Friday, July 09, 2010

Body Transformation Roadmap

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/3vOmK)
So I've been a little delayed with technical problems for the release of the new Naked Nutrition Insider. But every will get fixed this weekend so we'll be a go on Monday. In the meantime I wanted to share with you the featured article from Janurary's issue. The article focuses on how to achieve your New Years Resolution Weight Loss Goal and since we are a little over 1/2 way through 2010 I thought it would be a good one to share. Maybe you need a shot in the arm to refocus on the goals you set Jan 1st of this year or maybe you never set any...either way this article will give you a road map on how to achieve what you want.

Resolution Roadmap


Strong, Fit, & Healthy Featured Article by Mike Roussell
Things are going to be different now right? 2010, you're going to lose those last 10lbs, create a new positive routine, end an old negative habit. While new year resolutions may be cliché and lots of people make fun of them, saying that they are bound to fail so why bother setting them - I think new year resolutions are the most powerful motivation injectors that you will receive this year (second maybe only to your birthday). Why, because as Billy Crystal's character in City Slickers told Daniel Stern, you get a do-over.

Identification


In the opening editorial of last month's issue of SF&H, I encouraged you to audit your life and figure out what isn't working. If you remember I shared two things that weren't working in my life. One of these was my inability to consistently accomplish my professional writing first thing in the morning when most fresh and alert. After identifying this problem my resolution was to get up before my family does and write for 60-90 minutes each day. I'm happy to tell you that I'm writing this article at 5:37am.

So, what isn't working for you? I had a client once who was in sales and spent a good portion of his day driving around from sales presentation to sales presentation. The problem that he was having was that as a result of all the driving he either ate out or on-the-go in his car, with both options resulting in him consistently making bad food choices. Once we identified this problem we were able to make a specific plan to deal with this road block. All the excellent nutritional advice in the world would not have worked with this client had we not first addressed the primary issue of his unique daily schedule and how to incorporate good foods into it.

If you haven't already, then sit down to do a quick audit of your life and identify what is not working. Once you have your list, I'll help you move forward and problem solve three main areas of your life, mindset, diet, and training streamlined so that you can reach your 2010 goals.

Mindset


When it comes to diet and losing weight (a very popular New Year's Resolution of course), the mindset that you need to be successful is often overlook and rarely given enough attention (not nearly as much time as you would spend on your diet or training). This is a mistake as your thoughts frame your feelings and inevitably your actions. If you think of yourself as an overweight person that eats fast food and other junk, then in the end you are going to revert back to that behavior as it is continuous with your own mental image of yourself. World famous speaker and author Brian Tracy refers to this phenomenon constantly in his teaching. He encourages people to identify habits of lean people and do those things, make these your habits and image of yourself and you will create a lean physique. I call this the principle of inevitable results.

In Your Naked Nutrition Guide I talk about people in fitness and advertising professions that plan and pack all their meals at the beginning of the week so that as the week goes on all they need to do is pull out that predetermined meal and eat it. This is without a doubt one of the behaviors that allows them to maintain such low body fat percentages. See yourself as that person, or the person you are striving to be, maybe it’s an old picture of yourself much thinner. Research has shown that one strategy of people who successfully lose weight and keep it off, is always having a mental image of what they want to look like to keep them on track and moving toward their goals.

If in your life audit you find that you lose steam on your goals after 2-3 weeks or you find that you are constantly doubting your ability to lose the weight, focus on putting the 'inevitable results’ principle into action. Resources:Goals by Brian Tracy and The New Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz.

Diet


As a reader of this newsletter, hopefully you have a pretty good grasp on your diet. However, you'll undoubtedly be able to identify 1-2 areas where you are having problems. I would feel comfortable in assuming that if you are having trouble reaching a weight loss, muscle building, or health related goal then nutritional compliance is an issue. Please start tracking how well you are sticking to your plan. On page 11 (in the Key Concepts section), or issue 3 of SF&H, I included a link to a downloadable compliance tracking sheet. If you haven't already, then download that file, print it out, stick it to your refrigerator, and start tracking. This one habit will probably make a bigger impact on your success than anything else.



The next piece nutritionally is to identify where you are in the Stages of Nutrition. This is important as it will let you know what kind of nutrition plan you need to develop based on your current nutritional habits. I have made my 50 minute Stages of Nutrition presentation available to you as an added members bonus in the Strong, Fit, and Healthy members section at MikeRoussell.com

Training




Regardless of your health goal this year, whether it is to decrease your risk for heart disease, lose 10 lbs, or gain 20 lbs of muscle, exercise needs to be an integral component. Not only will exercise help you burn more calories and build more muscle it will also keep you invested in your plan. While I don't have scientific studies to support this, my own experiences and observations have shown me that people adhere to their diets better while involved in an exercise program. I believe that it has to do with supporting your commitment to one goal in several different areas of your life. If you are staying on your diet AND training hard, why would throw your diet out the window on Wednesday night for a medium pizza when you just spent 60 minutes at the gym working to burn calories and fat - the two actions do not jive.

The Metabolic Workout of the Month is a great place to start getting ideas and variety for your workouts. Most of the workouts in this section can be added to your current training program in place of traditional cardiovascular activity (running, biking, etc). When picking a training program two very inexpensive but very effective options you should look at are ‘Power Training’ by Robert Dos Remedios, ‘The New Rules of Lifting’ and ‘The New Rules of Lifting for Women,’ both by Alwyn Cosgrove and Lou Schuler with the later also co-authored by Cassandra Forsythe, and finally ‘The Female Body Breakthrough’ by Rachel Cosgrove. These books are readily available at Amazon.com or Barnes and Nobles and will provide you with top notch training programs to help you reach your health and fitness goals in 2010.

Regardless of what you choose for an exercise program, the one thing that you must vow to do is MOVE MORE. Over the Christmas/New Year’s break when my family traveled back to Vermont, I had the chance to meet up with a previous mentor at the University of Vermont. She has recently lost 25lbs, looks and feels great. In addition to tracking everything she ate, she attributed her weight loss to moving more. She set a goal of taking 10,000 steps everyday. I commented on how that must be really hard if not impossible as her job requires a lot of desk work. She replied that she realized that but had to make it work so she forced her self to take breaks during the day to go on short walks. It is these kinds of actions and commitments that make the difference. Move More this year. Go to the nearest sporting goods store and pick up a pedometer, track your activity levels. While pedometers are not the world's most accurate devices they will give you a good idea of how much you move each day relative to the previous one. If you need more convincing read the "Key Concepts: NEPA" article at the back of Issue 3.

Action




The one thing left for you to do is IT, or as Nike's slogan commands "just do it." Identify what isn't working in your life in the areas of your Mental Muscle, Diet, and Exercise programs. Practice the principle of inevitable results. Vow to track your dietary compliance all 52 weeks this years. Find out where you are in the stages of nutrition and build your nutrition plan accordingly. Finally commit to a top quality exercise program and move more everyday.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Free Issue of Strong, Fit, & Healthy to Download

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/rHvML)
I hope that everyone had a great holiday weekend. We had a classic 4th of July Weekend full of BBQ, the twins running around in the backyard and playing in the kiddie pool, and lots of sun (I needed a good vitamin D infusion).

Before I get into the free download info I wanted to make sure that you checked out my last 2 blog posts (they are a 2-part series) on Stage 4 Surges. I think that it is one of the best blogs of the year here at the site and hope that you will find it extremely useful. Check it out here --> Stage 4 Surges.

Onto today (and tomorrow). Starting tomorrow, I will be re-opening and re-releasing my Naked Nutrition Insider Program. I have been working on this for several months and if you have been a reader for a long time then you will really like the updated program. The flagship component of the Naked Nutrition Insider Program is the Strong, Fit, & Healthy Newsletter. I'm kind of a put your money where your mouth is kind of guy so I figured that the best way to see what the Strong, Fit, & Healthy newsletter was all about would be to give you a copy. So below you can download the first ever issue of Strong, Fit, & Healthy.

Over the next couple days I will be posting some more great health and nutrition info to build on the this free issue and other benefits of being a Naked Nutrition Insider. So look for my email tomorrow as I have put together an amazing deal for you. In the meantime  download Strong, Fit, & Healthy below.

Enjoy!


Download Here

Monday, July 05, 2010

Stage 4 Surges - Minimizing Body Fat the Fastest Way Possible & Keeping It Low

(My Original Blog Post: http://mikeroussell.com/stage-4-surges-minimizing-body-fat-the-fastest-way-possible-keeping-it-low/)
In the previous post I started talking about the idea of timed periods of intensity built into your year long training program called Stage 4 Surges. The name comes from the fact that you would move from the 3rd Stage of Nutrition to the 4th Stage of Nutrition. These surges center on your current life situation and motivation levels.

Let's finish this discussion by looking at a different approach to peaking so that instead of peaking you will instead plateau at your idea body weight.

When you are ready, when your motivation is high, when your plan is set...move up to the 4th Stage of Nutrition, count calories or portions, be perfect….but only do it for a finite period of time. 4, 6, 8, or 12 weeks. Don’t diet until you are burned out. Lose the weight and leave on a high note. Maybe your goal is to lose 30lbs and after 4 weeks you’ve only lost 15lbs but you are completely spent. Your compliance is slipping, your motivation is low - Don’t force the issue. No one can keep up that level of intensity and focus forever without losing ground in other aspects of their lives. Plus, you don’t want to stop dieting because you just “can’t stick with it anymore.”



To steal from the overused sports phrase, it isn’t ‘Go Hard or Go Home’ it is ‘Go Hard then Go Home.’

Transition back to a healthy but less rigid approach (i.e. the 3rd Stage of Nutrition), instead of reverting to eating garbage food as many people end up doing, until you  feel your fire comeback (and it will a lot sooner if you keep the weight off and don’t gain it back). When it does, move back up to Stage 4 and get back into attack mode.

Here’s what’s going to happen, despite the fact that you will back off on your dietary control moving down from Stage 4 to Stage 3, you are probably still going to lose some weight. This makes you different than 99% of other people that just ‘finished dieting.’ After a couple weeks of maintaining or losing more weight you’ll really become motivated. I'm willing to bet that the normal course of events after you finish a diet is to slowly gain the weight back, imagine how motivated you would be if the weight kept coming off.

Take that motivation and energy, re-commit yourself to a Stage 4 Surge and you’ll take another huge leap towards your goal. This stair stepping approach to long term and permanent weight loss success is much more effective than the usual 2 steps forward, 3 steps back approach that plagues most people.

I’m not telling you to start tomorrow, tighten your dietary control and go at it. I’m telling you to listen to your body, look at how your life (family, job, etc.) is going, and when you see an opening for when you can triple your efforts and focus DO IT.

If you are ready to ratchet things up then the best resource I have for you is Warp Speed Fat Loss 2.0 but it isn’t for everyone and it isn’t for you until you see that opening in your life and are ready to go for it. When it is over, don’t go back to eating junk, scale it back to consistently making healthy choices, until you are ready for another sprint. It is the middle of the year now. When December 31st comes around you are going to look at how much weight you lost between Jan 1st and December 31st. It isn’t going to matter if you lost 20lbs during May but gained it all back by November. Trying to force the issue with unnecessary dietary control 24/7/365 is how you do that. If you want to be 10, 20, or 30lbs lighter on December 31st then maximize your winners.