The secret to long life, and physical fitness has been known to us for an extremely long time. It's no longer a mystery that if you eat right and exercise you'll be slimmer, look better, be stronger and live longer (statistically speaking that is). The problem is that not everyone agrees on what eating right is precisely or which workouts are the best to achieve your idealistic physique.

The question is, if we all know that, if the secret is out... why don't we all just "do" that? That's only the first question of numerous that come up. Why, while the "eat right and exercise" idea works for so many, does it appear to fail so numerous others? Why might your friend, next-door neighbor, or cousin workout with you and reach much more astonishing results than you do? There are eight primary pitfalls or traps, which are common mistakes people make when attempting to find the counterweight between eating right and exercising, and with realization and elimination of these mistakes, you'll find yourself in total control. This problem becomes more apparent when we're trying to get ready for a big day like say...YOUR WEDDING. Brides and Brides to be all want to look great before their big day and they have access to tons of information online regarding this topic.

I'm calling the eight pitfalls "the 8 Deadly Pitfalls or Traps," not because they endanger your way of living, but because any one is enough to completely kill the potential for desired results and can hamper your wedding day physique plans. These traps are fatal to your potential to progress or succeed. Most of the pitfalls involve actions (or a lack of action) that ignore the importance of the synergistic relationship between eating supportively, exercising aerobically in moderation, and challenging muscle. All three elements are vital if the goal is a long-term positive physical change. It should not be discounted that this stuff is even more important for the short term, especially if you're working on a short term deadline. Once you learn to apply this vital synergy in a manner that fits comfortably into your life, you'll find the payoff for the time you invest in exercise to be significant and extremely rewarding, both in time for your big day and for the rest of your life. Let's get on to the Traps and Pitfalls.

With all eight packed tightly into your brain, fitness failure will no longer be an option, you'll look good for your big day and for the rest of your life!

Pitfall #1: Consuming too much sugar (or refined carbohydrates) on any fat loss program. For years people have learned to shop for food by responding to buying signals listed in large print on the front of food labels. The words "fat free" have compelled Americans to feast on cookies, cakes, ice creams, and pastries and America grew fatter. The number one ingredient in cookies, cakes, ice creams, and pastries, is sugar and regular sugar ingestion is an excellent way to sabotage attempts at fat reduction. If you understand how your body reacts to simple sugar ingestion, it becomes relatively simple to put a "sweet tooth" to rest. See when you take in a huge amount of sugar, your blood sugar content spikes (makes sense right?). Your body responds to this sugar spike in your blood by producing insulin (assuing you aren't a diabetic). Insulin is a hormone that helps your body store "stuff." The most effective and quickest way for your body to store materials is as fat. So in turn your body turns that fat free cookie's sugar into fat.

Trap#2 - The Plateau. The plateau is jargon in the physical fitness world that means your body does not show any more signs of progress, no weight loss, and no muscle gained. This happens because your body is no longer challenged. If you can perform a weight lifting or some other routine with ease then chances are your body will not need to adapt or grow to compensate for any changes because...there ae none. In order to progress your body has to constantly be challenged. So if you can do 10 bench press reps with 100 pounds without any hassle then increase the load by about 10-15% until you find it difficult to pump out 8 reps. Rest assured if you can't do 8 your muscles are trying to figure out the best way to adapt to this new strain and you will see results. Once you can perform a given routine, 10 reps without ease its probably time to up the ante again to continue to maintain progress.

Trap # 3 - Proper healthy food ratios. The ambiguous homogeneous answer of "eating right" usually means a few different things for people. For those trying to lose weight it could mean salads and Jamba Juice. For those trying to buff up it could mean protein shakes and grilled chicken. Somewhere in there is the "wellness" concept, right. People usually associate health with vegetables, fruits, whole grains and lean meat (poultry and fish come to mind). The problem is people don't know how much of each they should be eating. The question of "how many grams of protein do we need" has been asked for decades without anyone coming up with a clearly definitive answer. The reason, I believe, the answer has not emerged, is... there isn't any answer! We are all individual and in that we have individual metabolisms, lifestyles, and body compositions. A pro football player with 180 pounds of lean body mass would probably need far higher protein intake to preserve muscle tissue than someone with half his weight. What happens if you don't take in enough protein? Well, your body may have greater need for amino acids than is being supplied by your diet. In the absence of sufficient dietary protein, it can turn to muscle mass, begin catabolizing or breaking down muscle tissue to free up stored amino acids. This loss of muscle, while it may reflect as pounds lost on the scale, is a detriment to metabolism and in the long run can act to program the body to become more efficient at storing fat.

Trap# 4 - Feeding Frequency. Most people eat 3 times a day and usually not with any limitations as to what and when they should eat. Usually their diet gets larger throughout the day. Small breakfast, larger lunch and a huge dinner. Its quite understandable as it relates, generally, to time constraints and habit. Late for work, grab your bagel on the fly as you race out the door. Now that you're at work you get a little more time to relax for your lunch hour so you sit and fill that hunger void, By dinner time you're tired, hungry and can't wait to dig in on whatever feast you might have ready for you. Now, if we break this all down, your body does get accustomed to your habit and adjusts its internal thermostat accordingly. You actually train your body to store fat when you don't "stoke your fat burning fire place" enough. Your metabolism is the rate which your body converts food into energy. You should be eating and burning fuel every 3 hours or so. This is the ideal time frame to keep your body in fat burning mode.

Pitfall#5: Over training. Over training simply means working out beyond the body's recuperation limits. I meet two fundamental types of over trainers. There are the over-ambitious novices who want quick results and attempt to emulate the routines performed by individuals with years of muscle stimulating exercise under their belts. The second type are the overly enthusiastic who head "back to the gym" to start "working out again," not recognizing their bodies are not quite the same as they were back in the day. The secret to achieving leanness and muscularity involves challenging the body adequately, but taking it past the point of diminishing returns can move you further away from your goals. Train beyond your body's ability to meet fuel demand through its preferred sources of fuel, and your training might actually lead to a breakdown of muscle tissue, the complete opposite of what most people want. Over training leads to a loss of motivation, to irritability, to insomnia, to immune system compromises, and in numerous cases to injury. exercise doesn't have to be an overwhelming all-consuming effort. If you're not an advanced bodybuilder or fitness competitor, you don't need to pile the massive weights on the leg press machine for endless sets, nor do you need to crank out hundreds of repetitions of bench presses. You simply have to stimulate muscle, feed the body, and allow all the systems of the body to rest and recuperate.

Trap# 6 - Substituting activity for a true workout. Yes, doing something is almost always better than doing nothing, but don't substitute what you should be doing for some lesser thing and expect to see results as though you were engaging in the higher quality activity all along. This means yes, going for a walk is better than sitting on the couch watching TV, but going for a walk is not the same as riding your bike or running. Don't expect to see the physique of a marathon runner if all you did was walk around the block every day for 3 months. Remember what I said earlier, your body adapts to your daily activity and constantly needs to up the ante to keep improving. If you're supposed to workout one day but can't and instead go for a jog, that's good but make sure you are not substituting the job for the workout on a routine basis.

Pitfall #7: Failing to ingest calories sufficient to maintain metabolism and supply fuel for activity. A 150 pound man, at rest for a 24-hour period, would burn approximately 1500 calories just to keep his brain functioning, his heart beating, and his internal organs pursuing living-sustaining metabolic processes. Add in to the equation movement, workout, stress, and work and of course caloric requirements further increase. The old and misleading adage, "eat less to weigh less," has sent dieters flocking toward calorie deprivation. The challenge lies in keeping energy stores full and keeping metabolism stoked when you're barely taking in enough calories to sustain function at rest. Once you come to understand that eating supportively, eating "thermic" (calorie burning) meals frequently throughout the day, can actually boost metabolism, can make the body more efficient at burning through food and releasing fat, and can provide fuel to keep energy levels at a consistent high, you'll quickly develop some new eating habits. Ideally you'll divide your daily calories into six balanced meals allowing for optimal use of nutrients and a continuous stimulation of metabolic activity.

Trap#8 - Rest and Recovery. This doesn't simply mean sleep, which is vitally important, but you're going to do that I presume. The rest factor means taking the time to take a break, "enjoy the flowers." life should not be all about work, workouts and calorie counting. Positive stress (exercising) is a good thing when properly applied however you need to counterbalance that with positive down time. Do something that you enjoy. The analogy is like sunlight to a plant. A plant needs nsunlight to grow, but the side that grows fastest and first is the side that gets shade. Plants actually grow in the dark. They need light but they grow in the dark, which is similar to the way that your muscles work. They need to be worked and they need nourishment, but they also need time to recoup.

With these eight pitfalls exposed, the path to your ultimate wedding day body success should be clear. Eat supportive meals frequently, exercise enough to provide challenge, maintain some regular aerobic activity, and schedule in relaxation and recuperation time, and reshaping your body becomes a simple task. You're going to look great walking down that aisle.