The other thing that makes pullups great is that they don’t require expensive equipment. In fact, they require a bar and that’s about it. Take that overpriced Total Gym. The Iron Gym now makes it even easier. With the Iron Gym you only need a  doorway to place the device and you’re golden. It’s so simple to use I’m surprised that it took so long to be invented really.

Thus, I turn my attention to protein bars and meal replacement type bars that are going to have less sugar and more protein, possibly even a good amount of fiber. What I’ve found is that the average protein bar isn’t that much different from the standard issue candy bar.

It’s actually sad how much sugar gets slipped into protein bars. They’re supposed to be healthy, but in an effort to make them taste good, they take the candy bar route of sugar coating the protein and fiber until they aren’t much different than a candy bar at all.

Snickers Marathon Nutrition Bar

In my quest for a reasonable protein bar that would have a low Glycemic Index, I stumbled across the Snickers Marathon Nutrition Bar. Snickers is usually known for making famously unhealthy candy bars, yet the Snickers Marathon Nutrition Bar is actually pretty awesome by GI standards. It’s not perfect, but it  manages to only have 150 calories, 7 grams of fiber, and only 9 grams of sugar.

The dark chocolate crunch is pretty delicious. As it turns out it’s the only variety of the Snickers Marathon Nutrition bar available that I can find. That brings up a great irony in the Snickers Marathon bar product line.

The Fatal Marketing Flaw

Snickers as a brand is a candy bar brand. Snickers is not a brand that people think of when they think of health food. Protein bars are usually regarded as health food in the same vein as protein powder or a meal replacement snack.

Making a protein bar with the Snickers brand seems like the fatal flaw for this line of fantastic products. In both the Marathon Nutrition lines and the Snickers Marathon Low Carb lines, they are almost impossible to find. I think this is partially due to the low carb diets fading from popularity, but that seems to be compounded by the Snickers branding.

What would have happened if Mars would have just called this product line “Marathon Bars”? That would be a much easier sell for health conscious crowd. It’s sad really.

Where To Buy Snickers Marathon Bars

It is possible to find Snickers Marathon Bars, but the varieties that are most readily available seem to be the energy and protein varieties. Both of these are much higher in sugar, which doesn’t work so well for my diet.

The nutrition and low carb varieties are much harder to find. I’ve found the nutrition variety at a local convenience store for around $1.90 a bar. That’s way more expensive than they need to be.

I haven’t had much luck finding the low carb and nutrition bars online. The best luck I’ve had were on eBay. Even still, it would be much easier to buy in bulk on Amazon or direct from Mars or some other wholesaler.

There are many benefits of eating a low GI diet. When you eat carbs that have a high GI rating, you are pushing your body to extremes, which can be detrimental to your health. If you are overweight and you don’t get much exercise, you are really going to be compounding the problem.

Switching to a low glycemic index diet can help you lose and control your weight, it will help your body regulate insulin, improve diabetes control, reduce the risk of heart disease, reduce blood cholesterol levels, can reduce hunger and make you feel fuller for longer periods of time, can prolong physical endurance, and in general will just make you have a feeling of overall health and well-being.

How To Choose A Diet

There are many paid diets available that can work very well within the spectrum of low GI eating. One fantastic one for losing weight that doesn’t cost a penny is known as the "slow carb diet". I first learned of this diet via the blog of Tim Feriss, writer of The Four Hour Workweek. The best part of the diet is that it is very simple and not hard to stick to.

Other diet plans follow a similar system. What you find is that paid diets that provide food can be a good forcing function to keep you on track only eating what you should. On the other hand, you can save a lot of money just by having some self restraint and trusting in the diet to work.

My Low Glycemic Index Diet Results

Following the "slow carb diet", I’ve managed to lose 10 lbs in about two weeks. I personally plan on sticking to the diet until I reach my goal of about 108 lbs. It’s going to take months, but I know that the diet works and so I’ll keep posting progress reports to this post as the diet progresses. More to come.

How many people have bought a Bowflex or some kind of ridiculous home gym, only to find that they never and use it at all. What about the total gym or those endless supply of ab machines and so on and so forth? America is by no means in short supply of ways to get in shape, yet we are still quite overweight as a country.

So, in a quest to find a workout system that works, helps build strength and muscle, and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and come across an interesting paradox.  Is the paradox of profit.  You see, when I looked into equipment such as the total gym and other gyms I found that they are thousands of dollars or more.  It is quite unbelievable, in fact, how expensive it is to get a hold of a decent home exercise system.

I don’t have a lot of space in my house.  So doing Tae Bo or something in front of my TV isn’t necessarily optimal either. Since all the options were so expensive, I started looking elsewhere.

The Surprise At Wal-Mart

When I want to Wal-Mart on a whim to look around at their exercise equipment, I know Wal-Mart right? anyhow, I came across a pretty decent deal.  For like $10 or $15, I was able to buy this wonderful little exercise resistance band set that includes three different resistance bands like all work together or separately.  To sweeten the pot even includes a DVD with a 40 minute workout on as well and a poster with workout instructions. All of that only cost $15. I was stunned.

I started thinking.  Obviously, resistance bands shouldn’t be very expensive, because they’re pretty cheap to produce its really just some kind of rubber or plastic that’s pretty stretchy and so forth.  Thus, $15 is a pretty good price.  However, when I started actually trying them.  I found that they actually worked.

They gave a good amount of resistance and were quite versatile, and the amount of exercise that you could do.  For example, you can even attach them to a door and do some shoulder work similar to a seated row or a bench press. You can even do squats. It most certainly can do everything that a total gym can do and will give you just doesn’t work out.  Yet it doesn’t cost nearly as much.

Why Have I Never Heard Of These On TV?

After putting some real thought into this and came to the realization that the reason you never hear about the awesomeness that is resistance and workouts.  Is that, well, frankly.  There’s no profit in it.  Think about it, how much profit can Gold’s gym or anyone else be making for selling a $15 set of resistance bands. Probably maybe, I dunno $10 or so?

Now, compare that to the total gym or the Bowflex products.  Those products tend to retail for $300-$3,000 depending on the model.  Because of that, there is a significant profit margin there.  And of course that means that there is a significant marketing budget for it.

What this means to you is that if you don’t know about resistance bands no one is going to tell you.  There are fantastic deal and you can get an amazing workout, but don’t expect to see them on infomercial anytime soon.

Taking Resistance Bands To The Next Level

Since I bought my resistance bands.  I’ve gotten quite a bit of use out of them, but I found that I needed a new workout to take me to the next level.  What was included was great, but was really just the tip of the iceberg.

I found this new product called Mode Workouts. this book gave me a whole bunch of new ideas and workout programs that really helped me to continue to make progress.

You try to get in shape, but you don’t want to spend a ton of money.  You really owe it to yourself to buy a set of resistance bands and local sporting goods store or Wal-Mart or whatever.  You can even buy them online.

Don’t spend a lot of money, you should be able to get a decent set of them for $30 or less.  Once you get your workout bands try them to use them, try the Mode Workouts system, and shred the fat.

The best part of her resistance been worked out is that you can literally do them anywhere.  You can even bring him to the office or with you on vacation to make sure that no matter where you are, you can still get the work out that you want.  You’d never really do that with Bowflex.

You see, the real key in whether or not Acai Berry is a scam is whether or not it “works as advertised”. That is the real sticky point with the Acai Berry. To understand the advertising of Acai Berry, you need to backtrack a bit to understand how this all got started and perhaps even a bit as to why you are buying a product to lose weight.

The Facts About Acai

Acai is a berry that has significant antioxidant properties of that means it will be helpful to your health and overall well-being.  Apparently, acai and also the used to clean out your colon and get rid of some of the junk inside your system. However, there is a catch. There isn’t much in the way of medical research to prove the “cleansing” properties one way or another.

Also, there is most certainly not a magic weight loss benefit to acai berry and here’s why: Weight loss revolves largely around to specific variables – your metabolism and how many calories you eat everyday. Acai berry doesn’t impact either one of the significant.

The Power of Oprah

Now, the reason why this has become so popular is that it has been mentioned on television shows such as Oprah and Rachael Ray. Now, what wasn’t mentioned on those shows is the weight-loss properties of acai. The reason, is that the benefit of using acai berry has more to do with your overall health and less to do with your weight.

What does that have to do with advertising? Well, if something has been on Oprah, that it must be good right?  Think about all the books and movies and weight-loss products that Oprah has made popular. It’s a well known phenomenon that is Oprah liked your book.  It will be a bestseller.

Advertisers, especially online advertisers, it are well aware of this for and are using it as a way to promote acai berries. But it’s actually quite simple. Take the power of adult revelers were in my way people’s psychological need to lose weight and you have a recipe for incredible sales. That’s exactly what you have here.

So, is it a scam?

Now, the real area where you start to question the nature of this product is not really the product itself, but how it’s being marketed.  Oprah and Rachael Ray have come out trying to get their names disassociated with Acai products because they never really endorse them as a weight loss tool.

So, if you see advertisement with Oprah or Rachael Ray’s name on it, understand that they didn’t necessarily promote the cause of the weight-loss tool. They promoted it as an antioxidant that can make you healthier. While it could make you healthier, and it’s not by any bad for you, but if you believe it will help you lose 20 or 30 pounds.  You’re living in a dream.

Don’t Believe Everything You See…

The other area that is worth considering is how the product is advertised itself. But I bet you’ve seen the ads that look like a blog, whether talking about the benefits of the weight-loss and the dramatic weight loss with this product and give you.  Most of those are not real people. They are ads.

The photos used in many of those advertising sites are Photoshopped, to varying degrees. The practice of digitally altering photos is nothing new, especially the advertising world. However, quite these promotional blogs are being disingenuous to say the least about whether or not.  This product will work for weight-loss and that is why people are buying acai berries online.

So the bottom line is this.  You are close to God, if you use fairly deceptive advertising techniques are such a flaming endorsement by over a Rachael Ray. Also, some of the people promoting these products that create fake websites and fake blogs to make it look like this product really works. If you add all that together, just use your common sense and save yourself.  Is this really going to help me lose weight?

It probably won’t.

How To Lose Weight The Right Way

If you are interested in losing weight, but are many fantastic ways that can work. You just have to understand, that there is no magic pill that you can take to lose 10 or 20 pounds and look like a fitness model. It just doesn’t work that way. What does work is to maximize your exercise routine to insure that you get the maximum fat burn during and after your workout. Also, use a sensible diet to insure that you are minimizing your caloric intake and maximizing your weight loss results.

I recommend the Turbulence Training product  for your workout program. It was put together by Craig Ballantyne of Men’s Health magazine. The dude really knows his stuff. The whole workout plan centers around concepts of interval training, which has been shown to burn fat much quicker than any other form of exercise. Turbulence Training will help you lose fat quicker than any other exercise program I’ve seen.

For a diet, there are many great programs out there. If you are more independent and have a good amount of self-control, I recommend either The Abs Diet or the slow carb diet. I’ve used both of those before and had good success both times.

If you are somewhat short of willpower, you might want to try a more regimented diet program that will provide you with all of your food. Something like Diet To Go, where you can get all of your food sent to you, so the is no guessing involved. You eat only what they provide, and you lose weight. It’s just that simple.

Acai is not a bad thing in itself. The only part that is a scam is the way that a handful of people are promoting it. For what it is, a food with antioxidant properties, it is a healthy option to consider. As a weight loss tool, it just doesn’t stack up.