“I walked into McDonald’s and asked for fries. The woman at the counter said, ‘Would you like fries with that?’” – Jay Leno
Fast food is everywhere.
Whether we like it or not, it’s become part of our culture and it’s here to stay. Ideally, we would steer clear of fast food altogether and only eat healthy meals that we prepare at home. But let’s be realistic. Sometimes, we just don’t have time and need to grab a quick bite. Fortunately, there are some decent options out there that won’t blow up your gut. Here are my top three favorite healthy fast food choices. Just to clarify, when I say “healthy” I mean low-calorie. I realize this may be a somewhat controversial definition of the word, so I’ll elaborate later in the post.
“Body weight circuits are kickin’ my butt!” –Rusty Moore
Do you ever have days when you only have 15 minutes to work out?
I know I do. When this happens, most people will usually elect to skip their workout because they don’t think they have enough time to do anything worthwhile. I used to be guilty of this myself. Now, I know better. About a year ago, I came across Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training Crazy 8 workout on Fitness Black Book. The first time I tried it, I was completely gassed after only two circuits. This is when I knew that this workout was the real deal.
I wonder how many Spiderman pushups Spiderman can do...
“No matter how good you get you can always get better and that’s the exciting part.” – Tiger Woods
Notice the ideal V-shape build.
Tiger Woods is more than just a golfer.
He is an amazing athlete. In fact, he is one of the fittest athletes on the planet. Sure he’s endured his share of criticism lately. But whether you love him or hate him, one fact is undeniable. This guy is in ridiculously good shape. One of his keys to success on the golf course is his dedication to fitness. In one of the only sports where overweight people can actually compete at the highest level and experience great success, Tiger leaves nothing to chance. He uses his fitness to give himself a competitive edge. Tiger Woods’ workout routine consists of cardio, strength training, and flexibility training. Not to mention his diet is pretty spot on.
Tiger Woods does cardio first thing in the morning.
“Blogging is best learned by blogging… and by reading other bloggers.” – George Siemens
Why should you read fitness blogs?
I wanted to do a quick post on why you should read fitness blogs. If your goal is to get fit, there are a million ways to do this. There is so much information out there, that it’s easy to get overloaded. This is especially true in the health and fitness industries where there are often contradicting views from experts. When you have one fitness guru telling you one thing and another saying the complete opposite, it’s easy to get confused.
Blogs are a great source of practical information.
“Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.” – Peter Gibbons (Office Space)
The Treadmill Desk.
What on earth is this?
I’ll tell you exactly what it is. It’s a treadmill desk and no, it’s not a joke. These things are for real and they could very well be the workstation of the future. The treadmill desk was designed by the Mayo Clinic’s Dr. James Levine. It’s pretty self-explanatory: a treadmill with a desk attached to it. So here’s how it works. Basically, instead of sitting at your desk while working at your computer, you walk while working at your computer. Test subjects burned 100 calories per hour while walking on the treadmill desk at a slow pace (1 mph).
What is the point?
The idea behind this contraption is to give people who don’t have time to workout an opportunity to shed a few pounds. So how much weight can one expect to lose? Well, if you take a typical 40 hour work week and 50 work weeks per year, this is 2,000 hours of extra walking per year. At 100 calories per hour, this equates to 200,000 calories! A pound of fat is about 3,500 calories, so assuming food intake and everything else is kept constant, we’re talking about 57 pounds per year!
Cardio is one of the most misunderstood concepts in fitness.
What is the best cardio routine to perform for fat loss? Are some types of cardio better than others? Do you even need to do cardio at all? There is no straight answer to any of these questions. It all depends on your situation and what your fat loss goals are. For an active individual who is already in great shape, but wants to drop his body fat from 10% to 6%, I would recommend a different cardio routine than I would for a 400 pound man who hasn’t exercised in 20 years. Ultimately, you will need to build your own cardio routine. But first, you need to understand the different types of cardio. In this post, I will focus on three types of cardio.
“If you’re working out in front of a mirror and watching your muscles grow, your ego has reached a point where it is now eating itself. That’s why I believe there should be a psychiatrist at every health club, so that when they see you doing this, they will take you away for a little chat.” – Lewis Black
Most people don’t understand how to train in order to achieve visually appealing muscle gains.
I used to be the same way. When I first started working out in college, I didn’t know what I was doing. I just followed the lead of my friends since they were more experienced than me when it came to weightlifting. The type of workouts I performed were similar to what 90% of the guys in the gym were doing, so I assumed that there was nothing wrong with them and that impressive muscle gains were just around the corner. In truth, it wasn’t a terrible routine, but there was one big problem. There was no direction. It was like setting out on a road trip by simply driving in the general direction of the intended destination.
Even a monkey can workout without any direction.
I was too focused on increasing my numbers on each exercise without giving any thought to how I was lifting.
“Big is out, thin is in.” – Mike Sorrentino (aka “The Situation”)
How are the Jersey Shore guys so ripped?
Is there a secret Jersey Shore workout that will get you a six pack? With the highly anticipated second season fast approaching, I thought I’d put up a short post to offer up my two cents. My theory is that it goes far beyond what they do in the gym. Anyone who has seen Jersey Shore knows how ripped the dudes are. But how? After all, these guys are constantly gorging themselves on high-carb Italian feasts, funnel cakes, 2am pizza, and a seemingly endless supply of booze. They aren’t exactly beacons of good health. So how do you explain their top notch physical condition? The answer is very simple. Two words: calorie deficit.
“I can spend hours in a grocery store. I get so excited when I see food, I go crazy. I spend hours arranging my baskets so that everything fits in and nothing gets squashed. I’m really anal about it, actually.” –Cameron Diaz
Cameron Diaz loves grocery shopping, so you should too.
After I went grocery shopping this weekend, I thought some grocery tips might make a good post topic, so here goes.
When it comes to strategic eating, grocery shopping is a key element in your success. In fact, if you are preparing most of your meals at home (as you should if you are trying to get lean), then the foods that you keep on hand will make our break you. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that grocery shopping is a skill that should be learned by anyone who is serious about sticking to their fat loss goals. So having said all that, I’m now going to reveal a few tips on what I do when I go grocery shopping.
Make a shopping list.
In my opinion, this is by far the most important element of grocery shopping and it happens before you even set foot in the store.
“We lost because we didn’t win.” –Ronaldo (Brazilian soccer player)
The World Cup is here!
The World Cup is by far my favorite event of all time. Not just my favorite sporting event, but my favorite event. It only comes around once every four years, so when it arrives, it’s truly a spectacle. The whole world (except maybe the US) stops for a month to celebrate the very best the game has to offer. Now that it’s underway, I thought it would be fitting to write a post about soccer and fitness.
If you’re not yet convinced that soccer players have the best bodies of all athletes, check out this clip from my favorite TV show, Fox Football Fone-In:
The words “soccer” and “fitness” might as well be interchangeable.
I’m going to tell you how to cheat on your diet without cheating on your eating plan.
I’ve heard some experts claim that the more you eat healthy foods, the less you crave unhealthy foods. Personally, I have found this statement to be completely untrue. Right now I’m eating healthier than I ever have and I’m also craving junk foods more than ever. So what do I do? I cheat. I’m able to get away with this by varying my daily calorie intake.
An inspirational movie may be the spark that ignites your fitness journey.
Cam Gigandet in Never Back Down
At least that was the case for me. One night in September 2009, I was lounging around on my couch flipping through channels. A few months earlier, my cable provider had cancelled the NFL network and as a consolation, they offered me the Starz movie package free for a year. This was great for me because I love movies and I never watched the NFL network to begin with.
So I flipped to Starz and the movie that was on immediately sparked my interest. Normally, the thing that caught my attention would have been an attractive female, a funny scene, or something along those lines. This time, it was neither. In fact, it was the exact opposite. There was nothing comedic about the scene. It was a shirtless dude about to kick another dude’s butt. Under normal circumstances, I would have switched the channel right then. I’m not usually into this kind of movie. But this time, I was hooked.
The dude was Cam Gigandet and the movie was Never Back Down.
“Unless you puke, faint or die, keep going.” – Jillian Michaels
So, I thought I’d write a post about The Biggest Loser, which has quickly become one of my favorite shows on television. Season 9 ended this past week with winner Mike Ventrella dropping an amazing 264 pounds, more than 50% of his starting weight. As impressive as this was, I was even more impressed with something else that happened on the show: The Biggest Loser Marathon.
Here is a pic of the contestants from Season 9 at the beginning of the show... quite a hefty bunch.
Adjustable dumbbells may be the best fitness investment you will ever make.
The best part about having a home gym is that I don't have to be around people like this.
When I was in college, I had free access to a fantastic gym. Imagine a facility the size of a grocery store with almost every piece of workout equipment you can think of. This place was meathead heaven, which was appropriate since there were a lot of meatheads in college. So if you are a college student with free access to a great facility, then this article probably won’t apply to you. Still, you might want to read it anyway because one day, you will be in the real world where plenty of people are searching for the best home gym equipment.
After I graduated, I was faced with a concept that was foreign to me: paying money to workout. Well, that’s not entirely true. My condo complex has a small gym that’s free for residents. At first, I did the majority of my weight training there, but it wasn’t the same. If there were more than three people in the gym at once, it felt crowded. Of course, everyone went to work out at the same time as me (around 5 or 6 o’clock, right after work) which left me constantly waiting “in line” to use equipment. Needless to say, I got frustrated and immediately began searching for an alternative.
Eat Less Frequently and Prepare Most of Your Meals
In Part 1 of the Hype Free Eating Plan, I talked about how much to eat and in Part 2, I talked about what to eat. Now, I’ll go into when and where you should eat. First, I’ll focus on the when.
How many meals should you eat per day?
If you’ve read anything about nutrition recently, I’m sure you’ve heard the whole six small meals per day doctrine. The argument is that you need to be constantly eating so that your body doesn’t go into starvation mode and start storing fat. I used to buy into this but once I quit and went back to three meals per day, I experienced the best results I have ever seen. If you eat six small meals a day, then your meals will probably look like this:
Not very satisfying...
Here is where I believe the six small meals a day routine goes wrong.
