Lean Green and Healthy: Weight loss cures and snake oil salesmen.

Lean Green and Healthy: Weight loss cures and snake oil salesmen.:

Well this morning I had a run in with a fellow on the internet over his promotion of supplements for weight loss. He was posting in a group and his advertisement for his magical product encouraged people to lose weight by mixing his potion with milk, peanut butter and butterscotch pudding mix!  His other recipe included Oreo cookies and Jello flavoured puddingmix. Mmm sounds like a balanced nutritional meal to me! (not!) Not
surprisingly I got a little hot under the collar about this latest dietary scam and decided it was time to talk about weight loss supplements. 

Click the link to read the full entry  on the Lean Green & Healthy blog.

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Low Cost, Effective Home Training Routine, Part Two

This is part two of the Low Cost Home Training Program I posted up just before. I made the videos last summer and thought some new people might like to give it a try. These are serious routines and you will see good results if you do each of them twice weekly with suitable eating habits.

Here's the Pulling routine. The other one was the Pushing routine, remember?

Routine Description:

Warm Up: TRX Reverse Flies and Front Raises

I did 3 sets of 20 (10 reps of each movement) just as a nice warm up for the shoulders and upper back muscles.

TRX Hanging Row:

In the gym I’d probably be doing a cable row, machine row, even a dumbbell row… any type of horizontal pulling movement. Here I’ve gone for the TRX variation, and I’m leaning back as far as possible so that I’m pulling as much of my body weight as I can.
I managed 4 sets of 16 reps here, you should aim for 10 - 12 reps.

Resistance Band One Arm Reverse Flies

Here I’m trying to replicate a Reverse Cable Fly that I might do in the gym. In my program we’d call this a Precision Movement trying to target the rear deltoid muscle specifically.
Do 4 sets of 12 to 16 reps.

Resistance Band Upright Row

Usually I’d do this with a barbell in the gym, but a resistance band will suffice at home or on holiday. We want to be pulling our elbows straight up into the air, and our hands to about middle-of-the-chest height.
4 sets of 10 - 12 reps again here.

Pull Ups / Chin Ups

Vertical Pulling movement. Self explanatory! These are tough though, so don't be too upset if you can't manage them as a beginner.

Resistance Band Reverse Flies

Again. This is probably over kill having already done a TRX version and a single arm version, but I wanted to show a few different options.

Resistance Band Bicep Curls

Squeeze those biceps at the top and release slowly.
4 sets of 12 - 16 reps.


Not shown in the video, but do these too.Google them if you have to.


Hip Thrust / Glute Bridge 4 x 20 reps.
Hip Rotation aka Clam Shell Exercise, or Fire Hydrant Exercise 4 x 20 reps each side.
Hip Abduction aka Laying Side Leg Raise 4 x 20 reps each side.

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Low Cost, Effective Home Training Routine, Part One

I shot these videos last summer and thought I'd share them again for all the people looking to get into shape as part of their New Years Resolutions.

Now, it's like I talk about all the time. If you actually want results you need to train productively, not just "burn calories". Resistance training really is the key, but weights are expensive! On a budget, some resistance bands and a suspension trainer are a great option to train seriously at home.

Today's routine is based on pushing movements, and accessory exercises that compliment them.

Routine Description:

Warm Up: Resistance Band One Arm Flies

I usually start this routine with Pec Dec in the gym. A dumbbell or cable fly is a similar movement, and the resistance band fly is the option we’ll use with the home routine. If you had two sets of the same bands (and really they’re not very expensive, so that’s worth thinking about) you could do both sides together… or one at a time like I am doing here. I’m adding a little extra shoulder rotation to the end of the movement here which I feel gives me just that little extra bit of contraction in the pectorals.
Do 3 sets of 12 - 16 reps of these.

Horizontal Push: Push Ups

We could do a Chest Press with the Resistance Bands, but I feel like Push Ups are as good an option as any. You can see I start with a beginners version, leaning against the railing… and then I do a more advanced version with my feet elevated. If you have the TRX and are really looking for an advanced option you can have your feet in the straps which means a lot of extra work to stabalise yourself.
Do 4 sets of 10 to 12 reps.

Various Squats

I think the TRX Squats are a really good method to learn good, deep squatting technique. You can lean back into the squat a little and you have the handles to hang on to for balance, and you can squat nice and deep. Once that’s too easy, try either the one legged (pistol) squat or the one legged lunge. These damn near killed me. You can see some discrepancy with my form from one side to the other as well… if only I’d had a coach there to point that out at the time!
4 sets of as many as you can manage!

Resistance Band Front Raise

Coming back to upper body, and this is a nice one to target the shoulders. Anterior Deltoid muscle in particular.
Do 2 x 12 - 16 reps.

Resistance Band Side Lateral Raise

Shoulders again, this time trying to hit the Lateral (or middle if you prefer) Deltoid. With both this and the above exercise, try to have a little pause at the top of the movement, and then return slowly to the starting position.
Do 3 x 12 - 16 reps.

Vertical Push: Resistance Band Shoulder Press

Much like performing a Dumbbell Shoulder Press in the gym, but with the Resistance Bands instead.
Do 3 x 10 - 12 reps.

Resistance Band Overhead Tricep Extension

Self explanatory, isn’t it? You could do a variation on Cable Kickbacks here as well, which I quite like.
Do 3 x 12 - 16 reps.

Here's the link to the next routine.

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Masterpost: All detoxes are a scam.

I decided a "master post" is where I dump EVERY link I can find addressing a particular source of nonsense, quackery, pseudoscience or scammery. In this case, "detoxing".

Here it comes, hold on to your hats.

First though, you may well ask "if all these things are scams, how do they get away with selling them?" well you may be sorry that you asked. Here's a great video that explains it.

You want more links explaining why "detox" is junk science? You got it.

• Detox Diet Deliberations.
• Detoxes: An Undefined Scam.
• The ultimate detox: your kidneys.
• Quackwatch.org  detox overview
• The Crap That Is Colon Cleansing
• Elitefitnessmentoring: A bit of common sense shows us that this is total BS.
• Detox programs amount to a large quantity of excrement, both literally and figuratively.
• You Can't Detox Your Body. So How DO You Get Healthy?
• What the marketers of detox products have done is made the term “detox” meaningless – actually the term now is nothing but a red flag for snake oil.
• The idea that we need to follow a special diet to help our body eliminate toxins is not supported by medical science.
• There are multiple case reports and case series that describe the adverse effects of colonic cleansing. 
• Sciencebasedmedicine.org Fashionable Toxins
• Alternative medicine’s ideas of detoxification and cleansing have no basis in reality. 
• it might be gentler to think of it as a voluntary, self-administered tax on scientific illiteracy and decadence.
• Detox diets myths vs reality
• There’s no such thing as ‘detoxing’. In medical terms, it’s a nonsense. Diet and exercise is the only way to get healthy.

A few updates, as if we didn't know these products were bad enough already:

• Proceed with caution: The tea that’s making women pregnant.
• Unexpected Pregnancies Caused By Popular Tea Detox That Can Stop The Pill From Working
• Women having surprise pregnancies 'can be traced back to tea detox'
• Why Detox Diets and Cleanses Always Fail
• Fancy Juice Doesn’t Cleanse the Body of Toxins 
• Products that promise “detox” are a sham. Yes, all of them. 

And another video for good measure.

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Gabrielle Maston: Orthorexia Is Real

Gabrielle Maston: Orthorexia Is Real:

This topic has been a long time coming - orthorexia.  Haven’t heard of it before?
 
Well I will inform you, it’s a form of an eating disorder where someone has an extreme or excessive preoccupation with avoiding what is perceived as unhealthy “bad” foods. 

Click the link to read the full article.

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