Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

  Today is my dad's birthday. He would have been 75 years old.  I can't believe that I've lived the last 8 years without my dad in my life. I really don't know how I've made it this long as my dad was such an important person in my life. It also makes me sad that I don't have any pictures with my dad after the age of 31. It's just not fair.  I often wonder what he would think about my current lifestyle, my career and all the bikes we've accumulated over the past few years. I wonder what he would think about Greenville, SC. We had only been living here for a few weeks before he passed away after a 10-month fight with cancer. I wonder which one of our four cats would be his favorite :)  It's been a tough day today. I really miss him. I miss his advice, his stories and how proud he was of my accomplishments.  During my long run this morning, I couldn't help but think about my dad and what his passing taught me about life. I know that his death reall...

It’s quite the paradox but America is obsessed with eating healthy yet we are one very unhealthy nation. Although what we eat (or don't eat) affects our health, healthy eating is simply part of a healthy life. And a healthy life requires healthy lifestyle habits.  If you are constantly looking for quick fixes after you realize that your unhealthy lifestyle has become a problem, it's time to stop the diet mentality so you can (finally) create good lifestyle habits to improve your health, body composition and performance/fitness. Believe it or not, but by addressing your lifestyle choices you can actually improve your fitness, achieve/maintain a healthy weight/body composition, minimize GI distress (especially during workouts), improve recovery, have more natural energy throughout the day, reduce risk for injury and sickness and enjoy your athletic lifestyle a lot more without following a diet plan.  I realize that it's much easier to gain control over your...

Great performances are built on great health. If you are carelessly eating whatever you want or intentionally restricting energy and fluids before/during and after your workouts, in an your attempt to improve performance, you could actually find yourself becoming less healthy. You can't expect to train your way to great fitness and live an unhealthy lifestyle. Sure, you may not smoke, eat fast food all day or drink excessively but how are your dietary choices enhancing your health? Great health is the foundation to great performances.  As it relates to  healthy living and healthy eating, how much time you devote to getting fit compared to how much time you devote to improving your health?  Don’t assume that both are correlated as many times, they are not. You can be very fit but also very unhealthy.    In the February 2016 issue of Triathlete Magazine, you can check out two pages (Pg. 68-69) of my nutrition tips relating to fueling your body for ...

                                               Accept and re-create your environment Healthy living is extremely important when it comes to supporting your training/exercise, nutrition and health goals. Everyday, you put yourself into several different types of environments like commuting, traveling, work place, social/volunteer activities, training/working out and most of all, your home so it is obvious that if you want to change something in your life, you need environments that have structure but also accessibility to things that move you closer (not further away) to your goals. We live in a world where many people blame outside forces (their environment) as the main reason why it's difficult to maintain new lifestyle habits. Oddly, most people have the motivation and drive, at first to create new habits, but it's very easy to let "easy, comfortable, f...

With so much nutrition advice available, how do you know what to believe?  For example, my friend Jason  asked me if I heard about Almased, not because he was interested in it but because he was shocked at the diet plan and that it was endorsed by a Registered Dietitian (RD). So, if a MD and RD recommend Almased, does that mean that you should use the product to lose weight and follow the diet plan?  At the beginning, you only drink vegetable broth, water and three Almased ® shakes per day. For each “meal”, eight level tablespoons of Almased ® with cold water (bottled or filtered) or milk (skim, unsweetened almond or soy). The weight loss during this phase may be higher than for the rest of the diet. You can stay in this Starting Phase for a couple of days or up to 2 weeks if you feel good. Then you begin the Reduction Phase, during which you replace two meals (preferably breakfast and dinner) with an Almased ® drink and eat one healthy meal. This phase l...

A few tips for a more balanced day:  -Aim for 60 minutes of movement today (any way you like it, split up or at once) -Snack on fruits and veggies  -Surround yourself with people who give you energy, not take it away from you -Be motivated by your personal goals that are meaningful and realistic, not by what others are doing and what you feel others expect you to do. -Eat to be satisfied, fueled and nourished. Focus on a plant strong meal that is balanced with whole grains (1/2 - 1 cup) or high fiber starch (~30-50g carbs) +  20-30g of protein + enough healthy fat to make the meal taste great and hold you over (~7-15g).  -Work on a good, better, best system. Don't try to be your best right now if you are just making good choices. Accept the patience that is needed to make small changes that will last a lifetime.  -Learn to love new things in life. Not much is easy the first time you do it, especially if you want it to change you....

Athletes are all too familiar with wake-up calls. Waiting until things happen and then wishing they would have started doing things earlier. Injured? Perhaps you said I should have been better with strength training, I should not have pushed through that workout and I need to be stretching. Burnout? Perhaps you said you knew you should have rested when you kept pushing through. Not at your racing fitness? Perhaps you wish you would have made slow progress earlier in the year than trying to make everything happen in the last few weeks of training.  As humans, I feel it is perfectly normal to use wake-up calls appropriately for we all need a little kick in the butt to remind us that life has meaning and we need to appreciate it to the fullest.  For the 20+ year smoker has been known to quickly stop smoking when he/she finds out he has cancer and the individual who thought that diet and exercise didn't matter may feel instantly motivated to change habits after learning...

Fuel your body with real food because your body needs fuel to function, to thrive, to live, to be happy. Don't watch the clock. Don't say you're being bad. Don't regret what you choose to put into your body. Don't say you're cheating. Don't worry/stress about what other people are doing, what others may think or what others may assume. Own your actions. Feed your body throughout the day when your brain and body need energy. As I was seeing and charting on patients today in the hospital today, I couldn't help but think (as I always do) about how grateful I am to have a body that is well, happy and healthy. Every time you think about (or do) body bash or voluntarily restrict food that can be used for fuel or for health, consider reframing your thoughts. That same body that you think is fat, ugly or gross or just messed up or failed you, is the same body that you push to cross finishing lines, wakes you up in the morning to take care of yo...

  Thanks to Oakley Women and Shape Magazine, I was able to have an amazing venue to speak about topics that have changed my life. Because "healthy" can be a word that is often overused and not clearly defined in our society, I enjoy helping others live a more balanced lifestyle.   In San Diego, Boulder and DFW, I spoke to over 600 women (combined) for over 6 hours (total) and loved every minute of it. When you are passionate about something, it is easy to talk about. But when you can practice what you preach, it is easy to communicate to others with happiness, joy and satisfaction that the lifestyle that you live is so amazing that you hope that others can share it with you. Sure, this can be taken out of context as many people strive for a lifestyle that is unrealistic, extreme and often, unhealthy but I feel that to be healthy, you have to be happy. Sadly, as many people go about changing habits, they are not happy and feel that only the end result will bring happi...