The TRUTH About Body Transformations!

When Lifting Heavy...is BAD!! (Common Mistake)

The Scientific Reason Women Need to Go Heavy

Tip: The Scientific Reason Women Need to Go Heavy

How heavy? Here's the science.

Luckily, most women aren't afraid to lift weights these days, but many still avoid going too heavy. We're talking about sets of around 3 maximal reps here. Too bad for them, because females may benefit from heavy training even more than men.

Growth Hormone and Female Lifters

It all comes down to growth hormone. Where the male body relies more on testosterone to reap the benefits from weight training, the female body relies a bit more on growth hormone. Natural growth hormone plays a big part in both muscle and bone development. It also improves metabolic function and staves off tissue breakdown.

So, GH is good. And heavy lifting stimulates more growth hormone release in women.

The Study

One study on women looked at the effects that different kinds of weight training had on growth hormone. Researchers found that growth hormone was responsive to moderate (around 12 reps) and heavy (around 3 reps) lifting regimens.

"Since women rely on growth hormone to increase muscle and bone strength, the more growth hormone stimulated by a type of exercise, the better its outcome," researchers said.

The study had women weight training with different rep ranges for 24 weeks, complete with lots of blood tests. The heavier weight training protocols produced more biologically active growth hormone. Lead researcher William J. Kraemer noted: "Women need to have a heavy loading cycle in their resistance training routines."

Now, there's muscle-building value in lifting lighter weights too, like increased time under tension. But this study tells us that women shouldn't get stuck in the pattern of using only higher rep schemes and "going for the burn." Those heavy sets, as heavy as 3 grunting reps, may be where a lot of the magic happens.

https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-the-scientific-reason-women-need-to-go-heavy

5 Healthy Snacks That Kill Sugar Cravings -- With Thomas DeLauer, CEO & ...

Thigh Exercises For Losing Fat

How to Tell If You’re Overtraining or Just Sore

You’ve likely heard the saying, “no pain, no gain.” If you’ve gotten the impression that some soreness while working out is normal, you would be correct. But it can be a fine line between when that soreness becomes classified as pain. Walking this line correctly is the difference between pushing just the right amount and overusing your muscles. Even though everyone’s threshold for pain is different, there is an answer that’s universal.

WHY OUR MUSCLES GET SORE

As our muscles repair themselves, one of the side effects many people experience is a dull, aching pain. Known as delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS), no one is immune from experiencing this pain, but the severity will vary based on type of activity and how much the muscles have adapted to that activity over time.

“It is theorized that the eccentric motion (or lengthening) of the muscles repeatedly is the actual cause of DOMS,” explains Kyle Golden, owner and personal trainer at Work It Personal Training in Austin, Texas. “During this movement, the muscle tissue incurs small tears, which breaks down the muscle so that it can rebuild to get bigger and stronger. It is this breakdown and rebuilding process that is thought to cause the delayed soreness we experience.”

The American College of Sports Medicine recommends progressing slowly when starting a new exercise routine to reduce the severity of DOMS — and advises that the soreness experienced rarely requires medical attention.

FATIGUE VS. OVERUSE

How DOMS relates to muscle fatigue and how you can gauge pain to prevent injury lies in the difference between fatigue and overuse.

Muscle fatigue is common in exercise and is the feeling you get when you can no longer perform a specific movement. DOMS and “feeling the burn” during a workout can both fall into this category.

“Both of these sensations are positive changes taking place within the muscle fibers,” says Jennifer McCamish, a Pilates instructor and personal trainer who owns Dancer’s Shape in Austin, Texas. “You unfortunately need to experience some discomfort to build muscle mass.”

With muscle fatigue, the burning sensation usually subsides shortly after you stop the movement — such as lifting weights — and your body uses this to signal that the muscles are too tired to continue.

Overuse, however, involves pushing your muscles past the point of fatigue — and this is what can lead to injury. It doesn’t just involve straining the muscle during a workout, but it can happen when you don’t give yourself adequate time to rest and recover.

“Overuse of a muscle may result in many types of damage including muscle strain, tears, tendonitis and stress fractures,” says Golden. “Most of the time, these injuries are accompanied by fairly acute and sometimes severe, long-lasting pain.”

GOOD VS. BAD PAIN

With pain being a common denominator in the discussion of fatigue versus overuse, it is important to distinguish good pain from bad pain. Of course, pain is relative and will vary from person to person, but there are some general guidelines that athletes should know.

“In general, good sore muscle pain is a dull mild pain sensation that usually begins about 24–48 hours after exercise,” notes Golden. “With a little use and stretching, the muscle soreness should subside a little and may last a couple of days before going away completely.”

It is when the pain gets more severe, that may be a sign that an injury has occurred or that something has been strained. This bad pain can indicate that the muscles were overused.

McCamish adds that if you are experiencing consistent sharp or nagging pain that does not go away, you are most likely overtraining and have developed some type of minor injury that needs to be addressed.

HOW THIS KNOWLEDGE AFFECTS YOUR WORKOUTS

Varying your workouts is key to prevent overusing your muscles. McCamish explains that cross-training helps you to avoid the likelihood of the same muscles experiencing the same repetitious movements, which causes injuries.

There is no one-size-fits-all workout or rule of thumb for everyone, though the signs of overtraining can be felt no matter the workout regimen. Golden explains that how you exercise your muscles and to what point depends on your goals — and working to at least a light fatigued state is often part of reaching them.

“Once you start to feel the burn, due to lactic-acid buildup, you will know you have worked your muscles to their fatigued point and should consider easing up or stopping,” he concludes. “If you experience any acute pain, you are physically unable to perform a motion or exercise you could before, or are having difficulty with usual muscle function, you should stop exercising and get seek medical attention and advice.”

McCamish echoes that because everyone’s goals are different, in this case, pain should be your guide. If you experience chronic pain, it is an indication that you may have overused your muscles, and a break is warranted (if not also a medical evaluation).

“If you mix it up and do different things every day with one or two days off in a week, you should feel good and energized after working out,” she says.

http://blog.mapmyrun.com/how-to-tell-if-youre-overtraining-or-just-sore/

Slow Reps Vs Fast Reps - Which is Better for Building Muscle?

5 Tips to Stay on Track When Life Gets Busy

25 Ways You Could Get Back on Track Today

Don't Give Up on Your Goals!

Not long ago, you were energetic and determined to start your healthy lifestyle. Starting with enthusiasm and hope, you watched your food intake diligently, exercised like it was going out of style, and even avoided the temptation that seemed to lurk around every corner. You were confident that you were going to reach your goals once and for all!

Then certain tragedy struck! You ate an extra piece of birthday cake. Realizing you had “blown” your diet, you ate another and another and couldn’t get it together the next day either. Or worse, you missed one workout, and that turned into a whole week away from the gym. After that, your momentum to start over again was gone, and your gym bag hasn’t left the closet since.

Every time you misstep on your healthy journey, you have two choices: to keep walking backwards, which will surely take you even further away from your goals; or to accept your lack of perfection as normal and forgivable, and take not one, but two positive steps down the path that brings your closer to the future you want.

If you’re reading this, you might have been walking backwards for a while. But instead of waiting for the next day, week, month or even year to overhaul your habits, start TODAY. And start small. You can’t go from the recliner to running or from burgers to Brussels sprouts in an afternoon. But you can do one, two or even a handful of small things that will help you regain your momentum for healthy living.

When you feel like getting back on track is overwhelming, try one (or more) of these small steps each day.

1. Try a short workout. Even five minutes is better than nothing. For ideas browse our video library or workout generator.

2. Try a new recipe. Cooking healthy foods can be fun and it never has to be bland.

3. Eat a healthy breakfast. Your morning meal sets the stage for the rest of your day, so start if off right! Get lots of breakfast ideas here.

4. Drink your water. Try to aim for 8 cups each day and you’ll feel the difference!

5. Look at Motivational SparkPages. Seeing how others overcome similar struggles and obstacles can be a great source of motivation.

6. Track your food today. No matter how it adds up, you’ll learn from it.

7. Update your SparkPage. It’s a visual way to track your ups and downs, but also your progress.

8. Share your goals. Whether you post them on the Message Boards or share them with a friend, you’ll be more accountable.

9. Exercise for 10 minutes. Jump rope, march in place, or do some crunches. Small amounts do add up to something big!

10. Find a buddy. Get support from friends, whether you need someone to listen or a mentor to give you ideas and encouragement.

11. Take a walk. Don’t worry about how long or far you go—just get out there!

12. Create a motivational collage. Include pictures of your goal and reasons why you want to get there.

13. Go shopping for some healthy foods. Use this shopping list for ideas.

14. Check the nutrition facts before you go out to eat. That way, you can make an informed choice.

15. Ride your bike. Even a leisurely ride has benefits for your body and mind.

16. Work in the yard. Gardening and yard work is a great way to add activity to your day.

17. Take the stairs. Even if this is the only thing you do all day, you’ll feel stronger for it.

18. Rack up those SparkPoints! You earn them for every healthy task you do on the site—talk about motivating! Aim for a certain milestone, such as 100 points, and then reward yourself with a SparkGoodie!

19. Listen to an inspirational song. Better yet, make a playlist of them so you can turn to it whenever you need a boost.

20. Re-start your SparkPeople program. Sometimes it’s easier to get back on track when you have a clean slate.

21. Measure your portions. It’s a simple way to learn how much you’re eating.

22. Eat a piece of fruit. Even if 5-9 servings of fruit and vegetables sounds impossible to you, one is doable.

23. Slow down during meals. You’ll be less likely to overeat and more likely to enjoy your meal.

24. Play! What kids call “play,” we often call “exercise.” Play a sport, a game, or use the playground equipment to bring the fun back into fitness.

25. Learn something new. Sometimes simply taking a quiz or reading an article about nutrition, fitness, or health can change your mindset and get you back on track.

In tennis, losing one point isn’t the end of the world. It happens to the best of them. In fact, if you can consistently win a few more points that you lose, you may end up in the hall of fame. With healthy eating and exercising, as long as you’re consistently out-stepping your steps back, you’re ahead of the game. If you expect perfection (and many of us do), you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and guilt.

You CAN get back on track today. Even if you’re moving slowly, you’ll be moving in the right direction! 

http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/motivation_articles.asp?id=1062&page=2

Ice for Muscle Recovery

For many, it’s second nature to slap an ice pack or bag of frozen peas on an injury. It’s even likely your doctor recommended that you “RICE” an injury. This acronym that stands for “rest, ice, compression and elevation” has been the go-to post-injury prescription for nearly 40 years.

But does ice really help the healing process? Believe it or not, there’s no existing research to show that it helps reduce inflammation or enhance healing of damaged tissues. In fact, a 2012 review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine stated: “Ice is commonly used after acute muscle strains but there are no clinical studies of its effectiveness.”

What’s more, Dr. Gabe Mirkin, the man who coined the term RICE in 1978, recently recantedthe “R” and “I” in his protocol, saying that, “it appears that both ice and complete rest may delay healing instead of helping.”

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS WHEN YOU ICE

When you go out for a long run or do a tough workout at the gym, you get sore. Your muscles sustain damage, and a small amount of inflammation occurs to help your muscles heal. (Remember, inflammation is your immune system’s response to an injury and is a natural part of healing.) The soreness will go away over a few days, but it’s human nature to want to do something about that tired, achy feeling, so many people slap an ice pack on their throbbing muscles.

Ice can certainly make you feel better. It numbs the sore area by reducing nerve conduction velocity, which means that pain signals between your muscles and your brain slow down so you don’t feel as sore. Studies have shown that even people with chronic pain feel better after using ice or cold therapy.

Remember, ice only dulls the pain. It doesn’t help your tissues heal, so you may be tempted to work out again before your body is ready. This false sense of security could lead to more pain down the road.

HOW INFLAMMATION WORKS

As mentioned earlier, your body needs inflammation to heal. When your body triggers an inflammatory response to muscular damage, white blood cells rush to the site of an injury to sweep away cellular debris and deliver healing nutrients. As a precaution, damaged blood vessels constrict to quarantine the injury, while surrounding vessels expand to let nutrient-rich fluid in, causing the initial swelling you experience after an injury.

This swelling reduces naturally via the lymphatic system, a map of one-way vessels that remove waste products from the body. However, the lymphatic system is passive, meaning it doesn’t work automatically. It only removes waste when muscles contract, so if you sit still and ice your muscles, waste doesn’t get removed. Applying ice to an inflamed area actually slows down the healing process. The metabolic process described above slows to a halt and puts the brakes on the outflow of swelling and influx of healing nutrients. Essentially, ice hits the pause button on the healing process, which delays muscle recovery as demonstrated by a 2013 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

So if ice slows healing, what can we do instead to get back on our feet?

THE ACTIVE RECOVERY ALTERNATIVE

Since the lymphatic system relies on muscle activation to remove waste, light exercise and pain-free movement can jumpstart the healing process. Ever noticed how you’re naturally inclined to rub or move a muscle that’s sore? That’s because movement sparks recovery.

Instead of lounging on the couch with an ice pack, try light foam rolling or dynamic stretching through pain-free range of motion. Simply contracting and relaxing muscles around the sore ones (e.g. your calves or glutes if your hamstrings are sore) can bring the lymphatic system to life.

Recent research has shown that active recovery is effective for reducing inflammation and cellular stress post-exercise, something that many athletes have known for years. Sprinters have been using active recovery for ages in the form of light jogging to recover from all-out sprints. Many high-level runners use cross-training and short runs to prepare and recovery for longer runs. Even weight lifters and general fitness folks can benefit from active recovery to reduce soreness and fatigue.

THE COLD CONCLUSION

Ice is effective for reducing pain, but it doesn’t speed up the healing process or reduce inflammation. If you want a quick, medicine-free painkiller, feel free to use ice. But if you want to get back to training as soon as possible, ice fails where active recovery succeeds.

http://blog.mapmyrun.com/truth-ice-muscle-recovery/?utm_source=FACEBOOK&utm_medium=FB%20MyFitnessPal

3 Common Beginner Workout Mistakes

7 Reasons Your Thighs Aren't Changing No Matter How Much You Work Out

You've done more squats and leg extensions than you can count, but no matter how hard you try, you just can't firm up your thighs. It might be your genetics—unfortunately, some of us are just born with more fat cells and fewer muscle cells than Jillian Michaels, says Wayne Westcott, PhD, director of exercise research at Quincy College. But even if that's the case, don't kiss the dream of dynamite thighs good-bye. Avoid these 7 common mistakes, and you'll sculpt some gorgeous curves.

1. You're being unrealistic
You can't resize your thighs with just a few workouts. "People think they can go to the gym for 2 weeks and see all the muscles in their legs," says Thrive trainer Sean De Wispelaere, "but it doesn't work like that." If you strength-train your lower body 3 times a week, expect to start seeing changes in about 4 to 6 weeks, he says.

2. Your diet isn't very thigh-friendly

"To really change your body, the first thing you need to attack is your nutrition," says De Wispelaere. "Protein, vegetables, fruit, and good fat—if it's not one of those things, don't eat it." Protein is vital: It builds muscle while raising metabolism, so you shed fat faster.

3. You're not doing enough cardio
If you're training your lower body 3 times a week and still not seeing any definition, add some cardio. Don't have enough time to exercise that much? Try spinning—the pedaling tones legs while combusting 420 to 780 calories per hour. (Still feel like you don't have enough time to see results? With Prevention's Fit In 10 DVD, you will lose weight and transform your body—all in just 10 minutes a day!) Another alternative is stair climbing. Walking up any incline spikes heart rate and recruits 25% more muscle fibers than strolling the flats.

4. You're not doing clockwork lunges
This simple, at-home, no-equipment exercise tones the legs, butt, and thighs, and it's great for getting rid of cellulite. In fact, the older you get, the more important it is to regularly do moves like this one. "As women age, they lose muscle," says Westcott. "As that muscle layer becomes thinner, weaker and less firm, the overlying fat layer loses its stable base, and it crinkles and wrinkles." Result: Your thighs pucker up. Do these lunges like clockwork.

5. You're ignoring the rest of your leg muscles
Most of us—especially walkers, runners, and cyclists—already have well-developed quadriceps muscles. But to get the slim, sculpted leg look you want, don't forget the hamstrings and inner thighs. And it's not just about aesthetics: "If you're not working every muscle equally, you'll tighten your hip flexors and put yourself at risk for knee injuries," says Lauren Boggi, founder of Lithe Method workouts. For the hammies, do glute bridges. For the inner thighs, do these two ballet-inspired moves.

6. You're not using enough weight

To really change your muscles, you've got to challenge them. If you're a strength-training newbie, it's okay to start off using just your body weight. "But as soon as 12 reps no longer feels challenging, increase resistance," says fitness expert Larysa DiDio. For squats and lunges, start with 16 pounds (two 8-pound dumbbells) and increase by 2 pounds each week or whenever it begins feeling easy.

7. You're doing the wrong kind of exercise
You can't change your basic body type, but you still have a lot of room for improvement. If you have skinny legs, avoid long-distance running, which breaks down muscle and will make them even more birdlike. "Instead, concentrate on weighted step-ups or spinning to build muscle," says DiDio. But if you've got short legs, too much heavy weight training can make you look even stockier. She recommends doing squats and lunges with just your body weight, and to aim for 12 to 18 reps. Cardio will also help. "But no matter what your body type, everyone should be strength training," she adds.

http://www.prevention.com/fitness/strength-training/workout-mistakes-and-solutions-thinner-thighs

Do You Really Need a Rest Day After Exercise?

Rest days are a standard part of exercise programs, but they’re not the only way to avoid overworking yourself. Let’s look at the difference between rest and recovery, and when you can bend the rules.

The Reason for Rest Days

Most strength-focused programs like weightlifting either work your whole body and then skip the next day, or else they have you split up your workouts so that, for example, your arms get a rest on leg day. The idea is to let each muscle recover from a workout before you ask it to do the same thing again.

But not every activity works this way. Runners, for example, often run every day, and may only take one or two true rest days a week. But within that pattern, they will alternate days of hard running (like speedwork, hill running, or long runs) with easy runs that feel less challenging to the body.

Other sports may fall somewhere in between, but nobody expects to work every body part to exhaustion every day. Even when elite athletes do workouts every day that look killer to us, it’s because our “hard” is their “easy”. You can bet their coaches schedule in just enough of the easier workouts to keep the athlete’s progress on track with minimal risk of injury.

Rest days and splits help us to pace ourselves. Too much hard running, if you’re not used to it, sets you up for tendonitis and other overuse injuries. And too much exercise of any kind can lead to a syndrome called overtraining where your body may develop flu-like symptoms and disturbed sleep because it just can’t keep up with the demands you’re putting on it.

There’s Nothing Magic About Resting for One Day

Taking a single rest day after a hard workout isn’t the only way to keep yourself from overtraining. There are a few reasons it’s a good rule of thumb, though:

 

• Delayed-onset muscle soreness often takes two days to peak. If you did a too-hard workout on Monday, you might be feeling only a little bit sore on Tuesday and think you’re okay to work out some more. If you waited until Wednesday instead, you would have a better sense of how sore or injured you are. Then you would be able to make a better judgment call about whether, and how hard, to work out again.
• Resting every other day means only half of your days will be hard workouts. The other half will be rest days or easier days, so the schedule keeps your total workout intensity manageable.
• Mentally, it’s easier to stick to a workout when you enjoy it. Hard workouts aren’t always fun, and you may need to psych yourself up to try something really challenging. It’s okay if you don’t feel up to that every day. Having some easier, almost relaxing days can help you stick to your schedule.

If you can accomplish those goals with another schedule, though, feel free to do so. If you enjoy all your workouts, even the hard ones, slowly include more hard days in your schedule. If you feel okay with that, keep doing it! But if you end up sore or fatigued, listen to your body and put those rest days back in.

If soreness is your problem, be aware that skipping one day may not be the best way to deal with it. Soreness peaking at 48 hours is just an average, and the true timeframe can vary. Your muscles might only feel sore and weak for one day, or if you tried something new and difficult, you might feel it for a week. At the beginning of a new workout routine, you might even need three or four easy days.

Recovery Doesn’t Have to Mean Total Rest

Some people prefer the term “recovery” to “rest” days, because total rest isn’t necessarily your goal. After all, lifting a fork to your mouth is a similar action to a bicep curl, so if you just did a heavy arm day, would you be unable to eat? Clearly, some amount of activity is fine on a rest or recovery day.

This is where you have to calibrate your own sense of effort. If you’re new to exercising and you just did a day of heavy squats, a five mile bike ride is probably not a great choice for the following day. But if you bike five miles to work every day, you should be able to keep doing that even on your “rest” days.

When I did push-ups every day for 30 days, a few people suggested that I was setting myself up for injury by not taking rest days. But as I wrote in that article, I ramped up my fitness very carefully. A few sets of pushups every day is my new normal, and it’s no more taxing to me than a bike ride is to a bike commuter. Some days I might try a more challenging type of pushup or I might do more reps than usual; but I balance out those harder days with, you guessed it, easier days that are closer to my baseline effort level.

As you learn your own strengths and limitations, you too can alter your workout schedule according to what works for you. That might mean you only take one or two rest days per week, or it might mean you do mega-hard workouts and then lay low for a few days. If you’re getting a reasonable amount of exercise in total, and if you aren’t getting sore or injured, you’re probably doing okay.

http://vitals.lifehacker.com/do-you-really-need-a-rest-day-after-exercise-1792349953

Five Steps to Get Back into Your Fitness Routine

We've all failed to keep up our exercise routines at some point. Weeks without training, consecutive days of binging, terrified to step on the scale—it happens to the best of us, and it's always hard to get started again and get back on the horse. Here's exactly how to get back into your fitness routine.

Step 1: Realize That Falling off the Horse Is Normal

I've written a lot about self-compassion, so I won't beat that horse to death. (Otherwise you won't be able to get back on it, amirite?) But it's important to show yourself some self-compassion.

 

Look, falling off the horse is completely normal. Everyone does it, and it doesn't make you weak-willed or undisciplined. It makes you human. It's important to come from a place of self-compassion here so that you can try again.

We're going to go through an exercise that's used in the field of social work in order to improve self compassion around this situation. It may seem silly, but it will greatly increase your forgiveness for this misstep.

Split yourself up into three different personas:

• The criticizer – The person who is angry that you fell off the horse.
• The criticized – The person who is defensive about the potentially hurtful things that the criticizer is saying.
• A compassionate mediator – Someone who is going to look at things objectively and help figure out how to move forward. You can pretend that this is the most compassionate, understanding friend that you have.

Now, run through the dialogue that the criticizer would say. You know, the things that you're internally berating yourself about for stopping your regimen. Notice the charged words that are said and how they make you feel.

Secondly, run through the dialogue that the criticized person would say. Talk about how hurtful the criticizer's words are and how they don't make you feel like continuing.

Lastly, go through the compassionate mediator's role. You're going to show an extreme amount of compassion for the person being criticized. It's important to note that this does not mean making excuses, but rather, be empathetic and understanding of the situation at hand.

Mediate those two sides. Talk about how the criticizer's intentions are probably good, but the way that they are expressed hinder the ability to progress. (Remember, the mediator should be compassionate towards both parties.)

Go through a plan of action in which the criticizer will be happy that you're going to prevent this misstep in the future. This is a good place to run the "Time Machine" exercise in order to talk about what you could've objectively done to minimize the amount of derailing. The criticized person will feel supported in his endeavors and understand that he/she is not defined by his misstep.

You'll find that when you practice going through this exercise, you'll start to show yourself a lot more self-compassion for falling off the horse.

Step 2: Evaluate Your Losses Objectively, without Judgment

Once you show yourself some self-compassion, you can now evaluate your losses objectively, without judgment. Your losses can be broken down into two categories:

Muscle and Strength Loss

If your layoff was under three months, then chances are you did not lose very much muscle.

According to Sports-Specific Rehabilitation, "Strength trained athletes retain strength gains during short periods of inactivity (two weeks) and retain significant portions of strength gains (88% to 93%) during inactivity lasting up to 12 weeks."

If you've gone without training for longer then that, don't fret. Bodybuilders and strength athletes have long observed that even after a long period of inactivity outside the gym—sometimes lasting years—previous levels of strength came back relatively quickly. It's almost as if one's muscle retains a "memory" of how strong it once was. (Hence, the term for this is "muscle memory.")

Scientists were actually perplexed about this phenomenon until recently, when it was discovered that the nuclei of muscle (called myonuclei) actually stay in-tact even through atrophy.

In short, strength comes back quickly.

Fat Gain

If you have been feasting and binging for several days, or even weeks, the number on the scale may shock you. It's typical for clients to put on as much as 5% of their body weight (10 lbs for a 200-lb man). One female client put on 8% additional body weight (about 10 lbs for a 135-lb woman).

But most of this weight is probably from excess water retention, not fat.

Basically, the scale is lying to you. Realize that it takes a surplus of 3,500 calories to gain one pound of fat. Think objectively and without judging yourself: Do you think that you racked up that much of a surplus?

Possible, but not likely. In all likelihood, most of it is water weight. Take a week on a relatively moderate caloric deficit (20% or so) then step on the scale again so that you can come to an objective conclusion. Additional water weight should subside by this time.

Taking the scale at face value is particularly dangerous without doing the protocol above. I've seen clients who fell off the horse completely, because they assumed that they undid all of their progress. In reality it would have only taken a week or two to undo damage.

Often it's not the two-week vacation that someone takes that leads to their fitness doom, but the illusion that this doom had already occurred.

I have personal experience with creating this self-fulfilling prophecy. In 2006, I lost 40 pounds in four months and then competed in a bodybuilding contest. After gorging myself for two days straight post-competition, I stepped on the scale and saw that I had gained a whopping twenty five pounds. Rather than realize this caloric accounting is impossible, I felt defeated, allowed myself to continue gorging, and ended up weighing 200 pounds within six weeks. (And no, that was not water weight.)

The moral of the story is this: When you fall off the horse, whether you thinkyou're past the point of no return or not, you are probably alright.

So analyze objectively, without judgment. Better yet, talk to an experienced coach if you don't feel like you can be objective with yourself.

Step 3: Show Gratitude for How Far You've Come

Let's say you won the lottery tomorrow. You'd be pretty fucking happy, right? Of course you would.

But that happiness fades away quickly. As it turns out, research shows that you probably wouldn't be happier than the average person, and only marginally happier than someone who was paralyzed in an accident (if they were already a happy person).

When it comes to happiness, us human beings are equally incredibly resilient and stubborn. We are always establishing a new baseline of happiness, and I see this in my clients all the time.

One client went from dumbbell chest pressing 40lbs to 100lbs in a few short months. (Honestly, there were some amazing genetics at play here, since that took me a total of three years.) Yet, after a short break he was incredibly displeased that he could only do 80lbs.

When you focus on how much you "once could do," you idealize your past similar to the paralyzed individuals in the study above. (I really don't mean to equate losing 20lbs on your bench press to becoming paralyzed, rather than display what happens when you idealize your past.)

Idealizing the past will lead to preemptive feelings of defeat, hopelessness, and self-hate.

But this can be prevented by showing a sense of gratitude. Take a step back. Think about how far you've come and how much work you put in to get there.

If you show a sense of gratitude with your progress to-date, you no longer focus on the 100lbs that you used to do, but the 40lb increase that you've accomplished. When you do that, you can again focus on continued growth rather than previous glory.

Step 4: Create a To-Do List for "Reboot Week" and Establish a Baseline

The penultimate step is to designate a week to get back on your program—we'll call this "Reboot Week"—and create a detailed list of all the things you have to do.

For example, if you're struggling with going back to the gym because you're worried about how weak you'll feel, then your checklist will look like the following:

Monday

• Diet: Hit your calorie goals within +/- 3%
• Training: Put on workout attire
• Get in car
• Drive to gym
• Do three sets of dumbbell chest press
• Do two sets of incline dumbbell chest press

Wednesday

• Diet: Hit calorie goals within +/- 3%
• Training: Put on workout attire
• Get in car
• Drive to gym
• Do three sets of barbell squats

And so on. Now here's the important part: just get through your list without thinking about outcome whatsoever. It doesn't matter if you've completely lost all of your strength (which you likely didn't) or if you're still up 10lbs on the scale. Focus on getting through your checklist.

Whenever you feel that voice inside of your head reminding you of where you once were, gently refocus back to your checklist and remain in the present.

By the end of the week, you'll have your totals for your major lifts, as well asyour weight and waist measurements.

Step 5: Crush Your Previous Baseline

That's it. Once you beat all of reboot week's previous totals, you will have re-established a positive feedback loop and you'll be ready to keep kicking ass.

It's intimidating when you've been away from the gym for a while, but you'll thank yourself later for getting back on the horse.

http://lifehacker.com/five-steps-to-get-back-into-your-fitness-routine-1658435892