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).

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).

Check it out here: Rapid Weight Loss Plan.

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?

* 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.

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.

A woman came into his gym and said that she really wanted to join as she needed to lose weight for health reasons but she could not afford the monthly membership fee. My friend told the woman that he wanted to help her so he’d make her a deal…

He would give her a free 30 day membership. During those first 30 days, if she came in and exercised 15 times then he would give her the next 30 days for free, the same for the next month, and the next month. So in essence this woman could have a lifetime free membership IF she used it. The woman was so happy and very grateful to my friend for making such a generous deal with her. Do you know what happened in the following 30 days?

She showed up 6 times and never came back.

You can probably see what I’m getting at here….money wasn’t the issue. The cost of the gym membership wasn’t the ‘thing’ that was holding this woman back from losing weight. It was a convient scapegoat.

What are you convenient scape goats?

What are the reasons you give for not losing weight and reaching your goals?

Write them down, crumble up the paper, and throw it in the recycle bin never to mention them again.

Then get down to work and lose the weight.

What are the 4 things?

1. Drink 5 Cups of Green Tea Each Day – This level of green tea consumption has been associated with reduced signs and symptoms of psychological distress and depression.

2. Use Kava Kava – Kava Kava is an herb that has been used in scientific studies to successfully to treat  mild and infrequent anxiety.

3. Get Better Sleep – The quality (more so than quantity) of sleep that you get greatly impacts your stress hormones.

4. Supplement with Rhodiola Rosea – Classified and studied by Russia during the mid 20th century. This herb was (and still is in may circles) used for the treatment of fatigue.

For more a more indepth look at these four tips check out the full article at T-Muscle.com.

I really think that protein powders are a  must for everyone. Having a protein shake following a workout is something that cannot be duplicated with whole food (chocolate milk does come close though). Liquid protein gets into your system fast because there is no need for mechanical digestion and minimal need for chemical digestion (with certain types of protein powder).

Amino acids get shuttled to your “hungry” muscles much quicker with a protein shake than with whole food protein. The best type of protein powder for this situation is whey protein isolate or whey protein hydrolysate. There are so many brands, types, and flavors of protein powder on the market today that it can be hard to choose which one is best overall and for specific times of the day.

You will generally find the following types of protein powder: whey, casein, egg, and soy. Protein powder also comes in different grades: concentrates, isolates, and hydrolysates. Each of these protein types and grades has unique properties and tastes.

What is Whey?

Milk protein is 20% whey. Whey is by far the most popular protein choice, perhaps because it is so cheap. Whey protein contains large amounts of branched-chain amino acids as well as the full spectrum of amino acids (i.e., every muscle building block you need). Compared to the other proteins on the market, whey is one of the fastest digesting proteins (hydrolysate > isolate > concentrate).

Whey Protein Concentrate vs. Whey Protein Isolate

Protein concentrates. Protein concentrates are created by pushing the protein source (milk, whey, etc.) through a very small filter that allows water, minerals, and other organic materials to pass though. The proteins, which are too big to pass through the filter, are collected, resulting in protein powder. When this process is used to make whey protein concentrate, it yields a protein powder that is 70-80% protein and up to 5% lactose. People with lactose intolerance will have trouble consuming large amounts of whey protein concentrate.
Protein isolates. This is the next step up in purification; the protein is purified again using more filtration or a technique called ion-exchange or cross-flow microfiltration. Protein isolates have very low levels of carbohydrates and fat and are almost exclusively pure protein. People with lactose intolerance usually don’t have trouble with whey protein isolates. Many companies that make whey protein isolates will certify that their product is lactose free or they add lactase (the enzyme that breaks down lactose) to the protein powder to help with digestion.

A really interesting area of protein research is looking a whey protein peptides (i.e. short chains of amino acids). Studies are showing that these peptide chains have additional benefits independent of the actual amino acids. For example glycomacropeptides are found in whey protein. They have been shown to cause your body to release the hormone CCK which signals your brain that you are full (pretty cool, huh?)

I got my order of a new whey protein in the mail last night – Prograde Protein. This protein powder is different than most in that it is sweetened with stevia and not splenda or aspartame. It is just about all whey protein isolate and contains lactase and aminogen (a compound that helps with protein digestion).

.

The best part is the taste. I’ve have had enough vanilla whey protein shakes to know what to expect but…I was acutally suprised at how good the Prograde Protein tastes. You can get your own tub to try here.

Marketing budgets for books aren’t what they used to be so basically Rachel isn’t getting any help from the ‘big boys’ in regards to promoting her book. So she has taken it upon herself to generate enough sales to be the #1 seller in her category on Amazon. To do that lots of people need to buy her book in one 24hr period.

Today is that day. As a ‘thank you’ for buying her book Rachel will to a personal coaching call, she’s going to send you a poster, she’s going to give you my Stages of Nutrition Presentation. Only if you get the book today from Amazon.com. The book is only ~$12 so it is a no brainer. Here is the link to learn more – Click here. But make sure to read the interview below first as Rachel gives out really good info.

Women & Weight Loss – You’ve Been Brainwashed

Women have it all wrong when it comes to weight loss. The average woman when she joins a gym looks at how many treadmills there are and the aerobics schedule to see if there are classes that fit in her schedule. When women want to lose weight they torture themselves with repetitive movement for hours on end spinning their wheels or running to nowhere like a hamster in a habitrail! If you take a look at all of the women walking on the treadmills you’ll notice none of them have the body most women want.

The problem is that most personal trainers haven’t figured it out yet either. They get a female client who hires them to change their body and they think, “Oh man…another one of those stupid toning programs in the ladies only section with the pink dumbbells doing lots of reps…” Most trainers don’t realize that they need to challenge women to get their bodies to change and to stop being afraid of pushing her to gain muscle to boost her metabolism to change the way her body looks, permanently.

Weight Loss Program the average woman does:

• Endless hours of cardio or aerobics classes
• Avoids strength training because she doesn’t want to get “big and bulky” or maybe she uses some rinky dink pink dumbbells to “tone” for lots of reps
• Cuts back her diet to practically starve herself
• Focuses on the scale weight and a number she wants it to say (Interruption from Mike – This is so true – STOP with the scale!!!)

What works about this plan: NOTHING!
What is wrong with this plan: EVERYTHING!

She will lose weight but it will be a mixture of muscle, water and maybe some fat so she’ll end up looking like a smaller version of her same self but in the process she will have dropped her metabolism so there will be no way she can keep the weight off and will gain it back guaranteed. This is the cycle most women have been through many times throughout their lifetime.  Yet, when they want to lose weight they do the same thing again. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.

Weight Loss Program the average Women SHOULD do:

• Metabolically demanding full body strength training program lifting challenging weights. This should be their priority workouts 2-4 days a week.
• Boost their intensity and drop the duration on their cardio sessions performing interval style workouts for no more than 30 minutes at a time.
• Fuel their body with healthy food every couple hours getting their metabolism revving.
• Focus on how her clothes fit and how she looks and feels and not on a number on the scale. Focus in Fat Loss, not Weight Loss.

What works about this plan: It will boost her metabolism, it will change her body, it will make her feel confident about herself, she can eat and she will be able to maintain her new body!

What is wrong with this plan: NOTHING!

To really change their bodies permanently women need to start checking out the strength training floor. They need to get out of their comfort zone and push their bodies beyond what it is used to. No more walking to nowhere on the treadmill! I am not talking about bodybuilding routines where you split up each body part and bomb and blitz the pecs or pump up the biceps. It is not necessary for a woman to isolate any muscle group to get the defined look she wants.

Instead a woman should do a full body, metabolically demanding program in which she alternates between an upper body compound movement such as a push up or chin up with a lower body compound movement such as a squat or lunge. Keep the rest periods short and use a weight that is challenging. Use 3-4 pairs of exercises working out for no more than an hour at a time.

The woman with toned arms and defined legs looks that way because she has the very thing most women are terrified of, muscle. They are so afraid to lift weights in fear of bulking up that they never get their bodies to look the way they want them to. They have it deeply seeded in their subconscious that as soon as they touch anything over 10 pounds, they will sprout humungous muscles! Even if they do use weights, they probably still aren’t lifting heavy enough and pushing themselves hard enough to get the look they want. Most women don’t know what their bodies are capable of and tend to not push themselves hard enough. There was actually a research study done on this where they showed that women when left to train on their own, lifted loads below what they were capable of.

Maybe it is because women have been conditioned our whole lives to exercise from the point of view of what we “can’t” do, rather than what we can do. Women grew up doing “girl” push ups, because we were told we “can’t” do actual push ups or hanging from the bar instead of a chin up because girls “can’t” do chin ups. The first woman to run the marathon had to sneak in dressed as a man because women “can’t” run a marathon, and that was only in the 70’s, not that long ago. Women “can’t” lift too heavy, they will hurt themselves. We still subconsciously hold ourselves back when it comes to training whether we realize it or not. We need to start training from the standpoint of- What CAN you do? How much CAN you lift? How strong CAN you get? And stop letting “can’t” enter our vocabulary. As women start to push themselves in the gym, lifting weights and building lean muscle tissue, their metabolisms will be revving and they will be the toned, defined body they have always wanted.

So how do you get your body to change? You have to lift enough weight to build muscle to increase your metabolism, fuel your body with healthy food and turn your body into a fat burning machine. Stop pounding your body with hours of cardio and stop starving yourself!

Here are Rachel’s 16 Rules for Fit Chicks (this is the foundation of her book).

Rachel’s Fit Female Credo
1. Act as if you are a fit female
2. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
3. Fuel Your Body to be Fabulous
4. Train hard or go home
5. Get hooked on feeling fit, not a number on a scale.
6. Be an early Riser.
7. Make R&R a priority!
8. Obstacles will arise -anticipate them!
9. Keep a journal or a blog
10. Eliminate Crabs and surround your self with supportive people!
11. Think about your thoughts!
12. Attitude is everything!
13. Manage Your ‘Tub of Stress’!
14. Put an end to body bashing and instead celebrate your strengths!
15. Don’t rely on will power. Have strategies!
16. Stop rationalizing and making excuses!