This is a guest post from Ben.

It’s well known that the faster your metabolic rate (the rate you burn calories), the easier it is to stay in shape. What’s perhaps less well known is that boosting muscle mass helps boost your metabolism.

This is because muscle burns more calories than fat – up to 50 calories per pound per day in fact. So, the more muscle you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate becomes and the more calories you burn.

This doesn’t mean you need to look like Arnie. Rather, it’s a case of turning flab into muscle. Toning muscle will help boost your metabolism just as effectively as bulking up. So, to boost your muscle mass and increase your metabolism, try completing sets of these simple exercises.

Press-ups

Press-ups build the pectoral (chest) muscles, triceps and anterior deltoids (front of the shoulder). To properly perform a press up, lie face down on the floor, then raise your body so you’re taking your weight on both hands and feet. (Your arms should be straight but don’t lock your elbows). Keeping your back straight, lower yourself toward the ground until your elbows form right-angles, then raise yourself to the starting position again using your arms.

Dumbbell curl

This exercise targets the bicep muscles between your elbow and shoulder. With an underhand grip, hold a pair of dumbbell weights down by your thighs. Slowly curl the dumbbells towards your chest as far as you can without moving your upper arms. Pause, then lower the weights to the starting position.

Dips

A bench is needed for this exercise, which is designed to strengthen the triceps, the muscles on the back of the arm between the elbow and shoulder. Sit on the edge of the bench gripping it either side of you. Slide your bottom off the bench, keeping your feet together and legs straight out in front of you. Keeping your back upright, slowly lower your body straight down, then press back up. All the weight should be in your arms with your elbows pointing back.

Shoulder press

This dumbbell exercise works the deltoid (shoulder) muscles. Hold the dumbbells on either side of your shoulders with elbows below wrists. Push dumbbells upwards until arms are extended overhead (do not lock elbows). Lower the weights to the sides of your shoulders and repeat.

Lunges

Lunges help strengthen the quadriceps, gluteal and hamstring muscles in your legs. Stand with your feet together. Step forward with one foot and shift your body weight onto this front foot. Gently lower your body until your front thigh is parallel with the floor. Firmly push off with the front leg and return to the starting position.

Warming up and cooling down is an essential part of any workout routine to help protect muscles but joints also take an impact when using weights. To help protect joints consider taking a glucosamine supplement. This sugar compound is naturally present in joints and helps with flexibility.

Photo by: greg westfall.

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As many of us desperately try and cram two months of toning into less than two weeks before we go away in order to get a bikini body, more and more of us will turn to ‘superfoods’ to help our bodies try to detox, cleanse and tone up. There has been quite a bit of debate recently questioning if these foods actually have added health benefits, or if they’re just an unscientific marketing hype.

Despite the debate, experts believe produce on the ‘superfoods’ list have undeniable high nutritional value. They are great foods to add to our diets to help our body get healthier.

We’ve put together a list of ‘superfoods’ that aren’t expensive and are very easy to include in your diet – you might not feel like Superman after eating them, but these foods will definitely have a positive impact on your body.

Blueberries

Blueberries are delicious and the health benefits of eating them are vast. Blueberries contain anthocyanin, a form of antioxidant, that helps preserves cell health and help prevents degenerative diseases.

Top tips to add blueberries to your diet:

• Have at least one 1-2 cups of blueberry a day.
• Buy cartons of blueberries and snack on them throughout the day – they make the perfect sweet fix.
• Blend up a handful of blueberries with some bananas and milk for a delicious fruit smoothie.
• Sprinkle them on your cereal.

Spinach

The nutritional value of spinach is amazing. Firstly, it’s full of calcium which helps to strengthen bones. Combine vitamins E and C found in spinach, along with the fiber, magnesium and folic acid and you’ve got yourself a recipe that will help control colon, breast and lung cancers.

Ways to include spinach in your diet:

• When making a pasta sauce, always include half a bag of spinach. It will shrink once cooked.
• Sneak spinach into salads by replacing iceberg lettuce with the superfood.
• Put a handful in a blueberry smoothie.

Pumpkin seeds

Why not make pumpkin seeds your new go-to snack when you feel peckish? Pumpkin seeds contain L-tryptophan; a naturally effective compound against depression. They also have high levels of zinc which is great for preventing osteoporosis. They’re also a natural way to reduce inflammation, so before you reach for the ibuprofen, try these seeds instead.

Ways to include this food in your diet:

• Keep a bag of pumpkin seeds in your desk at work and munch on them when you get hungry instead of chips.
• Sprinkle them on salads.

Tomatoes

However you say it, make sure you’re getting plenty of this fruit in your every day diet. Although it’s a technically a fruit, tomatoes are the perfect accompaniment to other vegetables. The red fruit is notorious for its high vitamin A, B and C content. Lycopene is also found in high quantities in tomatoes, and its nutrients are important in preventing heart disease. It’s also an antioxidant which means it is powerful in protecting the cells in our bodies from damage.

Get more tomatoes in your diet:

• Add jarred tomatoes to your favorite stew – they’re a great stock vegetable.
• Tomato puree is a great way to sneak tomato in your diet. Squeeze half a tube in when you’re making a chili.
• Slice tomatoes and mozzarella cheese and top with basil leaves, a drizzle of olive oil and sprinkle with black pepper for gorgeous gourmet snack.

If you’re including these superfoods in a balanced diet, as well as keeping up an active lifestyle, then you should notice improved health before your next vacation!

Until next time and thanks for stopping by Small Steps to Health.

Photo by:  dogteaknit.

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When you go on a fad diet to lose weight, you are setting yourself up for failure. Approximately 70% of the weight lost through fad diets is from muscle tissue.  So for every 10 pounds you lose, 7 pounds comes muscle loss!

Muscle loss = slow metabolism

Maybe you think muscle loss is the price you have to pay for weight loss. But each pound of muscle burns up to 50 calories a day. When you lose 7 pounds of muscle, you are losing the ability to burn 350 calories a day.

350 calories is a lot of food. It is almost an entire meal for some of us. It is approximately the calorie count for my breakfast each morning (if you don’t count my coffee).

Losing muscle slows down your metabolism.  A slower metabolism means you must eat less and less food to maintain your new weight.

This is why yo-yoing dieting so detrimental to your overall health. Each cycle of weight loss leads to more muscle loss. After several cycles of yo-yo dieting, you have the classic case of a slowing metabolism so that each time you re-gain a little more weight than you lost previously or it becomes harder to lose weight each time.

Build muscle = increase metabolism

The secret weapon to maintaining your weight is strength training. Each year, we lose a little more muscle from our body due to age and a sedentary lifestyle.

Some body types could build muscle faster than I can sneeze. But on average it takes years to get your body into shape, but you would notice the health benefits within days of exercising regularly.

Ruler Body Shape on Building Muscle

With a ruler body shape, I put on a pound or two of muscle a year with my current exercise routine which includes 3 strength training session a week. This amount of muscle gain is only enough to counter the muscle I am losing.

So in reality, I am only staying status quo, which explains why someone had commented once that for all the exercise I am doing, I look about the same. And sometimes that is good enough because I don’t want to be going backwards.

Until next time and thanks for stopping by Small Steps to Health. If you like what you are reading, please share it with your friends.

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I love eating fruits and vegetables, especially when I travel. However, I’ve gotten food poisoning when I am in places like Mexico and China.

When you travel, you only eat food that are piping hot or ice cold if you want to reduce your chances of getting food poisoning. I have a weakness for fresh fruit, especially local fruits that are expensive or shipped great distances.  Hence, I often come home with a bad case of food poisoning at the end of my trip when I can no longer resist the temptation.

When traveling abroad, especially in countries where they have questionable water:

• Do not eat fruits unless you peeled it yourself.

The peel protects the fruit from bacteria found in the local soil and tap water that could give you food poisoning. However, if you have someone else peeling the fruit for you, that person might introduce bacteria to the fruit if they use a contaminated knife or their contaminated hands.

• Do not eat salads.

What kind of water do you think they are using to rinse the vegetables?

• Do not eat vegetables unless it is fully cooked or piping hot.

Hopefully, the next time I travel, I will remember to not eat the location fruits. Too bad I cannot bring my own stash of fruits with me when I travel to a foreign country.

Until next time and thanks for stopping by Small Steps to Health. If you like what you are reading, please share it with your friends.

Photo by: jenny downing.

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The last time I jumped rope was during the Jump Rope for Heart program in elementary school. I remember practicing every day because I did no­t want to be the weak one in my class. Peer pressure could be a good thing when it comes to exercise.

While I occasionally “jump rope” in my exercise videos for cardio between sets when I lift weights, the duration is usually 30 seconds to a minute. So when I was asked to review the Ultimate Jump Rope Workouts book, I was curious. After all, how many variations could there be to jumping rope?

This post is a review of the Ultimate Jump Rope Workouts book.

Is a jump rope workout effective?

First, the duration of your jump rope workout tends to be short, usually 5 – 20 minutes. Jumping rope could be an intense and high impact workout.

You don’t even need any equipment to jump rope. In my exercise videos, I go through the jump rope motions without an actual rope. It is the motion that is important, not the rope. The concept is similar to lifting your own body weights if you do not have any weights around.

Chapters in the Ultimate Jump Rope Workouts

Part 1: Overview
The two paragraphs above pretty much summarized this part of the jump rope book.

Part 2: Ultimate Jump Rope Workouts
The jump rope workouts in this part are designed to take no more than 15 minutes. The authors spend a couple of pages talking about intensity and how to design your own jump rope workout.

The prep program includes 4 weekly jump rope workouts that prepare your body for the basic jump rope program. Each week you exercise Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

After completing the prep program, you should have build up your endurance for the basic program. Once again, there are 4 weekly jump rope workouts where you exercise on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

And if the basic program does not make you want to burn your jump rope, there is an advanced program that is 4 weeks long with 3 jump rope sessions per week.

While the layout of the jump rope workouts implied that you should be able to linearly progress through all 12 weeks, it is a difficult exercise program so do not feel bad if you find that it might take you an extra week or two to complete a program. There has been plenty of time when it has taken me extra time to complete an exercise video program.

Part 3: The Jumps
This part has illustrated pictures of the various jump rope exercises listed in Part 2′s workout routines. There are 12 types of jump rope exercises. These include:

• shadow jumps: jumping rope without the rope

• basic jump

• the skier: jumping side to side

• the bell: jumping forward and back

• ali step: heel to toe jump

• scissors: splitting the legs when jumping

• alternating single leg

• double under:  jump rope rotate twice per jump

• single leg hop

• running man

• knee tuck single: tuck knees as close to chin as possible when jumping

• knee tuck double: same as single knee tuck except rope has to rotate twice per jump

My advice on jumping rope

A jump rope workout is an effective and quick way to burn calories and build muscle. But because it is intense and could be high impact, I recommend you take the following precautions:

• Start at the prep program

• Exercise on a soft surface.

Save your knees. If you can, jump rope on hardwood floors instead of concrete or tile. It is better to whip up dust than to jump on asphalt.

• Take as long as you need to progress.

So what if you have to repeat week 3 two times before you build up the endurance to progress to the jump rope workout in week 4.

Should you buy the Ultimate Jump Rope Workouts?

If you are looking for a quick and effective way to exercise, then you might want to purchase the Ultimate Jump Rope Workouts. Looking through the illustrated photos certainly brought back a tinge of nostalgia for my childhood.

Until next time and thanks for stopping by Small Steps to Health. If you like what you are reading, please share this with your friends.

Ready to buy the Ultimate Jump Rope Workouts?

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