Since running my personal trainer program, I have helped many personal training clients lose fat, tone up and get into amazing shape. And I have been doing this successfully for the last 17 years. And still to this day, I see people making the same mistakes over and over out there. There are many misconceptions as to what is necessary to get into great shape. And sadly, most people fall to these misconceptions and never lose the weight they want to or get into outstanding shape. I am here to change that for you.

As a boot camp trainer, I am going to shed some light as to what it truly takes to lose fat and tone up your entire body. And I am also going to dispel some of the fitness myths out there for you.

Mistake #1 - Endless Cardio: I have seen many of my boot camp clients make this mistake. If you are like most people, then you probably believe that doing conventional, slow-paced cardio is the single greatest way to lose weight. WRONG! Slow paced cardio only boosts your metabolic rate for up to a few hours afterwards, as opposed to up to 48 hours afterwards with another technique that I will discuss later. Also, doing excessive cardio can actually hurt you, by burning up valuable calorie burning muscle tissue. And if you don't believe me, next time you go into the gym, take a look at all the same people who have been doing cardio for years. What do you see? The majority of them look the same as they did a year ago.

Mistake #2 - Low Carb Diets: These low carbohydrate diets are very mileading, giving you false results. Sure, if you take all your carbs out, you will drop some weight. But, here is the problem, the weight you lose is half muscle and half fat. So, you become a smaller, fat person. And it gets worse. Low carb diets are totally unhealthy and near impossible to stick to. And as soon as you stop doing a low carbohydrate diet, you will begin to gain all the weight back and much more. I had a boot camp client who followed a low carb diet. He lost 23 lbs., but was not lean. And as soon as he got a body fat analysis done, he saw a huge dropping in body fat, not muscle .73%. He lost a lot of calorie-burning muscle. The worst part came when he went off the low carb diet. He gained all his original weight back and then some, due to having less muscle. Stay away from low carb diets.

Mistake #3 - Diet Pills: Diet pills don't work. Not only are they ineffective, they make you cranky and irritable. The sad thing is that there is no formal regulaton on fat loss supplements? It's true. Much scientific research has proven that the ingredients that the companies claim to be in their supplements do not exist.

And if you have made some of these mistakes, don't feel too bad. I must admit, most of my boot camp clients have made these very same mistakes before joining my personal trainer San Diego program.