 I just realized that we're only two weeks away from our neighborhood pool opening this season and I panicked with fear just thinking about getting into my swimsuit! #SuburbanPeopleProblems.
So, today, I met with my friend, John Casto of Action Fitness. With a spinach shake in hand, John talked me into actually committing to a goal. I took the plunge and signed up for personal training and his Women's Only Fitness Bootcamp starting on Monday (OH NO!). I figure by posting here that you, my lovely/supportive/encouraging readers, will keep me accountable for at least the first month. My goal is to lose 5lbs in one month - totally doable, right?
I was thinking - since I'm going to be doing this challenge, wouldn't some of you like to do it with me?! Please! We can even go for margaritas after bootcamp :) I threw this idea at John and he said he'd extend ALL OF MY READERS a FREE ONE MONTH TRIAL for the Women's Only Fitness Bootcamp in Fairfax! WOO HOO!
Plus, FIVE WINNERS will receive a FREE personal training session to get you started. How fantastic is that? It will be way more fun if we do it together!
 I posted on my facebook page last week about checking out botox. I'm 27 and not quite wrinkly, but I read online that getting botox can help enhance arches in your eyebrows and make you look more refreshed and rested (which I totally need!). I looked into it and met with Dr. Fadi Nukta at NOVA Plastic Surgery. Surprisingly, Dr. Nukta agreed that I didn't really need any botox at my age and I better come back in a few years. However, he told me about their current promotion and I thought I'd share it with you all since many of you chatted that you'd be into botox or other services. If you book an appointment for a consultation on a Wednesday during April or May, NOVA Plastic Surgery is offering FREE Botox to new patients. This isn't a giveaway from my site or a gimmick to purchase other services to qualify. "If you book a complimentary consultation on a Wednesday you will receive a FREE Botox treatment for one area of your face, 20 units of Botox (a $400 value). During your consultation you will meet board certified plastic surgeon, Fadi Nukta, MD, who will discuss how the Botox treatment can help you. If you are medically suitable you will receive your Botox treatment that same day."
Dr. Nukta told me that he specializes in giving patients natural results that do not change who they are. He didn't even try to upsell me on services I didn't need - even though those services were the reason I was there in the first place. I say check it out if you're thinking about it! For more info, visit: FreeBotoxWednesday.com or call NOVA Plastic Surgery at (703) 574-2588. To learn more about Dr. Nukta and his practice please visit novaplasticsurgery.com.
*I did not receive free (or any) services in exchange for this post - It's just too good of a deal not to share! Also, I am not a medical professional and I am not recommending any medical service. C'mon people, I have an English degree :)
 Yoga for a Calm Heart - Thursday, January 17, 2013 7-8 pm
Join Katrina Kenison, author, mother and Kripalu-trained yoga instructor for an hour of gentle yoga, meditation, and restoration. This yoga practice will leave you with a calm heart and a clear mind, the very foundation you need to embrace your mothering journey more fully. Investment: $20 drop-in or use your lil omm class pass.
Book Discussion and Signing Thursday, January 17, 2013 8-9 pm
After yoga, join Katrina for informal conversation and readings from her books: Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry, The Gift of an Ordinary Day, and her new memoir, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment. Katrina's own life journey, along with her poignant, beautifully written reminders to find beauty, grace and transformation in the mundane, ordinary moments of life, will touch your heart deeply and leave you feeling transformed and peaceful. Katrina will sign books (feel free to bring your own or purchase at the studio) and light snacks will be provided. Investment: $10.
If you are not familiar with Katrina, you can visit her site at http://www.katrinakenison.com/. She is the phenom behind the Youtube video The Gift of An Ordinary Day, (grab some tissues!) which has 1.6 million views, and her newest video book trailer can be found here. Register online at lilomm.com to secure your space.
Flash Giveaway! Enter below to win a $25 gift gas gift card from Smiles at Fairfax Corner! Smiles at Fairfax Corner is always accepting new patients for all of your dental needs.
Smiles at Fairfax Corner is an Elite Preferred Provider of Invisalign clear braces. Now through August 10th, they are offering $750 off Invisalign!
 I have been going to Dr. Rayek @ Smiles at Fairfax Corner since I was a freshman in college. I absolutely LOVE the practice and the staff! Smiles even sent me flowers after B was born! How sweet is that? I actually look forward to visiting the dentist thanks to him... it doesn't hurt that he's also tall, dark, and handsome! Who knew that my dentist would be able to rid me of my migraines? He also introduced me to Invisalign - the braces that don't look like braces. I have suffered from weekly migraines for years and neither my PCP or neurologist could make me feel better. Dr. Rayek told me that my migraines could be a result of me clenching my teeth at night and my jaw constantly popping because my bite was not aligned. I started Invisalign three years ago and have had only a handful of migraines since! LOVE IT!! - and as you know, I only promote things I really truly love. From Now until August 10th, Smiles at Fairfax Corner is offering $750 OFF Invisalign!! If you have been thinking about a Straighter and Brighter smile, then why not now? About Smiles at Fairfax Corner: The Smiles team is devoted to providing professional dental care for you and your family. We provide convenient and comprehensive dental services to meet all of your oral health needs. Dr. Rayek and our practice staff are pleased to be a part of the Fairfax Corner community. Many of our patients live, work, dine, or shop in and around our convenient practice location. Our dental office makes it easy for you to combine a dental visit with your other daily activities.
*sponsored post
 Operated by women, for women, The Women’s Club has been recognized for its long-term success in Northern Virginia, and as one of the top all-women’s fitness centers in the nation. The focus during the past 22 years of operation has been on providing women with a full complement of fitness, health, beauty and weight-loss programs to assist you in being your physical and personal best. And because one size doesn’t fit all, The Women’s Club provides custom-tailored memberships based on individual needs and preferences. To welcome Real Housewives of Northern Virginia readers to their club, they are hosting an awesome giveaway that includes SPA TIME! :)
Giveaway Details: - One month fitness membership featuring: - Unlimited Group Exercise Classes (we have over 50 per week) - A one-on-one Personal Training Session - Your choice of a 55 min Swedish or 55 min Bamboo Massage ENTER TO WIN ON OUR GIVEAWAYS PAGE!
 Studio Be @ Fairfax Corner
The Barre class is a unique fun, high energy class. It fuses legendary fitness techniques from pilates, ballet, calisthenics and yoga. These techniques are designed to streamline, firm, tighten and tone muscles and re-align the body without adding bulk. This helps to create balance, posture, body awareness, flexibility and cardiovascular endurance. The result is a body that can look and move as if it were 10 years younger!! The structure of this innovative Barre class keeps the heart rate elevated with motivating, up-beat music and brisk, dynamic, no-impact movements. All the while burning calories and fat and simultaneously building “bulk-free” lean muscle mass. The techniques learned in the Barre class help to increase your resting metabolism, which allows you to burn more calories and fat while you are at rest. The Barre class has some jumping, punching, lengthening and strengthening exercises which help to create the body of your dreams. It’s a 55-minute total-body workout. You’ll tone the arms, thin the thighs, lift the seat and flatten the abs. The goal is to work the muscle to fatigue, then stretch to make the muscles longer and leaner, and you’ll utilize the ballet barre in doing that. Enter to Win: One Month of Unlimited Barre Classes, 5 Pilates Mat Classes, or One Private Session on the MatStudio BE Pilates
4211 Fairfax Corner East Ave. Suite 215 Fairfax, VA 22030 703-222-0122
 guest blog post from Action Fitness personal trainer John Casto
THREE readers will will FREE in-home personal training from Action Fitness Inc!
Click here to ENTER TO WIN!
Why Women Gain Fat Easily (and how you can change it)As you may have your own personal battle with weight loss or weight maintenance, the rest of our country is suffering side by side with an ever increasing obesity and overweight epidemic. As hard as our environment makes it on us to choose healthy options, being a woman you face a few additional, and pretty unfair, disadvantages. The stereotype that men can “lose weight with little effort” does hold some truth to it when you compare the crazy things a woman’s body throws at her through the course of her life cycle. These are the 3 big reasons women struggle losing weightReason #1 Women NEED More FatEver heard of the term “essential body fat”? This refers to the very minimal amount of body fat we need for day to day bodily function. For men it’s roughly 3% while for women it’s between 10%-12%. Sounds a bit unfair – right? Don’t be upset about it. This base level of body fat tends to store in areas that compliment your physique. One last thing - essential body fat doesn’t necessarily mean that you are healthy. You should be aiming for the “healthy range” which is 15%-25% body fat for women. Reason #2 Lack of Lean MuscleIf you have been skipping out on the resistance training with weights, bands, and body weight exercises, then your metabolism is slower than it should be. Lean muscle mass elevates your resting metabolism, which translates to more calories burned while you go through your day to day activities (your average Fairfax VA Personal Trainer won’t mention this). Pretty cool deal, right? You have to work at resistance training consistently! This means no more skipping out on the weights for an elliptical. Reason #3 When The Hormones Work Against YouAs you get older, your hormones will put you in a worse position where you are more prone to weight gain in your stomach rather than hips and thighs along with your genetics, which will work against you if you have a family history of being overweight or obese. This isn’t to say that you have no control over your destiny. Many of my clients assume weight gain is out of their hands and inevitable. This is absolutely not true! You can fight the good fight of your body’s changes while progressing with your weight loss! Look at it this way, the challenge increases every year you add to your life, but it does NOT mean you have no chance. Use these tips to put together an effective plan to help you see fat burning results! Tip #1: Make Rest A PriorityWhether you are 25 or 45, getting enough rest is a key part to maintaining or losing any sort of weight. Not getting your optimal amount of rest consistently will completely throw off your hormones! So how does this impact weight loss? Your hormones define your metabolism, so if you put them on the back burner you also put your body’s ability to maintain and lose weight on the back burner as well. Trust me, as one of the best Northern Virginia personal trainers, I have made this mistake myself Do yourself a favor and get your z’s! Tip #2: Take Your Supplements Even if you eat high quality organic based foods with well balanced meals, you may not be reaching your ideal amount of vitamins and minerals, which means a slowdown in your energy levels and metabolism. I know - this is outrageous! Unfortunately they don’t tell you this at Whole Foods or the local farmer market, so what do you do? Use the power of high quality vitamin and mineral supplements to hit your daily amounts. Don’t take this as an opportunity to munch all day on low quality foods that lack these puppies, remember nothing replaces a natural source – just think of this as a way to make SURE you are getting everything you need! Tip #3: Use A Resistance Training ProgramResistance training adds to that metabolism boosting lean muscle mass that I mentioned earlier, so now you need to make use of it. This is where I get to help you with a special gift! I put together a FREE video workout program just for you (my girlfriend was kind enough to volunteer) with the same system that I use to train nearly 100 women every week. You can do all of these exercises from the comfort of your own home. I’m actually willing to mail it to you for free if you head to this page to get your FREE copy of my Full Beach Body Workout
Hurry – this offer ends Friday 5/10/2012! I only have a few copies left, so I hope you are one of the lucky ones!
 I’m so excited to become the featured Northern Virginia Personal Trainer for The REAL Housewives of NOVA blog! Lately I’ve been super busy working with nearly 100 women on staff at 9 local Fairfax County Public Schools (some who probably teach your kids!) where I’ve been helping them to completely change their health and fitness lifestyle. Most of these lovely women are looking to simply lose some weight and tone up while others work with me to battle arthritis, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, joint replacement issues, and even to strengthen their core following multiple spinal fusions.
 (that's just my saturday workout crew!) Even if they are focused on overcoming one of the many health issues I mentioned, I still usually find on their goals list “lose weight” or even more specifically “lose those last 5 pounds”. That’s why I wanted to break down the EASIEST things you can do to break through that “weight loss wall” ... Trick #1 You HAVE To Count (Or get a close estimate!) Counting calories is the oldest trick in the book, yet it’s quite surprising how many men and women just skip this step. As a Fairfax va personal trainer, 9 times out of 10 I found that most people don’t realize how many calories they are taking in each day. What’s even worse is that most food options in front of us are packed full of more calories than we would ever guess. Nutrition labels are there for a reason and portion sizes can be surprisingly smaller than you would initially think. -If you have a smartphone use one of the calorie tracking apps. They are free and have just about any and every food you could think of indexed (you can even scan the barcode!). I personally use FatSecret’s calorie counter which you can see by clicking here or searching on your smartphone’s app store.Trick #2 High Quality All Day!Once you have the quantity of calories in check, it’s time to fine tune your diet by punching in high quality foods. Yes, this means non-processed foods such as fruits, veggies, nuts and meat. I’m sure you’ve heard of the term “empty calorie” before – that’s simply when you eat a food such as white bread that packs in a ton of calories but is lacking of nutrients, which means it’s of a lower quality. What’s even worse is that today our fresh high quality foods are produced with pesticides and all sorts of chemicals which essentially strip them of their nutrients. The best solution for this is to buy organic whenever possible if not always and make sure that your meat isn’t injected with hormones, etc. -ALWAYS buy organic if you can, and cut out processed nutrient lacking foods. This IS a challenge, but there’s always one option that’s better than everything else around you! Trick #3 Focus On Resistance Training!I know there’s a taboo that using weights will make you bulk up, so I want to say that this is absolutely FALSE. If you use extremely heavy weights and train specifically to put on “the bulk muscle” then yes you will – but I can assure you a set of 8’s, 10’s or even 15’s will only tone up your hips, thighs and arms like you want! I ALWAYS use weights with the women I train and it’s the best way to build a fitness program that will reach your goals. 2-3 times per week with 30-45 minute workouts is optimal if you are starting out or are experienced. The best part is you will see lightning fast results because you will benefit from “EPOC” which means your metabolism is elevated following your workout (something distance running won’t do for you!). Whether you are starting out or are experienced, I would love to share with you one of my most complete workout programs. I’d be happy to personally mail you a copy so you can get your beach body ready for summer! Luckily my amazing girlfriend took the time to demo the exercises so that I could share this great program (she wasn’t too happy about it but she was a GREAT sport!) Get Your FREE Copy Of My Full Beach Body Workout DVD By Clicking Here!Anyways, give it a test run and let me know what you think. This is the same system that I’ve implemented with all of my clients to ramp up their weight loss efforts, where I’ve only seen fantastic results. 
 Are you ready to put on your swim suit and head to the pool? yeah... me either. Action Fitness is giving THREE of our readers one FREE month of IN-HOME PERSONAL TRAINING! ($600 value) ENTER TO WIN ON OUR GIVEAWAYS PAGE
Fairfax’s #1 personal trainer is offering 1 FREE month of personal training to 3 lucky women! With an already proven training program that is provided to numerous private clients and nearly 100 women who work in the FCPS school system, Action Fitness is giving you the chance to tone up and get in shape just in time for summer! Enter your info to the right for your chance to win. *BONUS* Try out the Action Fitness home DVD workout system for FREE by going to http://www.actionfitnessinc.com/novahousewivesFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/actionfitnessTwitter: https://twitter.com/#!/action_fitness*sponsored post
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