4 Mistakes That Make You Fat

1.You drink diet soda,like it's water
A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study found that when people swapped their favorite sugary soft drink for the diet variety, they ate more desserts and more bread than people who swapped their go-to beverage for water. Artificial sweeteners may increase your hunger for sweet things.

2.You try too HARD
Adopting a very rigid diet almost guarantees that your weight-loss efforts will be sabotaged by food cravings, suggests a new study in the journal Appetite. So cut yourself some slack. Flexible dieters have just as many cravings and give in to them just as often, says study author Adrian Meule, Dipl.-Psych. The difference is that they are more likely to get back on track quickly.

3.You play video games until 2 A.M.
A new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports that scant sleep can cause you to overeat fatty foods. When people slept only 4 hours a night for 5 days, they took in nearly 300 calories more than when they slept 9 hours a night. Too little shut-eye may increase your appetite by short-circuiting your brain's sense of reward.

4.You are too darned Optimistic
If you're like most people, you wildly overestimate the number of calories you burn during exercise. According to a study in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, people thought that a workout incinerated about 900 calories when it actually burned just 300.

The Chinup Plan

Exercise 1: Band-assisted chinup
This exercise not only allows you to do full chinups, but it more accurately mimics the classic movement than the assisted-chinup machines found in many commercial gyms. (If your gym has the machine but not the bands, go ahead and use the machine.)

Directions: Loop one end of the band around a chinup bar and then pull it through the other end of the band, cinching it tightly to the bar. Grab the bar with a shoulder-width, underhand grip, place your knees in the loop of the band, and hang at arm's length. That's the starting position. Now perform a chinup. Do 2 sets of 6 reps, resting 60 seconds between sets, and then move on to Exercise 2.

Exercise 2: Negative chinup
For this movement, you'll perform only the lowering portion of the chinup. That's because studies show that focusing on this portion of the exercise can lead to the greatest strength gains.

Directions: Place a bench under a pullup bar and use it to boost your body so that the top of your chest is at bar level. Then take as long as you can to lower your body (you should time yourself with a wristwatch) until your arms are straight. A key requirement: Try to lower yourself at the same rate from start to finish.

Do 2 sets, resting 60 seconds between them. When you're able to take 30 seconds to lower your body, or your combined lowering time for both sets is 45 seconds, add a third set. This is also a gauge of your progress: If you can complete a 30-second negative chinup, you can probably perform one full chinup. Complete all your sets, and then move on to Exercise 3.

Exercise 3: Explosive lat pulldown
To do this exercise, you'll perform each repetition quickly in order to train your fast-twitch muscles. These are the ones that are most important for building strength.