There will be days (everyday?) when you don't feel like doing your
workout.
Somedays you don't want to get out of bed.
Sometimes you don't want to leave your office because you feel like
there are too many deadlines (but this is when you need a workout
the most!).
Some nights you don't want to end story time with the kids only to
head down to the basement gym.
It even happens to me.
For example, just yesterday I was scheduled to do a final test run
through the February TT Workout of the Month (it's a TT circuit!)
and frankly, I wasn't up for it.
But I knew I'd feel like a million bucks after the workout. And in
the end, I know I can't let myself become "soft" and start skipping
workouts. I have to lead by example.
So if you are set on achieving a goal, then when it's workout time,
come heck or high water you've got to bear down and do the job.
Here are 7 tips for you to get inspired to get through your workout.
1) Reward yourself. Finish your workout and treat yourself to a
magazine, a TV show, some extra time with your family, some new
songs for your IPOD, or even a little extra time for yourself.
2) Or set up a punishment for missing workouts. Skip the workout,
put $20 into a jar to spend on home repairs. Just make sure your
spouse controls the money!
3) Review your goals everyday and every night. Keeping your goals
fresh in your mind will help you stay on track.
4) Realize that the hardest part of the workout is often getting
your butt to the gym. Once you get 5 minutes into the workout, you
will be over the hump. So tell yourself, "I'll just go in and do 1
set of the first 2 exercises, then I can go". Next thing you know,
you'll have done the entire workout.
5) Visualize yourself doing a great workout and finishing strong.
Get yourself mentally prepared and you will literally have better
workouts each time.
6) Crank the tunes. Seriously, nothing motivates like music. I'd
love to hear what tunes get you motivated for workouts and help you
jack up the intensity. Let me know on the TT forums.
7) Get social support. If you have a workout partner, you'll feel
like crap if you let them down. Or become accountable to everyone
in the Turbulence Training workout forums...if you don't post your
workouts, they'll track you down and demand to know why you've
fallen off track! So online or offline, get everyone on your side!
Get started...
==> http://www.turbulencetraining.com
Here we are, 3 weeks into January, and there are lots of men and
women thinking about quitting their fat loss programs. In fact, some
of them may have abandoned them already...often only days before
the results were about to appear in the mirror and on the scale.
I realize we are long past the first week of the year when everyone
is "gung-ho" about diet and exercise, and I'm very worried some of
you might be back to your old bad habits or are frustrated and ready
to pack it in.
Why?
Because maybe you just haven't had the results you expected, right?
You've strayed from the diet plan a little more often than you
should have, you missed a couple of workouts because you got sick,
or the kids were sick. Or you worked late. Or it was too cold to go
to the gym. Or maybe it is closed today for the Martin Luther King
holiday. Yes, those are all excuses we make from time to time.
But don't give up. Don't quit!
And there's no better day to pass along that message than today, as
many states in the USA are honoring Martin Luther King. There
was a man who did not quit.
So I hope he can serve as an inspiration to you not only in how to
treat others, but also how to persevere in hard times in order to
reach all of your goals, including your burning desire to lose fat
and finally change your body.
Don't let this be like other years, where your good intentions were
gone before you had a chance to reap the benefits of eating right
and doing the short TT workouts.
Don't give in because you lost 3 pounds in week 1 and nothing since.
Don't quit just because everyone else in the gym is dropping out.
Don't stop even if you ate too much last week, because you can
still get back on track today!
Whatever you do, don't quit!
You owe it to yourself, your spouse, your kids, your co-workers,
and everyone else who is depending on you to be the healthy role
model in their lives.
And if you still need to get started, use the Turbulence Training
for Fat Loss program:
==> http://www.turbulencetraining.com
You can still enter the TT Transformation Contest if you get your
photos up in the member's area today.
Forget about quitting and focus on re-starting. You have the rest of
your life to be lean and fit, don't give up now.
Stay strong,
With all the talk about obesity, you may be wondering what your
child should actually weigh. While adults can use the Body Mass
Index to determine their ideal weight, the scale for children is
different. It's based on percentages.
If your child weighs more than children in the 95th percentile, he
or she is considered overweight. Above the 85th percentile and
your child is considered to be at risk of becoming overweight.
You can see the growth charts for boys and girls age 2-20 by going
to www.cdc.gov/growthcharts.
It's important to remember that this is just a general guideline.
You shouldn't become too obsessed with making your child's weight
fit into a specific category. Instead, worry about his or her
overall health.
If your child is approaching the 85th percentile, you'll want to
look at your family's lifestyle and see where you can make
improvements. You should also talk to your pediatrician before you
make the determination that your child is overweight.
It's important to help your child maintain a healthy weight because
that will contribute to a healthy adult weight. However, it's also
important that you take things in moderation. Constantly weighing
your child and becoming fanatical about keeping his weight on
target can do more harm than good.
Use your common sense to monitor your child's weight. Help your
child to have a healthy lifestyle by providing her with a
nutritious diet and plenty of opportunities to exercise. It's also
critical for you to be a good role model.
You can't expect for your child to change her lifestyle while you
keep the same unhealthy one. When you work to keep the whole
family healthy, your child will be more likely to have a healthy
weight.
Rachel at YAYFood gives lots of tips on how to change our lifestyle and that it not just about us but also our childred. Visit her site here: http://www.YAYFood.com/
Just a quick one today...giving you three of the most important
things you need to be doing to burn fat.
1) Use www.fitday.com to figure out your food intake.
You can't just "wing it". You can't "eyeball" your food intake, as
research shows that even nutritionists underestimate how much food
they are eating.
So find out exactly how many calories you are eating each day. If
you aren't losing fat, it's a simple numbers game. You are eating
too much. And if you know your numbers, its easy to make the
necessary changes.
As one TT client said on the message boards...
"Ok, I input all my meals on Fitday yesterday, including 2 cheats
that I didn't think were a big deal. One was a handful of trail mix
and the other was a handful of goldfish crackers. (yes, I have kids
:-) ) I can't believe how just those two seemingly harmless snacks
added up!! No wonder I have a muffin top! Yikes! So thanks for the
tip about Fitday because that's going to keep me accountable."
Use it and lose it!
2) Use the right recovery pace in your interval training
The biggest mistake people make in interval training is working too
hard during the recovery period.
But if you work too hard in the recovery period, you end up turning
your interval training back into a normal cardio session.
So lose the cardio mentality and be sure to alternate between
periods of harder than normal exercise, and very easy exercise.
Use the recovery period to recover!
3) Plan your food intake on the weekend
Set aside time to plan, shop, and prepare several days worth of
meals. Use a Saturday or Sunday afternoon to cook some chicken
breasts, prepare some raw vegetables, wash your fruit, and pack up
your nuts.
Plan ahead and you won't succumb to vending machine follies, or gas
station sabotage on your diet.
Click here to get started with Turbulence Training for Fat Loss:
==>http://www.turbulencetraining.com
Tis' the season for cardio horror stories.
One woman wrote, "I started out doing 5 hours of cardio per week. No
results. So I upped it to 7 hours per week. Still nothing. Do you
suggest I do more? I'm worried if I use your program, I won't get
any results because you don't even have an hour of interval cardio
per week. Please help!"
And from a gentleman on the Men's Health forum, "I took up running
and didn't take up stretching until it was almost to late and
almost destroyed a knee. What happened was that my IT bands got
really tight and my inner quads didn't gain any strength so my knee
cap got pulled out of place. I had an MRI done on my knee and have
found that my knee cap has bruised my femur. "
Cardio horror stories are a dime-a-dozen. So here's the bottom line
on cardio...
Long slow aerobic training remains the biggest practical joke in
fitness. Marathon running for the average overweight person? Why
don't you just tell someone to go play in traffic...oh wait, that's
exactly what they are doing - all while crushing their joints with
excess weight and repetitive pounding.
If you do long, slow cardio, its only a matter of time before you
end up in a physiotherapist's office with all the others that do
too much of the same thing...whether its running or spin classes,
overuse injuries are far too common in the cardio world.
After all, what's easier to overdo, total body strength training
done 3 times per week for 20 minutes, or the same cardio activity
done for 6-9 hours per week?
Heck, I once knew a physiotherapist who was so addicted to spin
classes that she had overuse injuries that prevented her from
walking normally! Physio, heal thyself!
What a joke that cardio is...
But cardio fits our "more is better" mentality, doesn't it? We go
right from a 3000 calorie meal at the Outback Steakhouse to our 60
minute cardio confessional sessions on the elliptical. More, more,
more, more. And yet get less results?
There is a better way.
Take a peek at the weight room when you are in a gym. Then compare
the bodies there to the bodies on the elliptical. You'll find the
sculpted, toned physiques lifting dumbells and doing pushups, and
the plump, "never changing physiques" spinning their tires over on
the cardio equipment.
No matter what the city, no matter where the gym, its the same old
story.
Burn fat, get lean, and boost your metabolism with resistance
training. Finish with short interval training or even bodyweight
circuits (described in my DB-BW Fusion TT Workout Bonus) and you
are off to the fat burning races.
Or get left behind on the cardio equipment that is getting you
nowhere!
Visit http://www.turbulencetraining.com/ to get the program today!
If you're like most people, you love to pour rich, creamy dressing
all over the vegetables in your salad. And while you may think
you're eating healthier because you're eating your veggies, the
salad dressing may be weighing you down more than you realize.
Salad dressings, while tasty, are often full of fat and calories
that you don't need when you're trying to slim down and get
healthy. But there are alternatives that are healthier for your
body yet still delicious.
One option is to mix olive oil or flaxseed oil with red wine or
balsamic vinegar. You need one part oil to one part vinegar. You
may also want to salt and pepper it before shaking to mix the two
ingredients together.
While olive oil and flaxseed oil have fat and calories, they are a
healthy source of fat that your body needs. In fact, flaxseed oil
is used by so many organs of your body that it's almost impossible
for it to be converted into fat cells.
Another way to dress up your salad without adding extra fat is to
squeeze a little lemon juice on your salad. It gives it a tart
sweetness that many dieters enjoy.
You can also choose bottled dressings that are vinaigrette style
and have fewer calories and fat grams. However, steer clear of
low-fat and non-fat dressings. While they may be lower in fat,
they often have just as many (if not more) calories. Why? Because
to replace the flavor from fat, dressing manufacturers often load
the bottle with sugar!
Finally, if you simply can't go without your favorite salad
dressing, you can try a method of eating it that won't add as many
fat grams to your day. Instead of pouring dressing all over your
salad, put the dressing on the side.
Dip the tines of your fork in the dressing before putting the
veggies on it. You'll get a little dressing with each bite, but
you won't use nearly the same amount as if you pour it all over the
salad. In fact, you'll be surprised at the great flavor and the
small amount of dressing you actually need to feel satisfied.
These tips are provided by Rachel, The owner of YAYFood, visit her at: http://www.yayfood.com/
Turbulence training is a method of doing strength training
and interval training in one workout. So that you get in and out of
the gym whether it's your home gym or whether it's a commercial
gym. You get your workout done in 45 minutes.
We start with a 5-minute bodyweight warm up and then we do strength
training for 20 minutes, whether it's bodyweight training or
dumbbells. Sometimes we use barbells but most people that I work
with train at home so we just use dumbbells and bodyweight
exercises - no fancy equipment needed.
Then we finish with 20 minutes of interval training. We are using
the most efficient and effective training methods. The stuff that
gets you the most results in the least amount of time. So we are
not doing long, slow cardio sessions and we're not doing 5 or 6 day
per week bodybuilding training programs.
It's like the old business principle - 80% of your results come
from 20% of your efforts - so why do endless amounts of cardio and
redundant strength training exercises?
Do only what you need to do and then get out of the gym.
Get your very own copy of the Turbulence Training Workout &
Nutrition System here: http://www.turbulencetraining.com/
You've probably heard a lot about the importance of exercise for
your child. But you may be wondering how to help your child
exercise when you're competing with the TV and video games that he
loves so much.
You can make exercise fun for your child. Here are a few simple
ideas to get you started:
Play Games. While you may be used to the idea of structured
exercise, kids don't need to hit the gym. Instead, try playing
games with your kids that will allow them to get their heart rates
up and their muscles moving.
Playing Frisbee, basketball, soccer, tag, duck duck goose, or ring
around the rosy can be just as effective as a structured workout
would be. Even better, your kids won't know they're exercising.
They'll just be having fun.
Encourage Outdoor Play. When your kids play outside, they'll
naturally exert more energy. You may be able to allow your child
to play in the backyard or in the neighborhood.
If this isn't an option for you, make it a point to take your child
to the local park. It can be even more fun if you allow your child
to bring a friend or two. Water play can also be a great way to get
physical activity into your child's day.
If you have a swimming pool available, encourage your child to go
swimming (supervised, of course). If a pool isn't available, try
turning on the sprinkler in the yard and letting your child run
around in it.
Active Video Games. Some video game manufacturers are working to
help kids get off the couch and on their feet. Games like Dance
Dance Revolution encourage your child to move while having fun at
the same time.
While it's important for your child to get daily activity, it's
also important that you help your child develop lifelong habits.
When you help your child to understand that exercise can be fun,
you'll encourage him to keep doing it.
Rachel over at YAYFood gives lots of down to earth tips, not only for you but your entire family. I suggest that you pay her a visit over at YAYFood
Now that Mike Geary has shown you how to train your body for fat
loss to get 6-pack abs, let's find out what we need to do to eat
properly for maximum fat loss and to finally get the washboard abs
you deserve. You should also read his article:
5 Things You Must Know About Getting Six Pack Abs But first, a little more on the best cardio methods for abs...
CB: Mike, what do you use for burning fat, intervals or slow
cardio? Or both? Any gender differences here? Or differences
between fitness levels (beginner vs. advanced)?
MG: In most cases, my answer is definitely intervals... or as I
like to call it "variable intensity training". In general, I think
slow steady pace cardio is a waste of time, especially if the goal
is lasting fat loss. I think people need to get away from this thinking about "fat
burning zones" and calories burned during the actual workout, and
look at the bigger picture of what you're doing in your workout to
stimulate the greatest metabolic response in your body... and the
best metabolic and hormonal response is achieved through variable
intensity training and strength training, not slow steady-pace
cardio.
CB: And for sedentary beginners?
MG: Now I will say that if someone is really deconditioned and can't
handle higher intensity exercise routines just yet, this still
doesn't mean that they can't simply use lower intensity routines,
but still use it in a "variable intensity" fashion, by alternating
between higher and lower exertion levels throughout the workout.
CB: Great stuff Mike. Can you let us in on 1 or 2 of your top
secret nutrition tips for carving out those abs. Open your vault of
info!
MG: Well Craig, I think you'd agree that there has never been a
more confusing time regarding proper nutrition for consumers. Every
so called "expert" out there seems to disagree and contradict each
other on what's the best way to eat for fat loss and overall good
health. One of the most important messages I try to teach my readers in
this world of heavy confusion is that your diet doesn't need to
conform to any of the fad diets... you don't need to go "low carb"
or "low fat", or high or low anything for that matter to be
successful in losing enough body fat to get lean enough to be able
to see your abs.
CB: Great, we like to avoid complex stuff!
MG: I like to try to simplify things. I think that balance is the key
to success along with eating a diet that is made up of nutrient
dense foods in their natural state (as unprocessed as possible). In general, it is the heavy processing of foods that makes it wreak
havoc inside our bodies. Most foods in their natural unprocessed
state are inherently good for us. Of course there are always
exceptions... a salad of poison ivy leaves is "natural and
unprocessed" but certainly would not be good for us!
CB: So, some specific tips?
MG: I'll leave your readers with a couple of the most important aspects
of nutrition that help to get you lean for life...
1. Get enough quality protein in the daily diet - not only does it
have a higher thermic effect than carbs and fat (so you burn more
calories digesting it), but it also creates satiety so your hunger
is satisfied longer. Plus protein is a building block for maintaining and building lean
muscle... And remember that the amount of lean muscle you carry is
one of the main factors for controlling your metabolism.
2. Think fiber! When it comes to carbs, make sure that almost all
of your carbohydrate intake is from higher fiber sources like
vegetables, fruits, and high fiber unrefined grains. Try to avoid refined sugars and refined grains as that is one of
the main reasons so many people struggle with body fat. I personally don't eat many grains as I prefer to get most of my
carbs from veggies and fruits, but I am a bit of a fan of sprouted
grains. I generally recommend looking for carbohydrate sources that
have at least 2-3 grams of fiber per each 10 grams of total carbs. Remember that fiber helps fill you up and also slows down the
glycemic response of the foods you eat, all beneficial for getting
lean.
CB: What about fat?
MG: 3. Don't be afraid to eat fat! Many people try to go way too low on their fat intake and this can
negatively affect hormone levels in your body as well as causing
more cravings. Try to eat enough healthy fats daily. Good sources of healthy fats are nuts and seeds, nut butters,
avocados, olive oil, organic meats and eggs, coconuts and
virgin coconut oil. On that note, saturated fats from tropical oils are VERY
misunderstood, even by many nutritionists and other health
professionals. Yes they are composed highly of saturated fats, but
are actually beneficial (but that's way beyond the scope of this
article). 4. Avoid the two worst things in our food supply at ALL COSTS: *artificial trans fats from margarines, shortening, and
hydrogenated oils that are in most processed foods *high fructose corn syrup, which is in almost all sweetened
products on the market Again, if you avoid processed foods, it becomes easy to avoid these
two worst offenders in our food supply. I always contend that once you get a handle on these 4 main points
of your diet detailed above, the rest starts to take care of itself
as you gain control over your appetite, blood sugar levels, hormone
levels, etc. It all falls into place, and you eventually gain total
control over how lean you want to get.
CB: Thanks Mike! For more diet and cardio tips for getting ripped abs: Click HERE for the Truth About Six Pack Abs
In today's world, unhealthy drinks can be found everywhere you
look. From sodas full of sugar and preservatives to fruit drinks
that aren't really made of fruit, there are a lot of unhealthy
choices.
But it's critical that you make sure that you make healthy choices
in drinks. Not only do these unhealthy beverages lack vitamins
that you need, they can also cause problems with growth and
development.
So what are good choices? It's time to get back to basics.
Water. The absolute best beverage for you to drink is water.
Water is essential to the function of every part of the body.
Sadly, most people who eat the Western diet are dehydrated much of
the time.
Having plenty of fresh water available is one way to make sure you
have the option to drink this healthy liquid. If you don't like
the taste of plain water, you can try squeezing some lemon juice or
limejuice into the water to give it flavor. Serving water very
cold also can make it more favorable.
While there are plenty of flavored waters on the market, many of
them are flavored with artificial sweeteners. While this doesn't
cause them to be higher in calorie, artificial sweeteners may not
be the best things for your body. Try to stick to plain water as
much as possible.
Juice. Many people worry that they will be drinking too many
calories if they drink fruit juice. Some recent research shows
that drinking juice, even in large amounts, doesn't cause you to
become obese later in life.
While you should get most of your hydration from water, it's okay
to have a few servings of fruit juice every day. However, make
sure that you're drinking 100% juice. Many beverages claim to be
fruit drinks, but have as little as 2% actual fruit juice and are
filled with sugar and corn syrup instead.
This and thousands of more great tips could be found in the members area at YAYFood, I understand that Rachel, the owner, have lowered the fee from $19.95 to $1! Yes! 1 Dollar!
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