Acai berry is the latest and greatest thing to ever grace this planet…. Apparently. While Oprah and all of these “gurus” go on about the benefits of whatever new product stacks the shelves of the civilized world, I am not convinced. It is not just me either, a large proportion of the athletes and trainers out there also know the truth: There is no miracle cure.

It is often hard to resist the advertisements that have a picture of some overweight slob and then next to him is his new reclaimed body, complete with six (sometimes eight!) pack abs, rippling biceps, imposing pecs and a nice tan and recently waxed body.

These differences are often claimed to have been made by Acai, pills, supplements, legal steroids, machines, contraptions, secrets and God knows what else.

The reason that these products get promoted and are made to sound so miraculous is for a couple of reasons.

1. These products make record breaking profits every year.
Billions of dollars have been scalped from gullible, overweight consumers who want the six pack or the toned beach body. Clever marketers didn’t spend 4 years at college stuffing around, they learn how to manipulate people into buying things they don’t need.

2. It is so easy to believe in a “secret” or a “new and improved weight loss drug”.
People have always been lazy. It is hard to get up early. It is hard to stay on a strict diet. Going to the gym is an absolute killer if you are serious about it. But the real reason that people keep getting conned is that they believe in something for nothing.

Snap out of it and realize that the only way you get what you want is by taking ACTION on a good PLAN.

I also realize that a lot of people promote these supplements and that I will be crucified by some people for writing these articles, but the truth is, I don’t care. Find somebody that does.

I am not writing on the internet to deceive people and con them out of x$ per month for a bottle of phony pills that do nothing but fatten the pockets of already mind-blowingly rich corporations.

I have tried heaps of supplements in the past, specifically ones that help burn fat as I wanted to get lean and ripped.

I have spent a lot of $$ so you don’t have to!

Until next time, just eat healthy food and make your body work for its gains instead of trying to short cut life!

Johnny

I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine cranking out an abacus and performing calculations to find out how many points this meal is going to add up to and if I am allowed to eat it.

I also can’t be bothered spending an hour jogging on a treadmill in “Fat Burning Mode” staring at the blank wall ahead of me.

When I want to lower my body fat % I want it to be dead simple, efficient and effective.

Here are a few tips to make your body fat loss program a little more simple and therefore easier to stick to.

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1. Set out your weeks workouts in front of you.

This has saved me procrastinating, wondering what I am going to do and making excuses. If I have booked in a session of staircase sprints and it is raining… Too bad. A light patter of rain on the body isn’t going to kill me, in fact I feel fantastic after I get home from a run in the rain, although I don’t make a habit of it. I allocate times for the gym and a bit of interval training throughout the week and make sure I keep those times free.

2. Keep your diet simple.

I have found through intense experimenting that when I have a diet that allows too many foods, I find that it is easier for me to cheat the diet. At the moment my diet consists of pretty much the same sort of meal 4-5 times a day, even for breakfast. I can whip it up in about 5 minutes and eat it in another 5 minutes, simple as that, no slaving over a hot stove for me

3. Make your exercise a challenge, but fun.

I enjoy beating my old records, so most times I go out for a run I try go further in a shorter time. Obviously the effect plateaus after a while but you can always change it up for a new challenge e.g. swapping interval sprints to just a 20 minute all out run for a few days aweek, then back to sprints.

On the weights, it is pretty obvious that every time you go to the gym you want to lift heavier weights, or lift the same weights more times. I find it a great challenge and after a while, just as anything, progress plateaus. So then one might go to doing some 1 rep max lifts (lifting the heaviest weight you can lift for just one repitition), a body split (training different parts of the body on different days) or a full body workout.

These are a few things that have helped keep me motivated, because motivation is the key. Make a game of it and you will not want to stop the game! If you can stay motivated, no matter what you are doing, you will eventually get there, don’t let minor set backs such as injuries, missing a day, bad weather, arguments with a spouse, lack of money etc get you down. I have been through times where I have simply not had the $7 to go to my local gym and so I have to pump out some body weight exercises and get creative about getting money for the gym.

I have had arguments with my partner that have left me feeling so annoyed, down etc that I find it hard to do anything, but if we can get over these hurdles and just focus on the training, becoming a better and stronger person then it will be a huge blessing to us for our whole lives.

Until next time, sort out a rational, logical answer to your challenge and get into it!

Johnny

How To Lose Belly Fat Without Exercising

This seems to be searched quite a lot. It is proof that humans are brutally lazy and will do anything to avoid actual work.  A little off topic, but I have heard that the highest proportion of heart attacks occur on a Monday morning, meaning that some of us are so lazy we will have a heart attack to avoid going to work!

I think that unless you are extremely overweight there is not much chance of losing belly fat without exercising. Sure you can eat a good nutritious meal  6 times a day and measure out exact proportions for each meal, but if you are not burning any fat through exercise you will not see much in terms of results. You will definitely feel better though and will be a lot healthier, and over the long term you will notice some fat loss, but nothing like the synergestic effect of combining nutrition and exercise.

My bet is against you however. If you are too lazy to do exercise, the chances of you sticking to a good diet and not wandering from the course are pretty much zero. It is far harder to so no to chocolate cake at a party than it is to fit half an hour of exercise into a day. Take from this what you will, but as I say, my bet is against you losing belly fat without exercising, unless you are extremely overweight.
Even then you should still be doing a bit of exercise, even if you can only manage to walk around the outside of your house a couple of times a day.

Rock on over to How to Get Abs (my site) to check out what’s going on and kick your butt into action.

Until next time,

Look good, feelgood and live like you mean it!

Johnny