6 Reasons Why Weighing Yourself is a Bad Idea

It’s like one on hand we believe that our weight is not the end-all-be-all of health and fitness, but we simply cannot stand the idea of not looking. Most women weigh themselves daily–and their whole day is dictated by “the number.”

Click Here to read the rest of this article...

Synergize

Synergy … Kind of sounds like I’m going to talk about corporate strategy and team cohesiveness, and all that jazz, right?

As a point of fact, the very inspiration of this article series, Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, uses synergy as one of the interpersonal habits. While I believe it has merit, and I will touch on that aspect of it, I’m taking a whole different approach to the concept.

Click here to read the rest of this article... 

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

No wait, it's okay. This is a lie that you can do something about. I'm here, today, to give you a warning about the lie you'll tell yourself on New Year's Eve.

Actually there are four lies you'll tell yourself, according to Dax Moy, a UK based personal trainer. In a PDF document he released in 2006, he goes into detail about the four lies and a six-step plan to avoid having your New Year's resolution fall by the wayside as in previous years.

I'll give you a rundown of the document and my interpretations...

Put First Things First

This is probably my favorite habit because this is the habit of personal discipline.  You may be wondering why a habit about discipline is my favorite.  That's a great question.  The answer can be read in detail here on our CFS Fitness & Weight Loss Blog. 

This is the 4th installment in the series 10 Habits of Highly Effective Exercisers, taken from Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Impossible is Nothing

Begin With the End in Mind

"If you aim at nothing, you'll get it every time." -Zig Zigler

I thought that would be a great quote to start this blog post on creating goals and plans. This is another post in the series I'm calling The 10 Habits of Highly Effective Exercisers.

Begin with the end in mind is the second of Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and is the second in my list as well. 

Here is my take on this point...

Kind of a motivational video about working out

VO2 Max vs. Lactate Threshold For Performance Measurement

What is VO2 Max? Simply stated, it’s the maximum amount of oxygen you’re able to deliver (or process) to your muscles when you’re working your body at its hardest. The more you can process, the faster you can go, or the harder you can work...

Click Here to read the complete article via CFS Weight Loss Camp.

Being Proactive

This is a continuation of the blog post 10 Habits of Highly Effective Exercisers. If you'll recall, the first habit was "Be Proactive," which was directly *borrowed* from Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  

Read this article on the CFS Fitness Vacations website.
 

View STOP Obesity Alliance's "Are Words Weighing Us Down?" Webinar

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/View-STOP-Obesity-Alliance-s--Are-Words-Weighing-Us-Down---Webinar.html?soid=1101739393974&aid=p5SivgOWLwk

Is THIS why you can't find time to exercise?

This is kind of a long video, but it's worth watching. You'll see what I mean. If you like it, leave a comment below.

The Hierarchy of Fat Loss

I’ve been training people for a long time. I own a gym that has several trainers training several people. Despite all the athletes we’ve worked with over the years, by far the single biggest client request has been fat loss.

I’ve made more money from the fat loss market than any other single client group. Over the years my methods have evolved and been refined by what I see in the gym. Simply put, if I can get 20 pounds of fat off a client faster than my competition, I have a higher demand for my services.

Click here to learn more about the secret to the Hierarchy of Fat Loss.

Written by Alwyn Cosgrove, republished by Core Fitness Solution with permission.

15 Tips to Restart the Exercise Habit (and How to Keep It)

It’s okay, you can finally admit it. It’s been two months since you’ve seen the inside of the gym. Getting sick, family crisis, overtime at work and school papers that needed to get finished all kept you for exercising.

Now, the question is: how do you start again?


Reprinted from: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/15-tips-to-restart-the-exercise-habit-and-how-to-keep-it.html

Weight Loss Plateaus And How To Break Through Them

Weight loss plateaus can be frustrating, even maddening! It happens especially when you get down to that “last 10 lbs” or when you drop a lot of weight, and you hit the “good” body fat category, but you’re an “overachiever” and you still want to get even leaner… all the way to “ripped”, or at least lean enough to see your abs. It’s a challenge, but there IS something you can do about it.

Click Here to read the full article.

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About Bodybuilding & Fat Loss Coach, Tom Venuto

Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer, certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book in Internet history, "Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle.” Tom has written hundreds of articles and been featured in IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development and Men’s Exercise. To get more information about Tom's e-book about natural fat loss, visit the home page at: www.BurnTheFat.com

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Fast Weight Loss

Over the last few decades, our society has turned from one of patience and reaping what we sow to one of MTV and microwave ovens, which is to say we have lost our cultural patience and developed societal ADD.  We want it, and we want it NOW!  Bearing this observation in mind, it should come as no surprise that one of the most often-asked questions of me is, "How do I lose X amount of pounds by such-and-such date?"  

If you're searching for the same answers, click here to read the whole story...
 

Top Ten Tips for Dining Out

10 Habits of Highly Effective Exercisers

I have long been a fan of Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and I have always wanted to put them into fitness terms.  I'm not really sure why I've waited until now to actually execute the plan, but hey, better late than never, right?

I have a convention, though ... about the time I was first introduced to the book, I was working as a pizza delivery driver.  At that chain, we were expected to memorize the company's core values.  I have since taken these values and morphed them into fitness concepts, giving me a total of 10. 

You can read them all here.

Holiday Survival Guide 2.0

Holiday Survival Guide 2.0

They’re baaaaaack. 

The holidays make some squeal with delight while evoking in others the need to curl up in the fetal position.  If you’re struggling with your weight, the holidays can seem like all-out war (and they don’t even follow the Geneva Convention)!

Now’s the time to prepare for battle, and if you follow my advice you can get through the holidays unscathed (and maybe even enjoy yourself a little).

20 Habits That Are Keeping You Fat

Decades ago, around the time of Steven Tyler's last haircut, a completely wrong-headed idea started being passed around America's dinner tables: Eating fat makes you fat.
Wrong. Eating fat won’t make you fat, any more than eating money will make you rich.

One of my favorite quotes ...

Ever since I first came across this quote in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, it has been one of my favorites.  

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. " - Viktor Frankl

In a nutshell, it means that no matter what happens to us, we have the power to choose our response.  Pavlov proved with the aid of his pooches that responses can be conditioned. 

Read all the details here...

Fear and Desire

It has been suggested that pain and pleasure are the two main motivators in life -- that whatever we do, it is a function of obtaining pleasure or avoiding, reducing, or eliminating pain.  Everything else, then, would boil down to one of these two factors.  What blows my mind even more is that it isn't actual pain or actual pleasure that drives us, but rather the perception we have that taking a certain action would LEAD to pain or pleasure. 

So essentially what REALLY drives us is fear and desire.

Plan B

If there's one thing I've learned in life it's that you NEED a back up plan.  We can try to "will away" the bad stuff, but do you honestly believe that nothing bad will ever happen in your life?  Besides that, it's not what happens to us that determines our success; it's how we deal with what happens to us. 

Read any book or watch any movie (especially the biographical ones) and you'll discover that the main character in the story comes off heroic, not because of how lucky they were, but how they triumphed over some negative thing in their life.  Iron is shaped through fire, and our destinies are shaped through adversity.  That being said, we need to have an alternate workout plan for those times when life gets in the way. 

Strategic Approach to Fitness

As a trainer, it is almost second nature to tell you all about the success stories I’ve helped to create. In fact, this article will kind of go against the grain as I discuss with you the “not-so-successful” stories.

The message I’m conveying to you today isn’t going to be about successful folks who have lost 50 or 60 pounds on a program (any program) and then continued to lose on their own. Instead, I’m writing about individuals who may have done well on a program, but then lost their momentum after its completion.

Back on Track

I’ve been getting a lot of emails lately from people who have slipped up or gotten off track, or for whatever reason, just plain aren’t doing what needs to be done.  Listen, it happens.  So today, I thought I’d share with you a 4-phase plan that I created to get back on track and get back in the gym. 

Why the magic pill will never be invented (at least not successfully)

The tip of the iceberg.  It's a popular saying.  When I was growing up, it was just a meaningless expression.  Oh, I knew the connotation.  I knew it meant that there was more to the subject, but it was kind of like the term "elbow grease."  It had no literal meaning, only the figurative one. 

One day while listening to an audio clip from Steven Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the phrase took on new meaning to me.  He stated it in a way I'd never heard before. 

Inspirational

12 Tips to Embrace Adventure

Own Your Beauty is a groundbreaking, year-long movement bringing women together to change the conversation about what beauty means. Our mission: to encourage and remind grown women that it is never too late to learn to love one's self and influence the lives of those around us - our mothers, friends, children, neighbors. We can shift our minds and hearts and change the path we follow in the pursuit of authentic beauty.

Despite having her right leg amputated at age five, Bonnie St. John became the first African-American ever to win Olympic medals in ski racing at the 1984 Paralympics in Innsbruck, Austria. In recognition of this historic achievement, Bonnie was honored at the White House by President George W. Bush as part of the 2007 celebration of Black History Month.

In addition to her success as a Paralympic athlete, Bonnie is the author of five books, a highly sought after keynote speaker, a television and radio personality, a business owner, and the single mother of a teenage daughter. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard, won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, and served in the White House during the Clinton administration.

NBC Nightly News called Bonnie, "One of the five most inspiring women in America." She has been featured extensively in both national and international media including: The TODAY Show, CNN, CBS Morning News, NBC News, and The New York Times, as well as People, O, andEssence magazines, to name just a few.

Click Here to read Bonnie's 12 tips for Embracing Adventure in Your Life.

Wise Words from Faizal Enu

I was at Core Fitness Solution the other day, and I was asked by one of the campers "I am going on a two-week cruise next month, what do I do?" We talked for a while about this, and I thought it would make for a great blog topic.

While the subject of diet can be a very complicated topic, it doesn't help to make it complicated. For anyone who doesn't partake fitness as a job, one of the toughest tasks is to be able to balance an effective diet and nutrition with enjoying your life.

Lessons from Rocky

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know I find a great deal of motivation and inspiration from the Rocky franchise, so I thought it might be fun to list the different lessons I've learned over the years from watching and re-watching all of the movies.

Go for it

Does monkey behavior have anything to do with getting fit?  Let’s find out.  

I once read about an experiment where they put monkeys in a cage, in the center of which was a ladder leading to a nice ripe bunch of bananas.  As the monkeys would climb the ladder to get the bananas, they would be sprayed with a hose, making them abandon the attempt.  Before long, the monkeys began policing each other...

Pretty Cool and Motivating

The Dog Ate My Fitness …

I don’t have time to exercise … I’ve got kids … I work too many hours … I’m too old … I can’t afford a gym membership …  My back hurts … I’ve been a trainer for over a decade, and in that time, I’ve heard a lot of excuses why fitness seems just out of reach for so many people. 

The fact is, however, that for every excuse I’ve ever heard, I know someone who has overcome it.  

Fitness Karma

One of my all time favorite sayings is, "Fortune favors the bold."  I love it because it drives the point home that whatever you do, you should do it with passion and vigor.  Anything less will turn up less-than-stellar results.  I also like the phrase, "You reap what you sow."  This brings farming pictures to mind and the idea that hard work pays off. 

Either phrase alone makes me want to jump up and start doing stuff, but together ... it's a whole new ball game!

The I Want to Quit Zone Revisited

A while back, I wrote a blog post called "The I Want to Quit Zone" Somebody asked me recently how I came up with the term for the "I Want to Quit Zone."

I thought I'd share the story here on the blog.

If you've ever thought you couldn't do it ...

Drill Sergeant

Way back in my martial arts training days, if my coach saw something that we weren’t doing right, we’d have to do some sort of repetitious drill to perfect the technique.  In competitions, if we were having problems with a particular fighter, he’d analyze the fight, come up with a strategy, and drill it until we were ready to use it.  Whenever there was any kind of problem or deficiency, you can bet we were doing drills until an arm or a leg fell off. 

All of that repetition seemed cruel and unusual at the time, but when it came time to use what we were practicing, we were thankful for all the drill work.

Here he goes again ...

More great stuff from Will Smith. Pay particular attention to the section that starts at 3:01. When he starts talking about laying one brick perfectly instead of building a wall, think about approaching your workouts that way.

Interesting allegation about the Biggest Loser

Funny, but with a message ...

This is a hilarious video about going to the gym and exercising, but I want you to notice the negative attitude he has toward exercise and how we end up "buying in" to what he is saying. This happens ALL THE TIME in the media. I just want to make sure you are aware of it. Okay, enjoy the video!

Good for him ...

Four Reasons Why We Fail to Lose Weight

You thought it would work this time, didn’t you?  You set your goal.  You made your plan.  You tried really hard but ultimately fell short of what you might call remarkable results.  As you lean against the bathroom wall across from the scale that just betrayed you, you start thinking back to all the other failed attempts you’ve endured, all in the name of fitting into your skinny jeans. 

Achieving Your Goals for Fun and Profit (well, for fun anyway!)

I'm soliciting more people to join me and four other brave souls on this resolution project.  Let's make 'em stick this year, huh?

It's simple to join in.  All you have to do is send me an email with your main goal and your weekly commitments.  You have to step outside your comfort zone and be willing to share these with everybody on my mailing list, but statistically, that's probably your best shot at success, soooo ...

Just do it!  Come on, what do you have to lose?  Make it fun and con a few people at work into doing it with you!

In case you missed the initial email, I've posted it here.

Don't be scared!  You can do it.  Let's use the power of peer pressure in a good way.  Do it, do it, do it!  C'mon, all the cool kids are doing it!

I'll post the goals I've been given tomorrow or the next day, and we'll just go from there.

Proof it's possible!

For those of you out there who have given up hope, thinking it just doesn't happen to real people, watch this ...

Warning: Common Sense Makes You Common (Why one of the most highly regarded fitness beliefs is 100% wrong)

Alcoholics Anonymous defines insanity as continuing the same behavior and expecting a different result.  Logically we know that repeating an action will result in a similar outcome each time.  Yet when it comes to weight loss, why do we return to the same methods time and time again? 

This article may challenge some of your most closely held beliefs about fitness and weight loss, but if you keep an open mind, I promise you’ll walk away with a new found understanding of how to shed those unwanted pounds.

3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Happy New Year!!! Okay what's your resolution?

3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Happy New Year!!!  Okay what's your resolution?

It's resolution season, which means the gyms will be crowded until about Valentine's Day!  It also means that many of you receiving this email will re-commit to your fitness goals.  It always seems like a great idea.  The timing is right because a new year feels like a new start -- a clean slate, so to speak.  The problem is that statistically, people don't tend to make the resolutions stick.  This is where I come in!

A few days ago, I came up with an idea to make those resolutions more than just something to say at Midnight with a Champagne glass in your hand!  After all, we can't expect anything different to happen unless we do something different.

I want to create an accountability group.  Nobody HAS to participate, but I would encourage everyone reading this blog to get involved.  We can even involve other people.  There's no cost to participate, and everyone is welcome, regardless of their relationship to Core.

I'm still kind of creating the details, but I wanted to at least introduce the concept as early in the year as possible.  Here's what I have so far:

Start by sending me your main long-term goal.  It doesn't matter what "long-term" means to you.  It could be a year ... it could be 6 months ... it could be 6 weeks.  Whatever your goal and time frame, send it over to me.  Also included should be a rough-draft of your game plan, which will break your main goal up into manageable pieces.  Finally, send me the goals that you will commit to achieving this week.  These goals can be performance goals (such as I will eat at least 3 servings of veggies every day this week) or result goals (I will weigh xxx by xxx - be careful with these because the body works in strange ways sometimes, so I would maybe set these on a monthly basis and use performance goals for the weekly goals).  Make sure to state it in a “how much by when” format, so that anyone could show up on the specified date and see whether you made it or not.

On Friday of each week, it will be time to face the music.  Check in with an email and let me know how you did, any insights you may have picked up, as well as any tweaks you'd make in retrospect.  Next, I'll expect you to brag on yourself a little.  This part is required.  Some people will have no trouble bragging about themselves (you know who you are!), but I suspect this will be challenging for the majority of you.  Tell me what you did well.  Let me know what you did that maybe surprised you.  Finally, list out the weekly goals you're committing to for the following week.

Warning! Full disclosure alert!

Anything you send to me is subject to be shared with the entire group.  If you are not willing to share it with everybody, don't send it to me!  I may be inclined to make an occasional exception, but the power of this project is that we'll use peer pressure in a good way!  So, if you don't want people in your business, don't participate!

I am looking for support from everybody.  Whether or not you decide to share your goals, I’d like everybody’s help in providing congratulations and words of encouragement for those who are putting themselves on the line.  You can send messages to individuals, groups, or the entire group.  Anything goes (except negativity). 

Get your overall goal and your weekly commitments to me by Friday.  I’ll send out updates and highlights in the weekly email.

And of course, as always, don’t forget the conference call this and every Thursday at 5:40 PM (Eastern Time Zone).

Calling in is simple.

Dial 219-862-1300
Then, when prompted dial 808762