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3 Major Fat Loss MISTAKES

AVOID these 3 mistakes and start burning fat faster!

by Dr. Kareem Samhouri – CSCS, HFS
Neuro Metabolic Fitness & Rehab Expert
Author of the popular program: Abs Strength Guide

If you want to lose stubborn abdominal fat faster, don’t make these 3 common fat loss mistakes below…

1. Relying on Abs-Specific Training:

For some reason, the misconception of spot reduction continues. No argument has ever convinced me that you can lose fat in a specific area by contracting the muscle in that specific area. Fat loss just does not work this way. Yet for some reason, we see hundreds of people every day at the gym doing hundreds of crunches and situps and thinking that they are somehow burning fat from their abdomen, when in reality, they’re just wasting time!

Fat loss is a systemic effect that takes place as your body morphs into a healthier you. Fat storage patterns vary person to person according to hormonal levels, genetic fat storage patterns, myofascial restrictions, and inflammation. Reducing body fatin those areas through exercise is only done if you are working to modify hormonal levels that have related fat storage areas, for example.

However, there has yet to be convincing evidence that you can do tricep presses, for example, and lose fat in the back of your arms… Just doesn’t work that way. The same is true with your abs. In this case, even if you do 3000 sit ups per day, you wouldn’t be doing much for fat loss. Fat loss is about:

1. Energy system training
2. Compound movements targeting many joints at once
3. Muscle balancing
4. Motor unit recruitment, and
5. Multi-planar movement

It’s impossible to add all of the above into an abs exercise, or even a series of abs exercises. The goal is to tire as much of your body as possible, to a safe extreme. This is referred to as momentary muscular failure, and it’s when lactic acid onset takes place. Remember, lactic acid, which is what makes you sore, is a very good thing. It means your body is working hard to reduce inflammation and repair. You’re well on your way to rapid fat loss. You’ll see incredible results when you accept this:

I believe muscle soreness following a fat loss workout should be a 5 – 7 (on a 0 to 10 scale), most of the time, where:

0 = no pain whatsoever, no muscle soreness
10 = extreme muscle soreness, emergency level

This is a big wake-up call for a lot of people, but it may just shed light on why you’re not seeing the fat loss results for which you were hoping.
2. Low To Moderate Intensity Cardio For Long Duration:

Walking. This, alone, simply won’t work for long-term fat loss results. It may work at first for somebody who is extremely obese and has been sedentary, but not for most people. While I strongly believe in the benefits of walking for stress relief, personal time, reflection with movement, blood pressure and cholesterol modification, etc., I do not consider it a good method to lose body fat.

Losing fat is about shocking your body and stimulating a repair process. Giving your body the chance to adapt to a demand over time doesn’t help you lose fat quickly. Sure, you can see some initial results, often masked as ‘toning’, but in the end you’re turning your Type IIa muscle fibers (oxidative-glycolytic, or medium speed fibers) to Type I (oxidative, or slow muscle fibers that have great endurance). The only trouble is that the Type II muscle fibers do a much better job of getting you lean.

By stimulating muscular strength (not necessarily “bulking”) you are enhancing your metabolism. It takes energy to build and restore lean muscle tissue. Allowing it to grow consumes a bit more energy, but you don’t have to bulk up to see great results. Rather, just create a muscle repair process while stimulating your metabolism with fat-burning foods and you’ll see your results go wild.

After a full-body resistance-based alternation-style workout session, you’ll spike your metabolism for 2-3 days as your body re-uptakes the lactic acid from your bloodstream, restores oxygen to the muscle tissue you’ve worked, and repairs the micro-tears that took place in your muscles. Supersets or circuits in full body workouts is one example of this, and interval training accomplishes this too, but what if we take things a step further and get you off a machine?

I suggest that we alternate body parts, directions, speeds, intensities, and muscle synergies, or pairs. Alternation in any form, even when the intensity is a bit lower, is still a rapid fat loss signal to your body. You’re sure to see wild fat-burning results once you start thinking about fat loss as “shocking the fat away”.
3. Caloric Restriction:

Caloric restriction = muscle starvation = fat loss grinds to a halt.

Muscle requires calories to grow. Without some degree of muscle growth, it will atrophy under duress. If you’re exercising intensely, which you should be, your muscle will be eating itself to survive.

It’s really important that you feed your system so it can grow and maintain its level of function. Your body requires food for muscle repair, concentration, heart health, and digestive health. Regular meals are best. There are 2 schools of thought with eating for fat loss:

1. Eat 3 meals per day and up to 2 snacks.
2. Eat 5-6 small meals per day.

Normally, I recommend #2, because I find this is a great way to ensure you are not snacking on things that are bad for you, because you are eating healthy small meals often enough. Also, I tend to never feel hungry when I’m eating on this schedule. That’s very helpful for fat loss.

Contrarily, eating 3 meals per day seems like it should also allow you ample time to digest and re-spike your metabolism. I believe there should be a small bout of exercise in between each meal if you choose this approach. If thats the goal, let’s go at it.

Again, my recommendation is 5-6 meals/day, where you pre-plan your week’s meals over the weekend, cook many meals at once, and prepare yourself for fat loss. The most helpful resource I’ve read to date, on this, is Fat Burning Kitchen. I recommend you read this also.

Most importantly, make sure you are getting enough calories. Yes, you do need a caloric deficit to lose fat over a certain time period, but taking your daily calories too low can reduce your metabolism and halt your fat loss.

Under no circumstance should an active female eat less than 1300 calories or an active male eat less than 1500 calories when trying to lose weight. Within a few months of coaching, most of my female clients are eating 1800 – 2000 calories, and my male clients are eating 2100 – 2800 calories. …and they keep losing fat faster and faster. The goal should be to stimulate your metabolism to be able to eat more, not less.

In summary, there are 3 major fat loss mistakes you absolutely want to avoid:

1. Low to moderate intensity cardio for long duration – great way for your body to adapt to exercise and stop burning fat. Plus, you’re converting your muscle fibers to the wrong type.

2. Abs-specific training – 3000 sit ups and no result? That’s just depressing. Train for full body systemic fat loss. You’ll be glad you did.

3. Caloric restriction = starving muscle = no more fat loss; instead, make the goal to eat more and build more fat-burning muscle to ramp up your metabolism, permanently.

I specialize in helping people just like you burn fat at absolutely ridiculous rates. I’ve focused on this for 12 years now, and I’ve even added advanced physical therapy techniques that exploit how your nervous system works to get you results faster than anything you’ve ever seen. I’d like to teach you all about this awesome method that has people losing fat at record speed with these 2 special gifts below:

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1 Obscure Trick to Make ANY Exercise Program or Workout MUCH More Effective

1 Comment / Training

by Mike Geary,

I’ve read about this very interesting Harvard University study about exercise multiple times in the past, but I was just recently reminded about this study again while reading the fascinating book called 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman.

Pay attention, because this actually shows a pretty powerful trick that you can use to literally make ANY workout or exercise program a LOT more effective and results producing.

According to the book 59 Seconds, here’s how this study was carried out:

Researchers at Harvard University studied over 80 hotel room cleaning attendants from 7 different hotels. The hotel room attendants naturally received a lot of exercise from their daily jobs, which included cleaning an average of 15 rooms per day at about 25 minutes per room. This work involves a good deal of exercise in carrying things, scrubbing, lifting objects, vacuuming, and so on.

The researchers knew the hotel maids led an active lifestyle from their work, but also questioned whether most of the maids may not realize that their work was actually good for their health. The researchers set out to study the effects on the hotel attendants of making them very aware of how beneficial the exercise they got while working was for their health, and to see if this increased the results that they actually received from the exercise.

Basically, the question was… Would telling them that their work was great exercise improve their health, lower their blood pressure, and help them to lose weight compared to the hotel attendants that didn’t realize their work was in fact “exercise”?

The hotel attendants were split into 2 groups:

1. This group was informed about the benefits of exercise and told how many calories they were burning while doing their hotel cleaning work each day. They were specifically told how many calories activities such as changing sheets, vacumming, and scrubbing bathrooms were burning each hour.

The researchers also wanted this information to stick in their heads daily, so they gave the attendants a handout showing the quantities of calories they were burning doing each activity of their jobs. They were also shown a poster daily that reinforced how many calories they were burning.

2. The control group of hotel cleaning attendants was simply informed of the benefits of exercise, but were NOT told how many calories they were burning doing their work, and also were NOT told that their work actually constituted a good form of exercise.

The researchers studied the existing lifestyles of all of the participants in both groups as well as giving them various health tests, including weigh-ins.

The study was conducted for 4 weeks. The researchers made sure that none of the participants had actually changed their exercise habits, smoking, or eating habits outside of work. This assured that there was no external lifestyle factor that could have accounted for the results of the study.

In addition, the hotel managers assured that the workloads of both groups stayed the same throughout the entire experiment.

Here are the VERY interesting results:

It turned out that the group of hotel cleaning attendants that was informed daily about the calorie-burning effects of their normal work routines ended up losing a significant amount of weight, lowered their body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio, and decreased their blood pressure.

The control group of hotel attendants that was not told about the calories they burned while doing their work showed NONE of these improvements.

Wow… very interesting huh!

Remember that each of these groups received the SAME amount of exercise and did not alter their lifestyle, eating habits, drinking habits, smoking, or anything else. The only thing that was different between the 2 groups was simply that the one group was constantly being reminded of how beneficial the exercise during their work was for their health and how many calories they were burning, and therefore their minds were busy believing in the benefits of it.

This actually doesn’t surprise me… this is classic placebo effect at work here, and reinforces how powerful our brains are in relation to the results we get from exercise, food, supplements, etc.

How to use this info to burn more fat in your workouts, build more lean muscle, and improve your health more from exercise and nutrition

There’s a good lesson in this study. If you strongly believe in your mind that the workouts that you are doing are drastically improving your body, your results will increase dramatically from those workouts.

The trick I’ve used over the years is to really “get mental” during your workouts and believe strongly that the exercise you are doing is transforming your body into a lean chiseled machine. (This is assuming that you’re actually doing legit workouts such as Truth About Abs routines and not just wasting time reading a magazine while pedaling away on a boring exercise bike or treadmill).

So, if you want to burn more fat, not only do you need to workout intensely (for your individual capabilities), but you also need to mentally visualize the results you’re getting, the bodyfat you are burning, and really strongly believe in how powerful the workout routine that you are doing really is for your body.

Along the same lines, if your goal is to build more muscle, then you really need to strongly believe in your mind at how powerfully your workouts are helping you to build muscle.

And this can be applied to your food intake too!

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Metabolic Cycling Tricks For Faster Fat Loss

1 Comment / Training

By Scott Tousignant, Creator of the Metabolic Masterpiece Body Sculpting Program

The phrase, “Variety is King!” has been uttered by nearly every fitness trainer around the world, with the premise being that your body adapts to the stresses of a specific training protocol after four to six weeks, where the magnitude of the results that you have been achieving, begins to diminish. This is why you see Angie and I performing a new workout program each month.

There are many ways that you can incorporate variety in your training each month. Here are just a few:

a) Keep the workout the same, but change the exercises.
b) Keep the workout and the exercises the same, but change the reps, rest period, or tempo.
c) Change the entire workout plan.

An example of the first scenario would be someone who prefers to perform supersets, because they find that their body responds really well to this protocol and it can be a time efficient way to workout. In order to add variety to their program and prevent their body from adapting to the workout, they switch the exercises from month to month. If their leg workout consisted of squats and deadlifts this month, they may switch it up to leg presses and lunges the following month.

An example of the second scenario would to stick with the supersets using the squats and deadlifts on leg day performing 10-12 reps with 30 seconds rest between sets this month, then switching to 4-6 reps with 180 seconds rest the following month. This is a common form of periodization, where a trainee will go from a three month hypertrophy phase, focusing on muscle size to a three month strength building phase. The one downfall to this type of periodization is that during the hypertrophy phase you may lose strength.

Research has shown that your body adapts to rep ranges faster than it will adapt to exercises, which means that it’s important to vary your rep range more frequently than it is to vary the exercises that you use.

An example of the third scenario would be switching from supersets this month to dropsets next month and mixing up the rep ranges. This is my preferred method for various reasons. Using the example of changing from supersets to dropsets, they both place a different type of stress on your muscles. Supersets can allow for more recovery time for a muscle group, whereas dropsets will bring you much closer to your true ‘momentary muscular failure‘ and recruit many more muscle fibers.

As great as the above methods are for adding variety to your workouts, I have discovered Metabolic Cycling Tricks that produce the “Ultimate Body Sculpting Results“. With these Metabolic Cycling Tricks, you add variety within each workout.

Why go an entire month doing just supersets? Why go an entire month doing just 10-12 reps of every exercise? Why go an entire month allowing 60 seconds rest between exercises?

Why not add variety to the type of training, the rep range, and rest period within each workout in a structured way where you can progress from week to week for a 4 week time period?

An example would be to perform straightsets, super sets, and drop sets within a single workout, while varying the reps and rest period for each exercise.

Benefits of Metabolic Cycling Tricks For Fat Loss

Incorporating strength training into your workout plan is incredibly important, even when your primary goal is fat loss. When you add a strength training component to your fat loss plan you are more likely to preserve your precious lean muscle and possibly gain some sexy and lean muscle while you burn fat at the same time.

Strength training hit’s your muscles on a neurological level, which increases your ability to recruit more muscle fibers. I like to think of this as adding more members to my team, in my effort to continuously transform my body.

The best way to increase your strength is to perform straightsets, meaning that you perform one exercise for a designated number of sets before moving onto the next exercise. The number of repetitions for each set should be between 4-6 reps. The rest period between these sets should be between 90 and 180 seconds to allow your body to recover from the previous set.

Incorporating hypertrophy training into your workout is also very important, especially when your goal is to improve your body composition. Hypertrophy training hits your muscles on more of a metabolic and cellular level, increasing the size of the muscle, which is temporarily visible during and immediately after the workout as a result of the ‘Pump’. The more permanent and long term gain in muscle size is a result of your body adapting to hypertrophy training, increasing the size and numbers of your muscle filaments.

Not only is hypertrophy training associated with a ‘Pump‘, but it’s also associated with the ‘Burn‘, which is a result of the lactic acid build up. With the increase in lactic acid being produced, you will also experience an increase in growth hormone, which is excellent for muscle gains and for fat loss. This is key for any successful body transformation!

A typical recommendation for hypertrophy training would be to aim for 8-12 repetitions, allowing for a rest period of 60 seconds or less between sets. I find supersets to be one of the best ways to incorporate hypertrophy training into your workout program, by not allowing any rest between exercises, but allowing 60 seconds rest between sets. An example of this would be to perform a Barbell Biceps Curl for 8-12 reps and move immediately to performing a Lying Triceps Extension for 8-12 reps, then resting for 60 seconds. Repeat two more times for a total of 3 sets.

Now you have two different training protocol within one workout…

…Straightsets with a lower rep range and longer rest periods to focus on strength, stimulating the nervous system and recruiting more muscle fibers, and supersets with a higher rep range and shorter rest to focus on hypertrophy to increase the size of the muscle.

NOTE: Ladies, please don’t freak out about this. We’re not talking about ginormous, bulky, freakish muscle. Adding muscle will shape and sculpt your body. Now if you want to really ensure that you hit as many muscle fibers as possible and stimulate your body in every way possible, you can add my favorite finisher to any workout, which is dropsets.

Ideally with dropsets, you should keep the rest to a minimum. I prefer to only allow enough rest to change the weight. One of my favorite ways to perform a dropset at the end of a workout is to start off with a heavier weight, performing 4-6 reps. I then drop the weight to a point that allows me to perform 6-8 reps. I then drop the weight to a point where I can only do 8-10 reps. Finishing off with a lighter weight, performing 8-12 reps. Occasionally on that last set I’ll perform a really light weight for 20 repetitions.

At the end of this dropset you should have nothing left in the tank. Your muscle should be totally fried and ready for some healthy nutrition and rest to help it recover and rebuild.

With three different training protocol within a single workout you would expect it to last for an hour or longer, but that’s not the case, when the program is designed properly. When I follow this type of guideline my workouts last approximately 30-45 minutes. When you take into consideration that the dropsets require no rest and the supersets are minimal rest, that’s a good chunk of your workout that fly’s by.

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15 Easy Tips For Rapid Fat Melting

1 Comment / Nutrition, Training

Follow these simple tips from registered dietitian Jayson Hunter, the Head of Research and Development for Prograde Nutrition, for a lean and healthy body.

Eat 4-6 small meals day a day instead of the usual 2-3 large meals. Eating frequently will help regulate and boost your metabolism to burn more calories.
Consume whole foods that are high in fiber and low in sugar, such as lean protein sources (lean beef, chicken, fish, and whey protein), fruits & vegetables (oranges, apples, strawberries, blueberries, broccoli, peppers, asparagus, carrots, nuts (almonds, cashews, & walnuts), and whole grains.
Eat low-glycemic carbohydrates such as vegetables, whole-wheat products and oatmeal instead of refined processed carbohydrates which usually come in a box or a bag.
Consume 25-35 grams of fiber per day. Fiber will help satisfy hunger pangs as well as control insulin and blood sugar levels which tend to promote fat storage.
Eat some type of lean protein at each meal. Protein helps to satisfy hunger and provide the necessary building blocks to maintain lean body mass while losing body fat.
Consume adequate amounts of healthy fat foods such as olive oil, walnuts, almonds, Omega-3 fortified eggs, or other Omega-3 products. Healthy fats are great antioxidants as well as help with brain function and many other essential processes that take place in the body on a daily basis. Essential Fatty Acids also help prevent certain diseases.
Eat 5-10 servings of fruit and vegetables a day to meet your micronutrient needs. Vegetables also contain a good amount of fiber and help to control appetites and curb hunger. Additionally, VGF25+ provides the power-packed nutrition of 25 whole vegetables, greens, and fruits in a convenient “super pill.”
Consume Green Tea or Water instead of calorie-filled drinks such as soft drinks. Green Tea has many health benefits and you should be drinking 1ml of non-caffeinated fluid for every calorie that you consume. This works out between (8-12) 8oz glasses of Green Tea or Water a day.
Balance your fat intake for the day. One-third should come from saturated fats, 1/3 from monounsaturated fats, and 1/3 from polyunsaturated fats. Again, ensure you’re consuming antioxidant-rich Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acids by incorporating EFA Icon into your nutritional plan.
Consistent fat loss requires good habits. If you want to create good habits, then you need plan. Therefore, map out your meals every day and follow them. If you follow your plan everyday for 2-3 weeks, you will form habits that become part of your daily routine and part of your life.
Incorporate “superfoods” into your meal plan on a daily basis. Some examples are salmon, low-fat plain yogurt, tomatoes, spinach, mixed berries, whole oats, mixed nuts, olive oil, flax seeds(or flax meal), green tea, and various beans. Many of the super nutrition found in these “superfoods” are also found in VGF25+.
Keep total fat intake under 30% for the day. This can easily be accomplished by avoiding “extra” fats such as butter, sour cream, mayonnaise… This doesn’t mean you have to completely eliminate these items, just use them sparingly and avoid adding them to foods whenever possible.
EXERCISE! Yes, you can lose weight just by changing your eating habits. But very few people succeed long-term – and it takes much longer to lose fat – when they don’t exercise. And something most people don’t realize is, just how critical ingesting the research-proven Protein to Carbohydrate ratio is to optimizing the results of your workout efforts.
Record what you eat and drink. You will be amazed by what you find. Keeping a food journal is critical to your success because you need it to evaluate and analyze your current eating patterns. If your fat loss efforts are stagnant, the answer can usually be found in your food journal.
Follow the 90% rule. If you can follow your plan 90% of the time, you will soon see unwanted fat melt off your body. However, if you find yourself breaking these rules more than 90% of the time, your chances of failing increase significantly.

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6 Tricks to Get the Most from Your Workout

Training

Great men are known not only by what they do, but, more important, by when they do it. So it is with your workout. All of us live by the clock, and in order to succeed with style, we need to sweat by it as well. We consulted the timeliest experts to help you set your agenda. Because the best time to look great and build muscle is right now.

Work in a Workout When You Feel the 6 p.m. Burn

The American Council on Exercise recommends working out between 4 and 6 p.m., when your body temperature is highest, making your workouts more productive. But that’s not an ironclad rule, says MH fitness director Lou Schuler. “It’s much more important to exercise consistently than to focus on a particular time of day,” he says. “Some guys can’t get motivated in the morning, and others are too burned out after work. So pick a time that’s right for you and stick with it.”

Warm Up 15 Minutes Before the Main Event

Researchers at the University of British Columbia and the University of Otago in New Zealand found that a 15-minute warmup at an intensity of 60 to 70 percent of your full capacity improves your range of motion and enhances your anaerobic performance.

Wear Cross-Trainers When You’re Walking the Dog, Lifting at the Gym, or Hanging Out on Weekends

But when you hit the long road, opt for running shoes instead; cross-trainers are too heavy and don’t provide enough cushioning to keep runners injury-free.

Listen to Your MP3 Player When You’re on the Treadmill

Music will motivate you and keep your mind off the monotony of running indoors. The editors of Runner’s World recommend that you never wear headphones outside, even on running paths, lest your groove distract you from potential dangers like rottweilers, traffic, and Ned Beatty.

Replace Your Running Shoes Before You Log 500 Miles

After that, the midsoles are bound to have deteriorated, says Runner’s World deputy editor Bob Wischnia. Most quality running shoes will last anywhere from 300 to 500 miles. Heavier guys should replace shoes more often. Lighter guys can let the mileage run up a little more. And since shoes don’t come with built-in odometers (yet), write the date of your first wearing somewhere on the inside with a permanent marker. It’ll make it easier to figure out when that pair’s reached the end of the road.

Clean Your Watchband Before You Can Smell It

If it’s leather, look closely. Shiny means there’s a protective coating that can be renewed with standard leather cleaner. If it’s dull, that means it’s a more porous leather and will absorb any product you put on it, says Timex’s David Wimer. Clean it with a soft, dry brush. You can easily spruce up stainless steel, rubber, gold, or silver with a soft toothbrush and soap and water. But be careful with nylon—cleansers will fade it. Use a firm, dry toothbrush instead.
source; men’s health.com

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