Fat Burning Insanity Extreme Burpees Your Fat Burning And Cardio On Fire

Link http://howtogetthatsixpackabslook.com/Articles/?p=246

If you do only one bodyweight exercise in your fat burning workouts it should be the Burpee. We are talking a total body fat burning and conditioning exercise. And the variations you can do using a barbell, medicine ball, dumbbells, kettlebells and sandbags just keeps upping the intensity.

And wait till you see the third video I posted unreal.

So what are you doing still here click the link above.

6 Pack Abs Another Non Traditional (But Highly Effective) Ab Workout

Link http://fatburningdietsandworkouts.com/6packabs2010/

Are you still struggling to get that six pack abs look? You know that lean tight stomach so your not hanging out over your belt line anymore. Click the link above for a NON Traditional ab workout that can help you reach your goal.

Burn Fat With This 1 Fat Burning Exercise

Link http://howtogetthatsixpackabslook.com/Articles/?p=217

Click the link above to get the article and video of the bear. Don't know what the bear is? It is the end of your I have no time to exercise excuse.

Precision Nutrition 17 Lessons Why Your Not Lean Yet

17 Lessons if fat Loss by Dr. John Berardi of The Precision Nutrition System

I know that some readers are not at this level of fitness yet, but I’m hoping that if you’re not there yet, that you will use these tips as a guide and maybe inspiration to change your body.

In the following article, Dr. Berardi talks about one of his success stories, Canada K (obviously not a real name) and how he transformed his body following the Precision Nutrition program.

The great thing about this article is that it’s quite long and explicit and “Canada K” does go into a lot of details about journey to a leaner and firmer body.

In fact, “Canada K” breaks down his experience in 17 practical lessons:


>>> Here’s the article: Dr. John Berardi tells you why you’re NOT lean yet!

A couple years back, I released a rapid fat loss program called the Get Shredded Diet.

Now, I’ve always made it clear who this type of diet is for. It’s for folks who are pretty lean already. So, if you’re closer to 20 or 30% body fat, it’s not for you at all. If you’re in this range, your fat loss approach should start with The Precision Nutrition System.

Now, while the GSD is expressly for those already lean folks who want to get REALLY lean, the lessons learned from doing something like the GSD are absolutely universal. That’s why today’s update comes from Precision Nutrition Member, Canada K.

Canada K is a 37 year old guy, who, by day, is a chemical engineer and father of 3 boys. By night, however, he paints his face and turns into a bona fide gym warrior.

During the last few months, with the help of the GSD, he’s made it his mission to drop the stubborn body fat. You know, the stuff that prevented him from ever dipping into the land of single digits – in other words, below 10%. And drop it, he did, ending up around 6% body fat.

How did he do it? And what did he learn? Well, that’s what you’re here to find out. From the man himself.


Get Shredded Diet -

The 17 Lessons I Learned

I just came off a successful run at the Get Shredded Diet. It was such a mind-blowing experience, it took me several days to even partially wrap my head around everything I learned. Indeed, it was a brain explosion and I’m still processing everything. Following are my random thoughts, experiences, and philosophies around fat loss:


Lesson #1: If You Don’t Have The Body You Want, You’re Doing It Wrong

I’ve done the fat loss extreme (GSD) and, thank you very much, I kicked its a$$. The key was my attitude. It wasn’t until I got the right attitude that I starting seeing results.

Now, I thought I had it before, I really did. I’d have argued day and night that I had it. And, with a few people I did argue. But I didn’t get it. I was too confident in my knowledge. To certain I was on the right track. And because of that, I wasn’t doing the right workouts or eating the right stuff. It held me back.

Only once I admitted I didn’t know what I was doing 100% – only then did I begin to learn how to get lean. Only then did I start to discover the right workout and the right nutrition program. And my body followed suit. I started to get lean.

Before that, I was doing stuff wrong. That’s why I didn’t have the body I wanted. Perhaps that’s why you don’t have the body you want either.


Lesson #2: When Fat Loss Turns Invisible – The Dead Zone

Fat loss is a funny game when you get into the 10-15% range. Above 15%, any fat loss looks good. Your shape improves, you get slimmer, clothes get smaller, and so on.

Once you slide below 15%, the returns really diminish. You can lose a boatload of fat and it seems invisible. It’s not until you get below 10%, or even 8%, where abs start to appear, where your waistline starts to get really tight, and where veins really start to show up.

So basically, there is this giant dead zone in the middle where you’re making real gains but they’re incredibly unsatisfying. You must hang in there anyway. If you don’t, you’ll never be lean.


Lesson #3: When Fat Loss Turns Invisible – The Dead Zone, Part 2

At some point during the fat loss trek, everything seemed to stall. The scale was inching downwards, but the tummy looked the same, no abs in sight. On and on the stupid diet went, and still no abs. Here’s why. My body was shedding fat from other, less sexy, places like my quads, my back and my a$$. I just wasn’t looking there. If I would have been, I might have been happier with my progress.

Our bodies are funny things, and fat will come off unevenly. Sometimes it’s not where we want it to come from most. It doesn’t matter. That’s the way it goes. You’ve gotta just keep plugging away. Because eventually the fat will be lost. All of it.

In my case, it’s clear that my abs won’t really pop until I get down to probably 5%. Others may be luckier, but that seems to be what I have to do.


Lesson #4: Food Is Only Fuel & All Eating Is Emotional

Fundamentally, food is fuel. The only other reasons we eat is for socializing and for emotional reasons. This probably ruffles feathers, but I am basically saying that all eating is emotional, especially overeating and unhealthy eating.

It is also nearly impossible to divorce the emotional aspect from eating and make it simply a re-fuelling process. If it was, we’d all eat nutritionally perfect gruel and be perfectly happy with it. Getting to an elite level of body comp and staying there requires wrapping your head around the FACT that the reason you reach for the bag of Doritos, or the cheesecake, or the Aero bar is emotional eating.



Lesson #5: Eating Will Always Be Emotional… Learn To Use That

I don’t think we ever completely get past the emotional aspects of eating. But the people who are most successful at attaining elite body comp are the ones who get past it, and learn to look at food purely as fuel.

Decadent foods like pizza or ice cream become special occasions, kind of like the rest of the world might treat an expensive bottle of champagne. They are things to be savored and enjoyed rarely, not as a staple.

Think about this: a person who indulges in booze every day is called an alcoholic. Someone who indulges in junk food every day is called… your average North American.


Lesson #6: Fat Loss Is Easy, It’s Your Brain That’s Getting In The Way

This will pi$$ a lot of people off, but fat loss is actually pretty easy. It’s way, WAY easier than muscle gain. It’s not always pleasant, it’s pretty much always socially uncomfortable, and it forces you to go against the grain of your friends, coworkers and family. But when we break it down to a pure physiological process, fat loss is easy.

It’s all the mental stuff tied up in eating that make it pretty much impossible for most of the world. It’s the emotions around eating, the addiction to the taste and the feeling of food, the bonding that comes from sharing food with others, and the sense of belonging that comes from “going with the flow”. Most people fail not because they don’t have the right diet plan, not because they don’t have access to the right food, and not because they don’t know or understand exactly what they need to do. All the physiological elements are in place, and they work. Most people fail because they don’t consider the psychological aspect of the diet.

Food, particularly sugar and refined carbohydrates, is addictive. The cravings can be emotionally crippling. Hunger is a feeling completely foreign to westerners and we can’t handle it; it breaks us as brutally as being physically beaten.

There’s also the profound sense of alienation that comes from doing something “different”. Once food and shelter are taken care of, our number one need as human beings is to feel like we belong. When a person starts a diet they isolate themselves from the norm. And the single most social thing we do, as a species, is share food and drink. Many people will abandon a diet because it feels like they’re excluded, and for a heavy person already feeling badly about their self-image and their sense of belonging, that’s just too high a price to pay. They’d rather be obese than alone.

I’m not trying to be all haughty and holier-than-thou, let me be the first to admit I’m an emotional eater. I get a profound sense of happiness from sweets. It’s such a satisfying feeling it is (honestly and without exaggeration) practically sexual. But now I can control the psychological aspects of eating, and for long periods I can treat food purely as fuel. I feel like if any single thing allows me call myself an upper-tier gym warrior it’s that.


Lesson #7: Re-feed Days Are Great and Terrible

Re-feed days are a mixed blessing. For the most part, the key is learning to stop eating when you get “satisfied”, but that is very hard to do when you’re in the throes of indulging your carb addiction. It’s like telling an alcoholic to have just 1 beer.

I found myself eating things I didn’t even want because the day was almost over, and if I didn’t eat the ice cream, or the chocolate bar, or the donuts now, I’d miss my chance for another two weeks! How stupid is that?

So be careful with re-feeds. Because they can be very helpful during something like the GSD. However, when emotions kick in, they can become difficult to control. Again, all eating is emotional!


Lesson #8: Busting Out Of The Rut

I would never have pushed myself to this extreme if I hadn’t been afraid of being humiliated. In hindsight, what I did wasn’t even that extreme; it just looked that way from deep inside the walls of my rut.

I had no idea how many constraints I had put on myself, or how many different avenues I had simply refused to explore, until I climbed out of my rut and looked back at my old self.

We are all putting constraints on ourselves, telling ourselves “no I can’t”, “that’s doesn’t work for me”, “it’s too hard to try”. It’s all self-deluded horses##t, and no one is doing it to us. We’re doing it to ourselves. And we must stop. For our physical and our mental health.


Lesson #9: Competition Drives Us To Great Heights

Competition is probably the only thing that pushed me from good to great. And that’s why I’m so glad myself and some of the other PN guys decided to do this.

The fear of losing horribly and being humiliated in our little ad hoc contest was a strong motivator. Plus, the desire to win was also very strong. In fact, these were the only reasons I ever considered pulling myself out of my comfortable rut.

That rut was actually a grave. It’s a grave because once you put yourself into one, you’ll probably spend the rest of your life there, and die there too. So, if you want to make big chances, you’ll need a big goal. Compete for something. It’s very useful.


Lesson #10: No Limits

I could compete someday if I wanted to. I’m not saying that I’ve got such an exceptional body that I could walk away with a title or anything. I’m saying that there is no physiological reason why I couldn’t. My body type isn’t standing in the way, genetics aren’t standing I the way either.

My lifestyle, and what time I can afford to dedicate to bodybuilding IS standing in the way. My own mental toughness is another possible barrier, but much less of one than before. In essence, I realize that the only limits I have are those I place on myself. And I realize that I’m now in control of them. Very liberating!


Lesson #11: Water Shedding

Before taking my “after photos,” I decided to try water manipulation. It’s something necessary to look your best. So I wanted to do everything I could. Now, I can’t say for absolute certain that the water shedding made a significant difference. I believe it made me look leaner and fuller, but then again I wasn’t an ideal candidate: I’m not particularly huge nor was I lean enough where the differences would be most striking.

Plus I don’t feel like I’m sophisticated enough to know the feeling of “flat” versus “full” versus “depleted”. I also wasn’t able to follow the process exactly, and I’m told water-shedding is an extremely delicate balance, so that would have been another factor.

Still, I feel like it made my muscles look bigger and rounder. It was a worthwhile experience to try, because once again it forced me to do something way outside my usual rut.


Lesson #12: Water Shedding & Drinking Tons Of Water

As part of my water manipulation, I had to drink 3 gallons of water a day for a few days. This was actually harder than the diet. It’s a physically demanding task in ways that really surprised me. Much like the first few days of the GSD were depressing, so was water loading. The only difference was, by the time you start getting used to it, it’s over.


Lesson #13: Bodybuilding Is About Creating An Illusion

So much of what we see in magazines and on stage is actually kind of fake. You just to look bigger and leaner that the next guy, and there is a lot of trickery involved in doing so.

Compare Cliff (another PN Member who also did the GSD recently) and I. The big guy has 25 pounds of pure muscle more than I do, and only 8 pounds more fat. He is clearly the better bodybuilder. But the human eye is fooled into seeing leaner muscles as being bigger. When you rely on the human eye, I got the edge.

It makes no damned sense! But, at the same time, it’s the truth. So remember this, the leaner you are, the bigger you seem to look. Especially with your shirt off. And in pictures.


Lesson #14: A Great Body Looks Lousy With Lousy Photography & Lighting

When you take a picture of yourself, how it looks has as much to do with the lighting, the coloring, the angle, and just sheer dumb luck as the condition of your body.

I took a dozen front-double bicep pictures on photo day. Some made me look soft and small, but the one I picked made me look huge. The others were just bad pictures.

And don’t forget other finishing touches. I fake-tanned for a month before the pictures, and believe me I was brown! I still looked pasty white under the light of the sun. This over-exposed-washing-out tends to blur the muscular detail makes abs invisible.

So if you’re taking a picture, you need to have some colour or you need to manage the lighting to compensate. Even the buffest bod looks smooth otherwise. Oiling up your body helps too. The oil catches the light and emphasizes definition. I took pictures with and without oil, and the difference is notable.


Lesson #15: Full-Body Shaving

Shaving was both interesting and a drag. Body hair definitely blurs the muscular details. But nothing is as irritating as the unbelievable itching in the inner thighs on the third day after a shave.

For men there is a balancing act. Unless a guy is freaky huge, or really lean, men look feminine with no body hair. But thick or dark hair hides the muscles, and makes anything but the buffest abs hard to see. Plus uber-hairiness is off-putting to the ladies.

My compromise going forward is that I’ll keep shaving my arms (who likes hairy knuckles?) and probably my abs. I’ll use clippers everywhere else (except… well… there!).


Lesson #16: Bigger Muscles Show Better Than Small Ones

There are two ways for your muscles to really “pop”. Either you get rid of all the fat covering them up, or you grow those muscles really big so that they are easier to see underneath the fat.

That’s why a more muscular guy can look really good at higher body fat, the bigger muscles are still easily visible. As a slimmer guy, the message is clear. If I want to look like an underwear model I either have to maintain sub 7% body fat, or I have to gain more muscle.


Lesson #17: It’s An Exclusive Club

I think maybe 1 person in 1,000 will ever be able to drag themselves down to single digit body fat as adults. It’s way, way, WAY easier to be obese.

However, for those who are willing to commit to getting very lean, it’s totally possible. You just have to remember this. You probably don’t know what you’re doing – yet. You probably don’t know what you’re getting into – yet. Do it anyway. You’ll learn so much along the way. And when you stall, don’t be afraid to reach out for help. The PN Member Zone is a great place to do just that.



For More Help

Those are some great lessons from our friend, Canada K. Now, for those of you wondering how you too can become part of the “exclusive leanness club,” here’s how I recommend getting started.



Step 1: Begin with The Precision Nutrition System.

This is the cornerstone of everything we do here at Precision Nutrition. Skipping this step is like building a house on a foundation of sand. In other words, don’t do it. Get the right plan from the start.



Step 2: Once you’re lean, that’s when you can try the Get Shredded Diet.

As above, once you’ve built a foundation of good habits with the PN System, and you get your body fat down to the mid-teens, that’s when you can take the next step, just like Canada K did.


Step 3: Think about the Lean Eating Program.

As Canada K said above, fat loss is mostly about your brain – and how it gets in the way. If you’re the type of person who’d like to skip the trial and error and get right down to business with expert coaching, a rock-solid support system, and a system that guarantees your success, make sure you put your name on the waiting list for our next Lean Eating group. The next one kicks off in January of 2010.

For my review of the Precision Nutrition System Click the link

5 Fat Burning Cardio Workouts

Link http://howtogetthatsixpackabslook.com/Articles/?p=173

Faster Fat Loss With This Full Body Workout

Target more muscles in less time — and lose more fat — with these compound moves. Do them at home or in the gym!


Lose weight faster!

By John Berardi, Ph.D.

As a career-driven woman, fitness model and wife, Melissa Hall understands what it means to be busy. So when her clients start asking for something quick, she knows just what to give them – a total-body circuit that can be done anywhere.

Full-body circuits come with non-stop benefits. You can hit more major muscle groups with each workout versus isolating them with a segmented routine. Instead of exercising your hamstrings and quads once per week or four times per month, full-body workouts allow you to work them three times per week without the risk of overtraining. Since you are recruiting more muscle fibers with each training session, you expend more energy, yielding faster fat-loss results.

Your Personal Plan

You can do this workout in one of three ways. Simply pick the one that works best for you and get moving! Do it three times per week for four weeks to meet your goals.

• Three to four sets of each of the exercises demonstrated here for 12 to 15 repetitions with 30 seconds of rest between sets.

• Progress to heavier weights when you can easily complete 15 reps, and adjust your rest intervals to 45 seconds.

• Perform this program as a circuit routine. Do two minutes of intense cardio (which could include jumping rope, stationary running or using cardiovascular equipment) after completing a series of sets of an exercise.

DUMBBELL LUNGE & PRESS

Target Muscles: quadriceps, anterior deltoid, biceps
Synergist Muscles: glutes, adductor magnus, soleus, lateral deltoid, trapezius

Set Up: Standing upright with dumbbells at your side, step forward with your left leg into a lunge position (1). Be sure not to let your back knee touch the floor.

Action: From the lunge, transition into a standing posture by moving your right leg forward, placing your weight on your left leg. Simultaneously, curl the dumbbells up to your shoulders and (2) press them over your head while bringing your extended right leg in front of you. Repeat from the start (standing) position. Alternatively, you can try walking lunges.


ALTERNATING DUMBBELL PUSH-UP

Target Muscles: pectoralis major (sternal)

Synergist Muscles: pectoralis major (clavicular), anterior deltoid, triceps brachii

Set Up: In a push-up position, begin with your right hand on a dumbbell and your left hand on the ground (1).

Action: Move your body down toward the ground, as in a regular push-up (2), and then return to the starting position. After completing one repetition, place your left hand on the dumbbell (3) and remove your right hand, placing it on the ground to resume the starting position on the opposite side of the dumbbell (4). Again, perform a regular style push-up while keeping your left hand on the dumbbell (5). This is one rep. Repeat.




SINGLE-LEG STIFF-LEGGED DEADLIFT WITH ROW

Target Muscles: hamstrings, glutes, middle trapezius

Synergist Muscles: rhomboids, posterior deltoid, soleus, adductor magnus

Set Up: Stand on your left leg (right leg lifted off the ground with knee bent) and a dumbbell in your right hand held up at your side, in a hammer curl position (1).

Action: Move your right leg posteriorly as you bring your torso down and forward. Continue until your right leg and torso are on the same horizontal plane, almost parallel to the ground (2). Holding this
position, pull the weight in your right hand up towards your torso, bringing your elbow as high as you can (not shown). Return to the starting position by reversing the movement. Repeat, then switch sides.

FLOOR DIP WITH BODY WEIGHT

Target Muscles: triceps brachii

Synergist Muscles: iliopsoas, rectus abdominis, anterior deltoid, pectoralis major

Set Up: Assume a normal dip position with all four limbs on the ground. Extend your arms and keep them in line with your shoulders. The knees should be bent at approximately 45 degrees with the lower legs perpendicular to the ground. To complete the starting position, straighten your left leg so that it is pointing upward at 45 degrees in line with the right upper leg (1).

Action: Lower your body toward the ground by bending at the elbows and increasing knee flexion (2). Once you almost reach the ground, push yourself back to starting position. Repeat, then switch sides.

Full body circuit training workouts along with a good healthy eating program can give you the edge to the fastest fat loss possible.

The Precision Nutrition Challenge Nutrition Debates

The "Great" Nutrition Debates

by Dr John M Berardi, CSCS of Precision Nutrition Challenge

While displacement foods (unhealthy foods that fill us up, knocking healthy foods out of our diets) are probably at the root of many of our health and body composition crises, what I call "displacement debates" have also become a real problem in today’s information age.

For example, the average North American barely knows what a carbohydrate, protein, or fat is, yet when they hear well-respected experts at the ADA recommend high carb diets and the highly (though not universally) respected Atkins group recommend low carb diets, they get so confused and frustrated they ultimately do little or nothing proactive to improve their health.

This argument is an example of a displacing debate: an academic argument that pushes the more important problems out of the public discourse. For the average North American, following either the ADA recommendations or the Atkins recommendations would go a long way toward improving their health. But instead of suggesting that people just do something, these groups continue to bicker about who’s right at the expense of an ever-growing obesity rate.

Below I’ve presented six of the interesting displacing debates I’ve heard argued lately. Hopefully by discussing them I can put to rest the idea that these issues are of critical importance to your overall health and body composition. I’d like you to understand that these represent small, fine tuning details which are only relevant to a small percentage of the population, if that. On the whole, these debates do more to confuse and paralyze people than to encourage them to take their health into their own hands.

The Top 6 Displacing Debates

1. Fruit is Bad Now?
We all know fruit provides fiber, vitamins, minerals, and low glycemic index carbohydrates, so it should be no surprise that many experts recommend eating a few servings of fruit each day. Heck, this notion has even been turned into a clichéd rhyme:

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away!"

Yet some experts out there actually suggest that fruit might be bad for us! That’s utter nonsense. So, imagine you’re someone with a lifetime of eating habits that are less than optimal (for some of you, it might not be so hard to do) and you’re exposed to this debate. What do you do? Well, nine times out of ten, you figure that if there’s a chance fruit is bad for you, you might as well stay away from it — probably better to reach for a Big Mac instead. After all, it does taste better.

What to do? Eat the damn fruit – but, as with everything else, don’t overeat!

2. Raw? Organic?
Speaking again of fruits (and vegetables), it’s recommended that the average person consume two pieces of fruit and three servings of vegetables per day as a bare minimum. I recommend 10-15 servings per day. Yet most North Americans (athletes included) consume far less than the standard recommendation of five servings of fruits and vegetables.

However, rather than simply recommend more fruit and veggies (no matter how you can get them, for any fruits and vegetables are better than none), experts spend their time fighting about canned fruits and veggies vs. raw fruits and veggies. And then they fight about raw fruits and veggies vs. organic fruits and veggies! Sure, I agree that raw, organic fruits and vegetables are best since they probably have a higher micronutrient count, but let’s face the facts: any fruits and veggies are better than none!

So again, imagine you’re someone with a lifetime of bad eating habits and you’re exposed to all this bickering. What do you do? Well, you'll probably avoid the fruits and veggies, wait for the experts to finish dueling it out, and reach for a Snickers bar instead.

What to do? Get sufficient fruits and vegetables in your diet before worrying about whether they’re organic or not. Once you’ve done that, worry on.

3. Raw Milk vs. Regular Milk
What about milk? In my opinion, it’s not necessary, doesn’t always "do the body good," and should be minimized in the diet (although I see no need for total elimination unless you’re lactose intolerant).

However, if we could simply get more people to drink milk instead of sugary soda, we’d have less obesity and disease. But instead of focusing on healthy behaviors, experts will bicker on and on about regular milk vs. raw milk. Of course, all this does is serve to draw negative attention to milk and away from the other healthy decisions people could be making.

Sure, if it were possible to get raw milk that was guaranteed aseptic, it would be better than processed, pasteurized milk. But faced with the confusion, what do you, the hypothetical sub-optimal eater, do? Well, nine times out of ten, you avoid both kinds of milk and drink another Coca-Cola instead.

What to do? Limit milk, and drink calorie-free beverages like water and green tea instead.

4. Tap Water vs. Bottled Water
Speaking of beverage consumption, people are dehydrated because they drink too little water while drinking too many caffeinated, diuretic drinks (coffee, soda, and alcohol). Dehydration leads to all sorts of health problems for the inactive, not to mention the decrements in athletic performance seen in dehydrated athletes.

But rather than simply promoting the heck out of water consumption, experts will bicker on and on about tap water vs. bottled water. Sure, good quality bottled water is usually a better choice, but don’t be one of these people who stay away from tap water, forget to pick up their bottled water, and simply remain dehydrated.

What to do? Drink sufficient water first; worry about the source later. (Of course, you may want to avoid drinking out of puddles next to pig farms in Uganda.) Put a water filter on your tap or buy one of those filter jugs you store in your fridge and be done with it.

5. Glass vs. Plastic
And how about the bottles the water comes in? That’s right, the glass vs. plastic debate. Just the other day, I was recommending that a group of my athletes pick up some Tupperware so they could whip up all of their meals and shakes in the morning. It’s easy to make a good food choice during the day when you’ve got all your good food with you, pre-cooked, pre-wrapped, and ready to be eaten.

After the talk, one of the athletes came up to me and told me he avoids Tupperware altogether because of the potential leeching of xenoestrogens into his food. When I asked what he uses to store his food in, he told me he doesn’t even preplan his meals. He also told me he needed to lose fifteen pounds and that he was overweight because his nutrition sucked!

Buddy, I agree that glass containers may be marginally better than plastic, but for the love of God, pick up some plastic if it'll help you plan your meals! And this was a world-class athlete! You can imagine how the average guy fares!

What to do? Plan your meals in advance, storing them in woven baskets if necessary. Buy the best containers you can afford. If you can get the glass versions, great; if not, the generic plastic ones will do just fine.

6 . Free Range vs. Extremely Limited Range Meat
Most weightlifters eat lots of protein and that’s no mistake. One of the best ways to get all that protein is by eating a lot of protein and micronutrient-rich lean meat. Protein supplements are okay to supplement your diet, but real food should be your nutritional mainstay and there’s nothing better than good ol’ fashioned lean meat.

Since eating more protein can increase metabolic rate, improve your weight loss profile, increase protein turnover, accelerate exercise adaptation, and (when replacing dietary carbohydrate) decrease the chance of cardiovascular disease, it should be clear that most people would do well to increase their consumption of lean meat.

So imagine the dismay someone might experience when hearing that the experts are now bickering about the type of meat we consume. Many experts muddy the waters when discussing free range vs. grain fed meat, telling people that grain fed meat (the only kind you can find in many grocery stores in North America) is full of toxins, bad fats, and hormones.

Sure, free-range meat is probably a better choice, although there’s little proof the supposed toxins and hormones actually get passed on to us. But again, imagine you’re someone with a lifetime of eating habits that are less than optimal and you’re exposed to all this bickering about lean protein. What do you do? Well, when you’re afraid of the meat you have access to, you shy away from all types of lean meat and reach for another bagel. Bad choice!

What to do? Find the best meat you can by going around to various grocery shops and butchers. Owners of health food stores may also be able to help you locate the best stuff. But don’t be afraid to eat the meat you find in your grocery store — the reports of your impending death are greatly exaggerated.

These are just a few of the displacing debates gaining momentum in the nutrition world. Do your best to get past the marginalia, to get past the differences between all the new programs, and try to discover for yourself the basic principles all the successful programs seem to be built upon. Most importantly, when faced with a choice between two good options, one of which may be marginally better than the other, but both of which would be an improvement over what you're currently doing, just pick one and go with it. You can optimize later, as long as you make an improvement now.

There's no debating that.

SEE ALSO:
For more great training and nutrition wisdom, check out our complete system, Precision Nutrition Challenge. Containing system manuals, gourmet cookbook, digital audio/video library, online membership, and more, Precision Nutrition will teach you everything you need to know to get the body you want -- guaranteed.

And what's more, your online access allows you to talk exercise and nutrition 24/7 with thousands of fellow members and the Precision Nutrition coaches. Find out more about Precision Nutrition.