By Gary Mathews
Fitness Instructor for the Royal Australian Air Force and Author of Maximum Fitness

The vast majority of myths about weight gain are mostly passed down from “gym talk” and so-called experts who know nothing about the body’s workings.

Myths that lead to wasted time, frustration and if are taken blindly as truth, can really set back your progress in the gym. Don’t believe everything you hear in the gym when it comes to exercise and weight gain, do the research yourself.

Simple, basic principles apply to all weight and muscle gain such as progressive overload, variable frequency of reps and high intensity workouts. Lets take a look at some of the most common weight gain myths.

High repetitions burn fat while low repetitions build muscle.

Progressive overload is needed to make muscles bigger. Meaning that you need to perform more reps than you did for your last workout for that particular exercise. If you perform the same amount of reps at each workout nothing will change on you, also if the weight doesn’t changes on the bar nothing will change on you. You need to become stronger.

Definition has two characteristics, muscle size and a low incidence of body fat. To reduce body fat you will have to reduce your calories; the high repetition exercise will burn some calories, but wouldn’t it be better to fast walk to burn these off? Better still; use the low reps to build muscle, which will elevate your metabolism and burn more calories (less fat).

Vegetarians can’t build muscle.

Yes they can! Strength training with supplementation of soy Protein Isolate has shown to increase solid bodyweight. Studies have shown that athletic performance is not impaired by following a meat free diet, and people strength training and consuming only soy protein isolate as a protein source were able to gain lean muscle mass.

[Rob’s Note:] I agree. I was vegetarian for 12 years and vegan for two of those. I was able to put on over 40 pounds of lean muscle tissue on a plant based diet.

Strength Training will make you look masculine.

If it is not you’re intention to bulk up from strength training you won’t. Putting on muscle is a long hard slow process. Your strength-training regime coupled with quality food will determine how much you will bulk up. To bulk up you also require more food. Women don’t produce enough testosterone to allow for muscular growth as large as men.

By working out you can eat what ever you want to.

Of course you can eat whatever you want, if you don’t care how you want to look. Working out does not give you an open license to consume as many calories as you want. Although you will burn more calories if you workout than someone who doesn’t, you still need to balance your energy intake with you energy expenditure.

If you take a week off you will lose most of your gains.

Taking one or two weeks off occasionally will not harm your training. By taking this time off every eight to ten weeks in between strength training cycles it has the habit of refreshing you and to heal those small niggling injuries. By having longer layoffs you do not actually lose muscle fibres, just volume through not training, any size loss will be quickly re-gained.

By eating more protein I can build bigger muscles.

Building muscle mass involves two things, progressive overload to stimulate muscles beyond their normal levels of resistance and eating more calories than you can burn off. With all the hype about high protein diets lately and because muscle is made of protein, it’s easy to believe that protein is the best fuel for building muscle, however muscles work on calories which should predominately be derived from carbohydrates.

If I’m not sore after a workout, I didn’t work out hard enough.

Post workout soreness is not an indication of how good the exercise or strength training session was for you. The fitter you are at a certain activity, the less soreness you will experience after. As soon as you change an exercise, use a heavier weight or do a few more reps you place extra stress on that body part and this will cause soreness.

Resistance training doesn’t burn fat.

Nothing could not be further from the truth. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue and has a role in increasing the metabolism. The faster metabolism we have the quicker we can burn fat. Cardio exercise enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but does little else for fat loss afterwards.

Weight training enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but also helps us to burn calories whilst at rest. Weight training encourages muscle growth and the more lean muscle mass we possess, the more fat we burn though an increased and elevated metabolism.

No pain no gain.

This is one myth that hangs on and on. Pain is your body signalling that something is wrong. If you feel real pain during a workout, stop your workout and rest. To develop muscle and increase endurance you may need to have a slight level of discomfort, but that’s not actual pain.

Taking steroids will make me huge.

Not true, strength training and correct nutrition will grow muscle. Taking steroids without training will not make you muscular.

Most steroids allow faster muscle growth through greater recovery, while others help increase strength which allows for greater stress to be put onto a muscle. Without food to build the muscle or training to stimulate it nothing will happen. Most of the weight gain seen with the use of some steroids is due to water retention and is not actual muscle.

Strength training won’t work your heart.

Wrong!! Strength training with short rest periods will increase your heartbeat well over a hundred beats per minute. For example, performing a set of breathing squats and you can be guaranteed that your heart will be working overtime and that your entire cardiovascular system will be given a great overall body workout.

Any intensive weightlifting routine that lasts for 20 minutes or more is a great workout for your heart and the muscles involved.

I can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

Wrong. Only a few gifted people with superb genetics can increase muscle size while not putting on body fat. But for the average hard gainer, they have to increase their muscle mass to its maximum potential and then cut down their body fat percentage to achieve the desired shape.

Gary Matthews is a trainer from “down under” who has been coaching clients from athletes to bodybuilders for two decades. You may visit his website at Maximum Fitness.

Articles by Gary Matthews

Weight Gain Principles
Workout Without a Gym
Weight Gain Myths
Are You Overtraining In The Gym?

Read more Bodybuilding Articles

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Lower Your High Cholesterol Naturally

Rob Cooper reviews 60 Day Prescription Free Cholesterol Cure

I’ve always believed that every condition know to man could be treated naturally with diet, exercise and with the proper application of knowledge and nutrition. When it comes to Lowering High Cholesterol Naturally, I feel no different.

My Own Cholesterol Levels

My sister and her husband are doctors. In fact, my sisters husband worked as a private consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva Switzerland for 6 years. One summer they were visiting and I had just had my cholesterol levels checked with my doctor.

I remember the moment exactly, when I read what my cholesterol report said because they both stopped what they were doing, turned and looked at me. They had me repeat the numbers and then they looked over the report themselves.

It was at that moment that I realized I had actually stunned my sister the “doctor” for the first time. I had fallen prey to the “little brother can’t possible know best” syndrome, so they had never listened to me in the past.

I’ve been following a natural diet for a number of years and the work paid off not only with my weight , fitness level and health, but also for my cholesterol numbers.

Lower Your Cholesterol Without Drugs

In having a look online for a good way to inform people about Cholesterol and how to lower it naturally, I was lead to Frank Mangano after reading his book about natural high blood pressure reduction.

Frank began looking for a natural approach to lowering cholesterol for his mother. She was diagnosed with High Cholesterol and was afraid to begin Statin Drugs because of their terrible side effects. He dove into the research and the hard work paid off. What He gave his mother was a plan based on hard science that allowed her to lower her cholesterol without drugs. Her cholesterol dropped 40 points with his all-natural system. This kind of result normally leaves doctors slack-jawed at the amazing results.

Read more about Lower Your High Cholesterol Naturally

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By Gary Mathews
Fitness Instructor for the Royal Australian Air Force and Author of Maximum Fitness

The vast majority of myths about weight gain are mostly passed down from “gym talk” and so-called experts who know nothing about the body’s workings.

Myths that lead to wasted time, frustration and if are taken blindly as truth, can really set back your progress in the gym. Don’t believe everything you hear in the gym when it comes to exercise and weight gain, do the research yourself.

Simple, basic principles apply to all weight and muscle gain such as progressive overload, variable frequency of reps and high intensity workouts. Lets take a look at some of the most common weight gain myths.

High repetitions burn fat while low repetitions build muscle.

Progressive overload is needed to make muscles bigger. Meaning that you need to perform more reps than you did for your last workout for that particular exercise. If you perform the same amount of reps at each workout nothing will change on you, also if the weight doesn’t changes on the bar nothing will change on you. You need to become stronger.

Definition has two characteristics, muscle size and a low incidence of body fat. To reduce body fat you will have to reduce your calories; the high repetition exercise will burn some calories, but wouldn’t it be better to fast walk to burn these off? Better still; use the low reps to build muscle, which will elevate your metabolism and burn more calories (less fat).

Vegetarians can’t build muscle.

Yes they can! Strength training with supplementation of soy Protein Isolate has shown to increase solid bodyweight. Studies have shown that athletic performance is not impaired by following a meat free diet, and people strength training and consuming only soy protein isolate as a protein source were able to gain lean muscle mass.

[Rob’s Note:] I agree. I was vegetarian for 12 years and vegan for two of those. I was able to put on over 40 pounds of lean muscle tissue on a plant based diet.

Strength Training will make you look masculine.

If it is not you’re intention to bulk up from strength training you won’t. Putting on muscle is a long hard slow process. Your strength-training regime coupled with quality food will determine how much you will bulk up. To bulk up you also require more food. Women don’t produce enough testosterone to allow for muscular growth as large as men.

By working out you can eat what ever you want to.

Of course you can eat whatever you want, if you don’t care how you want to look. Working out does not give you an open license to consume as many calories as you want. Although you will burn more calories if you workout than someone who doesn’t, you still need to balance your energy intake with you energy expenditure.

If you take a week off you will lose most of your gains.

Taking one or two weeks off occasionally will not harm your training. By taking this time off every eight to ten weeks in between strength training cycles it has the habit of refreshing you and to heal those small niggling injuries. By having longer layoffs you do not actually lose muscle fibres, just volume through not training, any size loss will be quickly re-gained.

By eating more protein I can build bigger muscles.

Building muscle mass involves two things, progressive overload to stimulate muscles beyond their normal levels of resistance and eating more calories than you can burn off. With all the hype about high protein diets lately and because muscle is made of protein, it’s easy to believe that protein is the best fuel for building muscle, however muscles work on calories which should predominately be derived from carbohydrates.

If I’m not sore after a workout, I didn’t work out hard enough.

Post workout soreness is not an indication of how good the exercise or strength training session was for you. The fitter you are at a certain activity, the less soreness you will experience after. As soon as you change an exercise, use a heavier weight or do a few more reps you place extra stress on that body part and this will cause soreness.

Resistance training doesn’t burn fat.

Nothing could not be further from the truth. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue and has a role in increasing the metabolism. The faster metabolism we have the quicker we can burn fat. Cardio exercise enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but does little else for fat loss afterwards.

Weight training enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but also helps us to burn calories whilst at rest. Weight training encourages muscle growth and the more lean muscle mass we possess, the more fat we burn though an increased and elevated metabolism.

No pain no gain.

This is one myth that hangs on and on. Pain is your body signalling that something is wrong. If you feel real pain during a workout, stop your workout and rest. To develop muscle and increase endurance you may need to have a slight level of discomfort, but that’s not actual pain.

Taking steroids will make me huge.

Not true, strength training and correct nutrition will grow muscle. Taking steroids without training will not make you muscular.

Most steroids allow faster muscle growth through greater recovery, while others help increase strength which allows for greater stress to be put onto a muscle. Without food to build the muscle or training to stimulate it nothing will happen. Most of the weight gain seen with the use of some steroids is due to water retention and is not actual muscle.

Strength training won’t work your heart.

Wrong!! Strength training with short rest periods will increase your heartbeat well over a hundred beats per minute. For example, performing a set of breathing squats and you can be guaranteed that your heart will be working overtime and that your entire cardiovascular system will be given a great overall body workout.

Any intensive weightlifting routine that lasts for 20 minutes or more is a great workout for your heart and the muscles involved.

I can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

Wrong. Only a few gifted people with superb genetics can increase muscle size while not putting on body fat. But for the average hard gainer, they have to increase their muscle mass to its maximum potential and then cut down their body fat percentage to achieve the desired shape.

Gary Matthews is a trainer from “down under” who has been coaching clients from athletes to bodybuilders for two decades. You may visit his website at Maximum Fitness.

Articles by Gary Matthews

Weight Gain Principles
Workout Without a Gym
Weight Gain Myths
Are You Overtraining In The Gym?

Read more Bodybuilding Articles

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Weight Gain Principles

By Gary Mathews
Fitness Instructor for the Royal Australian Air Force and Author of Maximum Fitness

Stop wasting your time, money and effort for nothing. Please have a look at the facts presented in this outline of my weight gain principles and make your own decision. As you will see, my systems do work.

Hello, let me introduce myself. My name is Gary Matthews and I bring over 20 years of experience to the Health and Fitness Industry and to MaximumFitness.com.

My professional career began in the Royal Australian Air Force where I was employed as a Fitness Instructor. My duties consisted of training recruits in various disciplines including strength training and conditioning techniques for weight gain, weight loss and general fitness.

At this time I was very much influenced by the bodybuilders and the training systems of the time. Training five or six workouts a week was the norm, splitting upper and lower body workouts and sometimes working out twice a day.

Every set was taken to positive failure, then three or more forced reps and if that wasn’t enough I would do a few negative reps. This sort of training would totally exhaust me and render me sore for days after every session.

This constant battering to my body always made me sick or injured. I would take time off and then go back to it again and all the time I gained nothing in size or strength. Can you imagine years and years of hard work all for nothing and I still see it going on around me now.

Traditional training techniques like this are ineffective and downright dangerous, having been passed down from previous training generations and unquestionably followed at all costs.

The only people making any progress on these systems are the so called ‘bodybuilding stars’ who have superb genetics (about 2% of the general population) and are taking massive amounts of steroids (very expensive and dangerous).

Please do not fall into the same trap, if you haven’t made any gains for a long time now stop!! Stop wasting your time, money and effort for nothing. Please have a look at the facts presented in this outline of my weight gain principles and make your own decision. As you will see, my systems do work.

I have been helping people gain solid muscular bodyweight for years now using the same techniques I outline here.

Before I start on the actual training here are a few Scientific Guidelines for strength training that have always been around but are not followed by many training systems these days. As you will see I have based my programs on scientific principles not hearsay or gymlore passed on from trainer to trainer.

It’s an unfortunate reality that throughout the years there has been a growth of training techniques without any scientific proof. As in Life, and in Training: The simplest is always the best.

Read the Weight Gain Principles

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By Gary Mathews
Fitness Instructor for the Royal Australian Air Force and Author of Maximum Fitness

The vast majority of myths about weight gain are mostly passed down from “gym talk” and so-called experts who know nothing about the body’s workings.

Myths that lead to wasted time, frustration and if are taken blindly as truth, can really set back your progress in the gym. Don’t believe everything you hear in the gym when it comes to exercise and weight gain, do the research yourself.

Simple, basic principles apply to all weight and muscle gain such as progressive overload, variable frequency of reps and high intensity workouts. Lets take a look at some of the most common weight gain myths.

High repetitions burn fat while low repetitions build muscle.

Progressive overload is needed to make muscles bigger. Meaning that you need to perform more reps than you did for your last workout for that particular exercise. If you perform the same amount of reps at each workout nothing will change on you, also if the weight doesn’t changes on the bar nothing will change on you. You need to become stronger.

Definition has two characteristics, muscle size and a low incidence of body fat. To reduce body fat you will have to reduce your calories; the high repetition exercise will burn some calories, but wouldn’t it be better to fast walk to burn these off? Better still; use the low reps to build muscle, which will elevate your metabolism and burn more calories (less fat).

Vegetarians can’t build muscle.

Yes they can! Strength training with supplementation of soy Protein Isolate has shown to increase solid bodyweight. Studies have shown that athletic performance is not impaired by following a meat free diet, and people strength training and consuming only soy protein isolate as a protein source were able to gain lean muscle mass.

[Rob’s Note:] I agree. I was vegetarian for 12 years and vegan for two of those. I was able to put on over 40 pounds of lean muscle tissue on a plant based diet.

Strength Training will make you look masculine.

If it is not you’re intention to bulk up from strength training you won’t. Putting on muscle is a long hard slow process. Your strength-training regime coupled with quality food will determine how much you will bulk up. To bulk up you also require more food. Women don’t produce enough testosterone to allow for muscular growth as large as men.

By working out you can eat what ever you want to.

Of course you can eat whatever you want, if you don’t care how you want to look. Working out does not give you an open license to consume as many calories as you want. Although you will burn more calories if you workout than someone who doesn’t, you still need to balance your energy intake with you energy expenditure.

If you take a week off you will lose most of your gains.

Taking one or two weeks off occasionally will not harm your training. By taking this time off every eight to ten weeks in between strength training cycles it has the habit of refreshing you and to heal those small niggling injuries. By having longer layoffs you do not actually lose muscle fibres, just volume through not training, any size loss will be quickly re-gained.

By eating more protein I can build bigger muscles.

Building muscle mass involves two things, progressive overload to stimulate muscles beyond their normal levels of resistance and eating more calories than you can burn off. With all the hype about high protein diets lately and because muscle is made of protein, it’s easy to believe that protein is the best fuel for building muscle, however muscles work on calories which should predominately be derived from carbohydrates.

If I’m not sore after a workout, I didn’t work out hard enough.

Post workout soreness is not an indication of how good the exercise or strength training session was for you. The fitter you are at a certain activity, the less soreness you will experience after. As soon as you change an exercise, use a heavier weight or do a few more reps you place extra stress on that body part and this will cause soreness.

Resistance training doesn’t burn fat.

Nothing could not be further from the truth. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue and has a role in increasing the metabolism. The faster metabolism we have the quicker we can burn fat. Cardio exercise enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but does little else for fat loss afterwards.

Weight training enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but also helps us to burn calories whilst at rest. Weight training encourages muscle growth and the more lean muscle mass we possess, the more fat we burn though an increased and elevated metabolism.

No pain no gain.

This is one myth that hangs on and on. Pain is your body signalling that something is wrong. If you feel real pain during a workout, stop your workout and rest. To develop muscle and increase endurance you may need to have a slight level of discomfort, but that’s not actual pain.

Taking steroids will make me huge.

Not true, strength training and correct nutrition will grow muscle. Taking steroids without training will not make you muscular.

Most steroids allow faster muscle growth through greater recovery, while others help increase strength which allows for greater stress to be put onto a muscle. Without food to build the muscle or training to stimulate it nothing will happen. Most of the weight gain seen with the use of some steroids is due to water retention and is not actual muscle.

Strength training won’t work your heart.

Wrong!! Strength training with short rest periods will increase your heartbeat well over a hundred beats per minute. For example, performing a set of breathing squats and you can be guaranteed that your heart will be working overtime and that your entire cardiovascular system will be given a great overall body workout.

Any intensive weightlifting routine that lasts for 20 minutes or more is a great workout for your heart and the muscles involved.

I can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

Wrong. Only a few gifted people with superb genetics can increase muscle size while not putting on body fat. But for the average hard gainer, they have to increase their muscle mass to its maximum potential and then cut down their body fat percentage to achieve the desired shape.

Gary Matthews is a trainer from “down under” who has been coaching clients from athletes to bodybuilders for two decades. You may visit his website at Maximum Fitness.

Articles by Gary Matthews

Weight Gain Principles
Workout Without a Gym
Weight Gain Myths
Are You Overtraining In The Gym?

Read more Bodybuilding Articles

Copyright Natural Weight Loss
Plug Stamp: FFGNWL

By Gary Mathews
Fitness Instructor for the Royal Australian Air Force and Author of Maximum Fitness

The vast majority of myths about weight gain are mostly passed down from “gym talk” and so-called experts who know nothing about the body’s workings.

Myths that lead to wasted time, frustration and if are taken blindly as truth, can really set back your progress in the gym. Don’t believe everything you hear in the gym when it comes to exercise and weight gain, do the research yourself.

Simple, basic principles apply to all weight and muscle gain such as progressive overload, variable frequency of reps and high intensity workouts. Lets take a look at some of the most common weight gain myths.

High repetitions burn fat while low repetitions build muscle.

Progressive overload is needed to make muscles bigger. Meaning that you need to perform more reps than you did for your last workout for that particular exercise. If you perform the same amount of reps at each workout nothing will change on you, also if the weight doesn’t changes on the bar nothing will change on you. You need to become stronger.

Definition has two characteristics, muscle size and a low incidence of body fat. To reduce body fat you will have to reduce your calories; the high repetition exercise will burn some calories, but wouldn’t it be better to fast walk to burn these off? Better still; use the low reps to build muscle, which will elevate your metabolism and burn more calories (less fat).

Vegetarians can’t build muscle.

Yes they can! Strength training with supplementation of soy Protein Isolate has shown to increase solid bodyweight. Studies have shown that athletic performance is not impaired by following a meat free diet, and people strength training and consuming only soy protein isolate as a protein source were able to gain lean muscle mass.

[Rob’s Note:] I agree. I was vegetarian for 12 years and vegan for two of those. I was able to put on over 40 pounds of lean muscle tissue on a plant based diet.

Strength Training will make you look masculine.

If it is not you’re intention to bulk up from strength training you won’t. Putting on muscle is a long hard slow process. Your strength-training regime coupled with quality food will determine how much you will bulk up. To bulk up you also require more food. Women don’t produce enough testosterone to allow for muscular growth as large as men.

By working out you can eat what ever you want to.

Of course you can eat whatever you want, if you don’t care how you want to look. Working out does not give you an open license to consume as many calories as you want. Although you will burn more calories if you workout than someone who doesn’t, you still need to balance your energy intake with you energy expenditure.

If you take a week off you will lose most of your gains.

Taking one or two weeks off occasionally will not harm your training. By taking this time off every eight to ten weeks in between strength training cycles it has the habit of refreshing you and to heal those small niggling injuries. By having longer layoffs you do not actually lose muscle fibres, just volume through not training, any size loss will be quickly re-gained.

By eating more protein I can build bigger muscles.

Building muscle mass involves two things, progressive overload to stimulate muscles beyond their normal levels of resistance and eating more calories than you can burn off. With all the hype about high protein diets lately and because muscle is made of protein, it’s easy to believe that protein is the best fuel for building muscle, however muscles work on calories which should predominately be derived from carbohydrates.

If I’m not sore after a workout, I didn’t work out hard enough.

Post workout soreness is not an indication of how good the exercise or strength training session was for you. The fitter you are at a certain activity, the less soreness you will experience after. As soon as you change an exercise, use a heavier weight or do a few more reps you place extra stress on that body part and this will cause soreness.

Resistance training doesn’t burn fat.

Nothing could not be further from the truth. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue and has a role in increasing the metabolism. The faster metabolism we have the quicker we can burn fat. Cardio exercise enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but does little else for fat loss afterwards.

Weight training enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but also helps us to burn calories whilst at rest. Weight training encourages muscle growth and the more lean muscle mass we possess, the more fat we burn though an increased and elevated metabolism.

No pain no gain.

This is one myth that hangs on and on. Pain is your body signalling that something is wrong. If you feel real pain during a workout, stop your workout and rest. To develop muscle and increase endurance you may need to have a slight level of discomfort, but that’s not actual pain.

Taking steroids will make me huge.

Not true, strength training and correct nutrition will grow muscle. Taking steroids without training will not make you muscular.

Most steroids allow faster muscle growth through greater recovery, while others help increase strength which allows for greater stress to be put onto a muscle. Without food to build the muscle or training to stimulate it nothing will happen. Most of the weight gain seen with the use of some steroids is due to water retention and is not actual muscle.

Strength training won’t work your heart.

Wrong!! Strength training with short rest periods will increase your heartbeat well over a hundred beats per minute. For example, performing a set of breathing squats and you can be guaranteed that your heart will be working overtime and that your entire cardiovascular system will be given a great overall body workout.

Any intensive weightlifting routine that lasts for 20 minutes or more is a great workout for your heart and the muscles involved.

I can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

Wrong. Only a few gifted people with superb genetics can increase muscle size while not putting on body fat. But for the average hard gainer, they have to increase their muscle mass to its maximum potential and then cut down their body fat percentage to achieve the desired shape.

Gary Matthews is a trainer from “down under” who has been coaching clients from athletes to bodybuilders for two decades. You may visit his website at Maximum Fitness.

Articles by Gary Matthews

Weight Gain Principles
Workout Without a Gym
Weight Gain Myths
Are You Overtraining In The Gym?

Read more Bodybuilding Articles

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by Will Brink

Author of: Muscle Building Nutrition.com
Muscle Gaining Diet, Training routines by Charles Poliquin & Bodybuilding Supplement Review
Diet Supplements Revealed
Real World Fat Loss Diet & Weight Loss Supplement Review

Readers of the March 2003 issue of Life Extension magazine should recall the long list of potential medical, performance and anti-aging effects of creatine. The article outlined the substantial body of research that found creatine may help with diseases effecting the neuro muscular system, such as muscular dystrophy and may have therapeutic applications in aging populations, wasting syndromes, muscle atrophy, fatigue, myopathies, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and other mitochondrial cytopathies. Several studies have shown it may reduce cholesterol by up to 15% and has been used to correct certain inborn errors of metabolism, such as people born without the enzyme(s) responsible for making creatine.

The article also covered exactly what creatine is, how it works and how much is required to possibly treat the aforementioned pathologies. If you missed that article, refer to the March 2003 issue of Life Extension magazine, or view it at www.lef.org. In this article, we examine some additional properties of creatine, such as its effects on growth hormone release, homocysteine and chronic fatigue syndrome, as well as other important issues surrounding this supplement, such as its safety.

Although data is limited, some research suggests creatine can raise growth hormone equal to that of intense exercise. Growth hormone (GH) is known to play an essential role in the regulation of body fat levels, immunity, muscle mass, wound healing, bone mass and literally thousands of other functions both known and yet unknown. It is well established that GH levels steadily decline as we age and is partially responsible for the steady loss of muscle mass, loss of skin elasticity, immune dysfunction and many other physical changes that take place in the aging human body. Therefore, the possible effects of creatine on GH is worth exploring in aging populations.

One study found creatine could mimic the increased GH levels seen after intense exercise.1 In this comparative cross-sectional study, researchers gave six healthy male subjects 20 grams of creatine in a single dose at resting (non-exercising) conditions. The study found that all subjects showed a “significant” increase of GH in the blood during the six-hour period after creatine ingestion. However, the study also found “a large interindividual variability in the GH response.” That is, there were wide differences among individuals in the levels of GH achieved from taking the creatine. For the majority of subjects the maximum GH concentration occurred between two and six hours after ingesting the creatine.

The researchers concluded “In resting conditions and at high dosages creatine enhances GH secretion, mimicking the response of strong exercise which also stimulates GH secretion.” These researchers felt that the effects of creatine on GH could be viewed as one of creatine’s anabolic properties with the lean mass and strength increases observed after creatine supplementation. Although creatine supplementation has been found to increase lean muscle mass and strength in many studies, the effects of creatine on those tissues via GH enhancement has yet to be elucidated.

Creatine may reduce homocysteine levels

Homocysteine has been recognized as an important independent risk factor of heart disease, more so than cholesterol levels according to some studies. Creatine biosynthesis has been postulated as a major effector of homocysteine concentrations,2 and oral creatine supplements may reduce levels of homocysteine. Many studies have found that methyl donors (such as trimethylglycine (TMG) reduce levels of homocysteine, which also reduces the risk of heart disease. Conversely, pathways that demand large amounts of methyl groups may hinder the body’s ability to reduce homocysteine levels. The methylation of guanidinoacetate to form creatine consumes more methyl groups than all other methylation reactions combined in the human body.

Researchers have postulated that increasing or decreasing methyl demands on the body may increase or decrease homocysteine levels. In one study researchers fed rats either guanidinoacetate- or creatine-supplemented diets for two weeks.3 According to the researchers “plasma homocysteine was significantly increased (~50%) in rats maintained on guanidinoacetate-supplemented diets, whereas rats maintained on creatine-supplemented diets exhibited a significantly lower (~25%) plasma homocysteine level.” These results suggest that homocysteine metabolism is sensitive to methylation demand imposed by physiological substrates such as creatine.

Creatine and chronic fatigue/fibromyalgia

Because of creatine’s apparent abilities to improve the symptoms of other pathologies involving a lack of high energy compounds (e.g., congestive heart failure, etc.) as well as the aforementioned afflictions outlined in the introduction to this article, it has been suggested that creatine may help with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia (some researchers now posit that they are in fact the same syndrome). Although the causes of both pathologies is still being debated, a lack of high energy compounds (e.g. ATP) at the level of the mitochondria and general muscle weakness exists. For example, people with fibromyalgia have lower levels of creatine phosphate and ATP levels compared to controls.4 No direct studies exist at this time showing creatine supplementation improves the symptomology of either chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia.

Considering, however, the other data that finds that creatine supplementation increases creatine and ATP levels consistently in other pathologies where low levels of creatine and ATP are found, it stands to reason that people suffering from either syndrome may want to peruse the use of creatine. Another similar syndrome to chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, is Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome, which may also be potentially improved by the use of creatine supplements, though more research is clearly needed.

Creatine safety issues: fact or fiction?

After the first article in Life Extension magazine on the many potential medical and anti-aging uses of creatine, I received several letters and many e-mails that basically said “I would like to use creatine for the various reasons stated in the article, but I am worried about its safety.” This fear over the safety of creatine was usually generated from some hysterical news report or poorly researched article. It’s odd, but predictable that the media and conservative medical establishment have desperately tried to paint creatine as an inherently dangerous or “poorly researched” dietary supplement. The fact is, creatine may be the most extensively researched performance-enhancing supplement of all time, with a somewhat astounding safety record.

True to form, the “don’t confuse us with the facts” media and anti-supplement conservative medical groups have had no problems ignoring the extensive safety data on creatine, or simply inventing safety worries where none exists. A perfect example of this was the news report that mentioned the deaths of three high school wrestlers who died after putting on rubber suits and riding a stationary bike in a sauna to lose weight. Amazingly, their deaths were linked to creatine by the media, rather than extreme dehydration! Even more amazingly, on further examination, it was found that two of the three wrestlers were not using creatine!

Creatine has been blamed for all sorts of effects, from muscle cramps to dehydration, to increased injuries in athletes. However, these effects have been looked at extensively by researchers without a single study reporting side effects among several groups taking creatine for various medical reasons over five years.5-8

In some, but not all people, creatine can raise a metabolic byproduct of creatine metabolism known as creatinine. Some people-including some medical professionals who should know better-have mistakenly stated that elevated levels of creatinine could damage the kidneys. Elevated creatinine is often a blood indicator, not a cause, of kidney dysfunction.

That’s a very important distinction, and several short- and long-term studies have found creatine supplements have no ill effects on the kidney function of healthy people.9,10 Though it makes sense that people with pre-existing kidney dysfunction should avoid creatine supplements, it is reassuring to know that creatine supplements were found to have no ill effects on the kidney function of animals with pre-existing kidney failure, showing just how non toxic creatine appears to be for the kidneys.11 Bottom line, creatine safety has been extensively researched and is far safer than most over-the-counter (OTC) products, including aspirin.

Conclusion

Though additional research is warranted regarding the pathologies outlined in this article, creatine has a substantial body of research showing it is an effective, safe and worthwhile supplement in a wide range of pathologies and may be the next big find in anti-aging nutrients. Although the dose used in the studies was quite high, recent studies suggest lower doses are just as effective for increasing the overall creatine phosphate pool in the body. The dose of 2 to 3 grams per day appears adequate for healthy people to increase their tissue levels of creatine phosphate.

People with the pathologies mentioned in this article may benefit from higher intakes in the 5 to 10 gram per day range. People interested in more information regarding creatine, in particular the use of creatine and other supplements for athletes, should consider referring to my recent ebook Muscle Building Nutrition found at www.MuscleBuildingNutrition.com for additional information.

About the Author - William D. Brink

Will Brink is a columnist, contributing consultant, and writer for various health/fitness, medical, and bodybuilding publications. His articles relating to nutrition, supplements, weight loss, exercise and medicine can be found in such publications as Lets Live, Muscle Media 2000, MuscleMag International, The Life Extension Magazine, Muscle n Fitness, Inside Karate, Exercise For Men Only, Body International, Power, Oxygen, Penthouse, Women’s World and The Townsend Letter For Doctors. He is the author of Priming The Anabolic Environment and Weight Loss Nutrients Revealed. He is the Consulting Sports Nutrition Editor and a monthly columnist for Physical magazine and an Editor at Large for Power magazine. Will graduated from Harvard University with a concentration in the natural sciences, and is a consultant to major supplement, dairy, and pharmaceutical companies.

He has been co author of several studies relating to sports nutrition and health found in peer reviewed academic journals, as well as having commentary published in JAMA. He runs the highly popular web site Brink Zone which is strategically positioned to fulfill the needs and interests of people with diverse backgrounds and knowledge. The Brink Zone site has a following with many sports nutrition enthusiasts, athletes, fitness professionals, scientists, medical doctors, nutritionists, and interested lay people. William has been invited to lecture on the benefits of weight training and nutrition at conventions and symposiums around the U.S. and Canada, and has appeared on numerous radio and television programs.

William has worked with athletes ranging from professional bodybuilders, golfers, fitness contestants, to police and military personnel.

See Will’s ebooks online here:

Muscle Building Nutrition http://musclebuildingnutrition.com
A complete guide bodybuilding supplements and eating to gain lean muscle

Diet Supplements Revealed http://aboutsupplements.com
A review of diet supplements and guide to eating for maximum fat loss

Read more Bodybuilding Articles

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Balancing Fitness and a Busy Work Schedule Posted By : Stephanie Foster
Work often makes it difficult to keep up with a fitness routine. Coping requires a little extra effort.

By Gary Mathews
Fitness Instructor for the Royal Australian Air Force and Author of Maximum Fitness

The vast majority of myths about weight gain are mostly passed down from “gym talk” and so-called experts who know nothing about the body’s workings.

Myths that lead to wasted time, frustration and if are taken blindly as truth, can really set back your progress in the gym. Don’t believe everything you hear in the gym when it comes to exercise and weight gain, do the research yourself.

Simple, basic principles apply to all weight and muscle gain such as progressive overload, variable frequency of reps and high intensity workouts. Lets take a look at some of the most common weight gain myths.

High repetitions burn fat while low repetitions build muscle.

Progressive overload is needed to make muscles bigger. Meaning that you need to perform more reps than you did for your last workout for that particular exercise. If you perform the same amount of reps at each workout nothing will change on you, also if the weight doesn’t changes on the bar nothing will change on you. You need to become stronger.

Definition has two characteristics, muscle size and a low incidence of body fat. To reduce body fat you will have to reduce your calories; the high repetition exercise will burn some calories, but wouldn’t it be better to fast walk to burn these off? Better still; use the low reps to build muscle, which will elevate your metabolism and burn more calories (less fat).

Vegetarians can’t build muscle.

Yes they can! Strength training with supplementation of soy Protein Isolate has shown to increase solid bodyweight. Studies have shown that athletic performance is not impaired by following a meat free diet, and people strength training and consuming only soy protein isolate as a protein source were able to gain lean muscle mass.

[Rob’s Note:] I agree. I was vegetarian for 12 years and vegan for two of those. I was able to put on over 40 pounds of lean muscle tissue on a plant based diet.

Strength Training will make you look masculine.

If it is not you’re intention to bulk up from strength training you won’t. Putting on muscle is a long hard slow process. Your strength-training regime coupled with quality food will determine how much you will bulk up. To bulk up you also require more food. Women don’t produce enough testosterone to allow for muscular growth as large as men.

By working out you can eat what ever you want to.

Of course you can eat whatever you want, if you don’t care how you want to look. Working out does not give you an open license to consume as many calories as you want. Although you will burn more calories if you workout than someone who doesn’t, you still need to balance your energy intake with you energy expenditure.

If you take a week off you will lose most of your gains.

Taking one or two weeks off occasionally will not harm your training. By taking this time off every eight to ten weeks in between strength training cycles it has the habit of refreshing you and to heal those small niggling injuries. By having longer layoffs you do not actually lose muscle fibres, just volume through not training, any size loss will be quickly re-gained.

By eating more protein I can build bigger muscles.

Building muscle mass involves two things, progressive overload to stimulate muscles beyond their normal levels of resistance and eating more calories than you can burn off. With all the hype about high protein diets lately and because muscle is made of protein, it’s easy to believe that protein is the best fuel for building muscle, however muscles work on calories which should predominately be derived from carbohydrates.

If I’m not sore after a workout, I didn’t work out hard enough.

Post workout soreness is not an indication of how good the exercise or strength training session was for you. The fitter you are at a certain activity, the less soreness you will experience after. As soon as you change an exercise, use a heavier weight or do a few more reps you place extra stress on that body part and this will cause soreness.

Resistance training doesn’t burn fat.

Nothing could not be further from the truth. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue and has a role in increasing the metabolism. The faster metabolism we have the quicker we can burn fat. Cardio exercise enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but does little else for fat loss afterwards.

Weight training enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but also helps us to burn calories whilst at rest. Weight training encourages muscle growth and the more lean muscle mass we possess, the more fat we burn though an increased and elevated metabolism.

No pain no gain.

This is one myth that hangs on and on. Pain is your body signalling that something is wrong. If you feel real pain during a workout, stop your workout and rest. To develop muscle and increase endurance you may need to have a slight level of discomfort, but that’s not actual pain.

Taking steroids will make me huge.

Not true, strength training and correct nutrition will grow muscle. Taking steroids without training will not make you muscular.

Most steroids allow faster muscle growth through greater recovery, while others help increase strength which allows for greater stress to be put onto a muscle. Without food to build the muscle or training to stimulate it nothing will happen. Most of the weight gain seen with the use of some steroids is due to water retention and is not actual muscle.

Strength training won’t work your heart.

Wrong!! Strength training with short rest periods will increase your heartbeat well over a hundred beats per minute. For example, performing a set of breathing squats and you can be guaranteed that your heart will be working overtime and that your entire cardiovascular system will be given a great overall body workout.

Any intensive weightlifting routine that lasts for 20 minutes or more is a great workout for your heart and the muscles involved.

I can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

Wrong. Only a few gifted people with superb genetics can increase muscle size while not putting on body fat. But for the average hard gainer, they have to increase their muscle mass to its maximum potential and then cut down their body fat percentage to achieve the desired shape.

Gary Matthews is a trainer from “down under” who has been coaching clients from athletes to bodybuilders for two decades. You may visit his website at Maximum Fitness.

Articles by Gary Matthews

Weight Gain Principles
Workout Without a Gym
Weight Gain Myths
Are You Overtraining In The Gym?

Read more Bodybuilding Articles

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Balancing Fitness and a Busy Work Schedule Posted By : Stephanie Foster
Work often makes it difficult to keep up with a fitness routine. Coping requires a little extra effort.

Setting Fitness Goals Posted By : Jonathon Hardcastle
Many people make the mistake of setting their fitness goals too high when they embark on an exercise program. This leads them to abandon their plans out of frustration and impatience. Setting manageable goals is key to maintaining a fitness program over time.

The Importance of Proper Hydration and Stretching Posted By : Jonathon Hardcastle
Whether you’re taking a brisk walk or running a 26 mile marathon, hydration and stretching are extremely important to preventing injury and to maintaining optimum fitness.

By Gary Mathews
Fitness Instructor for the Royal Australian Air Force and Author of Maximum Fitness

Stop wasting your time, money and effort for nothing. Please have a look at the facts presented in this outline of my weight gain principles and make your own decision. As you will see, my systems do work.

Hello, let me introduce myself. My name is Gary Matthews and I bring over 20 years of experience to the Health and Fitness Industry and to MaximumFitness.com.

My professional career began in the Royal Australian Air Force where I was employed as a Fitness Instructor. My duties consisted of training recruits in various disciplines including strength training and conditioning techniques for weight gain, weight loss and general fitness.

At this time I was very much influenced by the bodybuilders and the training systems of the time. Training five or six workouts a week was the norm, splitting upper and lower body workouts and sometimes working out twice a day.

Every set was taken to positive failure, then three or more forced reps and if that wasn’t enough I would do a few negative reps. This sort of training would totally exhaust me and render me sore for days after every session.

This constant battering to my body always made me sick or injured. I would take time off and then go back to it again and all the time I gained nothing in size or strength. Can you imagine years and years of hard work all for nothing and I still see it going on around me now.

Traditional training techniques like this are ineffective and downright dangerous, having been passed down from previous training generations and unquestionably followed at all costs.

The only people making any progress on these systems are the so called ‘bodybuilding stars’ who have superb genetics (about 2% of the general population) and are taking massive amounts of steroids (very expensive and dangerous).

Please do not fall into the same trap, if you haven’t made any gains for a long time now stop!! Stop wasting your time, money and effort for nothing. Please have a look at the facts presented in this outline of my weight gain principles and make your own decision. As you will see, my systems do work.

I have been helping people gain solid muscular bodyweight for years now using the same techniques I outline here.

Before I start on the actual training here are a few Scientific Guidelines for strength training that have always been around but are not followed by many training systems these days. As you will see I have based my programs on scientific principles not hearsay or gymlore passed on from trainer to trainer.

It’s an unfortunate reality that throughout the years there has been a growth of training techniques without any scientific proof. As in Life, and in Training: The simplest is always the best.

Read the Weight Gain Principles

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Weight Gain Myths

By Gary Mathews
Fitness Instructor for the Royal Australian Air Force and Author of Maximum Fitness

The vast majority of myths about weight gain are mostly passed down from “gym talk” and so-called experts who know nothing about the body’s workings.

Myths that lead to wasted time, frustration and if are taken blindly as truth, can really set back your progress in the gym. Don’t believe everything you hear in the gym when it comes to exercise and weight gain, do the research yourself.

Simple, basic principles apply to all weight and muscle gain such as progressive overload, variable frequency of reps and high intensity workouts. Lets take a look at some of the most common weight gain myths.

High repetitions burn fat while low repetitions build muscle.

Progressive overload is needed to make muscles bigger. Meaning that you need to perform more reps than you did for your last workout for that particular exercise. If you perform the same amount of reps at each workout nothing will change on you, also if the weight doesn’t changes on the bar nothing will change on you. You need to become stronger.

Definition has two characteristics, muscle size and a low incidence of body fat. To reduce body fat you will have to reduce your calories; the high repetition exercise will burn some calories, but wouldn’t it be better to fast walk to burn these off? Better still; use the low reps to build muscle, which will elevate your metabolism and burn more calories (less fat).

Vegetarians can’t build muscle.

Yes they can! Strength training with supplementation of soy Protein Isolate has shown to increase solid bodyweight. Studies have shown that athletic performance is not impaired by following a meat free diet, and people strength training and consuming only soy protein isolate as a protein source were able to gain lean muscle mass.

[Rob’s Note:] I agree. I was vegetarian for 12 years and vegan for two of those. I was able to put on over 40 pounds of lean muscle tissue on a plant based diet.

Strength Training will make you look masculine.

If it is not you’re intention to bulk up from strength training you won’t. Putting on muscle is a long hard slow process. Your strength-training regime coupled with quality food will determine how much you will bulk up. To bulk up you also require more food. Women don’t produce enough testosterone to allow for muscular growth as large as men.

By working out you can eat what ever you want to.

Of course you can eat whatever you want, if you don’t care how you want to look. Working out does not give you an open license to consume as many calories as you want. Although you will burn more calories if you workout than someone who doesn’t, you still need to balance your energy intake with you energy expenditure.

If you take a week off you will lose most of your gains.

Taking one or two weeks off occasionally will not harm your training. By taking this time off every eight to ten weeks in between strength training cycles it has the habit of refreshing you and to heal those small niggling injuries. By having longer layoffs you do not actually lose muscle fibres, just volume through not training, any size loss will be quickly re-gained.

By eating more protein I can build bigger muscles.

Building muscle mass involves two things, progressive overload to stimulate muscles beyond their normal levels of resistance and eating more calories than you can burn off. With all the hype about high protein diets lately and because muscle is made of protein, it’s easy to believe that protein is the best fuel for building muscle, however muscles work on calories which should predominately be derived from carbohydrates.

If I’m not sore after a workout, I didn’t work out hard enough.

Post workout soreness is not an indication of how good the exercise or strength training session was for you. The fitter you are at a certain activity, the less soreness you will experience after. As soon as you change an exercise, use a heavier weight or do a few more reps you place extra stress on that body part and this will cause soreness.

Resistance training doesn’t burn fat.

Nothing could not be further from the truth. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue and has a role in increasing the metabolism. The faster metabolism we have the quicker we can burn fat. Cardio exercise enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but does little else for fat loss afterwards.

Weight training enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but also helps us to burn calories whilst at rest. Weight training encourages muscle growth and the more lean muscle mass we possess, the more fat we burn though an increased and elevated metabolism.

No pain no gain.

This is one myth that hangs on and on. Pain is your body signalling that something is wrong. If you feel real pain during a workout, stop your workout and rest. To develop muscle and increase endurance you may need to have a slight level of discomfort, but that’s not actual pain.

Taking steroids will make me huge.

Not true, strength training and correct nutrition will grow muscle. Taking steroids without training will not make you muscular.

Most steroids allow faster muscle growth through greater recovery, while others help increase strength which allows for greater stress to be put onto a muscle. Without food to build the muscle or training to stimulate it nothing will happen. Most of the weight gain seen with the use of some steroids is due to water retention and is not actual muscle.

Strength training won’t work your heart.

Wrong!! Strength training with short rest periods will increase your heartbeat well over a hundred beats per minute. For example, performing a set of breathing squats and you can be guaranteed that your heart will be working overtime and that your entire cardiovascular system will be given a great overall body workout.

Any intensive weightlifting routine that lasts for 20 minutes or more is a great workout for your heart and the muscles involved.

I can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

Wrong. Only a few gifted people with superb genetics can increase muscle size while not putting on body fat. But for the average hard gainer, they have to increase their muscle mass to its maximum potential and then cut down their body fat percentage to achieve the desired shape.

Gary Matthews is a trainer from “down under” who has been coaching clients from athletes to bodybuilders for two decades. You may visit his website at Maximum Fitness.

Articles by Gary Matthews

Weight Gain Principles
Workout Without a Gym
Weight Gain Myths
Are You Overtraining In The Gym?

Read more Bodybuilding Articles

Copyright Natural Weight Loss
Plug Stamp: FFGNWL

Stationery Exercise Bikes
Health and fitness articles at www.healthclub.info There are many people who like to do their exercise routines at home. For a long time, stationary exercise bikes were the most common type of exercise equipment you would find in anyone’s home. For the most part, this is still true. Though there are many more advanced types […]

There are many fantastic ways to get focused and motivated to begin a diet or exercise program, but often the most difficult thing to do is keep that drive and ambition alive for more than a few weeks and see your goal through to completion.

Within just weeks of starting, many people have already hit their first snag or setback, and as a result, have slipped backwards in the mental focus and motivation department. Setting goals in writing is an essential step to success, but how do you stay focused on them? One technique I have used ever since my very first bodybuilding competition 18 years ago, is…

The “contest countdown calendar.”

I have used it ever since, through 28 competitions and it will work for you too, for any fitness goal.

I purchase a desk or wall calendar - the type that shows each week stretching horizontally across the page with an open block of space for each day.

After I set my goal and place a deadline on it, I do NOT stop there. I take out my calendar and start counting backwards from my target goal deadline to the present day.

T-minus 117 days….

T-minus 116 days…

T-minus 115 days….

I also fill in my workouts for the entire 3-4 month period, which is the typical length I allow for my mid-range goals like contest prep.

you would be shocked - pleasantly so - just how focused this keeps you. Even better still, you get MORE and MORE motivated with each passing day you countdown because the deadline is getting closer

Deadlines are absolutely critical to your success. Little gets done without deadlines.

There is a saying in management and psychology that “work will always expand to fill the time allowed for it’s completion.”

Remember term papers in school? when you were given a term paper assignment and you had the entire semeseter to do it, did you run home that first night and get crankin on it?

How about after a week? two weeks? A month? TWO MONTHS?

probably not, eh?

If youre like most people, you put it off until the last minute and you barely got it turned in on time. In fact, there are always a few people who pull all nighters the night before!

Alas, the power of the deadline!

In your fitness endeavors, if you dont have IMPENDING deadlines that give you that twinge in your stomach that says “take action now, or else!” then you find it very easy to say to yourself, ‘ I have plenty of time so this one cheat meal doesnt matter… it doesnt make much difference at this point if I skip this one workout… I have time to make it up…”

And then, just like the term paper, you are scrambling at the last minute to reach your weight goal. But in the case of a your body, the consequences are more severe and painful than just a bad grade or late penalty.

Inevitably, you succumb to crash dieting and overtraining or other unhealthy fast-weight-loss madness, which eats up your own muscle like a hungry cannibal and sends you spiraling into the dark pit of metabolic damage and the inevitable plateau and weight gain that follow.

But the solution is so simple: Count your way down to success!

Don’t stop with setting goals. Put your goal countdown on paper, review your goals every single day, AND know, every single day, how many days there are until your target goal date. You will stay more consciously focused and even better, your unconscious mind will go to work for you in keeping you motivated, on track, and on schedule. You’ll come in for a landing on your goal deadline date like an F-16 landing on an aircraft carrier.

I just did my countdown calendar earlier this week… T minus 117 days til my next bodybuilding competition, and thanks to this simple but powerful technique, I’m already focused like a laser beam and have been making steady progress without so much as a hiccup…

Don’t under-estimate this simple technique… Give it an honest test… because it’s often the simplest motivational techniques that are the most powerful of all!.

http://www.burnthefatbook.com/

About The Author

Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer, certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle. Tom teaches you how to lose fat without drugs or supplements using the little-known secrets of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and turbo-charge your metabolism by visiting http://www.burnthefatbook.com/, home of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle and BurnTheFatInnerCircle , the Internet’s premiere members-only fat loss support community.

————————————————–
Metaphysics & Brain science merge and prove that positive thinking and goal setting literally create your body and your entire life experience
—————————————————

On recently broadcast special edition of CNN’s Larry King Live, Mr. King interviewed a panel of “mind experts” about how the thoughts you think literally turn into the events you experience, the material things you possess… AND even the health of your body.

For years, “positive thinking” and goal-setting were often criticized as “pollyanna” and “the law of attraction” was relegated into the category of “new age” fluff.

On the recent Larry King show, panel experts Bob Proctor, John Assaraf and others who were featured in the movie ‘The Secret’ explained that recent breakthroughs in neuroscience along with understanding mental laws, reveal why goal setting, the “law of attraction” and “positive thinking” all work, regardless of whether you look at them from a metaphysical or a scientific perspective.

Scientists have even identified specific parts of the brain, such as the reticular activating system (RAS), which works with the visual parts of our brain to call our conscious attention to things that are important to reaching our goals and to filter out those things that are unimportant.

The RAS is activated by “programming” goals into our sub-conscious minds. Our sub concscious mind is the “power center” and THIS is the mechanism that explains why goal setting and positive thinking are now being accepted as scientific methods for change.

We are discovering that our brain is cybernetic in nature, which means that it is literally like a computer, waiting for a program to be installed.

Here’s the kicker - the subconcsious is completely neutral and impartial - it will carry out any instructions you give it.

Unfortunately, many of us are still running negative programs we picked up from others as children when our non-conscious minds were totally open and impressionable, or which we developed over the years as a result of repetition of our own negative thinking.

As it turns out, our own thoughts, repeated daily, are one of the primary ways that our “mental computer” is programmed on a sub-conscious level, which is the level of beliefs, habits and automatic behavior.

To change your results, you must overwrite old negative programming and install positive new programming into your subconscious.

This can be achived through such techniques as written goal setting, positive self-talk (affirmations), and mental imagery (visualization).

In the 1970’s, the Soviets and East Germans were the first to formally use structured mental rehearsal, and at that time, they dominated in several olympic sports. This was reported in great detail in Charles Garfield’s landmark book, “Peak Performance.” Today, virtually all elite athletes use visualization extensively, as we now know that the brain cannot differentiate between real practice and practice that is vividly imagined.

If you are getting more of the same negative results in your life - such as the same health problems, or the same body fat continues to return even after you lose it, then you have probably been un-consciously running old negative programs and re-inforcing them with negative thought patterns.

You can begin the positive mental reprogramming process by writing down your goals, changing your internal dialogue and taking a few minutes to relax, quiet your mind and perform a session of visualization or mental rehearsal every day (seeing yourself in your “mind’s eye” not as you currently are, but as you ideally would like to be).

These methods, repeated often enough, will begin to program the non- conscious portion of the mind, which is the same part of the mind that controls your heart beat, digestion and new cell production, all on “automatic pilot.”

In the last decade, neuroscientists discovered that you have the capacity to create an almost infinite number of new neural connections in your brain when you run new thought patterns.

The Old neural pathways are like grooves in a record, and if you are struggling with your health related behaviors or behaviors in any other area of your life, you have been playing the “old records” over and over again.

If you were to carve a new groove into that record, it would never play the same way again. the old pattern would weaken and the new one would take over. Brand new, positive thoughts, feelings and images begin to create new neural patterns.

Psychologists estimate that it takes 21 to 30 days to establish a new pattern in your brain. During this time, the focus on sticking with your practice and repeating your new thought patterns is critical.

Is this easy? For most people, no it’s not. In fact, controlling your thinking and keeping it constructive may be one of the most difficult challenges you have ever faced. Fortunately, writing goals and reading affirmations can help get you started.

You can take some of the pressure off yourself by simply accepting that negative thoughts and self criticisms will pop up from time to time. Just observe them, without mulling over them or adding to them, and change the polarity of the thought by quickly repeating one of your positive affirmations or by changing your mental pictures.

So is there something to this whole “positive thinking” thing?

The philosophers and theologians have been saying yes for the entire span of recorded history: “As you think, so shall you be.” Variations on this proverb can be found in every spiritual and philosophical tradition.

But… if you are the left-brained, “prove-it-to-me” type, you dont have to go on faith anymore. Scientists are beginning to prove more and more convincingly that thoughts are powerful things. Even Larry King seemed impressed with what his panel of “mind mentors” had to say.

So how soon are you going to begin your mental training right alongside your physical training? When are you going to learn how to harness this power locked up inside your mind?

Guess what? You’re already using this force every day because you cannot turn it off. Whatever you are thinking and picturing in your mind repeatedly on a daily basis is already on it’s way to you, so it’s simply a matter of HOW you are using it, not IF you are using it.

What do you say to yourself every day? Do you say, “I am becoming leaner, healthier and more muscular every day?”… or do you say “I am a fat person - Ive tried everything, nothing ever works?”

The fact is - you can think yourself thin and healthy or you can think yourself obese and ill. Maybe not in the literal sense…but most certainly as the critical part in the chain of causation…

You see, there’s a lot of talk these days in the personal improvement world about law of attraction, manifesting, intention, visualization, affirmations and of course, positive thinking.

Without understanding that there is an orderly, scientific basis underneath all of these things, many people will simply remain skeptics, while on the opposite extreme, others may get the idea that you can sit around meditating and visualizing, then expect a mystical “law of attraction” to kick in and then “poof!” a great body materializes out of thin air… along with the perfect relationship, a nice bank account and fantastic career success.

What really happens is “Positive thinking” and related methods quite literally re-program your brain, which in turn creates new behaviors that move you physically toward whatever you have been thinking about and focusing on.

So success is achieved through positive thinking + positive doing…. attraction + action. There are two sides to the coin. Without paying attention to both, you may continue to struggle… often against nothing but yourself.

If you want to transform your body or any other aspect of your life, then you have to change on the inside (the mind) first and then everything else will follow.

This process of *scientific* goal setting and mental reconditioning through emotionally charged mental imagery (visualization) and internal mental dialogue (affirmations) is the very first thing I have always taught my clients and the first thing I wrote about in my book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle You can learn all of these techniques in detail in chapter 1. Learn more about the psychology of body transormation inside the Burn The Fat ebook:

http://www.burnthefatbook.com/

About The Author

Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer, certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle. Tom teaches you how to lose fat without drugs or supplements using the little-known secrets of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and turbo-charge your metabolism by visiting http://www.burnthefatbook.com/, home of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle and BurnTheFatInnerCircle , the Internet’s premiere members-only fat loss support community. .

Tags: law of attraction, tom venuto, larry king live, positive thinking, goal setting, the secret

I just got an email about Keith Baxter’s Free Report called - “Give PPC the Finger”

I will admit that I thought it was some hyped up offer to get me to join for free and get some offer…

…Turns out I was wrong… Way wrong.

The bottom line is, this report really opened my eyes. The good news is, the report also shows you what you need to know to succeed in the near future.

The times are changing and I it would be a shame for anyone to not read this report and fail like many will.

I read it, and I wanted to share it with you ASAP.

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Free Creatine Report

by Will Brink of Muscle Building Nutrition 

Creatine

What I am about to tell you is not going to make me a very popular person with many supplement manufacturers. In fact, some of them are going to be down right pissed off at me. On the other hand, some of them are going to be happy someone spilled the beans and told the truth. Finally, some of them will be totally unaware of this information and will be shocked when they read it. Basically, I fully expect this article to cause a sh*% storm that will reverberate throughout the supplement industry. The only people who I know are going to be happy about this article is the consumer, but I am getting ahead of myself. As we all know, creatine is one of the best bodybuilding supplements ever discovered. It increases strength, lean body mass, and, to a lesser extent, endurance. If that were not enough, it’s relatively cheap to boot! What more could we ask for from a supplement? When creatine was first introduced it was sort of pricey, but no one really cared because it worked so well. As time went on and more companies began selling creatine, the inevitable price war began and prices came down. At that point creatine was only being produced by a few companies, so creatine was basically creatine and the price was the only real consideration. As is typical of the market place, once creatine became big business, several new manufacturers popped up and it became no longer a price war as much as a quality war. The expression “creatine is creatine” no longer holds true. More on that shortly.

At this time there are probably four-five companies large enough to mass produce creatine for the sports nutrition market. These companies in turn sell their product in huge bulk amounts to various distributors around the world. As far as the mass producers are concerned, there is a large German company, two companies out of China, and two in the United States. Though there are various other companies, for this article we will basically concern ourselves with these five major producers which probably comprise 80-90% of the creatine production market.

Why I had to write this article

The supplement industry in the United States is by and large a self-regulated industry. Unlike other countries, we (the USA) don’t have government constantly telling us what we can and cannot do with our supplements. Though they have been trying to discredit supplements for decades, the FDA and pharmaceutical/ medical industrial complex have largely failed to do so. As a self-regulated industry, we must do just that. Let me state here and now, I am all for self-regulation and totally against government regulation when it comes to supplements. When we find gross problems, we have to expose them no matter what the cost. Any supplement that is found to be potentially dangerous, terribly misleading, or otherwise a total scam, must be exposed as such. If we don’t do it, then we allow the “powers that be” (who have an interest in discrediting the supplement industry) to get one step closer to the Orwellian scenario of other countries. I thought long and hard as to whether or not I should write this article, but in the end, as a person of good conscience and ethics, I knew I had to. In the end, it will cost the entire supplement industry far more than any one loss could ever cost a single company if problems with a certain product are not exposed. As far as I am concerned, this is us airing out or own dirty inter-industry laundry and policing our own, instead of waiting for the “don’t confuse us with the facts” popular media or other groups to come after the supplement industry. I know it must sound like I am almost apologizing for writing this article, and in a way I am. It could potentially cost certain people a great deal of money. On the other hand, it could also make some other person a great deal of money, depending on where they fall (this will make more sense to the reader as you read along). In the end, the truth can never been denied, it can only be delayed. With each day of delay, the cost to everyone goes up. Nuff said.

Are you getting more than you paid for?

Most of us are always happy when we get more than we paid for, but in some instances, it’s not such a good idea. If we are buying say vitamin C and the label says “500mg per capsule” and laboratory analysis reveals it contains 600mg, then that is a great thing. However, if we test a product and not only does it contain what the label claims, but several other compounds we did not know were in there and had no place being in there, then that’s a completely different story. For example, when the amino acid L-Tryptophan was taken off the market for the death of several people, it was not because of the L-Tryptophan itself, but because of a chemical contaminant found in a batch of the L-tryptophan that was not supposed to be there. This was a perfect example of getting more than you paid for in the worst possible scenario. What I am going to write about in this article certainly is not as bad as the L-tryptophan fiasco, but it could be a potential health concern.

So after that long, cryptic, and bizarre introduction, what am I getting at? Recently, a company tested the five largest creatine manufacturers products and tested the products of various distributors from the USA, Germany, Great Britain, and other countries. At this time, the company who did the testing wishes to remain anonymous, lest they be accused of throwing stones at the supplement industry. However, this is a very large and reputable company and they stand behind their test results. Also, I know this company to be one of the worlds most reputable companies, so I had no problems with their testing results or methods. The test results came to me through the back door so to speak. So what was tested for and what did it reveal? The creatine products were tested for: Dicyandiamide, Creatinine, Dihydrotriazine, and sodium content. What did the tests reveal? It revealed that there is a wide range of differences between creatine products from different manufacturers. The purity level of all the creatine products were also tested and they generally fell between 88 and 92%. Now before you go off yelling “but my creatine says 99% pure creatine monohydrate on the bottle,” you have to remember there is a small amount of water in creatine monohydrate. Before we bother with the results, we need to take a look at the chemicals that were tested for-and subsequently found- in these samples. What really bothered me was the fact that there is little safety research on some of these chemicals, most notably the dihydrotriazine. I did Med-line searches, looked through various chemical data related books (i.e. the Merck Index and other publications), made many phone calls to chemists, spent hours on the internet, and was amazed to find so little real safety data on some of these materials. Considering the fact that some creatine products contain fairly high amounts of these chemicals, the lack of solid safety data did not make me feel very comfortable. The major point of this is really the amount of creatine ingested in relation to the amount of contaminant present. It’s not that a compound has a small amount of some contaminant per se, but the levels of the contaminant is found in relation to how much of the product is consumed is the real question. In the December issue of Health and Nutrition Breakthroughs (p12, 1997) Dr. Podell addressed the same concern regarding creatine as I have when he stated “…there is the potentially important issue of product purity. Given the high doses of creatine most people take, even a minute toxic impurity could have a dangerous effect. Unfortunately we cannot be sure of a manufacturers’ quality controls.”

As we all know, people don’t just take 500mg (1/2 a gram) of creatine, they take 10,000mg (10g), 20,000mg (20g), or even 30,000mg (30g) of creatine per day, so even a small amount of a contaminant (such as the dihydrotriazine) can add up quickly. For example, one creatine product contained as much as 18,000 parts per million (PPM) of Dicyandiamide. If a person is taking in ten grams per day of creatine, that’s 180 mg of this chemical a day. If you are taking in 30g a day of creatine-as is often the case during the loading phase-you would be getting a whopping 540mg a day of dicyandiamide!

The Chemicals

Dicyandiamide (DC): DC is actually a derivative of one of the starting chemicals (cyanamide) used in creatine production. DC is formed during the production of creatine products, and large amounts found in a product are considered the result of an incomplete or inefficient process. A quality creatine product will contain very small amounts, less than 20-50ppm. At this time, DC does not appear to be a particularly toxic chemical. Oral studies with animals (rats and dogs) lasting up to 90 days have not shown serious toxicity or carcinogenic effects, and acute poisoning also takes very high amounts. DC appears to have many uses in the chemical industry. Some of the more interesting is the use of DC in the production of fertilizers, explosives, fire proofing compounds, cleaning compounds, soldering compounds, stabilizer in detergents, modifier for starch products, and a catalyst for epoxy resins. At the concentrations found in some of the creatine products (see below), it’s a good thing this stuff does not appear to be particularly toxic. However, as far as I am concerned, I don’t want to be eating the stuff. One interesting point as it relates to DC and toxicity is, if one looks at the safety sheet on the stuff it states that DC breaks down into hydrogen cyanide gas when exposed to a strong acid. Hydrogen cyanide gas is very toxic and has been used as a chemical warfare agent! As Bruce Kneller points out (see side bar), stomach acid, which has a PH of 2, is a very strong acid. Is even a tiny amount of hydrogen cyanide gas produced from the intake of large amounts of DC? The chemist I spoke to did not seem to think so and the safety data with animals would tend to support this, but who knows. Bruce might be overreacting a bit on this, but it’s better to lean on the cautious side with such things. Bottom line, it’s best not to be eating large amounts of DC in this writer’s opinion.

Dihydrotriazine (DT): DT appears to be the real mystery chemical as far as potentially toxic contaminants found in some creatine products. One company had it listed as “…Dihydrotriazine is often found in various creatine products. This substance is a byproduct of non-optimized creatine productions and consequently widely spread over creatine products. Dihydrotriazine is a compound with unknown pharmaceutical and toxicological properties.” It was virtually impossible to find any useful safety data on this chemical. However, DT is part of a large family of chemicals known as the “triazines.” It is an organic base with many derivatives. Some of these derivatives are toxic while others are known to be non-toxic, so it is very difficult to come to any real solid opinion regarding the potential toxicity of this chemical. One chemist I spoke to from a major pharmaceutical supply company said to me on the phone “it’s safe to say that there will be major differences in toxicity between derivatives since ‘triazine’ simply means possessing three C=N-H groups. Some derivatives are highly toxic.” Bill Roberts, a medicinal Chemist and writer for Dan Duchaine’s Dirty Dieting news letter commented after I sent him over this information: “There really is no way to say just how high a chronic intake of this chemical [these chemicals] is safe in humans from the information given. If the amounts were very small, say a few milligrams per week, it’s a reasonable guess that there would probably be no problem. But if a creatine brand has say 1% of this impurity [these impurities] then people are going to be consuming thousands of milligrams of this compound [these compounds] over time. I think we have to be concerned about taking so much of something that really isn’t well studied in humans for safety. It would certainly be unwise to assume thattoxicity is not an issue. If the consumer has a choice between a creatine brand that contains this impurity [these impurities] in significant amounts, and one that is more pure, I’d certainly recommend spending the extra money and obtaining the purer product.”

So as you can see, we are left with a major question mark regarding DT. For me, the less I know about a chemical the less of it I want to find in any product I am ingesting. Though this chemical might turn out to be perfectly harmless, I think it should not be found in any amount and thus should be non-detectable (n.d.) in the ppm range until we know more about this chemical. As you can see from the tests, some companies have n.d. amounts while others have far more than that. I find this unacceptable, and so should you.

Creatinine: Creatinine is one of the easy compounds to discuss on this list. Creatinine is actually a natural byproduct of creatine metabolism in the human body and of creatine production. A small amount can be found in every creatine product. However, in some products large amounts can be found, as high as 7700 ppm in one case (see chart). It is probably safe to say that the ingestion of creatinine is a safe endeavor. There is some research that links the ingestion of creatinine from meats with increased colon cancer incidence, but in all honesty I would not put much stock in that or get all worked up about it . The point is, when I buy creatine I want to eat creatine, not creatinine. Though a natural byproduct of creatine metabolism, it does not have any ergogenic effects and therefore I don’t want large amounts of it in my creatine, period. A high quality creatine product should contain less than 100ppm of creatinine in my opinion.

Sodium: Like the aforementioned creatinine, sodium is an easy one to talk about. Also, like creatinine, it is a generally safe thing to ingest at normal intakes. At the levels found in these creatine products, the amount of sodium added to the diet is very small and should pose no problems, even to the most sodium phobic person. However, like I said before, when I pay for creatine I want creatine, not sodium. The lowest sodium content was 20ppm and the highest was 500ppm. I leave it to the reader to decide what is a tolerable sodium content to them.

  

Free Creatine Report

Conclusion  

Believe it or not, the company who did the testing told me that although those were the main chemicals they tested for, some creatine products read like a who’s who of different chemical compounds, though they admitted that they are usually found in trace amounts. As for the consumer, if it were me, I would demand the HPLC test results from whom ever I was buying my creatine from regarding the chemicals listed in this article. If you don’t care, that’s OK also. As for me, I will make sure my creatine comes only from companies and distributors who sell creatine made by the large German company, or other companies, who clearly have their collective act together when it comes to producing an ultra pure creatine product. Bottom line? The expression “creatine is creatine” no longer holds true. However, a high quality creatine product it still the best thing going in bodybuilding/sports supplements.

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