Big Sale Today

I’m not much for shopping sales, but I do like saving money when possible.

Today is Amazon Prime Day. It’s Amazon’s biggest sale of the year and is exclusively for Prime members.

You can find deals on books, food, fitness gadgets, workout clothes and a lot more.

Amazon Prime members enjoy shipping benefits, streaming benefits, shopping benefits, reading benefits and more.

If you’re not already an Amazon prime member today is a great day to sign up.

Amazon Prime is a yearly, but well worth it.

If you’re already a Prime member and you see any awesome fitness deals, let me know in the comments below…

The Best Proteins to Help Combat Your Dad Bod

One of the key parts of gaining muscle is protein. If you don’t know where to start, it can be a bit confusing when trying to figure out what protein to buy. Fortunately for you, here’s a quick list of the best proteins on the market.

First, you should know that there are two different main types of protein: whey and casein. These are the two main proteins that are extracted from milk. Whey is generally taken right after a workout to promote quicker muscle healing.

Casein is generally taken before bed in order to keep your muscles well fed. The first brand that you should try is Optimum Nutrition, or ON as their label says. They sell really good whey protein and casein.

These are pretty good prices from Amazon – especially for such a great product. Like most proteins, their most popular flavor is chocolate, because the other flavors are generally not as good.

Next you should check out BSN SYNTHA-6. They have a similar product to ON, at a better price on Amazon. The only real complaint about this one is that it has many more carbs than the ON brand.

A serving of this brand has a carb-protein ratio of about 3:4 while the ON brand has about 1:8. This makes ON a better brand for post workout shakes, but BSN is still a good meal replacement.

Another brand to consider is Body Fortress. At a similar price per pound to BSN, they give you a pretty good deal for some quality protein. The carb to protein ratio on this brand is 3:10, which is better than BSN, but still not quite as good as ON.

This is the best post-workout protein for anyone who wants to get their protein at a good price. Most proteins that you find at places like Academy or Walmart will probably be fine – just chose the one with the best carb-protein ratio and try that one.

If you don’t really have loyalties to any one brand in particular, you should just try each one and see which one you like more. One shake may have a weird consistency, one may not mix very well, one may have a weird taste – but you just have to find the one that fits you.

The brands listed above are the recommended starter choices, but if you find a brand that suits you best, stick to that one. You can’t go wrong finding protein to add to your diet to weed out unwanted carbs.

I’d love to know which protein you like best. Leave me the details in the comments…

Lose Your ‘Dad Bod’ With This Cost-Effective Pull Up Bar

Having a Dad Bod isn’t healthy. You probably already know that and you’ve been meaning to do something about it, but two things hold you back. You don’t really have the time to work out and buying a gym membership is too expensive – especially if you know that you really, really hate going to the gym.

What you need to do is get workout equipment that makes exercising both convenient and affordable. If you didn’t have to leave your home to get in shape, it would make losing that ‘Dad Bod’ a whole lot easier.

That’s why the ProSource Pull Up and Chin Up Bar is such a popular buy for shedding the pounds that creates a Dad Bod. This bar can work out so many different muscles, it’s like having a tool that does the job of several pieces of gym equipment.

One of the biggest issues with the Dad Bod is when you have that excess weight on your stomach. This is the worst place on your body to carry fat because it affects your health the most.

But the bar can tone up your upper body fast and make it easy to get rid of the outward appearance of the Dad Bod and work on the inner destruction that visceral fat can cause.

While you gain upper body strength from exercising using the bar, you also tone up the abdomen, the chest, and the biceps – plus other muscles like your back and shoulders.

You’ll have the strength to pull yourself up with regular pullups or cross ankle pullups. You’ll also gain the upper body strength to do chin ups. You’re not stuck with using just one angle to work out with, either.

The bar is 41 inches in length and strong enough for you to use for your oblique muscles and your upper thigh and calf muscles. You can do leg raises, triceps dips and more with this simple piece of equipment.

The best thing about this bar is that if you don’t want to mount the piece, you can use it as a portable tool for even more exercise choices. You can move it and rearrange it for whatever exercise you need to perform.

When you’re ready to do your repetitions for crunches or situps, you just place it lower in the doorframe. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to put this together and set it up so that you can get started immediately getting rid of that Dad Bod.

You’ll need a good doorframe that’s solid and it needs to be between 24 to 36 inches. It’s made of a heavy duty steel, has 12 grips and a selection of handles. It can easily support up to a 300-pound weight load. You can use the J brackets to fix the bar anywhere if you don’t plan to take it down.

With the right equipment, you can say goodbye to that Dad Bod and hello to a healthy, active lifestyle.

Check out the ProSource Pull Up and Chin Up Bar and let me know how it goes in the comments…

Did This Activity Cause Your Dad Bod?

One of the main causes for Dad Bods everywhere is snacking.

Snacking is a really bad habit to get into, but many people today do it without even realizing it. If you cut out snacking, you’re going to reach your dream body goals faster.

Snacking generally occurs among men who enjoy a sedentary lifestyle. Sitting around playing games and watching TV will quickly lead to you snacking instead of eating full meals.

This is most prevalent with those who watch sports and have a big bowl of chips and dip ready to watch the big game. Along with these unhealthy snacks, they generally throw in beer and soda to the mix, which only makes it worse.

Snacking is really unhealthy because you quickly consume a ridiculous amount of carbs, but don’t really think about it because you do it mindlessly. If you just keep on reaching back into that chip bag to eat more and more potato chips, you’ll have finished the bag by the end of the game.

This adds up to a really unhealthy amount of calories and carbs. For example, a regular bag of classic Lay’s chips has 10 servings in it per bag. Each serving has 160 calories, 15g of carbs, and 2g of protein.

If you eat the whole bag over the course of watching the Super Bowl or any other big game, that comes out to be 1600 calories, 150g of carbs, and only 20g of protein. It’s obvious that this is one of the biggest factors of the Dad Bod.

The best option for people who like to snack is to either stop snacking or snack healthier. The first option is more difficult, but it gives better results. You should eat a breakfast, then a fruit between breakfast and lunch, then lunch, then a fruit between lunch and dinner, and then dinner.

If you really do feel like you have to snack throughout the day, there are some great healthy alternatives to chips. One great option is grapes. Grapes can keep you snacking for awhile just like chips – except they have much less carbs, and are only 62 calories a serving.

Another good alternative is popcorn. You can get 100 calorie bags that will last you much longer than a bag of chips for about 1,500 fewer calories. Most fruits and vegetables are good options for snacks.

This could include celery, apples, bananas – anything that you can grab at your local produce section. You still that crunch with things like celery, but it’s not as unhealthy for you as chips are.

Need some healthy snack ideas? Check out these recipes.

What is your favorite healthy snack?

4 Ways to Increase Your Energy Levels

For many people, being tired is a big issue when it comes to things like exercise. They feel too groggy and fatigued to go on a run or go to the gym. However, there are plenty of ways to quickly bring back your energy.

First, you may want to increase your magnesium intake. Magnesium is an extremely important mineral, being required for over 300 of your biochemical reactions. The most important of this is the process which breaks down the glucose from the carbs you eat, turning it into energy.

If you have a magnesium deficiency, the carbs you eat may not even be good for energy, and you’ll feel consistently tired. There are a few ways to add more magnesium to your diet.

A few nuts can provide you with the magnesium you need. Eat nuts such as hazelnuts, cashews, and almonds. You can also try eating more whole grain foods, such as bran cereal.

Surprisingly, one way to increase energy is to actually get involved in some physical activity. Going on a walk when you’re “too tired” to do it can actually leave you feeling more refreshed and energized.

Once you get that blood flowing, you can enjoy the energized feeling for about two hours – and that’s from just a short walk. Walking can be done just about anywhere at any time, so there’s not a whole lot of reason for you not to go on a quick 10 minute walk.

As we know, one of the bigger causes of the Dad Bod is beer. Drinking, not only beer but all alcohol in general, will leave you less energized. You have to drink tons of water if you want to be active.

Obviously, water is a key part of your body. Your body uses water up 24/7, even if you’re just sitting down doing nothing. You can quickly become dehydrated by drinking alcohol – meaning you’ll be left with very little energy.

Finally, try getting some sun. Vitamin D is a key vitamin in energy production in your body. Vitamin D deficiency has also been linked to weight gain, depression, heart disease, and multiple forms of cancer.

It’s worth it to take a quick walk outside on a sunny day to get your body re-energized. Besides getting some sun, there are plenty of foods that are good sources of vitamin D, such as spinach, cheese and other dairy products, orange juice, and egg yolks.

Incorporate some of these foods into your diet and you’ll be feeling more energetic very quickly. You can also give your metabolism a boost by spacing out your meals during the day, starting with an energy boosting breakfast!

What do you do to boost your energy?

Awesome Tool To Help You Get Rid Of Your Dad Bod

Just like any project you undertake, having the right tools for the job make the job much easier.

One such tool for getting rid of your dad bod is the Fitbit Charge HR Wireless Activity Wristband.

You’ll have more energy, be more confident, and be healthier than you were before. While a Fitbit won’t help you lose the weight directly, it can be a powerful source of motivation to guide you on your journey to becoming a healthier man.

The Fitbit Charge HR Wireless Activity Wristband tracks your activity so you can see how active or sedentary you really are. It also tracks your heart rate as you go about your day to day activities.

This can be helpful to make sure that youíre staying in the normal heart range for your weight and activity level. What many Fitbit users love about this device is that it encourages users to join online challenges.

You can participate in challenges to walk a certain amount of steps or sleep a certain amount of hours. Some people use their Fitbits for offline challenges, like employees who challenge each other to see who can get the most steps in the office.

Having a supportive community – whether online or off – can be one of the most effective ways to trim down and tone up your Dad Bod. Another feature that makes the Fitbit Charge HR Wireless Activity Wristband popular is the fact that it can track your sleep patterns.

While it’s not intended to diagnose a sleep disorder, you can use the Fitbit to get an accurate look at how and when you sleep to see if anything is contributing to your fatigue besides weight.

You might discover that you’re a restless sleeper or that you need more sleep than you’re actually getting. Keep in mind that sleep is important if you hope to lose weight and ditch the Dad Bod for good.

Without proper sleep, your metabolism slows and you’re more likely to crave unhealthy foods like the pizza and beer. That’s why it can be helpful to see what the Fitbit shows you about your sleeping patterns.

You can also use your Fitbit to set alarms. If you hate waking up to a blaring alarm clock, then the Fitbit’s gentle vibrations may be just what you need to get up and get your day started.

You can even set an alarm if you’re looking to take a nap. Another good thing about using a Fitbit is that you can discover how many calories you’re really burning. This can help you determine if you need to adjust your diet to eat more or less food.

Because your calories burned are tracked, you can easily look back through the records in your Fitbit account during a plateau. Don’t let your Dad Bod hold you back from changing your life.

You’re never too old or too far set in your Dad Bod habits to get healthy and the Fitbit Charge HR Wireless Activity Wristband can make the process of losing weight more enjoyable.

Even better, there’s a pretty good deal on the Fitbit Charge over at Amazon right now. Check it out here.

Getting Rid of Your Dad Bod Mentality

Much of the Dad Bod craze has to do with the mental side of it. If you can manage to conquer the mental aspect of the Dad Bod, you can become fit with no problem. Many people fall victim to the idea that they will never achieve their goals – that they’re too hard and unrealistic.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Fitness goals are achievable for everyone. Many people fall into this trap because after a few weeks of working out, they haven’t seen many distinguishable results.

Even if they are healthier, they can’t really see it – so to them, they feel as though they haven’t made any progress. If these people just stuck with it for a few months, and eliminated the bad habits they sometimes continue pairing with the healthier ones, they would see results.

You can’t work out every week, only to sabotage yourself by indulging in unhealthy activities after work and on the weekends. Having the right mindset in exercise will help you stick with your program until you reach your goal.

A big part of the Dad Bod mentality that you should rid yourself of is the idea that it’s okay to just be average. In reality, that’s what the Dad Bod is – just an average man’s body.

Some people are okay with just being average, but you should be encouraged to go above and beyond expectations. It’s better to have an above average body than it is to have a standard body.

It’s like the difference between getting a C and an A on a school assignment. C is average, and it’s fine, but you could get an A if you applied yourself a bit. The A is much more rewarding and much better overall.

Those afflicted by the Dad Bod should know that they could achieve their dream body if they just applied themselves for about a year. If you went from a Dad Bod to a dream body already, it’s important to note that it can be easy to fall back into that old body.

If you don’t maintain your body once you achieve it, you very well may fall right back into that old body that you had. Many people begin thinking that they’ve reached their goal, and now they can go back to drinking beer and eating pizza.

This is far from the truth. While you can let up on your health routine a bit, you can’t fall back into that old routine that got you the Dad Bod in the first place. Maintaining a good body requires the right mindset. You have to stay a bit strict on yourself or else you’ll lose all of the progress you worked so hard for.

Let me know what you think in the comments…

A Good Night’s Sleep Can Help You Shed a Soft Stomach

When you’re trying to lose weight, one of the key factors in your success is a rather unexpected one. It’s not how much you lift, or how many miles you run. It’s not how little you eat – but rather, how much you sleep!

The other factors are important, but sleep is incredibly vital to helping you lose weight. The first reason that sleep is important is that it’s just a biological make-or-break for weight loss.

It’s been shown in a study that was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that those who did get adequate sleep lost 55% more fat than those who did not. This is a crazy amount, and really goes to show what a huge impact sleep has on the results of your workouts.

The big reason that sleep is important is to help control your diet. It’s all too easy to give up and have something a bit unhealthy when you’re sleep deprived. You actually feel less satisfied after meals and hungrier before them due to a certain pair of chemicals: leptin and ghrelin.

If you have very little leptin, you feel hungrier. When you have more ghrelin, you also feel hungrier and burn fewer calories. It’s been shown that when you sleep for less than six hours, you do exactly what you don’t want to – produce less leptin and more ghrelin.

People who don’t get a proper amount of sleep will also fall victim to fatigue. When you wake up, you’ll be way too tired to exercise. Even if you do somehow manage to drag yourself to the gym, you won’t be able to lift nearly as much as you usually do.

This can lead to a lack of any real results. Your muscles aren’t actually so weak that they can’t lift those weights – they just have had little to no rest, so they’re not firing on all cylinders.

So, on a progress level, it’s as if you walked into the gym fully rested, and just used lower weights than you usually do. This will not help you tone up your Dad Bod. If you don’t get enough sleep on a regular basis, try to cut out unnecessary tasks throughout the day.

You may find that you don’t have time to watch a ton of TV if you want to get a workout in, go to work, and go to sleep at a decent hour. The average adult should get about 7 hours of sleep a night. If you’re getting anything less than that, rearrange your schedule, or you may not see the results you want to.

Do You Struggle To Get A Good Night’s Sleep?

I recognize that some of you struggle to get a good night’s sleep no matter how you arrange your schedule. Many of you suffer from sleep apnea or similar chronic sleeping disorders.

If that’s you, I found a program that may be of help. To learn more simply click here.

Quick “At Home” Workouts to Free Yourself from a Dad Bod

Not everyone has the time and money to go by the gym every day, but that shouldn’t stop you from getting in shape. There are plenty of exercises that you can do to rid yourself of the Dad Bod that will take little to no time out of your day.

First, you should do some jump rope. You can do this for about 10 minutes, twice a day to burn 200 calories a day – or 1,000 calories per week. Jumping rope can be done indoors or in your yard very easily.

If you’re busy working most of the day, you can wake up about 10 minutes earlier, do it once in the morning, and then do it once when you get home. In addition to helping your heart rate with burning fat, it also strengthens your legs – something that also helps get rid of the Dad Bod.

Next, if you want to firm up your chest but don’t have time for a whole routine, you can do push-ups. Push-ups take a mere few minutes to do, and are really great for your chest.

There are schedules you can print out from various websites that will have you going from doing 3 push-ups to 20 in the matter of a month. There are also ones that take an initial measurement of how many push-ups you can do, and format your schedule around that.

These schedules are a bit better, because they don’t assume you’re a beginner or an expert – you may just be intermediate. To help bring out your abs, there are abdominal exercises that can be done in about a minute or less.

If you’re new to ab workouts, you might not be familiar with the plank exercise. Form is very key in the plank position. The only parts of your body contacting the ground should be your toes and forearms, because your arms will be bent at 90 degrees.

You shouldn’t be sticking your butt up or letting it sink down. Your body should be in a completely straight line. Most people who start off doing this can’t even go for a minute, so you should be able to get a pretty good feeling ab workout in a minute or less.

If you want to hit legs but don’t have time to load up the squat rack, there’s another under-a-minute exercise for legs called the wall sit. Wall sits are like sitting down in a chair without a chair actually being there.

You press your back and head up against a wall and hold. Don’t lean down into your legs, keep your arms down to the side. This is a very intense leg workout, and also helps with your abs.

Hope this helps!

If you’re looking for more exercise ideas or simply a more extensive plan, check this out.

What is a “dad bod”?

The Dad Bod is a body type that affects many men today – anywhere between the ages of 16 and up. A Dad Bod doesn’t necessarily equal obesity. It equals more of an untoned body, and is unfortunately, somewhat of a fad.

Contrary to what the name may imply, the Dad Bod affects young men as well as middle aged. These men could take the route of getting in shape, but they see this fad right now working okay for other guys, which isn’t being necessarily fit.

The Dad Bod doesn’t mean that you’re overweight or fat. A good example of someone who has a Dad Bod would be someone who does lift weights, but you never see their progress because they’ll have beer and pizza in the same day.

This doesn’t necessarily make them weaker, but they do have excess fat that, if cut down, would make them look much stronger. They may have a slight pudge in their stomach, and slimmer arms and legs, which are soft and untoned.

The Dad Bod is bad because it promotes an unhealthy lifestyle. Whether or not the man is terribly obese, the habits will eventually cause worse weight gain and the underlying, invisible conditions like diabetes will remain a concern.

The worst part about the Dad Bod is that it promotes averageness. It tries to push the idea that being par is good and encouraged. Dad Bod people aren’t overweight, nor are they super buff.

They’re ordinary. Many have attempted to equate the Dad Bod to Leonardo DiCaprio, now that he has one, or Chris Hemsworth, who the media claims looks better with a Dad Bod than as his ripped character, Thor.

You can tell if you have a Dad Bod pretty easily. You’ll have a little beer belly, an untoned chest, but you’re not weak. You might lift weights occasionally, and you’re strong like a dad, but it just doesn’t show.

The diet that comes with a Dad Bod may include beer, pizza, burgers, chips, sweets, etc. It’s essentially the body type equivalent of mashed potatoes versus a crinkle cut fry. One’s soft and lumpy, the other ripped and crisp.

The Dad Bod has become a fad today for various reasons. Most of the women who like it say that it represents someone more “natural” and they like the pressure for themselves to be fit off of them.

Although, this also makes no sense, because a truly natural human would not be drinking beer – he would drink water. And instead of pizza, he’d eat lean meat. The Dad Bod seems to represent comfort to some people, but it’s not worth the lack of health benefits that come with it.

What do you think?

Special Offer: Click here to learn how to get rid of your “dad bod”