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Namely:
Everything in Moderation, Right?
When I hear people say “Everything in Moderation”, it’s basically just an excuse to eat stuff they know is damaging to their health. Those people never look or feel like me either. They are paying the price for this philosophy and I’ll explain why here.
Is cyanide OK in moderation as long as it’s in something that tastes good? How about eating strychnine, as long as you are careful to space it out enough so it doesn’t kill you right away, or you build a tolerance to it over time, or you take antidotes every time you ingest it?
The food you eat either improves your health or damages your health. There is no “neutral” food. The “Everything in moderation” people are making an allowance for the foods that damage their health. Then, they are hanging on hope that the healthy foods they eat will act as an antidote to counteract the damage they just caused. Does this sound like a healthy lifestyle to you?
Then there’s the people who claim to eat healthy “most” of the time and only eat unhealthy “some” of the time, as part of a “balanced” diet. Dr. Mercola has a great answer to this one:
“According to soda companies like Coca-Cola, sugary beverages can be safely enjoyed as part of a “balanced” diet and lifestyle. But what kind of “balance” are they really talking about? In essence, the “balance” referred to here is a balance between poison and nutrition. The idea they’re promoting is that if you eat a healthy diet, you can safely indulge in a little bit of poison every now and then. This is the only balance they can refer to, because when it comes to real foods and pure water — which is the only beverage your body cannot live without — maintaining balance is not really an issue. When you eat real food, it is beneficial and you don’t need to concern yourself with adverse effects like obesity and diabetes.”
The myth that “everything in moderation” is OK was recently busted through the publication of a study showing that eating only one junk food treat (aka poison dose) per day for just one month is enough to trigger metabolic syndrome in healthy people!
I submit that healthy foods can be just as “fun” and delicious and even more so, then unhealthy foods. In fact, I have found that all the healthy foods I eat and the recipes my friends and I have developed (many of them on HardBodCafe.com) are much more delicious than the unhealthy foods I used to eat. In fact, they are so much more delicious, I simply don’t crave any of those unhealthy foods anymore. Those poison food from my past don’t taste near as good as the healthy foods I eat now. Plus, I know that those poison foods would make me feel like crap, so I just don’t touch them anymore.
The X Gym Resolution Revolution
Did you know that over 90% of the people who make New Year’s resolutions fail? It’s actually more like 95%, but about 5% of the ones counted in the “success group” are lying about it because they are too ashamed to come to grips with the fact that they failed, or they “tweaked” their original resolution along the way to make it more achievable. I call the 95% who fail, “Resolutionaries” because they tend to make the same unrealistic resolution over and over, year after year and keep failing. Maybe this is where Ben Franklin’s quote came from: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Are you tired of being a Resolutionary? Are you ready to revolutionize your resolutions and try something new, instead of that same old thing that hasn’t been working for you?
Fit Past Forty (or Fifty or Further!)
People often use age as an excuse for why they aren’t as fit as they were in their 20s, but did you know that from a purely physiological standpoint, your metabolism shouldn’t slow down more than 3% per decade after turning 30 years old? This means that when you’re 40, your metabolism should still be 97% of what it was when you were 30. When you’re 70, it should still be 89% of what it was when you were 30.
Why is the decline usually faster than that? The answer is simple: We become more sedentary and/or exercise wrong.
Most people also think that muscle is harder to acquire as we age, but that’s not the case either. Numerous studies have shown that people who keep exercising, lose little to no muscle past the age of 40, even up to the age of 80! Hard to believe, right? Don’t take my word for it. Google it for yourself. It’s astonishing.
People who want to be fit past 40 should however, change some of the ways they are exercising. There are certain things people can get away with in their 20s that aren’t such good ideas past 40, like long-duration cardio for instance, or heavy, ballistic weight training. Instead of long-duration cardio (like running) that is usually high-impact and breaks down joints over time, shorter duration High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is a great alternative and also saves a ton of time, which is another important factor for people past 40. Instead of heavy, ballistic weight training, methods like those found at the X Gym are ideal because they are much safer, yet even more effective at building strength and muscle tone than traditional strength training.
Cardio may fight fat in younger years, but it can have the opposite effect as we age, especially as we acquire more and more stress in our lives with more responsibilities and more pressures in our careers. Yes, I said it: Cardio can actually turn into a fattening activity as we age, due to its unique ability to increase cortisol and other hormones, in addition to a high-stress life. IT can even shrink muscle mass and speed aging! The HIIT training I mentioned above and strength training (especially X Gym style) is particularly effective at reducing stress and belly fat, increasing strength, endurance and the metabolism.
Strength training is especially important for people past 40, because they are generally less active as they are more involved in the sedentary workforce than they were when they were younger. People passed 40 also are more prone to accumulating visceral fat (belly fat), which is the most dangerous type of fat. Strength training is particularly effective at keeping visceral fat in check.
Sure, there are certainly hormonal shifts that take place in the body as we age, along with other changes that warrant modifications in the way we exercise and the X Gym workout is already perfectly suited for all those changes. 
You can see Herschel Walker at 53 years old in the picture top left, who is in better shape than 99.9% of the 20 year olds out there. Sure, he’s genetically gifted too, but he also doesn’t touch heavy weights or long duration cardio. And then there’s Rachel McLish, who many people think looks even better over 40 than she did in her “prime” in her 20’s as you can see pictured right. And she doesn’t touch heavy weights or long duration cardio either. It’s not just Rachel either. Heck, if I had a dime for every woman who told me they want “Madonna arms,” who showed off her best guns after she turned 40…