“DIET” It’s a swear word!!

Commonly we associate weight loss with being hungry, boring diet foods and deprivation from good tasting food. The diet starts well but within a matter of days, you are so bored (and starving hungry!) that everything goes completely out of the window and we revert back to our old habits.

Never Deprive Yourself

The key is a balance of all of your vital food groups, good home cooking and a little bit of what you fancy.

The truth is your body can’t discriminate between intentional calorie deprivation (as in a diet), and starvation. When you dramatically reduce your caloric intake, your body shifts into a protective mode by slowing your metabolism down and holding onto fat (an important energy source) and burning muscle instead. At the beginning of a diet you WILL lose weight by dramatically cutting calories. But it won’t be fat loss; it will be water weight and lean muscle tissue – the exact OPPOSITE of what you want to get rid of.

Not only will harsh diets slow your metabolism down to a crawl, causing your initial weight loss to come to a gradual halt, they will also inevitably bring about a “rebound” effect. This rebound will make you even fatter than you were before starting the diet. When you rebound, not only do you generally put on more weight than you actually lost with the diet, but your percentage of body fat generally increases because your body cannibalised muscle tissue as an energy source during the dieting process. Thus the “yo-yo” effects that almost all dieters experience.

To permanently lose the fat stores in your body, you’ve got to burn more calories and increase your metabolic rate (the rate at which your body burns fuel throughout the day – even when you’re NOT exercising). This should be done with a precise exercise routine, and proper nutrient ratio adaptations (that means eating the right stuff at regular intervals). Even if you don’t exercise (but I recommend you do), just eating 5-6 small, high quality meals each day (and by a meal, I mean anything from a nutritious snack to a sit-down dinner) will substantially increase your metabolism – and you’ll burn more calories!

Strength Matters

So, to lose weight you need to spend hour upon hour in a traditional gym, running on the treadmill, followed by other famous cardio machines such as the rower, bike and X-Trainer. Right?

Nothing could be further from the truth. Muscle is metabolically active tissue. Fat is not. Fat is an energy source for the body, but most people have much more than they need. Fat does not use energy – it is used as energy and a lot of it is left unused. Muscle uses energy. And lots of it!!

The more lean muscle you have, the more fat you burn. And here’s the biggest benefit, and why everyone needs to incorporate resistance training in their exercise programme:

The more lean muscle you have, the more fat you burn…
You see, that’s really the ultimate weight loss and fitness secret. Looking great is not just a function of how much fat you burn when you’re working out, because you can only exercise so much in a given week. The real secret is how metabolically active your body is the other 95% of the time.

People with more lean muscle burn fat at a much greater rate than those with less lean muscle. That doesn’t mean you have to look like Arnold or Madonna to be an efficient fat-burning machine. But you do have to at least maintain – and preferably increase – your lean muscle tissue. This can be easily achieved with a structured resistance training programme.

SPECIAL NOTE: Women will NOT become “bulky” or “muscle-bound” by incorporating resistance training into their exercise routine. In fact, just the opposite is true. Lean muscle is more compact and firmer than fat. Resistance training will make women smaller, firmer and sexier. Women are not genetically predisposed to adding muscle mass. Men, on the other hand, will gain mass and see exciting muscle growth through the proper use of nutrition and resistance training.

ACCOUNTABILITY

In a recent study at Virginia Polytechnic University, researchers divided people starting a walking programme into two groups. Every week, each individual in one group got a phone call asking how their exercise was coming along, the other group got no calls. At the end of 24 weeks, 45% of the individuals who got the phone calls were still walking compared to just 2% of those who did not receive calls.

The results show that weekly accountability increases the likelihood of sticking to your exercise programme by 2200%! What you’ve just read is some of the most valuable information you will ever learn on how to lose weight and get fit. And having the RIGHT information is critical. But intellectually understanding what should be done, and actually doing it, are two very different things.

The truth is most people can’t get a grip on the three essential factors that separate those who achieve real and lasting physique transformations from those who don’t. Most people have difficulty with the commitment; don’t grasp the importance of progression, and lack the personal accountability to achieve their weight loss and fitness goals.

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