How to Fight High Cholesterol

In trying to lose weight, many people often start also thinking about their overall health. One big thing that can easily and naturally be fixed is high cholesterol. I always emphasize lowering your calories to lose fat, but understand that health and fitness are separate ideas. To understand how to fight high cholesterol, one must first understand the factors that can affect their cholesterol levels. Some of the chief factors that affect cholesterol levels are:

Diet

While the content of your food doesn’t matter as much as calories if you want to lose weight, it is absolutely crucial for your health. The amount of trans fats, saturated fats, and cholesterol quantities that are in the foods you eat add to cholesterol levels. Lowering fats in ones diet will lower the cholesterol levels. Oatmeal is excellent for lowering cholesterol levels as it contains fiber which helps to lower the lipoprotein level, the bad cholesterol. Consuming about 10 grams of fiber a day can decrease cholesterol levels. Walnuts will also lower cholesterol levels because they contain polyunsaturated fatty acids which helps maintain healthy arteries. A handful a day of walnuts is sufficient as they contain a high amount of calories. Read the rest of this entry »

The Best (and Easiest) Methods of Counting Calories

In a society where obesity is such an issue among younger and older generations alike, it has become extremely important to develop the habit of counting your calorie intake. Exercising, although essential, should not be the only method used to maintain or reach your ideal weight goal. It is essentially just as important, if not more so, to include counting the amount of calories consumed on a daily basis as part of your day-to-day routine. Although this may seem daunting, it really is a very simple feat to accomplish.

Every food item has an FDA-required dietary label affixed to it, thus making it easier to keep a record of the amount of calories each item contains. Apart from the dietary labels themselves, innovative technology has also made it easier to keep consumers informed on just about every subject known to men—thus making researching the food group of interest just a mouse click away.

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The Most Effective Natural Ways to Boost Testosterone

The most frequently discussed topic in men’s health today is one that is always significant throughout a male’s life: his testosterone level. Testosterone is considered by many men to be the “magical elixir of life.” Aside from regulating libido, building muscle, and boosting your mood, it also dramatically enhances one’s ability to socialize and interact with the opposite sex. There are substantial scientific and anecdotal examples of real men who credit heightened testosterone levels with their newfound success with women. On a number of online bodybuilding forums, steroid users have said that just one or two injections can stimulate the body into releasing pheromones, which have a natural attractive ability. Fortunately, you do not require artificial or painful methods to see improvements.

Although the specifics of testosterone functions are not fully understood, the increased sexual and physical health should be reason enough to desire more of this hormone running in your body. Here are the most powerful natural ways to improve your sex hormone levels today: Read the rest of this entry »

The Short But Ultimate Guide to Pull Ups

Pull ups are the king of upper body exercises. One of the more difficult calisthenics moves to master, its technique is actually quite simple. The movement is extremely simple. With the back of your hands facing you, reach up and grab the bar with an above-shoulder width grip. Now, flexing your biceps and upper back muscles, smoothly pull yourself up towards the bar—ideally until your chin is over the bar. When you’re done, slowly allow your weight to fall. To continue the exercise, don’t let your feet touch the ground and repeat the motion.

For variations of the exercise, try changing the grip so that your palms are now facing you. This is now a chin up, and there is now less emphasis on your back muscles and more on your biceps. Try wide grips and narrow grips. I’ve found that wide grips tend to utilize the latissimus dorsi (your “wings” on the sides of your ribcage) and close grips hit the arms hard. How could such a simple task build pounds of sexy and defining muscle onto the average layman’s upper body? Read the rest of this entry »

Hotel Workouts, Progress, Green Tea, and Jelena Abbou

What’s been up guys? Sexybodies and I are still here, with me still working hard to rid myself of body fat and win the Turbulence Training Contest. I’m still undergoing a very stressful period in my life, and what I’ve come to realize is this: many people eat in response to discomfort. When people are nervous, bored, anxious, or scared, they’ll typically eat… and eat, and eat. However, this is the wrong way to go about it. In the past few weeks, I’ve discovered that the best way to improve both your personal life and your physical shape is to use/view food as a resource, rather than as a comfort tool.

What I mean is this: since eating lower calories, I’ve been forced to eat higher quality foods to make up for the lack of nutrition. I replaced all soda and sugared drinks with water and green tea, and mostly concentrated on whole and natural food sources. Believe it or not, when you lower your caloric intake, you are actually forced to eat better foods. This is because you’ll end up wanting to get the biggest bang for your buck– or in this case, the most vitamins and nutrients for every bite. One must always distinguish between health and fitness, and always remember that health comes first.

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New Ways of Thinking About Rapid Fat Loss

By now, I’m about two weeks into my transformation journey and aside from a few bumps along the road, it’s been pretty good thus far. Today I hit the gym hard and though it was incredibly packed, still got a good workout. I think that the best way to deal with busy gyms is to realign your workout plans, meaning do the exercises out of order. Who knows, you might find a way to accidentally pre-exhaust your bicep muscles, making your pullups more lat-centric. As Grant Cardone has said in his book (and one of my current favorites) the “10x Rule:”

An excuse is just an alteration of reality; nothing about it will move you to a better situation. The fact that “the customer doesn’t have the money” will not help you close your deal. The fact that you “only have bad luck” is not going to improve the conditions of your life or change your luck. In fact, if you keep telling yourself that long enough, you’ll start to expect it—thereby ensuring that things will continue to be bad. - Cardone, Grant (2011-04-19). The Ten Times Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure (Kindle Locations 2140-2144). Wiley. Kindle Edition.

Now, I’d like to discuss the nutritional aspect of building a tremendously ripped body. As I’ve already mentioned before, I believe in only one method of fat loss: low calorie eating. Though there are benefits to low-carbohydrates, low-fats, and certain miracle or fad diets, the common denominator between them all is that they simply force the consumer to eat less. If you were to take a 200 pound man, figure out his basal metabolic rate, subtract 500 calories from it and force him to eat under that amount, there is no chance in hell that he is going to weigh the same exact amount in three months. If anything, he’ll be much lighter and healthier. Read the rest of this entry »

Dropping the Gurus and Thinking For Oneself

Message of the day: drop all gurus with few exceptions. The only people you should listen to are the folks who have accomplished exactly what you have, and there can be no arguing with this. I still cannot believe people listen to fat doctors on how to lose weight, or poor scam artists on how to make money. It’s ridiculous!

It appears that most people, especially with regards to diet or life, have no decision making processes anymore. They are scared of problems because they’ve relied on experts and gurus for too long. Any time they felt bad, they could simply ask for help, and they would receive it. However, most never stop to actually apply that wisdom– for any sort of application still takes a bit of decision making management that the masses don’t have. They are not conscience of the fact that most advice on this planet is already inherent knowledge. For example, everyone knows that eating less and exercising more will result in a better looking body. So why is it that many feel the need to buy every training program or borrow every diet book in their library?

Personal decision making and thinking for myself has already helped me tremendously in this transformation program. A few days ago, I stupidly forgot my workout program for Turbulence Training at home. At this point, I was already in the locker room, with no Craig Ballantyne to turn to and only myself to solve the issue. What did I do? I thought for myself. I designed a workout that I knew would challenge me and would utilize the equipment available, while implementing what I had learned from Craig’s workouts thus far: the incorporation of supersets, mixing up set/rep schemes, getting the heart pumping, etc.

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The Top Benefits of Reservatrol

There’s recently been an abundance of discussion around a powerful substance. Recommended by sports nutritionists, doctors, and endocrinologists all over, resveratrol is known to have antioxidant properties that can help protect the body against the risks of cancer and heart disease. It is commonly found inside the skin of red grapes—explaining its presence in red wine—as well as some berries, peanut butter, and even pine nuts. However, while it’s been described as a healthy food and great for many ailments, few people know of the exact benefits that it can offer. Resveratrol can serve many purposes in boosting the strength of your mind and soul.

As An Antioxidant – Resveratrol is a strong antioxidant that assists in boosting the immune system and also helps to fight many pollutants that get into the body from the external conditions. These pollutants can cause the immunity system of the body to lower by damaging the body on a cellular level. The use of resveratrol can stop that from happening, and even reverse damage.

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Slight Change; Romanz Revenge After Ultimate Fat Burning Workout 2k9

Call me a quitter, but I’ve been having many problems with Romanz Revenge (part of Turbulence Training workout programs). I still believe that it is efficient for what it intends to do, which is lean out your body while adding on some muscle; however, I personally found it difficult to stick to the program.

The past few days, I’ve had trouble doing the supersets due to the set up of my gym. For example, one of the days requires squats and push-pulls done superset-ed. Easy enough, right? Simple change the weights each time. However, Craig Ballantyne and John Romaniello expect you to do the superset in 5 minutes, and increase the amount of total reps done. Great idea, and fantastic training concept, but impractical due to the amount of time necessary to change the weights if you are limited to one power rack.

Additionally, the three-point lunges were giving me knee problems. I played a ton of basketball on concrete when I was younger, so I don’t have the most functional joints. I’m also lactose intolerant, and I think my lack of calcium is catching up to me.

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Romanz Revenge: Abs Workout Equipment Unnecessary

Hey guys, what’s up. The past few days I’ve been finally beginning the workout portion of my transformation journey. As most of you will know from my previous post, thus far I’ve been focusing on dieting and not really on training. Well, that finally changed on Wednesday when I began the Clash of the Titans: Romanz Revenge program from Turbulence Training. It features the standard TT signatures, with many supersets and emphasis on time. I have to say, I love it thus far.

The first workout was a bit strange for me, as I hadn’t squatted in over a year. I was still able to put up 185×6, which is nothing great (especially given the size of my legs), but was close enough to my one time max of 225×6. I feel as though a few weeks of training will get me back to where I was at my bodybuilding “peak,” which was pretty piss-poor (alliteration!) for anybody. I did enjoy the exercise variety, and still don’t have a good grip on the 3-point lunges. Personally, I would prefer to just do bilateral leg exercises– but alas, what you dislike to do is what you need to do. Right?

Additionally, I was glad to find out that I maintained my Romanian Deadlift form. I used to do Romanian Deadlifts all the time before stopping because my legs were getting too big (damn fat storage). They are easy to execute, simple, and effective. I recommend anyone who is trying to run faster or jump higher to do them religiously, as they target the exact muscles that are needed in improving those activities.

Overall, the first day was great. I then messed up and missed the workouts for yesterday and today. Why am I telling you this? Because I’m brutally honest, and only the cold, harsh reality will force a person into action. I honestly had no reason to miss the workouts. I made a mental excuse that I was “busy” and “tired,” but in actuality, I could’ve just thrown on some shorts and hit the gym. Oh boy, this is going to be tougher than I thought!

Failure is necessary for success, so I’m going to conclude this short post by saying: Turbulence Training is awesome, and maintaining a low-calorie diet rich in healthy foods makes you feel even more awesome. However, you must take CONSISTENT action to consistently feel that level of achievement!

So long for now, and thank you as always for reading. Please subscribe so that you can write me inspiring and motivating comments! Or, you could just yell at me and demand that my ass work harder.