Fergie Shares Celebrity Weight Loss Regimen Shoulders: Work the front and back of the shoulder, using 1.5-kg weights. Front raises for 2 minutes then side raises for 2 minutes, with as many reps as she can fit in. The key to this celebrity weight loss plan is to do a lot of them. Biceps: Regular bicep curls using rubber bands. Stand with your feet apart, holding the handles so you do front curl with your arms very close to your chest. Do the right arm, then left, then both together - 20-25 on each. Seen here on her almost-daily jog, Fergie is a workout champ! Triceps: We lift a long bar on the bench as she lays back her back, for 20-25 reps. Then the fiancee of Josh Duhamel does as many tight push-ups as she can. It might be one, four or sometimes up to 25. Legs/butt: Fergie’s legs are so naturally toned, she can skimp on this (lucky), but she does do do squats - around 15-20, in three sets. Yoga: Fergie does yoga on the ground to maintain her extreme flexibility. She does the “chair” pose and holds it for up to three minutes. Then the “warrior” one and two position for up to 2.5 minutes. Abs: Start with basic crunches, then start adding things each time. At a certain point, she lifts her legs to a 90-degree angle, then straight out in front, with shoulder blades off the ground. About 20 in each.Cool down: As with all celebrity workouts, it’s important to stretch out afterwards. Whatever muscles she just worked out, Fergie stretches them out for at least 3 minutes while she relaxes and gets her breathing down.

Celebrity Weight Loss Success Stories: Kristen Johnston

I’m a long way from my teen years, but I can still remember the things I used to think when I looked in the mirror: "I’m too fat," "I'm too tall," and "why is my butt so big?" I spent hours cataloging my flaws and, if I missed any, my older sister was kind enough to help me out. What I remember most is wanting to fit in. And from talking to some of my teen clients and reading some of the comments1 from other teens on this site, that hasn't changed much since I was in school. What also hasn't changed is the idea that weight and appearance play a role in being accepted. So, what do you do if you don't have the ‘ideal’ body? What do you do if you're overweight, underweight, or just want to get rid of a little excess fat? Is it possible to change your body? Things that Affect Your Weight You can change your body, but how much depends on a number of things--some you can control and some you can't:

• Puberty Though you may not realize it, puberty can have a major affect on your weight and the shape of your body. Both girls and boys can expect to gain weight as well as height during puberty. Hormones released during this time often cause boys to gain muscle and girls to experience an increase in body fat. These changes are normal but may make you feel like you're overweight, even if you're not.
• Genes One question I hear a lot is, "Why don't I look like my friends?" One reason is your genes. You inherit a number of things from your parents such as where you store excess fat on your body, how tall you are, and the shape of your body (such as being pear-shaped or apple-shaped). In fact, if your parents are overweight, that increases the risk that you'll be overweight as well.
• What you eat While puberty and genetics are things you can't control, what you eat is another story. Eating french fries, fast food, sodas, chips, and sweets on a regular basis and avoiding fruits and vegetables like the plague can add excess calories without much nutrition.
• Exercise One reason weight can be such a problem for everyone from teens to adults is all the sitting around we’re doing. Inactivity has a major affect on your waistline and your health. In fact, watching TV is the most common activity that can lead to weight gain (if you don't exercise or eat right) and is something teens usually do more and more as they get older.

Do You Really Need to Lose Weight?

This may seem like a no-brainer, but not everyone needs to lose weight. Too often, teens focus on getting their weight down to unhealthy levels in order to get that 'ideal' body--something that can lead to yo-yo dieting5 or even eating disorders6.

It’s easy to have a distorted view of what your body should look like, especially if your models tend to be, well, models, celebrities, or other people who are often known more for how they look than what they do. So it's important to understand what a healthy weight range is and, even more important, that your scale weight doesn't always tell the whole story. A scale weighs it all--your bones, fat, muscles, internal organs, what you ate or drank earlier...everything. It doesn't accurately tell you what you've gained or lost, so using a scale as your only method of tracking progress7 isn't always the best idea.

Before you decide to go on a diet or weight loss program, take some time to figure out if you’re really overweight or if you have a distorted body image. Use the following resources to figure out what a healthy weight really is:

• Teen Quiz – Am I Fat?
• What is a Healthy Body?
• BMI Calculator
• Body Image and Self Esteem

3. The Type of Workouts you Do: While any exercise is good for the body, some activities do burn more calories than others. Weight-bearing activities1 like running, aerobics or walking, burn more calories because gravity requires your body to work harder. When doing non-weight-bearing exercises like cycling or swimming, there isn’t as much gravitational stress on the muscles, which means fewer calories expended. What you can do: Non-weight-bearing activities do have advantages. They’re less stressful on the joints and you can often do them longer, which could make up the difference in calories burned with weight-bearing activities. However, cross-training with impact activities, if you’re able to do that, will not only work your body in different ways, it also helps build stronger bones and connective tissue. 4. Mechanical Efficiency: You probably never thought that being good at an activity would mean burning fewer calories, but that’s exactly what happens when you exercise consistently. Think about the first time you tried a treadmill or some other cardio machine. You probably felt awkward, holding onto the rails and worrying you might fall off. Over time, the movement became so natural, you didn’t have to think about it anymore. As your body became more efficient, you stopped wasting energy on unnecessary movements, which leads to fewer calories burned. What you can do: Mechanical efficiency is actually a good thing. By cutting down on awkward movements, your body works more efficiently, which helps protect you from injury. 5. Exercise Compensation: Something else we don’t often consider is how exercise affects our activity2 for the rest of the day. If you do a tough workout and then take a nap or skip an afternoon walk, something you wouldn’t normally do, you’re burning fewer calories. Exercise can also increase your appetite, causing you to eat more calories which can also sabotage your weight loss goals. What you can do: If you start an exercise program, keep a food and activity journal to get an idea of a normal day for you. Resting more or eating more are things we often do without being aware of it post-exercise. Keeping a simple log of your activities will help you make sure you’re getting the same amount of activity, even with your workouts. If you're exhausted after every workout, that may be a sign you’re overdoing it. You want to keep a little gas in the tank after most of your workouts. 6. Body Mass: Another irony with weight loss is that, the heavier you are, the more calories you’ll burn with exercise. For example, a 200-lb pound person can burn about 400 calories during 30 minutes of stairclimbing, while a 125-lb person burns about 250 calories doing the same thing. As you lose weight, your body expends less energy to move your body around, which means you’ll lose weight more slowly. This is one reason why losing those last few pounds3 can be so difficult. What you can do: First, remember that losing weight is a good thing, even if it means the weight loss slows down over time. Second, as you lose weight, you may need to recalculate4 how many calories you need and how many calories you’re burning. Adjusting the numbers as you go can help you stay on track with your weight loss and avoid plateaus. 7. Genetics and Gender: While we control many of the factors involved with weight loss, there are some things we really can blame on our parents: Genes and gender. Our genes often determine resting metabolic rate, muscle fiber types and genetic responses to different foods, all of which can affect our ability to burn calories and lose weight. Your body type5 does play a role in your ability to lose weight, as does your lifestyle. Gender can also affect weight loss. Women usually have more body fat than men and their bodies respond differently to exercise, which can change the rate of weight loss. What you can do: Recognize that there may be genetic factors that affect how quickly you lose weight. While you might inherit certain genes from your parents, your eating and exercise habits can make a difference. The only way to know what your body is really capable of is to try. Following a complete exercise program6 and watching your calories is the best way to find out what your body can really do. It can be frustrating when you start exercising and don't see the results you're expecting. You may start wondering: "What am I doing wrong?" Knowing there are other factors involved can help you be more realistic and, perhaps, encourage changes to your workouts to get more out of your program. If you're distracted and discouraged by calculations that don't seem to add up, remember that they're only numbers. They don't reflect the tangible results you may be experiencing such as feeling better, having more energy or simply having a better day-to-day life.

When it comes to losing weight, most of us follow a simple formula: burning more calories + eating fewer calories = weight loss. Exercise is one way we try to burn more calories, so we hit the gym or pick up a pair of weights thinking we’ll eventually see the number on the scale inch its way down. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way, something that often frustrates new exercisers. If you’re doing all this exercise, you should be losing weight, right? The truth is, exercise is a complicated business and there are a number of things that can affect how many calories you burn. Knowing what those are will help you set realistic goals and get the most out of your workouts. How Many Calories Are You Really Burning with Exercise? If you’re trying to lose weight with exercise, you may have used an activity calculator to determine how many calories you’re burning. For example, if you’re 165 lbs and you go jogging for 30 minutes, this calculator 1shows you’ve burned about 371 calories. Not bad for a 30-minute workout, you might think, but are you getting the whole story? Not exactly. There are a few other things to consider when it comes to exercise and weight loss. 1. Net Calories vs. Gross Calories: Most calculators use activity, duration of your workout and your weight to come up with an estimate of calories burned, or what is known as gross calories burned. What we forget to factor in are the calories we would’ve burned if we weren’t exercising, also known as the net calories burned. If you jogged during a time you normally watch TV, you’re still burning more calories than you were, but you need to subtract the calories you would’ve burned while watching TV in order to get a more accurate calculation. It may seem like a small difference, after all you may burn more than 300 calories jogging and only about 40 calories watching TV. This difference becomes important, however, when you’re trying to predict weight loss. Those 40 calories, if unaccounted for, can add up to fewer pounds lost. What you can do: If you’re tracking calories burned with exercise, you’ll get a more accurate number by subtracting the calories you would’ve burned if you weren't working out. For example, if you burned 200 calories while walking for 20 minutes and would've burned 50 calories if you sat at the computer during that time, your net calories burned would be 150. You can calculate your calories with this activity calculator2. 2. Exercise Intensity: You probably know that taking a leisurely stroll won't burn as many calories as, say, running a mile as fast as you can. How hard you work plays a role in how many calories you’re burning. Some calculators, especially those on cardio machines like treadmills and elliptical trainers, do take into account things like pace, resistance and incline. We also know the relative intensity of a number of activities3, but using this information to estimate how much weight you’ll lose is tough. For example, if you were to burn 2,000 calories a week with a walking program, you might expect to lose about 6 pounds of fat after 10 weeks of exercise. The problem is, this assumes you burned exactly 2,000 calories each week and that 6 pounds of fat would generate exactly 6 pounds of body weight loss, which isn’t always the case. What you can do: The formulas we use to calculate exercise intensity and calories burned aren't 100% accurate. Rather than rely solely on those numbers, learn how to monitor your intensity4 using the talk test5, perceived exertion6 and/or target heart rate7. You'll find your own limits while keeping track of how hard you’re working. You can get the most out of your workouts by:

• Varying your intensity: The harder you work, the more calories you burn, but if all your workouts are high intensity, you run the risk of overtraining and injury. By incorporating a variety8 of intensity levels, you’ll stimulate different energy systems while giving your body a break from too much high-intensity exercise. Interval training9 is a great option for working harder while still getting some rest time.
• Using a heart rate monitor10: A heart rate monitor is a great tool for getting an accurate view of your heart rate throughout your workout while keeping you on pace. Many monitors also show calories burned during your workout and you can use that number to compare different workouts and different intensity levels.

Next Page: More about exercise and weight loss

Part V Ben: How much? Mike: It's very close to zero. The only money I've spent is getting my blood tested to prove my own health statistics. I spend money on acupuncture therapy, massage therapy and visiting naturopaths, but that's just maintenance. I don't go in there and say, "Gee doc, I can't get out of bed. I'm sleeping 16 hours a day, what's wrong with me? I'm hyperventilating. I'm feeling I'm going to pass out." I don't go into my doctors with complaints. I go in and say, "I'm in perfect health. Can you help me be healthier, or is there anything else I can do to have better nervous system function or better stamina?" I don't spend any money on treating disease because I spend my money on healthy foods, and thus I don't have disease. Ben: And thus you save money. Mike: Exactly. Ben: I've noticed that the new USDA food pyramid guide has an emphasis on personalization. Their pyramid ostensibly works differently for each person. Now, the Honest Food Guide doesn't seem to have anything like that. It's more like the old food pyramid in that it looks like it should apply to everyone. Why would the USDA emphasize personalizing your food consumption? Mike: They claim it's personalized, but no matter what you chose, it still says three cups of milk a day. So it's the illusion of being personalized. It is true that different people need different quantities of food. You know, a 120-pound female needs a lot less food than a 200-pound male. This is common sense. I don't think that we need someone to have to log into a website and put in their weight and age and sex to understand this point. People know that. What people need to know is something that applies to all human beings, and that is which foods are healthy and which foods are unhealthy. People can figure out portions for themselves if they are eating healthy foods. It's very hard to become overweight consuming the foods I list on the health side. You can pig out on just about everything I list over here -- berries, vegetables and even nuts, although that's something I wouldn't consume pounds of a day. You can eat large, large quantities of these foods, and my guess is, if you're overweight, you'll probably lose weight, even consuming as much as you can handle. The challenge is not trying to individualize it; the challenge is speaking the truth about foods. I think that we need a guide that is simple enough that people can hand it to their friends, and say, "Here's the food guide I'm using. You can check it out, too." People shouldn't have to go online and log in to get some dietary advice. The other thing that the USDA has forgotten is that some of the people who need food information and nutritional information the most in this country are low-income people. Low-income people aren't sitting around with a couple of PCs in their house just ready to log on so they can find out they should drink three cups of milk a day. That's not the reality. Ben: They can listen to traditional media to find that out. Mike: Sure, yeah. They can find plenty of milk ads on TV and radio. I think the challenge is not personalizing but rather giving people a fundamental basis of nutrition from which to personalize it on their own. As human beings, we are 99.9 percent identical genetically. The biochemical laws that govern the way we use foods are nearly identical. I know there is some variation. Some people handle carbohydrates better than others. Some people have a higher metabolism than others. There's some variation, but we are 99.9 percent the same. In fact, we are probably more than 99 percent the same as other primates, like monkeys and apes too. The foods that I present on this guide, on the health side, are healthy for all primates. The foods that are disease-causing will cause disease for all primates. If you feed this stuff on the disease side to a monkey, you will kill the monkey. You will give the monkey diseases, and it's the same diseases we see today -- diabetes, cancer, heart disease. It would be animal cruelty, but human parents feed these same foods to their children, and it's not cruelty; it's popular culture. It's the American way. So my chart is based on the fundamental laws of biochemistry in human beings, and that's as personalized as we need to be. Make sense? Ben: It makes sense. The only other question I had was this: Earlier you said that we can figure out portion size ourselves and that that's usually not an issue, but I believe the old and the new food guide pyramids have the portions laid out for you, at least . Does theHonest Food Guide have portion sizes? Mike: No, but I want to get back to the portion sizes that you mention because some people will say, "I don't believe that people can control their own portions." The issue is what they're eating, because if you're eating processed foods then it's true: You can't "control your own portions." Processed foods give you too many calories in too small a physical factor for a person to effectively control portions. When you eat foods from nature, portion control is automatic. You know why? Because people's stomachs will physically fill up before they can get too many calories. When your stomach gets physically full, there are signals that go to your endocrine system that say, "Stop eating." Again, you can eat, for example, 200 calories worth of grapes -- that's probably I'm guessing about a cup and a half of grapes, maybe two cups -- and physically, that's a pretty large mass but it's only 200 calories. You might say the same amount of mass could be found in one slice of pizza, but that one slice of pizza might have 800 calories. The person feels the same level of fullness but they've consumed four times as many calories because it's processed food, manufactured food. What I'm saying is that if you eat natural foods on the healthy side of this guide, then you automatically get full before you make yourself obese. That's one of the big secrets of weight loss, is to eat foods that have a lot of water in them. Ben: And all these foods come with other nutritional benefits on the side, as well as being too filling to make you obese. Mike: Absolutely. You know, it's funny; people out there are getting gastric bypass surgery, or bariatric surgery as it's sometimes called, in huge numbers. This is a procedure that can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000. I call it a lobotomy of your digestive tract because they literally rip out a portion of your stomach and sort of rework your plumbing down there. You can save yourself all that money and all that scar tissues by consuming foods on the healthy side of my chart, because these foods will give you the effect of having a small stomach because you'll physically fill up before you have too many calories. It's food choice that's the problem, not that people's stomachs are too big. It is so ridiculous that modern medicine wants to go in and surgically mess with everything. Gee, does your arm hurt? Cut it off. Does your gallbladder have some pain? Take it out. Got a migraine headache? They're doing this now, they are surgically removing muscles from your head. Ben: And your face. Mike: Because your muscles are hurting. Come on. Ben: That way you don't have to eat responsibly or make your own decisions as to what you eat. Mike: I know. I was saying, in a previous report, that if you're a man and your prostate hurts, they just take it out. I read an article on women, especially women from the U.K., and 31 percent said they would have both breasts surgically removed if they had a history of breast cancer in their family. Ben: Right. I read that too. Mike: Healthy organs. The person doesn't even have breast cancer yet. Ben: And may never. Mike: They're going to do a double mastectomy because they might get breast cancer someday. Are you serious? And 31 percent of the women said yes. Ben: Yet the same people won't eat healthier foods, and they'll probably get disease from the unhealthy ones. Mike: I tell you what. There's some insanity out there, and part of the insanity is the USDA's food guide pyramid. It doesn't give people the information they need, and I believe this Honest Food Guide chart is one of the few that actually does. There's another one out there that I know of that's pretty good; I think it's called the Healing Food Guide. It's good as well. I encourage people to check out this information from several different sources. You'll find that you keep hearing the same truths over and over again. You should avoid certain foods and you should consume certain foods if you want to be healthy. You'll hear that there's a recipe for health and there's a recipe for disease. No matter what you think you're doing, you are following some recipe today, every time you go to the grocery store and every time you order food from a restaurant. Every time you make a meal, you are following a recipe. That recipe will produce a result. The result is based on the recipe. The result can be disease or health or anywhere in between, but you, as an individual, have to decide what results you want and then modify your recipe to match those results. Ben: Well, that clears up all the questions I had about the Honest Food Guide. It seems very clear and simple to use. Mike: Thank you Ben. I appreciate your questions and I enjoyed the discussion, and I know we got off track a few times. It is a simple thing to look at and understand. We went through, I believe, 26 revisions on this to make it this simple. It certainly didn't start out this way, but the USDA spent $2.5 millions dollars, and we did this for $0, and ours actually makes sense. Imagine that. Ben: And how much did you get paid for it? Mike: I got paid another $0. Anyway, again, it's HonestFoodGuide.org. That's where you can download it or print it. You can copy it. You can give it away. You just can't sell it. Please don't. Give it away -- it's much better. Ben: And you don't have to log in to anything to get it? Mike: No. You don't have to give me your email address or anything. Just go to the website, and download it. It's yours to enjoy, so learn from it. Put it on your refrigerator, or print it out and take it shopping with you. Hopefully this will help people make some good healthy choices about food.