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Extreme Training: Real Fat Loss 4
Written by James Faber
June 25th, 2010
Categories: Diet and Nutrition, Extreme Training
Heavy Bags
It is Time to Put your Rear in Gear.
Heavy Bags
In the last article, Extreme Training: Real Fat Loss 3, we discussed the importance of Recognizing Patterns in your Eating and Exercising Habits as well as to access your Current Level of Motivation to Change.
You should also have a good sense of what has worked or not worked in your past attempts to build a Healthy and Lean Body.
Now it is time to get to work. The following Four Steps will get you moving in the right direction.
First: Make sure that you have a clear image of what you want to achieve. For example, lose 5 pounds of fat in 10 weeks while preserving your muscle mass. In order to achieve this goal your target should be to lose one-half pound of fat a week.
You should now have a pretty good idea how much you eat every day from your Food Journal.
The average number of calories you consume every day is not necessarily your base-line. It may in fact be an amount which leads to fat gain over time (this topic will be addressed later).
That’s OK for now. Let’s start with the assumption that your average caloric intake is your baseline. From there you will subtract the number of calories, per day, that it will take to reach your fist goal of losing one-half pound of fat a week. In this example, if you divide the number of days to your weekly goal from the calories in a pound of fat, 3,500, you will come up with 250 calories per day.
Your goal, simply stated, is to eliminate 250 calories from your diet every day for the next ten weeks.
Second: Write down your goal. It is important to have some way of measuring your process. For some people this can be as simple as keeping track of their waist measurements. If your waist is 35″ and all of your pants are size 32″ than tracking your waist size may be all you need to do to tell if you are moving in the right direction.
The scale can be a tricky thing. Especially if you are eating healthy and exercising. It is possible to lose fat and gain weight in the form of Muscle Mass. That is why the tape measure is more useful than the scale.
Keeping things simple, following the example above, your goal is to eat 250 less calories a day for the next ten weeks.
That’s it. Simple.
Third: Identify the Weak Areas in your Diet. Now, you can make this as complicated or as simple as you want. I believe that by keeping things simple you are much more likely to reach your goals. In other words, don’t make things more complicated than they need to be by measuring and weighing everything you eat. Also, don’t get caught up in the “optimal” ratio of carbs to protein to fat. Why? Because there is science out there which supports just about any kind of crazy diet you can imagine. And the crazier the diet, the less likely you will actually do it.
If your goal is to lose one-half pound of fat a week you need to eliminate approximately 250 calories a day from your diet. At this point forget about how many calories you burn up during exercise. Why? In very simple terms, the training you do should become a part of your lifestyle. If you exercise more – we will talk about that later – great. But for now, let’s keep focused on the first objective.
Now, look at your Food Journal and find the weak areas in your diet. These will be places or times where you eat more than you need to eat – or even want to eat. If you notice that you always eat a snack just before dinner of cheese and crackers, cut that snack out and eat something healthy, like a no-fat yogurt one hour before your usual snack.
Essentially you’re making trades in your current diet. The reason why you should try to eat the substitute snack – of lower calories of course – an hour earlier is to prevent you from craving your usual snack at the usual time. In order to achieve your goals it is critical to change your habits. In this case you may discover that some cravings can be held off by eating something healthy before the situation gets bad.
Another common area to make improvements to your diet starts with breakfast. Try eating a slightly larger breakfast by adding an egg or half a cup of cottage cheese. Follow this up by eating a smaller lunch. A small thing like eliminating french fries (or chips) from your lunch menu could, by itself, bring you to your fat loss goals.
The point is to go through your Food Journal and identify the targets that you will have no problem eliminating from your diet. Decide what to cut and what to substitute and go to work. Now.
If you have a passion for something that is really full of fat and sugar and are not willing to give it up, fine. What we are focused on now are total calories consumed. If you have to eat three cookies a day, cut out the equivalent number of calories from bread, or pasta – or, as is always a good method, just eat smaller portions of everything else that you eat.
The better alternative is to trade unhealthy snacks for healthy ones in smaller quantities. Remember, just because something is low fat does not mean it is low calorie. And the aim of this exercise is simply to cut 250 calories a day from your diet.
Four: Remember What You are Doing. The reason you are cutting calories is because you want to achieve a specific goal. If you can keep in mind the fact that the long term benefits of obtaining a healthy-lean body outweigh the short term pleasure a candy bar may provide, it will make things much easier to resist temptation.
The good news is, as you make healthier choices you will not crave the same things you do now. In other words, making healthy substitutions will, over time, become your new normal.
But again, without getting too complicated, the essential point to focus on at this time is to slightly reduce the number of calories you eat from your current baseline every day.
If you are exercising heavily you should add more protein to your diet to make sure that you are not losing muscle mass along with the fat. But, don’t dwell on this (this topic will be covered later in this series). A simple habit to start developing now is to have a protein bar or shake as close after your workout as possible.
Quick Review:
We are taking things slowly, step by step. And for now, this step is simply to begin eliminating a certain number of calories a day from your normal diet. In order to do this you will be required to Pay Attention to what you eat, Maintain Your Food Journal, and note where you have cut calories from. Take pride in your small victories. They add up, like calories, to big results!
Again, this Diet Journal information will be extremely valuable as we fine-tune your diet to make it as effective as possible.
In the next article we will discuss in greater detail some strategies which will help you reach your fat loss goals.
Disclaimer: This article is not medical advice but is intended for informational purposes only. If you have specific medical questions, issues or concerns, consult your health care provider. [Lawyers - got to love them.]
If you found this article helpful (or not) please leave a comment below.
Enjoy your training and your life!
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