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Cardio Won’t Tone Your Body, You Need to Lift Heavy

October 31, 2011 by 3 Comments

Leora placed 4th in the Venus Index Transformation Contest. Just take a look at how has she transformed herself in just 12 weeks.

Leora - Venus Index Transformation

Leora's back shot.

Leora - Venus Index Transformation

Leora's front shot. Red background seems to work for her.

Leora’s goal was to lose 15 pounds of fat and gain another 15 pounds of muscles. She basically wanted a body re-composition. She did lose 15 pounds of fat, but on the other hand, she wasn’t able to gain the same weight of muscle mass. And this shouldn’t come as a surprise, you can’t expect to gain 15 pounds of muscle in just 12 weeks, hell even guys usually can’t gain that much muscle mass in such a short period of time. And guys have a lot higher level of testosterone than you do.

And not only that it’s impossible for you to gain so much muscle (especially in such a short time frame), but there is also no need to do that. Do you know how much 15 pounds really is? Next time you are in a shop take a pound of steak to see how much just a single pound really is.

This is exactly what Leora found out. She thought that just because her husband is and always been masculine, it’s easy and quick to gain muscle.

She just had no idea how big of a muscle gain is actually realistic for her.

5 Pound Dumbbells Won’t Get You Ripped

Usually there is not a lot of women lifting weights, most of them are on a treadmill or doing some other type of cardio. And if they do lift, it’s with pathetically light weights.

Light weights won’t help you or will change your body shape only very little.

You don’t have to worry about gaining lot of muscles and looking like a male bodybuilder. That is really impossible.

Yes, there are few women that have taken bodybuilding little bit too far, but you have to understand that they are on an insane amount of drugs to achieve and maintain such a look. You can’t lift weights and expect to grow muscles like men do.

Your natural level of testosterone won’t allow you to build lot of muscles and those few pounds you will build will only make you look more fit, attractive and feminine.

If you want to build a naturally attractive and toned body, lifting heavy is key.

Most girls make the mistake of just losing fat and thinking that it’s going to be enough, they are scared to death of going to the gym. However, if you just keep loosing fat you will become anorectic and not fit. You need to build some muscle too.

Just put your faith in weight lifting and start believing that what is build naturally must be attractive and you will be rewarded with a great body. Just take some models from Victoria’s Secret as examples, they are fit and they all work out and lift heavy!

At first Leora was lifting 5 pound dumbbells and while she was really trying to get most of her training sessions, the intensity just wasn’t there to stimulate any significant muscle growth. It wasn’t until the second month of training with Venus Index Workouts and also the second month of the contest that she finally realized that she needs to and actually can go significantly heavier on her lifts.

You may be very surprised how strong you actually are when you pick some proper weights. This is what she said: “I Didn’t know I’m that strong, you need to push it to its limits and challenge your body”.

Workouts were challenging on their own, but there was one more thing that was pretty tough for her.

One of the biggest challenges for her was admitting that she needs to lose weight. You would say that 135 pounds is already low enough, even her doctor told her that she needs to gain weight if she wants a prescription for birth control pills. However, judging your weight without considering LBM and your height is really pointless. Weight itself tells you nothing, it doesn’t say if you need to gain muscle, lose some pounds from your abdominal area or your hips. This is why it’s better to rather rely on body measurements and photos instead of your weight scale.

Being concerned about weight can also lead to some disbelief and skepticism about weight loss. People are afraid to weight too light (this is even worse for guys, it’s like they are scared of losing their manhood if they get under 170 lbs).

There is no reason to be concerned, all that matters are your proportions and overall shape. Does it look attractive and healthy? Then it’s okay to be that light.

Fat Loss Happened Kind of on It’s Own

Apart from the other contestants, for Leora dieting was the easy part. She is used to eat around her expenditure level and throwing few fasting days wasn’t really that difficult after a while. Even though she walks all day long, because of her job, she managed eat low enough to lose 15 pounds of fat. All while still enjoying food like ice cream and pizza.

She ate slightly more on the work days and then created bigger deficit in the rest of the week.

You may be wondering how she could lose so much while eating like a regular person, well this is the beauty of fasting with Eat Stop Eat. You can eat like you normally do (assuming you are not overeating) and just throw in few fasts and you will end up losing pounds of fat.

Fasting 2 days a week accounts for about one pound of fat a week. In 12 weeks you have 12 pounds. If you add some activity like her 20 000 steps of walking during the day like Leora did, you will easily get to 15 pounds of fat loss in 12 week.

Leora really transformed her body.

Today she is excited that it is moving in a right direction, its what she wants.

The best part is that anyone can do it.

Take away advice for girls that are in a similar situation as Leora was before the contest:

  • Be patient, building muscle takes some time
  • It’s important to stay busy and keep yourself occupied during the fast
  • You have to challenge yourself every time you are in the gym
  • If you feel pain, work around it – Stop training, don’t risk an injury
  • You need to force your muscles to grow, not expect them to appear all of sudden
  • Get into a supportive community – Chances are whatever your problem is, somebody else already solved it long before you have even encountered it
  • If you are really getting results then stick with whatever you are doing – Both diet and workouts
  • If you want to look better, you need to build some muscle
  • Stop looking at your weight scale and with the whole weight obsession, weight itself says nothing about how you look
  • Fat loss is the easy part if get the flow right, even if it’s struggle for you, it’s still pretty quick compared to muscle building

Plus at the end she tells how she had to call her husband to set up the camera for the after photoshoot and literally ran for food afterwards.

Listen to the interview here:

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Bodyfat Is An Endocrine Tissue, Not Just Stored Energy

October 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Bodyfat, adipose tissue, subcutaneous fat, brown fat, white fat, healthy fat sick fat, belly fat, visceral fat, gut fat, butt fat, arm fat, back fat, thigh fat, cellulite…just plain ol’ FAT!

There is more than just fat in a fat cell

As you might have guessed this podcast is about bodyfat. Specifically, we’re going to talk about what it is and how it’s regulated. In the past, bodyfat was thought to simply be a storage tissue for excess energy. It was assumed to be relatively inert and simply sit there holding energy in the form of fat for future use when calorie intake isn’t sufficient.

Over the past 20 years, this view has changed and now researchers know that bodyfat is a dynamic and metabolically active tissue that plays multiple roles in our daily functioning.

Your bodyfat is capable of producing various hormones, and converting hormones into different forms. It also produces inflammatory cytokines and other messenger molecules that act as signals to the rest of your body. The total amount of bodyfat you have will change how it communicates and acts on the rest of your body.

All of these recent discoveries have led researchers to re-categorize bodyfat as an endocrine tissue.

An endocrine tissue is a tissue in your body that secretes hormones as messengers to signal function for the rest of the body. And it’s now clear that bodyfat is more than just stored energy, it’s in fact an endocrine tissue.

Understanding bodyfat from the perspective of endocrine tissue as well as energy storage will give you more insight into it’s purpose and it’s regulation.

In this podcast, you’ll learn how and why things change in your body depending on how much fat you are carrying and what this means from a diet and nutrition standpoint.

John

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Filed Under: Bodyfat, Podcast, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: , ,

The Truth About Dietary Fat: What Labels Don’t Tell You

October 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Dietary fat is one of the least understood macro nutrients but it’s also the one that many people are the most afraid of. Over the past 50 years researchers have learned a great deal about dietary fat but there are still just as many unanswered questions.

If you’ve done any casual health and fitness reading you’ve probably come to some of these conclusions:

Is bad or good?

 

Saturated fat is bad

Trans fats are REALLY bad

Monounsaturated fats are good

Poly unsaturated fats are REALLY good

From there you’ve likely heard about fish oils, “omega” fats, and even the difference between Omega 6 and Omega 3 fats…if you’re really advanced in your understand of the Omega 3 fats you’ll also understand that there are different forms of “omega” fats and that only specific forms provide the purported health benefits of lowering cholesterol, raising HDL, and lowering triglycerides and LDL. You might even know what the specific essential fatty acids are that provide the health benefit that are basis of Omega 3 claims namely DHA (Docospentanoic Acid) and EPA (Eicosapentanoic acid).

Even if you understand all of this information, the real question is how do you  go about eating food on a daily basis and how do you choose where the fat will appear in your diet. Do you treat food as food and simply eat a sensible a varied mixed diet, or do you treat your food like a drug that needs to be dosed, and specifically dose your fat based on it’s chemical composition?

Many people do the latter. We search for food items that a a specific contest of poly unsaturated fatty acids. We’ll choose olive oil over other forms of oil, butter over margarine, margarine over butter…neither? Fish Oil tablets, salmon for its fatty acid content, flax seed oil because it has ‘omega 3’s’, coconut oil or milk because it’s supposed to have good fat.

Do all of these considerations actually amount to any real benefit of it’s it much ado about nothing?

Developing a grounded view of food as food (and potentially medicine) but NOT as a drug is the key component to understanding what to do about dietary fat.

In today’s uncensored podcast, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about dietary fat and how to have clear view of how much mind space and plate space it should take up in your life and your diet.

John

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Filed Under: Food, Podcast, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Venus Index: The Shape of an Athlete

October 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Fat loss is relatively straight forward. The fat comes off of your body in a systemic way and you can’t choose what parts of your body will burn the fat. It simply comes off all over and at it’s own pace so to speak. There are of course areas on your body where more fat will tend to accumulate (hips and thighs is the typical area for women).

This area seems to accumulate fat faster and at a higher proportion to the rest of the body. When you start losing fat this area seems to lose it slower when in reality there is simply more of it in this area so it takes longer for these areas to come down.

This is cover of FHM featuring Olympic athletes...A Venus Index body can also be a high performance body.

Losing fat and attaining a bodyfat level that is approximately between 18-22% is likely what it will take to be at the ideal Venus Index. But it’s not just about fat loss, the next step is building muscle to create the Venus Index shape. And this is where targeted muscle building comes in. Being ‘skinny fat’ isn’t going to cut it as a Venus. The body we’re talking about it a lean but muscular body, a body that has shape and power.

In today’s podcast, we’ll go over research that indicates many top level athletes in various sports all have the ideal Venus Index waist, muscle mass and are within our projected weight ranges. In short, we’ll show how the Venus Index body is also a high performance body.

John

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Overcoming Emotional Eating: Reprogramming Your Mind to Control Your Weight

October 10, 2011 by 4 Comments

Changing the look and shape of your body requires a holistic approach. This means the change has to come both with your physiology and psychology especially if you struggle with emotional or stressful eating.

Physiology simply means getting your calories under control, making more sensible food and eating decisions as well as sticking to a regular exercise program that is well designed to move you towards your health and fitness goals whatever they may be.

Dr Nicola Bird Founder of Self Imaging Therapy

You can even think of the physiology part as the things that are obviously outwardly such as going to the gym, choosing smaller portion sizes, and ensuring that your diet is based more on whole foods that satisfy your needs without over consuming calories from dense sources.

The physiology is what you read about in fitness magazines, and it’s the information that gets cluttered, contradicted, and over consumed. This is because the physiology for many people isn’t the problem. For some people it’s the psychology.

Getting a handle on the psychological aspects of weight control is an entirely different matter and it’s not so obvious what is happening in your mind and with your emotions. Taking control of your psychology and learning to reprogram yourself for weight loss success requires just as much work as the physiology, but this is a different kind of work.

If you think you have an emotional or psychological issue with eating and weight control the first step is getting to the root of the issue. This is hard and in many cases uncomfortable work, and the answer isn’t always obvious. In many cases you’ll be the last person to know what the real issue is until you start doing the work to find out.

Click this image to check out Nicolas book on Amazon

These are usually deep rooted issues that touch on your sense of identity and self worth. It will involve undoing old psychological patterns and laying down new ones, and it requires repetition to make it stick, just like working out.

To truly change your body for good, you must change both your physiology AND your psychology. Changing one without the other isn’t enough.

In todays podcast I interview Dr. Nicola Bird about changing your psychology to help overcoming emotional and stress related eating to make a real lasting change in your body. She is my psychotherapist and the ace up my sleeve that helps me stay balanced and keeps me moving forward.

We’ll discuss the root of the identity crisis that many people face when they do finally make a change in their body. We will also talk about why so many people self sabotage and become their own worst enemy when they try to change their bodies.

This is a great interview and I suggest you take notes if emotional or stress eating is an issue you’ve been struggling with.

Finally if you like what you hear from Nicola you can visit her website here and even book a session to start working through your own issues with her over the phone. I highly recommend it if you feel stuck or hitting a sabotage point that you cannot overcome. I find that her methods are the most effective way to start getting your psychology inline with your physiology for a lasting change.

John

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Filed Under: Podcast, stress, weight loss Tagged With: ,

Unethical Diet and Fitness Marketing: It’s Everywhere

October 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The diet health and fitness industry has it’s fair share of shady salesmen and dubious claims. In fact, it might be the worst offender for false claims and marketing ‘hope’ with no real science or evidence to back up the claims. The marketing in the diet and fitness and health industries are largely based around a fear based model.

This sign should be on the door of every health food store

The basic pattern is to get you to become aware and afraid of something that you were never aware of or afraid of, work you  up into a frenzy about it, then sell you a solution to remove the fear. This is the easy way out of marketing and sales. It’s also irresponsible and in many cases can cause serious psychological harm and turmoil for the unassuming customer.

The problem stems from a blurring of the lines between what is a real health practitioner vs a pseudo practitioner. Who can you trust? Who has a read background and a real degree that qualifies them to give you real health advice and guidance?

Should you be listening to the ‘fitness co-ordinator’ at the local gym? Or even worse the sales rep who is trying to hustle memberships and personal training? Or should you restrict your  advice to your family physician? It’s hard to know where to draw the line and who to listen to and who to ignore.

In todays uncensored podcast we’ll discuss these blurry lines and give an example of advice gone wrong. The industry is inherently irresponsible so the onus is on you to take responsibility for your health, and for what advice you  choose to follow.

Coincidentally the day we recorded this podcast this story about reebok having to pay $25 million for false claims on their ‘toning shoes’ hit the interwebs. Check it out here: Reebok gets slammed for false claims

John

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Venus Index Coaching Call

September 28, 2011 by 1 Comment

It’s been approximately 4 weeks into the 3rd Venus Index transformation contest and it’s a perfect time to do an inventory of what has been working and what needs some work.

If weight loss is your issue you have to remind yourself that the process is not linear. Some weeks are going to go really smooth and others are going to be a lot bumpier. Muscle building is the same thing, some weeks just feel like a lot more progress is happening than others.

It's time to find your exercise groove just like meatwad did with his 'powerwalking'

This is sometimes tough to deal with as your  daily and weekly effort seems to feel linear and consistent even though your results are not. The key at this point is recognizing that the path has it’s ups and downs and to be consistent over the long term. Twelve weeks is going to go by in a flash. Finding a groove is important and sticking with the parts that are working is going to keep you moving forward.

Give yourself some room for change, but don’t try to change everything at once. Review your list of what is working and what needs changing, pick the one or two most important things that need to change and make a plan. Give it about 1-2 weeks to see if what you’re changing is working then move on. If something doesn’t work, discard it and try something else.

Remember that this process is not perfect or smooth, it’s a controlled stumble forward.

In todays coaching call we’ll cover what to do at the quarter contest point and how to set up your inventory list, and how to think your way through the next 4 weeks of the contest.

John

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Filed Under: Contest, Podcast, transformation Tagged With: , ,

Calculating Metabolic Rate

September 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Metabolic Rate…Metabolism, BMR, RMR…these are buzz words that the diet and fitness media throw around all the time, however it’s greatly misunderstood.

There are many ‘metabolic rate’ calculators online that you can use to supposedly find out what your specific metabolic rate is by typing in your height, age, gender and weight. Some even have an ‘activity factor’ built into the calculator that is supposed to incorporate the amount of calories you are burning when you partake in various daily activities.

Do you think a simple calculator can guess your metabolic rate exactly?

Metabolic rate calculators are meant to be estimators, not fact. If you type your information into a calculator and it says your metabolic rate is 2500 calories per day, but when you eat 2500 calories per day you gain weight, then you have proof that your metabolic rate is actually lower than this number. You also have proof that the calculator is wrong.

This however is not how many people view this sort of situation. I get countless emails from people who say they’ve used a calculator and the calculator says their metabolic rate is X or Y, and when they try to eat that much they gain weight. Instead of believing that the calculator is broken or wrong they instead believe there is something wrong with themselves because they don’t fit into what the calculator said.

The tragedy is the fact that most people have the automatic assumption that they are broken instead of the calculator. This has to change if people are going to start having a healthier attitude and clearer picture of what it takes to get in shape and stay in shape.

In today’s podcast, we’re going to get to the bottom of what is behind metabolic rate calculators and what we know about metabolic rate in general.

We’ll explain how you  should view the numbers these calculators give you and how to use it as a general starting point to explore where you  might need to start if you’re trying to lose weight or get in shape.

Once you start viewing these calculators for what they really are, you can let go of any potential roadblocks or fears you might have about your ‘metabolism being broken’.

John

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Filed Under: Metabolism, Podcast, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: , , ,

Reading Between the Lines – How To Deconstruct Diet & Fitness Media

September 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Diet and fitness information can be found in print, television, online, from health care practitioners, and just about everywhere else. It seems that everyone has an opinion on what to do for ‘fitness’ and ‘health’. So how do you know who to listen to and who to ignore?

The words tell a different story when you know what is going on behind the scenes

Is it as simple as picking one group of people and following everything they say? Or is it more prudent to pick and choose from various camps and philosophies and piece together your own unique system?

How do you even know where to start? Do you need to go back to school for a degree in physiology? That sounds a bit drastic. It makes more sense to just follow the advice of a professional who has already done this work. But just like any profession, some health care practitioners aren’t as good as others, and the message you get from them depends on the medium.

The story you’ll get from a practitioner when you see them in an off the record face to face conversation can be drastically different from the story they might write in an article for a popular website or magazine. You have to learn how to consume recommendations and information based on the media and platform it’s being delivered from.

In today’s podcast Brad and I break down an article that was sent to us online. We’ll teach you what specific buzz words to look out for and what they mean legally. We’ll explain what influences most articles you find in print and online and how the message can become distorted.You’ll see how selectively pointing out parts of the truth and leaving out other parts can paint a picture exactly opposite of what the facts say.

Finally you’ll learn how to think your way through any article you read and decide if the message is credible, has any real backing in science, is worth looking into further and ultimately taking action on.

John

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Dropping the Baby Weight, Every Little Bit Counts: Interview with Kasandra Bragg

September 14, 2011 by 1 Comment

In todays podcast I talk to Kassandra Bragg about what it’s like to get back into shape after pregnancy. Most health professionals will shy away from any sort of diet advice for women who are pregnant or nursing because they don’t want to be liable for any adverse reaction that might happen to the child.

Kassandra Bragg Venus Index Transformation 6th Place

Kass lost 20lbs

Kass is proof that you can get your body back after pregnancy

Essentially you’re left at the mercy of whatever pregnancy does to your body and nobody seems to support you in getting
back into shape. It can leave you feeling guilty about wanting to have your pre-pregnancy body back…it’s almost as if you’re left to choose between your body and your baby.

But this is a false dichotomy. You can definitely get your body back after pregnancy and you don’t have to wait until
you’re done nursing. And that’s exactly what Kassandra did. She built muscle, dropped fat, lost almost 20lbs and reshaped her body.

Some of the keys to making it work:

1. Remembering that every little bit counts.

Skipping one workout makes a difference or eating one extra cookie that is not on your plan will add up. Every time you break your plan you open the door to doing it again and again. It’s an excuse and a slippery slope to skipping another workout, having 2 extra cookies and then the floodgates are open.

2. Building momentum.

Stringing together a streak of multiple forward days is the key to making big progress in a short amount of time. Once you get on a roll you can see serious progress. Sure it takes daily effort but it’s the only way to make the change happen.

3. Cutting off the bad days before they turn into bad weeks.

Nobody is perfect and we all have backwards days and days where we feel like nothing is working. Accept that you had a bad day, understand that it’s just one day and get back on track the following day. Not allowing one bad day to turn into a bad week is a major factor in making a positive change.

Kass proves that you can have the body you want if you’re willing to do the work even after pregnancy weight gain.

John

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