photo credit: Photos8.com

Do you set your alarm for a 6am run but then hit snooze til 9? Do you plan on going to the gym after work but never seem to get there? Sounds like you’ve got a case of fitness laziness!

In this article I am going to give you some simple steps to overcome fitness laziness. For once you overcome this hurdle, the rest will seem like a walk in the park.

Admitting that you have fitness laziness?

The first thing you need to do is admit you have a problem. Once you have admitted you have a problem you can begin to solve it. If you never admit it, you will never solve it. Here are three ways to tell whether you have fitness laziness:

• You don’t last more than a month
  One surefire way to tell if you are lazy is if you begin a weight loss program or a new fitness regime and then quit after a month. This is lazy because you have not given it enough time to work and are giving up too early.
• You cheat all the time
  Another way to tell if you are lazy is if you cheat. This could be that you have a “cheat snack” every now and then or it could be that you blow the gym off to go to a party or watch TV. Lazy.
• You leave the gym early
  If you ever leave the gym before completing your workout or head home after only jogging a few blocks it is a big sign that you are being lazy. Successful people never cut their workouts short – they always follow through to the end.

If you do any one of those things then it is time to admit that you have a laziness problem. Now that you have done that we can get to work solving it.

How to overcome fitness laziness

Laziness is a habit. It is not an inbuilt personality trait. Laziness has become a part of your life because you have allowed yourself to slip into that mindset. This means that with a few simple habit changes you can reverse its negative effects. You can change.

1. Take a vow in front of someone you respect
One of the most powerful ways to overcome laziness in relation to weight loss or fitness is to take a strong vow in front of someone you respect, love or admire. Vows are very powerful things and, when done with a good motivation, can shape and change your situation.

The best thing to do is gather together your husband, parents, siblings and friends and then make the announcement that you want to achieve a certain goal. It might be that you want to drop 20 pounds. Once you have made that announcement vow in front of all of them that you will achieve your goal within a certain time frame. This puts the onus on you.

2. Think about the consequences
Another way to combat laziness is to think about the consequences of your laziness. This is often the most powerful way to spur you in to some new and more motivated activity.

For example, if you keep putting off your weight loss program there is every chance that you will become overweight. Being overweight can be damaging to your health and can cause heart problems, diabetes and several other serious illnesses. Think about these things the next time you want to put something off til later.

3. Start small
One reason people fail when it comes to fitness is because they start in the deep end. Instead of getting up 20 minutes early and going for a light walk they try to get up two hours early and do a full gym session. Not going to happen. If you want to overcome your lazy habits you need to reverse them slowly.

Start by changing small things with your diet and fitness program. Instead of going for a marathon run everyday try just doing a nice light walk for half an hour. Instead of cutting out all carbs cold turkey try cutting out a few items at a time; bread, then rice, then pasta, etc. When you do things gradually you are more likely to succeed.

Conclusion

As I said, laziness is a habit. And you don’t get rid of bad habits, you just replace them with better ones. Start slow, take a vow and think about the consequences of your lazy behavior. If you do these three things you will achieve your weight loss and fitness goals a lot faster.

photo credit: soylentgreen23

There is one question I know a lot of women are concerned about: will training with weights make me bulky? In this post I am going to give you a few things to think about. Hopefully it will solve your worries.

Why is this a concern?

It seems as though women are just as afraid of becoming big as they are of becoming fat. Women these days want skinny bodies with minimal body fat and maybe a few curves in the right place. Bulk and muscle is considered to be masculine and unattractive.

However there are women out there who are fond of bodybuilding and wish to become bigger. To these women I say “good on you!” and encourage you to delve deeper into the world of female bodybuilding. This article is aimed at women who wish to use weight training as a weight loss and fitness tool without becoming too muscular.

Will weight training make women bulky?

So the question on everyone’s lips is whether or not training with heavy weights will make you bulky. It is an interesting question and one that has several confusing answers. I will try my best to shed some light on the matter.

1. Most women cannot bulk up
The fact of the matter is that most women cannot becoming more bulky by training with heavy weights. The main reason for this is that the female body does not have enough testosterone floating around in it and thus not the correct “environment” for muscle gain.

2. Women can bulk up if they try
If you are reading this post with the hope that you will find some information about bulking up there is good news, it is possible. If you want to gain more muscle you need to start on a good protein supplement such as whey protein powder. This will help to create that environment that we were talking about.

Final say

If you are worried about bulking up I say, stop worrying. Weight training will help you get fit and burn a heck of a lot of fat and it will not make you muscular as long as you are mixing it with a good cardio workout regime.

This is Part Two in our three part series on how to lose your fat butt. In the first post we looked at the crucial dietary aspects of losing weight and now we are going to take a look at some weight training and anaerobic exercises that will help you tone, shape and lose your fat butt!

Weight training and anaerobic exercises for the butt

If you cast your memories back to the first post I said there were three things that you need to do if you want to lose your fat butt. They were:

• clean up your diet
• start working with weights
• start doing some cardio

This post is about the second one, working with weights, and it is a really important part of your progress.

Weight training burns calories. In fact, I would say that it burns more calories than cardio. Why? Well two reasons actually. Firstly, weight training is hard work and it gets your metabolic rate up really high. This means that you burn calories during the workout but also long after the workout has finished. It is almost as if weight training allows you to keep exercises even when you are at home! Secondly, weight training builds muscle and muscle burns fat. Take a look at any woman with a toned body and you will see that she is quite firm. This is a mixture of weight loss and muscle gain – the muscle she has put on has burned off the fat. The two don’t co-exist well.

So it is important to work with weights if you want to lose your butt. And don’t worry, you WON’T end up looking like a bodybuilder. Women simply do not have the testosterone to look like this. Any muscle you do put on will be minimal and it will burn off the fat around it so in actual fact you will look smaller, not bigger!

Here are the weight training and anaerobic exercises that you need to do:

1. Jumping squats

4 sets of as many reps as you can do.

As you probably know by now we are big fans of jumping squats here at FWF and we advocate them for almost everything! If you want to lose weight; jumping squats. If you want to burn calories; jumping squats. If you want to tone your butt; definitely jumping squats!

Jumping squats work your entire lower body and they are amazing for building muscle and burning fat. This exercise will really get your heart racing. Check out this post for detailed instructions on how to do the jumping squat.

2. Weighted squats

4 sets of 15 reps

Weighted squats are the squats you do in a squat rack with a barbell on your shoulders. They are quite difficult to do so I recommend reading as much about them as possible before you go to the gym and pop your knee out.

Weighted squats should be done slowly and with the muscles your are working foremost in your mind. Do not lose concentration. You should also go no lower than parallel if you want to make sure your knees stay healthy. Lower yourself down to a count of five seconds and then push yourself up as quickly as you can. I have found this gets the best results. And remember, pick a weight that allows you to ONLY pump out 15 reps. No more, no less.

3. Walking dumbbell lunges

4 sets of as many reps as you can do

Dumbbell lunges are a great way to finish off your workout and by now, trust me, you will be feeling like quitting. Take two medium heavy dumbbells and find a place where you can walk without getting interrupted. If you workout at a gym quite often the staff will let you take the dumbbells out to the car park where you have more room to move.

The exercise is just like a standing lunge except you walk forward instead of going back to your original position. It is a fantastically rough way to burn calories and your butt muscles will feel like they are on fire! Try and perform four sets of as many as you can do. The heavier the dumbbells you choose the harder it will be. Don’t cheat on your reps either! Make sure you go all the way down to the ground with that back knee.

Tips for making the most of your weight training

I want to give you a few other tips about these exercises in order for you to get the most out of your weight training sessions. I often see women at the gym doing their reps in a really bad way that will surely cause them some problems later down the track. I want to make sure no FWF readers are in that group!

1. Go slowly
The best weight trainers in the world do their reps in a slow and controlled manner. They know that by going slowly you increase the pressure put on the muscle and avoid any injuries that you might get from banging them out quickly. Make sure you do all you reps at least to a count of four.

2. Warm up
Before any weight training session you should always spend a few minutes warming up. However, I am not talking about a little jog on the treadmill. I am talking about a warm up that warms up the area you are going to work out. What is the point of running on a treadmill if you are going to be doing upper body weight training? Make sure your warm up matches your weight training session.

3. Read, read, read
Weight training is an art form. Each exercise needs to be done in a specific manner if you want to maximize its utility and avoid injury. I always tell women to read as much as they can before doing the exercise and always get a trainer to help you until your technique is perfected. Without good technique there will be no progress.

PART THREE of this series is on cardio workouts to lose your fat butt.

Every woman is afraid of having a fat butt. We all know the common saying “does my butt look big in this?” because we have all said it! In this series of three posts I am going to show you how to lose your fat butt using a few simple exercises and diet tips.

Understanding the butt muscles (glutes)

It is important to get a good understanding of the butt muscles before you go and start working them out. Why? Because when you know where the butt muscles are you will have a better idea of how they work and this will help with your progress.

The scientific name for the butt muscles is the gluteus maximus and it is the red area on the diagram above. As you can see, the butt muscles (or glutes) tie in to the upper hamstring and the base of the lower back. They are there to help you balance and are involved in many motions where the leg is pushing out, such as stepping up a hill.

How to lose your fat butt

There are three things you need to do if you want to lose your fat butt. They are:

• clean up your diet
• start working with weights
• start doing some cardio

Now I am not saying you need to do a lot of these things but you do need to do them smartly. This series will show you the best ways to diet and exercise so that your fat butt will be a thing of the past.

Cleaning up your diet

photo credit: Zesmerelda

The first post in this series will be on how to clean up your diet. There is a reason I put this first. It is the most important. It doesn’t matter how much you run or how many days a week you spend at the gym, if your diet is crap so to will be your results.

If you want to clean up your diet you need to take a few simple steps. Forget fad diets and weight loss pills. Forget calorie controlled. All you have to do is:

1. Eat natural foods
This is a big thing for us here at Free Women’s Fitness. We strongly believe in the power of natural foods. If you want to lose weight you need to cut out all the man made foods like soda, candy, pasta, baked goods, etc. and replace them with fruits, vegetables, lean organic meats, free range eggs, etc. This is the diet humans were meant to eat and when you start cutting out the old stuff and replacing it with this the weight will just fall off.

2. Eat six meals a day every three hours
Did you know that digestion takes up more energy than any other process in the body? Isn’t that amazing, the act of eating actually burns calories! This is a good thing for us and we need to take advantage of that.

The way to do that is to eat six small meals every three hours instead of the traditional breakfast, lunch and dinner. The reason we do this is because if we eat small meals more often we keep our metabolism burning and this will help us to burn calories. Also, if the meals are small it is likely that we will burn most of the calories during the day before it gets a chance to be converted to fat.

3. Replace high carb foods with high protein foods
For a little while you are going to need to cut out breads, pastas, baked goods and rice. These foods really hamper your butt toning progress! Instead you need to start eating high protein foods like nuts, milk and free range eggs. These will help you build the muscles that will tone your butt and legs and burn off all the fat cells.

4. Drink more water
Water is an excellent weight loss tool as it helps to keep your appetite at bay. It also cleans out your system and leaves you feeling light and happy. Try to have a big glass of water before each meal as this will keep your from gorging yourself when you sit down to eat. Don’t drink all your daily water intake in one sitting, however, as this puts a lot of pressure on your internal organs.

5. Harness the power of the post workout shake
The most important meal of the day is no longer breakfast – it is the post workout shake. If you want to tone up your butt and lose weight you need to start harnessing the power of this very important meal.

When you workout the body uses up a lot of energy and it starts to run out of protein, sugar and minerals. Therefore, it is important to replace them straight after you work out. Not only that, but you need to start giving your muscles protein so they can rebuild and become stronger. This is one of the most important factors to toning and weight loss success.

Try to have a drink that is high in protein within five minutes of finishing your workout. The best protein shakes are natural ones made of milk, eggs and a little bit of whey protein powder. If you start doing this on a regular basis you will see results soon.

PART TWO of this series is about weight training for the butt.