My Top 3 Keys to Fat Loss and Health

What if I told you there were 3 simple tips that could very quickly change everything about your body? You're health, fitness, and performances. If you were to only concentrate on these three your body would...

• become a calorie burning machine
• You'd see fat drop like crazy
• You'd keep more muscle during cuts
• You'd build more muscle during gains while also acquiring less fat
• Would lead to a very noticeable difference in your training and competition.
• Reduce your risk of diabetes
• Increase your IGF-1 and testosterone levels (anabolic hormones: healthy fat burners)
  

You may think that only concentrating on three things would be way too simplified. Nutrition is very complicated and multifaceted, so that just cannot be. Well you be correct. But I was thinking of this last night, and trying to think how simple I could make nutrition for the average person on a very general scale (which is very hard for me because I typically like to throw way too much out there).

This is what i came up with. Focus on:

1. Fiber
If each and every US citizen was getting 40-60g of fiber a day our obesity problem would be close to ZERO. In fact many other health issue would dissipate as well. Hardly anyone would be even close to overweight though. Now this is quite a bit of fiber and on average I don't get this much in a day. But the point is, increasing your fiber is going to make dramatic changes. By no means am I refering to cereal bars and fiber supplements. Even though fiber supplements have there place, it would be much better to get a good mix of soluble and insoluble fiber from whole food sources like vegetables, fruit, and certain grains (oats and/or quinoa are both great).

Adequate amounts of fiber will slow the speed at which carbohydrates/sugar can be digested and enter your blood stream. Making sure that you have a steady state of energy circulating throughout your day. This will also drastically reduce your chances for late onset of diabetes, of which is the next big epidemic. Diabetes will probably kill more people in the next 15-30 years than cancer. That is what the high carb low fat diet is doing to America.
Also getting all those micronutrients from the plant sources is incredibly good for you. For your skin, bones, everything. You'll look and feel a ton better. 

Choosing good carbohydrate sources is key here.

2. Protein
Getting enough protein is essential, and commonly under appreciated. This, along with the other two is what holds people back much of the time. Please just for a second try and step out of your dogmatic thoughts and follow me for a bit.

First of all protein can have a similar affect as fiber. Your body is going to have to work hard at digesting it, so it's going to slow absorption down a bit. This is great, because that means metabolism is going to have to ignite and work that much harder. Increasing thermogenisis (body temp) slightly which in turn will allow you to burn more fat. And the slowing of absorption keeps the body's blood sugar/carbohydrate levels at a more constant or steady state throughout the day.

Then getting protein often and throughout the day (every 2-4 hours at least) is going to increase your body's natural production of testosterone and IGF-1 levels. These are your anabolic hormones which means they attribute to burning fat and gaining muscle. So if you are in a negative energy balance you are going to lose fat eating protein in this way, you'll also lose less muscle. Remember muscle is metabolic so it burns calories and we want to keep as much as we can. If you are in a positive energy balance you are going to gain muscle eating this way, and will put on less fat.

Females, do not worry about bulking or getting "man(ish)" as I hear so often. It doesn't happen or work like that. Girls need to produce testosterone also, and each and every girl in the world already does. It would take tons upon tons of time and work, while eating tons of food and probably getting supplemental hormone help to get a girl to look "manish". 

Girls that eat protein with every meal, often throughout the day, and lift heavy stuff are sexy as hell. Embrace it.

3. Water

Water is possibly your most valuable tool. What do you need? One big bottle to fill full of the stuff. Then every time you finish it go refill it immediately. 

How much? the daily recommendation of 64oz doesn't really work. It's only going to work for some people, and those people are going to weigh approximately 120lbs and not live very active lifestyles and are not trying to change their bodies in any way. So outside of those people lets get a system that'll work for you. How about AT LEAST 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water per day, that does not include the water you will take in during meals or workouts.Really in my humble opinion that is still borderline. You're just not going to drink too much water (it is possible but it's just a crazy amount of water that you would need to drink and you'd be hurting terrible before you even got close). 

Proper hydration is absolutely pivotal for performance, for fat loss, and for general health. 

It keeps your muscles operating efficiently and with strength, keeps the organs running perfectly, helps your body get rid of toxins. Being well hydrated drastically reduces your risk of injury, lets the liver function efficiently instead of having to help the kidneys out when you are not hydrated which will allow you to process more fat. It helps keep you from tiring quickly, helps to satiate you so you're less likely to overeat, then also keeps your blood sugar more consistent rather than up and down peaks and valleys that are unhealthy and lead to late onset of diabetes due to the overproduction of insulin and pancreatic activity. 

Your liver is a filter and it processes the fat in your body. Everything we eat, all the processed junk and all, it gets filtered out through the liver. If the body is not hydrated the kidneys don't do well and the liver helps them out, taking away from its main job. We only get one liver so it's not like the air filter in your car that you can replace when it gets gross, so we need to liver functioning properly. This means staying hydrated for one and getting good amounts of whole foods that wont have tons of the 'nasty stuff' in them. 

Fat is also holds some of our toxins. It is possible that your body is actually holding onto fat just because you're so full of stuff it doesn't like. This is where the hydration comes in again.

1 Month Challenge

Try these out for one month. Commit and you'll see what I'm talking about. The water will making you feel like you have to go the bathroom about every 15 min, and the fiber might make you wonder a bit, but believe me just these three will have dramatic benefits to anyone. Like I said 'commit' yourself to these, and you'll find exactly what I'm talking about.

The Biggest Loser!

I wanted to post on this today due to all the craze and questions I've been receiving. But I happened to check in on a guy's blog that I very deeply respect for his knowledge and passion that he brings to training and fitness. His first post was on the biggest loser, and I don't think I could agree more but I also don't think I could say it any better. So here it is, straight from "the man" Mike Boyle himself. 

"Just got a Facebook note from a friend about the latest episode of The Biggest Loser.

“I didn’t catch all of it last night (mainly because it hurts to watch the show), but a 210lb woman had to leave the biggest loser because she had a stress fracture in her hip. Maybe from running every single day?”

I am going to do something I don’t like. I am going to criticize a show I didn’t see. I hate The Biggest Loser. I watched it once. It made me ashamed and embarrassed to be in this field. What surprises me more is that there have not been more serious injuries in the show. The way they train the people on the show is an embarrassment to all of us who claim to know anything about working with overweight clients. I’ve been lucky enough to have helped my friend Hank Morse lose 115 lbs in less than one year but, we did it with no injuries and no abusive exercise.

I have said it before and I will say it again. If we abused any group besides overweight people, on television, for entertainment the way we abused these people on The Biggest Loser, there would be a huge public outcry. I guess we are doing something to combat obesity but boy do I wish we could do it better."

Just to let anyone that doesn't already know who Mike Boyle is. He is a world renowned strength and conditioning coach. He's produced tons of great information with dvd's, books, articles, and he trains all kinds of people, professional athletes to the general public. In fact, he's probably forgotten more about the body than I have learned, and I consider myself to be in the top 99% when it comes to trainers and strength coaches. So, when he talks I listen. 

Stay tuned. I'm sure to continue to shake your dogma some more in the future.  

Quality vs. Quantity: for fat loss

Sometime things just get to me a bit. Today I was reviewing an article on nutritional basics and the idea of the article was to stop trying to complicate things. This was written by a ridiculously smart guy and he did a great job, but one thing got me.

Just like the article states, in order to lose weight you need a negative energy balance. Too true, without doubt.  

More calories burnt/used than calories eaten. Pretty simple. 

After that he layed out some strategies to create a negative energy balance. 

• The first one eat less. Okay.
• The second one: exercise more. True. 
• Third: do both. Well, Tell me something I don't know. 

All of these are fine, and living an active lifestyle with ample exercise (some types obviously better than others) are great. Also, burning extra calories through the day and during exercise are going to help you lose fat.

Where I disagree is later when he layed out a plan for fat loss. Here if his clients are simply maintaining, not losing weight or gaining weight, then he'll advise them to increase their exercise time from 5 hours a week to 7 hours a week. 

This is where I go the other way. I can completely and whole heartedly agree with increasing the number of hours you spend being active in your daily lifestyle. By this I mean recreational type activities, playing with kids, going on a nice enjoyable walk or bike ride, just getting off your butt and having old fashion fun. As far as actually increasing the time that you are exercising whether it be at the gym or wherever I do not agree with that. 

So what should you do. 

1. Get a more active lifestyle: Rock climbing, biking, rowing, boxing, exploring nature, underwater basket weaving, who cares. But this is going to help you a ton, even if it seems small. 
2. Time exercising should not be looked at in terms of quantity (as it is here using hours). It should be looked at in terms of QUALITY. What are you doing while you workout and in what ways? What exercises are you doing, what intensity, volumes, rest times, and things of that nature. 

This is something that can make or break your success. 

Let's make a made up person. She is 5'6", has been sitting on the couch for six years and ballooned up to 300 from a healthy weight of 140. She's having all kinds of joint pain from lugging around all the extra weight so she begins to try and lose some fat. 

She starts eating better and begins walking one hour every day. That's 7 hours a week. In the first 3 months she drops 24 pounds (completely doable). She sees success so continues the same thing. In the next 3 months she only drops 16 pounds, and then she plateau's. 

Why? because her initial success was just the fact that she started doing something. It could've been anything and worked. But as she continued to get into better shape her body not only became more efficient so she was just plain and simple better at walking, but it also only had the one stimulus. On top of that, the type of training that she was doing would only work for someone in that situation. Hardly anyone is going to see good results doing this type of cardiovascular type exercise, but that is not the point of this blog. 

The point is, increasing the amount of hours that she walks is not going to lead to more fat loss and what's she suppose to start doing, get to the point where she's walking 3 hours a night? NO, it doesn't work that way and who has that much time. 

This is where QUALITY comes in. The quality of the workout and not the quantity. You want to lose alot of fat fast, you need to be burning tons of calories in short amounts of time in a very specific way in terms of the energy systems you want to be utilizing. 

In other words exercising smart for a short time is going to do much more for you than exercising for a ton of time.  

7pm rule=BUNK!!!

I've heard it too many times before, and I'm sure I'll hear it again, but this is getting beyond old. On top of that, people are really hurting their bodies and their chances for nutritional success by following this simple age old rule as if it came straight from "the book" itself.

It seems to be that most people are accepting the idea of eating frequently for good health and fat loss, which is great. But, for some reason, this stupid 7pm rule is still sticking around. Some people don't necessarily follow this rule but most people are still not getting food after they eat supper (or w/e you call your evening meal).

We know now that eating every 2-4 hours (and I like every 2-3 hours even better) is the best way to eat for health, fat loss, and for building muscle (funny how those all work together huh?). The theories make good sense, and it has been proven over and over again. (theories would include topics of metabolism, nutrient absorption, insulin sensitivity and other hormone regulations, along with others.)

Okay, so how does that connect with the 7pm rule? Well, lets do it the easy way.
Example: Lets say you eat at 6:30pm, go to bed at 10pm, wake up the next morning at 6pm and get breakfast right away. You are supposed to eat every 2-4 hours, but you have just gone 11 hours without food. In that eleven hours your body's metabolism slowed to a screeching halt, used up all its glycogen stores and then started breaking down your muscle for energy to stay alive. You also just told your body to get ready for the next time you decide to starve and so it responds by turning more of your food into fat to get ready for next time.

All that is just the short term. You also lost some muscle mass, which means your metabolism is lower and you are less able to deal with your normal calorie intake, in turn you eat more calories than you need and guess what, you got skinnier while you also gained fat. Not so cool. (Ever seen an overweight guy with hardly any muscle on his arms? That could be you if you like.)

What's the anwer?
Eat before you go to bed. Yes I know, I said it. Crazy huh? You are right, there is plenty of crazy here. Not saying I'm Galileo or anything close, or that I came up with these theories of eating, but you get what I'm saying. Everyone thought Galileo was crazy too.


What you eat is important. I am not saying eat pasta before bed, or any other form of high glycemic carbohydrate either. You cannot do that, it will be very very bad. You should be eating complete protein and vegetables that is as simple as I can get. Do this within an hour of sleep.


High glycemic carbs good before workouts, but BAD before bed


Complete protein and vegetables great before bed.


In the end all forms of 7pm rule suck. Try eating before bed for a week, I think you will like it, and I know your body will love it.

Till next time.

-Adam Rees

"Life is 10% what happens to you, 90% how you respond to it."

PS. By the way, for those with acid reflux issues, I know people that have had good success with alka seltzer and other forms similar. Good luck.