Archive for Fat Loss
How to avoid adding a turkey to your waist over Christmas.
Posted by: | CommentsHow to avoid adding a turkey to your waist over Christmas.
During the Christmas holiday season it is common to put on around 10lbs of weight. This can be attributed to the disruption of routine, consumption of extra calories and being generally less active during the festive season.
About five years ago, I had a bet with some trainer friends and tried to see if I could put on 1 stone (6.5kg) during the 2 week break. I was surprised at how easy it was and I actually managed to achieve more (16lbs, 7.5kg).
The method was simple, I didn’t attempt to keep any control over what I ate, if I fancied some crisps or cake I had it. I’m not a big drinker, but I’m sure I could have done a lot more damage to the scales if I consumed alcohol and fizzy drinks during the 2 weeks. I was still exercising, but only cardio during the spin classes that I was teaching at the time.
Something as inconspicuous as a mince pie could add nearly a pound of fat over two weeks. A pie per day will add about 200 calories, over two weeks that’s an additional 2800, and one pound of fat is equal to 3500. Add to that the other goodies that are around the house and giving into temptation can easily add an extra 2000 calories per day.
But Christmas is a time to let go a little, right?
Yes, I agree but you can still enjoy your Christmas break without trying to set a new record for total calories consumed while sitting around the house watching movies; one of my own personal favourite activities.
Take the following steps to avoid adding a turkey to your waist during the break:
* Taking a little responsibility for the foods and drinks you consume will make the biggest difference; enjoy your Christmas dinner but is it really necessary to have an extra portion of Christmas pudding?
* Plan your meals and snacks and keep a food diary to monitor how well you are keeping to your plan.
* Do a little light exercise each day, just some mobility and stretch work will prevent your body from seizing up.
* Do three workouts per week, 30 minutes will be long enough – just work with intensity using bodyweight resistance exercises. This will keep your metabolism stoked up and have you burning calories for the whole day.
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Darren Checkley is Coventry and Warwickshire’s leading personal trainer and health coach. A 3rd Degree Black Sash in Kung Fu, he has a holistic approach to achieving results fast; from guaranteed fat loss to to sports conditioning for martial arts, golf and snow sports. Programmes are tailored to achieve optimal results rapidly. Achieve Bootcamps are Coventry and Warwickshire’s most effective outdoor fitness and fat loss camps; providing outdoor fitness with a personal touch.
12 Days Gift: Holiday Achiever – 2 Week Fat Blast
The ‘Holiday Achiever – 2 Week Fat Blast’ guide is to prevent you from gaining weight during the holiday season. Learn 10 simple steps to holiday fat loss success. Implement my W.A.R.R.I.O.R. principles to start and continue to achieve goals that are often left until the New Year. Receive workouts with detailed exercise library, stretch routines, a meal planner, food diary and recipes straight to your inbox.
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Kettlebells And The Fat Loss Hierarchy
Posted by: | CommentsIf you’re looking to drop body fat it’s essential you understand the hierarchy of fat loss before you set sail with your New Year’s fitness programme.
At the top of the fat busting tree is strength training. The common misconception about strength training is that if you’re not leaping about and standing in a pool of sweat by the time your session’s up then it’s somehow inferior to aerobic training. Indeed, an hour’s steady running is likely to accumulate a higher calorific expenditure than an hour of lifting weights. However, unless you’re a professional athlete, the likelihood is that you’ll spend roughly 4 hours week training and the other 164 hours sleeping, working and generally not training. So when it comes to designing fat loss programmes, it’s no good relying on the mechanisms that worked fifty years ago. People were more active then & they walked a lot more. Today’s society requires a programme that enables their metabolism to be elevated for a significant amount of time after they’ve stopped training, and this is exactly what strength training does and steady state cardio does not.
Taking a step down our fat loss tree we find high intensity interval training (HIIT). The first significant study to support the efficiency of this type of training was in Tremblay, Angelo, et al’s 1994 research, which compared the effects of low intensity cardio and HIIT on body fat. The result yielded a 3x greater fat loss for HIIT, and has been supported by countless other studies since.
A branch down again we have high intensity steady state cardio, and finally, the poor relation in metabolic acceleration, low intensity cardio. So where does kettlebell training fit into all of this?
Whilst it would be naive to think that kettlebells can parallel barbells for maximal strength generation, they nevertheless provide today’s hectic gym goer/non-goer, with a huge bang for buck tool that is versatile enough to cover all of the necessary components of our fat loss tree.
The reason why kettlebells are so effective comes down to three main points. Firstly, the way they hang in relation to the body places their centre of mass uniquely below the hand rather than in the centre of it, which consequently initiates a higher stabilisation requirement of the working joints, meaning increased muscular recruitment and higher metabolic output. Secondly, dynamic kettlebell drills are super intense and subsequently super time efficient; making them ideal for our HIIT and well suited to our time starved lifestyles. To understand why they are so effective we need to take a look at the simple physics equation of Force = Mass X Acceleration. Immediately we can see that whilst the bell you are swinging may only be 12kg, the force your body is actually being loaded with is a lot bigger, meaning increased workload in less time and warp speed results. BOOM! The third main benefit to kettlebells for fat loss is that as a result of their efficiency we can afford to reduce the number of reps we perform and thus significantly reduce the impact we place on our joints, particularly through activities such as running where literally thousands of reps of the same motor pattern are being performed.
World renowned speaker Jack Canfield once said, ‘If what you are doing now was enough to get you what you want, you’d already have it.’ So if you’re really determined to drop fat and achieve the body you wish you had, it’s time to start adding kettlebell to your programme!
Charlotte Ord is a certified personal trainer, strength and conditioning coach and kettlebell expert. A specialist in fat loss for men and women, she presents her own fitness show on Sky Television and has featured in a number of leading health and fitness publications including Men’s Health, Women’s Health and Triathlete’s World, as well the national press.
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‘Kettlebell Killer Physique; The Foundations’ is a 10 part video tutorial and fat loss programme designed to give you confidence in the core kettlebell exercises. Delivered by Sky TV fitness presenter & kettlebell expert Charlotte Ord, this easy to follow tutorial and programme is guaranteed to turbo charge your body’s fat burning capacity whilst reducing the amount of time you spend training; get ready to develop a killer physique!
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Secrets Of The Weight Loss Gurus
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How a Kettlebell Can Help You Find Time to Exercise This Christmas!
Posted by: | CommentsIf you are still struggling to get to the gym three times a week for your weekly dose of exercise, you can stop beating yourself up about it right now! Most of us can’t find the time needed to get to the gym this often, and rather than feeling guilty and promising yourself you will manage it next week, why not try a change of tack?
After all, the definition of madness is repeating the same thing over, while expecting different results.
If you can’t get to the gym, don’t blame your lack of commitment or motivation. Blame the model. Getting to the gym involves travel, changing, finding a locker, finding equipment that is free and coming into contact with a lot of other people’s sweat. Not surprising it can often be the last place we want to be at the end of a hard day at the office.
Instead, why not invest in a chunk of cast iron, that you can store at home and that you can use any time and anywhere?
Instead of struggling to find the will to workout after a day at the office, get up 15 minutes earlier and do a pre-breakfast metabolism boosting session that will have you burning fat all day, feeling super-charged and energetic, and help you sleep better at night (so you feel fresher in the morning, despite the alarm going off 15 minutes earlier).
10 – 15 minutes a day, or 20 – 30 every other day is not to hard to find, especially if you take my advice and make time rather than hoping to find it somewhere (after all, it is elusive and rarely ‘found’).
An example workout:
Start with a dynamic warm up – squats, lunges, shoulder circles etc with no weight, for a few minutes.
2 handed swings – 1 minute
1 arm kettlebell chest press – 15 on each side
2 handed swings – 1 minute
1 arm kettlebell row – 15 on each side
Figure of 8 pass and hold – 15 on each side
1 arm military press – 15 on each side
Figure of 8 pass and hold – 15 on each side
Windmill – 10 on each side
Kettlebell Russian Twist – 15 on each side
Plank – as long as you can!
Perform this circuit one or 2 times through, resting as you need to depending on your fitness level (decrease the rest as you get fitter). Be sure to stretch your main muscles, paying attention to tight areas, after every session.
This is the by far one of the best ways to start your day – boosting your metabolism, mood and energy levels so you are bound to hit the rest of your day with style.
Caroline Radway is a certified Personal Trainer, yoga teacher and kettlebell coach from the UK. Caroline specialises in helping people create a healthy lifestyle and get the results they deserve, no matter how busy they are!
12 Days Gift: Kettlebell Fat Loss Workout for A Busy Christmas
A full body fat burning kettlebell workout you can fit into the busiest of schedules this Christmas! Want to offset all that Christmas indulgence? What better way than with a kettlebell, hey? Bells are clearly part of the Christmas theme, but these bells are going to give you a lean, sculpted body!
Donate To Caroline’s Charity Of Choice!
The 3 Best Ways To Ensure Success In Your Fitness Programs
Posted by: | CommentsThe training programs tried by the masses that guarantee their abilities to shed fat, build muscle and deliver incredible health are typically rigorous and very stressful on the body.
There’s nothing wrong with them (and they obviously work well for thousands of people), but there are many times where the training doesn’t work, despite the research (and results) that indicate they should, leaving those that ‘fail’ frustrated and wondering what to do.
If you’re frustrated because repeated attempts at ‘getting in shape’ have failed to bring you results, or if you’re simply a beginner struggling with ‘where to begin’ your journey to improved health and fitness, here are 3 things you can do to ensure you get the most out of your training:
1. Assess Yourself. An assessment is one of the most basic and important steps to getting results, yet it’s also one of the most overlooked (or ignored). You might have a clear vision of the health and fitness goals you want to achieve, but the roadmap you use to get there can only be drawn if you know your starting point. The best way to determine your starting point? An assessment!
2. Use an assessment that goes beyond ‘health history’ and postural/movement analysis . . . and digs deeper into your current lifestyle. The importance of health (and family) history can’t be denied because it gives you a ‘heads up’ about ailments/injuries you’re predisposed to. Postural assessment and movement analysis is also important because it enables you to effectively deliver structural balance to your body, ensuring that you’re actually ‘working the parts you think you’re working’ while preventing injury.
But an equally important assessment that you’ll want to do (that’s rarely ever done) is a lifestyle assessment because it helps you to objectively look at the elements of your life that are significantly influencing the health and function of your body right now. Not only will a lifestyle assessment direct you toward the specific areas of your life you can improve upon, but it will also help you to create a training program that will most benefit you.
Which leads to . . .
3. Use a training program that’s ‘ideal’ based on your current stress/health status. If your body isn’t functioning properly on the inside (i.e. if it can’t handle and positively adapt to the stress of training) it won’t respond to exercise in the way you think it’s supposed to . . . and you won’t see the expected results. It doesn’t matter if you’re training hard, using most ‘proven’ fitness program on Earth!
Simply put, it’s not often the training program that’s not working — it’s your body that’s not working with the program. And one of the most effective ways to fix the problem is to utilize training that emphasizes rejuvenation, rebuilding and recovery (like Qi-Gong, Yoga or a walk in the park) instead of solely following the latest, greatest ‘run yourself into the ground’ fat loss program.
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Assess yourself (including a lifestyle assessment) and create/use an exercise program that works best with your body as you strive to reach greater levels of health and fitness. They may be simple and obvious concepts, but they’re frequently overlooked, misunderstood or ignored. Make a concerted effort to do these 3 things, and you’ll open the door the greatest, longest-lasting results of your dreams.
Christopher Warden
Christopher Warden is the founder of Fifth Power Fitness, a health and fitness company offering holistic health-based training services in both NYC and Boulder, Colorado. When he’s not coaching clients or studying to make himself an increasingly effective ‘healer’, he loves spending time with his wife, 2 young children and dog . . . and traveling around the world. You can learn more about Christopher and his services by visiting http://www.christopherwarden.com.
12 Days Gift: Breathe Your Way Thin
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Breathe Your Way Thin is:
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- A series of exercises: to help you cultivate and restore energy as preparation for more intense training down the road, or as a great complement to a training program you’re currently doing.
Sign up below, and give yourself a gift that will serve as the cornerstone of your results for years to come!!
Donate To Christopher’s Charity Of Choice!
