As I have tried to emphasize before, fitness is all encompassing, it must be an ever present part of our lives. If your goal or definition of fitness then is yourself 15lbs lighter and more toned, then you must eat, sleep, and live in a way the progresses you towards that self-made definition.

Eating smarter is step number 1. Sure everyone says, oh but I am eating better and adhering to a more rigorous nutrition schedule but if I asked you to document your every intake, what would be the true story. Weight loss is simply taking in less calories than you expend, and maximizing the quality of those that you decide to ingest. That means low GI foods, with higher ratios of protein and good fats than carbs. Take care of your diet and bust your ass (excuse the vernacular) in the gym, and trust me, you WILL see results. Sure some people have more stubborn fat deposits than others or are prone to retain fat in key areas, but that is something again that can be targeted and eradicated. I just get so fed up with people that complain about not being able to be who they want to be and I know they are the kind of person that barely breaks a sweat or reads a magazine on the treadmill. Put up or shut up.

So to take away from this, remind yourself every day that if you have a weight goal in mind, do not simply rely on your one hour in the gym; accomplish your goal through a combined effort of excellent nutritional techniques, hard work, and a constant reminder that the quality time you put in, will produce results.

It’s what pushing for implosion means: You are who you are, if you want to change, even if only slightly do so by releasing your image of who you are currently and rewrite yourself.

Defy your Limits.

If you’re in the middle of a set and talking to the person next to you, you are not working out. If you are looking across the room and checking out some girl stretching, you’re not working out. And if you feel exactly the same at the end of a set as you did at the beginning, you damn sure are not working out.

Working out means training hard all the time. Not slacking off on leg days or walking on the treadmill while reading a book without a bead of sweat on your forehead. It’s pushing yourself like your life depends on it. Imagine if you knew today was the last time you’d ever be able to workout for the rest of your life – would you be taking it easy? Hell no, you’d make sure you felt like you were about to die by the time you were finished. And that’s how you should train every day.

So if you have been taking it easy, now is the time to stop being a baby and start pushing yourself. I am not saying that if you are not working out like a top athlete then you are not working out, I am saying if you are not pushing your own personal limits then you are not working out…

Push yourself towards what I like to call implosion. Ever heard the saying give it your all? Regardless of how long you are planning on being in the gym be it 5, 30 or 60 minutes, give it your all the entire time, please. Then true fitness will come.

What makes breakfast important is that it provides our bodies with fuel for the rest of the day, if the meal is balanced in protein, carbs and fat, curbs our appetite reducing the risk of overeating later and improves our concentration and focus. Some people tend to think that they do not have the time to eat breakfast. Just like those that believe that they cannot workout without a gym membership, this is nonsense.

You can make a quick breakfast in under five minutes with the most basic of food items. For example, you can buy a bottle of egg whites, some bell peppers, pre-sliced mushrooms and turkey or chicken slices all for under 10 dollars and it should last about a week for making egg white omelets every day. All you have to do is heat a skillet add  the egg whites and throw in the ingredients. Finish it off with Soy Milk, grapefruit juice (not from concentrate), orange juice, or good ole milk. That would make for an excellent breakfast in under 8 minutes.

Avoid the pop tarts, frozen meals with obscene amounts of sodium and ultra sugary cereals (cereals like Special K, Wheaties, Cheerios, Fiber One etc) are all fine when paired with something like a banana and juice. And again, avoid at all costs, not eating breakfast at all!

If you skip on breakfast, there is a very likely chance that later in the day you are going to be starved and thus binge eat. This might satisfy your hunger but it will likely involve eating a more unhealthy array of foods unless you had prepared before hand and brought something from home or selected a healthy food alternative. Also you will likely feel tired and run down throughout the day, having to resort to energy supplements such as caffeinated products or energy drinks like Red Bull to keep you going.

Future posts will include links to recipes but for now fitbuff has 7 simple selections to try tomorrow! The video below is my latest find, and let me say it is absolutely delicious, simple and fast.

Breakfast: It Gives You Wings

BMI is calculated via the following formula:

Thus, it is merely a factor of your weight and height. 703 is a conversion factor from imperial to metric units as the formula was originally derived by a Belgium statistician early in the nineteenth century. It is incredibly accurate at predicting the overall state of health of a population, but for individuals it is terrible. Now I will say that the CDC and most physicians use this measurement as a general rule of thumb, but it is still mind boggling trying to figure out why.

What is wrong with it? Scientifically, it makes no sense. It makes no account for body composition or waist size, the primary indicators of obesity level. Using myself as an example, if I go here http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/?htf=6&hti=1&wt=192&bmi=24.4 and enter my body information, 6′0” and 191lbs, it tells me  my BMI is 25.9, overweight. Similarly, many athletes are considered overweight by the BMI calculation. It is not taking into account physiological differences between different people. Some people have more bone mass than others and fit individuals have higher levels of muscle tissue which weigh more than fat.  Back to me, I know for a fact from skeletal muscle analysis that I fluctuate between 11 and 13 percent body fat as percent total of body weight and have a 32 inch waist. Thus, I am not overweight, I am merely fit. The same would hold true for others using this system of analysis. It is a system whose basic logic is flawed. A obese person will always have a high BMI, but a high BMI does not mean an individual is overweight. Like me, they could be fit and very healthy.

It gets scary when premiums for health insurance vary according to your BMI and it makes the United States look rather outdated using a number as nonsensical as BMI. NPR reported on a grocery chain that had different surcharges for health insurance if they had high BMIs. A much more accurate way to assess obesity is by measuring waist circumference and the CDC has it listed on their page as an alternative way to assess your health risks related to obesity. More complex methods are even more accurate but are also more expensive.  These include body composition analyzers and hydrostatic weighing.

Many, including myself, believe that it is because these alternative methods cost more and involve more time and effort that they are not more prevalent in their use and that this is why BMI continues to be the most widely used measure of body health. Just do yourself a favor and if you really want to assess the status of your body either simply measure your waist circumference or buy a cheap pair of calipers or if you want to spend a little more and get a body composition analyzer. Both would give you far more accurate information than BMI can.

Let’s first preface this discussion with some basic math stuffs. Your body is like a battery, excuse the sorry analogy. To do work it must intake a sufficient level of calories to convert into usable energy, which in our bodies is ATP or adenosine triphosphate. At the end of the day, excess levels of ATP are stored as either fat glycogen or other sugar substrates… or excreted. This is a gross simplification but it is sufficient for our purposes.

So let’s say you intake 4,000 calories over the course of the day but only do enough activity to burn 3,000. Well, chances are a portion of that unused energy is going to be stored as excess weight. How your body deals with this excess is specific to you, but in general, the above rule holds true. So you might ask next if there is a baseline as to how much you should consume per day. Well there is and it is called your basal metabolic rate. It is the measure of how many calories your body requires to be able to support its basic functions were you to be asleep all day. Figuring out your BMR requires rather strict testing conditions and calorimetric analysis of your breathing. For our purposes we will use a resting metabolic rate prediction or RMR. RMR is a rough estimate while BMR is precisely the number of calories your body requires while at rest.

The primary reason that most people cannot maintain a certain weight, or achieve a particular weight related goal, is because they are consuming more calories than they are using in a given day. Other factors do contribute, but this is the primary reason. The following resource provides an excellent calculator that will estimate your RMR. Use this as a baseline number of how many calories you should be consuming per day. Also, pay attention to the various levels of activity and how they require more or less calories. For example, a strenuous level of activity requires more calories per day than a sedentary level of activity. http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.php

Once there, click on “BMR & RMR Calculator“, populate the blank fields and see what it reports. If it tells you that your RMR for a light level of activity is 2,500 calories, and you are consuming 3,500, then you can assume that it is likely that if you want to drop some weight then you should lessen your caloric intake.  It is a give and take model, you want to provide as many calories as you are going to use and if you consume excess calories, expect weight gain.

For a lengthier discussion on BMR/RMR, the following is a excellent, concise read.

http://www.caloriesperhour.com/tutorial_BMR.php