There are 4 things you need to do look like a Fitness Model:
2) Do Supra-Aerobic Cardio
3) Overload Your Muscles to Stimulate Muscle Growth
4) Measure EVERYTHING!
OK, you're done!
Actually, each of these components must be done in a disciplined way. But it doesn't take as much time in the gym as all of those 'experts' claim it does.
Why? Because your body will adapt to ANYTHING you throw at it. If you start eating fewer calories, guess what? Your body will learn how to deal with fewer calories. If you workout for an hour at a time, your body will learn how to become more efficient by SHRINKING all of your organs and muscles!
So, the old 'gym lore' of lift weights every other day, do aerobics for 30-60 minutes every day, etc. is all going to hurt you more than help.
How does it hurt you? Read on for what works and what doesn't...
Step 1 - Eat Right
This is the most important step
Diet is 80% of it. Therefore, if you want to keep eating McDonald's stop reading and give up now. It isn't going to happen. You need to eat CLEAN food - and you need to eat it in the right combination.What is the 'right combination'? Only YOUR body can tell you that! Forget about the latest diet fads and trends, there is no 'One Size Fits All' diet that works for everyone.
So how do you know which foods to eat? This dovetails into Step 4 - Measure Everything! (see below)
This page cannot possibly cover all of the details you need to know about how food affects your metabolism, but the following are the highlights.
1) Start Out Eating a Ratio of 50% Carbs, 30% Protein, 20% (or less) Fat.
You need some fat in your diet, between 10-20%, so if you eat less than 20% fat, you will need to bump up the protein or carbs.
How do you know if you are eating right? You can use this free website to keep track of all your ingredients, recipes, and meal plans so you aren't guessing:
Meal Planning
You need to know EXACTLY how many calories you are eating each day, and what ratio of the above nutrients are in your diet. NO GUESSING! The above free website will help you create recipes with the right ratios and combine them into daily meal plans so you know precisely how many calories and what percentage of fat, carbs, and proteins you are consuming daily.
2) Eat 5 or 6 Meals Per Day
You heard right - you need to eat every 3 hours (between 2.5 and 4 hours) to keep your fat-burning machinery humming along. Alarm bells should start sounding in your head as soon as more than 3 hours have gone by between meals.
You may need to start getting up earlier to fit all of these meals into your day, but did you want to succeed or not??
3) Drink Tons of Water
First off, all that protein you are eating needs water to metabolize. If you aren't drinking at least a gallon of water per day, you aren't drinking enough. Keep a large sports bottle (32 oz. is great) with you at all times, and drink constantly.
Water is needed for all of your metabolic processes, so drink up!
4) Eat Your Last Meal 3 Hours Before Bed
Don't eat right before going to sleep - all of the good stuff you seek (fat burning, muscle building, recovery, etc.) takes place while you are SLEEPING. If you eat before bed, your body is busy taking those calories you just consumed and burning those instead of the fat you want to get rid of!
5) Eat 20-30% Less Calories Than You Require
OK - here's where you need to do some math. But don't worry, you can have all of these things calculated automatically for you here:
Meal Planning
For example, if you weight 200 lbs., and you are 25% body fat, you will need 2089 calories per day (I just plug the body weight and fat percentage into the above free website, and it figures it out for me).
Therefore, you should eat 20-30% less than this number so you are in a 'Calorie Deficit'. This works out to 1462 calories per day if your target is 30% less than your body mass requires.
If you eat 5 meals during the day, each meal would be about 292 calories using this example.
Now do you see why eating fast food won't work?
You may be asking yourself: "But I'll STARVE!" - actually, no. Once you start eating 30% or more protein, you will feel more full with less food. Plus, eating every 2.5-3 hours will keep your blood sugar at an even level, and spikes in your blood sugar from things like sugar or simple carbs. is what causes you to feel hunger pains. By eating the correct way, you will not feel hunger pangs like you think you will. It will take a week or 2 of eating this way before you get used to it, but you won't go hungry.
6) Every 4th Day, Eat More Calories Than You Require
This is called 'Calorie Cycling' or 'Carb Cycling'. To prevent your body from thinking it's starving, you need to crank the calories back up to what your daily caloric requirements are (or even higher). This will keep your body from going into starvation mode and holding onto all of its fat for dear life.
Using the above example, if you require 2089 calories (200 lbs, 25% body fat), then every 4th day you need to eat AT LEAST this number of calories (going over by 5-10% is OK too).
Based on this, you can have ONE cheat meal per week where you can eat whatever you want (within reason - don't go for that 2nd piece of cake!).
7) Know Your Body Composition and Adjust Accordingly
Like it says in Step 4, you need to measure everything. Start out learning how to use body fat calipers and measure you weight and body fat when you start. Weight yourself on the same day at the same time of day once per week. Then take your body fat caliper measurement. The best time to weigh yourself is in the morning after you wake up and relieve yourself (and evacuate your bowels), but before you eat or drink anything. The best time to do a fat caliper test is when you know you are well hydrated, so first thing in the morning isn't ideal. If you are drinking water all day like you are supposed to, do your fat caliper test before bed.
Now, go back and enter your new weekly measurements here:
Meal Planning Tool
...and adjust your daily caloric intake accordingly, based on your new body composition measurements.
Here's a BIGGIE: If you aren't making progress - if you aren't losing fat, or you are shedding muscle (also not good) - CHANGE YOUR RATIOS! This means if you started out at 50% carbs, 30% protein, 20% fat, then increase your protein percentage.
CAVEAT: You won't start making progress (in all likelihood) for the first 2 weeks, because you body needs to adapt to this way of eating and learn to burn off the fat, so don't sweat it if the needle doesn't move the first couple weeks.
8) Eat Clean Food
So it should be obvious eating Big Macs won't work. But what DOES work?
You want to eat Lean Protein (boiled chicken is best, or tuna fish packed in water - you can season it with spices all you want but don't pour oily dressing on anything!).
You want to eat Complex Carbs (oatmeal, brown rice, other whole grains, even potatoes aren't evil per se) - stay away from all sugar, and ESPECIALLY High Fructose Corn Syrup which is in almost EVERYTHING.
You want to eat Leafy Green Vegetables (spinach, collard greens are ideal).
Keep the Sodium (salt) levels low - processed, frozen foods may taste good and be easier to prepare, but they are usually LOADED with salt!
For Vegetarians (like myself): You need to try and get a Complete Protein with every meal, so if you are a vegan (no eggs or cheese) this is going to be pretty tough. You can find dairy-free and egg-free Protein powders and make shakes with Rice Dream or Soy Dream. I use Spirutein which has everything in it you need, but it's a little pricey.
9) Get Your Rest
You need to sleep to burn fat, build muscle and recover from exercise. Go to bed at a reasonable hour and get up early so you can start eating to fit in your 5-6 meals per day!
Step 2 - Do Supra-Aerobic Cardio
Tabata Protocol - The Fountain of Youth and Fat Burning Miracle Workout
Never heard of the Tabata Protocol?Created by Izumi Tabata, the Tabata Protocol is simply the best supra-aerobic cardio workout every discovered.
"The rate of increase in V02max is one of the highest ever reported." - Izumi Tabata, Japan
"Fat burn is greater when exercise intensity is high." - Metabolism
Here's the deal: With only 8 minutes (give or take) every 3 days, you can turn your body into a fat-burning super-engine.
When you create an Oxygen Debt (read: heavy panting) your body has burned off all of the blood sugar (glycogen) it has and needs to replace all of that energy. It does this by burning fat. You don't want to try and burn fat WHILE you are exercising. You want to burn off CARBS as fuel when you are exercising.
Your body has 2 fuel systems, so to speak. There is Aerobic and Anaerobic.
Now, the Aerobic system uses oxygen to burn fuel, and the Anaerobic system doesn't. But one does not replace the other! What happens is you start out by burning fuel with your Aerobic energy system, and once you go past the point where there is enough oxygen in your system to provide Aerobic energy to your muscles, your Anaerobic system kicks in. Think of this as your SUPRA-AEROBIC zone.
To get there, you need to get your heart rate up past what is typically referred to as the 'Target Heart Rate Zone' using common aerobics lingo. You will need a Heart Rate Monitor to measure yourself while doing this program, but again, this goes along with Step 4 - Measure Everything!
Now, you need to understand something - the way the Tabata Protocol is described and documented (and usually performed) is NOT the way you want to do it!
The original Tabata Protocol requires the following:
- 5 minutes of warmup
- 8 intervals of 20 seconds all-out intensity exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest
- 2 minutes cooldown
- Collapse on the floor (I added that one)
Now, if you research the Tabata Protocol online, the original study conducted at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, Japan used highly-trained endurance athletes in peak physical condition. They would do 8 (or more) intervals, keeping the RPMs on the bike over 85 RPMs until they couldn't maintain that level of intensity. Don't try this at home!
You REALLY need to ease into this workout slowly.
And another thing: You will find people doing a Tabata Workout with weights or kettle-balls or other types of resistance. Don't do this yourself, unless you have a death wish.
Your Maximum Heart Rate is normally calculated as 220 Minus Your Age (e.g. if you are 30 yrs. old, your Max. HR would be 190 BPM - Beats Per Minute). Go ahead and do the Tabata Protocol like they did it in the above study and you may see your heart rate shoot up over 200 BPM!
Since no one wants you to kill yourself, least of all me, you need gradually build your heart and lung capacity over time.
Here's what you need to do when starting out:
*** Medical Dislaimer ***
*** See your physician before starting any kind of exercise routine - ESPECIALLY this one! ***
The entire workout starts out at 8 minutes long. It breaks down to 3 minutes of warmup, 4 intervals of 30 seconds each. (2 minutes of exercise) followed by a 2 minute cool-down. If you think this doesn't work, wait until you try it!
1) Use a Recumbent or Stationary Bike, Versaclimber, Rowing Machine, Elliptical Trainer or other piece of cardio equipment that allows for gradually increasing resistance, speed, etc. and utilizes the large muscles of your legs.
Treadmills are a possibility, but because you have to rest for 10 seconds between bouts of exercise, the only option when on a treadmill is to step onto the sides and stop entirely, because the machine won't respond quick enough to the required rapid changes in velocity during a Tabata Protocol interval.
2) Wear a Heart Rate Monitor. Record the Max. Heart Rate achieved during your entire workout, and your Recovery Heart Rate (see below)
3) Warm up for 3 minutes at a moderate pace. You can start out with a low resistance and low RPMs (like 60-65 RPMs on a bike) for the first minute, increase the tension on your equipment one notch for the second minute, then increase the RPMs to 70-75 RPMs and/or tension for the last minute, gradually raising your heart rate to a moderate level.
4) Start out by doing 4 intervals:
- First, increase the tension one notch above where your warmup ended at, or more if you find your feet are flying off the pedals
- Pedal (or go) FULL SPEED, as fast as you can, well above 85 RPMs (if on a bike) - even over 100 RPMs - for 20 seconds.
- Pedal slow for the next 10 seconds. If you did it right, you SHOULD see your Heart Rate go UP a little AFTER you stop pedaling so fast. This is because of the Oxygen Debt you created, and it signals your body to get more oxygen to your energy system. You will notice yourself panting - this is your body trying to get more oxygen to your lungs to fuel your energy system.
- Repeat 3 more times (20 seconds all out fast, 10 seconds slow). Notice your Heart Rate go up a little after you enter the slow part of the interval each time.
- After 4 intervals, decrease the tension to 0 (lowest setting) on your bike or other equipment and pedal slow for 2 minutes.
- After your 2 minute cool-down, stop pedaling COMPLETELY for 1 minute and just sit there.
- At the end of this 1 minute, check your Heart Rate. This is your Recovery Heart Rate - record it!
- Record the Maximum Heart Rate you achieved during your workout. This may have occurred during your 1st interval or your last (usually the last). It will PROBABLY be over the Max. Heart Rate calculated by 220 Minus Your Age. If it isn't, that's OK, especially when you are first starting out - don't overdo it.
5) Do this workout 3 times per week - allow yourself at least one full day of recovery between workouts. Your body needs to heal itself, increase the strength of your heart and lungs, etc.
6) When you notice at the end of your next workout (or however many workouts it takes) that your Recovery Heart Rate went down, add another interval (bringing it to 5 intervals per workout).
7) The next time you notice your Recovery Heart Rate goes down after the workout from its previous number, increase the tension on your equipment to make it more intense.
8) Gradually build up your fitness level by first adding an interval, then increasing the tension, when you see your fitness level has improved from one workout to the next (by checking your Recovery Heart Rate).
I have to warn you: After a week or so you will have more energy than you have had probably your entire adult life. Don't be surprised if you find yourself bouncing off the walls from the high energy level this Tabata Workout brings you!
Step 3 - Overload Your Muscles to Stimulate Muscle Growth
Measured Intensity Training
Muscle is 'active tissue', which means it burns calories. If your body thinks it isn't getting enough calories (and this is the problem with dieting) the first thing it tries to do is get rid of the tissue in your body that is using up the most calories - your muscles!Therefore, your goal is to hold onto and increase the amount of muscle in your body while burning off as much fat as possible.
As I pointed out in Step 1, you need to cycle your calories every 4 days so your body doesn't go into starvation mode and start shedding muscle. But you ALSO need to stimulate muscle growth.
How do you do this? Think of it like suntanning. When you go out in the sun, your body adapts to the sun exposure by releasing melanin and giving you a sun tan to PROTECT your skin from damage the NEXT TIME you go out into the sun.
In other words, your first sun exposure STIMULATES an adaptive-response by your body to protect itself by darkening your skin.
Muscle building works the same way, and this is why you need to everything you can to stimulate an adaptive-response in your body to add more muscle. This is achieved by overloading your muscles with the MAXIMUM effort you can possibly put forth.
There are a couple obstacles to doing this, though.
1) You can only lift as much as your can lift through your WEAKEST range of motion. In other words, if the most you can bench-press is 150 lbs, that is because you need to lift that 150 lbs. through your weak range FIRST, before getting to your strongest position.
Think of it this way: If you were to trip and fall, where do your arms go? Do they stay close to your body, with your hands by your chest? Or they instinctively extend out so your hands are far away from your body? That instinct at self-presevation, where your arms and hands shoot straight out away from your chest to protect yourself from the fall is because your are STRONGEST with your arms practically locked out and fully extended.
You can prove this to yourself in the gym. For the bench press exercise, for example, take a Power Rack and position the pins so the bar is positioned where you only have 2-3 inches of travel when you lift it above your chest. In other words, when you grip the bar to start the bench press, it is ALMOST all the way extended already. See how much you can lift in this last 2-3 inch range when you lift the bar off the pins. If you normally can only bench press 150 lbs., don't be surprised that you can bench press 300 lbs. or more this way!
You can learn all about this method of training here:
1 Rep Gym
2) You need to recover for longer and longer periods of time between workouts. Since you are going to be taxing your system to the extreme in lifting very heavy weights, your internal organs all have to recover fully before your body will build any new muscle.
There are 3 stages of recovery:
- Initial Recovery - this occurs between sets. When you do your very last rep. and you can't do another one, if you rest for a minute or so you can go back and do another set! This is because your body always keeps some strength in reserve and never 'empties the tank' so to speak.
- Systemic Recover - this where your pancreas, lymph system, heart, lungs, etc. all have to recover from the overload you placed on your overall system. This period of time can vary from a couple days to a couple MONTHS! (Yes, you heard right). When first starting out, you may be able to do another workout just a few days later, but as you get up to heavier and heavier weights, you will need WEEKS to recover between workouts. Until your system fully recovers, you will not gain any muscle.
- Adaptive Response - this is where you body now adds muscle in anticipation of needing it for the next time you overload yourself.
If you don't make it through all 3 stages before your next resistance training workout, you will be weaker instead of stronger, and will lift less weight instead of more. If you don't know if you gave yourself enough time between workouts, by measuring the amount you lift you will know if you lifted LESS than the time before!
3) You need to EXACTLY what your Maximum lift is.
If you don't have a way of measuring, you have no way to know if you are making progress. Therefore, special equipment has been designed to provide a precise reading of each lift. This equipment is expensive, though. You can do this workout in the gym using machines like a Power Rack, but it certainly is easier with machines built especially for this type of workout.
A lot of research has gone into this method of training. This stuff works like nothing else, and only requires a few minutes every few weeks for the advanced trainee.
A lot of research has gone into this method of training. This stuff works like nothing else, and only requires a few minutes every few weeks for the advanced trainee.
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