Student Fitness

By: Ryan Imbach

With summer halfway over and the constant barrage of fat loss information on television and the internet, I decided to write a quick article on what people can do to finally shed that last bit of fat, or even get started. There is a lot of confusing information out in the world about how to optimize your fat loss plan.

Here, I’m going to offer some tips to help you overcome your plateaus. Here they are, in no particular order (though I believe nutrition is number one for a reason):

1. Get your nutrition in line now. If you’re not eating whole, unprocessed foods, you’re eating junk (except for protein powder). Now you don’t have to do this all the time, but 80 – 90% of the time should be whole unprocessed foods.

2. To help with nutrition, write down everything you eat. Using a product like FitDay (free!) can help tremendously.  The first step is to start eating unprocessed foods, and if you’re not losing fat, start using FitDay.

3. How’s your training? Have you been doing the same routine for the past six weeks? Change it up! It doesn’t have to be a completely new program either. Shorten rest periods, shoot for more reps or more weight, or use “finishers” at the end of your training session.

4. Create lofty, but attainable goals. Write them down, let people who will be supportive know of your goals. Having a visual reminder of your goals can be a great tool in your training plan.

5. Have a way to measure your progress. Whether that be through pictures, body fat measurements, scale measurements, or simply looking in the mirror week to week. If you can see yourself becoming better, you will not want to stop.

6. Finally, and this is important: REST. Many people will go for months training without rest. If you’ve been training and dieting hard for more than two months, take a week off to let your body get back on track. But don’t just sit on your butt. Continue eating clean, and do some light cardio or play some sports to keep active. Even walking for just 30 minutes a day is good enough for a week of rest.

So there you have it. Here are six tips on how to deal with fat loss plateaus. They may seem simple, but they are effective. You don’t need super-advanced weight training techniques or a multitude of supplements. Hard work, support, and determination will get you where you want to be.

If you patrol the internet, as college students have been known to do, I can definitely understand how you could be confused. However, as one becomes more advanced in training and nutrition, one realizes that there’s not much difference between different success stories.

By: Veljko Petranovic

As any fitness model will tell you, it’s the abdominal muscles that really sell a physique.

Bulging shoulders, tree trunk legs and brutal arms can be mighty impressive, but if you’re still carrying a spare tire around your waist, guess what? It deters from your appearance, virtually nullifying all the hard work. What to do?

Any devoted Student Fitness reader by now knows that ripped abs are gained by keeping your diet in check over a period of time. But what about hypertrophy? No one wants weak, puny abs, instead, that powerful, stuck-out look with ridges and crevices is what most people who train aspire to. Pro bodybuilder Adorthus Cherry wrote an interesting thing in one of his articles in Muscular Development – he only trains his abs pre-contest, and gives them a rest in the off season. This has good merit, as you can’t really see your abs while they’re covered with fat, and they do tend to grow pretty quickly for a lot of trainers. That’s because it’s easy to contract and isolate them, and if you go overboard, you can end up with a larger waist. For that very reason, I don’t add extra weight in my abdominal training.

People are really divided on this subject, but from personal experience, I’ve found out that you can very well have too much development in that area – to the point where even ripped abs stick out further than the chest. Also, I steer clear from oblique training and any sort of side crunches, but people who play competitive sports will surely disagree on this. To each his own. Aesthetically, the washboard, cheese grater look coupled with a tiny circumference is much more pleasing, but for functional training, you can’t beat a strong core. First off, I believe in striking a balance in your appearance. If you train the chest or shoulders once a week, why should you work the abs every other day or even more often? A lot has been said about the abs being “endurance” muscles, but that’s a big load of hooey.

All muscles in a body are composed of slow-twitch and fast-twitch fibers, and this endurance talk probably stems from the fact that you can do a lot of crunches in a row after a while. But guess what? Your bodyweight doesn’t really put much stress on that area, and that’s why you can rep out a hundred crunches after a few weeks easily. If you worked your biceps with 5 lbs, and if you did a hundred repetitions, would they become “endurance” muscles, too?

Speaking of crunches, they’re kind of out. Just about everyone does them, they’re boring, they’re easy and they don’t really do justice to the bottom half of your midsection. For me, leg raises are the way to go. They work your entire abdominal area like nothing else. I like to keep reps in the 20-30 area and make the movement steady at a slower pace, two seconds up, one second pause and contract, two seconds down and one second pause and extend. The big thing is not to let them relax during a set, but instead to keep a constant tension.

Here are some tried and true variations of the leg raise.

1. Hanging leg raise.

Grip a chin bar and stop at a dead hang. From there, lift your femur but bend the knees, letting them travel all the way up to the chest. The flexion happens at the hip, and your pelvis should also rotate upwards. Remember to squeeze at the top and don’t swing around like a little monkey. Keep the body steady. An advanced version of this would be to extend the knees, which allows for greater tension but shortens the range of movement a bit. When your legs come back down, don’t let them travel past your back, as this results in swinging and you really shouldn’t let inertia do your work. This is a good exercise for those who possess a strong grip. If you don’t, work on it!

2. Lying leg raise.

Start by laying down on a mat, and don’t anchor your hands. Instead, they should be by your side, relaxed. The legs are kept straight the entire time, and rotating the pelvis ensures that you use your hip flexors less while the abs do most of the work. A great way to make this harder is to have a training partner push at your feet when they reach the top of the movement, forming a 90 degree angle with the torso. Do not let your feet touch the ground – this makes the abs relax.

3. Floor wipers.

Lie down on a bench and get in a starting position of the bench press. The weight on the bar shouldn’t be more than half of your bodyweight, your grip slightly wider than your shoulders. Legs are straight, and then you lift them upwards and diagonally and touch one of the plates on either side of the bar. Bigger plates result in a shorter range of motion. The key to this is balance. You lift the legs up to one side, lower them down and straight, back up but than touch the plate on the opposite end of the barbell. Keep the arms locked at the elbow and ensure that you’re not slipping off either side of the bench by squeezing your shoulder blades together.

4. The candle.

We used to do a lot of this in elementary school gym class. Lie down, arms at your sides, pushing at the floor. You lift your legs up, knees straight and locked, and then proceed to lift the lower back off the floor and your feet further up in the air. Reverse the movement, but remember to keep the feet off the ground.

5. Planted leg raise.

If you’re lacking in grip strength, this one is for you. Most gyms have proper benches for this type of movement, a pad for your back and two for your forearms with handy bars for gripping. If you’re not in luck, a pair of parallel bars will do, but you’ll have to remain holding yourself up with your arms locked. Kind of like you’re doing a dip, but instead you remain at the top of the dip movement and lift your legs up instead, until they’re parallel to the floor. Bend them at the knees if it suits you, then over time progress to keeping them straight. As always, avoid swinging and don’t let the feet go behind you at the bottom of the movement. You can combine this with the floor wipers and lift the legs up and to the left, then up and in front, then up to the right – this is all one big rep.

A couple of final points.

Abs are typically done at the end of a workout, like an afterthought. If you’re bent on improving your midsection, give them priority in your workout – the exercises are not very exhausting and can make for a great warm up. Also, don’t just go through the motions, instead, aim to feel each rep and go for the burn. As your mind-muscle connection improves, you’ll need to do fewer reps and the results will keep coming. A set/rep scheme for the abs should be, four to five sets of as much reps as you can manage in good form without excessive pain. Remember to breathe at all times, breathe in as you contract the muscles and breath out as they extend. Also, a strong lower back is important both for your posture, muscular balance and injury prevention. Deadlifts on your back workouts are great for this. These are opposing muscles and should ideally be the same in strength and endurance. And if your abs still ain’t showing, it’s time to implement two new exercises into your regimen – the lowering of the spoon and the pushing of the dinner plate - away.

By: Veljko Petranovic

I got an urge to write some text about dieting about 20 minutes ago, during my second meal of the day, at about noon. Can you guess what I was eating? Well, here’s a recipe for a diet-friendly, no-carb meal that I’m sure you’ll enjoy. Ingredients: One can of sardines in sesame oil. Open the can halfway and let all extra oil exit by applying manual pressure. Serve sardines on a plate, and consume with a fork. Drink water throughout the course. Appetizing, eh?

Not really. But on the other hand, I’m on a mission to drop about 10 pounds of body fat exclusively, which is an endeavor that entails eating lots off protein. Carbs are cycled in a fashion that I’ll get to a bit later. It’s simple, effective and lasts one whole month during which you don’t get hungry once. Here’s a sample of my menu on Monday, the 12^th of May.

• Meal one: 4 raw eggs, drank, about 20 grams of protein plus about the same amount of fat
• Meal two: one can of tuna in salted water, about 25 grams of protein
• Meal three: one can of tuna in salted water plus about 100 grams of radishes (whatever that vegetable is called, it has next to nothing carbs yet contains fiber)
• Meal four: whey protein shake, in water, 38 grams of protein, 3,2 grams of carbs, 2 grams of fat
• Meal five: post workout shake, same as meal 4.
• Meal six: maybe 50 grams of cottage cheese Major suckage, right? It is what it is, but I’m hell bent on doing it and the results will be posted in about one month. Photographic evidence, one might say.

The whole diet plan looks something like this: on Mondays and Thursdays, I severely cut out the carbs. On Tuesdays and Fridays, I eat a banana pre-workout. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, there’s a proper feast waiting – two bananas pre-workout. And on Sunday, I eat a lot of complex, fibrous carbs, in the area of 300-400 grams. That is also the only day when I don’t have to hoard up on protein. Bananas are just what I chose for my carbohydrate source, it can be anything up to 100 grams of that particular macronutrient. Believe it or not, that’s all there is to it! Nothing fancy, nothing extraordinary, no miracle fat burners or thermogenic foods. Just frequent, protein-rich meals, which, combined with cardio and weight training, comprises a fail-safe plan. It isn’t a whole lot of fun, but on this regimen, I can eat a pound of lean beef steak and not feel bad about it. It’s no fun, though, and this lack of fun is what keeps most people from coming even close to their fitness aspirations. It takes discipline, it takes being dumb as a mule and just forgetting about taste of proper food. All tasting variety is limited to cardboard and salty cardboard.

In a Muscle and Fitness article from recently, I’ve read about this study. Apparently, they gave one test group fresh popcorn and the other group got stale popcorn in a – get this - larger bag. Results show that people are likely to eat even more crap food if it’s provided in large containers. That’s right, more of the stale popcorn ended up being eaten! Holy cow! That’s just dumbfounding. The point of this digression is this: you, and you alone, decide what goes into your body.

If your goals include being in better shape and more aesthetically pleasing, by all means, keep your browser pointed to Student Fitness. My colleague, Joe Nort, writes up excellent articles that will get you on your way to Fitville in 1-2-3, as long as you actually listen to the advice. There is another way, a path of accepting yourself as you are physically and give up on such superficial actions as “dieting” and “training” for the sake of “looking good”. On the other hand, a lot of people I know feel depressed and shortchanged because of the way they look. Yet they still end up doing nothing about it! Don’t be like that. You can be whoever you want to and you possess the power to get in awesome shape if you wish. So read up. After that, it only comes down to putting in some hard work and eating a lot of bland, yet awesome food.

The final rewards include, but are not limited to, being healthy, buff, fast, strong, positively oriented, also there are six-pack abs, self-confidence, attractive looks, high energy levels and the comfort of knowing that, if you can diet properly for a solid month, you can do just about anything.

By: Ryan Imbach

After a long hiatus – being super busy with school projects – I’ve decided to devote some of my time again to Student Fitness! I am hoping that the readership has grown since I’ve been gone. Thank goodness I’m back, because you were getting sick of that pumpkin pie oatmeal and you want some more creations! Well, I’ve concocted some more nutritional goodness for you. So eat up!

Neon Green Shake

Before, you attempt this, I highly suggest you get a blender. You could also beg your parents to get you one, which is the option I usually choose. A small one like the Magic Bullet is pretty useful in college. Anyway, this smoothie packs a pretty good nutritional punch, and it will keep you quite full, especially if you use the casein protein and the flax seeds. Here’s the goods:

-1/2 an avocado

-1 or 2 scoops any flavor whey or casein protein

-large amounts of fresh spinach

-2 tablespoons of ground/milled flax seeds

-water or milk

First, I put the spinach in the blender, then I add a small amount of liquid and blend into a watery green mess. Then add your other ingredients and blend. Trust me on this, the taste is way better than the looks. Your friends will think you are crazy for drinking bright green liquid. On the other hand, they may think it’s some sort of crazy fruit juice. But you know what you’ve got: pure nutritional goodness.

Banana Nut Oatmeal

Okay, so maybe you’ve already thought of this one. But for some readers who haven’t, here’s yet another oatmeal recipe that is pretty tasty. The ingredients:

-1 cup of old-fashioned oats

-1 scoop banana whey or casein protein

-1 tablespoon flax seeds (optional)

-slices of banana

-small handful of crushed walnuts

-Water to cook oatmeal

-A few shakes of cinnamon

Heat the water and oats in a glass bowl in the microwave. Put the protein, flax, and cinnamon in, and crush the walnuts and throw them in, too. Stir in and chow down, my friend.

French Toast Eggs

Here’s a twist on my previous microwaved scrambled eggs recipe. It’s supposed to taste like French toast. And since fried toast is covered in sugar and whipped cream, it is not the best choice for your body. Here’s the ingredients:

-Ingredients from scrambled eggs article, plus…

-A sprinkle of butter buds (butter flavored flakes, sweet!)

-1 to 2 packets of Splenda

-A few shakes of cinnamon

Make the eggs in the microwave as usual. Then, when they’re done, sprinkle Butter Buds, Splenda and cinnamon on your eggs. It will be a taste explosion. Okay, so maybe not that great, but it’s pretty close to tasting like French toast. And that’s a good thing.

Tuna Burgers

Yet another recipe that floats around in health food circles is the tuna burger. This requires you to have some hardware and to get a little messy. The hardware you’ll need is either a George Foreman type grill, and Pizzazz type rotating pizza oven, or a microwave might work. The tools and ingredients are:

-A glass bowl

-2 cans of tuna

-1 egg

-crushed oatmeal (oat flour); about ¼ cup or less

I’m not saying sneak it in, but if your college doesn’t allow a Pizzazz pizza oven…well, do what you have to do, right? But these are great. They cook from the top and the bottom, so it’s almost like a real oven. First I’d suggest starting your pizza oven or grill to get it warmed up. Then you combine all your ingredients in the glass bowl with a fork. Next you’ll scoop up about half the mixture with your hands (gross!), and put it on the grill/oven in a nice patty shape. Put the other half on the oven, and then wait for it to cook. I honestly could not tell you how long to cook it. If you’re using the grill, I would say maybe 3 – 5 minutes. With the oven, I’d say 5 – 7 minutes. You’ll just have to experiment with the cooking times. To change up this recipe a bit, you can always add in extras like curry powder, chili powder, lemon pepper, onions, chives, or chunks of bleu cheese. It will be tasty in no time.

Frozen Peanut Butter Balls

This is another messy recipe, and one that requires a very cold refrigerator or a freezer. It is pretty tasty, however, even though you’ll have to play with the amounts of ingredients to get the perfect texture. The goods:

-2 mashed bananas

-1 2/3 cup natural peanut butter

-About 4 scoops whey or casein protein

-About 1 cup water

-Oat flour (optional)

-Very large bowl (trust me) and very large spoon

First, mash your bananas. Now the hard part. Combine all your ingredients except your oat flour (I have never actually tried it with oats in the mix, but it might help to make the mix hold together). Stir and mix; mix and stir. Keep going because it will take a while, and it will be sticky. Once everything is combined, you roll the goop into little balls. You can then proceed to cover them with oat flour (or flax seeds), and pop them in the freezer in zip lock containers or bags. If this doesn’t work for you, don’t be discouraged. It took me a few tries to get it somewhat correct. And even then, they weren’t balls so much as they were blobs of goop. But they were mighty tasty!

Another installment of recipes for you dorm-dwellers. Enjoy, and remember, not too much longer and it will be summertime!

By: Veljko Petranovic

In my gym, everybody seems to be on something. I’ve recently talked to an Egyptian fellow, a mass monster by anyone’s standards, and he swears that his immense bulk is the result of heavy training and branch-chained amino acids. He’s an arm-wrestling competitor and looks like he could lift a house. This other guy, Mirko, my buddy from school, has a very lean physique and looks like one of those model types. He takes German creatine, whey protein, glutamine, aminos and ZMA. His home looks like a supplement warehouse. And then, there’s this dude we call “Cold”, who used to be really big and fat, but now sports a tiny, ripped waist and unhuman mounds of muscle everywhere you look.

Cold works as a bouncer, and I guess that’s a good career choice, since he has a very nasty disposition. A few days back, he took his shirt off, and you could really tell he was on something. Great muscle separation, paper thin skin, lumps and bulges up the yazoo. His traps have took the place of his neck, and he can bench 450 for reps. Despite all this, one couldn’t help but notice terrible acne which cover his entire back. For lack of a better word, it looks disgusting.

A lot of other people in my gym take steroids as well. The thing is, noone competes in powerlifting, or bodybuilding, or baseball or whatever. Guys buy a membership, and a few short months later, their arms swell up like balloons and their backs block out the sun. You see them some time later, and they are back to a more reasonable size, more human proportions. And, without fail, they all look terribly depressed. Once you were Superman, being Clark again really sucks.

My viewpoint on this is, unless you are making money from a sport that demands strength or size, you have absolutely no business taking anabolics, androgens or hormones. Due to a shift in our collective conciousness, women have gained more power and rights, and men, especially younger guys, seek to compensate. This „compensation“ can manifest itself in a variety of ways, but a very common one is the Adonis complex, bigorexia, muscular dysmorphia, whatever you want to call it. A lot of men feel inadequate, and resort to chemical enchancement.

The list of side effects of these drugs is as long as my arm. Hair loss, acne, testicular atrophy, damage to the liver, mood swings, high blood pressure, acromegaly, water retention, impotence, organ enlargement. Death is a big one, too. Need I go on? The thing one has to ask himself is, is this really worth it? Are you really going to put your health in danger for the sake of sheer looks? Isn’t it stupid? Is it not downright idiotic?

There is something to be said about moderation. It applies to some things. But, let’s take Heroin for example. There is no moderation with it. Either you’re addicted or you’re clean. In my opinion, the same goes for steroids. No one ever does „one cycle“. Taking „low doses“ actually means suffering less side effects, and there is no safety involved once you start tampering with your body’s natural hormonal balance. You can try, and get out of it relatively unharmed, but for what? Being huge? Bah.

Any recreational athlete can achieve his goals naturally, provided that his goals are realistic. You’re not going to look like Ronnie Coleman with weights and food alone. But just about anyone can take crappy genetics, apply hard work and dedication and produce a marvelous looking body. It’s a matter of consistency and figuring out what works for you. You can gain 20 pounds in a month and lose them in two months, or you can accept fitness as a lifestyle and keep looking great no matter what. Think of it as brushing your teeth. Think of it as an investment in your future, and the future of your kids. Think of it as playing smart.

By: Veljko Petranovic

1.Don’s start a bulking phase if your body fat level is above 10 percent. Fat begets fat, remember, and the more you have, the more additional adipose tissue you’ll gain along with the muscle. Ideally, you should start bulking up after you’ve dieted down for the summer/competition/photo shoot/girlfriend. That way, your muscle/fat gain ratio should be about 1:1. When you’re chubby to begin with, the ratio is more like 1:4 in favor of fat.

2. Eat a lot, but no junk food. You’re looking for quality sources of protein and complex carbohydrates. Despite the fact that ice cream is made of milk and therefore must contain protein, all that extra sugar will not do anything good for your appearance. Some fat is acceptable, heck, it’s unavoidable, but don’t let this be an excuse for regular gorge-fests. Eat up to six times a day.

3. Bump your calorie intake by a set number of calories per day. Space the extra calories over all your meals, don’t just eat double your normal breakfast. Do not exceed 1.000 calories over your normal diet per day, it’s overkill. Instead, gradually increase your food intake. If you need, say, 3.000 calories to maintain a 200 lbs of bodyweight, calculate the needed increase for 210 lbs and eat accordingly. Don’t eat like you should be weighing 250 lbs right off the bat, or the fat gain will be much larger.

4. You should never be hungry. Overfeeding takes a lot of effort, endless mastication and loads of food on the go. Don’t kid yourself by starving for the majority of the day, then pigging out for dinner. That approach is a sure way to fail.

5. Don’t forget the fiber. When it comes to eating a lot of food, all the excess must go somewhere, and a good digestion goes a long way. Well known side effects of bulking include, but are not limited to, gas, stomach cramps, hard stool and even more gas. Also, it would be a good idea to include fish oil capsules in your diet.

6. Train no more than three times a week. For the rest of your time, you should be eating and resting. Bulking phases are ideal when you’ve got a lot of study material to go over. Preparing for a big exam, or three, includes a lot of sitting on your ass, which goes hand in hand with gaining mass. Seize the opportunity.

7. Compound exercises should dominate your training program. Don’t miss out by not squatting, deadlifting, benching, stand-pressing and barbell rowing. Also, this is a great time to focus on a lagging muscle group. Specialize on your weakness and bring it up to par, lest it becomes even more apparent. Work that muscle group first in your training, and give it more volume.

8. Forget both cardio and a ripped six pack. For normal people, like you and me, it’s not natural to add pounds upon pounds of lean muscle. What’s required is singleness of purpose. It is during this time when you should care less about aesthetics. Think of it as an investment in your future self. Gaining muscle without some fat is nigh-impossible, unless you’re chemically assisted (which I don’t recommend) or genetically blessed.

9. Sleep for no less then 8 hours every single night. Ten hours would be even better, if you can manage. Your sleeping patterns should be just as important as your training, though a bit less so than your diet. If nutrition comprises 70 percent of your fitness goals, the rest is divided between lifting and sleeping.

10. Live a little. Once your fitness goals, regardless of what they are, become routine, you’ll view them as a chore and a burden. You don’t have to be miserable in order to get big. Socialize with your friends and family, and let them in on your current efforts. They are the best support group one could ever want. Go shopping for your new, bigger clothes. Go out and have some fun. Fitness is a great way to live, but it shouldn’t be life itself.

Learning is a lifelong skill. From birth and throughout life, a person goes on a journey of acquiring knowledge. How this knowledge is gained varies from one individual to another because each one is created unique.

There are some people who make little or no effort to learn and yet they do well in school. Others spend endless hours over their books but do not excel at all. Genes may have something to do with this, but more than the hereditary factor, it is the attitude towards learning that increases one’s ability to perform well. How one efficiently studies makes a capable learner. Here are a few tips to make the most out of learning:

1. Take care of your health

People, like machines, also need downtimes. Stress and fatigue due to studying for long periods of time render the brain less effective to absorb data. Hence, adequate rest should be taken. A healthy mind needs a healthy body - see to it that proper nutrition and regular exercise is always maintained.

2. Develop a passion for learning

One should have a thirst for knowledge in order for learning to take place. Attending classes every day, reading and studying for hours, and accomplishing assignments do not guarantee positive results if you do not have that craving or focus to learn. Self-esteem somehow triggers this passion. The higher your self-confidence is, the more challenged you will become to learn faster.

3. Find a study environment that is conducive

Elements in the environment play an important role in one’s quest for learning. A specific study area with ample lighting, privacy, and complete supplies and reference materials are but some essentials for a smooth and stress-free study time. A set routine should also be imposed. Assign a specific time during the day for study. Don’t just “fit it in” your schedule or else you’ll have no time at all.

4. Set goals and targets

In order for each learning experience to be realistic, it is wise to set goals for yourself - goals that are measurable, achievable, time-bound, and flexible. Prepare weekly schedules, taking note of deadlines. For example, to get high grades, extra effort must be taken in studying and preparing for exams.

5. Take breaks in between study sessions

The brain needs to be recharged once in a while as this is when it absorbs all data obtained from studying. Overexertion causes it to repel information and makes studying futile. Do not go on a study marathon. Instead, study in short but frequent sessions and take breathers in between.

6. Engage in study groups

Two heads are better than one – so goes the cliché. Learning with a group is synergetic. You get to share your opinions, ideas, and views, and at the same time it is a venue for clarifying mind-boggling matters. It is also more interesting and challenging because you gain different perspectives or outlooks.

7. Understand concepts instead of memorizing details

Most of the time, students pass exams and quizzes with flying colors. But after a while, their knowledge of the subject matter would already slip their minds. This is mainly due to a wrong approach to learning – that of memorization. Memorization is only short-term “disguised learning”. If one develops the habit of understanding concepts rather than focusing on details, the learning process will flow smoothly and will have a long-term impact.

8. Use shortcuts

Applying shortcuts to your study habits maximize your learning skills. You accomplish more when you abbreviate in note-taking, when you focus your notes around ideas instead of taking them down verbatim, and when you put everything straight into your computer. In this day and age, we need to pack a lot of information into a very limited timeframe.

9. Manage your time wisely

Learning is an ongoing skill. Hand in hand with your goal-setting is allotting and managing your time for things to be done – projects to work on, homework to finish, and term papers and theses to submit. Time properly managed is time well spent. Even your time for socializing should be taken into consideration. Remember – all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!

10. Reward yourself

It is important to make the learning experience enjoyable whenever possible. Try out things that may spark that craving within you to learn – listening to music, perhaps, or engaging in a delightful snack – whatever may inspire you. Continuous hours of studying will not only make you weary but also make you lose interest.

The above tips show that devoting long hours to study does not necessarily yield productive results. Studying efficiently and effectively are the key factors to learning better.

This is an excerpt from Mark Patterson’s award-winning book “Secrets of LazySmart Students” - every student’s guide to getting better marks by working smarter instead of harder. Mark’s book will give you incredible tips for time management, self-motivation, will teach you how to kick the procrastination habit and doing great in any exam or written assignment. For more detailed information on what you have read, check out his book now at: “Secrets of LazySmart Students”

By: Joe Norton

What can I say, it’s one of the things on most college students minds. You want to be able to have a good time, without paying too heavy a price. Throughout this article I will try to explain the predicament: How many calories you can expect from some of the most common Alcoholic drinks, What are the least fattening forms of Alcohol, and tips for reducing the caloric and fat impact of your Alcohol consumption.

I’m not going to lie to myself, I know that most of you who read this are not going to take the best advice: which is to not drink alcohol at all. But let’s be honest with ourselves, this is college. It’s more than just another part of college life, it’s one of the driving social aspects and college would not be the same without it.

With that in mind, I’m going to tell you how to drink responsibly,
in terms of calories, and what are some of the least-detrimental drink options.
I just have to say, Always drink in moderation and within your personal boundaries.
Be safe.

Alcohol is just another form of Calories,
it is not necessarily more likely to be made into Fat

When trying to work your drinking into your diet and nutrition plan you should know this: Alcohol is fattening because of the calories it entails. Not necessarily because it is actually “more fattening” This is untrue and an urban legend. Just like any other form food or beverage, it affects your calorie count. If you take in more calories than you burn - you gain weight = this is a caloric surplus. If you burn more calories than you take in - you lose weight = this is caloric deficit.

Keep reading to get the real reasons why drinking tends to go hand-in-hand with fat gain.

Least Fattening type of Alcohol

Alcohol is similar to soda in that it is empty calories & simple carbs. No matter what form: Beer, Wine, Hard liquor - it’s still calorie dense. A good rule of thumb is that most forms of alcohol contain:

AT LEAST 100 calories per drink.

When I say drink, I am referring to bartender standards (yes, I am a graduate of Bartender school) which is:

1 Alcoholic Drink=
A 12 oz. Can of Beer (atleast 100 Calories, usually closer to 140 - 200)
A 4 oz. Glass of Wine (62 - 160 Calories)
A 1 oz. shot of Hard Liquor (60-100 Calories)

What this means, is that “a drink is a drink” and to an extent you are not going to be better off drinking one form of alcohol over the other in terms of caloric intake. Earlier I said a rule of thumb is atleast 100 calories per drink, this is including the some of the newer brands which try their hardest to make alcohol less full of carbs and calories - these are 100 calories, older brands which were not intended to be calorically & carb reduced are closer to 140 -200 Calories per drink.

Don’t Fall for the Light Beer Trap

Just because it is “light” or “lite” does not mean it is anything like diet soda. Somehow, many people think that because it is “light” beer it is almost calorie free -
NOT TRUE. It is still full of empty calories and simple carbs. Light Beer typically falls into the ‘at least 100 calories per drink’ category. Non-light beers are usually between 140-200 calories per 12 oz. can.

Mixed Drinks = Tons of Calories

As you can see, hard liquor is just as calorically dense as the other types.
This is because despite it’s deceivingly
small serving size, it still has all the carbs and alcohol sugars as the others -
just in a purer, condensed form. Most people don’t realize the huge amount of calories that is added to the equation when you throw in soda, and juices. Something as simple as a “Gin and Tonic” is about 280 calories. The worst mixed drinks calorie wise, those frozen and creamy, can tip the scales at an astounding 800 calories per drink. Try to avoid the worst of these by always using Diet soda, avoid creamy drinks (loaded with fat), and know the ingredients of your drinks - you can’t account for something you had no idea you were drinking. Worst comes to worst, ask the bartender whats in it.

Drunk Munchies - Where the Most Damage is Done

This doesn’t need much explanation. Anyone who has partied all night has experienced this phenomenon. The following of binge drinking with binge pizza or burger eating leads to substantial amounts of fat and calories. This is due to a variety of factors:
How Much you Eat - When inebriated, it can be difficult to establish proper serving size
What you Eat - When inebriated, it can be difficult to make health conscious diet decisions
When you Eat -Following a night of drinking, it is easy to consume whole meals very late and just prior to falling asleep (or passing out) which means your body has less time to digest and is more likely to convert this late-night surge of calories into fat.

Avoid this dangerous situation by always eating before you drink, pick healthier or atleast less fatty/calorie dense foods, and don’t eat right before you go to bed.

With this guide you should be much better off than the uneducated party goer.

Check out more articles about Alcohol in College

By: Joe Norton 

1. Don’t just hope to find time for going to the gym. Take the time to plan it. The college lifestyle can be hectic and plans/entire courses of the day can be changed with a decision. When you have plans in advance you can build your day around your fitness lifestyle.

2. If lines at machines at the college gym are annoying you then you might want to try going earlier in the morning or later at night. College gyms tend to have very light traffic till just before lunch, it will get more busy throughout the day usually peaking by 5-8 and die off the closer you get to closing time. With this in mind, you can have the whole gym to yourself if you go at one of the less busy time periods.

3. Don’t forget about all the old school bodyweight exercises you know of. You know exactly what I’m talking about: The Push-up, the sit-up, the pull-up (if you have a chin up bar to use). These are compound bodyweight exercises that are the basis for many fitness routines and it’s because they are some of the most effective excercises we know about. Pushups and situps can be done anywhere, any time. Why not do a quick set of each during commercials?

4. Hoof it a bit. Walking is a great form of exercise. Try to plan your day to allow for a few strolls. Even though they require little physical effort they cause serious health benefits. Take every chance you can to get out of the cramped dorm room and take a look around on a walk. Why take the shuttle to save 10 minutes when you could have just added in 10 minutes of light exercise…

5. Moderate your alcohol consumption. Alcohol is not going to help any of your goals – unless your goal is to pass out. Alcohol causes a decrease in testosterone and will negatively impact your ability to grow muscle. Alcohol is also full of empty calories and simple carbs, plus – a lot of people eat seriously unhealthy food once they have had too much alcohol (this is where most of the fat for the beer belly comes form). Read more about “Alcohol In College”

6. Get enough sleep. Atleast 6 for most people, 8 is recommended. Lack of sleep can cause many things, the worst of which is psychosis (that’s right, a psycho), including decreased cognitive ability. It will also completely screw over any kind of lifting / fitness plan. Your body needs time to rest and repair, if you never give it time it can’t ever rest & repair. Read more about sleeping…

7. Avoid the buffet. It is scientifically proven now that when you go to a buffet you definitely eat more. We all knew it, no one doubted it, yet for some reason people still go to buffets which tend to have the worse food on campus. Bleh, boo this buffet! Read more about buffets…

8. Put some Pilates into your fitness plan! Pilates are those core based bodyweight exercises that seems kinda somewhat similar to yoga but its not. Yeah those, they are amazing for abs and can be done anywhere. I suggest the floor because it has no give and works good as support. However, you can even do them in bed. Things like “the hundred”, leg raises, the saw, v situps, are all Pilates moves and there are many more – check’em out.

9. Stay busy. Join an organization or professional development club and participate often. Not only will this help out your resume and your skills in the given area, but also it means you are busy more and less time to sit around. Stay moving, stay burning calories.

10. Join a team or club, or atleast start a recurring physical activity (like Sunday basketball games, Saturday morning football games, whatever). Add something to your life that is going to continually cause you to do activities that benefit your goal. Deciding to run a 5k or hell, even a marathon – is a gigantic example of starting a recurring activity that will actually guide you to your goal.

Keep these tips in mind this upcoming semester.

Convo with Entrepreneur Bodybuilder Tom Venuto leads to Recommendation
about his #1 best selling diet and fitness ebook in the history of the Internet

Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle is the #1 best selling diet and fitness ebook in the history of the Internet. In fact, it’s one of the best selling e-books on ANY subject in the history of the Internet.As soon as I read about his ebook in a forum I google’d it.

The site looked so good I bought it and read it in one shot- right on thru the night. I’m not even currently dieting and I couldn’t stop reading. It was just all great information, some I know, some I suffered to learn, some I was just learning.
I dug around the site to find a personal address and sent away an email – one I never expected to get answered.

Seeing how Tom Venuto is one of the best selling digital fitness experts I jumped at the chance to ask him a question and decided I had the best chance of getting an answer if I asked one specific thing. I decided to ask him what made his ebook sell so good.

He got back to me quickly.

“It’s because thousands of women and men of every age are burning off BODY FAT - not muscle or water weight - and they’re doing it naturally, without supplements, pills or “magic potions,” simply by using the proven, scientifically-accurate and common-sense advice found inside this amazing diet and fitness guidebook.”

It almost caught me off guard, but definitely a nice thing to see. When I had initially sent him an email I figured I’d never get a reply. I was wrong. We ended up sending several emails back and forth. I now hold Tom in the highest regard and highly recommend his ebook – “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle”

It is quite simply one of the most complete, detailed, and precise guides to fat loss you will ever read. What makes it so much different than other weight loss publications on the market?

Well first of all, it’s not a “weight loss” program, it’s a “fat” loss program. This may seem like semantics or wordplay at first, but once you’ve read just the first three chapters, there will be no doubt in your mind that pursuing “weight loss” is not only the wrong goal, it may be the reason that you’ve failed to reach and maintain your ideal body weight. Burn the Fat shows you exactly why it’s fat you must lose, not “weight” (which includes muscle, water and other lean tissue) and then goes on to show you exactly how to do it.

Secondly, what makes Burn the Fat different is the amount of attention that is paid to each and every element of successful, healthy, permanent fat loss. Burn the Fat not only thoroughly dispels the lies, myths and fallacies surrounding a very confusing subject, it is simply the most detailed book about fat loss ever written. By reading Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, (or better yet, “studying it”), you will learn more about fat loss than you could from an entire semester of nutrition classes or from an entire shelf of maintstream diet publications at your local bookstore.

You may be wondering, “Is this a low carb diet? A high protein diet? A high fat diet? what type of program IS it???” The truth is that Burn the Fat is neither a high protein diet, or a low carb diet. That’s because with the information in this book, you will be able to easily determine your own ideal protein, carbs and fats ratio. You will be able to analyze your body type (are you an endomorph, ectomorph, or mesomorph?), you will determine your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate, or the amount of “maintenance” calories your body requires every day), and you will find out whether you are carb tolerant or carb intolerant.

This personalized approach makes perfect sense because each of us is a unique individual and no two people are exactly alike in terms of body physiology and personal goals.

One of the most powerful chapters in the book is the first one called, “How To Set Powerful, Compelling Goals That Will Propel You Forward and Charge You Up with Unstoppable Motivation.” In this chapter, you will learn what is probably the ultimate secret to burning fat and getting in shape… and it has nothing to do with diets, supplements or training programs. There’s also a great quote in this chapter from the legendary Green Bay Packers coach, Vince Lombardi…

“The dictionary is the only place success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must all pay for success.” That line does a nice job of expressing the “no quick fix” philosophy behind the entire book. In the rest of the book, you’ll learn the complete and exact mechanics of fat loss - explained on both a scientific and a practical level (which you can easily apply in your own daily life in terms of what to eat and how to exercise to burn fat).

If there is any drawback to the Burn the Fat ebook, it’s that it contains so much information, that some readers may find it a bit overwhelming. Those who are looking for a “cliff’s Note’s” quick start type of fat loss program, might be a bit intimated at first. The good part however, is that even these types of readers can feel confident and assured that it will be worth the effort because this will literally be the last book they ever have to buy on the subject.

Who will benefit most from Burn the Fat?

In the broadest sense, anyone and everyone who needs to lose weight will benefit from Burn The Fat. Men, women, bodybuilders, fitness enthusiasts, and especially motivated individuals and avid readers will love this book. Although it was written by a bodybuilder, this book is certainly NOT just for bodybuilders.

You will find no “30 lbs. in 30 days” miracles at work here. It’s all about intelligent eating choices, planning, hard work and lifestyle change. As Burn The Fat author Tom Venuto says,…

“Burn the Fat is simple, but it’s not easy.”

In terms of graphic design, Burn the Fat is a clean and professionally formatted PDF e-book. It’s a little on the plain side, being just text, but that makes it ideal for printing and reading in the comfort of a favorite chair. Because of it’s size, it does require a robust printer and a good stack of paper.

Initially, some people thought that Burn the Fat was priced a little on the high side because $39 might seem like a fair chunk of money for an ebook download. However, after they saw the amount of information contained within Burn The Fat’s 340 pages, along with the special bonus ebooks and reports that come with it, they said it was not only worth the $39, but many times that amount.

As with any how-to publication, you’re not really paying for the materials used to compile the document, but for what the information can do for you, and clearly, this publication has changed many lives and the hundreds of testimonials and success stories found on the Burn The Fat website are proof of that (I recommend you take a look at that “testimonials” page on the Burn the Fat website because some of the before and after transformations are simply incredible - as well as inspiring).

The Bottom line?

Anyone looking for a quick fix solution to fat loss, anyone looking to be told fairy-tales, and anyone looking for a “magic bullet” offered by the likes of body wraps, fat burning pills, diet shakes, or “fat-burning” creams and gels might be best advised to steer clear of Burn the Fat.

On the other hand, anyone tired of “spinning their wheels” going nowhere, who wants the truth about fat loss and who is ready and willing to put in the hard work and discipline and make the lifestyle changes necessary to get a fat free body, will find Burn The fat to be one of the best investments they ever made in their lives.
Click here to learn more about Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat