I'm Back

Ya, I know, it's been AGES since I've put something on here. Sorry about that. The plan is to get back on here on a regular basis. I PROMISE...

One thing that I have now on my website are a couple of books that I recommend as a great resource for fitness information. You can check them out here and keep checking back at that link because over the next number of months I'll be adding more books, along with some of my own workouts that I'll be selling.

And, remember that little puppy of mine? Well, not so little anymore. Take a look at all 70 pounds of her..

Nice Home Garden Salad

So if you're like me and you've got a vegetable garden in your backyard, I came up with a really good salad over the weekend from what picked from it.

Here's what I had:

- A half a cucumber sliced and quartered
- A half a green pepper chopped up
- Some cherry tomatoes cut up (or you could cut up some regular tomatoes

Not from the garden:

- A can of tuna
- A handful of walnuts
- Olive oil
- Red Wine vinegar
- Salt
- Pepper
- Garlic Salt

Combine all those ingredients in a bowl and you've got yourself a really nice lunch salad with some good protein, good fat, and a nice portions of vegetables.

www.leanbodyfitness.com

I Know, I Know, I Know

You people probably think i abandoned this thing. I'm just having too much fun this summer to stress myself out about why the world is getting fatter and how to fix it. So, I've taken some time off. But, you remember this cute little girl that I got back in May?



Well, she ain't that little anymore....But still cute....





www.leanbodyfitness.com

No, I'm not Dead....

Sorry, I know it's been awhile since I updated this. Just been having to much fun this summer. I'll have some new material though this week so, stay tuned.

www.leanbodyfitness.com

Cholesterol - What All Those Numbers Mean

So you get your cholesterol checked (by the way, you should be doing this every year or every other year or, if you have abnormal numbers, as often as your doctor recommends) and get confused as to what exactly those numbers mean.

Well here’s a breakdown:

LDL (low-density lipoprotein) – This is the bad kind. This is the kind that builds up in the walls of your arteries and over time, can cause heart disease. You want to keep this number low. Less than 130 MG/DG is recommended.

HDL (high-density lipoprotein) – This is the good stuff. This is the cholesterol that basically acts as a cleaner and helps remove the LDL off the artery walls. You actually want to increase this number. A healthy range is between 40-60 MG/DL. It’s important to keep this number at least at 40 MG/DL.

Total Cholesterol (TC) – This is the combined total of LDL, HDL and VLDL (this type isn’t discussed here). Overall, you’d like to keep this figure below 200 MG/DL.

So how do you get those LDL down and the HDL up? The first step is to make lifestyle changes. Lose some weight. Change your eating, and get on an exercise plan. Studies have shown that both resistance training and aerobic exercise can improve cholesterol numbers. Also, if you smoke, STOP SMOKING!!!!

Other things you can do is increase your consumption of foods that are high in monounsaturated fats, such as olive oil, almonds, walnuts, and natural peanut butter. You should also completely eliminate anything in your diet that contains trans fats (check the label. If the word “hydrogenated” is listed anywhere in the ingredients, don’t eat it).

Another big step you can make is by increasing your fiber consumption. Try to get between 30-35 grams of fiber a day. Good sources of fiber are just about any vegetable (broccoli, carrots, celery), as well as whole grains such as oatmeal, whole wheat bread (that’s actually made from whole wheat flour). You can also get a large dose of fiber from legumes like black, pinto, and kidney beans. And don’t forget about fruits. Pretty much any kind of fruit is filled with fiber (apples, oranges, pears).

Once you get your eating in line and your exercise on track, there’s no reason your cholesterol shouldn’t go down and result in decreasing your risk for heart disease.

www.leanbodyfitness.com

No! I'm Not Dead!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Gone last week and this week has just been nuts trying to settle back in.

A little story though from my trip.

I was down in New Orleans for a conference (non-fitness related) and a couple of the days I decide to do a workout in the hotel fitness center.

I walked into the area and there was a young guy in there, maybe late teens or 20s. He was doing your typical bodybuilder workout, isolation exercises (bicep curls, tricep stuff, movement like that, that never work). He was also doing some weighted crunches on a swiss ball. That impressed me because that's a decent exercise. Except I learned a new way to do them from him that must be more effective than anything I've ever seen before:

You lift the bottom of your shirt up and look at your abs in the mirror while doing the exercise. That's an amazing new modification to that exercise that I'm SURE results in better body composition (please, I hope you see I'm being sarcastic).

After that I didn't much pay attention. I did my bodyweight warm up and then I started doing some dumbbell power cleans. I did notice the kid taking a glance at me in the mirror (that's bad form to take your eyes off your abs while doing those swiss ball crunches...) and he looked pretty confused as to what I was doing.

But, here's the most entertaining part of the kid's workout. After he was done, he walked out of the fitness center and onto a patio where the pool was. He sat down at a table....and immediately.....lit up a cigarette.......

I don't think I could makeup an ending like that to that story even if I wanted to.....

www.leanbodyfitness.com

Out This Week

I'm out of town this week at a conference. Have a good week and I'll be back to blogging next week.

www.leanbodyfitness.com