Viktoria Telek is a successful commercial real estate broker in Florida who has been named to the “Top 30 Under 30″ list by Realtor Magazine. Despite her intense career, Viktoria recently won Shape Magazine’s “Hot Body” contest where she beat out thousands of applicants and was featured in the September 2010 issue with a full page spread. So how does she maintain a fitness model body with such a busy career? Check out my interview with her below to learn more!

1. Hey Viktoria, thanks so much for your willingness to share your insights into staying in shape with a busy professional lifestyle. So for starters, have you always been in such great shape? Was there a time in your life where you didn’t exactly have a fitness model body?

Continue Reading Q&A with Viktoria Telek: Real Estate Pro & Fitness Inspiration

I have an interview below with my friend David Aaron (picture to the right) who is a young urban professional with an exceptional physique.

I met David a few years ago when we were both reverse commuting out to Greenwich, CT from NYC to our investment jobs. David literally looked like a professional athlete despite working very long hours (14-15 hour days, 5 days a week).

David is now working in business development for a large media company, but his workouts are still just as intense and his physique is just as exceptional.

In this information packed interview, David shares:

• How he stays motivated to go to the gym with a busy schedule
• His 2 favorite strength training exercises
• How he structures his strength training routine
• An awesome interval training cardio routine he uses
• His “Engine Check” to make sure his body is healthy
• How he never deprives himself of his favorite foods, but still eats well

Continue Reading White Collar Job, Professional Athlete Body

When it comes to losing fat without losing muscle to get that lean, healthy body you want, eating less calories then you burn while controlling insulin levels is critical. So how can you eat less calories than you burn without resorting to calorie counting? How do you know what foods spike insulin levels? What about making sure you’re eating enough protein?

While I’ve pointed out the benefits of the Harvard Healthy Eating Pyramid: Best Nutrition Guide You Don’t Know About, which I think is a solid framework for the general public, I wanted to take things a step further for you more advanced fitness devotees by introducing you to a conceptual framework I personally use and many natural bodybuilders, fitness models, and some sports nutritionists use as well, but it’s not mainstream at all.

This conceptual framework is based on 5 food groups, but they are different from the five food groups you probably know.

The Old Five Food Groups: USDA MyPyramid

The traditional food pyramid separates out food groups based on their basic properties:

1) Grains

Any food made from wheat, rice, oats, cornmeal, barley or another cereal grain is a grain product. Grains are divided into 2 subgroups, whole grains and refined grains. Whole grains contain the entire grain kernel — the bran, germ, and endosperm whereas refined grains have been milled, a process that removes the bran and germ.

Continue Reading The (New) 5 Food Groups to Get Lean & Healthy?

Back in the day when I was 30lbs heavier, I had NO concept of the number of calories in foods I ate. In fact, I didn’t even know that chicken cutlets and chicken wings are deep fried. Over time, however, I started to gain a general understanding of the calories in many different foods, which helped me become “calorie aware”. I think improving your calorie awareness can make a big difference to help you achieve better health and a leaner body.

I created this Calorie IQ Test to (1) help improve your calorie awareness and (2) raise calorie awareness around the world (maybe that’s a bit of an ambitious goal).

If you get 6 or more of the following 10 questions correct, then you pass the Calorie IQ test. Let’s see how you do!

1. Olive Oil 1 Tbsp.	2. Bacon 4oz. (little bigger than a blackberry)	3. Turkey 4oz., skinless breast
a) 25 b) 75 c) 120 d) 200	a) 200 b) 325 c) 450 d) 600	a) 160 b) 250 c) 400 d) 550 Continue Reading Raising Calorie Awareness: Calorie IQ Test!

When I worked as an investment analyst in New York City, I maintained a healthy routine during the week. My daily eating routine looked something like this:

• At 6:30am as I skimmed the Wall Street Journal and checked emails on my Blackberry in a cab, I would call in my egg white omelet breakfast to the deli across the street from my office.

• I ate lunch at my desk because I had to keep an eye on my stock screens. While I had several restaurants and meals to choose from, I would always get a lean meat, some veggies, and a starch. Pretty simple.

• As long as I didn’t have a dinner with clients, or coworkers, I ordered in from the same few restaurants at night, keeping the food wholesome and my portions under control.

Continue Reading Avoiding the Weekend Spiral: Eat Healthy on Weekends

A lot of people have been asking me about my fitness philosophy to help get a leaner, healthier body. So I created a video to answer that question. I also wanted to create some context for all the exercise and nutrition videos that I will be adding in the future.

If you blend these 3 elements I discuss into your life, I really do believe you can reach your potential!

The one thing I would like to add to this video is that being lean is really a lifestyle. Not every lean person has the same exact lifestyle, but the vast majority of people who are lean in my opinion infuse these 3 elements into their lives.

I hope you enjoyed this video and I encourage you to share it with friends! Also, am I missing anything? What would you add?

In the first two parts of this food journal article series, I described the 7 Reasons Why You Should Keep a Food Journal and my favorite Free Online Calorie Tracker and App to make keeping a food journal easier. In this last part of the series, I have a Free Printable Food Journal for those of you who expressed you would prefer keeping a written journal.

I wasn’t planning on creating this food journal template myself, but instead linking to a printable food journal that I could find on the internet. It turns out, they were all either missing important parts, or simply inadequate! I want you to have the best information, so I created a food journal report below:

Continue Reading Part 3: Free Printable Food Journal Template

In the first part of this food journal article series, I described the 7 Reasons Why You Should Keep a Food Journal, even for only a couple days. In Part 2, I want to describe the types of metrics you should consider tracking, along with the best online calorie trackers and Smartphone apps to make the process of keeping a food journal much easier.

What Should You Track?

There are a bunch of different metrics you may consider tracking in your food journal, so I included the big one’s below. These metrics may sound complicated, but in just a second you’ll learn of software that make these calculations a snap:

Continue Reading Part 2: Best Free Online Calorie Tracker and App

While I’m really passionate about eating healthy, my eating habits weren’t always great. In fact, they were absolutely terrible for most of my life. For the longest time I really didn’t understand the quality of the foods I was putting in my body, how they effected me, and why sometimes I would go on massive eating binges.

My eating habits soon changed the one week I kept a food journal using an online tracker and tracked my calories for every meal, every snack, and recorded any food that entered my body. It was an eye opening experience for me and if you have not tracked your calories, or kept a food journal before, it can be a very positive experience for you as well.

This food journal series will teach you the basics so you can get the most out tracking your eating habits. To start, here are 7 compelling reasons why you should try to keep a journal, even for only a couple days:

1) Learn how to control your calories

Continue Reading Part 1: 7 Reasons to Keep a Food Journal

As you’ve learned from my Starvation Mode article, skipping meals, or not eating enough food can drop your metabolism and sabotage your efforts to get lean. So what happens if instead of skipping meals, you eat more frequently? This post will delve into the benefits of frequent eating that you can apply to your life.

But before mentioning some of these benefits, I want to share with you an article I came across about how Sumo wrestlers eat to pack on so much weight. The average Japanese man is only around 145 pounds, yet amazingly, sumo wrestlers can reach 500+ pounds! So how do they eat to get so huge? Is it possible that you have similar eating habits as a sumo wrestler?

It turns out sumo wrestlers skip breakfast, then eat 1, or 2 enormous meals at 11am, then 6pm. If they eat two meals, they usually take a 4 hour nap right after the 11am meal to drop their metabolism. I’m taking a wild guess that you probably don’t want to look like a sumo wrestler (even though sumo wrestlers are venerated for their impressive stature in Japan).

Continue Reading The Wisdom of Eating Frequently to Get Lean