Your chest workout is probably one of your favorites. As you get stronger your chest starts to fill out and your upper body begins to get a “V” shape to it which is helpful in making your midsection look tighter and your waist look thinner.

So now that you know why you want to Build huge pecs and you probably already knew this. The next question is how do you Build huge pecs?

OK there are a few things that you need to know. To build up your chest you need to have a very focused workout for your chest.

Here are those keys to build huge pecs

Lift big to get big - This means that you need to train with heavy weights to get stronger. As you get a bigger bench press you will get a bigger chest. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks for visiting. To get started why not subscribe to the 21 day fitness plan at the top of this page. Look in the red box, it is right there.. Thanks Bill

With the switch back to Weight Watchers for my wife we have also added a new twist to our daily eating, no eating after 7:00 PM.

I didn’t want to mention this until after we had done it for a few days but what started out as a joke has become a great change in our lives. We started on Wednesday night not eating after an hour or so after dinner and over the last three or four nights I have missed snacking less and less.

The first two evenings of not eating I found that I was hungry when I went to sleep and my stomach was a little unsettled for some unknown reason but in the mornings I have not felt any different then I did before, not too hungry.

I have spoken to a few people that have done the exact same thing and found that they have lost weight wityhin the first week or two just from making the cahnge to no evening snacking.

What do you eat at night? Is it good or bad food or nothing at all? I know that I was not eating any really bad foods although I was eating some not very great food. I was eating fruit as well as trail mix and other kinda salty food.

There is one drawback that I am concerned about and that is the really long time between meals and what it will do to my muscle mass and my metabolism. I am a bit of a graser usually and eat throughout the day so my body never has to get nervous about me starving and because of this my metabolism is always pretty high and good.

Next of course is the whole catabolic balance. If your body is looking for energy it will use the energy within your muscles but if your muscles and the rest of your body can not find any energy it will go into a catobolic state where your body eats away at the protein and fat in your body. I know that this is what we are really looking for when we try to lose fat but the problem is that with any prolonged fast that you will lose the muscle that you really want to keep at as great a pace as you are losing fat.

Time will tell if this experiment with not eating at night will be a great method of cutting some calories and maybe even helping improve sleep cycles.

If you were to walk into your local health and nutrition store looking for supplements that build muscle, you’ll probably find yourself confused and amazed at just how many products there are to choose from. With so many supplements available, it can be a little on the tricky side to decide which ones will help you with your goals. There are a lot of supplements out there to help you build muscle, although some may not be ideal for your goals.

The first thing to keep in mind, is the fact that you don’t always need muscle building supplements to build muscle, although will help you speed up the process. These types of supplements can help you increase muscular development, providing you work out. They can aid you in both muscle growth and the recovery of your muscles. Among the many products available, the most popular are protein, creatine, and multi-vitamins.

Protein is a preferred supplement among bodybuilders and those who exercise. It contains many amino acids which help you to build muscle. No matter what type of diet you are or on or supplement you select, you should always pick one that contains a lot of protein. The ideal way to take protein, is 2 grams per pound of body weight. You can get protein in pill form, powder, or even bars. When you select your protein supplement, you should also make sure that the supplement contains whey, soy, and eggs. Whey protein is the ideal supplement, as it contains everything you need to start building muscle.

Fitness Tips for Life Read the rest of this entry »

There are a few ways that you can get fat without realizing it. Here are a few ways that people get fat without knowing it. I got these tips from Mark Joyners newsletter.

1. Staying Up Late
The opposite would seem to make sense: If you stay up late, you burn more calories. Burn more calories, burn more fat. Right?

Unfortunately, staying up late can set off a multi-pronged attack on your body composition.

First, sleep is vital for recovery. If you don’t get enough sleep, your body won’t build as much muscle mass – no matter how much time you spend in the gym. Less muscle mass = less fat burning power.

Next, if you are sleep-deprived, you increase levels of the stress hormone “cortisol.” The connection between stress/cortisol and obesity is well established, but it gets worse. A recent study (Epel, Yale) shows that cortisol related fat storage tends to be around the vital organs – the worst possible place to store fat in your body. If that’s not enough, lack of sleep is linked with glucose intolerance (diabetes), lower Growth Hormone levels, a weakened immune system, low energy, and more … Get a full night’s sleep (7 to 9 hours), but make sure your place of rest is peaceful and pitch dark. Your natural sleep hormone, melatonin, is suppressed when there is too much light.

2. Skipping Breakfast
Many people skip breakfast thinking it will help them to lose weight. “Fewer calories in – more fat burned.” The reality is that skipping breakfast actually lowers your metabolism so that at your next meal you’ll tend to overeat. To make it worse, the food you eat on a lowered metabolism is more likely to be stored as fat.

3. Prescription Drugs
Many of the drugs you are prescribed increase appetite, cause edema, or slow our metabolism. That’s a recipe for getting, and looking, fatter. The most commonly used drugs that have these effects are oral contraceptives, many anti-depressants, and estrogen replacements. Check with your doctor to see about finding suitable alternatives that won’t make you fat.

I have spoken before about how Atkins is only a short term solution but raising the protein in your diet is a great way to speed up your metabolism and accelerate weight loss.. A study here shows that this is in fact true.

There have been countless studies performed on the role of protein in the muscle growth process to try and determine exactly how much protein you should consume to build muscle mass. Recently, several studies have looked at the role that dietary protein plays in helping you lose fat, and more importantly, helping you keep it off!

One thing scientists have discovered is that eating lean protein foods is important for regulating body composition because it decreases your appetite.

In a 2003 study reported in the journal Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition And Metabolic Care, protein was shown to be more satiating (made you feel fuller) than both carbohydrate and fat both in the short term and the long term.

Eating more lean protein foods has also been proven as an effective strategy to help you burn fat and keep it off because of something called, �dietary thermogenesis� (also known as the thermic effect of food).

In a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition in 2005 (93(2): 281-289), researchers followed a group of 113 overweight subjects after 4 weeks of a very low calorie diet, through a 6 month period of weight maintenance. The subjects were divided into a protein group or a control group. The protein group was simply given an extra 30 grams of protein per day on top of their usual diet.

The researchers found that during weight maintenance, the group with the higher protein intake was less likely to regain the lost weight, and any weight gain in the protein group was lean tissue and not fat. The results were attributed to higher thermic effect and a decrease in appetite.

Although calories will always be the bottom line when it comes to fat loss, studies such as these are confirming what bodybuilders have known for a long time: That calories are not the only factor that can influence your body composition. Your protein intake and your ratios of protein relative to carbohydrate and fat can clearly play a key role in helping you lose fat and keep the fat off.

None of this is news to bodybuilders or to anyone who is already familiar with bodybuilding-style nutrition programs such as Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle. But it�s interesting that such positive results were achieved in studies where protein was increased so conservatively - as little as 30 additional grams of protein per day or a 20% increase above traditional protein recommendations.

Many bodybuilding-style diets call for as much as 30%-40% of the total daily calories from protein and some competitive bodybuilders jack up the protein (temporarily) to as much as 50% before competitions.

I�m curious to see if any research is ever conducted with these more aggressive protein intakes. If so, my guess is that we will find once again, that the bodybuilders are ahead of the science when it comes to the manipulation of diet for improving body composition.

The take home lesson is simple: If you remove some carbs and put in some protein - nothing too radical; even as little as 30 grams per day - this small change in your diet may decrease your appetite, decrease your body fat and help you keep the fat off after you lose it.

- Tom Venuto
www.burnthefat.com