Everyone loves sandwiches. They are convenient, portable and can pretty much be customized with any mix of ingredients that suits your fancy. However, over the past few years breads have gotten a pretty nasty reputation as a physique wrecker and deservedly so. Whether the drawbacks are because of gluten intolerance or just simple over-consumption, eliminating bread goes a long way towards helping people manage their weight.

Of course, removing bread means you’ve eliminated 90% of people’s lunch options. So in an effort to help us, food manufacturers have popularized the wrap. Ahh… the wrap, the supposedly healthier alternative to the sandwich. In fact, I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone tell me they made the switch from bread to wraps in the effort to clean up their diet. Small problem though… if you look at the nutritional content for most wraps, you’ll find they often contain more calories than would get in 2 slices of bread!

A healthier option? Not really.

Sadly, it doesn’t seem to matter whether your grains come from bread, a wrap, a bowl of cereal or noodles; refined grains pack a significant calorie punch with a low nutritive value. It’s no coincidence that most people get a lot leaner and healthier when they reduce their grain consumption, or at least limit it to specific times of the day. But having grain reduction as a goal and actually accomplishing it are two very different animals.

The allure of grains stems from the fact they are so easy to prepare and store. In fact, it was the increased popularization of cereal grain consumption that allowed civilization to flourish. But in one of those cruelly ironic twists, it seems that a large intake of cereal grains are one of the leading causes of many diseases of civilization. Irony certainly is a bitter pill to swallow.

So what’s a bread lover to do? Unlike a lot of experts who suggest untenable meal plans, I prefer to actually come up with solutions that work in the real world. In fact, I pride myself on figuring out ways to make healthy food both convenient and tasty. And although my attempts at creating a physique friendly bread have universally been met with failure, I have recently created a low-carb wrap that is pretty damn fantastic if I do say so myself. The beauty of this recipe is that it takes only 3 ingredients and any unused wraps can be stored in the fridge for several days.

GT’s low-carb wraps (printer friendly Low carb wraps)

• 1 cup egg white
• 1 1/2 TBSP ground flax seed
• 1 level TBSP coconut flour

*You’ll need a crepe pan for this recipe.

Heat the pan on low-medium and add a dab of coconut oil or cooking spray. Combine all the ingredients in a mixing cup, making sure to stir well as the coconut flour takes a while to dissolve. Once the mixture has been adequately mixed, pour a thin layer into the pan. Tilt the pan so that the mixture covers the entire surface and cook until the edges start to curl. Flip and continue cooking for another 20-30 seconds.

Remove from heat and let cool 2 minutes before eating. Nothing more complicated than that and you’ve got yourself one heck of a sandwich vehicle.

I took the liberty to do a quick comparison with a popular brand of wraps so you can see the difference. My homemade wraps have less than half the calories, a similar amount of fibre and twice the protein.

As an added bonus for you ovo-lacto vegetarians, having two of these wraps stuffed with avocado, lettuce, tomatoes and mushrooms is a “vegetarian-friendly” meal that also provides 20 grams of high quality protein. The real beauty of these wraps is that they can be used at any meal, not just post-workout. How’s that for a real world solution… a guilt-free sandwich that also helps your physique transformation efforts!

Of course, feel free to stuff your own wrap any which way you like. In fact, I’d love to hear about some of the more imaginative sandwich combinations you come up with!

Till next time, train hard and eat healthy.

Related posts:

1. Carbohydrates: A Question of Need
2. Kid Friendly Vegetable Recipes
3. A New Protein Prescription Needed

Part 2 of 3.

Part 1

Recently, we looked at some research that supported the observation that despite hours of exercise each week, many people do not transform their physiques for the better. This observation formed the basis of Reality Check #1: Exercise Alone does NOT produce weight loss. Subsequently, we had to question why bother with exercise at all, if dieting drive weight loss?

Although the conventional approach to dieting, drastic caloric restriction, typically induces weight loss, many dieters have learned that diets only tend to work for a very short period of time. Whether your diet of choice is low-carb, low-fat, grapefruit, or cabbage soup, they all seem equally effective at producing weight loss in the short term. Unfortunately, this loss of body mass is transient and after a few short weeks weight loss often comes to a screeching halt; leaving dieters frustrated and asking themselves, “Where did I go wrong?”

Truth be told, your hormonal and metabolic systems are designed to keep you relatively weight stable. When you gain a couple of pounds, normally your appetite should be suppressed and your metabolic rate would increase, allowing you to drop the weight. Conversely, in response to you losing a few pounds, your metabolic rate slows down and your appetite increases to encourage you to gain the weight back.

As frustrating as it may be, a fundamental property of human physiology is this: we are not designed for aggressive weight loss! Therefore, when sustainable weight loss is your goal, you need to take steps to overcome the natural checks and balances built in to your physiology.

[Author's note: it is supposed to be equally difficult for adult humans, outside of pregnancy, to gain more than a lbs or two of fat a year. Sadly, we are much better at overriding that control system, but that's a topic for another day.]

While dieting can produce a desirable loss of body fat, it often has the nasty side effect of also causing a loss of muscle mass, which is not at all what you want. Losing too much muscle tends to have a negative impact on your basal metabolic rate, which is the amount of calories you burn at rest.

Once metabolic rate decreases, weight loss becomes exceptionally difficult. Making matters worse, a sluggish metabolism often means that once you return to a “normal” eating pattern, you will more than likely gain back all the weight lost and more!

While part of avoiding the dreaded weight regain requires establishing a healthier long-term relationship with food, a significant component involves taking the right approach to training during the diet itself. But unlike everything you’ve been led to believe, aerobic training is not a dieters best friend!

Although aerobic training does burn calories, it is nowhere near as effective for weight loss as simply eating fewer calories. It takes a solid 30 minutes of running on a treadmill to burn 300 calories, whereas it takes you less than 30 seconds to eat a 300 calorie chocolate bar. In the interests of your time and sanity, does is not make more sense to watch what you eat as opposed to spending two hours a day on the treadmill?

But watching what you eat isn’t enough, as we’ve already established that dieting can cause a loss in muscle mass. Therefore, when we are dieting, we need to do everything in our power to protect our muscle mass and metabolic rate. And what’s the best way to protect muscle mass? Lift heavy things! In fact, it forms the basis for:

Reality Check #2

During a diet, the majority of your training should be resistance training

Quite simply, resistance training protects metabolism, even in the face of drastic caloric restriction. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the data. A recent study was published investigating the effects of resistance training while dieting, in a group of older individuals.¹

Over this 10 week study, older (mean age of 67 years), overweight individuals were placed into one of two conditions.

1. Diet alone: a 10% reduction in total calories
2. Diet + exercise: same reduction in calories + 3 full body resistance training sessions

And what was found was nothing short of amazing!

After 10 weeks, both groups lost weight, with the diet + exercise group losing more. Before we start doing cartwheels, let’s acknowledge that the energy deficit between the two groups wasn’t identical. So for now, all we we can say is that both diet and diet + weight training result in significant weight loss.

However, when we compare losses in fat mass to changes in lean mass, stunning results emerge. Almost all the weight lost in the diet only group came from lean mass, which is the worst possible outcome from a health perspective. In contrast, the diet + resistance training group gained muscle and lost fat, which is ideal!

From these results, it would suggest that dieting alone is a terrible choice, at least for older individuals. But is just dieting as detrimental for younger individuals?

A study published in 2008 addressed this very question². This study looked at a group of 94 overweight females (age: 35 years, BMI between 27-30 kg/m²), who were split into 3 experimental conditions.

1. Diet only
2. Diet + aerobic exercise: 3x/week; up to 40 mins per session
3. Diet + full body resistance training: 3x/week; 2 sets of 10 reps on 10 exercises

The goal in each of the groups was to reduce their BMI to 25 kg/m², which required an average weight loss of 12 kg. Admittedly, using BMI is a little shortsighted, but I didn’t design the study. Another absurd aspect of this study was that all the participants were placed on a strict 800 kcal/day diet, in order to produce the 12 kg weight loss. Although I question the use of such a low calorie diet, ultimately it did work because most of the participants were able to lose the weight in ~21 weeks.

At the conclusion of the intervention, some interesting body composition changes were found.

*In reporting their data, these researcher subdivided the women into women of African American (AA) descent and European American (EA) descent, to detect potential genetic patterns of weight loss*

First the good news; younger people seem to be able to lose body fat on a diet, without it all coming from muscle tissue. Another good thing is that once again, we see that the only intervention group that protected muscle mass over the course of the diet was the group that performed resistance training. Not surprisingly, the researchers also found this group to have a better preservation of resting metabolic rate.

Unfortunately, both groups of women in the diet only group lost a significant amount of muscle mass, whereas European American women also lost quite a bit of muscle while in the diet + aerobic training group. Why African American women didn’t is unclear; however the general conclusion is that most people will lose some muscle mass on a plan consisting of either a diet or a diet + aerobic exercise.

Hopefully by now you are realizing just how short-sighted is is to obsess about the scale while dieting. If too much of your body weight losses are due to muscle mass, the long-term ramifications of that diet attempts are bound to disappoint.

Thankfully, both of these studies show that performing resistance training during a diet, even a drastic calorie reduced one, enables you to preserve your muscle mass. Therefore, for anyone interested in transitioning out of a diet with a minimal amount of weight regain, dedicating a good portion of your training time to resistance training just makes sense.

In parting, I’ll leave you with one observation. Considering that the diet + aerobic exercise group in that last study didn’t lose a greater amount of weight, nor did they lose weight at a faster rate than either of the other groups, should we question how valuable aerobic training is for weight loss. Could it be that in the presence of a properly designed diet program, additional aerobic training has negligible benefits?

Debate that question for a bit and I’ll be back soon with more posts!

———–

1. Avila et al. (2010), Effect of moderate intensity resistance training during weight loss on body composition and physical performance in overweight older adults, European Journal of Applied Physiology, February 2010

2. Hunter et al. (2008). Resistance Training Conserves Fat-free Mass and Resting Energy Expenditure Following Weight Loss. Obesity, 16, 1045-51.

Related posts:

1. The Role of Exercise in Weight Loss: Part 1
2. Making Exercise More Effective
3. 3 Minute Fat Loss?

One of the questions I get quite often is “How much exercise should I be doing?” Unfortunately, the answer to that question, like so many others in nutrition and fitness is: it depends. Are you exercising to maintain health? Trying to lose weight? Wanting to gain muscle? Or are you training for high performance sport? All of these goals require a vastly different type and amount of exercise.

For heart health, 30 minutes of moderate-intensity cardiovascular activity, three times per week goes a long way towards keeping you from spontaneously keeling over dead. But if you think 90 minutes of weekly physical activity is all that it takes to build the body of your dreams, think again!

No matter how noble an intention it may be to exercise and eat strictly for health related reasons, the reality is that most people diet and train for aesthetics. Humans appear to have a near universal desire to look good naked. Whether this is a product of Darwinian evolution or just plain vanity, weight loss always seems to be foremost in our minds.

Given that weight loss is everyone’s primary goal, the question du jour becomes: how much exercise is needed for weight loss. In order to quantify an answer, we must first acknowledge exactly what exercise can and cannot do for body composition. Over the next three articles, we’ll be looking at some exercise research that will hopefully help you understand exactly what you should be doing going forward. So without any further ado, let’s get started.

Reality Check #1

Exercise does NOT produce weight loss

Although this sounds controversial, talk to anyone who trains at a commercial gym and they’ll swear they’ve seen thousands of regular exercisers who train religiously for years, yet never seem to improve their physiques. So what gives? Are our gym voyeur friends merely making faulty observations or is exercise actually ineffective for producing weight loss?

While I can’t vouch for the former, the latter certainly is true. Exercise appears to be a lot worse at producing weight loss than you’ve been led to believe, particularly if exercise is your sole weight loss strategy. A recent study published in the in the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism (Lockwood et al. 2008, Nutrition & Metabolism, 5:11), really hammers this point home.

In the Lockwood study, thirty-eight sedentary, overweight individuals were divided into three experimental conditions and followed for 10 weeks. The three conditions were:

1. Control: They did nothing for 10 weeks (life as a control subject sure is rough!)
2. Exercise group: They exercised 5x per week. Two sessions were full-body resistance training and 3 sessions consisted of aerobic exercise.
3. Exercise + high protein supplement: Same exercise program described above, but in addition they were asked to consume 1-2 protein shakes a day.

Add everything up and over the 10 weeks, both exercise groups performed 50 training sessions! For a sedentary individual, going from nothing to 50 training sessions over 2 ½ months is a huge jump in training volume and we’d expect to see some serious results. As a bonus, the researchers had someone supervise all the training sessions, so we know the participants actually completed the workouts in question. So after 10 weeks, what did these researchers find?

Body Composition Changes

Control: Lost 0.4 kg of fat and gained no muscle. No real surprise there.

Exercise only: Lost 1.1 kg of fat, gained 0.3 kg of muscle.

Think about that for a second. After 50 training sessions, all that these previously sedentary individuals had to show for their hours of sweat was a couple of measly pounds lost! Considering that the sedentary group lost 0.4 kg of fat, then all that additional exercise only amounted to 0.7 kg of fat lost. Talk about depressing.

Those numbers really don’t place exercise in too positive of a light. In fact, it kind of paints the whole business of personal training in unflattering colours. Given what we’ve just seen, how prepared would you be to commit to 3 months of personal training at $75/hour if all your $3500 investment  netted you was a couple of pounds of fat lost?

Having worked as a personal trainer for many years, I can tell you too many trainers don’t know the first thing about producing real results. However, before we label all personal trainers as frauds (let’s be honest, some of them certainly are), let me throw personal trainers a lifelife and suggest their inability to produce results isn’t entirely their fault.

Huh!?!? How can a lack of results not be your trainer’s fault? Well, many personal trainers can’t produce results because they lack the proper background. Let me explain.

Remember that this study involved a third group, the exercise + protein intervention. When we look at what happened to that group, we see a very telling pattern start to emerge.

Exercise + protein: Lost 2.7 kg of fat, gained 0.6 kg of muscle.

Now isn’t that something? Despite following the same, ineffective weight loss exercise program, the group with the minor nutritional intervention still experienced a significantly greater loss in body fat than both the exercise and control groups.

Now although some of you might argue that 2.3 kg over 10 weeks isn’t earth-shattering, keep in mind that:

1. Exercise + diet was 3x more effective than exercise alone (-2.3 kg vs. -0.7 kg)
2. The exercise program wasn’t optimized for fat loss (clearly)
3. The subject weren’t dieting, they only added protein shakes

Obviously just randomly tossing in an extra serving of protein or two is not what I consider optimizing a meal plan for fat loss. However, this study does highlight the importance of diet as the primary determinant of weight loss. Considering that most trainers don’t specialize in offering nutritional counseling, it’s no wonder so many of them struggle to produce weight loss in their clients.

Although this study helps explain why so many exercisers fail to change their physiques despite hours in the gym, it raises an interesting question: given the majority of body fat losses can be traced back to changes in our diet, why bother with exercise at all?

Definitely a good question and one we’ll investigate next week.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

Related posts:

1. The Role of Exercise in Weight Loss: Part 2
2. Making Exercise More Effective
3. 3 Minute Fat Loss?

One of my buddies recently requested that I comment about the “Broccoli: Miracle Food” campaign. If you haven’t caught the commercials just yet, here is one of them.

Broccoli Miracle Commercial

These commercials are definitely entertaining, but are they accurate? Is broccoli truly a miracle food? Well let’s take a look.

Nutrition Facts (per cup, uncooked)

Calories: 31
Protein: 2.5 g
Carbohydrates: 6 g
– Fibre: 2.5 g

Broccoli is also excellent source of vitamins A, C and K, a good source of folate, fibre and potassium and contains a significant amount of calcium. Not only does broccoli provide these essential vitamins and minerals at a very low caloric cost, but broccoli also carries anti-carcinogenic properties and may help rid the body of environmental estrogens. Definitely some pluses there.

Clearly, from a nutrition perspective, broccoli has a lot going for it. In fact, many people refer to broccoli as the healthiest or “king” among vegetables. Although I love and value broccoli as an excellent food, my stance is that putting broccoli on a pedestal and labeling it a miracle food just further propagates bad nutritional advice.

Remember back to the part of the video when the broccoli aficionado exclaims “Broccoli has 12 essential vitamins and minerals, all lovingly packed into these tiny green trees”? That reference to trees is ironic because I feel there isn’t a phrase that better describes conventional media’s treatment of nutrition research than: “can’t see the forest for the trees”. In other words, everyone loves to obsess about minutia and miss the big picture.

As a result of over-hyping too many nutrition findings, we’ve got millions of people with no clue about “good nutrition”. But these same people can tell you how much cholesterol is in a chicken breast or that blueberries have a higher antioxidant concentration than raspberries, but that both berries pale in comparison to the ORAC value of prunes… oye ve! Maybe it is just the cynic in me, but our “naive” society of 100 years ago seemed to understand a whole lot more about healthy eating habits than we do today. Isn’t progress a wonderful thing?

So to answer my friend about what I think about this miracle food campaign, I find it entertaining if somewhat misguided. My primary concern with labeling and marketing broccoli as a “miracle” or “superfood” is that too many people then justify wolfing down an extra donut or bag of Oreoes because they “had some broccoli today.”

Make no mistake, broccoli is great… but so too are cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts or any of the cruciferous vegetables. But to suggest that those vegetables are somehow superior to carrots, spinach, mushrooms, onions or peppers, well there we go obsessing about minutia again.

Despite all the bickering that occurs between nutrition experts, the one thing everyone seems to agree upon are that vegetables are universally good. But even increasing vegetable consumption alone does not a healthy diet make. There are many vegetarians and vegans who have terribly unhealthy diets and they eat more vegetables than most people. The key issue for optimal health will always be total diet quality.

All Natural? If deep frying and coating with chedder cheese is natural, sure!

Don’t get me wrong, I love broccoli. But broccoli can just as easily be considered a key part of an awesome diet as it can be considered nutritional garbage if boiled into oblivion and smothered with Cheeze Whiz.

Instead of promoting particular foods as some kind of magic pill, we need to accept that nutrition success will always follow “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.

Make good nutrition part of your lifestyle, and physique or health concerns become a thing of the past.

Related posts:

1. Multivitamins: Does a Body Good?
2. Get Shredded for $6
3. Kid Friendly Vegetable Recipes

Q: How do you turn an ineffective, weight-loss program into a fat incinerating activity?

A: Couple exercise with the correct nutritional intervention!

Increasingly, researchers, as well as the lay public, are recognizing that fat-loss programs consisting of exercise alone are remarkably ineffective. Recent studies have shown that even after three months of 4-5 hours of structured, supervised physical activity per week, many adult fail to lose more than a couple of lbs. Imagine – you sign on with a personal trainer and three months later and several thousand dollars poorer, you have only lost 3 lbs of fat for your efforts; talk about depressing!

If losing body fat is your goal, it is paramount to remember that you don’t actually lose body fat or build muscle at the gym. Weight training and cardiovascular training are just stimuli for change. In the absence of the proper nutritional and recovery practices, sustainable fat loss is next to impossible.

In fact, one weight loss truism is:

You can’t out-train a bad diet.

Consider the following example. It takes you approximately 30 minutes of treadmill running to burn 300 kcal. Conversely, in 20 seconds you can consume a 300 kcal donut. So unless you plan on devoting 6-8 hours a day training away enough calories to eat whatever you want, the greatest way to control calories is through your diet.

Unfortunately, complicating the fat loss picture is that not all calories are created equally. A 2000 kcal diet consisting of cakes, cookies, breads and sugary drinks produces vastly different metabolic outcomes than a 2000 kcal diet consisting of lean proteins, vegetables, healthy fats and natural water. In fact, your body will store much less body fat eating 2500 kcal worth of clean foods than it will if you eat 1700 kcal worth of junk. The interaction between certain nutrients and our hormonal system is just that significant.

Given our complex, and often confusing, biological system, trying to lose fat can be frustrating. But what if I told you there is one simple dietary change that could transform whatever exercise you are currently doing into one exponentially more effective in helping you lose body fat? I thought that might get your attention.

For a long time now, many highly regarded strength coaches have been touting the wonders of fish oil for body composition. However, despite numerous coaches claiming impressive results using fish oil with their athletes and clients, research support for fish oil as a fat-loss tool has been lacking (in humans anyway, fish oil is some kind of wonder drug for rats).

Although decades of research has shown fish oil to be beneficial for cardiovascular health, brain function and inflammation control, it wasn’t until relatively recently that studies have demonstrated that fish oil consumption may assist with body fat losses in humans. Thankfully, a short while ago, a study out of Australia by Alison Hill and colleagues demonstrated just how effective fish oil can be.

Hill et al. investigated the effects of high dose fish oil consumption on blood lipids and body composition, in a group of overweight volunteers. The researchers placed their subjects into one of four treatment groups.

1. A group receiving 6 g/day of safflower (a predominantly omega-6 fat)
2. A group receiving 6/day of a tuna oil (a predominant omega-3 fat, including 1500 mg DHA)
3. A group receiving the safflower oil + three 45 minutes exercise sessions per week
4. A group receiving the fish oil + three 45 minute exercise sessions per week

The entire study ran for 12 weeks, which is a pretty standard length of time for an exercise and diet intervention. None of the participants received specific diet counseling other than regular check ups to ensure they were consuming their fish oil. Additionally, the researchers took diet records at regular intervals to verify that all groups consumed a similar diet throughout the entire study period. So in terms of dietary control for free-living individuals, the researchers did a good job minimizing potential confounding variables.

Unfortunately, the researchers selected a pretty terrible exercise intervention from a fat-loss perspective. Subjects were only required to walk for 45 minutes, 3x/week at 75% of their theoretical maximum heart rate. This is pretty much the bare minimum you can do and still call it exercise. Sad they weren’t asked to do more, but I suppose the primary goal of this research project was to assess changes in risk factors for cardiovascular disease and not prepare someone for a figure competition.

At the conclusion of the 12-week intervention, the researchers found that both fish oil groups experienced significant improvements in their blood lipid profiles and arterial compliance. Obviously these outcomes are tremendous and suggests that fish oil helps reduce your risk for a heart attack. But that is old news. What was truly novel was their findings of the effects of fish oil on body composition. Take a look at their results:

Hill et al.  Am J Clin Nutr 2007; 85:1267–74.

From these results we can draw several important conclusions:

Fish Oil

1. Fish oil makes even a lame exercise intervention, dramatically more effective for fat loss
2. Taking fish oil alone does not magically burn fat

Safflower Oil

1. A diet high in omega-6 fats impedes fat loss and catabolizes muscle tissue
2. Exercise helps minimize the harmful effects of high dose omega-6 fat consumption

What is clear from these results is that the combined effects of diet and exercise produce significantly better results than either approach alone. Even though total fat loss was only 4 lbs in the fish oil + exercise group, remember this study didn’t entail any specific calorie reduction and consisted of a terrible exercise program. In light of those considerations, a 4 lbs loss of body fat is actually pretty spectacular. One could reasonably conclude that even better results would be obtained by optimizing both your diet and exercise program.

My theory for why Hill and colleagues were able to show these impressive results where other people have not is due to their use of a very concentrated dose of fish oil. The dose of they used provided almost 2 grams of combined eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) per day, with the DHA concentration contributing over 1500 mg! Conversely, most fish oil studies use a relatively modest dose of 1-2 capsules per day. Given that most commercial fish oil contains 180 mg of EHA and 120 mg of DHA, the dose commonly studied is likely too low to assist with fat loss.

At present, it’s unclear whether EPA or DHA play a greater role in assisting with fat loss. If we consider DHA to be the key ingredient (I’m not stating that for a fact, I’m merely going on what this study showed), then it would take 13 regular strength fish oil capsules to provide the optimal fat loss dose. Which is quite the number of pills!

Clearly not everyone seeking extra fat loss is jumping at the prospect of ingesting 13 giant pills a day. If popping pills isn’t your idea of a good time, many health food stores carry concentrated liquid fish oil supplements that provides almost 1500 mg of DHA in a 1 tsp serving. I’ve currently starting using a liquid fish oil concentrate from Trophic Nutrition. In my opinion, this is definitely the way to go. You get a maximal dose for a minimal cost and inconvenience.

Now before anyone decides to start flooding my comment section with claims that 13 fish oil pills a day is dangerous, consider that a 3-oz piece of salmon provides almost 600 mg of EPA and 1200 mg of DHA. There are countless populations around that world that consume fatty fish on a daily basis with no apparent ill-effects to health. In fact, regular fish eaters tend to be a lot healthier than your typical North American.

So if building a bullet-proof heart and a slender physique seems like a good idea to you, starting making fish or a concentrated fish oil supplement part of your daily routine. The only thing you have to lose are those few extra pounds around your midsection.

Related posts:

1. The Role of Exercise in Weight Loss: Part 2
2. The Role of Exercise in Weight Loss: Part 1
3. 3 Minute Fat Loss?