Well…it’s been awhile. 

My baseball life is now an allstar baseball life. The allstar game is tomorrow and I’ve been named to it. I’m actually leading the entire league in batting average. I would like to thank you for supporting me along the way to make this dream come true and allow me to step away from the fitness internet scene for a few months.

 THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU

 I will have a special offer sometime soon to celebrate me being an allstar but since i’ve been travelling and playing everyday it’s extremely tough to get anything else done.

 So just keep an eye open.

 Here’s my latest column/article from The Soko.

 Here’s my latest column at The Soko.

Be on the lookout for Inside Fitness Magazine if you’re in Canada. I have a 20 minute workout in there for ya.

 Just Want To Live A Little?

Human beings have fascinating psychological views and actions, in my opinion.  The food we know is not good for us, we still eat.  The workouts we know would help us get back into shape, we decide to not be consistent with them.

Some people realize that their health is what actually keeps them alive, but they’d rather spend their money on a monster television rather than a gym membership or a personal training service.

Why, though?

The typical answer I seem to get when I point out to someone that a chocolate bar isn’t exactly the best kind of snack in the world is this: “Why can’t I just live a little?”

Can We Break That Train of Thought?

I’m guilty of this at times too.  I mean, I’ve already confessed to you my love for hot dogs in a previous article.

My job as a fitness coach is to solve people’s fitness problems.  This whole ‘living a little’ philosophy is a rampant problem with many people, so I have to try and help them with it.

Just to make it clear right now, I’m not going to be telling you to never eat a bad thing ever again in your life.  That’s just stupid.  It’s okay to have cheat meals; you just need to be smarter and more organized about your choices.

I have here a list of a few possible solutions that may help you make better choices more consistently.

Understanding Your Top Priority

If you don’t have your health, you really don’t have anything.  If you’re sick from being drunk the night before, your health suffers, and it’s really hard to enjoy the next day with all the headaches and potential vomiting.  But in today’s society, that’s apparently the ultimate symbol of living a little.

Of course, that’s an example, and yes, I do drink alcohol on some occasions, but never like that.  I’ve realized my priorities on it.  In college I would drink.  When I tore my hamstring that threatened my baseball career, I actually started to drink fairly heavily.  The only priority I had was having fun and trying to run away from my circumstances.  Obviously that kind of attitude didn’t exactly help my recovery from the injury very much, because my health wasn’t my number one priority.

When I finally realized what my top priority should be, I quit drinking for a while.  And it was easy to do, because I had a new set of rules governing my life.

What’s your top priority?  It could be the difference between you buying that monster television or taking the steps to actually getting the body you want.

Surround Yourself With Your Goals

Put them everywhere.  Put them in your bedroom, in your wallet, in your car, on your mirrors, on the fridge, on the television and on your favourite junk food.  Get a bunch of those yellow post-it notes and write your goals on them.

Put them everywhere – literally.  Make sure your goals are always going to be fresh in your mind.  That will help when those ‘live a little’ decisions come your way.

Just ask yourself, “Will this decision HELP me towards my goals, or push me AWAY from my goals?”

Keep Visiting

Keep visiting sites like The Soko to try and find advice or tips that will work for you.  Maybe my stuff makes more sense to you than others, maybe not.

Organize your day so that you can read at least one article that relates to your fitness goals, so that you can learn along the way too.

This strategy can motivate you to keep working hard on your goals and not let those annoying decoys (the living a little decoys) get in the way of your goals and dreams.

________________________________________
living a little or dying a little?

When you buy into the living a little philosophy, which I think we all should do sometimes, are you actually living a little or are you dying a little?  I mean, eating tons of sugary food isn’t good for you, and if you do it enough, you might be on your way to a shorter life when you think about it.

But the key thing here is doing it consistently.  Organize your diet or your life to the point that you can enjoy some cheat meals during the week, or if you really want that monster television, make sure you’ve accomplished conquering your top priority first.  Hell, you might not even want the television anymore with your new body and new-found energy.

Have a great one,

Dan Grant

Since my baseball career is back in full swing and being on the
road is now apart of my daily life the emails from me won’t be as
often as they were.

My season is going great so far and going after my dream is making
life super exciting for me.

If you’ve been holding back on any of your dreams, I can’t urge you
enough to go after them. It’s a blast.

But let’s get back to me being ‘away’ for a while. I’m still going
to be sending out emails to you of the latest fitness trends and
my thoughts on them and how to get a great body, but they just won’t
be as often.
 

And since the majority of emails I get is about how to perform time
efficient workouts the timing of this couldn’t be better.
You see, Ryan Lee has created a program called BodyBot.
It’s a program where you can design your own 4 minute workouts.
It’s an amazing program and since it was released last week it’s
gotten incredible reviews. You don’t have to download anything, it’s
all just there ready for you to use. Pretty awesome.
And what’s even better is that his introductory price for the
program is unbelievably low.
 

==> http://tinyurl.com/6lfxtt
I’ve been preaching for a while now about the power of short,
efficient workouts and all my clients have gotten great results by
doing them. They love the fact that they don’t have to spend hours
in the gym - or even go to the gym at all.
I’m also going to do something special for you as well if you
decide to get Ryan’s program. If you order by Wednesday, just email
me the receipt and I’ll give you The Fat Loss Crew interviews for
f.r.e.e.
So because I might not be around on the ‘net as much this summer, I
wanted to make sure you had a program that could give you results
fast and this program was just the thing I needed.
You are in good hands with this program.
 

==> http://tinyurl.com/6lfxtt

Have a great one {!firstname},
Dan Grant
PS - With travelling and playing baseball all summer, time to
workout is very limited and I myself do a bunch of 4 minute
workouts on a regular basis so I can feel fresh even with the grind
of playing pro ball. Ryan’s BodyBot program is away I can just make
up my workout and then go at it.

Just a quick one today.

I’ve been on the road a lot with baseball so that’s why i haven’t posted regularly. I will do my best.

 I was talking with a guy who works at a correction facility for criminals today.

 He said that the people that go there have a choice between jail or their facility.  So obviously I said, “Well I guess you’re pretty busy then since i assume no one would really want jail.”

Surprisingly he said that a lot of people would rather go to jail. 

“Are you serious?”

He said, a lot of people don’t want to come to their facility because they have a mandatory fitness program.

In jail, they can just sit there.

I just don’t understand.

I’m assuming that’s the mentality for a lot of people since the obesity rate continues to climb to stupidly high levels.

 Is there a way to fix that?

I don’t know.

 what do you think?

Dan Grant

As some of you know, I made a comeback to baseball this summer.

 It officially starts Saturday…but my first real game back in 3 years happened last night.

 It was nuts. I went 2 for 4 with a single, a double, and an RBI. It was like I never left.

I’m 26 playing with a bunch of 20 year old studs who will be playing pro one day. Here’s the thing. This whole thing is like your dreams.

If you want the body you’ve always dreamed about, go get it. You aren’t too old, or whatever excuse you have been coming up with.

 I made excuses about my baseball career. I was ‘too old’ at one point.

 So what changed? I’m not ‘too old’ anymore.

My head was stopping me and my head got me back in it.

 My best advice I can ever give you to get your dreams.

FIX YOUR HEAD,

have a great one,

Dan Grant

I got an overwhelming amount of email this week from people who
sound as fed up as I do about some of the things they see in
commercial gyms.

Thanks for the emails, I love getting them, even if you don’t agree
with me.

Today I’m challenging my own philosophy a bit.

I’ve been called a ‘chronic overthinker’ by some people - ie. mostly
my girlfriend - so obviously I get deep in thought about training
methods.

Maybe a little too much sometimes.

Thoughts for the week (from my overthinking mind):

- Here’s an example of how my head works about decided that interval
training is the way to go.
I hate jogging. Yes.
Does that mean it can’t be uses as a fat loss method? No
If people like jogging and want to lose weight should they jog? Sure.
But what about the loss of lean muscle that comes with jogging? It’s
probably not that big of deal unless you don’t lift weights hard and
really overdue it on the cardio.
So why don’t I teach long cardio? It sucks and I hate it. Actually a lot of
people I talk to hate jogging.

Why do I pump up interval training so much? It’s time efficient,
decreased risk of nagging little injuries by a ton, revs up your
metabolism for longer after your workouts so it will lead to greater
fat loss. It’s been proven in countless research studies to be WAY
better at fat loss results then long cardio, and it’s been proven
in real life with my clients and a lot of other trainers clients I
know and study.
So interval training is better for fat loss? Yes.
Can someone do both? Sure.
Okay. But I’ve seen people who do long cardio and weight training
get some good results.

Why don’t I teach it? Most of those people
don’t know about interval training, their diet is good - what you
eat makes up about 70% of your results, by the way - and usually
their stomach is still a major PROBLEM area to lose a lot of fat.
Interval training has been proven to burn significant amount of
stomach fat.
What about beginners? Can they do Interval Training? Yes.
How? Because the ‘work’ interval is 80-90% of their level. That might
be a fast walk.
So it will still work the same for them? Yes.
So that’s why I teach interval training. Yep.
- So just incase you’ve ever wondered why I teach interval training
or if I just copy some of the big names, I actually go through
quite elaborate thinking about it. Actually a lot more then I actually
just wrote. I didn’t even mention cortisol effect.

But, maybe I’m just overthinking it.
Wait till you hear my continual thoughts on weight training…
Maybe I’ll just save that one till next time.
What are your thoughts on my methods and thoughts?
What do you do to shed the pounds or build the muscle?
Let me know, I’d love to hear from ya.
Have a great one,
Dan Grant

PS - I’m in Sherwood Park, Alberta right now in training. Make sure you visit my blog at http://www.bodytransformationcoach.com where I’ll be updating it frequently with thoughts and training advice.

PPS - Here’s an email I got about one of my articles on The Soko

“I don’t like you anymore…

BUT I LOVE YOU!
I just read your article on weight loss and HIIT
i couldn’t agree more that jogging is a bad BAD thing.. and I am proof…
i am a 25yr old female ,my left ankle was sprained several times. and yet when i thought it recovered i was jogging to burn fat.. the jogging only debilitated the joints and made me go into a 4-6weeks resting period in which i ended up putting more weight than i started with.
so yeah you’re right a short interval training is better than hours running like a fool.
it is nice to know that one of your clients had some disabilities too and managed to lose weight *i always respect people who overcome their chronic injuries like i do. and not make excuses to be fat and lazy*
 
will look forward for more articles from you!
 
thanks..”

PPS- The Fat Loss Crew gives you REAL advice on fat loss because they’ve all done it. Some did it with walking, some intervals. A lot of things can work. Learn from them at http://www.thefatlosscrew.com.

I was reading a book the other day called Your Portable Empire by Pat O’Bryan. It’s about internet marketing so it’s probably of no interest to you but I like to read different types of books every once in a while to see if I can pick up a fresh idea. The point, however, which I took from the book, was that all failure is just data.

I thought that was an interesting way to look at it. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. It’s hard sometimes to do something out of the ordinary because if you don’t succeed the way you thought you would, you may think the whole world will think of you as a failure.

But if you look at it from the outside in, you’ll realize that your ‘failure’ probably isn’t even that big of deal in other peoples eyes.

Failure isn’t really failing. It’s just collecting the proper data to help you along your journey to succeed in realizing your goals.

Think about it. If you tried to get a six pack before and ‘failed’, what happened? What did you do and what could you have done better?

Make a list of the things you thought helped you and make another list of the things that you probably could have done a better job on.

Now take the list that you wrote of things you could have done a better job on and make a side list of how you are going to do a better job with those things this time.

So let’s say that on your ‘could’ve done better’ list you wrote, “Had too many pizza and beer nights.”

So on your ‘how will I do better’ list you might write, “have a pizza and beer night only 1 time a month because if getting a six pack is really important to me I know I must sacrifice and have the will power to do so.”

That’s just an example, of course. You know better then I do what stopped you from reaching your goal.

The biggest thing to learn from all this is that you should NEVER quit because you didn’t achieve your goal the first time around (or even your second or third time). Just take it as data that will give you a better shot next time.

Cheers,

Dan Grant
www.degreesofchangefatlossplan.com

It’s been a week of driving and I FINALLY made it back to Thunder
Bay. I’m only in town for about a week though because I’m going
to head out west to Alberta to try and rekindle one of my dreams.

So as I get ready - and stay really busy - I didn’t really have too
much time for this week’s email or next weeks for that matter, so
if you don’t get an email next week that’s why.

I’ve gotten a lot of questions again this week so I will get back to
you - it might just take a couple days :).

Thoughts for the week:

- I went to a commercial gym for the first time in a few months
the other day. People were working hard - thinking they were
anyways -, but I really don’t know where this industry went
wrong. Maybe it’s the money - actually, it’s probably the money - but
the personal trainers there had people doing some of the most
pointless shit I’ve ever seen.

I think there’s a major LACK is motivation for these trainers. I
mean, if I paid somebody $50 an hour to train me, I wouldn’t be too
impressed if all we did for that hour was chat about life and go
from machine to machine not really challenging my muscles at all.

I think maybe these trainers just think that this is what the people
want maybe - I don’t know.

But when I see people - who are getting professional (kind of)
guidance - I cringe when I see them doing machine twist ab exercises
that are doing nothing but guaranteeing that client a major lower back
problem in the future.

All it takes is a little bit of learning for this industry to realize
that a lot of the machines out there are a waste of time, money, and
whatever else.

If you have a trainer and you haven’t learned AND implement the core
exercises of squats, dead lifts, pull ups, and pushups (variations of
them all too), it’s time to find somebody new.

That’s just my opinion. You may be getting the results now, but you
also may be setting yourself up for injury in the future.

Sorry if that was a little scattered. Just something to consider.

- Why people hate me - find out here.

- I’ve said EPOC quite a bit in the past but I’m not really sure if
I’ve ever explained it - that’s here.

Have a great one,

Dan Grant

SORRY! I’ve been on the road for what seems to be forever so posts have been limited.

Here’s my soon to be released article at The Soko:

There’s a lot of people out there who have used the information and programs that I have made for them and used them to great success. Yet, there as some that have gotten the same information and programs designed specifically for them but didn’t ‘believe’ in the program and got nowhere with it.

Those people, for whatever reason, now don’t like my ‘stuff’.

Some Success…

And that’s fine. I had a client who overcame double knee replacement surgery to lose over 20 pounds of fat in 2 months with only 60 minutes TOTAL of exercise per week. I’ve also helped a lady going off to Police College who couldn’t do a regular pushup to do 25 perfect pushups in 10 days.

And A Little Bit Of Failure…

I had a lady who paid me quite a bit of money for me to analyze her current program and then have me create a newer revised program because she wasn’t getting any results with her current program. The problem was that she never followed my program the way I wrote it out for her.

Why? Because it was ‘different’ from what she was used too. No kidding…

Anyways, this isn’t really a popularity contest for me, I just try to solve people’s fitness problem. So in this column we’re going to discuss a little bit of that.

I Don’t Hate Jogging…I Just Don’t Recommend It…Actually, I Do Hate Jogging

People who read my articles or decide they want to actually listen to me ramble on with fat loss advice often wonder out load, “Why don’t you like jogging? I thought that was how you lose weight?”

Yep, you can lose weight jogging and you can also lose weight by not eating for a week. Does that mean not eating for week should be recommended as fat loss protocol?

I used to work at a chiropractors office doing rehab work with people. I lost count at how many people came in with really bad knee, ankle, and/or ITB injuries. I probably don’t have to ask you why they kept coming in with these injuries, but I will just for fun anyways.

Do you know what the number one factor was that caused all of these injuries? Yep, you got it…jogging.

Do you know how many people came in to get treated for injury because they did sprint intervals (which many of the clients there did after talking to me)? NONE, a big ole’ goose egg.

I can keep bringing up examples and can continue to keep ranting but it would end up getting out of hand and I would probably never be allowed to write on here again. Well, that might happen anyway if this article gets a lot of people angry, but I’m willing to take that risk for the good of successful fat loss training.

Now, before I get totally anti-cardio on you, I will tell you that I do advise certain clients to do long cardio. And yes, doing something it better than nothing.

Interval training is just better for fat loss. It’s been proven in both clinical and real world studies. Plain and simple, you just burn A LOT more fat doing intervals then you do jogging for hours on end.

For more information on interval training check out one of my earlier articles, ‘3 Steps To Losing Belly Fat’.

“Yep, We Aren’t Touching The BOSU Ball”

You know what my new clients are usually most surprised about when they start training with me. That I don’t recommend using the BOSU ball (the half stability ball).

Why is the BOSU ball so friggin’ popular?

I know most people’s answer would be because it helps you ‘work’ your core too, but that just seems to be non-sense in my eyes.

For one thing, I see a lot of people doing a lot of bicep and tricep exercises on them, which if you read my articles you now know that’s not going to help your fat loss very much.

Secondly, this whole ‘working’ your core thing has gotten a little out of control in my eyes. Yes, you should do some ab exercise but you don’t need to bring in a BOSU ball to do it.

Squats, deadlifts, lunges, pushups, planks, ab wheel rollouts, sprinting, skipping, ‘work’ your core…just to name a few off the top of my head.

And i realize if you do a squat on a BOSU ball it will challenge your balance and you’ll feel a good ‘burn’, but it’s not going to have an optimal effect on your fat loss. Why? Because you aren’t really building any lean muscle…you’re just maybe improving your balance a little bit.

Now, remember we’re not talking about balance or performance type training here. But if you want to improve those things then the BOSU ball may be a good option.

I’m just saying lift some weight and stop worrying about this whole ‘work’ the core thing that comes along with stability equipment.

_________________________________________
different can be a good thing

Being different and not following the pack is almost always a good thing. You can realize that just by walking into a commercial gym. Typically, you can tell the difference between a fit person’s workout and an out of shape person’s. Here’s a hint, a lot of the people who are really fit with good looking bodies are the ones doing full body lifts and aren’t reading a magazine while doing their cardio training.

I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on this column post…and if you still like me or not.

Have a great one,

Dan Grant

Had a pretty fun weekend. Went to Busch Gardens Europe and Colonial
Williamsburg, VA (Revolutionary War period themed).

At Busch’s I went on all the roller coasters - even The Griffin - which literally
hangs you over the edge at 205 feet for what seems like eternity and
then shoots you straight down so the people laughing at you from
the ground can see what faces of pure terror look like.

But it was fun and the picture of the weekend - I didn’t buy it
because of total embarrassment - was my girlfriend beside me on one
of the roller coasters with her hands in the air and big smile on her
face and me next to her holding on for dear life and the total
opposite of a smile on my face.

So, needless to say that was a picture that was never getting out
to the public - cause NOTHING scares me :).

My Thoughts from the week:

- when you’re doing your interval training, make sure during the
‘rest’ interval you’re only working at about 30% intensity. The
sprint is the most important part of the interval and if you go
down to 60-70% intensity at rest all you’re really doing is turning
into a cardio session.

- quote of the week: “If you can’t stand the heat, you better get out
of the kitchen” - President Harry S. Truman “(I was at a President’s
Museum too - it was a VERY American weekend)

- Happy Mother’s Day to all the mother’s that read my
blog.

- My top 3 tips to keep healthy while at an amusement park: 1. drink
water 2. spend the little bit extra for some decent quality food (I
mean - it cost’s like $60 just to get in - what’s a few dollars more)
3. bring a few healthy snacks with you

- don’t something really fun and really different in the gym every
once in awhile. Doing the same type of workout all the time just
plain sucks sometimes.

I usually have a ‘fun’ week every 6-8 weeks or so where I just do
different things to keep my self interested. For example, one week
I did 3 sets of 50 reps on the leg press and then did jump squats to
boot - it sucked, but it was different and refreshing in a way.

- here’s my new column piece at The Soko called: The Brilliance of
Baseball. It’s actually about exercise :).

Talk to you soon,

Dan Grant