In my 20 plus years of training men, women and children of all shapes and sizes, I have learned that diets just don’t work. If they did, we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic. The diet industry continually makes promises that they can’t deliver and is fleecing the public at the tune of $40 billion dollars a year. The diet industry doesn’t want to tell you the truth. And why should they with the kind of money they’re taking out of people’s misery? The truth is that weight loss is difficult for many people to achieve. Weight loss is a personal struggle, complicated by an individual’s upbringing, eating habits, metabolism, genetics and psychology. Yo-yo dieting and subjecting the body to strange eating regimes is much more detrimental to one’s physical and mental health than maintaining a steady weight.

I’m not here to sell you the same bill of goods as the diet industry. What I will do is encourage you to develop a healthy lifestyle and feel better about yourself. When you train, go with the attitude that you want to move, breathe and stretch. What’s important is that you focus on wellness. According to Steven Blair, director of research at the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas, Texas, “There is a misdirected obsession with weight and weight loss. The focus is wrong. It’s fitness that is the key.”

Fitness is also a word that has been presented to the public at large. Go to any gym in America, what do you see? Weights and cardio machines, not much more. The only thing you can do is train strength and endurance; that’s not enough for true fitness! And how about the gyms with Yoga classes? Great, add flexibility to the list, if your lucky. You see Yoga teachers are a dime a dozen in America, especially in fitness gyms. Finding a good teacher is like finding a needle in a haystack, and they’re not at your local “Fitness” Center! Truth is many of the “Yoga” instructors in gyms don’t know a great deal and could actually end up hurting you.

Fitness is far more in-depth then most people are looking at. If your not improving in all areas of human performance: strength, endurance, flexibility, coordination, balance, body unity, grace, speed, hand eye coordination, reactions (and the list goes on) you are not completely improving your fitness.

You will notice that with a good well rounded system of exercise, you will start having more strength, more endurance, and more flexibility, and all the other benefits mentioned above. If you want to lose weight, it will take patience, exercise, sensible diet changes, and sacrifice. There is no way around it. Focus on fitness, moving, breathing, stretching, feeling strong and enjoying your martial arts or fitness routine.

Even a single one of these benefits would be motivation enough to learn and practice yoga or could be among the goals you have set for yourself. Taking it from its definition alone, “union,” yoga has a comprehensive outlook of health and wellness. So if you desire to have any or all of the benefits of practicing yoga, you must take it as a whole. Yoga alone won’t be able to effect miracles; it will, however, be the beginning of a radical change in the course of your life.

Regular performance of yoga relaxes you to be able to cope with the challenges of daily living. Meditation, a component of yoga, will  enable you to clear your mind of distractions or disturbing thoughts. This is just what you’ll want at each day’s end, the chance to relax and have a contented sleep and meet the next day renewed. These will enable you to face a new day with new energy, new outlook, new strengths and inspired direction. This deliberate focus can take you to achieve short or long-term objectives, for yourself or your family, like a raise or higher position, a nicer house, your own business.

Additional energy, stimulation and focus will surely hone your physical and mental skills or interests. You can also channel these reinvigorated and focused force towards creating balance in your professional and personal life, so you can enjoy more time with the people dear to you.

The various positions influence your metabolism and would grant you loss of unwanted weight. Besides, the stretching moves have a toning result on your muscles that your wish for a lithe healthy body can soon be yours. You can be sure not much can beat that in raising your morale!

The yoga positions have not just physical effects. Your hormonal levels get stabilized by the action of these moves to stretch your limbs and accelerating your internal organs and glands. Hormonal balance results in mental and spiritual balance for you.

Continuing practice of yoga slowly breaks down any temptation to quit. A growing inspiration, energy and direction mixed with the yoga meditation breathing methods can help you break negative habits like smoking.

Yoga grants you not only physical advantages. These gains to the health of your body can lead you to essential changes in your life. These numerous positive results have encouraged increasing numbers of people to practice yoga.

You must remember, too, that you will only get from yoga as much as you put into it. You would have to allocate a consistent period in your day to practice yoga. Do yoga as often as you can and you could get the incentive for your total transformation.

Nobody ever welcomes the possibility of getting sick. How then to get fit and stay fit? Most everyone began pondering over possible, realistic and effective ways to manage it. There must be efficient and effective ways of stress management and relief.

These issues could be fulfilled or responded to through Yoga.

The concept of Yoga is directed toward these three basic concerns of body movements to methods of breathing including meditation. An Eastern tradition for several  civilizations past, Yoga has gained a foothold in western countries and globally. Yoga practitioners first came from religious associations and expanded to businesses and professionals including a. The world is now understanding how stress affects your efficiency and effectivity at work, how it rocks the serene home and how Yoga can address these concerns.

Yoga views things as one entity. Yoga focuses on oneness – bringing together the body, mind and spirit. This tenet doesn’t only bring stress relief and physical fitness but mental and spiritual transformation as well.

Yoga teaches you how to meditate effectively, you are taught proper breathing, visualization, body stretching movements. Yoga postures stretch your body while sustaining unhurried and paced breathing. Your body becomes equally rested and energized.

Eventually, your body develops a resistance to stress as you develop in your yoga performance. The total combo of breathing techniques, stretching poses, fitness programs, meditation and focused imagery enable you to be stress-free.

Not only stress management and relief, Yoga likewise brings down blood pressure and adjusts heart rate, it diminishes anxiety levels and muscle constriction and raises energy levels and limbering of the body.

In contrast to regular exercise moves, Yoga’s are unhurried and calm, thus even those who are held back by physical illness can perform them. Moreover, Yoga meditation and postures open you up to spiritual development and sharpen your mental consciousness.

Nothing good comes just falling into our laps.  You must allot a regular time for you before you can acquire these gains leading towards the fitness of your entire system. Which will eventually enable you to accept and acknowledge that going into yoga practice was your key to the good life.

It started innocently enough. At the age of 38 my spouse has reached the age where any extra morsel magically metamorphoses into ye olde spare tyre. For some reason I assumed he wouldn’t be sensitive about a little good natured joshing in regards to ‘more of him to love’ – as opposed to his help mate, who couldn’t bear to admit that she was starting to buy her pantyhose one size larger and took the petite size from the grocer’s shelf only when he was looking. Surprisingly, he was just as vulnerable to my mention of his ‘love handles’ – the difference that he didn’t burst into tears.

He decided that changing our eating habits and starting an exercise program was what we needed. I didn’t see any point in changing our dietary patterns. After all, we ate plenty of fish and skinless chicken (well, I ate the skin). We steamed our vegetables and ate butter substitute on our potatoes. What’s there to change? And as for physical exertion – wasn’t my desk job bad enough?

My idea of working out was to wear chic, comfy elasticized sweat gear and gossip with my girl friends in the darkened corner of an aerobics class. My husband thought differently.

Right away he started buying fresh vegetables, salads and fruit for his lunches. He stopped drinking any form of caffeine, boasting, ‘I drink nothing but water and wine,’ the ratio of water far outweighing the wine. He drinks a minimum of 120 ounces of water compared to his 4 ounces of wine with dinner. Dinner didn’t change too drastically. We still grilled our fish and fowl and treated our vegetables with Lilliputian amounts of boiling water.

No More Pizza for Breakfast

Breakfast underwent major surgery… gone are the days of having cold pizza and soda or a processed, packaged burrito for breakfast. If I even look at something that contains mayonnaise I’m subject to a punishment worse than death – espousal guilt. Gads. You don’t even want to know the penalty for sodium.

Our body boot camp began just as swiftly as the sustenance rations. We started lifting weights three nights a week. My appendages ached so badly the first week, I couldn’t believe that someone I loved was asking me to willingly inflict pain on my cute, rather Rubensesque body. This was his idea of fun?

They say you don’t really know people until you’ve lived with them. Ha. You really discover their dark, sinister side when you work out with them. The gnashing of teeth, the Eddie Murphy language, the growls… this just during the consumption of the protein drinks and vitamins. But the clanging of weights and machinery really does something for one’s relationship – drowns out the nagging ‘Cmon, honey… one more set… good for the old rump roast. Yeah, maybe you should cut back on the brewskies and watch football from an exercise bike. Carb out, drop the fatty foods and empty calories…’ Ho hum, I can ignore those muffled suggestions.

At first I thought I was safe. Big deal, go to the gym with him a few nights a week. Humor him. Eat the healthy breakfast and hearty supper. I still had anywhere from 9 – 10 hours by myself during the day to do whatever my body dictated. I didn’t have to sacrifice the chill fries and cold, frosty (lite) beer at lunch, did I?

The Eye of the Beholder

Well, my viewpoint began to change when I first saw his body change. About three months into this fitness fixation I noticed my husband’s physique – for as long as I could remember he had a body, a frame, something to house his bones and intestines. Now, standing before me was a man with a physique, a bod. My spouse was a hunk. I looked in the mirror and saw a ruddy version of that legendary Doughboy. Uh-oh.

My beefcake bridegroom could not understand my frustration – if I was eating exactly the way he was and doing the same amount of exercise, why wasn’t I transforming also? Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we slip chocolate chip cookies up our sleeve. You’d be amazed at what you can consume unconsciously while developing your ‘secretarial spread’. My office was a nutritionist’s nightmare. A breeding ground for adipose tissue.

In the back of my mind I was determined not to lose my honey bunny puddy bear to some hard bodies muscle queen. I had conjured up all kinds of wild hallucinations that had him running off with some tall, scrawny, blond, pop tart aerobics instructor while I turned into a mere bulbous, globular amoeba in his life.

With that vision in my head the locomotion of junk food and trash that I was devouring came to a screeching halt. I learned to like fruit and vegetables. I started drinking so much water that I stopped retaining the stuff – always a big problem in the past. My ample, mean, fighting machine was going to get clean. During the first week concentrating on my intake of complex carbs (and increasing my H2O) I noticed that I didn’t want to snack as much as before. Then I could focus more sharply on eliminating the unnecessary lard, tallow and suet from my diet (ignoring the internal debate that chocolate must somehow be a necessary fat). I discovered healthy alternatives: olive oil, avocados, etc. This was going to be my fun. My husband and I became culinary wizards with our new found foods.

The release of athletic endorphins came much slower. I just couldn’t get hyped about this gym business. I hated it in high school and I was sure I’d hate it as a grown woman (especially since I’d grown by 10 years and 15 pounds). Surely I would lose all dignity and grace by becoming a sweaty, red faced Harpy in front of my husband.

On the contrary, I’ve begun to smile at the pain and tolerate the sweat, and he finds it all quite delightful. I’m starting to enjoy his compliments about my ‘definition and symmetry’ and appreciate it when his concerned about my fiber intake. I’m grateful for his vocal support during my forced reps and ungodly burns.

I’ve lost 6 pounds in five weeks and I can fit into my tight jeans again. I can hardly wait until our vacation. What dashing figures we’ll cut on the beach or at our friends’ pool parties. I guess there’s something to be said for this ‘Togetherness Training’. It has enhanced our bodies and brought a whole new dimension of sharing and caring into our relationship. W have more energy, we feel stronger and more balanced. We are appreciative of our own and each other’s bodies. I find that I’m beginning to look forward to our workouts and the time together when we discuss and plan our meals. This is fun.

They used to tell me. ‘You’ll have to go through hell before you get to heaven’. Well, I’m here to tell you, it isn’t such a bad trip.

Look, what you’ve been DOING now hasn’t been working and what you ARE now is the results of bad habits.  How bad do you want to change your life with women?  As a “shy” Asian guy you must accept the fact that you need to make a change.   And making change can be..let me take it back..it will be one of the most difficult periods you will ever go through.  The learning curve can take anywhere between 6 months to 2 years and that’s practicing 5 days a week.  It’s like detox.  There will be good days and absolutely awful days.  But if you have that desire..you will succeed.

2.  Destroy Negative thoughts

As in everything else in life, negative thoughts are a no no.  Asian men seem harbor a lot of negativity towards women…I did. 

“She’s racist” – Who cares?  It does exist and it will always exist.  This negative thought is blown way out of proportion.  There are a lot of websites out there protesting against racism on Asians.  And I would bet that any guys running those sites are pathetic with women.

“Can’t I just be myself?” – When did being yourself become negative?  It becomes negative if you’re not getting anywhere with women.  You are yourself from your experiences from the past.  Your personality has been forged through the years and your social skills have been learned maybe through movies, television, etc.  And it’s all wrong.  Now it’s the time to unlearn the bad and learn not what’s good, but how to be a man again.

“I’m short” – This is a common mental barrier among Asian men.  Are women attracted to things like height and fame?  You bet.  But what you need to understand is that inner confidence and game rules all.  Not because it will get you more women, but it transform your train of thought and you won’t worry about any negative thoughts.  You get it?

3.  Get in touch with your Alpha

Trying to impress women with your intelligence will get you nowhere.  Impressing women with your animal instincts is better.  It’s all about escalation buddy.  Making it known that you are a sexual being and getting out of the “friend zone”.  It’s better to go bold then to be passive. No doubt.  Taking the next and going for the kiss is a rite of passage that every man must go through.  Like I said.  The process is not easy.

4.  Learn and Get Out and Practice

Whether you’re learning from a book or a boot camp I want to emphasize to learn from actual Asian seduction coaches.  They have been through your shoes and can give you the best support.  In other words, they know you’re pain.  But going out in field and practicing is what separates the boys from men.  If you go out everyday expect at least 6 months of hard work…minimum.  But I’m with you brother, I’ve been through hell and back and I’ve seen the light and want to see you there.