You only logged three out of seven days of your food log. You felt heavy and sluggish during your workouts. You only eat one or two servings of vegetables a day. Your stress is through the roof. You can’t sleep. You hate the rain. You feel stuck in a rut. You are ready to throw in the towel.

STOP. Reassess.

Before you quit and return to couch potato ways, read these ten tips and check off how many of them you do every day. If you don’t check off any of them. Begin ticking them off everyday and watch the scale go down.

• Cut your sodium to 1,000 mg a day. Salt makes the body hold on to water which makes the scale go north instead of south.

1. 

   Water! Everyday! 90 ounces!

• Drink at least 80 ounces of water daily. See photo above. Add lemon juice to your H2O and the ascorbic acid will speed up your metabolism.

• Cut out processed foods–AKA frank-n’-foods. Frozen dinners, canned soup, boxed macaroni and cheese. Multisyllabic ingredients you cannot pronounce. If you can’t pronounce them they’re chemicals. Our bodies don’t recognize them as food.

• Abstain from alcohol. That means ZERO. ZILCH. NADA. RIEN. ASGJE. Alcohol inhibits the livers ability to metabolize fat. If you are losing weight limit alcohol to once a month.

High intensity equals high EPOC which equals elevated heart rate for up to 48 hours after the workout equals burning more calories at rest!

• Train at 85 percent of your MHR (maximum heart rate) for 1 hour 5 times a week. Your trainer can guesstimate your heart rate or take your pulse but if you really want to know, invest in a heart rate monitor.

Nine servings a day!

• Eat 9 servings of fruit and vegetables a day. Vegetables contain vitamins, minerals, antioxidants that fight free radicals (the bad guys) in the body. Vegetables keep you regular as many of them contain high amounts of fiber–broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage. Don’t just eat salad veggies!

Good sleep produces human growth hormone!

• Sleep 7 good solid hours of high quality REM shut-eye.

• Make sure you hit the lactate threshold in your workouts at least 2 or 3 times a week. Training in the phosphagen or fast and slow glycolosis energy systems will allow you to hit your lactate threshold.

Lifting heavy will ONLY make you "big" if you lift 85% of your one rep max with lots of rest in between. Don

• Lift heavy things. Weight lifting is critical when it comes to toning and tightening the body. Body composition is the percentage of fat compared to the percentage of lean mass. The more lean mass you have, the more calories the body burns. This is why men will always require more calories than women–they have more muscle mass.

• Have sex. Just as intense exercise produces endorphins, so does having sex. Not only will you burn extra calories and release endorphins, you honor your partner and your relationship.