Most health issues are a direct result of an unstable mind.  We all have fears that have dug deep holes within our minds that keep us from living up to our best each day.  When I began my fat loss journey, I had to tackle the controlling thoughts in my mind before I saw the results I wanted.  Sure I began seeing results before I came to this bridge because the first phase of a weight loss program is the easiest to lose weight.  When you hit that plateau and your not losing much weight anymore, that is when you need to have the skills to take control of your thoughts.

Think of your thoughts as sources of energy.  Bad thoughts = bad energy.  Negative thoughts crumble all that you have worked so hard to build.  Your muscles, bones, and nerves.  When you talk to yourself in a negative way, your body takes a beating.  The flip side is good thoughts = good energy.  This means we can control our energy with our thoughts.  Purposeful positive thoughts have a huge impact on our bodies.

I am not advocating any old ‘positive thinking’ here.  I am talking about being purposeful in all that you think and do.  If you go out and think to yourself “The sky is blue, it will be a good day today.”  That’s great, but what purpose does that serve.  Absolutely nothing.  Thinking/doing purposefully involves knowing who you are.  I can attest that taking the time to be with yourself listening to the thoughts that jump around in your mind to directing those thoughts to a purposeful outcome is one of the most rewarding activities you can do.

When I came to my first plateau in losing weight, I struggled a lot with fear.  One of my fears was the work would be much harder to get past this plateau.  Part of that fear was based upon reality but most of that type of thinking comes from getting used to being comfortable.  I was at a point in my life where I didn’t want anything to change.  Things were going well except for my health.  When I took the time to sit and think about where I was in my life with a realistic point of view, I figured out I was no where near where I wanted to be in life.  My life wasn’t what I wanted.  This fear was keeping me back from the life I‘ve always dreamed of.  By figuring out there was so much more I could be doing with my life, I was pumped up to get over my plateau and crush it!

If you are struggling with a plateau or you are at a point in your life where you have started to get comfortable with the way things are, you need to stop and take some time to listen and think.  Listen to the thoughts you currently have.  The dominate thoughts will become evident quickly.  Purposefully replace the negative thoughts (fears) with something you want.  This type of mental training will become a habit for you the more you do it.  It will make you a stronger human being both mentally and physically.  So stop right now and take some time to listen and think.

The first reason 24 Hour Fitness (affiliate link) works is because it is open 24 hours a day.  This is a major plus in our book.  Sometimes schedules change.  When this happens most people make excuses for not getting their workout in.  Same thing if the weather is not bright and sunny.  We talk ourselves out of getting exercise.  With 24 Hour Fitness, we no longer have that problem.  We can workout whenever we want to.

They also have everything you need to for a great workout.  Depending on the location nearest you, they’ll have weights and cardio equipment.  Some of them even have a pool, sauna and a steam room.  These are great treats to give yourself after a hard workout.

Another nice thing is they offer childcare for parents. This removes another excuse we like to use.  They have certified people on staff to watch your children while you get you workout in.  Very convenient!

Lastly, some of them have a store (affiliate link) where you can buy fitness apparel, supplements, sports drinks, etc.  Also very convenient since you are going to the gym anyways, why not pick up what you need while your there.  That’s one less trip for you.

We recommend 24 Hour Fitness because we use it ourselves.  We wouldn’t recommend anything that we don’t feel is the very best option out there for everyone.

Most people think that strength training is lifting weights.  While that’s correct at a general level, it goes deeper than that.  Just lifting weights can build endurance, strength or power depending upon how you go about it.  This is why some people lift weights for years and never get stronger.  They keep lifting the same weights over and over again.  Without knowing what you are doing its pointless strength train.

If your goal is to increase strength, then you need to find or create a plan that is designed to do that.  Instead of lifting the same weights each time you go to the gym, you need to increase them.  Without constantly increasing your weights you will never realize how strong you really are.  This one piece of advice alone will increase your lifts automatically.  Be sure not to increase the weight too much to injure yourself.  A consist small increase is all you need.

Let’s say your lift right now is the back squat.  You have been using 165lbs for the last 6 months on this lift.  This seems funny when you look at it written down and you realize how much you have been cheating yourself.  You decide to increase your weight to 175lbs.  To your amazement you are able to do this exercise for all your reps.  The next time you go into the gym you up the weight again to 180lbs and you are still able to do it.  You continue with this small consistent increase until you change up your workout routine.  There may come a point where you hit your max weight for a lift.  That’s fine!  You’ll never know what it is until you get there.  Once you find out, work to get even stronger.

How long have you been lifting the same weights?

How many different weight loss programs have you tried?  How many actually worked?  My guess is not many.  Or they did work but then you gained all your fat back.  You know you can lose the fat but there is something going on that makes you stop losing and start gaining.

As we’ve mentioned multiple times on this site, you have to start with your reason for losing the weight.  Without a clearly defined reason that is written down you won’t be able to keep the fat off. This reason doesn’t need to be a one and done deal.  You can change the reason as you move through your journey.  Just make sure that reason is yours and not somebody else’s.

There is a smart way to lose fat and there is a hard way to get rid of fat. The hard way is to buy a weight loss plan and do everything it says.  The hard part about this is the person who designed the plan doesn’t know much about you and they make be telling you to do things you don’t like doing.  This is one reason why most people don’t finish a complete program.  The smart way to lose the fat is to do some research about nutrition and then change some of your daily habits to have a more active lifestyle.  This will set you up for success.

Any weight loss journey starts with nutrition. It’s like repairing a leak in your home, you have to stop the source of the leak first before you can patch up any damage the water caused.  Getting to the source of why we got fat in the first place is key.  A good place to start your research is with the Glycemic Index.  This is a grading scale for foods.  It originally was used for people with diabetes but is now used by everyone.  The higher the food’s score in the Glycemic Index, the more you should consider not eating it.  Especially when trying to lose weight.

Understanding the Glycemic Index will help you select your foods wisely.  This is a smart way to lose weight.  You can select the foods you like to eat and know they are going to help you lose the fat.  Pick foods you are going to eat; foods you like to eat.  Don’t kid yourself that you are going to eat lima beans every night if you don’t like lima beans.  Get real!  Chose what you like and eat that.

Many of us are addicted to sugar.  It helps foods taste great.  Yet this sweet and innocent food causes havoc to our bodies.  In a recent article in the New York Times, Gary Taubes talks about sugar being a toxin.  After reading his article, it will be easier to switch from soda to water.

Now that we have a basis for nutrition, we need to do something about it.  Get up off your ass and get started. Start eating the foods you selected for two weeks.  Drink your water instead of soda.  You will begin to see the pounds drop.  After a week or two of this, begin including some activities to accelerate your fat loss.  One easy habit you can break is watching TV.  If we want to lose fat we have to take a look at our habits and see what caused us to get fat in the first place.  Most people watch an average of 5 hours of TV per day!  Are you kidding me?  Who has time to do that?  For those who do watch a lot of TV, try watching 1 hour less of TV than you are used to.  Instead get up off the couch and move around.  Yes you may not know who one American Idol but at least you’ll look good.

To make a great choice in selecting a workout routine is like working with people, everyone is different.  Let’s start by saying you should not stick to one workout routine for ever.  Our bodies adapt quickly so we need to mix it up to ensure we keep improving.  Besides doing the same workout longer than 4 weeks is boring.  Who wants to do that?

In order to find a workout that will get you results we should start with you.  What kind of results do you want?  Are you looking to lose weight?  Would you like to put on some muscle?  What physical ability would you like to work on to become better in your sport?  This is a question you need to take time to think about.  Why do you want to do a workout routine?

Now that you have your reason, its time to find one that will deliver results.  Good news is there are lots to chose from.  Yes, that is a good thing.  It’s a good thing because you can use more than one of these workouts throughout the year.  This is mixing it up.

Getting to specifics here are some general rules you can use when selecting an workout routine.

• Workouts that last longer are typically helping you lose weight.  Reason is the longer you move the more calories you burn.  Also, the longer you use your muscles the more you are conditioning your muscles to continue burning calories after your workout.
• Shorter workouts generally help with strength and power.  These are great for athletes who play in a sport that requires explosiveness.
• Most workouts out there fall in between the first two we talked about.  They are more for building muscle than anything else.  They are the typical 3 sets of 10 reps.

Think about these things when you are trying to decide how you are going to get the results you want.  If you don’t get the results you want with one workout routine, mix it up and try a different one.  Just don’t give up.

Assuming you are sitting down and relaxed, take the index and middle finger of your right hand and place both of them on the wrist of your left arm, left palm up.  Find the pulse in your wrist (hint: closer to the thumb side).  Have a clock that shows seconds.  Now for 10 seconds, count how many beats you feel in your wrist.  After 10 seconds, stop counting and multiply the number of beats you counted by 6.  This will represent the number of beats per minute.  This is your resting heart rate.

What’s good and what’s bad?  According to Dave Zinczenko, author of The Abs Diet (affiliate link), “A good resting heart rate is between 62-68 beats per min, excellent is below 55 and risky above 80.” Be sure to get within the suggested range.  If you are over 80 beats per minute, then you need to find ways to bring that number down.

Cardio exercise can help reduce your resting heart rate.  The healthier your heart is the less it has to do when you are resting.  Moving helps the heart run more blood through the body as oxidation occurs.  The amount of blood flow increases as your body moves.  When you are resting, your heart is in tip top shape thanks to the work you have already put in from your cardio workouts.

Relaxation will also help bring down your number.  Whatever that is for you.  It can be listening to music, meditation, yoga, etc.  Something that relaxes both the body and the mind.

Be sure you check your resting heart rate periodically to see how your work is paying off.  The lower your resting heart rate, the easier job your heart has.

With any weight loss plan, there are a few things to consider.  First we need to know where we are right now.  Without getting on that scale and seeing the damage, we don’t know how much we need to improve.  Besides numbers don’t lie (except when they do….banks).  Is our weight really the number we want to track though?  Well…no.

Our weight is the easiest trackable metric of our body.  Simply step on a scale, wait a few seconds and there’s your answer.  However, our weight is mostly an irrelevant number.  A better metric to track for losing weight would be body fat %.  This shows the ratio of how much fat your body is made up of.  An easy way to find out your body fat % is to buy these $10 calipers and either measure yourself or have someone enjoy pinching you.  Since body fat adjusts over time, take body fat measurements weekly instead of daily.

Tips

1. Know why you want to lose weight.  Understanding your reasons here are crucial.  If you try to lose weight because someone told you to, then you will probably quit your program.  Taking the time to think about the real reason that YOU want to lose weight is the key to a great start.
2. Set a goal each week.  Your goal can be to lose 2 lbs or to go running 4 days at 30 minutes each. Whatever you choose be sure to write it down.  Even better tell others about your weekly goal.  This will hold you accountable.
3. Drink water first thing in the morning.  Your body becomes dehydrated while you sleep at night.  Hopefully you got around 8 hours of sleep.  That means 8 hours without any water.  To fix this, try drinking 1-2 glasses of water when you wake up.  This may take some getting used to but the benefits are outstanding.  Not only are you replenishing your body with necessary water amounts, but you are also speeding up your metabolism.  Wouldn’t we all want that if we are trying to lose weight!
4. Make sure you are eating enough protein.  There is a lot of foods out there that focus on carbohydrates.  While this macronutrient is necessary, it’s over consumed.  Instead of snacking on those whole wheat crackers, how about eating celery with almond butter on top.  Figuring our your required protein intake will make or break you in your weight loss efforts.
5. Push yourself.  This is hard to do.  Everyone experiences a certain point in their workout where they want to give up.  The exercises are too hard and our bodies become sore.  We talk ourselves out of finishing what we came to do.  Knowing this is coming beforehand will help you push through it.  Plan what you will do when that time comes before it happens.  This is pushing past your “limits.”

If you have other weight loss tips, please share in the comments below.

P90x (affiliate link) is designed to be an in home workout.  The program comes with 12 DVDs, a fitness plan and a nutrition guide.  The workout program consists of 6 days a week, the 7th day is optional.  After we got our own P90x program, we put Ben to the challenge.  This was easiest for him to take on the challenge as he already had access to the required equipment (i.e. pull-up bar and dumbbells).

Ben was in good shape prior to beginning P90x.  This is not to be overlooked.  There are a lot of people who want to try the workout but are not ready to do so.  The program assumes you have a certain level of fitness prior to beginning P90x.  Do not be a hero here and jump right in, or the program will kick your ass.  Luckily, for those who need to get in shape to complete P90x, BeachBody has created a program called Power90 (affiliate link).

The workouts alternate muscle groups.  For instance, there is a Chest & Back workout.  This workout is setup as a circuit where you do one exercise for the chest, then an exercise for the back.  Once you complete the entire circuit you repeat the whole thing again.  Yep, that’s right!  This isn’t a workout for sissies.

Every 4 weeks you change the routine up.  This is the premise of P90x.  The idea is muscle confusion.  Our muscles adapt to the demand placed on them.  In order to keep our muscles guessing, the program changes the routines for you.  There is a recovery week between each phase.  The recovery week consists of stretching and some light cardio work.

Ben was able to complete P90x the first time through.  It took him 3 months to finish as the ‘90’ in the title of the program indicates.  He worked out 6 days a week opting to rest on the 7th day.  No workouts were missed and he pushed passed his limits for every workout.

When he began the program, he was able to do a respectable 10 pull-ups on the first day.  By the end of the 90 days, he was able to do 13 pull-ups…while wearing a 10lb weight vest! That is not easy to do.  Here is a look at some of his other comparisons.

Here are some of Ben’s comments about P90x:

“This program has a lot of pull-ups.  If you have trouble doing pull-ups I recommend getting Power90.”

“Some workouts take over an hour to complete.  Be sure you have enough time planned.”

“I always tried to beat Tony in the workouts.  He doesn’t complete all of them as he is instructing, but thinking I could do better than him helped push me.”

“I would recommend this product to anyone who wants to mix up their workout routine for 90 days.  Most who have tried find out they are not in the shape they thought they were.”

For those people looking to mix things up a bit, P90x is a perfect option.  That is if you have access to the necessary equipment and can commit to the time it takes.  You will see results.  Ben didn’t follow the P90x nutrition plan to the ‘T’ but he saw results anyways.  Once you have completed P90x, then mix things up again and try something else.