The Skinny Kid

Here’s a nice little site I found. A reminder that abs is more about taking the fat away than building the muscle up.

Dispelling The Abs Workout Myths

Say goodbye to hanging knee-raises, straight-leg raises, and any other type of leg raises for building your abs. They simply don’t work. The primary role of your abs is to stabilize your body. When you raise your leg for example, your hip flexors pull on your spine and arch it forward/downward. Your abs stabilize this action by resisting and essentially keeping your back from breaking. Take note that this is the static action of the abs. It doesn’t build or strengthen. Leg raising exercises only feel like they are effectively working your abs because of the repeated strain and exhaustion of your muscle producing catabolic, lactic acid build up.

What Really Works:

What does strengthen your abs is what strengthens any other muscle in your body. Contraction! In this case - Decreasing the distance between your rib cage and your pelvis.

So we come back to the good old sit-up.
The Secret:The difficulty in obtaining great abs is not so much building the muscle. It’s cutting enough fat from your body for them to show. You probably know by now that spot-reduction of fat simply doesn’t work here. In order to show those abs you need overall fat loss.

The balanced diet can sometimes be elusive in modern society. A good multivitamin can help. Here is Forbes’ guide to figuring out you need and what to buy.
Vitamins–Who Needs Them? - Forbes.com

The body cannot produce these nutrients on its own, but they can all be found in a number of foods. Unfortunately, with so many people opting for fast food, eating out and taking on restrictive diets, getting everything you need isn’t just difficult, it seems near impossible. The only option that makes sense is to supplement.

“If someone is healthy and eating a well-balanced diet according to the U.S. dietary guidelines, it’s likely they don’t need supplements,” says Dr. Cindy Moore, director of the Cleveland Clinic nutrition therapy department in Cleveland, Ohio. “But there are circumstances that make that impossible.”

Leading fitness gurus have packaged workouts that provide the music and instructions via the iPod. By subscribing, you presumably get new workouts and move up a fitness ladder. Not a bad idea for some people.

Gear Factor

The folks at iTrain are capitalizing on the prevalence of folks who workout with their iPod or other mp3 player. They’ve put together 10 Hollywood personal trainer workouts combined music that can be downloaded to your player of choice. The series includes programs for flexibility, strength and cardiovascular training. An “a la carte” package lets you buy programs at your leisure, or you can subscribe on a monthly basis ($9.99/month) or for a year ($49.99).

Here’s a story about a school teacher who reduced her weight dramatically by finding the time to exercise and sticking faithfully to a 1,200 calorie per day diet. Although she allowed herself cheat days on Saturday she eventually found she needed to cheat less and less.

Health 101: Teacher shares fitness lessons | www.tucsoncitizen.com ®

If she could do it, anyone can. So says Donita Montgomery, 29, a local teacher who lost 87 pounds and feels unstoppable - especially when she’s kickboxing.

At 5 feet 7 inches, she now weighs 145. It wasn’t that long ago, however, that she was 202 pounds and wearing a size 22. Montgomery, now a size 9, recalls that her most recent weight gain came in 2002. Her sedentary lifestyle and job as a fifth-grade teacher made it easy to pile on the pounds because she spent most of the day sitting.

Despite evidence that intravenous treatments using Vitamin C can fight certain types of cancer, precious little research has been done to determine whether the relatively cheap and safe process should be used as a mainstream treatment.

The government nutrition researcher has published new evidence that suggests vitamin C can work like chemotherapy - only better. But so far, he hasn’t been able to interest cancer experts in conducting the kind of conclusive studies that, one way or the other, would advance treatment.

This is not about popping supplements. It’s about putting high-dose vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, into a vein, which requires needles and trained professionals.

The distinction between oral and intravenous is crucial. The body automatically gets rid of extra C through urine. Levine’s lab has shown that, at high concentrations, the vitamin is toxic to many types of cancer cells in lab dishes. But to get that much C into the body before it’s eliminated, it must be put directly into the blood.

Loretta Hill, 42, of Pittsgrove, Salem County, sits at a faux granite table, facing a TV, chatting with two other cancer patients in the Marlton office suite of family physician Vivienne Matalon.

Each patient is tethered to an intravenous bag of C and other nutrients hung above the table that will take 40 minutes to drip into them. The fee, not usually covered by insurance, is $110.

Vitamin C is not miraculous, proponents say. Just as some people die despite standard treatment, some die despite ascorbate drips.

“We may not be able to affect the ultimate outcome,” said Matalon, who sees about 15 ascorbate patients a week. “But I think we see a dramatic improvement in quality of life.”

The problem is, anecdotes and impressions don’t count. Skeptics ask: Where’s the data on dosing and regimens, on tumor responses, on survival?

“As far as I know, that kind of registry just doesn’t exist now, and it’s a huge weakness of the movement,” acknowledged Ron Hunninghake, chief medical officer at Riordan’s center, which is starting a database.

In any case, as consumers clamor for alternative therapies, intravenous C is gaining fans. Reports of side effects are rare, and risky patients - with kidney problems or blood disorders - are easily screened out.

“Interest is definitely growing,” said Kenneth Bock, physician and president of the American College for Advancement in Medicine, an alternative-medicine society that teaches ascorbate infusion protocols.

Interest is not growing, however, among mainstream oncologists, judging from conferences, publications, and interviews with some of them.

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer | 06/18/2006 | Vitamin C: Cancer cure?

Has your weight loss program run into a brick wall? It may be time to shake things up a little. Reduce portions (again.) Add another small meal (at the expense of others.) Exercise a little more. Change what exercises you do.

But whatever you do, do something different!

PE.com | Inland Southern California | Lifestyles

When the needle on the scale refuses to drop another bar, it can be frustrating. Jump-starting weight loss calls for understanding what causes the halt.

A debated weight-loss theory holds that the body has a “set point” or comfortable level of fatness, below which the body will resist fat-loss efforts.

Weight loss also slows because “the less you weigh, the fewer calories it takes to move your body around,” said Roberta Jupp, a South Carolina registered dietitian and diabetes educator.

But you can crank up the calorie-burning.

Change your ways.

Luckily the rise in poundage I saw recently appears to have been a fluke. Although I am not back down to my recent lows, the body fat percentage and weight have both come down to reasonable levels. I weighed in today at 232.5 and 27 percent body fat.

One of the problems of cooking at home (especially my home) is the need to cater to a wide range of food allergies and general pickiness. But I recently remembered (through my wife’s encouragement) that I can always cook one set of meals for myself and another for everyone else. Which led me back to a meal I used to make all the time ten years ago, and which helped me lose weight then. - Jambalaya. Here’s my recipe:

Brown 1 cup of Andouille sausage or your favorite substitute with olive oil in a large stew pot.

Add enough rice or brown rice to make about 10 servings to the meat and stir for one minute in the oil.

Cover with water and bring to a boil. Turn to a simmer until there is little water left.

I add 2 cans of black beans. You can use kidneys or any similar bean if you prefer.

If desired, add a jar of jalapeno peppers and/or a jar of your favorite tomato sauce. Stir in and allow the mixture to lose any “soupiness.”

That’s it. You may or may not need additional seasoning, depending on whether you use peppers and sauce. It will make several days servings or feed a large family. Enjoy.

Weight-Loss Challenge Continues Today in USA TODAY and on USATODAY.com: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

The 2006 USA TODAY Weight-Loss Challenge continues today highlighting dieter Toni Riley, a 52 year-old 4-H youth development agent from Hopkinsville, Ky.Riley followed Bill Phillips’ Body-for-Life program, which combines a sensible diet and intensive strength training. Her diet involves eating 1,500 calories a day including three small meals and a couple of snacks. Her exercise plan included working out six days a week and following the Body-for- Life book’s weight training program, which involves rotating weights and cardio exercise. She has lost more than 20 pounds since the Challenge began.

The health benefits of soy are fairly well known. A new study suggests that soy-based meal replacement drinks can help people lose weight and lower cholesterol.

ISLAMABAD: For people trying to lose weight, new research suggests that soy-based liquid meal replacement shakes may be just as effective as intensive behavioral therapy and more effective than weight loss medications.”Using two meal replacements daily is one of the most effective ways of losing weight on your own,” study author Dr. James W. Anderson, of the University of Kentucky told Health.

What’s more, the benefits of soy-based meal replacements may extend beyond trimming the waistline, the report indicates. It also appears to help lower cholesterol and trigylceride levels.

“The bottom line is soy is healthy, and while incorporating it into weight loss may not have a more dramatic effect on your waistline than other nutrition plans, its benefits go beyond weight loss toward increasing overall health,” Anderson said in a university statement.

Source: Soy-based shakes help lower weight, cholesterol - PakTribune

Malaysia’s Star Online posted an article about the myths and facts of weight loss. It was fairly interesting, so here is the link and a sample:

Myths and facts about dieting for weight loss

Myth – The best and most effective diets help you lose weight quickly.

Fact – Researchers from Tufts University observed overweight or obese individuals on some popular diet plans like Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers and Zone diet – after one year, most people who followed their diet plan closely lost weight no matter which diet they were on. The study concluded that in the short-term all four diets worked equally well. Long-term, however, there appeared to be very little difference in success rates.