"With the panoply of training programs out there claiming to be the new or best way to lose weight and be healthy, how can one know what to do? If you are new to exercising, where do you start? You just want to reach your goal. You are not looking for a PHD in exercise science. You are busy with your career, your family, having a social life. The intent of this article is to bring clarity to the subject while keeping it simple. First, let’s address the elephant in the room: There are NO shortcut, NO magic pill and NO fairy dust. Take out your note pad and write this down, the single most important attribute to reaching your goal is… CONSISTENCY. That’s it. Take Action. Get moving. Keep doing it. Once you have made consistency your middle name, I’d like you to meet Mr. EFFICIENCY. He will make sure you don’t make the gym your permanent residence. "

"Imagine that you have recently gotten married and your favourite uncle has an amazing wedding gift for you. However the gift involves a choice. You have to choose between one of two suitcases: the first one contains $1 million in cash. The second suitcase contains a penny. He instructs you that you can take the $1 million right now and it is all yours, no questions asked, no conditions or catch. On the other hand, if you choose the suitcase with the penny and leave it with him, he will double its value for the next 31 days. Now the question is: which suitcase do you choose? Stop reading for a moment and really ask yourself WHICH SUITCASE WOULD YOU TAKE?

"I have a simple rule: do the least amount of work necessary to achieve maximum results. This golden rule applies perfectly to cardio. Too often, clients tell me their cardio regimen and what I hear is as painful as nails scratching a black board. For this reason, I’ve decided to set the record straight. Before I go into details, keep in mind that 1) we are referring to cardio training to burn fat, not improve performance and 2) the approach below is for the ones amongst us who have jobs, kids and are not gym rats and, therefore, need to be in and out of the gym within a reasonable amount of time.

"A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine sent me his workout program and wanted my opinion on its design. When I reviewed the program I saw a bodybuilding routine geared towards building muscle mass. He told me that in addition to the weights, he was also doing cardio to help his fat loss, which is his main goal. We agreed to have lunch to discuss his routine and discuss body composition training. During lunch, he made an interesting comment, even though he had to do a little research on the net and grab from programs here and there, his program had been pretty easy to design. I have to be honest, the program itself wasn’t wrong. But as our conversation went on, I found out that it wasn’t addressing the issues that we were talking about. In addition to weight loss, he wanted to increase his biceps strength (a lacking bodypart). When I asked him how he had addressed this issue in his routine, the answer was that he didn’t know how. Also, many important variables had been overlooked in his routine. By the end of our conversation he had realized that program design was very complex.