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.”
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, May 25, 2007
The spice of life
Today I have a treat for you...
Some words from my wife, sent to me when I fell into an emotional black hole...
Yeah... Who wants a boring life eh?
Some words from my wife, sent to me when I fell into an emotional black hole...
All we have to remember is that we are always being looked after and that we are never being abandoned... what happens to us is for our own growth and benefit whether we think so or not. We are here for soul and unless you have spot on communication with yours I don't think you know just what soul is meant to experience this time around. All I know is that one has to face their challenges head on with the utmost faith that everything is in order. Don't forget that attitude has everything to do with it. It's what gets us through one way or another.
Believe that everything will work out for the best.... which it does when you look back on difficult times.
We are where we are meant to be. It's up to you how you see it - challenges are the spice of life... without them life would be boring.
Yeah... Who wants a boring life eh?
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Get focused movie
Since I'm always on about being focused I thought you might like to get the message in a motivational movie format.
This one's courtesy of my friends at nomoresabotage.com and it's all about you so I hope you enjoy it.
Please have a look now.
This one's courtesy of my friends at nomoresabotage.com and it's all about you so I hope you enjoy it.
Please have a look now.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Weights build muscle and metabolism
Weight training is really important in repairing a suppressed metabolism. Lifting weights is the stimulus to keep the muscle you have. Progressively overloading your muscles is the stimulus to begin rebuilding new muscle tissue, and muscle tissue is the heart of your metabolic furnace.
Men generally have no problem with weight training, but many women say they don't want to lift weights as part of their fat loss programs. The fact is, if you don’t lift weights you can expect a very, very long metabolism building journey.
Once you start exercising, especially if you do both high intensity cardio and weights, you’ll get an almost immediate boost in metabolic rate but the results are not going to be overnight.
So in addition to exercising your muscle you must also exercise your patience.
Men generally have no problem with weight training, but many women say they don't want to lift weights as part of their fat loss programs. The fact is, if you don’t lift weights you can expect a very, very long metabolism building journey.
Once you start exercising, especially if you do both high intensity cardio and weights, you’ll get an almost immediate boost in metabolic rate but the results are not going to be overnight.
So in addition to exercising your muscle you must also exercise your patience.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Crash diets crash the metabolism
Most diet programs claiming to help you quickly drop excess weight, only end up making it harder for you in the long run because they use harsh metabolism-decreasing diets. Furthermore they rarely advise enough exercise and almost never any weight training.
The result of following starvation diets or dropping weight too rapidly in is metabolic damage; in other words your metabolism slows right down. This makes it very difficult, after the initial impact of the crash diet, to achieve any further fat loss at all.
The bottom line is: you can’t starve the fat off with crash diets.
The good news is, any damage to the metabolism can be repaired. You just need the right combination of metabolism stimulating exercise and metabolism stimulating nutrition.
Applied consistently over time anyone can increase their metabolism.
It may take a bit longer if you've lost a lot of lean body mass from severe starvation dieting in the past, but it is not hopeless.
The result of following starvation diets or dropping weight too rapidly in is metabolic damage; in other words your metabolism slows right down. This makes it very difficult, after the initial impact of the crash diet, to achieve any further fat loss at all.
The bottom line is: you can’t starve the fat off with crash diets.
The good news is, any damage to the metabolism can be repaired. You just need the right combination of metabolism stimulating exercise and metabolism stimulating nutrition.
Applied consistently over time anyone can increase their metabolism.
It may take a bit longer if you've lost a lot of lean body mass from severe starvation dieting in the past, but it is not hopeless.
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