Today we have an interview with Roberta Saum, who placed second in the last Venus Index Contest in the Open category.

Check out her pictures:

Roberta loves the Venus workouts and it shows!

There is no magic bullet, it really takes a lot of effort to build a body like this.

Here is a fun before and after picture of Roberta…same costume, different Roberta!

Roberta never tried any program specifically designed for look. She was running everyday and lifting in the gym, just following some advice from the guys she knew. Her training plan was pretty similar to a bodybuilding split – chest on Monday, legs on Wednesday and so on.

She was doing mostly what the guys were doing, not really thinking about training for a specific shape.

She was pretty strong though and over the years she build significant muscle mass. Training combined with running also contributed to pretty good conditioning. However, she wasn’t in the shape that she would like.

She was stuck and was doing the same stuff day after day and not getting the results she was after – a slim, toned, feminine physique.

Venus Index Changed Everything

Venus Index is completely different from anything Roberta ever done. Before VI she usually trained for about 30 minutes without any structure that would be getting her towards any specific goal, it was basically lifting to stay fit. This is why she loved the VI workouts, because there is more than one group of muscles trained in every session and it’s designed to get you to a specific goal – perfect Venus Index shape.

Not having a training plan designed to get you to a specific body shape that is attractive is a pretty common problem and it’s more common for women than men. Most women just do cardio and abdominal training while they are at the gym. Then there is a small fraction that lift weights, but it’s usually in a manner that doesn’t focus on bringing certain muscle groups up and supporting the feminine shape.

Only a few women like bikini model competitors actually know how to approach strength training to build a specific looking body.

You have to focus on training your body in a way the accentuates your shoulders and hips and minimizes the look of your waist. This requires some thought and variety with your training program, rather than following a male bodybuilder pattern of individual muscle group splits.

If you can keep your waist down and work on your hips and shoulders, then you will be moving towards the ideal VI shape.

The look is not the only thing you will build with the Venus Index.

A interesting ‘side effect’ that Roberta experienced was a strength and endurance boost. Her running significantly improved since she started training with VI. And while the purpose is the look first and foremost, you will also experience an increase in your strength and conditioning.

Roberta also proved that you can do significant work on top of the regular workouts. While she was focusing mainly on building the shape, she didn’t give up the running. She still ran 5-6 miles four to five days a week.

The combination of running and lifting with VI really worked for Roberta. The only thing that changed was that she no longer puts her running first. Now it always comes second after VI training.

It’s Okay to Eat Less Food and Feel Slightly Hungry

After reading the Eat Stop Eat protocol, Roberta learned to deal with hunger pretty quickly. She started to understand that it’s a signal that her body is losing fat and that if she grabbed something to eat like she did before, she would actually be halting her fat burning while her body digested her latest meal.

She never had a problem with overeating, but still she never realized how much food she was eating. And that’s pretty common. If you don’t really watch what you’re eating and just go through life ‘winging it’ on your diet you could end up gaining a few pounds each year, but those few pounds may easily turn into 8, 10 or 15 pounds every couple of years.

You see, most people are not obese. The reason for weight gain, is not constant overeating, or medicating with food or some metabolic issue. Most people are perfectly fine. The issue though is that today we have an abundance of food, food is a big part of our culture and we can’t resist eating a bit more at social eating events. Just try to remember how much food you had at the last barbeque, wedding, birthday party or over the holidays, probably a bit more than you usually have during your regular day, right?

And that is the point, it gradually adds up over the years and then one day you wake up wondering where those 25 extra pounds came from.

It’s really important to realize how much food we have within our reach on a daily basis.

Once you do it’s just about learning to manage yourself and plan for those events in advance.

Roberta was never what she would call ‘lean’, but with a few fasts per week and controlling the calorie intake on other days, she easily stayed in a deficit during the week and could still enjoy her weekly barbecue events.

In the past Roberta would never skip a meal and would never allow herself to be hungry. However, if you want to stay lean and still enjoy social eating events, then logically you have to make up for it later on (or better yet in advance). This is what most people don’t realize, you can eat more than you burn on some days, you don’t have to diet on weddings, or during thanksgiving and other holidays, but you have to “pay off” those calories sooner or later, otherwise they get stored as bodyfat.

Whether you prefer restricting calories throughout the day or just fasting, you gotta find a way to cut down those calories.

What worked for Roberta was fasting almost everyday and having just one big meal a day, because let’s be honest, no mater how much you think you can eat, there is only so many calories you can eat at one meal.

Then once she got leaner she stopped restricting herself so much.

This is a pretty common pattern. Once you get down to a lower body fat level, extreme dieting and big caloric deficits are not possible anymore. You have to find a way to create a small deficit on a regular basis.

It’s not that you could not manage fasting for 24 hours several times a week, but after the fasts you will end up eating it back up. It may not happen immediately after the fast, it can be delayed even two days, but the urge to eat all the way back up will ultimately come.

This is why most people change their approach to fasting and reduce it to 14-16 hours and fast more frequently when they get really lean.

It’s still about creating a deficit, but just a smaller one more often.

What to do if you want to look like Roberta:

• Follow the Venus Index Workouts and focus on building the hourglass shape
• Find a way to eat less, the key to the VI look is a slim waist
• Fasting is a great way to cut calories, just find the protocol that works for you the best, for Roberta it was Eat Stop Eat, and the length of your preferred fast will likely change as you get leaner
• Cut your portions down and think about what you are eating
• Love your workouts, you have to enjoy what you are doing to be consistent and to do it properly
• No diet will ever tone your body, you need to work out, in fact you need both – diet and exercise
• Don’t do just cardio and ab training, you have to lift heavy and focus on other muscles too

Words & phrases mentioned in the interview:

Venus Index Workout – Workout program focused on building a toned and natural feminine body shape.

Venus Index Community – What if there was a forum where all the cool girls hang out and were exchanging tips on how to get in shape and what works for them to build a healthy, good looking body?

Eat Stop Eat – Lifestyle and diet protocol by Brad Pilon focusing on balancing social eating events with fat loss.

Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Today’s interview is with Elisa Miller, who place fifth in our third Venus Index Transformation Contest.

Check out her pictures:

Elisa at 42 years old, probably at the best shape of her life. Ironically with doing less complex and complicated things.

When you take pictures, make sure you wear high heals. That simple tweak makes a big difference.

Don't be afraid of dreaming. Anybody can be in shape. You just need to do some work and put what you learn into practice.

Elisa has a history of gaining and losing weight, orthorexia, food schizophrenia and now placing in a online transformation contest. Let’s take a look how she managed to get from unhealthy eating to surprising her husband with a body transformation and placing in the Venus Index contest.

Elisa’s History

Elisa is 5’6”, 42 years old, she is a mother and a wife. Not exactly a description of someone you would expect to place in a fitness contest. This is one of many examples that anybody can do it and no matter what lifestyle or responsibilities you have, you can look good. It’s time to put all of your excuses behind and focus on improving yourself.

Let’s take a look at Elisa’s diet history, which is rather unusual.

When she turned 30 a lot of things had changed in her life. Her child was born and her father got sick. She had to take care of them both. This wasn’t an easy task. Having her father now at home and having a baby constantly seeking attention required lot of effort and energy. There wasn’t much time she would get for herself.

At the end of day she was often times resentful and depressed. And as a result she ended up using food to escape from her reality and help her calm down. When everybody went to sleep, it was “her night time”. She took some ice-cream and some cookies and watched TV.

Nobody would see, nobody would know and she would have her few hours alone at peace.

As months went by this resulted in a decent weight gain. She knew that it was wrong and that she shouldn’t be doing it, but she didn’t care. She was caring for everyone else accept her. It was almost her way of getting back.

You might be surprised that she is actually the one that her friends and family see as the “healthy food” expert.

Her mother was a healthy food fanatic, always teaching her to eat only organic and raw food, no chocolate, no chips or any tasty burgers (boo).

And then there was her father who was going behind her mothers back and taking her for ice-cream and chocolate (yay!).

This resulted in developing almost a schizophrenia about food. During the day she was eating only “healthy foods” and if she prepared something that wasn’t on this list she would spit it out. Then at night she would eat all the ice-cream and sweats in the house.

This is a very unhealthy perception of food to always see food as either good or bad.

This lead to several things like weight gain, feeling guilty, social inflexibility with food among others. After this approach she tried several diets including the paleo approach, during those years her weight was constantly going up and down.

What Finally Worked

Elisa was sick of the old approach and decided to try something different. Which probably wasn’t easy considering the way she was raised. But she decided to take it in her hands and take a step out of her comfort zone.

Important factor for her was recognizing that what she was doing was causing her more harm than good and simply wasn’t working.

When she got her hands on the Venus Index Workout and the diet protocols (AGD  & ESE) she found out that this approach was much better and made so much sense. At the beginning she was afraid of having to be even more strict than she was so far. Also she wasn’t sure if she could do this. However, it was a huge relief since to her surprise this new approach was more flexible and enjoyable than the things she was doing her whole life.

Sometimes the simpler things work better than the complex and difficult ones.

She immediately jumped on board and completely changed her lifestyle and her view of food.

No more paleo, no more good food – bad food paradigm. Only calories in vs. calories out and an intense workout on top of that for a more feminine and sexy body shape.

She admitted that what was she was doing before was pretty much a waste of time and it’s a pity that  it took her so many years until she discovered the truth.

She was eating everything like any other person, the only difference was that she felt guilty after eating those “unhealthy foods”. She only showed other people when she ate so called ‘good foods’.

However, she made her decision to end this. She didn’t want to live the way she lived before, under the shadow of her parents and by their rules.

She unsubscribed from all the “paleo lifestyle” experts and “healthy food” nutritionists and decided to do what makes sense and is most logical.

Once she was ready to leave the nonsense behind and  started incorporating all the advice from the Venus Index protocols everything just took off from there.

And she never looked back.

When her husband got home, after several months of being away, he was astounded to see her transformation. Elisa’s goal was to hit the 140 mark when he got back. Not only that but she super-passed it by 13 pounds, her final weight was 127 pounds.

Spectacular result for somebody who didn’t believe it was possible to go from 180lbs to her pre-baby weight, or even further.

Now she is proud of herself and happy with the way she looks.

Take home message from Elisa

• Stop with the whole obsession with the scale. Focus on your shape and proportions.
• There is no bad or good food. It’s all about calories in and out. Food itself is just an form of  energy covered by taste, you don’t need to feel guilty
• It’s possible to dream, you just need to take the required action to make your dreams a reality
• Don’t beat yourself up just because you did something wrong or not according to plan, simply get back on track and adjust your plan
• Take baby steps, everyday do a little to get closer to your goal – one day at a time
• Everybody should enter the contest, it’s extremely motivating and it is so much fun
• Find a nutrition plan or a way to eat that suits you the best and that you can sustain for a longer period of time.
• Don’t restrict your calories too much, because that will result in overeating afterwards
• There are two ways of dieting for the contest, you either lower your calories at the end or lower them at the beginning and slightly turn to maintenance towards the end of your transformation. The second option (aka Reverse Taper Diet) seems to work better for most people since at the end you have little fat stored on your body that will get burned so it makes sense to eat slightly below maintenance to have less deficit compared to having big deficit, which is not sustainable for a long time and often leads to post-contest rebound
• Discover your limits and back off if you feel like your approach is too difficult
• Be clear on what you are doing, use training for building more muscles and shaping your body and use diet to lose fat and lean out
• Don’t blame others for your weight gain, it’s your responsibility, you need to accept it and handle it, because nobody else will
• Don’t use food as a medicine for depression

Programs Elisa used for the transformation:

Anything Goes Diet – “Diet without rules”, forget about carb cycling, macro-nutrients or unhealthy foods. Eat what you like and lose weight.

Eat Stop Eat – Lifestyle protocol that will help you achieve your fitness goals despite the social eating events you have to attend.

Venus Index Workout – Workout focused on building a toned and natural feminine body shape.

Venus Community – What if there was a forum where all the cool girls hung out and were exchanging tips and support on how to get in shape and what works for them to build a healthy, good looking body?

Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

It’s time for the next interview, today with Kelly Hancock who won the third Venus Index Transformation Contest.

Check out her amazing transformation for yourself:

Kelly has undergone an unbelievable transformation.

She did a great job.

Simply Amazing!

Kelly said that she feels proud of her body and is very happy with the results and she has a damn good reason to be. A lot of things change when you get in shape, not only that other people will act differently toward you, but your own behavior will change as well. For example what people find out after a big transformation (both guys and girls) is that you become a calm and confident person. Things you are not capable of controlling will stop affecting you and the things that are in your control, well you suddenly realize that you can change them, so there is no reason to get upset because of those either.

Kelly’s Journey

Kelly while at school was an active person, she played lots of sports and didn’t really worry about her look. Well, as lifestyle changed after school, her weight changed as well. She wasn’t playing any sports and with her job stress became a big challenge.

Based on this it probably comes as a no surprise that she gained some weight.

In 2008 she started doing cardio on the elliptical for an hour every night and eating salad for dinner. She had no idea how to get in shape, but this seemed like a logical approach.

She lost about 20 pounds while doing this. Well, because she had no idea how to lose weight and how to keep it off, due to her lifestyle circumstances she gained it all back.

This cycle of losing and then regaining continued for a while and was causing her a lot of frustration.

She also joined gym and started reading bodybuilding forums, because she was interested in having a toned and defined body and the gym seemed to be the answer.

Ultimately she found the Adonis Index that had some great information, but the workouts were focused on guys. Luckily there was a program with the same approach for women, enter the Venus Index.

This was what she was looking for all those years.

Losing and gaining showed her that she has no control over her body, so she needed to try a different approach and the information provided at Venus Index was logical, based on science and made sense to her.

In November 2010 Kelly bought the program and started doing the workout.

She was also very active in the Venus Community and learned some great tips there. For example she found out that fat loss is all about calories and that based on the Eat Stop Eat approach many of girls were fasting on a weekly basis.

She incorporated that in her lifestyle as well.

She wanted to try a little experiment and fasted six days in a row.  It wasn’t scary like you might think, she realized that her body could function without food for multiple days, in fact the only side effect was that she  just got bored. No kidding, it’s not exactly a fun thing to do.

This was good enough proof for her that it works.

She wanted to take it to the next level and fast until she got to 130 pounds and ripped.

Well, she did exactly what she set out to do. The only issue was that after 12 days of being without food, she ended up blowing it completely. Kelly started massively overeating and beating herself up over that, which lead to overeating again. This wasn’t a good experience and she felt ashamed of those months.

Today when Kelly is going through her old diary, the feelings come back and like she said, she felt like a failure and was disappointed by what she did.

She was intentionally stuffing herself with food, not working out and all this justifying by her studying and making excuses about not having time for the workouts.

Ever did something you knew is not right for you, but you did it anyway and just rationalized the behavior afterwards?

Like she said, not a very positive chapter of her life. She felt like she let herself, her friends and the girls in the community down.

Obviously she had to do something to get out of this less than positive space.

She decided to turn this upside down and start over again.

She moved to a different city, changed her job to a more flexible one with less stress. She regained control over her food and her workouts and got back on track with the Venus Index.

This resulted in feeling control over her life again, having freedom in her choices, not being a slave to her work schedule and finally being able to take care of her body again.

After listening to several podcasts and talking to her friends in the Venus Index community she knew that  she could do it.

Kelly’s Approach for the Contest

After four weeks Kelly was able to stop counting calories, because she already got to level of being able to ‘eyeball it’.

You can do the same. Most of us eat pretty similar meals every week, so it takes as little as four weeks to know the calorie content in those meals and once you do you can just focus on the portion and “eye ball” it. This is the big difference between the calorie counting and calorie guessing approaches.

Calorie guessing is more freeing and simpler than weighing every meal and tracking down the exact calorie content of that food. Plus if you over guess the content you are consciously leaving some room for error. So even if you make a mistake, it will be accounted for.

There were days when Kelly would eat half a pizza and have some beers, but there were also days when she would have just a few apples and a salad. If you balance it and stick to calorie restriction you can lose fat on almost any diet you choose. In other words you can lose fat while eating your favorite foods.

Sounds nice doesn’t it? There are some modifications you will have to make, for example if your favorite meal is pizza then you will have to restrict yourself a lot, because a whole pizza is pretty high in calories. So, it makes sense to stick to low calorie choices like vegetables, fruits, chicken and other foods that can fill you up and then from time to time you can have your pizza or whatever your favorite denser calorie choices are.

You can chose whatever you want to eat, the rule is to limit the amount. Do that and you will lose fat.

After Kelly got her calorie intake in check she moved to the next thing and that was her workouts.

She started going to the gym right after work, did one hour of weights, following the Venus Index workout protocols (for those more interested it was specifically the circuits and the shoulder specialization) and then she did two hours of low intensity cardio.

This was enough to get into contest shape, and most importantly to stay there instead of gaining it all back like she did before. The maintenance point is important as well. It’s not as hard as getting in shape, but it still requires some effort and figuring out on your part.

However, this was all just the “mechanical” stuff, in order for this to work and really win the contest and stay in a great shape even afterwards she needed to figure out how to stay sharp as well. There is a quote that sums this up perfectly:

Success in any area is foremost 80% psychology and only 20 % mechanics.

Tony Robbins

For Kelly it was her internal reflection that made it possible. She began with the question: “What pressure have I put on myself that is unnecessary?” From this point she started shutting down things that were robbing her of energy and not helping her achieve her goals in any way. She started putting herself first and taking care of her life first.

This is something that you may have a hard time grasping.

Would you be comfortable saying this: “I put myself first, I am the priority in my life”?

Give yourself a sincere answer.

You absolutely need to get to a state of mind where you can say “Yes!”.

Why?

It’s simple and don’t worry it doesn’t mean you should be arrogant or selfish, quite the opposite.

Here is a great analogy and if you’ve ever traveled by plane you already heard it. When you sit down and prepare for the flight you are filled in on the basics of what to do if something goes wrong. In that case you are supposed to put a gas mask on yourself FIRST, even if you have a child sitting next to you, you are supposed to put it on yourself FIRST.

Does this mean that the airlines don’t want you to save your kid? Of course not. But if you start putting the mask on your kid and you faint, then you can’t help them anymore.

Are you starting to see where this is going?

If you ever want to help other people achieve their goals, help them get over their challenges and get that great feeling of knowing that you are contributing to this society in some way then you have to take care of yourself first. This is true in all of the areas of your life – relationships, finance and both health and look.

So to get back to Kelly’s challenge, when she put herself first and stopped doing what other people wanted her to do she suddenly gained control over her actions, could achieve what she wanted and that lead to many other great things. When she got to where she is now, other people started to seek out her advice.

The moral of the story is to make yourself a priority and then you will be able to take care of others as well.

If you want to look like Kelly, here is a summary of the things she thinks are important to someone in the position she was in:

• Cut everything out of your life that is putting unnecessary pressure on you
• Stop doing what other people want you to do and make yourself the priority
• Don’t get affected by the things you can’t control and handle the things you can control – that is the path to happiness
• Intelligent hard effort pays off
• Figure out when you can go to the gym on regular basis and start going there
• Walking on a tredmill in front of TV may help you avoid stuffing yourself with unnecessary food in the evening at home in front of the tv…if you’re going to watch tv anyway, might as well workout at the same time
• It’s okay to have few bad days, just stay on track
• Eat less and only when you are hungry
• Find yourself a support group
• If you assume you are alone you create your own isolation – remember that you’re not alone
• Don’t be scared to ask for help

Words & phrases mentioned in the interview:

Adonis Index – Workouts for men

Venus Index Workouts – Workouts designed to maximize your genetic potential to look your best both in bikini and clothes

Venus Index Community – You will never find a more supportive, accepting, forgiving, outgoing, and RESULTS based community like you’ll find with the Venus Index Community.

Eat Stop Eat – Lifestyle and diet protocol by Brad Pilon focusing on fat loss

Listen to the interview here: View Profile: jwilliams – The Official Hugo Community – Online Slots

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Today you get a chance to listen to Alisha’s interview. She managed to win for the second time! In the first contest she won the transformation category and in the last one she won the open, so you could say she did it all.

Here are her latest pictures, check this out:

Most people don't realize that they are just couple of months from a cover model body.

For the first contest it was very goal specific, Alisha wanted to lose fat and get more fit. However, this time she had to show a completely different look in order to take first place. She had to build more muscle and focus on building a specific shape.

What the real challenge for her though was figuring out her “sweet spot” where she could maintain a great looking body and her peace if mind.

She worked really hard, and was completely tired afterwards.

For the first contest she was afraid of looking too skinny. And while she was excited by how much bodyfat she lost other people were telling her that she was too skinny.

Alisha will admit, she probably took it too far, because even people that she met for the first time were asking her if she is okay, because her face seems skinny.

But it is really hard to do all in just twelve weeks. It’s one thing to lose fat, but building muscle is completely different, that takes more time, especially for women.

This is why it takes several contests to get close to your ideal proportions. For this second one Alisha achieved what you could call a body re-composition. Her upper body and face is definitely not skinny anymore, her body is symmetrical and her measurements are near perfect.

What Alisha Did Differently This Time

Right after the first contest Alisha was decided not to compete again.

But she felt a bit left out and started thinking about it.

What really changed her mind was seeing the results from the second contest and the fact that a lot of girls that placed in this one mentioned her being a big inspiration for them. For her that was the coolest thing that could have happened.

She made up her mind and decide to compete again.

This time was a little different. Not only did she have to come up with a new plan, because she needed to show up with different pictures, but this time around she didn’t really need to lose much fat. She stopped punishing herself for eating a bit more on certain days and made her weekends maintenance days.

Here are her pictures from the previous contest:

These are the pictures from Alisha's first contest. As you can see, for this contest her main focus was on building muscle rather than losing fat.

The difference was that she knew where she started and how many inches and pounds she had to lose to get back to her contest shape. The only thing she needed to do was mark the calendar and get going.

Her goal was to win, she wouldn’t even submit her pictures if she looked the same.

There were 12 weeks of hard work in the gym ahead of her.

Weekends were the maintenance days and week days were the “dieting days”. Four weeks out she changed the plan and went low carb for the entire week while keeping low calories. This kept away her hunger, however after this trial she realized that she isn’t able to lift that much in the gym anymore. She had to adjust to a point where she would get enough carbs in her meals and have energy for her workouts.

There are different ways. If you want to try let’s say three different approaches and determine which works for you best, it will take three contests until you do determine the best method. Your body is your own experiment. Or as once Madonna put it:

I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.

Madonna

Once you know what works for you the best, you will have a template you can use over and over again.

There Is a Difference between Photoshoot Shape & Everyday Shape

What most people don’t realize is that you look different in reality than you do on camera or in pictures. This is why you need to go more extreme for the photoshoot to show the world how you actually look. This may be hard to grasp, but if you have ever taken some good pictures you know this already. There is just so much going on at a photoshoot such as lighting, how far are you from the camera, tanning, posing heel height, background etc.

Extreme techniques like water depletion and carb loading are a way of helping you look your best for the photos. This is only sustainable for several hours though.

Obviously this is only visible if you drop the fat on your muscles, but once you do you will be surprised how water, food and training can make you  look sharper or bloated. And you need to learn what makes you look better to take the photos in your best state.

Once you do the contest you will have a new set of challenges in front of you. The biggest might be figuring out how to stay where you are and not go back to your pre-contest body.

In other words you need to find your maintenance point. Good analogy would be a swinging pendulum. If you were used to overeating your pendulum is swinging mostly to the left, if you started eating less for the contest it’s going to be swinging to the right. But if you go too far to the right, the pendulum will get too high and while it will stop there for a fraction of a second it will quickly fall to the left, which you might see as some kind of overeating after the contest that a lot of fitness models undergo. This is the proverbial yo-yo dieting.

The idea is to go through several contests and get in the best shape possible, reshape your body and focus on building a lifestyle that allows you maintaining this new body with as little effort as possible or in other words you need to figure out what you have to do to minimize the swing of your body pendulum.

Please understand that bodyweight is a range, it will keep changing based on your daily actions, the idea is not to have it stable (which is impossible), but not go too far up or down…reduce the swing of pendulum.

Take Home Message

•  The big thing is not to be so hard on yourself, be more realistic with your goals, realize what the range of those goals will be based on lifestyle, understand you will have fluctuations and expect it, if it’s not working change your pattern
• Commit to doing the contest
• Bodyweight is not stable, you have a range based on what you eat and drink
• Sometimes you may not notice that you are progressing and the stagnation is really just in your mind
• Expect people to disagree with your approach
• Gaining muscle takes time and one contest is not enough for full body re-composition
• Go through as many contests as possible, you will always learn something new about your body and improve your shape
• Don’t punish yourself over slipping away from time to time, you are allowed to take a step back as long as you keep taking two steps forward…you don’t have to be perfect, just consistently improve over time
• If you are tall, then an inch on your waist won’t be that noticeable and my actually be within your maintenance range
• Don’t compare yourself to others
• Track everything
• Never give up…ever

Words & phases mentioned in the interview:

• VI workouts – Venus Index workouts
• Venus Index Contest No.:1
• Venus Index Contest No.:2
• Venus Index Contest No.:3
• Alisha’s First Interview
• Interview with Erik Ledin
• Uncensored Podcasts

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Heather placed third in the Venus Index Transformation Contest.

She lost pounds of fat and toned her body and now she is very closed to her ideal proportions.

Check out her picture:

Heather did a great job losing weight and build a tone, slim body.

Heather's front photos. She transformed her body completely and placed third in the Venus Index contest.

Due to various experience and some personal tragedies in her life, Heather ended up overeating at the age of 14.

Before the Venus Index Contest she tried everything. Therapy, all sorts of diets and fat loss programs.

One expert told her that the flavored and processed food is the devil, so she stopped eating everything that was highly processed or flavored.

After that she heard that sugar is not that bad, but eggs can cause a heart attack and are the root of obesity. So, she stopped eating eggs completely.

All of this often times conflicting advice lead her to trying different diets like Atkins and she ultimately ended up being a vegetarian. After being a vegetarian for a while she decided to be a vegan in order to be “really healthy“.

This new eating style was causing a lot of trouble to her relationships especially to her marriage. Her husband was really struggling with her diet preferences, even though he never said anything it was obvious that he had idea how to help her.

Heather wasn’t eating with him and their families on holidays like a normal person, she always had her special meals. She wouldn’t eat with the family, because it just wasn’t part of the rules she acquired.

Now when she looks back it just wasn’t fair to him, but at that time it seemed like the only option for her.

The reason for doing all those crazy things was the fact that she just couldn’t stand her weight anymore and wanted to make a change.

The thing is, you can’t put foods on a ‘never have it again’ list, because when you label some food as bad you will tend to binge on it even more.

The truth is that you can eat pretty much anything you like, the important piece of advice many experts don’t know and don’t tell is that the key is the volume. The secret is in controlling the amount not limiting the choices.

There is really no reason to make it complicated and make a devil of saturated fat or processed food.

If you had no education in biology or chemistry and never been influenced by marketing and advertising, what would be your answer to “What is the best way to lose fat?”

What do you think a kid would say?

…just eat less.

This is the only way to lose fat, create a deficit, so your body will have to use stored bodyfat. Yes, you can create a bigger deficit with cardio and some other physical activities, but the foundation is in the diet, because you can’t out train a bad diet.

However, in the current conventional fitness community, the approach is quite different. It’s not only different, but it’s a complete scam made only to increase sales and not help people, no surprise being in shape seems like a fairytale.

One day carbs are labeled as bad for you, the next day fat is the evil.

And when you try to go on such a diet for a longer period of time that’s when things get ugly and you get really frustrated by not seeing any results.

The longer it’s drilled in your head, the bigger the threat of eating that cake and burger is. And ultimately you will end up overeating big time.

For Heather it was happening over and over again.

And she just couldn’t live like that.

She would follow some crazy dietary advice and then after a while crack and overeat massively. This is the pitfall of labeling some food as bad, once you tell someone it’s forbidden, the desire to have it is even bigger.

Plus it’s forbidden for no good reason, because no food is actually bad for you.

It’s like seduction, if there is an attractive man and he is just not returning calls, always takes days before replying to a message and generally just seems not interested at all, you will feel even more desire to have him. It’s a pretty basic law of nature.

This is exactly the same.

We want things we can’t have and that are forbidden.

It Took Her Years to Find the Truth and Learn the Lesson

Heather went through years of failure until she realized what the truth was and learned her lesson.

She’d gone through extremes, tried all sorts of things. Eliminating sugar, fat, processed food, eggs and the list just goes on.

Later on she realized that the devil is always in the dose and not in the food itself like all the “fitness experts” keep saying.

After listening to several of them you would even believe that chocolate or a burger can kill you. In reality there is nothing wrong with a burger or sweet chocolate. What can screw up your weight and health is having those foods every day and over eating on them.

Obviously there is nothing wrong with the occasional chocolate bar, cake or fries with a burger, as long as you account for those meals in your weekly calorie budget you are fine.

This is why the “concept of dosing” is so amazing. There is no more flexible and more enjoyable diet than this one. You can be someone who can eat whatever she wants. The benefit of not overeating is also the fact that when you don’t overdo it, you don’t feel stuffed and enjoy it, it’s positive reinforcement. You can actually feel great after eating, not full and guilty, what a change, huh?

Controlling calories only and not the meal choices gives you the ability to go out, have a meal wherever and whenever you want, not be a pill, enjoy the company of others in a restaurant and not worry about saturated fat and processed foods.

Obviously if you have spent the last 15 years overeating then it’s not going to be pretty at the beginning, it will require some effort, strong motivation and serious work on your will power and dedication. It is pretty similar to strength training. You need to make a habit of it and balance the past 15 years of doing it (eating) the wrong way. It’s like doing reps and sets in the gym. The more you do, the easier it becomes and the better the results will be. After a while it will all become natural to you.

Of course you will always have to watch how much food you eat and stay in a healthy caloric range, but it will be pretty natural and most of the time not even a conscious decision. Something to look forward, don’t you think?

Take home message from Heather:

• Make a diet based on your preferences, remember that you need to enjoy your food
• Never identify yourself with your food choices – Atkins girl, low calorie girl, vegan girl etc.
• Accept that the amount of calories your body needs is very low (RMR + daily activities, for average woman it’s around 1400 calories!)
• We want magic, but reality is different, you can’t eat 5000 calories divided into chicken wings, pasta and ice cream
• You need to find a way how to make it enjoyable and transforming at the same time
• You can and will enjoy food when eating less of it, it is a completely different experience
• If you don’t want to do cardio, you don’t have to, you can just add some low intensity walk, cardio will increase your appetite, so it might be even better to cut it or completely eliminate it from your schedule – Find your sweat spot with cardio and diet
• Keep it simple – Diet for fat loss and training for muscle growth and body shaping
• If you want to do something for relaxing your body and mind and stay away from injuries you can try yoga, such an activity won’t take a lot of physical energy from your workouts
• In this society overeating can get out of control very quickly,  we just tend to overeat a little at a time, but consistently, be aware of the amount you eat and then you will stay immune to all the advertising

Quote to remeber:

“It’s easier to eat less of the food you like rather than the food you don’t like and cut out what you like completely.”

John Barban

Words & phases mentioned in the podcasts:

• RMR/BMR – Resting Metabolic Rate/Basal Metabolic Rate (The amount of energy your body burns per day at rest, calculated in calories) – To get a somewhat accurate number without having testing yourself in a lab, try the WHO Equation
• AGD – Anything Goes Diet
• Venus Index Workout
• Venus Index Workout Specializations for additional muscle growth
• Venus Index Community and Forum
• Venus Index Podcasts
• Erik’s interviews – Links to Part 1 and Part 2

Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Suzanne placed 5th in our Venus Index Contest in the Open category. She did a great job and transformed her body, just check out her photos:

Suzanne's front picture.

Suzanne's back picture.

If you decide to improve your body, you need to expect and accept that there are going to be challenges along the way.

What sets successful people apart from the average, unsuccessful ones is the fact that they are willing to do whatever it takes to overcome any challenge they encounter along the way towards their desired goal.

If you can accept that road to success is not easy, the next step is to expect it to be hard and challenging. Once you expect it, you can prepare yourself to get over the roadblocks that will appear along the way.

Like many other contestants Suzanne had her own personal challenges or how she calls it her “barriers” she had to get over.

Barrier #1 Not Being Patient

Suzanne admitted that the biggest challenge for her when it comes to getting in shape was being patient enough or if you believe that patience is a learnable skill then we could even say her biggest challenge was learning to have patience.

And this is not true just in the fitness and health area of your life. If you want to take things to the next level and improve almost any area of your life, it will take a lot of patience to keep going till you succeed. Just take entrepreneurship as an example, even though this has nothing to do with building a better looking body, it’s a great analogy. When you are building a company from scratch, it takes time, sometimes you end up bankrupt or like Steve Jobs fired from your own company and you have to start again and work your way back up.

It’s exactly the same with your body. If you are not happy with the way you look, you don’t even remember being confident in your own skin or feeling feminine, then you need to accept that the change will take time and require some effort on your part. Sometimes it will even seem like there is no point in working on yourself. This is not meant to be discouraging, not at all, but you need to know what may happen in order to expect it and not be surprised when a challenge will appear.

One of the biggest mistakes you might have made in the past is having distorted expectations. For example Suzanne thought that you can make a transformation very quickly. You probably might believe something similar and this is really not your fault considering all the quick fat loss (or get rich quick) scams you are facing all day long from TV or the internet.

You probably expect results almost instantly, in a couple of weeks. Well, while you can lose several pounds of fat in just a few weeks, you can’t gain pounds of pure muscle in just a few weeks, that’s not gonna happen.

Losing fat is not comfortable, but is still a pretty simple and quick process. Some people can lose yup to 8 pounds of fat a month, sometimes even more. However, you can’t gain 8 pounds of muscle in just one month. Even guys have a hard time gaining muscle mass and they have 10 times more muscle building hormone than you! Yes, while you are more sensitive to testosterone, your body still produces very little of this hormone compared to guys.

If you have ever seen claims like gain 30 pounds of muscle, it is either BS or it’s possible only for male teenagers who have never been exposed to weight training before and still have juvenile muscle growth on their side.

It’s more realistic to expect just a few pounds of muscle gain over several months. As a woman you don’t even need to gain a lot of muscle mass to truly change the look and shape of your body. A few pounds is going to transform your body shape immensely. Even one pound of muscle is an incredible difference.

Barrier #2 Being Fixated on Weight & on the Scale

The fixation on the scale and to your weight is pretty common for both guys and girls.

Tracking your progress by weighing yourself can be tricky, because you never know if what you have gained is muscle or fat. Therefore pictures will do a much better job for you as far as progress tracking goes. It’s better to compare your pictures than numbers from scale.

Setting weight goals is also a pretty inaccurate thing to do, you should aim for shape not weight. Weight can lie and will tell you nothing about how you look. For example after you transform yourself, you might weigh exactly the same, but pictures will be completely different. How could that happen? Well, you can lose 5 pounds of fat and gain 5 pounds of muscle.

Another thing is that what you eat and drink during the day can be as much as 5 or 6 pounds, it depends on how tall you are, but overall the daily fluctuation of your weight can be significant.

Conclusion? Use measurements and pictures and focus on body shape instead.

Barrier #3 Thinking that You Need More Calories than Your Body Burns

How much calories your body needs and how much calories fitness experts tell you it needs are usually two completely different numbers. And if you want to lose fat, it will be even less than you think.

Finding about this was a pretty hard lesson for Suzanne.

Calculate how much food you eat and how much food your body needs (RMR + physical activity). Then calculate the difference. If the difference is positive, you are eating more than you should, thus gaining fat. If there is zero difference, you are eating around your maintenance. If the difference is negative then you are losing fat (this is a state where you want to be if you want to lose weight).

One of the best things you can do is to start intermittent fasting on a regular basis. You can use the Eat Stop Eat protocol like Suzanne did or some other, no matter which protocol you choose, if you incorporate any kind of intermittent fasting into your lifestyle you should see rapid changes.

Fasting will also help you understand things like why you eat and how many calories you actually need. It will help you control your appetite and see food in a completely different way.

Intermittent fasting is very liberating and when Suzanne tried fasting she realized that you don’t have to eat that much, you don’t have to snack, you don’t have to eat 6 times a day, you can throw away food and that you don’t have to eat just because someone gives you food. You don’t even have to eat breakfast.

You read so much about metabolism slow down, starvation mode and the like, but once you dig deeper you will find out that there is very little substantial evidence. And when you try fasting you will experience the positive change for yourself.

Barrier #4 Not Lifting Heavy Enough

If your goal is a fit, healthy looking, feminine body and you want to undergo some body re-composition, you need to lift heavy. There is no way around it. Muscle mass is important and for your best look you need both to lose fat and gain muscle.

This is one of the biggest challenges for women.

If you think you will look like a male bodybuilder, forget it. Those guys not only have 10 times more testosterone, but have amazing genetics and most importantly are on an incredible amount of drugs. Something similar applies for most of the female bodybuilders and fitness competitors as well.

There is a saying that what is natural is attractive. As long as you follow this saying you are going to look good and be healthy at the same time.

If you pick heavy weight instead of those 2 pounds dumbbells, you will end up with a toned and feminine physique that no guy will be able to keep his eyes off (and probably his hands as well).

Cardio is great for overall health, proper blood circulation and creating bigger caloric deficit, but it’s not going to shape your body.

You need to get a strength training workout program. You can use the Venus Index Workout that Suzanne used or try a different one, but it has to be professionally designed and you need to follow it with heavy weights.

Take home message from Suzanne for you:

• Photos will tell you how you’re doing along the way
• Find a supportive community that will help you keep going when you most need it (ex.: Venus Index forum)
• Be honest with yourself and learn more about your body
• Believe in what you are doing, even though it may seem strange at first, if you stick to it, results will come
• Have monthly expectations for fat loss and yearly expectations for muscle growth
• Logging calorie intake might help you to control your weight and how much food you eat
• It’s best to not have the food you tend to overeat on in your house
• Get over the disbelief about fasting, open your mind to different ways
• Acquire a flexible approach to nutrition
• Start lifting heavy, it’s a must if you want a feminine, fit body. Heavy weight lifting equals lean and defined figure
• Expect and accept the fact that the road to success is not easy
• Realize that you can achieve more than you think
• You can keep progressing as long as you remain consistent with your workouts, consistency is key
• Don’t compare yourself to other people because you have your own look, you can and should only compare yourself to yourself
• Pick a body shape target that is really close to how you do look and model it
• It’s hard to be objective about yourself, but taking pictures can help you do that
• You have to keep going even if it’s difficult, you will be challenged along the way, but you should see these challenges as lessons that will make you stronger
• You CAN do it, but will you?

Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download