Bend The Bar - Weight Loss Tips

Easiest Way to Lose Weight

On May 28, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

What is the easiest way to lose weight?

This is perhaps one of the most common questions people ask related to diet, weight loss and exercise. Wondering about the easiest way to lose weight is also an excellent question because it gets to the heart of the matter: efficiency! We do not have time to waste on weight loss, and cannot commit all of our time to exercising, so how do you get the most bang for your buck?

The answer may surprise you in both its simplicity and effectiveness!

The Easiest Way to Lose Weight

There are many different weight loss techniques, but to define the easiest, we should first look at what easy means.

Easy things either:

Take little time, take little effort, or take little of both!

The easiest and most successful method which I have found, that I have also mentioned in other posts, is food and drink substitution.

This requires no time in the gym. It is a sustainable practice because you do not need to obey it one hundred percent of the time (though this is recommended at first), and you can progressively refine it, so your food choices, and diet in result, become better and better over time.

Making Substitution Work for You

Simply think about the worst thing you eat or drink on a regular basis. Now, you are going to make a list that you will post on your wall. This will be a list of your substitutions. Draw a nice big line down the middle of the paper. On the left, write down that one horrible thing you often consume, and on the right, think of a similar, but much healthier alternative on the right hand side.

For example, if you are replacing something sweet like ice cream, write down yogurt with fresh fruit on the right. Next time you go to the grocery store, make sure you buy yogurt and fresh fruit instead of ice cream.

Just do one substitution per week, and put a check mark next to the food you have replaced each week you have used the substitution. Try to only use the healthy alternative at every opportunity for the next month. After a month of doing something different, we have usually habituated it, so it will be much easier to follow the substitution after four consecutive, consistent weeks of using the substitution.

Just repeat this process every week for the rest of your life and you will be amazed at how healthy you are eating even 1 year from now!

I cannot think of an easier or better long-term solution to weight loss. This simply is the easiest way to lose weight. Try it out and share your success!

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Get Rid of Belly Fat

On May 26, 2011, in How to Lose Belly Fat, by admin

If you are wondering how to get rid of belly fat, this article is a must read for you. Contrary to many people’s opinions, stomach crunches are not the only way to get rid of a belly. Instead, you need to focus on eating the kind of healthy diet that encourages weight loss and doing exercises that really address the role of the abdominal muscles.

The medical term for abs is “rectus abdominis”. Rectus is Latin for straight or upright, and just as is implied by their name, the main role of your abs is to work with your back muscles to hold your spine upright. Their job is not to help you roll into a ball or any other strange positions; their role is to help you stand up straight. The best way to exercise them and one way that will help you with how to get rid of lower belly fat is by working out your core.

Getting Rid of Belly Fat

If you can find a pilates class or video, try one of these popular workouts. If that is not an option, you can do squats or deadlifts. Deadlifts are essentially modified squats with a barbell in your hand. When doing heavy lifting, make sure your back maintains its natural curve so that it does not get damaged or strained. Either of these exercises or any other core exercises you can find are an effective solution to how to lose abdominal fat.

In addition to a good core workout, you can get rid of belly fat by adopting a weight lifting routine. The more muscles you have the more calories your body will burn in a day. Therefore, one answer to the query of how to get rid of a belly is to lift weights. However, if you take all these steps but do not eat a healthy diet, it will be difficult to figure out how to get rid of lower belly fat.

Eat Your Way to a Smaller Belly

Eat a diet that is full of fruits, vegetables, legumes, pasta and lean meats. Only eat enough dairy to help you get the recommended daily amount of calcium, and make sure that you eat a little fiber each day. If you follow that sort of regime, other people will see your smooth stomach and they will ask you how to lose abdominal fat.

You do not have to be an expert or a fanatic to get rid of a belly. With a little bit of heavy lifting, some attention to your core, and a good diet, you too can have a flat stomach. Do not get discouraged. Just keep working, and it will happen.

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Tagged with: get rid of belly fat • how to get rid of a belly • how to get rid of lower belly fat • how to lose a belly • how to lose abdominal fat • how to lose belly • how to lose the belly

Weight Loss Tips from Tim Minchin!

On May 24, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Weight Loss Tips from Tim Minchin! Pure comedic genius – I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

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Best Way To Lose Weight

On May 21, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Are you wondering about the best way to lose weight? There are many ways to lose weight. However, you need clear goals so you can check your progress and see if you’re achieving them. For example, you need to have a clear definition of weight loss, whether you want to lose fat or just lose weight. There is a big difference between fat loss and weight loss. Since muscle can help you become more metabolically efficient, it is best to retain muscle while losing fat. This article will discuss some of the theory behind losing fat easily, efficiently, and as quickly as is reasonably possible.

The most important question you have to ask yourself when considering ways to lose weight is whether or not your chosen method is sustainable. We all know that there are two ways to lose weight: you can either exercise more, or you can eat less. Let me rephrase this so that there is no confusion. You either need to burn more calories than you consume, or consume fewer calories than you burn. This is not as simple as it may seem. Many factors may increase or decrease your metabolism. As a result, two different people may do the same activities and consume the same foods and have completely different body composition. If you have a higher metabolism, you’ll naturally burn more calories. Therefore, one approach to losing weight is to try and boost metabolism. If you have more muscle than someone else, you may also burn more calories. Therefore another approach is to try and build and retain as much muscle is possible. However, since many people are afraid of developing muscle, they are shortchanging themselves.

Nobody will look like a magazine model simply by trying to gain muscle or get stronger. One has to do a lot of steroids in order to achieve those kinds of results as well as elitie, competition level dieting for the muscle to be clearly visible. If you are reading this article, this is not for you. You do not need to worry about gaining too much muscle because it simply will not happen.

“Eat less” is a terrible substitution for burning more calories. People should not really be worrying as much as they do about consuming calories and should instead be focusing on doing more exercise. Most people do little or nothing in terms of exercise. Our ancestors used to have to walk around and hunt for food all day. Almost all of their time was consumed simply trying to find food. To do this, they had to be physically fit and cover large distances which most of us could not even fathom. These days, most of us sit at a desk all day and have the food come to us.

We’re like trash cans in that we stay stationary and food just gets shoved into our mouths.

When I used to be fat, I used to feel like a trashcan. It was not easy to move, and I felt gross on the inside – not to mention that my self-esteem was not very good. I sympathize with people who are currently overweight because I used to be overweight as well. I know that things like walking can even be difficult. I used to have problems with my knees and ankles because I was overweight. I did not want to be too active because I knew I would get sweaty very quickly. This was undesirable to me and those around me. Therefore, I did little to nothing in terms of exercise and gained more weight in the process. This is an ugly downward spiral.

When it comes to easy weight loss, there are really only two solutions. First, there’s surgery. Second, there are supplements. Both of these are very hard on your body, and they are not sustainable. You will either need to keep getting surgery, or keep using the supplements for the rest of your life. The same is true of exercise, but the health benefits to your internal body, external body, and psychology are far greater. If you go for the easy route in this domain, then you are only shortchanging yourself.

How much can one lose in a short amount of time?

It is possible to lose a large amount of weight very quickly. This can easily be achieved through fasting. Simply consume no calories at all, and still be fairly active.

In my ignorance, this is how I first went about losing weight. However, it was very effective. In the course of six months, I lost 75 pounds. This is actually a reasonable start if you have a lot of weight to lose. You want to learn how to fast safely so that you do not hurt yourself or gain the weight back in the process.

For me, it was not just a matter of fasting, but also switching to a raw foods diet. Together these greatly reduced my overall caloric consumption. I would fast one day a week, and three days at the beginning of every month. When I was not fasting, I was eating only raw foods, which are things like uncooked vegetables, nuts and beans. It is very hard to gain weight when you’re consuming far less than the average person in terms of calories, and all of the calories are clean and natural.

However, I have learned much since that time, and would not recommend this approach to everyone. There are far better ways to lose weight, have more energy, be more fit, and still eat the foods you love.

In my next article, Weight Loss Solutions, I will talk about specific strategies that will help you lose weight. These will address topics such as:

Is running the best way to lose weight?
What is the best ways to lose weight at the gym?
What are some easy ways to burn calories?
What is the most efficient way to exercise?

I will also detail more about the calorie – weight-loss equation.

I hope this discussion has been enlightening and gotten the gears turning in your brain as to what is the best way to lose weight.

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Vegetable Soup Recipe

On May 20, 2011, in Recipes, by admin

In this article I will share my favorite vegetable soup recipe. Many people are looking for a weight loss vegetable soup recipe that is both nutritious and filling. This article will share my favorite vegetable soup recipe. This is a wonderful winter soup recipe because it is hearty and filling.

Vegetable Soup Recipe Setup

Broth

vegetable broth or instant vegetable base
dried beans
150-200g of white beans
150-200g of red beans

Vegetables

200-300g green beans
2 medium zucchini
1-2 floury potatoes
2 carrots
4-5 tomatoes
200g of fine, thin soup noodles
1-4 garlic cloves
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion
1/2-1 bushel parsley
Sea salt or coarse salt ground pepper
Freshly ground white or black pepper

Set

2 servings of pesto
200-300g of fresh, finely grated Parmesan

Cookware

1 large soup pot
1 sieve
1 potato peeler
1 Cheese Grater
A kitchen scale
1 measuring cup

Vegetable Soup Preparation

Make the broth. Soak the white and red beans and overnight in unsalted water.

Making The Soup

Pour the unsalted water in a small pan, bring to a boil.
Slice the tomatoes and cook for about 30 seconds in the boiling water.
With a spoon lift out of the water, remove the skin and remove the stalk.
Cut the tomatoes into quarters, remove the seeds from the vegetable water and cut the tomato flesh into strips.
Drain the beans through a sieve and let drain.
Peel the carrots and slice them thinly.
Wash the potatoes, peel with a vegetable peeler, cut unsightly places and cut with a kitchen slicer into thin slices.
Wash the zucchini and cut into thin slices.
Wash the green beans, cut both ends and pull the threads if necessary.
Cut the onion and garlic into small cubes.
Wash the parsley, remove anything ugly, dry and remove the stems and slice the rest into fine pieces.
Simmer the beans with the parsley together for 1.5 hours in liquid to cook.
Season the carrots and potatoes and simmer for about 20 minutes together.
Now add the beans and add zucchini and simmer for about 20 min.
Add the soup noodles and cut into strips.
Add tomatoes.
Simmer another 10 minutes on low heat.
Taste the soup/stew and season to taste.

Setting The Table

Serve with pistachios and cheese.

Additional Sides

Baguette – any kind of dry bread will suffice.

Variations

Prepare the soup just with the same amount of beef stock or chicken broth.

This recipe is a bit complicated, but it makes a wonderful soup. If your are looking for vegetable soups, this is well worth your time. Vegetable soup recipes are a healthy and wonderful alternative to other less filling soups and other meals. They are relatively easy to prepare because you can make them in bulk and it is well worth the effort. If you enjoy this vegetable soup recipe, please share your experience in the comments below.

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Weight Loss Solutions

On May 19, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

In my previous article, best way to lose weight, I talked about some of the theory behind different weight-loss solutions. I said that the most important thing you have to consider is whether or not your method of losing weight is sustainable. I discard of the ideas of fasting, surgery, supplements, and a sedentary lifestyle. This article will outline specific strategies for how to exercise, eat, and live so that you have a leaner, healthier body. I will also address the questions that I left at the end of the last article.

Let us start with sustainability. If you lose 10 pounds after a lot of work and then gain it back, are you happy? How about if you lose 20 pounds over two weeks, keep it off for three months, and then slowly gain it back over the next six months? Do you want to live a lifestyle where you’re continually dieting, losing weight, gaining it back, and then having to diet again?

The answer for most people is a resounding NO.

It is important to choose things that we can habituate. Aristotle talked about the power of habit and said that it was far stronger than the powers of nature. This is because once we adopt a habit, it becomes our nature. Nature can only instill a few habits in us, whereas we have the power to choose whatever habits we want to become part of us. If you learn how to eat healthy in a way that is not too difficult and you make this a habit, you will become a healthy eater. It will be natural for you to eat healthy. If you decide to become active and incorporates more activity into your life, habitually, you will become a more active person. You will naturally be more active. This is not rocket science, but it is something very important that we do not explicitly teach in our schools.

Weight Loss Solutions:

Let us first consider the fundamentals of exercise. Force equals mass times acceleration. Your goal in any physical activity can be summed up as either increasing your total volume or increasing your total force. If you do something faster than you did last time, you’re increasing your acceleration. If you are lifting something heavier than last time, you’re increasing your mass. These are the two variables of the force equation. I am of the opinion that the best way to exercise is by lifting weights. It is easy to track your progress, set clear goals, and manipulate your mass, acceleration, and total volume. These are the primary variables that increase your strength.

Everything else is secondary.

You want to increase your strength because the more volume you can do, the more calories you can burn, and likely, the more muscle you can retain. For weight loss, your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is very important. This is determined by the amount of muscle that you have on your body, how much you suffer from stress, and the amount and quality of your sleep. If you increase your basal metabolic rate, you can burn far more calories in a day than with just about any kind of exercise. However, exercise is also a part of determining your basal metabolic rate. Difficult exercises which few people perform can elevate your basal metabolic rate by a factor of eight to 10 for a short period of time. This is why you can eat so many more calories after a workout and not gain fat than you can consume before bed. The stronger you are, the more muscle you have, the more frequently you eat, and the more active you are in general, the higher your basal metabolic rate. I will now talk about how to eat so that you are not shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to the synergy between exercise and eating.

Calories and weight loss are closely related. However, as I mentioned in my last article, the difference between the amount of calories you consume and the amount of calories you burn are not easy to determine. In addition to needing more exercise, people could also use better diets. If you’re overweight, it is likely because of both of these reasons. You should be more active, and you should eat better food. You should also eat less junk.

Substitution is the key to a better diet. You can habitually replace bad foods with good ones. This helps you eat more healthy stuff as well as eat less junk. You are also not left with a void that you do not know how to fill. For example, many people fail to quit smoking because they stop smoking and, in the process, they lose a way to deal with stress. Simply deciding to do something in place of smoking, like drink and a glass of water, can help them ensure that they do not replace their smoking with another bad habit. This also decreases cognitive dissonance, so they are not as bothered by not smoking. Clearly, calorie restriction is not enough. It is smart calorie restriction that is sustainable which is most effective. This is why substitution is so effective.

You can easily choose your own rules to set and follow. Here are some of mine:

Weight Loss Rules

Eat every two to three hours
No carbs afternoon
No junk food unless it’s within one hour of a workout
Walk 30 minutes every morning before doing anything else
No caloric beverages after 3PM
Go to the gym at least twice a week and always aim for some kind of personal record
No work or computer after 10PM
Go to bed at 11PM and wake up at 7PM

Note that all of these rules are now natural. I do not have to think about them because they come to me automatically. I feel odd if I do not eat every three hours. I feel lethargic if I did not get my morning walk. I feel sludgy if I drink some caloric beverages after 3PM. I feel that if I do not get to the gym, then I am getting fat. I do not feel relaxed before bed if I do work or use the computer after 10 PM. I go to bed at 11PM so I can get a full eight hours of sleep.

The best way to lose weight is really a combination of habits. Set clear goals so that you know exactly what you need to achieve, then adopt habits, one by one, that will bring you to your goal. Once you have achieved your goal, you may either reevaluate your goal and strive to do more, or you can just continue on as you are. There is no need to do more or less. Just keep the habits that you have worked so hard to attain.

We are sum of our habits.

If we are inactive, we are not fit. If we eat more calories than we burn, we gain weight. If someone uses contraband habitually, then they look like a junkie. If someone trains to be strong, and they look strong because they are strong. If someone sleeps very little every night, then they look tired on a regular basis. They may develop deep bags under their eyes.

Poker players have to read people for a living. I used to play a lot of poker, and several of my friends are professionals. From this, I know that it is easy to get into the mind of somebody by observing their body because we are sum of our habits.

Lastly, let us look at efficiency.

Losing Weight Efficiently:

If you think that running is the best way to lose weight, then you are sadly mistaken. First, we must define running. When most people say running, they’re referring to this odd activity where a person maintains a steady, walking-like state, usually on a treadmill, for a long duration of time that is not too physically demanding. This is easy by comparison to sprints. One cannot accelerate for more than a few seconds before their acceleration decreases. Since forced equals mass times acceleration, they are not generating their maximum force once their acceleration decreases. It is important to keep such activity short, unless your goal is to try to develop very large muscles because low force does not generate strength. Furthermore, it has been shown that high intensity interval training burns far more calories than does steady-state cardio in the same amount of time.

The general rule of thumb is that the most efficient exercise is the one that recruits the most muscle fibers and generates the greatest amount of force. Therefore, if you have a choice between steady-state cardio and sprinting, you should choose sprinting with short rest periods. If you have the choice between doing squats and leg extensions, then you should choose squats.

For greater fat loss, keep your rest periods short. By short, I mean 60 to 90 seconds. Powerlifters will often rest for four to five minutes to ensure that they have had enough time to recover between sets. This allows for optimal strength development and recovery because they are always able to generate the largest amount of force in any given set. Unless you decide to become a powerlifter, stick to circuit training so that you can work different muscle groups as hard as possible with short rest intervals while still allowing them ample recovery time.

There are few more easy ways to burn calories worth mentioning in case you want to habituate them. Sleeping can increase your metabolic rate, so be sure to get a solid eight hours every night if possible. As you saw in my daily habits, I do not drink any calorie containing beverages after 3 PM. The exception to this is green tea because it can help with weight loss and because it can be used to substitute for calorie-containing beverages. Finally you may have also noted that I eat every three hours. By keeping the stomach constantly digesting by having protein containing meals every two to three hours, your metabolism stays elevated throughout the day.

Find habits which are suitable and sustainable for you. Work on implementing them, and let your habits bring you to your goals. I hope you have enjoyed these weight loss tips, learned a great deal, and enjoy success beyond your imagination.

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Weight Loss Tea

On May 18, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Today I’m going to talk about weight-loss tea. Many people have asked the question, “Does green tea make you lose weight?” Others may assume that it does and instead ask how to prepare green tea for weight loss. Still others may just be curious about the health benefits of green tea. These will be the topics of discussion for this article.

To address the first question, the answer is a resounding “Yes.” Green tea can help you lose weight. However, the effects are rather small. Do not expect to lose large amounts of weight simply by drinking green tea. Overall, if you drink green tea regularly, it may contribute to greater fat oxidation which leads directly to fat loss.

As to how to prepare green tea for weight loss, there are no special rules. Simply put your green tea leaves into hot water and let it sit for a few minutes. However, as I noted in my previous article titled Green Tea Diet, you should not be adding anything to your green tea. If you spike your green tea with any kind of sugar, natural or otherwise, this will cause a spike in your insulin. Insulin spikes are not desirable for fat loss. Therefore, when preparing green tea, all you want to do is put the tea leaves into the hot water and let it sit until it is ready to drink.

Wikipedia has an excellent page on the health effects of tea. You may find this page on the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tea

However, since you are here and the question has been raised, let me paraphrase a few of the results from the Wikipedia page:

While there have been many purported benefits of teas, there are mixed results. For Camellia teas, the benefits are very mixed. These include your white teas, black teas, green tea, and oolong tea. However, green tea is the exception. Green tea has been found to have beneficial effects on atherosclerosis, cholesterol, diabetes, IBD, cancer, diabetes, and most relevant to this article, weight-loss.

While Wikipedia lists up to 22 potential and benefits of these teas, there are also some drawbacks. For example, the tannin found in these teas may prevent absorption of various minerals, vitamins, and proteins. Another drawback is the caffeine. Caffeine is an addictive drug, and the overuse of it may cause sleep disorders. Drinking very hot tea has also been linked to esophageal cancer. So it is better to drink lukewarm tea or warm tea instead of hot tea. Overconsumption of tea can cause kidney stones and bind with other minerals in the body as stated earlier. However, in order for this to occur, a very large amount of tea needs to be drunk.

In conclusion, the benefits of most teas are very questionable. However, green tea has many associated health benefits. Just be sure to drink your tea lukewarm instead of piping hot, and do not drink too much on a regular basis to avoid caffeine addiction and sleeping disorders. Green tea can be an excellent weight-loss beverage as well as a tasty alternative to water and an excellent replacement for other high calorie beverages.

I hope you have learned vital new information about teas for weight loss today, and that you share this information with your friends.

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Green Tea Diet

On May 17, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Today, I’m going to talk about the green tea diet. Green tea has been a staple of Asian diets for as long as man can remember. However, in the West, only recently have people started to realize the many benefits of green tea. It is true that green tea can help you lose weight. It is also an excellent alternative to other calorie dense beverages. I will now talk a bit more about the green tea diet and its relationship with weight loss.

There are many different weight loss methods, and they all vary in their effectiveness. Trying to lose weight with green tea would fall on the easy end of the spectrum while severe dieting and contest preparation for a bodybuilding competition would fall on the other end of the spectrum. Most weight loss drinks are really not weight loss drinks. Instead, they are cleverly marketed beverages that contain far more calories than green tea. What makes green tea so wonderful, is that it contains chemicals which actually help you oxidized fat and lose some weight. When you drink green tea, you actually help yourself lose weight. However, when you drink these other beverages that contain calories but are labeled as weight loss drinks, you are usually just putting dead calories into your body. This will result in weight gain.

Ignore the other weight loss products on the market, and get yourself some green tea if you’re going to invest in anything. Aside from meal replacement shakes for weight loss, green tea may be one of the few other beverages that actually helps you lose weight. There is no special thinking involved, there are no gimmicks attached, it is just good for you. A cautionary note; you may want to avoid drinking green tea before bed as it does have about half the caffeine of coffee. My general rule of thumb is not to drink green tea after 4 PM.

Also note, if you’re looking to lose a large amount of weight, you may need to do more than just drink green tea. A healthy diet should be accompanied by exercise. If you want to lose a large amount of weight, you either need to burn far more calories than you consume, or you need to get surgery. These are the only two ways of losing weight.

Finally, I know there are some people who like to add sugar to everything. Please do not do this with your green tea. This is not black tea, and the sugar will cause an insulin spike that will defeat your weight loss attempts.

I hope you have learned something educational, helpful, and inspiring. In addition to tasting wonderful, adding green tea to your diet may also increase your alertness and bring with it a greater sense of calm.

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Tagged with: green tea diet • weight loss drinks • weight loss green tea • weight loss methods • weight loss products • weight loss recipes • weight loss with green tea

Protein Shake Recipes

On May 16, 2011, in Recipes, by admin

In this article I will share with you my favorite protein shake recipes. You can use whey protein shake recipes for weight loss, which is why these are often a bodybuilder’s best friend. People also use whey protein shakes to make sure that their muscles are receiving an ample amount of protein. In some of these recipes, I recommend milk however, you may also use yogurt instead. Add some ice to any of these recipes and you will have a yummy smoothie recipe.

Now let’s get on to my favorite protein shake recipes.

The first protein shake on the list is the peanut butter jelly shake. This is wonderful for people who have a sweet tooth. This also makes a wonderful alternative to peanut butter jelly sandwiches for your children.

They ask for a peanut butter jelly sandwich, instead offer them a peanut butter jelly shake. One more tip for the kids, if they ask for ice cream, instead offer them a yogurt smoothie.

Peanut Butter Jelly Protein Shake

Vanilla whey protein powder
1-2tbsp peanut butter
One cup of strawberries

Next on the list, I called the Sweet Temptation. Instead of having just orange juice for breakfast, you can add some whey protein and melon to get some more vitamins and protein.

Sweet Temptation

Vanilla protein powder
125ml orange juice
1/8-1/4 honeydew melon

For you coffee lovers, I have developed the mocha coffee shake. Sometimes, I will follow the Sweet temptation up with a mocha coffee shake. This reminds me of a traditional breakfast with a coffee chaser.

Mocha Coffee Shake

Chocolate protein powder
1 cup of coffee or instant coffee
optional: 1-2 spoons of cocoa powder

If you like pina coladas, then you’ll love the next shake. I love to drink this one on a hot day.

Pina Colada Yogurt Smoothie

Vanilla yogurt or vanilla protein powder
3 slices of pineapple
A cup of coconut milk

The next one is my favorite – I do not have a fancy name for this one, so I’ll just call it my favorite (note the caramel sauce as the last ingredient).

Author’s Favorite Protein Smoothie

2tbsp chocolate whey protein powder
10 ice cubes
330ml low-fat milk
2 tablespoons low-fat vanilla yogurt
1 tablespoon reduced-fat peanut butter
2 tablespoons of ground coffee with hazelnut flavor
1/8 cup caramel sauce

With hot days on my mind, the last shake on my list is the chocolate Caribbean. The squeezed lemon adds a bit of zest to the shake and goes really well with the chocolate. Make sure you find a chocolate protein that you really like because they often varying taste and quality.

Chocolate Caribbean Shake

1 squeezed lemon
200g chocolate protein powder
250ml sugar-free whipped cream
300ml of milk (low fat)
Brown sugar to taste

I hope you enjoy my protein shake recipes. If you have some other favorites, please share them in the comments below. I would love to try your yummy smoothie recipes as well!

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Meal Replacement Shakes for Weight Loss

On May 14, 2011, in Recipes, by admin

One of my favorite weight loss tips, is to use meal replacement shakes for weight loss. This is an effective weight-loss tool in your weight-loss toolbox. Most diets will make the mistake of recommending that you cut your calories. This is a poor plan, because it is usually not sustainable. They may also suggest exercise, which they then tell you to increase in duration, but this is also a foolish notion. The reason these ideas fail is because they are not sustainable. There is a ceiling that is quickly reached with your exercise; we do not have an infinite amount of time to exercise, and we cannot just keep increasing the time we can work out forever. Likewise, when cutting calories, we can not keep reducing our calorie intake until it gets to zero. Eventually, there will be a point where you feel tired, hungry, and stop losing weight. A far better practice to learn the art of meal replacement.

Meal replacement shakes are the perfect weight loss system because they are fast, healthy, and foolproof. There are many kinds of meal replacement shakes, so choosing the right one can be a difficult task. Always be sure to look at the ingredients label as well as the nutritional information. You need to know the number of calories that you are consuming with you meal replacement, and want to avoid me a replacement shakes that are high in fats and carbohydrates simultaneously. The ideal meal replacement shake will have a high amount of protein, a low amount of carbohydrates, and a bit of fat is fine.

Just about any weight-loss shake will work as long as it meets the above criteria. Again, do not just select the weight-loss shake that has the most convincing label. Always, always, always check the label for the number of calories and the amount of protein, carbohydrates, and fats.

Now, how does one use a meal replacement shake successfully?

What is the most unhealthy meal that you consume in a day? For most people, this will be dinner. A good way to start out, is to just replace your worst meal of the day with a healthy shake. By replacing your worst meal of the day with a meal replacement shake, you will likely decrease your caloric intake as well as consume healthier calories. Some people do full liquid diets, however, this can lead to terrible nutrient deficiencies. At the very least, have one meal consisting of whole foods and vegetables.

You can also make your meal replacement shakes more healthy by adding vegetables to them with a blender. To do this, all you need to do is pour the contents of your meal replacement into a blender and add some fresh vegetables or fruit like spinach, apples, or carrots.

There are many weight-loss shakes that work, just follow the above guidelines and you will have a winning strategy. I hope you put this weight-loss tool to good use, and enjoy the success you deserve.

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Chicken Breast Recipes

On May 13, 2011, in Recipes, by admin

Today I am going to teach one of my favorite chicken breast recipes to you.

As a powerlifter, I often need to eat a lot of protein – and a lot of that protein comes from chicken because it is a clean and healthy meat. When I’m cooking, of course I want something that tastes good; I also want something that can be cooked in bulk that is fast to prepare. Chicken breasts are the perfect candidate because you can bake boneless chicken breast for no-fuss good eating – buy fresh or in a frozen bag. First, I will talk about how to shop so as to be as efficient with your time as possible, and next, I will share my amazing chicken breast recipe with you.

Many people go to the grocery store becauase they enjoy shopping. However, bodybuilders and powerlifters who need to consume a large amount of calories and spend most of their time training cannot afford such a time-consuming luxury.

Shopping 101

To begin, you must start with a list. Make a regular list of things you need almost every time you go shopping. Keep this in a designated space – even save the list to your computer. Next to this list, have another list with items you need this week. Try to go shopping only once a week so as to cut down on commuting time. Finally, before going to the store, label the items by location so that you do not have to backtrack. Most of the things you need, if you have a healthy diet, will be along the outside walls of the store, making a nice circuit. So start with the produce, usually when you enter on the right, and label all produce items with a 1. Next label all of the meat / dairy items with a #2 if these comes next. Then you usually pass the frozen foods section; label these with a 3. Finally, there may be some canned goods on your list or things in boxes – these are usually in the middle of the stoer. Label these with a 4 and pick them up on your way to the check-out lane.

Now that my quick shopping tips are out of the way, let’s get on to my favorite and easy baked chicken breast recipes.

Cooking Tools

Oven
Tinfoil
Pan

Baked Chicken Breast Ingredients

Chicken Breasts (fresh or frozen)
McCormick’s Seasoning Salt
Lemon Juice
Cherry Tomatoes

Everyone should have or be able to find both the ingredients and cooking tools. They are also very minimal. The art is in the cooking.

Cooking The Perfect Chicken Breast

Put chicken breasts onto the pan and put the pan on the top rack near the heating coils.
Turn broiler onto high so the top heating coils (nearest the pan) get very hot.
Cook the chicken breasts in until the surface is lightly browned.
Meanwhile, slice up 6 cherry tomatoes per chicken breast and set these aside for later.
Flip and let sit until lightly browned.
Flip the chicken breasts again and change the oven to convection or normal heating at 185F and move the pan to the middle of the rack.
Cook about 7 minutes then flip the chicken breasts.
Sprinkle McCormick’s seasoning salt on top with a bit of lemon juice.
Cook another 5 minutes.
Take out and pour some lemon juice over the chicken breasts.
Let cool until the chicken breasts are cool enough to peel by hand.
Peel with your hands into a bowl and add the cherry tomatoes.
Mix and enjoy.

Your Chicken Is Ready to Eat

A lovely baked boneless chicken breast cooked to perfection with a juicy center marinated in lemon juice, tomatoes with a hint of spices.

Making a Succulent Chicken Breast

By cooking the chicken breasts under a high heat, the outside gets cooked quickly while the inside remains moist. You flip the chicken breasts over when they’re getting slightly brown to avoid burning and to ensure an even cook. You then switch to convection or conventional cooking and move the rack to the center of the oven to ensure even cooking and to give the center of the chicken breast time to cook.

Add seasonings at the end to keep them fresh, buutu to also get them to stick to the chicken breasts. The lemon juice and tomatoes are best served fresh, so you add the lemon juice while the chicken breast is cooling so it has a little time to be absorbed, adding a little juice to the cooked exterior of the chicken breasts.

Finally, peeling the chicken breast by hand is optional, but I prefer this to cutting it with a knife. I just prefer this texture with tomatoes. If you peel it while it’s still nice and warm, it releases some wonderful juices that make the chicken breast melt in your mouth.

I love this recipe for a few reasons:

It tastes marvelous
It’s fast
It’s easy

You basically need to put the chicken breasts on a pan, flip three times, and cut a few tomatoes. Once you get the timing down, you can just set a timer for each time you need to flip. For me it’s after 10, 7 and 5 minutes.

Chicken Breast Recipe Variations

To keep the outside a bit more moist, brush your chicken breast with olive oil before cooking. You can easily turn this base into several other dishes as well. Instead of tomatoes, you can make a nice pico de gallo. You can also add rice with spices to make something like a chicken jumbalaya. Another winner is to throw this into a tortilla with a few other fixings for a taco or quesadilla. Finally, one of my personal favorites is to just take your shredded chicken breasts and dip them into some guacamole.

Summary

However you decide to use my chicken breast recipe, I hope you find it useful for a quick, easy and healthy meal as I have!

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Lose Weight in 2 Weeks

On April 26, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Are you wondering what to do to lose weight?

Have you read other posts on this site yet?

If so, you know that there are many weight loss tricks and tools you can adopt, so in this article, I will outline a very specific program for losing weight in two weeks.

This program will consist of fourteen days worth of exercise to do that will hopefully keep you from being bored. As for eating, simply eat what you like as long as it was not previous stored in metal, paper or plastic. This means stick to fresh fruits and vegetables as well as fresh meats and nuts. Eating anything else will sabotage your weight loss efforts.

Now, I will outline how to lose weight in 2 weeks with exercise. I will not be too specific with the weight loss workouts, so use your own creativity and use your head. If it seems too easy, challenge yourself. If it is too hard, find a way to make it a little easier but still a challenge. No pain no gain does not mean hurting yourself, but that if you do not push yourself, there is no reward at the end.

There are no shortcuts, so follow the program each day and you will lose weight. Good luck.

Day 1: A Walk Outdoors

For the first day, I am simply going to prescribe 1 hour of walking. Regardless of your fitness level, this should be achievable. Find a nice place to walk outside and set a timer. You are not allowed to rest until you have walked for a full hour. If you want to get to bed at night, do not do this immediately before bed or you will find it harder to sleep.

Day 2: A Walk With Some Sprints

On the second day, do the same one hour walk, but add in one 15 second all-out sprint. Haven’t done this for a while? Good. It is wonderful for you and you only have to do it once today.

Day 3: A Walk and a Game

Keep up the 1 hour walk. Do a sprint if you want during it, but it is not required. Your goal today is to play some kind of game outdoors, preferably with a friend, for 30 minutes. This could be shooting hoops, tennis, or something else. Try to find something enjoyable, but if you absolutely cannot think of anything, throw a tennis ball against a wall for 30 minutes.

Day 4: More Sprints

1 hour walk plus 3 sprints, one sprint every 20 minutes.

Day 5: Push-ups

1 hour walk + 5 sets of 5 push-ups

Day 6: Push-ups Part 2

1 hour walk + 3 sprints + 10 sets of 3 push-ups

Day 7: Game Day!

Find a friend or some friends and play a game of your choice for an hour. This can be any physical game that involves some running be it basketball, tennis, soccer, touch football or even tag!

Day 8: More walking

Now you will up your walking time to 80 minutes and do 4 sprints (one fifteen second sprint every 20 minutes). Increasing the duration and intensity will help you burn off those calories. Because you have been increasing these progressively, weight loss will continue. We will keep increasing your activity until the end of the two weeks. Then you can either read the other articles here on how to keep the weight off, of you can gain it all back. It’s up to you.

Day 9: More Bodyweight Exercises

Today you will walk 80 minutes, sprint 4x as well as do 6 sets of 5 push ups and two planks. Planks are simply done by getting into the push-up position but then instead of keeping the weight on your wrists, put your forearms flat on the ground and put your weight on them. Now keep that back straight and flex your abs. Do this for one minute then take a break for 90 seconds. Do one more minute long plank and you are done for the day.

Day 10: Walk the Plank

On day 10, you will do the same thing as on Day 9, but instead of taking a 90 second break between planks, have someone help you wheelbarrow for 20 steps instead of resting between steps. The wheelbarrow is performed by having someone hold your legs up in the air while you walk forward with your hands. If you do not have someone to help you with this, get a chair and put your feet up on it and do raised-leg push-ups from the chair instead.

Day 11: Less Walking, More Sprinting

Today you will only walk 1 hour again. However, you will do 6 sprints, one every 10 minutes. Afterwards, do 3 sets of 60 second planks with a 90 second rest between sets.

Day 12: Old Time Weight Lifting

Find something in your house that you can lift from the ground to above your head. Not too heavy (you would not want to drop it on your head), but not too light either. After your 1 hour walk, your goal is to simply pick this up from the ground and lift it above your head until your arms are straight and the object is over your head. Pretend you are an Olympic lifter and the object is the bar overhead. Put it back down on the ground (don’t hit your head). Do this 50 times taking as much time as you need to get it done. This will help you activate muscles from head to toe and burn some extra calories.

Day 13: Farmer’s Carries

1 hour walk as usual, but this time, you must carry something with you in each hand. Try for a weight heavier than those pink dumbbells, but remember that you will have to carry these for an hour. Keep your shoulders relaxed (or they will get very stiff) and keep your hands naturally swinging at your sides. They may not swing much because of the weight. Some ideas for objects are light dumbbells, hammers, salami rolls, etc.

Day 14: The Playground Workout

This may sound simple, but could actually end up being the most challenging workout of all. Your goal is to go to a park nearby and workout for one hour with no more than a minute’s rest between sets. Try to do pull-ups, swing on the monkey bars, go up and down the slide over and over again. Try climbing the rope ladder, climb on parts you shouldn’t climb (be careful not to get hurt though). Take something heavy and try to balance it on the highest surface, wherever that may be. Do push-ups on a wobbly surface, see how long you can hang from the monkey bars before your grip dies, try to balance in an awkward position for as long as possible. The options are nearly endless, and you can have a much better time if you do it with a friend. Take turns dictating the silly exercise, and have fun with it. Was being a kid really great, or was it torture? This will help you remember.

If you follow this regime and push yourself outside of your comfort zone, you will lose weight. Without going through the reasons why, I have shared several weight loss tricks that will help you lose weight quick.

I have given you a 14 day workout program to help you lose weight in 2 weeks. You now know one way of achieving your results without buying any special “weight loss secrets” course or other such silly nonsense. There is no substitute for a simple plan and hard work. Follow this program to perfection, and you will lose a good amount of weight in the next two weeks.

Finally, be sure to chart your progress. Weigh yourself once in the morning of the first day, before breakfast, and once on the last day. Congratulate yourself on the weight loss that follows.

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image of the yin-yang representing weight loss balance

Quick Ways to Lose Weight

On April 24, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Unlike my last blog post, Quickest Way to Lose Weight, I will cover several quick ways to lose weight in this post. Rather than just cover what I think is the best way to lose weight, I will go over several very good ways to achieve this goal.

Weight loss tips abound, but most are missing the forest for the trees. A few really good tips will go much further than a huge bag of very minor tips. In addition, it will be far easier to implement a few solid tips than to try and remember a hundred different things that you need to do differently.

You can lose weight, and you will if you follow these tips without adopting new bad habits. Often, when trying to make a positive change, people will sabotage their efforts by simultaneously adopting a new bad habit. For example, when I first decided to stop drinking pop, I thought juice would be better. Little did I know that juice is also just a bunch of dead calories, just as calorie dense as pop, and I often drank more of it than I did pop because it both came in larger containers and because I mistakingly though it was healthier.

The result – weight gain. I thought I was doing something healthy, but I made a simple mistake. I adopted a new good habit (not drinking pop) but also adopted a new bad habit in its place (drinking calorie dense juice instead).

So the first quick way to lose weight is to evaluate all decisions related to weight loss carefully. Here is a short, but important checklist to make sure that you are making good weight loss decisions:

Is this new habit/rule sustainable?
If eliminating a habit, what will fill its place?
Is the new behavior/rule better than the old one?
Is there an even better alternative?
Would trim, vibrant people who I want to be like benefit by following this rule/habit?

Is this new habit/rule sustainable?

If it is not sustainable, it is not worth doing. Why bother to lose ten pounds if you will just gain it back in a week after you change your habits? Short-sighted thinking causes most people no end of pain. Looking to hook a man with your great looks that usually aren’t there? Go off the diet, and if he was interested in a slimmer you that you can’t sustain, expect him to go bye bye when the weight comes back on. Unless it’s a one-time event (like a vocabulary test), short-term fixes hurt more than help. They just waste your time at least twice (once when doing it the first time, and again when you decide to take the quick fix in the future).

If eliminating a habit, what will fill its place?

New years resolutions usually fail not because of poor intentions or lack of willpower. They simply fail because they are not engineered to succeed. You may decide to workout eight hours a day, and can keep this up while on vacation, but as soon as you go back to work – you simply can’t do it… not as long as you are human anyway. The sad fact is, most people have no idea how to plan for change effectively, although there is one simple rule that always works.

Whenever removing a habit, you need to find a new one to put in its place. If you do not have a new habit in mind beforehand, you will simply end up filling the space / scenario with something random. Since it is random, it may be a better or worse habit. The only way to guarantee success is to decide on a good habit to replace the eliminated one. For example, instead of just saying you will stop drinking Coke, decide to drink water every time you feel like drinking Coke.

I got off of the Coke habit while my father tried doing the same thing with beer. However, since my father did not have a replacement, he ended up substituting scotch for beer which just made him more inebriated and cost a lot more to boot! Moral of the story is, you cannot quit cold turkey. Have something to put in place of what you plan on eliminating before you start and stick to it.

Is the new behavior/rule better than the old one?

Let’s pretend you are working out to lose weight, but decide that you will do something more fun instead of something that is really working for you. Let’s say that you decide to go on a morning walk in the nice fresh air for half an hour instead of doing interval sprints on the stationary bike because it is more enjoyable. Now, there is something to be said for doing what you love, but the new behavior will probably lead to bad weight gain rather than added weight loss. You may like your walks more, but the new rule is not better than a harder workout to lose weight.

Is there an even better alternative?

Let us continue with the previous example. If you want to get more fresh air, you can substitute a morning walk for high intensity sprints on the stationary bike. However, instead of just walking, turn the walk into a sprinting exercise. Do the same amount of work that you would normally do at the gym, but do it outside at your favorite time of the day when the air is fresh and the birds are singing. At worst, you see the same results, but at best, you get even better results and feel better about it. Extend the length a bit more so you can wind down and enjoy the outdoors more and you have found a much better alternative from all angles.

Would trim, vibrant people who I want to be like benefit by following this rule/habit?

Another excellent question to ask about your method for losing weight is whether other healthy and vibrant people would adapt your idea. If, for example, you wanted to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger used to, you should expect to do similar training to what he went through – steroids and everything else included. Are your weight loss solutions actually helpful, or just helpless distractions? If you have a very fit friend or acquaintance, ask them about your idea and see what they think. If they shoot it down and recommend something else – strongly consider their advice. They may be a meathead or whatever derogatory term you have made-up to save your own ego, but they have something you desire. The quickest way to success is often simple emulation.

One of my favorite quotes comes from a world-famous powerlifter by the name of Jim Wendler. To get whatever physical goal you want, his advice is pretty much the same:

Eat a ton, exercise hard and sleep well. Repeat this daily for 10 years.

It’s hard to argue with that! However, few people are able to find habits which they can sustain for ten years since most diets and routines are all about fast results. Shift to a long-term perspective and your goals and behaviors for attaining them become clear.

My last quick weight loss tip will also save you a ton of time and frustration:

Focus on behaviors and not results.

If you do the right things on a consistent basis, do not worry about the results. They will eventually come as long as you keep doing the right things. However, if you are lying to yourself and not doing the right things, the results will never come. Therefore, if you fail to get your desired results time and again, you really need to change your approach because it is not working for you.

I hope you have enjoyed these quick ways to lose weight and wish you success in implementing them.

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Quickest Way to Lose Weight

On April 23, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Welcome to my article on the quickest way to lose weight. The problem always starts in the definition. Sometimes I address the extremes, and other times I address something more moderate. In this article, I am going to talk about a moderate, but extremely effective way to quickly lose weight and to keep it off.

If you have read my other articles, you probably know that I think habit is extremely important. This goes back to Aristotle who said that habits are ten times more powerful than nature. If you form good habits, the results of good habits will follow.

Instead of asking, “What’s the quickest way to lose weight,” I am going to change the question a bit to, “What is the most effective way to lose weight?”

Now, my apologize if you are only thinking about losing weight for a week. However, I think most people are really looking to lose weight for a long time, but want to get off to a good, fast start. There is nothing wrong with this because results are motivating. However, all results have diminishing returns when it comes to weight loss.

For example, after a vacation where I lose twenty pounds, I can lose twenty pounds in two weeks because I am quite strong and can therefore burn calories much faster than people who are much weaker. This is because I can do a lot more work, where work equals the amount of energy transferred by a force through a distance. Since I generate more force (mass times acceleration), I do a greater amount of work, and burn more calories. However, this does not go on forever. If I could keep losing ten pounds per week indefinitely, I would cease to exist after about twenty weeks!

Therefore, it is best not to get into the short-term mindset. Just be happy with your gradual weight loss. This is actually not that difficult to accomplish with the approach I am about to outline.

I will now outline what to do to lose weight.

Forget about workouts to lose weight for today. I discuss these in other articles at great length.

Today we will focus on diet, particularly, the art of substitution.

Substitution is an excellent art when done right, because I find that it makes discipline a lot easier. This is the same approach the National Institutes of Health (NIH) takes to help people lose weight and quit smoking.

The main premise behind substitution for weight loss is to replace “bad” foods with “better” ones. Notice that I did not say “good” foods, although that would be an excellent final goal. So the process is quite simple after defining bad and good foods as well as looking at a few examples.

What is a “bad” food?

The list of bad foods can get quite long depending on who you talk to, but let us make it a bit simpler because easy rules are easier to follow.

Bad foods are:

calorie-dense: ice cream, soda, alcohol, cereal, bread, etc.
processed: come packaged in a box, bag, can or plastic

Good foods are basically the opposite:

calorie-sparse: vegetables, fresh meats, legumes
natural: fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, legumes, unsalted nuts, organic cheeses and breads

So to effectively substitute foods, you need to:

Identify “bad” foods quickly and honestly
Think of a better food that can be eaten in place of it
Have the constitution to choose the better of the two options

Substitution is like all habits, the more you do it, the easier it is to do.

You now know what is the quickest way to lose weight in terms of a sustainable dietary change that it is now up to you to implement.

Are you up for the challenge?

Are you going to take this very simple and extremely powerful tip and use it to lose weight that you are obviously unhappy about carrying around with you?

OR

Will you ignore this advice and keep asking yourself, “Why can’t I lose weight?”

It is now up to you. The ball is in your court. If you don’t learn to dribble, you will never get the ball to the other side of the court and score. There are many ways to lose weight. I apologize for not having the best organization, but there are many gems on this website that, if you actually give them the attention they deserve, you too will be able to achieve your weight loss goals; not just once, but for the rest of your life.

Even if you start today and it takes you nine months to hit your weight loss goal which you were hoping to achieve in two weeks, just two years from now, you will look back and realize that the quickest way to lose weight was actually the most sustainable way to lose weight because you don’t have to yo-yo back and forth, and you can always improve your habits.

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How to Lose Weight in 2 Weeks

On April 13, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Are you wondering how to lose weight in 2 weeks? If so, you are in luck.

There are millions of quick weight loss success stories, and you can have one too. Even more, there are many weight loss solutions to help you achieve your goal.

Since you are looking for a quick solution, I will tell you what you can do with the next two weeks to lose as much weight as possible. Half of the battle is knowing what to do to lose weight, and the other half is actually putting it into practice.

Results will vary based on what you are willing to do, so I will give a general template. If you want to learn how to keep weight off in the long run, read my previous article – how to lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks.

There is a very simple plan for losing weight in the short run, and it is as follows:

Exercise
Eat Right
Sleep
Make Time

1) Exercise

When it comes to exercise, most people do it wrong for weight loss all the time. The best kind of training is weight training with heavy weights. This is relative depending on who you are. What needs to be consistent for the next two weeks is exercise. You must get to the gym every other day for a full hour of weight training. If you feel especially energetic, you may spend some time doing interval sprints or cycling after you are finished lifting weights. No jogging.

If you are a 275lb juggernaut, then a 500lb squat may be considered easy. However, if you have never done a squat in your life, squatting the bar may be hard at first. Therefore, we must look at the characteristics of a hard workout. These kinds of workouts are desirable because they recruit the largest number of muscle fibers by generating the greatest amount of force (remember, force equals mass times acceleration).

The more force you generate, the more muscle fibers you recruit, and the more calories you burn.

So, the common factors of a hard workout are:

a) Low repetitions (1-3 before failure), heavy weight, 10 or so sets AFTER warming up

and/or

b) Small rest periods and explosive movements

Always warm-up before working out with heavy weights as well as getting the blood circulating before explosive cardio (sprints). Do not go to failure, stop just short of it. Finally, your sets should not be long.

You cannot sprint at full speed for much longer than 30 seconds, nor can you lift a very heavy weight for much longer. Keep the sets short, hard, and give yourself a few minutes to rest in between them if they are heavy. Alternatively, if you go with lighter weights and explosive movements (like sprinting), keep the rest interval shorter, say 60 to 90 seconds.

2) Eat Right

The next weight loss tip deals with diet.

I will keep this very simple. For the next 2 weeks, in your effort to lose weight, you cannot eat or drink anything from paper, metal or plastic. Eat fruits and veggies and protein with every meal. You can still eat breads and pastas ONLY if you make them from scratch from ingredients that are not contained in paper metal or plastic – which likely means you will not be eating them at all. No milk, no juice, no cola.

The exception to this rule is for meats. Eat tuna from a can if you wish or packed frozen salmon. Chicken breasts, lamb chops, etc. are all fine. Just get some good protein in you every meal, at least four times per day, that is about the size of both of your fists.

3) Sleep

Next, you need rest. Your body needs to recover from your workouts. To do this, it needs to be relaxed and full of good nutrients for the muscle fibers to absorb. Therefore, after exercise and diet, for maximum benefit, you need a minimum of 8 hours of sleep per night. Try to get 10 hours per night if your body needs it.

4) Make Time

Now, I have not talked about the most difficult part of the program which is making time.

Doing all of these things takes time, and unless you really have very little to do, you will need to give up other things to make time for losing weight. You must make time for:

Shopping with a new list
Cooking in advance and in bulk
Going to the gym
Exercising harder than you are used to
Coming home from the gym
Doing the dirty gym laundry
Eating more meals than you are used to
Sleeping more than you are used to

All of these take time. At one point, I used to spend 20 hours a week just working out plus the commute. 90 minutes each way and a 2 hour workout four times a week meant 20 hours of time that I couldn’t do other things. You wanted the quick solution, so here it is. If it sounds like a lot, you really should see my other post on how to lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks. It is focused on making habits gradually to ensure that not only will you lose weight, but also keep it off.

Moral of the story is, if you want quick weight loss, you are dreaming. It is not worth it especially since it will just come right back on.

I said you were in luck at the beginning of the article because I tell you how to do what you want the knowledge to know how to lose weight in 2 weeks. However, you may not like the truth of that knowledge, and for that, I am not to blame. Browse through the other articles on this site if you want to learn more about how to lose weight and keep it off, or even how to lose belly fat for that matter.

But if the truth is inconvenient and you just want to pay people to lie to you, then it’s easy enough to find another website that will gladly lie to you.

I am here to help you achieve your fitness goals, then go beyond them.

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How to Reduce Tummy…

On April 9, 2011, in How to Lose Belly Fat, by admin

If you are looking for how to reduce tummy fat, flab or even fuzz, you have come to the right place! Actually, forget the fuzzy bit, I will only talk about reducing tummy fat and flab.

To begin, many people look to yoga to reduce tummy fat, or more specifically, yoga for weight loss. However, yoga is not very effective when compared to weight lifting.

Yoga is usually a form of stretching, and although the forms vary from extremely mild workouts to stuff that is pretty intense bodyweight exercise, it is much faster to learn to lift weights as a beginner.

The first dilemma for how to reduce tummy fat may be exercise selection, but let me make that easy for you. Do complex barbell movements. A lot of people espouse the benefits of unilateral motions, but they are full of a four letter explicative.

Even if you squat 1000 pounds, you cannot one legged squat anywhere near this amount, or anywhere near half the amount.

However, I am going off topic. Let me give you a few principles that will help in your weight management:

The more muscles you recruit, the more calories you burn.
The greater intensity you exercise with, the more calories you burn.
The longer you exercise, the more calories you burn.

Most people know the third one quite well and think weight management just boils down to working out longer.

However, you cannot continue to workout longer indefinitely!

Eventually, workouts will become too long to be practical, and this happens rather quickly, especially with “aerobics”. As a result, you have to utilize tips one and two.

The more muscles you recruit, the more calories you burn. This means that squats will help you burn more calories than biceps curls. The bench press will help you burn more calories than triceps extensions.

Greater intensity also forces your body to work harder. When you do this, it burns more calories. Compare sprints to jogging. You can get the same calorie burning benefits of jogging for an hour with just a few sets of all-out thirty second sprints. Your body is forced to go anaerobic and you are getting great muscle contractions.

Compare long distance runners physiques with sprinters.

Sprinters have muscle and great definition while long distance runners are skinny and flabby. The difference is that sprinters are tensing everything when they sprint while joggers are hardly tensing an muscles at all by comparison.

Now, you are probably wondering how to reduce your tummy flab using these principles?

All weight loss tips revolve either around diet and or exercise. Since we have already looked at exercise principles for burning calories, we will focus on this for now.

One last thing before talking about exercise, weight loss tips for women are the same as weight loss tips for men. It does not matter if you are a man or a woman – both people respond the same to exercise. Your muscles are exactly the same, the only difference from a training perspective is whether you can push yourself to the limit at all times of the month. Women can still workout at this time, but should not push themselves too hard since their bodies are already under varying degrees of stress.

One last thing to get out of the way before talking about how to lose your tummy fat which is the myth of spot reduction.

Spot reduction is a myth, for the most part.

You can increase circulation to your fatty regions and then engage the muscles around those areas to get somewhat of a more specific fat-loss effect. However, you should only be concerned with this method once the bulk of the fat is already gone. Save spot reduction for the bodybuilders because you are likely not one, and what I am about to say next is far more effective.

I have talked about what kinds of exercise are best for burning calories (which you can read as fat), as well as dispelled several myths about how to lose tummy fat. So the secret to reducing tummy fat is…

Lose fat in general.

Weight loss is not the same as fat loss. As a matter of fact, you can gain weight while losing fat at the same time. This is the ideal scenario for all bodybuilders.

The more muscle you have on your frame, the more calories you will burn.

Therefore, your goal is to lose fat.

This can be accomplished through heavy and intense exercise. This does not mean you need to exercise for hours, but do several sets of very heavy and explosive training. Olympic lifts are wonderful as are the power lifts. High intensity interval training is also leaps and bounds better than jogging on the treadmill or reading a book while on the stationary bike.

Get used to the idea of powerful, explosive movements.

If you do this and nourish your body with good foods, you will lose fat. As you lose fat, your waistline will get smaller, but this is one of the most stubborn areas on the body, so that may be the last place that your body drops the fat. Spot reduction will not help you if you are carrying tummy fat elsewhere.

I hope you have found this article on how to lose tummy fat informative and helpful and I wish you the motivation and wisdom required to be successful in your efforts.

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Tagged with: how to reduce tummy • weight loss tips • weight loss tips for women • weight management • weight reduction • yoga for weight loss • yoga to reduce tummy

Ways to Lose Weight Fast

On April 5, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

If you are looking for ways to lose weight fast, then you have come to the right place. This website has many weight loss tips from how to exercise to how to eat and everything, including psychology, in between.

The first question people often think about with weight loss is what they are eating. A reasonable first question may then be about what to eat to lose weight fast.

While this is a good question, the negative is even more important. So instead of just thinking about what to eat to lose weight, you may first want to consider what not to eat to avoid gaining weight.

The reason I focus on what not to eat first is because one bad meal or snack can ruin an entire day, or even several days worth, or perfect dieting.

So what are some good rules for what not to eat?

Think “outside of the bakery”
Processed means dead calories (lots of dead junk that makes you fat)
Fats and carbohydrates are like cats and dogs – they usually do not get along
Do not eat until you feel like an inflated balloon

Actually, rule 3 is just a repetition of the first rule. carbohydrates and fats are like carbohydrates and sugars – they help you gain fat very quickly. Unless your bakery is very different from the one by my house, almost everything found inside of one will destroy any efforts you make to eat well.

Rules two and four help you constrict calories where they should be constricted. Do not drink or eat anything that is contained in metal, plastic or cardboard. Many of you may not know how to eat at first given this rule, so you may have to go and ask active and healthy looking people how to eat better.

This means no cereal, no fruit juice and no canned vegetables.

You actually need to go to the produce section and buy foods that will rot if you do not eat them in the next week. You also should drink beverages like green tea (no sugar or milk), miso soup, and apple cider vinegar water or fresh fruit smoothies and yogurt.

Of course, water is at the top of the list – no calories and it helps hydrate you when your body is thirsty – asking to be hydrated with, well, water!

Follow these dietary guidelines and you will quickly lose a lot of weight quickly!

However, this is not all for this article since there are many ways to lose weight fast. I will now talk about the other key component; exercise.

You may be wondering, “What is the fastest way to lose weight?” The above recommendations are good, however, a better question to ask is:

“What is the best way to lose weight?”

Focus on the long term and you are guaranteed long-term success. Focus on the short term and your results will only be temporary.

Therefore, the best way to lose weight fast is to follow my “do not eat” rules and to become an active person.

Active person means that you are a person who regularly seeks activity. You do not avoid it, and being active becomes a very important part of who you are.

If you want to lose weight, you likely have a lot of excess weight on you. This comes from two things; poor diet and inactivity.

I discuss in other articles what I think are the best exercises to lose weight, but for now, just look at your current activity.

How many hours of exercise do you perform each week?

Walking up stairs does not count as activity, nor does walking into stores from your car. If you are not going to use your legs, you may as well get one of those electric wheel chairs. Many people who are forced to use them would kill to be in your position with a working pair of legs.

Whatever your current level of exercise, a simple recommendation is to increase it by 4 hours per week. If you currently get no exercise, go to the gym and workout 4 hours a week, or play a few games of soccer / football. Sorry, bowling and baseball do not count – you need to actually exert yourself for it to count as exercise.

If you have a lot of extra body fat, consider riding bike outside where you are forced to pedal up hill sometimes. Try to beat your old times, and push yourself.

Your body will not change unless you force it to.

I have not talked about what food to eat to lose weight, but what food not to eat since this is more important in the beginning. Couple this with four more hours of exercise per week and you will see fast weight reduction.

Enjoy the rest of this site – most articles will help you find several ways to lose weight fast, but remember, the three keys are diet, exercise, and becoming an active person.

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Tagged with: ways to lose weight fast • weight reduction • what food to eat to lose weight • what is the best way to lose weight • what is the fastest way to lose weight • what to eat to lose weight • what to eat to lose weight fast

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Benefits of the EZ Up Inversion Rack

On April 5, 2011, in Products, by BTB Friend

Teeter is a leading provider when it comes to inversion tables has returned to the beginnings of inversion therapy with their teeter hangups and their EZ Up Inversion Rack. This product was the brilliant invention of a chiropractor approximately thirty years ago. The inversion therapy technique offered an affordable, effective and noninvasive type of relief for back pain and was completely drug free. A Teeter Hang Up has become a very popular type of inversion table and is the preferred method for many, while others are enthusiastically embracing the inversion rack.

An EZ Up Inversion Rack needs to be used with a pair of gravity boots. These boots are actually more of a highly cushioned shin guard that is strapped to the legs and has a hook. This device can then rest in mounts which are screwed to the inside of a door frame and has been designed for both support and safety. Getting into the inverted position can require a little agility as well as some abdominal and shoulder strength because the user needs to grasp the built-in hand holds while they are hanging upright, then raise their feet in order to hook their gravity boots to another bar.

Once the user has themselves in position, they will typically hang upside down for approximately five minutes in order to provide the beneficial stretching that can help restore the vertebral discs to their original shape and alleviate any pressure that has been placed on nerves. While in this inverted position, some people will do a variety of exercises such as lift kettleballs, or do crunches. The Rack can be used to do pull ups as well or even as a fulcrum in order to improvise exercises which normally require a pulley and standing weights.

An EZ Up Inversion Rack as well as a Teeter Hang Up have both been designed to be extremely durable. They both provide a great way of getting the benefits found in inversion therapy.

Learn more about teeter hang ups at the author’s website.

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How to Lose 10 Pounds in 2 Weeks

On April 4, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Are you wondering how to lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks? If so, then you are not alone.

Many people wonder what to do to lose weight. My suggestion is to do something to get fast results.

Immediate results are gratifying and may motivate you to keep up the good work.

HOWEVER, most people fail many times before they succeed. If you are like me, you will lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks not once, but several times.

Each victory is followed by a quick defeat.

But fear not!

I have managed to not only lose 60 pounds, but to keep it off, and you can too!

Here is a little secret you should know – weight loss rarely comes without exercise. If you want to lose weight quickly, it can be helped by proper exercise. Also, if you want to keep weight off, you must change your habits.

You become what you habitually do.

Therefore, the two keys to losing weight are:

Exercise Regularly
Change Your Habits for the Better

I will now describe how to lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks with minimal difficulty.

Starting a regular and intense exercise routine is one of the keys to losing 10 lbs in two weeks and keeping it off. Below, I will outline a few simple workouts to lose weight that will get you started.

General Workout Notes

First, you will need to learn how to do these exercises, and they can take a lifetime to master. But do not worry about mastery at this point – you just want to get into the gym and start moving some weight. Technique will come with time.

Warm-up with an empty bar. If the empty bar is too heavy, use light dumbbells. Increase the weight in small increments.

Contrary to popular belief, fixed stretching is more likely to injure you than to help you, so stay away from static stretching. Instead, increase the weight in small increments, five to eight times to warm-up then do a few sets with a bit heavier weight for your workout.

The main exercise is the focus of your workout. You should perform the following first and take a good amount of time warming up. After the main exercise, you can do whatever you want for the next 30 minutes.

Just be sure you gave the first exercise a good amount of warm-up (gradually increasing to a heavy weight over 5-7 sets), and then pushed yourself with the harder weights (3-5 sets of heavy weight).

Workout 1 – Lower Body 1

Perform free-form squats (not on a smith machine). Work up to a heavy weight for five repetitions and then perform 20 minutes of sprint-walking or sprint-cycling. Squats are called the king of the exercises because they work everything in your body. The more muscles you work at once, the more calories you burn, so squat heavy and often.

Workout 2 – Upper Body 1

Perform standing military presses or push presses with the barbell. This is an excellent exercise that stresses all muscles from your toes to the top of your head. Great for building whole body strength and burning calories at the same time.

You may be very weak on this exercise at first, so focus on doing more reps, 5-12 per set with multiple sets after warm-up is great.

Workout 3 – Lower Body 2

Deadlifts. Many people are scared of the deadlift, but it is one of the best and safest exercises out there. Just read a few articles at t-nation and you will be reaping the benefits of deadlifting in no time.

Workout 4 – Upper Body 2

Bench press. Now, there are many variations for the bench press, but I prefer recommending the powerlifting bench press where you bring the bar down to your sternum instead of your pectorals.

This is generally safer for your shoulders in the long run and focuses more on your lats and triceps, allowing you to get stronger faster.

I have now given you four weight loss workouts. As a beginner, you can workout every day if you wish. As you become more advanced (after 2-3 years of lifting), you should lift weights no more than 4 times per week unless you are doing a more advanced body part split.

Dieting is a whole other monster I cover in other articles, so if you eat right and follow the above advice, you now know how to lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks.

My final note is that this really works!

After I go on vacation, I usually gain 20 – 30 pounds!

However, after vacation I clean up my diet and hit the gym four times per week with the above workouts and lose 20 to 30 lbs in two weeks.

This is two to three times the amount that you are trying to lose in the same time frame, and I usually do this about twice per year because I love being a glutton on vacation.

Change your habits so they incorporate regular weight training with heavy, free weights and change your diet so that you are not eating junk on a regular basis and losing 10 pounds in 2 weeks will be a breeze!

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How to Get Rid of Belly Fat

On April 4, 2011, in How to Lose Belly Fat, by admin

Do you want to know how to get rid of belly fat? If so, then read on!

Let me start with a short personal story. I used to weigh two hundred and thirty five pounds and had a size forty three waist. You may be better or worse off than I was, but the main thing is, I was only this fat until one day it kind of clicked in my mind that I was overweight.

Once this realization struck, I decided to do something about it, and you should too. The first step is simply commit to doing something about it. Our first efforts often fail, so do not let that stop you from achieving your goal. If you think, “I have the rest of my lift to fight this belly fat” then you will eventually succeed. This is a lifelong endeavor because if you do not change your habits from good, you will fail.

So after deciding to learn how to get rid of my belly fat, I happened upon a few things, but I will not bore you with the failed details. You have probably failed with several methods as well, so we have much in common.

I had heard the final advice that worked many times over and over again, but I did not ever understand it properly.

“Exercise more and eat less,” is the all too familiar adage on how to lose weight, belly fat being part of that.

If you want to know how to lose belly fat, there are only two ways:

Have surgery.
Decrease body fat until the belly fat stores go away.

Using option 2 I lost 60 pounds in 6 months getting to my all-time lean of 175. My waist shrunk 10 sizes, and although I did not have much muscle, it was good to see my ribs, obliques, and *cough* manhood without having to tuck!

You can exercise more by, well, exercising more. The most efficient bang for your buck is to focus on getting stronger. Focus on lifting more and more in the squat, deadlift and overhead press and everything else will fall into place. Go for more reps until you hit a plateau then lower the reps and up the weight.

The above tells you how to exercise more; this is not rocket science. If you prefer running, then you need to up the speed or increase the duration; these are your only two options. However, getting stronger with weights is by far the most effective way to lose weight. I discuss why in other posts on this site.

Finally, do not forget to supplement your exercise with a fitting flat belly diet.

What is a flat belly diet? Well, here are a few do nots and a few dos to help you out:

DO NOT:

Eat anything from a bakery
Eat sugars and fats at the same time (e.g. bakery)
Eat until your belly feels like it will explode
Eat excessive amounts of calorie dense fruits (bananas, raisins, prunes, etc.)
Drink soft drinks or other calorie containing beverages (juice, milk, etc.)

None of these are absolutes, but if you can follow them, you will drop up to 60 lbs of fat of your frame like me!

That will help show off your belly!

DO:

Eat fresh (uncooked or lightly cooked) vegetables with every meal
Eat protein with every meal (yogurt, fish, chicken, beef, pork, lamb, etc.)
Go to bed a little hungry (no food 2-3 hours before bed)

If you can follow all eight rules, you now know more than most about how to get rid of belly fat! Couple a good diet with performance-based training and you can also enjoy my results.

I have told you how to get rid of belly fat and some tips on how to get a flat stomach. Ignore these at your own risk! It is not complicated, but you will need to adjust your habits to follow the above guidelines.

Flat Belly Challenge

Make a food log. Every day that you complete following all of the dietary guidelines, you get one snack on Saturday – whatever you like. Just eat all the snacks around the same time. If you do not meet your guidelines one day, you have to minus two snacks from Saturday.

This will still allow you to enjoy some of the foods you will crave without all of the insulin spikes. If you must be bad, do it for once a week and be done with it. Do not have a small treat here and another one there.

Good luck, and remember, if you decide to pursue your goals until you accomplish them, you cannot fail.

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Tagged with: exercise • how to get rid of belly fat • weight loss

What is the easiest way to lose weight?

The Easiest Way to Lose Weight

Making Substitution Work for You

Getting Rid of Belly Fat

Eat Your Way to a Smaller Belly

Vegetable Soup Recipe Setup

Broth

Vegetables

Set

Cookware

Vegetable Soup Preparation

Making The Soup

Setting The Table

Additional Sides

Variations

Weight Loss Rules

Losing Weight Efficiently:

Peanut Butter Jelly Protein Shake

Sweet Temptation

Mocha Coffee Shake

Pina Colada Yogurt Smoothie

Author’s Favorite Protein Smoothie

Chocolate Caribbean Shake

Shopping 101

Cooking Tools

Baked Chicken Breast Ingredients

Cooking The Perfect Chicken Breast

Your Chicken Is Ready to Eat

Making a Succulent Chicken Breast

Chicken Breast Recipe Variations

Summary

Day 1: A Walk Outdoors

Day 2: A Walk With Some Sprints

Day 3: A Walk and a Game

Day 4: More Sprints

Day 5: Push-ups

Day 6: Push-ups Part 2

Day 7: Game Day!

Day 8: More walking

Day 9: More Bodyweight Exercises

Day 10: Walk the Plank

Day 11: Less Walking, More Sprinting

Day 12: Old Time Weight Lifting

Day 13: Farmer’s Carries

Day 14: The Playground Workout

Is this new habit/rule sustainable?

If eliminating a habit, what will fill its place?

Is the new behavior/rule better than the old one?

Is there an even better alternative?

Would trim, vibrant people who I want to be like benefit by following this rule/habit?

1) Exercise

2) Eat Right

3) Sleep

4) Make Time

General Workout Notes

Workout 1 – Lower Body 1

Workout 2 – Upper Body 1

Workout 3 – Lower Body 2

Workout 4 – Upper Body 2

DO NOT:

DO:

Flat Belly Challenge

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