Unveiling the truths of Weight Loss...

Having a hard time losing weight? You’re not alone in this fitness journey. So immediately after I lost a significant amount of weight, built up muscle and got into really great shape… Immediately people asked me what I did, how did I do it and how I kept my motivation to keep doing the workout…. After a significant mount of internet research here are the cliff notes of all of that medical research to help you on your fitness and workout journey.

First let’s start with the problem: There is a TON of internet mis-information designed towards getting you to spend money with X or Y company. Then there are the calorie deficit people who believe that creating a calorie deficit is the only way to lose weight, however, the problem is that’s only half of the story. The calorie deficit DOES work IF you stick to healthy foods… HOWEVER… it’s not necessarily the healthiest option or even the fastest option AND potentially mis-leading you down the wrong path. So let me clear up the murky waters, so you can go and manifest your greatness…

So a lot of the big food companies spend a lot of money to try to market to mass amounts of people, this concept about calories in and calories out and that’s how you lose weight… followed by say an ad for Coke Zero or Diet Coke… something that has zero calories. I’ve even seen McDonalds Commercials about eating less to lose weight featuring their new hamburger. This is a lot of mis-information put out into the market place.

So the problem is that most people don’t know what a calorie is other than it’s a unit of energy.

Here’s what it ACTUALLY is and how it’s measured.

If you were to take a single cubic gram of water, place it over “said food”, then set “said food” on fire… it’s how many degrees in Celsius it would raise the temperature of that cubic gram of water…

Note: THIS HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW YOUR BODY RESPONDS TO SAID FOOD!!!! Going back to our diet coke example… one of the ingredients is an anti-flame retardant chemical so it measures in at zero calories… The not so funny part is that it contains aspartame, sucralose, and other chemicals that have been medically proven by the CDC, FDA and numerous other medical organizations to actually make you GAIN weight! They also have other enormous health defects that you are probably going to want to avoid.

Here’s a great article about this.

https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/diet-soda-weight-gain-metabolism-insulin-brain-fat-metabolic-syndrome.html

Okay, now I’m done beating up on Diet Coke and all the well-meaning mis-informed calorie deficiters… SO WHAT DOES WORK?

So that thing that ACTUALLY makes your gain weight is called the glycemic load and glycemic index. Essentially it’s a number that scientists have applied to food that represents how fast your body converts that food into glucose or sugar. At the top of the list is sugar, donuts, white bread etc and at the bottom of the list is spinach (which has a score of 0), brocolli, Kale etc. If you do a quick google search you can find the glycemic index and glycemic load of different foods. To start losing weight typically you want to food to have a score under 20. Here’s a quick list of some of those foods, Oatmeal, Brown Rice, Sweet Potato, Banana, Pineapple, Grapes, Beans, Carrots, Kiwi, Apple, Orange, Cherries, strawberries, Kale, Broccoli, and spinach.

Here’s a little chart from Harvard Medical School

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glycemic-index-and-glycemic-load-for-100-foods

Things to avoid - Unfortunately you’re going to have to become one of those annoying people who reads labels. If you’re trying to lose weight and can’t figure out why it’s not coming off, it’s because there is an ingredient in what you’re currently ingesting / disguising itself as something else that you’ve overlooked.

Here are a list of the usual suspects -

1. Aspartame - This is 180 times sweeter than sugar… ingestion reports includ dizziness, headaches, and memory loss. Some studies suggest it is also cancer causing.

2. Saccharin - This is 300 times sweeter than sugar - This has also been linked to cancer, Obesity, and overeating.

3. Sucralose - (splenda) This is 600 times sweeter than sugar - This was originally discovered as part of a new insecticde compound. This is made of clorinated compounds that have been linked to cancer and weight loss and it’s in just about everything you buy from the grocery store that is in a can, or has a long shelf life. Grocery stores and manufacturers of these food products are all more interested in making money and staying in business as opposed to your health. The only person who is going to look out for you is you… and well me by writing this article.

4. Sugar - This goes without saying

5. Dextrose - This is basically just sugar…

6. Rule of thumb… If it’s anything you can’t pronounce… it’s probably a chemical that some company put in their food to make it last longer so they can see higher profits and likewise probably won’t help you.

Bummer right? Sort of… there are organic sweeteners that are also amazing for you… So you just need to swap out the bad sweeteners with the good sweeteners while your cooking for yourself. In another blog post, I’ll post some recipes that I use ALL the time for Healthy Ice Cream, and a bunch of other foods that people generally categorize as “unhealthy” that can be made to be healthy if we just replace the unhealthy ingredients with healthy ones…

1. Xylitol - White crystalline specs - it looks, acts, and tastes like sugar. I think it tastes better. This is a natural sweetener that stabilizes insulin and hormone levels, promotes good health and is actually good for your teeth. This sweetener can literally be used as a 1 for 1 swap for sugar.

2. Stevia - This is actually 1.5 times sweeter than sugar. Some vendors have a weird after taste that most people don’t like, but then there are some really good vendors that don’t have it… so before you try a bad vendor and forget about this one all together… try a few different ones. There are some amazing organic stevia vendors on amazon where the taste is like OH MY GOSH… Some people also get this confused for a bad natural sweetener like splenda however it isn’t. It comes from a stevia leaf and the body doesn’t metabolize the glycosides so there is NO caloric intake or negative effect on the body. It has no effect on on blood glucose levels.

3. Raw Honey - This is SUPER healthy for your digestive tract. This also helps with bacterial invasion.

4. Coconut Nectar - This contains 17 amino acids and minerals. Which help you build muscle and burn fat.

5. Maple Syrup - Grade B is the best for you… Grade A is also good but most people assumed that Grade A was better than Grade B and now most stores only carry Grade A. This promotes good heart health so if you want a bigger gas tank while you work out… this can help with that.

Also try to avoid going out to eat. Most Restaurants cook their ingredients in crisco… which even if you have something like sweet potato fries… if they cooked it in crisco… it’s now also horrible for you.

Try to cook your food in Avacado oil, Grapeseed Oil or coconut oil. I would also mention olive oil however olive oil can only be cooked in low heat below 275 degrees F before it turns into a black smoke which is actually unhealthy for you. What olive oil IS really great at is making Salad Dressings. Plus coconut oil and avocado oil will actually help you burn fat because what happens is your body can either burn carbohydrates or fats for energy… if you digest healthy fats like avacados your body begins to become “trained” to burn fat for energy. So this begs the question are there foods that will help me burn more fat…

YES… I like to call them my Fat Burning Combat Force Multipliers. Combining them together helps increase fat burn by MASSIVE amounts…

1. African Mango - Usually put into a pill form. You can get it cheap on amazon or usually at a pharmacy attached to a grocery store somewhere.

2. Chia Seeds - These are PACKED with nutrients. Give you a bunch of energy.

3. Grapefruit - If you eat a grapefruit within 45 minutes of working out, (recovery window) you can double your fat burn. It’s gross at first… but do it for a 3-5 days and eventually you’ll begin to enjoy it… I crave it after my workouts now… but NOTE: Do protein right after your workout… Then eat a grapefruit… if you do the grapefruit first… your protein drink will have a slight grapefruit taste to it.

4. Apple Cider Vinegar - This has been medically proven to help with weight loss. All sorts of different ways to get this one down the hatch… I’ve seen people make gummies, smoothies, etc.

5. Oranges / little cuties / Mandarins - Helps burn 50% more fat… similar to Grapefruit but just not as effective, but easier to take on at first.

6. Almonds - Raw almonds in smaller doses (about 1 cup) have actually been medically proven to help you lose weight. 1 cup equals about two handfuls. This food is also a really great source of high quality protein that helps you build muscle.

7. Avacado - This is a healthy fat that your body starts burning that healthy fat for energy… Do this enough and your body becomes used to burning fat for energy and likewise continues doing it.

8. Cayenne Pepper - This pepper is used typically as a spice but it helps normalize your blood sugar levels. There are doctors who have had great success treating type II diabetes with this… and there have been a number of cases where people have used this by dumping it into a glass of water and it would stop heart attacks.

9. Quinoa and Sweet Potato - Although these foods don’t present an immediate fat burning element to help you. These foods are starchy carbohydrates which give you energy so that you can perform at a high level again tomorrow… and if you eat them tomorrow, you’ll have energy to workout the next day… it’s the long play. These foods will help you hit your carbohydrate macros in the next section.

10. Turmeric - This spice will have you killing your workouts. There have been some medical studies that show that this spice is stronger than steroids. I didn’t believe it at first… however try getting some organic turmeric… and making up turmeric tea where you blend the termeric in water and let it boil for 10 minutes or so which helps activate the curcumin element… there’s a coupe different recipes floating around the internet.

11. Drinking Ice water within the first 15 minutes of waking up. This has been proven to raise your metabolism. Drinking ice water actually burns calories because your body needs to warm up that area so to do that it has to send blood to that area.

Maximizing your body’s responsiveness to the foods - This is also where the calorie deficit people’s argument sort of falls apart… If you are utilizing a calorie deficit, you’re not building muscle… Building and maintaining muscle in turn also burns more fat. Most people trying to lose weight that try the calorie deficit technique usually either fail because they are ONLY focusing on calories and not the quality of food (nutrients) they are putting into their body OR they can’t maintain a calorie deficit because they are tired, drowsy, and end up falling asleep at work or something. Eventually they go right back to their old way of life because they are starving themselves essentially and go back to eating the foods that allows them to live their old life without falling asleep at work or something. So if you want to maximize your body’s effort in the shortest amount of time, you need to be hitting what they call macros. Macros are a balance of Carbohydrates, Protein and fats. There’s a couple different ways of measuring this. The most common and at least my favorite is by body weight vs grams of each category. So for this example, we will assume that you are a 100 lbs person. (I know… most people that want to lose weight don’t weight 100 lbs but the Math is WAY easier to understand if we make it simple)

Macros designed for Fat Loss

1. Fat = 0.4 Grams per lbs of body weight (so if you were a 100 lbs person, you would want to try to hit 40 grams of fats)

2. Protein = 1-1.5 grams per lbs of body weight (So if you were a 100 lbs person, you would want to try to hit somewhere between 100 and 150 grams of protein)

3. Carbohydrates = 1 gram per lbs of body weight (So if you were a 100 lbs person, you would want to try to hit 100 grams of carbohydrates per day)

Macros Designed for MUSCLE GAIN

1. Fat = 0.4 Grams per lbs of body weight (so if you were a 100 lbs person, you would want to try to hit 40 grams of fats)

2. Protein = 1-1.5 grams per lbs of body weight (So if you were a 100 lbs person, you would want to try to hit somewhere between 100 and 150 grams of protein)

3. Carbohydrates - 2 grams per lbs of body weight (So if you were a 100 lbs person, you would want to try to hit 200 grams of carbohydrates)

NOTE: how the only difference between these two plans are the amount of carbohydrates you consume… Carbohydrates help give your body the necessary energy to build muscle AND perform other daily tasks like not falling asleep at work.

Working out - So now that we discussed diet and which foods will help you in your journey - Let’s talk about working out for a second. Burst Training, Circuit Training or High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has been proven time and time again to be the most effective way to lose weight / build muscle / become a sexy beast. There’s a lot of really great workouts out there from Crossfit WODs to free weight exercises… The key is to switch muscle groups. A lot of people love to try to take credit for these and call it something different but the reality is that it was originally discovered by a German scientist named Hala Rambie who defected from West Germany during the cold war and studied the effects of training legs, then push ups and then pull ups and noticed that by training different muscle groups in the same setting burned significantly more fat. For movement exercises try to keep the rest intervals between 30-60 seconds and the reps should be in the 8-15 range until muslce fatigue. Note: They called it German Body Comp. These tests have been confirmed / reverified by numerous medical studies and we now know that doing this type of burst training, circuit training, HIIT, muscle group switching, German Body Comp, or whatever the next guy is going to call it, actually burns 6-9 times more fat than just going running for example. The key is that you’re working out one muscle group until exhaustion then switching to another muscle group until exhaustion, Meanwhile you’re not giving your heart any rest… your heart is under this high level of intensity the entire time. Your heart goes into a state of shock as it receives information that more blood and oxygen is required at all these different muscle groups. The only way it can fulfill that order for that amount of energy is go into a fat burning cycle. That fat burning cycle can last somewhere between 24-36 hours, So it will actually be burning fat even while your sleeping. Here’s an easy example,

Set up an interval timer - There are several different free apps, the one I use is flex timer. They make their money by selling high quality clocks… but the app still works on your phone… (feel free to modify any of these exercises as need be to

30 Seconds of Running in place / High knees (This warms you up, works out your legs, abs, lower back, calves)

30 Seconds of Push Ups (This works out your arms, chest, and upper back)

30 seconds of sit ups (This works out your abs)

30 seconds of Squat Jumps (This works out your legs. If you don’t know what a squat jump is, spread your legs a little wider than should width apart, squat down and on the way up jump on the way up. When you jump, Try to land as quietly as possible… that means that you are landing on your toes and your calves are absorbing the shock which helps build up your calves and also protects your knees from the shock)

30 seconds of rest.

Then repeat that for 20 minutes. Each round will last 2.5 minutes. So in 20 minutes you can get in 8 rounds. Do more when you feel like it. Do this three times a week to start. You can also make your own, incorporate weights, go for a run (I actually love running and it’s also very therapeutic… The other thing I love about it, is that it’s simple… sometimes your brain doesn’t want to have to remember or read these long workouts… and you just want to throw on some tunes and go… Life is about balance, switching it up and being excited to tackle new challenges)

One of my favorite running exercises can be done on a treadmill, on the street, ellyptical, stationary bike, normal bike,

2 minutes of cruisin (light jog or walk)

1 Minute of sprint

repeat for 20 minutes or more…

If you want to go for immediate MAX fat burn, exercise first thing in the morning without eating anything. Try to drink ice water within the first 15 minutes of waking up as it helps burn calories and gives you some water in your system before working out. The key here is that your body has utilized and processed all the food from the previous day to help you sleep and rebuild, so if you wake up and workout immediately, it forces your body to burn fat for energy. If you want to start seeing immediate results, this is how.

If you want to build muscle… do the exact opposite - workout after eating something. Now this just depends on your fitness goals or maybe where you are in your fitness journey. Maybe you want to lose weight then build muscle… or maybe you want to do a mix of both… but eating before the workout will give you more energy to crush your workout so that you can build more muscle and burn more fat for later… so not as immediate as the don’t eat anything method but it’s up to you to choose which avenue you want to do.

But essentially if you’re not losing weight and not seeing results… that’s why. You need to

1. Clean up your diet / eat better - STOP FEEDING YOUR FAT CELLS - It’s a war we are in over here. Don’t give the enemy any ammo.

2. Do workouts where you are sending your heart into a state of shock because it’s trying to feed too many muscle groups oxygen… If it feels like your heart is beating out of your chest… that’s the state of shock I’m talking about… you’ll know what that feels like… also know that means your probably need to slow down soon too… This state of shock will burn 6-9 times more fat and then if you eat a grapefruit within the 45 minute window after working out you can turn that 6-9 numbers into 12-18 times more fat. Then if you don’t feed your fat cells any bad foods, you should be able to quickly see how this whole things works. Once you start seeing results… it will become a lot of fun and you’ll want to keep doing it. The human mind is never satisfied with going back to where it was. Once you start making more money at your job, you’re not satisfied with going back to making the old amount of money…

Hopefully this helps give a clearer vision of the whole Fitness / workout story and not just half the story.