Beware of Counterfeits!

I was at the grocery store yesterday and had to shake my head at all of the deceptive labels with everything claiming all sorts of things that are supposedly "healthy", but aren't really.

One of the things that really disturbed me was that I saw several examples of healthy foods in their natural state, but I saw counterfeit versions of these foods claiming that they were healthier than the original...

Yet in reality, all of these counterfeit versions were actually MUCH worse for you than the original... and they still have the balls to claim that their overly processed "junkified" versions are better.

This is food marketing deception at it's worst!

**Example #1: Product claiming "Better than peanut butter"

This product is ludicrous! I can't believe anyone would ever believe that this junk is better for them than natural peanut butter.

First of all, if you buy a good simple peanut butter (organic is best), it is usually nothing but 2 ingredients... peanuts and salt. And they don't add much salt so it's not high in sodium.

However, this counterfeit peanut butter which claimed it was "better than peanut butter" (trying to seem healthier than peanut butter based on it's label claims) had a list of junk in it you wouldn't believe. First of all, they strip all of the healthy fats out of the peanuts so that it is a "low fat" product. Ok, now you've just taken away one of the healthiest parts of the product...the appetite satisfying healthy fats that you need to control cravings and manage more stable blood sugar levels.

To make things worse, the healthy fats were replaced with 2 different types of sugary syrups as well as additional dehydrated cane juice (aka SUGAR), in addition to added refined starches.

This product has taken something as simple and natural as peanut butter, and turned it into what should really be called some sort of processed candy. Yet, they claim that it's healthier than peanut butter. And somehow they get away with deceiving people like this. Don't be their fool!

**Example #2: Product claiming to be "better than eggs".

I won't get as detailed on this one because I recently talked about this entire topic in another newsletter.

But basically, this product was just egg whites with a bunch of added chemical colorings, flavorings, and other nonsense, including fake added vitamins.

Again, this product has essentially ruined a good thing by removing the healthiest part... the YOLKS! And yes, the yolks ARE the healthiest part of the egg. Anybody that tells you different doesn't understand much about true nutrition. The important thing to look for in quality whole eggs are cage-free and organic.

**Example #3: A product claiming to be "better than butter".

This was essentially crappy margarine loaded with highly processed and deadly trans fats, yet it had the nerve to claim it was "better than butter".

Heck NO!

Even low quality butter is healthier than any margarine. One problem with butter is pesticides and hormones from improperly raised cows.

For this reason, you always want to choose organic butter, and if you can find "grass-fed" butter, then I would even say it can be healthy for you. In fact, adding a little butter to your steamed vegetables helps your body to absorb more of the vitamins and minerals in the veggies.

Also, due to the content of stable saturated fats in butter, this makes butter one of the best oils to cook with. Oils high in polyunsaturated oils are the worst to cook with due to their highly unstable nature.

And no, the saturated fat in butter is NOT bad for you!

If you found the topics in today's newsletter interesting, do your friends, family, and co-workers a favor and fwd this email to them.

For more information go to TruthAboutAbs.com

Til next time... Don't be lazy... be lean.

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
Founder - Truth about Abs

The 1% Rule for Losing Fat and Getting Fit!

by Mike Geary, Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Nutrition Specialist

So, what is the “1% rule?” Well, what this means is that it really only takes 1% of your given time every week to keep yourself in top shape…

Let’s think about it in terms of your available time… if you dedicate only 25 minutes per day, 4 days per week to a good exercise routine, that’s only 100 total minutes per week. Considering that you have 1440 minutes in each day multiplied by 7 days equals 10,080 minutes per week of total time.

So now look at those 100 minutes per week dedicated to exercise and divide that into the 10,080 minutes total that you have in a week, and that represents approx 1% of your total time in any given week.

1% of your time… that’s it!

When you think about it in those terms… isn’t it really ridiculous when you hear someone say that they “don’t have time to workout”… it’s actually almost comical that someone would claim they can’t dedicate 1% of their time every week to exercise.

So based on that rule, I wanted to share an article with you. written by Mike Geary, the author of Truth About Abs. We Love him and all he stands for. We hope this gets you motivated!
Why Do You Miss Workouts? Stop the Procrastination and Excuses and Start Working Out!

Here’s a common theme I see all the time at the gym…

Somebody that was doing well working out and finally starting to get results at the gym all of the sudden stops coming in for several months.

When they eventually come back and start working out again a couple months later, they’re usually back in horrible shape, have gained back all the weight or more, and lost most of their strength gains that they worked so hard for.

So while talking to them, I’ll ask where they have been the last couple months, and that’s when the excuses start…

•Perhaps it was that they had a special assignment at work and have been “too busy” to work out lately
•Or perhaps it was that they had a shoulder or arm injury so they thought that they couldn’t work out during this time
•Or perhaps they had a knee, ankle, or leg injury so they thought they couldn’t work out.
•Or perhaps they were busy with house renovations, or family issues, or too busy with the kids, etc, etc, etc… excuse, excuse, excuse

You can see where I’m going with this… if your health & fitness and how you look and feel is important to you, then there is no such thing as an excuse. Either you want it, or you don’t, and it’s either going to be a priority in your life, or it’s not!

After all, your health and fitness determines not only how good you’re going look and feel every day that you’re on this planet, but also how long you’ll exist on this earth to enjoy the time you have with your friends and family… So with all of that said, why wouldn’t you make your fitness a priority in your life!

Here’s my opinion on the example excuses above…

Excuse #1 – Too busy at work:

Ok, so why don’t you squeeze in really brief but really intense 5 minute workouts before and after work each day… after all, that’s only 10 minutes of your time, and despite popular belief you CAN stay in excellent shape working out as little as 5 or 10 minutes a day (as long as your time is well spent with the right exercises and right intensity).

“Too busy at work” excuse busted!

Excuse #2 – Shoulder or arm injury so haven’t worked out:

Bum shoulder… so what… are you saying your legs and abs don’t work all of the sudden just because your arm or shoulder is hurt? After all, most of your fat loss and metabolism-boosting results come from lower body based exercises anyway, as they burn more calories due to the larger muscle groups involved.

Your upper body injury just gives you a good reason to focus even more intensely on your lower body, abs, and interval training during this period when you won’t be able to do upper body exercises.

Shoulder injury excuse busted!

Excuse #3 – Knee, ankle, or leg injury so haven’t worked out:

Ok, so now you’re saying that just because you have a leg injury, that somehow your upper body no longer works? Even if you need to walk in there on crutches, and then do nothing but seated upper body exercises, that’s a lot better than doing nothing and letting your entire body get weak and soft during while your leg heals.

Knee or leg injury excuse busted!

Now don’t get mad at me about these injury excuses… Believe me, I DO understand that there are some serious injuries and disorders that do prevent some people from doing any exercise at all. However, for most minor injuries, there’s no excuse not to at least continue doing some form of exercise.

Excuse #4 – Too busy with the house, family, kids, etc:

Once again we need to get back to priorities. If your house and kids are priorities, why wouldn’t your health and fitness be top priorities also, so that you can enjoy your life and everything and everyone in it!

Remember, you don’t need to work out for hours every day to be in great shape. It’s all about maximizing the intensity and amount of full body musculature you work in a given time period, even if that time period is just a brief 4 minute daily workout.

(In fact, Linda and I have provided you with these short workouts throughout our blog/website)
Excuse #4 busted!

I know I take a hard-nosed approach with this stuff, but if finally getting into shape is important to you, nothing less will do, than to adopt a true fitness lifestyle and mindset.

I hope today’s article helps trigger some new motivation if you’ve struggled in the past with excuses or procrastination to getting in shape.

Til next time, don’t be lazy… be lean.

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
Author – world-wide best seller: The Truth about Six Pack Abs

Can you get fit in 6 minutes a week?

NY TIMES, June 24

By Gretchen Reynolds

A few years ago, researchers at the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Japan put rats through a series of swim tests with surprising results. They had one group of rodents paddle in a small pool for six hours, this long workout broken into two sessions of three hours each. A second group of rats were made to stroke furiously through short, intense bouts of swimming, while carrying ballast to increase their workload. After 20 seconds, the weighted rats were scooped out of the water and allowed to rest for 10 seconds, before being placed back in the pool for another 20 seconds of exertion. The scientists had the rats repeat these brief, strenuous swims 14 times, for a total of about four-and-a-half minutes of swimming. Afterward, the researchers tested each rat’s muscle fibers and found that, as expected, the rats that had gone for the six-hour swim showed preliminary molecular changes that would increase endurance. But the second rodent group, which exercised for less than five minutes also showed the same molecular changes.

The potency of interval training is nothing new. Many athletes have been straining through interval sessions once or twice a week along with their regular workout for years. But what researchers have been looking at recently is whether humans, like that second group of rats, can increase endurance with only a few minutes of strenuous exercise, instead of hours? Could it be that most of us are spending more time than we need to trying to get fit?

The answer, a growing number of these sports scientists believe, may be yes.

“There was a time when the scientific literature suggested that the only way to achieve endurance was through endurance-type activities,” such as long runs or bike rides or, perhaps, six-hour swims, says Martin Gibala, PhD, chairman of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. But ongoing research from Gibala’s lab is turning that idea on its head. In one of the group’s recent studies, Gibala and his colleagues had a group of college students, who were healthy but not athletes, ride a stationary bike at a sustainable pace for between 90 and 120 minutes. Another set of students grunted through a series of short, strenuous intervals: 20 to 30 seconds of cycling at the highest intensity the riders could stand. After resting for four minutes, the students pedaled hard again for another 20 to 30 seconds, repeating the cycle four to six times (depending on how much each person could stand), “for a total of two to three minutes of very intense exercise per training session,” Gibala says.

Each of the two groups exercised three times a week. After two weeks, both groups showed almost identical increases in their endurance (as measured in a stationary bicycle time trial), even
though the one group had exercised for six to nine minutes per week, and the other about five hours. Additionally, molecular changes that signal increased fitness were evident equally in both groups. “The number and size of the mitochondria within the muscles” of the students had increased significantly, Gibala says, a change that, before this work, had been associated almost exclusively with prolonged endurance training. Since mitochondria enable muscle cells to use oxygen to create energy, “changes in the volume of the mitochondria can have a big impact on endurance performance.” In other words, six minutes or so a week of hard exercise (plus the time spent warming up, cooling down, and resting between the bouts of intense work) had proven to be as good as multiple hours of working out for achieving fitness. The short, intense workouts aided in weight loss, too, although Gibala hadn’t been studying that effect. “The rate of energy expenditure remains higher longer into recovery” after brief, high-intensity exercise than after longer, easier workouts, Gibala says. Other researchers have found that similar, intense, brief sessions of exercise improve cardiac health, even among people with heart disease.

There’s a catch, though. Those six minutes, if they’re to be effective, must hurt. “We describe it as an ‘all-out’ effort,” Gibala says. You’ll be straying “well out of your comfort zone.” That level of discomfort makes some activities better-suited to intense training than others. “We haven’t studied runners,” Gibala says. The pounding involved in repeated sprinting could lead to injuries, depending on a runner’s experience and stride mechanics. But cycling and swimming work well. “I’m a terrible swimmer,” Gibala says, “so every session for me is intense, just because my technique is so awful.”

Meanwhile, his lab is studying whether people could telescope their workouts into even less time. Could a single, two- to three-minute bout of intense exercise confer the same endurance and health benefits as those six minutes of multiple intervals? Gibala is hopeful. “I’m 41, with two young children,” he says. “I don’t have time to go out and exercise for hours.” The results should be available this fall.

For more information on interval training, go to Turbulence Training.com

In good health,


Rachel and Linda
http://losefatlivehealthy.com/

7- Minute Weight Loss Circuit

By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Turbulence Training

One thing we have to lose from our workout mindsets is the idea of this "60-minute workout". Forget about spending that much time in the gym. Instead, choose better exercises that are more efficient. This will allow you to get your workout done faster, eliminating the "no time" workout excuse.

To do so, you need to eliminate irrelevant exercises. I know you want to do an exercise for shoulders, and one for arms, and one for abs, and one for this and that. But before you do, ask yourself, will these really get me to my goal, or have I just been convinced by bodybuilding magazines that I need 40 sets per workout to get results?

Now, taking those lessons, we can then create some pretty incredible bodyweight workouts as well. And these bodyweight workouts can get finished fast!

In fact, here is a 7-minute bodyweight circuit that can help you lose weight, burn calories, and blast your metabolism. You don't need machines or weights. You can do this anywhere!

Circuit:

• Bodyweight squat (10-20 reps)


• Pushup (10-20 reps) - do it on your knees if you must


• Reverse Lunge (10 reps per leg)


• Plank (30 second hold)


• Close-grip Pushup (10-20 reps)


• Side Plank (20 second hold per side)


• Mountain Climber (10 reps per side)

Do this with no rest between exercises. Rest 1 minute at the end of the 7-minute circuit and repeat up to 3 times.

If you are a beginner, do fewer reps and take longer rests.

It's a tough, tough bodyweight circuit, especially the combination of two exercises late in the circuit. This combo literally exhausted me to my knees...twice...before I was able to finish the circuit.You can do the circuit up to 3 times.

Another weapon in your fat loss arsenal. Now you'll know how to train efficiently and eat effectively for fat loss.

Don't wait any longer to get started! Get all of these bodyweight exercises, and more, in the Turbulence Training workouts that you can do in the comfort of your own home. No more annoying drives to the gym, waiting in line for machines in an uncomfortable environment, or being intimidated by the super-buff gym bunnies. Lose fat, get fit, and workout your way - at home with only a bench, a ball, and dumbbells.

Sincerely,
Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training

About the Author
Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit TurbulenceTraining.com