Blog # 10 - Recap

I’m going to take this opportunity to do a little recap of the past 9 blog posts to summarize and to give a short read for those not willing, or able to read the entire series. If you’re serious about transforming your physique, I urge you to read the entire series as it is the understanding of the fat loss process that will ensure the greatest results.

http://www.everydayhealth.com/blogs/burnfatfaster/welcome-newbs

An introduction to the Burn Fat Faster Blog and its Author, me! In this post I urged readers to take an honest look at their weight loss efforts & to ask themselves 2 important questions:

"Do you know how many calories you need to maintain your weight?
Do you know how many calories you're eating daily?"

http://www.everydayhealth.com/blogs/burnfatfaster/how-much-to-eat

The mathematics of fat loss. In this post I gave readers the formula to determine their caloric intake & how to track their caloric intake through http://www.everydayhealth.com/

"A) Basic Calorie Needs = Body weight x 11
+
B) Metabolic Rate = A x Activity Level*
+
C Maintenance Caloric Needs

ACTIVITY LEVEL*

Mostly Sedentary        30%
Active                         40%
Very Active                50%

* 30-40 yrs old subtract 5%
* 40+ yrs old subtract 10%"

http://www.everydayhealth.com/blogs/burnfatfaster/how-much-to-move

A brief look at how activity level & exercise affect caloric needs. Here I urged readers to track their caloric expenditure from normal day to day activities & formal exercise.

http://www.everydayhealth.com/blogs/burnfatfaster/what-does-it-all-mean-anyway

An explanation of how to use caloric intake vs. expenditure to determine diet set up & guidelines. In this post I gave some specific recommendations for how to adjust caloric intake & expenditure to create fat loss.

"EATING MORE THAN MAINTENANCE: Eat less. This is pretty simple; start by cutting your daily calorie intake by 500 calories & track your weight for 1-2 weeks. If still not losing, cut an additional 500 calories per day.

EATING LESS THAN MAINTENANCE: This is a bit more complicated; you’re either overestimating your activity level, underestimating your food intake, or your metabolism needs a tune up. If your goal is weight gain, this becomes easy; eat more!"

http://www.everydayhealth.com/blogs/burnfatfaster/starvation-vs-twinkie-death-match

The much anticipated discussion of how so-called “forbidden” foods on a diet can actually HELP with fat loss. No recap on this one, go read the article!

http://www.everydayhealth.com/blogs/burnfatfaster/and-the-winner-is

Exploring the connection between food intake, Leptin & your metabolism. Here I provided readers with some specifics on how to initiate a “refeed” in order to restore Leptin levels & therefore fat burning.

"The bottom line is that you must create a caloric deficit in order to lose weight, and a caloric deficit (depending on severity & duration) will slow the metabolic rate. Therefore in order to continue losing weight, strategic refeeds must be implemented to keep Leptin levels high and to keep the dieter sane.

An easy rule is that the longer and more severe a dieting stint, the longer & more intense the refeed should be. For those of you who don’t exercise at all, raising the carbs by 100 grams will likely work to restore Leptin levels. If you’re exercising consistently and intensely, upwards of 1000 gram carb refeeds* may be required. Take these guidelines and experiment."

http://www.everydayhealth.com/blogs/burnfatfaster/fat-loss-magic

Here I shared some of my favourite and most effective tactics for fat loss magic. Again, too many specifics to recap here just go read the damn article. ;)

http://www.everydayhealth.com/blogs/burnfatfaster/as-different-as-day-night

Here I showed readers how it is possible to burn fat & build muscle, within the same day, but not at the exact same minute. This is body recomposition at its finest with an extra look at fuel sources & their importance to exercise & fat burning. The bottom line is summed up nicely in the final sentence:

"… take a walk before breakfast, and go move heavy things after dinner!"

http://www.everydayhealth.com/blogs/burnfatfaster/more-or-less

A look at why adding more exercise to your fat loss regime may ultimately backfire if you tread into the territories of overtraining. In this post I briefly explained overtraining and why more is not always better. Also in this post I discussed the very important issue of the individual physiologic limit of fat burning and how this relates to overtraining.

"31 calories per pound of fat is all you can expect to safely lose in a day. I know, seems like it’s a futile endeavor.  However, consider how many pounds of fat you may be carrying. A very modest 20 pounds of fat can release 620 calories of fat to be burned. Most readers of this blog have significantly more fat than this, and could therefore burn many more fat calories each day.

The relevance of this number, the physiologic limit of your fat burning potential, is that your caloric deficit should not exceed this number. Put another way, whether you create this caloric deficit though diet, exercise or ideally a combination of both, should not exceed your limit. Theoretically, you could exceed this limit once in a while and no, your muscles won’t just dissolve overnight.

However, exceed this limit for the long term and you risk not only stalling your fat loss but also losing muscle mass. Even if you don’t think the amount of muscle you carry is important (ladies, I’m looking at you) consider that muscle loss heading into old age is a primary determinant of how independent that person will be able to be. This is equally an issue of physique and beauty as it is of health & longevity.

If your progress in training is stalling, eat more. Simple. Start small, 250 calories or so and see how this affects your training. Lethargy, depression, moodiness & muscle soreness than doesn’t go away by the next workout are all signs of overtraining. In this case it’s better to err on the side being conservative."

It is still my hope that you will go read the previously mentioned blog posts, even re-read them if possible. However, this recap should suffice to bring everyone up to speed, and to reinforce the concepts explained in the previous nine blog posts.

So that’s it for this week. Be sure to come back next week for more dynamite fat loss content including the previously promised look at the effect of exercise on insulin, your body’s potential for fat burning & muscle building. This will be a MUST READ for diabetics, and those who may be pre-diabetic, as well as for anyone who truly wants to Burn Fat Faster!

Matty

More or Less?

“There is no such thing as overtraining, only under eating, and under sleeping.”

This is one of my very favourite quotes, and couldn’t be truer. This quote also plainly illustrates the intimate connection between diet and training. Let me explain.

Without fail, when I talk to a client about the amount of food they’re eating and how it relates to the amount of training they do, they mention Michael Phelps. Why? Following his complete domination of the swimming events in the 2008 Olympic Games, he mentioned in an interview the copious amounts of food he eats during training season.

It makes sense. He trains for hours every day, therefore he needs to eat like a horse to recuperate and to come back stronger and faster than before. If Michael Phelps only ate 1000 calories per day during his high intensity, high frequency training, he undoubtedly wouldn’t even have made the US swimming team. Let alone win 14 gold medals! He would have overtained himself into the ground.

This concept is true for everyone, Olympic Athlete or not.  The amount of stress you put on your body through exercise dictates the amount of calories you should eat. High frequency & intensity of training will require more food than the average recommendations from blog post number 2.

Among the biggest mistakes in the weight loss world is combining a lot of training with a very low calorie diet, and this is a recipe for disaster. Without adequate calories to recover from previous training sessions, your body will be unable to maintain the intensity of training required to really burn fat & build muscle.

Worse yet, this set up will backfire, and you’ll end up losing more muscle than fat; as I’ve said before, this is bad, Bad, BAD. To understand this concept, consider the fact that a fat cell (adipocyte) has a physiologic limit to the amount of fat it can release in a day. Exceed this limit, and body protein (muscle, organs, etc) will be broken down for fuel. While this is a very new area of research, a number has been proposed & confirmed by several studies.

31 calories per pound of fat is all you can expect to safely lose in a day. I know, seems like it’s a futile endeavor.  However, consider how many pounds of fat you may be carrying. A very modest 20 pounds of fat can release 620 calories of fat to be burned. Most readers of this blog have significantly more fat than this, and could therefore burn many more fat calories each day.

The relevance of this number, the physiologic limit of your fat burning potential, is that your caloric deficit should not exceed this number. Put another way, whether you create this caloric deficit though diet, exercise or ideally a combination of both, should not exceed your limit. Theoretically, you could exceed this limit once in a while and no, your muscles won’t just dissolve overnight.

However, exceed this limit for the long term and you risk not only stalling your fat loss but also losing muscle mass. Even if you don’t think the amount of muscle you carry is important (ladies, I’m looking at you) consider that muscle loss heading into old age is a primary determinant of how independent that person will be able to be. This is equally an issue of physique and beauty as it is of health & longevity.

If your progress in training is stalling, eat more. Simple. Start small, 250 calories or so and see how this affects your training. Lethargy, depression, moodiness & muscle soreness than doesn’t go away by the next workout are all sings of overtraining. In this case it’s better to err on the side being conservative.  

More is not always better; Better is better.

Here’s to your better health,

Matty

As different as Day & Night

Yesterday I promised to shed some light on how to put together a great fat loss exercise program, and to maximize an already solid program. The secret lies in the use of fuel.

In yesterday's post I mentioned that low intensity steady state cardio (walking, easy bike ride) uses mainly fat for fuel. I also mentioned that fat is NOT burned during strength training. Allow me to expand on this.

When you wake up, after a prolonged period of sleeping, and therefore not eating (the fasted state), your body has very little blood sugar kicking around. This makes it prime time for low intensity steady state cardio, as the inherent low intensity negates the need for blood sugar as fuel. A nice long walk with Dog first thing in the morning is just about perfect for most.

Compare this to Strength Training or Interval work, where blood sugar along with the sugar stored in your muscles & liver (glycogen) is the dominant fuel. Attempting these forms of exercise while fasted in the AM and you're asking for trouble. Most will fall flat, finding they don't have the energy to sustain any intensity. Even worse, if they do, they risk using muscle protein as a fuel source, and this is bad, Bad, BAD.

Strength Training, as I mentioned yesterday is ESSENTIAL on a diet, as it limits the amount of muscle breakdown, or ideal maintains the muscle you have forcing your body to use fat. Since strength training requires glycogen, blood sugar and protein, it makes sense to perform your strength routine 2-3 hours after a meal (the fed state) when you'll have these fuels readily available. This will ensure that you both have the fuel to support intense training, and to promote muscle repair following the workout. Interval work has nearly the same requirements as strength training.

At this point you may already see where I'm going with this. Fasted low intensity cardio before breakfast, paired with strength training in the fed state 2-3 times per week creates the perfect program to go along with a caloric deficit. Remember that I said diet is primarily responsible for fat loss in non-athletes, and those who can't commit to 3+ hours of exercise most days of the year.

Interval work can be added in conservatively, to increase the caloric expenditure side of the equation. 1-2 sessions per week if the exerciser feels they can recover from it. So how does one know how much is too much?

Next post I will speak about good intentions gone bad, and how to determine if you may be overtraining. I also plan to touch on how diet affects the potential for overtraining.

Until then take a walk before breakfast, and go move heavy things after dinner!

Matty

Fat Loss Magic

Eat Less. It's really as simple as that; or at least it CAN be. The amount of food you currently eat has created the physique you see in the mirror. Want to lose some fat, eat less food. MAGIC!

Ok, all smartass comments aside, there are some special tactics as I like to call them, which can create fat loss magic! In today's post I hope to explore a few of these, and to make a few suggestions for incorporating them into your lifestyle.

Exercise - No big surprise here right? Everyone and their dog knows that exercise is good for you, but not many understand it. I will be speaking about exercise as Cardio, Intervals and Strength Training. Several articles could be written about the benefits, differences & synergy of these three. However, as a minimalist, I just want to tell you how to use these for fat loss.

Cardio - Anything less than sprinting. I refer to this type of cardio as "steady state" as you generally get into a groove and maintain it throughout the exercise session. This is good for your cardiovascular system (duh!) and can therefore make your body a more efficient machine. It also burns calories, and being relatively easy (comparatively) does not demand much from your recovery abilities.

Intervals - Anything that alternates periods of very hard work with easier work. Think Sprinting for 20 seconds and then walking 40 seconds, repeated for 20 minutes. This burns more calories than steady state cardio work, but also takes more recovery.

Strength Training - Anything that involves lifting or moving objects, including your own body. Barbells, dumbbells, kettle bells, sand bags, a sack of potatoes, etc. This type of exercise builds or maintains muscle and therefore is ESSENTIAL on a diet to avoid losing lean body tissue and forcing your body to burn fat!

Several important things regarding exercise must be mentioned here.
1) Exercise for strength, and conditioning; diet for fat loss. Far too many people are looking for exercise to make them skinny, and it’s a losing battle. The amount of activity needed to burn 1 pound of fat is outside the ability of most people, however to burn the same pound by dieting is achievable by anyone!

2) Cardio can be done fasted, strength training cannot. The lower the intensity of exercise the more fat it uses relative to other fuel sources. This means walking on an empty stomach will burn nearly all fat! It also means you are not burning any fat when you're lifting weights. Therefore when doing strength training, you want to be in the fed state, roughly 2-3 hours after a meal. Intervals occupy the land in between; most people can't train intensely when fasted, so the usual recommendation is to fuel your interval session as you would a strength training session.

3) Progression is king. No matter which type of activity you're doing, you must continue to progress. Heavier weights, more repetitions at the same weight, a faster run time, longer work periods for intervals, etc. Your body adapts to whatever you do, therefore to progress, do more!

Fasting - Specifically Intermittent Fasting (alternating periods of fasting with periods of eating) is a method that many find ideal for reducing calories. The diet myth of "6 meals a day, 2-3 hours apart" has been proven wrong, and the major factor for fat loss is caloric intake vs. caloric expenditure. By having a period of each day, or week where no calories are ingested you lower your caloric intake dramatically. Many find this to be an easy way of dieting, as your meals still stay the usual size, cravings and hunger are kept in check.

Positivity - Whatever you think of yourself, you're right! You are programmed to become what you believe, so stay positive and visualize yourself as the lean, healthy, beautiful person you WANT to be, and then watch yourself transform. Many people write this off as new age, hippy bull s**t, but there is solid science behind this. Negative self talk is your worst enemy. If you think of yourself as fat, you will subconsciously engage in practices that create a fat person. Think of yourself as lean & sexy and your subconscious will drive you to the choices & practices that create a lean sexy body.

Tomorrow I will show you how to put together a proper fat loss exercise program, and I will reveal how to maximize an already solid exercise regime. Later this week I plan to explore good intentions gone bad (overtraining) and how this relates to your individual maximal rate of fat loss.

Keep on living the Lean Life,

And The Winner Is....

TWINKIES!!!! OMG!

TWINKIES WIN!!!! This is Historic!!! Starvation put up a good fight but in the end, Twinkies win the fat loss battle of 2010. How? You may ask. The answer, to which I eluded yesterday, is our pal Leptin.

Leptin is a hormone that is primarily released by fat cells, though nearly every tissue in the body can create them. Leptin’s main role is sensing starvation; in other words Leptin tells your body both how much you’re eating and how much fat you have stored.

Leptin uses this data set to determine if your metabolic rate is too fast, too slow or just right. Lose some fat or chronically under eat; Leptin decreases.  Gain fat or chronically over eat; Leptin increases. In terms of importance to readers, decreased Leptin levels make it hard to lose fat. Increased reliance on other fuels, decreased physical activity, food cravings and all the other problems this blog has addressed soon follow a decrease in Leptin.

Research on Leptin is fairly new but at this point it appears that the body detects incoming calories and uses this info to determine how much Leptin to release. After only a few days of dieting (eating below maintenance) Leptin levels nosedive, wreaking havoc on the good intentions of dedicated dieters.

Here’s the fun part: Eating lots of carbohydrates (especially combined with fat, yummy!) triggers an increase in Leptin, therefore speeding up the slowed metabolism and making it easier to continue losing fat! Not to mention that eating carbs makes us happy (remember, Serotonin?), and provides some relief from chronic under eating.

Upon ingestion, the body digests carbohydrates and turns them into glucose. Part of this glucose will flux through a metabolic pathway called the HBP (Hexosamine Biosynthetic Pathway) and it is this very flux that triggers Leptin’s effect on the OB (obesity) gene. Therefore, we can raise Leptin, by raising Carbohydrates.

How each dieter implements “refeeds” (aka higher than normal carbohydrate intake) depends on several factors. First off is amount of body fat; since Leptin is made in fat cells, the more a person has to lose the longer it will take to really decrease Leptin levels. A lean person with very little body fat can deplete Leptin levels in a few days, whereas an obese person could diet for weeks without a major decrease in Leptin.

Equally important is how long a refeed should last and how often to implement them, and there are many different schools of thought on this topic.  A person with lots of fat to lose, should implement a single weekly refeed, also called a cheat meal. For one meal every week, toss the diet aside and eat some of the foods you are craving. This is just one meal, and you can’t get fat from one meal. So indulge, within reason of course.

A leaner individual should stretch these refeeds out for a longer duration and more less frequent implementation. So for a lean person whose abs are showing or nearly showing, a 5 hour refeed every 10-12 days would be more effective. This is partly because the lean individual will have much lower levels of Leptin; therefore it takes more to return them to normal. Some methods use a 2-3 day period of refeeding, however in practice this often backfires and results in fat regain.

Another popular approach is that of refeeding after every strength training session. Strength training heightens insulin sensitivity, opens the GLUT-4 receptors, and empties the stored form of carbohydrates (glucose) from skeletal muscle improving nutrient partitioning (where the calories go; fat or muscle).  I will blog about nutrient partitioning in a future post.

Some call this EOD (every other day, since most strength training programs are set up 3x/week) or Culking. Culking is cutting and bulking simultaneously instead of alternating the two. Eating less on rest & cardio days and more on strength training days fits this bill nicely.

Regardless of the method that suits you best, dieters can expect a significant weight gain the day after a refeed. This is water weight that accompanies a high carb intake, and it will resolve itself within a few days. Despite this gain, you can expect to look leaner & more muscular the day after a refeed.

The bottom line is that you must create a caloric deficit in order to lose weight, and a caloric deficit (depending on severity & duration) will slow the metabolic rate. Therefore in order to continue losing weight, strategic refeeds must be implemented to keep Leptin levels high and to keep the dieter sane.

An easy rule is that the longer and more severe a dieting stint, the longer & more intense the refeed should be. For those of you who don’t exercise at all, raising the carbs by 100 grams will likely work to restore Leptin levels. If you’re exercising consistently and intensely, upwards of 1000 gram carb refeeds* may be required. Take these guidelines and experiment.

What about the stuff gym lore is made of? Burn fat while gaining muscle? Is it possible? Conventional knowledge would offer a resounding NO; however, being the type that takes a “NO” as a dare or challenge, I have found a few magic secrets to share next week!

Stay tuned, and go eat a Pizza would ya?

Starvation Vs Twinkie; Death Match

Regardless of whether you suspect your metabolism to be as slow as molasses or not, odds are a metabolic tune up could help your fat loss efforts. Before I get to this, let me explain by comparing dieting with starvation. Yes, it’s cliché but it is so for good reason.

Dieting involves consuming fewer calories than you expend so your body is forced to rely on stored fat for energy. Starvation is essentially the same thing without being self imposed. So when you cut calories in an attempt to lose fat, your body senses starvation.

The human body is programmed with incredible defenses against starvation because in humankind’s past, starvation was a real threat. When calories are reduced too much, your body begins to slow down other processes that it deems less important to survival. Hormones shift to make it harder to use fat for fuel, decrease activity level & increase hunger signals.

Most people who’ve been on a diet know the feeling of lethargy that accompanies a reduction in caloric intake. Not wanting to get out of bed, skipping workouts or having really crappy workouts, a moody disposition, and general feelings of malaise are the common set of afflictions of the dieter. This is the physical reaction to starvation; decrease energy expenditure.

Equally common is the feeling of an overwhelming craving some point during their diet. So overwhelming are these urges, that they crack even the most steadfast of dieters. This is when that Hamburger & fries call to you, the half liter of Ben & Jerry’s taunting you. This is the hormonal reaction to starvation; increase caloric intake.

Readers will be happy to hear that satisfying these cravings, on occasion and within reason, will increase the rate of fat loss and the level of energy expenditure within your body! That’s right! All those foods you’ve been told are forbidden on a diet are in fact, the opposite. Carbohydrates & fat, above your normal intake have the ability to stimulate the hormone Leptin. If you want a lean physique, you want Leptin to be stimulated like Robert Downey Jr. on Oscar night. I will outline this process in a later post, including personalizing a plan.

So go ahead & eat that Chocolate Chip Banana Muffin that’s driving you mad! It’s just one muffin; it’s not going to kill you if you eat it. That extra bit of energy will help stoke your metabolic fire and will actually feel good. That feeling is the return of serotonin brought about by returning your caloric intake to normal. Those extra carbs will also make it that much easier to go for the run you keep putting off. Consistently engaging in physical activity will help your metabolism run at top speed, enabling you to burn fat faster.

Heresy, I understand, to praise the carbohydrate in this world of Atkins & South Beaches. However it is the much maligned carbohydrate that provides your body’s preferred fuel source. Too little of this fuel and your workouts will either not exist, or they’ll be pretty pathetic at best. People get too caught up on the fact that carbs cause an insulin spike, and that insulin prevents the burning of fat.

“Never eat carbs again, and you’ll burn only fat” assume the ketogenic dieters. Personally, the feelings of brutal cravings, horrible mood, plummeting energy level & awful workouts make this plan a bust. Not to mention that any food will cause a release in insulin.

We need carbs to fuel activity, and activity to burn fat. I don’t care if you eat nothing but protein; no magic ratio of macronutrients will change the basic rule: if you eat more than you burn you’ll still get fat. Keeping insulin low is good, but it’s not the be all and end all of fat loss.

So, lesson here; fad diets suck. Restrictive eating sucks. Being hungry sucks. Depriving yourself sucks. Being tired sucks too. However, there is hope! Tomorrow we’ll talk about how exercise affects Insulin, your body’s potential for fat burning & muscle building. Then on Wednesday I plan to outline several ways YOU can use your favourite foods, including those wonderful carbohydrates, as part of your best fat burning plan ever!

What Does It All Mean, Anyway?

Alright! 3 posts in and you are well on your way towards the beautiful, lean, muscular physique you desire! Today’s installment will look at interpreting the results of your week long calorie counting experience.

Upon completion of 1-2 weeks of calorie counting, did you find that you either routinely consume more or less than your maintenance caloric needs? Interestingly BOTH could account for a less than lean physique.

EATING MORE THAN MAINTENANCE: Eat less. This is pretty simple; start by cutting your daily calorie intake by 500 calories & track your weight for 1-2 weeks. If still not losing, cut an additional 500 calories per day.

EATING LESS THAN MAINTENANCE: This is a bit more complicated; you’re either overestimating your activity level, underestimating your food intake, or your metabolism needs a tune up. If your goal is weight gain, this becomes easy; eat more!

More often than not, its option 1 or 2 above. People are horrible at estimating their food intake without measurements, and calorie expenditure estimates are way too generous. Go back & weigh/measure everything you eat honestly; don't let a lack of attention to detail derail your fat loss efforts!

If you would classify yourself as a perpetual dieter, someone who is always on/off a diet, or someone who has lost a lot of weight, there is a good chance that you’ve slowed your metabolism somewhat. This doesn’t make it impossible to lose weight, just incredibly difficult!

Even if you don’t meet the above listed criteria, if you’re having trouble losing fat, it’s likely that a metabolic tune up would help. More on Metabolic Tune ups in a future post.

Most of you fell into the eating more than maintenance category if you were honest with yourself & measured/weighed all your food. People ACTUALLY eating less than their estimated maintenance needs and NOT losing weight are rare, very rare. Equally rare are genetic metabolism problems.

So start with your own numbers; decrease your caloric intake 500 calories below maintenance to lose weight, 500 calories above it to gain. Track everything to determine how well this level works & adjust. If two weeks eating 500 calories per day less than maintenance causes no fat loss, try two weeks 750 calories below. Still no loss? Two more weeks 1000 calories below maintenance or 1200 calories, whichever is higher. (I'll explain this next post).

 If at this point you truly believe that you’ve been honest with your food intake, measurements & weighing, and have still not lost weight, you fit into the small category of slowed metabolisms & are in need of a metabolic tune up.

That’s all for this post, I want to stop here & pick up next time on how exercise affects all of this, before writing on how to speed up a slowed metabolism, how to use forbidden junk foods to boost fat loss and finally how to plan & implement exercise to get the most outstanding results in your physique transformation.

How Much to Move

While determining your estimated caloric needs, and tracking your current daily caloric intake, some will be amazed at how little food is necessary to maintain their current weight, some will feel the opposite; that the amount of food needed to maintain their current weight seems like a lot of food!

Truth is you’re all right; this reaction depends on your perception of a “normal” amount of food. Naturally skinny people don’t eat very much compared to naturally overweight individuals. Your perception is also skewed by your current conditions. By this I mean that after a long diet stint, maintenance calories seem ridiculously high, however after a few weeks, you adjust to it and it becomes “normal”.

Naturally skinny people also move more than their chubby counterparts, and I don’t specifically mean exercise either. Skinny people fidget, get up a lot, walk instead of driving, etc. They’re just wired that way. Being overweight can cause you to move less, however inactivity is also a major contributor to weight gain in its own right.

So if your maintenance caloric needs seem like they’ll leave you starving, remember this: The more you move the more room there is in your diet for additional food! So if 1200 calories seems cruel, add exercise into the equation to increase the amount of food you can eat while still losing weight!

As an active individual I often have to eat more food than I desire simply because I expend so many calories in daily activity. Needless to say, your favourite foods are high calorie, so exercise allows you to eat more of these without gaining weight. I will, in a future post, explain why you MUST eat these calorie dense foods in order to maintain the MOST effective fat loss possible. Think Pizza, Burgers & fries, Ice Cream, Cookies & Cheesecake, Oh My. ;)

For now, I leave you with another challenge. Track your daily activity levels & determine how many calories you burn during “regular” activities (walking the dog, taking the stairs, etc) as well as how many you burn during exercise & adjust your caloric targets accordingly.

If your daily activity level is only allowing you an extra jube jube per day (one jube not one bag) then adopting a more active lifestyle, including formal exercise is necessary in your body recomposition plan.

Stay tuned for explanation & analysis of your calorie counting experience, and a discussion about the different types of exercise and how they can impact on your rate of fat loss.

How Much to Eat

Welcome back! Todays installment will be broken into 2 parts. Part 1 will provide you the tools you need to determine how much food you should eat daily, and to determine how much you actually are eating. Part 2 will be an opportunity for me to rant on a topic that's been irking me for a while, buckle up spin class, steppers & treadmillers.

So in the previous installment,  http://www.everydayhealth.com/blogs/burnfatfaster/welcome-newbs  I asked readers to take an honest look at themselves and ask if they know their maintenance caloric needs (the amount of food needed to neither gain nor lose weight) and their current caloric intake (the amount of food you're actually eating.

If you answered no, don't despair, we'll get there in a minute! If you answered yes, it might still be wise to polish up your targets. If you answered yes, but are still frustrated with your lack of results then definitely continue on.

HOW MUCH TO EAT: There are many different formulae for estimating maintenance caloric needs, however, they are all similar and will give you a good starting place. This is only an estimate, so fine tuning will likely be required for each individual.

A) Basic Calorie Needs = Body weight x 11
+
B) Metabolic Rate = A x Activity Level*
+
C Maintenance Caloric Needs

ACTIVITY LEVEL* Mostly Sedentary  30%
Active   40%
Very Active   50%


* 30-40 yrs old subtract 5%
* 40+ yrs old subtract 10%


So using myself as an example:
A) 205lbs bodyweight x 11 = 2255 (would keep me alive on bed rest)
B 2255 x 35% (31 yrs old, active) = 789 (how many calories I burn by moving)
C) A+B =  3044 (Maintenance Caloric Needs - how much to eat to neither gain nor lose weight)


Now knowing your Maintenance Caloric Needs is an important start, but its meaningless without knowing your Current Caloric Intake. If you're eating more than your own maintenance caloric needs you will gain weight; less and you will lose weight.


http://www.everydayhealth.com provides an awesome food & fitness journal for free! This is a great way to help you determine how much you're eating and how many calories you're burning. It even provides calculators for the above equations (or something similar as mentioned).


So now that you have determined your Estimated Maintenance Caloric Needs, spend a week or two measuring everything you eat with a scale or measuring cups, and tracking your Current Caloric Intake to see how close you are to actually maintaining your current weight.


Next post I'll talk about how to interpret your week of calorie tracking, and how to use this info to design your own personalized plan to either gain or lose weight. A plan that will use the foods YOU like, the exercises YOU enjoy (or at least will benefit from) and will get you the body YOU desire!


PART 2: THE RANT


I am a dedicated exerciser and have been since the day I decided I didn't want to be fat anymore. It just so happened that it was in the early winter so the weather conditions here in Southern Ontario were less than ideal for outdoor exercise. Having no treadmill or gym membership I began walking @ 6am EVERYDAY. Walking a few blocks turned into jogging a few blocks, which turned into jogging a few more blocks, and so on. I did this everyday for a year and lost about 100 lbs!


When I say EVERYDAY I mean it! I ran in the sleep, slush, rain, frozen rain, hail, blizzard and whatever awful thing Mother Nature could throw at me. With time I begain to thrive on it; "Bring it on! Nothing can stop me!"


The next year I bought a treadmill. I thought it would be nice now that I'm not so desparate to lose weight, to stay indoors and that I'd continue on. Well that treadmill got lots of use, but not only did I get bored, I found on the days I did go run outside I felt weaker than running inside.


Machines make things easy for humans, thats why we design them. Exercise machines are no different, or they're just a way to make money. A treadmill has a moving path, and I'm quite sure we don't have moving sidewalks a la Jetsons Future Vision. So your hamstrings don't have to work so hard, because the ground is moving FOR YOU. A bicycle (whether stationary or not) provides mechanical advantage and you sit down. Abs don't have to work much to hold you up, legs don't have to work hard, just switch gears.


Get outside and enjoy the world! Even on the "gloomy" days and through the winter. Its better for you and its more interesting. Nothing cracks me up more than arriving to work on my bike, and walking past the "spin class" whose members all drove to the gym to ride a bike for an hour.


That just ain't right.

Matty Smith

Welcome Newbs!

Hello & welcome newbs to the Burn Fat Faster Blog! THE place to be if you want to lose fat without giving up your favourite foods!

This Blog is being written as a comprehensive guide to Body Recomposition. For you, the reader, to get the most out of it, please read each post in order and subscribe to this blog to keep up to date.

Burn Fat Faster is written by a post-obese personal trainer with over 10 years in the fitness field. For a trainer to truly understand the plights of the overweight, they must have experienced it first hand. I know just how hard it is to go from flabby to firm, fat stomach to flat stomach, stretch marks to six pack, and now I want to share this information with you; so you can transform your body and your life!

For those who don't know me (yet) I'm Matty, and I'm a recovering Fatty. I grew up with no real weight problems, as I was an All Star football player; but I also never felt comfortable with my shirt off. Looking back, I was quite lean, so it amazes me that even then, I felt this way. By "this way" I mean fat. No sugar coating. Even before I got fat, I felt fat. That said, it never kept me from taking my shirt off at the pool, it never really affected my life; I was a kid, I didn't really care.

Fast forward to the late 90's. No longer playing football, and not eating healthily I packed on the pounds FAST! At my worst I stood on the scale at 278lbs, however weigh ins were few and far between, so my actual weight probably got up to 300lb before I changed everything.

Now I'll save my own story for a later post, this one is about you: the newbs. Suffice it to say; I am a recovering Fatty which means I am not fat anymore.  I lost over 100lbs of fat (without giving up any foods, including so called junk food), and then gained about 30lbs of muscle, and with my own sick pack abs in check, my objective now is to help you achieve the same!

So where do we start? With you of course! Without a doubt I can surmise that you're here because you're not truly satisfied with your current physique. Whether Male or Female, Teen age or middle age, I can help.

I can help by explaining things that will move you in the right direction. Short of personal training with me (sorry not accepting new clients at the time of this writing) I can not promise results. I can promise to offer knowledge, thougtful application of theory, and even guidance all free of charge. I feel blessed that the universe allowed me to recreate myself and to change my life, in writing this blog & offering my guidance I hope to pay forward some of the blessings bestowed onto me.

Back to you: before making any direct statements or imparting any esoteric wisdom of fat loss, a reality check is in order. Be honest with yourself.

Do you know how many calories you need to maintain your weight?
Do you know how many calories you're eating daily?

If you answered no to either, than this is your starting point. You must first determine how many calories are needed to sustain the body you have right now. Then you must strive to eat less than this amount to lose weight or more to increase it.

Tomorrow's blog will provide you with the formulae required to determine your maintenance caloric needs, as well as tips & tools for tracking your food intake!

Feel Free to leave questions & comments, or to email me directly for futher help!

math_hue@hotmail.com

Become a Former Fatty,

Burn Fat Faster!!!

Matty Smith