Four Rules To Live By

Today I want to share some killer tips with you that pretty much sums up what all of us need to do to get lean and sexy and to be able to stay lean and sexy for life.

It doesn't get any simpler than this… but simple works!

TOP 2 EXERCISE TIPS

Make Your Workouts Total Body:

This means doing a five-exercise circuit (designed to work your lower body, upper body, and core) at least three times per week with a day of rest between workouts. A great way to perform the workouts are to alternate between 50 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest for each a double-leg (e.g. squat), push (e.g. push-up), single-leg (e.g. lunge), pull (e.g. row), and core (e.g. plank) exercise. Perform up to 4 rounds without rest for a killer 20-minute total body workout.

Harness the Power of Intervals:

Interval training is scientifically proven to burn nine times more body fat than ordinary exercise and elevates metabolism for up to 48 hours following your workout. What you should do is perform cardio intervals on non-strength training days three times per week. Selecting your cardio exercise of choice, alternate between 20 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest and repeat this 30 second interval eight times for four total minutes followed by a one-minute rest. Repeat for up to 20 total minutes. This routine works best on a stationary bike (airdyne) or for body weight cardio exercise that you can do at home like running in place or jumping jacks. If you're up for the challenge, try outdoor sprints or hill sprints to really kick your butt.

TOP 2 NUTRITION TIPS

Eat Early and Eat Often:

Get something in your stomach immediately upon waking and then every two to four hours to starve fat and feed muscle. By continuously fueling your furnace, and eating some animal protein (meat, eggs, cheese, etc.) at every feeding, you'll also keep your metabolism revved up throughout the day and prevent overeating.

Think Fiber First When Consuming Carbs:

Eat an unlimited amount of fibrous, cruciferous green veggies to fill your belly both during and between meals. For optimal fat-burning, try to limit fruit and other carbohydrate consumption to within 1-2 hours post-workout when your body best tolerates starches and sugars.

Live by these 2 exercise and nutrition rules and you will have a body to be proud of for the summer... I guarantee it ;)

Get after it!

Mike
PS- Please forward this blog post to anybody that you know who can benefit from it!

Pill Poppers

I've got a mission for you today.

Go flip through a magazine, scan the newspaper, surf your TV channels and see if you can run across some type of ad that says:

“Eat all the foods you want and still lose the weight!”
“Lose up to 2 lbs a day without diet and exercise”
No hunger, no exercise, no disappointment, miracle, breakthrough, revolutionary, destroys, eliminates, dissolves, melts, flushes, soaks up FAT...

Something along those lines.
I bet you can find a couple within 30 seconds...these type of ads are EVERYWHERE.

And don't assume that just because it's FDA approved that it's safe.

So what's in a “fat loss pill”?

Well, the goal of most of these pills are to STIMULATE fat loss by doing one or more of the following:

Decrease food cravings, speed up metabolism, interfere with the body's ability to absorb specific nutrients in food and shedding excess water.

I'd prefer you stimulate fat loss by strength training and intense cardio intervals, but that's kinda tough to put into a bright bottle :)

Most of these pills contain caffeine (supposed to increase energy and metabolism), diuretics (dehydrate cells to reduce water weight), and appetite suppressants.

Now I was reading an article today promoting these weight loss pills and this was a direct quote from that article:

“While all of these different functions of weight loss pills stimulate your body, keep in mind that it does not create fat loss- you do , through diet and exercise.”

Now, I applaude them for admitting to this. Fat loss pills DO NOT work!

So why the heck do Americans continue spending billions of their hard earned moolah on pills that even admit to not being effective for fat loss??

I think it's a combination of things like deceptive advertising, feeling desperate, etc.

But I also think it's because it requires no responsibility. People can pass the blame onto someone else, the pill company. They can just say the pill didn't work and that's why they didn't lose any weight. People don't want to take a hard look in the mirror and face the facts. Most people are looking for the easy way out but there are no magic pills for fat loss.

People need to stop just treating the symptoms and get after the cause of their weight gain.

If you're putting on excess pounds because you always have junk food hiding in the cupboards, then clean them out! Out of sight, out of mind.

If you are stressed out or depressed and use food to comfort you, get rid of that chocolate ice cream and spoon and grab a pair of dumbbells instead. Exercising is a great stress reliever and triggers your body to release a chemical called endorphins which makes you feel happy. This feeling of euphoria can last up to 12 hours.

So throw that bottle of ThermaSlim away. Look at yourself and figure out what things caused you to put on the weight. If you don't know the real reason behind your weight gain, then you can't move forward and be successful in your own weight loss efforts.

And don't just say it's because you eat too many hamburgers and fries. That's not the answer I'm talking about.

Look deeper into the root of the problem. Once you figure that out, then and only then can you truely progress and be on the road to getting the body you deserve and can maintain for the rest of your life!

We Have Finally Found The Answer To Permanent Fat Loss!! Ice Cream

Finally!! Researchers have cracked the case for losing fat forever. After many exhaustive tests, experiments and clinical trials, scientists have announced today that the best food to eat to melt the fat and keep it off forever is ice cream!!

How great is that. You can have dessert and shed the pounds at the same time. The studies show that the frozen composition of ice cream actually raises the body's metabolism higher than eating room temperature food. This causes the body to burn more calories at a higher rate. So they recommend that you eat about 4-5 servings of ice cream a day to keep your metabolism burning high to create the best environment for rapid fat loss.

Ben and Jerry's here I come!!

Now I hope you're reading this and thinking... this sounds too good to be true.

I know you're smart enough not to fall for this...so put the ice cream down :)

Unfortunately, many Americans have tried a lot of fad diets out there and have failed. Now it doesn't make you a bad person for trying to make yourself healthier by going on one of these fad diets. You just didn't have the right information that you needed to make an educated choice. That all changes now.

Fad dieting goes way back and some I find to be pretty unusual. I found things on the vinegar and water diet back in the 1820's.

Then in the 1920's there was the popular cigarette diet that boosted Lucky Strike sales by more than 200% with the slogan "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet"!


Another was the Sleeping Beauty diet that had you zonk out on sedatives for a few days. Can't eat while you're unconscious i guess.

Some more fad diets are the cabbage soup diet and the grapefruit diet that seemed to be popular in the 90's.

To keep yourself from being a victim and falling for another dangerous fad diet, read this:
http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200903/1238095587.html

The bottom line is you have to be willing to put in the work to get the results you want. This isn't about finding the best diet plan to go on. It's about making a lifestyle change, to become more physically active, eat smaller portions, and trying to eat healthier foods instead of prepackaged crap and fast food sludge.

Take personal responsibility and make better choices for yourself. You only have one body in this world, so you better take care of it!

Brain Teaser

So I posted this to you guys last week. I got some really interesting answers to this and a couple of people actually got this right! I was pretty impressed.

So here was the question from last week:


It costs nothing, but creates much.It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give.It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends.It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and Nature's best antidote for trouble.Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody till it is given away.

What am I describing??

Drum roll please......






A Smile :)


Anybody that got this right, make a comment and let us know.

Have a good day.

Mike
www.CapitalCityBootCamps.com

5 Super Quick Tips To Burn That Flab

My boot camps hear me say this over and over like a broken record... nutrition is 80% of the fat loss game. You CAN'T out-work a crappy diet! It will eventually catch up with you, guaranteed.

One of my professors from college told me a story awhile back of how he went on vacation to visit some of his old friends. He's an active guy and is in great shape. His friends said they also stayed fairly active, so they decided to go to the gym and get a workout in before their day got busy.

Now my professor did his normal strength training routine and cardio workout. He watched as his buddies just cranked out a ton of crunches and were just trying to smoke their abs. They would do a couple curls here and there, but their main goal was to work on their gut.

After the workout, they all went out to eat and guess what his "500 crunch" buddies were ordering...pitchers of beer! Now just to let you know, his friends did not have six pack abs as you would think from all that ab work. They had guts on them...sporting the beer belly look.

And they wondered why they couldn't lose that spare tire and get their abs to show. Like I said, you can't out-work a crappy diet, period.

Here are five super simple fat loss tips you can easily follow to start getting your nutrition back on track:

1) Be Prepared- Follow the motto of the Boy Scouts. Prepare your meals ahead of time. I like to use a couples hours on Sunday to get a general outline of what meals I will eat for the week and also knock out most of my shopping. At least make a blueprint so you have some plan and make adjustments throughout the week as necessary. If you fail to plan, then plan to fail.
Cmon, if little Billy has to do it, so can you.

2) Don't Listen To Your Mom- Remember when you were always told to eat three square meals a day...well stop that right now. Shoot for a minimum of four small meals a day but optimally six small meals (every 2-3 hours) for rapid fat loss. Why? Because you need to control your metabolism and insulin levels. To do this, you need a steady flow of nutrients into your body throughout the day. If you only eat 2-3 meals per day, your blood sugar rapidly rises once you eat the meal and then crashes down a couple hours after. This causes your body to store fat and everything that much tighter because it knows you won't feed it for another 8 hours.

3) Stop guzzling liquid sugar. Yes, I mean soft drinks, juices and bottles of iced tea loaded with high fructose corn syrup. For the most part, a 12 oz can of cola is 150 calories of pure sugar. Have a couple of those a day on top of what you already eat and you could be hitting the 3000-4000 mark in calories per day! Remember, to lose one pound of fat, you need to burn 3500 calories....and it works the same in the reverse, yikes!

4) I've talked about this a million times - eat breakfast! If you want to make fat loss easy then make sure you start your metabolism off on the right foot. I would even prefer a pop tart over nothing...it's that important. Enough said.

5) H2O- Water is the most important element to the body. It makes up 60% of your body weight and go without if for a few days and you'll be dead. So it only makes sense to make drinking water a main pillar in your nutrition. Try and drink at least 1-2 glasses with each and every meal. This will not only keep you hydrated, but also keep you from overeating. The more water you drink, the less water you'll retain...just so you know ladies :)


* Bonus tip*

If you're having trouble with your nutrition and want to get the proper nutrients without all the calories, check out a whole foods based multi. Try Prograde Nutrition's VGF 25+ because it's made from 25 whole veggies, greens, and fruits.

Men visit-http://mikebevard.getprograde.com/store.php?top_menu=Products&products=6&submenu=1

Women visit-http://mikebevard.getprograde.com/store.php?top_menu=Products&products=7&submenu=1

Yours in health,

Mike Bevard, CPT (ACSM)

PS- Have you sent your friends here yet-
http://www.capitalcitybootcamps.com/