The Maui Diet: Blog

Here are the five main parts of my home gym. What your gym looks like and contains is up to you.
1. Dumbbells and Rack
2. Weight Bench
3. Concept II Rower (foreground in photo)
4. Gloves, Jump Ropes, misc.
5. Sound System

My dumbbells range from 3 to 75 pounds. They’re all you need for effective strength training. I bought mine, including the rack, second-hand and at sales.
The Weider weight bench I’m using in the photo I got on sale for under $70.
Got the rower second hand for $400. They’re $1,500 new with shipping to Maui, so this was s steal. I absolutely love this piece of equipment, it is great for abs, upper body, cardiovascular system.
Gloves, exercise mat, jump ropes, other items for less than $30.
Sound system is the tiny tape player on ground on at left–$10. It rocks.

The most important thing is to just get started. Your own home gym can begin with a pair of light hand weights or a jump rope, or whatever. Add to it as you go along. Mine is the result of watching for sales and gathering stuff. It was fun putting it together and I’m always on the look-out for new stuff. Have fun and get started. And next time you find yourself watching the boob tube, grab your dumbbells and pump some iron at the same time. Hit the rower or exercise bike or treadmill. Drop and give yourself 20!

For more go to www.themauidiet.com

A friend just gave me some gratifying feedback on my book The Maui Diet—he said the number one thing he’d gotten out of it was “make your exercise fun.” Absolutely—that’s why I highly recommend such a strategy.
There’s not a shred of evidence that exercise is to be taken seriously. Exercise is important, but it is just as important to make exercise fun. That way, you’ll be more likely to do it regularly. And it’s what we do regularly that is all-important.
A buddy or partner makes exercise more fun for most people. If you don’t have a partner, find an exercise buddy or two, or three or more. If one can’t make it one day, another one will.
If a buddy’s not available, or you prefer to exercise alone, you can still make exercise fun. It’s all in your attitude. Bad attitude: “I’ve got to get my exercise out of the way.” Better: “I’m grateful for my ability to exercise and I enjoy it to the fullest!”
Keep things light. If you’re not feeling motivated, warm up slowly and tell yourself you’re only going to do 10 minutes today. Chances are excellent that once you get going, you’ll do a lot more than that.
Keep your self-talk fun, light, goofy, whatever amuses you. Whatever makes it fun for you, do it.
Find new ways and times to exercise. If you’re a soccer mom or dad, the perimeter of a field is perfect for walking aerobically, or jogging. Have a sports bag packed, change into your exercise clothes and get out there. If you’re just doing drop off and pick ups, not sticking around for the practice or game, get there 20 minutes early for the pick up and use that extra time for exercise. Being spontaneous is fun.
Here’s my ultimate tip for making exercise fun: Use the beach. Take advantage of these incredible exercise settings. There are lots of reasons to exercise on the beach—the lack of pollution, the joy of exercising in the sunshine and fresh air, the entire setting—but the number one reason is because of the surface. Sand cannot be beat for walking, jogging or running. Choose the hard sand by the water, or the soft sand away from the water, two entirely different surfaces. On dry sand, all the sinking down and pushing back out overloads your musculature. Walking on dry sand takes two to almost three times more energy than walking on a hard surface. Running on dry sand requires 1.6 times more energy than does running on a firm surface. Moving on sand burns more calories, and training on sand carries a lower risk of impact injury than harder surfaces. The beach is a top exercise choice, it makes exercise fun. And if you don’t have a beach where you live, look for other great outdoor exercise settings with forgiving surfaces, like parks, trails, etc.
There are endless ways to get exercise if you’re willing to be creative, look for fun, and let nothing stand in your way.

For more go to www.themauidiet.com

This is a special alert.
Boycott or just avoid any and all food from China. We just have no idea what is in food coming from mainland China and the recent news is all bad.
This is a no-brainer. But it’s deceptive, too, because food manufacturers in America import huge amounts of food products from China, then use these in manufacturing food products. Without identifying that the finished product includes ingredients from China, like wheat gluten, for example.
What is clear is our Food and Drug Administration is in no way looking out for American consumers. They are both unwilling and unable to, so the responsibility for watching what we feed ourselves is up to us. Cross anything from China off your list—they are sending tainted, chemically laced, toxic crap of all kinds, sometimes over and over again until it gets through. It’s sounds unbelievable, but that is the state of affairs in this country, where huge segments of our government do not work, including the FDA.
Protecting yourself and your family comes down to you. Start by moving away from “food products” as much as possible. Eat food that is as close to natural as possible. The best food is always locally grown, and even better is if you can grow some of your own—then you know what you’re eating. Outside of that, buy organic, fresh, whole natural foods and eat those exclusively, as much as possible. More plant-based food than animal, and move toward a totally plant-based diet if you’re not there already.
China is undoubtedly the worst poison food offender, but America now imports a huge percentage of it food and food products from outside the U.S. Be aware almost all of these countries have little oversight over food, and again, our FDA does a lousy job of watching what comes into our country. Aloha and good luck.

For more go to TheMauiDiet.com

Here are a few of the impostor foods that have earned reputations as healthy foods, but aren’t.

Bagels
The average bagel is not a great food, no matter how many people mistakenly think they are. Most bagels have a lot going against them. Like being made from refined/enriched flour. Most are full of junk carbs, salt, and sugar. Add cream cheese and other fattening favorites they’re generally served with, and you’ve got a classic junk food: refined, high fat, non-nutritious.

Blueberry muffins
Or bran, poppy seed, banana nut or any other kind of muffin. They are filled with refined flour, sugar, fat and other unhealthy ingredients. This is the old “blueberries (or bran, bananas, etc.) are good for you, therefore blueberry muffins are too.” Wrong. Blueberries are a healthy food choice, but plain blueberries aren’t blueberry muffins. Ditto for all the other kind of muffins that are filled with sugar, white flour and fat. Don’t kid yourself by thinking they’re a healthy food choice. They’re not. If you’re not ready to get rid of them altogether, you’d do well to make them a very, very occasional treat.

Yogurt
Frozen, fat free and all the rest. We’ve all heard for so long and bought into for so long the belief that yogurt contains healthy bacteria beneficial to stomachs and digestive systems. It’s just pretty much accepted as fact, but yogurt is a cow’s milk product, and no cow’s milk product is as good for human consumption as the dairy empire would like us to believe. Plus, with a few exceptions, all those little cups and cutesy cartons of this stuff are loaded with “fruit” that is loaded with refined sugar. They’re as much a sugar blast as anything. Yogurt is far from a truly healthy food choice.

Pasta
Pasta got a huge boost during the carbo-loading craze that came with running and other endurance sports. It was a favorite that so-called nutrition and exercise experts touted. The night before an endurance event, eat a plate of spaghetti or other pasta and you won’t bonk, won’t hit the wall.

Pasta took on cult status as a health food and still enjoys that today. The problem is, almost all pastas are refined flour products. They’re the equivalent of white bread, made from flour that’s been refined, all the good nutrients removed. And like breads, most pasta products after refining are fortified or “enriched” with ingredients no educated nutritionist would ever recommend.

There are true whole wheat and other pastas made from whole grain. Choose the whole grain product and don’t kid yourself if you’re eating the refined flour variety. It’s pretty much empty, non-nutritive calories, period.

These are just a few—there’s a crappy cornucopia of junk food choices out there, most of them these days, including “meal replacement” bars and other crap disguised as somehow healthy. They’re not.

So what’s a person who interested in losing weight and getting fit to eat?
Simple: eat whole, fresh, natural foods, just as they come from nature. Foods as grown. Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans and legumes, raw nuts and seeds.

For more go to www.themauidiet.com

Nothing is more important for losing fat and getting fit than aerobic exercise. Aerobic means continuous exercise like walking, jogging, bicycling, aerobic routines. If you’re serious about losing weight, make aerobic exercise a daily habit just like brushing your teeth, showering and other habits you never miss doing. When’s the last time you missed brushing your teeth in a 24-hour period? Probably never, right? That’s the kind of commitment true fat loss and fitness takes—you just don’t miss. You make time for it and do it. The important thing is to get at least thirty minutes a day of moderately intense aerobic, fat-burning exercise.
Make the commitment. Find the time, make the time, take the time and just do it. Shoot for seven days a week. Six if you can’t do seven and five if you can’t do six, but five is the minimum. Some exercise coaches say seven days is too much. I disagree, but you may agree, and if you do, take a day off. Or two. Whatever suits you best, but the minimum is five days. Why? Because we all have a 24-hour metabolism cycle. To burn fat more effectively 24 hours a day, we want to exercise—heat up—our bodies on a daily basis to permanently change our metabolism. Exercising less than 5 times a week won’t do enough to change our metabolism and really burn fat. We have to get good aerobic exercise daily, or a minimum of five days a week, to see dramatic, permanent fat loss.
Get aerobic exercise daily, even if it’s raining. If it happens to be raining when it’s my time to exercise, I put on my rash-guard shirt and a pair of shorts and get out there. I don’t care! What do I care if I get wet? I make it fun and get my exercise, hell or high water. Had some of my best, most fun workouts in the rain. No excuses!
Top choices for aerobic exercise are walking, jogging, Spinning, aerobic exercise routines and stair stepping. All of these must be done continuously for a minimum of 20 minutes to work.
Another great exercise tip is to exercise in the morning. When blocking out time to do your daily exercise, make it in the morning if possible. If this means getting up an hour or 90 minutes earlier, do it. Why is morning so important? Because when we exercise in the morning, particularly first thing, we’re charging up our metabolism right from the start of the day. This keeps it elevated throughout the day, so we’re burning extra calories even when we’re not exercising. If we wait until the afternoon or later to exercise, our metabolism tapers off sooner and we lose the benefit of burning extra calories.
For fit exercisers, anaerobic or strength/resistance exercise has fantastic payoffs. But for pure fat burning, you cannot beat daily aerobic exercise.