According to World Health Organization specifications, I’ve qualified as both “Overweight” and “Underweight” at different points in my life. Both situations dramatically changed how I looked. This was especially noticeable by my face.

When I really got the hang of losing weight and could do so without much effort, I started noticing the aesthetic downsides of having very low body fat. I couldn’t find any decent comparisons of facial appearance versus body fat percentage, so I decided to swallow my pride and share my experiences on the subject. Here goes, pictures and all.

A twig of a human nowadays, I decided to beef up quickly, a process known to bodybuilders as “bulking.” I challenged myself to put on 10lbs of muscle in less than three months. I derisively called this challenge “Pack on the Sexy.” Watch the intro video here. These are the results, warts and all.

Getting in shape can be a herculean task. Trying to decipher the terminology of fitness is a big part of what makes it so daunting. BMI, BF%, creatine, l-glutamine, l-argine… what do those things even mean? In this article I will tackle the two most often metrics used to gauge fitness: body mass index (BMI), and body fat percentage (BF%). In simple terms, you’ll discover what they mean, and find out why understanding them is so critical to success.

If I’ve learnt one single lesson about fitness it’s that there’s no one single lesson. Getting in shape is about doing a multitude of tiny things that amount to a significant lifestyle change. How many tiny things? Pick a number. I’ll guess 10,000 or so.

Trying to single out the most important of those 10,000 things is a fool’s errand. So I will simply focus on one of my favourites: making fitness addictive. In my experience, doing so has had a significantly positive impact on my exercise routines and made all the other tiny changes a little bit easier.

I’ve had a lot of luck losing weight with running. Many people have. So when people ask my advice on getting fit, naturally I tell them to run. This isn’t always a perfect suggestion. What is good for me might not be good for someone else. So in this article I will be comparing some of the more popular and effective exercises. While you never need to restrict yourself to one exercise it often makes sense to specialize. Each activity is different with its own pros and cons, so you can decide which one is right for you.

I tried every trick in the book to improve my posture. None worked. So I asked my doctor why I’ve had such a hard time straightening up.

“Because you’re lazy”, he answered matter-of-factly.

I was expecting a more textbook response. Nevertheless, he was right. If getting good posture was easy, everyone would do it. The truth is it requires hard work and a significant, long-term change in your physiology, surroundings, and mentality. When you’ve let your posture go, correcting it isn’t a weekend project. However, it is a relatively straightforward process if you dedicate yourself and take a few simple steps.

If you’re interested in putting on a bit of muscle, accept this fact before you do anything else: Building muscle is hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it. Part of what makes it so exceptionally difficult is that it requires knowledge as well as training. Working out is straightforward. Knowing which exercises to use, nutrients and supplements to take, and what order to do so is the complex part. As a result, when you ask three bodybuilders for advice you’ll get five different opinions. Distilling these opinions to their proven base truths, this article shows how to work smart, so you can focus on working hard. Yes, sorry, you need to do both.

Many people who are eager to get into shape find themselves saying, “If I could only look like [so and so], then I’d be happy.” If this is you, hold your horses! When considering the shape you want to get into, you need to take a few crucial facts into consideration before getting underway. If you don’t, you may waste time, become discouraged, or worst of all, wind up looking funny.

Every overweight person looking to get in shape should get one. Every serious athlete already has one. They give you insight you couldn’t find anywhere else, or substitute with anything else. In my own experience of loosing around 50 pounds I couldn’t think of anything that helped more. Five years ago they were impossible to get in my hometown and I had to order one from abroad. They’ve been around a while but have only really entered retail stores recently. What is this important tool? Well, what it is isn’t important, what it does is.

I’m a unique type of vegetarian; while I haven’t eaten meat in over a year, I would have little moral dilemma doing so. In the olden days little could please me more than a beer and a big steak. I unwaveringly made the switch and don’t plan on turning back mainly for selfish reasons. Here’s why.