I love philosophy just because it gives answers to so many things in life! Relationships, conflict management, socienty… But, what does fitness have to do with philosophy? Well, check this out. This is a theory about progress applied to fitness:

One of the basic principles of constant progress is moderation. Avoid extremes, be it in fitness, business or any other area of life:

• Too much food is not good for your body, but going on a radical, unhealthy quick-loss diet is even worse.
• Not exercising and leading a sedentary life will cause health problems. On the other hand, exercising far beyond your limits may lead to burnouts, injuries or even heart attacks.
• Not eating right amount of protein will slow down your muscle growth. But taking such supplements like steroids to boost the growth is like kissing your health good-bye.
• Not sleeping enough can provoke stress, lack of motivation, irritation and other unstable, health-threatening moods. Sleping for too long has the same result.
• Spending too many hours working will affect your private life, your family, your wellbeing. But not working at all is not a solution either. (You still got to pay your bills.)

Astonishingly, it can be applied to anything. And it is nothing new. The taoist books, written over 2000 years ago, already mentioned the importance of sobriety and self-control. They say, the best way is somewhere in between.

It doesn’t mean that the progress is always a straight line. In fact, nothing is. Even on a subatomic level the atoms do move, but not in a straight line: they swing.

Or take something like our economy’s growth: it looks like a wave with its ups and downs. Of course, those swings may cause problems like unemployment, inflation or depression. That is why any government is trying to hold those waves as flat as possible. And that is what you should do, too. Because the less something swings, the more stable it is, the less probable it is to come out of balance. And the more stable it is, the longer it will last.

Equilibrium is the answer.

Be it in your time management, fitness or diet programm. Avoid extremes and take one step after another. “Rome wasn’t build in one day” as my father used to say.

If you led an unhealthy life all your life, you can be damn sure that it will take time to become Mr. or Mrs. Universe.

But if you opt for an extreme for a quicker solution like some pills, liposunction or steroids, your health may be at a great risk.

Think about it.

What does water have to do with losing pounds? I’ve looked at 14 random weight loss websites today and 12 out of 14 included drinking water as one of the top 3 tips. And as everyone is talking about how wonderful water is for losing weight one starts to rely upon it as a fact.

I think, in todays world one shouldn’t just trust the facts, but understand why those facts are “true”. So I did a little research on what water actualy does to your body and here is a summary of the “underlying facts” :

• More than 70% of your body is water.
• More than 15% of fat cells is water.
• Depending on how much water your body restrains, there may be much more water under your skin than the actual “fat”.
• Your body needs water to regulate temperature, to transport nutrients and “garbage”, etc. In fact water is even more important than food. You could survive without fodd for up to 2 weeks. But you will surely die after 2-3 days without water.
• Your body is highly adaptive. If there is a deficit of water, it will hold on every drop of water. Your kidneys will take the right measures and store all of the water it can wherever it can: under your skin.
• On the other hand, if you supply huge amounts of water your body won’t have any reason to store more as a reserve. By doing this, you can easily eliminate up to 40% or more of “volume” under your skin.
• Your body automatically regulates your body’s temperature. If you drink cold water, it has to be warmed up. This means that 2 liters of cold water daily will lead to up to 70 Kcals of extra burned calories a day. Roughlysaid : a pound a month. That is one of those tricks like cold showers (which also leads to greater energy expediture) that you could easily implement and burn even more calories.

Elimination of water reserves and higher energy spending. These are the two principal reasons why you should take more water for weight loss. Apart of that, there are other studies that suggest several health-related and beauty benefits like staying younger and having a cleaner skin.

A tip: look for water that is low in sodium as sodium retains water in the body and is counter-productive.

Cost: 0,15$-0,20$ or even free for 2 liters of water daily.

Lack of time is one of the most common excuses when it comes to exercising. BodyTweaking’s philosophy is that you don’t need more than 30-40 mintues a day to get into a sexy shape and lead a healthy lifestyle.

There are indeed very busy people out there that may struggle to find even 30 minutes a day to invest in their health. Family and job may take away most of your time. In my case my job and studies alone require at least 14-15 hours daily. Add some basic hours for eating, sleeping and blank time and you’ll need a 25 hours day pretty fast

In my opinion the only way to deal with tight schedules is by keeping an agenda. I use an agenda that lets me see one whole week at once. What I usually do is take 15 minutes each sunday to plan the next week. The key here is to keep it all flexible. I never asign a specific time to any task/project unless it’s a fixed meeting I have no influence over.

Keep in mind that your agenda is there to serve you, not the other way round. Stay flexible, if there is something you have to place for another day, do it.

Another good idea is to put the most important and extensive tasks at the beginning of the week. First of all, you’ll feel much better as you get closer to the weekend. By wednesday you could have the most important stuff done. On the other hand, if you suddenly can’t keep up with a task you had for monday, you can still put it on another day of the week. This way you can “roll” some tasks forward into the week. Everything is done by Sunday. And you take your Sunday to rest and spend some quality time with friends or family. (Personally, as you can see on the photo, I use to put most of my “personal” tasks directly on the weekend, when I have most of my free time)
When it comes to workouts, the core of a bodytweaker’s existence ;), it’s best to place those early in the morning, just after you wake up. After a workout you’ll feel great the whole day. Besides it’s crucial to do the most important things first, eh? So, if you use to get up 7:30AM you may want to change that habbit and get up 7:00AM instead. You get yourself a cup of coffee, do the bodytweaker’s 30 minutes workout, take a shower, eat something while checking google news, and get ready, everything before 8:00-8:10AM
. And you’ve improved your lifestyle beyond any benefit I could express within this post.

Planning is really something personal and each person does it differently. Nevertheless, flexible weekly planning (with daily modifications as the week goes by) has been proven an efficient method for millions of people. You could give it a try.

Note: A real bodytweaker never lets his agenda tell him what to do.
Cost: 3$/year for an agenda, 0$ for planning your workouts