Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Could Your Exercise Routine Actually Be Making You Fatter?

You know what it's like. You've had a gym membership for a while now, you lift weights, you do some cardio, but you really don't ever see incredible results, and you look around at all the other people in the gym wondering if they know something you don't. Are they lifting weights differently than you? Are they running harder than you? Well they probably don't know anything you don't and in fact they are probably just as insecure about their body, and want bigger muscles and smaller hips just like you. But there are some techniques when it comes to exercising that are a little dated, and if you are still doing in the gym, you may not be getting the results you could be. Rob Poulos, fat loss expert and Author of Fat Burning Furnace discusses below why some cardio techniques are more effective at fat loss than others.




Is Your Fat Burning Exercise Routine Keeping You Fat And Unhealthy?


By Rob Poulos, Fat Loss & Fitness Expert & Creator of 'Fat Burning Furnace'

The majority of exercisers today still rely on long duration moderate paced aerobic exercise as their primary routine to burn fat fast.  But recent studies have shown that this is a big, I mean big mistake.  In fact, you could say that the whole aerobics explosion of a few decades past was one of the biggest mistakes in the health and fitness industry.  Why?...

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Scratch Proof Your iPhone

If you are one of the lucky people who got your new iphone 4 last week, I am green with envy. I had one too many drinks a couple of weeks back, lost my beloved iPhone, and as a result have shutter boarded myself inside my apartment in fear of the horrified gasps by people on the street as they see the old brick of a handset I am currently using. Taking it out in public would surely result in social suicide and see me pelted with rotten fruit by passers by.


invisibleSHIELD for iPhone 3G

But if you did get your new iphone, have an old iphone, or any phone for that matter, did you know you don't need to cover it with one of those bulky cases to protect it? Check out this cool new product from Zaag called The Invisible Sheild. Its a clear buffer between your gadget and the outside world, completely protecting it from scratches and. smashed screens. You can also use it on your iPad. Check it out.

Healthy Boy x

Monday, June 28, 2010

Why You Need To Stop Drinking Bottled Water

Water. We all know it's good for us, we are constantly told we're not drinking enough of it, and we are forever adding colors, sugars and flavorings to it in an attempt to make it taste better. It helps you regulate body temperature, delivers nutrients to ours cells, metabolizes fats, and did you know that our blood is 90% water?...well last weekend my blood was 10% water 90% vodka soda with a splash of cranberry, but that's another story. However if you are like me then you probably don't give a second thought about buying bottled water. You stock it in your refrigerator for yourself and guests, and buy bottle after bottle when visiting the gym to guzzle down while you are lifting weights and burning off those love handles on the elliptical. Well it turns out that not only is our obsession with bottled water now destroying the environment, but it's destroying our bodies also. Research now shows that the chemicals found in the plastics of the bottles we are using are creating for us some serious health concerns that you need to be aware of.



If you were to ever see me at the gym, or see me busily blogging away each day, you will always see next to me an oversized bottle of Smart Water. I fill it right up to the top and ensure that I get through at least one every day. The problem with this, I have just learned, is that plastic bottles were not designed to be refilled and reused on a regular ongoing basis. You see the chemicals they use to form the plastic can leach into the water if reused for periods of time, or if the bottle is heated up. I'm not just talking about the microwave here people... while you are attracting attention in your too-short short shorts this summer,  your water could be attracting chemicals from the plastic if left in the sun too long...

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Get The Body You Want In 90 Minutes A Week

The other day I wrote a post about an exciting new book I read, Pure Physique, and how it's principles of weight training were revolutionary and that it explains why we spend so much time lifting weights but never see any improvement in muscle size. Well it seems Health Boy readers love it also because the book has been selling like crazy, and I have received a ton of emails from you all saying how much you love it and your new workouts. As a result I contacted the author, Michael Lipowski, and asked him to write a guest post about some of the principles he discusses in his  book. Here he talks about why you don't need to spend countless hours in the gym to achieve the body you want. I mean, just take a look at at the guy and you can tell he knows what he is talking about. Check it out below.

Healthy Boy x


HOW YOU CAN LOOK LIKE a BODYBUILDER or FITNESS MODEL in JUST 90 MINUTES a WEEK

Michael Lipowski

Think it takes five hours of weight training, and six hours of aerobics each week to look lean and muscular?  Think starvation diets are the only way you’re going to burn body-fat? If that’s the case then you’re about to get a healthy dose of reality…and you’re gonna love it.  That is unless you’re completely turned off by the idea of discovering exactly what your individual requirements are for building muscle and burning body-fat and prefer to aimlessly follow what others do (who also are not training or eating according to individual needs) and continue to waste precious time in the gym. 

If you’re one of those who simply loves to exercise regardless of whether you are making progress or not then much of what I’ll say is likely to fall on deaf ears.  However, if you’re primary focus is on looking and feeling your best and you’re willing to take a different approach, maybe even workout less, if it means better results, then keep reading because this advice is intended just for you...

Friday, June 25, 2010

What's Really In Your Peanut Butter

Who doesn't love peanut butter? Peanut butter ice cream, peanut butter cookies, and even peanut butter M & Ms... and just quietly, there is a Peanut Butter Pie at Billy's Bakery in New York City that if you are lucky enough to try is like sex on a plate... But of course you wouldn't eat those fattening things would you? Eating them would result in diet suicide and see your waistline balloon to epic proportions. They contain nothing more than bucket loads of sugar, tubs of saturated and trans fat, and enough artificial ingredients and preservatives to see your insides mummified and classified as national treasures next to Joan River's face. But what if I told you that those "healthy" tubs of peanut that you buy in the supermarket to put on your toast and throw in your protein shakes are just as bad as these peanut butter junk foods? Yes, that's right. Healthy Boy is here to show you they too contain those terrible ingredients that will not only cause you to pile on the pounds, but are detrimental to your health also.



We all think that peanut butter is healthy. Countless health and diet gurus and websites recommend a spoonful of it here and there as healthy low calorie snack in between meals, because peanuts are healthy and contain natural healthy fats. Well it would be healthy, if the peanuts were all that the food manufacturers put in their peanut butter. You see most people never turn the container over to actually see what the ingredients are, and if you did, you would be surprised what gets thrown in there. Lets take a look at the two popular supermarket brands available here in the United States and what is actually in them...

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Celebrity Body Secrets - Taylor Lautner

If you don't know who Taylor Lautner is then you've probably been locked up against your will in some backyard crack den for the past few years, living off a Victoria Beckham diet of lettuce leave and lint balls and thinking Beiber fever was something you caught from using public restrooms.  Pictures of Taylor are everywhere you go these days, from entertainment TV shows and websites, to the cover of men's health and tabloid magazines, and of course plastered over the wall of every hormonal teenage girl across the country. But it's not only his breakout role in Twilight that has shot him to stardom, his transformation from twinky teenager to buff young man has gained him more attention than anything, and here I am going to reveal to you his workout and diet secrets that trainer Jordan Yuam used to get him buff and camera ready.



Taylor had to put on weight to reprise his role at Jacob in the Twilight Saga, which saw him go from a skinny 140lbs to increasing his muscle and body mass by an impressive 30lbs. The 5 foot 10 star had to work hard to get where he is though, which saw him endure grueling workouts and incredibly strict diet, overloading his muscles with calories and nutrients to grow. Lets take a look at how he did it;


Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Book Review - Pure Physique by Michael Lipowski

I get sent muscle building and fat loss books by publishers and fitness "gurus" each week. I make sure I read everything that gets sent to me, but 90% of them never end up on this site. Why? Because I'm not going to recommend my readers buy anything that I believe they won't benefit from or anything that I wouldn't buy myself. There are two books I recommend on here, Burn The Fat and The Truth About Abs, each when I have read them have caused a light bulb to go off and have taught me training or nutrition techniques that I have benefited from. Well that light bulb went off again last week in a major way when I read Pure Physique by Michael Lipowski. If you are like me and have been working out for years and wonder why you have stopped putting on muscle, then this book is for you. It will change the way you work out.



So when it comes to nutrition or fat loss, the book didn't particularly teach me anything I didn't already know or techniques that you can't find online on many fitness or personal trainer websites: calculating calories, high intensity interval training, cycling carbohydrate intake etc. But when it came to weight lifting and resistance training it shed a whole new light on why people spend countess hours week in, week out, year after year in the gym lifting weights and not really changing their physique or see any increases in lean muscle tone...

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Does Sugar Give You Wrinkles?

Are you one of those people who can seemingly eat whatever you want and not get fat? Well if you are I hate you and if you come anywhere near me I will take my Betty Crocker boxed brownie mix and throw it at your head... just kidding, I would sooner sell a kidney than throw away a perfectly good box of brownie mix. Perhaps you are one of those people who do eat what they want, but compensate by doing countless hours of cardio at the gym and exercise till you are drenched in sweat and smell like dirty old gym bag. Well if you fit into either of these categories, or simply have a sugar addiction, but care about your image and looks, then you had better listen up. Because while you might be able to avoid packing on the pounds via good genetics or exercise, all that sugar is destroying your skin and aging you. That's right, sugar is once again the topic of a Healthy Boy post, and what you read today may make you put down that spoon and step away from the Haagen Dazs.



You all know that I'm the sugar nazi and have written so many articles about the negative effects it has on your waist line and overall health, but this particular side effect of consuming sugar was news that even got me listening. Whether you are male, female, straight, gay, or metrosexual, we can all agree that over the past decade we have become increasingly interested in preserving our exteriors with countless lifestyle choices, products and procedures. Looking good consumes our everyday activities from buying clothes that fit us well, using hair product and moisturizers, and getting our teeth whitened. We buy gym memberships, exercise, eat healthy, and read up on the newest anti-aging information in books and online. Some people even take it a step further by undergoing expensive, and sometime life threatening, cosmetic procedures. All in the name of looking good. No one wants to look old. Period. And while we do grow old, we would like to look as healthy and young as possible while doing so.

One of the things that gets a lot of attention in our fight against aging is our skin. We drink a lot of water to keep it hydrated, we apply moisturizers and creams, and even get a little botox (Yes even I have tried it once before, just around my crows feet, but it made me look like the Joker on crack when I smiled, so I didn't get it again). But all of the efforts we put into our skin maybe worthless if we are consuming sugary snacks or refined carbohydrates on a regular basis...

Monday, June 21, 2010

Whats Really In A McDonalds Chicken Nugget?

When you open up a 6 pack of McDonalds Chicken Nuggets you would think that you are just getting a fried piece of chicken goodness right? I mean McDonalds even has those advertisements on TV stating that they are made with "100% white meat chicken breast". Well you would be wrong. You see they do have chicken breast, and they are fried, but McDonalds (and other fast food restaurants for that matter) add a whole lot of other ingredients to fill up that nugget, fill up your stomach, and fill up their pockets, and these ingredients can not only going to make you pile on the pounds, but they could be causing you some more serious health problems as well.



Growing up in the 80's in a small town on the east coast of Australia, we didn't always have access to big chain restaurants. The fish and chip shop around the corner, and the local Chinese take out who's suspect "chicken special" always coincided with missing cats in the neighborhood, were all that was really available to us. But I will always remember the day we got our first McDonalds restaurant, and as soon as it opened I just had to have my birthday party there.

But because I was a picky eater, while all my friends were eating burgers, I could only eat the nuggets. But oh how I loved them. I would soak them in sweet and sour sauce, savor every bite, and if anyone asked me for a nugget I would give them the evil eye...like the one Dina Lohan gives her PC each morning when she hasn't had a google alert....

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Digg Me

Any Healthy Boy readers out these on Digg? If so, hit me up.... Click Here
Healthy Boy x

Friday, June 18, 2010

Exercises That Build More Muscle And Burn More Fat

Are you one of those people that head to the gym and perform countless amounts of bicep curls and wonder why your arms are still the size of toothpicks? Perhaps you do a ton of pec flies and wonder why your chest still resembles that of a pre-pubescent 10 year old girl? Well Mike Geary from The Truth About Abs is here to tell us why those exercises are about as useless as Lindsay Lohan's curfew, and which ones you need to be focusing on that will not only help you build muscle, but will help you burn fat at the same time.



Body Part Isolation vs Complex Movements in Strength Training


by Mike Geary - Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer



Working as a personal trainer & fitness professional, there is one type of question I get all the time that shows that many people are missing the big picture regarding the benefits of strength training. This popular question usually goes something like this:


“What exercise can I do to isolate my _______ (insert your muscle of choice – abs, quads, biceps, triceps, etc)?”


It doesn’t matter which muscle someone is asking about, they always seem to be asking how to ‘isolate’ it. My first response to this question is always – “Why in the world would you want to isolate it?”...


Thursday, June 17, 2010

Celebrity Body Secrets - Jake Gyllenhaal

Want to know how Jake Gyllenhaal got in shape for his current role in The Prince of Persia? Maybe you want to get his bulging biceps, huge pecs or chiseled abs? Well you might surprised to know it only took him four months to bulk up and slim down for his current role, and Healthy Boy has all his exercise and diet secrets that you too can implement into your own workout routine.



Simon Waterson, Jake's personal trainer for Prince of Persia, a former marine and the man responsible for getting male celebrities bodies in shape for A List movie roles (including the last five Bond films), reveals that Jake followed a very strict workout and diet routine that saw him working out twice, sometimes three times a day for anywhere from 2 - 4 hours per day, 6 days per week...

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

How To Eat Mexican Food And Not Get Fat

Every Sunday my friends and I head to our local Mexican restaurant to catch up, try and put together what happened the night before, and throw back some casual margaritas and coronas before the weekend come to an end. However by the time our meal arrives we have already inhaled all of the bottomless baskets of chips and salsa on our table, our hands are soaked in oil, our lips smothered in salt, and we are feeling guilty and vow never to eat chips again... until the following Sunday. But the chips aren't the only evil at your favorite taco stand, and If you don't know how or what to order you could be consuming up to two day's worth of calories in a single sitting, pumping your body with nasty artery clogging saturated fat, and causing those dreams of fitting into your summer swimsuit and gracing the cover of next month's Men's Health Magazine dashed within minutes.


We were pursuing the Mexican menu on a usual Sunday when one of my friends asked "What's a chimichanga?" We all looked to one another for the answer but none of us knew and someone added "I don't know but it sounds tasty" and we all agreed. We flipped out our iphones and blackberrys and crazily googled what a chimichanga was and gasped as we were petrified to find out it was a deep fried burrito. Consuming just one would set us back well over 1000 calories and in my opinion wouldn't be worth it. So I gave it some thought and put together a list below of some favorite Mexican menu items. Which ones are good. Which are bad. And which ones your health insurance company would jack up your premiums for if they found out you were consuming.

Salsa

Salsa is an excellent topping to add to your tacos or fajitas, over guacamole or sour cream, and your heart and skin will thank you for the lycopene obtained from the tomatoes. Just don't use chips to shovel it into your mouth! Just 7 tostada or corn chips can equal 120 calories and 7 grams of fat. If you can't resist the urge to nibble before your meal, put some salsa on your plate and eat it with your fork and ask your server to remove the basket of chips - your hips will thank you and you wont feel as guilty before your meal has even arrived.


Tuesday, June 15, 2010

3 Principles You Must Know To Burn Fat Faster


There is a new fat burning, weight loss program on the market that is gaining popularity pretty quickly. It's known as the "Fat Burning Furnace" and is authored by Rob Poulos. Check out the article below that Rob has written about Intensity, Volume and Frequency, and progression when performing cardio and how these three principles when applied correctly can increase your fat loss.

By Rob Poulos, Fat Loss & Fitness Expert & Creator of "Fat Burning Furnace"

By now, most people realize that adding lean muscle mass to your body does wonders for your metabolism and fat loss, as well as a host of other benefits that allow you to live out your life as healthy as possible.

Unfortunately, most people I see performing weight training or resistance training at the gym are spending too much time with the exercise and not working hard enough.  They're not going to burn very much fat this way. 

The secret I’ve found is that training for lean muscle and strength requires the proper application of three vital elements that are often ignored by those who attempt it.  Those three elements are:...



Sunday, June 13, 2010

8 Reasons Why You Keep Falling Off The Diet Wagon

What do Ricky Lake, Kirsty Alley and Jessica Simpson all have in common?  Other than the fact they can inhale a small child as an appetizer and can also be seen drooling all over themselves, pressing their faces up against the glass windows at Sizzler on HIghland waiting for the lunch time all you can eat buffet to open, (you know that Kirsty is heading straight to the dessert bar). Over the years waged a battle the bulge, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, and have seen their weight yo-yo up and down numerous times.



Truth be told we can all relate to this. Everyone at some point in their life has lost weight wether through diet or exercise only to see a little bit creep back on, or throw in the towel and see it all pile back on. Weight loss is hard and if it's wasn't we would all be walking Well Tom Venuto, professional bodybuilder, personal trainer, and international best selling author of Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle has identified the 8 reasons why we all keep falling off the diet wagon. If you address these 8 simple reasons, you will have a solid foundation for losing weight, but better yet, maintaining it.



8 Reasons Why You Keep Falling Off The Diet Wagon

By Tom Venuto
www.BurnTheFat.com

Clearly, we have an obesity problem in America and many other countries across our planet. Yet, I propose that we do not have a weight loss problem today. In case you’re confused at this apparent contradiction, consider these statistics:..

Friday, June 11, 2010

Weekend Cookbooks

Want some new recipes ideas but don't want to run down to the bookstore? Have a dinner planed with friends and want to impress them with your cooking? Check out these cool cookbooks. They are all e-books, meaning you download them from the net instantly and you will be cooking up a storm like a 5 star chef within minutes.



America's Secret Recipes: Not really a "healthy" read, in fact it's not really healthy at all. But who doesn't love to indulge now and then. This book teaches you how to cook your favorite recipes right at home, such as Hard Rock Cafe's Mac and Cheese, KFC's Potato Salad, Olive Garden's Chicken Marsala, Outback Steakhouse's Coconut Shrimp, and PF Chang's Mongolian Beef just to name a few. Yum!

5 Star Recipes: Want to really impress you friends at your next dinner? This book has a collection of recipes from 5 star restaurants from New York, Paris, Sydney, Hong Kong...the list goes on. Learn how to make Dolce's Veal Saltimbocca, The Ivy's Sheapard's Pie, Le Bernardin's Roasted Rack of Veal with Red Wine and Mushroom sauce, Nobu's red Snapper Tempura, Spago's Barbequed Butterflied Chicken, and many more.

The Raw Food Diet System: Information and recipes on living a healthy life via raw food.

Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Preservative Free Cookbook: The title pretty much says it all...

Your Plate, Your Fate: A cookbook from Healing Gourmet with healthy recipes that will help you lose weight and heal your body through food.

Enjoy

Healthy Boy x

Thursday, June 10, 2010

What Your Poo Says About You

What is your worst nightmare? I personally have an ongoing fear of getting locked in my apartment with nothing on TV other than an MTV marathon of "The Hills" and nothing sharp to gouge my eyes out with. Or getting arrested for drunken behavior and getting fitted with a SCRAM bracelet at the beginning of Pride Weekend. A friend of mine however has a fear of having to go to the bathroom in public places or at social events. We were at a party this past weekend, he had to go (badly) and there was not an option of leaving, so he sucked up his fear and headed to the restroom. Unfortunately for him his nightmare became a reality when he realized (after the fact) that the flush didn't work and there was a line up outside waiting to use the bathroom. Let's just say he used his creativity and a to go cup to get him out of trouble but he was shaken for hours and is scarred for life.



OK look, I know this post is going to warrant some cringes, some comments, and some ewwws, and some of you may refuse to even read it. But the fact of the matter is everyone sneaks a peak, I don't care what you say, and you so should be. It turns out that what you leave behind in the restroom is good indication of your health and can tell you if you need to drink more water, if you are consuming too much fat in your diet, or if you are deficient in certain nutrients. Take a look at the Poo Chart below which I obtained from the website of my favorite nutritionist Jillan McKeith, who's BBC show "You Are What You Eat" is, I believe, the best health show on TV....

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Celebrity Body Secrets - Ryan Reynolds



Want a hard ripped body like Ryan Reynolds? It may not be as hard as you might think. Ryan didn't always have such a lean and muscular look, in fact he admits that before Blade Trinity he had never even lifted a barbell before, and had only 5 months to go from his lean and lanky Van Wilder look to the buff and bulging physique we saw in the vampire flick with Jessica Biel. He gained 20lbs of muscle and reduced his bodyfat from 11% to 3%.



He credits his transformation to eating every 2 - 3 hours and drinking tons of water throughout the day. He ate plenty of carbs but reduced his intake at night, cutting out any after 8pm, and consumed the majority of his daily carbs post workout. Ryan admits he discovered the key to building a great body is 80% nutrition and was religious about his eating habits.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

The Top Fat Loss Secrets For Six Pack Abs

Who doesn't want a six pack? If IQ is a marker of a person's intelligence, then a six pack is the marker of a person's health and fitness level. Unfortunately for some (including me) it has eluded us over the years no matter how many damn crunches or sit ups we break our necks trying to do. We may get to gym regularly, we may eat healthy, but for some reason that little bit of tub around our waists just doesn't want to budge and we feel trapped in a body that we aren't happy always with. 






Regular readers of Healthy Boy will be familiar by now with Mike Geary. He is a certified personal trainer, the author of The Truth About Abs, and I'm constantly posting his articles on here because he offers a fresh, unconventional, no nonsense based approach to getting even the most unexperienced gym goer well on their way to revealing a trim, toned and terrific torso. Check out an informative interview below where he reveals that if your diet isn't clean, no number of sit ups or crunches are going to do anything for you. He also talks about some other interesting fat loss tips for revealing a six pack and lean stomach.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Eat Junk Food And Lose Weight

I fell off the wagon. Well not so much fell off as opposed to took a running leap off it and knocked myself unconscious when I hit the ground... and then the wagon backed up over me for good measure. You see I was at a friend's birthday party on the weekend that went the majority of the day and well into the night, and we all know what happens at those day long birthday parties - you have too much to drink and not enough to eat. Anyway, to cut a long (and messy) story short I found myself at 2am in the morning sitting in a dark kitchen inhaling the birthday cake. Apparently I couldn't find a spoon or had seemingly lost my ability to use utensils because when the dark kitchen was lit up by someone opening the fridge, I was found (to the horror of other party goers) using my hands to shovel the cake with buttercream frosting into my ravenous mouth. I refer you to exhibit A below. See the finger marks down the bottom of the cake? Yep. Guilty as charged.




The cake wasn't the end of it. An hour or so later I was found by friends at home eating ice cream and on my phone dialing every pizza place in town trying to get pizza delivered to no avail. Needless to say my healthy eating went right out the window...along with my dignity...and my friends will never look at me the same way again, nor will I be expecting any facebook birthday invitations in the near future. 

Arriving at Monday and the beginning of another healthy eating plan, where most people find themselves each week, I thought it wise to explore and research the relationship between healthy eating and junk food, and whether it was possible to have a balance between the two. Is it possible to maintain a diet that incorporates junk food every now and then without sabotaging all the hard work we put into healthy eating and working out at the gym? Well I found something that is going to make many Healthy Boy readers rejoice. It's called The Cheat Meal. It's not only something that can keep you sane and see you enjoying your favorite naughty foods, but it can actually help you lose weight. That's right, LOSE weight.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Why Eye Drops Are Bad For You

You wake up a little later today and head to the bathroom only to see two big red bloodshot eyes staring back at you in the mirror. Maybe you didn't sleep well, maybe it's hay fever season, maybe you one too many margaritas at the bar last night and woke up in someone else's bed (lucky you)...either way you can't leave the house looking like this, so you reach for the eye drops. But did you know that the drops could actually be making the redness worse? That's right, although it may provide you with some immediate relief, those drops can be causing you more harm than good.



Do you use eye drops regularly only to find that a few hours later your eyes are red again, sometimes even worse than when you first used them, and you need to use them again, and again and find yourself in a vicious cycle? Do you use eye drops everyday and find when you don't use them people say that you are looking tired? There is a reason for this, and it has to do with the affects the chemicals have on the blood vessels in your eyes.

Friday, June 4, 2010

The Three Best Ab Exercises That Will Surprise You

Hate doing abs? I do. I used to force myself to go to those ab classes at the gym because once that class starts there is no leaving and you just have to do it whether you want to or not. If I do abs myself on the gym floor. I normally leave them till after I have worked out, which means I am tired, and I will normally knock out maybe a couple of sets before I get bored, give up and head home. Well Mike Geary, certified personal traininer at author of The Truth About Abs is here to tell us that you don't need to do hours and hours of painful crunches, and just three exercises will target your midsection fast and effectively and will see you well on your way to getting that six pack we all dream about.




A unique ab workout that doesn't contain your typical boring stomach exercises - no crunches or situps here


by Mike Geary - Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer
Instead of the typical ab routines that we see so often with crunches, situps, leg lifts, etc... I like to give my readers better options for metabolism-boosting high intensity workouts that work their entire body while also working their abs... thus building rock hard abs & core, but also creating a much better fat-burning workout than a typical ab workout.


I'm going to show you an example today of one of my favorite "ab workouts" that doesn't include any direct "ab exercises" at all. It's in a tri-set format (similar to a super-set but alternating between 3 exercises).

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Hot Product - Optimum Nutrition Whey Protein

It's been a long time since I have featured a Hot Product on here Healthy Boy. I get sent numerous products each week and get contacted by various companies to promote their products on my blog but I will only promote the products I use and believe in, and quite frankly I haven't come across anything lately that I would recommend to my readers. However after the popularity of the last two products I featured (Silica Gel and PB2) resulting in them being sold out, and countless emails from you all telling me how much they love them and wanting to know what else I can recommend, I have decided to promote another favorite product of mine, and one I have been using for a couple of years - Optimum Nutrition Protein Powder. The good news? They also ship internationally.


This protein is probably doesn't come as a news flash to you, as I know a lot of people already use it - it is the top selling product on bodybuilding.com and you can buy it by the tub load at GNC, Vitamin Shoppe and most health food stores, but the flavor that I use and recommend is not normally found at stores, and can pretty much be only found online, and is the favorite flavor that I love...Extreme Milk Chocolate. Hmmmm, sounds good right? It is.

It is like a candy bar in a shake (with none of the fat and calories of course) and if you couple it with some PB2 or some peanut butter, you have an excellent post workout shake that will satisfy your muscles and your taste buds.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

The Worst Burgers in America

Think the burgers at McDonalds or Burger King are the nastiest burgers out there? Do you avoid fast food restaurants believing their options are the worse for your diet than other restaurants? Maybe you sometimes choose a veggie burger over a traditional beef burger because you believe it's better for you and your waistline? Well think again. Men's Health recently released a list of The Worst Burgers in America, and surprisingly, not all of them come from fast food joints. One of them is a veggie burger and if you consumed it, you would be consuming half a day's worth of calories and 53 grams of fat in one sitting.


Who doesn't love the occasional burger? There is just something about all the juices running down your arms as you bite into all that meaty goodness that just makes you think of childhood and long weekends. But not all burgers are created equal, and if are going to consume one, it seems logical to know which ones will see you satisfy your craving without sending you to join weight watchers and spending hours on the treadmill just to burn it off. The burgers below have been identified as the worst available, and by munching on just one of these nasty critters and you can kiss your summer swimsuit goodbye as it will turn your torso from slick and slender to swampy and swollen in no time.

Worst "Healthy" Burger


Ruby Tuesday Veggie Burger
1007 calories
53g fat
73g carbohydrates

Think the veggie burger is always the healthier option on the menu? Think again. Ruby Tuesday takes this to a new level by packing in more calories than two Big Macs and more fat than four Chocolate Triple Thick Shakes.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

How Liquid Calories May be Making You Fat

I have just spent the whole morning writing an article, and even more hours before that researching it, on how the fastest way to drop fat is to remove liquid calories from your diet, only to press the wrong button and the whole thing got deleted. If I was a looney Tune character I would be sitting here with steam coming out of my ears right now. Not a happy camper.


Rather than sit here and dwell in my anger and stupidity, and to ensure my Healthy Boy readers get an article along the same lines as the topic I was going to post, I have an article below from Tom Venuto talking about liquid calories. If anyone needs me I can be found hugging my teddy, rocking back and fourth in the fetal position pulling out my eyelashes until further notice.





How Liquid Calories May Be Making You Fat... Even Your Favorite Protein Drinks! 

By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS

At least 7 scientific studies have provided strong evidence that energy containing beverages (i.e., “liquid calories”) do not properly activate the satiety mechanisms in the body and brain and do not satisfy the appetite as well as food in solid form. 

Epidemiological research also supports a positive association between calorie-containing beverage consumption and increased body weight or body mass index. New research now suggests that soda may not be the only culprit…

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