Lean and Hard

We can debate the reasons for this all day long, but studies have repeatedly confirmed that, when it comes to fitness, example matters.


Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

Millions of us have tried going on diets. They are a huge waste of time and a virtual guarantee of discouragement and defeatism. Instead of going on a short-term diet, learn how to substitute. This is what makes for permanent success in the health and fitness arena.

Here's a quote from an article I read recently about Bret Baier, a well-known anchor on Fox news:

"after a while, you become accustomed to what is in your beneficial list and you make that your choice."

That's what substitution is all about. Not starving yourself or sweating bullets trying to stick to some weird set of restrictions (like, you can have as much as you want, as long as it's only the skins of grapes! As much as you want!).


Substituting is simple: You make a list of the stuff that's bad, and another list of the stuff that's good. Then you replace the bad with the good. Every chance you get. Whether you're cooking at home or eating out. What's bad? Simple carbs. What's good? Protein, good (polyunsaturated) fats and complex carbs.

You can't each as much as you want, unless you want just enough to maintain a healthy weight. I'm not that lucky. I don't get to eat as much as I want because, for whatever reason, I want more than I need. So I have to restrict my calorie intake, but eating as much as I need is not that difficult, and the benefits keep me motivated.

An added benefit, though, of substituting good foods for bad ones, is that your appetite is far more controllable. Bad carbs, as we know, cause sugar spikes and are somewhat addictive. The more you eat them the more you want/need them. Replace them with complex carbs and you'll see your cravings diminish to a level that you can control.

So try substitutions rather than going on short-term diets. You'll see that I'm right!

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

It would never happen, but I wish fitness product ads would all have to have a big warning on the screen. Something like, "Please know that this product will NOT make you look like this model we paid to promote it. EVER!"

You can't get chiseled abdominals by using that gadget for only 10 minutes a day. Maybe 2 hours a day would do it in a year, but then you'd probably get a hernia.

These models got to look the way they look only by lots and lots of exercise, and some pretty serious portion control along with it. Believe it. And you can look like that too, assuming you're also 25 and willing to devote yourself to fitness and healthy eating.

When we see people who look good - I mean trim, strong, energetic - it's easy to assume they're just lucky that way. Don't believe that. They don't look that way by luck and great genes. They look that way because they're careful about what and how much they eat, and because they stick to a good exercise regimen.

The cool thing about all this - the fact that it's not about luck or good genes - is that you can do it too.

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

Motivation to exercise is sometimes hard to find, I know. That's why we need to store up in our minds and hearts all the great reasons to get out and just do it (sorry, Nike). Here's one that might get you over the hump on those kinds of days...

It helps to know that, when you exercise regularly, some pretty awesome changes take place in your body on a cellular level, and these changes can have profoundly desirable consequences. As it happens, one of the reasons we age and our bodies deteriorate is that our cells have a limited number of times they can effectively replicate themselves. After a certain number of duplications, the DNA bits that cap the end of our cells' chromosomes, called telomeres, run out and our cells die.

Exercise, it has been found, actually prevents the shortening or the telomeres, thus putting off the death of our cells. Hence, a longer, healthier life! This from an excellent Live Science article found here:

The researchers measured the length of telomeres in blood samples from two groups of professional athletes and two groups who were healthy nonsmokers, but not regular exercisers.

"The most significant finding of this study is that physical exercise of the professional athletes leads to activation of the important enzyme telomerase and stabilizes the telomere," said Ulrich Laufs, the study's lead author and professor of clinical and experimental medicine at Saarland University in Homburg, Germany.

"This is direct evidence of an anti-aging effect of physical exercise," Laufs said. "Physical exercise could prevent the aging of the cardiovascular system, reflecting this molecular principle."

This means younger skin, younger organs, a younger body. Thinking about this has gotten me to the gym more than once.

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

New York Times - 2.20.13 by Michael Moss

What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort — taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles — to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive.

Grant Cornett for The New York Times

On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America’s largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills and Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars. Rivals any other day, the C.E.O.’s and company presidents had come together for a rare, private meeting. On the agenda was one item: the emerging obesity epidemic and how to deal with it. While the atmosphere was cordial, the men assembled were hardly friends. Their stature was defined by their skill in fighting one another for what they called “stomach share” — the amount of digestive space that any one company’s brand can grab from the competition.

James Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at Pillsbury, greeted the men as they arrived. He was anxious but also hopeful about the plan that he and a few other food-company executives had devised to engage the C.E.O.’s on America’s growing weight problem. “We were very concerned, and rightfully so, that obesity was becoming a major issue,” Behnke recalled. “People were starting to talk about sugar taxes, and there was a lot of pressure on food companies.” Getting the company chiefs in the same room to talk about anything, much less a sensitive issue like this, was a tricky business, so Behnke and his fellow organizers had scripted the meeting carefully, honing the message to its barest essentials. “C.E.O.’s in the food industry are typically not technical guys, and they’re uncomfortable going to meetings where technical people talk in technical terms about technical things,” Behnke said. “They don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want to make commitments. They want to maintain their aloofness and autonomy.”



Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

I'm always fascinated by pictures from the Depression era. You know, that time in the 1930s when the economy crashed and people had very little? If that sounds like today, think again. There was no safety net provided by the government then, and people literally went hungry. That's why in pictures from that time people look so thin. They didn't have enough to eat. And they didn't have cars and machines to do everything for them. They actually had to expend energy!

Fast forward to today, when you can easily afford far more calories than you need, and you can make a living and live your life almost without moving at all.

It's no wonder that we have an enormous problem with obesity and its many related diseases.


When I started my fitness lifestyle, I started thinking about calories and money. Let's say I have a limited supply of money so that I can only afford to eat 2000 calories a day. And let's say I'm smart, and want to get the most bang for my buck by making sure those limited calories have as much nutrient content as possible. What would I be eating? And how much would it cost?

I realized that all the excess food I ate over the years was still with me, stored as fat. I had thousands of dollars of calories saved up! I could spend less now by eating fewer calories than I was burning, and make use of all that stored energy! So that's what I did and my excess fat lasted about a year. Since then I've increased my intake, but it's still limited, and I'm still saving money.

The idea that I need to spend more to lose weight seems wrong to me. Why should I pay someone to give me less food? I can eat less food and spend less money all by myself.

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

Either you've said it or heard it: "When I was younger I ate everything in sight and was thin as a rail. Now I eat a single donut and put on five pounds!"

I can tell you for certain that I gave not a moment's thought to my eating when I was 16, and I was a skinny guy.


I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it. And look at me! But then a few decades passed and I weighed more than 300 pounds. What the hell happened?

This is what I think:

It's not that something mysterious changed and my metabolism suddenly slowed to a crawl. It's that I was always eating more than I was burning, but since I was still growing and developing, the extra calories went into producing that growth. I was getting heavier, but it wasn't fat. It was muscle, bone, blood, etc. Add to this the fact that I was very active: I was always on the move and playing sports in school.

But as I got older, I became less active and my body, no longer needing to build, started storing fat. I kept eating what I wanted, but burned and used less. So I put on a few pounds of fat every year. Maybe noticeable, but not alarming, really. With those extra pounds came increased difficulty in moving around, so I became even less active.


From 175 to 180. Then 180 to 185. No big deal. Then I hit 190 and decided to diet. I dieted and lost 20 pounds. Yay! But then I went back to the usual over-eating and under-exercising and started the process over again. This happened maybe 3 or 4 times until I gave up.

Finally, after all these years, I've found a way to limit my caloric intake and eat a nutrient dense diet as a way of life, and have also developed the habit of exercise. The cycle has been broken and I'm not looking back. Except for writing about it. :-)

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

Anyone who's making progress on their fitness goals might well feel a bit of terror at the approaching pig-out holiday season. You may feel like a wildebeest swimming across a croc infested river, nostrils flared and eyes bulging. Here are a couple of simple tips to keep the 23-foot monsters away.

1. Don't go to parties or holiday meals hungry.

For some reason, who knows why, the turkey always takes longer to cook than we think. After years of experience you'd think we'd learn. We get invited to a holiday meal being told it will be served at 2. First, that means 4. Second, why does it have to be so late anyway?



The trick is to eat something healthy before you go so you aren't ready to strip the meat off the still-uncooked bird with your teeth and damn the consequences, when it's not ready as promised. You'll be immune to the teasing aroma that would otherwise have you drooling saliva for 2 hours. So when you're finally (finally!!) served, you'll be able to...

2. Eat what you like in moderation.

See how it works? The goal is to get through it without inhaling 2-weeks' worth of calories and gaining 5 pounds overnight. This is made much easier if you aren't that hungry to begin with when faced with those tempting-yet-unhealthy sides and sweet treats.

No need for snacking on the bad stuff circulating before the main course. No need for seconds and thirds. People will marvel at your self control when you say, no, thanks, not realizing that you just aren't that hungry!

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

If you've followed my weight loss, my efforts to get and stay lean and hard (I won't call it a "journey;" nothing should be called a "journey" that isn't a literal "journey," OK?) and haven't just arrived at today's entry, you'll know that I started out at 303 and am trying to maintain 173, for a loss of 130 pounds. It took about a year, and now I'm learning how to keep my weight where I've decided it should be. So, what have I learned so far about maintaining?

First, I've learned that I am in control of my weight. I can weigh whatever I decide is right for me. Ever since I found out about switching to complex carbs, I've been able to control my eating and find the energy to exercise. I've been able to be in the driver's seat again. This is important for me to keep as a first principle in life. I've proven to myself that I'm not at the mercy of circumstances or other people. My weight is up to me.

Second, I've learned that I can't stay at an exact weight on a daily basis. It would be virtually impossible to wake up each morning and weigh exactly 173 pounds. Instead of attempting the impossible, I have to allow myself to fluctuate above and below that weight by a margin of a few pounds. It's sort of like the vibrato a vocalist uses to maintain pitch, or a violinist uses to convey emotion from his instrument. There are times when I'll eat a bit more than I need to maintain my weight, and times when, in order to get back where I need to be, eat a bit less. The key is that I'll average the right number of calories over time, keeping an eye on my weight regularly in order to stay on top of it.

Third, I've learned that food and exercise aren't my life's ultimate focus in and of themselves. They are only the means to a much more important and fulfilling end, that being to be my best in order to love and serve others in caring relationships and productive work.

Do these lessons resonate? If so feel free to add your thoughts by commenting!

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

If you know your Greek mythology, you're familiar with the story of Sisyphus, who was a king consigned as punishment to the futile business of pushing a boulder to the top of a hill, only to watch it roll back down to the bottom again, over and over again forever. This was his fate. He could do nothing to change it. Or could he?

Many of us see it as our immutable fate to be overweight, unhealthy, uncomfortable in our own skin, tired and unattractive, huffing and puffing our way through life. Like Sisyphus, we've tried rolling the boulder up the hill many times, only to watch dejectedly as it always rolled back down again. We've dieted, lost a few pounds, and gained it all back and more. So we've given up.

That was exactly my situation. As it turns out, it wasn't my fate to be fat and unhealthy. There's no question there's some comfort in giving up. It's easier to accept the way things are than it is to fight against our circumstances. But if you don't like the way things are, you can do something about it. I'm a bit rebellious by nature, don't like feeling hemmed in by circumstances. I can be realistic about things I can't change, but there's a lot we can change if we're prepared to defy what seems to be our fate.



Another story that relates to this point is the description I once heard about how animal trainers control elephants. They use a strong chain that's firmly anchored at one end into the ground and attached to a manacle on the animal's leg at the other. The elephant learns that he can only go so far before the chain pulls him up short. After this lesson sinks in, the trainer can use a much weaker chain that's only barely stuck into the ground, a constraint that the powerful animal could easily break free of. But the elephant has learned that he cannot break free and has long since given up trying.

So instead of giving up, or trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, perhaps it's time to find a better way. A way that works, that breaks us free from our addiction to simple carbs and the hunger they cause. A way that understands that fad diets are a waste of time and money, that gets back to sound fitness principles. A way that lets us transform our bodies and defy fate. It's time to set the boulder aside and make a change!

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say, unequivocally, that you cannot - repeat, cannot - lose weight and get lean and hard, or stay lean and hard, without taking control of what goes in your mouth. Exercise alone won't do it. Fad diets won't do it. The necessary ingredient in the fitness recipe is policing what you allow into your mouth and down your gullet.

The reason for this is simple: It's far easier to say no to calories you ingest than it is to burn calories through exercise. How long do you have to spend on a treadmill to burn off the calories you took in in the seconds it took to inhale that brownie? Food for thought, eh?

Many of us act as if other people control what we eat. We behave as if we have no choices! How so? Anyone who works for a company or is a member of a club, for example, will often face the challenge of unhealthy foods being on offer at meetings or special events. With the holidays coming up the trickle will become a flood... cookies, pies, pizzas. cakes, they will be offered to you over and over. But here's the question: Do you have to partake?

20% off your entire purchase with code WINTER12. Valid 11/1-11/10/12

What about family gatherings? Keeping in mind that there are things that will be available that are no problem from a health and nutrition perspective, do you have to eat the bad stuff? Do you have a choice?

Look at it this way. If you had an allergy to nuts that would cause you to swell up and be unable to breathe, would you be able to say, no, thanks to the peanut butter cookies? You betcha. So would it be so terrible to say no thanks to the sugary treats and fat-laden indulgences? I don't think so.

Some of us have this self-imposed rule that we live by: If it's free, you have to eat it! I prefer to live by this rule: I'll eat what I choose to eat, not what others choose for me.

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

Why do fad diets fail? Why do things fall when you drop them? These two phenomena are almost as common, and happen to be based on straightforward laws of physics that control the workings of the universe we live in. There's a hypothesis in science that says there are infinitely many universes, and anything you can imagine, and quite a lot that you can't, is happening in an infinite number of them. So we can surmise, if this is true, that somewhere out there there are places where things don't fall when you drop them and fad diets work beautifully. But we don't live in any of those places, so let's focus on this place.

Fad diets are popular, usually, because humans want to get quick results for very little effort. And because we are gullible. But here's the thing: Fad diets are, by definition, weird. They have in common this attribute: They promote eating in ways that are highly unusual and impossible to maintain over any reasonable length of time. Think about some of them: The Soup Diet. The Grapefruit Juice Diet. The Paleo Diet. The No Carb Diet. The Cookie Diet. The Desert for Breakfast Diet. Just to name a few.



So why don't they work? (And by "work" I mean result in weight loss that can be maintained permanently.) They don't work because they can't be maintained. Who can stick with cookies forever? Maybe the Cookie Monster, but no one else. Soup? You'd get so sick of it you'd be ready to do bodily harm to the next person who dares come between you and a solid food meal.

So what does work? What can be maintained for the rest of your life without feelings of deprivation? A nutrient dense, calorie sparse diet, with enough calories to maintain a healthy weight, can be maintained because it avoids addiction to high carb foods that cause the sugar high, sugar crash cycle. It works because it creates a healthier, more energetic body that is its own reward. And it works because it acknowledges the laws of physics that govern the universe we find ourselves in.

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

Almost nothing will knock your exercise routine out of commission like an injury. If you hate going to the gym, that can seem like a blessing: Finally, a good excuse not to go! But if you like your exercise or count it as important to your quality of life, hurting yourself in the gym is not a happy event. Here are 5 major causes of gym injury. Avoid them and be well!

1. No Warm-up

Warm, limber muscles and joints are conducive to great workouts. Cold, locked-up muscles and joints lead to injuries. Pulled muscles and tendons, strained joints and the like can easily result from no or inadequate warm-up, so take some time to stretch and get the blood flowing before hitting the big weights.

2. Over-Repetition

It's important to switch things up every so often, not only to avoid boredom and fitness plateaus, but also to avoid injuries. Repetitive movements can, over time, cause muscle imbalances and damage, so just like a balanced diet, make sure your workouts are balanced and hit all major muscle groups; and think about changing routines once in a while.

3. Distractions

The gym can be a distracting place, and it can be dangerous to lose focus in the middle of a heavy lift. The stronger you get, the heavier weights you'll be lifting, and heavy weights can quickly get out of your control. Avoid this by keeping your mind on what you're doing. Once the weight is down and the set it over, then you can drift for a bit before the next set.

4. Bad Form

Remember what you're trying to accomplish at the gym. The goal of lifting weights is not to lift the weight by any means possible. It's to increase muscle mass and strength. To that end, proper form is everything. Swinging the weight and putting your entire body into getting it up can not only minimize the benefit of the movement, it can also break something vital. So concentrate on the muscle you're trying to work, use it to lift the weight by sticking to good form, and avoid the mistake of trying to lift...

5. Too Much Weight

Strength and mass are increased by putting tension on the muscle, so you have to lift enough weight to shock the muscle into getting bigger and stronger. But pushing the pounds up too quickly can lead to bad form and serious injury. If you can't lift it using good form, back down the weight a bit.



Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment!

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

No one likes to be wrong. That's why it's so difficult even to consider the possibility of it. There's the old joke about the guy who says, "I made a mistake once. I thought I made a mistake, but I was wrong." For some of us it's not only difficult to admit error, it's downright torture. There are a few people I know who, as far as anyone can remember, have never, ever admitted to a mistake.

Where's this leading? We are continually assailed with advice about fitness. One of my earliest memories is of my mom telling me that the men at the service station used Coke (the soft drink, not the controlled substance) to de-grease nuts and bolts, so think about what it would do to my teeth. Yikes. She was wrong about the nuts and bolts, right about the sugar being bad for my teeth. What other fitness "truths" have we picked up along the way that are really and truly flat out wrong?



There isn't any harm in being wrong about a lot of things, but health and fitness mistakes can be costly and frustrating. For example, the idea that you can get toned through exercise alone is one that leads to failure and disillusionment every day. Good strength training and cardiovascular exercise  can build muscle and burn calories, but this is not enough. Diet is a far more powerful way to trim excess fat and, in conjunction with the right exercise, give you a lean and hard body.

Another old but oh-so-wrong bit of classic fitness dreck is the one that says you get lean and toned by doing light weights and lots of reps, and a bulky, ape-like look using heavy weights and few reps. Doesn't work that way. Building strength and muscle mass is difficult to accomplish and requires working muscles to the point of almost-failure and eating a good, healthy diet.

So, rather than cling to those old, tried-and-proven-false fitness myths, do some research and get the facts. It's the age of information, so let's take advantage of that and update our database of knowledge.

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

How much filthy lucre have you spent so far this year on weight-loss products? It's difficult even to estimate, isn't it? Everything from the gym membership that you rarely use, to the Lean Cuisine frozen dinners, to the pills and supplements, to the miracle exercise gizmo you saw on an infomercial and now lives in a closet, the garage, or under your bed; that all counts.

The next question is obvious: Has any of it worked? We're not going to count the phantom loss of 3 pounds that turned out to come back like a boomerang in a week. We can only count significant weight loss that stayed off.

[Advertisement} Save 15% on amazingly tasty Gift ideas for all Occasions from 1800baskets.com! (valid until December 31, 2012) Use code 18BSAVE15

Maybe you know better than to spend your money of ineffective products, but millions of Americans don't. Take a look at the graphic below...


It shows how many people (approximately, of course) are overweight worldwide, and how much money Americans have spent on weight loss. Both numbers are climbing at an alarming rate.

So, why do people continue to spend money on ineffective products? Several reasons. We're desperate. We hope the next one will work. We blame ourselves for failures instead of blaming the products. I say it's time to wise up and find a solution that's based on truth and evidence. That's what Lean and Hard (dot com) is focused on. What works. And it costs you nothing! So click on "subscribe" below to get your free email updates!

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

Here's an interesting thought: It doesn't seem strange when someone attempts to change their level of physical fitness through diet and exercise, but how many people do you know who are attempting to develop their emotional fitness? I mean in a systematic way that is based on sound science? If they're out there, I don't know them personally, or at least they don't talk about it,

Granted, transforming your body from morbidly obese to lean and hard is easily apparent to others, while transforming your internal state is far less so by definition, except as the change manifests itself in the way you behave. But isn't it true that people who get to know you in a more meaningful way can also recognize and appreciate an emotionally fitter you? And even more important, can't you?

I've made a lot of progress toward my goal of becoming physically lean and hard. I've lost 127 pounds so far, gone from a 52 inch waist to a 34. I'll be at my goal when I'm a 32, so I'm not there yet. But in spite of that progress, it seems to me that I can also engage in a different kind of diet and exercise, one that will enhance my emotional fitness. And I can go about it in a systematic way that is based on sound scientific evidence.

What is emotional fitness? There's no chart to tell me how much I should reduce my selfishness, anxiety or laziness, nor is there a measuring device to tell me how big my empathy and compassion are getting. But I can recognize what needs to be reduced and what needs to be enhanced, and I can find some means of cutting out the things in my life that destroy my emotional health and instead practicing more of those activities that build up my emotional fitness.

I look forward to sharing what I find as I embark on this journey toward a different kind of lean and hard. I hope you'll find it interesting and helpful.

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

(Photo: Healthy Choices Daily) When I was about 15, I started running. I mean I ran as a child, playing sports and that sort of thing, but I took up running as a form of exercise. Sadly though, I took up smoking just a year or so later, to look cool and all that, and so the running got booted out the door like an unwelcome guest. Then, when I was around 18, I gave up the cigarettes (which I had indulged in for all of about 6 months) and got to running again. That lasted for quite a godly number of years. But then, blah blah blah, you've heard the story in previous posts, I got sick from simple carbs and just got too heavy for running to be possible. Now here I am again, having gained significant ground back toward my goal of lean and hard, and I'm faced with this question: To run or to walk? Which is best?

Walking has been part of my fitness routine on the days I didn't do the gym. It's been gym, gym, walk, gym, walk, gym, rest, (that's 7 days, if you're counting) for months. But a few weeks ago I began transforming the walking into running. For example, I had been walking 4 times around my apartment complex. Then I substituted a few hundred feet of running to the walk, then I was walking three, running one, then walking two, running two, then I added a lap and last week I walked one and ran four. I'd like to be running six pretty soon. Then, who knows?

But is this the right approach? Which is best for getting lean and hard? Which is best for my overall health? These burning questions will be answered very soon. Actually, right now.

First, the fat burning question. According to experts, the idea that you burn more fat when you exercise at a lower intensity is a myth. While it's somewhat correct to say that you burn more fat proportionally in comparison to carbohydrates, this small difference is offset by the fact that you are burning far more calories at higher intensities. Take a look at this quote:

Myth: Exercise done at a low intensity, such as walking, is better at fat burning than other high-intensity activities, like running or cardio activities where you push yourself very hard.

The Truth: In a strict scientific sense, these claims are true because working at a lower intensity requires less quick energy and a higher percentage of fat is burned. But you'll also burn fewer calories than you would if, for the same amount of time, you work out at a harder intensity (running versus walking). If you're trying to lose weight, even though a higher percentage of fat is being used, a lower total amount of fat is lost (Busting the Great Myths of Fat Burning).

On the other hand, walking is far and above better than not doing either. And for many people (me included for a long time), running is not an option.

Another consideration is injury. Low-impact exercise is certainly prone to fewer injuries than the high-impact varieties, and running can result in injury to various parts of the body.

So, running burns more calories and increases my cardiovascular fitness better than walking, but is not always possible and can be more prone to injuries.

Here's what I'll do. I'll run, but I'll build up slowly and be careful not to over-train. Cool? Awesome.

(If you're wondering where power-walking fits in, it doesn't. You run the serious risk of getting beat up for looking so dorky.)

Lean and hard movie star of the month: Jon Hamm



Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

Here's an interesting question you might ask yourself: What percentage of people my age are physically fit? (I'm defining "fit" as being lean and hard from regular exercise and healthy eating.)

If you're in your 20s, you might think that number would be quite high. You might then be surprised to learn that:

Approximately one-third of boys and girls age 12 to 19 in the United States do not meet standards for physical fitness. (according to a report in the October issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine)

But still, 66% is not bad. So if you're fit in your teens or early 20s, you would be among the 66%.

What about older people? Check this out:

During a 2006 study the National Center for Disease Control determined that the percentage of adult’s age 20 years and over who are overweight or obese was an astounding 67 percent.

 It would be intuitive to guess that the percentage drops off as the age range gets higher, but counting everyone over 20, we're talking about a complete reversal. Now you're among the 33%. And your cohort gets smaller and smaller the older you get. Are you over 50? You're in a very small club.

While not scientific, you only have to consider the people you know and see as you go through your life. Very few, if any, are physically fit at 50 and over.

So it's very inspirational (assuming you want to be fit over fifty) to read about women like Ruby Carter-Pikes, who recently placed second in a women''s body-building competition.

The 64-year-old Palmdale resident, known as “Miss Ruby” recently bested her 20-something competitors by scoring second place for Women’s Figure, a category judged by shoulders, lats, abs and quads, at the FitSciences Championships in Atlanta. Carter-Pikes was also a top finisher in the Fit Mom Class.

Women and men like this show us that we can be fit over 50, and that's a message we can afford to hear over and over again!

Have a great fitness story? Share it in the comments and inspire our readers!

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

Is it ever advisable to take a break from my regular workout routine? Will I lose all my gains if I miss a day? How do I know if I need a break? And how long should a break be?

These are all great questions. I've actually taken short breaks by necessity rather than by choice, and I've found that they can actually be advantageous. But what do the experts say?

While exercising consistently is important for building endurance, conditioning your body and losing weight, you may reach a point where you're tired, bored and desperately need a break. Taking a break may be just what you need to rest, recover and rejuvenate, but how long before you start losing your fitness?

You may be surprised to learn that taking a few days or a full week off from training won't necessarily hurt the gains you've made. In fact, many serious exercisers and athletes regularly schedule a week off every 8-12.

So if you're serious about fitness you can be certain that breaks are not only not a bad thing, they're actually important for your long-term fitness goals.

Today's awesome workout song...



Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.

How old are you? It's a simple question, right? Not really.

It's not as simple as you might think to answer this question. Most of us just count the number of years that have passed since the date on our birth certificates. By that measure I am 52. But there are other ways to measure age. Sometimes people say you're only as old as you feel. But what about your biological age?

Here's an interesting definition of biological age:

Your BIOLOGICAL AGE is the age that most normal people would be when they have a body and mind similar to yours.

Your chronological age can't be manipulated, but your biological age can be. You can, in fact, turn back the clock. You can even accomplish this at a genetic level. Consider the results of this study:

The researchers identified 596 differentially expressed genes (meaning atypical to other genes being analyzed). Of these, after 26 weeks of resistance training the researchers identified 179 genes associated with age and exercise showing a reversal of their gene expression. This means quite literally that the resistance training was not only slowing, but also reversing the aging process at the gene level. The gene expressions of the resistance trained older subjects demonstrated characteristics similar to those of the younger group. The researchers also noted that mitochondrial impairment, normally seen with inactivity, was reversing with the 6 months of resistance training.

What does all this mean? As mind-blowing as it is, it means you can actually reverse the aging process and increase your lifespan!

A related term that's more useful than "lifespan" is "healthspan." Healthspan is defined as:

...the period of a person's life during which they are generally healthy and free from serious or chronic illness.

I'm not as interested in increasing the length of time I would be considered clinically "alive" as much as the length of time I am healthy and able to enjoy living. And this I can definitely affect by the way I live right now.

Are you ready to get started with your age reversal?

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for free email updates.