The first episode of the fifth season of The Office was about weight loss. Corporate proposed a weight loss competition amongst all the branches and the winner would receive extra time off. I’m a fan of the show and I’m sure they were making fun of a lot of the crazy things people try to do to lose weight.

What that episode showed is probably not too far from some of the things people really do. I sure hope no one is swallowing tape worms–I’m not sure the return is worth the investment. It did make a good observation that most people go about weight loss by doing the wrong things with not eating at the top of the list.

A character on the show, Kelly, went on a “liquid” diet but, it was more of a starvation diet. She used some sort of mix of honey and water to replace three square meals. Drinking liquid meals with practically no nutritional value is a recipe for disaster. I believe in liquid diets but, the liquid replacement has to have nutritional value. It needs to replace the nutritional and remove the excess. You don’t want to replace something with nothing.

Parties are a frequent occurrence on The Office and on this episode they decided to have a birthday party with no cake. Instead, it was a fruit and water party. I love fruits and water but, you need to give yourself a cheat meal–or two, I’m living on the edge!–in order to stay consistent the rest of the time.

If you are going to party, party hard. You’ll be back on your diet the next day. Otherwise, you put the entire well being of your diet at risk. Life should not be lived in a state of torture and when you crack due to the extreme diet restrictions, you’ll throw the whole diet out the window and not revisit it again. It will be a net loss in the long run.

None of the characters seemed to have put an exercise routine into their weight loss strategies. It is a good idea to have one. You will lose weight exponentially faster if you are burning more calories when you are resting. Building muscle will do that for  you.

For a comedic guide on how not to diet, check out the Weight Loss episode of The Office.

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Almost everyone admits they want six pack abs–the rest are lying. Guys like them on girls and girls like them on guys. It is totally win-win. The usual and recommended exercise for abs is the crunch or the sit-up. Those aren’t bad exercises to build abdominal muscles but, they are not the best single exercise for developing a six pack. That honor belongs to the plank.

The plank is performed by getting into push up position with your forearms are on the floor. You then tighten your mid-section as if someone was about to punch you in the gut and hold it for 30 seconds. That is one rep. You’ll need to keep your body straight the entire time as well–much like a push-up.

You can also do a side plank which is ideologically the same. The difference is you are lying on your side with your upper body propped up by your left or right elbow and forearm. You then raise your hips until your body forms a straight line from your shoulders to ankles. Now you tighten your abs for 30 seconds and repeat until you’ve completed a set.

If you’ve never done planks before than this might sound easy. In fact, you might think it is a big waste of time. Let me convince you of its benefits and if I can’t, you should still give it a try.

Crunches and sit-ups are very limited abdominal exercises and work a proportionally smaller amount of core muscles than the plank. We use our cores to stabilize our spine, rotate our torso, flex our hips, and more. There is almost no activity you can do that doesn’t require your core to step in and do some of the work. The plank works a lot more muscles in and around your core than the crunch or the sit-up.

It is difficult to target all your six-pack muscles doing crunches because crunches predominantly work the upper abs. The plank will work the entire thing. Some people report that sit-ups create discomforts in their backs and a lot of people who do crunches are really just furiously nodding their heads. It is more difficult to do the plank wrong and cause back discomfort or waste time in a head nodding frenzy.

The plank is the single best exercise for targeting your mid-section. However, the key to a six-pack is body fat and not how long you can hold a plank or how many crunches you can do. It is entirely possible to never do a single ab exercise and come out with a six-pack by reducing your body fat percentage. Generally speaking, you’ll need a body fat percentage in the 10 percent range or below but, it varies by person.

Dropping body fat is going to take more time than the several minutes it takes to do crunches or planks. You can use these tips as a starting point. The best way to get those abs is to work your body’s biggest muscles so that you increase your resting metabolic rate which will help you burn fat faster. Eating well is also important and there is no diet easier than this one. A wise fitness guru once said, “six packs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym”.

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We have gotten used to immediate results in today’s world. Whether it is good or bad is open to debate. There are no real instant weight loss programs. With the current technology and scientific understanding of the human body, instant weight loss is impossible unless you have a liposuction operation. However, there are small things you can do right now that will help you lose weight.

1. More H2O

This one is easy. If you are not getting adequate amounts of water, your body will hoard more water which adds to your overall body weight. Bodybuilders prepare before a competition by removing as much excess water from their body as possible so that they will look exceptionally defined. Their regiment is rather complex and probably not a good idea for the average person.

You can easily emulate what they do by drinking more water. Eight cups of water is recommended but, you won’t die if you drink twice as much. There might be more trips to the bathroom but, you’ll live. I’ve heard stories of people “drowning” themselves by drinking too much water. Maybe it is a rumor; I don’t know. Regardless, you will have to a drink an enormous amount of water for it to become harmful. The more physical activity you undergo, the more water you will need. There is plenty of water so you don’t need to ration it.

2. Eliminate Liquid Sugar

You’ll be surprised how many calories you consume in liquids on a daily basis. Any drink that is sweetened is likely to have a hundred calories or more in sugar. Diet and sugar free drinks should be safe. The average person drinks 20% of their total daily calories. The drink isn’t going to make you feel full for any lasting period of time because your body isn’t counting calories. Eliminate the sugary drinks and you’ll reduce your daily caloric intake by 20%.

3. Don’t Fear Fat

Low-fat diets used to be popular but now, we know it doesn’t work. If you’ve ever tried going on a low-fat diet, you’ll know that it doesn’t work. Some people will blame their lack of dedication or self-control. Man was never intended to live off a diet of bread and salad. One of the worse thing you can do in any diet is to avoid fat. You need to eat fat to lose fat.

Fat has this great property of keeping you feeling fuller longer. You obviously shouldn’t over eat on fatty foods but, don’t avoid it like the plague. Fat keeps you satiated so that you’ll end up eating less.

4. Replace a Meal

The easiest diet to maintain and follow is a meal replacement diet. You replace a meal with a liquid meal known as meal replacements. They are usually in the range of a couple to a few hundred calories and should have an optimal blend of carbs, fats, and proteins as well as vitamins and minerals. These meals are designed to be low in calories and make you feel satisfied.

You can buy an over-the-counter meal replacement product in the form of ready to use cans or powders that you need to blend. You can also make your own with the ingredients that you want. The latter is most complicated unless you know what you are doing.

5. Eat More Often

This is the popular diet mantra today and it works. However, the idea is not to eat gigantic meals. This is easiest to accomplish when you use it with the tip above about meal replacements. You want to eat five to six meals or more a day instead of three. Each meal will be smaller but, you will keep your metabolism running in high gear all day long.

A high metabolism will allow you to burn fat while you are doing nothing more than sitting around. You could be at work in front of a computer or watching TV on the couch. A high metabolism will help you burn more calories while doing the least physically taxing activities.

6. Don’t Starve Yourself

Some people use the strategy of starving themselves for a few days to dramatically lose weight. I try to make sure I never feel like I’m starving. It isn’t a pleasant feeling. What’s worse is that while you starve yourself, your body is breaking down muscle to use as energy. It is not breaking down fat.

In the long run, you will end up gaining weight. Muscle increases your metabolism because it takes energy to maintain. Breaking down muscle means you are losing muscle. While your weight will go down so is your metabolism. Once you return to eating as usual, the weight will come back with a vengeance.

7. Sprint

If you are like most people using a cardio machine at the gym, you are aiming for the “optimal fat loss zone”. That is all nice and dandy if you are going to be running no where for the entire day. If you are only going to spend twenty to thirty minutes on that thing, there is nothing optimal about what you are doing.

You want to employ the idea of high intensity interval training–HIIT. All you need to do is to add sprints to your cardio routine. Instead of going a steady pace for twenty minutes, you’ll sprint for 30 seconds and then go at a slower pace for a couple of minutes and then sprint again for 30 seconds and so on and so forth.

It’ll be a lot more fun and it won’t feel like twenty minutes. The concept here is that sprinting will keep your resting metabolic rate higher for the rest of the day and beyond. You will burn more calories all day long and end up burning more calories than you would have if you ran at a steady pace the entire time.

8. Want the Muscle

Most guys want to be somewhat muscular. We might not all want to look like a bodybuilder but, we also don’t want to have twig sized arms–I hear it isn’t very attractive. Most girls fear weights because they think they’ll get big. The only thing you need to know is that you should lift weights. The guys who are afraid they’ll turn into Arnold are dreaming and the girls who think they’ll look like Chyna–former female wrestler–are misinformed.

It takes an immense amount of work and “help” to achieve bodybuilder-like results. A woman is pretty much incapable of becoming huge because her body was not designed for it. Estrogen has the natural gift of making sure muscle growth is kept in check.

There is nothing more useful for losing fat and looking good than a healthy dose of muscle. It fills out clothing better and you look more human! Use the weights at the gym to put on some muscle. Every pound of muscle will help you burn about 50 calories a day by just existing. Don’t aim to be a stick figure–they don’t look good in art or real life.

9. Cheat to Stay Consistent

Although not good advice in a relationship, it is great for a diet. Give yourself a meal a week for anything you want. It won’t matter what it is or how many calories it is. You won’t destroy all the progress you’ve made with your diet. It will be completely guilt free.

The cheat meal will help you stay consistent by satisfying an urge on a recurring basis so that you won’t toy with the idea of forgetting this whole diet thing altogether. As long as you are consistent with your diet, the results will come. Being extremely strict and thinking that you can maintain it indefinitely is a losing battle. You’ll only end up caving in and never returning to the diet.

10. Snack of Celery

I’m not the biggest fan of vegetables but, celery has the great property of taking more calories to digest than it contains. So eating celery can be equated to eating negative calories. How awesome is that? Of course you’ll have to forgo the dip and anything else you might add. Celery is also supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Why not snack on it?

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Perhaps it is illogical to think that not eating will actually force your body to store more fat. The fact is, starving yourself is going to trigger your body to go into survival mode. Instead of doing what you want it to do–lose fat–it’ll do the opposite to keep you alive. That is more important than looking like a model, right?

If you have ever tried any sort of starvation diet you should know that it doesn’t work and probably made things worse. I like food so I can’t imagine starving myself. It’ll just be horribly painful. I will assume that most people enjoy eating food as well. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all common get-together events with friends and family. Not only is a starvation diet highly inconvenient, it is also going to place a damper on the joys of life. What good is being thin if you have to sacrifice such a fundamental part of life?

Ironically, starvation diets don’t make you thin. It leads to muscle destruction and it is muscle that helps you tear through extra fat. If you start dropping weight by not eating, it will mostly be a loss of muscle. Muscles require energy to exist. Calories are energy. So muscles will burn calories just by lying around. Because of that, muscle will be the first to go.

Back in ancient times when man had to hunt and kill his food, food was a lot more scarce. The rabbit might get away one night and there would be no dinner. You never knew for how long you would go without getting enough to eat. Fat is a store of energy that doesn’t require much energy to keep around so the human body does the only intelligent thing: it keeps the fat.

The longer you can survive, the better your chance of finding the next meal. We didn’t climb up the food chain by being evolutionary rejects. The human body knows how to survive–it has done it for millions of years. Today, there is more food than we need and we need not even bring our own spears.

Knowing that starvation leads to more fat storage–not less–we can design diets that facilitate the use of fat as energy. Diet gurus have been promoting this idea for many years now. You want to eat more than just three square meals a day. Several small meals spaced throughout the day will raise your metabolism and tell your body that food is in abundance so don’t keep any fat!

The idea is not to eat five or six versions of a meal from a three meals a day plan. If you usually consume 1000 calories a meal, eating five of those will give you 5000 calories a day. Unless you are an athlete, you don’t need that much food.

What you want is to eat five 500 calorie meals. So where you would have consumed 3000 calories eating three 1000 calorie meals, five 500 calorie meals will be 500 less calories. Those kinds of savings will help you lose a pound a week by merely tweaking the size and amount of meals you eat.

So how do you go about doing this? It will be quite difficult to count calories and prepare meals that fit the calorie criteria. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands or a personal chef–I would love that, the best bet is to try meal replacement shakes.

It also does not have to be five 500 calorie meals. You can mix up the numbers as long as it still falls into a total calorie amount that is less than what you eating now. A meal replacement diet might end up being seven 300 calorie meals. The math tells us that it works even better than five 500 calorie meals.

Remember, the worse thing you can do if you want to lose weight is to starve yourself. It might work for a few pounds but, the long term result is quicker weight gain in the future. It is a losing strategy. There are better ways to reduce your daily calorie consumption. A diet should not be unpleasant. We didn’t struggle for millions of years hunting giant mammoths with stone spears to purposely starve ourselves today.

If it doesn’t feel good, it probably isn’t good for you.

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I never noticed what was so strange about ordering a clearly fattening food–like McDonald’s–with a Diet Coke. Some people find it contradictory or ironic or something. I’m not sure. My reasoning is always the same. Why would I want to consume a beverage loaded with empty sugar calories when I already lost one battle by giving into my urge for greasy fast food? The only logical answer is that I don’t want to. Why add to the damage when I can avoid it?

On average, 20% of our daily calorie consumption comes from liquids. That means we can reduce our caloric intake by 20% without feeling any less full. Beverages don’t make us feel full so we aren’t going to eat 150 less calories if we have a drink that has 150 calories. A person who consumes 2000 calories a day would save a whole pound in calories in 10 days. You can lose 3 pounds a month without eating any less food or doing any more work other than drinking more water and other low calorie drinks.

Water is important. It certainly doesn’t taste as good as soda, energy drinks, juice, or any other sweetened beverage. Most of our body is made up of water so there is really no reason to be frugal with it. Muscles are made up of 80% water. Start reducing your excess liquid calories by replacing soda consumption with H2O.

You can also choose the diet variety of many soda’s if you can’t avoid drinking it for whatever reason–maybe you just have an urge. It is probably a good rule of thumb to stay away from all sodas but, if you are going to drink it you might as well save yourself the calories–drink diet.

Coffee and tea are both low calorie drinks if you don’t add anything to them. Black coffee and regular tea have almost 0 calories. Most of us don’t drink our coffee black or our tea without sugar or something else to make it taste better. I’m not really a tea drinker so I don’t even know what to add to it besides sugar so I just do nothing to it when I do drink it.

I’m a big fan of coffee for many reasons that I’ve alluded to before. When I go to Starbucks, I will add the non-fat or low-fat milk plus one packet of Splenda. It helps retain the flavor of the coffee without turning the drink into liquid candy. There are other coffee places that make the coffee for you–like Dunkin’ Donuts–in which case I still order it the same way. Most places will make it if you ask.

I also happen to consume energy drinks–my second favorite caffeine source. I generally look for the sugar free versions. RedBull, RockStar, Monster, and the rest of them all offer sugar free or low carb varieties. They generally contain anywhere from 5 - 10 calories per serving. Compared to the regular sugar-loaded versions, it is a big savings.

My biggest consumption of empty liquid calories comes from alcohol–it’s probably the same for you. For the most part, I don’t think too much about calories when I’m drinking. I don’t drink all the time but, I do consume a fairly large amount of it if I planned to be drinking. If I am doing the right things the rest of the time, the extra calories from alcohol from partying isn’t going to kill me. The last thing I want to worry about is calories when I’m out having a good time–what a buzz kill.

Alcoholic calories have this special property of being unstorable. Your body cannot store calories from alcohol so it has to use it first before it can burn anything else for energy. So when you are at the bar, club, lounge, or whatever and you are drinking, do something more than just sit or stand around–maybe dance?. You might as well burn the calories on the spot–it’s basically asking for it.

For those who have a couple of drinks a day, studies have shown that it helps prevent heart disease but, you probably shouldn’t overdo it.

The next time you have a craving for fast food–maybe delicious White Castle?–order a diet soda with it. There is nothing at odds about limiting the damage of the “treat”. Consume more water throughout the day to keep your body and muscles hydrated. Avoid as much sugary beverages as you can and you’ll be dropping pounds faster than ever.

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Curling in the squat rack
This is irritating solely because most gyms only have 1 or 2 squat racks and most people can’t curl over 135 for reps (which is what one would consider enough weight as an excuse to use the squat rack for curling). How are you supposed to safely squat heavy weight if some tool is using it for 45 pound curls?

Loud grunting noises
On every rep. It’s only a natural human behavior to let out some emotion on the last 1 or 2 reps on every set if you’re going to failure, but if you’re going to draw attention to yourself by doing it on every rep, then guess what? You’re a tool. It’s unnecessary. Though I don’t condemn grunting to the point where it should br banned like in the case of Planet Fitness vs. Mr. Argibay almost 2 years ago. Planet Fitness is clearly not a real gym.

Working out with 10 of your friends
You probably don’t see this at all unless you work out at a college gym, but college students love to work out in packs. They love to take turns on the bench press and there’s so many of them that they end up hogging it for an hour. They love to work out 1/4 of the time whilst using the other 3/4 talking about how to get bigger biceps, how hot the girl across the room is, or how “easy” all their classes are. They love to form a frontier around the squat rack to watch each other curl. When I go to the gym, I don’t work out; I train. I don’t see how these kids can focus on their training with all those distractions.

Doing partial reps
“I can’t squat too deep; I have bad knees.” This same guy does leg extensions for 3 sets of 20 reps, which is arguably worse for your knees than regular squats (if you really do have bad knees). What about putting less stress on your knees by lowering the weight to do full squats? You win in 2 ways. I see this too often with preacher curls too. Some guys don’t go down nearly enough to be really working their biceps. Why don’t you just lower the weight and do it right?

Cell phones (unless you’re a doctor on call)
Not because it’s rude to use you cell phone in public. In fact, people who think it’s rude to use your cell phone practically everywhere are annoying. It’s a free country. Anyway, cell phone use in the gym is annoying because it encourages machine hogging, and thus you waste my time making me wait for a bench when you’re sitting on it talking on your phone. If you want to talk on the phone, just step aside and let other people use the equipment. I don’t care what you talk about thereafter.

Mr. Spot
“Hello, I am Mr. Spot. I need a spot on every single rep I do, otherwise I can’t pretend I can lift 50 more lbs than what I really should be lifting.” I was once asked to spot this guy who was benching–of course he was. He was “lifting” 225lbs, but he was a really small guy. I knew right away that this was going to be ridiculous. I didn’t even bother to ask how many reps he was planning to do because I knew he wouldn’t even push one. I predicted it too well and his 1-rep-max turned into a deadlift/bent over row for me. Keep your own weight and you won’t need a “spot” for every single rep.

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The weather is starting to cool down and the cold months of winter will be here before we know it. People are biologically designed to gain weight over the winter. We needed it back in the days of caves to ensure that we would survive the extra cold and lowered amount of available food. Luckily for us, we have heaters and food just as available to us in the winter as it is in the summer.

While human society has evolved and improved, we haven’t biologically adapted to this relatively new way of living. Food is certainly not going to be in short supply as we have Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and a bunch of other holidays in the last quarter of the year. Over eating is going to be anything but difficult.

We also get lazier with our workouts when it gets cold. If you normally workout in the morning, you’ll be more inclined to stay in your warm comfortable bed instead of hitting the gym. The cold is going to give you many reasons to skip workouts or do them half-heartily. After all, everyone is going to be bundled up in layers upon layers so a few pounds won’t be so noticeable.

So, how can you reduce the impact of the winter weight gain or even avoid it altogether? Assuming you are still going to be seduced by the warm beds and delicious holiday foods, your best bet is to build some extra muscle right now.

If you are likely to skip workouts and end up consuming more food, you’ll need to increase the amount of calories you burn on a daily basis to lessen the impact. The only way–without drugs–is to pack on some extra muscle to help you burn about 50 extra calories a day per pound of muscle by just existing. If you just add 1 extra pound of muscle, you’ll burn through an extra 1500 calories in a month without lifting a finger.

If your main activity at the gym is some sort of cardio activity like the treadmill or the elliptical, go grab some weights. You aren’t going to gain any muscle by running on a glorified hamster wheel. You might, in fact, lose muscle.

For those who already lift on a regular basis, now might be a good time to switch up your workout if you have been doing the same thing for a while. Once muscles adapt to a routine, the gains will slow down. I recommend doing 3 total body routines a week hitting all the major muscle groups with as many compound exercises as possible.

Try to incrementally increase the amount of weight you use each workout if you can. So, if you started doing squats at 135 lbs–bar and two 45 lb plates–you’ll want to add another 5 lbs next time or the time after that. People often stay at a certain weight for far longer than they should. To make the most gains as quickly as possible, you will want to make sure the exercise stays difficult.

What you should not do are exercises like forearm curls or calf raises or something else that works a tiny muscle. For the purposes of packing on muscle to ignite your natural fat burners, working muscles as tiny as your forearms are a big waste of time and energy.

Here is my pick for three compound exercises that you should have in your workout to maximize muscle growth. And for those who don’t have access to a gym, you might want to take a look at this total body workout without a gym.

This is the best way to prevent, minimize, or avoid the winter weight gain that you’ve probably experienced every year for as long as you’ve cared. There is a reason why losing weight is such a popular New Year’s resolution–everyone gained extra weight in the months just before. Sadly, winter doesn’t end with the New Year and the excuses to skip workouts are still in full force.

Make sure you are spending the reduced amount of time at the gym wisely by using it to build more muscle. The magical calorie burning gift of muscles aren’t just limited to the cold months so you’ll continue to benefit after the winter. Ignite your body’s natural fat burners to keep you lean.

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A great many of us have tried every diet on the planet that we could find. The low fat diet was popular once upon a time and the Atkins diet was a giant fad. Between, before, and after those diets were a slew of other mystical ways to lose weight. The problem with most diets is that they are hard to stick with and when you stop, the weight comes back–sometimes with a vengeance. What good are those kinds of diets?

I hate counting calories and having to watch what I eat when I’m eating out. Determining the caloric damage of a restaurant meal is an art form all its own–some menus tell you the number of calories now. How am I supposed to know which choice of entree that I actually want to eat is also not going to be worth two meals in calories? That is way too much work–and mostly guess work–to do when you are out trying to have a good time.

The easiest of all diets to stick to and actually lose weight with is a meal replacement diet. Some people might call it a liquid diet. The idea is to replace certain meals with liquid ones that have a set number of calories, vitamins, minerals, and everything else that you can scientifically control. These shakes are generally a few hundred calories and keeps you satisfied. You are never starving yourself.

A meal replacement diet is simple and fool proof. Studies show that replacing one or two meals a day leads to a consistent loss of 7 to  8 percent of body weight in a year. You can choose to replace your entire diet with meal replacements. That will get boring and you will likely get a craving for real food. Real food is nice. I don’t recommend making every meal a liquid one but, replacing most of them will probably give you the results you want without any side-effects of weight loss drugs. You can replace most of your meals with a liquid one and then make sure that your other meal is consistently in line with your diet so when you go out to eat, it won’t matter what you order. You can consider it a treat.

You can get any number of over-the-counter meal replacement products like Slim-Fast, Met-Rx, or Atkins Nutritionals. You can also buy meal replacement powders from places like GNC. The idea is to look for something that has a good ratio of fats, carbs, and proteins as well as lots of vitamins and minerals. Basically, you want to replace what you would normally get in real food with the liquid stuff. In a lot of case, you’ll probably be eating better–nutritionally–with the shakes if your current diet consists mainly of mass-produced or highly processed chain restaurant foods.

I’ve tried a few meal replacement shakes from making my own using real ingredients in a blender to prepackaged powdered products. For convenience sake, I would go with the powdered products. The one that I am currently using is Muscle Milk Chocolate Milk. It has a the blend of carbs, fats, and proteins that I want plus a handful of vitamins. On top of that, it actually tastes really good. It also has a lot of other things that are supposed to promote fat loss and boost muscle growth. I don’t know if it works but, if it does, great.

There isn’t an easier diet to follow on the planet. It works, usually quicker than most other diets, and it is easy to stick with. There is little preparation work involved once you figure out which meal replacement product you want to use. Mix this diet in with a real workout plan and you’ll be torching fat like nobody’s business.

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Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but don’t nobody wanna lift no heavy ass weight!”
-Ronnie Coleman, 8-time Mr. Olympia

Tommy wrote a good piece on the myth of toning. I wanted to write one myself since I once fell victim to this popular misnomer. There is considerable amount of ignorance surrounding this concept of toning. I don’t blame you. The fitness industry has standardized the word “toning” to be synonymous with spot reduction—yet another myth.

Spot reduction is the notion that if you work out a specific muscle, you will decrease the amount of fat only in that particular muscle, or “tone” that muscle. It sounds ridiculous, but the majority of people still believe this.

Let’s begin with toning. The real definition of muscle tone is the sustained partial contraction of your relaxed muscles. In other words, it is a measure of muscle functionality. Most people understand toning as changing the structure of a particular area in your body. There are only 4 ways I can think of that will accomplish this: gaining fat, losing fat, gaining muscle, losing muscle. Most people who tone mean they want to build muscle while losing fat.

Rule #1: You cannot alter the shape your muscle takes as you build more muscle. In other words, you cannot alter your genetic disposition. You can only change the perceived shape of your muscles by either losing or gaining body fat.

This brings us to Rule #2: You cannot lose body fat in one particular area in your body. Doing 500 crunches a day won’t get you a flat stomach and washboard abs unless you lose overall body fat of course. When you gain or lose fat, it tends to occur almost proportionally throughout your body. The reason I say almost is because not everyone is the same. Some have trouble losing fat in particular regions such as the chest, the abdominals, and the gluteus. It is simply due to a genetic selective pattern rather than spot reduction.

Guys who go to the gym and do crunches to lose their gut must understand that they have to lose overall body fat and it will tend to occur proportionately. Same thing goes for girls who go to the gym and want to lose fat under their arms or in their butt and thighs. While doing tricep extensions and thigh abductor exercises certainly don’t hurt, it’s not the only or most important thing that will give you a more “toned” look.

It’s better to think in terms of overall muscle growth and overall body fat loss. Muscle growth is crucial for those with this toning goal for 2 reasons. One is that having more muscle indirectly increases your basal metabolic rate. Some studies indicate that a pound of muscle burns about 50 calories a day while a pound of fat burns only 10. While these figures are questionable in other research studies, it’s still conventional wisdom that muscle burns more calories than fat.

Furthermore, other than having little impact on muscle development, light-weight and high-repetition toning work outs have only a minor impact on your post-workout metabolic rate compared to higher intensity workouts. This is simply because you will manipulate more hormone release. Higher intensity workouts will most likely also burn more calories for you directly. One reason is because higher intensity workouts are usually coupled with compound movements, which obviously take a greater toll on your body than simple isolation movements. What do you think burns more calories: 50 repetitions of light-weight bicep curls or 5 repetitions of heavy dead lifts? I’m willing to bet dead lifts would win. Another reason is that people who perform light-weight, high-repetition workouts usually don’t lift to failure, which is a crucial component to resistance training. You don’t pick up a random weight and decide to do 3 sets of 8 and stop at the 8^th repetition on every set. You pick the weight so that on every set, the 8^th repetition is almost impossible. This is just an example. Same thing goes for most other resistance training programs.

Here comes the I-don’t-wanna-lift-heavy-because-I-don’t-wanna-look-bulky posse. Listen, I’m just trying to help you achieve your goals faster. I’m just going to simply explain why lifting heavy weights is not necessarily going to give you a “bulky” look. First is testosterone (assuming mostly females are worried about this phenomenon). Testosterone is the most important muscle-building hormone in your body. Men have this abundantly and women don’t, so it is far easier for men to build muscle. Second, as Tommy mentioned before, it takes years of dedication to have that full-fledged, bodybuilder-type body you see in those fitness magazines. You might even offend some fitness models if you think you’re going to go to the gym and automatically get big if you lift heavy weights. It would be a dream come true if that were to happen.

So next time you go to the gym and decide you want to tone your arms and decide to do bicep curls and tricep extensions mindlessly for 30 minutes, think about how much faster you could achieve your goals if you has a proper weight training regimen.

First, high repetitions are really not as effective as heavy-weight, low-repetition workouts unless you do them correctly, which most people don’t. Repetitions should not go any higher than 15. Any higher and not enough muscle fibers are recruited to innervate increasing levels of anabolic hormones that will make your muscles develop. Also, higher repetition workouts mainly recruit your slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are great for your endurance, but not great for achieving hypertrophy.

Second compound exercises should really be your priority if you’re looking to make a real change in your physique. I’m not saying isolation exercises should be completed removed from your program. I’m saying you should think of them as a supplement to your main program for making minor tweaks. There are a number of reasons why compound exercises will benefit you more. I will discuss a couple. First, far more muscle fibers are recruited from compound exercises. This is obvious. But more muscle fibers being recruited means more hormone stimulation, which is a good thing. Second, you spend less time in the gym. You can pretty much have a full body workout and distress your central nervous system enough to achieve great results with 3 to 6 compound exercises. The same can’t be said for isolation exercises.

I hope I even somewhat enlightened some people regarding this toning and spot reduction myth. I’m not saying that everyone should be doing the same program. Certain programs work best for only certain people. But doing 20 repetitions of anything is certainly not going to give you the results you want.

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This is a 100 in 100 Challenge. The idea is to capture yourself on video doing 100 push-ups within 100 seconds. There isn’t any real prize except the reward of knowing that you were able to accomplish a pretty difficult feat. I will gladly make a list of all the people who decided to accept this challenge, achieved it, and provided a link to a video on YouTube or some other Internet video service.

Here are the specifics:

Deadline: December 31st, 2008

Who Can Participate: Everyone. You can be from the United States or any other country on Earth or in space. You can be a man or a woman or an other. You can be any age, ethnic group, religious group, or political party. Who you are makes no difference. What matters is whether or not your are up to the challenge.

How to Participate: Accepting the challenge is an agreement you make with yourself. You just need to work towards being able to perform 100 push-ups in 100 seconds and post a comment or send an e-mail with your name and a link to a video proving it.

Prizes: All participants will be awarded an impressive story to tell! Those who provide a name and video by December 31st, 2008 will be honored in a special section on this blog so that the world will forever know of their triumphs. You will also likely get in better shape than you are now–score!

The Video Proof: The video doesn’t need to 100 secs in length. From the time you start your first push-up all the way up to your 100th will be 100 seconds. You can choose to put anything else you want in the beginning or end. The videos will be critiqued by the power of the Internet to determine if it was faked or if any other form of cheating occurred. You will want to film yourself from a side view showing your entire body. The Internet will be your judge and it is damn smart.

So what are you waiting for? Start making a plan of attack to kick this challenge in the ass. You have over 3 months to get from however many push-ups you can do now to doing 100 in 100 seconds.

Are you up to the challenge?

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