Healthy FitnessLearning to live healthy and fit for the rest of your life

Friends constantly keep asking me what they can do to lose weight and for guys, gain muscle. I just so happen to be surfing the net today and found many questions on diet and exercise that I’d like to address here. So let’s start.

I’ve labeled this as a beginners workout and diet plan as this is will give people the results they are looking for in a fraction of the time it would by going to the gym and utilizing a personal trainer (no offense to them by the way). But this workout and diet plan can be used by just about anyone at any fitness level. For more fit people, you would just have to increase the intensity level by including more weights into the program.

Diet - People freak out when they hear the word “diet”. But what really is a diet? People will right away think of all the fad diets out there. Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers (which is actually GREAT), etc. Most of these fad diets have flaws in them and can actually harm your body more than help. So, what can I eat then? People always have a tough time when trying to figure out what they can eat. I recently spoke to a nutrition specialist and asked him this same question and this is the response I got from him: “Look at the food first, then ask yourself, ‘Did God intend for us to eat it like this?’ If the answer is yes, then it’s good to eat. If you answer no, then don’t put it in your grocery cart”. So when you are out buying groceries, ask yourself that question. If you feel your cart is too empty, then that’s good. That means you haven’t stuff it with Doritos, Cheetos, Pepsi, etc.

I’ve set up a ‘diet’ (using the term very lightly) as to what you should be eating and when. This isn’t STRICT but try to keep it similar to this. The basic premise to this is to eat your carbs early in the day and none during night, eat more protein at night and not in the morning, and eat a consistent amount of fats throughout the day AFTER breakfast. So here’s a list that I’ve made:

Breakfast:
You should “carb load”. You are currently in a carb starvation mode due to the 6-8 hours of sleep. Eat some fresh fruit, blend them into a shake or smoothy, or etc; do anything to get some fresh fruit in your system to jump start your metabolism. You want to do this within 30 minutes of waking up. After that, your metabolism won’t be working at full speed throughout the day.

Snack:
This will be about 1-2 hours after eating your fruit. Eat another thing of fruit; I’d highly recommend an apple since there is controversy about eating any other fruit with anything else. So eat an apple and grab a hand full of fresh, raw almonds.

Lunch:
I’m not one for eating bread but it is hard to cut it out right away. I’d recommend getting whole wheat or 12 grain bread. Eat it with a bunch of freshly cut deli lunch meat, lettuce, tomato, pickles, etc. Load it up with what ever veggies you like. Try to fit in some olives or avocado slices on your sandwich.

Snack:
Try to snack on some more nuts. Make sure they are RAW (not salted, roasted, etc). Have 2 handfuls of that.

Dinner:
This is when you don’t want to eat ANY carbs at all. Meat is your best bet. Make sure you eat a lot of GREEN veggies too. They contain some carbs but the fiber in them “balances” it out…from what I’ve read. You can even go with fish, shell fish, etc. Anything with a good amount of protein and fats and next to 0 carbs. Try to cook with olive oil or coconut oil. Anything with good fats in it; and this should also give it good flavoring.

Snack:
Have a handful of nuts again if you need this snack. Do not eat after 7PM if you are wanting to lose belly fat.

If you have any questions about this ‘diet’, feel free to email me: jbart04 [at] gmail [dot] com

Exercise- Many people think that running 10 miles a day will get you healthy, but it doesn’t. How many times have you heard of the guy that runs 10 miles a day and had a heart attack at the age of 38? I actually knew a guy like that who passed away a few years ago and I never understood it until I took a seminar about diet and exercise. When running 10 miles a day, your body gets so use to it that it’s not even helping your body but actually hurting it. Not to mention the knee, ankle, shins, etc problems associate with long distance running. Your body looks at this 10 mile run as a stressor and your body will soon adapt to this stressor and it won’t have any effect on your body once it does so. This is what we like to call the plateau phase. So how can I get in good cardio shape and not have to worry about this plateau phase? I’d like to introduce to you, Burst Training.

A few things about burst training:

• Takes only a few minutes a day and can be done anywhere
• Fat burning, muscle building response system - How your body responds to exercise. Our bodies were made to move (”fight or flight” -> Move quickly)
• Human Growth Hormone increase - Builds muscle and burns fat. Increases directly proportional to workout intensity. This will benefit you hours to days after your workout
• Testosterone increase - Builds muscle and burns fat
• Metabolism will increase - Building more lean muscle
• This will help decrease: Heart rate, blood pressure, and LDLs (bad cholesterol)
• This will help increase: blood circulation to your brain (better for learning) and circulation of toxins (for their removal)
• The rest period will allow the body to respond to the stress by burning fat

Sound like something you want to do? Here’s the workout:

Warm up - Be sure to warm up for at least 5-10 minutes before doing this. For warm ups, you can jog, do jumping jacks, etc. What ever works. I’d recommend doing multiple ones rather that just doing 1 for the whole warm up period.

The workout is only 3 minutes of exercise!!! To an extent Here’s what you do with the workout:

• 20 seconds of maximum effort
• 20 seconds of rest

3 sets of 20 on and 20 off.

Repeat this for 3 different workouts. For those that haven’t a clue as to what to do, I’ve tried to layout a simple weekly workout:

Day 1

• Pushups
• Standing squats
• Pull ups (if you don’t have a pull up bar, please read this blog: P90X Chin Up Bar

Day 3

• Lunges
• Bicep curls
• Tricep extensions

Day 5

• Upright row
• Jumping squats
• Shoulder flies

If you still feel good after each of the workouts each day, I’d recommend doing an ab routine followed by planks. You can also do these on your off days if you do not feel like having a day rest in between. Doing abs and planks will help tighten and tone your core muscles which will help stabilize your back (hey, I’m a student of Chiropractic, we are all about the back ).

After about a month or 2 of that, change it up. Find new workouts to do with this. You can do anything you want. If you want to go to the gym and do bench press, you can. There are almost 0 limits to this. Just commit yourself and you will see results.

To do some of these workouts, you may need to go out and get dumbbells or resistance bands if you are doing this in your house. For dumbbells, I’d highly recommend powerblock. For resistance bands, you can find decent ones at Wal-mart for about $10 USD.

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