Fitness Tips For Life

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I have written quite a few times about the importance of drinking water but last week I restarted a strategy that I had followed for a long time and then gave up.

Drinking water first thing in the morning.

The idea is to get up and immediately drink four glasses of water and nothing else. Wait at least 45 minutes before having any coffee or tea or breakfast.

Why would you want to do this? Well I used to do this before getting on the bike to ride to work, actually I did it for a couple of years and had a lot of energy in the morning. I never knew if the energy was from drinking the water or from the bike ride itself. There seems to be a very popular notion that drinking water or anything in the morning will kickstart your metabolism and I have to agree that over the last week I have had a lot more energy and a much better level of concentration to get more done in the early morning.

Try it and see if it works. Post your comments about what you think of this water in the morning idea.

On Thursday I decided to change things up and change my reps for my workout.

It was a killer workout. The workout took 35 minutes. And I am still sore today.

The workout I did was a high rep workout where I did the same exercises as usual, mostly, and instead of sticking to 6-12 reps per set I actually pushed my reps to 50-60 per set for only a couple of sets per exercise.

This is a High Rep Workout

• 1 set of 60 reps of incline bench press followed by 12 reps of incline flyes
• 1 set of 30 reps of military press
• 1 set of 25 reps of one armed bent over rows
• 1 set of 50 reps per arm of alternating curls
• 1 set of 25 reps of tricep kickbacks

I went through this set with a longer than regular time between sets, maybe a minute or so, and by the end I was really winded and wiped. I took about a 10 minute break and did it again. Read the rest of this entry »

I just saw an article on CNN about a woman that lost 160 pounds on the Raw Food Diet. Many people ask me about this because the Raw Food Diet seems like a natural and safe way ot lose weight.

Raw food diets can be a great way to not only lose weight but also led a much healthier, natural lifestyle in general. Most raw food diets are plant-based, with at least 75% of the diet composed of raw food.

Food examples include living and raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, rolled or flaked grains, and seaweeds. Some adherents may also eat cooked grains and legumes, fresh fish and poultry. For the strict raw food diet, however, nothing should be heated over 116 degrees Fahrenheit. Read the rest of this entry »

Regardless of the number of fad diet pills and supplements coming up in the market, the rules of weight loss have not changed over the years! The basic rule of weight loss is still the same: follow a healthy, balanced diet and exercise regularly. If you want to do something that breaks this basic rule, you will be in for trouble.

Do you want to lose weight quickly by following a fad diet program? No matter how expensive and popular the diet program is, you won’t be able to lose weight permanently if you try to get rid of fat by any unnatural means.

Diet Pills and Weight Loss?

Some of the diet pills out there will take you through a rapid cycle of weight loss. No sooner have you finished smiling at the dipping scale than you will notice that the scale is going upwards as fast as it had gone downwards. In simple terms, you will gain weight as quickly as you had lost it.

There is a reason why this happens. It is all okay as long as you follow the diet, but there is no fad diet in the world which is not a bit over-the-top in terms of food restrictions,. These fad diets restrict your food intake in such a way that you end up craving for your old, favorite junk foods. You start by binge eating: that is, taking one bit of your junk food everyday. Soon it goes out of your control, and you won’t even realize when you have cheated on your diet program, quit it and got back to your old lifestyle.

Diet change needs to be permanent

As soon as you return to your normal eating habits (that is, eating more and more junk foods), you end up gaining a lot more weight than what you started with. Read the rest of this entry »

I just found a story at People Magazine that Baron Davis, the 6′ 3″ L.A. Clippers guard, is on Jenny Craig.

What a strange story that a weight loss program that is built for normal people, and maybe even some people that get no exercise, is now being use by an NBA player in the off season to get in shape.

Inspired by current spokeswoman Latifah, Davis, 29, started the plan at the beginning of August to get in shape for basketball season.

“I know Queen Latifah, and when I saw her out there using it, I thought maybe I could use it, too, to work on my health and fitness goals and inspire others,” he tells PEOPLE.

During the NBA off-season, Davis let his fitness slide. “In the off-season, it’s kind of hard to maintain day-to-day,” he says. “I don’t want to get up and cook. And when I pig out, I’m the type of person where there’s no limit to what I can do.” Read the rest of this entry »

Dieting is pretty boring, not just because of the kind of food you have to eat but because of the several rules and regulations you are required to follow when cooking your food. Plus you are not even sure what ingredients to include and what not to include in your meals.

As you can see, cooking meals at home involves a lot of guesswork; plus it is a drain on time! However, this should not be an excuse for you to quit your diet program. After all, if you don’t want to cook meals yourself, you can take advantage of diet meal delivery services and have ready-made meals delivered at your doorstep.

Just imagine: you hear the door bell ringing and you are handed over a package. The smell that comes from it seems to be mesmerizing and you are already itching to take a bite. You open the package to see that there are all delicious foods inside, waiting just for you! These are all healthy, natural, low-calorie meals that you can eat without being worried about weight gain! They don’t contain any kind of artificial flavors or preservatives that would increase your body weight.

Home delivered diet meal is a boon for many people because it not only saves them a lot of time but also eliminates all the guesswork that goes in the making of ‘diet meals’! Plus the food is also tasty since they are cooked by professional cooks! You might actually end up getting addicted to these home delivered meals - they are THAT good.

Contrary to what you might believe, home delivered diet meals are actually pretty cheap and affordable even for the ‘ordinary pockets’; don’t think that they are only for the people of upper society! To give you an idea of how much money you can save, take a pen and paper and list all the items that you use to cook your meals. When all is said and done, you will be surprised to see that you are getting the home delivered diet meals at a bargain price.

The toughest part is that of finding the right diet delivery program for yourself. Not all programs are reliable; plus there are specialized diet delivery services than would deliver you only a certain type of meal. So, if you need low-calorie meals, you need to find a reliable service that would offer you that kind of food packages! If in doubt, you can also search in Google but be careful when taking your pick as the sites that appear at the top of the search results are not necessarily the best.

All in all, a diet meal delivery program is really a great tool that you need in your quest of weight loss; you should be using it if you aren’t already.

Like they say, age gracefully. No matter how old you are, would you like to have wrinkles, age spots, uneven and sagging skin? Definitely not! Everyone wants to hide their age as much as possible, and celebrities are more ‘at fault’ in this regard than us. Look at Demi Moore and Cameron Diaz-do they really look their age?

Time was when anti-aging tools were the prerogative of the celebrities. Not so any more! Today anyone can use them! In fact, I will tell you of a simple way to look more beautiful and hide your age.

You already know that exercises can help you lose weight and become fit. However, do you know that there are also special types of ‘facial exercises’, which would help you fight against aging? If you do these facial exercises regularly, you will look several years younger! In this article I will tell you about them.

1. Neck exercise: Tilt your neck backwards and then in a roundabout way. This is a great exercise for quickly shedding the extra pounds from your face; plus your blood circulation would also improve with this exercise. Make sure you do not move your neck in a jerky way or in any awkward position as it can cause neck injuries.

2. Jaw exercise: Open and drop your jaw, then open and close your mouth. Do this at least 20-25 times. This is yet another way to get rid of facial fat, particularly the fat around your chin and neck! For best results, jaw exercises should be done early in the morning.

3. Smiling: Not the half-heated smiles; I mean, smiling with a wide open mouth - smiling like that can help you get rid of facial fat.

4. Other things: While these facial exercises can work on their own, there are other things you need to take care of. For example, you need to watch your diet! If you can survive only on juices then there is nothing like that! Fruit juices are good for your health since many of them are rich in vitamins! A strict fruit-juice diet would help you achieve a glowing skin quite fast.

If you cannot survive on a juice-only diet then you can eat vegetables and fruits. If possible, eat fruits and vegetables in their raw forms; if not, you can boil them! Junk foods are obviously a strict no-no. Sugar and salt intake should obviously be reduced and regulated.

Looking young is not all that hard! You don’t need to buy the latest and greatest cosmetics or go under the knife in order to look beautiful! Just follow the four simple tips I outlined above and relive your youth.

The very capable guys and gals at the Mayo Clinic have an article today about Bisphenol A health risks. This is something very new to most of us but it involves plastic containers that we store food in.

An important article in the Sept. 17 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association discusses the health effects of the chemical Bisphenol A. What is this compound and what are its effects? What might happen as a result of this study?

Bisphenol A is a chemical in plastics. It is widely found in the lining of food containers, plastic bottles, compact discs, carbonless paper, and many medical devices. It also is used to coat metal products (food cans and bottle tops), and even water supply lines. Some dental sealants also contain this ingredient.

Now for the Bisphenol A health risks. Animal studies done in the 1980s and ’90s identified that low doses of Bisphenol A have adverse effects on the brain, reproductive system, and metabolic processes related to insulin balance and liver function. It may also be related to cancer or even obesity and heart disease. Although it is not immediately lethal, studies show that greatest sensitivity to Bisphenol A occurs during periods of early development and that the substance accumulates over time in the body and environment. Read the rest of this entry »

With so much information available on diet and weight loss, I am still not sure why people fail to lose weight. Sure, everyone makes mistakes, but it is the magnitude of the mistake that will determine the success or failure of your weight loss plan. For example, if you make the small ‘mistake’ of eating one burger a week, it won’t make any significant difference in your body weight. However, if you make the terrible diet mistake I am going to outline in this article, then you have no chance of ever becoming successful at fat loss.

If you’ve ever followed a diet plan, this would sound familiar. The process goes thus:

1. You pick up a diet plan that is too strict for any average person

2. This diet plan basically deprives you of almost everything that you enjoy: chips, burgers, pastries, white bread, cakes, biscuits, milk, chocolate, soft drinks, etc. So you have no other option but to throw away all those things from your kitchen. You start following the diet program with all good intentions, and promise yourself that you would never quit it until you have lost weight successfully.

3. You lose a few pounds quite rapidly within the first few weeks. You seem to be happy with your progress when suddenly, one day you realize that you are no longer shedding pounds! You have hit a weight loss plateau. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, actually on Tuesday, Fitness Tips for Life celebrated it’s 1 year anniversary as a blog. Originally when I came up with the idea of this blog it was supposed to just be 30 days of posts of what people could do to improve their health. I had a goal to help 100 people to improve their fitness and improve their lives. It looks like I have probably done that.

Some of you may have been reading before as I had a fitness hobby blog connected to my family domain but on September 16th, 2007 I moved to Wordpress as a blogging platform, got the new domain up and running and got serious about this blog.

The last year has been very eventful 272 new posts and 966 comments from others. That is a heck of a lot of information to read and learn from.

I have also had a lot of people signup for my newsletter and 21 day email fitness program. In fact 1244 people have signed up and gone through that course and receive tips and not very regular info from me by email.

The number of people that visit has steadily increased as well. over 2000 people a day are coming and checking out articles and learning more about fitness and what they can do about improving their health.

I have also added some fitness forums to the site and although they are getting busier I am hoping to start posting a lot more there so if you have not checked out those messageboards I would urge you to go there now and sign up so that you can interact with others that read the blog.

I want to thank everyone that has come by and read what I have to say over the last year. I want to thank all of the commenters that have said nice things and especially those commenters that have inspired others with words of knowledge and encouragement. This blog has a life of it’s own thanks to everyones interaction and is less about my input than it is about you who include yourself as a part of it.

Thanks