I try to live a healthy lifestyle and encourage others to do the same. Here are 40 great fitness tips that were passed on to me that I’d like to share with you…
40 Ways To Stay Fit
WEIGHT TRAINING:
1) Lift Weights: Adding muscle to your frame enables your body to speed up its metabolism. You will burn an additional 35-50 calories per day from every pound of new muscle you develop.
2) Limit Rest Periods: Limit rest periods to 59 seconds to add a calorie-burning element to your weight training. This has been shown to increase calorie burn by 50%.
3) Mix It Up: Try to make incremental increases to your weights, try new exercises, shorten rest periods, switch from barbells to dumbbells… anything to keep your body guessing. After just a few weeks, your muscles will have adapted to your exercises and will crave something new.
4) Train Heavy: Pushing your muscles beyond what they’re currently trained to overcome forces them to adapt and regenerate themselves so they’re ready for the next workout. This will also help rev your metabolism.
5) Rest and Recovery: The real gains occur during rest. Try to get eight hours of sleep each night to allow your muscles to recover, which ups your calorie-burning potential.
6) Don’t Over Train: Allow a few days before working the same muscle groups again. This will prevent overtraining which can cause your muscles to be dissolved.
7) Add Weights For Your Abs: Use weights that allow you to get 15 reps per set, and allow only 30 seconds between sets. You should also slow the pace down to 3 seconds per rep.
8) Keep A Training Log: Record your workouts, sets and reps each session, then refer to the data to assess your progress and set new goals.
9) Supersets: To help amp up your calorie burn between sets- and accomplish more in less time- incorporate supersets or drop sets to your workout. (Superset: When one exercise immediately follows another without any rest in between)
10) Compound Movements: Build your workout around multi-joint movements like presses, rows and squats to recruit the most muscle fiber and burn the most calories. Isolation movements, or single joint exercises, such as bicep curls, leg extensions, and triceps extensions, should be supplemental to the multi-joint movements.
Note: Free Weights VS Machines: Free weights force your body to recruit more total muscle because they call on stabilizing muscles to balance the weight, a superior advantage to the predetermined range of motion that machines have to offer.
CARDIO:
11) Run For The Gold: Incorporate 3 to 4 sessions of cardio per week for 20 to 30 minutes each.
12) Run Hungry: Perform cardio first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. Your body will burn fat as the first energy source because your glycogen stores are depleted.
13) Start Strong-End Slow: Do your high-intensity cardio early in your workout and taper off to a slow finish to burn significantly more fat. After a 3 minute warm-up, immediately kick it into high gear for 15 to 20 minutes before slowing down for the last 10 minutes.
14) Interval training: The best way to improve your aerobic fitness and burn fat is to alternate very intense periods of cardio with low-intensity sessions. Run at 80%-85% max heart rate for 1 to 2 minutes then slow it down to 50% - 60% MHR for 1 to 2 minutes and then back up again. Keep this cycle going for the entire session.
15) No Smoking Please: Smoking deprives cells of the oxygen they need to maximize metabolism, keeps muscles from repairing themselves after exercise and makes cardio a lot tougher.
16) Cardio Second: For the highest caloric burn possible, do your cardio after your workout. Since lifting depletes glycogen stores, your body will use fat as its first fuel source during cardio.
17) Warm-Up With Cardio: Perform 5-10 minutes of cardio before you begin your weight training sessions. This helps to get your muscles warmed up for your workout without depleting your glycogen stores.
18) Change it up: Whether you’re lifting weights or doing cardio, the key is to keep your body from adapting to what you’re doing. Regularly changing your cardio mode is the best way to keep your body responding.
NUTRITION:
19) Eat More Frequently: Eating 5-6 small meals a day causes your metabolism to work constantly. Eating larger meals, however, slows your metabolism and forces leftover calories to be stored as fat.
20) Cut Carbs: Keep your carbs low when trying to lose weight. Good, clean, fiber rich carbs include oats, sweet potato, brown rice, and whole grain bread.
21) Eat Green: Spinach, romaine and broccoli is the best form of carbohydrates you can eat. Eat a salad before your meals to increase your fiber and consume less calories overall. Stay away from high-fat cream dressings.
22) Protein Is King: Since muscle-building is the fastest way to lose fat, make sure your protein consumption is enough to keep up with your weight training. Get 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight each day.
23) Cut Out Liquid Candy: Eliminate sodas and drink water instead. If you drink one soda per day, you’re adding 1750 calories per week to your diet.
24) Not So-Happy Hour: Alcohol consumption can blunt testosterone levels, hindering muscle repair and growth and blunting sexual drive. Also, alcohol contains empty calories and the simplest form of sugar available in any drink.
25) Slow Down: Fast eating and body fat go hand in hand because you tend to overeat. It takes up to 20 minutes for your brain to receive the signals that you’ve eaten enough.
26) Dinning Out: When ordering at a restaurant, ask to have your meats grilled without oil or grease. Order steamed vegetables with no butter. Request the doggy-bag to arrive with your meal so you can eat one serving size and take home the rest for tomorrow.
27) Drink Water: You should try to consume at least one gallon per day to avoid becoming dehydrated. Well hydrated individuals burn more calories and become sick less often.
28) Burn More Calories: The goal in any fat lose program is to burn more calories than you consume. Aim to reduce calorie consumption by about 250 calories per day. This will help you lose 1 to 2 pounds per week
29) Avoid Simple Sugars: Sugar in your diet can wreak havoc on your metabolism by spiking your insulin response and promoting the accumulation of body fat.
30) Timing Is Everything: When you eat is just as important as what you eat. Consume two-thirds of your daily calories before dinner to avoid overeating late at night.
31) Eat More Fiber: Fiber, both soluble and insoluble, is essential to health and helps decrease body fat. Consume large amounts of fibrous vegetables, such as broccoli, and spinach to attain your daily intake and promote satiety.
32) Prepare In Advance: It’s very difficult to find healthy foods at work or in restaurants. Before leaving the house, pack healthy foods for the day with plenty of bottled water. Make sure you bring enough for emergencies i.e. an extended meeting, a traffic jam, delayed flight, etc.
33) No Yolk: Eating plenty of egg whites for breakfast was found to reduce hunger and food cravings for up to 24 hours after consuming.
34) Salt Free: Excess sodium consumption can make you look bloated and soft and can cause you to burn less fat. To help you look leaner and strip sodium from your diet, drink more water, cut back on processed foods and enjoy to true flavor of foods.
35) Go Nuts: Eating a hand full of almonds each day helps test subjects lose 62% more weight, 56% more fat and 50% more from their waist-line after 24 weeks compared to those who followed the same diet without almonds.
36) Drink Coffee: Drinking Coffee before doing cardio will help you burn fat. Subjects who consumed two cups of coffee (300 mg) two hours before exercising on a stationary bike for 30 minutes were able to burn more total calories and used a much greater percentage of body fat for fuel.
MOTIVATION:
37) Discipline Yourself: If you’re tiered of how you look, then understand you’re the only one who can change it. Create a plan and stick to it, budgeting time for the gym, food preparation, and rest for the week.
38) Set A Goal: Giving yourself a reason to get in shape is a great way to stay on track with your goals
39) Cheat Meal: Allow yourself one cheat meal every 7 days. Small indulgences make dieting more tolerable, keeping you on track longer.
40) Stay the Course: Consistency is key to losing fat. The first week may be tough, but by the third, you should be a creature of habit.
A woman by the name of Ammie wrote in response to this blog entry, “Don’t forget to breath! Slow down and go deeper into your soul! The most beautiful people is calm and warm person!” Thought I would share that with all of you. : ) ~ Niko
It might be the laughter of a child, a friend in need, pleasant or painful memories, dreams, happiness, frustrations. Nature. I write little songs for our animals here at "Freetown" (the property where most of the team lives). Traveling and being in other places far away stirs things up in me - the sights, the smells, the sounds of another culture and land. Sound inspires me. I will hear something like a car engine cranking up or the horn of a train or the wind blowing through the trees and it will actually inspire a melody or lyric or chord progression in me. Also, just sitting down at my piano inspires me. Most every time I sit to play, something fresh and new comes out. Sometimes it’s a song while other times it’s an idea or a melody that later becomes a song. And the hope of my music touching the world, that inspires me deeply. It is important that we always have hope in our hearts for through hope we find inspiration to fulfill our dreams. The content of my lyrics tend to focus on positive things, I like knowing that my songs are helping people and helping to bring light into this world. If I can do this, then when I breathe my last breath I will have peace in knowing I fulfilled my purpose on this earth. 
