It’s pretty teriffying to think how short our attention spans have become because of those text messages, tweets, status updates etc. Nowadays we all look for shortcuts, the easy and quick fix. And when it comes to weight loss, it gets worse because the market today is riddled with millions of ‘fast solutions’.
I’m telling you this because almost everyone I talk about fat loss related topics is pretty confused. They are even unsure about what is that they want from losing the weight. If you don’t understand your own motivation, how are you supposed to maintain your will power?
Aren’t you tired of spinning your wheels already? Do you want to be in bad shape for the rest of your life?
Actually, I’m so sure about my basic motivation. For me, keeping the weight off is a necessity, not a luxury.
That means I NEED to keep the weight off, not I WANT to keep the weight off. It’s a ‘need’ issue. I need to uncover my best physique because I hate it when I dislike what I see in the mirror. Yes, the mirror is more important than the scale for some people and it’s ok! Let me tell you what is not ok. It’s not ok if…
You hate taking your shirt off in front of people in places like your local pool or on the beach.
You don’t even bother wearing make-up as you feel ‘what’s the use’.
You feel like you are trapped into ‘what the hell I’m doing’ kind of exercises.
You are becoming extremely discouraged and depressed and feel like giving up.
I have to confess… My number one motivation is to look hot. If you have decided to lose weight due to health concerns, I truly respect you. But most of the time, it is the case that people want to lose weight for the purposes of getting a partner.
This is obviously a fairly basic motivation and not the bad motivator that some may claim. It is a fact that you are more likely to attract more potential partners the closer you are to the stereotype of physical beauty.
Let’s say you’ve found your love already and been having a great relationship… Don’t you sometimes wonder how to keep your spouse interested and happy?
Of all the reasons for weight loss my favourite has to be revenge. Let me explain: A man leaves a woman and runs off with a girl several pounds lighter. There is simply no better revenge then to turn up in his local bar several months later looking like the bomb.
Look at all those topics being discussed for years: How to lose weight quickly, how to burn stubborn fat, how to gain muscle, how to lose man boobs, how to get rid of baby weight…
You see, as well as the host of popular topics being discussed in the ‘weight loss’ media, the old favorites are still there. Some may sound dramatic but the point is that you need to let your subconscious know you’re serious about getting fit and keeping the weight off.
First of all, do what people like me, some of my friends and John Romaniello did. Confess to yourself what your number one fat loss motivation is.
If you are sure about your motivations and certain that you NEED to get rid of those extra pounds, take action right now! Click below and get a chance to grab a copy of John Romaniello’s Final Phase Fat Loss program.
In mylast post, we’ve established that there are three specific hormones that cause the three most common types of regional fat storage.
As a quick recap:
1. Estrogen - the female sex hormone responsible for lower body fat storage patterns.
2. Insulin - Or rather, insulin resistance; this nasty little dude heavily influences fat storage in the love handle and lower back area.
3. Cortisol - the appropriately dubbed stress hormone is part of the reason you’ve got more flab than ab.
Those are your enemies.
Now, I want to talk to you about how you can actually increase the production of other hormones that offset the above "bad" hormones--through the manipulation of training methods.
Estrogen vs. Testosterone
Now that we’ve established (again, with apologies to the ladies) that estrogen is the main reason lower body fat storage occurs, we need to know how to work around that.
Well, how else would you combat estrogen but with testosterone? In all honesty, when if comes to fat loss and muscle gain, testosterone good, estrogen bad.
It’s for that reason that professional athletes, bodybuilders and the juicers down at the Jersey Shore use illicit steroids that are derivatives of testosterone.
Of course, that’s not an option for us--and certainly not desirable. Instead, we are going to increase testosterone levels naturally, through training. Not only will this increase the net fat-burning effect of all exercises, but more appropriate to our purposes here, it will also facilitate in getting rid of lower body fat.
I should mention something here to alleviate any concerns: it is NOT possible to produce a detrimental amount of testosterone through training. So ladies, you don’t have to worry about any masculinizing effects.
Instead, training produces what we would term a ‘high’ amount of testosterone from a physiological perspective, relative to what your body normally produces. For the guys, this means that such training will help you put on a bit more muscle--just not steroid muscle.
Insulin Resistance vs. IGF-1
As I mentioned in the video above, insulin resistance is combatted very nicely by a hormones called IGF-1, or Insulin-like Growth Factor one.
Producing extra IGF-1 via training will help you (and me!) improve insulin sensitivity and begin to rid ourselves of love handle and lower back fat.
Insulin resistance is very common, particular in people who were previously overweight; so if you have lost some fat and you’re now struggling to lose a bit more, and that fat happens to be in your love handles, I’m willing to bet you’re suffering from some degree of insulin resistance.
In order to get rid of that fat, we have to do fat burning workouts (obviously) and increase insulin sensitivity to the greatest degree that we can through the training effect. To that end, we need to employ what I call Dynamic Training.
Dynamic training is pretty much the over-arching concept of how I design fat loss training programs--it consists of using fast-paced movements to teach the body how to move more efficiently such as combination movements, like the squat-to-press or "thruster" I demonstrated below.
Because this style of training is extremely expensive in terms of energy (Calorie) demand, by and large dynamic training is excellent as a general fat loss modality.
Perhaps more importantly, however, is the fact that utilizing these types exercises and setting them up in a non-competing circuit fashion under the dynamic training umbrella is an incredible way to produce IGF-1--and that is one of the most effective methods to mitigate insulin sensitivity.
Cortisol vs. Growth Hormone
We have touched on cortisol a bit, so I won’t rehash that too much. Suffice it to say that the higher your cortisol levels are, the more fat you’re going to be storing on your belly. Given that fact, it stands to reason that if you store fat primarily in the abdominal region, you’re a victim of high cortisol.
Never fear, though: Growth Hormone is here.
Also known as the “fountain of youth”, growth hormone is the single most effective compound your body can produce to affect both fat loss and muscle gain. The more you produce, the faster you’ll lose fat and build muscle. It’s just as simple as that. Now, in addition to that awesome little fact, growth hormone is going to whoop cortisol’s ass and help you burn belly fat.
Also, you’ve probably heard that one of the ways to reduce your cortisol levels is to get more sleep. That’s something you hear on nearly all the medical TV shows. What you don’t hear is the reason.
You see, sleeping is one of the main ways by which your body produces growth hormone. Or, saying it another way, while you're asleep is your body’s primary opportunity to produce growth hormone.
And, as I stated previously, growth hormone is one of the main hormones that reduces the effects of cortisol.
Sleep more and you’ll produce more GH. Produce more GH and you’ll have less cortisol. Therefore, sleeping more results in lower cortisol levels. Got it?
Of course, I’m not suggesting you can just sleep your way past a fat loss plateau; although getting more sleep does help. I’m merely illustrating the relationship between cortisol and growth hormone.
Which leads us to the production of growth hormone as it relates to training.
While nearly all forms of exercise produce both growth hormone and cortisol, some types are better than others. Cortisol, as I mentioned in the previous article, is produced heavily in long duration cardio sessions--so let’s not do that.
Instead, we’re going to utilize a style of training that produces more growth hormone.
To do that, we’re going to employ a training method known as Lactic Acid Training.
In order to get to the growth hormone, you must first produce lactic acid.
Lactic acid, by way of a definition, is a byproduct of the chemical reactions that take place during exercise. This substance is wildly irritating to the nerves, and your body responds.
Think of lactic acid as sort of a type of oil igniting fires as it flows through you--your body will call the fire department to put those fires out.
And your body will do that by dousing them with soothing, cooling growth hormone.
Okay, maybe I’m being a little simplistic with my metaphor, but it gives you a general idea.
In any event, we must structure training to produce the most lactic acid possible. And, because lactic acid is primarily produce in the concentric (positive) phase of anaerobic exercise, we extend that period, and decrease the eccentric period.
What that means is that we lift the weight very very slowly, and lower it very very quickly so that we can have a fast turn around.
As an example, if you’re doing a squat, you’ll descend to the bottom the squat very quickly (drop down fast, but still controlling the weight somewhat) and then lift the weight sloooowly, oh so sloooowly--over a period of 4-6 seconds.
This will create tremendous amounts of lactic acid, which will intern send GH production into overdrive. I must mention that training in this way necessitates the use of lighter weights than you normally would on any given exercise. Therefore, if you’re interested in lactic acid training, I suggest you reduce the weight you’d use on any exercise by about 30% in order to be both safe and effective.
With traditional training methods, you’d lift the weight pretty quickly and lower it slowly. Here, we’re doing the opposite, in order to produce the most lactic acid possible, which will then lead to a corresponding increase in the production of growth hormone.
This will result in not only reducing cortisol, but also reducing cortisol related fat storage in your belly. On top of it all, it’s great for fat loss in general!
In my last post, I shared with you the reasons why you aren't losing fat, particularly in the LAST few pounds. It seems that everything stops working the way it was for the FIRST few pounds.
As promised, I'm going to share with you the 3 hormones causing fat stoage. Read on.
Back Got Back: Low Body Fat Storage
One of the most common types of fat storage that we see in women is the “pear shape” –fairly thin on top but heavy on the bottom (and IN the bottom, if you know what I mean).
This is so common that we often refer to a “pear shape” as a body type. This is true to an extent, but this type of fat storage is also heavily dependent on the female sex hormone estrogen. This is one reason why you see this type of fat storage primarily in women.
High levels of estrogen are awesome for enjoying Grey’s Anatomy and makin’ babies, but terrible for fat loss, which makes it obvious that women usually have more trouble losing fat than men.
However, anyone—male or female—with high estrogen levels will have trouble losing fat, especially from the lower body. In essence, the higher your estrogen levels, the greater the likelihood you’ll store fat in your lower body; mainly in the hips and thighs.
And yes, it IS possible for men to have high estrogen levels. Unfortunately, outside of having to deal with a declined rate of fat loss and lower body fat, these guys ALSO have to deal with the ignominy of man-boobs.
On the whole, estrogen related fat storage is a pain in the ass (get it!?) but it is not completely unmanageable. You see, you can offset this phenomenon with certain types of training.
In addition to helping you lose fat stored in the lower body, these specifically designed workouts will also be great for fat loss in general. Essentially, they’re great for burning calories and for shedding lower body fat through estrogen management—combine the two and the result is rapid fat loss, with a heavy concentration on lower body fat stores.
Muffin Tops: No Love for the Love Handles
Probably my least favorite incarnation of regional fat storage is love handle and lower back fat. On top of making me fat in that immediacy, it also completely had a pretty negative effect on the way my body processes and handles insulin period.
The degree to which you ae able to process and respond to glucose (sugar) in your body is called insulin sensitivity. The higher this is, the easier and more efficiently your body utilizes carbohydrates for energy, and the less like you are to store carbs as fat.
On the other hand, insulin resistance is the opposite: you don’t deal well with carbs, and anything other than a low carb diet pretty much means you’re gonna hang on to some fat.
And, to make matters worse, as I mentioned previously, there are regional effects. It’s been shown that people who store fat in the love handles are generally very insulin resistant—and therefore it can be reasoned that insulin resistance leads to love handle and lower back fat storage.
Which means, of course, that insulin resistance makes it very hard to lose fat from that area as well.
I’m sure many of you out there who have been heavy before are experiencing much the same problems that I used to have.
The good news is that insulin resistance (and the resulting regional fatness) can be mitigated with certain types of training. For example, with careful planning and selection of exercises, you can start to whittle away at love handle and lower back fat while you increase insulin sensitivity.
The better news is that I’ve figured out a specific series of training sessions that will do just that.
The One, The Only: Belly Fat
Without question, the most common type of regional fat storage is belly fat. If this isn’t you, it’s someone you know.
Abdominal fat storage obviously has a lot to do with your diet and overall body fat level; that should be obvious but it never hurts to touch on it.
Outside of that, it’s hormones baby, hormones.
The one we’re talking about here is cortisol. This hormone has been in the media a lot the past few years, and I’ve talked about it a bit, so by now you know that cortisol is sometimes called a “stress” hormone.
Basically, that means your body will produce cortisol (and encourage belly fat storage) under conditions of nearly any type of stress—both emotional and physical. Instead, it is of far greater effect to combat cortisol through resistance training.
Now, if you’re observant, you may have noticed what seems to be a contradiction.
As I said, cortisol is also produced through physical stress. In fact, training is actually one of the primary means through which your body will produce this sneaky little hormone. Additionally, because cortisol has been linked to overtraining and has a catabolic (muscle wasting) effect, producing too much of it through training is certainly counterproductive.
It’s important to note, however, that long duration cardio and extended lifting sessions are what produce the most cortisol, and I always recommend against those.
Instead, short, intense training sessions using a particular type of training modality will help to counteract the effects of cortisol; both the muscle-wasting effect, and the cortisol related belly fat storage.
In the next post, I'm going to teach you how to fight hormones with hormones. I’ll show you how to use specific types of training to combat the nefarious three hormonal nemeses by producing hormones that offset the effects of estrogen, insulin and cortisol.
One of my fitness colleagues John Roman is launching his final fat loss program.
There has been a discussion going around in the fitness community about fat loss.
It seems like most fat loss programs focus on one main thing: to burn fat, you have to expend more energy than you take in.
Such a focus makes sense, of course, because if there is a universal truth to fat loss, that’s it.
This is what we call “energy balance.” In order to lose fat, you have to create what we call “energy debt” or “energy deficit” –that is, eliminate the balance and instead be on the negative side of the balance scales.
That works very well for “beginning” fat, of course. However, success doesn’t last forever.
As anyone who’s ever been on a diet and exercise program of any kind can tell you, at first it’s pretty smooth sailing. Eat less, do more, lose fat.
And then it stops—and usually, stops suddenly, as those same people can also tell you.
Of course, the first instinct people have is a very natural one: to simply do more of what was bringing them success in the first place.
So they eat even less and do even more.
And…have no results.
You see, what these people fail to realize (and what most fat loss programs fail to address) is that:
After a certain point, simple energy deficit no longer covers the tab.
It becomes more about what type of deficit. Speaking generally, you actually have to eat closer to maintenance calorie levels (instead of far below) and expend more Calories through exercise.
Even then, things don’t always happen as quickly as you want.
You see, once you’ve hit a fat loss plateau—or when you’re trying to lose the last few pounds, like I was when I was dieting for the beach house—fat loss becomes a bit less about energy balance a lot more about hormones.
Some hormones, such as leptin, actually control the majority of your general fat loss efforts and all the factors thereof: appetite, satiety, “starvation mode.” However, assuming you’re eating enough and trying to create an energy deficit through training, leptin isn’t the issue.
There are other hormones which are a bit more insidious in their effects on your physique. They don’t just determine IF you gain fat—they determine where you gain it, and whether you’re able to lose it from those areas.
Those “problem” areas on your body are there for a reason.
“Problem areas” are created by your hormonal environment, and it’s your hormones that force your body to have particular fat storage patterns.
It becomes more about what type of deficit. Speaking generally, you actually have to eat closer to maintenance calorie levels (instead of far below) and expend more Calories through exercise.
Even then, things don’t always happen as quickly as you want.
We'll discuss three most common types of regional fat storage, and the hormones that cause them.
Morris County Certified Personal Trainer Carey Yang shares his top 7 strategies to beating the holiday bulge.
Visit http://bit.ly/8hl8by to sign up for free 5-Part e-Course 'Jump-Start Your Body!' to help you burn fat, build muscle and get in great shape really fast!
Sign up for the 5-Part 'Jump-Start Your Body!' e-Course to help you burn fat, build muscle and get in shape really fast!
Ever hit a "wall" in your fat loss program where your progress just seemed to come to a screeching halt?
Perhaps you're experiencing it now...
Well, good news -- scratch that, GREAT news.
Fitness model and author John Romaniello is offering a complimentary download of his new fat loss report "Why You've STOPPED Losing Body Fat...And How to Fix It" over at his website.
I've read the report, and John really went over the top here -- more than 25 pages of pure, actionable content that will absolutely help you immediately begin losing fat FASTER.
