No nutrition program is complete without regular exercise! However, since 80% of a lean physique is a direct result of your diet, I suggest that you cover this base first.  Now that I am on The Raw Crunch Diet™, I exercise to stay healthy and sculpt my body, rather than over-exercising to lose weight. 

The Raw Crunch Diet™ coupled with regular exercise is a wonderful way to get oxygen and other powerful nutrients into your system. Exercise causes life-supporting oxygen to flow through your veins and accelerates the lymphatic system, sweating and removal of wastes through the skin. We all know how important good blood flow is to the organs and tissues, but proper lymph flow and drainage is also of great importance. The lymphatic system is an important part of the body’s immune system and disposes of toxic cellular waste products. This system pumps lymph fluid through the body several times a minute. Accumulation of fluid reduces the amount of oxygen available and can cause swelling in certain areas. Some experts blame lymph accumulation on cellulite. Regular exercise and the cleansing effect of The Raw Crunch Diet™ keep lymph fluid pumping through the body like a free flowing river, without running through rocks or debris. If your diet is loaded with processed, non-natural foods, and you neglect exercise, debris can build up and your system becomes sluggish.  

OVER-training (like I use to do in an unsuccessful effort to lose weight) or incorrect form when exercising can sometimes be more detrimental than no exercise at all. If you do a typical aerobic video and throw your body all over the room without constant focused attention to proper form, you are often doing more harm than good. The same applies in the gym, working out with weights. See, strength training naturally causes microscopic tears in your muscle membrane allowing muscles to grow back stronger, and that is normal (as weird as it sounds). However, if your form and body alignment is not correct, those tissues will take longer to heal, producing more cellular waste. In worst cases, those muscles will grow back in the wrong alignment at the expense of your body balance.  

Whenever your body undergoes trauma as with these microscopic muscle tears, it sends blood and fluid to those areas to heal the tissues. This causes the puffiness, and it is one of the main reasons people get so discouraged when beginning a training regimen. As a fitness competitor, I would have to stop all leg training ten days before my competitions, to reduce fluid build-up in my legs. Otherwise, I would have a smooth look rather than defined leg muscles. Like most body-builders and fitness competitors, I would also try and keep my legs up, above my heart, as long as possible throughout the day prior to my competition to reduce fluid collection. Those were the days prior to my development of The Raw Crunch Diet™ and The Raw Crunch Personal Training Session™. Now my tissues always remain healthy with proper flow and drainage.  

These days I practice the exercises on my The Raw Crunch Personal Training Session™ DVD and yoga, which are amazing for strengthening and lengthening my body, rather than tightening and shortening the body like conventional body-sculpting workouts.  This type of focused training and deep breathing boosts your ability to feel what’s going on inside your body. This body awareness not only detects whether your hamstrings or hips are tight, but also whether your stomach is already full.   

In Strong Health,

Kathy