Funny Fitness eCard - rehydrate with margaritas

Funny Fitness eCards... love them

Funny Fitness Card - Thigh Clapping

Fitness Tip: Increase the number of meals you eat

- On average, you should be eating some form of protein and vegetable combination that is low in fat and high in fiber every 2 -3 hours of the day. Doing so will give you a big advantage over those who only eat the normal 3 meals (or less) each day. As long as you don''t change your total daily calorie intake, you will burn more fat, increase your metabolism, and have more energy and focus throughout your day.

3 Ways to Turn Fat into Muscle

Inside your body, at this very moment, there's a war going on: a battle between the cells that make up muscle and those that make up fat. You know which side you're rooting for. But here's the problem: In this war, fat will always have an unfair advantage. The New Rules of Lifting will help muscle win this battle. In fact, this book will help speed your fat loss while revving your metabolism, balancing your hormones, and quashing your appetite. To get you started, here are three secrets on how to win the battle of the bulge: Include Protein with Every Meal and Every Snack Muscle doesn't come simply from lifting weights or hauling groceries up the stairs. Eating protein triggers muscle growth. In fact, every time you eat at least 10 to 15 grams of protein, you trigger a burst of protein synthesis. Never Skip Breakfast When you wake up in the morning, your body is fuel-deprived. It's been 7 to 9 hours (or more) since you last ate. Your insulin levels have dropped, your protein stores are empty, and your muscles are desperate for nutrition. Your body needs food to restore its balance. Eat Before and After Your Workout In one study, subjects who ate a protein- and carbohydrate-rich snack right before and right after their workouts fueled their muscles twice as effectively as those who waited at least 5 hours to eat.

Fitness for Brides

The countdown begins as soon as you decide on the date of the wedding and start planning. The ceremony is 365 days away so you think to yourself, 'I have plenty of time to lose this weight'. It's true! You do have plenty of time. But, if you don't begin planning right away, you will find that each day that passes, it will be harder and harder to reach your goal. Think about it, you want to lose 20 lbs. in 365 days. Don't tell yourself it's easy and that you can do in the last eight weeks before the wedding. Your procrastination might have led you to even gain a few more pounds by that point with all of the stress of the planning you've been doing. Therefore, my first point is PLANNING. Set a realistic goal such as losing one pound of body fat every 1-2 weeks. This is very realistic. You can achieve this by creating a caloric deficit each day. You can do this by decreasing the number of calories taken in and by increasing the number of calories burned. If you eat 400 calories less and burn 300 calories more per day, you have just createda 700 calorie per day deficit. Over a 7 day period, that is 3500 calories which is equal to one pound of body fat. A 700 calorie per day deficit is not hard to achieve. Just have some Splenda and skim milk in your latte and that's probably good for 250 calories right there. 30 minutes at a moderate pace on the Elliptical Crosstrainer is good for another 300+ calories. My second point that will ensure your success is CREATING A LOG of your nutrition and exercise. This will create accountability and keep you on track. Whether you are working out with a Personal Trainer, or are taking on the fat-loss game alone, the journal is important. Not only does the journal open up your eyes to the quantities and food choices that you are making, it also makes you accountable to yourself or the Personal trainer that is helping you reach your fitness goals. You don't have to carry the journal under your arm all day long. What I recommend to all of my clients is to leave it on your nightstand next to your bed and spend 10 minutes recapping everything you ate that day. Once you're finished, take a look at the day and think to yourself how you'd like to do it differently the next day. Or, what could you change to improve your comsumption the next day. This is also a good time to plan where you're going to be and what food will be available where you are. That will help you make smart choices that day and not get caught up starving at the McDonald's drive-thru. Also, doing this at night before falling asleep, will actually help you relax as it will distract your mind from all other things that went on during the day. Additionally, it will put your subconscious mind to work throughout the night on how to improve your food intake the next day. Remember, start early and stick to your plan because you know thoselast couple of weeks prior to the wedding will be full of stress and last minute headaches that will demand your attention. If you're almost at your fitness goal by that point, you'll really wantto finish losing that last pound or two instead of just giving into the stress eating and anxiety.

Suck it up

It's so easy to stop because you're tired! Remember this ....Suck it up and someday you won't have to suck it in.

Wet your whistle!

Water is an oomph-inducing essential. "Because the human body is made up of 60 to 75 percent water, when you're dehydrated you also become fatigued," says Jim Karas. How much H2O do you need? Many experts recommend 64 ounces daily. Both Karas and Kimball suggest drinking half your body weight in ounces, because water intake should be relative to your body mass (e.g., a 140-pound woman requires 70 ounces of water daily).

Get connected!

Check out the e-mail, chat, or discussion groups on the Internet that deal with fitness, weight loss, diet, and exercise. You can find some uplifting success stories by real people, who are often very happy to support you in your exercise goals.

Feed Your Muscles

Lifting weights makes your metabolism race as your body works to replenish energy and repair muscle tissue. "If you don't take in enough calories and protein, you won't have the resources you need to recover," says Durkin. He recommends consuming 300 to 500 additional calories on workout days, and skewing those calories toward protein, the building block of muscle. "Shoot for 1 gram per pound of body weight," says Durkin.

How often should you train your abs?

It seems I get asked that question
at least 5 times a day...and for
good reason

Because...EVERYONE WANTS ABS (and they
want the fastest way to develop them!)

Well...

My answer is always a 2 part one:

1.  You HAVE to tighten up your nutrition.

Six pack abs aren't made by slamming down
six packs of beer, watching sports on TV or
living on fried foods.  BUT, here's the important
thing...they aren't made following some kind of
starvation diet either!

Sprouts and carrots aren't going to cut it!

Remember, your abs ARE MUSCLES TOO and
they need protein, carbs and
calories to sustain them too.  So deprivation
diets are OUT! As in NEVER again.  Got it?

2.  You have to train your abs on every EXERCISE!!

Huh?  You may be thinking that I made a typo.
Nope.  EVERY EXERCISE!!

Why Bad Coffee Makes You Weak .. WARNING

Good coffee is magic.

It can promote brain function, memory, and energy levels.  It can serve as a massive source of antioxidants and is associated with all sorts of positive health outcomes.  Coffee can even effect your body and mind like Chi Gong exercises.  It can even help you build muscle without exercising. However, the wrong coffee can sap your health and hurt your performance.

When I started using espresso in college, I got the highest calculus grades of my life. However, I also had severe joint pain, jitters, anxiety, and (although I didn’t know it) I was about to get brain fog. Even bad coffee was an improvement for me then. But after I biohacked myself, I got used to feeling great.

The only problem is that I didn’t feel so great when I drink coffee anymore. Sure, I would get a caffeine driven burst of energy but then I would feel edgy, cranky, and often my joint pain would return. And when the coffee wore off, I was useless mentally.

I thought the negative effects were simply a compromise I would have to live with in order to enjoy coffee.  Strangely, I didn’t get these problems with every type of coffee.  When I traveled to Europe, I could more often enjoy coffee without any of the negative side effects. So I gave up coffee for 5 very long years.

After years of researching ways I could return to the hot, bitter arms of my great love (coffee, ahem), I finally uncovered the secret to my acute onset coffee malaise.

Why Bad Coffee Is Bad For You
Sometimes your taste buds know best.
Keurig K-Cup Portion Pack Starbucks Veranda Blend Blonde Coffee - (Google Affiliate Ad)
You don’t like the taste of bad coffee for the same reason you don’t like the taste of gasoline: your body is telling you it’s toxic.

The data on coffee consumption goes back and forth.  Some studies show health benefits, while others show negative outcomes.  This might seem confusing, but the reason is simple: bad coffee is bad for you, and scientists suck at differentiating types of coffee when they run studies on coffee.

Studies on coffee and health don’t control for processing methods or the source of the beans.  This means the coffee beans are almost always contaminated with mycotoxins.  Mycotoxins are damaging compounds created by molds which grow on coffee beans (among other things).  These compounds cause all sorts of health problems like cardiomyopathy, cancer, hypertension, kidney disease, and even brain damage.  They also make your coffee taste bitter, like it needs sugar.

Some types of coffee have more mycotoxins than others, which is why you see some studies showing a benefit to drinking coffee, and others showing negative health outcomes.  The problem isn’t coffee per se, it’s the mold on your coffee. It even can vary by individual batch, especially for large coffee producers. (like ones with big ugly green logos on every street corner)

Mycotoxins are in almost all low quality brands of coffee.  One study showed that 91.7% of green coffee beans were contaminated with mold.  This is before they were processed, which allows even more mold to grow.  Another study showed 52% of green coffee beans and almost 50 percent of brewed coffees are moldy.  Coffee is easily one of the largest sources of mycotoxins in the food supply.

As the researchers concluded,

“…regular coffee consumption may contribute to exposure of humans to OA (ochratoxin).”

Ochratoxin A is bad news. It hits your kidneys, causes cancer, and messes up your immune system. Trust me, I know. I’m an ochratoxin canary, having lived in a house with ochratoxin-generating toxic mold that caused some serious damage to my immune function and autonomic nervous system. (If I can be Bulletproof with all that going on, so can you!)

Coffee is only bad for you if it serves as a delivery platform for mold.

Cheaper coffee varieties cost less because they use poor quality beans and they allow a higher percentage of damaged (moldy) beans, then companies process them with techniques that add flavor but amplify the amount of toxins.

“Blends” of coffee are bad news because they mix cheap beans from multiple areas, almost guaranteeing that you’ll get some moldy ones.  This is why its important to buy your coffee from a single estate, as outlined in the process for finding the highest performance coffee in your city. If you drink mass market coffee, the beans in your grinder may come from several countries. It’s the same logic that tells you not to eat a hamburger made from the meat of 10,000 animals.

Decaf coffee is even worse.  Caffeine is a natural anti-insect and antifungal defense mechanism for the plant.  It deters mold and other organisms from growing on the beans.  Mold is everywhere, but caffeine helps prevent it from growing on the beans while they’re in storage. When you remove the caffeine, your beans are defenseless.  Decaf coffee is higher in both aflatoxin and ochratoxin.  This is one of the reasons decaf tastes like camel sweat.

You might think the more expensive types of coffee will be good for you, but this isn’t the case.  Arabica beans are typically less moldy than robusta beans. (Robusta is what you find in Folgers and cheap coffee.) But even expensive types of coffee are usually processed with methods that allow mold to grow.

The natural process method is common in African coffee.  This allows the beans to sit outside where they can collect bird feces and other debris.  They mold. One of my favorite high end coffee roasters, Carsen at Drumroaster Coffee, describes natural process beans as, “Delicious, flavorful, and psychedelic” because they affect how his brain works.

Wet process is not much better. Here, coffee growers toss the beans into giant vats and add water, then let the beans spoil for a while (ferment) so it’s easier to remove the outer parts of the bean. What grows on each batch of beans is unpredictable, but it usually makes more toxins.

Health “experts” enjoy vilifying coffee almost as much as saturated fat.  The evidence is only conflicting if you don’t look at the whole picture.  The truth is that the right kind of coffee is a health food.

There is a large body of data showing people who drink coffee are healthier and live higher performance lives.  Drinking coffee lowers your risk of stroke and diabetes.  Coffee improves focus, memory recall, and exercise performance.  Its also the largest source of antioxidants in the Standard American Diet.  Coffee is a potent thermogenic which stimulates fat loss. In an upcoming post, I’ll explain how coffee grows muscles too.

The right coffee is good for you.  Mold is bad for you.  Never mix the two.