What is better exercise running a mile or doing stairs for a mile, which burns more calories?

What is better exercise running a mile or doing stairs for a mile, which burns more calories?

Can I use the Garmin FR60 indoors to count calories during my workout, without the foot pod?

Im looking for a indoor Heart rate monitor that counts calories during my crossfit workouts and all I want is a chest trap and not with a foot pod.

YOGA FOR WEIGHT LOSS

A CALORIE-TORCHING SEQUENCE FOR TONING AND STRETCHING YOUR WHOLE BODY! REPEAT AND CREATE WITH THESE POSES AS YOU GET YOUR HEART RATE–AND YOUR METABOLISM UP!

Not All Fats are Bad Fats

 

I have a confession: I love butter. In fact, I would say it’s on my favorite foods list, right up there with nuts and chocolate. But I also love extra virgin olive oil and avocados, and this amazing toasted walnut oil. Fat is satisfying, it makes food taste better and keeps us fuller longer, stabilizing blood sugar. It is soothing and nourishing, and when consumed in moderation, is a necessary component of our daily diet.

To begin, let’s have a quick lesson in “Fats 101″:

Fat is a macronutrient, just like protein and carbohydrate and something our bodies need. Fats are precursors to hormones, they cushion our internal organs, they regulate our temperature, and they carry fat-soluble nutrients through our bodies. As part of a balanced diet, we need a variety of natural fats.

 

So, how much is too much? That depends on the person. The standard advice is to limit fats to no more than 30% of calories in one’s daily diet. In my experience, what feels right varies from person to person. For example, some people feel better with 20 to 25% fat, while others need a bit more, perhaps 35 to 40% – more along the lines of a Mediterranean-style diet. If you crave a lot of sugar and feel hungry within just a couple of hours after eating, your body may need a little bit more fat. Try adding a few slices of avocado to a meal, or rather than something sweet for dessert, have a small handful of nuts or a spoonful of a natural nut butter. My very favorite: roasted almond butter!

Here are the different types of fats:

Saturated Fats – these are solid at room temperature. They include animal fats (not fish!) such as butter, cream and cheese, and just a few plant-based fats: Coconut, cocoa, palm and palm kernel oils. While some authorities claim that saturated fat should be avoided, others say that these stable fats have been used around the world for thousands of years in their natural state. I personally believe that all natural fats, including saturated fat, can have a place in the diet. They are ideal for cooking in many instances because they are not easily damaged by heat.

Monounsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature and some (peanut and olive, for example) may harden when refrigerated. They are found in olive, canola, peanut and avocado, as well as high oleic sunflower and high oleic safflower oils (these are often called “high heat sunflower and high heat safflower” oil). Monounsaturated fats are recognized as highly beneficial: They help keep HDL cholesterol high and they are stable fats for cooking. When using olive oil, be sure to cook on low or medium low heat…olive oil has a low flash point so it burns quickly. You can also combine it with other oils such as canola or high heat sunflower oil for a milder flavor.

Polyunsaturated Fats - these are liquid at room temperature and liquid when refrigerated. You will find them in nuts, seeds, egg yolk, corn, soy and fish. (Polyunsaturateds contain those Essential Fatty Acids you hear about – I’ll do another post soon about all of that!) I never advise cooking with oils that are high in polyunsaturated fat. This is because they are easily damaged by light and heat and are best eaten in their original form such as edamame or corn, or used raw such as flaxseed oil or sunflower oil.

Trans fats – these are created when liquid oils such as soybean or cottonseed have been chemically treated in order to make them solid at room temperature. You may see the words “partially hydrogenated” on a food label – means the same as trans fats. These partially hydrogenated oils, commonly used by food manufacturers, are very unhealthy and should be avoided whenever possible. At Whole Foods Market, you don’t have to worry or read labels because we don’t allow man-made hydrogenated fats in the foods we sell. Common sources of trans fats include most commercial baked goods, processed foods, pie crusts, cookies, crackers and margarine. (FYI: we sell all-natural, good-tasting margarines that are created from natural oils such as palm and canola.)

Some of my favorite ways to add a variety of good fats to meals and snacks are:

• Add a couple tablespoons of chopped walnuts to breakfast cereal or yogurt
• Sprinkle a tablespoonful of pine nuts, sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds on your salad
• Add ½ cup of chopped almonds, pecans or walnuts to a cookie or cake recipe, or sprinkle over the top
• When making stir-fry for dinner, add a handful of roasted cashews just before serving
• Top grilled fish or chicken with sliced avocado
• Drizzle extra virgin olive oil over sliced veggies such as cucumber, tomato or steamed veggies. (adds great flavor and extra virgin olive oil is filled with antioxidants and other plant compounds)
• Add chopped olives to tuna or chicken salad
• Put a pat of organic butter on your hot steamed veggies
• Sprinkle finely chopped macadamia nuts or hazelnuts over a bowl of berries
• Eat fish such as salmon, sardines, char or mahi-mahi 2 or 3 times a week
• Make your own buttery spread by mixing ½ cup olive oil and 1 stick softened butter in the blender. Puree until smooth then store in a container with a lid in the fridge – it becomes semi-solid like tub margarine, and is easily spreadable, and contains NO trans fats. Use raw or for cooking.

 

How To Lose Belly Fat

 

• Spare Tire
• Love Handles
• Muffin Top
• Pot Belly

All somewhat comical terms for belly fat. Most people don’t like having that extra flab around their midsections, but we tend to just put up with it. There is much conflicting advice out there, and besides, we’ve failed in the past so there’s no guarantee we’ll succeed anyway.

Take heart, there is a truly effective strategy to lose belly fat, but you may have to loosen up some old preconceptions. Please note that in this article I am specifically talking about fat loss as opposed to overall weight loss (fat, muscle & water).

How To Lose Belly Fat – The Guide

The strategy involves both diet and exercise – nothing new there. However, it entails 2 unique ways of going about it.

The Diet – Become a Fat-Burner

Low-carbohydrate nutrition is the most-effective way of shedding pounds of fat from the body.

Why?

Basically, the body burns energy in the following order:

1. Carbohydrate (from food and stored glycogen)
2. Fat (from food and bodyfat)
3. Protein (from food and muscle tissue)

If you eat what most government guidelines recommend you eat, you are a carb-burner. It then becomes obvious that in order to become a fat-burner, you should remove the current primary energy source i.e. carbohydrate.

When you do this, your body takes a few days to flip a ‘metabolic switch’ and become a fat-burning machine. At that point, the fat you eat gets consumed first, and then you start burning away bodyfat as your primary source of energy. Obviously, you don’t therefore consume copious amounts of fat, and you don’t need to go zero carb to benefit. Anything under 100 grams of carbs a day is considered ‘low-carb’, but ideally under 60 grams would produce great results.

On low-fat diets (which by nature are high-carb diets), when your ‘food calories’ are gone, the body will burn a mixture of both fat and muscle tissue (protein). As muscle is ‘metabolically active’ — it burns calories all day long just by being there — losing it is a disaster for the dieter. Their metabolism will continually slow down over time.

This is one of the main reasons why low-fat diets very often produce temporary results: you lose weight for a while, but then it stops working (as your metabolism has crashed) and you pile it back on – and then some!

The Exercise

Loads and loads of cardio, right? Wrong.

Overdoing cardiovascular exercise will also put your body in a state where it breaks down lean muscle tissue (catabolism). So the question is, how do we complement our fat-burning nutritional strategy with fat-burning exercise.

It’s called ‘Interval Training’, or more specifically ‘High Intensity Interval Training’. The idea is to perform some sort of cardio in ‘fits and starts’ i.e. a period of lower intensity followed by a period of higher intensity.

Why?

Research shows that this type of work burns more fat than steady-state cardio, typically by about 50%. In fact, one study showed a 9 fold increase in fat loss for HIIT compared to low-medium intensity cardio.

Also, with respect to belly fat in particular, research has shown (though the reason is not clear at this time) that HIIT can produce more fat loss in this area than other parts of the body. An Australian study found that the HIIT group lost 3 times more fat and significantly more belly fat than the steady-state cardio group who actually exercised for twice as long!

The even better news is that HIIT need only be performed for 10-20 minutes at a time.

Hopefully you can see that these unique approaches to diet and nutrition will work synergistically to produce truly effective fat-loss:

1. Get your body to burn fat for energy.
2. Then add exercise that will utilize the most fat possible.

There’s obviously more to talk about on this topic, but a single post doesn’t permit me to get into it all. I hope you enjoyed it and if nothing else, you feel inspired to find any weight-loss program that you feel you can work with to bring permanent results.

How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise

 

It is possible to lose 20 lbs. of bodyfat in 30 days by optimizing any of three factors: exercise, diet, or drug/supplement regimen. I’ve seen the elite implementation of all three in working with professional athletes. In this post, we’ll explore a variation of the “slow carb” diet as used by Dean Karnazes, an ultramarathoner famed for completing 50 marathons on 50 consecutive days in 50 different states. The most impressive part of this, for me, is that he did so, not with the typical anemic marathoner build, but with a well-muscled mesomorph body.

In the last six weeks, I have cut from about 180 lbs. to 165 lbs., while adding about 10 lbs. of muscle, which means I’ve lost about 25 lbs. of fat. This is the only diet besides the rather extreme Cyclical Ketogenic Diet (CKD) that has produced veins across my abdomen, which is the last place I lose fat (damn you, Scandinavian genetics). Here are the four simple rules I followed…

Rule #1: Avoid “white” carbohydrates

Avoid any carbohydrate that is — or can be — white. The following foods are thus prohibited, except for within 1.5 hours of finishing a resistance-training workout of at least 20 minutes in length: bread, rice, cereal, potatoes, pasta, and fried food with breading. If you avoid eating anything white, you’ll be safe.

Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again

The most successful dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat loss, eat the same few meals over and over again. Mix and match, constructing each meal with one from each of the three following groups:

Proteins:
Egg whites with one whole egg for flavor
Chicken breast or thigh
Grass-fed organic beef
Pork

Legumes:
Lentils
Black beans
Pinto beans

Vegetables:
Spinach
Asparagus
Peas
Mixed vegetables

Eat as much as you like of the above food items. Just remember: keep it simple. Pick three or four meals and repeat them. Almost all restaurants can give you a salad or vegetables in place of french fries or potatoes. Surprisingly, I have found Mexican food, swapping out rice for vegetables, to be one of the cuisines most conducive to the “slow carb” diet.

Most people who go on “low” carbohydrate diets complain of low energy and quit, not because such diets can’t work, but because they consume insufficient calories. A 1/2 cup of rice is 300 calories, whereas a 1/2 cup of spinach is 15 calories! Vegetables are not calorically dense, so it is critical that you add legumes for caloric load.

Some athletes eat 6-8x per day to break up caloric load and avoid fat gain. I think this is ridiculously inconvenient. I eat 4x per day:

10am – breakfast
1pm – lunch
5pm – smaller second lunch
7:30-9pm – sports training
10pm – dinner
12am – glass of wine and Discovery Channel before bed

Here are some of my meals that recur again and again:

Scrambled Eggology pourable egg whites with one whole egg, black beans, and microwaved mixed vegetables

Grass-fed organic beef, pinto beans, mixed vegetables, and extra guacamole (Mexican restaurant)

Grass-fed organic beef (from Trader Joe’s), lentils, and mixed vegetables

Post-workout pizza with extra chicken, cilantro, pineapple, garlic, sundried tomotoes, bell peppers, and red onions

Rule #3: Don’t drink calories

Drink massive quantities of water and as much unsweetened iced tea, tea, diet sodas, coffee (without white cream), or other no-calorie/low-calorie beverages as you like. Do not drink milk, normal soft drinks, or fruit juice. I’m a wine fanatic and have at least one glass of wine each evening, which I believe actually aids sports recovery and fat-loss. Recent research into resveratrol supports this.

Rule #4: Take one day off per week

I recommend Saturdays as your “Dieters Gone Wild” day. I am allowed to eat whatever I want on Saturdays, and I go out of my way to eat ice cream, Snickers, Take 5, and all of my other vices in excess. I make myself a little sick and don’t want to look at any of it for the rest of the week. Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate (thyroid function, etc.) doesn’t downregulate from extended caloric restriction. That’s right: eating pure crap can help you lose fat. Welcome to Utopia.

How to Build Muscle and Lose Fat

 

I believe that to have long-term success, the plan must become your lifestyle. It must become a habit.

Therefore this article is not an 8-week program. It’s a list of simple ways to build muscle and lose fat. Tips that worked for me and my readers. And guess what: you will be able to build muscle and lose fat in 8 weeks using these tips.

Build Muscle. The fastest way to build muscle is to get stronger. The stronger you are, the stronger you’ll look. Get into strength training. Do barbell exercises that hit several muscles at the same time: Squats, Deadlifts, Overhead Press, etc.

Start with an empty barbell. Learn the exercise technique. Increase the weight gradually. If you don’t know where to start, check out the Beginner Strength Training Program: it takes 3 times 30 minutes a week.

Nutrition. You need solid nutrition to get stronger and build muscle. Keep the nutrition healthy and you’ll lose fat. Some tips:

• Protein. 1g/lbs daily. Meat, poultry, fish, eggs, etc.
• Fat. Balance omega 3, 6 & 9 intake: fish oil, saturated fat & olive oil.
• Veggies. All kinds, especially green fibrous veggies.
• Fruit. Also all kinds. Eat veggies and/or fruits with every meal.
• Water. 1 liter per 1000 calories you expend.
• Whole grain food. Oats, rice, pasta, breads, …

Eat foods that come in their natural state. Avoid anything that comes out of a box. Avoid trans-fats. Limit junk food consumption to once a week. Quit drinking soda. These simple tips will make a big difference in a very short time.

Lose Fat. Strength training will build muscle while decreasing your body fat. Eating healthy will further decrease your body fat. If you need to lose a lot of fat or if you’re impatient, these tips are for you:

• Cardio. Do 30 minutes of cardio after your strength training. Three times a week at moderate intensity will do. The goal of cardio is to burn fat, not to exhaust yourself. You should breathe heavier than when at rest, but not gasping.
• Cut calories. Track your food intake using Fitday. Start eating 18x your current body-weight in lbs. One week later: cut 500kcal. Check the balance one week later again. Did you lose weight? If you did, keep eating the same amount of calories. If not: cut another 500kcal.

Whatever you do: don’t starve yourself. Fat is emergency storage for your body. If you don’t eat your body will hold the fat and burn muscles. That’s the opposite of what you’re after. Only cut calories if you don’t progress.

Women. Building muscle, losing fat and strength training for women is same as for men. The only difference is women have other hormonal profiles than men. Meaning women will always have less muscle mass and more body fat than men.

But the approach is the same. Follow these tips and you’ll get results. You won’t get bulky if you don’t overeat and stay away from steroids.

Vegan & Vegetarian. Leo is a vegan, and other readers of Zen Habits are also vegans or vegetarians. You’ll find plenty of examples of vegans and vegetarians who built muscle. It can be done. But you might have less results than meat-eaters.

Red meat contains saturated fat and cholesterol which raises your testosterone levels. Testosterone is needed for muscle. Ask your doctor for a blood-test. Eat red meat for 2 months. Do another blood-test. Compare testosterone levels.

Eat lots of dairy products: milk, eggs and cheese if you’re vegetarian. Don’t let the fact that you’re vegan or vegetarian serve as excuse. You can build muscle.

Motivation. The best way to keep yourself motivated is to set goals & track your progress. The classic scale is not your best tool. Here are better ways.

• Fat measurements. Measure your body fat weekly using a fat caliper.
• Pictures. Take pictures every 4 weeks.
• Blood test. Check health improvements.
• Strength stats. Keep a training journal. More strength is more muscles.
• Weigh scale. Only use it once a week. Each Friday for example.

I advise you to keep an online journal. Put it on Zen Habits Forums or on StrongLifts.com Forum. You’ll get feedback & you won’t feel alone anymore in what you’re trying to achieve.

Expectations. Don’t believe the hype in the magazines. You won’t get ripped in 8 weeks. However you can build muscle and lose fat in 8 weeks.

As I wrote in the leading: 8 weeks is a start. It learns you that you can transform your body if you want to. One of my readers lost 40lbs fat & built 20lbs muscle in 10 months at age 55. You can do it. If you want to. Persist and you’ll get there.

Ten Surprising Nutrition Facts

 

The American diet circa 2007 is a disaster – but positive change has begun. Those were the twin themes of the "Fourth Annual Nutrition and Health Conference" held in San Diego, Calif., May 14-16, 2007. The conference was sponsored by the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine in conjunction with the Program in Integrative Medicine (PIM); PIM was founded and is co-directed by Dr. Weil. 

The three-day event brought together leading nutrition researchers from around the world, bearing plenty of both bad and good news. Some highlights:

 

Bad News:

 

1. Hunter-gatherers in the Australian outback today live on 800 varieties of plant foods. Modern Americans live principally on three: corn, soy and wheat.

   From the presentation, "Phytonutrients: Nature’s Bonus from Plant Foods" by David Heber, M.D., Ph.D. Professor of Medicine and Public Health and Director, UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

2. One third of Americans get 47 percent of their calories from junk foods.

   USDA" Trends in the United States – Consumer Attitudes and the Supermarket, 2000. From the presentation, "Phytonutrients: Nature’s Bonus from Plant Foods" by David Heber, M.D., Ph.D. Professor of Medicine and Public Health and Director, UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

3. The average American is eating 300 more calories each day than he or she did in 1985. Added sweeteners account for 23 percent of those additional calories; added fats, 24 percent.

   Putnam et al. USDA. From the presentation, "Cultivating the Common Ground of Food, Nutrition and Ecological Health," by David Wallinga, M.D., Director, Food & Health Program, Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy, Minneapolis, Minn.

4. Vitamin D deficiency is widespread. The following health problems have been linked to vitamin D deficiency: type 1 and 2 diabetes; multiple sclerosis; rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, periodontal disease, increased susceptibility to infection; osteoporosis, low birth weight infants; low seizure threshold; cancers of the breast, prostate, colon, pancreas and ovary; non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; hypertension, myocardial infarction, stroke, congestive heart failure; wheezing in childhood, and compromised muscle strength and falls in the elderly.

   From the presentation, "Vitamin D Deficiency: The Cause of Everything?" by Louise Gagne, M.D., Clinical Assistant Professor, Dept. of Community Health and Epidemiology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.

5. In real dollars, the price of fresh fruits and vegetables has risen nearly 40 percent since 1985. In real dollars, the price of soft drinks has dropped 23 percent. The reason unhealthy foods tend to be less expensive on average than foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables has much to do with American farm policy.

   Condensed from "Food without Thought: How U.S. Farm Policy Contributes to Obesity" Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Environment and Agriculture Program, from the presentation, "The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Searching for the Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World," by Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley, Calif.

           Hopeful News

6. Ten cups per day of green tea delayed cancer onset 8.7 years in Japanese women and three years in Japanese men.

   From the presentation, "Beef or Broccoli? Nutrition and Breast Cancer" by Victoria Maizes, M.D., Executive Director, Program in Integrative Medicine, Assoc. Professor, Clinical Medicine/Family & Community Medicine, the University of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson, Ariz.

7. Three meta-analyses of randomized, placebo-controlled trials found a 5-12 percent decrease in cholesterol levels in hyperlipidemic patients after at least 30 days’ treatment with 600-900 mg of garlic extract.

   Warshafsky S., et al Ann Int Med 1993; 19;599-605; Silagy C, et al. JR Coll Phys Longdon 1994; 28:2-8; Ackermann RT, et al. Arch Intern Med 2001: 161: 813-24. From the presentation, "The Medicinal Spices" by Tieraona Low Dog, M.D., Education Director, Program in Internal Medicine, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Medicine, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.

8. Maternal limitation of seafood consumption to less than 340 grams per week during pregnancy did not protect children from adverse outcomes. In contrast, this observational study [Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children] showed beneficial effects on child development when maternal seafood consumption exceeded 340 grams per week, with no upper limit of benefit…

   Hibbeln et al., The Lancet, 17 Feb., 2007. From the presentation of Joseph Hibbeln, M.D., Senior Clinical Investigator, Sectional of Nutritional Neurosciences, Laboratory of Membrane Biochemistry and Biophysics, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Bethesda, Md.

9. "I see a lot of hopeful trends, including the rise of alternative agriculture: organic, local, biodynamic…There are now over 4,000 farmers’ markets in the U.S. The number has doubled in 10 years."

   From the presentation, "The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Searching for the Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World," by Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley, Calif.

10. Chocolate…may have a mild hypotensive [blood-pressure lowering] effect.

    From the presentation, "The Medicinal Spices" by Tieraona Low Dog, M.D., Education Director, Program in Integrative Medicine, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Medicine, The University of Arizona, Tucson. Ariz.

 

Why fast foods are bad, even in moderation

 

Eating a diet consisting largely of fast food could cause your waistline to bulge more than eating the same amount of fat from healthier sources.

Monkeys fed a diet rich in trans-fats – commonly found in fast foods – grew bigger bellies than those fed a diet rich in unsaturated fats, but containing the same overall number of calories. They also developed signs of insulin resistance, which is an early indicator of diabetes.

Trans-fats, or partially hydrogenated oils, are found in many fast foods and also in baked goods and processed snacks. They dramatically increase the risk of heart disease – even more than saturated fats found in animal products.

Kylie Kavanagh, at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, US, wondered how this "killer fat" would affect the risk of diabetes in 51 vervet monkeys.

She fed one group of monkeys a diet where 8% of their daily calories came from trans-fats and another 27% came from other fats. This is comparable to people who eat a lot of fried food, says Kavanagh. A different group of monkeys was fed the same diet, but the trans-fats were substituted for mono-unsaturated fats, found in olive oil, for example.

Both groups ate the same total calories, which were carefully metered to be just enough for subsistence.

Path to diabetes

After six years on the diet, the trans-fat-fed monkeys had gained 7.2% of their body weight, compared to just 1.8% in the unsaturated group. CT scans also revealed that the trans-fat monkeys carried 30% more abdominal fat, which is risk factor for diabetes and heart disease.

"We were shocked. Despite all our enormous efforts to make sure they didn’t gain weight, they still did. And most of that weight ended up on their tummies," says Kavanagh, who presented her findings at the American Diabetes Association meeting in Washington DC, on Monday. "This is walking them straight down the path to diabetes."

This is the first study to show such a dramatic result on abdominal fat, adds Dariush Mozaffarian at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, US. "The days of thinking about fats just as calories are over," he says.

Partially hydrogenated oils can easily be replaced by other oils during food production. Last week, fast-food giant Wendy’s announced that it was cutting partially hydrogenated oils from its food in the US and Canada, while in January, food manufacturers in US were ordered to label all trans-fats on packaged goods.

16 Ways to Eat Healthy While Keeping it Cheap

 

Eating healthy is important. Eating healthy:

• Lowers disease risks
• Increases productivity
• Gives you more energy
• Makes you stronger

You probably think eating healthy is expensive. I’ll be honest — it is. But there are tricks to keep it low cost. Here are sixteen ways to eat more healthy while keeping it cheap.

What is Healthy Food? Before we start, let’s define healthy food. It consists of:

• Protein. The building blocks of muscles, needed for strength.
• Fat. A balanced intake of omega 3, 6 & 9.
• Veggies. All kinds, especially green fibrous veggies.
• Fruit. Full of vitamins.
• Water. 1 liter per 1000 calories you expend.
• Whole grain food. Oats, rice, pasta, breads, …

On with the tips.

1. Switch to Water. I drank huge amounts of soda daily for more than 15 years. Then I started Strength Training and switched to water:

• It’s healthier
• It’s cheaper

Quit the soda & drink water. Take a bottle wherever you go.

2. Consume Tap Water. Check the price of water on your tap water bill. Now check the price of bottled water. Quit a difference, isn’t it? So why are you buying bottled water?

• Cleaner? Not necessarily.
• Better taste? No, simply a matter of Adaptation.

Bottled water companies get their supply from the same source you do: municipal water systems. It’s like selling ice to Eskimos. If you don’t trust the quality of tap water, filter it yourself. I use a Brita Pitcher. One $7 filter cleans 40 gallons water.

3. Eat Eggs. I always have eggs at breakfast:

• Full of vitamins
• High in proteins
• Low in price

Don’t believe the Eggs & Cholesterol myth. Dietary cholesterol is not bound to blood cholesterol. Want to make it cheaper? Buy a chicken.

4. Eat Fatty Meats. Fatty meats are cheaper & more tasty than lean meats. You think it’s not healthy? Check the Fat Myths:

• Fat doesn’t make you fat, excess calories do
• You need a balanced intake of fats: omega 3, 6 & 9

I’m on the Anabolic Diet, I buy beef chuck instead of sirloin.

5. Get Whey. The cheapest source of protein. 70$ for a 10lbs bag lasting 4 months. Nothing beats that. Use whey in your Post Workout Shake to help recovery.

6. Tuna Cans. Canned tuna is cheap & contains as much protein as meat. Alternate tuna with eggs, meat & whey. You’ll easily get to your daily amount of protein.

7. Buy Frozen Veggies. I mostly buy frozen veggies:

• Take less time to prepare
• You don’t waste money if not eaten in time
• Can be bought in bulk for discounts & stored in your freezer

If you can afford fresh veggies, then do it. I go frozen.

8. Use a Multivitamin. Pesticides lower the vitamin levels of your fruits & veggies. Two solutions:

• Buy organic food. Expensive.
• Use a multivitamin. $10 a month.

Choose what fits your wallet best. I take the multivitamin.

9. Fish Oil. Omega-3 is found in fish oil. Benefits of omega-3 consumption include:

• Lowered cholesterol levels
• Decreased body fat
• Reduced inflammation

You need to eat fatty fish 3 times a week to get these benefits. Time consuming & expensive, I know. Try Carlson’s Liquid Fish Oil with Lemon flavor. One teaspoon daily. You’ll be ok.

10. Buy Generic Food. The box might be less attractive, it’s certainly more attractive to your wallet. Brand-name food will always be more expensive. You’re paying for the name. Get real. Food is food. Go generic.

11. Buy in Bulk. Think long-term. Buying in bulk is more expensive at the cashier, but cheaper in the long run:

• Gets you discounts
• Saves time
• Saves car fuel

Invest in a big freezer. Buy meats & veggies in bulk and freeze them.

12. Go to One Grocery Store. This grocery store is cheaper for meat, that grocery store is cheaper for veggies, the other grocery store is cheaper for fish… How many grocery stores are you going to, trying to find the cheapest food? Think!

• Time is money. Stop losing a day shopping.
• Cars don’t run on water. Lower your fuel expenses.

I get all my food in a big grocery store near my place. It hasn’t the cheapest price for all foods, but it saves me time & fuel.

13. Make a Plan. A classic, but worth repeating. Everything starts with a plan.

• Make a list of what you need
• Eat a solid meal, don’t go hungry
• Go the grocery, get what’s on your list & get out

No need to take your partner or kids with you. This is not a recreational activity. Just get your food & get back home.

14. Take Food To Work. Ever counted how much money you throw away buying food at work daily? Start preparing your food for the day on waking up:

• Get up earlier
• Eat a solid breakfast (like Scrambled Eggs)
• Prepare your food for work in the meanwhile

Total time 30 minutes. No stress during the day about what you’ll be eating & you get healthy food while sparing money.

15. Eat Less. This one is obvious. The less you eat, the lower your grocery bill. If you’re overweight, get on a diet. Your health & bank account will thank you.

16. Don’t Buy Junk Food. The last one. Stop buying anything that comes out of a box, it’s:

• Unhealthy
• Expensive

If you actually find junk food that is cheaper than whole food, think long-term. Health implications.

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