If you’re involved in a body transformation contest or simply trying to lose fat, but finding it difficult to stick to your plan, then I recommend going back to part 3 of my interview with Brad Pilon.  Brad not only offers some of his best tips to help you see your transformation to the end, but also reveals just how little resistance training you need to maintain muscle mass.

Today, in part 4, we’ll take a closer look at Pilon’s fasting for fat loss book, Eat Stop Eat, and get to the truth about fasting and its effect on your metabolism.  Interesting stuff!

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Craig Ballantyne:  Okay.  So why don’t you give us a quick background on the Eat Stop Eat?  Everybody who’s got this report also has the Eat Stop Eat book so they can read in detail about it, but why don’t you just give us a quick background on the Eat Stop Eat.

From my understanding it’s just eat normal for six days and then fast for 24 hours and then as a result of that you end up with a caloric deficit and so it’s more important over seven days than it is to worry about dieting every day.

Brad Pilon: That’s exactly my approach.  So the key is it’s still the food in between.  I mean it’s always going to come down to what you’re eating but the concept behind Eat Stop Eat is that if you cut out one or two 24-hour chunks of eating from your week and eat the regular way you normally eat to maintain your current weight, that’s almost a 20 percent REDUCTION in food intake if you fasted twice.

And thus you should see a reduction in calories while on the days you are eating you’re still eating the way you normally eat.  And the concept really WORKS for the type of people – and everybody knows them – who want to lose weight and when you start making suggestions on things for them to change they are simply not willing to change their diet.

So it leaves you in a really odd position.  Like I don’t know how to get this person to eat less and then all of a sudden the obvious answer is just ask them to eat less via frequency.  Or the amount of times they eat.

So what it’s designed to do is just make it extremely EASY to do long term.  I mean I’ve been fasting with the twice a week now for almost 18 months now.  And I’ve never really had a situation where I got tired of it or sick of it because I space it out in a way that completely agrees with me.

For me I fast once every five days and it just seems to work.  It’s been the best way for me to keep my body weight extremely low.  I mean I’m never more than five, six pounds off of the weight I competed at.  And it’s just an easy way to maintain caloric restriction.

Over the years I’ve come to think that the bulking and cutting cycling and the ratios approaching the carbs or fast proteins to slow proteins and high glycemic carbs and low glycemic carbs really becomes just moot points compared to how many calories you are or aren’t taking in.

And whether you can do a diet long term is I think the key to success from not only your physique transformation but maintain that transformation.  I can think back and I used to do it all the time when I was young.

The whole concept of dieting for the summer and then ballooning up during the winter.  I mean how counter productive and frustrating is that.  Whereas if you just maintain a lean body 365 days a year it’s way better.

So that’s basically East Stop Eat in a nutshell.  It’s a way to make dieting flexible but still effective.

Craig Ballantyne:  Okay.  And for anybody that is reading this or listening to this, you also can go into the Turbulence Training Members,  and we have a teleseminar with Brad where I have an hour-long interview with him about Eat Stop Eat and the fasting approach to weight loss.  So make sure that you check that out for more information.

Now, Brad, one of the things that we covered in that call but we’ll cover again here is the concern or myth that doing something like that is going to RUIN your METABOLISM.  Do you want to approach that?

Brad Pilon: Yeah.  Absolutely.  Going back to quoting the research which always irks some people but the main determinant, the thing that determines your metabolism or your metabolic rate is your lean body mass.  And as we just discussed if you’re weight training and dieting your lean body mass isn’t really changing. And so if your lean body mass isn’t really changing, then neither is your metabolism.

If you want to take it a bit further, if you look at research studies, there are specific measurements you can take.  One is metabolic rate.  One is RQ which is just a measure of how much fat versus carbs your body is burning.  And two other things you can look at are the two enzymes.  One’s responsible for moving fat out of your fat cells and one’s responsible for moving fat into your fat cells.

And you can look at those four things during a one, two, three, four-day fast and you see that okay lean mass doesn’t go down so you’re maintaining your metabolic rate.  The RQ does go down which means you’re burning more fat.  And the activity of the enzyme releasing fat goes up while the activity of the enzyme that brings fat into your fat cells goes down.

So all signs point to the fact that you’re maintaining your metabolic rate while burning more fat which is exactly what you want during a diet because the GOAL of the diet isn’t just to lose weight.  It’s to LOSE FAT.

So based on that data, small, short periods of complete fasting don’t decrease your metabolic rate or mess up your potential fat burning ability.  So then over a long period of time considering the fact that you will go back to eating you are eating smaller amounts and you are resistance training to keep your lean mass up.

There’s really no reason to believe that you are slowing your metabolism or ruining your fat-burning ability.  Now, you throw inactivity in or become bedridden and lose muscle mass, then that’s a completely different story.  And it’s a result of muscle wasting is indeed a loss of metabolic rate but if you maintain that muscle by training properly it’s not a concern.

Craig Ballantyne:  Okay.  So the big point there is people seem to be getting carried away with articles these days that if you miss a meal your metabolism is going to decrease.

Brad Pilon: Ridiculous.  And I understand in a way it’s a great SCARE TACTIC to sell the idea of multiple meals or certain types of meals or certain ratios but just in the sense of your metabolism slowing down or ruining your ability to burn fat, it just isn’t there.

Craig Ballantyne:  So why don’t you give us a success story of Eat Stop Eat and maybe some beginner that came up that had a hard time losing body fat and has been able to succeed with Eat Stop Eat and how they have done it and put it in their lifestyle.

Brad Pilon: Absolutely.  The people I notice that have been having the results from Eat Stop Eat and the ones who are emailing in and I get a chance to talk to are people who have either had problems with diets in the past or just didn’t even want to bother.

It’s the type of people who when they looked at the pros and cons of dropping 30, 40 pounds of fat versus massive alterations in their lifestyle they just weren’t into it.  They did the pro and con and said as much as I’d love to look better and drop some weight, it’s not worth the change.

And so that’s when those type of people were like okay, this program here which is pretty easy to follow.  As long as I can make it through one of these fasts I know I can make it through all the subsequent fasts so they all sort of start out the same.

People are fairly HESITANT at first.  They give me all the reasons why they probably can’t do the fast.  And then I don’t hear from them for a while because they’ve tried the first fast, they’ve realized it’s fairly easy and they’re just going forward with it.

And then it’s people I have talked to once or twice and then all of a sudden four or five months later I get these emails and these pictures of people who have dropped 40 pounds.  Really amazing things like that.  And a couple of them I’ve had a chance to meet and it was like an entirely different person.

The STORIES were always the SAME.

It’s always I started fasting.  It was easy.  I got the hang of it.  I started working out.  And then the workouts are typically like I really started weight training and then I started intervals.  They were hard but I could do them.  And then I found that I could do them on my fasting days.  That wasn’t a problem.  And then four months later I’m meeting people who have lost a tremendous amount of weight.

And the cool thing is then because fasting is so easy they don’t have to all of a sudden worry about and then I stopped my diet and everything went to hell.  And I’m still fasting.  I just don’t fast as often.

So that’s the great part.  Is so many people who went down from 240 to 200 but then I see them a couple months later and they’re 195 and they’re 180 but they’re not just ballooning back up because they just incorporated the fast lifestyle and the weight training and the rest of the life changes that kind of happen as you start seeing weight loss.

But it’s for those people who really think they can’t do it on other diets that seem to have the best success.

Let’s find out what other nutrition and transformation tips Brad has for us in part 5 of this interview.

Who will be the next winner of the Turbulence Training Transformation Contest and what fat burning workouts will they have used?

We’ll find that out later this week…

If you want to win the 7th TT contest, I have good news for you…it starts…

Sunday, Dec 27th

So get ready to fire it up.

And remember, even if you don’t win, all of the folks who have finished a contest will agree its amazing what you can accomplish in just 12 weeks.

Just imagine…being 10, 15, 20, or even 30 pounds lighter at the end of March. That would be pretty cool, huh?

So get ready to get started right after Christmas.

Click here to download this week’s call

Monday – Dec 14

Transformation Tip: “Be Loud & Proud”

Be loud and proud of the healthy changes you are making in your life. There are many more folks secretly wishing someone will take charge and be a healthy role model for them.

It might not happen overnight, but if you continue to lead by healthy example – without preaching or being condescending – you can build an entourage that will help you reach the next level.

Intermediate Workout A – Fusion 2K6

Workout A
1A) DB Squat (3×15) 2-0-1
1B) Spiderman Push-up (3×12) 1-1-1
2A) DB Row (3×6) 2-0-1
2B) Bulgarian Split Squat (3×15) 2-1-1
3A) DB Incline Press (3×8) 3-0-1
3B) 1-Leg RDL (3×8) 3-0-1
Interval Training

Tuesday
30 minutes of fun activity and now lets look at a recent Protein study.

20 healthy, young resistance trained athletes were examined for energy expenditure for one week and fed a mixed diet (15% protein, 100% energy) .

In the second week, followed by a hypoenergetic diet (60% of the habitual energy intake), containing either 15% (~1.0g.kg) protein (control group, n=10; CP) or 35% (~2.3 g.kg) protein (high protein group, n=10; HP) for two weeks.

Reference:
Med Sci Sports Exerc. “Increased Protein Intake Reduces Lean Body Mass Loss during Weight Loss in Athletes.” Mettler S, et al.

Subjects continued their habitual training throughout the study.

Results
Control group lost 6.6 pounds total weight BUT 3.5 pounds lean mass
Protein group lost 3.3 pounds weight and only 0.67 pounds lean mass

That’s a LOT of lean mass in just 14 days…Seems a little fishy…

So we went to a guy who just spent a few years reviewing protein, training, and other diet studies while getting his Master’s degree, Brad Pilon, for a breakdown. He says…

“The study in question is a very interesting one, but should NOT cause you to drastically change your views with regards to protein.

“This is one trial, and an outlier at that.

“These men managed to lose more FFM in two weeks then you typically find in studies four times this length. While this study was well conducted, this should prompt us to ask the question “why?”

“DXA (the technique used to measure lean mass) doesnt measure muscle mass, only ‘non-fat mass’, so further work needs to be done to see if the losses were actually muscle.

“Numerous studies have not found this result using many different measurement styles and subject groups, and these studies are typically much longer in length. This makes me wonder if this is a transient measurment error/confounder that dissapears after a short period.

“The calorie restriction was not severe. The fat loss (equal in both groups) seems to correlate well with the calorie restriction, but if the losses in Fat Free Mass were actually muscle, this would suggest a large amount of ‘missing calories’ in the study.

“The bottom line is that we should never jump to conclusions with the publication of one single study. Doing this is similar to what newspapers and fitness magazines do, and generally is a waste of time.

“There is more than enough data to show that protein intake plays a very small role in our ability to maintain our muscle mass while we are dieting.

There is also a very large amount of data showing that it is resistance training that determines how much muscle we maintain when we are dieting.

Stick with the total body of evidence in an area, and try not to make drastic changes in your diet on the speculations of one single study.

At the same time we should not discount this study, as no research is ever useless, but we should view it with the bigger picture in mind.”

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Craig again.

Interesting thoughts from Brad, and I think the bottom line is this…

At most, you need 1 gram of protein per pound of your goal bodyweight – as suggested by Alan Aragon last week.

So if you are a 220 pound guy but want to weigh 180, then aim for 180 grams of protein. Or if you are a 150 pound woman that wants to weigh 130 pounds, aim for 130 grams of protein.

You don’t need any more.

Here’s a simple list of common protein sources

1 cup of dairy = 8 grams
1 ounce of meat = 7-8 grams
1 egg = 6 grams (5 grams of fat)
2 tbs. peanut butter = 8 grams (16 grams of fat)
1 cup low-fat cottage cheese = 24 grams
1 scoop of protein powder = 20 grams
1 protein bar = 15-35 grams (check the label)

Wednesday

Workout B – Fusion 2K6

1A) DB Chest Press (3×6) 2-0-1
1B) 1-Leg Hip Extension (3×15) 2-0-1
2A) DB Reverse Lunge (3×8) 2-0-1
2B) Shoulder Press Push-up (3×12) 2-0-1
3A) Inverted Row* (3×15) 2-0-1
3B) Stability Ball Leg Curl (3×15) 2-0-1
Interval Workout B

Thursday
30 minutes of fun activity and check this out…

“Research reported you order more if a skinny friend orders more, you order less if a fat person orders more, and you order less if you eat with people who are careful about what they eat.”

So the bottom line…

Hang around the right folks at the office Christmas party.

Friday

Workout C – Fusion 2K6

A1) DB Split Squat (3×8) 3-1-1
A2) Close-grip DB Press (3×8) 2-0-1
B1) Pull-up (3xMax) 3-0-1
B2) Siff Squat (3×20) 2-0-1

Circuit (1-3 times, no rest b/n ex)
C1) DB Diagonal Lunge (12) 2-0-1
C2) Off-set Push-up (10) 2-0-1
C3) 1-Leg Deadlift (8) 2-0-1
C4) Spiderman Climb (10) 1-0-1
C5) Plank (60 seconds)

Social Support Saturday!

Social support is the #1 key for success in fitness programs. While the support can come from your spouse, sibling, child, parent, friend, neighbor, or co-worker, individuals have a better chance of sticking to an exercise program when they hold themselves accountable to a personal trainer or lifestyle coach.

Don’t try and do this on your own. Social support is important in your quest for fitness and fat loss.

Sunday – Plan, Shop & Prepare

According to Men’s Health magazine (Dec 2009), we should get no more than 9 teaspoons of added sugar per day; but most folks get 30 teaspoons (after all, a can of soda has 8 teaspoons).

So last week, we dedicated an entire article to:

How to Reduce Sugar Cravings

And then I asked Brad Pilon for his suggestions on how to get rid of them, and he said…

“Sugar cravings are a result of expectations. You need to break the cycle, and literally take a break from sugar. My advice is to do a simple 24 hour fast.

“Obviously this is a little self-serving, since I’m the guy who writes about fasting, but I believe that you only need to do this a couple times before you see a reduction in sugar cravings.

Sounds a little crazy, but I have found it works great,  especially if you pay special attention while you are fasting, looking for the times you crave sugar, and the cues that make you crave sugar.

The more you know your personal eating cues, the better you will be at
avoiding or beating those impulses.”

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Craig here again, and I agree, you’ll learn a LOT about your body and your eating schedule and habits just by trying fasting. Check out Brad’s book and blog for more info.

Okay, that’s it…

Next week!
Advanced Fusion 2K6 Workout
Nutrition – More tips to eliminate binging

We’re nearing the finish line of my 9-part interview with Tony Horton, but if you missed part 7 where he reveals the four-letter word that has helped countless people reach their fat loss goals, then make sure to have a read.

But don’t go too far because today in part 8, Tony brings it all together with his 11 Laws of Health & Fitness….

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Tony Horton: It’s fun because on Facebook I can access so many people at once. 

I mean, I – I think – I don’t know if you read my blog called “When I’m 85.”  I couldn’t believe I got, like, 110 comments in the course of 12 hours, because those things mean something to people.  Those are stories.  I always tell people that you can give all the facts and figures in the world, but if you just tell a real, a true story about somebody, that’s – that’s why P90X infomercial has so much success.

We don’t pay a single – all these celebrities use P90X.  A lot of them ask us to be in our infomercials for free, but we turn them down because we don’t need them.

People sitting at home, real people sitting at home, wanna watch real people on their television. They don’t wanna watch some megastar talk about the program.  I mean, all the information – all the infomercials that you see that have celebrities – they are paid money to say what they say.  We don’t have to do that, and we have the most popular products in the country, because it works, because it’s real and it’s truthful.  Ooh, what a shock, huh?

Yeah, the truth – will set you free, man. The truth isn’t easy.

It’s sometimes a jagged little pill to swallow, but good things come to those who are willing to work hard, you know?

I mean – and if there’s a guy like me who can deliver it in a way that is fun, that is motivating, that is inspiring, that has some information attached to it –

I wrote these 11 laws of health and fitness:

Variety, consistency, intensity, purpose, reality, sport, the plan, stress and sleep, loving it, flexibility, and food and supplementation.

It’s – I’m doing a camp in Hawaii in a couple of days, and that’s one of the seminars:  How do those 11 things change your life forever? And in an hour and a half, maybe not all 11 will mean something to you, but at least 4 or 5 will.  And if you can get – hold onto those four or five, like if that light goes on above your head and you say, “Oh, my God, I never really realized that I’m not getting enough sleep,” you know, you – some folks all of a sudden will change their sleep pattern, and everything will change for them.

Another one, too, is – number nine is “loving it.”  Why do exercise you don’t love or at least tolerate?

“Yeah, but everybody else is doing Pilates; I should –”  No, if you hate it, go to the spin class you always loved, because it’s a hell of a lot better than you fighting something that’s popular that you don’t like.

These are simple rules that, when you get it figured out, man, it’s just a whole lot easier to stay fit and healthy for the rest of your life.

To discover the rest of Tony Horton’s fat burning advice:

Click here to listen to this exclusive interview

I promise you’ll learn a lot to help you lose belly fat

Just finished up a powerful interview with one of the most well-known fitness experts in the world, Tony Horton. Tony, as you may know, is the creator of the programs Power 90, P90X, 10-minute trainer, and One-on-One with Tony Horton.

He’s a heck of a guy, and we covered everything including…

- Tony’s story about how he created P90X (you’ll also find out why Tony originally moved to LA)

- How Tony got Power 90 on TV (and you’ll discover who the original Power 90 program was designed for…this is very cool info for all you rock and roll fans)

- What his favorite workouts are in the program (and which type of exercise he dreads…I’ll give you a hint, it’s the kind I don’t like either!)

- The truth about what folks can do in 10 minutes to get great results (and why his 10-minute trainer program is so important)

- What type of intervals he likes best

- Why Tony thinks cardio is important

- What he REALLY thinks about yoga (he makes some pretty bold statements)

- His simple and powerful nutrition tips for fat loss and energy (and what he thinks about counting calories)

- His unstoppable inspiration and motivation secrets

- Amazing inspirational stories of P90X users who cut their body weight in half and lost over 100 pounds

And a lot more. It was just a great, great call.

Click here to listen to Tony Horton’s fat loss coaching call

And make sure you join Tony’s Facebook Fanpage where he is dedicated to bringing a healthy lifestyle to the world through fun, entertainment, and fitness.

Unlike most personal trainers, Tony doesn’t have his windpants pulled up to his navel, and he actually makes fitness fun and easy to understand. Download this call to your Ipod, it will make for a powerful workout motivator.

NOTE for Personal Trainers:

Without realizing it, Tony also happened to drop 3 killer business tips for all personal trainers who want to create their own workout programs, books, and DVD’s, including:

1) How he leveraged a program he designed for a major celeb (you’ll find out who) into a mega-info product

2) How Tony took one of Time magazine’s “Top 10 Future Trends” and used it in P90X to set it apart from everyone else

3) The “testimonial secret” that Tony and I agree on, 100%!

Find out all of that and a lot more in our interview here.

And feel free to share this interview with everyone you know who is interested in improving their health and fitness.

Pay it forward just like Tony,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS

Wow, crazy week just went by…

We added the Turbulence Training Transformation Contest to Facebook.

And I recorded a free call for you going over every single last detail about how to enter the contest, how to take amazing photos, and how to win some money by losing belly fat!

Click here for the free call

Alright, now let’s get into the best fat burning tips of the week! You’ll discover some slight workout tweaks I used when creating the TT Buff Dudes-Hot Chicks program that we are giving away this week.