Learn to Breathe
If you’ve ever tried to build a fire with the best logs possible and no air, then you know what happens. No fuel or spark will make a difference. Even though the oxygen is often overlooked, it’s a vital part of a fire. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to best utilize oxygen to feed your flame.
The second most important element of success in weight loss, after the right fuel, is exercise. I seriously believe nutrition plays a role of 80% in your success, if not more. It would be foolish to neglect how simple it is to change your eating habits and try to work out like a madman to see success. I have helped many clients lose tremendous amounts of weight with diet alone. This chapter is for those who have already mastered Chapter 1 or those of you who care to multitask to see success.
In my practice, clients who see the most success concentrate on their diet 80% and their workout about 20%. This gets much more drastic success than the opposite.
Now that you realize nutrition is the #1 priority, let’s move on.
There are a few different elements that make working out important. The first and foremost is oxygen consumption. In my opinion, the only reason to work out is to increase oxygen consumption. If you merely walk around all day instead of sitting down, you’ll breathe more. If you breathe more, you also exhale more. This means you’re burning off more energy. It’s a simple process.
Yet, there are ways to increase how much we breathe throughout the day with different types of workouts which I will bring to your attention. In Chapter 1, you learned how to eat small, frequent meals. This is a no-brainer for most and has been preached about for years by many health professionals. The difference in what I preach is combining fats and proteins to balance out our high consumption of carbohydrates. This still baffles people even after reading the science provided.
The same applies to workouts. I have a few simple rules to working out. When you first start working out, doing anything at all is an accomplishment. Just get off the couch and go for a walk. If you’re too far out of shape to walk, then swim. If you’re too out of shape to swim, then play video games. Anything that is more interactive than the TV. I’m not joking about the video games. One hour of first-person shooters expends about the same amount of calories as jogging a mile!
After you have mastered getting off the couch at least three times a week for 30 minutes, it’s time to add more technique to your workouts.
Some workouts actually hurt more than they help. If you put too much oxygen on your fire, you can actually blow out the flame! If you don’t add enough oxygen, the flame will die as well. The key here and everywhere else in life seems to be balance.
I often see people in the gym for two to three hours at a time and they see no progress after months of the same routine. This saddens me because I know a method that only takes 30 minutes three times a week to see much better results. Enough success to get six-pack abs and the body of their dreams. Just look at all the aerobics teachers who are out of shape. People! Obviously aerobics classes aren’t the answer!
As I mentioned before, getting the right balance of oxygen to the flame is the only reason we work out when trying to lose weight. With this in mind, let’s look at a few different concepts.