The year was 1995 and two years prior, I had just finished up my college basketball career. I had been playing basketball since I was 10 years old and never thought the “air” would go out of the ball and I would stop playing. Basketball had been a part of me for most of my life and it took me to some wonderful places and introduced me to some great people. I couldn’t believe it was all gone. I knew I could still play for fun, but it is something about playing competively that brings out the best in you. I still liked to play, but I noticed after time my interest in playing became less and then something happened.

When I was in high school and college, I was significantly underweight for someone my size. I was 6’6 and weighed a whopping 170lbs and that was on a good day. I remember how I got pushed around under the basket, because I didn’t have any strength. It was through that experience, that I became obsessed with gaining weight. That’s right, gaining weight! I would consume weight gain shakes and eat loads of food just to put on pounds, and none of it ever worked. It just succeeded in giving me “gas” and frequent bathroom trips. I know too much info, right? ( smile) I finally gave up my quest to gain weight and just chalked it up to a fast metabolism, but one thing always sticks out in my mind. What was it? I remember people telling me as I got older I would gain weight easily and I thought, “nah that could never happen to me!”

Ok… fast forward to 1998 and the kid who couldn’t gain weight was almost 240lbs! I am 6’7 now but 240lbs was alot of weight for my frame and it took its toll on me. I had frequent back and knee problems and couldn’t understand why this was happening. I could only guess it had something to do with giving up the gym and exercise all together. I had this notion I would be forever young. Have you ever had the same thought? I remember my turning point vividly and it came during a pickup basketball game at the local “Y” in my hometown during a vacation. I use to dominate the court and not to brag or boast, but I had great leaping ability. I started playing and living on a memory of “ what was”, but here was the truth. I was overweight, slow, and could barely get down the court. I can remember all the comments from the guys I grew up with and all of them said, “ you are living the good life down there in Florida”. They were really telling me I had gotten fat but in a round about way. It hit me to my heart while I was sitting there with ice on knees and my heart beating faster than a hummingbird’s wings. What could I do?

I drove back to Florida a couple of days later, and I knew things had to change. How was I going to change them? I was determined to change and this was coming from a guy who stopped at just about every Burger King from South Carolina to the Florida border. I didn’t know it at the time but that would be my last fast food binge. I got home and started to do some research on the internet and came across the “Body for Life” website and dove into it. I wanted to buy the book and I remember it being 20 bucks, at the local book store. I was on a budget at the time, and couldn’t afford it, but I didn’t give up. I went to a flea market in South Florida and I remember going to a booth and saw the “Body for Life” book. I asked the guy in charge of the booth how much he wanted for the book and he replied, “a dollar”. I bought the book and went home and immediately dove into it. This was a Saturday and by Monday I was at the gym starting the program. I stuck with the program and got down to 205lbs and never felt better. I noticed my knee pain and back pain disappeared and I felt better than I ever did. I felt athletic again and it showed when I ventured back to playing “pickup” basketball. I guess you might be feeling that I’m “tooting” my own horn, but that is not the point. The point is to take action and quit waiting on the perfect time, the perfect day, the perfect training program, or even the perfect trainer because perfection doesn’t really exist. The important thing is to start where you are and expect help along the way. There is power in a made up mind. See you on lean side.

Darren McDuffie
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist
Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Nutrition and Weight Management Specialist

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Darren McDuffie

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In the movie, Forrest Whitaker “plays” the coach of the basketball team. He manages to  get enough players to have a team and a season. The players for the most part are new to one another and have to learn to play together as a “team”. There is one player who doesn’t want to play as a team but would rather play as an individual.  He doesn’t want to pass the ball and thinks he has to score all the time. The guy is very selfish. At one point the head coach played by Forrest Whitaker goes to the boy’s house and is having a conversation with him and says, “ only a fool doesn’t change ”. This line really stuck with me and it made sense. Does it make sense to you?

I love fitness but I realize everyone doesn’t share the same love I have for it and that’s fine. But.. if I told you I had the cure for diseases and  premature aging, would you believe me? I don’t think you would especially if I wasn’t on TV talking about some pill, right? I can tell you I do have a cure for what I mentioned above but its not in pill form, its in the form of diet and exercise. Yup… that’s the truth, but you have to make some changes to enjoy the benefits which most people aren’t willing to do, but like the movie said, “only a fool doesn’t change”. Until next time…see you on the lean side.

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Diet-  The cookie diet, oatmeal diet, cat diet, rat diet… whatever diet you are on stop now because I can tell you it is only a temporary “fix” and it won’t last. Most of the weight you lose on diets is unhealthy weight loss… you lose weight, but also muscle. Muscle is what keeps your fat burning oven going all day. Our society places pressure on women by telling them they have to be a certain dress size and certain weight to look good and diet companies feed off this. I don’t care if Dr. Seuss made your diet… it ain’t gonna work long term! The only long term solution is a change in eating habits and weight training.

Starving yourself– The principle of fat loss is burning more calories than you consume but you need to eat! The right foods can help your metabolism along but starving yourself only slows down your metabolism.You can strategically fast” to lose bodyfat and there are some obvious benefits to this, but just plain starving yourself is crazy.

Instant Gratification– Tell me why… why, why, why do I always get asked by a woman who hasn’t exercised in years ask me within 2 workouts why they aren’t losing any fat. It didn’t take you 2 days to gain all the fat you have, why do you think it’s gonna take you 2 days to lose it! This leads me to my last and final point.

Scale Watchers– Women by far are the most guilty of this. Quit watching the scale and worrying about weight loss. The name of the game is fat loss. Muscle is more compact than fat so as you start to train with weights etc., you’ll notice your clothes will start to fit better and you’ll look better naked. Yup I said it! ( smile) It may not necessarily show up on the scale but it will show in the compliments you get, and the added energy you’ll receive from working out. Always remember… you want to improve lean body mass.

Bonus Tip***** Women… please don’t be afraid to pick up a weight or a resistance band and start using it. You’ll transform your body quicker doing this. If you have the chance to weight train vs climbing on the treadmill doing boring cardio,  go for the weight training. Ladies send me your questions/ comments I would love to hear from you. See you on the lean side.

Darren McDuffie
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist
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Brad Pilon pioneers a program called Eat Stop Eat and has helped many people reach their fat loss goals. I picked up a copy of Brad’s book out of curiosity and was amazed at what I found in it. In the book, Brad strikes down the myth that you will lose muscle if you don’t eat and your metabolism will slow down. On the contrary, the opposite is true. When you resistance train, your body goes through various changes but the biggest one is it starts to secrete growth hormone. Guess what your body does, when you fast? Yup…. it secretes growth hormone. In addition to this, because your body doesn’t have the constant influx of food it will then begin to burn fat as fuel! This makes it easier for you to lose the unwanted body fat you have been storing in various places.

I bet I know what is going through your mind right now. You are thinking, “ there is no way, I can give up food”. I thought the same thing when I started out. In this program, you only have to give up food for two non concurrent days. What does this mean? You might fast from 1:00 pm on Monday until Tuesday at 1:00 pm then you can eat a sensible healthy meal. You are not finished yet!  You’ll need to pick one more day you want to fast in the same week.. since we picked Monday let’s do friday at 1:00 pm to Saturday at 1:00 pm. You are now finished for the week. What did this do? By doing this, you have just created a caloric deficit which is what you need to lose fat. It was just that simple. Oh, I forgot to tell you, you can drink water. I would advise you to drink plenty of it on the program. I can tell you this program works and I don’t endorse anything I don’t use myself. I have experienced my goal of losing fat but here are some additional benefits I have experienced with this program:

• Ability to get more done -  did you know most of our time is spent thinking about what to eat, where we are going to eat, and what we are going to cook? For two days out of the week I don’t have to worry about doing this! I can concentrate on the task at hand and enjoy more free time

• Clarity -  I am able to think more clearly

• Convenience – I don’t have to worry about packing lunch, making breakfast, or dinner.

Check out the Eat Stop Eat program details down below. There is some startling information in this report!  See you on the lean side… with Eat Stop Eat.

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I hope you are enjoying your President’s day holiday! If you didn’t have a holiday today well, I can only sympathize with you. I like having an extended weekend as it helps me to catch up on things. What about you? Anyways… I subscribe to other fitness newsletters because as a personal trainer, I figure there is always something out there I can learn but can you learn to much? I think this is possible because I notice quite frequently I’ll receive emails from other fitness gurus and they sometimes seem to contradict each other. So who’s right?

Fitness can be overwhelming in some aspects if you let it. All the fitness experts want to see you use their method or supplement because they want to make money. So who do you listen to and how do you know what they are telling you is right? I don’t have the answer for you but what I can tell you is learn the basics. There are basics to everything and they will work but for some reason fitness experts are intent on making things a bit harder than what they should be. Are you doing too much cardio? Are you doing too little cardio? Should you even be doing cardio? It goes on and on. It’s enough to make anyone confused so again, what do you do?

Find out what works best for you… and stick to it! There is no need to jump on the latest fitness program, the latest gadget, or the latest diet. Learn the basics first and listen to your body because your body knows what works. You may need to “tweak” something every now and then and that is to be expected but jumping from one thing to another only keeps your results delayed. What do you think? Until next post, see you on the lean side!

Darren McDuffie
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Darren McDuffie
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
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In the past when I traveled on business, I was at my own mercy. I would fall prey to all the meeting snacks they put out during break which would include pastries, cookies, and even ice cream. I”m not sure what it is about meetings but the thought of sitting there listening to one person for an extended period of time made me sleepy. In order to   combat the sleepiness, I would eat just to try and stay awake. That was the wrong thing me for me to do! It gave me a sugar rush and it would temporarily keep me awake, but within a few minutes I would have to fight to stay awake even more due to the sudden rush of insulin. Once the meeting was over, I would run to my room feeling exhausted even though I didn’t exercise. Why wasn’t I exercising? It was probably because I thought I needed a gym at that time. I had fooled around in hotel gyms before and alot of them were ill equipped . What do I mean? They usually had one raggedy treadmill, no dumbells, and very few had any cardio equipment. So… what to do, what to do? I would usually go back up to my room kick up my feet and watch TV. Is that what you do now?

I think most of us give up when we are traveling because its easy to do. Its easy to eat all the bad food and skip working out because you are traveling isn’t it? What if you made the sacrifice to continue your exercise and eat healthy foods? Here’s what I did to make sure I didn’t skip my exercise routine and make sure I ate properly. I brought along my bodylastics resistance bands. I can attach those to my hotel room door for back exercises and also use them for a variety of other exercises. In addition, I packed some trail mix consisting of almonds, raisins, cranberries, and pistachio nuts. I ate that for a snack in between my regular meals. I bypassed the pastries in the morning, skipped the afternoon cookies, and told the ice cream goodbye with the evening meal. It made it easier that I prepared in advance and didn’t fall prey to self sabotage. Are you falling prey to self sabotage? See you on the lean side!

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In case you didn’t know, there is an obsession with weight loss. I would be willing to bet you can’t watch TV for an extended period of time without seeing an ad for some pill or potion to lose weight. Companies capitalize off this, and implant in the mind weight, weight, weight. Am I correct? What about fat? Few if any of these commercials attack fat loss! I wonder why? It’s probably because the money is in the disease and not in the cure. What do I mean by that? All of these weightloss companies are out to make a buck and not necessarily to educate the consumer. Don King, the boxing promoter, says it best when he says, “ Only in America” because only in America can ignorance be capitalized on to make a quick buck. They want to make money and won’t tell you the truth, but I am going to tell you the plain truth about weightloss right here and now! weightloss is a myth, it is fatloss you want to shoot for if you want to look and feel better. How could that be?

Have you ever seen someone who has loss weight at a rapid pace? I have and I can tell you they still looked unhealthy! When you lose weight at a rapid pace, chances are you are also losing muscle. Muscle is something you just can’t have enough of because it keeps your metabolism humming along so you can burn calories. You need to burn calories in order to lose fat. If you replace fat with muscle, you’ll look damn good… more shapely, more toned, and then you’ll have something in the bank that will keep your fat burning furnace revved up. You could settle for plain ol’ weighloss where you lose weight only to gain it back. If I were you, I would pick up a barbell, a dumbell, or resistance band and start building some muscle today. What do you think? See you on the lean side…Dee

Darren McDuffie

Certified Nutrition Education and Weight Management Specialist

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