Convenience – Weight Loss Diet Solutions

Today is Earth Day and I know that my kids will be celebrating, or at least recognizing it, by picking up garbage in the neighborhoods around their school.

Even though we often feel like we transcend our environment and that we are directing the area around us this is not actually true and just looking around can be a real wakeup call for us and make us realize that we are coexisting in our environment and need to take better care of it.

We can see on a daily basis as the weather changes are happening (whether it is manmade or not), and we can see the effects of building manufacturing plants and oil drilling around the world and how that has changed the environment.

I often think about how I live here in North America and my “carbon footprint” is changing the way the earth is and how people on other continents that don’t have to heat the house 8 months a year, or grocery shop with overpackaged goods built to draw us in. Even things so simple as the fact that in my house we have two cars instead of one only because of the convenience for my 50 kilometer drive to work.

In my more finger pointing moments I can point to other people that are living a life that has a lot of waste and say “Look there, they are polluting the world” but really it is all of us together, in this consumer based society I even see it in my son that will hop from one percieved need to another looking for satisfaction while we still buy too much that ends up in a landfill one day.

But feelings of guilt will never fix a problem and I think the problems that we see this Earth Day are worse than any other and quite probably next year things will be worse than this year. The fact is that we need to all step up, each person trying to make changes while not being concerned with what our neighbors do, really it is just about each of us making changes in how we spend our money and how.

So today as you go along try and see where each of your dollars go, how much of a difference good or bad are you doing by spending your money and what decisions are you making for good or bad?

I know that I have a long way to go but at least we can each start today in making a difference for the better

Happy Earth Day!

Related Blogs

Related Blogs on Carbon Footprint

Related Blogs on Continents

Read a great review of the Fat Loss for Idiots program. See if you can lose 9 pounds in 11 days and what Cycled Eating is

Fast Weight Lifting Workout

I know I only do this occasionally but thought that it would be nice just to post my fast weight lifting workout for the day today. This whole workout had my body worked out hard within30 minutes

As I have commented before on Twitter and on Facebook, I have switched to a much shorter, fast weight lifting workout based on lots of science but also trying to find convenience for myself. I was on the verge of splitting my workout to a 2 day split a few months ago and over the summer started trying to find ways to do heavier quicker workouts. The example I will show you today of my current fast weight lifting workout is quite good but there is still room to improve.

Start of Fast Weight Lifting Workout

So I started my workout today with a simple circuit. To me lately the key to all of my workouts are doing compound exercises, this way I am leveraging different muscles on each set and getting all of my minor muscles groups done. I hate remembering weight amounts but I will give as much detail as I can.

Please note that I did this warmup set back to back to back in about 5-10 minutes or so.

Bench press – machine – 12 reps I pushed these out ok and this was mostly warming up the shoulders triceps and chest
Military press – machine – 12 reps I find that I have a bit of soreness in my left shoulder but this exercise is a good warmup for triceps and shoulders
Wide Grip Pulldowns – machine – 10 reps I do wide grip pulldowns to get a good stretch and warmup my lats and biceps
Close Grip Rows – machine – 10 reps – Here I am working my lats differently and also stretching out my lower back. I get the weight up higher for this than a traditional warmup because I love the lat burn.
Tricep Pushdowns with rope – 12 reps – This is just an addon to a regular pushdown where the rope allows you to get a better peak contraction. I had a higher weight on this as well.
Alternating Bicep Curls – dumbells – 10 reps per arm I was just getting a good contraction for my biceps as the back exercises warm up the biceps but they could still use some work.
Seated Hamstring Curls – machine – 12 reps I skipped squats today to isolate a bit (maybe I was lazy?) this exercise really hits the hamstrings good and was a good warmup
Leg Press – machine – 12 reps I always love leg press as I can really feel the burn in the quads and the flex in my knees

Now that I was warmed up I did one superset for each of my main muscle groups. These supersets woulde make sure that I was able to get a fast weight lifting workout in and still really pound my muscles. All of the exercises were to exhaustion meaning that I could not get one more rep out even if I had to. Also there were no breaks in between the superset sets but about 2 minutes before I did the next muscle group.

Chest Superset
Cable Crossovers x 10 then machine bench press x10 Here is where I found that I am a lot stronger. I had moved up the weight I regularly use for crossovers and it was still not quite hard enough so my reps were to high. I really pushed the bench press though

Back Superset
Wide Grip Pulldowns x 8 Seated Rows x10 I did the same as my warmup sets for back but I really increased the weight. I did not get the weight high enough for the seated rows so I need to remember this for next time.

Shoulder Superset
Front Laterals x10 Side Laterals x 10 Pullups x 10 I know that the laterals are really an isolated exercise and should maybe do military press but I get a great contraction and burn with laterals vs militarys. My shoulders were really burning by the time I did the pullups and I kept my knees loose and really focussed on my form so I did not swing the weight around.

At this point I was really wiped and breathing a bit harder than I expected, I moved to legs before arms

For legs I did the same as the warmup (again I am a wimp for not doing squats) and I turned up the weight for hamstring curls and leg press.

For biceps I did 7-2-1 exercise which is done with a bar. 7 reps from bottom to half way up, 7 reps from half way up to peak contraction, and then 7 full reps. All this in one set.

For Triceps I did kickbacks to really get a great burn. I have fairly strong triceps so I get cocky about tricep exercises.

And that was the workout. Does not seem like much but this is kinda what I am doing twice a week for weights and I have to say I am getting stronger fast and think I am making better muscle gains because of the fewer sets.

Improvements needed for my fast weight lifting workout

I am still not having perfect sets or workouts. I feel great but I have not got perfect conectration on each set and my intensity could always get better. One more thing that I need to dial in better is the weight that I use in each set. I want to get my reps to about 7 reps per set but I am not quite there yet, going a little too light compared to my strength.

And finally, I still struggle a bit with ego issues. If I do compound exercises properly then I should be able to get away with Squats, chest, back, and shoulders with no bicep or tricep exercises, I feel though still that I have to work those guns.

Why should we do a fast weight lifting workout?

There are a few things that are helping me these days and I will psot them as seperate post to make sure that they get the attention they should get but I have been moving up my strength in a large part due to the fact that I am doing less sets but each set has far more intensity. Also I am taking my sets to the very end, making sure that I am getting the most from each and every set. Finally I am concentrating on good form and a peak contraction on every rep.

I know that my exercise routine changes over time and I am sure that just as I am reducing sets now that a year from now I am sure that I will have spun it up to more sets per muscle group. Remember the most important thing to do in any workout, especially a fast weight lifting workout, is to create confusion in your muscles, making sure that you workouts, sets and reps are always changing.

Doing a fast weight lifting workout is a great way to do all of the above and save time getting stronger.