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Two Essential Components for a Successful Fat Loss Diet (Part 2)

In the last article I talked about the importance of consistency in your fat loss approach. In addition to being consistent with your fat loss efforts you also need to be consistent with the tracking of your fat loss efforts. As I mentioned previously for ultimate success with your weight loss, there needs to be a marriage of consistency and methodical movement towards your goal. We’ll look at the later now.

Kaizen – Your Secret Weapon

While is seems like an obvious trait, methodical movement towards your fat loss goal is often a lacking component especially when your fat loss goal is a long term goal (i.e. 4+ months). But constantly making an effort to methodically move forward, get better, be more precise, constantly making little corrections to your plan and execution will get you to your goal faster than you originally planned.

The Japanese call this kaizen. Small improvements summed over a longer period of time yield huge results. The reason that I say that you need to make these changes/improvement in a methodical fashion is because making improvements in this fashion will allow your to maximize your efforts. This is goes in line with one of my ‘diet rules’ which says

‘…you should spend the least amount of time and effort on your diet as possible because you have better things in your life…’

Methodical changes will allow for the least wasted effort and time spent. How do you do this?

First, you need to identify areas in which you would like to improve. Areas which improvement would give you better and faster results.

Some areas you might choose from area:

-Compliance
-Food/Meal Prep
-Resistance Training
-Metabolic Training
-Nutrition Taste/Flavor

Let’s look at two.

Metabolic Training

Metabolic training as this is an easy one. Continually making small improvements to your metabolic training (i.e. doing more work in less time) will make sure that not only your fitness level will improve but you will cause more ‘metabolic disruption’ yielding more fat and calories burned.

My friend and partner in fat loss crime Alwyn Cosgrove loves to do metabolic countdown ladders with burpees and kettlebell swings. Here’s how you do it:

15 reps of burpees
15 reps of kettlebell swings
14 reps of burpees
14 reps of kettlebell swings

…etc…etc..etc..until you get down to 1 rep of each.

When you do this time yourself. Each time you complete the workout strive to improve your time.

Focus on continually improving this over the course of 12 weeks – you’ll be amazed.

Compliance & Cravings

Let’s briefly look at another area in which you can apply methodical improvements – compliance. If you are currently in the 2nd Stage of Nutrition (see this article for more), then your main goal is improving your compliance. How can you do this?

After tracking your compliance to your diet for 2 weeks. Take a look at where you veer from your dietary plan. Were these planned occasions or spur of the moment decisions? Take all the spur of the moment decisions and try to figure out what was going on in those situations. A common problem people have to deal with is cravings. If your compliance is suffering from your struggles with warding off cravings then this is an area to target.

How can you get better?

Step 1 – Identify the cravings.

Step 2 – Idenfity what is causing the cravings (i.e. triggers).

Step 3 – If possible, remove the focus of your carvings. For example, if you crave doritos make sure there aren’t any doritos in your house).

Step 4 – Vow to ‘wait out’ your craving. Usually food cravings are psychological. When you are ‘in the moment’ with your craving, acknowledge this fact and make a decision to wait 20 minutes before acting on your urge. Usually after 20 minutes the craving will have passed.

Put this process into action. The first time you do it, you might not do it all successfully. That is fine. Just vow to improve each and every time. Soon enough these cravings won’t be an issue.

Wrapping it Up

It is okay if you only pick one area at a time to focus on but pick one. Get better each workout. Each day become compliant, do more work in less time. Often when we set longer term goals, it is easy to get stuck in maintenance mode without knowing it. Maintenance mode is another word for slow death By focusing on small improvements each day in one or more areas you will ensure that you avoid a slow fitness death and lose the weight faster.

-Mike

P.S. If you want more practical weight loss and health boosting tips as well as strategies to help you stick to your plan become a Naked Nutrition Insider today. Learn more about the membership and the Strong, Fit & Healthy Newsletter Click Here. It only costs less than 2 cups of coffee at Starbucks (but membership rates are doubling next week).

Two Essential Components for a Successful Fat Loss Diet (Part 1)

This past weekend I gave a seminar in Allentown, PA. The seminar was entitled “How to Lose Weight At Will” and for 2.5 hours I went through in great detail the foundational principles of using Naked Nutrition for fat loss. The attendees were great and seminar went off really well. As I was driving home that night (it is about 3 hours from Allentown to State College) I thought a lot about the seminar, the attendees’ questions, and the core message.

I kept coming back to two main concepts/areas. Consistency and methodical changes. If you shaved down the entire 2.5 hour presentation, those two concepts would be what was left. Let’s look at consistency first and in a later article we’ll examine methodical changes.

Consistency

Consistently sticking to your diet and exercise plan is the number one determining factor of your success. If you stick to a bad plan, you will have better results than if you sort of stuck to a good plan. Sticking to your plan is far from a glorious behavior. You don’t get a rush of adrenaline from it and you don’t get any recognition for doing it.

But as success coach and author Brian Tracy says:

“The key is to resolve to do what you said you would do.”

Sticking to your plan is by far the limiting success factor for most people.

It isn’t protein to carbohydrate ratios.
It isn’t nutrient timing.
It isn’t whether or not you have properly activated your semispinalis.

The key is sticking to your plan day after day, month after month. This is NOT a sexy concept (nor an original one). But it will make all the difference. Sticking to your plan is a daily battle that is won via proper goal setting. I recommend that you set long term and short term goals.

Long term goals are things that would take you weeks or months to achieve – losing 30lbs would be an example of a long term goal. Let’s say it will take you 3 months to achieve this goal. How are you going to stay focused for all 90 of those days?

This is where small goals come into play. Small goals are more about keeping yourself honest and ensuring that you do what you set out to do. Small goals include the 90% rule. Each week you should set the goal to adhere to your nutritional plan 90% of the time. You should track this on a daily basis. Other small goals may include – completing all your workouts, getting up at a certain time to ensure that you will have time to workout, taking 2-3 small breaks during the day to get up from your desk and stretch/move around, taking 10,000 steps each day to maximize your non-exercise physical activity levels and calorie burning. These small goals when achieved day after day will lead to you reaching your long term goals – almost automatically.

Every day I carry about with me 4 pieces of paper:

1. My Meal Compliance Grid.
2. Daily To-do List.
3. Goals for the Week.
4. Daily Habit Tracker.

The daily habit tracker is a list of actions (similar to what I listed above when talking about short goals) that I set out to do every day. After I complete each item I just check it off. So, just like with my meal compliance grid, at the end of the week I can see if I followed through and was consistent about achieving the small goals that will make the accomplishment of my long term goal automatic.

In the next article we’ll talk about methodical changes and its importance in successful fat loss but between now and then look at your long term weight loss/health goals (hopefully you have them) and see what actions your need to take every day to ensure that this long term goal happens. Make a list and check the items on that list off every day to ensure that you are doing what you vowed to do.

-Mike

P.S. If you want more practical weight loss and health boosting tips as well as strategies to help you stick to your plan become a Naked Nutrition Insider today. Learn more about the membership and the Strong, Fit & Healthy Newsletter Click Here. It only costs less than 2 cups of coffee at Starbucks (but membership rates are doubling next week).

Rapid Weight Loss – What To Do

The other day I created a great resource on rapid weight loss on the Warp Speed Fat Loss blog. I’d appreciate if you’d check it out, most a comment, and/or make suggestions on what you would like to see me add to it. At the end of the article you’ll find a sample workout from Warp Speed Fat Loss 2.0.

Check it out here: Rapid Weight Loss Plan.

3 Simple Steps For More Weight Loss & Better Health

Several weeks ago I wrote about having a ‘Nutrition Belief System.’ The idea behind this is that you were to come up with a simple set of beliefs regarding your diet that you could follow. I wanted to continue on this theme today with some more very simple strategies that if you implement you will lose more weight and improve your health.

1. Weigh Yourself Everyday – This is such an easy habit to get into. Wake up, go to the bathroom, step on the scale, and record your weight. I recently read a review of 11 studies that showed this simple action can give you up to a 6 pound weight loss advantage over people who do not regularly weigh themselves. (For more on Self-Weighing see the Key Concepts section in this month’s issue of Strong, Fit, & Healthy).

2. Stop eating after 7pm – This is a classic weight loss tip that is often overlooked. There is nothing magical about not eating after 7pm (some people eat dinner late due to their schedule so the 7pm cut point might not work) but if you are prone to snacking (see 3 Ways to Sabotage Your Weight Loss for more on this) then this is a easy way to stop it all together – just don’t let yourself start.

3. Drink 2 Cups of Water Before Your Morning Coffee – As I’ve mentioned before, there is nothing wrong with coffee. The problems arise when drinking coffee prevents you from drinking other things; this is also known as dietary displacement. You don’t want your coffee habit to prevent you from drinking water; this is an all too common occurrence. To avoid this just make sure that you drink 2 cups of water each morning before you cup of joe.

Do you have any simple tips/rules that help you stay lean and healthy?

Female Fat Loss Tips

I was recently re-reading a couple sections of Rachel Cosgrove’s book – The Female Body Breakthrough (which I recommend you pick up if you haven’t already) and wanted to highlight some great tips/take home points for you that Rachel makes in the book.

*Eliminate Black and White Thinking – If you binge and overeat just get over it. Stressing out over overeating will just make you feel terrible and probably cause you to overeat again. You would need to eat ALOT of calories to actually gain a pound of fat from a binge. Move on and vow to do better.

* Bone loss is a huge problem for women as they age. Weight training helps stop and even reverse bone loss. Jogging on a treadmill doesn’t do anything to stop this problem.

*Keep a journal/blog so that you have a record of your habits, moods, feelings, victories, and struggles (not just regarding weight loss). A journal an incredibly valuable took to have at your disposal so that you can look back and objectively figure out what is working and what isn’t.

* Listen to your body. Rest and Recovery are very important. Don’t ignore nagging muscle pains and soreness. Take measures everyday to boost your recovery through proper nutrition, foam rolling, naps, and stretching.

*It is okay to be a BITCH. Be Inspiring Totally Confident, and Hot.

*Using bodyfat calipers, a mirror, pictures, and measurements are all very important ways to track your progress. Don’t rely just on the scale weight.

*Don’t cheat, Splurge. Cheat meals just sound like you should feel guilty about them. Splurges are a different story. In regards to money, everyone splurges – buys a new pair of jean, gadget, or whatever every so often. You just get back on your budget and move on. The same goes with your diet. Plan to splurge on your diet at least 10% of the time and don’t feel guilty about it.

Click here to learn more about Rachel’s book and her free video coaching.

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