It’s December 31, the last day of the 2000s. It’s always fun, and often quite moving, at times like these to take a look back and remind ourselves how far we’ve come, to recall where and what we were and how and why we are different now. These exercises can seem a little cheesy, but I think they’re quite useful. Some change comes so gradually that you hardly recognize it’s occurring at all. With a little self-reflection you can acknowledge that real change has occurred, be proud of it and own it, and then commit to further personal growth.
I was inspired by this Mark’s Daily Apple forum thread. In it forum user bonesheal asked, “What did YOU learn this year?” Seeing that Mark’s Daily Apple may have played a small part in raising the consciousness of the people that responded makes the experiment that is MDA all worth it. I […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

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Fat Burning Vegetables?

Fat Burning Vegetables? Are you kidding me? Hey we all can benefit from this. Here is an part of an article by Mike Geary enjoy the veggies!

It turns out that there is a specific class of vegetables that contain very specific phytonutrients that actually help to fight against abdominal fat.

Let me explain what they are and how they work…

You may already know about how certain chemicals in our food supply and our environment, such as pesticides, herbicides, and certain petrochemicals from household cleaners, cosmetics, etc., can act as xenoestrogens.

Xenoestrogens are chemicals that you are exposed to that have an estrogenic effect and excess exposure can cause hormone balance disruptions for both men and women. In other words, these can wreak havoc in the body for both guys and gals.

These estrogenic chemicals that we are exposed to on a daily basis can stimulate your body to store belly fat, along with many other problems.

So here’s where this specific class of vegetables comes in handy…

One of those cool tricks he teaches in his program is that cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, cabbage, etc., contain specific and unique phytonutrients such as indole-3-carbinol (I3C) that help to fight against these estrogenic compounds…

And by fighting against these belly fat stimulating estrogenic chemicals, this can help you fight against abdominal fat!

So there you go… just another excuse to do what mom always told you and eat more broccoli!

I’ve finally learned to like brussels sprouts in the last month too…Melt a little grass-fed cheese on them and some garlic and they’re great!

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Hey people here is a good explination of the HIIT protocol which we use in our classes…hee heee but of course we also add the super secret Tabata Protocol to make for a wild ride and fun class. Enjoy Karens explination!…See you in class!

-Darrin

Author: Karen Whittaker

In recent times, there has been a lot of speculation surrounding the benefits of HIIT, also known as high intensity interval training. To begin with, HIIT refers to continuous bouts of both low and high intensity exercise done for a set period of time. The entire training session usually lasts no more than 20 minutes.

Example of HIIT

An example of a HIIT workout would be to start off with a 3 to 4 minute warm-up. This warm-up would be followed by 30 seconds of running hard at the fastest pace you can attain and then 60 – 90 seconds of light jogging or walking for recovery. This is called the interval. The interval is repeated for an average of 6 – 10 times (depending on your level of fitness). The workout ends with a 3 to 4 minute cool-down.

Maximum Cardio Benefit in Minimal Time

Several studies have found that the benefits of HIIT are far reaching and long lasting when compared to other cardio workouts, including long distance sprinting. According to one study, 2.5 hours of rigorous HIIT training extends the same benefits that are found after 10.5 hours of long distance training.

Turn Your Body Into a Fat Burning Furnace

In a study done at the University of Guelph in Canada, participants were monitored over a 2 week period to determine the affect of high intensity interval training (HIIT) on the body’s ability to burn fat. The study found that this sort of training dramatically improved the fat and carbohydrate burning process within the body. Results were seen during and after exercising. This has a direct impact on your resting metabolic rate (RMR), which is a measurement of how many calories your body burns while you are resting. In other words, HIIT significantly increases your metabolism. Compared to steady paced cardio, your body will burn more fat during a HIIT session and will continue burning at this high rate for up to 24 hours afterwards. So, in the hours following your workout, while you are watching your favorite reality television show, your body will still be in fat burning overdrive. This is one of my favorite benefits of HIIT.

Improve Your Endurance and Stamina

A HIIT (high intensity interval training) session also significantly improves your endurance and stamina. The maximum oxygen amount that one can take in during an exercise session or during sports is called the VO2 max. High intensity interval training (HIIT) has the ability to drastically increase an individual’s VO2 peak, which enables the person to perform all sorts of physical activities for a longer span of time. Someone who may struggle to run on a treadmill for more than 5 minutes will notice a huge improvement after engaging in HIIT for a few weeks. In a study published by the Journal of Applied Physiology, participants doubled their endurance after just 2 weeks of engaging in HIIT. When one of my nephews first tried running, he was convinced that he could last for at least 15 minutes. After 5 minutes, he was ready to collapse. After a few months of high intensity interval training, whereby he alternated sprinting and walking on the treadmill, he can now run for approx. 20 minutes straight. This is another one of the key benefits of HIIT.

No More Boring Steady Paced Cardio

Another one of the core benefits of HIIT is that it breaks the monotony of typical, steady-paced cardio workouts. Some of us struggle to workout on a regular basis. When we finally drag ourselves into the gym to squeeze in a workout, we read, listen to music, cover the timer with a towel, or find other creative ways to help those agonizing and boring 30 minutes pass. High intensity interval training sessions require you to spend much less time exercising. Additionally, there is an element of excitement that is introduced when you are going back and forth between running and walking or jumping jacks and squat thrusts, or whatever combination you choose. You are also constantly pushing and challenging yourself throughout the workout so that you make it through the various intervals. Before you know it, you are done. Upon finishing, you feel a strong sense of pride because you have just completed the kind of workout that some hardcore athletes perform. Your body will love you for this.

Whether you want to lose weight, maintain your existing weight, or improve your cardiovascular fitness, high intensity interval training will definitely get you closer to your goals. The benefits of HIIT are many and have long term desirable effects. Be sure to consult a physician before beginning any exercise program.

You can view more examples of HIIT sessions here.

About the Author:

Additional diet and exercise articles by Karen Whittaker can be found on the FatBlastZone website.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.comThe Many Benefits of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training)

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Fasting Makes You Active

It’s a familiar image we might attribute to stereotype: a sluggish, maybe portly individual lying prostrate on the couch, his/her front littered with Dorito crumbs. Could there, however, be truth behind the picture? Is there indeed a connection between incessant snacking and chronic slothdom? Or considered another way, is there a connection between fasting and being active? As a long-time fan of intermittent fasting (and a believer in the research behind it), I’m convinced. A study out this month sheds even more light on the relationship between lethargy and continuous eating.

For decades now, conventional wisdom has told us that we should eat regularly throughout the day to keep our blood sugar steady. With three regular meals and at least two snacks, we’re counseled to keep our bodies in a perpetual postprandial state. However, newer research, including this month’s study from ETH Zurich, questions this assumption. Scientists focused on the opposing […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

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The basis of Tabata Training is 4 minutes of intense interval training/circuit training. What you are doing is taking an exercise we'll use sprints as an example here.
Sprint as hard as you can for 20 seconds
Walk for 10 seconds
Repeat 7 more times for a total of 8 sets.
So what you have is a total of 4 minutes workout time.
Tabata Training can be done with a number of different exercises the idea is to use an exercise that gets the whole body involved or at least the major muscle groups.Tabata Training can be done with Barbells, Dumbells, Kettlebells or just Bodyweight exercises. I'll give you some other exercises and routines to try in a minute but first let me give you some background and how Tabatas work.
Tabata Training was developed by Izumi Tabata (imagine that) at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, Japan. They did a study on […]

Original post by WP-AutoBlog Import

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New Years is almost here, and for a lot of people, that means making resolutions that they know they’re not going to stick to. But if you’re one of the people reading this site (and you are!) then there’s no reason you can’t fulfill your resolutions this year. Here are 3 simple tips to make your New Years resolutions come true, no matter what they are:
1. Don’t get psyched about them. The #1 reason people don’t fulfill their resolutions for the new year, in my opinion, is because they allow themselves to get psyched out about it. When you first make your resolution, your excitement about what you’re setting out to do takes over. You have the whole year ahead of you and you figure you can accomplish whatever you want to accomplish.
What happens after the initial stage of excitement is you start getting intimidated. You set some really big […]

Original post by rafael@thefitnessadviser.com (Rafi Bar-Lev)

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Is Canned Food Safe to Eat?

Ideally, The Primal Blueprint is a living, breathing document. Whether it’s emails from insightful readers or random articles from my RSS feed casting a subject in a completely different light, or even personal N=1 revelations spurring a meticulous re-examination of previously-held stances, I’ll often find myself rethinking certain aspects of the PB. They usually hold up pretty well, mind you, but it’s always good to take stock of the evidence. It keeps us in the Primal community on our toes. Take yesterday’s post, for example. The discovery of grain residue from a 100,000 year old dig site was undoubtedly intriguing, because it suggested that a major tenet of the Primal lifestyle – that grains have no place in the human diet – might need some refining. In the end, our position remained the same (the intense labor inherent in the sourcing, gathering, hulling, processing, and cooking of grass seeds would […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

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The Ghrelin Made Me Eat It

You feel hungry.
You eat.
You feel full
You stop eating.
.
This is how it’s supposed to work.
Unfortunately, our bodies don’t always work the way we want them to.
Sometimes,we feel an intense desire to eat (and eat and eat) even when we are full
And why is that?
According to researchers, one of our appetite hormones – Ghrelin, can trick our brains into making us eat “pleasurable” foods even when we are full.

Previous research has shown that elevated levels of ghrelin is linked to the “reward” aspects of eating.
According to researcher Dr. Jeffrey Zigman, rewards can “generally be defined as things that make us feel better”.
“They give us sensory pleasure, and they motivate us to work to obtain them,” he said. “They also help us reorganize our memory so that we remember how to get them.”

In this recent study, researchers looked for an answer to why someone who is already is driven to eat that high-calorie […]

Original post by healthhabits

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The Primal Blueprint, as our good readers know, is founded on the principle of evolutionary nutrition. In short, what our long time ancestors ate during the course of 100,000+ years, we’re still designed to eat. This 100,000 years of hunting and gathering, from a physiological standpoint, trumps the comparatively short 10,000 or so years since the Agricultural Revolution, when humans commenced widespread farming practices and prepared grains as a significant part of their diet.
An article published in this month’s Science Magazine presents archeological evidence that, according to its author, challenges this accepted timeline. A number of readers have written me about this story. Here’s one letter among the bunch….
Mark,
Please help me make some sense to this: Stone Age diet included processed grains

I’m a crossfitter in Colorado and most of the gym keeps a Grok diet and are confused about this article. Does this open the door to other minimally […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

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Cheesecake Mastery

Everyone knows Christmas is a great time for cheesecake. And I’m a cheesecake master.
Master at eating it, that is. Do not click pic if prone to cravings.

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Original post by noreply@blogger.com (Martin Berkhan)

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