We have all watched Jillian for years on the Biggest Loser and now it seems we will be seeing her on TV even more. Jillian has a new show that will be on in the fall called Losing It with Jillian Michaels. The show is expected to start sometime next Spring and will not just be a diet and exercise show like you would expect, instead Jillian will be moving in with families and providing Super Nanny style coaching.

NBC has ordered eight episodes of “Losing It With Jillian”.   In the series, which will make its debut next year, Ms. Michaels will help families “make life-altering changes,” NBC said. She will be joined by the celebrity chef Curtis Stone, who will cut unhealthy foods from the family diet. Reveille, the production company responsible for “Biggest Loser,” will also produce “Losing It.”The focus won’t be just on weight loss and fitness, although that will be a key part of it. Jillian will also examine family dynamics, finances, career goals and how the parents relationships are with children at home.

“We’re essentially rebooting them,” Jillian Michaels said today during a media conference call.

“It’s not about fat to thin,” Jillian Michaels later added. “It’s about being stuck and getting unstuck.”

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Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

While some individuals are strictly interested in obtaining muscle for aesthetics, for most people, this isn’t an interest. Instead, you’re more interested in knowing what health benefits weight lifting will have for you…

Far too many people overlook the many health and fitness benefits that weight training has to offer, and because of this, experience problems down the road with their body such as decreased bone density, a slowed metabolic rate, increased stress levels and other negative consequences that are associated with constant stress.

Increased Bone Density

Weight lifting, being one of the best weight bearing exercises you can do, will increase your bone density and help ward off osteoporosis or stress fractures in the future. Read the rest of this entry »

The Bowflex Blaze Home Gym is a very popular piece of home workout equipment. Bowflex as you probably know uses long bending rods instead of weights to add resistance to exercise and the Blaze is a great example of this equipment

In the beginning of using the Bowflex Blaze Home Gym it would be a good idea to concentrate on doing just a few compound exercises for three sets each and then after a few weeks start to mix it up. One of the things that happens with weight workouts is that your body becomes accustomed to exercises that you are doing and strength gains stop happening so you regularly need to change exercises to keep a certain amount of muscle confusion.

As for number of sets and reps it is a good idea to do 3 sets of each exercise with 10 reps per set. I usually do the first set with a light weight and slowly through the entire range of motion of the exercise get the muscle warmed up and then do two heavier sets. You may want to take it kind of easy for the first couple of weeks though as you may be tired after your workout but the next day and two days later your muscles will get really sore if you push yourself too hard.

The goal of doing the compound exercises on the Bowflex Blaze is that you will gain muscle mass and this will also lead to a faster metabolism when you are gaining muscle your metabolism will need to be higher for both maintaining the muscle and the healing of the muscle and this happens between workouts. With cardio you obviously raise your metabolism during the time that you are exercising and then if you have worked out hard enough for more than 20 minutes you will get an additional raise in your metabolism for about 12 hours.

Try doing this 3 times a week on non consecutive days. So say Monday Wednesday Friday and initially without the curls. I do this kind of workout as a circuit doing every exercise once and then repeating. You may not need as much time between each exercise as you are hitting different muscle groups on each set so your muscles will not tire as quickly. It should only take about 45 minutes to get through each workout after you get the swing of it.

So as for the exercises that you will want to do, there are 65 total exercises for the Bowflex Blaze it looks like and you really want to only be doing 6 or so at a time.

The page numbers listed below are the pages that the exercises appear on in the Bowflex Blaze manual.

Bench Press – This works the Chest and Shoulders and also the Triceps as a secondary muscle (p18)

Wide Grip Lat Pulldowns – This works the Lats (upper back) as well as the Shoulders and Biceps (top p30)

Shoulder Press – This works the shoulder very hard and the triceps as well (top p23)

Leg Extensions – This works the Quadriceps which are the biggest muscles of your body as well as the Calves (p45)

Leg Curls – This works the hamstrings (not in the book but just lie on your stomach and pull the weights up. See link) http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/Hamstrings/LVLyingLegCurl.html

Crunches – For the Abs and to add to core stability. To start with you do not need to use any weight. (top p34)

Good Mornings – This is not really part of the Bowflex but it is a great exercise to strengthen your lower back which adds a lot of stability to your core. Seems easy but if you do to many reps or work to hard with it your lower back muscles can get really sore the next day. There is no need to do this with weights for a while and I do them with my hands on my head to add to upper body weight in the exercise. http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/Hamstrings/BBGoodMorning.html

Bicep Curls (bottom p37) and Tricep Curls (top p34) – The Biceps and Triceps are kind of show muscles and you are working them anyway using the compound exercises so it although not needed you may want to add these exercises after you are more comfortable with your workouts after a couple of weeks or so.

Try out the Bowflex Blaze. This is one of the great pieces of workout equipment on the market today and with it you can quickly increase your strength and improve your fitness.

Happy New Year!

Over the years I have had some really good years and some really bad years as far as making change on new years day is concerned. I know that back in my drinking smoking partying days I would not commot and do the work for anything and sadly I now call those my lost years. Not anymore. Every year I move forward and I have accepted the fact that every year parts of my life chance a lot and always for the better.

So what makes the biggest difference in my eyes? Making the commitment with action.

The trouble with thinking of a new years resolution and trying to get it done is that you will forget it easily when other things in life distract you, so you take the action of writing it down, and this gives you a better chance.

To further improve your chances of meeting your new years resolutions, today you must do things that will move you towards them, ACT!, get moving now!

If you want to lose weight (very common today of course) then start eating right this morning and get some exercise this morning as well. I read a book once where the lady that wrote it (Your Best Year Yet!)
said that in a drunken bit of bravado she announced that she was going to run the London Marathon and the next day, hungover she realized she would have to give it a shot and she started running that day….that is what it takes.

So to help you today to get started I am going to pull a few posts from the archives that will hopefully give you some ammunition to get started today. You can always change your life for the better so why not start that process today?

One question that I get emailed about more than almost anything else lately is “How can I get on the Biggest Loser?”

I know that many people are interested in the show, after 7 or 8 seasons now people have seen so many success stories on the Biggest Loser that they can’t help but think that there is no way that they can lose the weight they want to lose without getting on the biggest loser.

I for one don’t beleive that at all, no matter if you want to lose 20 in one month or lose 100 pounds in a year there are always ways to lose the weight without going on a TV show. Really! Believe it.

How to get on the Biggest Loser

Ok, now after that if you really want to know how to get on the Biggest Loser I have a plan that won’t guarantee anything but I think will improve your chances to get on the Biggest Loser. Read the rest of this entry »

What are the foods to gain muscle? I wrote a few posts last week that were about how to gain muacle and how to do weight workouts to gain muscle. One of the things that I kind of glossed over were the foods that you need to eat to gain muscle. Lots of this may just be a recap for lots of people but it is important to know what foods help you gain muscle and what your diet should look like.

Protein to gain muscle

The building block of all muscles is a combination of amino acids (the building blocks of protein) and water. If you look at that as part of your diet then you need to eat lots of protein. Here I want to stress lean protein, you know fish, chicken, lean beef, not Kentucky Fried Chicken or deep fried fish. Read the rest of this entry »

As we all know a faster metabolism will help you lose weight. One of the risks that people that are overweight hve is an increased risk of getting diabetes.

A new study done by a pharmaceutical company seems to show that taking a certain drug for raising metabolism also reduces the risk of diabetes.

Investigational drugs that mimic the metabolic effects of calorie restriction have shown favorable results in animal models, according to researchers here and in France.
Action Points Read the rest of this entry »

There are several reasons that people do not lift weights but several more reasons why it is important to add weightlifting to your health and fitness regimen.

This week I am hoping to write a few articles that will help you understand what it takes to lift weights as well as the how and why weightlifting is important, but today lets just start with the basics.

First of all did you know that fewer that 10% of the population actually does any weightlifting in their pursuit of fitness? I know that the number is low for a few reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been looking through some of my blog posts for this year and realized that I have posted a lot about eating and not quite enough about exercise. You do exercise a lot don’t you?

Well if you are like most people the answer may be a sheepish no…that’s ok, change is near.

I wanted to kick off some exercise posts by today letting you know 5 exercise myths and why you have to stop believing them. Read this mythbusting a few times so that you are not as scared about getting scared about exercise. Read the rest of this entry »

Fad diets such as Atkins recommend an almost total abstinence from carbs. Apart from that, even many experts believe that carbs are the real culprits behind the rising cases of obesity. They recommend a carb-free diet as the ‘healthy’ way to lose weight. Truth however, is that this is an ‘unhealthy’ weight loss method!

Carbs are needed by your body for producing energy! You use this energy for performing your daily activities. This energy also helps your body in performing its ‘bodily’ functions. If your body doesn’t receive an adequate amount of carbohydrates, it will start burning off your lean muscles for the purpose of energy production. This is known as ketosis.

If you are a pregnant woman or a diabetic patient then ketosis can result in your untimely death! As you can see, carbs are your friends and not enemies. A healthy diet is one which contains a healthy dose of all nutrients, including carbs. Read the rest of this entry »