Knowledge is Power

As you constantly try to improve yourself and make progress towards the goals you have set, you try to educate your mind and are bombarded with endless and endless amounts of "raw" data on how to reach those goals. What you want to find is a source where it's all tied together and it makes sense. There is so much to learn and sometimes knowing the basics or fundamentals makes it so much easier to digest. The knowledge you acquire empowers you in so many ways. You learn to avoid the pitfalls that have stifled you and prevented you from realizing the things you want to achieve. In this article, I hope to ease some of the painful learning process and pull together some of the meaningful details you have probably seen yet not fully understood how to use. To begin, we all must first decide what goal we are pursuing. For the moment, I will generalize and say that I want to lose weight. The weight I wish to lose is body fat and not lean muscle. Sounds tough? It should and even more so if you don't understand the basics. What are the basics?
The basics to losing fat/gaining muscle:
We all know that in order to lose weight, you must place yourself in a caloric deficit. That means, the number of calories taken in must be less than the calories burned. The calories burned are what is referred to as "basal metabolic rate" (BMR). To determine your basal metabolic rate is extremely difficult. One way to find this is to weigh yourself at the start of a week. Monitor the number of calories taken in for the week. If your weight does not change, the total calories for the week is probably your basal metabolic rate. Of course you may want to repeat this process to nail down an average. Divide this weekly total by 7 and you will know your basal metabolic rate per day! Simple? Knowing your daily basal metabolic rate opens a wealth of knowledge. How you ask? Well say you find that your BMR is 2500 calories per day.
Now, you have decided that you want to lose weight. However, you want to maintain lean muscle in the process. To accomplish this you next need to determine your body type. The three scientific body types are: ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph. An ectomorph has very long limbs, very low body fat, and has a hard time packing on mass. A mesomorph is muscular, has a thick and lean build and has a moderate amount of body fat. An endomorph is heavy set and carries a high amount of body fat that is difficult to reduce. Some of us actually may fall in between these types. Myself, I am an ecto-mesomorph. This is because I have some areas that are muscular and others that have been and are difficult to build. Knowing your body type and your BMR provides several significant things. In the following table, based on your body type and perceived metabolism, a value can be derived:

Metabolism	Slow	Moderate	Fast
	(Endomorph)	(mesomorph)	(Ectomorph)
Lost Fat/ Maintain Muscle	10	11	12
Lose Fat/ Gain Muscle	13	14	15
Gain Muscle	16	17	18

To interpret the table, assume you weigh 180 lbs., and have a fast metabolism. Using the table above, to lose body fat, you would simply multiply your body weight by 12. The result, 2160, is the number of total calories per day that you would consume to reduce body fat. This number has very little meaning without knowing that each gram of carbohydrate or protein equals 4 calories and each gram of fat equals 9. A 180 lbs. bodybuilder in a pre-contest 2160 calories diet who has been instructed to achieve a dietary 10-30-60 fat/carbs/protein ratio, would need to consume 24 grams of fat (2160 * .10 / 9), 162 grams of carbs (2160 * .30 / 4), and 324 grams of protein (2160 * .60 / 4).
Each nutritional component multiplied by the recommended daily percentage and divided by the number of calories per gram, provides its total grams per day. Once you have mastered these formulations, you can easily adjust your daily consumption percentages with ease! Now, having realized that your BMR was 2500 calories per day and to achieve you goal, you must adhere to a 2160 calorie diet, means you will incur a 340 calorie per day, 2380 per week deficit.
This allows you to know how much cardio to incorporate when you exceed your daily goals due to unexpected binges! To find success in any dietary scheme, you need to know "what" your consuming and how much to consume. The calculations above give you all the information you need. However, it can be confusing when deciding what foods to include and what to avoid. Personally, I feel it is important to eat healthy foods for the most part. Quality or nutritionally fulfilling food groups provide larger portioning. Eating things like, pizza, pie, cake, etc. can quickly result in exceeding your daily totals. Next time you get the opportunity, check out: http://www.fatcalories.com. This site provides the nutritional values of several fast food menus. You will surely be surprised when you see the high numbers of saturated fat in most fast food! Also, the USDA provides an interface to a database containing detailed nutritional values of just about any food you can think of. The address is: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/cgi-bin/nut_search.pl.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! How to Avoid Fad Diets Like The Cabbage Soup Diet

The American Heart Association recommends adopting healthy eating habits permanently, rather than impatiently pursuing quick diets in hopes of losing unwanted pounds in a few days through fad quick weight loss plans. Many of these fad diets, such as the notorious and outright silly Cabbage Soup Diet, will undermine your health, cause physical discomfort, abdominal discomfort and flatulence (gas), and lead to the ping-pong effect of gaining weight soon after losing it. In other words the risks aren't worth the rewards.

1. First, one food or one type of food is generally overemphasized with fad quick weight loss diets. They violate the first principle of good nutrition which is to eat a balanced diet including a variety of foods.

2. Also, because no one food has all the nutrients needed for good health, these diets can result in a lot of health problems. One such diet is the Cabbage Soup Diet. This so-called fat-burning soup is eaten mostly with fruits and vegetables. The diet supposedly helps heart patients lose 10-17 pounds in seven days before surgery. Even if the weight loss claim were true, all the damage due to a lack of many essential nutrients would far outweigh (pun intended) the benefits of losing the weight. Pixies, elves and fairies, or even cabbages, can't create magical weight loss. That's why you should eat moderate amounts from each of the food groups rather than cutting out everything but a cabbage and water.

3. These crazy diets also ignore another important principle of good nutrition which is that eating should be enjoyable.. These diets are so monotonous and boring that it's almost impossible to stay on them for long periods. Consider a week on the Cabbage Soup Diet. By mid week crawling bugs would look good. If you make it to Sunday you might die of a heart attack before you ever again tasted real food.

4. Boredom isn't the only reason fad diets aren't good ones. Most don't talk about exercise, such as aerobics for 30 minutes a day every day. While doing nothing can lead to heart problems, exercise is a major element of maintaining proper weight. When a diet includes no need for a workout, run the other way. Quick weight loss is possible. But if a program sounds too good to be true, it is.

How to Follow Michael Phelps 12,000 calorie diet

Shortly after the Olympics , news of swimming star Michael Phelps Diet was released . It had been reported that the swimmer maintains a 12,000 calorie / per day diet. It is perfectly healthy to eat this many calories per day as long you spend the time to work them off. Phelps spends hours a day conditioning his body. It is estimated that he burns 1000 - 2000 calories per hour in the pool. To put it short Michael Phelps is a calorie burning machine.

1. BREAKFAST Breakfast fuels your day and is definitely the most important meal . You will need to consume 4,000 calories to be like Mike during breakfast time .Reportedly Michael's breakfast consists of two cups of coffee , three fried egg sandwiches , 1 5-egg omelet , 3 slices of french toast , 1 bowl of grits and 3 chocolate chip pancakes. You will need to follow this up with at least 1 hour of swimming or running.

2. LUNCH Lunch consists of another 4,000 calories . For lunch Phelps drinks 1,000 calories in energy drinks , 1 pound of pasta , and two ham/cheese sandwiches. As you can see so far Phelps consumers huge quantities of food per meal . It is very important that he follows up his meals with exercise. Following this meal you will need to swim , run or lift weights for about 1.5 - 2 hours.

3. DINNER For the final 4,000 calories of the day . Phelps will consume 8 slices of pizza , another pound of pasta and 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks. This meal should be followed up by another 1.5 - 2 hours of physical exercise.

Biggest Loser Diet and Exercise Plan

If you've ever watched The Biggest Loser on NBC, you probably noticed that they lose a lot more weight than the recommended 1-2 pounds per week. You might also be curious as to how they achieved such a fast paced weight loss so that you can create your own Biggest Loser diet and exercise plan.

1. The main problem when trying to follow the Biggest Loser plan or any diet from a reality show is that you have a life. Try this exercise: quickly make a mental list of all the responsibilities you have to tend to each day. Dropping the kids off at school, attending school yourself, work, homework, housework, cook dinner, grocery shopping, fix the car, mow the lawn and I bet you could come up with a bunch more.

2. When someone goes onto one of these reality shows to lose weight, they temporarily leave their lives behind and live with everyone else who is on the show. That means they don't go to work, drop the kids off at school or go to the store. A big chunk of the day is planned by the producers in order to achieve the maximum amount of weight loss. They wake up, eat, exercise, eat, exercise, eat, exercise and finally go to sleep.

3. Going back to the list of tasks you have to accomplish each day, how much time do you have left for exercise? If you're lucky, maybe an hour. A huge part of weight loss is exercise and if you only have an hour each day to do it, the weight will come off in a slow but steady manner. If you're on a reality show, your whole day revolves around exercise. Each team has a personal trainer which gives contestants a lot of one on one attention. Do you have your own personal trainer?

4. The other part of weight loss is a healthy, calorie restricted diet. While you're at work or school, what do you usually eat? Do you go for some fast food or a sit down restaurant? Do you prepare your own meal the night before? Do you eat an unhealthy snack? When you're on a reality show, you get all your meals prepared for you. A chef, who works closely with a dietician, makes sure that each meal tastes good and is extremely healthy (or sometimes just low calories). Do you have this kind of service at home?

5. At the end of the show when everyone goes back to their regular lives, they all stress out about picking up their old habits. It's hard to go back to normal after being pushed by a personal trainer and fed by a chef. A lot of them will gain the weight right back because if they aren't told when to exercise and how to cook, they simply don't do it. Another show, Celebrity Fit Club on VH1, is based on the same principle: get overweight people on the show and teach them how to lose weight. If you've seen more than a few seasons, you'll realize that a lot of the contestants are back season after season, meaning that they aren't keeping the weight off. This is because they can't stick to the changes once the pressure to lose weight through competition isn't there anymore.

6. Most of these shows now sell diet plans. These diet plans are nothing different than what you're already doing. Buying one of these plans won't help you lose weight as fast as the contestants on the show because you don't have access to the same resources. Sticking to a sensible diet and exercise plan will yield the best results for you.

MuscleTech Leukic Review

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