New recipe !

Just received a new recipe from gymsuperstar.com - serve with steamed greens or salad for a healthy dinner!

Balsamic Glazed Salmon


1 tbsp.olive oil
4-5oz. salmon fillets
sea salt and pepper to taste
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp. honey

Heat oil in skillet over medium heat. Season both sides of salmon with salt and pepper. Add salmon to skillet and cook 2 minutes per side. In small bowl, mix together vinegar and honey. Add mixture to skillet and simmer until fish is tender and liquid reduces, about 2 minutes. Serves 4.

Ooh, it's raining outside. I don't want to get wet...

Well, if you're a bit precious about getting wet when you workout (I'll just add in here that it can be quite refreshing..), and you just want a nice workout you can do at home with minimal or no equipment... here you go!

Warmup:
1 minute skipping (if you don't have a rope, just pretend - arms 'n all!)
1 minute lunges
1 minute squats - if you have a swiss ball use this against the wall and do wall squats
Repeat
Stretch out quads, hamstrings & chest lightly

Circuit workout - perform 10-12 reps of each exercise in a circuit fashion - ie go straight onto the next exercise, no rest
Burpees
Alternating stationery lunge - or walking lunge
Ab crunches
Squat jumps
Tricep dips
Reverse leg curl on swiss ball - or single leg bridge lifts if you don't have a ball
Pushups
- have a quick drink/breather, then run through circuit again another 2- 3 times.

Cool down with 2 mins skipping and light stretching for chest, arms, shoulders, hamstrings, quads and calves

Enjoy :-)

More pearls of wisdom from Tom Venuto

I received this in my inbox today, and it's well worth a read!

BURN THE FAT ARTICLE
BY TOM VENUTO
http://www.BurnTheFat.com
-------------------------------------------

"How you could you eat that crap? It's so bad for you!"
(nag, nag).
"Don't you know those fries will give you
a heart attack?" (nag, nag).
"You have to stop eating all that junk food, it's going
to make you fat!" (nag nag)

"If you keep eating fast food, then all your workouts
will be for nothing!" (nag, nag).

Your friends nag you, your family nags you, your doctor
nags you, and of course, your personal trainer nags the heck out of you, to stop eating all those BAD FAST FOODS.

But does all that nagging you and bad-mouthing the fast
food industry really help?
Doesn't look that way. The fast food industry is thriving, even in the bad economy. The Chicago Tribune recently said
that McDonalds is "recession proof."
As one of only two companies to turn a major profit over the last year (the other being Wal Mart), McDonald's is laughing
its way to the bank. In fact, McDonalds plans to open 1,000 new stores this year.

I was driving down Route 95 a few weeks ago and pulled
over to use the rest room at Mcdonalds on a Saturday morning (there's a McDonalds conveniently located
immediately off almost every exit up and down the full
length of Interstate 95.
The parking lot was full, it was standing-room only inside and the lines snaked around into the seating area!
You'd think Brad and Angelina were there signing autographs or something. Nope, just a regular weekend
at breakfast-time.

I was shopping in Wal Mart the same week and I almost passed out when I saw (smelled, actually) a Mcdonalds... INSIDE THE WAL MART! Also, with lines.

Yep. It looks like your friends and family's nagging you,
and all the messages of the health and fitness industry
to get people eating less fast food are not working!
So what does work?

The results of a new survey from the behavior and psychology section of the journal, OBESITY (Feb 2009)
provide some answers:

Researchers at the University of Minnesota School
of Public health surveyed 530 adults about their
attitudes towards fast foods.
They found that people already know fast food is unhealthy. (umm, no kidding!)

The primary reasons they eat it anyway are because of the perceived convenience and a dislike for cooking! (I'd add another: they think fast food is always cheaper than healthy food).

So, said the authors of this research paper, scolding
people and warning them that "fast food is going to make
us fat and kill us" is the wrong approach.

The right approach?

Focus on teaching more people how to make healthy eating
fast, convenient and easy, because those are the reasons
people are choosing fast food in the first place.
So what's holding us back from implementing or taking
this advice?

Well, I think that most people can't get over the ideas
that they "just cant cook" or that cooking is "too time
consuming" or that healthy food "tastes like dirt" (as if Mcdonalds is gourmet food!)

That said, I'm not going to nag you, scold you or
try to scare you out of eating fast food. Nor am I
going to bad-mouth the fast food restaurants.

I'm going to lead the new charge by showing you just how easy and convenient it is to eat healthy and nutritious
food and make it delicous.

Here's a few meal ideas (for starters) to prove
my point.


3-MINUTE APPLE CINNAMON OATMEAL

* natural oatmeal (like Quaker old fashioned rolled oats)
* natural (unsweetened) applesauce
* cinnamon
* for protein, serve with scrambled eggs or egg whites on side
or stir 1-2 scoops of vanilla protein powder into the oats

I eat this almost every morning. It's faster, easier and
cheaper than going to the donut place or getting sausage,
cheese, bacon breakfast muffins at the fast food joint!
(you don't have to wait in line, either!)


10-MINUTE LAZY PERSON'S CHINESE STIR FRY

* Brown rice (I like basmati)
* frozen oriental vegetables
* chicken breast, grilled (try foreman grill)
* bragg's "liquid aminos" (or light/lo-sodium soy sauce)

This takes 30 minutes, however, if you get
a rice cooker and make a giant batch, you can
have your rice on standby for instant eats and
this will take less than 10 minutes.

Doesn't get any easier than that. (I like
those chinese veggies that come with the little
mini-corn-on-the-cobs... reminds me of that Tom Hanks Movie, BIG)


2-MINUTE BLACK BEANS AND SPICY SALSA

* black beans (15 oz can)
* Medium or hot salsa
* 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
* 2 gloves garlic or chopped garlic to taste
* salt and pepper to taste

This one takes you all of 2 minutes to make.
No cooking required! And it's good! It's vegetarian
as listed above, but if you're a high-protein muscle-head like me, just add chicken breast or lean ground turkey.

Best part: this is all inexpensive food!
Oats, rice, beans... doesn't get much cheaper
than that - buy your healthy staples in bulk
and the cost per serving is probably less than mickey D's! (yes, even the "Value" meals)

I'll share some more recipes in future newsletters,
and will compile my recipe project into a book or
ebook later this year. Plus I'm already publishing all my recipes for my inner circle members one by one as I create them (http://www.BurnTheFatInnerCircle.com)
Every one of these recipes is compatible with
my Burn The Fat program (http://www.BurnTheFat.com)

This means that my way of eating makes you more muscular and leaner... so you can look hot wearing
very little clothes this summer... and be healthier...
and save money too.
Train Hard, Eat Right, and Expect Success!

Tom Venuto
http://www.BurnTheFat.com
http://www.BurnTheFatInnerCircle.com

Australian Fitness Expo

It's nearly upon us once more, the Australian Fitness Expo. If you want to get some great deals, see what's new on the fitness scene, by up some fabbo Lorna Jane gear, then get yourself to the Expo
It runs from April 17-19.
The great thing for me is the full three day FILEX conference - lots of new ideas - so be warned people!

Autumn....

Well, I'm not quite sure where February disappeared, but disappear it has.
..and now, it's Autumn - and yes, you could feel it in the air this morning on that cool Southerly wind.

When you couple this with darker mornings, it's often all the excuse some people need to stay in bed for an extra hour instead of getting up, getting going, and getting fit.

We are very spoilt in this climate, we think it's cold when it's 22 degrees. I say, perfect exercising weather!

If you're one of those people that looks for excuses like this instead of exercising, hop on over here Outdoor Fitness Experience and see how other people handle exercising in 'real' cold.

After you've read that blog - see you at 6.15am in our pleasant climate

The Biggest Loser

It's really hard to not post comment on shows such as the Biggest Loser. Whilst on the one hand it's great for personal training and fitness in general - it helps to motivate the general public into action, I really disagree with the methods and the whole concept of the show.

Yes, I know... it's a show. It's meant to have MASSIVE results and MASSIVE impact, but do they really have to be so brutal to those poor people? and for the love of god, 1100 calories for the women and 1400 calories for the men? No wonder these people don't keep the weight off without some drastic measures later - they're not learning how to do it for life.

I would never advocate a healthy diet for a women to be less than 1500 - 1600 calories, and for a man 1900-2000 calories - depending upon their activity levels.
But for people that were eating around 4-6000 calories a day and upward, doing no exercise, to now drop to those levels and do around 4 hours of intense exercise a day...no wonder blood sugar levels and tempers, moods etc run rampant.

That little amount of calories would have sent the most hardened person straight to the temptation table in a flurry.

But... this is the only way they get such massive weight drops.

Which leads me to my next point of contention.
This is just not realistic people - 1/2kg to 1kg a week is the key to healthy, long term weightloss. Anything above that is generally not sustainable - yes, you may get more or less fluctuations on a week to week basis - but if you average it out over a 10-12 week period, it should average out to a kilo a week. By doing that you are learning more about what your body needs, how much it uses, what is optimum, how you feel, if you need to add more 'fuel' or could tweak a little more. At least when you start off around 1600 calories a day, you have somewhere else to go. If you start at 1100 calories and 4 hours of exercise...what else are you going to have to do when you plateau, which you inevitably will as your body shuts down its metabolism thinking its in starvation mode.

Crazy stuff. Yet compelling viewing...if only for the wrong reasons.

8 reasons most people fall off the fitness & weight loss wagon

This was the subject of an email from Tom Venuto (Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle), so i thought it worth re-posting here:

THE 8 REASONS:

1. NO FOCUS: you didn't set goals, you didn't put your goals in
writing, and or you didn't stay focused on your goals daily
(by reading them, affirming them, looking at a vision board, etc.)

2. NO PRIORITIES: you may have set a goal, but you didn't put it on or near the top of your priorities list. For example, your goal is six pack abs, but drinking beer and eating fast food on the weekend is higher on your priorities list than
having a flat stomach.

3. NO SUPPORT SYSTEM: you tried to go at it alone; no buddy system, training partners, family, spouse, friends, mentors or coaches to turn to for information and emotional support when the going got tough.

4. NO ACCOUNTABILITY - you didn't keep score for your own accountability - with a progress chart, weight record, measurements, food journal, training journal, and you didn't set up external accountability (ie, report to someone else
or show your results to someone else)

5. NO PATIENCE: you were only thinking short term and had unrealistic expectations. You expected 10 pounds a week or
5 pounds a week or 3 pounds a week, so the first week you lost "only" 1 or 2 pounds or hit a plateau, you gave up.

6. NO PLANNING: you winged it. You walked into the gym without having a workout in hand, on paper, you didn't
plan your workouts into your weekly schedule; you didn't have a menu on paper, you didn't make time (so instead
you made excuses, like "I'm too busy")

7. NO BALANCE: your diet or training program was too extreme. You went the all or nothing, "I want it now" route instead
of the moderate, slow-and-steady wins the race route.

8. NO PERSONALISATION: your nutrition or training program was the wrong one for you. It might have worked for someone else, but it didn't suit your schedule, personality, lifestyle, disposition or body type.

So there you have it - 8 reasons why most people to fall off the wagon! Have you been making these mistakes? If so, the solutions are clear and simple:
focus, prioritise, get support, be accountable, be patient, plan, balance and personalise.