P.O.W.E.R.

Avoiding These Five Mistakes Will Take Your Breadth Away

If you’ve tried and failed to lose weight, you may be imprisoned by outdated ideas. Are you willing to change your beliefs about weight loss and fitness to achieve your goals?

Look at these five mistaken viewpoints to see if they are sabotaging your efforts:

1. The function of food is to provide pleasure.

If your diet consists of densely caloric food that tastes good but lacks nutrition (e.g., burgers, fries, chips, pizza, ice cream, soda), you will have difficulty losing weight.

An occasional treat is okay but, on a daily basis, you’ll need to focus on fruit, vegetables, lean sources of protein (such as chicken and fish) and low-fat dairy items (such as yogurt and cottage cheese). To succeed, you will need to eat for health and pleasure.

2.  Food is an effective medication for soothing emotional distress.

Reassuring ourselves with food during uncomfortable moments in life is a common practice.

Comfort eating when we are sad or mad does provide relief, but the relief is only temporary. For instance, researchers found that eating chocolate improves a person’s mood for only three minutes.

The difficult emotions remain and are compounded by feelings of guilt for the indulgence. Instead of turning to food for comfort, start building an inventory of coping mechanisms that includes exercise.

3. A quick-fix weight-loss plan is just what you need.

Are you a sucker for the latest fad diet? Do you purchase overpriced berry drinks to melt away pounds?

No quick-fix solution for losing weight exists, yet that fact doesn’t stop advertisers from promoting useless products. At best, the products are a waste of money. At worst, they can damage the consumer’s health.

Surplus pounds are typically acquired over many years, so gradual loss is more attainable and sustainable than rapid weight loss is. Persistence, rather than speed, will help you realize your goals.

4. Others can solve your weight-loss problem.

Are you hoping someone (e.g., a doctor, your spouse, your best friend, a family member) will enter your life and provide you with an effortless solution to your weight-loss problem?

Are you hoping that a miracle drug will be invented that will dissolve the fat on your body and allow you to eat whatever you want? Eating consciously and exercising regularly are the only known ways to lose weight.

Decisions about what to eat and how much to exercise are ones that only you can make.

5. You must achieve your weight-loss goals on your own.

Are you critical of yourself because you lack the willpower to lose weight and get fit?

If you’ve tried and failed to get fit and lose weight on your own, are you now convinced that further efforts are hopeless? Millions of people share your struggle, and some are succeeding with the help of support groups.

Create a support team that includes exercise partners and individuals who will hold you accountable.

Every body is different―no single approach to weight loss works for everyone. To succeed, you’ll need to become a student again and experiment with different exercises and food plans to see what works best for you.

You’ll also need to commit for the long haul. Don’t get discouraged if at first the going is slow. You have the rest of your life to incorporate healthful changes.

George Bernard Shaw said that “imagination is the beginning of creation.

You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.”

How you think about food, exercise and weight loss determines the outcome of your effort. Imagine a new, healthy and fit future for yourself.

Imagine how wonderful you will feel and look. Then begin the step-by-step, decision-by-decision process of realizing your fitness dreams.

    MSNBC Warns about the Dangers of Long-Distance Running:

Are You Running Yourself to Death?

Participating in a Marathon Can Put Severe Stress on Your Body.

This is the headline that reminded the world of Dr. Arthur Siegel's groundbreaking research into the dangers of long-distance running.

His studies were published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation.

Results were sobering. The "inflammatory storm" triggered by the stress of running a marathon creates all the symptoms of heart disease.

As Dr. Siegel puts it, "Your body doesn't know whether you've run a marathon. or been hit by a truck."

The impact of these studies is consistently glossed over by the media. But the message is clear: Your body was not designed for running marathons.

Listen to the "Dark Side of Cardio"

http://combatercise.fileurls.com/cnrtmi

Please leave a comment and let me know if this was helpful or full of s#!+

Luv ya

5 Reasons Why the Term "Cardio" is Lame

"Cardio" is the "Economic Stimulus Bill" of the fitness world. You can put your hopes in it, but generally it isn't going to do anything for you, and it will just waste your time and resources.

Most people don't realize that there was "life before cardio". People used to exercise outdoors. They participated in sports. They played games - outside! - with their family and friends. They used their feet or bicycles for transportation (rather than driving 15 minutes to the gym to go do "cardio").

So here are the top 5 reasons why I think the term "cardio" is lame.

1) People hate doing cardio.

Have you ever met a person who smiled when they said, "Oh, I have to go do cardio now." (That's not the same as the excitement an endurance athlete gets when they go "training". That's different from "cardio". Endurance athletes don't call their workouts, "cardio".)

NOTE:

So if you are a runner, and you love to run, and you tell me (with a smile), "I'm going out for a run", then that's cool by me. Nothing wrong with that. But if don't like to run, and you tell me (with a pout), "I'm going out for a run because I have to get my cardio", then I say, "Boooooo to that". Life's to short to hate your workouts!

2) People mistakingly believe that 30 minutes of half-assed cardio (which is what most people do) will help them lose weight.

But it won't. It just wastes their time. People are obsessed with the calorie counters on machines. I truly believe this is how folks get hooked and obsessive compulsive with cardio...because all they can think about is how many calories they have burned, and how much food that means they can eat.

"Cardio" does not promote healthy relationships with food.

3) People think you have to "cardio" (i.e. go to a gym and exercise on a machine that doesn't go anywhere) for 30 minutes in order to be healthy.

You don't have to do "cardio" to be healthy. There is so much more to health than 30 minutes of "cardio". Your diet is more important for your cardiovascular health than your exercise regime.

Plus, as long as you're active each day (doing manual labor, "cardio", playing sports, or lifting weights), you're doing enough to meet the minimum required amount of exercise for cardiovascular health.

4) People think "cardio" will help them with sports performance or their short, burst fitness (like climbing stairs).

It rarely does.

In fact, the guy who does "cardio" in preparation for his basketball, soccer, hockey, or Ultimate Frisbee league is going to be sorely disappointed by how slow he is - and by how he lacks sports-specific fitness as much as all the guys who just lifted weights all off-season.

Plus, doing traditional "machine cardio" does not prepare you for sports-specific movements or speed of movement, so you're just as likely - if not more likely - to get injured during the early season.

5) It signifys a waste of time, inefficiency, and a sheep-like mentality towards doing something just because everyone else is doing it.

Seriously, if you were from another planet and you came down to earth and went into a big commercial gym and look at the "cardio" section, pardon me, the "cardio theater" section, you'd smile to yourself and say, "wow, this planet is going to e easy picken's".

"Cardio" is also lame because people use cardio as a time to catch up on their magazine reading and TV watching (and now Internet and email time). That about says it all. Workout time is not multi-task time.

So what should you be doing instead if you want to sculpt your body, burn fat, lose your belly, and get lean before summer?

You should skip the "cardio" (let's not ever use that phrase again) and focus on total-body, multi-muscle resistance training and interval training exercises to help you build "everyday" strength and fitness (like the ability to carry groceries or children, or climb 3 flights of stairs as fast as possible).

Plus, with these total body workouts, you'll save time and get more health benefits than you will with straight "cardio". (Sorry to use that term again.)

Helping you get more results while saving time and money,

Amur El, LMBT, CPT

Author,Attack The Fat & Fit Over Fat

PS - If you want the best, fastest, and most effective fat burning workouts that you can do at home...

...(without the indignity of driving to a gym to use a sweaty, disgusting "cardio" machine), then grab your copy of Attack The Fat  for Fat Loss.