Best of The Net and Everything Else

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Lowest Price for Glutamine in Canada

The most important nutrient for a weightlifter in terms of maintaining and building muscle is protein. After protein, it is recommended that one invest in Creatine Monohydrate and Glutamine to further maximize gains.

Glutamine is one of the most abundant amino acids within the body and is also one of the most essential to building muscle and repairing broken tissue after a vigorous workout.

Higher Power Micronized Creatine is a pharmaceutical grade supplement that is more easily dissolved in water than many other brands of Glutamine available in the market.

To buy Higher Power Micronized Creatine online at the best price possible, click HERE.

Lowest Price for Creatine Monohydrate in Canada

For anyone who lifts weights and wants to have gains, the first necessity is a diet rich in high quality protein. To further maximize gains, the next nutritional supplement that a weightlifter should use is Creatine Monohydrate. Click HERE to buy.

Monday, June 2, 2008

BodyBuilding.com Coupon Codes

The following are BodyBuilding.com Coupon Codes that you type in at the field on the bottom of the first page in your online Shopping Cart after you click one of the following:

Take $10.00 Off Your $200 Order! Use coupon code 10off200.

Take $5.00 Off Your $100 Order! Use coupon code 5off100.

Take $15.00 Off Your $250 Order! Use coupon code 15off250.

Take $20.00 Off Your $300 Order! Use coupon code 20off300.

Chef Jay's Tri-O-Plex Protein Bar

Chef Jay's protein bars are high in protein, high in fibre, and low in saturated fats. Each bar contains 30g of high-quality protein. Each bar also contains 420 calories, 45g of carbohydrates and plenty of good fats, thus making them an excellent meal replacement bar. These protein bars are excellent for people who workout or want a healthy treat while they are on the go.

Box Of 12 PB Choc. Chip Supplement Facts
Serving Size1Bar(118g/4.2 oz)
Servings Per Container12
Amount Per Serving % DV
Calories 420
Fat Cal 140
Total Fat 16g 25%
Sat. Fat 3g 16%
Cholesterol 0mg 0%
Sodium 130mg 5%
Potassium 275mg 8%
Total Carbohydrate 45g 15%
Fiber 6g 24%
Sugars 16g
Protein 30g
Calcium 60mg 6%
Iron 3mg 2%
Vitamin E 0.4IU 2%
Niacin 3mg 12%
Folic Acid 15ug 4%
Vitamin B12 15ug 18%
Phosphorus 115mg 16%
Magnesium 36mg 12%
Percent Daily Values (DV) are based on a 2,000 calorie diet

Ingredients:
CJ Protein Blend (Soy Protein Isolate, Whey Protein Isolate, Milk Protein Isolate), Fruit Blend (Fruit Juice, Natural Grain Dextrin), Glucose Syrup, Water, Whole Grain Rolled Oats, Peanut Butter, Peanut Flour, Chocolate Chips, Peanuts, Peanut Oil, Vegetable Glycerin, Oat Flour, Honey, Natural And Artificial Flavors (Peanut Flavor), Contains 2% Or Less Of The Following: Plum Puree, Lecithin, Mono-Glycerides, Salt, Citric Acid, Potassium Sorbate, Calcium Propionate, Glucono Delta Lactone, Sucralose Allergen Statement: Contains Egg, Corn, Dairy And Soy.

AVAILABLE IN BULK QUANTITIES

Chef Jay's Tri-O-Plex Bars, Box Of 12, PB Choc. Chip

Chef Jay's Tri-O-Plex Bars, Box Of 12, Peanut Butter Banana

Chef Jay's Tri-O-Plex Bars, Box Of 12, Smores

Chef Jay's Tri-O-Plex Bars, Box Of 12, Chocolate Coconut

Chef Jay's Tri-O-Plex Bars, Box Of 12, Caramel Apple

Chef Jay's Tri-O-Plex Bars, Box Of 12, Cookie Dough Chocolate Chip

Chef Jay's Tri-O-Plex Bars, Box Of 12, Very Berry

Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet

Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet is an amazing diet program created by Dr. Siegal back in 1975. It is only in 2007 that his diet cookies were sold online.

Basically, you consume 6 cookies a day at an interval of an hour and a half apart. This keeps your body supplied with protein and carbohydrates to keep you healthy, and also keeps your metabolism at a peak becauase your digestive system and digestive tract will be continuously working. The 6 cookies will give you a total of 800 calories. After your sixth cookie, it will be night time and you would then eat a healthy dinner as your last meal.

The cookies are basically a meal replacement and can be called meal replacement cookies.

The cookies were designed to provide your body with energy and nutrients throughout the day, but more importantly, they were designed to suppress cravings, to satisfy your hunger, and to control your hunger.

The very nature of lowering your caloric intake below your caloric expenditure will cause your body to lose weight. This is an effective means of losing a steady and healthy amount of fat every week.

Unlike other diets, Dr. Siegal's cookie diet does not entail starving yourself and makes it easy for you to curb your hunger because after you eat one delicious cookie, it is only an hour and a half that you will have to wait until you get to eat another delicious cookie. After eating one cookie, you will tell yourself, "why should I overeat when in only 90 minutes I can have another cookie? Instead of overeating, I will let my body burn out the cookie that I just ate and to burn fat; Then, in only 90 minutes, I will need to eat another cookie and can feel comfortable doing so."

Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet is perfectly healthy and normal and is in fact recommended by many doctors who supply their patients with Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet.

Diabetics are prescribed by their doctors and dieticians to eat a small slow-digesting meal low in fast-acting sugars, and low on the GI (Glycimic Index) every 3 hours. The act of eating a small meal low in simple sugars frequently throughout the day prevents blood glucose levels from rising too high, and thus endangering diabetics who do not produce enough insulin to safely divert the sugar out of their bloodstream for storage as glycogen in the muscles and liver and then as fat in adipose tissue.

Bodybuilders also eat a small meal every three hours that contains protein and carbohydrates in order to keep a constant supply of nutrients to their muscles and body so that it does not catabolize. It is important in a diet program to preserve muscle mass because the more muscle a person has, the higher their metabolism will be. Muscles help us to burn more calories even when in an idle or resting state. Dr. Siegal's cookie diet provides the user a source of high quality protein every hour and a half, thus providing the muscles a constant source of protein that would help to prevent the loss of muscle mass.

To learn more about Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet or to purchase a batch of 42 cookies (a 7-day supply), please click the following link:
Dr. Sanford Siegal's COOKIE DIET™
Eat cookies, lose weight!

Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet batch of 42 cookies comes in a box that has seven packs of 6 cookies. Each cookie is individually wrapped. When you wake up in the morning, all you have to do is put a daily pack of 6 cookies into your purse, manbag, or knapsack, and you will have enough food to feed you for the entire day until you return home for your healthy dinner meal (preferably an hour to two hours before bedtime). This will save you time because you will not have to make a breakfast, lunch, or carry snacks with you.

I hope that you benefit from this article, and if you are overweight, please do try the Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet. I know that you will lose weight and live a more happier and energetic life, just like how I did and others whom I know as well.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Do It Yourself Search Engine Optimization

A search engine optimization campaign can easily be divided in three fundamental stages:

Choose the right keywords (keyword optimization)
Optimize your pages for your selected keywords (web page optimization), and
Get quality inbound links to your pages (off-site factors).
In the next few pages, we will teach you how to follow a systematic approach to complete these three steps, using free tools available on the net.

PART I: Keyword Optimization
The first step in a search engine optimization campaign is to choose your keywords or keyphrases for each of your web pages. Keywords are the terms that search engine users type in the search box to conduct a query. The right keywords are those that:

clearly describe the purpose and content of your site, and,
allow your site to show up as close to the first results page as possible.
A good position doesn't depend only on your choice of keywords. It also depends on how well do you position those keywords in your web page, and how many quality external pages link to you. However, choosing the wrong keywords can throw off your entire search engine optimization strategy, so you need to invest a few hours and make sure you do it right.

Let's start with your homepage. Look at it carefully and write down the words and phrases that best define your site. Try to form two or three word phrases, since competition for one-word keyphrases is fierce, and it is virtually impossible to get a top position for them. That is why, from now on, we will talk about keyphrases, not keywords. Once you have developed your list of potential keyphrases you are ready for the next step: to analyze the demand and supply for those keyphrases, and choose the best ones (those with good demand and not enough supply).

We will first check the demand for your selected keyphrases. For this, we will go to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Overture is a popular pay-per-click search engine. You will then type each of the keyphrases you selected, and see how many people search for those terms. This tool will show you only those searches conducted in Overture (and only in one month time). However, the relative popularity of each search term will be very similar in other search engines as well. In addition to telling you if your selected keyphrases are popular, this tool will show you other keyphrases that you may not have thought about, which may even be more relevant to your site.

For example, if your first keyphrase was "Italian Restaurant", the Search Term Suggestion Tool will also display other popular search terms, like: "Gourmet Italian Restaurant", "Northern Italian Restaurant", "Italian Restaurant Pizzeria", "Italian Restaurant Miami", etc. You may also try other keyphrases, for example: "Italian Cuisine", and come up with more specific keyphrases, like: "Fine Italian Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Miami", "Northern Italian Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Fine Dining", "Gourmet Italian Cuisine", etc.

What you have done is to validate and enlarge your pool of popular, in-demand, potential keyphrases for your web page. The next step is to check the supply, or, in other words, to see how much competition there is for your selected keywords. Naturally, you want to focus on keyphrases where competition is less fierce. For example, choosing "Italian Restaurant" alone will certainly hurt you. There are so many of them that your chances of showing up in an advantageous position within the search results are pretty slim.

Having said that, get your list of keyphrases, go to Google ( http://www.google.com ) and type-in each of them in the search box. Enter your keyphrases within quotation marks (to filter-out less relevant results), and see how many results each individual query produces, making a note of those with a relatively small number of results (less competition). You will stick with the keyphrase that:

Best describes the topic and content of your page
Is a popular search term according to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool.
Generates a relatively small number of results after performing the Google search.
If "Gourmet Italian Restaurant" is the keyphrase that best meets these three criteria, it will become your primary keyphrase. To get even better results, you can choose a second keyphrase to make your page more relevant to an even more specific niche. For example, if your restaurant is in Miami, you can consider "Miami" a second keyphrase. Once you have chosen the keyphrases for you homepage, do the same for the other pages on your site.

After this, you will take your selected keyphrases and optimize your pages heavily for them. This involves placing them in strategic locations in the title, headings and body of each page, as we will see in Part II: Web Page Optimization.

PART II: Web Page Optimization
Once you have chosen your keyphrases, the next stage is to optimize your page for those keyphrases. You do that by positioning your keywords in strategic locations within your page. What follows is a checklist of tips and steps you must follow to optimize your page:

Keyphrases in the web page title:
Create a descriptive title for your page: Your web page title is very important because it is what the search engines display as link text as the result of a search. The title must include your main keyphrases, while at the same time it must describe your business very well and should entice readers to click on it.
Unless your business is big and well known (like Microsoft or Coca Cola) don't start your page title with the name of your company. Start your title with the words search engine users will most likely use (your keyphrases)
Put your main keyphrase at the beginning of your page title (keyphrase prominence) and keep your keyphrase together (keyword proximity).
Put your second keyphrase somewhere else in the title.
Make the title short (8 words or less).
Keyphrases in your Keyword Meta Tag: Search engines rarely use the Keyword Meta Tag any more (Google completely ignores it). However, place a list of your main and secondary keywords in the Keyword Meta Tag of your page, just in case search engines decide to use them again in the future.
Keyphrases in your Description Meta Tag: The Description Meta Tag is still important, since some search engines use them to elaborate on the results link. Remember to:
Include your keyphrases (main and secondary) in your Description Meta Tag.
Make your description 'descriptive', concise and professional. Avoid using hype.
Make it short (25 words or less).
Don't make your description sound just like a collection of keywords.
Keep your keyphrases together.
Keywords in the body of your page: It is important to use your keywords heavily on your page, since this will help the search engine determine the topic of your page. Follow these tips as much as possible, since they will help search engines determine your page's relevance to your chosen keyphrases:
Use your keyphrases several times, and place them as close to the top of the page as possible.
Place your keyphrases between Header Tags (H1, H2 or H3) in the first two paragraphs of your page.
Place your keyphrases in bold type phase at least once.
Repeat your keyphrases often to increase your keyphrase density. Repeating your keyphrases between 5 to 10 times for every 100 words in your page is considered effective.
Since you have to repeat your keyphrases often, you must be especially careful not to make your text sound awkward. Your visitors should be able to read your page fluently and effortlessly. Remember that ultimately it is your readers who will decide if your page is worth the time they spend on it. A pleasant experience will make them more likely to come back.
A good resource on how to write search engine friendly copy without losing readability is this special SEO writing report by Jill Whalen.

Other Web Page Design Considerations:
You must make your page easy to navigate by the search engines. Search engines heavily favor text over graphics, and HTML over other editing formats.
Use text heavily, especially in your navigation bar. Avoid placing text in graphic format since the search engines won't be able to read it.
Avoid frames. Search engines have trouble following them, and they may index only the framed content page and not the navigation frame.
Avoid Flash and JavaScript: search engines don't follow either one. If you use flash, make an HTML version of your site available to your readers and the search engines. If you use a JavaScript navigation menu, include an alternate text menu at the bottom of the page, so it can be followed by the search engines.
Create a Site Map that includes all the pages in your site, and place a Site Map link close to the top of the homepage. When the search engine follows the site map link, it will find and index all the pages in your site!
If you use a left navigation bar, the search engine will read it before the body of your page. Make sure you include your most important keywords there, too.
Make sure that all your internal pages link to your homepage.
Don't try to describe all your products or services in one page. It will confuse the search engine and dilute your page's relevance to your selected keyphrase. Instead, create different very focused pages, each with its own content and keyphrases, and optimize them too.
This is pretty much all you have to do to make sure that your page is optimized for your chosen keywords. The next and final step to increase your site's ranking is to get as many links to your site as possible, from quality sites that have a topic related to yours. This is what we will see in Part III: Off-Site Factors.

Part III: Off Page Factors
Once you have selected your keyphrases and optimized your pages for them, the last step is to make sure that you get linked from the best directories, and from lots of quality sites with a topic related to your site's. The best search engines, and in particular Google (who alone can deliver 80% of the search engine traffic to your site) "crawl" the web looking for links to your site. They interpret a link to your page as a vote, and the more links (votes) you have coming from quality sites the higher your page rank will be, and the higher the possibility that your page will achieve a good position in the search results pages. It's that simple. Following these four steps is the best way to get the quality links you need:

Get listed in DMOZ: The Open Directory Project ( http://www.dmoz.org ) is the world's largest directory. It is maintained by voluntary editors who review your site prior to inclusion. Being listed in this directory is important because it is used by Google and America Online to build their directories. Getting listed is free, but it may take a few weeks or even months to get listed, which can be a bit frustrating. However, there is a strong believe among search engine optimization experts that an Open Directory Project listing can significantly increase your page rank in Google, so you must take the time to submit your site and do it right (list your site in the right category and strictly follow their submission guidelines). For how to get listed in the Open Directory Project go to: http://www.dmoz.org/add.html .
Get listed in Yahoo!: Submissions to Yahoo! are no longer free for commercial sites (your site can be reviewed in about a week for a fee of $299 although inclusion in the directory is not guaranteed. However, if you do get accepted, the $299 fee will be due every year if you want your site to continue to be listed). A link from Yahoo’s directory is still one of the best links you can get, and it is worth the money you spend getting listed. For tips on getting listed in Yahoo! go to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/ .
Submit articles: There are many sites where you can publish articles in your field of expertise. This is a great way to establish yourself as an expert and to drive quality traffic to your site. The key is to include your resource box at the end of your article. A resource box is a small paragraph with a brief description of you and your business, where you include a link to your site. This way, every time somebody picks up your article and publishes it in their website or newsletter, your link will be there for readers and search engines to see and follow. For tips of getting traffic by writing articles you can visit: http://www.theinternetdigest.net/archive/write.html .
Exchange links with reputable sites: You must try to find quality sites that are compatible to your site's topic (not direct competitors), and ask the webmaster for a link exchange. This will give you highly targeted traffic and will improve your score with the search engines. For tips on a good link exchange campaign, visit: http://www.theinternetdigest.net/archive/inboundlinks.html . If you liked this article and feel inclined to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you may want to check out Aaron Wall's SEOBook.

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You can freely reprint this article provided that you include the following resource box:

Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), an internet marketing content site packed with useful articles and resources, and SEO Tutorial ( http://www.seotutorial.info ) where you can learn the basics of search engine optimization in four easy steps.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Top 20 Tips for Beginner Bloggers

Choose a topic that you know, like, and are passionate about. This way you will never get bored and will keep your audience always interested and asking for more.

Pick a topic where there is not a lot of competition. If your topic is too common, try addressing it from a particular angle or focus on a specific niche. For example, there are many sites that talk about cars, but few that specialize in only one brand, and even fewer that focus on only one model. The key to be successful is to find a specific enough topic with a large enough audience.

Open a Blogger account. It is free and easy to use. That way, you won’t have to invest in costlier platforms like MovableType or TypePad before you have the chance of finding out if blogging is for you.

The SEO Book
The most comprehensive
and updated Search Engine Optimization Ebook

Use a minimalist template, preferably one with a white background. This format is easier to read and pleasant to the eye when you combine it with color pictures.

Use pictures to dress up your blog entries and give your blog a more professional appearance. You can find excellent pictures at a very low cost in istockphoto.com, or even free in Flickr (don’t forget to ask the owner of the picture for permission before you use it).

In one of your blog’s side columns, list six or seven links to authoritative sites related to your topic. When the search engine robots visit your blog, they will find these links and your blog will benefit by association.

Write in simple language, short paragraphs and using bullet points. These are essential guidelines for writing on the web, and will make your posts easier to read and understand.

Always link out to the sources you use to document your posts. This is not only good etiquette but also a way to promote your blog and get links: when the people you link to find out that they’ve been linked to, they will most likely link to your post from their site or blog.

Check your posts for spelling and grammatical errors. This will make your blog look more professional and will increase the probability of other people linking to it.

Use labels to categorize your posts and keep your blog neatly organized. Blogger recently modified its software to allow the use of labels.

Participate actively in forums and discussion groups related to your topic. Find what are the most common questions and provide the answers in your blog. Then, direct forum readers to your blog. Try to also direct forum readers to other resources, or answer without necessarily linking to your blog, sometimes. If not, you may be perceived as self serving and only interested in promoting your blog.

Use HitTail to research topics to write about. HitTail gives you a list of the search terms used by those who came to your blog through a search engine. This search term list will give you ideas for future blog posts.

Allow your blog readers to email your posts to other people. Also, give them the option to bookmark your posts using del.icio.us, furl, or any other social bookmarking service. You can go to AddThis to download a smart button that makes it easy to bookmark your posts. You can find instructions on how to add the button to Blogger here. The easier you make it to share your blog posts, the more relevant traffic your blog will get.

Use Technorati tags at the end of your blog posts. Technorati tags are a way of classifying your blog posts by topic and have them added to Technorati’s index (Technorati is the most important search engine for blogs). Use this automatic Technorati tag generator to avoid having to create the HTML code manually.

Syndicate your blog allowing your visitors to subscribe to your feeds through their favorite aggregator. This way, they will be automatically notified every time you update your blog. You can use this tool to generate attractive syndication buttons, which you can then place in a side column of your blog.

Post frequently. It is the only way to keep your audience interested and coming back. Two or three times a week is ideal. Once a week is the borderline minimum that I recommend to keep your audience engaged and maintain adequate visibility in the search engines.

Keep a large number of posts in the main page of your blog. Search engine robots usually won’t crawl and index all your blog pages, however they will visit your main page frequently. The more content you keep in your main page, the bigger the chance of it popping up in the search engine results pages.

Use Google Adsense to monetize your blog. Blogger lets you add Google Adsense easily and seamlessly in several locations within a page. The best locations are within the content, and on top of the page simulating a navigation bar.

Don’t use Google Adsense excessively, at least at the beginning. Your initial focus should be not to monetize your blog, but to build your audience and establishing your blog's reputation as an authority within your topical community. A blog that is deep on content and lean on ads is more likely to attract the kind of links needed to become relevant to users and search engines.

Once your blog is established and generates abundant, relevant traffic, you can monetize more aggressively, not only with Adsense but also with affiliate links and, why not, maybe even by selling your own products.
You can see a real example of all these tips at work in my blog: http://www.shoestringbranding.com

You can freely reprint this article provided that you include the following resource box:

Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), a growing collection of Internet marketing articles, tips and resources, and Shoestring Branding ( http://www.shoestringbranding.com ), an online resource for entrepreneurs who want to build strong small business brands.

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Saturday, November 3, 2007

Transformation: How Much Have You Changed?

By: Jeff Setton

Before:352 lbs After:170 lbs

Vital Stats
Name: Jeff Setton
Email: jeff.setton@rogers.com
Weight Before: 352lbs
Weight After: 170lbs
BF% Before: 48.9%
BF% After: 6.7%
Lean Muscle Before: 132lbs
Lean Muscle After: 158lbs

How I Did It
Two simple words can describe what is required in order to achieve these results: dedication and commitment. All it takes is being aware of what your regimen consists of, what to eat, and when to workout, and everything else falls into place.

I was somewhat of an active child. From the age of 6, I played hockey 3-4 times/week, and did this up until I was 15 years old. When my biggest growth spurt hit, I seemed to lose interest in all physical activity.

To make matters worse, I had recently started a job in a retail sports store, in which I was working 30-40 hours/week on top of keeping up with school. This led me to become even more lazy in terms of physical activity, and I found myself eating fast food 2-3 times/day making the absolute worst choices when it came to food (McDonald's, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza, etc.).

During my downtime, I found myself rarely being social with kids my age, due to the fact that I was completely burned out from school and work. As a result, I often took 1-2 hour naps in the middle of each day. Due to the lack of activity and horrible eating habits, my weight could only go one way, UP.

As you can imagine, I rarely looked at myself in the mirror as I got disgusted with the way I looked. Although most people could not believe how much I let myself go, I chose to block that out of my mind and did not think anything was wrong with being big.

Tipping the scale at my heaviest at 384lbs, I had no perception of how much my weight problem was getting in the way of my everyday life. Now, after losing over 200lbs, I realize how much I was being held back. Barely fitting into most furniture (chairs, couches, etc) and wearing a 58" pair of jeans was not something that I could keep up for much longer without affecting my health.

I started this program at 352lbs on March 15th, and exactly nine months and four days later, I weighed in at 170lbs. That's 182lbs less in just over 9 months (about 20 lbs/month). I went from wearing a 58" waist and 4XL shirt, to a 32" waist and a S-M top (depending on the brand).
My blood pressure went from 165/100 and a rest heart rate of about 87 beats/minute to 110/68 and a resting heart of 48 beats/minute!!! This, of course, is the result of the cardio exercise I did religiously while loosing weight.

What Got Me Started?
I went to the doctor just a few weeks prior to my 19th birthday and found out some very alarming news. When a person is tested for diabetes, any reading at or above 7.2 means they are diabetic. My reading came back at 7.1, which meant not only was I severely overweight, but I was now a borderline diabetic.

To make matters worse, my blood pressure was 165/100 with a resting heart rate of 86-88 beats/minute. It was here that I realized something drastic has to be done. My father had recently signed up for a gym membership where he was sold on a package of 25 personal training sessions.

Jeff Setton.

As he was extremely busy, he was only able to utilize 4 of the 25 sessions over the span of one year. When he found out I was willing to start exercising, he immediately signed me up at his gym and transferred those sessions to my membership.

I was provided with a trainer who had a reputation as being a "drill sergeant." After a few weeks, I began seeing quick results (Week 1 = 9 lb weight loss, Week 2 = 7 lb weight loss, Week 3 = 11 lb weight loss). I went through ups and downs during this journey, but all in all it was completely worth all the countless hours I put into cardio to get my body back in shape.

Diet
I started with a trainer, who also provided me with 3 simple rules I needed to follow (as always, Keep It Simple!). Firstly, the only things I could eat were essentially from three of the main food groups, Protein, Carbohydrates, and Vegetables. From these groups, I could only eat the following:

Protein:
Chicken breast (no skin)
Turkey breast (no skin)
Tuna
Egg whites
Lean beef (once/week)
Salmon (no carbs with this meal)

Carbohydrates:
Sweet potatoes
Brown rice
Oatmeal
Wild rice

Vegetables:
All greens (except avocado)
No carrots
No cooked onions

I could select one item from each category for THREE meals/day. On top of the three meals, I was allowed to have 3 Whey Protein Isolate shakes in between each meal.

Sample Day:
Meal 1: 7:30am
8 egg white omeletCut up vegetables in omelet (tomatoes, zucchini, egg plant, red/green/orange/yellow peppers)60g of sweet potatoes (~30g of carbs)
Snack 1: 10am
1 scoop Whey Protein (28g protein/scoop)
Meal 2: 12:30pm
115g of Turkey Breast (35g of protein)1/2 cup of brown rice (37g carbs for 3/4 brown rice)Green salad w/ 1/4 cup brown rice (1 tsp. extra virgin olive oil, Greek spice, lemon juice, other spices)
Workout: Cardio for 60-75 minutes (1:45pm)
Snack 2: 3pm
1 scoop whey protein (28g protein/scoop)
Meal 3: 5:30pm
125g of Chicken breast (35g of protein)1/3 cup of oatmeal (20g carbs)Lots of greens (celery, cucumber/tomato salad, Anice, etc.)
Snack 3: 8pm
1 scoop Whey Protein (28g protein/scoop)

Supplements I Used
For the first 6 months of this lifestyle change, I did not take any fat burners, thermogenics, etc. The only supplement I was taking was a daily multi-vitamin twice/day, Vitamin B, C, D and E.

As the weight became progressively harder to take off, I decided to try Clenbuterol for a few months, which provided me with more success. I took off an additional 48lbs in 6 weeks, and was doing the 2 week on, 2 week off phase with the Clenbuterol.

On my 2 weeks off, I was taking a product here in Canada called "Maximum Burn" which contains Ma Huang (ephedrine), White Willow Bark (aspirin) and Caffeine. I found these two stacks to be quite effective.

Training
Sample Week of Muscle Training: 3 Day Split (use for calorie burning and toning)

Workout #1 - Back and Biceps
-Wide-Grip Pulldowns (20reps, 20reps, 20reps)
-Underhand Bent-over Rows (20, 20, 20)
-Seated Long Pulley Rows
-Barbell Deadlifts (20, 15, 12)
-EZ Bar Bicep curls (20, 20, 20)
-Hammer Curls (20, 20, 20)
Click Here For A Printable Log Of Workout 1.

Workout #2 - Chest, Shoulders, Triceps
-BB Bench Press (20, 15, 12)
-Incline DB Press (20, 18, 15)
-BB Military Shoulder Press (20, 15, 12)
-Standing Lateral Raise (20, 20, 15)
-Close-Grip Bench Press (20, 18, 15)
-Rope Pulldowns (20, 18, 15)
Click Here For A Printable Log Of Workout 2.

Workout #3 - Legs
-Leg Press (20, 20, 18, 15)
-Walking Lunges (20, 15, 15)
-Leg Extensions (20, 18, 15)
-Lying Leg Curls (20, 20, 18, 15)
-Seated Leg Curls (20, 18, 15)
-Abductor (20, 20, 20)
-Adductor (20, 20, 20)
Click Here For A Printable Log Of Workout 3.

Suggestion To Others
My suggestion for anyone trying to reach their goals is simply, do not give up. If working out and getting results was easy, wouldn't all of North America be in shape? You have to ask yourself what your priorities in life are. If you take pride in the way you look, then you have to exercise and stay in shape.

Just remember that if someone is trying to discourage you from reaching your goals, they are simply jealous. I had so many people tell me at 270lbs that it was impossible to get "slim" because of my genetics. I got the last laugh! Don't let anyone steer you away from your goals.

Have a set plan as to what you want to do, and where you want to be by certain dates. Setting time frames for yourself is another way to achieve your goals. Back in August 2005, I knew I was going to be going to Florida on December 25th 2005. I weighed in just over 230lbs (~233lbs).

I set a goal that by the time I stepped foot on that plane; I would be weighing in at 170 lbs. On December 25th, I got on the plane weighing 171 lbs. I was up 1lb on the scale from celebrating the night before (had a few things to eat off my program).

Don't Let Others Discourage You!

It just goes to show that with dedication, commitment, and your goals stuck in your head at all times, anything is possible. Remember, never give up, and do not let people tell you what you can and cannot achieve!