Sep's Take on Fat Loss: Part 3

Welcome to the third and final installment of Sep’s Take on Fat Loss. I know. I know…It’s been AGES since part 2 and I apologize for the crazy delay. Anyways, last time I covered the nutritional bases of a sound fat loss regimen, so today I will complete the puzzle by addressing proper exercise protocol. This one is the grand finale, the PRESTIGE! It is quite a read but I promise you won’t be disappointed…Let’s begin shall we?

The Cardio Misconception
I would first like to begin by clearing the misconception about cardio. As the very successful strength and conditioning coach, Alwyn Cosgrove, puts it in his book, The New Rules of Lifting, “cardio” and “aerobics” are used interchangeably, as synonyms for “endurance”. I’ll admit I sort of made that mistake in part 1 of my mini-series when referring to “cardio” as the stuff you see in most commercial gyms i.e. treadmills, bikes, etc... . So here’s the real deal…aerobic exercises are those which utilize the body’s aerobic metabolism, the easiest way for us to produce energy to move around and function. These activities use oxygen, “aerobic” meaning “with oxygen”, to burn a combination of fat and glycogen to produce energy. The key here is to think LOW intensity—things such as sleeping (yes you burn calories sleeping), walking, jogging and lower-intensity running. Treadmill running, stationary biking and elliptical machines are mostly considered aerobic exercises too (I mean how often do you see people going full blast on the elliptical or sprinting on a treadmill?). These are the things that come to people’s minds when looking at the term “cardio”. However, this term really defines any exercise or activity which makes the heart and lungs work harder, according to writer and strength coach, Lou Schuler in the same book, The New Rules of Lifting.

Cardio: The RIGHT Way
Having cleared all of that, now we’ll go into how to properly use cardio to burn fat. To be very simplistic, fat loss, as opposed to muscle gain, comes down to being in an energy deficit. That means you have to burn more calories than you consume. Assuming you’ve read parts 1 and 2, you would know that you can’t just consume ANY calories. You need clean source of energy (calories). So having that in check, all that’s left is the expenditure of that energy. Now it should come as no surprise that higher-intensity activities will burn more calories. These exercises would make use of a different energy system known as anaerobic glycolysis. This system uses glycogen, the sugar in your muscles as the main source of energy, leaving lactic acid as a by-product, which in turn fatigues your muscles by inhibiting muscle contraction and gives you that “burning” sensation. Again though, don’t sweat the details of the different energy systems. Your body will take care of that. All you need to do is think in terms of intensity.

It’s All About Intensity Baby!
This concept is EXTREMELY important if you want to lose fat and get in shape as quickly and efficiently as possible; you absolutely must train with the highest intensity. How do you do that you may ask? Time for another list!

1) Do resistance exercises/calisthenics (i.e. pushups, squats, jumping jacks, sit-ups, etc...). This type of work done quickly (I’ll discuss exercise speed later) will get your heart pumping real hard, real fast in addition to building strength and muscle and skyrocketing your metabolism.

2) Focus on compound movements more. Compound exercises are those which involve more than one muscle group. I’m mentioning this because the more muscles of your body are recruited in the exercise, the more demand it places on your body, thus fatiguing your muscles quicker and adding to the intensity.

3) Shorten your rest periods. By decreasing the amount of breaks you take between exercises, you are putting even more of a demand on the heart and lungs. This is a good thing as it allows your body to constantly put more “fuel in the furnace” and induce a thing called EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption). By means of EPOC your body continues to burn calories several hours after your workout; this is a thing Cosgrove calls an “afterburn” effect.

4) I slightly touched on this in #1. Perform your exercise repetitions as fast as possible with great emphasis on the concentric (lifting) portion. Therefore, do the concentric part of the exercise accelerating as fast as you can and perform the eccentric (lowering) portion as quickly as possible under control, whatever speed that may be.

5) Be as explosive as possible. This somewhat ties into #’s 2 and 4 in that being explosive involves performing the lift with as much acceleration possible and recruiting as many motor units in your muscles (basically using your whole body) to aid in that acceleration. You really don’t need to worry about this one when it comes to losing fat. It’s just something that can be applied as you get more advanced or if you’re an athlete also trying to improve performance.

Putting It All Together
Okay enough teaching. It’s time to put this stuff to use! That’s right; I’m going to introduce to you an easy-to-use, fail-proof program consisting of ridiculously short workouts, which will melt fat in no time! Boy, that didn’t sound like an infomercial at all, but it really is THAT good!

Enter Charles Staley’s EDT Program
After playing with and reading about different ideas and concepts, not only for fat loss but also muscle gain and athletic performance, I’ve found a program which truly is perfect. Now don’t get me wrong. Like I’ve mentioned in my articles, there is no “magic” pill or easy way out, nor is one program the end-all be-all of whatever your fitness goals are; however, I’m convinced that this is the easiest and most efficient way for you to reach your physique and performance goals. “So what the hell is it?” you must be asking.

In a nutshell, EDT (Escalating Density Training) is an effective form of training, invented by the very popular and knowledgeable strength coach, Charles Staley, which uses a fixed period of time for each workout. The whole idea behind Escalating Density Training is to perform more work or repetitions of your exercise in the next work out given the set amount of time. What is this fixed period of time? Fifteen minutes! That’s right! Each workout would consist of one to an upwards of three PR (personal record) zones, each zone being 15 minutes in length. Again the goal is to complete a certain amount of repetitions of a given exercise within the PR zone and then BEAT that number the next time around. It’s that simple! By constantly increasing your number you are increasing the density (ratio of work done to time) of your training sessions, hence the term Escalating Density.

The reason I’m introducing you all to this specific program is because of its simplicity. It’s easy and fun to follow in that each time you are competing against yourself and constantly producing results. It just CAN’T fail. The program demonstrates all of the concepts and ideas I’ve outlined in the most efficient way. After all, Charles is DA BOSS!

Here’s how it works: a PR zone will generally have two different exercises for example, a pushup and a row. The reason for this selection is that the pushup uses the chest (pectorals) as the prime mover or agonist and the row uses the muscles of the back (lats). These muscles groups, the chest and back, are what we call antagonistic muscle groups. (Okay I know I mentioned that the “teaching part” was done with, but there’s just a LITTLE more to explain before the really good stuff, so put up with me for just a bit longer.) In antagonistic muscle groups, one relaxes while the other contracts; so in other words when you are doing a pushup, the muscles of the chest are all contracting to generate force for the exercise, while the muscles of the back are forced to relax. There are essentially three different types of antagonists:

True Antagonists: Muscles opposite one another basically. When one contracts the other is forced to relax. (Examples: bicep/tricep, pectorals/lats, quads/hamstrings)

Proximal Antagonists: Muscles as far away from each other as possible or have little to do with one another in terms of work. (Example: calves/shoulders, chest/quads, biceps/hamstrings).

Unilateral Antagonists: Best way to describe this is to give you an example of the lunge exercise. When you do a lunge, your rear leg is resting while the front leg is doing the work. One always relaxes as the other generates force.

The reason CS (Charles Staley) implements antagonistic pairings in each PR zone is to manage muscle fatigue as effectively as possible. Since the goal of each workout is to get as many repetitions of the exercise in 15 minutes time and beat your last number, it’s vital that you do not overly fatigue your muscles to the point where you are constantly resting and not getting your reps in. If a PR zone consisted of just pushup variation, you would fatigue the muscles of your chest in no time. Hence, including a pair, more importantly an antagonistic pair, allows the muscles to relax and recuperate as you keep on switching between exercises.

The exercises you choose must be done with a load (weight) which you can lift no more than 10 times. That is what’s called your 10-rep max (10 RM). With your 10 RM load you do sets of no more than 5 repetitions to ensure greatest amount of force production and minimal fatigue; in other words, the sets will feel much easier. As you go through the 15-minute PR zone you’ll be forced to drop down to sets of 4, then 3, then 2 and to the point where you’re doing sets of 1 repetition. It doesn’t matter how you go about doing it. Each person is different. Just go with what your body feels. The point is just to beat your previous PR-zone number.

Another thing I should mention is the exercises themselves. Sometimes you may have two separate exercises greatly varying in difficulty level, for example deadlifts and bicep curls (proximal antagonists in this case). Say you get exhausted doing sets of 5 for the deadlifts and drop down to 3. You would then also drop down to 3 reps for the bicep curls even though you’re still capable of doing 5 reps of that exercise. You want to stay consistent with the exercise pairs so that you end up have the same number of reps of each in your PR zone.

So here’s how you go about recording your PR-Zones… You will have your two antagonistic exercises on the top of your notebook page with a line going down the middle dividing them. To the side of the page you will number down 5…4…3…2…1. These are the reps per set. So say your first set is 5 reps of the pushup and 5 reps of the dumbbell row right after that. You will put a mark or tally under each exercise with the “5” column and so on…That’s it! Keep tallying away and add them up at the end.

Escalating Density Training has you focus on performance in the form of constantly increasing the number of reps in your PR-zones. By doing so, a miraculous thing happens. You are improving each training session by beating your last number, and as the weeks and months go by, that increase in performance transfers to amazing results in the mirror and on the weight scale.

The Sample Program
For the case of fat loss, I would shoot for 3-4 training sessions a week, each consisting of one 15-minute PR-zone. The program I’m about to show you will have you doing 3 training sessions a week and will simply utilize ONE type of exercise. What is this exercise? One of my favorites for fat loss and overall conditioning: single-arm kettlebell swings. This exercise pretty much works the entire body, using the legs, hips and arms for one explosive motion. I chose this for the reason that it gives you a lot of “bang for its buck” and isn’t very difficult to learn in terms of technique. Check out this video of the exercise being performed (put it on mute): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1UVCto6xMQ. There are three points to keep in mind:

1) Keep your chest out and your back straight to put your spine in a neutral position.

2) Always keep your weight on the heels of your feet

3) Always keep your midsection/abdomens tight to prevent flexion of the lumbar spine.

You can find some decent kettlebells at your local sporting goods store. If you want a lot more variety in terms of weights, I’d look online. You can even use a dumbbell instead of a kettebell. The reason kettebells are better though is because of their size and shape.


Now It’s Your Turn
Well there it is…the three-part series comes to an end. You now have everything you need to start taking action and transforming your body. I hope you enjoyed this mini-series. Now go out and be UNLIMITED!

Sep's Take on Fat Loss: Part 2

Hey folks…so last time in part 1 of Sep’s Take on Fat Loss, I laid down five ground rules to follow and be aware of when beginning a fat loss program. In the last article, I mentioned at the end that in part 2 I’d talk about both nutrition AND exercise. Well it seems like I bit off more than I could chew. I thought I’d be able to condense the information enough to fit both topics in one article, but 1200+ words worth of nutritional facts say different. Not to worry, I will tackle exercise needs as well but just not today. It’s like I mentioned in the first installment, fat loss is a war in which the crucial battles are won in the kitchen. So without further adieu, I give you part 2 of this series, solely focused on nutrition.

The Battles in the Kitchen

It’s hard for me NOT to go into every detail of proper nutrition. So instead I’ve decided to start from scratch (authors note: I had over 600 pages of unedited nutrition facts written but it was starting to look more like a chapter out of a textbook so I deleted everything) and instead give you another complete list of rules for how to succeed with your diet and win the “battles in the kitchen”. It’ll probably be even longer than what I had written the first time but here we go!

Rule 1) Eliminate or heavily cut down on the three C’s: Candies, Cakes, Coke. A well-known strength and conditioning coach, Kelly Baggett, coined that term. Basically the three C’s represent all those fast foods and junk foods flooding the markets these days. That means processed foods overloaded with sugars like high fructose corn syrup (a.k.a. poison), preservatives, artificial flavoring, rancid oils such as hydrogenated and partially-hydrogenated fats, and I could keep going but you get the point. It’s pretty easy to spot out these foods. Don’t let your stomach tell your brain what to buy. Ditch the junk food…

Rule 2) EAT BREAKFAST and more importantly eat a big breakfast. This one is huge. Skipping breakfast is the worst thing you can do for your body. Think about it. You’ve already gone around 8 hours without eating. By missing out on breakfast you’re starting off the day in very catabolic (muscle-breaking) state meaning increased levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, low blood sugar, low muscle and liver glycogen (fuel) and a very slow metabolism. Basically your body is in a “fat-storage” mode as a survival mechanism to preserve energy. This is obviously a very BAD thing, because then you’d be super hungry from having not eaten anything and you’ll end up eating the type of foods described in rule #1. And then guess what happens to those foods? Yep, they get stored as fat. Again, EAT BREAKFAST!

Rule 3) Filtered water should be your main beverage. Next is green tea, for the antioxidants, caffeine and fiber. That’s about it…No high-calorie fruit juices, soft drinks or any of those ridiculous energy drinks they keep coming out with on a daily basis. They’re all worthless, toxic junk. (see rule #1)

Rule 4) Eat every 2-3 hours if possible. This idea is nothing new. It used to be said that we should all eat three solid meals a day. Well the nail has long been put in the coffin of that theory. For those of you don’t know, eating smaller meals more frequently speeds up your metabolism in addition to other proven benefits such as decreased levels of stress hormones (i.e. cortisol) and other magical scientific stuff which is beyond the scope of this article and would likely put you to sleep. Eat every 2-3 hours. Nuff said…

Rule 5) Include 1-2 servings of both fruits and vegetables with EVERY meal. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of these “superfoods”. Fruits and vegetables are packed with all the powerful vitamins, minerals, and fibers your body needs; the nutritional benefits practically have no limits. They are THAT important. Be sure to go with organic sources though; you don’t want to be eating fruits and veggies sprayed with pesticides and other toxic chemicals you can’t even begin to pronounce. Another important thing to note is that 85% of the carbs in your diet will and should be coming from fruits and vegetables (complex carbohydrates with a low glycemic load). I’ll talk about the other 15% as well as the difference between simple and complex carbs later.

Rule 6) Include protein in EVERY meal. Protein is a thermogenic, meaning that it take s a lot more energy for you body to metabolize it and in doing so it somewhat heats up your body and burns more calories. Go with lean, healthy and complete sources like eggs (probably the BEST source of protein), free-range poultry, grass-fed beef, and fish (I prefer wild salmon or tuna). If you don’t eat meat then I’d go with vegetables with high amounts of protein in them like legumes, broccoli, spinach and wheat grass (a MUST for non-meat eaters and meat eaters alike). There’s also soy but you should limit its intake, if not, avoid it altogether. Note that a lot of foods contain some amounts of protein in them but they are incomplete and/or minuscule amounts. The ones listed above are those which contain complete proteins with all the essential amino acids in them.

Rule 7) Simple carbs with a high glycemic load should only be consumed during breakfast and post-workout. This is the other 15% of your carbohydrate intake I was talking about in rule #4. Now by simple carbs I mean carbohydrates which raise your blood-sugar levels fairly high, which in turn, cause your pancreas to release insulin accordingly to bring them back down. Simple carbs are foods high in sugar content. Basically all junk foods are simple carbs but you DON’T want those for obvious reasons (see rule #1). I’m talking about grains like pasta and breads and certain fruits and vegetables like squash, sweet potatoes, raisins and bananas. When your glycogen stores are low (during breakfast and after your work out), these are the best times to be consuming foods high in sugar—simple carbs. They spike your insulin levels, and since insulin acts as a messanger hormone to deliver these nutrients to your muscles and liver, the carbs don’t get stored as fat. However if you eat foods high G.L. (glycemic load) foods any other time of the day you are at risk of this happening, which is why you want to eat COMPLEX carbohydrates (most fruits and vegetables with the exception of the ones I listed above). So basically to summarize this, eat your fruits and greens most of the time and your breads, pasta, potatoes either in the morning or after your workout. Make sense? Hope I didn’t lose you guys there. Boy, did that rule take the longest to explain.

Rule 8) I was about to end it on 7 but I remembered the most underrated topic of all—fat consumption. Alright I’ll try my best to make this one short even though it probably deserves the longest explanation. Get your daily fill of fats! When it comes to fat intake you should shoot for an equal consumption of saturates, polyunsaturates and monounsaturates. The saturated fats come mainly from animal fats which you get when consuming your protein from poultry, beef and fish. There are some healthy saturated oils too like virgin coconut and macadamia nut oil, again for you picky plant-eaters. As for polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, the best source for these are a good fish oil supplement which contains the essential fatty acids, DHA and EPA, (both of which are omega-3 polyunsaturated fats) and a good ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 (monounsaturated) fatty acids. Don’t worry too much over the names and which types of fats you are getting. Just stick with a good fish oil supplement like I explained and also consume foods like mixed nuts (pecans, almonds, walnuts), avocados and extra-virgin olive oil, which is best taken cold on salads or in sandwhiches (it does not stand well in heat and can easily break down, become rancid and lose its nutritional benefits).

Phew! So there you have eight rules for success in the kitchen and ultimately with your body transformation. In the third and final installment of this series I will address proper exercise protocol for fat loss…