Weight loss Articles

Nine Sure-Fire Ways To Gain Fat

By Nick Nilsson

When it comes to fat gain, you may be helping your body

succeed without even realizing you're doing it! These

nine things will open your eyes and stop fat gain in its

tracks.

Ever wonder if some of the things you do on a daily basis could be making you gain fat? Some things you may already know but some of them may take you completely by surprise!

1. Eating then sleeping will make you gain fat

Did you know that Sumo wrestlers eat then sleep on purpose to gain fat as quickly as possible? Your body doesn't require as many calories during sleep and calories that are eaten right before sleep have a FAR greater chance of being stored as fat. In fact, it's almost a certainty.

This goes for afternoon naps and also applies to late-night eating. If you eat and then immediately sleep on a regular basis, you will gain fat.

[EDITORS NOTE: eating specific foods such as protein shakes that are taken for the purposes of muscle building and recovery do not fall into this category. When taken properly and in reasonable quantities, they will not add significant fat to the body.]

2. Skipping meals or not eating for long periods of time will make you gain fat

But doesn't skipping meals (most notably breakfast) save a lot of calories during the day? Sure, there's a chance that it may. But consider this - skipping meals will slow your metabolism and you'll get really hungry. With a metabolism that's been slowed by not eating (particularly true of skipping breakfast), you're going to store a lot more of that food as fat. It doesn't matter if you're eating a hamburger and fries or if you're eating plain pasta and a chicken breast. Your metabolism will be sluggish and your body will want to store what you're eating rather than use it.

Eat as soon after you wake up as possible (never more than an hour) to kick-start your metabolism for the day. Even if it's just a small something you grab on the go, do it. It will get your metabolism going and ensure the food you eat later doesn't get preferentially stored as fat.

3. Drinking soft drinks (even diet drinks) with fatty foods will make you gain fat

A sugary soft drink will result in a high insulin response. Insulin is a storage hormone - it helps the body store carbohydrates, proteins and fats.

There is also evidence to suggest that the artifical sweeteners commonly found in diet drinks can cause an insulin reaction in the body. It's a simple reaction to the sweetness, not carbs as there are no carbs in diet drinks. The body simply associates the taste of sweetness with the presence of carbs and assumes that carbs are present, increasing insulin levels in response.

What do you get when you have fatty foods in the presence of increased insulin levels? Simple. You get fat.

My advice is this: if you're going to eat fatty foods (we all do it at some point or other), drink water, not soft drinks or even diet soft drinks. Save the diet drinks for times when you're not eating fatty foods.

4. Constant snacking on energy foods will make you gain fat

I'm all for frequent eating to boost the metabolism and snacking on healthy foods is definitely not a bad thing. That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about giving your body a constant supply of food energy.

Consider this: if you give your body a constant supply of energy, it will not have a reason to dip into stored bodyfat for energy. You'll never dip into the battery on your laptop computer if you leave it plugged in. The body is no different.

A constant supply of outside energy means it won't have to use its own stored energy supplies. The result: you put on fat because the body doesn't need to burn any of it for energy.

5. Stress without physical exertion will make you gain fat

The jury is NOT out on evolution. The human body evolved to deal with stress in certain ways. Before we became "civilized," stress was all about fight-or-flight. Stress was that you were about to be eaten by a lion so you'd better run!

In response, the body needed a mechanism for quick energy to be available and a system to help deal with shock and injury. It was all about survival.

The result? In stressful conditions, the body secretes cortisol - a hormone that immediately starts breaking down muscle tissue for fast energy (it also acts as an anti-inflammatory in case of injury; cortisone is a relative of cortisol).

These days, we very rarely have to worry about being eaten by pretty much anything. But the basic responses of the body can't distinguish between that stress and the stress of, say, your boss taking away your treasured red stapler that you love so much and moving your desk to the basement.

In the past, stress would be immediately followed by physical exertion. You'd run as fast as you could from the lion or you'd fight off what was attacking you. Now, there is rarely physical exertion following stress so the cortisol is not dissipated. It continues to break down muscle and promote fat storage.

This is why constant stress without regular exercise will make you gain fat.

6. Toxic substances in your food will make you gain fat

Your body's reaction to a toxic substance is simple: protection. There are two primary ways the body does this. First, it tries to flush the toxins out. If that fails, it will try to lock the toxins away.

Think about it this way - what do nuclear power plants do with radioactive waste? They seal it in concrete and bury it. This is essentially the same thing your body does with toxins that you ingest. If it can't get rid of them, it seals them up in fat cells and locks them away.

Have you ever experienced headaches or other general ill feelings when you've gone on a diet? This is typical and is a result of previously stored toxins being released into the body again as you burn or release fat. You are, in essence, unsealing the toxins and flushing them out. This is one of the primary reasons it's critical to drink plenty of water when you're losing fat.

Minimize foods that contain toxins such as preservatives, pesticides (wash your fruit and vegetables thoroughly), antibiotics, and heavy metals (such as the mercury increasingly found in some species of fish). Your body will protect itself by holding onto fat to lock the toxins away.

7. Losing muscle mass will make you gain fat

The engine of your metabolism is your muscle mass. This is where the majority of calories are burned in the body. If you go on a diet and you lose a lot of muscle, it is pretty much a guarantee you'll gain the weight back (and often more!) and make it harder to lose fat again.

If you don't protect your muscle mass, the more you diet, the fatter you'll get.

8. Overconsumption of fructose will make you gain fat

Even though fructose is a sugar found in fruit and fruit juice, please, please, PLEASE don't take this point to mean that simply eating fruit is going to make you fat. It's not. Here's what I mean:

Your body stores carbohydrates in the form of glycogen in the muscles and in the liver. When your body needs energy, it breaks the glycogen down into sugar (glucose) for use in various bodily processes.

When your glycogen stores are full, extra carbohydrates will have a tendency to be stored as fat unless burned by activity. Fructose is more efficently converted into fat (more specifically, it's converted into the chemical backbone of triglycerides, which are fat molecules) than are other carbohydrates such as glucose. This makes it that much easier for excess fructose to be converted into fat.

While high fructose corn syrup is by far the main culprit when it comes to fructose and fat gain, even the fructose found in fruits and fruit juices can have this effect. Because fructose has "nicer" associations with it (being a fruit sugar) than other sugars such as sucrose (table sugar), a person may think they can drink all the juice they want and not run into the same trouble as if they drank the same amount of a sugary drink containing sucrose.

Fruit juices are essentially a concentrated source of fruit sugar and calories - as much as 150 calories or more per glass! Certainly, juice has more nutritional qualities to it than a soft drink but it is nevertheless important to realize that juice actually has a lot of calories and that the sugar it contains can easily be converted into fat.

What to do about it? Eating your fruit and drinking your fruit juice earlier in the day will greatly minimize any chance of spillover into fat stores. Also, take steps to minimize consumption of high fructose corn syrup, which is found in foods and drinks such as soft drinks and fruit beverages, cookies, gum, jams, jellies and baked goods. As always, read the labels!

9. Drinking alcohol frequently will make you gain fat

Alcohol can make you fat in so many ways. Consider these points:

- Alcohol inhibits both the fat-burning enzymes and the muscle-building hormones in your body for many hours after consumption.

- Alcohol is normally consumed later in the day/evening, a time when your body has the least need for the extra calories.

- Alcohol is preferentially stored as fat and is very efficiently converted into fat in the body.

- Alcohol is not an intelligence-enhancing substance and can lead you to make poor late-night food choices, again, a time when your body needs the extra calories the least.

- Alcohol is a depressant that will eventually make you tired. Remember what Sumo wrestlers do to gain fat quickly? Take in a lot of calories then go directly to sleep.

- Alcohol contains a lot of calories (7 calories per gram) with very little, if any, redeeming nutritional value.

All these points are not to say a moderate amount of alcohol consumption is bad for you. The key truly is moderation.

When you look at these points all together, imagine how quickly you'll gain fat if you drink a lot of alcohol late at night, eat fast food then go directly to sleep. There are few better ways to gain fat this quickly.

Conclusion:

Keeping an eye on the above factors can help you keep your weight under control. Add exercise into the mix and that extra fat will be a thing of the past!

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Nick Nilsson is Vice-President of the online personal training company BetterU, Inc. He has a degree in Physical Education and Psychology and has been inventing new training techniques for more than 16 years. Nick is the author of a number of bodybuilding eBooks including "Metabolic Surge - Rapid Fat Loss," "The Best Exercises You've Never Heard Of," "Gluteus to the Maximus - Build a Bigger Butt NOW!" and "The Best Abdominal Exercises You've Never Heard Of" all available at (http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru). He can be contacted at betteru@fitstep.com.

What Do You Mean Low-Intensity Training Isn't The Best For Fat Burning?

By Nick Nilsson

Find out why high-intensity training may be

your best bet for trimming your waistline.

But how can this possibly be? Everywhere you look, it's always said that long-duration, low-intensity training is best for fat loss. All high-intensity work does is burn carbohydrates, right?

Wrong.

After reading this article, I guarantee you'll develop a new respect for high-intensity cardio training for fat loss.

Low-intensity exercise is defined as working at a heart rate of about 60% to 65% of your maximum heart rate (which is equal to 220 - your age = maximum heart rate, thus if you are 20 years old, 220 - 20 = 200 max HR). High-intensity exercise is defined as working at about 75 to 85% or more of your maximum heart rate.

Using the previous example for maximum heart rate (max HR=200), working at 60% of your max HR would be 120 beats per minute and 80% of that would be 160 beats per minute.

There are several reasons low-intensity exercise is normally recommended for fat loss.

1. It's easy - In many cases people who are trying to lose fat don't always feel energetic enough to do hard training due to the caloric deficit (a.k.a. diet) that they are on. In these cases, just sticking to an exercise program can be hard enough, never mind making the exercise itself challenging.

2. It's low risk - A personal trainer generally can't go wrong by recommending low-intensity exercise to clients. Even the most out of shape person can usually do low-intensity cardio training safely. While this is certainly appropriate advice for novice trainers, it does not necessarily apply to the more experienced trainer when it comes to effective training.

3. It burns a higher percentage of calories from fat - this is very true: exercising at a lower intensity does burn a higher percentage of calories from fat than high-intensity exercise. But, as I will explain, this does not necessarily mean you're going to burn more fat.

Let's crunch some numbers to show you exactly what I mean when I say high-intensity exercise burns more fat.

Low-intensity training burns about 50% fat for energy while high-intensity training burns about 40% fat for energy. This is not a huge difference.

Say, for example, walking for 20 minutes burns 100 calories. Then 50% of 100 calories is 50 fat-calories burned.

Now say 10 minutes of interval training at a high intensity burns 160 calories. Well, 40% of 160 calories is 64 fat-calories burned.

By doing the high-intensity work, you've just burned 14 more fat calories in half the time. Starting to sound good? There's more...

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Low-intensity exercise only burns calories while you are actually exercising. That means the moment you stop exercising, your caloric expenditure goes back down to nearly baseline levels. Within minutes, you're not burning many more calories than if you hadn't done anything at all.

High-intensity exercise, on the other hand, continues to boost your metabolism long after you're done (often up to 24 hours after, depending on the length and intensity of the training session). This means you're continuing to burn many more calories all day long!

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Low-intensity exercise does nothing to build or support muscle mass. Maintaining muscle mass is critical to an effective fat-loss strategy as muscle burns fat just sitting there. Want to keep your metabolism working to burn fat? Do whatever you can to build or keep your muscle tissue.

High-intensity exercise has the potential to increase muscle mass. Compare the body of a top sprinter to a top marathon runner. The sprinter carries far more muscle mass. You won't get big bulky muscles from high intensity training but you will get shapely and more defined muscles!

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How To Do It

Now that you've seen how effective high intensity training can be for fat loss, how is it done?

The absolute easiest way to start this type of training is to get on a cardio machine at the gym and select the interval training program. As you'll see, you'll start off with a fairly light warm-up cycle, then quickly jump up to a high intensity level for a short burst. You will then drop back down to a low level for a period of time, then back up to a high level again, repeated several times and finishing with an appropriate cool-down period.

The repetition of these intervals is the nuts and bolts of high intensity interval training. You can also do it manually by adjusting your intensity level up and down over short periods of time.

For example, do 30 seconds at high power then 30 seconds at low power. Repeat. It's very simple and very effective.

Another excellent method for doing high-intensity training is called aerobic interval training. It is essentially the same concept as the previously explained interval training but the work intervals are longer with the intensity level somewhat lower. A good example would be running at a pace that you can only keep up for about 5 minutes then walking for 2 minutes then running 5 more minutes, walking 2 minutes, etc.

High-intensity training can be applied to any form of cardiovascular exercise. Anything from walking/sprinting to swimming to bike riding will work perfectly. I would recommend doing his type of training 2 to 3 times per week for best results. As always, be sure to consult with your physician before starting any exercise program.

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Remember, what you get out of exercise is directly proportional to what you put in. Work at high-intensity training for awhile and see just how much better your fat-loss efforts go.

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Follow the Path of MOST Resistance!

By Nick Nilsson

Why weight training is the fast track to sculpting your body.

Resistance is NOT futile! When it comes to changing your body for the better quickly and permanently, nothing comes close to good old-fashioned weight training.

The shape of your body is determined by three things: muscle, bone and fat. While there's really nothing you can do about changing your bone structure, there is a whole lot you can do about muscle and fat. This ratio of muscle to fat is commonly known as your body composition.

And what is the fastest way to change your body composition? Weight training. Why is it so effective? Because it builds muscle.

Muscle is the key to changing your body. While fat certainly gives your body shape, muscle is what gives you the shape you actually WANT!

One of the greatest things about muscle is that it burns calories all day long, even when you're lying on the couch. What this means is that the more muscle you have, the more calories you'll burn during the day and the more you'll be able to eat without gaining weight. Sound interesting? There's more.

Weight training stimulates your metabolism more than aerobic training such as cycling or walking. This means that you'll continue to burn calories long AFTER you've completed your weight training session. The calorie-burning effect of aerobic training generally declines rapidly once you stop the exercise.

Beginning trainers, who are just starting with exercise, are often under the impression that they should stay away from weight training because they might gain weight before they start losing it.

I like to use a car as an analogy. Imagine your body is a car, your muscles are the cylinders in the engine, and your bodyfat is the gas.

With a four-cylinder car, you only burn a minimum amount of gas/fat. Weight training and building more muscle is the equivalent of putting more cylinders into your engine. As you can imagine, you'll burn a whole lot more gas even while idling! And, just like a car with more cylinders, you'll be a lot more powerful too!

The bottom line to you is this...with more muscle, you'll get greater fat loss with less effort.

While it certainly is a possibility that you could gain weight before losing it, if you gauge your success solely by numbers on a scale then you're not getting an accurate picture of yourself. Measure your progress by how you feel, how you look and how well your clothes are fitting, not by which direction the needle on a measuring device is moving.

At the end of the day, I'm not suggesting for a moment that you should eliminate cardiovascular training from your exercise routine, but, if you are struggling to lose fat and keep it off, weight training may be just the thing you need to lose that fat and keep it off for good!

For more information on resistance exercises you can do at home, go to:

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1089

For more information on weight training exercises you can do at the gym, including optimized exercise technique, tricks for improving the exercise and common errors, go to:

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1025

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10 Things You Can Do To Lose Fat Without Even Trying

By Nick Nilsson

Fat loss doesn't have to be painful. Try these simple

tips and you'll see just how easy it can be.

1. Eat smaller more frequent meals - not only is your metabolism boosted every time you eat something, your body can more efficiently process smaller meals. Instead of having 3 large meals in a day, try to break them up into 5 or 6 smaller meals.

2. Drink more water - regular water intake helps to flush away waste products in the body. Get at least six to eight 8 oz. glasses per day. An easy way to do this is to keep a water bottle handy and drink from it frequently.

3. Be inefficient - do you need to go to the kitchen to get a couple of things? Break it up into to two trips even if you can do it in one. Being inefficient like this can easily double your activity level, burning calories without even trying.

4. Eat more protein - sources of protein include foods such as chicken, fish, eggs, dairy, beans, lean red meats, etc. Your body burns more calories processing protein than either carbohydrates or fats. Protein also helps to support your muscle tissue, which burns calories all day long!

5. Take the stairs instead of the elevator - any time you can add in a little more physical activity, do it. This doesn't mean you need to slog up 20 flights of stairs. Even a flight or two done regularly will add up.

6. Don't let yourself get hungry - when you get hungry you will have a much greater tendency to overeat when you do finally get something to eat. As well, because your body is starting to go into starvation mode, it will be much more likely to hold onto whatever you give it.

7. Order small portions at restaurants - it's tough to order small french fries when "supersizing" your order is such a great "value." Take note, however, your real savings will occur in the calories that don't end up on your backside.

8. Eat more fiber - fiber is very filling. By eating more fiber you will find yourself full sooner. This feeling of fullness will last a long time as well.

9. Wait 20 minutes between servings - your brain takes at least 20 minutes to register that you're full. By waiting that long, you'll give your brain a chance to realize that you don't really need any more food.

10. Cheat on your diet - one thing I always make my clients promise is that they will cheat on their diet. The only thing I ask that they do is to cheat ONLY when they have planned to cheat. By planning when you are going to eat the foods you crave, you take back control of your eating habits.

This way you no longer "give in" to your cravings. You "reward yourself" for sticking to proper nutritional habits. Do this once or wice a week and you will feel far more in control of your eating.

In conclusion, if you follow even a few of these 10 easy tips in the long term, you will certainly notice a difference in your overall weight and health.

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Seven Quick Tips To Speed Up Your Metabolism and Burn Fat Faster

By Nick Nilsson

The speed of your metabolism is the real key to burning

fat quickly and efficiently. Here are seven easy tips

for boosting your metabolic rate.

Your metabolism or metabolic rate can determine exactly how quickly you gain or lose fat. Here are some quick tips you can put to use immediately to help crank up your metabolism and increase your fat burning.

1. Eat Breakfast

It's no myth that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If you skip breakfast thinking you are saving calories or time, consider this...

Your body has been in a fasting state for 8 hours or more. When you wake up and don't give it any food, its natural reaction is self-defense. It thinks "famine" and automatically slows your metabolism to a crawl to conserve calories. Not only does everything you eat for the rest of the day have a far greater chance of being stored as fat, your chances of burning any fat off that day are low.

And here's the whammy... you're going to get really hungry later and will probably want to eat something that's not so good for you. With your now-slower metabolism (because you skipped breakfast), you're going to store a lot more of that "not-so-great" meal than usual.

2. Eat Frequently

Besides skipping breakfast, the next biggest metabolism-killer is long waits between meals. Every time you eat something, your metabolism ramps up to process the food. The more frequently you eat, the more frequently your metabolism will get a boost.

The real key, however, is to be sure you're eating smaller meals (eating 5 big meals instead of 3 big meals isn't good for losing fat!). Try to eat 5 or more times per day, even if it's just healthy snacks between meals.

3. Exercise With Intensity

Your metabolic rate is directly related to the intensity of the exercise you perform. Walking will burn calories while you're doing it and give your metabolism a small boost for a little while after but it doesn't compare to high-intensity interval training. That type of training can boost your metabolism for a full 24 hours or more after.

Even if you can't handle high-intensity training, you can always find ways to make the easier exercises such as walking more intense, e.g. walk faster, walk up hills, wear a weighted back-pack, etc.

4. Train With Weights

Weight training builds muscle and muscle is a huge factor in determining your metabolic rate. Muscle tissue is very metabolically active. Your body burns a lot of calories just to maintain it.

Weight training gives your metabolism a triple-shot. Not only do you burn calories during the exercise, you also increase your metabolic rate long after the exercise (provided the training you are doing is intense). Add to that the extra muscle you build from the training and you can see how effective weights can be for boosting your metabolism.

5. Eat More Protein

Of the three major macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fats), protein requires the most energy to digest. Protein is also less likely to be stored as fat because of this. Protein will also help you to build up your muscle.

I don't recommend that you overload on protein, however, focusing on getting plenty of good-quality protein from a variety of sources (e.g. lean meats, chicken, fish, eggs, soy, etc.) can help keep your metabolic rate high.

6. Take Your Vitamins

Your metabolic rate basically boils down to chemical reactions in your body. Vitamins and minerals (and water) are important parts of these chemical reactions. If you don't have enough of these components available for your body to use when it needs them, your body will have to limit itself to what you've got.

Think of your metabolism as a car assembly line. You can't build a complete car until you have all the parts available. If, for example, you only have enough doors available to build 100 cars but you have 200 doorless cars on the line, you're missing out on a lot of potential production.

By taking a multivitamin on a regular basis, you will not only support your metabolism but your health as well.

7. Reduce Your Fat Intake

Fatty foods take longer for your body to digest and they leave you feeling fuller longer. While not being hungry is certainly fine when trying to lose fat, eating meals that encourage you to wait longer periods between eating can slow your metabolism.

This goes back to the point about eating frequently. If you eat fatty foods for breakfast, you may not want to anything again until lunch, which could be 5 or more hours away. Ideally, you should eat approximately every 3 hours.

If you're looking to give your metabolism a boost, give these tips a try. A faster metabolic rate can help you tremendously with fat loss.

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How Fat Loss Pills Can Make You Fatter

By Nick Nilsson

What the diet industry doesn't want you to know can have

serious long-term effects on your health and bodyfat

levels.

There are many good supplements on the market today that are extremely effective for fat loss. Fat loss is big business and this has fueled tremendous developments in technology. There are more high-quality fat burning products out there now than ever before.

Properly used, these supplements can make a big difference in your fat loss efforts, helping you reach your goals far quicker.

Improperly used, however, fat burning supplements can actually make you fatter, no matter how effective they are! In fact, the more effective a supplement is, the worse off you could be!!

To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using supplements to help lose fat. I'm all for it. The main problem with fat loss supplements lies with how people use them (and how they are told and encouraged to use them).

Armed with the knowledge in this article, you will learn exactly what you can do to break the diet pill cycle and keep the fat off for good.

The Big Secret

The diet pill and fat loss drug industry is built on ignorance: not theirs, yours.

Many of these companies bank on that fact that people generally don't know a whole lot about fat loss or supplements. They are in the business of selling shortcuts to you so that you don't have to know anything about fat loss. The reason for this is simple: if people knew a lot about fat loss, they wouldn't need fat loss products anymore and the companies would go out of business.

As backwards as it seems, the diet industry can only stay profitable by keeping people fat.

Look at the typical business. They do their best to keep customers coming back to them. That's how they make money. Why would the diet industry be any different? If you lose fat and maintain that fat loss you won't need to lose fat anymore. You won't be their customer anymore!

As little business sense as it makes, the ideal situation would be to have companies that are dedicated to the goal of losing customers. If they do their job, you will lose fat and keep it off and never need them again! As a personal trainer, my goal has always been to train people so thoroughly that they don't need me anymore.

Is this sort of reform going to happen in the diet industry? Not likely. But there is something you can do to stop the cycle (you are doing it right now): LEARN!

How Fat Loss Pills Can Make You Fatter

The bottom line is...fat loss pills work. This is both the best thing about them and the worst thing about them.

When you take a good fat burning supplement, you lose a lot of fat, you feel better about yourself and you are happy, right? This is the best thing about fat loss supplements.

The worst thing about these supplements is that because they work so well, you don't have to change your eating or exercise habits to accomplish your goals. You get results simply by taking a little pill.

Does this phrase sound familiar: "Eat whatever you want and still lose weight!"

Here's the scenario: you take the pills and you lose all the weight you want. What happens when you stop taking the supplement once you've reached your goals? Since you haven't had to change your eating or exercise habits, you regain the weight. Then you buy their pills again and start the same cycle again! It is very similar to the yo-yo diet syndrome of weight loss and regain.

How do you break this cycle? The solution is very simple though it may not be glamorous or easy: you learn to eat properly and you exercise regularly.

When you remove your dependence on fat loss pills to lose fat (through education, nutrition and exercise), you free yourself to use them to enhance your efforts, not anchor them. You will be able to lose your extra fat and keep it off without having to depend on fat loss pills to make it happen.

For more information on fat loss and how to accomplish it through exercise and nutrition, I recommend the following articles, available in the BetterU News Archive:

1. What Do You Mean Low-Intensity Training Isn't The Best For Fat Burning?

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1046

2. 10 Things You Can Do To Lose Fat Without Even Trying

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1030

3. I Didn't Realize How Important Protein Was For Fat Loss Until I Discovered Something That Blew My Mind...

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1045

4. Seven Quick Tips To Speed Up Your Metabolism and Burn Fat Faster

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1005

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Cardio or Weights. Weights or Cardio. What's It Going To Be?

By Nick Nilsson

Knowing how to balance cardio with weight training can be

one of the most challenging aspects of putting together

your training program. Learn how to do it here.

Training your body is all about balance. A complete exercise program should address not only resistance training but cardiovascular training as well. Proper balance between these two basic forms of exercise is essential to your training success.

Training balance basically boils down to the amount of cardio training you do compared to the amount of weight training you do. You are going to learn exactly what factors affect this training balance and how you can use them to ensure you reach your goals as quickly as possible!

The major issue you will need to take into consideration when balancing your cardio with your weight training is your primary training goal; if you're training to lose fat, your balance is going to be very different than if you're trying to gain muscle or if you're training for a specific sport.

Your primary goal will give you a general starting point for figuring out exactly how to balance your training, as well as what type of cardio and weight training you should be doing.

In addition to your primary goal, you will also need to take into account two other major factors:

1. Your body type - Are you naturally slim? Do you gain muscle easily? Do you tend to hold onto fat readily?

2. The type of cardio training you're doing - Is it high-intensity or low-intensity? Does it fatigue you for weights? Does your weight training fatigue you for your cardio?

As you read through this article, I want you to write down the points that apply to you. After explaining these factors, I will tell you how to integrate everything you've learned in your personal training program.

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In order to successfully balance your training, you need to first identify what your primary goal is. Are you trying to lose fat? Are you focused on gaining muscle? Are trying to improve sports performance?

It's very important to note, you will be far more successful in achieving your goal if you focus on one specific goal only. The training processes involved in losing fat or gaining muscle are very different and do not mix well with each other. If you try to do both at the same time, your results won't be as good as if you focused on one at a time.

If you're training to lose fat, you're going to need to do more cardio than someone who is training to gain muscle. A good starting point is three times per week, 20 to 30 minutes per session. Depending on the other factors we're going to discuss, you may need more or less than this. Weight training three times per week should be sufficient to maintain and even build muscle mass.

With fat loss, your primary goal should be burning calories while sparing as much muscle as possible. Since you're most likely eating fewer calories, your body is not going to be eager to add muscle, therefore it's best to focus on keeping what you've got. Any muscle you may add is just ice cream on the cake (bad analogy for this topic!).

If you're training to gain muscle, you will need to do less cardio training. Too much cardio can actually hamper your muscle gain by slowing recovery and burning up calories that your body needs for the process of building muscle.

As a general guideline, one or two cardio sessions per week should be enough to maintain your cardiovascular conditioning and keep your bodyfat gains in check while not slowing muscle growth. You should train with weights at least three times per week, up to even six times if you can recover from it and still make progress.

If you are training for a specific sport, how many cardio sessions you need will depend greatly on the cardiovascular and muscle mass and strength requirements of your sport. Naturally, a long-distnace runner is going to have far different requirements than a hockey or football player. The type of cardio training you do will also come into play here (which we will look at below).

As a guideline, the more cardio-oriented your sport is, the more cardio sessions you will need and the greater your focus should be on cardio training. If your sport is more strength-oriented, your focus should be primarily on developing that strength, with fewer cardio sessions. Of course, there are many sports that require both strength and cardiovascular capacity. Training in this case should be more equally balanced.

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Now that you've identified your training focus and the general guidelines for it, we need to take a look at your general body type. There are three main bodytypes: ectomorph, endomorph and mesomorph. The catogories operate on a sliding scale - a person may be an ectomorph but have mesomorphic tendencies, for example (we will go more into each type below).

The ectomorph is the naturally-slim person. They have a smaller bone-structure and can seem to "eat whatever they want and not gain an ounce."

The ectomorph has a fairly easy time losing fat so they will will generally not need to do as much cardio for fat loss. Two or three times per week should be plenty. An ectomorph trying to gain muscle may need to lay off cardio training completely in order to have enough recovery energy available for their body to even build muscle. Once or twice a week should be the maximum cardio frequency. Even weight training may need to be less frequent (two or three times per week) in order to see results.

The endomorph type is the heavyset end of the scale. The endomorph typically gains and holds onto fat easily and has a harder time losing it. The endomorph does tend to carry more muscle mass than the ectomorph, however.

Endomorphs will need to do more cardio to see significant fat loss. The minimum would be three times per week but some may require up to five or six sessions per week for best results.

An endomorphic person trying to gain muscle mass should continue to do cardio two or three times per week. Their tendency to accumulate bodyfat when eating excess calories (which is a requirement for muscle gain) can be reduced by keeping a reasonable amount of cardio in their training program. The endomorphic body has plenty of energy in reserve for muscle gain.

The mesomorph has all the luck. This is the naturally-muscular person. They are characterized by having broader shoulders and a narrower waist (known as a "V" taper). They gain muscle easily and lose fat easily.

A mesomorphic person training to lose fat can get away with doing only one or two cardio sessions a week while still seeing fairly good results. They will have an easier time holding onto muscle while losing fat, which gives them a calorie-burning advantage (the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn in a day even while doing nothing). Mesomorphs who do more cardio sessions will see greater fat loss results than either of the other two bodytypes - their greater muscle mass helps them burn more calories.

The mesomorph has a relatively easy time gaining muscle. Their bodies seem to naturally want to add muscle and keep it. The mesomorph training for muscle gain should keep doing enough cardio training to maintain cardiovascular capacity (about once or twice a week). They can, however, still get away with doing more without compromising results.

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The type of cardio training you do will have a tremendous impact on the frequency at which you can do it and still get the results you want.

Low-intensity cardio training, such as walking or slow cycling, can be done practically every single day (even several times a day) for longer periods of time. This type of training is very easy for your body to recover from, regardless of your body type and your goals. It will have very little negative impact on muscle gain and can help you burn calories for fat loss.

Moderate-intensity cardio training, such as jogging or swimming, will need to be done a little less frequently. This type of training requires more energy both to perfom and for your body to recover from. A person trying to lose fat can generally perform four to six moderate-intensity sessions per week at around 20 to 30 minutes each. A person trying to gain muscle should reduce this amount to two to three sessions per week.

High-intensity training is the toughest of the bunch but can actually net you the greatest and fastest results. High-intensity training is exemplified in activities such as sprinting and interval training. If you've ever had a coach make you run up and down hills, you've done high-intensity cardio. Basically, anything that you do as hard as you can for a short period of time could be considered high-intensity training. In fact, intense weight training with short rest periods is very good for cardio capacity.

High-intensity training is extremely effective for fat loss as it not only causes you to burn a lot of calories during the activity, it also raises your metabolism for a long time after the activity is done. This type of hard training should be done less frequently than the more moderate forms of cardio as it is much harder for your body to recover from. If you are training for fat loss, you should do at least two but no more than three high-intensity cardio sessions per week. If you are training for muscle gain, once or, at the most, twice per week should be the limit.

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The three major factors that determine how much cardio you should do in your program (your primary training goal, your bodytype and the type of cardio training you do) must now all be taken into account when determining how much cardio you should be doing compared to weight training.

Every body is different and every person reacts to training in different ways. To determine how much cardio you should do, you will need to look at each factor on it's own then look at all three factors at once. When you write them all down, you will probably see a pattern develop. Here's an example.

Fat Loss - 3 to 6 times per week

Endomorph - 3 to 6 times per week

High-intensity Training - 2 to 3 times per week

Weight Training - 3 times per week

This would mean an endomorphic person training for fat loss with high-intensity training could do cardio three times per week and weights 3 times per week.

Here's another example:

Muscle Gain - 1 to 2 times per week

Ectomorph - 1 to 2 times per week

Low-intensity Training - 2 to 3 times per week minimum but can be done almost every day

Weight Training - 3 to 4 times per week

This would mean an ectomorphic person looking for muscle gain and doing low-intensity cardio training could do cardio two days a week at a minimum to maintain cardio capacity while trying to gain muscle.

Conclusion:

Every person's situation is wide open to interpretation and, when it all comes right down to it, much of your training schedule is determined by the time you have available to you. These guidelines should help give you an idea of what frequency of training is most appropriate for your specific goals and situation. Take these recommendations simply as advice, not as rules written in stone and feel free to experiment. You may find out that what actually works for you is exactly the opposite of what is written here!

Cardiovascular Training Resource Links:

What Do You Mean Low-Intensity Training Isn't The Best For Fat Burning?

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1046

Cardiovascular Training Basics

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1065

Cardiovascular Activities

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1066

Cardiovascular Equipment

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1067

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Why We Get Fat - Hunting Big Macs and Gathering French Fries

By Nick Nilsson

Are we doomed by our genetics to gain fat? Is your inner

caveman causing your waistline to expand? What can we do

to work with our ancestry and not against it?

It is important to know why we get fat. Once you know the underlying reasons behind fat gain, you can take that information and apply it to fat loss. Knowing why something happens is the first step towards changing the result.

The one major reason we get fat is that we put in more than we burn off. This may be an overly simplistic view but it's also a very liberating one. It shows you that if fat gain is not that complicated, fat loss is not necessarily that complicated either.

But what are the origins of our body's amazingly efficient fat storage mechanisms? In a nutshell, why do we gain fat so easily?

Your Inner Caveman

Our earliest ancestors did not go to the supermarket to hunt for food. They didn't point at a cave drawing with a Big Mac on it when they were hungry. They did not sit at a desk all day. They didn't drive everywhere they went. In fact, fast food had to be chased down before it outran you!

The daily life of the earliest humans, whom we owe our genetics to, was consumed with getting enough food to survive. In order to eat, they had to either hunt it or gather it. As you can imagine, this burned a lot of calories.

With the start of agriculture, people no longer had to hunt down or forage for their food. They could stay in one place and grow it. Animals were domesticated. They could sell this produced food to others in return for other goods or services. This is known as the Agricultural Revolution and it was the start of our society as we know it.

Agriculture became the primary means of food production in the world. The story changes during the 1900's, however. As we progressed as a society, manual labor was no longer required of most people. Machines were starting to take over more of the hard labor jobs. This led to less and less physical activity by a growing number of people. It was the start of the modern obesity epidemic.

To sum it up: these days food is plentiful and easy to get and physical activity is no longer a part of daily life.

Thank Your Ancestors

The human body of 50,000 years ago when we were hunter/gatherers is exactly the same as the human body of today. Our body had successfully adapted to continuous cycles of feast and famine. How did it adapt? It adapted by developing extremely efficient fat storage capabilities.

By storing large amounts of fat whenever possible, the body would protect itself against the inevitable famine to come when food was scarce. By storing up large amounts of energy, our ancestors could survive the harsh conditions and thrive. In winter conditions, it would often come down to survival of the fattest, not fittest.

Our bodies are still programmed with this desperate need for storage even though, due to highly available food supplies, we don't really need it anymore. This is the reason you can often put on fat quite easily but have a hard time taking it off. Your body is protecting itself against the famine that it thinks is coming.

Compound this need for storage with reduced physical activity and readily available, calorie-dense foods and you have the recipe that has resulted in rampant obesity in our society today.

Diet = Famine

If you've ever been on a diet you've probably experienced that quick weight loss when you first start then the gradual slowdown and sometimes complete stop in progress that comes after a few weeks.

You can thank your ancestors for this one too. When you dramatically reduce your calories, such as when you begin a diet, your body starts using up the stored fat quickly. Your metabolism is still high and you are losing weight.

The trouble is, your body can't distinguish between the lack of available food known as famine and the voluntary reduction in food known as dieting. To your body "diet = famine." After a short period of time, your body will go into a panic state. You are losing your energy stores too fast and your body will do everything it can to slow down or put a stop to it.

-The first thing that will happen is that your metabolism

will slow down. You won't burn as many calories during the

day, regardless of how much you are eating or exercising.

-The next thing that will happen is that your body will

step up its burning of muscle tissue. Muscles are very

metabolically active and require a lot of calories to

maintain. Your body knows this and, in its effort to

reduce the drain on its energy supplies, will start

destroying muscle tissue. Your body will metabolize your

muscle into energy in order to hold onto its fat stores.

This vicious cycle will continue every time you further reduce calories in order to compensate for a slower metabolism. Your body will slow your metabolism down even more and destroy more muscle tissue to reduce energy usage.

How do we avoid this problem? There are a number of ways to approach it:

1. Reduce your calories slowly. If you are trying to lose fat, don't slash your food intake rapidly. This will throw your body into a panic, causing it to grind your metabolism to a halt.

2. Mix up your caloric intake. Don't eat the same things in the same amounts every day. Eat a little more on some days and a little less on other days. It's what you do in the long term that will really affect your results.

3. Exercise. Since most people don't actually have to exercise as part of their daily life, you must take the initiative and make it a point to exercise regularly. It helps by burning calories and giving your body the stimulus to preserve muscle mass (it's the old principle of "use it or lose it" at work).

4. Reduce your intake of processed foods. Your body is not readily equipped to efficiently process Twinkies. Try to stick to foods that are closer to their natural state, such as whole grains, lean meats, etc.

Remember, your body is an extremely efficient fat-storing machine but, with the right knowledge, you can very easily work with your biology and not against it and get the results you want.

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The Insider Secrets of Interval Training - Learn How Now!

By Nick Nilsson

High Intensity Interval Training is extremely effective for

fat loss and for dramatically improving your cardio

capabilities. Learn exactly how to perform Interval

Training for maximum results.

Without question, High Intensity Interval Training is one of the most effective means available for rapidly losing bodyfat and improving your cardiovascular conditioning. Not only do you burn many more calories while you're performing the training, you also stimulate your metabolism to a far greater degree than with lower intensity training, which is traditionally hailed for fat loss.

You're going to learn exactly how to perform various types of high intensity interval training to maximize your results. For a full discussion of the advantages of high intensity training over low intensity training, read the following article, which explains it detail:

What Do You Mean Low-Intensity Training Isn't The Best For Fat Burning?

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1046

Even though it's more challenging than low intensity training, High Intensity Interval Training offers tremendous benefits to you:

1. It burns more calories than low intensity training, meaning you can burn more fat in shorter workouts.

2. Higher intensities stimulate your metabolism far more AFTER the workouts than lower intensity training. This means you continue to burn calories and fat for long periods after you're done training. Not so with low intensity training.

3. Training at higher speeds, such as with high intensity training can dramatically improve sports performance. Football players can sprint faster and recover more quickly between plays. Tennis players can keep chasing down balls during longer points. Even endurance athletes can benefit by teaching their bodies to work at a faster pace!

In general, interval training is best done 2 or 3 times per week. It is a challenging form of cardio and requires recovery time in between sessions. Interval sessions can last anywhere between 5 to 30 minutes or more, depending on the fitness level of the trainer and the style of intervals being done.

How To Do It:

Interval training is based on a very simple concept: go fast then go slow. Repeat. It sounds easy, but within this simple formula lies a tremendous number of possible variations and strategies you can employ to take full advantage of the power available to you.

Interval training can be performed on almost any cardiovascular machine (including the treadmill, stair machine, stationary bike, elliptical trainer, etc.) as well as almost any type of cardiovascular exercise (such as cycling, swimming, running, etc.).

Though the examples I will go through below use time as a measure for intervals, you can also very easily use distance as your guide. For example, you can sprint between two telephone poles then walk to the next one. You can sprint the length of a football field then walk the width. You can even run up a flight of stairs then walk back down. The variations you can do are truly endless!

Here are a number of different types of interval training you can use:

1. Aerobic Interval Training

Aerobic Interval Training is very beneficial for rapidly improving your aerobic conditioning as well as burning fat. It will even help you build up your endurance faster than long-duration cardio! It is also a very good introductory format for starting interval training. If you are new to interval training, I highly recommend beginning with Aerobic Intervals.

This type of interval training involves relatively long work periods and shorter rest periods. Work periods are generally 2 to 5 minutes long in this type of training. The idea is not to take it easy for that work time but to work at a speed that challenges you to be able to make it to the end of that work interval. Your 2 minute interval pace is, therefore, going to be significantly faster than your 5 minute interval pace.

The rest interval for this type of training is between 30 seconds to a minute. Naturally, the shorter the rest period, the tougher the training will be. Too much rest will allow your body to recover too much, lessening the overall training effect of the exercise.

Here are some examples of a number of different intervals you can use in your training:

Work Rest

2 min. 30 sec.

5 min. 1 min.

3 min. 45 sec.

2 min. 1 min.

5 min. 30 sec.

When using these intervals, you can choose to stick to the same time intervals (e.g. do 2 minutes hard and 30 seconds slow for the duration of the workout) or mix it up with different time intervals as you go through your session. This type of training can generally be done for about 20 to 30 minutes.

2. Maximal High-Intensity Intervals

This type of interval training is VERY high intensity and is VERY effective for fat loss and cardio training. You essentially push yourself to the maximum on every single work interval you do! This type of training is extremely effective when training for sports that require all-out repeated efforts, such as football, soccer, hockey, etc. If you want to get faster and recover faster, this is the type of training for you.

This type of training sends very powerful signals to the body and the metabolism. In addition to dramatically ratcheting up the body's metabolism, maximal-effort training also causes large amounts of Growth Hormone, one of your body's primary fat burning hormones (the Fountain of Youth Hormone, as it's sometimes referred to) to be released into the bloodstream. This two-pronged effect is very powerful for fat-burning.

Maximal Intervals are much shorter than Aerobic Intervals. Generally, the longest you'll be able to perform a maximal effort is around 30 seconds so all the work intervals are 30 seconds or less.

Rest periods can be short or long, depending how good of shape a person is in and/or how much they want to recover inbetween intervals. Shorter rest periods make the work intervals more challenging but the speed of the work will also drop quickly after a few intervals. Longer rest periods will allow the body to recover a little more, allowing faster speeds on more intervals. Rest periods should always be at least as long as the work periods. This is to allow enough recovery to be able to perform well on the next work period.

Here are some examples of Maximal work and rest intervals you can use in your training. As I mentioned above, you can stick with one time period through the whole session, or vary your intervals you go through the workout.

Work Rest

30 sec. 30 sec.

30 sec. 1 min.

20 sec. 1 min.

10 sec. 30 sec.

30 sec. 2 min.

Since Maximal Intervals are so challenging, a person should not expect or try to be able to jump right in at a high level for a large number of intervals. It is very important to build yourself up gradually.

Start by performing five Maximal Intervals the first two sessions you do the training. The next two sessions, do six Maximal Intervals. Continue adding intervals in this step-up fashion until you are doing intervals for a maximum of 15 minutes straight. The exact number of intervals you do in a session will depend on the times you're using in your work and rest intervals.

Because Maximal Intervals are so challenging, you may find yourself getting too fatigued to perform at a fast pace as you get towards the end. When this happens, try doing Reverse Pyramid intervals. Instead of keeping your work interval the same, reduce it by 5 seconds every couple of intervals.

Here's a sample of how to do it:

Interval 1 - 30 seconds hard, 30 seconds rest.

Interval 2 - 30 seconds hard, 30 seconds rest.

Interval 3 - 25 seconds hard, 30 seconds rest.

Interval 4 - 25 seconds hard, 30 seconds rest.

Interval 5 - 20 seconds hard, 30 seconds rest.

Interval 6 - 20 seconds hard, 30 seconds rest.

Interval 7 - 15 seconds hard, 30 seconds rest.

3. Sub-Maximal High Intensity Intervals

Sub-Maximal intervals are excellent for burning fat and for building up your cardiovascular conditioning. This type of training will do each of these fat better than continuous-tempo, lower-intensity training.

This type of interval training is very similar in concept and execution to the Maximal interval style. The difference is, instead of pushing yourself as hard as you can on each work interval, you work at a pace that is somewhat below your max. This allows you to do more total work intervals during the session while still keeping your intensity levels high.

Most Interval programs on cardio machines follow this principle. The resistance/speed is increased to a higher level for a set period of time then reduced for a set period of time. The level is not so high that you must put your maximum effort into each work interval, but it is at a level you could not keep up for long periods.

This type of training is also very effective for fat loss and increasing the metabolism.

Intervals in this style can be longer, since you're not working at maximum speed, but not much longer. Work periods of 30 seconds to a minute and rest periods of 30 seconds to a minute work well for it. Here are some sample intervals you can use in your training:

Work Rest

30 sec. 30 sec.

30 sec. 1 min.

1 min. 1 min.

1 min. 30 sec.

45 sec. 45 sec.

This type of training can be done for about 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the intensity level of the work.

4. Near-Maximal Aerobic Intervals

This is a unique form of interval training that I've been working with that basically combines Aerobic Interval Training with Maximal Interval Training to allow you to work at near-peak levels for long periods of time. This has the benefit of burning a tremendous amount of calories for longer periods of work time than is possible with normal intervals.

The work intervals themselves are short but the rest periods are much shorter! Instead of pushing yourself to the max on every interval, you work at a pace somewhat short of your max. This type of training allows you to perform near your max for longer periods of time. It is a very challenging and unique form of interval training.

Here's how it works:

Start with a work interval of 20 seconds and a rest interval of 5 seconds. Your pace should be one that you would only be able to keep up steady for about 1 to 2 minutes before having to stop. Do that pace for 20 seconds then go very slow for 5 seconds. Jump right back in and do that same pace for another 20 seconds then very slow for 5 seconds. Keep this cycle repeating for a designated period of time, e.g. 5 minutes, 10 minutes or 15 minutes.

Here are some sample intervals you can use with this training style:

Work Rest

20 sec. 5 sec.

25 sec. 5 sec.

30 sec. 10 sec.

15 sec. 7 sec.

40 sec. 10 sec.

This type of training works very well with cardio machines that allow you to switch resistance instantly or very quickly (stationary bikes, stair machines or elliptical trainers often allow this). Machines that must cycle slowly through their speeds as they change do not work well for this (treadmills fall into this category). It can also be done with running then walking, cycling then pedalling slowly, or even swimming hard then stroking lazily. You'll find it very challenging to be having to constantly restart your momentum from almost scratch on every interval!

Please note: it's very important that you don't stop completely when you take your short rest period. Keep yourself moving during this time even if you're just moving very slowly!

5. Fartlek Training

No discussion of Interval Training would be complete with a reference to Fartlek Training. Translated from Swedish, "Fartlek" literally means "speed play." What is it? It's simple - Fartlek training is every type of interval rolled into one workout!

You can start by jogging for 5 minutes then walk for 30 seconds then sprint for 30 seconds then walk again then run fast for 2 minutes and so on. The idea is to train at a wide variety of speeds, distances and times in order to hit the widest variety of training parameters.

This type of training is an excellent way to keep your cardio interesting. You never have to do the same thing twice! This workout can last anywhere from 15 to 40 minutes, depending on the intensity at which you are working.

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In conclusion, Interval Training is not a hard concept to wrap your head around: go fast then go slow! The various types of interval training I've explained above will definitely help you achieve your goals, whether they be rapid fat loss, high-powered sports performance or amazing cardiovascular capacity!

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