Issue #2046
- WEALTHY: How a top marketer grabs your attention
- HEALTHY: 3 diet "solutions" that don’t solve much of anything (Dr. Al Sears)
- WISE: Randy Glasbergen with a little joke about instant weight loss
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- What to look for in fine wines produced from 3 of the "noble" grapes (Michael Masterson)
- A more productive way to multi-task (Robert Ringer)
- It’s Fun to Know… about genetically engineered silkworms
- Add "supposititious" to your vocabulary
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Worth Quoting: Jeff Hicks, President and CEO of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, on His Job as a Marketer
"There’s no amount of money I can pay to get my commercial in front of you, because you can powerfully edit what you spend time with. So my job as a marketer is no longer to interrupt, but to produce content that is so relevant, interesting, entertaining, and involving that my best consumers won’t want to live without it."
(Source: Business 2.0)
"Thank you for calling the Weight Loss Hotline. If you’d like to lose a half pound right now, press 1 eighteen thousand times."
Randy Glasbergen
"Stress Makes You Fat" and Other Diet Deceptions
By Al Sears, MD
With nearly 72 million Americans on a diet, it’s no wonder that diet options abound. But many of these so-called solutions won’t make a big difference in your fat-loss efforts. And some can have serious negative effects.
Fortunately, you can lose fat safely and easily. But first, you need to know just why you should avoid three of the most deceptive diet choices around.
The Cortisol Blame Game
Visit the website for the diet pill CortiSlim, and you’ll see a newly transformed woman claiming, "Stress was piling on the pounds!" The makers of this diet pill advertise that cortisol is to blame. Cortisol is a natural hormone that’s produced by your adrenal glands in response to stress – but does cortisol add weight? No.
Have you ever seen a caged animal at the zoo that appears to be stressed by living in captivity? When animals are under stress, increased cortisol will suppress their appetite. Over time, they become thin and start to waste away. The same is true of humans.
Cortisol gives your body the chance to pool all of its stress-fighting resources in order to deal with a crisis. Under those conditions, your appetite will disappear. Think back to the last time you were panicked or upset. Having lunch was probably the last thing on your mind.
Several weight-loss products try to link cortisol to weight gain by pointing to a single Yale University study published in 2000 that showed that women who respond poorly to stress tend to have a belly. True, excess cortisol can affect where your body stores extra calories as fat. But cortisol itself does not cause weight gain.
Fat Burners and Metabolism Boosters
Products in this category claim to help you lose weight by raising your metabolic rate. Contrary to the hype you may have read, the increase is very slight.
Even ephedra, one of the best, is only modestly successful at raising metabolism – perhaps by a fraction of a percent. This natural herb was banned by the FDA, but that ban was overturned by an appeals court in August 2006. Today, ephedra is starting to make a comeback, despite the fact that its metabolism-boosting properties are negligible.
One of the more popular fat burners claims that you can eat anything you want and still lose weight. This product uses a less-effective ephedra substitute, synephrine, which is supposed to increase your metabolism without the "harmful stimulants" used in other weight-loss products. Other ingredients in this product include caffeine, glucuronolactone, and taurine – the same ingredients found in Red Bull. If you feel any effect from it, it will be from the combination of synephrine and caffeine.
You should think of products like these as stimulants – not fat burners. They may help wake you up and give you a temporary jolt of energy, but so does a good cup of coffee.
Carb Blockers
To ease your guilt after splurging on bagels or pasta, carb blockers may seem like the answer. The term "carb blockers" sound magical… until you realize that what they’re actually blocking is an important digestive enzyme.
The idea of taking something that will interfere with your body’s ability to digest food is not a good one. In fact, it’s dangerous. Your body absorbs essential vitamins and nutrients in the form of carbohydrates. By blocking them, you are robbing your body of what it needs to survive.
The active ingredient in most carb blockers is a white kidney bean extract called phaseolus vulgaris. This substance prevents the enzymes in your stomach from digesting starches.
Dietrine, a well known carb blocker, states on its website: "One Dietrine capsule taken prior to a meal can block up to 1125 calories from fat and carbohydrate foods."
There are no reliable clinical studies to support such a claim. In fact, the only respectable study, published in the Alternative Medicine Review, concluded that "no statistical significance was reached."
Flip Your Body’s Fat-Burning Switch
Truth is, I have had more success with my patients by using a single exercise strategy than I’ve seen with all the dieting and supplement strategies combined. If you’re a regular ETR reader, you’ve heard me talk about this strategy before: Exercise in short bursts. By exercising this way, you can burn fat for up to 24 hours after you finish. Even while you sleep.
This type of exercise teaches your body that storing energy as fat is inefficient. Fat is a low-energy, slow-release fuel. It’s not good for providing you with quick high energy. So if you don’t exert yourself long enough to make good use of your stored fat during your actual exercise routine, your body gives it up afterward, during the recovery period.
You can use any number of exercises to turn your body into an automatic fat burner. The only rule is that the activity has to use enough muscle mass to challenge the rate at which you’re using energy. I like bicycling and swimming, because they’re low-impact and don’t have as much risk of injuries as high-impact exercises like jogging. What you choose will depend on your level of fitness.
Here’s how to get started:
- Perform a light warm-up and stretch before each exercise session.
- Begin with 20 minutes every other day. (This averages to only 10 minutes per day.)
- Exercise at an easy pace at first, and increase it gradually.
- As your fitness improves, increase the intensity of each session.
- After a few weeks, break each session into two short bursts of exercise – two six-minute sets separated by six minutes of focused recovery at a gentle easy pace.
Eventually, you can go with even briefer episodes of gradually increasing intensity.
The most common error people make is assuming you must work at a higher level of perceived exertion to get results. This is not true. The point is to start with what is a comfortable level of exertion for you. Then, as that level of activity gets easier, you focus on increasing the level or resistance of the activity rather than the duration.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Sears is a practicing physician and a leading authority on longevity, physical fitness, and heart health. Short bursts of activity form the basis of his PACE program. You can get more information about it HERE.]
‘Spare Time’ Income that Could Add 7 Figures to Your Net Worth
The key to successful real estate investing is learning how to ‘buy right.’ This means purchasing at or below market value – in a neighborhood with a fast-appreciation potential – for a price that allows the rental income of the property to cover your carrying costs. (Even if you don’t intend to rent it out.)
So, if you first learn how to ‘buy right’… then how to borrow right… you will have a world-class one-two punch that will win you the financial crown you’ve always dreamed of. Better yet, when you learn how to do these kinds of deals not just once but two, three, or four times a year – in your spare time – you can rapidly add seven figures to your net worth and thousands to your monthly income every year. For more information on ‘buying right,’ click here.
- Justin Ford
Main Street Millionaire
The Peck-Away Theory of Getting Things Done
By Robert Ringer
Like all busy people, I can never hope to get around to getting everything done that I’d like to do. As a result, I have a tendency to work on many projects simultaneously – especially if they’re tedious in nature. This runs the gamut from moneymaking projects of major importance to organizational and tidying-up tasks.
For example, if I have to review and make revisions to a contract, I might work on it a half-dozen times a day, 10 to 15 minutes at a crack. Since I intensely dislike this kind of work, it’s hard for me to find – or make – the time to do it from start to finish in one sitting.
While I’m working on the contract, I might also be running "Disk Cleanup" or "Defrag" on my computer. And then I might listen to, and take notes for, a CD that needs editing, perhaps in segments of 15 to 20 minutes. From there, I might work on another draft of an article such as this one. And so on.
In a way, I guess this makes me a bit of an enigma, because I’m usually a very focused person. I always have one major project that I spend a majority of my time on each day, and I’m relentless about following such projects through to conclusion.
What I do, however, is take periodic breaks from my main project and peck away at anywhere from five to 10 other projects. The result is that a project I may never have "found" the time to do all at once ends up getting completed over time.
My approach to pecking away at projects is somewhat related to a Japanese strategy for achieving goals. The strategy I’m referring to is known as kaizen, and is summed up well in Lao Tzu’s oft-heard observation, "A journey of a thousand miles must begin with the first step."
So, I guess my Peck-Away Theory is really another way of "making the time." It’s just that I make the time to do many things rather than just one. You might want to give it a try and see how it fits on you. It’s not for everybody, but it’s worked out very well for me.
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Living Rich: What You Should Know About 3 Medium- to Full-Bodied Red Wines
By Michael Masterson
As you may remember from my article "The Well-Stocked Wine Cellar," there are thousands of grape varieties but only a few that are used for producing fine wines. Of that group, there are six white varieties and eight red varieties that wine experts consider "noble."
The eight noble red grapes are: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, Syrah, Gamay, and Zinfancel.
The eight noble white grapes are: Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Chenin Blanc, and Gewurztraminer.
Last week, I gave you some basic information about wine produced from the Cabernet Sauvignon grape – medium- to full-bodied reds that you’re almost sure to include in your wine collection. Today, let’s take a quick look at medium- to full-bodied reds produced from three more of the noble red grapes:
Sangiovese
Sharp flavors and flowery aromas characterize the Sangiovese wines. They are medium- to heavy-bodied reds. Sangiovese grapes are almost exclusively grown in Tuscany, Italy. They are the primary grapes in the best-known wines produced there: Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino, and Vino Nobile di Multipulciano
Nebbiolo
Medium- to heavy-bodied Nebbiolos are dark red wines with high tannins. "Nebbiolo" means "cloudy." These wines, from the Piedmont area of Italy, have high tannins and aromas of plum and tar. They are powerful, and do well when aged. Barolo is the Nebbiolo grape’s best known wine. The other two important Piedmont wines made from this grape are Barbaresco and Gattinara.
Syrah
Simple, medium-bodied Syrah wines are deep red in color, with peppery flavors and high tannins. The Syrah grape is grown in France’s Rhone Valley and also in the warmer climates of California and Australia. Because this grape has high tannins (like the Cabernet Sauvignon grape), Syrah wines should be aged until they are mellow. A good range for aging is five to eight years.
[Ed. Note: Want to learn more about building your own wine collection? Read Michael's article "A Start-Up Collection for New Collectors."]
It’s Fun to Know: About Genetically Engineered Silkworms
Dyeing silk may become a lost art – if, that is, a group of Japanese scientists succeed in their plan to genetically modify silkworms.
Silkworms spin cocoons that produce natural white, yellow, straw, salmon, pink, or green fibers. But the scientists have identified genes in silkworms that control pigment, and are attempting to modify those genes so they can get the silkworms to produce just about any color.
(Source: Agence France-Presse)
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Word to the Wise: Supposititious
Something that’s "supposititious" (suh-poz-uh-TISH-us) – from the Latin for "to put under" – is either hypothetical or isn’t what it purports to be.
Example (as used by Stephen Jay Gould in a Natural History article titled "The Lying Stones of Wurzburg and Marrakech"): "He has threatened to write a small treatise exposing my stones as supposititious – I should say his stones, fashioned and fraudulently made by his hand."
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Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007
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