Do I promote Atkins, Paleo, LCHF, VLCD, GI, a vegetarian diet, spending four hours a day in the gym or what’s my view on healthy living?

Well, I love statistics and facts. Therefore I’ve spent countless of hours reading hundreds of scientific studies on everything from basic calories to testosterone. As a result, my view on fitness and diets is highly affected by what scientific studies actually says. Some might argue that science isn’t all and sometimes it “just works”. I don’t agree and often you’ll find that it’s just a stone in the soup, meaning you would have gotten the same results even if you didn’t do something, or it might be placebo.

Obviously you need some knowledge on how to read studies and how to put them in context. If not, you’ll just end up with amazing headlines like any other magazine copying a press release. I’ve actually posted a crash course in bad science which I recommend everyone to watch. It takes 14 minutes and afterwards you’ll basically be able to spot flaws in any amazing study published in popular magazines.

Calories

What does the science say then? Well, the foundation in every diet is calories. You can’t get around it. Sure, most popular diets trick people into eating less by reducing or limiting different kinds of food but if you consume more calories than your body use you’ll gain weight.

Nutrition

Please, do note that this doesn’t mean that you can eat whatever you want and get the same results. It’s not just about calories. If you end up eating nothing else than candy and drinking soda you’ll lose muscles and gain fat even though the scale says the same. Therefore it’s vital to focus on eating enough protein. Studies has shown that just by eating enough protein you’ll keep your muscles.

There’s no optimal amount yet but it’s recommended that you consume 1.5 times your body weight. In other words, if you weigh 70 kg it’s recommended that you consume at least 105 g protein each day.

Once you’ve eaten the minimal limit of protein you can divide the rest of your calories on more protein, carbohydrates and fat. It’s up to you how you want to divide it depending on what you enjoy eating and if you have a lot of hard work and thereby need more carbohydrates.

FOOD

I don’t have any rules on what kind of food you should or shouldn’t eat. However, I do recommend that you try to limit the amount of convenience food you consume. These are the types of prepared dishes you get from the fridge and just heat in your owen or microwave. Unfortunately these often contains lots of sodium, sugar, e numbers and provide little to no nutritional value.

Try and cook as much food as you can at home. If you need inspiration I’ve got a category filled with healthy recipes which I’m sure will inspire you.

Treats

What about sweets? A lot of people believe we need a treat once in a while. I beg to differ. I wrote about it in my eBook (Overcome Sugar Addiction) and my point is that we learn to associate food with emotions at an early age. This is something that has to stop. You wouldn’t argue that we need a cigarette or some drugs once in a while – yet people look down on people trying to avoid unhealthy sweets. It’s madness!

I’m not saying that you shall never eat something tasty, I’m just saying that there’s better alternatives than drinking soda with high fructose which leads to non alcoholic fatty liver disease.

meal schedule

Contrary to popular belief you don’t have to, and probably shouldn’t, eat five meals a day. If your daily calorie taget is 1500 kcal, and you had five meals a day, then every meal would consist of 300 kcal which isn’t easy. If you, on the other hand, exercise a lot and have a daily calorie target of 3000 kcal, then you need to eat several times to be able to consume all the calories.

Think about your lifestyle, how often you want to eat and how much you need to feel satisfied. Personally I went a few weeks eating one big lunch and small dinner after my workout and it worked great for me.

Supplements

Supplements is another debated topic. Much like everyone else I believe there’s no substitut for real food. I do, however, know that it can be difficult to get enough vitamins and protein if you’re trying to lose weight and limit your calories. This is why I recommend you to consider some kind of multivitamins. Just one each day is enough to cover what your body need.

The same goes for protein powder. It’s simple, cheap and you’ll be sure that you get enough protein every day. Please note that I don’t recommend replacing real food with protein powder. It’s just a supplement when you, for one reason or another, have problem coming up with your recommended intake.

Exercise

I love working from home. Seriously. Love it. There’s no time spent on going to the gym, waiting for the right equipment and so on. I just wake up, step out of bed and begin my workout. Therefore, my main focus in this blog will be on how to exercise at home for a low cost. With a pair of dumbbells you can actually exercise your whole body.

With that said, I do enjoy working out in a gym with friends and recommend everyone to try it at least once. However, as I said, my main focus in this blog will be on how to exercise at home.

Work

There’s a quote saying that if you work with what you love, you’ll never have to work another day in your life. I believe this to be spot on. Instead of taking a job in which you hate every minute, think about your lifestyle and reflect. Would it be possible to buy less useless things and thereby have the option to take job with less pay but a job which you truly love? There’s actually a great story on this which I’ll share with you later.

Summary

I highly recommend that you read the whole post to grasp the concepts but here’s the short version. Hopefully it will make you read the rest.

• You need to consume less calories than you use.
• Eat at least 1.5 times your body weight in protein.
• Divide the rest of your calories on protein, carbs and fat.
• We don’t need sweets once in a while.
• Try to limit convenience food.
• There’s no five meals a day-rule!
• Consider taking multivitamins and protein powder.
• Follow your passion.

I highly appreciate comments and I’m looking forward to yours.

Maybe it’s my own fault. Maybe I led you to believe it was easy, when it wasn’t. Maybe I made you think my highlights started at the free throw line instead of at the gym. Maybe I made you think every shot I took was a game winner, that my game was built on flash and not fire. Maybe it’s my fault that you didn’t see that failure gave me strength, that pain was my motivation. Maybe I led you to believe that basketball was a God given gift and not something I worked for every single day of my life. Maybe I destroyed the game. Maybe you’re just making excuses.

Take lots of pictures. Not of sights, don’t take pictures of buildings. Take pictures of moments, because that’s what matters. Capture them in your mind and hold on to them in your heart.

Love it. Just make sure you don’t get stuck in your past and spend your days complaining on how everything was better back then. Remember Al Bundy? Seize the day, focus on the present and experience new adventures!

According to me, your wallpaper is one of the most important thing when it comes to being inspired to work on your computer. Therefore I have decided to share my top 16 wallpapers. Feel free to add yours in the comments.

When it comes to getting things done I personally believe every one of us use the time we have. Meaning, if you have two hours to finish a project it will take two hours. If you on the other hand have four hours, it will take four hours and you will get about the same things done.

Because of this it is important to always have a todo-list so you know what you should be doing. Another important thing is to get rid of all distractions which can be a bit tricky if you do not know what is distracting you.

How to find your distractions

We are only human and it is difficult to think back and remember what we did during the day and for how long. When it comes to computers, on the other hand, we can use them to track every second of our time.

Personally I am a huge fan of RescueTime, which is a software for both Windows and Mac. When using it you can see exactly how much time you spend on every website, document, software, etc.

How to get rid of you distractions

This is where RescueTime truly comes in handy. In RescueTime you rate every website and software on a scale from –2 to +2 depending on how productive they are. Later on when you want to focus one hundred percent you can simply click on a button in RescueTime and it will automatically block every website with a rating of –2 and instead send you here.

Why we use distractions

Personally I believe we use distractions just because we do not know what we should do, or we are bored doing it. This is why you should try to find your true passion and also always know what to do when you are done.

What do you think is you major time waster? Think about it, leave a comment, then try RescueTime for a week and come back with the result.

Last summer we replaced our old roof and demolished our conservatory which resulted in a busy week. It was a lot of hard work with heavy tiles but I could encourage myself by the knowledge that work burns calories and as everyone should know by now – energy deficit results in weight loss.

You can encourage yourself with the same knowledge whenever you have to shovel snow, mow the lawn or clean your home. Every active minute results in you burning calories. An active life promotes good health.

Other upsides of working outdoors is that you get a healthy dose of vitamin D and possibly even a good looking sunburn. Just remember to be a bit careful with the sun and try to spend some time in the shadow. If you find yourself having some spare time it might be a good idea to combine the advantages of working outdoors by planting some healthy and tasty strawberries.

This is without doubt my favorite fish dish. It tastes absolutely amazing, is pretty cheap, healthy and takes no time to cook. Well, the potatoes might take up to 30 minutes to cook but they can handle themselves.

The most important part in this dish is to take an extra minute to rice the potatoes. It makes the dish a bit more luxury and it tastes better.

In the study, they went through data from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and looked at people reading labels and doing exercise to find out which method makes the most people succeed with their weight loss.

Label users who did not exercise displayed a slightly greater likelihood of weight loss than those who exercised but did not read food labels. Additionally, those who only read labels were more likely to improve their chances of weight loss by adding exercise to their routines rather than abandoning label usage in favor of exercise.

As you can see, people reading labels are more likely to succeed than those just exercising. You are most likely to get the best results by combining them.

Jamie Oliver has gone from being a highly entertaining and skillful chef in English television to being the chosen one. Since this lecture, from 2010, he has continued his fight and is now opting for a food revolution day.

The lecture shows some startling facts. I’ve previously mentioned that your lifestyle will kill you but the scene in which kids can’t tell the difference between potatoes, tomatoes and pears really scared me.

Watch the lecture and be inspired. It’s both entertaining and highly educational. Then visit foodrevolutionday.com and see what you can do.

During the last weeks I’ve exercised every morning but during the few days I visited my family I didn’t exercise once. Sure, I can come up with all sorts of excuses but I had a similar problem with the food. Living on my own, I rarely eat candy or cookies and closely monitor my calories. During the easter I ate unhealthy and didn’t care much about the calories. I guess we all fell back to the old, bad, habits we had back when I was living there.

This made me think about what we learned from Vietnam soldiers and how difficult it can be to come back home if we learn to get rid of our habits somewhere else. Think about the show The Biggest Loser. Everyone in the show says the same thing – the most difficult part is when you come home.

How can we overcome this? Well, the best method would probably be to overcome your bad habits at home together with the people you’re sharing your home with. By doing so, you reduce the risk of dragging down each others.

A regular 30 min walk burns roughly 200 calories for me which corresponds to 33 cl milk or two glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice. If you drink a few glasses a day or have a chocolate bar after the dinner you’ll almost certainly have to exercise just to maintain your current weight.

Burning calories should be the frosting, not the whole cake!

Make sure to eat healthy and not only exercise. Just by replacing your beverages you’ll probably see progress i.e. weight loss without hassle.

According to the Swedish company 118100 one Swedish school year consists of 178 days and I’m sure that’s roughly the same in all western countries. During my school years I had one out of four meals in school i.e. lunch. I had breakfast, a snack and dinner at home every day. Based on this stats, the schools stands for 178 of 1460 meals every year! Is it then logical to blame the schools or should we focus on the other 1282 meals (88%)?

Once the kids finally reaches high school it can be a good idea to educate them about nutrition and calories but until then, it should be the parents responsibility to make sure they eat healthy the other 1282 meals. This doesn’t have to be done by monitoring them 24/7, instead you can go a long way by just avoid buying home junk such as candy and soda. If there isn’t any candy, soda or cookies at home – a 8 year old kid won’t consume it!

I still believe there’s room to improve the school food but we need to choose our battles and prioritize the 88% which every parent can have 100% control over instead of focusing on the 12% they are served in school.

Therefore, I decided to not allow comments in the beginning. However, I did miss being able to speak and get feedback from you. So this weekend I took the time to implemented Facebook to the blog. It’s nothing fancy but forces everyone to add their real name behind their comments. By doing so, I believe most of the trash-talk will be avoided and we can build a pleasant atmosphere.

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily. - Zig Ziglar

Today is motivating monday and what can be more motivating than Journey?

Lyrics

Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world
She took the midnight train going anywhere
Just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit
He took the midnight train going anywhere

A singer in a smoky room
The smell of wine and cheap perfume
For a smile they can share the night
It goes on and on and on and on

Strangers waiting, up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching in the night
Streetlight people, living just to find emotion
Hiding somewhere in the night

Working hard to get my fill, everybody wants a thrill
Paying anything to roll the dice just one more time
Some will win, some will lose, some were born to sing the blues
Oh the movie never ends, it goes on and on and on and on

Strangers waiting, up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching in the night
Streetlight people, living just to find emotion
Hiding somewhere in the night

Don’t stop believing
Hold on to that feeling
Streetlight people

Other reasons to get enough sleep:

• Sleep deprivation will make you less attractive
• Sleep deprivation may lead to overweight
• Sleep deprivation will steal your time
• Your lifestyle will most certainly kill you

I’ve been doing this for roughly two weeks and found a few, non scientific, but important reasons to why I love this. First and foremost, I tend to read a lot more books. Since I can’t waste time online I read every night until I get tired enough to go asleep. There’s a great difference in blog posts and books.

I tend to think a lot more. Instead of watching TV until I fall asleep and then wake up tired, I spend some time thinking about the day and my goals.

I get more hours with light which makes me more productive. Instead of having to do my daily tasks when I get home I can do them in the morning.

How to succeed with this challenge

I’m using the built in settings on my Mac to automatically turn it off. It gives me a 5 – 10 minute window which is enough to close everything for the day.

I’m not watching my TV often but when I do, I make use of the timer, so it turns off automatically at 11 PM. Most shows end 11 PM so if the TV turns off automatically you can’t begin to watch a new show and thereby convince yourself that you “have to” see how it ends. Truth to be told, I’m 100% sure you could even sell your TV and become happier than ever.

Also make sure you read my posts on how to get better sleep. If you’re able to fall asleep faster you don’t need your TV in the background.

How the challenge works

Well, there isn’t much more to say. Your goal this month should be to turn off your TV, computer and iPad before 11 PM. Using your cellphone is considered cheating so place it somewhere you can’t reach it.

When the month is coming to its end, get back to me and share your experiences and what difference it has made to your life.

Good luck and, as always, convince your friends to join you!

But first, a summary on why you need your sleep:

• Sleep deprivation will make you less attractive
• Sleep deprivation may lead to overweight
• Sleep deprivation will make you waste more time
• Your lifestyle will kill you

Lastly I also found a discussion suggesting our ability on critical thinking gets worse when we are sleep depraved. The result of this would be that you perform worse on a test but still believe you got a terrific result.

8 scientific methods to get better sleep

The following methods comes from Bootzin, 2002; King et al., 2001:

1. Keep a regular circadian rhythm - Every time you try to catch up lost sleep you push your built in sleeping cycle, making it even more difficult to get back into a healthy sleeping cycle.
2. Avoid naps - By taking a nap you’ll make it more difficult to get asleep later in the evening. If you need a regular nap, make sure you take it as early as possible. Preferably around lunchtime.
3. Avoid stimulants - For most people it’s a no-brainer to not drink coffee right before bedtime but did you know that both tobacco and chocolate greatly affects your body? It can actually take up to 4-5 hours to halve the amount of coffee in your blood stream.
4. Avoid alcohol and sleeping pills - People tend to fall asleep quicker after drinking alcohol but your REM-sleep gets disturbed which will make you more tired when you wake up. Also sleeping pills affect your REM-sleep negatively and can make you addicted or give you insomnia.
5. Mediate - Muscle relaxing techniques and meditation has proved to reduce tension and remove worrying thoughts which is one of the most common reason to why people can’t get a sleep. If you’re not into meditation I gave another solution the other day.
6. Avoid exercise - Well, exercise during the day is great and will make you fall asleep quicker but exercise late in the evening might be contra productive and stimulate your body to become more alert.
7. Associate your beed with sleep - Just like everything else in your life, and heroine addicted soldiers in Vietnam, your body are heavily affected by association. This is why you shouldn’t work, watch movies, eat or do anything else in bed. Your beed should only be for sleep and sex.
8. Don’t use your computer before bedtime - Once again we don’t want the body to become alert. Therefore it’s extremely important that you avoid both computers and watching TV right before bedtime.

As a kid, I used to try and count to 1000 but as I grew older I managed to count while I was thinking on everything else. My solution today is instead a kind of meditation where I avoid all thinking and just focus on my breathing. It’s a bit difficult in the beginning but works perfectly when you learn how to do it.

Obviously watching TV and listening to radio will disrupt your sleep and you’ll not have any energy when you wake up in the morning.

This is why I recommend everyone to take a few hours, preferably today, and create a todo-list to overcome your stress. Studies has shown that you’ll feel better simply by writing about your current situation and thereby get a feeling of control over your own life. It can be everything from movies you borrowed and never returned to mail you never replied and promises you made but was unable to keep. Write down a list of everything you’re feeling guilty for.

When you’re done with your list it’s time to solve it. If you borrowed something from a friend, make sure you return it. If you’re late on a task, make sure you create a plan on how to get it done as quick as possible. If you worry about your money situation, try and find some help to create a plan.

We tend to close our eyes and just look away but unfortunately this often makes the problem even worse. The best thing is to try and solve them as quickly as possible before they increase. Remember that nothing is impossible with the right mindset and help you often can find for free.

These results show that eating at night is not associated with an increased propensity to gain weight, suggesting that individuals trying to lose weight should not rely on decreasing evening calorie intake as a primary strategy for promoting weight loss. – Source

There’s actually a study suggestion it might be preferable.

To conclude, ingestion of larger AM meals resulted in slightly greater weight loss, but ingestion of larger PM meals resulted in better maintenance of fat-free mass. Thus, incorporation of larger PM meals in a weight loss regimen may be important in minimizing the loss of fat-free mass. – Source

I do, however, recommend people to not eat right before bedtime because most of the times you don’t need it. It all comes down to how many calories you’ve consumed during the day. If you plan for a late meal then go ahead but if you’ll fall asleep within 1 – 2 hours you might want to skip the meal and just see the extra calories as progress towards your total weight lose goal.

There seems to be a common misconception that pizza contains 2000+ calories and you can’t eat anything else during a day if you have a pizza. Well, I’m not promoting pizza every day but since I live above a pizzeria I tend to order pizza once or twice a month and therefore decided to check the amount of calories.

Ingredients

• Pizza base (dough, tomato sauce, cheese, ham): 353 g
• Shrimps: 28 g
• Pineapple: 45 g
• Mushrooms: 20 g
• Bacon: 35 g

It has a diameter of 29 cm and contains a total of 1100 kcal.

As you can see, people tend to overestimate the amount of calories in a simple pizza. Just remember that every pizza are unique and, according to a previously mentioned study, the U.S. version seems to contain more calories. Therefore it’s vital that you weigh your own pizza from your local pizzeria.