Do calories matter or do you simply need to eat certain foods and that will guarantee you’ll lose weight? Should you count calories or can you just count “portions?” Is it necessary to keep a food diary? Is it unrealistic to count calories for the rest of your life or is that just part of the price you pay for a better body?

You’re about to learn the answers to these questions and discover a simple solution for keeping track of your food intake without having to crunch numbers every day or become a fanatic about your food.

In many popular diet books, “Calories don’t count” is a frequently repeated theme. Other popular programs, such as Bill Phillip’s “Body For Life,” allude to the importance of energy intake versus energy output, but recommend that you count “portions” rather than calories…

Phillips wrote,

“There aren’t many people who can keep track of their calorie intake for an extended period of time. As an alternative, I recommend counting ‘portions.’ A portion of food is roughly equal to the size of your clenched fist or the palm of your hand. Each portion of protein or carbohydrate typically contains between 100 and 150 calories. For example, one chicken breast is approximately one portion of protein, and one medium-sized baked potato is approximately one portion of carbohydrate.”

Phillips makes a good point that trying to count every single calorie – in the literal sense – can drive you crazy and is probably not realistic as a lifestyle for the long term. It’s one thing to count portions instead of calories — that is at least acknowledging the importance of portion control. However, it’s another altogether to deny that calories matter.

Yes, calories do count! Any diet program that tells you, “calories don’t count” or you can “eat all you want and still lose weight” is a diet you should avoid. The truth is, that line is a bunch of baloney designed to make a diet sound easier to follow. Anything that sounds like work — such as counting calories, eating less or exercising, tends to scare away potential customers! But the law of calorie balance is an unbreakable law of physics: Energy in versus energy out dictates whether you will gain, lose or maintain your weight. Period.

Muscle to Die 4 Recommends: Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle
Click here for Tom’s Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle program.

I believe that it’s very important to develop an understanding of and a respect for portion control and the law of calorie balance I also believe it’s an important part of nutrition education to learn how many calories are in the foods you eat on a regular basis – including (and perhaps, especially) how many calories are in the foods you eat when you dine at restaurants.

The law of calorie balance says:

To maintain your weight, you must consume the same number of calories you burn. To gain weight, you must consume more calories than you burn. To lose weight, you must consume
fewer calories than you burn.

If you only count portions or if you haven’t the slightest clue how many calories you’re eating, it’s a lot more likely that you’ll eat more than you realize. (Or you might take in fewer calories than you should, which triggers your body’s “starvation mode” and causes your metabolism to shut down).

So how do you balance practicality and realistic expectations with a nutrition program that gets results? Here’s a solution that’s a happy medium between strict calorie counting and just guessing:

Create a menu using an EXCEL spreadsheet or your favorite nutrition software. Crunch all the numbers including calories, protein, carbs and fats. Once you have your daily menu, print it, stick it on your refrigerator (and/or in your daily planner) and you now have an eating “goal” for the day, including a caloric target.

That is my definition of “counting calories” — creating a menu plan you can use as a daily guide, not necessarily writing down every morsel of food you eat for the rest of your life. If you’re really ambitious, keeping a nutrition journal for at least 4-12 weeks is a great idea and an incredible learning experience, but all you really need to get started on the road to a better body is one good menu on paper. If you get bored eating the same thing every day, you can create multiple menus, or just exchange foods using your one menu as a template.

Using this method, you really only need to count calories once when you create your menus. After you’ve got a knack for calories from this initial discipline of menu planning, then you can estimate portions in the future and get a pretty good (and more educated) ballpark figure.

So what’s the bottom line? Is it really necessary to count every calorie to lose weight? No. But it IS necessary to eat fewer calories then you burn. Whether you count calories and eat less than you burn, or you don’t count calories and eat less than you burn, the end result is the same — you lose weight. Which would you rather do: Take a wild guess, or increase your chance for success with some simple menu planning? I think the right choice is obvious.

This is my write up of a training/supplement program I was on. The total program lasted 9 weeks and in that time I actually gained 20 lbs! I went from 174 to 194, now I have in the past weighed 188 and some of this was regained muscle, but on top of that I put on a fresh new 6 pounds.

Ok, some background on how I thought up this program, as you may already know, suggested programs for hardgainers are short and infrequent. I got to thinking that “what if you trained even shorter workouts and did them more often?”. I was on a busy schedule and still wanted to train so I decided to try this to see how it worked.

I knew pre exhaust workouts were a very effective method, but in the past I had only done it here and there for one or another body part and I had never done it for every muscle group for weeks at a time. Below is the routine I used, most workouts lasted 5 minutes or less.

Workout 1 (Chest)
Dumbbell Fly
With no rest do Bench Press

Workout 2 (Back)
Dumbbell Pullover
With no rest do Row

Workout 3 (Shoulders)
Lateral Raise
With no rest do Press Behind Neck

Workout 4 (Legs)
Leg Curl
Leg Extension
With no rest do Barbell Squat

Workout 5 (Arms)
1 Rep Chin (Go very slow, 30 seconds up and 30 seconds down)
With no rest do Standing Barbell Curl

1 Rep Dip (Go very slow, 30 seconds down and 30 seconds up)
With no rest do Tricep Exertions

I did do a warm up of a lighter set of the compound exercise then I did just one hard work set as listed above. I tired to add weight to the exercises each and every workout and I stayed in the 6 to 9 rep range, except on the chin and dip which is done for a painfully slow 1 rep.

The first 2 weeks I worked out Monday through Friday and took the weekends off, each muscle group was being hit once a week, but the soreness from the last workout was interfering with the next workout and I switched to training every other day. After 3 weeks I gained 11 pounds and then the gains seemed to slow down.

Starting week 4 I began taking a hormone precursor supplement and my gains started up again, I gained another 9 pounds over the next 6 weeks!

On diet I followed a zone type plan (40% Carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat) and I ate up to 7 to 8 times a day.

This program is very different then any you will see in the glossy muscle magazines but it sure does work, and if any one is feeling he can’t train because he “doesn’t have the time”, I’m sure you can squeeze in 5 mins every other day to make some great gains!

About The Author: Paul Becker is a natural (steroid free for life) bodybuilder and fitness consultant. He is the author of many ebooks and courses on training and diet. For more information visit his website at http://www.trulyhuge.com

In The Rader Master Bodybuilding and Weight Gaining System, Peary told us about a program he developed that could add up to 3/4 of an inch to a trainees arms in one day.

The program goes like this – pick a day when you can do nothing but train, eat and rest. You use just two exercises, one for triceps and one for biceps, and you do a set of each every hour for 12 hours. Use a weight lighter then your usual poundages, and do not work to failure. Eating some protein every hour, massaging the muscles after each workout and to resting all you can, were also recommended.

This program has worked for many and we could continue to use it exactly the same way to get a quick increase in arm size, but Peary gave us a hint of the full usefulness of this method. He stated “Most men use it on their arms since no one ever seems to have as large arms as he would like. However it will work on any muscle. We hope that some day when we have a greater understanding of muscle growth and the controlling factors, a similar method can be applied to men and women in a specialized session of perhaps a month and give them a physique that today takes years to acquire.” So we can see that Peary had a lot of hope for this method.

I believe I have a program that would be useful for advanced hardgainers who would like a quick increase in size all over their body. It would go something like this, you pick six exercises that cover the entire body, for example squats, bench press, over-head press, rows, calf raises and curls. For about 4 weeks you workout twice a week ,wed and sat, (this is to get used to these exercises and avoid extreme soreness when you begin specialization) do 2 work sets for each exercise, then on week five on Wednesday you do your regular workout but on Saturday you take the first exercise (squats) and do one set an hour for 12 hours, use about half of your usual poundage the idea as Peary said was “Working on the principle of flushing the muscles with blood and keeping them flushed all day long, the muscles will grow unbelievably for a short time.”, so we aren’t trying to push to maximum on these sets. Keep the Wednesday workouts the same as the first 4 weeks, and every Saturday take the next exercise in your program and hit it for 12 sets in 12 hours.

This program is still admittedly experimental, but all signs seem to show that it would bring about a big gain over the 10 weeks it takes to complete. The most important thing is that you don’t get overtrained, do only two workouts a week, and give the most days rest after the specialization day, hence the wed and sat schedule. The other thing is to do the hardest exercises like squats early in the cycle when you recovery ability is strongest and as the cycle progresses you work your way down, and at the end of the cycle you are doing the least taxing exercise like curls. The volume per exercise is high one day a week but the overall volume is kept at about 12 sets a workout, which is still not too bad for a hardgainer.

If you are a beginner, or intermediate stick to the basics like 20 rep squats, heavy deadlifts, presses, at al., you will grow plenty fast if you work hard, and eat and rest enough. But, if you are getting close to you potential and would like to get a quick burst of size, try this routine and see how it works for you. Tell me how it goes.

You?ve been trained very hard for some years now. You?ve build up some good muscle size, and your dieting and cardio workouts have given you some decent definition also. But you still feel like something is missing – you look good but you want to look great!

Well, now is the time to work on your impressive muscles. Some muscle groups are more likely to impress people then others, these are the muscle groups that people who have never trained with weights have little to no development in at all. When these areas are fully developed, they become super impressive to people on the street and even your fellow gym rats.

So if you?re ready to take your physique from merely looking good to looking amazing, then here are the areas to work on: 1) Wider Shoulders, 2) Thicker Pecs, 3) Larger Upper Arms, 4) Smaller Waist With Etched Abs and 5) Diamond Calves. When you have developed these to the max, you will take on a classic refined look that will put you a step above everyone else in your gym. OK, I know you?re excited and ready to get started, so let?s get to the workouts you?ll be doing for for each muscle group:

1) Wider Shoulders

What you want to do it maximize your development of the lateral head of the deltoid, this is what gives you width. Start with the Dumbbell Lateral Raise, use a weight that you can do in a slow and controlled manner. Hold the top position for a count of two and really feel the burn in the lateral head of your delts. Do 3 sets of 15 reps. Next is Barbell Upright Rows, keep your elbows high and the bar close to your body, hold at the top for a count of two while flexing your shoulders. Do 3 sets of 10 reps. To finish off your shoulders do Dumbbell Presses, keep your elbows back and don?t lock out at the top. Do 3 sets of 6 reps.

2) Thicker Pecs

Start off with Dumbbell Flys, keeping your arms bent. Get a good stretch at the bottom and come up like your hugging someone, do not touch the dumbbells at the top so you keep constant tension. Do 3 sets of 15 reps. Next is the Bench Press, Keep your elbows back and Don?t lock out at the top. Do 3 sets of 12 reps. Now Incline Dumbbell Press, while keeping your elbows back start at the bottom with the dumbbells wide and as you press move them closer together till then touch at the top, flex your upper pecs hard, lower and repeat. Do sets of 12 reps. Last is Parallel Bar Dips, keep your chin on your chest and your elbows out wide, not close to you body. Do 3 sets of 6 reps, add weight as you get stronger.

3) Larger Upper Arms

Alternating Dumbbell Curls, start off with the palms facing down and as you curl rotate the dumbbells up so your palms are facing up. Raise your pinkly high and flex you bicep hard at the top. Do 3 sets of 15 reps. Next do Barbell Curls, put one foot slightly forward and curl up with out bending back. Do 3 Sets of 8 reps. Lastly do Dumbell Hammer Curls, these build the brachialis a large muscle beneath the biceps. This is often a weak link in arm development. Many have found that by adding specific brachialis exercises to their workouts can increase their upper arm size by as much as one inch in a month. Do 3 sets of 10, 8 and 6 reps adding weight each set.

Now you?ll want to hit the long head of the Triceps and this will make your arms are look huge when standing relaxed. The First exercise is Bench Dips, place two flat benches parallel to each other, about three to four feet apart. Using your hands to support your weight, lift your feet to the top of the other bench so that the rest of your body is suspended between the two benches. Slowly lower your body toward the floor by bending your elbows until your upper arms and forearms form a right angle. Slowly rise back up to the start position by straightening your arms. The secret is to keep your elbows back and as close as possible to each other. Do 3 sets of 12 reps. Next is Dumbbell Kickbacks, keep elbows tight to side also trying to pull them as close together as possible. Hold and flex at the top for a count of two. Do 3 sets of 15 reps. Lastly Tricep Pushdowns, do 3 sets of 10, 8 and 6 reps adding weight each set.

4) Smaller Waist With Etched Abs

Frog Crunches. Lie flat on your back and draw your heels up under your knees wide and out to the sides like a frog. Place your hands with a barbell plate behind your head. Keep your head down with your chin on your chest as your shoulders round forward curl your upper body until only the small of the back remains in contact with the floor. This movement is not a stiff back sit up, it is a roll movement and you must perform it as such for it to produce results. Crunch Your abs hard at the top and hold for a count of of three. Do 3 sets of 20 reps. Remember cruches only tone the ab muscles, you need a lowered calorie intake to burn off the fat, to make the waist smaller and so the muscles then show through clearly.

5) Diamond Calves

Start with Seated Calf Raises, move slow (no bouncing) get a good stretch at the bottom then hold and flex your calf hard at the top for a count of two. Do 3 sets of 20 reps. Next is Standing One Leg Calf Raises, it’s been found that a straight leg generates less torque than when the knee is slightly bent about 20 degrees keep it fixed at that angle throughout the exercise. Hold a dumbbell on the same side as the working calf, use you other hand for support. Do 3 Sets of 12 reps.

Time To Get Pumping!

Hopefully you now see that training your “impressive muscles? will bring your physique up to a whole new level!

About The Author: Paul Becker is a natural (steroid free for life) bodybuilder and fitness consultant. He is the author of many ebooks and courses on training and diet. For more information visit his website at http://www.trulyhuge.com