I started Fit Soldiers hoping to quickly tone and tighten for an upcoming vacation. I joined using one of the LivingSocial deals, thinking the six weeks would be enough to get me where I wanted to be for my vacation; not thinking for a moment when I began that this would be a program that I would commit to for any longer than the six weeks. That was nearly 19 months ago.

During my orientation, I found out what it meant to be skinny fat. I knew I wasn’t as in-shape as I used to be, but I never considered myself fat. I was floored to find out that my body fat percentage was only 4 % away from being considered ‘obese’. If being shocked by my body fat percentage wasn’t enough, it became very clear how weak I had become. Our group cheered when one of the girls could do one pushup on her feet, I could barely do one pushup on my knees. My fitness level was bleak. I knew for some time that I wasn’t as healthy as I should be. I love to run, and running had become difficult, I found myself walking far more than running. At the end of orientation, I was definitely motivated to get in shape…and if nothing else do one push up on my feet.

So my 6 week journey began…and I am not going to lie, it was tough, but I saw differences in my body after the first few weeks. My clothes were fitting better and as funny as it sounds, I felt muscles in my arms that I had never knew existed…seriously. I felt healthier and stronger. I immediately felt a difference in my energy level and also found myself motivated to learn how to eat and drink better. Of course, these are all changes that you’d expect to get by working out, but I also noticed changes in myself that were not physical. You think about committing to an exercise program and you think that the benefits of that program are purely to tone and tighten, but I gained so much more in the first six weeks. I was beginning to gain my confidence back. This is something that I did not expect. As a mother of two children and going through two pregnancies, it was an unexpected surprise to feel great in my skin again. With this, my results, and the fact that I was finally enjoying my workouts; I knew it was no longer a 6 week journey, but a life-long journey.

Now, nearly two years later, I am stronger, happier and healthier. I have reached my initial goals of working out and eating better to get into shape, and I no longer struggle to complete a push up (and can do so on my feet). I continue to see physical changes and know I still have a long way to go to reach my new goals which consist of unassisted chin-ups, and half-marathons. I have lost inches off my thighs, hips, and waist, and have gained muscle, strength and most of all self-confidence.

My favorite thing about Fit Soldiers is the TRAINERS!! I know, after years and years of ‘working out’ and not seeing results that I need someone to kick my butt. The Fit Soldiers trainers do just that. They push me just outside of my comfort level which in turn has resulted in continued progress. I can’t say enough wonderful things about this program; it has truly changed my life.

Shanna Haller

It was my wife that actually gave me the nudge to try something new. We were driving by Fit Soldiers one day and saw a bunch of folks outside working out. It looked like something totally different then what I was doing before. I was looking to try something new besides those big box gyms where you do the same thing over and over again. I was no longer motivated at those kinds of places and had stopped going. After my first Fit Soldiers workout of doing Spartacus, I was hooked!

Before I came to Fit Soldiers I thought I was in fairly good shape because I played soccer, hiked, and biked. But now I have a lot more stamina when playing soccer and I can run the whole game. Another thing I have noticed is that typical hikes used to tire me out and now a 5 mile hike is a breeze!

Since I started at Fit Soldiers I’ve dropped 10 pounds and 5% body fat. My fitness level has never been higher! I have more energy during the day, my stress level is a lot lower, and my core is solid. Also having great personal trainers has helped me work on my form, which has made my workouts a lot better.

Another thing that has changed since coming here is my nutrition. Dave did a grocery store tour that made me more aware of what is actually in food. Now I check the food labels and try to stay away

from fast food places. I’m eating more fruits, vegetables, and also eating at home more. I buy food that is good for me instead of ice cream and cookies.

My two favorite things about Fit Soldiers are the trainers and the people who are there. Everyone is in an upbeat mood and encourages each other to get better. I like the variety of exercises we do too. We focus on all the different parts of the body each workout. You never know what to expect when you walk through the doors!

Mike K.

Hello Fit Soldiers Family!

May is kicking off our Revolution for a Cause charity drive.

For the month of May we will be recognizing and supporting the Denver Rescue Mission.

If you are not familiar with the DRM (those are also my initials!) then you might certainly be familiar with their Lawrence St. sign downtown, a cross that reads "Jesus Saves". Although that is the most well known of their shelters it is certainly not the only one they have, nor is it all they do.

The DRM meets people at their physical and spiritual points of need, with the goal of returning them to society as productive, self-sufficient citizens. They provide multiple shelters and programs and no one is denied services because of gender, race, color, creed, national origin, religion, age, handicap, political affiliation, sex, sexual orientation, or marital, parental or military status.

Check out this story that is right up our fitness alley!

http://running.competitor.com/2010/10/features/running-for-their-lives_15119

You can also learn more about the Denver Rescue Mission by visiting http://www.denverrescuemission.org/

Here is how and we will be raising support for the Denver Rescue Mission

• Water - $1.00 - 100% of proceeds
• Foam Rollers - 100% of proceeds (I will also make sure I send you our 48 page Foam Roll Manual!)
• 10 Days for $10 trial membership - 100% of proceeds
• Charity Bring-A-Buddy Boot Camp - May 11th @9:00 AM - Details to come!
• ANY New Client - We will donate $10 from every May sign up to the CHCF.

We are looking forward to a great Revolution for a Cause with the Denver Rescue Mission.

Committed to Your Results,

Dave Mura
and the Fit Soldiers Family!

Hey there Fit Soldiers!

May 2013 is Bring-A-Buddy Month!

This is a prime time for you to share us with your friends, family, and co-workers and let them experience our award winning programs.

What do you get out of it? You get to win stuff!

Here's how it works:

• Bring A Buddy to a workout = 1 ticket
• Buddy enters a trial offer on ANY program = 1 ticket
• Buddy signs up for any of our programs = 3 tickets

You can receive up to 5 chances to win just for bringing in one buddy!

Each of the above must be completed in the month of May in order to receive the appropriate tickets.

All tickets will be entered into a raffle and winners will be selected from the raffle at the end of the month.

Here's what you can win!

• Free Month of Fit Soldiers 20 session month! ($180 value)
• 60 Minute Massage ($55 value)
• Weekend Warrior 5 punch card pass plus hand wraps ($80 value)
• Free entry to our next Kettlebell Workshop ($49 value)
• Prograde Platinum Package (VGF+ Multi, EFA Icon, Workout pre/post recovery) ($124.95 value)
• Resistance Band Training Single Band Package (Purple, Black, Red, Orange) ($52.99 value)
• 3' Foam Roller plus 48 page SMR Manual ($25 value)

Referral Bonus!

Even better news, you will still receive your referral bonus if your buddy signs up during the month of May! We want people just like you so start sharing us with your like minded friends that want to work hard, feel great, and see results!

Revolution for a Cause!

During our Bring-A-Buddy Month we are offering a 10 Day for $10 Trial. 100% of the $10(during the month of May) will go to our charity of the month, the Denver Rescue Mission.

Your buddies are more than welcome to come with you to your next workout for free(only one free workout per buddy).

Buddies who take advantage of our 10 Day for $10 trial are required to complete a Fit Soldiers Goal Setting and Assessment session.

We are excited to meet your friends and help them on their journey to amazing health and wellness!

Committed to Your Results,

Dave Mura
and the Fit Soldiers Family!

If you watched Popeye the Sailor Man as a kid you know that when you eat spinach you get super strength, right?! Now hum along if you remember the song…”I’m strong to the finish ‘cause I eats my spinach!!”

But seriously, in a way vegetables do give us super strength because they are low in sugar, high in fiber, and loaded with vitamins. They are also shown to reduce the risk of chronic disease and help shed fat. Veggies have a lot of nutrients and a lot of volume from fiber and water but they don’t have a lot of calories. So when you eat more vegetables you end up more satisfied and feeling full without consuming a lot of calories.

This brings me to my next lean eating habit: Eat at least five servings of vegetables a day.

A serving is about the size of your fist. So make a fist and now you know how much how much you have to eat per serving. Now eat 5 of those per day! They emphasized that you can eat your veggies however you prefer, which means raw or cooked. They also said that if you really love one kind of veggie to go ahead and eat a couple of servings of that.

They suggest eating the rainbow because the more colorful a vegetable, the more nutrients it has. They recommend experimenting and trying new vegetables that you have never tried before. The goal is to eat a wide variety of colorful veggies and fruits. They also suggest trying to get more dark leafy vegetables.

While I do love vegetables and Dave and I probably eat a lot more veggies than the average person, over the two weeks while I was working on nailing this habit, some days getting 5 servings in was tough. One thing that helped me was to make a big salad for dinner with a bunch of different veggies and throw some grilled chicken or salmon on top of it. That alone can be 3 or 4 servings of veggies, depending on the size of your salad.

Another way to get a raw serving of veggies in is to throw a handful or two of spinach into your smoothie. Dave and I have been doing this lately and loving it! You get the benefit of the nutrients and a serving of veggies and you can’t even taste it. This might help for those of you picky eaters who don’t exactly heart vegetables.

Another thing I sometimes do to get veggies in at breakfast is add them to my eggs either in a scramble or an omelet. I really like spinach, onions, broccoli, red pepper, and tomatoes in my eggs. Sprinkle on some Cholula and hand me a big cup of coffee with a little cream and you’ve just made my day Jack! (Duck Dynasty Fans you know what I’m talking about!)

One other thing that has helped me get my 5 servings in is to make a big vat of soup in my crockpot and load that up with veggies. In fact, Dave and I just had some homemade minestrone last night and it was pretty delicious if I do say so myself! We had onions, diced tomatoes, carrots, celery, and kale in just that one dish. Oh and by the way if you don’t like a veggie the first time you try it, try it again. I’m speaking from experience when I say that veggies (and other foods) can grow on you. I didn’t particularly love kale the first time I tried it, but now after having it several times I actually really like it. So give your taste buds a little time to adjust to new foods and flavors.

So now just like your mama always told you, eat your vegetables! Experiment and have fun with it! Try a new way of prepping or cooking your favorite vegetable. You can eat your veggies raw in a salad or smoothie, steam them, grill them, sauté them, or add them to soups. Try eating what’s in season or buy something local or organic.

Let us know what new veggie you tried this week or post your new favorite veg recipe here!

Finally they gave us a habit that I’m already pretty good at!! :) They asked us to eat lean protein with each meal. Maybe it’s because Dave has ingrained it in me, and because I’ve heard him tell all of our clients that you need to have a balance of proteins, carbs, and healthy fats at every meal and snack, but honestly I didn’t find this habit to be too hard.

For breakfast, lunch, and dinner this comes very naturally to me. It’s the snacks that I have to be a little more intentional about making sure I’m doing this.

For instance it would be easy for me to grab a piece of fruit, granola bar, some crackers, or a handful of pretzel thins for a snack, but then I would only be getting carbohydrates, which means I would more than likely be starving again in 20minutes. So what I have been trying to do is add a lean protein (which often covers the healthy fat as well) with my traditionally carb heavy snacks. My favorites are cottage cheese, fage plain greek yogurt, string cheese, and hard boiled eggs.

Precision Nutrition gave us the following list of their recommendations:

• Lean meat such as beef, pork, wild game
• Poultry such as chicken or turkey
• Fish & seafood such as shrimp or scallops
• Eggs & egg whites
• Cottage cheese or strained plain Greek yogurt (such as Fage)
• Protein powder such as whey, egg, vegetarian blends, etc.
• Cooked lentils or beans
• Tempeh or tofu
• Veggie burger

Another thing they mentioned is that while plant sources(aka veggies) do contain some protein they are not as protein dense, meaning they don’t have as much protein per volume as animal foods such as beef, chicken, or fish. So you would have to eat a lot more of them to get enough protein, which is why they are not on their recommended list of protein sources.

Today make it a point to get lean protein in with every meal and snack that you eat. Then do it again the next day and the day after that. Before you know it, just like me, you may find yourself getting pretty good at this one!

Post a comment and let us know how your healthy eating habits are coming along!

Committed to Your Results,

Dave and Katie
and the Fit Soldiers Family!

Hello everyone, Katie is back with third update on her Precision Nutrition Lean Eating Journey. If you missed her previous posts you can check them out here: http://fitsoldiers.com/home/item/lean-eating-series-here-we-go

First let me apologize for not being more consistent with my posts. It has been an insanely busy past few weeks! The third habit I was given to practice was, and is still the most difficult for me to implement, but is also one of the two most important habits we will be given all year, according to Precision Nutrition. It is to stop eating when 80% full. You might be wondering “how do I measure 80% full?” Well, it isn’t an exact science, but there are some ways to measure and accomplish this.

Stop eating just a little sooner than you normally would at every meal. Either you can put less food on your plate than you normally would, or just don’t clean your plate, instead save a few bites for later. Eating slowly, which is the other of the two most important habits in lean eating(according to what they tell me) will help you stop eating at 80% full because you will be more in touch with whether or not you are actually hungry.

Before you start eating ask yourself if you are physically hungry. Notice your hunger cues. My hunger cues are a growling stomach, an empty feeling in my stomach, and/or irritability. Yes, when I am super hungry I tend to get a little grumpy. Sometimes Dave can even tell that I am hungry before I realize it myself!  If you are hungry eat something, but eat it slowly and mindfully, and make sure to stop when you are satisfied and not stuffed, again to 80% full.

Another helpful tool they gave us to help us work on this habit was to imagine a hunger scale. Then rate yourself between 1 and 10, with 1 being no hunger and 10 being the hungriest you have ever been. If you’re around a 7 then eat something, but stop at about a 2 or 3 which would be approximately 80%.

If you’re anything like me this will be quite challenging and may take a lot of trial and error. But give it a try, play with it, and see if you can stop eating at 80% full.

You never know, it might just become a habit!

There you have it! Stop eating when you are 80% full. Give it a try!

Committed to Your Results,

Dave and Katie Mura
and the Fit Soldiers Family!

Hey Fit Soldiers,

If you have made positive changes to your nutrition habits then that probably included adding more vegetables into your daily routine.

If so, that's awesome! Keep it up and make sure you are including a variety of different kinds of vegetables. After all, I've never heard anybody say "Stop, your eating too many vegetables."

By adding more veggies your probably adding a little prep time (no big deal, it's worth it) as well.  Most likely you are also tossing a lot of veggie scraps into the trash or maybe even your compost. Again, this may not be a big deal, but what if you could get more out of them?

That's just what Katie and I have been doing the last few months...

Time is goes faster than we ever imagined. Especially when eating. Katie's seemingly simple second habit was well, not so simple.

You would think there is a food famine in our country at the rate we shovel down our food.

Read on and see what Katie has to say and some important health reasons to eat slowly.

If you made it in Tuesday morning you had a chance to try some of our tasty Fit Soldiers Flapjacks!

Typical pancakes carry trace amounts of protein and are overloaded in refined carbohydrates and even still need an excess of syrup to pour on top of them.  You'll notice these are not your typical pancakes. They've got protein and still carry a taste that doesn't need much if any syrup at all.

First the Protein Pancakes, I'm not sure who to source here because this recipe is all over the internet but you can see some of our edits below. You can cook these up for a snack later in the day, freeze them for later in the week, or eat them hot and ready for breakfast, your pre/post workout, or fueling an outdoor adventure.

COMING SOON!
The Pumpkin Pancakes come from a woman (Registered Dietician) I met this past fall at a health fair. They still have some quality protein but have a little more sugar that the others. Because of that there really is no need for other sweeteners.  They are pretty amazing!

So whip some up and tell us what you think! You can also share this with your friends!