Dance Fitness and Health with Mary
Dance and fitness changes lives. Love makes it possible. Look for my weekly class schedule, links to information and random thougjts. Be healthy; be happy.
I came to dance fitness in 2012 as a student of Zumba(r). After a significant weight loss, amazing gains in energy and outlook, I became a Zumba(r) instructor in January of 2014. I am continuing my education in dance and dance fitness, as well as exploring the benefits of proper nutrition, weight training, yoga, and all life affirming activities. Here you will find updates of my teaching schedule,
26/05/2024
“It's NEVER too late to start lifting weights.
If you sit in a chair, you squat.
If you pick up a box, you deadlift.
If you put something on a high shelf, you overhead press.
DO NOT let the idea that you have to lift super heavy weights intimidate you or keep you from starting.
Even lifting weights twice a week for 30 minutes can build:
✅ Strength
✅ Muscle mass
✅ Bone density
✅ Confidence and self-efficacy
✅ And reduce frailty
Plus — getting strong gives you more independence and options — especially as you age.
The best time to start is when you're young. The second best time to start is RIGHT NOW.
It's never too late.”
H/T to GGS Academy Founder Molly Galbraith for this important message!
Give us a 🙌🏻 or a ❤️ if you agree!
Want to learn more about how you can FUEL your workouts through menopause?
Enroll in our FREE 5-day course:
🔥 Menopause & Nutrition 🔥
With this course you’ll gain powerful, evidence-based nutrition strategies you can individualize based on your (or your client’s) unique menopause experience.
🥵 Day 1: Master Menopause Symptoms – What You Didn’t Learn in School
🥙 Day 2: Nutrition + Menopause – Combat Weight Gain
😴 Day 3: Menopause + Poor Sleep: 4 Strategies to Help
🔥 Day 4: Menopause + Hot Flushes – 3 Strategies to Help
🧠 Day 5: Menopause Brain: 5 Ways to Improve Cognitive Function
Over the next 5 days, you’ll get practical, evidence-based nutrition strategies — all carefully selected for their power to help you (or your clients) improve common menopause symptoms.
It’s time to take a deep dive into learning about menopause and nutrition! 🙌🏽🙌🏿🙌🏻
Click below to enroll today — totally FREE!
https://go.girlsgonestrong.com/menopause-nutrition-free-course
18/05/2024
Normalize complimenting women on things that have nothing to do with their appearance.
We're all for complimenting a woman's appearance when it's consensual and appreciated in your relationship. 🌟
But let's move away from *only* focusing on appearances.
For instance, telling a new mom she “doesn't look like she had a baby” — we promise it’s NOT the most impressive feat this woman has accomplished in the last year! 🌼
So skip the appearance-based comments and call out her other unique qualities, such as:
✨ “You’re so artistic!”
✨ “You have the best sense of humor.”
✨ “Your passion for your hobbies is beautiful!”
✨ “You really make a difference in the world.”
(H/T to GGS Academy Founder Molly Galbraith for these awesome examples!)
Let’s recognize women as the amazing, multi-dimensional, talented beings we are.
Tag a woman below who’s important in your life and share the love! ❤️👇🏾👇🏿👇🏻👇🏼👇
"Clean eating" is a marketing gimmick.
Access to those things that contribute to good health should be a right, available to all.
06/12/2023
What is the deal with clean eating? Clean eating. That's when you eat a pizza and don't get your hands dirty right?
17/11/2023
“It is 100000% OK to eat food just because it brings you joy.
DO NOT let diet culture convince you that eating is only about fueling your body, or hitting the right macros, or getting all your micronutrients in.
DO NOT let diet culture rob you of the pleasure, joy, and celebration food can bring.
DO NOT let diet culture trick you into thinking certain foods are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and that you are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for eating them.
Eating food just because you love it is part of an overall ‘healthy diet,’ too.
What food brings you the most joy?
Right now for me it's:
🌮🥗🍪🍓🍕”
H/T to GGS Academy Founder Molly Galbraith for this! 😍
Give us a ❤️ or a 🙌🏻 below if you agree that eating food you love is part of a "healthy diet” (and enjoyable life)!
12/11/2023
Just say no to disinformation.
Imagine if you could cure all your ailments without worrying about the risks from medications. No more headaches, body aches, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, dogs and cats fighting, gluten induced PMS, and those god awful cupcake herpes.
It’s right here in this documentary that tells you to go plant based, ketogenic, paleo, sugar free, or to consume your food in juice form because... juice is how the cavemen cut sugar, I think?
Today’s Moment of Science… health “documentaries.”
I’ve watched, admittedly, far too many food and health documentaries. If you watch enough of these, a formula makes itself apparent. Through a combination of cherry picking data, an occasional line of total bu****it, and cleverly ignoring any information that suggests other diets can also be healthy, these documentaries make it clear why you’re probably dead already and watching this from the grave if you’re not eating their specified diet of organic plant based emu ass.
If you want to be a little better armed to spot the horsesh*t going into the next food documentary, look for a few patterns.
1. Feature people dealing with health issues they haven’t been able to manage using conventional health advice.
After a montage of reporters talking about the obesity crisis and candid shots of overweight people walking (which is just fu***ng rude), we meet our cast. Some of them are struggling with weight, some have health issues we don’t generally associate with diet. By the end of the documentary they’ve lost the weight and wouldn’t you know it, their psoriasis, headaches, and fractured tibia have all healed up.
2. Point out that humans didn’t evolve to eat our modern diet.
Their diet is THE human diet. It’s how we evolved to eat and they’ve got proof. True, you can find evidence that humans used to eat all sorts of different diets; that’s because we did. There’s never been one human diet, so any argument from antiquity to the effect of “correct human diet™ because old human diet” is utter nonsense. Someone’s current diet can merely need to be a bit healthier without bringing Darwin into this.
Humans used to engage in cannibalism. So.
3. It’s the system, man. Just ask our personal experts that are better than the real experts.
These documentaries tend to recycle a class of ‘rogue’ experts with an ideology to promote. In the documentaries about plant based diets, there’s the same handful of experts in every movie. Conversely, a different batch of five or six experts are in rotation for the documentaries dedicated to keto.
They more or less have one thing in common: they think they’re victims of being blackballed by the establishment, proponents of other alternative nutritional philosophies are wrong, and they have the one true answer. Watching keto and plant-based documentaries back to back is a knee slapper. Polar opposite diets, similar results. Funny that.
4. Attribute all health improvements to the diet.
Diet can cause or cure illness for myriad reasons both related and entirely unrelated to weight. A handful of specific diet plans are used in managing diseases like Crohn’s, celiac, and short bowel disorder, amongst others. But diet doesn’t cause all diseases, and we certainly can’t treat all diseases with diet alone. It sets people up for a false set of expectations.
“Maybe this will be the diet that cures my headaches,” I thought so many times in my younger life. And nobody exactly promised they cured headaches, but man, you can’t get through one of these docs without someone saying their headaches cleared up thanks to the power of spinach.
5. Go big and mention that time your diet performed a miracle.
It’s an insidious technique, but many documentaries will bring out someone who boasts that they skipped chemotherapy because of this diet. The narrative skips or downplays that the cancer was treated with surgery, letting you fill in the blank that the broccoli scrubbed the cancer out.
There are bits of preliminary evidence to suggest that some diets can have an adjunctive effect along with surgery, chemo, and radiation in helping recover from cancer. But at this point, no diet has been shown to cure cancer.
If you’re still determined to watch these wastes of bandwidth, I recommend drugs first. Preferably the type that gives you the munchies.
This has been your Moment of Science, balancing the peanuts with the m&ms in my diet.
07/11/2023
01/11/2023
Why Are We So Obsessed With Taking 10,000 Steps a Day? Multiple studies have found that 10,000 steps may not be optimal number for everyone. Why do we keep working toward it?
Key word is "just." You have the right to decide how your body will look; you don't have to accept movement as punishment in order to achieve your goals.
Details matter
Yup!
22/09/2023
22/09/2023
6 Effective Pelvic Floor Exercises (That Aren't Kegels) The key lies in re-balancing the pelvis.
06/07/2023
04/07/2023
21/02/2023
What if we said you don’t need to sweat through your sports bra every workout? Or you don't need to be in pain after every leg day?
This might be contrary to what you’ve heard — but hear us out.
💦 Sweat is a natural response meant to cool down the body. So while you’ll probably sweat during a hard spin class, you might also sweat because you're sitting on your deck and it’s hot and humid.
And while you might not sweat because you're resting, you also might not sweat on a three-mile run because it's cold and your body is regulating your temp.
🔑 The key point? You don't have to sweat to make progress.
As for muscle soreness?
💪 When you challenge your muscles in certain ways, the stress creates micro tears in the muscle fibers. With the proper nutrition and rest, your body repairs these tears — and builds that muscle up stronger.
Does that mean you have to be sore after every workout to build muscle? No!
Some people simply don’t get as sore.
But if you’re new to exercise or challenging your body with new movements, soreness is normal. This typically tapers off as you grow stronger.
🔑 The key point? If you're always super sore after every workout, you might not be making progress — you might be struggling with recovery.
What to do:
🧘🏾♀️ If you feel like workouts “don’t count” unless you’re dripping sweat, try some different forms of restorative movement like walking or yoga, or varying your workout length. See how you feel!
😴 If you’re always sore, pay attention to other aspects of your recovery, like nutrition and sleep. If you can optimize your recovery, you can probably make the same gains with less pain!
H/T to Head Coach of GGS Coaching Jen Comas () for these tips!
For even more fitness myths that may be hindering your results, click here https://www.girlsgonestrong.com/blog/articles/5-fitness-myths/ to check out Jen’s article:
➡️ 5 Fitness Myths that Are Ruining Your Results
You might be surprised what else is on the list!
16/12/2022
Good matrix for staying on track while atill respecting your own body.
Amanda Thebe
15/08/2022
Check it out! New fitness class at the San Ramon Senior Center--Thursday evenings at 7:15 pm, starting September 15. Sign up through the San Ramon Parks and Community Guide (Fall 2022).
Nothing wrong with trying to maintain a healthy body. Just be aware of why and how you work at it, and how you feel about yourself along the way.
17/07/2022
29/05/2022
Your Worth Is Never in Question!
📢 (Louder for the people at the back!) 📢
It’s also not tied to:
🚫 Your weight or your body size
🚫 Your title, your income, or your credit score
🚫 How much you squat or how fast you run
🚫 Your relationship status or whether or not you have kids
🚫 The size of your house or the make of your car
🚫 Your number of followers or how many likes you get
Even when we objectively know this, we can sometimes forget — it’s useful to get a nudge in the right direction! Know anyone else who does? Why not lift them up by tagging them below! 🙋🏽🙋🏿🙋🏻🙋🏼🙋🏾
H/T to GGS Woman-in-charge Molly Galbraith for this important reminder.
And if you're struggling to believe this or see your worth outside your body, we highly recommend getting a copy of her book:
𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗪𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝘁 𝗘𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗨𝗽
It's your step-by-step guide to:
🔥 Healing your relationship with yourself and your body
🔥 Overcoming comparison, jealousy, and self-doubt
🔥 Believing you're good enough as you are
🔥 Discovering your values and living true to yourself
🔥 Setting boundaries
🔥 Holding yourself and each other accountable
🔥 Finding simple ways to lift women up in your daily life
🔥 Discovering your superpowers and using them for good
🔥 Having more meaning and purpose in your life
… and ultimately creating a better world for women and girls.
And once you do, email in your receipt to get some amazing bonuses!
Here's how it works:
1️⃣ Click here https://www.mollygalbraith.com/book to order the book. All retailers are listed including international.
2️⃣ Email a copy of your receipt to [email protected].
3️⃣ Check your email for your book bonuses.
Have you gotten your copy already?
If so, let us know below and be sure to tell us what you think!
21/05/2022
If you like the beach, put on whatever makes you feel good and go to the beach!
How to get a bikini body:
1. Put a bikini on your body
No but seriously, ignore fu***ng everything you see about dieting for your holiday, for cutting calories, for exercising excessively - just so you can go and drink cocktails and play in the sea. If you see it, scroll past or switch off.
Start living your life right now, don’t wait til your thinner or more toned or whatever it is that you think will make your life better.
I’ve been a size 8. I’ve been a size 22. I was always waiting to be something else. Thinner. Prettier. Less fat here. More tone there. Every diet going. Every exercise possible. Every emotion available. I hated my body the entire time.
One of the things that I am slowly learning is that my body doesn’t have to be ‘beautiful’ to be important. I don’t need people telling me that I’m curvy or beautiful - or that my stretch marks are nice, or my body is sexy. And it certainly doesn’t have to be thinner to be accepted or healthy. I was at my most unhealthy when I was very thin, and I barely ate. Everyone told me how much better I looked thin, but no one cared why I was thinner.
In 2019 when I got really ill again, I lost several stone in a couple months through not eating and struggling, and the compliments fu***ng flowed in. Even the nurses on the ward when I went to see the consultant with Jaimi, told me I looked great. One said ‘whatever you’re doing, bottle it and sell it!’
I was starving. I was malnourished - but I was thin, so my social worth increased.
I don’t talk about body image stuff much cos I’m on my own journey and I don’t feel I can preach about it - but Jaimi took this pic of me yday and I actually quite like it.
Live ya life. Eat the chips. Bomb into the pool. Drink the cocktails.
Stop waiting!
13/05/2022
You are allowed to eat.
You are allowed to eat…
… even if you didn’t exercise.
… even if you ate “too much” yesterday or today.
… even if feel like you don’t deserve it.
… even if your brain is making up a whole bunch of different reasons why you “shouldn’t.”
We — especially women — have been conditioned into believing that we must “earn” our meals, and if we don’t, we don’t get to have them.
We call BS. 💁🏻♀️💁🏼♀️💁🏽♀️💁🏾♀️💁🏿♀️
Food is not a reward for doing something. There are no “good” or “bad” foods, and you’re not “good” or “bad” for eating them.
Food choices are nothing more or less than personal preference, and your self-worth is NOT inherently tied to your choices.
So in case you needed to hear it today, we’ll say it again:
You are allowed to eat.
18/04/2022
It's on! Low Impact Kickboxing, starts tomorrow--Tuesday, April 19, 11:16 am at the San Ramon Senior Center. A low impact cardio workout, with chair supported options, for individuals 55 and older. Drop in fees: $4--SR residents, $5--non-residents. Join me for your health and some fun!