A quality life is a all about “moving well, feeling strong, and increasing longevity.” Check out this SB Independent article featuring Mikki Reilly on the best tools for maintaining a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle.
12 Simple Steps To The Paleo Lifestyle in Santa Barbara
Are you curious about the “Paleo” lifestyle, but not sure how to put it into action? Here are 12 simple steps to get you started…
Primal Supplements for Health and Fitness
Nutrient density, meaning the actual vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients contained in food, is different than it was 40,000 years ago. Here is a list of supplements our modern body needs to best replicate the nutritionally dense diet our ancestors ate.
Paleo Lifestyle: Preventing Diabetes One Step At A Time
Does diabetes run in your family? Are you concerned that one day you too could develop diabetes? While diet is definitely a contributing factor, believe it or not, one of the most commonly overlooked risk factors is body composition…
Personal Training Improves Body Composition and Insulin Sensitivity
There’s little doubt that a low-carb diet can keep you sensitive to insulin and thus help you avoid storing fat, but did you know that your body composition–ratio of lean body mass to fat–affects insulin sensitivity too?
Eat an Abundance of Plant Foods from the Santa Barbara Farmers Market
From a Paleolithic point of view, ancient humans evolved on a diet that was based on wild plants, particularly green leafy vegetables and meat from wild animals. These vegetables provided antioxidant vitamins, minerals, and many phytochemicals with a variety of antioxidant properties…
Live to Be 100 and Die Disease Free in Santa Barbara
What if you could live to be 100 and be pain and disease free with all of your mental faculties in tact, would you want to extend your life and keep doing what you are doing?
Paleo Lamb and Sweet Potato Recipe
Looking for tasty meal with a little Paleo-friendly carbs? Check out this amazing LAMB AND SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE contributed by Fitness Transform member Penny G.
Primal Lifestyle: 3 Things You Can Do To Eliminate Pain
Many people believe that joint pain is inevitable, something they must learn to live with as they get older. But as a fitness trainer with 20 years experience, working in the trenches with clients, I’ve seen hundreds of people reduce or completely eliminate pain when they implement three simple steps…
Functional Movement: The Right Kind of Exercise at Fitness Transform
Why do you need to exercise? Simply because your body is designed to move. Pushing, pulling, bending, twisting, squatting, lunging, running, walking, sprinting and climbing are all full-body movements that we evolved to perform.
Your Primal Body at Whole Foods in Santa Barbara
Whole Foods is now selling my book Your Primal Body: The Paleo Way to Living Lean, Fit, and Healthy at Any Age. Slowly but surely, I am spreading the Paleo word one bookshelf at a time.
Foam Rolling and Stretching with Santa Barbara City College
During the month of July I led a 4-session class Become Pain Free with Foam Rolling and Stretching. It was an enormous success.
Making Sense of a Paleo Lifestyle at Santa Barbara City College
From May 21 through June 4, 2014, I led a 3-part class Making Sense of a Paleo Lifestyle in my studio in conjunction with Santa Barbara City College’s Center For Lifelong Learning.
May 2014 at Fitness Transform Studio
My schedule has been full sharing my passion for livng a Paleo lifesyle. I met and engaged with students at a book signing on the picturesque Santa Barbara City College campus, and led my inaugural class at SBCC on the benefits of “going Paleo.”
9 Fitness Tips for Surviving the Holidays in Santa Barbara
Wake Up Early and get your training in before family activities begin. If you’ve traveled out of town, find a space where you can do some bodyweight exercises like squats, push-ups, planks and burpees.
Heavy lifting required: WEV graduate forges following in fitness, by Alex Kacik (published in Pacific Coast Business Times)
Pacific Coast Business Times features Mikki Reilly, a Santa Barbara-based entrepreneur, who opened Fitness Transform and recently published Your Primal Body
Product Review: The GRID Foam Roller at Fitness Transform Studio
Before I review the Grid Foam Roller, I want to let you know that I’m a big fan of foam rolling. In fact, I think the foam roller is probably one of the most underrated fitness tools available.
Edible Santa Barbara Magazine Features Your Primal Body
My book, Your Primal Body, was featured in the Winter 2012 edition of edible Santa Barbara, a community-based magazine that celebrates the local food, farms and cuisine of Santa Barbara County.
Getting Personal – A Moment with Fitness Trainer Mikki Reilly, by Victoria Woodard Harvey
Like many trainers, Mikki derives her sense of purpose from helping people get fit, and she is very good at it…
Is Eating Meat Good for the Planet?
Some people object to the Paleo Diet with its emphasis on eating animal products because they say it’s not environmentally responsible and therefore bad for the planet…
Fat Burning Workouts at Fitness Transform in Santa Barbara
Recently, a new approach to HIIT has emerged that combines all the benefits of HIIT with resistance training. This hybrid form is called Metabolic Resistance Training (MRT), and it uses full-body exercises that are performed circuit-style in an interval fashion.
Strength Training at Fitness Transform Studio is Anti-Aging
In a recent study, scientists at McMaster University showed that certain kinds of exercise, specifically strength training, reversed a genetic profile to that of younger men and women.
What is the Paleo Diet?
For most of our evolutionary history, we were hunter/gatherers; we hunted animals, fished, and gathered plants for food. So our ancestors of the Paleolithic era ate a diet of whole foods found in nature, like wild game, fish, vegetables, wild fruits, eggs and nuts.
Maximize Fat Loss With High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
High intensity interval training (HIIT) is the fastest and most effective way to improve your body composition. HIIT can be done in a variety of ways, but the traditional way(which I discuss here) is to use intervals for sprinting, whether on a track, on a bicycle or in a pool.
I Wrote a Book!!
I finished writing my book! It took me about nine months, but it’s finally done. I’m excited to give you a sneak preview of the contents and will let you know as soon as it is available to buy. The title is Your Primal Body: Lean, Fit and Pain-free at Any Age. The premise is that you have a birthright …
The Egg Controversy
For decades the US government has been advising us to avoid eggs, along with butter, whole milk and cheese because they claim that these foods are high in cholesterol and therefore increase your risk for heart disease. Recently these guidelines have changed and they now advise us to eat one egg a day. “Evidence suggests that one egg (i.e. egg yolk) per day does not result in increased blood cholesterol levels, nor does it increase the risk of cardiovascular disease in healthy people,” according to the government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
But what they should have said is, eat as many eggs as you like because cholesterol in foods does not lead to heart disease. In this recent post to Spacedoc.net, Dr Malcolm Kendrick and Dr Duane Graveline explain the way cholesterol works in the body…
Lifting Weights Builds New Brain Cells
We all know that endurance/aerobic activity improves cognitive function by increasing bloodflow to the brain. But what about resistance training? Most of the research on exercise and brain function to date has focused on low-intensity aerobics, such as long distance running and cycling. But a recent article in the New York Times, sheds light on two exciting new studies involving the effects of weightlifting on the creation of new brain cells–neurogenesis.
Flexibility vs Mobility
There seems to be a bit of confusion around the concepts of flexibility and mobility. So let’s begin with a couple of definitions. Flexibility is the ability to flex, extend, or circumduct a joint through its intended full range of motion. So we’re talking about the length of the tissues, nothing more. Mobility, or joint mobility, is the ability to …
Flexibility: the Benefits
If the idea of having supple muscles and smooth, fluid movements – movements that convey youth and health, regardless of age – sounds appealing, then add flexibility training into your life, if you haven’t done so already, so that you may begin to enjoy the many benefits. Flexibility is defined as the measure of a joints movement through a normal …
Inside the Fitness Studio
Thinking about getting in shape? If you’re interested in working one on one with a personal trainer the small niche fitness boutiques located in and around Santa Barbara provide an abundance of choices both in the environment and training approaches featured in the different facilities. Recently I visited a number of these studios, looking for a new place to train …
Challenge Your Balance
Let’s face it everything these days is about balance from diets to exercise right down to balancing opposing muscle groups. But the type of balance we’ll discuss in this article is more fundamental. It’s the human function we depend on every day of our lives to get out of bed, to walk, or to play just about any sport – …
The Secret To Fat Loss: Intervals!
If you’re one of the many people struggling to keep up in the fast-paced world of cell phones, pagers, and laptops, with little time left for fitness, then intervals may be just what you’re looking for… For years, we’ve all heard if you want to lose fat you need to spend endless hours on a treadmill or riding a bike. …
Stress Reduction Techniques
Meditation Meditation is one of the most popular forms of physical and mental relaxation. Some forms of meditation are based on religious beliefs, while others focus solely on breathing and relaxation. The meditative state involves a deep centering; a quieting of the mind, emotions and body. This state can be reached through a daily structured practice, or through an unstructured …
Stress, Cortisol and Weight Gain
Despite the abundance of information on diet and exercise in the media, Americans are continuing to get fatter. According to a recent analysis, an estimated 30 percent of adults – over 60 million – are obese, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, and, an estimated 65 percent of adults are overweight or obese, defined …
More on Exercise And Weight Loss
I am posting a comment my client Alan made in response to my last post because he illustrated the point I was making… that exercise plus nutrition works outstandingly well for weight loss. Here’s what Alan had to say: This is a pretty loaded topic for me. I’ve lost 90 lbs since I decided to lose weight. The first 40 …
Exercise and Weight Loss In The News
Time Magazine’s cover story this week is titled “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin.” I think Gary Taubes first wrote about this in a book I read called Good Calories, Bad Calories . Here’s an excerpt on this topic from an article Taubes wrote in New York Magazine: The one thing that might be said about exercise with certainty is …
Low Carb Diets And LDL
In my previous post, I wrote about a recent study which compared the effects of a very low-carbohydrate, high-saturated-fat diet with a low-fat diet to evaluate long-term weight loss over a one-year period. The outcome of the study was that the low-carb group lost more weight and had greater decreases in triglycerides and HDL cholesterol, which is all good. But …
Long Term Study Compared Low Carb With Low Fat Diet
A new study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, compared the effects of a very low-carbohydrate, high-saturated-fat diet (LC) with a low-fat (LF) diet to evaluate long-term weight loss over a one-year period. One hundred eighteen dieters with abdominal obesity and at least one additional metabolic syndrome risk were randomly assigned to either the LC diet (4% carbohydrate, …
Get Moving For Health In May
May is National Physical Fitness and Sports Month. This year, Fitness Transform joins the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports to challenge Americans to get moving for health and to get active and fit during May Month. According to Melissa Johnson, executive director of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, which started National Physical Activity and Sports …
The High Protein Diet And Kidney Damage
I was reading a post by Dr Eades recently, where he was examining a study which showed that high-dose thiamin (vitamin B1) may be an effective treatment for diabetic nephropathy, when I came across an interesting response to a comment. The commenter was talking about how his friends and family give him a lot of grief about his high protein …