How is everyone doing with their health and fitness goals? If you are looking for a spark or something to get you engaged and moving again, let me know! Remember that health and fitness is a life-long journey. This is not something you do for 90 days and then go back to your old ways. Living a healthy life requires time, commitment, and dedication! If you have fallen off the horse, fine. Dust yourself off, get focused, get some motivation, and get back on!
For those of you who have been sticking with it, good for you, you are having an influence and impact on the ones around you more than you know!
A couple things this week.
1. I have had some great interest already for the Shakeology samples. I have sent a bunch out already to many of you reading this e-mail. Please, if you are receiving a sample from me, let me know when you get it so that I know you have received it alright. Then, give it a shot and let me know how you like it. If you haven't requested a sample yet, and would like one, e-mail me so that I can send one to you!
2. I don't know if you folks read the Beachbody newsletter or not, but Steve Edwards (Beachbody's fitness adviser) is a regular contributor, and almost always has something worthwhile to read. This week's edition is no different. Have a read below:
5 Reasons You Could Be Gaining Weight
By Steve Edwards Nothing taps your panic button quite like gaining weight, especially when you're on a weight loss program. Unfortunately, it's an inevitable fact of life. Luckily, you've got me here to tell you that, as long as you're following a solid program, results will come. It's a physiological certainty (unless you have an underlying issue, like hypothyroidism).I realize this might take further convincing, considering our instant-gratification society. But this ain't my first weight loss rodeo. I've seen almost every scenario you can dream up, most of which were solved by patience. That said, there are some strategies you can use to ensure you're getting the most out of both your diet and exercise program. Let's tackle five of the most common weight loss conundrums.
- I'm following the program perfectly. Why isn't it working?! Cortisol
is a word you should become familiar with, as it's a key factor here.
You've probably heard that it makes you fat, but you have no idea why
"they" say that. What is cortisol? It's actually a performance-enhancing
stress hormone that serves an important function in survival
situations. Unfortunately, when we force too much daily stress on our
bodies, we shift into a state of chronic cortisol release. This can
cause us to store excess fat as a survival instinct. While it sounds
pretty dire, it's generally only a serious problem in those with poor
lifestyle habits.
The beginning of a diet and/or exercise program, however, is a survival situation. In a very simplistic sense, your body releases cortisol, which, in turn, causes excess water retention to help you rebuild broken down muscle tissue. While this is cortisol functioning properly, it does lead to a period of water weight gain as you adjust to a new program. It's nothing to worry about. By following a solid plan, your body will adapt by repairing this muscle tissue. This results in an increase in your metabolism and leads to weight loss if that's your goal.
The trick is that there is no hard line on how long this adaptation takes. It's based on your individual parameters. Just rest easy in the fact that it will happen, unless you force it not to, leading us to . . . 
I'm barely eating. Severe
undereating causes cortisol release, as it's the definition of a bodily
emergency. Beachbody® offers many kick-start (or express) eating plans
where you undereat for a few days, but you're always encouraged to get
back to a solid maintenance calorie level quickly. A short period of
strategic undereating with proper hydration will help your body dispense
of unneeded food (most of us chronically overeat) and regulate bodily
functions. Go too long, however, and chronic cortisol release is the
result.
This is a tough situation because our natural reaction to weight gain is to eat less. When you're exercising, it's important to keep your eye on workout performance, as opposed to how much weight you're losing. You should be eating enough so that your daily workouts improve over time. As long as that's happening, your body is adapting, your metabolism is increasing, and you will lose weight provided you also don't overeat.- I've been doing hard workouts for weeks. On the performance
theme, you need to continually improve, which is why workouts get harder
as you move through any of Beachbody's programs. It's also why we add
resistance (via added weight or gravity, as is the case with jumping) to
workouts. If you're doing the same workouts at the same intensity
constantly, you are not forcing adaptations that lead to changes in your
metabolism. This is called a plateau.
A plateau, technically, isn't gaining weight—it's remaining the same—but a proper diet and exercise program should continually force improvements (in the form of adaptations). Otherwise, your metabolism won't continue to increase, which is the goal of most weight loss programs. - My friend and I are doing the exact same thing and she's losing. Back
to adaptation. We all react differently. The only absolute is that our
bodies will change over time with a healthy program. A fitness rule
called the Specificity of Adaptation states that it takes the body
between 3 and 12 weeks to adapt to new stimuli, which is a very broad
range. This is why it's vital that you stick to your program and not
change it repeatedly based on your daily results!
In our test groups, two-week results have almost no bearing on who does best in the end. In fact, many people that undereat early and get off to a fast start will stagnate, while those who stick to the plan and eat as advised will start slower but train harder over time, leading to rapid weight loss as the program wears on. 
I lost weight for a while but now it's stopped. For
ages on the Team Beachbody® Message Boards, this was our most
frequently asked question. You eat less to lose weight. Things are going
great, but suddenly you plateau—or start gaining. Odds are, your
metabolism has slowed down in order to deal with the decreased calories.
You're starving your now fit body, so it's doing what it needs to do to
survive. The answer to this problem is pretty simple: eat more.
Again, this is a tough sell, so here's an example. One of our early Success Stories lost 40 pounds during a round of Power 90®, eating only 1,200 calories a day. He then stagnated for a long time and was very resistant to eating more, fearing it would kick-start a regression. We talked him into adding calories until, finally at around 2,000 calories, weight loss resumed. It then became so rapid he dropped through his goal, and about 20 pounds below, until finally, at around 3,000 calories, he leveled out. Then a daily diet of around 3,500 calories a day got him to a ripped 175.
My blogs from the past few days:
Body Beast Build: Legs Complete Review
Motivation Saturday
Body Beast Days 34-38
Cross Training and Periodization
Training Principles
Body Beast Build: Back and Bis Complete Review
Everyone have a great week! If you need anything, you know how to reach me, talk to you all soon,
Quote of the day:
"Difficulties mastered are opportunities won."
~Winston Churchill
Check out my new Website: tylerrobbinsfitness.com
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