For most of my training career , I got people to eat healthy and get leaner by following an eating approach, that was anti- calorie counting.

Here is the thing. I never really liked counting calories personally and I assumed many other didn’t either.

If I could make it, simpler, people were more likely to do it, I thought.

This worked for many people.

I advocated improving your food quality and you’ll most likely eat the right amount and reach your goals.

The big things I would advocate were

Eating protein based meals with real foods like chicken, beef, fish protein shakes, yogurt , cottage cheese etc

Eat more fruits and veggies.

Eat healthier and more natural versions of fats and carbohydrates, the ones that were not highly processed like potatos instead of breads and olive oil instead of fake fats like margarine.

Drink plenty water

Eliminate or reduce, most other foods.

Now, for most this way works and works well. The problem is right now,

It might not be something your even willing to do.

Also , you can still be overeating, even if its healthy foods, this can stop you from getting lean.

I wanted to give you 5 reason why counting calories, may be just what you need.

To me counting calories means

-Recording the foods you eat on tracker like my fitness pal.

-Doing your best to accurately measure and weigh most of your foods.

This isn’t something to do for ever, but maybe a month or so. To educate your self and become more aware.

Not everyone has to do this, but it’s smart for some situations . I’m going talk about this today.

1. Your brand new to diets and eating healthy. There is a lot talk about eating intuitively. The issues is you don’t know, what you don’t know. I’ve been, eating healthy for most of my adult life. I can look at a plate of food and judge how many calories are on that plate better, than some one who hasn’t paid attention to food much in there life .

There lays the issue, often when people struggle to lose fat, there eating more than they think. This is why spending a brief time, counting and measuring food. Can be real eye opener for many and make it very clear, what you have been over doing.

For beginners focus on hitting a calorie goal of around 12 x your ideal body weight and hit body weight in grams of protein, is great place to start. Than try to fill the rest of the foods you eat with, healthy foods and foods, you enjoy.

2. You like eating junky food. For some people there just aren’t willing to eliminate all unhealthy foods.

That is perfectly okay. You’ll see a tremendous health benefits and be able to lose fat by eating mostly unprocessed foods and not overeating.

If your someone, like this , who always likes to include some junky food like, ice cream, candy, chips etc.

It best to always track calories, because your not going be just eat those things and expect to lose weight. There just too easy to over eat.

Like I said this okay. You can include some of those things, if you keep your calories and protein in check. You’ll still get really good results. With this style of eating, but there is always a give and take.

You want your chips, you have to sacrifice carbs or calories some where else. So maybe less carbs at dinner or lighter breakfast and/or lunch, so you can still have chips and not going over your calories, so you can still lose fat.

3. You’ve been eating super clean. So, this another situations that happens. You’ve been eating healthy. You eat a ton of clean food. You might of gotten some where, but maybe your stuck now.

But, you feel stuck. There is a myth that eating healthy is the same thing as easing for fat loss. Healthy is good but fat loss is always about eating less calories, than you take in.

Hence why tracking calories, might be a huge eye opener for you.

4. Direct way to fast fat loss. So, many people want fast results. But, the most direct way to lose fat is tracking calories diligently .

You can eat clean , you can eat keto or go low fat, but you can still get stuck, if your still eating too much.

Counting calories, is the best way ensure fat loss, if your in a rush.

Those are a few times,when counting calories is the thing that you may need. But, you don’t have to count to get results.

I had guy go from 300lbs to 180 without counting calories.

But, just because you don’t count calories to lose fat doesn’t mean that you didn’t lower calories, which caused the fat loss.

If your looking to get leaner, I offer free nutrition coaching with me personal training. Hit the contact button and schedule your free assessment and free workout today.

The 2nd most common pain , is shoulder pain. It something I have to deal with .

Being very active most of my adult life.

Lifting, doing OCR races, grappling and fighting, has done a number on them.

There certain drills, that are a must for me.

The funny thing is, people who not as active as I have been, will still experience shoulder pain in the almost the same way.

Three things we need to think about, when it comes to developing better shoulder health and increase the chance of getting out of shoulder pain.

Breathing

Posture

Movement and exercise routine.

These are three different subject. I’ll talk about. But, there all interconnected. Poor breathing, drives poor posture and poor posture effects, the how we move and how we exercise..

Breathing

This might not seem like a big deal but how we breathe effects our posture and also the health] of the muscles, that will contribute to shoulder pain.

If you think of breathing , we do this in two different ways.

Chest breathing, where we breathe shallow into our chest, this is constantly expanding and retracting our muscle in the upper body. This is equivalent to doing 1000’s reps of on these muscles a day. This creates very tight pecs, lats and traps. Which can contribute to shoulder pain and poor shoulder movements.

Also this style of breathing will, also causes us to extend at the lower back 1000′ of times a day. This creates a posture, wherever it is hard to breathe in the second way, I’ll talk about . This is how , poor breathing patterns, create worse posture .

The second way breathing is breathing into our diaphragm and into stomach . This the ideal way to breathe , most of the time. This way reduces our stress, improves our cardio, as far shoulder pain reduces, the tension in all those, upper body muscle we over use, when we breathe shallow into the neck.

There is an issue, though. If we have bad posture, it is hard to breathe into the stomach.

The hips and bottom of the rib cage align to create, this canister or chamber to breathe into the stomach. Without this posture belly breathing can be very tough.

But, if we have poor posture and hips and rib cage are not lined up. It becomes harder to breathe this way. It will feel more natural to breathe through the chest,

This kind of thing, like the chicken or the egg.

Do we have bad posture because we breathe poorly.

Or do we breathe poorly because we have bad posture.

But, by working on both we can, reduce tightness in the shoulder and create better posture, that leads to greater shoulder function and hopefully get out of pain.

Posture

Next is posture, how we spend most of our time. Determine our default posture.

Good or bad.

Sit slouched.

Sit down with back rounded and head forward for 8 hours a day at work.

We are going to have less than ideal upper body posture.

This creates tight muscles and weak muscles, causing an imbalance between the front and rear shoulder. This can create dysfunctional and painful shoulder. Because they can’t stabilize like, they want to,due to this.

What is ideal upper body posture?

This what most people are dealing with. The cross line , shows the tight muscles, and than the weak muscle. This often due to our daily movements and posture

This is ideal posture. Lower back flat , upper back without an excessive curve and head over shoulders. You’ll notice the line, going through the body, that shows you, what great posture is.

Movement and exercise

The third things , we can do, is to exercises to balance things out.

We want to stretch or open tight areas and get the area that are weak, stronger. In general the tight muscles, will be the front muscle and the weak muscle will be the ones in the back.

So, since we are talking the upper body we have to open up.

• Pecs/chest
• traps
• lats
• T-spine the part of the spine right behind the chest

We have to get the upper back and shoulder stabilizer stronger and the lower and mid traps, as well rhomboids.

This is where a great programming is important, we don’t want do a program that makes, these things worse. Which is what many workout of day style gyms, can do.

So, what would make this worse?

• Too much bench work or chest work.
• Not enough push ups
• Not enough upper back work
• Using bad form and with heavy weight.

So a good program would do theses things.

Have proper warm up that opens the chest and lats and activated the upper back and shoulder stabilizer.

Than during the workouts, we will get more upper back work, than chest and front shoulder work.

Example might be

Warm up

• Chest stretch 60 sec per side
• Lying wind mill 10 per side
• YWT 20 sec per side
• Face pull with band 20 reps
• Yoga push up 10

Workouts

• DB bench press 3x 5
• Push ups 3x 10
• Ring rows 4 x 10
• Band pull aparts 4x 20
• Rear flys 3x 15
• lateral shoulder flys 3x 15

I hope this helps, you out.

This is something, that wont works like magic, it going take some time to get better shoulders.

Be committed.

Work on breathing, if your shallow breather

Be mindful of posture and do the best you can correct.

Warm properly, make sure we stretch open chest , traps and lats and activate the upper back and back of shoulders

When you train use proper form, make sure not all chest exercises are presses and do more push ups too, there better for shoulder health. Do more upper back than chest, when doing this, think total reps. The workout I gave there, was total 45 reps of chest and 165 reps of upper back, 80 those being lower intensity upper back exercises from band pull parts.

Let me know, if you have any questions