A Beginner’s Guide To Getting In Shape

Thank you Steve!

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You woke up today and looked in the mirror.

And you said to yourself, “Gosh darnit (or #$^@  $#@$@%), I’m going to get in shape!”

Just one problem – you don’t quite know HOW.

It’s okay; we’ve all been there.   This might be the first, tenth, or the fiftieth time you’ve tried to lose weight and get healthy.  Sure, things didn’t work last time, or the time before that, or even the time before that…”but things are going to be different THIS time,” right?

So you hop on the internet, search “how to lose weight,” and see 7.8 billion websites that promise you fast results with minimal effort.  You get overwhelmed, intimidated, and then go back to playing Modern Warfare 3 or Hello Kitty 2: Island Adventure.

Somehow, you stumbled across Nerd Fitness…which means there is hope for you yet 

By the end of this article, you’re going to know exactly how to get in shape.

Get your act together

First and foremost, if you suck at life…it’s time to stop.

I know it.  You know it.  Even your mom knows it (she called me).

So let’s get started.  Think back to the last time(s) you tried to get in shape and lose weight.  How successful were you?  What made you fall off the wagon?  Congratulations, you already know what “get in shape” method doesn’t work for you.

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  Unless you’re insane, don’t try to get in shape the same way you did last time…it’ AIN’T gonna work!  If you counted calories, ran on a treadmill, did kickboxing, tried starving yourself, or whatever, and you’re not happy with the results, it’s time to try something new.

May I recommend the Nerd Fitness method of success: the Triforce of Winning!  Well, I just came up with that title, but now that’s what I’ll call it henceforth.  If you want to succeed at changing your life, you need three things:

• Education: know HOW to get in shape
• Inspiration: know WHY you’re getting in shape
• Support: having others help you along the way to get in shape

If you can successfully combine these three crucial pieces, then you’ll
defeat Ganon and save Hyrule have a fightin’ chance at getting in the best damn shape of your life.

Education

1) If you made some New Year’s Resolutions for 2012,make sure they don’t suck.  Be incredibly specific with your goals so that you can actively plan what steps are needed to achieve those goals.  Alternatively, if you somebody that NEVER succeeds at your goals, instead try making a new habit every 30 days…put the focus on the habit and not the goal.

Whichever method you decide, it’s important to be deliberate in your actions:

• If you are setting goals – be SUPER SPECIFIC, write them down, and plan them out.
• If you are making new habits – add them to your calendar, set phone alarms or alerts, and do them EVERY DAY.
• Understand that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and Optimus Prime didn’t transform in one move.  This is NOT a diet, or a quick fix, but a LIFESTYLE CHANGE.  Don’t expect overnight results, or abs in two weeks.  Slow, steady progress.

2) Identify your kryptonite.  If you tried to get in shape in the past and failed, it’s important to know WHY.  Did you get sick and give up after a few days?  Did you go on vacation and say “why bother?”  Maybe you just got bored?  If you sucked at getting in shape last time, educate yourself on the hurdles and kryptonite that made you suck, and work on either avoiding those pitfalls or develop methods to deal with them.

3) Clean up your diet.  Believe it or not, 80% of your success when it comes to getting healthy will depend on your diet – unless you are running marathons on a daily basis, you cannot outrun your fork, and you can’t out-train a bad diet.  I honestly cannot stress the importance of this enough.  Whether you want to count calories, cut out certain foods, or attempt a new diet all together, this is the most important step you can take:

• Start here: How to eat healthy – yes, it’s a long read.  But it covers the basics and teaches you what to eat and not to eat.
• The Beginner’s guide to the Paleo Diet – my preferred diet of choice.  Not for everybody, but it works.
• Short on money?  How to eat healthy without breaking the bank. 

Now, most people suck at eating better because they try to make TOO many changes at once, their stomach freaks out and they run back to their comfort foods.  My advice?  Pick one food change every few weeks, and stick with it.  Whether it’s eating less calories per day, drinking one less soda, eating more vegetables or cooking your own meal once a week…small changes can lead to big successes in the long run.

4) Find an activity that makes you happy, and do it all of the time.  Do you like to run?  Awesome, do that (just do it right).  Do you like to lift weights?  Awesome, make sure your workouts don’t suck.   Maybe you like yoga, or dodgeball, or Ultimate Frisbee, or rock climbing, or whatever!  If you tell me that “I don’t like to exercise,” then you just haven’t found the activity that makes you happy yet.

We’re genetically designed to be active.  If you don’t like to move, then it’s time to try new things until you find something that you DO like.  Sign up for a new class, join your company’s running club for a day, try out something in your basement or living room, just keep trying new stuff until you find something that you like.  And then do it as often as you can.

Remember, your diet is 80% of your success or failure.   Exercising regularly will help you build muscle, strengthen your heart, lose weight, increase your endurance, stamina, and/or flexibility.  On top of that, regular exercise keeps your mind thinking healthy, which in turn will keep your stomach thinking healthy, which will cause your mouth to want to continue eating healthy foods.  It’s the circle of life, sucka.

Now, if you want specific direction on weight lifting, weight loss, or running, I’ve offered a few premium resources on Nerd Fitness.  Yes, they cost money, but they work.  These guides have helped hundreds upon hundreds of NF readers transform their lives.  Each guide comes with specific workout plans depending on your fitness level, video demonstration of exercises, and more…they all come with 1-year, 100% money-back guarantees as well.

• Rebel Fitness Guide: a fitness guide for beginners who want specific diet and exercise advice.
• Rebel Strength Guide: a guide for people looking to build strength and muscle, either bulking up or slimming down
• Rebel Running Guide: a guide for new runners who want to have fun while AVOIDING INJURY

If you want to buy more than one guide, email me at Steve@NerdFitness.com for combo pricing.

If you’re more of a do-it-yourself kind of person, you can build your own workout, or get started with a free resource like my Angry Birds workout.  The important thing is to GET STARTED, and then try to get better each time.

5) Put it all together:  These are the steps you can take today:

• Determine your goals or habits you want to establish.  Write them down and hang them up.
• Determine why you sucked in the past and how you can avoid it in the future.
• Start cleaning up your diet in whatever method works best for you.
• Pick an activity that makes you happy, and do it.  A lot.

Inspiration

WHY do you want to get in shape?  What is your reason for wanting to do so? Do you want to get in shape to…

• Impress a cute coworker?
• Win a weight loss competition at work?
• Eventually play with your newborn son?
• Grow old with your significant other?
• Prove everybody wrong who said “you can’t do it?”

Have a freaking reason, friend!  Write it down, hang it up in your bedroom, have a calendar alert pop up every day, whatever.  But keep that reason for wanting a better life at the front of your mind at all times.

Many people get inspired by reading success stories of folks like them.  Luckily for you, we have lots of those stories on Nerd Fitness with many more to come:

• Saint: 60 pounds overweight to 6-pack abs
• Tony: 4 months, 46 pounds lost.
• Staci: Your new favorite superhero
• 6-Week Success Stories
• Jessica: How Nerd Fitness gave me superpowers

Maybe success stories aren’t your thing; completely understandable. Maybe you like to get your inspiration from slightly nerdier sources like archaeologists, hobbits, Link, assassins, jedi, or the One.

Or maybe you’re a video fan!  Well then, videos like this and this will make you want to run through walls.

Like to read? Try this one.

Here’s the deal: It will never be easy.  Unless you have motivation to succeed, and can find inspiration to push through the crappy days, you will give up at the first sign of resistance.

I’m a nice guy, so I crammed all of the inspiration you’ll ever need into one place.  You’re welcome.

Support

Last but not least, you need support.

Yes, I understand its kind of fun to be an army of one: the lone ranger trying to succeed against insurmountable odds….but it’s not necessary.

Once you decide to get in shape, want to know the best way to guarantee success?  Make it public.  Tell all of your friends, start a blog, and/or inform your co-workers and ask them to keep you accountable!  Unless you like being called a quitter, you’ll probably think twice about skipping out on your workouts.

Maybe your word isn’t your bond, and you need a different kind of motivation and support to succeed. Try money.  My buddy Saint said he would pay his friends $500 if he didn’t get in absolutely incredible shape for his wedding six months down the road.  Saint didn’t have $500 to lose, so he decided instead to just get in great shape…and it worked.

Build your own Jedi Council – find people who are stronger than you and work out with them, or faster than you and run with them, or more educated than you and ask them questions.  These are people that you can turn to when you need advice or help.  If you don’t know anybody in real life, keep reading…

Find a workout buddy!  There are going to be days when you want to sleep in and skip your workout.  There will be afternoons following a crappy day of work where all you want to do is play Halo.  Find somebody who’s at a similar level of fitness as you, and work out with them!  He/she will push you on days when you’re dragging, and vice versa.  You can inspire and support each other, feed off of each other’s success, and offer up tough love when the complaining gets too much (and yes, there will be complaining).

Now, let’s say you’re the ONE person in your group of friends that wants to get in shape.  Or you’re the only person in your office who doesn’t stuff his face every day.   Maybe you don’t have anybody to turn to for support or advice…

We’ve got you covered. 

The Nerd Fitness community: a persistently amazing, always inspiring, never judgmental group of people who want nothing more than to help you succeed.  I have never been more excited to be part of a community.

This 100% free community has almost 4,000 members, hundreds of successful w00ts, and we’re rapidly approaching our 100,000th post.

Dominate life

Today starts a new 6-week challenge in the Nerd Fitness community.

It’s pretty damn simple: pick a few goals that you hope to accomplish in the next six weeks and then start working towards them.  We’ll pick a winner at the end of the challenge – along the way you’ll make new friends, challenge each other with mini contests, and more.

You can even try out the latest features just added to the boards: blogs!  Yup, you can start writing your own articles and keeping track of your stuff right on the site – workouts, food intake, whatever floats your boat.

So, come join us.

Educate yourself, find your inspiration, and create your support group. 

Sucking at life stops here.  Welcome to the Rebellion.

Any questions?

-Steve

Source:- http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2012/01/03/get-in-shape/

5 Reasons Your Workout Isn't Working

5 Reasons Your Workout Isn't Working

Have you been working out consistently for months (maybe even years) and yet the scale is creeping up? Here are five ways your workout could be keeping you from losing weight, and what our experts' recommend to start shedding pounds again:

1. Your workout routine is making you eat too much.
Is your workout causing you to use the "I burned it, I earned it," excuse when it comes to your diet? "Studies show that people tend to eat more calories when they take up exercise," says Michele Olson, Ph.D., professor of exercise science at Auburn University Montgomery, and creator of the Perfect Legs, Glutes & Abs DVD.

Think your 45-minute morning run was enough to burn off that slice of chocolate cake on the dessert menu? Consider this: the average, 140-pound woman burns about 476 calories (at a 10-minute mile pace) running for 45 minutes. The average restaurant dessert clocks in around 1,200 calories (or more), so even if you only eat half of a slice, you'd still easily eat away your run—and then some—in less than 10 minutes.

The solution: Make your workouts count by pairing them with a healthy diet that stays within the appropriate calorie range your body needs in order to lose or maintain your weight. Olson recommends writing down what you are eating to keep track of calories consumed, and then subtracting the calories you burned, for your true daily number.

2. Your workout completely wipes you out.
That 5:00am killer boot camp class seemed like a great way to get in shape, so why aren't the pounds dropping off? If your workout leaves you feeling completely drained, exhausted, sore, and just wanting to lie on the couch for the rest of the day, it could be doing more harm than good, says Alex Figueroa, a personal trainer and fitness instructor at the Sports Club/LA in Boston, MA. While your workouts should be challenging, pushing your body too hard can have the opposite affect on your body. Over training can cause everything from sugar cravings, a weakened immune system, and insomnia—all of which could contribute to weight gain.

The solution: Figueroa recommends following a workout plan that is appropriate for your current fitness level—one that will still challenge your body without completely draining it. Not sure what's best for you? Try scheduling a session with a personal trainer to review your goals and the best plan of action to reach them.

3. Your workout burns fewer calories than you think.
Feeling pretty righteous when the treadmill says you've torched 800 calories? Not so fast, cautions Olson. An unusually high calorie burn reading is rare, Olson says, and most machines overestimate readings by as much as 30 percent.

"Many machines do not require you to put in your body weight and, therefore, the calorie output is often based on a ‘reference weight' often used in science of 155 pounds," Olson says. "So, if you weigh 135 pounds, for example, you would not burn the same calories as someone who is at the reference weight."

And even those that use heart rate readings may not be accurate either. "Machines that incorporate arm activity (such as the stair stepper or elliptical) can cause a higher heart rate compared to a leg-only machine like a treadmill, but this is not usually because you are burning more calories," Olson says. "Research has shown that at the same level of calorie burning, the heart rate will be markedly higher when using the arms versus the legs, and you may even be burning fewer calories despite a higher heart rate."

The solution: Try using a ‘distance covered' read-out to more accurately gauge how many calories burned, Olson says. "For instance, if you want to burn 300 calories, jogging 3 miles, walking 4 miles, or cycling about 10 miles on a bike are known to burn this amount."

4. Your workout's not balanced.
Sure, we love Zumba just as much as you do, but that doesn't mean it's all you should be doing to stay in shape. "Variety is not only the spice of life, but the key to getting a better, leaner, stronger body," Olson says. "There is not one single activity that can give you everything you need."

Doing only cardio workouts or the same strength workout over and over means you are sacrificing the opportunity to build lean muscle mass and challenge your body in new ways (translation: burn more calories doing something new), and you may plateau because of it.

The solution: Create a weekly program that rotates through different modalities of exercise (cardio, strength training, flexibility, core) in order to keep your mind, and body, engaged and changing. Olson recommends fitting in at least three strength sessions and three to five cardio sessions per week for best results.

5. Your workout is totally stale.
Have you been taking the same body-sculpting class using the same 3-pound weights week after week? Grab some heavier dumbbells to boost your calorie burn and build more fat-blasting muscle, recommends Sonrisa Medina, group fitness manager for Equinox Fitness Clubs in Coral Gables, Florida. And while you're at it, try a class you've never done (like yoga or Pilates) to stimulate your body in new ways.

Why is it so important to switch things up? Doing the same workout routine over and over means your body doesn't have to work as hard to perform it after a few weeks. "We 'learn' how to do any activity and movements," Olson says. "The more ‘learned' we are, the easier the activity is to our bodies, which means you will actually burn fewer calories than you did when the activity or your routine was new to you."

The solution: Whether its trying heavier weights or adding more resistance during cycling class, changing up the intensity and style of your workout can help kick up your calorie burn to start losing weight again. Even adding workouts like yoga and Pilates that don't typically burn a large amount of calories, if they are new to your body, will create some nice changes in your physique simply from being a new challenge to your movement and workout patterns, Olson says.

Source:- http://www.shape.com/weight-loss/tips-plans/5-reasons-your-workout-isnt-working

Kafka's Calisthenics

See video here:- http://www.slate.com/articles/life/fitness/2011/01/kafkas_calisthenics.html

People often comment on my father's physique. Toned doesn't quite capture it: He looks carved. Unusually muscular. He is also, by any measure, ridiculously strong. He has never, to my knowledge, belonged to a gym. He plays tennis a bit. He skis (beautifully), but only once or twice a year. There was a short tenure as a coxswain; it ended when he smashed the boat.

For as long as I can remember, my father has maintained the same workout regimen. Most mornings, as the rest of the house struggles to start the day, he begins a series of exercises—the "Müller technique." Body swings. Stretches. Hopping on one foot. Lunges with arms windmilling, first backwards, then forwards. Sit-ups, push-ups, toe-touches. He does all this clothed in nothing but underwear. He is finished in 25 minutes, or less.

When I was very young, I remember watching my grandfather practice Müller as well, as he had each morning since he learned it at Jewish summer camp on the banks of Austria's Lake Wolfgangsee. After I gave birth and found it harder to get to the gym, my father suggested I try Müller: "You can do it at home!"

Müller's My System, published in 1904

Born in Asserballe, Denmark in 1866, J.P. Müller was, for a time, as famous as that other Danish export, Hans Christian Anderson. Maybe more. At the turn of the last century, Müller's wildly popular cult of physical fitness swept Mitteleuropa, turning parlor-sitting dandies from Copenhagen to Berlin to London into ironmen. Müller's My System was published first in 1904 as little more than a long, bound pamphlet graced with an image of the Greek athlete Apoxyomenos naked and toweling himself. The exercise guide, which promised that just "15 minutes a day" of prescribed * exercise would make "weaklings" into strong men (and women), was ultimately translated into 25 languages, reprinted dozens of times, and sold briskly well into the 20th century.

Müller was the Tom Paine of free body movement and fresh air. Like many a radical, he was resisted at first, called pornographic (partly because he often appeared in a loincloth—even while skiing in St. Moritz). His was a call to throw off the restrictive shackles of the Victorian era—a literal stripping away of restrictive layered clothes and corsets, a rejection of the "pallid, sickly looks" once prized as beautiful, and the "false dignity which forbids people, for instance, to indulge in so healthy and beneficial an exercise as running." He admonished: "Do not let a day pass without every muscle and every organ in your body being set in brisk motion." And bathing—the man had a fondness for cleanliness many of his contemporaries did not share: "This does not refer only to people of the 'working' classes. I have often met 'gentlemen' in frock-coats and top hats and ladies in evening dress of whom you could tell by the smell of them, even at a distance of several feet, that they seldom or never took a bath."

Born sickly himself, so small "I could be placed in an ordinary cigar box," Müller nearly died of dysentery at two and "contracted every childhood complaint." His own strength, in other words, was acquired, not inherited, through physical exercise.

Step-by-step instructions in My System

The Müller system is pretty much as I observed each morning growing up; it is something like a precursor to Pilates, it borrows from ballet, and it needs no equipment, other than commitment. It is strict but appealingly accessible. Unlike some of the other popular physical fitness gurus of the time—including the Prussian Eugene Sandow, who is known as the father of bodybuilding—Müller wasn't interested in building muscle mass through dumbbells. And while My System wasn't only aimed at men—in his original pamphlet, he explains that a woman needs to develop a "muscular corset" (that is, core muscles)—Müller, eventually, added to his bookshelf, writing My System for Ladies and My System for Children. There was also the remedial My Breathing System for those for whom, trapped in a Victorian sartorial nightmare, respiration had to be taught.

Aside from being popular, My System was also intuitively, precociously, on the mark. In an age of rampant tuberculosis infection, Müller insisted practitioners must both open windows and allow the sun to touch the skin. (At the time he published My System, Müller was working as an inspector at the Vejlefjord Sanitorium for Consumption.) This advice was, as Dr. Lee B. Reichman wrote in 2003's Timebomb, among the few TB-preventative options available in the preantibiotic era. Müller also recommended common-sense daily living: eating and drinking alcohol "in moderation," getting eight hours of sleep, drinking water, caring for your teeth, giving up the pipe.

Best of all, My System is open to all. Where many of the other gymnastics movements—and there were dozens upon dozens of others born in Europe around the same time—had aggressively nationalist, proto-fascist, and often anti-Semitic overtones, Müller was refreshingly secular and remarkably nonideological. Müller's system could be enthusiastically embraced by Jew and gentile alike. That is probably what appealed to his most famous devotee, Kafka.

Franz Kafka was a fanatical Müller follower. He would do the movements, fully naked, in his window, twice each day, whirling his arms and twisting this way and that, practicing the same hops and isolations advocated with similar vigor by my family. Indeed, My System became an integral piece of Kafka's obsession with the body. When Müller's women's pamphlet was published, in 1913, Kafka sent a copy to his fiancée, Felice Bauer, recommending she pick up a daily practice as well. "If they bore you, it shows you are not doing them properly," he wrote.

Mark Anderson, the author of Kafka's Clothes and a professor of German and comparative literature at Columbia, argues that the author was likely drawn to Müller's unabashed commentaries on the crush of modern life. ("The town office type is often a sad phenomenon … prematurely bent, with shoulders and hips awry from his dislocating position on the office-stool, pale, with pimply face.") The system also promised benefits for artists and writers ("geniuses who have no thoughts for their bodies"), and Kafka appears to have shared Müller's pleasure in the naked body. (Kafka himself did a short stint at a nudist summer colony and often sunbathed nude at home—at least until his tuberculosis caught up with him.)

Most of all "for someone like Kafka who was allergic to nationalist group identity and belonging, the advantage of Müller is that he can do it alone at home—it's his system," Anderson elaborated on the phone recently, noting Kafka had likely been aware of the (not terribly welcoming) Czech Sokol nationalist gymnastics clubs. He continued:

It's divorced from ideological context and that's a great advantage, but, nonetheless, he still feels he is one of these neurotic, overintellectualized, urban Jews that need some beefing up. He feels too tall, too thin, too weak. His nerves are shot. He … very strongly believes that becoming a writer means becoming disciplined and toughening up his physical organism. He does a series of things to create a new identity. The gymnastics is one part of it.

Anderson sees Kafka's body-identity struggle, and embracing of Müller, as loosely connected to the movement to create "muscle Jews." It's a reference to Max Nordau, a contemporary of Theodore Herzl, who prodded Jews at the turn of the last century to toughen up and cast off the pallor of the city, the study room, and the literary salon. At the 1898 World Zionist Congress, Nordau issued a call to arms to his brethren: "Let's go! Pull your courage together! Do something! Work for yourself and make a place for your people under the sun! Don't rest until you have convinced the indifferent and downright hostile world that your people have a right to live and enjoy life just like other peoples."

Jews across Europe began working out. Hundreds of athletic clubs were formed, some of which—like Hakoah Vienna, which developed winning rowers, swimmers, water polo players, and a champion soccer team of the same name—were successful by any measure. It was in this heady context that my grandfather, a lifelong Zionist, learned his Müller as a 12-year-old in the 1920s, alongside other Jewish Austrian kids. Some of these other young athletes were also early Zionists, developing their bodies to work on kibbutzim in Palestine; some were merely seeking access to a burgeoning culture of German and Austrian athleticism. It's not clear that Jews flocked to Müller more than any other gymnastics regime, but being a part of a secular gymnastics movement was a means of conveying one's national as well as ethnic identity; ironically, given how some gymnastics clubs would feed into Nazism in a few years, in Germany such Jewish athletic clubs were also seen as a means of being "German."

Müller took great pride in his system's popularity. In My System for Ladies, he notes that his first book sold "over a million copies" (later estimates pegged it at 2 million), and devotees included Crown Princess Sophia of Greece. Eventually he settled in London, dropped his umlaut, and opened the Muller Institute at 45 Dover Street, where he welcomed guests like the Prince of Wales. British soldiers were told to practice his exercises in the trenches of World War I. He gave hundreds of lectures on hygiene and exercise throughout the 1910s and early 1920s across Europe. A radio program, helmed by a devotee, broadcast his system from the mid-1920s until the mid-1950s.

By the end of World War I, Müller had begun to think the system was a kind of El Dorado that would keep the devoted alive well past the age of 100.

A statue of J.P. Müller in Denmark

It was not, as the tubercular Kafka soon discovered. Müller himself died in 1938. In memoriam, the town of Nykobing, Denmark, erected a statue of him, a bronze casting of his body as it was in the height of his physical ability. Nude but for a loincloth, he is towelling himself off briskly—an essential part of the system. (The skin is an organ!)

Müller and his system faded into obscurity, some historians say, because he turned to the occult at the end of his life, alienating would-be followers by drifting a great distance from the corporeal world he'd long cultivated. In truth, Müller the man was less important to my family than the books themselves, which my grandfather, Karl, collected. Karl taught my father "to Müller," as the Germans put it, at age 5. My father, now a physician and in his 60s, believes that Müller's emphasis on developing the core is exactly right; half of his exercises are now part of his standard back-pain recommendations for patients.

For me, seeing my father lace his fingers together and swoop his entire upper body first in one direction, and then the other, is something like a visual madeleine. I can see myself, age 7 or 8, in my parents' old bedroom, watching my father hasten to finish his Müller, pushing his feet under the bed to hold them steady as he does sit-up after sit-up. Not much has changed, really, though the child watching now is my own.

Source:- http://www.slate.com/articles/life/fitness/2011/01/kafkas_calisthenics.html

                                  

The Best Free Workout Videos on YouTube

This is just one of the videos.  I wouldn't mind a pair of luscious legs!
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Build strong lower limbs (a.k.a. “luscious legs”) with this 11-minute routine from Autumn Calabrese. Power through three sets of tough moves, like single-leg jump squats, wall squats, and more, for a quick, no-equipment-necessary workout.
Source:- http://greatist.com/move/best-free-workout-videos-youtube

More Buns of Steel

Exactly How Hard Are You?
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Source:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biCBPpsWdsE

Feeling Quite Pleased With Myself

Well,

Yesterday being a bank holiday I was lucky enough to not be working.  I did myself proud.  I got up when I felt like it, which in retrospect turned out to be about 7 o'clock, had my non carb breakfast of 3 eggs scrambled with linseed sprinkled on the top and a black coffee.  Then I put Camilla Dallerup's workout on the DVD and did the whole hour's workout with her.  I only do it about twice a week but I am now remembering some of the sequences so I can concentrate on getting quality into the moves instead of rushing trying to keep up.  I can also get right through to the end without feeling like a corpse!

Then,

I still had some energy left so I put on Keti Sharif's A - Z of Bellydance and tried, for the second time, to get a handle on moves L - P.  P is brilliant because although I have seen it danced lots of times I never really worked out that I didn't actually have this in my movement vocabulary so mission of the week is to take the DVD to belly dancing on Wednesday and learn it with my partner-in-crime, Chris.  She has the laptop, I have the DVD and between us we are gonna crack this move!

In the middle of belly dancing, my friend phoned and we went out for a drink and a chat and 5 hours later I came home feeling like I actually LIVED.  So many days just pass in a haze.  So many good intentions get swept away.  Getting up, going to work, rushing around after work trying to get things done is the norm, but yesterday was MY day and it felt great.  COPY ME PLEASE.

         

Here is a bit of a Keti sharif dvd


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zK73XlScNY

Buns Of Steel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlawhQDvgJg

Workout? Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That, Right?

by Kerri Randall

I get it. We’re all busy people, not enough hours in the day. But what’s that saying? We’ve all got the same 24 hours as Beyonce.

And I feel ya when you say that working out sucks and it just isn’t fun. But let me take you back to my belief that you just need to find the right workout for you. That’s going to take time…and WORK. (There’s that damn WORK word again. All caps too. Must be important…)

But once you find it, you’re going to fall in love with working out, I promise. I speak from personal experience.

I used to HATE working out. Yes, me, the bubbly, happy, way-too-energetic instructor of 4 different formats, who still fits in a couple workouts on her own at home on top of it all.

My abs have always been my trouble spot, so I invested in all those gimmicky ab gadgets (never got to that belt that shocks your abs into contracting, though, thank God!). Every single one of them recommended cardio or some form of exercise along with a good diet “for best results.”

And I thought, screw that noise. All I want to fix are my abs, so I’ll just work on that.

Surprise, surprise, I never saw any results. My ab muscles were damn strong, though!! But you couldn’t see them at all…

Eventually I bought a Tae Bo video, kinda liked it, bought a few more, got my mom to join in with me. But I was always watching the clock. “Seriously? It’s only been 5 minutes since the last time I looked?”

Then a friend of mine lent me her Turbo Jam videos. I was a little reluctant but she insisted I try them. I fell in love instantly. I mean, I had to break a couple of times and take my inhaler more than I should and I thought I was going to die, but I was smiling and having so much fun I couldn’t wait to do it again!

That’s when I started learning how to MAKE time for working out. It’s so much easier to find room in your day when you love it and you’re looking forward to it.

I can’t tell you which workout is your soulmate workout–there are so many options out there, so many different personalities. You have to do your own research and actually try them out. Date around, play the field, until you find your soulmate. If you really want a few suggestions, comment below or find me on Facebook and we can chat. =)

Your best bet for automatically making time to work out is to become an instructor. It’s awesome to get paid to work out, but the point is you kind of have no choice–you have to be there, and you also have to be there on time. But also when you’re the instructor, it’s not really YOUR workout. You’re there for your students, to coach and motivate them, so it counts…but it doesn’t.

So if instructing isn’t an option, you might have to force yourself out of bed a little earlier. It’ll suck in the beginning but eventually you’ll get accustomed to it. It’ll become habit in a month or so, so none of this quitting after a week stuff just cuz you’re tired. Go to bed earlier then. Damn straight.

Or join a gym or the corporate fitness program at your work. You’ll get used to keeping a gym bag full of workout clothes in your car, and you’ll either work out at work, on your lunch, or immediately after work. Don’t let your car go on autopilot and drive you home. If you find yourself in the driveway and you’re not drenched in sweat, put the car in reverse and find the nearest gym pronto.

There are ways to do it. There IS time, no matter how busy you are. (And if you think about it, busy people have an easier time FINDING time to fit stuff in because you already know how to organize and plan your day effectively.) There are programs out there that can get you a hardcore, quality workout in 20-30 minutes.

Heck, get up 10 minutes early and go for a 10-minute walk! Bench press your toddler! Let your dog take you for a run! Pull out that old Buns of Steel VHS tape. I don’t care what you do–just MOVE. DO SOMETHING. ANYTHING!

If it gets your heart pumping, you break a sweat, and you feel stronger in the end, it’s worth making time for. If it makes you HAPPY, it’s worth making time for! Find the workout that makes you happy, make time for it, and keep doing it.

Whether you want to lose weight, or you just want to maintain where you’re at, or you want to gain muscle, or you want more energy, for the love of God, just WORK OUT!!

EVERYBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!! =)

Source:- http://www.kerrijokala.com/workout-time

TIRED OF DIETING - Changes You Can Make Today!

Any one else tired of being on a "diet".  A forever uphill battle of denying yourself things that you want or, even, need. Tired of running yourself into the ground with workouts or counting calories for a living? When I host 30 day challenges every month, the number one complaint of challengers is that they are TIRED of trying, and tired of the experience, and tired of not being SUCCESSFUL.


I have just finished reading an enlightening book written by Dr. Jeffrey S. Bland called The Disease Delusion. It takes an in depth look at what is causing many of the chronic illnesses that plague us and offers some simplified steps to creating a longer, healthier life. As always, it comes off so simply: eat better foods and get involved in more activities. Sorry for the wording below...but it was just too funny:







Dr. Bland highlights the idea of inflammatory- or allergy- inducing foods in his book, which really hit home for me due to my recent diagnosis with an intolerance to casein (dairy), and my son's diagnosis with Celiac's Disease (gluten). I also found it interesting that the inflammation that these foods create in our bodies are often the culprits and instigators of many of the autoimmune diseases we see and are having diagnosed within ourselves and loved-ones daily. Dr. Bland breaks it down to a cellular level and explain exactly where the problems start based on a combination of what genes we are dealt AND what our environment adds into the mix.


Throughout the book, Bland breaks down our bodies' functions into seven different processes. He spends a chapter on each process, including a thorough questionnaire that allows for you to check yourself for imbalances and patterns in your own health, and see if you can't make some changes and tweaks to get ahead of any problems. His book is NOT intended to replace general or functional medical care, but to provide you with knowledge so that you can be an advocate for your own health and really understand what is happening in your body.





For example, chapter 4 dealt with Assimilation and Elimination; basically how foods enter and leave your body and what that process looks like for you. You take the questionnaire and then read up on what some of the questions could mean in relation to your health. Later on in the book, he offers solutions to support problems or issues with assimilation and/or elimination and helps his readers understand what better info to bring to a discussion with their medical provider. Reading through his ideas really helped drive my conversations with my doctor when we had our follow up meeting and I feel a greater understanding of the functions and processes my body is undergoing each and every day.


Towards the end of the book, I felt grateful for a very simple breakdown of diet and exercise, that I believed would help anyone that is on the path to wellness. He created a list of "shoulds" and "should nots" both in regards to diet and exercise. I wanted to share them with you today. A while back, I blogged about how to take 3 SIMPLE STEPS towards greater health and wellness for your family. I think this is great confirmation that we are headed in the right direction in the Smith household:





One of my favorite resources for finding out more about anti-inflammation diets/foods is Dr. Andrew Weil. He has created an amazing Food Pyramid that breaks down an average week of foods that create a healthy balance without increasing inflammation. You may need to tweak some: for example Dr. Weil allows for small amounts of dairy and grains (including whole wheat) which doesn't fit into our family plan, but he is one of my favorite experts to learn from. Notice how small some of the servings are that we eat daily. He recommends 1-2 servings of dairy or cheeses per WEEK. I was eating about 3 servings per day when I found out that I was intolerant.







Are you an exercise abuser? Do you beat yourself into a pulp every day trying to lose weight? 20 minutes a day is the minimum he recommends. I, personally, like 30 minutes at least each day. A nice, brisk walk where your heart rate is elevated should do the trick for someone who is just getting into fitness, or even bike riding could be perfect. Most of my workout options fit into that category, and ALL of them are a decent fit for my ability level and fitness needs. Once you have established the routine and conditioning level, it would be great to add in some strength work too. As we get older, we NEED to be strong. Yoga practices, pilates workouts, and other low impact strength moves can be very powerful as well.


I am excited an empowered by the knowledge I gained after reading through this book. By no means am I suggesting that each of you run out and grab it off the shelf. I don't pretend that it is a page turner or competes with the Hunger Games trilogy. But, for me, in the place I am in my life and with my family, I can't think of a better way to use my time than to educate and move myself forward both in my health and happiness. I spend each day working on my body, spirit, mind and family and growing in each of those areas.


Give us a holler if you need some direction or support in this transition period. That is exactly what we specialize in during our 30 day challenges. Taking time in a supported and safe space where you can get the info you need to find success with both motivation and accountability.


Source:- http://www.fourfitsisters.com/2014/06/tired-of-dieting-changes-you-can-make.html

5 Habits To Get You In Shape Quickly

Ever feel like you're doing all the right things to get in shape and get healthy, yet you just aren't getting results as fast as you thought you would?

Yeah, we've all been there. While you should never expect to magically lose weight and get fit the second you start working out and eating healthier, there are ways to speed up your results.

Here are five habits that have helped me get in shape quickly, and will help you, too:

1. Don't be afraid to push yourself.

If you want to get the most out of your workout, the key is to focus on intensity. Doing quick, focused, HIIT-style workouts will help you get in shape faster than slow, moderate ones will.

If your goal is maximum efficiency (aka fastest possible results), you should be sweaty and exhausted by the end of your workout — or you're not working hard enough.

2. Focus on full-body exercises.

Including full-body exercises like squats, burpees, push ups and triceps dips in your workouts will help you get fit in less time than simply focusing on isolation muscle exercises (think biceps curls and calf raises) will.

Full-body exercises are more functional, anyway, and will help you more in real-life situations (like lifting a suitcase over your head in an airplane or playing with your kid at the playground).

3. Do plenty of plyos.

If you ever played sports growing up, you'll probably remember practice being full of plyometrics: exercises like long jumps, tuck jumps, jump lunges, sprints and more.

Plyos are great because not only will they help you get conditioned for whatever sports you enjoy in your free time, they'll help you burn fat and lose weight as well and are a great habit to build into your workouts.

4. Set (athletic) goals.

Even if your ultimate goal is to lose weight, it's much more motivating and satisfying in the long run to work toward an athletic or fitness goal of some kind.

Whether your goal is to do your first handstand, learn a cool yoga pose or complete 100 burpees in a row, making it a habit to regularly set and work toward athletic-focused goals will not only help you get fit quicker right now, making it a habit to create fun and challenging fitness goals will help ensure you make health and fitness a priority for life.

5. Stop making excuses.

Want to know one of the best habits you can adopt to get fit quicker? Stop making excuses not to work out.

Because it doesn't matter whether you don't have access to a gym, have no workout equipment available, or have less than 15 minutes to work out — you can still get a good workout if you set your mind to it.

You'll be amazed at how quickly you start getting in shape once you become consistent with your workouts and quit your excuses for good.