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Most people have been on a diet. Some people have been on more than others-a lot more. There are a lot of different types of diets out there. There are over 2,000 registered diets with the FDA. That’s a lot. Unfortunately there isn’t a one-size fits all diet that will work for everybody and bring miraculous, forever results. As a boot camp instructor I have seen and heard my share of diets. What the majority of people who go on diets have been made to believe is that when they do go on a diet that they must restrict their calories. Makes sense right? Eat less food, lose more weight. It works, but only for a short period of time.

That’s why today I am going to focus on low calorie diets. Most of the diets out there are. But I want to share with you the problems associated with these low calorie diets (LCD) and why if you are looking for permanent weight loss and a healthy body you should never go on one.

I am going to stray away a little from the medical definition of LCD, which is a diet consisting of 1200 calories or less. I’m going to talk about LCD based on you and your size. This is the definition I use with my boot camp clients in Columbus, but obviously it would work where ever you are.

We all have what is known as a basal metabolic rate. This is the amount of calories you would burn if you just lied in bed all day watching TV. It varies from person to person, but the major factors contributing to differences are height, weight, body fat percentage, lean muscle percentage, and exercise/activity level. Exercise and activity level will change it the most. So you need to find out how many calories you are burning per day with all the other factors taken into consideration. You can search ‘BMR calculators’ online to find yours; just make sure it takes activity into consideration.

Now once you have figured that out it is now time to determine if you are on a low calorie diet based on you. It’s simple-if you are getting 500-1000 calories below your BMR you are on a low calorie diet. My take on this weird, I know. Even if you are getting 2300 calories a day, if you supposed to be getting 3400, then you are on a LCD.

Let’s get into the problems you will experience while on a low calorie diet based on you. First off, your body is starving. Even if you are not hungry the body is. It craves more calories, because calories to the body are energy. And to perform at a top-notch level your body needs energy (calories). When your body is starving it goes into survival mode. In survival mode it does a couple of things. It starts to ‘eat’ protein from your body, so basically the lean muscle tissue you’ve trained so hard to earn. Also, when you put more food in the body it will have a better chance of converting to fat.

All the stuff I just mentioned leads to one thing-a slower metabolism! This is the last thing you want if you are trying to burn fat and lose weight. You want your metabolism racing like an Indy car on the straightaway towards the finish line. And to do this you need to eat and create a caloric deficit of between 200-1000 calories under what you burn off for the day. This will create a 1-2 pound loss a week of fat. Anything more than that, and you are losing hard earned, metabolism revving lean muscle tissue, and water. Plus, your body will burn fat off very slowly, and try to preserve it as much as it can. This is why when most dieters lose weight, their body fat hasn’t changed much, and they still have folds of fat, and become frustrated with their diets.

So in order to lose fat you have to EAT! I cannot stress that enough. If you starve yourself you may lose weight, but you will also lose lean tissue and water, and eventually you will plateau. Then when you stop starving yourself the weight will come right back on, and usually with a little extra.

If you don’t have a lot of weight to lose you want to consume no more than 500 calories under your BMR. If you have a lot of weight to lose that number will be as high as 1000, but never more, because then you will put your body in survival mode. As you lose weight the number of calories under your BMR will drop.

Please note if you are overweight you are going to be consuming a lot of calories at the beginning. More so then you are probably used to. But keep in mind this number will drop as you continue to lose the weight. Remember this is how you do it for safe, permanent, and effective weight and fat loss. You are in it for the long haul. So what if it takes you a little longer to reach your goal.

I hope this was helpful to you. Remember the key to fat loss is you have to eat. You have to EAT! And you have to eat consistently with supportive foods. Foods like whole grains, veggies, fruits, lean proteins, nuts/seeds, healthy fats, and occasionally supplements. Exercise needs to be done too. Find a good boot camp or trainer or friend in your area, and make it a habit. Be healthy! Good luck!

By: Jason Yun

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Knowing what should be your calorie deficit to lose weight, is certainly essential. Because you can lose weight only if you burn more calories than you take in. Very often the problem why people struggle so much with weight loss, is not because people are consuming too many calories, but because the calorie reduction is too severe and that is counter productive.

It would be ideal to reduce your calories just below your maintenance level and burn a lot of calories with exercise. But most people do the opposite and fail again and again. A 500 calorie deficit works most of the time. So if your maintenance level is 2100 calories, then reducing your calories to 1600, would be very good – not to little and not too much either. A 500 calorie deficit in a day would mean a 3500 calorie deficit in a week. Since there is 3500 calories in a pound of fat, then ideally you could lose 1 pound of fat.

This would also mean that a 750 calorie reduction in calorie means on average of 1 and a half of pounds of fat lost in one week. A 1000 calorie reduction would mean a 2 pound fat loss in one week. But the problem is that if you go too far with your calorie reductions like from 2100 to 1100 calories, then you not only lose fat, but muscle as well. If you lose muscle, then this means your body also burns less calories. That can be a very big problem in the long run. It would be ideal to only lose 100% of fat and if you reduce your calories just a little and start weight training and cardio training, then it can be done.

Alternative way to figure out how many calories you exactly need, is to use the percentage method. A 15-20% reduction is considered is a small deficit and it is the best option to use, especially at the beginning. For example if your maintenance level is 2400 calories, then a 20% reduction would mean a 480 calorie deficit. This is a better method because people are very different and a 750 calorie deficit could be too little for some and too much for others.

By: Randolph Meresmaa

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One of the hardest things about building lean muscle is the meals. Not just the sheer number of meals you have to eat everyday, but also thinking of new ways to get your calories and protein in. It can get darn boring just eating eggs and legumes all the time. A popular online muscle program might be the key. This article will review Vince DelMonte’s, “No-Nonsense Muscle Building”, but in particular his meal plans that are included with the purchase.

It’s a pretty good deal you get. The meal plans are actually bonuses included with the purchase of the main product, “No-Nonsense Muscle Building”. You get five 84-day bulking ones, four 84-day vegetarian ones and three 84-day cheap meal plans. Each meal plan aggregates by 1000 calories, to suit different people’s energy requirements. They complement the 29 week beginner-intermediate workout routines.

Just taking the bulking meal plans for example, I’ll need 5000 calories a day, so the plan is I get up at 6 or 7 am, have breakfast, work out, have another meal at 9-10 am, have lunch at 1 pm, have a meal around 3-4 pm, have dinner at 6 pm and a snack at 9 pm. So you eat quite a lot during the day. Given that you really push yourself in the work out, you’re going to need this many meals to ensure you repair and build muscle while you rest.

These might not suit many people, however. For example, I’m Asian, and I’m just not accustomed to eating things like cottage cheese or taking salmon oil in the morning. The meal plans are creative and you will be eating things like salads, sauteed vegetables and tofu, different fruits, nuts and legumes. Of course having said this, you don’t have to strictly follow these guidelines. The e-book, “No-Nonsense Muscle Building” has a chapter on food and given that you read through it properly, you probably can supplement some ingredients or meals that you’re more used to.

All in all, if you’re not picky and willing to try new things, Vince DelMonte’s, “No-Nonsense Muscle Building” and the accompanying meal plans could be what you’re looking for if you’re having trouble with your diet while getting lean muscle.

By: Cheng Kee

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Life is a classroom where we should all observe and learn and become better people. There is no better way to learn than learning from the practical experience of others.

Elvis Presley is a legend. A great singer who blazed many trails. However the cause of his death is still not conclusively known. Was it the drugs he was taking? Or his massive intake of food that finally killed him? The situation is further complicated by the fact that it is believed that he was taking some of the drugs to try and control his weight.

Did Elvis Presley’s Diet Kill Him?

We all need a minimum of 1,500 to 1,800 calories daily to stay alive. People doing heavy work and therefore burning lots of calories need even more calories, up to about 10,000 per day.

Elvis was consuming over 85,000 calories per day and was sitting around doing nothing more strenuous than reaching forward to flip the channels on his TV set. 85,000 calories is more than enough to keep an elephant alive. Presley’s favorite daily diet was a 30-cm long bread roll stuffed with bacon, peanut butter and strawberry jam. Each one had about 42,000 calories. Elvis would eat two every day together with other snacks like hamburgers and deep-fried white bread.

The answer to our question is, yes, Elvis who conquered the fickle and fiercely competitive music industry was no match to the alluring aroma and taste of food. He just ate himself to death.

Why Do Most Celebrities Have A Weight Problem?

The Elvis era ushered in a new era of super-rich celebrities. The new medium of TV helped create a new breed of super-rich entertainers. Elvis with his good looks and suggestive dancing was especially suited to it. Ever since two problems have been constantly and regularly associated with super-rich celebrities. Drugs and weight problems. For the purposes of this article, we will concentrate on weight problems.

It is useful to note that many of these big stars were literally starving and hard-up for cash just before their big break to celebrity status. Just like Elvis.

Suddenly they find themselves in a situation where they do not have to worry about money. Situations where they don’t have to retain a nine to five job to put food on the table. That’s where all the trouble seems to start.

Most of us seem to end up in a similar situation when we get comfortable jobs that we enjoy. A mildly successful junior executive or entrepreneur is bound to have a problem with obesity, no wonder it’s a national crisis.

What We Can Learn From Elvis

It is clear that had Elvis exercised, even a little, he would have lived much longer. Had he lived in this information age, he would also have had numerous other “less painful” ways of controlling his weight.

But the real danger zone, if we are to learn anything from Elvis, is in the mind. Presley had reached a situation where there was nothing left to achieve. There was no new challenge, even in the horizon, which interested him. That was the really dangerous point and that’s the really deadly place for anybody to be in. It happens to many celebrities these days with devastating consequences.

The lesson is that however successful you become, you need a constant supply of new challenges and new ventures and formidable tasks to take up all the time. It seems that it is true that when the mind goes to sleep, the body follows suite with devastating consequences.

By: Chris Kavila

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Many people ask me whether they should drastically cut back on calories when it comes to losing weight. Well of course one needs to cut back on calories to start losing because the problem in the first place is too many calories in and not enough being burned.

However when I am asked this, many people are considering cutting their calories to an extreme deficit. They want to cut them to around 1,000 calories a day, which may lose them the weight but will leave them feeling terribly tired and drained. If you want to lose weight but still feel good then you need to cut calories sensibly. There is a way to work out how many calories you need to reach your ideal weight.

This is a general way to work it out but to work out calories take your ideal weight and times by 10. For example if you want to be 120 pounds then you will need a basic level of 1200 calories. However you have to take into the fact that you will also need a few hundred calories just for daily living. So at a very minimum you would need around 1,400. Of course though exercise is important when trying to lose weight so adding this into your equation is important. For vigorous exercise you should add up to an extra 500 calories. With this general outline you should be able to lose weight and get to you ideal quite easily. This gives you around 1,900 calories to try to work towards a 120 pound body.

However a few words of caution: If you feel hungry EAT. To tell if you are truly hungry do the fruit test. If you don’t want to eat fruit then you are probably not really hungry and just craving. In this case I would just try to ride the cravings out; they will pass. If not try to eat fruit, as it is much better for you. Trying to overcome cravings can be hard – many times your cravings may simply be emotional. To discover if they are observe your eating habits over a 3 day period and see whether you eat out of stress or emotion. When you know you will find it much easier to tackle. Self-awareness is key.

You may also be dehydrated so make sure you try drinking water before giving into food. Most Westerners are dehydrated in this day and age so drinking water throughout the day is important. You will feel much better for it.

By: Marie Crawford

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It’s really true, there are people who struggle endlessly with the goal of gaining weight. Their only dream is to pack on some extra weight to their skinny bodies.

Many people wish they had that problem, but in reality people who want to gain weight have the same anxiety, and suffer the same self-esteem problems as people who want to lose weight.

Being extremely thin has it’s own health problems, so you can’t even take comfort in the fact that you will be living a healthy lifestyle. Skinny people suffer heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and all the other diseases heavy people suffer. Plus because of their weight they may have a weaker immune system and heal slower after an operation.

While you may want to gain weight if you are underweight, your goal should be a healthy weight gain. Adding muscle mass to your body is the way to go. You don’t want to add a whole lot of loose, jiggly, fat to your frame.

While looking for high calorie foods to gain weight, you want to add nutritious foods, ones that are good for you.

The simple truth is that if you eat more calories then you burn, you will gain weight. So you need calorie dense foods to accomplish your goal. You could eat broccoli all day long and you won’t gain an ounce. You’ll probably get even skinnier than you already are.

Here is a list of high calorie foods to help you gain weight:

Pure fruit juice — much more calorie dense then eating fruit in its natural form Peanut butter — it’s delicious and high in calories Bananas — I find it easy to eat two Salmon — A calorie dense food that’s healthy and delicious Bacon — while bacon may make you think of all the fat contained in a strip, it’s so satisfying to have a few strips and it will pack on the pounds Nuts — always a healthy choice Cheese — I love breaking off a few chunks of provolone and those few chunks are very heavy in calories Butter or margarine — one tablespoon is 100 calories Olive oil — it’s good for you and high in calories Dressings — taste great and will pack on the pounds Guacamole Yogurt Lard Dried fruit

What you want to do is snack in between meals to add more calories to your daily consumption. A few chunks of cheese between lunch and dinner. Spread some peanut butter on a slice of bread. Munch on some nuts, or make a trail mix as a snack. Eat a handful of dried fruit.

Now that you are eating high calorie foods to gain weight, there is one more thing you should be doing. You should begin a workout routine that will help you turn these extra calories into muscle mass. The way to do that is to workout with heavy weights — while doing low reps. The heavy weight low rep workout is what is needed to build muscle mass. When I say heavy weights I mean heavy relative to what you are able to do. You won’t be attempting record-breaking lifts. Just weight that you will only be able to lift a few times.

Be consistent and workout about 3 times a week. And with this plan you will gain weight.

By: John Ringer

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