Belly Fat Loser

Cankles – Defined as the area between the calf and the ankle, when there is no separation between said calf and ankle, just a smooth blob of fat between where the ankle should get thinner at the bottom of the leg, and where the heel starts.

You may think that cankles are A: no real problem and B: something no one really knows about. I did too, but obviously I was wrong, since none other than fitness Mecca Gold’s Gym has designated this month as cankles awareness month. See how well it worked? Now we both know what cankles are. Even someone definitely not known for any connection to physical fitness, conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, designated a few minutes of his show to discuss the scourge that is cankles.

If cankles are so deserving of national attention, one wonders how the heck you can get rid of them, because anything that gets this kind of publicity should obviously be done away with, post haste. Since cankles are comprised of 100% fat deposits, you eradicate cankles the same way you tackle any other fatty deposit found on your body, through diet and exercise.

There is no such thing as spot reducing. It exists only in the minds of the excessively idealistic. If you have too much fat in one area, you can only eliminate it by getting rid of excess fat in all areas. Your body simply burns fat for energy, and isn’t too particular when it does so. It’s up to you to make it burn that fat so your cankles disappear.

Here is a quick plan for getting rid of cankles:

Stop eating those things that are white, or comprised of things that are white. This is basically white flour, refined sugar, and white rice.

Cut back on fried foods, especially as those tend to be coated in one or more things from the list above. You don’t think they make that breading with whole grain flour, do you? Fat has roughly 2.3 times the calories per unit of mass than does the other two building blocks of nutrition; protein and carbohydrates. That is why fatty foods tend to be so fattening, they usually have more calories.

Start applying some portion control. If your idea of dining out involves rolling down your window, you need to stay far away from any of the larger items on the menu, since most of them could feed the average Somali family for about a week. They’re just plain too large.

After you’ve applied some portion control, you’ll want to actually eat more; meals that is. That’s correct, you’ll want to eat more meals, spread throughout the day, but keep your total caloric intake  enough to make lose fat, and your cankles, in the process. That lets your body actually assimilate the nutrition you eat, instead of experiencing overload, and storing what it can’t use immediately for later. You know how it stores that excess food? That’s right, as fat, just below your calves.

I know, exercise isn’t what many people have time for, or especially want to do, but you get in some of the sneaky  kind that will help you lose some fat. By sneaky exercise I mean the kind of exercise that doesn’t involve any person screaming at you, foam mats, or weights (although some people actually pay for that stuff). Just take the stairs for a couple of flights, park farther away and walk, and walk around the office or living room while talking on the phone instead of sitting on your kiester.

That is how to get rid of cankles. You can do the faster cankle reduction plan as well, and you what that entails, don’t you?

Shoulder workouts are one of the foundations of a fantastic physique. After all, your shoulders define your look in front or rear silhouette. Do you want full, rounded delts, or slumped shoulders that look like you’ve never done a workout in your life? If you want a workout to make you proud of your shoulders instead of looking for the nearest dark closet to hide them in, here you are.

Not only do shoulders help define your physique, they are vital to athletic performance and all your upper body lifts. The shoulder joint is involved in virtually every movement that you do with your arms, so an improvement in your shoulder strength will often translate into improved performance in other areas. Here is how you get that added shoulder strength.

Know that the deltoid is the muscle that covers the shoulder and gives you that broad shouldered, shoulder pad look. The deltoid muscles have three heads, appropriately named the anterior, lateral, and posterior. For those of you that haven’t spent their time in the pages of Muscle and Fitness Magazine, or a high school anatomy text, those equate to front, middle, and rear, respectively.

Shoulder workout exercises -

Upright rows –

The upright row is one of the real killer shoulder exercises that has to be a part of your shoulder workout. It hits your delts hard. Regular readers know I’m a big fan of compound exercises because they recruit so many more muscle groups simultaneously, increasing development and shrinking training times. The upright row is a compound movement that works your shoulders, forearms, biceps and trapezius muscles. (The trapezius are your “no neck” muscles).

Guys, if you’re looking for that NFL linebacker look, this will do it for you. Women can do them as well, and it is extremely effective for them too, but they won’t tend to come off looking like Junior Seau, as will the men. The upright row really does a great job at targeting the traps as well as the front delts, so if you’ve been plagued by pronounced clavicles for years, this can help make those bones disappear.

You can do these exercise with a barbell or a set of dumbbells. I have had success with both pieces of equipment. Dumbbells offer more flexibility to change angles and hit your muscles differently, in addition to making sure you’re working symmetrically. It is much more difficult for the stronger shoulder to help the weaker one when the weights on each side aren’t connected together.

Overhead presses -
This is another classic shoulder exercise, probably the first one many people ever do for shoulder development when they set out weight training. They can be done in front of the neck or behind it, with each working the deltoids differently. Like the upright row, they also stress the trapezius muscles, although not to the same degree as the upright row. Unlike the upright row, you’ll work the triceps muscle at the rear of the upper arm when doing the overhead press. The triceps really comes into play through the last half of the movement, when locking out the weights overhead.

You can do them seated or standing. When you progress to heavy weights, many lifters use a bench with a vertical back rest to ease the strain on their lower back and core muscles. This back rest allows them to safely use heavier weights for maximum shoulder development.

When using a barbell, lower the weigh until the bar touches the upper chest (when pressing in front of the neck) or traps (behind). Many people fail to lower the weight far enough. This compromises the range of motion and thus their progress, although they can use more weight to suitably impress others in the gym.

A safety note about the overhead press: When performing it behind the neck with a barbell, be extremely careful not to lower the weight too quickly and not far enough back, so that it crashes into the vertebrae of your neck. This can cause serious injury to a very vital area of your body (if you want to keep walking and using your arms) .

A nice variation of the overhead press when using dumbbells is the Arnold Press, named after the current Governor of California, for achievements in his

earlier career, when he worked in Venice Beach, not Sacramento. To do the Arnold Press, start with the dumbbells in front like you were going to do a front overhead dumbbell press. The difference is that you start with your palms facing you (supinated grip), and as you press the dumbbells upward, you rotate the dumbbells so that you end with your palms facing away from you (pronated grip). You’ll really feel it in your front deltoids when doing the Arnold Press.

Dumbbell Raises
This dumbbell exercise is an old standby for developing huge shoulders (for guys) and nice shoulders (for gals). It is an isolation movement, unlike the two exercises above, although it does slightly hit the traps along with the deltoids, it focuses on the delts. As the name suggests, dumbbell raises can only be done with dumbbells, unless you’re a genius with metallurgy, and can figure out how to separate a barbell and reassemble it again during your workout.

You can do raises with different angles relative to your body, depending on which part of the deltoid your want to develop the most. Front raises are performed by raising the weights directly out in front of you. They isolate the anterior head of the deltoid pretty effectively, while lateral raises are done by lifting the dumbbells out to the sides and focus more on the lateral heads. To hit the rear delts, bend over at the waist, hold the dumbbells in front of you, bend your arms to about 70 degrees, and lift the weights from the center of your body until your arms look like a Harley rider with ape hangers traveling down the freeway.

You can do traises with relatively light weights and still get a terrific workout, because the length of your arms work as a lever in reverse, making the weights seem much heavier than they are. The other advantage of dumbbell raises is that it allows you to target specific parts of the deltoids, depending on your specific needs. The disadvantage is that you’re only working a single muscle group at a time, which in this time compressed world, seems like a waste.

Power Cleans -
For regular readers, you know I’m a big fan of the power clean to burn fat and develop muscle. It is a great all around exercise, and one of the muscles it works best  are those of the shoulder area. The power clean will give you a pretty great hit to the deltoids and traps, while throwing in some back and leg work for good measure. That makes sense, since it is basically a combination of deadlifts and upright rows in a single exercise.

A Great Shoulder Workout -
Here is a workout that will kill your shoulders in short order. You’ll be out of the gym during your lunch break, with enough time left over to prep for that important meeting after lunch.

All figures are sets x reps

Power Cleans
1 x 15, 1 x 10,  3 x 6

Upright Rows
2 x 6

Overhead presses (behind)
3 x 6

Arnold presses
2 x 6

For all of these, go to failure on the 6 rep sets, and throw in an extra rep or three with a spotter, or by quickly dropping the weight a few pounds. The extra intensity will pay huge dividends in your shoulder development. If you’re trying to lose fat, I posted a few months ago on why 6 or 8 rep sets are more effective for losing fat, and it is scientifically proven, although many people still insist on doing sets of 15 to burn fat.

If you’re looking for shoulder workouts, these will do it. Your deltoids will thank you.

There has been an ongoing debate for about as long as people have been trying to lose weight; what is more important, diet or exercise? The reality is that you can lose weight by using either strategy, but it depends on a couple of things. The most important one of which is your diet. If your diet is truly abysmal, you can not exercise enough to lose weight, unless you are one of those rare individuals with a sky high metabolism or your name is Michael Phelps.

It’s sad, but true, you can’t exercise your way past a bad diet. Why would you want to though? Unless your diet is truly terrible, you can make minor changes to it and add just a little exercise to lose weight pretty fast. The alternative is to continue eating your horrible, Super Size Me diet plan and exercise 16 hours a week. Most people just don’t have the kind of time it would take to overcome a total crap diet like that with exercise alone. Once again, why would you want to?

If you are married to fast food, at least make some healthier choices. The fact is that if you do nothing, you are going to continue being fat. That is the cold, hard reality of the situation. If you make some minor diet changes, you can escape the clutches of the fat demons that hold you now, but you have to stick to them, it’s not like you can skip the Big Mac / Large Fies / Large Coke meal once or twice , then go back to your old ways.

Here are some examples, just using McDonalds for a what if:

If your current lunch consists of a double ¼ pounder with cheese (740 calories), large fries (500 calories), and a large coke (310 calories) you’re taking in 1,550 calories just for lunch, not to mention the level of fat (21.5 grams of saturated fat) and carbs you’re ingesting. A few, small changes would trim the calorie and saturated fat levels substantially.

For example, if you changed to a Big Mac, a Premium Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken, and a diet Coke, your calorie count would drop from 1,550 to 790. Your saturated fat count would drop from a heart stifling 21.5 grams to 13 grams. You’d also lose the high fructose corn sweetener found in the coke, albeit substituting it for the chemistry set that is artificial sweetener in the diet coke. That is by no means a health food diet, but it is a huge change for the better from before.

For some simple diet rules to lose weight, always remember my three belly fat cutting “no” rules for your diet; no white flour, no refined sugar and no white rice. Add in my three “yes” rules – yes on plenty of low glycemic index vegetables and fruits, healthy fish (healthy for you, I really don’t care if the fish was physically fit when they died), and non fat, no sugar yogurt. Add in some green tea and a bit of protein powder for those meals when you aren’t getting enough protein and you’ll be set.

Remember that although you can’t exercise enough to overcome a bad diet unless you’re training like a world class athlete, you should exercise a few times a week at least. It will multiply your fat loss efforts, especially if you concentrate on high intensity resistance training. That gives you the best “bang for the buck” in the exercise department. Why? Everyone seems to think I should be spending hours doing cardio?

Simple, it is because the increased muscle mass increases your basal metabolic rate to the point where you burn more calories 24 hours a day, more than over coming the calories you’d burn by spending an hour on the treadmill. See my post on why weight training is better than aerobics to lose fat for more scientific based info on this.

Until next time, lose your fat!

Everybody talks about losing weight, but in nearly every case what they really mean is losing fat. One thing that make losing fat much easier is to know what your body fat percentage is to start with. To know that you need a body fat calculator. Your body fat percentage is exactly what it sounds like; the percentage of your body that is composed of fatty tissues.

Trying to lose fat can be a battle; for some a much more difficult battle than for others. You need every advantage in your fight against fat, so here is a way to make losing fat a bit easier. Just as using a journal of your weight and food has been proven to make your weight loss efforts more effective, so to can keeping track of your exact body fat percentages.

Keep all your results in a journal, and track your results carefully. The power of the body fat calculator is that it lets you analyze the amount of fat you’ve lost and the amount of muscle you’ve either lost or gained. That allows you to tweak your program for maximum fat loss success.

What is a normal body fat percentage? As with many things in life, that depends. A normal body fat percentage for a competitive male track athlete, triathlete, football defensive back, or bodybuilder can be very low indeed; on the order of 3% - 7%. Most men past their teens would be pretty darned happy to keep their body fat between 8% - 10%. You’d definitely have that “ripped” look at the level of body fat, if you were carrying any muscle at all. In fact, most men would look great between 10% and 12%, and that would be a percentage they could actually keep throughout the year.

Too much lower than that would be difficult to maintain and could cause problems for some people. Your body actually need some fat in order to function efficiently and it needs a base level of fat to maintain life itself. There are two categories of body fat; stored fat, also called subcutaneous (under the skin) fat, and essential fat. Essential fat is just what it sound like, that fat which is needed to support bodily functions.

Women naturally have a higher percent body fat measurement than do men. A woman at 14% - 16% looks pretty lean, and while a man might be showing a belly roll at 16%, most women would not. In fact, women should not let themselves fall below about 12% to avoid danger to their bodily functions, while men can safely reach as low as 4 or 5%.

If you’re looking for a body fat calculator, you’re in luck. In the past the only way to calculate your percentage of body fat was to immerse yourself in a dunk tank and calculate your total body volume. That volume measurement could then be used together with your weight to measure your body density, and arrive at a body fat measurement. If it sounds a bit complicated, it is, mainly because you need a precisely measured volume of water large enough to completely immerse your body. Not too many people have such a pool of water just laying around, and they’ve never exactly measured the amount of water in their backyard pool.

About 25 years ago, the skin fold test began to see widespread use. That body fat test uses calipers to measure the thickness of skin at certain points on your body. These measurements and your age correlate to a certain body fat percentage. It is not as accurate as the dunk tank method, but it does have obvious advantages. The one problem is that it does not accurately measure belly fat. Belly fat, also known as visceral fat is not directly under the skin, where it can be measure by a skin fold test. Instead, it is packed around your internal organs, where a skin fold test does not read.

More recently electric body fat measuring equipment has begun to see widespread use. More correctly called bioelectric impedance measuring, it is pretty accurate and thanks to advances in electronics, can now be done with inexpensive equipment at your home. In fact, you can buy a scale for less than $50 that has such a body fat tester built right in!

If you’re just a sucker for expensive lab equipment, you’ll probably want to get your body fat measured using dual energy x-ray absorptiometry. That even sounds expensive. As the name implies, it uses two different types of x-rays to scan your body. One is absorbed by all your body tissues, the other is not absorbed by fat. A computer is used to analyze the results and compute a highly accurate body fat percentage measurement. If you’re on the U.S. Olympic team, or play in the NFL, you may have had one of these tests done.

By using a body fat calculator, you can closely monitor the exact amount of body fat and muscle you are carrying. That lets you carefully fine tune your exercise and diet program to get teh maximum results, making your fat loss easier. In many cases, being able to exactly measure your progress give added motivation, making your fat loss easier still.

One question I’m often asked, especially by people that have a social event or are going to see someone they haven’t seen for a while is “What is the best way to lose weight in a week?” Unfortunately for those in such a predicament, the answer to their question probably isn’t what they want to hear.

You are probably not going to be able to lose enough weight in a week to make much difference in your appearance. The irony is that if you are one of those people that is physically fit and motivated enough to actually lose an appreciable amount of weight in a weeks time, you probably already know the answer to the question.

In a best case scenario you could probably lose 15 lbs in a week, but you would have to go far beyond what most people would consider reasonable in order to achieve such a lofty weight loss goal. The other bit of irony associated with such an ambitious weight loss program is that you do not want to do one of the things that first springs to mind when the whole thought of trying to maximize weight loss in a week springs into your head.

One thing to think about is that when most people say they want to lose weight, they really mean they want to lose fat. What you do not want to do is lose any of your lean muscle tissue, because that muscle actually burns calories and helps keep you from gaining any more fat. So you want to preserve as much muscle tissue as possible during your weight loss program, even if it is only a week long.

Most people think that they would have to cut way back on their calories. The problem with such a calorie cutting strategy is that in a few days your body will interpret this sudden decrease in caloric intake as an emergency that it must deal with in order to save your life. It thinks you’re lost in the woods with only a piece of string and a compass or maybe your plane went down on a remote island. In any case the natural physiological response to a sudden decrease in caloric intake is to prepare for what could be a long time with little food. It does so by slowing down your metabolism.

The problem for you as someone who wants to lose weight is that you want the exact opposite to happen. You want your metabolism to become a raging fire, ready to burn every fat molecule in sight. The way to do that is to cut calories to about 900 for the first day, then go up to about 1,400 for the second day, then you want to eat the recommended number of calories to lose weight. To find out what that is, see my post from a few weeks ago on How many Calories Should I Eat to Lose Weight.

Second, you’ll want to drink plenty of good old, pure, clean water. There are 2 reasons you want to drink plenty of water is that most people don’t do this. The relative lack of water makes your body retain water. Water is a diuretic, meaning it makes you flush water from your body. It is counter intuitive, but actually drinking water signals your body that water is plentiful and it can eliminate any extra water is is holding. You can lose a few pounds in a day or two just by drinking a gallon of water a day for a couple of days. NOTE: If you are not physically active, do not continue to do this for more than a couple of days, as it can cause a dangerous electrolyte imbalance and lead to serious health problems.

The second reason that you should drink water is that it helps your body burn fat, which is your real goal here. One of the main fat burning organs in the body is the liver. It loves to metabolize fat. The problem is that it also assists the kidneys with their duties, and the kidneys require an adequate supply of water to function correctly. Don’t drink enough water, and the kidneys can’t work as efficiently as they could. Their work still has to be done however, so the liver takes time off from its fat metabolizing tasks to help the kidneys. That slows down your fat metabolism.

The last component of a week long weight loss program is exercise. Typically I’m a strong proponent of heavy resistance training to lose fat, and I have both empirical and scientific proof that it is far more effective for long term fat loss than is cardio training. In the case of a week long, rapid weight loss effort however, you aren’t going to have time to build sufficient muscle mass to make much of a difference. Here is your exercise program to lose the maximum amount of weight in a week’s time.

NOTE: Check with your doctor before you start this, because you’ll look far worse if you’re dead, than if you had a few extra pounds, don’t you think?

Day 1

Morning – empty stomach, please 1 hour of cardio in the “fat burning training zone” of about 60% of maximum heart rate

evening

Bench press – 1 set of 15 reps

1 set of 10 resp

3 sets of 7 reps

Power Cleans – 1 set of 15 reps

1 set of 10 resp

3 sets of 7 reps

Squats – 1 set of 15 reps

1 set of 10 resp

3 sets of 7 reps

Day 2

Morning – empty stomach, please 1 hour of cardio in the “fat burning training zone” of about 60% of maximum heart rate

evening

Overhead dumbbell presses - 3 sets x 10 reps

dumbbell curls – 3 sets x 10 reps

dumbbell tricep extensions - 3 sets x 10 reps

Day 3

Morning – empty stomach, please 1 hour of cardio in the “fat burning training zone” of about 60% of maximum heart rate

Day 4

Morning – empty stomach, please 1 hour of cardio in the “fat burning training zone” of about 60% of maximum heart rate

Day 5 – repeat day 1

Day 6 – repeat day 2

Day 7

Morning – empty stomach, please 1 hour of cardio in the “fat burning training zone” of about 60% of maximum heart rate

Normally you would never work out 7 days a week, because your body needs time to recover. 5 or 6 days would be more than enough. Failure to allow this recovery time is one of the most common mistakes new fitness enthusiasts make. However, in this case you are trying to maximize your week long weight loss, so you are going to hit it hard every day.

Make sure you eat plenty of fiber during this period. That will help flush the junk out of your body, possibly helping you lose even more weight. Your diet during this week long time frame should consist of oatmeal, apples, grapefruit, salmon, chicken, broccoli, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, green beans, cauliflower, brown rice, and protein powder.

Broil the meat or use a grill like a George Foreman that drains away the fat. The salmon you can pan fry using olive oil spray. Add flax seed and protein powder to your oatmeal in the morning.

Make sure you cut back on the salt, In fact, don’t add any salt at all. You probably get too much any way and it will make you retain water. Eat balanced meals, with and make sure you spit your daily calorie intake into 5 separate meals, not the traditional 3.

One more thing, make sure you get at least  7 - 8 hours of sleep every night. You body needs that to recover and burn fat.

This is the best way to lose weight in a week..

A dumbbell workout can be the greatest thing to hit your fitness routine since, well since you started the thing. Dumbbells have several advantages over resistance bands or barbell weight equipment. Sure, you can any of those pieces of equipment to gain strength, increase muscle size, or lose fat. Dumbbells however, offer advantages the others just can’t compete with.

First, dumbbells require your muscles to completely control the weight from every angle. This is great from a development standpoint because it recruits more muscle mass for a given exercise. That is but one reason dumbbell workouts can help you provide that edge you’ve been looking for in the gym or have you losing body fat faster than ever.

Second, that increased control requirement translates into your developing more functional strength. That the kind of strength that translates into everyday activities, weather that is on the athletic field, or when your wife asks you to move the dresser.

Third, dumbbells allow you to really up the intensity you can get from every set. Part of that flows from the increased control requirement, but wait, there’s more! With dumbbells you can get those last few reps immediately after the point of muscular failure on exercise where it would be impossible with a barbell. This is true when you are working out without a workout partner and safety is an issue. The bench press is a great example of this.

With a barbell, especially if you have the weights locked on with collars, those last reps could be dangerous if you reach the point of absolute failure. While that danger can offer the ultimate motivation to complete that one last rep, sometimes that extra motivation can’t overcome muscular fatigue that can leave you with a heavily laden bar on your chest, screaming for help that is often too far away to hear. If you were only using dumbbells you could just drop them and start your rest period between sets, rather that roll the bar down to your stomach, flattening your internal organs like a steamroller tin the process.

Forth, dumbbells allow a greater range of motion. That means you can work the muscle even more effectively, generating better results from both a strength and muscular development perspective.

Here are some great dumbbell exercises. You can use them to create dumbbell workouts that will make your muscles grow larger like never before.

Dumbbell bench presses – The kind daddy of upper body dumbbell exercises. There is no better overall front, upper body movement you can do that the dumbbell bench press. To change exactly which muscles you are working, just change the angle. The incline dumbbell bench press is fantastic for upper chest development, an area where many bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts are lacking. That exercise will also hit your front delts and triceps with a vengeance.

Be careful to avoid the major mistake made by people that do this movement; they don’t lower the dumbbells far enough. If you were doing inclines with a barbell, you would lower the weight until the bar touched your upper chest. Obviously there is no bar with dumbbells, so the tendency many lifters fall prey to is not lowering the weight as far. Don’t do that! Instead, you should lower it farther, really getting a great stretch out of your pectorals. Be careful not to tear anything, but that extra extension can pay big dividends for your chest.

Dumbbell deadlifts – Dumbbell deadlifts are like two exercises in one. Regular deadlifts are fantastic for developing the back, traps, forearms and yes, the legs, dumbbell deadlifts do them one better in terms of leg development.

When you use dumbbells for deadlifting, you can keep the weights closer to even with your body’s center of mass. This aids in balance and increases the load on your legs. The down side is that it probably lessens the effectiveness of the exercise as a back movement since the lats aren’t required to the same extent as they are when the weight is farther our in front of your center. On the plus side, as I noted earlier, it increased the stress on your legs, maximizing this as a leg developing superstar.

Overhead presses -  Another great dumbbell exercise that is tops for developing the shoulders and triceps. As with the bench press, you can really switch things up by changing the angles you use when performing this exercise. One other aspect to using dumbbells for overhead presses behind the neck is that you can’t drop the bar on the back of your neck. This can possibly cause a major neck an spinal injury, although if you’ve ever done this with relatively heavy weights, you’ll be amazed at the resilience of the human body.

Bent rows – Bent rows are kind of like the bench presses poor, backward cousin, but they sure are great for developing the lats, rear delts and traps. The only thing I don’t like about them is because you have to do one side of the body at a time, it takes twice as long to get things done. I’m all about getting in the maximum effectiveness in a workout while taking up the minimum amount of time, so this goes against my philosophy, but it is a great addition to your workout nonetheless.

Dumbbell upright rows – Talk about a fantastic shoulder and trap movement! Doing upright rows (correctly) with dumbbells is more difficult than using a bar, but you get a great all around shoulder and trap exercise that can have you looking like an NFL strong safety in less time than you’d think.

Dumbbell power cleans -  Okay, I’m saving the best for last. This is one of the most important all around exercises you can do with dumbbells. It hits many of your major muscle groups, including the quads, hamstrings, glutes, traps, forearms, lats, and lower back. Those that you miss with dumbbell power cleans you can hit pick up with the bench press. In fact you can get in a pretty damn effective workout with just those two exercises and hit just about all the major muscle groups pretty well.

You can combine these with several varieties of tricep extensions and curls with dumbbells. You have and almost endless number of variations of upper arm exercise allowed if you use dumbbells. An advantage to using dumbbells for curls is that it allows you to rotate your wrist as you do the curl, increasing the effectiveness and promoting more development, faster.
Here is a great dumbbell workout using these exercises:

Dumbbell Power Cleans –

1 x15

1 x 10
3 x 6

Dumbbell Deadlifts        3 x 6

Dumbbell Bench Press -

1 x 15
1 x 10
3 x 6

Overhead Press -         3 x 8

This should take no more than 35 minutes, adding in 10 minutes on a bike or treadmill for warming up should still have you out of the gym, workout complete, in less than 45 minutes.  Depending on your age, how much sleep you get, your nutrition, and some genetic factors you can do this workout anywhere from once a week to every 4th day. Do not do it any less than every 4 days or you’ll risk over training, and killing your progress. Keep the intensity up by doing those one or two extra reps after total failure on the sets of 6 reps. Don’t go quite to failure on the sets for 15 and 10 reps. Those sets are more to get the muscles for the hell that is coming.

You can break this up into 2 separate workouts, doing the deadlifts and power cleans on day one, then taking a day of rest and doing the press exercises on the third day. Just make sure you take four days of rest in between the like days. For example, if you hit the deadlifts and power cleans on Monday, don’t do them again until Friday. This can help, especially at the beginning, where you aren’t yet physically fit enough to get maximum intensity for the entire 16 set workout.

Dumbbell workouts; the way to make it happen. Use this one to get the results you’ve been looking for.

If you’re trying to drop a few (or more) pounds, probably one of the first questions you wanted an answer to was “What are the foods that can help me lose weight?” It is an excellent question. Unlike many things you may try to control, food is a necessity, and you’ll need to cross paths with it several times a day. Trying to control something that you cannot avoid completely is extremely difficult for many people, and so it is with food.

If you’re looking for foods that can help you lose weight, you’ll want to look for alternatives to some of the unhealthier foods you may be eating now. The fact is that your caloric intake, more than any other single factor, determines how much you’ll weigh. Recent clinical studies have confirmed this. The most widely publicized was performed by the National Institute of Heath and published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this year.

It found that caloric intake was the single largest factor in determining a person’s weight. In the study, test subjects were fed one of four diets, each containing a different nutrient ratio. All the diets contained low levels of calories and saturated fat, and were high in fiber. Participants were asked to exercise a fixed 90 minutes a week. The participants were not specifically asked to do high intensity resistance training however, which has been shown to require higher levels of protein than other exercise regimens.

The diets were based on a calorie intake of 750 less than the participants calculated daily energy needs. All participants lost similar amounts of weight, regardless of their protein / carb / fat percentages. What the study did not address however was weather certain foods help people eat less, and weather certain foods provide all the required daily nutrients without being so caloric. Nutritionally dense, lower calorie foods help you to lose weight by allowing you to eat more, reducing cravings and keeping your daily calorie intake relatively low.

One note here; lowering your calorie intake too much is actually counter productive, as it will cause your body to reduce it’s energy usage, causing you to need even fewer calories each day. Keep in mind the study I referenced in my post How Much Protein Do I Need? That study indicated that protein supplementation helps promote weight loss and muscle retention even if you are not exercising.

Here are some foods that can help you lose weight by filling you up with nutrition, rather than calories.

Broccoli – These green, mini trees are loaded with nutritional content and fiber, but low in calories. Use them steamed or raw to preserve the nutrients they contain. Boiling can remove some of the water soluble vitamins from them.

Protein Powder -  I am partial to whey protein, but protein supplementation is a great way to get the protein you need to lose weight and gain muscle without having to eat lots of meat or fish. If you’re a vegetarian this can really help, although vegans will want to find some soy based protein powder. Getting your protein this way is also effective because you get an easy to digest source of protein that you body can more easily use. You can use it in shakes, or sprinkle it on the next food in the list of foods that can help you lose weight; oatmeal.

Oatmeal – This hearty healthy food is full of dietary fiber, can be flavored to taste like almost anything you’d like and will help you lower you cholesterol as you lose weight. I use it every morning as part of my breakfast and it has helped lower my cholesterol from over 200 to 165. It also helped me lose weight; about 40 some pounds worth. Don’t make the mistake of loading it up with sugar, that is defeating the purpose. You can use a little bit of honey, but it is even better to use protein powder. That will give your oatmeal a shot of flavor and give you that protein you need.

Have oatmeal’s positive health effects been scientifically proven? You bet. Three studies in the 1990’s positively linked oatmeal to lower levels  of blood glucose, insulin, triglycerides and fats found in the blood immediately after a meal. The studies, published in the journals”Circulation,” the “Journal of the American Dietetic Association,” and “The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition” back in 1996, helped pave the way for the FDA to approve the “heart healthy” labels you see on oatmeal today.

Tomatoes – These fruits masquerading as a vegetable are loaded with anti oxidants and fairly low in calories. They are nutritionally dense too.  Tomatoes are loaded with fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, potassium and manganese. A 6oz serving of tomatoes has less than 30 calories, and gives you one third of your USRDA of vitamin C and a quarter of your recommended  vitamin A. They are fairly high in protein too, but it is incomplete protien, having significant holes in its amino acid profile.

Spinach – Popeye was right on the money with this one. Spinach can help you lose weight, because it is low in calories, fills you up so you eat fewer high calorie foods, and packed with important nutrients. 3oz of spinach has only 12 calories but 2/3 of your daily vitamin A, almost ½ your vitamin C, and 13% of your vitamin B6, so it is a great base for a salad.

Grapefruit – This fruit was at the heart of a diet craze in the 80’s and it still has quite a bit going for it if you’re trying to lose fat. It has a glycemic index of only 25, very low for a fruit, is loaded with vitamin C, and  gives you some potassium, calcium, folate, and vitamin B6. A ½ grapefruit has only about 90 calories. Proponents of the grapefruit insist the fruit has some enzymes that help to metabolize fat, accounting for the grapefruit diet’s effectiveness. Despite scientific study however, this has never been proven and the enzyme has never been found. Suffice to say the grapefruit is just darn good for you, so use it as part of your diet.

Lean, Skinless Chicken Breast -  skinless CHX is a great protein source, and is very low in fat if you’ve purchased the kind with no skin. It is a spectacular low fat protein source, but watch out ,as chicken is relatively high in sodium too. Eat it in 4oz portions once or twice per day, and combine that with other sources of protein, such as fish and/or protein powder.

Salmon – This is a wonder fish. It is relatively high i fat, but it is the good kind of fat. You need some fat to optimize your fat metabolization and overall health. Just make sure you get the right kind. Salmon has that good fat and high protein too. It’s protein has a very complete amino acid profile. So good in fact, that salmon could be your only protein source. The grapefruit / salmon diet, anyone?  Pacific wild salmon’s only real knock is that it is high in cholesterol, so limit your portions to about 4 or 5 a week, if you have cholesterol problems, maybe 2 or 3.

These foods will help you lose weight by giving you nutrition without all the calories. Remember, you still have to eat a completely balanced diet, so expand your food horizons. Keep your calorie count at the recommended level, not below, or you risk slowing your body’s metabolic rate, and hurting your fat loss efforts. Trade some of your “bad” foods for these in your quest to lose fat. Your belly (fat) will thank you.

If you’re just getting into fitness or bodybuilding, you may well ask the question “How much protein do I need?” It’s a great question to ask, and the answer isn’t the same as you’d get if you asked the question and your daily activity did not include heavy training or athletic activity.

A normal sedentary person can make due with about 1 gram of protein per kilo of body weight. Other sources list 36 grams per 100 pounds as the minimum for sustenance. If you’re training hard, either to build muscle or to lose fat, you;ll need more. Building muscle involves hypertrophy; basically over stressing the muscle in order to force adaptation. This means you’ll need more protein than if you were watching Sponge Bob and sipping a Diet Coke.

To support fat loss and enhanced muscular development you will need more protein than a typical individual. Studies support the fact that protein is important in not only increasing muscle development, but preventing muscle wasting when reducing calories in order to lose weight and body fat. In fact a study performed at the Minnesota Applied Research Center and the Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center (GRECC), Veterans Administration Medical Center found just that in a randomized, double-blind clinical study.

In the study subjects reduced their daily caloric intake by 500 calories. One group was given a whey protein supplement twice per day, while the other group was not. The supplements were given 20 minutes before breakfast and dinner. The results demonstrated that the protein supplements had a significant effect on fat loss and muscle sparing. The protein supplementation group lost 73% more fat and less than half the amount of muscle tissue. The groups in this study were not even exercising, which shows the importance of getting the proper amount of complete protein in your diet.

Another study on the effects of protein supplementation with and without exercise goes a bit farther to explain the importance of this nutrient when training. Conducted at the Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences, University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada, the study revealed what many of us already knew from years of experience. Protein is extremely important when exercising. The results plainly showed that “a high-protein diet was superior to a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet either alone or when combined with an aerobic/resistance-training program in promoting weight loss and nitrogen balance, while similarly improving body composition and risk factors for the Metabolic Syndrome in overweight and obese Canadian women”.

Okay, those studies are pretty definitive, but  what about those of you who are hitting the heavy iron and trying to gain some serious muscle mass. How much protein do you need? A study “The Effect of Whey Isolate, Creatine and Resistance Training on Muscle Fiber Characteristics, Strength and Body Composition,” completed in 2003 at Victoria University in Australia, indicates that whey isolate and creatine are more effective at increasing muscle size and strength compared to a placebo. The results demonstrated that the combo “produced greater muscle fiber growth increases that transferred into significant increases in functional strength. “

How much protein did they use in the study, which was conducted on advanced (but presumably natural) bodybuilders?  Test subjects received 1.5gms of whey protein isolate per kilogram of bodyweight per day. Keep in mind these were experienced bodybuilders, whose body fat percentages, even between contests is seldom above 10%, typically lower. Someone with more bodyfat could probably use less supplement. Also, note that the study used whey protein isolate. If you use plain old protein powder, you’ll need to up the amount of protein you use every day, providing you train as a hard core athlete does. If you train with less intensity and duration, you’ll require less protein per day.

These studies and the experience of many bodybuilders and athletes that adding protein to your diet is important to see the maximum results from your training program. So, to lose fat and gain muscle, stock up on the protein!

Are there any fish oil side effects? Is fish oil harmful? After all, any oil is 100% fat and we have been told for years to cut fat from our diet. Thankfully, fish oil has been the subject of numerous studies of late, so there is ample evidence of its side effects and its effect on our overall health.

Are there side effects to taking fish oil? Well, US National Institute of Health classifies low intake of omega-3 fatty acids from fish as “Generally Regarded as Safe”. However, very large doses can cause bleeding problems in some individuals. Large doses can also cause stomach discomfort in some people.

In balance to their many health benefits, fish oil supplements are extremely safe. Contrast this to eating fish to obtain the oil. Fish is known to contain contaminants, some types in fairly high amounts. Fish oil supplements, on the other hand, contain virtually none of the dangerous chemicals.

It turns out that fish oil is one of the healthiest supplements available, and it is recommended by some of the most health oriented organizations in the world, such as the American Heart Association. The AHA recommends recommends eating fish (especially fatty fish) at least twice a week.  In a 2002 study titled “Fish Consumption, Fish Oil, Omega-3 Fatty Acids, and Cardiovascular Disease” by Penny M. Kris-Etherton, PhD, RD; William S. Harris, PhD; and Lawrence J. Appel, MD, MPH, key findings indicate that fish oil is extremely beneficial to heart health.

One reference cited by the study indicates a nearly 40% reduction in “cardiac events”, research lingo for heart attacks, due to fish oil supplementation. Plant derived Omega-3 supplementation was administered in the study as well, and while that showed significant health benefits, these oils only showed an improvement on the order of 25%. A 25% decrease in heart problems is nothing to shake a stick at, but is nowhere close to 40%. The study also noted drops in triglycerides on the order of 25% - 30%, along with accompanying improvements in both HDL and LDL cholesterol levels.

In the study’s conclusion, researchers state “Evidence from prospective secondary prevention studies suggests that EPADHA supplementation ranging from 0.5 to 1.8 g/d (either as fatty fish or supplements) significantly reduces subsequent cardiac and all-cause mortality.” They went on to state that “the fish recommendation must be balanced with concerns about environmental pollutants, in particular PCB and methylmercury, described in state and federal advisories”

An excellent way to avoid ingesting contaminants is to do two things. Choose your fish wisely and use fish oil supplements (which have no contaminants). According to the EPA, swordfish, shark, king mackerel, tilefish, shark, and some tuna should definitely be avoided if you are pregnant (and probably by others as well). Salmon is generally considered safe to eat, especially Pacific wild caught salmon. Fortunately, salmon is also the fish with one of the highest fish oil contents.

Can fish oil supplements be beneficial if you’re trying to lose fat and gain muscle? Well, a recent study indicates it sure could help prevent you from losing muscle. The 2004 study, done by Watkins, B.A., et al. With the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology discovered that fish oil supplementation has a significant effect on preventing muscle atrophy in muscles that are not used regularly. If you are taking a break from training for some reason, such as injury, fish oil supplements could help prevent loss of muscle mass.

In another study, this one done in 2007 by Carole Thivierge, from Université Laval’s Institute of Nutraceutics and Functional Foods, demonstrated fish oil’s ability to positively stimulate muscle protein metabolism. The study also showed increased insulin sensitivity as a result of fish oil supplementation. Both of these are positive results when it comes to increasing muscle mass and losing body fat. The study’s authors stated that such supplements could help minimize the loss of muscle tissue in older, untrained individuals.

In yet more research on the effects of fish oil supplementation, a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition demonstrated that a daily regimen of oil containing omega-3 fatty acids, combined with moderate exercise, can cause significant weight loss, and was more effective than the exercise alone. The fish oil and exercise group in the study lost about 600% more weight than the group which exercised and took an equivalent amount of sunflower oil. That’s pretty powerful stuff. I referenced this study in an earlier post as well.

To discover the benefits of fish oil for yourself, check out the Vitamin Shoppe. They are one of the largest vitamin and supplement stores in the country. They’re letting me offer my readers a special, 53% off deal on fish oil supplements. This is a great offer that is not available in their stores. Check it out here.

The bench press is one of the best single exercises you can do to increase power and develop musculature in your upper body. The sheer amount of muscle you involve when hoisting big weights on the bar just about guarantees you’ll get something out of it. Just how much depends in large part on the workout you do.

Here are a couple of bench press workouts that take up little time, but will have you blasting through your personal best in no time. You’ll pack on new muscle, and best of all, it will help you get lean too. As with most other exercises, the key to effectiveness is intensity. High intensity equals great results with bench press workouts too, so grab a spotter and head to the bench.

These workouts only take about 15 - 20 minutes, so if you do them about every 5 or 6 days, you should spend an average of about 30 minutes per week to totally blow up your bench. Just remember to add the other two parts of the triangle; sleep and plenty of good nutrition.

Bench Press Workout

This one is a great way to pack on the good kind of mass while stripping off that of the adipose variety.

If you aren’t doing this routine immediately after some other exercises, warm up on the treadmill or bike for about 10 minutes to get the blood flowing. After that, head over to the bench. Do a set of about 15 easy reps first.

sets        reps
1     x     12
4     x     6 (+5lbs x 3)
Okay, the 4 sets of 6 reps have a twist. After the 2nd set, you’ll add 5lbs to the weight you use for each set you do. When you can successfully complete all 4 sets, you increase the weight you use for all sets 5 or 10 lbs, depending on how much weight you’re using. If you’re ending at less than about 315, make a 5lb jump, otherwise use 10lbs.

Here’s another twist to this bench press workout that will ramp up the intensity, and have you lifting more than ever before. For the last 3 sets, as soon as you complete the set, rack the bar and grab a set of dumbbells and crank out 2 or3 more reps, using a spotter to get the last one. Yeah, when you’re done, your chest will be shaking like a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, or something.

Now, get to it.

If you want to discover how to lose belly fat, you’re reading the right post. Why is it so important to lose your belly fat? A study by Tobias Pischon, MD, MPH was published in the November 12, 2008 edition of the The New England Journal of Medicine . The European study is the most comprehensive investigation on the subject yet, and details the dangers of belly fat. Although it’s has been known for quite some time that the layer of fat surrounding your abdominal organs wasn’t healthy, the dangers appear to far more serious than was originally thought. The study linked belly fat to an untimely death, and the link is stronger than was first thought.

The layer of fat surrounding your organs that is known as either belly fat, intra-abdominal fat, or visceral fat. Unlike the fat that sights benignly under your skin (known as subcutaneous fat) , making you look bad, this type of fat is packed around your internal organs like ice around beer in a cooler. It does make you look fat, too, but it is the long term health risks that make this fat so important to lose. In addition to the physical health risks, a new study also links belly fat to clinical depression.

A study of 409 women at the Rush University Medical Center, showed that their levels of belly fat strongly correlated with increased incidences of clinical depression. The amount of belly fat on the women was measured with a CT scan, to ensure that it wasn’t mistaken for subcutaneous fat. Interestingly, women with large waist lines that were caused by subcutaneous fat showed no higher incidences of depression.

So, if you have that unattractive, and now it looks like highly dangerous, layer of fat around your midsection, how can you lose it before it loses you? Fortunately, there has been research done in that area too. Much of the studies show promising results from techniques that can dramatically shorten the time it takes to lose fat, and have unearthed things that can hamper your progress unnecessarily.

There really is no shortcut for the basic formula to lose fat, burn more calories than you take in. However, the way you take in those calories, what they’re made of, and when you take them in can make a huge difference. In addition there are ways to make sure you burn more calories every day. Sure you can ride a bike or walk on a treadmill for hours. That works, and it does burn calories, but as I’ve posted before, it isn’t the most effective way to increase your body’s energy usage on a per unit of time basis.

That gets to the core of the fat loss problem for many people. They are extremely busy, and don’t have time to go to extreme lengths to lose bely fat, however much it is warranted. So, here is a simple plan to lose belly fat. It is backed up by the latest studies and research, not to mention some good, old, common sense. Follow it and you should lose your belly fat, not to mention any other unwanted adiposity you have hanging around.

If you ware going to exercise, you have to fly in the face of convention if maximum fat loss in the minimum time spent exercising is your goal (and really, shouldn’t it be?). Sure, you could pull the kids out of soccer, skip a few meetings at work, or stop spending time with your family and friends, but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense does it? So, the most important thing you can do is to get yourself either a gym membership or a set of dumbbells. I’ll detail the best way to use them to lose fat in a minute.

If you want a gym membership, Costco has 2 years of full membership at 24hr Fitness for only $299. That is only about 12 bucks a month. It’s hard to imagine a better deal on a club membership. If you don’t want to go the health club route you should pick up a set of dumbbells. You can get a good deal on a used set, or you can get them at the aforementioned warehouse store or any exercise supply or sporting goods store. I like adjustable dumbbells for the reasons I laid out  a few months ago in my post on adjustable dumbbells.

Recent studies seem to indicate that for long term metabolic rise and the most effective fat burning, high intensity, medium repetitions are the way to go. In the past, prevailing logic dictated that you’d use low reps for muscle building and high reps to get lean and burn fat. Unfortunately for those of us that followed that logic for 10 or 20 years, it wasn’t entirely accurate. While it wasn’t a waste, it also wasn’t giving us the best results for the time we spent in the gym.

Now it seems that sets of 6 – 8 repetitions at very high intensity are the way to go. I detailed some of the studies that bear this out in my posts on getting in shape fast and how to burn fat with weights. Spend about 5 – 10 minutes on the bike or treadmill to get your heart pumping and your muscles and connective tissues warmed up first. Then I typically do a set or two of my core exercises at 12 – 15 fairly easy reps to get my upper body a bit more warmed up and help prevent injuries.

If you’re using dumbbells, you’ll only need these 3 exercises; bench press, power cleans, and squats. These are the biggies that target your major muscle groups and get your metabolic fires burning. If you do it right, they’ll be burning fat. You can do these with dumbbells or a bar, but I’m partial to dumbbells because they make you use so many other muscles to keep everything in line, so it’s more like real work. They also take up less space in the condo.

Pick a weight you can barely do for 1 set at 7 reps. Then do 4 sets of 7 reps. Yes, I said 4 sets of 7, resting about 1 minute between them. On the concentric phase (lifting) you want to explode out. On the eccentric phase (lowering) you want to go slower, about 1-1/2 to twice as long as the concentric phase. You’ll need a spotter to get the last rep ( or 2??) on most of your sets, but that extra intensity is where you really get the benefit. Don’t wiggle or fish around, or lift crookedly, you’re trying to lose fat, not get hurt. Injury prevention is vital to any sort of progress, not to mention a pain free life. If you don’t have a spotter, do as many as you can with the original weight, then go to a lighter set of dumbbells for a few more reps.

Do this weight workout 2 days a week. If you’re young and get plenty of sleep you can probably do it 10 times a month instead of 8. Your body needs a recovery time to rebuild after lifting, because lifting weights basically forces your body to adapt to stress by attempting to overcome it.

If you are one of those people that has extra time, you can by all means throw in some cardio. It does burn fat and it’s great for heart health. Again, the rule of the day is high intensity, relatively short duration, but with a twist. That twist is interval training. I posted a few weeks ago about running to lose weight. In that post I detailed the high intensity cardio training interval strategy that was found to work very well in clinical studies. Train for 4 minutes at 85% intensity, followed by a 2 minute rest interval. Repeat this for 4 cycles. That’s 24 minutes of training that will do more to burn fat than longer, continuous runs at lower intensity. The most effective time to do cardio, if you are going to be doing some, is before breakfast. That has been shown to more effectively mobilize fat for energy, instead of relying on muscle glycogen to power your workout.

Now, resistance training is great for losing belly fat, getting stronger and generally feeling better, and some cardio sure doesn’t hurt either, but the fact is that your diet is of critical importance for losing fat and for overall health. You need to get enough quality nutrition, which some people neglect when they make the common mistake of cutting back a little too much on their diet. If you eat too little, or too little quality food, you’ll torpedo your fat loss progress. Check out this post on how to determine how many calories you need.

Once you determine your daily calorie requirements, divide it into at least 5, but preferably 6 different meals. You can still eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, but throw in a few healthy snacks along the way. By breaking up your daily food intake, your body will be better able to absorb nutrients. It will also be less likely to store food as fat. If you eat a traditional large meal, your body will store what it doesn’t need for immediate use or to replace depleted muscle glycogen. Glycogen is a polysaccharide used by the body when it needs energy Right Now. Your muscles need to replenish it after a brutal workout. That’s why it is important to eat some carbs directly after your workout. It will help your body rebuild its muscle glycogen stores and get ready for the next big storm.

A study by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute recently revealed that it is the number of calories you eat more than anything else diet related that will determine weather or not you lose fat. However, that doesn’t mean that you should just eat a fist full of sugar for every meal. Sure you would be eating a fairly low calorie diet, but you’d be missing out on the nutrients you’d need to grow lean muscle and maintain your overall health.

You are more likely to store fat depending upon what you eat because of different food’s effect on your hormones and metabolism. For example, eating simple sugars causes your blood sugar to spike, causing your body to release the powerful hormone insulin. In oversimplified terms, insulin can command your body to more easily store extra calories as fat.

That is why so called low glycemic carbs is a key to fat loss. The glycemic index is a measure of how fast a carbohydrate causes your blood sugar to rise. Low glycemic index carbs release more slowly into your bloodstream, which helps keep insulin levels from spiking along with the sugar levels. If you have some high glycemic index carbs, do so immediately after your workout. If your activity level is and has been low, rapid blood sugar rises will cause the extra sugars to be stored as fat because your sugar dumps into your body faster than your body is using it up.

An easy way to help yourself is to eliminate all white flour, refined sugar, high fructose corn sweetener, and white rice form your diet. For many people that has them eating not much of anything, but there are great tasting alternatives for most of these things that are nutrient rich, too. Substitute brown rice for white. After a while you’ll want brown rice because of the taste. Eat whole grain pasta instead of traditional stuff. Switch to whole grain breads from white or even wheat bread.

If you’re really adventurous, you can try flour-less bread. That’s right, you can actually buy bread that’s made with no flour. I love it, but some people think it takes a bit of getting used to. Dave’s Killer bread, made in Portland, OR is my favorite, but it’s a bit spendy. They make quite a few varieties of bread with flour too. Dave himself has a very interesting life story which proves that even if you really screw up, you can usually fix your life again if you take the initiative. You can check out his website at Daves Killer Bread.

Keep on the lookout for hidden sugars, because they’re in nearly everything that you buy from the store. Take a second to read the nutrition label on the foods you buy. You’ll be shocked at what is in some of them. Some foods have 4 or 5 kinds of sugar. Keep in mind that foods are listed in the order of how much is in there. The first ingredient on the list is the most prevalent in the food. If you see 3 or four types of sugar near the top of the list, that means the food is almost entirely sugar. Put it down, now.

When you’re preparing your food, you should weigh it. Yes, it is a pain in the rear, but it is all too easy to eat far more than you think you are by simply taking too large a portion on accident. Those little accidents really add up over time. I did a post on portion control for fat loss back in the winter. If you eat out (and if you do, you should be really cognizant of portion size, many restaurants serve enormous portions). Something else that has been proven by actual scientific research to help people lose weight and fat is keeping a food diary. That will help you really get a handle on how much you’re eating at each meal.

So, here is your easy to follow plan for belly fat loss success -

Workout with weights 2 days a week using a high intensity, medium / low rep routine. This will only take you less than ½ hour per routine, so you’ll spend less than an hour a week exercising. You can always do more, of course. If you want to do cardio too, you certainly can.

Eat healthy foods, broken up into 5 or 6 meals per day. Don’t eat too few calories or too many. Determine how many you actually need using the formula for daily calorie requirements.

Stay away from high fructose corn sweetener, white rice, and refined sugar. Keep to high glycemic index carbohydrates in most cases. Definitely don’t eat any carb-laden meals within a few hours of bedtime, it will go straight to your belly.

Use portion control with your food and write everything down. It is a clinically proven path to fat loss success.

That simple plan will get rid of your belly fat, with any luck, once and for all. Look through other posts for more detail and other insights on what to eat and when, exercise routines and supplement information.

Hope you keep losing your belly fat!

Salad can be one of the best meals when you’re trying to lose fat and gain muscle. Unfortunately, too many people make sure that their salads taste great, and in the process make something they shouldn’t really be eating. You can make a salad recipe that tastes great and is healthy.

Salads have many advantages as healthy foods. They’re easy to prepare, fast, cheap, and are great contributors to a well balanced diet. Done right, salads can be low calorie, nutrition packed meals, but one of the big mistakes people make when they’re concocting a salad is that they smother it with good tasting, but fat-laden dressing. Dressings like 1000 island and bleu cheese are almost entirely fat, and not the good kind, either. They really raise the calorie count of your supposedly healthy salad.

Stick to low or no calorie dressings that add only flavor, not all that other stuff you want to keep out of your body. There are some good low calorie versions of popular ones, like balsamic vinaigrette, Italian, and Russian. You can even use oil and vinegar, but use olive or canola oil, and go light on it, because all oil is pretty calorically dense. One note on salad dressings; most of them use high fructose corn sweetener. I’ve done a few posts relating to the hazards of HFC when it comes to losing fat, so scan the fine print on the ingredients label for any signs of the stuff in your prospective salad dressing choice.

Another place people tend to go overboard when designing their salads is overdoing it on the cheese. Your salad shouldn’t look like an uncooked pizza if you want it to be healthy. Some cheese is great, especially low fat mozzarella, just measure out your portions, because it is easy to add too much. Check this out; an oz of low moisture, part skim mozzarella cheese has about 85 calories, 4 grams of saturated fat, and 7 grams of protein. Non fat moz has 9 grams of protein and less than ½ the calories. That sounds like a great salad topping.

One thing to remember is actually something to forget; iceberg lettuce. That stuff is almost nutritionally inert. Instead try some spinach, or romaine lettuce. You’ll have a salad that’s more nutritious and tastes better too.

Try putting some lean meat in there for extra protein. Salmon is great, because in addition to protein, it also give you a solid dose of Omega-3 fatty acids. Albacore tuna is a lower cost alternative that tastes great, too. Skinless chicken or turkey breasts are solid choices for salad meats as well.

Nuts are fantastic salad ingredients. They add antioxidants, protein, and some good fats, too. Almonds or wa;nuts with the skins on are perfect for salads. They are high in nutrition and taste pretty darn good.

Feel free to throw in as many vegetables as you’d like to round things out, but don’t forget some fruit too. Tomatoes are that fruit masquerading as a vegetable that really lends itself to salad prep duty. They’re full of antioxidants and high in Vitamins A, C, and  K, plus you’ll get a healthy dose of potassium as well.

Another great, but little known salad topping is golden flax seed meal. Golden flax seed meal is a bit more expensive than the normal, browner stuff, but it’s worth it if you’re going to be sprinkling it onto your salad because it tastes quite a bit better. The flax seed meal will give you tons of dietary fiber and Omega-3 fatty acids. It is a great way to help you get the “good” fats you need in your diet. If you include salmon in your salad too, it’s an Omega-3 bonanza. The stuff I use is from Flax USA in North Dakota and has 2,700mg per serving. I typically use about 1-1/2 servings at a time.

The secret to a healthy, fat loss, muscle building salad is to fill it with enough low calorie, nutritionally dense ingredients that you’ll fill your stomach, but take in a minimum of calories. The ones you do take in will be filled with all the good stuff your body craves to replenish itself after your high intensity workouts. So, for your next meal, take a trip down the produce isle and go by the seafood counter for good measure. It’ll really help you to lose fat, and pack on some lean at the same time.