Reward yourself

It's great to get a pat on the back every once in a while. And it's especially needed when you're out of your comfort zone, challenging yourself to improve, nervous about whether you can succeed.

Unfortunately most people are so wrapped up in their own problems they don't give out too many pats on the back so you've got to do it yourself.

Find some ways to reward yourself to pat yourself on the back and encourage yourself when no one else will. Pay more attention to what you do right than what you do wrong.

Make the reward meaningful to you. It doesn't have to be lavish or costly. It could be just settling down to read a good book for a change. Sometimes, the best rewards are those you can't buy.

Small rewards for meeting smaller goals, achieved more often, are more effective than waiting for the bigger rewards that require more work and more time.

By all means celebrate. But don't use food as a reward. Even good food. It's just too risky. Decide how you're going to celebrate reaching your weight loss goal and involve other people. Tell them about it. Plan a celebration that you can anticipate and then keep it within sight all the time.

He who hesitates is lost

There's an expression that goes, 'He who hesitates is lost.'

It's okay to 'look before you leap' and exercise a degree of caution but if you approach a block in the road to your dreams with hesitation, it might resist and break your resolve.

However, if you step forward with confidence, you can climb over that hurdle in your way, even if it's one inch at a time, and pull yourself over the top.

It's all about confidence.

Confidence is what you build by facing problems. Then you know that you can take on anything that comes along.

Metabolism and interval training

Depending on slow cardio exercise for significant fat loss is at the very least, inefficient.

With slow cardio exercise (like walking normally) it takes a long time for you to burn a lot of calories. Using only light cardio training for weight loss could even result in a reduced resting metabolism. Strength training doesn't suffer a reduced metabolic rate.

So what is the solution to burning fat in a faster, more efficient method?

The answer is to burn fewer calories in less exercise time, but with a more intense form of exercise.

Your body burns more calories after intense exercise (when you use intervals) than it does after you do slow cardio and your metabolism will stay high. This is sometimes called the afterburn effect.

How do you do intervals?

Well, you could sprint for 30 seconds and rest for 90 seconds and repeat that for 6 sets - using the bike, treadmill or running outside or even swimming, boxing, or skipping.Within that short time frame the intervals will cause your muscles to go crazy with activity. This crazy metabolism boost causes lots of calorie burning after exercise to get your body back to normal.

The result is you end up burning more fat and more calories in the post-exercise period as your body tries to get things under control.

Just remember though, you can wipe out an entire workout's work in less than a minute simply by eating rubbish food.

Success movie

Here is a slide show of magnificent pictures and inspiring messages on The Nature of Success.

Enjoy!

Weight joke

A bloke steps onto one of those machines that speak your weight and tell your fortune.

“Listen to this”, he tells his wife. “It says I’m energetic, bright, resourceful and a great lover.”

“Yes,” his wife nods, “And it’s got your weight wrong too.”

Steady burn

Have you ever been around a campfire? You've got to keep it going so it's ready to cook over at certain times don't you.

So what do you have to do to keep it going so it's a steady fire?

Feed it, right?

Can you achieve this by feeding the fire once or twice per day?

No you can't, because you'll have a raging blaze after stoking it up and then it dies down more and more until you stoke it up again.

Your metabolism is like this. It works best if it's fairly steady.

Once your metabolism is back up where it should be, it takes continued "stoking" of the metabolic furnace to keep it there. If you starve it of fuel (crash diet), it dies down. So once you get your metabolic fire burning, you've got to keep feeding it fuel or the fire will die down. This means frequent small meals rather than a couple of big feeds a day.

And what you feed it too is important. You can't throw some crumpled newspaper on the fire, it's too quickly burning. For your body this is akin to eating the high GI foods.

You have to keep putting small amounts of wood (the right type of fuel) on the fire at regular intervals or the fire burns out. For your body this means quality nutritious food.

To get your metabolism burning hot and keep it burning cannot be achieved by sporadic, infrequent training, missing workouts or missing meals.

Consistency is the key

If you keep starting and stopping with your exercise program, or skip meals and workouts often, you won’t even get off the ground to increasing your metabolism.

Nothing will undermine the re-building of your metabolism like inconsistency in applying the proper nutrition and training principles every day.

What are those principles?

1. Meal Frequency: eat 5-6 small meals per day. To do this you’ll need to eat about every 3 hours.

2. Adequate Calorie Intake: maintain a small calorie deficit and avoid starvation-level diets (suggested safe levels for fat loss: 2100-2500 calories per day for men, 1400-1800 calories per day for women) Have a substantial breakfast, a substantial meal after workouts and reduce the meal sizes as the day progresses.

3. Weight Training: Basic exercises that include the largest muscle groups such as squats, dead-lifts, overhead presses, and all kinds of rows and core-activation exercises will have a much greater metabolism stimulating effect than isolation exercises like curls, shrugs and, calf raises, etc.

4. Cardio Training: Get the intensity up if you really want to get a metabolic boost. Walking and low intensity cardio is fine, but higher intensity, particularly interval training, is more metabolism-stimulating.

5. Food Types: Select natural, unprocessed foods with high thermic effect (lean proteins like chicken, turkey, egg whites and fish are highly thermic, as are all green vegetables, salad vegetables and other fibrous carbs). Ensure you have protein with every meal.Maximize the low GI and complex carbohydrates and minimize the refined foods.Get plenty of water and stick to low fat (NOT no fat) foods.

Consistency means making it a habit. Before long weight control will be much easier.