Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Your Habits Hold The Key To Good Health & Sustainable Weight Loss

A day does not go by without hearing about all the health problems the citizens of the western world are facing and despite all the billions of dollars we spend every year to solve those health problems, the health of the western world is getting worse.
The truth is that the solution to the health problems that we are facing, is very simple, but the solution does not make money for anyone, and therefore there are very few people out there promoting the real solution. 

Many people are waiting for the medical industry to solve the bad health epidemic.  What People need to realize, is that the medical industry is not into preventing bad health, they are into managing bad health because that is where they make their money.  Don't get me wrong, I am not against the medical industry.  The medical industry has made great contributions to human society but the fact remains that they are not into prevention.  Besides, the vast majority of the diseases that people are suffering from, are easily preventable by few changes in their habitual behaviors.  The medical industry is not going to help you change the habits that got you the disease, it will only give you a pill that will manage the disease.

The industry that is into preventing bad health is the fitness industry but they are not doing a very good job. Here is a very interesting fact.  Since 1992 in America alone we have more than doubled the amount of money we spend on weight loss products and services and yet the obesity rate went from 12.6% to over 36% today.  Isn't it obvious that whenever the weight loss industry is doing is not working?  Spending more money on solutions that don't work will not make them work any better.  One of the main reasons the weight loss industry if failing is because most fitness professionals, who create all those diet and weight loss programs to help people get in shape, they don't understand people who hate exercising and dieting, which is most people.  So, they create weight loss and diet programs that the average person can’t follow or can’t follow for a very long time.  This is why, only around 5% of the people who lose weight, are able to keep it off!

Our habitual behaviors hold the key to sustainable weight loss and better health.  If you want to lose weight get in shape, and more importantly stay in shape for the rest of your life, you must first identify the habitual behaviors responsible for your bad shape and replace them with healthy behaviors that will help you lose weight and improve your health.  There is no other way to achieve sustainable weight loss and better health.  

The reason we are losing the weight loss battle and our health is getting worse is because very few weight loss programs and fitness professionals focus on helping people make permanent changes in their habitual behavior.   Their focus, unfortunately, is to deliver what people want, fast results, which don't last. 

This is one of the biggest reasons why we are losing the weight loss and health battle and this is what I am trying to change through my sustainable weight loss project.

Click Here to learn about my sustainable weight loss project.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

You Can't Target a Specific Area of the Body to Lose Fat

Sorry, but “spot reduction” is a myth.  As a matter of fact, it is one of the biggest myths that many fitness “experts” are helping spread.  Many people and companies in the weight loss industry would

Don’t fall victim to this. All you can do is create the environment where your body can lose weight, and genetics will determine where you are going to lose the fat from.  You have absolutely no control of where the fat will come off from.  Here are two studies that basically prove that spot reduction is not possible.  These studies were taken from the Lifestyle & Weight Management Consultant Manual of American Council on Exercise.

One classic study examined the muscle and fat mass in the right and left arms of high-caliber tennis players before the two-handed backhand became so popular.  At that time, the diameter and muscle mass of the dominant playing arm in professional tennis players was much greater than the non-dominant playing arm.  If spot reduction truly worked, we would expect to see less fat storage in the dominant playing arm.  However, no differences were found in the sum of multiple skin fold measures of either forearm.  Thus, sustained exercise in the playing arm did not result in a reduction of fat storage over the exercised muscle (Gwinup et al., 1971).

Another study done by Katch and colleagues (1984) examined the effects of a vigorous sit-up exercise program on adipose (fat cell) cell size and adiposity.  They had subjects perform more than 5,000 sit-ups over a period of 28 days.  Skinfold thickness, body composition, and circumference measures were taken before and after the exercise program.  They also took fat biopsies from the abdominal, buttocks and subscapular regions to assess the number and size of the cells in each area at baseline, and after the vigorous training program.  The extensive sit-up routine resulted in no changes in skinfold thickness, body composition or circumference.  Interestingly, the fat biopsy data did not find any selective differences in the preferential use or reduction in fat cell size or number in the abdominal region compared to the sub-scapular or buttocks regions.  Basically, what this means, in plain English, after all those sit-ups there was no fat loss in the midsection.

So, you see, it is not my opinion that spot reduction is not possible; it is a fact.  Just in case you are still not convinced that spot reduction is not possible, I will give you one more example to prove it to you.  As you know, everybody has a dominant and non-dominant side.  Especially for arms, the dominant arm does a lot more work than the non-dominant arm.  If spot reduction was possible, the dominant arms should have less fat on it then the other arm.  In many cases, the dominant arm might have more muscle, but the fat is always the same on both arms.  It is a good thing that spot reduction is not possible because then most people would end up with a fat side and a lean side.

 The question many people raise after they learn that spot reduction is not possible is “How can those ab machines you see on the infomercials guarantee you will lose one to two inches in the first two weeks if spot reduction is not possible?”  The answer is very simple.  When you don’t do any form of midsection exercise, the midsection muscles, like the rectus abdominus muscles, are relaxed and the organs push them slightly outwards.  As soon as you do any form of crunches, the first thing that happens is your midsection muscles pull in a straight line, so they are no longer pushed outwards by the internal organs.  Just by the midsection muscles tightening up and pulling in at a straight line, most people will lose one to two inches off their waistline.  That is how those ab machine infomercials can promise that you will lose one to two inches off your waist in the first one to two weeks.  The problem is, although they don’t say it, they make you think that you lost fat off of your waist, but in reality, all you did was pull your ab muscles in a straight line.  What they don’t want you to know is that any decent midsection exercise will do that for you; you don’t need to spend money to buy their ab machine.  Like the study proved, you will not lose fat off your waist by doing midsection exercises.  To get in shape and lose body fat, all you can do is create the environment in which your body can lose weight in, and your genetic make-up will determine where you are going to lose the fat from first, but eventually you will lose it from all over the body.  The 3 things you need to do, in order to create the right environment for weight loss and better health, is some form of resistance training, some form of aerobics, and proper nutrition. 
hate me for revealing to the public one of the biggest lies in the weight loss industry.  The sales of a
lot of fitness equipment are based on the promise of spot reduction.  How many times have you seen commercials and infomercials on TV that advertise specially designed abdominal toning equipment, that guarantee you will get washboard abs? There are hundreds of exercise videos on the market today, designed to tone and shape “problem areas” on your body.  Many health clubs have fallen into the trap too, and have added “ab, butt and thigh” toning classes which have become very popular.  All these classes and exercise machines claim that exercising the muscle beneath the fat in the “problem areas” will help you lose that fat.  To be able to spot reduce sounds great and it is easy to sell, especially to people who don’t know any better.  Many companies and fitness experts take advantage of the ignorance and the desperation of people to tone problem areas and sell them equipment and exercise programs that will not fulfill their promise.