Top 5 Things You Need to Reach Your New Year's Resolution

Happy 2011, Readers!

As a new year begins, so does the most common resolution:  "Eat healthier, and lose weight in the new year."  Don't let yourself become another statistic who tried and failed.  Below are the top five things you need to know to make sure you reach the success that you're setting out to achieve!

#5.  The fifth most important thing that you need to know involves flexibility training and its role in fat burning.  While not all flexibility methods are exactly alike, flexibility exercise usually involves "holding a stretch" for a given length of time (20-60 seconds is recommended by the ACSM for most populations, whereas yoga, Pilates, and some other disciplines encourage different durations).  Unlike moderate-to-high intensity cardiovascular or resistive exercise, flexibility conditioning tends to burn a relatively low number of calories per minute, even if you're sweating or "feeling the burn" to a great degree.  For the most part, you can't expect to lose much body fat from a standard flexibility regimen.  Keep that in mind when you're planning your exercise, meal plans, and total caloric consumption/expenditure, to avoid misleading yourself or setting yourself up for disappointment.

#4.  The fourth most important fact to keep in mind is that selecting an appropriate frequency and duration for your exercises is paramount.  We've all seen the "5-Minute Secret" books and strategies, that promise you the world if you just devote five minutes per day to exercise.  What we haven't seen is an example of any of these mythological systems actually working properly for people.  Science shows us that 20-60 minutes of cardiovascular exercise at moderate to high intensities is recommended for most of us, five days per week or more.  And, strength training should be performed at least twice per week for every major muscle group.  To burn more body fat and keep it off, do your best to free up enough time in your schedule to allow this.  "Some" is always better than nothing, but following these recommendations is the key to long-lasting fat-loss success and longer life.

#3.  Now, let's discuss a key ingredient: intensity!  People everywhere are performing cardiovascular and strength work at inappropriate intensities -- some too high and some too little.  The truth is that most muscles will not improve much without at least 60% of their maximum tolerated resistance.  This generally means that two, three, or even five pound dumbbells won't usually do the trick once you've been exercising for more than a few months.  (Consult with your Perfect Personal Trainer for more specifics regarding your own muscles and heart conditioning.)  And, to remain free of cardiovascular disease, we need more than a light walk; we need to challenge our aerobic systems and progress safely over time.

#2.  Is there a limit to the amount of "healthy food" that you should be eating?  Absolutely!  Regardless of a food's (or a drink's) health benefits, the term "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" still applies.  Eating healthy foods is of tremendous importance, but the amount of those foods is what really makes the difference when you're on the road to fitness success.  Too many calories is too many calories, plain and simple.  Your Perfect Personal Trainer will help you to determine some safe and effective parameters in line with ACSM and AHA guidelines.

#1.  The number one thing you need to know as you embark on your quest for a healthier, leaner body?  Body Composition.  "Weight" is the measuring stick of yesterday, and "body composition" (also referred to as "fat percentage") is the gold standard for knowing the truth about your body and your risk for cardiovascular disease.  Here is the proof:
What if, after 5 weeks on your new exercise regimen, you lose 10 pounds of fat but gain 7 pounds of muscle, 1 pound of bone, and carry an extra 2 pounds of water in your body?  Your body weight would be the exact same as it was, right?  But, yet, you'd have made some excellent changes to your physique that would go unnoticeable when you look at a standard scale.  For this reason, we strongly recommend a body composition assessment by an in-home Perfect Personal Trainer.  This is truly the best way to evaluate your condition and how you progress.  Best of all, it's a good indicator of your risk for health problems such as heart disease or stroke.

Thank you all for your accomplishments and support in 2010!!  We've shed more pounds and improved more lives this year than ever before, as we've continued to expand throughout the country.  We look forward to serving you, your families, and your businesses even more in 2011 and beyond.  As always, we encourage your questions in the comment box below, or by calling 877-698-DO-IT (3648).  Our top exercise scientists and physiologists are always here to help!

We wish you all the safe, happy, and healthy New Year that you deserve!

The Fad Diet Solution

Hello, readers!

With another holiday weekend now behind us, we have to ask:  Did you make poor food selections?  And, more importantly, did you overconsume calories?

It's times like these that people start considering any of the number of fad diets out there...

Low carb, high carb, low fat, no fat, cookie diet, pure liquid, and one of the recent worst -- the “egg, vinegar, and water diet” -- all have some potential for weight loss over a moderate amount of time, but with unhealthy physiological risks.  It is important to remember that weight loss shouldn't carry risky side effects.  Low carb diets, for example, are especially dangerous because the dieter is cutting out the body’s main energy source.  As another example, low fat diets are dangerous because they minimize the body's ability to absorb and utilize vitamins.  Trading one health problem for another is no way to get things done. And, if you are doing some unhealthy for your body, the symptoms won't be obvious.  While you may feel just fine during a fad diet, there may be some dangerous underlying issues that you are not aware of.
So, before considering one of these fad diets at any point in the future, we suggest that you rely on tried-and-true science, using the labels' serving sizes as helpful quantity guides. Below is a list of foods and their respective serving sizes from The American Heart Association and the government's food pyrimid.  These suggestions are recommended for their cardiovascular health benefits as well as their ability to help maintain adequate body fat.  Not only will you be on the road to heart attack prevention, but these will help you to maintain energy levels while minimizing your body fat!  Have a look and compare to your current diet diary...

Below are the recommended daily number of servings for a 150-180 lb person:

Vegetable Servings Per Day:  3-7 Servings
Examples of a serving:

• ½ cup of cooked vegetable
• ½ cup raw vegetable
• 6 ounces or ¾ cup of vegetable juice

Fruit Servings Per Day:  2-3 Servings
Examples of a serving:

• 1 medium fruit (apple, orange, banana)
• ¼ cup of dried fruit (raisins, prunes, etc.)
• 6 ounces or ¾ cup of fruit juice
• ½ cup canned, frozen, or cooked fruit
• ½ cup raw fruit

Whole Grain Servings Per Day:  6-11 Servings
Examples of a serving:

• 1 slice of bread
• About 1 cup of ready-to-eat cereal flakes
• ½ cup of cooked cereal, rice or pasta

Dairy Servings Per Day:  3 Servings
Examples of a serving:

• 1 cup of milk or yogurt
• 1-½ ounces of natural cheese (cheddar)
• 2 ounces of processed cheese (such as American)

Legumes Per Day:  4-5 Servings
Examples of a serving:

• ½ cup of cooked, dry beans
• ½ cup of tofu or 1 ½ -ounce soy burger
• 2 tablespoons of peanut butter
• 1/3 cup of nuts

These are important considerations when meal planning.  As you can see, a "serving" is pre-determined, not necessarily the amount you can comfortably have in a sitting. 

We, at Perfect Personal Training, hope this helps as you plan your meals each day!  For more nutritional information, please comment below or send an email to info@perfectpersonaltraining.com.  Our staff of highly trained exercise specialists and nutritionists are always eager to help with your personalized lifestyle change.


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Is BMI Obsolete?

Hello, faithful readers!

This may be our most important post of the last year -- especially for those of you with an unhealthy body composition.  We encourage you to read this posting and respond with questions or comments, as the information below may help revolutionize the medical approach to weight management.

Since PPT's inception, we've declared that the Body Mass Index (BMI) is an inaccurate method of evaluating one's risk for fat-related disease.  Our reasoning?  BMI does not determine any difference between a person's fat weight and lean tissue.  This means that if you were to gain ten pounds of hard-earned muscle while losing ten pounds of excess fat, your BMI would stay the exact same, and your doctor would likely tell you that your exercise efforts were not paying off in terms of fat loss.  Imagine that... You lose fat, gain muscle, and then hear that your BMI hasn't improved.  You'd be making tremendous progress, but you'd be likely to become discouraged from a lack of understanding.  Unlike our methods of body composition assessment (also called body fat percentage assessment), The BMI is a simple system that looks at fat, bone, water and muscle as all falling into one category:  weight.

The medical community has continued to rely on the BMI because of it's simplicity and ease.  And, for non-exercisers, it has some merit (until they begin exercising and gaining muscle, at which point it becomes misleading).  From its inception the Body Mass Index has been questioned for its numerous flaws, and other quick and easy means have been evaluated.  But finally, researchers from the University of Michigan seem to have something on the horizon that is just as simple, but that illustrates a more accurate assessment of health risk.
After assessing anthropometrics, or body circumferences in more than 1100 children ages 6 to 18, correlations were found between neck circumference and risk for later diseases such as obstructive sleep apnea, diabetes, or high blood pressure.  Whereas abdominal obesity is not taken into account with the BMI scale, it does seem to correlate quite well to these neck circumference measurements, thereby leading the researchers to feel that neck measurement would present a more meaningful value to patients than the BMI.

Neck circumference and risk stratification charts are not currently available, but should become so in the near future. In the meantime, rely on direct measurements of body fat (body composition) with your Perfect Personal Trainer, along with anthropometric measurements to predict risks to health and to assess proper lifestyle modification.

Learn more about your risk factors and the best ways to reduce them!  Call (877)698-DO-IT (3648) to speak with a Perfect Personal Trainer.  We're even happy to schedule a free consultation, right in your home or office, and to evaluate your risk factors for you and your family.

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Lack of Sleep... Slow, Sluggish, & a Bigger Belly?

We at PPT hope you had a safe & happy Mothers' Day!

The effects of sleep duration are gaining more and more attention among wellness professionals. Getting the right quality and quantity of sleep is not only essential to optimizing mental and physical recuperation, it may be essential to preventing obesity.

In a recent study published in the journal Sleep, researchers from Wake Forest University reported that getting less than 5 hours of sleep or more than 8 hours of sleep leads to increased intra-abdominal fat when compared to those who sleep for 6 or 7 hours.

More than 1,000 Americans were interviewed to obtain information on sleep habits, nutrition, physical activity and lifestyle. They also participated in a CT scan, which was used to assess both visceral and subcutaneous abdominal fat. Baseline measurements were then compared to a re-assessment five years later.

Participants who slept less than 5 hours a night experienced a 32% increase in deep abdominal fat over 5 years, while those who averaged more than 8 hours of sleep increased by 22%. Subcutaneous abdominal fat increased similarly.

After factoring in lifestyle factors such as total calorie intake, education levels, physical activity and smoking, sleep duration persisted as an independent risk factor for increased abdominal adiposity, especially in participants under 40.

Researchers offer broad speculation to explain the cause and effect relationship of sleep to fat gain. The primary explanations involved increased daytime fatigue, which limits energy to participate in physical activity. In addition, some believe in the potential for sleep deprivation to inhibit appetite-suppressing hormones, thus leading to overeating.

We hope you found this research to be helpful in your daily decision-making. And, if you're not already taking these supplements, then please do yourself a favor and include them in your daily routine to reduce your family's risk for athersclerosis and other chronic health conditions while battling the effects of aging!




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Should Your Muscles Be Sore? Important News!!

At Perfect Personal Training, we're privy to some of the more common misunderstandings relating to the struggles of fat loss.

Often, exercisers assume that a "good workout" is defined by the level of muscle fatigue and soreness. Basically, many people believe that if their muscles are sore the day following a workout, that they have done themselves some definite good.

Others believe the opposite: Some people believe that muscular soreness is an indication of overworking muscles, and that some damage may have been done unnecessarily. These people tend to lower their selected intensities after days of muscular soreness.

So, we now address the scientific truth of muscular soreness.

Muscular soreness that begins within 24 hours of exercising is generally associated with the buildup of biproduct within the muscles. It is common in both effective as well as in ineffective workouts. That's true! Muscular soreness that begins within 24 hours of a workout does not necessarily mean that you've gained significant lean tissue, nor that you have burned body fat either. Adequate sleep and water intake as well as a well-designed stretching regimen post-workout will minimize or eliminate this soreness and make you more comfortable.

Now, some muscular soreness doesn't begin for two or three days following exercise. While this type of muscular soreness can still be minimized through adequate water, sleep, and appropriate stretching, this is more of an indication of muscular growth. This "delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS)" is a sign that your muscles are in the process of improving their contractile properties, strength, and endurance. But, keep in mind that you might make your muscles grow very nicely even without this DOMS occurance -- especially if you're getting proper nutrition, sleep, and flexibility training.

We at Perfect Personal Training truly hope that this will help you to make proper exercise-related decisions for the rest of your life. Do you still have questions on this or other related subjects? Please feel welcome to reply below, or to call us at (877)698-DO-IT (3648) anytime. We are here to help America get stronger, healthier, leaner, and more confident!

The TV Workout -- Part Three: Cardiovascular

Hello, Readers!

We have important news for you: The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that cardiovascular exercise be performed at least five days per week for 20-60 minutes at a time. This helps to control blood pressure and cholesterol while promoting a stronger heart and lungs. This form of exercise doesn't have to be boring. Here are some great ways to burn bodyfat and improve cardiorespiratory health while watching movies and TV, right at home:

Marching in Place -- Alternate from one leg to the other, raising your knee up high and maintaining a neutral posture. Do not continue if this causes back pain. You can also step forward and backward with this movement or swing your arms with it for a more intense workout.

Jumping Jacks -- If your knee, hip, and ankle joints are in good health, then consider putting bouts of jumping jacks in your cardiovascular training. You can modify intensity by changing the height of your jumps or the range of movements of your arms or legs.

Kicks -- Stand on one leg and perform repeated kicks with the other. Or, alternate from one leg to the other while you continue. For greater intensity, kick higher or hold your arms out to the side while you kick.

Side Kicks -- Stand on one leg and kick out to your right or left. This is an unusual movement, so attempt it lightly at first. Eventually, you can kick higher and with more force if you are feeling comfortable and not experiencing any knee or hip trouble.

Punching -- Stand with your legs at about shoulder width for a strong base of support. Alternate from one arm to the other as you punch straight in front of you. Do not fully extend your arms at the end of each movement, as it may damage your elbows.

Back Kicks -- Stabilizing your hands on a couch or table, bring one leg back behind you. Act slowly at first, and gradually increase the movement over time.

Jogging in Place -- This is another great way to exercise your cardiovascular system. This may be abrasive, so avoid any heavy stomping and discontinue if your knees or hips feel painful.

We hope this helps! As always, we encourage you to consult your Perfect Personal Trainer with questions, or to call us at (877)698-DO-IT (3648). Stay healthy and strong!

Thanksgiving Calories... Where Are They Now?

It's universally-accepted knowledge that the average American gains body fat during the holidays, as a result of overconsuming calories.

It is also universally-accepted to know that the overwhelming majority of Americans either do not exercise, or do not exercise with enough intensity or duration to remove the excess body fat.

Is it noticeable?

The extra fat often goes undetected because people don't notice a big enough difference in their own bodies to recognize it. One's bodyweight often remains roughly the same, and clothes don't feel significantly tighter... So, if we're gaining body fat, then why isn't it more obvious?

One reason is that our bodyweights fluctuate throughout the day, often by up to 2%. With this, a gain in body fat of less than one pound, which is a common amount of fat to gain in one holiday season, often goes undetected and gets lost in the mix of daily bodyweight fluctuation.

Clothes can be misleading also, as gained body fat may get distributed rather evenly throughout a body, which makes it more difficult to notice in clothes. On the flipside of that thought, most of the new fat may be stored in one place that would not affect the way clothes feel. For example, additional body fat on the back of the arms may not result in a "tight feeling" against a loose-fitting short-sleeved shirt.

Another reason is that we often lose muscle as we gain body fat, which tends to balance out the scale. While this is not always the case, we should accept and understand that our muscles are atrophying (shrinking) when they aren't being challenged enough or when they aren't getting the right amounts of protein at the right times. With holiday stress, missed workouts, and a general lack of proper amounts of protein, it is a safe assumption that we are not just gaining body fat, but that we are losing muscle as well, which will minimize any change in the total amount of actual bodyweight.

What Can You Do?

First and foremost, commit to more regular moderate-to-high intensity cardiovascular exercise for at least six weeks. As a very broad generalization, just one or two more 30-60 minute workouts per week, in addition to what you already do, should partially or completely remove the additional body fat. Please keep in mind that this is a generalization based on mean values for the average American and will not have personal accuracy.

Secondly, have your body fat percentage (also called "body composition") checked by a PPT professional, and re-check after the holiday season. This should serve as a good indicator as to whether or not your caloric consumption throughout the holidays was having a drastic effect on your body. If it is, as it is with most Americans, then we can determine a plan to create a safe caloric deficit.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that any extra, unneeded calories that you consumed at Thanksgiving (or at any other time) will either remain in your body as fat or will be lost through activity and/or a caloric deficit. They won't magically disappear as their own, as some may hope, but they are well under your control!

Defining Nutrition

Keywords: Fat loss, Body weight, Lose weight

Losing weight means "eating healthy", right?

Let's think about this....

Apples are healthy. Avacados are healthy. Rice is healthy.

But, would a meal of these three foods always equate to fat loss?

Today's lesson is a short one: "Health" and "losing bodyfat" are not the same thing. In fact, they are often greatly opposed to one another. Separate the way you see the two: "Healthy" food choices don't have to lead to fat loss or vice versa.