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Anne Alexander is the writer of a book called Win the Fat War. I am still trying to track her down but it looks like she is a writer for Prevention magazine. As you probably remember from last weeks Biggest Loser Couples Prevention magazine does all sorts of weight loss articles and also has great news otherwise.

Anyway Anne, If you get a chance to read this post, I have posted all of these tips that Anne Alexander wrote in a Prevention magazine article and they are fantastic. This is a list that can help anyone lose weight and gain muscle and take control of your eating and health.

Read these and comment on what you think. I will try to find an email address for Anne so we can email and thank her as well for these great tips.

Believe in Yourself

1. Ditch all-or-nothing thinking. Every time that Sandra Wadsworth, 41, attempted weight loss, she’d quit at the first slipup. “But I finally lost 20 pounds when Weight Watchers helped me see that I wasn’t a bad person. Everyone makes mistakes. The key is to learn from them.” 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

There are so many different weight loss pills and products out there that they often try to distract us from the basics, or shall I say that WE get distracted by the lure and high promises of these supplements? It is not surprising that people are falling in love with those pills. After all, if you can lose twenty pounds just by popping a couple of pills, why would you diet and exercise? However, the fact remains that if your weight loss program is based only on these magic pills you can never really lose any substantial amount of weight permanently. These supplements shouldn’t be treated as substitutes for natural weight loss. Your focus should only be on diet and exercise, not on these diet pills!

1. Check your diet: The old saying goes that you become what you eat. As much as you disbelieve it, it holds true even to this day. Have you ever watched the health of those who eat burgers regularly? Or that of your friends who often coax you to visit a fast food restaurant? Do their bodies indicate anything healthy about them? When you eat fatty foods, does your body react in a certain negative way? I know it sounds all clichéd, but unless you are going to cut down on sugar, fat and processed foods, you can never hope to shed pounds.

2. Cardio Exercises: Along with keeping an eye on your diet, you should also do cardio exercises. Cardio exercises come in various forms, such as stair climber, running on a treadmill, biking, rollerblading, etc. Cardio exercises should be an important part of your weight loss program for they help you to burn fat faster than you’d otherwise! Cardio exercises also get your heart pumping at the proper speed, as well as conditions your body to any amount of workload. If you have ever got tired while lifting weight, walking or running for miles or climbing the stairs, cardio exercise will help to adjust your body to these types of activities!

3. Resistance training: Cardio exercises are not enough. Along with cardio, you should also do resistance training. In fact, resistance training is even better than cardio exercise, for it not only helps you burn fat but also builds your muscles. The more muscles you have, the faster you will be able to burn fat. Resistance training can be of different types such as yoga, weight training, etc.

In the end, I would only like to say this much: if you want to lose weight properly then you need to follow the three-fold plan as I outlined above. If any of the above components is missing from your weight loss program, you may not be able to lose as mush weight as you really want to! Also remember that weight loss pills are called “supplements” for a reason - they are supplements to natural weight loss efforts. Therefore, while they can be very helpful in helping you shed even more pounds, they shouldn’t be treated as substitutes for diet and exercise!

One of my goals this year is to pull some of the posts off of this blog and create blogs that are more tightly focussed. Don’t worry about the posting frequency or the content, I just want to make sure that this blog concentrates on diet, exercise and fitness. Over the last year or so I have been diving a little bit away from this focus and giving you posts about a few other topics.

Today I want to announce that I have moved off all of the acne and skin care posts over to a new blog. That blog is Acne Info Today. Acne info today will be focussed exclusively on skin care.

So as I start looking through the 600 or so posts on this blog what would you like to see? I have been thinking of doing more muscle building but of course the motivation for diet and exercise are important as we get near the end of January and the quick death of the new years resolutions. Do you want more diet articles? More supplements? I started new categories for both supplements and for nutrition so that I could start getting a bit more concentration on those two important topics.

More to come.

I had to laugh when I went one of my favorite sites about blogging and ran across an article about how bloggers eat unhealthily. I go to ProBlogger for blogging tips not for eating tips but I think that the article nailed it as far as how people sitting at a computer tend to eat very badly just out of convenience. Here are the tips:

1. Not Planning Your Meals and Snacks
2. Eating sporadically and erratically
3. Loading up on high carb, low fat or low carb food
4. Eating nothing but packaged, high-convenience foods
5. Taking supplements in place of eating real foods
6. Depriving yourself of things you enjoy in the name of ‘health’
7. Ignoring the warning signs your body is giving you

These are for sure a list of great tips that you should take to heart if you work at a computer all day.

I have taken it a bit easy that last week and a half or so. I had access to a car for work, we had a long weekend up here in Canada and I was just being a bit lazy.

This week started on Tuesday with a very windy morning that continued to yesterday and I had some really tough riding.

This morning I got up and started getting ready for work. My wife asked me what all the grunting was about and I realized that I was having real trouble with sore legs. I had not noticed it yesterday but the riding in the wind after taking it easy had done it’s job to put my legs through the ringer.

I took a couple aspirin this morning, hopped on the bike to a breezeless  dark start to my ride and by the time I arrived I felt great.

I know that sometimes we get sore from our exercise and although I am not much of a fan of any pills other than regular supplements I sometimes find that aspirin will do the trick to make me feel better. If there is anything that will kill motivation quickly it is sore muscles. When you have sore muscles your body will come up with almost any excuse not to do what you need to.

Information abounds. I was looking around for some tips to offer about increasing protein in your diet when I ran across this article by David Monyer on increasing protein in your diet. As you should really be aware most people do not get enough protein in their diet and if you are doing any weight lifting (also known as resistance training) you need a little more protein in your diet anyway. Read through this and see just how much it helps you learn more about protein.

One problem that I do have though is with the myth that you need 1.5 to 2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day. I could not stomach 300 or 400 grams of protein a day and think that 150 to 200 grams is the max that anyone should take in per day.

The first thing every bodybuilder needs to know is the importance of getting enough protein in your daily diet. Although plenty of protein can be consumed in the form of whole foods, bodybuilders typically use a combination of beef, foul (chicken, turkey), fish and protein supplements in powder or liquid form.

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