So... if you're reading this page, then 9 times out of 10, you are looking for some fitness tips or facts. Let me just start off by saying I don't get paid anything for posting the information that I am about to tell you. I'm not selling a fitness product. I look at it like this: the healthier you are, the longer you will be around to enjoy my music and videos! Sounds like a good deal to me.

The first thing is this, fitness has unfortunately become a BUSINESS, instead of being a LIFESTYLE (kinda reminds me of some churches that I've been to). By the way, I'm a matter-of-fact type of person... sorta like Megan Fox because without all of the cursing. So I'm going to put it to you straight and I hope that no one gets offended. To quote one of my favorite people, "It's all in love... with the love... L-O-V-E." ~Michael Jackson So back to my point. Don't believe everything that you see on TV. Don't believe everything that you hear in the gym either. I used to be a full time personal trainer and the one thing that I felt like I should have been getting paid for was being involuntary psychologist. Trainers listen to their clients problems, issues, confusion and frustrations. It's apart of the job. A trainer ends up being more of a life coach than a fitness coach. Ask any personal trainer (good or bad) and they'll all just about agree that most of the time isn't spent counting (not if you are good) but more so listening to clients vent while they exercise. Trainers don't get paid for what they know about working out. They get paid for their time and PRE-PAID for results. Notice the CAPS on the word PRE-PAID. Clients expect results at the end of it all. Not a new friend, lover or business partner. So let's break down how you are able to get results without the trainer (because we've established that the only reason you would need a trainer is for motivation). 

These are the facts and tips to being healthy for life. If you do these things, I PROMISE you that the quality of your life will rise. (If you follow these tips and get results, feel free to send a donation for my time of posting this.)

1. The definition of the word DIET: Dieting has been given this connotation that is means "to give up" a particular food product or a restriction to consumption. A diet is simply the way that you eat on a daily basis. Point, blank, period. If you eat M&M's everyday, that's your diet. If you do the Beyonce' diet and eat Frosted Flakes, drink lemon juice and lick cayenne pepper everyday, that's your diet. If you give up eating carbs because you want to lose weight, that's just plain silly. You NEED carbs. Carbohydrates ensure that you can have energy so that you can function from day to day. So whatever idiot said "Don't eat carbs!" should be hog tied. There are good carbs and bad cards, which I'll talk about shortly. But about dieting, always remember this, if you "go on a diet" that you can't keep up for the rest of your LIFE, you've already failed... and guess what else? It's NOT a diet at that point. It was merely just an experiment. So unless you're a scientist, let the trendy diet thing go. EAT RIGHT DAILY!

2. Good carbs are: fruits, vegetables and grains (breads, wheat, oatmeal, rice) . Simple as that. Bad carbs are:  Products made with anything that doesn't grow out of the ground and tastes too good to be true. If it tastes too good to be true then it's probably not that good for you. Don't get me wrong, food is supposed to taste good but anything that is addictive or causes an obsession is probably not good for you. Example: Women have chocolate cravings. Yes? We agree on that right? Ok but how many women do you here say this: "OMG! I have got to stop by the store and get some wheat bread and watch Nip Tuck tonight!" You've never heard that. But here's my disclaimer: chocolate can be good for you, but in moderation and most the dark kind.

3.  The key to losing belly fat: Eating right. Almost 70% of how we look directly correlates with how we eat.Ever heard the cliche' "You are what you eat"? That's what it means. If you are fine, it's probably because you eat "fine". Athletes eat like athletes. Models eat like models. Heavy people eat like heavy people (excluding those with diabetic or thyroid issues). Conclusion: You are literally what you eat and also how you eat. Want to have a flat tummy? Eat like people who have flat tummies. The next tip tells you how.

4. Eat often. Ever notice how slim or skinny people are always eating? THAT'S IT! Here's the science behind it. Your digestive system has more functions than you realize. It doesn't just digest food to excrete waste later on and then wait for the next meal. Let's talk about the calorie system. Calories aren't "fat meters" to help you measure how much you can eat before you have to worry about growing a fatty cell in your body. Calories are units of energy. When you are "burning calories", don't think about it as burning fat cells, think of it as burning units of energy. Just like a car burns gas. Follow me? So the body needs what to stay alive? Energy! What measures energy? CALORIES! So if you eat enough food, you'll stay alive because you will have energy for the body to burn off. Now here's the best knew you'll probably ever read on a website, every body movement, voluntarily and involuntary, burns calories! So to recapitulate (recap for short), eating all the time gives you energy to burn that we measure in units called calories. Got that? Great! So back to the digestive system: This system is the hardest working system in your body. It doesn't the most work because it's working all of the time, for hours. Meaning what? It burns A LOT of calories. It's also the body furnace. That's right, it keeps you warm! So every time you eat, your digestive system burns many calories.

5. Calories: Highway mileage and street mileage.  Just as your car burns gas more efficiently on the highway than in stop and go types of situation, your body does the same with calories. The difference is that "street mileage" works in your favor for burning calories, unlike street mileage for the gas in your car. The idea is to conserve gas but who wants to conserve calories? Nobody. So the more stop and go traffic, the better. Here's the deal: Your involuntary organs are always burning calories. This is an example of highway mileage for the body. The body scenario would be when you go to sleep at night. Ever notice how you can sometimes wake up feeling hotter than you did when you first went to sleep? That's good! Your involuntary organs (brain, heart, lungs, etc.) are keeping you alive while you are unconscious and of course while you are awake as well. That's highway mileage, however, it burns less calories. Street mileage activities would be sprints, dancing, swimming, aerobics, etc. The key is to do an activities that calls for you to use bursts of energy with frequent (but short) rest periods in between. But don't go kill yourself. I'm not saying go outside and sprint down the street with all of your might. Here's another good purpose for a personal trainer, go to your local fitness club and get evaluate to see what your fitness level is before starting a workout regimen. Better to be safe...than passed out on the ground. 

6. Learn your fitness level and then work to elevate it. :-)

7. Eat like a King for breakfast, a Queen for lunch and a peasant for dinner. If you can remember that, you have the best diet plan ever. Kids can remember that. 

8. After 6:00 PM, your body's metabolic process naturally changes. Change with it. Make sure that you've all most of the meals for the deal and eat lightly if you decide to eat again. I'm not saying don't eat, I'm saying eat smart.

9.  Don't eat when you're not hungry in the first place. That's just extra calories for no reason. That's how you can end up being fat. Don't eat within 2 hours before you know you will go to sleep. Give that great digestive system some time to burn.

10. If you've had all of your meals for the day,  you shouldn't be hungry anymore for the rest of the evening/ night. So if you usually get 6 - 8 hours of sleep, you'll get to spend all of that time involuntarily burning calories. That's how you can use that highway mileage scenario to your benefit. If you skipped that fit bit, go back and read it. It's very important. 

11. Nothing works without exercise. NOTHING! Supplements? Nope. 5 hour energy drinks? Nope. Medicine? Nope. And anything else that you can possibly think of... NO! You've got to exercise. Why? Because it's NATURAL. I'm not sure why American's have been falsely led to believe that we can be lazy and still get results. That's why only 1% of this country is wealthy. And for that matter, a very small percentage of this country is in-shape as well. Why? Laziness. If you're lazy, don't feel bad. Fell empowered to do something about it. Do you want to be a better parent, spouse, friend or business person? What to stop being in a bad mood and going off on people like Serena went off on the little Asian lady? Then exercise so that you can look better and feel better about yourself.  I mean... you can only look better and live longer. That's the worst case scenario of breaking a sweat. Which brings me to my next point...

12. SWEAT!  If you weren't supposed to sweat, you wouldn't be able to sweat. Do you think that people who can naturally produce saliva wouldn't pay money to be able to produce it without having to carry around water all the time? Appreciate your natural ability to excrete toxins from your body. That's a blessing.Who ever said that sweating wasn't attractive or nasty? Who's the person that told the world that it's OK for men to sweat and not women? Hog tie them too! It's a big ugly lie. Women have been misled for so long about this process. Who cares about clothes and hair? They've made a business out of that too. And you're the consumer. Most times, you PAY money to buy clothes and get your hair done, not make it. So why would you put a product or a hairstyle over your own natural ability to be beautiful. Beauty happens with the absence of toxins. The Creator made it so that your body naturally gets rid of toxins and waste. Your endocrine, immune and digestive systems do all of this work for you on the inside and the outside. Do you want beautiful skin? Don't buy makeup, sweat. And don't depend on clothing to make you look good, depend on your body to make you look good in your clothes. If you have to by boutique jeans to look decent, you're spending too much money for the wrong reason. You should look great in levi's if you're treating yourself the right way. Sweating will help with that. By the way, bigger clothes costs more money. Losing weight will help you save money on clothes if you are an overweight individual. I'm saying that with love. Doesn't childrens' shoes cost less than adult shows? Yes. Why? Because their smaller. It takes less material and labor to make them. As far as hair, if you are anything other than African American, you have the easiest hair to manage. Get your butts in the gym and get some Pantene ProV to wash your wash after. For black people (and all of those with kinkier hair), a good perm will hold up to sweat. I have never in my life sweated out a perm. I've lost some curls but never suffered "kinky root relapse". If you wear your hair naturally and straighten your hair with heat, even more of a reason to go and sweat. You can do your hair by yourself most times. What I'm getting at is that there's no excuse for not exercises. And for ALL men, there's just no excuse. None! Zilch! Zero! Why is there ever a reason for a man to have a beer belly? That's just a waste of testosterone. One of the benefits of having testosterone is lower body fat to begin with. Yall knew that, right?

13.  Rest. Too much of anything isn't good. You have to allow your body time to heal itself from strenuous activities. The average person shouldn't workout more than 5 days a week. Not even athletes do more than 6 days a week in many cases. 

14. Last but not least, stretch. The bigger the muscle, the more flexible the muscle should be. Those guys that we see walking around with huge muscles but the rotational movement of a robot have all of that muscle for nothing. Let look like wrapped hams to me. Being flexible lowers your chances of being injured when doing daily or leisure activities. It also releases toxins, increases blood flow and stimulates good hormones to move through the body. So now you know why Yoga became so popular so fast. Take a yoga class a week and learn how to stretch safely and effectively. It's not boring when you go for the right reasons. Never go to a yoga class to be amuse, go to experience relaxation and growth. If you're mind can't slow down enough to tolerate a yoga class, there's way too much going on in your head. Meditation may be a good place to start to learn some mind control and experience true relaxation. 

So that's all that I have to say about fitness. I hope that you've learned something. Feel free to pass this on to friends and loved ones. I'll be blessed every time that you or someone you know benefits from the information that I've shared here today. All I ask if that you quote me correctly and reference my site as the source of your knowledge. :-) Be blessed, love someone everyday and love yourself first so that you can love everyone and everything in your life the best that you can! Mwah!