Morning Workouts

When my Wife and I started eating better and exercising more we had joined a local nutrition club where we learned a lot and we exercised with them as well as at home. They helped us get started but they have moved their club to be closer to where they want to be. I'm very happy for them but I miss the Boot Camp workouts they did weekly.

Since they moved I've had a harder time doing workouts at home. Many of us have busy lives and fitting in a solid 30 to 45 min workout sometimes is hard between helping with homework or cooking dinner or the thousand other things families have to do.

We decided that if we wanted to maintain our level of fitness that we would have to workout at different times during the day, so we joined a gym. My wife goes during her lunch break for a 30 min workout and heads back to the office.

I can go to the gym after work, but I sometimes cook dinner so we plan it out that my afternoon sessions coincide with a slow cooker dinner. What I really enjoy is hitting the gym before work. There are only a handful of people there, I have my pick of the machines and the locker room is cleaner. I only have to get up a half hour earlier and can get in a 45 min workout most days and still get to work on time.

I pack my lunch the night before and put my work clothes in the car. I get up, put on my gym clothes and head straight out. Then I feel good for the whole day and I can still go home and walk the dog after dinner and maybe squeeze in 20 min of yoga for a good end of the day stretch. We still get out on the weekends for hikes and bike rides or just a walk around town when time allows. The goal is to find what works for you.

Find the time to workout when you can, wherever you can, for as long as you can. Just Get Moving!

My Workout - Office Abs

During the Winter months its hard to get out at lunch time for a walk or a run and my fitness center is too far away to get a 30 minute workout done during lunch.

I do have space at work to do some simple exercises to keep my abs toned up and I don't feel like I'm wasting the day not getting a workout in.

Below is my 10 min Office Abs Workout.

1 Min 30 Sec: Seated Knee lifts

·         Sit up straight, lift both feet off the floor 3 inches and contract your abs, hold for 10 seconds. Repeat.

1 Min: Seated bicycles

·         Sit on the edge of your chair and lean back some; start moving your legs in a pedaling motion for one minute.

1 Min: Seated Russian twists

·         Sit on your desk or floor, lean back and keep your knees bent and feet off the floor. Hold a water bottle, or clasp your hands together and drop your hands next to your hips to the left, then the right. Repeat for one minute.

1 Min: Front plank

1 Min: Left side plank

1 Min: Right side plank

1 Min: Crunches

1 Min: Leg drop

·       Raise both legs toward the ceiling. Breathe in and tighten your abs. Exhale and slowly lower your legs until they’re about four inches above the floor (or as low as you can go without lifting the small of your back). Pause and breathe in. Breathe out as you raise your legs to the starting position.

1 Min: Scissors

·         Raise both legs toward the ceiling. Keeping them straight, lower your left leg until it’s about six inches off the floor. Lift your head and shoulders off the floor and grasp the back of your right leg, gently pulling it toward you. Switch legs and repeat on other side.

30 Sec: Seated Bicycles 

Rest for 15 seconds between exercises.

If you are feeling ambitious, do a second set with a 1 min rest between sets.

My Workout - Yoga for Beginners

When most guys hear "Yoga", they get this mental image of a bunch of hippies all sitting around, wearing unusual looking clothing and doing odd body poses looking for their "inner peace".  While Yoga for many is a spiritual endeavor as well as a physical one, it is also a great way to mix up your workout routine and add some flexibility back into your life.

How many of you have lower back problems? Yeah, I know, all of you. OK, Personal story time. A few years ago I really messed up my back shoveling snow from the roof of my house one winter. My chiropractor had a hard time adjusting me and finally sent me for x-rays that revealed the issue. See the image after the jump.

Common Tasks Count

We know that adding exercise to our lifestyle will make us healthier and burn extra calories, but what if we are too busy doing all the things we need to do to keep our house clean or yard neat or even shopping?

Well I have good news for you! Those common tasks count toward your burned calorie goal!  See, if we can burn at least 500 extra calories every day, then the weight will start to come off. Below are some calories burned for some of those common tasks we do every day.

Before and After

These are me taken January 2012

These are me taken August 2012, 42 pounds lighter and a whole lot leaner. 

If you have doubts that you can lose weight, put them aside. If I can do it, you can do it.

How Did I Do It?

If you've read all the articles I've posted so far on health & fitness, what to eat and when to eat, you may be thinking "is there something else he's done to lose weight?" Yes. Yes there is. I started using Herbalife products when I started to change my eating and exercise habits in Jan 2012 and continue to use them daily. Combined with exercise, as of this posting I've lost a total of 35 pounds and am leaner with better muscle tone than ever.

Herbalife weight management products are based on a simple concept, cellular nutrition. It all comes down to how well your body can absorb the good nutrients you put into it everyday. The Herbalife Quick Start program is what I used to begin my weight loss by drinking a Formula 1 shake with 8 oz of milk for breakfast, having a healthy snack in the mid-morning, a Formula 1 shake for lunch, 2 more snacks in the afternoon, and eating a good meal for dinner. The Formula 2 Multivitamin is taken three times a day, and the Formula 3 Cell Activator is an aloe vera based supplement that aids the absorption of nutrients and cell reproduction in the body. The Quick Start also comes with a powdered Herbal Tea that naturally helps boost your metabolism, added to water I drink 3 servings of it daily.

Now, do you need to use these products to lose weight. No. If you follow all the other articles on this blog on how to eat, what to eat and when to eat, you can achieve the same results I have. However, having two of your meals ready to go with all the needed protein and nutrition is simply a "No Brainer".  It takes some of the guess work out of eating breakfast and lunch and is exactly what I needed to lose weight and get in shape.

If you have a hard time eating breakfast in the morning, then a shake is a quick and easy way to get fueled up. Always going out for lunch? Mix a shake at home, put it in a cooler and take it with you to work. Pack your lunch with your healthy snacks and go home and have a great dinner.

If you want more information on the Herbalife products or want to view the product line, visit my ordering site.
https://www.goherbalife.com/40somethingfitness/en-US

There are videos and health articles there that will help you with your weight loss goals.

Protein Drinks

There are allot of protein drinks on the market aimed at providing nutrition for the average persons workout right up through the heavy weight body builder. Below are links to Consumer Reports and a review posted in Triathlete Magazine for Herbalife 24 Rebuild Strength.

I have used the Herbalife 24 Product after my Bike rides and heavier weight workouts and I can tell you from personal experience that my muscles feel much better and recover faster with the Herbalife 24 Rebuild.

Target, FAT!

I think we all want to believe there is a secret to weight loss. With so many different companies claiming that pill X or solution Y will solve all your problems with their simple solution, you start to believe that its true.

The ones that really get me is the ones that target specific areas. "Lose Belly Fat Now!" ""Removes Fat From Thighs!" " Eat This Food and Burn That Specific Body Fat!" Claims like these and many others that make the statement that their solution will remove fat from a specific area of the body, unless its a doctor performing liposuction, are a fabrication.

While its true that there are foods that will help boost and raise your metabolism, they don't target a specific area of the body. I mean, how does the food know where the fat is? It doesn't, the raised metabolism is what is burning the saved calories throughout the body as a whole. The same is true of all those metabolism boosting pills and capsules you can purchase to "Burn Off The Pounds!"

On the same line of thinking, there is no magic exercise that targets belly fat or thunder thighs or even man boobs. Regular cardiovascular exercise combined with a healthy balanced diet, with the correct sized portions, with your daily total intake of calories below 2000 for most guys, will burn the stored fat. Period.

Face it, It takes hard work, dedication, will power and real effort to lose weight consistently over time. Time is the other thing it takes. The weight didn't get there overnight so don't expect to lose it overnight either.

The bottom line it that there is no quick and simple solution to losing fat. Accept that you will have to put in some work and get started!

My Workout - Calisthenics Routine

I see all the advertisements and commercials for different types of equipment that will help you build the muscle tone you are looking for and have that "Greek God" body. The reality is that you don't need any of that at. Having lean muscle helps burn calories, so the goal is to tone up the muscles and simple calisthenics are easy to do.

I looked back to the Physical Training or PT we did while I was in the Army and decided to put together a routine that you can do with little or no equipment. The only thing specific I use is a small medicine ball, other than that its just your body weight that you are lifting.

I begin this workout with some aerobic warm up, jumping jacks work well for this. Below is the complete routine done in no specific order.

My Workout - Upper Body with weights

The one thing I didn't want to do when I started a fitness plan was to invest in a lot of workout or exercise "devices" to tone up and work the various muscle groups. There are too many of them on the market and some are just too specialized to give a whole body workout.

One of my favorite TV Chefs, Alton Brown, will say the same thing about kitchen utensils, "No Uni-taskers!" Free weights like dumbbells can be used in many exercises so they are the way to go.

So I purchased a basic set of 40 lb dumbbells that have interchangeable weights. I can set them to 8, 15 and 20 lbs each and they allow me to do most toning and upper body exercises. I searched many fitness websites looking for various types of dumbbell exercises that I felt would work the muscle groups I wanted to tone up. I found that there are multiple exercises that will work the same muscles, so I tried many to find the ones I liked.

I do the following exercises in no real order.

• Flat Chest Presses
• Flat Chest Flies
• Seated Shoulder Presses
• Front Arm Raises
• Single Arm Row
• Upright Row
• Hammer Curls
• Triceps Kickbacks

I do a different amount of repetitions depending on the exercise and only two sets total with a minute rest between sets. The amount of repetitions varies as the strength of each of the muscle groups are different. The goal is to work the muscles to near exhaustion, pause, then do the second set. Over time you will increase the number of repetitions per set or even add a third set.

After a thorough upper body workout you should wait a few days before repeating the workout to allow the muscles to rebuild. Perform a good cardio workout or work the lower body over the next day or so and repeat the upper body after two or three days.

The website www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/dumbbellexercises.html helped me by not only explaining the various exercises for the different muscle groups, but by providing an animated picture showing how to do each exercise.

Get some exercise

Exercise is an important part of getting into shape and staying healthy. Even walking your dog for 30 minutes helps burn a few calories. If you haven't been exercising for awhile I suggest taking it slow and perhaps even see your doctor first. 

There are three basic types of exercise you can do, flexibility, aerobic and anaerobic.