When it comes to weight loss, there’s no doubt a healthy diet goes a long way. After all, your diet makes up 50% of your calorie balance so it’s certainly a very powerful influence in keeping your bodyfat levels in check. One of the most popular weight loss methods is to “eat right” which usually involves trying to only eat …
7 Causes and Solutions to Overeating
Overeating is the single biggest threat to your Healthy Eating habits. It’s the number one influence in obesity, and metabolic disease not to mention general unease and poor dietary choices. It’s natural to overeat once in a while. Even I may go a little overboard here and there. but chronic overeating is when you purposely eat more than you need to in …
How Long Should It Take to Get Results?
How long should it take to get results? It’s one of the most common questions I’m asked on the R.D.P YouTube channel and Instagram. People want to know if they are making enough progress or if they are not making progress fast enough. It would be nice if I could give a concise answer to this question, but everyone’s timetable …
Top Tips On Setting up Your Fitness Environment for Success
All humans are products of their environment. Disciple and work ethic is important, but far too many people struggle with their fitness goals due to environmental misalignment. Losing weight, building muscle and improving performance is incredibly difficult when your environment is working against you. The solution is pretty simple, improving your environmental alignment can make reaching your fitness goals much easier. It also …
What to Do When Staying in Shape Seems Impossible
Sometimes, it can seem like staying in shape is impossible when life becomes stressful. Even the most disciplined fitness enthusiasts face times when they lose motivation or feel like they can’t keep up with their current habits. It’s normal to feel like life itself is against you and your efforts to stay in shape. It’s a myth that some special folks …
Tension is The Best Medicine
Muscle tension is the best medicine in the world. It’s more potent than any drug, safer than any organic food and almost every side effect is an added bonus. Best of all, you don’t need a prescription for it, it’s available wherever you are and it won’t jack up your health insurance premiums. It may even decrease your premiums while …
Can Stress Really Make You Fat?
Stress is naturally a big influence on your fitness. In some ways, it can build you up like when you work a muscle to make it stronger. In other ways, it can break you down, like when you don’t get enough sleep. The book, Strong Medicine, does a fantastic job of describing the role stress plays in your health and fitness …
5 Dietary Scapegoats Experts Blame For a Bad Diet
Dietary blame is one of the biggest handicaps to healthy eating. Blaming influences, like sugar or fat can cause you to focus too much on an important, yet limited influence, while ignoring many other influences that should be addressed. Pointing fingers and claiming “it’s all their fault” also robs you of your power to pursue a truly healthy diet. It’s …
Solving the Biggest Fitness Mysteries of Our Time
Modern society has presented us with some pretty big fitness mysteries. Why can’t we create a diet that helps anyone reliably lose weight? How can two people do the same workout program, yet experience different results? Why can’t well-educated experts ever agree on the best method for, well, anything? The answer lies in the vast and complicated nature of fitness …
3 Big Muscle Building Advantages Of Getting Older
They say you can’t build muscle when you’re older. HA!!! That’s total Bullshivick! In fact, there are 3 massive muscle building advantages that can only come with age. These aren’t just any a few minor advantages either. I’m talking super-massive black hole size muscle building advantages that can make all the difference in the world! The best thing is, these …
Best Training & Diet Habits For Your Body Type
Your body type is a big influence on which training and diet habits are best for you. Sometimes, the advice to eat and train a certain way can be scientifically sound, but it doesn’t work for you because of your body type. It’s not that some advice is right or wrong, but more along the lines that it’s not a …
How to Be Fit and 50 With Laurence Codd
Have I got a treat for you this week! I just finished sitting down with Mr. Fit and 50 himself, Laurence Codd. For those who don’t know, Laurence is the man when it comes to real-world practical information for staying in shape past your 20s, 30s and even 40s. In fact, Laurence got his start in fitness fairly late in life …
Build More Muscle and Strength With a Multi-Faceted Approach
Last week, I discussed how you can lose weight faster, and keep it off by using a multi-faceted approach. This week, I’m going to show you how to share with you seven strategies you can use to build more muscle. Focusing on many things can make it a lot easier to build, and maintain your gains compared to if you …
Lose Weight Faster and Keep it Off With a Multi-Faceted Approach
I highly recommend using a multi-faceted approach to weight loss if you’re looking to shed some body fat. While it’s not the most common approach, it does offer several big advantages that make it easier to not only lose more weight but to keep it off as well. What is a multi-faceted approach? A multi-faceted approach is where you combine …
How to End Permission Eating w/ Catherine Taylor
Permission eating is one of the most toxic elements in our dietary culture. It ultimately keeps you from being in control of your food choices while leaving you at the mercy of external influences like food, the scale, and expert opinions. The ironic thing is permission eating is one of the most common and even sought after strategies in the world …
Overcoming Diet and Exercise Resistance
Diet and exercise resistance can make achieving your fitness goals very difficult, if not impossible. It’s just like riding a bike with the brakes rubbing. It makes you work much harder while gaining little benefit. This week’s episode fo the R.D.P Podcast is all about the 3 biggest sources of resistance that can hold your potential in check. The first …
The Inherent Flaw of Dietary Restriction
Many healthy eating strategies make the mistake of basing their approach on dietary restriction. It doesn’t matter if it’s fasting, paleo, raw, low carb or based on the glycemic index. Almost all popular diets make the mistake of assuming that the best way to achieve a healthy diet is to restrict your food choices in some way. Some restrict what you can eat, …
Training for Your Body Type
Training and eating for your body type can make it easier for you to achieve the results you want. On the other hand, losing weight and building muscle can be very difficult if you use methods that don’t work for your type. If you’ve ever felt like a particular diet or workout wasn’t a good fit, there’s a good chance it …
Why Losing Weight is So Hard And What You Can Do About It
“Losing weight is one of the hardest things you can do.” That’s what legendary strength coach Dan John told us at a certification I attended several weeks ago and it’s true. As a fitness professional, I can attest that it’s far easier to make progress in just about any other way than it is to lose weight. I spent the past month …
Is Your Workout Effective or a Waste of Time?
I received a great question on the RDP YouTube channel the other day asking “how do you know if your workout is effective?” This is a very important question because it calls for brutal honesty in understanding if your workout is really effective. Chances are if you can’t say for sure that your workout is effective it probably isn’t. If it …
My 5 Best Diet Tips for Real Results
The internet is flooded with trivial and trendy diet tips that do little more than make for a good sound bite. Ideas like “don’t eat anything your grandparents wouldn’t eat” or “if it didn’t grow in the dirt or walk around don’t eat it. As catchy as these ideas are they don’t help much for turning the tide on obesity …
Is Ben & Jerry’s Healthier Ice Cream Than Halo Top?
I recently took a trip back home to Vermont and I got into a discussion about how different Ben & Jerry’s and Halo Top were, not just as brands, but about which one may be the healthier ice cream. There’s more to healthy eating than what’s on a label If you go by the numbers, Halo Top is clearly the …
How Stress Makes You Fat and What To Do About it
Stress and fat are best friends. Where you find one, you usually find the other. This is why many of the best weight loss strategies are just as much about controlling stress as they are about controlling fat. The link between stress and fat Both mental and physical stress can influence how your body functions which in turn can alter …
Understanding the Source of Fitness Stress
Dogmas are the biggest source of fitness stress. They restrict your ability to make the best diet and exercise choices for your body and lifestyle. In other words, they prevent you from doing what’s best for you while forcing you to adhere to rules that place stress on your body, mind, and lifestyle. Like with all things in life, overcoming …
How Chronic Fitness Stress Kills Your Progress
Fitness stress is the #1 enemy in your quest to build muscle, burn fat and improve performance. It erodes emotional motivation while beating up your body. Almost every challenge you face in fitness is due to stressful diet and exercise habits. Wait, isn’t some fitness stress necessary for progress? Yes, some types of fitness stress are important. You won’t …
Everything You Think You Know About Food Addiction is Wrong
Food addiction is a scary topic. There are messages all over the internet telling people they are addicted to sugar, carbs, and processed foods. Doomsday tales are everywhere about how evil food companies are engineering their food to get you hooked for life. What can you possibly do when sugar stimulates your brain just like cocaine? Well, for one, there’s …
How to Change Your Fitness Set Points
Fitness set points can seem pretty scary. The idea that your fitness destiny is predetermined by your genetics threatens the promise of making positive changes. What’s the point of even trying to lose weight or build muscle when your own body will default to the same set point? While there is some debate over whether such set points exist, it’s hard …
What is the Best Calisthenics Diet?
Nutrition is a turbulent topic of debate and this is still true when considering what diet is best for calisthenics athletes. Most dietary advice tends to favor one of two approaches. On one side you have the “eat big to get big” crowd that emphasizes food quantity. These are the same folks who claim you need to be in a calorie …
What to Consider When Making Healthy Food Choices
A sound diet requires making healthy food choices every day. That much is obvious but the big question is how do you make such choices? What should you consider and take into account? If you follow the popular diet trends you’ll find many experts place emphasis on what type of food you should eat or not eat. While what you …
How to Make Whole Foods Better Than Junk Food
The case against processed junk food is pretty strong. A diet of junk food loaded with artificial stuff is correlated with almost every ill ranging from obesity to cancer. Even I, with my liberal approaches to healthy eating believe people are better off eating less stuff from a box and more natural foods. If we know so much about the negative …
Are Popular Diet Rules Holding You Back?
Popular diet rules are everywhere in our fitness culture. They are the talk of celebrities, news media and fitness enthusiasts alike. Most of these rules are pretty simple and can be very helpful. Examples include not eating processed foods and eating organic or grass fed beef. Even avoiding sugar can seem straightforward, but there can be a potential downside to them. …
Is Your Healthy Lifestyle too Stressful?
The Red Delta Project was created from the belief that a healthy lifestyle should improve your quality of life rather than compromise it. Unfortunately, the common belief is that you must adopt stressful diet and exercise habits to get in shape. There are a lot of memes out there portraying the idea that you’re supposed to suffer for your results. it’s …
The Unstoppable Power of Fitness Beliefs
Your fitness beliefs make or break your success in everything from weight loss to building muscle. Even though the Henry Ford Quote about “whether you think you can or can’t your right” is becoming a bit old hat, it’s absolutely true. Your success hinges more on what you believe than what you may know. In this information age, we’re told the key …
Calorie Balance vs Calorie Counting for Weight Loss
The debate over calorie balance is a common example of how many people mistake a principle of fitness for a fitness method. Those who argue against calorie balance point out that counting calories or severe calorie restriction do not work very well. I agree that calorie counting and calorie restriction are not very good methods for long-term weight loss. However, …
How to Find Reliable Fitness Information
Despite having more diet and exercise information than you’ll need in 10 lifetimes, it can be pretty hard to find reliable fitness information on the internet. Even simple questions like how much protein you should consume or the difference between split and full body routines can lead you down an endless rabbit hole of debate. How are you supposed to comb …
How Much Protein Do You Really Need?
There’s far too much confusion and debate out there regarding protein consumption. It’s so easy to feel lost when trying to figure out how much protein you should eat to build muscle or lose weight. Looking for numbers doesn’t usually help because one expert’s answer is another experts criticism. It’s almost impossible to find solid answers these days. That’s why …
The Root of a Healthy Diet
The source of a healthy diet goes much deeper than what you eat. While what’s on your plate is important, what’s most important to why that food is on your plate, to begin with. Your food choices depend less on what the latest research says about nutrition and more about the emotions you literally bringing to the table. A cookie is …
How to Make Junk food Healthy
Junk food doesn’t automatically have to be unhealthy. A certain food isn’t always bad for you just because it falls on the wrong side of some experts black and white dietary dogma. It is most certainly possible to include supposed junk food in your diet, and be better off for it. A lot of the potential benefit of a food depends not …
Why Diets Always Work
Despite the plethora of diets that spring up every year, many nutrition, weight loss and fitness experts claim that diets don’t work. It’s a popular claim, but it’s just not true. Every diet has worked perfectly well for every single person who’s used it. It’s true. I challenge you to find any example when any diet has ever failed anyone. …
The Trap of Over Qualifying Exercise
Over qualifying exercise is one of the biggest reasons why you may be struggling to get the results you want and it’s easy to fall into this trap. At first, you learn about the “best exercises” to reach your goals. Then a buddy tells you about the “optimal rep range for muscle growth.” Then the pro body builder in the …
The 4 Big Flaws in Every Diet
These days dieting dogmas are almost a religion. Some of them even originate from religious practices. Diet evangelists preach the virtues of their dietary methods on the internet and in books. They promise salvation from obesity, poor health, and even your own sinful desires. Even though various diets come and go, they are all based on the same basic premise. …
Lessons from The History of Dieting
Dieting is a discipline that people have used for hundreds of years. Dietary dogmas have existed ever since people have cared how they looked in their clothes. In the book, Calories and Corsets a History of Dieting over 2,000 Years, Louise Foxcroft takes the reader through the fads and trends over the years. While the information in the book is great, I …
Nutrition is only 25% of a Healthy Diet
When it comes to Healthy Eating, good nutrition is important, but it’s not everything. Not by a long shot actually. As I explain in my book, Fitness Independence, a healthy diet focuses on satisfying 4 primal appetites. Each of these appetites is equally vital to your health and well-being. Nutrition is one of these appetites, but it’s only one. This means …
Why You Should Build a Custom Routine
Fail to plan and plan to fail. That’s what they say, and for good reason. You’re not going to get very far without a well thought out diet or exercise plan. Unfortunately, many good plans turn into a rigid dogmatic approach to how you should “eat right” and exercise. While any plan is better than no plan, super strict approaches …
Fitness Plateaus and Progression
A lot of fitness and weight loss plans are built around the idea that you should make consistent progress from one week to the next. Some examples might be that you’re supposed to lose 2 pounds a week or lift 5 more pounds each workout. Expectations like are this are based on a linear model of progression. The idea is …
Easy Fitness Part 4- Fat Loss
Easy is good. I know that’s not what you usually hear when it comes to weight loss, but it’s true. You don’t get results by working your tail off. You get results by how productive you are, and the best way to do that is to make things easier. Of course, anything worth having in life is going to take …
Easy Fitness Part 3 Diet
Diet and nutrition may be one of the hardest things to tackle in a healthy lifestyle, but it doesn’t need to be so. I’m a big believer in the idea that the better your diet becomes the easier it should be to stick to. A diet that constantly stresses you out is not only difficult to maintain, but it’s also …
Dump the Diet Dogma and Eat Better Than Ever
Diets and nutritional dogmas are everywhere in our fitness culture. Every month there are new ways to “eat right” and force yourself into a nutritional mold someone else created in a lab. These dietary dogmas are often sold as the savior to your health and waistline, but they actually hold you back. In many ways, they run counter to the …
3 Easy Healthy Eating Tips (Book 3 Preview)
Book 1 of the Red Delta Project, Fitness Independence, is already out and book 2 is in the works. I’m even starting to outline the material for book 3 which focuses on the diet and nutrition aspect of Fitness Independence. In this week’s podcast I give you a super-early sneak peak at some of the stuff I’m working on for …
Break Free of Diet & Exercise Dogma for Good
Fitness dogma that dictates how you should eat and exercise is ever prevalent within our fitness culture. Most of the time these dogmas start out as simple ideas but grow into a mini-religion by the time they hit the masses. The issue I take with them is they both limit your freedom of lifestyle and results. It’s like locking both your …
3 Keys to a Healthy Meal
I keep to a pretty carefree style of eating. There’s no food that’s really off limits and I don’t follow any of the trends or fads the experts claim are so darn important. That doesn’t mean I don’t have my own rules and guidelines. I have 3 simple things I keep in mind with each meal that helps me ensure …
The Quick & Easy Fix to Your Fitness
We’re told there is no quick and easy fix in fitness. That the road is long and hard. That anywhere worth going is going to be one trial after another. Building muscle, losing weight and any fitness related goal is going to have it’s trials for sure, but is the “no easy fix’ idea sending us the wrong message? Can …
When Are Diet & Exercise Details Important?
There’s no shortage of detailed information concerning diet and exercise information. It seems everywhere you look some expert is suggesting the smallest details concerning you habits can make or break your success. It can all be very confusing. You can get lost in the maze of details around what to eat after a workout alone. Should you drink a protein …
3 Mental Weight Loss Barriers w/ Catherine Taylor
“75% of Weight Loss is Mental” -Catherine Taylor Catherine Taylor is a master when it comes to the emotional and mental side of fitness and weight loss. Understanding the science behind weight loss is only a small piece of the puzzle, and few people understand this like Catherine. In today’s podcast, I sit down with her talk about 3 of the …
How to Make Fitness Simple and Easy
Many of the struggles to build muscle or lose fat come from the needless obstacles we place in front of ourselves. We are making this whole diet and exercise stuff far too complicated and difficult. It’s not supposed to be so difficult it requires a herculean degree of motivation and will power. You also don’t need to become an expert …
Is Workout Fatigue Good or Bad?
Achieving a high degree of fatigue and exhaustion is a polarizing topic. Some folks love to leave everything they have in the gym or on the trail and come home completely spent. Others don’t like to be dead on their feet and avoid pushing their levels of endurance. I’ve been on both sides of this coin. What I’ve learned is that …
How to Balance Out Emotion and Logic Dominance
Most folks are either emotion or logic strong in their philosophy and approach to fitness. You can check out this post to learn about emotion and logic dominance but here are the cliff notes: Logic dominant individuals: Keep looking for the best and latest science and information. Over-rely on knowing the “right” way to do things or the right program …
Emotion vs Logic Dominant Fitness Habits
Are you working your tail off and sticking to your diet or exercise plan, but not getting the results you want? Is pushing yourself to your limits the extent of your workout plan? Maybe you’re always looking for that one diet or workout program that’s going to work for you. Are perhaps you feel you know what to do but you …
Tips For Calisthenics and Fitness Excellence
Excellence in calisthenics and fitness is something we all want, but there are a lot of hurdles in making that happen. Some of them are all in your own mind. Some of them are all around you. Make no mistake, you can achieve far greater results than you currently believe are possible. Just imagine what it would be like to …
How to Fix a Broken Diet
This podcast was inspired by an online lecture I watch by John Berardi Ph.D. from Precision Nutrition. John’s advice is simple, down to earth and, above all, practical for the average man or woman to use. I decided to share with some of the biggest takeaways I got from the lecture including: Why most popular nutrition advice doesn’t really help anyone …
Big Lessons From Biggest Loser Weight Gain Story
The big news is that many of the contestants from Season 8 of the Biggest Loser TV show have regained a lot of their weight and their metabolic chemistry is running like an ’85 Trans Am. Here’s the article and synopsis of the study if you want to learn more. But here at the RDP, I’m not about bashing, trashing and pointing …
The 3 Most Important Exercise Rules Ever
I like to keep things simple when it comes to exercise, especially when it comes to building muscle and fat loss. It’s such a relief to take all of the fluffy information out there and distill it down into the basic principals. Not only does this greatly improve your chances of success, it also gives you the freedom and flexibility …
7 Ways to Make Healthy Eating Easier
Healthy eating is the primary eating strategy here at the Red Delta Project. It doesn’t embrace the idea that your diet should be a challenging mission, but rather a series of habits that make eating as stress-free as possible. Check out this video where I show you 7 of the biggest tips on how you can make healthy eating easier, …
The Real Purpose of a Healthy Diet
Keeping a healthy diet is incredibly important, but what’s even more important is the purpose behind the food choices you make. As they say, find your “why” when you’re trying to make something important happen. This will both motivate and help you make the best choices possible. As I mentioned in the last post, the biggest why for most “healthy …
The Diet and Weight Loss Myth
Eating better in an effort to lose weight or body fat is one of those things that’s assumed to be true. It’s practically assumed that cleaning up your diet is the most important component in a weight loss plan. If you eat right then the fat should just fall off and stay off. While eating well is certainly an important part …
Reach Your Fitness Goals Faster
Have you every felt like reaching your fat loss or muscle building goals is going slower than it should? Do you want to breathe some new life into your routine to jump start your progress? Give this video a quick view to attack the habits that are slowing you down while increasing the habits that will speed up your progress.
How to Break Your Bad Fitness Habits
Your habits will make or break your success. They can make it easy to shed fat and build muscle, or nearly impossible to make any progress at all. In this week’s podcast, I bring a refreshing, and slightly uncomfortable, perspective on what’s really holding you back from making the progression want. Hold onto your hats because this might get a …
Diet vs Exercise for Long Term Fat Loss
Many claim diet is more important for fat loss, and it may be in some situations, however, fat loss through diet is a temporary scenario. Regardless of what diet you follow your body will find a way to return to calorie balance one way or another. This is why physical activity might be a stronger, more potent variable towards your …
Is Walking the Best Fat Loss Exercise?
I believe the best fat loss exercise isn’t done in the gym or sweating your sock off in some sort of class. It’s simply walking out your front door and continuing to put one foot in front of the other. All of the high-intensity stuff is still great, but when it comes to long-term, lasting fat loss walking just might be the …
Escape the Gym and Burn More Fat
In this edition of the R.D.P Podcast I explore why betting your weight loss hopes on gym based exercise can be incredibly limiting. If you really want to burn as much fat as possible, your best bet might be to use methods that don’t require a membership fee and a TV to keep your mind distracted from how bored you …
Rules of Progression & Results
Progression is the bottom line in strength and fitness. If you have progression you get the results you want, it’s as simple as that. However, if you have the perfect routine, the perfect diet and the best equipment, but no progression, you’re stuck. So there’s a lot at stake here. With progression comes the results you want. Without it, nothing …
7.5 Facts About Fitness Progression
Progression. It’s the single Delta Principal that can make or break your success. Or to put it another way, no progression no results. If you get progression you get results. Simple eh? The trick is understanding a few key basic principals about progression which will make it a lot easier, let alone possible. Check em out:
Eating Right vs Eating Better
People ask me if I eat right, to which I enthusiastically reply no, as a matter of fact I don’t eat right. I love their reaction, it’s always a mix of disbelief and sympathy like I’m a darn fool. “Oh you’ll learn” they say. Just wait until you reach age, 20, 30, 40 or whatever. “You won’t be able to eat …
Should You Eat Less For Fat Loss?
Eating less can potentially jump start fat and weight loss but it’s not always a sound plan. Some folks can, and should rein in their diet while other people should focus more on being more physically active. In this video, I show you if you can calories to cut out or if you should focus on physical activity for fat …
Is Modern Fitness Ridiculous?
I came across this super cool video showcasing some of the fitness trends of the past century: I’m really fascinated by the history of our modern fitness culture and videos like this are both educational and highly entertaining. Despite its entertainment value, I can’t help but ask myself “How did people back then take this stuff seriously? I mean, why did …
Burn Fat & Build Muscle Faster
This week’s podcast is a refreshing perspective regarding both the fat burning and muscle building process. If you’ve been frustrated with either fat loss or building muscle listen to this to learn why most fat burning and muscle building methods are not entirely truthful.
Is Body Weight Training Safe if You’re Overweight?
Summery: Yes, calisthenics is ideal for those who are overweight and this guide is a great place to get started. Here’s why: I understand why someone, who is over weight, would be nervous about body weight training. Their whole goal is to become lighter and leaner. They have been told by countless influences, including health experts, that that their weight …
Don’t Worry About Holiday Weight Gain
Don’t worry about gaining weight this holiday season. Seriously it’s not even a mild threat to your belly and waist line. Especialy considering there’s an even bigger threat to your figure than even your most indulgent office Christmas party. Even worse, it’s lurking just under most people’s awareness all year long. The good news is, once you recognize and handle …
Escaping the Cardio Trap
The cardio trap is easy to get caught up in, especialy for those looking to lose weight. It’s characterized by a vicious cycle of eating more due to an increase in appetite from doing a lot of exercise and then needing to exercise more because you eat so much. With each repetition of the cycle the need to both eat …
Calorie Hacking 3.0
Calorie Hacking the the art and science of using the universal law of homeostasis to support your weight loss goals. Many diet and weight loss programs intend to fight against homeostasis which sets them up for certain long term failure and frustration. You can’t fight homeostasis anymore than you can stand on a beach and fight off a tsunami. …
Why Even Small Distractions Kill Results
Distractions are pure poison for your fitness results. No matter what you want, from weight loss to running faster, distractions make you work twice as hard for half the result. In this week’s podcast I expose why even small “harmless” distractions can halt your progress for years regardless of what your routine looks like.
Why I Don’t Do Fat Loss Workouts
I actively avoid working out with the goal to simply burn fat and calories. I believe it’s very unproductive and not very effective for long term fat loss. Granted, I used to practice weight loss workouts for years, but now I use a very different approach. I explain why in more detail in this video:
The Miracle of Modern Nutrition
Modern nutrition and food often get’s a bad reputation. Be it protests against GMO labeling or people claiming snack cakes are not real food we’ve regressed our appreciation of food to the point where some claim we even ate better when we were living in caves. While our modern food supply certainly isn’t perfect it’s never been easier, cheaper and …
Hit a Plateau? Good!
Plateaus often get a bad reputation in fitness. After all, we’re in this game to make change happen and plateaus are when change just can’t seem to come. Everyone wants to know how to break out of their plateau, but I’ve got a different recommendation; Don’t break that plateau. Stay exactly where you are and try not to break it. …
Freedom From Fitness Criticism
I just found this and couldn’t resist sharing it. It rings so true to the challenge I seem to face everyday. Our fitness culture is awash with options. There are countless tools, methods, protocols and methods you can choose from. The variety is good, but it can also be suffocating. There are a million options but none of them are …
How & Why I Dumped Cardio
I used to be a full-time cardio junkie. Even in college when the university opened a brand new weight room, I was content spending more time on the elliptical and stair machine than I was spending in class. I had a few good reasons to hit the sweat inducing machines for 1-2 hours each day. – It helped me burn …
The One Thing Holding Your Fitness Back
A sound fitness plan requires many pieces and part. There’s diet, exercise, sleep, hormones, nutrients, technique and a host of other details. It can be confusing to keep track of all of it. Despite the complexity, there’s a very good chance that your current rate of progress is being held back due to one single tiny thing. Most importantly, all …
Escaping the Eating Right Prison
Eating right is a lofty ideal pedestal intended to elevate your diet, your health and possibly even your entire quality of life. While it can certainly bring you some benefit, there is a risk that many of the messages supporting the notion that you should eat right can overwhelm you. This can result in an endless cycle of stress and …
Programing Calisthenics for Fat Loss, Muscle Building & More
Calisthenics is a fantastic training method, but it can fall flat if you don’t know how to program your routine to accomplish what you want. The squat is a good example. You can use it to pursue any goal from building muscle to explosive training and even fat loss. It’s just one move but it can used to accomplish many …
Calisthenics Programing for Fat Loss
Burning fat doesn’t require a special routine or workout. Literally any form of movement will burn fat and contribute to weight loss. Seriously, it doesn’t matter what you do or how you do it. It all counts. Of course you want to optimize things don’t you? You want to burn as much as possible and that’s what this video …
The Sugar Drug Myth
“Sugar is just as addictive as cocaine.” “Eating junk food is just like shooting up.” Ideas like this are all over our dietary culture. Mostly they are based on this idea that eating sugar and processed foods stimulate the same area of the brain as addictive drugs like cocaine. The myth isn’t that sugar stimulates that area of the brain, …
Supplements Exposed With Mike Vaughn
Today I have a real treat for you. I teamed up with my buddy Mike Vaughn who has an extensive history of working in the supplement business. In this podcast he mercilessly tears back the hype and marketing of many popular supplements to expose the truth about what that stuff on the bottle can really do. Mike pulls no punches …
Why Real Food is Far Better Than Supplements
You may not believe this but, I was once a big believer in supplements. I was even one of those guys who claimed you couldn’t even get in shape without them. My how things change! These days my idea of supplementation is making a second trip to the buffet line for extra helpings. I’m not so much anti-supplementation its just …
Weight Control Without Counting Calories
Weight control is all about calorie control, but calorie counting can be a real pain in the neck. It’s time consuming, takes a lot of personal energy and can feel awkward as you insist on writing everything down when you’re eating with others. Not to mention it’s almost impossible to do accurately on a consistent basis. These reasons and more …
9 Reasons Why You Should Train Every Day
Training every day may seem a little extreme, but it may just be the ticket to making progress much faster and easier than if you only pursued your goals a few days out of the week. Here are a few reasons why training every day can super charge your strength and muscle training. #1 At the heart of all training …
Why Quality Diet & Exercise Habits are Cheaper
Quality is much better than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles. -Steve Jobs The idea that fitness is expensive is highly prevalent within our society. People complain about the price of healthy eating, the cost of a gym membership and even the time it takes to warm up. It’s a darn shame, because fitness doesn’t …
Are Weights & Diets Even Necessary?
Simply put, no. Nothing that has been created within our fitness culture over the past 100 years is even remotely necessary. – You don’t need a gym membership. – You don’t need all of those supplements. – You don’t need to read the latest diet books or get caught up on the latest nutritional research. – You don’t need the …
4 Fitness Struggles You Can’t Win
Fitness Shouldn’t Be A Constant Struggle. If it is something is wrong. Our current fitness culture is in love with struggle and fighting the good fight. Facebook is filled with people showing off their blood sweat and tears. There are pictures of torn hands, and people laying on the floor in exhaustion. People love to tell their friends how hard they …
Ending the Food Craving / Addiction Cycle
One of the first steps towards true healthy eating is to end the endless cycle that causes eating behaviors such as cravings, binges and purges. Of course everyone has their own reasons behind their emotional attachments to various foods, but I’ve found that most of the time cravings and binges are part of a cycle. This cycle usually starts …
Do You Really Need an Activity Tracker?
Activity trackers are becoming much more popular through promising to help make you more aware of everything from your heart rate to sleep habits. Becoming more aware of your daily habits is critical in improving your fitness. This is especially the case because our modern-day living can make us a bit numb and even blind to our daily habits. We exercise …