Weight Loss The Atkins Diet

The Atkins diet is a modern weight loss phenomenon. Founded by Dr Robert Atkins, 1930-2003, it was first published as a diet book, “Dr Atkins Diet Revolution” in 1972. This was followed by a series of books on the subject. There were worries about the safety of the diet and although it dwindled in status, it became popular again in the 1990’s.

The popularity of Atkins as the ultimate fast weight loss system was helped by the rise of the celebrity fascination and the fact that many celebrities that had shown fast weight loss, attributed this to the Atkins diet. The diet became very popular, with some hotels and restaurants offering special menus for followers.

The Atkins weight loss system is based on the diet being restricted in its intake of carbohydrates. These are largely replaced by allowing more fat and meat based products into the diet and this has been one of the main areas where the diet has been criticized as this can affect the balance of food groups that are eaten.

Many health experts contend that it is not good for the body to have a restricted level of carbohydrates in the diet and that this is also not the best way to achieve weight loss. However those in favor of Atkins point to sudden and dramatic weight loss that, so long as you follow the principles, it is possible to maintain.

If you reduce your daily carbohydrates to less than 40 grams, (some Atkins texts suggest this should be no more than 20 grams), then you will be subject to a state known as ketosis. This means that instead of using sugar from carbohydrates as fuel, the body will instead to use fat.

Some dieticians believe that this is not a good way to diet and that some of the material that is used as energy, is normal tissue rather than fat. Some also think that at least part of the loss is water. Although it has to be said that there are also health professionals that do not have a problem with the Atkins weight loss system.

Part of the problem that some people have with this, as good way to weight loss is that Atkins advises that when the desired results are achieved, then the participant should remain eating a low carbohydrate diet, or they will return to their former weight. Although a gradual increase in the carbohydrates is allowable, it is still low.

One of the main criticisms that is leveled at the Atkins weight loss plan is that it does not contain any carbohydrates and so is unhealthy. This is inaccurate, although the level is low and this is mainly what the diet is based on. Another problem is that, as some fresh vegetables and most fresh fruits contain sugar, that this can restrict your intake of these and so is bad for the general health of the dieter.

The Atkins weight loss system undoubtedly works if adhered top strictly, as the amount of carbohydrates that are taken from the diet lowers the amount of calories that are eaten and you lose weight. But there are many other effective diets that are based on

restricting calories.

When starting any weight loss diet, especially one that is restricting certain food groups such as the Atkins, it is a good idea to see your doctor and get advice as to whether this is the right diet for you and whether it is the best alternative. There may be other weight loss systems that provide a better all round nutrition and yet still let you lose weight at a reasonable rate.

Weight Loss The Atkins Diet



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5 Reasons Why Alcohol Will Destroy Your Muscle Gains

I receive emails every single day from aspiring muscle-builders all over the world, and one of the most common questions I’m asked is “does drinking really affect the muscle growth process?” I’m sorry to say it, but yes, too much alcohol will almost definitely have a significant negative impact on your muscle-building results. Alcohol is far more harmful than most people think, and it’s very important that you understand how this drug (yes, alcohol is a drug) is affecting your progress. This is not an anti-drug speech, but if you’re serious about achieving a truly impressive physique, you should definitely be aware of the 5 main ways that alcohol is slowing down your gains…

1) It negatively affects protein synthesis.

Protein synthesis is the process where amino acids are joined together to form complete proteins. Excessive alcohol consumption slows this process down by up to 20%, and since your muscles are made up of protein, you can see how this is a problem.

2) It lowers testosterone levels and increases estrogen.

Testosterone is the most important muscle-building hormone in your body. One of the limiting factors that determines how much muscle a person can gain is their level of free-flowing testosterone.

3) It causes dehydration.

The kidneys must filter very large amounts of water in order to break down the alcohol, and this can result in severe dehydration within the body. Water plays an absolutely crucial role in the muscle-building process, and being even slightly dehydrated is a recipe for disaster. The muscles alone are comprised of 70% water.

4) It depletes the body of vitamins and minerals.

Alcohol consumption causes vitamins A, C, the B's, calcium, zinc and phosphorus to all be drained at rapid rates. Vitamins and minerals keep every little process in your body functioning properly, and many of these processes involve muscle growth and maintenance.

5) It increases fat storage.

With 7 empty calories per gram, alcohol can actually be quite fattening. Alcohol also disrupts the Kreb’s Cycle, which plays an important role in fat burning.

It’s important to have fun in life, but too much fun can lead to problems. If you’re serious about achieving significant muscle-building results, you definitely need to monitor your intake of alcohol and make sure that you are consuming it in moderation. A few drinks here and there shouldn’t be a problem, but if you find yourself drinking every weekend you can almost certainly kiss your muscle gains goodbye.

If you do decide to go out and party, make sure to drink plenty of water and to properly nourish yourself with vitamins/minerals and a protein rich meal.

I don’t recommend revolving your entire life around your muscle-building program, so don’t be afraid to go out and have a good time once in a while. Just make sure to keep your drinking nights infrequent (no more than once a month) and properly nourish yourself to lessen its effects. As long as you monitor what you’re doing you can achieve an impressive physique and have a social life at the same time.

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The Most Common Myths about Abs

Myth #1

Abdominal muscle is different from regular muscle.

Your abdominal muscles are just like every other muscle in your body. The abdominal is different only in location and unlike biceps or quads they don’t rest on a bony surface. So you should train them the same way you would train, say, your biceps or your chest. The basic laws of physiology apply to all your muscles, including your abs. This means that you have to do exercises in the correct plane of movement to effectively work the muscle.

Myth #2

You have to train your abs everyday.

The rules of weight training state that you should give your muscles at least, a day of rest to recover and this applies to your abs as well. Instead of working your back everyday, do them every other day or even just three times a week. They need a break just like the rest of your body. The trick is to train them hard.

Myth #3

Doing ab exercises gets rid of abdominal fat.

There is no such thing as spot reduction. People assume that if you have fat deposits on your abdominal, exercising the muscles underlying the fat will make it go away. But they assume wrong. You can’t get rid of the fat over a muscle by repeatedly exercising that body part. The only way to burn fat from your tummy is through prolonged exercise and a healthy, low calorie diet.

Myth #4

High repetitions are required to make gains.

As you’ve read earlier, abs are just like every other muscle in your body. That means, you should train your abs the same way as the rest of your muscle groups. To make strength gains with your abs, you have to overload your muscles.

Myth #5

Anyone can have a flat stomach.

For many people it’s not physiologically possible to achieve a flat stomach. In most of us the abdominal muscles are designed to be somewhat rounded, not flat. Age, genetics, gender all these factors decide the size, shape and appearance of you belly.

Myth #6

If you have a bad back, training the abs will worsen it.

Training your abs will strengthen you back. The opposing muscles in you body always assist each other. So if you have weak ab muscles, the load of the work falls on the back. So strengthen the abs and your back will become stronger as well.

Don’t waste time by falling victim to six main ab myths. Train intelligently in accordance with scientifically based training techniques and get super abs.

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The Most Powerful Muscle-Building Tool Available

The bodybuilding debates will never end. The endless arguments over how an effective muscle-building program should be structured will most likely continue until the end of time. Just scour the Internet message boards, flip through any muscle magazine or talk to the sales rep at your local supplement store. No matter who you talk to or what you read, it seems that everyone is an expert these days.

If everyone is an expert, confident in their own ideas and beliefs, how can the average beginner possibly know who to listen to? He or she is instantly confronted with endless questions that seem to have no clear-cut answer.

How many days should I train per week? How many sets should I perform for each muscle group? What type of rep range should I be using? What are the most effective exercises for stimulating muscle growth? How long should my workouts last?

These questions go on and on until he or she is eventually led to believe that building muscle is an infinitely complex process involving rocket-science precision and an intimate understanding of human physiology. I mean, that’s what takes to build muscle, right? Wrong! Believe me, there are answers to these important questions, and if you are willing to put in the time and effort you will most definitely find them. But that’s not what this article is about.

You see, amidst all of the confusion and endless debating, the majority of lifters end up losing sight of the big picture. Beyond all of the specific workout principles, such as rep range and exercise selection, remains one crucial principle, a principle that lies at the very heart of the muscle growth process. If this principle is not given full attention, or even worse, completely ignored, building muscle becomes next to impossible.

The bottom line is that muscles grow as they adapt to stress. When you go to the gym and lift weights, you create “micro-tears” within the muscle tissue. Your body perceives this as a potential threat to its survival and reacts accordingly by increasing the size and strength of the muscle fibers in order to protect against a possible future “attack”. Therefore, in order to continually increase the size and strength of the muscles, you must focus on progressing each week by either lifting slightly more weight or performing an extra rep or two. In doing this, your body will continue to adapt and grow to the ever-increasing stress.

Building muscle is all about building strength!

So what is the most powerful muscle-building tool available? Quite simply, it is a pen and a piece of paper!

Every time you go to the gym you must write down exactly what you accomplished and then strive to improve upon it the following week. If you aren’t always getting better, then you’re either staying the same or getting worse. Every week you should have an exact plan of attack ready to be executed. You absolutely cannot afford to start throwing weights around aimlessly without a clear-cut goal in mind.

The specifics of building muscle are important to understand and implement, but regardless of what style of training you’re currently using the ultimate deciding factor between success and failure is progression. You can sit around all day obsessing over specific principles, but the bottom line is that if you aren’t getting stronger every week, you absolutely will not be getting any bigger. Examine your training approach closely. If you haven’t been paying laser-like attention to the amount of weight you’ve been using, the number of reps you’ve been performing, and then striving with every ounce of your energy to improve upon those numbers each week, you are completely ignoring the very foundation of the muscle growth process. If you want to see the best gains in muscle mass and strength that you possibly can, a pen and a piece of paper is the most important tool you could possibly have in your arsenal.

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The Myth Of Gaining Muscle Without Fat!

Many of you have expressed concerns about gaining too much body fat while on such a high calorie diet, and wonder if you should do some aerobic exercise to offset the weight gain.

Absolutely not.

That will be detrimental to gaining muscle. For best results, you either have to train and diet to gain muscle or lose fat. One or the other. If you are a true hard gainer, you cannot do both. If you try, you will not make any substantial progress either way. So, now is the time to gain weight. You will worry about losing fat later.

The fact is that there are no magic pills, powders, foods or exercises that will allow you to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

It all is determined by your genetics and metabolism. Some people can do it, some can't. If you are naturally thin and have a difficult time gaining weight of any kind, it would be silly of you to think that you will be able to gain muscle while trying to keep your body fat low.

Most skinny guys want to gain more muscle, but are afraid of gaining body fat. They see all the bodybuilder photos and read the stories about people gaining pounds of muscle while losing pounds of fat -- They want to do the same. When looking at these photos, you have to remember that most of these people do not have your body type. The majority of them are overweight and want to lose fat, not gain muscle.

'Well', you say, 'What about those people who transformed their bodies? They lost fat and gained muscle'. Yes, but almost all of these people were overweight, or had high levels of body fat. In other words, their metabolisms were, for the most part, slow. They simply dieted and trained for fat loss.

Weight training helped them to tone up and slightly increase their muscle mass by replacing some of the fat with muscle. However, you will never increase your body mass far above your original starting weight on that type of diet.

In other words, even though you gain some muscle, you will actually weight less!

For example, Big Joe weighs 189lbs with 18% body fat. This works out to be 34lbs of fat and 155lbs of muscle. He then goes on a fat loss diet and slowly diets down to a ripped 5% body fat at 168lbs, which is 8.4lbs of fat and 160lbs of muscle. He lost 26lbs of fat, and his weight only went down by 21lbs. So, looking that this we realize that he managed to also gain 5lbs of muscle. You can see that he has more muscle mass than when he started, and he looks totally ripped, but his weight decreased because his main goal was fat loss. He looks much better, and his measurements changed, but he only increased his total weight by five pounds.

If you are very thin, you cannot do this. Yes, your body fat will decrease, and this will also give you more muscle mass, but it will not increase your weight. You will just get much thinner. Big Joe was 'big' to begin with; we are not. To get the same results as Big Joe, you must first gain the weight, and then concentrate on losing the body fat later. Joe had the size; he just needed to trim down. We do not have the size to work with, so we have to force our bodies to grow beyond our body's comfort range. This is the hard part.

This is why if you want to grow beyond your current size, you have to diet for it specifically.

Remember, most of you have extremely fast metabolisms. Gaining weight will be extremely difficult.


The only way you will get bigger is to shock your body.

You must shock your body by:

1. Training with heavy weights, and

2. Eating a lot of calories.

The first shock is with weight training. You must focus on compound free- weight exercises, and lift heavy weights, which will stimulate the largest amount of muscle fibers. Your body responds to this stimulus by increasing your muscle mass.

The second way we must shock our body is by eating more calories than your body is used to. This is the most important factor in gaining mass. When you overload your system with plenty of protein and fats, your body has no other choice but to gain weight.

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The Perfect Rep Range For Building Muscle

No matter what you read or who you talk to, everyone has their own opinion of what the "perfect" rep range should be to allow for maximum muscle stimulation and growth. In this article I’m going to clear up the confusion once and for all and teach you the truth about choosing the most effective rep range for optimal muscle-building results.

Sets that utilize heavy weight and low reps are without a doubt the most effective means of stimulating muscle growth. For every set you perform in the gym, you should utilize a rep range of 5 to 7. This means that for every set you perform, the weight should be light enough that you can complete 5 reps in good form, but heavy enough that you cannot complete more than 7. What's so special about 5 to 7, you ask? Well…

1) Each set will only last between 20-30 seconds.

Maximizing your muscle gains is all about intensity and efficiency. By utilizing a lower rep range, your sets will only last a short period of time, allowing you to generate 100% mental focus and effort. Training with 100% intensity is critical to stimulating muscle growth and it is much easier to maintain this level of effort for shorter periods of time. You will not have to psyche yourself up for marathon sets lasting minutes on end, but rather for a short burst of all-out effort lasting only several seconds.

2) Muscle stimulation will be maximized.

Our bodies are made up of 2 main types of muscle fiber: slow twitch and fast twitch. Slow twitch fibers cannot generate large bursts of power and are utilized during prolonged activity. They have a high tolerance for endurance exercise but do not have a very high potential for increased growth. Fast twitch fibers on the other hand produce large bursts of power and are utilized during short, explosive movements. They contain a large amount of mitochondria (an area in the muscle cell where energy is produced) and have the highest potential for increases in both size and strength. By utilizing a rep range of 5 to 7 you will tap into these extremely responsive fibers and this will result in the greatest amount of muscle growth and strength gain possible.

3) Maximum resistance can be used.

By performing only 5 to 7 reps per set, you will enable your muscles to handle heavier amounts of weight than you could with a higher rep range. Building muscle is a byproduct of building strength, and training in a lower rep range is the most effective way to accomplish this. Since your strength will shoot up much faster using 5 to 7 reps per set, so will your muscle size.

4) Lactic Acid production will be kept to a minimum.

Training in the range of 5 to 7 will also decrease the amount of lactic acid that is secreted within the muscles. Lactic acid is a metabolic waste product that is produced as the body burns carbohydrates for fuel. Lactic acid accumulates in the muscle tissue at increased rates the longer you exercise. By limiting the amount of lactic acid production you will decrease muscle catabolism and create an environment in the body where greater amounts of energy can be generated. This will translate into greater power output and maximum strength potential.

Okay, so we've established that a rep range of 5-7 is the absolute most effective means of stimulating muscle growth. However, this does not apply all the time or on every single lift. There are a few select muscle groups that should be stimulated using a slightly higher rep range. These are the calves, abs, forearms and upper traps. These muscle groups are predominantly made up of slow-twitch fibers, and therefore will respond better to higher reps. For this reason, a rep range of 10-12 should be utilized for these muscle groups. Again, this means that the weight should be light enough for you to complete at least 10 reps, but heavy enough that you cannot complete more than 12.

Summary:

Perform 5-7 reps for the chest, lats, biceps, triceps, shoulders and thighs.

Perform 10-12 reps for the calves, abs, forearms and upper traps.

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The Potentially Dangerous Side Effects of Steroids

You've been going to the gym everyday and working your butt off. You drink protein shakes, eat loads of chicken, and see some muscle gain. Your happy. Then you notice the new guy at gym is getting big real fast. He only started 3 months ago and he's putting on size like there's no tomorrow. What the???

Obviously he's on roids and your starting to wonder whether you should chuck in the towel or jump on the train. It's tempting. Why work so hard when you're only going to see mediocre results compared to the other guy.

Steroids obviously work, but are they worth it? And are they guaranteed?

The Technical Mumbo Jumbo:

Hundreds of distinct steroids have been identified in plant, animals, and fungi. The steroids associated with muscle growth are called anabolic steroids.

Anabolic steroids are a class of natural and synthetic steroid hormones that promote cell growth and division of tissue and bone. They not only effect muscle tissue but various other organs as well. Testosterone is the most potent natural anabolic steroid.

Testosterone is primarily secreted in the testicles of males and the ovaries of females. It is the principal male sex hormone. On average, the adult male body produces about twenty times the amount of testosterone of an adult female's body.

Testosterone naturally increases in males at puberty and causes these effects:

- Increased libido and erection frequency
- Pubic hair extends to thighs and up toward umbilicus
- Facial hair (sideburns, beard, mustache)
- Increased tendency for violence or aggressive
- Subcutaneous fat in face decreases
- Increased muscle strength and mass
- Deepening of voice
- Growth of the Adam's apple
- Growth of jaw, brow, chin, nose, and remodeling of facial bone contours
- Shoulders widen and rib cage expands

The Risks:

The side effects of using anabolic steroids vary depending on the type of drug, dosage, duration of use and individual sensitivity and response.

To be straight with you, there are more stories and myths about steroid effects than you can poke a stick at. But some of the more common and documented effects include severe acne, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, impotence, and mood swings.

So if you think you can handle that, then you're all set... Well, not really.

Besides the shrunken testicles, people who take large doses (like what's needed for muscle gain) can lose control of their emotions and become irritable and really aggressive. Little things can make them hysterically angry. This is what is called "roid rage".

A case study published in the Australian Medical Journal (165:222-26) reviewed the evidence concerning the effects of anabolic steroids on the mind.

The case centered on a 29-year-old bodybuilder who beat his wife to death using a weapon described as a claw hammer. While he committed this horrific act, his four children were in another part of the house. He then shot himself in the head. Before this incident, his home life had been described as ‘‘happy.’’

This man had used steroids off and on for years, and seven weeks before the murder, he had used a steroid stack consisting of Winstrol-V and sustanon, both injectable steroids. A later urine test showed that he also used Valium, a muscle relaxant and anti-anxiety drug.

This doesn't mean if you take steroids you are going to lose it and become an angry incredible hulk. But it definitely rings warning bells.

More Bad News - The problems don't stop when you stop taking roids either. People who use steroids can develop a dependence on them. That means they will go through withdrawal when they stop using. They can feel sick to their stomach, have headaches, sweat a lot, feel dizzy and be depressed.

Also, They are illegal - (In case you were wondering):

Steroids are legal for use by veterinarians and doctors but it is illegal to sell or buy them on the street. When steroids are sold on the street or in a gym, they are often mixed with other things which only increases your risks.

Steroids are also banned from amateur sports like the Olympics and most professional sports. Several Olympic athletes have lost their medals after they were tested and found to have used steroids to bulk up.

Are they Guaranteed:

Steroids are going to increase your muscle mass - Hands Down.

That doesn't necessarily mean your chest and biceps are going to pop out of your shirt first. There are some cases where users experienced very little gain on their chest and massive gain on their shoulders and traps. Who else wants to become the next hunchback? Not me.

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