How to Lose Weight

I’d like to share an e-mail I received from Kevin Kimmel about the weight loss mind map.

“Today whilst on the Sounder Commuter train from Tukwila to Seattle I started to listen to your podcast.  When I saw the title on weight loss I decided to start with that one first, I have so far listened to it three times today.  Three months ago I went to the doctor and found out that I was a diabetic (blood sugar at 267), which is understandable since I weighed in at 442 pounds (5″9′) with family history of diabetes.  My doctor said that if I did not get my weight off he would more than likely be cutting off my feet before I died.  So I considered that a great motivation factor and started changing my lifestyle.  I have not been counting calories as of yet but I started eating four small meals with snack in between my meals.  I no longer eat fast foods and measure everything morsel of food out.  Now it is three months later and I have lost 54lbs which of course makes me happy, but now that I am eating very healthy I want complete body health.  I knew I needed to write everything out and somehow create a way to monitor every part of my health, but did not know how to begin.  I had gone out and bought a white board to start graphing out my weight, goals and exercise.  But since I did not know how to put it together, the white board has not been hung up on the wall and still has not had the first mark on it.  So you can understand why I got real excited when I listened to your podcast.  When I arrived at work, I went to the link for the overview map and opened it up.  I could swear that I heard angels singing with a full orchestra.  This is going to make an incredible difference in my goal for complete body health.  I might leave early from work so I can get my white board hung and start moping.  So thank you so much for taking the time to creating this overview map, it is deeply appreciated.”

You are very welcome Kevin.  Once I got my hands on that particular piece of software, I only had a short trial.  I opted to create something useful that even the highest priced books don’t show you.  A lot of us are visual learners.  While we read and learn how to do many things, unless it’s mapped out in a step by step process, many of the small stuff (important stuff) gets lost in the jumble of the 10,000 tips and tricks and fundamentals we’re supposed to do.

I hope this mind map can help others.  Print it out!

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There's No Shortcuts to a Six Pack

Here’s my Top 4 Weight Loss Tips for men or women who want to burn the fat and feed the muscle.

1. Get your workouts done quickly. Start using Supersets if you aren’t already. You’ll get more work done in less time and truthfully, you’ll bump up your metabolism and increase your rate of fat burning while working out with weights.
2. Interval training. There’s some strong evidence to show that doing interval training can help burn more fat in less time. While I do believe that, I mix my workouts up to have some cardio sessions at a moderate intensity for 40 minutes and other sessions will be high intensity styles. It’s definitely something to look into if you are trying to strip away body fat. I’d even go so far as to say if you are advanced, you do add 2 sessions per day for no more than 30 days. I’m a firm believer in the less is more approach but sometimes when you are doing less, you have a lot of areas when you can tweak your cardiovascular program and use it as a fat stripping tool.
3. Make weight resistance your #1 priority. As you build more muscle, your metabolism will increase. This means, if you put on a pound of muscle, you could burn approximately 30-35 extra calories per hour because of that (varies for conditions and is not set in stone).  The more muscle you can build, the leaner you will become. If your goal is to build muscle or burn fat, weight training needs to be the foundation of your program.
4. Dial in your nutrition. Make your meals at home and ensure you are eating 5-6, smaller but frequent performance meals. There’s quite a lot you can do when it comes to nutrition from carbohydrate cycling, nutrient ratio manipulation or just generally tightening up your diet to eliminate processed foods. All too often people have so-so nutritional habits and immediately look to a fat burner, some diet tea or detoxification formula when all it really would take it a few minutes analyzing your current eating plan and making some minor adjustments.

Sure, there’s a heck of a lot more to it than just these 4 little tips but let me leave you with this.

The ONE thing that literally saved me was something Dave Draper said in his book, “Brother Iron, Sister Steel.”

Consistency!

“There are no secrets. You simply have basic God-given genetics, body chemistry and bone structure. And provided the attributes of discipline and determination, you apply yourself full bore, and your body potential emerges, slow and sure.” - Dave Draper

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I receive countless emails that start off like this…

In January I was 190 lbs at 25% body fat. 8 weeks ago I stopped seeing results. The last 8 weeks while cutting down I have dropped a few pounds (which I don’t really want to do) and my body fat has remained the same.

What many people fail to realize when cutting is the concept of nutritional periodization. All too frequently, I get e-mails from frustrated weight loss seekers who have been on a calorie deficit for MONTHS. While they understand the basics of calorie cutting and what it means to be in a deficit, very few of them use a Zig-Zag method or fully comprehend the deficits or length a cutting cycle can have on their metabolism.

People who seek to lose weight grasp the very basics.

1. Calculate calories
2. Eat less
3. Eat good foods
4. Keep cutting until I achieve the desired effect

While that works, at some point they hit a wall and what’s the 1st thing they want to do?

EXERCISE MORE and EAT LESS!

Which is the wrong approach. Nobody told them about the tips below.

The 3 best tips for fat loss are as follows:

1) Cycle your calories and your carbohydrates. This can be referred to as the Zig-Zag approach. In a nutshell, it’s defined as days of maintenance calories mixed with days in a calorie deficit.

2) Understanding your personal level of tolerance to carbohydrates. There are great differences in the way people process foods. You can find your nutritional ratio and then adjust it according to your personal needs and tolerances that you will discover thru experience.

3) “If man made it, don’t’ eat it!” – Jack Lalanne. You need to eat natural foods and avoid refined foods. I notice in many meal plans, more than 20% of the daily protein requirements are coming from protein shakes. My own rule is not to get more than 20% of my daily protein from supplements.

The 3 biggest mistakes are as follows:

1) Too severe of a calorie deficit:

• 15% below maintenance = very conservative deficit
• 20% below maintenance = conservative deficit
• 25% below maintenance = moderate deficit
• 30% below maintenance = aggressive deficit
• 35%+ below maintenance = very aggressive deficit
• 50%+ below maintenance = semi-starvation/starvation

2) Too prolonged of a calorie deficit. More than 12-16 weeks of a calorie deficit could result in a lowered metabolism. The concept of nutritional periodization of cycling calories and carbohydrates comes into play after out 12 weeks depending on your overall progress.

3) Over-training while under-nourished. Long stints of high intensity work in a long period of calorie deprivation no matter how small.

I’d love to take credit for these weight loss tips. Unfortunately I can’t. While I did adjust them and add some of my own tips, I pulled the real gems from pages 47-48 of THE FAT BURN FILES, a unique collection of by Tom Venuto. It gets 2 thumbs up from me because of the way it reveals everything that DOESN’T work as well as what DOES work for burning fat and gaining muscle… all in a fascinating, entertaining personal interview format.

Photo of the Perfect Weight by Jill Greenseth Used under a Creative Commons license

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I decided it was about time to draw out a map of what I tell my clients when it comes to weight loss.

This is a nice 50,000 foot overview of what you need to do, step-by-step when it comes to burning that fat. This drawing you see above is called a mind map. It’s a visual way of thinking out a process.

When I think of trying to explain all the aspects of weight loss to a client, these are things we talk about over a period of weeks.

Click Here to see the full color version of the Weight Loss Tips MindMap

PS - The site is still a bit new, I’m fixing a few things. You’ll find the legend on the map that explains the symbols. You’ll get linked to articles about a particular subject that you see that will further explain an item on the weight loss mind map.

PPS - Your comments are most appreciated. I would love to hear back from you.

 

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