Let’s say you run as fast as you can for a minute. The first 10 seconds or so are pretty easy, but then you can’t run as fast anymore. With each passing moment your muscles burn a little more, and…
The dieting craze, like any craze, goes in cycles. In the 1980’s, fat was the culprit. Fat was stripped from every food imaginable and the results were disastrous. By the 1990’s people realized that fat wasn’t the problem, it was…
You’ll never get ripped without changing your diet. It’s as simple as that. So what changes should you make? This is where you’ll get a million different answers. It seems that every week a new book, article, or diet comes…
This summer I decided to go on a vegetable juice fast. I’ve never done any type of fasting (unless you count the hours I’m sleeping) so I didn’t know what to expect. I always thought fasting was for emaciated hippies who weren’t tough enough to eat meat three times per day. But since my vegetable intake could use a healthy boost I gave it a trial run. You can read about my first 36 hours in part I here.
So now I’ll pick up on the night of day 2 of my vegetable juice fast. (I didn’t give you all the details of day 2 in part I.)
The first day, as mentioned, was a little rough. I was as hungry as an angry boar by mid afternoon but I stayed busy enough to fight off the hunger pangs. On day 2, my hungry was more manageable. By evening I decided it was time to replenish my muscles. I was leaner by day 2, for sure, but I felt pretty weak. So at 7pm on day 2 I did a circuit of 10 kettlebell swings, 10 clap push-ups, and 5 pull-ups for 10 rounds. I was weaker than normal but my endurance was up to par, maybe even a little higher. This was a pleasant surprise.
Vegetables are the best food on earth. A magical food group, if there ever was one. It doesn’t matter if you want to burn more fat, build muscle, or improve your overall health, consuming more vegetables on a daily basis will make a dramatic difference. How many foods can you say that about?
To stay lean and healthy, I can sum up a lifelong nutritional strategy in one sentence: consume vegetables all day long with some lean protein. Veggies reduce inflammation, fight cancer and every disease, and they’re loaded with nutrients your body needs to keep your good hormones up and bad hormones down.
But there’s a problem: I despise eating vegetables. Sure, I wave a big ol’ veggie flag because my clients’ results depend on eating plenty of them, but in my own life I’ll freely admit that my intake is woefully inadequate. So I recently took it upon myself to change my ways.
We all want to get a flat stomach fast, and sometimes life throws us in a situation where we end up eating a monstrous meal that’s straight from the devil’s kitchen. Maybe it was your birthday, or you met up with an old friend, or you just felt like dropping the reigns of dietary control for a night. It happens to all of us – I’m certainly no exception.
First, the good news. A high-calorie meal that’s replete with fat and carbs can boost hormones, such as leptin, that can elevate your metabolism. But this is only true if you’ve been following an effective diet leading up to the binge. And yes, short periods of overfeeding can help put your body in fat-burning mode, but the good news ends there. So I’ll tell you how to offset the damage from a late-night indulgence.
In order to melt body fat, you can’t do things halfway. When your goal is fast fat loss through exercise you must generate the highest metabolic cost possible. It’s imperative to full-body workouts in order to create an oxygen debt which, in turn, stimulates your body to burn more calories and fat (especially after you stop training). Most people just jog on a treadmill or maybe run a few sprints to burn fat. Think of any typical cardio exercise and I’ll bet it’s a lower-body exercise (sprints, jogging, biking, hiking, etc). But there’s a much better, faster way to see your abs. (Don’t forget, eating the right foods is essential, too.)
While training, the key is to do high intensity cardio that stimulates your upper- and lower-body muscles in the same workout. If you just run, no matter how fast, you’re only get half the results you could be getting if you simply added in an upper body exercise. The problem is, people don’t equate upper body exercises with cardio so they don’t know how to supercharge their fat loss.