Because YOU Want RESULTS!!!

It's that time again; when you and millions of Americans will resolve to lose weight and get back into shape. It should come as no surprise that this is the number one New Years Resolution. Perhaps this will be your first attempt, but chances are you've done this before, right?

So what’s your plan this time around?

Will you be taking one of those magic weightless pills you see advertised everywhere, or will you go with some good old-fashioned diet and exercise?

Ok, so which diet?
• Low Fat
• Low Carb
• Low Carb/Low Fat
• High Protein
• High Protein/High Fat
• The current Hollywood Fad Diet your friend told you about

Not sure? Well you need only pick a book or two on diet and you’ll be all set. Wait a minute – there are thousands of books to choose from, and many of them contain conflicting information. This conflicting information is hardly limited to books – it is everywhere! It’s no wonder people are so confused!!!

The truth is, there is no such thing as a “one size fits all” diet plan. A little bit of common knowledge and common sense can get you started. A personalized diet plan, motivation and support can take you ever further. That is where ELITE Fitness & Wellness comes in!

The other part of the equation is Exercise

With so many different type of exercise programs available, people are left confused yet again. Not to worry; ELITE Fitness & Wellness will take the guesswork out here as well.

Let’s face it though: exercise requires EFFORT! When you put forth the effort, what you expect to get in return? You want RESULTS, right?

The good news is, if you have just just exercising, you will see results. The bad news is, the results will be short lived once the body adapts, usually after 1-3 months.

What will you do then? If you are like most people, you will give up because the results are not worth the effort. Another year will go by, and this whole process will be repeated next year, and the next, and the next - each time a year older, a few pounds heavier, and more out of shape!

End the cycle now! Choose ELITE Fitness & Wellness, and to WILL Get Results!

I personally lost nearly 100 pounds of body fat over a 3 year period, and then I packed on nearly 50 pounds of lean muscle over the next 2 years! I've been on both sides of the fence, and I know I can help you with your specific goals

ELITE Fitness & Wellness places great emphasis on functionality, and the programs are designed to improve competency in all ten of the general recognized physical skills - for total fitness, beyond mere wellness.

With a combination of proven, results-oriented training modalities that have stood the test of time, and new cutting-edge techniques, results will be yours - all you have to do is Bring It!

Email or call today to Get Started. Hurry, time slots are filling rapidly!

Want to live PAIN FREE???

First let's look at why you have (or will) have pain.

The body has a standard design, and that deviation from it is the source of pain and incapacitation.

Even though you may not currently feel pain, chances are you have imbalances, and one day it will lead to pain. It’s simply a matter of time!

The cause is our sedentary modern lifestyles, and the effect is motion starvation. If motion deprivation establishes itself, our bodies literally forget how to move according to the design.

When this happens the primary muscles for moving the joint(s) in question are shut off, and the compensation muscles are called upon to move the joint(s). This leads to further atrophy of the primary muscle and further overdevelopment of the compensation muscles – leading to more dysfunction, and ultimately pain and incapacitation.

Conventional training methods do not address these imbalances and often make the condition worse!!!

This revolutionary training method fills the gap created by the sedentary modern environment with a series of unique exercises - delivered in a very precise sequence - targeted at muscles and functions that are receiving inadequate or improper motion.

In short, these routines re-teach the muscles what to do and how to do it.

What makes this methodology effective is that it focuses on the total body equation. The sum is greater than its parts. The other common denominator is that it works on asymmetries first. How can you expect a body that has two of almost everything to function optimally if one side either looks or is not functioning as well as its counterpart?

This is a holistic approach to training and conditioning as well as rehabilitation. It looks at the body as a whole and deduces between the compensations and the dysfunction. By addressing the dysfunction, the body's need for compensating reduces. And if there was injury previously, you create an environment for healing.

Take your first step towards living PAIN FREE – email or call today!

Top 10 Reasons to Hire a Personal Trainer

1. Motivation
Personal trainers wear many hats, serving not only as coach, but also as an educator, confidant, role model and a major source of motivation and encouragement.

2. Consistency
Do you find it difficult to stick to your program? Scheduling regular appointments with a personal trainer helps eliminate any excuses you may come up with for not exercising.

3. Safety
A personal trainer will show you how to exercise safely (including which exercises to avoid), and instruct you on the proper and safe use of exercise equipment.

4. Individualized Instruction
An exercise program that works for one person may not work for another. A personal trainer will develop the most effective program for you based on your fitness evaluation results and personal goals.

5. Effective Workouts
Today's hectic lifestyles mean you don't have time to waste on ineffective exercise routines. Personal trainers help maximize your time by providing workouts designed to meet your goals quickly and efficiently.

6. Supervision
Need someone to spot you while you do pull-ups? Looking for feedback on your running form? That's what your personal trainer is for: to observe, assist and, if necessary, correct as needed.

7. Sports-specific Training
Whether you want to shave some strokes off your golf score or beat your brother-in-law at tennis, a personal trainer can tailor your program to your sport of choice.

8. Injury Rehabilitation
An experienced personal trainer can make the road to recovery a smooth one by recommending exercises that emphasize overall muscular balance to prevent future injuries.

9. Special-needs Training
Research confirms that individuals with health challenges such as diabetes, asthma, osteoporosis or heart disease benefit greatly from regular physical activity. These conditions, however, can make exercising safely a challenge. Many personal trainers are experienced in designing programs that address the special needs of these and other conditions.

10. Ego Boost
It's a fact--feeling good makes you look good, and vice versa. Not only can personal trainers help you achieve your health and fitness goals; they provide you with positive feedback on your performance and bolster your confidence to take on new challenges.


originally posted on 11/15/06

Top 20 Reasons to Exercise

Everyone exercises for different reasons. But regardless of your initial motivation, you still get ALL the benefits. Below are the top 20 reasons why you should workout. If you can find even one benefit on this list, you'll have enough reason to begin an exercise program and take steps to take care of yourself.

Regular Exercise Can...

• Help you lose weight and reduce body fat
• Improve your physical appearance
• Increase your level of muscular strength and endurance
• Maintain your resting metabolic rate to prevent weight gain
• Increase your stamina and ability to do continuous work
• Improve fitness levels, or your body's ability to use oxygen
• Provide protection against injury
• Improve your balance and coordination
• Increase bone mineral density to prevent osteoporosis
• Lower resting heart rate and blood pressure
• Lower Body Mass Index (BMI), your fat to height ratio
• Reduce triglycerides and bad cholesterol
• Enhance sexual desire and performance
• Reduce heart disease risk and stroke
• Reduce the risk of developing certain types of cancer
• Increase insulin sensitivity, prevents type 2 diabetes
• Reduce your level of anxiety and help you manage stress
• Improve function of the immune system
• Improve your self-esteem and restore confidence Help you sleep better, relax, and improve mood

originally posted on 11/20/06

Primal Eating Plan

I have never been a fan of the conventional, especially when I consider how the powers-that-be can influence/determine conventional thought. I've previously made my points about big agribusiness, pharmaceutical companies, etc, so some of you may know what I am referring to.

Anyway, unconventional thinking and concepts, although intriguing, are not enough to draw me in - there are a lot of kooks and pretenders out there - so the ideas must have some sort of scientific backing and they must actually make sense when you really look deeply into them.

Here is one of those rare gems! The following is from Mark Sisson's site. He has a ton of interesting information on his blog! Here are 2 of his posts with additional links that I feel lay the foundation for the plan. ENJOY!

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The Context of Calories

200 Calories is 200 Calories. Right?

“What’s that in the road ahead?”

vs.

“What’s that in the road!? A head!?”

Context is important.

Many people think weight loss is simply about cutting calories. But context counts here, too. Calories do have context and that’s what I want to explore today. Is a calorie from fat the same as a calorie from protein or carbohydrate? Depends on the context. Does day-to-day calorie monitoring make any difference if your week-to-week weight and energy expenditure are dialed in? Maybe not.

Most people (even many scientists) believe that the body composition challenge is a relatively simple equation: to lose weight you must reduce calories (either eat less or burn more), to gain weight you must add calories, and to maintain weight you keep calories constant. Calories in over calories out.

The truth is, it’s more like a complex equation where you have to factor in many other very important variables: Do I want to lose weight or just body fat? Do I want to gain weight or just muscle? How much muscle do I want to put on and how fast? What is my personal genetic “range” or limit for body fat or muscle? These are all different contexts. And these are further affected by supply (types and quantity of foods as well as frequency of meals) and metabolic demand (your relative immediate need for either energy, repair, or building). In the short-term, they are rate-limited by hormones (insulin, glucagon, epinephrine, nor-epinephrine, cortisol etc). And in the long-term the range (or limits) of possible outcomes is determined by gene expression (5’8” ectomorphs simply can’t become 275-lb body-builders, but they can be well-proportioned 165-lb men or 135-lb women.). The context can also change day-to-day. That’s where you come in as the director.

Fat burning, glucose burning, ketone burning, glycogen storage, fat storage, gluconeogenesis, and protein turnover. All of these energy-related processes are going on simultaneously in each of us at all times. But the rate at which each of these processes happens is different in each of us and they can increase or decrease (sometimes dramatically) depending on the context of our present circumstances and our long term goals. All of these contexts utilize the same gene-based principles of energy metabolism – the biochemical machinery that we all share - but because they all involve different starting points as well as different goals or possible outcomes, they often require different action plans. We can alter the rate at which each of these metabolic processes happens simply by changing what and when we eat. We can change the context.

The RD’s will tell you that protein has four calories per gram, so when you figure your daily intake, budget calories accordingly. But protein is used by the body mostly for maintaining structure and function. Yes, it can be burned as fuel, but really only as a secondary source, and even then, it must be converted to glucose to be utilized. So, depending on the need within the body, the first 10, 20 or 30 grams of protein might go towards repair and growth – not energy. Do we therefore discount those first 30 grams when we “count calories?” Depends on the context. If you don’t exercise much and eat frequently and copiously all the time, maybe most of the protein you eat will count more towards your calorie budget (since your structural protein turnover is relatively less). On the other hand, if you run yourself ragged, are under a great deal of stress (lots of catabolic hormones) and generally don’t get much protein, maybe most of that one high-protein meal goes toward repair and won’t be called upon as fuel for days or weeks. Or maybe you’re coming off an IF day. Does it really count as calories today if it isn’t burned or stored as fat? If those protein calories today go to adding lean mass (muscle) that is retained for years, do those calories count today? Then again, as muscle it does offer a potential long-term stored source of energy when gluconeogenesis is increased. See what I mean? Depends on the context.

Fats aren’t just for fuel either. They can be integral parts of all cell membranes and hormones and can serve as critical protective cushioning for delicate organs. At what point do the fats we consume stop becoming structural and start becoming calorically dense fuel? Depends again on the context. If there’s a ton of carbohydrates accompanying the fat on a daily basis, it’s pretty certain that that fat will be stored as adipose tissue sooner rather than later. That’s nine calories per gram in the tank for future use (if ever). And that’s what adds up over time when you weigh yourself. OTOH, if you’ve withheld carbs for a few days and your insulin remains low, the fats from this meal might be used quickly to provide fuel for normal resting metabolic processes.

Keep your carbs low enough long enough and you get into ketosis, a fat-burning state that creates what many now refer to as the “metabolic advantage.” In this context, fats are fueling most of the body’s energy demands either directly as fatty acids or as the fat-metabolism byproducts called ketones. To the delight of those looking to burn off unwanted fat, it gets better. The body balances the acidic effect of any excess ketones by either excreting them in the urine (in today’s $5 a gallon economy, isn’t that wasting fuel?) and by using ketones and fatty acids to create a bit more glucose for the brain via gluconeogenesis in a fairly “energy inefficient” process.

Finally, let’s look at the lowly carbohydrate and its four calories per gram. All carbs are broken down into simple sugars, and eventually (and almost always) into glucose. The primary use of glucose from all carbohydrate food is as fuel, whether burned immediately as it passes by different organs and muscles or whether stored for later use. The brain, red blood cells, and nerve cells prefer glucose as primary fuel (but don’t absolutely require it – they can use ketones). Muscles that are working hard will prefer glucose if it is available, but don’t absolutely require it unless they are working very hard for very long. If it is not burned immediately as fuel, excess glucose will be first stored as glycogen in muscle and liver cells and then, if or when these glycogen storage depots are full, it will be converted to fatty acids and stored in fat cells as fat. The things to remember about carbs and to put into context: Carbs are not used as structural components in the body – they are used only as a form of fuel; glucose in the bloodstream is toxic to humans UNLESS it is being burned immediately as fuel. (For reference, “normal” blood sugar represents only about one teaspoon of glucose dissolved in the entire blood pool in your body). That’s why insulin is so critical to taking it out of the bloodstream and putting it somewhere FAST, like muscle cells or fat cells. Moreover, humans can exist quite easily without ever eating carbs, since the body has several mechanisms for generating glucose from the fat and proteins consumed, as well as from proteins stripped from muscle tissue. For all these reasons, in the PB-style of eating, carbs are lowest priority. Unless your context includes lots of endurance activities (or storing fat) there’s little reason to overdo the carbs (USDA and RDs’ recommendations notwithstanding).

So what’s the take home message from all this? To be honest, I thought maybe you could tell me! Maybe it’s that by understanding how these metabolic processes work, and knowing that we can control the rates at which each one happens through our diet (and exercise) we needn’t agonize over the day-to-day calorie counting. As long as we are generally eating a PB-style plan and providing the right context, our bodies will ease into a healthy, fit, long-lived comfort zone rather effortlessly.

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The Definitive Guide to the Primal Eating Plan

In my recent Context of Calories post, I explained how the different macronutrients we eat at each meal (fats, proteins, and carbohydrates) have different effects in the body. I suggested that, despite their raw calorie values, it’s far more important to get a lasting intuitive sense of how much of each macronutrient you need and when you need it (or not).

But how do you do that? How do you figure out the proper number of calories - and breakdown of fats, protein and carbs - to accomplish your fitness and health goals? To lose weight? Lose fat? Gain muscle? Maintain status quo? Run marathons?

In fact, most popular daily diets look at overall calories as the main factor in weight loss and weight gain. The age-old conservation of energy Conventional Wisdom says that “a calorie is a calorie.” From there most diet gurus generally prescribe some formulaic one-size-fits-all breakdown of fats, protein and carbs. A classically trained Registered Dietician will tell you that protein should be around 10-15% of calories, carbs should be 60% (and mostly from whole grains) and fat under 30%. This macronutrient breakdown stays the same regardless of how much weight you need to lose or what other goals you might have. Barry Sears has his 40/30/30 “Zone” diet. The USDA bases everything on a choice of between 2,000 and 2,500 calories a day. But, as I said earlier, it’s not that simple. Calories do have context.

The human body uses these macronutrients for a variety of different functions, some of which are structural and some of which are simply to provide energy - immediately or well into the future. Moreover, with regards to energy conservation or expenditure, the body acts as both an efficient fuel storage depot (and as a toxic “waist” site) as well as a potent generator of energy, depending largely on the hormonal signals it gets. It will store glycogen and/or fat and it will build muscle - or it will just as easily tear them all down and use them for fuel - based on input from you: what you eat, how much you eat, when you eat, what you’re doing before or after you eat - even what you’re thinking when you eat. Yet because your body always seeks to achieve homeostasis over time, the notion of you trying to zero in on a precise day-to-day or meal-to-meal eating plan is generally fruitless (yes, Charlotte, some fruit is allowed). The good news in all this is that falling off the wagon once or twice this week won’t have the immediate disastrous effect that you might imagine - as long as you can keep your average intake under control and understand how the various macronutrients function over time.

Which brings me to the crux of today’s discussion. Not only is it nearly impossible to accurately gauge your exact meal-to-meal calorie and macronutrient requirements, doing so will drive you crazy. In fact, to accurately figure your true structural and functional fuel needs (and hence to achieve your goals) it’s far more effective to look at a much larger span of time, like a few weeks, and aim for an “average” consumption. Then you can review that average daily intake over weeks or months and adjust accordingly. Below, I’ll give you a way to figure a “jumping off” point to start with, but remember, our genes are accustomed to the way our ancestors ate: intermittently, sporadically, sometimes in large quantities, and sometimes not at all for days. Their bodies figured out a way to maintain homeostasis and preserve lean tissue and good health through all this and so can we. Our genes want us to be lean and fit. It’s actually quite easy as long as we eat from the long list of Primal Blueprint healthy foods and try to avoid that other list of grain-laden, sugary, processed and otherwise unhealthy foods. Realistically, we also want to allow for the occasional party-splurge, a pre-planned (or accidental) intermittent fast, an over-the-top workout or even a week of laziness. Where most people get into trouble is in miscalculating their energy needs over extended periods of time - not day-to-day. They don’t see the average amount of carbs creeping upwards, or they figure they need x amount of calories, but don’t have a clue as to what kind of food those should be coming from.

I start with these four basic principles to guide my Primal Blueprint eating style:

1) 80% of your body composition will be determined by your diet. Yes, exercise is also important to health and to speed up fat-burning and muscle-building, but most of your results will come from how you eat. I’ll write more on this later, so just trust me on this one for now. Suffice to say, people who weigh a ton and exercise a ton, but eat a ton, still tend to weigh a ton. I think I’ll have that made into a t-shirt…

2) Lean Body Mass (LBM) is the key to life. I’ve said it many times on this site: lean mass (muscle and all the rest of you that is not fat) is directly correlated with longevity and excellent health. Rather than strive to “lose weight”, most people would be better off striving to lose only fat and to build or maintain muscle. Since other organs tend to function at a level that correlates to muscle mass, the more muscle you maintain throughout life, the more “organ reserve” you’ll have (i.e. the better the rest of you will work). Refer back to rule #1 and eat to build or maintain muscle.

3) Excess body fat is bad. Most human studies show that being significantly overweight increases your risk of nearly every disease (except osteoporosis - because ironically it responds to weight-bearing activities). Fat just doesn’t look that great either. See rule #1 and eat to keep body fat relatively low.

4) Excess insulin is bad. We’ve written about it here a lot. Chronic excess insulin may be even worse than excess sugar (and we know how bad that is). All animals produce insulin, but within any species, those that produce less insulin live longer than those who produce a lot. Eat to keep insulin low.

Here is how I use these principles to guide my individual macronutrient intake:

Protein

Protein takes priority. If there is ample glycogen (stored glucose) and the body is getting the rest of its energy efficiently from fats, protein will always go first towards repair or building cells or enzymes. In that context, it hardly seems fair to assign it a “burn rate” of 4 calories per gram. It’s like saying the 2×4 studs that support the walls of your house can burn nicely if you run out of firewood. They will, but I prefer to burn other fuel first. At a minimum you need .5 grams of protein per pound of lean mass/per day on average to maintain your “structure”. If you are moderately active you need .7 or .8, and if you are an active athlete you need as much as 1 gram of protein per pound of lean mass. That’s at a minimum, but it’s on a daily average. So a 155 lb moderately active woman who has 25% body fat (and thus) has 116 lb of lean body mass needs 93 grams of protein on average per day (116 x .8). If she gets 60 or 80 some days and 110 on others, she’ll still be in a healthy average range. And even if she exceeds the 110, it’s no problem if she’s eating low carb because the excess protein will convert to glucose, which will reduce her effective carbohydrate needs (see below). At 4 calories per gram, that’s between 320 and 440 calories per day in protein. It’s not that much.

Carbs

If you’ve forgotten everything you ever learned in biology, just remember this and “own” it: Carbohydrate drives insulin drives fat (Cahill 1965, and Taubes 2007). The idea in the PB is to limit your carbs to only those you need to provide glucose for the brain and for some reasonable amount (certainly less than an hour) of occasional anaerobic exercise. And the truth is, you don’t even need glucose to fuel the brain. Ketones from a very-low carb diet work extremely efficiently at that task. Either way, ideally, we would like most of our daily energy to come from dietary or stored fats. Typically, (if you are at an ideal body composition now) I use a rule of thumb that 100-150 grams of carbohydrate per day is plenty to keep you out of ketosis (and ketosis is NOT a bad thing) but away from storing the excess as fat if you are the least bit active. Don’t forget that your body can make up to 200 grams of glycogen from fats and protein every day, too. On the other hand, if you are looking to lose body fat, keeping carbs to under 80 grams per day will help immensely in lowering insulin and taking fat out of storage. On the other other hand, if you are insistent on training hard for long periods of time, you would add more carbs (say, 100 per day extra for every extra hour you train hard). It becomes a matter of doing the math and experimenting with the results.

Ironically, it’s tough to exceed 100 grams of carbs even if you eat tons of colorful vegetables - as long as you eat like our ancestors and consume no grains, no sugars and few starchy vegetables (potatoes, yams, beets, legumes, etc). Even if you eat a ton of vegetables AND a fair amount of fruit, you’ll be hard pressed to exceed 150 grams of carbs on average per day. Our remote ancestors couldn’t average 150 grams of carbs a day if they tried, yet they had plenty of energy and maintained their lean mass. At 4 calories per gram that’s only between 400 and 600 calories per day. Add that in to the protein above and our sample girl is barely at 1,000 calories on the high end. So where does the rest of the fuel come from?

Fats

Learn to love them. They are the fuel of choice and should become the balance of your Primal Blueprint diet. Fats have little or no impact on insulin and, as a result, promote the burning of both dietary and stored (adipose) fat as fuel. Think about this: if protein and carbs stay fairly constant (and carbs stay under 150), you can use fat as the major energy variable in your diet. Feeling like you need more fuel (and you’ve already covered your bases with protein and carbs)? Reach for something with fat. Nuts, avocados, coconut, eggs, butter, olive oil, fish, chicken, lamb, beef, the list is a long one. 100 grams of fats per day would only add 900 calories to our girl’s daily average, putting her at between 1620 and 1940 calories a day. Even if she averages somewhere between 1400 and 2200 calories per day over a few weeks, as long as she pays attention to protein and carbs, her body composition will shift to lower body fat and more desirable lean mass. If she decides to do some walking, a few brief intense weight sessions and a sprint day here and there, that process would accelerate greatly. If she gets to a point where she’s content with her body fat, she can even add in a little more fat to provide energy that she previously got from her stored fat.

The main thing I’ve figured out from eating this way for years is that I don’t need nearly as many calories to maintain health, mass, and body fat as I once thought I did - or as the Conventional Wisdom says I do. I eat 600-1000 calories per day less than when I ate a carbohydrate-based diet, yet I maintain slightly lower body fat and slightly higher muscle mass on even less training. Remember: 80% of body composition is determined by diet. The best part is that I don’t ever feel hungry because I base my eating on exactly what my 10,000-year-old genes want me to eat.

Further Reading:

The Primal Blueprint

The Primal Blueprint Carbohydrate Curve

The Definitive Guide to Grains

The Definitive Guide to Fats

The Definitive Guide to Cholesterol

The Definitive Guide to Insulin, Blood Sugar and Type 2 Diabetes

The Definitive Guide to Stress, Cortisol and the Adrenals

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I highly recommend checking out these links and the rest his blog for that matter - Excellent reading material!

Evolutionary Fitness

"If you look at our ancestral activity patterns, you can see that we had lots of languid periods of rest interspersed with a few short bursts of very-high-intensity efforts.... I believe in variety and intensity of exercise." - Arthur S. De Vany, professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine, speaking on segment 108 ("Can you really extend your life?") of the PBS’s "Closer to Truth"

Evolutionary Fitness

Art De Vany, author of the forthcoming book Evolutionary Fitness, maintains that short bursts of high intensity exercise are better than slow steady exercise. Sprinters are much healthier and more in tune with our evolutionary nature than long distance runners, according to professor De Vany. He comes to these conclusions primarily by studying the activity patterns of our Paleolithic ancestors, who lived during the early Stone Age between 2-6 million and 10,000 years ago.

"I try to imagine the environment in which the human genome and human metabolism developed," says De Vany. He sees an evolutionary environment in which the vast majority of our ancestors survived by hunting wild animals – which would mean long periods of walking or jogging combined with sprints and often violent struggles -- and gathering wild plants and other sources of food and water. That’s important because our genes still "think" we are hunters and gatherers. Most scientists agree that our genetic makeup developed over millions of years -- the pace of biological evolution is glacially slow – and is largely unchanged in the last 10,000 years. Genetically our bodies are virtually the same as they were 40,000 years ago. As the authors of The Paleolithic Prescription (Harper & Row, 1988) told us, 100,000 generations of humans have lived as hunters and gatherers, 500 generations as farmers, and only 10 generations have lived in the industrial age. In terms of genetic makeup, we are still hunters and gatherers.

A reader and friend called my attention to professor De Vany’s evolutionaryfitness.com website several months ago (thanks Seth). A short time later I read about De Vany in Chef Jeff’s Weekly Health Update, and more recently I communicated with him by email. Art De Vany is no armchair scientist. He’s a former professional baseball player – a game of high-intensity bursts separated by long lulls – and a lifetime fitness buff. At 6' 1'’ and 205 pounds, he’s a living example of what he preaches. "I know what really works," says De Vany, "I’m 63, and I have seven percent body fat." Three years ago, based on body composition, strength, flexibility, reaction time and blood profile, a research institute rated his biological age at 32. That’s not surprising, says De Vany: "Hunter gatherers don’t age like Westerners do because they retain their metabolic fitness." In short, De Vany is a modern-day version of Cro-Magnon man.

Variety is Crucial

De Vany’s program combines Darwinian thinking with his interest in chaos theory and complex systems. We’ll have to wait for the publication of his book for a complete explanation, but he believes that most modern exercise regimens are off the mark. "Variety is crucial," says De Vany. He believes that too much endurance training is harmful. "Chronic aerobic exercise overtrains the heart, reducing the chaotic variation in heart rate which is essential to health," he says. "Boston Marathon participants have a high rate of brain cancer," he said on the PBS program Closer to Truth. "Lots of joggers die of heart fibrillation," he added. Likewise, he believes that most weight training involves too many reps and sets, and too much routine.

"High intensity, intermittent and brief training mixed with power walking and play is closer than aerobic exercise, high-volume weight training, or sedentism to how our ancestors lived," says De Vany. His general advice to both weight trainers and aerobic exercise enthusiasts is to cut duration and frequency, and increase intensity. "Our muscle fiber composition reveals that we are adapted to extreme intensity of effort," he explains.

De Vany says that contemporary hunter-gatherer societies rarely experience the diseases which plague modern man, such as hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. "The primary objectives of any exercise and diet program must be to counter hyperinsulinemia (chronically elevated insulin) and hypoexertion (wasting of the body’s lean mass through inactivity) – these are the number one health risks in western society," he says on his website. "Intermittent, intense exercise in brief spurts," as he recommends, "promotes hormone drives that quench hyperinsulinemia and build muscle and bone density that keep you young and lean."

Pending the completion of his book, Professor De Vany says the best explanation of Evolutionary Fitness training is an article by Australian author John Macgregor in the July 29, 2000 issue of the UK magazine New Scientist. That article combined with our personal communications provides more details of De Vany’s training philosophy.

For beginners, he recommends three sessions a week -- upper body and lower body weight workouts focused on the large muscles and a third session aimed at improving overall fitness -- lasting not more than 40 minutes. "For most people, a move from mechanistic training to adaptive training would consist primarily of cutting back on the number of sets and how often they work out," says the professor.

De Vany himself generally does two weight sessions, upper body and lower body, totaling about an hour and a half a week. He gives his workouts a chaotic character with ascending weights and descending repetitions. For example, on squats a typical workout would be 15 warmup reps with the bar, 15 with 135, 8 with 225, and 3 to 5 with 305. He rests little between sets and never stops before producing "a good burn." He never goes to failure, however. In keeping with his preference for randomness, he’s not particular about the precise amount of weight on the bar; he uses the amount that’s easy to load quickly. "Most people spend too much time resting at the top of the squat and dramatically lower the intensity," says De Vany. "That’s because they’re trying to do too much weight." Interestingly, after racking the weight on the final set, he does vertical jumps "as high and as many" as he can. (Sure sounds like a violent struggle worthy of a caveman, doesn’t it?)

In addition to gym sessions, he adds a wide variety of other activities that vary randomly in intensity and duration. When I communicated with him, he was doing walk/sprint intervals in the hills ( "running up hills and then walking on"), Tabata-protocol type sprints and "stretching, lengthening workouts aimed at grace and symmetry." From time to time, he also does Rollerblading, bicycling, tennis, basketball, hitting softballs and trekking with a grandson on his shoulders.

The X-Look

De Vany takes grace and symmetry seriously. "I don’t want to sound egotistical about it," says De Vany, "but I am the most symmetrical person in any gym I’ve been in. People remark on it all the time." That’s important from the evolutionary standpoint. It’s Mother Nature’s way: survival of the fittest. "Symmetry is a reliable evolutionary clue to health," he says. "Tumors and pathologies produce gross asymmetries, and our love for symmetry reflects the reproductive success of our ancestors, who were sensitive to these cues." He strives for what he calls the X-look, which Macgregor describes as "a symmetrical balance of mass in the shoulder girdle, upper chest and back, the calves and lower quads." That’s an evolutionary clue to the female of the species that good genes are present. De Vany says the X-look also makes men look taller, which women find attractive. (Guess that leaves me out.)

Our ancestors were highly sensitive to clues of health and clear skin and the right waist/hip, shoulder/hip ratios are quite reliable indicators of health," says De Vany. Research clearly shows that obesity is harmful, but most harmful when it is concentrated in the abdomen. "Our genes knew this before research demonstrated it," De Vany observes.

Can’t Wait for the Book

I find Professor De Vany and his theory of training fascinating, and not only because of the obvious similarities to my own approach. Evolution based fitness makes perfect sense. It goes without saying, of course, that evolutionary fitness is a flexible concept subject to many interpretations. I eagerly await the release of the book for a more complete explanation for the path chosen by Professor De Vany. He wouldn’t tell us when Evolutionary Fitness will be finished, but we’ll let you know as soon as it’s available.

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http://www.cbass.com/EvolutionaryFitness.htm

PROTEIN ~ YOUR KEY TO NUTRITIONAL SUCCESS!

One of the biggest mistakes many people make is that they don't pay attention to their muscle building nutrition with the same detail, desire and determination with which they pay attention to their weight training program.

If you neglect (or ignore completely) one or the other, whether it be your training or your nutrition, your results will only be a fraction of what they could be!

Look, you work extremely hard on your workouts. Don't screw it up by neglecting to be as dedicated to your nutrition program.

So let's talk about the importance of nutrition. The truth is, no one will ever gain muscle without food. Nutrition for building muscle is simply a matter of eating. But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot to learn.

The Best Muscle Building Supplement

So here's the question every dedicated Fitness enthusiast wants to know.

What's the best muscle building supplement available today?

You might not like the answer. It's not sexy, it's not new, but it works.

Your number one supplement should be a high quality protein powder.

I know you probably already know this. But it's worth repeating because I get a ton of questions from people wanting to know what is the best new miracle supplement they can buy. And they aren't getting enough quality protein.

Before buying any other supplements, make sure you are always taking in a high quality protein powder.

If you want to make outstanding muscle building progress, you must put together a solid weight training program, train with a high level of intensity, add poundage to your exercises as often as possible, eat six high protein meals every day, and make sure recovering from your workouts so that your muscles have time to grow.

Protein powders make it extremely easy and convenient to eat six meals a day and to get enough quality protein into your body.

Using protein shakes will make it easier for you to consume enough calories and protein each day, as well as making it much more convenient to have 6 meals a day. Who has time to prepare six meals a day? Not anybody I know, that's for sure.

You may need to add or subtract ingredients based on individual taste preferences and number of calories needed.

When I was younger, more active, and had a metabolism like a furnace, I needed all the quality muscle building calories I could get. And protein shakes like this were the only way to get them.

You should eat every 2 or 3 hours.

When you have your post-workout muscle building protein shake, throw in a serving of creatine as well if you like.

High quality protein, aka, "the real muscle building supplement" should be the center point of all your meals.

Intense exercise increases demand for protein, which support muscle repair and growth.

When you train with weights and you're looking to pack on pounds of quality muscle, you should try to eat a MAXIMUM of 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. If you weight 150 pounds, try and take in at least 150 grams of protein each and every day. More than that is not necessary.

You don't have to have carbs or fat at every meal, but you must have protein. When I say protein, I am referring to high quality protein derived from animal sources.

For getting more fit and stronger, the only protein you need to be concerned with are those found in whey, casein (cottage cheese), eggs, beef, poultry, and fish.

Throw in a high quality creatine product (Beachbody Men's Strength & Health Formula) and you are good to go. Stick with the dual muscle building protein/creatine stack for awesome muscle/Fitness gains.

A crucial time to get a lot of high quality protein is right after your intense weight training session.

One thing I've found that has helped my progress is to add a few more calories than I normally would and then drink part of the smoothie right before my workout, or even sip some of it during my workout so my muscles are constantly getting the nutrients they need, both to power my workout and to recover from it.

If you want to push your muscle/Fitness results forward and do it as fast as possible, you have to get your protein. There is no excuse to skimp in this area. You need plenty of protein. Nowadays, most protein powders taste great and many are pretty inexpensive when compared to food.

Mix your protein powder in Soy/Skim milk or water. Why? Quick muscle building!

The Importance of Post Workout Supplementation

I cannot overstate the vital importance of the post workout meal, or more specifically, the post workout drink.

You see, after a hard training session, your body is primed and ready to absorb all the nutrients it needs to help your body begin recovering from the muscle breakdown that has occurred during your training session.

Why a drink? Because your body is craving nutrients immediately following a hard training session and it needs them quickly. Your body will digest the nutrients in liquid form much more quickly than a solid fool meal.

During this time your body is ready, willing and able to quickly and completely absorb the protein that it needs. This will help to optimize protein synthesis, leading to a positive nitrogen balance, gains in muscle and strength, and the loss of body fat.

Of course, you need to constantly supply your body with the protein it needs to maintain and build muscle mass. However, the time right after a hard training session intensifies your body's ability to absorb the protein it needs.

Immediately after my weight workout I take my post workout drink. For this meal you want fast acting protein and fast acting carbs. This is one of those times you gladly want your body to release insulin, to help shuttle the much needed carbs and amino acids into the muscles.

Another great way to do it is to use a drink specifically designed to take advantage of the post workout opportunity as I mentioned earlier.

One goal...get better EVERY day!

THE IMPORTANCE OF FIBER

When we think of proper nutrition, we think about cutting calories, or ratios of fat, carbohydrates, and protein. However, very few people consider the advantages to incorporating fiber into their diet. Fiber is a nonessential complex carbohydrate that is indigestible by humans. Although it is nonessential, fiber is still recognized as a VERY important component of your diet.

Dietary Fibers

Dietary fiber has many advantages such as its ability to induce feelings of satiety, delay gastric emptying, lower cholesterol, reduce transit time in the colon, and reduce the glycemic response to certain foods.

What makes fiber indigestible to humans is the inability of our enzymes to breakdown certain carbohydrates, even though they may consist primarily of glucose (like most carbohydrates). The reason that our enzymes cannot breakdown fiber is due to its chemical structure.

Believe it or not, bananas and potatoes are almost completely resistant to digestive enzymes and reach the colon relatively intact!

There are seven major categories of fibers including cellulose, hemicellulose, pectic substances, gums, mucilage, algal polysaccharides, and lignin. Cellulose is the most common of these fibers, and can be found in the plant cell wall. Hemicelluloses are fibers that contain 5 and 6 carbon sugars. Pectic substances are water-soluble fibers rich in galacturonic acid. Gums are actually substances secreted by plants in response to injury. Mucilages are also water-soluble, and are used by plants to protect seeds. Algal polysaccharides are extracted from algae. Finally, lignin is found in woody plants.

The Different Catogories Of Fibers

Fiber can be categorized as soluble and insoluble. On nutrition labels, you will often see amounts of soluble and insoluble fiber in the carbohydrate section. So what's the difference? Generally, cellulose, lignin, and some hemicelluloses are insoluble and nonfermentable. On the other hand, pectins, gums, mucilages, and the other hemicelluloses are soluble and fermentable. The soluble fibers will more than likely make you pass gas, which is what fiber is famous for.

If you've ever eaten a large portion of beans or vegetables, you've probably noticed that you feel really full, and that your stomach seems like it sticks out further than normal (gastric distention). Since fiber is resistant to digestion in the stomach, the bulk that fiber adds to a meal produces feelings of fullness that can last for a long period of time. So, if you are reducing your caloric intake and still feel hungry after you eat, try incorporating some soluble fiber with your meals.

Also, soluble fibers form gels in the stomach and therefore slow gastric emptying. This results in a more uniform presentation of your meal to the small intestine for absorption. Since insoluble fibers do not form gels in the stomach, they have no effect on the rate of gastric emptying. Again, if you are getting hungry between meals when dieting, soluble fibers will help the food move slower from your stomach to your small intestine. This will keep you feeling fuller longer.

One drawback of soluble fiber intake is that the gel that is formed in your stomach can entrap other nutrients like other carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. This prevents enzymes needed for nutrient absorption from reaching the entrapped nutrients. By eating higher levels of protein and fat, this effect may be normalized. However, this entrapping effect of soluble fibers is also beneficial in that it improves glucose tolerance and lowers blood cholesterol. By improving glucose tolerance, blood glucose levels are lowered following meals with soluble fiber, the glycemic response of carbohydrates is then lowered, and thus insulin secretion is also lowered.

Insulin is one of the major anabolic hormones. For diabetics, decreasing blood glucose after a meal is obviously beneficial because the need for insulin is not as high as it normally would be. Thus, increasing the intake of soluble fiber can be used as a preventative and treatment method for diabetics.

The Effects Of Fiber

The effect of fiber on blood cholesterol is still being investigated. However, researchers believe that the mechanism by which fiber may lower blood cholesterol is accomplished in several different ways. By delaying gastric emptying, fiber affects the rate of lipid absorption, which influences lipoprotein formation, thus reducing the amount of cholesterol in the blood following a meal.

Within the colon (the large intestine), the ability of fiber to reduce transit time depends on whether or not it is soluble. Soluble fibers are more readily fermented by bacteria in the colon than are insoluble fibers. Therefore, more of the insoluble fiber remains in the feces, creating much more bulk than do the soluble fibers. Said another way, taking in more insoluble fiber increases the size of your feces than does soluble fiber. The increase in bulk also increases the amount of water-holding capacity within the feces. The combination of greater mass and greater moisture content contributes to a decrease in transit time within the colon.

How Much Fiber Should I Have?

Presently, there is no recommended dietary allowance for fiber. It is suggested that individuals take in 10 to 13 grams of fiber for every 1000 calories. The concentration of fiber in the diet should be increased with age, because energy requirements decline in older individuals.

Food sources of fiber include whole grain products, legumes, leafy vegetables, and some fruits such as apples, oranges, prunes, and raspberries.

Including fiber in your diet has many positive benefits for individuals trying to lose fat, or trying to improve their health status. Much more research must be performed before the real value of dietary fiber can be fully realized, but the results thus far are very promising.

FIBER, are you getting enough?

by Mike French

The Biggest Workout Mistakes People Make

I see it in every gym, people giving 110% doing some of the craziest things. People spending hours and hours in there daily for 7x a week, yet they look the same month after month. Clients spending $1000/month on private training yet their trainer has them doing stuff that is not even related to what their goals are. What is going on? There are more people working out nowadays, belonging to gyms, hiring personal trainers, buying supplements, on so called “diets”, and yet the results are not showing! Sadly it seems most people are making so many mistakes when it comes to training, yet they just keep right on trying. If we can see what we need to be doing, and more importantly what we don’t need to be doing….then maybe the results will start to finally show! These are the biggest workout mistakes that I see today:

• Focused on How Many Calories are Burned Working Out: Honestly what does this matter in the overall scheme of the whole day and fat burning? Assuming that fat burning is your goal, does that mean doing more and more exercise just burns more and more fat? NO! Who said you are even burning fat in the first place? What about stored glycogen? What about breaking down muscle? What about that subway sandwich you had an hour ago? Really this mentality is what is keeping most people from focusing on what matters, your eating! Diet/Nutrition is where 85% of your results come from and will even tell the body hormonally when to burn fat, and when to NOT burn fat. Forget how many calories you are spinning away, you don’t know what is really going on inside of you. Prime your body for all day fat burning and use your workouts as the right hormonal trigger for it.

• More is Better When it Comes to Working Out: This goes hand in hand with thinking that you are burning more fat with more exercise, which is not true. Not too mention the more people workout, the lower they drop their blood sugar and if they go too hard and go into a hypoglycemic state guess what will happen, they will rebound with sugar cravings and most likely end up drinking/eating more calories than they even burned in the first place. Not too mention the increase of cortisol you will get from extended workouts (over 45-60min) that will start to break down and use muscle as fuel. Also when it comes to resistance training, I see people wanting big muscles yet they do the same workout 4x a week. How is your body supposed to grow muscles if you keep breaking them down and never give them time to grow? Remember the saying that “muscles do not grow in the gym”. So resistance train a few times a week, then go home and eat and sleep to grow the muscles. How do you expect the build a big house (muscles) if you keep smashing it down during the construction period?

• Carb/Sport Drinks are OK Before, During and After a Workout: This could be titled instead “don’t believe everything you see on TV or read in advertisements”. If you look around you would think that you need Gatorade all day long (did you know they have an AM version? Are you kidding me?). So you have people working hard on a bike, rowing machine, treadmill (whatever) and then drinking a sugar drink for more energy? Ok, if you are an athlete and are training for increased endurance or power during a 3 hour workout and need ongoing fuel, then maybe you need something….but if you are the average person trying to burn fat and pumping sugar into your body in the process…..you are somehow expecting the rules of fat burning to not apply to you! Forget the workout drinks, drink some water and go burn some fat instead…..well that is only if your diet is also on target to allow you to.

• Not Lifting Heavy Enough: Whether it is women afraid to get bulky muscles (won’t happen), magazines saying you need high reps to “tone” (which is a fancy word for burning fat around a muscle….which doesn’t happen lifting something 50 times), or just people afraid to challenge their muscles for safety reasons. Hands down you get the best results for strength and muscles when you lift in a range of 5-10 reps. So if you are new to exercise, hire a trainer to show you how to properly and safely lift. Exercises and heavy weights do not hurt people……people doing all the wrong things hurt themselves! So forget all those magazines with 40 reps of some lying side leg lift…..go do some lunges and eat right and you will be more tone than anyone reading those magazines….as those people tend to have a lifetime subscription for a reason.

• Having No Real Set Plan (aka “Winging It”): While you don’t need anything overly complicated, you do need to have a plan. Whatever it may be, you need to know if you are progressing in your workouts and not just doing whatever exercises you “feel” like doing. That and you need to keep your rest periods short to get through your workout in 30min (40max). If you can’t get a workout done in 30min, you need a new plan! Most people at the gym are socializing and trading facebook profiles, and they also stay there for hours and look the same month after month. Do your workout, have a plan, get out of the gym and get on with your life……as life should be more than just working out.

• Using the Whole Maze of Gym Machines (Just because it is there): Just because a gym has 100 pieces of equipment to target your calves and rear deltoids….doesn’t mean you need to use them. In fact all you need is a few pieces of free weights and you get done all the exercises that really count. All the rest are just there to keep memberships up and to keep people coming back. Forget isolation exercises and focus on the basic compound movements (listed below). Machines may help people will some movements but overall you don’t need 95% of what is in a commercial gym nowadays.

• Mentality that You Need a Gym to Get in a Good Workout: This is probably the worse mental mistake people are making. Say you don’t have time to get to the gym, or are on the road travelling, or whatever other excuse you want to use…..so does that mean you can’t workout? NO. But many people will not because the gym is seen as the only place that they can workout. The gym industry is a tragedy in the sense that they make most their money off the 90% of people who sign up, show up for a week or two and then come back like 3x in the next year….yet get billed monthly. If you knew the break even point on membership for gyms you would probably laugh (as a small gym may need 500-1000 members, and a bigger gym 10,000+). You don’t need a gym to go run a trail, do some pushups on your living room floor, lunge across the kitchen, take the stairs at work, do some pullups at the park on the kid’s monkeybars, or whatever. No more thinking you need the gym….the gym may need you, but you don’t need it!

• Spot Reduction and Isolation Movements are the Focus: Want big triceps? Do some heavy dips. Want big biceps? Do some heavy chinups. Want big calves? Sprint! While you can add in some isolation movements in a workout if you like, they should be at the end and all done within 10minutes. The bulk of your workout (whether you goal is fat loss or gaining muscle) should be with compound body movements (see a pattern here?) like squat, deadlift, overhead press, pullups, etc. Isolation movements are for bodybuilding magazines to keep writing about so they can sell new subscriptions for years to come. Want abs? Then hold something heavy over your head and brace it with your abs….or do a plank. Forget the situps and go focus where it matters….with your eating.

Ok so we have gone over alot of mistakes people make, but now what are some of the solutions then? It’s easy…..keep it simple and focused and consistent…..results will follow!

• Eat Real Whole Foods to Burn Fat and Exercise will just Accelerate it: We know that eating whole non-processed foods are the best way to burn fat and gain muscle. Eat whole food proteins, healthy fats, veggies, fruits, nuts….and skip the breads, cereals and other processed foods. You need amino acids, vitamins, minerals and many other nutrients available in plenty with whole foods for maximum fat burning and muscle building. Eat a diet of whole foods, forget the stuff that is destroying your body (esp sugar!)

• Keep Your Main Workouts Short and Intense: It doesn’t matter how many calories you burn during a workout, what does matter is how much fat you can burn all day! Short and intense workouts are not only great to stimulate fast twitch muscle fibers but to also get the right hormones going (such as GH) to burn fat and build muscles. Keep your rest short (30 sec) between your sets if you are lifting weight and add intervals before any cardio session. Doing that along with proper eating will get amazing results.

• Have an Active Lifestyle, Go Play! Life is fun! So go play with your friends, dog, kids or just off by yourself. Go hiking, biking, walking, rowing, dancing, boxing, frisbee in the park…..whatever you find fun and interesting. Some of the best bodies you will ever see are people who are very athletic and active (and may not even have a clue how to lift weights and workout). Enjoy what you do and chances are you will do it for a long time to come (and probably live longer because of it)

• Keep Your Workouts Simple and Effective. Focus on Movements that Count: I always say get in-get out in 30min. If you can’t get a good workout in 30min, then you need to rethink what you are doing. More is not better when it comes to resistance training, smart is better! You don’t need some super secret Russian-East German Progressive Overload training system from 1965 either. The basic full body movements like squat, lunge, pushup, bench, pullup, bent rows, overhead press, cleans, snatches, and deadlifts will get your more bang for your buck if you challenge yourself and keep the progress going. I don’t care if you do 5×5 or 3×10s. Do them with intensity and with heavy enough weights and then go eat and recover. You can add in secondary movements at the end of your workouts (like arms or planks for abs) but they are not the main focus. Results are simple yet we think we need a super complicated program to get them. Don’t get “paralysis by analysis”, just take action and modify as you go. Need more help for what to do for workouts? Well guess what….your solution is now here.
  

• Stop Listening to Advertisements and Magazines: You don’t need a gatorade, you are not training for 4 hours a day like a professional athlete, there is no such thing as spot reduction no matter how many ab crunches you do (or whatever ab-infomercial tries and sell you on). Advertisements and magazines are there to sell you on something, just remember that.

• Do Your Workouts Anywhere and Just do Something Daily: Have some fun and make fitness a part of your daily lifestyle! Think you can’t get a good workout at home or at the park? Think again…..all you need is your body and a way to make it move and work the muscles. Pushups, pullups, squats, lunges, planks, dips…lots of things to do. You can also use minimal equipment and bring it with you like some dumbbells, kettlebells, set of bands and use simple equipment outdoors like a playground, set of rings or bodyweight bars (as seen above). Do it in your backyard, on your porch, in your garage…wherever!

• (Re)Read these Posts: I made these a while back to help people know what really matters, and it helps to keep re-reading and seeing where you need to focus on for results: Fat Loss 101 and Muscle Building 101.
  

So there you have it. All the things you need to be successful in your workouts. Again remember the most important things are to focus on eating right, keep your workouts simple and intense, do the major movements with resistance, and then just keep active and consistent with your workouts. Before you know it, months will pass and you will be amazed at where you are! So start today with something….and most importantly just enjoy your fitness lifestyle! Go Play!

Shedding Fat

There are many fads and fallacies regarding fat loss. The bottom line is this; you will not lose fat if you cut calories dramatically, and you will only lose body fat (and keep it off) if you burn calories through regular exercise! It really is that simple. The part that everyone finds so challenging is figuring out this balance between calorie consumption and calorie expenditure; what do I eat, when do I eat it and what kind of exercise will optimize fat loss. Then the only hurdle is actually doing the work!

One thing I know for sure: DIETS DON'T WORK!!

This is particularly true with females. In the book "Outsmarting the Female Fat Cell", Debra Waterhouse makes it very clear that females come equipped with significantly more lipogenic (fat storing) enzymes and significantly less lipolytic (fat releasing) enzymes than their male counterparts. She also cites studies showing that a female's lipogenic enzyme count increases and lipolytic enzyme count decreases after a calorie-restricted diet, making it increasingly harder to lose weight with each and every successive diet!

A man's body doesn't appreciate dieting either. It's not uncommon to seemany male back pain patients undergo hospital directed diets, lose 60 pounds, and gain it all back in as little as a month. Coming off a diet to start eating "normally" again is like the tide coming in!

Instead of starving your body to shed fat, a more effective method is to increase the amount of energy you expend. Muscle cells are fuel hungry machines. Consequently any exercise that increases the size of muscle cells and makes them work more often will increase metabolism for optimal fat loss. Sounds to me like resistance training tops out again! It is well known among strength training professionals and researchers that there is a significant post-exercise elevation of metabolism, lasting up to 3-4 hours after your weight training session ends. This is an important consideration when deciding between cardio work or resistance training for fat loss. Since cardiovascular exercise provides very little post-exercise elevation of metabolism, your cells stop burning extra energy when you get done with your run, bike, swim, etc. Compare this to a good, solid weight training session where your metabolism keeps nibbling away at that fat for hours.

To see this in action, look at any group of athletes whose predominant exercise consists of resistance training, or short, high intensity sprint work. Sprinters are some of the very leanest athletes in the world. Olympic Weight lifters would rather be castrated than go for a run, yet they are predominantly a very lean group. Bodybuilders, by simple observation, are far leaner than those trying to lose fat by aerobics alone.

Body Pump is a highly popular free weight training class choreographed to music and taught in a group setting. Take a look around - you'll be amazed at the incredibly lean, fit looking bodies in the room. If you view an aerobics class, you just don't see the same thing. In fact, IDEA released a study a couple years ago indicating that aerobics instructors had an average body fat of >20%, which is suprisingly high for what could be considered a professional athlete.

The whole physiology of someone who lifts weights is geared up to burn calories. The opposite is true of aerobicisers, whose physiology is like that of a Honda Civic; stretching a gallon of fuel for 40 miles. When you want to lose fat, you want to be like a Cadillac or a Hot Rod; you want to be fuel inefficient! Therefore you want to do exercises in such a manner that fuel efficiency is sacrificed.

I have had very good results using the following circuit concept: 5 compound exercises back to back with less than 1:30 seconds rest. The rest periods become progressively shorter as the clients' condition and tolerance for lactic acid improves. Initial weight loss may be due to the fact that they are woofing their cookies between circuits, but within a few sessions clients learn to come rested and with less in their stomachs! This format causes huge caloric expense during and after training because the exercises chosen are predominantly closed chain with free weights. This type of program causes your body to reach states of near meltdown, which activates your thermo-regulatory system, burning even more calories. The program is done 3-4 times per week with intensities of 70-80% 1RM, cycling various exercises in and out to prevent injury.

Another useful method is to eat dinner within three hours of going to sleep. I highly recommended a large protein-rich breakfast, a well-balanced lunch, and dinner as the smallest meal of the day for those needing to "shake some weight".

So there you have it, if you want to lose fat, do the following:

1. DON'T DIET! Eat a nutritious well balanced diet to discourage "survival" fat storage.
2. Make your first two meals of the day the largest. Eat snacks as needed to convince your body you're not starving, so you don't activate lipogenic enzymes
3. Eat your smallest meal of the day for dinner, remembering to give three hours between eating and hitting the sack.
4. Use resistance training to increase muscle mass, increase cellular metabolism and become FUEL INEFFICIENT
5. Apply periodic cycles of high intensity circuit training. Format your circuits with 5 compound exercises, short rest periods, bring a towel so you don't sweat all over everyone and prepare to up-chuck if you eat too close to your training session.

I have been applying these principles with great success. I am sure you can create the body you've always wanted with them if I can!

RECOVERY and EXTRA workouts

Folks, whatever your PRIMARY workout each day should be your focus. People think that they need to do extra workouts EVERY day to get faster results. This is simply not true.

Realize that your body has a FINITE amount of energy to repair/build muscle and recover from your workouts. If you are applying the PROPER intensity to your workouts, you don't need to do ANYTHING else. Every time you do additional workouts during the day you are taking away from your body's ability to recovery.

SIMPLE RULE: NO RECOVERY = NO PROGRESS Make no mistake about this.

Remember my Note a few weeks ago about Leaning out by adding muscle? How can you add muscle if your body can't recover from 2 workouts a day?

RECOVERY is the key to EVERYTHING folks.

Think of your body like a Bank account:

Your RECOVERY is deposits in the Bank. Your workouts are withdrawals from the Bank.

What happens when your withdrawals outnumber your deposits?

We need to be stronger EVERY day. You can't get stronger if you can't recover from your workouts.

Realize that building metabolism enhancing muscle will get you leaner FASTER than tons of EXTRA cardio will.

I will give you an excellent example: ME

During my first round of the P90X I was doing the EIFB (Extreme Interval Fat Burner) almost daily during the last 30 days in an effort to get as lean as possible.

I did get very lean, and I also got down to 168 lbs. Too light for my frame. I burned precious muscle in an effort to lean out.

Lets compare this to my current strategy to lean out for my end of year in 2007.

I did NO extra cardio in my efforts to lean out. I was getting STRONGER every workout and giving each workout 100%.

Emphasizing getting stronger, building muscle, and RECOVERING has made all the difference in the world for me.

Here are some thoughts on RECOVERY:

Workouts provide the stimulus for change; the change itself (an improvement in fitness level) takes place during the periods between workouts. How quickly and completely this recovery takes place is result of many commonly overlooked factors, including specific dietary habits, supplementation, age and personal stress levels, just to name a few.

Factors That Effect Recovery Rates

Age - Older individuals will need longer recovery periods than their younger counterparts. It is suggested that around 25 years old is when most trainees will need to start to allow for longer recovery periods.

Experience - More experienced trainees will need less recovery time than new trainees will.

Psychological Factors - Never underestimate the power of the mind. Work, finances, personal relationships and basic everyday life can all cause stress. If left unchecked stress can have very powerful physical manifestations - headaches, insomnia and an increase in catabolic hormones such as cortisol, just to name a few.

Replenishment of Nutrients - The availability of key micro- and macronutrients in a person's nutrition will have a large impact on recovery.

While not usually considered therapeutic, nutrition plays a huge role in the speed and completeness of recovery. Your body needs raw materials to repair and restore bodily systems stressed by training and without adequate nutrition those materials will not be available. Vitamins, minerals, water, protein, carbs and fats must all be present in proper amounts in order for the body to fully recover from training.

A deficiency in even one key nutrient could slow this process down greatly, if not grind it to a complete halt. Proper nutrition can not be stressed enough when talking about the overall success of a fitness program and most trainees' frustration about their lack of progress can be traced back to this recovery factor.

RECOVERY folks...How is yours?

BALANCE ~ IN YOUR FITNESS AND YOUR LIFE

Attaining and maintaining balance in Life is the biggest challenge facing many people today. Balance is maintaining a healthy, consistent lifestyle on a daily basis in mind, and body, regardless of your situation or circumstance.

Keep your Mind Balanced

A balanced mind means that you are aware of your thoughts and the things that you choose to think about. Many folks allow their mind to wander throughout the day. The goal is to enjoy each day as if it were your last. In order to cultivate this thought process, your thoughts have to be focused on the present moment.

Yesterday is in the past. There is nothing we can do to go back and change what has already happened. Learn from your mistakes. When you dwell on failure you can trigger depressive feelings such as regret. Work through these feelings and let them go. If we let what happened in the past impact today in negative ways, we remain locked to the past. ALWAYS move forward!

Another place that we allow our thoughts to wander is when we think of the future. These thoughts will cause feelings of anxiety, fear of the unknown and unnecessary pressure. Thoughts of the future, beyond planning and goal setting, can also take away from your focus on the moment and keep you off balance. The reality is that we can only take forward steps toward our goals in the hours that we are awake. Take each day, one at a time. Each day is an opportunity and a gift, which is why they call it the present, an old saying that makes a heck of a lot of sense! To attain and maintain balance in your mind, keep your thoughts focused on the present.

Keep Your Body Balanced

A balanced body involves exercise, proper nutrition, enough sleep and an overall healthy lifestyle. Workout hard 6 days a week and you will do your strength, cardiovascular Fitness, and flexibility a world of good! Exercise releases natural endorphins that help your body to relax and feel good. Don't focus too heavily on any one discipline. Strength without an efficient cardiovascular system is not good and if you neglect your flexibility you are doing your body and Fitness a HUGE disservice. The overall physical goal that we should be striving for is to be ready for any physical activity at any time. Swimming, running a long distance or sprinting, climbing, lifting weights, Yoga, hiking, etc. Be ready for all of it, at any time!

Monitoring your daily food intake and becoming aware of the types of food that your body needs and best responds to also helps you attain and maintain your balance. Focus on eating nutritious, healthy foods that you enjoy. Proper nutrition doesn't need to be complicated. This will allow you to stay disciplined over the long haul. This is essential in being healthy for a lifetime!

Another essential element in maintaining balance is getting 7-8 hours of sleep each night. Most people do not get enough sleep. When you get your rest, you recover from your workout more efficiently, your mood improves, and you are more mentally alert. Get a good nights rest and feel the difference!

Limit your intake of alcohol, drink at least 8 glasses of water per day, don't smoke, take nutritional supplements that help you push towards your Fitness goals.

When you try and keep a balance in your life, good things happen....

by Mike French

TAKE YOUR FITNESS PERSONALLY!

There is a mindset that moves you closer to your Fitness goals. It's a positive, aggressive mindset and we need to try and cultivate this mindset every day in regards to making progress towards our Fitness goals.

NEVER use the word CAN'T. If you think you will never achieve six pack abs or do 10 pull-ups, guess what? You never will! Focus and visualize your goals until you SEE them happening in your mind. Concentrate so hard on succeeding that you can actually FEEL what it will be like to achieve them. Then GO OUT AND MAKE IT HAPPEN!

You know who determines your Fitness success? You do! No one else! Not your Wife/Husband, children, Family, NO ONE BUT YOU!! Don't blame anyone but yourself if you eat something that sets you back. YOU control your Fitness destiny!

One of the greatest motivators in the world is proving someone wrong that doubts you. It happens everyday. "You will never have a six pack." "You can't eat like that for the rest of your life." EVERYONE has someone like this in their life. It might be a co-worker, a best friend or the person that is most important to you in the world. Internalize that doubt and turn it into FIRE !

Use that negative energy as fuel for your workouts, nutrition, and supplementation.

Who cares if you get funny looks or comments because you brought your supplements and a protein bar to a Family gathering. When the Office is having a pizza party and you are drinking extra water and eating chicken breast and brown rice, look at them and smile. They are taking time off their lives, and you are adding to yours!

Take the attitude that NO MATTER WHAT, you will not quit on yourself. U.S. Navy Seals cultivate this attitude. It doesn't matter how difficult the task, they are going to accomplish it.

We need to do the same. How difficult is eating clean all day? How difficult is working out HARD for 50 minutes? IT IS ONLY AS DIFFICULT AS YOU MAKE IT IN YOUR OWN MIND!

Would you rather eat clean all day and reap the Fitness benefits or weakly eat a "Little something" that ruins your entire days nutrition in less than 2 minutes?

Am I saying NEVER eat treats? Of course not!

The difference is in the choice. If we choose to have a treat because we EARNED one from a TON of hard work, that is fine because we made that choice. When you give in to eating a slice of cake or "just a couple of cookies" on impulse just before bed time, that is where you have an issue.

Get "ANGRY" folks. There is nothing wrong with using properly channeled anger to push your Fitness forward. The anger needs to be controlled and focused. When you can let it loose in your training in a focused manner, you have an energy that can be described! It's like you drank a Keg of espresso! Its an amazing feeling and near magical things can happen when you let it loose!

Is Plyo [or insert your most dreaded routine] on the schedule for your workout? Get ANGRY! Think to yourself "Ok PLYO, it's you and me today! I'm not backing down from you! Give me your best shot because you are going to get mine!" Conquer your workout! Don't be apprehensive or think, "Wow, this is going to hurt." Attack your workout! Tell yourself "Is this the toughest workout you could come up with? I OWN this workout and I'm going to use it as a tool to MAKE ME BETTER....TODAY!"

Have a confident swagger in regards to your Fitness and nutrition. I know people that look at meals as an athletic event. It's inspiring to see. They makes proper choices and then eats A LOT of the foods that push his Fitness forward. Same with their workouts. They aggressively push as hard as they can. They fight self doubt, insecurity, and fear with every rep. Do the same!

It's all a choice Team. You can use some positive, motivating ANGER and push your Fitness forward or you can be someone on their "6th Round of the X" that looks like they still need to complete their first. Which is it going to be?

The Thermogenic Effect of Foods We Eat

When I say "thermogenic," many people instantly think of fat burning supplements or exotic herbs, green tea, etc., which are designed to ramp up your metabolism and burn off body fat.

Concentrating on tiny details (especially before you’ve mastered the basics of nutrition) is putting the cart before the horse. It’s like getting excited by the (misguided) idea that drinking enough ice cold water is "thermogenic" and is going to get you ripped because the body has to "warm it up" and that expends energy... when meanwhile, people are skipping meals, drinking beer on weekends and working out sporadically. This makes no sense to me. We need to look at the big picture.

ALL foods are "thermogenic" because the body must use energy to digest them. This is known as the "thermic effect of food" (TEF). When you say "thermogenic food" to me, I think of REAL, WHOLE FOODS.

The most thermogenic fat burning food is lean protein from solid foods, especially the following:

• chicken breast
• turkey breast
• bison, buffalo
• very lean red meat such as top round and lean sirloin
• almost all types of fish
• shellfish and other seafood
• egg whites (limit the yolks)

Protein powders are conveneint and some - like WHEY - even have functional properties (as antioxidants and immune boosters), but powders aren't as thermogenic as real food. They are easily broken down by the body.

Focusing on highly thermogenic WHOLE foods (and not a lot of shakes or powdered drink mixes) can really crank up your metabolism due to the thermic effect of whole food.

It’s commonly known that of all the macronutrients (protein, carbs and fat), lean protein has the highest thermic effect.

I believe the thermic effect of protein is even higher than most people realize.

When you combine thermogenic lean protein foods with the right amounts and types of essential fats, add in plenty of green vegetables and just the right amount of natural starchy carbs and whole grains, your body will literally turn into a turbo-charged fat burning machine. - without eliminating food groups (carbs).

Select a green vegetable or fibrous vegetable such as asparagus, green beans, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, salad vegetables, etc., and then combine that with one of the lean proteins (mentioned above).

That is the foundation of your fat burning meal (lean protein + fibrous carb). From there, add: Starchy carbs or grains such as brown rice, oats, or sweet potatoes Fruit is also quite acceptable (Nature's Candy)

Make sure to focus more on the green and fibrous vegetables due to their lower caloric density.
Eat most of your carbs (starches and grains and simple sugars) early in the day and right after your weight training - the two times when insulin sensitivity is at it's highest.

Follow these simple rules and reap the amazing benefits of the Thermogenic effects of food!

by Mike French

BEYOND 90 DAYS...FITNESS FOR A LIFETIME!

Our Society is obsessed with Fitness and Nutrition. There are new workout programs and nutrition “miracles” being produced everyday. Some people have decided that Fitness just “isn’t for them”.

Our Society has grown to accept that is “ok” to be sluggish and overweight. Eating whatever people want and wondering why they feel and look worse, month after month.

People find every excuse to eat something they shouldn’t or to skip a workout. “When I get home from work, I just don’t have the energy to workout.” “Its too expensive to eat healthy.”

My personal favorite is “I just don’t have the time to workout.” LOL! I have the same 24 hours that that person does and I manage to work a full and part time job, give my wife and son the attention they deserve, and workout EVERYDAY!

People are constantly looking for the “Secret” or something that will give them that extra edge. Doesn’t matter if it’s a diet, workout or supplement. “THE ONLY THING YOU NEED TO ACHIEVE FITNESS IS YOUR BODY, A MINDSET OF REFUSING TO QUIT, AND WHOLE HEALTHY FOODS THAT YOU PUT INTO YOUR BODY.”

Don’t fall into the trap of trying to use science as a crutch to make up for lack of workout effort and nutritional discipline. An example of this is someone that uses a “Fat Burner” and their Nutrition isn’t spot on. It's like eating a combination pizza and a “Diet” soda…What’s the point?

There is a saying that I absolutely love:

YOU CAN'T OUTRUN A BAD DIET!

What does this mean? You can't burn enough calories in a day to make up for poor nutritional choices. The calories it takes you an hour to burn can be ingested in 30 seconds! Not really fair, but it's the hand we have been given!

Want me to make it simple?

EXERCISE REGULARLY AND EAT HEALTHY FOODS IN MODERATION

Do both of those things every day, for the rest of your life. Stop making excuses and start taking responsibility for your own Fitness!!!

The Key to real Health and Fitness is consistency. Most people lack the commitment to get in shape and really make a difference in their lives.

We live in a world of fast food results. We want our food NOW! (Why do fast food restaurants serve more people daily than any other type of restaurant? Why do people continue to eat there, even though they KNOW for a fact that there is nothing that could be worse for them and their health?) We want results NOW! When it doesn't happen we get frustrated and start looking for other ways to do it.

We want the quick fix. Six Pack Abs in 6 weeks! Get ripped for summer with the latest routine and diet in Muscle & Fitness magazine. Magazines LOADED with the latest supplements to add muscle, get rid of fat quicker than the next guy. Are they concerned with our health or making money? Clearly it is the ladder.

That is why Beachbody Products are such a blessing for all of us. Fitness first. REAL programs and supplements that WORK! We need to think beyond 90 days from now. Think 5, 10, 20 years from now!

All that really matters is how long we live and how healthy we are during that lifespan. Our health is precious and we need to take care of it.

Do everything TODAY to give yourself the best chance to live a long and productive life. Then replicate it tomorrow!

Fitness success comes from relentless hard work. Once you have it, you need to work to keep it. If you don’t it leaves allot quicker than it took to achieve it. Train hard. Be proud of your Fitness and don't apologize for it!

Get in shape and then NEVER put yourself in a position where you have to “Get back in shape.”

Train to be ready for ANYTHING that might come your way. Running, swimming, and obstacle course, a pick up football game at a Family Reunion.

I hope it never happens to any of us but what are we going to do if we have to swim out into the ocean to save a loved one, or your Family is involved in a car accident and you are forced to “run” to get assistance? Will you be ready? That is not the time to wish you had paid your dues with your workouts and nutrition.

Granted, those are worst case scenarios but if you prepare for the worst, you will be prepared for anything.

Build strong, flexible, muscles, improve your cardiovascular Fitness, and burn calories.

LEAN AND MEAN rules the day.

CHALLENGE your heart and lungs everyday! True “MASS APPEAL” is a lean, trim, physique with long flexible muscles. It contributes to our overall health and longevity and makes us look and feel better!

WE CAN GET LEAN AND STAY LEAN ONCE WE HAVE COMMITTED TO TRAINING FOR LIFE.

Don't let your GOALS become your limits. It's easy to “relax” once you have achieved a goal. Don't waste time and let what you have achieved slip away slowly. Set new goals and then set out to accomplish them! Move forward and really see what you are made of and what you can accomplish!

One of my favorite quotes:

“YOU KNOW WHY I WILL ACCOMPLISH MY GOAL? BECAUSE YOU SAID I COULDN'T DO IT!”

It's not how much weight you lift, it's how hard you work when you lift it. Remember, we are not just training for today but for many years down the road. Pay particular attention to your ABS and lower back. Your CORE is the key to your future health and fitness.

What you do today affects the rest of your life. We want to look and feel good right now, but we also want to look and feel good when we are eighty. Our lives are the sum total of our daily activities.

Are your activities going to be positive and healthy, or negative and unhealthy? The choice is ours.

What should be EVERYONE’S goal?

GET BETTER EVERY DAY!

Strive for daily improvement. Vow to get better every day. Forget about the past and don’t worry about the future. Concentrate on the present, what you can control RIGHT NOW.

If you improve your Fitness today, the future will take care of itself...

Even the best exercise plan can be destroyed by eating too much or eating the wrong types of foods. Eating a dessert can add more calories than you could hope to burn in an intense hour long workout.

Scary as it is, you could ruin your entire day of nutrition and hard work in your workouts in less than 5 minutes by eating junk food.

Exercise: Body Weight
130 lbs. 155 190
Calories Burned in 1 hour
Calisthenics (such as Total Body PLUS, a P90X+ routine), vigorous effort 472 593 690

(1) 100 gram Kit Kat Candy bar has the following “Nutritional Value”
a. 520 calories
b. 32 grams of fat
c. 46 grams of sugar

Depending on your body weight by eating ONE candy bar you have exceeded or almost exceeded ONE hour of a Butt Kicking workout like Total Body Plus.

It doesn’t need to be a candy bar. It could be a forkful of our kids macaroni and cheese followed by a “small” chocolate and “Only one soda”. It all adds up and before you know it you have taken in hundreds of extra calories that you don’t need.

Believe me, I know because I did the same thing. I had to fight each day to reclaim my “Abs” and conditioning. Don’t make the same mistake I did.

No more excuses. No more , “Well it was only something small, it won’t hurt me.” You better believe it will. Make no mistake about that. Once you get into the habit of having “something small” every once in while, it quickly becomes every day.

Am I saying NEVER eat cake or candy again? Of course not. Make it a special treat, like at a Birthday Party or Holiday, not something you do because you are bored.

No More Excuses, make a difference in your future...TODAY!