This guest blog post was written by fitness and nutrition author Rob Poulos I have his permission to share it with you.

Ask ten people what type of exercise they should be doing to burn fat and fire up their metabolism and they’ll all probably tell you the same thing. They’ll tell you that you need to do 30-40 minutes of moderately-paced aerobic exercise on a treadmill, elliptical machine, stair climber, etc. for 3-5 times per week.

They’ll probably also tell you that more is better…4 times per week would be better than 3, and 5 times per week would be even better.

People will tell you this because that’s been and continues to be the mainstream recommendation for fat burning by many fitness professionals. Get in a certain target heart rate and stay at that heart rate for 30 minutes or so, several times per week. I am here to tell you there is a better way.

Sure, you’ll burn some calories while you’re running to nowhere on a treadmill, but you won’t make a complete physique transformation with this type of exercise alone.

In fact, this type of exercise can actually be counterproductive to burning fat. Here are just a couple of reasons:
Long duration, lower intensity aerobics calls upon your stored body fat for energy during the sessions. While this may sound good, this can actually cause your body to create more body fat in reserve after the workout is over to have ready for your next workout. Yikes!

What’s worse, this type of exercise when done frequently as typically suggested, trains your cardiovascular system to be efficient. Again, while this sounds good, your heart and lungs can actually reduce their capacity for work as they are getting more efficient at doing easy work (your long duration, low intensity aerobic workouts), which reduces their ability to handle stress.

This can lead to a host of other problems including higher change of heart attack. You are only working within your current aerobic capacity because you’re never challenging it to go beyond what it’s capable of. And anything that is easy will not yield results even close to what’s challenging for the body to accomplish.

Instead, you should be challenging the body to increase its capacity, so that it is stronger and able to deal with stress more easily. How is this done?

The fastest and most efficient way to rev up your metabolism, burn fat faster, and develop lifelong health and fitness is to add lean muscle to your body through resistance training – period. You want life changing results in the quickest possible time? Get stronger and build some muscle. When you add lean muscle to your body you’ll be literally turning your body into a fat burning machine!

Let’s say that you were eating the amount of calories that allow you to maintain your current bodyweight, but began to add lean muscle to your body through proper resistance training…you’ll need to use some of those calories you’re eating to feed the new muscle, creating a calorie deficit in your body.

In addition, when you stimulate your body with proper resistance training like I teach my students, the repair and growth process will call upon your stored body fat for energy. This calorie deficit combined with the repair and growth process will allow you to burn fat all day long, every day. You’ll even get these fat burning effects when you’re sitting around doing nothing at all.

Also, properly conducted resistance training actually increases your heart and lung’s capacity for work. By placing intense demands on your body, it is forced into being ready for anything you throw at it. This makes you more resistant to cardiovascular health problems that plague most people…even those that exercise with aerobics frequently.

And the beauty is I’ve discovered that you don’t have to spend much time working out to get the fat loss effects, and strength and muscle gains that will create this environment…you can actually get it done with 2 or 3 weekly workouts that last between 20 and 30 minutes, and even less time at an advanced level.

And it’s easy to make this type of exercise part of your life because of its efficiency…and it will help keep you lean and healthy for the rest of it…muscle is the stuff that fat burning furnaces are made of! That I can promise you.

For more info on Rob’s program **click here**

Tweet This Post

This guest blog post was written by fitness and nutrition author Jon Benson. I have his permission to share it with you.

There’s a club you should join.

It’s called The Insider’s Club.

It is that club whose membership is based only on what secret goodies the members possess.

In our case, this is the Fatloss Insider’s Club. Only those in the know can join…. freee to them of course… : )

So, if you want to get rid of some lbs…

FATLOSS TRICK 1

Eat Pizza?

Today I went for some New York-style pizza here in Austin, Texas.

Do I feel ‘guilty’? No way… in fact tomorrow I will feel LEANER.

What the what?

I had to set up my body for this bit of metabolic trickery of course. You cannot just “eat pizza” and shed the pounds… I wish you could!

But my personal System for fatloss not only “allows” pizza (and all my other favorite foods)… it DEMANDS that I eat it.

Here’s another true story: I blew off my “feed meal” (that’s what it is called in my System) four days ago. I have been on a massive fatloss roll for weeks now and frankly I just did not feel like eating a lot.

That’s another benefit of my System… it really cuts your appetite and food-cravings down.

Anyway, the next day in the gym I fell on my face! I was weaker and not any leaner. I went home, ate literally about 6000 cals and presto: Leaner than ‘ever’ the next day and ready to train hard.

Learn how to use this System here:

The Every Other Day Diet Click For More Tricks!

FATLOSS TRICK 2

The 10-Minute Cardio Trick

If you want to just get into good heart health, you only need GXP Cardio (covered in the System mentioned above) 2-3 days per week for 9-15 minutes. That’s it.

However if you want to use “smart cardio” (not long, boring cardio) then you need a bit more. Just a bit.

It’s my 10-minute trick.

Start with just every other day. Then move to 4 days… and then 5.

If you are pressed for time, this is ideal. Even if you are not, it works like magic.

10 minutes in the morning ‘before’ you eat. Just make sure your heart rate is only about 65% of your max… in other words, you are not breathing super-heavy at all, but you are working up a sweat. That’s it.

10 minutes ‘before’ lunch. Just cut your lunch hour short by 10 minutes… that’s all. You don’t sweat enough to need a shower… don’t worry. Walking stairs works great, or walking outside… be creative!

Then 10 ‘harder’ minutes about 2 hours before you go to sleep. Get your heart rate up to where you are breathing a little harder.

That’s it.

You can even start with just two sessions of 10 minutes (morning and night) if lunch is out.

FATLOSS TRICK 3

Increase Your Fat?

Yep. I want you to eat more dietary-fat…. but I want you to replace some of your carbohydrates (starch like rice, potatoes, etc.) with healthy fats like olive oil, coconut oil and almonds.

Fat dulls the appetite and all three of the fats above actually help your body get rid of its fat-stores if you decrease carbs.

I have the plan laid out for you. More here:

The Every Other Day Diet Click For More Tricks!

FATLOSS TRICK 4

Think Resistance

Far better than cardio will ever be. That would be resistance training.

Either weight training or in-home resistance training using bands and bodyweight. Studies confirm what we fitness pros already know: Resistance training not only sculpts the body (cardio cannot) but it also burns 9-12x more bodyfat over the long-term than cardio.

But you need both. And both cardio and resistance training (in-home or in the gym) is worked into my book “7 Minute Body.”

You can get it when you pick up “Every Other Day Diet” for 75% off-retail… it is all detailed here…

The Every Other Day Diet Click For More Tricks!

Welcome to the Club!

Yours In Fitness,

J O N B E N S O N

P.S. I’m still giving away “Radical Fatloss Blueprint” along with EODD for a few more days. And I’m giving a lucky few the chance to pick up the Supplement-Kit that comes with Radical Fatloss for almost 100 bucks off… the video and details are here:

The Every Other Day Diet Click For More Tricks!

Sorry… EODD Readers Only…. so pick it up today.

Tweet This Post

In my last post I introduced the concept of EPOC and today I will tell you how to use it to get results

This is the key part that most people don’t know or understand and therefore do not utilise. The power that interval and resistance training can give you.

Imagine burning calories not only when you’re working out but for 24 hours after you stop. That is what happens in the body when you lift weights and do interval training.

So how does this differ from normal fat loss training. In most cases people (and some trainers) think that the best way to loose weight is to run, cross train, cycle etc. They get on the bit of cardio and workout all at the same speed for an hour.

Well in that hour the calorie consumption may have been 800 calories as opposed to only say 400 calories from doing intervals or lifting weights.

However it is the effect with in the body that is more important. The weights or interval training will set of a reaction of hormonal and physiological responses that will continue to burn fat hours after finishing the exercise where the steady pace running would only burn calories for another couple of hours.

Tomorrow I’ll describe more in depth about what each of the factors, Alwyn talks about, are.

If you want to take a closer look at ‘Afterburn’ then check it out at www.CoachCosgrove.com – he also has some great products for fitness professionals.

Until next time,
Train hard, train smart, make every rep count.

Alex

Tweet This Post

As I mentioned yesterday I needed to change the program as from this week because of one big reason.

I initially got involved in running this the Bristol half marathon as wanted to support and help my wife, Sarah, complete it, whilst we raise money for BRACE Alzheimer’s charity.  As I work a full 7am to 8pm day on a Wednesday and finish at about 4pm on a Tuesday, I have switched the program around so that now it looks like this:

Mon – rest

Tues – Interval Run

Wed – Strength Circuit (another change to the programme, but a planned one)

Thurs – Long interval (non running)

Fri – Strength Circuit

Sat – rest

Sun – big run

Whilst this may not be ideal in so much as the only running I am doing is twice with in three days, but that’s what needs to be done.  Sarah needs my help for the Interval Run.  She’s really come along way and I’m incredibly proud of the effort she is putting in, but then she is ultra competitive (I won’t tell you about our surfing competition we had in South Africa back in 2006)!

Another  change I made at the last minute was switching to doing it on a treadmill as I torrential rain meant training outdoors could have been lethal – potholes galore!

So what did we actually do?

Well it was a 6 mile time interval session which looked a bit like this:

Easy mile warm-up (about 10km/h – 1 incline of course)

Mile @ 1mile time trial pace from last week – 12.7km/h, gave me a 7:35 mile

Easy mile @ 10km/h

Mile @ 1mile time trial pace from last week – 12.7km/h, gave me a 7:35 mile

Easy mile @ 9km/h – (I was getting really tired now!)

Mile @ 1mile time trial pace from last week – started at 12.7km/h, but had to drop it down to about 11.5 km/h in the end as I was really struggling, 8:05 mile)

That was it, I say that was it…..it was far from easy, simple but not easy.

Tomorrow, I ‘m changing the resistance training element of the program and will up date you then.

Don’t forget to download your own copy by **clicking here**

Tweet This Post