Diets that work for one person may not work for another. You really have to know yourself and choose the diet that fits your lifestyle and personality. Most popular diets do work if you stick to them but if you pick the wrong one they will never work. Just because your friend lost a lot of weight on a particular diet doesn’t mean it’s the right diet for you. I know how frustrating this can be.

I’ve been helping people lose weight for over 25 years as a personal trainer so I know that not every diet works for everyone. I do have my favorite diet for weight loss which is a low-carb approach with eating tons of vegetables and lean proteins.  I know that this diet; however, is not for everyone.

What you really have to do is sit down and make a list of all the foods you just can’t live without.  If you see a lot of carbohydrates on the list then the low-carb approach is not for you. If you see a lot of processed foods on the list then you might want to try a low calorie approach or intermittent fasting.  These diets allow you to eat the foods you like but in small quantities or allow you to skip meals to eliminate calories while still eating your favorite foods.

Keeping your weight under control is most likely the healthiest thing you can do for your body. Losing weight the healthy way by eating a lot of natural foods like vegetables, lean meats, poultry and fish with some whole grains is the goal but in my opinion it’s more important to lose the weight anyway you can. Keeping your body weight at an optimal level is the most important thing.

Diets that can Work for You

Carbohydrate lovers can count calories. My formula for counting calories is take your body weight and times it by 10. That’s the maximum amount of calories for you to consume in order to lose weight. For example, if you are 150 pounds, times it buy 10 which will give you 1,500 calories for the day. A 150-pound person will consistently lose weight eating 1500 calories a day. Calorie counting pretty much works for everyone but it takes a lot of discipline.

If you can’t live without eating meat, chicken and fish try the low-carb approach. Thousands of people have lost weight on the Atkins Diet as well as the South Beach Diet and a number of moderate low carb diets. I’m actually a fan of these diets as long as you eat a bunch of vegetables along with your lean meats.

If you’re a person who just can’t live without processed food and junk food your best approach is intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting involves skipping meals like breakfast or just not eating for 24 hours once a week. This method allows you to eat all your favorite foods while still eliminating calories from your diet through fasting. This approach has worked well for thousands of people and studies have shown that there are many health benefits to fasting. My favorite program for intermittent fasting is the Eat Stop Eating program. If you still want to eat all your favorite foods check out this program.

I hope this article helps. I know it’s not easy losing weight especially with all the different diets out there. Just keep in mind the most important thing is to lose the weight. Therefore, find the right diet for you even if it’s not considered the healthiest. Here’s a link to an article by a nutritional professor who lost 27 pounds and lowered his cholesterol by eating mostly junk food while just counting calories.

If you like this post, make sure you visit my Facebook page and like it.

Best-Mike

We all know that fruits are a good source of vitamins and minerals but when it comes to weight loss you have to remember they also contain sugar. My approach to losing weight is based on a low sugar model so I recommend that you limit your fruit consumption to no more then two per day.

I have had many personal training clients that would pick on fruit all day thinking they are doing a good thing but when it came to losing weight they had a hard time. As soon as they cut back on the amount of fruit they were consuming; however, they started to lose some weight.

Obviously fruits are a better choice of carbohydrates then cake and cookies but in my experience you still have to keep an eye on how many fruits you eat if you want to lose weight. I really believe that your best weight lose option is cutting carbs.

Why Fruits are not Good for Weight Loss

Look at it like this, diabetics are told to limit their fruits because they are high in sugar. When you consume too much sugar many bad things can happen. One has to do with insulin. I wrote a whole post about it here called Insulin will Not Let You Burn Fat. When you consume a lot of breads, pasta, grain, soda and fruit your body tries to store the carbohydrates (sugars) in your muscle and liver for later energy use and insulin is the storage hormone that gets the job done. But if you keep eating too much sugar all the time, the insulin will stop working and you wind up overweight and with health problems like diabetes.

Fruits are a much better choice then processed carbs like breads, cookies and cake but you still have to keep an eye on how much fruit you eat. I would much rather you eat vegetables all day and cut back on the fruit. Vegetables are loaded with vitamins and minerals and are much lower in sugar than fruit.

I have never had a personal training client in 25 years gain weight from eating too many vegetables.

Best Fruits for Good Health

It is also important to vary the one or two fruits you eat each day. Try to eat all different colors when choosing your fruits.   Blueberries have a different nutritional make up than oranges so mix it up. Don’t make the mistake of eating your favorite fruit everyday; experiment and try something new.

Don’t get the wrong idea from this post. I do think that fruit is good for you as long as you don’t over do it.  As always, too much of a good thing can get all of us in trouble.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you go to my Facebook Fan Page and like it.

Best – Mike Cola

Fitness Blog

Being a personal trainer I hear this all the time, “why can’t I lose weight?”. I have had clients come to me who have read every diet book, been to a number of trainers and have even been to weight loss hypnotism but still can keep the weight off.

So why can’t they lose the weight?

Let’s take a look at a couple of case studies of two typical people that I have come across in the gym over the years. The first one Susan and the second Debra.

Susan is desperate to lose weight; she has been struggling with her weight ever since she was a teenager. She has read every diet book there is, she gets very motivated every now and then and jumps full steam into the most popular diet and exercise class of the moment that all her friends have told her about. But as soon as she doesn’t instantly lose weight she gets discouraged. After working out hard and eating right for two weeks she only loses 2 pounds. She feels like it’s just not working for her. Everyone else is dropping weight quickly. She thinks she is doing something wrong so she gives up and has a binge night out and gains the 2 pounds that she worked so hard to lose over the past two weeks.

On the other hand, Debra wants to lose some weight and realizes that she has not been taking care of herself like she used to. She has been very busy with work and the kids and has put on about 20 pounds over the last 5 years. In light of this, she hires a personal trainer and works out with him at the gym two days a week, walks outside on her off days and follows a healthy all natural diet. But after two weeks of training she does not lose any weight but she does not get discouraged. She says to herself “I’m feeling better even though I haven’t had any weight loss yet”. She does not panic and give up. She knows that if she sticks to the program the weight will eventually come off and she is appreciating how much better she feels living a more active healthy lifestyle.

The big question is, which one are you? Are you Susan or Debra?

If you are a Susan you have to realize that losing a pound a week is great. It’s 10 times better then gaining a pound a week and 100 times healthier. If you lose one half a pound a week for one year you will be 25 pounds lighter by your next birthday. Losing weight and exercising is a life long pursuit. Slow and steady progress is the key to success with occasional setbacks.

What I recommend to anyone who thinks like Susan and gives up on every program they try that does not give them instant and dramatic results is, hang in there. Pick a diet, aerobic and muscle-building program that you can stick with for a year or more. There will be some weeks when you won’t lose any weight while other weeks when you will. There will be days when you over eat and wake up 2 pounds heavier but don’t quit. That 2-pound weight gain is not real; its water weight from most likely eating salty processed foods. What you have to do is get right back on the program and the 2-pounds or more, will come back off. The secret to losing weight and staying in top shape is consistency. You can’t give up if you have a non-weight loss week or a binging night out resulting in some water weight gain the next day. You have to stick with the program.

Naturally, there are quite a number of good diet and fitness programs on the market. However, I want it to be as easy as possible for you to get started by giving you a couple of my favorite program recommendations. When it comes to muscle building I like Visual Impact for Women and Visual Impact for Men. These two programs will make you firm while not bulking you up. When it comes to diet my favorite program is Eat Stop Eating. I write about it all the time on this blog; it involves a form of intermittent fasting that I think is one of the easiest ways to lose weight.

I hope this post makes you realize that anyone and everyone can be in control of their weight. No one should ever say to them selves “I can’t lose weight?”.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you go to my Facebook Fan Page and like it.

Best – Mike Cola

Health and Fitness Blog

I’ve been writing about the benefits of Intermittent Fasting on this blog for quite some time now. I even did a post called ” Intermittent Fasting Resources” where I showed everyone all the research I did on the subject and how I came to the conclusion that fasting is a great way to improve your health and lose weight.

However, I have been getting so many e-mails and questions about fasting that I wanted to take it a little further and back up everything that I have been saying with a list of studies. I expanded my research and found a number of studies about fasting from Pubmed which is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that includes over 19 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals and a number of other journals.

After reviewing all the studies, I’m even more convinced that intermittent fasting is one of the best ways to control your weight and improve your health. If you want to learn how fasting to lose weight works, I recommend you try the Eat Stop Eating program. It will teach you the right way to incorporate fasting into your life without being hungry.

10 Studies on Intermittent Fasting

• Intermittent food deprivation improves cardiovascular and neuroendocrine responses to stress in rats.

• Beneficial effects of intermittent fasting and caloric restriction on the cardiovascular and cerebrovascular systems.

• Impact of Reduced Meal Frequency Without Caloric Restriction on Glucose Regulation in Healthy, Normal Weight Middle-Aged Men and Women

• Intermittent fasting dissociates beneficial effects of dietary restriction on glucose metabolism and neuronal resistance to injury from calorie intake.

• Alternate Day Calorie Restriction Improves Clinical Findings and Reduces Markers of Oxidative Stress and Inflammation in Overweight Adults with Moderate Asthma

• Interleukin-6, C-Reactive Protein and Biochemical Parameters during Prolonged Intermittent Fasting

• Eating, exercise, and “thrifty” genotypes: connecting the dots toward an evolutionary understanding of modern chronic diseases

• Acculturation, meal frequency, eating-out, and body weight in Korean Americans

• Influence of the feeding frequency on nutrient utilization in man: consequences for energy metabolism

• Hormesis is Applicable as a Pro-Healthy Aging Intervention in Mammals and Human Beings

If you’re on the fence about trying Intermittent fasting I hope these studies help you make your mind up. I know fasting is not for everyone but it has helped me and number of my personal training clients control our weight and improve our health. The exact program I recommend you try is called Eat Stop Eating. I think it’s the best weight loss program on the market.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you go to my Facebook Fan Page and like it.

Best – Mike Cola

Health and Fitness Blog

I’m always looking for ways to motivate my personal training clients and the readers of this blog to lose weight. Sometimes it helps to see and read about other people’s weight loss success stories.  I searched the Internet looking for before and after pictures along with some motivational stories about how people had transformed themselves and lost a lot of weight.

1- I found this story in Women’s Health magazine about Kristen Collins. She lost over 50 lbs. and here is her story right out of Women’s Health:

Before: 180 lbs

After: 130 lbs

As a teen growing up in Silver Spring, Maryland, Kristen Collins Eccleston regularly dined on greasy fast food with her friends. After college she met her now husband, Bryan, and got into the habit of splitting extra-large pizzas with him and ordering buffalo wings for Sunday-night football. Their junk-food feasts caused Kristen to tip the scale at 180 pounds. When Bryan proposed in 2009, it was a wake-up call for the 25-year-old special-ed teacher, who vowed to shed weight from her 5’6″ frame before getting hitched.

The Change

While shopping for size-16 wedding gowns in February 2010, Kristen’s mom sensed her daughter’s misery. She sent Kristen an encouraging note, pledging her support and offering to buy her a new smaller-size outfit for the rehearsal dinner. “My mom wanted to see me happy, so she motivated me to do something about my weight,” says Kristen. “She told me to do it as a wedding gift to myself.”

The Lifestyle

Kristen trimmed her portions and added fat burning foods like lean protein, veggies, and fiber-rich whole grains to her meals. Bryan joined her for daily after-dinner walks, and by May 2010, one month into her shape-up, Kristen’s clothes felt looser. Then Bryan suggested jogging their usual one-mile route, and for added incentive they signed up for a 5-K. Kristen increased her evening runs by half-mile increments, and she finished her first race bursting with pride. She immediately signed up for another and ran one or two a month until her November nuptials. A month before the big day, she was fitting into size-6 clothes.

The Reward

Before her slim-down, Kristen avoided cameras. But she enjoyed posing for her wedding photos and even rocked a two-piece swimsuit on her honeymoon, sans cover-up. “Now I want everyone to see me,” she says. “I have the confidence I’d always wanted.”

Kristen’s Tips

Stay competitive.

“Trying to keep up with my fiance pushed me and kept me from skipping workouts. I didn’t want him to outdo me.”

Take two.

“Vow to stick with a new routine for just two weeks. After that it becomes a habit you don’t even think about.”

Forget fads.

“Diets never worked for me because I felt deprived. I had to learn to eat mostly whole foods in moderation.”

2- Shape magazine had a women named Heidi who lost over 50 pounds at age 42. Here is Heidi’s story taken from Shape magazine:

Heidi had always been “heavy but not huge”—until she got pregnant. “After my son was born, I went on a high-protein diet,” she says. “But because I was still eating fried chicken and mozzarella sticks, I couldn’t get the scale to budge below 178 pounds.”

Diet tip: Seizing the moment

Shortly after turning 40, Heidi—a longtime yoga fan—decided to become a yoga instructor. During the training program, her teacher asked the class to commit to making one healthy change for the next 40 days. “I had been thinking since my birthday that I could go my whole life not knowing what it feels like to be proud of my body,” she says. “The challenge—along with the fact that I’d just seen a flyer for a new boot camp class that promised to transform your body in weeks—was just what I needed to finally achieve weight loss success.”

Diet tip: Basic training

Heidi signed up for the boot camp and was soon hitting the gym at 5 a.m. three days a week. “My idea of cardio was reading a magazine while I did the elliptical for a few minutes,” she says. “But the trainer had us doing push-ups, pulling weighted sleds around, and even flipping tires over for a whole hour!” Although she planned on quitting after the 40 days were up, Heidi was so encouraged by her weight loss success—she was down 10 pounds by the end—that she signed up for another session. This time around, she also tackled her diet. “I’d always thought I was being virtuous by skipping breakfast and refusing to snack between meals,” she says. “When my boot camp instructor suggested eating five times a day, I thought she was crazy. It seemed like so much food! But my way wasn’t working, so I decided to give hers a try.” Heidi’s mini meals (like cut-up fresh veggies with whole-grain crackers and cheese) kept her from feeling deprived—and helped her get down to 128 pounds a year and a half later.

Diet tip: Ripple effect

A svelte new shape wasn’t the only payoff for Heidi’s hard work: She also gained the confidence to open her own yoga studio. “Becoming healthy has opened so many doors for me,” she says. “Don’t get me wrong—I love the way I look now, and the fact that my body’s strong enough to crank out 100 push-ups. But the best part of this whole process has been inspiring my students to make positive changes in their own lives.”

Heidi’s stick-with-it secrets

1. Map out meals

“Every Sunday I write down what I’m going to eat in my food journal. It makes grocery shopping easier and lets me pencil in ‘cheats,’ like a piece of cake when I know I’ll be attending a birthday party.”

2. Nip burnout in the bud

“I add something new to my workout routine—like in-line skating or burpees—every few weeks to keep myself from falling into a rut.”

3. Trick your taste buds

“Believe it or not, nonfat plain Greek yogurt drizzled with agave nectar can be just as satisfying as a scoop of full-fat ice cream.”

I hope these two weight loss success stories help motivate you to lose weight. If you are ready to start a weight loss program and need some help, I recommend Eat Stop Eating. It is one of the most successful and easy diet programs to follow. The program is based on intermittent fasting which has helped me and a number of my personal training clients lose the weight and keep it off. Give it a try; I’m sure it will work for you.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my e-mail list.

Best – Mike Cola

Health and Fitness Blog