Monday, November 27, 2006

Why Calories Don't Matter

Why Calories Don't Matter
By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS

TurbulenceTraining.com

Myth: I need to burn 300 calories each workout to lose fat.

Truth: Possibly one of the worst inventions for fat loss was the calorie-counting monitor on treadmills, elliptical machines, and stairmasters. Because of these, millions of men and women now obsess about the number of calories burned per session. You've probably even been one of those people, watching it creep up ever so slowly during a slow-cardio session. All the while knowing that you can wipe out a 30-minute, 300-calorie treadmill session with one fell swoop of the Krispy Kreme hand.

Too many people are brainwashed into thinking that if they don't burn 300-500 calories per session, then they won't lose fat. After all, that is what you've been told time and time again in those fluffy fitness/fashion magazines. The problems with this approach to fat loss are numerous. First off, it's difficult to say if the calorie counters are even accurate. A story on CBS news showed that cardio machines overestimate calorie burning by up to 20%.


Next, depending on slow cardio for advanced fat loss is relatively useless and at the very least, inefficient. It takes a long time for you to burn a lot of calories and one study showed that men who only used cardio training for weight loss ended up with a reduced resting metabolism. You are basically undoing the calorie burning by depending only on cardio. On the other hand, guys in the same study that used strength training didn't suffer a reduced metabolic rate.

So what is the solution to burning fat in a faster, more efficient method? The answer is to burn fewer calories in less exercise time, but with a more intense form of exercise.

And the trick to getting better results in this backwards approach? Your body will burn more calories after exercise (when you use intervals) than it does after you do slow cardio and your metabolism will stay high. Some experts refer to this as the afterburn effect. How do you do intervals? Well, you could sprint for 30 seconds and rest for 90 seconds and repeat that for 6 sets - using the bike preferably or treadmill if you are experienced with it.

Within that short time frame the intervals will cause your muscles to go crazy with activity (I call it a metabolic disturbance). This crazy metabolism boost causes lots of calorie burning after exercise to get your body back to normal. The result is you would end up burning more fat and more calories in the post-exercise period as your body tries to get things under control.

Now there is one time where you'd want to count calories, but that is when you are counting up and determining how many calories you eat per day. Again, you can wipe out an entire workout's work in less than a minute simply by eating garbage. Without some structure and discipline to your nutrition, there is nothing that even my programs can do to help you lose fat.

So exercise nutrition control and interval training. These are the two anti-calorie counting methods that will help you lose fat and get lean.



About the Author

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines and all over the Internet, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Can You Think Yourself Thin?

The Law Of Attraction And Weight Loss: Can You Think Yourself Thin?
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS BurnTheFat.com

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Metaphysics & Brain science merge and prove that positive thinking and goal setting literally create your body and your entire life experience
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On recently broadcast special edition of CNN's Larry King Live, Mr. King interviewed a panel of "mind experts" about how the thoughts you think literally turn into the events you experience, the material things you possess... AND even the health of your body.

For years, "positive thinking" and goal-setting were often criticized as "pollyanna" and "the law of attraction" was relegated into the category of "new age" fluff.

On the recent Larry King show, panel experts Bob Proctor, John Assaraf and others who were featured in the movie 'The Secret' explained that recent breakthroughs in neuroscience along with understanding mental laws, reveal why goal setting, the "law of attraction" and "positive thinking" all work, regardless of whether you look at them from a metaphysical or a scientific perspective.

Scientists have even identified specific parts of the brain, such as the reticular activating system (RAS), which works with the visual parts of our brain to call our conscious attention to things that are important to reaching our goals and to filter out those things that are unimportant.

The RAS is activated by "programming" goals into our sub-conscious minds. Our sub concscious mind is the "power center" and THIS is the mechanism that explains why goal setting and positive thinking are now being accepted as scientific methods for change.

We are discovering that our brain is cybernetic in nature, which means that it is literally like a computer, waiting for a program to be installed.

Here's the kicker - the subconcsious is completely neutral and impartial - it will carry out any instructions you give it.

Unfortunately, many of us are still running negative programs we picked up from others as children when our non-conscious minds were totally open and impressionable, or which we developed over the years as a result of repetition of our own negative thinking.

As it turns out, our own thoughts, repeated daily, are one of the primary ways that our "mental computer" is programmed on a sub-conscious level, which is the level of beliefs, habits and automatic behavior.

To change your results, you must overwrite old negative programming and install positive new programming into your subconscious.

This can be achived through such techniques as written goal setting, positive self-talk (affirmations), and mental imagery (visualization).

In the 1970's, the Soviets and East Germans were the first to formally use structured mental rehearsal, and at that time, they dominated in several olympic sports. This was reported in great detail in Charles Garfield's landmark book, "Peak Performance." Today, virtually all elite athletes use visualization extensively, as we now know that the brain cannot differentiate between real practice and practice that is vividly imagined.

If you are getting more of the same negative results in your life - such as the same health problems, or the same body fat continues to return even after you lose it, then you have probably been un-consciously running old negative programs and re-inforcing them with negative thought patterns.

You can begin the positive mental reprogramming process by writing down your goals, changing your internal dialogue and taking a few minutes to relax, quiet your mind and perform a session of visualization or mental rehearsal every day (seeing yourself in your "mind's eye" not as you currently are, but as you ideally would like to be).

These methods, repeated often enough, will begin to program the non- conscious portion of the mind, which is the same part of the mind that controls your heart beat, digestion and new cell production, all on "automatic pilot."

In the last decade, neuroscientists discovered that you have the capacity to create an almost infinite number of new neural connections in your brain when you run new thought patterns.

The Old neural pathways are like grooves in a record, and if you are struggling with your health related behaviors or behaviors in any other area of your life, you have been playing the "old records" over and over again.

If you were to carve a new groove into that record, it would never play the same way again. the old pattern would weaken and the new one would take over. Brand new, positive thoughts, feelings and images begin to create new neural patterns.

Psychologists estimate that it takes 21 to 30 days to establish a new pattern in your brain. During this time, the focus on sticking with your practice and repeating your new thought patterns is critical.

Is this easy? For most people, no it's not. In fact, controlling your thinking and keeping it constructive may be one of the most difficult challenges you have ever faced. Fortunately, writing goals and reading affirmations can help get you started.

You can take some of the pressure off yourself by simply accepting that negative thoughts and self criticisms will pop up from time to time. Just observe them, without mulling over them or adding to them, and change the polarity of the thought by quickly repeating one of your positive affirmations or by changing your mental pictures.

So is there something to this whole "positive thinking" thing?

The philosophers and theologians have been saying yes for the entire span of recorded history: "As you think, so shall you be." Variations on this proverb can be found in every spiritual and philosophical tradition.

But... if you are the left-brained, "prove-it-to-me" type, you dont have to go on faith anymore. Scientists are beginning to prove more and more convincingly that thoughts are powerful things. Even Larry King seemed impressed with what his panel of "mind mentors" had to say.

So how soon are you going to begin your mental training right alongside your physical training? When are you going to learn how to harness this power locked up inside your mind?

Guess what? You're already using this force every day because you cannot turn it off. Whatever you are thinking and picturing in your mind repeatedly on a daily basis is already on it's way to you, so it's simply a matter of HOW you are using it, not IF you are using it.

What do you say to yourself every day? Do you say, "I am becoming leaner, healthier and more muscular every day?"... or do you say "I am a fat person - Ive tried everything, nothing ever works?"

The fact is - you can think yourself thin and healthy or you can think yourself obese and ill. Maybe not in the literal sense...but most certainly as the critical part in the chain of causation...

You see, there's a lot of talk these days in the personal improvement world about law of attraction, manifesting, intention, visualization, affirmations and of course, positive thinking.

Without understanding that there is an orderly, scientific basis underneath all of these things, many people will simply remain skeptics, while on the opposite extreme, others may get the idea that you can sit around meditating and visualizing, then expect a mystical "law of attraction" to kick in and then "poof!" a great body materializes out of thin air... along with the perfect relationship, a nice bank account and fantastic career success.

What really happens is "Positive thinking" and related methods quite literally re-program your brain, which in turn creates new behaviors that move you physically toward whatever you have been thinking about and focusing on.

So success is achieved through positive thinking + positive doing.... attraction + action. There are two sides to the coin. Without paying attention to both, you may continue to struggle... often against nothing but yourself.

If you want to transform your body or any other aspect of your life, then you have to change on the inside (the mind) first and then everything else will follow.

This process of *scientific* goal setting and mental reconditioning through emotionally charged mental imagery (visualization) and internal mental dialogue (affirmations) is the very first thing I have always taught my clients and the first thing I wrote about in my book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle You can learn all of these techniques in detail in chapter 1. Learn more about the psychology of body transormation inside the
Burn The Fat ebook:BurnTheFat.com




  • About the Author:

    Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder and author of the #1 best selling e-book, "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to burn fat without drugs or supplements using the little-known secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and turbo-charge your metabolism by visiting: www.
    BurnTheFat.com

    Monday, November 20, 2006

    How to Cut Your Workout Time & Lose More Fat

    By line: By Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
    Turbulence Training
    Word count: 964
    Related keywords: cardio, fat loss, weight loss, burn fat, lose weight, build muscle, burn calories


    How to Cut Your Workout Time & Lose More Fat
    By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
    Turbulence Training

    The #1 reason for not working out is a lack of time.

    If you get up at 5:30am to drive an hour to work, only to get home at 6pm and then have to launch right into carting the kids around, who can blame you for not working out? Not when it takes 45 minutes to do cardio, and another 30-45 minutes for isolation bodybuilding workouts.

    If that's the way you have to exercise to lose fat, then practically no normal person is going to be able to pull that off.

    But when you look at the science, you'll see that you can get more results in less time. You just have to increase the intensity of the workout, but at the same time, you can cut your workout time in half (or more!).

    I am convinced that an effective fat loss workout can be done in 45 minutes or less, and that long, slow, excruciatingly boring cardio is not necessary for you to get the body you want. Please, read on...

    In last week's newsletter, I spoke about the 3 biggest training mistakes as well as my top 3 training tips to help you get more results in less time. Here I go into detail on the superiority of interval training when compared to traditional aerobic exercise:

    Q: What is the role of interval training vs. steady state aerobics in a fat loss program?

    Answer:
    Interval training is more important than cardio. First of all, it gets more results in less time. And with "lack of time" being the number one reason most people do not participate in a training program at all, clearly intervals are the winner here.

    Now let's just assume that lack of time is not a problem. Well, interval training is still more effective because it applies more "turbulence" to the muscle. Or in scientific terms, interval training results in a greater metabolic stress on the muscle.

    And that causes more calories to be burned in the important 23.5 hours per day when you are not exercising.

    From there, the muscle must work to recover, repair, and replenish the energy that was used in the training. It is much more metabolic work for the muscle to recover from interval training (and strength training) than it is to recover from aerobic training.

    Therefore, in the post-exercise period, interval training results in more calories burned.

    In fact, I just read a new study from Australia that shows interval training is superior to slow cardio for fat loss.

    The researchers, Trapp & Boutcher put WOMEN through a 15 week study where one group was a control, one group did intervals (20 minutes of alternating sprints and recovery), and one group did 40 minutes of slow cardio.

    The interval group lost 2.5kg of fat in 15 weeks on average (with one subject losing 7.7kg of fat), while the slow cardio group lost only 0.4kg of fat over 15 weeks on average.

    The results speak for themselves.

    So don't get hung up on how many calories are burned during a training session with aerobic training. That is not nearly as important as how many total calories your body burns over the course of the day - and you will burn more with interval training.

    And for those that subscribe to the fat burning zone as being important, again, you aren't looking at the big picture (the 24-hour calorie burning period). Instead, those that believe in the importance of the fat-burning zone have a myopic view of how the body works.

    The same message applies to those people that live and die by the cardio on an empty stomach method. You're "nickel and dime-ing" the fat loss process, when really it's a much bigger budget to balance.

    Look at the big picture. Get your nutrition in order, then focus your workouts on brief, intense strength and interval training workouts that increase your metabolism for the next 24 hours.

    Get your very own copy of Turbulence Training & the Nutrition Guide here: Turbulence Training
    Sincerely, Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
    Turbulence Training

    P.S. More TT Success Stories...Including the "21 pounds in 21 days Fat Loss Story"!

    "TT Training has revolutionized my workout routine--NO more excuses! No time for the gym...NO problem, can't go outside...No problem! The bodyweight workouts kept me strong this fall."
    Mary Iverson

    "Hi Craig, I am enjoyingTurbulence Training. I am a personal trainer, so I've incorporated much of it into my sessions. Though I used some philosophies from TT, your program has added a world of new ideas, methods, and techniques to my client sessions. And for that, I thank you so very much. Even my wife loves it, ha! So much more to read and implement, so TT reading will keep me busy for many months to come. Make it a great day!"
    Loren Salas

    Get your very own copy of Turbulence Training & the Nutrition Guide here: Turbulence Training

    "The things I like the most in the TT program: a) Large number of different exercises allowing for ever new combinations, which prevent boredom and routine. b) Different approaches to strength training (dumbbells, own body, simple implements). c) A lot of precise information about pacing, timing and choosing effort levels. d) Sound and solid information on kinesiology and physiology of training."
    Peter Tancig

    "Hi Craig, I wanted to send you a note regarding TT. The workouts are great and if you incorporate the diet plan you can't help but lose FAT. I have been using the program for three weeks and have dropped twenty one pounds. I look forward to getting down to my goal weight within a year. I am very happy to have purchased this program and would recommend it to other with no hesitation. Thank you very much."
    Tim Jones


    About the Author

    Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines and all over the Internet, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit Turbulence Training.com

    Tuesday, November 14, 2006

    Fat Loss Power of Food

    By line: By Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
    Turbulence Training

    I know that most readers think that fat loss is all about exercise, but you must know that good nutrition is just as important for fat loss results. Making the correct food choices is your secret weapon in the rush to get the best body for summer. Eating right will help you lose fat and increase your energy dramatically, so that you'll have plenty of stamina for social life, in the gym, and at work.

    When I start working with clients, I have everyone enter their food intake on a nutrition tracking website to allow both of us to evaluate their nutrition. Some of the common problems that I see are:

    1. Too many treats per day. As one client said, ''I still have one treat per day such as chips, a chocolate bar, a donut, or a rib sub each day, and sometimes I skip breakfast. But other than that, I think it is pretty good.''

    If that’s the case, and you are trying to lose fat, then you will have a difficult time. You just can't eat that many treats (read: garbage) and expect to get lean (unless you are 16 years old).

    2. Skipping breakfast.

    3. Not eating enough fiber.

    4. Not eating enough lean protein and low-glycemic, low-fat carbohydrate sources.

    5. Not eating much during the day and then eating a huge dinner.

    Solutions:

    1. Set the tone with the first meal of the day by consuming a lean protein source and high-fiber, low-glycemic carbohydrates. Fiber at this meal will help control blood sugar over the morning and can help modify appetite at subsequent meals.

    2. Consume mini-meals to prevent starvation-induced meal binges and energy slumps.

    3. Choose snacks that contain protein and fiber, such as almonds.

    4. Keep your dinner moderate, and avoid high-calorie feasts.

    5. Consume calorie-free beverages, preferably Green Tea or water.

    6. Consume at least the recommended amount of fiber through vegetables, fruits, almonds, etc. But start adding fiber to your diet slowly and drink more water.

    7. Try to improve your nutrition each day. This will help get you into healthy eating habits. Be consistent with your training and nutrition, and you'll get results.

    So here is your challenge. Start with one day and eliminate all of the processed foods from your nutrition plan. I want you to go one full day without foods containing added sugar, hydrogenated oils, or high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

    If you do this, you'll feel amazing and energized. You will probably have your best workout of the year and you'll probably get more done at work as well.

    Replace the junk with lean protein sources, fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains (such as oat-based products), water, and green tea. Make sure to log your food intake on fitday.com and compare it to your regular eating. You'll notice that it is very hard to overeat when you eat only healthy foods. And then next week, try going two days without processed foods.

    Keep focusing on one improvement each day and soon you'll have better nutrition habits and fast fat loss to go along with it...not to mention a new body!

    Sincerely,

    Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
    Author, Turbulence Training

    About the Author

    Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit Turbulence Training

    Related keywords: carbs, carbohydrates, protein, fat, calories, fiber, meals, fat loss, burn fat, lose weight, weight loss, nutrition

    Tuesday, November 07, 2006

    How Bad is Your Nutrition?

    By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
    Turbulence Training

    Chances are your nutrition is terrible. Or at the very least, your nutrition plan is good but you allow yourself far too many treats. Take today for example. How many Halloween candies have you treated yourself to at work? And you still have to go home and resist the leftover candy bowl or your child’s Halloween loot. The bottom line: You can’t succeed in your fat loss program if your diet is average.

    I need to bring up this point because of the many emails people send me about their nutrition. From what I read, most people’s nutrition plans are far too poor to allow them to lose fat. And yet they are working harder than ever in the gym and wondering why they aren’t losing fat. No workout will help you build muscle and lose fat if you keep eating at fast-food restaurants, drinking sugary sodas, and raiding bags of leftover mini-candy bars.

    And it’s frustrating because the secrets to fat loss nutrition are so simple. The best approach is eating several small meals per day, with each meal containing lean protein, vegetables, and other whole foods. You must eliminate unnecessary calories such as soda and high-fat, high-sugar snacks (like that mini-Snickers bar that’s on your desk right now). If you’re trying to lose fat, you can’t have treats every day. If fat loss is the goal, then cookies, apple pie, ice cream, nachos, fried foods, etc. just don't make the cut, as unfortunate as it is.

    Research shows that an increased intake of fruits and vegetables is associated with fat loss (nutritionists never put a limit on the number of vegetables that people should eat - provided they are not fried or covered in fat or sauces). Other research suggests that replacing carbohydrates with almonds (a source of fiber, protein, and monounsaturated fats) leads to greater weight loss. Almonds are a very healthy snack and help curb hunger. A typical serving is 1 ounce of almonds (about 22 pieces) and can replace chips, chocolate bars, and cookies in your diet.

    Make sure you are logging your food intake and making notes about your energy levels when you eat certain foods. Soon you will identify the nutritional reasons for your fatigue or for your consistent energy levels. You will quickly associate sugar and fried foods with poor mental performance, while noticing that small, whole, natural food-based meals and snacks help keep you alert and full of energy.

    If you are overweight and just starting to improve your nutrition, I have some good news for you. You should begin losing at least 1 pound per week (probably 2 or more) simply from the nutritional changes.

    Nutrition is that powerful. Don’t expect to start eating perfectly tomorrow, but you should slowly build up to eating much better and healthier than you were yesterday. Try to improve your nutrition plan everyday. Stay consistent and focused with your nutritional approach. You can do it. Here are three nutrition changes that would pay huge dividends for a fat-loss beginner:

    1) Eat several small, whole food meals per day.

    2) Don't consume any unnecessary liquid calories (i.e. no soda, alcohol, or sweetened beverages). Drink more water – nutrition experts recommend 3 liters per day.

    3) Eliminate processed carbohydrates and sugar from your nutrition plan (no soda, cake, chips, white bread, or chocolate bars).

    If you’re fed up with the body fat and spare tire around your middle, then it’s time to take a structured approach to fat loss.

    If your current nutritional plan is preventing you from losing fat, then it’s time for you to start working on building better eating habits. This can be as simple as committing to one small nutritional improvement per day (such as replacing your lunchtime soda with water) and one large nutritional change per week (such as setting aside time on a Sunday to prepare a weekly menu and all of your meals).

    But you need to have a plan to make this work, just like how you have a plan for your workouts. Your nutrition plan should include the contents of every meal, as well as your grocery list for the week. This will enable you to have meal alternatives for nights when you might need to be running from one event to the other with no time or healthy snack alternatives when you are on the road between meetings.

    It’s important that you make your plan something you can follow. If you are currently eating 7 meals per week at the golden arches, it wouldn’t be realistic to plan to replace those meals with carrot sticks and tofu this week. A better plan would be to substitute a couple of those meals with healthier sandwich options and then work on improving things even more in the following weeks.

    So here’s a three-step guideline on building a better nutrition plan:

    1) Prepare a weekly menu. Outline each meal and snack for every day of the upcoming week. Take into account the possibilities that you might work late or get invited out to lunch. The more options you have and preparations you make, the better you will be able to stick to your fat loss plan.

    2) From your menu plan, you’ll now know what foods and ingredients you need to make it through the week. Make your grocery list and stick to it (see mine below). Grocery shopping is your first opportunity to break some bad nutritional habits. You can’t eat chips, cookies, or cakes if you don’t have them in the house – so don’t buy them and you’ll avoid any future temptation.

    3) Prepare the meals or prepare the ingredients so that making the actual meal doesn’t take a lot of time. Like shopping, it’s best to do all of these preparations at one time (such as on a Sunday or another day off).

    My shopping list includes:

    Fruits · Apples · Oranges · Blueberries · Melon · Peaches · Grapefruit · Raspberries

    Vegetables · Peppers (red, yellow, green, & orange), · Spinach · Asparagus · Broccoli · Snow Peas · Mushrooms · Frozen mixed vegetables · Tomato sauce

    Protein Sources · Chicken breasts · Turkey breasts · Salmon fillets · Lean beef · Skim milk & low-fat, low-sugar yogurt

    Carbohydrates · Oat bread · Oatmeal (no sugar added) · Whole-wheat pasta

    Other · Green tea · Unsalted, not roasted, Almonds

    You’ll notice that most of these foods come without a food label. Most of the foods that you should avoid come in a bag or a box. Building a shopping list that contains very few bagged or boxed items is something to aim for. But when you do purchase something with a label, make sure to avoid two of the unhealthiest ingredients created by man:

    1) High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) 2) Hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil (the sources of trans-fatty acids)

    You might have heard of these two ingredients. They are strongly associated with obesity and other lifestyle-diseases (such as diabetes).

    Sincerely,

    Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
    Author, Turbulence Training

    About the Author

    Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit Turbulence Training

    Monday, November 06, 2006

    Challenge complete.

    I know this post is late, but I thought I would post it anyway.
    I followed the "Bowflex 6 week challenge" for the last 6 weeks. I followed the exercise plan exactly. The diet plan I was not as successful with. The diet requires you to eliminate all caffeine from your diet. I did not do that. I also allowed myself to drink on the weekends..... about 6-8 oz of spirits with diet coke. The food portion of the diet I followed to a tee. I was not able to find certain food options as they were American products, but I was able to find a calorie equivalent option.
    The water portion of their diet was difficult, but I would say I was able to follow it 90% of the time.

    Now the results! This is a quote from the diet plan in the Bowflex manual.

    "The men involved in my research, for example, had an average fat loss of 27.95 pounds per man. Women on the same
    program averaged a reduction of 16.96 pounds. Best of all, these dramatic results were achieved -- not in six months --
    but in only six weeks!
    That'’s right. Similar results can be accomplished by you in six short weeks, which include just 18 workouts (3 per week)
    on the Bowflex machine.
    Bowflex was a significant part of the results. The exercises performed on it allowed the participants to build muscle,
    which accelerated their metabolisms, and produced faster and greater fat losses."

    My results were not quite so dramatic.

    I lost 8.6 lbs..... 5.1 lbs of that was fat loss. The rest of it (3.5) was muscle mass.
    Just a tad short( insert sarcasm here) of the almost 28 lbs the program suggests is possible.
    Even though I did not follow the program exactly I don't feel the cheats I allowed myself would account for the huge difference in what they claim is possible, and what I achieved.
    The muscle mass loss is what bothers me the most....although everything I have read suggests that weight loss and building muscle mass don't go together. You need to eat more calories to add mass and you need to reduce calories for weight loss.
    Most plans have you lose weight and then add muscle back after tour weight is at a healthy level.

    Overall I am pleased with my progress. My weight loss is on average 1.4 lbs per week which is healthy and sustainable for a long period of time. I feel more muscular, and have more muscle definition than when I started.
    I am now at week 10 and have added some cardio to the program. I am now down 10.6 lbs and counting.
    My current weight is 211 lbs and my goal is 195. I can see the light. 2 years ago I weighed 270 lbs and it seemed like an impossible task. It is NOT!
    Slow and steady will win the race....eat healthy....watch your portions....drink lots of water...exercise hard 3-5 times per week. It will happen for you! It will happen for me.