You may not have heard of intermittent fasting, and so you may not know why it can and should be a part of your workout and fat loss plan. Intermittent fasting is the practice of abstaining from all but water for a period of usually 24 hours to help with the goals associated with fat loss and weight loss in general. The way in which it helps in this arena is by cutting out a full days caloric intake, while still being able to maintain a full workout schedule. Let’s look at three main reasons I believe that intermittent fasting is a good idea for anyone serious about fat loss and muscle building!

The primary reason I’m fond of a workout plan that involves intermittent fasting is that it promotes maximum fat loss. Most people employ these types of fasts two days a week while working out, and this means they are effectively cutting out a full two days caloric intake from their weekly consumption. This combined with your workout can and does have a dramatic effect on the pace at which you lose excess fat. By working out while doing these fasts, you are attacking your goals with a two-edged sword, slashing it from both ends of the spectrum.

The second reason would be that this type of fasting allows you to maintain a moderate to intense workout load while still maintaining your energy and metabolism. Many people think that fasting drains both of these aspects, and while that is true for other, particularly longer fasts, for intermittent fasting the opposite has proven to be the case. You often have more energy and a higher metabolism while engaged in this type of fasting, making it the best of both worlds. Many other fasts are so debilitating that you are left at the end of the day so drained you are unable to do anything. Intermittent fasting is not like that at all.

The third reason why I believe intermittent fasting is a good practice to include in your workout plan is that it has beneficial aspects to it that are a little less easy to see, but of great benefit all the same. There is a cleansing of your system that takes place with any fast, as your body adjusts to less content being put into it. There are also undeniable psychological benefits, such as a very affirming sense of accomplishment that can help you in many areas of your life. Knowing that you are not a slave to food is a major part of that.

I’m a firm advocate of intermittent fasting as a way of enhancing your fat loss and workout routines. There is in my mind no faster way of getting maximum fat loss while still being able to handle a full workout load. Investigate it today. I think you might be surprised at the results you’ll come up with!

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Brad Pilon is a nutrition professional with over eight years experience working in the nutritional supplement industry specializing in clinical research management and new product development. Brad has completed graduate studies in nutritional sciences specializing in the use of short term fasting for weight loss.

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit my Eat Stop Eat recommendation page.

I have been doing a lot of reading lately, I mean a LOT of reading. I have been gearing up and getting my ducks in a row, gathering information, tips and advice from all around my world and putting it together for you and I.  Nutrition tips, healthy and tasty recipes, workout routines, training tips… bunches and bunches of nuggets that you can take and work into your lifestyle and health transformations.

Blogs are one of the greatest sources of inspiration, motivation and information available to us today. They are typically the most honest and straightforward resource you can have in your toolbelt. So I have compiled a list of blogs to share with you that I have been reading and visiting on a daily basis, and I hope they inspire, motivate and empower you as well!

1. Fitness Black Book – Rusty Moore advocates the “Hollywood” type of fit body, rather than the “bodybuilder” type. Meaning: slim, athletic, sexy. This is the look and feel that I prefer and that I am personally pursuing. His knowledge and delivery style are top-notch.
2. Fit and Busy Dad Blog – Chris Lopez is a busy man with a huge family to take care of, and he shares his tips, strategies and workouts for busy parents (or anyone else who is perpetually busy for that matter) using lots of videos and an easy approach.
3. Turbulence Training Fat Loss – Craig Ballantyne is a fairly intense guy, but boy does he know his stuff. I have only read a few of his articles so far, but that is more than enough to convince me to keep up with this dude. He has all the credentials and education that you could ever ask for, but he also knows how to break all the science down into an easily “digestible” (pun intended) format. Don’t miss this one!

That is my short-list for now and more than enough to get you started. These 3 blogs will give you a balanced and, most importantly, a sustainable set of plans for attacking your body and healthy lifestyle transformation! Happy reading!

My best friend Steve and I were enjoying a mid-afternoon meal today when a great part of our conversation started to become very clear to us. Before we begin the journey in our lives toward living healthy and living free, we must take the time to realize a simple, yet profound, truth. Diets never work, only a lifestyle shift will.

Let me clarify that a bit though. Actually diets do work, for a period of time. But since the majority are mostly all based upon unhealthy restriction of calories and macronutrients, they are very rarely, if ever, sustainable. When we have a “diet” mentality to weight-loss and nutrition, we will most of the time find ourselves hoping and praying for the diet to come to an end so that we can eat again. They are a temporary fix to a long-term problem, and that problem is often the way we view food.

By the time we feel we are in need of diet, we see food as the enemy, something to be avoided at all costs. And even when we are “allowed” to eat on a diet, we feel the constraints of what we can’t have instead of the freedom of what we can, and should, consume.

So as I started my journey towards weight-loss and overall health, and as my friend Steve is just beginning his, I learned that the first step in my success would be for me to adopt a total lifestyle transformation. My view of what I should and should not be putting into my body had to RADICALLY shift, otherwise I knew that any hard work to I put forth would only end in disappointment because the change would not be SUSTAINABLE!  There would be no way for me to perpetually deny my “cravings” for an extended period of time. Eventually I would cave in, fall off the wagon, and then right back where I started, only with a heavy dose of guilt and disappointment to add to the image I saw in the mirror everyday.

Yes, I did begin my transformation with some fairly radical steps, I knew that those radical moves were the catalyst I needed to simply gain forward momentum. I knew that I would not have to count calories forever, or weigh myself every morning right after a trip to the bathroom for the rest of my life, or measure all of my food to learn my portion size. But I did realize that those steps were necessary to set me up for success for the rest of my life. I KNOW beyond the shadow of a doubt that I will NEVER return to that weight level or state of unhealthiness again. And it is because my entire lifestyle has changed, the way I look at food and exercise too. I also knew in the beginning that there were several diets that I could have embraced and achieved some great, maybe even outstanding, results, however I knew that sooner or later I would revert back to the old “me”. I was what needed to change, not my food or exercise routine.

So we will talk more soon about the freedom that a lifestyle transformation brings versus the constraints of a diet and we will debunk many myths surrounding our views of nutrition and fitness. Even as I write this and remember my conversations today, I realize more and more how truly passionate I am about the transformed life…. transformations in body, mind, finances and spirit. I can’t wait to share it all with whoever is listening!

I launched this blog some time ago with enthusiasm and fanfare. I was so happy to finally have a personal space on the world wide web of my own that didn’t belong to my company or my clients. I was so excited to have a place to share my personal thoughts and interests and was chomping at the bit to get it going. I registered my domain, got web hosting setup, installed Wordpress and configured all the cool-kids plugins… stuff I could do with my eyes closed because I have been doing it for other people for over a decade. So then I was already to take off, shoes laced tight, feet in the starting blocks, gun raised in the air and ready to fire and then….

Nothing. Absolutely. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Z— you get the idea.

I realized very quickly that I had done all the easy stuff, all the technical stuff. But none of that was going to help me be a better writer, a better communicator, a better relationship-builder or a better blogger. I had not taken the time to find my focus or my niche. I had no clue what I really want to write about or who I wanted to talk to and with, and so I floundered in the vast expanse of potential. Without a focus, or a “why”, I had nothing to get me started, much less to keep me going. If it weren’t for a couple of slick plugins for Twitter, I would still only have one post to read at all, ONE POST!!  Sheesh, talk about a big fat disappointment.

But in preparing for another online venture called Our Road to Wealth, I began reading a lot of new material. A new friend on Twitter, @ericgoldstein, recently told me that “Leaders are Readers” and you better believe that I have been doing my fair share of reading lately. I already love to read, but had been taking some time off because I was starting to suffer from an insatiable appetite for information, but that information wasn’t necessarily being translated in knowledge (there is a big difference!). But I digress… One of the best resources that I have come across so far is Ramped Blogging by Robb Sutton. It is a free ebook that is absolutely jammed packed with information and step-by-step instructions for everything from blog topic brainstorming (exactly what I am writing about here) to promotion and monetization. I am only a couple of weeks into it, but I already know that it will be my go-to guide for the foreseeable future.

Maybe you have guessed it already, but the VERY FIRST aspect that Robb covers is choosing the right niche topic for your blog, but it is also the VERY FIRST thing that I did not do. And without purpose or direction I was in danger of having a perfectly setup and configured blog gathering dust on the server farm at my hosting company. Since I almost went down that road, please take it from me that having a definite purpose and subject matter for your blog, or any other site you may have in mind, will be like the first button on your dress shirt…. if you don’t get it right then all of your remaining efforts might possibly be in vain.

“OK John, we get it… have a focus. So WHAT is yours?!”

I thought you would never ask.  I want to devote a separate post to my niche in detail, but I do want to go ahead and let you know so that you can prepare yourself for the awesomeness that is to come. After brainstorming through my passions and the things that occupy my time and thinking, I realized that I am VERY passionate about eating healthy,working out & strength training, and living for total wellness. About a year ago I lost a considerable amount of weight (a little over 50 pounds) and the difference in my quality of life was almost overwhelming. I could run fast again, I had more than enough energy to keep up with my two amazing children and I simple felt better from head to toe. I have been an athlete all my life, but I learned that I didn’t know how bad I really felt until I felt good again. And I want as many other people as possible to feel that exact same feeling, or even better!

So the focus of this site will be health and nutrition, and more specifically the challenges of healthy living, eating and exercise for parents of young children and busy couples.  I will continue to refine the exact topics that I will be writing about and videoing, but the healthy and wealthy lifestyle will definitely be the core foundation. It feels great to finally have a direction and a definite purpose for this site. I can’t wait to talk with you more about it!

Of all my years of living and, most importantly, working with the web, I have never taken the plunge into the world of blogging. In my existing business we have always advised clients on the importance of blogging and initiating a conversation with their clients. And we have dipped our toes in the water a couple of times for our own site, but never I have I taken my own medicine and created a blog for myself. So in light of my designer/perfectionist tendencies, I am indeed taking a plunge. I am simply letting this first post flow out of me. I have little concern, for now, about my keyword density, whether I have configured my SEO plugins correctly or if the visual design is as perfect for me as I would ultimately prefer. None of that, for now…

I am simply taking action.

And this is what you can expect from me on this site. Action, transparency, and passion. You see, I love the marketplace. I love the entrepreneurial spirit that I have been given, and I love having the opportunity to connect with others and unlock the creativity, passion and dreams that reside in us all. I believe that we are created to live so much bigger, so much more than the 40-hour week. For the past 8 years, I have had the privilege of owning my business and my time, and now I long to own my time and all of it. You see, even being self-employed is still a form of employment, a J-O-B. I still trade a unit of time for a unit of money. I still work for money. Now I am beginning to take the necessary steps for having money work for me.

I am currently reading two books that are heavily influencing my current decision-making process: Cash in a Flash by Robert Allen and Mark Victor Hansen and Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I am not going into the details of either of these books in this post, but suffice it to say that both books have enabled me to identity and intensify thoughts, feelings and actions that have been simply floating around in my life for some time now. Allen and Hansen openly admit that even they have been heavily influenced by the thinking and writing of Napoleon Hill, so the books complement each other rather nicely. Let this be my first piece of advice I give you: Run to B&N or surf to Amazon as quickly as you can and buy them both and dive in. If you have been finding yourself increasingly unsatisfied with your status quo, giving all your time to your boss and very little to yourself or your family, longing for true wealth so that you can live a free life…. then let me encourage you to follow your leadings and begin to take massive action now.

With this blog, I plan to be as transparent as possible with everything I do online. I am no “guru” or marketing genius. If you choose to walk with me it will be because I have passion for generating wealth and using that wealth to improve the world that I/we live in. I firmly believe that we possess the same potential for success and creativity that Edison, Rockefeller, Gates, Jobs, Buffet and Trump possessed when they started… You and I are no different in that regard. The only difference, for now, is that they took passionate action in order to grab hold of that which stood before them. So I want to show you exactly what I do so that you can see for yourself that there is no great mystery in front of you. You too can see your dreams materialize.

That is all I have for now. I am positive that there will be much more to come and I plan to use video and audio heavily so that you can put a face and a voice with the name. I look forward to it!