Jimmy's Better Life

Don't believe everything you hear on late night television, especially those fitness infomercials. These infomercials are largely slick marketing stories to teach the public to believe that they can “flatten” their stomach by doing twenty or thirty minutes of ab exercises each other day.

As important as the machines themselves in these ads are the super attractive, smiling fitness models who demonstrate how these fantastic products have made their incredible abs possible. These hot people almost make it look like it is fun and easy to use their ab machine.

However, what these super-healthy fitness models don’t tell you is that they were born with super-lean bodies and had great looking abs even before they used an ab machine.


The Truth About Ab Machines

Ab machines do one thing well, they strengthen your ab muscles. But that is all they will do for you, they will not make your waistline slimmer. Let me put it another way, ab machines make your ab muscles stronger but do not make your stomach smaller.

Are you having an "ah, ha moment" right now? You could actually have rock hard abs packed under layers of fat and no one would know (unless they punched you in the gut).

My favorite example is the offensive and defensive lines of any football team. American Football players are huge, many are overweight, their stomachs are bulging under their uniforms. However they can take a hit like anybody's business partly because they have got a massive amount of fat tissue over hard muscle. Football players are very strong but many are also very fat and they all work out all the time on weights and even ab crunch machines.

So should you not buy or use Ab Machines?

Of course not. If you want a thinner, smaller waistline then you must first lose the fat around your mid section using a good diet plan and exercise. Then your stomach muscles will be visible. Once the fat is gone, then you can firm up your stomach and build those rock hard abs you always wanted. Remove the fat tissues over your tummy and then build and strengthen your abs.

So the truth is, ab machine companies just want your business and if one model does not work for you, they are happy to sell you another. But if they revealed that you needed to go on a diet first most of them would be out of business because most overweight people want to lose weight first before building a muscular body.

To begin losing weight fast (and to get a slimmer waistline) I think using the new Fat Burning Diet from Fat Loss 4 Idiots is more effective. This is a brand new type of diet never seen before and you can read more about it & also receive special offers by joining my free weight loss newsletter which has more great articles and stories to help you lose weight.

Let's call this one the friend's flu. According to a study done by the New England Journal of Medicine (a magazine written by smart doctors) obesity is a contagion you catch from your friends.

This totally makes sense to me. Remember how your mother told you to stay away from "so and so" because she or he was a bad influence. Turns out pothead Dan was not the only problem, skinny people make their friends skinny and fat people can turn their friends fat. As a 2007 Time Magazine article stated "instead of you choosing your friend with six pack abs, you chose a friend with a six pack of beer."

Pictures of Elvis Presley show that as he got fatter and fatter, everyone in the pictures around him got fatter too. Talk about the Memphis Mafia emulating the boss.

The co-author of the study, Dr. Nicholas Christakis of the Harvard Medical School, claims the obesity affliction is not just people with the same habits befriending one another. "It's not that obese or non obese people simply find other similar people to hang out with."

But common sense says people with similar vices tend to come together. Food and drink is part of hanging out. We drink together at the bar, eat popcorn together at the movie, gossip over pizza, celebrate anniversaries and birthdays over three course dinners. Eating and friendship go hand in hand.

This is not to say you need to get new friends, however you should be aware that if spend a lot of time with overweight buddies, you will unconsciously eat more than if you hang out with fit and trim friends. My conclusion is that if you are dieting, you should seek new activities with your chubby friends like walking or shopping rather then the usual fast food hangouts, bars and eating establishments. And if your fat friends don't get it, find people who are health conscious or are trying to lose weight like yourself.

Are struggling to keep your weight under control? Are you frustrated with all these fake dieting programs. I would love to hear about your yo-yo dieting and how you feel about the weight loss industry. If you want to recommend any program that worked for you, let me know. I will reply to all comments. Your opinion matters. Please leave a comment below to share with others. :)

Hi Everyone:

I have another confession. Unlike many of you, I am not a serial dieter. Never really minded the extra sponge in my tummy area (well until two years ago). Actually it is in my nature to be very modest so it's only on the hottest days, I might show some skin and even then I won't take off my shirt. So as long as I could hide my bulge under my shirt, I did not mind.

But back in 2008, my stomach started to expand and expand to the point my trousers got really tight around the waist line. Maybe worse than that, that ugly turkey fat thing under my chin appeared making my face round and pudgy.

So I asked my co-workers around what type of diets they recommended and one of the guys said he tried Atkins' Plan and had lost thirty pounds. Wow, that's great so I ran to the bookstore and picked up a paperback and followed the instructions. OMG!

I should have listened to his warning that Atkins is hard. Atkins is really, really difficult unless you have the discipline of a marine. In a nutshell, doing Atkins is based on cutting back carbohydrates like pasta, bread and potatoes as well as sugar will force your body to burn body fat into fuel. You can eat many types of meat and vegetables and in fairly generous portions but that is not the problem.

The problem is that almost everything has either starch or sugar in it so for the first two to six weeks you are stuck eating bland, boring food. You can't even eat fruit because it has sugar in it. You can't have any bread or cereal. Not even sugar in my coffee. Needless to say, I could not even finish the first week and saw no significant improvement.

I will talk more about Atkins in future posts but lets just say I would not recommend it to most people and will give my reasons as more blog posts go up. If you want to hear more about my dieting adventures, subscribe to my free newsletter called Jimmy's Weight Loss Stories and I will send you a free diet tips ebook.

Welcome to my blog. I am a little late to the party but hey, I am blogging thanks to Google, Web 2.0 technology, and all those nerds who have made this possible.

Have you ever had those "I am fed up and take it anymore" moments? Sure, we all have. Right now, I am at the end of my rope. Life has gone completely wrong and I am looking for a fresh start. While there is quite a few things I need to change about myself, I don't think revealing every deep dark secret about myself on this blog is something I feel comfortable doing but I will admit my appearance has gone down hill over the past decade.

Yes, I am getting fatter by the year and now could lose twenty pounds or so. My skin is both oily and dry with blemishes and my teeth are crooked and not quite white. And that is just my good side. Appearances have not been high on my list of things I care about but now it's time I buckled down and fixed how I look because if I don't take care of myself, who will? Besides fat & old is way worse than fat & young and I can't stop father time. Looking good does help you feel good and feeling good is what it is all about.

So join me in my journey, as I try different methods and products to lose weight and clear up my skin, maybe even get a six pack or massive muscles. My weight goals are to get a 32 inch waist, down from a 34 inch belt, cut my body fat percentage from 20% to maybe 12%, go from 175 pounds to 155 pounds, be able to run a mile without gasping for air. My facial goals are to get a stylish haircut, clear up my skin and get my teeth super white. I might even get eye laser surgery to replace my glasses.

If you want to hear more about my dieting adventures, subscribe to my free newsletter called Jimmy's Weight Loss Stories and I will send you a free diet tips ebook.