Alright, everyone place your bets in now; this is going to be a real good race between the two contenders and I think you all will enjoy the this topic. I decided to do a topic on sports drinks (specifically Powerade and Gatorade) because these two drinks are some of the most popular among athletes and fitness professionals (when they are not consuming water),  There are many other drinks that are also fairly popular but because I like these sports drinks, I choose to talk about these two today. I don’t know if any of you have had the chance to try either one of these drinks, but basically they are fruity in nature and there is a wide variety of flavors.  For the most part they look like the above pictures but they come in different sizes and sometimes rather different containers. Once a upon a time there was a time in my life where all I would drink was powerade or gatorade because I didn’t like the taste of water and I was trying to steer myself from consuming pop. For awhile I didn’t think nothing of it because it was tasted good and I thought they were “good” for me. Come to find out, they aren’t the best resources for your body unless you need sodium to replace the sodium that has left your body during sweat, electrolytes or because you need something with sugar.   Many people do not realize the effects that come from drinking these sports drinks beyond moderation, and in the long run they start to become a reason for weight gain, sickness, high blood sugar, etc.  Today, I am going to share with you information on these two sports drinks and give you guys a closer look into the both of them so that all of you are well aware of them. Btw, I still drink these but not often. 

• Both Gatorade and Powerade contain carbohydrates in the form of sugar (replenishing energy during or after a workout)
• The original :”thirst quencher” Gatorade and traditional Powerade contained 21 grams of sugar per 12 fl oz. 
• Gatorade contains sucrose (table sugar) and dextrose (simple sugar); while Powerade contains high fructose corn syrup. Supposedly high fructose corn syrup has been associated with increased abdominal fat in excessive amounts.
• Gatorade contains 160mg of sodium and 45mg of potassium, Powerade 150mg of sodium and 35mg of potassium.  This means that Gatorade does a better job at replenishing electrolytes. Powerade has the added vitmans: B-3, B-6 and B-12 for improved energy production
• They both offer a lower calorie drink (Gatorade being 7g of sugar and Powerade being zero grams of sugar) & Gatorade offers specialty drinks for endurance athletes

Alright, so everyone I wanted to talk about today’s workout and aftermath results. By the way, I will make a “serious” topic after this one, and by serious, I mean something like my normal stuff where I have a topic of discussion and blow your brains up with information and set these high expectations that all of you will share feedback, Haha.  Yes, I realize what I do with you guys and I just can’t help myself because I am so passionate about fitness and health and I want all of you to love it like I do and feel the same way I do; no I am totally kidding, I just want all of you to appreciate it in some form or fashion and have a little bit of different outlook maybe.. and share your inner feelings with me about it, so I can handle those concerns and make you smile again when I make mention of the gym and working out. I really do love fitness and health though, so I thank all of you for putting up with me when I talk about it a whole lot and spread my wonderful knowledge and opinions and sweaty facts. 

As for today, I hated my lower body workout, not because I chose really lame exercises, or because I felt watched while doing my squats( although that did happen) but because IT HURTS so bad afterwards and during. Some of you are probably wondering what exercises I did; well I am going to tell you. I will also make mention it was a very high intensity day for me again on leg day.. I am sore.

• Leg press- 200lbs 20 minutes, 6 reps, 1.5 minute break between sets. Now some of you are wondering why I did this for 20 minutes, and not just 3 sets of 6 reps. Well yes, I could have done the 3 sets of 6, but I like timing myself when I do high intensity workouts sometimes. So, technically I am just doing it for as long as I can with the proper breaks between, so that I am not fatiguing myself. On a more normal day, I probably would have done 180 lbs, 3 sets of 6-8 and called it a day and moved on to another exercise, but I am not always normal.
• Russian twist using a 25 pound weight plate. This was my first time moving up to 25 pounds, normally I use 10 pounds but I felt like conquering the world and took the dive. my abs definitely felt the burn. I did 105 reps total, doing sets of 20 with a 30 second rest between. 
• Split squats using two 10 pound weight plates. I did 6 reps instead of 8-10 because by this time, my legs were practically telling me to go fuck myself (excuse the harsh language) and I didn’t want to hurt myself, I did do 4 sets though each leg.
• Planks. 3 sets of 1 minute planks, This wasn’t so bad today; 1 minute break between sets. 
• single leg deadlifts- 4 sets of 10 reps each leg using 10 pound weight plates. You betcha, I was wiggly like worm doing these today, I have horrible balance when I am not focused.. and today I lost focus due to the many questions this guy was asking me.  Grr. I like this exercise though (heads up, I will talk about this exercise soon)
• I failed using the cables today for a lower body exercise (looked like a dork) I totally know better and  I had a complete brain freeze and spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to use cables for a lower body exercise (for my hamstrings).. yes… shame on me. I am going to look into videos to refresh my brain.  Even professionals such as myself forget things and embarrass themselves. Yes, I did have a couple of people watch me as I struggled to find the correct form and technique to my exercise with the cable. Talk about a nail to the ego, but I am okay, I will return and pretend nothing like that has ever happened to me & hope that somehow they forget all about watching me look like mental patient.

Hey everyone, I posted this video about body shaming. This video is a bit longer than the last few because this is such a large topic discussion and I wanted to make sure I got my point across, and didn’t rush through it.  Body shaming is horrible and we need to learn to expand our vocab and find replacement words to describe ones self and others body.  I think it is safe to say that if someone is overweight or underweight, there is no “nice” way of telling them and they know this already, so to make light of their situation with negativity is wrong.   Hopefully all of you reading this will agree and will find other means of describing the way you look and others. I think if we push for words of encouragement we will get further.  Using words like obese, overweight, underweight, etc. are okay to use in my opinion, because it is what it is, those are ways to describe someone’s weight without having to call them a “fat ass” or “twig”.  Words of encouragement don’t have to be about someone’s body though, it can be about how they dress, what they smell like, etc. When you look in the mirror, it isn’t about saying “wow.. I look like a whale”, it is about turning that negative into a positive and saying “I love the way my hair falls to my shoulders” or “I have noticed I have lost some weight, awesome!” or “this outfit is super cute on me”.. etc. Fitness is not all about your body type, it goes beyond that in my opinion. I hope all of you enjoy my video, I was in my fitness apparel, ha. 

Please always feel free to share, comment, reblog, etc on all my videos 🙂

My video 🙂

Your fitness  blogger, 

Shay-lon xoxo

Video demonstrating the single leg split squat

1. stand with dumbbells grasped to sides facing away from the bench.
2. Extend one leg back, and place top of foot on bench
3. squat down by flexing knee and the hip of the front leg until the knee of the rear leg is almost in contact with the floor (you do not have to touch the floor) 
4. Return to original standing position by extending hip and knee of the forward leg
5. Repeat steps 1-4; continue with opposite leg.