Last day in part 2 of my interview with Scott Colby, I talked about what to do if you’re trying to lose fat, but love carbs.  If that sounds like you, then you’ll definitely want to go back and read up on that.

Today we discuss another familiar question – you eat well, workout regularly, but can’t seem to lose the belly fat.  So what should you do?  Let’s find out…

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Scott Colby: Let’s see – our next question, Richard Steele out in Hollister, California.  He says, “I work out three times a week and am active the rest of the week.  I eat as clean as possible, but cannot get rid of the last of my belly pouch. I’m 62 and hover around 8 percent body fat” – that’s awesome, congratulations!  “8 percent body fat at 185 pounds.  I used to weight 250 pounds.

“Maybe I don’t eat enough to free the need to hoard fat for energy.” So basically, he’s 62, he’s lost a lot of weight, 8 percent body fat, and trying to get rid of the last of his fat in his stomach.

Craig Ballantyne: Well, 8 percent’s kind of hard to believe if you do have remaining body fat, because in pictures of me where I’m kind of – you know on my blog at ttfatloss.com or on my website, my famous kind of ab shot, I don’t even think I’m 8 percent body fat in that shot.

So there may be some error in the measurement, which I’m not making any friends here with this answer.  But I just don’t believe that you can be 8 percent body fat and have belly fat that is visible, because 8 percent body fat, that’s what the guys on the cover of Men’s Health magazine are.

So there may be some error in measurement, but then we take into account the fact that you have lost body fat in the past, it may be excess skin.  And that excess skin is going to be difficult to remove at age 62, because that’s when our skin elasticity starts to lose its ability to just kind of rebound.

So really we go back to the same thing that I said to our first guy, George.  We take a look at the NUTRITION.  Is it really as good as we say it is? Do all those things that we talked about.  And then increase the intensity of the exercise.  And that’s really the only two things that are really gonna work here.

Without knowing how many calories he’s consuming, without knowing the exact foods, we can’t talk about that last question that he asked.  But I know we’re gonna get into the how many calories and that type of stuff, so I may as well cover that right now.

How much protein should I consume?

And the answer to how much protein that you should consume per day is gonna be one gram per pound of your ideal body weight. So I’m just answering this because I know we’re gonna cover it.  But one gram per pound of your ideal body weight.

EXAMPLE:

So if you’re 150 pounds and you wanna be 140 pounds, then that’s how many grams of protein you should have is 140 grams.

And then your DAILY CALORIE INTAKE should be this:

It’s going to be – your daily calories are going to be your ideal body weight multiplied by the number of hours you exercise plus 9.5.

EXAMPLE:

So let’s say we’re using 180 pounds as our goal body weight, and our daily calories are gonna be 180, and he’s exercising 3 hours per week, so it’ll be 3 plus 9.5, which will give us 12.5, multiplied by 180.  I had this on my blog at ttfatloss.com.  Now using 180 times 12.5, we get 2250 as a daily calorie intake.

And then from there, we get 180 grams of protein, and then the number of FAT GRAMS we’re gonna want is half of our ideal body weight in grams.

So our ideal body weight is 180 pounds, so fat intake per day is gonna be 90 grams.  Then CARBOHYDRATES is simply gonna be the same as protein, so it’s gonna be 180 grams as well.

So that would be – and I’m getting this equation from Men’s Health magazine, from a guy named Alan Aragon, who I think is a really, really smart nutritionist.  Common sense – lots of common sense there.  And so if you’re exercising 3 hours per week and you wanna be 180 pounds, which would help our gentleman here lose some body fat and belly fat, then 2250 calories per day is maybe what he wants.

Now another thing to do, if that seems high to him – and it may well be – then here’s another thing to do….

Write down everything that you’re eating.  Figure out how many calories that is.

If you’re NOT losing belly fat on that, then chances are you have to decrease that amount and increase the quality of your food. So the very first thing that you do is:

• Make sure that you’re eating ten servings of fruits and vegetables.
• Increase the quality of the food.
• Eliminate anything from a bag or a box.
• Then maybe even recalculating your calorie intake now that you’ve improved the quality of your diet.
• If you’re still not losing weight, then talk about decreasing your calories 10 or 20 percent.

However, if he writes and is concerned that he’s not eating enough, it’s tough to say without knowing the actual numbers here.  And then there’s two actual numbers.

There’s the number of calories he BELIEVES he’s eating, and then the number of calories that we’re ACTUALLY eating after we go through that equation and do the seven day food journal and really find out is there anywhere where we’re doing what’s called mindless eating, which is when you go home from work and it’s between work and dinner.

And you’re just kind of putting your hands in all types of things – a cookie here, a handful of chips there, whatever.  That’s MINDLESS EATING.  It can add up to a lot of calories in a lot of people, and that’s the type of thing that we have to put routines into our life.

Such as instead of going home and doing that, the first thing I do when I go home while I’m preparing dinner is I cut up lots of broccoli, peppers, mini-carrots, and prepare hummus, and that’s what I snack on.  So even if I filled myself up on that, I’d probably only eat 200-250 calories, versus if I had one cookie and a handful of chips, I might have 250 calories and no dent in my hunger was even made.

So that’s the kind of stuff we have to watch out for is the mindless eating.

And then we put those routines in there to make sure that we are not doing that type of stuff.  And then we also figure out from that calorie and food journal are the portion sizes that we’re eating, were they twice as much than what we thought?  And therefore we’re eating an extra 300 calories at breakfast, an extra 150 calories at lunch, an extra 250 calories at dinner.  And if we cut those portions back, then we start getting results.

So there’s a lot of factors.  I mean really every single one of these questions needs to be answered in an entire one-hour sit-down consultation.

Scott Colby: You got that much time, Craig?

Craig Ballantyne: Well, you know there’s so many factors in here.  I’m trying to be pretty straightforward about it and trying to cover every single angle from which we can attack this.  But I think that he’s certainly living a great lifestyle, and he deserves better results than what he’s getting if he’s struggling with that.  So hopefully those are some alternatives that will come through for him.

Scott Colby: Yeah.  All good advice, Craig.  And I’ll send out a link to your blog where people can get that equation that you were determining the calories and the fat grams.

Craig Ballantyne: Sure.

Scott Colby: And we’ve covered weight training and such, and I’ll just recommend maybe he could take a look at his workouts just to make sure he’s changing it up.

A lot of people do the same routine for months, and that may be one thing he needs to do is increase the weight or change the routine of the workout.  And then just something simple, like when I went through a pretty good transformation, one of the big things – and we’ve talked about it – I just cut out cereals and most breads and that made a big difference in my belly fat.

Again, it was stuff I thought was healthy for me that it turned out had too many ingredients that were holding me back in my results.  So just maybe some simple tweaks, but you gave some great suggestions.

Let’s jump to the next question regarding low calorie diets for fat loss.

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.

Whew-wee…we’ve covered a lot so far and if you’re just jumping in now, then be sure to check out part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of my 9-part interview series with P90X creator, Tony Horton.

Today we’re going to switch gears a little bit and see what advice Tony has for us in terms of diet and  nutrition.

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Craig Ballantyne:    Yeah.  It’s such a simple thing that can be so powerful.  And I’m sure that you guys have seen it, like you said, thousands and thousands and thousands of times – amazing stories of people literally cutting their body weight in half.

Tony Horton: You know Dallas Carter lost 160 pounds.  This girl, Julianne, lost 110 pounds. They – in both their stories;

they didn’t count a calorie;

they just stopped eating junk.

And they stopped eating huge meals.

And they stopped eating before they went to bed.

And the problem with most people is that they have a food addiction, and they’re not willing to admit it.  They have a serious food – they’re addicted to the crap ingredients that is in most food.  And it’s hard to get off.  It’s maybe not as hard as getting off of cigarettes, but it’s really hard.  You know what I mean?

So I tell folks, I say, “Find fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats, and find the spices that make those things taste good.  And find the restaurants that will make the food the way you want it.” I can go into any restaurant, anywhere, and ask for exactly what I want.  I mean, it’s not – I’m not gonna say I’m gonna get the thin crust, whole grain pizza covered in vegetables with no cheese, but I’ll get something close.  I’ll get something close.

And I always tell the waiter – like, people say, “Well, what do you do when you go out?  What do you do when you travel?”  I say, “Put a cooler in the car, plug it in, and then put – you know, PLAN ahead.”  Nutritionists – just like their workouts.

If you wanna have success with your workouts, you have to have a PLAN.  Same thing with food.

You have to have a – if you’re going on a trip and you’re gonna be in a car, and you didn’t pack the – and the night before and put it in your cooler in the car the next morning, then you have not made your PLAN and you have set yourself up for FAILURE.

You’re gonna be starving, and there’s gonna be Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s, and Burger King, and Pizza Hut along the way, and you’re gonna make a mistake.  You know?  There are certain rules to success.  I call it the “cycle of success.”

There are certain things that have to be done every day, for you to succeed, for your day to be great.

I’m 51 years old, and ten minutes ago, I was eight, playing catch in my front yard.  I’m 51.  How’d that happen?  The trip is short.  You’d better get your act together.  You know what I mean?  Are you gonna go out like a lot of people, the last 20 years of your life?  And it’s an ugly picture, filled with lack of movement, lots of depression, and too many pills.

Craig Ballantyne:    Those are powerful, powerful points there.  And Tony, you know, seeing you on Facebook and just listening to the last five minutes of conversation there, you’re a true motivator and a very inspirational person.

Now, what is it that – what are some of the things that you have seen in your personal training with clients that has helped people stay motivated?  Obviously just simply knowing to PLAN, planning ahead, keeping it as simple as possible.  What else has really been very successful in helping people that you’ve trained in person and through P90X to stay motivated and stick with the program?

Tony Horton: You know what I learned a long time ago is that – there’s a great article in Time magazine that came out, I don’t know, about five or six years ago.  It was the ten most important trends of the millennium.  And number nine was called “Infotainment.”  And I’m kind of hardwired for that.  I mean, that’s just kind of who I am.  I mean, I was an actor and a comic, and I also loved fitness.

So I could take really dull, hard to swallow stuff and make it more palatable for people through little – like, a lot of my expressions, “Do your best and forget the rest,” “You’re only good at things you do often,” “Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean protein, and healthy fats,” you know, “the cycle of success,” “communication,” you know, “meditation” – these are all things that I – that are short and easy to remember and keep you on track.

I mean, I know you have a lot of trainers out there, but the thing is, a lot of trainers and nutritionists and everything – they treat this stuff like rocket science.

Well, the stuff is hard to swallow as it is; and then we’re gonna make it dry and boring on top of that?  Oh, my God.  You know?  The reason why P90X is successful is because Carl Daikeler, the CEO, and Jon Congdon, our president, said, “Horton, go do your thing.  We’ll tone you down if you get too crazy,” you know?

So I was able to just – I mean, I go on QVC and I just act like a clown.  I mean, I just – you know, why make this stuff – it’s – push-ups are hard.  Pull-ups are hard.  Squats are hard.  Cardio sucks.  You know?

I mean, if we’re gonna make it really important _____ giving all the statistics and the range of motion and the Krebs cycle – shut up.  If your client wants that, and if that’s important, great.  If they wanna count calories, then you’re better to show them how.  But other than that, you’d better get a sense of humor.  Get a sense of humor about it, man.  And give people a break.

A guy – I have a friend of mine; she’s brilliant.  Brilliant.  She does Gyrotonics and Pilates.  But she starts working with me, and she doesn’t cut me a break.  She asks me to do things that I physically can’t do, and she looks at me like I’m crazy.

“You’re a trainer.”  I said, “I’ve never done this move before in my life.  I have a learning curve, thank you very much, so I’d like you to be more patient and have a better sense of humor and show me a modified version.”  And if you’re supposed to be so good – those – you’ve got degrees up the ying yang, but you can’t show me those three things?  So that’s important, I think.

Craig Ballantyne:    That’s awesome stuff.  I mean, aside from just being really interesting and motivational to the people that are listening for the fat loss purpose, the trainers – I hope you really paid attention to what Tony just said there.

It was CAREER-CHANGING advice for you.

If you can be entertaining and break things down into very simple concepts from the very – from slightly complex stuff that nutrition and exercise can be, you will help a lot more people.  And Tony – with 18,000-plus fans on Facebook, on your Facebook fan page, you are certainly helping a lot of people.

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

We’re now onto part 4 of the 9-part interview with Tony Horton, but if you missed part 3 where he revealed the fountain of youth, and why not being able to do something right away might actually be a good thing, then you’ll want to check that out.

Today,  Tony discusses what kind of results you can really expect from working out only 10 minutes a day, as well as offering alternatives to doing long, slow boring cardio that will keep you motivated and coming back for more.  So let’s get into….What To Do When You Hate Working Out

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Craig Ballantyne: So let’s switch gears and talk about the ten-minute programs that you have now.  Why don’t you tell the folks listening at home what people can really get done in ten minutes and then how you structured those workouts to get the absolute, 100 percent out of every single second in those ten minutes?

Tony Horton: Well, remember when the ten-minute trainer came out, everybody was calling me a sellout, you know what I mean?  “Oh, Mr. Extreme Fitness is selling ten-minute workouts.  He’s a sellout.”  Well, what I’m trying to do – what Carl Daikeler, our CEO, is trying to do – is get as many people moving and getting off the couch as possible.

So there’s a MASSIVE demographic of people who can’t even get near Power 90 or P90X, folks that have got 60, 70, 150 pounds to lose.  There’s a lot more of those kinds of people in this country than ever before.

So the only way you’re gonna get them off the couch is introduce them to routines that are obviously shorter.

They have to still be intense.  I mean, they can’t be – walking ten minutes is not gonna have the same amount of results as something that is very synergistic in nature, where you’re lunging and curling and pressing and kicking and – you know what I mean?  That’s the thing about the ten-minute trainer routines.  Each one of those ten-minute workouts are NOT a walk in the park. Some of them have the same level of intensity as parts of the P90X routine.

The idea is, I show you modifications – “Look, here’s the advanced way to do it; here’s the super-modified way to do it.  Pick one that you can physically do, but I want you to finish the ten minutes.”  You know, “Just do the ten minutes.” So the idea is to try to get two of those in a day.

Now, if you did just ten minutes a day, the results would come, very slowly – that is, if you modified your diet, right; you got all the junk out and you started eating better.  But at twice a day, the idea is – we sell the ten-minute trainer as a means to help people who have very tight schedules to start working out, people who have had all these excuses, “I don’t have time, right?  I need – I don’t need –”  So it takes you ten minutes to make the bed.  You can work out in ten minutes.

But the demographic that we don’t talk about are people who HATE exercise.

Hate it.  They just – “Ah, forget it.  I don’t like sweating; I don’t like breathing hard; I don’t like my muscles being sore.”  So the idea is to try to introduce to those folks, “Look, if you want the quality of your life to improve, you’re not gonna get it through a pill, a potion, or processed food.  You’ve been wasting your time and going around in cycles with that.  Why don’t you try stepping up – do ten minutes in the morning?”

I have a cousin who’s a perfect example.

She didn’t like going to a gym; she had a bunch of kids.  She had the time. I mean, she knew that she could make the time.  She just didn’t want to.  And so I said, “Look.  Here’s a disc.  It’s me.  It’s your cousin.  Just put it in the thing and do it.”  I mean, what’s – and she lost a bunch of weight.  She has a ton of energy.  And she got off some of the basic crap food that she was eating, and she got amazing results.  So –

Craig Ballantyne: Very good.  All right, so let’s talk about interval training.  I was reading, actually, your – there’s a Wikipedia page on Tony Horton, and it was talking about how you got into interval training with the help of, I think, Mark Sisson or something.  And so why don’t you tell us about your favorite interval type of training, your favorite duration, length, that type of workout, and then how you like to do interval training the best?  Is it some type of cardio machine, or is it biking outside, or what do you like to do for interval training?

Tony Horton: Well, I do different kinds of interval training.  Like, the one that I’m gonna do tonight is a leg – is a Plyometric legs routine.  And so, unlike the Plyo routine in P90X – we kind of go from one to another to another of super-intense Plyometric move to a semi-intense to a completely non-Plyometric move, because you need that.  You can’t do Plyo, Plyo, Plyo, Plyo.  There’s just – the lactic – the Krebs cycle won’t – I’m not – how do I say this in basic terms?  There’s just – the lactic acid builds up so your muscles burn out and you can’t do it.

So the routine I’m doing tonight is a combination of a Plyometric movement and basic leg moves.  So there’s a lunge move; there’s a squat move; there’s a Plyo move.  And we kind of rotate.  And there’s some – I have a lot of isometric movements in there.  We do chair against the wall, one-legged chair against the wall.

And I – and we try to go as quickly as we can, because the heart rate shoots way through the roof.  And then you take a short break, maybe 15 seconds, and you get – 15, maybe 30, if there’s – sometimes we have 12 people here at my house doing it, so some folks, I don’t wanna leave them behind.  So we have to – more people slows it down.  But that’s one of my favorite interval routines.

The other one I do is on machines.

I love doing intervals on – like at my house, here at my gym, I have a slide board; I have a ski machine; I have a VersaClimber; I have a stationary bike; I have a treadmill; I have a platform to jump rope on; I have a set of stairs and a heavy bag.  Now, what I’ll do is I’ll do five minutes on each one of those, right?  So – and then I even have them all numbered.  I went and had them all, like, and then – with these interchangeable numbers.

So it’s this – every Wednesday night, I do this mixed-up – I call it core cardio interval routine.  So the heart rate’s up, and then you’re going full blast.  Five minutes is awesome.  It’s a perfect amount of time for me just to go crazy.  Then I hop off; I give myself, like, 30 seconds, and then, bang, I jump on another one.

And the great thing about that is, if you think about it – you can go for a 45-minute run, and what are you doing the whole time?

You’re running.  You’re running, you’re running, you’re running, you’re running. 

So you might hurt your knees, you might hurt your ankle, you might hurt your back.  You’re very susceptible to injury, especially as you get older.  Have you ever watched somebody in their 60s or 70s run?  Holy cow, you just wanna pick them up and throw them in a yoga class, you know?

And – but when you’re doing a routine like that, you go from a lateral ski exercise to a vertical VersaClimber routine to a linear running thing and then to a Plyometric jump roping thing.  I mean, you can’t beat that.  You’re less vulnerable to injury.  You’re less vulnerable to getting hurt.  And it’s a heck of a lot more fun, man, when you’re mixing it up like that.

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

Last winter I did an interview, “The Craig Ballantyne Turbulence Training Interrogation” with Joel Marion, a former Body-for-Life Transformation Contest winner. It’s something you need to read if you’re interested in losing belly fat with interval training.

An Interview with Craig Ballantyne

If you perform 30-45 minutes of moderate cardiovascular exercise almost daily, yet you’re still not losing fat nearly as quickly as you’d like, it could be that all that cardio is actually holding you back.  Body transformation contest expert Joel Marion sits down with “Just Say No to Cardio” author Craig Ballantyne to find out the truth about fat loss.

Joel Marion:  Craig, you just wrote a very controversial fat loss book called Just Say No to Cardio (which we’ll be getting into shortly), but for those of our readers who may not be familiar with you, tell us a little bit about your background and some of the other things you’re  involved in.

Craig Ballantyne:
Joel, I’ve been helping men and women lose fat without slow-go cardio since 2000 through my best selling fat loss program, Turbulence Training, in addition to having well over a hundred articles published in magazines like Oxygen, Muscle & Fitness Hers, and Men’s Health.  I also hold a Master’s Degree in Exercise Physiology.

JM: Turbulence Training really has become a revolution in the fitness industry with people all over the world dropping weight and getting into fantastic shape without ever doing a “typical” cardio workout. In fact, in your book you talk about some of the myths surrounding low-intensity cardio and weight loss.  Can you tell us a little bit about some of the latest research your cardio, fat loss, and interval training recommendations are based on?

CB:
Sure thing.  Despite what the general fitness crowd teaches, long, slow cardio sessions just aren’t a great way to lose fat.  One study from the journal Obesity discovered that when men and women did 6 hours of cardio per week for a full year, the average woman’s weight loss was only 4 pounds. That’s a lot of work for almost no results.

A second study from the International Journal of Obesity had an even scarier finding. Researchers discovered that some subjects will gain weight when they start a cardio program because they end up eating more food each day. The scientists call these folks “compensators”, and this behavior might explain why some women do so much cardio and find that their thighs get bigger.

So most folks are just hoping and praying for cardio success, but without results.

Finally, a recent study from Australia compared 40 minutes of regular cardio against 20 minutes of interval training. Each workout was done 3 times per week, but at the end of the study, only the interval training group lost belly fat.

That’s three strikes for regular cardio.

JM:  And let me add strikes four and five.  I was recently looking at studies from the University of Texas and Lincoln University that resulted in similar findings—up to 14 hours per week of mostly slow cardio and subjects actually gained weight.  So there’s some compelling, additional validity to the “compensator” theory.  So if regular cardio isn’t the answer for men and women looking to lose fat, what is?

CB:
With the Turbulence Training approach, I train women with a two-factor fat loss program. First, we do resistance training, often using a lot of bodyweight exercises and some dumbbell exercises.

Research shows that resistance training alone can help women lose fat. One of the secrets of an effective resistance training program is to use a high-intensity. You won’t get results using a weight you can lift 25 times.

Second, we use interval training, which I’ll discuss a little later in the interview.

JM:  Very cool, Craig.  Now, you mentioned bodyweight exercises.  One thing I’ve always liked about Turbulence Training is that you can do the workouts at home without any fancy equipment.  Can you give our readers some insight on a great, high-intensity fat-burning workout that they can do in their living room?

CB:
There are 5 fat burning moves I put in every workout. You can do these with only your bodyweight, but you can also use an exercise ball or dumbbells for variety. One way to do these 5 exercises is in a circuit.

Start with a squatting movement. This could be bodyweight squats, dumbbell squats, or even split squats (stationary lunges).

The second movement is a pressing exercise, either a pushup variation or some type of dumbbell press.

The third movement is a pulling exercise. I recommend dumbbell rows.

The fourth movement is any single-leg exercise, such as lunges, split squats, or lying 1-leg hip extensions for beginners.

Finally, the circuit finishes with a total-body ab exercise. This can be a plank, side plank, mountain climber, or an exercise ball ab move like jackknives or rollouts. Rest one minute at the end of the circuit and then repeat 2-3 more times.

JM:  It really is the ultimate way to exercise for burning massive amounts calories and dropping fat fast.  I also talk about interval training in that article, which you alluded to earlier.  Can you give our readers a basic explanation of what you mean by interval training?

CB:
Interval training is alternating between short burst of harder-than-normal-cardio with short recovery periods.

For example, if you can normally run on the treadmill at 6mph for 30 minutes, we’d have you do 1 minute of interval training at 7.5 mph followed by easy walking recovery at 3.0 mph. We’ll repeat that 5 more times. Including a warmup and cooldown, you’re looking at 20 minutes total. Interval training takes only half the time of normal cardio, but you will get more results.

JM:  I couldn’t agree more.  Now, getting back to Just Say No to Cardio, what would you say are the top two myths surrounding cardio and weight loss?

CB:
The first has to be the fat burning zone. By exercising in the “fat burning zone”, as some folks like to call it, you only burn a few extra calories than if you weren’t doing any exercise at all! Slow, boring cardio workouts are not the best way to lose belly fat. If you truly want to change your body, you need to use short, burst-type exercise and home fitness workouts.

The second is the myth that we need to get up and do slow cardio on an empty stomach in order to burn fat. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no fat loss magic to doing cardio on an empty stomach. In fact, most trainers “in-the-know” are using intervals instead of slow, boring cardio to help their clients burn fat fast. Plus, who wants to be doing boring cardio at 6am while their stomach is rumbling?

JM:  Interesting stuff.  I also dropped the empty stomach cardio recommendation more than five years ago when I came across research showing that those who consumed a small meal before their workout actually increased performance and burned more calories.

Another study showed no difference in the amount of fat burned when performing workouts on an empty stomach, so for those reading and doing empty stomach cardio, make the switch to more effective workouts today!

Alright, Craig, last question.  What is the one secret to fast fat loss that no one else really talks about?

CB:
Social support.

Research shows again and again that folks need social support to help them lose weight.  For many men and women, they don’t have social support at home, so they need to go online to find a positive fat loss community for motivation and encouragement to stick to their diet and program.

Research from Sweden shows the more you use online fat loss support websites, the more fat you will lose. That’s why I created the Turbulence Training online support forum, and everyone who starts using Turbulence Training gets a free 3-month membership.

JM:  Thanks for the informative interview Craig!

CB:
Great speaking with you Joel, and I hope this has helped everyone understand Turbulence Training even better.

And to everyone, please let me know if you have any other questions about Turbulence Training.

To your success,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training