Belly Fat Loser

Being overweight is a problem worldwide. In fact, the World Health Organization recently discovered that more people around the world actually die from being fat than from hunger or malnutrition. It’s shocking in this day of information at your fingertips that many people simply don’t know how to lose weight.

Sure, they know “eat less and exercise more”, but they are almost totally unaware of simple ways to lose weight they can do everyday to keep dropping pounds. In addition, they are also ignorant of simple mistakes people make that keep them fat, when it would be easy to avoid them without dramatically impacting their daily life.

Here are 4 simple things you can do to lose weight. I’ll share some more of these in upcoming posts. One thing that bears repeating over and over is that you’re really not trying to lose weight, as much as you are trying to lose fat. Typically you will lose both, because there is simply more excess fat to be lost than muscle to be gained. For example, if you are 70lbs overweight, it would probably be a great idea to gain 10 – 20 pounds of muscle and lose 70 lbs of fat, for a net loss of between 50 and 60lbs.

How to Lose Weight Tip 1 -  Eat Spicier Food
There are many reasons why spicy food contributes to weight loss, but two of the most powerful are these:
1 ) Some hot spices, such as cayenne peppers, raise your metabolism. Recently, the spice curcumin, found in many Indian and Asian foods, was discovered to have fat fighting properties as well.
2)    Eating spicy foods makes you eat slower, allowing you more time to assimilate nutrients and also get that “full” feeling so you ultimately eat less.

How to Lose Weight Tip 2 – Portion control
Portion control is something Americans in general have a huge (no pun intended) problem with. Restaurants have been giving us a steady diet of larger and larger portions, much of which is either eaten when it shouldn’t be, or thrown away (sad when there is hunger in the world). Instead of eating so much at a sitting, you should eat less, but eat more often. Make sure your portions are matched, so that you are not eating too much of one thing at the expense of another. For example, eat a small serving of beans, one of veggies, and one of lean meat. Don’t eat just one type of food at a meal.

Portion control at individual meals ties in nicely with something else I have discusses here before; instead of three huge meals each day, try 5 smaller ones, with the largest one eaten at mid day, and a relatively smaller meal at dinner time. Eat only until you are full, not until every last thing on your plate is gone. Your parents aren’t watching you anymore.

How to Lose Weight Tip 3 – Cut the simple carbs
Most Americans eat a diet rich in simple carbs. Don’t get me wrong, I love bread as much as the next person, but as far as your body is concerned, bread basically converts to sugar, which something else most people eat entirely too much of. Why am I capping on carbs? Well, I am not bashing all carbs, just the high glycemic index ones.

If you’ve been here before (and maybe if haven’t), you know that glycemic index measures how fast a carbohydrate raises blood sugar levels. Low glycemic index foods don’t cause rapid psikes in blood sugar levels, but rather a much slower rise. Why is this important? Because those spikes in blood sugar levels contribute to fat storage in a mighty way, that’s why.

That means cut out simple sugars, breads and pasta that aren’t whole grain (includes breading on foods), and fruit juices. Rather than juices, eat the fruit itself, which has more nutrients and fiber. Rather than high glycemic index carbs, eat low glycemic index fruits and vegetables, which you can actually eat more of  from a volume perspective than you can that other stuff anyway.

How to Lose Weight Tip 4  – Only a Little After Dinner
Instead of eating a big meal or snack before bed, eat just a small amount of protein and have some herb tea. The tea will make you feel full, and the protein will help your muscles repair and grow while you are sleeping. Do not eat any carbs before bed time. This will wind up on your belly and hips in no time, and if it already has, it will simply add to the carnage.

Instead, after your last meal at 6 or 7 pm severely limit your food intake. This is one of the most difficult things for people to do, myself included. Having that snack while watching the game or prime time TV show is so tempting, but it is also a recipe for disaster.

For more tips to lose weight fast, see some of my previous posts -

Super Easy Ways to Fight Fat Everyday
The Fastest Way to Lose Weight
The Best Home Fitness Equipment to Lose Fat and Gain Muscle Fast
How to Cut Calories – Easy Ways to Trim Calories From Your Diet

As America and much of the western world grows more obese every year, many people are looking to discover the reasons why. In many cases, the reason comes down to one main culprit; diet. Too many processed foods with too much refined sugar and other high glycemic index carbohydrates. Thankfully, there are some common dietary items that can actually seem able to help weight loss and improves overall health. One of these that has been receiving some attention lately is common cinnamon.

Cinnamon is probably best known as that dark, brown substance that makes Cinnabons so damn addictive. It has been used for many centururies as a spice to enhance the taste of food, and also for it’s supposed medicinal properties. Like many other natural substances that have been used for medicine since before the western world took notice, cinnamon does seem to have some positive attributes.

One of the primary benefits attributed to cinnamon is it’s ability to help lower blood glucose levels and is a powerful antioxidant. What many people are unaware of is that there are several main kinds of cinnamon, and over two hundred specific subtypes, each with different properties. There is one type, Cassia, which is typically referred to as cinnamon in the United States. It has different properties than “true” cinnamon, including the containing blood thinning agent coumarin, that has led to Cassia being banned in Germany.

Cassia is also called Chinese (C. cassia ), Saigon, or Vietnamese cinnamon (C. loureirii ). It is differentiated from the “true” cinnamon by it’s lighter color and the cross sectional shape of the sticks. Cassia sticks are shaped with a double roll, like an ancient parchment writing scroll, while “true” or Ceylon cinnamon sticks are rolled more like you’d roll up a newspaper. Ceylon sticks are much more brittle and easy to crumble than their Chinese or Vietnamese counterparts.

Now that you can tell them apart, is there a difference from a weight loss and blood sugar regulating standpoint? Does eating Cassia help you lose weight any better than “true” cinnamon, for instance? If it does, how much of either should you eat? Much of this started in 2003 when a study by the USDA’s  Richard Anderson (PhD) came to light, revealing that cinnamon increased glucose metabolism and  insulin’s effectiveness. According to Dr. Anderson, all varieties of cinnamon worked “similarly”.

How does this favorite of desert lovers everywhere help you lose weight? It is all in how it increases insulin’s effectiveness and moderates blood sugar levels. When blood glucose levels rise suddenly it triggers a massive insulin response from the body. Unfortunately this rise in blood sugar and insulin also makes it possible for your body to pack on the pounds in the form of fat. Now, you don’t want insulin to not enter your bloodstream because you’d then experience the dangerous long term effects suffered by many diabetics.

What happens is that your body is using sugar in the cells as fuel to make things happen. Insulin is the body’s response to a condition where you have more sugar in your blood than you need. The insulin helps your body get the sugar into the cells, where it can be stored for later use. Just how is it stored for later use? A small amount is stored as glycogen, which provides fuel for the muscles to do work when it is needed. That accounts for only a very small amount of the total stored sugar however. The rest is stored as your enemy, body fat. Cinnamon helps to keep blood glucose levels more controlled and lower, preventing so much insulin from being released and so much fat from being stored.

How Much Cinnamon Should I Take to Lose Weight?
Well, you have to overhaul your entire diet in order to increase your overall health and lose weight, but adding some cinnamon to it is only going to help. You have to only take the recommended amount however, which is less than 2 teaspoons per day, according to the much publicized USDA study. Most people will see positive results from half that amount, or even less. Start with ½ teaspoon per day for a while. Excessive cinnamon can bring with it problems, such as blood thinning and liver enzyme imbalance. Stick with the lower amounts and you should be just fine. In fact, in the USDA study the lower doses took longer to take effect, but they had a much longer lasting effect on lowering blood glucose levels  than taking higher doses.

You can take it as a tea, and discard the solid portions. Because the active glucose moderating compound in cinnamon is methylhydroxychalcone polymer, which happens to be water soluble, you can get its benefits form drinking the tea and not the solid portions. Your chances of having any side effects are lower this way.

Cinnamon can be taken as a supplement or just off the shelf from the grocery store. Try some out for a while ans see if it helps you lose weight. It probably couldn’t hurt.


Belly fat is somewhat of a dirty word these days, and with good reason. Science is discovering that it is much more dangerous than other kinds of fat. Belly fat is a concentration of visceral fat in your abdominal region. Visceral fat is packed around your internal organs, potentially contributing to a plethora of problems, including heart disease, diabetes, kidney problems and more.

In short, accumulations of belly fat not only keep you from taking off your shirt around the pool at your 20th high school reunion, they can actually put you in an early grave. Some people are predisposed to build up belly fat in greater concentrations than others, who are more likely to add fat in a more evenly distributed fashion.

For those of you who need to lose that unsightly and unhealthy bump around the belly, here are some things you can do everyday that will slowly whittle it away. No, you won’t peel off 50lbs a month with these strategies, but you will slowly watch your belly disappear, and you won’t have to spend hours exercising every day (although exercise never hurts). These simple lifestyle tweeks will help you to lose what may have taken you years to gain. It will still probably take you a year or two to lose.

Major Fat Loss Mistake-
Realize that you can’t out exercise a bad diet, unless your last name is Phelps, so don’t fall into this common trap. You think “Hey I’m doing a bit more exercise, so I can eat more now.”,  closely followed by “Hey, I’m doing a bit more exercise so I can eat these large fries now.” That kind of thinking will sabotage your weight loss efforts faster than you can down a smoothy.

How to Lose Belly Fat -1
DEC, short for don’t eat crap. Remember that simple little phrase and it will do more than almost anything else to jump start your fat loss efforts. The three main components of crap are refined sugar, white flour, and saturated fat. Fat has gotten a bad rap as something that can make you fat, but it actually saturated fat that causes most of the health problems. Fat can make you fat because it more calorically dense than carbohydrates  or protein, so it easier to eat a greater number of calories when you eat high fat foods. That doesn’t mean you should stay away from fat. On the contrary, you should eat it, but only the right kinds of fat, and watch what you eat and how much, because it is easy to pile on the calories if the food is high in fat.

In short, if you just DEC, and then don’t overcompensate by eating more, you’ll lose weight. You don’t even have to eat a diet that a health food nut would envy, just cut the crap.

How to Lose Belly Fat -2
Eat smaller meals, 5 times a day. Your body will assimilate nutrients much more effectively if you eat smaller meals, more frequently. For example, try eating at 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm and 7pm, instead of the traditional 7am, noon, and 6pm. Definitely do not skip breakfast. Interestingly enough, and perhaps counterintuitivly, studies have correlated skipping breakfast with obesity.

How to Lose Belly Fat -3
Find little ways to pack more activity into your day. Here are some great ways to do this.
- If it is less than 4 floors, take the stairs.
- Unless it is unsafe to do so, park at the far side of the lot or parking garage and walk to the building. It always cracks me up watching people drive around aimlessly, waiting for a closer parking spot at the gym, so they won’t have to walk so far to go in and work out.
- Don’t have the kid at the grocery store load your bags into the car; do it yourself.
- Get some ankle weights and wear them around.
- Get a wireless headset and pace around your office or cubicle while talking on the phone at work, rather than just sitting in your chair for 8 hours a day. You’ll be amazed how many more calories you’ll burn.
- If you’re on the road all the time, stop every hour or so and walk around for 5 minutes.
- Find as many things to do around the house as you can. Don’t have your kinds do things, even if they really should be. Take out the garbage, rake the yard, shovel snow, scrub the floor, etc.
- Wash your car by hand instead of going to the drive through car wash or using a power washer.
- If your mailbox is a bit away fro your front door, don’t get the mail as you drive by. Wait until you get hoe, then walk back to it for your mail.

How to Lose Belly Fat -4
Replace one or two of your 5 meals meals with a smoothy. See the post I did last year on how to make delicious weight loss shakes. The secret is to make sure it has plenty of fiber, protein and ice. The ice is both a volumizer and a hydrator. The protein and fiber help to keep you from getting hungry. I usually use low fat, sugar free yogurt or low fat milk in mine as well. The calcium and protein in yogurt has been shown in university studies to help burn fat and build muscle.

These are really simple ways to fight the belly fat bulge. You’ll have to make some changes in the way you have been living if you want to lose fat. It stands to reason that you’ll not change your body if you just keep on doing the same old things that got you where you are now. The good news is that you don’t have to radically change your life in order to fight belly fat. Some subtle changes can be a great weapon in your fat fight, and are much easier to implement than a radical lifestyle change. Just don’t expect instant results. Stick with it, and you’ll not ice a change in your belly for the better.

If you’re in an intense lifting program, you may reach a point where you have trouble supplying your body with the nutrients is needs in order for you to make good progress. Sure, you can just eat, and eat, and eat, but that brings with it something you probably don’t want; excessive calories and fat around your mid section. Besides, there are some trace nutrients that are difficult to find on quantity in the foods we eat. This is where supplements come in.

The first thing you should know is that you don’t really need supplements if you are eating a nutritionally dense, well balanced diet, and are not participating in a high intensity training program. You’ll get everything you need in your diet. This is true even if you lift weights a few times a week, but are not really looking to make any great size or strength gains.

If, on the other hand, you are trying to lose fat while you gain muscle, or build large quantities of dense muscle, your diet may not supply everything you need in order to optimize your progress. Really, what’s the use in working your ass off if you are not going to get every last thing out of your training program that you could be?

Here are the top 5 supplements that will help you build mass, lose fat, and break through that plateau that you’ve been stuck on for so long.

Weight Lifting Supplement #1 – Protein Powder – Although it doesn’t have to be powder, most protein supplements are in powder form. If you are training hard, eating a high protein diet is essential to build the muscle and support recovery from those grueling training sessions. The good news is that it is not very expensive and comes in several flavors, so you can mix it in shakes, peanut butter, oatmeal, milk, or just about anything else you want. You’ll support muscle growth and recovery without having to eat mountains of burgers, steak, tuna, and eggs (although you’ll probably want to eat some of that stuff too).

Weight Lifting Supplement #2 – Creatine Monohydrate – Creatine zoomed to popularity in the 1980’s when it was revealed that some Olympic athletes were using  it to increase their performance, and even better, it actually worked well! Since then it’s effectiveness has served to maintain creatine’s popularity to the extent it is still one of the most popular supplements for athletes, bodybuilders,  and recreational lifters alike.

Creatine is found in nature and in your body, but typically not in the amounts that are needed to maximize performance when training hard. Creatine supplementation gives your body the ability to tap into additional stores so you can squeeze out those extra few reps during a tough training session. That, in turn, makes you grow stronger, and possibly bigger. For more on how creatine works and if it is safe, see my post on Creatine Side Effects from last year.

Weight Lifting Supplement #3 – Glucosamine/ Chondroitin/ MSM – One of the biggest surprises was that this supplement is so popular. In fact, it is one of the top five (hence it’s inclusion in this list) weight lifting supplements around. The reason is simple; heavy lifting and high intensity training can wreak havoc on your joints and connective tissues. If you are in constant pain it can be difficult or impossible to keep up with any kind of beneficial training program, or in some cases, get through your daily life.  Glucosamine/Chondroitin/Msm supplementation can mitigate much of the wear and tear faced by your joints and connective tissues from heavy training and other sports related activities.

MSM stands for methyl sulfonylmethane, a natural form of bio-available sulfur. In an example of why some people prefer whole, non processed foods, many foods have naturally occurring MSM, but it is invariably destroyed during cooking and processing. Much of the evidence supporting MSM is purely anecdotal, and although some scientific studies have been done there are few to date that have been of the double blind variety, later published in peer reviewed journals.

This supplement works by increasing the formation of cartilage in your joints. In many cases this cartilage becomes degraded by years of vigorous activity, such as lifting, running and sports with constant stopping and starting, like tennis. These three compounds were first used to help with the effects of osteoarthritis, but later found to be very effective for some people with joint and connective tissue problems related to athletics and training.  A caveat; if you have diabetes, be careful with Glucosamine because it can cause a rise in blood sugar levels.

Weight Lifting Supplement #4 –  Nitric Oxide Boosters – Bodybuilders and eight lifters have only recently come to start regularly using nitric oxide supplements to increase muscular size and strength. Nitric oxide itself is actually a gas, and has a few functions in the body, but for lifting and training purposes, it is an intracellular messenger that regulates blood flow. Obviously blood flow has an important  impact on performance and recovery from training sessions.

In fact, nitric oxide was deemed so important by the scientific community for the vascular system that a researcher, Dr Louis Ignarro, actually received the 1998 Nobel Prize in medicine for his research on nitric acid’s importance to the circulatory system.

Your body produces nitric oxide naturally, and nitric oxide supplements aim to increase natural production and levels to benefit muscle size and strength. It helps give body builders that vascular “pump” they are looking for, and makes it last much longer. Most lifters and bodybuilders love that “veins popping out all over” look that these supplements can give.

Making more nitric acid in the body requires a combination of  amino acids, of which arginine is the most important, but aspartic acid, and citrulline can be utilized as well. Arginine combines with certain types of enzymes in your body called Nitric Oxide synthase, often abbreviated NOS. This combination creates a reaction that produces nitric oxide your body can use.

From a body building and lifting perspective, nitric oxide keeps your muscles full of blood , a similar effect to the pump you get after a hard workout, the difference being the nitric acid enhanced pump lasts longer, much longer. The extra blood flow not only makes your muscles appear larger, it also does a better job flushing away metabolic byproducts and bringing oxygen and nutrients to fatigued muscles, letting them grow even bigger, and recover from training sessions faster.

Nitric Oxide Side Supplement Effects
Some study has been done on nitric oxide supplements, and some effects on  liver enzymes (reversible) have been anecdotally reported from a few people using this type of product (though not from all people using all the different types of nitric oxide supplements on the market), so it would be a good idea to use it under a doctor’s supervision, at least until you determine if it will have an adverse effects on you.

In addition, since these products contain amino acids, care should be taken not to exceed the recommended dosage. Some amino acids can cause problems if over done. For example, excessive arginine can cause varied symptoms, including diarrhea, nausea, and  ironically enough, weakness.

Some of these supplements also contain caffeine and other stimulants, so if you are trying to limit caffeine look at each one to see if it contains high levels. As with everything else, look closely before you choose. Do your homework, but these supplements have been extremely popular recently, and with good reason, they seem to be safe and effective for most people when taken as directed.

Some of the more popular Nitric acid enhancing supplements include, Muscletech PUMP-TECH, Optimum Nutrition Nitric Boost, BSN Nitrix, and IDS NP2.

Weight Lifting Supplement #5 -Natural Testosterone Boosters – Testosterone is “the” male hormone. Testosterone levels tend to decrease with age. By age 60 the typical man will have lost half of his testosterone production capacity.  Raising testosterone levels can promote greater muscular development, fat loss, even benefit your overall mood and increase your sex drive! There are over 125 products marketed by the major supplement manufacturers aimed at naturally increasing testosterone production. The reason there are so many is due to their popularity with weight lifters, athletes, and body builders. The companies are just responding to the market.

How do Natural Testosterone Builders Work?
Most have combinations of various ingredients shown or thought to increase testosterone production. One of the most popular is the plant derived compound tribulus, from the tribulus terrestirs plant. This vine like plant has been used for hundreds of years as a way to increase overall well being. However, when extracts are used in supplements it can have a powerful testosterone building effect, although nowhere near the “legal steroid” levels that some people proclaim. It is possible that tribulus actually stimulates the pituritary gland to increase testosterone production.

A test was actually performed on the effects on tribulus on the effects of it on body composition and athletic performance on resistance trained men. It was published in the June, 2000 edition of International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. Overall, it was shown to have a positive effect on testosterone levels on test subjects.

Another popular ingredient in natural testosterone builders is the zinc / vitamin compound ZMA. ZMA contains vitamin B6, plus the compounds Zinc Monomethionine Aspartate plus Magnesium Aspartate and vitamin B-6. ZMA appears to work for testosterone boosting, according to several scientific studies. The most referenced was presented in 1999 by Dr. Lorrie Brilla of Western Washington University, who examined ZMA’s effectiveness on college football players. Her research discovered that test subjects who took a course of ZMA gained 250% more strength while weight training that those who took a placebo! In 8 weeks, their leg strength went up over 11%. WOW!

Dr Brilla also noted a 30% increase in free testosterone levels in the ZMA group, compared to a 10% decrease in the placebo ingesting group. Note that these were already highly trained, college athletes, so an 11% strength increase and a 30% testosterone increase is substantial in an 8 week time period. The supplement has also been shown to improve sleep, itself important for recovery and increased HGH production.

Some caveats to the Brilla ZMA study: It was funded by the company that first developed the supplement. Many have claimed that the methodology was flawed, since the athletes used as test subjects may have been zinc deficient from the outset. The supplement would have served to restore proper zinc and magnesium levels, thereby increasing strength. Many hard training athletes can be deficient in zinc. A subsequent German study noted no increases in testosterone levels among their subjects, who were also well trained males.

ZMA has received more press and positive feedback than any other supplement since Creatine. It is even being used by NFL athletes to increase performance. The reason is that highly trained strength athletes tend to deplete their zinc and magnesium levels rather dramatically. The specific combination in ZMA reverses that and restores levels to optimum, thereby providing a dramatic performance increase. According to research, this is also a result of the ZMA  derived testosterone boost.

NOTE: As effective as ZMA may have been at improving performance, it was still insufficient to keep WWU from canceling their football program last year.

There you have it. The top 5 weight lifting supplements are Protein Powder,  Creatine Monohydrate,  Glucosamine/ Chondroitin/ MSM, Nitric Acid Boosters, and Natural Testosterone Boosters.
Hot Deals 40% Off or more on Supplements @ Vitamin Shoppe

As the New Year is upon us, many people are looking for the fastest way to lose weight to help satisfy their new year’s resolution. If your resolution for 2010 includes losing weight, read on. You’ll discover the fastest way to lose weight, and some myths that can keep you from making all the progress in your weight loss program that you should.

Most people, when they think of losing weight, are a little misguided. What they really want is to lose fat, not simply weight. Roughly speaking, your body weight is in two major classes, lean body mass, and fat. You want to burn off as much fat as possible, or until your body fat percentage drops to around 10% for men and 18% for women. Some competitive athletes will want to go even lower.

What many people do not know is that actually gaining lean body mass will help them lose their fat. That is because lean body mass takes more energy to support, so the more of it you have, the more calories your body burns at rest. This increase in resting calorie burn is called increasing your basal metabolic rate, and it is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal in your quest to lose weight.

You see, you can exercise a few days a week for an hour or so every day, and that will definitely help you to lose weight, but if your basal metabolic rate increases, you will burn more calories all day, every day, no matter if you’re sleeping, watching TV, sitting at your desk, or shopping at the market. Since for most people these other activities comprise a much greater percentage of their daily lives than does exercising, it only makes sense to maximize the calories they burn when away from the gym, bike or court if they are trying to lose weight.

Weight Loss Myth
One of the biggest problems people face when they are trying to lose weight is that they go too far, and it comes back to bite them bad. People go overboard and actually cut back their calories too far, too fast. The human body, being a finely tuned machine with millennia of evolution at it’s disposal, can take over and do the opposite of what you want in this scenario. It actually slows your metabolism down and holds on to excess weight as tightly as possible.

10,000 years ago when humans roamed the Asian steppes and the African plains, food was not all that easy to come by. Safeway and Subway hadn’t been invented yet, so it was common for people to sometimes go a day or two with no food at all. In times of scarcity, the body evolved a response to help ensure it’s survival, slow down and conserve. That way whatever stored energy was contained in the body fat would last until the next meal could be found. There was no way of knowing weather that would be a berry bush around the next corner, or three days hence, after a successful hunt. In some cases food may have been even farther away than that.

The uncertainty of finding food in ancient times led the body to develop a conservation of mass strategy that confounds dieters to this day. That means for you to lose weight you want to actually keep you caloric intake above a certain threshold to avoid the body slowing down your metabolism.

The Fastest Way to Lose Weight
You can lose plenty of weight in a relatively short period of time, but most people want to lose weight and actually keep it off forever. To do that, you’ll have to take a more strategic approach. The strategy includes increasing your basal metabolic rate for help with long term weight management, and getting rid of as much fat as possible in a short term so you look great for that reunion.

If you need to look great in a hurry, you can do some pretty amazing things in 8 – 12 weeks. If you are looking at a shorter time horizon that that, like a week or two, you can still burn off some fat, but much of your weight loss will be water. Before you head off to the gym or the kitchen, there is something that you need to know. In the opinion of many personal trainers and training professionals, the 7 – 20lb weekly weight loss totals portrayed on the TV reality series “The Biggest Loser” is unrealistic and not the best solution for long term weight management. A figure of 2 – 3 lbs per week is closer to the weight loss target for most individuals.

That rate of weight loss is easily achievable and will typically yield better long term results than trying to kill yourself striving for a 20lbs loss per week. What happens on many occasions when shooting for such extreme weight loss figures is that you will over train your muscles, which actually inhibits their growth. You should be seeking to maximize muscle growth.

The other common problem faced by people that try to lose too much weight, too fast is rebound, where they lose weight fast, only to regain it in a relatively short time period. In many cases they actually end up heavier than they were before they started their weight loss efforts. What you should be trying for a is a synergistic approach, where strategic diet and exercise work together to have you dropping the maximum amount of fat in the shortest amount of time, and then (this is important) keeping it off forever!

If you have a need to lose weight in the short term, such as for an event of some kind, you can have the best of both worlds. You will lose a relatively large amount of weight in a short period of time, and then less per week over the long term, until your ultimate goals are met.

Short term weight loss program:
You’ll use this program for 2 weeks to jump start your weight loss program. If you stay on this it will actually hurt your progress long term, so after the first two weeks, you;ll transition to the long term program. It is fairly intense, so check with your doctor to see if you are up to it.

Quick Weight Loss Diet Section -
All the foods are strategically chosen for this diet. For example, the yogurt is very important because in a 2005 study test subjects who ate 3 servings of low fat, sugar free yogurt every day lost 22% more weight and 61% more body fat (and an amazing 81% more belly fat) than those who simply cut calories and didn’t eat yogurt.

Before you begin the diet portion of this, described below, there are some rules to live by, but the simplest are these: Do not eat white rice, white flour or refined sugar. You’ll have to get into the habit of actually reading the labels on the food you eat because there is a tremendous amount of crap on supermarket shelves these days. Remember, if there is one type of sugar in food, there is 20. If it ends in “ose” it is sugar. Glucose, fructose, and sucrose are all different kinds of sugar, as is the worst, high fructose corn sweetener.

Your carbohydrates should primarily be of the low glycemic index variety. Low glycemic index carbs include green vegetables and some fruits. Glycemic index is basically a measure of the speed at which the carbohydrate is absorbed into your bloodstream. Quickly absorbed carbs cause your body to rapidly release the powerful hormone insulin. High insulin levels facilitate fat storage, so keeping them in check is essential in helping to combat high body fat levels. For more on this, see my previous post on low glycemic index foods.

Monday – Saturday
- Calories in parentheses to the right -
Breakfast (405):
3/4 cup oatmeal (225)
2 heaping tblspns flax seed meal (60)
1 scoop protein powder (120)
½ tsp cinnamon (0)

AM Snack (222):
8oz sugar free, low fat yogurt with heaping tbsp protein powder (170)
½ grapefruit (52)

Lunch (264):
½ skinless chicken breast, grilled (142)
8oz sugar free, low fat yogurt (90)
4oz broccoli, steamed (32)

PM snack (222):
8oz sugar free, low fat yogurt with heaping tbsp protein powder (170)
½ grapefruit (52)

Dinner (425-574):
1 skinless chicken breast, grilled (286)
or
4 – 6oz salmon fillet, grilled (232 – 348)
or
5.3oz extra lean turkey burger, grilled (200)
½ tomato, sliced (10)
4oz broccoli, steamed (32)
1oz walnuts (183)

Daily Total: 1587 – 1736 calories

To reduce calories down to 1,400, just cut the ¾ cup of oatmeal for breakfast down to ½ cup and eat only ½ a chicken breast for dinner.

On Sunday, completely go off this diet, and eat tons of junk. Well, not tons of junk, but you can eat up to 3,000 calories, and much of it should be of the simple sugar variety, and starches such as pasta. If you love spaghetti, here’s your chance to pig out on it. Eating like this one day a week will do a few things, such as keep your body from trimming back your metabolic rate to conserve until more prosperous days are back again. It will also help normalize levels of a hormone called leptin, which help to control hunger. See my post on leptin control for more on how this can keep your body fat levels low.

Follow this diet for 4 – 6 weeks.

While also doing th exercise section to follow:

Quick Weight Loss Exercise Section -

Fast Weight Loss Cardio -
Before breakfast, 6 days a week, 45 – 60 minutes of cardio in the “fat burning zone”, where your body is operating at approximately 65% – 70% of it’s maximum heart rate. To find your target heart rate for this, see my previous post on target heart rate for fat loss. It is important that you do this before you eat breakfast so your body is metabolizing fat for energy rather than the carbohydrates you just ate for breakfast.

Resistance Training -
Weight training, along with diet, is the very foundation for fat loss. Building muscle that keeps your metabolic fires burning is incumbent upon you if you want to keep from having to slave away doing cardio for the rest of your life to fend off fat. Don’t get me wrong, cardio definitely has it’s place keeping your heart healthy and increasing your endurance, but after you drop this initial weight, you can concentrate more on short, intense weight training sessions instead of long, grueling cardio workouts.

It isn’t just me saying that weight training will increase your metabolism and help reduce body fat percentage, either. A recent Boston University Medical School study published in the journal Cell Metabolism revealed that resistance training did increase metabolism and help in burning body fat, in addition to increasing strength.

Another study, published in 2000 and performed by the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Ohio University’s Athens campus entitled “Effects of High-Intensity Resistance Training on Untrained Older Men. I. Strength, Cardiovascular, and Metabolic Response” demonstrated that even previously untrained, older men will get tremendous increases in strength and decreases in body fat percentage from doing resistance training exercises with a repetition range of 6 – 8.

Still further evidence of weight training’s efficacy in terms of increasing metabolic activity for hours after training has ceased is provided by another 2000 study, this one authored by Drs Osterberg and Melby and published in the “International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism” examined females in their mid 20’s. It looked at one of the standards I like for measuring metabolic rate increases; excess postexercise oxygen consumption (EPOC).

In this study EPOC was measured at specific intervals after the exercise period was over. Again, resistance training showed a great ability to increase metabolic activity for many hours after the training period was complete. In this case, the training translated into significant body composition improvements.

Here is a great workout to get you started on your fast weight loss program. You’ll need only four things to build muscle: Sleep, nutrition, recovery period between training sessions, and of course, intense training to stimulate growth.

Stay tuned for a more on exactly how to lift to maximize your results while minimizing effort.

Fast Weight Loss Weight Training Workout Program (5 day cycle)-

Day 1                    (# of Sets x # of reps in that set)
Bench Press                1 x 16
1 x 10
3 x 6

Incline Bench Dumbbell Press    3 x 6

Overhead Dumbbell Press        3 x 6

Upright Rows            3 x 6

Day 2 – rest

Day 3
Squats                1 x 16
1 x 12
1 x 10
3 x 6

Leg Press                3 x 8

Dumbbell Deadlifts        3 x 8

Seated Rows                3 x 6

Pull Ups / Pull Downs        3 x 8
(do pull downs with so you
can use less than your body
weight if you can’t do pull
ups)

Day 4 – rest
Day 5 – rest

Use enough weight that you can easily complete the sets of 16 repetitions, and enough that you can complete the sets of 10 or 12 reps with some difficulty. The sets of 6 or 8 reps should be done with enough weight that you can barely complete the first set of 6 reps.

Sleep 8 hours a night during this weight loss program, drink plenty of pure water (at least 6 12oz glasses per day. You’ll also get water in your food.)    every day, and follow the dietary recommendations. This is the fastest way to lose weight and keep it off. After the 6 weeks of this program, you can cut back on the cardio training to twice or three times per week of high intensity interval training, which I’ll discuss more thoroughly in a future post, but you can do more in less time with H.I.I.T., something I am a big fan of.

Keep up  the weight training though, and switch up things every 4 weeks or so to take advantage of the muscle confusion principle, and prevent plateaus. For more on how to lose weight quickly and keep it off forever, see more posts at:

Weight Training Routines to Gain Muscle and Lose Fat

Tips on How To Lose Weight

Quick Fat Burning Exercises

How Much Protein Do I Need?

You know, you can build muscle without weights. It’s true. Some of the most famous athletes of all time looked like they could bench press a truck, yet never touched a weight. Probably the best known of these is NFL star Herschel Walker,

who built plenty of muscle using only bodyweight resistance exercises. He didn’t use weights at all until he entered the NFL, but by then, his physique was already incredibly well developed.

Unless you have similar genes, and follow a workout similar to Herschel’s, don’t expect to look like him unless you follow a high intensity weight training program for years. However, even with no weights, you can still make some tremendous progress, and develop a nice symmetrical build with a fair amount of muscle, and low body fat (requires the proper diet).

Here is a great program to build muscle without weights. If you don’t have access to weights or any fitness equipment, these exercise will pack on the good pounds. You’ll have to train a bit differently that you would with traditional weight training, though. One disadvantage is that you may find your workouts take a bit longer, and you may have to use some creativity.

Decline Push Ups With Blocks – These are push ups with your feet elevated. Getting them about a foot off the floor works great, but you can change it up every so often to keep your muscles guessing and growing. This exercise is analogous to doing incline bench presses, except that you’re pushing up your body weight. Place your hands on wide, stable blocks about 4” high. This lets you go down farther without your head hitting the ground for a greater range of motion. You can also use raised push up handles if you happen to have some laying around. If you can do more than 25 of these with no added weight, you will really benefit from wearing a backpack loaded with books, soup cans, or rocks to increase the intensity.

Dips – Dips are one of the best upper body exercises of all time. One huge bonus, and essential for the purposes of this post, is that you need no other weights to get a great workout. You can change the angle of your body and the width of your hands to hit your muscles differently. Lean forward more to shift the emphasis from the triceps to the chest. You can do them using a bench, or with some sort of parallel bar arrangement.  Each will target your chest, shoulders, and triceps differently.

If you start getting to where you can do 20 or 25 of these, put on that backpack, and try it again. One caveat with respect to dips. Make sure you go down far enough, so that your upper arms are past parallel with the ground. Be careful however, dips can aggravate shoulder problems with some people. Take it slow and easy, and discontinue doing them if you start having shoulder problems.

Wide Grip Pull Ups In Front -  One of the all time great back builders. This will get you that “V” back look. Most people never need to add any weight for these, because to do them correctly your body weight will usually suffice. If you can do more than 15 of these, use the backpack trick to add some weight.

Just what is “doing them correctly”, anyway?  Make sure you get full range of motion. Grab the bar about 3 feet apart, with your palms away from you. Hang until you are at full extension, then pull yourself up so the the bar touches your upper chest. Concentrate on feeling your lats squeeze as you go up. Use good form on this one. There is a strong tendency to cheat and use all sorts of other body movements to complete your reps. Make sure your legs don’t move during these. Let them hang straight down, or keep them bent, but don’t use leg movement to help you. NOTE: You can actually use some additional movement to help you complete a few extra reps, but only after you have gone to failure using good form.

Chin Ups – Another great back exercise, with more emphasis shifted from the lats to the biceps. This time grab the bar with your palms facing you about body width apart (about 14” – 18”). As with wide grip pull ups, let yourself hang all the way down, and make sure you come all the way up. Concentrate on feeling the contraction in the muscles you’re trying to work, i.e. the back and biceps. At the completion of  the “up’ phase, your chin should be above the bar. No cheating please, except to squeeze out a couple of intensity boosting reps.

Squats – Keep your feet a few inches wider than your natural standing posture. Normally about 12” – 18” is fine. It si very important to concentrate on using good form so you do not injure your lower back. You want to squat down so that your upper thighs are parallel with the floor. Do not let your butt come up first, then use your lower back to lift the rest of the way. Decrease the angles of both your hips and your knees evenly when performing each rep. Hold a 5 gal bucket of water in each hand to increase intensity if your rep range starts getting too high.

This is one exercise where you may be held back by not using additional weight. If you are overweight, or have not trained your legs very much, your body weight may be all you  need. Your legs have a tremendous capacity for strength however, so before too long you may need to use the backpack trick to add some weight.

Hill Sprints – If you have access to a relatively steep hill, a few (4 – 6) sets of 50 yard sprints up it will definitely pack some muscle on your lower body. You’ll get cardio benefits too, as hill sprints amount to interval training. Sprint up for about 50 meters as fast as you can, then walk down and repeat the process. You’ll notice your quads a’ burnin’ during the trip back down. If you’re running these on grass, wearing football or soccer cleats really helps with the traction.

Crunches – While not, as I demonstrated in my post on most effective ab exercise as few weeks ago, the most effective ab exercise, the basic crunch still a lot going for it, and if you don’t have access to any fitness equipment, you can still get some benefit from doing them, as your abs will no doubt attest to after a few sets..

Chair Knee Raises -  Sit on the front edge of a dining room chair. Grasp the edges of the chair by your butt, lean back so your body is about 15 degrees away from vertical. Keep your feet together and extend your legs out., then retract them back until your thighs are vertical. This is great for both your obliques and abs. Do about 20 or 25 reps. It’s about as close to captain’s chair knee raises as you can get without having a captain’s chair.

Here is the Build Muscle Without Weights program: (remember to warm up first, then take it slow to avoid injury)

Day 1
Dips – 5 sets to failure
Decline Push Ups With Blocks – 3 sets to failure
Wide Grip Pull Ups In Front – 5 sets to failure
Chin Ups – 3 sets to failure

Day 2 – rest

Day 3
Hill Sprints – 6 x 50 meter sprints
Squats – 8 sets to failure
Crunches – 4 sets to failure
Chair Knee Raises – 4 sets to failure

Day 4 – rest

Day 5 -
Crunches – 4 sets to failure
Chair Knee Raises – 4 sets to failure

Day 6
Dips – 5 sets to failure
Decline Push Ups With Blocks – 3 sets to failure
Wide Grip Pull Ups In Front – 5 sets to failure
Chin Ups – 3 sets to failure

Day 7 – rest

Remember to eat properly if you are trying to build muscle without weights (or with them, for that matter). Have a protein supplement before going to bed, and one after your workout. Eat protein in the morning as well, either eggs, or a protein supplement of some kind. Many people that are training do not get adequate protein distribution.

You want your protein intake well distributed throughout the day, taking in the amount your body can assimilate at any one time, but no more. This is different for every person, but a general rule is 1/4g/lb of lean body mass at any one sitting. So, for example, if you are 200lb man with 15% body fat, you have a lean body mass of approximately 170 lbs. 170/4 = 42.5g. That means you can eat roughly 42 grams of protein at each meal.

The point with regards to eating is that you should spread your meals out so that your body can maximize nutrient assimilation and metabolic rate, and minimize fat storage. Strive for at least 5 meals every day.

Get at least 7 hours of sleep every night, preferably 8. I posted about the importance of getting enough sleep a few weeks ago. You muscles grow when you sleep, and your HGH secretion happens then as well.

That about wraps it up for today. So, you really can get pretty darn ripped, and build substantial muscle without weights. You’ll have to change up your workout obviously, but if you do everything right, you will gain muscle.

Have a great Christmas!

If you love yogurt, you may want to make it at home. Yes, you really can make the stuff you find in those little, 6oz plastic cups right in your very own kitchen. If you don’t like it all that much, you may well want to learn to like it when you see how much it can impact your fat loss and muscle building program. The advantage of having your own yogurt maker is that you can add (or not add) whatever you want, and make your own special blend to taste exactly how you like it. Just why would you bother making yogurt, anyway?

Yogurt is something of a fitness and health wonder food. In one study, conducted a the University of Tennessee, the fat loss and muscle benefits of yogurt were nothing short of astounding. The study examined two groups of dieters, one whose diets included 3 servings of light yogurt each day, and the control group, who did not. The yogurt eating group lost 22% more weight than the control group. That in itself is a great result, but the real surprise was that the yogurt eating group lost an amazing 61% more fat than the control group!

That’s some pretty powerful stuff. So, what do you need to do to make it at home? The first ting you’ll need  to do is get a yogurt maker. They are pretty affordable, generally ranging in cost between $25 and $75. Nothing too exotic here. You can get machines that will make it either frozen or non-frozen. For the purposes of enhancing the fat burning qualities of your diet, I recommend the non-frozen variety. One big advantage if making your own yogurt is that you can use your choice of ingredients, and ensure that everything is fresh, with no added preservatives or chemicals. For me the biggest advantage is that you can your yogurt with your own choice of sweetener, such as stevia, and stay far away from the high fructose corn sweetener that you find in so many of the store bought brands.

Most of these yogurt makers are very easy to use; simply heat the appropriate amount of milk to about 180 deg F, cool it to a certain temperature (typically about 110 deg F), mix it with a few tblsp of plain yogurt or yogurt starter, pour the mixture in the machine, plug it in, and you’re about 8 hours away from delicious yogurt. Refrigerate it for a few hours before you eat it, and yes, you must keep it refrigerated or it will spoil in a hurry; no preservatives, remember? You can set it to ferment for longer or less time, depending on the consistency and tartness you prefer. Some people like to add powdered milk to make the finished yogurt creamier.

You’ll want to look at a couple features when evaluating potential yogurt makers for purchase. Capacity is important. If you’re living in an apartment by yourself, you’ll obviously need to make less than if you are making for a hungry family of 6. Thankfully, these machines come in a variety of sizes, from under a quart up to around half a gallon. Some of the makers use a single vessel, while others use multiple containers. If you’re opposed to using a plastic container, some come with glass vessels, and it is possible to substitute a glass canning jar for the plastic with some of the units. One advantage to the machines with multiple containers is that you can make many different flavors at once, or you can make different batches with different textures or tartnesses at the same time.

Keeping consistent temperature for the entire incubation period is vital to make good yogurt. It is supposed to hold at 110 deg F for the entire period, so the accuracy of the thermostat control is very important. That is one of the reasons why, although you can make your own yogurt in an oven, the results will often be inconsistent. The temperature must also be absolutely even throughout the entire area, and ovens often have relative hot and cold spots that prevent your yogurt from setting up as well as it should.

Highly rated yogurt makers come from manufacturers such as Yogourmet, Cuisipro, Waring Pro, Esigo, and Salton.  The choices you’ll have to make when choosing your machine are:
- Single vessel, or multiple cups
- Capacity
- Brand
- Frozen capability – will it let you make the yogurt, then freeze it while stirring, like an ice cream maker?
- Glass or plastic containers?

There are a large variety of these on Amazon.com, and the reviews on almost all the yogurt makers are overwhelmingly positive. Unless you are allergic to dairy products, you should add 3 or 4 servings of yogurt to your diet every day to help burn fat and build muscle. That will cost about $2.50 – $3.00 per day if you buy yours at the store, and you’ll still have to deal with artificial ingredients, high fructose corn sweetener, sugar, or a combination of the three. Make your own and you’ll cut your costs by about 60%, allowing you to pay for your yogurt maker in a month, then that extra money will go straight to your bank account, and you’ll be eating better yogurt to boot!

To check out Amazon’ selection and their huge amount of consumer reviews
click here

Let’s face it, not everyone wants to or can afford to work out at a club. For a number of reasons many people want or need to work out at home. If you want to get in a great workout at home, you’re going to need some gear. Here is the best home fitness equipment, so you can start losing that layer of fat and adding muscle in all the right places.

One of the secrets to dropping fat is that you have to add muscle. Muscle is like the key to fat loss. It literally forces your body to burn more calories, so everything else being equal, the more muscle you have packed onto your frame, the higher your metabolic rate will be. That is a great thing, because the higher your metabolic rate, the more calories you are going to burn 24/7.

Losing fat is a numbers game. Burn more calories than you eat, and the weight will come off. Actually, it is more than fat coming off that you should be concerned about. You can be 6′ tall and 225 lbs and look great like a linebacker or look like the Michelin man. It is your body composition that you have to worry about.

If you are going to be trying to get on the good side of the body composition equation while working out at home the big thing most people have against them is the relative lack of space. Even if you dedicate an entire spare bedroom to build your home gym, that is a tiny fraction of the space at even the most modest health club. It is even small by the standards of the personalized health studios.

The lack of space means that you’ll have to make the most efficient use of what you have. To do that you’ll have to look at two factors; what is the most effective workout, and what fitness equipment do you need to do it in the space you’ve allocated to your home gym.

For fat loss and muscle gain, the most effective exercises for the time spent are typically heavy, compound movements, such as the bench press, squat, and dead lift. You may not have the space or finances to dedicate to a full sized squat rack, so thankfully there is a way around it. Even if you do the big three compound exercises, you’ll probably also want to do some additional exercises.

There are a few reasons for this. One is that you want to get complete, symmetrical development by training all your muscles and not letting any one muscle group out pace the others. The other reason is that it has been demonstrated that it is more effective to change up the exercises in your workout every so often. This keeps you muscles guessing so that they have to constantly adapt.

Hypertrophy, the fancy name for muscle growth is your body’s adaptive response to stimulus, in this case resistance training. The more you keep it guessing about what is coming next the more it has to adapt and keep adapting in order to be ready for whatever lies ahead. The way it does this in a training situation is by increasing the size and strength of your skeletal muscles.

Every extra pound of muscle you get not only makes you stronger and look better (to a point), it burns another 5 – 15 calories per day, some studies place the number even high, as far as 50 calories per day. What ever the true number, numerous scientific studies have demonstrated that building muscle keeps the body’s metabolism elevated to a greater degree, as measured by excess postexercise oxygen consumption (EPOC).

EPOC, as the name suggests is a measurement of the amount of oxygen your body consumes after your exercise session has ended. The increased oxygen consumption indicates that  your body’s metabolism is elevated and your body is working on replenishing what was lost, damaged, and destroyed during your workout. In addition to this repair procedure, which can take several days, your body has to do several things in order to recover from an intense exercise session. It must reoxygenate your blood, restore your circulatory hormones, replenish your energy resources, and return your body temperature, respiration, and heart rate to normal. The energy it expends to do these things accounts for EPOC. The larger the measured EPOC response, the larger the metabolic increase.

Studies that investigated EPOC have concluded that high intensity interval training has the largest effect on EPOC (1999 study by Haltom et al.), and that resistance training will give a larger EPOC response that aerobic training (1998 study by Burleson et al.). A 2000 study by Osterberg and Melby on women that performed 10 different weight training exercises including the bench press, bent over row, and leg extensions, showed that the test subjects resting metabolic rate was still 4.2% higher 16 hours after the end of the training session than its’ level before.

You need to do a high intensity, high volume, medium repetition, high weight, training session to get the maximum benefit. Can you do this at home on home fitness equipment? Of course, but you are going to need quite an array of it in order to do everything.

Here is my pick for the best home fitness equipment to accomplish your goals. It was evaluated for versatility, value, volume and effectiveness. The VVVE parameters, as it were. The top 3 pieces of home fitness equipment for your home gym are:

1)    Adjustable dumbbells – I have posted about these versatile gym wonders before. They can virtually hide in a corner, yet they can let you do almost any conceivable exercise, when coupled with an incline bench, which a few of the adjustable dumbbell sets include as part of the package. They are great for two reasons; they fit a whole dumbbell series into the corner of your room, and they are far less expensive than buying an entire series. I have had my 5 – 90lb PowerBlocks for years and they haven’t let me down yet. Different variations of adjustable dumbbells are also made/marketed by IronMaster, Weider, Reebok, Lifesmart, and Bayou.

2)    Fitness ball – Once again, it is the same criteria that pushes the fitness ball to the front of the pack. They let you do any number of exercises, and if you saw my post on the best ab exercises a few weeks ago, you know that crunches on a fitness ball are one of the most effective ab exercises. You can also use them for all manner of other exercises and even as a makeshift bench for presses, but be very careful. You can really hurt yourself if you try to use heavy weights with a ball in this manner, because they are an unstable base.
3)    Treadmill – Cardio may not be my favorite fat burning methodology, but it sure has it’s place for increasing your endurance, and improving your cardio vascular health, plus it does burn fat. I would have put an elliptical trainer on this list, but although they are more effective than a treadmill, they tend to run about twice the price of a decent treadmill, so I went that direction instead. Why even have a piece of cardio equipment on here at all? After all, the road is free, and you can go running any time for nothing.

In some places, running or doing any exercise outside is just not a very real option. Tried running outside in Phoenix, Tucson, or Las Vegas from June through September? How about Calgary, Minneapolis, or Fairbanks in December, Jamuary, or Feburary? Seattle, during the rainy months? Exactly! Many people will need to have some cardio option on a climate controlled environment, plus you can crank the tunes or watch TV while you do your cardio that way.

That round out my list for the best home fitness equipment to put in your home gym. They will help you add that all important muscle, and burn fat so everyone can see it.

Here are some great resources where you can save money on equipment for your home gym:
(if you buy anything there, I’ll get a few bucks to help keep the blog going)

Amazon.com
Deep Discounts on Home Fitness Equipment

Smooth Fitness
Up to 45% off treadmills with a lifetime warranty

BigFitness.com
Wholesale Fitness Equipment

One of the most difficult things to do when you’re trying to lose fat is to lose the fat and maintain the muscle. Here is how to lose fat and maintain muscle at the same time. In fact, you can even lose fat and gain muscle. How would that be?

Losing fat often entails losing muscle for two reasons; restricted calorie diets that contain insufficient nutrients to support muscle tissue, and two sides of the same coin, training. Many people train incorrectly when they are looking to lose fat, and that costs them valuable muscle tissue. They either over train when they are trying to lose fat, they rely on diet only, or they do cardio training exclusively in their quest for fat loss.

Any of these mistakes are muscle killers, and that’s a cryin’ shame, because it is the muscle that keeps your metabolic rate elevated, and causes you to burn more calories and fat 24/7, not simply when you’re in the gym, on the bike or slogging through yet another mile on the trail.

In many cases increased fat is associated with reduced activity levels. It is easy to fall into the trap, what with the demands of job, family, and X-Box, and before long, the pounds begin to pile on. It is not simply the fat increase, it is the decrease in skeletal muscle tissue that often accompanies fat gain. This decrease is what can be so devastating to your ability to lose fat and lead an active lifestyle in the future.

So, how can you lose your fat and either maintain, or better still, increase your muscle?

1 – Maintain sufficient nutrition and calories to sustain muscle growth. One of the primary mistakes people make when they begin to lose weight is to cut back too far on their calories, and important nutrients. This will cause initial weight loss, but it deprives your body of the essential nutrients it needs to support muscle maintenance, and in a better world, muscle growth. Eat 6 small, highly nutritious meals every day. Never go more than about 4 hours (during your waking hours) without eating. This helps assure maximum nutrient absorption and utilization. In addition, eating on such a schedule helps your body keep its’ metabolic rate elevated.

If you are lifting weights in a high intensity training program, balance your meals to include (by calorie content) about 40% protein, 15% carbohydrates (low glycemic index carbs derived from vegetables and whole grains), and 45% healthy fats that are rich in Omega-3 fatty acids and low in saturated fat. Don’t eat a low fat diet, like we all did in the ’80’s. It is not the best for your health and you will shortchange your fat loss efforts. You need to eat fat to burn fat. Two great sources of Omega-3 fatty acids are fish oil supplements and flax seed meal. I eat a nice sized helping of golden flax seed meal with my oatmeal and protein powder every morning. Try it!

Several recent studies have indicated that low carbohydrate diets are very effective for losing fat while gaining muscle mass, if the proper training regimen is followed. One such study, conducted by Volek et al. at the Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Connecticut, found that “Considering the effectiveness of very low carbohydrate diets (VLCDs) in promoting fat loss and improving the metabolic syndrome, discounting or condemning their use is unjustified.”

To determine how many calories you need, see my post on How Many Calories Should I Eat to Lose Weight.

2 – Make sure you get enough protein. This is a corollary to number 1 above, but it is easy to get insufficient protein to support muscle growth if you’re trying to lose fat. If you are in a high intensity resistance training program (and you probably should be if you want to multiply your fat loss results) you should eat about 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. If you’re training really hard, such as at competitive athlete levels, you can up this to 1gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. Get your protein from a good quality protein powder, plenty of fish (check for safety to ensure the type of fish you eat is not contaminated with heavy metals such as mercury)

If you do not know how much lean body mass you have, you’ll need to get tested somewhere, or purchase one of the scales that uses low current electricity to measure your body fat. This is a great idea anyway, because it will let you see exactly how much fat you’ve lost and if you are gaining or losing muscle. This knowledge allows you to adjust your training and diet programs accordingly.

3 – Use high intensity resistance training to ensure you help keep your metabolism high and have adequate muscle stimulation to avoid muscle wasting. High intensity resistance training with reasonably heavy weights will give your muscles the stimulation they require to initiate hypertrophy. That is the big, fancy word kinesiologists use to mean your muscles are growing. You can use weights, resistance bands, or body weight exercises, although in many cases you’ll want to use a combination of all three. If you are extremely heavy, check with your doctor to make sure you can safely engage in an exercise program without damaging your knees, heart, or other body parts.

Warm up your muscles and joints by doing some high repetition (14 – 20 reps) sets with very light weights before you begin. This will get blood flowing trough your muscles to help prevent injury. Do relatively slow movements on the down or in phase and somewhat faster movements on the actual lifting portion of the movement. Proper form is essential at all times. Don’t jerk, fish around, or use any Saturday Night Fever gyrations to help you lift the weight, or you can easily tweak something or get more seriously injured. After your warm up is complete, choose a weight you can barely lift 7 times on the first set. Do 4 total sets of each exercise. Personally, I’ve had the best results doing 2 or 3 exercises per body part. You may be need to do more, or be able to do only one or two exercises per body part. For example, if I could get maximum results by doing only 4 set s of dumbbell bench presses for chest, I damn sure would.

4 -  Don’t over train or under train. Kind of like Goldilocks and the  3 bears, you’re shooting for “just right”. You need adequate recovery time to allow your muscles to recover form your workouts and grow. The harder you train, the longer you should wait between workouts to allow adequate recovery time. Some people have a better ability to recover from training sessions than others. All things being equal, the older you get, the longer it takes to recover. In most cases 5 – 7 days is a perfect interval between training the same body parts. Some people require more than this and some people can train each body part more frequently.

5 – Get plenty of sleep every night. Your muscles do most of their recovery and growing when you’re asleep, so don’t shoot yourself and your progress in the foot by not getting at least  7 – 8 hours of quality sleep every night. Studies have discovered that sleep, or lack thereof, affects protein synthesis and growth hormone production. Obviously, these things are vital to get your maximum muscle growth. In fact, human growth hormone (HGH) levels are elevated during sleep, and the longer you sleep, the longer they stay that way. HGH has been shown to have a positive effect on skeletal muscle and lowering body fat levels. Since almost half of your total HGH production happens during the 3rd and forth REM sleep stages, it stands to reason that spending little time in these stages will dramatically decrease your body’s HGH production.

A 2007 Stanford University study demonstrated that male test subjects over 60 years of age gained almost 5 pounds of muscle and lost almost 5 pounds of fat as the direct result of HGH therapy. HGH therapy in young  patients on the other hand, has been theoretically linked to several problems including certain types of cancers and diabetes. Naturally maximizing your own body’s natural production of the hormone has not been shown to cause such problems, however.

6 -  Stay well hydrated. Your muscles are made up of mostly water, so you obviously need plenty of the stuff to keep the functioning at their peak, and to make sure they continue growing. There are other great reasons to drink plenty of water when you’re trying to lose fat. Your water intake should be about 96oz of water per day, including the water you get from your food. Heavy training and hot weather will increase this requirement. Basically, you should drink enough water that you’re urine is consistently pretty close to clear.

One reason is simply that drinking cold water requires your body to burn calories in order to heat it to your body temperature. Those are calories you would have otherwise had to cut back on or work off using some other method, like 3 sets of dumbbell presses, or something.

The big reason that you should drink enough water is that your liver, which is tasked with most of your body’s fat metabolization, needs enough water to function efficiently. Too little water and the liver not only doesn’t function as efficiently as it could, it will spend much of it’s time assisting the kidneys, which also need plenty of water in order to do their work. Too little water ad the kidneys look to the liver for help, which means it is not doing all it can to help you burn fat.

These 6 things are essential to help you burn fat and maintain muscle. Actually, if you do them correctly, you should be able to burn fat and increase muscle, and wouldn’t that make you look a damn sight better! I know it would me.

What? Elliptical trainers are a waste of time when it comes to burning fat? Why are all the people at your gym lined up to ride these things for an hour if it doesn’t burn fat? Well, to be honest, riding an elliptical trainer, or any other cardio machine, for an hour will burn fat and help you get lean. The problem is that if you do that you just wasted an hour – if burning fat in the most efficient way possible is your goal.

If you are trying to lose fat, shouldn’t doing it in the most efficient way possible be your goal? I would think so, unless you’re a masochist. The problem with elliptical trainers and just about every other cardio machine is that doing an hour of cardio does burn fat, but resistance training causes your body to burn more over the course of a day, and you’ll have to spend less time exercising to do it.

Ellipticals do have their place, and they do burn fat and according to some recent studies they make your body use calories more effectively than an exercise bike does. What is their place, if not to burn fat? As the name implies, cardio training is great for increasing your cardio vascular health, and improving your endurance. These are both worthy goals, to be sure, and if you want to live longer you should grunt it out doing some sort of cardio training, but leave the fat loss training in the weight room.

Here is what you should not be doing: Spending an hour watching ESPN or TMG while you plod along on your favorite cardio machine, pausing every so often to stare at that cute girl/guy’s ass on the machine on the other side of the gym. Nothing wrong with the ass staring, but did you know you can get more cardio fitness benefit by training only about a tenth as long?

Several studies have indicated the effectiveness of high intensity interval training , compared to traditional steady state cardio workouts. A 2006 study by researcher MJ Gibala in the kinesiology department at Ontario’s McMaster University looked at just such a question. The study followed 16 physically active men, approximately 21 years old through a series of either steady state cardio training or high intensity interval training sessions over a period of 2 weeks.

The results are eye opening (all the better to stare with?). The high intensity interval group did an average of 5 repeats of a 30 second on, 4 minute rest cycle at maximum activity level. That means their actual exercise time was only about 2-1/2 minutes! Their total time from the beginning of the first activity interval to the completion of the last was only18-1/2 minutes.

The “I love spending all my time in the gym” group, on the other hand, did an average of 105 minutes per training session at 65% of their maximum exertion level, Sure that is easier, but over an hour and a half??

Who do think got more out of their workouts? If you guessed the 18 minute group, you’d be right on the money, sort of. What the researchers found was that, although the high intensity training group did an astounding 90% less work than the steady state group, and spent about 1/5 the time doing it, their muscular adaptive and cardio response was the about same, within the statistical limitations of the test.

That means that for you to get the best elliptical trainer workout, use high intensity interval training. Either program it to alternate between your maximum intensity and about 10% intensity in the 30 second / 4 minute protocol, or just do the extreme intensity 30 second interval, then get off the machine and walk around for 4 minutes, and get back on for the next 30 second interval. Make sure you warm up for a few minutes before you begin the high intensity interval work.

That kind of high intensity, relatively short duration workout will get all you time pressed people the maximum cardio and muscle stimulation in the minimum amount of time. Hop to it! You can also check out my earlier post on the benefits of elliptical trainers.

24hr Fitness Club, home to the TV reality series “The Biggest Loser” is having a membership special offer just in time for that new year’s resolution you’re probably crafting. Although there is something to be said for having a well equipped home gym, some people (myself included) find it easier to work out in a fitness club.

For me the reason I get a better workout at a club all comes down to commitment. When working out at home, you’re faced with so many distractions, from your kids, to the phone ringing, to catching that great play on the game your son is watching. You have to stay focused on your workout for the entire time, and keep the intensity at peak levels.

When I work out at a club, I am committed the second I walk out the door. I know I will be working out and there will be nothing to take me away from it. It helps me to focus. The facilities most modern health clubs throw at you are just an added bonus. The biggest problem with working out at a gym for most people is usually the money.

That money problem may be gone for you. In the finest holiday spirit it seems 24hr Fitness is playing Santa and dropping a special membership price on us for the holidays. It’s kind of a Black Friday special, if you will. For a limited time they have an all club sport membership for only $199 for an entire year. That’s only about $16 a month. HURRY though, it ends Nov 30th!

1 year ALL Club Sport membership at 24 Hour Fitness for $199. Valid 11/19-11/30

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!

In just a couple of weeks it will be that Thursday many of us in the U.S. gather together with family to watch football and eat a really big dinner (or two). If you’re trying to lose fat or just generally eat a healthier diet, here are some healthy Thanksgiving dinner recipes.

From a diet perspective, Thanksgiving actually does have a lot going for it. For starters, everyone’s favorite dinner mainstay, the turkey, is actually pretty healthy fare. It’s loaded with protein and is fairly low in fat. It’s low fat if you don’t deep fry it, which is growing in popularity. If you must deep fry your turkey, make sure you use one of the healthier oils, such as virgin peanut oil. Peanut oil is better able to withstand the high heat required than are other oils, such as olive oil. Although deep frying your turkey makes for a very tasty bird, it also adds a ton of calories to what is typically a healthy, low calorie T-day dinner course.

Roast turkey is a healthy enough main course. What changes it into something that your body could maybe do without is the addition of the wonderful, brown gravy that we all love to slather our Thanksgiving day food with.

Something our family has done for years is have seafood for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Sure, that’s blasphemous, but a cooler full of freshly steamed Dungeness crab tastes fantastic, and if you can resist the urge to dip it in garlic butter, it’s a healthy alternative to poultry. Baked or poached salmon is another taste treat you can have as the alternative  or companion to your giant gobbler. The downside to seafood is that it has gotten very expensive in the last year or so, and sad as it is, some people just aren’t big seafood fans.

Here are some great recipes you can make for Thanksgiving dinner to go with your roast turkey and/or seafood that will overwhelm your taste buds without overly expanding your waistline.

Chunky Tomato Salad Recipe
Here is a great salad recipe that will add to your dinner plenty of taste without so many of the carbs that are so prevalent in traditional Thanksgiving day meals. Sure, dinner rolls and stuffing are great, but they are loaded with white flour type simple sugar carbs that you should be trying you should be trying your darndest to avoid.

Chunky Tomato Salad 2 cups fresh tomatoes – cut
in ½” cubes ¼ cup scallions – sliced
1 cup mushrooms – sliced 1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon vinegar1 tablespoon water 1 teaspoon dried basil
1/8 teaspoon dried oregano ½ teaspoon splenda – or your choice
salt and pepper to taste
How to Prepare:
Combine veggies. In small bowl mix rest of ingredients.
Add to veggies. Toss gently till spices are evenly spread thru out. Chill overnight.

Double Cranberry Salad Recipe
Look, a Thanksgiving themed salad with everyone’s favorite little, red berry.

2 ½ cups Diet Iced Botanicals(Cranberry-Raspberry) – zero carbs
1 large package Cranberry Jell-O ( about 8 grams of carbs)
½ cup chopped celery1/2 cup chopped pecans 1 ½ cups cottage cheese
1/8 cup non-fat cream cheese
How to Prepare:
Bring Botanicals to boil. Stir in Jell-O until dissolved. Chill until partially set
(thickened –but not solid Pour ½ in 8×8x2 inch glass pan. Stir ½ cup celery &
½ cup nuts into pan―add additional celery & nuts to remaining Jello. Chill 8×8
pan & remaining Jell-O mixture—until Jell-O is firm.Mix together cottage cheese
& non-fat cream cheese—place on top of 8×8 layer of Jell-O. Take remaining Jell-O (if it is firm
warm slightly in microwave & pour over cottage cheese.Chill until firm. Cut into 8
servings.

Semi-Healthy Turkey Gravy Recipe
Ah, the gravy. They don’t call good things in live gravy for nothing. This stuff is just plain fantastic. The problem is that gravy is far less than healthy eating. Here is a gravy recipe that still tastes great, but leaves some of the bad stuff in traditional gravy behind.

Gravy Ingredients:
1 medium-large shallot, peeled and finely chopped
Fresh ground black pepper, to taste
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tblspoons virgin olive oil
6 cups (48 fluid ounces) water, divided
1 tablespoon fresh sage, remove from stem and finely chop
1 tablespoon fresh thyme, remove from stem and finely chop
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, remove from stem and finely chop
1 cup (8 fluid ounces) skim milk
4 cups purified water (use bottled water or filtered drinking water, chlorine makes the gravy taste terrible)
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 turkey neck (from your roasting turkey)

To Prepare the Gravy
Use the turkey neck as part of the base for this gravy. Place it in a pan with the 4 cups of water, then cover it  and let it simmer over low heat for about 1 hour. This is the gravy stock.
Place the turkey roasting pan onto the stove top on medium heat. Add 2 cups of water into the pan. Stir about 5 minutes or until the drippings and browned bits from bottom dissolve.

Place a strainer over a fat separator cup or bowl. Pour pan drippings through strainer. Add enough liquid stock from what you prepared earlier to make 4 cups total when the stock and filtered drippings are combined.
Put the olive oil, garlic and shallots into a saute pan and saute them for a few minutes until the shallots are tender. Set this aside for a few minutes.

You’ll definitely want to remove fat from drippings. To do this, add several ice cubes to the liquid and place stock into freezer for 10 minutes. That will cause the fat to congeal (much as it does in your cardio vascular system),  so you can easily remove it. If you’re using a fat separator cup, pour off stock into another pan. If you’re using a bowl, remove hardened fat with spoon and place the stock into a pan. You should end up with about 4 cups of liquid stock. Put your saucepan with the stock onto the stove top over medium heat.

After placing the saucepan on medium heat, bring it to a slow simmer. Add the rosemary, thyme and sage (yes, like the song) to the simmering stock. Then add the sauted garlic and shallot mixture. Continue simmering until it’s is the stock reduced by 1/4, or until about 3 cups of it remain.

Pour milk into a small bowl. Add cornstarch and stir to mix evenly. Slowly pour milk mixture into the simmering stock, stirring slowly. Bring sauce to a boil and continue to stir until stock thickens and has a nice shine, about 3 to 5 minutes.

Now you’ll have a great tasting gravy that won’t stop your heart. It may slow it a bit, but not like the traditional gravy will.

Cheesy Cajun Meatball Recipe
Okay, I’ll be the first to admit this isn’t a traditional Turkey day menu item, but it tastes great, and people will love having a heaping plate of meatballs in the middle of the table next to the turkey.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 pounds lean ground buffalo meat
1 large egg
8oz Cheddar cheese – cubed and frozen
1-1/2 tablespoons cajun spice
salt — to taste
pepper — to taste

Preparation:
Mix ingredients in large bowl
Form meat mixture into golf ball size meatballs
Carefully push frozen cheddar cubes into the meatballs.
Leave the opening where the cheese went in open so it won’t leak
out when they’re in the oven
Sprinkle with a little more cajun spice
Bake at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes, let ‘em cool for a few minutes, and eat up!

Make a big basket of whole grain dinner rolls to go with these tasty dishes. Don’t forget the sweet potatoes either. Sweet potatoes are not only a traditional Thanksgiving favorite, and taste great, they are far healthier than the taste would lead you to believe. They’re loaded with dietary fiber, and have almost a full complement of amino acids, being just a tiny bit deficient in lysine. They have plenty of vitamin C, and an unbelievable amount of vitamin A, too. In fact only 4oz of baked sweet potatoes give you almost 400% of your USRDA of vitamin A! When baked, their glycemic index is 54, much lower than traditional mashed potatoes, which score a 70.

Thanksgiving Desert
For desert, take some chilled light vanilla yogurt and mix in fresh blueberries, rasberries and strawberries. Add in a touch of real vanilla extract to richen up the taste. Blend it together with some light whipped topping. You can add in a touch of sugar free hazelnut or almond syrup as well. Pour the mixture into glasses or bowls and chill or freeze, depending on your mood. It makes a great tasting, yet fairly healthy desert. You can even use it as pumpkin pie topping. Pumpkin pie is fairly healthy as pies go, and you wouldn’t want to ignore such a strong, old tradition, would you?