"The Jack of All Trades, Master of None" Becoming great at anything involves doing practicing a skill even after the initial enthusiasm wears off. It is fun to "hop from one thing to the next", but mastering a skill involves performing that skill with a ton of repetition. Most people quit when things get boring. To reach the top in anything…push through the boring times. This isn't just an approach to lifting, it applies to anything worth doing.

More here.

Some simple reminders. By Gabirelle Reece.

A lot of us are out there watching what we eat and exercising, but still not making a dent in our bellies and body weight. There are a few things we are probably not doing, or doing too much of, that would mean major improvements in our health.

Get more sleep. After a very short period of time (about 6 nights), studies show that your glucose levels can rise if you get only 4 to 7 hours of sleep each night. New parents are excluded, but everyone else should try to hit the 8 hour mark as often as you can and get to bed BEFORE midnight. Every hour of rest before 12 a.m. is twice as valuable as the hours after midnight: Our cortisol levels are lowest before midnight therefore our recovery is the highest.

Eating fewer refined and processed foods. Avoid fast and fried food and try to consume as many real foods as you can. It's also imperative to get enough fiber (helps with elimination); fruits and veggies are a great way to fill up.

Avoid sugary drinks and reach for more water. Water is great for so many things like digestion, eliminating toxins in the body, and transporting important nutrients to our cells which need energy to burn calories. Americans drink 20% of their calories, so be careful of that silent pitfall.

Get to know your kitchen. I realize it takes more work, but the simple truth is we eat out or order in too often. There is a greater opportunity to control what is in your food if you cook it yourself.

Slow down. When you do sit down to a meal, don't wolf it down. Our culture encourages eating while driving or sitting at our desks. The only time we seem to sit down and enjoy our food is at Thanksgiving. The monks chew each bite of food 100 times (which is excessive), but they also eat only until they are full. They recognize that chewing their food more makes it easier for the body to digest.

Breathe. There are so many days that I don't breathe deeply. In the morning, mid-afternoon, and at the end of the day take a 10 conscious, belly-deep breaths. Close your eyes, pull that air deep into your stomach via your nose and let all the junk out through your mouth. Whether its a stressful day, or you just want to start and end your day on the right foot, breathing is important.

Don't starve yourself. Oddly enough some of you may not be eating enough, and the lack of calories is putting your body into save mode. Our bodies are so brilliant, and if they aren't getting enough food, your metabolism will tell your body to store each and every calorie it receives or to make energy from whatever muscle tissue you have. Not good. Oh and by the way, don't skip breakfast. People who skip breakfast are over 4 times more likely to be overweight.

Do more than exercise. Even if you are working out, you can't eat and drink whatever you want. It really is a three sided puzzle: balancing exercise, food, and (oh yes) the spirit (which stress and happiness play into).

I wish you the greatest of success, and remember, being healthy is like making your bed. It really is something we have to work at everyday.

*From here.

Below is an article from this chick who met Jillian Michaels, the lady trainer from The Biggest Loser.

5 things I learned from Jillian Michaels

DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR SELF-PRESERVATION I told Jillian that some of my habits--flushing rice down the toilet so I won't eat it, bringing my own high-fiber bread to brunch--stirred some controversy on the blog. "Why?" she asked. "Why should we apologize for the practices that help us manage the symptoms while we deal with the real reasons we eat? I pour candle wax on my food at restaurants," Jillian admitted. "Not wanting to 'waste food' is a poor excuse for ending up far worse off later on, dealing with all the health problems that come with obesity." (Here are a few restaurant do's and dont's to help you maintain your healthy eating goals while dining out.)

RUN I asked Jillian if running really is the best form of cardio for weight loss. "Absolutely," she said. "There are lots of great ways to get your heart rate up, but if you want to see the pounds melt off, running is the fastest way. But I get that not everyone is built for it--knee problems, tight IT bands, heel spurs; I get it." Whatever you do, she said, "Don't forget the weights! The more muscle you build, the faster your metabolism will run."(What's better running outdoors or on a treadmill?)

THE BIGGEST LOSER IS NOT REALITY "You don't watch the Olympics and think, Hmm, I should swim for 6 hours a day like Michael Phelps, do you? But you might think about joining a pool and swimming a few times a week," she said. That's what Jillian wants people watching TBL to think, too: "If these people can lose ten pounds in two weeks, maybe I can lose ten pounds in a couple of months." She adds: "I want people to realize their own potential; I meet people all the time who never thought of themselves as athletic, but now? They truly are athletes."

FORGET WILLPOWER "Losing weight is not about willpower--it's about moments of bravado, like the moment when you ask your waiter to take the bread away from the table right away."

JUST SAY THANK YOU When I told Jillian how much weight I've lost, she congratulated me. And then (as I always do), I added, "But I still have a long way to go." "Stop," she said. "What does that do," she said, "apart from negate everything you've already accomplished? You're being self-deprecating and disempowering, and that doesn't serve anyone-and especially not you. Be proud of what you've done for yourself."

*complete article here

1st Day at the gym...

...after a 2 months break, is AWESOME!

I did chest (I went light) and cardio and cardio and cardio with some situps and jump-rope. Then I got dizzy. I guess it should be ok, for a 'coming back' trip. Its like warm-upla.

Its the same gym by the way. I didnt not approach or do any research at all, on the other gym. Haha. I asked some members at my current gym for opinions and shit and of course theres a reason why theyre still here and not in some fancy gym. Some of them switched from their previous fancy gym to this current one and judging from their feedback (of course theyll give better review of the current one since theyre in it) I think Ill stay here for a couple more years (or until im just sick and tired of it).

Cant wait for next trip.

GOAL: NOT TO BE A BODYBUILDER, just be fit! (my ex-trainer had another client whos on his way to become buff and muscular. threw me off a bit, but then i told myself, THAT IS HIS GOAL, not mine.)

Motivational Method

Below is a cut-and-paste article I got from 1stOctober'08's The Star, health section. Interesting read.

TRIM WITH EASE Tan Cheng Li

A new method to trim down espouses a nourishing diet and a healthy state of mind.

NO cutting down on calories, no heavy workouts, no surgery, eat whatever and however much you want - the Gabriel Method sure sounds like a dream weight loss programme. Jon Gabriel, a trim and taut 83kg in a 1.9m frame, is proof that his slimming method works for, just seven years ago, he was an obese 187kg.

The approach behind the Gabriel Method appears to be simple: you lose weight by getting your body to want to be thin. Huh?
Jon Gabriel with his old pair of pants. His weight dropped drastically after he stopped worrying about it.

Gabriel explains: “Your body has an internal logic that determines how fat or thin you will be at any given time. The way to lose weight is not to diet or struggle but to understand this logic and work with it so that your body wants to lose weight.”

Gabriel devised his weight loss technique through much hard-won lessons over 12 years during which he struggled to keep his weight down. Like many fat people trying to shed the extra kilos, Gabriel dieted and tried one weight loss programme after another, but none worked.

Instead, his girth kept growing until one day, in August 2001, he had a eureka moment.

“I realised that I was fat because my body wanted to be fat and as long as it wanted to be fat, I’d be fighting it and I would always lose. So I decided I’d never diet again and instead try to figure out why my body wanted to be fat in the first place.”

That quest saw him spending 10 hours a day learning everything about weight gain and weight loss.

“I researched biochemistry, neuro-biology, quantum physics, stress management, meditation and the mind-body connection. I started to get real answers. I started to lose weight and I wasn’t dieting,” he says in an e-mail interview.

The transformation is stark as the “before” and “after” photographs show: one of a morbidly obese Gabriel, the other a toned Gabriel with six pecs and handsome, chiselled features. With his new body came a new life - Jon gave up his stressful stock-broking job in New York and moved to Australia. He now travels worldwide to share his weight loss-without-dieting technique. He has also written a book, The Gabriel Method.

Gabriel, 42, concluded people are not fat solely because they overeat, lack exercise or are undisciplined, but because “their body wants them to be fat”. It is a genetic survival mechanism linked to times of ancient famine and extreme cold when it was a case of survival of the fattest.

“We don’t have those stresses any more, but we still have stress, which can trick our body into holding on to weight and fighting for its life,” says Gabriel.

To get your body to want to be thin, he explains, you have to address and eliminate the reasons why your body is holding on to excess fat in the first place. Some of these reasons are nutritional starvation, chronic yo-yo dieting, mental and emotional stress, toxins and devitalisation.

Sure, we eat, but we might be feeding our bodies with nutrient-poor food or we might not be digesting food properly and absorbing the nutrients. Our bodies sense this nutrient deficiency as famine and reacts by storing fat. We might also be loading our bodies with toxins from chemical-laden, processed food. To protect us, our bodies store even more fat since fatty tissues readily absorb toxins.

“The way that you address these issues is to add foods and nutrients that your body is craving, and practise certain visualisation techniques (that he talks about in his book) that eliminate the mental and emotional causes of obesity,” says Gabriel.

“The most common mistake with other weight loss methods is that they don’t address the real issues. I personally find that the mental and emotional stresses are a much more compelling cause of fat gain, and most diets or methods don’t even go there.”

Gabriel should know. He has, after all, tried everything from low-fat diets to low-carb diets and everything in between. He had spent a small fortune consulting Dr Robert Atkins (of the high-protein Atkins Diet), naturopaths, homeopaths, chiropractors and fitness trainers, spent time at Pritikin Institute (a health centre) and even had an acupuncturist tape seeds to his ear €“ all to no avail.

“They all followed the same pattern. I’d lose a little weight in the short term, then I’d get a rebound, then I’d be hungry all the time. I couldn’t fight it and, sooner or later, I’d binge. Weight that took me weeks to lose would be back in a matter of days and then I’d be even heavier than when I first started out.”

Hence the Gabriel Method renounces dieting. Gabriel points out that a nourished body will not demand for more food. Cutting calorie intake on the other hand, can do more harm than good because it will trigger chemical changes in the body that mimic a state of famine, making your body want to gain fat and hold on to it.

“The reason we have excess fat on our bodies in the first place is to protect us against famine. That’s why diet’s don’t work ... you can lose weight in the short term, but then you activate a famine response that puts your body into fat-storage mode for its survival. This inevitably leads to a rebound weight gain.”

Although you can eat however much you want, Gabriel advocates eating lots of greens (which are essentially low-calorie foods) and organic produce. He recommends a diet with ample water, proteins (from grass-fed meat, free-range chicken, cold-water fish and whey protein), essential fatty acids (Omega 3 from cold water fish and flaxseed oil) and, for efficient digestion, probiotics and digestive enzymes. Unlike other popular weight-loss programmes, the Gabriel Method does not deny you of any foods that you might be craving but instead, makes your body crave healthier foods. You are also not required to eat only certain types of food such as low-carb or high-protein.

Gabriel explains why: “It’s important to provide your body with the nutrients that it requires. But everyone is different and a low-carb or a high-protein diet, or any other diet of this type, is oversimplified and doesn’t necessarily address the real reasons that your body wants to be fat, such as mental and emotional stress, toxins and devitalisation.”

Another trick that Gabriel employs to stay slim is the “visualisation” technique, whereby he pictures his ideal body, as motivation. To help those with no experience with visualisation, he has developed a visualisation CD that comes with the book.

Gabriel’s method was the highlight of the conference of the American Holistic Medical Association in June 2007. He says there are doctors recommending the Gabriel Method. One of them is Dr Jean Vokelman, director of the Endo-Biogenic Medical Centre at the University of Idaho. Vokelman is now putting together a continuing education course on the Gabriel Method.

“Every other weight loss approach follows the same paradigm ... you have to force your body to be thin by restricting calories, or to make yourself exercise, or through behaviour modification or more radical methods such as drugs and surgical procedures. But if you can get your body to want to be thin, weight loss happens automatically,” says Gabriel.

Sounds simple enough to be given a shot, you think?

*http://thestar.com.my/health/