Many of us get fat as we age. We become less active, but we continue to eat as we did when we were active teenagers. We are no longer growing “up,”  so the food we eat makes us grow “out.” We also eat stuff that is not good for us, and the negative effects accumulate over the years.

However, all is not lost. We can help ourselves by remaining active. Choose an activity that you enjoy and do it regularly. Don’t think of getting exercise; think of having fun. We all need to play and have fun. The more time that we spend at play, the less time that we have to eat.

If you are already active, then do yourself a big favor and avoid becoming sedentary. Avoid fat habits: Watching television, taking the elevator at work, eating snack “foods,” sitting all day at the computer. These things do you little good.

Many people live a long time in great discomfort. I’d like to live a long life, but I want to feel good in old age. I’m convinced that maintaining physical fitness by avoiding fat habits is the way to minimize discomfort in old age.

I had a Tai Chi instructor who was also a ballet dancer. Her face was old and wrinkled, but her body was strong and supple. She seemed to have none of the physical discomforts that many older people have.

NPR recently ran a story on ballet dancer Frederic Franklin who is still dancing at the age of 95. When I heard him speak, he sounded not at all like an old person. He has been dancing since he was eight years old. He loves it and keeps doing it, and it keeps him young.

I don’t know about you, but I want to be young in my old age, and I want to die young.

What if I told you that you should not want to lose weight? What if I told you that you do not want to be skinny? Well, that is what I am telling you.

In the battle with excess fat we have lost our direction. We think that we should be losing weight, but weight is not really the issue. The issue is excess fat. We are too fat. What we should focus on is fitness and fat loss so that we can live well physically for a long time.

In our efforts to lose weight we are becoming fatter.  We must put the focus back on losing fat and becoming more fit.

As we become fatter it becomes harder for us to lose fat because it becomes harder for us to exercise. We don’t enjoy exercise as much as we become fatter.

You do not want to lose weight. You want to lose fat! You do not want to be skinny. You want to be lean! Here is what you need to do to accomplish these goals:

• Eat real food.
• Eat smaller meals, but eat more frequently.
• Avoid soft drinks and packaged juices.
• Do resistance exercises at least 3 days per week.

That’s it! You don’t need to go on special diets.  You don’t have to buy expensive, prepackaged meals. You don’t have to spend a lot of time in the gym.

Here is a free resource to help you in your quest for a lean body.

You can change weight in a flash with Adjustable Dumbbells

Dumbbells have now been improved. A set of dumbbells can take quite a bit of wall space, and replacing weights can be time consuming, but now there are adjustable dumbbells that use only a few square feet. The new adjustable dumbbells let you to change the weight in a flash by moving a pin or turning a dial. Now anyone can use free weights at home. Yea, I love these adjustable dumbbells.

Let’s face it… building muscle is not the easiest thing to accomplish even despite regular hard workout schedules and trying every type of workout and supplement. 

I struggled for years to gain any significant muscle mass, but over the years in my personal training business and with my own experimentation have found some important things that have helped make significant muscle gains possible even for hardgainers.

So, I’m going to give 3 important tips here so you can start building lean muscle mass faster and easier.

1. Make sure that 95% of the exercises you perform regularly in the gym are big multi-joint compound exercises.  It doesn’t matter if your goal is fat loss or building muscle… big multi-joint exercises should comprise 95% of the exercises you do in your workouts if you want to get lean, ripped, and powerful.

It’s easiest to think of it in terms of the major movement patterns such as these (focus 95% of your workouts on these):

• upper body horizontal press (bench press, pushups, dips),
• upper body horizontal rows (1-arm dumbbell rows, seated cable rows, bent over barbell rows),
• upper body vertical pull (lat pulldowns, pullups, chinups),
• upper body vertical press (overhead dumbbell and barbell presses, barbell or kettlebell clean & presses)
• lower body squatting movements (front squats, back squats, overhead squats, bodyweight squats, etc)
• lower body deadlifting movements (regular deadlifts, sumo deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts)
• lower body single leg movements (lunges, step-ups, jump lunges, etc)
• abdominal and core exercises (these are important, but still are 2nd priority after all of the major upper body and lower body multi-joint movements… your abs and core will be worked from most major multi-joint exercises anyway)

The other 5% of your exercises can focus on single joint exercises (isolation exercises) such as bicep curls, tricep presses, calf presses, shoulder shrugs, shoulder lateral raises, pec flyes, etc, etc.  However, these exercises are only accessory exercises to do after the main focus has been the multi-joint drills.

2.  Train hard and intensely 3-4 days/week for 45-60 minutes per weight training workout.  Keep your workouts to no longer than 60 minutes as training too much beyond this point can trigger excess catabolism.  You want to stay anabolic, but you still need to train your body hard and intensely enough to trigger muscle growth.

Try a super-set style of workout program to maximize the intensity that you can train.  My favorite combinations are opposing upper and lower body movement patterns that don’t interfere with each other, such as squats coupled with pullups as a superset, or bench press coupled with deadlifts as a superset.

Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of these types of upper/lower body supersets done with heavy weights and a high intensity.  The first time in my life that I experienced significant muscle mass gains were when I started doing these types of workout combos regularly (although still mixing up my training variables).

These are mainstays of almost any effective workout program — caloric intake can simply be adjusted whether your goal is fat burning or gaining muscle mass.

3.  Eat clean with quality whole foods… REAL foods instead of highly processed over-hyped supplement powders and bars. 

The quality of protein (and additional nutrition from vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants) are best assimilated by the body from real whole food such as eggs, meats, dairy (preferably raw), fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, etc. instead of from processed protein powders, chemical-laden bars, and meal replacements.

Forget about the hyped up workouts in the muscle mags that only work for pro bodybuilders or people on steroids. Forget about the over-hyped supplement “stacks” that pay the bills for almost every muscle mag… Instead, make these tips in this article part of your lifestyle, and you’ll see muscle gains and a leaner, ripped body like you’ve never seen before!

I bought this weight loss and fitness program in November of 2009. I figured I would take a look at it and if I did not think it worth the money, then I would just request a refund within the eight week return period. I was not interested in just building my abs, I was interested in losing weight in general, and I wanted to know what I could do to live better as I grow older.

I have limited time in which to exercise, plus I am limited in what exercises I can do because of a back injury and a shoulder injury. However, the injuries are part of my motivation for wanting to become fit. I wanted to do something that would make my injuries less of a hindrance in my daily living.

Mike Geary’s The Truth About Six Pack Abs is not an abdominal program. It is a complete guide to nutrition and physical fitness for men and women, young and old. The Abs part is not about specifically training your abdominal muscles, but is a statement of what happens when you lose excess body fat. When you lose that extra belly fat then your abs become visible. They are already there under layers of belly fat. If you focus only on abdominal exercises then your abs will get stronger, but if you don’t lose the belly fat then no one will ever see your six pack abs.

Geary’s program shows you how to quickly lose excess fat, and that should be your real goal. Aim for building a lean, fit body and the abs will be automatic. More importantly, you will have increased your fitness level and your strength. This is not a diet to lose weight, for you do not want to lose weight. You want to lose fat and you want to keep the muscle. It requires more energy to maintain muscle than to maintain fat, so the more muscle you have, the more you can eat without gaining weight. That is one reason why elite athletes can eat so much more than the rest of us without getting fat. It takes a lot of calories for them to maintain their bodies. Of course, they also exercise more than the rest of us.

I like that this is not a weight lost diet, but a nutrition and fitness program. It includes a nutrition component that does not require that you starve yourself, in fact it demands that you eat often and eat nutritiously; and it includes an exercise component that shows you the best exercises for losing fat quickly. You do not have to spend hours in the gym to lose fat. You can exercise in your home or office and accomplish your goals, but you have to do the right kind of exercises. Mike Geary shows you what exercises to do.

I have not regretted my purchase of The Truth About Six Pack Abs program. I decided not to request a refund. I’ve read a lot about fitness and nutrition, and I’ve found the information provided by Mike Geary to be sound and in line with other credible sources. I put the program into practice and lost 10 pounds in 30 days. The only thing that I don’t like about the program is that it does not work if I don’t use it.

Here is a complete review of The Truth About Six Pack Abs program that tells you specifically what the program contains.

Warning: this style of workout is WAY different than anything you’ve ever tried before and may result in a dramatically leaner, stronger body so that your friends no longer recognize you in a matter of weeks!

Alright, I exaggerated about your friends recognizing you, but this workout is still great for busy people that always use the excuse that they don’t have time to go to the gym, or even for the normal gym rat to try out for a few weeks to break out of a plateau.

Please keep an open-mind and don’t worry so much about what other people think, because this is quite different and you may get some funny looks, but you’ll get the last laugh with your new rock hard body! To be honest, most people are too self conscious to try something like this. If that’s the case for you, then that’s your loss.

Here’s how it works (these workouts can be done at home or even in your office):

Instead of doing your traditional workouts of going to the gym 3-4 times a week and doing your normal weight training and cardio routines for 45 miutes to an hour at a shot… with this program, you will be working out for just a couple minutes at a time, several times throughout each day, 5 days/week.

The program will consist of only bodyweight exercises done for about 2-3 minutes, 6-8 times per day, throughout each day. Now obviously if you work a normal office job, you are going to have to not be shy about doing a few exercises in your office and having your cube-mates watch you. Actually, I’ve found that some people that have tried this have actually gotten their co-workers to join them!

If you have a private office, then you don’t have to worry about anybody watching you. If you work from home, or are a stay at home mom, there’s no reason you can’t fit these in throughout the day while at home. If you end up having a busy day with meetings and so forth, and can only fit a couple of these 2-minute workouts in, then so be it, but try to get as many done each day as you can.

If you’re on a normal 9-5 office schedule, I recommend doing your 2-minute workouts every hour, on the hour, with the exception of lunch. For example, you could try 9 am, 10 am, 11 am, 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, and 4 pm.

Some of the bodyweight exercises that are the best to focus on are:

• bodyweight squats (and variations)
• pushups (and variations)
• forward, reverse, or walking lunges
• up & down a staircase if one is available
• floor planks (holding the plank position from forearms and feet)
• floor abs exercises such as lying leg thrusts, ab bicycles, etc.
• one-legged bodyweight Romanian deadlifts

This list is not fully comprehensive, but I wanted to keep it relatively simple. If you know other good bodyweight exercises, you can add those to your routine also. If you want to keep it real simple and don’t want to get down on the floor for anything, you can stick to squats, lunges, and pushups and still get great results.

The good thing about these workouts is that you do enough in 2-3 minutes to get your blood pumping, heart rate up a bit, a large portion of your body’s muscles worked, and body temperature raised. However, it’s usually not enough to break a sweat in only 2 or 3 minutes, so you don’t have to worry about sweating in the office or where ever you may be. At most, you might just get a little moist on the skin.

Here’s an example workout routine at home or the office (adjust the reps up or down based on your capabilities):

Mon/Wed/Fri
9 am – 10 pushups/15 bodyweight squats, repeat 1X for 2 sets
10 am – plank holds (hold the planks as long as you can taking short rest breaks for a total of 3 minutes)
11 am – 5 pushups/10 bodyweight squats, repeat for 4 sets
1 pm – plank holds (hold as long as possible in 3 minutes)
2 pm – 8 pushups/12 bodyweight squats, repeat for 3 sets
3 pm – plank holds (hold as long as possible in 3 minutes)
4 pm – max pushups/max bodyweight squats in one set (no repeat)

Tues/Thurs
9 am – 6 fwd lunges each leg/6 rev lunges, repeat 1X for 2 sets
10 am – one legged bw Romanian deadlifts (RDL) 6 each leg/floor abs for 20 sec, repeat 1X for 2 sets
11 am – 3 fwd lunges each leg/3 rev lunges, repeat for 4 sets
1 pm – one legged bw RDL 3 each leg/floor abs for 20 sec, repeat for 4 sets
2 pm – 5 fwd lunges each leg/5 rev lunges, repeat for 3 sets
3 pm – one legged bw RDL 10 each leg/floor abs for 30 sec (no repeat)
4 pm – max fwd lunges each leg/max rev lunges in one set (no repeat)

In order to progress on these workouts, you could either add 1 or 2 reps to each set per week, or you could progress to more difficult versions of each exercise each week (for example, close grip pushups, one leg raised pushups, squats with arms raised straight over head, etc.).

The above routines are just a couple examples of how you can use this very unique style of training. Use your creativity and come up with your own. Think about what you’ve accomplished with these “mini” workouts completed throughout each day… You’ve increased your heart rate and pumped up your muscles 6-8 different times throughout each day, burning a lot of extra calories and stimulating your metabolism.

Even though each “mini” workout was a very short duration, you’ve accumulated lots of repetitions for almost every muscle throughout your entire body, and you didn’t even have to break a sweat during any of the “mini” workouts. And there’s hardly any excuse for not being able to take a 2-minute break once per hour and do a couple of exercises.

Another benefit of this style of training is that now you don’t have to devote any time before or after work to going to the gym because you already got your workouts little by little throughout the day. You’ve now got some extra free time on your hands!

Try this type of time-efficient workout routine out for 3-4 weeks and then go back to your normal gym routines. I think you’ll find that it was a great way to break out of a plateau and stimulate new results in your body. You can try mixing in a cycle of these “mini” workouts every couple of months to keep things fresh.

Keep in mind that this is only one method of training and doesn’t mean that you should only stick to this method for eternity. You will hit a plateau on any given training method, so I’d recommend just rotating it into your arsenal of various training methods. And by all means, don’t worry so much about what other people think…have the courage to try something a little different. In the end, you’ll be the one laughing back at all of the “blubber-bellies” at your office that are giving you funny looks while they eat their donuts!

If you liked these training ideas, my internationally best-selling ebook The Truth about Six Pack Abs contains hundreds of more innovative training ideas to lose stubborn body fat and carve out a rock hard set of abs and a flat stomach.Feel free to email this link on to any friends or coworkers that you think would like to try these types of unique quick daily workouts.  Heck, try to get your co-workers to do these with you if you can!

Americans are losing a decades long battle with obesity. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 67 percent of American adults were overweight in 2006, 34 percent were obese, and 5.9 percent were extremely obese. While the prevalence of overweight has remained stable since 1980, the prevalence of obesity has more than doubled in that period.

There are many diet plans available to help you lose weight. The challenge is to find a plan that will work for you. It seems that most of them work for some people, but what works for your friend may not work for you. However, there is one thing that most effective weight loss diets have in common, namely, they require that you eat real food.

Why do we eat, or perhaps I should ask, why should we eat? We should eat for energy and nutrients. For the epicureans among you, it is alright to enjoy food, but the primary purpose of food is to provide us with fuel and nutrition. We must have both. If your food is nutrient dense, then you can easily eat more of it without getting too many calories. If your “food” has no nutrients, then you are eating “empty” calories, and your body will crave more food so that it can get nutrients.

Real food is what you find around the outer aisles of the supermarket. This is where you find the fresh vegetables, fruits, meats, and dairy. You also find it in the frozen food cases. The other real foods include certain breads, dried beans and grains, and canned goods. Real foods are foods that you can recognize without having to read a long list of ingredients. Broccoli is broccoli. Cheese is cheese. Milk is milk. Apples are apples. Chicken is chicken. All real foods have nutritional value.

Now that you know what the real foods are, you must restrict yourself to those real foods that are not laden with too much sugar and salt. Many canned goods are high in sodium or sugar. Too much sodium, from salt or sodium chloride, is linked to hypertension. Too much sugar adds too many calories. Furthermore, too much salt and sugar causes us to crave more food and overeat. That’s why you can’t eat just one potato chip. That’s why when you drink certain sweetened beverages, you are still thirsty.

To lose weight you must burn more calories than you eat. Professional athletes can eat several thousand calories per day and remain lean because they burn several thousand calories per day. People who sit at a desk all day don’t need to eat as much as pro athletes. If you work at a desk and you eat as much as Venus or Serena Williams, then you are going to get fat. A point of clarification is in order here: Lean and thin are not the same thing. You can be thin and fat, meaning that you have no significant muscle mass or muscle tone. Serena Williams is not thin, but she is lean. She has lean muscle mass.

In addition to eating real food, you must eat sensible portions. If you eat food without a lot of sugar and salt, it is easier to eat smaller portions. You will not be as easily subject to cravings, and you will be more easily satiated because your body will get nutrients from real food. Real foods are nutrient dense and will not ignite cravings, so begin now to incorporate them in your diet.

The point of weight loss is not to lose weight, but to change your body composition so that you have less fat. You must lose fat. Of particular interest is visceral fat, which is the active abdominal fat that gives you that fat belly look. Yes, it is an issue of vanity, but it is also an issue of health. Belly fat has been linked to higher risks of heart disease, hypertension, insulin resistance, and diabetes. So while you want to lose belly fat to look good, you also want to lose it to feel good.

Some recent scientific studies have suggested that adding strength training to your regimen will result in greater fat loss than diet and steady state cardio alone. A 2005 study found that two sessions per week of progressive resistance training, without an accompanying weight loss diet, significantly improves insulin sensitivity and fasting glycemia and decreases abdominal fat in older men with type 2 diabetes.

Results of a 2003 study of men with coronary artery disease suggest that a long-term combined aerobic and strength training program is more effective than an aerobic program alone in producing changes in body composition.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that strength training is superior to steady state cardio training for reducing fat. Furthermore, this anecdotal evidence indicates that you do not have to devote a lot of time to achieve significant results. As little as forty minutes of strength training, three times per week can reduce your body fat significantly; and it is more likely that you can keep this kind of training schedule. Running for an hour can be quite boring, and while it will improve your fitness level, it will do little to preserve your lean muscle mass. You will lose fat doing cardio, but you may also lose muscle. To preserve and build your muscle mass, you must do strength training.

There are many strength training programs available, so if you are trying to lose fat, especially if you are on a fat loss diet, then you should incorporate strength training into your fat loss plan. The Truth About Abs program is a fat loss and fitness program that includes a nutritional component and a strength training component. The strength training component uses multi-joint exercises to build strength and burn fat quickly. If you don’t have access to a gym or don’t have time to go to a gym, you can design a strength training program that requires only dumbbells and body weight exercises. In fact, you can do strength training with body weight alone.

Strength training has other benefits besides fat loss. By stressing your bones it increases bone density. Strengthening your muscles protects your joints. Strength training increases stamina and also can help you sleep better. So in addition to losing fat, you will improve your health in other ways by doing strength training.

I was recently asked if it is safe to lift weights while on a diet. If you are in reasonably good health, then it is safe to lift weights while on a diet. But more importantly, it is good to lift weights while dieting to lose weight.

But let’s be more precise in stating your goal. You should not diet to lose weight, but you should diet to lose fat. Weight is not the enemy. Excess fat is the enemy. To permanently lose excess fat requires a combination of dietary changes and exercise. However, for permanent fat loss, you must make the right dietary changes and do the right exercises.

While dieting you are attempting to create a calorie deficit so that your body will burn stored calories. The trick is to get your body to burn the calories that are stored as fat. You want to maximize fat loss and minimize the loss of lean body tissue. You can be skinny and soft. The goal is to be lean and not skinny.

Have you wondered why so many people who lose weight while dieting gain back more weight when they end their diets? They ultimately fail because while dieting they lose muscle mass. It takes more calories to maintain muscle than to maintain fat, so the loss of muscle mass lowers their metabolism. After losing weight their metabolic rate is lower which means that it takes fewer calories for them to maintain their weight, so when they resume their normal eating habits they are taking in many more calories than they need and they accumulate fat again. They end up fatter than they were before they started dieting.

Dieting is not the only way to create a calorie deficit. You can create a calorie deficit by exercising. Strength training by lifting weights or by other means maintains and builds your muscles while you lose fat. This will maintain or increase your resting metabolic rate so that it becomes easier to control your weight.

Strength training has other benefits as well. By stressing your bones it increases bone density. Strengthening your muscles protects your joints. It increases stamina. Strength training can also help you sleep better. So in addition to losing fat, you will improve your health in other ways by lifting weights.

Yes, it is safe to lift weights while dieting, but it is not just safe. It is good to lift weights while dieting because it makes your fat loss program more effective. Even if you are using a diet plan that does not require exercise, you should add a strength building component. So get your doctor’s permission to do strength training and start lifting weights or doing other resistance exercises to preserve and build your lean muscle mass while you lose fat.

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