‘Biggest Loser’s’ Jillian Michaels: Fad diets don’t work

BY NANCI HELLMICH

Jillian Michaels, the fitness trainer with the drill-sergeant style on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser,” says that for those who want to lose weight, her best piece of advice is: Stop following fad diets.

The 38-year-old Michaels, whose latest book is Slim for Life: My Insider Secrets to Simple, Fast, and Lasting Weight Loss (Harmony Books, $25), shared her thoughts on the challenge of weight loss.

Q. What is the one thing you wish everyone knew about weight loss?

A. Stop turning to fad diets and use common sense. This is where so many people go wrong, from cutting out all carbs to eating only fat-free foods to fasting to the Master Cleanse (a plan that involves eating no food but drinking a mixture of fresh lemon juice, organic maple syrup, cayenne pepper and water). It’s all bull, and not only is it bull, but it harms your metabolism in the process. The fad diets are doing way more harm than good.

The key is to master a few simple ways to exercise that will burn the most calories in the least time. And you also need to figure out how you can eat more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff without feeling deprived so your diet regimen feels manageable.

Q. What were your past struggles with weight?

. I was overweight as a kid, and if I looked at why that was, there were a couple reasons. My father was overweight. Food was a way we bonded. As I got a little bit older, I began to see food as something comforting, something I could look forward to, something I could control. I was a child of the ’80s, and there was a lot of misinformation. Everybody was drinking pop, and people thought a cheese-and-bologna sandwich was better than a Big Mac. Of course, it’s not. I was 175 pounds at 13 years old and 5 feet tall. By comparison, I’m now 115 pounds at 5-foot-3.

Q. How did you lose the weight?

A. My mom got me into martial arts. That’s when I began to appreciate fitness. It translated into every other aspect of my life — my confidence, self-worth, self-esteem. Nobody bullied me or picked on me anymore because I respected myself. When I carried myself in a confident way, I commanded respect. When I was 17, I started training for my black belt. I graduated high school early, and people would come and ask me if I was a trainer. So I fell into personal training at 17. Now I have four fitness certifications, and I’m a certified nutritionist.

Q. What advice do you have for parents who are worried about a heavy child?

A. Lead by example. I see that with my toddler every single day. If I am doing a yoga DVD or at a photo shoot and doing exercise poses, she does them with me. If we are at a farmers market, she wants to pick the fruits and vegetables. We grow a garden and let her plant the seeds and pick the fruits and vegetables.

Play with your kids. Limit their TV time. Get outdoors and chase them around. Wrestle with them. Walk the dog. Go bike riding.

The reality is that your kids are not stupid, and they know when they are overweight. It’s about the entire family getting healthy. Gradually change the foods in the house; go on active family vacations; start walking the dog after dinner instead of watching TV. You don’t want them going on the Web to find ways to lose weight. That’s when you’ll find them eating tissue paper because they read that a supermodel did it.

Q. What’s the biggest mistake exercisers make?

A. People don’t maximize their time in the gym. They might be on an elliptical reading a magazine. Or they may be using the machines and resting after every exercise. They should be doing high-intensity circuit training.. … If you work out in the right way, you burn calories while you work out, and you burn more calories after.

Q. What words of inspiration can you offer to the millions of people who have a hard time eating healthfully and exercising regularly?

A. Gain perspective. Think through the choices you are about to make. If you are going to have a doughnut over oatmeal or pizza over a grilled chicken sandwich, ask yourself how you are going to feel 15 minutes after you eat it, the next day when you feel bloated, the next week when you’ve gained weight and at the end of the year when you’ve gained even more.

On the flip side, think about how you are going to feel if you eat the healthy food … how you are going to look in a bikini next summer or in skinny jeans. You’ll be more confident in the bedroom, more confident at the office. These things are going to be far more beneficial than any pizza is going to taste in the moment.

Q. You’re known for your drill-sergeant-style personal training. Is that just your TV persona, or typical style?

A. It’s “The Biggest Loser” persona, and there’s a good reason for that persona. If you read my books, do my DVDs, listen to my radio show or go to one of my speaking engagements, I’m not screaming at all.

On “The Biggest Loser,” that is a life-or-death situation. The contestants are suicidal with food. I need them to have a rock-bottom moment. If they don’t see how bad things have gotten, the fear and work involved with change is going to be too scary for them. I’m so intense and aggressive because I have limited time with them. Every season starts with me being crazy and intense, and as the contestants become healthier and more confident, then I become more of a buddy, a coach and friend.

‘Biggest Loser’s’ Jillian Michaels: Fad diets don’t work Read More »

5 Surprising Reasons You’re Not Gaining Muscle

Training

by jasonferruggia

Let me start out by saying that this post is not for beginners. If you’ve been training for less than two years most of what’s written below will not apply. As a newbie you need to learn proper technique and stick to the basics. Once you’ve built your foundation and packed on your first 15-20 pounds a plateau is sure to rear it’s ugly head at some point.

So if that’s where you’re at right now and are wondering why you’re not gaining any muscle read on and hopefully you’ll find some useful info to get you growing again.

You’re Still Doing 5×5

A beginner plan like a 5×5 set up is awesome. For beginners. But once you’re no longer a beginner you’ll burn out on that after a while. There are no championship lifters or bodybuilders who follow such a plan. It’s good to take you from point A to point B, to enforce proper technique and to keep training volume manageable for a newbie who usually doesn’t have the best work capacity.

Once you’ve milked your newbie gains dry 5×5 and other beginner type programs will start to become more and more useless. For one thing, you can’t do nothing but big barbell lifts all week long. Secondly, you’ll need some more variety and rep work to keep progressing and remain healthy and injury free.

You’re Not Getting a Pump

Getting a pump doesn’t matter when you’re a beginner. That’s actually the last thing you should be worrying about. So you can do a 5×5 workout and be fine.

A pump is not necessary for muscle growth during the first year of training… Personally I always like to attain a sound pump, with one proviso. I like to arrive at it via quality sets… – Vince Gironda, The Iron Guru

But cellular swelling and the act of accumulating fatigue is a very important aspect of muscle growth for everyone beyond the newbie phase. That means you need to some higher rep sets (8+) or rest less between sets or both. But do it with high quality, heavy sets like The Iron Guru advised. Just doing sets of 25 reps with light weights ain’t gonna cut it.

The biggest problem you need to worry about is not getting a pump when you are doing both of those things. If you’re doing multiple sets of eight with a minute rest between and hardly getting a pump something is seriously wrong and needs to be addressed.

I’d look toward your hydration, sodium intake, increase your carbs, especially around training and make sure you’re sleeping properly. When you can’t get a pump something is wrong and needs to be fixed ASAP.

Then you know something’s wrong.

Which leads me into the next mistake…

You’re Just Hoisting Weight & Not Maximizing Tension

Everybody wants to lift the heaviest weights possible. So they often do more on each set than they can handle and end up using less than perfect form. That’s fine for some people but too many others only feel exercises in their knees, hips, lower back, elbows and shoulders instead of where they’re actually supposed to feel it… the belly of the muscle.

I can’t tell you how many guys I work with who never feel their lats or their pecs or their glutes or whatever simply because they are just heaving weight. All the stress is in their joints and connective tissue. Instead of building the size they hoped for they end up with shitty physiques and shoulder injuries.

When I have them lighten the load a bit and focus on keeping the tension on the muscle they’re supposed to be training, instead of just mindlessly heaving away they actually start to get a pump and grow.

Heavy low repetition work performed with plentiful rest between sets is not the way to gain quality size. Divorce yourself from this type of notion and any preoccupation with handling continual maximum weights, be it in singles or low repetitions where weight and not work is the motivator. –
Bill Kazmaier

You’re Resting too Long Between Sets

Shorter rest periods have always been positively correlated with muscle growth. That’s why big guys always recommend an average of a minute or so between assistance exercises. If you’re working up to a heavy, top end set of a squat, deadlift or press variation you can rest a bit longer.

But on stuff like dumbbell presses, rows and glute ham raises you shouldn’t be sitting around chatting and texting between sets. Somewhere between 45 and 90 seconds rest should be plenty. That will do more for body composition changes and hypertrophy than rest periods of 3-5 minutes.

You’re Not Changing Your Program Frequently Enough

 As a newbie you should stick with the same program for quite some time. But as a more advanced lifter you need more frequent changes.

The first Mr. Olympia, Larry Scott, always said that the variety was the key to muscle growth and also the key to staying healthy. I agree wholeheartedly.

When you’re advanced the concept of progressive overload, which is critically important during your first couple years of training, no longer holds water.

As Louie Simmons has said a thousand times before, it will actually destroy you. So you need variety. That’s why many top powerlifters, including all the Westside guys, rotate exercises weekly. It allows you still train hard without burning out and it keeps you healthier.

The reason it keeps you healthier is because it eliminates the repetitive stress. When you swing a tennis racquet or golf club over and over you can develop tendon issues.

Everyone’s heard of tennis elbow, of course. Well, what do you think happens when you press a barbell, that weighs a hell of a lot more than a tennis racquet, in the same plane over and over again? You get hurt, that’s what.

I haven’t done the exact same workout twice in a row in years. I have all my advanced guys make some changes to their programs a minimum of every two weeks.

The key is to have some rhyme or reason to the changes and to keep track of things over time.

5 Surprising Reasons You’re Not Gaining Muscle Read More »

Shape Up At The Office: 6 Healthy Habits For The Workplace

Training, Weekly Motivation

by Shannon Clark

Even if you spend an hour each day at the gym, you spend at least eight times that amount at work. Sitting. Snacking. Stressing. None of which furthers your personal fitness agenda.

I’m not saying you should throw your papers in the air and walk out the door to become a personal trainer, professional mountain bike racer, or bear wrestler. That may not be a good idea. You can, however, implement a few strategies to make your workplace healthier.

By making your office a friendly place for health and fitness, you’ll be able to spend more time working toward your goals. Add the following things to your workday and you might just see those inches slide off a little faster. This will probably help your career, too. Win-win.

1 / Fire Your Chair and Replace it with an Exercise Ball

Your old office chair sees more of your backside than probably anything or anyone in the world. Sitting eight hours every day may not be killing you, but if you add those hours to the time you spend sitting in the car, sitting on the couch, and sitting at the table, you’re looking at spending most of your life on your butt. According to this infographic, sitting too much is just about the worst thing you can do.

Take some wear off your spine by sitting on an exercise ball. It’s a great way to strengthen your entire abdominal region and the muscles that flank the spinal column. By sitting on one throughout the day, you maintain a low level of contraction in the core muscles, providing strength benefits and added calorie burn.

If you’re struggling to stay upright on an exercise ball, try sitting on it for one-hour intervals until you can remain upright all day.

2 / Stock a Mini-fridge/Cooler

If you have an office, invest in a mini-fridge. If you’re in a cubicle farm, bring a cooler to work. Packing in your lunch and snacks for the day makes keeping track of your macros nice and simple. If you’re constantly going out for lunch instead of preparing a healthy meal at home, you probably ingest far more calories than you need.

It takes 10 minutes to prepare a healthy lunch the night before work or pack leftovers from dinner. So there’s no excuse to continually make poor eating choices.

3 / Stuff Your Desk Drawer with Healthy Snacks

The vending machine can take a toll on your nutrition plans. Instead of wasting your money on that Pop-Tart and Diet Coke like usual, keep some canned tuna, instant oatmeal, low-sodium jerky, protein bars, and home-made trail mix in your desk drawer. The next time you have to work late, healthy eats will be within arms’ reach.

More ideas for some easy, packable snacks can be found here.

4 / Coffee Break? Put Caffeine to Good Use.

No matter how hard you work, you need to take an occasional break to de-stress and refresh. So keep a pair of running shoes stashed under your desk, and when your coffee break rolls around, take a brisk 10-15 minute walk. Not only will this torch a few calories, but it may help you clear your mind, ease stress, regain focus, and feel more energized.

Movement increases circulation to your limbs and brain. Most people don’t realize how energy-draining long-term sitting can be. So if you feel like passing out at your desk, a mid-morning and mid-afternoon stroll could be just what you need.

5 / Keep a Water Bottle on Your Desk

If the only fluids you tend to consume during your workday are coffee and diet soda, you need some water. Many people don’t realize they’re dehydrated. Thirst can zap your concentration, energy and performance.

Start keeping a water bottle on your desk at all times. That way, you can sip on it as the day moves along and get the water your body needs without having to think about it.

6 / Set a Timer

Instead of sitting at your desk for eight hours straight, set a timer to go off each hour. When it beeps, do something active for one or two minutes.

You can do 10 push-ups or squats easily enough. Even going for a short walk is better than nothing.

By moving around for just two minutes every hour, you’ll feel better at the end of the day. Bring a little play to work and your brain. Your body and your boss will all thank you.

Shape Up At The Office: 6 Healthy Habits For The Workplace Read More »

Bikini Body Workout (spring is here)

Nutrition, Training

Your Bikini Body Workout

by Shannon Clark

It’s February. If you’ve already begun to focus on getting that great beach body, you’re ahead of the game. Most women leave their diet and exercise plans by the wayside until April or May. If you wait that long, it’s usually a scramble to undo all the damage from the long months of eating comfort food and hibernating from the cold.

Building the body you want takes a lot of time and effort. To ensure you’re not wasting days and energy, you need to do more than walk on the treadmill a couple times per week.

Early motivation will help you succeed; but there are other key aspects to fitness that can be the difference between three months of hard work and three months of hard work that lead to a successful transformation! In addition to taking advantage of your awesome self-motivation and drive, be sure to do these six things:

1 / Remove All Processed Foods

Ditch all the packaged snack foods, frozen dinner meals, and pints of ice cream sitting in your freezer. Even that container of fruit-flavored yogurt needs to go. As painful as this process may be, it will make the world of difference in your diet and, by extension, your appearance.

Limit your diet to foods that come from nature. The right nutrition for your beach-ready body does not include bags of chips or cans of soda.

2 / Get Serious About Sleep

If you often burn the midnight oil, you need to change your habits. Finish your school and work projects earlier, and say “good night” to your favorite late television show.

People who don’t sleep enough are at a higher risk of accumulating body fat. Dr. Michael Breus explains that “if you are sleep deprived … your metabolism will not function properly.”¹ Furthermore, it’s likely that your lack of sleep won’t help you fight the craving for a late-night snack run.

3 / Supplement with Protein Powder

Most women don’t take in enough protein. If you want to build muscle—and burn more fat—eat about one gram of protein per pound of body weight. If you can’t get that much protein with whole food, try supplementing with whey protein powder. Mix up a shake before and after your workouts.

Including more protein in your diet also helps defeat those carb cravings! Put down that bag of pretzels and pick up a protein shake.

4 / Track Your Calories

Tracking calories can feel like a burden, but if you want to see excellent progress, it’s a must. It’s much easier than it was in the past, though. Today, you can simply install an app on your phone, tablet, or computer and enter what you eat. By keeping tabs on your calories and macronutrients, you’ll be able to tell when you need to make adjustments to your diet and training. If you’re not sure what you put into your body, there’s no way of knowing what your diet does or does not lack.

5 / Cardio the Smart Way

Many women use the “more is better” approach to cardio training. Don’t fall into this trap! Never ending sessions on the treadmill are not the best way to burn body fat.

Instead, add short, super-intense sessions of cardio to your regimen. Alternate 30 seconds of intense work with 60 seconds of reduced work and repeat the sequence 8-10 times. You can do interval training anywhere-on a treadmill, on a bike, on the elliptical, or on a rowing machine. Mix it up! You’ll find better results with shorter bursts of high-intensity work (HIIT) than you will from long bouts of lower-intensity work. Plus it’s more fun.

6 / Lift Weights

Strength training is the best way to change how your body looks. It will boost your muscle mass and definition, and increase your strength, balance, and agility. It’ll also shift your metabolism into high gear by building muscle, your most metabolically active tissue.

Not sure what workout will work best for this goal? The following workouts can be done, one after the other, on the same day. The first portion will test your strength and the second will challenge your cardiovascular fitness. As you fatigue, don’t let your form stray. If you must stop and rest at some point, don’t be afraid to do so.

Aim to complete these workouts at least 2-3 times per week. Make sure you leave a day of rest between sessions.

As always, make sure you do at least a five-minute warm-up before you train and cool down when you’re done.

Bikini Body Workout (spring is here) Read More »

24 Rejuvenating Ways to Spend Your Lunch Break

Weekly Motivation

Eating a cold sandwich at your desk while you surf Facebook doesn’t count. Shake things up with one of these energy boosters.

Christina DesMarais

Ideally lunchtime–the hump of the workday–should involve a change of scenery. For one thing, eating at your desk while you continue to work makes for a long and sedentary day.

With a bit of intention, lunchtime can be a great way to recharge so you’re primed for a great afternoon. Here’s how workers around the country are making the most of midday.

1. Get horizontal. Desk workers tend to slouch, which compresses the spine and ribs, impedes proper breathing, and tightens neck and shoulder muscles. “Laying on your back in semisupine position with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor for 10 to 20 minutes allows the muscles of your neck to release, your chest and shoulders to widen, and your whole body to undo tension built up throughout the morning. You rise feeling light, open, and destressed,” says Los Angeles–based Sharon Jakubecy, who teaches people how to have a powerful presence and communicate confidently through something called the Alexander Technique.

2. Wiggle like a kid. Minneapolis-based chiropractor and yoga and Pilates instructor Martha DeSante suggests getting your hands on an adult-size Hula-Hoop, finding a spot where you won’t break anything, and hooping in both directions “to bring more balance to your body and brain,” she says. “Hooping lets you shake off the stresses of the morning, getting your creative and inspired energy flowing so you can tackle your afternoon agenda feeling refreshed and renewed.”

3. Sing. Think about it–it’s nearly impossible to feel bad when you’re belting out a tune. Not only that, the pulsing of the vocal cords causes a physical vibration that actually works to calm the body. That’s according to Minneapolis- and Los Angeles–based Ariella Forstein, chief empowerment officer with the Ariella Approach, which she uses to coach business people and performers how to increase their confidence and find their authentic voices. Not comfortable singing in the office? Forstein suggests trilling in your car.

4. Learn a foreign language and then plan an overseas trip to practice. According to New York–based career counselor and executive coach Roy Cohen, many study options are perfect for lunch, whether you’re learning online at your desk, in your car on a mobile device, or with others in a language practice meetup group. “If interrupted, it is easy enough to explain, and it is a good career booster,” he says. “You appear motivated and disciplined, and proficiency in a foreign language may be beneficial to your work. And a reward like an overseas vacation is likely to keep you focused.”

5. Meet new business connections. “I’m a big fan of networking over lunch,” says Cory Jones, CEO of San Francisco–based DINKlife.com. “Meet someone new, rejuvenate your passion for what you do, and get to know someone else’s story. I’ve done several lunches with letslunch.com and had good success.”

6. Jump on a trampoline. It’s a little-known fact that Sky Zone Indoor Trampoline Park has more than 30 locations across the U.S. You can jump and flip to your heart’s content for as little as $8 per half-hour. Check out this video, in which plenty of grown adults are doing it.

7. Get creative. “Pull out some glitter, glue, markers, paint, or paper, and make something,” says Alyson Dias, who works for Fresno, California–based iLoveToCreate and says it takes only a few minutes to make plenty of creative projects.

If crafts aren’t your thing, any creative endeavor will do the trick. Arash Afshar, podcast host at San Diego–based CrappyAwesome.com, heads to the coffee shop over lunch: “I am an artist, so I’ll usually work on some music on my laptop or sketch something in my sketchbook. A small sense of creative accomplishment gets me energized to power through the rest of the workday.”

8. Give yourself a mini spa experience. Kristen Brown, Minneapolis-based author, speaker, and coach on stress management and work/life harmony, says self-pampering works for both sexes: “Rub some essential oil of your choice on your temples, and rub a little into ends of hair to condition. Apply some rich hand cream to your hands, elbows, and other dry areas; dab on some eye cream; and turn on your favorite music. Then take 10 deep breaths through the nose slowly. Bend over in your chair and get the blood flowing with some stretches. Also, be sure to have living plants in your desk area,” she says.

9. Take it to the rink. Mia McPherson, marketing manager for Dublin, Ohio–based OnGuard Systems, says, “Our latest favorite rejuvenating lunchtime activity is ice skating. We found a place near our office that does an indoor skate from about 11:30 to 12:30. We’ll pack a lunch that day and eat in the office so that we can use the lunch hour to skate. I also like that on skate days, I get my exercise and don’t have to drag myself to the gym after work.”

10. Exercise outside with a pal. “The science of happiness indicates that exercising with a friend, ideally in nature, combines three things that will boost our mood and creativity,” says Scott Crabtree, chief happiness officer for Happy Brain Science in Portland, Oregon.

11. Unplug from technology. This sounds simple, but it is remarkably difficult for some people to do. “Connecting with nature for your 60-minute lunch will reboot your brain. Try it and watch what happens,” suggests John Dowd Jr., Cambridge, Massachusetts–based author of Heroes Mentors and Friends.

12. Make a game out of it. Flynn Zaiger, CEO of New Orleans–based digital marketing and advertising agency Online Optimism, suggests playing board games with co-workers (try Balderdash or Cranium) to spark creative juices.

Bob Bentz, president of Advanced Telecom Services in Wayne, Pennsylvania, says people in his office play basketball at 12:30 p.m. on Fridays in the spring and summer. “It’s a great team-building event,” he says. “It also does a great job of bonding the younger and older employees that don’t normally hang out together.”

13. Ramp it up. “My company has a five-story parking garage, and on my breaks, I will walk the garage, starting at the bottom, doing a complete circuit on each floor, and walking up and down the ramps. I do this on my morning and afternoon breaks, as well as lunch,” says Clearwater, Florida–based paralegal Hope Rising.

14. Volunteer. “I’ve been spending my lunch breaks when I don’t have meetings or prior engagements at the local soup kitchen, helping to serve food and hopefully brightening someone’s day…So far, it’s been very rewarding in that I’ve made some new friends, and it affords me the opportunity to help someone turn their life around,” says Jacob Baldwin, search-engine-marketing manager for One Call Now in Troy, Ohio. He also plans to do some resumé coaching at the soup kitchen in coming weeks.

15. Hypnotize yourself. Wait, what? Seattle-based hypnotherapist Robert Schryvers says you can do it in 10 minutes. Here’s how.

16. Juggle. “Juggling is a great way to reenergize during lunch, and I love that you can do it right in the office or outside on a nice day,” says Heather Wolf, founder of JuggleFit in Brooklyn, New York. “Not only is it a light cardio exercise; it also clears your mind so you can come back to work tasks feeling refreshed and focused. And, of course, it’s fun.” Not sure you can pull it off? Here’s a primer.

17. Go to a salon. A blowout–you know, a shampoo, blow dry, and style–will make any woman feel recharged. And both sexes can reap the relaxation that comes from a manicure or pedicure–usually they come with massages.

18. Read a book. Ideally, it would be something escapist, although driven types might feel better getting through nonfiction or self-improvement reads. Whatever you read, do it somewhere other than your desk, ideally near a window or outside in the sun.

19. Take a nap. The biggest challenge with this one is: where? If your office doesn’t have a sofa somewhere private, you can always recline the passenger seat in your car and take a quick snooze there. Set your phone’s alarm to wake you within a half-hour. Longer naps can actually make you feel worse.

20. Be a street musician. Josh Aguilar, a Web designer for TopSpot Internet Marketing in Houston, suggests taking a musical instrument to a nearby park. “Get away from the screen [and] take a container for your tips,” he says.

21. Go home and connect with your kid (or dog or cat). Whatever creature is waiting for you at home will appreciate the attention, and you’ll get recharged spending a few minutes with someone or something you love. Ashley Morris, CEO of Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop, says he makes a habit of taking a full lunch break to go home and play with his infant son. Doing so helps him unwind and remember why he works hard every day.

22. Feast on art or books. Martha Bartlett Piland with MB Piland Advertising and Marketing in Topeka, Kansas, says you’re likely to find her at the local art gallery or library over lunch, where she “drink[s] in the stillness.”

23. Get in the moment. According to Amy Jo Martin, founder and CEO of the Las Vegas–based social-media consultancy Digital Royalty, people spend nearly half of their lives recalling the past and fretting about the future. What keeps people in the present is blocking out a few minutes a day for “Ready, Set, Pause,” a concept the company came up with that encourages people to make time for a daily mental break. Ideas for this time-out from stress: Listen to good music, dance, pray, call someone to tell him or her you love him or her–whatever keeps you in the present and distracted from your worries.

24. Get a furry fix. “Go to a pet store and pet the animals or if you happen to be near a place that has animals; watch and enjoy and calm your mind,” suggests marriage and family therapist Lisa Bahar, who’s based in Dana Point, California.

24 Rejuvenating Ways to Spend Your Lunch Break Read More »

admin