Bodyweight Exercises

Life is full of surprises and moments so exciting that by simply looking at them, we miss ourselves. We are so busy doing unremarkable stuff – on the phone, on the PC, in front of the TV and radio, adventuring, and endlessly seeking power and status. This is when car racers feel alive and excited – when they are in a near death opportunity! Imagine that. Actually, that is when we also feel enthusiastic – with adrenalin-pumping, hair-raising incidents or when one is over excited, showing off, or risking fearful flights – that we cannot see what’s real in our lives. We make mistakes. We miss turns. We lose or forget things. And this is all because we lose reign of our senses. Only when there are accidents, a thump on the head, a slap in the face, a comment, a synchronized moment, a glance from a beautiful person, song of a sweet bird, the rising or setting of the sun, a shooting star, or the rhythm of the waves do we stop for a second and appreciate and reflect on these things with our minds. Time seems to slow down in moments of awe, devotion, speechlessness, and high spirits. We become aware of beautiful, fresh, sweet, shining, and glowing moments.  It seems that only at these times are we awake, truly alive, and with a calm and serene mind.

So what does this have to do with bodyweight exercises and how to get a flat stomach?  Simple. It’s a lot easier to survive that accident, take a long walk through the woods, or climb a mountain, and find that moment fo awe, if you’re in shape.  Carrying 15 or 20 flabby pounds around your waist is not conducive to doing these actions that make us aware of beautiful and shining moments. It’s better to have the sunset take your breath away than just walking upstairs.

Check out “Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle” by Tom Venuto, and you won’t miss a moment of awe because you’re too busy huffing and puffing.

Hi. Is alcohol turning your fitness program into a bad diet?  You know how to get a flat stomach.  But are you defeating your six-pack with the occasional six pack? I know that I used to enjoy hitting the bars after a really hard work out. Key words: “used to.”  Check out the Q&A from guest contributor Tom Venuto, author of “Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle,” the best manual on integrating nutrition and exercising on the web.  How long does it take to get in shape?  A lot quicker is you aren’t doing the 16-oz curls…

QUESTION: Tom, what about alcohol? How does that fit into your burning fat program? I am not talking binge drinking, just one or two a day.

John

ANSWER: Hi John. A couple drinks on the weekend and or on special ocassions probably won’t have any major impact on your fat loss results (although I would encourage you to consider the mindset that EVERYTHING you do either helps or hurts).

A drink or two on ocassion is a part of enjoying life for many people, and it’s important to find lifestyle balance for the sake of your long term happiness and success.

However, I do not recommend drinking every day.

“A couple every day” adds a LOT of extra calories to your daily diet. If you’re talking about two 150-calorie beers, thats 300 calories extra a day or 2100 extra calories a week.

Multiply that out for a year and you have 109,200 extra calories! WOW! That’s potentially 31.2 pounds of fat in a year.

If you DO account for the calories in those drinks, then you have another conundrum - the alcohol calories displace good valuable food calories…

Drinking gives you empty alcohol calories with virtually no nutritional value (and some negative value in more way than one), while pushing out important vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, fiber and other good stuff.

Alcohol also inhibits fat burning. While your liver is busy metabolizing alcohol, it puts your fat metabolism on hold. That’s why I do NOT recommend any drinking when you are on a fat loss program (at least if you are serious about it).

When you are on a regular, year-round lifestyle/maintenance program I recommend that if you drink, you do so in moderation, keep it to special occasions or weekends and remember to factor in those calories to your daily intake.

By the way, there’s a major risk to drinking every day - even just one or two - that most people don’t even think about:

Daily drinking is habit forming. Anything you do every day easily becomes a habit that is difficult to break later.

On the other hand, if you could establish the habit of eating 5-9 servings of fruits and vegetables and getting some exercise every single day, those would be habits worth forming!

let me know how else I can help. This question comes up often, so I did cover alcohol and fat loss in much greater detail in chapter 13 of the Burn the Fat book: www.burnthefat.com

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer (CPT), certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best-selling e-book, “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle.” Tom has written more than 200 articles and has been featured in print magazines such as IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Exercise for Men and Men’s Exercise, as well as on hundreds of websites worldwide. For information on Tom’s Fat Loss program, visit his website.

Even though there is so much information available about weight loss, the same diet mistakes are being made over and over every day. We are not talking here about little slipups where you ate a slice of pie that was not on the plan, but big mistakes that lead to failure to lose the weight that you want to lose. Understanding these errors can help you develop the attitude that will lead to permanent weight loss and not just how to get a flat stomach.

1. The All Or Nothing Attitude

All or nothing dieters will often pick out a complicated diet that is almost impossible for them to maintain. Before beginning, they will search the kitchen for anything that does not fit the plan and throw it in the garbage. They are planning to be the perfect dieter, and so they will be, for one day, three days, seven days or even a couple of weeks. Then, inevitably, something happens that means they cannot keep to the diet one time. Immediately the whole thing is ruined in their eyes and the diet is over. They go to the store and buy all the things that went into the garbage last week and proceed to gain back all the weight that they lost, as fast as possible.

If you are this kind of dieter you need to ask yourself some tough questions. Do you really want to lose weight permanently, or just lose a few pounds so that you can enjoy putting them back on again? The way forward is to make small changes to what you eat so that you have a slow but steady weight loss.

2. The Attitude of Sacrifice

Another common mistake is to view your diet as a period of sacrifice. You do not allow yourself the foods that you enjoy most while you are on your way to your target weight. You may have a great diet plan and be very successful in losing weight, but what happens when you reach your goal? You have not learnt to eat ‘bad foods’ in moderation so as soon as you start, you are likely to go out of control. It is better to include a little of everything in your diet and learn to enjoy it in small quantities. Yes, even chocolate!

3. Goal Failure

Setting achievable goals is vital in any weight loss plan. Goals should be clear, realistic and set out in writing. While you probably do have an ideal weight in your mind, unless you are only very slightly overweight it is probably too distant to be useful. A more useful goal would be to lose two pounds per week for the first five weeks and then one pound per week after that. Some weeks you will lose more and some less, some weeks you may even gain, but if you track your progress on a graph you will see that ups and downs are natural and do not stop you progressing steadily toward your major goal.

If you have been making these mistakes, do not worry. The most important point in dieting as in so many other things is to move on. Learn from your failures as well as your success and do not use a mistake as an excuse for giving up. The only way to achieve your goal permanently is to make a commitment to become a healthier person. Remember that eating normally includes eating more some days and less others. Learn to enjoy food in moderation and you have every chance of avoiding these bad diet mistakes.

For more information on proper diet and nutrition,see “Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle” by Tom Venuto.