Lose Fat With Equipment Free At-Home Cardio Workouts

We throw up a lot of self-imposed barriers to our fitness success. One of the most common refrains I hear is the "I don't have time" excuse. I'll concede that time is becoming ever more precious and that we all lead very busy lives. But the truth is that fitness takes a lot less time than you would think. You can get a highly effective fat-loss workout in the comfort of your own home in less than half an hour.

The fitness industry has us well conditioned to believe we need to fight our way through traffic to get to an overcrowded gym where we spend a ridiculous amount of time waiting for machines so that we can do exercises which are barely effective and certainly not time-efficient. I can understand how, given this circumstance, many people would be able to easily convince themselves that they don't have the time to train.

But let's set the record straight. Treadmills are not the most effective means of fat loss. Elliptical machines, stationary bikes and stair steppers are about the least time-efficient means of getting in shape. If you want fat loss in a hurry, put together circuits of resistance based exercise that quickly raise intensity levels to a high level for relatively short periods of time.

This approach is sometimes referred to as Metabolic Conditioning. It is a cousin of Interval Training, but isn't a slave to running, biking and other "aerobic" conditioning methods. You can put these circuits together with anything. My favorite tools for this are Clubbells, kettlebells, sandbags and of course bodyweight exercises.

The advantage of using bodyweight exercise is the ability to take your workout routine with you wherever you go. Do you work long hours? Catch a workout in your office. Travel a lot for work? Train in your hotel room. Scared of people and hide in your apartment all day? You get the idea...

When setting up your training circuit, you'll need to work with the Rate of Perceived Effort. Using a scale of 1-10 (10 being extreme effort), you should aim for an RPE of 8-10. This will get you into a zone where you are creating a metabolic disturbance. This means your body will be working for hours - or even days - afterwards in order to bring you back to your original state. This means continued fat burning after the session is done. You won't get that with your traditional cardio. The minute you step off the treadmill the process is done.

You can set up your session in a hundred different ways, but here is one extremely simple example for you to try. Do the following 3 exercises one after the other without rest. You have one and a half minutes to do all the exercises and get some rest in before the next round starts. No matter what, when one and a half minutes is over, the next round starts. So, if it takes you 60 seconds to do all your reps, you get 30 seconds of rest.

Here is your circuit:
Pushups x 10 repetitions
Sit-ups x 10 repetitions
Bodyweight Squat Jumps x 10 repetitions

Repeat this circuit for 8 rounds and you'll soon see that you can pack a very intense and simple exercise session into a very short 12 minute package.

This is an extremely simplistic example as far as exercise selection goes. But these are exercises that most people will be familiar with. In truth, the sky (and your imagination) is the limit as to the types and variety of bodyweight exercise that is available to you.

Visit this page to sign up and receive two free manifestos containing my favorite bodyweight exercises.

Adam Steer is a Head Coach of the Circular Strength Training® system. He is also a fitness trainer and coach in Quebec city and an avid blogger on the subject of health first fitness. Adam has delivered workshops to fitness professionals in Singapore, Australia, Washington State, Philadelphia and New York City.

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Herbal Weight Loss Supplements

Weight loss products is a big industry in this country. So many folks need to lose weight that producers of supplements and pills that supposedly "melt the weight" away proliferate reputedly more each year. The situation could be a bit distressing if you need to find the best weight loss supplements to your diet that can help reduce your weight and make you slimmer but you do not need to become involved with some con product that takes your money and doesn't deliver results.

One way to try to cut thru the hype of all the weight loss products is to be very skeptical of any product that claims it can get a huge amount of weight off in a very short time. When they have "testimonials" of people who lost 30 pounds in 3 weeks, that is either a fake testimonial or a very unhealthy product. The sole way you can lose weight at that rate of speed is to become very sick or to take something that is unhealthy for you. Our bodies are not built to change at that rate of speed. If you did lose ten pounds or more in a week, the effects on your general health would be ravaging. And because your body would not have lost the weight naturally, the weight will not stay off.

Another claim that is created by many weight loss supplement products is that you can lose an outstanding quantity of weight without changing your diet and with no exercising. This is one of the most prevalent weight loss myths that takes on a new complexion almost every week. One product has discovered a puzzle herb in the depths of Africa that makes the weight fall off. Another one is employing a space age formula which has been a top secret with NASA till now and this weight loss company were the ones to get it. If the phrase "give me a break" springs to mind when you hear these claims, your skepticism is well placed.

The unhappy thing is these products employ a system of nearly making you unwell to get that weight off without diet or exercise. If you choose to try one of these products, notice straight away the strict rules about when to take the pills so you don't make yourself sick straight away. What happens is the pills will cause your metabolism to race so you will literally shake and sweat the weight off as you rest after eating a meal. The supplement is literally making you unwell to get rid of the weight. And like all supplements that promise a lot for small effort, the weight will not stay off even if you lose weight short term.

The best weight loss system uses supplements to healthy diet that causes the good foods you eat to be maximized by your body. They are natural supplements that use food products to supplement food products. And the product makes no claims of fast weight loss or that you can skip good diet and exercise programs. All good weight loss systems are grounded in long term adherence to a lifestyle of diet and exercise. If you recognize that and use supplements based on commonsense and healthy decisions, that might be a supplement that truly works so you lose weight and keep it off as you continue to live well.

Visit us at http://guide-to-vitamins-and-supplements.mysurehealth.com

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Unilever To Add Hoodia to Products

Diet products that are simply lower in fat, sugar and calories aren't as hot as they once were. "Functional" is the new frontier for food and beverage companies looking to grab the attention and dollars of the growing number of overweight consumers at home and abroad, confirms a new Euromonitor International Trend Watch report, "Opportunities Within Functional Weight Management Products.'

In response to consumer trends, weight-management products are undergoing a "profound shift" away from merely "better-for-you" (BFY) or "lesser evil" reduced fat/sugar offerings and toward products with ingredients promising benefits such as appetite suppression and increased metabolism/calorie burning, report Euromonitor's analysts.

In fact, whereas such ingredients and claims were once mainly the bailiwick of those diet supplements promoted on TV via startling before-and-after photos of women and men in bathing suits, mainstream companies are increasingly looking to get in on the action.

The reason: Worldwide BFY packaged foods sales reached $116 billion, and beverages reached $36 million last year, but together, their annual growth rate was only marginally higher than the 2 seen by the overall packaged F&B market, according to Euromonitor. Meanwhile, fortified/functional F&B's continued to see growth of about 10% in 2007.

A few major U.S.-based F&B's have already stuck their toes into the functional waters. Kellogg has been particularly active with its Special K brand, including its recent launches of Special K Sustain cereal with fiber and soy protein and its "innovative--especially for a cereal company"--Special K20 Protein Water mixes and bottled waters. Both products hone in on the "satiety" trend, points out Euromonitor.

The joint Coca-Cola/Nestle launch of Enviga in the U.S. in late 2006 stimulated controversy and lawsuits with its "negative calorie" claim. But that hasn't dissuaded PepsiCo from introducing, with a less aggressive marketing/claims approach, both Diet Pepsi Max (zero-calorie cola with ginseng and extra caffeine to provide "a kick of energy") and Tava--another zero-calorie, carbonated beverage fortified with vitamins and chromium and offered in three "exotic flavor blends."

Smaller and medium-sized functional weight-management players in the U.S. include Marquis Platinum's new Vitality Drink with green-tea extracts, marketed as an energy drink with a calorie-burning formulation; and Scientific Response's dairy-based Drink & Shrink chocolate shake, which contains hoodia gordonii extract. The latter, reports Euromonitor, is sold as a dietary supplement rather than a food product "in order to get around much stricter regulations on herbal extracts permitted in foods, as set out by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which would not allow hoodia as a functional ingredient in food products."

Unilever is reported to be planning the launch of a hoodia weight-management product under its Slim-Fast brand by 2011, according to Euromonitor.

Functional weight-management F&B products are already quite prevalent in other countries, including Spain and Japan.

Euromonitor explains that functional weight-management products fall under three broad categories/benefits claims: products that suppress appetite/induce a feeling of satiety and include functional ingredients such as chromium, hoodia gordonii, fat emulsions, added protein and fiber; products that boost metabolism and include ingredients such as conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), omega-3 and green-tea extracts; and products that inhibit digestion of macronutrients (carbs, fats) or their conversion into body fat with elements such as hydroxycitric acid (HCA).

Here's a summary of the most promising areas of opportunity for F&B's in the functional weight-management arena, per Euromonitor's analysis:

* Dairy: Dairy products provide the "ideal" physical and marketing medium for the addition of many types of functional ingredients, in part due to the global probiotic yogurt boom. "Consumers the world over are more than ready for the next line of functional dairy products," says Euromonitor, noting that, for example, one-shot yogurt drinks "lend themselves especially well to employing a satiety-enhancing positioning." Such products are already available in other countries.

* Beverages: In addition to the carbonated and other drinks already noted, waters are ripe for functional marketing because of "the bottled water industry's well-communicated rehydration message" and because bottled waters in general are already associated with weight management in consumers' minds, reports Euromonitor. Again, waters with weight-management-purporting benefits are available in other countries.

* Bakery: Since the reduced- or low-carb craze began to wane in 2004, marketers have largely failed to capitalize on the "golden opportunity" in weight-management-positioned carb products, says Euromonitor. "Weight-management products ideally need to have a daily presence in consumers' lives if they are to stand any chance of being effective"; hence, the opportunity in products like bread or breakfast cereals, say the analysts.

Aside from Kellogg in the U.S., Japanese manufacturers have introduced soluble-fiber cake bars that produce a long-lasting feeling of satiety, Euromonitor reports. But chromium, "which is promoted in the dietary supplements realm as fighting off sugar cravings, would make an ideal weight management ingredient to be added to staple bakery products," and HCA, "which is purported to inhibit the conversion of carbohydrates into fat, offer "great potential" for carb-rich, low-fat bread and breakfast cereals, it points out.

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