Your basal metabolic rate is the number of calories your body burns, not including calories burned from daily activity. I realize that calorie counting and knowing your BMR may seem like an "old school" approach to dropping body fat, but an understanding of these numbers will help if you are stuck. I want to discuss your BMR and why many people simply eat too many calories per day when trying to lose weight. We will also discuss the fact that people overestimate the effect that adding muscle has on increasing the BMR.

[I wasn’t planning on throwing in another Halloween photo, but this picture was too good to pass up.]
Understanding BMR Is Going to Help You Get Lean Quickly

The total calories you burn in a day are a sum of your BMR plus any calories burned through activity. The biggest number in this equation is your basal metabolic rate…the amount of […]

Original post by admin

Organizations whose members are expected to engage in physical activity as an essential aspect of affiliation – the various branches of the military, law enforcement agencies, fitness methodologies like CrossFit – necessarily impose standardized fitness benchmarks, minimum requirements which every prospective member must satisfy. When a significant portion of your professional identity is predicated upon your ability to catch (or kill) bad guys (bad guys, mind you, whose primary objective is to avoid capture), you’ve got to be able to run, jump, support your own body weight, and adequately perform all the other physical activities that might come up in a day’s work. The various fitness standards are an attempt to ensure candidates are up to par in their respective areas.

They vary wildly, of course. Different jobs call for different levels of competency. Also, certain organizations, like the Army, are always looking for new recruits, so their standards aren’t quite […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

We live in the information age. There’s so much knowledge being fed to us every second with so little time to actually digest it, that we end up more confused than when we started. This is also what’s happening with the fitness advice of today. There’s so much information on new “special techniques to get you strong”, that we forget about the simple, core exercises that have been proven to work for decades. In that spirit, I’ve listed the three core exercises for building muscle.

[I have no idea what I was thinking when I put in this picture.]
It’s Time To Get Old School
There’s a reason doing 3 sets of 6-10 repetitions has been so popular up until now for building muscle. It’s because it’s simple, and it works. If you’re looking to put on muscle, find a weight that for your particular exercise, you can’t do more than 10 repetitions […]

Original post by rafael@thefitnessadviser.com (Rafi Bar-Lev)

(This is the first part of a four part series on fitness.)
fit-ness
?fit-ness
n.

The capacity of an organism to survive and transmit its genotype to reproductive offspring as compared to competing organisms
The ability to conduct oneself in physically demanding situations; to function effectively in emergencies; to display superior body composition and aptitude in matters of strength, cardiovascular capacity, power expression, reaction time, speed, agility, flexibility; to evince generally superior health and resistance to injury and disease

In Grok’s time, both definitions of fitness were inextricably linked. In fact, I’d argue a Paleolithic hominid organism’s reproductive fitness almost completely relied upon his physical fitness level, whereas today’s humans wield various currencies, both immaterial and tangible, that predict their reproductive fitness irrespective of their physical strength, stamina, or endurance. A person’s bank account, education, or employment status are all considered to be better predictors of reproductive fitness. The ability to whip out a debit card […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

(This video can’t be embedded, so when you click the screen you’ll be directed to a new site – kcra.com – that hosts the video.)
An update on last week’s event announcement:
Early this week I hit the road for a mini book tour in Northern California. I started off shooting a spot on NBC’s local news affiliate (KCRA) in Sacramento (video above). Between this and a stop at another local news station (this time in Reno, NV) I had the pleasure of giving my first official Primal Blueprint PowerPoint presentation to CrossFit Genesis and other Primal enthusiasts in Roseville, CA. The response was overwhelming. It was unbelievably inspiring to meet people one-on-one that are turning their lives around with the PB lifestyle behaviors. You see, I get emails every day from readers with success stories; we have dozens of them showcased here, and many others have been featured on MDA. I […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

Symmetry is a beautiful thing. It seems to be nature’s preferred state, at least in the structure of organisms: two eyes for stereoscopic vision (the better to hunt you with), two legs of equal length for injury-free traversal of the environment, two hands, two arms. For all intents and purposes, the two sides of the body are approximate mirror images of each other, with corresponding muscles and ligaments and tendons. Our anatomical symmetry is obviously a product of evolution, because a balanced body simply works better. Kids born with right legs an inch or two shorter than the left are more prone to injury, just as cars with bigger wheels on the left will be more prone to disrepair. Objective human beauty is determined by symmetry of the facial structure, as if we’re innately drawn to balance. A balanced body structure, too, is objectively attractive, because it connotes strength and […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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Original post by healthhabits

Interesting fact in this article I thought you might like to know.

Guest post by Tom Raithel

Being a loser is a lot more fun than it used to be.

In fact, being the Biggest Loser in a weight-loss competition sponsored by the Tri-State Business Group on Health this spring resulted in cash bonuses, not to mention the likelihood of improved health and happiness for the 266 participants.

The Business Group sponsored a Biggest Loser competition, modeled after a television program of the same name, to encourage employees of Tri-State businesses to lose weight.

Employees at 12 companies took part in the 10-week contest, said Lisa Gish, executive director of the group.

The first-place team of eight won $800. The second-place team won $400. Employers of some of the teams chipped in additional incentives, Gish said.

“Obviously, our interest was to provide some sort of program on the obesity front, because that is one of the concerns that businesses say they are most challenged with,” Gish said.

“It’s a known problem, and even more than that … they (employers) will tell you that tobacco use and BMI (body mass index, or weight) are two of the biggest problems they have trouble impacting,” she said.

If it shares the stage with tobacco use as a national problem, obesity is increasingly hogging the spotlight. A 2007 study by the Milken Institute, “An Unhealthy America: The Economic Burden of Chronic Disease,” found that the most important way to reduce health costs in the U.S. is to reduce obesity. Obesity is commonly defined as having a body mass index greater than 30.

The study concluded that, if the country reduced the growth of its obese population to 1998 levels, it could save more than $300 million in the treatment of high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

That’s just reducing the growth. In fact, the total cost of U.S. obesity and physical inactivity in 2000 was $117 billion, according to a 2008 study by Trust for America’s Health.

Businesses pay part of that cost through higher health insurance premiums, worker absenteeism and loss of productivity, said JoEllen Vrazel, director of the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity of the Indiana State Department of Health.

Just how much this costs businesses locally and nationally is hard to determine, said Andrea Hays, program director for two Welborn Baptist Foundation programs aimed at reducing obesity. “Folks can come up with all the figures they want. Obesity is a tough one.”

But the local problem appears to be worse than national one, she said. A random telephone survey of adults in five counties in the Tri-State revealed that the percentage of overweight and obese people here was in most cases higher than state and national averages.

For example, in Vanderburgh County, the percentage of obese people was 34 percent compared to 27 percent in Indiana and 26 percent nationally. In Warrick County, the percentage of obese people was 40 percent.

As a result, the Foundation has a school-based initiative called Heroes that emphasizes good nutrition and exercise among young children, and an adult program called movement, which encourages healthier eating and more physical activity, Hays said.

Individual companies are also taking action. Flanders Electric has one of the longest-running and most innovative wellness programs in the Evansville area. “The reason why they started it was basically as a cost containment for insurance purposes,” said Jennifer Wakeland, wellness director at the company.

A key aspect of the program is financial incentives for employees, she said.

The program includes an annual health screening for employees in which risks, such as tobacco use, obesity and high blood pressure, are identified. Employees receive information about their risks and develop goals to reduce them. They get money if they make progress toward a goal.

“We’ve been getting results,” Wakeland said. Between 85 and 95 percent of the employees participate compared to many companies that have rates as low as 20 percent participation, she said.

The program includes follow-up blood pressure screening, tobacco cessation classes and the posting of information on a variety of health matters.

As for obesity, the company offers a fitness reimbursement for those who exercise regularly and arranges reduced corporate rates for employees at three local fitness centers, said Wakeland.

Tracy Mallory, benefits specialist for Berry Plastics, said that the Biggest Loser competition generated enough interest the company is offering its own Biggest Loser Part 2 — an individual competition where employees receive financial incentives for losing weight over 12 weeks.

The contest also succeeded because obesity, weight loss and healthier living are all hot topics now, Mallory said. “A lot of people were interested in losing weight, and we just gave them a start.”

Tom Raithel

EBJ correspondent

Cool idea isn’t it…run your own biggest loser contest and get your employees healthy. Win/Win in my book!
-Darrin Walton

I am doing an intense exercise routine in my apartment this winter. One of the days is such a pain in the butt that I really have to psych myself up to mentally prepare for it. The big challenge I have found with doing exercise at home is the ability to go easy on myself or finding an excuse to cut my workout short. It is much harder to justify cutting a workout short, when you drive to a gym. I'd like to discuss this a bit as well as get your comments and tips that you may have regarding exercising at home.

[The benefits of working out at home is the time you save. The downside is that you are the only person holding yourself accountable. It is so easy to simply find an excuse to cut your workout short, skip sets, etc.]
Character = How You Behave When No One […]

Original post by admin

As part of our ongoing Primal Blueprint Fitness Video Contest reader Peter Nathan submitted his interpretation of Primal Blueprint bodyweight exercises (the current theme). He is in the running for a cash and prize package worth $400 and has a one in four shot of winning. If you’d like to be featured on Mark’s Daily Apple for a chance to win Primal gear read the Primal Blueprint contest details and submit your video (fitness or recipe), real life Primal story or Primal recipe soon!

Check back tomorrow for a Worker Bee culinary creation of a reader’s Primal recipe submitted as part of the Primal Blueprint Cookbook Contest (current theme: A Primal Breakfast).
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Related posts:

Contest Video: Primal Blueprint Bodyweight Exercises
Contest Video: Primal Blueprint Upper Body Workout
Announcement: New Recipe Theme for the Cookbook Contest

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Original post by Mark Sisson