How To Get Rid Of Flabby Arms And A Belly At Home
By Ray Burton
Author of FAT 2 FIT www.FatToFitProgram.com

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This is a common question I get from Fat 2 Fit subscribers when the New Year starts creeping up and people are starting to think about getting in shape again!

Question:

Hey Ray, I’m not fat, but I do have a bit of a belly and flabby arms going on! Now I have started doing cardio "exercise bike" 30 minutes a day, that’s going to burn the fat! But I was wondering how do I shape up these trouble areas? I have a hard time doing press-ups, so what stuff could I do at home to help me get rid of flabby arms and tone up the abs?

Answer:

First, what I am about to tell you will only work when used with a total approach to getting in shape. That means proper diet, cardio and resistance training.

The easiest thing you can do to tighten up flabby arms and a droopy chest is the press up. I know you have difficulty with them but that’s because they are hard, but they also work VERY well. We will call the press up a pushup from now on just because that is the term that most people use. The pushup has many variations and I am sure that one of the ones I give you will be well within your ability to do until you get to the full military pushup variation and beyond.

A quick word on pushup form. You want to keep your core tight. What you do not want to happen is that when you push up, you look like you are peeling yourself off the floor. I call this worming. A lot of people do it when they get tired. First you will see them raise their heads, then their chest and finally their hips leave the floor. What should happen is that you contract your core so that everything from the base contact point (feet or knees) is lifted off at the same moment.

The other important point to consider when doing pushups is the arm and shoulder angle. A common mistake when doing the pushup is having your shoulders and arms too close to your head. If you are lying on the floor in the proper pushup position and someone looked down on your from above, you would want to look like an arrow head and not a "T". Your hands should be below your shoulders or even a little further back towards your hips. The farther back you go the harder the pushups becomes. This sets up your arms so they are slanted back on a 45 degree angle if viewed from above.

HOW YOU CAN WORK UP TO A FULL PUSHUP

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The first and easiest version of the pushup is the wall pushup. This is simply standing face into a wall and doing your pushups by pushing against the wall until you are standing straight. You lower and push over and over. If you can do 15 to 20 reps of these two to three times then it is time to go onto the second version.

The second version on the scale of difficulty in pushups is the box pushup. Instead of pushing against the wall, you will push against something that is 1-2 feet off the floor.

You should probably do these with your base being your knees instead of your feet like in the full military pushup. The couch will work and so will the coffee table. Make sure you position yourself so that when you touch the couch (or whatever) in the bottom position your lower chest is the contact point.

Aim for the nipples if you want an exact spot.

After you can do 3 sets of 15 on this version, you are ready for the next step in your pushup evolution!

The third version on the scale of difficulty in pushups is when the pushup is done on the knees.

Everything about this version is the same as the regular full pushup except that your knees do not leave the ground. This cuts out the extra weight from the knees to the toes making the pushup a little easier than the full version. Again, when you get 3 sets of 15 repetitions, you are ready to move on.

The fourth version in your journey to a full pushup is the knee pushup with a full pushup negative. Now we are getting somewhere! The trick with this version is to do your pushup as in the above version and lower yourself in the regular full pushup version. The reason you do this is because you are always stronger in the negative or lowering portion of the movement than in the positive or raising portion. So we do the heavy full pushup to lower and the easier knee pushups to raise your self up. When you get your 3 sets of 15 repetitions here, you are now ready to do full military pushups!

If you find yourself in a place a couple of months from now where pushups are like butter then you can keep the ball rolling. In the beginning we took the upper body from the wall to the box and then to the floor. We made it harder by adding more weight over the chest area in little bits. To make it more difficult, we do the exact opposite.

First put your feet on the box, then at 45 degrees on a wall and before you know it, you will be doing handstand pushups! By raising the feet slowly over time, you shift even more weight onto the chest until you hit a point and the working muscle flips.

Once your feet get high enough and you are almost vertical, feet up, you will be putting most of the tension square on the shoulders. This is very hard but you can do it if you put in the time.

HOW TO GET RID OF THE BELLY AT HOME.

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If you are just starting out, the best way to safely get into training off that belly is the simple crunch.

You’ll hear a lot of experts jumping on the bandwagon saying the crunch isn’t the most effective ab exercise.  It’s not if you are a gymnast and you have been training for years and are an athlete. If you can’t do a couple of sets without your abs burning though, it’s a great place to start without killing yourself!

Here is how I teach my clients doing Fat 2 Fit to do them. Place your hands behind (support, but don’t pull) your head. I like to support my head by using the finger tips to cup the ears. It’s a light support but it keeps you from cranking your neck forward.

From here, c.url your upper torso forward. As you do this you want to keep your lower back in mind and push it into the floor. Bring your rib cage toward your pelvis until you feel a contraction in your abs. Holding your hands down by your hips is an easier version. Pause for the contraction and slowly return to the starting position. Exhale on the contraction - this breathing advice applies to all abdominal exercises.

Three sets of crunches for 20 reps a set is a nice place for a beginner to start. You can rest anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute depending on how hard of an effort that was for you. If that’s not a problem then superset each set of crunches with the next exercise called hip rolls.

Superset is just a fancy personal trainer term for no rest. This means then that the first set of crunches is immediately followed by a brief 30 second rest to let the burn fizzle a bit. Do three sets of this combination.

To do hip rolls correctly you lie on the ground pushing down on the floor with your hands by your sides. Keep your feet off the floor and bent 90 degrees at the knee the whole time. You then raise your pelvis off the floor so the tail bone comes right up and squeeze the abs! You should now be rolled into a ball with your knees over your chest. At the top if you get really good, not only will your pelvis be off the floor but also a portion of your lower back.

NOW STAND ON ONE FOOT AND PAT YOUR HEAD..(just kidding)

If you watch your diet and do your cardio along with your full body workout, you will see that six pack come out. The last step in the beginner ab routine is to add in some bridges or "planks" as the yoga folks like to call them.

This is basically a pushup position but you don’t rest on your hands, you rest on your forearms and just hold it for 30-60 seconds. Don’t let your lower back sag! Keep a slightly inverted c posture like your trying to pull your hips toward your chin.

Now to combine all these fine ab exercises into an abdominal workout you can do at home and get a little sweat on.

Beginner home abdominal workout

Crunches x20

Hip rolls x20

Planks for a 30-60 second hold

So there you go. If used with proper diet, cardio and full body training this will tighten up flabby arms, a saggy chest and a pokey belly in the comforts of your own home.

Do Your Best Until You Become The Best, Ray Burton, ISSA-CPT, Crossfit Author of FAT 2 FIT www.FatToFitProgram.com

I hope this helps you out and if you would like to use the program that I designed that takes care of all these factors for you, please visit http://www.fattofitprogram.com Its only $29.95 and you get exercise descriptions, your diet, exercise program and a ton more. It’s the complete package if you want to lose weight fast the healthy and correct way.

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The Best Diet And Exercises For A Six Pack

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A question I run into a lot from personal training clients is "What diet and exercises are the best for me to do so I can see my abs?" For some reason there is a misconception that there is something special that you do different from regular training in order to get a six-pack.

The truth of the matter is that developing a six pack comes back to the same information that we have heard before. You need to train your whole body, and eat properly in order to reduce your body fat so that your abdominals become visible.

It’s just not possible to wake up one day and decide that you would like to have a lean, fat free stomach and that you can achieve this through some quick "plan" that will zero in on your stomach to the exclusion of the rest of your body.

You can have the main goal of seeing a massive change to your stomach but if you take the correct actions to attain a six-pack in the fastest manner possible, you MUST see changes in your whole body.

What I am saying is that even though it may seem indirect, you will see greater visual changes to your stomach in a shorter period of time from doing three whole body workouts a week, some cardio and eating 5 small meals a day then you ever will from the best ab gadgets and fat burning pills out there.

Let’s just say for the sake of argument that some of these ab machines work excellent for stimulating the abdominals. They still don’t do anything to remove the layer of fat that is covering them and making them impossible to see.

In order to remove that layer of fat, you need to burn off calories and you also need a way to keep that layer from coming back. This brings me to the fat burning pills.

First let me say that fat burners are a joke and that you can get the same effect from drinking coffee and green tea. That effect is a temporary high in energy and kick in the pants to your nervous system. You MAY burn slightly more calories because of your heightened energy levels but when you crash down and need a nap, you’re not burning very many calories then are you?

Let’s just say that there was a fat burner that could be the answer to all your prayers and that just by taking it would give you a six pack in a couple of weeks. What happens once you have that six pack? You’d need to keep taking and paying for those pills in order keep what you have. In other words, you’d be an addict with no spare cash.

That’s assuming that fat burners did work, which they don’t. There was a time when some of them did, but these days the ingredients that make them work are now illegal.

Remember, the quickest route to a fat free, flat stomach is getting rid of excess body fat. You’re abs are already there! Reach down and touch your stomach. Dig deep into any cushioning you have there and you will feel lumps! Those are your abs.

If you take away the cushioning, you will see them.

If you want to see a six pack in the shortest possible time, get working on a full body resistance training program that includes some abdominal work and cardio work. Start eating the right foods. Foods that will fire up your metabolism and give you more energy. Combine these factors for a couple of weeks and you will see more results in a couple of weeks then any ab gadget or fat burning pill could ever give you.

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Discover How to Turbo-Charge Your Metabolism, Sculpt Your Body, Flatten Your Stomach and Develop A Fat Free Six Pack…

Without Fat Burners Or Fancy Equipment.

Quicker Results With Quick Workouts!
By Ray Burton
http://www.fattofitprogram.com

Making Fitness A Part Of Daily Life
By Ray Burton

The Practical Way to Lose Fat
By Ray Burton

Everyone wants the magic pill to swallow or secret exercise that will burn fat. The truth is that while permanet weight loss may not be easy, the concepts are simple. This is a practical guide to releasing fat and keeping it off.

Today’s society is about speed. We no longer have to wait for the oven to warm our food because we have microwaves ready to do the work in less time. Breaking news events don’t travel by telegraph across the great oceans; they are transmitted instantly with live video over the Internet or bounced from the array of satellites that float in constant, geosynchronous orbit. It comes as no surprise that supplement sales are on the rise as we continue to seek out quick, convenient ways to lose fat – fast!

Losing fat is not difficult. I have been coaching clients to break through plateaus and send their fat cells running for cover for years now. So why does this continue to be an elusive goal for so many people, who “struggle” just to lose a few inches?

We can address this by creating a practical guide to lose fat. Is this a special diet that will have the pounds melting off? No. Is it a secret workout program that causes you to burn fat while you sleep? Nope, not that, either — your body already does it. So what on earth can we share?

There is a secret, over 2,000 years old, that was leaked to the general public by the father of medicine, Hippocrates. Somewhere along the way, it was lost again. Let’s bring it back to light. It goes like this:

“If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.”

Sounds almost too good to be true, doesn’t it?

The problem is that in our efforts to find something — fast — we tend to resort to equations and formulas that should magically spit out the right number of calories, or eliminate entire food groups like sugars or carbohydrates in our quest to make our fat cells cry (what some people call “sweat.”)

Everyone will benefit by reducing fat and increasing muscle. It’s not so much your weight that may slow you down, it’s the percentage of that weight that comes from fat! So how do you target the love handles and saddle bags without losing your guns or wheels, as biceps and thigh muscles are affectionately termed in the bodybuilding world?

1. Move more, eat more.

Whoa — wait a second! We all understand the idea behind moving more. That means burning more calories. But eat more? You thought it was eat less, didn’t you?

The truth is that you must eat more: more intelligently. You must eat more nutrient-dense foods. In turn, you will consume fewer calories. Less calories does not mean less nutrition, when done correctly.

Even engineered foods (shakes, bars, and sports drinks) contain little nutritional value for the calories that go with them. There is nothing that beats nature’s own packaging – fruit, vegetables, lean proteins, healthy fats, and so on. If you want to remain satisfied and full, try consuming over 50% of your calories from fresh fruit and vegetables. Your calories automatically go down, while your intake of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients goes up. The idea is to consume foods as close to their natural state as possible. This means you’ll do most of your shopping on the outer edge, or perimeter of the grocery store where the meats, eggs, and fresh produce exists, rather than in the middle, where everything comes in boxes, bags, and cans.

Want some nutrition-packed snacks? Try dates or figs with raw cashews. Roasting nuts may damage some of the healthy fats. You’ll notice that roasted or cooked nuts are addictive, while raw nuts are not. Can’t take the blandness? Buy roasted, lightly salted and raw nuts, then mix the two together for a compromise. Afraid of the fats? Don’t be. These come loaded with fiber, protein, and carbohydrates, along with a healthy dose of fatty acids. My personal favorite is celery sticks with all-natural peanut butter.

2. Make Your Muscles Resist!

As your calories decrease, there is a chance you may lose muscle mass. Avoid this by making your muscles resist. Your muscles don’t know the difference between gravity or any other form of resistance. The way to keep them active and toned is to engage in weight bearing activity. While the majority of your training will be focused on endurance, don’t neglect the power of strength training. Strength training will improve your bone density, build lean muscle mass or preserve it while you are trimming the fat while providing explosive power when you need that kick during your competition. It also helps maintain joint integrity and strength, which is necessary to combat the repeat-use syndrome many runners develop in their ankles, knees, and hips.

Because your goal is not to stand on stage in a bodybuilding competition, but instead an endurance goal, keep your workouts to two or three short, intense training sessions — 20 or 30 minutes each — every week. Get in, give it 100%, and then recover and focus on the rest of your training. Stretch thoroughly.

There is an added benefit as well: resistance training burns calories for hours after you are finished, and studies show the combination of resistance training and aerobics burns more fat than aerobics alone.

3. Slow and Steady

Want a recipe for disaster? Try doing too much, too soon. Most people grasp this concept with training, so why do they fall short when it comes to nutrition? Think “better,” not “perfect” when changing your nutrition habits. You want to crash? Go on a diet. You want to change? Transform your lifestyle. Small changes over time tend to last longer than quick-fixes like fad diets or magic bullet pills and supplements.

As an example, if you currently drink soda, don’t go cold turkey and jump straight to water. Most will find themselves chomping at the bit for something cold and fizzy! Instead, make a gradual transition. First, switch to diet soft drinks. After you are used to the change, try sparkling mineral water with a lemon or lime. Finally, transition to water. Make small changes, get used to them, and you will be well on your way to trim, fit body.

Conclusion

If you are like most people, you did not suddenly gain fat overnight. It was a gradual transition. So why should you expect losing the weight to be any faster? Take it slow. A pound of weight per week is a good rule of thumb for permanent fat loss. Anything faster may be too restrictive and could be lean mass (even muscle) instead of simply fat weight. Perhaps the most useful tool for losing fat isn’t a nutrition guide or workout program after all — it is a trait. Patience is by far the most powerful tool to lose fat and keep it off.

Ray Burton
ISSA CPT
Calgary Personal Trainer

Create Your V Taper With The Chin Up
By Ray Burton

First there are two kinds of pulling movements that fall in the chin-up category. The chin-up and the pull-up. Pull-ups are performed with palms pronated (facing away from you). Perform the pull-up just like a lat pull-down, except that the body rises up to the bar, rather than the reverse where you pull the bar down to you. Make sure you clear the bar with your chin at the top, and pull the scapulae back at the bottom position. Think of "pulling the elbows to the ribs" rather than lifting the chin over the bar. Chin ups are the same movement but your palms face you and the arms stay closer to the sides.

Most people like to start out with chin-ups and the palms facing you, as for most it is the easier version. It doesn’t matter which version you do as long as you do them!

How to work up to a chin-up if you can’t do them:

The Jumping Chin-up: This is a simple yet great way to get the feel for the full blown chin-up. If you have a doorway chin-up bar, you can set it up at a height that allows you to grab the bar with a slight bend in your knees if you are standing below it.

If you are at the gym, pull up a box or bench to place it beneath the chin-up bar so you can get the jump off that.

From here it is simply a matter of how much leg power you want to put into your "jump up" to determine how hard the "chin-up" is for you. When you get comfortable, you can start off with a couple normal style chin-up attempts followed by the remaining reps performed "jump style".

You can also jump up and do a very slow negative or lowering portion of the movement to build up your strength. Soon you will be able to pull all the way up and not just lower.

Why do I suggest the jump style method of chin-up over certain machines that can take of resistance? Because for what you are trying to accomplish here, which is fat burning and a wicked "V" taper, you want to burn calories and build your back. Jumping does that much better than the machines!

What to watch out for:

Make sure you get full extension at the bottom.

Make sure you get your chest up to the bar or at least your chin over the bar.

Avoid pulling with only the arms. This is a back exercise with the arms helping.

Here is an awesome little workout you can do anywhere. Yes, anywhere because chin-ups can be done hanging onto the top of a door, a tree branch a playground set, you name it!

The anywhere "V" taper workout: You are going to combine pushups and chin-ups for a total of 50 reps each. You alternate between the two exercises every rep. One chin-up and then one pushup until you hit 50. Time it and then try to beat it next time, and yes, you can use the jumping chinups!

Ray Burton
ISSA CPT
Calgary Personal Trainer

When Cheat Treats Become Binges
By Ray Burton

Once I released my last weight loss article on managing social pressure when it comes to eating out, I received a lot of questions regarding the cheat day. The common problem seems to be that most folks have a hard time keeping their weekly cheat day down to a treat or two. What seems to happen is that people go nuts and starting binging once they get a taste of the "good stuff". Now I’d like to make things easy and say that if that’s the case for you, then just don’t have a cheat day but I know that’s not going to work. We need a better solution. So lets set up the scenario and see what we can come up with.

So lets say you have been giving yourself a cheat day once a week. You follow the Fat To Fit Program to a T, six days a week and have been losing about one pound per week. Not bad at all. This has been a great track record for you for the past three weeks you have been on the program. But here is where the plot thickens. During the cheat day, you find yourself going hog wild, and eating every single treat you can get your hands on just because you know that you shouldn’t allow yourself to eat those kinds of treats the other six days of the week if you want great results. You do the crime and get grouchy during your cheat day because you inadvertently make yourself sick. Your body is so shocked from all of the sugar, fat and extreme surplus of extra calories that you have consumed in your frenzy of taste sensations. Oh bother! Your intuition screams that what you are doing to yourself is very bad for your body, and that these actions are NOT what I had in mind for including the cheat day into this fat loss program.

So the question then becomes, "How do I maintain a relaxed, do whatever I want because it’s cheat day attitude while still enjoying a "couple" of my favorite treats in MODERATION?" Well the first point to contend with is that you cannot do whatever you want because its cheat day. Its called discipline and sacrifice. If you didn’t want to hear those words, then work on those skills if you want your weight loss efforts to yield any results.

The purpose of the cheat day is to cause a slight temporary increase in your bodies caloric intake so that your metabolism stays high and strong. As a side benefit, most of us fitness coaches say to get the bugs out of your system and enjoy a treat on your cheat day to kill two birds with one stone. (No animals were harmed in the making of this article.) It is a shift in perception that is important. The treat is not the reason for the day. The treat is a side benefit. Would you get better results if you increased your calories through increased complex carbohydrates and some high quality protein? You bet you would.

The thing is, most people want a treat now and then. As a fitness and weight loss coach you can either be right with your clients or you can get results for your clients. If your going to cheat on the program, you should at least do it in a controlled fashion in the context of a cheat day.

Now that the nuts and bolts are out of the way. I’m going to give you some tips on how I personally handle my cheat days of heavenly taste sensations.

First if the guilty feeling sets in fast for you even when you keep your cheat days sane, try this. I like to do some sort of workout or light activity. I almost always keep treats confined to the post workout replenishing window. A walk to the video store or a jog in the park before you have a cheat meal just makes you feel like you are creating a deficit that you can replace without any harm. You are actually, but its more fun to think you are getting away with something. Let me also say that 90% of the time I eat treats, my conscience makes think about what the treats doing to my abs. Listening to this little voice is the key to keeping your cheat day to just one meal or treat.

After reading this article, you know you should increase your daily calories on the cheat day so you follow my advice and do that to maintain progress with your fat loss. What keeps you from going hog wild is that there is no temporary sensation that food can offer, that replaces the permanent feeling of pride you will have when you look at your new found levels of self discipline, physical achievements and over all feeling of well being.

Feeling like crap all day long does not do it for me and I’m guessing it doesn’t work for you either. So enjoy your treat but stop there because now you should be thinking ahead about how it always makes you feel mentally and physically for the rest of the day when you go overboard. The joy of food pleasures is a couple of minutes. The joy of a tight waist, butt and rapid weight loss lasts all day long.

Think of a cheat treat like sex. A couple of minutes of bad decision-making can have crazy long-term effects. Even better and much less graphic, think of it like drinking. It feels good at the time. Its fun in moderation, but push it too far and a couple of hours fun one night, leads to feeling like crap the whole next day.

The key to stopping anything you do not want to do is looking at the cost to benefits that the action gives. Learn to talk yourself into and out of things!

I hope this helps you in you weight loss and fat burning efforts!

Ray L Burton is the owner of Buildingbodies Fitness Consultants and creator of the FAT TO FIT PROGRAM 

Ray Burton
ISSA CPT
Calgary Personal Trainer

Why Cant I Lose Weight?
By Ray Burton

I’m sorry if I step on toes with this one, but in this politically correct world where the truth is hard to come by its easy to get opinions that make you feel good about yourself. While I do want you to like who you are, I will not say what people want to hear if it’s not the truth. I’ll say what you don’t want to hear. So if you have been working out for a few months and don’t like what you see, there is a problem with what you are doing. Here are some of the things it could be.

Why Cant I Lose Weight?

1. You don’t eat 5-6 times a day. I hear it all the time, "I cant eat that much or I will get fat". Well, you’re already fat so why don’t you try to lose weight