Monica Morris

ACE Certified Personal Trainer

Monica Morris is an ACE (American Council on Exercise) Certified Personal Trainer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. With over 15 years of fitness training experience, Monica started her own physical training practice and gained her ACE Certification in 2017. Her workouts emphasize proper warm-ups, cool-downs, and stretching techniques.

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Meal ideas on how to eat 120 grams of protein a day
Getting 120 grams of protein can seem daunting, but there’s a way to effectively divide it up so it’s not too hard. Ideally, you should eat 5 times per day: breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon snack, and dinner. You should include protein at each interval and keep the fat content low, depending on your goals (e.g., more egg whites than yolks, or fat-free Greek yogurt with chia, flax, and berries).

Here are a few ideas:
Breakfast: an egg white omelette, high fiber oatmeal with added protein powder, or turkey sausage with scrambled egg whites.

Mid-morning snack: a protein shake, protein bar, hard-boiled egg, or handful of almonds.

Lunch: I’d recommend choosing a meat, adding some beans for fiber, and something green (like kale or spinach). A low-fat option like chicken or turkey would work.

Mid-afternoon snack: Hard-boiled eggs, protein bar, an apple with peanut butter, grilled chicken with low-fat spinach dip, or some homemade high-protein baked goods. There are a lot of healthy replacements for traditional ingredients using egg whites, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and protein powder.

Dinner: Tilapia and broccoli, steak with peas, tuna on healthy greens, or steak with
sautéd onions and pepper. You may prefer to lower carbohydrates since the window of physical activity begins to reduce.
How can I get big and stay motivated?
For motivation, when beginning a fitness routine, it’s great to get creative with ways to stay on track. Here are some suggestions:

1. Get an accountability buddy with similar goals. Even if their goals aren’t similar, you could each work on separate goals and hold each other accountable by checking in or even FaceTiming/video chatting during the scheduled workout time.

2. Communicate your goals to the people in your life, whom you see regularly, so they too can help encourage or support you.

When friends ask me to go out to lunch together or grab a drink, I respond by suggesting that we meet at my gym for a workout or do something physical. This will help shift the dynamic to healthier habits with the people you love or care for.

3. It is said that it takes 21 days to build a habit. That’s first and foremost; something small and attainable just to create a regular time that you get grounded in your body and work towards your gains. The acronym commonly used is SMART, meaning:
S- Small
M- Measurable
A- Attainable
R- Realistic
T- Time sensitive

For those 21 days, set a timer for 10-15 minutes each day and just start with core/abs or stretching. If the goals are too large in the beginning, your brain will develop an aversion to exercise or working out. The task becomes daunting rather than enjoyable. To help facilitate the brain's rewiring, ask yourself after a workout if your mood has improved or if you feel better compared to before the workout. Asking yourself this question helps develop the neural pathways that associate working out with positivity, since the answer will likely always be 'yes, I feel better".

4. Keep a journal, set an alarm, and block off the time on your school/work calendar. Help yourself by helping yourself. People who work out regularly also started somewhere small, so watch for comparing yourself to other peers.

5. After your 21 days of consistency, graduate to 20-minute bouts of training. Rather than off days, just do mobility, so you don't get thrown off when beginning to build a daily routine.

6. For muscle development, at the start, begin with an upper body day and a lower body day. Level up to push, pull, and leg day for 3 workouts a week. There is more "leveling up" to be done, but this would be the first few months.
Any Tips to Get More Weight as a Girl With Fast Metabolism?
Sometimes the inability to gain weight is due to a thyroid issue, generally hyperthyroidism. It’s important to rule that out with a blood panel.

To gain weight, calorically dense foods help put on weight faster. One unit of fat compared to your other two macros is more than double (9 cal per gram).

With that being said, consume foods that are high in fats like avocado, steak, salmon, etc. Eating foods closer to bedtime (as well as throughout the day) sends a message to the body’s metabolism to store the food rather than burning it off as fuel.

It’s important to distinguish between healthier fats (unsaturated) and unhealthy fats (saturated). To avoid the undesirable side effects of high-fat food plans (high blood pressure or high cholesterol levels), avoid foods high in saturated fats as much as possible.
How can I lose belly fat fast?
The best way to lose belly fat is certainly through diet. You can always assist with making sure that there is definition underneath by doing abdominal/core training, but it won’t show unless there is a clean diet in addition to cardiovascular training.

Hydrating properly and keeping cortisol levels low will also help visceral fat (belly fat) diminish.
What etiquette should you know when going to a gym?
Gym etiquette is fairly universal. One of the most important things to know is that it’s extremely common and good etiquette to ask another gym patron how many sets they have remaining, if they seem to be taking a long time with a piece of equipment you are trying to use. You can simply say, “How many sets do you have left?” If they reply with a high number of sets, you can say “Can I work in with you? “ or “Can you let me know when you’re finished?”, and point out where they can find you.

In addition, it’s proper etiquette to always wipe down any equipment you have used. It’s appropriate to use one machine at a time until you have completed using it. Using more than one machine at the same time is frowned upon, unless there are a few other gym goers present. Correcting other people‘s form is also frowned upon.
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