Ok, so you’ve been spending a bunch of time in the gym busting your butt working out.

You’ve been working out like an animal, and you feel like you’re really putting some hard work into getting the body you want.

And yet, you’re just NOT seeing the changes you want in your body. ARGH! SO FRUSTRATING!!!

If that describes how you feel, it’s VERY important that you check out this post and video, because they will show you the secret that you’re missing that’s stopping you from getting results.

In fact, it’s so important that I managed to get everybody’s favorite internet fitness dog Tali to get on camera with me to talk to you about it.

And you should know that Tali is VERY busy, she usually can’t fit activities like this into her schedule. She’s far too busy sleeping, chewing on her bone and trying to steal human food. So this info MUST be good!

Check out the video below to find out:

• Why you have the wrong approach to fat loss if you’re trying to burn calories during your workouts
• Why you MUST always think about the OTHER 23 hours of the day
• Why you shouldn’t hop on the treadmill when you’re trying to lose fat
• The key components to keeping your metabolism high all day long
• What it sounds like when Tali yawns (listen closely at 1:44 in the video)

It’s as simple as that guys.

All of the progress you make in your fat loss journey comes from keeping your metabolism high around the clock, not just for 30 minutes while you’re working out.

I’ll be back soon with more videos about different strategies you can use to keep that metabolism revving all day and all night long. Until then, leave me a comment to let me know what you think. Or if you don’t want to leave ME a comment, at least leave one for Tali. She reads and replies to every single one.

Take care,

Yudi

P.S. If you enjoyed this blog post, please help spread the word by clicking the Share/Save button below to add it to your favorite social bookmarking site.

Also, if you want to get regular email updates every time I make a new post, as well as getting exclusive access to ebooks, videos, audios and other bonus material that I send out only to my newsletter subscribers, make sure you put your name and email in the box below:

The Most Hyped Diet Study Ever?

You see, a recent laboratory study indicated that rats who were fed a very low calorie diet lived longer than rats who ate normal diets. Interesting findings, for sure, but not quite worthy of the huge generalizations that were made as a result, with scientists proclaiming the idea that the same principle would apply to humans.

Suddenly, all kinds of magazines and mainstream media have been telling people that the secret fountain of youth is to live on a calorie restricted diet, causing even MORE people to start eating less food, hoping to lose weight and turn back the clock in the process.

Where’s The Proof?

Just How Low Are We Talking?

Living Longer = Living Inactive?

Lastly, even if calorie restriction does help you live longer, you’ll likely be spending those extra years inactive and nursing some disease or disability.

Restricting your calories without proper design and modified exercise can lead to lower bone density, nutrient deficiencies and a lack of the essential fats that are crucial for cognitive and physiological function.

You could very well be more at risk of developing osteoporosis and other debilitating diseases usually correlated with aging – and the research has not yet been done long term to show that this won’t happen when severe calorie restrictions are placed on the human diet.

The Honest Truth About How Long You’ll Live

We all know those people who smoke, drank and ate terribly their whole life and lived to their late 90s, and we also all know someone who was the consummate health nut and died young.

Life span is a product of genetics, lifestyle, medical treatment, preventive healthcare, mental state and a whole host of other factors. To say that prolonging life is all about restricting calories is misguided and frankly unproven.

The Bottom Line

Final Thought

In this blog post I’ve laid out all the reasons why I don’t buy into the calorie restricted diet hype.

But having said that, I understand that you might still want to try it and hey, it might suit you well. So go ahead and try it out for a while if you want and see if it’s for you. But do it intelligently and don’t just run after what you see on TV, blindly believing it to be the truth.

Think, discover, explore and test it for yourself. That’s always the process you should follow when it comes to health, fitness and wellbeing.

If you enjoyed this blog post, please help spread the word by clicking the Share/Save button below to add it to your favorite social bookmarking site. Also, if you want to get regular email updates every time I make a new post, as well as getting exclusive access to ebooks, videos, audios and other bonus material that I send out only to my newsletter subscribers, make sure you put your name and email in the box below:

Do I need to count calories to lose weight?

(Photo by Imnop88a)

Every field of study has one or two major seminal arguments that underly the basic philosophy of understanding in that subject.

Biology has the whole ‘nature vs nurture’ debate. Music has the whole ‘learning by feel vs learning by studying theory in depth’ debate. And of course, celebrity culture has the whole ‘Paris Hilton vs Nicole Ritchie’ debate (ok, scratch that last one).

Weight loss is no different, and despite the tremendous advances in the exercise science field over the last decade, there still rages on a heated argument that divides fitness enthusiasts everywhere.

The Simple Formula For Losing Weight

Traditional theory has always been that weight loss is simply a product of one simple formula:

Calories in vs calories out = weight change

Essentially, what this theory states is that if you eat more calories than you burn over the course of a day, you end up with an excess of calories which gets stored by your body as excess weight. Conversely, if you burn more calories than you eat, your body is left with an energy deficit, and so as a result needs to consume some of its fat (or muscle) stores to make up the difference.

What this means in practice is that weight loss is pretty simple. If you want to lose weight, you simply make sure that you burn more calories than you eat on average.

How? Easy! You either eat less food (or healthier food that has less calories) in order to take your calorie intake down, or you increase your level of physical activity and exercise to increase the amount of calories that you burn up. Or, if you’re really savvy, you do both!

That’s ‘Side 1’ of the great debate. Sounds pretty reasonable right?

Is Quality More Important Than Quantity?

Maybe not so much if you think about it from another perspective. ‘Side 2’ proponents believe that this argument is oversimplified and ignores many other important factors in weight loss.

Take, for example, the following scenario: I take 2 people. I tell them both that they must restrict their caloric intake to 1500 calories per day. However, participant A must eat only fruits, vegetables and lean protein to make up that 1500 calories, while participant B must eat only McDonalds hamburgers and fries to make up that 1500 calories. Both participants are undertaking exactly the same workout plan and are burning up the same amount of calories per day. Technically, according to the calories in vs calories out theory, those two people should experience the exact same weight loss or gain while on that nutrition plan. Since calories in vs out are identical in both cases, there should be no difference.

Does that seem right to you? Me neither.

The Great Weight Loss Dilemma

So what’s the answer? How do we reconcile these two differences and find out which factor has the most important determination on weight loss – the amount of calories or the type of calories?

The truth is that as yet, science has not provided us with a cut and dried answer. So, as usual, it’s up to us to use our logic to find the solution that seems most logical. And as is pretty much always the case when you’re dealing with two dogmas in the fat loss world, the answer in my opinion lies somewhere between the two extremes.

Does weight fluctuation depend on calories in vs calories out? You betcha. Does the type of calories that you ingest matter? You betcha.

(In fact, I’d also add that the combination of calories in vs out makes a huge difference on the outcome as well – someone who is losing weight by taking in only 600 calories a day while doing no exercise is VASTLY different to someone who is losing weight by eating 1700 calories a day but burning up 2000 calories a day. But that’s another story for another blog post.)

The way I see it, the basic underpinning argument of calories in vs out just makes sense. It’s hard to argue with the fact that if your body has a surplus of energy it will store it, and if it has a deficit in energy it will lose some of the weight that has previously been stored. But there’s no way that eating hamburgers can ever be equal to eating fruits and veggies when it comes to health and weight loss. Even if you’re eating a reasonable number of calories when on your fast food diet, how is your body going to get the vitamins, nutrients and energy it needs to be able to exercise efficiently? How is your body going to be able to build muscle instead of fat when it is missing the essential lean proteins it needs to do so?

What You Can Learn About Weight Loss From Two Construction Workers, Some Sticky Mud And A Rickety Wall

Here’s an example to illustrate my thinking:

Take 2 construction workers. Give them both the same tools and the same procedure to follow, and ask them to build a 10 foot high wall for you. However, you provide one of them with good quality cement and bricks, and the other with sticky mud and roughly hewn pieces of square rock with which to get the job done.

If both of those workers follow your procedures as instructed, they’ll both get a wall built in the same time and to the same specifications. But the quality of the walls will be vastly different. One of them will be rigid, sturdy and completely solid. The other one will be fragile, filled with holes and gaps, and could probably be easily toppled after a short period of time.

Weight loss is the same. Watching your calories in vs calories out is like adhering to the specifications of the wall. If you follow the guidelines and maintain a negative energy balance then sure, you’ll lose weight (initially, at least). But the quality of your calories, which is analogous to the quality of the materials used to build the wall, is also of critical importance. If you eat terrible food and all of your calories are from empty, junk sources, then the wall that you just built isn’t going to be very sturdy. It may be standing now, sure, but it’ll be so weak that just a little bit of effort will topple it down and crush all of your efforts. Likewise, if you eat poorly, you’re likely to end up lacking the essential nutrients that your body needs, meaning that sooner or later you’ll cave and fall into bad habits again. Or maybe you’ll weigh less, but all of the weight that you’ll lose will be muscle instead of fat, leaving you lighter on the scale but looking saggier and flabbier than ever. Is that really what you want?

So that’s why the answer to the great debate, in my opinion, lies somewhere between the two extremes. And that’s why I believe you should never listen to ‘celebrity’ trainers or diet books that tell you that the way to weight loss is to drastically reduce your calories. There’s a whole lot more to the puzzle than that.

What are your thoughts on the subject? I’d love to hear them, whether you think I’m wrong, right, or somewhere in between. Feel free to leave them in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this blog post, please help spread the word by clicking the Share/Save button below to add it to your favorite social bookmarking site. Also, if you want to get regular email updates every time I make a new post, as well as getting exclusive access to ebooks, videos, audios and other bonus material that I send out only to my newsletter subscribers, make sure you put your name and email in the box below:

Welcome back, to all of you who have shown up and are ready to take your fitness to the next level.

In our last post, we discussed how 90% of success was just showing up. Beautiful words, for sure, but the question still remains – what do I do with the final 10% to really reach the success I’m capable of? It’s a great question, and a particularly tough one when it comes to fitness and getting the body you want.

Is it any wonder that many people say that the toughest weight to lose is that stubborn last 10 lbs? Or how about artists, who always bemoan the fact that finishing a painting or a song is by far the toughest part of the creative process. Getting started may be tough to do, but it’s nothing compared to really finishing things off the way you want.

So let’s tackle the question head-on: I’ve shown up, now what?

The answer to this can be split into parts:

1. Eat right:

A bland first answer perhaps, but truthful nonetheless. The old axiom states that ‘you can’t out-train a poor diet’, and while I don’t agree with that entirely, it’s still broadly true. Your body can only work with the materials it’s given – genetics and fuel. Most people completely overrate the role of genetics. No one is biologically perfect and using that as an excuse is limiting yourself and looking for an easy cop out. It’s also an extremely negative mindset to have – focus on what you can change, not what you can’t. You can’t change your genetics, but you can change your diet.

Limit your carbs, cutting out grains wherever possible. Eat lots of lean protein. Up your intake of healthy omega-3 in items such as almonds, fish and olive oil. Get rid of all unnecessary sugar by ending your habit for sodas, energy drinks and candy. Eat more fruit and healthy vegetables. Get dressings and sauces on the side and limit them. Watch your calories and eat more in the morning and less in the evening. This is all basic, basic stuff, but 90% of the people out there are not following it. Try adhering to it – rigidly – and watch the immediate results.

2. Train movement patterns, not body parts:

When it comes to exercise selection, I like to stick to the basics when they work and innovate a little when the basics just don’t cut it. However, I’ve found that most people do just the opposite.

Take for example, core/ab training. The latest scientific research has indicated that most people are doing completely the wrong thing in this area, yet old school exercises are more popular than ever. People are injuring themselves and creating faulty movement patterns by doing situps and crunches day after day, when really that’s the last thing they should be doing.

Then, on the other hand, you have hip and thigh training, where people are always searching for the latest machine or cable attachment that will ‘get rid of cellulite’, when really they should be doing what has worked since time began – squats, deadlifts and variations thereof.

If you’re trying to get in shape, you need to work out based on movement patterns, not body parts. In other words, instead of working your chest, you should be thinking of working your horizontal push. This may seem like semantics, but the difference, in actuality, is huge. I’ll be sure to discuss this further in a future post.

3. Get the most bang for your buck:

You need to be doing workouts that are functional – exercises that help you move better, look better and experience less pain in real life situations. Get on your feet and get off your backside. Just making a simple change like this can cause your core to fire more in each exercise, adding to the caloric demands of your exercise and working more muscles with each movement.

You also need to find exercises that help you improve in multiple areas all at the same time. One of the best exercises for this is the pushup. In just one exercise you get shoulder stabilizing strength as well as chest and arm strength, all while also working your core. Or how about static lunges done with your foot up on a bench and a dumbell in one hand – leg strength, hip mobility, core stability and balance, all challenge in one movement. If you change the way you think about working out, you can get this kind of effect with almost any exercise. This will be discussed in greater detail in future posts.

4. Ditch exercise that is inefficient and ineffective:

While this principle can apply to a lot of different things, I’m talking specifically about traditional long, slow, boring-as-hell cardio. It’s not effective for weight loss, it wastes a ridiculous amount of time, it’ll probably injure you in the long run, and to be frankly honest – the way most people do it is almost entirely useless.

Thankfully, there is another method that is effective, time-efficient and proven to succeed in both research and practice: interval training. Train really hard for a short period, then train lightly for a while to recover. Rinse and repeat. It’s the secret weapon of knowledgeable trainers all over the world and it’s probably the single most effective way to lose fat in a short amount of time. I’ll expand on exactly how to do it in future posts.

5. Train with intensity:

Talking to someone, reading a magazine, or watching TV while you workout means that you’re not putting in your full intensity. Period. You need to approach each workout with a ruthless single-mindedness. From the moment you start your warmup until the last second of your cooldown flexibility routine, your mind should be focused on one thing and one thing only – getting the absolute maximum out of your exercise session. Put your ipod in your ears, put on music that gets you pumped and focus your mind.

6. Be Balanced:

Too many people are afraid of being a polymath when it comes to health and wellness. It’s almost like people are scared to stray from one dogma, which makes no sense to me. If you want to put on muscle mass, there is plenty you can learn from yoga that will help you do that. If you want to lose your cellulite and get toned, there’s a ton of information from the weight training community that will absolutely help you get there. Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself and look outside your boundaries, you’ll be amazed at how every single school of thought has something to offer. Take what you like, leave the rest behind and bring it all to the table to create the complete and healthy lifestyle you’ve always wanted. If you restrict yourself to one way of being, you’re limiting yourself to unidimensionality. Get out there and explore.

Also, do the stuff that you know you should be doing but somehow never get around to. Get more sleep. Drink more water. Take some time to breathe deeply and clear your mind. Let go of your life and let yourself be. Everyone talks about this, few people deliver. Be one of those few.

These are the broad principles underlying my philosophy on fitness. Revolutionary? Probably not. Talked about by others? You betcha. Actually implemented by people? Hardly.

This post was intended as a very broad outline to what I have found to be truthful and successful in my journey to find the ultimate method to complete wellness, fitness and fat loss. Looking at them like this, from a 10,000 feet view, doesn’t really demonstrate how powerful they are. When you see the details from close up, though, you’ll be amazed.

This is my philosophy.

No gimmicks, no BS.

No stuff that people say ‘works’ when there’s no evidence at all of that being true. No stuff that science says works but doesn’t happen in the real world.

Just tried and true methods that get people in the best shape of their life. I’ve tried to take these first couple of posts and show you what I believe in. Now that we have the foundation in place, we will be exploring the finer aspects of these points, and delving into the actual, practical ways that you can make them a part of your life and a part of your success.

Tomorrow, we start at step 1 of the road to fat loss and wellness: getting rid of aches and pains. First up, the killer that’s getting 80% of our nation as we speak – low back pain.

Thanks for indulging me as I get my feet wet in the blogosphere and for the positive energy that you have brought to both yourself and me by reading this post.

And thanks again for showing up. Lets conquer this last 10% together.

(photo by mattcyp88)