Many have waited for a logical answer to the question, "How can I lose body fat?" In their search for the answer, many have spent an enormous amount of time thinking, worrying, wasting effort, and spending money.
Most to become very disappointed with the negative outcome; either still overweight, a smaller version of themselves with the same consistency, a weight gain due to improper dieting, or even an unused fitness membership due to de-motivation.
Wouldn't you agree that stories of inconsistent results from nutrition and weight loss programs are everywhere? Without visible results one can only expect to suffer from discouragement, an inconsistent fitness lifestyle, and the inevitable...the disappointing attitude.
I've been watching this take place for many years. Seeing committed people continually get themselves focused on a goal of health and weight loss only to get their enthusiasm intercepted or dampened by the fallacies of fat removal.
Fallacies of nutrition and weight loss are more common now than ever. It seems that every day there is a new and amazing way to remove fat from your body. A unique secret or method that has been discovered to remove the disgusting fat deposits away from our waist, thighs, glutes, arms, and everywhere else the gruesome nutrient seems to want to hang around.
One of my goals as a Doctor is to help you live a happy, healthy life as you overcome the falsehoods of the body fat loss conspiracy that is meandering around every television set, fitness center, and exercise magazine in the country. Be prepared.
This program dramatically sets apart the truth from the quick fix. It's the nuts, bolts and tools required for proper nutrition, fat loss and overall health. If you think this booklet will only require a quick glance, you may be disappointed. Take the time to read and study this eBook page by page.
Take time to master each step. Follow the simplicity of this plan. Add a touch of common sense. You will be amazed with the results! There are no miracles, no secret codes, and no magical exercises. These steps are timeless. Use them throughout your life, regardless of what level of health you desire to attain. Stay toned, sculpted and say goodbye to unwanted body fat forever! Let's look at step 1.
Step 1
We must start with this to remove the biggest fallacy of fat & weight loss; spot reducing. This is to remind you that the only way you can "spot" reduce fat off your body is with a surgical procedure!
You cannot burn fat directly by weight training or resistance training. You have a better chance of washing your car and then miraculously finding that your house is clean also.
Body fat burns systematically, from everywhere at once. Generally, this process starts when you lower your calories or increase your activity level. Some are still doing hundreds of sit ups, waist bends, and leg lifts thinking these areas will tighten up because of the constant burning.
I sympathize for people when they tell me, "I'm really trying to trim up this waist, I'm doing a hundred million sit ups a day". Or the famous girl from a popular TV show when she responded to a question some talk show host asked her. He wanted to know her secret to a great stomach. "Oh, I do a hundred sit-ups a day!" she responded. Get a clue!
Please remember, weights build and maintain muscle, and diet and cardio burns fat. When you do a weight training exercise and feel a burn in a certain muscle group, what your feeling is the muscle burning not the fat burning. If you want to lose the soft stuff around your waist or thighs and you do waist or thigh exercises, you're not burning fat- you're building muscle.
This goes for all areas of the body. Some of the popular ways people try this type of magic are doing butt exercises to make the butt smaller (wrong)! Doing arm exercises to lose the fat in the back of the arm (never)! Doing inner thigh movements to get rid of the soft spots on the inside of the leg (impossible)!
You have a much better chance of building those areas bigger than you do of making them smaller. If you want to lose fat, remember it burns systematically off your body. This requires a change of lifestyle, particularly in your eating habits and activity level.
Step 2
Before you even think of starting a fat loss program you must recognize and identify exactly what you want from it first. Properly identifying and recognizing what you want will make all the difference in the world!
This story explains it all. There was a man, let's call him "John", who been trying to lose weight but it never worked. He was 5'6, 265 lbs. and only 31yrs old. Let's just say that the weight wasn't all muscle (to say the least). I asked him what type of workouts he had done.
He had tried everything. Fad diets, workout tapes, home programs, treadmills, miracle diets, meat grinders, toothpicks under the fingernails, nothing worked! One thing he never tried was "consistency"! He hadn't done any weight loss program for more than 4 wks. He didn't know why he lost motivation immediately shortly after he started each one. Someone once asked him if he had properly identified his major health & wellness goal.
He explained that he wanted to lose about 100 lbs. As quickly as he was explaining his goal, his key obstacle was evident. "Have you ever heard the old adage about goal setting?" He was asked. "The one about looking at the top of the big mountain before climbing up?"
It can be kind of intimidating. John was encouraged to change his general 100lb. goal to something smaller such as 1 lb. of fat loss per week. It's not as overwhelming, allowing him to focus on a smaller 1 pound rather than large intimidating 100 pound goal. He agreed.
He decided to pursue that one pound per week goal. 3 months later John had a changed attitude. He also looked as if he had lost a significant amount of weight. He explained that according to the scale he is 5 pounds lighter than he was 3 months ago.
However, according to his body fat percentage, his clothes size, and the favorable reaction he gets from people when they see his change, he actually benefited much more. He removed 12lbs. of body fat and He gained 7 lbs of muscle.
If you're asking yourself how he achieved more results in three months than he did in three years, the answer is this: he completely identified what he wanted in small believable parts. In order to be successful at burning fat and feeling your best, you must recognize exactly what you want and break it into small parts.
Also, if John had that "visible" goal when he first started (three years prior), he would not have given up as quickly. You can reach any goal you set if you break it down into small parts. After that, write it down and read it daily. Write down exactly how much fat you want to lose, exactly what you want look like and how you want to feel.
What's your number one goal? Take some time right now and identify what you want and then break it into small parts. If you skip this crucial step you can expect to resemble John during his first three years. An unfocused goal setter. He knew where he wanted to go. However his goal wasn't completely identified so he didn't know how to get there.
Do it now, recognize it, break it down, then write it down and read it often.
Step 3
Without this action step, your expectations for results may get unfocused. It reminds you to use your common sense when thinking of losing fat and weight loss. It has to do with the difference between muscle and fat. It keeps you correctly focused. I make this point first because 9 out of 10 people that start a weight loss goal start because of a desire to reduce size.
Think of a pound of fat which has a caloric consistency of 3500 calories.
If you took one pound of fat and put it in front of you it would equal a grapefruit in size. If you take a pound of muscle which has a caloric consistency of 600 calories and put it in front of you it would equal an orange in size. Looking at both you'll find that they are both the same weight but one pound of fat is bigger and takes up a lot more room.
If you lose 10 grapefruits off your body, and gain ten oranges, and they both individually weigh one pound, you would be the same weight but a lot smaller afterward. Because of this size difference you may see your clothes get bigger on you, your inches go down, and people telling you that it looks like you lost weight.
However, if you get on the scale you may stay the same weight and appear to be a lot smaller. This happens when you do a regular exercise program or increase activity because you always initially build muscle. Usually 2-4 pounds for a woman, and 5-10 pounds for a man. This can happen within the first few months.
When measuring your results by the scale, you may be heavier or the same weight. This is because you will build muscle faster than you will lose fat. But after your muscle building slows down, after the initial growth period (1-3mo's), you can count on seeing fat consistently peeling off your body. You can lose 1-2 pounds of fat a week. Imagine losing a pound of fat every week!
That's 52 pounds in one year (imagine 52 grapefruits off your body). So remember to use to use common sense when thinking of fat loss: don't just think of weight loss.
Step 4
Most fat-loss failures could be avoided if people will just absorb this next step. This helps you to remember that by doing resistance training (or weight training) you can prevent committing "exercise suicide". "I'm going to lose weight first then I'll tone up". Or, "I don't want to do resistance training now, I'm waiting until after I lose the weight."
My bones quiver when someone says those phrases within listening range. It's committing exercise suicide on the installment plan. I'm going to explain to you how this happens. I'm also going to show you how to prevent this semi-catastrophe.
First let's look at the annoying habit of going on a diet or reducing your calories significantly without resistance or weight training. I call this the "I want to lose weight first then tone up" disease. The reason this fallacy started in the first place is because if you think about it, it appears to make sense.
Our bodies are programmed to prevent starvation. Imagine your body has 3 separate sources for food: muscle (protein), fat and carbohydrates. Fat contains 9 calories per one gram and muscle and carbs contain 4 calories per one gram.
Fat is more valuable to your body because it has more calorie burning power in case of starvation. It has nine calories as opposed to four. This means that in case of starvation one gram of fat would last longer for food supply than one gram of muscle (protein) or carbohydrate.
Fat would have a longer calorie burning period since it has 9 calories per gram and muscle and carbohydrates have only 4 calories per gram. Imagine you needed money and someone asked you " Do you want 4 dollars or 9 dollars?" You would undeniably pick the nine. The 9 dollars would last you longer and provide more usefulness.
Same with your body. It would rather have the 9 calories from fat rather than only 4 calories from carbs or muscle (protein) because 9 calories provides more use (more valuable). When you diet, your body burns more calories and at the same time consumes less calories.
This gets your body nervous because it thinks it's getting ready to starve. So what does it do? It says, "Since I'm starting to starve with this diet, I better prepare and hold on to my most valuable form of food, fat. Instead of using fat for energy, like you want it to do, it has to hold on to fat (retain it) because of starvation alert.
There is a way to prevent all this! Incorporate resistance training or weight training activity into your dieting plan. Resistance training builds and tones muscles. When you resistance train and tone muscle you send a message to your body that tells it that it is not starving, it's growing! It tells your body that it's okay to go ahead and burn fat for energy.
You're preventing the starvation process because you're adding and toning muscle through resistance training. When you resistance train you build and tone your muscles. This signals your body that it's growing and healthy, not starving and dieting. By resistance training you speed up the metabolism.
As I just said, when you weight train you speed your metabolism and you really help out the fat burning process. Here's why. Muscle to your body is like an engine to a car. The bigger your engine the faster it goes! If you went out and added an extra cylinder to your car's engine it would be faster.
When you build muscle it speeds up your metabolism and is like adding an extra cylinder to your body. As an extra cylinder in your car's engine would make it faster. An extra cylinder in your body makes your metabolism go faster too.
Approximately 50 extra calories a day are burned when you weight train. These 50 calories a day may not seem like much, but over 7 days that's 350 calories. After 10 weeks that equals 3500 calories. That happens to be the caloric consistency of one pound of fat! So when you weight train you get a bonus fat loss.
Fat (the size of one grapefruit) will systematically burn off your body every 10 weeks just for adding one pound of new muscle. Dieting without resistance training isn't the only way you can be considered suicidal in exercise.
There's another way too. I've been watching exercisers do this for years. Not only do they slowly commit exercise suicide by doing this, they also cause zero results from their exercise routine altogether. It's when an exerciser walks into the chiropractic office, the gym, the fitness center or their own exercise facility and they start doing a cardio exercise before they weight train.
They do a full cardio session then start pumping the machines or free weights. I'm not talking about a warm up. A five to ten minute cardio warm up is okay. I'm talking about a 20-60 minute cardio session. The cardio session could be walking, running, jogging, biking, aerobics, treadmill, or even a walk around the park.
This is wrong! Remember we were talking about your body having three separate food sources, fat, muscle, and carbs? Well, it loves to use the carbs first. When you do a full cardio session before your weight training routine you use mostly all the carbohydrates your body has available. When you weight train right after, your body searches for an energy source to use while weight training but can't find one. It wants to use carbs but you just spent them on the cardio.
It can't use fat because fat requires oxygen to be burned. (When you weight train you contract your muscles. Veins and arteries that deliver fat burning oxygen to your muscle get constricted. When this happens they are unable to deliver oxygen for fat burning purposes.)
Your body is then forced to look for an alternate form of energy to support this weight training. It looks for carbs but they are all gone. It tries to use fat but the veins and arteries are being squeezed and constricted. Your body has no choice but to use "itself" for energy and feed off of your own muscle mass.
The result: you become a smaller version of yourself with the same consistency, i.e., exercise suicide on the installment plan. Do resistance training first!
When you do resistance training first, you put your body in a win-win situation. Your body wins because it gets to do what it wants to do. It uses carbohydrates for energy first. Your body also wins because it gets to use carbs during resistance training (like it's supposed to) rather than using its own muscle mass.
Make sure you do cardio session after you get done with resistance training. Most of your carbs will be burned, and as long as you don't get out of breath and deplete your oxygen supply, after a few minutes your body will be using fat for energy.
The point is your body can only use muscle or carbohydrates during resistance training. It can't use fat directly. If you deplete your carbs before you start resistance training with cardio, you leave it no choice but to use muscle. Here's a quick hint for you when doing cardio session after weight training.
Always go at a pace where you can carry on a conversation without having to huff or puff to catch your breath. This will guarantee enough oxygen supply for fat burning. By doing this action step you will be an alive, toned, sculpted, and an enthusiastic exerciser!
Step 5
You must remember to always have a steady income of fat in your diet in order to lose fat off your body. Incorporating fat in your diet is like having money in the bank.
If you have some money in the bank, and you have a steady income coming in regularly, you don't mind spending some of that money in the bank. BUT, when you have money in the bank, but no steady income, what do you do with that money in the bank? You hold onto it and use it sparingly.
This is precisely how your body thinks. If your body sees that you don't have any fat intake, it gets nervous and thinks your starving. It will not release body fat for energy. The message is to always consume 15% of your diet from fat. This is where a good supplement program can really help.
Also, don't be afraid to eat something you really love at least once weekly. Make sure you pick a day and time and stick to it. "Marty", is someone who loves this concept, but don't be like him. He really started to see results when he incorporated a cheat meal once a week however, there was a little problem. He kept changing the "cheat day".
Originally his day was Sunday. One Wednesday, he was seen eating in a pizza place at a local shopping center. When he was approached he said," Oh hi, I didn't tell you, I changed my day to Wednesday now, its not Sunday anymore." When asked when he had decided to make the change he said, "Just recently, when I walked by this pizza place!".
A couple of days of cheating will never hurt anyone that bad but too much inconsistency and flexibility definitely will. Include a good percentage of fat in your diet and eat a desert or something you really enjoy one or two times a week. As I mentioned before, there are well balanced nutritional supplements that can also give you this balance.
Step 6
Write down everything you eat for three days. Do this on three days that you're not pigging out. Do it on three average days of eating in your life. Write down every piece of food or drink that goes into your mouth.
If you sporadically try this action step, your attempt at any specific fat loss goal will certainly fail. You must, like everything else, be consistent for it to work. Losing weight, gaining weight or maintaining weight is simple when this formula is adhered to. Here's what you do.
Get a little note pad and take it with you everywhere you go. Start writing down everything you eat, every morsel of food or drink that enters your mouth for three consecutive days. After three days get a little two dollar calorie book from the supermarket and add up your calories. Just the calories. This gives you a great idea of how many calories it takes your body to operate every day. To maintain your present weight.
Let me repeat. Write down everything you eat or drink for three consecutive days. After the three days add up the caloric content of everything. Now, after you have done all of the above divide the total.
This is the magic number. This number indicates the calories it takes your body to operate on a daily basis and to maintain your current weight. By choosing from the 4 food groups or following a nutritional program from your doctor, you're ready to start developing your eating plan. You can now effectively lose weight, gain weight or maintain weight.
You must have the discipline to write everything down for three days or you will not formulate a proper eating plan.
Step 7
In order to lose body fat, keep your energy levels high, and keep your thinking capacity normal, you must follow this next action step. This will help you remember that you must have the proper serving of each food group included in your eating plan. Or, follow a plan by your doctor that contains the proper nutritional supplements that can provide the same.
It's all quite easy to do. To start, follow the Recommended Daily Allowances (from the US government). Don't be concerned, in this case, the government is right on the money with there recommendations.
Don't complicate it by thinking you're different. Your goal in eating should be to get the proper servings from the RDA and the four food groups. This is regardless of what your goals are. The RDA for adults is 2 servings of meat or high protein, 2 servings of milk and dairy, 4 servings of fruits or vegetables, and 4 servings of cereal and grains.
A serving of meat is about a four ounce piece of any type of meat. The serving size for vegetables, fruit, cereal and grains is one cup. You can get a list of the foods in each book free off the Internet or by requesting it from the federal government directly. Eat a minimum of four small meals each day consisting of these groups,no questions asked!
They will keep your metabolism going, your energy level high, and your functioning capacity primed. If you feel you have a very slow metabolism, you can increase your meals to 5 or 6. These are not 7 course meals I'm referring to. They are 1-3 regular meals and maybe 2-3 healthy snacks.
So when you go grocery shopping keep a list of the food groups. Let your shopping revolve around them. Change your eating habits if they do not match the RDA. You will be thankful when you're feeling great, looking great and staying healthy.
Step 8
This step is simply meant to inform you that 60% of your eating plan may consist of carbohydrates (carbs). Never do a zero carb or even a low carb eating plan.
Unless you enjoy feeling weak, looking scary, becoming moody, and appearing stringy. If you like those things cut way back on your carbs and warn those who see you on a regular basis. The people who do this type of eating are usually the ones really determined to lose weight.
This does nothing but drop water weight. (You see a weight loss from water loss-this is not good). Your body is 70% water. Every gram of carbohydrate in your body attaches to 3 molecules of water. When you eat low or zero carbs, the water leaves the body due to the lack of carbs present.
When this happens, your body panics because it thinks it is starving. Then you know what happens...it will not release any body fat. You then leave it no choice but to burn muscle for your everyday energy.
You have then lost water and muscle, not fat. You'll feel as productive as a car driving down the highway with flat tires. When you eat high carbohydrates (high meaning in proportion to your eating plan) you feel energized, clear headed, and able to endure a workout properly.
Eat carbohydrates! Remember that rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, cereals, fruits, veggies and the like are the preferred carbohydrate fuel for the human body. They are the main energy source. This is one of the reasons why the fruit, veggie, bread, and cereal group requires 4 servings in each category.
Unlike the meat and protein group which requires two.
Step 9
This step is the logic behind losing fat. This reminds you that you must initially subtract calories from your caloric maintenance level to lose fat. You formulated your maintenance level when you did Step 6 and wrote down all your food intake for three days. Subtract calories from the magic number of calories determined from Step 6.
This will put your body in a caloric deficiency and ready to lose fat. How many calories per day do you need to subtract from that number to lose fat and create a caloric deficiency? A realistic goal of fat loss is one pound per week. One pound of fat consists of 3500calories.
Divide the 7 days of the week by 3500 calories which equals 500 calories. Subtract this amount of calories from your original caloric maintenance level and you'll lose one pound of fat a week (provided you are following the other steps).
Let's say the number of calories it takes to maintain your weight was originally 2000 calories a day. You would then formulate an eating plan to fit in 1500 calories a day. Again, first find out how many calories it takes you to maintain your current weight by doing Step 6.
After that, subtract 500 calories from the overall caloric intake number then arrange the content of your food to fit RDA standards and the 4 food groups. You will now start to lose weight and fat. After you hit a plateau, gradually and slightly continue to decrease your calories every few weeks.
Once you get as low as 1200 calories a day its time to stop decreasing your calories. Anything lower than 1200 calories is a nutritional risk for you. This leads to step 10.
Step 10
If your calories get to 1200 and you still want to lose more fat, do this next action step. It's actually two action steps in one: Add activity and increase your meal frequency. Let's look at the adding activity first.
Adding activity will decrease your calories in addition to lowering them from food intake. You can do this by walking, doing the stationary bike, maybe a light jog or maybe adding some sports to your agenda. Whatever you do remember every 30 minutes of light to moderate activity burns about 300 calories.
This is a great way to lose weight if you don't like to decrease calories and you like to eat. The next part of this action step is to increase your meal frequency. Eating many mini meals throughout the day will keep your metabolism high and your body burning fat throughout the day. (Don't confuse mini meals with Happy Meals, these are mini meals.) The best way to do this is to pre-plan your meals ahead of time.
The minimum you should eat for fat loss is around 3-4 meals a day. If you really want to be a fat burning machine then increase to 5-6 small meals a day. For instance you may eat some oatmeal for breakfast, then chicken, rice and veggies for lunch. A piece of fruit a couple of hrs. after that.
Another piece of fruit, a meal replacement shake, or some yogurt 2 hours later. For dinner some beef, potatoes and salad. Maybe a tuna, chicken, or plain salad a few hrs. before bed. This is the best way to lose the fat pounds.
Especially if you have a slow metabolism and you enjoy eating like me. I love food, so I eat many mini meals throughout the day. I stay satisfied and am less likely to binge when I see my favorite junk food around.
Basically, the gist of this is if you want to lose fat or weight you must burn more calories than you consume daily.
Review
STEP 1: Realize that you can not spot reduce fat. It burns systematically.
STEP 2: Properly recognize and identify your goal, then break it down into small parts.
STEP 3: Use common sense and expect fat loss not just weight loss.
STEP 4: Do resistance training regularly to avoid exercise suicide (losing muscle).
STEP 5: Incorporate fat into your diet and never remove fat totally from your eating plan.
STEP 6: Write down 3 days of food intake to discover your caloric maintenance level.
STEP 7: Follow the RDA to create the proper eating plan and food variety.
STEP 8: Never eliminate carbohydrates from your eating plan!
STEP 9: Calorie reduction is the initial physiological step to trigger fat loss.
STEP 10: Do calorie burning activities and eat frequent meals to enhance fat burning.
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