Belly Fat Loser

Swimming has many benefits, both exercise and otherwise, but does it really help you lose weight?

Swimming is a wonderful activity that can cool you off on a summer day or be a great way to exercise. The benefits of swimming however, extend far beyond those two popular attributes. From an exercise perspective swimming is fantastic because it is zero impact. If you are heavy or have knee or ankle problems, swimming can be a great way to help rehab or continue your training.

Swimming Benefit 1- Zero Impact

Many a weekend warrior has succumbed to the tribulations of a bum knee. From playing tennis and racquet ball and in shape, to sitting on the couch and gaining weight can be a depressing road to travel. I know many people who have met this fate. If you are used to consistent physical activity such as skiing, basketball, tennis, or any other sport, the transition to couch potato can be brutal and depressing. Swimming can be a great way to maintain your activity level while you’re waiting for the injury to heal.

Swimming Benefit 2 – Great, All Over Exercise

Swimming works many different muscle groups throughout the body. In fact, depending on the stroke used, you can hit just about every muscle group except your calves.

Swimming Benefit 3 – Relaxing Exercise

If you want to get a relaxing form of exercise, it’s tough to beat swimming. Running does it for a few people, but swimming allows you to put your body on autopilot and let your mind drift away.

Swimming Benefit 4 – Cardio-Vascular Training

Swimming is great for your heart and lungs. You can get your heart rate to about any zone you need for your training, and hold it there for as long as you are able. Because it involves so many different muscles, swimming is very effective at increasing your heart rate.

Swimming Benefit 5 – Social Atmosphere

Like other sports such as basketball, tennis, and softball, swimming allows you to congregate with other people that share a common bond (the pool). You can make many friends at the pool. The obvious thing is that you can’t talk while actually swimming, but your opportunities for conversation during a tennis match or competitive hoop session are pretty limited as well.

Swimming Benefit 6 – Builds All Over Muscular Strength

Because swimming works so many different muscles, and because water provides progressive resistance, you can build substantial muscular strength with swimming. Because of the resistance characteristics of water, the faster and harder you push, the harder it pushes back, and the stronger your muscles become.

Swimming Benefit 7 – Weight Loss

Swimming can definitely help you lose weight, however it is not as effective for that as many other forms of exercise. Sure you burn calories when cutting through the water, but it is that very water that prevents swimming from hitting the same level as many land based exercises.

The water keeps your body relatively cool and allows you to regain your body temperature fairly quickly. So, while you’ll expend calories at roughly 3/cal/mile/lb of body weight, you wont keep your metabolic rate elevated for 4 – 24 hours as you would with biking, running, or weight training. For example, if you are a 200lb man, you’d burn about 600 calories by swimming a mile. For one thing, not too many people can swim a mile, at least until they have substantial training behind them. That limits the percentage of people that can use swimming as a good weight loss tool, unless they are willing to fully commit to it.

So, while swimming does have tremendous physical and social benefits, unless you have an injury or other body condition that prevents you from running, biking, playing basketball, tennis, or resistance training, swimming should not be your go to exercise for losing weight. You’ll simply get more weight loss benefits for the time spent by using other activities.

Soccer, Rugby, Real Football (the kind with pads and linebackers), or virtually any other sport requires powerful legs like these in order to excel. Here's how to get them, or just make your legs look a heck of a lot better...

Leg workouts are the key to success for many things in fitness. Weather you’re trying to lose fat, improve strength for football or bump skiing, the right leg workout can make it happen. Maybe you’re a bodybuilder and want to have legs like Tom Platz or Ronnie Coleman; well, you’re in luck, it’s just a few (hundred) leg workouts away.

The fact is that your legs are the foundation of your body. They generate most of the power for athletic endeavors, even those that many people would think are primarily powered by the arms. Throwing a punch in boxing, hitting a baseball, or a swing in tennis are all powered by a strong set of legs and hips, with some rotational core power thrown in for good measure.

If you are trying to burn fat, your legs are the key there too. There is more muscle down under and your largest single muscle is the Gluteus Maximumus, otherwise known as your rear end. Working your legs  burns more calories than any other body part, and will raise your basil metabolic rate more as well. Those two things, but especially raising your metabolic rate, are the keys to losing fat.

One thing to watch for when doing heavy leg work for very long is that it makes you want to eat like a horse all the time. You’ll become a ravenous machine, searching out every last bit of food that’s not tied down. It is definitely something to be aware of  before you start a high intensity leg workout program.

There is a reason for all that hunger, of course. It is because your body is desperately trying to rebuild those large muscle groups. That takes nutrients and calories. It only makes proper eating and supplementation all the more important. There is no sense in killing yourself at the gym, only to sabotage your efforts by not giving your body the resources it needs to get the job done.

One other resource you need to rebuild your legs after a brutal workout is sleep. Sleep is when your body repairs damage and rebuilds things to be better than they were before…better…stronger….faster.

Bonus:
Make sure you incorporate a good stretching program. Not only can it help prevent injuries, but research has

Lying leg curls like these are great for the hamstrings, as you can see.

demonstrated solid strength increases from stretching alone! It essential to get maximum development, strength, and flexibility out of your legs. The bodybuilder more associated with great legs than any other, Tom Platz, advocated warming up, then stretching completely before every leg workout.

Here are some great leg workouts that really work.

Football / Rugby Leg Workout
Football and rugby demand a combination of power and endurance that is biased toward the power side of things. Depending on the position you play, you may need more of one than the other. For example, an O-lineman needs a bit more pure power than does a defensive back, who must actually run 40 – 50 yards on a regular basis, but still be able to deliver jarring hits and jump high when needed.

No matter what your position is though, one thing is key; explosive power. That is what you have to train for. When training your legs for football or rugby, it is essential to develop explosive power, because the other guy will, and one of you is going to be on the ground, or left behind; better him than you.

To develop explosive power, concentrate on going down fairly slowly, pausing at the bottom of the movement, then exploding out as hard as you can. Do this for each of the rep for the sets with less than 10 reps. Take between 90 – 120 seconds from the end of one set to the beginning of the next.

(sets x reps)
Squats
1 x 16
1 x 12
1 x 8
3 x 6

Hack Squats
1 x 10
3 x 6

Squat Jumps
Note: Be very careful doing these. Load a barbell to between 45lbs (only the bar) and 135lbs, depending upon your weight and strength. Start with a barbell in the squat position. Go down until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Hold that position for about 1 second, then explode out as fast as you can, so you leave the floor, if possible.
3 x 5

Leg Curls
3 x 8

Seated Calf Raises
5 x 15

NOTE: You can also do power cleans for legs, an exercise that I’m a huge fan of. It is one of the most complete full body exercises available and can be brutal. The problem with doing power cleans for legs is that typically your legs will out pace your upper body in strength. It then becomes a hen becomes a less effective movement for pure leg development, because you’ll either be lifting a weight that is too light for your legs, or too heavy for your shoulders.

Bodybuilding Leg Workout
So you really do want to have legs like Tom Platz or Ronnie Coleman, don’t you? Here is how to get them. Make sure you

Tom Platz had some of the best legs ever in bodybuilding, and that was 20 years ago!

warm up for about 10 minutes of moderately easy riding (about 40% VO2 max)on a treadmill or stationary bike before you begin this leg routine.

This one is all about building massive size, so you have legs like mighty oak trunks. You’ll get stronger too, but it is about size more than strength, which means you have to cause maximum hypertrophy.

Leave only about 60 – 90 seconds between the end of one set and the start of the next. This is a brutal, high volume workout, that takes every set except the warm up sets to at least one rep past failure. You’ll need a spotter to accomplish this at all, much less safely. Your muscles will be screaming in pain, and you’ll soon follow.

Squats
1 x 16
1 x 12
4 x 8 + 1 – use a weight that lets you barely be able to finish the 8th rep with maximum effort, then do at least one (preferably 2) more with the help of your spotter. Use this same protocol for all of the “+1” sets in this routine.

Leg Press – incline sled variety
3 x 8 + 1

Straight leg dead lifts
1 x 12
4 x 8 + 1

Leg Curls
3 x 8 + 1

Leg Extensions
3 x 8 + 1

Seated Calf Raises
Change the angulation of your feet to hit the calf from different angles and maximize development. Calves are notoriously difficult to build, which accounts for all the bodybuilders out there with small, high calves. Avoid their fate, please.
4 x 12 + 1

Standing Calf Raises
4 x 12 + 1

General Fitness – Improve Appearance Leg Workout

Leg extensions are great to isolate the quads. Pause for about 1 - 2 seconds and squeeze them tight all the way at the top, and your quads will really pop.

High intensity is still the key to getting the maximum benefit in the minimum time, but you don’t have to take nearly the approach that you do for pure bodybuilding. This leg workout will whip your legs into great shape, they will look great, and you’ll definitely perform better on the slopes, courts, or diamond. Leave the same 60 – 90 seconds between sets that you’d use for the body building workout.

Squats – Alternate with 3 sets of 10 lunges every 2 weeks
1 x 16
1 x 12
3 x 8 + 1

Leg Extensions
3 x 10

Leg Curls
3 x 10

Standing Calf Raises
4 x 12

My Leg Workout – I have been playing tennis about 3 – 4 days a week, so that definitely helps the ole’ legs, especially the calves.

Here is what I do for weights:

Leg Press – incline sled variety
Start with 2each 45 pound plates on the sled, then add 2each 45lb plates after each of the first sets, add 4each plates more for the last 3 sets (Total of 12) I am slowly increasing the weight. I try to increase it every time, but have not for the last 2 workouts. Before that I went from using 8 x 45lb plates and 2 x 25 lb plates, to the current 12 x 45 plates for my 3 rep sets in only 10 weeks, so I’ll take a bit of plateau, as long as it’s short.

2 x 16
1 x 15
1 x 12
3 x 3 + 3 (I do 3 reps as explosively as possible, then immediately strip off one plate from each side and do as many more reps as possible, typically 3 – 5 more reps)

Leg Extensions – hold reps at the top for a 1 – 2 second pause.
3 x 10

About every 3rd workout, I’ll throw in a set or two of dumbbell dead lifts too.

I know, I should do more, but time is short.

These are some great leg workouts that will help you meet your fitness goals, no matter what they might be. If you have a leg workout that’s worked well for you, leave it in the comments section so others could benefit from it too.

Have you been trying to lose weight since your TV looked like this? Well, if you've been on the weight loss Yo-Yo, here is the secret to keeping your weight off, and maintining your good health.

It’s no secret; losing weight can be incredibly difficult. Obesity is now one of the most serious health problems in the United States, with approximately one third of the population being classified as obese. A quick look around can help you confirm this for yourself.

Why are so many more people overweight now than 30 years ago? Is it the lack of physically demanding jobs, fewer people smoking, or the rise of the TV/Internet/videogame based culture, where people sit around and do nothing (online Texas hold’em tournaments and X-box Live don’t count as exercise)? It is possible that all of these things play into the trend of rising obesity. Some people are actually successful at taking the excess weight off after they’ve gained it.

For many people however, losing weight is only half the battle. Keeping the weight off after you’ve lost it can be almost as daunting a task. If this is a problem you’re battling now, you can take solace in the fact that you’re not alone. In fact according to several sources, 85% – 95% of people who lost weight on diet gained it back in the next 2 years. Sadly, many people gained back even more than they initially lost.

Predictor of Future Weight Gain

Even more surprising is that many experts are now starting to say that losing weight on a diet is actually one of the strongest predictors of future weight gain. You read that right. If you’ve lost weight on a diet, you are now far more likely to gain weight than if you’d just kept your fat on and never changed your diet at all.

Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology and lead author of a 2007 study on the subject indicated that the results from their research indicate that this is so. Her team’s results are corroborated by other work in the field, including work by a team at the University of North Carolina in 2001, which showed that among white and African American men and women studied “dieting was associated with a larger mean annual weight gain than non-dieting over a period of 6 years “

Keep Your Health From Declining, Even If You Gain Your Weight Back

There is however, something which well correlates to keeping weight from hunting you down like revenuers after a moonshiner. What is this magic bullet, you ask? According to yet another study, this one conducted at the University of Missouri by Tom R Thomas, professor in the Department of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology in the College of Human Environmental Sciences, demonstrated that exercise was the one part of the weight loss equation that could help dieters not only keep off weight, but prevent any number of different diseases and syndromes (there are so many these days).

His research showed declining metabolic health for those participants who did not exercise, and improving health in that area for those who did weather or not they regained their weight. Professor Thomas acknowledged the propensity of dieters to regain their weight, and that it poses significant health concerns. He also indicated that the results of his research indicate that even if some of the weight is gained back after the conclusion of a diet, continued exercise can often reduce or eliminate the negative effects of weight regain.

In his research, participants actually lost and then regained weight on purpose, as part of the test. Shocking as though that sounds, people actually went through the difficulty of losing, knowing they were only going to gain it all back again. Many people gain it back again, but at least they think they are going to keep it off when they are in the process of losing it.

After the weight gain, he divided the subjects into two groups, one who exercised 5 days a week, and another who never exercised. He then examined them to check for the health effects of the different behaviors. No surprise that the exercising group came out ahead on this one. Although the exercise didn’t help abdominal fat levels (remember, the participants were supposed to gain their weight back, so they ate until they did), improvements were noted in the areas of LDL and HDL cholesterol, oxygen consumption (VO2max), blood pressure and glucose, even with the increased weight.

What Can I Do?

All this research points in one direction for keeping weight off after you’ve lost it. You can’t go on a diet to lose weight, you have to undergo a lifestyle change to healthy eating. That doesn’t mean you have to eat nothing but rabbit food, but it means you have to start what I call the DES diet. DES stands for Don’t Eat S**t, and it can be one of the most valuable tools in your battle against the fat around your belly. See the many posts in the diet for fat loss archive to discover how you can eat more delicious foods than you could have ever imagined, and still lose weight.

The other component is exercise. You don’t have to work out like an Olympic athlete or pro football player, but you should do some sort of exercise at least 3 days a week. If you haven’t exercised for a while, slowly ramp up the intensity until you are working out with a high level of intensity. High intensity workouts let you workout less often and for a shorter duration, yet achieve better benefits.

Make these few changes in your life and your chances of being in the 10% that do keep the weight off will skyrocket.

The Latest Atkins Diet Book, The New Atkins, For a New You, continues the low carb diet craze, whcih has turned out not to be a craze after all.

The Atkins diet is like Kleenex or Xerox. In the minds of many it is a generic term for the low carb diet. People say “I’m going on the Atkins Diet” when they’re not really going on the Atkins diet, they’re just cutting out most of their carbs. That’s when you know something has been ultra successful.

There have been several Atkins Diet books published since the original back in 1972, and two more have been published since his unfortunate death in 2003. Now a third can be added to that pair, The New Atkins. Subtitled “For a Healthy, New You” this latest version digs into the reams of data that has been generated in the last decade from low carb diet research. Many of those studies I have referenced in this blog. I can delude myself into thinking the author, Duke University professor Dr. Eric Westman, is a regular reader here.

What has Dr. Westman come up with, and is this new edition any different from the last? It is easier to follow and draws heavily on the latest research. There has been plenty of research done in this field since the earliest books have been written, most of which shows the power of limiting carbs and eating plenty of fat.

The Healthy New You edition has all new recipes and 24 weeks of meals for you to follow. It is easier to follow because there are so many food choices in this one, and it has been subtly revised to account for results of the latest research, which increases it’s effectiveness. They also claim it is easier to follow than the original, but I never read the original, so I can not verify that claim.

There is a great and very informative review (I would expect there soon to be many more) on Amazon on this new version.

See it (them?) here now.

DO those ab machines live up to their promise of being better than the common crunch or stitups? Some do. most don't. CHek out check out which ones will do the trick.

In my my previous post a few months back on the absolute best ab workout, I examined some popular medieval torture…I mean ab workouts, and showed why some popular ab exercises really aren’t nearly as effective as you’d think. The findings in that post were based on a San Diego State University study on the effectiveness of different ab exercises, as measured with a high tech piece of gear called an EMG machine, which measures the electrical activity generated by your muscles as they are used. The machine can tell how much electrical energy is generated by the muscles, and that correlates to how much intensity they are working with.

Those crazy researchers are at it again. Now there is a new study, this time looking at some of the most popular ab machines, many of which have risen to fame thanks to late night infomercials. It makes me wonder who that is up at 3am is also interested in improving their physical fitness, but that’s a question for another time.

Tested for their effectiveness at stressing your abs of steel were the Ab-ONE, Ab Scissor, Ab Swing, 6 Second Abs, Perfect Ab Roller and the Torso Track. You may have used some of these machines yourself, and you may even have one, tucked away in the corner of your spare room.

If you’ve ever wondered if those things really work, or they are the creations of a fantastic copywriter, the answer could be a bit of both, depending on which of the machines you’re talking about. Some of them actually worked better than the common crunch, which was used as the baseline for effectiveness in the results. All machines were measured against the crunch, and their score is the percentage of muscle recruitment compared to the crunch. The crunch gets a score of 100, and anything better than the crunch at working your abdominal muscles will score higher  than 100.

How did they fare?

The machines were scored for both their ability to stimulate the abs and obliques.

Machine        Abs    Obliques
Ab-ONE        126      113
Perfect Ab Roller      96        77
Ab Scissor          64      126
Ab Swing          35      117
Torso Track          70        98
6 Second Abs          63        85

You’ll note that some of these machines are nowhere near as effective at working those abs as the common, apparatus free exercise I reported on in my previous post on the ultimate ab workout. Some of those exercise are twice as effective as the machines.

Before you try and down some fat loss products to get ripped like these guys, read the label!

Hydroxycut, once one of the most popular weight and fat loss supplements (still is – in a new formulation), was banned this week by the Philippine Food and Drug Administration. Likewise, in May of last year the U.S. FDA restricted the sale of Hydroxycut as well, citing health concerns such as liver damage. Since the U.S. FDA ban, Hydroxycut has reformulated their products to eliminate the problematic ingredients. It is unclear weather the new Philippene ban refers to the existing Hydroxycut formulation, or the original version.

In a related south east Asia note, the Philippine agency also banned some Chinese weight loss products, Zhen De Shou Fat Loss Capsule” and Zhen De Shou Fat Loss Tea. In a statement, an agency spokesperson declared “(BFAD) laboratory examinations show that samples (of the two products) contain … amphetamine and sibutramine, or steroids, either singly or in combination with each other. Consumers can be put on imminent danger or injury when using such products,”  Wow! Sounds like the Chinese get the good stuff!

Both of these examples point to why you should always know what you eat. Read the ingredients labels not only on your food, but on your dietary, performance, and fat loss supplements as well. It is ironic that products marketed as being healthy and improving your body composition, in reality contain toxic and dangerous substances.

It is worth noting that Hydroxycut and other weight loss products and fat burners typically contain large amounts of caffeine and natural products that contain caffeine and similar substances. If you are sensitive to them they can cause problems. Make sure you read the ingredients labels of any supplements you are taking or contemplating, to prevent problems. (My doctor told me never to touch the stuff so my heart doesn’t explode. It was a sorry day indeed when I had to give up my morning white Rock Star. Cinnamon tea just isn’t the same)

Some fat burning drinks contain sugar, which is ironic because sugar does its best to actually make you fat. Once again, read the ingredients before you buy. The same goes for protein and energy bars, many of which are loaded with unhealthy ingredients and have as much saturated fat as a hamburger. Check out my post on the Top Protein Bars – What’s Hiding in There?

Do you have to do endless ab work to lose that fat around your midsection? Actually, no, you don't. What you need to do is eat right, but does that mean you have to have a low fat diet?

Low fat diet plans have been all the rage for a couple of decades now. In the ’80’s we even started seeing things like low fat cakes and cookies appear on supermarket shelves. Amazingly enough, the more low fat products that materialized on our grocery store shelves, the fatter Americans became. Coincidence?

Well, you can draw your own conclusions, but the fact is this, Americans have a carb fetish; one that low fat diets do nothing to wean them away from. Actually, low fat diets can be healthy, but far too many people confuse “low fat” with healthy when they are definitely not the same thing.

There a three main reasons for this:

1 – Your body needs a certain amount of fat to actually be healthy. It’s true. Fat is an essential nutrient that your body needs to not only survive, but to operate at optimum health levels.

2 – You need to consume fat to burn fat at peak efficiency. If you are not consuming the fat your body needs, it will be loathe to burn off its precious stored fat supplies. Rather, it will hold on to your stored fat as insurance for the future, when it will need that fat to function.

3 -  Many low fat diets are loaded with the wrong kind of carbohydrates, such as the kind you get in breads, pasta, and white rice. These will make you fat faster than just about any other kind of food you can eat. In many cases they also contribute to an insatiable hunger. That’s right, eating these kinds of carbs can actually make you want to eat more!

It all has to do with a little thing called glycemic index. Glycemic index is a measure of how fast a carbohydrate causes your blood glucose levels to rise. High glycemic index foods make your blood sugar levels go up fast, low glycemic index foods make it rise slowly. Why does this affect how much fat you have stashed around your belly?

Simplified version - When your blood sugar levels rise quickly, your body must release comparatively large quantities of insulin in order to allow the sugars to be transported into your cells, where it can be used. It also signals your body to store unused carbs as fat, and since said calories are hitting your body rather rapidly, much of it normally stays unused, and is saved for later. How is it saved? As fat, of course.

Oh, and it gets worse…Fat can only be stored in fat cells when your insulin level is high. High insulin levels trigger high activity among the enzymes tasked with breaking down fat in your bloodstream. These enzymes are called lipoprotein lipases, and their job is to turn blood-borne fats into fatty acids so they can be transported through cell walls. Nice work, if you can get it. When insulin levels are high the fat cells are also called upon to turn the fatty acids back into fat and store them for later use.

You’d think that staying away from low fat diets means that you should eat a low cab, high fat diet. High fat, low carb diets have seen tremendous popularity over the years. The best example of this is the Adkins diet. However, there are also two main problems with eating high fat diets:

1 – The wrong kind of fat can kill you. It won’t happen overnight, but in time your ole’ ticker will seize up, just like an overworked engine that has never had it’s oil changed. It’s sad in this day of information at your fingertips, but people just do not know how to eat.

Many times, the low carb diet is kind of the low fat diet phenomenon in reverse. The problem is that most people eat the wrong kinds of fat, and these fats can do all sorts of nasty things to you, like clogging your arteries. The wrong kinds of fats are saturated fats and trans-fats. Trans fats have been in the news for the last few years, and the medical community has determined that there is no safe level for them. That is why so many foods now advertise that they contain zero trans fats. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with all foods.

Saturated fats and trans fats are the kind of fat you find in butter, meat and cheeses. They also include hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (read the label). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a rabbit food eating wimp. I love to eat burgers and steak, but  those should be reserved for rare occasions. Most of the time, I stick to eating healthier stuff. That’s great, because there is a secret to eating better.

There are certain healthier alternatives for most of the foods like burgers. For example, you can eat lean turkey or buffalo burgers instead of 20% beef hamburgers. It is important to distinguish between lean and regular turkey burgers. Look at the label before you plunk down your hard earned cash at the check stand.

You are better off to eat only certain kinds of fat. These “good” fats include mono unsaturated fats and poly-unsaturated fats. You want to be sure to get an adequate quantity of Omega-3 fatty acids as well.
Here are some great sources of “good” fats:
olives
olive oil
salmon
mackerel
herring
peanuts
flax seeds and flax seed meal
avocados
walnuts
almonds

Basically, you want to maximize good fat intake, and minimize bad fat intake within your fat consumption range. So, if your diet is 40% fat, you want to be sure that that is comprised primarily of the good fats.

The other problem with a high fat diet - One caveat about eating plenty of fat. Fat has 9 calories per gram, while carbs and protein have only 4. Even I figured out that high fat foods are more calorically dense than low fat ones. That doesn’t mean however, that high fat foods are bad for you though. It just means that high fat foods can be deceptively high in calories, so watch how much you eat.

Why Low Fat Diets Are Not the Best Way to Lose Weight
So, what is the reason that low fat diets are not the best way to lose weight? Well, I mentioned one of them already. Your body needs fat to function, so if it is not getting what it needs in your diet, it will fight to hold on to what it has.

The second reason has to do with carbohydrates, and their effects on blood glucose levels, and subsequent effects on fat storage that I discussed earlier. A nice side effect of fats is that they help moderate the carbohydrates so that they are absorbed more slowly than if eaten alone.

So, remember you don’t have to eat a low fat diet to lose weight, and in fact, you shouldn’t. What works even better is to cut way back on the kind of carbs that most North Americans and western Europeans eat so much of, such as breads, cereals, white flour, and white rice.

If you can only do one thing, completely eliminate refined sugar from your diet. That alone makes more of a difference in their weight for most people than anything else, and low and behold, refined sugar has absolutely zero fat!

Next, make sure you get plenty of carbs from sources such as green vegetables. Grab a glycemic index chart to clue you in on which foods have low glycemic index carbohydrates. Check out my post on low glycemic index carbs to see some delicious examples. Next, you want to get enough dietary fat, but please make sure the fats you eat are of the healthy variety.

That should help you lose the weight you’ve been trying to peel away for the last 5 years. It sure did with my 5 year build up.

To discover more about why carbs are so much like crack, check out my post on why simple carbs make you hungry and  fat.

For delicious foods that you can eat more of than you though possible, and even lose weight, see my Top 15 Healthy Foods List. Okay, so you can’t as much of them as you want, but you’d be surprised at how much of them you really can eat.

Another study extolls the fat loss benefits of dairy products. They are not takling ice cream, but study participants that ate extra cheese, yogurt or low fat milk lost more weight. Probably not a good idea for the lactose intollerant.

I have been a proponent of using low fat yogurt as part of a fat loss and muscle building diet for some time now. My personal experience and numerous studies indicate it works great. Now there is a new study, this one by some scientists down under at Curtin University of Technology, one of Australia’s largest technical universities.

The study lasted for 12 weeks, and examined the effects of a dietary change from consuming the recommended 3 servings of dairy per day, and increasing it to 5 daily servings. The research team discovered that the 2 additional servings significantly contributed to what we’re all trying for; decreased abdominal fat levels. In fact, study subjects experienced a decrease in blood pressure, and a decrease in overall body fat levels.

Take note that the test subjects did not just add two additional glasses of liquid moo to their diets. No, they were on reduced calorie diets, and had their caloric intakes normalized. That means that you do have to reduce your calories to the recommended levels for weight loss (but no more), and if you do so the optimum calorie diet with the 5 servings of dairy will be better for losing fat than the diet with only 3 servings.

Find your optimum daily calorie intake for fat loss in my post on how many calories should I eat to lose weight.

You want to get huge? Maybe you're training for a specific sport, or just want to drop some fat. You'll have to design your training routine differently depending upon your goals. Here is how to do that.

Weight training routines are personal things, different for every person, depending upon their body and their individual needs. Maybe you want to be the next Mr. Olympia, you might want to win power lifting competitions, or you just want to lose weight, build some muscle, or look better. Many people lift weights primarily to improve their athletic performance. No matter what your reason for hoisting the iron, the important thing is that your routine is specifically tailored to get you to your goals safely, and as fast as possible.

When you’re developing your weight training routine there are 7 questions you must answer. When you’ve answered them, you will have the kind of training regimen that will get you to your goals, no matter what they may be.

No matter the kind of routine you end up developing, you are trying to achieve one thing from your muscle’s standpoint; progressive overload. Any increase in muscle size or strength is a physiological response to progressive overload.

The response is your body’s answer to what is views as basically an attack. It increases muscle size and / or strength in order to be better prepared to face such an attack in the future. The way your muscles respond can be manipulated by your training methods to achieve the results you want.

Questions to answer to develop your own, personal weight training routine:

1 – What do I want to achieve?
Is your goal to get stronger, develop your physique / figure, improve your athletic performance, lose weight, improve endurance, or some combination of all of those goals? The different goals for your program will determine the answers to the following questions. In addition, different sports and different specialties within those sports will also help determine your training routine.

For example, not all football players train the same way. A d-lineman will have a different training program than will a defensive back or a wide receiver, because the demands of their respective positions are completely different. Similarly, you’ll want to develop a different routine if you are a cross country skier than if you compete in freestyle moguls.

If weight loss, general fitness, or bodybuilding is your ultimate goal, you will also have a specific set of parameters for each one of them. Making sure you tailor your routine as closely as possible for your body type and goals will help ensure that you get where you’re going as quickly and easily as possible.

You’ll also want to take into account your medical and injury history. Some exercises may prove to be painful, counter productive, or even dangerous if you have certain medical conditions or past injuries. For example, if you have a history of rotator cuff tears, certain chest and shoulder exercises may be inadvisable or impossible until the rotator cuff is strengthened or repaired. If you faced that situation, you would want to incorporate cuff strengthening exercises into your routine, and find other exercises for chest and shoulders that do not adversely affect the  rotator cuff or cause undue pain (I know you’re tough, but come on, there’s no need for unnecessary pain)

Another variable to consider is what kind of shape you’re in now. Are you an elite level college or professional athlete? Were you an athlete at one time, but haven’t trained in some time? Have you not even thought about lifting weights since the Johnson administration? Those things will also come into play when developing your weight routine.

2 – What exercises do I have to do to get there?
You need to look at what muscles need to be developed for your particular sport. If you are looking to lose weight or improve your appearance, you’ll be after more symmetrical development and should choose your exercises accordingly. Keep your injury history in mind when planning which exercises to include in your routine. As I discussed above, some injuries can make certain exercises ones to avoid.

As a general rule, almost every sport, general physical conditioning program, or bodybuilding program will incorporate some of the major, compound exercises, such as the bench press, squat, and deadlift or power clean. These recruit a tremendous amount of muscle with each repetition, and contribute substantially to overall muscular development. They help you to build a platform for all your other muscles to work from.

You will supplement these kinds of exercises with sports specific exercises. For example, tennis or baseball players might add rotator cuff extensions, calf raises, and wrist curls, both of which can help to prevent injuries and improve overall performance for those sports. Football and rugby players would probably want to throw in 3 – 5 sets of dumbbell shoulder presses, tricep extensions, dumbbell curls, and seated rows to their routines. Skiers should add in some leg extensions, leg curls, and forward lunges (watch the knees) to theirs. Both forward and lateral lunges are also very beneficial exercises for tennis players, who must start, stop and change direction very rapidly.

For all sports, a solid abdominal routine is essential, as all the power flows through this region. See my post on the best ab routine for exactly how to develop a strong midsection, but in a nutshell, captain’s chair and lying bicycles should be used over any other exercises.

3 – How often should I do my routine?
Well, in most cases you won’t do your entire routine in a single session. You’ll break it up into two or three sessions, training different body parts each on different days. This is to allow you to train with sufficient intensity so that you get the gains you’re after as quickly as possible. This scheduling of your training sessions is also known as your training interval.

For example, one of the most classic weight training groupings is to train chest and triceps together on one day, hit shoulders and legs on the next day, then back and biceps on the last day of your training cycle. This allows you to devote maximum effort and achieve peak training intensity for each set of body parts.

Several factors come into play when choosing your training interval, such as age, experience, sleep, nutrition, and overall volume of training. In general, younger people can simply do it more often. Sorry older folks, but you need more time to recover from intense training sessions to prevent over training.

Notice how hard they push themselves on the TV show The Biggest Loser, day in and day out. That’s great for losing weight in the short term, but not the optimum way to develop increased strength and muscular development, or to keep your metabolic rate high for the long term (which requires increased muscular development). Too short of a training interval leads to the phenomenon known as over training. The better your nutrition and sleep patterns, the more frequently and intensely you can train without succumbing to over training.

That is one of the most common problems facing beginning weight trainers, they simply do it too often, and expect their bodies to grow faster as a result. In fact the opposite is true. Your body will not have enough time to recover from the previous training session. It will still be rebuilding past the point were you left off. If you go back and train that body part too soon, you muscles will have not recovered past the point where you were before. You want them to actually recover to the point where you were before  and add a tiny bit more each time you train.

Generally, high school and college age weight trainers should train each body part every 3 – 4 days, provided they are getting optimum nutrition and sleep. People in their 30’s and early 40’s should add a day or two to that, and people in their mid 40’s and beyond should add another day still, so they are training each body part only every  6- 7 days. The key is to train hard, with maximum intensity, otherwise you can train more often, but you’ll get less out of it, even though you’re training more often.

4 – Which order should I do each exercises in?
Generally you’ll want to do the larger, compound exercises first, since they recruit the largest number of muscle fibers, and require the most concentration in order to perform at maximum intensity. In addition, pre-fatiguing the smaller muscles will make it more difficult to get maximum effectiveness from the larger muscle groups, and could make you more prone to injury.

5 – How much weight and how many reps should I use on each exercise?
As with the other questions you’ll need to answer, the answer is “It depends.” What it depends on is the answer to the needs analysis you performed in question number one.
Power development:
If your primary goal is develop explosive power, do lower reps and concentrating on exploding during the concentric phase of the movement. Typically, developing power would require you to lift about 70 – 90% of your 1 rep max for sets of 3 – 5. Pause at the midpoint of the movement for about 1 second, then concentrating on feeling your muscles contract as you explode out for the concentric phase. You’d do about 3 to 5 sets  of each exercise per body part.

Muscular size development:
If your primary training goal is to increase muscle size, you’ll want to increase the number of repetitions slightly, and lower the training weight to about 60 – 80% of your 1 rep maximum. The goal here is hypertrophy. Hypertrophy is the high tech name for your muscle’s increase in size as a response to stress placed upon them. If you are chiefly lifting to increase muscular size, you’ll want to do a routine that is primarily sets of 6 – 8 reps to muscular failure. That typically works out to a weight of about 60% – 80% of your 1 rep max.

Increase endurance:
If you’re training to increase your muscular endurance, you’ll want to use lighter weight still; closer to 50% of your 1 rep max, but perform sets of 14 – 20 reps.

No matter which goals you are shooting for, you’ll achieve some bleed over. For example, you will see some size gains, even if you are training primarily for power, and you’ll see some endurance gains even if you’re training mostly for increased size

6  – How long should I wait between sets of each exercise?
To increase muscle size and overall strength, waiting 60 – 90 seconds between sets is good. If you are training more to increase absolute strength and power, you can wait longer; on the order of 2 – 3 minutes. Some hard core power lifters wait as long as 5 minutes between their heavy sets.

7 – How many days should I wait between training each body part?
Some of this was answered in question #3, but that generally depends on what you are training for. You can sometimes train smaller muscles more often than your large, core muscle groups. For example, you may train biceps and triceps every 3 days, but train legs only every 6 days. It depends on how quickly you recover. It is something you’ll want to experiment with. If you do end up training smaller body parts more frequently than larger ones, you’ll obviously have to change the way you group your body parts for workouts. You won’t be able to train chest and triceps on the same day. In any case, some trainers advise grouping biceps and triceps together and training your arms on the same day. This has been shown with some people to increase muscle hypertrophy so you’ll get larger arms. Who wouldn’t want that?

Answering these 7 questions will help you to design your own personal weight training routine. Weather you want to get bigger, stronger, faster, or leaner (maybe all of the above) you will be able to have a lifting program that will get you to your goals.

Good luck!

You may not be able to see these on yourself now, but you can lose weight without upsetting the apple cart. Here are 4 simple ways to lose weight you can do every day.

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

Cinnamon can have dramatic effects to lower your blood sugar levels and help insulin response. Can this can help you lose weight? The cinnamon shown is the lighter tan, Chienese, Vietnemese, or Siagon variety

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.


These tips may not have you looking like this, but you can lose your belly fat over time, without making any major lifestyle changes.

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.