It used to be that chocolate milk was considered a kids’ drink. That’s not the case anymore as recent research suggests that when it comes time to fuel up after a tough workout that choclate milk is actually an excellent option.

In fact, more and more experts are saying it’s one of the best choices out there to help recover after fitness.

Chocolate milk does more than drinking just water or sports drinks like Gatorade. It has twice the carbohydrate and protein content, making it ideal to restore tired muscles. The high water content replenishes lost fluids, while adding nutritional value with calcium and small amounts of sodium and sugar.
Trainers say chocolate milk offers more benefit to athletes who really push themselves hard, like distacne runners, swimmers, cyclists or competiive basketball or tennis players who burn lots of calories during long training sessions or competitions.
Athletes who push on for extended periods require high levels of calories, carbs, and protein.
So don’t be afraid to turn back to your childhood favorite – chocolate milk can actually do a body good.

At Home Fitness consultant Aaron Dorksen’s blog deals with a variety of fitness topics, ranging from workout tips, motivational ideas and feature stories on how exercise impacts people’s lives. E-mail him with comments, questions or ideas for future blogs at aaron@athomefitness.net

Spring is just around the corner and many people are working out in the gym in order to try and firm up so they don’t emerge on the beach looking like they were hibernating bears.
It’s important to not only exercise consistently, but to eat right if you want to have the flattest stomach possible.
Here is a 12-pack of food items to put on your next shopping list to help you firm up and be healthier:

1. Oatmeal – A great way to start the day, loaded with fiber that will help you feel full well into the day
2. Plain yogurt – Also a healthy breakfast choice and great source of calcium.
3. Strawberries – Great for you, tasty and can sweeten up your oatmeal or yogurt. They’re better for you than buying artificially sweetened products.
4. Unsweetened tea – Tea is an underrated beverage, which is rich in antioxidants and can even help speed up metabolism.
5. Walnuts – Will help your overall health, and help satisfy hunger pains in a healthy way.
6. Whole grain bread – A much healthier option that white bread. Be careful as some breads advertised as “wheat” are not whole grain.
7. Broccoli – Put it on salad or mix in with a chicken stir fry. It’s loaded with vitamins and minerals that are not only healthy, but will help keep your waistline down. It’s high in fiber and low in calories.
8. Spinach – Go with spinach or leafy green lettuce for your salad instead of Iceberg lettuce, which has very little fiber.
9. Fish – An excellent source of protein and omega-3.
10. Chicken – A great way to get protein, is even healthier if you take the skin off.
11. Fat-free or 1 percent Milk – Outstanding source of calcium, vitamins, and protein. Soy milk can also be nutritious.
12. Apples – The old favorite really will help keep the doctor away. It’s much, much better to snack on an apple a day than a bag of chips.

At Home Fitness consultant Aaron Dorksen’s blog deals with a variety of fitness topics, ranging from workout tips, motivational ideas and feature stories on how exercise impacts people’s lives. E-mail him with comments, questions or ideas for future blogs at aaron@athomefitness.net

You’ve made time to get to the gym, worked hard and left satisfied with your effort. But there’s one more thing to take care of next: your appetite.

Soon you’ll be hungry because of the extra calories you’ve burned.
To avoid having the munchies the rest of the day, eating the wrong things and counter-acting the positive steps you’ve made, eat the right kind of post workout snack or light meal.
A snack after exercising will also help with muscle recovery, repair and growth. A low-fat, high-protein snack is essential after a workout.
Here are seven excellent post-workout snacks/light meals:

1. Low-fat protein bar
2. Grilled chicken breast
3. Skim milk or even chocolate milk
4. Non-fat yogurt
5. Turkey sandwich (pick smart toppings and skip the mayo)
6. Fruit
7. Tuna/tuna salad

At Home Fitness consultant Aaron Dorksen’s blog deals with a variety of fitness topics, ranging from workout tips, motivational ideas and feature stories on how exercise impacts people’s lives. E-mail him with comments, questions or ideas for future blogs at aaron@athomefitness.net

Everybody knows there are 12 months in a year, and that’s a lot of time to make yourself look and feel better in 2010?
Here are random healthy eating tips for each of those months to make this a better year for you.

1 Eat a good breakfast – It will start you off to a productive day and actually help you eat less the rest of the day.

2 Don’t go to the grocery store hungry – You’ll make a lot smarter shopping decisions if you’re well-nourished before shopping. It will be a lot easier to leave the potato chips and Ho-Hos on the shelf. Seriously, it’s embarrassing to think about what my shopping cart has looked like on some visits in the past when I was hungry – and not on any type of diet plan.

3 Don’t keep junk food in the house – This follows up No. 2. If you shop smart, and there’s no junk food in your house, it will be a lot harder to be tempted to eat food that’s bad for you.

4 Put your fork down between bites – If you slow down eating, you’ll consume less calories. It takes 20 minutes for the brain to get the signal from the stomach that it’s full. So come up for air and talk more during dinner.

5 Drink eight or more glasses of water a day – The benefits are really almost endless – including it will help fill you up.

6 Reduce salt from your diet – You’d be shocked how much salt is in food we eat. Lately my wife and I have been looking at labels and choose items that have less salt, which can lead to high blood pressure. Even seemingly healthy frozen food meals can have huge differences in salt levels.

7 Cut way back on sugar, too – Sugar produces insulin, which causes the body to store fat.

8 Stop drinking soda, including diet pop – The biggest and easy sugar source to cut out is soda. It’s been tough, but I’m trying to do it here in 2010.

9 Don’t eat out at restaurants more than a few times a month – Here’s your stat of the day: restaurant meals average about 750-850 more calories than meals cooked at home.

10 Limit alcohol to weekends – This is a good habit to start and will really help you trim up.

11 Drink a sparkling water in between alcohol – When you do drink, if you mix in something non-alcoholic, like sparkling water or water, it will cut the calories about in half.

12 Get plenty of fiber- Eating high-fiber will help fill you up – and also stay regular. And we all want that.

At Home Fitness consultant Aaron Dorksen’s blog deals with a variety of fitness topics, ranging from workout tips, motivational ideas and feature stories on how exercise impacts people’s lives. E-mail him with comments, questions or ideas for future blogs at aaron@athomefitness.net

Two of the most common New Year’s Resolutions are to exercise more and lose weight. Often, these both go hand in hand.
Since it’s Dec. 31, 2009, just in time for the New Year here are five tips to help keep your fitness resolution(s).

1. Make reasonable goals – As was stated in the Dec. 30 blog, don’t set fitness goals so high that you set yourself up for failure. Make your goals reasonable and be willing to adjust them some. Rather than set an exact weight loss amount in pounds, if you state a resolution to eat better and stick to it then you’ll wind up losing weight anyways. You’ll avoid feeling like a failure if you don’t hit a 15- or 30-pound weight loss goal, but may still hit the mark you hoped for.
Same for exercising, if you make a resolution to exercise more instead of saying you’ll work out five times a week it could wind up being a more positive end result.

2. Get organized - Plan ahead of time when you can work out and do some research on how to meet your goals. The same goes for people who want to try to eat better. Research workout and diet ideas on the Internet and also go into a bookstore and see what fitness magazines and books are available. There’s more great information than ever before available.

3. Plan meals ahead of time – The easiest way to fall off a diet is to not have a meal plan set in advance. I know for me, I’m most likely to go through a drive-thru for fast food if I’m in a hurry and know there’s nothing in the fridge at home. Have a meal plan in advance and it never hurts to freeze leftovers or meals ahead of time to have them accessible in an instant.

4. Set yourself up for success – If you have existing workout equipment, get it ready to go as soon as possible in the New Year. That could mean cleaning it and inspecting it and calling a service man or fitness company to make any needed repairs. Get your music in order that will help inspire you during workouts. You could also take stock in what equipment you have and make a decision to add a new piece or pieces to get you going.

5. Write it down – As I’ve stated before, writing it down is one of the best tips out there for people to stay on a workout plan. A workout log will help you stay organized, chart your progress, serve as a motivator to not have blank pages stick out and also set goals for the future.

Bonus tip: If you can find a workout buddy, it will make things easier for you to stick to a program. You will have someone else to be accountable to and you can both push each other.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all and let’s make 2010 the “Fittest” year yet!
At Home Fitness consultant Aaron Dorksen’s blog deals with a variety of fitness topics, ranging from workout tips, motivational ideas and feature stories on how exercise impacts people’s lives. E-mail him with comments, questions or ideas for future blogs at aaron@athomefitness.net

There is probably no single holiday more centered around eating than Thanksgiving. It’s other name is Turkey Day, so that right there tells you something.
At the end of the day you could come out stuffed like a turkey yourself, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Here are five Thanksgiving eating tips to follow that your body might thank you for on Friday. Notice I didn’t call them diet tips because I don’t think most people should approach this day of thanks in diet mode, but do be smart about your eating.

Eat slowly
It takes 20 minutes for your body to know that you’re full. Enjoy your food, lift your head up from the plate to talk during the meal and enjoy each bite. There’s nothing wrong with putting your fork down a few times, too. It doesn’t constantly have to be in motion.

Drink lots of water
Water is a model’s best friend and it knows how to be a good friend to you, too, if you let it. Water can help control your appetite by letting you feel full faster. If you’re drinking beer, mix in some glasses or bottles of water during the day.

Get your grub on early
Don’t show up at the Thanksgiving feast on an empty stomach. Eat a good breakfast that day, preferably with protein and fiber to help digest the turkey legs to follow. Maybe even eat some fruit, like an apple, an hour or so before Thanksgiving dinner. It’s always better to space out small means instead of one giant one during the day. And it will really help you eat less at the Thanksgiving dinner.

Be a food connoisseur
Don’t waste your calories by loading up on items you can have year-round, like mashed potatoes, gravy and rolls. Instead, go easy on those high-calorie foods and take small samples of other things, too, that you rarely get to eat, such as sweet potatoes, certain types of vegetable casseroles and a piece of pumpkin pie.

At Home Fitness consultant Aaron Dorksen’s blog deals with a variety of fitness topics, ranging from workout tips, motivational ideas and feature stories on how exercise impacts people’s lives. E-mail him with comments, questions or ideas for future blogs at aaron@athomefitness.net

The Holidays are quickly approaching and we all know how hectic they can be. There are holiday plans to make, gifts to buy, work demands and then when you finally sit down at your family’s dinner – enough food to feed a small army.
The average American packs on 5-10 extra pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year’s day.
Here are some tips to make sure you give yourself the gift of fitness – not an unwanted present of 10 extra pounds:
* Control your diet – Eat smaller meals rather than one epic smorgasbord. Eat an apple or other healthy snack one hour before you sit down at Aunt Maggie’s Thanksgiving feast to help curb your appetite.
* Be disciplined with your workout schedule – It’s even more important than usual to stick to your workout schedule. It will not only help you burn off extra calories, but aid with stress relief from staying at your mother-in-law’s house, or dealing with cousin Bryan’s seemingly wild pack of indoor dogs and cats.
* Be forgiving of yourself - Don’t beat yourself up too badly if you slip up on your diet once or twice, or miss a workout or two. Just try to compensate by getting back on the treadmill or jogging trail as soon as you can.
* Make time for yourself - Finally, with all the demands other people put on you, which can result in great family memories, make some time for yourself, too. And that time should include fitness!

At Home Fitness consultant Aaron Dorksen’s blog deals with a variety of fitness topics, ranging from workout tips, motivational ideas and feature stories on how exercise impacts people’s lives. E-mail him with comments, questions or ideas for future blogs at aaron@athomefitness.net