Watch the Mirror…Not the Scale.

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Using the scale as  your measurement device to help you determine where you want to be in your weight loss and fat loss goals is somewhat counter-intuitive, and worse, can have a negative effect on what you’re trying to accomplish.

Muscle weighs more than fat.

Using the mirror as your guide is especially helpful for women, since an ideal I suggest women aspire to…those of the pro-bikini, figure and fitness competitors…require that the lady be willing to develop some serious muscle tone, in order to not only bring out those sexy curves (it’s the MUSCLE that gives you them that fantastic look) and of course, is the fuel for the fat-burning fire.

And no, you are not going to become muscle-bound, looking like the female bodybuilders in doing so.  Those women are lifting extremely heavy, for long periods of time, taking in huge huge calorie counts, and very often…steroids or other hormonal enhancements to achieve that degree of muscularity.

So as the female puts on this muscle tone and definition, and her body fat comes down, the scale…her actual WEIGHT…may not be reflective (pun) of what she sees in the mirror.

And don’t let it be.

Forget the damn scale.  Use the mirror to see how you can re-shape your body, bringing out shape in your legs, and just a little bit in the shoulders and arms, and then use my exercise techniques to tone done the midsection to help create the feminine hourglass effect that is so pleasing to the eye.

Love, Happiness, Health and Peace…………Tim   🙂

Challenging the Mayo clinic on Supplementation

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On page 4 of the March 2012 issue of the Mayo Clinic Health Letter there is an article entitled “Risks of vitamin supplements.”

In the article, they explain that a great many people take supplements, but that they may actually be doing more harm than good.

I’ll be the first to back the notion that we should use our food sources for our nutrition first and foremost, and use supplements only when necessary for illness or needed health enhancement.

But I would challenge the overall stance of the Mayo Clinic’s opinion, some of which was derived from an Iowa Women’s Health Study whereby they tracked for almost twenty years the supplementation habits of more than 38,000 women 55 and older.  Their findings suggest that taking a multivitamin appears to increase the risk of death.

My first question in analyzing their study would be to ask them: “What multivitamin did these women take?  Was it a low-quality, barely-bioavailable multi like Centrum, whereby much of the solid pill often end up in the stool in the toilet, or was it a whole-food multivitamin made from real food…foods that the body understands and can make use of?”

My bet is that the multi’s took, where almost definitely not of a whole-food sourced vitamin.  After all, real whole-food multi’s are relatively new, and certainly were not available 20 years ago (at least to my knowledge).

Without being specific as to what these women were taking, the reader is left making a very broad-based decision based solely on assumptions about what actually happened.  An average reader’s interpretation of a “multi-vitamin” could amount to any number of supplements on the market, but it will most likely end up being that of the popular brand names that we all see advertised on TV.  Multi’s that essentially, in many cases, use forms of vitamins and minerals that are not food-sourced and may even be interpreted as toxic to the body.

And in that sense, I too would encourage these women to NOT take such a “multi,” if it can even be called that.  (I prefer the term “synthetic rock pill” over “multi-vitamin.”)

Having a law background, I have learned how to discern any/all studies, and to know what kinds of questions to ask in all of these studies that are made public.  It is frustrating…downright angering…to see so much effort go into what appears to be a misleading of the public with some sort of agenda, though I of course won’t claim that is exactly what is going on.

Perhaps the people involved in creating the study do have the best of intentions…But…when people are in turn lead to believe that ALL multivitamins are not only useless, but even harmful, a great many people may miss out on the benefits that a real whole-food supplement, from a real food source full of nutrition that the body recognizes, can bring them.

And from that interpretation, we are victimized by such studies.

Love, Happiness, Health and Peace……………….Tim