Strong, Fit, & Healthy Issue 6
February 6, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Issue 6 of Strong, Fit, and Healthy is now ready to download for all Naked Nutrition Insider Members. In this issue you’ll find:
- How to use the S&M method for unlimited delicious recipes
- The latest research on green tea and weight loss, how much sitting around at work is effecting your ability to burn calories, and the essential components of online weight loss components.
- 15 to 1 Metabolic workout
- Top 5 best lunge variations
- Banana Nut and Cranberry Almond Oatmeal recipes
- Plus the latest food of the month, Key Concept, and Awesome Online resource.
If you are not a member join here to get access to this month’s issue.
Members can download the issue right now by clicking the image below (Note: You must be logged in to see the image). Read more
3 Ways You Sabotage Your Weight Loss Diet
January 18, 2010 | 4 Comments
There is nothing more frustrating than sticking to your diet and exercise plan but not losing weight. You think you are doing everything you are supposed to do but the weight just isn’t coming off like it should. You ask yourself ‘What is Going On?!” I might have the answer for you. Today I want to share with you three under the radar ways that you could currently be sabotaging your weight loss efforts without evening knowing it.
Nibbling while Cooking
This is my personal demon. I’m a nibbler. Snacking and nibbling on the foods that you are cooking while preparing your meals can be a significant source of unaccounted for calories. Let’s say you are making a chicken, vegetable, and cashew stir-fry. You have a couple cashews while getting the ingredients out, a small handful while adding them to the dish, next thing you know you’ve had 200-300 unaccounted calories.
One of the great benefits of ‘meal preparation chunking’, a technique that I teach which involves getting most if not all of your food prep done at one time at the beginning of the week. This cuts down on the temptation of nibbling by just removing it from the equation, except for one time during the week.
Generous Portions
Over measuring is another huge mistake that is commonly made and overlooked. If you are having trouble losing weight then you need to be honest with yourself about measuring your food. Is the tablespoon of peanut butter that you add to your shake truly a tablespoon or is it more like a 1/4 cup? Did you just pour approximately 1 TBSP of olive oil into the non stick pan or was it more like 3 TBSP? These small mismeasures can add up and may be the thing holding you back from losing the weight that you should.
While recently several scientific studies have concluded that exercise is not as an important part of weight loss as many people think; I still believe that exercise is of the utmost importance. While you may already be training with weights at least 3 days a week and on top of that you are completing 3 more metabolic/interval type sessions it is key that every couple weeks you take the time to audit your exercise intensity. How hard you are training is more important than how often you are training. Increased intensity is easily the difference between 5 pounds of weight loss and 10 pounds of weight loss.
To wrap things up for this article, if you feeling like you are doing everything that you should be doing but you still aren’t losing weight, run a quick audit on your life and see if you are adding unaccounted for calories via nibbling, mismeasuring, and/or do you need to step up the intensity during your training sessions. Make one or all three of these adjustments in your life and the weight will start coming off again.
Your Nutrition Belief System – The Simple Way to Never Diet Again
November 9, 2009 | 10 Comments
So I’m back blogging after a wild WSFL 2.0 week last week (not to mention the 2 weeks leading up to it as I was scrambling to get the new package together).
Today I wanted to step back from all the ‘rapid weight loss’ talk to share with you a concept that I think is very important, much over looked, AND if you apply it there is a good chance that you would NEVER need WSFL 2.0.
What I’m talking about (and as you can probably guess from the title) is your Nutrition Belief System. Good ol’ Wikipedia aptly describes a belief system as a life stance. So the question is – what is your belief system or life stance on nutrition?
I was recently reading a book by Dan Kennedy on time management and success. He said (I’m paraphrasing) that..
Where you are in your life is a result of your current belief system whether you want to admit or not.
This got me thinking about nutrition and weight loss. Many people know what they should be doing but aren’t doing it; they are instead doing the opposite. For example most people know that if they want to lose weight, they need to eat less carbs – but in actuality they aren’t eating less carbs and they are frustrated with their inability to lose weight.
What would that person’s real nutrition belief system be?
I can eat as many carbs as I want and still lose weight.
Now think about it again. What really is your nutrition belief system?
Here is what I came up with (feel free to steal it):
I believe that the only way to a lean, healthy, and muscular body is through daily consumption of protein, fibrous vegetables, key supplements, and daily metabolic exercise. The acceptance of ill-timed starches, calories, alcohol, and missed workouts will prevent the achievement of my goals.
Now, without any other information, tweaks or secret strategies, if you followed the above 2 sentences on a daily basis you would be in excellent health and you have the type of body that most people envy. You’d never need to diet and you’d never need WSFL 2.0.
Eating would become easy. Whenever confronted with the question – should I eat this? You would just need to ask – “Does it fit in line with my belief system? Yes or No?”
This is a really simple concept but very powerful. Just apply the above nutrition belief system (or write your own) to your life everyday for the next 30 days. You’ll be amazed.
Have a good one,
Mike
How To Lose Body Fat Without Losing Muscle
September 15, 2009 | 9 Comments
Q: Hi. I’m wondering about how to lose body fat without losing muscle. In your manual for losing fat [Warp Speed Fat Loss] you said you never witness someone losing muscle mass while on a diet if he / she were working out at the same time. and you brought some studies to support it. What about “Starvation mode”? How do you prevent your body from keeping the fat and burning muscle for energy.
A: Good question. It is possible to lose muscle while dieting but if you do it right then you don’t have to worry about muscle loss. I’ll use what we do in Warp Speed Fat Loss as an example of precautions that you can take to prevent muscle loss but the strategies are really applicable to any weight loss diet and training program. First let’s look at why your body would breakdown muscle to use as fuel when dieting. There are three main reason.
- Body’s Problem: Needs energy.
- Body’s Problem: Needs enough amino acids to maintain important bodily functions.
- Body’s Problem: Energy is low thus needs to only keep around essential parts that require calories.
You have your own set of problems in regards to how your body acts when it comes to functioning on low calories.
- Your Problem: You want it to specifically use store fat to fill the energy void.
- Your Problem: You want the body to get amino acids from places other than hard earned muscle.
- Your Problem: Need to convince your body that lean muscle is essential.
Fortunately it isn’t to hard to make sure that you and your body have their needs met and everyone is happy. The truth is that you have enough stored energy in the form of body fat to last a very long time . Lack of energy isn’t the issue. What we need to do is show your body how to access that energy(i.e. your body fat). To do this we use a low carbohydrate diet. This controls insulin levels and allows your body to access its essentially unlimited supply of energy whenever it needs.
Photo Courtesy of baostar
We don’t want your body to start using lean muscle to meet its amino acids needs so we just simply add more protein to the diet to meet any increased need your body have (or may think it has). This is a dieting technique that has been around forever but it is still just as effective as it ever was.
The final problem is the trickiest and it can’t be helped with diet. How do we convince your body that your muscle is essential so that it keeps it around? This is where your training comes in. My partner in crime Alwyn Cosgrove has found that the addition of heavier weight training not only forces the body to hold ont0 the muscle that it has but in some cases people actually get stronger (while dieting!). What is heavier? 2-4 sets of 4-6 reps seems to be the sweet spot between lifting heavy enough weight but completing enough reps so that you are burning sufficient calories.
Those are the three ways that you can ensure that you beat ’starvation mode’, lose fat and not muscle. I recommend that you put all these tips into action at once. You can do it yourself or you can use Warp Speed Fat Loss where Alwyn and I have integrated all these techniques into a 28 day comprehensive rapid weight loss plan.
–> Click Here to Learn More About Warp Speed Fat Loss
7 Revolutionary Fat Loss Studies
June 24, 2009 | 1 Comment
Alwyn Cosgrove recently posted a list of the 7 Fat Loss studies that have most influenced how he trains clients for fat loss. Here is the list:
- A 2004 diet study that shows a simple change can increase dietary compliance and fat loss (by 96%) — (and it’s not “eat less”!)
- A 1998 study that showed that the addition of 45 minutes of hard aerobic training, 5 times a week for twelve weeks – had no effect on fat loss
- A 2007 study – that showed the addition of 50 minutes of aerobic training, 5 times per week for six months – also had no effect on fat loss
- A 2008 study showing 40 mins of aerobic exercise three times per week for 15 weeks actually resulted in the participants gaining fat!
- A study from 1994 showed a specific cardio training method that when adjusted for calories burned – actually reduced body fat (actual skinfold measurements) nine times more than traditional cardio training — despite taking less time, and actually burning less calories per session!
- Another study (1999) showed that the addition of a specific resistance training program increased fat loss by 35% over diet and aerobic training.
- That same study also showed that 3 aerobic sessions of up to 50 mins, for 12 weeks (36 sessions) only increased fat loss by one pound over dieting alone
- A 2002 study used an Afterburn-type approach to training – and showed an elevation of metabolism for 38 hours post workout.
- A 2008 study showing an increased loss of visceral abdominal fat with a high intensity program – and no change with a low intensity program.
Alwyn has taken the information these studies (+100 more), his 10+ years as a trainer, and compiled it into at 16 Week Fat Loss blitzkrieg called Afterburn. Alwyn has told me in the past that most people never acutally finish the entire Afterburn program because they lose all the weight they need somewhere between weeks 8 and 10. Afterburn is one of the best selling fat loss training programs online. If you don’t have a copy go here and pick it up.
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