If you want to increase your strength and stamina, allowing you some substance behind those muscles you work so hard for, there are certain exercises that help you more than others.  Jim Liston CSCS, the founder of Catz Sports in Pasadena, claims his routine will build muscles and endurance using pyramid type repetitions.  Here’s his routine.

1. Boxer’s Punch and Dumbbell Squat-The Warm-up

You use a small 5 pound dumbbell you use 32 punches, alternating between left and right of course for even muscles, and then you put your arms down to hang loosely at your sides.  You place your feet wider than hip width, but just by a bit, and you bend at the hips and knees to squat until your thighs are parallel to the floor.  Then you go back up, repeating this 16 times.

1. Push Up and Prone Row-The Workout

Using two six sided dumbbells, you put them under your hands to use for your push ups.  Grip themand push up, lower for 2 seconds, push up for one.  It gives you that extra kick.  For the Prone Row, start in the up position of the push up, and you have to remember to still use the dumbbells.  Bring your right hand with the weight, make sure you can handle it, up to your armpit, and lower the weight.  Then alternate between both hands.

1. Jump Squat And Curl

First, do the jump squat.  This is not as harsh as some methods, so it’s an easy start.  First, assume the squat position.  Hold small dumbbells at your side and increase the weight over time if you want to.  Your feet should be slightly wider apart than your hips.  Using your heels, jump after you squat and then land on the balls of your feet, sinking back into your heels.  After landing, let the dumbbells hang and curl without moving your upper arms.  For an increased workout, don’t use the dumbbells.  But go down to the floor, putting your hands on, jump your legs down to the push up position, bring them back up, and then jump.  Repeated sessions of this are harder and more effective. 

            If there is one key to weight loss, it is a higher metabolism.  Metabolism is your body’s method of burning fat and calories.  Therefore, if your body has a higher metabolism and is therefore burning more calories while you are still eating the same amount, you lose weight.  Once you learn the right way to speed up your metabolism, you no longer suffer hunger, frustration, or defeat like you would otherwise. 

            So how do you do this?  For starters, stop starving yourself.  If you starve yourself, your body will feel constantly hungry, think it’s starving, and compensate by slowing your metabolism.  Second, eat more frequent meals.  The less your body feels hungry and the smaller meals it has to process at any given time, the less likely it is to store fat and the more likely it is to keep up a constant fat burning regimen.  But above all else, hang in there.  If your body is not metabolizing calories properly, all your efforts are doomed, because you are fighting against your body.  If you hang in there however, you can help yourself, turn things around so that your body is working with you instead of against you.

            One of the major things you can do is to clean our your colon.  Many slow metabolisms start in the digestive tract, and if your colon is dirty and compacted as many are, it is slowing down your body’s ability to process calories and therefore your metabolism.  You may be surprised to see and find out what’s been hiding inside of you.  It isn’t pretty, and you may even see it through your waste with a good colon cleanser.  It also makes you eat more, because your body is not absorbing nutrients properly and therefore takes longer to realize that you have eaten enough. 

            Second, don’t cut way back on your calories.  If you are eating about 1200 calories per day give or take, you’re doing alright.  If you are eating 1000 calories or less, you are probably starving and your body is compensating, trying to save you, trying to save itself.  If you eat too little, it will start to burn less, even if you are cutting it into smaller meals throughout the day.  If you are eating a 30 calorie meal every 3 hours, you are still going to be constantly hungry, and your body will still work to protect itself, even though you are eating frequently. 

            So in short, when trying to lose weight, be sensible, don’t try to change yourself into someone you’re not in terms of eating, and help yourself out a little by using a good colon cleanse.  All of these things will give you the optimum results, helping you to speed up your metabolism and ultimately helping you to achieve real and long lasting weight loss. 

            You have seen the hoodia chewing gums and so on, all claiming to suppress your appetite.  What if this actually had some substance to it?  Obviously, as far as science is concerned, hoodia has no application.  So you could probably go really cheap and cheaper than any hoodia supplemenet.  But chewing a piece of gum has actually been shown to suppress your appetite.  We have seen it used successfully to help you stop smoking, though you may become addicted to the action of chewing gum.  It has been used to combat bad breath in some cases or just blow bubbles in others or give you a pleasant taste.  But too much sugar can interrupt your dental hygiene. 

            But studies have shown bubble gum to have extra benefits.  First of all, it can suppress your appetite.  The chewing action among other things with a 5-10 calorie piece of chewing gum can burn calories and raise your metabolic rate and suppress appetite.  With 100 chews per minute, you can increase your metabolic rate by 20%.  Theoretically, you could lose about 11 pounds in a year just by doing this.

            Second, it has been shown to improve brain power.  Apparently chewing stimulates the brain in areas of concentration, memory, and focus.  It apparently increases the heart rate and blood pressure, therefore delivering a higher amount of blood and oxygen to the brain.  It therefore helps the left and right side to work together. 

            Third, it has been shown to ease stress and tension.  Who needs a stress ball when you have chewing gum!  It can relieve muscle tension, and stress again by increasing blood flow and oxygen to the muscles.  It is given in field and combat rations in the US Armed forces for this reason. 

            So of course choose sugar free options.  But a chewing gum can provide you with more than just a way to pass the time in your mouth.  It won’t have the substantial effect of some fat burners of appetite suppressants.  But it is certainly cheaper.

            Some of us have heard the statistics.  Children who are breastfed are less likely to develop obesity problems as adults.  Obviously diet and exercise habits or lack thereof contribute to childhood obesity, but breastfeeding is apparently one of the other key elements. 

            Breastfeeding is generally recognized as an efficient, convenient, and cheap way to feed your baby.  Some women in certain countries breastfeed to some degree until their children reach 5 or even 6.  It has been known to create a stronger bond between mother and child, and it is high in nutritional value.  They are apparently more likely than bottle fed babies to learn when they are full and when to stop, and it is not controlled by a bottle size that should be finished according to parents.  The infant is the one controlling the sessions. 

            Apparently, the nutritional value is the biggest thing.  Formulas are energy dense, which means that their systems will create more insulin than they would if they were breastfed.  And from what we hear, the women that breastfeed until the ages of 5 or 6 have something.  The longer a child breastfeeds, the lower their chances of obesity become.  Those who breastfeed till the age of 5 or 6 suffer a 0.8% chance of obesity as compared to 4.5% in those who were never breastfed.  When they reach the ages of 9 to 12, those breastfed for only the first 6 months suffer a 22% lower rate of obesity than those who were never breastfed at all. 

            Finally, once a child reaches adulthood at 18 years of age, those breastfed for even 3 months statistically have less body fat and are significantly leaner than those never breastfed.  So it seems that this can contribute to healthy eating habits and therefore may even have a bigger impact on obesity than diet and exercise alone.

            A self proclaimed expert in alternative medicine, Kevin Trudeau is responsible for books like Natural Cures They Don’t Want You To Know About.  You can see him on the average infomercial bragging about being sued by the FTC, claiming that they want to silence him for the drug industry, claiming that he has found natural cures for diseases like herpes, cancer, etc. 

            He has been sued by the FTC repeatedly, and this should be considering when checking out his additional weight loss and other “natural” products.  It should also be considered that not only was he sued by the FTC more than once and yet continues on his path to more money, he was also convicted of fraud and larceny in the 1990’s.  Court orders have specifically stated that he is restricted in promoting or selling any service, but he is protected under the free speech amendment of the United States Constitution, that is as long as he is not promoting or selling a product that does not misrepresent itself. 

            Most recently, he has been charged with making deceptive claims about his book “The Weight Loss Cure They Don’t Want You To Know About.”  He has since been banned from making infomercials since October 2008, for a 3 year period of time, and he has also been fined $5 million. 

            Kevin Trudeau was first sued in the early 1990’s for a company known as Nutrition for life, which created a pyramid scheme.  He was also convicted of larceny and credit card fraud for posing as a doctor to deposit $80,000 in false checks.  In short, you recruited people, which is fine, but there was no delivery of actual product, which is illegal. That was when he turned to infomercials, promoting everything from coral calcium to real estate programs.  He was then fined in 1998 for unsubstantiated claims.  His offenses have only continued over the years. 

            In 3 years, after he is allowed to start creating infomercials, it would be well advised to not buy any of his products.  He promotes supposed “weight loss cures” that aren’t substantiated by any actual scientific research, let alone by the FTC.  He doesn’t care, taking a blatant disregard to multiple warnings and suits from the government.  There are also plenty of reputable companies who are not regulated by the FTC, and they do have scientifically proven weight loss ingredients, though they may not be approved by the FTC.  And honestly, we are sure of one thing, Trudeau will be coming out with many more scams in the coming years.

            Especially with the recent popularization of nutrient dense foods to encourage weight loss, everybody has been searching for a list.  Nutrient dense foods by definition provide significant amounts of the vitamins and minerals that your body needs, while producing a more efficient satiation within the body.  It includes mostly foods that are not processed, don’t have added sugars or fats, low caloric values, and rich in vitamins, minerals, amino acids, etc.  This includes quite a few fruits and vegetables as well as lean meats such as chicken and salmon.  Others include some beans, oats, rices, and pastas.  Out of the various dairy products, only those fat free or extremely low fat qualify.  Fruits and vegetables are easy to discern as nutrient rich foods.  But the following includes some that may be more complicated.

            *fat free cottage cheese

            *fat free mozzarella

            *oatmeal

            *barley

            *rice

            *whole grain foods

            *skinless chicken breasts

            *salmon

            *vegetable oil

            Dietary fats can vary according to the amount of calories you are taking in on an average daily basis.  However, a healthy balance of all these types of nutrient dense foods is the best way to go both for short term weight loss and long term overall health benefits.  Some are just easier to differentiate than others.

            The industry for men’s diet pills has found that most men are not actually interested so much in losing weight as they are interested in gaining muscle.  As such, there have been many supplements using certain testosterone boosters to hopefully achieve a diminished level of fat and higher levels of muscle.

            One such ingredient, tribulus terrestis, is native to warm and tropical areas.  It has also been called puncturevine, caltrop, yellow vine, and goathead.  It has been recently popularized both in the Americas and Australia.  Some have reported it to increase sex drive, leading to the concept of a testosterone booster in part. 

            Tribulus terrestis has been used in Chinese medicine under the name of Bai Ji Li as well as in traditional Aryuvedic medicine as an aphrodisiac.  It increases testosterone by increasing gonadotropin-releasing hormone.  Rat based studies have also positively shown it to increase testosterone, dihydrotestosterone, and dehydropiandtestosterone.  However, it requires over 1000mg for about a 150 lbs man.  Dosage depends on the weight.  However, unlike steroids or other testosterone boosters we’ve seen and banned before, tribulus terrestis does not actually interfere with the body’s natural production of testosterone, thereby not causing many side effects or serious damage to the body. And unlike creatine, it does actually work to actively increase your muscle mass instead of just giving you the extra energy to increase it yourself if you are willing to take the time.  In short, it takes the time and workouts you do have and improves your results with them.