Building Better Bodies Fitness

Burning fat is not much of a fun experience for anyone. You may mentally sike yourself up for an hour a day routine at the gym moving from cardio machine to cardio machine, but in the end you either give up or go into a coma from boredom. A better fat burning option is using the High Intensity Interval Training, also known as HIIT

What is HIIT?

HIIT is several short, but hard exercises followed by short and less intensive exercises. Some of the benefits of HIIT are that it doesn’t take a lot of time to complete a workout and it doesn’t take a lot of time to start seeing the positive results. The drawback is that these types of workouts are tough.

Research studies reveal, however, that HIIT programs tend to burn nine times the number of calories burned in traditional cardio workouts. Shorter, more intense workouts with far better results than longer, more boring workouts; it seems like a fair tradeoff.

How HIIT Works

A HIIT workout causes the heart rate and energy consumption to spike, which triggers the release of huge amounts of growth hormone and other fat burning and muscle growing chemicals into the body. Intense workouts, such as HITT, also turn the metabolism on full blast, so a higher rate metabolism continues for several hours after your workout is over.

It’s not to say that HIIT is an easier way to lose weight and burn fat because it is intense. HIIT does, however, payoff faster and more effectively than any other type of cardio workout.

As there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, there is good fat and bad fat. Foods high in fat can be good for you or they can be bad for you. If you’re trying to lose weight, here are some foods you can concentrate on eating to help you burn more fat.

• Lean beef
• Skinless chicken
• Fish
• Nuts

Eating these foods cannot only help you burn more fat, but eating these foods can also help curb your appetite so you stay away from food that is bad for you.

Foods to avoid include:

• Donuts
• Pre-packaged cereals
• Pastas
• Chips
• White bread
• Cookies
• Crackers
• Muffins
• Processed foods

Eating right in conjunction with working out can help you achieve your weight loss goals in a faster and easier way.

Interval training is all about working out or training by alternating high intensity exercises with low intensity exercises. Interval training provides the same benefits as a 30-minute aerobic routine, which has a high enough intensity to strengthen your heart while also providing long-term fat burning. Interval training is a highly effective way to lose weight and keep the weight off.

For example, run as fast as you can for one full minute, either on the treadmill or outside. Follow this one-minute run by two minutes of walking. When the two minutes is up, run again as fast as you for one minute and then walk again for another two minutes. Continue this routine for a full 30-minute session.

Benefits of Interval Training

• Makes legs stronger
• Builds more muscle mass
• Burns more fat
• Provides cardio-vascular training for a stronger heart
• Helps to prevent heart disease
• Improves circulation

There are a myriad of fancy gyms where members spend tons of money to work out. There are also spa fitness centers that combine workout equipment with spa services. There are also a tremendous amount of expensive machines you can buy for your own home workouts.

Fitness, getting in shape and losing weight does not necessarily require you to spend a lot of money. The health benefits of getting fit, however, far outweigh any monetary investment.

Pushups

Regular or girl pushups do not require one piece of equipment. All that’s required is the floor and you. Hit the deck and do three sets of 10-15 pushups. It’s a great to build muscle and strength in your upper body.

Side Planks

Three sets of side planks also build muscle and strengthen your upper body. As an added bonus, you workout your side muscles to give you a toned and sculpted look all the way around.

Yoga

While you can take a class at a yoga studio that may cost you money, there are also yoga shows on TV and downloadable yoga workouts online. Yoga focuses on working your core muscles and can create a full body workout that also relaxes your mind and spirit. Your torso and hips will get a great workout, so yoga is a great routine for losing weight and toning muscles.

Can you get the body you want working out at the gym? Yes.

Do you have to spend the money on a gym membership or buy expensive equipment to get the body you want? No. There are plenty of ways you can meet your fitness goal without spending a dime.

Every body is different and has different needs. If you’re looking to lose weight, tone or build muscle, you can create a custom workout video to help you create a plan to reach your goal. Sure, you can hire a personal trainer to create a workout routine, targeting your problem areas. While personal trainers can absolutely do this, they can also keep you motivated to workout and reach your goals.

Feel like you have the motivation but need the plan?

Guess what?

You can customize your own workout for free using Fitness Magazine’s Create a Video Workout online. 

This is also a great tool to create new workouts to keep things fresh. If you get bored with a workout routine then you are more likely to quit. If you continuously change and refresh your workout routines, you’re more likely to stay motivated and continue to workout.

In between breakfast and lunch, and again between lunch and dinner, it happens. You get the munchies. The problem is that you’re trying to lose weight and trying really hard not to overeat. Feeding your body the right foods as opposed to starving it is the best way to provide your body the nutrients it needs while not overindulging. Prepare your snack foods to take along to work with you so that you aren’t left searching for a healthy snack, but instead have one in your desk or the office fridge.

Blueberries

Blueberries are a great source of antioxidants. In fact, blueberries contain antioxidants you can’t find in any other food source. You can eat them straight from the fridge, add them to your protein shakes or put them in your fruit or green salad.

Papaya

Papaya has a wealth of nutrients soaked into its sweet meat. Potassium, vitamin C and beta-carotene are a few of the bonuses papayas offer your body. Added bonuses includes it’s low in calories and carbohydrates and high in fiber and natural digestive enzymes.

Kiwi

The kiwi may be small in size but it packs a powerful punch in the health department. It’s full of vitamin C, fiber and anitoxidants.

Cottage Cheese

Along with its protein that can help with weight loss, cottage cheese also contains conjugated linoleic acid, which has fat-reducing and muscle building powers.

So the next time your stomach is growling at you in between meals, it’s OK to feed it. The important thing is to choose healthy foods that can feed your body nutrients and helps you reach your weight loss goals simultaneously.

Before picking up that bagel for breakfast, you may want to reconsider and choose eggs instead. Eggs help stabilize blood sugar and produce food intake for up to 24 hours after you eat them. Once eggs are converted, glucose is slowly released to maintain steady levels of blood sugar in your body, which promotes and enhances learning. This is one reason why feeding eggs to school-aged children in the morning may be beneficial to their learning abilities.

For adults that consume eggs, studies have shown that they ate less in calories and felt less hungry throughout the day. Eggs promote weight loss without increasing cholesterol or chances for heart disease. They also contain 13 essential minerals and vitamins and are a great source of protein and antioxidants.

So when choosing what you’re going to eat for breakfast, include eggs as a staple food. Your body will thank you for it later.

It happens a lot at the beginning of each year when people set their New Year weight loss goals. With a goal in mind, you’re motivated to exercise and work off that extra weight you put on over the holidays (or over the past few holidays). You’re going along hot and heavy for a few weeks or a few months and then it strikes. You start to skip a workout session here and there. Then, before you know it, you’re not working out at all.

Use these 3 easy steps to keep you motivated:

1. A picture is worth a thousand words. Find a picture of you at your heaviest weight and blow it up to the size of a poster. Hang it somewhere in your house where you have to look at it on a daily basis. Since you don’t want to look like that again or continue to look like that now, you’ll soon find that you are more motivated than ever to hit your exercise routine again.
2. Vary your routine. You wouldn’t eat the same thing everyday because you would get sick of eating it. The same holds true with your workout routine. Don’t do the same exercises over and over again, time after time. If you do, you’ll quickly get bored and stop exercising. Have a set of different routines that you can rotate through. Each day you work out, do a different routine. This will help to mix things up and keep them interesting enough for you to continue toward achieving your fitness goal.
3. Choose quality over quantity. People often spend hours in the gym rather than focusing on the quality of the exercise they’re performing. Even if you can only allocate ten minutes to exercise, make those ten minutes count. Focus on performing the exercises to the best of your ability. It’s better to spend ten quality minutes exercising than it is spending an hour in the gym doing it all wrong.

Stick to these three tips and you’ll learn to stay motivated throughout your exercise routines. Motivation and dedication is what will lead you to achieving your goal.

Just thinking about doing cardio for 30-60 minutes causes people to feel sick to their stomach. So how can you turn that cardio session into something more tolerable, effective and maybe even fun? Use these seven steps to get you started.

1. Change from doing cardio on just one machine and incorporate 3-4 different machines. For example, a typical 40-minute session can be turned into 4-10 minute sessions on each machine.
2. Take it outside by either riding your bike, jogging, rollerblading and speed walking. It is more challenging and you get to enjoy the temperature and scenery.
3. Let go of the handlebars or handrails to make the exercise more efficient, work the muscles more and burn more calories and fat.
4. Listen to the right music. Get your iPod and set it to play low tempo music during the warm-up and low intensity parts of your cardio session and some fast temp0 energizing music during the intense parts.
5. Use High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). This cardio session will keep your body guessing and help burn more fat throughout the day.
6. Play sports instead of always running on the treadmill. This will allow you to get your heart pumping, boost your competitive fire and help you interact with others. Some sports like tennis, basketball, soccer, flag football, racquetball, cycling, and rowing are excellent choices.
7. Pedal backwards on the stationary bike or elliptical machine to target different muscles. When running outside, run backwards and sideways, take shorter and longer strides. Mix it up so it won’t be boring.

Finally, make the most of your cardio session. Don’t make it easy because your physical fitness will take longer to achieve. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say, “I have no idea how I gained 40 pounds!” If they spent even one day truly looking at the food they are eating and the lack of exercise they’re infusing in their lives, they would see immediately how those 40 extra pounds managed to catch up with them. More than likely, you know where you want to go. Maybe you want to lose those extra 40 pounds you’ve packed on over the past year. Maybe you want to return your body to the pre-baby weight. Maybe you simply want to tone-up your muscles.

Create a journal

In order to get where you’re going, the first thing you need to do is figure out where you are. The best way to do this is to start keeping an HONEST journal of the food you’re eating and the exercises you’re performing. Do this for a couple weeks and then sit down and take a hard and honest look at what you’re doing that may be causing the weight gain or prohibiting you from reaching your fit body goal. Once you realize you’re eating junk food twice a day everyday then you can start to make the necessary adjustments to substitute your bad eating habits for good ones.

Make a plan

The second part of your journal should be what you plan to do to reach your goal. Writing out your goal, the plan you have for reaching your goal and the specific steps you’re going to take to your reach your goal truly helps you to achieve it. There is something very powerful about the written word that propels you from simply thinking about something into actually doing it!

If you take the time to keep track of your eating and exercising, you’ll quickly gain the knowledge you need to figure out where you are now. Once you know where you are, it’s easy to figure out how to get where you want to be.