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!

Before and After Workout Eating

In the past year since my Wife and I began learning how to live our healthy lifestyle, we learned volumes about nutrition and how our bodies utilize the different compounds.

Now that we are working out regularly and I am hitting the weights more often we wanted to make sure that we were fueling our bodies to be able to work out. Yes, the goal is to burn calories that are stored as fat, but you need more to go on to get the fire going to get the fat burning.

So I did some checking and many people have the same opinion on eating prior and after a workout.

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!

Keeping Track and Label Reading

Keeping a log of your weight loss and daily calorie counts is one of the many things you should be doing to monitor your progress as you change your nutrition and improve your health. Your mood, stress, sleep, exercise and water intake are other items that can be tracked as well as keeping a journal of how you are doing and commenting on your goals and failings as you go.

If I didn't have a way to keep track of my calorie, protein and fat intake daily I would never have lost the weight I did. Before you can keep track of these you need to know your way around the Nutrition Facts label found on most foods. This is where you start while shopping to see what foods are high in protein, low in carbohydrates and low in calories.

We start at the top of the label where it says "Serving Size". Just because that 20 oz soda fits in your hand doesn't mean its one serving. More after the jump.

Nutrition Plan

What you eat, when you eat and how much you eat are all very important for your health and general well being. Knowing what types of food you should eat and what types you should not eat is a subject for debate, but one we will try to tackle here.

The one thing you will not find here is any type of "diet". By "diet" I am referring to "Atkins", "South Beach", "Chicken Soup" and the never ending list of fad "diets" that seem to come and go. Some of these have good points, most, not so much.

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.