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Most people, myself included, spend about 3-4 weeks eating higher calories than normal during the holidays. I am not just talking about on the actual day of the holiday. I had at least 10-12 days in December where I really just sat back and enjoyed a large quantity of really good food. Don't feel bad if you did the same. This is what December is all about. Heck, if I could go back in time I would probably try and eat a little more of my Aunt's cookies on Christmas. You live once and in my opinion, this is the time to reflect and enjoy good friends, family, and great food. So let's talk about a strategy to lose body fat in a short time frame.

[No worries if you gained a bit of fat in November and December. It just meant you stopped and smelled the roses a bit. Now it is time to step away from the roses and obliterate that body fat.]

Your Body is Primed for an Aggressive Diet After the Holidays

When you diet for prolonged periods of time your Leptin levels drop as does your thyroid hormone concentrations. Leptin drops to preserve your body fat when calories dip too low for extended periods of time…it is part of the survival mechanism in the human body. When Leptin is low you can still lose body fat, but it can make things tough.

High Leptin Levels = Easy Fat Loss

After a period of higher calorie eating…Leptin levels are high. I am guessing a lot of people have high Leptin levels after the holiday. In addition to that, I am also guessing that very few people are over-trained in late December. To me, this creates the perfect condition for an aggressive diet to work wonders. The body can handle a week or two of low calorie dieting.

A Diet Burst of 7-10 Days Can Work Wonders

I want to give credit where credit is due. Lyle McDonald wrote a book about scientific crash dieting called "The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook"…and this is where I learned about the idea of short bursts of low calorie dieting. You can get your calories down to a low level with great results as long as you don't do this for long periods of time…7-10 days (14 days max). I only recommend doing this 1-2 times per year.

So What is Does an Aggressive Diet Look Like?

Remember this is only to be done for 7-10 days…so keep this in mind when reading this.

1) A Low Calorie Protein Source
2) Green Vegetables (Lettuce, Broccoli, etc.)
3) A Multi-Vitamin
4) Plenty of water

The key is to get just enough protein to insure no muscle loss and green veggies that don't really add calories. Aim for a daily intake of roughly 1.5 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass. Go a little higher if you are exceptionally active. The goal is to keep these calories as low as possible while meeting your protein requirements and adding in green vegetables to fill the stomach a bit. It is possible to lose 10-20 pounds in 10 days as well as 5-6 pound of body fat.

10 Days of Nothing but Chicken Salad & Chicken Soup

I have done this crash diet on a few occasions and I have lived on a 10 day diet of nothing but 3-4 chicken breasts per day either cut up into a salad or in chicken broth with veggies as a soup. I used rice vinegar as my salad dressing. This is really a bland approach and you can add more variety, but I like to keep it as simple as possible.

You Can't Train Hard During These 10 Days

A word of warning: This diet works best if you drop your cardio and just focus on a few resistance workouts during this 10 day period. Believe me, you will not have the energy to do cardio with this level of calorie deficit. Even if you are tough enough to hit cardio during this 10 day period, resist the urge…it is counterproductive to the way the diet works.

This Type of Diet is Tough and Makes You Crabby!

Makes no mistake about it…this is a brutally tough diet and will make you grumpy. I am a calm and nice person most of the time, but tend to lose patience towards the end of this diet.

You Can Be A Little Less Aggressive and Push This to 14 Days

An alternative to Lyle McDonald's approach is to add in a few more calories each day and extending the diet by a few days. This will work, but probably not at the same level as the more aggressive approach.

Note: Lyle McDonald is the master of this type of dieting. This is a VERY brief overview of how this diet works. I wanted to post this, because I believe that right after the holidays is when this diet will work best. For more info…just go over to his site: www.BodyRecomposition.com

One Last Thing: You can use the principles outlined here to come up with your own strategic approach. Maybe you are slightly aggressive with your diet, but nothing this extreme. There are many variations using this same idea that work very well.

Tags: Dieting for Fat Loss, calorie deficit, cardio, fat loss, lose body fat, lyle mcdonald, rapid fat loss, rice vinegar, the rapid fat loss handbook

I want to start this post off and say that I love free thinkers and people who question things. I don't even care if I agree with 100% of what the person is talking about. Rebels make the world more exciting. I have spent the past hour over on Free the Animal and have been sucked in to Richard Nikoley's fantastic writing style. He has several great articles talking about a similar subject: That all successful diets are high fat diets. You will see exactly what he means by this in a second.

[I tried to find an appropriate photo for the topic of "high fat diets", but those were all brutally boring. A ghost lady wearing a bikini instead? Someone needs to make a B movie with this theme!]

How Can a Low Fat Diet be Considered High in Fat?

Well…that is what sucked me in to one of Richard's articles. I was interested to hear what he had to say. I had a suspicion of what the article would talk about (and I was right), but it was very well written. What he is saying is that all diets are high fat diets, because your body releases its own body fat into the bloodstream as you lose weight.

This Article on His Site Has Changed My Outlook a Bit

Losing Weight is Pretty Much Like Eating Lard <---This article makes you think! Richard talks about how your own body fat has a similar composition to lard. Losing body fat involves having fatty acids released into the bloodstream, similar to the effect of eating lard has on the human body. I have never looked at losing body fat in that way. It is certainly a paradigm shift for me.

Losing 2 Pounds of Body Fat Per Week?

A common suggested weight loss goal for many people is to lose 2 pounds of fat per week. Well, that is the equivalent of 7,000 calories per week of fat…and much of that fat is saturated fat (270 grams in this case). Kind of crazy to think about. I honestly never looked at it this way before. Makes you question people who attack eating fats in the diet.

Are You Confused About What Fats to Eat?

This whole thing is confusing as heck at times. You hear so many different pieces of advice. As far as fats go, my friend Scott Kustes of Fitness Spotlight did an excellent guest post on the subject on this site: The Four Types Of Fat Sorting Out the Confusion of Dietary Fats. This is a great article to tell you what to look for in the grocery store. I have been a big fan of coconut oil since Scott wrote this guest article. Great stuff for stir fry!

What I've Learned Over the Past Two Years

One thing I have learned is that hardcore processed foods are the thing to minimize. More than anything else it is these processed "altered" foods that are causing much of the health problems in modern society. If 75% of what you eat are whole foods, then you can be pretty certain that you are eating in a way that promotes good health. It isn't so much about how much fat or how many carbs, but what the fat and carb sources are. Like I said in "Visual Impact"…your grandma is right when it comes to healthy eating. Just make sure you know when to stop and you will be good.

Check Out Your Local Farmer's Market

These past few Sundays, me and my girlfriend have made a point to walk down to our local farmer's market and buy fresh food. It is about a 2-3 mile walk round-trip, so it is a good way to get healthy exercise as well. The one we go to is in a hip and artsy part of our city so we get live music, entertainment, etc. It simply feels good to get food close to the source. Most cities have several of these farmers markets and my hope is that they grow in number. It is fun to interact with people who live in your community…we have become so disconnected with technology that this feels good.

A Quick Video Explaining the Paleo Diet

When you guys head over to Richard's site, Free the Animal, you will hear him talk about the Paleo way of eating. People who are new to this could be slightly confused. Here is the best video on the subject. Created by Methuselah at Pay Now Live Later.

Watch this…it is actually pretty darn entertaining!

[I don't follow these principles all the way, because I like a bit more carbs than what this diet recommends...but I do love the idea to limit processed foods. Instead of going all the way paleo, I find that I will mix in paleo meals many times per week. This works well and gives me more flexibility than eating paleo all the time.]

Note: Free the Animal is a great site, because Richard talks about his experience with the Paleo diet and even discusses challenges with that way of eating. This post created a major buzz and massive discussion a few weeks ago —> Paleo Diet Problems

Tags: Dieting for Fat Loss

I was thinking about something the other day when killing myself on the stepmill machine doing intervals at the highest setting. Am I able to push hard at the highest setting because I am in decent shape, or is it just because I am a sicko who can push through pain? Part of me thinks that I am just good at pushing hard even when my body tells me to back off. In the spring and summer I play tennis for hours with a good friend of mine who is the same age and works out year round as well. We are both winded and drenched with sweat within 30 minutes of playing, but push on. Again I ask myself, am I in good shape or do I simply have a high pain tolerance. Let's discuss this topic in more detail. I don't have a concrete answer, but would love to explore this idea with you guys and get your feedback as well.

[Just another cool photo that has nothing to do with the article. I didn't want to show people in pain, plus this photo blends in well with the colors and shades of my site.]

Let's Talk About "Linda" and Her Struggles With Weight Loss

I used to manage a woman named Linda. Linda was 52 years old and had been overweight her entire life. She did everything wrong as far as keeping her weight under control. Linda was a big-time compulsive eater and ate every 2 hours the entire day, to "keep her metabolism from slowing down". She even lectured me about this on a regular basis, saying that my metabolism would slow down if I continued to eat just a few times per day. She gave everyone diet tips and the two years she worked for me she stayed 100+ pounds overweight the entire time. Linda said she couldn't exercise due to fibromyalgia.

"When I Try to Exercise, It Hurts Boss!"

Linda's excuse for not exercising was her "fibromyalgia". Fibromyalgia is a legitimate condition where people feel fatigued and have body-wide pain, but there are many people who do as Linda did and claim they have this condition as an excuse to be lazy. Linda was not diagnosed by a doctor, she said that it was obvious because when she exercised it "hurt." When I asked her what her symptoms were she said that her legs would get a burning sensation when she rode an exercise bike and she would breath "really hard" even just walking on a treadmill. "Boss…when I walk at the same speed as other people I breath a lot harder and it hurts….I tried to lift weights once and it hurt for 4 days. I hate having fibromyalgia!"

Do Fit People Simply Have a Higher Pain Tolerance?

The thing about pain is that you can't tell how much pain someone else is feeling. When I am doing an intense interval session it hurts "quite a bit", during the sprinting part. I don't feel like anything is being damaged, but it takes mental discipline to keep pushing. Pain tolerance is a weird thing as well. Two people can feel the same amount of pain and mentally cope with it in different ways. I am positive that my interval hurts me much more than Linda's walking speed hurts Linda. The difference is that I know that the reward will be worth it and part of me likes to see how far I can push myself. Linda simply has a personality where she searches for the path of least resistance. Unfortunately that is the path of least reward as well.

The Skill of Pushing Through Pain, Creates Elite Athletes

I believe that pushing through pain (not injury) is what allows your body to reach the next level of conditioning. I am convinced that some of the fittest athletes in the world simply operate longer and more often on the edge of pain – adapt – and then push to the next level. Once they reach the next higher level of conditioning they push to the edge of pain again and they continue to progress.

Here is An Entertaining Fact About Pain Tolerance…

Swearing can actually increase pain tolerance. Here is an excerpt from the article I'm linking to, which describes a recent study examining pain tolerance.

They recruited 67 undergraduates, and asked to make two short lists of words – one containing five words they might use after hitting themselves on the thumb with a hammer, the other containing five words they might use to describe a table. The participants submerged one of their hands into room temperature water for three minutes, to provide a standardized starting point, then transferred it to a container of cold water and instructed to keep it submerged for as long as they could. In one condition, they were told to repeat the first swear word they had included in their list; in another, they repeated one of the words describing a table.

Contrary to their hypothesis, they found that swearing actually reduced the amount of pain felt. The participants kept their hands submerged in the cold water longer, and also reported experiencing less pain, when they repeated a swear word than when they repeated a word describing a table. Swearing was also associated with increased heart rate.

Swearing therefore enabled the participants to tolerate to the cold temperature for longer, and also caused a reduction in their perception of the pain felt. A difference between males and females was observed. Swearing led to a greater reduction in pain perception and a bigger increase in heart rate in females

"Damn this F@#&%N Interval Workout!"

I would probably attempt to swear during intervals, but I am typically out of breath…plus I'd get booted out of the gym. Swearing has come in handy a few times when I've stubbed my toe or hit my head. I actually believe jumping around helps ease pain tolerance as well. If I hit my head, knee, or "funny bone"…I can't stand still. A few F-bombs and circling around or jumping around when I jam my toe works wonders. Who made up the name funny bone anyway? It is anything but funny when you hit that part of your arm!

What's Your Opinion on Being Fit Vs Tolerating Pain?

I would love to hear your opinions on this subject matter. I think there are some people who so probably feel more pain, but my guess in that a large portion of the population simply lives a life of seeking the path of least resistance. There is always some type of discomfort to be expected or price to be paid for anything worthwhile…right?

Tags: Interval Training, HIT, metabolism, treadmill, walking