Fitness videos abound as well, from dance ab programs to promises of easy yoga. All of these have the same promise: shredded abs. Too good to be true? You bet.I’ve said before that fitness is a journey. If shredded abs are the goal then the journey can head ab-ward. But that takes time and dedication.

Every home exercise routine that I have ever reviewed has had an ab focus either centrally or as an add on. Take a look at the DVD reviews on this site. They all have ab videos grafted on. Why? Everybody wants a ripped six pack. Not everybody can get one, though.

Why not? It’s pretty simple, really. A visible six pack requires a lower level of body fat that most home exercisers or even most athletes will never realistically achieve, or frankly even want to achieve.

The American Council on Exercise uses the following categories based on percentage of body fat:

Why is this important? For men shredded abs don’t really start to appear until body fat drops under 10%. Sure abs might be visible with body fat between 10% and 15% but we’re still looking at a body fat percentage far below where most people looking for weight loss and fitness are are willing to go.

No matter how nice it would be, spot reduction simply doesn’t work. The fat has to be lost overall to reveal those abs no matter how much time on the Ab Seat or Abba-dabba or Ab-Rack or how many crunches on might do.

Rock hard abs are comparatively easy. Those can come through lots of crunches and floor routines, targeted weight lifting, yoga, kickboxing or dance based routines. From rock hard abs comes the shredded six pack, albeit slowly. Keep pushing and over time as the fat comes off small shadows will begin to appear, eventually with diligence that six pack will peek out from behind the disappearing veil of fat.

His Take: I’m a decade into regular fitness and constantly changing routines and ratcheting up the intensity. It wasn’t always like this. I was happy just to keep the weight off and joked about wanting to one day have that six pack. The last year, it’s become a goal. It’s still a ways off. At 11% body fat, those shadows appear in the mirror. I look pretty good and at this point nobody believes I was ever fat. I still don’t have the shredded six pack. I might never get there but I’ll keep trying. I also haven’t spent money on any crazy ab machines.

Her Take: Every fitness expert and personal trainer will tell you that spot reducing won’t work. Sure you can enlarge and define muscles with targeted exercises, but it still won’t show if those muscles are covered in fat. So why does every workout have a special ab routine? Because it’s important to have strength in your core: the muscles not only of your abs, but also of your lower back. Strong arms and strong legs without a strong core is like having a car with a big engine and no transmission. Luckily,  comprehensive workouts will get into your core if you pay attention. For example, holding a good flat plank during push-ups or using your abs to lift your legs during high-knee or kicking exercises will work the core in a manner that balances with your other activities. But the 6 pack? That takes more than just exercise; it requires a lifestyle. For the record, that’s me in the side banner. You can see my obliques, but the 6 pack is lacking.

Sure, everybody loves the fact that green tea has a little bit of caffeine. It’s also got lots of plant chemicals that seem to be good for humans. Recent stories you may have seen on your local news station include the idea that green tea can help prevent flu, and help people lose weight. As for actual research, here’s some recently published studies:

• A study of over 42,000 Japanese people shows that green tea drinkers experience less stress.
• Another similarly large Japanese study shows that green tea is associated with a reduced risk of blood cancer.
• Yet more research from Japan shows that green tea may cut the risk of death from pneumonia.
• A meta-study of 51 green tea research studies shows that while green tea drinkers are less likely to get some cancers, the evidence on other cancers was “conflicting“. They did however conclude that “Drinking green tea appears to be safe at moderate, regular and habitual use.”
• Finally, it seems that a bit of lemon in your tea is good for you. As a pure bonus, this research seems to indicate that less safety testing of food and beverages on animals will need to be done in the future.

That’s just a handful of recent items. In addition to confirming that the Japanese love green tea, studies continue to support the idea that green tea is good for us — or at the very least, not harmful. Perhaps it’s tea-time.

The hype goes on. We’ve written about it here and here and here. The LA times has come out against the hype here.

People just want to believe, though. Something keeps them buying disproven diet solutions.Dallas’ WFAA aired this piece that briefly acknowledge controversy but was also very HCG positive. Boston’s WCVB was happy to report on HCG successes while warning of some risks and doctor skepticism. And, of course, Hot Indie News essentially advertises for a vendor hawking homeopathic HCG drops over injections. Between press releases and ill considered local coverage Google News is awash in stories on HCG for weight loss.

None of this press matters. HCG doesn’t work for weight loss. Period. The 500 calorie per day diet that is required while on an HCG diet plan will work for weight loss for a while, but HCG simply doesn’t. See the previous posts on this sites for more. Like this in depth explanation.

There is only one formula for weight loss and that is:

input – output = weight change

How does this work? Input is the total number of calories put in. Output is the total calories burned from base metabolic needs and exercise. The result is change in weight. That difference added over days will result in weight change.

Eat too much and exercise too little? When the difference adds up to 3500 calories, a pound is gained. Eat less, exercise more? When the difference is a 3500 calorie deficit, a pound is lost. It’s pretty simple.

The discipline is hard. Exercise and diet as part of overall healthy lifestyle is the only road to sustained weight loss. The only road. Real people do this every single day. Some make a bigger deal of it than others like our sponsor Fit Like Us.

It’s time to stop throwing money away on quick fix plans that never really pan out and embark on the weight loss journey that it’s going to take to truly age against the machine.

Her Take: I am almost amused by the assertion in today’s “news” stories that HCG “works” by making the body think it is pregnant and pulling fat to feed the non-existent baby. If this were true, then nobody would recommend it for men at all — they don’t get pregnant — and birth control pills would cause women’s fat to just melt away! Another amusing claim was that homeopathic HCG drops work just as well as daily injections. Since neither works, that’s perfectly true.

Seriously, however, HCG has a valid use as a fertility drug. As such, it effects the female reproductive system. Since it’s used by women who desperately want babies, no research has ever been done on what drug interactions may occur between HCG and birth control pills.

How big? How about a billion dollars a year and growing:

Sales of testosterone products already on the market have rocketed 25% in the 12 months ending in June, to just under $1 billion. The recession has knocked the wind out of other “lifestyle drugs”—medicines to treat conditions that aren’t life-threatening. Even Pfizer’s blockbuster Viagra fell 8% in the most recent quarter, year over year.

One complication is that plain testosterone can’t be taken in pill form; it gets digested by the liver before it can get into the bloodstream. That means that to be useful, the hormone must either be injected or absorbed through the skin as a gel, cream, patch, etc. Since most people don’t like the idea of giving themselves regular injections if it can at all be avoided, topical applications are most popular. This leads to an interesting problem.

Under a variety of normal circumstances, topical testosterone can get absorbed into the skin of people other than the patient. For example, his wife or kids. As a result, the FDA has issued tips to avoid accidental exposure which include covering the treated area with clothing and taking care to wash the hands after applying the drug. The FDA has also required a “black box” warning on two products. It is important to note that no such warning box will appear on any custom formulation prepared by a compounding pharmacy on your doctor’s orders. It’s still a good idea to follow the FDA tips.

His Take: Big pharma is pushing topical testosterone because it’s an easy sell. They’re not necessarily the best way to increase testosterone, though. Anti-aging doctors generally prefer to use injectable testosterone because it doesn’t rub off or smell bad and provides a very consistent predictable dose regardless of sweat or skin thickness. Newer technologies like implantable pellets that secrete testosterone over time may become the preferred way to replace hormones but for now weekly injections provide the best testosterone results overall.

Study participants spent a total of 60 minutes chewing in the morning, and then on average consumed 67 fewer calories later that day. Energy expenditure rose by 5%. The working theory is that “nerves in the muscles of the jaw are stimulated by the motion of chewing and send signals to the appetite section of the brain that is linked to satiety, which may explain why the act of chewing might help to reduce hunger.”

However, there are 2 things to remember about this study. First, it is a short term study with only a few dozen participants. Researcher Dr. Kathleen Melanson of the University of Rhode Island is interested in doing a longer term study to determine whether gum chewing is a useful strategy in a weight loss regimen. Second, this study was funded by the Wrigley Science Institute, a research group related to the Wrigley gum company dedicated to documenting the benefits of gum chewing. Realistically, we can’t be shocked that a gum company wants to promote gum research.

That being said, there appear to be several benefits and few dangers for adults chewing standard, sugar-free gum — as long as you aren’t caught with it in Algebra class.