What, how much and when to eat are big themes among the more serious weight training and bodybuilding communities. In recent years, various forms of carbohydrate manipulation have been popular in dietary schemes like low-carb and Paleo dieting. Paleo diets are based around the idea that early humans in the Paleolithic era more than 10,000 years ago ate virtually no grain or tuber foods like cereals and potatoes. Thus, Paleo advocates say, we would be healthier if we did the same. Strict Paleo diets consist mainly of meat, fish, vegetables and certain low-carb fruits like berries. (Oh, and you can't eat beans either.)

One thing that has been driving the belief in advocacy of such a nutritional regimen -- supported by a few well-known fitness trainers -- has been a dearth of evidence of grain and tuber consumption from the archaeological record of the Paleolithic. But now that has changed in a big way.

Stone Age Pantry: Archaeologist Unearths Earliest Evidence of Modern Humans Using Wild Grains and Tubers for Food

A new study by Julio Mercader at the University of Calgary's Department of Archaeology, has put grain and tuber eating back to at least 100,000 years ago. The team found evidence of consumption of wild sorghum and African potato at a site in Mozambique.

Frankly, the Paleo diet premise was always full of holes, but now, considering that the Paleo diet is predicated on the short time we are supposed to have been eating these foods, is the Paleo diet dead?

Mercader J. Mozambican grass seed consumption during the Middle Stone Age. Science. 2009 Dec 18;326(5960):1680-3.

The concept of "fitness" is a relative one. You need to be fit for something -- for some purpose -- whether it's a pleasing appearance, normal weight, a particular sport, or even for climbing Mount Everest or the stairs in your building.

The ways you might test or judge that you've reached you goal are surely vast and varied. However, there are some basics. Read more about the basics of fitness and being in shape and tell us how you know you're fit for your purpose.

1. Get in Shape with Weight Training
2. How Do You Know When You're In Shape?

If you've got a fitness book gift in mind in the next week, here are some recent reviews, plus a list of some older 'standard' favorites.

• Women's Home Workout Bible - Brad Schoenfeld
• The End of Overeating - David Kessler
• The Body Fat Solution - Tom Venuto

Reference standards in weight training books:

• Top 10 Weight Training and Bodybuilding Books

And coming soon is a review of Hardcore Circuit Training for Men by Jim McHale and Chohwora Udu.

Near the end of each year the American College of Sports Medicine publishes a list of fitness trends for the upcoming year. Here are their predictions to feature big in 2010. The list, in order of popularity, is based on a survey of ACSM members worldwide. Strength training has moved up from fourth to second for 2010, reflecting a growing interest in weight training and resistance training.

1. Professionally educated fitness trainers.
2. Strength training
3. Children and obesity
4. Personal training
5. Core training
6. Fitness programs for older adults
7. Functional fitness
8. Sport-specific training
9. Pilates
10. Group personal training

That's exactly the problem isn't it? You want to lose weight, get fit and build an attractive body, but you just can't seem to find the motivation to make the effort to get the job done.

Like . . . how do you get motivated to get motivated to get . . . well you know what I mean. It may help to understand the building blocks of 'change;' then you can go from there. Here are five basic steps in behavioral change.

1. A pre-contemplation stage in which the person is not aware of the need to change.
2. A contemplation stage in which the person reflects on the advantages and disadvantages of change.
3. A preparation stage in which concrete plans for change are made.
4. An action stage in which behavior starts to change.
5. Finally, a maintenance stage in which the person decides whether to continue the new behavior or to relapse to the former behavior.

If you can get to stage 2 and enlist the help of a personal trainer, coach or even family or friends, then you're well on your way to achieving those goals. Then you need to have a way to manage step 5, which is where many people fail. But if you keep these five stages in mind it may help you get right through the process and achieve permanent personal growth. Go for it.

Read more: Motivational Tips for Building a Great Body

Stretch bands and tubes have an amazing variety of uses in strength and conditioning training. I've used them when recovering from injury and when something light and 'soft' fits the bill when you're still a little tender.

But you can also use them on a regular basis at home and even at work and during travel because of their portability and storability -- even if they're probably not going to be your first choice in a serious strength and muscle program.

---> Stretch Bands for Strength Workouts

When you push hard with an overhead lift your systolic blood pressure (the top one) can go very high. That's one reason to try to breathe regularly when you're lifting weights, particularly in pushing and pressing exercises.

It's also a reason why the reasonable  advice, over many years, has been to not do heavy weight training if your blood pressure is high, and particularly if it's uncontrolled by blood-pressure lowering drugs. If you're an experienced exerciser, and your blood pressure is well controlled, you don't have to worry too much. The incidence of stroke in lifters is not beyond normal as far as I can see. If you're new to weight training, go easy at first and build it up in a progressive program as you get fitter.

Physical activity in general has long been suggested to offer protection against ischemic stroke -- the blood clot type -- but a new study has reported additional information. Dr Joshua Willey and team of Columbia University in New York has shown that moderate to high-intensity exercise is protective compared to no exercise and even light exercise. 

The research team studied more than 3000 people from Northern Manhattan. Only 20% said they regularly participated in moderate- to heavy-intensity activities. The high-intensity exercisers had about 25% less incidence of stroke compared to light or no exercise, but only in men and not in women. One key point was that total energy expenditure was not associated with stroke reduction, only intensity.

Although not conclusive, the study should give some confidence to 'hypertensive' weight trainers who worry about stroke risk, although your doctor's advice is always the first point of reference.

Willey JZ, Moon YP, Paik MC, Boden-Albala B, Sacco RL, Elkind MS. Physical activity and risk of ischemic stroke in the Northern Manhattan Study. Neurology.  2009 Nov 24;73(21):1774-1779.

It's always a challenge to stay fit and lean when you know there will be temptations galore in the guise of rich food and alcohol at a certain time of the year.

In fact, there is every reason, at this time, why you should not get into the habit of slackening off your training and commitment because you feel you have an excuse. It should be other way around.

Because you're likely to over-indulge, you might actually want to escalate your effort a little to compensate. I've spent Christmas morning in a gym -- only once, and early I admit . . . (and then there was that 10-miler) -- but anyway, before you accuse me of not having a life, I was determined not to let my fitness suffer from wine and song and, well . . . food of course -- you know what it's like at Christmas.

In any case, here are a few workouts you might want to revisit to keep things on track and moving in the right direction.

1. Home Dumbbell Weights Workout
2. 10 Exercises to Make You Look Good Naked
3. A High Power Fat-Loss Program

If you train all year round, and you don't like to miss more than a day or two, what do you do when you're not feeling so good?

This is a situation that all regular exercisers and athletes have to deal with at some time. The first thing to consider is the nature of your illness or debilitation. Is it muscular soreness, a joint injury, extreme lethargy, or a flu-like or common cold infection?

Whether you can train through musculoskeletal injuries is a matter of experience and, or medical advice. If you're just extremely fatigued, in the absence of signs of infection, then you may just need a few rest days.

However, if you have a cold or flu-like symptoms, especially in these days of H1N1 influenza risk, you need to be careful. Although the risk is probably low, exercising with viral infections has been implicated in viral cardiomyopathy, a debilitating and serious heart condition.

The general approach is that if you have the aches and pains in muscles and joints typical of influenza infection, be sure to rest until better. If you have a light head cold with no obvious flu-like progression, then you might by okay to exercise lightly. You could cut your overall weights volume and intensity back a little and do your training at home. Don't spread any infection around at the gym or club. For chest infections you probably need a medical opinion if you want to do anything too vigorous. If you do exercise, keeping the heart rate low, say below 60% of maximum heart rate, is a good idea.

(I must admit to having run a marathon while on antibiotics for a chest infection, but that was in the days when I was younger and sillier and I probably would not do it again and neither would I recommend it.)

The bottom line is: Be cautious, back off when the viral lethargy is obvious, and definitely get medial advice if you're not sure.

Questions similar to this get asked frequently on weight training and bodybuilding forums. And there is no shortage of "experts" and marketers making outrageous claims for wild muscle growth with certain programs and diets. I'm talking about steroid-free training here.

The variables are many -- men, women, young, old, skinny, fat -- you name it; it won't be the same for everyone, naturally. Let me know your best month here.

Full article is here:  ---> How Much Muscle in a Month?