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Extreme Training: Real Fat Loss 6
November 17th, 2010categories: Combat Conditioning, Diet and Nutrition, Extreme Training
Bag Work 1
Now the Fun Begins.
Now that you have a handle on your caloric intake through the use of your food journal, and have shifted some of your meals around, it is time to Get to Work (See prior articles, Extreme Training: Fat Loss 1, Extreme Training: Fat Loss 2, Extreme Training: Fat Loss 3, Extreme Training: Fat Loss 4, and Extreme Training:Fat Loss 5 ( if you need a refresher.)
Understanding and refining you diet are important steps to fat loss. Maintaining a Food Journal is also Critical.
But the best results you will obtain are going to come from performing the Optimal Extreme Training Program.
Once you have determined your base caloric needs – maintenance calories (what you can eat without gaining weight) it is time to bring Extreme Training into the picture.
Just like Diet, Exercise is a very Personal thing. You should enjoy what you do, be challenged by it, and feel a sense of accomplishment that it so motivating you are compelled to return to the gym and train with an even increased level of intensity.
So, at this juncture it is time to make some decisions concerning what physical activities you enjoy or would like to try and set up a Plan of Action.
Your Plan of Action should be based on the following 3 decisions:
1. How much time are you committed to spend training on a daily or weekly basis?
2. How committed are you to achieving your fat loss goals?
3. Are you Willing and Courageous enough to try different exercise forms or are you a creature of habit who likes to do the same thing over and over? Creatures of habit tend to be Prey, where the Courageous are the Predators!
Then, you need to Plan and Commit to a Specific and Sacred time for your Training. This time must be included in your schedule as a critical level appointment with your Destiny. If you are willing to constantly shift your training time, or worse, skip it altogether, you need to question how committed you really are to achieving your objectives. Without Commitment and Consistency Nothing will Happen and you will end up back where you started from, or as is more often the case, worse off.
As you think about the above questions, there are 4 Essential Factors to keep in mind:
1. The better your Condition Becomes the more Intensity you will need to apply to your Work in Order to get Continued and Lasting Results.
2. Variety is Essential. Your body adapts to new exercises quickly. This is why the Extreme Training Zone recommends changing your workout from day to day – never do the same exact workout twice.
3. Increase your Training Program and Intensity Slowly. You will be training for the Rest of Your Life. Why rush things (and risk injury or burnout)? Go at a pace that you are comfortable with and every week add a little more. Increasing Intensity does not always mean an increase in exercise time. It means Working Harder on a Consistent Basis.
4. Finally, over the years more and more research is proving (and all of my clients can attest to this) that “long slow fat burning pace” workouts are far less effective at burning fat than intense work performed for a shorter duration. The good news is with the right Extreme Program you do not need to spend hours on a treadmill or exercise bike (you would be better off lifting the treadmill and bike and walking around the block with them).
On the Extreme Training Zone Program you will Work Hard, Work Fast, constantly mix things up, Learn and Develop skills, such as balance and coordination that you didn’t know you had and develop a state of Functional Strength and Endurance (real world stuff) that will melt away not only unwanted fat, but Years as Well.
Sound to good to be true? It’s not. The very real cost is Commitment, a Spirit of Adventure, Consistent Hard Work, and an Intelligent Training Plan with Intelligent Fitness Professionals (like those found at the Extreme Training Zone at Peak Physique in Denver Co.) to help guide you along the path to Optimal Conditioning.
The next Installment of this Extreme Training: Real Fat Loss series will introduce you to the basic Extreme Training Concepts ( some of which have been discussed in some detail on this site in prior articles) and help you design an individual program that you need to develop Razor Sharp Muscles, Cuts, Strength, Endurance, Speed, and the Body of Your Dreams.
Have Fun in Your Training and Prepare to Embark on the Exciting Journey of an Extreme Life!
If you found this Article helpful or have questions, please leave a comment below. And don’t forget to sign up for the Extreme Training Newsletter that, while slow in evolution and production will become your source for Leading Edge Training Concepts, Exercises, Nutritional Research, Motivational Strategies, and No-Nonsense Fitness and Health information you need to know to life the Extreme Lifestyle.
Extreme Training: Real Fat Loss 5
July 9th, 2010categories: Diet and Nutrition, Extreme Training, Mental Muscle
Heavy Duty
Time to Move Things to the Next Level.
By now you should have a pretty good idea where you are with your eating habits. You should have made some decisions concerning the number of calories to cut from your diet on a daily basis as well as identify the weak points in your diet. If not, review the prior articles in this series.
In particular you should be aware of the Times during the Day when you have a difficult time sticking with your diet plan.
Armed with this information, it is time to Fine Tune your Fat Loss Plan.
Establish your baseline calorie intake amount. In other words, what number of calories do you have to eat in order to maintain the same weight? Maintaining your food journal is essential in this process. Keep in mind that fat loss is not an exact science and everybody responds differently to changes in diet. For example, some people gain a fair amount of water weight when they eat high salt foods. We are trying to get beyond these nuances and dial in the average number of calories you need to consume to stay at the same weight.
Once this is done, it is simply a matter of reducing the number of calories you take in to start to lose weight. However, our objective here is to lose fat, not muscle. This is where things get tricky.
First, you want to spread the calories you eat evenly across the day into five or six small meals.
There is a fair amount of information which suggests that eating smaller meals five or six times a day is beneficial for fat loss. Beware that there also advocates who say that eating one large meal a day is also the way to go. The problem is less one of science and more of psychology. What will you actually do? Eating one meal a day is hard to do.
That being said, it is easier to eat three meals a day – breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then add a snack during your weak times, or after a workout. This snack needs to be planned. For example. Breakfast at 8:00. Snack at 10:30. Lunch at 12:00. Snack at 3:00. Dinner at 6:00. Snack after workout at 8:00.
You can experiment by moving the number of calories involved in each meal to see if that makes it easier or harder to stick to your plan. For example, a larger snack at 10:30 may lead to a desire for a smaller lunch. Keep track of how you feel in your Diet Journal and see if you can come up with a plan that is actually easy to follow.
You can also experiment with the types of foods you eat at certain times and their effects. Fruit may make you hungry in the afternoon, but hit the spot in the morning. Rather than concern yourself with the types of calories – carbs, fats, or protein – at this point you are trying to find what works, in other words, what you will actually eat at the planned time.
Keep in mind that everybody is different. What works for one person may not work for another. That is why people have difficulty with intricate diets that tell you exactly what to eat and when. You may not want to eat a can of tuna for a snack, but are happy with a yogurt.
Second, you should make Healthy Substitutions as Possible. Eating before you get too hungry is a good tactic to employ in all cases. Often junk food is consumed because it is easy and accessible. If you have junk food in your house, throw it away. Eliminate the temptation from as many areas of your life as possible and eventually making the right choices will become easy. For example, Cheese Sticks make a nice snack. Something that makes you crave more and more of it, like chips or cookies, is not a good choice.
The reason why Junk Food is Bad, from our simple perspective here, is that it often leads to overeating. It is difficult to eat one potato chip. Once you eat one, you crave more. So, in a sense, the use of the term “junk food” here applies to foods that lead you to eat more than you should in order to maintain your daily caloric intake.
Remember, we are not focusing on what mix of carbs, protein and fat to eat. What matters at this stage is the number of calories you consume. If you want to eat something that others call “junk”, that’s OK as long as it doesn’t push you over your daily calorie targets.
Along the way you will discover that higher fat snacks, like cheese, tend to be more satisfying than salty carb snacks, like chips or pretzels. Of course, eating a balanced diet is important, but first we want to get the total number of calories under control. In other words, we are only focusing on one thing at a time. Eat less calories.
So, if you are really fond of a “junkie” snack, build it into your diet plan. Over time, your tastes, or nutritional requirements may change and you will find that the snack you used to crave just isn’t worth the calories.
Third, Reduce your Calories Slowly. In the last article we discussed reducing your caloric intake by 250 calories a day. See, Extreme Training: Real Fat Loss 4. That is not a very large amount, but over time, is very effective. In particular, your body does not sense that you are on a diet and does not shift into survival mode and try to spare every calorie by lowering your metabolism.
Most diets that are too calorie restrictive lead to a lowered metabolism and an even harder time loosing fat. Not to mention that many people become frustrated and quit the diet now that their metabolism is lowered which leads to Increased Fat Gain.
In this case, slow but steady works. And, if you keep maintaining your food journal, and start recording your measurements with a tape measure (you can record weight, but that is really a secondary concern at this time), you will see on a week by week basis, whether you have properly identified your baseline caloric needs and whether your reductions are causing the desired effect.
If nothing changes, it is time to take a closer look at your diet and perhaps slowly reduce some of the calories you consume until you reach the desired effect. Be patient! This process takes time and your body has many of its own tricks to play, as we will discuss later.
For now, work towards finding the baseline and making small reductions in calories.
Fourth, It is important that you Maintain your Current Fitness Activity Level During this Process. We are trying to make small adjustments in a way which provides us with information we can use in the future. Once your diet is dialed in we will turn to the important exercise component.
But for now, work on eating evenly spaced meals, making a slight reduction in calories, and recording everything you do as suggested above.
Once we have the daily caloric intake dialed in, it becomes mush easier to design and implement or make improvements to your training routine. Next installment of this series we will make the shift towards integrating your training in a way that helps Accelerate the Fat Loss Process.
If you found this article interesting or have any thoughts about this topic, please leave a comment below.
For now, Enjoy your Training and your Life!
Extreme Training: Real Fat Loss 4
June 25th, 2010categories: 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!
