I read a great article emailed to me in my 'Burn the Fat' newsletter (Tom Venuto.)  http://www.burnthefatblog.com/archives/2007/09/3500_calories_to_lose_a_pound.php

It talked about new research regarding fat loss vs. lean tissue loss in fat people and in lean people.  Bottom line, if you are lean you need to use a LESS aggressive calorie deficit and maintain high protein intake.  This may not be what you want to hear when you are trying to lose the 5 pounds you gained on vacation, but it's what you will need to do in order to keep muscle.  It will take more time, but you will maintain lean body mass and have way less chance of gaining the weight back.

The bottom line for your clients - fat people lose more fat than lean when restricting calories aggressively.  So it may be OK to let clients start with enthusiasm.  As they lose weight the calorie deficit should shift though, from an aggressive to a moderate or even conservative deficit.  In other words, as time goes on, and if your client is losing fat, you should give calories back to them.  They should like that!

The science behind this article is impressive, and I really enjoy reading Tom's newsletters and blog.  Think about signing up at www.burnthefat.com  (By the way, I am not being compensated in any way for saying this - I just really do like what Tom is doing!)

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You may notice that I have added advertising to a couple of places on this website. Don't be afraid to visit these websites and patronize these businesses!  It helps support our efforts here at FitClasses.com.

The other day I was sweating away in Body Pump as a participant.  I was at a gym that I pay for membership at, and I am not an employee there.  I was just there to work out.

The guy behind me sat down, he was overheating.  I told him he needed to walk, and his wife took him out of the room.  The next thing I know the wife comes back in and the instructor leaves very abruptly with her. 

The class kept doing what they were doing for a few minutes, but as I watched people start to kind of fall out I realized that the rest of the class was in an unsafe situation (cooling down too fast.)  So I ran out and grabbed the mic from the other instructor and I covered until he came back.

Luckily, the man who overheated was fine.  In this situation there was someone to cover.  But it really made me think about what to do and what not to do in an emergency situation.  I am working on an article about handling emergencies, but I need to hear from other instructors with real life emergency situation stories.  Please leave some comments below, or email me if you would like to contribute.  It's an important topic, and I really need your help on this one.

Please check out my latest article about turning a profit from your Pilates program.  This article represents a team effort between myself and Laura Rogers and appears in Fitness Management magazine this month.

New articles on the site include Transitioning to Outdoor Cycling by Beverly Turbeville, and tons of new stuff by Krista Leopold.

I talked about FitDay.com a few weeks ago and I wanted to put another one out there.  On DietFacts.com you can look up the nutrition information for just about anything, and there is a button right under the nutrition information where you can add that food to your fitday.com journal.  How cool is that.  I have been using the dickens out of this thing!

I saw a great article today on MSN.com - http://health.msn.com/dietfitness/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100167999&page=1

It really attempts to draw a definite correlation between America's increasing consumption of fast food and our increasing waist lines.  Seems pretty simple to me.  But it talks about some reasons why this is true, including labeling fast food as "dense" - meaning that it packs many calories, and few fibers in to a small package in order to be easily consumed.  It can be argued that the food we consume in fast food restaraunts is unnaturaly to our bodies - that we cannot process or handle the food as it comes in because it is more dense than our bodies were ever meant to process.

In a  few places in this article the question is asked "Why do people keep coming back?"  A conclusive answer is never given, although I have attempted to answer this question breifly in my article in August's Fitness Management Magazine - "Energizing Your Group Fitness Schedule."

We live in a franchise world - people like things to be the same.  They like to know what to expect.  People eat fast food because they know for sure what they will get, how much it will cost, and how they will fee when they eat it.  Every time.

This is a usefull concept to note as an instructor, and especially if you are a director.  People like to know what they are getting before they commit.  You can use this concept to guide your class scheduling and class planning.  If you commit to outlining each format you offer, and then stick to your outlines, your participants will have less stress about committing an hour to any specific class.