Category Archives: Fat Loss

Becoming Lean

The 30 day ‘Rip off the Fat with the Best Foods for Fat Loss’ diet…

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Welcome back!!

This week an extremely ‘doable’ 30 day fat loss via food plan… Read it, do it and you can expect dramatic and EASY Fat Loss…

Regular readers know that you can’t out train a bad diet. In your quest to lose body fat and to re-condition your metabolism food has to come first.

I’m far from the first to say and I certainly won’t be the last – and anyway you already know

Even over 70 you can look this good!!

this. It might be deep down, it be hidden but you KNOW this…

So food is first – here are some simple but effective guidelines for your nutrition. Follow these and you’ll rip off the body fat in no time (well about 30 days actually)

As a definite plus if you adopt these guidelines for the long term than you’ll likely live longer with more energy, more health and a lot more enjoyment…

Okay – the Guidelines:  Eat lots of these foods…

In order to maximise fat loss and improve overall health you need to eat:

  • Foods that are nutrient dense and calorie sparse
  • To improve the absorption of these nutrients in your gut
  • Food in a macronutrient format that improves your body composition
  • Enough good quality foods to meet as many of your micro- & macro- nutrient needs as possible from your food
  • Using sensible timing & spacing to control both cravings and hormone release

You should NOT eat:

  • Foods that harm you – and you know what they are!!
  • Foods that are calorie dense and nutrient sparse
  • Foods that say now with added vitamins!
  • Foods that contain what I’ll call antinutrients – like most grains and processed grain products
  • Foods that contain trans fats, HFCS and lots of sugar in any form.

Look there are (last time I looked 12+ months ago over 2.5 Million diets & programs out

Cops may lov’em but the trans fat keep you fat…

there. Some are good (anything by Berardi of Precision Nutrition fame or Rousseau of Warp Speed Fat for example), a few great, many crap and more than a few that deliver short term results only…

Even simplistic programs like the Slow-Carb-Diet from Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Body is one that you can use long term and it does get results.

Thing is, even on the better touted diets, most of them work for so long as you are compliant. When compliance stops so does the results and fat gain usually occurs.

Here are my thoughts on using food for fat loss…

What follows is a 30 day full on program. Follow it as written and you’ll lose fat and gain energy and likely without any hunger pangs or uncontrollable cravings. It’s really that easy and this is an easy program to follow…

You might not get to look like Thor, but you will drop fat…

The program is designed around food. So if all you do is the foods I mention in the way I mention then you will lose fat.

So – are you ready to start losing some fat? If so then this is the absolute ‘no deviation allowed’ ever rule for ALL of your meals – eat your food in the following sequence:

Lean Protein first, then good Fats then Vegetables – preferably low starch ones. Lastly if you have some room left – some Fruit – berries, cherries, apples or pears preferred…

Again eat you’re your food in that order for the next 30 days.(or longer) and you’ll get your fat loss well under way…

But how does this work you ask? This is the ‘guts’ of fat loss and improving your health – buckle up!!

I recommend that you eat this way – eat your protein until you are about three quarters full, make sure that you’ve had your healthy fats and then eat veges until you are full and have had enough.

Why lie this? Getting in the amount of protein that I’m recommending will be tough – read on…

Protein.At every meal for the next 30 days eat your Protein first. And it should be solid, chewable protein – no shakes, no meal replacement powders – just good old fashioned solid protein. Why solid? Chewing your food helps to trigger satiety and this in turn a) stopsyou over eating and b) actually reduces the chance of any cravings popping up.

Don’t get me wrong I think that whey powders are a great source of protein and very

Yum…Protein!!

convenient but this program is manipulating a lot of variables (i.e. satiety triggers etc.) so the shakes are out for 30 days.

You’ll see a lot of writers these days extolling the virtues of only eating grass fed beef and wild salmon, free range eggs and chicken etc etc. and there is something to what many of them say – especially if you are in the US or Canada – about the potential health risks inherent in ‘normal’ foods, farmed the normal way. In Australia & New Zealand the use of drugs in livestock and so forth is a lot less.

It is true however that grain feed beef has a high Omega 6 to omega 3 ratio and this is a ratio that needs redressing (see Fats section below for the reasons why) But we don’t all live in a world of financial plenty…

There is the issue of cost. I know that your health is priceless, but the reality is that if you are an adult with adult responsibilities then you may not be able to afford those ‘wild’ sources of protein.

Guess what – so what.

Just eat the protein that you can afford (a quick note here along

Forget grass fed versus grain fed eat eat you can afford…

with shakes – no soy, no tofu no TVP or Quorn etc. – real flesh based protein only) and you’ll get results. Add some supplements (buying & using the few that I’ll suggest further on will still be cheaper than going the organic / grass fed / free range / wild only route) Again of you can afford it, fine go the organic route if not then leave the optimum protein sources out of your musings – if you can afford grass feed beef or free range eggs – great have them! If not, then eat the beef you can get – just try to make it as lean as possible, and the eggs you can afford.

No matter what though – eat your protein first.

How much protein? Try to eat about a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight or more. This will not be easy – a 100 gram steak contains about 21 grams of protein. So when I say 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight I don’t mean 1 gram of steak (or Chicken / veal / lamb / pork / salmon etc) I mean I gram of protein. If you weighed 200 pounds then to get your 200 grams of protein from steak you will need to eat about 100 grams (2 pounds) of steak.

Beginning to see why you won’t have to worry too much about hunger…

So in order to get this amount of protein into you each day you need to be a bit strategic and break your protein intake up over each of your daily meals – I find that if you are willing to do some prep time 4 or 5 meals a day makes this easy, but if you’re not then aim for 3 or 4.

Regardless of how often you eat you have to make the protein and the amount of protein specific to you a priority.

Sounds like you have to count calories & grams etc doesn’t it? I hate counting and I bet that you do too, so do it this way:

Figure out what you daily protein target is (for me at 205 pound it is 205 grams) and then plan your protein requirements using the tables below.

For example to get my 205 grams I’d need to eat – over my 5 meals – about 41 grams of protein a meal. So if I have 2 hamburger patties, a decent sized steak then I’m already be half way there. Add in a chicken breast, a can of tuna and a couple of eggs and I‘ve hit my protein target.

NB: 1 Ounce = approx 28grams so 4 oz of steak would weigh 112 grams

Beef

  • Hamburger patty, 4 oz – 28 grams protein
  • Steak, 6 oz – 42 grams
  • Most cuts of beef – 7 grams of protein per ounce

Chicken

  • Chicken breast, 3.5 oz – 30 grams protein
  • Chicken thigh – 10 grams (for average size)
    Lots & lots of way to cook & serve protein…
  • Drumstick – 11 grams
  • Wing – 6 grams
  • Chicken meat, cooked, 4 oz – 35 grams

Fish

  • Most fish fillets or steaks are about 22 grams of protein for 3 ½ oz (100 grams) of cooked fish, or 6 grams per ounce
  • Tuna, 6 oz can – 40 grams of protein

Pork

  • Pork chop, average – 22 grams protein
  • Pork loin or tenderloin, 4 oz – 29 grams
  • Ham, 3 oz serving – 19 grams
  • Ground pork, 1 oz raw – 5 grams; 3 oz cooked – 22 grams
  • Bacon, 1 slice – 3 grams

Eggs and Dairy (avoid yoghurt – too much sugar even in Greek styles and watch the amount of cheese you eat – remember we want to drop fat and eat lean protein!)

  • Egg, large – 6 grams protein
  • Milk, 1 cup – 8 grams
  • Cottage cheese, ½ cup – 15 grams
  • Soft cheeses (Mozzarella, Brie, Camembert) – 6 grams per oz
  • Medium cheeses (Cheddar, Swiss) – 7 or 8 grams per oz
  • Hard cheeses (Parmesan) – 10 grams per oz
One of the best sources of protein…

Fat. For the next 30 days eat healthy fats second at every meal. By fats I mean healthy quality fats, not manufactured ‘franken-fats’ like trans fats.

As I’ve written before eating good fats is essential for fat loss and health. Given the anti-fat blitz of the last few decades this seems counterintuitive but the facts are the facts – processed carbs sugars make you fat, not fat itself. Even the worst of the saturated fats has little effect on fat storage unless it is eaten with processed carbs…

The idea is to try to cook in fats like coconut or macadamia, use olive oil where & when you can, cut out the commercial vegetable oils (really seed oils) like canola, corn or peanut and the like… This way you’ll begin to limit your Omega 6 intake and increase your omega 3’s (more on this below) you’ll not only be helping your body burn more fat but you’ll be reducing one of the main causes of inflammation in the body with all of the attendant horrors like arthritis, heart disease and so forth.

There are many types of saturated fats (our body’s makes omega 9 for example) but we need to get omegas 3 & 6 from our diet. Both are needed for our health but the ratio of 6 to 3 is the problem.

For the US of A consumption patterns over the last 40 years look like this:

Among 18 – 44 year olds in the United States, saturated fat consumption was in at 30 grams per day in 1970, and 27.8 grams per day in 2005.

Omega-6 fatty acid intake, however, was 9 grams per day in 1970, and almost doubled to 17 grams by 2005. Some reports have it even higher now in 2012.

High intakes of omega-6 fatty acids have been linked to cellular inflammation — one of the main factors behind a substantial number of degenerative diseases.

This is why I think everyone should prioritise good healthy fats like this: first increase your intake of omega-3 fatty acids, add in some monounsaturated fats, then use healthier saturated fats (like coconut, macadamia and cacao), and leave omega-6 fatty acids (especially from cooking oils) and less healthy saturated fats (like that in soft cheeses, pork, and chicken skin) last.

Although omega-6 fatty acids are essential to our health, they are so prevalent in so many foods that you would have to try extremely hard (and eat a significantly and dangerously limited diet) to not easily meet your daily requirement.

Healthy fats…

I want to finish this section on fat by making sure the main points are clear:

  • Omega-6 fatty acids are NOT intrinsically unhealthy – we need to consume a certain amount every day for optimal health.
  • Many very healthy foods are good sources of omega-6 fatty acids, so I am not advocating total avoidance of foods that contain omega-6 fatty acids.
  • However, our western diet contains consistently higher amounts of omega 6 and this pushes our intake of this particular fat too high. There is a very real need for this intake to be reduced because in this case, more is certainly NOT better.

Increasing your omega 3 intake is important to your health and is best done through eating deep sea oily fish (salmon or sardines for example) avocadoes, or taking a quality fish oil or krill supplement. You need to redress the 6 to 3 imbalance (some say it is as high as 20:1) as soon as possible.

The detailed benefits of omega 3 intake will be the subject of another post but for the moment take it as a given you need lots more 3 than 6 in your diet and the sooner the better.

The way to achieve this is to limit your 6 intake as much as possible and then to increase /

Don’t get ahead of yourself…

top up your 3 levels.

So eat your protein and then top up your Omega 3, by having some high quality fish oil with every meal. Aim to be having 2-3 grams of combined DHA/EPA per meal. (again – a fish oil capsule is usually 1 gram but it only contains about 450mg of 3’s so you need to take a few capsules – 5 or 6 at least)

But how much Omega 3 do I need?

Frankly I believe that everyone should be having 4-6 grams a day because of the many beneficial effects of Omega 3s’. Omega 3’s fight inflammation, help regulate insulin response, are used in a host of body repair mechanisms, are used in hormone production are important for brain health and even, it is not suggested are associated with maintaining telomere length – one of the most sought after anti-aging effects. Your body needs these…

Other writers suggest the following:

 

Abs so lower need of Omega 3’s

If you can see your abs, you have no sore joints (except after a heavy session in the gym) and have no arthritic signs then you’ll be okay with 2-3 grams a day.

If your joints ache, you have a touch or more ) of arthritis, your abs haven’t been seen for a while – then you’ll need to be having 4-8 grams total EPA/DHA per day.

If you get back to the visible abs level then you can reduce this to 3-4 grams.

Again try to divide your daily intake roughly equally across your meals.

Remember though the focus is on food so the supplements I’ll suggest will be few.

To top up the fat content of your meals try adding a tablespoon of one of these healthy fats: Butter – not dairy soft, not a blend just good old butter; ghee, coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil or best of all the rendered fats from an animal source. Yep good old lard – nothing makes cooking taste better. In fact all of these good fats when used for cooking add flavour that is second to none.

Of course if your meal is heavily weighted towards salmon, sardines, anchovies or lean

Deep sea fish are great for protein & omega 3’s

beef / pork / lamb then you can skip the added tablespoon (still use the above sources for cooking though!)

Cook your meat with the fat on, leave the skin on your chicken – these fats are not the enemy. Feel free to remove the skin or the fat after cooking if you must ( I still do with pork – just can’t eat it I’m afraid!)

For Cooking: Cook in coconut oil (low to high heat), Macadamia oil (high heat), olive oil (low temperatures) or use red palm oil (all temps) or use lard or butter.

Any other so-called vegetable oils other than those mentioned above should be banned from your table, kitchen & pantry for good – your good and the wellbeing of your family.

FAT SUMMARY:

  • The best way to get good fats into your diet is through lean protein sources such as beef, & lamb or through marine sources like oily fish – salmon sardines etc.
  • Next is to use the right oils to cook with (see above)
  • Butter & Ghee
  • A Fish Oil or Krill supplement
  • Avocado

Vegetables.  Eat these third at every meal for the next 30 days. Yep last but for fruit ( that only if you are still hungry)

You should be about 80% full after your protein & fats so now fill up the remaining 20% with veges.

Some folk will say avoid starchy vegetables like potato – ignore this have some if you want just don’t fry them because this makes them lethal in terms of adding fat.

The best path to follow is to eat as many colours of vegetables as you can every day and at every meal.

The red of capsicum, the yellow of squash, the white of cauliflower, the green of rocket, the orange of carrots – there is a lot of colour to try & fit in!!

Just finish each meal by eating a variety of vegetables until you are no longer hungry. The colour idea is important as this will ensure that you get the widest range of micronutrients

Colourful eating is key…

possible.

You can do by having a stir-fry, steamed veggies, raw veggies, a big salad, a casserole, or roasted in the oven. Have whatever makes you happy.

Use spices and olive oil and a touch of vinegar or soy for flavour.

Remember variety is the key – don’t get stuck with the same 2 or 3 vegetables – you’ll get bored and you won’t get as much nutrition as you could.

Still hungry? – then have some fruit but aim for berries or apples or pears.

What about bread you ask?

Ancestrally, we didn’t eat any processed carbs, or even a carb heavy diet, and when / if we did we didn’t eat a lot of it.

None of these…

It is only in modern times that processed carbs have become a staple of out diet.

The longer you go without processed carbs the quicker your body changes its composition and the sooner you get over any carb addiction. You’re trying to lose fat and rebalance your body.

Grain based foods are all processed and all are increasingly indicated as being related to causing various inflammatory diseases (not to mention that good old white bread spikes your blood sugar as fast & as high as table sugar…)

So no grains, no cereals and no legumes for the 30 days and you’ll lose your desire for them long before then). While legumes are a “lessor evil” when compared to grains and gluten, the anti-nutrient content (lignans, lectin, saponins) plus the carb content rules them out. All cereals and all grains out means no quinoa, no oats, no brown rice, even if those grains are also lower on the scale of anti-nutrients.

If you’re fat and need to lose some you’ve probably got at least a touch of an insulin

What you’re after – less fat, more lean…

resistance problem and some the need for some metabolic reconditioning.

Drink tea green is good hot or cold), coffee, diet sodas and lots of water. That’s it no fruit juices, no vege juices, no Coca-Cola, no chocolate shakes – just sensible low calorie beverages.

Eat the way that I‘ve suggested above and prepare to be amazed as your body changes and you feel better, stronger and leaner. The nutrient density of a meal like this is incredible.

Here is the main guideline again.

Make every meal a healthy sequence of Protein, Good Fats, and Veggies in that order.

Add in Omega 3 supplements, a multivitamin (to ensure that you get all of your micronutrients) & Vitamin D3 (if you’re not getting much sun). Anything else is surplus, and purely elective.

Try to eat only when you’re hungry but make sure you get your protein target hit every day!!

Exercise: Move more. Lift heavy weights 2- 4 times a week, for never more than an hour

Get outside & move more…

at a time. Walk often. Stand more, sit less. Do some sprints every now and again. Remember HIIT. Jump rope, ride a bike – have fun!!

Get outdoors more often for Sun and fresh air and just for not being indoors so much!

Chase down 8 or 9 or even 10 hours of sleep a night. Sleep helps you lose fat. Lack of sleep helps make & keep you fat!

Do this for 30 days and be amazed.

See you next week.…

 

Fat Loss & Alcohol – It’s not all bad news…

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Welcome back!!

This week I want to take a look at the effect of alcohol on fat loss. A couple of friends of

This Decorated Soldier no doubt enjoys a brew or two but he earns it!!

mine (both good Personal trainers) were discussing this and disagreed on the path to foloow with alcohol. One was for totally foregoing it until you had achieved your desired fat loss and the other felt that if you factored it in as something that you did not overindulge in then it was no probelm.

This made me stop and think. Pretty much I have been in the first camp – alcohol = no fat loss or at least a severe blunting of progress but…

I’m a strong advocate of a balanced lifestyle and very anti-processed foods. I am pro-exercise and protein and veges and fruit and damn it I like a drink. Or two…

Don’t get me wrong societally alcohol has been a disaster for many cultures and has caused and continues to cause untold heartbreak for many people. Yet consumed responsibly alcohol is more than a socilal lubricant it can have health benefits. in fact I  believe that alcohol can be part of a flifestyle that is healthy and active.

Okay but where does this leave the fat loss?

What you need to know about Alcohol and Fat Loss –
Alcohol is a calorie laden poison.

No getting around the fact that this is so…
Alcohol and calories

Scary isn’t it…

If you are seriously working to lose body fat then you know that you have to ingest fewer calories than you use as a major component of achieving this.

o you need to consider the calorific load of what you eat and drink and the way that what you out in your mouth is processed by your body.

Alcohol carries a seven calorie per gram load, fat contain 9 and protein and carbohydrates contain only four.
This puts alcohol right up there in terms of the potential to add calories….

But that’s not the problem – the problem lies in the foods we eat with the alcohol, and the liquids we mix it with..
If you like Bundy & Coke, or a Gin & Tonic or a scotch & Dry you are likely to be adding over 300 calories per serving to your intake. Per serving. Have 3 ot 4 and you’ve come close to taking in the equivalent of half a pound of fat calories-wise.

It’s even worse for cocktails.. But okay you use Coke Zero and the diet versions of mixers – problem fixed – right? Wrong!

When we have a drink or two we tend to be drawn towards unhealthy foods like potato

Alcohol ignites cravings for the wrong foods…

crisps, fat laden burgers or pizza – basically alcohol stimulates our cravings for the wrong type of food and these cravings are powerful things to ignore…So we drink to be sociable varous flavour receptors get switched on, some hormones are stimulated and suddenly you find yourself eating deepfried Mars bars or tacosor corn chips!

BOOM! Becuase of the add on effect of alcohol you’ve just eaten an entire day’s worth of calories (and from poor food choices! in one evening…Guess what that does to you fat loss…

But, I hear you say,  I don’t drink spirits or mixed drinks I have a brew, a beer or a wine.

More bad news – beer is associated with the release of the belly fat storing hoemone cortisol (a beer gut is often just that – a belly caused by cortisol stimulated from too much

The classic beer gut…

ale…) The calories in a glass of beer can run from under 80 to over 230 depending upon type…Red wine (in a 5 ounce serving) has about 125 calories, white wine (depending upon type – the sweeter the higher the calories) has about 100 calories and sparkling & fortified wines get into the high 100s. A nip of Scotch has 54 calories.

Processing Alcohol

I’ll go with the short version here.. Alcohol is processed in the liver, and in large quantities it places a big strain on this organ. It is viewed & treated by our bodies as a poison. It is not a coincidence that alcoholics suffer from a range of liver diseases as their alcoholism progresses.

Thing is whilst we are young our liver can handle alcohol reasonably well but over time – especially if we binge drink (try to fit a week’s worth of alcohol into one night) or drinks lots – our liver processes the alcohol less & less well. It is NOT a case of the older liver taking more time to do the same job – it just can’t do the same job. period.

But here’s the kicker becuase our body views alcohol as a poison it pretty much halts

Too much for way too long…

everything else it does to process the alcohol. A lot of fat is broken down in the lvier – this stops..the entire fat burning process throughout your body stops until the ‘poison’ has been dealt with.

The processing of alcohol require large quantities of the B group vitamins so these get depleted.and becuase they are involved in the burning of fat your fat loss gets hit from this direction as well.

Recovery and Alcohol
Alcohol – again in large amounts – will hinder how well and how fast your body recovers from your work out program. Again it is liver related but also endocrine system as well – simply processing alcohol taxes your system and depletes it. It also stops protein synthesis. remember muscles grow after exercise in response to stress. In order to repair & grow after the level of intensity required to burn fat your body neeeds to process protein.

You won’t be doing this after a big night out..

Big night out = long time before you can recovery from exercise. Which of course puts you behind in terms of momentum and… you know the rest

So just don’t drink – right?

Wrong. nearly all of the negative effects of alcohol come from having too much and from having the wrong types. Red wines at the rate of no m ore than a glass or a night will not only keep you sociable but the calorie load they’ll add, the cravings they’ll trigger and the processing they’ll require will all be much less than spirits, cocktails, beers, fortified wines or even sparkling ones. The less sweet varieties of white wine are also reletivel low impact if drunk responsibly – not as good for your health as red but still better than most of the rest. A Rose` is a good compromise.

Again though – moderation is the key. Even at 2 glasses a night your liver will have to work, your fat burning and protein synthesis will stop and you’ll need to keep an eye on your vitamn B levels. Of course if you are eating the high lean protein, high unprocessed carb and low grain diet espoused here with littl or no sugar, transfats or HFCS then the effect on your health & fat burning will be even less.

If you want rapid results in terms of fat loss then don’t drink any alcohol until you get to

All good sources if B group – but a supplement won’t hurt…

your desired level. If you want to get there but remain sociable and are not in a burning hurry then a few drinks durng the week of a decent red won’t set you back too far…

An occasional drink won’t keep you fat, but be careful heart friendly or not, antioxidant rich or not (red wine at least) if you are taking in more than a sparse couple of alcoholic drinks then you will definately hit your progress on the head. Hard…
Personally, here in Oz with Winter upon us (such as it is) I think that I might still have a glass or two of red with a roast dinner; but overall look at foregoing the alcohol until daylight savings rolls around again for Summer – that way maybe I’ll keep the winter belly under easier control…

How about you?

See you next week….

 

The 4 Fat Loss Principles You Must Know to Drop Fat Fast…

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Welcome back!!

In the spirit of last week’s list of 5, here are 4 principles that you have to apply if you are going to see fast fat loss results…

Principle the First – You gotta keep your metabolism humming along…
Cutting calories like most folk do when they decide to lose weight (ie Fat) results in a dive in the various processes that make up your moverall metabolic rate.

You eat less so you lose out on the thermic effect of food. Eating lessbecause most folk

Keep your metabolism humming – but don’t do crap like this!!

severley cut their calories back means you have less energy and so you move less and exercising becomes difficult.

Your basal metabolic rate drops off as you body enters into good ole starvation mode.

These things then combine to deliver a thump to your hormones.

Leptin (the ‘okay we’re full stop eating’ hormone) levels fall off a clif in as little as a week of moderate calorie reduction.

So you fix this by cycling your calories or even easier if you are going low carb then you must make sure that you a ‘Cheat day’ – the trick here though is to eat with some sense –

Eaten intelligently even pizza can help you lose fat…

don’t gorge and overfeed, just allow yourself to have some processed carbs one day a week if you are on a serious drop fat fast diet. ne day of ‘spiking’ your carb intake will reset your leptin levels to pretty much normal so you can cut calories for ht efollowing week and then reset again with a ‘cheat day’ and so on…

This strategy works best if you workout hard the day before your cheat day. here is a program from renowned training Expert Craig Ballantyne that you can use:

Do a minium of 3 rounds and try for 5 if possible.

Rest 15 seconds between exercises and 1 minute at the end of the circuit.

Do as many repetitions as possible in the given time.

Make sure to do a bodyweight warm-up of squats, lunges, and
pushups before this circuit (2 sets of 8-12 reps each).

1) Lunge Jumps – 20 seconds
2) Pullup or Bodyweight Row – 30 seconds
3) Spiderman Pushup – 30 seconds
4) KB Swing – 30 seconds
5) Walking Prisoner Lunge – 30 seconds
6) Cross-Body Mountain Climber – 30 seconds
7) KB Goblet Squat – 30 seconds

Lunges – work!!

By doing this you deplete your body’s store of glycogen and when you cheat the next day these stores get refilled so the extra carbs not only reset your leptin they don’t 9unless you are foolish) create a calorie overwhelm that results in fat loss. In fact doing this can help predispose your body to burn fat as preferred fuel…

Principle the Second – You gotta cut calories a lot if you want fast fat loss…

You’ve read it here before a pound of fat is 3500 calories (closer to 7200 for a kilo) and the only way that you get your body to shift those pounds / kilos is for you to eat less so your body burns more…

Of course there is more to it than just eating less – what you eat, how often and and so on all has an effect but the base line info to grab onto here is that you have to create a strong energy deficit for fat loss to occur.

Which would you rather be carrying around…

Dropping 5 kilos (about 11 pounds) of fat equates to a energy deficit of around 38,000 calories..

if you’re hooked on thinking in terms of weight loss rather than fat loss then you need to understand that a pure fat loss of 5 kilos probably means a total weight loss of 7.5 to 10 kilos becuase of fluid loss that comes along with dropping weight.

Principle the Third:  You gotta use both DIET & Exercise to achieve your fat loss.

  I’ve said it before – you can’t out train a bad diet and you can’t lose fat unless you get a number of things working together.

Forstly – take as many of the processed, then the the starchy processed carbs out of your diet as possible. Replace these with loads more vegetables, lean protein and fruit.

Step up your exercise and use HIIT protcols to get your metabolism revved up. Lift heavy weights at leat once a week to keep your muscle mass intact 9if not increase it!0 and then use cheat days to keep your homones on your side.

Is there more to it than this? Yep – but just do the above and you’ll get results better than 80% of the folk who try to lose ‘weight’…

Principle the Fourth:  You gotta keep the muscle you’ve already got… 

I mentioned this above but it is worth locking down on its own.

Muscle is more metabolically active than fat. The more you have the faster your basal

Lift heavy once or twice a week to hold onto fat burning muscle mass…

(resting) metabolism is and the more calories that you burn at rest. Likewise when you exercise if you have muscle your body will burn more calories more quickly than if you were fatter with less muscle.

Most people lose muscle when they diet becuase once your body goes into starvation mode it tries to protect fat stores and turns to breaking down muscle to supplement your energy needs. But you can stp this. Dead. How? Lift heavy weights. It has been shown in a number of studies that lifting heavy weights once or twice a week makes your body preserve if not add to) your muscle mass and gets it to burn more fat – even if you are in starvation mode due to calorie cuts.

Well there you have it – 4 principles to follow for rapid fat loss.

See you next week.

Top 5 food rules for fat loss

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Welcome Back!!

Tear up the processed carbs!!

Short & sharp this week – how to get on track to shed kilos of body fat with these diet rules.

If you are following a program of challenging work outs then  following these five food tips consistently will have you dropping the bodyfat kilos quicklly and get you feeling like a Million Bucks!! Plus you’ll LBN**

1 Cut Your Calories

Half a kilo of fat (about 1.25 lbs) is 3500 calories – so although the process is NOT as simple as counting calories the inescapable truth is that you have to cut calories, create some sort of energy deficit so that you’ll lose fat.

So to lose fat, you have to gradually decrease your calories by eating less and cutting out fat depositing foods like processed carbs – yep bread, pasta, cakes, cookies, biscuits, most foods from a box these are the real culprits when it cpmes to putting on nd keeping on the fat.

2 Increase your Protein

To speed up your metabolism you have to increase your lean body mass – specifically your

Hard to beat – BBQ’s Chicken and fresh salad…

muscles. in order to support the growth and thr maintenace of muscle tissue you have to increase your protein intake.

This is a good thing as eating protein increased the thermic effect of food (you need to burn more calories to process protein than fat or carbs0 and that eating more protein leaves you feeling fuller for ;opnger meaning that you eat less (see #1 above!)

In other words, eat more lean meat, chicken, fish or eggs.- whatever lean protein source you choose. These foods help speed up your metabolism, keep you feeling full and provide important amino acids for body repair and hormone production.

3 Choose your carbs wisely

Carbs are not and never have been the enemy. Well the right types of carbs that is – vegetables and fruits are the right kinds of carbs to have – they promote fullness, provide fibre, do not cause fat storing insulin spikes,  and more importantly a host of vitamins, minerals, co-factors and phytonutrients and flavonals AND anti-oxidants. In other words as close to unprocessed as possible is the way to go. (NB frozen fruits & vegetables are just

The best source of carbs – forget the grain based, processed ones!!

fine to have – they may lose a litle vitamin C in the freezing process but have been shown to have the same if not higher nutrient content of fresh Fruit & vegetables!)

So which carbs are the one to avoid? Simple pretty much any carb that is grain based. So if it is baked or comes out of a box avoid it. Avoid heavily sugared foods and especially soft drinks / sodas.

In other words, eat less sugar and starches, such as processed grains. Eating too much of these foods can wreak havoc on your bloodstream, increasing the hormones – especially insulin –  that lead to fat gain.

4 Dose Up on Your Veges

Replacing processed, grain based carbs in order to get healthier and to lose fat is pretty challenging – grains are cheap to grow and have for over a century provided the big food companies with a way to create low cost products with a high sales value. We hav,e in a nutshell been brainwashed to view bread  biscuits, cake and cannolis are healthy or at least a part of a healthy diet.

You look like this if you get off the processed carb roundabout!!

If you are serious about re-conditioning your metabolism then you need tp support your body while you wean it off the sugar laden, infalammation causing processed carbs that you’ve been eating most of your life.

The way to do this is to increase your intake of vegetables and decrease the processed carbs. You’ll get more fibre, more nutrients and fell a lot better for it.

5 Tips to Boost our Metabolism

To support your metabolism, gradually replace bad fats with healthy fats. Adding things like olive oil, avocados, nuts, seeds and fish oils to your diet will help speed up your metabolism and lose bodyfat.

There you go – move more, eat less processed carbs and lose that fat.

**LBN = Look Better Naked

See you next week

4 Ways to Speed Up a “Slow” Metabolism

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Welcome back!

How my friend wants to go back to looking like…

I was talking a friend of mine the other day who is trying, to lose weight. (Long term readers will know that I consider this ‘wrong thinking’ we should be focussed on losing fat, not weight…)

The amount of weight in question is only 7 kilos (about 15lbs) so my friend is not obese yet she has been struggling with this same 7 kilos for years now…losing most if not all of them only to have them come back often with extra  ‘friends’…I’m sure that this sounds familar to many of you – it was certainly my experience in the past.(For my story and why this happens to so many of us sign up for the free report at the top right of this page)

You know the situation Lose 5kg.  Gain 4. Lose that 4.  Gain 6. And so on.

From our chat it was obvious that this pattern had been repeating over & over since her early 20’s. Having 3 kids in her late 20’s may have made it a bit worse, but nonetheless this weight has become a decade long issue. Her husband, a big athletic ex-kickboxer has also been fighting the same fight since he hit his late 30’s. This is not just a female or male only issue – we all want to look and feel healthy and the older we get the harder it becomes to get into and then stay in shape.

This is because our metabolism becomes de-conditioned. It is just not a matter of it slowing down – it actually becomes less efficient in a whole lot of areas all of which impact our health & well being.

This how we want see ourselves – lean & fit…

Now my friend & her husband are example so this. They get in shape about once a year through an all out campaign of huge exercise increase and dietary restriction. They drop weight (though not necessarily fat) look slimmer for a period of time and then the slow (or not so slow) weight regain happens and they end up being the same size as before if not larger. Even worse it takes more & more effort to get into shape each year and once there they are staying ‘slim’ for shorter & shorter periods of time.

Accepting a future of becoming ‘comfortably chubby’ is on the cards as far as they are concerned…My friend is concerned about this and wanted to know how she can speed up a slowing metabolism.

So how do you speed up a “de-conditioned” metabolism?

The bigger you are the faster your metabolism will be – this is simple fact. However if you took 2 people the same size and weight – the one with the lower body fat would have the faster metabolism and the easier time of it when it came to losing fat and getting healthier.

Why? Well because muscle – lean tissue – does increase metabolism more than fat, so less fat and more lean tissue keeps your metabolism running faster. A faster metabolism burns more calories and this means decreased fat.

Build muscle. The more muscle you have the faster you metabolism, the lower your body

Lift weigths, move more – get your metabolism reconditioned…

fat and the better you look naked – pretty good reasons to strive to get more lean tissue onto your frame don’t you think!!??

Muscle is more metabolically active at rest and when moving. Now some folk will tell you not to get too excited about this because for every 1 lb (500 grams) of muscle, research shows its only about a 9-15 calorie/day increase in metabolism. But as you know losing fat and looking better and being healthier is a game of synergy  and incremental gains What you eat, when you eat, how often you eat; when & how you work out, how much sleep you get, your stress level, your DN – all of these things work synergystically for or against your fat loss. So in the scheme of things burning an extra 9 or so calories a day at rest is not exciting BUT fat loss is a game of increments not huge differences!! It all adds up – so while 1 lb of muscle doesn’t offer a huge calorie benefit, adding on more muscle than that does.  Plus working out to gain that muscle has a ton of other health related benefits – including better calorie burn! If you work out properly you can be burining extra calories for hours afterwards.

Eat More.Unprocessed carbs and protein that it. It sounds contradictory but the other way

Eat more often & eat more protein with unprocessed foods…

to speed metabolism is to eat more. I have spoken about the Thermic Effect if Food (TEF) here: Metabolism-what-it-is-how-you-can-make-it-work-for-you-part-6

When you eat, especially if you eat protein and fibrous vegetables & fruits, your body has to use energy to digest & process your meal so your overall metabolism increases.  Protein, of course, does more to boost metabolism than either carbs (even unprocessed ones) or fats because it takes more energy to break it down & process it.  So make sure each meal includes a little protein — fish, eggs, chicken, turkey – skip the nuts, beans or soy their protein is not complete (they have to be eaten with foods containing a complete amino acid profile – ie flesh based protein) are less bio-available and does not have a) the same thermogenic affect and b) confer fewer health benefits.

Eat breakfast.  Eating a good solid breakfast after what is effectively at least an 8 hour

A family favourite at our place….

fast gets the metabolism rolling in quick order. Again though it is protein and fibrous carbs that do the trick. That oatmeal, boxed muesli or buttered toast are marginally better than skipping breakfast entirely but only just.and is likely to be causing a lot of other less desirable health effects. (Mmm – insulin spikes for breakfast just what I need to stay fat!!)

The best breakfast to rev up your metabolism is eggs with spinach, mushroom, onions and capsicum as an omelette, along with some cheese, some fruit and a small handful of nuts. (Colby cheese and pear is one of Nature’s great duos – right up there with tomato and onion, bacon & eggs, cauliflower and cheese sauce..)

There’s now some solid data suggesting eating eggs in the morning boosts weight loss above and beyond choosing toast, cereal or a bagel.

Do HIIT for your workouts. I’ve said it before (Interval-training-the-1-not-so-secret-fat-loss-tool) – long, slow cardio sessions do next  to nothing in terms of creating a post

When you’re fit enough sprints are a great HIIT workout…

exercise calorie burn (EPOC) when the workout is done.  On the other hand, shorter, harder intensity exercise bouts cause a much longer increase in metabolism, even hours after your workout is finished.  In fact, a number of studies show s much as a 14+ hour increase in metabolism after a high intensity bout of exercise.  This boost burned an additional 190 calories!  Again it is a game of increments so this will add up.

There you have it — 4 simple strategies to boost a slowing metabolism. If you’d like to know more about speeding up and reconditioning your metabolism go here and read the series.  How-you-can-fix-a-broken-metabolism-part-1

PS My firend & her husband have adopted the above and in addition have gone ‘paleo’. They’ve never looked or felt better. I’ll write about Paleo soon.

See you next week – be well.

 

 

Top 7 Tricks To Keep The Weight Off For Good…

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Welcome Back!!

You probably already know that your lifestyle is the biggest reason behind why most folks can’t keep their body fat at lean levels. It is the reason why after dieting & working out or plain starrving to reach a particular weight (instead of focussing on how you look and your clothes fit…) getting there on the scales and then within weeks often end up back where they started… or even worse – fatter than before!  The reality is we tend to live unhealthy and fat storing lifestyles is because they are EASILY ACCESSIBLE to us.

Hungry?  There’s a fast food restaurant within a few blocks from almost wherever you are.

Thirsty? It’s soooo easy to crack open a can of sugar laden soda or chemical filled diet soda, isn’t it?

Exercise?  It’s too easy to just hop on the treadmill for a few minutes and casually jog or walk while watching TV and say to yourself, “Now I’ve gotten in some exercise”.

BUT HERE’S THE TRUTH:

Eating better, exercising better and living better isn’t much harder…it’s just that we have to figure out ways to make it just as accessible…just as easy as living in an unhealthy manner.

So here are my top 7 tricks to make living leaner and stronger a true lifestyle, so you keep that weight off forever:

1. Drink water from a water bottle, not from a glass. It may seem like a little thing, but simply switching to a 32oz. water bottle and refilling it 3 times (rather than having to refill an 8 oz. glass 10 times a day) can make a HUGE difference in how much water you drink. 

2. Use pre-cut fruits and veggies. How many times have you chosen to eat something pre-packaged over a fruit or vegetable because it was just easier?  Getting your fruits and veggies in ‘ready to eat’ form will have you getting more of the micronutrients that your body thrives faster than ever.

3. Keep your healthiest foods at eye level. Whether in your cupboard or fridge, what you see first is typically what you’re going to eat, especially at snack times.  Don’t hide the fruits and veggies in a drawer…keep ‘em in front of your face, where they’ll be saying, “eat me!”.

4. Keep junk food out of your house. While it is not a good idea to completely cut out some of your favorite treats, keeping them out of your house is!  If it’s constantly in plain sight, guess what, you’re going to eat it! A wise man once said it’s much easier to control your environment than to control yourself.  Keep your special treats for when you’re enjoying a night out every so often.

5. Have ‘go-to’ meals and snacks. You know that eating smaller meals every 3 hours or so is the best way to keep your metabolism going and preventing over eating…but make that process easy and accessible by having a list of 2 or 3 go-to meals or snacks you can prepare in 5 minutes or less. One of my favorites is a quick whey proten shake made with frozen mixed berries using a stick mixer…

6. Work out in the morning…before you do anything else. While it’s usually best to work out when you have the most energy, many people find that their day just gets away from them and they end up with ‘no time’ to work out.  Wake up a bit earlier and knock out 25 or 30 minutes of HIIT training…now you can get on with your day without having to worry when you’re going to find time to work out. Even better your brain will be in top gear and you’ll energised and terrific!

7. Get a home gym setup now. This is another way to make it easier on yourself…and you don’t have to try to recreate a commercial gym for it to be efffective. All that you need is some basic strength training equipment. This means a skipping rope, a set of dumbbells or a couple of kettle bells, a chin up bar and if you can a weighted vest. This way you can ad some extra resistance and variety to bodyweight exercises.

Alright, I know these 7 tricks will make living the lean body lifestyle EASILY ACCESSIBLE to you starting today, and every day!

Remember, it doesn’t have to be difficult to live the way you want to live…it’s quite simple once you make the easy choices the right ones.

How many of these tricks are you following right now?  Do you have any others to share with us? Post ‘em in the comments below…

HIIT, Burst & ignore the CDC’s exercise guidelines!!

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Welcome back!

Just how much time to exercise do you need to shift weight and to recondition your metabolism?

The Centre for Disease Control in the USA recommends a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate intensity cardio exercise per week for 18 – 64 year old adults in its Physical

Got 5 hours a week to spend on this??

Activity Guidelines for Americans1. On top of that, to the CDC’s credit, they also recommend at least 2 sessions per week of ‘muscle strengthening’ exercise. And that’s if you are not overweight.

This recommendation ups to 300 minutes+ of cardio and then more resistance training if you want to lose fat. That’s 5 hours a week of cardio and likely another 3 or 3 of resistance training. Say 8 hours a week. Out of the 168 hours a week that we have available to us 8 hours doesn’t seem like a lot – but let’s look a little more closely.

  • Sleep (@ 8 Hours per night) = 56 hours
  • Food preparation, eating & clean up = 15 hours
  • Hourly commute to work = 10 hours
  • Work itself = 45 hours (8 hours work + 1 Hour lunch & breaks per day, 5 days)
  • Showering, laundry, household chores = 16 hours
  • Exercise (as per the CDC) = 8 hours

That leaves 18 hours a week for shopping, TV, recreation, reading, loving etc etc or a little over 2.5 hours a day.

Real Adults have real world responsibilities…

Really for most of us finding 8 hours a week just for exercise (this does not mean sport or recreation just fat loss focussed, fitness maintaining exercise) is not really feasible for the average adult with adult responsibilities.

In a word the CDC’s recommendations are not real life practical.

Now if fat loss is an imperative in your life, if it is deeply held goal then you will find the time – but such an effort is unlikely to become a regular habit for most of us. We’ll do it short term to drop fat for an event like a wedding or a reunion, but sustaining this type of effort is just not realistic for most of us.

And let’s be honest if we were to follow these guidelines who wants  to spend 5 or so hours a week on an exercise bike, stair climber, treadmill or elliptical trainer?

Just ain’t going to happen, no where no how.

 To make matters even worse it appears that everything we have been told for years about exercising especially for fat loss has been wrong.

It is not about duration, nor about finding some mythical fat burning zone – studies from conservative sources like Harvard University indicate that the key to effective exercise for fat loss and overall health is all about intensity.

Here are some guidelines for judging your level of intensity using a PRE(perceived rate of

Stair runs – now that’s intense!!

exertion) protocol:

  • Level 1 = Warm-Up or Slow Pace
  • Level 2 = Medium (you can talk easily
  • Level 3 = Medium-High (you can still talk)
  • Level 4 = High (Talking is in short bursts
  • Level 5 = Hard as you can go (Talking is not possible)

These levels are based on your current level of personal condition.

The available data shows that the long, slow, constant-speed aerobics that we’ve all been inculcated to believe are so good for us is exactly the wrong thing for us to be doing.

 In fact I’d go as far as to say doing continuous cardio is a waste of time.

 Why?

Hmm…Cortisol and low intensity perhaps??!!

Long slow constant cardio doesn’t get your metabolism running faster, nor does it build your fat burning capability or even really condition your cardiovascular and respiratory systems. It does increase cortisol release – which is not a good thing as high cortisol is associated with belly fat accumulation.

Look I’ve posted before on the benefits to your metabolism (both reconditioning and improving), your fat loss and your overall health of HIIT (high intensity interval training).

There has been a heap of research showing that high intensity interval training is better than traditional, long, slow aerobics if you want to:

  • Recondition your metabolism
  • protect your heart
  • burn body fat
  • build lean muscle
  • boost your overall metabolism
  • reduce insulin resistance
  • decrease cortisol levels
  • increase levels of HGH
  • increase your energy levels
  • improve your sleep patterns
  • Not waste time

You can get faster results in a shorter time period using HIIT. And that was where we

The results of HIIT (and okay maybe some help genetically…)

came in – 8 hours a week of exercise for so-so results when you could do HIIT style exercise for 12 – 20 minutes three times a week, add in a couple of 30 – 45 minute resistance training sessions and you you’ve got more time and better results. (in fact if you combined the 2 into what is called metabolic resistance training then you’d get all the benefits in under 80 minutes a week! – more on MT and how to design a program next week)

This is just not me speaking – here are some results from recent studies:

Harvard School of Public Health: A study of over 7,000 people found that the more intense the exertion, the lower the risk of heart disease.

Physical Activity Sciences Laboratory, Laval University, Ste-Foy, Quebec, Canada: Compared to treadmills and hour-long aerobics classes, HIIT helps you burn fat more efficiently and quickly.

Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada: Moderately active women (not on their backside all day but not running marathons either…) lost an impressive amount of fat doing just two weeks of HIIT.

School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: Young males who did HIIT / Burst Training substantially reduced their risk for type 2 diabetes.

Department of Kinesiology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada: For people with type 2 diabetes, HIIT Training can improve blood sugar levels and reduce risks for diabetes-related complications.

The next level of HIT is a thing called ‘Burst Training.’ Regular HIIT requires intense effort for fairly short periods of time interspersed with short rest periods. Now I have to go on record here and say that I think that Burst training is largely a marketing term– if you are

Either way – HIIT or Burst – this is time efficiant and fat burning to the max!!

hitting high levels of exertion in your HIIT training then you are already ‘Bursting.’

Why this term has come about is because I think that many people say they are doing HIIT when they are really only doing timed exercise. It’s Tabatas – most folk do 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off for 4 minutes and say they’ve done a Tabata.

Unless you worked so hard during those 4 minutes that you are lying on your back sucking air then you have NOT done Tabatas – you’ve done timed interval exercise which is nowhere near as challenging or stressful. Nor does it deliver the health benefits we are after in as short a period of time as true HIIT or Tabatas.

Make no mistake unless you are going ‘balls to the wall’ for short periods of time followed by short periods of rest then you are NOT performing HIIT or Burst training. You’re working out, likely getting some benefit but far less than if you go flat out.

Burst training involves short (20 – 60 second maximum) bursts at such a high intensity that the created oxygen demand is higher than your body can supply.

Think about doing sand dune sprints, prowler sprint pushes or where Rocky runs the Philadelphia stairs…

This is so much more time efficient than the CDC’s ‘moderate cardio’…

This ‘over demand’ for oxygen creates a high level of  metabolic “stress” in your body that it depletes your glycogen stores which requires your body to not only work harder to repay this ‘oxygen debt’ but means that it has to burn more fat.

The Health benefits of “burst training” are not dissimilar to that of HIIT and include…

  • Increased fat burning
  • Increased lean muscle mass
  • Improved cardiovascular health
  • Combined aerobic and anaerobic activity
  • Increased “feel-good” beta-endorphins
  • Increased human growth hormone (HGH)
  • Increased energy
  • Improved athletic performance
  • Reduced inflammation
  • Increased EPOC

If you really want to go for it then move to what is called “Threshold” intervals. These are insanely hard bursts of intense exercise that, unlike the shorter ‘burst’ style, last anywhere from 65 seconds all the way up to 2 or sometimes 3 minutes.

Now that is a HIIT and that will burn fat & recondition your metabolism like little else!

They are also so demanding physically & mentally that you can’t do this oftenwhich

Threshold training should leave you feeling like this…

means this training style should only be used on those days when you are feeling in touch with the Universe when a flow state is nigh and you want to up the ante a bit.

Few of us mortals can train this way on a regular basis – but if you can incorporate them once a week then:

1. Research shows that performing “Threshold” intervals is one of the best ways to accelerate glycogen depletion (which = faster fat loss).

2. Test subjects who regularly performed threshold intervals burned more fat when they performed steady state or higher intensity intervals.

In other words, using the Threshold system  develops your metabolism where it becomes more adept at burning fat in less time that either HIIT or Burst style training.

So forget what the politically correct exercise guidelines are – get HIITing, Bursting or jump over your Threshold!! This is how you can recondition your metabolism in record time, get leaner, get healthier and LBN.

See you next week – don’t forget to share this!!

1)      http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/everyone/guidelines/adults.html

How often should you really be eating?

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Welcome back

How often should we eat?

I came across an interesting study late last year, which looked at the effect of eating frequency on folk of ‘normal weight’, or who had lost fat and were maintaining that fat loss, or were ‘overweight’. The number of meals eaten in the day was essentially the same across the groups – the typical ‘3 squares’.

70 years old – how often does she eat?

However, for snacks it was different:

Overall, those of normal weight and those who had lost weight ate more snacks than those deemed overweight.

In other words, in this study, increased eating frequency was associated with lower weight.

The authors of this study make the conclusion that eating three meals a day with two snacks in between ‘may be important in weight loss maintenance.’

The suggestion from this study is that eating more frequent can help with fat loss and weight control. This may be the case but this study most certainly does not prove that. That’s because it’s epidemiological (ie based on self reporting and in the field not in controlled lab conditions) in nature, and can only tell us that increased frequency of eating is associated with lower weight.

The increased snacking may not have caused the lower weight. It might also be that fatter individuals are more likely to forgo snacks because they believe this will help them lose weight or reduce the risk of weight gain.

People who look like this are actually prone to eat less often…

However, having said that, I find personally, that some well-timed snacking on the right sort of food  can make a huge difference to someone’s attempts to eat healthily and lose fat or maintain a healthy weight.

For some people the time that passes between meals is just too long.

This is usually more of a problem between lunch and dinner than between breakfast and lunch. Some people can eat lunch at 12.30 and not be able to sit down to their evening meal until 8.00 or later. By this time hunger can be at such a level that it makes healthy eating almost impossible, and junk fod a certainty if not a necessity!!

Starchy carbs such as bread, pasta and rice as well a processed ‘no preparation required’ foods are normally the order of the day at this point, and are often preceded by some unhealthy snacking (e.g. biscuits / sweets / potato chips) and then topped of with a none-too-healthy dessert.

Also, out of control hunger can drive people to drink more alcohol than they normally would.

The other effect of out of control hunger and too much alcohol…

All of these issues can usually be avoided by having a suitable snack  in the late afternoon. The snack of choice? For me it is nuts or if you are allergic to nuts – an apple with a slice of cheddar cheese.

Because both of these snacks are reasonably protein-rich and give a strong feeling of fullness they suppress your appetite in contrast to fruit alone which tends not to do the job nearly as well. And all of the above are vastly superior to the afternoon sugar rush from a chocolate bar or cake…

Snacking between meals is not a ‘must-do’ – if you can go from meal to meal without your cravings for food or your appetite getting out of control then snacking is unlikely to add much to your fat loss efforts.

However a lot of reasearch shows (and I am a proponent of this thinking myself) that eating 5 or 6 times a day with protein at every meal keeps your metabolism running faster, your insulin release lower and overall assists in fat loss.

Also, keep in mind  that how often you eat on each day can vary according to whether or not you’ve been working out, how hard you’ve worked out, the temperature, your sleep quality and the stress you may or may not beunder in your life.

If you exercise like this – you’ll eat more food but perhaps not more often…

Appetite like much else is variable. – some days you may just need more food or more frequent eating than others.

So for most people this means eating 2 or 3 meals a day with 1-2 snacks a day.

There are no hard and fast rules.

The important thing is to eat enough of the right foods, frequently enough to avoid getting ravenously hungry, and to eat the right foods that support your fat loss efforts. This means proteins and vegetables and fruits and nuts – low or unprocessed foods.

Eating like this is what makes healthy eating (and fat loss for that matter) easy and sustainable.

See you next week.

References:

1. Bachman JL, et al. Eating frequency is higher in weight loss maintainers and normal-weight individuals than in overweight individuals. J Am Diet Asso 2011;111(11):1730-1734

Six Rules to Use to Avoid Becoming Fat (& if You’re Fat these’ll help You Get Thin…)

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Welcome back – there are six rules to live by contained in this post.

Six rules that will keep the fat off, keep you lean and if you are fat already will help you re-condition your metabolism and get leaner and healthier.

Six rules that if you adopt them will improve your quality of life.

Six rules that if you pass them on to your family and your kids they all will live better, less disease prone lives.

Rule #1: Severely Limit Fructose in Your Diet

I’ve written before about the evils of fructose (http://bodyshapeshiftersonline.com/2011/10/01/fructose-but-not-glucose-knocks-your-metabolism-backwards/) and the evidence against this ghastly additive continues to rise.

You need to realise that we are programmed through evolution to desire sweet and salty foods. This is hardwired into us and what was once a survival mechanism has become an out of control craving. A hunger that food manufacturers use to their advantage.

HFCS – the worst form of sugar for your health & leanness!!

 

I’ve often said that you can’t out train a bad diet – that exercise alone, no matter how often or how hard, will keep you lean. It is your diet that makes the difference and it is the easiest thing to lose control of.

Simply put ant exercise you do can be undone just by ingesting fructose laden beverages and foods. Soft drinks / soda, fruit drinks and sports drinks – most if not all are full of fructose and make you fat. Vitamin Water for example has 33 grams of sugar in its regular sized bottle, a can of Coca Cola had 27.

The science is not in dispute (again click on & read the above article for the facts)

By now you should be used to reading the labels on any & all processed / packaged foods that you eat. If you don’t then when you start the amount of sugar in the food you routinely eat will shock you. Even worse because it is cheaper to manufacture & use much of this sugar is fructose.

Restricting the amount of fructose in your diet is vitally important for fat loss, lean maintenance and overall health.

There are numerous reasons for this but latch onto this one if no other: eating fat does not make you fat; eating excessive fructose does!

Right message wrong marketing!! Water is the best beverage…not soda.

Look at cans of soft drink / soda as you have been taught to view a chunk of fat and you would be on a truer road to wellness. (BTW the fat would be healthier for you!)

Fructose simultaneously promotes fat storage and maintenance by:

  • Impacting your Leptin levels resulting in reduced feeling of being full (satiety) so you stay hungry for longer and eat more. (for more on Leptin read this: http://bodyshapeshiftersonline.com/2011/08/20/metabolism-what-it-is-how-you-can-make-it-work-for-you-part-7/)
  • Excessive fructose actually enhances ghrelin release – the ‘keep eating I’m still hungry hormone’  (Glucose however does suppress ghrelin – see all sugars, like all calories are most definitely NOT equal!!)
  • Over time, excessive fructose contributes majorly to the development of insulin resistance.
  • It raises triglyceride levels significantly
  • It converts to fat more easily and readily than any other sugar.
  • Etc etc etc – do you need more reasons to avoid this additive?

Many health experts are now suggesting that we all strive to keep our daily fructose levels – including that from fruit – to under 25 grams per day. Aim for 15 conscious grams from fruit and try to have zero from other sources this way you’ll hit the 25 gram level easier.If you need to drop body fat then you need to aim for 15 grams total.

Rule # 2: Reduce Your Grain Carb Consumption

Like fructose there is an increasing amount of research coming out that says that grain based foods and carbs are bad for us and are another major player in the obesity epidemic.

Some of the common side effects associated with high grain based food intake are:

Excess body fat Depression Abdominal Bloating High blood pressure
Fatigue and frequent sleepiness Brain fogginess Low blood sugar High triglycerides

If you experience any of these symptoms, then the chances are very good that the excess grain carbohydrates in your diet are to blame.

No where near as healthy as we’ve been brought up to believe…

The main reason to cut down if not out grain based foods from your diet is that these foods convert easily into sugar and cause insulin spikes. A few slices of bread has the same effect on blood sugar levels as a Mars bar or two…

Insulin spikes eventually lead to the development of insulin resistance and more fat storage as well as Type II adult onset diabetes, obesity, heart disease and other chronic diseases.

So to be come healthier & leaner reducing your grain based carb consumption is a must!! This means cutting down or preferably OUT:

  • Breads and baked goods (ALL grains, organic ones aren’t any better)
  • Breakfast cereals (including oats & muesli)
  • Rice (white, brown & wild)
  • Pasta

Your body needs carbs but due to clever & insistent advertising most folk think carbs means grains & cereals when what we need to eat for our carbs are fruit and vegetables.

Our ability to store carb created sugars (as glycogen in the liver & muscles) is limited so excessive carbs, especially those readily converted to sugar get stored as fat.

Grains are at best left to be an optional & rare extra.

Rule # 3: Increase Your Healthy Fat Consumption

Fats are where its at in terms of fuelling your body.

Avoid these – check labels trans fats are everywhere in processed foods…

NOT TRANSFATS though – they are dangerous (see http://bodyshapeshiftersonline.com/2011/10/29/the-fat-in-your-diet-is-not-the-fat-on-your-hips-or-belly-or-thighs-or/) See below as well.

Carbs provide sugar and provide quick burning fuel when taken in the right amounts. But for endurance and satiety fat is what your needs.

Once you reduce your sugar load through avoiding grains & fructose  then you need to replace them with increased amounts healthy saturated fats. Fats provide you with high quality fuel your body needs and do not cause insulin spikes. However eating a lot of  margarine, or vegetable (more correctly seed) oils is asking for trouble as these types of trans fats have been linked to:

Cancers of various types Lower immune function: Obesity
Diabetes Hormonal problems – especially testosterone in males Heart disease: Trans fats can cause major clogging of your arteries

Healthy fats are:

The preferred fuel for your heart Useful antiviral agents (caprylic acid) Useful for lowering cholesterol levels (palmitic and stearic acids)
Carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, and required for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption, and for a host of other biological processes Effective as an anticaries, antiplaque and anti fungal agents (lauric acid) Modulators of genetic regulation and prevent cancer (butyric acid)

Good sources of healthy fats include:

Olives and Olive oil (for cold dishes) Coconuts, and coconut oil (for all types of cooking and baking) Butter, best made from raw grass-fed organic milk
Raw Nuts, such as, almonds or pecans Organic pastured egg yolks Avocados
Grass fed meats Palm oil Unheated organic nut oils

 

Healthy fats

Lastly let’s not forget Omega #’s. Best gotten from dep cold water fish like salmon, mackerel or sardines or from quality Krill supplements Omega 3’s are the closet thing to a winder drug in terms of fats yet discovered.

For more information about omega-3’s please read this Dr. Mercola article. I do not agree with everything he says but he is on the money more often then not!!

Rule # 4: Avoid All “Diet” Foods.

Diet anything is best avoided…

It turns out that artificial sweeteners may be linked to weight gain. This appears to be because the artificial sweeteners are less satisfying for your body and may actually increase cravings for the real thing.

If a food says it is diet & contains any of the artificial sweeteners avoid it unless you want stronger sugar cravings…

Rule # 5: Eat lots & lots of Vegetables

Two posts ago we looked at the incredible story of Dr Terry Wahl & how she reversed her MS by eating the equivalent of 6 heaped dinner plates of fruits & vegetables with lean protein everyday.

Her story and more research than you can jump prove that one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve your health and drop body fat is to increase your intake of fruits & vegetables.

These are real carbs with real benefits…

 

There is a lot of talk about the need for these to be organic and there is some truth in this, but if you are currently eating a typical western diet don’t worry about the source so much as worrying about getting more F&V into your diet. (BTW frozen F&V has been shown to have vitamin & mineral profiles as good as if not better than many ‘fresh’ F&V from supermarkets…)

Rule # 6: Exercise often and smartly.

Lift some weights, walk often, sprint once a week, play a sport, do some yoga but move more & sit less whilst challenging your muscles & cardiorespiratory system.

Go back though this blog for programs to use or check out Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence

KBs are a great exercise tool!!

Training programs (link to the right a and yes it is an affiliate one!)

The secret to increasing your fat loss is to include some high-intensity, short-burst-type exercises, two to three times per week. Several studies have confirmed that exercising in shorter bursts with rest periods in between burns more fat than exercising continuously for an entire session. Forget hours on exercise bikes or treadmills try metabolic resistance exercise.

Use a  variety of exercises  (weight training, cardio, stretching, etc.) Alternate difficult days with easier days Exercise outdoors, which helps maintain vitamin D levels and improve mood
Partake of Interval training sessions 2 x a week Lift weights 3 x a week Walk and run on softer, uneven terrain, such as sand, grass and dirt, possibly barefoot or in your Vibrams.
Vary your weight program every 30 or so days Ensure that you leave enough time for recovery after physical exertion Include Recreational activities, including dancing and sex

If you’re like most Western adults, especially those of us over 35 years old then you’re likely carrying at least a few too many pounds / kilos of excess body fat.

If you adopt these 6 rules you’ll lose them and quicker than you imagine.

Give these a go and let me know how you find them!!

See you next week.

Be well.