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Posts tagged ‘Body’

3
May

3 Easy Tips to Lose Fat and Get a Summer Body

Summer is fast approaching and it’s time to break some more of my easy tips and techniques to burn fat fast.  Let’s face it, knowing that during Summer more clothes come off and more of your body will be showing is a great motivator to get that great looking toned, ripped, and lean looking Summer body.  Use these three easy tips to lose fat fast so as to show off six pack abs and not a bowl of belly fat. 

If you’re doing the Fat X Program and utilizing the Fat X Diet philosophy you’re well on your way to a great Summer body.  Adding these 3 easy tips will speed up results and help you lose fat faster. While these tips are really easy and simple to implement, don’t dismiss the power of them.  Like the Fat X Workouts, and the Fat X Diet, use these tips consistently for best results.

Tip number one for a great Summer body:  Keep a water bottle next to your bed, and hydrate as the first thing you do when you wake up.  Dehydration can set in over night and cripple your metabolic processes which will slow down your fat loss and fitness progress.

Tip number two for a great Summer body: End your day with a diet meal high in protein and low in carbohydrates (carbs).  Your body will deplete it’s glycogen stores. This will allow your body to begin breaking down fat for energy over night and as you sleep. 

Tip number three for a great Summer body: Start your day with a diet meal high in protein and low in carbohydrates (carbs).  Your body’s glycogen stores will be depleted and your body will continue to use fat and break down body fat for energy.

Good luck to you on achieving your best Summer body ever!  Join me on the Fat X 101 Facebook for more tips.  If you’re in the Pasadena area, contact me for private fitness coaching or to join my FX Boot Camp.  


10
Apr

Is a Woman’s Body Always Open For Comment? [The Problem With Street Fashion Blogging]

Does this girl look fat to you? Would you describe her as “a bigger, curvier girl than most of the other bloggers who you see in the press”? This Italian small-time fashion blogger was photographed by big-time (perhaps the inventor the genre) street-fashion blogger The Sartorialist and in a post that is still causing ripples through the Internet, he praised her in a very back-handed way for knowing how to balance her “sturdy legs” with a “strong shoe.” Even after thousands of commenters called him out for his bizarre size comparison and even for remarking on her size at all – do you have to be tiny to have good style? – he refused to recant saying, “I get emails all the time from self-professed curvy girls who want to see representations of their size on the site. What sucks is that when I try to put a photograph up to talk about these issues, the post is hijacked over the political correctness of the words.”

Two things: First, those purple shoes are amazing and I want them. Gorgeous. Second, it’s not her legs, it’s the pants. I know that leggings/jeggings/hipster jeans/skinny jeans are all the rage right now but this is case in point of what they do to all women’s legs regardless of our size or weight. When you have pants that taper to the ankle they make your thighs look bigger by comparison. It’s even worse with a light wash like she’s wearing. I hate this and yet of course I own three pairs (remember this post?) – before you mock, I have to say they are very practical here in the snow-bound north as they are by far the easiest pants to tuck into boots and nobody wants their hems dragging through the slush. But yes, they make my thighs look big. They make everyone’s thighs look bigger.
The issue here for me goes way beyond The Sartorialist and hipster jeans on gorgeous Italians. I’m a big fan of fashion blogs. Not the kind put out by lady mags or fashion houses but rather the small – often vintage-esque – blogs that show people’s ingenuity in putting together an beautifully crafted outfit. Most of the blogs I read just feature the bloggers themselves but some of them feature snaps of people out on the street. At it’s best, it’s finding art in the every day – something The Sartorialist has proven he has a keen eye for (if not an apt mouth) – but at it’s worst, it’s People of Wal-Mart.
It feels unsafe to me. By far most of the subjects of the “fashion” pictures are women, many unaware they are even being photographed. Some bloggers ask permission before they take a picture but many don’t. I’m pretty sure that all of the People of Wal-Mart got up there without their knowledge. So when does it become inappropriate to comment on a woman’s body if we are fair game even picking up a package of cold medicine in our jammies at 10 o’clock at night? Do we need to pull a Dita Von Teese (side note: I covet her closet) and glam up to shop for lettuce?
Seriously – is this not the cutest cardi ever??? I love her.

The Sartorialist this week proved that even when it’s meant to be complimentary – and he is very clear that he fines the Italian woman to be beautiful – it can still be cruel. Can you imagine having thousands of people on the Internet debating whether or not your legs are fat? I shudder. For her part, the woman says she was okay with what he said but she also says her English isn’t very good so she didn’t understand what he was saying to her on the street.
While many fashion bloggers work very hard to capture beautiful pictures, anyone with a camera phone can snap a pic and post it to the web. I remember in Seattle one day sitting in the park with my kids. They were running through the sprinklers with a bunch of other little kids and it was all happy summer fun until I noticed two men with camera phones taking pictures of the little kids, especially of one little girl (maybe 4 years old) who was only wearing her underpants. I walked over and confronted them and told them I’d called the police – which I had – and they took off quickly. But it shook me up. I understand that there is a huge difference between possible pedophilia and taking an artful shot of a woman you admire for her style but both represent an unasked for commentary about the female body.
It used to be that women risked catcalls walking down the street. Now we risk everything from sexual objectification to praise to public humiliation every time we leave our house? As much as I love looking at beautiful fashion shots, I’m not sure that I’m down with the street fashion blogging trend.
What’s your opinion about street fashion blogs? Have you ever been photographed without your permission? What do you think about what The Sartorialist wrote?

Written with love by Charlotte Hilton Andersen for The Great Fitness Experiment (c) 2011. If you enjoyed this, please check out my new book The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everythingfor more of my crazy antics and uncomfortable over-shares!

31
Mar

Is a Woman’s Body Always Open For Comment? [The Problem With Street Fashion Blogging]

Does this girl look fat to you? Would you describe her as “a bigger, curvier girl than most of the other bloggers who you see in the press”? This Italian small-time fashion blogger was photographed by big-time (perhaps the inventor the genre) street-fashion blogger The Sartorialist and in a post that is still causing ripples through the Internet, he praised her in a very back-handed way for knowing how to balance her “sturdy legs” with a “strong shoe.” Even after thousands of commenters called him out for his bizarre size comparison and even for remarking on her size at all – do you have to be tiny to have good style? – he refused to recant saying, “I get emails all the time from self-professed curvy girls who want to see representations of their size on the site. What sucks is that when I try to put a photograph up to talk about these issues, the post is hijacked over the political correctness of the words.”
Two things: First, those purple shoes are amazing and I want them. Gorgeous. Second, it’s not her legs, it’s the pants. I know that leggings/jeggings/hipster jeans/skinny jeans are all the rage right now but this is case in point of what they do to all women’s legs regardless of our size or weight. When you have pants that taper to the ankle they make your thighs look bigger by comparison. It’s even worse with a light wash like she’s wearing. I hate this and yet of course I own three pairs (remember this post?) – before you mock, I have to say they are very practical here in the snow-bound north as they are by far the easiest pants to tuck into boots and nobody wants their hems dragging through the slush. But yes, they make my thighs look big. They make everyone’s thighs look bigger.
The issue here for me goes way beyond The Sartorialist and hipster jeans on gorgeous Italians. I’m a big fan of fashion blogs. Not the kind put out by lady mags or fashion houses but rather the small – often vintage-esque – blogs that show people’s ingenuity in putting together an beautifully crafted outfit. Most of the blogs I read just feature the bloggers themselves but some of them feature snaps of people out on the street. At it’s best, it’s finding art in the every day – something The Sartorialist has proven he has a keen eye for (if not an apt mouth) – but at it’s worst, it’s People of Wal-Mart.
It feels unsafe to me. By far most of the subjects of the “fashion” pictures are women, many unaware they are even being photographed. Some bloggers ask permission before they take a picture but many don’t. I’m pretty sure that all of the People of Wal-Mart got up there without their knowledge. So when does it become inappropriate to comment on a woman’s body if we are fair game even picking up a package of cold medicine in our jammies at 10 o’clock at night? Do we need to pull a Dita Von Teese (side note: I covet her closet) and glam up to shop for lettuce?
Seriously – is this not the cutest cardi ever??? I love her.

The Sartorialist this week proved that even when it’s meant to be complimentary – and he is very clear that he fines the Italian woman to be beautiful – it can still be cruel. Can you imagine having thousands of people on the Internet debating whether or not your legs are fat? I shudder. For her part, the woman says she was okay with what he said but she also says her English isn’t very good so she didn’t understand what he was saying to her on the street.
While many fashion bloggers work very hard to capture beautiful pictures, anyone with a camera phone can snap a pic and post it to the web. I remember in Seattle one day sitting in the park with my kids. They were running through the sprinklers with a bunch of other little kids and it was all happy summer fun until I noticed two men with camera phones taking pictures of the little kids, especially of one little girl (maybe 4 years old) who was only wearing her underpants. I walked over and confronted them and told them I’d called the police – which I had – and they took off quickly. But it shook me up. I understand that there is a huge difference between possible pedophilia and taking an artful shot of a woman you admire for her style but both represent an unasked for commentary about the female body.
It used to be that women risked catcalls walking down the street. Now we risk everything from sexual objectification to praise to public humiliation every time we leave our house? As much as I love looking at beautiful fashion shots, I’m not sure that I’m down with the street fashion blogging trend.
What’s your opinion about street fashion blogs? Have you ever been photographed without your permission? What do you think about what The Sartorialist wrote?

Written with love by Charlotte Hilton Andersen for The Great Fitness Experiment (c) 2011. If you enjoyed this, please check out my new book The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everythingfor more of my crazy antics and uncomfortable over-shares!

9
Mar

Fat Burning Project for a Bikini Body

A couple of weeks ago I started a new fat burning Fat X Project.  This Fat X Project was code named BBB, short for bomb bikini body. The goal was to get through the Fat X Program in 12 days, and come out with less fat, and a more toned body that would be well on it’s way to looking great in a bikini.  


This Fat X Project would be the most trying for me as subject BBB was my own girlfriend Elizabeth.  As anyone knows, training your significant other can be a challenge.  I’ve actually had other fitness trainers pay me to train their significant other because of how much of a challenge it can be. 

 Elizabeth was motivated to get her bikini body but the skepticism as to the power and effectiveness of the the Fat X Program lingered.  Getting her to change her diet habits and follow the Fat X diet philosophy was and uphill battle. Luckily, towards the end of the 12 day fat burning program we finally ironed out the kinks in her diet.  


While Elizabeth got excellent results for 12 days, I always like to look back at my public Fat X Projects and write about things that went well, and things that didn’t go so well in an effort to help those that are planning on doing the Fat X Program.

As I mentioned before, she was highly motivated, so getting her to do the workouts was easy.  She would actually watch the fat burning workout videos before she showed up and it would make explaining the routine a bit easier. Where I went wrong is underestimating her strength. I do believe we could have used heavier weight.  Using the heaviest weight possible is something that I advocate as it renders the best results.  Next time I would use heavier weights to maximally stimulate her metabolic processes.

The decision to go ahead with this project was a last minute decision, so the first few days on the diet were a bit rocky since we hadn’t shopped for her food.  I advocate shopping for groceries before starting the Fat X Program to make sure you get a good start on the diet.  This is another detail that could have helped produce better results.

If you’re new to Fat X 101 and you’re planning on doing the Fat X Program, I hope this helps.  Remember to download the workout manual as there are some adjustments that aren’t in the free fat burning workout videos.  Good luck!  

25
Feb

What The Mind Forgets, The Body Remembers

This is also a very important anniversary that Hallmark does not have a card for.
September 11, 2001. Every year I can feel the vibrations of this anniversary for weeks before it approaches. When it finally arrives, it is almost a relief to cry a little and move on. No I didn’t lose a loved one in the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers but in a weird twist of fate I did lose a loved one that day. Or at least I was supposed to. That was the day I was scheduled to give birth to my daughter Faith whom we already knew was dead or dying but for whom we were still secretly praying for a miracle. Instead I woke up to my mom calling me to tell me she wasn’t going to make her flight that morning after all.
“But why…?” I stuttered in a haze of disbelief. If ever a girl needed her mom, it was now.
“There’s been a… I can’t explain it. Go turn on your T.V.”
“What? Which channel?”
“Any of them.”
I got to my T.V. just in time to see the second tower come crashing down. At the time no one really knew what was happening so I went to work. (I will leave it to you to shake your head over the fact that I refused to take off work even on the day my labor was scheduled to be induced.) My students and I spent the entire class period surfing the Internet trying to find more information until I finally just dismissed them early so they could go hold their loved ones a little tighter.
After I was done teaching I went to my doctor’s appointment. There wasn’t a soul there but the doctor, my husband and I. Just to be safe they were clearing all non-essential cases from the hospital, women gestating dying babies included. And so while the rest of the country walked around in a haze of grief and mourning, my too-still belly and I joined them. My grief was private but it felt as if every stranger shared my pain. This is what I remember.
Sometimes you remember the anniversary but sometimes the anniversary remembers you.
March 8th, 2004. This date too sends out shock waves, predictors of the earthquake to come. This was the date of the sentencing of my abusive ex-boyfriend, the culmination of an ugly court case and the worst nine months of my entire life. I watched via tape because again I was incapacitated with pregnancy.
He plead guilty saving us all the protracted indignity of a jury trial and yet still getting in one last dig by using an “Alford Plea” meaning that all his admission of guilt meant was that he believed the State had enough evidence to convict but he wasn’t admitting that he did anything wrong. After he was chastised by the judge and led away in handcuffs, my body let out a huge sigh of relief finally releasing the teeth-chattering anxiety I’d been holding for the duration of the court case. The relief was so great that I went into labor and my second son was born early the next day. This was not coincidence. And yet despite it being a day of great import to me I never remember it.
Yesterday found me spilling my guts to a friend. At first I was confused – ostensibly we had met so that she could vent about her problems. She has a demanding and difficult yet very important job: she’s a public defender, the lawyer who represents the people charged with crimes a.k.a. the most hated lawyer. And she just got assigned her first murder case. Clearly her issues are more pressing than mine.
Yet I insisted on hijacking the conversation with my 10-years-in-the-past issues, asking her why the defense attorney who represented my boyfriend was such a jerk to me, why the ex was allowed to use the Alford Plea, why I wasn’t allowed to read the results of his psychological evaluation, why, why, why. During the trial, whether it was because I lacked the wherewithal to ask them or because the State’s lawyer lacked the wherewithal to answer them, I ended up with a lot of unanswered and unexplained questions. My friend with her unique legal perspective was able to finally give me some answers. Answers I didn’t even realize I still wanted until she so gently offered them.
After an hour I finally stopped myself long enough to ask the why of myself. Why all the questions? Why the resurgence of the memories and nightmares? Why the dull ache in my stomach for the past few days? Perhaps even why the panic attacks? And especially why now*? And then the date hit me: the anniversary that I demand myself to forget was coming for me. Strangely Hallmark doesn’t have a card for this. All the sadness, the worry, the fear, the self-loathing: My grief was public and it felt like no one shared my pain. This is what I do not remember.
But my body does. Like wax lost in a batik, strange what the heart chooses to hold between the pauses in its rhythms.
*In wondering why this anniversary felt particularly hard this year, it didn’t occur to me until I wrote this post that this is the seventh year. In addition to jail time, treatment and some fines, the judge sentenced him to seven years on the Sex Offender Registry. In a week he will be taken off the registry and I’ll no longer know where he is. No one will. No wonder I had a panic attack.
Do you have an anniversary that sneaks up on you every year? Do any of you have things that your body remembers before your mind does? What were you doing on Sep. 11, 2001?
Written with love by Charlotte Hilton Andersen for The Great Fitness Experiment (c) 2011. If you enjoyed this, please check out my new book The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everythingfor more of my crazy antics and uncomfortable over-shares!

17
Jan

Can You Spot-Reduce Your Thighs? [Learning to love the body I've got thanks to dubious science and the Internet!]


Leave it to an incorporeal computer to give me a reality check about my body. Somewhere Isaac Asimov is smiling. But just as the Internet giveth, so does the Internet taketh away… and now I’m just confused.

Every woman has a body part that she just doesn’t like much. (Strike that – while most women do, I imagine there are some who love every inch of themselves and more power to them!) Oh sure we’ll gripe about there-ain’t-no-love-in-these handles (so says TurboJennie) or our Oprah-waves-goodbye upper arms (so says Oprah) but there is usually one extra special body part that we focus most of our attentions on. For me, that part is my thighs.
I’ve had a love-hate (but mostly hate) relationship with those womanly fatty bits pretty much ever since I came to associate “womanly” with “fatty bits” – so you know, like 5 years old. My “athletic” thighs are the reason I go through denim hell trying to find jeans that fit. Every single pair I own is too big in the waist and too tight on the thighs. Why oh why have shoulder pads, leggings, dingy flannels and for the love of unholy fashion banana clips come back into style but not my precious 90′s sk8r grrrl wide-legged jeans? Clearly the pants aren’t the problem, it’s got to be my legs! (Now be a good little consumer and write that 100 times on the chalkboard before you leave adolescence.)
All I wanted were legs that didn’t touch anywhere between ankle and pelvis; is that too much to ask for? Yes, yes it is. Even at my skinniest-skinny (to quote the adorable Ginnifer Goodwin who also shares my thigh woes) my thighs were still best friends. And, as any reputable personal trainer will tell you, there is no such thing as spot reduction. Or – say it with me! – “everyone who chews gum would have the skinniest face ever!” Thank you endless stream of P.E. teachers and personal trainers for that witticism. Basically Suzanne Sommers was selling you snakeoil in the form of a spring-loaded contraption you pumped between your legs that was just this side of socially acceptable.
But conventional wisdom is wrong on this one, says Tim Ferriss, author of the hugely controversial and popular book The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman. (You have an hour to kill? Go read the reviews on that sucker – your head will spin faster than Christina Aguilera in a shoe store.) For those of you uninitiated into the Ferriss-verse, he is known for being a human lab rat and trying out every body hack imaginable. Similar to yours truly in concept only – that man tries stuff so far on the other side of extreme that I wouldn’t do even if you paid me in Lululemon outfits. I can’t comment on the whole book – haven’t read it yet although I plan on doing so – but he put up a “bonus” chapter on his blog about, oh yes, spot reducing the upper thighs on women. According to him it is possible. And for the low low price of $39.99.
Apparently I am not alone in my dilemma. Ferriss, to his credit, really does his homework and the whole science-y explanation is on his site. Here’s the short version: he tried two creams containing compounds that theoretically had the chemical properties to alter fat storage under the skin. The prescription cream failed. But the other cream – a super gimmicky sounding CelluThin – actually did work. It reduced his body fat measurement on his treated thigh by 1 mm. I know 1 mm doesn’t sound like much but he isn’t measuring the circumference of his thigh with a tape measure but rather measuring his fat thickness and 1 mm is a big deal there. I almost bought the CelluThin on the spot.
But then something else caught my eye (ooh, shiny!) – a designer clothing site having a super clearance sale. (I know, I know we talked about this but I was just looking I SWEAR. I did not buy a thing. Just drooled on my keyboard.) This site, weirdly, was called MyShape. I say “weirdly” because fashion is never about my shape. Fashion could care less what shape I actually am. It’s all about making me fit into their shape. But this site is based off the idea that women should by clothing according to their actual body shape. Forget “apples” and “pears” – this site offers 7 different types to choose from.
Being the Cosmo-esque quiz lover I am, I read through all the body types and picked the one I thought I was but when I tried to go further into the store, it stopped me. They wanted measurements. And not just your bust-waist-hip that we’ve all got memorized but about 20 different measurements including everything from the breadth of your shoulders (another problem spot for me, holla for the pull-ups!) to the height of your knee above the floor. Curiouser than Alice in CotureLand, I pulled out my trusty tape measure and went to work.
15 minutes and a ton of numbers entered later, I closed my eyes and clicked submit. (Not really. Not even I’m good enough to web surf blind.) It gave me an “S” shape. (Another bonus: their shapes are just named by letter with no judgement word attached to it like “athletic” or “curvy” or “boyish.”) Turns out an S shape is “evenly proportioned.” Excuse me? My thighs aren’t transplants from Godzilla?
As kooky as it sounds it made me realize that maybe I don’t want skinnier thighs. What if I got my dream of an inch off each thigh – would my shoulders look freakishly large then? Would my hips look weird? What if the problem isn’t my body not fitting the clothes, like I’d assumed for so many years, but rather the clothes not fitting my body? I’m just going to come out and say it – for the first time I can remember – I like myself the way I am, thighs touching and everything. You can keep your cream.
Have any of you ever tried a spot-reduction technique or cream? Did it work for you? Do you remember a moment where you learned to like yourself? What sparked the change in you? Or are you still looking for it? Opinions on Tim Ferriss or The 4-Hour Body??
Written with love by Charlotte Hilton Andersen for The Great Fitness Experiment (c) 2011. If you enjoyed this, please check out my new book for more of my crazy antics and uncomfortable over-shares!

3
Jan

Rachel Cosgrove Female Body Breakthrough Results UPDATE


Having just finished Day 1 of our Fitness Challenge Experiment with Lindsey, the Gym Buddies and I all got our body fat percentage tested so we’d have our official results from November and December’s Rachel Cosgrove Experiment. I posted last night about my results from it but these new numbers were so stunning I had to add an update. Seriously, any of you who are still undecided about heavy lifting and minimal endurance cardio, this will be the push you need! Just try it!

Me: Today I got the same trainer to take my body fat as I did a month ago and I’m down 7% according to her measurements. (The other trainer gave me a drop of 5% on Saturday. Yes, I had my body fat tested twice in three days and yes I know that’s nuts.) So I lost 5-7% body fat, either of which is a massive success.
Allison: Down between 5% and 8%, which is impressive alone but considering she started at the very low end of the body fat scale makes it even more remarkable. (But don’t lose any more girl – you need some fat to live!)
Krista: Did the impressive feat of losing both weight (down 8.8 pounds) and fat (down 6%) by combining Rachel Cosgrove with Weight Watchers.
Daria: Lost 5% body fat and 2 pants sizes. In one month. Just amazing.

And for all of you on Team GFE for this month’s Experiment, don’t forget to do your first workout today! Just FYI, since Lindsey made the workouts to be done at home and we work out at the gym (free childcare!), we altered them by adding weights to each move.

Written with love by Charlotte Hilton Andersen for The Great Fitness Experiment (c) 2010. If you enjoyed this, please check out my new book for more of my crazy antics and uncomfortable over-shares!

28
Dec

Achieve a Trim Toned Body For Summer

So you have some fun outdoor activities planned this Summer, possibly some beach outings, where you’ll be wearing a bikini and or shorts, tank tops and basically showing off your body, but at the moment your body isn’t as toned, trim and beach body ready as you would like it to be.  Most people wait until the last minute to get their body ready for Summer. Then they go on extreme diets, or exercise for countless hours on worthless workouts to burn body fat and try to achieve that trim and toned, beach body.  There’s a better way to achieving that trim and toned, beach ready body, than using extreme diets and long worthless workouts!


First of all, the process of achieving you’re trim and toned beach ready body should start months before Summer. Achieving the trim and toned look, requires a low body fat percentage, so you need to burn/lose excess body fat. You should start to burn body fat early in the year with properly set up workouts, and a healthy diet, so as to avoid the pitfalls of last minute crash dieting and marathon workouts. 

Crash dieting makes you feel like crap, and marathon workouts can actually harm your body and lead to injury.  Starting the process of achieving your trim and toned beach ready body early, allows you to settle into small short term fat burning goals, that will lead to a big fat burning goal long term.

Keeping track of your fat loss is extremely important in staying on track to achieving your trim and toned beach body goal. Measuring your belly area is an easy way to track fat loss and keep track of your fat burning progress.  The belly area is where most people store a large amount body fat, and as you start burning body fat, that’s wear it will be easily measurable and trackable. 

Making a reasonable fat loss goal is also important. Let’s say you start on your fat burning workout and diet program in January, and you want to lose 4 inches around your belly area by Summer.  You’re goal only has to be about 1/2 an inch a month and you’ll be down 4 inches in plenty of time for Summer.  

So you’re motivated to start burning that body fat and getting your trim and toned beach ready body, but now what?  Well, if you’re a beginner, I would suggest doing the Fat X Program (FX 12) and completing a Fat X Project at a slow pace the first time through, since the workouts have been described as “no joke”.  Even though the workout program was designed to be done in 12 days, if you’re a beginner, doing the workout program over a longer period will still get you off to a good start on achieving that beach ready body in time for Summer.  

If you’re intermediate to advanced, I would suggest following the Fat X Program (FX 12)as closely as possible and try to complete the workouts in 12 days for the fastest results.  While health and fitness should be a long term goal, getting fast results is important for motivational purposes.  Those fast results early, will help you stay positive and on a healthy long term path to achieving and maintaining that trim and toned, beach ready body.

Whichever way you choose to get through the Fat X Program (FX 12), keep in mind that the specifics of the program are what make it special and set it apart from anything else out there.  I made an easy to follow guide to help you stay on track during the workouts.  The workout videos are free, but consider downloading the workout guide so that I can continue to fund Fat X 101 and bring you free tips to help you achieve your fat burning and fitness goals.  

If you’re in the Pasadena area, you can join my FX Boot Camp to help you achieve that trim and toned beach ready body.  

17
Dec

5 Great Things About My Body [And 1 Really Embarrassing Thing]

It seems like sometimes we fit bloggers get a bit obsessive about our bodies. (That would be the understatement of the year except that “Kanye West seems a bit off” wins every time.) We tweak what we put into our bodies and catalog what comes out. We monitor the various ways, times and parts of it that we exercise. We love it, we restrict it, we dream about it, we punish it. We can even get obsessive about not being obsessive about it. And really, it’s quite understandable. The human body is a miracle. It works like no machine ever could. When everything goes right – and the majority of the time it does – it is so seamless that I sometimes take it for granted.

Today I am all about the gratitude for my body.

My Top 5 Favorite Things About My Body


1. I have carried and birthed five children. Three were healthy, all were beautiful. Even in the death of my infant daughter, I was grateful to my body for taking care of her as best as it could and I was grateful to her body for sticking with me as long as she did. I was never so grateful for my ability to breathe as I was that first morning without her because even that tiny movement felt like a supreme effort.

2. I have a quick mind. When we talk about our bodies, we often neglect to think about the part that does all the thinking. I may forget some of the minutae (Oh hello YMCA? What’s that – I left one of my children there? Yes, now that you mention it I do only count three… Oh crap. True story.) but I have a great memory and love for the stories in my life, the epic tales that have made it worth every minute of my time on this ride.

3. I can run fast. I’m no Olympian but I can sprint to a toddler chasing a ball into the street like you wouldn’t believe. They carried me through ten miles of barfing and still got me over the finish line. My legs have never ever failed me when I have truly needed them. They are strong and powerful and beautiful.

4. I have a great immune system. This is one of those things that you don’t think about it until it isn’t working. The truth is that I rarely get sick. And when I do, I recover quickly.

5. I feel everything. Sometimes it’s hard living in this world when you are a very intense person but at the same time I firmly believe that that same intensity makes colors brighter, smells linger and the gentle words of a friend more meaningful. I cry a lot but I also laugh a lot and it all adds to the experience.

The Most Recent Way My Body Betrayed Me


At first I wasn’t going to share this story with you – I wasn’t going to share it with anyone – but then I spilled it over at I’m Not Superhuman (which you totally want to go and read the comments on that post – everyone shares their most embarrassing fitness moment and HOLY CATS they are funny.) And hey, embarrassment is better when shared, right Gym Buddy Who Won’t Be Named Whom This Has Also Happened To?
So, the downside of those bootylicious Fila pants I was raving about? The material is slick. Very slick. So slick that a pantyliner doesn’t stay firmly attached. A fact I didn’t notice until I saw the sticky white wad on the gym floor. Aiiieeee.

What is your favorite thing about your body? Has it betrayed you recently like mine did? Spill it- what’s your embarrassing gym moment??

Written with love by Charlotte Hilton Andersen for The Great Fitness Experiment (c) 2010. If you enjoyed this, please check out my new book The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everything for more of my crazy antics and uncomfortable over-shares!

9
Dec

The Index Of Weight Of A Body

Numerous medical researches have confirmed the fact that people with excess weight are in a greater degree subject to various diseases. Because of additional loading on an organism the risk of a stroke raises, problems with a metabolism can cause a diabetes and the osteoarthritis precondition directly is pressure of excess weight upon joints. Excess weight is a question not only of an external esthetics but also one of obstacles in a way to improve state of health. What are the reasons of occurrence of excessive weight? And is it necessary to consider the weight superfluous?

For today there is very simple way to learn whether you have excess weight. To make it is possible having calculated an index of weight of a body. It is very simple procedure which can be spent independently: measure and write down the growth (in centimeters) and weight (in kgs). Divide an indicator of weight of a body into the size of growth squared. That index of weight of a body represents the following formula: an index of weight of a body = Weight (kg) / [growth] 2.

Surplus of weight of a body begins with an indicator 25.0-29.9. Adiposity is in limits 30.0-34.9, and sharply expressed adiposity is more than 40 points.

If you an index of weight of a body makes more than 25 it is necessary to reflect on ways of stabilization of the weight. After all excess weight is not only cosmetology but also a medical problem. The additional weight of a body raises risk of formation of many diseases: an arterial hypertensia, a diabetes, a short wind and the accelerated palpitation and even to frustration of a psychoemotional condition.

But it is not necessary to despair at once. Many ways capable to help with struggle against excess weight are known. It is important to know that even insignificant reduction of weight of a body – from total – is capable to change state of health to 5-10 percent cardinally.

So, what are basic ways to get rid of excess weight?

Diet. Perhaps, all those who struggled with excess weight, at least once in life tried to go on a diet. For today hundreds of various diets are known but all of them can be classified to following signs:

Restriction of the use of some kinds of products or full refusal of them;
“Unloading” days at a usual food;
A separate food;
Starvation.
The effect from diets can be the most different: fast dump of excess weight or its gradual stabilization. Don’t forget that it is important to support the received result, gradually leaving a diet, and also in addition applying physical activities. Refusal of the bad habits, a healthy dream, absence of stresses and excessive emotional loadings is the big plus to any diet. And still.

Physical activities on an organism. Undoubtedly, useful way is not only struggle against excess weight but also it is simple improvements of state of health. But, again, physical activities should be supported by eutrophy. Effective they become when the quantity of the burned calories exceeds the quantity which has arrived during food intake.

The food additives, special medicines. It is a way of chemical influence on metabolism process on purpose to settle mastering of fats, fibers and carbohydrates and, it is investigatory, to relieve of an excess weight problem. In the same group it is possible to carry the preparations reducing appetite.

It is really surprising that today we live in the world where information quickly enhances the quality of our life. Seems like an easy statement, but for some reason people don’t use this power in their life.

If you are concerned about your weight, what can be easier than researching the HCG diet topic today? With the help of Internet. Review HCG diet first, then it is very easy to choose the best proposition on the market. Just Google HCG diet and do a quick reading on the sites and blogs.

Due to this if you are properly armed with the knowledge in your topic you can rest assured that you will always find the solution to any bad situation. So, please make sure to visit this blog on a regular basis or – the least time consuming way of doing it – sign up to its RSS feed. Thus you will have your hand on the pulse of the latest info updates here. Blogging can be helpful, you just need to understand how to use blogs for finding the best weight loss products which are available on the market today.

Related posts:

  1. Excess Weight And Diets
  2. Apple Diet For A Weight Loss
  3. Simple Way To Lose Extra Weight
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