Hey! My name is Sage Watkins and I am a Certified Personal Trainer and Performance Specialist in Austin, Texas!

My love for fitness began back in Raleigh, North Carolina where I spent most of my life (over 15 years) swimming competitively!

I graduated from East Carolina University in 2015 and decided to move to Austin to pursue my love for health and fitness. 

I believe that each individual enjoys different styles of fitness. I am ready to help create a unique and personal fitness program just for you!

I strive to impact the lives of my clients through my fun and motivating personality. 

To lose weight the average person needs to take about 2,000 steps in the average mile.

One mile burns about 100 calories. This means your pedometer will help you keep track of your steps, how many miles you reach each day and how many calories you burn. It will also help you if you don’t have time to exercise. You can simply add steps to your daily routine.

• 1 Mile = 2,000 steps and 100 calories burned
• 1 Pound – 3,500 calories
• 1 Pound weight loss per week = 500 calorie deficit per day
• To lose 1 pound per week you need to add 10,000 steps to your day.

When you make the decision to change a habit or create a different lifestyle, be prepared for potentially negative feedback from some of your friends. Some people may think that your choice to change is a poor reflection on their choice to remain the same.

Myth: Don't Eat After 8pm

The theory: You burn up the food you eat earlier in the day, while late-night calories sit in your system and turn into fat.

The reality: Calories can't tell time. "Your body digests and uses calories the same way morning, noon, and night," says Mary Flynn, Ph.D., a research dietitian at the Miriam Hospital, in Providence. They may sit around a little longer if you eat, then lie on the couch and watch Letterman, but when you move around the next day, your body will dip into its stores. That said, there are other solid reasons to avoid late-night snacking, not least of which is that snacks you grab when you're tired tend to be unhealthy ones.

People who get an adequate amount of sleep each night, considered to be 7 to 9 hours for adults, generally weigh less. It makes sense that sleep supports weight loss; the amount of sleep you are able to get significantly affects two of the hormones in the human body that influence the appetite. Ghrehlin enhances appetite and can lead to weight gain. Leptin represses appetite and can support weight loss. A lack of sleep disturbs the hormonal balance. The result of insufficient sleep leads to an increase in ghrelin and a decrease in leptin levels, which may lead to weight gain.

When it comes to sugar in your diet, the key thing to note is that not all sugar is created equally. Choose the right type of sugar and it won't have too large of an influence over your health - and could actually improve it. Choose the wrong type of sugar however, and this will not be the case.

Not only will you be packing on body fat quickly, but you'll also be at a much higher risk of developing diabetes as well. Learning which types of sugar are good and which are to be avoided is critical for your success.

Natural Food Based Sugars

The first type of sugars you'll find are natural food based sugars. These are sugars that are found naturally occurring in foods you eat. For instance, you will find sugars in the carrots you had at lunch. Now clearly, carrots are a healthy food packed with vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Not something that you want to omit from your diet just because you're watching your sugar intake. Likewise, fruit is very high in sugars, but here again, they are natural fruit sugars that also come packed with antioxidants and vitamins. Additionally, it contains 50% fructose, which is not put into the blood stream, but rather moves into the liver tissues. This means it won't have as large of an influence on blood sugar. Fruit, as long as it's eaten in moderation, is also not going to need to be removed from the diet. There's also sugars found in dairy products in the form of lactose (dairy sugar), which don't necessarily need to be omitted either. What you do want to watch for however is dairy products that have additional sugar added. This would be foods such as fruit flavored yogurt or fruit-on-the-bottom cottage cheese. Those you want to stay away from.

Processed Sugars

Which brings us to the bad type of sugar. Table sugar, high fructose corn syrup, brown sugar, dextrose, invert sugar, glucose, maltose, sucrose, and fruit juice concentrate are all names for sugar that should be avoided. Each of these will have a different molecular make-up however they all will have the same impact on the body: quickly rising blood glucose levels and a sure of inulin flooding the system. Furthermore, unlike the sugars mentioned above, they do not come packaged with other nutrients for the body, so are just all around unhealthy choices to be consuming.

Natural Simple Sugars

Which finally brings us to naturally occurring simple sugar. This would be things like maple syrup, honey, and molasses. These are made by nature and do contain some additional nutrients in very small amounts, so are ever-so-slightly better than the sugar described just above. Just note, they are still going to have the very similar influence on blood glucose levels and insulin production because they are lacking the dietary fiber or protein to go along with the sugar, like which was found in the fruits, vegetables, and dairy products listed above. So for this reason, you should still be minimizing them as much as possible. They might be ever so slightly better than spooning on some table sugar but don't let yourself believe they are 'healthy' by any means. The only healthy form of sugar to be consuming is that which is found naturally in unprocessed foods. Choose these sugars only and your diet will significantly improve.

Myth: Pasta Makes You Fat

The theory: When you eat carbohydrates, your body turns them into sugars, which are then stored as fat.

The reality: Carbohydrates per se don't make you fat; extra calories do, whether you eat them in the form of carbs, fats, or protein. Besides, carbohydrates include vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, which are important parts of a healthy diet. In short, the problem isn't pasta but the sheer volume consumed. "Americans tend to eat too much carbohydrates, fat, and protein. But they overeat carbs most of all," says Barbara Moore, Ph.D., a nutritionist in Clyde Park, Montana, and a spokesperson for the American Society for Nutrition. "You go to a restaurant and you're served three cups of pasta with lots of sauce." Those three cups of pasta can pack up to 600 calories without the sauce.

Your metabolism is responsible for converting food and drink into energy, according to the National Institutes of Health. Your age, gender and body size all contribute to your unique basal metabolic rate ( BMR).

Your BMR is the minimum number of calories your body needs to sustain life while it's in a resting state. This rate accounts for well over 50 percent of the calories you burn each day. A few alterations in diet and lifestyle may help boost your metabolism.

Not much in life happens overnight!

We are human and we want fast results but few things materialize just because we want them to.

Eating healthy to lose and then maintain weight has to become a habit.  We often associate the word habit as something bad that we do … start thinking about it the opposite way ...