Healthy Sustainable Fat Loss

Hey, I got another guest post from my good friend Carisse Crossland, CSCS whose a Personal Trainer and group fitness instructor in Las Vegas. She's listed some of her favorite tips to help you reach your lose weight and keep it off.


Hold yourself accountable.
Keep a daily journal of food, calories, and activity. People can offer vitamins, recipes, ergonenic aids (caffeine, etc.) but it all comes down to calories in and calories out.

For detailed information - www.mypyramid.gov





Choosing to eat healthy is exactly that, its a choice.
No one is forcing you to eat the cheeseburger. No one is forcing you to NOT make food for the day. We either decide to be healthy or not. Surround yourself with individuals living the way you want to live. Adapt small changes! These small changes will result in long term gains and snowball into a HEALTHIER lifestyle.


For more tips from Carisse sign up for her Motivational Monday e-mail by sending her an e-mail to CarisseCrossland@hotmail.com.


If you like this check out 9 Tips for Successful Weight Loss

14 Strategies to Reach Success

Are you ready to succeed in your fitness quest? Here's 14 of my favorite strategies to reach success. The key is to do them. You may know about them, but you don't truly know them until you apply them.


1. Set Goals

2. Be specific with your goals and dreams

3. Create good daily habits

4. Visualize success daily

5. Believe in yourself

6. Stop talking and start doing

7. Step outside of your comfort zone

8. Today is the best day to start anything.

9. Plan everyday. Success isn't an accident.

10. To be successful you must must take 100% responsibility for your actions.

11. Don't compromise your dreams

12. Expect more of yourself

13. Surround yourself with successful people

14. Don't be afraid to ask for help

Well there you have it. I've highlighted some of my favorites. What are yours? Leave me a comment down below. Please feel free to add to this list as well.

Tony

3 Tips for Fitness Success

This is a guest post by my good friend Carisse Crossland, CSCS whose a Personal Trainer and group fitness instructor in Las Vegas. She's listed 3 tips to help you reach your fitness goals.

1. No pain no gain" is old news. Pain vs. Burn are 2 different things. Pain means something is wrong, burn means you are exerting yourself, keep THAT up!



2. There is no sport like your own. To run more efficient, you have to run. To play football better, you play football and incorporate workouts around the movements of football. A gentlemen once saw a lady on the stepmill. They spoke afterwards and she told him she plans on doing a marathon. He said, "Oh, if you can do the stepmill, you can run a marathon." This is incorrect. Climbing stairs is not comparable to running 26.2 miles. You have to train what you plan to compete. (Aka sport specificity)


3. If you are lacking drive or motivation, aim for an event to compete in. There is nothing more satisfying than joining people with the same goals and finishing an event you trained months for.



Please leave Carisse a comment and let her know what tips you like best. Also feel free to add your favorite in the comments section as well. You Can reach Carisse at CarisseCrossland@hotmail.com.

Why Slow Cardio Sucks for Fat Loss

Hey I hope you’re doing great and still working hard at your goals as this year wraps up.

Last week I was talking to a new client about fat loss and toning up. She told me she was doing lots of cardio and now looking to start working with weights. Apparently, many people are still stuck doing long duration, low-intensity cardiovascular exercise.


I explained that metabolic resistance training is the fastest way to fat loss and the easiest way I could describe it was “cardio strength training”.

Here’s the deal: if you’re looking to achieve maximal benefit from the time you put into your workouts, long duration “slow-go” cardio is okay if you’re a distance athlete, but NOT the way to go, if you are looking to lose weight.
Here’s why:

1. Not enough calories burned — 45 minutes on the treadmill may burn 300 calories if you’re lucky, which is ONE TENTH of a pound of fat. Exercise ten hours a week and you might just lose a pound! Not good.
Which brings me to my next point:

2. Too much time invested — if you’re like most, you don’t have ten hours a week to put into working out each week. The good news is you only need a few hours tops for fat loss. I’ll get to that later.


3. Slow Cardio is just plain BORING — sitting on an exercise bike staring at the back of some sweating guy in front of you for 45-60 minutes everyday? I don’t think so.


4. No prolonged metabolic benefit — Did you know that with higher intensity exercise it is possible to continue to burn calories for up to 48 hours post workout? It’s true (see Burn Fat Fast). But you know what else is true? Long duration, low intensity cardio provides virtually NO prolonged elevation in metabolism. In fact, with slow-go cardio, metabolism returns to baseline almost IMMEDIATELY following the exercise session.

And finally:

5. Minimal fat loss — Fewer calories burned per minute and virtually no additional calories burned afterward = minimal, if any fat loss results. And what’s the point to doing cardio if not for the results.

So if long slow cardio isn’t the solution, what is?

Short duration, high-intensity exercise. Less time, faster results!


The beauty of “high intensity” is anyone can do it because it’s relative to you. I don’t care if you’re already in great shape or if you’re 50 lbs overweight, you can exercise with increased intensity.

It might be a sprint or a walk up hill but somehow you need to increase the intensity.

Stop doing what doesn’t work and embrace what does work.

If you want the end result, I urge you to add metabolic training to your training. For a sample program try the backyard strength workout.

Abs - Beyond Crunches

If you're looking to flatten your stomach, tighten your tummy or get six pack abs, stop doing crunches. Before you work yourself into a fit with what I just said, listen up. If you want to get what you've never had you have to do something you've never done and I'm just guessing you've done tons of crunches in the past with not much to show for it.

I've put together four exercises in this video here for you to add to your workout routine. The best part is it only takes a few minutes.






Keep in mind there's no magic exercise that will shrink your waistline, they only build the muscles. So make sure you're also cutting out the excess calories in your diet to lose inches as well.

Your abs need recovery just like any muscle so make sure you give them a day off after working them. For variety switch off the between this workout and the core workout 1.

The Biggest Loser Finale

So I'm watching the Biggest Loser finale the other night and wow did those people lose a ton of weight! I know what you're thinking if you saw the show - how did all those people lose in double digits in a single week and how did that guy lose 28 pounds in a single week.

They're in another world

You've gotta remember on the show they're living a different life than you or me. They don't have to work eight plus hours a day, go to school, take care of the kids, the dog, pay bills or do any of the things we have to do.

Plus they work out for hours a day under the supervision of two trainers that don't take excuses and push them to their limits and beyond. To top it off, they have nutritional and medical staff behind the scenes as well.


How to Lose 10 pounds in a week

Well they don't always lose 10 pounds a week, sometimes they don't lose anything - even with all those advantages. But the more you weigh, the more calories you can burn in a workout. After all walking a mile isn't all that tough when you weight 160, but imagine how much work you'd be doing if you weighed 400 pounds. More work = more calories burned.


The turning point

The contestants all came into the show with a burning desire to change, for some it was a matter of life or death if they didn't lose weight. Even so, at some point each and every contestant wanted to give up at one point or another and without a trainer they would have slowed way down or even quit completely.

You could see from the clips of the first few shows how the contestant were saying things like, "I can't do this", "I have to stop", and "this is too hard". Have you ever pushed that hard where you were telling yourself that? These people were working the butts off.

When you're not accustomed to working hard, you want to give up a lot. But then something changed. They got accustomed to hard work and started to believe they could step up to the challenge.

When you believe in yourself your language changes. They started saying things like, "I can do this" and "I will be the Biggest Loser". When you believe in yourself your language changes and your attitude changes and you can accomplish what you set out to do.


How you can succeed

*You gotta have a burning desire to change. Change doesn't happen by accident. Your health and fitness may not be a matter of life and death, but that's how serious you need to take it. Stop putting it on the back burner. I'm serious - stop it now. Make exercise and nutrition a priority in your life today.

*Change your thoughts. Until you truly believe in yourself you won't accomplish your goals. Stop hoping and wishing. Successful people don't hope and wish... they believe. Change your thoughts and change your life.

*Work hard; then work harder. I know you think you work hard on your own, but trust me, each and every last person I've trained always works harder when their pushed. When you want to give up - don't. Do you see how hard the contestants worked? They results they got weren't on accident.

Give more effort in your workouts and you'll get more in return. To truly push yourself, you need a trainer or at least a training partner; just make sure your partner spend most of the time pushing you, not talking your ear off :)

*Surround yourself with positive, like minded people. The more time you spend around negative people the harder it is to get where you need to go. Joining a boot camp or a running group are great ways to get around people with similar goals who are positive and will support you.

Stop hoping and wishing. It all comes down to believing in yourself and working hard.

What do you think of ab machines?

Q: I’d really like to know what you think of the exercise machines out there. I just bought the Ab Circle. What do you think about it? Is it worth keeping? Do those things really help? I’d greatly appreciate your take on this and others that you know.

A: Okay, here's the deal. All ab devices are tools to strengthen the muscle. You already have one of the best tools available which is your own body. So is an ab machine needed? No. Is it useful maybe.

If you’re looking to trim your waistline and tone your abs, you need three things. Limiting yourself to just the ab machine will strengthen your abs, which is good but won't burn off the layer of fat covering the muscles.

Here's the three steps you need to take.

1. Do full body resistance training including exercises that work the core. Building muscle will boost your metabolism which helps you lose fat around your entire body.

2. Cardio exercise. Preferably high intensity exercise. Which gives you the best return on your time investment for fat loss.

3. Supportive nutrition. You can do all the cardio and ab work in the world but if you eat like crap you'll never achieve the results you want. See clean eating 101.

So to sum it all up, if you’re looking for results you gotta do more than ab work to get the results you want; even with the best tool

9 Habits to Break

Aren’t you tired of hoping and wishing you could finally get in shape? In all my blog posts I’ve put up tons of useful workouts to help you along the way, but if your mind isn’t right then it’s not going to help much. Once your break these habits and form new positive habits success is right around the corner.

1. Stop waiting for the right time to get in shape. Don’t wait until you have more free time, January 1st or next summer to start working out. I know people who’ve been waiting for 6 years for everything to be perfect before they start working out! Start now, because there’s never a better time than now.


2. Being afraid to fail. Maybe you failed the last time you tired to lose weight. So what! Everyone who’s been successful fails. The difference is successful people embrace failure, learn from it and try again.

3. Not finishing what you start. Do not let yourself be the person who makes a New Year’s Resolution just to give up 6 weeks later. Successful people get the job done whether or not they feel like it. Take it one day at a time and be successful every day.


4. Not having a plan. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail…. nuff said.


5. Being Insane. Hey the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Stop being insane! If the workouts in the magazines aren’t working – it’s time to try something new.


6. Giving up because it’s hard. You know, I rarely see someone in great shape who doesn’t work hard. Yeah you’ve got a few people with great genes that don’t have to work hard, but for most of us we have to work hard for what we want.


7. Stop rationalizing failure. Maybe you don’t have a gym membership or you have a bad back. Stop using that as an excuse. Find a way to succeed despite the road block.



8. Stop complaining and blaming others. Don’t tell me you can’t eat healthy because you don’t buy the food in your household. If you want to succeed start taking responsibility for yourself. It’s your job to see that you eat healthy not anyone else’s. Go shopping with the person who shops or give them a list of the healthy foods you need.


9. Being inconsistent. Working out once in a while won’t get you in the shape you want to get in. Even if you can’t do your full workout once in a while, do 10 or 15 minutes. This will keep you consistent and you’ll be less likely to let a week or two go without working out which leads to giving up completely.

Let me know what your favorites are below.