For many people losing 20 pounds in a month would be a dream. Put that dream right in front of you because I am saying that there are ways that you can lose 20 pounds in a month.

To get started on any weight loss goal is easy but you need a strategy and tactics in order to lose 20 pounds in a month. Your strategy towards any goal is the broad strokes, the big concepts that are important. Here is your weight loss strategy

Increase your resting metabolism
Reduce your calorie intake
Quickly burn calories during cardio and weight workouts

Now that you have a strategy to lose 20 pounds in a month so now you need the tactics that will make it a reality. You need radical changes to lose 5 pounds a week.

Your tactics are the individual things that will make your dream work out for you. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Now that it is College Basketball playoff time we get to see a lot of young kids interviewed after games and often they say things like “I gave it 100%” or “I left everything I had on the court” or my very unfavorite (as my daughter would say) “I gave it 110%”.

Gave it 110% eh? Well that does not even make sense but the reason thaqt people say that is that they want to stress that they had nothing left except what they did today. The fact is it is impossible to give your workouts, whether cardio or weight everything all of the time. You have off days and you have times when you are a bit tired or your diet is not quite there on a particular day.

To really make gains ion strength or losses in fat you need to go beyond your norm, beyond 90% and remember how these college athletes do things trying to get to the final 4. I have always been a believer that if I do a set of bench press the first few reps are useless for strength increases. The only reps that matter are the ones where you are pushing your already known strength limits and reaching to levels of strength where you have never been, the last couple of reps is where all of the muscle gets created to be needed next time. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been away on vacation for the last few days. I went with my family on a vacation to Hawaii. We spent 7 days in Waikiki and the rest of the island of Oahu and I have a few stories that I am looking forward to telling about the weather and sunburns, about eating at restaurants, about exercise and workouts and also about people trying to have the best beach body.

I am still getting my bearings back since I have had to move back and forth across four timezones but I am less sleep deprived today then I was yesterday.

More articles this week. I am hoping to be a bit of a posting demon getting lots of tips up this next week.

Oh, and the Biggest Loser? I have missed two straight episodes so I will need to watch those and post about those as well.

Research has proven that if we’ve a single objective as our goal, and if we direct all our energies and resources towards the achievement of that objective, we can’t but win the goal. It is really true, and when it comes to weight loss, it is no different either. The very first thing you need to do is to make your weight loss goal your priority, and then enlist all the available resources and time towards achieving it. That is the only way you can lose weight.

I am not telling you to neglect things that are more important than weight loss, but I am pretty sure that the number of such ‘very important things’ is fewer than what you think, and I am also sure that you can, if you want, accommodate your weight loss program in this short list of ‘very important things’.

You see, nothing is more important than your health. If your health goes for a downhill, everything else that you set as ‘important tasks’ will have to stop. Now, how does this relate to weight loss? Well, you might not be aware of the fact that obesity is the forerunner of several harmful diseases such as diabetes, heart related diseases, hypertension, etc. Therefore, the main reason why you should lose weight is not just to look and feel good, but to make sure you live a healthy and long life. There are some ways you can ensure that you always find time for your weight loss program. Read the rest of this entry »

I remember when I was younger and I never did cardio. I would go into the gym and do weights Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and just do weights on a 2 on one off schedule. I would do chest, shoulders, and triceps one day and back, biceps and legs the second day. And again I did no cardio.

I did so little cardio that there was a woman bodybuilder in the gym that we would talk to and she said that she did 2 hours of cardio a day. I was shocked that this was even possible for someone that lifted weights to do.

times for me have changed a bit. Now I do three sets per muscle group three times a week so my workouts are only around 45 minutes or so and I do get cardio on my mountain bike or indoors on the elliptical trainer. I believe that now my workouts are much more focussed and I listen to my body more so that I do not risk overtraining like I really did back then. Read the rest of this entry »

I always lose track of the episodes as the Biggest Loser season goes on. I finally got to watch last night and wow there was lots of drama. Bob kicked Jillians but in the reverse stair climbing contest. Jillian teared up as Bob picked teams and there was another wrigleys gum product placement.

Anyway they really seemed to pack a lot into this latest episode. The 8 teams are now just 2 teams. The Blue team was chosen by Bob Harper after winning a reverse escalator challenge and the black team were the four teams left over for Jillian. It seemed a little unfair the way he teams were picked. Maybe the producers of the show want Bill to win this season but we all know by now how the Biggest Loser picks a winner, based on percentage weight loss. The fatter you start the higher the percentage weight loss at the end when you are skinny. Bob of course picked the heaviest teams. Read the rest of this entry »

With kids in the house and priorities everywhere I decided that this year the only way that I would be able to get weight workouts in would be to keep them short and increase the intensity. Here were my thoughts on the perfect workout for me.

I am not 20 anymore so I knew that I had to be realistic about my goals

I need a quick workout

I wanted to do my whole body in one day

I wanted to be able to recover from weight workouts but still be able to do cardio on a lot of the exercise days of the week

I ended up coming up with a quick 25 minute workout that would be as hard as I could and feel a little wiped for an hour or so but still have my evenings free to spend with my wife and kids. So here is what I came up with: Circuit training with weights in about 20 minutes.

Warmup, 5 minutes of cardio, eighter a bike with some light weights or the elliptical machine

1. Warmup set of really light bench press, shoulder press, and one armed bent over rows across my bench.

2. A long set of the following

10 reps Bench press
10 reps each of alternating front laterals (front of shoulders), side laterals (side of shoulders) and bent over rear laterals (back of shoulders)
10 reps one armed bent over row across bench for each arm
10 bicep curls
10 tricep extensions
10 squats
25 each of crunches and leg lifts

This is one long set that takes about 7 or 8 minutes and each exercise is done to exhaustion. I am really winded at the end and it took a bit to figure out how much weight each exercise should use so that I was done at 10 reps or so

3. repeat step two

4. stretch a bit, and I am done

This workout has worked really well for me, it is quick and hits every muscle group, actually each muscle group is really hit hard and I a, pretty shaky by the end of the workout. I do this workout three times a week on alternating days and it does not really cut into my schedule much. Of course this is only one kind of workout, you would want to change things up exercise and rep-wise and probably change to a longer workout at times during the year to really shock the muscles on a regular basis.

So after a not very restful sleep and a Tylenol 3 for pain I woke up this morning to a bit less pain then last night but I am still kind of immobile and sore.

I went to the clinic this morning and the doctor says that I have a sprained back. I now have a filled prescription for an anti-inflammatory and  a muscle relaxant.
I will be out of commission for about three days and the doctor said that I should take it easy for a while after that. So I am going to be worrying more about stretching and isometrics and give the weights a break, sad for me because I really felt that I was getting in the groove of my workouts.

I am still thinking about how I hurt my back and it was a classic case of leaving my back exposed while I was warming it up. As you have probably heard in the past you should lift with your legs not with your back, I was not doing that.

Here is exactly how I wrecked my lower back. Instead of using 25 pounds or so doing one armed rows on the bench, I crouched down to do rows on an angle with just 15 pounds per arm but because of the angle that my back was relative to the weights I was putting a lot of pressure on my lower back instead of stressing my upper back muscles.

I guess we live and learn but I did not really want ot go through any kind of back problems. I had some problems with my knees many years ago and first resorted to riding a bike to strengthen the muscles around my knee, now it looks like I will need to do the same with my core, strengthening my core of my abs and my back are now a real priority.

eDiets has an article telling us what fit people do. It is right on the mark

1. Sleep well and wake up naturally. Many fit people arise without an alarm clock feeling energized, rested and hungry. They have set fitness goals and a plan to achieve them. People who are fit fall asleep easier, have more quality sleep and require less sleep than someone who is unfit. Lack of sleep is strongly associated with obesity. Sleeping helps the body repair, rebuild and recover.

2. Get prepared. Fit people pack their gym bags the night before, have clothes laid out for exercise, toiletries packed for a shower, clothes for work and an appointment in their planner for physical activity. They regard their workout appointments as highly as any other business or social commitment. Read the rest of this entry »

OK I guess this year is an open book for me, no real burning plans but lots of little things that I want to do, see, and experience. I try to share whatever I can on this blog so I thought that I would share some of what I am hoping to do this year. Just in point form, you wouldn’t want to see all the writing that went into these goals/resolutions for the year.

Run a 10k – This has been on my list for years but I have never been able to run long enough to get my self ready to run one. My crap knee gets sore and swollen and I stop my running workouts. This year I am going to try to cross train any way that I can so as to avoid too much actual running until race day. This is I know stupid as I will not continue the running beyond that one race but this has been one of those lofty goals to me for year…I want to get it done.

Lose 10 pounds of fat – I have been holding on to this ten pounds of fat for a few years. I am not really lean but I know that the 10 pound loss to pring me weight around 190 will make me feel better and look better if only for the summer (it’s hard to see a 6 pack in Calgary in the Winter).

Reduce the bad stuff – Dropping my intake of chocolate, pop and coffee. I will not be quitting them as we all know that is a certain path to failure but I will instead be very conscious of the times that I have any of these things and will reduce on a weekly basis the amount that I am taking in.

Work, Play and Family – I have all three although I often blur the lines between them. This year I will be shutting off the computer more and staying away from the blackberry when I don’t need it. Reading with the kids more and going out to do my own fun stuff as well. Over the last three years or so I have been trying to juggle and multitask myself into doing a lot of things and in the end I have let my family suffer by doing stuff with them while thinking about the web or how I resent not doing more fun stuff.

These are all fitness, home and health type resolutions. I have lots more for career and earnings and other things that are not related to this. I am going to be moving again this year and want to travel more as well. One of my big goals this year will also to be to make more money online so that my IT work is not the only income source that I have. I also want to be leaving free time all over the place to do things like writing a book (non fitness related) that I have been apparently working on for years as well as making it a focus to type faster and with fewer mistakes and finally to make sure that I have the time to try new things. There are always opportunities in life for new adventures and new skills but when you are too busy you just have to let them pass by. This year I am going to let less things pass me by.