Category: Getting Rid Of Fat

This category covers things that relate to metabolizing stored body fat. Generally speaking, burning this fat will result in a reduction of body fat levels, which has been linked to improved health outcomes. Lowering body fat is also one of the two main objectives when tackling body composition or aesthetic goals; the other being the creation of lean muscle mass.

The Discipline High – Part One

Every now and then someone will say something that makes me laugh out loud, ask them if they actually said it, and then laugh at how profoundly important yet completely obvious the comment is.

“Discipline high” was one of those comments.

I had been talking to a friend and discussing the merits of the body building bulk that I was on. It was late winter and he was getting ready to start back to the gym to shed the extra winter weight he had gained. He does this almost every year and has become pretty good at it.

When the topic of diet came up, he mentioned that one year he ate nothing but organic food. He enjoyed the taste of the food a lot more and felt that meats were more dense. He said that he figured dollar for dollar it worked out to be close to the same price, maybe a little more for the organically grown food. But he said that during this particular year, he got more of a discipline high from eating good quality food.

I laughed, asked him if he said discipline high and then laughed again. It had never crossed my mind that someone could get a high feeling from NOT doing something. This is, of course, how it works with me. Whenever I exercise I am rewarded with a chemical high (the release of neuro transmitters and endorphins) that promote the feelings of well being along with a cerebral high that is accompanied by feelings of accomplishment. Whenever I’m eating better, there is a rapid elimination of the negative physical feelings associated with a poor diet and a similar cerebral high that comes from making better food choices. The discipline high comes from this cerebral feeling and it reflects the sense of accomplishment that following through on your desire to make a positive change in your life creates. Given my tendency to seek pleasure or avoid pain, I must be getting something out of the strict diet if I’m to follow it. I believe that the discipline high is the pleasure that allows me to continue the pain (not eating whatever I like).

I have thought a lot about the discipline high since we spoke about it and when I read JoLynn’s daily Motivation: Creating Healthy Eating Habits post it hit on me that not everyone will experience it from following a strict diet. Maybe it is a learned behavior and the lucky one’s learned how to experience it when they were younger.

It isn’t clear to me if I am gaining more than I am giving up when I will myself to eat appropriately. What is clear is that I get enough out of it to keep doing it and the longer I do it, the easier it is to find that reward in the experience.

What Is The Best Workout For People Over 40?

Bodybuilding.com asks the question what Is The Best Workout For People Over 40? and their members reply.

Blink41 wins a $75 store credit with is workout and nutritional recommendations, but it’s conciseness is worth more than that.

The older you get, the weaker your body becomes. An adult over age 40 should start to experience a decrease in muscle size, strength and recovery time. Bones becomes increasingly more fragile and more prone for injury.

Testosterone levels begin to decrease and the ability to build quality muscle decreases greatly. Joints begin to ache after a hard days work. However, there is an easy way to slow this aging process down. Simply follow a good diet with a good routine and you can slow down this decay on your body.

The Workout:

* Monday: Chest / Triceps
* Tuesday: Rest
* Wednesday: Back / Biceps
* Thursday: Rest
* Friday: Shoulder / Traps
* Saturday: Rest
* Sunday: Thigh / Calves / Abs

Do 5 minutes of light cardio before workouts to get the blood flowing through the body. Do 30 minute of moderate intensity cardio after workouts. Be sure to stretch before and after workouts. Allow 2 to 3 minute rest periods between each set.

Eliminate Body Fat by Eliminating The Need For It

The human body is remarkable at conserving energy. It will quickly adapt to changes in the external environment to create an internal state that it can maintain. You can increase the amount of daily calories you consume and your body will respond by increasing its metabolic rate to burn off the increase. Talk to any body builder and they will tell you that adding 3 pounds of muscle per month requires that you increase your caloric consumption by more than 350 per day; many lifters find that they need to eat an extra 1000-1500 calories per day to add any weight. If the body did not have the ability to adapt and boost metabolic functioning in response to caloric increases they would need just the 350 per day to add 3 pounds per month.

One of the more effective survival mechanism of the body is the fat storage system because it allows humans to store energy during times of food surplus and utilize that stored energy during food shortages. This system is, for the most part, an all or nothing thing – you will either be storing fat or you will be using fat.

Maintaining stored fat requires energy because body fat needs oxygen and, therefore, a blood supply. The cost is small, but over a long period of time, or if there is a lot of body fat, the cost will be dramatically increased. High blood pressure is one consequence to obesity because of the increased need for blood vessels to service the large amount of fat – the heart has to push blood around miles of extra tubing so it has to work harder.

However, the body does rely on what I can transient fat storage / utilization (TFS/U) to help it get through the periods of time when blood sugar level drops to a critical level and food is not eaten. TFS/U deals with periods of less than 12 hours, the usual maximum time that anyone will go without food as a result of sleep. Even people who eat a calorie balanced diet (equal in the amount of energy that they eat vs. what they burn off) will rely on the TFS/U throughout the day because they are eating three meals a day; this feeding schedule is insufficient at delivering the constant energy needs to fuel their daily activity. As a consequence, the body remains motivated to keep storing fat because it is being utilized fairly consistently.

The notion I am putting forward is that, in a caloric equilibrium state, the body will rid itself of excess body fat if we eliminate the need for transient fat storage. The rational is that the body will do what it can to conserve energy. Since body fat requires energy to maintain, energy can be conserved by getting rid of it. However, the only way to eliminate the need for TFS/U is to maintain a constant blood sugar level through frequent feeding and eating food that cause slow and steady increases in blood sugar.

10 Keys to the Lean & Sexy Look

In this first post from new T-Nation author Jen Heath 10 Keys to the Lean & Sexy Look, Part I we get keys 1 to 5. The article is geared towards women.

What most people call “toning” is actually a muscle getting a little big bigger (yes, that does mean it increases in “bulk”) and the fat cells covering a muscle getting smaller. You put those two things together and you get “tone.”

Most women I talk to would like more muscle in their arms yet don’t necessarily want behemoth guns. Whenever a woman tells me she just wants to “tone” her body with light weights, I usually end up having a conversation similar to this:

Jen: “Okay, so if I understand you right, your arms now measure 9 inches, but you wouldn’t mind getting them up to a firm and solid 12 inches. At the same time, you don’t want to get 16 inch monster arms, right?”

Client: “Yes, that’s exactly right!”

Jen: “Well, let me ask you this: Would you rather take a month or two to build that 12-inch arm or would you rather it take you forever?”

Client: “I want it now!”

Jen: “The reason I ask is because the same thing that builds the 16 inch arm the fastest will also build the 12 inch arm the fastest — lifting intensely with progressively heavier weights. Once you achieve the amount of muscle you desire you can always reduce the volume to maintain.”

Client: “Ah, I see!”

I think most trainers have a similar conversation with 90% of their new female clients. Jen’s approach just nails it.

Great article, check out the original and part two.

4 Things Your Girlfriend Should Know

Tony Gentilcore’s article 4 Things Your Girlfriend Should Know on T-nation.com has ruffled a few feathers {Note – this is the link for a revised version of the original article}. He makes the statement that “Yoga Mostly Sucks” at improving the body composition. He trashes steady state cardio (low intensity long distance) in favor of high intensity interval style training for fat loss. He suggests that women train more like men and that they should be using low reps and heavy weights. He’s even got his girlfriend deadlifting.

“But I don’t want to get big and bulky.”

Newsflash, ladies: You will not get “big and bulky” just because you’re doing squats and deadlifts. That statement is akin to me saying, “Eh, I don’t want to do any sprints today because I don’t want to win the 100m gold medal next week.” Getting big and bulky isn’t easy, just like winning the 100m gold medal isn’t easy.

If anything, it’s an insult to all those people who’ve spent years in the gym to look the way they do. It didn’t happen overnight, which is what you’re assuming by saying something so absurd.

And let’s be honest, most people (men and women) won’t work hard enough to get “big and bulky” in the first place. It’s hard enough for a man to put on any significant amount of muscle, let alone a woman. Women are physiologically at a disadvantage for putting on muscle due to the fact that they have ten times less free Testosterone in their bodies compared to men.

That being said, you still need to get the most bang out of your training buck, and that includes ditching the glute-buster machine and focusing more on the compound movements. Joe Dowdell, owner of Peak Performance in NYC, trains many of the top female models in the city and their programming includes squats, deadlifts, chin-ups, bench variations, sled dragging, and tons of energy system work.

Yes, Victoria’s Secret models are doing squats and deadlifts. And yes, that’s completely hot. Guess what they’re not doing? Watching Oprah every day while walking on the treadmill for 60 minutes.

It isn’t a rant on the evils of yoga, just on the lies that some yoga teachers attempt to pass off as fact and the impact that these notions have on how women work towards their fitness goals.

What I take out of it is that people will believe anything an “expert” tells them without so much as thinking about it. Anyone who suggests that deadlifting is not as good at building back strength as yoga has NEVER performed a single deadlift with their body weight.

If you want to look a particular way, do what people who look that way do. If you desire to be lean and have toned muscles, you’re going to need to work out intensely and lift a lot of weight.

Study Findings About Long-Term Exercise Compliance

Gary Homann talks about his findings into long-term exercise compliance in this T-nation thread called Long Haul Training.

He covers all kinds of stuff such as goal setting periodization and what the evidence indicates about exercise intensity is well worth the read if you’re prone to quit training:

Back to the intensity issue. Unfortunately, this is another example of experts prescribing what they think people will do rather than what’s best or optimal. Reviewing the research makes it clear that higher intensity exercise leads to a longer life and less cardiovascular disease. (5) Studies have also demonstrated that people who do higher intensity exercise are leaner than people who only do low or moderate intensity exercise even when they eat more calories and burn fewer calories during exercise. (6) In short, you get more bang for the buck with higher intensity exercise.

Short Term Weight Management – Fat Burning Phases

The fastest way to lose fat is not a long gradual journey, it is a series of steps, alternating between rapid loss and no change. You will learn discipline and healthy eating by following the long gradual approach that can help you maintain the results once you’ve achieved your goal. I recommend the long gradual approach to everyone because of the lifestyle management and educational opportunities it presents. But if the goal is to get the weight off as quickly as possible, a repeating cycle of 4 weeks of intense exercise and then 1 week of recovery will get you there faster that anything else.

The body adapts to change very quickly and will become more efficient at maintaining a state the longer it is held in that state – doing 45 minutes of cardio three days a week while eating 500 calories fewer per day will achieve the most weight loss during the first few weeks. Soon after, the rate of loss will drop off and then stabilize. This makes sense from a survival point of view because you need the body to function on as much energy as is available in the environment and you need it to adjust to conserve energy when there is a shortage and burn more when there is a surplus.

Intense exercise can be regarded as a shortage of food as you are creating a caloric deficit through motion vs. food restriction; intense exercise also increases the BMR with leads to a further deficit. Just like a real food shortage, the body will adapt over time to function more efficiently with the lower number of calories. The goal of cycling the exercise in 4-week blocks separated by 1 week of rest is to minimize this adaptation and then reset the body to function under normal caloric conditions. This is what will generate the fastest weight loss because it eliminates the body’s powerful ability to adapt to changes in the environment to conserve energy.

It’s also important to remember that the rest week will help to keep your immune system functioning at a normal level. Extended periods of a sustained caloric reduction have been shown to dramatically suppress immune functioning.

I am not advocating that people take this approach to weight loss, I’m just saying that this is what works the fastest. Lifestyle and behavioral modification are the safest and more effective ways to long-term weight management but if you aren’t interested in that, here’s the solution you’ve been looking for.

Just Move, Just Do Something

It’s hard to have a great looking body. It takes a lot of time, focus and sacrifice. People who have great bodies are revered for it because they have worked hard to achieve it. If you want six pack abs, it is going to take you a while to drop the body fat and build the size of the muscles; you are looking at anywhere from 6 to 18 months for someone who is in reasonable shape. It is going to be a lot longer if you are out of shape and dislike exercise. The reality is that only about 5-10% of the population will take the time to build their midsection to the point were they have that revered look, and these numbers drop dramatically for people who are older than 35 because it is harder to attain as you get older.

So what are you going to do about this? Well, my advice is to not care about it. If you really wanted to look like that you would already have taken the necessary steps to get yourself moving towards it. If you don’t, you probably don’t place that high an importance on it. From my experience, looking that way doesn’t bring you any extra happiness – the world doesn’t start treating you any differently just because you have a great body. Your problems don’t go away just because you look better than everyone at the gym. In fact, other than achieving a goal, the process of building a great midsection brought me very little fulfillment or happiness. The difference between a flat midsection and a ripped midsection is the last 20% of getting a great body, the first 80% is getting to a point where you look good. I have noticed that happiness does come to those who work to get a good body. So my guess is that most would be happy to just look better.

Looking better is very easy if you don’t already look good. All it requires is that you do something active. It doesn’t really matter so long as it’s something that you don’t normally do that requires that you move around. Some people like parking their car far away from the door, some like reading the newspaper while walking on a treadmill, some like making multiple trips up and down stairs to achieve a task that could have been accomplished with one well thought-out trip, some will join a gym, while others will take up playing a sports or a musical instrument. It doesn’t really matter what you do, so long as it gets you moving. Moving burns energy that you might normally store as fat and it gives the muscles a workout that they need to grow and remain strong.

A different way to look at it would be to say that if you want to look better, stop doing something that requires you to remain relatively still; television is a good example of an effortless movement-less activity, ordering in dinner instead of making it or spending time playing most video games or surfing the Internet are other examples of low movement activities. Ideally you will be able to liberate some time from ceasing a sedentary activity and fill that time with something that requires that you do a little more activity. You’ll benefit from this change in behavior very quickly.

If your goal is to feel and look better, just start doing something today. It doesn’t have to be much, but it has to be something. Regardless of how small it is, a first step is a first step and it is always the beginning of something new. Remember, it is hard to look great, but it’s easy to look better, just do something.

Body Weight Exercises Are Key

Consider doing some body weight exercises to help build that stronger body because:

  • The body will adapt quickly to them because it is a reasonable load. I don’t know if this is true but I’ve always found that I gain strength very quickly with body weight exercises.
  • They are very functional – the strength generally lends itself to real activities.
  • They do not cause undo stress to the body because the movements are natural.
  • They are difficult to do at the beginning. Yeah, but anything that you have not done before is difficult to do at the beginning.
  • Most people don’t and can’t do them, probably because they are hard and people tend to shy away from difficult tasks.
  • They add variety to your strength training workouts.
  • They can improve symmetry and will balance strength. Consider one-legged squats, they guarantee that you work each leg equally.

Pull-ups are, in my opinion, the best body weight exercise that you can do because they engage many of the muscles of the back, as well as working the biceps and the rear deltoids. They require a lot of strength to do and there are a number of different variations that allow you to shift the focus onto different parts of the back and body. For example, narrow grip will work the middle back, the biceps and the rear deltoids more, wide grip focus the load on the lats to help build back width and off level pull-ups, while a more sport specific move, will focus more effort one side of the body.

Other body weight exercises you can try:

  • Dips – these really work the triceps and chest muscles.
  • Body row – great for working the middle back and the rear deltoids
  • Push-ups – an often-overlooked classic that works the chest muscles very effectively. Try placing the hands closer together to increase the load on the triceps and middle chest.
  • Various single legged squat movements – if you are concerned about being able to do these, consider the movement of getting into and out of a car as proof that you can.
  • Front and side planking moves – great of building core strength
  • Leg raises (hanging, lying, Roman chair) – fantastic for building lower ab strength
  • Various balancing moves – I’ve found the starfish position were you are standing on one leg and have your arms and other leg full extended to really tax my legs and lower back.

Supersets: You can also benefit from adding body weight exercise to weighted movements to create challenging supersets:

  • Narrow grip push-ups finish off a set of machine flies to complete chest failure.
  • Hanging leg raises complement weighted crunches nicely.
  • Dips and pull-ups can be done together for a great push pull set that will work the entire upper body.

Next time you’re looking for a new challenge, improved results or a change to your workout routine try giving some of these body weight exercises a try.

If you listen to one thing, listen to this…

If someone was to ask me to give one piece of advice it would be this: eat only enough so that you are hungry in 3 hours and then repeat. I think it makes the biggest impact to overall health.

I say this because:

  • Digestion is very taxing on the body. Eating smaller meals avoids this.
  • Digestion can break down nutrients contained in food, lessening digestion time can increase the nutrient yield from a meal.
  • Quickened food absorption into the blood will help to stabilize sugar levels, allow for more consistent energy levels and the quick availability of nutrients improves exercise recovery potential.
  • Complete digestion improves bowel movement frequency and consistency.
  • Most junk or fast food meals cannot be digested quickly enough to be consumed automatically increasing the quality of the food that you eat.

Moving to this type of eating can be difficult however, as it requires a fairly substantial change in your eating habits. The three square meals a day approach that most of us were raised on was based on the need to maintain an 9-12 hour work day, allowing for big enough sized meals that would help someone avoid hunger until the next meal. This approach is effective at doing this, but it isn’t ideal for most people any more, given that we have improved freedom to eat whenever we need to vs. whenever we are allowed to.

The consequence to not eating whenever we need to, or to eating to avoid hunger for longer than 3 hours is fat gain unless you are particularly active. I say this because the body adapts to getting food every 5-6 hours and will come to rely on transient body fat to fuel energy requirements not met through eating – those periods of time when a meal is being digested and has no impact on blood levels. If we introduce food every 3 hours, we decrease the reliance on body fat to power our energy needs.

It will take you about a month of eating smaller meals every 3 hours before it becomes part of your daily life, but you can enjoy the improved health benefits after only a week or so. If your schedule and work allow for it, give it a try. It’s helped me add lean muscle mass and lower my body fat.