NUTRITION & FITNESS TIPS

Tip Archives!

View the compound moves from the Ed Bersntein show!

A good weekend strategy is to stick with your normal exercise and eating plan. Be disciplined on the weekends and keep focused on your goals to avoid setbacks.

The most common fitness question I get from men is “how do I get rid of my love handles!” There is no one specific exercise that will get rid of the extra fatty tissue that men carry on their sides and women typically carry on their hips. The answer is a good diet and moderate overall exercise program including cardio to burn extra calories. Here are a few tips to get you started. Make sure to drink plenty of water. I recommend 120 ounces a day! Cut out the sodas and candy in your diet. Eat 5-6 small meals a day including a lean protein and complex carbohydrates in each meal. Do some type of cardio for 30 minutes 5 days a week and include a weight lifting routine at least twice a week. Make these few changes and see those love handles slowly melt away!

One of the most common injuries for both men and women is the shoulder joint, the rotator cuff injury. Before lifting weights, always warm up the shoulders by doing internal and external rotations from a pulley machine keeping the elbow tucked in to the body while you rotate the hand both internally and externally. This can also be done with dumbbells as well. Make sure to go slow and use a light weight, just enough to warm up the joint. Stretch out before and after your workouts. If you are one who has chronic injuries, I suggest taking a yoga class twice a week. Yoga is a great addition to any exercise program.

Losing weight in today's society is difficult because we are all so busy. The fast food restaurants some days are all we can get to. Don't give up! You can lose weight and stay healthy eating on the go. For example, every fast food restaurant has some kind of grilled chicken sandwich. Order it without the mayo and hold the cheese. In a fast food Mexican restaurant, you can order grilled chicken or shrimp tacos with corn tortillas, and again hold the cheese. Always look for the words grilled, baked or broiled. Look for the low sugar protein bars at your local health food store for the on the go choices. Keep unsalted almonds and fruit in your car or office for snacks. Remember super sizing your meals will only super size waist.

When traveling, take a jump rope for your workout! This is light and easy to travel with and when the weather is bad outside or the hotel doesn't have a gym, you can always pull out the rope and do a 30-minute circuit routine. For example, jump rope for 5 minutes to warm up. Drop down and do 30-50 pushups. Get up and jump for 1-2 minutes. Stop and do 25 squats. Jump again for 1-2 minutes. Stop and do walking lunges. Jump again for 1-2 minutes. Stop and do 50 abdominal crunches. And so on. Either repeat the exercises again or come up with your own on the toning part. Jumping rope is such a great calorie burner and it's fun!

Hitting a plateau in your workouts is very common. Any time you want to make a change in your body you have to make a drastic change of some kind in either your workouts or your diet! Try changing up your sets, repetition, and weights during your workouts. For example, try the pyramid approach. Do three sets starting out with a lower amount of weight and a higher number of repetitions. For the second and third set, lower your repetitions and increase the weight each time. All three sets of weights you should pick should be so heavy you can barely lift the last two. This routine should give your body the shock it needs to get you over your plateau! Do this for a couple of weeks and then change up your routine again!

A great exercise for shaping the gluts is the walking lunge. Holding hand weights, step forward with your right leg and bend both legs, making sure that your knee is right above your front toe, not past. All of the weight should stay in the heel of the foot. As you lift to change legs and step forward with your left leg, you are squeezing your right buttock. Do the same thing with your left leg. Do 3 sets of 15 and you will feel your entire leg the next day.

Water is essential! Everyone hears they need to drink more water but not a lot of people realize the importance of drinking water to help reach their weight loss goals. Water flushes any excess toxins out of your body. It cleanses the body of extra sodium you may have consumed. It helps to keep your energy up and it helps to keep you more satiated throughout the day. The problem is, your body doesn't know when it is thirsty. Sometimes you may feel hungry, but really you are in need of water. Try to get in a gallon of water a day and you will see major changes n your body, your skin, your energy, and your appetite.

It is important to get the essential omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids into your diet. It may be difficult to get that in through the foods you eat without taking in a lot of extra saturated fat. Therefore, it is important that you take an essential oil everyday to get that important fats that your body needs to burn fat. You can get good health; heart fats from olive oil, almonds, avocados and salmon, but you are also getting saturated fat as well. If you want to see the best results in your weight loss goals, try to cut out all saturated fat and just take an essential oil supplement. This way, your body takes what it needs to help burn any fat you have in your body and it will help to increase your metabolism. It will also help with sugar cravings and hormonal balance.

To spice up your current exercise program, try running or walking stairs along with pushups and lunges. This is great for a lunch workout when you don't have a lot of time but you want to fit something in that is a good intense workout.

When trying to lose weight, eat a complex carbohydrate for breakfast and lunch, but skip the carbohydrate for dinner. This will help save some calories in your day. When eating your meals, try to eat smaller servings 5-6 times per day rather than 3 large meals per day. This way your body will only take what it needs to burn rather than storing extra calories that it cannot process as fat. Also try not to eat 3 hours before going to bed.

Try to make meals at home a lot in the beginning of a new program. This way you can measure everything out yourself and get used to eyeballing a portion size. This will help you when you go to a restaurant and they give you a huge plate of pasta. You will know just by looking that only a quarter of that portion is what you will be eating. If you get pasta with marinara sauce, a vegetable like asparagus and shrimp, you will be able to eat all of the shrimp and vegetables and about 1 cup of the pasta. You can start with the shrimp and vegetables and by the time you get to the pasta, you won't be as tempted to eat the entire plate. Remember, you don't have to finish your entire plate. You can always take home the rest for leftovers the next day.

When eating out, choose wisely. If you know you will be drinking alcohol or want dessert, choose a grilled fish with vegetables and hold the baked potato or rice. When everyone wants to have dessert and you want some but are feeling guilty, share a dessert with friends and only have a couple of bites. This way you won't feel deprived and you aren't going to do any harm to your waistline. It is when you start going out to eat every night and use that as an excuse to eat what ever you want that becomes a problem to your weight loss goals.

When choosing carbohydrates, think brown verses white. For example, wheat or whole grain breads rather than white or sourdough, brown rice versus white rice. Simple sugars like fruit are good but some fruits are higher on the glycemic index scale, meaning they turn into sugar more rapidly. A banana is very high on the glycemic index scale. Apples, oranges, plums, strawberries, melons, grapefruit, and pears are all really low. Corn and carrots are higher on the glycemic index scale as well. You don't have to cut these foods out of your diet, just eat them in moderation. Fruit is definitely a better alternative to pure sugar like candy.

Red meat does not have to be completely cut out of your diet, just eat it in moderation. Try to choose lean cuts of steak. Burgers from fast food restaurants are not what you want to be eating to lose weight, but if you buy your own burger from the grocery store, they now have extra-lean ground beef. Ground turkey makes excellent burgers as well. Put anything on the barbeque and it will taste delicious!

When trying to lose weight, be realistic. Plan on losing 1-2 pounds per week maximum. Anything faster than is water loss and it will be hard to keep off. Think long-term results rather than the quick fix. Do you really want to yo-yo for the rest of your life? Try to make realistic goals that you can stick with.

When starting a healthy diet plan and weight training regimen, it is important to get your body fat and measurements taken beforehand. When you are weight training, muscle weighs more than fat. Therefore, if you start building muscle, the scale might not necessarily reflect your results, but your body fat and measurements will. This will help to keep you motivated and on track. Try to get it taken once a month.

When traveling, always be prepared for times where you won't be able to make healthy choices. Like the airport for example. Always bring fresh fruit, vegetables, turkey, crackers, or protein bars in your bag so you won't have to give into temptation like sticky buns.

At restaurants, don't be afraid of asking the waiter or waitress for your food the way you want it. More and more restaurants are adding a healthy cuisine to their menus but it doesn't hurt to ask for dressings on the side, fish made without butter, vegetables steamed without butter, baked potato plain, chicken grilled not fried, and sauces on the side. If you feel embarrassed to ask for things on the side. If you feel embarrassed to ask for things on the side because of everyone around you, wait until after you have ordered and then go and find the waiter and ask him in private. This way, you can still eat healthy when eating out and enjoy good company.

When performing weight lifting exercises, make sure to do them slow and controlled. If you are lifting too much weight and find yourself jerking your entire body to get the weight up, you may need to go down in weight so that you can perform the exercise correctly without using momentum.

If you only have 20 minutes to workout one day, 20 minutes is better than nothing. Just make sure that 20 minutes is powerful. You can try intervals on the treadmill or elliptical trainer. Start at a lower level and work your way up. For example, start on level 3 for 2 minutes, move to level 4 for 1 minute, level 5 for 1 minute, level 6 for one minutes, then return to level 4 and start the cycle again. On your last cycle, move to level 7 for 2 minutes and really push yourself, then take it down to level 2 or 1 for 2 minutes for a nice cool down.

When lifting weights, make sure you are lifting enough weights to fatigue the muscle. Many women are afraid of weight feeling as if it will bulk them up. Your last couple of repetitions should be difficult. Most women do not have the ability to build a lot of muscle. Therefore, try to get in at least 12-15 repetitions. That last rep should be really hard to lift. If it is easy you should bump it up a notch. (I did this one 7-2)

Try to mix up your routines so that you will avoid boredom. This will keep you on track all year long. Get with a trainer once every other month to get a new routine. Try different classes at the gym. Make sure to do what you like so that you will keep it up. If you are running and you absolutely hate it, you are most likely aren’t going to stick with it when working out becomes a low priority. But, if you fin something that you really like, you will be more likely to jump right back on when you have hit a bump in the road and had to miss a couple of workouts.

Core strength is very important in any exercise. Any time you are performing an exercise, your deep abdominal muscles should be tight. This will avoid any kind of injuries and will help to strengthen your mid section and lower back. Try sitting on an exercise ball while doing your biceps curls with dumbbells. This will make you work your abdominals as well as your biceps! (8-12)

When performing abdominal exercises, think as if you have a really tight pair of jeans on and you are trying to suck your stomach in even more creating space between your skin and your jeans. This way, you will avoid building your muscle outward. Think about sucking in your abdominal muscles every time you breathe out and lift up.