If you are a woman like me, two words can make you instantly start salivating: Ryan Reynolds. For men, he is someone to be admired and envied because he has a body like a super hero, which is very convenient since he will be portraying one this summer when Green Lantern is released in theaters.
Reynolds first became known for his rock-hard six-pack when he appeared in Blade: Trinity. Since then, his weight has fluctuated a little bit, depending on what kind of movie he was acting in. When Reynolds is going to be in an action film, he really concentrates on building muscle tone. According to his personal trainer, Bobby Strom, Reynolds weighed in at “200 pounds and 8 percent body fat [when he is in an action movie, but for romantic comedies] he’s about 180 and 11 percent body fat.”
In order to get in such fantastic shape, Reynolds works out for 90-minutes, seven days a week. His workouts vary, based mainly on what his role in the next movie is.
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Scientists from the U.S. Johns Hopkins team have managed to turn bad white fat into good brown fat in recent experiments on rodents. This breakthrough could be a huge step in treating obesity if it were able to yield the same results in humans.
Brown fat is present in all humans during the infant years, but disappears as we age. Brown fat has been called the key to burning fat and could be a helpful way to control weight. When brown fat is lost in the body, it is replaced by white fat which has been called “bad fat” because it just sits. In their experiment, scientists were able to suppress an appetite stimulating protein called NPY. Through this suppression, the rodent’s appetite and caloric intake was reduced. This was the case even when they were fed a diet high in fat. An even more interesting development with this experiment was that the rodent’s bad white fat stores turned into good brown fat.
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Have you ever noticed that people carry weight in different parts of their bodies? Some carry it around their hips, resembling the shape of a pear, while others carry it around the middle, looking more like an apple. For quite a few years, having the shape of an apple has proven to be more of a health risk than a pear, but researchers have been unclear as to why people carry weight in different areas. But new research from the University of Edinburgh is helping to shed light on why humans don’t all carry weight in the same areas — and how the new knowledge can be used to help fight obesity.
Scientists pinpointed a protein known as 11BetaHSD1 that seems to indicate body shape. According to the research that was published in the journal Diabetes, apple-shapes tend to have higher levels of the protein than pear-shapes do. The protein is known to raise levels of hormones that are linked to obesity and is associated with an over-reaction in the immune system that results in unnecessary inflammation that causes damage to healthy cells.
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Raphael Calzadilla is a certified trainer with the American Council on Exercise (ACE) and has been a personal trainer for almost 20 years. He is also a natural competitive bodybuilder, 2001 Mr. Connecticut, and winner of the prestigious WNBF (World Natural Bodybuilding Federation) Pro Card, earning him status as a drug-free professional bodybuilder. You can learn more about Raphael at his website www.fitbyraphael.com.
Four years ago I was asked to speak at a fitness and nutrition seminar. With the audience being primarily women, I was excited to once and for all clear up the misconceptions about cellulite. Finally, it was my chance to talk about the infamous cottage cheese-look that makes women cringe in disgust.
I enthusiastically told my wife, Pam, and shared some of my material. She was excited about the subject matter and was listening intently. I told her that, from a medical standpoint, cellulite doesn’t exist. Her eyes got so big I thought I’d be shot on the spot, but I told her to be patient because it gets better.
I told her that cellulite is nothing more than fat. Len Kravitz Ph.D., who published an outstanding article “Cellulite: Everything You Want To Know and More,” in which he said “the name (cellulite) originated from the French medical literature over 150 years ago.” He goes onto describe the physiological reasons why cellulite is nothing more than plain old body fat.
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The reason anyone starts a fitness program is to see results, and the only way to know how far you’ve come is by knowing where you started.
P90X, the popular extreme home fitness program, understands the importance of tracking all indicators of fitness.
Instead of just tracking weight or measurements, P90X has an intensive Fitness Assessment that tracks your weight, measurements, strength, flexibility and cardiovascular capacity every step of the way.
The P90X program is split into three phases, 30 days each, and at the end of each phase, you will retest to see how much your health has improved. The first test is done before the first P90X workout so you know your baseline of fitness.
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