up, to take action and to align their actions with their values and beliefs. 

I regularly encounter resigned-what’s-the-point individuals in my street outreach. As much as I endeavour to see the situation from their point of view it’s a struggle to relate. How disheartening would it be to exist in a world you feel you have no power to impact? How sad to agree something is wrong (Yes, the way we breed and slaughter animals for their flesh and excretions) and then to make the decision several times a day to actively perpetuate the cycle of cruelty by continuing to demand animal flesh and excretions because you feel hopeless and ineffective.

If you can relate to this struggle street, I’m sorry I don’t have an answer… yet. Right now all I can do is ask myself would I prefer to:

A) Live in ignorant bliss to the atrocities we inflict on animals?NO!

B) Live in incongruent denial and hopelessness that anything can change?NO!!

C) Do my very best every single day to bring about the change I want to see? YES!!!

To quote vegan activist Ben Johnstone who I interview in the very next show #544: Behind the scenes of animal rights activism with Ben Johnstone, “The best way to avoid being overwhelmed by a problem is to be part of the solution.”

That’ll be live in just a couple of days.

That’s it for today in Healthification. Huge thanks to YOU for sharing this week with me. I appreciate it with all my heart.

The Healthification podcast is proudly bought to you by my FREE ‘Easy Vegan’ plan. In fact if you’re listening to this on the day it goes live we’re either Day 2 or Day 3 of this months LIVE Easy Vegan Plan. Although the 3 Day Easy Vegan Plan is available and free to download at any time of the month I’ll be doing it with you on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd of each month. It means there will be more fresh content and live videos (sometimes gym / workout based, sometimes mindset based and maybe, one day kitchen based – though I’m much more comfy in the gym and would prefer to have my recipe flops off camera and just share the vegan deliciousness with you when it works really well!)

To learn more check out: strongbodygreenplanet.com or for the live videos search strongbodygreenplanet on Facebook and Insta.

Till next time, remember Creating a body and life you love is Freedom. (If this ex-carb queen, NON-genetically gifted, naturally uncoordinated VEGAN-chick can do it – so can YOU!!!)

If you liked ‘3 Keys To Trade In Your Buts For Booty Love‘ you’ll also like: Booty Love

If you’re yet to share the Healthification love – just click here to zip over to iTunes and leave an honest rating and review. It’d help me out big time. With gratitude, Kate.