Don’t think about you, think about them.

When crafting a resume so many veterans make the mistake of putting as many things that they’ve done as they can on it. WRONG!

Have you ever thought about how many other resumes that hiring manager is looking at for the position? The last job I applied for they were over 3000 applicants. How do you set yourself apart from 3000 other people on a black and white sheet of paper? Simple, think about who your resume is for, instead of, how much you can put on it.

One thing that hiring managers need to do is save time, the best way for you to help them save time is make your resume one page.

You might think that's impossible, but it's not when you're considering the other person who's looking at it instead of yourself. If they don't have to click on a "2" or "next page" button, you're saving them time, therefor, they like you, and they put you in the KEEP pile.

Keep it simple:

• Bullet point your biggest professional accomplishments; S.T.A.R. - the Situation, Task given, your Actions, Results?!
• A job timeline that takes no more than one line per job - title, company, dates you worked, no gaps. That's it!
• Additional skills, certifications, qualifications and training that are relative to the job.
• Awards and honors from companies for performance and anytime you have been recognized publicly.

It won't be easy but you can get your resume to the top of the stack if you're thinking about who instead of how.

This is what I regularly put in my "Green Drink" first thing in the morning. Keep in mind sometimes the ingredients will change, I may only have 2 different fruits, or I might add something like honey or oranges. Basically, it's not an exact recipe, however, these are my staple ingredients:

Handful of Kale - curly, dinosaur, purple - loaded with minerals, vitamins, fiber, and amino acids, as well as important anti-oxidants. 
Handful of Baby Spinach - high in anti-oxidants, protein, and fiber. 
4-6 strawberries - heart healthy and high in Vitamin C. 
7-10 blackberries - powerful anti-oxidant, can help prevent Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and are anti-aging. 
7-10 raspberries - neutralize free radicals. 
Handful of blueberries - among the highest ranking anti-oxidants; also anti-aging and improve cognitive function. 
Tsp chia seeds - maintain hydration, boost endurance, and are high in Omega-3. 
Tbsp flax seed - also high in Omega-3. 
1 or 2 scoops of protein powder.
​
If you want to sweeten it you could add half of an apple, orange, or banana. 

If you're like me then every day is a struggle to find time to workout. If it's not something at home that pulls you away, it's a project at work that you really need to finish that causes you to miss your workout. So you think...

In my experience it's when I make it as easy as possible for myself to get a workout that I am more likely to do it. 

There are a few things that I do throughout the day so that I get my workout in. Here are 7 best strategies that I have found that help me stay on track:

1. 1. Always have a bottle or glass of water on your desk at work.
   2. Prepare a healthy lunch and snacks at home before going to the office, and then only eat what you bring with you from home. Few things can trigger dietary anxiety more than a coworker asking, “Where do you want to go for lunch?” Having your lunch prepared ahead of time eliminates the need to make a choice.
   3. Keep your gym clothes in the car so you don’t have to stop at home before taking a separate trip to the gym. Nothing derails the intention to work out like a quick stop at home to change into gym clothes, as there are just too many potential distractions and stumbling blocks involved.
   4. Keep a pair of running shoes at work so you can take a quick walk during your lunch break. Simply seeing the shoes under your desk will help you make the choice to get up and move.
   5. At home, keep the television closed up behind cabinet doors, which will help reduce the impulse to sit down to watch TV every evening.
   6. Keep running shoes by the front door or sitting on the treadmill at home to make it easier to squeeze a quick walk into your day.
   7. Keep a yoga mat laid out on the floor to remind yourself to do your daily push-ups, stretching protocol or yoga session.

Some days you simply do not have time for your usual workout.  Perhaps you are traveling or you have meetings from dawn ‘til dusk.  Or maybe something totally unexpected comes up and your workout time disappears.

When life steals your exercise time, however, you do not have to forgo your workout.  If you have just a few minutes, you can burn off 100 calories, get your heart pumping fast and redeem at least a little of your workout.

Use them on busy days or even to supercharge your normal workout days.  Most estimates are for a person weighing approximately 130-150 pounds.  If you weigh more, you can probably shorten the duration, but if you are lighter, add a few minutes to ensure that you burn at least 100 calories.

1.     Take the stairs.  Stair climbing for 15 minutes will burn 137 calories.  Have a 15 minute break at work?  Find a stair case and set your phone alarm to alert you when 15 minutes have passed.

2.     Run a 5-minute mile. By the time you are 4 and ½ minutes in, you will have already burned 100 calories.  If you can’t get outside, just run in place.

3.     Ride a stationary bike at 20 mph for 4 minutes 54 seconds.

4.     Work on the lawn.  Pull weeds for 17 minutes, rake leaves for 20 minutes, or dig dirt for 16 minutes.

5.     Calisthenics. Spending 15 minutes doing some light body weight squats, lunges, jumping jacks, get-ups and knee-ins will burn about 137 calories.

6.     Go for a walk.  A 150 pound person will burn approximately 117 calories by walking at a 4 mph speed for 20 minutes.  Walk in place if you do not have a good area to walk in outdoors.  Try walking in place while you watch your favorite television show!

7.     Grab the vacuum.  Vacuuming your home or office for 28 minutes will burn 100 calories.  This is a great way to sneak in some exercise at work and get on the good list of your coworkers!

8.     Chop fire wood.  It is hot now, but winter is coming!  Spend 5 minutes chopping fire wood and you will burn 100 calories.

9.     Swim laps.  It only takes 12 minutes to burn off 100 calories while swimming.

10.  Mow the lawn with a push mower.  14 minutes is all it takes to zap 100 calories.

Today, we’re taking a hard look at winter weight gain.  It’s a common problem—people tend to pack on a few pounds during the winter months.

But we want to fight back, and we hope you will join us.  Let’s get after this now, while winter is still in full force.  We’ll have less to deal with when the warm breezes start blowing!

The good, the bad…and the solution 
 Although winter weight gain varies from person to person, research shows the average gain to be five to seven pounds!  Some people gain this extra weight because they have Seasonal Affective Disorder—a type of winter depression.  But most of us can’t blame winter depression for our tendency to pick up extra weight during the winter months.

So, why does winter weight gain happen?  According to Lawrence J. Cheskin, MD, founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center, it happens because we eat more and move less during the winter months1.

This is bad news and good news.  It is bad news because it would be kind of nice if we could blame our cold-weather corpulence on something exotic like the jet stream cycle and waddle off for another espresso.

But it is good news because we can do something about it.  We don’t have to greet spring with softer middles and tighter clothes.  So let’s celebrate by tackling winter weight gain with our weapon of choice here at VETFIT:  Discipline.

Hour of decision According to Merriam-Webster, discipline is a “rule or system of rules governing conduct or activity2.”  This is perfect.  Just like in the military, in order to fight winter weight gain, we have to discipline ourselves to follow some rules. 

Here we go…

1.  Banned language: For the next several weeks, do not allow yourself to say, “Just this once.”  If you pay close attention, a ‘just this once’ situation comes up practically every day.  You go to a retirement party.  You take spouse out for a birthday dinner.  Someone brings a meal by your house because you’ve been sick.  Your co-worker brings in the leftover pizza from last night’s party.  Your child has leftover Valentine’s Day candy.  You have to say no every single time.  Otherwise, you will never get ahead.

Just grit your teeth, resist what others are having and make good food choices.  I’m not saying it is easy.  I am saying it is necessary.

2.  Plan your occasional splurge, and do not deviate from the plan. Unending deprivation is never a good idea, but you have to be intentional about the time, place and food that you let yourself splurge on. 

Love the hot wings at your favorite restaurant?  Then let’s make a deal!  Eat clean for ten days.  No cheating.  And then at the end of those ten days, go have the wings.  Guilt free.  Just enjoy them.  Then set the next goal.  But you are not allowed to deviate from your plan in the meantime.

If you do, you lose the wings. 

Don’t waste your fun calories on something that doesn’t compare to those wings!

3.  Keep moving.  Exercise is not an optional activity.  Now more than ever you have to get your body in motion.  Exercise is very effective at preventing weight gain—and that is what VETFIT is after right now.  Don’t even worry so much about losing pounds; just work to keep the winter scale-creep from happening to you. Try to get some cardio in at least 4-6 days a week.

Remember:  spring is coming.  Let’s be ready for it, and leave winter weight gain behind.

Sources

1http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/5-tips-to-avoid-winter-weight-gain

2http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discipline

From weekend warriors to Ironman finishers, performance is directly tied to diet.  If you want to train at the peak of your ability and recover quickly, you must be intentional about what you eat, taking care to feed your body what it needs.  Trying to work out with a body that is starving for essential nutrients will end only in frustration; and frustration eats your momentum and resolve with a voracious appetite.

Make the most of every minute you work out by fueling your body sensibly.  Eat whole foods and leave all that processed junk alone. Now let’s look at the basics.

Nutrition 101:  the foundation
The big three nutrients that you need to be concerned with are carbohydrates, protein and fat.  An eating strategy that balances these three macro-nutrients will skyrocket your fitness results.

• ·       Carbohydrates:  (4 calories per gram) Some have argued that carbohydrates are the most important nutrient that an athlete consumes, because carbs fuel muscle.  Every time you move one of your muscles, you are using carbohydrates.  Your body breaks down carbs into sugars and then stores them in your muscles and livers.  If you eat more than can be stored in either of these two places, the excess is stored as fat in your body. 

Good sources of carbohydrates include vegetables (Highest Nutrient Value), fruits (Next Highest), beans, and some whole grains.

• ·       Protein: (4 calories per gram) In order to build muscle, you must have protein.  Muscle is the foundation of every athlete:  without a solid muscle base, you will be ineffective any fitness pursuit.  Muscle also plays an important role in protecting you from diabetes.  The more muscle you have, the more efficiently your body can uptake glucose from your bloodstream.   

It is important to eat protein daily, because your body cannot store protein very easily.  Protein from animal sources is the easiest way to get complete protein, but plant-based proteins can be combined to provide complete protein as well. Keep in mind that if you are getting the majority of protein from plants you will likely never be nutrient deficient.

• ·       Fat:  (9 calories per gram) It is unfortunate that fat came under such fire during the last decade or so.  Fat is essential and you need a lot of it.  The key is to know what kind of fat to eat.  Avoid anything that is hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated.  These fats are also called trans-fats and are very unhealthy.  Instead try to get the majority of your fat from olive oil, coconut oil, nuts, seeds, avocado, wild-caught fish and free-range animal products such as butter, cheese, yogurt, beef and poultry.
  

Note: Be careful when eating fat if your goal is weight loss. It is 9 calories per gram and it can be easy to eat too much.

Finding the balance
If you are like many people, you are often confused about how to balance out the different kinds of foods you eat.  It seems as though there is a new diet promotion every day, promising all sorts of miracles.

The key, however, to fueling your body for peak performance is balance and moderation.  In The New Rules of Lifting for Women, Cassandra Forsythe insists that eating a ratio of 40/30/30 (carbohydrate/protein/fat) will bring the best results.  Start here and then adjust the ratios to see what best suits your body.

Remember:  you must give your body what it needs to perform.  If you don’t, you will end up tired, weak, and prone to frustration because you won’t have the energy or strength to work out.  The better you fuel your body, the better it will serve you in your pursuit of fitness and health.

The human body was designed to be highly adaptive.

This is proven when a person loses their stomach to say...cancer, and then the intestine develops a pouch over time where food is then digested.

The human life is also highly adaptive.

That is why we must go through times of hardship. If there is no struggle there is no perseverence.

Then that person grows up knowing nothing of the way life truly is: HARD AS HELL. 

When you grow up there is no one to hold your hand when you cross the street; you either look both ways, or take your chances with fate.

I hope that I have been out through enough hardship so that when times are tough I can look back, shrug my shoulders, and say, "eh, it could be worse."

A major problem I had in the beginning of my health and fitness journey was that it took so damn long to cut up all those veggies everyday. 

So I came up with this easy solution: Write down 5 vegetables that I can eat every day, go to the store, buy enough for the week, take them home and prep them, and eat them every day of the week. I'll break it down into 3 simple steps for you to follow.

3 SIMPLE STEPS TO EATING MORE VEGGIES

STEP 1) Fill your shopping cart with as many veggies as you can. Grab enough for you(and your family) for the week.

STEP 2) When you get home instead of just putting the veggies away in the fridge; pull out your cutting board and get to chopping.

STEP 3) Chop up all the veggies and put them in resealable containers.

Now you can pull a handful, or 3, of fresh veggies from the container every day instead of having to chop them up. 

One less thing for you to think about when preparing your meals!

PLEASE NOTE: You can also add blueberries, raspberries, walnuts, almonds, cheese and whatever else. Be creative and put things you like to eat in there...they can help mask the flavors of some of those less than tasty veggies(Kale for me).

Enjoy!


If you have any questions about other tips for eating better email or message me on Facebook. I am here to help.

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Comment below about your favorite salad combinations...

The one question I get asked the most by soldiers is, "how do I plan my workout?" 

For someone like myself who has been a Strength and Conditioning Coach for a decade the answer is simple. However, these are Soldiers we're talking about here, and they need the basics. So I put together a plan to set any Weekend Warrior on the right path. 

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Go into a gym, any gym really, and you will see the same thing; a bunch of sweaty dudes with different goals trying to achieve them using different types of equipment and methods. Have you ever actually LOOKED at the order people are doing things, though?    

Often times the best of intentions in training can be mired by improper programming. Correct exercise order seems like a basic idea, but it is often done incorrectly. Here is a brief introduction on how a proper training session should go.

Every training session should begin with a dynamic warm up. Whether you choose to use the preparation drill from the Army’s Field Manual 7-22 or you have formulated your own at home in your living room. 

The purpose of a warm up is to both raise the body’s core temperature at least 1 degree Celsius and take the joints through a significant range of motion to get them ready to exercise. 

After a proper Dynamic Warmup, here is how a training session should go:

1. Explosive Lift (Olympic lifts, box jumps, medicine ball throws, etc)
   
2. Multi joint strength and power “core” lifts (squat, bench, military press, deadlift, etc)
   
3. Multi joint assistance lifts ( step ups, good mornings, close grip pushups, etc)
   
4. Single joint assistance lifts (bicep curls, leg extensions, tricep rope press down, etc)
   
5. Pre-hab movements (rotator cuff, knee, ankle mobility, etc)
   

Ideally you would do cardio and conditioning work on a separate day, but if you don't have the time to workout everyday then you must decide what your goal is.    

Most athletes will emphasize the cardio after they train as lifting will only slightly take away from cardio. Whereas, cardio before lifting can be more detrimental to the progress of strength and power.

Planning a workout using proper exercise selection can help to maximize progress while reducing the risk of injuries over time. Placing exercises in the right order means that your body will become properly trained to do what you ask of it without getting injured. 

This is important for every Weekend Warrior, but especially for soldiers who are trying to stay healthy for deployment, Field Training Exercises, promotion, etc. 

Train safe, Train smart, and Train hard!  
Aaron  

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We really like to talk to people about working out. So, if you have a question about your workout or anything else write it in the comment block below.