As the temperature rises and the days grow longer, it's easy to slip into a relaxed mindset when it comes to our health and fitness routines. However, maintaining a consistent workout regimen and healthy eating habits throughout the summer is essential for our overall well-being. To help you stay on track and make the most of this season, here are five tips to keep you motivated and dedicated to your fitness and nutrition goals.

Set Realistic Goals

When it comes to fitness and healthy eating, setting realistic goals is crucial. Understand your current fitness level and identify what you want to achieve realistically within the summer. Create a roadmap with specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. For example, aim to work out three times a week or incorporate more vegetables into your meals. These attainable goals will keep you focused and motivated as you progress.

Plan Ahead

Summer can be a busy time with vacations, social gatherings, and outdoor...

When it comes to optimizing our health and achieving weight loss goals, one cannot underestimate the power of prioritizing protein and incorporating an abundance of vegetables into every meal. These two nutritional powerhouses work synergistically to provide an array of benefits that go beyond mere weight management. Let's explore how making these dietary choices can enhance your well-being and contribute to a healthier lifestyle.

Sustained Energy Levels

Protein is an essential macronutrient responsible for repairing and building tissues, enzymes, and hormones. By including protein in each meal, we stabilize blood sugar levels and feel fuller for longer periods, avoiding energy crashes and unhealthy snacking. This sustained energy enables us to perform daily activities with vigor and helps us stay on track with our weight loss goals.

Enhanced Metabolism and Muscle Maintenance

Protein-rich foods require more energy for digestion, leading to a slight boost in metabolism. This...

If you are reading this, I'm excited you are looking to learn more about nutrition...which is arguably the most important part of overall health. Even more so when it comes to seeing changes in our bodies, this is a key component to results. 

You may be hoping there is a secret diet i am going to share in this article...to be real, there is no real secret. We seem to want to complicate things by doing crazy hardcore fad diets that only result in short term results. 

I am however going to provide information for those who actually are looking to change their eating habits and make healthy choices. This takes commitment, DAILY. Not just for 2 weeks until your vacation, or 6 weeks until a wedding date. It's about making the healthier choices day in and day out that are going to add up over time. 

But still the question remains, what diet is best? I will provide a few different diets we see in the fitness industry, starting with the method I PREFER to do personally as...

Getting started is by far the hardest part when it comes to fitness and health, but here are a few things I learned the importance of quickly on my fitness journey.

After over a decade of coaching, training, and competing, these are the top 5 things I wish I knew when I got started. 

If you are just getting started or are fairly new, these 5 things maybe helpful for you. 

1. Staying hydrated. This not only improves overall performance but it also helps with mental clarity. And if you are someone who likes to get your steps in, walking to the bathroom 20+ times a day will add to your steps! 

What are the benefits to staying hydrated?

Staying hydrated offers a variety of benefits to your body, let me just name a few...

Proper hydration helps regulate body temperature, maintain blood pressure, carry nutrients and oxygen throughout the body, lubricate joints, aid digestion and much more. Additionally, staying hydrated can help improve your mood and mental...

What cardio is best for optimizing fat loss and maintaining muscle?

This is a common question I have gotten over almost a decade as a coach. And there is no correct answer, as we all have different goals, schedules, and abilities. 

So let's look at all the different forms of cardio and their benefits. Remember cardio can be not only an effective tool towards fat loss, but it also has a powerful impact on your overall health and wellbeing.

What's the best form of cardio? The short answer is that any kind of cardio can help with fat loss, as long as you're burning more calories than you're consuming. However, some types of cardio have been proven to be especially effective for fat loss. High-intensity interval training (HIIT),  moderate-intensity steady state (MISS), and Fasted Cardio, are a few of the most popular forms of cardio for fat loss.

Starting with one of the most popular and well-known forms of cardio in the fitness industry, HIIT training.

HIIT is a form of...

Who is Danielle?

Danielle is a wife, mom (to a spunky 2-year-old and 3 cats), and full-time worker who loves time with her family and friends. She is often found working at her desk during the week and enjoying any type of activity, snuggles with her daughter, and/or a good Hallmark movie on the weekends!

What made you want to start your fitness journey?

It was a combination of missing activities I used to get through dancing and finding time for myself that drove me to this journey; I hoped, and have found, that starting this fitness journey would give me what I desired. 

What inspires you most?

I tend to look to people for inspiration and that is true in this case as well; while there are several people that motivate me in different aspects of my life, my sister and daughter have been the biggest drivers in this journey. First, my sister has always been my rock, my person, and the person I look up to; she accomplishes everything she sets her mind to and lives a truly happy...

It's that time of the year... weather getting colder, nights getting longer, and energy levels dropping. 

If you notice your overall mood, energy, and motivation changing with the season, you may be experiencing seasonal affective disorder (SAD). 

What is Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)?

According to the Mayo Clinic, Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a type of depression related to changes in seasons — SAD begins and ends at about the same times every year. For most, symptoms of SAD begin in the fall and continue on through the winter months. Less commonly, some find that their symptoms show up during the spring and summertime. 

Symptoms of SAD include

• Feeling listless, sad, or down most of the day, nearly every day
• Losing interest in activities you once enjoyed
• Having low energy and feeling sluggish
• Having problems with sleeping too much
• Experiencing carbohydrate cravings, overeating, and weight gain
• Having difficulty concentrating
• ...

Holiday Season is upon us… how to stay healthy In a world revolving around food.

Its that time of year again! Holiday goodies are everywhere you look, parties are every other day, and sweater season is a joyous time to hide our binge worthy gains. It is important to unlearn the unhealthy society behaviors over the most joyous time of the year in order to be successful all year round.

Here are a few tools I use to help overcome challenges and temptations during the holiday season.

Need vs. Want

The most important thing to remember while trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle is simply this:

“We do not live to eat, we eat to live.”

In today's society our lives very much revolve around food. Getting together with friends, family BBQ, celebrating an event or holiday, going out on the weekends, vacation, essentially everything we do on a daily basis has one main focus; Food. In many ways we stopped caring about the nutrition of the food we are consuming, and...

Fall is here, which means so is #PSL season! According to Starbucks' website, a grande pumpkin spice latte with 2 percent milk and whipped cream is 380 calories. This includes 14 grams of fat, 52 gram of carbs, and 50 grams of sugar. Don't get me wrong, we all love a good pumpkin spice latte, but they are not the best option when you are trying to keep your calories (and sugar) down.

Let's cut the calories, fats, AND sugars down a bit... and then up the protein content, shall we? 

Here is what you'll need:

Ingredients

• ¼ Cup Canned pumpkin puree
• ½ Medium banana sliced (preferably frozen)
• ½ Cup Vanilla Greek yogurt
• ¼ Teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• ½ Scoop Level-1 Protein Pumpkin Spice Latte
• ¼ Cup Almond milk
• optional garnish: light whipped cream and pumpkin pie spice

Instructions

1. Place the pumpkin puree, banana, Greek yogurt, pumpkin pie spice, protein powder, and almond milk in a blender.
2. Blend until smooth.
3. Pour into a...

Who is Rylie?

Hello, my name is Rylie Scheff. I am a 28-year-old substance abuse counselor with two dog babies and a fiancé at home. I am a positive beacon of light that helps others believe they can do things others have said they can not. I work hard to bring positivity to a world full of darkness and provide help for those who need it the most.

Tell us about your journey with Okon Fitness

As many people did during the pandemic, I started to realize something was missing from my life, and that "something" was me! I am always taking care of others so for a long long time, I stopped taking care of myself. I came to this realization that my life was morphing into the life of my fiancé. His friends were my friends, his hobbies were my hobbies, and I woke up one morning and said WOAH WOAH WOAH I need to find myself again. I needed to be reminded of who I was, what I enjoyed, what I looked for out of life, and what I wanted to continue to grow into. When I was in college...