10 Weight-Loss Tips for Beginners

Laurence Grigorov is director of a residential property development company based in Johannesburg, South Africa that specialises in bespoke high-end luxury living. In his spare time Laurence Grigorov enjoys training at the gym as well as travelling.

Laurence Grigorov found an online article in www.bodybuilding.com written by My Obvi that highlights simple steps we can take to successfully start a weight-loss program:

Do you want to lose weight? Don’t be embarrassed! Living a healthier lifestyle is possible for everyone at any age. Losing weight takes patience, strength, and commitment. Some people will find it easier than others to shed the extra pounds. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else. Whatever happens, just keep going! Everyone’s weight-loss journey is unique, but what they all have in common is the desire to lose weight.

Here are some tips if you want to lose weight and some insight into the journey you will make:

Tip 1: Realize You Will Be Making Sacrifices

If losing weight were a piece of cake, the United States wouldn’t be waist-deep in an obesity epidemic. To lose weight, you’ll have to cut back on eating certain foods that are high in calories (like cake) or otherwise unhealthful, even though you may find them delicious. You don’t have to sacrifice taste, however. With a little creativity in the kitchen—and a basic internet search for recipes—you can have diet-friendly meals that satisfy your taste buds as well as your protein, carb, and fat allowances.

Along with cutting back on certain foods, you’ll also have to increase your activity to burn extra calories. Less TV, more exercise. You should continue to make these sacrifices until you reach your desired weight-loss goal, at which point you can loosen the reins a bit.

Tip 2: Make A Commitment And Stick With It

Many people start a weight-loss journey only to feel discouraged after a couple of weeks or months, at which point they quit. If you want to lose weight, you must stick with your goal. It will take a lot of commitment before you start to see a difference in your weight. Don’t grow discouraged if success doesn’t come overnight. (Warning: It won’t. And that’s OK.) Even though you may not see physical results, if you’re eating well and exercising, you may be building muscle. Gaining strength is a plus for your weight-loss journey because while you’re losing some fat pounds, you’re putting on lean mass, aka muscle.

Tip 3: If You’ve Started And Stopped, Give Yourself Permission To Start Again

You may reach a point where you decide to give up on your weight-loss journey for any number of reasons. It could be a life shock, a schedule change, or even simple frustration that you’re not progressing quickly. If you do stop, you’ll likely resume the habits that made you gain unwanted pounds in the first place.

Regardless, you can always try again. To quote self-help author Mel Robbins, “You are not a failure, even when you’ve failed. It’s an event, not a personality trait. No matter how many times you fail, it will not define you unless you let it.”

Tip 4: Build A Support System

Weight loss doesn’t have to be solitary. Find supportive friends and family to join you on this journey. Who knows, maybe they’ll decide to lose weight with you! In that case, you can plan days to work out or prepare meals together. You’ll also be able to hold each other accountable for mistakes and encourage each other to stay on the right track.

If you don’t have any friends or family members who want to come along, join an online weight-loss support group, where you can chat with other people about your experiences. You can also join a gym and take a fitness class where you’ll meet people who are trying to accomplish similar goals to yours. That said, the most important supporter you have should be you. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to continue the journey and accomplish your goals.

Tip 5: Accept That You’ll Never Follow Your Diet 100 Percent, And That’s OK

Unless you are infallible, there will be days, even on a diet, when you overeat. Don’t give up. Mistakes happen. The important thing is to accept that you made a mistake, learn from it, and try not to do it again. If you want to do something constructive after overeating, hit your next workout extra hard and burn some extra calories. Then, resume your diet.

Tip 6: Exercise—And It Doesn’t Have To Be In A Gym

Exercising will help you reach your weight-loss goals faster. You can train at the gym, or you can exercise in the comfort of your own home. BodyFit by Bodybuilding.com offers great options for both approaches!

 

Tip 7: Practice Patience—You’ll Need It

Weight loss requires patience. Depending on how much weight you hope to lose, it may take weeks, months, or even years to reach your goal. Given that it’s going to take a while, learn to enjoy your weight-loss journey. Rather than getting hung up on setbacks, focus on the small achievements along the way.

Tip 8: Dial In Your Diet

We’ve already discussed the calories-out part of the weight-loss equation, meaning exercise. Now let’s talk about the calories-in part, namely, your diet. If you want to lose weight, you probably need to cut some calories, unless you want exercise to do all the work—which is not feasible for most people. The goal is to eat below your maintenance calories every day to lose at least one pound a week.

Tip 9: Step Away From The Scale

One of the biggest mistakes people make on their weight-loss journey is constantly checking the scale to see if they’ve lost weight. Unfortunately, if you don’t see immediate results, you may grow discouraged. Again, this is a slow process. Only check your weight once a week or once every two weeks, not every day. Mornings, when you wake up, are the best time to check because your stomach is empty and you’ll get a more accurate depiction of your body weight. To keep yourself motivated, track your progress by writing down your weight every time you weigh yourself.

Tip 10: Remember Why You Started

You will want to give up at various times during your weight-loss journey, but always remember why you started. You knew it was going to be hard, but you decided to make the commitment to reach your goals. You’ll do yourself a disservice if you give up. Try to imagine the finish line and how happy you’ll be when you get to live with the results you’ve dreamed of. Nothing in life comes easy, and all of the hard work and sacrifices will pay off in the end if you get there—so do it!

 

Words & images courtesy of www.bodybuilding.com

 

4 Immune-Boosting Supplements

As director of Johannesburg based residential property development company, Laurence Grigorov enjoys active exercise as part of his relaxation and health routine.
In order to maintain a healthy body and mind, Laurence Grigorov trains regularly at the gym as well as taking part in road running and boxing-based workouts. This allows Laurence Grigorov to still keep a healthy balance in life and has the added benefit of keeping him focused at work.
A recent article by Shoshanna Cohen on http://www.bodybuilding.com regarding immune systems caught the attention of Laurence Grigorov.
Staying healthy takes a multi-pronged approach. It starts with regular exercise, a nutritious diet, adequate sleep, and stress management. Supplements can also help ensure you and your immune system are running at 100 percent when the day comes that you need them to be resilient against the world at large. Never has that been clearer than right now, when sickness is on everyone’s mind.
What many immune formulas have in common is their antioxidant properties. Antioxidants are substances that neutralize free radicals to protect cells from damage. In other words, they keep cells healthy so your organs and body systems, including your immune system, can keep working correctly.
Here’s the good news: You don’t need to buy fancy or expensive supplements to harness antioxidant power. The best supplements for your immune system are actually pretty basic.
Here’s our guide for cold and flu season:

1. Vitamin C
Vitamin C is one of the most well-known and most popular antioxidants, and for good reason. This simple, affordable supplement delivers a big antioxidant hit to protect cells from free radical damage, helping to support a healthy immune system.*
Vitamin C is special because it also helps your body produce other things it needs, like collagen, L-carnitine, vitamin E, and neurotransmitters. Plus, it helps you absorb iron from veggies, so definitely take it with meals.

2. Alpha Lion Superhuman Greens
Even if you start every morning with a kale smoothie that you could prop up a spoon in, it can be tough to get all the veggies and fruits you need. Consider a well-formulated greens powder your vegetable insurance. It gives you more kinds of superfoods than you’d ever eat on the regular, in one easy-to-drink beverage that doesn’t taste like your lawn. (Granted, a greens supplement isn’t a replacement for actually eating vegetables, since it doesn’t have the fiber you get from veggies in their natural state. The supplement’s main job is to provide extra nutrients.)
In Alpha Lion’s Superhuman Greens, you get fruits and veggies as well as sprouts, wheat grass, sea vegetables, spirulina—all kinds of stuff that’s super good for you but not normally in your grocery cart. And most super of all, it tastes great. Choose from Anabolic Apple and Manchild Mango.

3. Zinc
Zinc is less famous than vitamin C, but it also provides powerful immune system support, making it another great addition to your supplement regimen.
Zinc plays a lot of roles in the body. It helps your skeletal, neurological, and endocrine systems work correctly, and helps with protein and carbohydrate metabolism, among many other jobs.
It’s also a key component of ZMA, which you may already take for sleep and recovery. (If you do take ZMA, there’s no need to double up with an additional zinc supplement.) And as an added perk, since zinc defends against oxidation, it can be helpful for healthy aging.

4. Multivitamin
A good multivitamin is one supplement everybody should be taking, not just during cold and flu season, but to protect against nutritional deficiencies year-round. It’s especially important if you work out a lot, since between the extra wear and tear on your body and losing minerals through sweat, you just need more of everything.

Words and image courtesy of http://www.bodybuilding.com

How to Lose Fat While Keeping Your Gains

Laurence Grigorov is director of a residential property development company based in Johannesburg, South Africa. The company specialises in modern, luxury apartments, cluster units and bespoke homes.

Laurence Grigorov enjoys training at the gym in his spare time as a way to relax and reduce the stress associated with a high-pressure work environment. Laurence Grigorov firmly believes that a healthy body and well-rested mind are crucial in order to maintain a high level of work focus.

The following article written by Sivan Fagan was of particular interest to Laurence Grigorov:

You’re coming off a muscle-building phase, or “bulking phase,” as many may refer to it. You’ve worked hard to put on mass. You’ve been focused and consistent with your workouts, and you’ve gotten noticeably stronger and denser. The time has come to unveil the muscles you’ve built. You want to shed some body fat, but you’re not too stoked about losing your hard-earned gains. How do you go about preserving muscle and also keeping your performance as high as you can?

You must be in a caloric deficit to lose fat. There is no way around it. Here’s what you need to do in order to lean out while maximizing muscle retention:

1. Start With The Most Calories Possible In Your Deficit

The most basic way to create a caloric deficit is to multiply your body weight in pounds by 10-13. Yes, it’s a wide range, but it’s just an estimated starting point—your caloric requirements may be higher or lower based on your age, gender, lifestyle, and goals. I suggest you start on the higher end of the spectrum to give yourself more calories to work with from the beginning.

Say you weigh 150 pounds. Your magic number is 1,950: 150 x 13 = 1,950 calories. So you need to consume 1,950 calories per day in order to lose body fat.

Since body weight is dynamic and fluctuates throughout the week, do not cut calories dramatically if your weight stays the same for a few days. Monitor your weight daily for two weeks in order to make objective decisions. If you’ve lost weight, great! Don’t change a thing. If you’ve stayed the same, drop your intake by 150 calories (which puts you at body weight in pounds x 12).

For most people, losing 0.5-1 percent per week is appropriate. At that pace, you’ll be more likely to keep up your performance at the gym and hold on to more muscle.

2. Eat Your Carbohydrates When You Need Them Most

Nutrient timing has greater importance when you’re in a calorie deficit and trying to maintain muscle

mass. You want to make sure that the majority of your carbs (along with some protein) are contained in your pre-workout and post-workout meals.

Some people enjoy having a solid meal of complex carbs and protein 1-2 hours pre-workout, while others enjoy having simple carbs and fast-digesting protein about 30 minutes before. Try both and see what works best for you.

The recommended amount of carbs to get before and after training depends on your overall carb intake, tolerance, and preferences. I have found that consuming a pre-workout meal containing no less than 40-75 grams of carb has helped me to manage fatigue and perform optimally in the gym.

3. Keep Your Protein Consumption High

Higher protein diets increase satiety, create a greater thermic effect, improve mood and cognitive functions, and promote muscle building and recovery. These are all things you want, especially when you’re restricting calories.

My recommendation is to eat 0.8-1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day. So, for a 150-pound individual, this means 150 grams of protein per day. The recommended amount of protein before and after training is around 0.18-0.23 grams per pound of body weight, so about 30 grams each for a 150-pound individual.

The easiest way to go about it is to consume protein in every meal. Simply divide your total protein intake by the number of meals that you plan to eat per day. If you need to consume 150 grams of protein and you eat four meals per day, each meal should contain 37 grams of protein.

4. Utilize Refeeds Only As Needed

“Refeeds” are higher calorie days in which you focus on getting a surplus of carbs for the purpose of helping you adhere to the diet. It also assists with muscle retention. The structure of your refeeds will depend on where you are in your diet, your activity level, and your preferences, among other factors.

First, however, let’s talk about what refeeds aren’t. They are not all-you-can-eat buffets or a test of how much junk food you can consume in a single day. Refeeds are mainly to give you the psychological benefit of a break in dieting, and the opportunity to eat more may translate into better gym performance.

My suggestion is to add refeeds to your diet under two conditions:

You’ve been consistently losing weight for at least four weeks.

You’re feeling fatigued and lethargic.

In that case, experiment with adding 1,000-2,000 calories on a specific day each week. If you end up needing 2,000 calories, you can opt to have two days where you add 1,000 calories each instead.

As far as the specifics of a refeed go, some people enjoy having carb-focused refeeds, while others benefit more from adding a combination of fats and carbs. At the end of the day, what matters is that you took a break from a caloric deficit, increased calories for 24-48 hours in a structured manner, and now feel more energized and ready to continue with your fat-loss efforts.

5. Do Not Favour Cardio Over Strength

Many people make the mistake of adding intense cardiovascular exercise in order to burn more calories. There’s nothing wrong with this, as adding cardiovascular exercise helps keep fat-burning pathways open and is a great way to use up additional calories. Still, if cardio compromises your strength training, I suggest you rethink your strategy. Most of us already live and work in high-stress environments, so it doesn’t make much sense to add even more stress to your system by performing

draining, high-intensity cardio while trying to maintain your gains.

Instead, try increasing your daily NEAT, or non-exercise activity thermogenesis. I’ve found that walking 8,000-10,000 steps per day essentially takes care of my additional calorie burning without compromising my performance at the gym.

6. Prioritize Compound Movements

There is absolutely no reason to cut all compound movements from your program while you’re in a fat-loss phase. Focusing only on isolation movements, high repetitions, and “feeling the burn” doesn’t translate into burning more fat in that specific area. What helped you gain the muscle is what’s going to help you keep it. Continue doing squats, deadlifts, rows, chin-ups, and presses. Try to keep up as much of the training volume as you can, for as long as you can.

Your performance depends upon your training age and your specific training program, but as a general rule, you should be able to maintain most of your intensity at the gym (or even add to it) up to a certain point in your diet, until it’s time to end your diet and start focusing on building again. I’ve found that more often than not, what limits someone’s intensity in the gym is more about the psyche and less about the physiological state.

When you go to the gym, believe in your abilities and work hard. As I mentioned before, what helped you gain the muscle is what’s going to help you keep it.

7. Take a Creatine Supplement

Creatine is one of the most well-researched and safest supplements available. Briefly, creatine is a natural substance that turns into creatine phosphate in the body. Creatine phosphate helps make ATP, which is the energy muscles need in order to contract.

In short, supplementing with creatine helps increase muscle, power, and strength—things you want to hang on to as your body weight drops. You can take in creatine through foods like meat, but you would have to eat a substantially large amount of it to get the creatine levels your body needs to see benefits. Daily consumption of 3-5 grams of creatine monohydrate is sufficient for most people.

8. Prioritize Sleep and Manage Stress

Sleep and stress management are extremely important for your energy and quality of life, but they become of greater importance when calories are restricted. For thousands of years of human history, losing weight was a threat to survival. The human body perceives restriction of calories as a threat to its survival even though it’s not anymore. Still, you need to promote a safe environment in the body to allow fat loss to occur.

Specifically, lack of sleep may lead to changes in hormones that can increase hunger.[6-8] Similarly, high secretions of cortisol and other stress hormones can mask weight loss by retaining water in the body and may lead to increased hunger.

With this in mind, be sure to find time to relax, tap into a parasympathetic mode, and do things you enjoy that will reduce stress and promote feelings of well-being and happiness—reading a book, talking to a close friend, playing video games, drawing, etc. Additionally, make it a habit to go to sleep and wake up at the same time each day, getting 7-9 hours of quality sleep. Not only will practicing these habits make it easier to lose fat, but it will also have a positive effect on many other aspects of your life.

9. Assess Your Progress Bi-Weekly

One of the main tips for preserving muscle is to focus on slow and consistent fat loss. The following assessment tools used together can provide the most accurate snapshot of your progress as you work through a dieting phase:

Tracking body weight daily

Taking measurements—specifically waist and hips—every two weeks

Taking front, side, and back progress pictures every two weeks

Sometimes the scale won’t budge, but visual changes are apparent, so it’s important to have several assessment tools that measure your progress and not rely on only one. Evaluate your progress every two weeks and adjust your diet and/or activity plan as needed.

As a general rule, let your diet take care of fat loss, and your strength training program take care of muscle retention.

Words and image courtesy of www.bodybuilding.com

11 Popular Fitness Myths Debunked

As director of a leading real estate development company based in Johannesburg, Laurence Grigorov is involved in all aspects of the development process of these complex projects.

In order to relax and unwind, Laurence Grigorov enjoys exercising and in particular training at the gym. This is important for a healthy work-life balance.

With all the health, fitness, and nutrition information you could ever possibly need just a Google search away, it’s amazing that there are still so many myths about what goes on in your body and your mind in pursuit of better health. Too often, though, more information leads to more confusion, not less.

Jose Antonio, PhD, CEO of the International Society Sports Nutrition and a researcher at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, puts the following common misconceptions to rest. RIP, bro science.

Myth 1: High-Protein Diets Are Bad For Your Kidneys

The recommended daily allowance (RDA) for protein is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. In contrast, here at Nova Southeastern, we have data showing that if you’re a trained male bodybuilder and consume 3.3 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day (four times the RDA), you’ll experience no harmful effects to your kidneys, liver, or blood lipids.

Myth 2: High-Protein Diets Leach Calcium From Your Bones

This myth about high-protein diets says that consuming too much of it can make your bones brittle and weak. We have done studies up to six months in length that looked at the effect on the bones of women who consumed 2.5-3.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight (about three times the RDA). We found no decrease in bone health. In fact, the data suggested that if women eat a high-protein diet, they may increase their lumbar bone-mineral density.

Myth 3: Muscle Soreness Is Caused By A Build-up Of Lactic Acid

You might have heard a massage therapist saying, “Today, I’m going to massage the lactic acid out of your muscles so you won’t be sore.” Sorry to burst their bubble, but lactic acid, aka lactate, has nothing to do with delayed-onset muscle soreness. DOMS is primarily caused by doing eccentric loading or negatives, or by doing exercises that tax your muscles in new ways. In either case, the soreness comes from micro tears in your muscle fibres.

Lactate isn’t a metabolic poison and it doesn’t cause soreness. In fact, it’s a fuel source used by your heart, brain, muscles, and kidneys.

Myth 4: You Lose More Fat By Decreasing Fats…Or Carbohydrates

Some people say the way to lose body fat is to follow a low-fat, high-carb diet, while others insist it has to be a high-fat, low-carb diet. The truth is, if you keep protein the same and reduce your total daily calorie allowance, you should lose pretty much the same amount of weight with either approach.

In other words, you lose body fat by keeping your protein the same but reducing your daily allowance of calories. When you compare one diet to another, it is usually the one that’s higher in protein that leads to greater body-fat loss.

Myth 5: Taking Creatine Causes Cramps And Dehydration

In studies of how the body reacts to exercises done in abnormally high heat, researchers have found that subjects who take creatine perform better. There is simply no scientific basis to the persistent idea that creatine causes cramps, dehydration, or both.

Myth 6: Women Who Strength-Train Get Big And Bulky

Look in any college gym and you’ll see lots of young men doing prodigious amounts of lifting and eating, in hopes of gaining as much weight as possible. Try as they might to bulk up, it usually doesn’t happen. Yet many women feel they’ll suddenly get gargantuan muscles from lifting even light weights. The fact is, it is very difficult for anyone—especially women—to add muscle mass or lean body mass

just by lifting weights.

Myth 7: Artificial Sweeteners Are Bad For You

Robust data shows that artificial sweeteners such as Sucralose or Aspartame are indeed safe. Experiments in which scientists give animals very large doses of these artificial sweeteners do reveal problems, but when taken in the normal amounts humans consume, there’s no evidence these sweeteners cause harm. When it comes to satisfying your sweet tooth, these sweeteners offer a safe substitute for sugar-filled foods and beverages.

Myth 8: It Doesn’t Matter How Much You Eat, As Long As You Eat “Good Food”

Both the number of calories you consume and the quality of the food you eat plays a role in your overall physique. You can’t ignore either one. Unless you are following some superhero workout plan or are skiing across Antarctica, you can’t consume 5,000 calories a day without putting on some body fat. Eat 20 avocados a day—a healthy food—and you’re still going to weigh more. That’s all there is to it.

You can, however, overeat a bit—as long as you’re getting those calories from protein. Based on existing research, it appears that even if you consume 300-400 extra calories of protein each day, your body won’t create additional fat. If, on the other hand, you overindulge in carbs and fat, get ready to loosen your belt a notch or two. You can’t just sit down with a big jar of peanut butter, eat it all day long, and not expect to gain weight. Sorry.

Myth 9: You Have A Few Hours After Your Workout To Get Your Protein

Here’s the question: After you’ve finished your workout, should you consume your 20-40 grams of protein immediately after, or can you just go home and wait for up to an hour or two?

Many people think that as long as you get your protein within your “anabolic window,” a period that lasts for many hours after a workout, you’ll be fine. I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. The question is whether there is any value or benefit to holding off on your protein consumption, and the answer is no. There’s absolutely no value to it.

The pragmatic answer then is that when you’re finished training, whether you were lifting or doing cardio, drink your protein shake as soon as possible. There’s no clear drawback, and may be some potential benefit.

Myth 10: Caffeine Is A Diuretic Agent That Can Lead To Dehydration

When you look at the data on exercise and caffeine, it is clear that caffeine improves exercise performance. But does it also cause the body to urinate more? There is some evidence that it might have a very mild diuretic effect, possibly when consumed as a cup of strong coffee. In general, the data does not support the theory that caffeine is a diuretic.

Myth 11: The Best Way To Lose Body Fat Or Weight Is Through Exercise

According to the data and studies, exercise alone is a poor way to lose weight or body fat, mostly because most people don’t exercise enough to matter. Even if you ride a bike for four hours a day or work out at the gym for 60 minutes a day, you’re just not burning that many calories.

The primary driver of fat loss is diet. If you’re in the gym for an hour, you might burn 300-400 calories, which is very easy to replace with even a small meal. If you change your diet throughout the day, though, it’s much easier to create a caloric deficit, one that will result in more fat loss than exercise only.

Exercising more or changing the way you exercise—without reducing your caloric intake—isn’t how you lose body weight. You have to do both together.

Words courtesy of www.bodybuilding.com