Is Fat Loss Really Easy?

Do you remember learning to ride a bike?

Probably not.

OK, bad example. Do you remember teaching your kids how to ride their bike? Or maybe you just remember the gist of learning to ride a bike.

Was it easy? Of course it wasn't. You probably fell off numerous times until you got your balance in check and confidence in line to help keep you upright and going down the block. Until you had to stop and freaked out and then fell in your neighbor's yard.

But it was simple, wasn't it? When it came down to it, all riding a bike entailed was balance, confidence and some coordination and you were on your way.

Simple, but not easy.

There's a big difference between simple and easy.

The same correlation can be made when it comes to losing fat.

Losing fat is very simple, but it's not easy.

When it comes down to it, losing fat entails consuming fewer calories than you expend through your daily activities and metabolism.

Sounds simple, right? But as you know it's not very easy.

It takes willpower.

It takes confidence in yourself.

It takes social support.

It takes having the right exercise program in place, and actually doing it on a consistent basis.

It takes the knowledge of knowing what to eat and when and knowing what foods and drinks to stay away from.

Simple. But not easy.

However, it can be done. All you need to do is understand that it's a simple equation and have the confidence in yourself that you can achieve your goals and will stick to it when the times get tough and move on when you mess up.

Plus you need to do resistance training 3-4 times per week, while training your entire body in each session, for 15 minutes, along with some form of cardio work (preferably interval training because it delivers the most bang for the buck and gets you done quicker).

You also need to eat fruits and vegetables and get quality protein from sources like turkey and chicken breast, lean sources of beef, beans, and nuts. In addition to eating breakfast everyday and limiting your alcohol intake.

Simple right? You should be nodding your head.

Losing fat doesn't take any fancy gizmo you see on television, nor does it take some over-hyped fat loss supplement that's really just loaded with some form of caffeine which jacks up your nervous system and makes you pee (thus losing water weight and not fat).

Simple, but not easy.

That's the theory behind all my training programs, including my e-book Fat Loss To Go, and always will be. The workouts and nutrition information, when used properly, aren't easy, but is very simple.

Have a good day!

Ed

P.S. - If you ever have any questions about anything I write in these newsletters or anything else related to fat loss or exercise, don't hesitate to ask. I'm here for you.

10 Minute Bodyweight Workout

I get a lot of questions about what to do in a 10 minute workout.

Well, below you'll see a video of one of my favorite 10 minute workouts. It's called a "Push-up & Squat Ladder" and, if done right, is an awesome workout.

Make sure your push-ups and squats are done with good form...no half-squats or half-push-ups.

This is my first ever video, and there were a few cuss words said trying to get it done (and yes I know that when I said to do 3 push-ups I only did 2).

Plus I think I'm the only person who actually looks skinnier on camera than in person. Isn't the camera supposed to add 10 pounds?



Be sure to check back here regularly because I am going to try to add a new workout video every week.

Was Your Easter Gluttonous?

Have you ever said something to someone that you knew was stupid? You know, the old "foot in mouth" syndrome?

I do that quite regularly. I don't know why, but stupid things seem to flow out of my mouth pretty readily and I get my foot lodged deep down my gullet.

That's actually how I got the idea for this newsletter. I said something stupid.

You know what the best way is to alleviate "foot in mouth syndrome"?

Apologize and move one.

Pretty easy, isn't it?

The same thing can be said about messing up with your exercise program and eating plan, like eating too much Easter candy or too much ham, casseroles, side salads, etc..

We all mess up. I do that quite often, too. Just today I ate some (OK, a lot) of Starburst Jelly Beans. Yes, I know I'm a personal trainer who's supposed to be all about fitness and fat loss, but I love those little sugar-laden, fat storing, demons.

And it's just this one time, right? I just ate them because it was Easter...and they were readily available...and they kept calling my name.

But I just have to move on. I already did it. I can't change the past. The jelly beans are already eaten. I can't do anything about it now other than pick myself up off the ground, dust myself off and move on.

Tomorrow is another day and I won't eat poorly tomorrow. I'll eat my fruits and vegetables and get my protein.

Have you ever done that? Have you ever messed up your eating plan (like yesterday)? Maybe you splurged a little bit over the weekend and now you feel like a bloated sloth. Or maybe you were running late and decided to run through the drive-thru and your cravings got the better of you and instead of getting the chicken sandwich without mayo, you got the double cheeseburger and fries with the giant Coke (and "no", making it a Diet Coke doesn't make it any better).

Or maybe you decided you'd rather head to the bar after work than doing your fast fat loss workout. It's just one workout, right?

But then the guilt hits and that's no fun.

You have two choices at this point. You can either give up and tell yourself you can't do it, or you can pick yourself up and move on.

The only way to alleviate that guilt, and succeed in your fitness or fat loss goals, is to move on. You can't change what you just did. You can't go into the past and do the workout you skipped. You can't join Michael J. Fox in the time machine from Back to the Future and go back and not eat that double cheeseburger (or Starburst Jelly Beans in my case).

You just have to move on...and more importantly not do it again.

That's the real key. Don't do it again. We all make mistakes, and changing your eating and exercise habits are big undertakings and mistakes are bound to be made. But you must remember that if you do mess up, just move on, don't worry about it and keep moving forward...and try not to do it again.

Have a good week!

Ed

P.S. Did you know that the unofficial start to summer is only about 10 weeks away? This year is already flying by. Don't get stuck wishing you had worked out and ate better come summer. Do something about it now. Go to http://www.fatlosstogo.com/ today and get started on your fat loss journey immediately.

How To Lose Fat On The Weekend

The weekends are a killer for most people on any sort of exercise plan, especially if fat loss is the main goal.

I’m willing to bet that you don’t work on weekends, so that throws you out of your routine. You probably have activities, either for your kids or yourself, that you need to run around to and errands to run, or chores to do around the house, and you get out of bed a little later (unless you have kids or a whiny dog, like me).

All this throws you out of the routine you’ve made for yourself during the week.

You’re not getting up at the same time, not preparing the same healthy breakfast, or you’re eating it a little too late in the morning and probably splurging a little bit because, hey, it’s the weekend. You’re entitled to a little relaxing and splurging on the weekends, aren’t you?

That’s true to some degree. I know that I relax my eating habits a little on the weekend. Not too much, though. If you splurge or relax too much you’re going to put your goals at a standstill (at best) or not make any progress at all.

Weekends can actually kill your fat loss goals.

So here’s what I do, and what you should do too, in order to keep yourself on the right track and still relax a little on the weekends.

1. Do your workout first thing in the morning. As soon as you wake up, do your workout. This may require getting up 10 minutes earlier than you’re used to so you can make sure you get some peace and quiet, but this is a must if you really want to stick to your goals. A lot of my workouts only take 10 minutes to complete, so if you get up just 10 minutes earlier, you could have a killer fat fighting workout already done in the time it takes most people to get warmed up. Check out my 10 minute workouts at www.fatlosstogo.com

a. If you tell yourself you’ll do it later in the morning or even in the afternoon, you’re not going to do it. Something will come up. A friend will call and want to go out to dinner. Your family may plan an evening out. Or you’ll just get sidetracked. Not only will you make sure you get your workout out of the way, but you’ll boost your metabolism for the rest of the day, meaning you’ll burn more fat than if you otherwise skipped the workout, and it’ll wake you up.

2. Stick to your same healthy breakfast as during the week. If you have a smoothie for breakfast during the week and you feel great after having it, then do that on the weekends too. You know how much I value breakfast when it comes to fighting fat and just living a healthy lifestyle, so why would the weekend be any reason not to have it? I’m a creature of habit, which means I find something I like and stick to it. So I have the same exact smoothie on the weekends as I do during the week. The smoothie includes blueberries, raspberries, organic skim milk, pomegranate juice, ground flax seed, wheat germ, and vanilla protein powder. Try it sometime, it’s great.


3. Don’t go overboard with the cheat meals. Whenever people tell me they’re having trouble losing fat and I ask how their eating habits are during the week and how that compares with the weekend, the weekend is always the culprit for the failed fat loss. You go out to lunch and/or dinner everyday and drink alcohol. Going out to lunch and dinner is fine, I encourage it, but there are ways to do it and stick to your healthy, fat fighting diet.

a. Don’t order an appetizer. Don’t drink alcohol, and if you do really make sure you’re eating a low-calorie, low-fat meal. Don’t eat fast. You’re not some starving kid in Africa and nobody is going to come snatch your plate from you, so why do you need to eat that fast? Put your fork down in between bites and take a drink of water. This ensures you eat slower and digest your food properly.

4. Make sure you get your rest. Weekends are supposed to be a time for you to rest and recoup, but far too many people go way too hard on the weekends trying to accomplish way too much. Your body needs to rest and recuperate at some point and I’m willing to bet you don’t get enough sleep during the week. Doing too much and stressing yourself out is only going to make it that much harder to lose fat. Plus it’ll make you lose your hair, gain more belly fat and just be a pain in the butt to be around.

There you go. That’s the easiest I can put it for fighting fat on the weekends. If you want to lose fat, and are struggling, do those 4 things this weekend and see how you feel come Monday morning. If you do at least 3 of those 4, I guarantee you that you’ll feel better, you won’t be so bloated from the poor eating and alcohol and will be well on your way to losing all the fat you want.

Have a good weekend!

Ed

The Key To The Show "The Biggest Loser"

Have you ever seen the show "The Biggest Loser"?

I don't think I've ever watched an entire episode, but I'll tune in for a few minutes every now and again.

It's kind of intriguing. These severely overweight individuals putting themselves through hell to lose weight. I think it's awesome that they put themselves out there like that, in front of millions of people, and get healthy.

But do you know the real reason they lose a ton of weight on that show?

Yes they spend a lot of time working out (hours upon hours per day) and, yes, they have the food spoon fed to them which makes it kind of tough to fail, but there's something else that really makes them succeed.

Something else that many people are missing in their own health and fitness goals, no matter what they may be.

That something else is social support.

The people on "The Biggest Loser" don't just rely on themselves in this fat loss adventure, they have the other people on the show who are in the same boat. Plus they've got personal trainers there walking them through every step of the way.

If they are having trouble with something, they have someone to talk to.

If they don't know how to do an exercise or are using horrible form, their trainer is there to correct and motivate them.

When they're doing really hard workouts, they motivate one another.

Social support is the REAL reason the people on that show succeed.

I'm not saying that you need a big cheerleading section behind you, patting you on the back and telling you "You can do it!", but you need someone.

You need someone to tell you "no" when you want to eat that piece of cheesecake.

Someone to tell you to get your butt out of bed to do your workout when you don't really feel like getting up.

You need someone to remind you why you decided to do what you're doing.

What you don't need is someone telling you that your butt is too big, that you have developed a nice "muffin top", or that your belly has started oozing over your pants. That's not helpful. If you have someone telling you that, you have my permission to smack them upside the head...hard.

The best thing to do is to find someone (friend, spouse, family member, or co-worker), who wants to fulfill the same goal you are looking to accomplish. So, if you want to lose 20 pounds of belly fat, find someone else that you can rely on throughout the journey.

Like I said, it doesn't have to be a cheerleading section, because nobody wants to be a cheerleader and you can't rely on someone to constantly cheer you on, it just has to be someone that you can trust and who is honest and won't back down when you glare at them with those evil eyes when they tell you that you should put down that box of girl scout cookies because you already filled your quota of cheat meals for the week.

So who's going to fill that role with you? Think about it and ask them.

Ed

Fast Fat Loss Workout

Today was a crazy day.

I had non-stop appointments for 8 hours straight, including a couple deep tissue massages.

Needless to say that when I finally sat down I was spent. That's OK, because I love what I do for a living.

I get to wear comfortable clothes, I own a private studio, which means nobody is around to bug me or my clients. No weirdos lurking around the gym, no inconsiderate people leaving sweat pools on benches and the music is good.

Anyway, after my day I didn't really want to workout. I could have believed the excuse I was giving myself "I worked hard all day training clients and giving a couple deep tissue massages, I don't need to workout".

It's true, I probably could've gotten by taking a day off. The only problem is that believing that excuse begins a cycle...and a bad cycle.

Where does it stop?

Pretty soon I'll be telling myself that I don't have time to workout.

That's not true. I've been telling you that for months, possibly years. That's not a viable excuse.

So I bucked up and did the following workout. You can do it too if you have the equipment in your home gym.

Warm-up 3 sets:
Hatchets - 15 reps
Push-ups - 15 reps

I had 8 minutes left in my 10 minute workout after the warm-up and did as many sets as possible of the following:

Chin-up - 10 reps
Dips - 10 reps

I only rested 15-20 seconds after the dips before returning to the chin-ups. I don't remember exactly how many sets I got in because I was breathing so hard and was in kind of a daze from all those chin-ups.

Needless to say, this fast 10 minute workout was a killer!

I've included tons of 10 minute workouts just like this one in my Fat Loss To Go program. Go to www.fatlosstogo.com to learn more!

Have a good day!

Ed Scow

Don't Be A Workout Flip-Flopper

There is a phenomenon amongst entrepreneurs called "entrepreneurial disease". What that basically means is that you come up with an idea for a business, put the plan into action, then before you see it through you think of something else and start working on that plan, etc.

That's all well and good, except for the fact that you didn't finish the project you started before moving on to the next. This process continues, with the entrepreneur coming up with idea after idea, but never seeing them through to their fullest extent. Some ideas may yield results, but most flounder along never living up to their full potential.

This same entrepreneur usually ends up quitting business altogether, telling himself that he just doesn't have what it takes to be successful in business.

This phenomenon also happens with people when they decide they are going to get fit, no matter if they want to lose fat, gain muscle, or improve their overall fitness.

They see something new and exciting and decide they want to try that plan. So they go along with that plan for a couple weeks, only to see another new and exciting plan and jump ship from the one they started and go on to the next best thing.

The good thing is that at least you're doing something. Any sort of physical activity is better than nothing, but you really limit yourself on what can be achieved.

Maybe you saw a workout in a magazine on how to get a better butt in 6 moves and decided you were going to do that, while completely abandoning the program you were on that had given you good results.

You had good intentions...you wanted a better butt. And really, who doesn't want a better butt?

But what if I told you the program you were on, that you just abandoned for this magazine workout, was easier to stick with and gave you better results than the one in the magazine?

Or maybe you're after a workout that can strip the fat off your stomach and you see some fancy schmancy new abs gizmo on an infomercial and decide that you're going to quit using the program that your very knowledgeable personal trainer gave you (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), and solely rely on the new abs thing-a-majig because the well-paid infomercial people told you all you had to do was use their thingy and get "flat, toned abs".

This turns into a never ending cycle of flip-flopping, and I think John Kerry can tell you, through his experiences in 2004, you don't want to be called a flip-flopper.

You hop from one program to the next, never seeing one to its end and thus never knowing what one program will do for you.

If this sounds like you, maybe you've told yourself the same thing the entrepreneur tells himself, except you say that you just can't lose that fat, gain the flexibility, build the muscle, or whatever your goal may be.

Here's one very important thing you should know about good fitness programs:

Most worthwhile fitness programs, no matter what your goals are, build upon themselves, making them progressively more effective as time goes on and if you were to stop after a couple of weeks and then start a different program just because it sounds better, you are severely limiting the results you can achieve...making you think that you just don't have what it takes to be successful with your fitness goals.

So whether it's a 12 week program that you found in a bookstore, a 6 week advanced fat loss program that was found in a fitness magazine, or better yet an effective fat loss program written by a knowledgeable personal trainer (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, www.fatlosstogo.com ), just follow it through to the end. The program will work, but you absolutely have to follow through.

Who knows, you may just end up with better results than what you were after.

In case you didn't get that "subtle" self-promotion, I was of course talking about yours truly and my Fat Loss To Go program. A program designed specifically for busy men and women who want to lose fat in as little time possible. Check it out at www.fatlosstogo.com