Set Your Metabolism on Fire

When I mention dieting for fat-loss, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?  Most of you just though “eat less” (This is where I’m assuming the 1,200 calories thing came in to play although I’m not sure what’s so magical about 1,200 calories). In terms of total calories you might be right but in terms of total volume of food, I can almost guarantee that you are sadly mistaken.  Most of the folks that come to us for fat-loss coaching ate like crap and consumed way more calories than they burned which caused them to put on extra, unwanted body fat.  Most then tried the a very low calorie approach and had great results for a few weeks.  The problem is that a very low calorie approach (think 1200) can do a ton of metabolic damage (rapid slow down of the metabolism in this case) if not planned and implemented properly.  What happens when your diet creates a quick slowdown of your metabolism?  Your body hangs on to every little bit of body fat that it can.  These folks then come to us, understandably frustrated because they’ve either hit a plateau or put on a bunch of the body fat that they had lost.  Here is the basic approach that we take to speed up their metabolism and shred body fat (this is also an approach that you can implement immediately):

1. Cut out all long, slow cardio for fat-loss purposes.  If you love to walk or jog, great!!  If you hate it but are doing it for fat-loss purposes, stop!!  There are better methods.
2. Train intense, but usually shorter than most would think.  If you can keep the same intensity for more than 30 seconds, you’re not training hard enough.  We use MRT (metabolic resistance training) with our “group personal training” and have had GREAT success.
3. Increase your caloric intake.  Although we look our clients’ diets more through total grams of carbs, fat and protein, we have in mind some general caloric guidelines that we do use:
   1. Around 14 calories per pound of body weight is a good level for maintenance.  Depending on the level of metabolic damage done, some folks may need to stay at maintainence level, as frustrating as that may be, for weeks.  Fortunately we don’t see this very often.
   2. Around 12 calories per pound of body weight is where we like to start for fat-loss purposes.  This is the first step to a sound fat-loss approach.  Interestingly enough, although this is considered to be a good level to start fat-loss, it’s usually substantially more than most are used to eating.
   3. Around 10 calories per pound of body weight is as low as we will go for any length of time.

It’s really that simple.  Eat a lot more clean stuff including lots of quality protein, a moderate amount of carbs and a moderate amount of fat and train with an intensity that you can’t maintain for longer than 30 seconds per set.  It is necessary to adjust the total intake of protein, carbs and fat as you get leaner but this is where my expertise comes in 😉

Ever stronger!!