Fitness Tips For Life

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This post is a bit of a rant. I love everyone that emails me and reads this blog but sometimes I am too easy on the changes that people need to make. So I will rant a bit today for you.

I know the title may be a little tongue in cheek but I worry that so many people are waiting for another day to start what they need to start today.

There is a great quote that I always have loved

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift

The reason that this means so much is that people dream about tomorrow and they dwell on the past and forget that today is the only day that you really have control of.

But just looking at this short term means that people fail to act. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe you have heard of lapband surgery or maybe not. Actually lapband gastric surgery simply put is a method to squeeze the stomach so that you would feel fuller and not eat as much. The surgery is less invasive, I guess, than Gastic bypass but is still full of complications and often needs to be either adjusted or removed althogether.

In a surgical procedure, the band is placed around the upper part of the stomach, creating a small pouch that can hold only a small amount of food. The narrowed opening between the stomach pouch and the rest of the stomach controls how quickly food passes from the pouch to the lower part of the stomach. The system helps the patient eat less by limiting the amount of food that can be eaten at one time and increasing the time it takes for food to be digested.

Depending on the patient’s needs, after the device is implanted the narrowed opening between the pouch and the lower part of the stomach can be adjusted in size by inflating or deflating the hollow band. Inflating the band makes the opening smaller, causing food to pass more slowly. Deflating the band makes it wider, causes food to pass more quickly. This adjustment is made by adding or removing fluid inside the hollow band. The doctor does this by injecting or removing the fluid through a small button-like part called the access port. This access port is placed under the skin in a muscle in the chest wall. The port is connected to the band by the tubing. Read the rest of this entry »

Governments everywhere are banning smoking in public places even though they always seem quite happy to keep tobacco legal so that they can still collect taxes.

India has imposed the world’s biggest smoking ban by forbidding its 1.2 billion people from lighting up in public places.

The move has been introduced to try and fight tobacco use blamed, directly or indirectly, for a fifth of all deaths in the world’s third-largest consumer.

The ban, which includes all offices and restaurants, will hit its estimated 240 million tobacco users, who are likely to find their homes and cars among the last few places to light up. Offenders will be fined 200 rupees ($4).

How do you feel about these bans? As an ex-smoker I think it is a good start but there still seems to be a real shortage of programs to help people quit smoking easily. I can vouch for anyone that has quit that it is really tough.

I know how difficult quitting smoking really is so I started a quit smoking email course to help people out. If you do smoke and want to quit then sign up and see

I used to do a lot of really heavy weightlifting, nothing like a pro bodybuilder, but have always been impressed by the Mr Olympia. Last weekend the Mr Olympia took place and Dexter Jackson won the Sandow (Mr Olympia trophy) and the title as Mr Olympia 2008.

Dexter has been a very high level bodybuilder for many years first placing 9th in the 1999 Mr Olympia so it has taken him until his 10th Olympia to win one.

There are many many bodybuilding contest but the Mr Olympia has overshadowed all of them except maybe the Arnold Classic, which is a contest sponsored by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Even the Mr Universe, which was popular in the 1960’s and 1970’s, does not have nearly the hype surrounding it as the Mr Olympia has.

The local sports shows as you may have noticed do not seem to talk about bodybuilding or this contest although there are a lot of hardcore followers that knew exactly what was happening this weekend in Las Vegas. Read the rest of this entry »

I have written quite a few times about the importance of drinking water but last week I restarted a strategy that I had followed for a long time and then gave up.

Drinking water first thing in the morning.

The idea is to get up and immediately drink four glasses of water and nothing else. Wait at least 45 minutes before having any coffee or tea or breakfast.

Why would you want to do this? Well I used to do this before getting on the bike to ride to work, actually I did it for a couple of years and had a lot of energy in the morning. I never knew if the energy was from drinking the water or from the bike ride itself. There seems to be a very popular notion that drinking water or anything in the morning will kickstart your metabolism and I have to agree that over the last week I have had a lot more energy and a much better level of concentration to get more done in the early morning.

Try it and see if it works. Post your comments about what you think of this water in the morning idea.

On Thursday I decided to change things up and change my reps for my workout.

It was a killer workout. The workout took 35 minutes. And I am still sore today.

The workout I did was a high rep workout where I did the same exercises as usual, mostly, and instead of sticking to 6-12 reps per set I actually pushed my reps to 50-60 per set for only a couple of sets per exercise.

This is a High Rep Workout

• 1 set of 60 reps of incline bench press followed by 12 reps of incline flyes
• 1 set of 30 reps of military press
• 1 set of 25 reps of one armed bent over rows
• 1 set of 50 reps per arm of alternating curls
• 1 set of 25 reps of tricep kickbacks

I went through this set with a longer than regular time between sets, maybe a minute or so, and by the end I was really winded and wiped. I took about a 10 minute break and did it again. Read the rest of this entry »

I just saw an article on CNN about a woman that lost 160 pounds on the Raw Food Diet. Many people ask me about this because the Raw Food Diet seems like a natural and safe way ot lose weight.

Raw food diets can be a great way to not only lose weight but also led a much healthier, natural lifestyle in general. Most raw food diets are plant-based, with at least 75% of the diet composed of raw food.

Food examples include living and raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, rolled or flaked grains, and seaweeds. Some adherents may also eat cooked grains and legumes, fresh fish and poultry. For the strict raw food diet, however, nothing should be heated over 116 degrees Fahrenheit. Read the rest of this entry »

Regardless of the number of fad diet pills and supplements coming up in the market, the rules of weight loss have not changed over the years! The basic rule of weight loss is still the same: follow a healthy, balanced diet and exercise regularly. If you want to do something that breaks this basic rule, you will be in for trouble.

Do you want to lose weight quickly by following a fad diet program? No matter how expensive and popular the diet program is, you won’t be able to lose weight permanently if you try to get rid of fat by any unnatural means.

Diet Pills and Weight Loss?

Some of the diet pills out there will take you through a rapid cycle of weight loss. No sooner have you finished smiling at the dipping scale than you will notice that the scale is going upwards as fast as it had gone downwards. In simple terms, you will gain weight as quickly as you had lost it.

There is a reason why this happens. It is all okay as long as you follow the diet, but there is no fad diet in the world which is not a bit over-the-top in terms of food restrictions,. These fad diets restrict your food intake in such a way that you end up craving for your old, favorite junk foods. You start by binge eating: that is, taking one bit of your junk food everyday. Soon it goes out of your control, and you won’t even realize when you have cheated on your diet program, quit it and got back to your old lifestyle.

Diet change needs to be permanent

As soon as you return to your normal eating habits (that is, eating more and more junk foods), you end up gaining a lot more weight than what you started with. Read the rest of this entry »

I just found a story at People Magazine that Baron Davis, the 6′ 3″ L.A. Clippers guard, is on Jenny Craig.

What a strange story that a weight loss program that is built for normal people, and maybe even some people that get no exercise, is now being use by an NBA player in the off season to get in shape.

Inspired by current spokeswoman Latifah, Davis, 29, started the plan at the beginning of August to get in shape for basketball season.

“I know Queen Latifah, and when I saw her out there using it, I thought maybe I could use it, too, to work on my health and fitness goals and inspire others,” he tells PEOPLE.

During the NBA off-season, Davis let his fitness slide. “In the off-season, it’s kind of hard to maintain day-to-day,” he says. “I don’t want to get up and cook. And when I pig out, I’m the type of person where there’s no limit to what I can do.” Read the rest of this entry »

Dieting is pretty boring, not just because of the kind of food you have to eat but because of the several rules and regulations you are required to follow when cooking your food. Plus you are not even sure what ingredients to include and what not to include in your meals.

As you can see, cooking meals at home involves a lot of guesswork; plus it is a drain on time! However, this should not be an excuse for you to quit your diet program. After all, if you don’t want to cook meals yourself, you can take advantage of diet meal delivery services and have ready-made meals delivered at your doorstep.

Just imagine: you hear the door bell ringing and you are handed over a package. The smell that comes from it seems to be mesmerizing and you are already itching to take a bite. You open the package to see that there are all delicious foods inside, waiting just for you! These are all healthy, natural, low-calorie meals that you can eat without being worried about weight gain! They don’t contain any kind of artificial flavors or preservatives that would increase your body weight.

Home delivered diet meal is a boon for many people because it not only saves them a lot of time but also eliminates all the guesswork that goes in the making of ‘diet meals’! Plus the food is also tasty since they are cooked by professional cooks! You might actually end up getting addicted to these home delivered meals - they are THAT good.

Contrary to what you might believe, home delivered diet meals are actually pretty cheap and affordable even for the ‘ordinary pockets’; don’t think that they are only for the people of upper society! To give you an idea of how much money you can save, take a pen and paper and list all the items that you use to cook your meals. When all is said and done, you will be surprised to see that you are getting the home delivered diet meals at a bargain price.

The toughest part is that of finding the right diet delivery program for yourself. Not all programs are reliable; plus there are specialized diet delivery services than would deliver you only a certain type of meal. So, if you need low-calorie meals, you need to find a reliable service that would offer you that kind of food packages! If in doubt, you can also search in Google but be careful when taking your pick as the sites that appear at the top of the search results are not necessarily the best.

All in all, a diet meal delivery program is really a great tool that you need in your quest of weight loss; you should be using it if you aren’t already.