Five years ago I decided I was tired of being overweight. I started walking everyday and after 6 months, I hadn’t lost a pound. I talked to my doctor and she told me just walking wasn’t enough—I had to combine more intensive exercise with proper food intake if I wanted to lose weight. That’s when I started weight training at Fit 4 Life. My personal trainer developed a program of weight training designed to fit my needs and combined a knowledge of fitness and nutrition to provide a healthy lifestyle change that was very effective. And, because the weight training uses specially designed equipment and super-slow techniques, it is a very safe and effective alternative. I lost 50 pounds and kept it off! And a side benefit is the reduction in blood pressure and increase in muscle mass that result. I would not hesitate to recommend Fit 4 Life to anyone. - Charles (Chuck) Berkins

ADVANTAGES   |   WEIGHT LOSS   |   OUR TRAINERS   |   PHOTO GALLERY What's the Problem With Losing Lean Muscle Tissue? Here’s the reality. For every pound of muscle you lose, your metabolism goes down by 30 – 100 calories per day! So let’s look at an example to illustrate the devastating consequences of that fact. A woman decides to go on a diet and starts participating in aerobics classes on a regular basis. In the process, she loses 10 pounds in 6 weeks. Great, right? Not really because that 10 pound loss actually comes out to about 3.3 pounds of body fat lost and 6.7 pounds of muscle lost. This means that her metabolism probably went down between 200 and 670 calories per day. So, if she was able to maintain her weight on 1800 calories before, she is now only able to consume between 1130 and 1600 calories before she starts to gain weight. This is the main reason that 99.9% of people who diet gain the weight back PLUS MORE! A person on this roller coaster needs to keep eating less and less to keep the weight off. Your lean muscle tissue is critical for keeping the weight off for good. More Muscle = Less Body Fat The most effective way to lose the greatest amount of body fat in the shortest amount of time is by strength training properly. When you strength train properly, as we do at Fit 4 Life, you ultimately increase your resting metabolic rate by increasing the amount of lean muscle tissue you have. When you eat properly and incorporate strength training, the ONLY thing you lose is body fat. Not only that, but at the end of your program your metabolism is higher so you can actually maintain your weight, eating more than you used to be able to. Let’s revisit the above example. That same woman, instead of eating properly and doing aerobic activity, decides to eat properly and strength train. She loses that same 10 pounds in a 6 week period, but let’s look at the numbers more closely. The scale shows that she lost 10 pounds, but did she actually lose 10 pounds? No. She actually lost approximately 12 pounds of body fat and gained 2 pounds of muscle. In a 6 week time frame it is reasonable to assume that an average woman will add 2 -3 pounds of lean muscle. What does that mean for her metabolism? By adding 2 pounds of muscle she increased her metabolic rate by between 60 and 200 calories per day. So instead of maintaining her weight with 1800 calories per day, she now maintains at between 1860 and 2000 calories. Not to mention the fact that when you add muscle you firm and tone and your body takes on a more fit appearance. Research has proven that the Fit 4 Life Synergy System programs are the most effective way to tone and shape your body while losing unwanted body fat and increasing valuable lean muscle tissue. Proper Exercise and Its Role in Reducing Fat Proper exercise is a logical strategy to fatigue momentarily the major muscular structures of the body. Momentary fatigue appears to be the major factor required to stimulate muscular growth. A proper exercise program involves quantity movement of the body against quality resistance of the exercise tool (i.e. barbell, dumbbell, or exercise machine). For a variety of reasons, momentary fatigue must occur within one to three minutes. This requires persistent recording and standardization of the movement to ensure progression of the resistance as performance demonstrably improves. For these reasons, proper exercise means strength training. The best strength training program is slow training. To place exercise in its proper perspective with the goal of fat loss, consider the following proportion. Realize that this numerical proportion is not exactly accurate, but the general principle it represents is correct. Both exercise and food are essential components in either a physical conditioning program or a fat-loss program. The proportionate contributions of exercise or food however, are different respective to the goal. The goal of physical conditioning is 80 percent dependent on exercise and 20 percent dependent on food. The goal of fat loss is 20 percent dependent on exercise and 80 percent dependent on food control. Exercise and food are essential, not optional, to either goal. Their proportionate contributions, however, are rough reciprocals for physical conditioning or for fat loss. The proportionate importance of food and exercise (20/80) to physical conditioning underscores the nonsense often invoked to eat one’s way to strength. Just as delusional is the nonsense that exercise can be used practically to burn off transgressions of caloric excess. It remains true that the 20 percent dietary contribution to physical conditioning is essential. And the 20 percent exercise contribution to a fat-loss program is an absolute requirement. These six factors comprise this 20 percent contribution. Each of the following exercise factors contributes to fat-loss effectiveness… Discriminated Weight Loss Generally body weight is not an issue of health. The real issue is body fat. Except in extreme cases of wasting or gargantuan obesity, body weight alone is an unreliable marker for health evaluation. Any proper, ethical, fat-loss program contains two elements: a moderate, negative-net caloric intake and an exercise program. Without the negative-net caloric intake, weight will not be lost. Without the exercise program indiscriminate weight loss - from all body tissue - will occur. The only method by which to force preservation of muscle and other lean body tissues is through an exercise program. Popular activities often incorrectly construed to be exercise do not serve this purpose. This is one reason why exercise and strength training are exclusively synonymous. There are several possibilities for discriminate and indiscriminate weight loss. As a prelude to their discussion, it is helpful to underscore one of the body’s highest priorities; muscular growth. In 1975, a landmark study was published regarding this uncelebrated discovery. The investigators were Alfred L. Goldberg, Joseph D. Etlinger, David F. Goldspink, and Charles Jablecki. Their findings are published in Medicine and Science in Sports, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 248 – 261, 1975. The following is a synopsis: The exercise physiology community is often fixated on treadmills for testing purposes. This partly stems from their requirement in animal laboratories. It is impossible for rats and other lower animals to perform slow and controlled movements, tracking muscular function to muscular failure as is required in strict exercise. The technician’s only resort is to walk or run animals on treadmills. This certainly qualifies as movement or activity, but animals are designed with biomechanical properties enabling locomotion through tremendous muscular efficiency. If not, the muscles would not propel the animal for longer than approximately one minute. Therefore, typical locomotion activity does not qualify the definition of exercise, but this qualification must be conditionally waived in animal research. Through exercise, a momentary failure is a stimulation signal for the body to overcompensate. Momentary failure is the inability to continue an exercise movement in the prescribed form. It is believed that the muscle’s strength is momentarily decreased to a level whereby a growth mechanism is turned on. Alfred Goldberg and his colleagues attempted to effect just such an overcompensation by reducing the mechanical efficiency of muscle. Since quantity movement against quality resistance was impossible with rats, they devised a roundabout way to partially achieve an overload effect. A few uninitiated exercise enthusiasts are tempted to conclude that this study proves that running on treadmills is efficient muscular work. The caveat is that such activity for rats or humans neither satisfies The Ten Requirements of Full-Range Exercise nor the four-point definition of exercise. These concepts are discussed in the Nautilus Book by Ellington Darden, Ph.D., and The First Definition of Exercise by Ken Hutchins, as well as other sources. Dr. Goldberg and his colleagues cut the tendon of the gastrocnemius muscle of one leg of each of the group rats. This muscle forms part of the calf and functions to extend the ankle. Ankle extension was then borne by only the soleus muscle. The rats were then run on a treadmill and the soleus of the tenotomized legs grew dramatically compared to their contralateral controls. Eventually, many research groups of rats underwent unilateral tenotomies of the gastrocnemius, but some groups received simultaneous and various additional handicaps. One group was hypophysectomized – the hypophysis of their pituitary removed – so that they could not produce growth hormone. Another group received alloxan, which produces a diabetic state – a lack of insulin. Another group was placed on a starvation diet of only water. Other groups had various combinations of the same procedures. Once preparation was complete, all the animals were run on the treadmills. After an appropriate period of time they were sacrificed for analysis. The analysis revealed that the soleus muscle overcompensated. It grew, apparently at the expense of other body tissues. It grew on a starvation diet, without insulin, and without growth hormone. It grew in spite of the fact that its growth consumption of resources meant hastened demise of the organism. Although Dr. Goldberg received little attention for this work, it stands as one of the most important biological discoveries in recent history. He and his co-workers seemingly stumbled onto a fundamental biological priority. They found that, if stimulated, muscle will grow in spite of tremendous adversity and at the expense of the remainder of the organism. The next question to arise is: “What survival logic of nature is at work here?” If we could personify nature, we believe nature’s answer might be: Although muscular growth, if stimulated, is expensive to other organic resources and may lead to the eventual death of the animal in an impaired state; if the animal is not strong enough to move to acquire food or move to prevent becoming someone else’s food, all is lost anyway. One of the fundamental traits of animal life is locomotion. Locomotion depends on muscular strength. Survival resources, therefore, are allocated to the muscle first. This priority allocation, however, is predicated on muscular growth stimulation. Without the stimulation, resources are stored, sloughed, or put to other uses. Modes of Discriminate Weight Loss With a background of the work of Alfred Goldberg, consider the following four scenarios. Each scenario involves a typical American male whose daily caloric expenditure equals 2500 calories, daily caloric consumption equals 3000. Scenario #1: He reduces his normal daily consumption to 1500 calories. He incorporates no exercise. Result: He loses weight indiscrimately – muscle, fat, bone, and organ tissue. Scenario #2: His reduction is identical to scenario #1, but he also incorporates strength training. Result: He loses weight discriminately – only fat. He also builds muscle. Scenario #3: His reduction is drastic: 500 calories. At this starvation level (800 calories or less) he incorporates no exercise. Result: Initially, he loses weight discriminately – all tissues but fat. Scenario #4: His reduction is the same as in scenario #3, but he now incorporates exercise. Result: Initially, he loses weight discriminately – all tissue but muscle. Muscular hypertrophy or its prioritized maintenance will hasten the depletion of all other already – wasting tissues. Reviewing scenarios #1 - #4, note that all are starvation diets in a matter of speaking. The only proper scenario for a fat-loss program is #2, but even it cannot be applied forever. A maintenance caloric consumption must be incorporated once an acceptable level of body fat is attained. Continued negative-net caloric intake would eventually end in the same conclusion as the other scenarios, just not as quickly. Increased Basal Metabolism Various dietary products are available, claiming to assist weight loss by increasing basal metabolism. Many, perhaps all, of these products are unsafe and ineffective. There is, however, one real, significantly effective, and safe means to increase basal metabolism. Exercise! The two most calorically expensive tissues in the body are nervous tissue and muscle tissue. Of these, only skeletal muscle can be practically increased. Elsworth Buskirk, Ph.D., and his colleagues at Penn State University estimated a basal metabolism increase of 50 – 100 calories per day for each pound of muscle added to the adult body. Based on this information, if a woman adds five pounds of muscle, her basal metabolism may increase 250 – 500 calories. These are calories burned regardless of her activity level. Although important for a man on a fat-loss program, this basal-metabolism increase is critical for a woman. It promotes effectiveness of her program, allows her to better enjoy her meals with her family members, and ensures success with maintaining her enhanced figure after her initial fat-loss. Have you ever wondered why men often stay comfortable in the typical office environment while the women are always somewhat cold? This is common although the women usually possess more insulating body fat than the men. Why? Because the women lack the muscle the men possess to generate heat. Note that very muscular men have extremely high metabolisms, everything else being equal. Ellington Darden featured Keith Whitley in his book, Massive Muscles in 42 days. Keith’s basal metabolism was measured October 2, 1990, at the Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Keith expended 3,029 calories if he did nothing but rest. This is over twice the expenditure of the typically active woman. Improving Body Shape The primary determinate of the body’s shape is its bones. But after the bones, the most important determinant is skeletal muscle. If a make-believe human skeleton greeted you on the street, would you recognize it as a normal human? No. Add skin over the bones and organs and you still do not have a human. Return to the image of a skeleton and add the organs, a moderate amount of fat and skin. Note that the organs and fat droop out of the skin to make the surface appear like melting glue. Return to the image of the skeleton once more. Now add only well-developed muscles – no organs, no skin, and no fat. Note that the resulting shape appears almost identical to the silhouette and contour of a human being. Add the finishing touches of some fat, skin, and organs, and you have the appearance of a normal human being. There is an important lesson to be learned from this demonstration. For improving the body’s shape, only the muscle and fat can be practically modified. Both are important. Most figure problems are a matter of excess fat and inadequate muscle. To lose fat and muscle is a serious insult to a man or woman’s appearance and health. Muscle is required to maintain firmness, support overlying fat and skin, flatten puckers, and control posture. Continued Preoccupation Pretend that you typically arrive home from the office every afternoon and plop in front of the television at six o’clock. You eat dinner and watch television until eleven o’clock and then retire. After several months of this habit, you begin to feel guilty that you are wasting your life when those hours could be spent productively. You correctly reason that you could spend those wasted evenings for several months to renovate a room, finish the attic, or organize your garage. You implement a moratorium on evening television and embark on a project to finish the attic. After another several months, you have not only a finished attic, but a delightful surprise. Your waistline is smaller. You then conclude that your reduction is due to the additional caloric expenditure of your increased activity. This is a natural mistake. Although your new lifestyle did expend a few calories that otherwise you would not have burned, your negative net caloric consumption is largely due to preoccupation. Admittedly, you can not very well poke food in your mouth if you are going to get your work done. It is difficult to hammer and saw and staple and measure and paint…and eat at the same time. In fact, you re so enthusiastic about what you intend to accomplish each evening that you tend to almost forget dinner. At the very least, you abbreviate it so that you can get back to your project. In comparison, what will you do if you sit in front of the television for five hours each night? Eat! The thousands of calories you do not eat are more effective at decreasing your body fat than the few extra you burn due to increased activity. The same principle applies to many aerobics activities considered by some would be experts as a boom to weight loss. It is difficult, even dangerous, to simultaneously eat and jog, or eat and dance, or eat and play tennis, or eat and swim, or eat and be active at many things. You are preoccupied. Additionally, significant muscular activity poses a conflict of interest if there is food in the stomach. Blood is needed for working muscles, but also for digestion. If both are required simultaneously, nausea is the result. As a youth I was taught to wait at least an hour before swimming if I had just eaten a meal. For many years, I could not understand what water had to do with eating. The answer is, just being in the water after a big meal is not problematic. Strenuous activity, whether in the water or not, is in the stomach. Nausea and vomiting can result. And this becomes a major safety issue in the water where drowning could ensue. Depressed Appetite Increased activity, especially exercise, depresses appetite. This factor, however, is of limited value. You eat meals three times a day and may develop a craving for food more often. Since exercise should not occur at closer intervals than 48 hours, it is not often available when needed for this application. Some individuals remark that exercise makes them hungry. It is possible to set up a Pavlovian association between exercise and eating. For instance, a man performs afternoon exercise at five o’clock three days per week and eats dinner at seven o’clock nightly. He follows this schedule for several weeks. An association develops. Unexpectedly, he changes his schedule so that he exercises at three p.m. He then complains that he becomes hungry at five p.m. on those days when he exercises. This association, of course, can be broken. Generally, moderate activity not necessarily qualifying as exercise, is a useful appetite depressant, especially if you are inactive. If you develop a craving for food, get up and clean the house, take a walk, or wash the car. These activities are not exercise, nor will they burn much in the way of extra calories. But they will depress your appetite and keep you preoccupied. Increased Caloric Expenditure Discriminated weight loss is the most important, yet rarely mentioned or realized, exercise factor in a fat-loss program. Ranking number two is increased basal metabolism. It is slightly less important than discriminated weight loss. Slightly less important than increased basal metabolism is the third factor – improved body shape. From here the exercise factors diminish in importance rather rapidly. Continued preoccupation and depressed appetite, ranked respectively, are much less important than the first three. Now we approach the sixth exercise factor contributing to a fat-loss program. Its relative importance is a quantum fall beneath continued preoccupation and depressed appetite. Its importance is so slight that it barely makes the list. Yet the exercise factor of increased caloric expenditure receives most of the attention from the lay press, exercise enthusiasts, and the exercise physiology community. Increased activity does burn extra calories – a few. It is estimated that one pound of human fat supplies enough energy to enable a thirty year-old man to run 35 – 45 miles. The basal metabolism of a 30 year-old man is approximately 1900 calories per day. If he is a desk worker for most his waking hours – 10 hours per day – he uses 200 – 400 more. Therefore his typical daily expenditure might be as high as 2300 calories. If he is extremely active in some form of manual labor, his daily expenditure may be 60 percent above his basal metabolism – as high as 3100 calories. Strength training, properly performed, burns more calories per minute than any other known activity. Even so, a half-hour work out might only burn 200 calories. Other popular activities erroneously construed as exercise would require an hour to burn the same calories. Either amounts to a mere ten percent increased expenditure for the desk-job man. It is a slight six percent increase for the manual laborer. What is more, as he becomes more skilled in the performance of this activity he burns even fewer calories. The harm such an activity does to a fat-loss program is great. Such low-intensity, construed as exercise activity fatigues the subject so that quality exercise is impossible. So-called aerobics prevent muscular strengthening and often cause muscle wasting. Aerobics programs have an exorbitant injury rate, and musculoskeletal injuries lead to more muscle wasting, depression, overeating, and over-fatness. Aerobics enthusiasts often imply that such activity will compensate for eating infractions when all that realistically occurs is guilt absolution. Recently, the exercise physiology community admitted that steady state activities do not directly burn a significant number of calories. But they are quick to add that there is more important burn off of calories for several hours after the activity. One should ask rhetorically, “How much more?...another one percent?” Do not dwell on the caloric expenditure of activity or exercise. Yes, it contributes to your fat-loss program, but raising your basal metabolism through slow exercise training and restricting your caloric intake is far more important. A key step in losing fat efficiently may be as simple as drinking more water. For years, professionals have been said that everyone should consume eight glasses of water a day. But is this really true? No. You really need to consume more than eight glasses a day. Since 1980, Dr. Ellington Darden has advocated what he calls superhydration – drinking at least a gallon of water a day. This amount doubles the traditional recommendation. After training more than six thousand women in the various fat-loss programs, he has yet to find a single woman who initially was consuming enough water. They were not dying of thirst – only failing to maximize fat loss and optimize well-being. Maximum fat loss, optimum well-being, and superhydration are closely related. You are about to see why… Like an Aquarium Imagine the interior of your body as being like an aquarium. Water supports every function in the body. Your body, in fact, is composed of 65 percent water. Fun Fact: Besides the free fluids in your body, muscle is 72 percent water, skin is 71 percent, brain is 85 percent water, bone is 50 percent water, and fat is 20 percent water. WOW! Knowing these facts, you would think that all of this water comes from the fluid we drink. This is not the case. Only 28 percent of the fluid actually comes from drink water. Coffee and tea, which are mostly water, make up another 24 percent. The remaining 48 percent comes from milk, soft drinks, meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and alcoholic drinks. The water you drink, as well as the water you get from all foods, mingles with minerals to become fluids in which all life processes take place. An example of water usage in the function can be seen by examining the lungs. Moisture is necessary to enable the lungs to consume oxygen and excrete carbon dioxide from the body. Depletion of Water As your body experiences dehydration, your body will feel it in the systems that contain the most water. Dehydration is a condition that occurs when a person loses more fluids (i.e. urine or sweat) than he or she takes in. An example of this is when you lose your mental alertness and then suffer from overall muscular weakness. The last component that dehydration affects is your fat. That is why excessive sweating has no effect in reducing your body-fat percentage. Water’s Function Acts as a solvent for vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and glucose. Carries nutrients through the bodies systems. Makes the digestion of food possible. Lubricates the joints. Serves as a shock absorber inside the eyes and spinal cord. Maintain body temperature. Rids the body of waste products through the urine. Eliminates heat through the skin, lungs, and urine. Keeps the skin supple. Assists muscular contraction. Signs to Be Aware of Dizziness Muscular Weakness Blurred Vision Fatigue Thirst Flushed Skin Headache Cooling System Water is the air conditioning unit in the body. Water lost through your skin cools you as it hits the air and evaporates. Water, therefore, is a coolant both inside and outside the body. Kidney-Liver Connection Studies have verified that large amounts of water facilitate the fat-loss process. This is because your kidneys need abundant water to function properly. When your kidneys are unable to work to full capacity, your liver assumes some of their functions. This diverts your liver from its primary duty – to metabolize stored fat into usable energy. Fat empties into your bloodstream in the form of triglycerides. Triglycerides are the chemical form in which most fat exists in food as well as in the body. Your liver breaks down the triglycerides into free fatty acids, which are useable energy. But if your liver is preoccupied with performing the chores of water-depleted kidneys, it is unable to convert triglycerides. Triglycerides that are not converted into free fatty acids are stored in your body as fat. Superhydration solves the kidney-liver conflict. But that is not all it does. Appetite Regulation Superhydration reduces bingeing and overeating. Water keeps your stomach feeling full between meals. Consuming high-fiber foods accompanied by water magnifies satitiation because fiber swells as it absorbs water. Also, water flowing over the tongue keeps your taste buds cleansed of flavors that might induce food cravings, particularly sweet or salty foods. Urine Your body produces heat throughout the day. 85% of your daily heat loss emerges from your skin. Just think of it this way... Heat = Calories = Fat Most of your fat is lost through your skin in the form of heat. The remaining heat loss is divided between warm air coming from your lungs and warm fluid being passed out through the normal urination process. Superhydration can increase urination throughout your day. If this occurs, you will be eliminating more heat and which means heat loss and fat loss. So remember, urinating frequently is healthy for your body. Constipation Cure Another desirable side effect of superhydration is defense against constipation. This is often caused by inadequate water intake. When deprived of water, your system pulls cellular water from your lower intestines and bowels, thus crating hard, dry stool. One of the key roles of water is to flush waste from the body. This is a substantial chore during fat metabolization because waste will otherwise tend to accumulate during the fat-loss process. Too Much Water Intake? It is possible to drink too much water, but highly unlikely that this would occur. If you were to consume too much water, you would develop hyponatremia. Hyponatremia occurs mostly in athletes involved in triathlons and marathons. These athletes consume many gallons of plain water during the course of these unusually long competitions and because of this continuous activity, they don’t stop to urinate. In other words, they impede their normal fluid-and-sodium balance and actually become intoxicated with too much water. Wash Away the Pounds The benefits of water consumption are vast and indisputable. Don’t worry about becoming waterlogged! The more your drink, the more your body will excrete. Soon you’ll acquire a natural healthy thirst that helps you maintain your water balance. Superhydration may be incon-venient in the beginning, but your body will adjust. During this process, you’ll be getting significantly lighter as you wash away the pounds. Helpful Guidelines Purchase a 32-ounze insulated, plastic bottle to sip throughout the day. Start for the first 14 days by sipping one gallon (128 ounces) a day. Drink most of the water before 5 pm. Keep the water ice cold. Anyone with a kidney disorder or anyone who takes diuretics should consult a physician before making any changes in their water consumption. Results Throughout your process of consuming more water, you will feel less fatigued, more energetic, have smoother skin, and feel more satiated. With this change you are on your way to a lean, healthier body. Exceed 8 Glasses The standard recommendation specifies a minim of 8 glasses of water per day, which is a total of 64 ounces. It is further indicated to include one glass just before each meal and on during each meal. But it’s beneficial to drink considerably more water. Purchasing a 32 ounces water bottle with a straw, which is available in most supermarkets and convenience stores, will help you through this process. With this bottle, you can carry water with you throughout the day for continuous sipping. Participants who consistently drink water tend to not only lose the most fat, but also have a better skin complexion. Water helps bolster skin as its fat cushion departs. Specifically, water buoys your shrinking cells, plumping your skin and leaving it clear, healthy, and resilient. In addition to preventing dehydration, water is essential to a strength-training program because it supplies muscles with enhanced ability to contract. Don’t Wait to Be Thirsty Responding to thirst will prevent only severe dehydration. It will not prompt you to drink the water needed for peak performance. Inadequate water intake causes your body to perceive a threat to survival, and thus it begins to retain an excess proportion. Water is then stored outside the cells, resulting in swollen feet, legs, or hands – a condition commonly called water retention, or edema. The best way to avoid water retention is to give your body its needed water. Only then will stored water be released. If even after drinking 16 glasses a day you have a persistent problem, the likely culprit is excess sodium. The more sodium you ingest, the more water your system withholds to dilute it. One source of sodium is diet soda. Although free from sugar, the sodium in diet drinks may cause water retention. “Over the last dozen years, 549 women and 271 men have officially completed one of my routines that involved Superhydration. Not a single one of these participants ever suffered from any major medical problem as a result of drinking at least one gallon of ice-cold water each day for the duration of the course.” - Ellington Darden, Ph.D.