Being fit is about more than just exercising. It involves living a healthy lifestyle. Simply establishing the goal of leading a healthy lifestyle should make you feel good about yourself. To make that goal more attainable, stay informed, get creative and come up with small goals that you know you can meet each day to help keep yourself feeling positive. Accomplishing the smaller goals will leave you with a more immediate feeling of success.

Here are a few techniques you can use to keep your portions under control.

• If you’re at home, use smaller plates. This creates the illusion of eating a bigger serving.
• If you’re at a restaurant and you know the portions are going to be huge, ask the server to put half your meal in a doggie  bag before it even hits the table. This saves you money as well as unnecessary calorie overload.
• Share an entrée with your dining partner.
• Make a new rule for yourself: Always leave something on your plate. This reminds you that you are in control of the food, not the other way around. A little bit of empowerment can go a long way!

Here’s one of the most popular fitness articles on the web where you’ll get a complete 14-day guide for rapid fat loss to kick off 2012.

Read it here and print it out – 14-Day Rapid Fat Loss

It’s the exact plan fitness expert Craig Ballantyne gave to his ol’ college buddy who had gained 25 pounds since the birth of his baby boy.

It’s your complete 14-day FAST-TRACK guide to fat loss (if you like it, please forward it to a friend or print them off a copy too):

Get your 14-day rapid results blueprint here 14-Day Rapid Fat Loss

It’s the perfect way to kick-off the New Year.

 Yeah, it’s a New Year 2012, but forget about making a bunch of empty New Year’s resolutions. How about keeping just this one: Get the badass body you’ve always dreamed of! We won’t let you off the hook until you reach your goal. So call us RIGHT NOW (203) 619-4749 and start your NEW YEAR off right by LIVING A HEALTHIER LIFE that you can be proud of.

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Jillian Michaels: It’s Time to Curb Mindless Eating

By Jillian Michaels

Okay, you’ve all heard the term “grazing” — you know, picking at food throughout the day instead of (or in addition to) eating regular meals. This constant, indiscriminate eating — especially when you’re focused on another task, such as talking on the phone, working on the computer, or watching TV — is the downfall of many committed dieters, but it doesn’t have to be.

If you’re piling on pounds because you eat when you’re distracted or bored rather than when you’re actually hungry, try the following tactics to break the habit.

To curb daytime grazing:

• Don’t eat while you’re standing up, in the car, on the go, or when you don’t have time for a full, proper meal. If you sit down at mealtimes and pay attention to every bite, you’ll be more relaxed; you’ll notice when you’re satisfied, which means that you’ll be less likely to overeat — and you’ll actually enjoy your food!
• Don’t skip meals. I mean it. You might think you’re saving yourself calories, but it will only leave you famished and more likely to consume extra calories later on to feel full.

To curb nighttime grazing:

• Why do most people graze at night? Because they’re bored. If you’ve been thinking about taking up knitting, crossword puzzles, Ping-Pong, or some other hobby that will keep your brain busy in the evening, now is the time to do it.
• Brush your teeth. Food never seems quite as appealing when you have that fresh, minty toothpaste taste in your mouth.
• Try a cup of hot tea; the warm liquid in your stomach can help you feel satiated.

By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Turbulence Training for Fat
Loss

The great thing about strength training and intervals
for fat burning is “efficiency”. Because you are working harder, the signal to
your body to change is stronger. You cut time when you increase intensity and
you burn fat faster.

Now don’t worry, I won’t be asking you to do hill sprints tomorrow if you
aren’t exercising today. For a beginner, we just do some slightly faster than
normal walking intervals. For intermediate fitness levels, we’ll pick up the
pace about 20% compared to their normal cardio levels, but again, the work
periods are much shorter.

The key is, you must shift to a slightly higher intensity in order to cut
time from your workout. But the workout also goes faster, and much more
importantly, you will get more results and better fitness from these
methods.

It’s easy to do these workouts first thing in the AM, at lunch, or after the
kids go to bed. Plus, you can get a great workout at home with only a bench,
dumbells, and an exercise ball. You don’t need fancy machines or an expensive
gym membership.

And another bonus, you only need three hard fat burning workouts per week.
You don’t have to be in the gym six days per week.

On your off days, it’s important to stay active for at least 30 minutes, but
these days should be unstructured and revolve around being active with your
family or hobbies. Don’t think of them as workout days, think of them as fat
burning, stress reducing activity days.

About the Author

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength &
Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Maximum
Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked
Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s
Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and
women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45
minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training
workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy
equipment, visit Turbulence Training for Fat Loss

Everybody wants defined abs. Good thing there are so many different abdominal exercises to choose from — you’ll never get bored as you work your way toward washboard abs!

Here are three versions of the plank, a move that works the lower back, chest, and shoulders in addition to the rectus abdominis.

Basic Plank
(beginner)

Start in a push-up position, but keep your hands directly under your shoulders instead of outside your chest. Legs are extended straight behind you, with feet together. You are balancing on your palms and the balls of your feet. Hold this position for as long as you can, working your way up to 1 minute. It’s a lot harder than it sounds!

Plank Twists
(intermediate)
Start in plank position. Maintaining this position, exhale and rotate your torso by bringing your right knee in toward your left armpit. Return to the starting position, then repeat, bringing the left knee toward the right armpit. Plank twists work not only the rectus abdominis but also the internal obliques.

Extended Plank
(advanced)
Start in a basic plank position, but instead of placing your hands under your shoulders, bring your hands together and place them on the floor in front of you (about 3 inches in front of your head). This variation places much greater emphasis and concentration on the rectus abdominis because you’re not able to use your arms as pillars to support your body weight.

Here is a Guide that will help you through this Holiday Season. Happy Holidays

Holiday Weight Loss Guide – Quick Fat Loss :: Combating Christmas Weight Gain

As it pertains to our eating habits, the Holiday season provide one of the most disastrous time of the year. Christmas cookies are calling to be eaten, while spreads of turkey and cranberry sauce serve as signals for binge eating. Occasionally than not, giving in to these tasty temptations punish us with the dreaded Christmas fat gain. But, with a bit of willpower, keeping your figure from ballooning amidst the Holiday feast is not an impossible task.

The very first thing to remember is the 40- 40- 20 rule: 40% lean protein, 40% complex carbohydrates, 20% fat. This rule would assist you in making healthy food choices in the sea of less healthy foods. Turkey without skin, potatoes with no gravy and veggies without butter all follow this cardinal rule. By removing some parts of your Holiday feast, you instantly transform your banquet into a good Christmas buffet. Sugar and alcohol are two other pursuits to avoid at the dinner table. Besides are these two addictive, they are also major causes of weight gain. Once you’ve screened out the unhealthy servings on the food table, the next step is to control how often you eat. Many experts say that eating more often results in better metabolism, a key to achieving some weight loss even on holidays. Spreading out your daily calorie intake through six small meals is a better approach to holiday weight loss than eating three full meals. Instead of starting and stopping, your digestive system continuously burns fats and calories when your meals are spaced a few hours apart. To also improve your metabolism, you could pair your favorite foods with a glass of iced water and hot coffee. These two beverages allow your body to amp up its basic metabolic rate, thus making it more efficient in burning a number of those would- be Christmas weight gain.

Taking charge of your diet extends even after the feasts are over. A good way to continue your good holiday weight loss practices is to reset your fridge once the slew of Christmas parties have come and gone. Throw out all those Christmas leftover treats similar to cakes, cookies, carbonated drinks and alcohol. This way, you are less prone to the temptations that these tasty treats represent. You taking it a step further, it is advisable to stock up on balanced diet items such as lean protein, fresh fruits and vegetables and bottled water. Many websites like fatlossholiday. com offer you products that could prove to be helpful in combating drastic weight gain.

The Holiday season time may be a time of giving, but this may not include giving a whole lot of fat to your belly. Maintaining healthy eating habits, even in taxing situations such as the Christmas Holidays, is a product of self- discipline. By using all these anti- weight gain tips, it is possible to perhaps set an example to your family and friends on how to incorporate healthy eating in your lifestyle. Who knows? Maybe Santa can pick up in contact with your tricks, too.