Lean Body Fitness, LLC

Time to Say Goodbye

2011-01-03T12:28:00.003-05:00

Yup, the blog is going away.

Well, not entirely.... It's just getting a new home.

This blog has been good to me but, like everything else in life, change is needed from time to time.

So I've got a new blog that is going to continue on with what I started here 4 years ago.

This blog will always be around for historical purposes but, going forward the new blog will be the place to visit.

Without further ado, check out the new blog by clicking on the link below (catchy name of the new site, huh?)

mikenavin.com

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10 Minute at Home Beginner Workout

2010-12-07T17:37:00.003-05:00

This is a 10 minute at home beginner workout from the December 2010 30-minute workout. Clear off some space on the floor in front of your computer and do it along with me.

4 exercises in a row, doing each exercise for 30 seconds (15 seconds on each side of the Bird Dog and Glute Raise). After doing all 4 exercises, rest 30 seconds, then do that circuit again. Rest another 30 seconds, and then do that circuit one more time.

Here's a direct link to the YouTube Video:

10 Minute at Home Beginner Workout

Bird Dog -- Knees - 15 seconds on each side

1. Kneel on the floor and place your hands on the floor under your shoulders. You should be on "all fours" (like a dog).
2. Brace your abs.
3. Raise your right hand and left leg simultaneously while keeping your abs braced.
4. Point your right arm straight out from your shoulder and your left leg straight out from your hip.
5. Hold for the recommended time and then slowly lower and then repeat on the other side.

Wall Hold - 30 seconds

1. Stand in front of a wall (about 2 feet in front of it) and lean against it.
2. Slide down until your knees are at about 90-degree angles and hold for the recommended time. Keep your back straight and do not lean forward or place your hands on your legs while holding the position.

Glute Raise - 15 seconds on each side

1. Lay flat face down on the ground with your arms raised over your head and spread your legs apart just past your hips.
2. Starting on your right side, focus on using your butt muscle to raise your right leg up as high as you can while keeping the leg straight. Your left leg should stay on the ground.
3. When you reach the top, pause for a moment and then return to the starting position.
4. Continue the movement on the right side until you have completed the recommended number of repetitions or time and then follow the same procedure with the left leg.

Three Point Wall Pushups - 30 seconds

1. Stand facing a Wall with your feet 2-3 feet away from it and place your hand in slightly closer than shoulder width apart.
2. Lower yourself towards the wall.
3. When you reach the wall, push yourself back up by pushing through your chest, shoulders and triceps.
4. Then move your arms out so that they are straight down from your shoulder. Lower yourself again using the same form that you used in steps 2 and 3.
5. Once you have come back up, move your hands out to a distance wider than shoulder width. Lower yourself again using the same form that was used in steps 2 and 3.
6. Once you have come back up again, move your hand back in slightly closer than shoulder width, and repeat steps 2 and 3 again.
7. Continue this movement and changing the hand positions between close, straight down from shoulder width, and wider than shoulder width between each repetitions for the recommended number of repetitions or time.

For more quick workouts you can do at home, visit The 30-Minute Workout and get access to a FREE full 30 Minute Workout Video.

30 Minute At Home Workout

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Quick Workout at Home

2010-11-30T21:20:00.004-05:00

This is a quick workout you can do at home from the main workout of the December 2010 30-minute workout. Clear off some space on the floor in front of your computer and do it along with me.

Here's a direct link to the Youtube video:

Quick Workout At Home

4 exercises in a row, doing each exercise for 30 seconds (15 seconds on each leg of the One-Legged Wall Hold). After doing all 4 exercises, rest 30 seconds, then do that circuit again. Rest another 30 seconds, and then do that circuit one more time.

Kneeling Offset Pushups - 30 seconds

1. Get at the top of a pushup position by resting on your hands and the tips of your toes. Both hands should be shoulder width apart, but one arm is straight down from your shoulder and your other arm where the bottom of your hand would be in line with your nose. Make sure to keep your body in a straight line from your shoulders to your feet and to not sag or raise your hips.
2. Drop your knees straight down on the ground without moving them closer to your stomach.
3. Lower yourself down until your nose is only a few inches from the ground and make sure that your hips do not sag. Also as you are lowering, pull your shoulder blades together as far as they will go and make sure that your neck stays in line with your spine.
4. Pause for a second, then brace your abs and keep your body in a straight line from knees to shoulders as you push through your chest, shoulders, and triceps until you get to the top of the position.
5. After doing two repetitions, switch hand positions and do another two repetitions. Continue switching hand positions after two repetitions for the recommended number of total repetitions or time.

Step Out - 30 seconds

1. Stand with your feet just greater than shoulder-width apart and your hands clasped together in front of you. Raise yourself up on your toes as high as you can and keep them that high throughout the entire set.
2. With your abs braced and butt muscles squeezed, start the movement at the hip joint and push your hips backward and "sit back in a chair." Make your hips go back as far as possible and lower yourself as far as your range of motion will take you.
3. Starting on the right side and staying in the squat position, step out to the right side (your body with turn as well), so that you form an "L-shape" between your two inner thighs.
4. Bring your right leg back in towards your body, and do the same thing on your left.
5. Once you bring your left leg back into your body, stand up from the squat position.
6. Continue this movement of squatting down and alternating legs until you have completed the recommended number of repetitions or time.

One-Legged Wall Hold - 15 seconds on each leg

1. Stand in front of a wall (about 2 feet in front of it) and lean against it.
2. Slide down until your knees are at about 90-degree angles.
3. Lift your right leg off the ground and extend your knee so that it is completely straight while at the same time keeping your hip in the same position.
4. Keep your back straight and do not lean forward or place your hands on your legs while holding the position.
5. Hold for the recommended time and then complete the same hold on the left leg.

Cross Body Mountain Climbers - 30 seconds

1. Start at the top of a push up position.
2. Bring your right leg up and across your body as far as you can go so that your right knee is point towards your left elbow.
3. Return your right leg to the starting position and repeat the movement using your left leg.
4. Continue alternating legs until you have completed the recommended number of repetitions or time.

For more quick workouts you can do at home, visit The 30-Minute Workout and get access to a FREE full 30 Minute Workout Video.

30 Minute At Home Workout

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Playground Ab & Upper Back Workout - Monkey Bars

2010-11-09T11:58:00.006-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a post on a Playground ab workout on a swing set that you could do when you hit the playground with your kids.

This time, I've got a new video of an ab and upper back workout you can do at the playground using the monkey bars.

You'll do 4 exercises in a row, 30 seconds for each exercise. Then you'll rest 30 seconds, do that circuit again, rest 30 seconds, then do that circuit 1 more time.

Take a look at the video and I've written out the exercises below it:

Here's a direct link to the video:

Playground Ab & Upper Back Workout - Monkey Bars

1. Neutral Pullup
2. Hanging Leg Raises
3. Inverted Row
4. Hanging Side Leg Raises

Should take you less than 10 minutes to get through it.

Another great way to get a workout in while also spending some quality time with your kids at the playground.

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Admit It. You Gained Weight

2010-11-03T20:16:00.005-05:00

Halloween is over. But you still have that bowl of candy sitting there. I heard an interesting stat a while back stating that only about 33% of candy that people buy actually goes to trick or treaters. The other 67%? Well, I don’t think it takes a Ph.D to figure that out…Bottom line: save some of it for your kids, and throw the rest out.

Back around Labor Day I talked about how that time period was an essential time to get on a fat loss regiment (yes, I know there’s irony in me tell you that considering I was telling it to you at the time in a video while I was drinking a beer…). That from the time period between Labor day and the end of the year there were a lot of holidays, events, etc., that no matter what, involves eating lots of food, and more than likely, drinking alcohol. It’s a time period where you could, when January 1st hits, be 10-15 pounds heavier than you were at Labor day.

So how did that work out for you? Go ahead. Get on the scale. How does it look compared to Labor day? If you didn’t take my advice and start some sort of fat loss workout and diet, then you put on some weight.

The bad news is you gained that weight, only after one holiday involving parties, candy, alcohol, and more candy. You’ve still got 3 big ones to go: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, where you could easily put on another 10 pounds between those holidays.

The good news is that you’ve got some time to go between now and Thanksgiving. About three weeks.

How about you set a goal for yourself to lose a certain amount of weight between now and then? Let’s say, 5 pounds. That’s only about 1 ½ - 2 pounds a week.

The best way to do that? Well, I hate to make this simple but, eat less food.

But that’s probably not very helpful. So here’s a few guidelines.

Make a list of the foods that you can’t live without.

The problem with dieting is that people think that they need to deprive themselves of the foods that they love…forever. That’s just not true. You can still eat the foods that you enjoy, just try to eat less of it.

Need that bar of chocolate every day? Go ahead and eat it, BUT how about just eating half of it and eating the other half the next day?

You NEED pizza once a week. That’s fine. But instead of having 4 pieces, how about eating only 2?

And sugary drinks. You need a Mountain Dew in the morning to wake yourself up and another one in the afternoon to keep you awake. How about giving up one of those and having a hot cup of green tea in place of the other one (there’s caffeine in that so you’ll still get some kick from it..)?

Now make a list of the foods that you enjoy but, you could see yourself doing without. Take that list, and avoid that food until at least Thanksgiving. Now, don’t try and lie to yourself and say “Oh, alright…I’ll give up the veggies, fruits, whole grains, etc…..I can suffer through not eating those foods for a few weeks” when you very well know that you’re not eating those right now anyway! They have to be foods that you are actually eating on a regular basis.

Now, let’s get some exercise in here. You’ve got workouts that you can do, and you can do them for free if you go to my YouTube Channel at this link. There’s beginner, intermediate and advanced workouts in there so anyone can do these and most of those workouts that I’ve got in there won’t take you more than 30 minutes to get through (and most of them are much shorter than that) AND you can do them in your own home with barely any exercise equipment. How about you go through three of those a week? You’re talking a maximum of 90 minutes over the course of a week in exercise. You can do that, don’t you think?

If you want to take it a step further, go ahead and order the 30-minute workout for $4.95 today for either a bulk of eight months worth of workouts or get the most up–to-date workout this month along with a Fat Loss Nutritional Guide. It’s your choice and it’ll only cost you $4.95 to try it out.

Think about that. For less than the cost of a pizza, you could get a workout all written up for you that you can do over the next 3 weeks to drop 5 pounds before Thanksgiving. Then you can sit down, eat a big meal that day, have some wine, and not worry about putting on a ton of weight because, you’re ahead of the game.

Go ahead and order now and start that New Years resolution two months before the New Year.

30-Minute Workout for $4.95

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Free Beginner Workout Programs

2010-11-02T16:20:00.000-05:00

Ready for some more Free Beginner Workout Programs?

A couple of weeks ago I posted a video of a 20 minute workout from the main workout of the November 2010 30-Minute Workout.

Now I've got the same type of circuit from the beginner version of the November 2010 workout. Give it a look and a try and see what you think.

And don't forget, you can try the rest of the November workouts (the main workout AND the beginner workout) for just $4.95 by going to the link below and ordering, right now:

November 2010 30-Minute Workout

Here's a video of the workout with a description below:

Here's a direct link to the YouTube video:

Free Beginner Workout Programs

These are what I call, Seven Ups and it's more of an advanced workout and it's a workout you can do at home, at work, anywhere you want:

You're going to do seven circuits of exercise with no rest between the exercises within the circuit. With each circuit, you are going to add an additional exercise from the prior circuit, until you are at the last circuit where you'll be doing 7 exercises in a row with no rest between exercises.

Circuit 1:
1. Lying Hip Extension on Chair -- 30 seconds
2. Rest 30 seconds

Circuit 2:
1. Lying Hip Extension on Chair -- 30 seconds
2. Jumping Jacks -- 30 seconds
3. Rest 30 seconds

Circuit 3:
1. Lying Hip Extension on Chair -- 30 seconds
2. Jumping Jacks -- 30 seconds
3. Wide Wall Pushups -- 30 seconds
4. Rest 30 seconds

Circuit 4:
1. Lying Hip Extension on Chair -- 30 seconds
2. Jumping Jacks -- 30 seconds
3. Wide Wall Pushups -- 30 seconds
4. Sky Dive -- W Pullback -- 30 seconds
5. Rest 30 seconds

Circuit 5:
1. Lying Hip Extension on Chair -- 30 seconds
2. Jumping Jacks -- 30 seconds
3. Wide Wall Pushups -- 30 seconds
4. Sky Dive -- W Pullback -- 30 seconds
5. Waiter's Bow -- 30 seconds
6. Rest 30 seconds

Circuit 6:
1. Lying Hip Extension on Chair -- 30 seconds
2. Jumping Jacks -- 30 seconds
3. Wide Wall Pushups -- 30 seconds
4. Sky Dive -- W Pullback -- 30 seconds
5. Waiter's Bow -- 30 seconds
6. Wall Hold -- 30 seconds
7. Rest 30 seconds

Circuit 7:
1. Lying Hip Extension on Chair -- 30 seconds
2. Jumping Jacks -- 30 seconds
3. Wide Wall Pushups -- 30 seconds
4. Sky Dive -- W Pullback -- 30 seconds
5. Waiter's Bow -- 30 seconds
6. Wall Hold -- 30 seconds
7. Army Side Bends -- Knees -- 30 seconds

Should take you about 20 minutes to get through.

For more information on Beginner November 2010 30 Minute Workout, go to:

http://www.30-minuteworkout.com

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Lose Weight Eating Junk Food

2010-10-28T02:56:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile since I've actually written anything on this blog outside of posting various exercise videos (which by the way, I hope you have enjoyed). So today you'll actually read something with some more substance and what better kind of substance than everyone's favorite topic...Junk Food.

A nutrition professor from Kansas is experimenting with losing weight....while eating junk food.

Basically, for 30 days he's eating high calorie, high fat food, but, keeping it within 1,800 calories a day. His goal in this is to show that even though he's eating junk food, he can still maintain or lose weight.

After that 30 days, he's going to flip it around and eat healthy foods, but eat more calories than what his body needs to maintain his body weight in order to show that even if you eat healthy foods, if you eat too much of them, you can gain weight.

The results so far on the junk food diet: in 6 weeks he lost 19 pounds... No word yet on when he'll start the weight gain exercise with the healthy foods so I'm going to keep up on this and she what happens.

The overall point that I think he's trying to make is a good one: No matter what kind of food you eat, CALORIES COUNT. If you eat less than what your body needs, you're going to lose weight and if you eat more than what your body needs, you're going to gain weight, regardless of the type of food you are eating.

With that said though, I wouldn't recommend dropping the broccoli and salmon for a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. He is only demonstrating what the effects are on weight loss. He's been monitoring other health indicators while doing this junk food diet and blood pressure, triglycerides, and cholesterol have all INCREASED.

Which again bring up a great point: Just because you are losing weight, doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting healthier.

I know that I do a lot of stressing about keeping it simple by sticking with meat, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and oils. It works for me. It might work for you. But another form of eating might work for you if you’re just not into eating those kinds of foods. You just have to remember that if losing weight is your goal, to make sure you are keeping your calories lower than what your body needs.

Does that mean you have to measure out all your food, count calories, etc.? If you want to do it that way or if that’s how you stayed disciplined, then you can do that. But it’s not required. If you simply monitor what you eat, and watch your weight on the scale and take a measurement around your waist at your belly button on a weekly basis, that should be good enough. If you see the scale go down from week to week as well as the measurement around your waist, then you know you’re on the right track. See it stay the same or increase from week to week, then you know you’re eating too much and you need to eat less.

Which again, going back to the way that I think works well for eating (keeping it to various meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and oils), in various portions and timing of your meals that I lay out in the Fat Loss Nutritional Guide that comes along with the membership option of the 30 Minute Workout, makes it very simple to follow with a variety of food for even the pickiest of eaters, AND enhances that fat loss effect.

Give the 30-Minute at Home Workout a try, take a look at the nutritional guidelines that I set out for you, and see what you think. It only costs $4.95 to try out and if you’re not impressed, you can just go ahead and cancel it and all you lost was just one day worth of your favorite coffee drink at Starbucks.

This doesn’t have to be complicated. Want to lose weight: Eat less food. What to lose weight and see overall healthy results: Eat less healthy food, and exercise.

30 Minute Workout Order Form

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Playground Ab Workout - Swing Set

2010-10-26T15:50:00.003-05:00

You're at the playground with your kids. Guess what? You can get a workout in too. And I've got a great ab workout you can do right there on the swing set.

Take a watch of this video as I explain it and the description is below:

Direct link to Video:

Playground Ab Workout - Swing Set

Four Exercises in a row doing each exercise for 30 seconds each. After completing those 4 exercises in a row, rest 30 seconds, and then do that circuit of exercises again, followed again by 30 seconds of rest and then do that circuit one more time. The exercises are:

1. Swing Jacknife
2. Side Plank on Forearm and side of feet on swing with a hip raise on left side
3. Plank on forearms and feet on swing with an ab lift.
4. Side Plank on Forearm and side of feet on swing with a hip raise on right side.

Should take you less than 10 minutes to get through it.

Just another way to get a workout in any place and anytime (and a great way to lead by example in front of your kids too).

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20-Minute Workout from November 2010 30 Minute Workout

2010-10-20T16:12:00.005-05:00

The new November edition of the 30-Minute Workout is available and it's a killer. There's a circuit in there that'll take you 20 minutes to get through. I put the circuit together in a video for you to try out. Take a look, give it a try, and tell me what you think (that's of course, if you survived it....).

And don't forget, you can try the rest of the November workouts (the main workout AND the beginner workout) for just $4.95 by going to the link below and ordering, right now:

November 2010 30-Minute Workout

Here's a video of the workout with a description below:

Here's a direct link to the YouTube video:

20 Minute at home workout

These are what I call, Seven Ups and it's more of an advanced workout and it's a workout you can do at home, at work, anywhere you want:

You're going to do seven circuits of exercise with no rest between the exercises within the circuit. With each circuit, you are going to add an additional exercise from the prior circuit, until you are at the last circuit where you'll be doing 7 exercises in a row with no rest between exercises.

Circuit 1:
1. Crossover Reach Pushups -- 30 seconds
2. Rest 30 seconds

Circuit 2:
1. Crossover Reach Pushups -- 30 seconds
2. Y -- Forward Lunge -- 30 seconds
3. Rest 30 seconds

Circuit 3:
1. Crossover Reach Pushups -- 30 seconds
2. Y -- Forward Lunge -- 30 seconds
3. Twisting Jump Squats -- 30 seconds
4. Rest 30 seconds

Circuit 4:
1. Crossover Reach Pushups -- 30 seconds
2. Y -- Forward Lunge -- 30 seconds
3. Twisting Jump Squats -- 30 seconds
4. Decline Plank -- 30 seconds
5. Rest 30 seconds

Circuit 5:
1. Crossover Reach Pushups -- 30 seconds
2. Y -- Forward Lunge -- 30 seconds
3. Twisting Jump Squats -- 30 seconds
4. Decline Plank -- 30 seconds
5. Y-Sumo Squat on Toes -- 30 seconds
6. Rest 30 seconds

Circuit 6:
1. Crossover Reach Pushups -- 30 seconds
2. Y -- Forward Lunge -- 30 seconds
3. Twisting Jump Squats -- 30 seconds
4. Decline Plank -- 30 seconds
5. Y-Sumo Squat on Toes -- 30 seconds
6. Reverse Diagonal Lunge -- Toes -- 30 seconds
7. Rest 30 seconds

Circuit 7:
1. Crossover Reach Pushups -- 30 seconds
2. Y -- Forward Lunge -- 30 seconds
3. Twisting Jump Squats -- 30 seconds
4. Decline Plank -- 30 seconds
5. Y-Sumo Squat on Toes -- 30 seconds
6. Reverse Diagonal Lunge -- Toes -- 30 seconds
7. Bodybuilder Burpees -- 30 seconds

Should take you about 20 minutes to get through.

Let me know how it goes.

For more information on November 2010 30 Minute Workout, go to:

http://www.30-minuteworkout.com

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Beginner Workout Routine

2010-10-13T03:45:00.000-05:00

I put together a short little Beginner Workout Routine for those that are at the "thinking stage" of starting to work out. Hopefully this will show you that no matter where you are in your physical health, you can start out with something as simple as this and work your way up as you get stronger and in better condition. In order to get to the top of the stairs, you simply have to lift your leg up to that first step.

Take a look and the workout should take you about 10 minutes to get through:

Direct Link to Video:

Beginner Workout Routine

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Pants Sizes Don't Add Up

2010-10-05T19:24:00.004-05:00

I wrote back about a month ago about how I had an experience in the store when trying on some new pants and wrote about how your pants are lying to you.

Well, strange coincidence, there was a segment on ABC news on the EXACT same thing and in fact, some of the commentary that is used in the segment sound almost verbatim in how I put it in that blog post (okay, I'm done caressing my ego...). Anyway, take a look at the segment on this video clip from ABC News on it:

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Shocking! Eating Less Causes you to Lose Weight!!

2010-10-01T11:33:00.001-05:00

Brad Pilon has been a guy that I've been following for a couple of years now and he's just so good at putting things into the simplest of terms and cutting through all the junk that's out there to help people lose weight and get into shape.

He had a great blog entry today that I just had to share with you. Take a read:

Eat Less

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Last Chance for the 30-Minute Workout Special Offer

2010-09-24T08:00:00.000-05:00

This is it. After 11:59 pm tonight, the prices on the 30-Minute Workout go up from where they are at right now.

Think of it this way. With this workout, you don’t need a gym membership, you don’t need any gym equipment (except a stability ball), and you don’t need a personal trainer.

If you were to train with me for one month, 30 minutes, 3 times a week, it would cost you roughly $300.

That means that with either of these special offer prices, you are paying 34-60 times LESS than that!! And that doesn’t even include what you’re saving on a gym membership!

More chatter from satisfied customers:

"I followed the beginner, intermediate and advanced workouts of the Lean Body Training Home Bodyweight Fat Loss Workouts. I was intimidated that I wouldn't be able to complete even the beginner program. Also, because of my skepticism, I took baby steps and held off on starting the eating plan until I felt more confident, which wasn't until a few weeks into the intermediate workout. Initially, after completing the beginner workout, I lost a few pounds and after finishing the advanced workout and having been on the eating plan for approximately two and a half months I lost an additional 25 pounds. Definitely surprised by the results. When I decided to start the program I didn't even have an actual goal in mind as to how much weight I wanted to lose because I never thought it was possible. However, after I started seeing results, I set a goal and stuck to it. I was a carboholic before I started the nutritional plan and was worried that I wouldn't be able to stick with it. After approximately a week and a half the carb cravings were gone and I actually started looking forward to the meals. There are such a wide variety of food choices that even a picky eater like myself had no trouble finding foods I love to eat. Once I made up my mind to follow the eating plan I didn't find it to be very difficult to stick to it, even with a busy lifestyle. I would recommend this program to anyone who is serious about losing weight and who desires a healthy lifestyle."

- Cheri Holland, Plymouth, Michigan

"I was skeptical about this class at first because I thought it would be too difficult and hard on my wrists and knees. I was already in the kick boxing class once a week then I added one fat loss class. I lost 7 lbs in a month and a half. I have enjoyed it so much I am now going two times a week along with my kick boxing class one time a week. I am 44 years old and I am in better shape than when I was in my twenties. And no, I am not kidding. My abdominals, legs, and arms are very defined. I have more energy and self-confidence than I have had in a long time. Yes, it is hard work, but when you leave you will be amazed how wonderful you feel. Michael is a wonderful instructor and knows that not everyone is on the same level. So he shows his class a low, medium, and high impact example for each exercise. He also mixes up the exercises for each class so we are not working the same body parts every time (and he plays good music)."

- Dawn Miller, Taylor Michigan

Last chance. Don’t pass up this offer to get in shape BEFORE everyone else tries to after the New Year.

30-Minute Workout Order Form

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Don't Let the 30-Minute Workout Special Offer Pass Up!

2010-09-23T08:00:00.001-05:00

For only $4.95 today, you can try out either the package option or the monthly membership option of the 30-Minute Workout.

This is an incredible deal on a system that works. Read what others have to say about the programs that I put together:

"I found out about these awesome classes from a friend of mine who had been taking the classes for quite some time. She kept telling me it was just what I needed when I made the decision to become a healthier person. I was very skeptical about the class! I have always been overweight and didn't think I could keep up with the exercises, especially because my friend who recommended it is in extremely good shape. I kept thinking, ha, yeah right, there's no way I could do this class if she does it and says it challenges her. Plus I didn't want to go to a class full of "skinny" people and be the only one who still had some weight to lose. However, I had nothing to worry about. The class is wonderful because it is geared for all fitness levels.

There are workouts that are done at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels and you only have to do what you are capable of doing. Nobody is forcing you to do anything, but rather, people are very encouraging. There are many people in many different stages of fitness and I immediately felt comfortable with everyone else and myself.

Additionally, Mike is there to make sure you are doing the exercises correctly and to push you somewhat but not to be overbearing and make you feel as if you are being bossed around. I lost ten pounds in the first 6 weeks.

I had just lost 50 pounds over 6 months and hit a plateau where the weight would no longer come off. I contacted Mike and he said he thought this class would help me push through it and he was right. I immediately saw the results.

Not only that, this class makes me feel so strong. My muscles are gaining some definition and feeling tight and it is an absolute wonderful feeling. I am also becoming stronger, when I started the class I couldn't do a pushup at all and six weeks later I am making great progress and doing pushups on my knees. I truly look forward to coming to the class because I work hard and can truly feel my body changing. I feel like I can accomplish anything.

I must admit I was shocked by the results. Not only the physical aspect, but the overall mental well being the class induces. I feel strong, proud of myself and am in a much better mood overall because I know I am working toward being healthy and doing what I need to do to live a longer, healthier life. I receive so many compliments on how much I've changed and I must contribute a lot of it to this class.

Mike is an excellent instructor, not only does he take the time during class to guide you through the workout, he answers all your questions to help you outside of class as well. I feel like he really is interested in helping me make the best decisions in regard to my workouts as well as my weight loss plan. He gives you the right tools so you can see your hard work pay off with great results. I am serious when I say, if I can do this and enjoy it this much, then I know everyone else can to!"
- Cindy Brooks, Allen Park Michigan

There you have it. No matter how skeptical you might be, no matter how much you think to yourself “No, I can’t do those exercises,” people HAVE done, and HAVE gotten INCREDIBLE results with my systems.

Don’t wait any longer. Go ahead and try the 30-Minute Workout for just $4.95.

30-Minute Workout Order Form

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30 Minute Workout Launch and INCREDIBLE Offer

2010-09-21T09:00:00.001-05:00

Here it is, the launch of the new 30-Minute Workout system.

Let’s go over the Monthly option again:

You can purchase a membership where you receive TWO new 30-Minute Workouts a month (a beginner workout along with either an intermediate or advanced workout) that are each four weeks long AND also get the Lean Body Training Fat Loss Nutritional Guide.

The monthly price for this from now until Friday, September 24 at 11:59 pm is just $8.95 a month.

Now here’s the Package option:

You can buy FOUR MONTHS worth of the past workouts that I’ve put together in a package, for just a one-time charge. And remember, four months worth of these workouts actually equals EIGHT MONTHS since each monthly workout has two workout options.

So with this package option you’ll get EIGHT workouts that are each a month long, broken down into:

• 4 Beginner workouts
• 2 Intermediate workouts
• 2 Advanced workouts

Eight months of workouts, all for just $39.95 from now until Friday, September 24 at 11:59 pm.

But I’m going to make this offer even better for both options.

For the monthly option, it’s only going to cost you $4.95 for the first month.

AND

For the Package option, you can pay just $4.95 now, and then be billed the remaining $35 in 21 days.

Bottom line, whatever option you pick, you pay just $4.95 today in order to start working out with the 30-Minute Workout system, TODAY!

Don’t waste any time. Go to the link below to the order form to get this incredible offer on one of these options:

30-Minute Workout Order Form

Or, if you need to read up more on the 30-Minute Workout, how I came to develop it and why it works, go to the link below:

30-Minute Workout System

Remember, this special deal is only good until Friday, September 24, 11:59 pm so don’t miss out on this great opportunity to get started on burning fat NOW instead of waiting until after the New Year when you could be trying to work off an additional 10-15 pounds.

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Reminder, 30-Minute Workout Re-vamp Launch tomorrow

2010-09-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

Remember to keep an eye out tomorrow around 9:00 for the information on the launch of the re-vamped 30-Minute Workout System.

There’s two options available for you:

You can purchase a membership where you receive TWO new 30-Minute Workouts a month (a beginner workout along with either an intermediate or advanced workout) that are each four weeks long AND also get the Lean Body Training Fat Loss Nutritional Guide.

OR

You can buy FOUR MONTHS worth of the past workouts that I’ve put together in a package, for just a one-time charge. And remember, four months worth of these workouts actually equals EIGHT MONTHS since each monthly workout has two workout options.

So with this option you’ll get EIGHT workouts that are each a month long, broken down into:

• 4 Beginner workouts
• 2 Intermediate workouts
• 2 Advanced workouts

From Tuesday, September 21 at 9:00 am through Friday, September 24th at 11:59 pm, Both of these options are going to be DISCOUNTED at a rate of 20-25% what the normal rate is going. After that, the prices go up.

BUT, I’m even making it a BETTER DEAL that I’ll announce tomorrow.

Stay tuned…

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Special Offer on The 30-Minute Workout

2010-09-17T04:00:00.000-05:00

I talked to you last week over a pint of beer how we are about 16 weeks away from Christmas and how important these next few months are to get into an exercise routine as well as getting your eating in line in order to lose weight so that you don’t start off the new year in January, 10-15 pound heavier than you are right now.

This week I went over why a 30-minute workout works for me, how you can design your own 30-minute workout, and gave you a free video of a 30-minute workout that you can try out for yourself.

We’re almost at 14 weeks now until Christmas so times a wastin’.

But with all of that, you are still probably just saying “Thanks for that information Mike but, just give me the workouts and let me get started NOW.”

Fair enough.

And with that being said, I’ve got a special offer coming your way that I really think you’re going to like.

On Tuesday, September 21st, I’m going to be launching the re-vamped 30-Minute Workout system where you’re going to have a couple of options.

One option that you’ll have is just like I have it set up now: You can purchase a membership where you receive TWO new 30-Minute Workouts a month (a beginner workout along with either an intermediate or advanced workout) that are each four weeks long AND also get the Lean Body Training Fat Loss Nutritional Guide. This option is going to be at an INCREDIBLY reduced rate from what it goes for now.

A second option is new. In this option you can buy FOUR MONTHS worth of the past workouts that I’ve put together in a package, for just a one-time charge. And remember, four months worth of these workouts actually equals EIGHT MONTHS since each monthly workout has two workout options.

So with this option you’ll get EIGHT workouts that are each a month long, broken down into:

· 4 Beginner workouts
· 2 Intermediate workouts
· 2 Advanced workouts

This second, package option will be at a 20% DISCOUNTED rate than what the normal price will be.

These two promotional rates aren’t going to last forever.

I’ll be shutting down the 30-Minute Workout site on Sunday, September 19th and this special offer is going live on Tuesday, September 21st at around 9:00 am and will last until Friday, September 24 at 11:59 pm. After Friday night, the prices are going back up to their normal rates.

You’re not going to want to miss out on this and it’s giving you the PERFECT opportunity to lose weight NOW instead of waiting until after the New Year.

So check back on Tuesday, September 21st when it goes live to get your fat burning 30-Minute Workout at home without the need to waste your time wandering from exercise machine to exercise machine at the gym.

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A Full 30-Minute Workout Video

2010-09-16T04:00:00.002-05:00

You read about how a 30-minute workout works for me, and you've read about how to design your own 30-minute workout. Now check out the video below to see a full 30-minute workout that you can try out. It's a combination of beginner, intermediate, and advanced movements so it'll be a challenge for everyone.

A direct link to the Youtube video is below:

30-Minute Workout

Make sure to check back tomorrow when I pull all this information together that I've been giving you all week. You aren't going to want to miss it.

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Designing a 30-Minute Workout

2010-09-15T04:00:00.001-05:00

You like the idea of a 30-minute workout because you find yourself like me: You just really don’t have time for anything longer.

There are just a few of steps that you need to take in designing a 30-minute workout: determining what exercises to do, then doing those exercises in a particular order, next, doing each exercise as well as resting for a particular amount of time. Let’s start with the type of exercises that you need to include.

There are six basic movements that you want to include in your workouts that will work the biggest muscles in your body: Squat, Core, Jump, Pushing, Single Leg, and Pulling.

Along with these movements, you can then break them down into a beginner, an intermediate, or an advanced variation.

Let’s look at each movement individually and then look at examples of each variation:

Squat – A beginner variation would be a Lying Hip Extension, an intermediate would be a full range of motion bodyweight squat, and a more advanced version would be a Sumo Squat on your toes.

Core - A Plank is one of the best core exercises out there. A beginner version would be a Plank on your forearms and knees, an intermediate would be a Plank on your forearms and toes, and an advanced version would be a Plank on your forearms and toes but your toes resting on the edge of a chair so that your body is on a decline.

Jump – A beginner version of a jump would be Jumping Jacks, an intermediate variation would be a Leap Frog, and an advanced version would be Bodybuilder Burpees.

Pushing – A beginner variation of a pushing movement would be a Pushup on the wall, while an intermediate version would be a Pushup on your knees on the ground, and an advanced version would be a Pushup on your toes, while resting your toes on a chair so that your body is on a decline.

Single Leg – A beginner version would be a Donkey Kick, an intermediate version would be a Reverse Lunge, and an advanced version would be a Crossover Forward Lunge on your Toes.

Pulling – Pulling exercises can be a bit tough with just using your bodyweight. Ideally you’d like to have something like a pullup bar (even if you can’t do pullups). But there are some modifications that you can do such as a Stick Up, and a Sky Dive with a W Pullback.

These are just some basic examples of each type of movement but as you can see, they encompass the use of your biggest muscles (shoulders, chest, upper back, core, and legs) in order to work your full body.

Now it’s a matter of putting them in some sort of order.

The best way to do this is to put them into a circuit where you’ll perform a certain number of exercises in a row with no rest in between. Maybe you want to do two exercises in a row, then rest for a bit. Or maybe you want to do 4 or 5 exercises in a row before taking a rest.

Let’s start with just three exercises as an example. Let’s say you were a beginner and you put together a circuit that would include a jump, a squat, and a push.

You could design it so that you first did Jumping Jacks, then you did a Pushup on the wall, then you did a Lying Hip Extension. You did all three of those in a row with no rest. Then you would rest for a bit, and then complete that circuit one or two more times.

The last piece is determining how long you want to do each exercise.

You could do each exercise for a set number of repetitions but, that makes it difficult to determine how much time it would take to complete those set of repetitions in order to know that you can get the workout done in 30 minutes.

A better way is to do each of those exercises for a set amount of time before moving on to the next exercise.

Let’s say that you’re going to do each exercise for 30 seconds. You’ll do the Jumping Jacks for 30 seconds, then immediately move on to the Wall Pushups for 30 seconds, then again with no rest, move on to the Lying Hip Extensions for 30 seconds. Then you’ll rest 30 seconds, and complete that same circuit two more times. After that, rest 60 seconds, and then go on to another circuit that you put together.

So in the above example, each time you do the circuit it would take you 120 seconds to complete (30 seconds for each exercise, then 30 second of rest between circuits). When calculating how long it would take to do this circuit 3 times, your total time would be 390 seconds (120 seconds for each of the first two circuits, then 150 seconds on the last circuit since you’ll be resting 60 seconds at the end and not 30 seconds).

Also, in reality, it’s going to take you about 10 seconds to move from one exercise to the next so include 10 seconds between the actual exercises. That will add in another 60 seconds to this circuit example, which will take the total time to 450 seconds, or 7 ½ minutes.

After that, you simply build some other circuits together of these exercise movements, until you have a 30-minute workout in front of you.

There you have it. A 30-minute workout template that you can use to build a quick and effective workout right in your own home with no exercise equipment necessary that’ll give you a better workout than if you did slow steady state cardio on the treadmill for an hour.

Tomorrow I’m going to show you a video of a full 30-Minute Workout that you can try out. It’s going to be a combination of beginner, intermediate and advanced moves and I think you’re really going to like it so make sure to check out my blog and/or watch for the e-mail tomorrow that’ll I’ll be sending out to let you know it’s viewable.

PS. Again, make sure to go over to www.30-minuteworkout.com and fill out the two quick fields to download the 3 free workouts that are available. Give one of them a try based on your training level and see for yourself how great of a workout you can get in just 30 minutes without all that fancy equipment that they have at the gym and you'll see that I truly am on to something.

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Why A 30-Minute Workout Works for Me

2010-09-14T04:00:00.000-05:00

Some of you may know me personally. But most of you probably don't. So I'm going talk a little bit about my life.

Being a personal trainer is not my only job. I also work a full time job during the day for 8 hours.

So my day starts out between 5:15 and 5:30 each morning. Get ready for work, head out, and work a full day until about 3:00 in the afternoon. I rush home, let the dog out, then get my workout in.

Then I spend a little quality time with the dog taking her for a walk or just throwing the ball around outside for awhile. Then I make a quick dinner and then head out to teach one of my fitness classes that I teach 5 days a week.

I teach the class, then come home and work on the business part of the fitness business until roughly 10:00 at night.

Television? Don't have time for it (okay fine, I'll admit, it's on in the background pretty much every night that my Tigers are on but other than that, it doesn't come on much).

It's go-go-go from the moment I wake up until the time I'm ready to get back into bed for the night.

But look at the third paragraph again where I say I get my workout in. Read it again: I GET MY WORKOUT IN. With everything in that busy schedule, I still get a workout in. I rarely (if ever) miss it.

The workout I do isn't long. It's only 30 minutes because that's all the time in my schedule that I have.

What does your schedule look like really? I hear a lot of people say that they don't have time for a workout because they're just too busy with their work, taking the kids to their daily/nightly activities, etc. That's completely understandable, to a point. But, how much time do you spend at night watching TV? Just sayin....

I think when people think of "working out" they think the only way they can get a workout in is going to a gym. When you look at it like that, you're right, you probably don't have time because you have to drive to the gym, find something to do for an hour, and then drive home. That one hour workout in reality probably takes you between 90 minutes to two hours to complete after the travel time and getting the actual workout in.

It doesn't have to be like that. You can get a great workout in 30 minutes.

It's not going to be a light walk on a treadmill. It won't be a slow steady state pedal on a bike.

To get the effect that you want from a workout that only lasts 30 minutes, it has to be at a higher intensity. But, it's well worth it because you'll get better fat loss results, you'll get stronger, and since you only need to do a workout like this 3 times a week, you'll be saving a ton of time compared to a traditional gym workout that you'd do.

Tomorrow, I'm going to explain to you how YOU can simply design a 30 minute workout that you can do in your own home, with no exercise equipment except maybe a stability ball, that'll get you moving closer towards the look you're striving for.

Mike Navin, CSCS
www.30-minuteworkout.com

PS. Go over to www.30-minuteworkout.com and fill out the two quick fields to download the 3 free workouts that are available. Give one of them a try based on your training level and see for yourself how great of a workout you can get in just 30 minutes without all that fancy equipment that they have at the gym and you'll see that I truly am on to something.

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Stability Ball Core Workout 09-06-10

2010-09-09T04:00:00.002-05:00

Three exercises in a row using a stability ball. Do each exercise for 30 seconds. Rest 30 seconds after doing the circuit then complete it 2 more times.

Stability Ball Rollout

1. Kneel in front of a stability ball and bring your arms close together and your hands on the top of the stability ball.
2. Roll your body forward so that your arms "climb" up the stability ball. Make sure to not let your hips sag or raise. Continue rolling over the stability ball until your elbows are touching the ball.
3. Pause for a moment, and then contract your abs and pull yourself back up to the starting position. Again, make sure that you are raising your hips or lower back to pull yourself back up, concentrate on using your abs to complete the movement.
4. Continue the movement for the recommended number of repetitions or time.

Plank -- Forearms on Stability Ball

1. Rest your forearms on a stability ball.
2. Raise your body in a straight line and rest your bodyweight on your forearms (that are on the stability ball) and toes so that your body hovers over the floor.
3. Keep your back straight and your hips up but not so high that your butt is sticking in the air. Hold (brace) your abs tight. Breathe normally.
4. Hold this position for the recommended amount of time.

Mountain Climbers -- Hands on Stability Ball

1. Place your hands on the top of a stability ball and rest on your toes with your body creating a straight like from your shoulders to your feet.
2. Keep your abs braced, pick one foot off the floor and bring your knee up to your chest.
3. Do not let your hips sag or rotate.
4. Keep your abs braced and return your leg to the starting position.
5. Perform the same movement on the other leg and return to the starting position. Continue alternating legs until you have completed the recommended number of repetitions or time.

Direct link to video:

Stability Ball Core Workout

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30 Minute Workout Over a Beer - 09/07/10

2010-09-07T04:00:00.000-05:00

We just finished up the Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer.

But, from my perspective, it's the start of the most important part of the year when it comes to fitness for you.

Grab a beer, and sit down with me for a few minutes while I explain in the video below.

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3-Day Breast Cancer Walk Recap

2010-09-01T03:00:00.006-05:00

I’ve written before about my experiences last year in the 2009 Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure and also talked about my recent involvement with the 60-Mile Men.

I walked in the Michigan 3-Day again this year and I think there’s one initial word that can summarize the whole thing: HOT. I don’t think I’ve ever felt heat like that, although, how often are you walking 20 miles a day continuously in it? If I had to bet, I was probably drinking about 3 gallons of water a day, and needed every ounce of it.

But, regardless of that little issue, it was another great experience.

Last year was the first year I walked in it and I’ll admit that I found the whole thing intimidating. Didn’t know what to expect. Was nervous about whether I’d actually be able to walk on average, 20 miles a day. I also had my cousin on my mind a lot. Thinking about what she was going through and overall just hoping everything else went okay as she was coming down the finish line of her treatments.

This year was a little different though. My cousin is free and clear, I had a better idea what to expect out of the walk, and overall was just more comfortable and relaxed.

I spent a lot of time on this walk talking to a lot of people while walking. It’s interesting but you tend to make “pit stop to pit stop” friends on this walk. You leave a pit stop (that’s a rest station where you can fill up your water, use the porta john, get medical treatment, etc), and you start walking again and you end up more than likely walking around some other people and just start talking. You do this for about an hour until the next pit stop and then pretty much find someone else to talk with after you leave the next pit stop.

When talking with people, you talk about why you’re walking and what it means to each person. Thinking back, I really don’t think there was one story that was the same between two people. Some were walking for a friend, or a relative, a mother, a sister, a daughter, and even a lot of people walking for no particular person, just walking because they wanted to do something for the cause.

But the one similarity that I found, and I saw this last year too, was just the positive energy that people had while on this walk. It’s not a walk where people are all frowns and sad.

Sure, there are sad moments. But for the most part, people are looking at this walk with determination to not let breast cancer take their spirit. Everyone seems to have the attitude of taking something bad and wanting to make a positive out of it.

The 3-Day is definitely designed around that: A true showing of what a small little group can do together when they focus on one goal and walk towards it.

I can’t say enough about this walk and how I think it really establishes a true sense of the concept of "community." When looking at what part each person is doing, and doing it because they have such passion for it, it gives you such a huge uplift in how strong the human spirit really is.

Everyone from the walkers doing the walking, to the crew that is doing their jobs at the medical stations, the food serving areas, to the safety crews out on the streets, to the personal and corporate donors who graciously gave to get people the money they needed to do the walk to the Susan G. Komen organizers who push through doing this weekend after weekend, city to city.

And then you have the support on the streets. The neighbors and people at the cheering stations leaving food out on tables and neighbors setting their sprinklers out for us to walk through. Maybe the most heartfelt are the little kids out there spraying you with water and handing you food and clapping with big smiles on their faces all while decked out in pink outfits.

All of these people, just doing their individual parts when put together makes for just an amazing community that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced in any other setting.

That sense of community got me to put together a short little video using of my video camera while on the walk.

I wanted to put something together to kind of try and give a sense of what this incredible community looks like through the eyes of a walker. To give a feel for what you see for three days out on the streets, in camp, and at the opening and closing ceremonies.

Hopefully those that have done the walk can relate and I hope for those that haven’t done the walk it’ll give you a little insight into what it’s all about and hopefully give you the motivation to be a part of the 3-Day community over the coming years. It’s a great adventure, and through all the fundraising, training preparation, doing the actual walk and everything else that’s involved, it’s worth it in the end.

Okay, enough talk. Take a look and make sure you have your sound turned on:

For a direct link to this YouTube video, you can go to the link below:

Breast Cancer 3 Day

Follow Up to 200 Pushups in 5 Minutes

2010-08-30T09:15:00.003-05:00

I know, it's been awhile since I blogged but, August was a busy month and had a number of projects that I was working on and it's the last full month of summer and just wanted to soak it all in.

But, it's back to the grind since Labor Day is only a few days away.

I mentioned awhile back about how I was doing 200 pushups in 5 minutes where basically I was spreading the pushups out over the course of the day and not just doing them in one session.

I continued doing this for a few weeks and I thought it worked great.

I changed things up a bit. Three days a week I would do pushups, and 3 days a week I would do pullups.

With the pullups, I didn't quite do 200 of them in a day. With pushups, you can do them anywhere, but with a pullup, you obviously need to have a pullup bar and since I'm on the go most of the day, I'm limited to when I can do pullups when I'm home and have access to my Iron Gym.

So I started off with just doing 50 pullups throughout the day. I would do 10 sets of 5.

After a couple of weeks of doing 200 pushups, 3 days a week and 50 pullups, 3 days a week, I add more to each exercise: I increased the number of repetitions per set of pushups that I was doing from 10 to 15 and the number of repetitions per set of pullups from 5 to 7. So I ended up doing 300 pushups a day, 3 days a week, and 70 pullups a day, 3 days a week.

I was really impressed by how simple this routine was, how it doesn't take long, and quite frankly, how great the results are for your upper body by just following these two simple movements.

I'm really starting to think that if you just used these two movements, added in some interval training, got your diet in line, that you wouldn't need much else.

So just remember to try and not complicate things too much. Stick with the basics, eat better (and less food if fat loss is your goal), and you'll be pleasantly surprised with the results.

If you haven't already, give this routine of pushups and pullups (if you have a pullup bar) a try for a couple of weeks and let me know how it goes.

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Your Pants are Lying to You

2010-08-05T06:30:00.005-05:00

I remember back in the day, I use to be able to go into a clothing store, find the waist and inseam size of a pair of pants I wanted, and just buy them without even having to try them on.

I was out shopping recently for some new shorts. For as long as I can remember, I can wear roughly a 32 or 33 waist pant size and feel comfortable in them.

But going through the racks, it was frustrating because all I could find were sizes 28, 30, 34, 36, etc. For the life of me, I couldn't find a 32 or a 33.

So I just decided to grab a couple of pairs of the size 30 and try them on and see what they felt like.

I Went into the changing room, tried them on and was shocked: They fit, and they were almost too loose.

For a split second, I was a bit excited, but, then I thought to myself "Wait a second, something's wrong here. There's no way I'm a 30." I checked the pants closely. There's no elastic anywhere to be found.

Just for testing purposes, I went back out and got a pair of size 34 to see how those fit. Put them on, buttoned them, and they fell right to the ground. And that's only one or two sizes larger than I normally wear.

I remember a few years ago when I was trying on some dress pants and noticed that there was this elastic pull on the sides. I thought that was pretty funny in that it allowed someone to wear a pair of pants smaller than what they could normally wear, say that they were wearing a size 32 but were actually stretching them to a size 34.

But in this most recent situation with the size 30, I think is taking it to a bit of an extreme. It also explains why there were no 32 or 33 sizes, because the guys that were actually wearing size 36 could fit in those instead.

Think about the ramifications of that though. If you're all of a sudden fitting into a size 33 or 34 where you are normally wearing a size 36 or 38, isn't that giving you the sense that you are in better shape from a waist measurement perspective?

Studies are showing that there's a strong correlation between waist size compared to your height and your risks of various health risks, rather than looking at the old standard of Body Mass Index (BMI).

If we are now making pant sizes bigger than what they actually are, just to make people feel better about their body shape, aren't we actually putting these people in the delusional mindset that they are at a healthy waist size, when in reality they may not be?

I guess looking back at my recent shopping endeavors, I've been seeing this for quite some time. I've always been a solid medium when it came to just your every day shirts, but looking through my closet now, I notice a lot more smalls sizes.

I even remember a couple of years ago not being able to find a bathing suit that fit that would actually stay on and having to go to the Juniors section to look for one (that didn't work out to well either but with the opposite problem).

I guess my point is that you need to be careful when buying clothes and to not get to excited when you're able to all of a sudden fit into a size that you normally haven't fit into and it isn't because you've been losing weight or body fat, because chances are, your pants are lying to you.

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Beginner 30 Minute Workout - (Video) - 08/01/10

2010-08-04T03:00:00.003-05:00

This is a circuit from the August 2010 Beginner 30 minute workout.

You're going to do 5 exercises in a row, each for the time listed next to the description below. Once you're done with the circuit, you'll rest 30 seconds, and then complete that circuit again, rest another 30 second after completing the circuit a second time, and then go on and do the circuit one more time.

Here's a video of it and the written descriptions are below:

Knee Taps - 30 seconds

1. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, and bend your arms at the elbow right in front you of with your upper arms tucked into your sides.
2. Bring your left leg up as quickly as you can, touching your left hand with the top of your left knee.
3. Lower your left leg while at the same time bringing your right leg up and touching your right hand with the top of your right knee.
4. Continue back and forth between legs as quickly as you can and remembering to bring your legs up as high as you can to touch your hands until you have completed the recommended number of repetitions or time.

Side Leg Raise with Extension - 15 seconds on each leg

1. Kneel on your knees and hands and keep your back flat and arms straight from the shoulders to your hands on the ground.
2. Starting with the right side, raise your right leg (while keeping the knee bent and your upper body stable) up towards your right side until the leg is parallel to the floor.
3. Then extend knee so that your entire leg is straight and pointing to the right, while keeping your leg lifted in the air.
4. Pause for a second, then bend your knee back into towards your body and then lower the leg back down.
5. Continue doing all the repetitions or time on one side before moving on and completing all the repetitions or time on the left leg.

Cross Crawl - 30 seconds

1. Stand with your hands behind your ears and pull your shoulder blades together. Keep your eyes looking straight ahead.
2. Move your right elbow across your body and slightly down while at the same time, bringing your left knee up as high as you can. In other words, aim your right elbow towards your left knee.
3. Return your upper body to the starting position and place your left leg on the floor.
4. Follow the same movement aiming your left elbow towards your lifted right knee.
5. Continue alternating between both sides until you have completed the recommended number of repetitions or time.

Prisoner Squat - 30 seconds

1. Stand with your feet just greater than shoulder-width apart.
2. Clasp your hands behind your head. Keep your elbows back and shoulder blades pulled together to work the upper back.
3. Start the movement at the hip. Push your hips backward and “sit back into a chair.” Make your hips go back as far as possible.
4. Squat as deep as possible, but keep your lower back tensed in a neutral position.
5. Don’t let your lower back become rounded.
6. Push with your butt muscles, hamstrings, and quadriceps to return to the starting position. Continue the movement for the recommended number of repetitions or time.

Spiderman Crawls - Knees - 30 seconds

1. Get at the top of a pushup position by resting on your hands and the tips of your toes. Your arms should be shoulder width apart. Make sure to keep your body in a straight line from your shoulders to your feet and to not sag or raise your hips.
2. Drop your knees straight down on the ground without moving them closer to your stomach.
3. Starting with your left leg, bring it forward towards your hand as far as you can and drop your foot flat down. Make sure to keep your body straight. Don’t raise your butt. Keep your arms straight/locked at the top of the position (don’t lower yourself).
4. Pause for a moment and then return your left leg to the starting position.
5. Do the next rep using the right leg and continue to alternate legs until you have completed all of the recommended repetitions or time.

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Great Ab Circuit (Video) 07-26-10

2010-07-28T03:00:00.003-05:00

I was looking at some of my favorite exercises and noticed that all of them really work the abs so I decided to put them all together to make a nice little 2 minute circuit.

The exercises that you're going to do in this circuit are a Side Plank - Forearms, Plank - Forearms, and a Pushup.

You're going to start by doing a Side Plank on your forearm on your right side and you're going to hold that position for 30 seconds. Then without dropping your knees or using your left hand to help with the movement by setting it on the ground, you're going to roll over clockwise into a Plank on your forearms and toes. You're going to hold that Plank for 30 seconds.

Then again, making sure not to drop your knees to the ground or push off from your right hand, roll clockwise again into the Side Plank on your forearms on your left side and you're going to hold that position for another 30 seconds.

Once that 30 seconds is over, roll counter clockwise (without dropping to your knees) and get into the top of the pushup position. Then do 10 pushups.

Then you can rest. Rest 60 seconds, and do that circuit 3 more times.

The important point is to not use your free arm on the side plank or your knees in any of the positions to make the transition from one movement to the next. The transition should be made with your core.

Here's a video explanation of it:

Exercise Descriptions:

Side Plank – Forearms

1. Lie on the floor on your right side.
2. Support your bodyweight with the outside of your right foot (with your left foot lying on top of the right foot) and your right elbow with your lower arm pointed straight ahead and your palm on the floor.
3. Keep your body in a straight line so that your body hovers over the floor from your foot up to your right forearm.
4. Keep your back straight and your hips up and your head looking forward, making sure that your neck is in line with your spine. Hold your abs tight. Contract them as if someone was about to punch you in the stomach, but breathe normally.
5. Hold this position for the recommended amount of time and then switch to the left side.

Plank – Forearms

1. Lie on your stomach on the floor.
2. Raise your body in a straight line and rest your bodyweight on your forearms and toes so that your body hovers over the floor.
3. Keep your back straight and your hips up but not so high that your butt is sticking in the air. Hold (brace) your abs tight. Breathe normally.
4. Hold this position for the recommended amount of time.

Pushups

1. Get at the top of a pushup position by resting on your hands and the tips of your toes. Your arms should be shoulder width apart. Make sure to keep your body in a straight line from your shoulders to your feet and to not sag or raise your hips.
2. Lower yourself down until your nose is only a few inches from the ground and make sure that your hips do not sag. Also as you are lowering, pull your shoulder blades together as far as they will go and make sure that your neck stays in line with your spine.
3. Pause for a second, then brace your abs and keep your body in a straight line from feet to shoulders as you push through your chest, shoulders, and triceps until you get to the top of the position. Repeat for the recommended number of repetitions or time.

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So You Think You're Feeling Healthy

2010-07-27T08:44:00.003-05:00

For the most part, if you ask most people whether they are subjectively “feeling healthy” most of the time, they’re going to say “Yes” regardless of whether they eat unhealthy or healthy, whether they exercise or not exercise, whether they smoke or not smoke.

That’s really kind of a strange way the body works. If you take on unhealthy habits, your body doesn’t immediately fight back and make you FEEL like there is anything wrong. Over time it slowly clogs the arteries, decays your lungs from smoking, increases your heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol, fasting glucose levels, and not to mention, your waistline.

But through all of that, you continue to think that if all of those bad habits were so bad, then why aren’t I “feeling unhealthy?” So you just continue on with your bad habits and push aside all the warnings the “experts” have about the risks of those bad habits as nonsense in the real world.

I bring this up because I came across an story about an obese woman Marci Williams, who went to the doctor for a physical, with no known “health problems” (because I’m assuming she felt “fine”), and within two weeks she was taking medication for high-blood pressure, started taking insulin because she was diagnosed as diabetic, and her cholesterol levels were off the charts and had to start taking cholesterol lowering medication.

She states that:

"My resting pulse was in the 120-something range," she recalled. "That's a racing pulse for most people, and that was my resting pulse."

She ended up going to a cardiologist and this is rather long quote but I truly love the fact that the doctor didn’t mince any words with her:

"I just knew the minute he walked in this wasn't going to be a very good appointment," she said. "He said, 'You know, you are not going to live to see 50 if you don't lose this weight.' He made it very clear to me that all these things that were happening to me were symptoms of obesity, rather than stand-alone illnesses. His advice to me was [that] we can treat all of these symptoms, but the only way to cure this is to lose the weight." [my emphasis]

The first thing she did was to get an angioplasty to open up those arteries a bit.

Then she started watching what she ate, and had a goal of exercising 30 minutes a day, although in the beginning, that became too much for her and she had to break that up into 10 minute workouts a few times a day.

I think this is a great idea of breaking up the workout into very short little sessions all day and I mentioned that I’m in the process of testing this right now with pushups.

She lost some weight, and the doctor gave her the okay to do some more strenuous exercise, so she joined a gym.

As she continued to drop weight:

...she also shed symptoms. She stopped having to take insulin. Her blood pressure came under control. Her cholesterol improved.

When this all started, Marci weighed around 332 pounds (at 5’ 3”) and her weight now is between 135 and 140 pounds.

I talked about this in a post about a client that I have in my class that was always overweight but then had a heart attack and that really woke him up. He had always ate unhealthy foods, didn’t exercise, but didn’t “feel unhealthy” so he just thought he was mortal to any problems.

But as both him and Marci Williams found out, at some point, these habits will catch up to you and the consequences will hit you like a brick. Thankfully both of them were freaked out enough to make some changes.

I know with my client, and I’m assuming with Ms. Williams, is that now that they are actually following better eating habits, exercising, and watching their weight, that even though they “felt healthy” for most of their lives with their bad habits, they now realize how unhealthy they felt now that they TRULY know what “feeling healthy” feels like.

Which I think is my overall point: don’t assume that just because you don’t feel “unhealthy” (especially if you have bad eating habits, don’t work out, and are overweight) that everything is “okay.” Go to the doctor, get blood work done, ask your doctor for a blunt opinion, and make some changes and see what it feels like to really “feel healthy.”

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A Smiling Doberman (Video)

2010-07-26T03:00:00.001-05:00

A slight break from fitness talk to talk about my dog, Scarlett the Doberman, and how she cracks me up on a daily basis. No matter what kind of mood I'm in, she can just do something so innocent to put a smile on my face.

And I think that's why pets are important. They can really help you stay healthy, both mentally and emotionally.

One of Scarlett the Doberman's craziest antics is that she actually smiles. That's right, she smiles. I have to act like a fool sometimes to get a good one out of her (as you'll see when watching the video) but it's well worth it to see that smile show up on her face.

One morning I walked back up to my room after doing some work downstairs for awhile and decided to grab my camera to see if I could get her to smile, and she didn't disappoint.

I'll keep the camera handy to try and catch other ones in the future as well.

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200 Pushups in 5 Minutes

2010-07-22T07:14:00.006-05:00

The other day I talked about Starting a Fat Loss Program and I used pushups as an example of a great exercise that uses a lot of muscle that when done, will lead to your body need more calories for the recovery process, thus burning more fat after the workout is over.

That got me thinking about pushups some more and how I really like doing them. I still think the pullup is my favorite but, the pushup comes in at a close second.

So I decided when I woke up yesterday, that I wanted to get 200 pushups done in 5 minutes.

There's a catch though. I wasn't going to just get on the floor and muscle out 200 pushups in one session. I was going to do them a little bit at a time over the entire day.

By my calculations, it takes me about 15 seconds to do 10 pushups.

So if I were to do 20 sets of 10 pushups throughout the day, that would mean I was spending just a total of 5 minutes a day doing pushups.

If you assume that you are awake 16 hours in a day, that would mean you would have to do 12.5 pushups an hour to reach 200 pushups.

So I woke up in the morning, jumped out of bed, got down on the floor, and did 10 pushups.

Got ready for the day, and after my shower, did another 10 pushups.

Throughout the entire day, I just stayed cognizant that my goal was to do 200 pushups for the day, and when the desire hit me, no matter where I was, I would drop down and do 10 pushups (I was in a parking lot and dropped and did 10 right in front of my car....Got a few crazy looks for that...).

I drink a lot of water during the day and found a nice routine in that when I had to use the bathroom, I would drop on the floor and do 10 pushups first. Considering I probably have to use the bathroom every 45 minutes or so, that means over the course of 3 hours I would have done 40 pushups.

By the time I got to my last set of 10 pushups at the end of the night, my form and intensity were exactly the same as when I did my first set of 10 in the morning. I felt great. Didn't feel depleted at all.

Woke up this morning and have a tad bit of muscle soreness in my chest, but feel a really great pump in my arms, shoulders, and especially my lats.

I was doing pushups on my toes. But that doesn't mean this won't work with other variations of it. You could do them against the wall, or on an incline, and on your knees.

One suggestion though: If you've never done a pushup before, or you only do them from time to time, don't try and hit 200 over the course of one day at first. Work your way up to it. Try shooting for 50 first. Then if that feels okay, the next time you do it, try and shoot for 75 or even a hundred throughout the day.

The larger point of trying to do 200 pushups spread out throughout the day is to show that short workouts can do wonders for you. I talk a lot about doing a 30 minute workout and how I think that if designed correctly, can be even more effective than a 60 minute workout. But even doing short little burst of an exercise (such as 15 seconds), can still be beneficial. This shows that there truly is NO EXCUSE for saying you don't have time to do a workout. Spread the workout over the course of the day if finding a block of 30 minutes isn't going to work for you.

I'm going to continue doing 200 pushups, 3 days a week for the next couple of weeks and see how it goes (and if you're going to do this, I would recommend only doing it 3 days a week to start). I'll let you know how my progress is going in a few weeks.

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Exercise for Beginners at Home (Video) - 07/20/10

2010-07-21T03:00:00.002-05:00

Need to build your way up to bodyweight squats? Here's a progression of exercises that you can follow with the Lying Hip Extension.

Start with 3 sets of 30 seconds of the Lying Hip Extension 3 days a week. Once that gets to easy, move up to the Lying Hip Extension with Legs on a Chair, then to the 1-Legged Lying Hip Extension, then to the Elevated 1-Legged Lying Hip Extension.

Check out the video and then there are written descriptions of each of the exercises below:

Lying Hip Extension

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor.

2. Brace your abs, and contract your butt muscles as if you were squeezing something between your cheeks
.
3. Lift your hips up by contracting your butt muscles. Don't use your lower back. You should form a straight line from your shoulders to your knees (meaning, the only thing that should be supporting you are your feet and your shoulders).

4. Pause when you reach the top position and keep your abs braced and squeeze the butt muscles.

5. Slowly lower yourself down to the starting position and repeat for the recommended number of repetitions or time.

Lying Hip Extension on Chair

1. Lie on your back with your heels on a chair and your knees bent 90 degrees.

2. Brace your abs, and contract your butt muscles as if you were squeezing something between your cheeks.

3. Bridge your hips up by contracting your butt muscles. Don't use your lower back.

4. Hold your hips elevated for 1 second. Keep your abs braced and squeeze the butt muscles.

5. Slowly lower your hips down to the starting position.

6. Slowly lower yourself down to the starting position and repeat for the recommended number of repetitions or time.

One Legged Lying Hip Extension

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor.

2. Extend your non-dominant leg out straight so that it's just hovering above the ground.

3. Brace your abs, and contract your butt muscles as if you were squeezing something between your cheeks.

4. Bring yourself up by contracting your butt muscles and pushing down on the foot of your dominant leg. Don't use your lower back or the momentum of your leg.

5. Pause when you reach the top position and keep your abs braced and squeeze the butt muscles. Your body should be in line from your shoulders to your knee. The only parts that should be supporting you are your shoulders and your foot on your dominant leg.

6. Slowly lower yourself down to the starting position and repeat for the recommended number of repetitions or time.

7. Once you've completed all the repetitions or time with one leg elevated, complete all the repetitions or time using the other leg.

One Legged Lying Hip Extension on Chair

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent and your non-dominant foot on on the edge of a chair and your dominant leg slightly elevated and straight out from you.

2. Brace your abs, and contract your butt muscles as if you were squeezing something between your cheeks.

3. Bring yourself up by contracting your butt muscles and pushing down on the foot of your dominant leg. Don't use your lower back or the momentum of your leg.

4. Pause when you reach the top position and keep your abs braced and squeeze the butt muscles. Your body should be in line from your shoulders to your knee. The only parts that should be supporting you are your shoulders and your foot on your dominant leg.

5. Slowly lower yourself down to the starting position and repeat for the recommended number of repetitions or time.

6. Once you've completed all the repetitions or time with one leg elevated, complete all the repetitions or time using the other leg.

Check out other great movements for fat loss with the 30 Minute Workout.

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Starting a Fat Loss Program

2010-07-20T10:44:00.019-05:00

If you were to decide to build a new house, how would you start building it once you had all the materials, permits, workers, etc.? Would you start building the roof first? That wouldn’t make sense. What about having the window company deliver all the windows in your house first? That’s probably not a good idea either.

Chance are, you’re going to start with the foundation first. But even before that, you’re going to have to have a plan.

The same goes when starting a fat loss program.

You’ve sat down and decided what diet or what kind of eating you’re going to do. You’ve got meals planned for each day of the week.

Now it comes time to put together an exercise plan, and this is where people tend to get lost on what kind of exercise routine is best for fat loss.

People think that they need to buy that fancy (and expensive) exercise equipment from that man or woman that was in great shape on that infomercial you saw on television last night.

But really, you don’t need to do that.

One of the best workouts for fat loss, is using nothing more than the weight of your body by using the biggest, and strongest muscles that you have.

When you use the largest muscles in your body during the workout, this means that those muscles are going to need quite a bit more calories in order to recover than if you had done a workout where you just focused on the smaller muscles.

I’ll use the pushup as example. During a pushup, the main muscles that you are using are your chest, triceps, shoulders, and forearms, as well as activating your core in order to stabilize your entire body.

Compare that to a bicep curl. A bicep curl is basically isolating your bicep and forearm muscles to lift the weight and using your shoulders and core to stabilize your body.

Aren’t you using quite a bit more muscle in the pushup than you are in the bicep curl?

Meaning, doesn’t it make sense that with all the muscle that you’re using in the pushup, that it’s going to mean that your body needs to burn more calories after the workout to repair those muscles from the pushups then it would take to repair the smaller amount of muscle you used in the bicep curl?

Which is why more and more studies are showing and confirming that when workouts revolve around full body movements such as pushups, squats, pullups, lunges, and the hundreds of variations of those, the body continues to burn calories in order to recover from that workout for up to 24-36 hours. Burning more calories equals, more fat loss.

But if you’re just staring off, are overweight, and never worked out in your life and think there’s no way you can do pushups, what can you do?

Let’s take the pushup again. You can first start off by doing the pushup against the wall.

Over time, these are going to get easier, so you have the change it so that it’s more challenging on your muscles to make sure that you continue to increase strength and to cause your body to continue to burn more calories after the workout which will lead to more fat loss. So you can modify the wall pushups by doing pushups against an incline like a chair or a table.

When that gets easier, pick a lower object to the do incline pushups on, such as a step.

Then you can modify it to doing them on your knees.

Then modify them to do them on your toes.

Then when you really get good at them, prop your legs up on something and do them on a decline.

With just a simple movement like a pushup, you can see that you can start off with a simple modification to it to make it challenging for you, and then you progress over time.

Don’t forget that point about progression: In order to continue to see results, you have to challenge your muscles when a movement becomes to easy because if you don’t, your body will adapt, and you’ll see a plateau in strength gains, as well as in the amount of calories that you are burning after the workout.

Note though, that these are exercises that you can do to ENHANCE the fat loss you’re going to see. If you don’t get your diet in line, quite frankly, you’re not going to see much fat loss. As the saying going in the personal training industry “You can’t out exercise a bad diet.”

Variations of pushups, squats, lunges, and if you’re up to it, pullups, are just some simple examples of exercises that you can start off with in a fat loss program that you can do without spending thousands of dollars on exercise equipment that you’ll use a few times and then turn into a clothes hanger.

Simple (yet challenging) workouts that you can do right in your own home in thirty minutes a few times a week that can get you closer and closer to not only your goal weight, but also make you a more healthy looking and healthy feeling person with each passing day.

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Bodybuilder Burpees (Video) 07-13-10

2010-07-14T03:00:00.002-05:00

Today I've gotta quick video for you on a 4-minute power workout you do with Bodybuilder Burpees that is in my current July 2010 30 Minute Workout.

Check out the video below:

o You’re going to do 20 seconds of Bodybuilder Burpees, and then you’re going to rest for 10 seconds.

o After that 10 seconds is up, you go right back to doing Bodybuilder Burpees for another 20 seconds.

o Continue doing 20 seconds of Bodybuilder Burpees and 10 seconds of rest until you have done the Bodybuilder Burpees sets 8 times (which would equal 4 minutes).

o Make sure you’re putting a lot of intensity and speed into the Bodybuilder Burpees (but at the same time, making sure you keep perfect form).

Bodybuilder Burpees description:

1. Get into the top of the pushup position resting only on your hands and tops of your toes.

2. Push your legs out apart from each other while keeping your legs straight.

3. Bring your legs back together so that you are at the top of the pushup once more, thrust your legs into your body, and then jump straight up.

4. When you come back down, squat down, and thrust your legs back so that you are back to the top of the pushup position.

Check out other great movements for fat loss with the 30 Minute Workout.

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Changing Your Image of Your Image

2010-07-13T10:54:00.002-05:00

This is a great article that I think gets to the heart of why millions of people go on a diet and exercise program, lose some weight, and then fall off just after a couple of weeks.

What author Tom Venuto comes up with is pretty similar to something I had come up with a numbers of years ago.

Basically, we put ourselves into a “box.” We tell ourselves “I am _______” and then we keep ourselves in that “box.” Why do we do that? Is it because our “box” is comfortable and we’re afraid to veer outside of it? More times than not, ya, that’s probably the answer.

And unfortunately, that’s why people continue to go on diets and exercise plans, only to fall back into their own ways after a short period of time. People think that all they have to do is change their eating, get on an exercise plan, and turning fat to lean will show up in no time.

But, unfortunately, THOSE are the easy parts. The mental part is the hard part. You have to WANT to change your self-image. You have to WANT to step outside that “box.” Don’t create a new “box,” just get outside your current “box” and do what you want to do and look the way you want to look. Once you change your self-image, then the eating and exercise plan you put yourself on will do the rest.

The article goes into steps you can take to change your self-image. Follow it. It may seem rather strange to be doing what he states but, trust me, if you follow his easy steps, you’ll reach your fitness goals (as well as any other self-image changing goal that you’ve set for yourself).

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Whole Body Scans

2010-07-08T10:31:00.008-05:00

I came across a comparison of whole body scans of two women: One woman weighs 250 pounds and the other woman weighs 120 pounds.

WARNING: If you get queasy easily, you may want to click on the back button before scrolling down further.

One of the first things that I noticed was the amount of muscle on the 250-pound woman. If you think about it though, it makes sense. Weighing that much means that you need more strength to be able to lift your legs (move your body), lift your arms, etc.

But along with that, you can see that parts of the larger woman are clearly asymmetrical. Look at her shoulders. Granted, it could be the way that she was being scanned but, take that along with her upper legs, lower legs, and arms, and all of those parts are shaped differently on the left side compared to the right side.

Compare that to the 120-pound woman who is pretty symmetrical all around.

I know it sounds strange that I noticed the symmetrical differences first when comparing these two women since the most obvious difference is the incredible amount of body fat on the 250-pound woman compared to the 120-pound woman.

What I think this really shows is how fat doesn’t have a set way that it is added to the body. It doesn’t even out on the left side and right side. It just basically adds itself to wherever it wants to go. That then has an effect on the muscle growing around the bones asymmetrically since you could have more body fat to carry around on one side or area than the other.

Look at the bones in the 250-pound woman. Much larger than the 120-pound woman which again makes sense because the more mass you have the stronger the bones have to be in order to support the weight. But because of the asymmetrical shape of the body, some of the bones are contoured differently on one side and the other (and notice how the ankles bow inward on the 250-pound woman, which is a product of that extra weight and is more than likely going to cause some major walking problems for this person at some point).

When taking all of that into account and then looking at the 120-pound woman, everything looks very symmetrical and even on pretty much all parts of the body. What little body fat there is, is not too disproportionate on the left and right sides, the muscles are symmetrical, and the bones look very stable and symmetrical as well (I know I’m using the word symmetrical a lot today but I think that’s the best word to use to describe these pictures).

Overall, when you look at the 120-pound woman and the 250-pound woman, you just see a much healthier person. The heart, liver, internal organs, and even the brain just look much healthy and hate to say “pleasing to the eye” then the overall body scan of the 250-pound woman.

Does this mean that every woman should strive to be 120 pounds? No and I don’t think that’s realistic. But, I think it’s safe to say that if you got your weight into a “normal” range for your sex and height, you’d be pretty well off with the insides of your body looking healthy rather than unhealthy.

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Healthy Diet for a Child

2010-07-07T10:34:00.004-05:00

We all seem to notice day after day when walking down the street that the waistlines of kids are getting bigger and bigger. Kids today get into the habit of having well, bad habits…. particularly bad eating habits.

What can we do: 1) for kids that are not overweight or obese yet, stop them from becoming so and 2) get kids that are overweight and obese from changing course?

I think there are some very simple things that you can do to start changing and molding good eating habits in your kids, and as a bonus, in yourself as well.

First, parents, your kids are going to follow your lead. If you are eating junk, they are going to eat junk. If you eat healthy, they are going to eat healthy. So you HAVE to lead by example.

You can take things in small steps though.

1. Go through all the cupboards in you house and throw out all the junk food.

2. Throw out all your regular soda.

3. If you and your family are eating fast food on a weekly basis, stop.

Those are the first steps. If you can eliminate those three items, you're going to see some vast improvements in your waistline as well as your children's.

If you take all of those out, then at this point I don't even care about portion sizes of the other food you are eating.

I don't care if your kids have an extra helping of pasta, or mashed potatoes, or another piece of chicken or another homemade hamburger, etc. We'll worry about portion size later. All I'm concerned about at this point is getting rid of the junk from your diet.

Will the kids complain? Sure.

I noticed something about my dog awhile back. I've had her on some special medication for a little bit of time and the vet told me that her appetite would increase while being on the medication.

Prior to putting her on the meds, she ate her food, but was always picky. I would have to spice it up with some cheese or something and then she'd eat it.

But when I had her on these meds, it doesn't matter. I put that food in her bowl with nothing added and she ate it like she hadn’t eaten in a week.

Moral of the story is, your kids might complain about eating food without all that "junk food flavor" in it and may even pout and say they aren't going to eat at all if it's not going to be "junk food." But at some point, they're going to get hungry, and they'll eat what you give them.

Now this doesn't mean you can't give your kids junk food ever again. You just need to make sure when you do, that it truly is a treat. Maybe after a week of not consuming any of the junk, you take a family for a walk or bike ride (stressing walk or bike ride, not drive) to a local ice cream place for that treat. But that's it. It's only a treat to be used very sparingly.

Start out with those three changes and don't worry about the rest for now. If you start with those three, then you've created a nice solid foundation for other improvements later on.

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Squats and Knees

2010-07-01T10:03:00.002-05:00

There's always been a few myths out there about squats and lunges and how they affect the knees that I think would be a good idea to go over.

Myth Number 1: Squats and Lunges are bad for the knees

Assuming you have healthy knees (meaning, the doctor hasn't told you not to do squats or lunges), they aren't bad for your knees. In fact, they could actually help build up the bone mineral density of the bone in the knee and surrounding leg bones to make them stronger and thus, decrease your chances of osteoporosis as you age. They’ll also build up the muscle in both your upper and lower legs with the same benefit of building up the strength of the knee joint.

Myth Number 2: In a squat, you shouldn't let your upper leg go below the point of being parallel to the ground.

One word: babies. Meaning, take a look at babies after they start to walk. They stand there, stick an object in their mouth, throw it on the ground, and squat down to pick it up. Look at how they squat. Their butt in that diaper is nearly grazing the ground. They then pick the object up, stick it back in their mouth, throw it back on the ground, squat down again, and the cycle continues for 3-4 hours.

Babies are natural squatters and if squatting below parallel was harmful, we'd have millions of kids growing up in knee braces.

Another point to make on this myth is that if you go below parallel, you're actually going to be recruiting more from your glutes (butt muscles). So if you're hoping to shape that butt, keep doing squats.

Once last thought on this is that studies have shown that there is more force being applied to your knees when your legs are at parallel than at any other position. The amount of force on the knee significantly DECREASES when you go below parallel.

Myth Number 3: You shouldn't let your knees go past the front of your toes while squatting or when doing a lunge.

First, again, go back to the babies. Watch their knees and you'll see that they naturally go forward and past the front of their toes when the squat down.

The biggest problem I see with this myth is that if you are watching where your knees are going, you could be causing bigger problems in other areas: your lower back.

In a squat, your lower back should be in a neutral and flat position. You should keep your eyes looking slightly downward at a 45-degree angle. You don't want your lower back to round. If you're paying attention to your knees, meaning, you're looking down at your knees, your lower back immediately goes into a rounding position. Not good.

In a lunge, you want your upper body to be straight up and down. Don't lean forward. And I'll give you one guess as to what happens when you look down to see where your knees are in comparison to your toes. Yup, the upper body leans forward.

Bottom line, don't worry where your knees are compared to your toes when doing squats and lunges, just keep your eyes looking slightly downward at a 45-degree angle and your back flat on a squat, and upper body straight in a lunge.

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Core Tabata Workout - 6/29/10

2010-06-30T03:00:00.000-05:00

Here's a great Core Tabata Workout that you can do in just 4 minutes. Your abs will be screaming when you're done with this:

You're going to start by doing 20 seconds of fast mountain climbers.

After that 20 seconds has expired, immediately go into a side plank on your right side (from your right elbow to the outside of your right foot) and hold it for 10 seconds.

Once that 10 seconds if over, immediately go into another 20 seconds of fast mountain climbers.

Then again when that 20 seconds is over, go into a side plank again, but this time on your left side (from your left elbow to the outside of your left foot).

Once that 10 seconds is over, go back into fast mountain climbers again, followed by the side plank on your right again.

Continue doing this for 4 minutes (or 8 rounds of fast mountain climbers and 4 side planks on each side).

When making the change from fast mountain climbers to side plank, try to do with without dropping to your knees. You want to keep your core elevated and activated for the entire 4 minutes.

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Too Much Salt Intake

2010-06-29T09:26:00.003-05:00

A while back I talked about the amount of salt in processed food and how the food manufacturing companies have agreed to decrease the amount of salt in their foods over the next 5 years due to the fact that Americans are taking in way to much salt in their daily diet.

The guidelines tell us that we shouldn’t get more than 2,400 milligrams of sodium a day.

I don’t add salt to my foods and I do my best to only eat foods that don’t have any or a very small amount of sodium in them, so I thought.

A couple of weeks ago I sat down and wanted to see how much sodium I was getting in a day. I came up with around 1,200 milligrams. Although I was glad that I was quite a bit below the upper limit, I was still pretty surprised that I was getting that much in on a daily basis.

I bring this up because there’s a new study out there showing that very few Americans are taking in sodium at or below the recommended amount of 2,400 milligrams a day.

First, a breakdown of the upper limit of what people should be taking in:

Health officials currently say no adult should eat more than a teaspoon of salt each day. They go on to advise that 70 percent of adults — including people with high blood pressure, all African-Americans and everyone over 40 — should actually limit their salt intake to a more restrictive two-thirds of a teaspoon.

And what the researchers found:

Overall, only 1 in 10 adults meet the teaspoon standard, said the CDC study. But for those who should be even stingier, only 1 in 18 manage to do it.

Not surprisingly, what the researchers are finding is that people aren’t just dumping a bunch of salt on their food from the saltshaker. The vast majority of the salt intake is coming from processed and restaurant foods. And,

...it concluded that salt was most commonly found in cold cuts and other meats, and in baked goods and other items counted as grain-based products.

I know a lot of people say “I just don’t add extra salt to my food when I’m about to eat it.” My guess is that might have been a good rule of thumb some time ago but, with the amount of sodium being increasingly added to processed food over the years, that rule doesn’t seem to mean much any more.

As I mentioned, I watch my sodium intake closely, but my daily intake is still around 1,200 milligrams a day. Which makes me believe that it’s not that difficult for people who aren’t paying attention to their intake to very easily go over the 2,400 ceiling marker.

I’m glad to see that this issue has been getting quite a bit of attention over the last few months because I don’t think it can be stressed enough as to how we need to get this salt intake under control in this country (and around the world for that matter).

If even 25% more people that are regularly over consuming in their salt intake were able to reduce it to the recommended levels, I think that would go a long way in reducing the various ailments like high blood pressure (which increases the chances of heart disease and stroke) that come from too much salt intake.

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The Obesity Virus

2010-06-25T08:28:00.009-05:00

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Outbreak” with Dustin Hoffman and Renee Russo, there’s a scene where all the politicos are sitting around a table determining what to do to contain the spread of a hemorrhagic virus that has infected a small town.

They show a graph of an animated map of the United States as to how quickly the virus could spread over the course of 24, 48 and 72 hours, if the virus were to make it’s way out of this small town that it’s in now. Basically, within 72 hours, it would consume and spread to the entire country.

I bring this up because I found an animated map of how obesity rates have changed from state to state across the United State between 1985 and 2008 and when it moves from year to year, it made me think of that movie and how striking it is that what we almost have is an obesity virus spreading across this country.

Take a look at the map in 1985:

And then look at it in 2008:

To get the full effect, click here to go to the link and watch it in motion.

In 1985, you only had a handful of states where the state obesity rate was between 10-14%. Compare that to 2008 where only ONE state had obesity rates between 15-19% and all the other states were higher than that.

I don’t know about you but when looking at that whole thing in motion is pretty shocking and in a way, kind of creepy in how it really looks more like an obesity virus rather than an obesity “problem.”

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TV Commercial Workout

2010-06-23T03:00:00.004-05:00

You're sitting in front of the TV at night watching your favorite television show. You can get a great TV commercial workout while you're sitting there.

Take a watch of the video below that explains it:

Do the first exercise for the length of the first commercial, then when that commercial is over, immediately go on to the next exercise.

Continue cycling through the exercise in the video and written below until your show comes back on and then rest while you are watching the show (but don't sit there and eat potato chips!).

When the next commercial break comes on, start with the next exercise that you left off at during the last commercial break.

First exercise: Offset Pushups
Second exercise: Knee Taps
Third exercise: Plank with a hammer curl
Fourth exercise: Forward alternating lunge
Fifth exercise: Cross Body Mountain Climbers

30 Minute Workout

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Smoking and Stress Relief

2010-06-22T09:30:00.003-05:00

One thing that I tend to hear smokers say about why they smoke is because they find that smoking gives them stress relief.

The argument could also be made that overeating, doing illegal drugs, or a variety of other unhealthy activities that people do could also be used as stress relief (however temporary that relief feels).

There’s a new study out that says quitting smoking might actually REDUCE a person’s stress level.

The researchers in this study recruited:

469 smokers who had been hospitalized for a heart attack or heart bypass surgery. While the patients were still in the hospital, they completed surveys on their perceived stress levels and smoking habits. All said they were motivated to quit and had agreed to take part in a clinical trial of in-hospital smoking-cessation counseling.

The vast majority of the participants (85 percent) thought that smoking helped them deal with stress, on the initial survey they took, with 50 percent saying that smoking “very much” helped them cope with stress.

A year after the initial survey was given, 41 percent of the participants had remained smoke free.

As for the overall findings:

On average, Hajek and his colleagues found, the abstainers showed a 20 percent reduction in their reported stress levels, while patients who had gone back to smoking showed little change in their perceived stress.

The relationship between abstinence and reduced stress held up when the researchers accounted for factors such as patients' age and education, how heavily they had smoked before quitting, and how high their stress scores had been at the start of the study.

According to the researchers, it’s the simple matter that being dependent on smoking cigarettes is itself a source of stress.

So someone who smokes 20 cigarettes per day, for example, essentially goes through 20 bouts of stress each day, as the levels of nicotine in the body decline. Once that person quits -- and gets over the initial period of withdrawal -- he will have 20 fewer periods of stress each day, Hajek said.

So in other words, chances are, you aren’t stressed because of stressful things going on in your life, you’re stressed because…you aren’t smoking on a cigarette.

As I said, I think other habits could like overeating can definitely have this same effect.

You eat, not necessarily because you’re hungry, but because there’s a stress after awhile of NOT eating.

I think there could be a positive spin on this though.

I know with myself, if I go three days without exercising, I tend to be incredibly low on energy and somewhat stressed. But then all it takes is one workout and then it clicks in my head “yup, that’s all I needed to get back on track.”

So if you’re looking for a habit that will not only relieve stress, but won’t be a harmful burden on your body like what smoking and overeating can do, go out and get a little bit of exercise. Take a walk, a run, lift some weights, etc. You don’t need too much. Thirty minutes a day is a good starting point and I think you’ll be amazed how well physically and mentally you’ll feel after you continue to do it on a regular basis.

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Burning More Fat

2010-06-16T08:59:00.005-05:00

If you first start off with an exercise routine and you’ve never exercised before, you without a doubt notice that you are burning more fat than before when you were sitting on the couch.

But then after a few weeks, you might notice that it stops. Maybe you push through and start to see yourself dropping more weight, or maybe you get frustrated and give up.

There’s a great new study that came out that talked about how regular exercisers release more fat burning molecules that increases the body’s ability to metabolize body fat, sugar, and amino acids.

The study, apparently the first of its kind, takes a look at how regular exercise -- that is, fitness -- alters metabolism right down to the level of chemical changes in the blood.

"Every metabolic activity in the body results in the product of [fat-burning] metabolites," said senior study author Dr. Robert Gerszten, director of clinical and translational research at Massachusetts General Hospital Heart Center. "A blood sample contains hundreds of these metabolites and can provide a snapshot of any individual's health status."

Here’s how they did it:

To trace the fat-burning molecules, the researchers took blood samples from healthy participants before, just following, and after an exercise stress test that was about 10 minutes long. Then they measured the blood levels of 200 different metabolites, which are released into the blood in tiny quantities.

And here were the results:

Exercise resulted in changes to levels of more than 20 metabolites that were involved with the metabolism of sugar, fats, amino acids, along with the use of ATP, the primary source of cellular energy, according to the study.

After running on a treadmill for 10 minutes, people who were relatively more fit had a 98 percent increase in the breakdown of stored fat, sugar, and amino acids, while less-fit people had only a 48 percent increase.

The question you’re probably asking yourself (because I asked myself the same question) is: If you’re not active right now, and you become active and stay active, can you increase the percentage increase in burning more fat?

The study says:

It's unknown whether training boosts the ability of people to burn fat more efficiently, or if more fit people were genetically able to burn fat more efficiently, though it's likely some combination of the two, Gerszten said.

I’m hoping that this means this will lead to another study where they look at exactly that.

If I had to guess though, consistent training will cause a consistent increase in the ability of the body to metabolize fat and sugar.

It makes sense if you think about it. If someone is sedentary, and then takes a stress test, they aren’t able to run at an intensity during that test as much as someone that is more fit.

I talk about interval training a lot and mention the concept of Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption in past posts and how when it comes to fat burning, your body burns more calories after the workout compared to calories burned after a slow steady state cardio workout.

I think a study like this gives more support to the concept that it’s about intensity rather than duration that is going to be a better indicator of overall fat burning and if you stay consistent, your overall maximum level of how well you burn fat should increase.

The bottom line is that if you are inactive, don’t take this study to mean that you can never train your body to start burning more fat. Get active in something, stick with it long term (and what I mean by that is,,,,forever…) and I think you’ll not only turn your body into a more efficient metabolic machine, but you’ll be reducing your chances for future heart disease, diabetes, and other ailments that can come with living a sedentary lifestyle.

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Taking My Clothes Off for Breast Cancer

2010-06-15T03:00:00.005-05:00

Last year, I walked in the Susan G. Komen 3-day, 60 Mile Walk for the Cure in honor of a cousin of mine who was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer in 2008 and had to have a double mastectomy. I blogged about those experiences here and talked about how great of an event it is.

This year, I’m walking again for my cousin, because she came through like a champ and this is kind of like a 60-mile victory lap.

But I did something else this year as well.

The fight against breast cancer has become the social cause that I want to take on and bring about some awareness and fund raising for (it’s my opinion that everyone should have some kind of social cause that they get involved with in life. Doesn’t have to be big, just something to give back to the community).

Well, I guess I found an interesting way of doing that.

Last year I found out about a group of men that created a non-profit organization to raise funds and awareness for breast cancer called the 60-Mile Men.

The main feature that the 60 Mile Men do once a year is put out a calendar.
But not just any calendar….This is a calendar where a man is picked for each month, they pick a theme and then they get photographed…..naked….

Okay, well, not completely naked. There are strategically placed objects in front of places that need objects strategically placed.

So, earlier this year, I decided that I was going to put in an application to be one of these calendar pinups and to my surprise…I was picked.

There was a hint (okay, maybe a little more than a hint…) of panic when I first found out I was picked and even had thoughts of bailing on the whole thing.

But, that lead to me to picture a woman who just go home from a radiation or chemo treatment or just waking up after getting out of surgery from having a mastectomy. Just looking like and feeling completely drained both physically and mentally.

Then someone hands her a copy of this calendar. This calendar of 12 goofy guys this year that took off their clothes to help raise funds and awareness for what she’s going through. And as she flips through it, a little crooked smile pops up on her face. Maybe that’s just enough to spark a lift in her spirits to keep her going over one of the hills that she has to climb through this ordeal.

After those thoughts went through my mind, then it became a piece of cake to say, “no problem, I can do this.”

That’s what doing this calendar and being one of the 60-Mile Men is about for me. Doing this not only for the people that I know affected by breast cancer, but doing it for those that I don’t know as well. Doing it to put a little smile on their faces and to let them know “you’re not alone. Even those that you don’t know are standing right beside you as you fight through this.”

So go check it out and order your 2011 60-Mile Men calendar today. It only cost $20 and the profits go to the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure.

2011 60 Mile Men

Finally, a really big thanks to Lynda Johnson from ithadtobeyouphotography.com, the photographer that I worked with on these pictures. She did this job Pro-Bono and she was a blast to work with and the pictures turned out great. Thanks again Lynda!

Mike Navin
Mr. March 2011
60-Mile Men
60 Mile Men on Facebook

Want to be the World's Largest Woman?

2010-06-10T10:33:00.006-05:00

Since most people who are overweight and obese have a goal of losing weight but, it’s rather eyebrow raising when there’s someone out there whose goal it is to GAIN weight and hope to become the world’s largest living woman.

I came cross this story about a woman from New Jersey that currently weighs 600 pounds and has a goal to gain 400 more pounds in hopes of becoming the world’s largest living woman.

She’s the mother of a 3 year old as well as a 14 year old.

She has already submitted a claim with the Guinness Book of World Records for the title of being the largest woman to every give birth (that claim is currently being reviewed).

Here’s where things get even stranger to me:

Simpson said she has received a book offer and wants her own reality show, partly to give plus-size women more confidence.

Then there are her currently health problems:

Simpson spends as much as $750 a week on groceries, suffers from Type 2 diabetes and struggles with basic tasks such as cooking and taking a shower.

But she dismisses critics who warn that her weight can lead to heart problems, aggravate her diabetes and cause pressure on her joints.

"I'm very healthy. I go to the doctor every three months," she said.

The article notes that:

Among the heaviest women ever recorded was one who reportedly weighed 1,800 pounds and another who reportedly weighed 1,200 pounds at the time of their deaths.

I don’t know. I get the whole “accept me for who I am” concept but there’s a couple of things to consider in this situation.

She says she’s very healthy and goes to the doctor on a regular basis. Okay, we’ll go with that at her current weight. But what about when she adds another 400 pounds? I hate to be blunt but, did she not read that the other two women recorded as being the heaviest are now deceased?

With today’s obsession with reality television shows, and her saying that she wants one of her own, tends to kind of scream “I need attention.” Granted, that’s not an uncommon thing among people but, when you’re putting your health at risk (and whether she wants to believe that or not, that’s what she’s doing), I think it adds more to it.

Finally, let’s take a look at the fact that she has a teenager and a 3-year old. If you’re going to go out and TRY to gain weight, is it worth the risk that you could leave both of your children motherless in a couple of years?

What kind of habits are you teaching your children? Sure, as I stated, it’s not a bad thing to teach them “be who you are, and accept those in your life that will accept you for who you are.”

But the reality is that children are more likely to become overweight and obese if their parents are overweight and obese. Does she really want to lead her children on a path of future health problems and potentially early deaths with the example that she is showing them?

What do you think? Am I being too harsh or do you think these are legitimate issues?

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Yo-Yo Dieting Effects

2010-06-09T10:39:00.002-05:00

Been awhile since I’ve blogged. Was out of town last week and I feel like I need a vacation this week being on vacation last week.

One thing that is all too common when it comes to dieting is the yo yo effects of it. Meaning, you lose weight, then you gain it back, then lose it again, then gain it back again.

We’ve probably done it ourselves, know people personally that have done it, and even seen millionaire celebrities like Kristie Alley and Oprah Winfrey go through this cycle over the years. I even talked about the Biggest Loser contestants that have put back on weight after the show was over.

There’s some studies that show that:

By some estimates, more than 80 percent of people who have lost weight regain all of it, or more, after two years. Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles analyzed 31 long-term diet studies and found that about two-thirds of dieters regained more weight within four or five years than they initially lost.

The rest of the article is a decent read even though I don’t agree with some pieces of it.

I think one of the causes of yo yo dieting is the fact that a person sets a weight that they want to reach and mark that as their goal.

Which means that like a lot of things in life, when we reach that goal we think “ahhhh, I did it!” And then stop….

If you’re goal is to run a marathon, you train for it, you run it, but when you reach the finish line, do you keep running past it or do you stop? Your goal was to run in it, you finished, you reached your goal, you’re done (at least until you set your next goal).

The thing with fat loss though is that you can’t do that. You have to set that benchmark, and then make sure that you stay right around that benchmark in order for it to stick.

But let’s back up to the point before reaching the “goal weight.”

A lot of times you get on a weight loss kick, start losing weight, lose weight consistently, and then find yourself at a plateau for a couple of weeks. This is where people tend to fall off.

There are those that will be patient, make adjustments, and push through the plateau. There are others that get frustrated, and give up. They go back to their old style of eating, and then put the pounds back on, thus, just completed a round of yo-yo dieting.

When you hit a plateau, you need to be patient. Take some time away from your regular eating and exercise habits for 2-3 days and just relax. Then get right back to what you were doing. Sometimes your body needs this kind of shake up to get you back on the fat loss track.

So you push through that plateau, and you reach your goal weight. Great! Pizza for a week!!! Well, not quite. This can be the hardest part of the whole weight loss process: maintaining what you just did.

As mentioned, this is where you can either go back to your old habits, which will result in gaining weight, or you stay on the mark, watch what you eat, and keep an eye on that scale.

I like to tell people to follow the six pound rule: Keep weighing yourself once a week (and only once a week), keep your food and exercise in line, and keep your weight within six pounds of your goal weight.

If you keep your weight within six pounds of where you want to be, that’s very manageable and you can very easily get back to your goal weight fairly quickly if you need to (at the same time, six pounds isn’t that much to the point where others are going to notice or that all of a sudden those pants won’t fit but, from a psychological perspective, just knowing that you’re at your goal weight for a special event can do wonders for your mind set).

The bottom line is, have a goal weight in mind but, remember that MAIN goal is to keep it off!

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30 MInute Hotel Workout - 6/1/10

2010-06-02T03:00:00.000-05:00

I'm out of town this week but put together a nice 30 Minute Hotel Workout that you can do when you get to that summer vacation in the next couple of months.

This is more of an advanced workout.

Workout Details:

2 exercises back to back:

1. Do 10 repetitions of Sumo Squats on your Toes then with no rest,
2. Do 10 repetitions of Pushups, then again with no rest,
3. Go back and do 10 more repetitions of Sumo Squats on your Toes followed by
4. Another 10 repetitions of Pushups.
5. Continue going back and forth between 10 Sumo Squats on your Toes and 10 Pushups with no rest in between exercises for 10 straight minutes.

Then rest for about 4-5 minutes.

Then another 2 exercises back to back:

1. Do 10 repetitions of Burpees then with no rest,
2. Do 10 repetitions (on each side) of Alternating Y-Forward Lunges, then again with no rest,
3. Go back and do 10 more repetitions of Burpees followed by
4. Another 10 repetitions (on each side) of a Alternating Y-Forward Lunges.
5. Continue going back and forth between 10 Burpees and 10 Alternating Y-Forward Lunges (on each side) with no rest in between exercises for 10 straight minutes.

Then you're done.

If you want to learn more about the 30 Minute Workout Program, click below:

30 Minute At Home Workout

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Suburban Fat

2010-05-28T10:40:00.003-05:00

Ever wonder whether suburban life is making you fat?

I feel fortunate with living in the area of Wyandotte Michigan where I have a lot of things within walking distance of my home.

Within about a ten minute walking radius, I have a convenience store, over a dozen different eating establishments, clothing stores, a couple of schools, a couple of playgrounds with baseball fields, volleyball nets set up, three or four churches, a golf course, and a river to drop my kayak in (don’t really have a grocery store but, now that I think about it, there’s one that I could walk to in about 25 minutes if I wanted to).

Unfortunately, I think my situation is more the exception rather than the rule when it comes to suburban life nowadays.

There’s some new studies out that are talking about how living the suburban life is contributing to the fat that we’re putting on in the United States.

Sprawling suburbs make it harder for people to get around without a car may help fuel obesity: Americans who live in the most sprawling counties tend to weigh 6 more pounds than their counterparts in the most compact areas.

This was something that I know I see all the time in new suburbs:

“Look at many new suburbs — there are not any sidewalks at all. ... The result is we just don’t walk,”

A few years ago when I was looking at moving out of the house I had at the time and looking at new ones, as strange as it may seem, if I went into a neighborhood and saw that there weren’t any sidewalks, it really gave me a negative first impression that extended into what I thought of the inside of the house(s) that I was looking at.

When you read a little further into the article, there is a difference between those that live in sprawling suburbs and those that live in more compact areas but, it’s really not a huge difference:

In the 25 most compact counties, 22.8 percent of adults had high blood pressure and 19.2 percent were obese. In the 25 most sprawling counties, those rates were 25.3 percent and 21.2 percent, respectively.

At the same time though, if you’ve ever spent time in a more compact area, your legs most definitely tell you that you’re moving more than you are when you’re back at home in the burbs.

This was probably the most startling stat that was mentioned in the article:

In Europe, people make 33 percent of their trips by foot or bicycle, compared with just 9.4 percent of Americans’ trips.

When I was in the south of France a few years ago, it was great to be able to walk EVERYWHERE. Take a nice walk in the morning to get coffee and a bagel, walk to a nice café in the afternoon for lunch, walk somewhere for dinner, to the “grocery store” for whatever (and most of it fresh), etc. No need for a car whatsoever.

I had a thought a few years ago that it would be great to see new neighborhoods designed almost like very small cities.

The center of the neighborhood would be small stores and shops and some restaurants and pubs that are within a 15-20 minute walk from the furthest house built. Then within the neighborhood you could have a school somewhere on the outskirts of it, and a few different denominational churches in there as well.

Everything would be within walking distance for everyone in the neighborhood. People would be getting their exercise, possibly have stronger relationships with those in the small community, drinking establishments would be within walking distance thus reducing the number of drunk driving incidences.

I know I’m probably dreaming on all of that but, I think it would be a great little simple lifestyle to live with the bonus being that we’d be taking some steps in reducing our suburban fat.

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30 Minute At Home Workout - 5/25/10

2010-05-26T03:00:00.000-05:00

Here's today's 30 Minute At Home Workout:

This is more of an intermediate level workout.

2 exercises back to back:

1. Do 10 repetitions of Bodyweight Squats then with no rest,
2. Do 10 repetitions of Kneeling Pushups, then again with no rest,
3. Go back and do 10 more repetitions of Bodyweight Squats followed by
4. Another 10 repetitions of Kneeling Pushups.
5. Continue going back and forth between 10 Bodyweight Squats and 10 Kneeling Pushups with no rest in between exercises for 10 straight minutes.

Then rest for about 4-5 minutes.

Then another 2 exercises back to back:

1. Do 10 repetitions (on each side) of Knee Taps then with no rest,
2. Do 10 repetitions (on each side) of a Stationary Lunge, then again with no rest,
3. Go back and do 10 more repetitions (on each side) of Knee Taps followed by
4. Another 10 repetitions (on each side) of a Stationary Lunge.
5. Continue going back and forth between 10 Knee Taps and 10 Stationary Lunges (on each side) with no rest in between exercises for 10 straight minutes.

Then you're done.

If you want to learn more about the 30 Minute Workout Program, click below:

30 Minute At Home Workout

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The Best Diet Plan

2010-05-25T10:19:00.002-05:00

People are always searching for the best diet plan out there.

But here’s a not so secret: they can all be the best diet plan for you.

I’ve talked about how my preferred way of eating is sticking with meats, veggies, fruits, nuts and oils and basically avoiding dairy, whole grains, beans, etc. For the most part, I only eat those foods, twice a day, and eat until I’m full. No counting calories, no measuring, just eat those foods until I don’t feel like eating anymore (although I do tend to be a little more careful with the serving sizes of the nuts and oils since those are higher in calories then the rest). There’s a few other things on the “do” and “don’t” list that I have but for the most part, that’s it.

It’s a simple plan, and makes shopping fairly easy.

But the question is, why do I REALLY like this eating plan?

I tend to always argue that it’s because it’s the way humans have eaten for millions of years and since we’ve survived this long, there must be something to it.

But I think it goes even deeper than that. I tend to gravitate to this style of eating because I’ve always been fascinated with evolution. In other words, I’ve found a style of eating that is healthy, and that I can follow based on my underlying interests. By doing that, it makes it more likely that I will always stick to it.

When I look at other people and the way they eat, those that are successful at weight loss, tend to eat foods in a way that conforms to an underlying interest or lifestyle.

In other words, yes it’s true that in order to start living a healthy lifestyle, you need to make some changes. But, at the same time, that doesn’t mean that you have to make a complete change and throw out everything that you’ve enjoyed eating your entire life.

Don’t like meat or fish? Then don’t eat it.

Do you like to have that morning bagel with your coffee? Then eat it.

The absolute bottom line when it comes to fat loss is: Eat the things that you enjoy, just eat less of it.

There’s a million diets out there that people can follow.

I read one article awhile back where a guy ate his fruits, veggies, lean meats, oatmeal, etc., during the day, but every night before he went to bed, he had a pint of Guinness. He loved Guinness and didn’t want to give it up. So he changed some of his other eating habits, started exercising, had his pint of Guinness every night, and ended up losing a significant amount of weight.

I had also read another article a couple of years ago by a fitness professional who was telling a story about his father’s approach to his own weight management. He asked his dad how he was able to maintain his weight within ten pounds his whole life. His dad simply said “I buckle my belt in the same hole all the time. When it gets too tight, I eat less.”

Which is the simplest take home to fat loss: eat less.

The best diet plan for a healthy lifestyle is the one that you gravitate the most towards AND can stick to it 90% of the time. Sure, you’ll have to make some changes, even some small sacrifices. But it doesn’t mean giving up everything.

So the next time you’re out searching for the best diet plan to follow, first sit down and think about things that you are interested in (food and everything else for that matter), and chances are you can fit that into an eating plan that can work for you.

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Bad Things About Eating Meat

2010-05-20T11:11:00.004-05:00

For decades we’ve been told there are bad things about eating meat.

I’ve always kind of wondered why meat gets such a bad rap considering that some form of human has been eating meat for almost 3 million years. If it was so bad for you, how have we survived so long eating it?

I eat meat daily and overall my blood work has always been great. I stay away from (for the most part) the processed meats such as any lunch-meat, bacon, sausage, and hot dogs, just to name a few due to all the other additives in them that I’m not very fond of.

Which leads to an interesting meta analysis of a collection of studies that showed kind of meat being consumed is a better indicator of heart diseases risks rather than just lumping all meat as “bad.”

Specifically, that heart disease risk comes from processed meat (such as bacon, sausage, hot dogs, lunch-meat) rather than your non-processed meat such as steaks and hamburgers.

Here’s what the researchers found:

In a report that pooled data from 20 different studies from around the world, the researchers found that daily consumption of about two ounces of processed meat was associated with a 42% increased risk of heart disease and a 19% heightened chance of diabetes. By contrast, a four-ounce daily serving of red meat from beef, hamburger, pork, lamb or game wasn't linked to any increased risk of heart disease.

It’s interesting because both types of meat have “high” levels of saturated fat so it’s believed that there is

the possibility that when it comes to meat, at least, the real bad actor may be salt. Processed meats generally have about four times the amount of salt as non-processed meats.

Since I’ve pretty much dumped salt and products with sodium in them over the last couple of years, when I bite into a piece of meat that is processed, it’s amazing how instantaneous you taste that salt (and more times than not, my stomach doesn’t appreciate it either and let’s me know…).

The article also states that even though non-processed red meat didn’t increase the risk of heart disease, it didn’t lower it either. Okay fine, then the meat producers can’t go out and start making a health claim on meat now but at the same time, I think it adds a bit more evidence that non-processed meat isn’t UN-healthy for you.

The article also mentions a second study that conducted a meta analysis of other studies that that was published earlier this year that

found that intake of saturated fat wasn't linked to a statistically-significant increased risk of heart disease, stroke or cardiovascular disease.

Which then leads to the best quote I think I read all week:

"There is growing evidence that it's not which nutrient we eat, but the type of foods we eat that is important," said Harvard's Dr. Mozaffarian. "We have to get away from trying to micromanage nutrients and look at the health quality of foods."

That last sentence is key. We continue to look at things in this tiny little box and say “that’s the part that is making this whole thing unhealthy” instead of looking at the combination of things that could be resulting in an unhealthy result.

I’ll give an example. When I’m walking through the grocery store, I tend to take notice of people that have their cart pretty full with food. For the most part, 90% of the stuff in those carts is processed junk, very little fruits and vegetables, and maybe a couple of steaks and some hamburger.

It hit me as rather odd that when reading the “bad things about eating meat” studies and looking at this grocery cart full of processed foods that are loaded with sodium, sugar, trans fat, high fructose corn syrup, etc., the least unhealthiest thing in there IS the non-processed meat.

In the end, and I know I keep saying this, I like to stick with eating meats (the non-processed kinds), fruits, veggies, nuts, and oils. Nice and simple to follow and you get to stay away from the processed meat that is looking like is the true villain in the equation of the bad things about eating meat.

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Shake Weight Review

2010-05-19T04:00:00.001-05:00

Ever seen that commercial for the Shake Weight or the Shake Weight for Men?

I was out last week and saw in on a TV in a restaurant I was at and I couldn't eat another bite I was laughing so hard. Here's a short (and in some ways almost obscene) video clip of it:

"Dynamic Interia"?? When I googled that term looking for an actual definition, the first page only had links talking about...The Shake Weight.

I know this goes without saying but, don't waste your money on this product.

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Beginner 30 Minute at Home Workout

2010-05-18T03:00:00.002-05:00

Want to try out a beginner 30 minute at home workout? Take a look at the video below:

I'm going to try to get these up roughly once a week so keep an eye out for them.

30 Minute Workout

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Uses of BMI

2010-05-17T13:35:00.003-05:00

It seems that no matter what health or fitness website you go on, there will always be a BMI calculator and then some information on the uses of the BMI calculation that it came up with.

I won’t bore you with the entire history of the BMI but just a few key points that are worth going over.

The Body Mass Index (BMI) was originally known as the Quetelet Index and was invented (shockingly) by a guy named Quetelet in 1832.

His goal was to:

describe the standard proportions of the human build—the ratio of weight to height in the average adult.

He did this by:

Using data collected from several hundred countrymen, he found that weight varied not in direct proportion to height (such that, say, people 10 percent taller than average were 10 percent heavier, too) but in proportion to the square of height. (People 10 percent taller than average tended to be about 21 percent heavier.)

The interesting part is that Quetelet didn’t intend for this equation to be used as a way to define obesity or define whether someone was more at risk for obesity related diseases.

Maybe even more importantly, he stressed that information obtained from BMI measurements were more reflective of POPULATIONS and not for individual assessments.

In other words, the way the BMI equation is today is not what it was originally intended to look at.

Presently, it’s almost considered the gold standard in how you are assessed, health-wise.

There’s the added issue that someone with a low body fat but with a lot of lean mass could be considered overweight with following the BMI.

I’ve gone back and forth on what I think about the uses of BMI. Although it’s not being used the way it was originally intended, and it might not be accurate for those with a low body fat percentage, for the most part, I think that it is still an fairly accurate assessment of an individuals “fatness” for 98% of the population.

But, there is a “new” health assessment that is getting some fanfare. It’s called the Weight-to-Height Ratio (WHtR).

To determine your WHtR), you simply take your waist measurement, in inches (at the belly button), and divide it by your height, in inches. The link above will give you a breakdown of what your number means.

The reason this might be a better measure of heart disease risk or other risk factors is because abdomen fat has been found to be more of a predictor of cardiovascular health.

"The size of the hips seems to predict a protective effect. In other words, a big waist with comparably big hips does not appear to be as worrisome as a big waist with small hips," said Dexter Canoy, M.Phil., M.D., Ph.D., a research fellow in epidemiology and public health at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.

Although I still think that there are uses of the BMI for assessing overall populations and population trend swifts in how the proportions of our bodies change, I’ll be interested to see if the use of the WHtR will be more widespread in the future as it seems like a fairly good, simple measuring tool and seems to have more of a relationship to determine actual health risks.

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Long Term Benefits of Exercise

2010-05-14T10:30:00.006-05:00

In a society that tends to focus on the “here and now” sometimes it’s hard to think about and focus on things like the long-term benefits on exercise.

I wrote about my own experiences with how to age well and how even though I’m still fairly young, I can feel the benefits already of exercising and eating right over the last decade than probably someone who hasn’t followed that same healthy lifestyle.

But I came across an interesting article that looked at the true long term benefits of exercise in men that had been taking a bootcamp style class for over 20 years.

The class was 45-minutes in length and involved no exercise equipment, just the use of bodyweight exercises such as pushups and situps.

The results over a 20 year period are pretty staggering:

Among the 20 who continued coming to class -- 3½ times a week for more than 20 years -- low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the bad type, dropped 27 percent after the first year and 60 percent over 20 years. High-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, the good type, increased by 60 percent after the first year and continued to improve for the next 15 years, according to research published in 2009 in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport.

Total cholesterol (LDL, HDL and other lipid components) dropped nearly 18 percent after year one and 40 percent over 20 years, the study found. Triglyceride levels decreased every year, including 23 percent after the first year and 61 percent over 20 years.

The men also lost, on average, 27 pounds.

The article goes on to cite other studies that eleven percent of men that exercise five or more times a week developed heart failure compared to 14 percent of men who didn’t exercise.

Another study of women with an average age of 55 found that over the course of eleven years, the women who exercised were 40 percent less likely to have a heart attack then those women that didn’t exercise.

I think this is a great statement in the article:

"The most important organ in an older person's body is their legs," said Dr. Walter Bortz, a professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. "If your legs stay good, everything else takes care of itself. You don't fall down and break your hip. Your heart stays good. You don't get frail. Your sex stays good, your brain stays good and you cost less money."

Keeping those legs moving is essential. These are some of the strongest muscles in your body working together and the workhorse for any type of fat loss that you want to obtain. It’s also the muscles that are most involved in pushing various hormones out when you stress them that are then used across your entire body.

How much exercise is needed for middle to older age folks?:

So how much should middle-age people or seniors strive for? At least three, 30-minute sessions of exercise a week, though more is better, Bortz said.

Which is interesting because my 30 Minute Workout that I offer is all of this put together: minimal exercise equipment needed, using just your bodyweight, 30 minutes long, three days a week.

Although it’s great to look at the immediate short-term fat loss and health benefits of exercise, don’t underestimate the long term benefits of exercise on what you are doing now and to just stay consistent with it.

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Life Without Food

2010-05-11T10:07:00.005-05:00

Could you imagine what life would be like without food?

I’ve talked in the past about low carb diets and specifically the process of ketosis and I’ve talked about my past experiences (and I still follow it today) about intermittent fasting.

The recent trend in health and fitness is that you must eat 5-6 times a day or your body will fall into “starvation mode”, and really that concept is a bit overblown.

But I came across just a very bizarre story about an 83-year-old Indian yogi that claims he has survived without any food or liquid for over 70 years.

A team of military doctors are going to be observing him for 24 hours in a sealed off area of a hospital for a couple of weeks and also conduct medical tests throughout.

"This may help in working out strategies for survival during natural calamities, extreme stressful conditions and extra-terrestrial explorations like future missions to the Moon and Mars by the human race," Ilavazahagan said.

They’re going to be testing brain and heart activity, his electrodes, as well as blood tests which I’m assuming will contain glucose and cholesterol information.

The yogi states that he gets the energy that he needs for his body from meditating and

Jani, who dresses in red and wears a nose ring, grew up in Charod village in the Mehsana district in Gujarat and claims to have been blessed by a goddess aged eight, which has enabled him to survive without sustenance.

It really truly is something that is hard to believe and I guess that with this observation doctors will be able to tell whether this is real or something fraudulent.

At the same time, though, even though I watch what I eat and eat fairly healthy 90% of the time, would I really want to live a life without food? To never be able to enjoy the tastes of the various foods that are out there? I think I would be missing out on a lot.

What about you? If you could live a normal healthy life but it would be a life without food, would you want to live like that?

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Craving for Sugar

2010-05-06T10:56:00.006-05:00

We have an incredible craving for sugar in this country. You walk into the grocery store and you can almost smell it.

Back in the late 70s and early 80s, we started seeing the beginnings of the low-fat and no- fat products. The problem with this though is that when the food manufacturers took out the fat, all they did was replace it with sugar and other additives. So a food that had fat in it that added up to 200 calories was replaced with a food that didn’t have fat in it but had more sugar (or High Fructose Corn Syrup) that added up to…200 calories.

The whole concept of taking out the fat from products (we were told) is because we wanted to fight heart disease and dietary fat (saturated fat to be specific) was the main culprit.

But now a new problem.

A new study has come out saying that too much sugar can increase a person’s risk of heart disease.

"Just like eating a high-fat diet can increase your levels of triglycerides and high cholesterol, eating sugar can also affect those same lipids," Dr. Miriam Vos of Emory School of Medicine, who worked on the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, said in a statement.

The researchers reviewed what 6,000 adults ate and then grouped them by sugar intake and cholesterol levels.

What they found was:

On average, nearly 16 percent of people's daily calories came from added sugar.

The highest-consuming group ate an average of 46 teaspoons of added sugar per day, while the lowest-consuming group ate an average of only about 3 teaspoons daily.

If someone was getting in 2000 calories a day (which honestly, I think the plurality of people are probably consuming way beyond that), 16 percent of that would be about 80 grams of processed sugar a day. That seems like quite a bit to me and that’s on just a 2000-calorie diet.

The conclusion was

...people who ate more added sugar were more likely to have higher risk factors for heart disease, such as higher triglycerides and lower levels of protective high-density lipoprotein or HDL cholesterol.

The article goes on to say that

The association warned last August that Americans need to cut back dramatically on sugar consumption, recommending that women eat no more than 100 calories per day of added processed sugar a day, or six teaspoons (25 grams), while men should keep it to just 150 calories of added processed sugar per said or nine teaspoons (37.5 grams).

Now remember, they are talking about ADDED sugar to any food you are eating. And when I say “added” I’m talking about pretty much any food that is processed and contains the words “sugar” or “high fructose corn syrup” in the ingredient. Don’t think that it only means what sugar YOU might add to a food (like sprinkling sugar on your morning cereal), it’s any added sugar that is not naturally in the food (like fruit).

That’s why I like just keeping it simple when it comes what to eat to the basics of meat, fruits, veggies, some nuts and oils and leave it at that. No processing of foods, no added salt/sodium, no added sugar. It takes the guesswork out trying to figure out whether the other food in the store is actually healthy or not.

When you essentially throw out the processed food with all that sugar in it and focus on getting sugar from fruit, you still have a craving for sugar but, it’s a different kind of craving. The craving is specifically for the sugar in fruit. Might sound strange but, a candy bar just doesn’t satisfy that craving.

Don’t let those cravings for added sugar get a hold of you and your heart will be better off in the long run.

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Jillian Michaels and Pregnancy

2010-05-05T08:25:00.006-05:00

I'm not a big fan of Jillian Michaels and I've ranted about her in the past.

I'm a little late to the show on this one but, she got into a bit of controversy over some comments that she made about pregnancy.

She's quoted in Women's Health as saying that she's not going to have biological children of her own and that:

"I'm going to adopt," and, "I can't handle doing that to my body."

Some media outlets took that and misquoted her as saying that she said something along the line that she "Won't ruin my body with pregnancy."

Okay fine. She was misquoted. But quite frankly, I don't think her actual comment is much better.

As someone who is in the spotlight, has had weight issues in the past, and has a rather large following of her weight loss programs from young women that do not have kids yet, she needs to be careful with comments like this that could greatly influence (or terrify) them into wanting to have a child.

Besides, just because you have a child doesn't mean a woman's figure is ruined. In fact I would almost go as far to say that for the most part, women that I know that had great figures before getting pregnant returned to that figure after a little bit of time after they gave birth.

Bottom line, I think she could have easily said "I'm going to adopt" and ended the sentence there and no one would have blinked an eye.

Thoughts?

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Weekend Calories Can Hurt

2010-05-04T10:41:00.006-05:00

Weekend calories can absolutely kill any chance of trying to lose weight.

You start off Monday morning and work hard all week on watching what you eat, measure out your serving sizes, count your calories, and do your exercise.

You then get on the scale the following Monday and the scale hasn't moved. You get frustrated and think "Why am I not losing weight? I was good 90% of the time last week but had a little fun on the weekend. I should have seen some change on the scale."

Your problem might have been that "fun" you had on the weekend.

You can put yourself in a calorie deficit all week long but on the weekend you head out for dinner a couple of times, have a few drinks and snack on some "fun" food that you wouldn't normal eat Monday through Thursday.

Maybe you head to a Mexican restaurant, order your food, and then snack on the chips and salsa while you wait. Your meal comes, but you could have very easily chowed down 500 calories from those chips.

Then Sunday comes around and you have a big family dinner that includes snacks beforehand, followed by a nice main meal, some dessert after and some wine or other alcoholic beverages in between.

But in your mind, you're thinking "I was eating as planned during the week so all of this won't cause a problem." But the scale doesn't lie come Monday morning.

There's a recent article about how weekend calories can wreck your diet that talks about a study that pretty much confirms the scenarios above.

A couple of professors reviewed data from 600 men and women that tracked exactly what they ate over a period of two weeks (they were reviewing data collected from a marketing research survey).

What they found was,

...that people tended to eat more on weekends than they did during the week — particularly at breakfast, when they likely had more time to eat than on weekdays

Dietitian and exercise physiologist Kim Gorman, MS, RD, Weight Management Program director at the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado at Denver says it perfectly about the effects of these weekend calories:

"Many dieters feels as though they're dieting all the time but not losing weight, when, in fact, they're creating a calorie deficit Monday through Friday but filling it — and more — during the weekend,"

The weekends tend to not have the structure of routine that we have during the weekdays. I don't think that's a bad thing. We need frequent breaks from the normal day in and day out activities that we do. But that doesn't mean we should go off our regular healthy eating habits 100% of the time during the weekend.

The article gives some tips on ways to avoid weekend calories that cause a "two step forward, two step back" to your weight loss goals.

1. Wake up the same time on the weekends that you do on the weekdays. This one can be rather difficult to do, especially if you're up at 5:00 like I am every weekday morning. But if you can do it, go right ahead.

2. Eat Breakfast. But make sure it's not a bigger breakfast than what you're use to having during the week.

3. Weigh in Friday morning and then again Monday morning. This is a great tip and can really be an eye opener as to how much the weekend calories are causing you to be at a standstill. I've done this a number of times after a "bad" weekend and it definitely raises an eyebrow.

4. Keep a log. I find it difficult for people to keep a log as most people tend to fall off with tracking things pretty quickly and they tend to under report how much they actually eat.

5. Watch your alcohol intake. Alcohol can be a big factor on adding to the weekend calorie total due to how alcohol can shut down the natural fat burning mechanisms that we have.

6. Workout on the weekend. If you don't normally include a workout for yourself on the weekend, add a quick one in. Go on a longer walk with the dog than you normally do as well.

The simplest advice that I can give on this is to continue with your healthy choices of meats, fruits, veggies, and some nuts and oils during the weekend like you normally do, but just take one (and only one) meal on the weekend and use it as a cheat meal. Eat what you want but only for that one meal.

Taking and "cheating" for one meal during the weekend is going to go a lot longer in seeing fat loss results and avoiding the extra weekend calories than using all 9-12 meals during the weekend as a cheat meal.

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How to Age Well

2010-04-30T20:04:00.001-05:00

When we're younger, we want to look older. When we're older, we want to look younger. But there are some simple things you can do to age well.

When I was growing up in my teens, I was always told I looked quite a bit older than I was. When you're that age, you take that as a huge compliment.

But when I got into my mid to late 20s, it started to get annoying when you were told you looked older....like ten years older....

Up until my late 20s, I ate well, started sunbathing less in my early 20s and stopped it completely by about 25.

Ate fairly healthy but didn't exercise much. Had a few foods that were my vices.

In my late 20s I decided that it was time to look forward to my 30s and start creating some more healthier habits. To eat healthier 90% of the time and to make exercise a staple of my life.

My thought was that if I started making these type of habits in my 30s, it would put my on a good path of setting a foundation for those good habits to a healthy lifestyle through my 40s and beyond.

I had come to this by watching friends, co-workers, and acquaintance that had bad habits through their 30s like smoking, eating unhealthy, etc., but that overall still looked pretty good and seemed to be aging well.

But right after they would hit 40, things started to change and to me it looked as though the aging process had caught up to them...and beyond.

Ever notice how you can tell whether someone smokes by looking at their face before you even smell the cigarette smell on their clothing? Here's an interesting facial comparison picture of the same person with one side being if they smoked and the other side if they did not.

There was a recent study that came out talking about habits that can age you by 12 years and I think it really shows some simple things you can get rid of to not only help you live longer but also to look younger.

It really shouldn't come as a surprise as to what these four habits are when combined, can age you by 12 years: smoking, drinking too much, inactivity and poor diet.

The researchers tracked 5,000 British adults for 20 years.

Overall, 314 people studied had all four unhealthy behaviors. Among them, 91 died during the study, or 29 percent. Among the 387 healthiest people with none of the four habits, only 32 died, or about 8 percent.

Now granted, I guess you could argue that even having all four of those habits still only resulted in 30% of them dying. That's fine if you want to look at it that way but, the article unfortunately, didn't go into whether the other 71% had additional health problems other than death that they people who didn't have those four habits didn't have.

The risky behaviors were: smoking tobacco; downing more than three alcoholic drinks per day for men and more than two daily for women; getting less than two hours of physical activity per week; and eating fruits and vegetables fewer than three times daily.

Staying away from these healthy habits seems quite doable for anyone and the long term benefits seem pretty clear:

"You don't need to be extreme" to be in the healthy category, Kvaavik said. "These behaviors add up, so together it's quite good. It should be possible for most people to manage to do it."

(The picture of Susan Sarandon is a comparison to how she looked in 1995 and in 2008. She's 63 now and looks pretty darn good and I verified, doesn't appear that she's had plastic surgery).

I never smoked, I have a drink or two throughout the week, have been getting the veggies and fruits in for years and most definitely get exercise. Has it paid off?

Absolutely. I'm probably healthier now then I've ever been and when it comes to how old I look, people who meet me for the first time tend to say I look like I'm more in my mid to late 20s rather than in my late 30s.

I don't want anyone reading this to get discouraged and think that they missed their opportunity in their 20s and 30s to start a foundation for good health and aging gracefully. It's never too late to make changes and you will most definitely get health and appearance benefits no matter what age you take that turn to a healthier lifestyle.

A quick note about one unhealthy habit that came to my mind when reading this article on how to age well that they didn't list was: sunbathing/tanning.

I know. People like to have a little color on their skin.

That might look okay short term but, I see people out there where it's evident that they tan quite frequently and to be honest, sure you've got some color, but to be blunt, the wrinkles you're getting from all that tanning is making you look 10 years older than you are. Maybe you don't see it but, it's there (and I won't even go into the increased risk of skin cancer issue).

If you're looking for solutions on how to age well, start with getting rid of these four unhealthy habits (get rid of that other one that I mentioned as a bonus). They aren't that hard to incorporate into your life and your body will thank you in the long run.

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Stretching Before a Workout

2010-04-28T09:06:00.006-05:00

Whether it's before a weight lifting routine, a run, a walk, or getting on a bike, it seems like everyone follows the natural routine of stretching before a workout.

I've never been a fan of static stretching before a workout. An example of a static stretch would be like bending down and trying to touch your toes and then holding that position for a period of time.

The thought is that by doing this you're "warming up" or preparing that particular muscle for whatever activity you're about to do.

But the problem that I've always found is that if you are stretching a muscle that doesn't need stretching, is there really any benefit?

Picture a muscle like you would a rubber band. When you stretch a new rubber band, it's can be fairly tight. But if you continue to stretch that rubber band, it becomes longer in the "relaxed" position. Continue to stretch the rubber band some more over time and at some point it will snap.

The same could be said about stretching a muscle statically that doesn't need to be stretched. If you continue to stretch it, you could essentially weaken it and risk an injury if the right stimulus came around.

I'll give an example. Back a couple of years ago, former Detroit Tiger (and now Philadelphia Phillie) second baseman Placido Polanco would do a stretch of his arms over his shoulders before each pitch when he was at the plate (he'd also grit his teeth for some reason..). It was his routine.

During the 2006 season, he ran out to right field to try and catch a fly ball. He dove, caught the ball, and landed on his shoulder. He ended up separating it and missed 34 games.

What was interesting though is that when he came back after recovering from the injury there was one thing that was missing: he no longer was doing that arm stretch over his head anymore before each pitch when he was up to bat.

I won't argue for sure that the recurring stretch is what caused the injury, but at the same time, I think it would be hard pressed to say that the stretching he was doing was helpful in any way.

I bring all this up because there's more evidence coming out that static stretching before a workout isn't what it's been worked up to be over the last umpteen decades.

Traditional stretches, like when people bend over to touch their toes or stretch their legs on a fence, often cause the muscles to tighten rather than relax — exactly the opposite of what is needed for physical activity.

The body always works towards balance so this completely makes sense.

When you stretch before exercising, your body may think it's at risk of being overstretched. It compensates by contracting and becoming more tense. That means you aren't able to move as fast or as freely, making you more likely to get hurt.

The researchers are NOT saying that you should not stretch at all. They are just saying don't do static stretching before a workout. If you want to static stretch after a workout or at some other point in the day, that's okay since you're not doing an activity right after that might increase your chance of injury (at the same time, I'll take it a little further though and again say that if a muscle doesn't need stretching, then there's no reason to static stretch it).

This is probably the most important part of the article to dispel the myth that static stretching before a workout reduces the chance of injury:

In the last few years, several studies have found static stretching before playing a sport makes you slower and weaker.

And when experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention combed through more than 100 papers looking at stretching studies, they found people who stretched before exercise were no less likely to suffer injuries such as a pulled muscle, which the increased flexibility from stretching is supposed to prevent.

Does all of this mean that you should just throw on your shoes and start working out?

No, I wouldn't advise that.

These studies that we are talking about are only dealing with static stretching.

The more effective warm up or stretch to do before a workout would involve dynamic stretching.

Dynamic stretching would be doing movements that resemble more along the lines of what kind of activity that you're about to do.

If you're ready to run or walk, do some forward lunges, reverse lunges, squats, side squats, etc. If you're ready to do some bench presses with dumbbells, do pushups beforehand.

These types of movements will help get your body ready in a more practical manner to the exercise that you're about to do as well as increase your core body temperature. Which means overall, your entire body will be prepared and not just individual parts statically stretched in a movement that doesn't resemble the movement that you are about to take on.

Also, a quick note that also is talked about in the article: yoga.

Those types of stretches are commonly used in yoga, which emphasizes how the body is aligned during stretches, not just flexibility. Many yoga poses involve the whole body and focus not only on stretching a particular muscle, but the ligaments, tendons and joints around it.

Meaning, yoga is a different animal and it's not just all about statically stretching individual muscles, it's about stretching the body as a whole. So don't take this kind of study to mean that yoga is a bad or a potentially dangerous exercise to do.

Static stretching before a workout has been common practice for a long time and I'm glad to see that it's getting more press that it's not all up to what it claims to be.

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Weight Loss for Busy Women

2010-04-27T09:42:00.009-05:00

We live busy lives. Get up in the morning, get the kids ready for school, go to work, come home from work, take the kids to their after school activities, cook the family dinner, help the kids with their homework, get the kids into bed, and then try to decompress for a little bit before going to bed ourselves. Wake up in the morning and repeat that cycle.

Where can you find time for exercise in all that?

It doesn't help that a study comes out that states in order for women to fight the flab, they need an hour a day of exercise.

At least an hour of moderate activity a day is needed for older women at a healthy weight who aren't dieting. For those who are already overweight — and that's most American women — even more exercise is called for to avoid gaining weight without eating less, the study results suggest.

One hour each and every day is a pretty tough sell. In a follow up to the article above, many women tend to kind of scoff at the idea:

Dr. Mary Tillema, 42, a neonatologist at the medical center, said an hour a day of moderate exercise will be tough. "I think that's a lot to ask of the typical person. If I don't watch what I eat, I gain, even though I try to consistently exercise."

Which is important to note that the study only dealt with looking at women that were exercising and not changing their diet. Diet is the most important part of weight loss. You can add in all the exercise you want but if you continue to eat a pizza a day, you're not going to see the scale drop much.

What makes me a bit curious though is that the study only talked about "moderate" exercise. According to the article, "moderate" exercise is defined as something such as brisk walking, leisurely bicycling and golfing.

Those are fine to do but, what if you were able to exercise at a higher intensity, for less time?

I had talked about a little bit ago in a post about interval training studies where subjects that did six interval training sessions of a 30 minute workout on a bike over a period of two weeks was just as effective as doing 10 hours of steady state cardio over the same period of time.

Meaning, you could cut the "moderate" exercise of 10 hours over a course of two weeks to three hours over two weeks if you increased the intensity to a "high" level.

30 minutes a day, three days a week of a high intensity workout to fight the flab.

Does that sound more doable for a weight loss program for the busy women of the world?

I've got a new product that is the PERFECT fit for this.

It's called the 30 Minute Workout.

It's a workout you can do three days a week that will take 30 minutes to complete AND it's a workout you can do right in your own home with the only exercise equipment that you'll need is a stability ball (which should only cost you between $10-$20 to purchase).

The workouts are intense, but, they use only your bodyweight as the resistance that you'll need to burn more calories than you would if you were to take a "moderate" walk for an hour.

Every month you'll get a new workout that will tell you exactly what to do, when to do them, and give you a description of each exercise so that you have the perfect form.

Actually, you'll get TWO workouts a month: One that will always be for a beginner, and the other one will be either an intermediate or an advanced workout (they will rotate from month to month).

The program also comes with a fat loss nutritional guide because as I mentioned, if you're not going to change your diet, then the exercise you add in isn't going to make much difference in your weight loss.

The cost? For the first month it's just $4.95 and after that it's $11.95 a month.

Think of it this way. This is a workout that you can do at home, with nothing more than a stability ball. No need to get in your car and spend the money on gas to go to a gym. No need for a gym membership. No need to hire a personal trainer.

It's a workout plan you can do right in your own home for less than $12 a month.

Still unsure?

How about if I let you tryout a 30 Minute Workout first before committing. In fact, I'll let you try out THREE workouts for FREE before committing one penny.

Just go to link below and you'll see a place where you can fill out your name and e-mail address and then you'll be able to download THREE sample workouts to try out and see if it's something that works for you.

Weight loss for busy women can be tough if the experts say that you need to exercise 60 minutes a day. But with the 30 Minute Workout, you can get BETTER results in more than HALF the time.

30 Minute Workout

You've got nothing to lose in at least trying these out for free. Give it a shot. You'll be shocked as to how effective they really are.

30 Minute Workout

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Adaptation in Humans

2010-04-23T10:25:00.004-05:00

Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.

-Lou Holtz

I really find human evolution amazing and find it even more interesting when looking at the adaptation in humans that we've gone through and continue to go through.

When you think about it, the body so easily adapts to a change in the environment, what kinds of food you put in it, what kinds of movement or stress you put on it, etc.

I have a client of mine who is in his mid-50s that is in one of my classes that came up to me last night and told me that it had been one year since he had a heart attack.

It was a real eye opener for him and he said he felt lucky to have a second chance to turn things around from being unhealthy to being healthy.

He said he had always been overweight and in his words "I thought I was immortal. No matter what I ate or how little exercise I got, there weren't going to be any consequences to that."

But after that heart attack, he quickly changed his mind.

He started eating better, started exercising, and a year later, he dropped between 70-80 pounds and when he went to the doctor the other day for a stress test, the doctor was amazed at how healthy of a transformation he had made in just one year.

That's the amazing part about the adaptation in humans.

Even if you've been living an unhealthy lifestyle for 10, 20, even 30 years, of eating horrible foods, gaining weight, being sedentary, etc., in the big picture, it does not take long for your body to adapt positively when you start making healthier decisions about what you eat and how you move your body for exercise.

It's great to hear that client of mine talk about how much better he physically feels now that he's making better choices about his health. How it puts a smile on his face to be able to chase after his granddaughter that he might not have been able to share time with if that heart attack had been a little worse.

The bottom line is that:

1) no one is immortal to unhealthy choices you make on how you treat your body. The effects might not be immediate, they might not even show up within 10-20 years, but at some point, it WILL catch up to you.

2) it's never too late to start making healthier choices AND if in the big picture, you stick with it CONSISTENTLY, your body will reward you fairly quickly to those healthier choices that you make.

For the most part, we don't control much that happens in our lives. We don't control whether we get hired for a job, laid off from a job, lose our health insurance, or see a loved one get seriously ill.

But the one thing that all of us have control over, is the ability to decide how well we treat our bodies.

Your body is your gift and it's your choice whether you want to treat it well or not.

FRIDAY LINK:

Just a quick link to an article that might surprise you on bad breakfast foods.

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Effects of Food Additives

2010-04-21T13:13:00.004-05:00

I'm not a big fan of processed food and all the effects of those food additives.

I think you can get by in life simply eating meats, fruits, veggies, nuts, and some oil.

But I found a good article that goes over the effects of food additives and which food additives are the best to avoid. I'm not going to go over all of them but a few caught my eye to talk about a little more.

1. Artificial Sweeteners. Shockingly, I'm not horribly against these when taken in very LOW dosages. Granted, I guess i'm kind of biased since I have a one Diet Coke a day requirement an hour or so before my daily workout, just for the caffeine energy boast. Regular soda is bad and if I'd like to see any progress on decreasing the amount of regular soda and it meant people switching to diet soda and not water and just continuing to drink regular soda, I'll pick diet soda.

2. High Fructose Corn Syrup. Very simply, I hate HFCS. Don't see anything good about it and I hate the fact that at the same time our government talks about improving the health of Americans they are giving massive subsides to the farming communities to make more corn, to then be processed into High Fructose Corn Syrup, to then be turned into this fake sugar, that in turns is helping lead the way to larger American waistline.

3. Hydrogenated Oils. These are pretty much where the Trans Fats come from and thankfully the FDA now requires that food manufacturers actually list on the nutritional labels how much trans fat is in a product. Studies on trans fat pretty much show that it causes your LDL cholesterol (bad stuff) to increase and your HDL cholesterol (the good stuff) to decrease. So stay away when you see it listed on a food label.

The article gives some pretty good tips for how to evaluate the ingredients for the bad food additives and they're pretty simple.

1. Choose foods that don't have a lot of ingredients listed and the ones that are listed are recognizable.

2. If your grandmother wouldn't recognize the ingredient, then it's more than likely man-made so stay away from it.

3. Probably my favorite and one I always preach: if you can't pronounce it, then it's more than likely processed.

There's a lot of bad effects of food additives so be careful of what's inside the foods that you think are healthy but might not be. Read the labels using the above criteria and that should help you make healthier choices.

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Sample Interval Training Workout

2010-04-20T07:25:00.004-05:00

I was doing some reading on a few interval training workout studies last week that were conducted by some Australian researchers and experimented with a few options and thought I would give you a sample of what they were so you could give them a try yourself.

The first interval training workout I tried had you go at a high intensity for 24 seconds, and then recover at a lower intensity for 36 seconds.

I first started off with a slow warm up for 3 minutes and then at the 3 minute mark went high for 24 seconds, then slowed down for 36 seconds, then high again for another 24 seconds followed by another low intensity for 36 seconds. I continued doing this until the clock had reached 20 minutes and then did a cooldown for 3 minutes.

It was a good workout and I definitely felt spent when I was done.

I was doing this workout on an upright stationary bike and it might be possible to do this on a treadmill but the bike seemed more practical since you could easily switch between the high intensity and low intensity fairly quickly (by the way, resistance is more important with these when using a bike rather than speed. Try to pick a resistance that you can only pedal between 70-80 RPMs on the high intensity bouts).

A couple of days later, I tried another interval training workout based on what the Australians did where the high intensity is 8 seconds and the low intensity is 12 seconds.

Again, I warmed up for 3 minutes on the upright bike and then started with the intervals after that until the clock said 20 minutes.

This was a good workout but I didn't like the practicality of it.

It takes at least 3-4 seconds to reach the appropriate RPM range so you're really only getting about a 4 second burst.

This workout is completely impractical on a treadmill and even if doing this outside on a track or something seems impractical since again, it's going to take you at least 3-4 seconds to reach your top speed.

Overall it was a good workout but, I just thought the intervals were just a bit too short for practical purposes.

The last interval training workout that I tried was meeting in the middle of the other two: 16 seconds at the high rate, 24 seconds at the lower rate.

I did this on the upright bike again, started out with the 3 minute warm up and then did the intervals until the clock hit 20 minutes.

This one felt harder than the 24-36 intervals and I felt the most spent from this one compared to the other two methods, which kind of surprised me. Again, I'm not sure how practical this would be on a treadmill, but might work if you were doing sprints outside.

For overall fat loss, I dropped quite a bit of weight last week when incorporating these (along with staying in line with my eating) so the fat loss results working with these are pretty impressive.

As I mentioned in a prior interval training post, you can get good results when doing these types of routines without going completely all out. You need to push yourself but you don't necessarily have to go at a rate that you would if someone was chasing you with a knife.

Overall, I would suggest using the 16-24 method and the 24-36 method for a good interval training workout. Give them a shot and let me know what you think.

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Heart Disease in Women and Men

2010-04-14T11:33:00.004-05:00

It's estimated that in 2006, there were 81,100,000 case of heart disease in women and men in the United States. Granted, this number takes into account anyone with high blood pressure to all out cardiac arrest but, when looking at that number, it's still pretty staggering.

I'll spare you my soapbox against the argument that red meat is to blame for this and talk about a new study that came out showing a connection between eating simple carbs and heart disease in women and men.

This study looked at not only the number of carbs ingested by people, but also looked at the glycemic index of those carbs.

Taking in foods that are higher on the glycemic index are associated with higher levels of triglycerides and the lowering of HDL cholesterol (the good kind) which in turns can increase your risk of heart disease.

The Italian researchers in this study had over 15,000 men and 32,000 women fill out questionnaires of their dietary intake and then followed them for 8 years.

What they found:

..the researchers found that women who consumed the most carbohydrates overall had about twice the incidence of heart disease as those who consumed the least. Closer analysis showed that the risk was associated with higher intake of high-glycemic foods.

"Thus, a high consumption of carbohydrates from high-glycemic index foods, rather than the overall quantity of carbohydrates consumed, appears to influence the influence of developing coronary heart disease," the researchers wrote.

What's really interesting is that they didn't find this same connection between high glycemic index foods and heart disease among men.

The researchers speculated that:

The difference might be due to the action of sex hormones....Male hormones, androgens, appear to slow the transformation of carbohydrates into blood sugar, whereas the female hormone estrogen speeds the process, she said.

The researchers concluded that women need to focus not only simply low in carbohydrates but low in simple sugars.

"Look at the label," Steinbaum said. "It says 'carbohydrates.' Under that, it says 'sugars.' When you have a high number for sugars, that's a way to know what the glycemic index is."

I REALLY don't like that simplistic view of how to connect a food to it's glycemic index, and I'll go even further to say I don't even like the use of the glycemic index when evaluating whether a food is "good" or "bad."

Here's an example of what I mean.

An apple. Using what she says and only looking at the sugar content of a cup of apple, out of 22 carbohydrates, 16 of them are sugar. So using what she is saying, that must mean that the glycemic index on that apple is high and should be avoided.

Then let's look at white bread. In 40 grams of white bread, there are 30 carbohydrates and out of that only 7 grams are sugar.

But when you look at the actual glycemic index of both of these foods, an apple rates anywhere from 28-40 (which would rank as low out of a scale of 100), and white bread is ranked anywhere between 70-100 (very high).

So I think the researcher's try at simplifying things won't work for a lot of different foods (especially fruits since they tend to be for the most part, composed of simple, natural sugars).

The whole glycemic index might be useful in some ways but from a practical standpoint, it can just make things more confusing. Most of these foods would show the estimated spike in blood sugar only if the situations were right: empty stomach, it was the only food being eaten, and you ate enough of it.

But most people rarely find themselves eating foods all by themselves. If you add protein and fat to carbs in a meal, that protein and fat slows the absorption of that carb (even the high glycemic index carbs) into the blood stream.

In the end, a lot of carbs are processed and the best thing we can do is just stay away from them.

I think it would go a long way in changing heart disease in women and men in this country if you stuck with eating just meats, fruits, veggies, nuts, and oils and for the most part, leave out the rest.

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Weight Loss for Obese Teens

2010-04-09T07:55:00.006-05:00

The number of obese children in this country is steadily getting higher and solutions on weight loss for obese teens need to start looking at any and every option.

I was at a conference about a month ago and one of the sessions was on working with obese parents and children.

When looking at statistics, between 1976 and 1980 the number of overweight and obese children between the ages of 12-15 was 5%. Between 2003 and 2006, that number is at 18%. Not Good.

It's estimated that one third of babies born in 2009 will develop diabetes before the age of 18.

An obese child is at a higher risk of having high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and it's estimated that 80% of all overweight 10-15 year olds are obese at age 25.

It's not a good sign of things to come for the next couple of generations and there are some thoughts that because of these health problems caused by obesity, that the next couple of generations born in the US may have a shorter life expectancy then current, older generations.

A new study though comes out with a new option that could be useful when it comes to helping lose weight in these young, obese children.

The study found that a high-protein, low-carb diet is a safe and effective way for severely obese teens to lose weight.

There's always been concerns that a low-carb diet could impact growth and increase cholesterol levels due to the higher fat involved in most low-carb diets.

But in this study, they found that not to be the case.

The researchers assigned a group of severely obese teens to either a high-protein, low carb diet or to a low-fat diet. The average age of the child was around 14 years old. The study had these teens on the respective diets for 13 weeks.

The results:

On average, those on the high-protein, low-carb diet lost 29 pounds over 13 weeks, while those on the low-fat diet lost 16 pounds. Both groups kept the weight off nine months after the study.

And for any health issues that they were concerned about with having these teens on the high-protein, low-carb diet:

The high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet also appeared to be safe, with no serious harmful effects on growth, bone mineral density, and various "metabolic" parameters, such as cholesterol levels. Both groups showed declines in levels of harmful LDL cholesterol and increases in levels of heart-healthy HDL cholesterol.

There always tends to be this stigma about low-carb diets and I think it has to do with the initial idea that originally came out when the diet became popular that you could eat bacon, fried food, etc. on it. And quite frankly, I just don't consider those part of a true low-carb diet.

For the most part, high-carb diets have been a more recent integration into the overall human diet.

For the vast history of human evolution, our bodies for the most part have eaten a low-carb diet.

20,000 years ago, we simply ate meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and some occasional eggs and oils. When looking at the health of people that lived then, for the most part they were stronger, faster, leaner, and overall healthier than we are today (at least in the western world).

So it doesn't really surprise me that a low-carb diet for obese teens turned out to be more effective for fat loss as well as providing overall health benefits because a true low-carb diet is what children lived on for most of our time here on earth.

I think if we could get kids (and adults as well) to simply eat those foods above, it would take a lot of the complexity away from deciding what is healthy and not healthy among the rest of the food that is in the center of the grocery store.

But, that's easier said then done. So how do we get those kids to eat those foods?

In the end, it HAS to be up to the parents to set this in motion.

I'm just taking a guess here with no scientific evidence in front of me to back this up but, chances are that if a child is overweight or obese, the parents are as well.

In other words, maybe we need to change the term "childhood obesity" to "family obesity" because that's truly where the problem AND the solution are at.

Which means, if you want an overweight child to eat healthier, then you are going to have to as well.

Don't sit there and think that you can leave junk food laying around the house for your consumption but not for your child's. It's just not going to work.

If you want to start off simple instead of making it a complete culture shock for the household, I blogged awhile ago on simple healthy changes you can make now to start on the right track.

The kids will probably complain, pout and say that if it's not junk food they won't eat it but, as the presenter said at the seminar I was at a few weeks ago "A healthy child will never go hungry." At some point, they'll eat what you give them.

Let's not forget about the exercising. Although the eating is the biggest part of the equation, you can't leave out the exercise portion.

The biggest part about getting kids to exercise is that it has to be FUN. Kids bore easily. But if you make it fun, they can get in a fairly vigorous exercise routine without even noticing it.

I wrote about a simple exercise routine for kids to start off with. It works well and don't be afraid to make the routine competitive. Kids tend to be naturally competitive so that should help increase the fun, the intensity, and the chances that they'll want to continue doing them.

Small steps to start with can become big gains in the whole grand scheme of things when it comes to weight loss for obese teens.

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Tax on Sodas

2010-04-06T08:05:00.006-05:00

In roughly 30 states there is a tax on sodas with the idea hopefully being that the increased cost will decrease the consumption of those high sugary sodas thus helping in reducing obesity rates.

But, a new study out is showing that small taxes on sodas aren't curbing obesity rates.

When talking about how this tax didn't curb obesity rates, we're specifically about obesity rates in children.

The researcher looked over surveys of over 7,000 fifth graders and looked at how their height to weight ratio changed over a two year period and compared that to the number of high sugar sodas or sports drinks that they drank. They then compared that to the soda taxes that were in effect at the time of the survey (survey was done in 2004).

Two-thirds of the children lived in states that had a tax on sodas where the average tax was 4 cents on the dollar.

What they found was:

They found the taxes made no real difference on overall soda consumption or on obesity for kids overall. They did have a small effect on certain children — especially those from families with an annual income of $25,000 or less. Those kids — who drank about seven cans of soda a week, on average — drank one less can because of the taxes, Sturm said.

At first look, dropping from seven sodas a week to six doesn't seem like a big deal. But, I wrote a while back about soda being bad and gave the breakdown of how cutting out a regular soda habit without changing anything else in your diet can result in significant weight loss over time.

In this situation, if a child was consuming one less 20-ounce soda a week (because really, I think the chances are that it's a 20-ounce bottle they are consuming and not a 12-ounce can), that would reduce the amount of calories they are consuming by 242.5 a week. Over the course of a year, that would 12,610 less calories.

It takes a reduction of 3,500 calories to burn a pound of fat. So in this situation, that would mean over the course of a year, by just dropping this one soda a week and changing nothing else would theoretically result in a three and a half pound weight loss.

The researchers claim though that if the tax was more like 18 cents on the dollar, that might significantly reduce soda consumption.

I'm not sure that I completely buy that. I think it would have to be significantly higher for consumption to really be affected.

I think the last time I looked, a 20-ounce bottle of soda here in Michigan goes for around $1.50 (plus deposit). If you added on 18 cents on the dollar to that, you'd pay around $1.87. Chances are when you buy that now, you give the cashier $2.00. If that tax was added, you'd still give the cashier $2.00 and simply get less change back and wouldn't think twice about it.

Think of the situation with the cigarette tax. In Michigan, the state tax on a 20 pack of cigarettes is $2.00 and then there's the federal tax of $1.01. Essentially, a pack of cigarettes cost $6 with roughly half of that being a tax.

A lot of people still continue to smoke regardless of that price and regardless of the fact that half of it is a tax, but at the same time, a lot of people have quit because of that high price.

I would almost think that in order to reduce the consumption of soda significantly, the tax on sodas would have to make the price of the soda double as well.

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Overeating and Depression

2010-04-01T09:26:00.006-05:00

I've always thought that there was kind of a chicken and an egg relationship between overeating and depression.

This article talks about a recent study done by Dutch researchers showing a relationship between becoming obese and leading to depression, and depression leading to obesity.

Obesity, Luppino and colleagues found, increases the risk of depression in initially non-depressed individuals by 55 percent and depression increases the risk of obesity in initially normal-weight individuals by 58 percent.

The study was pretty massive. Pooling subjects from 15 published studies:

The studies, which collectively involved more than 58,000 people, used body mass index, or BMI, to gauge how fat or thin a person is. For reference, a US adult with a BMI of 25 or more is considered overweight, while one with a BMI of 30 and above is considered obese.

The study also showed though that it was a little different for people that are overweight but not obese.

Being overweight increased the risk of depression in initially non-depressed individuals somewhat, but depression did not increase the risk of being overweight over time.

All of this tends to make a lot of sense into how overeating and depression can go hand in hand and can lead to a downward spiral.

You become depressed, and you go to food to find some "emotional support." That food then leads to weight gain. You notice the weight gain and it makes you even more depressed about your body image, thus, leading you to eat more, and then being depressed more, etc.

When looking at the obesity epidemic, I've always thought that there was more to it than people just eating more and exercising less. That there was a deeper root cause and that maybe what we really had was a depression epidemic that was the underlying cause of the obesity epidemic (this somewhat relates to an addiction to food post that I talked about recently).

What about an approach to deal with the issue more? What if we started officially categorizing obesity as an eating/psychological disorder just like we do with anorexia and bulimia?

Essentially, it's the same thing: They are all eating disorders, they all have some kind of underlying psychological issues involved in them and eating (or not eating) is just the bio-product of it.

Roughly 1-5% of the population will be diagnosed with anorexia and/or bulimia, yet, it's estimated that ONE-THIRD of the US population is obese.

So again, why are we not treating this as an eating disorder?

It's good that we keep focusing on eduction when it comes to exercise and healthy food choices but, I think we really need to change focus a little bit and realize that there may be more "behind the scenes" when it comes to why we've become so overweight, so quickly.

I hope more is done to look into the connection between overeating and depression because I really think there's something to it.

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Addiction to Food

2010-03-31T09:21:00.008-05:00

There's a new study out that talks about how an addiction to food, specifically the high calorie, high bad fat, high sugar ones, can be very similar to an addiction to cocaine.

I think everyone pretty much knew that about junk food. Those that really get a first hand look at it are people that have essentially lived off junk food and decide to cut it out cold turkey and go through the same withdrawal symptoms that people go through when they cut off a drug, alcohol, coffee, soda, etc.

This study used rats as the subjects for 40 days and they broke the rats into three groups:

1. One group was fed healthy rat food (I guess whatever "healthy" means to a rat..)
2. A second group was fed healthy rat food, but also given junk food that they could munch on for only an hour a day.
3. The third group could eat as much junk food that they wanted, 23 hours a day.

Shockingly, the third group that could eat all the junk food that they wanted, became obese fairly quickly.

But the interesting part is how their brains changed.

By monitoring implanted brain electrodes, the researchers found that the rats in the third group gradually developed a tolerance to the pleasure the food gave them and had to eat more to experience a high.

The researchers also added a little pain into each of the groups when food was present. When that pain was administered, the rats in the first two groups were frightened away from eating, while the rats in the third group didn't care, they were solely focused on eating that junk food.

This relates fairly closes to studies done on rats involving cocaine and heroin:

In previous studies, rats have exhibited similar brain changes when given unlimited access to cocaine or heroin. And rats have similarly ignored punishment to continue consuming cocaine, the researchers note.

When relating this to humans:

The ingredients in purified modern food cause people to "eat unconsciously and unnecessarily," and will also prompt an animal to "eat like a drug abuser [uses drugs]," says Wang.

It appears that the main culprit in all of this is the neurotransmitter, dopamine that rats (and humans) have:

The neurotransmitter dopamine appears to be responsible for the behavior of the overeating rats, according to the study. Dopamine is involved in the brain's pleasure (or reward) centers, and it also plays a role in reinforcing behavior. "It tells the brain something has happened and you should learn from what just happened," says Kenny.

Overeating caused the levels of a certain dopamine receptor in the brains of the obese rats to drop, the study found. In humans, low levels of the same receptors have been associated with drug addiction and obesity, and may be genetic, Kenny says.

How do we get past this addiction?

With continued research like this, there's always the possibility that treatments can be developed to stop the decrease of dopamine that is associated with the addiction.

There's also the practical applications of:

1. Slowly cutting bad food out and replacing them with healthier choices or
2. Just cold turkey throwing out all the junk food and going healthy (although this is the more extreme approach and can result in a withdrawal period, I tend to like this one the best. Get it over with).

But we probably need to look a little further into it to determine the "Why?" of the addiction, just like it's necessary when working with someone with a drug or alcohol addiction.

In other words, maybe people are using that junk food as a substitute for something else, and maybe digging deeper into that realm will help with getting away from the addiction of food, permanently.

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A Healthier Michigan

2010-03-30T09:01:00.003-05:00

I was contacted last week to start blogging for a new website that is being put on through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan called ahealthiermichigan.org.

The site contains forums, blogs and a whole lot of information out there on how to make yourself, businesses, your community, and the health care system, healthy.

From a health standpoint, Michigan tends to always rank at the bottom of every nationwide study. The economy has been in the crapper for at least the last 5 years in Michigan and there are major changes headed our way when it comes to our health care system.

So I hope this site takes off and starts to throw around a lot of ideas that are "out of the box" to get some new innovative ideas on how to move forward in Michigan.

My blog over there will pretty much be a cut and past job from this site but, you'll see me floating around the Healthier You forums from time to time with some different ideas.

So make sure to go to ahealthiermichigan.org and sign up for an account and come back often.

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Inteval Training Studies

2010-03-29T03:00:00.001-05:00

There's some new Interval Training Studies out there that are hopefully going to help with being able to use this type of exercise protocol for the overweight and even the obese population.

I've talked recently in this post that the problem withe the classic interval training of going "all out" for short periods of time can be rather difficult when dealing with people that are quite overweight due to the amount of compression that would result on various joints, particularly the knees.

That's why I was advocating in that post the concept of what I like to call "Metavals" where instead you use a number of exercises in a circuit fashion for a period of time and you'd be getting just as much fat loss benefit as you would with all out sprints.

But this new interval training study that said it's not completely necessary to go "all out" in order to be effective.

As Gibala explained to the press:

"We have shown that interval training does not have to be 'all out' in order to be effective."

"Doing 10 one-minute sprints on a standard stationary bike with about one minute of rest in between, three times a week, works as well in improving muscle as many hours of conventional long-term biking less strenuously," he added.

So the part about the sprints being just as effective in a short workout compared to a long distance session is something we've known. But the part about not having to go all out and still being effective is something new.

In this new study they used a standard stationary bike and a workout that was still beyond the comfort zone of most people (about 95 per cent of maximal heart rate), but was only half of what might be regarded as an "all out" sprint.

This less extreme form of HIT should work well for people whose doctors might be a little worried about them taking up the "all out" form: that is people who are older, less fit and likely to be overweight.

The subjects in this study had six training sessions over a two week period where they completed 8 to 12 one-minute high intensity bursts (although it still wasn't "all out") followed by 75 seconds of active rest period between the bursts. I'm assuming they had some kind of warm up and cooldown so each workout probably came out to 30 minutes at most.

The results:

The results showed that the training significantly increased exercise capacity in two cycling time trials (one for 50kJ and the other for 750kJ).

The researchers also compared biopsy samples of vastus lateralis muscle (the largest part of the quadriceps) taken before the 2 weeks of training with samples taken after, and found that the later samples showed increased maximal activity of mitochondrial capacity and other relevant chemical processes.

The conclusions:

"This study demonstrates that a practical model of low volume HIT is a potent stimulus for increasing skeletal muscle mitochondrial capacity and improving exercise performance."

The researcher also concluded that to get the same results within the same time period (2 weeks) of slow steady state endurance, a person would have had to go for 10 hours, rather than the 3 hours of total work that it took to get these results in this study (at the same time, it would have been interesting if they would have had a separate group of subjects actually doing that in the study so that they could make a better comparison of that).

I like the fact that they used the bike on this and I think if interval programs were to be used for those that are fairly overweight, it's probably the modality to use since there's less jolting of the knees. NOTE: If you're going to use a stationary bike, use the upright one, not a recumbent.

But if that's not available, I still wouldn't recommend running sprints for this particular population since it's a knee injury just waiting to happen. The metavals that I talk about in this post are still your other best option.

It's great to see though that Interval Training studies are still coming out and showing that it's a more efficient and effective workout compared to slow steady state cardio.

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Salt in Processed Food

2010-03-26T03:00:00.001-05:00

I hate processed food and I hate the fact that there is so much salt in processed food.

Blunt enough?

Well, it looks like according to this article, the food companies are getting that point as well.

According to the article:

Last week, Kraft Foods Inc. announced it would cut the salt in its North American line by an average of 10 percent in over 1000 products over the next two years. On Monday, PepsiCo unveiled a global nutrition initiative to reduce sodium in food products by an average of 25 percent by 2015. The company also has a 10-year plan to decrease added sugar in beverages by 25 percent and saturated fat in foods by 15 percent. Other companies, such as ConAgra, Sara Lee, and Campbell Soup, already have plans underway to reduce salt in key product categories.

That's great to hear. But this part of the article really blew my mind on how much salt there really is in the food we buy:

Kraft's initiative alone is projected to eliminate more than 10 million pounds of salt from the food supply over the next two years

.

10 million pounds of salt will be eliminated in two years, and that's just from ONE food company? That's pretty amazing.

I worry though that they are just going to find another ingredient to add into their products that is going to be just as harmful as salt.

Trust me, they aren't just going to pull the salt out of all those foods that are big sellers because of craving people have for salty food and watch people stop buying them. These companies wouldn't be taking this initiative for the health benefit of the nation if they thought they were going to see a disastrous decline in their profitable products.

Let me live in my little dream world for a moment though.

I don't add any salt to my food. I don't buy products that have salt in them (if they do, it's very minimal).

I haven't died of starvation or deprivation due to no salt.

If you want to truly stay away from salt, stick with these foods:

1. Meat, fish, chicken, turkey, pork etc.
2. Vegetables
3. Fruits
4. Nuts
5. Oils
6. Non-salt spices like garlic and onion powder and a slew of others for taste

Sure, you might go through a little withdrawal of the lack of salt in those foods but, you'll adapt and you'll be surprised how much better you'll feel when you focus on just eating those kinds of foods listed above, 90% of the time.

There's no need to eat all that salt in processed food. There's many other foods out there that can taste just as good and that are much more healthy for you.

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Ways to Prevent Breast Cancer

2010-03-25T07:05:00.004-05:00

There's a new study out that talks about ways to prevent breast cancer.

As some of you may recall, I walked in the Susan G Komen 3-Day for the Cure last year and the fight against breast cancer has kind of become my personal social cause to work with.

This article talks about how we're basically at a decent spot for early detection in order to slow the disease.

"What can be achieved with screening has been achieved. We can't do much more," Carlo La Vecchia, head of epidemiology at the University of Milan, told The Associated Press. "It's time to move onto other things."

Just some background stats on the prevalence of breast cancer in western society.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. In Europe, there were about 421,000 new cases and nearly 90,000 deaths in 2008, the latest available figures. The United States last year saw more than 190,000 new cases and 40,000 deaths. A woman's lifetime chance of getting breast cancer is about one in eight.

What's interesting is what they think fuels a lot of breast cancer cases:

Many breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, a hormone produced in fat tissue. So experts suspect that the fatter a woman is, the more estrogen she's likely to produce, which could in turn spark breast cancer. Even in slim women, exercise can help reduce the cancer risk by converting more of the body's fat into muscle.

Now granted, this isn't always true. My cousin that I walked for last year is and always has been a slender woman that exercises, eats healthy and just overall lives a healthy lifestyle. But, since the vast majority of the population is overweight or obese, I think for the most part they are right on target.

La Vecchia cited figures from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which estimated that 25 to 30 percent of breast cancer cases could be avoided if women were thinner and exercised more.

And there we have it. Another reason why we need to exercise more and eat healthier.

There's just simple things that you can do to lose weight by eating healthier and exercising that are simple and at the same time, is one of the ways to prevent breast cancer:

1. Stick with whole foods such as meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and oils.
2. Stay away from processed food (if you can't pronounce the ingredient that is listed on the box, then put it down).
3. Simple (yet intense) exercises that involve the biggest muscles in your body in order to not only burn more calories during the workout, but also after the workout.

The Home Workout Routines that I offer (that'll cost you less than $10 for a 4-week program) is a great exercise program to get you started AND it comes with a Fat Loss Nutritional Guide. Best part is that you can do the workouts right in your own home and you don't need ANY exercise equipment.

If you're trying to find ways to prevent breast cancer, this simple program is a great way to get your exercise in and get your eating in line to help reduce that risk.

www.leanbodytraining.com
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Too Much Exercise

2010-03-19T10:03:00.005-05:00

It's great to exercise but sometimes you have to ask yourself the question "How much is too much exercise?"

We get into our fitness routines, and keep doing the same thing over and over again and then we might start feeling some pain in our lower back, maybe even in our knees or ankle joints.

Sometimes it doesn't take long to feel that pain during exercise to know that it's too much exercise.

Take for example the show that I love to hate: The Biggest Loser. You take someone that is 450 pounds and on their first day you send them out to run a mile. That's just flat out stupid and is the wrong kind of exercise for someone that size that is just asking for an injury.

This article tends to state the obvious that too much exercise can lead to overuse injuries.

"People tend to do the same thing over and over again, without varying it, without taking adequate rest, without building slowly, and they end up with an overuse injury," said Geralyn Coopersmith, national manager for the Equinox Fitness Training Institute.

"Tendonitis, bursitis, fasciitis, these kinds of inflammations are pretty much guaranteed if you don't vary your training," said Coopersmith, who oversees the training of 1,400 personal trainers in 48 Equinox clubs nationwide.Yet she concedes that even clients who complain of nagging aches and pains are loath to change their routine.

"People get terrified. They'll say, 'The treadmill made me lose weight.' Well, exercise made you lose weight. The treadmill was the modality. That doesn't mean it's the only way or the best way," she explained.

This makes absolute sense and I think everyone does this (including me). You get into a routine, but then you start to feel a little "pinch" somewhere but tend to rationalize it away. You keep at your fitness routine and then the pain becomes a little stronger, but you still just say that you'll "work through it." Finally it gets so bad that you can't do it anymore and end up having to take a break.

You've done one of two things: Taken on too much exercise too soon or keep doing the same exercise over and over again with no changes so that your body hasn't had time to build up the strength and muscle around the area that you are constantly using.

If you're starting off new to exercise, you need to start at the bottom and work your way up. Try something out a couple times a week, then after a few weeks, add in another day.

For those that have been exercising for awhile and are doing the same thing day in and day out, change what you are doing. If you're running, take some time off from it and do some strength training. If you're strength training and you've been working with heavy weights for awhile, back off and do some lighter lifting for a little bit to let everything recover.

The best option would be to look into getting subscribing to my fitness routines program. If you're a beginner, you'll have programs available where you can start from the very basics to make sure you don't overdo it too quickly.

If you're a more seasoned exerciser, these fitness routines will give you the variety from month to month to make sure you aren't overusing a certain area on your body that could lead to injury.

All the while, the routines are designed to help you get the body that you strive for without prescribing you too much exercise. It only costs $4.95 for the first month so it's well worth a try to see if it's something for you.

www.leanbodytraining.com
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Misleading Food Labels

2010-03-18T09:59:00.003-05:00

Misleading Food Labels are...well...misleading.

But we're not talking about the actual nutritional label that lists out the amount of each nutrient and gives you the calories per serving size like this:

We're actually talking about the front of the product. You know, where the producer says things like "Reduced Fat" or "Low Sodium" etc.

According to this article, a lot of manufacturers are pushing the line on how accurate those statements are.

Seems that it all came to a head in September of 2009:

The situation reached something of a head when in September of last year, The New York Times wrote an article about the Smart Choices program — a voluntary labeling program used by several companies in collaboration — and how the label that was supposed to indicate foods that were healthy choices ended up appearing on a box of Fruit Loops, among other less-than-healthy options.

That's actually funny. I wish I would have saw that in the grocery store at the time. I would have bought 5 boxes just to have a record that they were actually pushing Fruit Loops as "healthy" (what I think would have been interesting though is to see if sales of Fruit Loops went up because of the misleading food label).

The overall problem with front of the box food claims is that it doesn't tell the whole story. Okay fine, a product claims that it's "reduced fat." But when you look at the actual food label, you see that it's loaded with sugar, thus not as "healthy" as it would appear from what is listed on the front.

The goal that the FDA is striving for is to find out what information consumers are going to find helpful on the front of the product to make an accurate assessment of whether it's going to be healthy or not:

Various labeling schemes have been used and proposed: Some list just a couple key points of nutrition, such as calories, accompanied by a check mark or other symbol; some are a truncated version of the Nutrition Facts label that show key points, such as calories, fat, sugar and sodium; others include on top of that information a "traffic light" symbol (something that has been used with success in the United Kingdom) by each nutrient that indicates whether that nutrient is in the acceptable range (green) or not (red).

I'll be honest, I don't see this ever happening. There's no way the food manufacturer lobby would ever let this go through. If they all of a sudden put out a "traffic light" symbol on a product, who would ever buy that? You'd see sales and that company fall into an immediate crash.

Besides, the idea of originally putting the current nutritional label on products was to give people a better concept of the ingredients in them so that they can determine whether a product is "healthy" or "not healthy." That was supposed to help people make healthier choices. Well, I'm not sure that worked since our waistlines have gotten larger and larger by the day since they starting requiring that on foods in 1994.

In other words, people have the ability to read the current food label on the side or the back of the product, might even actually look at it, and are STILL buying the unhealthy products. What are the chances that if you put on the front of the product that it's bad for you that people are STILL not going to buy it?

There's a warning on cigarette packages warning against the risks of smoking, but does that seem to stop someone from buying them?

My suggestion? Stay away from foods that are in boxes. Meaning, buy fruits, vegetables, meats and nuts, and that's really all you need.

You don't need to worry about misleading food labels with my fitness routines that I offer that come with a nutritional guide that lays out the very simple process you need to take to lose body fat that doesn't have you worrying about whether a product is healthy or not healthy and it's incredibly affordable to try this program out at just $4.95 for the first month. Give it a shot.

www.leanbodytraining.com
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Baldness and Testosterone

2010-03-17T08:20:00.003-05:00

We've known for awhile that baldness and testosterone levels are linked.

I've had a receding hairline for as long as I can remember. Looking back at my senior pictures in high school, it's clear as day. A few years ago, I caught myself in a two-way mirror and saw a nice thinning spot right on the back of my head. So, I just decided to take the plunge and shave it all off instead of trying to do the "comb over" that doesn't really fool anybody.

But there's some good news for us bald guys, especially the ones that can remember if they started going bald before the age of 30.

According to this article, men who go bald earlier in life, tend to show lower levels of prostrate cancer later in life.

Researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine studied 2,000 men aged between 40 and 47.

They were able to link high levels of the male hormone testosterone in those who lose their hair earlier with a lower risk of tumours.

Researchers compared the rate of tumours in those who said their hair had thinned by the age of 30 with those who did not suffer hair loss.

Men who had started to develop bald spots on the top of their heads as well as receding hairlines had a 29% to 45% reduction in the risk of prostate cancer.

Just to give some background on what they think causes baldness:

Baldness is caused when hair follicles become exposed to too much dihydrotestosterone (DHT). This is a chemical produced by the male hormone testosterone.

Experts believe that men with high levels of testosterone are more likely to lose their hair, especially if baldness runs in the family.

Seems that normally men who have prostrate cancer are given drugs to REDUCE their testosterone levels but this study is showing that that might not be the best route to take.

I think we all know someone that has or has had prostate cancer and the treatments they have to go through and being a guy, I can say it really makes me uneasy.

So guys, if you start to see that hair starting to thin, don't freak out. It just might be helping you out over the long haul.

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Army Bootcamp

2010-03-16T10:34:00.004-05:00

I've never gone through Army Bootcamp and can only base opinions on it when I watch things on television (with one of my all time favorite mini-series being Band of Brothers). You see the other goofy movies like Stripes too and Private Benjamin but, I never took it to show what it's really like.

But one thing that I noticed on more of the serious documentaries and films on going through Army Bootcamp was all the running. Since becoming a Strength a Conditioning Specialist a number of years ago, I always wondered "Why do they make them run so much? When would a soldier ever run in a straight line, at a sub-maximal level, for 10 miles?"

I came across this article that talks about how basic training in the Army is getting it's first major makeover in 30 years. It looks like they're coming up with some good stuff and trying to make what they are training from a physical standpoint more like what a soldier would face in combat.

Adapting to battlefield experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Army is revamping its basic training regimen for the first time in three decades by nixing five-mile runs and bayonet drills in favor of zigzag sprints and honing core muscles.

Trainers hope the switch will better prepare soldiers physically for the pace of combat, with its sudden dashes and rolling gun battles. They also want to toughen recruits who are often more familiar with Facebook than fistfights.

I don't mean to criticize our Armed Forces but, makes me wonder why it took so long for them to get to this point. Even before Afghanistan and Iraq, you still didn't see situations in Vietnam or WWII where soldiers were running 5 miles in a straight line.

Seems that when a soldier is out on patrol, there's walking, and walking, and walking (with a lot of extra weight from the gear on you), and then all of a sudden bursts of speed needed, along with zig zag movements. And that would appear to be the rule, not the exception.

The new training also uses "more calisthenics to build core body power, strength and agility," Palkoska said in an office bedecked with 60-year-old black and white photos of World War II-era mass exercise drills. Over the 10 weeks of basic, a strict schedule of exercises is done on a varied sequence of days so muscles rest, recover and strengthen.

Again, this sounds just like how it would be in combat. You're going to have times where you need quick power and speed, but other times where you'll have time to recover (even if that time is very short).

It's also interesting to see that they are taking the fact that Army Bootcamp isn't immune to the obesity epidemic (which I talked about once in this post):

Another aim is to toughen recruits from a more obese and sedentary generation, trainers said.

Many recruits didn't have physical education in elementary, middle or high school and therefore tend to lack bone and muscle strength. When they ditch diets replete with soda and fast food for healthier meals and physical training, they drop excess weight and build stronger muscles and denser bones, Palkoska said.

Continues near the end of the article:

Fleming said those who had some sort of sports in high school can easily pick up on the training, while those who didn't have to be brought along. One hefty soldier in a recent company he trained dropped 45 pounds and learned to blast out 100 push-ups and 70 sit-ups, he said.

"We just have to take the soldier who's used to sitting on the couch playing video games and get them out there to do it," Fleming said.

This is going to be real interesting to see how it all plays out but I think if anything, it makes Army Bootcamp closer to an anaerobic "activity" rather than an aerobic one and that's going to go a long way.

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A Simple Diet Plan

2010-03-15T03:00:00.001-05:00

I'm all about simple solutions and finding a simple diet plan for people to follow AND that works.

I came across this article that gives out a eating plan that claims you can lose weight while staying full.

I like the concept because I think for a lot of people, they snack on junk food because they get what they consider "hungry."

But when you look at the diet itself that it has listed out, it's not a very simple diet plan.

Example from Day 2 Breakfast:

5.3 oz 2% Greek yogurt with honey, 1 sliced banana, 1 Tbsp chopped walnuts

So you mean you have to measure that out? Not 5.1 oz, not 5.5 ounces, but 5.3...

Day 2 snacks:

1 cup cantaloupe chunks and 1 cup pineapple chunks, topped with ¼ tsp chopped mint

Are these from a can, or do you have to take the time to cut all that up almost every day(and if it's in a can, that's a lot of sodium to go along with it)?

And probably my favorite snack they listed on the last day:

Two 2¼-in. homemade chocolate chip cookies; 8 oz coffee with 1% milk

2 1/4 inch....HOMEMADE...not store bought...talk about getting technical.

And I'll admit, I had to google what a Babybel was.

The problem is, there's not too many people that are going to last on this diet for long. All the measuring, chopping, eyeballing, and weighing of food is going to make it to complex for people to stick with.

My fitness routines comes with a fat loss nutritional guide that I think is basic a simple diet plan.

You eat twice a day, and you eat all you want of the foods I have listed. The foods are very simple: meats, veggies, fruits, nuts, and various oils.

There's no measuring, there's no weighing, there's no calorie counting. You follow the diet plan and the workouts and you WILL lose weight.

This stuff doesn't have to be complex. A simple diet plan is all you need and the fitness routines that I offer are just what you need to lose that weight and get the body that you want and at just $4.95 for the first month's workout (just 16 cents a day), you can give it a try for a month. You've got nothing to lose.

Fitness Routines

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Muscle Fiber Recruitment

2010-03-13T03:00:00.000-05:00

One thing that tends to get lost when it comes to different training techniques is an understanding of muscle fiber recruitment.

I had a client of mine that is in my Fat Loss class come up to me this past week telling me how great she felt when she was out in Colorado and hiking around and how the class really prepared her for the endurance that she was going to need.

My class doesn't focus on slow steady cardio or aerobics. The focus is on fat loss and increasing strength and muscle.

So why did her endurance increase when she wasn't training for endurance?

It's because indirectly she was and it comes down to the types of muscle fibers that are used and recruited.

There are three different kind muscle fibers:

1. Type I muscle fibers (aka slow twitch muscle fibers) – These fibers develop force very slowly and at the same time, relax slowly and can withstand fatigue for long periods of time. These types of muscle fibers have a high capacity for activities such as a marathon, soccer and distance cycling. Basically, you are going at a sub maximal pace for a long period of time. These fibers are used in what is classically called “endurance” exercises and activities.

2. Type IIa muscle fibers (aka fast twitch muscle fibers) – These fibers can develop force faster than the type I fibers but, also get fatigued faster. These fibers involve activities that are a little more quicker and powerful with intensity than the type I fibers, such as an 800 meter run, some strength training workouts like in the Lean Body Fat Loss Training class, interval training, and what I like to call, metaval training.

3. Type IIb muscle fibers (aka fast twitch muscle fibers) – These are the most powerful muscle fibers that we have. These are the fibers that are able to develop force very rapidly, but, at the same time, they fatigue very rapidly. These include activities such as a 100-m sprint, a maximal lift of a weight, or a vertical jump.

No matter what type of activity you are doing (for the most part), your muscles are recruited in a particular order: First the Type I's are recruited, then if needed your Type IIa's are recruited, and finally if necessary your Type IIb's are recruited.

So if you're doing just a normal walk, you'll recruit your Type I muscle fibers but that will be about it. If you are doing some bodyweight squats or lunges, you'll first recruit your Type I muscle fibers, then you'll more than likely recruit your Type II muscle fibers. If you added a barbell full of weights onto your shoulders and completed more squats that was incredibly intense, you would first recruit the type I fibers, then the Type IIa muscle fibers, and finally you'd probably recruit Type IIb muscle fibers.

When you start to increase the maximal strength of your Type IIa and Type IIb muscle fibers, you are also at the same time increasing the strength of your Type I muscle fibers, because those have to be recruited as part of the mix when you are lifting things to strengthen the Type IIa and Type IIb muscle fibers.

So in essence, you are increasing your maximum abilities when training your Type IIa and Type IIb muscle fibers, and also increasing your SUB-MAXIMAL abilities of the Type I muscle fibers.

That's why my client had an easier time out hiking with the strength training she did in Lean Body Fat Loss class then if she simply did low, sub-maximal walking.

You can follow the same type training with the monthly fitness routines that I offer. It's a great way to train not only for gaining strength and building muscle but will also help you build up endurance for a 5K, 10K, a full marathon, as well as a hiking trip.

So don't be afraid to train at a higher intensity level than what you are going to use for. In the end, the order muscle fiber recruitment can be used to cover all increases in strength at all levels.

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Best Workout For Fat Loss

2010-03-12T03:00:00.000-05:00

I get asked the question a lot: "What is the best workout for fat loss?"

People are always on the search for the best fitness plans but more times than not they find one listed as such, try it out and then if fails.

but the problem is not that the workout failed, it's that the person failed the fat loss workout.

The beauty of fitness is that it allows all of us to be part of an experiment. The difference is that we are both the tester and the subject.

If we work through a fat loss fitness routine EXACTLY as it's spelled out for us, then after some time we can tell for ourselves whether it worked or not.

The issue arises though in that people won't follow EXACTLY what is prescribed for them to do.

Same goes for diets. People get on diets but then 2 days into them they start making "small modifications" and then in 3 weeks they say the diet didn't work but if you look at what they were actually doing, they weren't following the original diet at all.

The key is to follow exactly what a workout for fat loss says with no modification for a period of time and then you'll be able to make an accurate opinion of whether yo thought it worked or not.

Here's the way I do it:

I found a diet/and or fitness routine and follow it exactly for a month. Before I start, I'll take measurements of my weight, as well as the circumference of my waist. I'll also take pictures of myself to see if any physical changes occurred.

After a month, I'll compare the measurements and pictures of the two time periods and make a decision as to whether I accept or not accept whether the routine/diet succeeded or not.

Then from there, I might start making modifications the routine or diet and continue to track my measurements and pictures.

But, the important part is that in order to get an idea of whether a workout for fat loss succeeds or not, you HAVE to give it some time and at first you HAVE to follow it EXACTLY as it is laid out for you.

Again, back to my experiences with intermittent fasting. I followed it for a month exactly the way it was spelled it out. After a month, I was able to make a subjective opinion on it (which by the way, was that I thought it was a great way to lose weight AND not lose muscle).

Want to make yourself a subject of a workout for fat loss that I have laid out for you?

Every month you can get a workout from me that spells out exactly what to do, when to do it, what to eat, and what not to eat. It's very simple to follow and if you stick with it EXACTLY, you will see results.

And I make it real easy for you to try this out. For the first month's routine, it's only going to cost you $4.95. That's it. Less than $5 to experiment my fitness routine on yourself to see whether it works or not.

Go check out the link below to read more (along with testimonials) on people you did the workouts, followed them exactly the way I wrote them, and got results and are now following one of the best, most affordable workouts for fat loss you can find.

Monthly Fitness Workout Routines

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Stair Training Fat Loss Programs

2010-03-11T03:00:00.000-05:00

Tabloid rumors are not the only thing celebrities like Alex Rodriguez & Madonna have in common.

And heart throbs Tom Brady & J-Lo also happen to share in common with A-Rod & the Material Girl.

They all use stairs to improve their conditioning, athletic performance and just plain look amazing.

The NY Daily News reports that A-ROD gets up at 6AM to run stairs and it's been written that Madonna can climb 50 flights of stairs in one clip.

J-Lo hits the stairs with a 20 pound vest, Tom Brady runs stadium stairs and Tom Brokaw uses them when he travels.

So why stairs?

Don't these celebrities have access to anything money can buy?

Of course they do but money has nothing to do with this.

There's one simple truth.

Although a free training tool accessible to most anyone stairs simply deliver the results these super stars are looking for.

Fat loss, speed, six pack, a hot bod, conditioning, flexibility, power

You name it and stairs can help.

Here are 3 reasons why...

The first reason that stairs are so effective is that going uphill (against gravity) will always force your body to work much harder and will increase your strength without even lifting weight. You ever notice how much harder it is to ride a bike or run uphill. Well that's the same reason stairs are so effective and even more because the slope is usually higher with stairs.

The second reason is time saving. Even greater with stairs is that training results are achieved in far less time than traditional training. A tough stair workout can take less than 15 minutes and yield the same results as an hour
long workout. Which would you rather do?

The third reason is that it's super easy to add equipment like a weighted vest (J-Lo does this) or attached some resistance bands to exit doors for upper body or core work. You can also throw in body weight exercises before or after your climbs.

It truly is hard to beat this free training tool and that's why you have the best of the best using them.

Follow suit and you'll reap the benefits too!

For a very limited time Stair Training Expert Virgil Aponte has 3 Free Videos and 1 Free E-Book on Stair Training at

Fat Loss Programs

Go there now before he takes them down:
Fat Loss Programs

Disclaimer: Lean Body Fitness, LLC is an affiliate of The Ultimate Stair Exercises

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Stair Training

2010-03-10T03:00:00.000-05:00

Virgil Aponte went from being a gym rat to using very unique stair training exercises after going through some injuries he got from traditional weight training.

Now does that mean you should scrap your training?

Of course not as Virgil put it.

If something is working for you then stick with it but if you think stairs are something for you then learning about and adding it to your training tool box will be a great thing for you.

Virgil learned this first hand when he was left without a training center during the 2002 WNBA Basketball Season.

Virgil was the Strength Coach to the New York Liberty Women's Basketball team but he actually had no place to train his athletes so he turned to using the stairs!

And guess what? They went all the way to the WBNA Finals!

And stairs are not just popular with Virgil and his athletes either.

Athletes and celebrities like A-Rod, Tom Brady, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna and many more swear by them.

You will to once you give them a try.

For a limited time Virgil has 3 free videos for you at his web site:

Stair Training

Go there now before he takes them down!

Stair Training

Disclaimer: Lean Body Fitness, LLC is an affiliate of The Ultimate Stair Exercises

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Metavals - The New Interval Training for Burning Body Fat

2010-03-09T13:27:00.004-05:00

One of the issues that I always have with clients is that when it comes to interval training for burning body fat they just can't get the intensity that they want on a treadmill or bike due to being overweight.

I still like doing intervals on a treadmill or bike for burning body fat. Especially a treadmill. The feeling of doing an all of sprint just really makes me feel alive.

But, I'm not overweight.

If you're overweight by say 25 pounds or more and do all of sprints, it's just asking for knee problems. What I see in a lot of my clients is that they instinctively know this and don't go all out and thus aren't burning body fat like they could.

But I came across some information from Alywn Cosgrove that makes a lot of sense and they are routines that can give you just as much benefit as intervals on a bike or treadmill but without the vast amounts of pressure that the compressions on your knees and other joints would get hit with: Metabolic Training or as I like to call them, Metavals.

Metavals are essentially exercises that you do in a row over a period of time without stopping and create that same kind of EPOC that you would get had you been doing the classic interval training on a bike or treadmill.

Here's an example of one of my Metavals that is in the current month's fitness routines that I offer:

Ten and Downs
1. There are three exercises involved in this routine: Kneeling Pushup, Bodyweight Squat, and Door Towel Rows.

2. Start by doing 10 repetitions of Kneeling Pushups.

3. With no rest, do 10 repetitions of Bodyweight Squats.

4. With no rest again, do 10 repetitions of Door Towel Rows.

5. Again with no rest, go back and do 9 repetitions of Kneeling Pushups, then 9 repetitions of Bodyweight Squats, then 9 repetitions of Door Towel Rows, with no rest between any of the exercises.

6. Then do a set of each of those exercises again, but only doing 8 repetitions.
7. Continue doing these exercises in this fashion but decreasing the number of repetitions that you do by one after each set.

8. When you get to doing just one repetition, hold the bottom of each of that one repetition of the Kneeling Pushup and Bodyweight Squat position for 30 seconds, and hold the pulling/contracting part of the one repetition of the Door Towel Row for 30 seconds.

This one is a simple one, and really only takes about 10 minutes to do. But it is very very effective and can keep you burning body fat for not only hours but days afterward.

Interested in learning more about these type of fitness routines for burning body fat? Then check out the monthly workout program that you can sign up for and get fitness routines at just $4.95 to start:

Fitness Routines

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Stair Exercise

2010-03-08T03:30:00.002-05:00

Not too long ago I chatted with my buddy and Stair Training Expert, Virgil Aponte about what he does to stay in shape.

Now if you know many personal trainers like I do you would probably hear things like I going to the gym a few times a week but Virgil goes a different route.

Instead of the gym he hits the stairs twice a week.

Don't get me wrong Virgil loves the typical gym stuff but back in 1996 he hurt himself in the gym and had to have hernia surgery.

Because of this Virgil could not hit the gym for 3 months!

Imagine giving up something you love for 3 months!

Now you know that must've been torture for Virgil.

He also became very depressed because he's supposed to set an example for his clients and for his students.

So what did Virgil do?

Well the first thing he did was a big mistake.

He went back into the gym only 3 weeks after surgery and pulled an abdominal muscle.

Now he was set back even further

What next?

He tried swimming but no good. Still too painful even for a former New York City Lifeguard!

He used the exercise bike at the gym but it was just way too boring.

You see Virgil was used to lifting weights, playing 3 on 3 basketball, wiffle ball and touch football and now he'd have to use a boring as hell exercise bike!

There had to be something better!

And that is exactly what Virgil found that actually made him famous. (At least when it came to stairs)

He was visiting a friend who happened to live on the 19th floor but one of the elevators was out or service.

Instead of waiting for the second elevator Virgil decides to take the stairs and the rest was history.

By the time he hit the 19th floor he was breathing heavy but more importantly there was no pain from his injuries.

He found a new training tool!

And it simply was walking the stairs in his friends 21 story building.

Yup that is how the stairs guru got started.

Over the next few months while healing from hernia surgery Virgil got up to walking 140 flights of stairs in a workout!

Now something really special started to happen.

Virgil was all healed up and was ready to go back into the gym but he still wanted to keep stairs in his routine.

So he decided to hit the gym 2 times a week and the stairs 2 times a week.

Virgil also came up with most unique stair exercises you will ever find and put them into an ebook and video series called The Ultimate Stair Exercises.

Stair Exercise

And we are not just talking about walking stairs either:

He came up with exercises to

-Improve Aerobic Fitness: Great for Beginners or Recovery Workouts

-Improve Anaerobic Fitness: The Kind of Workouts that Burn Tons of Fat!

-Improve Your Strength: The Kind of Exercises that give you Buns of Steel!

-Improve Your Power: The Kind of Exercises that Help You Perform on the Athletic Field, Burn Fat & Make You Look Amazing!

-Improve Conditioning: The Kind of Exercises that Elite Athletes Use for Incredible Stamina and Give You Tons of Energy!

-Improve Your Flexibility: The Kind of Exercises that Alleviate joint Paint and Make You Feel Great!

-Make Good Use of Your Time: The Best Stair Exercises of All Time. Time Efficient & Super Effective.

Now are stairs the only thing you should be doing I asked Virgil?

Of course not he says. I'd have to be crazy to say that considering I always tell people to keep an open mind and learn as much as you can about other training tools.

The more tools you have the betters: Gyms, Spinning, Yoga, Stairs, Bands, Kettlebells etc... all have their place

In fact when he was the Strength & Conditioning Coach for the New York Liberty back in 2002 they didn't even have access to the New York Knicks training center because it was still under construction.

Can you imagine the best basketball team in the nation not having a place to train.

So actually they were forced to uses stairs and bands for a bulk of our training and that served them just fine as they were the best conditioned team in the league and went to the WNBA Finals!

Can you imagine if Virgil only believed in using a gym?

So I ask you this:

Could stair training help you?

That's something you have to ask yourself

And if the answer is yes for a limited time Virgil has 3 free stair training videos for you just for visiting his site:

Stair Exercise

Go there now before he takes them down!

Stair Exercise

P.S. Make sure to go and check out my blog entry on my experiences
with the Ultimate Stair Exercises:

Lean Body Fitness Blog

Stair Exercise

Disclaimer: Lean Body Fitness, LLC is an affiliate of The Ultimate Stair Exercises

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History of Cooking

2010-03-05T09:25:00.005-05:00

Ever wonder about the history of cooking? Ever think about when it might have been that we decided to start throwing our food over a fire and eating it cooked instead of raw?

Since I was in 7th grade, I've always had a fascination of history. It's just really interesting to look backwards and try to piece together things that have happened to see how we got to this point right now.

As you've read in the past on this blog, I'm a big supporter of following diets such as a paleo diet, and on occasion, follow intermittent fasting, and follow simple workouts because I think that's what our body was designed to do.

This is an interesting article that theorizes that when we started cooking our food, we really put ourselves on the fast track to evolving as humans.

First, when we moved from eating a straight vegetarian diet to more meat, that was the starting point of moving from chimp to a form of human:

It is already accepted that the introduction of meat into our ancestors' diet caused their brains to grow and their intelligence to increase.

Meat - a more concentrated form of energy - not only meant bigger brains for our ancestors, but also an end to the need to devote nearly all their time to foraging to maintain energy levels.

As a consequence, more time was available for social structure to develop.

This part of human history just never seems to have changed: we were always looking for ways to simplify things in order to have more time to do other "stuff." We strive to do that every day in our own lives today.

But, it might have been when the history of cooking was born based on an "accident" that really moved us forward:

Harvard Professor Richard Wrangham believes there is more to it than simply discovering meat.

He thinks that it is not so much a change in the ingredients of our diet, but the way in which we prepare them that has caused the radical evolution of our species.

"I think cooking is arguably the biggest increase in the quality of the diet in the whole of the history of life," he says.

"Our ancestors most probably dropped food in fire accidentally. They would have found it was delicious and that set us off on a whole new direction."

How many times have you heard about the history of an invention and you almost always here the start of the story with "Well, it kind of came together by accident."

Think of how many times you've been cooking something and added something that you shouldn't have and you find that it actually enhances the taste of it.

It sends off that little light in your head that says "hey, I just made something new by screwing up."

The most momentous shift however, happened 1.8 million years ago when Homo erectus - our first "truly human" ancestor arrived on the scene.

Homo erectus had an even bigger brain, smaller jaws and teeth.

Erectus also had a similar body shape to us. Shorter arms and longer legs appeared, and gone was the large vegetable-processing gut, meaning that Erectus could not only walk upright, but could also run.

He was cleverer and faster, and - according to Professor Wrangham - he had learned how to cook.

"Cooking made our guts smaller," he says. "Once we cooked our food, we didn't need big guts.

"They're costly in terms of energy. Individuals that were born with small guts were able to save energy, have more babies and survive better."

Professor Peter Wheeler from Liverpool John Moores University and his colleague, Leslie Aiello, think it was this change in our digestive system that specifically allowed our brains to get larger.

Must be the nerd in me but I find this stuff really interesting because it begs the question, what would have happened if this "accident" didn't occur? Or what would have happened if they wouldn't have learned from that food accidentally falling into the fire and they would have continued to eat meat raw? Would it have not mattered and at some point we still would have figured it out?

I guess it comes down to the fact that even millions of years ago, something as simple as a piece of meat falling into the fire could very well have changed how humans developed and probably shows that through all the human forms we have gone through in the millions of years of human evolution, we still have one thing that hasn't changed: the ability to learn and adapt.

Always keep that in mind. You can adapt to situations before you are forced too. If you need to lose weight, then change your behavior and adapt to it. Your body can do it, you just need to convince your will that you can.

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Home Workout Routines

2010-03-03T08:25:00.004-05:00

Wouldn't it be great to have home workout routines where it didn't cost you a thing in gym membership fees OR exercise equipment?

The Lean Body Training Home Bodyweight Fat Loss Workouts are home workout routines that gives you exactly that: A workout at home that doesn't require any exercise equipment but at the same time is designed for fat loss.

The best thing about this program is that it's very efficient: It's only going to take you roughly 30 minutes to complete, 3 times a week. So no matter how busy you are, you should be able to find 90 minutes within your week to get one of these home workout routines done.

Another great part of this program? It comes in three different versions: A separate one for beginners, intermediates, and advanced training levels.

So it doesn't matter if you're beginner or a seasoned workout veteran, these home workout routines are perfect for you AND gives you fat loss results.

Maybe the best part: AFFORDABLE. One of these home workout routines is only going to cost you $9.95. That's a very small price to pay for a month long workout that you can do in your home, with no exercise equipment.

Read what one client had to say about it:

I followed the beginner, intermediate and advanced workouts. I was intimidated that I wouldn't be able to complete even the beginner program. Also, because of my skepticism, I took baby steps and held off on starting the eating plan until I felt more confident, which wasn't until a few weeks into the intermediate workout. Initially, after completing the beginner workout, I lost a few pounds and after finishing the advanced workout and having been on the eating plan for approximately two and a half months I lost an additional 25 pounds. Definitely surprised by the results. When I decided to start the program I didn't even have an actual goal in mind as to how much weight I wanted to lose because I never thought it was possible. However, after I started seeing results, I set a goal and stuck to it. I was a carboholic before I started the nutritional plan and was worried that I wouldn't be able to stick with it. After approximately a week and a half the carb cravings were gone and I actually started looking forward to the meals. There are such a wide variety of food choices that even a picky eater like myself had no trouble finding foods I love to eat. Once I made up my mind to follow the eating plan I didn't find it to be very difficult to stick to it, even with a busy lifestyle. I would recommend this program to anyone who is serious about losing weight and who desires a healthy lifestyle.

- Cheri Holland, Plymouth, Michigan

Don't waste anymore time. Get your copy of The Lean Body Training Bodyweight Fat Loss Workout today.

Home Workout Routines

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Lean Body Training Live on YouTube

2010-02-25T16:35:00.012-05:00

Okay, it's not really LIVE but, I've started making videos and putting them on YouTube. This is my first one, basically and introduction of me as well as and introduction to the girl in my life....Scarlett the Doberman. Take a look:

Get ready for more of these as time goes on. Have a good weekend.

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