Student Fitness

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

By: Joseph Norton

When I lost weight it wasn’t because I went on a diet. It was because I analyzed my habits and lifestyle - chose my goal of what habits and lifestyle I did want. Then I worked to become the new me. When I was doing all this I noticed that every problem area of my life that was causing me discomfort could usually be grouped into one of three categories. Together these 3 categories are the major areas where the college atmosphere influences students and makes them prone to weight gain:

Lifestyle

College is different than high school. It’s as simple as that. The primary areas of the typical college students lifestyle that are affected is the amount of free time they have, how they use their free time, how much you physically exert yourself (be that excercising, lifting, anything that is aerobic). Usually, this new free time is used in ways which are, although fun, not quite conducive to weight loss. Just think about how often you use your free time to work out physically?
Many high school athletes who managed to stay fit from practice do not compete in college. Inherently, the additional hours of free time will undoubtedly lead to increased sedentary activity.

This is why I was so shocked at my weight gain. Being a former athlete I felt immune to weight issues. It should have dawned on me that although I was a football player in the past, nothing about my current lifestyle includes any of the physical training from my football days. So what happen is I ate the same, and exercised less - big shock, I gained weight.

Even if you never played sports, its likely you still spent more time exerting yourself
during offhours in high school than you will in college. Also, take into account how much more downtime you really have. An average courseload being 15 credits, this means 45 hours of actual classtime per week.

College, technically speaking, takes up about as much time as a “full time” 40 - 50 hour workweek. Even being so, it’s not much time your actually in class.

Think about highschool and how it was typically 6 hours, 5 days a week. Well, for college the average schedule requires 3 hours, 5 days a week. Meaning college takes HALF as much time as high school. This is why moderating how you use your downtime is so vitally important.

Stress

College students are in a complex environment; surrounded by new people, learning new
concepts, and all while trying to maintain an active social life. It can get a little stressful. Stress causes all sorts of problems.

Stress can cause your immune system to get seriously bogged down, inviting illness.

Pair this with the fact that college is already a risky place for illness and you got a serious
threat of sickness Also note that stress causes higher cortisol levels, which directly increases abdominal fat.

Here are several strategies that can help you cope with stressful situations in college, according to the University of South Florida’s Counseling Center for Human Development:

Learn to manage your time wisely. Make and follow a daily schedule that includes time for classes, reading and writing assignments, exam preparation (don’t procrastinate!), healthy meals, exercise and a job.

Set priorities and make the most of your opportunities as a student. Write down the most important items and concentrate on those at the top of your list. Writing ideas down helps crystallize your thinking and reinforce important goals.

Learn to say “no” to some of the demands for your time. Protect your own best interests by refusing to allow yourself to become overstressed by taking on every request or opportunity that comes your way.

Make careful planning a basic part of your academic routine. In a student’s hectic world, poor planning often leads to crisis situations. And crisis almost always leads to stress.

Food

Far too many students come into school with the midnset that the meal plan will be there whenever they are hungry.

Only to realize that most meal plans only allow 2 meals a day on avg and definitely require additional supplementation.Without viable healthy alternatives to campus food, and with surrounding fast food, the convenience factor becomes overwhelming.

Students snack on candy bars and soda from the vending machines instead of buying fruit or juices to ease those late night cravings. With some planning and moderate discipline, students can learn that it is not terribly difficult to live a healthier lifestyle.

Upon entering college the average student’s life is dramatically altered in these three areas. Unfortunately for us with a naturally slow metabolism the impact of these three changes can lead to dramatic weight gain – The Freshman 15.
Together these factors tend to cause 3 significant changes in the fitness and nutrition of the college student.

1. Consume More Calories – poor food choices, to counteract stress

2. Burn Less Calories – from being less active

3. Start/Stop Metabolism – from missing meals, poor food choices

Another result of the lifestyle switch between high school and college is the proclivity of college students to live on a more nocturnal schedule.

This can cause problems especially given how the meal plans given out at colleges operate during day hours. This can lead to missing the “time zone” for a specific meal period. To avoid this you need to learn to work with your meal plan.
Another significant problem with the lifestyle inherited by the college student is frequency of meals. There is a significant problem with only eating 2 meals a day, and doing so crushes your metabolism.

By: Joe Norton 

University of Pennsylvania researchers found that even the most chronically sleep-deprived men report feeling “only slightly sleepy.” So, the question is how often do you feel slightly sleepy? Everyday! Well, if you are one of the many who do not get enough sleep and suffer because of it, here are some correlations you should be made aware of.

Sleep Deprivation opens the door for Illness

In a recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that when 11 sleep-deprived but otherwise healthy men were given a flu vaccine, they built up just half the level of antibodies–proteins produced by the immune system to battle foreign substances–as fully rested guys given the same shot. Pair this with the fact that college campuses are already a hotbed for illness due to close quarters (and hygiene for some) and you’ve got serious potential for illness.

Don’t sacrifice mental ability.

“Studies done on visual perception, motor skills, and creative tasks all show that if you don’t sleep enough, learning just doesn’t happen,” says Sara Mednick, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute. Think she’s exaggerating? The National Sleep Foundation reports that sleep deprivation impairs mental performance almost as much as being drunk–only without the funny stories. Keep in mind you are a student and don’t sacrifice mental ability for a few extra hours.

The standard amount of sleep per night is 8 hours however there is room for variation.
Some sleep as much 9 hours while others sleep as little as 5 1/2.
For More information about sleep 

By: Joe Norton 

There are many ways you can increase your metabolism, the best ways of which are to be active and to eat often. However, there are smaller, simpler things you can do to increase your metabolism a little. Every little bit helps.

Load up on hot sauce - capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot peppers, causes an increase in metabolism. Studies have found that capsaicin works in two ways to reduce cholesterol levels: it decreases cholesterol absorption by the body so that more is excreted in the feces; and it increases the enzymes responsible for fat metabolism in the liver, so that more triglycerides, the hard insoluble fat, are secreted by the liver rather than accumulated in the body.

Drink coffee -Anyone who’s had a few too many coffees and sufferred the shakes can tell you that caffeine is a serious stimulant that dosen’t get much negative press due to our cultures love of coffee. Just make sure to drink plenty of water (I drink a glass of water for every cup of coffee, in addition to my daily 64 daily ounces) to counteract the dehydrating effect of the caffeine.

Eat Some Ruffage – Celery is so fibrous that your stomach burns more calories digesting it than you gained by eating it. So what happens is a net change that is negative. You burn calories by eating stringy veggies like celery.

By: Joe Norton 

It’s called progressive overload.
It is the process of systematically causing your muscles to overload, to get max’d out, and thus they adapt to this stimulus and grow to handle the weight. Then you do this again.

Try to make a weekly target, like add at least 2.5 pounds per exercise per workout.
After a few weeks you have made substantial gains and all the while it will hardly seem difficult. This is how the professionals do it, it’s as simple as that: Progressive overload.

I highly suggest using a journal to record your exercises and to make sure you are slowly progressing. After a month you will wonder how you ever managed to keep track of your progress without it (and you’ll realize you actually didn’t) It wasn’t until I kept a journal that I made significant gains in strength in short spans of time.

By: Joe Norton 

If you haven’t seen SuperSize Me, a documentary on a filmmakers one month diet based entirely off the McDonalds Menu, then go see it. If you have then you already know that the average American eats way too much fat every day.

There are some simple rules which will allow you to ingest far less fat, and with time eating this way your body will adjust accordingly. It is important to also keep in mind that the human body requires fat and that having too low of a fat intake will cause your testosterone to decrease. So, it is a bit of a juggling feat to have enough but not too much.

Stick to lean meats, poultry, fish – these are very low in fat, while very high in protein. These should be a staple to your appetite. Avoid fatty beef and pork products. Turkey based products taste just as good (I prefer them) and are way better for you.

No Fried Foods – get grilled, broiled, toasted, whatever. Just not fried, that adds a lot of calories, and a lot of fat. Eat grilled chicken instead of fried chicken, eat mash potatoes (or way better is sweet potatoes) instead of French fries.

No Cheese – its ridiculous how 7 grams of fat is in every slice of cheese, might want to at least think before getting 2 slices on every sandwich. Cheeses should generally be avoided.

Strictly Skim Milk- Not even some creamer in your coffee, it’s unnecessary. Throw Skim milk in, or better yet buy those zero sugar creamers or zero calories.

Avoid Simple Carbs, Stick to Complex – Most often fatty snacks are simple carbs. Things like cakes, cookies, brownies; bakery goods in general which don’t have the name whole wheat are not complex and should be eaten sparingly.

Don’t think you can fuel yourself with anything.

Even if you stick to your caloric limits, it has to be in the right proportions. If you eat 2,000 calories of mostly simple carbs and fat you are not going to get the same results as if you eat 2,000 calories of complex carbs and lean protein.
A saying I learned from programming, was “crap in, crap out”. You get what you put in, in programming. If you put in sloppy code then you’re going to get a sloppy product.

Our bodies work the same way, if you put good fuel in then you get the kind of results that good fuel produces.

 Here are some of the most common ways of getting de-railed from your weight loss and fitness goals. You may recognize one or… all of them. Don’t let’em happen to you: 

          You Gained Weight!- You’ve been sticking to your brand new diet for a whopping 48 hours.  You check the scale and somehow you’ve managed to gain weight! Don’t be frustrated - it might not be fat. Many people experience muscle growth during fitness/health plans. As they say, muscle ways more than fat and it’s entirely possible you added muscle mass. “Well, I want to lose weight, not gain it” you say?

By gaining muscle mass you are increasing the amount of calories your body needs to run - it now burns more because of the additional muscle mass. This means the more muscle mass you have, the more calorie room. You will want to use a body fat analyzer to be able to precisely say what type of weight you are losing/gaing.

          Overwhelmed by your Appearance/Situation - What you look like today physically does not reflect who you are today. That’s right, because what you look like physically is the result of your past actions - it has nothing to do with your current actions.

Your future physical appearance is determined by your current and ongoing actions. Theres no reason to fret over the fact that you are not where you want to be right now. There is no way to instantly change your situation - you have to get yourself on the path to your fitness/weight loss goal. It’s all about consistency. Weight loss can quickly accumulate when you are consistently working towards your goal.

          All-Or-Nothing Attitude - This happens when somene breaks their diet and then decides “what the heck, I already screwed up my diet, I’ll just eat what whatever and get back on the diet tomorrow…”. You must avoid this attitude at all cost if you want to be successful in your fitness and weight loss goals.

The vast, vast majority of people who say this to themselves end up gorging themselves and not getting back on the diet weeks. The proper way to have handled a situation where you eat something you shouldn’t is to :

Damage Control - One you eat a cheat food, cut it off there. Don’t open the flood gates.

Then, to account for the increase in calories/fat you should Exercise It Off.

No hot pockets
Try to stay away from most frozen food.  Although it true that flash frozen vegetables can be fresher than store bought, it is also true that most college students have more hot pockets in their freezer than veggies. Frozen foods like hot pockets are excessively high in sodium and and sometimes in fat.

Avoid Ramen
Tons of sodium, and no nutritional value at all in the simple carbohydrate noodles. This type of snack would be stored right away as glycogen