Diets

Remember the Atkins diet? Well, the Atkins diet was all about how evil carbs are and that you should avoid them and you will lose weight. Guess what, if you cut anything out of your diet you will lose weight. This does not make it a healthy diet. You could cut out all protein and carbs and you would lose weight only eating fat. This is obviously a very unintelligent idea. Our bodies are made up of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates and needs all 3 of those things to function properly. Studies were done on the atkins diet versus the normal healthy low fat diet and in the first 6 months people on the atkins diet lost weight fast so it could be known as a fast diet. But after a year the weight loss was no different than the normal way. But what does this mean? Someone on the low fat diet would see steady weight loss over a year which is motivating month after month. The person on the atkins diet would see good results the first 6 months and then the results would greatly decrease causing them to quit the diet soon after 6 months and go back to their normal eat patterns. That's because the Atkin diet is just that... a diet. You can't eat like that forever, so it is only a matter of time before you go back to your old ways and gain the weight back. The normal "diet" can actually be sustained thoughout your whole life making it an eating lifestyle change where you are able to keep weight off forever.

Yoga

If you have never been to a yoga or pilates class I would recommend going to both. Don't just go once and decide you don't like it, make sure you try them both at least twice. I say this because you need to try them both out with different teachers/instructors. My first time to pilates I loved it and then i went back and it was a different teacher and it wasn't very good. So make sure you try out different styles. Yoga can change your life in more ways than just physically. One great thing I learned from yoga is how inflexible I really am. I had no idea that the muscles in my right leg were so much tighter than the ones in my left. And, after analyzing every movement possible, I have come to the conclusion that the tightness of the muscles in my right leg are a huge reason for the problems in my right knee. I might be able to save myself a lot of money from not having knee surgery if I continue to stretch my right leg muscles more. So, you could say that going to yoga class saved me from knee surgery. I might just go get some yoga pants and continue doing yoga.

Shoulders

Lateral Side Raises
Stand with weights at your side, arms straight. Raise your arms until they are parallel to the floor and then slowly lower them back down to your side. You are going to have to use a light weight for these so that you can do 12 reps.

Rear Delt Raises
Same as Lateral side raises but you will be bent at the waist the whole time so that your body is parallel to the ground.

Front Raises
Stand with weights at your side and lift them in front of you with straight arms until they are to eye level then slowly return to starting position.

Shoulder Presses
Do these with the better biceps workout

Nutrition

Okay so here are some weight loss tips to help you eat a little bit healthier... throw away all ranch and mayo that you own and buy cottage cheese! Cottage cheese tastes good on anything that you put ranch on and is much better for you than ranch. It goes well with pizza, lasagna, chimichangas, and the best is cottage cheese on a sweet potato! Try it

Also, instead of counting calories all day, compare the Fat grams to grams of Protein in each food and if there are more grams of fat than protein you should think twice about eating it. Make a deal that you will only eat a certain number of things all day that have more Fat than Protein.

Workout #3

Obliques
Okay today is an easy workout and all you need is some kind of stick... a broom will work fine.

Following are 3 exercises for obliques with a broom (or any other stick long enough)

1. Sit on the floor and lean back until your torso is at a 45% angle with the floor.
2. Hold the broom across the back of your shoulders. (The same place the bar would be if you were going to squat with it.) Your hands should be at each end of the broom handle so that they are outstretched.
3. Twist from side to side touching the end of the broom handle on each side of you. The handle is going to touch behind you. Make sure you are twisting your torso not just dropping your shoulders from side to side.


Next you will do the same thing but instead of leaning back to a 45% angle you can sit on a chair straight up and twist with the bar still resting across you shoulders. You want to make sure you twist only your torso and not your pelvis. Keep you head straight and focus on using your obliques to turn.

And the 3rd exercise is another variation of the same. With the broom resting across your back/shoulders you are going to stand with feet shoulder width apart and bend at your waist as far as you can, which will be 90 degress for some people. Then you will twist all the way to one side and hold for 2 seconds then twist to the other. Remember to keep your pelvis from moving.

I know reading these it seems like it wouldn't be a good workout but trust me it is.. you will feel it.