Justin Spencer: "Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle" by Tom Venuto

“Contest training” was by far the most effective program I had ever followed.
It’s not enough to work out; you have to get the nutrition right. That’s the most important element. The cliche “You can’t out-train a bad diet” is absolutely true.
I realized that as long as the nutrition was customized for each individual, it would work for almost anyone to achieve any goal, whether that was burning the last few pounds of stubborn fat or overcoming serious obesity, from just “firming up” to “ripping up,” from brides shaping up for weddings to guys chiseling down for the beach.
Any time you attempt something new, there’s a learning curve, but if you have the right coach, you can bypass years of trial, error, and frustration.
Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is not about dieting your body down as much as it’s about building your body up.
It’s miraculous how the words you use to describe yourself can shape your identity, change your self-image, and, in turn change your behavior.
Weight loss and fat loss are not the same thing.
What matters most is your ratio of muscle to fat--your body composition.
Your main focus should be burning the fat and keeping the muscle.
Reduce your carbohydrates too much, and your energy level takes a nosedive.
Deprivation diets make you lethargic, hungry, and miserable.
You’ll lose weight on any diet with a caloric deficit, but when you add training, you’ll burn more fat without slowing down your metabolism or losing muscle.
Putting training and nutrition together is the difference between transforming your body and simply losing weight.
Don’t starve the fat with diets: Burn the fat with training and feed the muscle with nutrition.
Burning fat is simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. “Simple” means uncomplicated. “Easy” implies little or no effort. Losing weight is a simple matter of achieving a calorie deficit. There’s nothing complicated about that. But balancing energy in and energy out is a modern, sedentary, temptation-filled environment is easier said than done.
“Hard work” scares people away. But hard work is the only way anyone accomplishes great things. Everything worth having in life has a price attached to it.
By selectively quoting research, magazines can promote a new diet pill or exercise fad every month and make it look like a breakthrough every time.
The truth is that training and good nutrition from whole foods are all you’ll ever need.
The majority of so-called fat-burning products available over-the-counter are worthless and have no scientific evidence validating their use.
If there really were a magic pill that burned off fat without work, there wouldn’t be millions of overweight people in the world today.
Popular trends always change, but fundamentals never do.
If you’ve ever sabotaged yourself or fallen off the fitness wagon before, the reason always comes back to lack of focus and an untrained mind.
As you read, remember that knowledge unused is worthless; only knowledge applied is power, so begin using what you learn immediately.
Support is a major key to motivation and long-term success.
The first is that restrictive low-calorie diets are almost impossible to follow for long, so the weight loss almost never lasts.
You see diet ads everywhere proclaiming that the holy grail of weight loss has been found, but the statistics don’t lie: The way most people are dieting for weight loss doesn’t work--and there are scientific reasons why.
The law of energy balance says that if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. There are 3,500 calories in a pound of stored body fat.
When you introduce a calorie deficit at the start of a diet, you’ll lose weight, but it doesn’t take long before weight loss slows and sometimes stops completely.
A calorie deficit is a moving target. When you lose body weight, you need fewer calories to support your smaller body.
You can survive a long time without food.
During long periods of starvation, your body slowly feeds off itself for energy, burning through fat stores, then muscle, and eventually vital organs.
The first thing you notice during a calorie shortage is the hunger. You should expect a little hunger when you’re in a calorie deficit, but with extreme diets you become ravenous.
Your basal metabolic rate is the number of calories you burn at rest every day.
Dieting without resistance training can cause 30 percent to 50 percent of your weight loss to come from lean tissue. The risk of muscle loss is higher if your protein intake is too low.
Non-exercise activity thermogenesis, also known as NEAT, is the scientific name for all your physical activity throughout the day, excluding formal exercise.
One of the first signs of undernutrition is loss of energy and the ability to sustain intense training.
Low-calorie diets can have a major impact on hormone levels.
You need that calorie deficit to burn fat, but cutting calories too far--especially when you slash the carbohydrates too low--can wreak havoc with the very hormones you need working at peak efficiency.
Leptin is a hormone produced primarily in your fat cells that also plays a major role in regulating metabolism and body weight.
When leptin is low, it signals your brain that body fat reserves are declining and starvation is impending.
Cortisol is a catabolic (muscle-wasting) hormone produced by your adrenal glands in response to various types of physical and mental stress, including dieting.
Research has shown that cortisol is inversely related to calorie levels.
Testosterone also takes a hit when you cut calories too much.
Most research says that a conservative calorie cut of 20 percent below maintenance level won’t affect testosterone.
The odds of you losing fat permanently with traditional low-calorie diets are stacked against you biologically, psychologically, and environmentally.
You can’t achieve permanent fat loss by going on and off diets, especially if you’re always hopping from one diet trend to the next.
You achieve permanent results by adopting new habits that you can maintain for the rest of your life.
The best way to get rid of undesirable habits such as drinking soda, spending hours on the couch watching TV, and thinking like a pessimist is by replacing them with new ones, rather than trying to overcome them with willpower.
Be patient: Everything is difficult in the beginning. Accept the challenge!
A simple strategy for permanent fat loss is never lose muscle. Muscle is your fat-burning secret weapon. Muscle is your metabolic furnace. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn at rest as well as during exercise.
On the nutrition size, the biggest keys to maintaining muscle include getting enough protein and being conservative with calorie cuts.
You must have a calorie deficit to burn body fat, but most people cut calories much too fast. Your body can’t be forced to lose fat more quickly than nature intended; you must coax it. The smartest, safest, and healthiest approach for permanent fat loss is to start with a small deficit, add exercise, then continue to cut calories if necessary as your weekly results dictate. Do it slowly and progressively in stages, not all at once.
There’s more than one way to create a calorie deficit. You can decrease your calorie intake from food or increase the calories you burn from training and other activity. Unless you’re physically unable to exercise, a combination of both is ideal.
Compared to dieting alone, the results you get from combining cardio, weight training, and nutritious eating to achieve a specific goal are nothing short of miraculous.
When your fat loss slows down or you hit a fat-loss plateau the first time, dropping calories is usually the right decision. But if your calories are already low and you’ve been dieting for a long time, cutting calories more can dig you into a deeper metabolic rut. It seems counterintuitive, but sometimes the best thing you can do to “reset” a sluggish metabolism is to eat more before going back to the calorie deficit again.
Inserting occasional higher-calorie days between lower-calorie days is a simple technique that gives you a nice physical and psychological break from days or weeks of continuous deficit.
People with high body fat levels can usually drop fat faster without as many negative side effects. People who are already lean need to lose more slowly, or the risks--especially muscle loss--are greater.
Dropping 1 percent of total body weight each week is a safe and realistic goal that’s customized for each individual.
One of the greatest secrets of body transformation is to “know thyself” and customize your training, nutrition, and lifestyle to suit your body type instead of blindly following someone else.
Your goal should be to achieve your personal best while avoiding comparisons to others who have different genetics than you.
Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the amount of energy you burn at rest every day just to maintain normal body functions such as breathing, circulation, digestion, and so on.
The average male has a BMR of about 1,900 calories and the average female 1,400 calories.
Some people are born with more fat cells than others, and women have more fat cells than men.
A healthy, normal weight adult has between 25 billion to 30 billion fat cells.
Fat cells can increase in both size and number. They can multiply during rapid weight gain, which is another reason to keep your calories in check and your weight under control.
Fat cell number cannot be decreased except through liposuction, and that can be expensive, painful, and risky.
Like fat cells, you were born with a predetermined number of muscle fibers. Muscle fibers can get larger, in a process called hypertrophy, or they can get smaller, or atrophy.
Unlike fat cells, muscle cells can’t multiply in number.
There are also different types of muscle fibers. Some are suited to endurance work (slow-twitch fibers) while others are suited for strength, power, and explosive work (fast-twitch fibers).
The muscles insert onto the same bones in all humans; however, the exact point of insertion varies. Even a tiny difference in insertion points can create large increases in mechanical advantage.
You can measure join circumference with a tape measure. A simple test is to wrap your hand around your opposite wrist. If your thumb and middle finger overlap, you are small jointed (usually 6-to-7-inch wrists); if your thumb and middle finger touch, you are medium jointed (usually 7-to-8-inch wrists); if your thumb and middle finger do not touch, you are large jointed (usually 8 inches or more in wrist circumference).
Some people’s bodies don’t handle carbohydrates very well. Carb-intolerant individuals often suffer from blood-sugar and insulin-related metabolic disorders and may have problems with appetite regulation. Their condition gets worse if they eat large doses of sugar or other concentrated carbohydrates.
The way your body looks today is the result of genetics, behavior, and environment all put together.
Dedication, discipline, and hard work can take you so far, it can appear as if you’ve shattered your genetic “limits.” The reality is that most people never come close to fulfilling their full potential. A belief in limitations stops many from even exploring it. How much potential do you have? You’ll never know unless you get busy and find out.
There are three basic body types:

Endomorphs are the large, fatter types. They have a soft roundness and often have difficulty losing body fat.
Mesomorphs are mostly muscular types. They are lean, hard, and naturally athletic, and gain muscle with ease.
Ectomorphs are the lean, skinny types. They are thin and bony, with fast metabolisms and extremely low body fat.

Pure body types are rare; a combination is more common.
Keep in mind that the somatotype system gives only general guidelines and the lines between body types are somewhat subjective. What’s most important is knowing your predominant type and understanding how to use that knowledge in a practical way.
When it comes to fat loss, a well-planned, strategic approach is more important for the endomorph than any other body type.
Many endomorphs respond well to reducing carbs.
The endomorph strategy calls for high levels of activity, including an active lifestyle, weight training, and cardio.
Everyone can include their favorite indulgence foods in their meal plans if they do it sensibly.
Plan cheat meals in advance, and make sure they fit into your daily calorie and macronutrient limits.
A simple way to burn more fat is with longer or harder cardio workouts.
For time efficiency, a great strategy is to increase the intensity of the cardio you’re already doing and burn more calories in the same amount of time.
Building more muscle with weight training can create a long-term increase in metabolism, but the only way to keep your metabolism “spinning” is with frequent and consistent exercise. Cardio and resistance training combined give you the best results.
Resistance training is essential. By choosing large muscle full-body and lower-body exercises, you not only build lean mass and strength, you also increase metabolism, burn more calories, and stimulate hormones that improve body composition. Squats, deadlifts, lunges, pull-ups, rows, presses, and other compound exercises are your best choices.
Replace as much TV time as possible with physical recreation or exercise--unless your workout machine is parked in front of the TV and you’re on it.
Do whatever it takes to stay mentally pumped!
Exercise is one of the most important factors in successful weight-loss maintenance and it’s more important for the endomorph than anyone else.
Every time you stop working out for an extended period, body fat will start to creep back on. Burning fat is one thing. Keeping it off is another. It takes a lifetime commitment to stay lean.
Ectomorphs are naturally lean, skinny types. Ectomorphs have a tendency to lose weight easily and have a hard time gaining muscle.
Ectomorphs respond best to brief, heavy, basic weight training programs. Daily training and high-volume workouts might even be counterproductive. The ectomorph should get in and out of the gym quickly and allow plenty of recuperation between workouts.
The big challenge for the ectomorph is gaining or even maintaining lean body weight. That’s why cardio should be kept to a minimum and be done mainly for health and conditioning reasons.
Choose foods for health, not just for fuel and muscle growth. Never use a naturally lean body type as an excuse to overindulge in junk food.
Mesomorphs (a.k.a the “genetic freaks”) are the naturally muscular and lean types. Many of them had muscle before they started working out. These are the genetically gifted ones who everyone loves to hate because they gain muscle and lose fat so easily.
Here are two tips for the mesomorph to live by:

Don’t coast on your genetics.
Pay attention to food quality.

A mesomorph with clear goals and a superior work ethic will always rise to the top and quickly become a superstar.
If you recognize that you’re genetically gifted for physique development, appreciate your blessing and make the most of it, even if you’re not interested in sports or competition.
Again, keep in mind that nutrition is not just about looking good; it’s about being healthy.
In the classic system, “somatotype” refers to the physical or external body structure, which you can appraise with a photograph or tape measure. “Metabolic type” is different; it refers to biological processes that take place internally.
How well you process carbs and manage blood sugar is one of the most important traits to consider.
Your body changes on its own with growth and aging, and you change your body purposely with nutrition, training, and lifestyle choices.
In the diet and fitness world, most people believe that there’s only one single best way. But a one-size-fits-all approach couldn’t possibly work for everyone.
But the primary cause of excess body fat is your own attitude, behavior, and lifestyle.
Most of the factors affecting body composition are entirely under your control.
The truth is, if you’re unhealthy, you’re unfit, or you have too much body fat, you’re responsible. If you refuse to accept this, you’ll never reach your full potential.
You create positive circumstances through positive thinking and positive action, and you create negative circumstances through negative thinking, lack of action, and wrong actions.
You can overcome nearly any obstacle if you’re willing to work hard enough.
Don’t try to become better than someone else; become better than you used to be. Instead of focusing on comparisons, focus on progress and self-improvement.
Fat fills in all the lines and “cuts” that separate each distinct muscle group. It covers your muscles with a thick layer of insulation, obscuring the definition underneath, and adds a soft and doughy quality to your entire body.
Muscle is what makes your body look solid, chiseled, and athletic, but muscle has more than aesthetic value. Your goal should be to develop and maintain muscle not only for how it looks on you but for what it will do for your metabolism, your strength, and your health.
The scale doesn’t tell you how much weight is fat and how much is muscle.
Losing weight is easy. Losing fat and keeping it off--without losing muscle--is a bigger challenge.
Start judging your progress with lean body mass and body fat.
These people with low body weight but high body fat are often called “skinny fat.” That term may be fitness slang, but it’s a real clinical condition: Researchers call it “normal weight obesity.”
The truth is, BMI might be an acceptable screening tool for the general population, but for many people BMI is just as misleading as height-weight charts.
So forget about BMI and height-weight charts; the ideal way to rate your weight, check your health, and track your progress is body fat testing.
Measuring your body fat is the only way to be sure all that activity is moving you in the right direction--toward better body composition, not just weight loss.
The average woman has about 23 percent body fat and the average man approximately 17 percent.
If you really think about it, when two-thirds of the population is overweight or obese, average isn’t so good. Our standards have fallen.
An optimal body fat percentage is around 16 percent to 20 percent for women and 10 percent to 14 percent for men.
If you want the look of a Men’s Fitness model or a figure competitor, you may need to drop your body fat even lower. Most men will start to see more muscle definition, including abs, when they hit the single digits. Women show nicely defined muscles when they reach the teens.
Low numbers are nice for bragging rights, but what counts is whether you’re healthy and happy with how you look.
Focus on improving yourself instead of chasing after some Holy Grail number.
Being extremely lean is healthier than being obese, but trying to maintain extremely low body fat levels for too long might not be healthy or realistic, especially for women.
Training and dieting in cycles so body fat levels vary between lean and competition lean is healthier and more sensible.
It’s impossible for body fat to drop to zero because some fat is stored internally and is necessary for normal body functioning.
Essential fat is found in the nerves, brain, bone marrow, liver, lungs, heart, and nearly all the other glands and organs of the body.
Essential body fat is at least 10 percent for women and 3 percent for men.
You rarely see changes in your own body as easily as others do. That’s why you need an objective, accurate, and scientific method for measuring your body composition.
After weighing the pros and cons, I think you’ll agree that for our purpose--tracking weekly personal progress--skinfold testing is the easiest and most practical.
Most of your body fat is stored directly beneath your skin. This type of fat deposit is called subcutaneous fat.
Measuring the amount of subcutaneous fat you have by pinching folds of skin and fat at several locations can give you a very accurate estimate of your overall body fat percentage.
Taking measurements at three or four sites is most common and is more than enough for an accurate reading.
As long as you see the skinfold thickness dropping, it means you’re losing fat!
Even with the most skilled tester, skinfolds are only accurate within 3 to 4 percent.
The accuracy is not as important as the consistency of repeated measurements so that you can chart your progress effectively from one measurement to the next.
Skinfold measurement is by far the most popular way to test body fat, and it’s my top recommendation for this program.
BIA (bioelectrical impedance analysis) is a fairly reliable and valid measure of body composition, as long as the test procedures are followed properly.
If you decide to use the body fat testing scales, be sure to follow the test protocol to the letter. That includes a consistent time of day for the weigh-in.
Fat floats and muscle sinks. This simple fact is the basis for underwater weighing, also known as hydrostatic testing.
It’s well worth remembering, however, that there’s a strong correlation between your waist circumference and your total body fat. If there’s any reason you don’t measure your body fat percentage, the very least you should do is to track your weight and your waist measurement. If your waist measurement is going down, your body fat percentage is almost always going down as well.
Your waist measurement is also an important health marker. Fat stored in the abdominal area is unhealthier than fat stored in the extremities.
Above all else, just remember, weight loss and fat loss are not the same thing.
The real value in knowing your body fat is to monitor your body composition progress from one week to the next.
Your LBM (lean body mass) is the total weight of all your body tissues excluding fat.
Monitoring your LBM is one of the most useful and important purposes of body fat testing.
To calculate your LBM in pounds, you need to know two things: your body weight and your body fat percentage. First, determine how many pounds of fat you’re carrying by multiplying your body fat percentage by your weight. You can then calculate your lean mass by subtracting the pounds of fat from your total body weight.
The ideal weight formula is: LBM / (1 - target body fat %)
You’ll learn more about your body by measuring and tracking your body weight, body fat, and lean body mass for just a few weeks then you will by reading about it for years.
Recording your results, getting into a performance feedback loop, and charting your progress are steps that guarantee you’ll never fail.
There is no such thing as failure--only feedback, only results.
As long as you have a goal and you’re taking efficient daily action, then whatever result you produce is “performance feedback.”
Know your outcome. Decide exactly where you want to go. Knowing what you want is the first step toward success.
Establish your starting point.
Formulate a plan of action.
The most efficient way to choose a plan of action is to model (copy) the physical and mental strategies used by those who have already achieved what you want to achieve.
Find successful role models, do what they did, and you’ll get a similar result. Trial and error can be a long and painstaking process, and life is too short to do it the long way. Learn from the experts.
The fundamental principles apply to everyone; there are laws of fat loss just as there are laws of gravity and electricity.
Act on your plan consistently.
A goal without action is worthless.
Develop the sensory acuity to know if what you are doing is working or not. If it’s working, keep doing it.
“Sensory acuity” is a neuro-linguistic programming term used to describe your ability to see, feel, and notice even the smallest changes in your body.
Mistakes are how we learn.
If you don’t play attention, you might be taking action but repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
Your program is either working or it’s not. You’re either moving forward or backward. Maintenance is an illusion. You must chart your progress in writing and pay attention to the direction you’re heading. If it’s the wrong direction, change it quickly!
Once you’ve locked onto a winning strategy and you’re getting the results you want, don’t change a thing.
If it’s not working, do something else.
The moment you realize you aren’t making progress, you must immediately adjust your approach.
Be flexible in your approach and be persistent.
Be willing to adjust your approach as many times as necessary until you reach your goal. Be willing to try as many different things as necessary for as long as it takes.
In developing the martial art of Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee worked hard to create a philosophy for self-defense and personal growth. His method had four simple steps:
Research your own experience.
Absorb what is useful.
Reject what is useless.
Add what is specifically your own.
There is no single best way.
The more feedback you get and the more ways you have to measure results, the better.
Ten feedback tools to measure your progress:

body fat percentage
skinfold thickness
total body weight
lean body mass
fat weight
how you look in the mirror
before and after photographs
measurements (tape measure)
clothing sizes and how clothes fit
other people’s opinions

The fit of your clothes, especially your waistline, is a great feedback tool, but remember that growing muscles can make clothes feel tighter.
Together, the skinfold caliper and scale don’t lie.
To get the most consistent weigh-in, always weigh yourself under the same conditions. Measure yourself on the same scale on the same day of the week at the same time of the day, wearing the same amount of clothes.
Measure your progress weekly and make course corrections as often as necessary.
Most people drop some water weight in the beginning, especially if they’re restricting carbs, and this may show up in the LBM number.
If your LBM continues to drop week after week in any significant amount, you may have cause for concern. A continual downward trend over time in your LBM number clearly shows that you’re losing muscle tissue.
Never panic over a one-week fluctuation. The trend over time is much more revealing.
Each time you make a change, watch carefully for what happens every day during the following week. This will increase your sensory acuity skill. If you develop a keen eye for changes in your body based on changes to your nutrition and training, you’ll eventually become a master at this, just like the fitness pros.
You can increase intensity, duration, or frequency, depending on the volume of your current cardio program.
If this is the first time you’ve lost LBM, it may be water weight and nothing to worry about. If this is a recurring pattern and you’ve been losing LBM more than two weeks in a row, you’re losing muscle and you need to eat more, at least temporarily.
Make sure you’re consistent with your weight training. Make the weight training sessions short and intense, and be sure to recover adequately from your training.
If you do gain muscle and lose fat in the same week, terrific! Your results are exceptional. Don’t change anything.
I always recommend letting your results dictate your strategy
Don’t fix anything that’s not broken!
Measure everything you want to improve.
The crucial first step is setting a goal.
Action without planning is one of the biggest causes of failure.
There’s a big difference between knowing what to do and doing what you know. A goal is the bridge that spans this gap.
The secret to staying motivated all the time is to set emotionally charged goals, commit them to writing, and stay focused on those goals day and night.
No amount of positive thinking will help without action.
Goals work because they harness and direct the awesome power of your subconscious mind, which guides your behavior on autopilot.
Your mind has two components: the conscious and the subconscious. The conscious mind is the rational, logical, analytical, thinking part of the mind. It’s constantly taking in information from the five senses, and then it reasons, analyzes, and concludes whether the input is true or false. The subconscious is the part of the mind responsible for storing data (memory) and for automatic behavior (habits), reflexes, and the body’s autonomic functions such as digestion, breathing, and circulation.
Frequent repetition of thoughts (mental orders) is one certain way to penetrate the subconscious mind.
Because of how your subconscious operates, it’s crucial to focus on what you want to achieve, not on what you want to avoid.
If you want to be successful at getting leaner or any other endeavor in life, you must master your communication with yourself. You must take charge of your self-talk, “police” your thinking, and literally reprogram your brain for success.
Become more aware of your thoughts and your language. The instant you catch yourself in the middle of a negative thought or self-defeating question, interrupt it!
Set specific goals.
Specific goals have a more powerful impact on your subconscious.
Set measurable goals.
You must have a way to objectively measure your progress, otherwise you’ll never know if you’ve actually reached your goals.
You should be interested not so much in what you weigh as in how much body fat you carry.
The ideal method to measure your progress is body composition testing.
Set big goals.
Nothing great was ever achieved by being realistic!
It’s okay if your goal scares you a little. In fact, if your goal isn’t scary and exciting at the same time, then your goal is too small.
Don’t let fear of failure or the feeling of discomfort prevent you from going after what you really want.
Set realistic deadlines.
Anything that dehydrates you can cause quick weight loss.
Your goal should be fat loss, not weight loss.
If you lose water weight, you’ll gain it back immediately as soon as you rehydrate yourself.
Usually, it’s not the goal that’s unrealistic but the deadline. Be patient: There are definite limitations to how quickly the human body can safely burn fat.
Set long-term and short-term goals.
There are six types of long and short-term goals you can include:

long-term goals and your ultimate “ideal body”
one-year goals
three-month goals
weekly goals (weekly body composition tests and weigh-ins)
daily goals (habits to develop, behaviors to do every day)
the goal of continually beating your personal best (personal records or “PRs”)

You can’t afford to associate with negative people who always tear you down.
Probably your most important goal at any time is your three-month goal.
Deadlines are not only motivating, they’re a necessity, because otherwise nothing gets done.
To reach your weekly, three-month, twelve-month, and long-term goals, you must develop positive everyday habits.
You develop positive habits by setting daily goals (action steps) and repeating them until they become behaviors as automatic as brushing your teeth or taking a shower.
You should plan every workout in advance as part of your daily goals. Never “wing it.”
When your larger goals are broken down into smaller parts and you focus on each little step one at a time, you won’t be overwhelmed.
Take baby steps. Every step you take, no matter how small, will give you a feeling of accomplishment and keep your momentum going.
The important thing is that you’re moving in the right direction.
If you fall into the habit of continually comparing yourself to others, this will ensure that you’re perpetually unhappy and unsatisfied, no matter how much you achieve.
Set goals to become better than you used to be, not become better than someone else.
The goal card is the high-achiever’s secret weapon. Choose your most important, highest-priority goal for the next three months. Write is down as an affirmation on a pocket-sized card and carry it with you everywhere you go.
Make sure your goals don’t conflict; prioritize and focus on your one most important goal.
But it’s not typical to see big increases in muscle while you’re also shredding fat.
The most efficient way to get results fast is to put 100 percent of your energy into the one goal that’s most important to you.
Establish the emotional reasons why you want to achieve your goals.
Uncovering the reason why you want to achieve something adds emotion to it.
Write out a goal list in the form of affirmations.
Here are three guidelines to follow when writing your affirmations:
Make your affirmations personal: Use the word “I” with a verb after it.
Write your affirmations in the present tense.
State your goal in positive terms.
One of the best ways to start an affirmation is to use the phrase “I AM.”
Your subconscious responds best to commands given to it in a personal manner.
Your subconscious mind responds best to commands given in the present tense.
For best results, write, think, and visualize your goal as if you’ve already achieved it.
Your subconscious moves you toward whatever you focus on, whether it’s positive or negative.
Read your affirmations (your goal list) at least twice a day and always keep your goals in front of you and on your mind.
Psychologists have proven that repetition is an effective way to penetrate and program the subconscious mind.
The ultimate purpose of using affirmations is to help you permanently change the “tape” that loops in your mind every day. When you reach the point where your affirmations become your new habitual way of thinking and speaking, the results will astound you and what you’ve been imagining will start to materialize in your life.
Read your goals with faith.
When you look in the mirror every day, see what you want to become, not what is presently there.
As you read your affirmations, mentally visualize them as already achieved.
The brain thinks in pictures.
Because your brain thinks in images, adding a big, bright, focused mental movie or picture of what you want will help you program your subconscious mind faster and more deeply than if you simply read your goals.
When you fall asleep thinking about your goals as already achieved, your subconscious continues to work on how to achieve them while you’re sleeping, and then adjusts your actions during the next day to move you closer to your goals.
Every time you achieve a major goal you should do three things:

Celebrate or reward yourself.
Keep a list of your achieved goals.
Set new goals continually.

Reinforce your success by rewarding yourself.
Any time you feel your motivation or enthusiasm flagging, go back and read your list of past successes.
Goal setting never stops; it’s an ongoing process, not an event.
Each of the four elements in Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle are important, and each enhances the others, but nutrition is the foundation for everything. What you eat is the make-you-or-break-you factor. Get nutrition wrong and it can sabotage your results completely. Get it right and the rest is easy.
Any discussion about optimal calorie intake is really a total waste of time--unless you are actually counting the calories!
A food calorie (kilocalorie) is the amount of heat required to raise 1 kilogram (1 liter) of water 1 degree Celsius. A calorie, then, is simple a measure of heat energy. Like any fuel (gasoline, coal, wood, etc.), food releases energy when it’s burned. The more calories that are in a food, the more energy will be released.
Body fat is like a reserve storage tank for energy.
There are 3,500 calories in each pound of fat.
From a survival point of view, body fat is a good thing and being too lean is a liability. But only small amounts of body fat are essential for health.
High body fat is a health risk.
The law of energy balance:
To lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume each day.
To gain weight, you must consume more calories than you burn each day.
Some foods are healthier than others because they are nutrient dense and unrefined. But eating for health and eating for weight loss are different goals. Regardless of how healthy the foods are, if you eat more calories than you burn, you’ll still gain weight, usually in the form of fat.
Low-carb, high-protein diets reduce hunger and make it harder to overeat. The end result is that most people automatically eat fewer calories.
There’s no such thing as a diet where you can eat all you want and lose weight simply by eating (or avoiding) one particular food or food group.
You might be able to get away with eating a low-calorie junk food diet without gaining weight, but if you want to stay healthy, calorie quality is important.
The law of energy balance and its two corollaries override all other weight-loss laws.
Sometimes the only mistake preventing you from reaching your fat-loss goals is ignoring portion sizes.
Getting leaner requires the discipline and willpower to control your calories at all times, even when you eat your occasional cheat meals.
TDEE is the total number of calories your body burns in 24 hours, including basal metabolic rate and all activities.
BMR is the total number of calories you burn every day for basic bodily functions.
Next to BMR, your activity level is the second most important factor in how many calories you need every day.
Your total body weight and total body size are also major factors in the number of calories you need. The bigger you are, the more calories you require to sustain and move your body.
Separating your total weight into its lean and fat components helps you calculate your calorie needs more accurately. The higher your LBM, the higher your BMR.
Metabolic rate tends to slow with age.
Men usually require more calories than women.
According to exercise physiologists William McArdle and Frank Katch, the average maintenance level is 2,000 to 2,200 calories per day for women and 2,700 to 2,900 for men.
A fast and easy way to see how many calories you need daily is to use your total current body weight in pounds times a multiplier between 11 and 20:

fat loss = 11 - 13 cals/lb
maintenance = 14 - 16 cals/lb
weight gain = 18 - 20+ cals/lb

1 inch = 2.54 centimeters
1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds
Once you know your BMR, you can calculate TDEE by multiplying your BMR by an activity factor.

sedentary = 1.2
lightly active = 1.375
moderately active = 1.55
very active = 1.725
extremely active = 1.9

Because the Katch-McArdle equation accounts for LBM, it applies equally to both men and women and it’s the most accurate method for calculating your daily calorie needs.
BMR = 370 + (21.6 * LBM in kilos)
The primary benefit of including LBM in the equation is increased accuracy when your body composition leans to either end of the spectrum (very muscular or very obese).
The mathematics of weight control are simple.
To keep your weight the same: Stay at your daily caloric maintenance level.
To lose weight: Create a calorie deficit by reducing your calories below your maintenance level (or keep your calories the same and create a deficit by increasing your activity).
To gain weight: Create a calorie surplus by increasing your calories about your maintenance level. To gain weight as lean body mass, a program of progressive resistance weight training is mandatory.
There are 3,500 calories in a pound of stored body fat. In theory, if you create a 3,500 calorie deficit per week through diet, exercise, or a combination of both, you will lose one pound (assuming you lose 100 percent body fat). If you create a 7,000 calorie deficit in a week, you will lose two pounds.
The ideal way to choose your calorie deficit is to use a sliding scale and to select a percentage deficit relative to your maintenance level. For healthy, long-term fat loss, choose a deficit between 15 percent and 30 percent below your maintenance level.
In an aggressive deficit, lean people tend to lose more lean tissue and retain more fat, while obese people tend to lose more body fat and retain more lean tissue.
People who are already lean but want to get even leaner (a.k.a. “ripped”) have a higher risk of losing lean tissue with very aggressive calorie cuts, especially when training volume and intensity are high. That’s why, if you’re lean, it’s wise to keep your calorie deficit moderate or conservative. If you’re overweight, it’s safer to make your calorie deficit more aggressive.
A larger calorie deficit results in faster weight loss. But a deficit that’s too large or too prolonged will eventually slow your metabolism, increase hunger, decrease energy, reduce essential nutrient intake, and cause a loss of lean body mass.
The American College of Sports Medicine’’s suggestions of reasonable calorie minimums are 1,200 per day for women and 1,800 per day for men.
The best practice is to follow the Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle guidelines and use a maximum calorie deficit of 30 percent below maintenance.
Extremely aggressive deficits should not be used except by very overweight or obese patients under their doctor’s orders.
As long as you still train hard, bring up the calories slowly, and keep the surplus small, you won’t have to worry about gaining back any fat.
You have to eat a lot more to gain lean muscle at the maximum rate.
High body fat is unhealthy, so if you’re carrying a lot of fat, focus your goals on shedding the fat first.
If your food intake varies and you never have a typical day, then write down three days’ worth of recent eating, so you can add them up and divide by three to get a daily average.
Cutting calories quickly and abruptly often leads to diet failure and weight regain because the change is too dramatic to sustain.
The best approach is to gradually adjust your calories in small weekly increments of 100-200 calories at a time to allow your metabolism to acclimate.
Tracking portion sizes is a start because this acknowledges the importance of energy in versus energy out.
The downside of counting portions is that you’re only guessing at the calories.
Although a lucky few can “wing it” and guess at everything with good results, the people with the best bodies in the world are meticulous about tracking calories.
If you aren’t quantifying and tracking your food intake, it’s almost impossible to troubleshoot stalled fat loss.
Once you have your daily meal plan finished, print it, stick it on your refrigerator (or carry it in your daily planner or mobile device), and you have an eating goal for the day.
All you need to get going on the road to a better body is one good meal plan, customized for your calorie needs. Eating the same thing every day makes establishing a baseline, tracking calories, sticking to the program, and troubleshooting plateaus super-easy.
During the initial stages, weigh and measure all your food. Get yourself a food scale, available in the kitchen section of most houseware or department stores, and a set of measuring cups and spoons. Make it a habit to read the nutrition facts panel on the labels of packaged foods to learn the ingredients, calories, and nutrient values.
Keeping a food journal at least once in your life is an amazing learning experience that you’ll never get from reading a book or following a premade meal plan.
There’s no better way to learn about calories than to carefully count them in the early phases when you’re just getting started, otherwise you’ll always be guessing.
Some people don’t consider nutritional number crunching fun or easy, but tracking your food intake is a discipline and becoming disciplined about your nutrition and training habits pays huge dividends.
If you want the best results, then do what’s necessary: Get out your calorie counter, your spreadsheet, or your nutrition software and create your meal plans. Then get out your measuring cups and food scale and start tracking what and how much you’re eating.
How you divide your calories between the three macronutrients--proteins, carbohydrates, and fats--and which foods you choose from each category has a profound impact on your body and your health.
The first rule of macronutrients: Eat proteins and carbs together at each meal.
Your nutrition program should never consist primarily of one food type or one macronutrient; you need a proper balance between proteins, carbs, and fats.
Diet gurus often claim that there’s magic in the special foods they emphasize. It’s closer to the truth to say that restricting entire food groups is a clever way to make you eat less.
For building muscle, it’s optimal to eat protein at regular intervals throughout the day. Protein can’t be stored in your body like carbohydrates.
Studies have proven that protein has an appetite-suppressing effect and makes you feel fuller.
Out of all the macronutrients, protein has the highest thermic effect (providing a boost to your metabolism) because of the extra energy required to digest and utilize it.
Muscle glycogen is the primary source of energy for weight lifting and high-intensity exercise, but your glycogen stores are limited and must be continuously replenished by eating carbs.
If you suffer from nagging hunger, cravings, or hypoglycemia, it’s often from eating too many sugars and processed carbs by themselves.
The ultimate meal combination is a lean protein, a starchy carb, and a fibrous carb.
Creating meal plans by the numbers gives you the kind of nutritional precision that puts you in complete control of your results. It enables you to easily troubleshoot plateaus, accelerate your fat loss, or dial yourself into peak condition on the date of your choosing. This is how the leanest people in the world do it.
A macronutrient ratio is simple the percentage of your total calories that come from protein, carbohydrate, and fat, respectively.
For improving body composition, the best approach for most people is moderate carbs, moderate fat, and moderate to high protein.
Supporters claim that carbs are driving obesity because carbs stimulate insulin and insulin causes fat storage.
There are legitimate concerns about excessive carb intake. Many people are getting an overdose of sugar and not enough lean protein or healthy fat. Unfortunately, the concerns about carbs have been blown out of proportion, creating unwarranted fear. Carbs are not fattening outside of the easy calorie overload they cause if you’re not careful with portions.
Carb restriction can be a good way to accelerate fat loss, but that’s not saying carbs make you fat.
It’s hard to go wrong with 50 percent carbohydrates, 30 percent protein, and 20 percent fat as your starting point.
Whenever you want to master a new subject or acquire a new skill, you must learn the basics first.
Remember the 80-20 rule. That’s the efficiency principle, which says that 20 percent of your actions--the vital few--will produce the majority of your results. The other 80 percent--the trivial many--is minutiae. Most people are wasting their time on the small stuff.
With real-world progress data, you can see how your body is responding to all the variables and make the right adjustments at the right time.
An ectomorph rarely needs to restrict carbs.
For short periods when maximum fat loss is the goal, the macronutrient ratios can be shifted to more protein and less carbs.
If you’re metabolically healthy and active, aim for 50% carbs, 30% protein, and 20% fat as your baseline.
If you make sure to eat a lean protein, a fibrous vegetable, and a natural starchy carb with every meal, your numbers will be in the ballpark, automatically.
A simple way to estimate your nutrient ratios for an individual meal is to follow the 3-2-1 rule. Imagine your plate divided into six sections like slices of a pie. Fill up three slices (3/6) with natural carbs. Fill two sections (2/6) with lean proteins. Finish with one section (⅙) of fat.
The best and most accurate technique for meal calculations is free, and you probably already have it on your laptop or desktop computer: It’s a plain old spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel.
To calculate your ratios, take your total caloric goal for the day and multiply it by your target percentage of each macronutrient. Then, divide the calories from each macronutrient by the calorie content per gram.
1 gram of carbohydrate = 4 calories
1 gram of protein = 4 calories
1 gram of fat = 9 calories
Your primary goal is to come as close to your macronutrient target as possible when you add it all up for the day. Don’t worry about being perfect.
If you’re training hard, your nutrition needs are different from those of couch potatoes.
When you see nutrient recommendations for the general population, keep in mind that the average person is not training and that minimum and optimum nutrition needs are two different concepts. If you want to get lean and muscular, then do what lean and muscular people do, and at the same time listen to your body so you can make the right adjustments for you.
No ratio has any magical fat-burning or muscle-building properties.
Listen to your body and pay attention to your results each week.
You need a little bit of fat--even the saturated kind--to maintain normal anabolic hormone levels.
All it takes to lose weight is a calorie deficit. It takes a lot more to develop a great body and maintain it.
For high-intensity training, muscle glycogen is your body’s preferred and most efficient fuel. Glycogen is restored by eating carbs.
Saturated fats, with the exception of the tropical oils, are solid or semisolid at room temperature (think butter or animal fat). Saturated fats have historically been considered the least desirable because they can raise blood cholesterol.
Unsaturated fats are subdivided into polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats and they come primarily from vegetable and plant sources. They are mostly liquid at room temperature (think olive oil). Generally, they tend to lower levels of blood cholesterol and have other health benefits or cardioprotective effects. The polyunsaturated fats contain the healthy essential fatty acids (EFAs).
By increasing your intake of omega-3 fats, you obtain a long list of health benefits, restoring you to the balance that nature intended.
It takes only a small amount of EFAs to prevent a deficiency, but if you want to maximize fat loss, muscular development and physical performance, your goal is to get optimal amounts of every nutrient, not just to avoid deficiency. You can achieve this by adding at least one rich source of omega-3 into your meal plan every day.
Eating fatty fish at least two or three times per week is recommended by almost every major health authority.
Supplements can never take the place of whole foods.
Research on fish oil suggests that 1.5 to 2.0 grams per day of combined DHA/EPA is the ideal dose for supporting fat-loss programs.
Flaxseed oil is the richest plant-based source of omega-3, with twice the omega-3 content of fish oil.
The idea that you shouldn’t eat any whole eggs because they raise cholesterol and cause heart disease has been strongly challenged in recent year. There’s a growing body of evidence that eating one or two whole eggs per day has no negative effects on cholesterol.
Dairy products are also an excellent source of calcium and two very high-quality proteins: whey and casein. If you want to minimize saturated fat, limit the calories, and get more protein, choose nonfat or reduced-fat dairy products.
If you’re not careful, the calorie density of oils can actually sabotage your weight loss.
Many fats and oils have healthy properties, but they’re all calorie dense, with more than twice the calories per gram than protein or carbs.
If you need to save calories, using cooking spray is more calorically economical than pouring oil in your pan because it takes a 15-second spray to equal the calories in 1 tablespoon of oil.
Nuts are little nutrition powerhouses. They give you fiber, vitamins, healthy phytonutrients, and good fats (walnuts are high in omega-3). But if you eat large amounts of walnuts, almonds, macadamia nuts, cashews, or peanuts as snacks without keeping track of calories, you could be hundreds or even a thousand calories over your optimal fat-burning level!
Ironically, a common reason for fat-loss plateaus is eating too much healthy food, and healthy fats are a prime culprit.
Fats to avoid: hydrogenated, partially hydrogenated, and trans-fatty acids.
For good health and weight control, the most common recommendation is to keep your dietary fat intake between 20 percent and 35 percent of total calories.
Based on my research and real-world experience with physique athletes, I’ve found that most people get the best results with about 20 percent of their daily calories from fat.
Some people report more energy or less hunger with a slight bump in fat.
Nonfat and very low-fat diets are not the answer for maximizing fat loss or muscle growth.
Aim for 20 to 30 percent of your total calories from fat.
Eat fatty fish such as salmon, trout, mackerel, sardines, and herring at least two or three times a week.
Eat nuts and seeds, provided you stay within your calorie limits (nuts are healthy but calorie dense).
Eat avocados and olives, provided you stay within your calorie limits.
Reduce fats in general to help you control your calories during deficit eating.
Use an essential fatty acid supplement such as flaxseed oil or fish oil if you don’t get enough healthy fats from whole foods.
Avoid trans fats, including foods with “hydrogenated” on the label.
Avoid any foods that are deep-fried in oil.
Although your body appears solid, it’s in a constant state of flux as old cells die and new ones replace them.
Body structures made from protein include skin, hair, nails, bones, connective tissue, and, of course, muscle. Next to water, protein is the most abundant substance in your body, making up approximately 15 percent of your weight. Of most interest to those who want a better physique is that 65 percent of all the protein in your body is located in your skeletal muscles.
The smallest units of a protein are called amino acids.
There are 20 amino acids the human body requires for growth. From these 20 amino acids, tens of thousands of different protein molecules can be formed. Each protein is assembled from the bonding of different amino acids into various configurations.
Of the 20 amino acids, your body can make 11. These are called the nonessential amino acids (also known as dispensable amino acids). The other nine amino acids are called essential amino acids (or indispensable amino acids). Essential amino acids are those that can’t be manufactured by your body and must be supplied from your food.
Foods that contain all the essential and nonessential amino acids in the exact ratio and amounts required by your body for growth are called complete proteins.
Proteins can’t be stored to any significant degree.
To maintain the ideal environment for muscle growth and prevent muscle breakdown, complete proteins must be eaten every day, and ideally with every meal.
Protein has the highest thermic effect of all the macronutrients. Up to 30 percent of the calories are burned off to digest and absorb the protein.
If you get enough protein from whole food sources, there’s no need for a supplement.
Complementary protein combinations such as rice and beans are how vegetarians can improve their overall daily protein quality. It’s not mandatory to eat a lot of animal proteins to get lean and muscular, but it is mandatory to eat complete proteins and meet your total protein requirement every day.
Among the leanest, most muscular people in the world, 1 gram [of protein] per pound of bodyweight per day has been a rule of thumb for years. The science suggests they’re right.
Eat a high-quality protein food (lean meat, fish, eggs, or dairy products) with every meal and aim for approximately 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day, and your protein nutrition will be covered!
In some special cases, there may be advantages to eating even more protein than one gram per pound. These include:
When your goal is gaining muscle and your training is demanding.
When your goal is getting lean and your calories or carbs are low.
To gain lean body weight, you must increase your calories into a surplus.
If your goal changes from burning fat to gaining muscle, you’re going to need a lot more calories.
If you go overboard with any food, the excess can be stored as fat. But in a surplus, dietary fat is the macronutrient most likely to be converted into body fat first.
If anything, as your calorie intake goes down, your protein needs go up. That’s why it makes so much sense to increase a deficit by cutting carb calories specifically and leaving that precious protein intake high.
Protein also suppresses hunger and increases metabolism more than any other macronutrient.
There are two high-priority protein goals in Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. The first and most important is to hit your total daily protein target, including high-quality proteins that supply all the essential amino acids. The second is to eat protein with every meal.
When you eat protein is not as important as hitting your total daily quota, but scientists say there’s evidence that spreading your daily protein intake over several meals helps optimize muscle growth.
In Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, our baseline plan has you eating five times per day. If it’s feasible, eat a protein at every one of those meals or snacks. At the minimum, eat protein three or four times per day if you want to optimize the muscle-building response.
Aim for a daily protein target of 1 gram per pound of body weight, give or take 0.1 to 0.2 grams.
As a baseline, set up your meal plans with approximately 30 percent of total calories from protein.
When your calorie deficit is aggressive, you may increase your protein to approximately 40 percent of total calories or 1.1 to 1.3 grams per pound of body weight.
If you’re in serious training for muscle growth, you may (optionally) increase your protein to or above 1.1 to 1.4 grams per pound of body weight.
Eat a high-quality complete protein with every meal.
Aim for about 25 to 40 grams of protein per meal: women and smaller individuals toward the lower end of the range, men and larger individuals toward the higher end.
Eat protein before and after your weight training workouts.
Unlike proteins, which are used as building materials, carbs are used for energy.
Carbs are your body’s preferred and most efficient energy source for intense training.
Your body is always burning a mixture of carbs and fat for fuel, but the fuel mix changes based on demand. During low-intensity, long-duration exercise, most of your energy also comes from fat. Most of your energy also comes from fat while you’re at rest. During shorter bouts of high-intensity exercise, such as sprinting or weightlifting, carbs are the main fuel.
Carbs are the limiting factor in exercise performance.
Structurally speaking, there are two broad categories of carbs: simple and complex. Simple carbs consist of a single sugar molecule (monosaccharide) or two sugar molecules linked together (disaccharide).
In general, simple carbs are digested quickly and cause a rapid rise in blood sugar, especially when you eat a lot of them alone or in meals with no fat, fiber, or protein. When there’s a blood sugar spike, there’s a large release of insulin from the pancreas. The insulin quickly clears the sugar from the bloodstream, leading to a blood sugar dip known as hypoglycemia.
Whole fruit is a healthy food because it contains vitamins and minerals as well as carotenoids, flavonoids, and polyphenols, which are natural compounds with health-promoting properties.
Use low-fat or nonfat versions of cheese, milk, cottage cheese, and yogurt.
As long as your digestive system can handle it, dairy products can be a part of any fat-loss program.
The second major carb category is complex carbs, also known as polysaccharides. Most complex carbs contain fiber and they provide sustained energy without the highs and lows you get after eating simple carbs.
Fiber is the indigestible portion of the plant, so it passes through your digestive tract without all the caloric energy being absorbed.
It’s nearly impossible to overeat green vegetables and fibrous carbs.
Combined with lean protein, fibrous carbs are your secret weapon in the war against fat.
If you cut out refined carbs including sugar-sweetened beverages, white sugar, and white flour products, you’re 90 percent of the way there. To accelerate your fat burning to the next level, learn the difference between the fibrous carbs and the starchy carbs. Fill up your plate with more fibrous carbs (right next to your lean protein) and less starchy carbs and watch in amazement as the fat drops off your body.
The glycemic index (GI) is a scale from 1 to 100 that was developed to measure how a carbohydrate food affects blood sugar.
For good health, the most important distinction you can make about carbs is the difference between natural and refined.
An overdose of refined sugar and processed carbs is probably more responsible for poor health and excess body fat than any single factor.
It’s best to avoid processed carbs as much as possible.
Ten reasons to avoid processed carbs:

Processed carbs can increase body fat.
Processed carbs can increase triglycerides.
Processed carbs can decrease good HDL cholesterol.
Processed carbs can suppress your immune system.
Processed carbs can deplete your body of important minerals.
Processed carbs can increase insulin.
Processed carbs can cause reactive hypoglycemia.
Processed carbs can cause tooth decay.
Processed carbs can promote diabetes.
Processed carbs are linked to depression.

Don’t judge a food entirely by the grams of carbs or even the grams of sugar on the nutrition facts panel because that doesn’t tell you what kind of sugar it is. Dig a little deeper and inspect the ingredients list to see if refined sugars have been added, then make your decisions based on the calories, total carbs, and type of carbs.
Added refined sugars can be found in the list of ingredients under different names, including high-fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, rice syrup, glucose syrup, sucrose, dextrose, brown sugar, turbinado sugar, and invert sugar.
The baseline for carbs on Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is 50 percent of total daily calories.
When you want to accelerate fat loss or break a fat-loss plateau, you might drop the total amount or ratio of carbs.
Eat natural, unprocessed carbs; reduce processed, refined carbs as much as possible, especially the “whites”: white sugar, white flour.
Learn the difference between starchy carbs and fibrous carbs.
Eat a starchy carb and a fibrous carb with each meal (along with your protein).
Eat fruit every day with meals or as snacks. If you don’t have a fibrous vegetable with a meal, have a fruit.
Aim for 25 to 35 grams of fiber per day or 14 grams per 1,000 calories of energy expenditure. If you follow the Burn the Fat meal templates, you’ll easily hit your fiber goal automatically.
As a baseline, aim for approximately 50 percent of your total calories from natural carbs.
Customize your carb intake based on your activity, body type, and results.
The effects of dehydration creep up on you. By the time you feel the full impact, it’s too late: you’re already dehydrated.
Men: drink approximately 3.5 liters of water a day. Women: drink approximately 2.5 liters of water a day. Follow this one tip and your hydration needs will be covered under all normal conditions, with room to spare. Drink more water if you get extremely active, and even more if you’re training in the heat.
Water may not be a true appetite suppressant (in the hormonal sense), but water can increase stomach fullness and reduce calorie intake at a meal.
Cutting something out cold turkey creates a void that begs to be filled, so it helps if you think in terms of replacement rather than removal.
By the time your body registers the sensation of thirst, you may already be under hydrated.
Drink immediately when you wake up in the morning because you haven’t had fluids all night.
Drink before your workouts. Drink during your workouts. Drink after your workout.
Drink when it’s hot and you’re sweating, even if it’s not during a formal workout.
Two of the easiest fat-loss strategies are drinking water before meals and drinking water during meals (in place of caloric drinks).
There’s no doubt about it: caloric drinks are keeping a lot of people fat.
Bottom line: the best strategy to beat body fat is to cut out all sugar-sweetened beverages.
Rest assured that diet drinks by themselves do not cause weight gain. If a drink doesn’t have calories and it doesn’t stimulate appetite or trigger excess food intake, it can’t make you fat.
An occasional glass of wine or a couple of beers will probably do no harm to your health or waistline, provided you budget for the calories.
Your body has no storage capacity for alcohol as it does for carbs (which is why some people consider it a poison). As a result, the oxidation of alcohol takes priority over other macronutrients. In other words, while your liver is busy metabolizing those beers you drank, the use of fat for fuel is almost entirely suppressed.
With seven calories per gram, alcohol is calorie dense and the calories add up with the food you eat.
Heavy drinking suppresses testosterone, one of the main muscle-building hormones.
I strongly urge you to avoid daily drinking (or daily junk food eating, for that matter), because behaviors repeated daily become habits.
Your body needs rest and thrives on structure and schedule. Disrupted sleep patterns often mean missed meals, poor workouts, and poor recovery.
Most people don’t care that you’re working on self-improvement. In fact, some people resent it if you improve and they don’t. It’s easier for an average person to reach up and pull you down than to climb up and improve themselves.
Food quantity, quality, and timing all work together with exercise to increase your ability to train hard, recover from your workouts, gain lean muscle, and burn more fat.
You need more protein when you’re weight training.
Putting emphasis on structure, numbers, and timing develops discipline and attention to detail. I believe these are major factors that separate people with average bodies from people with the best bodies in the world.
Whatever meal schedule you choose, follow it consistently every day. Missing a meal occasionally won’t make your metabolism crash or your muscles waste away, but missing planned meals or eating unplanned calories are major mistakes to avoid.
Haphazard eating patterns lead to fat-loss failure.
To get your ideal intake per meal, simple choose how many meals you want and then divide your total daily calories by the number of meals.
The problem is obvious: most people, especially in America, have no awareness of calories per portion and they’re massively overeating.
If you want to get leaner, you must choose your meals wisely and control your portion sizes, especially at restaurants.
The simplest easiest way to split up your daily calories is to divide them evenly between each meal.
Most of the research on breakfast shows correlations, not cause and effect, and obviously breakfast is not an absolute necessity to lose weight.
To increase the odds of putting yourself among the achievers, get up early, review your goals, prep your meals, and have a nutritious breakfast so you’re well fueled and mentally sharp for the day.
It’s a myth that eating at night makes you fat.
Recent research has suggested that nighttime protein is beneficial for protein synthesis, which has prompted some people to avoid carbs at night, but they still go for a protein meal or a bedtime protein shake (casein protein is popular for this purpose).
Calorie or carb tapering has been recommended for years by countless physique athletes and coaches and it can be a good strategy for calorie control.
The basic concept of nutrient timing is to provide more fuel and nutrients when you need them most.
It’s important to have one of your protein-containing meals fairly soon after resistance training, because this is an important time for muscle recovery and growth.
The amount of carbs in your post workout meal can vary but should probably be at least equal to the protein.
Eat soon after resistance training.
The 45 to 60 minutes immediately after intense training is an important window when proper nutrition makes the biggest difference.
Eat protein and carbs in the post workout meal.
Eat some of your carb calories in your post workout meal.
The carbs you eat after training are used to replenish muscle glycogen and rarely get stored as body fat.
Drink your protein and carbs post workout if you prefer.
Several studies found that milk makes an excellent post workout drink (add chocolate protein powder for “healthy chocolate milk”).
Eat simple carbs or high glycemic carbs if your prefer. The post workout period is a time when quickly absorbing carbs are acceptable.
Whole food gives you micronutrients and fiber, not just calories and carbs, while satisfying your appetite better, and these are decided advantages over liquids.
Most people eat their pre workout meal an hour or two before training. The most recent research suggests that pre and post workout meals should not be separated by more than 3 to 4 hours, assuming the weight training workout doesn’t go longer than 45 to 90 minutes.
If you train at the crack of dawn and can’t work out comfortably with a big meal sloshing around in your stomach, have a light meal, snack, or protein shake as your pre workout feeding (meal one) and then eat your big breakfast (meal two) afterward. Doing weight lifting or intense training totally fasted, without even providing amino acids, is not optimal.
Even if you prefer lower-carb nutrition, shifting your limited amount of daily carbs around (or at least right after) your weight training sessions is one of the biggest bang-for-your-buck nutrient-timing strategies you can use.
Bracket your workout in between two of your daily meals and make sure each meal contains a protein. If it’s easier, use a protein drink. This is one of the simplest and easiest nutrient-timing strategies to help you burn more fat and build more muscle.
Always think ahead to the next day and schedule your entire day in advance. If you put your ideal day on paper before you start it, you’ll always have a plan and you’ll never be caught off guard without healthy food.
Schedule a time for each meal and stick to it.
A huge time-saving strategy is to cook large quantities of food for several days or even a week in advance and keep it refrigerated or frozen until you need it.
Keep your kitchen and refrigerator well stocked with healthy foods.
Never stockpile junk in anticipation of cheat meals. When it comes time for a cheat meal, make sure you have to go out of your way to get it. If it’s not in your house every day, you won’t eat it every day.
Apple-Cinnamon High-Protein Oatmeal Pancakes:

¾ cup oatmeal
1 whole egg
3 egg whites
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
half an apple (chopped)
dash of cinnamon
noncaloric sweetener (optional)

Some snack ideas include raw vegetables (carrots, broccoli, celery, cherry tomatoes, cauliflower, etc.), fruit (all kinds, but beware of the high calories in dried fruits), nuts and seeds (in small quantities, within your calorie limits), nonfat or low-fat cottage cheese, nonfat or low-fat cheese, nonfat or low-fat yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, sardines and other canned fish, and protein shakes.
Don’t go overboard with shakes. These products are supplements, not a replacement for good eating habits. The primary advantage of meal replacement shakes over whole food is convenience.
Many so-called nutrition bars are a compromise at best and candy in disguise at worst. Read labels carefully.
Greek yogurt is a popular, quick high-protein snack.
There’s always a way when you’re committed.
If getting caught without food happens to you a lot, you need to spend more time planning your schedule and preparing food in advance.
Don’t use missing one meal as an excuse to abandon your schedule for the rest of the day. Get back on track with your next meal. That’s all there is to it.
Whatever meal schedule you choose, establish a regular daily pattern, seven days a week.
One trait shared by every person who gets lean and stays lean is consistency.
The truth is there are no good reasons for poor food choices, only excuses, because planning is the simple cure that solves every diet problem.
A meal plan is your eating goal for the day.
Without goals, you wander aimlessly or float wherever the current of life takes you, and in the case of eating, for most people, that’s right to the nearest fast food joint.
As simple as it seems, having a meal plan on paper is one of the most powerful fat-burning strategies you can use.
The Terrible 12:

french fries and other deep-fried foods
ice cream and milk shakes
doughnuts and pastries
candy and confections
sugar-sweetened soft drinks
sugar-sweetened juice drinks, energy drinks, teas, and dessert coffees
white bread and white flour products
potato chips, corn chips, and fried tortilla chips
bacon sausage, and processed lunch meats
hot dogs and fast-food burgers
pizza with thick crusts and fatty meat toppings
sugary breakfast cereals

Eating the same healthy foods every day also taps into the power of habit.
Any behavior you repeat daily becomes habitual and eventually effortless.
Willpower will only take you so far.
Lean protein foods have the highest thermic effect and suppress your appetite better than any other macronutrient.
The most “fat burning” of all meals is lean protein plus fibrous carbs (fish and broccoli or chicken and a green salad, for example).
The Terrific 12:

whole fresh fruit
vegetables (any fibrous carb or non starchy vegetable)
yams (or sweet potatoes)
potatoes
oatmeal, rolled or steel-cut (unsweetened)
brown rice
beans and legumes
100% whole wheat or whole grains
low or nonfat dairy products
chicken and turkey breast
eggs and egg whites
lean cuts of red meat, game meats

Many Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle readers who lost over 100 pounds started their body transformation journey simply by eating the foods recommended on the 12 best fat-burning foods list and avoiding the 12 worst fat-storing foods.
The classic bodybuilder’s meal is a lean protein, a starchy carb, and a fibrous carb. Here’s the template:

Choose a lean protein for every meal.
Choose a starchy carb for every meal.
Choose a fibrous carb for every meal.
Add healthy fats into some meals as needed to reach your daily goal.
Swap fruit for fibrous carbs.
Swap fruit for starchy carbs.
Dairy products are optional.

For a variety, eat more than one fibrous or starchy carb per meal.
Be careful with cold cereals: most of them are processed and filled with sugar, which is one reason why hot old-fashioned rolled or steel-cut oatmeal is so popular on this plan.
If you’re looking for easy ways to eat more vegetables, put them into your omelets and scrambles.
To make sure your calorie and macro numbers are on target, add up your meal subtotals and your daily meal plan totals. Then increase or decrease the serving sizes so you’re close to your calorie and macronutrient goals.
Some people find making daily meal plans challenging at first, but usually only because they’re trying too hard to micromanage their macronutrients.
Instead of snacking carelessly on junk food, build snacks strategically into your schedule and, if possible, include protein in most of them.
When it comes to the need for variety, everyone is different. But among the leanest people in the world, they usually share a unique trait: when they’re pursuing an important physique goal, most of them follow the same meal plan every day.
Contrary to what many people have been taught, eating the same thing every day or following the same meal plan each day can help you automatically eat less and maintain long-term fat loss.
Weighing food is the most accurate way to track calories and macros, and that’s why a food scale is a prominent appliance in every Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle kitchen.
If you never count, weigh, or measure, you’ll never go through the learning process that allows you to become unconsciously competent. You’ll always be guessing, running blind, and probably underestimating your calorie intake badly more often than you think.
If you use any condiments that have calories, be sure to add those into your meal plan totals because little things forgotten can add up to an “unexplained” plateau over time.
A good rule of thumb for most people is the 90 percent compliance rule.
One meal doesn’t make or break you. Your habits make or break you. It’s what you do every day, over and over, week after week, that matters the most.
Don’t try to wing it. You can’t “intuitively” eat properly from day one without educating yourself about food and developing a meal plan.
The surefire way to make eating well become second nature is by going through a learning process, and that includes setting goals, crunching numbers, planning meals, tracking food, and measuring progress.
Eating less without moving isn’t going to cut it. You must get active!
Good nutrition alone can get weight loss started and improve your health, but there's one thing eating right can’t do: it won’t make you fitter.
Working out isn’t a free pass to eat as much as you want.
The secret formula to fat loss is not exercise. It’s not what foods you eat either. The ultimate secret to fat loss is achieving a calorie deficit, and consistently staying in that deficit until you reach your goal. Nutrition is only one way to achieve the deficit: you decrease calories in. Training is the other way: you increase calories out.
You can lose weight without training, but without some type of vigorous physical work, you’ll never burn fat at the maximum possible rate.
High-volume endurance training, especially running, can interfere with muscle size and strength gains.
Stair-climbing machines give you an intense cardio workout and they’re excellent calorie burners, making them ideal for fat loss.
Rowing machines give you a superb cardio workout with very high fat-burning potential.
If you do a lot of cardio, it’s wise to alternate days of high-impact activities with days of low-impact activities, or alternate high-intensity cardio with low-intensity cardio. This simple trick saves a lot of people from chronic joint pain and burnout.
How often you should train depends on your goals, your schedule and your desired rate of progress. Three days per week is a good starting point for almost everyone, because it’s enough to enjoy health benefits, improve your conditioning, and increase fat loss.
Many beginners try to do too much too soon, then they find themselves burned out or injured, especially if the cardio was intense of high-impact.
Start with at least three sessions per week, and if your goal is maximum fat loss, progressively build up to five, size, or seven days per week as your weekly results dictate.
There’s a big difference between efficient training and fitness marketing hype.
One way to find your ideal training intensity is by heart rate. The “age-predicted” method has been recommended in fitness books for decades. You estimate your maximum heart rate (MHR) with this formula: 220 minus your age. Then multiply your MHR by a target intensity range of 70 percent to 85 percent. Choose 70 percent to 75 percent for moderate; 75 percent to 80 percent for moderately hard; or 80 percent to 85 percent for hard.
Rating of perceived exertion (RPE):

0 = nothing/no work
1 = very very light
2 = very light
3 = light
4 = moderate
5 = somewhat hard
6 = moderately hard
7 = hard
8 = very hard
9 = very very hard
10 = maximal

If you’re not breathing heavily, you’re not working hard. If you’re so out of breath that you can’t finish a sentence or hold a conversation (the “talk test”), your intensity is probably too high for steady-state training.
When you’re ready for a real challenge, try running stairs.
Running stairs is also an amazing leg workout.
Because all types of sprint interval training are so intense, once to three times a week is all it takes. If you’re also weight training, any more is overkill.
The best time of day for cardio or any other type of training is the time you feel most physically energetic, most mentally focused, most motivated, and most likely to make it a habit and stick with it.
It’s easy to blow off evening workouts when you’re exhausted from work. When you train at the beginning of your day, your workout is out of the way.
If you’re lifting weights or doing intense cardio in the morning, it’s probably ideal to have one of your meals beforehand, including protein.
Timing is secondary to training consistently and achieving your calorie deficit consistently.
On Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, maintaining muscle is the top training priority, so weight training goes first and cardio second.
To excel at a sport, the training demands must be specific to that sport’s goals.
With moderate amounts of cardio, muscle loss shouldn’t be a concern.
High-volume endurance training while on a very low-calorie diet can be catabolic, and has been known to cause metabolic adaptations even more sever than starvation dieting alone.
The fact is the human body is a remarkable machine, and at least for short periods can perform a lot more work than most people give it credit for.
Almost all of the negatives you hear about cardio are related to long periods of high-volume training, without proper recovery periods in between, or from doing large amounts of cardio in an aggressive calorie deficit.
The more you train, the more efficient you get at doing the workouts until you eventually need a more challenging workout to keep improving.
Once you’ve achieved your target weight and body fat level, don’t stop doing cardio, but don’t keep blasting away for hours either. Slowly downshift into a maintenance phase.
For strength and power athletes, the best amount of cardio might be the least you can get away with.
Not sure how much cardio you should do for maximum benefit and minimum risk? Here’s a simple shortcut formula, backed by research and experience: a foolproof starting point is three to four days per week of the cardio of your choice, for 20-40 minutes at a moderate to high intensity. If you’re already fit and your time is limited, do up to three sessions of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) per week. When you need to accelerate fat loss, simply increase the duration and frequency a little bit each week until you get the rate of fat loss you want.
The ultimate cardio program is the one you design for yourself.
You can lose weight with a diet, but only weight training can increase your strength and literally give you a new body.
No fat-loss program is complete without resistance training because it plays such a crucial role in getting leaner.
“It’s 80% diet!” is a common weight-loss cliche’. Even if this isn’t literally accurate, it’s fair to say that nutrition is the most important element for fat loss.
Weight loss is a matter of energy balance. Body composition is a matter of energy partitioning.
One reason that weight training increases fat loss is obvious but is almost always overlooked: it burns a lot of calories.
The truth is weight training can produce an equal if not greater metabolic boost than cardio.
The higher your lean body mass, the higher your metabolic rate.
There’s no question: you’ll improve body composition far more with weights than you will with cardio alone.
Progressive resistance training--namely weight lifting--is the single most powerful body transformation tool you can use. A weight training program combined with proper nutrition will burn fat and reshape your body faster than any other single form of exercise. If you’re ever in doubt about how to start working out, start with resistance training. Add cardio and other types of training from there.
When you have time, do weights and cardio. When your time is limited, always prioritize the weights.
“I don’t have time” is not a valid reason, it’s an excuse.
Paradoxically, it’s often the busiest people who get more done than anyone else, because their schedule forces them to become masters of productivity.
Muscle can’t change into fat because fat and muscle are two different types of tissue.
Elite athletes practice, train, or compete for hours every day, burning huge amounts of fuel. When their athletic careers end, their activity levels drop, but if they keep eating the same amount of food, they instantly create a calorie surplus and start gaining fat. This makes it look like their muscles “turned to fat” purely because they stopped working out.
Weight training can actually increase your flexibility if you perform the exercise through the full range of motion.
If increasing flexibility is one of your fitness goals, then devote some time for stretching at the end of your lifting sessions and emphasize the tightest areas. An easy way to fit stretching into your routine with no extra time commitment is to stretch in between sets.
You have the knowledge of all the world’s experts at your fingertips today on the internet, but more than ever you’re also drowning in a sea of conflicting opinions and information overload.
You’re uncomfortable the first time you do anything, but you must step outside your comfort zone to grow.
First, you’ll learn the training principles. Fads come and go every year, but core principles never change. If you build your training plans on a foundation of principles, you will never go wrong.
Progressive overload is the number one principle of all successful training programs.
Any type of progressive overload can cause a positive adaption--but progressive resistance, where you lift more weight than you have before, is the Holy Grail of building muscle and strength.
Using a repetition range (such as 8 to 12) is helpful for guiding progression. When you reach the upper end of your rep range, then it’s time to increase the weight. Increasing reps, then weight, is known as the double progressive system.
The antithesis of progression is to go through the motions and repeat the same workout at the same workload over and over again. That might maintain your current condition, but it won’t improve it.
If you’ve selected the right amount of weight, the last two or three reps in a set should be difficult.
If you stop when you still have three, four, or more reps left in you, then you’re not challenging yourself.
The science tells us that training to failure can increase muscle fiber recruitment, muscle tension, metabolic stress, and anabolic hormone release, which can all contribute to better muscle gains. However, training to failure all the time could lead to overtraining and mental burnout. As long as you keep using the progressive overload principle, you’ll keep making progress whether you reach failure or not.
The 4 to 7 rep max range is considered heavy and is associated with the strength workouts. The 8 to 12 rep max range is considered medium and is associated with the muscle workouts. The 13 to 20 rep max range is light and associated with the endurance workouts.
Working in more than one rep range gives you the best overall results because it develops greater strength as well as greater muscle development.
Choose a repetition bracket based on your goals or the effect you want to produce. To get stronger, athletes do a lot of training in the 4 to 7 rep range with heavy weights. Training in the 8 to 12 rep range with moderate weights is ideal for muscle growth. If you want muscular endurance or pump (increased blood flushing into the muscle), work in the 13 to 20 rep range.
Giving yourself a range lets you know when it’s time to increase the weight and helps you use the progressive resistance principle.
The optimal approach is to do multiple sets of each exercise.
Three sets per exercise has been a best practice for decades, but there’s no reason you can’t do two sets or four sets per exercise. Five sets of five is actually one of the most popular strength workouts. For strength workouts, when the reps are low, the number of sets per exercise is sometimes increased to keep the total training volume up.
Larger muscle groups like your back can handle more volume than smaller muscle groups like your biceps.
If you’re training for muscle, resting 60 to 90 seconds between sets is a good rule of thumb.
If you’re training for strength, it’s ideal to extend rest intervals between sets to two or three minutes. This lets you recover more fully so you can do each subsequent set with maximum strength, but it’s not so long that you start cooling off.
A superset is where you perform two exercises in a row with no rest between them. You rest after the second exercise.
The concentric action is where you lift the weight and the muscle shortens or contracts.
The concentric part of the rep should be done quickly but under control.
The eccentric action is where you lower the weight back down and the muscle lengthens. If you go a little slower on the way down (eccentric emphasis), this may help increase your strength and muscle gains.
Milk each routine for all it’s worth before switching to the next one.
Beginners should stick with their initial program for at least three months.
What’s most important to know is that a program using periodization is always more effective than one that doesn’t.
Dumbbells will never go out of style: they are the first and best resistance training equipment investment you can make.
It’s important to warm up before each weight training session. Warming up raises your body temperature, increases joint mobility, stimulates blood flow, and increases your physical and mental readiness for the workout ahead.
It’s important to remember that static stretching is for increasing flexibility, not for warming up. In fact, an ideal time to stretch is after you’re already warm.
There’s nothing wrong with staying with a full-body workout for up to six months or longer if you continue to get great results from it and the simplicity of full-body training suits your style. What you’ll need to do however, is rotate your exercises every 4 to 12 weeks and continue to use the progressive overload, intensity, and variation principles.
Changing exercises and other program variables at least every few months gives your body new challenges and keeps training fun and interesting.
There are a handful of very important basic movement patterns including squats, lunges (split squats), deadlifts, rows, pull-ups, chest presses, and shoulder (overhead) presses. Master them. These exercises should always be a major part of your training plans.
The “big lifts”--multi-joint, compound exercises such as squats, deadlifts, rows, and presses--have the highest calorie burn and are the most effective muscle builders.
Between one direct exercise all all the pushing you do on shoulder and chest exercises and all the pulling for back exercises, your biceps and triceps get plenty of stimulation.
There is nothing wrong with working the same exercises for months as long as you can keep applying the progressive overload principle.
If you do the same exercises week after week for months on end, especially if you train hard and heavy, eventually your joints take a beating.
Beyond the beginner stage, your body will respond best when you accumulate a higher volume of work. Splitting your body in two gives you time in each workout to add those additional sets and exercises.
When you only have to work half your body, you can give more energy and intensity to each muscle group.
On strength and muscle days you’ll do a mix of heavy sets for 4 to 7 reps and muscle sets for 8 to 12 reps. On muscle days, you’ll do sets of mostly 8 to 12 reps and an occasional higher rep set. There are no low-rep-only (strength) days because this is a body transformation program, not a powerlifting or strength sports program.
Simple continue focusing on progressive overload, and keep challenging yourself to hit new personal records.
The important thing is that you always include the resistance training element of our four-part fat-loss formula. If you’re not doing some form of resistance training, you’re not doing Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle.
No training plan can remain the same and keep working forever.
Become your own science project, and remember: the results of your own personal experiments are what matter more than anything else.
But getting through plateaus is as much psychological as it is physical. When you’re stuck, that’s when it’s more important than ever to redouble your commitment, stay focused on your goal, and be positive. That’s plateau-breaking strategy number one.
You’re more likely to zigzag your way to your goal, with sticking points and good weeks and bad weeks, than you are to shoot to your goal in a straight line without a hiccup.
In the majority of cases, a faulty thyroid gland or slow metabolism is not the cause of stalled fat loss. Lack of compliance is the biggest reason for fat-loss plateaus and slower-than-expected weight loss.
When you’re rating yourself for compliance, remember to rate yourself in all four areas:

Mental training. Do you have a current set of updated goals in writing, and have you been keeping your goals in front of you, reading them every day?
Cardio training. Do you have a customized cardio schedule and have you been following it consistently?
Resistance training. Have you been following your weight training program and applying progressive resistance consistently, week by week?
Nutrition. Do you have a customized meal plan in writing and have you followed it every day to the best of your ability?

When you rate your compliance to your nutrition program, be sure to rate yourself twice: once for compliance to your food quality and again for compliance to your food quantity.
But fur fat loss, the real question is: How was your compliance to your calorie deficit (food quantity)?
Almost everyone reports eating fewer calories than they really do; it’s one of the most well-known facts in weight-loss research.
When you do it the first time, you may be shocked at how easy it is to underestimate your calories. But you’ll be glad you did it because you can then self-correct and start making progress again.
Map out your training and nutrition strategy for the next seven days in advance and schedule the workouts right in your daily planner with the rest of your appointments.
Your body doesn’t like to change. Every system in your body is tightly regulated to maintain homeostasis.
Smaller people burn fewer calories than larger people, so the more weight you lose and the lighter you get, the more your deficit shrinks, even at the same calorie intake.
If the effort you’re putting in isn’t getting you the results you want, then quietly, and without complaining, accept that you may need to work longer, harder, more often, or all of the above.
Eating more gives your metabolism a boost, resets regulatory hormones, and gives you a psychological break as well.
One or two days a week, raise your calories--especially the carbs--up to maintenance instead of staying on low calories every day.
If you’re seriously overtrained, you may need a short time off to let your body fully recover.
Here’s the master checklist of the eight most important training and nutrition variables you can adjust each week to break plateaus and keep your progress coming.

Eat less.
Change your macronutrient ratios.
Improve your food quality.
Increase the duration of your cardio.
Increase the frequency of your cardio.
Increase the intensity of your cardio.
Add high intensity interval training or sprint work into your cardio program.
Change the type of cardio.

If you’ve stopped losing body fat, it means you’re no longer in a calorie deficit.
Breaking a plateau is mainly an issue of calorie quantity and establishing an energy deficit.
Don’t try to keep up daily cardio for months on end or use it as a crutch for poor nutrition.
Daily cardio can work wonders to get you lean superfast.
Twice-a-day cardio is another advanced strategy some people might use for short periods to break a plateau or to get extremely lean.
Two-a-day cardio is also a strategy you might use when there’s a deadline and you need maximum fat loss in a short period of time.
The most time-efficient way to break a plateau is to increase the intensity of the cardio you’re already doing.
Measure everything you want to improve, use the progress chart, get into a weekly feedback loop, hold yourself accountable for results, and let your results dictate your next move.
I don’t see very-low-carb eating lifestyle for most people. A more balanced macronutrient split that doesn’t severely restrict food groups, combined with plenty of exercise, is the real ideal lifestyle plan.
Here are three situations where low-carb dieting is most appropriate:

accelerating fat loss
breaking a plateau
peaking for bodybuilding, physique, fitness, figure, or transformation contests

Low-carb, high-protein diets are highly thermic.
Protein has the highest thermic effect of any food, up to 30 percent.
Low-carb diets help control calories, reduce hunger, and increase satiety.
Protein is the most satiating of all the macronutrients.
Low-carb diets help control insulin.
When you reduce carbs, you reduce insulin output.
When insulin is lower, stubborn fat is more easily released into circulation and then burned for energy.
Low-carb, high-protein diets help reduce water retention.
Low-carb diets are more difficult to stay on.
Low-carb diets have a high relapse rate.
Low-carb diets may be unbalanced and lack essential nutrients.
Any diet that requires you to eat mostly one food or to remove or severely restrict an entire food group is not balanced.
Low-carb diets may be unhealthy.
Low-carb diets that are mostly protein almost guarantee rapid weight loss, but without adequate fiber and micronutrient intake, a low-carb diet can be unhealthy, especially if you follow it for a long time.
Low-carb diets can kill your energy levels.
Low-carb diets can produce deceiving weight-loss results.
Much of the weight loss in the initial phase of a low-carb diet comes from water and glycogen depletion.
Low-carb diets affect your mental state.
Low-carb diets may increase the risk of muscle loss.
Preventing muscle loss is a challenge on any calorie-restricted diet, but when you restrict carbs, your body can easily use protein for energy through a process called gluconeogenesis.
Decrease your carbs slowly, only if you need to, based on your weekly results.
Eat carbs in the pre and post workout meals on training days.
Cycle the carbs instead of staying on low carbs all the time.
It’s the final phases of fat loss--achieving goals like single-digit body fat or six-pack abs--that takes serious tightening of the diet belt. If you must cut more calories somewhere, cutting carbs is one of the best ways to tighten up.
A moderate 10 percent to 15 percent reduction in carbs with a corresponding increase in protein (and/or good fats) can sometimes work wonders, especially for endomorphs.
Some low-carb diet advocates argue that we don’t need carbs at all. Technically speaking, they’re right. The textbook definition of “essential” refers to whether your body can manufacture a nutrient on its own or must obtain it from food. There are essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, essential vitamins, and essential minerals, but there are no essential carbs.
One of the best places for a high-carb-plus-protein meal is right after intense weight training.
The two core ingredients of the accelerated fat-loss meal are a lean protein and fibrous carb. The biggest difference between this and the baseline plan is that you’ll be eating fewer starchy carbs.
If you ate nothing but lean protein and fibrous carbs at all of your meals, you’d see the fat fall off, even if you didn’t count calories or macros, because it’s almost impossible to overeat lean proteins and fibrous carbs. Don’t drop all your starchy carbs, though, because you need to support your training energy and recovery.
Carb cycling involves rotating lower-carb days and higher-carb days instead of keeping carbs low all the time.
There are no hard-and-fast rules on re-feeding frequency except that for fat loss there must be more deficit days than re-feed days or you won’t establish enough of a weekly deficit.
You eat mostly the same types of carbs on your high-carb days as you normally would on this program; you simply eat more of them.
The easiest way to set up a carb cycling diet is to simply add more carbs on the high day and change nothing else.
A popular method is to synchronize your high-carb day with your days of most intense weight training. There’s probably merit to all these strategies, especially the last one, but I’ve always found that the more complex you make it, the more confused you get. Simpler is better.

Justin Spencer

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"Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle" by Tom Venuto

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