How to Create a Sustainable Weight Loss Program
- Weight training is the key to weight loss. Building a foundation of lean muscle will provide you fat burning centers found in the muscle spindle cells that is created and enhanced with load bearing exercises like strength training.
- Feed your gains with protein. People often skip protein intake immediately after they exercise, thinking that they will save 200 to 300 calories. However, a high-quality shot of protein – specifically amino acids, will accelerate lean muscle growth and muscle repair post exercise. The more lean muscle you build the more efficient you are at burning body fat.
- Determine your physical and mental limiters by completing a strength and cardiovascular assessments (sport specific). Establish specific goals and objectives for the next three, six, and 12 months that will help you eliminate your physical limiters. Research indicates that eight workouts per month is the minimum required to stick to a fitness plan. The more frequently you exercise, the better the odds are that you that your initial effort will turn into a habit. Being mentally focused will help you maintain your motivation levels.
- If you have been away from training (i.e. off season, illness or injury), ease back into strength training and cardiovascular fitness slowly. Many people try to resume or pick up where they left off when they exercised in the past. This only results in excessively sore muscles, stressed joints, and a negative mental outlook on working out. When you begin your strength exercises, choose a load level that’s extremely easy to lift for 8 to 10 reps for two sets. Complete that same amount of weight and reps for three weeks to allow your body adequate time to adjust and adapt (I refer to this as the Anatomical Adaptation Stage). For your cardiovascular exercise, keep your duration less than 30 minutes and keep your intensity low – you should be able to pass the talk test, which is where you could talk to someone else or sing to yourself while exercising without becoming winded.
- The bottom line is that no amount of training is going to drop body fat and build muscle mass without quality/quantity of food and sleep. This means consuming a carb, protein and healthy fat every two hours in the form of a meal or snack and getting 8-10 hours of sleep per night to allow your body to release the recovery hormone hGh (human growth hormone) which naturally makes you lean. Sleep and naps are the shortcut to getting leaner and stronger.
Drop Body Fat, Build Lean Muscle Nutrition
The cornerstone to dropping body fat and building lean muscle is nutrition. Many people do not realize that the body composition that you sit with today is a byproduct of what you have consumed over the last six months. In other words, if you want to have a certain body in June, it must start in January. With that being said, we recommend you start with the following steps to start the process of dropping unwanted body fat (not water weight) and building lean muscle mass.
1 – Using the Body Measurement Spreadsheet below, capture your current body measurements. You will recapture these numbers in two weeks so store this resource somewhere you can easily find. For more information on how to accurately capture your body measurements, please watch the video below.
2 – Using the Food & Energy Log below, document our food intake for four days. Do not clean up your eating habits for this exercise. We need a current snapshot of your eating and hydration habits, not one on your best behavior. Remember, your body measurements are a byproduct of what you have eaten over the last six months.
3 – Start the 2-Week Food Challenge to begin ridding your body of simple sugars and white starches. (download pdf below)
After 3-4 days you may experience low energy or headaches, do not fret – this is normal! This is the most critical part of the Challenge as you are pulling your body off the dependency of simple sugars and starches.
At the one-week mark begin a journal of food items that you have taken out that you miss. Note that these are the items that you will be evaluating following the Challenge to see if they affect your energy and mental clarity.
4 – Once you have completed the 2-Week Food Challenge recapture your body measurements. Most likely you lost some body fat as most people do, and while the process may have been difficult at times, you are probably experiencing better energy and mental clarity. While these short-term results are great, the overall goal of the Challenge is to create a nutrition plan that is sustainable going forward so you can keep the body fat off and create a healthy lifestyle. So, how do you keep this going?
Choose one of the items on your “miss” list and add it back into your daily diet. Evaluate your mental clarity and energy 20 minutes after eating this missed item. If you find yourself lethargic, foggy, and lack athletic ability, you know this one item does not agree with you and you must remove it from your nutritional portfolio. However, if after adding the item (regardless of what it is), you have good mental clarity, high levels of energy, and solid athletic performance results, this item can stay on your list of approved foods. Do the same for each food on your list until your list is exhausted. At this point you have created your own customized nutrition program by evaluating food items that provide you the necessary mental and physical energy to perform at an optimum level.
Dropping Body Fat the Right Way
It is important to have an understanding that a calorie burnt is not a calorie burnt like the online community likes to advocate. It has been scientifically validated that as you bring your heart rate up (from Zone 1 to Zone 5 as outlined in your Heart Rate Zone Calculator in Week 1), you burn more sugar and less stored fat. The easiest way to understand this concept is to think about a carburetor. As you open the throttle up more and more, you move from the idle jet to the main jet. Your body functions the same way. You move from using fat as a primary fuel source at the idle jet level and gradually use more and more sugar and less fat as you open the throttle up to the main jet. In other words, if your ultimate goal is to drop body fat, you MUST keep the intensity of your workouts low (HR Zones 1-2 – blue workouts).
How Do I Build Lean Muscle?
Developing lean muscle mass is a simple formula. Stress the muscle tissue with the correct load levels, refuel the body with protein (amino acid specifically), and sleep 8-10 hours a day to allow your body the chance to release the recovery hormone hGh (human growth hormone).
As clearly outlined in your weekly training protocols, strength training exercises are designed as a full body workout that forces your muscles to work in a three-dimensional plane (front/back, left/right, top/bottom), the same way you ride a motorcycle. Also, in your weekly training schedule, you will notice the incorporation of cardiovascular workouts such as cycling and Concept 2 rowing at the varying intensity levels.
Body Measurements
Watch below to accurately capture your body measurements using a soft tape measure.