13 Reasons Why You’re Not Losing Weight and What You Can Do About It

#13, Same Routine = Same Results; every 3-6 weeks you should mix it up.

#12, Not Keeping a food & cardio journal; gotta keep records to beat records

#11, Too Many Splurge Meals; 2 meals or 10% of your meals can be splurges (no sugar).

#10, Drinking too much alcohol; save it for the splurges & no more than 3 drinks per week.

#9, 1st: No sugar at all. 2nd, limit sugar free sweeteners to 1-2x/wk (save it for your splurges)

#8, too many starchy carbs, not enough vegetables and fruits Read the rest of this entry

Specific. Measureable. Attainable. Realistic. Timeline.

By Michael L. Alves, ATC, CSCS

O.K.  If you’re considering changing your body and getting in your best shape for 2009, then you must set S.M.A.R.T. goals.

What are S.M.A.R.T. goals?  S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for specific, measureable, attainable, realistic and timeline and is a formula for achieving goals.  Read on to learn more.

Specific:  You must set specific goals if you want to achieve them.  General goals gets you general (read:  mediocre) results, specific goals, get you…you guessed it, specific (read:  awesome) results.

Ask yourself, “What is it I must change now?  What way am I tired of being and I must do it now or I’m only going to get older and it’s never going to change.”

Measurable:  You must be able to measure your progress in the short term (to keep excited or to make adjustments if not going as planned) and long term (how will you know you’ve achieved your goal).

What feeling/emotions and actions will you measure daily?

What objective & subjective things can you measure each week/month to give you feedback on your progress? Read the rest of this entry

I am constantly reading and doing research to educate myself. My goal is to be the best personal trainer that I can be and to be able to provide others with quality information that they can use to help get them in shape and be the best that they can be as well.

I often consult with other fitness professionals. I attend a lot of conferences and networking events. I also subscribe to quite a few different email newsletters from other fitness professionals as well.

This morning I was reading a newsletter from Craig Ballantyne, the author of Turbulence Training. He is on of the top fitness professionals and weight loss experts around. I always look forward to reading what he has to say, because he really knows his stuff.

In his newsletter this morning one of the training tips he mentioned was that every time you workout, you should be try to break your own personal record.

Every time you workout try to achieve your personal best for each lift or exercise. It can be your fastest time in a run, the most reps at a certain weight, the most reps in a certain period of time, or your personal best on a lift. It doesn’t matter what it is, just try to be better than the time before.

You should always be trying to do a little better than the workout before if you want to start seeing your body change and to see some serious results.

Use this as motivation to keep you focused on your workouts. Make it a competition and challenge yourself, to get better.

This is where keeping a workout journal becomes so important. By keeping records of your workouts, you can easily look back and see what you did in your previous workout and try and beat your last record.

I have records of my workouts that go back almost 8 years. I can look back and know exactly what weights and how many reps of a certain exercise that I began with 8 years ago. How many people can say that?

This is important, because I switch up my workout programs constantly. Most of my workout programs last for 4weeks, 6 weeks, or 12 weeks at a time. I can easily monitor my progress by tracking the results from my workouts. This allows me to see exactly what is working and what is not working. It also allows me to challenge myself, because I know exactly what numbers I have to beat.

So next time you workout, challenge yourself and establish your own new personal records. If you don’t keep a workout journal, now is the time to start. I promise it will help you get better results.

By Benjamin Petitpas

Everyday we get bombarded with advertisements for weight loss pills and supplements. They all have these great before and after pictures. I bet you have asked yourself at least once, will they work for me?

These weight loss pills and supplements are everywhere you turn, from TV commercials, magazines, and right in front of you on shelves of your local stores. You may know someone who has tried them before. You may have even tried them before yourself.

 Have you ever looked at the ingredients?

Do you know how they will help you lose weight?

Appetite Suppressants

These pills work to suppress your appetite by using chemicals to basically tricking your brain into feeling full, making you less likely to over eat.

Fat Blockers

These pills work by preventing a percentage of the fat that you consume from being absorbed during the digestive process.

Will these pills work for you?

Selling weight loss pills and weight loss supplements is a multibillion dollar a year industry. With all of the money spent on these weight loss pills, you would think that everyone would be skinny and that our country would not have an obesity problem, but unfortunately that’s just not the case.

Companies make promises like,” Lose 40lbs in 40 days” or something ridiculous like that. The problem is that these are just outrageous claims. There is no real quick fix for losing weight and keeping it off. The truth of the matter is that it comes down to eating healthy and exercise regularly.

Sure, weight loss pills may slightly increase your metabolism and suppress your appetite, and you may even initially lose a few pounds. However, weight loss pills themselves cannot produce any serious or permanent weight loss. The truth of the matter is that it still comes down to eating healthy and exercise regularly.

The following is just a few of the side effects of weight loss pills and supplements:

• Rapid or Irregular Heart Beats
• Feeling Lightheaded
• Raised blood pressure
• Increased risk of heart attack
• Cramping
•  Gas
• Diarrhea
• Constipation
• Headaches
• Dry Mouth
• Insomnia

By Benjamin Petitpas

 Lose 20lbs in 20 days!

Don’t believe a word of it! I wish it was that easy! Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for weight loss. Supplement companies are making a fortune making people promises of having the magic pill or weight loss drink, but the truth is that there is no magic supplement to help you lose weight overnight. Sure you can have liposuction or even bypass surgery to lose weight quickly, but what happens after the surgery, when you resort back to the same old behaviors that caused you to gain the weight in the first place. Do you think that you will still be able to keep the weight off and prevent future weight gain? I seriously doubt it.

Losing weight and living a healthy lifestyle requires a lifelong commitment. It does not just happen overnight. You must make it a priority in your life. I couldn’t tell you how many people that I have meet over the years that said, I want to lose weight, but they failed to do it. The reason was that at that point at time they were not ready to make the sacrifices that come with making a commitment. They were only able to be successful when they were truly ready to commit to living a healthy lifestyle.

Set goals for yourself.

 Find out what motivates you. Do you want to get back into your skinny jeans? Do you want to lose the last 5 lbs? Do you want to reduce your body fat? Do you want to have more energy so you can chase your kids around? Whatever it maybe, you need to find what it is that drives you and make it your goal to accomplish it.  Write your goal down and use it for motivation.

Educate yourself and create a plan.

Now that you have a goal take the time to educate yourself, learn as much as you can about what you’re trying to accomplish. If weight loss is your goal you need to learn about exercise, nutrition, life style changes, and the psychology that goes into it making the changes.

Use the information to develop a plan to achieve your goals. Write your plan down and keep records. Studies have shown that people are twice as likely to succeed if they follow a written plan and keep and keep a journal to track their diet and workouts.

Most people fail to achieve their goals because they lack the knowledge or skill that it take to achieve them.  If you don’t know how to do something, I strongly recommend that you find someone that does, like a coach or a mentor.

Find a support system

Surround yourself with people who will support you. Having a support network is important for your success. Having people there to offer positive feedback, will encourage you to stay focused and help you work harder to achieve your goals.

It can be very challenging to be do it all on your own. Sometimes friends and family can be your biggest distraction to our success. Often they can be negative influences that contribute to your negative behaviors. This is why it is important that you let your friends and families know what it is that you are trying to accomplish and how important it is to you.

Many times you can encourage them to make changes as well and you can work together. You can work out together, share recipes and eat healthier meals together, and motivate each other to do better.

Stay Focused

Understand that you are human and that you will have ups and downs. If you have a bad day diet wise or if you skipped a workout, get back on track the next day.

Remember that you made a long term commitment to your health and that the bad day was just a bump in the road. Just make sure that you keep your sights set on accomplishing your long term goal.

Make it happen

Now that you have the knowledge and a support system in place it’s time to take action and start improving the quality of your life.

Nothing is going to happen until you decide to take the next step and make the commitment to change your life.

Now go make it happen!

By Benjamin Petitpas

If you have never seen a kettlebell before, just imagine a cannon ball with a handle. They range in size from 8lbs all the way up to 105lbs. It has been my experience that a good starting weight for women would be 15lb to 26lb kettlebells and 35lb to 45lb kettlebells for men.

Kettlebells are great tool because they are small and you can train anywhere with them.  All you really need is a kettlebells and a little bit of space.  They are great for working out at home, in your garage, backyard, or even outdoors.

You can perform all of the traditional dumbbell exercises like presses, squats, or rows. However, the real difference has to do with the wider handle and the shapes of the kettlebell, which cause you to use have to use more core stability to perform the exercises.

In addition to being able to perform traditional exercises the real benefit from kettlebell training comes from the more explosive movements that require the whole body to work together as one. A few examples of these exercises are; clean and press, snatch, squat to press, and kettlebell swings. All of these movements use large muscle groups, there for require more energy to perform. This causes you to burn a ton of calories during your workout and it will also give you the “afterburn” effect following your workout, which can be described as an increase in your metabolism.

Kettlebells were first used by strongmen and athletes as a way of training for competitions.  In the last few years more and more people have begun to train with kettlebells because of the many benefits as well as their versatility.

Anyone can train with kettlebells as long as there are no medical conditions or previous injuries that would prevent them from training with them. The important thing is that you always use proper form when you exercise. If you are unsure about form proper form, you can always ask your personal trainer.

I will be posting some videos of kettlebell exercises that you can refer to as well.

Kettlebells can help you build lean muscle, improve your conditioning, and burn fat. They are versatile and can be used almost anywhere. Training with kettlebells can be fun and challenging alternative to using machines and free weight.

By Benjamin Petitpas