For some time I have been on a very positive track losing fat and bringing my goals closer than ever.

This year is my 25th reunion and thankfully I expect to be quite lean.

I want to share with you two routines that I do at the gym that caused my seriously obese body to begin burning fat and shedding pounds in a consistent manner.

The first is called Peak 8 created in part with Dr. Joe Mercola State of Illinois Licensed Physician and Surgeon.

The second is called High-Intensity Interval Training from Dr. Doug McGuff, M.D.

So I don't mess the instructions up I have obtained permission from Mercola.com to reprint any part of the article on both routines.

First the Peak 8:

Why Peak 8 Exercises are the OnlyType of Exercise Capable of Increasing Your Levels of the "Fitness Hormone"

If you watch children (and most animals), you'll see perfect examples of natural movement. They don't run marathons, but rather sprint about at high speeds for short amounts of time, resting in between spurts. Essentially, they're performing "peak" exercises instinctually.

Your body was designed for this type of movement, and in response it produces growth hormone! HGH is what helps children grow, and in adulthood it's helps you maintain optimal health and youthful vigor.

In order to better grasp the benefits of peak fitness exercises, you first need to understand that you have three different types of muscle fibers:

1. Slow (red, oxygen-rich muscle)
2. Fast (also red muscle that oxygenates quickly, but is five times faster than the slow fibers)
3. Super-fast (white muscle fibers that contain far less blood and mitochondria)

The super-fast muscles are the only muscle fibers that have any major impact on your production of HGH.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people, including many athletes such as marathon runners, only train using their slow muscle fibers, which can actually cause the super-fast fibers to decrease or atrophy.

It's important to understand that neither traditionally performed aerobic cardio nor strength training will work anything but your slow muscles.

Power training, or plyometrics burst types exercises will engage your fast muscles, but still will not affect HGH production to any great degree.

The super-fast muscles, which are ten times faster than slow fibers, are what you use when you do Peak 8 anaerobic, short burst exercises, and these are the muscle fibers that will affect HGH production.

How to Properly Perform Peak 8 to Increase Your Growth Hormone Levels

The nice thing about Peak 8 exercises is that you can perform them with any type of exercise; with or without equipment. So, while having access to a gym or exercise equipment will provide you with a larger variety of options, you don't require either. You can just as easily perform Peak 8 by walking or running outdoors.

Another benefit is in the time it will save you. Instead of doing an hour-long cardio workout, you'll be done in 20 minutes or so. The actual sprinting totals only 4 minutes!

Keep in mind however that you should only do Peak 8 exercises two or three times a week.

If you do it more frequently than that, you may actually do more harm than good. Phil Campbell agrees, and also warns against overdoing it. We've found that, more often than not, when people do it more than four times a week they're simply not pushing themselves hard enough.

The key to performing Peak 8 exercises properly is to raise your heart rate up to your anaerobic threshold. Keep pushing at maximum effort for 20 to 30 seconds, and then rest for 90 seconds.

Repeat this cycle for a total of eight repetitions.

In this video, Phil Campbell and I demonstrate how it's done. (video is at the end of the Peak 8 section)

Here's a summary of what a typical peak fitness routine might look like using a recumbent bike:

1. Warm up for three minutes
2. Exercise as hard and fast as you can for 30 seconds. You should be gasping for breath and feel like you couldn't possibly go on another few seconds
3. Recover for 90 seconds, still pedaling, but at slower pace and decreased resistance
4. Repeat the high intensity exercise and recovery 7 more times

Below is a sample chart showing how my heart rate "peaks" eight times during a Peak 8 session. Also note how my anaerobic threshold rises with each repetition.

You will certainly want to work your way up to this point, but ultimately you want to exercise vigorously enough so you reach your anaerobic threshold as this is where the "magic" happens that will trigger your growth hormone release.

By the end of your 30 second period you will want to reach these markers:

• It will be relatively hard to breathe and talk because you are in oxygen debt
• You will start to sweat profusely. Typically this occurs in the second or third repetition unless you have a thyroid issue and don't sweat much normally.
• Your body temperature will rise
• Lactic acid increases and you will feel a muscle "burn"

Be mindful of your current fitness level and don't overdo it when you first start out. Also keep in mind that there's no "magical" speed here. It's entirely individual, based on your current level of fitness. Some may reach their anabolic threshold by walking at a quick pace, while others may need to perform a mad-dash to get the same effect.

If you are out of shape you may want to start with just two or three repetitions, and work your way up to eight, which is where the magic really starts to happen. If you can do a peak fitness workout twice a week, and follow the dietary recommendations I'll go over next, you will increase your production of growth hormone.

The Anti-Aging Health Benefits of Peak 8 Exercises

Once you regularly participate in these 20 minute exercises about twice a week, most people notice the following benefits:

• Decrease in body fat
• Improved muscle tone
• Firmer skin and reduces wrinkles
• Increase in energy and sexual desire
• Improved athletic speed and performance
• Ability to achieve your fitness goals much faster

Natural Growth Hormone is Far Better than Injectable HGH

Human growth hormone in the form of somatropin was discovered almost 100 years ago, by Dr. Harvey Cushing. Although still popular with some body builders and other athletes, this injectable version has been banned from many professional sports. Some also inject it to promote health and longevity.

I do NOT recommend injecting HGH as I believe the cost and the health risks involved are unjustifiable.  

Ideally, you really want your body to produce it naturally, and the way you produce it is by doing Peak 8-style exercises.

Remember, this high-intensity short-burst form of exercise is the ONLY exercise that will activate your super-fast muscle fibers, which causes HGH to be produced.

Eat Right to Further Optimize Growth Hormone Release

Aside from incorporating Peak 8 exercises into your fitness regimen, there are a number of additional lifestyle strategies that will further help you optimize your body's HGH production, such as:

• Get a good night's sleep
• Avoid a high fat meal prior to exercising
• Drink plenty of water
• Eat plenty of vegetables and high quality protein
• Optimize your vitamin D levels
• Avoid sugar, especially fructose

The last part is absolutely crucial.

If you consume sugar or fructose, especially within two hours post-exercise, you will increase somatostatin which will in turn obliterate the production of growth hormone!

This is yet another reason to avoid commercial sports drinks, as most of them are loaded with high fructose corn syrup, which will negate many of the benefits from your exercise, including shutting down HGH production.

Next is the High-Intensity Interval Training:

Story at-a-glance

• Dr. McGuff is a proponent of high-intensity interval training using weights, which is purposed to achieve many of the same results as Peak 8 exercises using cardio equipment
• High-intensity exercise, which engage your fast-twitch muscle fibers, is required if you want an effective aerobic workout, and can cut your workout time from an hour on the treadmill down to 12-15 minutes
• Your fast-twitch fibers are largely glycolytic and store a lot of glucose. When these muscles are recruited, it creates the stimulus needed to grow muscle. At the same time, it enlarges the glucose storage reservoir in the muscle, which enhances your insulin sensitivity
• Long, slow, distance-type of exercise can actually cause your intermediate and fast-twitch fibers to begin to atrophy. Aside from losing muscle mass, this also promotes onset of loss of insulin sensitivity

 The following includes why this exercise is so much better and the instructions for doing them:

By Dr. Mercola

Dr. Doug McGuff, M.D., an emergency room physician, is also an expert in one of my new passions of exercise, namely high-intensity interval training.

One of the primary reasons that drove me into medicine was to apply my interest in exercise to optimize health.

Of course, it morphed into other things like nutrition, but exercise has remained a longstanding passion.

I've been exercising since 1968, but it was only recently – in the last two years – that I started to fully appreciate the benefits of high-intensity exercise.

After 42 years of long-distance running, I switched over to what I refer to as Peak Fitness, which includes Peak 8 exercises, and it was one of the best changes I've ever made in my exercise.

I ditched the conventional cardio completely, and I'm experiencing the benefits of that decision.

Dr. McGuff's passion for exercise began at the age of 14, and over the years, he's developed and refined his own techniques to reach optimal fitness. While I've been recommending high-intensity anaerobic training (Peak 8) using an elliptical machine or a recumbent bike, Dr. McGuff is a proponent of high-intensity interval training using weights. In this interview, he discusses both high-intensity anaerobic-type training, and high-intensity super-slow weight training, which can achieve many of the same results using weights instead of a recumbent bike or elliptical.

Redefining Exercise

You've likely heard the terms: anaerobic-, aerobic- and cardiovascular training.

"… [T]hose are all kind of false constructs created by the fitness industry," Dr. McGuff says. "The first thing you have to realize is that to do cardiovascular exercise, the only way that you can access the cardiovascular system is by performing mechanical work with muscle.

Now, you can do that on an elliptical; you can do it on a Schwinn Airdyne, or you can do it on quality weight training equipment, or with a barbell. As long as you're doing mechanical work with muscle, you're accessing the cardiovascular system…

If you look at cellular metabolism, that sort of work, whether you're doing aerobic low-intensity work or high-intensity work, proceeds to a certain shuttle. You take glucose into the cell and you go through glycolysis… [which turns it] into pyruvate. That pyruvate is then moved into the mitochondria, where it goes through a cycle of chemical reactions in the presence of oxygen. What occurs from glucose to pyruvate is—in the absence of oxygen—the the anaerobic metabolism… Then the pyruvate gets moved into the mitochondria, that becomes your aerobic metabolism.

But you cannot carry out any aerobic work without doing anaerobic work first. The aerobic cycle cannot even run unless it has the substrate delivered from the anaerobic cycle. The anaerobic cycle can deliver that substrate faster than the mitochondria can use it. So if you want an aerobic workout, the best way to do it is by delivering that substrate as fast as possible, and that requires high-intensity exercise."

Achieve Greater Health Benefits in Less Time

This is why high-intensity interval training cuts down on your exercise time so dramatically. You're actually getting MORE benefits from high-intensity training than you do from aerobic/cardio, in a fraction of the time—all because you're utilizing your body as it was designed to be used. You can literally be done in about 20 minutes, compared to spending an hour running on the treadmill.

"… [T]he exercise physiology world has created an inextricable link between the aerobic metabolic system and the cardiovascular. But that's not true at all. There's no way that your heart and blood vessels are hooked up only to the mitochondria. The heart and blood vessels support the entire cellular metabolism," Dr. McGuff says. "The best way to get that benefit is with high-intensity intermittent exercise."

If you give it some thought, it's actually easy to see that your body was designed for high-intensity, short-interval exercise. As Dr. McGuff says:

"… the issue isn't necessarily the running for hours and hours and hours. It's the modality itself. You will never, in nature, see an animal jogging… What the steady-state activity does is it trains the plasticity out of your physiologic system—that ability to handle widely varying levels of exertion within a short span of time gets trained away. You actually make yourself less plastic and less adaptable to physical stress in general." 

High-Intensity Exercise Effectively Normalizes Insulin Levels

High-intensity exercises sequentially recruit all the different types of muscle fibers in your body, starting with the smaller motor units made up of slow-twitch fibers—which are primarily aerobic in metabolism, have a lot of endurance, and recover quickly—to the intermediate fibers; followed by the fast-twitch fibers. The key to activating your fast-twitch muscle fibers is speed. (I've explained how to properly perform high-intensity interval exercises in great detail, so for a refresher, please see this previous article.)

Your fast-twitch fibers are largely glycolytic and store a lot of glucose. When these muscles are recruited, it creates the stimulus needed to grow muscle. At the same time, it enlarges the glucose storage reservoir in the muscle, which in turn enhances your insulin sensitivity. I've often stated that normalizing your insulin is one of the primary health benefits of exercise, and this is particularly true in the case of high-intensity exercise.

Conventional aerobics does not do this as efficiently.

"If you're doing long, slow, distance-type of exercise; what you're doing is you're very gradually recruiting the slow-twitch motor units. If you remember those will recover quickly," Dr. McGuff explains. "So rather than moving to the next set of motor units, you're just recruiting that one group over and over again."

As a result, your intermediate and fast-twitch fibers actually begin to atrophy! Aside from losing muscle mass, you'll also experience earlier onset of loss of insulin sensitivity, leaving yourself open to a cascade of health ramifications, such as metabolic syndrome.

Dietary Influence

You can prevent some of this by optimizing your diet, i.e. avoiding sugars and processed foods, and making sure you consume high-quality healthy fat, but you can't negate it entirely. Unfortunately, most people simply eat far too many carbs—including many athletes. Your body's need for sugar is, biologically, very small. And when you consume more than you need, your body turns it into fat. As I've stated before, you do not get fat from eating fat—you get fat from eating too many carbs (sugar).

Dr. McGuff explains:

"Your skeletal muscle – if you're lucky – can hold maybe 250 grams of glucose, and your liver holds about 70. If you take 320 grams of glucose as what your storage capacity is, you can kill that with a single trip to Starbucks. Once you go beyond that, your body is going to find some sort of way to deal with those excess carbohydrates.

If your glycogen storage is full, your body has nowhere else to put it. So instead of going all the way through this metabolic pathway, it… produces body fat. That's called the novel glycogenosis. We are in the midst of a very bizarre, evil-scientist type experiment in the Western world, because we are dumping into our bodies an amount of carbohydrate and, in particular, refined sugars, that are way above the capacity of our metabolism to handle normally."

The result of our modern diet, which is loaded with grains and sugars (especially fructose), is a large percentage of obesity, and people that are overweight. This can be turned around, however, using a wise combination-approach of a high-fat, low-carb diet and high-intensity interval training.

"Through an amplification cascade, when you're doing a high-intensity exercise, you very aggressively empty sugar out of your muscle cells. By doing that and combining over the low-carbohydrate diet, you start to heal the metabolism," Dr. McGuff explains. "They are able to access their energy source finally. That's how they can turn things around."

It's crucial to remember that you cannot exercise your way out of a bad diet, and the first step toward improving your diet is to cut out as much sugar/fructose and grain-carbs as possible. (For more of Dr. McGuff's dietary insights, please listen to the interview in its entirety, or read through the transcript.) Your diet actually accounts for about 80 percent of the health benefits derived from a healthy lifestyle, with the remaining 20 percent coming from exercise. That benefit ratio could lean even higher toward diet, according to Dr. McGuff:

"The standard American diet is highly inflammatory. It produces systemic inflammation of an order that is almost beyond belief. In that state, if you do exercise of any significant stress, you're just adding inflammation on top of the inflammation, and you're actually putting yourself at a bit of a risk. I advise people to get their diet straight and then exercise. Because I think a highly inflammatory diet, in combination with the acute systemic inflammation that occurs as a part of the exercise stimulus, can actually be a negative thing."

High-Intensity Burst-Type Exercise Promotes Human Growth Hormone

As you reach your 30s and beyond, you enter what's called "somatopause," when your levels of human growth hormone (HGH) begin to drop off quite dramatically. This is part of what drives your aging process. According to Dr. McGuff, there's also a strong correlation between somatopause and age-related sarcopenia (muscle loss). HGH is needed to sustain your fast-twitch muscle fibers, which produce a lot of power. It's also needed to stimulate those muscles.

"What seems to be evident is that a high-intensity exercise stimulus is what triggers the body to make an adaptive response to hold on to muscle," Dr. McGuff says. "We have to remember that muscle is a very metabolically expensive tissue… If you become sedentary and send your body a signal that this tissue is not being used, then that tissue is metabolically expensive. The adaptation is to deconstruct that tissue…"

High-intensity exercise promotes muscle building, but just how much muscle mass you gain is highly variable, and depends on your individual expression of certain genes. According to Dr. McGuff, there are about eight different genes relating to muscle mass, but probably the biggest determinant is a gene called myostatin.

"We discussed that muscle is a very metabolically expensive tissue. Your genome has evolved a governor on how large your muscles can become, and how highly expressed that governor is will determine what your muscle mass response to exercise will be. Regardless of that, your body will shuffle around these different genetic alterations, and everyone gets stronger. Some people get enormously stronger without a lot of change in muscle mass. Other people become modestly stronger with very large increases in muscle mass.

But regardless of whether the masses increased or not, what is for certain is their glucose storage capability – irrespective of how impressive the size increases – does increase significantly. That's the more important thing from a metabolic standpoint."

Repetitions and Frequency of Exercise—What's the Ideal Amount?

I've been recommending doing Peak 8 exercises three times a week, but after doing that myself for about a year, I gradually felt that it was too much for me. I cut down to once a week, which seemed to work out well. But after discussing it with Phil Campbell, he made a compelling argument to increase it back to three times a week. Having your body produce growth hormone three times instead of just once a week can have profound health benefits, so I bumped it backed up.

However, I did reduce the intensity by about five percent. Otherwise I just felt too fatigued between sessions. Dr. McGuff has also convinced me to make some additional changes to my routine, and I am experimenting with that. He believes you only need 12 minutes of Super Slow type strength training once a week to achieve the same growth hormone production as you would with Peak 8. Intensity is key for making it work.

"The intensity of the exercise needs to be high enough, so that you can't stand anymore; that you're giving up," Dr. McGuff says. "With that particular modality being used, somewhere in the realm are seven or eight repetitions – that's maybe about all that you can stand, which determines the dose of the exercise… [But] I found that the results in terms of response do not diminish at all when you cut back from eight down to five rounds. That begs you to say, "What are the other three rounds for, other than taxing my recovery ability unnecessarily?"

Dr. McGuff points out that if the intensity is really high, the frequency may need to be reduced.

"For any interval increase in intensity, there has to be a very disproportionate decrease in frequency for it to continue to be productive," he explains.

For example, as a weak beginner, you can exercise three times a week and not put much stress on your system. But once your strength and endurance improves, each exercise session is placing an increasingly greater amount of stress on your body (as long as you keep pushing yourself to the max). At that point, Dr. McGuff recommends reducing the frequency of your sessions to give your body enough time to recover in between.

"The whole notion of the growth hormone spurt becomes very important for a person who's deconditioned and has lost their fastest-twitch motor units in their skeletal muscle that demand it. But just the presence of having an improved metabolic condition and more fast-twitch muscle cells – just having that there – will augment the normal diurnal secretion of growth hormone that occurs and that should be occurring on a natural basis, but is after-feed in most people.

Because you needed it three times a week to get that spurt [when you were] deconditioned does not mean you need it when you're in excellent condition. By the time you're in excellent condition, you already have the muscle tissue that drives the very large diurnal spike of growth hormone anyway. You only need that extra kick after you have fully recovered, which will be much less frequently."

Why Less is More, When it Comes to High-Intensity Exercise

So essentially, McGuff suggests that once you're fit, you really don't need frequent spurts of growth hormone production. Rather recovery takes precedence as being more important, and your recovery period could be anywhere from three to seven days. In fact, he strongly recommends NOT exercising too frequently once you are in fit condition, and here's why:

"[Y]our adrenal gland… sits right above your kidneys, and it's arranged in layers. On the outermost layers, you have mineral corticoids that control your sodium and your electrolyte levels. In the middle layer, you have your corticosteroids that control sugar and generate stress hormones. And in the innermost layer is where you generate growth hormones and the sex steroids, or that's involved in the axis, in the feedback loop that generates that.

The old saying in medical school to memorize the three layers is "salt, sugar, sex" – the deeper you go, the better it gets. But you got to remember, your adrenal gland is an integrated organ. Those three layers are not perfectly divided.

If through high-intensity exercise you're trying to hammer that adrenal gland three times per week, but now you're much stronger and your body hasn't fully recovered from your Monday session and you come back and hit it again on Wednesday… you're going to tap down into that deeper level.Instead of growth hormones spurt, you're going to get in a cortisol spurt. You're going to completely undermine what is it that you're after."

The Importance of Recovery

I have known the importance of "Listening to Your Body," and always advocate this when it comes to selecting foods. But this also applies to exercise and recovery. The epiphany I had with Dr. McGuff was that I wasn't applying the 'listen to your body' principle with respect to my exercise program. When asked about the parameters of how to know if you are recovered from your exercise, he says:

"You would have a restless energy and feel like you have to engage in some type of physical activity. You will spontaneously just want to work out."

Well that had not happened to me for some time, and I believe I was pushing myself too hard and had not allowed myself enough recovery time. This is probably not a problem for most people who exercise, as they are more than likely not pushing themselves hard enough, but when you go to extremes like in Peak Fitness, this is a serious risk you need to pay careful attention to.

So, as a result of this fantastic interview, I'm now in a massive experimentation phase, and I'm having fun playing around with my exercise program. I can't tell you what a profound realization it was to hear this as it really resonated truth with me, and as a result I doubled the number of recovery days in my exercise program.

So, I will likely be exercising the same length of time, just breaking it up differently. I suspect that will be more ideal for me and I intend to report on my results so you can learn from it. Dr. McGuff goes into far more detail with regards to his exercise recommendations than I have covered in this summary, so I highly recommend taking the time to listen to this interview in its entirety.

Principles of High-Intensity Interval Weight Training

As mentioned earlier, Dr. McGuff recommends using weights rather than a recumbent bike or elliptical machine. Metabolically speaking, both forms are very similar to each other.

"Because what you're doing is that you're producing metabolic byproducts of that fatigue, in particular lactic acid," he explains. "You're moving quickly from one movement to the next, or through cycles of a particular movement in the case of interval training. That lactate begins to stack up in the system, and that generates the whole cascade of metabolic adaptations and improvements that make you more capable.

The difference is that in the type of training I advocate, that metabolic stacking of these byproducts (that fatigue) occurs as a consequence of something even more important to the active genotype. In interval training, this is occurring as a side effect of the activity, whereas in the type of training I'm doing, it's occurring as a deliberate goal of what we're doing. That goal is to momentarily and deeply fatigue the starting level of strength of a given muscle group.

What we're trying to do is we are trying to pick up the movement that will involve several large muscle groups, and then rapidly and systematically deeply fatigue all the fibers of those muscle groups in a span of 60 to 120 seconds."

How to Perform Super-Slow Weight Lifting

Essentially, by aggressively working your muscle to fatigue, you're stimulating the muscular adaptation that will improve the metabolic capability of the muscle and cause it to grow. McGuff recommends using four or five basic compound movements for your exercise set. These exercises can be done using either free weights or machines. The benefit of using a quality machine is that it will allow you to focus your mind on the effort, as opposed on the movement.

Dr. McGuff recommends the following five movements:

1. Pull-down (or alternatively chin-up)
2. Chest press
3. Compound row (A pulling motion in the horizontal plane)
4. Overhead press
5. Leg press

Here's a summary of how to perform each exercise:

1. Begin by lifting the weight as slowly and gradually as you can. The first inch should take about two seconds. Since you’re depriving yourself of all the momentum of snatching the weight upward, it will be very difficult to complete the full movement in less than 7-10 seconds. (When pushing, stop about 10 to 15 degrees before your limb is fully straightened; smoothly reverse direction)
2. Slowly lower the weight back down

Repeat until exhaustion. (Once you reach exhaustion, don't try to heave or jerk the weight to get one last repetition in. Instead, just keep trying to produce the movement, even if it's not 'going' anywhere, for another five seconds or so. If you're using the appropriate amount of weight or resistance, you'll be able to perform four to eight repetitions) Immediately switch to the next exercise for the next target muscle group, and repeat the first three steps done in this fashion, your workout will take no more than 12 or 15 minutes. While this may sound ridiculouly short, once you've tried it, you'll likely realize that it's really all you can muster. This super-slow movement allows your muscle, at the microscopic level, to access the maximum number of cross-bridges between the protein filaments that produce movement in the muscle.

"It's sort of like a caterpillar or a centipede that's crawling along a surface. If you start off moving very, very slowly, you're going to engage more legs or more movement arms at the microscopic level. What you have in terms of movement is the difference between a centipede and a millipede, and that also produces very gradual movement.

What the slow movement does is it keeps the muscle under a continuous load. It can never escape being under the stress of the weight, so the fatigue accumulates very quickly.

We'll just have you lift and lower the weight until your fatigue accumulates to the point where you no longer have enough strength to continue to move the weight, at which point we will have you continue to attempt to produce movement even though it is not occurring for several more seconds, which drives your level of fatigue more deeply."

More Effective AND Safer Too!

This type of super-slow weight training has another benefit that makes it ideal for virtually everyone, regardless of age or fitness level, and that is safety, as it actively prevents you from accidentally harming your joints or suffering repetitive use injury.

"Force is mass times acceleration. If you deprive yourself of the acceleration, you're delivering almost no punishment to your joints. There's no repetitive use injury," Dr. McGuff says. "The forces are extremely low, and as you become more fatigued, you're becoming much weaker. So you're actually delivering a smaller and smaller force to your body as you fatigue."

I'm very excited about this information and have already begun implementing it into my fitness program. I hope you'll give it a try too!

***

Give it a try!

These routines are my routines as well. I have shed 60 pounds in the last 6 months using them. I am not dieting and eat quite a bit of good food; eating a mostly (mostly) vegetarian diet and never touching sugary process foods or drinks.

If you read both routines well enough you will see why it is useless to workout any other way if you are over 40 and obese. 

For my take, the American processed and fast food diet is a killer and your the victim. Clean up your food and shock your body with these routines. They will not hurt and you don't need to over exert yourself. Just keep it up and give yourself some rest in between.

Again my story and results apply to me and if you have been or are morbidly obese these routines will apply to you. I wouldn't feel so strongly about it if I didnt see such great results.

The high intensity weight training completely burns every single muscle in your body if you do it correctly. I feel so absolutely spent when I do it and it takes me a good 7 days to recover. With the peak 8, I can perform it every 3 to 4 days for just 20 minutes each day and my body is set in motion to burn fat.

In case you didn't read all the fine points, do not eat any sugars or heavy complex or simple carbs for two hours after you do these routines.

I hope my friends that you can unlearn what you have learned. If you are losing the 50-200 pounds you need to lose then keep up what you are doing but if you have been working out month after month and year after year and the only weight you have lost in the initial 10-30 lbs when you began then you need to change your routine and the way you think to get your body back on track.

You can do this. You can do this. And it doesn't require pain. Just patience, discipline and time.

May you have the very best in life and be blessed always.

Namaste!

So why the hell am I over-trained?!?!

{“Over-training is where you train your body above its capacity meaning it cannot recover and adapt quickly enough to be prepared for the following training session”

Basically, this means you’re training too hard with not enough rest. I’ve read in-depth explanations of what over-training is and it all comes down to too much training and not enough rest. There are other factors like diet to consider, but these are rarely the cause of over-training in 99% of cases.} from www.muscleandstrength.com

Although this is a sensible explanation, it is so hard for me to believe I am training too hard. I do accept it though and know why I am not sick from training too hard. My Taoist training, although in its infancy, has shown me how to heal through herbs and spices and by the touches, massages, and breath concentration on my internal organs. That last part means I breathe, concentrate on the organ I am massaging or touching, and do not let my mind waiver. I have been following this philosophy 7 days a week for the last 27 weeks and have bypassed nearly all the infections people around me have had. I said nearly because all 5 of my immediate family had the stomach flu with the works; diarrhea, vomiting, and more. I finally did get it but with only the stomach pain and I used Taoist stomach rubbing techniques to make that go away in a day and a half. In addition, I learned that the stomach flu is made worse by meat or dairy and when I have it, which is nevermore, I only eat rice, bananas, breads and oatmeal.


...So this is where I stopped writing the article I should have published Thursday and really thought about my body and the state it is in right this moment.


Before when I have over-trained I would get sick and come down with something viral leading to sickness and all around icky-ness. Now in addition to the Tao of Revitalization, I take fenugreek seeds, pure oregano oil, eat lots of parsley, oregano, ginger and green onions, take 1000mg of vitamin c I could find, and eat fruits and vegetables all the time. I know my body must ingest 2900 calories per day for me to lose 1 lb per week. Calorie estimator calculated on EverydayHealth.com.

I have no idea what caused this. So I went to the Great Tao for answers. It’s a large book covering a majority of all there is to know about the methodologies in Taoism. The answer was there of course. Too much too fast. I had added three Pa-kua power moves workouts from Sifu Jerry Johnson that fired up every muscle in my body. Pa-kua is very intense in the way that you are pulling in chi energy and doing moves that activate nearly every major muscle goup. Apparently I am just not ready yet.
So now I wait for a week to recover with only the morning routine and some slow walking to loosen up my tight muscle fibers.


It’s frustrating how long it takes to achieve health goals. I sure wasn’t thinking about health goals when I nearly destroyed myself. I look at pictures of myself 10 years ago and I wonder what the hell did I do. Although I feel like crying when I see myself then, I also realize that this morbidly obese version of me made the choice to change knowing then it would be a 10-11 year ride to lose the weight in a way it would not return like so many fad diets and celebrity diets do.

“Every year it took you to get real fat is the number times 1.15 to get back to health.”

Now that I am completely dedicated and succeeding I am stronger than ever in my mind, but tend to try to rush things once in a while. This is why adapting or adopting (not sure which word is best) a strong positive philosophy, religion, or both, is so important for you no matter which one you choose. Without it you can fail along the path and never get up.


I am so grateful for those who bless me with so much. I am content knowing I will reach my goal and thankful there is something or someone up high to boost me back up when I sometimes fall.


Please note that this post and my previous ones are my experiments and decisions I have made in my life. I cannot speak for you and how you got to where you are. But I can generalize that 75% of you are over 35 years of age, obese or over-weight suddenly need to lose weight today. Let me further say your diets are too constricting calorie wise, full of processed foods you think are healthy, drinking too much and too wrong liquids, and exercising in such a habitual or intense way that your body gets used to it or is over-trained within weeks. I see these people in the gym all the time.  Do you really think that a woman who is very obese who once ate 4000 calories per day is going to do well at 1500?


A 350 pound inactive woman requires a certain number of calories to keep the weight she is at. She can only reduce her calorie intake by 500 calories per day so she is reducing her weight by a pound per week (500 x 7 = 3500 calories = 1 pound of fat). If she is trying to lose 200 pounds it will take her almost 200 weeks to do it. That’s 4 years.


The reason I always mention that it takes the same number of years as you got fat to lose it is because we meet all sorts of strange diseases and plateaus along the way. If you reached 350 pounds 4 years ago and stayed that way, you made the fat in your body a lot denser and a lot harder to lose.


Also we are not as dedicated as we think we can be and you deserve to cheat one meal a week out of 21. This draws out the process.

Americans are in real trouble because so many people here expect the responsibility for their health to be on someone else’s shoulders. Until it is clear that you are responsible and that so many doctors are just in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, you are going to rot slowly and then quickly. Oh you probably wont die but you will want to.


Like I said I cannot speak for you but I implore you to speak for yourself. Ask questions, demand explanations, demand healthy alternatives from your doctors. They hardly know all even though they believe they do. What they do know is how to take stock of where you are right now. What you do with that data can mean a lifetime of so-called treatments or a cure.

Demand it because no one really cares about your health. Let me say it louder,

NO ONE REALLY CARES ABOUT YOUR HEALTH!

Let me explain. Spouses, partners, friends and family care about you very much and always will but if you aren’t dedicated to your health, they aren’t going to be either. Other than your significant other, the rest have lives of their own and problems of their own. You health is not in the front of their mind.

For example, you know that aunt and uncle who was always fat, always ate too much, drank too much, and then suddenly dies or needs to be on dialysis 3 days a week. You always loved them but we minded our business when it came to their personal health. We don’t tend to pry and when we do we are told to piss off in the nicest way. It’s that way with parents, friends, etc. This is a good reason to have a nemesis who would love to tell you all kinds of things to your face. Revenge is a good motivator if its done to benefit you.

Well that’s it. I went on a lit bit of a rant but the USA is in a bit of trouble and we all need, myself included, a kick in the ass.

Namaste!

Have you ever said this?

I have. I have been losing weight and healing myself for about 9 years with the last 4.5 years of serious research and training. But from time to time I look at myself in the mirror and wonder if I have made any gains at all.

“Boo hoo.” I say, making fun of me.

I was really fat. So fat that I once smashed a toilet into millions of shards of porcelain glass. That was my last indication that I needed to take care of this problem.

But all fat jokes aside, you don’t ever think about how much internal fat you have built up in the first place.

As a thin lad of 15, (at this age I lost 150 lbs from 8th grade to 9th and started my high school with a 34 waist-but my bone density from carrying all that weight over the years made me still 150-160 lbs), I was able to lose weight quickly due to my age and increased metabolism from daily exercise. I could recover quickly.

As an adult weighing 428 lbs, the road back would take as long as the road was to get there. It took 10 years of power-lifting, over-eating, bad eating, sedentary living and drinking to fuck up this bad. How long have you been at it?

Now take that number and multiply it by 125% because the road back is full of fun roadblocks which I will share over time on my own or by request.

I have a 44-46 waist at the moment, down from the 60 I had 9 years ago. I have a couple more years to my goals and then a lifetime to keep up what I am doing.

I see myself as doing really great but still fat, and in truth I am, even though my blood pressure is perfect, my sleep patterns are great 7-8 hrs per night, my exercise is balanced to confuse my body but to heal it as well, and I am more randy than ever.

TMI?

Well, I think a lot of you would like to know that any problems in that department go away when you get into better shape.

So even though I still appear fat, how is it that I am stronger, clearer thinking, and can heal myself from most common ailments quickly and not feel weak?

I am in great shape within.

Fat that was around my organs, plaque in my bloodstream, crap in my lungs and any dysfunctions in digestion, prostate, and urinary end to end are gone or practically so.

How?

I didn’t find out how until I ran into roadblock after roadblock.  I finally realized it all had to do with the food I ate, the type and quantity of liquids I took in, and the kind of exercise that heals and strengthens.

You can go on the biggest loser diet, following online, and lose a considerable amount of weight-but for the first month you are losing a ton of water weight that your body has been holding on to. You are also losing muscle weight. Yes-you large human being, you have muscles that are necessary to carry all that weight around. During all that activity your muscles are shrinking faster than your fat if you are not eating enough to maintain the weight you are now, minus 10-15%.

According to Everyday Health , to maintain the weight I am, knowing I work out 7 days per week (internal exercises allow this without over-training), I must eat 3,229 calories per day. To lose one pound a week (any more is a fluke, muscle, water-or all three), I need to reduce that intake to 2,929. This food must be high quality; real, not processed, with no chemicals or fillers.

Now, you may have been on 2,000 and 2,500 calorie standard diets and found out that you hit a plateau and then began to gain weight-perhaps gaining more than you were before.
Do you know why?

Your body thinks it’s starving. It’s a built in condition in your body that you cannot change. And guess what? When your body thinks it is starving, it begins to hold in your belly and ass every ounce of fat and accumulate even more.

Why do gyms have diets contrary to this?

Because they want you to see instant results. And those instant results are more harmful to you than you can ever imagine. It can take a while to get a really fat body convinced it isn't starving because you don’t believe it.

The only times our ancestors, pre-1800s and as far back as ‘yore’, got fat is when they were rich or when they had no food. That way, like a camel, you started saving up stores.
Okay so you get the point but are you willing to believe it?

That’s up to you. I still have problems with what foods are doing what and finally realize that wheat and pasta’s are screwing me up. So no more.

This is trial and error. It’s a journey you have to undertake in order to be truly healthy.

So we are back to what we see in the mirror. It may not be there yet or you may have not even begun.
For me, I have come a long way. I am in constant success mode because at this point I make subtle changes in routines and eating that appear over time, but I am not there yet.

My practice in the Tao has begun its 25th week as of this posting. I practice using the learning materials from Dr. Stephen Chang who holds medical degrees in Western and Eastern medical boards. I also have read and listened to the religious aspects of the Tao from Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching. Taoism as a religion for me came after the training. It helped reinforce my Christian values. So you could say I am a Taoist Christian. If you knew you would understand. To understand you need to read and practice.

Anyone just starting internal exercises should realize you must crawl before you walk. There are tons of amazing videos of people using their energies for show and demonstration on YouTube. Be careful, though, you can truly screw up your body and your mind trying out these routines without knowing the origin of all internal exercises; the Tao.

Most westerners do not have the patience for this kind of practice, or believe it will work, so if you don’t think you can perform 30-60 minutes of easy routines every morning, then don’t read further. It’s pressure points and rubbing all over your body to wake up your circulation in every internal organ. The importance of each routine becomes known in practice. Sometimes you are able to go through it all quickly and then other times you hit the right groove and you breathe and meditate for long periods of time. There is great healing and love in the emptiness.

Did I say emptiness?

Yes, but think of it as having an empty brain; empty of all confusion, tasks, worries, concerns, anxiety, etc.

My practice in just 25 short weeks has given me the ability to empty my brain of what Taoist call the 10,000 things. This one ability alone is worth it’s weight in gold.

You know the saying that every day is new-free of all worries and problems. Yeah, except what you drag into it by just thinking about the day before.

All that crap you bring with you are the 10,000 things that you cannot control.

You can learn, with practice, to let go of the 10,000 things and empty your mind.

For me, I have reduced symptoms of colds and sore throats to a minimum with my knowledge of herbs, energy and healing foods, and my routines as well as emptying my mind.

I also work out every afternoon. Sometimes it is a simple set of postures to erase the cobwebs of the day. Before Taoism, I needed to cardio 20-30 minutes, 5 days a week to do this. Some of my sessions in the afternoon are Taoist, chi gong or pa-kua routines. Again, I will explain more in detail over time-or please ask me questions on a topic so I write about it sooner.

I do not know a lot of the answers, but you will, once you learn how to empty your brain and ask the questions you want or need of yourself.

Do I do any external or strenuous exercise?

Well chi gong and pa-kua can make you sweat and really make your internal organs and muscles strong, I think you mean like weight lifting and cardiovascular.
Yes, two days per week I do Peak 8 performance. this is something I picked up on www.mercola.com . This is my source of muscle confusion and is really great for my heart. I also lift dumbbells twice a week for my chest, shoulders and back. My legs are so worked out by my other routines that I don’t need to do anything else for them.
I will sometimes stop the hard exercises when I can feel my body not recovering properly and wait a few extra days to recover.
When you are older, over-training is so easy to do.

Bill, you are fat-how can you over train?

It doesn’t seem possible but when you are over 40, inactive, and want to really start training, your body rebels and wants to keep the status quo. Oh sure, you can push through it, but how many guys do you see in the gym in great shape complaining of rotator cuff, knee, or back injuries with the same stupid motto, “no pain, no gain.”
Wrong idea.

Your body can accept hard training but you need to crawl again. The Taoists accept that you want to train hard, but you should never do external exercise without the internal so you can recover faster and not strain your organs. That 225 lbs against your chest may feel good but you are impacting an area where your spleen, pancreas, and liver touch. If they are not strong and you start training hard, you are going to be sick or sore for a long time.

Wow have I really gone on for this long?

I hope this has been helpful and I would love to hear your ideas in your comments, and be sure to link to your sites as well. Spam will be deleted, help is always welcome.

Namaste!