photo credit: lululemon athletica

In the gym my friends are constantly asking me about how to flatten their tummy. Is it a diet trick? Perhaps some sort of flat tummy workout? Actually, its not as secret as you might think. It does involve quite a lot of discipline though.

In this article I am going to show you how to flatten your tummy fast. If you follow these steps you will have that tight, firm and fat free tummy that you have been trying to achieve for years.

Why do we want to flatten our tummy?

I used to think about this a lot. Why are women so obsessed with a flat tummy? I used to think it was an unhealthy obsession that we had picked up from the media, Hollywood, etc. We see stars like Jessica Alba, Lady Gaga, Miranda Kerr, etc. and we want to have bodies like theirs.

But recently I read a study that showed that a belly is a very important indicator of health and, in actual fact, humans have used the belly to gauge the health of a mate for thousands of years. If your belly is too big you might not be able to provide for the family – that was the thinking.

Now science is showing us that even small amounts of belly fat can increase the likelihood of cancer, heart disease and so on. It is extremely important to be at a healthy body weight.

How much fat is healthy?

The Australian Government has put out some guidelines for what is a healthy amount of fat to have on your belly. They have been trying to get people to lose the fat because it is costing the health care system millions of dollars every year in heart attacks and cancer medicine. Lose the fat and you can potentially prevent a lot of this stuff from happening.

If your waist size is more than 80 cm you are at an increased risk of heart disease and cancer. If you are over 88 cm you are at a greatly increased risk. This should be motivation enough to change.

How to get a flat tummy

photo credit: lululemon athletica

To get a flat tummy you need to take a double headed approach: diet and exercise. You need to put about 80% of your energy in to getting your diet right. And for the exercise, you need to make sure you doing a mixture of high intensity, low intensity, static and resistance exercises. We want to burn calories and boost your metabolism whilst building muscle.

1. Reduce meal sizes by 10%
If you can reduce your meal sizes by 10% you will begin a very good habit that will allow you to lose over 10kg of fat each year. And, more importantly, you will establish a routine that will stop you from gaining the fat back.

You see, a flat and tight tummy comes from losing the fat that is covering your ab muscles. The best way to do this is by reducing the amount of energy you consume over the long term. Try not going back for seconds at dinner time and buying smaller bowls so you eat smaller sized meals.

2. Drink water before every meal
In the same fashion, by drinking a tall glass of water before every meal you will reduce the size of your appetite. This will help you consume less calories and therefore spend less time at the gym. Every time you eat something you should have a glass of water first. Its easy.

3. Eat before you get hungry
Don’t wait until you are starving. Eat before you get hungry. The idea here is that you will eat a lot less and snack on less junk food. Eat when you are hungry and eat until you are full. This is very important.

4. Exercise every single day, even just a bit
I have an exercise bike in my TV room. I will pick one TV show per day and ride the bike during that show. For example, if you like watching the news you can ride your bike while you watch. If you don’t have a bike you can do sit ups, push ups and other types of exercise. Do it every single day and you will burn so many calories while you feel like you are relaxing at home.

5. Drink green tea
Green tea can help you speed up your metabolism and keeps you healthy and well. It also works towards keeping you feeling full.

6. Do high intensity exercise twice a week
We have written so much on the benefits of high intensity exercise. It builds up your muscles and gets your metabolism boosting. It also burns a lot more calories than a slow walk on the treadmill. Take a look at this article for some other ideas. Some of my favorites are:

• Capoeira
• Kickboxing
• Jumping Rope

7. Do Pilates for your abs
Pilates abs exercises are a great way to get a flat tummy. Some of the best ones are the swiss ball jack knife and the Pilates crunch.

Conclusion

A flat tummy is achievable but it takes time and discipline. Every woman can do it as long as you have the right tools. Read this blog and all our archives and you will have more than enough real information to start you on your flat tummy journey.

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photo credit: Josef Seibel

Want to lose weight fast and keep it off? That is a major priority of women all over the world. In today’s high fat, high sugar, low exercise society we find ourselves getting bigger and bigger with more and more health problems.

But it doesn’t need to be this way.

In this article I am going to show you how to lose weight fast and keep it off for the rest of your life. Its actually not as hard as you think.

Why are we getting so fat?

Before we can talk about how to lose weight fast we need to look at some of the reasons as to why we are so big. Why are so many women having trouble with this issue? Why are so many American women in particular having trouble with this issue. Well the blame can be placed on a few key areas.

• Portion sizes
  Portion sizes in the United States are out of control. The small size for a Coke at McDonald’s are equivalent to the large size everywhere else in the world. Meals at restaurants and at home are so much bigger than the human species has ever needed over the past ten thousand years.
• Poisonous lifestyles
  Women today work hard and move quickly. There are kids to take care of, careers to think about and a husband and house to look after. It is busy. There is hardly any time to think about (let alone act on) our health and wellbeing. This is poisonous.
• Choice of exercise
  When we do get a chance to exercise we often choose the wrong thing to do. A lot of women are wasting their time trying to lose weight fast with exercise methods that are either out of date or inefficient.

The whole point of this website is to give you the right information, ideas and motivation for how to lose weight and get fit and healthy the best way possible. We really don’t think it is that hard if you know the right ways to do things and have a little bit of self discipline. We can do it together.

How to lose weight fast

photo credit: familymwr

What I want to do now is tell you about a few strategies that, when combined together, can make your fat loss journey a lot simpler, quicker and more sustainable. Read it carefully because a lot of you are doing the wrong thing.

1. You don’t need the gym if your portion sizes are right
This is a shocking statement for some people but it is the most important thing I have ever learned. Over the past year I have lost 10 kilograms (22 pounds) without doing any exercise all from controlling my portion sizes.

The reason is simple. If you eat ten less calories a day you are consuming 3650 less calories per year. That is one pound of fat. So imagine if you ate ten less calories every time you had a meal. Now imagine that was 20 or 30 calories. Over five year period these tiny changes add up to massive amounts of weight. This is the maths of weight loss. It is very important to understand how this works.

2. Exercise is pointless (for weight loss) without good eating
The reverse of the above philosophy is that if you eat poorly you will make no progress in the gym no matter how much you do. Again, you have to look at the maths of the thing. Let’s say a can of soda has 150 calories in it. That is 30 minutes on the treadmill, just to burn off one can of soda.

Imagine if you never drank it!

The gym needs to be a supplement for your diet, not the other way around. Don’t go to the gym and think that you can treat yourself with a donut or some fast food because you are literally going to go backwards, not stay in the same position. This is a major reason many women quit exercising because they aren’t helping themselves with the diet aspect of the equation.

Now, it is extremely important to stress that weight loss is not the only reason you need to exercise. Science has shown us time and time again that daily exercise reduces the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and so many other problems. Exercising daily not only helps you lose weight, it will help you live a longer life with less health hardships.

3. Low intensity exercise doesn’t do enough
Unless you are jogging for an hour every day you probably aren’t going to do enough to make a big difference. You need to step up the intensity.

High intensity exercise is vital for weight loss because it combines aerobic and anaerobic exercises. It burns more calories, it gets your metabolism elevated and it creates an environment in your body where you will burn more calories throughout the day.

Take a look at the women who do a lot of dancing. It is the type of exercise where you do short bursts of high intensity exercise over and over. They have amazing butts, tight legs and abs and almost no fat. Contrast that with the women who do long sessions of low intensity cardio and never seem to make any progress. This also goes to the enjoyment factor; walking or jogging for hours just doesn’t keep you turned on after a few weeks. Dancing and kickboxing and pole dancing will keep you going.

Some of the best exercises for this include:

• Kickboxing
• Dancing and pole dancing
• Capoeira
• Boxing
• Boot camps and army style training
• Netball and other traditional competition sports
• Squash

The most important thing is to find something that gets your heart rate up high, makes you use your full body and engages your muscles as much as it does your lungs.

4. Happiness leads to weight loss, not the other way round
Recent studies have shown that happiness leads to weight loss, not the other way round. For decades women have thought that if they just lost their fat they would be a little bit happier and feel better about themselves. When they fail they get less and less likely to ever lose weight and more and more depressed.

Scientists suggest that if you work on your stress levels and aim to get happier you will find that it is easier to lose weight. Why? Because stress causes a hormone to be released in to your body that makes it easier to store fat. Reduce the stress and you also reduce the amount of this chemical in your body.

This concept also works on so many more levels. If you are happy you are less likely to binge on sugars and carbs and all those other comfort foods. If you are happy you are more likely to get outside and walk the dog or go to an exciting new fitness class. Happy people are quite often more active.

And the amazing thing is that the more you move the better your feel. Your body will release endorphins which are hormones that make you feel good. You will also see the weight loss happening and feel good about that too.

5. If you don’t change your portion sizes it will all come undone
Here is the really important part. Unless you change your portion sizes forever the weight will come back. It does for almost everyone. In fact, statistics tell us that 90% of people who lose weight will gain it all back within 5 years.

Don’t be in that 90%. Be a part of that 10%. Do it with portion sizes.

As hard as it seems at the time it is a really easy way to lose weight. Putting the plate down and not having seconds at dinner is so much easier than spending an hour at the gym everyday. Having half a six inch instead of a foot long when you go to Subway is way easier than living on the treadmill.

Just make the change, this small little change, and you will lose weight for the rest of your life without having to do all that extra exercise.

6. Stop drinking everything except water and tea
Tea and water are the only two things that you should be drinking. Why? Because everything else either has hundreds of empty, belly-producing calories in it or else makes you feel like you need to eat something extra.

Water will fill you up so that you don’t eat as much at meals times and tea will actually help you to lose weight fast.

This change a lone is enough to drastically change the way you look. Especially if you live in the westernized world and are addicted to sodas, shakes, coffee and beer.

The important lessons on how to lose weight fast?

So what are the important lessons to take away from this article on how to lose weight fast? Here are the main ones:

• Cut the size of your meals
• Drink only water and tea
• Move often
• When you exercise make it super high intensity

If you can do these simple things you will find that you don’t need an expensive trainer forever, you don’t need every new gadget that comes out and you will lose the weight and keep it off for the rest of your life.

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Ever wanted to stretch your back after a long day at work but weren’t sure exactly how to do it? In our latest video Pilates instructor Tamara goes through the Cat Curl and how to do it perfectly and safely. This is fantastic for releasing tension and actually can help to make you feel more energetic and alive. Remember:

• Don’t do this stretch if you have a back injury
• Follow the instructions carefully and don’t deviate from the technique
• Start gently and don’t push yourself too much

Make sure you subscribe to our Youtube Channel so you don’t miss any of our videos. We have some really cool ones coming up with great workouts to help you lose weight, tone up and get super fit for summer.

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photo credit: istolethetv

So you’ve decided you need to lose a few pounds. You’re getting a little bit soft around the edges and your heart starts racing when you climb the stairs to bed each night. But you’ve tried the gym before, you’ve tried going for jogs in the morning and none of it worked. Light bulb! I’ll get a personal trainer. That will solve my problems. But will it? Are personal trainers really necessary in order to achieve your weight loss and fitness goals? In this post I am going to look at that very question.

Not all personal trainers are created equal

Before we delve too much into the personal trainer debate I want to make something quite clear. Not all personal trainers are created equal. There are good ones and bad ones. In fact, there are some very bad ones. It is important to make the distinction between the two, however, because you don’t want to go around thinking all personal trainers are experts or phonies. Some of them are very good, some of them are not.

So how do you know whether a personal trainer is good or not? Well there are no hard and fast rules but here are some suggestions that you might want to take on board:

• How long have they been a personal trainer?
  If your personal trainer is very new it might mean that they don’t have the experience to guide you, especially if you consider yourself to be quite experienced. Of course, this is not always true.
• Are they qualified?
  In my opinion you shouldn’t have anything to do with a personal trainer unless they are qualified. There are many stories going around about people who trusted a trainer through a health issue and the trainer’s advice just made it worse for them.
• Is the qualification a good one?
  Not all qualifications are great. In fact, some of them are pretty shocking. Just do a two week course and you are able to tell people how to do dangerous exercises like the dead lift and make dietary programs for them even when they are diabetic. Not good enough. Make sure their qualifications are respected.
• How fit are they?
  This is a big point of contention between my brother and myself. He reckons that it doesn’t matter what a trainer looks like as long as they know their stuff. I reckon that is bullshit. If a personal trainer doesn’t have the body you want to get, the fitness levels you want to achieve, etc. then walk right on by. You would never go to a financial planner who drove a 1982 rickety VW Beetle. Trainers should live and breathe their trade.
• Are you making progress?
  If you have been with your trainer for more than three months and have not seen drastic progress then it is time to move on. Why? Because a personal trainer should be always thinking about you. Their goal is to give you the power and knowledge to look after yourself and go out on your own, not keep you down and unfit so you will keep paying them. The best trainers at my gym have big turn over rates. Not because their clients hate them but because they all get so fit so fast. And this is the best marketing exercise they can do for themselves as well.

Make sure you address these questions before you sign on to any trainer. If you are already using a personal trainer then sit down and take a look at these issues now before your next session. You should not take any chances when it comes to someone who is involved with your health.

The positive: why you SHOULD hire a personal trainer

photo credit: mark_donoher

I thought we would lead off on the positive. Let’s take a look at why I think you should hire a personal trainer. These points might not appeal to everyone but hopefully it will give you something to think about while you are making your decision.

1. Certainty
The first reason that you want to get a personal trainer is because they provide you with certainty. You get to stop worrying about whether you are doing the right or the wrong thing. They can point you in the right direction and help you through any questions. This is actually quite a big deal because I know a lot of women who really worry about whether they are using their small amount of exercise time efficiently.

2. Injury prevention
If you go to the gym by yourself it is fair to say that at some point you will get an injury. Sometimes you just get unlucky but more than likely the cause is improper technique or lack of warming up. A personal trainer can help you dodge these issues as they will usually make sure your technique is perfect before letting you do the exercise at full weight. This is a very big advantage. In fact, this is the best reason to hire someone.

3. Faster weight loss
Let’s be honest here. Unless you know what you are doing you are going to make a lot quicker progress having an expert help you out. The most important thing when losing weight is knowledge and hard work – a personal trainer can help you with both of those things.

The negative: why you SHOULDN’T hire a personal trainer

photo credit: B Rosen

Now we can take a look at some of the reasons why you should not bother with a personal trainer. If there are any PTs reading this article I am sorry if this section causes you offense. Leave and comment and let me know if you disagree and I’m sure we can get to the bottom of the matter.

1. Its expensive
Just like the title of the post suggests, personal trainers are expensive. Some of them are reasonably expensive and some of them are just plain out of control. If you live in up state New York or Hollywood chances are your personal trainer is going to charge more than I pay to rent a house. And that is fine if you like throwing money down the toilet but, to be honest, it is completely unnecessary. Most Hollywood celebrities use personal trainers that other celebrities use, not personal trainers that are good for them. The best personal trainers are not always the most expensive ones.

You also have to look at whether you are getting value for money. Are you making progress? Would the money be better spent on buying fruit and vegetables? Could you put the money to better use by buying equipment? All of these questions are important to ask yourself.

2. Its lazy
A lot of the time people hire personal trainers because they can’t motivate themselves. Now I’m not saying that everyone does this but a lot of people do. If you are hiring a PT because you need education and advice then you are on the right path. But if you are hiring one because you want someone else to motivate you every time or because you can’t workout unless someone is pushing you then a PT is a bad idea. That issue is something you need to work on yourself. That is a mental block and not something that a PT will necessarily solve.

The verdict

My view is quite simple. Everyone should hire a personal trainer but only for a short period of time. Once you have learned the exercises properly, got a workout plan and made some progress it is important that you move out on your own. Personal trainers only have a limited use as far as I’m concerned. If you need one for longer than six months then perhaps you aren’t making the progress you think you are.

What do you think? Do you think personal trainers are a waste of time or something that everyone should be using? Leave a comment.

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The latest video from our Free Women’s Fitness series is up on You Tube. This time we are talking about how to do a perfect lunge in order to get a toned butt and sexy tight legs. If you aren’t already subscribed, please head to our You Tube Channel and do so as we might not be posting all of the videos here. And if you have any suggestions please let us know.

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This is a must see video for beginners and experts because it really highlights how tricky even just a basic crunch can be. But, if you master this you will be well on your way to a flat stomach and toned abs. Please subscribe to our Youtube Channel or email updates to make sure you don’t miss out on the next video.

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If you have been doing abs work for a while now you will, undoubtedly, be looking for some new exercises to keep your abdominal workouts spicy. Today I am going to show you how to do a Swiss Ball Jackknife – a very powerful exercises for working your lower and upper abs as well as your back and arms.

Preparing for the Swiss Ball Jackknife

Before you do any abdominal exercise you need to make sure you have covered a few areas. These include:

• Ensuring you use the proper technique
  Make sure you always study the exercise well and learn how to do it with the perfect technique. If you perform any exercise incorrectly you run the risk of developing a long term injury that will haunt you for years.
• Ensuring you warm up
  Make sure you do a warm up before you do any resistance exercise. Again, this helps to prevent injuries.
• Ensuring you target the right muscles
  You would be surprised to know how many women do exercises that they think targets one muscle but, in fact, it targets something completely different. Before you do this exercise you need to know where your abdominal muscles are located and how they work.

Once you have these three things under control you will be ready to start the exercise. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to perform every exercise with the perfect technique. It will prevent injuries and help you get that sexy body a lot quicker.

How to do the Swiss Ball Jackknife for Toned Abs

Now we can move on to the exciting part! This exercise is an amazing way to target your upper and lower abs in one exercise. It also hits your arms and shoulders, your back and even your butt and legs. Many women find this is a great exercise to toned the whole body as it requires strength from a lot of different areas to complete properly.

Engage your pelvic floor muscles
It is very important when performing abdominal exercises that you engage your core muscles correctly. If you don’t you run the risk of completely missing out on the work that your lower abs should be doing. They simply won’t engage. To turn on your core you need to engage your pelvic floor muscles (the ones that you tense when you are busting for the toilet). You also need to tense your major abs muscles by pulling your belly button in as far as you can. Hold this throughout the exercise.

STEP ONE – Position Yourself on the Swiss Ball

The first part of the jackknife is done by positioning your body on the Swiss ball in the correct posture. Without the correct posture your whole exercise will feel unbalanced and weak. To do this you need to:

• Place your feet on the ball so they are balanced and stable. Close together is best but you can have a little space if you need it.
• Place your hands shoulder width a part and lock your elbows so you can support your body weight.
• Make sure that your shoulders are back by lengthening the distance between your ear and your shoulders
• Make sure your back is perfectly straight; not curved upwards or downwards. This is vital.
• Tense your abs and pelvic floor muscles.

Make sure you feel comfortable and secure. It will take some practice to get the balance correct but if you keep your posture as illustrated above you will find the stability comes quite naturally.

STEP TWO – The Actual Jackknife “Crunch” Movement

From the initial starting position you will now do the main jackknife or “crunch” part of the movement which is where the majority of the work is done. In order to do this correctly you need to:

• Very slowly bring your knees toward your chest by crunching your abs and rolling the fitness ball forward
• At the top of the motion you tense your abs again as you breathe out
• Very slowly return your legs to the original position making sure your abs stay tensed and firm

Repeat the above sets until your abs are too tired to continue. This is called “failure”. You should fail after about 15 to 20 repetitions if your technique is correct. Make sure you do not continue if your execution starts to get sloppy as you will not be targeting the correct muscles and you might do yourself an injury.

Conclusion

The Swiss Ball jackknife is an amazing exercise for toning your abs and getting a flat stomach. It is quite advanced so build up slowly by performing a regular pilates abs crunch. When you feel like you are ready get your fitness ball and go for it! You will see results in just a few sessions.

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If you’ve turned on any chat show in the last two years you would know that women love Michelle Obama’s toned arms. And trainers all over the world have tried to capitalize on this fascination by teaching us how to get arms like the First Lady. But as I read through a whole bunch of articles about her toned arms I noticed a distinct lack of clear instruction. Sure, there are some amazing pieces that give general tips on how to get toned arms but no one really wrote about what you should do in terms of diet, exercise, etc.

In this post I am going to do an in depth look at how to get toned arms like the very beautiful Michelle Obama. I will try to include as much information as possible so you can begin your workout today.

Toned arms in 4 weeks?

The title of this post indicates that you will have nice toned arms in four weeks time. And while that might be possible for some of our readers it won’t be possible for everyone. It is, however, a very good goal to keep in mind.

Why won’t it be possible for everyone? The fact of the matter is, if you want to have a toned body you need to lose body fat. And this is a very long term affair. Some of you might already be at a level where you can just do a few little tweaks and wind up with the definition you want, others will need more time. So while I want everyone to keep the four week goal in mind, don’t be too disappointed if you don’t see final results in that time.

One thing is for sure, if you do four weeks of proper diet and exercise according to this post, you will be well on your way to success. I’m betting you will be well ahead of your friends who are still dabbling around.

Spot reducing fat from your arms

The first thing you need to know is that you cannot spot reduce fat from your arms. A lot of women out there think that if you want to get toned arms you need to do some magical exercise that will burn fat just off of the arms. It doesn’t work like that. If you want to get toned arms you need to lose fat off of your whole body. If you want to get toned abs you need to lose fat off of your whole body. There is no easy way out.

And that leads us to the first and most important part of this post – your diet.

Dieting for toned arms like Michelle Obama

photo credit: garryknight

Without any shred of a doubt the most important part of getting toned arms is your diet. It is what you put in your mouth that determines how toned your arms are, even more so than how much you exercise. If your diet is not on track you will not get the arms that you desire.

The maths of arm toning
In our epic article on how to lose weight for good we talked about the mathematics of weight loss. This is a very important concept that I urge you all to read an understand for it will change the way you think about diet and exercise. I will not explain it all again but here is a quote from the article to give you an idea:

If you have a can of Coke with lunch everyday of the week you are taking in 155 calories x seven days a week. That is 1085 calories a week. Now, there are 3500 calories per pound of body fat. So, if you take in 1085 calories from one can of Coke per day in three weeks you have added a pound of fat. That is 17 pounds per year. Just from your daily Coke.

You can see from this little bit of maths that your diet is going to have a much bigger impact on your weight loss than the exercise that you do. Just one Coke will take you 30 minutes to burn off on the treadmill. So what about all the other excess calories that you eat every day? How long must you need to burn all of them off? It is vital that you get your diet in order if you want to tone up.

What to eat for arm toning
So what exactly should you be eating if you want to get toned arms like Michelle Obama? The most important thing is to stay away from man made processed foods that are full of our three main enemies:

• refined sugar
• salt
• saturated fats

These foods are full of empty calories. An empty calorie is basically energy that comes from food that provide no nutritional benefits. For example, if you have a can of Coke you get 150 calories but no minerals, vitamins or nutrients. On the other hand, if you have a salad you get the same amount of calories but a nice amount of protein, fiber, minerals, etc. You need to be avoiding the man made foods that are just full of empty calories. These are a disaster for any woman who wants to lose weight.

A long term approach to short term gains
The main point here is that you don’t want to go on another diet. You aren’t trying to lose weight by eating just lemons. What you want is a lifelong change in your eating habits that will allow you to lose weight, get toned and then stay toned as the years go by. Most women revert back to their old shape and weight. We don’t want that to happen.

Some of the foods you want to be eating on a daily basis include:

• green leafy vegetables
• milk and small amounts of cheese
• unsalted nuts and some seeds
• free range eggs
• lots of fresh fruits, the more colorful the better

I’m not a big advocate of meat but a lot of trainers and dietitians will tell you to take in lean proteins from animals. My personal experience has been that I have lost weight faster eating a vegetarian diet. I also feel better. A lot better. Meat tends to weigh me down and make me feel depressed. It is also a thoroughly unethical industry that I don’t really want to be supporting. But that is another story.

Green tea as a bonus food
Green tea is something that I often talk about on this website as something that all women should be drinking. It is amazing for your health and studies have shown that people who drink green tea daily have a smaller chance of getting caner and heart disease. There is also some evidence to suggest that it can help you burn fat at a faster rate. I strongly recommend that everyone who reads this take up drinking a nice pot of green tea every day and see how it makes you feel.

Exercises to get toned arms like Michelle Obama

photo credit: lululemon athletica

Now that we have covered some of the important dietary points we can move on to a bunch of exercises and workouts that will help us get those coveted arms. Remember, when you do any exercise you need to make sure you are doing it with proper technique and according to your level of fitness. I always encourage my friends and readers to meet with a trainer for your first session and learn exactly how to do each exercise so that you don’t end up with an injury that lasts the rest of your life.

Burning fat is the way to toned arms
Let me tell you something that you might know, you might not. You already have toned arms. They are there right now. The problem is that they are being hidden under a layer of fat. So if you want to tone your arms you need to burn the fat that is covering them. That is the point of eating right and that is 80% of the exercise. If you want toned arms you need to exercise so that you are burning fat at a proper rate.

High intensity workouts are the best
One of the things we try to do here at FWF is educate women on the benefits of high intensity workouts. For too long now we have been told the slow jog on the treadmill for an hour is the best way to lose fat and get toned. It isn’t. Not by a long shot. The best way to get into the shape of your life is to workout at an intense pace. Some of the absolute best ways to do this include:

• Kickboxing classes
  I know a lot of women will groan at this and think that they will never try it but I guarantee you it is one of the best ways you can burn fat and get toned in a really quick time. Three kickboxing classes a week will absolutely change the way you go about your fitness. When kick a bag you use your entire body; your legs, abs, hips and arms. The same goes for punching. You will get your heart rate up to super high levels and you will find that your body changes very quickly.
• Skipping
  Here she goes about the skipping again I can hear you all say. But it really is one of the best ways to burn fat and tone your arms – you get the worst burn! Bruce Lee once said that 10 minutes of skipping was the same as 30 minutes of running and I tend to agree. Get yourself the best skipping rope and go for it!
• Circuits
  One of the most intense workouts you will ever do is a circuit. These focus on resistance and cardio exercises and are a great way to get the fat burning and the muscles working. So how do you do them? Simply choose one exercise for each body part and perform them one after the other with no break in between. Once you finish them all, take a short rest and then start again. Try to do the whole circuit as many times as you can.

It is really important not to overdo it though. A high intensity workout should not be done every day as your body needs time to recover and heal. Try and aim for three times a week with a few more gentle workouts in between. If you can do that for four weeks you will see some incredible results.

The importance of weight training and resistance exercises
Women seem to hate weight training because they are worried that it will make them bulky and manly. Well it won’t. I have said it before and I will say it again. Weight training and resistance exercises only help to make you thin and toned and healthy. They will not make you muscly because women, for the most part, do not have enough testosterone to grow big muscles. When you look at women in the gym who weight train they always have thin and hard bodies – never bulky manly ones.

It is time for all women reading this to add some weight training to our regular cardio workout. Mixing weights with cardio has some major advantages including:

• Elevating your metabolism
  When you weight train you elevate your metabolism. This is a very good thing because it means you will be burning calories even when you aren’t at the gym.
• Burns more calories
  Mixing weight training with cardio actually burns more calories than if you just did one slow cardio workout. The lifting of the weights is a very hard motion and it takes up a lot of energy.
• Your body becomes fitter and healthier
  There have been scores of studies that show that weight training makes you extremely healthy and a lot fitter. Basically, without getting too technical, when you weight train you turn your body into a fat burning machine. The more weights the more fat burning.

How often should you weight train?
If you want to get into weight training you should start slowly and work your way up to about three times a week. If you can mix it in with your kickboxing or other high intensity workouts you will be on the way to a very quick set of toned arms!

Conclusion

Getting toned arms like Michelle Obama is a long process. Sure, it can be sped up but please don’t think that it is an easy road. You need to be committed to a near perfect diet and a workout routine that doesn’t quit when it gets boring. Remember, if you have any other tips you can leave a comment below as it might really help someone out there on their journey.

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The jumping squat is my all time favorite exercise for toning the leg and butt muscles. It has been used by footballers, soccer players, martial artists and sprinters for generations in order to build strength in the lower body. The good news is that it is also amazing for burning fat and toning your legs and butt. In this post I am going to show you how to do the perfect jumping squat.

What muscles does the jumping squat target?

The jumping squat targets more muscles than just about any other exercise. It is what is known as a compound exercise because it works more than one muscle group at a time. In particular it will hit:

• the hamstrings
• the glutes (your butt!)
• the calf muscles
• the thighs
• the hip flexors

When you do a jumping squat you are essentially doing a cardio workout and a strength workout all in one handy exercise. Your heart rate will be elevated to a point where you will feel like you have just run a sprint race and your legs will burn like you have just been doing the most difficult squats of your life. If you want to tone your legs and butt and lose that problem fat then this is an exercise you need to make a regular in your fitness plan.

How to do the jumping squat

The photos above show the starting position and then the landing position. You must swap your lead foot in the air.

The jumping squat is easy to do but it will take a lot out of you. Many women cannot do more than five or six on their first go. That is okay. As long as you do more each time you will be making progress. Try to do at least four or five sets with about a minute break in between each set.

1. Starting position
   Crouch down in a squat position with your left foot in front of your right foot and your hands touching the floor for balance.
2. The movement
   Spring up in to the air as high as possible using your quadriceps and butt to make you jump. This is a very dynamic and powerful motion.
3. Whilst in the air
   Whilst in the air change feet position so that you land with your right foot in front.
4. Landing and repeating
   Crouch all the way back down to the ground and repeat as fast as possible with the other foot now in the lead. Don’t stop at the bottom but keep going as fast as you can.

And that’s it! As I said, the technique is easy but exercise is not. You will get a burn in your legs like you have never had before.

I do this exercise at the start of every workout. It takes a lot out of me but I truly believe it is one of the best ways to burn fat and tone your leg muscles.

Good luck!

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photo credit: Claudia Castro

The morning walk is one of the most common forms of weight loss exercise. When I sit at my table in the morning and look out the window I see scores of women going for walks with their dogs, husbands or a group of friends. And while we have approached the question of “does walking burn fat” before, in this post I want to give you a few ways to super charge your morning walk so you can burn more fat in less time.

How to burn more fat on your morning walk

While I think walking has its merits (it is relaxing, low impact, etc.) I do think there are a lot better ways to burn fat. High intensity exercise like sprinting, skipping, hill climbs, kick boxing classes and weight training are all far superior in my opinion. But for some women these choices just aren’t options. And sometimes a walk is a nice start to the day – it is definitely a lot better than doing no exercise at all. Here are a few ways to super charge your morning walk.

1. Walk for at least 45 minutes
There have been several studies done on the topic of whether walking actually burns fat. In these studies it was found that you need to walk for at least 25 minutes before you actually start burning fat stores in your body. And while I am not so sure if this science still stands up, the principle remains the same. You need to walk for more than 25 to 30 minutes if you want to burn a good amount of fat.

Why is this so? Well the main theory is that when you walk before breakfast you have no available energy from food and as such you will tap into stored fat reserves. Apparently you need to walk for at least 25 minutes before this process begins to take place. This is not entirely true because glycogen energy remains ready for action for a long time. A more likely reason, in my mind, is that walking is not very likely to lift your heart rate and as such you need longer to get to a point where you are actually doing some damage to the energy stores in your body.

Whatever the reason, make sure you are walking at a good pace for at least 45 minutes in the morning. If you can’t bare to be out for that long at least try to get half an hour.

2. Hit the hills
Walking, as we mentioned, is a very low impact form of exercise that doesn’t do much in the way of pushing your boundaries. For this reason it is a great idea to change the terrain a little bit so that your muscles are doing some work that they might otherwise miss out on. The hills is a great place to start.

Walking hills has been one of the best forms of exercise for a long time. It is an exercise that tones your butt and legs, gets your heart rate up a lot higher and is far more interesting and challenging than just walking on the flats. Now, you don’t have to find some gigantic mountain in order to get a good workout. Most of you don’t live near mountains. But almost all of you will have some form of hill near your house. It might be an actual hill in a park or reserve or it might just be a sloped street that you can walk up and down. Hit it.

At the end of the session you will feel more energetic and vibrant because you would have actually worked out a large part of your body. Hill walks are a really good way to super charge your morning walk and burn more fat.

3. Drink a black coffee before you leave
I can hear all of you breathing a sigh of relief. A fitness website telling us to actually drink coffee! What a great idea. In fact, if you want to burn more fat on your morning walk you should drink a cup of black coffee. Isn’t that great news? The bad news – you aren’t allowed to have any milk or sugar. Just coffee and water. Add anything else and you won’t get the benefit.

photo credit: e.asphyx

So why does coffee help you burn more fat? Well many people believe that it allows you to access fat stores instead of carbs. Others believe that the stimulant aspect of coffee assists in its fat burning. To be honest, however, neither of these things makes much scientific sense. In fact, talking to nutritionists and doctors who have looked at studies around this issue and not many of them agree with the above assertions. So why am I recommending it? Because I have seen results in myself and my workout buddies. A bit of caffeine before a morning workout seems to have a positive effect on our weight loss progress. Bodybuilders have been saying the same thing for years.

One last reason; a morning coffee can help to wake you up and get your head in the right place for a workout. I can’t tell you the number of times I got up for a workout and then went straight back to bed because I couldn’t wake myself up. A coffee can help to prevent that. Give it a go and see how it works for you. If you don’t see any results after a couple of weeks chuck it in.

4. Take some weights
Another great technique to super charge your morning walk to to take along some hand weights to give your arms something to do. While your legs do all the walking it is great to do some work for your upper body. This effectively means you will get a full body workout which will, of course, burn more calories.

So what do you do with the weights? Well, if you are a little self conscious you could just hold them by your sides to provide some resistance for your arms. This is good enough and will give you a little mini bicep workout. But if you want to spice up the walk a bit more and perhaps even do some arm toning then why no do some full on bicep curls or slow punches or overhead presses? That way you can workout your shoulder, biceps and triceps – all on your morning walk!

Give it a try and see how you go. If you feel stupid, embrace it!

5. Wear a backpack with some weight in it
You have to be a little bit careful with this one because it can produce some back and shoulder injuries. This tip is only for super hard women who are not afraid of a little bit of pain. Be warned though, if you don’t take it easy and do this one carefully you are probably going to wind up with some sort of injury.

This idea actually comes from the army. One of the main things you do in the army is walk. In fact, you walk a lot. And I’m not just talking about walking around in the park. No sir. These guys carry massive guns that weigh as much as your upper body, ammunition that would squash your dog and, you guessed it, backpacks full of supplies. And they burn a lot of fat. You will never see a fat person in the army on active duty.

Fill up your backpack with some light weights and go for a walk. If you have any pain you should stop but over time you will find that your legs and butt get a good workout and you have to push yourself extremely hard just to finish the walk. It is an army style workout that also helps you become very tough mentally.

Any more ideas?

We loving hearing your ideas and experiences. Talking on the blog is a great way to meet new people and learn new things. If you know of any other ways to super charge your morning walk please leave a comment and let us know.

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