The new year has come and gone once again “the new year resolution people”  who were gung ho about going to the gym and getting in shape have started to fall off the band wagon.

We already know 95% Fail because of lack of accountability.

“The Boiling Frog Effect” is another reason that the 95% quite after only a few weeks.

As your personal trainer it is my responsibility to educate you for long term success.

If you’ve ever yo-yo’d on a diet or tried to start an exercise program, but couldn’t stick to it, this one is for you.

The following single bit of information has been a “life changer” for many who used to struggle.

It all boils down to …

“The Boiling Frog Phenomenon”

It’s a psychological effect that dates back to research conducted at Johns Hopkins University back in 1882.

Here’s how it works.

Imagine you want to cook a frog …

If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out.

But if you place a frog into a pot of lukewarm water and slowly turn up the heat, it will stay happily inside the pot … and before the frog realizes what is happening … you have frog soup.

The human nervous system works much the same way.

If you try to introduce a radical change in your life, your system fights back – much like the frog jumping out of the pot of boiling water.

To create lasting change – you simply have to slowly turn up the heat …

Over time, these tiny changes are almost imperceptible to your nervous system, but over time they add up to HUGE transformations.

This is similar to the Japanese concept of “kaizen” whereby one makes small constant improvements that eventually add up and make a radical difference.

Want to see how it works?

Let’s say you want to lose 10 pounds.

Knowing the Boiling Frog technique, you know that making a sudden, dramatic change in your diet and exercise habits won’t likely stick.

It’s too much of a shock to the system.

A smarter way to go is make a more gradual change like this:

Week 1 – Stop drinking canned sodas. Instead drink water.

That’s it! Don’t do anything else. Just that one change.

Then …

Week 2 – Take long brisk walks every other day

And so on …

At the end of a year you’ll have a whole new set of habits and you’ll be a totally different person.

And you know what?

It will stick!

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Trainer B.

If you have ever attended one of the fat burning Fit Body Boot Camp workouts, you are more than familiar with the B-Word and probably get goose bumps when you hear those two syllables come out of my mouth – Burr….peeee…

But, the reason why I recommend and prescribe this exercise in my workouts and personally love them is because the body movement is integrative and totally effective in terms of improved motor skills, increased metabolism and body sculpting.

By far, the Burpee is considered the “most challenging body weight exercise.” The reason is because there is nothing “isolation” about it, as with a squat or sit-up. In order to perform this particular exercise, your individual muscles become a “team” performing squats, push ups, planks and interconnect with one another thus requiring you to work more body parts simultaneously leading to faster fatigue but quicker fat shedding and results! So, just before you sigh and label your fitness coach as a “manic depressive/masochistic” who takes his personal issues out on you, consider the benefits your body is reaping:

Tighter stomach
Firm butt
Stronger shoulders and upper body
Defined calves
Better back posture
Fitter looking arms
Increased agility and physical performance
A symmetrical and sexier physique
Greater endurance and much, much more…

The Origin of the Burpee

The exercise may have been originated by a man named Lieutenant Thomas Burpee who lived from 1757-1839. He was an officer in the New Hampshire Militia during the American Revolutionary War and was described as “having the innate “Burpee” fondness for martial exercises” in A History of the Town of New London, Merrimack County, New Hampshire. Lt. Burpee may have used the combination of pushups and squat thrusts as a means of drilling, conditioning, and disciplining the troops under his command. In addition, the exercise was also been used by the troops as a way to stay warm during the winters in wartime New England.

Enough said, let us get to business!

After you have mastered the Burpee, here is a routine you can do at the gym or in the comfort of your own home that adds a little variation to the exercise. It requires, very little equipment. In fact, all you need is a dumbbell or kettle bell, medicine ball or some sort of resistant weight such as a telephone book. ARE YOU READY FOR THIS QUICK ROUTINE?:

1) Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

BMR is the total number of calories your body burns for normal bodily functions,
including digestion, circulation, respiration, temperature regulation, cell construction, and
every other metabolic process in your body.

In Trainer Ben words, your BMR is the  total of all the energy used for basic bodily functions, NOT including physical activity.

BMR usually makes up for the largest amount of your daily calorie burn – about two thirds.  BMR is at its lowest and slowest when you’re sleeping and you’re not digesting anything.

BMR varies dramatically from person to person depending on genetic factors.

You probably know someone who can eat anything they want yet they never gain an ounce of fat. This type of “fast metabolism” person has inherited a naturally high BMR.

2) Activity Level

Next to BMR, your activity level is the second most important factor in how many
calories you need every day.

The more active you are, the more calories you burn; it’s that simple.

Become more active and you burn more calories. Sit on the couch all day long and you hardly burn any.

3) Weight

Your total body weight and total body size are also major factors in the number of
calories you require.

The bigger your size, the more calories you’ll require to move your
body.

4) Lean Body Mass (aka LBM)

Total body weight correlates with the number of calories you require, but separating your
total weight into its lean and fat components allows you to calculate your calorie needs
even more accurately.

The higher your Lean Body Mass, the higher your BMR will be.

This is very significant when you want to lose body fat because it means the more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn at rest.

Muscle is metabolically active tissue, and it requires a great deal of energy to sustain it.

The best way to increase your BMR is to increase your LBM. This is why weight training helps you lose body fat, although indirectly. Also the reason men usually burn fat a little quicker than women.

5) Age

Metabolic rate tends to slow down with age.

Therefore, the number of calories the average person requires also goes down with age.

Fortunately, you can prevent and even reverse the age-related slowdown in metabolism by developing more muscle through weight training and healthy eating.

6) Gender

Men usually require more calories than women.

The average male has a maintenance level of 2800 calories per day. The average female requires only 2000 calories per day to maintain.

The reason for this difference is not so much a sex-related issue as a body
weight and muscle mass issue;

the average man carries much more muscle mass than the average female and this explains the spread in calorie requirements between men and women.

Except for individual genetically-related differences in BMR, a 140 pound man and a 140 pound woman would have the same calorie requirements if their activity levels were identical.

How many calories do you burn a day?

Trainer B.

Unable to sleep is common for most even me. That is the reason I am writing about it at 11:30pm.

A lot of you are familiar with the common question I ask every morning before boot camp. “Did you get plenty of sleep last night” and more often than not I hear the response “NO”!!!

How important is it really?

Lack of sleep increases snacking and bingeing

Multiple sleep related studies have found a connection between sleep and the hormones that influence our eating behavior. Two major hormones are involved. Ghrelin is responsible for feelings of hunger. Leptin tells the brain when it’s time to stop eating. When you’re sleep deprived, your ghrelin levels increase at the same time that your leptin levels decrease. This equals an increased craving for food and not feeling full. And sleep deprived people tend to choose different foods to snack on—mainly high caloric sweets and salty and starchy foods. These small changes can lead to long-term weight gain.

How much sleep should I get to lose weight

The average person needs between seven and nine hours of sleep a night. Some more, some less. Very few of us actually get the minimum of seven. How do you know how much sleep you really need? Experts suggest to sleep as long as you want for several days (best done on vacation somewhere with sandy beaches and warm weather . Then, your sleep should stabilize and you’ll find yourself waking up after the same number of hours daily, within 15 minutes or so. Once you know about how much sleep you need, start getting into a steady routine. Set a regular time for sleep. Start getting ready ahead of time. And avoid using the bed for watching TV or doing work (Guilty).

Exercise + Sleep + Healthy Diet = Weight Loss

Disclaimer: Don’t think snoozing a few hours longer each night will solve a weight problem. It won’t. You can’t use this article as an excuse to miss 5:30am boot camp.  Exercising and eating healthfully is still the way to go. But, lack of sleep may soon be considered another risk factor for obesity. Especially since 65 % of Americans are overweight and 63% of people don’t get eight hours of sleep a night. Interestingly enough, many of those who are overweight also don’t sleep enough.

A recent study

At the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies today, Dr. Walter Moraes of Universidad Federal Sao Paolo, Brazil, presented the findings from a study he recently conducted which demonstrated that people lose weight three times as fast while asleep than while lying in bed awake. Dr. Moraes studied 14 healthy men age 21-30, confining them to a bed with a built in scale which allowed him to constantly monitor their weight. The subjects spent the night in bed asleep, and then remained in bed for the next 8 hours, awake. They were given food and drink proportionate to their body weight and, according to the poster, did not urinate or defecate during the study. Dr. Moraes found that the average weight loss during sleep was 1.9 gram/minute (or ¼ pound an hour), but only 0.6 gram/minute while lying in bed awake.

Good night and sweet dreams.

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Can you believe  the first week of the new year is almost over. I thought this would be perfect a blog post on how to reach your goals. I am going to share my own 2010 goals with you at the bottom and I want to hear yours as well.

Some of you may of heard about this but if not in 1953 a very famous study took place, the graduating seniors of a major university (Yale) were asked if they had written goals, and plans to achieve them, after they left the university.
It turned out that 3 % had written goals and a game plan to reach them. 14 % had goals but they were not written. The other 83%  had no goals or plans at all, aside from getting out of the university and going on vacation that summer.
Twenty years later in 1973, they did a follow up on the graduates in the study and asked them, among other things, about their financial situations. They found that the 3 percent of students who had clear, written goals and plans upon graduation were worth more than the entire 97 percent of graduates put together.

So what does this experiment have to do with your fitness goals?

It has EVERYTHING to do with them

Before we start an exercise plan, we must write down our fitness goals.

This will program your subconscious towards achieving your goal.

EXAMPLE

Imagine that you have two drivers, each with a brand new Car.

They both set to travel across the country toward a distant destination.

One sets off with no road map, navigation system, nothing.

The second driver takes the time to plan his trip carefully using road map, navigation and getting advice from people who have traveled that path.
Which driver do you think will reach his destination on schedule??

The first driver probably won’t even reach his destination.
Your fitness goals are pretty much the same.

People with clear, very specific goals and plans that they work from each day, accomplish on average, 10 times the result as others who don’t have a clear idea of where they are going or when they want to get there.

Hope enjoyed this short post and may all your fitness goals come true for you in 2010.

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