As a fitness coach one of the most common questions, I get asked is how to improve the appearance of one’s midsection. Many people have been misled into believing that if they do hundreds of crunches and sit-up’s that they’ll end up with a tight, flat stomach.

The truth is that’s not the recipe! While crunches and sit-up’s can be part of well- balanced fitness regiment, you don’t have to do a ton of them, and they’re certainly not the path for fat loss. In my professional opinion, ab isolation exercises are just one piece of the total puzzle in building a strong core and flat stomach that functions as good as it looks.

Here is a summary of my position on ab training: 

1. Most people are far too obsessed with traditional ab exercises (sit-up’s and crunches) and fail to understand the actual role your abs play in human movement. The primary role of your abdominal muscles is to stabilize the trunk (lumbar-pelvic region) so you can do...

Adequate sleep and recovery is one of the seven essential components needed for effective fat loss and body transformation. Without enough sleep your body stays in an on-going catabolic state where hormonal imbalances essentially block fat loss. As a double whammy, you’ll also be more likely to gain weight with stress related eating habits. Research has shown that individuals who do not get enough sleep are, get this, a whopping 73% more likely to be overweight than those getting 7-8 hours per night!

In today's blog post I’m going to explain just exactly why this happens along with providing you some tips on how to improve your sleep patterns and therefore your weight loss. The first principal we must come to terms with is that health and body composition hinges on sufficient rest and recovery. The old adage, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” may sound cool but the truth is you’ll just get there quicker. You can only push the human body so hard for...

Although most all exercise is beneficial for improving your health, is there one form of exercise that trumps all others in helping to stabilize blood sugar levels and improve insulin sensitivity? In today’s post I want to discuss this topic and share with you my thoughts based on personal experience and research.

Before we dive right in, I want to be perfectly clear with a few things up front. When I find a particular methodology with fitness training to provide a positive result and then I make reference of what I found, it doesn’t mean the science is settled and the case is closed. For crying out loud, haven’t we had enough of that lately? Take the information for what it’s worth and do your own experimentation and evaluation of the research associated with it.

I want to clarify this in attempts to avoid the senseless debates that sometimes come up. There are a lot of people, so called “experts” included, that have very rigid positions on...

Are there really any true bona-fide secrets to shedding unwanted body fat, getting fit, and improving your health? There will be those who disagree, but after twenty plus years in the personal fitness training industry, I believe the answer is unequivocally no. Now this isn’t to say that we don’t uncover and learn new things on an on-going basis with exercise and nutrition science, but I will go out on a limb and say that you shouldn’t expect a pill anytime soon that will get you in exceptional shape or health without any effort.

Still, it seems that it’s part of human nature to desire the shortcut, the quick and easy way, the path less demanding. The first step towards success is recognizing that pull and not trying to deny it. You see it’s not like you’re going discover one day that you find if more pleasurable wearing yourself out with a workout than putting your feet up and taking it easy. It’s more like, you’ll associate the...

You’ve undoubtedly heard the advice about writing down the foods you eat when trying to lose weight. Journaling has long been considered by many weight loss experts as an effective, yet strangely often underutilized strategy for lifestyle and behavioral change. It appears there may be something to this as confirmed through research. A research study by the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research showed that individuals who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept no records.

The study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and included over 1,685 participants. Similarly, the National Weight Control Registry which tracks over 5,000 individuals who have lost large amounts of weight and maintained that weight loss, found that an overwhelming majority of successful study participants tracked what they ate.

The research seems pretty clear that writing down what you eat improves results. It may seem like boring and tedious work,...

You may have heard before that excess belly fat is directly related to increased cortisol levels. This is true and it’s arguably one of the deadliest combinations for the human body because of the connection to increased visceral fat (the fat that surrounds your organs) and high levels of inflammation. If you have a significant amount of belly fat your chances for developing insulin resistance and type II diabetes nearly doubles!

What you may not be aware of is the reason behind the connection of belly fat and cortisol. The objective of this post is to explain the details behind the connection and provide you with action steps to reverse it.

For starters let’s look at how cortisol levels get increased in the first place. While cortisol gets a bad rap it serves a beneficial role in the human body. Cortisol is a hormone that is secreted by the adrenal glands in times of stress. The stress may be psychological or physiological. A little bit of stress like produced during...

There is a common longstanding belief that cardio is the best type of exercise if your goal is to lose weight. This is easy to observe if you walk into most any health club during peak hours. You’ll often find most of the individuals who appear to be exercising for weight loss on the cardio equipment and not so many in the free weight training area.

I believe one of the main reasons behind this is the faulty belief system that in a vacuum, cardio is best for weight loss and strength training is best for muscle building.

While cardio is certainly beneficial for weight loss and obviously strength training is beneficial for building muscle, I’d make the argument that strength training is best for BOTH muscle building and fat loss.

It’s been my experience over the past twenty plus years in the fitness training industry that the key component in a lean body transformation is unequivocally strength training.

Therefore, if you’re goal is fat loss, it should be at...

If you have symptoms such as regularly feeling tired and fatigued along with recurring allergy issues, suffering from anxiety, difficulties with concentrating, poor sleep patterns, and find it difficult to lose weight, you may be dealing from hidden adrenal fatigue also known as hypoadrenia.

This is part one in a three-part series that I’ll be doing on adrenal fatigue and how to correct it. First, we should develop a basic understanding of the adrenal glands and what they do. There are two adrenal glands located on top of the kidneys. These glands are involved several physiological functions including blood sugar regulation, central nervous system processes, cardiovascular function, hormone production, gastrointestinal function, and liver function to name a few.

The adrenal glands also play an important role in helping the body respond appropriately to stressors. They produce hormones in a complex symphony that is orchestrated with two other glands in the brain called the...

There is nothing quite as frustrating as a scale that just won’t seem to budge. You’re working out on a regular basis and watching what you eat but it’s simply not working. When fat loss stalls, most people will attempt to “fix it” by exercising more and eating less. This will result in only more frustration.

Let’s put an end to this madness once and for all! I am going to help you stop the confusion and frustration right now by sharing with you some real secrets of fat loss. I’ve listed below the top seven reasons I’ve found why you’re probably not losing fat.

1. You’re Eating Foods That Cause Inflammation

No I’m not talking about eating too much processed, refined, junk food. If you need me to tell you that then you’ve been living in a cave. But you may be surprised to learn that eating even “healthy” foods like whole grains can cause bloating and inflammation. Many women have digestive issues with...

The secret for women to obtain a healthier, firmer, and more toned looking body is no longer a secret. For years, women have traditionally relied on a belief that combining aerobic activity with a low calorie diet would be the most effective means for changing their shape.

Unfortunately, most have found out after painstaking effort that this practice doesn’t work very well. The fact is that low calorie diets only punish the body by compromising necessary nutrition and significantly lowering metabolism, thus making weight loss more difficult. The quick weight loss that occurs in low calorie diets often includes the quick loss of muscle tissue.

This is ineffective for several reasons. It is the lean muscle tissue that will keep your metabolism high through out the day. By sacrificing lean muscle you’ll make it difficult to lose body fat. Changing your shape always starts with increasing lean muscle. Remember you can’t tone fat only muscle! 

I have always been...