Anyone who has been in a grocery store recently knows that food companies are tripping over themselves in the rush to introduce “low carb” versions of everything from bread to candy to soda to cereal. Do not think for a minute that these companies are motivated by the health interests of consumers. The reality is that they are mainly concerned with the wallets of consumers and will market anything that they think a gullible public will buy. Low carb junk food is still junk food.

I know some of you reading this may…

I am often asked which exercise is best for providing cardiorespiratory benefit and burning calories. If you are training for a specific event (i.e. running a 5k race, cross country cycling tour, swim meet, etc.), then you want to focus your efforts on exercises that closely mimic the event you are training for. For the other 99% of us though, the best exercise is the one that…

Despite what the infomercials and supplement marketers want you to believe, the reality is that fitness and long term weight loss requires effort. There are no magic pills or revolutionary gadgets that will “melt fat” or give you “six-pack abs” while you sleep. No, the simple truth is that fitness and weight loss requires effort and the main elements of that effort are to eat right and exercise.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of many to eat right and exercise, weight loss and fitness efforts often end in failure. Why does eating right and exercising work for some and not others? The answers can probably be found in… Read the rest of this entry

Despite what the infomercials and headlines on the covers of the magazines at the grocery checkout will tell you, there is no such thing as spot reduction. The truth is that the only way you can target fat loss on a specific area of your body is through liposuction or surgery. If you carry excess fat around your abdomen, for example, all of the crunches, leg raises, and sit ups in the world are not going to target that fat and make your waist smaller. They only exercise the muscles underneath that layer of fat, and if you think about it logically for a minute, you know exercising a muscle is not done to make it smaller. And those infomercial gadgets that promise to give you a slim, trim waistline if you just use them for minutes a day? They are lying to you in order…