1. Although vegetarians would like you to believe that it is healthier to never eat meats, the scientific fact is that the human digestive system has developed over hundreds of thousands of years to allow humans to be healthiest while eating an omnivorous diet, and that means both animal and plant foods.

When you do eat meat, the important thing is to eat healthy meats, which are a far cry from what you'll find in most grocery stores. Grass-fed, organic, and free range are musts for choosing healthy meat. Grass-fed meats (such as grass fed beef or buffalo) contain as much as 3-5x more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) than do conventional grocery store grain fed meats. CLA is a healthy fat contained in grass fed meats that can help to reduce cancer risks as well as help to burn fat and build muscle.

In addition, grass-fed organic meats contain a more balanced fats profile of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids, which helps to reduce inflammation in your body, and is healthier for you. Unfortunately, your typical commerical grain-fed meats contain faty acid profiles that are far too high on the omega-6 fats, and far too low on the omega-3 fatty acids.

Do your body a favor and make sure to only choose meats that are either grass-fed, organic, or free-range.

2. If you've ever bought "fat burner" diet pills, you've basically thrown your money in the trash!

Most diet pill companies use perfectly chiseled fitness models to make you think that they simply popped a little "fat burner diet pill" to get their perfect body. The fact is that those models make their careers by eating extremely healthy and training extremely hard to get their perfect bodies... NOT by taking "fat burner pills". The truth is that most of these diet pills are pure garbage and not worth the money.

Real food with high quality nutrition and consistent training is where the real results will come from.

3. It may be a good idea to eliminate grain-based foods from your diet, and focus more on fruits and vegetables for your carb sources. Eating too many grain foods may be inadvertently giving you indigestion, making you gain weight, and also causing other problems in the body.

As I mentioned before, the human digestive system has developed over hundreds of thousands of years to be most efficient and healthy on a "hunter-gatherer" type of diet -- and this means veggies, fruits, seeds, nuts, and meat (from healthy animals, not from today's factory farmed animals).

Grain foods, on the other hand, weren't introduced to the human diet until recently (only several thousand years ago), and therefore, the human digestive system is still not designed optimally for grains. It is no surprise that it's estimated that the majority of the world's population has at least some degree of problem digesting gluten, a protein which is common to most grains (wheat being the biggest problem for most people).

Try giving up grains such as breads, pasta, and cereals for 2-3 weeks and see if you feel and look better overall. You may find that digestion problems go away and you start to lose body fat as well.

4. For workouts... you absolutely MUST ENJOY your workouts if you are going to be consistent for long term results. Getting involved in sports is a great way to enjoy your workouts, but please be aware that you still need resistance training such as weight training or bodyweight training for all the major muscle groups for the best possible health and fitness.

Make no mistake -- you really do need resistance training to keep maximum bone density as well as to keep your metabolic rate as high as possible. Most sports typically will not give you the same benefit as properly designed full body weight training exercises and bodyweight exercises. If you want to be lean, strong, and truly healthy, making resistance training part of your regular schedule is a must!

5. The cardio exercise myth -- Most people think that cardiovascular exercise is the only way to lose body fat. What most people do not realize is that high intensity weight training (when done in a specific fashion) increases your metabolic rate to a higher degree than typical standard-pace cardiovascular workout routines. Not only that, but resistance training done at high intensity has also been shown to have powerful effects on your body with reducing blood pressure and increasing your body's efficiency at processing blood sugar.

If you are not already making high intensity resistance training (weight training) the foundation of your exercise routines, start putting more focus on this, and less focus on the boring cardio routines. After all, the variable intensity nature of weight training (done at a high level of effort) trains your heart through a much wider heart rate range than just typical cardio exercise. This can be very beneficial and can strengthen your heart even more than jogging or other monotonous cardio routines.