Day 1 at the Fitness & Health Bloggers Conference

My favorite part about Day 1 at the Fitness & Health Bloggers Conference was the Tabata class...but we'll get to that...

I'm such a tease.

Before coming to the conference I was really looking forward to the keynote speaker Dr. James Hill.  He was set to discuss evidence based strategies for weight-loss and as a future dietitian I was highly intrigued.

This pic is NOT crooked.

He made a lot of amazing points and created great discussion among the group.  Why is there an obesity epidemic? Diet? Food? Technology? All of the above?
I want to devote an entire post to this subject, because as you know it's massive and it's my passion.

Here's an interesting point Dr. Hill brought up. There was a study done on daily activity using an Amish man and a traditional American man.  Check out the differences in their daily activity:

• Amish Man - 18,000 steps
• Traditional American Man - 5,940
• Estimated daily calorie difference - 603 calories

600+ calories a day adds up.  Then add bigger portion sizes and it's a compounding problem.  A compounding problem that unfortunately has deadly consequences as our next presenter would point out.

According to Dr. San Millan 100,00- 400,000 people die each year from obesity related causes.  That's like wiping out an entire city.

He talked in a highly scientific manner (which I loved) about mitochondrial dysfunction and how cardiovascular fitness can completely change your fat burning mechanisms.  Meaning the more cardiovascularly fit you are the more active your mitochondria are at burning fat and the healthier you are.

I am a science geek, so this will be coming to you in a whole post soon.  It's pretty amazing stuff.  Being sedentary can kill you. Literally.

Dr. San Millan also lead our next session on testing lactic acid threshold and Vo2 max.  I'm going to sound like a darn broken record but....I'm have a whole post on that soon.

What blew my mind is that he can predict a marathoners PR based on their lactic acid threshold.  He couldn't stress how valuable this information is if you are a runner/triathlete who wants to improve their times.  They said, "You spend $3000 on a bike. This test is $500 and will take minutes off your time." Blows my mind.

We ended our sessions for the day with a Tabata class.

It's well known that I have a passion for high intensity intervals. I rocked out Tabata with PowerCakes, MammaCakes, Alec, and a ton of strong FitFluential women.

This was my first group Tabata class and I loved the energy.  I'll create a pinable version of the workout for you, so you can Tabata like you were in Denver too.

After all the learning my brain was hungry. Did you know your brain needs about 125g of glucose a day? True.

Chipotle sponsored our roof top dinner and they didn't disappoint.  I enjoyed a burrito bowl and way too much guacamole.  Don't judge me.

As I said in my first post about the conference, I have learned so much and had so much fun here. I wish you all were here too!

What part of my afternoon would you be most interested in learning more about?

Love and "posts to come later",
Carissa & Kyle

Catch Up with FHBC12 -
Why you should go to a blogging conference