Fat Burners: The Unadulterated Truth
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.burnthefat.com
Fat burner supplements are advertised everywhere these days - on the internet, in magazines and even on TV. The ads almost always feature a very lean fitness model or bodybuilder and claim that these products, usually pills, were the secret to their six pack abs and very low body fat levels. Some of these ads suggest that the only way to get as lean as the "hot bodies" you see in the ads is by taking their "miracle pills" and that proper nutrition and exercise alone is not enough.
While I won't dismiss the fact that there are ingredients in some fat "burner" products that might help a little bit, I take great displeasure in seeing misleading advertising claims as well as the misleading use of models who are often paid to endorse the product even though they may never have even used it (they're just models!)
Many “fat burner” companies have been sued by the Federal Trade Commission for false advertising, false claims and falsifying before and after photos.
The best you get is a slight thermogenic effect and possibly some slight appetite suppression. A few products might work through other mechanisms like improving thyroid, but if you forgive me the generalization, I consider the effects of all these “fat burner” products to be minutia.
In one of my previous newsletters, I said that in my opinion, 97% of your results come from nutrition and training and maybe you get an extra 3% advantage from supplements. Just so you know those numbers arent something I just pulled out of thin air, lets take an example:
I have reviewed scientific data that EGCG, the active ingredient in green tea extract, if consumed in enough quantity, could increase thermogenesis / metabolic rate by an average of about 75 calories in 24 hours. Since ephedrine was taken off the market, green tea extract appears in many ephedra-free formulas these days. What is a typical calorie expenditure for an active male in 24 hours? lets say 2700 calories per day. 75/2700 = 2.7%.
That little extra doesnt hurt, especially when it's delivered in a healthful package such as green tea (rather than central nervous system stimulants), but it's minutia in the bigger picture. Another way to put this into perspective is to make a list of what other things would burn 75 calories (for 150 lb person:)
* walk your dog for 15 minutes
* walk for 5 minutes at normal casual pace three times a day
* 30 minutes of ironing
* bagging leaves and grass clippings for 14 minutes
* re arrange your furniture for 10 minutes
* wash your car, 15 minutes
* vacuuming for 15 minutes
* 7.2 minutes of walking up stairs (could be spread throughout the day)
Ah yes, but why move your body when you can take the pill and metabolism increases while you sit and watch TV? How about for your health? A body that is not moved, rots away. Unlike a car which only has so many miles on it and wears out from over-use, people are the only “machines” on earth that fall apart from under-use.
Here’s what any good personal trainer will always tell you: No amount of calorie restriction or pill-popping will ever give you FITNESS. It willl never give you STRENGTH. it will never get you MUSCULARITY. It will never give you FUNCTIONALITY. At best it will help you reduce body mass slightly.
On one hand, I’m tempted to say that everything counts and that yes, 75 calories here and 75 calories there, it ALL adds up, because it does. After you’re exercising regularly and all your fundamentals are in place, details and little things do matter.
I’m simply asking you to put the benefits of any fat burners in proper perspective and realize that (1) there is no “need” for taking them and (2) the claims made in the ads are often erroneous or exagerrated.
My advice on fat burners:
1. NEVER buy a fat burner unless you get independent verification of the claims made for the product.
How do you KNOW they really work? Are you SERIOUSLY going to take the advertisers word for it? Are you SERIOUSLY going to take someone else’s testimonial as fact? Get verification for yourself by going to the pub med data base and looking for the primary research.
2. Put it in perspective
With those products that work, such as those providing a small thermogenic effect, put that in perspective as compared to how easily you could burn that many calories with even light exercise like walking or housework. Keep in mind the additional fitness and strength benefits you will obtain from exercise as opposed to doing nothing and popping a pill.
3. See if there are any side effects or health warnings.
With all supplements and especially with prohormones or stronger thermogenics like the ephedrine and caffeine stack, (if you still have access to them), understand the risk to benefit ratio, and be certain you know the dangers and contraindications.
4. Read the label and see if the product contains enough active ingredient to even work.
A classic scam is when a “fat burner” advertisement quotes research that a certain inredient boosts metabolism, which might be true. What they may not tell you is that all the research with positive results used a large dosage of the ingredient, which might not be cheap. So the supplement company includes a “pinch” or “light dusting” of that ingredient just so they can say it’s in the bottle, even though it's nothing more than “label decoration.” Then they have the audacity to invoke the research studies in their advertisements when the amount of the ingredient in their product is no where near what was used in the research!
5. Proprietary blend scam.
Some companies don't let you see how much ingredient is in the product formula, because it contains multiple ingredients and they say their formula is a “trade secret” aka “proprietary”, so they list what is in the product but not how much. Well, if you don’t know how much is in there then how are you supposed to know whether it contains the proper dosage? (answer: you don't!)
6. Make sure there is human research, not just rodent research.
In many cases, advertisements cite studies on rats and mice as “proof” under the assumption that the product will produce the same results in humans. Animal research is an important part of the scientific method, as it is often used to help find areas of research where human study should be pursued, or in the other direction, to trace back the mechanism that makes something work. However, for obesity research in particular, a positive finding in rats does not mean the same thing will happen in humans.
7. Look for more than one human study.
Consider trying a supplement after it has human research that has been replicated by different research groups which are not industry-sponsored. My policy is that I will usually only give a “buy” rating to a supplement when a product has an intitial well-designed human controlled trial published and then similar research has been replicated by another research group that is not supplement-industry funded.
Actually, I think it’s a good thing that nutrition and supplement companies fund and sponsor some of the research. They should. They should not only back up their claims with published clinical trials, they should share some of the cost of this expensive research.
However, a basic principle of the scientific method is replication. Other researchers should be able to duplicate the findings. Therefore, while the funding source does not necessarily prove bias, if there is only one study available on a supplement and it is company or industry sponsored, I usually take it with a grain of salt and put an asterisk next to it while I wait for confirmation from another study. (You might be surprised at how infrequently this type of confirmation occurs).
Do you really need “more” than nutrition and exercise?
Now, when you weigh the fact that even the products with research backing them only help a little, with the fact that many of the ads lie to you about research, exagerrate claims and hide vital information about ingredients, and with the fact that you can do a few more minutes of exercise per day and get the same results for free, how enthusiastic are you about fat burners? Yeah, that’s why I’m not real excited about them either and based on the fact that I use no drugs and no “fat burner” supplements and I compete in bodybuilding - very successfully - I’d say that the assertion, “it takes more than nutrition and exercise to get six pack abs” is patently false.
Train hard and expect success,
Tom Venuto
www.burnthefat.com
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) and a certified personal trainer (CPT). Tom is the author of "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using methods of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com
Thursday, December 9, 2010
How I Got "Ripped" Abs For The Very First Time
How I Got "Ripped" Abs For The Very First Time
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com
I’ll never forget the very first time I got ripped, how I did it and how it felt. I’ve never told this entire story before or widely published my early photos either. Winning first place and seeing my abs the first time was sweet redemption. But before that, it was a story of desperation…
I started lifting weights for bodybuilding when I was 14 years old, but I never had ripped abs until I was 20. I endured six years of frustration and embarrassment. Being a teenager is hard enough, but imagine how I felt being a self-proclaimed bodybuilder, with no abs or muscle definition to show for it. Imagine what it was like in swimming class or when we played basketball in gym class and I prayed to be called out for “shirts” and not ‘”skins” because I didn’t want any one seeing my “man-boobs” and ab flab jiggling all over the court.
Oh, I had muscle. I started gaining muscle from the moment I picked up a barbell. I got strong too. I was benching 315 at age 18. But even after four years of successful strength training, I still hadn’t figured out this getting ripped thing. Muscle isn’t very attractive if it’s covered up with a layer of fat. That’s where the phrase “bulky” really comes from – fat on top of muscle. It can look worse than just fat.
I read every book. I read every magazine. I tried every exercise. I took every supplement in vogue back in the 80’s (remember bee pollen, octacosanol, lipotropics and dessicated liver?) I tried not eating for entire days at a time. I went on a rope skipping kick. I did hundreds of crunches and ab exercises. I rode the Lifecycle. I wore rubber waist belts.
The results were mediocre at best. When I made progress, I couldn’t maintain it. One step forward, one step back. Even when I got a little leaner, it wasn’t all the way. Still no ripped abs. When I played football and they beat the crap out of us at training camp, I lost weight, but STILL didn’t get all the way down to those elusive six pack abs. In fact, it was almost like I got “skinny fat.” My arms and legs lost some muscle but the small roll of ab fat was still there.
Why was it so hard? What was I doing wrong? It was driving me crazy!
My condition got worse in college because I mixed with a party crowd. With boozing came eating, and the “bulk” accumulated even more. At that point, the partying and social life were more important to me than my body. I was still lifting weights, but wasn’t living a fitness lifestyle.
Mid way through college I changed my major from business management to exercise science, having made up my mind to pursue a career in fitness. That’s when I started to feel something wasn’t right. The best word for it is “incongruence.” That’s when what you say you want to be and what you really are don’t match. Being a fitness professional means you have to walk the talk and be a role model to others. Anything else is hypocrisy. I knew I had to shape up or forget fitness as a career.
But after four years, I STILL didn’t know how to get ripped! Nothing I learned in exercise physiology class helped. All the theory was interesting, but when theory hit the real world, things didn’t always work out like they did on paper. My professors didn’t know either. Heck, most of them weren’t even in shape! Two of them were overweight, including my nutrition professor.
However, out of my college experience did come the seeds of the solution and my first breakthrough.
In one of my physical education classes, we were required to do some running and we were instructed to keep track of our performance and resting heart rates. Somehow, even though I was a strength athlete, I got hooked on running. After the initial discomfort of hauling around a not so cardio-fit 205 pound body, I started to get a lot of satisfaction out of watching my resting heart rate drop from the 70’s into the 50’s and seeing my running times get better and better. And then it happened: I started getting leaner than I ever had before.
The results motivated me to no end, and I kept after it even more. My runs would be 5 or 6 days a week and I’d go for between 30 minutes to an hour. Sometimes I had a circular route of about 6 miles and I would run it for time, almost always pushing for a personal record. When I finished, I was spent, drenched in sweat and sometimes just crashing when I got home. And I kept getting even leaner.
That’s when I started to figure it out. If you’re expecting me to say that running is the secret, no, that’s NOT it per se. I was thinking bigger picture. In fact, I noticed that my legs had lost some muscle size, so I knew that over-doing the runs would be counter productive, ultimately, and I don’t run that much anymore these days. But that’s how I did it the first time and I had never experienced fat loss like that before. The fat was falling off and I had barely changed my diet.
My “aha moment” was when I realized the pivotal piece in the puzzle was calories. It wasn’t the type of exercise, it wasn’t the specific foods and it wasn’t supplements. Today I realize that it’s the calorie deficit that matters the most, not whether you eat less or burn more per se, but in my case creating a large deficit by burning the calories was the absolute key for me.
These runs were burning an enormous number of calories. Everything I had done before wasn’t burning enough to make a noticeable difference in a short period of time. 10-15 minutes of rope skipping wasn’t enough. 45 minutes of slow-go bike riding wasn’t burning enough. Hundreds of crunches weren’t enough. I put 1+1+1 together and realized it was intensity X duration X frequency = highest the total calorie burn for the week. How much simpler could it be? It wasn’t magic. It was MATH!
It was consistency too. This was the first time in SIX YEARS I stuck with it. Body fat comes off by the grams every day – literally. Kilos and pounds of body weight may come off quickly, but they come back just as fast. Body fat comes off slowly and if you have no patience or you jump to one program to the next without following through with the one you started, you’re doomed. In six years, I had “tried everything”… except consistency and patience.
Then the stakes went up. I had finally gotten lean, but there was another level beyond lean… RIPPED! My buddies at the gym noticed me getting leaner and then they popped the question: Why don’t you compete? My training partner Steve had already competed 3 years earlier and won the Teenage Mr. America competition. Since then, I had been all talk and no walk. “Yeah, I’m going to compete one of these days too… I’m going to be the next Mr. America.” Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. The only title I had won was “Mr. Procastinator.” Then finally, Steve and my other friends challenged me almost in an ultimatum type of way. Well, the truth is, I set myself up for it with my big mouth and they called me out, so I would have been the laughing stock of our gym if I didn’t follow through.
The first time you do a real cut - all the way down to contest-ready - is the hardest. Not as much physically as psychologically, simply because you’ve never done it before. Doing something you’ve done before is no big deal. Doing something you’ve never done before causes uncertainty and fear, sometimes even terror! I was plagued with self-doubt the entire time, never sure if I was ever going to get there. It seemed like it was taking forever. But failure was not an option. Not only did I have an entire gym full of friends rooting me on, I had great training partner who was natural Mr. Teenage America! The pressure was on. I had to do it. There was no way out. No excuses.
Some other day, I’ll tell you all the details of the emotional roller coaster ride that was my first contest diet, but let it suffice to say, at that point, I still didn’t know what I was doing. It was only later that I went into “human guinea pig” mode with nutritional experiments and finally pinned down the eating side of the equation to a science (and gained 20 lbs of stage-weight muscle as a result).
In the late 1980’s, the standard bodybuilding diet was high carb, low fat. For that first competition, I was on 60% carbs – including pancakes, boxed cereal, whole grain bread, and pasta - so I guess you can toss out the idea that it’s impossible to get ripped on high carbs – although high carb is NOT the contest diet I use today. But it didn’t matter, because I had already learned the critical piece in the fat loss puzzle – the calorie balance equation. Understanding that one aspect of physiology was enough to get me ripped. It only got better later.
In the end, I took 2nd place at my very first competition, the Natural Lehigh Valley, and one month later, I won first place at the Natural New Jersey. Seven months later, the overall Natural Pennsylvania.
Looking back, was all the effort worth it? Well, my good friend Adam Waters, who is an accountability coach, teaches his students about using “redemption” as a motivator. Remember the Charles Atlas ad where the skinny kid got sand kicked in his face and then came back big and buffed and beat up the bully? That’s redemption. Or the dateless high school nerd who comes back to the 10 year class reunion driving a Mercedes with the prom queen on his arm? That’s redemption.
After all the doubt, heartache and frustration I went through for six years, I not only had my trophies, my abs were on the front page of the sports section in our small Pennsylvania town newspaper. The following year, I was on the poster for a bodybuilding competition… as the previous year’s champion. THAT’S REDEMPTION. You tell me if it was worth it.
There are 7 lessons from my story that I want to share with you because even if you have a different personal history than I do, these 7 lessons are the keys to achieving any previously elusive fitness goal for the first time and I think they apply to everyone.
1. Set the big goal and go for it. If your goal doesn’t excite you and scare you at the same time, your goal is too small. If you don’t feel fear or uncertainty, you’re inside your comfort zone. Puny goals aren’t motivating. Sometimes it takes a competition or a big challenge of some kind to get your blood boiling.
2. Align your values with your goals. I understood my values and made a decision to be congruent with who I really was and who I wanted to be. When you know your values, get your priorities straight and align your goals with your values, then doing what it takes is easy.
3. Do the math. Stop looking for magic. A lean body does not come from any particular type of exercise or foods per se, it’s the calories burned vs calories consumed that determines fat loss or fat gain. You might do better by decreasing the calories consumed, whereas I depended more on increasing the calories burned, but either way, it’s still a math equation. Deny it at your own risk.
4. Get social support. Support and encouragement from your friends can help get you through anything. Real time accountability to a training partner or trainer can make all the difference.
5. Be consistent. Nothing will ever work if you don’t work at it every day. Sporadic efforts don’t just produce sporadic results, sometimes they produce zero results.
6. Persist through difficulty and self doubt. If you think it’s going to be smooth sailing all the way with no ups and downs, you’re fooling yourself.. For every sunny day, there’s going to be a storm. If you can’t weather the storms, you’ll never reach new shores.
7. Redeem yourself. Non-achievers sit on the couch and wallow in past failures. Winners use past failures as motivational rocket fuel. It always feels good to achieve a goal, but nothing feels as good as achieving a goal with redemption.
Postscript: My journey continued. Since that initial first place trophy, I have competed as a natural for life bodybuilder 26 more times, including 7 first place awards and 7 runner up awards. And yes, I finally nailed down the nutrition side of things too. You can read more about that and the fat loss program that developed as a result at www.burnthefat.com
Tom Venuto Newspaper Photo
Train hard and expect success always,
Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com
I’ll never forget the very first time I got ripped, how I did it and how it felt. I’ve never told this entire story before or widely published my early photos either. Winning first place and seeing my abs the first time was sweet redemption. But before that, it was a story of desperation…
I started lifting weights for bodybuilding when I was 14 years old, but I never had ripped abs until I was 20. I endured six years of frustration and embarrassment. Being a teenager is hard enough, but imagine how I felt being a self-proclaimed bodybuilder, with no abs or muscle definition to show for it. Imagine what it was like in swimming class or when we played basketball in gym class and I prayed to be called out for “shirts” and not ‘”skins” because I didn’t want any one seeing my “man-boobs” and ab flab jiggling all over the court.
Oh, I had muscle. I started gaining muscle from the moment I picked up a barbell. I got strong too. I was benching 315 at age 18. But even after four years of successful strength training, I still hadn’t figured out this getting ripped thing. Muscle isn’t very attractive if it’s covered up with a layer of fat. That’s where the phrase “bulky” really comes from – fat on top of muscle. It can look worse than just fat.
I read every book. I read every magazine. I tried every exercise. I took every supplement in vogue back in the 80’s (remember bee pollen, octacosanol, lipotropics and dessicated liver?) I tried not eating for entire days at a time. I went on a rope skipping kick. I did hundreds of crunches and ab exercises. I rode the Lifecycle. I wore rubber waist belts.
The results were mediocre at best. When I made progress, I couldn’t maintain it. One step forward, one step back. Even when I got a little leaner, it wasn’t all the way. Still no ripped abs. When I played football and they beat the crap out of us at training camp, I lost weight, but STILL didn’t get all the way down to those elusive six pack abs. In fact, it was almost like I got “skinny fat.” My arms and legs lost some muscle but the small roll of ab fat was still there.
Why was it so hard? What was I doing wrong? It was driving me crazy!
My condition got worse in college because I mixed with a party crowd. With boozing came eating, and the “bulk” accumulated even more. At that point, the partying and social life were more important to me than my body. I was still lifting weights, but wasn’t living a fitness lifestyle.
Mid way through college I changed my major from business management to exercise science, having made up my mind to pursue a career in fitness. That’s when I started to feel something wasn’t right. The best word for it is “incongruence.” That’s when what you say you want to be and what you really are don’t match. Being a fitness professional means you have to walk the talk and be a role model to others. Anything else is hypocrisy. I knew I had to shape up or forget fitness as a career.
But after four years, I STILL didn’t know how to get ripped! Nothing I learned in exercise physiology class helped. All the theory was interesting, but when theory hit the real world, things didn’t always work out like they did on paper. My professors didn’t know either. Heck, most of them weren’t even in shape! Two of them were overweight, including my nutrition professor.
However, out of my college experience did come the seeds of the solution and my first breakthrough.
In one of my physical education classes, we were required to do some running and we were instructed to keep track of our performance and resting heart rates. Somehow, even though I was a strength athlete, I got hooked on running. After the initial discomfort of hauling around a not so cardio-fit 205 pound body, I started to get a lot of satisfaction out of watching my resting heart rate drop from the 70’s into the 50’s and seeing my running times get better and better. And then it happened: I started getting leaner than I ever had before.
The results motivated me to no end, and I kept after it even more. My runs would be 5 or 6 days a week and I’d go for between 30 minutes to an hour. Sometimes I had a circular route of about 6 miles and I would run it for time, almost always pushing for a personal record. When I finished, I was spent, drenched in sweat and sometimes just crashing when I got home. And I kept getting even leaner.
That’s when I started to figure it out. If you’re expecting me to say that running is the secret, no, that’s NOT it per se. I was thinking bigger picture. In fact, I noticed that my legs had lost some muscle size, so I knew that over-doing the runs would be counter productive, ultimately, and I don’t run that much anymore these days. But that’s how I did it the first time and I had never experienced fat loss like that before. The fat was falling off and I had barely changed my diet.
My “aha moment” was when I realized the pivotal piece in the puzzle was calories. It wasn’t the type of exercise, it wasn’t the specific foods and it wasn’t supplements. Today I realize that it’s the calorie deficit that matters the most, not whether you eat less or burn more per se, but in my case creating a large deficit by burning the calories was the absolute key for me.
These runs were burning an enormous number of calories. Everything I had done before wasn’t burning enough to make a noticeable difference in a short period of time. 10-15 minutes of rope skipping wasn’t enough. 45 minutes of slow-go bike riding wasn’t burning enough. Hundreds of crunches weren’t enough. I put 1+1+1 together and realized it was intensity X duration X frequency = highest the total calorie burn for the week. How much simpler could it be? It wasn’t magic. It was MATH!
It was consistency too. This was the first time in SIX YEARS I stuck with it. Body fat comes off by the grams every day – literally. Kilos and pounds of body weight may come off quickly, but they come back just as fast. Body fat comes off slowly and if you have no patience or you jump to one program to the next without following through with the one you started, you’re doomed. In six years, I had “tried everything”… except consistency and patience.
Then the stakes went up. I had finally gotten lean, but there was another level beyond lean… RIPPED! My buddies at the gym noticed me getting leaner and then they popped the question: Why don’t you compete? My training partner Steve had already competed 3 years earlier and won the Teenage Mr. America competition. Since then, I had been all talk and no walk. “Yeah, I’m going to compete one of these days too… I’m going to be the next Mr. America.” Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. The only title I had won was “Mr. Procastinator.” Then finally, Steve and my other friends challenged me almost in an ultimatum type of way. Well, the truth is, I set myself up for it with my big mouth and they called me out, so I would have been the laughing stock of our gym if I didn’t follow through.
The first time you do a real cut - all the way down to contest-ready - is the hardest. Not as much physically as psychologically, simply because you’ve never done it before. Doing something you’ve done before is no big deal. Doing something you’ve never done before causes uncertainty and fear, sometimes even terror! I was plagued with self-doubt the entire time, never sure if I was ever going to get there. It seemed like it was taking forever. But failure was not an option. Not only did I have an entire gym full of friends rooting me on, I had great training partner who was natural Mr. Teenage America! The pressure was on. I had to do it. There was no way out. No excuses.
Some other day, I’ll tell you all the details of the emotional roller coaster ride that was my first contest diet, but let it suffice to say, at that point, I still didn’t know what I was doing. It was only later that I went into “human guinea pig” mode with nutritional experiments and finally pinned down the eating side of the equation to a science (and gained 20 lbs of stage-weight muscle as a result).
In the late 1980’s, the standard bodybuilding diet was high carb, low fat. For that first competition, I was on 60% carbs – including pancakes, boxed cereal, whole grain bread, and pasta - so I guess you can toss out the idea that it’s impossible to get ripped on high carbs – although high carb is NOT the contest diet I use today. But it didn’t matter, because I had already learned the critical piece in the fat loss puzzle – the calorie balance equation. Understanding that one aspect of physiology was enough to get me ripped. It only got better later.
In the end, I took 2nd place at my very first competition, the Natural Lehigh Valley, and one month later, I won first place at the Natural New Jersey. Seven months later, the overall Natural Pennsylvania.
Looking back, was all the effort worth it? Well, my good friend Adam Waters, who is an accountability coach, teaches his students about using “redemption” as a motivator. Remember the Charles Atlas ad where the skinny kid got sand kicked in his face and then came back big and buffed and beat up the bully? That’s redemption. Or the dateless high school nerd who comes back to the 10 year class reunion driving a Mercedes with the prom queen on his arm? That’s redemption.
After all the doubt, heartache and frustration I went through for six years, I not only had my trophies, my abs were on the front page of the sports section in our small Pennsylvania town newspaper. The following year, I was on the poster for a bodybuilding competition… as the previous year’s champion. THAT’S REDEMPTION. You tell me if it was worth it.
There are 7 lessons from my story that I want to share with you because even if you have a different personal history than I do, these 7 lessons are the keys to achieving any previously elusive fitness goal for the first time and I think they apply to everyone.
1. Set the big goal and go for it. If your goal doesn’t excite you and scare you at the same time, your goal is too small. If you don’t feel fear or uncertainty, you’re inside your comfort zone. Puny goals aren’t motivating. Sometimes it takes a competition or a big challenge of some kind to get your blood boiling.
2. Align your values with your goals. I understood my values and made a decision to be congruent with who I really was and who I wanted to be. When you know your values, get your priorities straight and align your goals with your values, then doing what it takes is easy.
3. Do the math. Stop looking for magic. A lean body does not come from any particular type of exercise or foods per se, it’s the calories burned vs calories consumed that determines fat loss or fat gain. You might do better by decreasing the calories consumed, whereas I depended more on increasing the calories burned, but either way, it’s still a math equation. Deny it at your own risk.
4. Get social support. Support and encouragement from your friends can help get you through anything. Real time accountability to a training partner or trainer can make all the difference.
5. Be consistent. Nothing will ever work if you don’t work at it every day. Sporadic efforts don’t just produce sporadic results, sometimes they produce zero results.
6. Persist through difficulty and self doubt. If you think it’s going to be smooth sailing all the way with no ups and downs, you’re fooling yourself.. For every sunny day, there’s going to be a storm. If you can’t weather the storms, you’ll never reach new shores.
7. Redeem yourself. Non-achievers sit on the couch and wallow in past failures. Winners use past failures as motivational rocket fuel. It always feels good to achieve a goal, but nothing feels as good as achieving a goal with redemption.
Postscript: My journey continued. Since that initial first place trophy, I have competed as a natural for life bodybuilder 26 more times, including 7 first place awards and 7 runner up awards. And yes, I finally nailed down the nutrition side of things too. You can read more about that and the fat loss program that developed as a result at www.burnthefat.com
Tom Venuto Newspaper Photo
Train hard and expect success always,
Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com
Listen to Maintainers, Not to Losers: 5 secrets to Keeping the weight off for good
Listen to Maintainers, Not to Losers: 5 secrets to keeping the weight off for good
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com
I have very little interest these days in all the media-hyped stories of dramatic, rapid losses of body weight. “Big losers” don’t impress me, for numerous reasons. For example, weight is not fat. “Weight” could be composed of mostly lean tissue, or it could be mostly water weight. In fact, I would go a step further and point out that rapid loss of bodyweight correlates very highly with a greater chance of relapse, weight re-gain and long term failure.
So what does impress me? What gets my attention?
I pay attention to what the “long term maintainers” have to say - those are the people who have maintained an ideal weight for over a year… preferably even 2-5 years or more.
The difference between losers and maintainers
As I was researching the subject of long term weight maintenance recently, I was surprised at the huge amount of research that's already been done in this area.
One paper that caught my interest was published by Judy Kruger and colleagues in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, titled,
“Dietary and physical activity behaviors among adults successful at weight loss maintenance.”
This was not an experimental study, but a compilation of data from the “Styles Survey” which was representative of the U.S. population and asked respondants questions about strategies to aid with maintaining an ideal weight.
In this particular survey, only one-third (30.96%) of the respondents said they were successful at keeping their weight off. The researchers wanted to know the difference between the small group that was successful and the majority that were not.
Both groups reduced the amount of food they consumed, they ate smaller portions, more fruits and vegetables, fewer fatty foods and fewer sweetened beverages.
Not really any surprises there, but what we want to know most is not what losers and maintainers have in common, but what the maintainers did that the losers didn't.
Some major differences emerged between losers and maintainers:
First, a significantly higher proportion of successful maintainers reported exercising 30 minutes or more daily, and they also reported adding other physical activity to their daily schedules (recreation, sports, physical work, etc). In addition, more of the successful maintainers included weight training in their exercise regimens than did the losers.
Reducing sedentary activities (TV watching, etc) was also a significant difference between those who successfully maintained and those who did not.
The next big difference that separated the successful maintainers from the unsuccessful was in their “self-monitoring behaviors” including:
* tracking calories
* tracking body weight
* planning meals
* tracking fat
* measuring the amount of food on their plate
Unfortunately, these types of self-monitoring behaviors, especially weighing and measuring food and counting calories, are among the most avoided and even criticized weight control techniques. Some weight loss “experts” even claim that it's detrimental to count calories, weigh yourself or measure and weigh your food.
However, these self monitoring behaviors are being identified more and more frequently in the research as part of “the difference that makes the difference.” I agree, and they have always played a major role in my own Burn The Fat program.
A final difference was that people who reported self-perceived “barriers” to their success were 48-76% less likely to be a successful maintainer.
For example, they said they had no time to exercise, they were too tired to exercise or it was too hard to maintain an exercise routine. I interpret this as: the unsuccessful losers were excuse makers!
THE TOP 5 STRATEGIES TO BE A SUCCESSFUL MAINTAINER
So let’s recap and turn these research findings into some practical action steps you can apply today.
1. Increase your total daily activity level, including formal exercise as well as sports, physical work or recreational activity. Exercise improves weight loss, but more importantly, it is critical for weight maintenance.
2. Decrease sedentary recreational activities by cutting back on TV watching, computer games and web surfing. Take up physical recreation such as sports, boating, biking, walking, hiking, gardening, physical hobbies and playing with your kids, if you have them.
3. Include weight training as part of your formal exercise program, throughout the fat loss phase and even more seriously during maintenance.
4. Track and monitor everything! Count calories and nutrients, measure your portion sizes, weigh your food, plan your menus in writing and monitor your body weight and body fat percentage.
5. Avoid excuses and maintain positive beliefs and attitudes towards your environment and what you perceive as “barriers.” For example, say, “I can always make time for what is most important to me” instead of, “I don't have time to exercise.”
If you're currently on a fat loss journey, and you want to know how good your odds are for being a successful maintainer, it's pretty easy to predict using these 5 strategies. If you're not using all 5 of them yet, then when would be a good time to start today?
There are limitations to survey results such as these, including the fact that they are cross sectional, and therefore cannot prove causality. However, I believe these findings are important and significant.
Not only do they confirm previous similar studies and agree with the findings of other groups of successful maintainers (such as the National Weight Control Registry), I found that these results match precisely what I've seen among my most successful “Burn The Fat” clients.
THIS is the type of advice I'd suggest you listen to the most: Advice about how to lose body FAT, not body WEIGHT, and how to maintain an ideal bodyweight and body composition over the long haul, not how to lose weight as fast as possible.
Your friend and coach,
Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
P.S. There was one more “difference that made the difference,” in this study, and this one may surprise you (although it didn’t surprise me). Successful maintainers were LESS likely to take over the counter diet products (pills, etc).
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com
I have very little interest these days in all the media-hyped stories of dramatic, rapid losses of body weight. “Big losers” don’t impress me, for numerous reasons. For example, weight is not fat. “Weight” could be composed of mostly lean tissue, or it could be mostly water weight. In fact, I would go a step further and point out that rapid loss of bodyweight correlates very highly with a greater chance of relapse, weight re-gain and long term failure.
So what does impress me? What gets my attention?
I pay attention to what the “long term maintainers” have to say - those are the people who have maintained an ideal weight for over a year… preferably even 2-5 years or more.
The difference between losers and maintainers
As I was researching the subject of long term weight maintenance recently, I was surprised at the huge amount of research that's already been done in this area.
One paper that caught my interest was published by Judy Kruger and colleagues in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, titled,
“Dietary and physical activity behaviors among adults successful at weight loss maintenance.”
This was not an experimental study, but a compilation of data from the “Styles Survey” which was representative of the U.S. population and asked respondants questions about strategies to aid with maintaining an ideal weight.
In this particular survey, only one-third (30.96%) of the respondents said they were successful at keeping their weight off. The researchers wanted to know the difference between the small group that was successful and the majority that were not.
Both groups reduced the amount of food they consumed, they ate smaller portions, more fruits and vegetables, fewer fatty foods and fewer sweetened beverages.
Not really any surprises there, but what we want to know most is not what losers and maintainers have in common, but what the maintainers did that the losers didn't.
Some major differences emerged between losers and maintainers:
First, a significantly higher proportion of successful maintainers reported exercising 30 minutes or more daily, and they also reported adding other physical activity to their daily schedules (recreation, sports, physical work, etc). In addition, more of the successful maintainers included weight training in their exercise regimens than did the losers.
Reducing sedentary activities (TV watching, etc) was also a significant difference between those who successfully maintained and those who did not.
The next big difference that separated the successful maintainers from the unsuccessful was in their “self-monitoring behaviors” including:
* tracking calories
* tracking body weight
* planning meals
* tracking fat
* measuring the amount of food on their plate
Unfortunately, these types of self-monitoring behaviors, especially weighing and measuring food and counting calories, are among the most avoided and even criticized weight control techniques. Some weight loss “experts” even claim that it's detrimental to count calories, weigh yourself or measure and weigh your food.
However, these self monitoring behaviors are being identified more and more frequently in the research as part of “the difference that makes the difference.” I agree, and they have always played a major role in my own Burn The Fat program.
A final difference was that people who reported self-perceived “barriers” to their success were 48-76% less likely to be a successful maintainer.
For example, they said they had no time to exercise, they were too tired to exercise or it was too hard to maintain an exercise routine. I interpret this as: the unsuccessful losers were excuse makers!
THE TOP 5 STRATEGIES TO BE A SUCCESSFUL MAINTAINER
So let’s recap and turn these research findings into some practical action steps you can apply today.
1. Increase your total daily activity level, including formal exercise as well as sports, physical work or recreational activity. Exercise improves weight loss, but more importantly, it is critical for weight maintenance.
2. Decrease sedentary recreational activities by cutting back on TV watching, computer games and web surfing. Take up physical recreation such as sports, boating, biking, walking, hiking, gardening, physical hobbies and playing with your kids, if you have them.
3. Include weight training as part of your formal exercise program, throughout the fat loss phase and even more seriously during maintenance.
4. Track and monitor everything! Count calories and nutrients, measure your portion sizes, weigh your food, plan your menus in writing and monitor your body weight and body fat percentage.
5. Avoid excuses and maintain positive beliefs and attitudes towards your environment and what you perceive as “barriers.” For example, say, “I can always make time for what is most important to me” instead of, “I don't have time to exercise.”
If you're currently on a fat loss journey, and you want to know how good your odds are for being a successful maintainer, it's pretty easy to predict using these 5 strategies. If you're not using all 5 of them yet, then when would be a good time to start today?
There are limitations to survey results such as these, including the fact that they are cross sectional, and therefore cannot prove causality. However, I believe these findings are important and significant.
Not only do they confirm previous similar studies and agree with the findings of other groups of successful maintainers (such as the National Weight Control Registry), I found that these results match precisely what I've seen among my most successful “Burn The Fat” clients.
THIS is the type of advice I'd suggest you listen to the most: Advice about how to lose body FAT, not body WEIGHT, and how to maintain an ideal bodyweight and body composition over the long haul, not how to lose weight as fast as possible.
Your friend and coach,
Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
P.S. There was one more “difference that made the difference,” in this study, and this one may surprise you (although it didn’t surprise me). Successful maintainers were LESS likely to take over the counter diet products (pills, etc).
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com
Avoid This Killer Weight Regain Mistake
Avoid This Killer Weight Regain Mistake
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com
If you want to burn off fat and keep it off permanently, there are a few things you absolutely must do, and a new study from Wake Forest University has just uncovered another one…
Previous research has concluded without a shred of doubt that high levels of exercise are one of the keys to keeping fat off and maintaining your ideal weight. In this new study just published in the October 2008 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, researchers found for the first time, proof that the drop in physical activity that happens automatically during calorie restriction is directly correlated to weight regain.
We’ve known for some time that when you restrict calories, your level of non exercise physical activity (non exercise activity thermogenesis or NEAT), drops spontaneously, even if you don’t realize it’s happening.
Your physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE) also tends to drop when you restrict calories.
Basically, when you cut calories, you get sluggish, you move your body less, you don’t feel like exercising and if you do exercise, you do it with with less “gusto.”
This means that unless you intentionally counter this tendency by pushing yourself to keep active and keep up the intensity, despite your low calorie intake, your weight loss will slow down automatically as you continue with caloric restriction. (can you say, “fat loss plateau?”)
The new twist to this story is that in this latest study the researchers followed up on the subjects through the maintenance period - with 6 month and 12 month checkups.
This is significant, because most fat loss “success stories” are reported immediately after the weight loss phase, but you never know what happened to them afterwards.
Not surprisingly, it wasn’t much of a “maintanence” period… almost everyone regained most of the weight.
The surprise was WHY they regained back the weight and WHO regained the most…
The drop in physical activity during the diet was directly related to the weight regain after the diet!
The researchers wrote,
“The greater the decrease in physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE) during the energy deficit, the greater the weight gain during the follow up.”
“That won’t happen to me,” you say? Think again. That drop in activity usually happens unconsciously. It’s part of the “starvation response” (or “weight-regulating mechanism” if you prefer). Your body tricks you in countless ways, in order to restore energy balance and stabilize your weight.
If you believe that diet alone is the answer or that you can skimp on the training, you are shooting yourself in the foot and thinking short-term.
When you extend out your time frame to a year or longer, you get a whole new perspective.
For years, I have been imploring my readers and subscribers to “burn the fat” with higher levels of exercise - strength training AND cardio training - while “feeding the muscle” with a higher intake of clean food, instead of simply “starving the fat” with low calorie diets and little or no exercise.
“Eat More, Burn More”… “BURN The fat FEED the muscle.” those are the mottos you want to remember.
Can you lose weight without exercise? Of course. Just be sure you have a dietary-induced calorie deficit. Is it the best way? Not by a long shot.
Bottom line: If you want to MAXIMIZE your fat loss, and keep fat off permanently, it is imperative not only to keep up a high level of energy expenditure (BURN calories not just cut them), but also to make a conscious effort to make sure your activity level does not drop as you lose weight during the calorie deficit.
If you’d like to learn more about this effective and proven approach to fat loss: “eat more, burn more,” then please visit my “Burn The Fat” website at www.BurnTheFat.com
Train hard and expect success,
Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com
If you want to burn off fat and keep it off permanently, there are a few things you absolutely must do, and a new study from Wake Forest University has just uncovered another one…
Previous research has concluded without a shred of doubt that high levels of exercise are one of the keys to keeping fat off and maintaining your ideal weight. In this new study just published in the October 2008 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, researchers found for the first time, proof that the drop in physical activity that happens automatically during calorie restriction is directly correlated to weight regain.
We’ve known for some time that when you restrict calories, your level of non exercise physical activity (non exercise activity thermogenesis or NEAT), drops spontaneously, even if you don’t realize it’s happening.
Your physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE) also tends to drop when you restrict calories.
Basically, when you cut calories, you get sluggish, you move your body less, you don’t feel like exercising and if you do exercise, you do it with with less “gusto.”
This means that unless you intentionally counter this tendency by pushing yourself to keep active and keep up the intensity, despite your low calorie intake, your weight loss will slow down automatically as you continue with caloric restriction. (can you say, “fat loss plateau?”)
The new twist to this story is that in this latest study the researchers followed up on the subjects through the maintenance period - with 6 month and 12 month checkups.
This is significant, because most fat loss “success stories” are reported immediately after the weight loss phase, but you never know what happened to them afterwards.
Not surprisingly, it wasn’t much of a “maintanence” period… almost everyone regained most of the weight.
The surprise was WHY they regained back the weight and WHO regained the most…
The drop in physical activity during the diet was directly related to the weight regain after the diet!
The researchers wrote,
“The greater the decrease in physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE) during the energy deficit, the greater the weight gain during the follow up.”
“That won’t happen to me,” you say? Think again. That drop in activity usually happens unconsciously. It’s part of the “starvation response” (or “weight-regulating mechanism” if you prefer). Your body tricks you in countless ways, in order to restore energy balance and stabilize your weight.
If you believe that diet alone is the answer or that you can skimp on the training, you are shooting yourself in the foot and thinking short-term.
When you extend out your time frame to a year or longer, you get a whole new perspective.
For years, I have been imploring my readers and subscribers to “burn the fat” with higher levels of exercise - strength training AND cardio training - while “feeding the muscle” with a higher intake of clean food, instead of simply “starving the fat” with low calorie diets and little or no exercise.
“Eat More, Burn More”… “BURN The fat FEED the muscle.” those are the mottos you want to remember.
Can you lose weight without exercise? Of course. Just be sure you have a dietary-induced calorie deficit. Is it the best way? Not by a long shot.
Bottom line: If you want to MAXIMIZE your fat loss, and keep fat off permanently, it is imperative not only to keep up a high level of energy expenditure (BURN calories not just cut them), but also to make a conscious effort to make sure your activity level does not drop as you lose weight during the calorie deficit.
If you’d like to learn more about this effective and proven approach to fat loss: “eat more, burn more,” then please visit my “Burn The Fat” website at www.BurnTheFat.com
Train hard and expect success,
Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com
Friday, December 3, 2010
Speed Eating and Fat Loss: Diet Advice Your Mom Was Right About All Along
Speed Eating and Fat Loss: Diet Advice Your Mom Was Right About All Along
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com
A new study just published in a recent issue of the journal Obesity has revealed that thin people eat very differently than heavy people at all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants.
Researcher Brian Wansink and his team from the Cornell University Food and Brand Laboratory observed diners at 11 different Chinese buffet restaurants across the United States.
Their goal was to find out whether the eating behaviors of people at all-you-can-eat buffets varied based on their body mass.
Trained observers recorded the height, weight, gender, age, and behavior of 213 patrons. The various seating, serving and eating behaviors were then compared across BMI levels.
The heavier (higher BMI) patrons:
* ate more quickly
* chewed more food per bite
* used forks
* sat facing the food buffet
The thin (lower BMI) patrons:
* ate more slowly
* chewed less food per bite
* used chopsticks
* sat facing away from the food buffet
This study confirms earlier research from the University of Rhode Island published in the journal of the American Dietetic Association which found that eating slowly leads to decreases in energy intake.
Scientists even have a name for this now:
"TIME-ENERGY DISPLACEMENT"
Time-Energy Displacement means that the more time you take to eat, the less energy (calories) you are likely to consume. The faster you eat, the more energy (calories) you’re likely to consume.
But wait, there’s even more! A study from the University of Alabama looked at satiety (how full a food makes you feel), energy density (calories per unit of volume) and eating time of various foods. To maximize the effects of Time-Energy Displacement, it was found even more advantageous to choose foods that FORCE you to ingest calories more slowly.
This includes choosing more:
Foods that have a high satiety factor such as high fiber and high water foods (so you feel fuller more quickly):
* Peas
* Red beans
* Raspberries
* Broccoli
* Green beans
* Chick Peas
Foods with a high “chew factor” (so you can’t eat them fast if you tried; you have to chew them thoroughly):
* Lean meats such as top round, lean sirloin
* Celery
* Apples
* Pears
* Peaches
Foods with a low energy density such as salad vegetables and greens (so you’d get tired of eating before you took in a lot of calories):
* Tomatoes
* Artichoke
* Cucumber
* Salad Greens
* Cabbage
* Okra
These results also confirm all the studies that have been advising us not to drink our calories. Liquid calories, especially soft drinks and dessert coffees are two of the biggest sources of excess calories in the typical American’s diet.
The problem: calories in liquid form can have a very high caloric density and can be consumed very quickly. Liquid calories also do not activate the satiety mechanism in your brain and gastrointestinal tract the way solid food does.
"Don't inhale your food" used to be an admonishment about proper eating etiquette you heard from your mom. It is now scientifically-proven fat loss advice.
To learn more research-proven tips for burning fat, visit the “Burn The Fat” website at www.BurnTheFat.com
Train hard and expect success,
Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com
A new study just published in a recent issue of the journal Obesity has revealed that thin people eat very differently than heavy people at all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants.
Researcher Brian Wansink and his team from the Cornell University Food and Brand Laboratory observed diners at 11 different Chinese buffet restaurants across the United States.
Their goal was to find out whether the eating behaviors of people at all-you-can-eat buffets varied based on their body mass.
Trained observers recorded the height, weight, gender, age, and behavior of 213 patrons. The various seating, serving and eating behaviors were then compared across BMI levels.
The heavier (higher BMI) patrons:
* ate more quickly
* chewed more food per bite
* used forks
* sat facing the food buffet
The thin (lower BMI) patrons:
* ate more slowly
* chewed less food per bite
* used chopsticks
* sat facing away from the food buffet
This study confirms earlier research from the University of Rhode Island published in the journal of the American Dietetic Association which found that eating slowly leads to decreases in energy intake.
Scientists even have a name for this now:
"TIME-ENERGY DISPLACEMENT"
Time-Energy Displacement means that the more time you take to eat, the less energy (calories) you are likely to consume. The faster you eat, the more energy (calories) you’re likely to consume.
But wait, there’s even more! A study from the University of Alabama looked at satiety (how full a food makes you feel), energy density (calories per unit of volume) and eating time of various foods. To maximize the effects of Time-Energy Displacement, it was found even more advantageous to choose foods that FORCE you to ingest calories more slowly.
This includes choosing more:
Foods that have a high satiety factor such as high fiber and high water foods (so you feel fuller more quickly):
* Peas
* Red beans
* Raspberries
* Broccoli
* Green beans
* Chick Peas
Foods with a high “chew factor” (so you can’t eat them fast if you tried; you have to chew them thoroughly):
* Lean meats such as top round, lean sirloin
* Celery
* Apples
* Pears
* Peaches
Foods with a low energy density such as salad vegetables and greens (so you’d get tired of eating before you took in a lot of calories):
* Tomatoes
* Artichoke
* Cucumber
* Salad Greens
* Cabbage
* Okra
These results also confirm all the studies that have been advising us not to drink our calories. Liquid calories, especially soft drinks and dessert coffees are two of the biggest sources of excess calories in the typical American’s diet.
The problem: calories in liquid form can have a very high caloric density and can be consumed very quickly. Liquid calories also do not activate the satiety mechanism in your brain and gastrointestinal tract the way solid food does.
"Don't inhale your food" used to be an admonishment about proper eating etiquette you heard from your mom. It is now scientifically-proven fat loss advice.
To learn more research-proven tips for burning fat, visit the “Burn The Fat” website at www.BurnTheFat.com
Train hard and expect success,
Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com
Stop Cravings and Stop Binge Eating: Advice from a Pizza Man
Stop Cravings and Stop Binge Eating: Advice from a Pizza Man
By Tom Venuto
www.BurnTheFat.com
In a surprising comment made during a popular UK radio show, the founder of one of the largest Pizza chains in the United States and United Kingdom told listeners not to eat too much pizza!
In an interview with host Adam Shaw on BBC’s Radio Four program, John Schnatter, the founder of Papa John’s pizza, was asked whether he was concerned about the British government’s recent actions in the fast food restaurant business to help put the brakes on obesity.
Schnatter said, “Pizza is actually healthy for you if you don’t eat too much of it. You can’t eat five or six slices but if you eat one or two slices it’s very nutritious.”
Laughing, Shaw replied, “I’m not sure your investors would want to hear you tell people, ‘don’t eat too much of our pizzas!”’
Across the web, bloggers and tweeters have been putting in their two cents. Some say he was a little TOO honest. Others say this was either the worst PR screw up ever… or the best PR move ever (you know what they say about “bad” publicity).
Although I wouldn’t call pizza health food, I think his advice to eat pizza, but only in moderation was the responsible thing for a fast food owner to do at a time where obesity is reaching epidemic proportions, not just in the United States but in the U.K. and other countries as well.
Moreover, it was just plain good diet advice! One reason people are failing to control their weight is because of all-or-none thinking, i.e, “I can’t eat ANY pizza EVER again!” or, “I have to follow my diet 100% or not at all.”
In my experience, all or none thinking is one of the biggest causes of diet failure. It’s far better from a psychological perspective to eat your pizza; simply enjoy it infrequently and in small quantities.
Think of you on a diet like a pressure cooker on a burner. The longer you keep that pot on the heat, the more the steam pressure builds up inside. If there’s no outlet or release valve on that thing, eventually the pressure builds up so much that even if it’s made of steel and the lid is bolted down, she’s gonna blow, sooner or later.
Well, in the beginning, you might think your willpower is made of steel and that you’re bolted tigher than a submarine hatch, but the longer you’re on a diet with no relief, the greater the pressure builds up until YOU blow your top… and that means massive binge eating.
But if you let off a little steam in the form of a “free meal” (or two) and enjoy that slice of pizza (or whatever is your favorite ‘poison’) on occasion, that relieves the pressure. Alas, you never even feel the urge to binge… because you HAD your pizza and the urge was satisfied. Since the meal was planned and you kept the calories under control, it had little or no effect on your fat loss results.
This topic of conversation was prompted on the BBC radio show during a discussion about how the Pizza business was doing during the recession and about efforts to stem the growing obesity crisis in the UK.
Earlier last month, The Food Standards Agency in the UK started negotiating with UK food, pub and sandwich chains to display calories on their menus to try to provide education about healthier options for consumers who eat out frequently.
The move is similar to one made in New York City last year, where restaurant chains that have more than 15 locations must print calories on the menus. According to an article in the British Medical Journal, this has resulted in an average reduction of 50-100 calories for each food order. Not much, but at least it’s something.
In the case of pizza, a 2.2 ounce thin-crusted slice of cheese pizza could have as little as 190 calories. One slice of “meat lover’s” pizza, on the other hand, could set you back almost 500 calories! If you knew the difference, would it change what kind and how much you ate?
I’m totally in favor of posting calories on menus, despite the critics who say it won’t make a difference. I think anything that raises calorie awareness is going to affect behavior in a positive way and help make for better food decisions. Whether it should be mandatory by law is debatable. I say, let the restaurants decide and then let the marketplace sort itself out.
I would be more likely to recommend or support the restaurants who opted to post calories, increase their range of healthy choices… and on that rare occasion, have a CEO who actually says, “Eat my food, but not too much!!”
Now, if we can only get those Mcdonalds’s execs to say the same thing!
Train hard and expect success,
Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
P.S. No relation to Venuto's Pizza, hahaha
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a fat loss expert, lifetime natural (steroid-free) bodybuilder, independent nutrition researcher, freelance writer, and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle: Fat-Burning Secrets of The World’s Best Bodybuilders & Fitness Models (e-book) which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com
By Tom Venuto
www.BurnTheFat.com
In a surprising comment made during a popular UK radio show, the founder of one of the largest Pizza chains in the United States and United Kingdom told listeners not to eat too much pizza!
In an interview with host Adam Shaw on BBC’s Radio Four program, John Schnatter, the founder of Papa John’s pizza, was asked whether he was concerned about the British government’s recent actions in the fast food restaurant business to help put the brakes on obesity.
Schnatter said, “Pizza is actually healthy for you if you don’t eat too much of it. You can’t eat five or six slices but if you eat one or two slices it’s very nutritious.”
Laughing, Shaw replied, “I’m not sure your investors would want to hear you tell people, ‘don’t eat too much of our pizzas!”’
Across the web, bloggers and tweeters have been putting in their two cents. Some say he was a little TOO honest. Others say this was either the worst PR screw up ever… or the best PR move ever (you know what they say about “bad” publicity).
Although I wouldn’t call pizza health food, I think his advice to eat pizza, but only in moderation was the responsible thing for a fast food owner to do at a time where obesity is reaching epidemic proportions, not just in the United States but in the U.K. and other countries as well.
Moreover, it was just plain good diet advice! One reason people are failing to control their weight is because of all-or-none thinking, i.e, “I can’t eat ANY pizza EVER again!” or, “I have to follow my diet 100% or not at all.”
In my experience, all or none thinking is one of the biggest causes of diet failure. It’s far better from a psychological perspective to eat your pizza; simply enjoy it infrequently and in small quantities.
Think of you on a diet like a pressure cooker on a burner. The longer you keep that pot on the heat, the more the steam pressure builds up inside. If there’s no outlet or release valve on that thing, eventually the pressure builds up so much that even if it’s made of steel and the lid is bolted down, she’s gonna blow, sooner or later.
Well, in the beginning, you might think your willpower is made of steel and that you’re bolted tigher than a submarine hatch, but the longer you’re on a diet with no relief, the greater the pressure builds up until YOU blow your top… and that means massive binge eating.
But if you let off a little steam in the form of a “free meal” (or two) and enjoy that slice of pizza (or whatever is your favorite ‘poison’) on occasion, that relieves the pressure. Alas, you never even feel the urge to binge… because you HAD your pizza and the urge was satisfied. Since the meal was planned and you kept the calories under control, it had little or no effect on your fat loss results.
This topic of conversation was prompted on the BBC radio show during a discussion about how the Pizza business was doing during the recession and about efforts to stem the growing obesity crisis in the UK.
Earlier last month, The Food Standards Agency in the UK started negotiating with UK food, pub and sandwich chains to display calories on their menus to try to provide education about healthier options for consumers who eat out frequently.
The move is similar to one made in New York City last year, where restaurant chains that have more than 15 locations must print calories on the menus. According to an article in the British Medical Journal, this has resulted in an average reduction of 50-100 calories for each food order. Not much, but at least it’s something.
In the case of pizza, a 2.2 ounce thin-crusted slice of cheese pizza could have as little as 190 calories. One slice of “meat lover’s” pizza, on the other hand, could set you back almost 500 calories! If you knew the difference, would it change what kind and how much you ate?
I’m totally in favor of posting calories on menus, despite the critics who say it won’t make a difference. I think anything that raises calorie awareness is going to affect behavior in a positive way and help make for better food decisions. Whether it should be mandatory by law is debatable. I say, let the restaurants decide and then let the marketplace sort itself out.
I would be more likely to recommend or support the restaurants who opted to post calories, increase their range of healthy choices… and on that rare occasion, have a CEO who actually says, “Eat my food, but not too much!!”
Now, if we can only get those Mcdonalds’s execs to say the same thing!
Train hard and expect success,
Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
P.S. No relation to Venuto's Pizza, hahaha
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a fat loss expert, lifetime natural (steroid-free) bodybuilder, independent nutrition researcher, freelance writer, and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle: Fat-Burning Secrets of The World’s Best Bodybuilders & Fitness Models (e-book) which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com
Friday, November 26, 2010
Body Wraps and Waist Wraps: The Difference Between Losing Fat and Losing Inches
Body Wraps and Waist Wraps: The Difference Between Losing Fat And Losing Inches
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com
www.BurnTheFatInnerCircle.com
"Body wraps" have been around for ages in the weight loss and spa industry. Claims include loss of body weight, loss of body fat, and loss of inches. Infomercials for rubber “waist belts" are also back on TV and similar claims are made for these types of wraps as well. What few people realize is that there is a huge difference between losing fat and losing inches. When your body fat decreases, your circumference measurements will usually also decrease, but “fat” loss and “inch” loss are not one in the same. If you don’t know how to tell the difference, you could be falling for one of the oldest, most notorious fitness and weight loss scams in the book.
The truth is, body wraps and waist belts do not shrink fat cells or burn body fat - no matter what type of wrap is used: bandages, plastic, foil, vinyl, or rubber and regardless of what you are wrapped in: herbs, minerals, enzymes, seaweed, clay, or mud - it doesn't matter. Fat can only be lost with a caloric deficit from a reduction in food intake, an increase in activity or ideally, a combination of both.
Whenever you see fat loss claims for wraps or any other product which doesn't involve a caloric deficit created though nutrition or exercise, the “scam alarm” should go off in your head, and you should always stay away, no matter how compelling the sales pitch.
Furthermore, the companies making fat loss claims would be in hot water with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) if they were investigated and caught because claims for body fat reduction from wraps cannot be supported with scientific evidence.
The FTC as well as numerous state attorney general's offices have already taken action against body wrap companies in the past for false advertising and unsupported claims. Some companies simply had to stop making false claims, others had to pay stiff fines as well. The problem, from a legal and ethical standpoint, is the claim being made. Remember, "inches" and "fat" are not the same thing.
Some types of wraps can definitely take off inches (for example, they might reduce the circumference measurement of your waist, hips, arms and legs), but it's not fat, its water weight and fluid, and the results are temporary.
Suppose this claim is made in an advertisement:
* Lose Up To 15 inches in 1 Hour! *
This is legal advertising because the claim "lose inches" might be supportable (if enough circumference measurements are taken with a tape measure at enough sites, that might add up to a total of 15 inches in circumference loss)
However I believe that these types of claims are misleading (and probably intentionally so), because "inches" is not the same as body fat but the product vendors know that you might easily confuse "inches" with "fat."
Contrast that claim with this one:
* Lose Body Fat without diet or exercise in 1 Hour!*
That claim is totally false and scientifically unsupportable.
Again, body wraps cannot burn fat or "shrink fat cells."
If fat loss could be achieved with body wraps, it would be very easy to test and prove.
Body composition (body fat) testing (rather than measurements of inches) could be performed before and after the wrap, and the answer ("does it work") would become easily exposed.
Since it doesn't work, you won't find any wrap people accepting your challenge to allow you to do independent body composition testing, nor will you find a shred of scientific evidence showing reduction of bodyfat from wraps.
Unfortunately, bogus fat loss claims are still quite widespread, as a simple Internet search for "body wrap" will demonstrate. The most frequently used claims however, are for loss of "inches."
The inches lost simply come from loss of fluid. And guess what - those inches (and or water weight) will come right back in days if not hours, as soon as you completely re-hydrate yourself.
Other claims made for body wraps include detoxification, improved circulation and tighter, smoother and clearer skin. Most health and fitness researchers, as well as government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will tell you that these claims are "debatable" and mostly anecdotal.
Some experts even warn that certain types of wraps can be dangerous, mainly due to the rapid and excessive fluid loss/dehydration.
If you want to get wrapped because you find it relaxing or you consider it a "spa-like" treatment, that's one thing. Just remember, wraps have absolutely nothing to do with fat loss.
I'd suggest completely avoiding any companies that advertise fat loss when it's only water and inches you're losing, because a dishonest company is one you don't want to patronize at all.
One last thing – this is a timely subject because although "body wraps" have been around for ages and it's old news, I noticed that infomercials for "waist belts" or “sauna wraps” are back on TV in force and I see that they are replaying the ads over and over again, which means people are buying it.
Everything I just said about body wraps also applies to those rubber waist belts too.
On a web search I just did for those rubber belt waist wraps, I noticed some of the websites are STILL making claims like "Melt fat" (totally bogus, unsupported and illegal claim).
Other sites seem to be wary of the FTC paying them a visit, so they do a whole song and dance around the legal issues by saying stuff like, "sweat away inches," "therapeutic heat", "target your problem areas" and so on. Even if these claims are not illegal, the promotions are still deceptive…
The professional fitness model is pictured taking off the rubber belt, revealing ripped six pack abs below... as if those abs are a result of wearing the belt! Wishful thinking! These are professional models, folks. They got the abs the same way everyone else with abs got them - with a calorie deficit from a combination of strict diet and hard training!
Wraps and waist belt products might take off some inches or water weight, but they can’t take off a single ounce of fat. Buyer beware.
Programs like Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle are focused on FAT LOSS, not water loss or loss of inches. When body fat decreases, circumferences in inches will also decrease, but "fat" lost and "inches" lost are not one in the same.
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer (CPT), certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best-selling e-book, "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle.” Tom has written hundreds of articles and has been featured in print magazines such as IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Exercise for Men and Men’s Exercise, as well as on hundreds of websites worldwide. For information on Tom's Fat Loss program, visit: www.burnthefat.com. To learn more about Tom's Fat Loss Support Community, visit: www.burnthefatinnercircle.com
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com
www.BurnTheFatInnerCircle.com
"Body wraps" have been around for ages in the weight loss and spa industry. Claims include loss of body weight, loss of body fat, and loss of inches. Infomercials for rubber “waist belts" are also back on TV and similar claims are made for these types of wraps as well. What few people realize is that there is a huge difference between losing fat and losing inches. When your body fat decreases, your circumference measurements will usually also decrease, but “fat” loss and “inch” loss are not one in the same. If you don’t know how to tell the difference, you could be falling for one of the oldest, most notorious fitness and weight loss scams in the book.
The truth is, body wraps and waist belts do not shrink fat cells or burn body fat - no matter what type of wrap is used: bandages, plastic, foil, vinyl, or rubber and regardless of what you are wrapped in: herbs, minerals, enzymes, seaweed, clay, or mud - it doesn't matter. Fat can only be lost with a caloric deficit from a reduction in food intake, an increase in activity or ideally, a combination of both.
Whenever you see fat loss claims for wraps or any other product which doesn't involve a caloric deficit created though nutrition or exercise, the “scam alarm” should go off in your head, and you should always stay away, no matter how compelling the sales pitch.
Furthermore, the companies making fat loss claims would be in hot water with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) if they were investigated and caught because claims for body fat reduction from wraps cannot be supported with scientific evidence.
The FTC as well as numerous state attorney general's offices have already taken action against body wrap companies in the past for false advertising and unsupported claims. Some companies simply had to stop making false claims, others had to pay stiff fines as well. The problem, from a legal and ethical standpoint, is the claim being made. Remember, "inches" and "fat" are not the same thing.
Some types of wraps can definitely take off inches (for example, they might reduce the circumference measurement of your waist, hips, arms and legs), but it's not fat, its water weight and fluid, and the results are temporary.
Suppose this claim is made in an advertisement:
* Lose Up To 15 inches in 1 Hour! *
This is legal advertising because the claim "lose inches" might be supportable (if enough circumference measurements are taken with a tape measure at enough sites, that might add up to a total of 15 inches in circumference loss)
However I believe that these types of claims are misleading (and probably intentionally so), because "inches" is not the same as body fat but the product vendors know that you might easily confuse "inches" with "fat."
Contrast that claim with this one:
* Lose Body Fat without diet or exercise in 1 Hour!*
That claim is totally false and scientifically unsupportable.
Again, body wraps cannot burn fat or "shrink fat cells."
If fat loss could be achieved with body wraps, it would be very easy to test and prove.
Body composition (body fat) testing (rather than measurements of inches) could be performed before and after the wrap, and the answer ("does it work") would become easily exposed.
Since it doesn't work, you won't find any wrap people accepting your challenge to allow you to do independent body composition testing, nor will you find a shred of scientific evidence showing reduction of bodyfat from wraps.
Unfortunately, bogus fat loss claims are still quite widespread, as a simple Internet search for "body wrap" will demonstrate. The most frequently used claims however, are for loss of "inches."
The inches lost simply come from loss of fluid. And guess what - those inches (and or water weight) will come right back in days if not hours, as soon as you completely re-hydrate yourself.
Other claims made for body wraps include detoxification, improved circulation and tighter, smoother and clearer skin. Most health and fitness researchers, as well as government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will tell you that these claims are "debatable" and mostly anecdotal.
Some experts even warn that certain types of wraps can be dangerous, mainly due to the rapid and excessive fluid loss/dehydration.
If you want to get wrapped because you find it relaxing or you consider it a "spa-like" treatment, that's one thing. Just remember, wraps have absolutely nothing to do with fat loss.
I'd suggest completely avoiding any companies that advertise fat loss when it's only water and inches you're losing, because a dishonest company is one you don't want to patronize at all.
One last thing – this is a timely subject because although "body wraps" have been around for ages and it's old news, I noticed that infomercials for "waist belts" or “sauna wraps” are back on TV in force and I see that they are replaying the ads over and over again, which means people are buying it.
Everything I just said about body wraps also applies to those rubber waist belts too.
On a web search I just did for those rubber belt waist wraps, I noticed some of the websites are STILL making claims like "Melt fat" (totally bogus, unsupported and illegal claim).
Other sites seem to be wary of the FTC paying them a visit, so they do a whole song and dance around the legal issues by saying stuff like, "sweat away inches," "therapeutic heat", "target your problem areas" and so on. Even if these claims are not illegal, the promotions are still deceptive…
The professional fitness model is pictured taking off the rubber belt, revealing ripped six pack abs below... as if those abs are a result of wearing the belt! Wishful thinking! These are professional models, folks. They got the abs the same way everyone else with abs got them - with a calorie deficit from a combination of strict diet and hard training!
Wraps and waist belt products might take off some inches or water weight, but they can’t take off a single ounce of fat. Buyer beware.
Programs like Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle are focused on FAT LOSS, not water loss or loss of inches. When body fat decreases, circumferences in inches will also decrease, but "fat" lost and "inches" lost are not one in the same.
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer (CPT), certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best-selling e-book, "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle.” Tom has written hundreds of articles and has been featured in print magazines such as IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Exercise for Men and Men’s Exercise, as well as on hundreds of websites worldwide. For information on Tom's Fat Loss program, visit: www.burnthefat.com. To learn more about Tom's Fat Loss Support Community, visit: www.burnthefatinnercircle.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)