Top 6 Eating Tips For The Run Up To Christmas

I usually preface my blogs with some sort of intro, but these tips are pretty self-explanatory, so let's get to 'em:

1. Don't Fast Before Big Meals

Many people make the mistake of avoiding food altogether on days where they know that they're going to a holiday party or a big dinner.  It's a huge mistake.  First, you're far more liable to overeat if you haven't had anything in your stomach, so you're making a bad thing worse.  Second, when you don't eat regularly, your body enters fasting mode, lowering your metabolism and ensuring that you store much of your next meal as fat.

2. Drink Your H2O

Most people don't drink enough water.  Even fewer do it during the holidays.  Water is so crucial to everything your body does, and better yet, it helps fill your stomach and prevent overeating.

3. DON'T Drink Your Boose

It doesn't matter if it's beer, wine, cocktails or anything else, alcohol is an absolute no-no for slim waists.  Alcohol will help you put on body weight in so many different ways...

   -It's calorie dense

   -It's NOT satiating

   -You eat worse foods with it

   -It slows your body's fat burning mechanisms

As tempting as it is to carry around a drink at the holiday party, don't do it - unless it's water.

4. Eat Before Parties And Get-Togethers

Have something healthy to eat before you go to a party.  Try to include choices that are high in protein and fiber.  Veggies are always a great choice for food to eat before a party.  Just avoid the high-calorie dips - why everyone has to have their food dipped in some other food, I'll never know.  What I do know, those dips and sauces aren't going to do anything positive for your body composition.

5. Don't Snack On Little Treats

Make sure you know when you're going to eat and eat then.  Most parties - heck, most offices - have some sort of fatty, sugary treat sitting around just waiting to make your pants tighter.  Most holiday treats are 100 calories apiece - MINIMUM.  If you munch on just a couple of them a couple times a day.  It adds up to an average of 619 extra calories eaten each day during the holidays by your average American.

6. Moderation, Moderation, Moderation

At this point it may sound like I'm telling you to eat nothing but steamed veggies and chicken breast over the holidays.  Nope.  The key is, as always, moderation.  You should never, NEVER, binge on food.  I talked about this awhile ago, but "living a little" shouldn't involve doing something blatantly unhealthy, which binge eating most certainly is.  Give yourself a treat, but remember that your stomach is not as big as much of what we eat during the holidays.  It's amazing what a difference lowering your portion sizes can make.

3 Holiday Fitness Tips

The holidays are known for wreaking havoc on our bodies, and to put a stop to it, you need a concrete plan.  It's an easy time of the year to find excuses to eat lousy food and not workout.  Today, I'm going to focus on the working out with these three tips:

1. Book It

If you just treat exercise as something you'll "get around to," you're never going to get around to it.  Few people treat exercise as an appointment, but that's what it needs to become, even over the holidays.  

Not exercising has two main negatives.  First, you don't burn calories, leading to weight gain.  Second, you lose lean muscle mass, leading to a lower metabolism and again, more weight gain.  This is what makes figuring it out in January such a poor option - you've already cost yourself some very valuable weeks.

So make an appointment to exercise at least twice a week, preferably three times.  I STRONGLY recommend doing it in the morning, as the longer you go in your day without exercise, the more excuses you'll have to avoid doing it.

2. Shoot For A Number

Even though holiday schedules can be hectic, there are always little bits of daylight in every schedule, be it for a minute or five.  You have to seize on those moments.

Your body really doesn't much care whether it's done 100 squats in a five minute window or over the course of the entire day.  If you have a day where time is really tight, set a goal of exercise repetitions to complete over the course of a day.  Ten reps here and ten reps there take virtually no time but add up to big numbers at the end of the day.

Example: 

Squats - 200

Pushups - 100

DB or Band Rows - 100

This will easily keep you strong, or even help you gain strength over the holidays.  Keep in mind, however, that this is for very busy days.  Even though you're getting in your work, the optimal hormonal environment for fat loss is present only during periods of short rest.  Long rest periods can be just as beneficial for maintaining strength, but in terms of fat loss, really emphasize this strategy if things are truly hectic on a given day.

3. Don't Make Time For The Health Club

The holidays are a time when one of the most common images I can think of are crowded parking lots.  The last thing you need at this time of the year is more hustle and bustle.  Not wanting to find the time to go to the gym, find parking, battle for equipment (especially machines, which you should NOT be using, by the way) and all the other stuff that goes along with the health club "experience" becomes an easy excuse.

Workout from home, or find a workout buddy and go do something outside together.  I know that it's cold out - but it'll actually feel nice once you get moving (just ask the women in my Edmonds boot camp - after just a set or two, they're usually begging to open the windows and let in a little crisp air).

There you go.  Simple stuff, here.  Don't "get around" to exercise.  Find the little breaks in your day and do a few reps of exercise.  Don't worry about the health club.  Make sure you put it to use.

-Mark

aimfitcamp.com

Don't Eat a Lot to Live a Little

You've heard it before, right?

"C'mon, it's the holidays - live a little!"

Maybe you've heard it; maybe you've even said it.

I know I've said it to myself before.  But it's such a flawed way of looking at life.  You don't have to binge in order to enjoy Thanksgiving or any other time of the year.

But that's the kind of thinking that the statement enables - you're only living if you're doing something bad for you.  The holidays really bring this to the forefront.  You should be enjoying the holidays, but how did enjoying the company of family and friends get mixed up with binge eating and drinking.

Do your best to make the holidays about the people you love, not food.  You can enjoy their company without doing the things that cause most Americans to gain five to ten pounds over the holidays.  Of course you can enjoy some turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce on Thursday - I know I will.  But the point is that you don't eat until you're so stuffed you can barely move.  It's not healthy.  In spite of our cultural denial, it IS binge eating.  

Treat yourself to some of the foods you want this holiday season, but be reasonable in the coming weeks.

-Mark

aimfitcamp.com

See Those Compound Exercises in Action

Check out the video of me demonstrating the compound fat loss exercises I mentioned in my last blog.

Now that you know 'em, put 'em to use. And let me know what you think!

-Mark

aimfitcamp.com

The Best Exercises for Rapid Fat Loss

I constantly get asked questions about the best fat loss exercises.

To make it as simple as possible, the best exercises for fat loss are the ones that involve as many muscles as possible. Both research and anecdotal evidence back me up – total body workouts are superior for fat loss.

To really increase this effect, I often use combination movements to really increase the total body effect of the exercises I select. For example, squats are one of the best exercises you can possibly do – they are second to none for leg and hip strength, as well as being excellent for fat loss. They become even better when you combine them with, say, a row or a press. Squat rows and squat presses are not only effective – they’re effective in a very short amount of time.

It’s a simple equation, really:

More muscles involved equals more calories burned equals greater fat loss in less time.

I must be honest in that I have a true love-hate relationship with the following movements I am about to share with you. Love because of the unparalleled fat-melting, muscle-building results they provide to help maximize my sexy. Hate because they break me every single workout by leaving me in tears while in a pool of my own sweat. In other words, these are not for the weak of mind, body, or soul!

Without further adieu, here is my official top 10 list of the best exercises in the world for fat loss:

Exercise #1 - Squat Row

Exercise #2 - The Swing (can be done with dumbbells, kettlebells, medicine balls or sandbags)

Exercise #3 - Reverse Lunge to Shoulder Press

Exercise #4 - Squat Thrust

Exercise #5 - The Chop (can be done with dumbbells, kettlebells, medicine balls or sandbags)

Exercise #6 - Olympic Lifting Variations: Dumbbell or Kettlebell Cleans, Snatches, High Pulls

Exercise #7 - Side Plank w/ 1-Arm Press

Exercise #8 - Mountain Climber

Exercise #9 - Med Ball Slam

Exercise #10 - Single-Leg RDL plus Row

I will be including a highlight video of many of these exercises later this week so you can include them in your repertoire.

I hope you take my expert advice and ditch the piecemeal exercises (biceps curls, triceps extensions, ab crunches, etc.) in favor of total body exercises. I guarantee you better results in less time by regularly employing these movements into your workouts – they will really be taken to the next level.

-Mark

aimfitcamp.com

How to Use Circuits For Faster Fat Loss

Resistance training is typically approached in a straight set format.  Essentially, this means you do a predetermined number of reps of an exercise for or you perform as many reps as possible of an exercise and then rest anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes before repeating this a certain number of times based on your goals. 

So, what’s wrong with that?  Well, though straight sets are simple to explain and an easy place to start, they are also an extremely inefficient way to order your exercises.  In most commercial gyms you’ll typically see someone perform three sets of 10 reps of an exercise - let’s say a biceps curl.  They crank out 10 reps, go to the water fountain, chat it up with their friends, watch a couple of highlights on ESPN, and then gingerly walk back to finally do their second set.  In the case of three sets of 10 biceps curls it takes many a gym-goer up to 15 minutes to complete one single exercise. That means you’d need at least an hour to go through only four exercises!

A much more effective and time-efficient approach to ordering your exercises is utilizing the alternating set format.  Here you’ll perform one exercise, rest for a short period of time, then perform another non-competing exercise, rest for a short period of time, and so on.  Alternating sets allow you to work different areas of your body when you'd otherwise be sitting on your butt waiting to start your next set.  Plus, by working another area of your body with a non-competing exercise you allow your body to recover from the previous exercise or exercises.  The result is more work accomplished in less time, the cornerstone of any sound fat loss program.  There are several ways to perform alternating sets outlined below:

1.) Supersets: Alternate between two different non-competing exercises (e.g. upper body and lower body such as push-ups and lunges)

2.) Trisets: Alternate between three different exercises (e.g. push, pull, and lower body such as push-ups, rows, and lunges)

3.) Circuits: Alternate between four or more different exercises

All of these are great training options, and I use all of them in my Boot Camps.  To show you why, that a look at one of my favorite circuits, the 50-10 Five Exercise Circuit.  In this circuit, you alternate between 50 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest for all five exercises, a total of five minutes (and what a five minutes it is!).  It's an easy plug and play workout format, and I've included what I feel is the strongest way to utilize it (examples in parentheses):

Exercise #1 - Double Leg (Squats)

Exercise #2 - Push (Push-ups)

Exercise #3 - Single Leg (Reverse Lunges)

Exercise #4 - Pull (Compound Rows)

Exercise #5 - Core (Bicycles)

You can do this once, and then do a different circuit, or you can do it up to four times for a 20-minute total body fat burning workout (make sure you work your way up to a 20-minute workout if you value getting out of bed the next morning!).

Basically, in the same 15 minutes that it took to get in three sets of biceps curls you could have done three sets of five different exercise for a total of 15 work sets!  Plus, the intensity on each exercise will be just as high as in the straight set format because in this five exercise circuit you will have full recovery with over four minutes before you return to any given exercise (just as you did with the straight set format described earlier).

The key to creating the optimal hormonal environment for fat loss is to perform each exercise with maximal intensity while separated by brief rest periods in order to accumulate a high volume of total body work in the shortest amount of time possible. Circuit training gives you the best of both worlds and is flat-out unmatched for maximizing fat loss and lean muscle gain.

I’ll be sharing some more great circuit training workouts from my boot camps in the weeks to come, so keep visiting!

Yours in health,
Mark Haner

www.aimfitcamp.com

Partner Up For Results

In my newsletter last week, I talked about partnering up for exercise.

Few things can make you work as hard as having someone to work with.

But there is a flip side to this.  A lot of people who think they have a "workout buddy" actually have a "conversation buddy."

If you want to workout with a partner so you have someone to talk to, then you're doing it for the wrong reason.  Be honest with yourself, are you working hard if you can carry on a conversation?  I sincerely doubt it.  And if you're not getting after it, you're going to have to workout a lot longer than you want to in order to get results out of it.

Workout with a partner so you have someone to push you.

Grab a friend and try this four-minute workout.  I recommend that your entire workout last longer than four minutes (I would use these four minutes as just one element of a full workout), but if you are really in a time crunch, four minutes can get you a really tough workout, especially when working with a partner.

One partner will be at Station A, setting the pace.  Station A is 15 pushups.  The other partner will be at Station B, which will involve running between two cones (or shoes, or sweatshirts - something to mark out the distance) spaced ten yards apart.  Both partners will be working for the entire four minutes.  While one partner is doing 15 pushups, the other will be touching as many cones as possible on the run.  Once the 15 pushups are complete, you switch places.  Keep switching stations as many times as possible (read: get after it on the run and the pushups).  Once four minutes are up, you're done - and believe me, you'll be done!