Can you possibly lose fat or even gain muscle while on vacation? Absolutely. It’s not easy of course. You are on vacation after all, so you probably want to indulge and eat and relax. Here are some tips to actually lose fat and/or gain muscle and STILL have a fun indulgent vacation.
You can lose fat and/or gain muscle even while on vacation
Let’s say you are taking a one week or two week holiday. You can do a lot of damage to your body in 14 days of eating junk, drinking, and laying around the beach. Don’t let that be you! You can be the person who comes back from vacation not just well rested and rejuvenated but also in better shape! An important step is to plan ahead – waiting until you are on vacation is too late. So good for you for reading this article now.
These are notes partially to myself (I’m on vacation as I write this). And as with many of the approaches I take, I need to thank Tom Venuto and his Burn The Fat ebook.
1. Find A Gym – Chances are, there is a gym near your vacation spot. Search before you leave, find out if they have a power rack or squat rack. (Yes, you’ll still do the Big Seven as your primary lifts). Find one with day passes.
2. Time Your Workouts around the “indulgent” meal. You’ve heard me (and countless others) talk about how important it is to feed your muscle within that 1 to 2 hour block around your workout. You need protein and carbs to start the repair process. Many people advocate eating most of your calories for the day around this window (shake before, shake during, big meal afterwards). Well, if you are on vacation and you love big, crazy breakfasts, then workout in the morning before you indulge. If instead you are going to go hog-wild over dinner, then workout beforehand.
3. Count Calories – Calories do still count. There’s no magic here – if you eat more than your body uses then you will gain fat. I believe it’s more complicated than just counting calories (hormones play a huge role) but for some people, the logical process of counting calories let’s them eat crazy for a meal, then dial it back the rest of the day. Which brings me to… (more…)
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The video itself says it all (just click to see the video – only 3 minutes long but worth every second):
Written by Jason
Alright, let’s be honest, we all have those days where it’s tough to get up and go to the gym. You can think of a thousand reasons not to do it, and of course it’s so easy to rationalize that skipping just one day won’t hurt anything. (more…)
Continue reading about Dating, Your Job, & Sex… Workouts Make it All Better
Your body is 100% unable to do anything that your brain does not tell it to do. Period.
For every movement you make, and for every action you take, the initiation and completion begins and ends with the signals that come from your brain. Since your brain is the central (more…)
Continue reading about Mind Over Matter: Performance Through Visualization
Think you’re too wimpy or too small to be seen in a gym? Better think again.
His name is Aditya, but his friends call him Romeo. He is 2’9” tall, weighs in at less than 20 pounds, and feels no shame whatsoever as throngs of people come to see him as the smallest bodybuilder ever.
And why should he feel any shame whatsoever?
What is wrong with being born with a frame that’s smaller or larger than usual?
Yeah, I know that it’s easy for a beginner to feel out of place in a gym. You’re struggling to press an empty bar while some beast of a man is pressing 500 pounds next to you. You might feel (more…)
Continue reading about I Am The Strongest Dwarf In The World
Image Credit: neloqua
With the new year a few weeks behind us, now is a great time to look at our New Year’s resolutions and evaluate how we will achieve them. It’s sad, but many people set goals that they will never achieve.
But being lazy is not the only (more…)
Continue reading about 5 Essential Tips for Effective Goal Setting, Part 1
Image Credit: Gio Foto
This article was written by Jason.
I hate the basics.
It doesn’t matter what it is, we simply don’t want basic things in life. Nobody wants to go out and buy a basic car if they could afford something nicer. We don’t like to have basic computers or basic cameras either… we want the fast computers or the cameras will all the hi-tech features.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting more than the basics. We don’t want to live basic lives, we don’t want to buy things that are the bare-bones basics, and we naturally want something more than a basic workout that gives basic results.
In addition, no matter how important it can be to learn the basics rules about whatever you are doing, learning the basics can be a real pain.
I remember taking a basic golf course in college. The teacher made us learn the basics of each golf swing by having us practice every day without a golf club in our hands. I became so frustrated by pretending to play golf each day that I wish I had a real club just so I could smash something with it.
Everybody in my golf class felt that way. We all wanted to learn how to play golf, and just sitting around all day looking at the most basic movements was a real frustration. It’s the same thing with anything we pursue; we naturally want to move beyond the basic level as quickly as possible.
Going to the gym isn’t much different either. You don’t want to have a basic body — you want an amazing body, right? So why would you do the basic exercises if having a basic body isn’t what you want?
That’s why I don’t like using the word “basic” to describe the most useful exercises… it’s very misleading.
The Accelerated Course
It’s just too easy to get caught up in all the details of what we’re trying to do in life. We often waste our time doing all the little things when there’s something big that needs to be done first.
It’s like trying to sweep the floor in your house when there’s a big elephant in the living room that won’t stop crapping on the floor. Take care of the big things first, and then the small details will be easy.
I get the feeling that a lot of us are doing the same thing in the gym. We’re trying to focus on the little details of our workouts like putting some little line on our biceps or a little “cut” in our shoulders. These types of exercises do have their place, but focusing on the details doesn’t get you very far in the beginning.
So why not take the accelerated course when you’re in the gym? You’ll get where you’re trying to go much faster, and you’ll even pick up a lot of the details along the way.
The strange thing is, (more…)
Continue reading about Your Workouts Will Always Suck Without These
This post is part 2 of a 2 part series. In part 1, Starvation is Not the Answer, we talked about how under eating can slow down your metabolism and make you fatter.
Here’s a piece of information that some of you will be glad to hear – Eating enough food each day will help you to keep fat off of your body. You are going to have to forget the idea that cutting fat comes from just eating less food; it’s simply not the truth.
This is the part that is hard for many people to accept when you are trying to cut some fat. Switching to smaller and more frequent meals throughout the day will actually cause your metabolism to stabilize.
You might be eating more food overall throughout the day, but eating even amounts of food throughout the day will help you to keep your metabolism higher. The key will be to make the following things happen:
1. Feed your body: Like we discussed before, (more…)
