A Guide To Fat Loss

 

 

 

 

 

 

Losing Fat While Preserving Hard Earned Muscle
by Thomas Woods

Now, let me be realistic: it is impossible to lose fat without losing muscle, and gain muscle without gaining fat, without the use of drugs. But if you do things smart, you can come pretty close. By smart, I mean don't try and lose 30 pounds in 5 or 6 weeks, or a lot of that will be muscle.

There are many key things to do to ensure you preserve muscle, while losing weight. A lot of them revolve around, you guessed it, the diet.

1. Maintain high-protein consumption: When you go on a calorie-restricted diet, make sure that you are still taking in enough protein. Whey protein powder, chicken, turkey, lean beef, eggs, and milk should be the main staple. This will help fuel your muscles and help keep them big, as your muscles feed off of protein to help them grow. I take in at least 1 g per pound of bodyweight, and recommend that to anyone. Also this should be increased whenever carbs are decreased.

2. Cutting carbohydrates gradually: When increasing weight/bulking, bodybuilders tend to eat high amounts of carbs, which is perfectly okay. But when you switch to losing weight, you can't cut carbs all at once, or this will put your body in a state of shock. Gradually cut the amount of carbs in each meal week by week, and you should start shedding fat without losing muscle. Your body uses carbs for fuel and if you are on a low carb diet your body will switch to burning fat instead.

3. Eat more frequently: Right now I am eating 6 meals a day, and that is a good number to stick by, if your lifestyle allows it. There are days when it is hard, but then I remember what is important to me. 3 meals a day come from whole food, and the other three are supplements, like protein shakes or bars, sometimes with extra carbs. I alternate my food and supplement meals. Meal 1 is usually supplement, then food, then supplement, and so on until I get three of each in for the day. Eating more often allows meals to be smaller, and it keeps your metabolism going steadily without overdoing it with one huge meal.

4. Cut carbs at night: This is something I just started doing. The last two meals of the day for me contain very little carbs if any. This will prevent them from being stored as fat at night when your metabolism slows down.

5. Increase cardio gradually: A lot of people don't do much if any cardio, when increasing weight/bulking. If you don't, start with 20 minutes after each weight training session, and increase it 5 minutes a week, and increase it as long as you need to burn the desired amount of fat.

Here is the current diet I am on that is going to get me ripped to the bone:

Meal 1-7:00 AM- 2 scoops Designer Whey with 12 oz milk and a packet of oatmeal. This is 47g protein and 50g carbs.
Meal 2-10:00 AM- 8 oz meat (either chicken, turkey, hamburger (96%lean), all cooked on the George Foreman Grill) with rice or potato. Around 50g protein and 40g carbs.
Meal 3-1:00 PM- 1 Met-Rx Vanilla Meal Replacement Powder, tastes good with water, so I get 37g protein with 22g carbs.
Meal 4-3:30 PM- same as meal 2, another 50g protein and 40g carbs.
Meal 5-7:00 PM- Protein Bar, 32g protein and 10g carbs.
Meal 6-9:30 PM- Usually 10 oz meat, and 2 rice cakes. 60g protein and 10g carbs.
Totals for the day: ~275g protein, and 175g carbs.

Along with this there are a few supplements I like to take.
10g Glutamine - Great for preserving muscle mass while dieting.
1 Multi-vitamin
2 Potassium pills, 99mg each
1 Flax-Oil Pill
3 1g Vitamin-C pills

So, there you have it. Try these tips out whenever you are looking to shed a few pounds, and remember, take things slow and results will come.

Fat Loss Through Mental Strength
by David Knowles

Eating correctly and exercising consistently are both very difficult, physically and especially mentally. If you can succeed through this battle mentally, you will probably be fine in every other field. If you can convince yourself, anything is possible. This applies to both dieting and exercising. Going out to eat, while dieting, and having to order a lean meal while whoever is with you orders fried chicken fingers with fries is kind of punishing if you're new to dieting. This is especially true if you're dieting down for a bodybuilding contest and your workout partner is shoving pizza in your face at dinner and saying "you hungry?". It's all part of it, what doesn't kill you makes you that much stronger. The keys to success are staying focused, establishing discipline, and preventing a relapse into old, bad habits.

 

Goal Setting and Accomplishment

In order to stay focused, you must formally create goals for yourself. Choose reasonable goals, write them down, and put them somewhere so you will see the list everyday. If you're really worried about losing focus, you may even want to consider buying a notebook and writing specifically what you did that day to work towards your goals. By keeping a journal, you remind yourself that you must do at least one thing everyday in the way of your goals so that you can have something to write at the end of the day. If you can, try to find someone to exercise with or diet with. It always helps if someone is there and understands exactly what kind of work that you are putting into your program. This way you will have someone to vent to or relate to. Trust me, most of your friends will not understand, and some will turn their noses up at you if they see you trying to eat right. Another way to keep from losing focus is to pick exercises or foods that you enjoy and are compatible with the program that you are in. If you choose a diet or exercise program that you hate, you'll be more likely to not follow it.

I think that the most important thing is to have fun. Don't approach dieting or exercising with a negative attitude. The more that you put into a program, the better your results will be. If you do these things and have a positive attitude, exercise and diet will turn into habit and replace your old habits and then you'll be on track!

 

Discipline, Self-Control and Consistency

Hopefully, by now you have established some measure of discipline. Discipline is defined as control gained by obedience or training. I think it is obvious to see that having discipline is vital in creating self-control in a dieting or exercising program. Without it, you would probably stick with the program for a good two or three days before dropping it. So how do you maintain or improve self-discipline? In my opinion, you need to spend time in places that make you motivated to exercise or diet. You can do this in many ways.

First, you could hang up pictures of what you want to look like (make sure that the picture is realistic). A more effective, but similar technique is putting out a picture of yourself during a time that you feel you looked your best (if you have one). Try to put it in a place where you will see it first thing in the morning and right before you go to bed. Put your running shoes out in the open so that you have to walk by them when you walk around. This way you will be reminded to exercise, even if you try to put it out of your mind. Avoid decorating in such a way that you promote digression. If you do this, you yourself will be likely to digress. I have even gone as far as to make my bed uncomfortable so I don't just come home and lay around all day. Of course, there is a down side to that, but there is always a happy medium. Ultimately, establishing self-discipline results in consistency within your program. Consistent actions will eventually lead to habits in which you can break away from the initial "Die-Hard" techniques utilized in trying to improve self-discipline.

 

Plan to Cope with Relapse

Relapse is a term that, in this case, refers to going back to bad habits that you had before the exercise or diet regimen. Obviously you want to avoid this. However, at times it is very easy to slip back into old patterns, but I'm going to give you a couple of tips that you can try for yourself to prevent this. This list of suggested actions comes not from my head, but from a list made by Marlatt and Gordon, and it was originally used to help out smokers and drug abusers. Recently, this list has also been successful in helping individuals maintain exercise and diet programs. First, identify situations that may put you at high risk for relapse. I think that it would be a good idea to even write out these situations on paper, so that you'll know they're real situations.

Next, plan to avoid or cope with these situations by utilizing techniques such as time-management and confidence-building. Follow that by actually writing down the consequences that you would suffer if you did not exercise and put these consequences in real prospective. For example, if you're extremely tired when it is time to exercise, it may benefit you more to skip exercising and sleep instead. However, be cautious to not exaggerate your degree of tiredness and use it as an excuse to not exercise.

Next, expect and plan for lapses. A lapse in a program is unavoidable. For instance, you might get injured or go on vacation in which you would be forced to take a break. In that case, do your best with the situation, have a backup plan if you can. Also, you might be several weeks/months into the program and your body needs a break. In this case, don't be afraid to back off and even take time to rest and recuperate if needed. The fifth step is to block out any images or self-talk that center around the pros to not exercising. The more you try to self-talk your way out of skipping activity, the more likely you will be to follow through and skip. Don't go into a program with an all or nothing attitude. My professor, Dr. Rod Dishman, called this the "Abstinent-Violation Effect". Basically, it refers to a person who is so "Gung-Ho" about being flawless in the program that one slip up causes him/her to totally quit the program all together. Finally, enjoy exercise and don't look at it as one more thing to do. To avoid this mindset, simply replace time in which you are inactive with a time of activity. I've said it all along, enjoy your program, do exercises that you want to do.

 

If you utilize the techniques that I have described, you will have a full arsenal to fight off the mental battles that you will endure. The most important thing is to be realistic and have fun.

Fat Loss Through Exercise
by David Knowles

In my opinion, losing fat is a mental, physical, and nutritional challenge. Here, I will be talking about the physical aspect of losing fat; how you can benefit from physical activity. I will include things like type of exercise, duration, frequency, and intensity.

First, you need to record your weight and try to get a body composition test done in order to find out your body fat percentage. It might be depressing to find out at first, but I think it is beneficial to have. This way you can monitor your progress through an exercise program. The progress that you experience acts as a reward for your activities.

 

What Type of Exercise?

Now, as far as what type of exercise you should do, consider this. Anything is better than nothing. You can judge what type of exercise that you like and what works for you. I feel that it is the duration, frequency, and intensity that matter the most in activities. Personally, I run or ride a stationary bike. To me, I feel that these two exercises cause me to expend the most energy. In addition, running and biking are simple, you don't have to rig yourself up to a machine, punch in a bunch of keys, or have to put up with cardio freaks looking over your shoulder to see how much more time you have on their favorite machine. Don't get me wrong, treadmills are great if running outside is too hard on your knees or ankles. Many people like to swim because they feel that it is a total body workout. If this applies to you, be aware that it is not a weight bearing exercise and therefore little resistance is used. This aspect will prevent bone strengthening (more important for women than men, statistically). I do both running and biking so that it will take me longer to adapt to either exercise. Also, if I ran all the time, my knees would really take a beating, thus impairing my leg workouts. The bottom line is that anything is better than nothing, and if you feel like you are really being challenged with your exercise of choice, stick with it, but don't be afraid to try other exercises.

 

What Does the Body Use for Fuel?

First off, you need to know a little bit about fuel utilization in your body. There are three energy pathways of the body, phosphocreatine shuttle, glycolysis, and oxidative metabolism.

Phosphocreatine (PCr) yields low amounts of energy at a very high rate and is used in very high intense exercises such as sprinting.

Glycolysis breaks down glucose for more energy than the PCr system, but at a little slower rate. It is used as the next energy source when the PCr system runs out. Lactic acid production is a key characteristic of this pathway. That's right, when you're lifting weights, lactic acid is the burn you feel towards the end of a set. That is how you know that you are using glycolysis as the major pathway for fuel.

Finally, oxidative metabolism can use fats, glucose, or proteins for energy. This pathway is the final energy pathway; it yields the highest amount of energy, but at the slowest rate.

These pathways are triggered in a cascade fashion. At the beginning of an exercise, the PCr system kicks in order to give your body energy quick since you're going from rest to active. After the PCr stores run out (in about 1-5 seconds), glycolysis kicks in for about the next 45 seconds. Finally, oxidative metabolism starts at about a minute into an activity. Now, there is some overlap with these systems. For instance, PCr and glycolysis can be going on at the same time as the transition is made between the two systems. Similarly, oxidative metabolism and glycolysis are both going at the same time up until about 10 minutes of activity.

 

Duration is key.

There are many conflicting views on just how long you should go for. I like short and intense exercise, usually no more than 15 minute bouts. However, according to the literature, bouts of lower intensity and longer duration burn more fat. Exercise bouts of higher intensity and shorter duration tend to burn more glucose.

At the beginning of every exercise, you burn more glucose, and less fat (in the form of free fatty acids). This is because of the cascade effect previously mentioned. If you sustain the exercise for about 20 minutes, you reach a crossover point in which your body burns fat and glucose at the same percentage, 50/50. After that point, your body decreases the amount of glucose used (in order to preserve glycogen for the maintenance of blood glucose and fuel for the brain) and increases the amount of fat used for energy. This is what you want! This is when oxidative metabolism is the sole pathway for energy production. It is called oxidative because you need oxygen for the pathway to run, if you don't have oxygen, glycolysis begins again.

Considering all of this information, I still think that fat loss can be achieved through high intensity exercises such as sprints. How can you say otherwise when you consider sprinters? Most real deal sprinters do not have high aerobic endurance, yet they are shredded. This is the idea that I go by: marathon runners, for the most part, are pretty thin and lack muscle mass and sprinters are thin too, but have high amounts of muscle mass, relatively speaking. If you go by the longer duration method, I would exercise for about 45-60 minutes, and if you go by the shorter duration method, I would exercise no longer than 20 minutes.

 

Intensity

Intensity is also a major issue considered in an exercise program. The higher the intensity of the exercise, the more glycolysis, and less oxidative metabolism you do. This means that you burn less fat with higher intensity. The lower the intensity of the exercise, the more oxidative metabolism, and less glycolysis you do. This means you burn more fat with lower intensity. However, there is a cut off point, and the problem is still: what intensity is needed to burn the most fat? The lactate threshold is that point at which if you increase the intensity of your exercise one bit, you'll fatigue, but if you maintain the intensity that you're at, you can go forever, it seems. This is the intensity that you want to be at, right below your lactate threshold. At this point, oxidative metabolism is running at its maximum rate while glycolysis is lying dormant. This means once the crossover point has been reached, fat will be burned at a maximum rate. According to the literature, this ideal point is 50% of your maximum exercise capacity. Don't worry about that, just go by feel; the more you exercise, the more you'll know where your lactate threshold lies.

 

Frequency

Frequency plays a major role also because undertraining and overtraining are both issues. In order to avoid both, you need to be reasonable in designing your program. I would think that exercising more than 5 days a week would be too much, but less than 3 days per week is too little. I like doing cardio twice a day every other day. I feel like my metabolism speeds up even more after the evening session rather than running once in the morning. This is also because I do high intensity workouts; if you do long duration, low intensity, keep your work session to once per day. Also, I don't think it's a good idea to do an intense weight training session following or followed by a cardio session. To me, this is simply too much for your body; it needs a break to recover. However, the exception lies in the intensity. If both sessions are of low intensity, then it's fine to do both back to back (just make sure you stay hydrated!).

 

Well, that about sums up the exercise portion of the fat loss program. I hope that I have given enough information for you to form your own program that will work for you.

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