Stefanie Lester Coslow is a native New Yorker currently residing in Chicago with her husband and two kids and teaches at CorePower Yoga throughout their Chicago locations. In a former life, she was an accountant at a TV Rep firm who studied Psychology at school, talk about yin & yang.

I love teaching yoga….I really, really do. I love the connection I make with my students, I often teach newer students, and I love when I help them figure out a posture…..nothing is more rewarding than seeing them have that “aha moment”. And I thoroughly enjoy chatting with them and getting to know them a bit more before and/or after class. I love that I’ve shared a bit of what I’ve learned with people in my daily life, whether it’s helping my mom tone her midsection or showing my father-in-law some stretches to help alleviate his low back/hip pain. Point blank, I love sharing something that I’m so passionate about and I thrive on connecting with people. I finally get the point of “doing what you love”. I found a true home in the studio where I teach and an awesome community in the the people I teach with, the amazing teachers that I learn so much from, and my ever inspiring students. . I also sincerely love writing, I’ve always found putting my thoughts on paper to be so theraputic, and if someone actually wants to read it what I write and likes it …..wow, that’s the icing on my cupcake! So let’s just say, I’m where I’m meant to be, or at least working towards that direction, regardless, I’m loving the journey.

That being said, I haven’t been able to practice yoga much myself lately and, outside of the studio, I’m feeling a bit out of sorts. Our schedules (mine & the kids) are a bit wacky lately, the way their schools work out, I have maybe 1 ½ hours on my own every other day. I know I need to embrace this time with them when they’re young, I know it’s short lived, but I often can’t help feeling wound up and as if I’m constantly just running from place to place. And my husband’s been traveling for work, a lot… There isn’t child care at the studio, so,….I do make it to the gym with my son a couple times a week, and if I can make it to a class, great, but if not, well, it’s just hard sometimes to self motivate. What can I say, I’m a creature of habit, and honestly, just love my hot yoga. Plus growing my own practice helps me to grow as a teacher.

So, I feel slightly out of shape and somewhat in a funk during the weeks when I can’t make it to the studio. Maybe too it’s the change of seasons…..it’s dark, colder, winter’s just around the bend….

Anyway, my point here is not to be Debbie Downer, but just to let you see that I’m like you, and I face challenges and obstacles to working out too, and sometimes just plain old have a hard time motivating myself. So, when I say something don’t think “whatever, yoga teacher lady, you don’t get it”, because, I do.

In love and health….

Namaste,

Stefanie

Take one of Stefanie’s classes at corepower yoga studios throughout Chicago corepowerchicago.com. She is on the schedule as Stefanie C. She also works with private clients in their homes so think of her for your next party or corporate event. Either write her a note on the blog, or call her directly at 646-642-3391.

Stefanie Lester Coslow is a native New Yorker currently residing in Chicago with her husband and two kids and teaches at CorePower Yoga throughout their Chicago locations. In a former life, she was an accountant at a TV Rep firm who studied Psychology at school, talk about yin & yang.

In my late teenage years, towards the end of my high school career, I joined a gym and became addicted to working out for the first time ever. It was an all women’s gym that was very pink, probably some teal, and very mirrored in true typical late 80’s/early 90’s fashion. Step classes were the latest thing and calisthenics were all the rage. Back then, and through most of my 20s, working out was all about looking good, losing weight, and fitting into small sizes. Then I became a bit more comfortable in my skin, enter the grunge phase and a bit of rebellion, and I no longer cared so much about how I looked, I had loftier goals, and screw what people thought! Then, after being a bit too comfortable in my skin, I soon again became uncomfortable as I had ballooned into a person I no longer recognized, both physically and mentally. I then tried to find a balance between working out and being healthy, yet also working and having an active social life, and, for the most part, it worked.

Enter parenthood, and that’s when things went awry for a bit. Exercise was no longer even close to a priority. I’ve mentioned my good fortune with genetics before, so with being somewhat careful with what I ate, or eating rather oddly to be quite honest, and between being busy and stressed, I was able to fit into smaller and smaller jeans, so all was right in my world.

Except it wasn’t. I’ve had borderline high cholesterol for years, my whole family has high cholesterol, but my ratio of HDLs to LDLS (good to bad cholesterol) had always been exceptional, so my doctor was happy. Nine months after having my second child, probably a good year since any formal type of exercise, I went for a physical, and there it was. Not only was my total number still borderline high, hovering at 200, but now my ratio was no longer so great, and now, this was something to keep an eye. WHAT?!? It was like I had suddenly failed a test.

And this is when it dawned on me, yes exercise is very much about looking good, and feeling good, both physically and mentally, and often, that’s what most of us focus on as those are the most immediate, tangible results. But, first and foremost, exercise is about our health. And, I now had two little people in my life that looked up to me and depended on me. I realized that I needed to do the little things I could to stay healthy for myself and for them. So, I rededicated myself to a moderate exercise routine, and, in the interim I surprised myself and found something that I truly am passionate about and love sharing with other people.

I am constantly inspired by people and stories I read and hear about. I cannot watch an episode of The Biggest Loser without crying. And maybe it’s smaller scale than that, but I must give a shout out to a truly inspirational friend of mine. About a year ago she decided to take charge of her health and lose 40lbs by her 40th birthday, she reached her goal, and then some, this past July. You know who you are and I am so very proud of you.

One final thought…..I read this awhile ago and truly loved it. It’s so simple, yet I had never thought about it. If you break apart the word “impossible” it becomes “I’m possible”.

As always, namaste,

Stefanie

Take one of Stefanie’s classes at corepower yoga studios throughout Chicago corepowerchicago.com. She is on the schedule as Stefanie C. She also works with private clients in their homes so think of her for your next party or corporate event. Either write her a note on the blog, or call her directly at 646-642-3391.

Women who exercise during pregnancy usually have a more comfortable pregnancy and faster postpartum recovery.  If you’re not a gym fan pre-pregnancy is a good time to find a low-impact form of exercise you enjoy doing so that your body has time to get used to it.  Starting an exercise program now is much better then starting a program when you are already pregnant and feeling the ups and downs of your first trimester.   Pre-pregnancy is a great time to really work on your stomach muscles, especially your lower abs, they do a lot of work doing pregnancy.

We need to exercise.  Our bodies thrive on movement, and quickly degenerate without it.  It is also essential for fertility, weight loss and handling stress.  Inactivity deprives muscles of the constant push and pull they need to stay healthy.  It also saps their ability to respond to insulin and to efficiently absorb blood sugar.  When that leads to too much blood sugar and insulin in the bloodstream, it endangers ovulation, conception, and pregnancy.

You don’t need to be fit to be fertile, but it helps.  If you are in reasonably good shape this increases your chances of conceiving quickly and having an easier birth.  Exercise also helps reduce stress, promotes good sleep patterns, improves your circulation and improves your feeling of both physical and mental wellbeing. And when you’re feeling good your confidence and sex drive increase.

Unless you are extremely lean and don’t need to lose weight exercise is a must for fertility.  Research shows that for every hour of vigorous activity per week there was a 7 percent reduction in infertility.  Vigorous intensity exercise causes a substantial increase in breathing or heart rate making having a conversation difficult, having a “perceived exertion” of 15 or greater and can burn more than seven calories per minute.

Perceived exertion is based on a scale that was developed by Dr. Gunnar Borg.  It is based on how hard you perceive you are working.  The scale runs from “no feeling of exertion” which rates a 6, to “very, very hard”, which rates a 19 or 20, this means you are exercising so hard you couldn’t possibly push yourself any harder.  It runs from 6 to 20 to roughly correspond to your heart rate by multiplying your perceived score by 10 should give you your approximate heart rate.

The Borg Scale for Perceived Exertion

Working your muscles is good for ovulation and conception as well as being an integral part of losing or controlling weight and keeping blood sugar and insulin in check.  A single exercise session speeds the entry of blood sugar into muscle cells and improves their sensitivity to insulin, which, as we now know, is important for fertility.

Some women need more exercise then others for their weight or moods and others are active just because they enjoy it.  Some who need to be active aren’t, while a small number of others are too active. Most women should be getting at least thirty minutes of exercise every day, unless your BMI is over 25, then you may need to exercise for longer.  If your BMI is below 20 then you may need to cut back for a little while, we will discuss BMI and the “fertility zone” later.

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based health coaching, personal chef and personal training service that  specializes in pre-pregnancy care; helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering one-on-one counseling, in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.

Stefanie Lester Coslow is a native New Yorker currently residing in Chicago with her husband and two kids and teaches at CorePower Yoga throughout their Chicago locations. In a former life, she was an accountant at a TV Rep firm who studied Psychology at school, talk about yin & yang.

Ahhh, reunions, …..seeing old friends/acquaintances you haven’t seen in quite some time, everyone wants to look their best. I just had my 20th high school reunion and I for sure felt that way.

Back in the spring, my mom asked me to help her get in shape for her upcoming rather significant number high school reunion. I won’t say how many years out of high school she is, but she’s my mom, so it’s more than 20. Anyway, as I may have mentioned in the past, I’m genetically pretty lucky. We Lesters have rather large sweet tooths that we indulge on a pretty regular basis (again, everything in moderation though), and we are naturally pretty thin. And, let’s just say that my mother and sister do not share my passion for exercise (*note: big understatement here*). That being said, my mom weighs the same as she did in high school and we often can share clothes, or if things become a slight bit tight on her guess who benefits….. So, before you hate her, or us, know that we are all really nice people, really, I swear! Anyway, my mom had developed a slight belly bulge that was pretty abnormal for her and called on me, her yogi daughter, for help.

Now my mother has some bad neck ailments that prohibit her from doing any sort of planks or crunches so I modified and gave her some exercises to do from a table top position. But, unless I see a note from your doctor, all the rest of you get the real deal. And, as a conclusion to my story, my mom has been religiously doing the moves that I showed her every morning for months now and has lost a few inches from her waist……am I a good daughter, or what?

So here’s my advice for the best core toning moves:

1. Eagle sit ups – lay down on your back, engage your core muscles (draw your navel into your spine), keep your low back down on the floor. Bend your legs and bring your right knee over your left, if you can, wrap your right ankle around your left calf, squeeze your legs tightly into one another. Next sweep your right arm underneath your left and intertwine at your elbows and wrists. Bring your elbows up ver your nose, exhale and squeeze your elbows to your knees lifting from your abdominals, keep your low back on the floor at all times and your shoulders relaxed down your back and away from your ears. Keep the back of your neck long and your gaze up at the ceiling. Repeat with left leg over, left arm under. Work up to 30 reps on each side.

2. Planks – I can’t say enough about planks, I LOVE planks. You can start in high plank, either on the palms of your hands or down on forearms, hands interlaced if you like. Stack elbows under shoulders and, if up on palms, wrists directly under shoulders as well. Rock onto your toes, keep your heels reaching back behind you. Lengthen out your body stretching the crown of your head and your heels to opposite ends of the room. Keep hips in line with your shoulders – no sagging down, no butts up in the air! Engage your core (belly button up and in!), engage your quads, pull everything in nice and tight. Draw your shoulder blades down your back and together. Keep the back of your neck long and gaze down. Hold here…..start out holding for 30 seconds, work up to 90 seconds. That’s right….I said 90 seconds, you can do it!!

There are also numerous other exercises you can do from plank position:

a. Mountain climbers – Bend your right knee out wide and bring it up to the outside of your right elbow. Keep your core muscles engaged the entire time and your hips in line with your shoulders. Repeat on the left side. Take 20 reps each side.

b. Bring your right knee to your right elbow, knee up to your nose, and across to your left elbow all the while maintaining your form: shoulders, elbows, wrists stacked, abdominals engaged, hips in line with shoulders, neck extended long, gaze down. Repeat on your left, again, 20 reps each side.

c. Hip dips – Roll your heels to the left, drop your left hip down towards your mat, heels and hips all stacked on top of one another, come back to the center and pivot to right. This can be done either from a high plank position on the palms of your hands, or from a forearm plank.

Hip dips can also be done from a side plank. Root down through your right arm, hips stacked one on top of another, come on to the knife edge of your right foot and stack your left heel on top of your right. Left hand can rest on left hip, keep your right elbow straight (or a micro bend in it to avoid hyper-extension) and dip your right hip towards the mat. Repeat on left side, 20 each side.

3. Leg lifts with block – Lay on your back, legs extended up to the ceiling, feet flexed. Squeeze a yoga block (or a ball, pillow, rolled up towel….whatever you’ve got) in between your thighs. Keep your low back pressed into the mat, arms down at your side your hands underneath your low back for support, exhale and lift your hips up off the mat and keep squeezing the block. Do 30 reps. In fact, any exercise in which you are utilizing a ball or block in between your legs (as long as you are actually squeezing!) will intensify the low abdominal work.

To counter balance these core moves, stretch in upward facing dog (see my chatarunga post for details and take Dhanurasana (Floor Bow) – Lay on your belly, chin on the floor. Bend your knees and keep them at hip’s width distance. Reach your arms back and grab for the outsides of your feet. Kick into your hands and lift your chest forward and up. Press your tailbone towards the ground, lift your heels away from your butt. Feel a nice stretch through your torso.

Ideally, do these in conjunction with regular cardio exercise to burn fat and calories.

As always….namaste,

Stefanie

Having trouble fitting a full exercise routine into your life, here are a few ideas to help you get more physical:

• Choose activities you like. A lot of different things count as exercise: dancing, walking, gardening, playing basketball. Choose whatever gets you moving.
• Try a pedometer. Pedometers are cheap and easy to use. Best of all, they help you keep track of how active you are. Build up to 7,000 steps a day—or more.
• Piece your workout together. You don’t need to get all your exercise at one time. Ten minutes morning, noon, and night can give much of the same benefit as 30 minutes all at once. (My Quicky Workout does this!)
• Exercise with a friend. Finding a workout partner can help keep you on track and motivate you to get out the door.
• Take lunch on the move. Don’t spend your lunch time sitting. Grab a quick meal and hit the gym or go for a walk with coworkers.
• Park in the back of the lot and walk
• Pace while on the phone
• Stand instead of sitting
• Walk down the hall to tell a colleague something
• Schedule dates with friends around activities instead of food
• Go for a walk after dinner
• Get off the subway or bus before your stop
• Join a sports team
• Get off your butt while watching TV
• Play!

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules. She specializes in pre-pregnancy care; helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering one-on-one counseling, in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.

Stretching is another important part of a safe and effective fertility exercise routine, although it won’t do much for fertility it will keep your muscles safe and elastic and able to move easily through its entire range of motion.

I recommend stretching both before and after exercise, each for different reasons.  Stretching before an activity (after the warm-up) improves the ability of the muscle to work to full range of motion and reduces the chance of injury.  Stretching after exercise ensures muscle relaxation, increases normal resting length, increases circulation to joint and tissue structures, and removes lactic acid, which causes muscle soreness and stiffness.

When doing strength training, it is best to do your stretching before, as I just mentioned and between sets, while muscles are warm and recovering.  You want to stretch the muscle you just worked.  It’s also a very good idea to stretch afterward too.

When doing your cardio, you want to stretch after your warm up and after you’re done with your workout.

Here are some points to follow for any passive stretching session.

• Always complete a warm-up session prior to stretching
• Stretch until a mild tension is felt, then hold, don’t bounce
• Stretches should be held for about 30-60 seconds
• Avoid stretches to the point of numbness or a tingling sensation is felt
• Focus on the stretch and avoid any distractions
• Try to relax the muscles throughout the stretch, as this will help to alleviate any unnecessary tension within the muscle.
• Do not hold your breath, breathing freely helps you relax and get the best stretch
• Do not bounce

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules. She specializes in pre-pregnancy care; helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering one-on-one counseling, in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.

Clients always ask me, when it comes to cardio, how hard should they be working.  I always send them this chart.  This chart is known as the Borg Scale for Perceived Exertion developed by Dr. Gunnar Borg.  It is based on how hard you perceive you are working.  The scale runs from “no feeling of exertion” which rates a 6, to “very, very hard”, which rates a 19 or 20, this means you are exercising so hard you couldn’t possibly push yourself any harder.  It runs from 6 to 20 to roughly correspond to your heart rate by multiplying your perceived score by 10 should give you your approximate heart rate.

To get a good, intense workout you should be working at about 15 on this scale.

The Borg Scale for Perceived Exertion

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules.  She specializes in pre-pregnancy care; helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering one-on-one counseling, in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.

Aerobic exercise is anything that gets your heart and lungs working substantially harder than they do while you are sitting as well as gets your blood pumping; brisk walking, cross country skiing, jumping rope, swimming, aerobic class, zumba, etc. Aerobic exercise should be the centerpiece of your fertility enhancing exercising program.  Aim to do something aerobic on most days of the week for at least 30 minutes.  This can be broken up into three ten minute bouts of exercise.

If you are just starting an exercise program the best place to start is to walk, just start walking.  I tell my clients to walk 15 minutes one way and then 15 minutes back.  As your body gets more comfortable pick up the pace but keep walking15 minutes one way and 15 minutes back.  You’ll notice that you’ll be covering more distance.  It’s now time to move on to something a bit more intense.  You can start jogging for 1 or 2 minute intervals or go to the gym and test ride a machine.  I would start with a treadmill and play with the incline and speed.  Again, as you get

more comfortable try a cross country elliptical machine, a stair stepper or a rowing machine, but continue to strive for vigorous intensity or a perceived exertion of 15.

If you’re a gym rat you may need to pick up the intensity a bit.  I have found the easiest way to do this is to constantly change up your exercise routine.  If you’re a treadmill junky try some of the other machines, such as the elliptical or rowing machine, or get out of the gym and try a team sport that keeps you moving, hockey, soccer and basketball come to mind.  On the machines change up the intensity or incline, do intervals, break a sweat!

Taking yourself out of your comfort zone is a great way to increase your intensity. Try a zumba class, kickboxing or a boot camp class.  Every once in a while I would throw in something slow like yoga and tai chi to really mix things up.

I firmly believe you should never do the same exercise routine twice.  Every day it should be different, either a different modality (kickboxing one day, treadmill the next) or changing things up (on the treadmill walk 1 minute at incline 2 and speed 3.5, then 2 minutes at incline 4 same speed, change to 1 minute at incline 4 and speed of 3.8; tomorrow you do different intervals).

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules.  She specializes in pre-pregnancy care; helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering one-on-one counseling, in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.

Strength training, also called resistance training or weight training builds and strengthens muscles.  It does this by making a muscle resist an opposing force which causes damage to the muscle and, in order to repair itself, the muscle will build more muscle.  The resistance can be your body weight, dumbbells, barbells, elastic bands or exercise machines.

Strength training is a fundamental part of a fertility exercise program because it has a profound effect on blood sugar and insulin.  As mentioned, strength training builds muscle and the more muscle you have the more area for glucose to be absorbed and the easier it is to control your weight because muscle burns more calories than its equivalent of fat.  When you work your muscles they tug on the bones that they are attached to causing the bones to strengthen as well.

When you first start an exercise program consider what time of day is best for you to fit physical activity into our day.  Just as some people think more clearly in the morning and others think more clearly at night, some people prefer to exercise first thing in the morning, while others prefer to exercise later in the day.  There is no right or wrong; it’s simply a matter of personal preference.

If you’ve never lifted weights before, the best thing to do is hire a personal trainer.  If you are going to do it on your own start out slow and light.  Get comfortable with the weight in your hands.  Always keep proper body alignment (feet staggered front and back, knees soft, abs taut, shoulders back and down).  Lift with a slow and controlled movement.

To figure out the weight you should be lifting, start with a weight that you will be able to life about eight times (repetitions, aka reps).  As the weeks pass and you get stronger you will be able to add reps.  Work your way up to twelve, this is a set.  Once you are comfortable with twelve reps, take a rest for about thirty seconds and add another set starting with as many reps as you can do.  Work your way up to three sets.  Once comfortable increase your weight and start again.

You should be doing exercises that target your shoulders, biceps, triceps, back, chest, abs, obliques, hamstrings and quadriceps.  As with cardio you should always mix it up, never do the same routine twice.  There are many, many different exercises for each muscle and incorporating them into your routine will help you build muscle faster.

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules.  She specializes in pre-pregnancy care; helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering one-on-one counseling, in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.