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If a lean body is your goal then you should be excited to hear that just by eating a good breakfast you can increase your metabolism by as much as 10% throughout the entire day!

The mere act of eating breakfast can actually increase your metabolism and basically have your body burning more calories throughout the day then it normally would.

One of the best things you can eat at breakfast time is oatmeal because of the long chain carbohydrates that oatmeal contains. The long chain carbohydrates go into your system and because of their complexion they stay in your system for up to 8 hours!

That means your body has 8 hours to burn/utilize the oatmeal, long-chain carbohydrates as energy before converting them to fat. Compare that to the 30 minute life span simple sugars have in your stomach to be burned or utilized as energy prior to being converted to fat.

It should be pretty evident that long-chain or complex carbohydrates are superior to simple sugars because they give your body a long-term sustained form of energy that it can utilize throughout the day.

A typical breakfast for me is a bowl of oatmeal and a glass of orange juice.

The orange juice is a great addition to the oatmeal because it contains some simple sugars which can be quickly utilized by the body to replenish it’s glycogen stores after a long night without food.

Again, if a lean body is your goal then I strongly consider you begin every day with a healthy breakfast that includes some form of complex carbohydrates and some form of simple sugar and just watch your metabolism skyrocket!

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That’s right I said speed up your metabolism by eating more…

Now that doesn’t mean you can eat everything under the sun whenever you want but if you increase the number of meals you eat from the 2 or 3 you’re eating right now to 4-6 per day then you will in deed speed up your metabolism and burn more calories every single minute of the day.

I know, I know… the first time I read about this several years ago I was floored myself but here’s how it works:

Your body’s first and foremost directive is to keep you alive. Contrary to what some people believe it’s not to keep your stomach flat and keep you looking good for the opposite sex. So when you starve your body and eat like one meal a day you’re basically forcing your body to store everything you eat as fat so that it’ll have something to burn as energy (the fat stored in your butt and belly most likely) during that long period of time between your next meal…

You can eliminate your body’s pension to store the food you eat as fat by feeding your body every 2-3 hours or by eating approximately 6 meals a day. By eating and feeding your body every few hours, you’re basically telling your body that it will get fed every few hours and after a while your body will recognize that it no longer needs to store fat for future use.

The end result is your body will utilize most or all of the food you eat and whatever your body doesn’t use… well you know.

Mix in a little exercise and a clean diet and you’ll be looking like you did at 21!

Speed up your metabolism by eating more… who knew?

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Here’s a quick cardio-interval training workout routine that I use when I’m short on time and I’m looking to get a really good workout in a minimal amount of time… usually about 10-20 minutes.

The great thing about this workout is that you can pretty much do it anywhere because all it basically is alternating between jogging and sprinting.

It’s called interval training and as far as workout routines go it is pretty effective minute for minute and it is ideal for burning fat, losing weight and you’ll get an excellent lung workout as well!

To start off you want to get loosened up and warm yourself up thoroughly because your interval training workout routine begins with an all-out sprint… so you want to make sure and get a good warm up session in beforehand.

Once you’re thoroughly warmed up you’re ready to begin your interval training session.

Your interval training session begins with an all-out sprint for 30 seconds. This is followed by 60-90 seconds of light jogging. Which is followed by another 30 second all-out sprint. Which is followed by 60-90 seconds of light jogging. Followed by a 30 second sprint… followed by 60-90 seconds of light jogging… and I think you get the point. Lather, rinse and repeat…

I usually go back and forth for about 15-30 minutes or until my sprint turns into a really fast “jog.”

This interval training workout routine is ideal because #1 it’s a great cardio workout since you’re sprinting you’re really testing yourself #2 you burn a lot of calories since your exertion level is so high because of the sprinting and #3 you burn fat with the jogging.

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I’m in my early 30’s and a lot of my friends are starting to get beer bellies (not me please I look like I’m a pro athlete) and I discovered something about beer bellies the other day that I thought we should all share with our beer swiggin’ buddies… apparently research indicates that the fat (especially if it’s hard to the touch) found in the bellies of a lot of men is visceral adipose tissue which has been directly linked to heart disease!

So the bad news about visceral adipose tissue is that it has a direct link to heart disease but fear not there is some good news…

The good news is that this type of fat is usually one of the first our bodies will dispose of when we first engage in some type of weight loss program. This is a case where weight loss will actually benefit your health in more ways then the obvious benefit of the weight loss itself.

The bottom line is that any belly fat is bad for your health but hard belly fat may actually lead to other much more serious conditions and it’s a condition that can be very easily avoided with a little bit of exercise and a cleaner diet.

Exercise 3-4 times a week and lower your caloric intake by 10-20% to put your body into fat-burning and weight loss mode.

Take the first step in a weight loss program and your body, your health and your heart will all thank your for it.

Popularity: 57% [?]

OK so in the last post we talked about circuit training working as a hybrid workout that we can utilize as both a cardio workout and an anaerobic workout as well.

So how can we take this workout routine to the next level? How can we continue to work our muscles through resistance training and increase the intensity of the cardio workout at the same time?

Most of the time when we think circuit training we think of anaerobic exercises… the cardio effect comes into play because we’re jumping from one station to the next basically never taking a break between sets.

What I recommend you do is mix in some cardio exercises into your circuit training.

This will increase the intensity of your cardio workout and it will really increase the amount of calories you burn during your new hybrid circuit training workout!

Here’s what i recommend:

4 sets of 4 exercises.

3 anaerobic exercises (anything where you have to push or pull any type of weight even your own) and one cardio exercise at the end of the set.

For the cardio exercises I recommend 5 minutes on the treadmill, 5 minutes on a stationary bike at a good pace or 5 minutes on an elliptical trainer.

Take your circuit training and fat burning to the next level… try the circuit training hybrid workout the next time you hit the gym!

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