Fitness Contrarian

I just got back from a two-week vacation at the beach with my whole family. It’s always hard for me to take time off; I always feel I should be working all the time to improve my career and provide for my family. Every time I go on vacation; however, I realize how important it is to take some time off, have fun with the family and really live an active healthy lifestyle.

There were a number of things I learned on this vacation that when I’m working so hard training clients and publishing this blog, I become unaware of. These include the following (…)

I‘m back at Sag Harbor, NY for a two-week beach vacation with the family. I love the ocean and it’s so easy staying active at the beach. I don’t have to go to the gym or have to do any type of structured workouts to stay fit. My kids and I just got into skimboarding this summer. What an incredible interval workout.

Skimboards are the size of a boogie board but thinner. They are like little surf boards that you throw on the sand when there is just a little bit of water and skim along the top of the sand or ride them into a breaking wave (…)

One of the biggest problems with insulin is that it stops your body from burning fat. When insulin levels are high from eating too many sugars like processed carbohydrates you are pretty much locking in the fat in your fat cells and not letting it out to be burned off.

There have been books written about the ill effects of insulin and how it is more important than calories for losing weight. Chronic high insulin levels do lead to weight gain and a number of other health issues like obesity, insulin-resistance, diabetes and heart (…)

If you know what you’re going to order before you sit down at a restaurant your chances of making a healthy choice will go up tenfold. Once you sit down at a restaurant and have a few sips of your martini you will pretty much order anything on the menu regardless of calories

My personal training clients were always asking me what to eat when they go out to dinner. For years I used to frequent restaurants that my clients would go to so that (…)

I just got back from a week long vacation at the beach with my family in Sag Harbor, NY . We had a great time. The weather was very hot, humid and sunny. I don’t remember being so hot at the beach. You had to be in the water all day just to be comfortable. I left the beach around 1:00 PM one day to get lunch for my wife and kids and was surprised to see so many people running and biking in 100 degree heat with high humidity in the middle of the day (…)

I ran a contest last year called Get Fat Fast. In this contest I asked everyone who is having trouble loosing weight to write down the 10 foods they would eat if they had to gain weight quickly (clink the link Get Fat Fast and checkout some of the lists people sent in). This is an exercise I have had my personal training clients do to help them lose weight. The reason for making the list is to change how you feel about eating the foods that make you fat fast (…)

The first challenge for avoiding summer weight gain is Memorial Day weekend. I was at three different barbeques this weekend and saw a lot of people having a good time but unfortunately over indulging on empty calories. Opposed to conventional wisdom, most people can eat red meat and have an alcoholic drink at a barbeque while avoiding summer weight gain (…)

You should be able to miss a meal and not be hungry. If you’re the type who can’t miss a meal or has to eat by a certain time without getting lightheaded or ravenously hungry, you’re most likely burning sugar all day instead of fat.

My wife and I went out to dinner with friends this weekend. As soon as we sat down (…)