Nine No Nos

Even the best fitness plans can fail due to simple errors. Here, we present nine "No Nos" that keep people from reaching their fitness goals. When confronted with one of these choices, just say no!

1. Personal pan pizzas. Take a look at the calorie count on these. Most of them run between 1800 to 2500 calories, and you can add more to the total meal very easily. For most people, this is an entire day's allotment of calories.
    
2. Three square meals. Eat six small meals. Make each one nutritious, but don't fill up.
    
3. Drinking colas. Liquor, obviously, is just empty calories along with organ-killing alcohol. So softdrinks are OK, right? No. Just think of them as cancer in a can.
    
4. Staying up late. Sleep deprivation causes all kinds of problems. If you want to look and feel lousy, stay up late. If you want to decrease your level of performance at work (or in school), stay up late. But if you want your mind and body to be working properly, get your sleep. Sacrificing sleep to get more done may work in the short term, but it's not sustainable. Rather than destroying your brain and body, invest in our Sleeplessness causes and cures course.
    
5. Loading up on supplements. A supplementation program, intelligently devised, can provide quite an edge to anyone seeking improved vigor, better appearance, or better health. But just taking the latest hyped up stuff is a waste of money. Most of what's on the market doesn't do what the ads claim. That's why our selection is so limited. If it doesn't work, we don't sell it.
    
6. Total body workouts. For beginners, these are OK because the intensity is low. But after a couple of months of training, this kind of workout has outlived its usefulness.
    
7. Low intensity "workouts." About 90% of the people going to gyms are not getting results. Doubt that? Just look around at all the flabby bodies. Yet, some people seem to look better every time you run into them. Why the difference? In a word, intensity.
    
8. Overtraining. You can't work the same muscle group in each workout. A properly worked muscle needs several days to recover (partly because you are using it lightly when working other muscle groups). This is why, for example, doing squats twice a month is far more effective than "working legs" three times a week.
    
9. Focusing on isolation exercises. Suppose two men, neither of which is genetically freaky or doing steroids, want to increase the size of their arms. Their diets are similar. Alfred does no exercise other than biceps curls once a week. Barry does no exercise other than front squats twice a month. At the end of three months, who will have bigger arms? Clearly, it will be Barry. Why? It has to do with creating the proper hormonal environment for muscular growth.

If this were a 'ten tips" article, we have to add a 10th one. If that were so, that 10th one would be "Obsessing over your physique." While this isn't a "no no" in terms of interfering with your fitness goals, it does retard you in other ways.

Your body, being human, will never be perfect. Even if it were, who would really care? Keep things in perspective. Train hard, eat right, sleep right--so that you are fit and healthy and able to do things that make life more enjoyable.