Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

I can tell you and guide you to what you really need to do, but in the end it's really up to the individual to make the decision to make the lifestyle changes that they need to make in order to reverse the 5, 10, 15 or however many years of bad habits and abuse that they have put their bodies through.

Most Americans don't like to hear that.

With more than 60% of our population in the United States being a minimum of 30 pounds overweight, being healthy and fit must be a personal lifestyle decision. A great many people make that decision every year and fail. They fail due to a lack of education and guidance - not to mention the fact that food is everywhere!

Portions are growing, as well as the amount of fat, sugars and empty carbs that are in those foods.

Question How many times a week to you get your meals from a drive thru window? Be Honest.

Motivation Tip

Enough with the excuses. Few people like to admit that they're afraid to do something. They also don't enjoy admitting that they'd rather not work toward improvement. The way out? The always-available excuse.

Here is where you are going to start. Write down all the excuses you have used in the past not to improve yourself. Look at them constantly when your inclined to use one think about what good comes of using these excuses. None.

Change is not easy and in the beginning you will have set backs that's okay.

When you truly believe that change and occasional setbacks go hand in hand, you'll never again be thrown off course when one occurs. You won't see an obstacle or problem as proof of your inability to succeed.

Kick the word diet out of your vocabulary right now. The word diet alone has a negative meaning to most people.

What do you think of when you hear the word diet?

Every year millions of people around the world go on and off various diets, take various "mineral packs", drink apple cider vinegars, swallow diet pills, use "fat sucking body wraps" and spend billions of dollars in the vain attempt to lose unwanted fat. What they do not realize, however, is the utter futility of their efforts.

Think about this if all these so called miracle diets and celebrity diet programs and pills and schemes work why are so many people overweight?

Ok so know you get it (I hope) I hate the word diet.

Look if you are going to lose weight you are going to be eating more than you probably do now. Are you crazy I can hear you saying. Yeah that's right you will eat more but you will eat clean.

Eating clean and more often 5-6 times a day is going to help to kick start your metabolism which is key in any success in losing weight.

DON'T give up all your favorite foods all at once. A great way to make yourself focus on a certain food is quit eating it. For example, if you love chocolate cake and tell yourself you can never have it again, are you going to be thinking about chocolate cake a lot? Chances are, yes. Treat yourself now and again. It will keep you from stressing and bingeing later.

DON'T wait for the "perfect" time to start. There will never be a perfect time. Learn a few of the basics and start as soon as you can. Putting it off is a great way to have nothing change.

I'll tell you right off the bat as far as exercise workouts go I like to use alot of variety. Weight Training, Kettlebells, Tabatas, Interval Training Bodyweight only workouts Medicine Ball exercises, Jump Rope I use them all.

Your body can adapt to the stress of an exercise workout fairly rapidly. Your best gaines in lean muscle and losses as in weight and fat loss will come quicker if you use a variety of exercise systems.

Using compound exercises is the fastest path to building lean muscle and losing fat. Weight training has been proven to keep your metabolism raised for hours after your workout is over.

Combining a weight training program 3-4 days a week and doing 1-2 Tabata or Interval workout will get you to the physical transformation you are after.

If you have never worked out before or are in really bad shape start off slowly.

Tabata Training

Nutrition 101

Weight Training Workouts

You Fit And Healthy

Interval Training

Protein and Fat Loss by Nick Nillson

I Didn't Realize How Important Protein Was For Fat Loss Until I Discovered Something That Blew My Mind.

The year was 1992. I had just finished a long cycle of weight gain whereupon I had moved my bodyweight up from about 150 pounds to about 215 pounds. And let me just tell you, it wasn't all muscle!

I hadn't been all that careful about my diet previously but I thought I knew pretty well what I was doing. It was time to lose some of that fat.

The first thing I did was make the biggest mistake a dieter can make: in my focus of trying to eat only low fat foods, I unwittingly and drastically reduced the amount of protein that I was eating.

The result? I lost weight and plenty of it. The problem was, I lost mostly muscle! I was smaller, weaker, lighter and nearly as fat as I was before. Not quite the results I was looking for.

In retrospect, I know exactly what I did wrong and it's something I'll never do again.

I FORGOT ABOUT PROTEIN!

Protein is an extremely important nutrient whether your goal is to lose fat, gain muscle or just tone yourself up. It is the main structural nutrient in your body, making up the bulk of your muscles and organs. Protein is essential for proper hormone function and immune system health. Most importantly, for our purposes, protein is used for building and repairing muscle tissue.

When you are trying to lose fat, you reduce your calories. Unfortunately, your body views fat stores as more precious than your muscle tissue and will tend to eat up muscle tissue before it goes to fat for energy. This physiological adaptation used to protect our ancestors from famine but works against us now.

This is very unfortunate because muscle tissue is a great calorie-burner. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn even when you're doing absolutely nothing! Protecting your muscle tissue makes fat loss so much easier, it will amaze you. Not only that, it will help you keep that fat off permanently!

What can you do to protect your muscle tissue?

The first thing you can do is exercise. Exercise, especially resistance training, provides a stimulus for your body that sends it a signal saying "keep this muscle, you're going to need it."

The second thing you can do is provide your body with enough protein. This can be in the form of food or supplements.

Good food sources of protein include chicken, fish, eggs, lean meats, legumes (beans), soy, and dairy products. Protein supplements are derived from food sources but are concentrated for convenience and effectiveness.

How much protein do you need?

The standard recommendation for athletes is between 1.2 to 1.7 grams per kilogram of bodyweight per day (or 0.5 to 0.7 grams per pound of bodyweight per day), though some research indicates a ratio as high as 2 grams per kilogram of bodyweight per day (0.9 grams per pound) is beneficial. This means if you weigh 150 pounds, you should try to eat between 75 and 105 grams and up to around 135 grams of protein per day.

Essentially, you should experiment with your protein intake to find out what works best for you. As far as importance in your supplement program goes, I would rank protein as next in importance to a good multi-vitamin.

When I made my first grand attempt at fat loss, I made the mistake of neglecting protein and it cost me. Don't make the same mistake I did!

To read part 2 of Nick's article click Protein and Fat Loss