The Importance of Nutrition

October 8th, 2008

Nutrition is an important part of living a healthy lifestyle - as the old adage goes, “You are what you eat!”.

But, nutrition is more than just eating the “right” food versus the “wrong” food.

Nutrition Is Not “One Size Fits All”

Everybody’s nutrition requirements are different. If they weren’t, then surely somebody would have come up with the perfect diet for everyone. OK, coming to think of it, lots of people have been pushing their diet as the “perfect diet” for everyone! But, do you really believe them?

The reason that everyone’s nutritional requirements differ, is because, we are all different. Some of us are big, some of us are small. Some of us play competitve sports, some of us hardly move all day.

Our lifestyle and environment in which we live, play a large part in what we eat. If you are a sports person who competes at the highest level, your body will need more nutrients than someone who lazes around all day.

In any case, regardless of your nutritional requirements, eating healthy food is better than eating unhealthy food.

And, if you’re not feeding your body with the nutritients it needs, your body is going to start complaining. You won’t feel as good as you could be feeling, had you been eating healthy foods. 

What Is Healthy Eating?

Generally, healthy eating refers to eating healthy food. Typically, healthy food is food that contains plenty of high quality nutrients (such as fiber and protein) and is low in poor quality nutrients (such as sugars and saturated fat).

You should also try to eat a balanced diet. Don’t go too heavy on a single food group. Make sure you eat food from the five major food groups. The five major food groups are:

  • Fruit
  • Vegetables, legumes
  • Lean meat, fish, poultry, eggs, nuts, legumes
  • Bread, cereals, rice, pasta, noodles
  • Milk, yoghurt, cheese

For a list of food and corresponding nutritional values, check out these nutrition facts.

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Are You Overweight or Obese? (You Might be Surprised…)

August 26th, 2008

About two thirds of adults in the United States are overweight, and almost one third is obese, according to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2001 to 2004.

Definition of “Overweight”

Overweight refers to having a body weight that is higher than set standards. This could be due to muscle, fat, bone, or even excess water. This can be a little confusing for some people. Many body builders are technically “overweight”, but this is purely due to the size of their muscles!

Definition of “Obese”

Obesity is when a person has an abnormally high proportion of body fat. High proportions of body fat often results in poor health. Even a person who is “only” overweight (but not obese) could still have a high risk of poor health. Being obese certainly doesn’t make things any better.

Effects of Overweight and Obesity

Here are some common risk factors for people who are overweight or obese:

  • diabetes
  • coronary heart disease
  • high blood cholesterol
  • stroke
  • hypertension
  • gallbladder disease
  • osteoarthritis (degeneration of cartilage and bone of joints)
  • sleep apnea and other breathing problems
  • some forms of cancer (breast, colorectal, endometrial, and kidney)

Furthermore, obesity is also associated with:

  • complications of pregnancy
  • menstrual irregularities
  • hirsutism (presence of excess body and facial hair)
  • stress incontinence (urine leakage caused by weak pelvic floor muscles)
  • psychological disorders, such as depression
  • increased surgical risk
  • increased mortality

Prevention?

The best way to reduce your risk of becoming another “obesity statistic” is to exercise regularly and eat the right food. Cardiovascular exercise is great for eliminating body fat and strengthening your heart.

Also, as great as exercise is, you’ll get much better results with proper nutrition. Wholesome, low fat foods are best. Avoid fast-food like the plague! Did you know that there are actually foods that burn fat. Try including some of these in your diet.

And one of the most important things is to create a workout plan. A good plan will help you develop healthy habits. Without a plan, you’ll find yourself falling back into old habits. And you wouldn’t want that now, would you?

What’s My Ideal Weight?

To help you create your goals, check out this body weight chart. It will help you figure out how much weight you should lose (or gain!).

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What’s More Important, Weight Loss or General Fitness?

July 7th, 2008

A recent study highlights the fact that it is very important to decide what your fitness/weight loss goals are. The study found that, while Weight Watchers is a great program for losing weight, it might not be the best for general fitness.

So, although losing weight can be a great goal in itself, “weight loss” does not automatically equate to “good health”.

The University of Missouri recently conducted the study, which compared two groups of participants. One group participated in a Weight Watchers program for 12 weeks, while the other group took to the gym.

While the Weight Watchers group lost more weight - averaging 5 percent of their body weight - most of the weight lost was lean tissue. This means that they didn’t actually lose much body fat. Lean tissue is not something we should be trying to lose, as it can help keep our metabolism high. A high metabolism in itself can help keep our weight (and body fat) down.

In contrast with the Weight Watchers group, the gym group lost less weight, but they did lose a lot of intraabdominal fat. Intraabdominal surrounds the vital organs and can lead to cardiovascular diseases.

But the study did find that Weight Watchers is a great program for support. Most of the Weight Watchers participants remained in the program for the duration, while many of the gym participants quit.

So, if your goal is to lose weight and maintain good health, remember to eat well and exercise well.

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Fight Food Cravings With Ease

June 19th, 2008

The part of a fitness plan that most people have trouble with is the diet. Even if people find that exercise comes naturally to them, they often have trouble limiting the foods they love if they happen to be very high in calories or fat. So finding the willpower and the desire to eat healthily is a crucial component to making your fitness plan a success. If you have trouble weaning off of unhealthy foods, try these strategies to reduce cravings.

Get More Sleep

If your busy life is causing you to stay up late at night and wake up early every day that is probably the root of your food cravings. Regular sleep is a very important part of hormone regulation. Specifically, your body will produce a lot less of the hormone leptin. This chemical is responsible for helping you feel full, and for helping food make you feel satisfied. So if you have been having a lot more trouble resisting fattening foods, you might try getting to bed earlier. Even an hour of extra sleep can make a huge difference in you leptin. It is also important to improve the quality of your sleep by trying to fall asleep at approximately the same time every night.

Eat the Right Kinds of Carbs

The most common kinds of cravings are for sugary carbs, things like donuts, cupcakes and cookies. Really, this might be your body telling you that it needs the kind of energy that only carbohydrates can provide. If you focus on eating healthy carbohydrates, such as the kind that come from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, you may just find that your cravings for sweets will go away.

Move Your Body More

One of the most powerful appetite suppressants known to man is exercise. If you are contemplating ordering a pizza for dinner instead of making something healthy at home, you might want to just go for a quick stroll around the block. Even light exercise can activate the production of the hormone dopamine, which increases your sense of well-being and makes you more emotionally equipped to make smart choices about what you eat.

Let Yourself Cave in Occasionally

Though diet is important, it is actually important that you don’t feel constantly deprived. In fact, if you do feel deprived all of the time, you are more likely to binge on bad food. So it is actually a good idea to assign one meal every week as your “cheat meal.” This gives you permission to eat any kind of food that you will like. These occasional indulgences won’t do that much damage to your diet, but they will let off enough steam to let you focus on eating properly for the rest of the week.

Find Healthy Ways to Manage Stress

A lot of people eat as a way of dealing with stress. It is important to find other ways to find release for stress. Make sure that you always set aside some time during the day to engage in activities you enjoy. Finding balance in your life it vital to finding success in your fitness.

Expert fitness trainer Christopher William McCombs runs an intense Fitness Boot Camp in Irvine California. He is radically different in his approach to losing fat. He is also a Personal Trainer Marketing expert and helps fitness trainers all over the county to increase their business.

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Save Time by using Compound Exercises

June 15th, 2008

If you’re like most people I know, you’re so busy, that you struggle to find the time to hit the gym. You might have good intentions, but you probably also have what feels like a hundred other conflicting priorities (i.e. work, study, family etc).

If this sounds like you, compound exercises could be just the thing you need.

By using compound exercises, you’ll make much faster progress than you would if you use isolation exercises. In fact, you should always include compound exercises in your workout routine anyway. But this becomes even more important when you’re pushed for time.

What are Compound Exercises?

Compound exercises are exercises that move the body through more than one joint. By contrast, isolation exercises require only one joint.

Because compound exercises use more than one joint, they use more muscles. Compound exercises generally require you to use your largest muscle groups too - like your leg and back muscles.

Benefits of Compound Exercises

Because compound movements exercise multiple muscle groups in one go, this is where you can save precious time. By exercising more muscles with one exercise, you won’t need to do so many different exercises. Therefore, you won’t need to stay in the gym for so long.

Also, you’ll find that you can lift much more weight when you perform compound exercises. This is partly due to the fact that more muscles are being used, but it also has to do with the fact that most compound exercises force you to use your large muscle groups.

“The Big Three”

Here are three compound exercises that are commonly known as “The Big Three”. These three movements are so effective, that most power lifters only use these three exercises when they train. They are:

  • Dead lift (Mainly for your back muscles, but great overall body exercise. Your legs will love this exercise!)
  • Squat (Hits mainly the legs, but works the whole body to some degree.)
  • Bench press (Mainly for chest muscles, but your shoulders and triceps will get a great workout too.)

If you were to include only 3 exercises in your workout routine, make it these three. By performing these three movements, you’ll work your whole body.

More Compound Movements

Here are some more compound exercises:

So, if you’re struggling to find time for your workouts, try eliminating all/most of your isolation exercises and concentrate mainly on compound exercises. By doing this, you’ll spend less time in the gym, while getting equal or even better results.

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6 Steps to Gaining Weight

June 10th, 2008

Whilst, millions of people around the world strive to lose weight, some of us actually strive to gain weight. There are plenty of people who wish they weren’t as thin as they are. They wish they were carrying a bit more muscle. If you’re one of those people who are as skinny as a rake and can’t seem to gain weight, check out these 6 steps to gaining weight.

Set a Goal

Before you even start trying to gain weight, you need to decide how much weight you want to gain. By doing this, it will be much easier to track your progress. For example, say you currently weigh 60 kilograms. You might set your goal at say, 75 kilograms.

You should also set a deadline for your goal. For example, you could say “I will weigh 75 kilograms in 12 months time.”. Even better, set a date - instead of just saying “12 months”, set an actual date that is 12 months into the future.

You can also break your goal down into smaller milestones. This will help to keep yourself motivated. So, you could set milestones at say 65 kilograms, 70 kilograms, and then the ultimate goal - 75 kilograms. Each time you achieve a milestone you will feel great!

Eat More Calories than you Burn

Gaining weight is a little bit different to losing weight. To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you eat. To gain weight, you need to burn less calories than you eat. But you don’t just want to put on fat - muscle is better than fat right? Make sure you’re eating lots of protein rich food, and plenty of carbohydrates too. These foods will complement your weight training schedule perfectly.

But don’t worry, it’s OK to eat some fat. Our bodies do actually need fat too! Having said that, it’s best to avoid saturated fats (so try trimming the fat off your steak!).

Lift Heavier Weights

If you’re going to gain weight, it’s better to get bigger muscles than more fat right? To get bigger muscles, you need to continuously lift heavier weights. Try to lift a little heavier than you did on the previous workout. This is what increases size of your muscles. The heavier the weight, the more muscle you’ll need to lift it. With proper nutrition, once your muscles have recovered from their heavy workout, they’ll be a little bit bigger than before.

But realize that sometimes you won’t be able to add more. That’s OK. Just lift the same that you did on the previous workout. Then, maybe your next workout will be better. The last thing you want to do is injure yourself because you’re trying to go heavier than you should.

A good indicator for whether you’re ready to increase your weight is the amount of reps you can perform. If you can do 8 or more reps on your last set, you’re ready to increase the weight so that you can only do 6 reps.

Use Compound Exercises

Compound exercises are those that require the movement of more than one joint to perform. Therefore, compound exercises require more muscles to be used during the exercise. And by using more muscles, you are able to lift heavier weights.

Also, the big compound exercises force you to use your largest muscle groups - like your huge back and leg muscles. When you increase the size of these big muscles, your body weight will skyrocket!

Whilst compound exercises require multiple joints to perform, an exercise that requires only one joint to perform is referred to as an isolation exercise. These exercises are used to isolate a particular muscle. Whilst these exercises are great for concentrating on a single muscle group, they’re not as effective as compound exercises for gaining overall muscle mass - and therefore, gaining weight.

By all means include some isolation exercises in your workout routine, but make compound exercises your focal point.

Some great compound exercises include dead lift, squat, and bench press.

Use Low Reps

To build big and strong muscles, you need to use weight that is so heavy, you can only perform between 6 to 8 reps. By lifting heavy weights with low reps, you will work your muscles hard.

But, make sure you warm up with a set of higher reps first - say 12 to 16 reps. Then gradually increase the weights through your sets until you’re barely able to do 6 reps.

Monitor your Progress

Weigh yourself every day. Make sure you do it at the same time each day - first thing in the morning is perfect. Keep a log of your gym schedule, the weights you’re lifting, and most importantly, your weight. Over time, you’ll see the entries showing heavier and heavier weight. This will help keep your motivation up!

Gaining weight can be easy, as long as you have a good plan. If you follow the above steps to gaining weight, your body will have no choice but to gain weight!

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How to Integrate More Exercise Into Your Daily Routine

June 8th, 2008

There is no doubt that a smart fitness plan includes time set aside each week for exercise. By ensuring that you have a window of time where you concentrate on only working out, you not only get into the habit of exercise, but you ensure that you will be able to make the most progress towards your fitness goals. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t also work to include a bit of exercise into the other parts of your life. Even by getting in a little more walking into parts of your day, you actually help burn off a surprisingly large number of calories if you do it often enough.

Here are a few easy ways to get more walking into your everyday life.

Wear a Step-Counting Device

A pedometer is just a small device that you can strap onto your belt and informs you of how much you walk during the day. It works by actually measuring bumps. Every time there is a jostle or a shake, it assumes that you have taken one step. Believe it or not, studies show that people who wear a pedometer on average do a whole lot more walking than people who don’t. It seems that when you actually have something telling you how much you are walking, you are generally inclined to do a whole lot more of it.

What’s great about pedometers is that there is actually a huge range of them to suit your needs. Sometimes banks even give away cheap pedometers as part of customer appreciation or a promotion.

Walk More at the Grocery Store

When most people go to the grocery store or the mall, they usually try to park and close as they can to the entrance to avoid having to walk a long distance from the store to the car. However, it can be much easier to simply park further away and use going to the store as an opportunity to get more walking in. And really, trying to get spot up close usually doesn’t save you any time anyway because you typically have to wait until someone else leaves their spot. By parking further away, you don’t spend any more time at the grocery store than you usually do, but you are able to burn more calories.

Find Social Activities that Involve Walking

Socializing with friends doesn’t always have to mean sitting around at a restaurant or watching a movie. You could go for a walk in the park or even at the mall. Going to the mall is an especially attractive option if you ever discover that the weather is too nasty for a nice outdoor stroll. If you are worried that being around so much stuff that you can buy might tempt you into running up your credit card, you might consider just keeping your wallet in your car.

It is important to remember not to separate fitness from your everyday life. How fit you become is determined by the decisions you make, whether inside the gym or out.

Christopher William McCombs is a personal trainer in Signal Hill California. Chris teaches a radically different approach to losing fat to local OC residents and he makes the workouts fun. Chris is also a Fitness Trainer Marketing expert and helps fitness trainers all over the globe to triple their income while cutting their work hours in half.

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Things You Can Do On Your Next Workout to Increase Muscle Gains

June 5th, 2008

Making certain that your muscles are always developing can be a seriously complex business. Yet strangely, a lot trainers start focusing on the more complex aspects of weight training long before they have ever mastered the very basics. In fact, you can see this in gyms all the time. Trainers pour in, do the exact same exercises that they have always done for God knows how long, without ever making any noticeable muscle gains.

If you don’t want to be a member of the teeming millions who just works without progress, you have to start thinking about some ways you can ensure that you always keep progressing.

Slow it Down

Obviously, you are going to have to use momentum on some more complex exercises, but you should never be in a contest to see how fast you can swing the weights around. By taking your time on every repetition, you increase the amount of stress on your muscle, which ultimately spurs more muscle growth.

Generally, it is preferable if each exercise lasts about four seconds, with two seconds to lift the weight and two to lower it. Unfortunately, even experienced trainers often underestimate the importance of the negative portion of the exercise. Lowering that weight just as slowly as you lift it will help you see bigger gains in the long run.

Do Something You Have Never Done Before

Variety is far more than just the spice of life, it is also the spice of a healthy fitness regimen. Your muscles are surprisingly adaptive, so if you go day in and day out doing the identical exercises that you have been doing for years, you do yourself no favors.

Every six weeks, you should switch things up and start doing exercises that you may not be used to. Yes, it will take a little time to learn proper technique, but you will be rewarded in the end.

Focus on Compound Exercises

The more muscles that each exercise recruits, the better. The compound exercises have numerous advantages over more simple isolation exercises. Firstly, they simply can make your workouts shorter because they work more with less movement. Secondly, by recruiting more muscles, you actually encourage more production of testosterone, which can help your gains greatly.

Cut Your Workouts Down to Size

It’s great if you get a lot of stimulation from going to the gym, but if you really want to see constant progress, each individual weight training session shouldn’t last more than an hour. After this point, all the energy that you are expending is actually causing your body to eat muscle.

If you are one of the those lucky people who happen to have a lot of time on your hands and enjoy devoting yourself to your training, it is possible to manage a split routine, where you split different parts of a long workouts into two separate workouts during the day. For the rest of us who have to hold down a job, keeping it under an hour a day should work sufficiently.

Fitness Expert Chris McCombs is a West Hollywood Personal Trainer California. While walking out of a burrito joint Chris discovered a radical approach to burning fat at a rapid rate which he helps people all over do today. Chris is also a fitness trainer marketing expert and helps personal trainers and other people in the fitness industry to triple their income and cut their work hours by more than half.

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Brief, Intense Exercise Is Good For Your Heart

June 4th, 2008

According to a new study by McMaster University, short bursts of high intensity sprints can be just as beneficial to the cardiovascular system as longer, endurance type exercises.

The study compared individuals performing 30 second sprints, three days per week, to those performing 40 to 60 minutes of cycling, five days per week. The sprints were performed with high-intensity. The cycling was performed with moderate-intensity.

The research found that the short, high-intensity, sprints improved the structure and function of the individuals’ arteries as much as the endurance type exercise did for the other individuals. In particular, the exercise can improve the arteries that pump blood to our muscles and heart.

The study was led by kinesiology doctoral student Mark Rakobowchuk, and is published online in the journal American Journal of Physiology. Regulatory, Integrative & Comparative Physiology.

Source: ScienceDaily

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Super Easy Diet Tips

June 1st, 2008

It’s simply a matter of fact that it is way easier to consume calories than it is to burn them off. So matter how often you work out, or how intensely you work out, it probably won’t help your fitness level much if you primarily eat junk.

But the transition to eating healthy can sometimes be a challenging one. Like all habits, eating bad foods is a tough one to break.

If you have been finding it a tad tough to make the leap into a healthy diet, use these tips to make the change a little bit more smooth.

Eliminate Liquid Calories

“Liquid calories,” that is, calories that come from stuff like milk, alcohol, juice, and soda can ruin on your diet for a number of reasons. Firstly, they can add a bunch of calories to your daily intake without ever thinking about it. If you instinctively grab a coke from the refrigerator when you are thirsty, you are adding one hundred forty calories and forty grams of sugar to your diet very rapidly.

Secondly, liquid calories hurt your diet because they don’t help satiety. Meaning, even though you are getting all of these calories, you don’t feel any more full, so you are more likely to turn to solid foods after drinking liquid calories, which can increase the number of calories you eat in a day even more.

Have Foods that are Both Healthy and Convenient

If you are ever in a rush and are just looking for a “quick bite to eat,” chances are you will reach for something that is high in starchy carbs, sugar, or saturated fat. The reason unhealthy foods creep into the diets of even people who really want to eat well is that these bad foods are just so convenient. No matter where you go, there is bound to be a fast food restaurant willing to give you high calorie food in a matter of minutes after buying it.

Help making eating healthier by stocking your cupboard with foods that are not only healthy, but also very easy to make. For example, you might have a premade fruit salad that you just pull out of your refrigerator when ever you want a snack, or have a selection of healthy canned soups that you can just heat and eat.

Make Things Flexible

The biggest mistake that over ambitious people make while designing their workout is making it just too strict. Just because you will probably lose weight and gain muscle by eating nothing but tuna and oatmeal, that doesn’t mean that you should design your diet like that, because it just isn’t sustainable. After just a few days, you will probably start craving variety and revert back to your old eating ways.

Most dieters designate one meal a week that is their “cheat meal,” that is, a meal where they can eat whatever they please.

Deal with Stress Directly

It is important to deal with the emotional side of dieting head on. In times of stress, especially when you are deviating from what you might typically eat, you are much more likely to start binging on foods in order to feel better. In order to keep from falling into this trap, you should find other ways to deal with this stress. Always set some time aside for yourself every day to do something that you truly enjoy. This will help reduce your stress level sand help you find dieting easier.

Expert fitness trainer Christopher William McCombs runs a Fitness Boot Camp in Irvine California. He is radically different in his approach to losing fat. He is also a Personal Trainer Marketing expert and helps fitness trainers all over the county to increase their business.

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