One of the biggest keys to long-term health and fat loss is being consistently good with your nutrition. Many people know this, yet they often struggle to find the motivation or willpower to consistently eat healthy. This causes people to fluctuate between eating right and going through periods of overeating or eating unhealthy foods. Until these behaviors change and healthy eating become the norm, long-term success will remain elusive. Fortunately there is something you can do to improve your ability to consistently eat the right foods and keep progressing with your health and fitness.

     I can’t count the number of times people have said things to me such as, “I wish I had your motivation” or “I just don’t have that much willpower.” These comments were generally made because I eat healthy the vast majority of the time and have exercised consistently for over 15 years. I can see why people could make those types of comments, but the reality is my motivation and willpower are probably not any better than those of the average person.

     Like most people, if there is a lot of junk food sitting around at home I will feel tempted and probably eat some or maybe even a lot of whatever is around. Of course, to avoid this type of problem, I rarely have junk food around the house. This is a simple example of the secret to developing the willpower to succeed. The truth is that problems attributed to a lack of willpower generally have very little to do with willpower and are actually related to your environment and how well you prepare yourself for success. In other words, the better your preparation, the greater your willpower.

Stress is one of the biggest problems in today’s society, because it causes numerous health problems and leads to premature deterioration in virtually every part of your body. Having a high stress level can also derail even a great exercise and nutrition program and leave you with little to show for all your hard work. To make matters worse, many people don’t realize how stressed they really are, so they don’t think about taking steps to reduce their level of stress. Therefore, I write this post to tell you about a simple stress reduction technique you can use everyday to reduce your stress level.

First I should point out that I did not come up with this stress reduction technique and I learned it from listening to a talk by Dr. Andrew Weil. This technique primarily involves deep breathing and there is an element of meditation, but what most people really like is it is very simple and can be done in just a few minutes, although it takes some time and practice to really become good at using it.

In my previous post, Foundations of Every Effective Exercise Program: Part 1, I discussed what I consider to be the first foundation of every effective exercise program: the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). This theory provides the basic information to explain why exercising at right intensity level is essential if you want to improve your body. However, it does not help explain anything about what type of exercise you should do to reach your specific goals, but that’s what the SAID principle is for.

SAID stands for Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands and the SAID principle is my second foundation of every exercise program, because it provides the necessary direction to your training. Even if you always train at the perfect intensity level, it does not guarantee that you will achieve the results you want from your training program. The SAID principle explains that various types of training will each result in specific adaptations, depending on the type of stress or demand they put on your body.

I have previously discussed the importance of exercising with proper technique, but even if you have great form, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have a good workout routine. Technique is certainly an important element, but the design of your exercise program is equally important. Program design includes things like how much weight you use, the number of reps, how long you rest between sets, etc. There are many important elements in program design, but the one I will focus on today is choosing the actual exercises you perform.

Selecting the right exercises is critical if you want to design a training program for a specific purpose, such as improving performance in a sport. For example, soccer players should focus on exercises to improve their leg, core, and neck muscles and not design a training program made up of only arm exercises. This example is common sense, but many people end up performing workouts or designing training programs without really thinking about why they are including each exercise in their program.

Each sport or activity has different physical requirements and fortunately more and more schools and athletic teams are hiring people trained to design appropriate exercise programs for the individuals participating in those activities. However, a large segment of the population exercises for general health and fitness or to improve their quality of life and these people rarely receive advice about how to design appropriate training programs. As a result, people often end up creating routines without really understanding how different exercises and workouts affect their body.

Everyone has problem areas; you know those areas that seem to accumulate fat more than other areas in your body. For many people, those areas are the first places you gain fat when you gain weight and the last places you lose fat when you lose weight, which is why they are such a problem. There are a ridiculous number of pills, powders, exercise products, diets, etc. all promising to make fat from your problem areas disappear, often in as little as 4 to 6 weeks. Of course, this is all just marketing hype to sell what are usually disappointing products that sound much better than they actually are.

If these products really worked, practically everyone would have their ideal body, but having a great body is never as simple as just taking a supplement or using an exercise product for a few weeks. I would like to be able to tell you that there is some magical nutritional program you can follow or a secret new exercise you can use to make fat from your problem areas go away, but the reality is not that exciting. The good news is that you can lose fat from your problem areas, but the best way to get to those areas does not involve a specific exercise, workout, or even a specific eating program.

Eating right and exercising are both critical for developing a great body, but the key to losing fat from those stubborn areas is being consistent with your nutrition and exercise program. This may sound overly simplistic, but it is the most effective way and I will explain why. I should also point out that while this is technically a simple approach, it is generally a challenge for most people to do well.

There are numerous reasons to exercise and more different workout types than I can count, but regardless of your goals and your preferred method of working out, there are two things that must be incorporated into your program if you want it to be effective. These two foundations are not specific exercises or even types of workouts, but rather general scientific theories.

Many people don’t consider scientific theories to be flashy or interesting, but they are important for increasing our knowledge and understanding. These two theories in particular are very helpful for understanding exercise program design and explaining why some workout programs work, some fail, and some result in improvements, but not necessarily the ones we hoped to achieve.

The field of health and fitness is continually evolving and many things we believed 10 – 20 years ago are now thought to be outdated or inaccurate, but these 2 theories show no signs of being replaced anytime soon. The longevity of the first theory, the General Adaptation Syndrome or GAS, is particularly impressive, because it has been around for over 70 years.

Fat loss continues to be one of the most popular topics in health and fitness and people are always looking for new ways to lose weight and improve the way they look. Companies are always promoting new and often untested products such as pills, powders, creams, exercise equipment, and diets to promote fat loss, but the vast majority of these things are marketing gimmicks that are rarely as effective as previously established methods for losing fat. One such proven method for increasing fat loss that often goes overlooked is nutritional journaling.

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of nutritional journaling, it is basically just writing down what you eat and drink throughout the day, although there are many different ways to go about keeping a nutrition journal. A journal can be very thorough or much more simplistic, but keeping virtually any type of nutrition journal should increase the amount of fat you lose.

It may not seem as though keeping track of what you eat and drink would significantly affect fat loss, but you can see how powerful nutritional journals are by taking a closer look at the most popular and enduring weight loss businesses. Most popular programs do not necessarily use a journal, but they generally use something to help you keep track of what you eat. This typically involves things like following a point system or eating pre-made meals that have specific calorie contents.

Over the years iceberg lettuce has received its fair share of negative publicity. It often appears on lists such as “the top 10 foods you should avoid” or “foods you may think are healthy, but really aren’t.” All of this negativity towards iceberg lettuce stems from the fact that is does not have that many vitamins or minerals compared to darker green leafy vegetables, so it is often considered a source of empty calories. Yet the question remains, is iceberg lettuce actually a food you should avoid?

If you have goals to improve your overall health or lose fat, then minimizing your intake of empty calories is definitely a good thing. That said, iceberg lettuce gets a bad wrap and really shouldn’t be anywhere near the top of your list of foods to avoid. As is often the case with nutrition, this is an issue focusing only on one aspect of a food not looking at all of the components, so the big picture ends up getting lost.

It is true that iceberg lettuce does not have anyw

This post is inspired by a book excerpt I recently read in the February 2010 issue of Wired magazine. The excerpt is from a new book titled The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine and it is primarily about using decision trees to help you make better choices when making health related decisions. While the decision tree information was somewhat interesting and could be very useful to some people, it was the introductory information that really struck a nerve and made me want to write about this topic.

(There’s a Reason it’s called a Beer Belly)

It’s common knowledge that drinking a lot of alcohol will make you fat, unless you have a naturally fast metabolism or have an otherwise great nutritional program and burn a lot of calories through exercise. However, chances are you may not know why alcohol causes you to store so much fat or how many ways alcohol can sabotage your ability to lose fat. Alcoholic beverages can have a lot of calories, but the number of calories is only one of the issues.

The number of calories in alcoholic drinks is still worth noting as the calories alone cause problems for many people. For example, margaritas are a very popular drink, but a lot of time people don’t realize or think about the fact that each one can have around 500 calories. It is not uncommon for people to have 2 or more of these drinks during a meal, which means they are consuming at least 1000 calories, and that is before counting the calories from the actual food. From a caloric standpoint, an evening with dinner and drinks can have more calories than you should consume in the entire day.

Naturally, if you are consuming 1000 or more calories during one meal you are going to gain some fat, because your body simply does not have any use for that many calories at one time. Generally speaking, any calories that cannot be used (for energy and other physiological functions) will just be converted into fat, so consuming large numbers of calories in a short amount of time is a guaranteed recipe for fat gain.

One of the most common problems people have when dieting and trying to lose fat is controlling how much they eat at one time, otherwise known as portion control. Many people end up eating appropriate amounts of food for most of the day, but then eat significantly more during one of their meals (usually dinner). In some cases, the amount eaten during this larger meal is enough to undo all the progress the person made with their eating during the rest of the day.

There are many different reasons why people overeat and most of the time it has nothing to do with true physiological hunger. For some people, the main problem is just eating too fast. When you have satisfied your body’s actual caloric needs, your brain will send a signal that you do not need to eat anymore, but that signal does not come right away (on average about 20 minutes later). During this time many people keep eating and if they eat fast, they can consume way too many calories before their body tells them to stop.

People frequently write or talk about the physiological differences between muscle fibers (fast twitch vs. slow twitch, oxidative capacity, etc.), but this information is generally not very useful to the typical health and fitness enthusiast. Some understanding of how your muscles work is certainly important, but most people don’t need to know all the in-depth physiology. Instead, I believe that understanding the basic functional differences between muscles provides more practical information than you would get by learning a lot of the muscle physiology.

When looking at the functional differences between muscles you can certainly go into great depth and examine how all the various muscles function at every single joint, but in the end, muscles generally fall into two different functional categories: prime movers and stabilizers. Prime movers are the muscles that actively create movement, while stabilizers provide balance and support to your body.

Prime movers are typically the larger muscles in your body and include muscle groups such as your quads and hamstrings (upper thigh), pecs (chest), lats (back), biceps and triceps (arms), etc. They connect to your bones (by tendons) and create movement around a joint. For example, your bicep connects your upper arm to your lower arm (forearm), crossing the elbow joint, and when the bicep contracts it brings your forearm closer to your upper arm. Since the bicep contraction creates this movement, it is considered a prime mover.

The abdominals are the muscles that people are concerned with more than any other part of the body. There are so many products developed, articles written, videos made, etc. about developing better looking abs that it could seem like everyone must be walking around with incredible abs. Of course, most people don’t have great abs and genetics does play a part, but another reason is because people assume that doing lots of abdominal exercises is the best way to get great looking abs. The reality is that this belief, while common, is complete fiction.

Doing lots of abdominal exercises is definitely not the best way to get great looking abs and believe it or not, it is actually a very inefficient way to get the abs you desire. That said, it is still very important to incorporate abdominal exercises into your overall routine. Just keep in mind that abdominal exercises have more to do with the way your abs work (strength, endurance, etc.) and less to do with making significant changes in the way they look.

One of the common beliefs people have is that their abdominal muscles are not big enough to be clearly seen, so they think doing a lot of abdominal exercise will make them stand out more. Doing abdominal exercise can tighten, tone, or increase the size of your abs, but the problem is rarely that your abs are not big enough to be seen. The real issue is the significant layer of fat that almost everyone has on top of their abdominal muscles. Until the majority of that fat is lost, your abs will never be visible, regardless of how much you train them.

Fat loss is probably the most common health and fitness goal today and there are so many different products and programs designed to make people lose fat that it is virtually impossible to keep track of them all. Having different options for achieving fat loss is important, because no single approach will work for everyone, although some fat loss strategies definitely work better than others.

I hope this is obvious, but any good approach to long-term fat loss must involve making improvements in your nutrition and any product or program that promises fat loss without addressing nutritional issues is almost certainly a gimmick and a waste of money. The good news is there are many different fat loss programs that are effective. Interestingly, even though some of these programs involve very different eating habits, they often have some of the same fundamental strategies at their core.

Most people realize that flexibility is an important physical attribute and any good health and fitness program should help you improve or at least maintain your existing level of flexibility. Poor flexibility causes numerous problems including pain and injury, so it is important to avoid doing things that decrease your flexibility. Lifting weights is an activity that is acknowledged to have benefits for virtually everyone, yet some people avoid it, because they don’t want to lose flexibility.

There is still some confusion about whether or not lifting weights causes a decrease in flexibility and unlike my previous fact or fiction posts, this one does not have a definitive fact or fiction response. It is more accurate to say that lifting weights can decrease your flexibility, but it doesn’t have to. It is certainly possible to lift heavy weights as your primary form of exercise and increase your flexibility at the same time. However, another person could follow a similar exercise program and lose flexibility.