Today I am putting up a guest post from Vic over at Gym Junkies. Although my workout philosophy is different than what Vic teaches, the guy keeps in amazing condition year round and has my respect. I'm the first to admit that there are many, many approaches to getting lean and fit and I would be skeptical of anyone who claims to have "the only way that works". Gym Junkies might be the most organized fitness blogs online today. My favorite part is the "How to" videos that are organized in the left hand sidebar. The site is just full of step-by-step instruction and feels almost like a paid course in strength training.

[Once you get lean, it is easier to stay motivated to eat well and workout. The key is to get to he point where you feel like you look great. Once you feel and look your best, you won't want to go back.]

So I asked Vic to Do a Post on Motivation. Here's Why… Gym Junkies has so much outstanding step-by-step info, that I wanted you guys to go over to his site and watch his videos and learn specific techniques. For this post, I just wanted him to write some tips people can follow to stay motivated. All the "How to" stuff is already over on his site, so these are tips to actually stay motivated enough to do the work.

Motivation Tips for Sticking to Your Workout -by Vic Magary

You know the cycle all too well. An important event comes up where you want to look your absolute best – it could be a beach vacation, wedding, high school reunion…And you do it – you stick to the diet, bust your ass in the gym, and get your body looking absolutely fabulous. For a weekend.

And then it's binge time. A whole lot of late night pizza and beer while watching Ironman on your big screen for the twelfth time and you're right back to where you started. Or even worse than when you started. It's time to stop the quick fix merry-go-round and make a life-long commitment to being healthy and looking great.

Here are some tips to help you do that…

Stop Being a Victim

Everyone that has a problem with their weight or how their body looks, always has an irrational reason outside of themselves to blame for them being that way. Always…

I do. You do. We all do.

It's a TOUGH pill to swallow. Basically by not being where we want to be in life we rationalize it to ourselves by blaming our problem on something else. That could be our genetics, our metabolism, our job, not having enough time, having kids, not having enough money….or whatever.

Everyone does this, and sometimes we won't even admit these things to ourselves because by doing so we are admitting that we failed. But by rationalizing our problem we allow ourselves to put the blame on something or someone else.

Like I said this is the harsh reality and a tough pill to swallow. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I first realized this.

Don't let yourself be a victim, and don't rationalize why you're in the spot you are in now. Admit to yourself that you're in the situation you're in because of what YOU'VE done, and then make a change.

Intrinsic Trumps Extrinsic For Long Term Change

Finding your motivation to get in shape outside of yourself in something such as a big event, an article of clothing you want to fit into, or to impress friends, family, or the object of your affection is a recipe for crash and burn.

Sure you'll hit the gym and tighten up the diet until you reach that extrinsic goal. But what about afterwards? When the event passes, the clothing goes out of style, and the object of your affection is no longer so shiny and new your motivation to stay fit will wane.

However if your motivation to train stems from a personal standard that you hold yourself to – meaning your values – then you have long term fuel to sustain consistent results.

Deep down you need to have a personal belief that caring for your body with proper nutrition, exercise, and rest is your own responsibility.

Another helpful tip is to surround yourself with friends who have healthy habits…

Find A New Clique

It's been said that your net financial worth can be predicted by taking the average net worth of the five people you spend the most time with outside of your job. Well I'll make the bold claim that your health and fitness can be predicted by taking the average nutrition and exercise habits of the five people you spend the most time with.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you have to excommunicate your friends if their not in tip-top shape. I am suggesting that if your friends have health and fitness habits that are not at least at your own level you should occasionally swim in different circles.

Find a new gym partner or take a mixed martial arts class where most of the people in the group are in better shape than you. Try a new activity like indoor rock climbing and find a training partner who has more experience than you. Or ditch the gym completely and start doing some home workouts with your spouse or friend.

Whatever you do, push yourself out of your comfort zone and surround yourself with people who are in better shape than you…

Your Mindset Is EVERYTHING

If you have a fat person mindset, no amount of exercise and diet is going to make you thin over the long haul. You'll always have fat person tendencies, and sooner or later you'll "snapback" into your old self.

Have you ever wondered why half the people on the Biggest Loser end up gaining all their weight back? Its all about mindset and willpower. Hell anyone could lose weight living in a hotel and only being fed healthy food with no distractions or temptations around.

But when you get back into the real world and one day you're late for work and you stop at McDonald's for breakfast, then its only a matter of time before the whole cycle starts again…

If you want to be lean and thin forever, you MUST have the mentality of a lean person…

Here's some tips to help…

Put It On Autopilot

You don't want to have to think about your fitness training. Or what you are going to eat each day. There will be exceptions to this with vacations and holidays, but in the normal day-to-day, preplanning your training and food intake is the recipe for long term success.

Keep your workouts at the same times and days each week. That's pretty basic and many people already do that, so let's take it a step further.

Make it a habit to pre-pack all of the gear and clothes you need for training the night before. Make a checklist if you have to – iPod charged, check; workout shorts packed, check. What ever you need to do, you want to do it the same way each time. You want a procedure that with repetition becomes a habit.

And do the same with your nutrition: If you're trying to lose fat, then pre planning your meals is KEY. I always do my grocery shopping, cooking, and packaging of my meals for the week on Sunday. Then you don't have to think about what to eat when you are tired and stressed – it's already been prepared and you've set yourself up for success.

Sometimes it can be fun and challenging to get in awesome shape for a big event. But it is even more rewarding when the unexpected happens – whether that's a pickup basketball game of shirts versus skins or an impromptu skinny dipping session – and you have the confidence that you are always ready to go.

Let your training be fueled by your personal values, hang out with people who are in better shape than you, and set yourself up for success by preplanning your training and diet and you'll always be in shape for those special occasions.

Conclusion

We can sit here and debate calories vs. carbs or circuit training vs long slow running all day, but if you don't have the mindset of the person you want to be, then you'll never change.

Real, long term change comes from within.

Register for my free workout videos by clicking here—> Gym Junkies Free Video Workout Series

Tags: Workout Routines, circuit training, fitness blog, gym junkies, motivation tips, strength training, workout video

I have a rule that I follow that allows me to stay lean year round without getting too obsessed with food and counting calories. You see, I like to drink beer and eat tasty foods, but I also like to have visible abs and a lean youthful appearance. I will talk about a simple and realistic approach to insure that you never have to worry about racing to get in shape for the summer ever again.

[With the increase in beach pictures, you can probably tell that I'm dying for a tropical vacation. People who live in the upper latitudes like me can probably relate. This picture just sums it up perfectly. Suntanning and swimming. My idea of an ideal vacation.]

So What is The 5 Pound Rule?
(more…)

Related posts:

1. Staying Lean on a Mini-Mart Diet
2. Bulking Up Causes a Permanent Increase in Fat Cells, Making it Tough to Stay Lean

Traveling during the Holidays? Try this quick and easy hotel room workout video if on vacation or travel from http://diet.com/workout and Stephen Cabral for a total body fat loss exercise routine.

Technorati Tags: body weight exercise, calories, diet, exercise routines, fat loss, travel workouts, workout plan, workout video

Figure competitor, Michelle Anderson dishes some straight talk about fat burners and how they should be used responsibly.

“Fat burners are all too common, and many assume that they need the “extra” fat-loss effects that they claim to provide. So should they be used as a regular supplement to fat loss? My personal opinion on fat burners — and if using one, who should use one, are they effective, and what is a good way to implement one in a program?” – Michelle Anderson of MichelleFit.com

Technorati Tags: adverse effects, body fat, central nervous system, diet, efficacy, fat burners, figure competitor, metabolism, Michelle Anderson, supplements, sympathetic nervous system, weight loss

John Williams, Ph.D., has degrees in archaeology and anthropology. His research and fieldwork has focused on the Paleolithic and Neolithic of the “Old World”, which basically means the Stone Age of Europe, Africa and Asia. John has always had an interest in nutrition, which actually works quite well within prehistoric studies, because our past was one big food quest.

CB: John, you have an interesting background. Now, let’s talk about North American nutrition for gaining muscle and losing fat. What’s new in nutrition approaches for athletes, fat loss, and health?

JW: I try to stay current with nutritional literature for my own interests, but I don’t want to get in over my head with respect to performance nutrition for athletes. Others like John Berardi, who make a living in this field, would be better suited to discuss the latest and greatest approaches.

I have been reading a lot about fish oil lately, and its positive effects for both overall health and positive effects on body composition. Adding a little fish oil in your diet is one of the easiest ways to boost your metabolism. Recent studies have shown that as little as 3 grams of combined EPA and DHA (both omega-3 fatty acids) can speed your metabolic rate by about 400 k/cal per day.

These long-chain fatty acids also have a host of great health benefits, including brain health, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, better sugar management, and more. So by doing something as simple as popping a couple of fish oil caps with each meal, you can live a longer, leaner, brainier life!

CB: John, do you have any other superfoods that you think absolutely must be in everyone’s diet?

JW: Fish oil would be one, for the reasons given in the previous answer. Another must-have in everyone’s diet is spinach. Among the leafy greens, spinach offers some of the best benefits in terms of vitamins and micronutrients. It’s chock full of important phytochemicals, vitamin A, B vitamins, calcium, phosphorous, iron, folate and potassium.

But that’s not all! Spinach is also one of the most alkaline foods available, which means that it helps neutralize acidic foods that are common in high protein diets. So by adding more spinach to our diet, we can alleviate a lot of stress on our muscles and bones.

I also think that most people could benefit from simply increasing their daily intake of fresh veggies and fruit. I’m not talking fruit juice or even V8, but the real deal: every color and variety of vegetables and fruit that you know of. This isn’t groundbreaking news, but fresh fruit and vegetables provide an enormous amount of benefits, ranging from anti-cancer properties to improved blood lipids to increased energy.

Another food of the grain variety that I think many people would benefit from is quinoa (pronounced “KEEN-oowa”). It’s a South American grain domesticated by the predecessors of the Incas that grows on a plant that looks a lot like spinach. So it’s a “leafy grain” rather than a grass grain such as wheat and corn.

Quinoa is gluten-free, and contains none of the allergens common to grains from the grass family such as wheat, rye, barley, oats, and corn. Furthermore, quinoa contains lysine, an amino acid deficient in many grains, making it a complete protein. Quinoa is also an excellent source of calcium, magnesium, iron, phosphorus, and B vitamins. It’s one of the good guys in the grain family, so pick some up next time your in a whole foods-type market.

CB: Are there any nutrition-fat loss myths that you would like to clear up?

JW: With respect to the recent swing of the pendulum to low-carb diets, it seems that a lot of people used that as an excuse not to eat vegetables. Low carb diets certainly have their benefits for many people, but there is absolutely no excuse for avoiding a big serving of broccoli for fear of a few extra carbs. Unless it’s drenched in margarine, broccoli (or insert any leafy green here) can do nothing but good.

CB: Thanks John. I believe that eating large amounts of fibrous vegetables is one of the keys to getting, and staying lean. How do you think someone should eat to get lean? Does eating to stay lean differ from getting lean?

JW: Let me address the last question first: The ideal situation is to learn how to eat to maximize both your performance and health goals, and simply eat more or less according to how much muscle you want to gain versus how much fat you want to lose. In other words, eating to get lean and eating to stay lean would differ only in overall calories consumed.

There are certainly cases when someone would benefit from a more extreme diet like Atkins to remove years of overindulgence and bad dietary choices, but the danger is always there that the person will rebound unless they learn how to eat properly.

So, how do we eat to get (and stay) lean? I have a few simple rules, like caloric balance, sufficient protein, lots of whole veggies and fruit, no processed carbs outside of the post-workout window, balanced fats and let’s not forget the other side of the coin: activity (preferably a mixture of heavy lifting and some sort of cardio). There are certainly a lot of details within those rules, and tricks to make it work for your individual goals, but it all boils down to those simple rules.

My good friend John Berardi has spoken extensively on how some people have a tendency to replace hard lifting, and even a healthy diet, with the acquisition of knowledge. These folks have mediocre or even poor physiques, yet all of their time is spent in pursuit of the holy grail of fitness and nutrition knowledge. How many carbs does that 5.8 oz serving of artichoke have, and how will this affect insulin levels? Who cares, just eat the darn thing and go lift some heavy weights! The fact remains that it takes hard work in the gym to get a good physique, in addition to knowledge about how to lift and what to eat.

Obviously, the road goes both ways, and there are still hordes of folks out there that don’t know an artichoke from a Twinkie, but the key is to not get lost in the minutia and neglect what really matters: a balanced diet and hard training.

CB: You have a Ph.D. in archaeology, and you’ve researched evolution and nutrition, correct? What lessons have you learned from your studies? How have we evolved to eat? Does it differ geographically?

JW: That’s right, Craig. We archaeologists love to make fun of trendy “Paleo-diets” and books like Neanderthin. There was no single paleo-diet; people during the Paleolithic ate whatever they could get their hands on, and what they ate depended upon what region of the world they were living. I recently talked with Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist and the world’s premier expert on Neanderthals, and he summarized his thoughts on the matter by saying “the Neanderthal world was in no way idyllic. These folks had hard lives and died young, and their version of a paleo-diet was to eat whatever didn’t eat them first”.

That being said, there are certain lessons we can learn about our past that can help us understand why we’re having so many diet-related problems today.

I have a few simple lessons from the archaeological record concerning nutrition:

1) Eat more protein and less of the other stuff.

In a nutshell, we’ve been eating a diet rich in plants, fish, and animals for millions of years now. There have been many studies published in peer-reviewed journals demonstrating that getting your protein consumption over the 10-15% national average has positive benefits in terms of body composition and blood lipids.

2) Get your carbs from their source.

Paleolithic people didn’t have Krispy Kreme, otherwise they’d be as fat as your average sugar junkie today. Outside of the post-workout window, when simple sugars and fast-absorbing protein is desirable, we can all benefit from avoiding all of the hyper-processed food that litters the aisles of our grocery stores, and opting instead for foods in their original, unadulterated state. If you took a look in my kitchen cabinets, you’d see a variety of whole grains and legumes: quinoa, barley, steel-cut oats, oat bran, wheat bran, lentils, split peas, and chick peas.

3) Eat your veggies and fruit.

It’s clear that we’ve evolved to reap the benefits of a diet rich in veggies and fruit, judging from the preserved remains of literally hundreds of varieties of wild plant foods at sites such as Ohalo II, a 23,000 year old fishing camp on the Sea of Galilee. I never realized how many veggie haters there are until I started trying to get my friends and family to eat more of them.

After months of avoidance, I finally convinced a good friend of mine to increase his vegetable intake. He was by no means fat, but he was getting frustrated with a slowly growing tire around his waist. I gave him some recipes to make things like broccoli and spinach more palatable, and he eventually took my advice. After this change, he is leaner than he has ever been in his life, and he is constantly telling me how much energy he has.

4) Balance those fats.

This is an issue that really ties-in with my prehistoric research. It’s interesting to note how skewed the fatty-acid profile of the modern western diet is towards saturated fat and omega-6’s, at the expense of monounsaturated and omega-3’s. In our not so distant past, this wouldn’t have been possible, because wild animals don’t store so much overall fat, and they weren’t fed corn meal to inflate the omega-6’s in their adipose tissue. Also, our ancestors got a lot more omega-3’s from wild plants, animals, and fish. All in all, it looks like we’ve evolved on a diet with a good amount of monounsaturated fats from nuts, seeds, and animals, as well as a nearly equal amount of omega-6’s to omega-3’s. Tons of studies have shown that an inflated omega-6 to omega-3 ratio is contributes to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity, while getting a more balanced fatty-acid profile, including sufficient monounsaturated fats, actually protects against these health problems. What’s the solution? Free range meat and eggs are always a good choice, and when you’re buying meat from feedlot animals, go for the leanest varieties. Throw-out any corn oil in your cupboards and replace it with olive oil, and then eat plenty of fish and/or supplement with flax and fish oil.

CB: Thanks John. Excellent info. Simple guidelines. Focus on whole, natural foods.

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men’s Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit www.TurbulenceTraining.com

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