http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/healthy-eating-for-a-harder-body.html http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/healthy-eating-for-a-harder-body.html Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500

I always make sure that my fridge is stocked with loads of fresh vegetables. My supplier will change depending on the season but I always try to have the following basics in the fridge.
I usually have zucchini, spinach, broccoli, red peppers and mushrooms. I use these with my breakfast eggs every morning. Sometimes I can put some lean chicken (diced) along with Swiss or goat cheese just to vary the thing a bit. I love coconut milk which is always in my fridge and I use this for mixing it in to my smoothies, yogurt, oatmeal. This stuff is great because it is full of healthy fats and gives a great creamy taste.

What else will you find in my fridge? I love cottage cheese and ricotta is a great favourite of mine as well. I can mix in chopped nuts and berries into these or into a yogurt for a great snack. As regards nuts, I use pecans, walnuts and almonds – these are a great source of ‘good’ fats. I also grind flax seeds in a coffee grinder and add them to a salad. You must use them fresh, though. Eggs are another favourite because they can increase your good cholesterol. As for peanut butter, well, I am not a great fan but I like to use almond butter with sesame seed butter. What about normal dairy butter ? Nothing wrong with it but is fairly dense in calories but if you eating healthily, why not?



What do I have in my kitchen cabinets? I have dark bitter chocolate for a start- always great for a quick jolt of insulin. Actually I am a chocoholic so this satisfies my desires but you have to watch it as it is fairly dense in calories but full of antioxidants. Anyway, it is much healthier than having a cream cake. I keep a few tomato sauces handy - this stuff is full of lycopene which is also very good if you have prostate gland troubles. Kidney beans are great as they will fill up wraps and they also are full of antioxidants so you will live a long time! Brown rice is another staple in my cabinet- the white rice is not a very healthy option. I have whole wheat pasta – again this is much healthier than the white pasta because the wholegrain has lots of fibre. Raw honey is great for sweetening things up and don’t bother with the highly processed stuff. The same goes for maple syrup – you want the organic kind. Aunt Jemina’s maple syrup is full of fructose so you will want to avoid that like the plague. Actually raw honey is great to add to a smoothie or yogurt when you want an insulin surge to put nutrients into your muscles. I also keep Stevia – this a natural sweetener and has none of that saccharine which you find in commercial sweeteners which are deadly. This is great for adding to tea. I am a great tea drinker and my favourites are green tea, oolong, white and rooibos. Coconut milk is also there – when I open it I put the rest in the freezer. My cereals are oat bran – again these are much healthier than the instant oatmeal kind because of the higher fibre content.

I hope you enjoyed looking inside my fridge and kitchen cabinets and that this will give you some great ideas when you go to your grocery store to stock up. Just eat some or most of the stuff above and you will be well on your way to a healthier, leaner you.

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Robert Locke is a fitness writer in Health.
Visit to receive your own personalized metabolic rate calculator as well as 4 secret hard-body workout routines - both FREE. Click on the Truth About Abs.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/get-off-the-plateau-by-varying-your-workout-routines.html http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/get-off-the-plateau-by-varying-your-workout-routines.html Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500


But if you change your workout routine very often and radically, then you may get bad results and all your efforts will be wasted. If you are not trying to improve in a consistent way on a specific set of reps and rest intervals, then your body cannot get used to the varied regime and has no basis on which to build in order to improve its condition. So, you have to stick at a current specific training method for a period of time so that you can see the results. Usually a time period of 4-8 weeks works best. That gives your body time to adapt to the method you are using and you will get the results you want.



Time for a change- but not a complete change! If you are reaching a plateau , say after 6 -8 weeks, then you will have to consider varying your whole routine and introduce new variables. Once you have decided on these you will have to stay with them for another period of 4-8 weeks. Just in case you have not read my article on training variables, these are some of the main points I wrote about. The order in which you do your exercises. You can change round the order – it will make life more interesting ! Then you can consider changing the exercise grouping – that is, whether you want to do tri-sets, super-setting or circuit training. You can consider changing the exercise TYPE – i.e. whether machine based or free weights. How about your stability base – you can change to standing, sitting, one-legged a stability ball. Then there are rest periods between sets, repetition speed and exercise angle (inclined, declined, flat or bent over). Last but not least, you may want to change the duration of your workout and vary also the frequency – two longer sessions or three shorter sessions and so on.



For example, this is the training program you are doing right now. Six different exercises which are grouped together in pairs – these are done as supersets. You are doing 10 sets of 3 reps with 30 seconds rest between each superset. You are taking note in your notepad of the weights used, sets and reps so that you can see the progress you are making. If, after six weeks, you find that you have reached a plateau, then it is time to change some of the variables I have mentioned above and stick with that program for another 4-8 weeks and see how you are doing.

So how do your change the program I have outlined above? Go for a classic 5 sets of 5 reps routine but this time you are going to them in tri-sets. That means three exercises done back to back and then repeated for the number of sets. You can decide to do the exercises in the tri-set with no rest period between them and then have arrest for 2 minutes between each tri-set so that you can recover your strength.

What we have done is an example of introducing variables in your program but within a consistent framework and that will get you great results.

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Robert Locke is a specialist in Wellness.
Visit to receive your own personalized metabolic rate calculator as well as 4 secret hard-body workout routines - both FREE. Click on the Truth About Abs.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/ultimate-hard-body-exercise-is-the-squat.html http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/ultimate-hard-body-exercise-is-the-squat.html Sun, 14 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500
Get out your dumbbells, kettlebells or other free weighted objects or just the weight of your own body. Forget the Smith machine or other squat machines. Remember squats should be done ONLY with free weights. Machines will do part of the work for you like stabilizing the weight for you. That means YOU work less and the results are not going to be so great.



Many trainers favour one squat exercise over the other but I am a firm believer in maintaining that a combination of all three gives the maximum benefit whether you want to improve athletic performance, lose fat or build muscle mass. The three types of squat are as follows. First we have the barbell back squat where the bar rest across the trapezius muscles of your upper back. Then we have the front squat where the bar is on the shoulders in front of the head. Then we have overhead squats where the bar is locked out in the snatch grip overhead. Some trainers maintain that in order to avoid back injury, the latter two are preferable. Generally the back squat is easier for most guys and I would say it is definitely easier than the front squat. I will deal with the overhead squat in a later article as many guys find that one the most difficult. If you are accustomed to the back squat, the front squat may take some getting used to so it is best to start off with a light weight than gradually increase it.

Here is how to perform the front squat. As you are in a more upright position, you will find that you are using your abdominals much more than when you do the back squat. The front squat concentrates more on the lower body but is also great for building strength and stability into the squatting movement. As some guys have difficulty in resting the bar on their shoulders here are some tips. There are two ways you can rest the bar on the front of the shoulders. One way is to step under the bar, then cross your forearms into an X position making sure you rest the bar on the little hollow that is created by the shoulder muscle near the bone. Keep your elbows high making sure that your arms are parallel to the floor. You can press the thumb side of your fists against the bar for support and to hold the bar in place.
Another way is to hold the bar by putting your palms facing up and the bar can rest on your fingers against the shoulders. Whatever method you use you have to make sure that your elbows remain high so that the weight does not fall. Also your upper arms should stay parallel to the ground while you are doing the squat. You can work out which method you feel more comfortable with. When you begin the squat, concentrate on the hips by sitting back and down and remembering not to put your weight on the balls of your feet but put it on your heels. As you squat you are aiming for a position where your thighs are going to be parallel to the floor. By keeping your weight towards your heels will help to prevent any knee injury and also make your knee joints stronger and more resistant to injury. Remember that if you do squats correctly, you will be strengthening your knees.
Always start off with an un-weighted bar or at least a very light weight while you are learning to do the exercise. You will be pleasantly surprised when you realise that this exercise works the abs quite a lot once you start doing it correctly. This is because you are in a more upright position than when you do the back squats.

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Robert Locke is a fitness writer in Health.
Visit to receive your own personalized metabolic rate calculator as well as 4 secret hard-body workout routines - both FREE. Click on the Truth About Abs.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/strength-training-secrets-for-the-body-you-want.html http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/strength-training-secrets-for-the-body-you-want.html Sat, 13 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500
I want to point out in this article that the body will only work at its peak when all the muscle groups are involved. That is when you perform a single movement, the muscles you are working are not performing in isolation- there are muscle groups in the neighbourhood which are involved and they are vital for you to perform that movement. The bigger guys help the smaller guys, if you like, in performing a complex movement. So, a much better strategy is to try to perform multi-joint complex movements rather that a single-joint exercise.
So, let us say you want to perform a single-joint exercise and you are trying to isolate some muscles. If you do that, you are not allowing the body to perform efficiently and it will be much more likely to suffer from injury. Basically you are building a collection of body parts and not thinking of the whole body as a powerful, wonderfully complex unit working together.
If you are really convinced that you want to isolate your biceps or whatever, then you can continue that type of training but be warned that you are likely to end up with a few bandaged joints, tendonitis, not to mention unwanted body fat. Now if you want a leaner fitter and muscular body all over, you should be trying to move away from this isolation training and aim for a body as a wholly efficient machine functioning on all cylinders which will have no trouble in performing complex movements- whether it be in athletics or just fairly simple routine jobs. Look at Maurice Green or Terrell Owens and you will note they are totally ripped just like the bodies of wide receivers and a lot of sprinters. I can tell you now that these guys do NOT do training for muscle isolation – they would be crazy to do so. Yet their results are amazing and don’t tell me you wouldn’t like a body like theirs.



It should be fairly obvious that if you are doing isolation training and concentrating on single- joint movements, the whole body is not involved and therefore your metabolism is not at its full peak. Now think of the complex movement situation and here the metabolism rate will be higher, more calories will be burned and also that means that you are going to produce testosterone and growth hormone which is what you are aiming for really. That in turn means you can lose body fat more easily.
Let’s look at an example. The machine leg extension is a single joint exercise that works mainly the quadriceps, can potentially cause knee joint instability in the long run, and doesn’t even burn that many calories. On the other hand, exercises like squats, lunges, step-ups, and deadlifts are all multi-joint complex movements that work hundreds of muscles in the body (including the quadriceps) as a functional unit, create more stable and strong joints in the long run (when done properly), and also burn massive quantities of calories compared to the single-joint exercises.

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Robert Locke is a fitness writer in Health.
Visit to receive your own personalized metabolic rate calculator as well as 4 secret hard-body workout routines - both FREE. Click on the Truth About Abs.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/food/stock-up-with-antioxidants-and-see-the-benefits.html http://www.articletrader.com/food/stock-up-with-antioxidants-and-see-the-benefits.html Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500 How do these antioxidants work when you are tired after a heavy workout? During exercise, the body produces a lot of free radicals and these are not such a great asset for your body as they tend to damage muscle tissue. So, what you need is to stock up with antioxidants before you start your workout. An hour beforehand is ideal. In that way, you are providing your body with the necessary defences against these nasty free radicals and thereby helping your body to reduce the damage done to the muscles by the free radicals.



Did you know that nuts and seeds are great sources of antioxidants ? Also berries – cranberries, cherries, blackberries, blueberries. Fruits such as strawberries and raspberries will give you a good supply too. Not forgetting beans, purple potatoes, grapes and red wine. Then there are various types of tea – oolong tea is very fashionable at the moment with good reason. But also white tea, black teas and red tea, also known as rooibos will do equally well. When you see all the hype about expensive antioxidant pill supplements, jus forget them because natural sources are always best and as you can see from the list above, there are plenty around.
Try this pre-workout snack an hour before you begin training. It is just loaded with antioxidants. Toast a slice of wholemeal bread and then spread some almond butter and blueberry jam on top. Add some sliced strawberries or fresh blueberries. Drink some tea – any one of those listed above – sweetened with a little honey. All these ingredients are just full of antioxidants which are going to keep you younger and protect your muscles. Don’t just take my word for it, try it. You can also be inventive and suit your own tastes – there are loads of foods you can choose from.

Every day, we are exposed to a large doses of free radicals. They come from exercise and workouts but also from the air pollution, smoke, sun, junk food not to mention chemicals and other nasty substances in the atmosphere. These free radicals are producing what is called oxidative stress and antioxidants are the answer. What we must try and do is to ensure that every meal or even snack has at least one antioxidant source in it. In this way we are getting a constant supply of these valuable antioxidants which will be great protection.



Antioxidants are just one important element in your diet. You will need to take them constantly so that you can be leaner and fitter. You will need them to live longer and fight off heart disease, strokes and diabetes which are the plague of the western world. You can learn a lot more by clicking on the link below.


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Robert Locke is a fitness writer in Health.
Visit to receive your own personalized metabolic rate calculator as well as 4 secret hard-body workout routines - both FREE. Click on the Truth About Abs.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/secrets-of-what-to-eat-after-your-routine-for-a-hard-lean-body.html http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/secrets-of-what-to-eat-after-your-routine-for-a-hard-lean-body.html Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500
This could well be the most important meal for you.



WHAT should you eat? You want to restore the muscle glycogen that you have just lost and quickly digestible carbs are your best bet. You also need some protein to give your body the amino acids which are essential to repair your muscle tissue. So an easily digested meal made up of carbs and protein will spike your insulin levels which in turn will trundle some nutrients into those muscle cells.

Try to have a snack or meal which contains 300-500 calories. If you are female and weigh about 120lbs, then you will need 300 calories. A man who weighs 200lbs will definitely need about 500 calories. Try twice the rate of carbs to protein with a maximum of four times as many carbs as protein. You need fats too but NOT in your post workout meal – you can have those with all your other meals.

Your digestion will be slowed down by fat so best to avoid it at this time.
You do not really need any of those post workout supplements which you see in all the fitness magazines. Go for something natural. Here are some ideas:- any fruit, raisins, honey or maple syrup will all spike your insulin levels which in turn is going to restore your levels of muscle glycogen and encourage the anabolic effect which will build your muscles. For the protein bit, I usually try low fat yogurt or denatured whey protein isolate. Try a smoothie recipe for some great post workout meals

Chocolate Banana. This has about 450 calories, 35 grams of protein and 75 grams of carbs, just .5 grams of fat. Blend the following ingredients :- 1 cup water, ½ cup skim milk, one and a half frozen bananas, 2 tbsp organic maple syrup, and 30 grams chocolate whey protein powder.

If you really want to lose some body fat,
you should remember that all your daily meals should be the opposite of the post workout snack. What are you eating during the day, then ? During the day, your meals have a low glycemic carbs, lots of slow release protein which is easy to digest, healthy fats and carbs which are slowly digested. That is in stark contrast to the post workout snack, where you are going for high glycemic carbs, quickly digested proteins and hardly any fat.
So, if you are really serious about getting leaner and fitter, try out the points I have mentioned above. Just think, you will be able to satisfy your sweet tooth and still not put weight on around your belly ! You will be having sweet things at the right time and they will be helping your body to repair the muscle tissue.

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Robert Locke is an expert in Health.
Visit to receive your own personalized metabolic rate calculator as well as 4 secret hard-body workout routines - both FREE. Click on the Truth About Abs.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/workout-routine-needs-a-makeover-better-and-faster-results.html http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/workout-routine-needs-a-makeover-better-and-faster-results.html Mon, 08 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500
This article will help to broaden your mind, I hope, and show you some ways of varying your training routine. There are lots of things you can do to vary your training routines so that you can get the most benefit for building muscle and losing fat. Some people think that changing their sets and reps will do the trick. But how about changing the following :-

Change training frequency and time of training session.
Change exercise type – free weight or machine based, multi-joint or single joint?
Vary the amount of resistance and time under tension
Change your stability base – sitting, standing, one – legged ?
Shuffle your exercise angle – upright, bent over, inclined or flat?
Change your rest periods between sets and rep speed.
Change your grouping – go for circuit training, super- setting or tri- sets?

So, a lot of things to take into account in order for you to get great results. If you have a good personal trainer he is going to ensure that your training does not get too repetitive or boring. I want to give you a few examples to get your mind round this concept so that you can create better workouts and get faster results yourself

How about 10 sets of 3 , with just a mere 20 seconds of rest between the sets?

Have you considered using a lighter than normal weight – try 1 set of 50 reps for each exercise.
Go for close to your maximum weight and 10 sets of 1 rep, with 30 seconds rest between sets.
Try a heavier weight and go for 6 sets of 6 reps and you can do a sprint on the treadmill for 3 minutes between each set of weight lifting.
Select one full body exercise – that would be , say, a dumbbell squat and presses. Do that exercise for a full 20 minutes. That is pretty intense but it does vary the routine.
Do a workout based on your bodyweight only – so go for the push-ups, pull-ups, chin-ups and dips. Add in a few squats and lunges.
Do a full circuit (12 different exercises) which cover the whole body –no rest between exercises.
Next time round, do exactly as above but change the order round – last one first and so on.

Vary your speeds – on one workout go for faster repetition – on the next one go at dead slow speed
Try to vary your weekly routine – one week you can do three workouts of an hour each. Next week, change that to five shorter workouts of just 30 minutes each.
In this article I have outlined some of the many ways you can vary your training routines which will get you results faster and you won’t turn into a gym robot!

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Robert Locke is an expert in Wellness.
Visit to receive your own personalized metabolic rate calculator as well as 4 secret hard-body workout routines - both FREE. Click on the Truth About Abs.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>