I hope you are feeling great and have a spring in your step after the time switch this weekend.

I love waking up naturally to the sunshine entering the bedroom OR my daughter Matea jumping on my head, whichever comes first…

We spent all of Sunday outdoors in the sunshine teaching Matea to ride her bike.

Speaking of switches, my friend Craig Ballantyne who I will be hanging out with in California this week during a big fitness conference, emailed me a cool article on “Nutrition Switches for Faster Fat Loss” to share with you.

So enjoy, as I gotta get packed for my 1st trip to”Cali”, can’t wait and will have lots of good fitness tips to share with from the conference!

5 Proven Nutrition SWITCHES for Faster Fat Loss
By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS

—> Download The TT Simple Nutrition Guide

Every day in March, I’ve committed to sharing a Training and Nutrition “SWITCH” to help you lose fat. Here are 5 of the most popular nutrition switches I’ve posted so far:

Nutrition SWITCH #1 – No More Dessert for Breakfast

If you want to lose fat, stop eating dessert for breakfast.

Let’s be honest, most of what people eat for breakfast would qualify as dessert if served at any other time of day. So stop with sugary cereals, muffins (let’s be honest, we all know that muffins = cake), granola bars, and bagels.

Nutrition SWITCH #2 – Switch Your Eating Schedule

If you find that you often “binge snack” at night, try having a bigger late afternoon healthy snack, and then having a later healthy dinner.

There’s no magic to not eating after a certain time. I often eat a big healthy dinner and go to sleep within 30 minutes. That won’t make you fat. Eating a pint of ice cream & bag of chips every night while you watch TV makes you fat.

Nutrition SWITCH #3 – Minimize the Junk

Your house doesn’t need to be stocked like the local 7-11. Keep the minimum amount of treats at home to avoid mutiny and keep treats out of sight & hard to access.

Make healthy foods (giant bowls of fresh fruit) visible and places encouraging notes to eat the fruit in the kitchen.

Put ready-to-eat produce in most visible part of the fridge & hide junk in the back. All research proven to increase healthy food consumption. And when it’s your time for a cheat meal, you can enjoy it guilt-free.

Nutrition SWITCH #4 – Go From Processed to Natural

When possible, switch out all processed or “modified” carbohydrates and replace it with a fruit, vegetable, or nut.

For example, instead of toast with eggs, have an apple and add spinach to the eggs. Instead of a processed carbohydrate with your morning coffee, have 1oz of raw nuts (almonds or walnuts). With steak, eat broccoli, not mashed potatoes or French fries.

Nutrition SWITCH #5 – Cut the Sugar From Your Post-Workout Drink

If you’re focused specifically on fat loss, you do NOT need to add sugar (or any variations of sugar) to your after training drink.

I interviewed top nutritionists about this in 2010, and they all agreed that for fat loss, you don’t need to force post- workout sugar into your body. So take it out.

BONUS Nutrition SWITCH – Become Your Own Nutrition Expert

Stop getting fooled by fad diets. Become an expert yourself by going through a 2-week “intensive nutrition course”.

Here’s how:

Eat a wide variety of food for 2 weeks and record all of your meals. You’ll quickly know the calorie counts of all foods and proper serving sizes AND most importantly, what works for YOU. Very simple. Very effective.

Research proven tips to help you eat better.

—> Download The TT Simple Nutrition Guide

Everyone wants to eat CHOCOLATE…especially today

(except our little daughter Matea who wanted her heart shaped candy lolipop for breakfast!)

But you can have your chocolate and abs too…here’s how…

PS. Hope you have a great VALENTINES Day with whoever you wish to spend it with. I am taking my wife out to dinner, then we are going to see The Goo Goo Dolls perform live here in town!

Enjoy your abs AND chocolate!

=> http://www.TTWorkoutDvds.com

So I asked him to share them with you before it appears in the magazine;-)

The 10 Best Weight Loss Tips
by Craig Ballantyne

You’re about to discover the most important weight loss and body transformation tips I’ve ever put together.

Over the holidays I spent 16 hours reviewing every article I’d ever written
and I’ve extracted these tips as the best ones to help you lose fat and get lean in 2011.

10 Weight Loss Tips for Success

1. Sit down and plan out your complete body transformation.

Plan everything from end goals, to getting started with nutrition changes, to overcoming all of the obstacles in your way. Sit and daydream about this for 15-30 minutes.

2. Clean out your pantry.

Listen, one of the best fat loss tips is simply, “If you don’t have it in the house, you won’t eat it!”

So get rid of as much junk food as you can – and avoid bringing more into the house. Simply cutting back on junk can help you lose fat fast.

3. Get social support in-person and online (research proven to help)

Surround yourself with people who are smarter and fitter than you. Talk to them EVERY day – both in person and online.

Scientific research proves that you will lose more fat if you have social support, both in “real life” and on the internet. So hook up with friends who are going to help you reach your goal.

I recommend getting started with Turbulence Training here and using the Turbulence Training forum to connect with people just like you who also want to lose fat.

4. Use a food journal.

Write down what you eat. This is another research proven tip to help you lose fat faster. Write down everything you eat. It will help you eat better.

5. Use a professionally designed workout program.

With a program from a pro – like Turbulence Training – you’ll save time when you do fat burning exercises. One of the biggest mistakes people make is not having a plan and that wastes time and you won’t get the results you deserve.

6. Change Your Mind.

No matter what you struggle with, you must change your mindset to be a successful transformation. You must go from a person who “can’t resist cookies” to the type of person that “doesn’t eat cookies unless they are part of a planned reward meal”. That is how you win transformation contests!

7. Stop doing slow boring cardio and switch to interval training.

Research shows that it takes up to 50 hours of cardio just to lose one pound of bodyweight. Who has that kind of time? No one!

Additional research studies show that interval training burns belly fat while slow cardio doesn’t. So skip the insanely boring cardio and start getting results with interval training (as you’ll find in the Turbulence Training workouts).

Research shows that resistance training and interval training can help you gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. Plus, you can burn belly fat AND boost your post-exercise metabolism. You MUST use this type of workout for guaranteed results.

8. You must be in the correct state of change.

The truth is that even the best transformation contest winners don’t lose 30 pounds of fat on their first try. They start, they stop. They begin, they give up. It happens. And it’s okay.

But when they get in the right state of change, that is when they finally breakthrough and transform! And that’s where you have to be.

9. Plan, shop, and prepare your food.

Take an hour or two on the weekend to go to the grocery store and buy all the whole, natural foods you need for the week ahead. Go home and prepare as many lunches and snacks as possible so you have the right food to eat while at work. This is a proven strategy to help you lose fat and avoid temptation!

10. Join a Transformation Contest

The deadline, social support, proven training program, and goal setting that go along with a Transformation Contest are all proven to help you lose weight.

If you want to lose fat and gain lean, sculpted muscle at the same time, there is nothing better to get you motivated and committed than a 12-week Body Transformation Contest.

But this week is the LAST CALL for you to enter the 10th Turbulence Training Transformation Contest. The last day to begin is Saturday, January 15th.

Not only can you dramatically change your body, but you can also win $1000 just for losing belly fat. At least, you can when you join the Turbulence Training Transformation Contest.

All you have to do is take your before photo, and start using Turbulence Training today.

But how do you enter?

After 12 weeks, simply email us your before and after photos along with a 300-word essay about your transformation and tell us your results and the programs you used. That’s all you have to do to enter.

It’s that simple.

Now let’s get started,

=> Start with the TT for Fat Loss program here.

PS. This is the final week for you to enter the 10th TT Transformation Contest,where you can win $1000 prize just for losing belly fat.

=> See $1000 Transformation Winners here

I am writing this to you from Quebec City airport while I wait for my connecting flight to Montreal… then on to Saint John, New Brunswick.

==> http://www.dadfitness.com/TT-Travel-Report.pdf

Hope this helps you in your travels…

No matter what level of fitness knowledge you think you may have, you always need to look and learn from other trainers and coaches to improve your mind and body. As the author of Dad Fitness, I still strive to learn and improve my knowledge to help others get the fastest results possible.

After spending 5 days hanging out with guys like Craig Ballantyne of Men’s Health and fitness icon Shawn Phillips, I started to pick up on some of the secrets these guys use to stay in awesome shape even while traveling.

So here are 5 Tips To Stay Fit While Traveling.

1. Workout No Matter What. After a busy 5 days of sitting on my butt in meetings and seminars I still managed to workout 4 out of the 5 days while in Florida. Which is even more than I workout at home!

The first day I got together with Rommel Acda of FitInAHurry.com, and Deb Froehlich of CelluiteCircuits.com and we trained together in the hotel gym. It wasn’t very big but had enough to get a great workout using our bodyweight and a few dumbbells.

Then the next day along with Craig Ballantyne of Turbulence Training we all headed to the local Powerhouse gym to get a great workout in a more upbeat gym atmosphere.

Wether it’s a quick hotel room bodyweight workout, a hotel gym workout or a Powerhouse gym workout, just make sure you do some exercise while traveling to offset all the sitting down on airplanes and in meetings.

2. All You Can Eat. The great thing about travelling to new cities is experiencing new places to eat. But if you’re not careful you could be paying the airlines extra weight on the way home, and I am not talking about your luggage…

So do what all the fit trainers did every morning to start their day off right; eat a nutritious breakfast. Even though our hotel served a FREE buffet breakfast every morning, most everyone who is in great shape skipped the bacon and breads and had a huge freshly prepared omelet stuffed with veggies with a little fruit on the side, me included. Keep lunch small with a salad or whole grain wrap so you don’t get sleepy during the afternoon meetings, and enjoy a nice dinner with some lean meat and veggies and even a glass of wine.

3. Drink Up. I don’t mean spend your nights at the hotel bar getting sloshed. I mean drink lots of cold refreshing water. It will keep you full and focused and your mind off the donuts and croissants sitting across the conference table.

It’s really easy to drink lots of H2O during these hotel conferences as they usually serve you pitchers of water in your meeting rooms and in the big conference rooms. Just to be sure you always have water on hand, pick up a couple of litres of spring water at the hotel gift shop and keep on ice in your room.

4. Ditch the Cab. If you are up for some sight seeing or heading to a nearby restaurant for dinner, ditch the cab fare, get some directions and walk there instead. Google Maps on your smart phone works great for this!  Walking is a great way to see a new city and burn some calories. Strolling back to the hotel after dinner is a great way to end the evening and ease the guilt from that decadent dessert.

You can also try to find a park or gym a couple miles away and walk or run there to get your heart pumping and your warmup out of the way.

5. Recharge. If you’re traveling solo, staying at a hotel is a great way to get some extra rest and relaxation. You get the bed to yourself, and you have no worries of the kids jumping in the bed at the wee hours of the morning.

It’s also a great time to catch up on some work or read that book you have been trying to get through. A dip in the hotel pool and a hot sauna afterwards might be just what you need to recharge your batteries before you get back on the road.

So there you have it, 5 Travel Tips To Stay Fit so you’re wife still recognizes you when you get home…

How do YOU stay fit on the road? Let me know and leave a comment below.

September seems to be a busy month for everyone. Back to school, back to work and back to some serious workouts!

After talking with my buddy Craig Ballantyne of Men’s Health magazine I asked him to share his 5 best tips to help you guys get more energy to get through the busy fall season and here is what he had to say.

So use those tips and have more energy….

PS.Craig Ballantyne and my buddy Chris Lopez just released a new Kettlebell Fat Loss home workout program called Kettlebell Revolution. I can’t recommend Kettlebell workouts enough if you want to get bodysculpting results in 10-20 minutes per day.

So don’t miss your chance on these powerful new home workouts – heck, you can even do them at the park.

Get your Kettlebell workouts here:

=> Kettlebell Fat Loss Workouts

There are all types of ways to do interval training, and research hasn’t shown us a best way yet. There is NO best interval training workout for fat loss, however, some of my favorites are:

a) 1 minute on, 1-2 minutes off, repeat 6 times.

b) 30 seconds on, 90 seconds off, repeat 6 times.

c) 45 seconds on, 90 seconds off, repeat 6 times.

d) 20 seconds on, 40 seconds off, repeat up to 8 times.

Make sure to include a warm-up and cool-down after each.

And remember, you can use all types of interval training methods for these workouts.

You can do treadmill running, hill walking, stationary cycling, sprinting outside (if you do extra warm-up), kettlebell swings, medicine ball power woodchoppers, rope jumping, rowing, swimming, or even the elliptical machine (if you think it works).

One research study even used 8 seconds on, 12 seconds off for a total of 20 minutes, but these short intervals are almost impossible to do on regular gym equipment.

For more in-depth, step-by-step fat burning plans, visit:

==>TurbulenceTraining.com

Sean Barker, CPT

Learn the “The Truth On Fat Loss, How To Finally Lose That Beer Belly” in this FREE report from Sean Barker at www.dadfitness.com

That’s Toronto by the way…the biggest city in Canada.

I am staying smack in the middle of downtown in the Hilton Hotel with a cool view overlooking city hall with the big Christmas tree and all the Christmas lights .

I wish my wife and daughter were here to share this with me but she is having a fun trip visiting her sister in New Brunswick. I will connecting with them on the trip home on Wednesday in Quebec City. Can’t wait to see them!

Yesterday I had an awesome day attending Day 1 of business meetings with all the top guys in the fitness industry like

Craig Ballantyne of Men’s Health & Tuburlence Training

Brad Pilon of Eat Stop Eat

Vince Delmonte of Your Six Pack Quest

Along with 6 other fitness professionals we all headed out to a nice dinner at Red’s Steakhouse. I would highly recommend it if you are ever in Toronto.

…and NO we didn’t all eat salads and chicken breasts!

We had a couple beers, appetizers, AWESOME steak and even a little dessert.

The SECRET to fat loss and getting the body you want while enjoying the foods you like to eat is this:

Do short intense workouts just 3 times a week, eat real healthy natural foods most of the time and when you feel like treating yourself go ahead and enjoy it!

…BUT the key is to get back to your healthy foods and Dad Fitness workouts the very next day.

For those of you who didn’t get to read this article in last month’s newsletter check it out in the second installment of my Dad Fitness monthly column on TheFatherLife.com

Click Here==>3 Simple Steps To Awesome Abs

Gotta go get started on Day 2 of our meetings!

Sean Barker, CPT

Learn the “The Truth On Fat Loss, How To Finally Lose That Beer Belly” in this FREE report from Sean Barker at www.dadfitness.com

…to go and visit her sister in New Brunswick for a week.

This is the first time daddy’s little girl will be away from me since she was born.

I certainly miss them both so much already. But was just talking to my wife and they arrived safe and sound which is what really matters.

As for me I will be heading out of town on Sunday to attend a weekend mastermind meeting in Toronto with Craig Ballantyne, Men’s Health expert and creator of TurbulenceTraining.com

It will be a weekend of networking with 10 other fitness professionals to enhance and grow our fitness businesses to help more people worldwide get fit for life.

No matter how much you think you know or what fitness level you may be at, always strive to learn more from the top experts in the health and fitness industry.

Don’t try and design exercise programs for yourself if you don’t have the experience and expertise to do so. Even myself as well as lots of the top trainers in the world look to other trainers in the industry to design exercise programs for them.

I also do the same every now and then and use workouts from other top trainers because they say the hardest person to design an exercise program for is YOURSELF!

Let me do the work for you and start using professionally designed fat burning workouts that are designed for busy dads.

Click this link to==>Download 16 weeks of fat burning workouts

…Tonight I will be heading to a buffet dinner with some friends.

So I thought I would share with you an awesome tip when you are attending any holiday buffets this Christmas.

It’s actually from a great book called “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think”

It’s called the Rule of Two. You can choose anything you want at the buffet, but you can never have more than two items on your plate. If you want to load it up with nuts and cake, go ahead. If you want to go back for seconds and load it up again with chips and carrots, go ahead.

Although this sounds like a recipe for disaster, it actually works quite well for people for three reasons:

• You tend to take the two types of food you want most. People who love desserts don’t work their way up to desserts. They’ll start with the desserts, and then stop.

• You tend to not overfill you plate. Putting only two things on our plate helps keep our serving sizes somewhat small because we psychologically don’t want to overload on a particular item.

• You tend to not go back more than two times. In one study did on the Rule of Two, 83 percent of people only made one or two additional returns to the buffet.

This morning I also had a great workout at the gym. It was short and intense and was a high rep day with short rest periods of 45 secs!

That’s it for today I am heading outdoors to start putting up our Christmas lights!

PS. If you feel like you ate a little too much yesterday and want to get back on track you can get your workouts instantly at DadFitness.com so you can burn off those extra calories.

…Or if you are like me and love the convenience of online shopping from the comfort of your own home the Dad Fitness System is just the thing to give to someone who is also a busy dad looking to get in shape in the New Year.

Sean Barker, CPT

Learn the “The Truth On Fat Loss, How To Finally Lose That Beer Belly” in this FREE report from Sean Barker at www.dadfitness.com

Completed Workout C of Craig Ballantyne’s TT For Meatheads at the gym today.

I felt strong on the barbell deadlifts and pumped out good reps on reverse lunges and ab supersets. The ab circuits in this program are awesome for hitting all the muscles of your core WITHOUT crunches!

Seeing as it was a beautiful sunny day here in Labrador we took Matea out for a stroll to the local playground.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Playground Lunge

Sean Barker, CPT

Learn the “The Truth On Fat Loss, How To Finally Lose That Beer Belly” in this FREE report from Sean Barker at www.dadfitness.com