I was on the phone with a friend today and we were talking about lunch.  I told her that I had been eating Hot Pockets for lunch lately and she was surprised.  When I asked her why she was surprised she said that she thought I always ate "healthy".  I've gotten this response in the past when I've gone out with friends to eat or have been in a social gathering.  The misconception is that every thing you eat and every time you eat, it has to be a healthy meal in order for a person to be fit, be into fitness or live a healthy lifestyle. I believe that this misconception is a reason that a lot of people are turned off or unmotivated to start a fitness routine and or a healthy lifestyle. Most peoples diets are so bad, that just a small change, maybe one healthy meal a day to start with would make a big difference.  The same thing goes for exercise.  There are a lot of people that get no exercise at all, so one or two good workouts a week would also make a big difference.

I've been involved in fitness for a long time.  It started as a hobby.  I would exercise to stay in shape and this eventually led into making fitness a career choice.  Along the way I made many mistakes.  Through an eagerness to learn better and more efficient ways of exercising to get the results I wanted, I was able to correct these mistakes.  I can attribute the correction of these mistakes to the success I've had Fitness Coaching and to the success of the Fat X Fitness program.  I thought I would put a list together of some of the mistakes in fitness, exercise, fat burning and diet that I've made so that hopefully it will help you avoid these pit falls and make your efforts more successful. Here are the top three. Too Much Cardio I wrote an article pointing out how too much cardio can hurt your fat burning efforts . Not Organizing Exercises in a Workout Properly Not organizing exercises properly can make the workout inefficient and less effective in achieving your

Every week I answer a question or questions that are sent in to me regarding fat burning, weight loss, diet, fitness and or the Fat X program. Today's question was regarding the protein intake. I've been doing your exercise and diet program for 4 days now and I was wondering if I should start taking a protein supplement.  I like the program and I feel I'm getting results but my body has been sore and I think I might not be eating enough protein. Dean Your body will be sore from the exercise program but taking in enough protein will help.  I've noticed that when I don't get enough protein for whatever reason I do tend to stay sore longer.  It only makes sense since protein is responsible for building, maintaining and repairing muscle tissue. The other issue is knowing exactly how much protein you should be taking in.  A quick and easy rule I follow is that I try to get my body weight's worth of protein in grams in my diet each day.  This gives me a goal to re

If you want to lose excess fat weight it's very important that you eat several times a day for at least two reasons. One, eating several times a day keeps your metabolism boosted and burning calories. Secondly, eating several times a day keeps you from getting overly hungry to the point where you just feel that you have to gorge on the first thing you see. The problem with this piece of advise is that some people think that eating several times a day means eating a three course gourmet meal several times a day. They feel they can't do it, it's too much food, or they can't fit in 4-6 meals a day because the last meal would be near bed time and they've heard this is a bad thing. Meals don't have to be big. Eating as little as an apple and a few nuts can be considered a meal. So you can see how six meals a day wouldn't be too difficult if you think of it that way. Now, back to the point of this post. Here's a list of my favorite night time snacks

The secret of the Fat X 101 workouts and the exercise program is less like a secret and more like little known and under utilized concept in fitness.  I've always been open minded when it came to trying exercise methods, concepts and routines.  This open mindedness and unbiased approach gave me the advantage of throwing away things that didn't work, and holding on to things that did, regardless of it's popularity.   Through trial and error I was able to learn a very important concept or secret in fitness and fat loss. This concept or secret I've learned and implemented in Fat X 101 workouts and the 12 Day Fat X Program is the concept of synergy.   Synergy is what makes the exercises in each of the workouts interact and cooperate with each other in such a way that they produce a combined effect greater than the sum of it parts to produce a highly effective and efficient fat burning exercise program. In putting together Fat X 101 workouts and picking exercises, not

Every week I answer a question or questions that are sent in to me regarding fat burning, weight loss, diet, fitness and or the Fat X program. Today's question was regarding the Fat X diet. I've been doing your Fat X exercise program and have lost a few pounds but my problem is the diet. I'm a very picky eater and I really don't like vegetables.  Do you have any tips to help me.  Thanks so much, Patty Since you say that you are a picky eater, you are really going to have to experiment a lot.  A good friend of mine and grappling coach once gave me this piece of advice, "you need to be comfortable, being uncomfortable".  What that meant to me is that I needed to reach out and try different things and not just stay in a box.  This has helped me tremendously not only in fitness terms, but in life. As a matter of fact, without that piece of advice I wouldn't have ever done the Fat X Project and started this blog. So anyway, this might help you in ter

Fad diets usually become popular because they actually will work to lose a few pounds short term.  Marketers are aware of this so they'll push and advertise a fad diet aggressively and then just move on to the next fad diet.  This is one of the causes of yo-yo dieting.  If you think back a few years you might remember the Atkins diet, then the cabbage soup diet, and then maybe the apple patch diet, this list can go on and on.  What all these diets have in common is three things.  They work short term, they're highly restrictive, and they fail long term. The fact that they work short term is actually tied to their restrictive nature, which in turn is tied into why they end up failing long term.  For example, the Atkins diet  and other low carb diets highly restrict carbohydrates.  For most people, the carb restriction alone will cause short term weight loss due to the fact they will not eat certain high carb, high calorie, non-nutritious food they had been eating like muffins,