The Infonian

If you want to burn off fat and keep it off permanently, there are a few things you absolutely must do, and a new study from Wake Forest University has just uncovered another one…

Previous research has concluded without a shred of doubt that high levels of exercise are one of the keys to keeping fat off and maintaining your ideal weight. In this new study just published in the October 2008 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, researchers found for the first time, proof that the drop in physical activity that happens automatically during calorie restriction is directly correlated to weight regain.

We’ve known for some time that when you restrict calories, your level of non exercise physical activity (non exercise activity thermogenesis or NEAT), drops spontaneously, even if you don’t realize it’s happening.

Your physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE) also tends to drop when you restrict calories.

Basically, when you cut calories, you get sluggish, you move your body less, you don’t feel like exercising and if you do exercise, you do it with with less “gusto.”

This means that unless you intentionally counter this tendency by pushing yourself to keep active and keep up the intensity, despite your low calorie intake, your weight loss will slow down automatically as you continue with caloric restriction. (can you say, “fat loss plateau?”)

The new twist to this story is that in this latest study the researchers followed up on the subjects through the maintenance period – with 6 month and 12 month checkups.

This is significant, because most fat loss “success stories” are reported immediately after the weight loss phase, but you never know what happened to them afterwards.

Not surprisingly, it wasn’t much of a “maintanence” period… almost everyone regained most of the weight.

The surprise was WHY they regained back the weight and WHO regained the most…

The drop in physical activity during the diet was directly related to the weight regain after the diet!

The researchers wrote,

“The greater the decrease in physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE) during the energy deficit, the greater the weight gain during the follow up.”

“That won’t happen to me,” you say? Think again. That drop in activity usually happens unconsciously. It’s part of the “starvation response” (or “weight-regulating mechanism” if you prefer). Your body tricks you in countless ways, in order to restore energy balance and stabilize your weight.

If you believe that diet alone is the answer or that you can skimp on the training, you are shooting yourself in the foot and thinking short-term.

When you extend out your time frame to a year or longer, you get a whole new perspective.

For years, I have been imploring my readers and subscribers to www.burnthefat.com with higher levels of exercise – strength training AND cardio training – while “feeding the muscle” with a higher intake of clean food, instead of simply “starving the fat” with low calorie diets and little or no exercise.

“Eat More, Burn More”… “BURN The fat FEED the muscle.” those are the mottos you want to remember.

Can you lose weight without exercise? Of course. Just be sure you have a dietary-induced calorie deficit. Is it the best way? Not by a long shot.

Bottom line: If you want to MAXIMIZE your fat loss, and keep fat off permanently, it is imperative not only to keep up a high level of energy expenditure (BURN calories not just cut them), but also to make a conscious effort to make sure your activity level does not drop as you lose weight during the calorie deficit.

If you’d like to learn more about this effective and proven approach to fat loss: “eat more, burn more,” then please visit my “Burn The Fat” website at www.burnthefat.com

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
www.burnthefat.com

www.burnthefat.com About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com

There are plenty of people out there who can tell you how to get 6 pack abs fast, but most of them are people who either have way too much time to workout and prepare their meals, have genes that would rival a pro bodybuilder, or take some kind of steroid. In this article you’re going to learn the truth about building 6 pack abs fast as well as some common myths that you absolutely must know if you ever want to sculpt a great looking set of abs.

The first thing you might find interesting is that girls actually like a guy with flat, defined abs over a guy that’s completely ripped to shreds and has ever muscle in his body showing.

So if you’re going crazy over trying to get 6 pack abs fast, calm down because odds are, the girl(s) you’re trying to impress don’t care as much as you think!

By the way if you’re curious about exactly why girls don’t need a girl with ripped to shreds abs, it’s because they realize that guy will most likely spend most of his time in the gym and worrying too much about how he looks instead of paying attention to her.

Anyway, here are a few great tips if you want 6 pack abs fast or if you simply want to sculpt a nice looking set of defined abs that anybody would appreciate.

1) High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) Is King – If you want to get 6 pack abs fast you’re almost definitely going to have to lose weight because you can’t see your abs until your body fat is low enough. And if you’re losing weight, you don’t want to lose muscle do you? By incorporating HIIT into your workout program you’re guaranteed to save more muscle and even release more muscle-building hormones throughout your body.

2) Start Fasting – Fasting has gotten a horrible wrap in the industry but it’s all based on lies. Fasting for 24 hours has been scientifically proven, time and time again, to not only be one of the easiest ways to lose bodyfat but to do so without losing muscle (there’s a scientific reason why you don’t lose muscle) or slowing your metabolism. It’s a little tough the first 2-3 times you try it, but after awhile it gets very easy, trust me!

3) Mix Up Your Workouts – By mixing up both your weightlifting as well as your cardio workouts, you put your body through something called “muscle confusion”. Simply stated, your muscles will never know what’s hitting them and by putting them through a confused workout a few times in a row they’ll start working even harder to keep up – causing your metabolism to rise which ultimately causes fat loss.

If you do these 3 things, you’re guaranteed to start losing weight faster and get 6 pack abs fast and much easier than ever before.

However don’t go crazy over how your abs look because as I mentioned earlier, even if you want 6 pack abs fast doesn’t mean that the people you’re trying to impress want you to have them! Jeremy Reeves is a certified personal trainer who has had enough of you being lied to by other fitness professionals. His controversial FREE report, “The 7 Deadly Fat Loss Sins”, will open your eyes to the TRUTH about losing weight – http://www.7-deadly-fat-loss-sins.com

Author: Jeremy Reeves

There are a lot of different gizmo’s, gadgets and widgets out there that supposedly help you build a great set of abs, but very few of them actually work. I originally that the same about doing the ab roller exercise using an ab wheel – until I found out the truth.

Here’s the story:

I was up late one night watching an infomercial and saw one that claimed that the ab roller exercise was scientifically proven to recruit more muscle fibers in your core than any other abdominal exercise machine on the market, plus it was better than any type of situp or crunch too.

Being the skeptical person I am, I actually went out and bought an ab roller just to see how this thing really worked.

And guess what?

The ab roller exercise immediately became my “go to” exercise for building a rock-solid core and getting abs of steel!

After using it for roughly a month, my abs were literally never stronger. Every single one of my lifts went up due to my increased core strength, and my abs started popping out in place they never came out before.

So if you ask me whether or not I’m a fan of the ab roller exercise, it’s a definite yes. There are a variety of exercises you can do with it including leaning to one side to work your obliques, standing instead of kneeling, adding a weighted vest, doing them one-handed, and a few other variations.

But who is it for?

Well this is kind of complicated, but here’s what I suggest if you don’t know whether or not you’d be strong enough to try out these ab roller exercises.

Go out and grab an ab roller (they’re cheap) and instead of going all the way out like most people show you, simply go until you feel a good amount of resistance and then pull back up.

The next time you workout, do the ab roller exercise another inch or 2 lower. Continue doing this until you can fully extend your arms, and keep working up to higher reps until you can start adding weight.

In my personal opinion this is the fastest way to build a set of rock-hard abs. Try out the ab roller exercise today and I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

For more information on how to build lean muscle and lose weight without going on some crazy diet, check out my free report titled “The 7 Deadly Fat Loss Sins” by going to http://www.7-deadly-fat-loss-sins.com

Author: Jeremy Reeves

I use to be a gym rat, go to the gym and lift weights like everybody else In the beginning I made some advances. After a while, those advances stopped happening. And who isn’t motivated by the feeling of making progress?

As if by luck, I found some information on bodyweight exercises. You remember those exercises, from the physical education days? So when I started doing the bodyweight exercises, I started to feel like I was making progress again.

And then I started doing exercises with very light weight, not iron pumping exercises, but exercises that challenged me in ways like no other. And sometimes I only used as little as five pounds. I guess you could also classify these as bodyweight exercises.

Then I added to my ever-increasing routine, I started using kettlebells and balance exercises with the Swiss ball. I now have more routines than I know what to do with. I don’t think I’ll ever get bored again. Is there anything worse than dragging your butt to the gym not psyched for your workout?

When it’s time to workout, I can’t wait. Just some of the variety of exercise I’ve grown accustomed to:

1. Hindu pushups

2. Leg swings

3. Running on the mini-trampoline

4. Feet on stability ball pushups

5. Pushups, feet on stability ball, hands on balance disks

I have literally hundreds of exercises in my arsenal that I can do. There’s no wonder that I’m feeling great and in the best shape of my life. When you add variety back to your workouts, you go a long way in making a commitment to yourself to get in great shape again.

Believe it or not, everything I’ve found on the internet has been free or low cost. I never spent a lot of money, like those ridiculous infomercials. Ok, maybe I did once, but I learned my lesson.

Whenever I feel like I need more variety in my workouts again, I usually pick up another book out there on the web. Before you know it, I’m off and running again. This approach may not be for everyone, some guys like hanging around the gym. But not me!

I head down to my basement, a Swiss ball, my kettlebells, my skip-rope and I have a better workout facility than any gym can provide. And believe me, it’s at one one-hundredth of the cost. I guess you could say I’ve found the Holy Grail when it comes to staying in shape.

Author: Robert Bell

The legions of fitness men all over the world will agree that developing a well-defined midsection can be the most challenging part of working-out. Stored fat around the belly tends to be the most stubborn when trying to trim down and lose body fat. The effort of trying to get rid of love handles and a cushy tummy can get very frustrating at times and a lot of people give up.

Our anatomy is such that the excess calories we don’t expend our stored as fat and this is concentrated mostly around our midsection. It’s quite unattractive to walk around with a potbelly, so losing belly fat tops the list for gym goers everywhere.

Gym exercises require repetitions that can become tiresome and boring after a while. With lower ab exercises for women, it’s tougher to stay motivated because their body fat is usually found in the lower part of the belly, hips and thighs.

Because body fat tends to leave the lower abdomen last, it may seem like progress in terms of getting a six pack is slower than developing other parts of the body. As such, a lot of folks try to do lower ab exercises more.

Isolating the lower part of the rectus abdominus by trying to target the lower abs is quite impossible because it’s really all one single muscle. There are lower ab exercises however that put more stress on that area: air-pedaling while on one’s back, vertical and horizontal leg raises, and different versions of such.

The monotonous nature of repetitions and seemingly slower progress developing the lower abs make it a challenge to keep working regularly. This can be remedied by either working-out with a partner, using alternative devices like a medicine ball, or switching to a different type of lower ab exercise every now and then.

Muscle tissue stops growing when it adapts to a specific type of movement. Changing your lower ab exercise routine once you feel like you’ve hit a plateau will help you reach your goal of getting a six-pack a little faster.

By keeping our workouts less monotonous through a gauntlet of different lower ab exercises, we don’t face the risk of getting bored and worse- stop working-out. The best way for radical results is consistency in exercising.

Author: Robert Bell