Daily tip #36| Spot fat removal

  Back when I watched a lot of tv, I used to see a lot of commercials saying their product will target the 'love handle and waist region' and remove the fat from there.

Until a few years back, I didn't find it ridiculous, I honestly thought you could remove fat from a place by exercising that place.. Turns out you can't.

 It is all a myth, there is no 'spot' fat removal, you can't lose weight from a single spot, if you lose - you are going to lose it from your whole body. Remember those commercials of vibrating belts, saying they'll remove the fat from the waist? It is not possible to focus removal of fat on a single spot of your body.

 Remember, people are different. Different people behave differently, so you might not lose those lovely handles until 10% body fat, and someone else might've lost them at 15%.

  The body decides how it distributes fat over - all you can do to shoo those man boobs and love handles away is to start easy by swaping out a few products, and then follow a general guideline. Nutrition alone will do a lot, but to gain a proper form you need atleast some aerobic exercises, jogging and cycling are one of the most preffered methods too.

 With a basic eating guideline and a 40 minute easy jog every 2 days and motivation too, ofcourse - you can get rid of the manboobs and unneccessary fat.


Do not forget to drink a lot of water, not underestimate sleeping properly, stop making common mistakes to become happier! 

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Daily tip #32| How to cheat

Cheating can be a great pressure valve to release yourself once in a while, you can only eat rice, chicken and steamed vegetables for so long before you pig out on creamy, frosty and sweet stuff. Let me walk you through on how to properly cheat without destroying all of your work just because of a small temptation..


What you first should realise is that a cheat meal is not a cheat DAY. It should not be two pizzas and two six packs of beer - it should just be two or three slices of pizza and a few beers.

In my opinion, everyone should have a cheat meal atleast once a week. You might go a week without it, then go on the second week, and then the third week the pressure will make you explode into and eating frenzy, ruining a few weeks if not a month of your work, also demotivating you greatly.




Do not let that happen to you, have atleast one cheat meal per week, even if you feel like you don't need it. A cheat meal is designed to prevent the binging, it is not a scheduled meal, so have it whenever you feel like, it is a safe way to get that kick up your behind to get you going on your regular plan again, because I'm sure you'll feel just a tad bit guilty after having it, making you want to keep on eating better.


Do NOT have more than TWO cheat meals per week. One is good, Two are okay, Three is a NO. Remember, a cheat meal is not a cheat day! I know what goes through ones mind when they crave, I really used to crave all the time while starting out, I had cheat days and random cheat meals all throughout the week - it went nowhere, I achieved nothing. It was like I wasted my time and work all for nothing. Then, I realised I can continue on with my plan while releasing the pressure with just two random cheat meals per week.


Have anything you want, but do not have the whole thing. Pizza? Have a few slices. A six pack of beer? Have half.

Got it? Okay, good.


Do not forget to drink a lot of water, not underestimate sleeping properly, stop making common mistakes to become happier! 

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Daily tip #31| Nutrition 103

On my last two posts, we went over the substitute method, and the standart 3 solid meals a day plan, now, we will learn what is even more healthy.


Eating healthy can be a lot of work while you're starting out, it's not to be scared of, though, because you can get ripped abs or a fit belly and waist. It is not too hard though, basically, it is about limitation.


You should try getting most of your calories from wholegrains, fruits, legumes and vegetables. Limit bad things, eat only lean meat, if you're going to eat chicken, do not eat the skin. You don't really have to eliminate the bad things, just try to limit them as much as you can. In a few weeks you should start to see the big difference in your feelings, your decisions and the quality of sleep/staying fresh and awake through the day.


Try and eat 3-5 cups of fruits and vegetables per day. Eat fiber rich whole grains. Only eat lean cuts of meat like chicken and fish, remove the skin. Limit alchohol, limit snack foods, limit cookies, cakes etc.


Water. Water. Water. Water. It helps lose weight, it helps clean your body, and a lot more!

Sleep is very, very important too!

Remember, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, explained why in daily #30.

These are three very simple things which people take for granted all the time - they seriously can improve your life.




Do not forget to drink a lot of water, not underestimate sleeping properly, stop making common mistakes to become happier! 

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Daily tip #30| Nutrition102

On my previous post I gave you a very simple solution to start getting on track and shed some weight off easily, the substitute method.


Let's say you followed the method for a few weeks, and the weight slowed, so you want to continue on forward.


The the next appropriate step would be to start following an eating schedule. A basic eating schedule consists of three balanced meals per day. It will not go to harsh on your body, meaning it's completely safe for anyone. I'm saying this because cutting down on many calories at once can be bad for your body, it becomes a health risk. It is not to be taken lightly. You should aim for about 20% calorie reduction from where you are now-- But don't count calories yet, counting calories is not a pleasureful activity, and if you're just looking to shed off some weight, you don't have to!


This is very simple nutrition. What you should start doing is eating three regularly scheduled(spaced out throughout the day) meals. Each one of them should be home made and, atleast relatively healthy. You can really go far with this, you will be able to gain muscle and shed weight at the same time. Ofcourse, way slower than 6 meals per day, but this is only the beginning, I'm guessing if you start up hardcore now - you'll get demotivated pretty soon after the results slow down. You lose weights on certain periods of time, more on that later on.


Don't have any idea of what is considered healthy and could be homemade? Oatmeal with two eggs and a glass of milk or yogurt - that would be breakfast. A tuna sandwich with an apple or two - that's lunch. Dinner? Have meat and potatoes with a salad. Do not go hard on salt or sos, they are unneccessary.


Remember, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Your body is in a great need for energy, as you haven't eaten for eight hours! Assuming, you slept for atleast 8 hours, which you should be doing.


Do not forget to drink a lot of water, not underestimate sleeping properly, stop making common mistakes and you'll be much happier! 

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Daily tip #29| Nutrition 101

Lately I've been getting into some intermediate stuff, I don't see many people actually reading the article, so let's start keeping it short, and novice-based, most of the days.

What might be your daily meal plan? Is it.... 3 to 6 fast food meals per week? Lots of fried foods? Lots of snack foods? Candy, cookies, sweets? Barely any vegitables? Almost no fruit, no fiber and lots of salt? Is that atleast half of you? You're doing it wrong.

If you're eating like this, you might not realise how much you could accomplish with a simple change.. If you added 30 pounds over the last 5 years, it is only because you ate 57 calories per day too much. Yep. 57, that is nothing! It actually doesn't take much to change the whole situation around, it is very easy, and I really thought everyone knew this! 

So.. What do you do? You substitute. But how? You choose two meals that you eat often, and substitute them with a healthy solution! Yes, just two. If you drink a lot of coke, substitute it with water. If you have fried foods often, eat baked potatoes. That's it. Two meals, and the weight will start shedding off! It really is that simple. None of these sacrifices are too great to cause any deprivation, or any hard thinking to do - yet, it is a very powerful method. And it will work, 100%.

I'll be starting these nutrition dailies, after all, nutrition is key to losing weight and gaining muscle. I'll be progressively getting into more advanced stuff each day. I'm hoping this short format will make you, the visitor, actually read what I write.

And yes! Drink a lot of water, not underestimate sleeping properly, stop making common mistakes and you'll be much happier!

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Daily tip #28| Poor results gaining

A lot of people are getting demotivated after seeing no results.. After a week. This is not how muscles work. Building muscle is a very slow and hard process. Before changing your work out, work with it for ATLEAST a month, and then see. Now, let's take a look at what you might be doing wrong..


                              Nutrition is key in gaining muscle, but not the only key.

  Lifting weights may be the easiest part of working out, but you must not take it lightly. You need to constantly and intensively lift weights. If you go to workout just once a week, for one hour and spend half of that one hour talking to a bud, you're not going to gain anything.




Let's say you intensively work out 3 days a week, and you're still not seeing results after a few months. Well, remember that cookie you ate? Yeah. Remember the sugar you put into the coffee covered with cream on top of it? Do not expect results without solid, proper nutrition. 6 meals a day, every two to three hours. 3.3 litres of water (2.3 if you are a girl). And proper sleep (Atleast 8 hours). Solid sleep and rest is essential, no sleep - no gain.
Ofcourse, the meals have to be balanced too! (more on that in a later post)

   You're probably thinking to yourself "6 meals a day.. Damn, I need to eat like a horse to do this' Nope. Wrong. You do not need to eat more to gain muscles. You do not need fat to gain muscle. This is a horrible myth, seen and heard everyday. 'I'm skinny so I eat a lot to add fat in order to gain muscle' this is heard really often, too often. To build muscle you need atleast 0.5/1g of protein per pound of your total bodyweight weight. That is what you need to start building muscle, no fat. If you weigh 180 pounds, you need to consume 180 grams of protein each day. Ofcourse, somewhat evenly spaced out!(30g per meal, though you can have 15 g in one meal and then compensate with 45 in the other, just do not have your daily dose at once)

  Do not abandon natural protein and turn to protein shakes. One protein shake per day is good, but two or three is horrible. There are many, BETTER proteins in natural foods like nuts, chicken breasts, eggs, milk and other lean meats. You can also have a protein bar, but do not have it as a snack.

  If you're getting poor results.. Ofcourse, you might just be simply overtraining. If you've suddenly stopped gaining strenght and started losing it - you're overtraining. If you lift weights, 3 days per week of 1-2 hours is enough. If you're having 'parts days' do not have two chest days, or two bicep days, one day per week is enough. Later on you CAN start lifting 4 days per week, but that's much more later on, do not worry about that.

And yes! Drink a lot of water, not underestimate sleeping properly, stop making common mistakes and you'll be much happier!

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Daily tip #23| HIIT

High Intensity Interval Training. You might have heard of it, you might have not, I'll explain what it is and what it does..



First of, what is it? It is basically performing at near your maximum speed for a few minutes, and then at an average speed for another few minutes, then near your maximum speed again, so on and so on.


What is near max or average? Let's make a scale, 1 being 'this is so easy I'll fall asleep' and 10 being 'OH GOD I am going to pass out'. Near max would be 8-9, and average would be 5-6. I think it's clear now? Alright, good.


Now, why choose HIIT? Research has found that normal cardio burns the same amount of calories like HIIT. But here's the catch, HIIT continues burning calories after you're done. HIIT also increases fat burning in muscle fibers. So? It burns more calories, it increases the burning of calories, how do you do it? Well, I'll have to let some hopes go, because HIIT should only be performed by medium-to-advanced joggers/runners/swimmers, whatever cardio you do, you can't be a beginner and do HIIT. HIIT really puts a lot of stress and demand on your body, if you're not used to it - you can easily get injured. Also, if you have joint problems, high heart pressure or some kind of heart disease you must talk to a doctor. You should have known to talk to him already if you have a good doctor though.




Let's get into how to do it. If you're just about to start HIIT, you should do a total of 20 minutes. 2 minutes intensively, 2 minutes moderately/lightly. It's very simple.

Run fast / 2 minutes
Run slow / 2 minutes
Repeat.

Swim fast / 2 minutes
Swim slow / 2 minutes
Repeat.

Cycle fast / 2 minutes
Cycle slow / 2 minutes
Repeat.

It's pretty simple, isn't it? Once in a while you can also attempt to do it like this once it a while:


Cycle/Run/Swim fast 1 minute
Cycle/Run/Swim slow 2 minutes
Cycle/Run/Swim fast 1 minute
Cycle/Run/Swim slow 1 minute 30 seconds
Cycle/Run/Swim fast 1 minute
Cycle/Run/Swim slow 1 minute
Cycle/Run/Swim fast 1 minute
Cycle/Run/Swim slow 30 seconds
Cycle/Run/Swim fast 1 minute
Cycle/Run/Swim slow 1 minute
Cycle/Run/Swim fast 1 minute
Cycle/Run/Swim slow 1 minute 30 seconds
Cycle/Run/Swim fast 1 minute
Cycle/Run/Swim slow 2 minutes
Cycle/Run/Swim fast 1 minute


Yeah? You've got the idea. Always make sure to keep the fast at 8-9 and slow at 5-6, or it simply will not work!


Before you run off to do HIIT, always remember to warm up, that is a must! Your goals should also be down to earth, always keep in mind the next day! Today you might feel fine, but after an intensive workout, the next day you will feel completely beat, not allowing you to exercise properly, maybe have a light day then? To continue improving with HIIT you should increase either intensity or duration, never increase both at the same time!




If you have no idea on how to make a routine, here you go. You want to do HIIT once or twice a week, not more - atleast while starting out HIIT. Remember - you can overtrain with HIIT, if you feel like you've gained nothing in a really long time, or you're getting weaker, ease off a litte.


Rest is key, water is factor and a good post work out meal is a must! A little bit more motivation wouldn't hurt either! Sleep well, eat well and rest well!

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Daily tip #20| Basic routine

On one of my recent posts I've had a comment asking me of how to set up a basic routine to get started, I understand it might be difficult when having no idea from what to start, so let me give you a hand..



So, when beginning you want to start slow and easy so you don't injure yourself. Let me make you a basic, home workout to use.


Day                     Exercise                Sets                      Reps      
Monday             Crunches                    3                      12-25
                          Pushups                     3                        8-12
                          Overhand pullups       3                        8-10
                          Lunges                      3                         8-14


Tuesday             Cardio day, you should jog, swim, bike or brisk for 25 minutes.



Wednesday        Crunches                    3                      12-25
                          Pushups                     3                        8-12
                          Overhand pullups       3                        8-10
                          Lunges                      3                         8-14
                     
                         Cardio, swim, jog, bike or brisk for 25 minutes.

Thursday           Cardio today, jog, brisk, swim or bike for 40 minutes today.




Friday                Crunches                    3                      12-25
                          Pushups                     3                        8-12
                          Overhand pullups       3                        8-10
                          Lunges                      3                         8-14

                      Cardio, easy jog, swim, brisk or bike for 15 minutes.


Saturday        Intense cardio day, jog, swim, brisk or bike at about 80% of your speed, 1 set lasts five minutes, 5 sets.



Sunday        Long session today, you might be feeling sore from saturday, so now you want to go easily, but long, do 60-90 minutes of light/slow jogging, brisking, swimming or biking. Do not go hard.





How much rest should you have between sets? Start off with 60 seconds of rest between sets. If you feel like you're getting too beat, increase the rest to 90 seconds, nothing over two minutes though. If you feel like this is too easy, decrease the rest to 30-45 seconds.


So there you go, I just put together a simple workout week, you should be able to follow this for quite a while. You do not want to increase the reps/lenght of cardio until you learn the proper form and understand your body, I suggest keeping this atleast two months, from then on you can increase the reps.

Do not forget to sleep better, eat better , drink a lot of water and have a better mindset. You'll achieve what you want eventually, you just have to fight for it, or in this care, do the above four.


Remember, you're getting used to this kind of routine, this is not a 'diet' type of thing, this is a lifestyle. You can get injured, stay safe.


You should always know it's better to cheat a day or two than quit. If you really feel like you can't do anything today, take the day off, but make sure to not miss one next week.

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Daily tip #12| Common mistakes

I see A LOT of common mistakes people are making when 'dieting', and it's not something insignificant. If you think it's insignificant, it probably isnt. Let me help you by pointing out some of these..


Beverages: These are something that's taken for granted, you can get a lot of liquid calories. It has no nutritional, even if you drink 2000 calories, you'll still feel hungry, and then over-eat. You should always take note of what you are drinking, as this can be pretty big. Just say no sweetened soda and other drinks like latte, frappe, frozen coffee, smoothies or sweetened tea. Juice doesn't seem like a big deal, but eating the whole fruit would be far more benefitial, it would be more filling, it would have more fibers and few calories.



Skipping meals: Sounds logical, right? You want to lose weight, so you eat less calories = skipping some meals. That's a big NO. By skipping meals you're doing way more harm than good to yourself. Breakfast is the most skipped meal of the day, and it can be the most important one in your diet. Do not skip breakfast. If you're always running out of time, go to sleep earlier, you need more sleep anyways.



Giving into friends: You go to a restaurant, or come over at a friends house.. And there it is, a big bucket of ice cream, or pleasantly smelling hot pizza, your friend starts eating, looking at you weirdly as to why you're not taking a piece, you then-- WAKE UP! You have your own head on your body, you have to think for yourself, if anyone is insisting on you eating something, you have to nicely apologise and say you can't. You shouldn't lie saying you don't like that flavour, because you'd be tricking yourself too, you need to stay strong.



Forgetting your meal schedule: I see people forgetting when they have to eat all the time, if you do too, you should set an alarm to go off every two and a half hours, every day. This will not only remind you, it will also help you remember it better on your own since you'll be looking at the exact times every time it goes off. The good thing is this can be done on almost any phone.



Not drinking enough water: I can't stress how important water is, see this.



Weighting yourself too often: People are getting more and more obsessed about the scale, media doesn't really help with this fact. The thing about weighing yourself is that your weight changes constantly, in the morning you'll be one way, in the evening you might be shocked, how could you have lost/gained so much in one day?! Only to be let down the next morning.. What you have to do is weigh yourself daily, taking notes of your weight, then taking the average at the end of the week. You'll know your exact weight then.



Forgetting this is a lifestyle: If you think dieting is just a two-week thing which you have to last through, and then you're done - you're just plain wrong, it can be, but you're going to go back to the same weight you were before the diet, possibly even more since now you're 'allowed' to eat anything you want. What you have to realise is this can be a lifestyle, you can be healthy, fit, strong and flexible your whole life, you just have to make it you, and let it make you.

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Daily tip #11| Exercise does make you happy

Do you ever feel like you've acomplished something, and become more happy after workouts? Well, you're kind of forced to. Some even describe the post-workout feeling as euphoric.When you workout, you improve, get more fit and flexibe, those are not the only reasons why you're happy. A study from the American College of Sports Medicine has shown that just a basic 30 minute exercise session can really boost your mood and tackle depression seriously. This does sound familiar, doesn't it? If low or medium intensity exercise is all that’s needed to give yourself a boost, imagine what you can get out of intense exercise..

Now, there's sience behind this, there's three things that make this happen:

Serotonin: It is a neurotransmitter which makes us emotionally stable. Levels of serotonin rise high during exercise, meaning it boosts your confidence and makes you happier. Serotonin produces out of an tryptophan, which is found in bananas, cottage cheese (more reasons to love cheese),chicken, and baked potatoes. Serotonin is also responsible for your sleep and awake cycles, mood, libido and appetite. It is directly linked to feelings of depression and sadness.



Dopamine: Dopamine is a neurotransmitter which makes us feel energised, motivated and upbeat. High levels of protein containing foods such as meat, milk, fish and beans help produce dopamine. Dopamine is factor in developing and strenghtening coordination and  muscle memory. Dopamine makes the brain associate happiness with exercise, your brain will then remember the feeling and will be encouraging your body to do exercise, in order to get more.


Phenylethylamine: An naturally occuring neurotransmitter found in the brain, it works as an mood enhancing stimulant, also aiding in the production of dopamine.



Endorphins: They bind to opioid receptors in your brains neurons, altering the number of neurotransmitters which are discharged. It reduces your central-nervous-systems' ability to receive electrical impulses of your nerves which mean pain, this means your body declines the feelings of discomfort, sadness and pain while working out.



So now you know, exercise is truly the key to happiness, not only will you look great - you'll feel better.

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