My Arch Nemesis: Belly Fat

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Belly fat is stubborn, unsightly, and unwanted. We all want to be rid of it, but it’s always there, lurking, sagging, dragging us and our self-esteem down with it. Lucky for you, I have the knowledge, skills, and experience to eliminate your pouch and bring you out from beneath your belly fat’s shadow. Just take a look at these quick tips and be the person you always knew you could be:

Flaunt what you got!

One study suggests those who have a fruit bowl in their house weigh on average eight pounds less than those who don’t. While correlation may not mean causation, it does stand to reason those with more fruit on hand are more likely to snack on fruit as opposed to something unhealthy. Pro tip: keep two kinds of fruit on hand. That way, you don’t get sick of eating the same thing all the time!

Out of sight, out of mind.

The opposite of the above, hide unhealthy temptation. As they say, “out of sight, out of mind.” A separate study found individuals who had chips or cookies (junk food) immediately visible weighed about 10lbs more than those who didn’t. What’s even more surprising?

Those with cereal boxes visible generally weighed 21lbs more than those without such sugary snacks in eyesight. Soft drinks visible? Try 25lbs more!

Smaller plates.

Really, it’s honestly that simple. Use smaller plates and you’re bound to eat smaller portions, which means less food, and less food, as you can likely guess, means a smaller waistline. Clearly, food just being in front of us makes us far more likely to eat it. So with smaller plates, not only can we physically not serve larger portions, but we will be comfortable with the smaller meals in front of us.

9-10 inch plates are recommended. If you are currently using 12 inch plates, research suggests you will reduce portion size by an immense 22%. That’s nearly a quarter of your daily diet, just with plates! Take advantage.

Follow these tips and you’ll be strutting the along the sand in your newfound beach body in no time! Till next time!

Fat-Causing Condiments

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Sweet N’ Low. Trans Fats. MSG. They’re making you fat. Of course, they are on nearly anything and everything that’s edible, and so they can be difficult to get away from; not to mention, their nutritious value (or lack thereof) is largely neglected as a whole in the mainstream media, making them easy to neglect and forget. Yet, theses additives are there and are taking their toll, primarily in three different ways:

  1.  Two of these additives hinder the release of a hormone, leptin, which is responsible for telling your brain when you are full.
  2.  Other obesity additives actually increase your fat content by transforming how our bodies absorb and utilize calories. How do they do this? Insulin. When these additives increase insulin, a fat-storing insulin, your calories are converted to fat rather than as energy for you muscles.
  3. Additional additives, believe it or not, change chemicals in our brain known as “neurotransmitters” to make us addicted to them, just like a serious drug.

In light of the harm these additives can cause to your weight loss and fitness journey, I have elected to put together a list of the absolute worse additives that you should remove immediately from your diet:

–Stripped Carbohydrates: Basically sugar, flour, enriched white flour, white flour, glucose, high fructose corn syrup (aka HFCS), and sucrose among others.

–Artificial Sweeteners: NutraSweet (aspartame), Sunette (acesulfame K), & Sweet ‘N Low (saccharin)

–Added caffeine: Soda or energy drinks like Red Bull. Of course, a few cups of green tea or coffee are nothing to worry about.

–Trans Fats: As I’m sure you’ve heard, trans fats are not good for you. They should be cut immediately, and are generally listed “partially hydrogenated oils”

–MSG: MSG also falls under this umbrella of undesirable additives. It is often described as “monosodium glutamate”.

–Extra Alcohol: If you need to, limit it to one or two drinks a week.

–Extra Salt: Often found in chips, crackers, canned food, pickles, different cheeses, pretzels, condiments, and salted nuts, extra salt is a silent killer you should try to avoid at all costs.

Well, now that I’ve told you what you can’t eat, let me tell what you can eat:

Heinz Organic Tomato Ketchup is a great option over other more traditional ketchup options. Why? It doesn’t have high fructose corn syrup.
Curley’s Famous Hot and Spicy Barbecue Sauce is awesome because it doesn’t have high fructose corn syrup or MSG.
Newman’s Own is a fantastic salad dressing line since many of its options lack excess sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
Lucini’s Hearty Artichoke Tomato Sauce has a measly 230 mg of sodium in each serving and less than a gram of sugar, which is literally less than 1/10th that of the more popular Prego’s Italian Sauce Traditional.
McCormick’s Original Taco Seasoning is a great option for adding some flavor to those shelled pieces of deliciousness because it has no trans fats, otherwise know as hydrogenated oils.

These are just a few options you can use to better your diet, make the transformation you dream of, and lose the weight you want gone. For even more information, go to this article. That’s it for now. All the best!

Repair Your Broken Metabolism

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Often times, I find myself repeatedly talking about the different the dangers related to chronic dieting or what other’s like to call yo-yo dieting. One of those dangers is the fact that constant dieting can break your metabolism. In other words, it can slow down your metabolism to the point where it’s extremely difficult to lose weight! As dire as this may all sound, there’s always a solution. You can repair your metabolism after years of chronic dieting. Here’s how.

The best metabolism-repairing solution I can offer is increasing something known as the “G-flux.” The G-flux involves a very simple formula: eat more, exercise more. Eating more may sound like the opposite of what you need to be doing, but let me explain. When you pair up increased calorie intake with increased exercise you increase your metabolism. Like everything in life, the trick is to learn how to balance the calorie intake with the exercise so you manage creating a negative calorie balance.

What usually happens is that when people decide to go on a diet, they either don’t exercise at all or reduce their calorie intake. This is a problem. First, not exercising or remaining sedentary will slow down your metabolism significantly. What ends up happening is that people don’t really teach their bodies to burn additional calories, hence your metabolism simply stops working in your favor. Second, when you under-eat (as many diets ask you to do) your metabolism adopts a starvation protection mechanism. Since your body doesn’t know when you will feed it again, it slows down in order to preserve whatever the little energy and nutrients you have consumed.

As you can see, as contrary as it may sound, eating and exercising more will boost and repair your metabolism. So for example, if your basal metabolic rate allows you to burn 2000 do not choose to only consume 1500 calories and leave those 500 calories to waste. This will unequivocally lead you to having a sluggish metabolism. What you should do is eat 300 more calories, so 2300 in total. Then make sure you exercise and burn 800 more calories than usual, so 2800. According to the G-flux formula, this will put you at a 500 calorie deficit, but the difference is that you have triggered and sped up your metabolism. That’s the power of the G-flux!

 

Some Foods That Reduce Stomach Fat

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For decades, we have always been told that fat is simply “no good” for you and only causes weight gain among other negative results. Well, I’m here to tell you that there is no reason to view fatty foods poorly anymore. When looking at the food pyramid with grains as the foundational part of any “healthy diet,” it is clear that many times consuming an abundance of wheat actually causes high blood sugar. High blood sugar in turn results to poor insulin sensitivity, thus producing excessive abdominal fat accumulation which has the potential of becoming cyclical for many Americans.

When some people think of “fatty foods,” often times cake or a pastry comes to mind, but there are tons of foods high in natural fat that are loaded with vitamins and minerals. It is sometimes easy to overlook different produce that are a lot healthier for you, so I’m here to shed light on a few that you can start using in your day to day eating habits. The following fatty foods help to maintain a solid fat-burning hormone balance by replacing heavy, wheat foods (bagels, bread) with less processed food that make you feel great after a meal.

Some of our top “fatty foods” to reduce belly fat accumulation are: whole eggs, nuts (e.g., almonds, pecans, walnuts, cashews), seeds (e.g., sunflower, pumpkin, flax, chia), avocado, olive oil, fatty fish (e.g., mackerel, tuna, salmon, trout), and coconut oil. Nuts are super high in natural fat and protien with low calories, fish has high omega 3 levels and avocado or olive oil contains minerals that help heart functions. Seeds such as flax or chia are key components in regulating your intestinal system and providing great amounts of energy, along with maintaining fullness after consumption. These foods will help to not only maintain an overall healthy day to day diet, but also help increase energy levels.

 

Lewis Howes Podcast – 8 Mental Shifts to Making $100 Million in Your Business

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I had the chance to record a podcast a few weeks ago with my good friend, Lewis Howes. We talked about my experience as an entrepreneur in the nutrition industry and outline 8 mental shifts that helped BioTrust become a $100 million company. Go ahead and take a listen!

http://lewishowes.com/podcast/josh-bezoni/

Don’t Eat Vegetables Without Olive Oil!

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We all know that veggies are awesome for your health, your waistline, and your dinner plate. Vegetables are rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidant phytochemicals. However, it’s sometimes not enough to just crunch away at these vegetables without adding another very important nutrient. The good news is, it’s a delicious one.

A recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition revealed that participants who added olive oil to their salads and veggie dishes absorbed much greater amounts of vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals. Those who skipped adding the healthy fat (or chose a fat-free dressing) absorbed almost none.

Why does olive oil matter? Well, the phytochemicals are what help to fight off inflammation, defy aging and control appetite. If you’re not absorbing phytochemicals, you may as well not be eating vegetables at all, since you’d be throwing away the vast majority of what makes them healthy and nutrient.

Olive oil is rich in monounsaturated fats which have been shown definitively to increase veggie nutrient absorption. If you want to get the most out of your veggie intake, top off your salads with olive oil and vinegar. Also, add olive oil to your veggie side dishes and cook your vegetables in olive oil.

Olive oil has many other health benefits. For one, it can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. Traditionally, a low-fat diet has been prescribed to prevent heart disease, diabetes and other risks associated with fat. However, more important than avoiding fat altogether is eating the right type of fat. A diet rich in monounsaturated fats such as those found in olive oil, nuts, and seeds actually protects from many of these chronic diseases.

Older individuals who consume olive oil every day can protect themselves from strokes, according to a study from France. The study looked at over 7,000 individuals with no history of stroke. After 5 years, they noticed that the participants who didn’t have strokes were also the individuals who used olive oil regularly for cooking and dressing food.

Olive oil has also been shown to slow down the aging of the heart. As we grow older, the heart goes through its own aging process. Arteries may not function as well as they once did, and that can lead to a host of other health problems. In a recent study, Spanish researchers found that an olive oil rich diet or other monounsaturated fats could improve the arterial function of elderly individuals.

 

How to Stop Stress Eating

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exercise jogging SSEmotional or stress eating as it is often called can be devastating and entirely derail the most ardent of dieters. You have probably done this at one point in your life. You get stressed, whether it is from work or another source, and you end up eating an entire carton of ice cream. While it is an understandable way to vent your problems, we can all agree that this is not helping you achieve your goal of a healthier body and lifestyle.

The problem lies in how we cope in stress and not stress itself. This is because, given the hectic nature of modern life, stress is simply unavoidable. When experiencing stress, we can either choose to deal with it in a positive or negative manner. We are here to teach you how to choose the latter.

First, you have to recognize that you will become stressed and then make an effective and positive action plan on how you will deal with it. If you don’t have a plan, you will inevitably end up binge eating a pack of your favorite cookies.

Everyone has different interests and there are, therefore, a number of effective ways to positively cope with stress. Here are a few that I have found useful.

Go outside and go for a long walk, run, or drive. These activities allow your brain to think. Often times, people forget that they are even exercising and run miles before realizing how far they have run. Furthermore, running release endorphins that can effectively clear your mind and soothe your stress.

Another great way to cope with stress is to listen to some of your favorite music. Music can help your mind think more clearly and calm you down. Furthermore, it’s even more effective if paired with one of the activities above. These aren’t the only solutions for dealing with stress, but simply the ones that work for me.

How a Simple Trick Can Help you Shed Belly Fat

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Josh Bezoni - Belly Fat TrickA group of researchers recently published a study in the prestigious Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise determined that men and women who possess more abdominal fat tend to burn fat at a much slower pace than those who fat was located in the lower portion of their body.  The primary take-a-away from this article is that a primary focus, if you wish to accomplish your goal of a full body transformation, must be shedding belly fat. Don’t worry, a slew of studies have shown a new, truly effective, method of burning such fat. The best part about this is that it actually speeds up this process.

A group of researchers conducted a ground-breaking study and discovered that people who perform a simple fat-destroying trick two times each day can burn fat four times faster than the control group. This is not the only academic study that yielded such results. Published in the Journal of International Medical Research, another study demonstrated  that those utilizing this ultra-effective trick shed more than a fifth of their body fat over three months. If you want to see real results, then you should probably click here. As the studies show, you can shed four times more fat, why not try this simple trick…