Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

Stop Cravings and Stop Binge Eating: Advice from a Pizza Man

2009-11-10T07:17:00.000-08:00

In a surprising comment made during a popular UK radio show, the founder of one of the largest Pizza chains in the United States and United Kingdom told listeners not to eat too much pizza!

In an interview with host Adam Shaw on BBC’s Radio Four program, John Schnatter, the founder of Papa John’s pizza, was asked whether he was concerned about the British government’s recent actions in the fast food restaurant business to help put the brakes on obesity.

Schnatter said, “Pizza is actually healthy for you if you don’t eat too much of it. You can’t eat five or six slices but if you eat one or two slices it’s very nutritious.”

Laughing, Shaw replied, “I’m not sure your investors would want to hear you tell people, ‘don’t eat too much of our pizzas!”’

Across the web, bloggers and tweeters have been putting in their two cents. Some say he was a little TOO honest. Others say this was either the worst PR screw up ever… or the best PR move ever (you know what they say about “bad” publicity).

Although I wouldn’t call pizza health food, I think his advice to eat pizza, but only in moderation was the responsible thing for a fast food owner to do at a time where obesity is reaching epidemic proportions, not just in the United States but in the U.K. and other countries as well.

Moreover, it was just plain good diet advice! One reason people are failing to control their weight is because of all-or-none thinking, i.e, “I can’t eat ANY pizza EVER again!” or, “I have to follow my diet 100% or not at all.”

In my experience, all or none thinking is one of the biggest causes of diet failure. It’s far better from a psychological perspective to eat your pizza; simply enjoy it infrequently and in small quantities.

Think of you on a diet like a pressure cooker on a burner. The longer you keep that pot on the heat, the more the steam pressure builds up inside. If there’s no outlet or release valve on that thing, eventually the pressure builds up so much that even if it’s made of steel and the lid is bolted down, she’s gonna blow, sooner or later.

Well, in the beginning, you might think your willpower is made of steel and that you’re bolted tigher than a submarine hatch, but the longer you’re on a diet with no relief, the greater the pressure builds up until YOU blow your top… and that means massive binge eating.

But if you let off a little steam in the form of a “free meal” (or two) and enjoy that slice of pizza (or whatever is your favorite ‘poison’) on occasion, that relieves the pressure. Alas, you never even feel the urge to binge… because you HAD your pizza and the urge was satisfied. Since the meal was planned and you kept the calories under control, it had little or no effect on your fat loss results.

This topic of conversation was prompted on the BBC radio show during a discussion about how the Pizza business was doing during the recession and about efforts to stem the growing obesity crisis in the UK.

Earlier last month, The Food Standards Agency in the UK started negotiating with UK food, pub and sandwich chains to display calories on their menus to try to provide education about healthier options for consumers who eat out frequently.

The move is similar to one made in New York City last year, where restaurant chains that have more than 15 locations must print calories on the menus. According to an article in the British Medical Journal, this has resulted in an average reduction of 50-100 calories for each food order. Not much, but at least it’s something.

In the case of pizza, a 2.2 ounce thin-crusted slice of cheese pizza could have as little as 190 calories. One slice of “meat lover’s” pizza, on the other hand, could set you back almost 500 calories! If you knew the difference, would it change what kind and how much you ate?

I’m totally in favor of posting calories on menus, despite the critics who say it won’t make a difference. I think anything that raises calorie awareness is going to affect behavior in a positive way and help make for better food decisions. Whether it should be mandatory by law is debatable. I say, let the restaurants decide and then let the marketplace sort itself out.

I would be more likely to recommend or support the restaurants who opted to post calories, increase their range of healthy choices… and on that rare occasion, have a CEO who actually says, “Eat my food, but not too much!!”

Now, if we can only get those Mcdonalds’s execs to say the same thing!

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
BurnTheFat

P.S. No relation to Venuto's Pizza, hahaha

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a fat loss expert, lifetime natural (steroid-free) bodybuilder, independent nutrition researcher, freelance writer, and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle: Fat-Burning Secrets of The World’s Best Bodybuilders & Fitness Models (e-book) which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: burnthefat

The Real Way to Stop Eating Fast Food

2009-11-05T07:08:00.000-08:00

By Tom Venuto
www.BurnTheFat.com

“How could you eat that junk? It’s so bad for you!” (nag, nag). “Don’t you know those fries will give you a heart attack?” (nag, nag). “You have to stop eating all that fast food, it’s going to make you fat!” (nag nag). “You have to eat more healthy food like fruits and vegetables - they’re good for you!” (nag, nag). Your friends nag you, your family nags you, your doctor nags you, the health newsletters, websites and magazines - they all nag you, and of course, your personal trainer nags the heck out of you, to stop eating all those BAD FAST FOODS. But does all that nagging you and bad-mouthing the fast food industry really help anyone stop?

It doesn’t look that way. The fast food industry is thriving, even in the bad economy. The Chicago Tribune recently said that McDonalds is “recession proof.”

As one of only two companies to turn a major profit over the last year (the other being Wal Mart), McDonald’s is laughing its way to the bank. In fact, McDonalds plans to open 1,000 new stores this year.

I was driving down Route 95 a few weeks ago and pulled over to use the rest room at Mcdonalds on a Saturday morning (there’s a McDonalds conveniently located immediately off almost every exit up and down the full length of Interstate 95).

The parking lot was full, it was standing-room only inside and the lines snaked around into the seating area! You’d think Brad and Angelina were there signing autographs or something. Nope. Just a regular weekend at breakfast-time.

I was shopping in Wal Mart the same week and I almost passed out when I saw (smelled, actually) a McDonalds… INSIDE THE WAL- MART! Also, with lines.

Yep. It looks like your friends and family’s nagging you to stop eating fast food, and all the messages of the health and fitness industry to get people eating more “health food” are not working!

So what does work?

The results of a new survey from the behavior and psychology section of the journal, OBESITY (Feb 2009) provide some answers:

Researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Public health surveyed 530 adults about their attitudes towards fast foods.

They found that people already know fast food is unhealthy. (like, no kidding!)

The primary reasons they eat it anyway are because of the perceived convenience and a dislike for cooking! (I’d add another: they think fast food is always cheaper than healthy food).

So, said the authors of this research paper, nagging people to eat more healthy food and warning them that “fast food is going to make us fat and kill us” is not the best approach.

What’s the right approach?

Focus on teaching people how to make healthy eating fast, convenient and easy, because those are the reasons people are choosing fast food in the first place.

So what’s holding us back from implementing or taking this advice?

Well, I think that most people can’t get over the ideas that they “just cant cook” or that cooking is “too time consuming” or that healthy food “tastes like dirt” (as if McDonalds is gourmet food!)

That said, I’m not going to nag you, scold you or try to scare you out of eating fast food. I’m not going to lecture you about health food (not today, anyway). Nor am I going to bad-mouth the fast food restaurants.

I’m going to lead the new charge by showing you just how easy and convenient it is to eat healthy and nutritious food and make it delicous.

Here’s a few meal ideas (for starters) to prove my point.

3-MINUTE APPLE CINNAMON OATMEAL

* natural oatmeal (like Quaker old fashioned rolled oats)
* natural (unsweetened) applesauce
* cinnamon
* for protein, serve with scrambled eggs or egg whites on side or stir 1-2 scoops of vanilla protein powder into the oats

I eat this almost every morning. It’s faster, easier and cheaper than going to the donut place or getting sausage, cheese, bacon breakfast muffins at the fast food joint! (you don’t have to wait in line, either!)

10-MINUTE LAZY PERSON’S CHINESE STIR FRY

* Brown rice (I like basmati)
* frozen oriental vegetables
* chicken breast, grilled (try foreman grill)
* bragg’s “liquid aminos” (or light/lo-sodium soy sauce)

This takes 30 minutes, however, if you get a rice cooker and make a giant batch, you can have your rice on standby for instant eats and this will take less than 10 minutes.

It doesn’t get much easier than that. (I like those chinese veggies that come with the little mini-corn-on-the-cobs… reminds me of that Tom Hanks Movie, BIG)

2-MINUTE BLACK BEANS AND SPICY SALSA

* black beans (15 oz can)
* Medium or hot salsa
* 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
* 2 cloves garlic or chopped garlic to taste
* salt and pepper to taste

This one takes you all of 2 minutes to make. No cooking required! And it’s good! It’s vegetarian as listed above, but if you’re a high-protein muscle-head like me, just add chicken breast or lean ground turkey.

Best part: this is all inexpensive food! Oats, rice, beans… doesn’t get much cheaper than that - buy your healthy staples in bulk and the cost per serving is probably less than mickey D’s! (yes, even the “Value” meals)

Every one of these recipes is compatible with my Burn The Fat program

This means that my way of eating makes you more muscular and leaner… so you can look hot wearing very little clothes this summer… and be healthier… and save money too.

Train Hard, Eat Right, and Expect Success!

Tom Venuto BurnTheFat

About the Author:

Calorie Restriction For Life Extension: What They Didn't Tell You On Oprah

2009-11-03T06:49:00.000-08:00

By Tom Venuto BurnTheFat

On a recent episode of the Oprah show, one of the guests was a 51 year old man with the heart of a 20 year old. He's been following a calorie restriction plan and they said he might be one of the first people to reach 120 years old by following this plan. There have been stories both in the lay press and scientific press about calorie restriction for years and it has been a frequent talk show topic on other many other TV shows. However, before you cut your calories in half in hopes of adding another decade onto your life, you'd better get the other half of the story they didn't talk about on Oprah.

I’ve seen a lot of strange things in the health field, and although calorie restriction (CR) is the subject of serious and legitimate scientific study, I consider CR to be one of those strange things. Of course, that’s because I choose a different lifestyle - the muscle-friendly Burn The fat, Feed The Muscle lifestyle - but there’s more than one reason why I’m not a CR advocate:

Hunger while dieting is almost always a challenge. There’s some hunger even with conservative calorie deficits of 15-20% under maintenance. Prolonged hunger is one of the biggest reasons people fall off the weight loss diet wagon because it’s unpleasant and difficult to resist. This is why pharmaceutical and supplement companies spend millions of dollars on researching, developing and marketing appetite suppressants. Yet CR advocates put themselves through 30-50% calorie restriction on a daily basis as a way of life in the hopes of extending life span or health.

Practitioners of CR follow a low-calorie lifestyle, but technically, they are not in a chronic 30% calorie deficit. That would be impossible. What happens is their metabolisms get very slow (that’s part of the idea behind CR; if you slow down your metabolism, you allegedly slow down aging). So a 6 foot tall man who would normally require nearly 3,000 calories to maintain his weight, might eventually reach an energy balance at only 1800 or 1900 calories. This is not just due to a ‘starvation mode’ phenomenon, that’s only part of it. It’s primarily because he loses weight until he is very thin and his smaller body doesn’t need many calories any more.

Does caloric restriction really extend lifespan?

The biological mechanisms of lifespan extension through calorie restriction are not fully understood, but researchers say it may involve alterations in energy metabolism (as mentioned above), reduced oxidative damage, improvements in insulin sensitivity, reduction of glycation, modulation of protein metabolism, downregulation of pro-inflammatory genes and functional changes in both neuroendocrine and autonomic nervous systems.

Mouse studies on CR go back as far as 1935 and monkey studies began in the late 1980’s. So far the results are clear on one thing: caloric restriction does increase lifespan in rodents and other lower species (yeast, worms and flies). Studies suggest the life of the laboratory rat is 25% longer with CR (even longer with aggressive CR). Primate studies are still underway and humans have been experimenting with CR for some time. In primates and humans, biomarkers of aging show signs of slower aging with CR. This makes many proponents talk about this CR as if it were a sure-thing, already proven through double-blind randomized clinical human trials.

The truth is, there is NO direct experimental evidence that you will live longer from practicing CR. Due to the length of human lifespans, we will not have the necessary data for at least another generation and perhaps multiple generations. Even then, it will still be highly speculative whether CR will extend human life at all and if so how much. We can only estimate. I’ve seen guesses in the scientific literature ranging from 3 to 13 years, if CR is practiced for an entire adult lifetime.

Jay Phelan, a biologist at UCLA is skeptical. He says the potential life extension is on the lower end of that range and the increase is so small that it’s not worth the semi-starvation:

“There is no current evidence that lifelong caloric restriction leads to increased lifespan in primates. It’s certainly tantalizing that things like blood pressure or heart rate look as though they are a lot healthier and I believe they are. Whether or not this translates to a significantly increased lifespan, I don’t know. I predict that it doesn’t.”

I don’t quibble qualitatively with their results. Yes, it will increase lifespan, but it will not increase it by 50% or 60%, it won’t increase it by 20% or 10%, it might increase it by 2%. So if you tell me that I have to do something horrible for every day of my life for a 2% benefit - for an extra year of life - I say no thanks.”

Is prolonged caloric restriction unhealthy?

When caloric restriction is practiced with optimal nutrition (CRON), it is not inherently unhealthy. Actually, it appears the reverse is true. First, the weight loss that comes with the low calories produces improvements in the health markers, as you would expect. Second, the meticulous choice of food from CRON practitioners, where they pick high nutrient foods and avoid empty calories means that they are making healthy food choices. Third, advocates say that the CR itself improves health. I wonder, however, how much does CR improve health independent of the weight loss and the optimal nutrition?

By losing fat and maintaining an ideal body composition (the fat to muscle ratio) and eating high nutrient density foods, I propose that even at a more normal caloric intake, you will get very significant health and longevity benefits. I also propose that gaining muscle in a natural way (no steroids) will increase your quality of life today and as you get older.

Aside from the fact that we are not lab rats, the truth is, none of us knows when our day will come. We could get plucked off this physical plane at any moment and have no control over how it happens. My belief is that we should make our lifestyle decisions based on quality of life, not just quantity of life. That includes our quality of life today as well as our anticipated quality of life when we are older. Maybe we ought to be focusing more on “health span” than life span.

Downsides of calorie restriction for life extension

One fact about calorie restriction that they often don’t mention on these talk shows is that the benefits of CR decline if you start CR at a later age. This was discussed in a research paper from the Journal of Nutrition called, “Starving for life: what animal studies can and cannot tell us about the use of caloric restriction to prolong human lifespan.” The author of the paper, John Speakman from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, said that the later in life you begin to practice CR, the less of an increase in lifespan you will achieve. Even if the CR proponents are right, if you started in your late 40’s or mid 50’s for example, the benefit would be minimal. If you started in your 60’s the effect would be almost nonexistent. Essentially, you have to “starve for life” to get the benefits.

While some CR proponents claim that they aren’t hungry and they cite studies suggesting that hunger decreases during starvation, Speakman and other researchers say that hunger remains a big problem during CR - especially in today’s modern society where we are surrounded with convenience food and numerous eating cues - and that alone makes CR impractical:

“Neuroendocrine profiles support the idea that animals under CR are continuously hungry. The feasibility of restricting intake in humans for many decades is questionable.”

Let’s suppose for a moment that CR is totally legit and the claims are true. Many of the proposed benefits of CR come at the expense of what many of us are trying to do here: gain and maintain lean body mass. One spokesman for CR is 6 feet tall and 130 pounds. Another poster boy for CR is 6 foot tall and 115 lbs. Measurements of rodents under CR not only show large reductions in skeletal muscle but also bone mass.

I am not suggesting that these CR practitioners are anorexic, a concern that has been raised about CR when practiced aggressively. However, they are losing large amounts of fat-free tissue and that is plainly obvious for all to see when you look at their bony physiques. I am not imposing my body standards on others, but 115 to 130 lbs at 6 foot tall is underweight for a man by any standard. Furthermore, researchers say that at the body mass indices sustained by most voluntary CR practitioners, we would expect females to become amenorrheic. “One thing that is completely incompatible with a CR lifestyle is reproduction” says Speakman.

With that kind of atrophy, I have to wonder what their quality of life will be like in old age. While many people struggle with body fat for most of their adult lives, I’m sure almost everyone knows an elderly person who wrestles with the opposite problem: they are seriously underweight and they struggle to eat enough and maintain lean body mass.

My grandmother, before she passed away, was under 80 lbs. We could not get her to eat. She was weak and very frail. I have reported many times about the research showing how most overweight people under estimate calorie intake and eat more than they think or admit. In elder care homes, the research has often showed the opposite - the patients over estimate how much they eat. They swear they are eating enough, but they arent and they keep losing dangerous amounts of weight. With underweight, atrophied seniors, weakness means less functionality and lower quality of life and a fall can mean more than broken bones, it can be life-threatening.

Life extension with more muscle

While there is a commonality between CRON and the way I recommend eating (high nutrient density, low calorie density foods), in most regards, CR is the opposite of my approach. In my Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle program , we go for a higher energy flux nutrition program, which means that because we are weight training and doing cardio and leading a very active lifestyle, we get to eat more. Because we are so active and well-trained, the eating more does not have a negative effect as it would on a sedentary person, who might get sick and fat from the additional calories. We active folks take those calories, burn them for energy, partition them into lean muscle tissue and we enjoy a faster metabolism and extremely high quality of life.

As a bodybuilder, CR is not compatible with my priorities, but hypothetically speaking, if I were to practice a lower calorie lifestyle, I wouldn’t follow an aggressive CR approach. I’d probably do as the Okinawans do. They have a very simple philosophy: hari hachi bu: eat until you are only 80% full. While this does not mean there is a carefully measured 20% calorie deficit, it’s consistent with what we practice in the Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle lifestyle for a fat loss phase, and avoiding overeating is certainly a smart way to avoid obesity and health problems. Incidentally, the Okinawans eat about 40% less than Americans, and 11% less than they should, according to standard caloric intake guidelines, and they live 4 years longer than Americans.

If someone is being “sold” on CR by an enthusiastic CR spokesperson, or simply curious after watching the latest TV talk show (where they are looking for controversial stories), it’s important to know that there is more than one side to the story. If you carefully read the entire body of research on CR, you will see that the experts are split right down the middle in their opinions about whether CR will really work. CR for humans remains highly controversial and there are no guarantees that this will extend your life.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health in Baltimore, MD put it this way:

“Because it is unlikely that an experimental study will ever be designed to address this question in humans, we respond that “we think we will never know for sure.” We suggest that debate of this question is clearly an academic exercise.”

In closing, let me go back to one of the original questions I was asked: “Can the BFFM food plan also be thought as a longevity lifestyle, but with more muscle mass?” Absolutely beautifully said! That’s precisely what Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle is.

I believe that by making healthy food choices but doing so at a higher level of calorie intake and expenditure, that we can fend off sarcopenia - the age related decline in muscle mass that debilitates many seniors - while enjoying a more muscular physique, greater strength, and a less restrictive lifestyle. Most gerontologists agree - by making simple lifestyle changes that include strength training and good nutrition, you can easily turn back the biological clock 10 years without going hungry.

For more information about Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle, the “longevity lifestyle with more muscle”, visit: BurnTheFat

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto Fat Loss Coach BurnTheFat

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a fat loss expert, lifetime natural (steroid-free) bodybuilder, independent nutrition researcher, freelance writer, and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle: Fat-Burning Secrets of The World’s Best Bodybuilders & Fitness Models (e-book) which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: burnthefat

References:
Hunger does not diminish over time in mice under protracted caloric restriction. Hambly C, Mercer JG, Speakman JR.Rejuvenation Res. 2007 Dec;10(4):533-42.Aberdeen Centre for Energy Regulation and Obesity (ACERO), Rowett Research Institute, Bucksburn, Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Starving for life: what animal studies can and cannot tell us about the use of caloric restriction to prolong human lifespan.Speakman JR, Hambly C. J Nutr. 2007 Apr;137(4):1078-86. School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 2TZ, Scotland, UK.
Can dietary restriction increase longevity in all species, particularly in human beings? Introduction to a debate among experts. Le Bourg E, Rattan SI. Biogerontology. 2006 Jun;7(3):123-5.
The potential for dietary restriction to increase longevity in humans: extrapolation from monkey studies. Ingram DK, Roth GS, Lane MA, Ottinger MA, Zou S, de Cabo R, Mattison JA.Biogerontology. 2006 Jun;7(3):143-8. Laboratory of Experimental Gerontology, Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, 5600 Nathan Shock Drive, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA.
Caloric restriction in humans: potential pitfalls and health concerns. Dirks AJ, Leeuwenburgh C.Mech Ageing Dev. 2006 Jan;127(1):1-7. Epub 2005 Oct 13, Wingate University, School of Pharmacy, 316 N. Main Street, Wingate, NC 28174, USA.
Caloric restriction and human longevity: what can we learn from the Okinawans? D. Craig Willcox, Bradley J. Willcox Hidemi Todoriki. Biogerontology (2006) 7: 173—177
Endocrine alterations in response to calorie restriction in humans. Mol Cell Endocrinol. 2009 Feb 5;299(1):129-36. Epub 2008 Oct 21. Redman LM, Ravussin E. Pennington Biomedical Research Center, 6400 Perkins Road, Baton Rouge, LA 70808, United States.
Caloric restriction in the presence of attractive food cues: external cues, eating, and weight. Polivy J, Herman CP, Coelho JS.Physiol Behav. 2008 Aug 6;94(5):729-33. Epub 2008 Apr 13. University of Toronto, Canada.
Life Extension by Calorie Restriction in Humans. Everitt AV, Le Couteur DG.Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2007 Aug 23, Centre for Education and Research on Ageing, University of Sydney, Concord, New South Wales, Australia.

Build a Bigger Chest in 3-4 Workouts or Less

2009-10-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS BurnTheFat

If your pecs are a weak body part, or, if you’ve simply hit a progress plateau in your chest development, then this high intensity chest training program will pack slabs of muscle mass on your chest after just 3-4 workouts - and I guarantee it. This is a high intensity bodybuilding workout for advanced bodybuilders only. (Beginners don’t even think about it...)

I’m currently on workout 3 of 4 in this pec routine and the results have been so impressive that I decide to write it up for you before I even finish the final workout next week.

Considering I’m on a calorie deficit in a cutting phase, I’m especially impressed with the increase in my chest size and development after 3 workouts. You’re not going to gain much if any muscular body weight if you are in a caloric deficit, but NO DOUBT, you can improve the development of a muscle group even while cutting up. This is a perfect example. I’m going to return to this program again for sure on my next mass phase. This program is called…

Multi-Angular Rest Pause With Pump Finisher

Here’s how it works. You select two exercises. For exercise one (the main course), I chose a basic pec mass exercise that can be done at any angle from steep incline to flat bench. Thats the primary exercise you stick with for all 4 workouts. Incline Dumbbell Press was the natural choice. I set up on a fully adjustable bench that allows multiple angles of incline.

For exercise two (dessert), I chose an isolation exercise for a pump finisher, and it changes with every workout.

Here’s the sequence:

A1 Incline Dumbbell Press - steep incline - about 65-70 degrees
6 reps
rest 10 seconds

A2 Incline Dumbbell Press - medium (regular) incline - about 45 degress
6 reps
10 seconds

A3 Incline Dumbbell Press - low incline - about 20-25 degrees
6 reps
10 seconds rest

A4 Dumbbell Press - flat bench
6 reps

Now rest 2 - 3 minutes.

That’s one "set." Technically of course, that is FOUR SETS, done in rest pause fashion, so lets call it one “round” for clarity’s sake.

Yes… that was round ONE. Now do it two more times.

Note: It helps a lot if you have a training partner change the bench angle so you can stay seated and keep the dumbbells in your hands. Doing it alone is slow and cumbersome.

For poundage, youre going to have to go MUCH lighter than usual. Although I don't train heavy pecs anymore, last time I did, I was doing 6 reps with 125s on the incline. So for this program I took about 50-60% of that; 70 lbs on workout 1, 75 lbs on workout 2,and 80 lbs on workout 3. On the last one, I had to drop to the 75s to finish all 3 rounds and even then I needed some forced reps towards the end.

You may need to decrease the weight on the 2nd or 3rd round, but if at all humanly possible, do NOT reduce the weight during each round. Doing all four angles at the same poundage is the whole idea.

What may happen, especially if you even slightly overestimated your starting poundage, is that reps may drop with each angle change within a round. First angle - 6 reps is easy. second angle, a little harder, but still no problem. Third angle, you might only squeeze out 5 reps or hit honest failure on the 6th rep. 4th angle (flat), you might hit total failure on the 4th or 5th rep.

Now this is also where a training partner comes in. This routine should not be attempted without a spotter. Sorry, but you are a dork if you try to do this without a spotter. This program causes HONEST muscle failure (I’ll explain that in more detail shortly), so you need the spotter for safety, but moreover, you will need a spotter’s assistance to complete forced reps, at least on the final round or two, if not the first round. In general, forced reps should not be overused, but they play an important part of this program.

Ok, where were we? Oh yeah, you just finished your 3rd round. You might be finished! Yeah. some people will be DONE, KAPUT, ZONKED, BONKED, NUKED, GAME OVER, after 3 rounds of that (think about it - that was 12 sets, disguised as 3 sets!) However, for those who want the full course…. come with me and lets finish off those pecs with the pump (oh, you thought were already pumped… heh.. just wait…you’ll see what a pump is!)

The second exercise (exercise B) is going to be an isolation exercise.. ie., DB flye, cable crossover, machine flye (pec deck), etc., and you will perform 20-25 reps, non stop in piston-like fashion. use a steady quick tempo, but not so fast that you use momentum.

This isolation /pump exercise will change with every workout:

B1 Workout 1: standing cable crossover
2-3 sets, 20-25 reps

B1 Workout 2: machine flye or pec deck
2-3 sets, 20-25 reps

B1 Workout 3: decline dumbbell flye
2-3 sets 20-25 reps

B1 Workout 4: flat bench cable flyes in cable crossover machine
2-3 sets, 20-25 reps

That’s it! That’s the whole program. Three rounds of multi-angular rest pause, then finish your workout with 2-3 sets of 25 reps on a pumping, isolation movement.

This routine is performed within a standard bodybuilding type of split, so it should be done once in 5-7 days, no more. You would probably do another body part after chest,such as biceps or triceps, depending on how you organize your split routine.

I would recommend advanced bodybuilders use this program a couple times a year if and when they need a boost in chest development. This is not the type of program you would use all the time. You would burn out and overtrain.

There’s one more very important part of this routine - progression.

On the Incline Dumbbell Presses, you will increase the poundage with every workout. Keep in mind, you will not be able to complete all 3 rounds at all 4 angles for 6 unassisted reps. Its going to get harder each time, even as you get stronger. You may have to use a spotter more with each progressing workout. You may also find that on workout 1 or workout 2, you can complete all 3 rounds with the same dumbbells, but on workout 3, by the 2nd or 3rd round, you have to drop the weight or you’ll barely be getting 2 or 3 reps.

Now let me re-emphasize the importance of a spotter. Theres something thats going to happen when you do this routine that does not happen often. You will hit what my training partner and I call “HONEST FAILURE.” This means that your muscles literally fail, or give out right underneath you. Mind you, this is not something you would usually aim for, but that’s just the nature of this program and this is only a 4-workout high intensity “shock” type of routine.

When I say your muscles will give out, I mean that literally. On the last rep or two of 3rd or 4th angle, of the 2nd or 3rd round, your arms may literally buckle underneath you. That’s honest failure.

You see, there are several types of failure… First there is “sissy failure”.. that’s when there is a lactic acid burn or a fatigue in the muscle (you’re tired) and because it hurts or youre tired, that causes you to stop. Thats sissy failure (sarcasm).

Then you have positive failure. This is where you can no longer push the weight up in a concentric motion, but you are still able to lower the weight and exert an upward force against the weight. For example, you’re bench pressing and you hit the “sticking point,” but you are holding that bar at the sticking point (its not coming back down), and you’re still exerting force to push the bar upward, but the bar simply isn't moving up!

Then you have honest failure. This is where the muscle simply gives out.. it buckles. you have reached concentric and eccentric failure. This type of failiure is rarely discussed. In fact I don’t recall anyone ever writing about it except for Arthur Jones and Ellington darden and the rest of the High Intensity Training (HIT) camp.

Rarely does any bodybuilder tread in this territory, and for good reason, as it is really not necessary and can be dangerous for anyone but a veteran who knows what the heck he is doing - and all the kidding aside for a moment, Im serious about this. Its no joke if your chest and arms give out from underneath you and you dump a 70 or 80 pound dumbbell on your face. (you do like your teeth, don’t you?)

However, as a technique you use on rare occasion for a shock routine that breaks through progress plateaus, that untrodden territory is there… for those who dare. There is something about this particular program (multi angular rest pause) that takes you there. You've been warned! Train hard, but be safe!

Now, go out there and get jacked!

Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
Lifetime Natural Bodybuilder

BurnTheFat

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting:burnthefat

The Low Body Fat Secret Of Bodybuilders And Fitness Models

2009-10-27T05:35:00.000-07:00

By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS BurnTheFat BurnTheFatInnerCircle

The secret to getting super lean – I’m talking about being RIPPED, not just “average body fat” – is all about mastering the art of "peaking." Most people do not have a clue about what it takes to reach the type of low body fat levels that reveal ripped six-pack abs, muscle striations, vascularity and extreme muscular definition, so they go about it completely the wrong way.

Here’s a case in point: One of my newsletter subscribers recently sent me this question:

Tom, on your www.burnthefat.com website, you wrote:

‘Who better to model than bodybuilders and fitness competitors? No athletes in the world get as lean as quickly as bodybuilders and fitness competitors. The transformations they undergo in 12 weeks prior to competition would boggle your mind! Only ultra-endurance athletes come close in terms of low body fat levels, but endurance athletes like triathaletes and marathoners often get lean at the expense of chewing up all their muscle. Some of them are nothing but skin and bone.’

"There seems to be a contradiction unless I'm missing something. Why do bodybuilders and fitness competitors have to go through a 12 week 'transformation' prior to every event instead of staying 'lean and mean' all the time? If they practice the secrets exposed in your book, they should be staying in shape all the time instead of having to work at losing fat prior to every competitive event, correct?"

There is a logical explanation for why bodybuilders and other physique athletes (fitness and figure competitors), don’t remain completely ripped all year round, and it’s the very reason they are able to get so ripped on the day of a contest…

You can’t hold a peak forever or it’s not a "peak", right? What is the definition of a peak? It’s a high point surrounded by two lower points isn’t it?

Therefore, any shape you can stay in all year round is NOT your “peak” condition.

The intelligent approach to nutrition and training (which almost all bodybuilders and fitness/figure competitors use), is to train and diet in a seasonal or cyclical fashion and build up to a peak, then ease off to a maintenance or growth phase.

I am NOT talking about bulking up and getting fatand out of shape every year, then dieting it all off every year. What I’m talking about is going from good shape to great (peak) shape, then easing back off to good shape.... but never getting "out of shape." Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

Here’s an example: I have no intentions whatsoever of walking around 365 days a year at 4% body fat like I appear in the photo on my website. Off-season, when I'm not competing, my body fat is usually between 8 – 10%. Mind you, that’s very lean and still single digit body fat.

I don't stray too far from competition shape, but I don't maintain contest shape all the time. It takes me 12-14 weeks or so to gradually drop from 9.5% to 3.5%-4.0% body fat to "peak" for competition with NO loss of lean body mass...using the same techniques I reveal in my e-book.

It would be almost impossible to maintain 4% body fat, and even if I could, why would I want to? For the few weeks prior to competition I’m so depleted, ripped, and even “drawn” in the face, that complete strangers walk up and offer to feed me.

Okay, so I’m just kidding about that, but let’s just say being “being ripped to shreds” isn’t a desirable condition to maintain because it takes such a monumental effort to stay there. It’s probably not even healthy to try forcing yourself to hold extreme low body fat. Unless you’re a natural “ectomorph” (skinny, fast metabolism body type), your body will fight you. Not only that, anabolic hormones may drop and sometimes your immune system is affected as well. It’s just not “normal” to walk around all the time with literally no subcutaneous body fat.

Instead of attempting to hold the peak, I cycle back into a less demanding off-season program and avoid creeping beyond 9.9% body fat. Some years I’ve stayed leaner - like 6-7%, (which takes effort), especially when I knew I would be photographed, but I don’t let my body fat go over 10%.

This practice isn’t just restricted to bodybuilders. Athletes in all sports use periodization to build themselves up to their best shape for competition. Is a pro football player in the same condition in March-April as he is in August-September? Not a chance. Many show up fat and out of shape (relatively speaking) for training camp, others just need fine tuning, but none are in peak form... that’s why they have training camp!!!

There’s another reason you wouldn’t want to maintain a “ripped to shreds” physique all year round – you’d have to be dieting (calorie restricted) all the time. And this is one of the reasons that 95% of people can’t lose weight and keep it off --they are CHRONIC dieters... always on some type of diet. Know anyone like that?

You can’t stay on restricted low calories indefinitely. Sooner or later your metabolism slows down and you plateau as your body adapts to the chronically lowered food intake. But if you diet for fat loss and push incredibly hard for 3 months, then ease off for a while and eat a little more (healthy food, not "pigging out"), your metabolic rate is re-stimulated. In a few weeks or months, you can return to another fat loss phase and reach an even lower body fat level, until you finally reach the point that’s your happy maintenance level for life – a level that is healthy and realistic – as well as visually appealing.

Bodybuilders have discovered a methodology for losing fat that’s so effective, it puts them in complete control of their body composition. They’ve mastered this area of their lives and will never have to worry about it again. If they ever “slip” and fall off the wagon like all humans do at times … no problem! They know how to get back into shape fast.

Bodybuilders have the tools and knowledge to hold a low body fat all year round (such as 9% for men, or about 15% for women), and then at a whim, to reach a temporary “peak” of extremely low body fat for the purpose of competition. Maybe most important of all, they have the power and control to slowly ease back from peak shape into maintenance, and not balloon up and yo-yo like most conventional dieters!

What if you had the power to stay lean all year round, and then get super lean when summer rolled around, or when you took your vacation to the Caribbean, or when your wedding date was coming up? Wouldn’t you like to be in control of your body like that? Isn’t that the same thing that bodybuilders and fitness/figure competitors do, only on a more practical, real-world level?

So even if you have no competitive aspirations whatsoever, don’t you agree that there’s something of value everyone could learn from physique athletes? Don’t model yourself after the huge crowd of losers who gobble diet pills, buy exercise gimmicks and suffer through starvation diets like automatons, only to gain back everything they lost! Instead, learn from the leanest athletes on Earth - natural bodybuilders and fitness competitors…

These physique athletes get as ripped as they want to be, exactly when they want to, simply by manipulating their diets in a cyclical fashion between pre-contest "cutting" programs and off season "maintenance" or "muscle growth" programs. Even if you have no desire to ever compete, try this seasonal “peaking” approach yourself and you’ll see that it can work as well for you as it does for elite bodybuilders.

If you’re interested in learning even more secrets of bodybuilders and fitness models, visit the Burn The Fat website at: BurnTheFat

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer (CPT) and a certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS). Tom is the author of the #1 best-selling e-book, "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using the secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn body fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com. To learn more about Tom's Fat Loss Support Community, visit: burnthefatinnercircle

The Ideal Body Measurements

2009-10-24T05:09:00.000-07:00

By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS BurnTheFat

I’m often asked what my body measurements are and/or what are the ideal measurements for a bodybuilder or a classical muscular male physique. Believe it or not, there are actually many formulas for determining the “ideal body proportions.” On the other hand, you might want to take them with a grain of salt…

QUESTION: Tom, there is one thing that I really would like to know – your measurements. You have a physique that (in my opinion) is ideal and your photos are a real inspiration to me. I am able to move up in weight gradually with my workouts, so I know I am building muscle, but I never have a measurement to shoot for – e.g. biceps, chest, waist, hips, etc. Also, it seems like certain ratios (for example, chest to waist ratio, and maybe there are others?), would be helpful also. My thinking is that if my waist and hips are “growing” faster than my chest, then that might be an indicator that I am gaining fat where it likes to show up first (hips and waist). The measurements I have of myself are: chest, waist, hips, biceps, forearms, thighs, calves. Thank you.

ANSWER: Personally, I no longer take my measurements, although I did regularly when I was a teenager. I do, however think it’s a great way to chart progress. Circumference measurements give you feedback about how well your training (and nutrition) regimen are working and let’s you catch yourself if certain body parts are lagging behind others, or in the case of waist and hips, if you’re gaining body fat.

The waist measurement is an important one, because when your waist circumference is going down, you know your overall body fat is going down. Also, when your waist shrinks even a little bit, it tends to completely change the way you look – even if you don’t gain any muscle, a narrow waist creates an illusion of broader shoulders. Abdominal fat and a large waist measurement is also a health risk.

There have been all kinds of different formulas proposed over the years for the “ideal proportions”, but I never aimed for a certain measurement myself. Bodybuilding is a very visual sport. The judges don’t come up on stage and measure your arms in a bodybuilding contest – you are judged on appearance.

I’ve always gone after a certain “look” as opposed to a certain measurement. I cut out photos of bodybuilders whose physiques I admire and want to emulate and rather than having a measurement in mind, I always have a picture of my ideal in mind.

On top of a solid base of muscle size, I simply work towards symmetry, so all muscles are developed equally, with no single muscle groups that are out of proportion compared to others - for example, a huge chest and rib cage with small arms looks silly - huge arms and small legs looks un-symmetrical as well.

I’m not all that hung up on weighing a certain amount either, although I do weigh myself regularly. The main reason I monitor my weight closely is because in the off season, I’m always interested in gaining more lean body mass and prior to competition I have to make a weight class (middleweight has a 176 1/4 lbs cutoff. )

I’m 5’ 8” tall and I weigh 174-176 for competitions. That is very much a “false” weight, however, because I easily lose 6-10 pounds of water weight in the three days before a contest. By the Monday after a Saturday contest, my weight is usually back up to 180-184 or so. Off season, I weigh about 195-200 lbs. My off season body fat is usually around 9-10% and before contests it’s around 4%.

Years ago I do remember measuring my arms and they were 17 1/2” cold and 18” pumped. That was a long time ago. I would imagine they’re bit larger now, but who knows. My waist is 31-32” most of the year, even smaller before contests (last notch on the lifting belt!)

These are somewhat typical off season / pre contest height, weight and body fat measurements for a natural bodybuilder. In the professional and open federations (not drug tested), those weights and measurements might be considered “small.” However, a 17-18 inch arm on a lean and proportionate body can look very impressive.

Steve Reeves for example, was known as one of the most symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing bodybuilders of all time, even though he was not “huge” by today’s standards.

Reeves wrote about ideal measurements frequently and was always striving for his idea of perfection in this regard (and came close to achieving his own personal ideal). One of his criteria for ideal proportions included having his arms, calves and neck measure the same.

Steve Reeves Measurements:
Arms: 18.5 inches
Calves: 18.5 inches
Neck: 18.5 inches
Thighs: 27 inches
Chest: 54 inches
Waist: 30 inches

In his “classic physique” book, Reeves said his formula for “ideal proportions” was as follows:

Muscle to bone ratios:
Arm size= 252% of wrist size
Calf size= 192% of ankle size
Neck Size= 79% of head size
Chest Size= 148% of pelvis size
Waist size= 86% of pelvis size
Thigh size= 175% of knee size

Steve Reeves’ height and weight chart for a bodybuilder (natural)
5’5” 160lbs
5’6” 165lbs
5’7” 170lbs
5’8” 175lbs
5’9” 180lbs
5’10” 185lbs
5’11” 190lbs
6’0” 200lbs
6’1” 210lbs
6’2” 220lbs
6’3” 230lbs
6’4” 240lbs
6’5” 250lbs

In the book Brawn, Stuart McRobert published the old “John McCallum formula for “challenging yet realistic” measurements for “hard gainers. His formula is based on wrist measurement and was also published in the book Super Squats:

John McCallum’s realistic measurement ideals for hard gainers
1. 6.5 times your wrist gives chest girth
2. 85% of the chest girth produces the hips
3. Take 70% of the chest girth for the waist
4. 53% of the chest gives the thigh girth
5. The neck size is 37% of the chest
6. 36% of the chest produces the upper arm girth
7. The calves come out a little less at 34%
8. The forearms get 29% of the chest measurement

Incidentally, McRobert’s book Brawn has an entire chapter called “expectations” which discusses the truth about measurement claims.

I find all these measurement ideals very interesting, but personally I take them with a grain of salt.

Be careful with some of the formulas for “ideal measurements”, because if they were based on steroid using and or pro bodybuilders, you may get discouraged by trying to pursue an impossible goal for a natural bodybuilder or the measurements of someone with a totally different bone structure than you have.

Measurements - especially arm measurements - are also frequently exaggerated. Twenty inch arms, for example, are rare and when you actually see them in person, you realize just how massive they really are. But somehow beginners and natural athletes get the idea in their head that bodybuilding success means 250 pounds and a 20 inch arm.

The truth is, a 17 to 18 inch arm on a ripped 175-180 pound physique with excellent balance, symmetry and proportion can look much larger than it really is – it’s an optical illusion of sorts.

Some of these guidelines for “ideal proportions” are the “Grecian” or “classical” ideals while others are ideals for bodybuilders. In either case, keep in mind they are subjective – they’re just someone else’s opinion of what is an ideal measurement. The only opinion that matters in the end is your own.

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS Lifetime Natural Bodybuilder BurnTheFat

About the Author:

Low Carb Diets For Weight Loss: Just a Myth After All?

2009-10-21T07:28:00.000-07:00

By Tom Venuto BurnTheFat

QUESTION: Tom, I’ve been reading your stuff for years and I also read a lot of other sites and message boards including some of the low carb boards. I have finally come to the conclusion, both from all my reading and my personal experience, that the idea that one will lose weight just by cutting carbs is a myth.And I welcome anyone who thinks they can to go ahead and try to prove me wrong. I’m not looking for a fight of course, just looking for good information and discussion.

Consider the following two situations; each involves an identical male who requires 3,000 calories/day to maintain his current weight.

SITUATION #1: The individual reduces his calories to 2,500/day, which theoretically will result in losing one pound/week. The individual divides his calories so 60% (1500) come from Carbs and the remainder come from Fat and Protein. Will he lose weight even though he’s eating a lot of Carbs? I believe the answer is YES because even though the carbs are high (60%), he is in a calorie deficit.
SITUATION #2 The individual adopts a Low Carb Diet by eating only 25 grams of Carbs daily (100 calories). He then eats an additional 2900 calories of Fat and Protein. Will he lose weight? I believe the answer is NO because even though the carbs are low, he is eating at his maintenance level.

Now, I understand that there are advantages to controlling insulin and reducing Carbs, including some health benefits for some people, but what I often don’t see on the low carb benefit list is the impact that fat has on controlling appetite. I believe that Fat satiates even the largest appetite, causing you to eat less.

Therefore, I believe that the reason a Low Carb Diet works is because people who follow it eat fewer calories.

I would love to get your feedback on this Tom and if you or any of your newsletter or blog readers have any studies or information proving me wrong, please let me know.

- John in Texas

ANSWER:

Thanks for your well-thought out question John. Yes, we’ve discussed this before, but it’s timely and worth discussing again, especially with some of the long-term research that was just published earlier this year.

You are preaching to the choir though, my friend. You are right, fat loss hinges on calories in versus calories out. BUT — and there is a big BUT — we really need to make some distinctions about low carb and high protein so we don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Low carb has some advantages. More imortantly, so does high protein. Heres where most of the confusion comes from in this whole low carb thing:

Are we talking about low carb in a free-living / ad-libitum (non calorie counting) situation, or are we talking about a laboratory-controlled study or a strict calorie-counting situation?

This makes all the difference because in a real world (free-living) scenario, low carb almost always beats high carb for weight loss, especially in the early weeks and months on the program.

This can be partly explained by water weight and glycogen loss in the intital weeks, but also by actual greater fat loss during the early stages.

However, this is not because of “metabolic advantage” of low carbs over high carbs, it is because subjects in these types of studies ate less in the low carb group.

In other words, low carb diets usually control calorie intake better, when you’re not counting calories (you get “automatic” calorie control, provided you’re not a totally unrestrained eater, of course).

So you are correct in your conclusion.

Furthermore, it’s difficult to eat too much when you remove an entire group of calorie dense foods (sugars and starches) which are a food group responsible for providing a huge portion of the calories in most people’s diets. Sure, you can overeat on dietary fat as well, at least in a mixed diet, but apparently not easily in the absence of carbs. Now, heres the kicker… As soon as you start controlling calories.. I mean hospital ward or research facility controlled, where the subjects cannot pick and choose their own food, and instead, the food is weighed and measured and almost literally spoon fed to the subjects, the difference in weight loss between low carb and high carb shrinks or even vanishes.

In other words, when calories are matched, there is little or no difference in fat loss between a high carb and low carb diet, when dietary fats and carbs are the variables manipulated.

In the long term studies, even more valuable data has emerged…

The big study by the New England Journal of Medicine that got all that publicity earlier this year confirmed it once again… Even though low carb diets work better in the short term for weight loss in free living subjects, the advantage decreases by month six, and disappears after a year or two. The moral of the story is (drumroll please)… Most people don’t stick with ANY type of diet very well for very long. And… the extreme low carb diets in particular have lower long term adherence rates and poor long term maintenance rates. Now, this does not mean that low carb diets do not have benefits. They certainly do, and some of them are health related (which is beyond the scope of this column). Other benefits are fat loss related… If you automatically eat less due to appetite suppression and removal of calorie dense foods, that is clearly an advantage, it’s just not the advantage that most low carb advocates suggest. There is no proof of metabolic advantage purely from restrction of carbs and insulin does not lead to obesity in a cause and effect sense, insulin merely plays a role in the process of partioning surplus carbs into fat stores or in suppressing fat release. Insulin is important to manage, but not the deciding factor in whether you lose fat or not. One change in macronutrients that DOES help fat loss is an increase in protein. Protein is highly thermogenic - about 30%. So 30% of the energy in protein is not available for potential fat storage, as it is metabolized just in the digestion process. So in reality, you could say it’s the higher protein, NOT the reduced carbs, that provides the real advantage!

Ironically, a low carb diet is NOT always high in protein! Ketogenic low carb diets for example, are actually high in dietary fat, not so much protein. most people don’t realize that. Too much protein is somewhat gluconeogenic and kicks people out of ketosis.

Likewise, a high protein diet is not always low in carbs. Take the 40-40-20 macro split from BFFM (or BFL) for example. 40% of calories from protein is very high. And yet 40% carbs is not very low!

The protein-induced thermodynamic advantage is somewhat small, but it’s significant if a large shift in protein intake is made as is the case with a 30-40% protein program. For example, the old food pyramid/ traditional dietician-style diet is 15% protein. Research from the University of Washington School of Medicine showed that when protein is doubled to 30% (replacing carbs), there is a small but measureable advantage even when matched calorie for calorie. In free living studies, the advantage is even larger because protein is a great appetite suppressant and is highly satiating. In fact, protein NOT FAT, is the most satiating nutrient. It appears that fat is psychologically satiating, but protein is the hands down winner as the most satiating, appetite suppressing macronutrient, physiologically speaking. Thus, a protein with every meal and a 30% (or even higher) ratio of protein is conducive to better fat loss - which incidentally is EXACTLY how the Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle program is set up. Theres much more to good nutrition and health than just calories, but ultimately the most important factor is not macro ratios or low carb vs high carb. When you sort it all out, fat loss all comes down to a calorie deficit in the end. In my 26 years of bodybuilding and 20 years as a fitness professional, I’ve tried it ALL… I’ve gotten ripped on high carb and I’ve gotten ripped on low carb; thousands of others can testify the same for either side. What successful approaches have in common is a calorie deficit… AND they are programs you can actually stick with. I simply believe that if you can get even a slight advantage by bumping up the protein and dropping the carbs, at least a little, why not take it? So that’s why my bodybuilding-style pre-contest maximum fat loss program is high in protein and low to medium in carbs.

learn more at ====>BurnTheFat

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto, Fat loss coach BurnTheFat

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) and a certified personal trainer (CPT). Tom is the author of "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using methods of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: burnthefat

The Little Thing in Your Head That's Keeping You Fat

2009-10-20T06:46:00.000-07:00

By Tom Venuto BurnTheFat

I have no doubt that a scientist somewhere just read the title of this article and said out loud, “YES! Venuto is right! That little thing in your head – the hypothalamus – it IS the thing that is keeping you fat! By George, that Venuto guy isn’t a dumb bodybuilder after all – he’s been doing his research!” At which moment, I will be shaking my head and thinking, “you need to get out of the laboratory and into the real world, with real people, buddy.” Okay, okay, to be fair, Neuro-endocrine control of appetite and body fat really is quite fascinating. But today, I’m talking about PSYCH-ology, not PHYSI-ology. The little thing in your head that’s keeping you fat is actually just a….

Limiting belief!

Self-limiting beliefs are among the biggest problems that people deal with in their struggles to achieve a healthy ideal weight. They’re also one of the reasons that so many people start to falter or fall off the diet and exercise wagon as early as late January or early February in their New Year’s goal pursuits.

If you’re that science guy I spoke of and you’re about to bail because you’re thinking, “Here we go again… another psycho-babble, self help article,” then think again. A belief is the force behind the placebo effect, which is well known by every scientist and medical professional. A respected doctor gives a patient a pill and is told it’s a powerful drug. The patient gets well immediately, not knowing that the “miraculous” substance was a dummy pill. Inert. Sugar. The miracle was in the mind.

But beliefs are not only involved in the mind-body connection, they are unconscious programs that control your behavior. The most important factor in whether you achieve the body and the health you want is NOT what diet or training program you follow. It’s what makes you follow your diet and training program. And guess what? What you believe controls your behavior - whether you will stick with your program or sabotage it with cheating, bingeing or inconsistency.

What to do about limiting beliefs

Ok, so now you agree that beliefs are psychological factors that affect you physically by controlling your behavior, including your eating, exercising and lifestyle. What now? 3 steps. 2 questions.

STEP 1: IDENTIFY LIMITING BELIEFS

You are fully aware of many of your beliefs. For example, beliefs about spirituality or politics are usually in the front of your conscious mind.

But the beliefs that hold back your health and physical development the most are usually the ones you don’t even know you have. They are like unconscious “brain software,” running silently in the background.

So the first step is to bring those unconscious and potentially damaging beliefs up to the surface so you are aware of them. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t know you have one.

2 Quick Questions That Will Help Draw Out Your Beliefs

Beliefs can go back to childhood, but don’t worry, you don’t have to go to a psychotherapist and be regressed back to kindergarten. It’s simpler than that. But it does pay to do this questioning process as a formal “exercise” with serious quiet time, with pen and paper (instead of just thinking about it).

Question #1: What causes me to be overweight (or unhealthy, or not having the body I want)?

Question #2: What’s preventing me from getting leaner? (or healthier?)

Spend some time with it and see how big of a list you can create. Ask yourself whether each belief helps or hurts you. Does it move you forward or backward. Does it empower or disempower you? The ones that hurt you or hold you back will be obvious. You may come up with beliefs such as:

“I’m overweight and I can’t get leaner because”:

I have no time
I’m too old
I can’t stop eating
I hate exercise

You just can’t do it when you have 4 kids

It’s impossible after having a hip replacement

But the million dollar question is: are these beliefs actually true?

Beliefs are not facts. You may hold your beliefs as absolute reality, but when you deconstruct them and challenge them, you may see that they don’t hold any water.

Self limiting beliefs are false interpretations (negative thought patterns) that hold you back. And you keep holding on to them because making excuses and staying the same is a lot more convenient than changing, isn’t it? Change requires hard work, effort and leaving your comfort zone.

Your mission now: weaken the limiting beliefs and get rid of them

STEP 2: CHALLENGE THOSE BELIEFS

How do you challenge a belief? 4 ways:

(A) Challenge it directly: Is the belief even valid at all? See if you can find a “counter example” that disproves your belief. For example; if you think that after you’ve had 3 or 4 kids, it’s impossible to get a nice flat stomach, what will you say after I introduce you to a dozen of my clients and readers who had 3 or 4 kids and went from bulging belly to rock-hard flat stomach? If they did it, then how could your belief be valid? Answer: It WASN’T! You believed something false and inaccurate and it was holding you back!

(B) Challenge the source: Is it your belief, or have you been living what your parents, peers or culture handed down to you? Just the realization that a belief wasn’t yours to begin with is enough to shatter it.

(C) Challenge the usefulness of the belief: Ok, so you believed something when you were younger. Does still believing it has any usefulness today? Does it help you move closer to what you want in your life today? If not, then wouldn't today be a good time to get rid of it?

(D) Challenging the belief by weighing the consequences: If you keep this belief, what is it going to cost you? What will the pain be like? What will you miss? And what will these consequences be if you don’t change it NOW?

STEP 3: INSTALL A NEW BELIEF

Nature abhors a vacuum, as Spinoza once said. You don’t simply get rid of a belief, you must also replace it. What things would you want and need to believe instead that would create positive behaviors that would move you toward your goal? Write them down, then massage them into an affirmation. For example, if you’ve hung your hat on the belief that you didn’t have time to exercise, could you write a new affirmation of belief similar to this?

“I’m a very busy person, so that means I must set clear priorities and I must keep my health and body on the top of my priority list. I always schedule time for my most important priorities, I am efficient with my training, and I use every minute of my day wisely. And if Barack Obama, the busiest person in the world, can train for 45 minutes a day 6 days a week, there’s no excuse for me. I can do it too.”

Write down your new belief affirmations and read them, right along with your goals, every day.

Then “activate” this affirmation by doing what Olympic and professional athletes do: engaging in mental rehearsal. Visualize yourself carrying out the behaviors that this belief would generate. Think about and feel what it would be like to take those positive actions steps and play mental movies of how your life would change by doing so. Involve all your senses: see it, hear it, feel it.

Keep it up until you start to see your behavior change and your habitual actions come into alignment with your goals/intentions. If you’re diligent, you’ll see changes in attitude and behavior with 21-30 days. It may happen sooner. It may take longer if you’ve carried deep, lifelong limiting beliefs. But in less than a month, the roots of the new belief pattern will be formed.

Then you can update your goals and affirmations to reflect your current priorities and move on to the next goal you want to achieve or the next limiting belief you want to change. Keep THAT up, and pretty soon, you will be LIMIT-LESS!

BELIEVE ME, spending quality time understanding and working on your beliefs is a lot more productive than spending time in forums arguing about whether a low carb program is better than a high carb program… or even whether the cure for obesity is found in the arcuate nucleus of the lower hypothalamus. It’s in your head all right… but most people have been looking in the wrong place.

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto Fat Loss Coach BurnTheFat.com

About the Author:

The 2 Pounds Per Week Rule and How to Burn Fat Faster

2009-10-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

By Tom Venuto BurnTheFat

Why do you always hear that 2 pounds per week is the maximum amount of fat you should safely lose? If you train really hard while watching calories closely shouldn’t you be able to lose more fat without losing muscle or damaging your health? What if you want to lose fat faster? How do you explain the fast weight losses on The Biggest Loser? These are all good questions that I’ve been asked many times. With the diet marketplace being flooded every day with rapid weight loss claims, these questions desperately need and deserve some honest answers. Want to know where that 2 pounds per week rule comes from and what it really takes to burn more than 2 pounds of fat per week? Read on.

Why Only 2 Pounds Per Week?

The truth is, two pounds is not the maximum amount you can safely lose in a week. That’s only a general recommendation and a good benchmark for setting weekly goals. It’s also sensible and realistic because it’s based on average or typical results.

The actual amount of fat you can lose depends on many factors. For example, weight losses tend to be relative to body size. The more body fat you carry, the more likely you’ll be able to safely lose more than two pounds per week. Therefore, we could individualize our weekly guideline a bit by recommending a goal of 1-2 lbs of fat loss per week or up to 1% of your total weight. If you weighed 300 lbs, that would be 3 lbs per week.

Body Weight Vs Body Composition

Weight loss is somewhat meaningless unless you also talk about body composition; the fat to muscle ratio, as well as water weight. Ask any wrestler about fast weight loss and he’ll tell you things like, “I cut 10 lbs overnight to make a weight class. It was easy - I just sweated it off.”

You’ve also probably seen people that went on some extreme induction program or a lemon juice and water fast for the first week and dropped an enormous amount of weight. But once again, you can bet that a lot of that weight was water and lean tissue and in both cases, you can bet that those people put the weight right back on.

The main potential advantage of any type of induction period for rapid weight loss in the first week is that a large drop on the scale is a motivational boost for many people (even if it is mostly water weight).

Why do you hear so many diet and fitness professionals insist on 2 lbs a week max? Where does that number come from? Well, aside from the fact that it’s a recommendation in government health guidelines and in position statements of most nutrition and exercise organizations, it’s just math. The math is based on what’s practical given the number of calories an average person burns in a day and how much food someone can reasonably cut in a day.

How Do You Lose More Than 2 Pounds Per Week?

Can you lose more than 2 lbs of pure fat in a week? Yes, although it’s easier in the beginning. It gets harder as your diet progresses. How do you do it? My rule is, extraordinary results require extraordinary efforts. An extraordinary effort means a particularly strict diet, as well as burning more calories through training because you can only cut your calories so far from food before you’re starving and suffering from severe hunger.

Simply put, you need a bigger calorie deficit.

If you have a 2500 calorie daily maintenance level, and you want to drop 3 lbs of fat per week withe diet alone, you’d need a huge daily deficit of 1500 calories, which would equate to eating 1000 calories per day. You would lose weight rapidly for as long as you could maintain that deficit (although it would slow down over time). Most people aren’t going to last long on so little food and they often end with a period of binge eating. It’s not practical (or fun) to cut calories so much and in some cases it could be unhealthy.

The other alternative is to train for hours and hours a day, literally. People ask me all the time, “Tom, how is it possible for the Biggest Loser contestants to lose so much weight? Well first of all they’re not measuring body fat, only body weight. Then you have the high starting body weights and the large water weight loss in the beginning. After that, just do the math – they’re training hours a day so they’re creating a huge calorie deficit.

But without that team of trainers, dieticians, teammates, a national audience and all that prize money, do you think they’d be motivated and accountable enough to do anywhere near that amount and intensity of exercise in the real world? Would it even be possible if they had a job and family? Not likely, is it? It’s not practical to do that much exercise, and it’s not practical to cut your calories below a 1000 a day and remain compliant. If you manage to achieve the latter, it’s very difficult not to rebound and regain the weight afterwards for a variety of physiological and psychological reasons.

For Fast Fat Loss: Less Food Or Harder Training?

Trainers are becoming more inventive these days in coming up with high intensity workouts that burn a large amount of calories and really give the metabolism a boost. This can help speed up the fat loss within a given amount of time. But as you begin to utilize higher intensity workouts, you have to start being on guard for overtraining or overuse injuries.That’s why strict nutrition with an aggressive calorie deficit is going to have to be a major part of any fast fat loss strategy. Unfortunately, very low calorie dieting has its own risks in the way of lean tissue loss, slower metabolism, extreme hunger, and greater chance of weight re-gain.

My approach to long term weight control is to lose weight slowly and patiently and follow a nutrition plan that is well balanced between lean protein, healthy fats and natural carbs and doesn’t demonize any entire food group. To lose fat, you simply create a caloric deficit by burning more and eating less (keeping the nutrient density of those calories as high as possible, of course).

But to achieve the extraordinary goals such as photo-shoot-ready, super-low body fat or simply faster than average fat loss, while minimizing the risks, I often turn to a stricter cyclical low carb diet for brief “peaking” programs. I explain this method in chapter 12 of my e-book Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle (it’s my “phase III” or “competition” diet).

The cyclical aspect of the diet means that after three to six days of an aggressive calorie deficit and strict diet, you take a high calorie / high carb day to re-feed the body and re-stimulate the metabolism. Essentially, this helps reduce the starvation signals your body is receiving. It’s also a psychological break from the deprivation which helps improve compliance and prevent relapse.

The higher protein intake can help prevent lean tissue loss and curb the hunger. A high protein diet also helps by ramping up dietary thermogenesis. A high intake of greens, fibrous vegetables and low calorie fruits can help tip the energy balance equation in your favor as fibrous veggies are very low in calorie density and some of the calories in the fiber are not metabolizable. Healthy fats are added in adequate quantities, while the calorie-dense simple sugars and starchy carbs are kept to a minimum except on refeed days and after (or around) intense workouts.

There’s No Magic, Just Math

In my experience, a high protein, reduced carb approach in conjunction with weights and cardio can help maximize fat loss – both in terms of increasing speed of fat loss and particularly for getting rid of the last of the stubborn fat. It helps with appetite control too. But always bear in mind that the faster fat loss occurs primarily as a result of the larger calorie deficit (which is easily achieved with sugars and starches minimized), not some type of “low carb magic.” If your diet were high in natural carbs but you were able to diligently maintain the same large calorie deficit, the results would be similar.

I’m seeing more and more advertisements that not only promise rapid weight loss, but go so far as saying that you’re doing it wrong if you’re losing “only” two pounds per week. “Why settle” for slow weight loss, they insist. Well, it’s certainly possible to lose more than two pounds per week, but it’s critically important to understand that there’s a world of difference between rapid weight loss and permanent fat loss.

It’s also vital to know that there’s no magic in faster fat loss, just math. All the new-fangled dietary manipulations and high intensity training programs that really do help increase the speed of fat loss all come full circle to the calorie balance equation in the end, even if they claim their method works for other reasons and they don’t mention calories burned or consumed at all.

Beware of The Quick Fix

Faster fat loss IS possible. My question is, are you willing to tolerate the hunger, low calories and high intensity exercise for that kind of deficit? Do you have the work ethic? Do you have the supreme level of dietary restraint necessary to stop yourself from bingeing and putting the weight right back on when that aggressive diet is over? Or would you rather do it in a more moderate way where you’re not killing yourself, but instead are making slow and steady lifestyle changes and taking off 1-2 lbs of pure fat per week, while keeping all your hard-earned muscle?

Remember, 1-2 pounds per week is 50-100 pounds in a year. Is that really so slow or is that an astounding transformation? You don’t gain 50-100 pounds over night, so why should anyone expect to take it off overnight? Personally, I think short-term thinking and the pursuit of quick fixes are the worst diseases of our generation.

If you want to be one of those “results not typical” fat loss transformations, it can be done and it may be a perfectly appropriate short-term goal for the savvy and sophisticated fitness enthusiast. It’s your call. But when you set your goals, it might be wise to remember that old fable of the tortoise and the hare, and buyer beware if you go shopping for a fast weight loss program in today’s shady marketplace.

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto Fat Loss Coach BurnTheFat

About the Author:

An Explanation and Solution For Slow Female Fat Loss

2009-10-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

By Tom Venuto BurnTheFat

You may have heard (or, heh, realized), that it's more difficult for women to lose fat than men. Immediately most people think it must be estrogen or hormonal issues. But perhaps the biggest factor is NOT hormones, but the simple fact that women are usually smaller and lighter than men.

When you have a smaller body, you have lower calorie needs. When you have lower calorie needs, your relative deficit (20%, 30% etc) gives you a smaller absolute deficit and therefore you lose fat more slowly than someone who is larger and can create a large deficit more easily.

For example, if my TDEE is 3300 calories a day (I’m 5' 8" and moderately to very active), then a 20% deficit is 660 calories, which brings me to 2640 calories a day. On paper, that will give me about 1.3 lbs of wt loss per week, rather painlessly, I might add.

If I bumped my calorie burn up or decreased my intake by another 340 a day, that's enough to give me a 2 lbs per week wt loss.

That's hardly a starvation diet (Ahhh, the joys of being a man). For smaller women, the math equation is very different.

If your total daily energy expenditure is only 1970 calories, even at a VERY high exercise level, then a 20% deficit for you is only 394 calories which would put you at 1576 calories a day for (on paper) only 8/10th of a lb of fat loss/wk.

If you pursued your plan to take a more aggressive calorie deficit of 30%, that puts you at a 591 calorie deficit which would now drop you down to only 1382 calories/day.

That's starting to get fairly low in calories. However, you would still have a fairly small calorie deficit. In fact, I would get to eat almost twice as many calories as you and I'd still get almost twice the weekly rate of fat loss!

What this all means is that women who are petite or have a small body size are going to lose fat more slowly than larger women and much more slowly than men, so you cannot compare yourself to them.

It's great to be inspired by our success stories, but if you're looking for someone to model yourself after, choose one of our success stories of someone your body size and wt, rather than the folks who started 100 lbs overweight and were therefore easily dropping 3 lbs a week.

ONE POUND a week of fat loss is much more in line with a realistic goal for someone of a smaller body size. Overweight people can lose it faster. The best thing you can do is to be extremely consistent with your nutrition over time.

Suggestion #1: Weigh and measure all your food any time you feel you are stuck at a plateau, just to be sure. When your calorie expenditure is on the low side, you don't have much margin for error.

Suggestion #2: Take your body comp measurements with a grain of salt, especially if you are using Bioelectric Impedance Analysis (BIA) scales (they are a bit wonky) and remember that body comp testing is seldom perfect. Pay attention to your circumference measurements, how your clothes fit and how you look in the mirror and in photos as well.

Suggestion #3: You might actually want to take fewer refeeds - once a week instead of every 4th day, or even just once every 10-14 days, so you can get a larger weekly deficit.

Suggestion #4: You may want to take 2 or 3 of your long cardio sessions on the treadmill and switch them to intense intervals or ANY other type of activity that has potential to burn more than 362 calories for an hour's investment of time, or perhaps that equivalent calorie burn in less time. No need to add more days of cardio or more time - get the most out of the time you are already spending.

Suggestion #5: If you do intervals, don't make the workout too brief (ignore the advertisements for those "4 minute miracle" workouts, etc.), or you may burn fewer calories than you were before! In fact, you might even try the method where you do HIIT
for 15-20 min, then continue for another 30-40 at slow to medium intensity. Increasing total calories burned should be your focus.

Dropping only ONE pound per week (or less) may seem excruciatingly slow, but it's actually the same type of thing I do. As a bodybuilder, I go from lean to extremely lean when I diet and I don't expect more than a pound a week during contest cuts.

You are in a similar situation, even if not competing. Even if you get a half a pound a week fat loss, if you get that progress every week, that’s what you’re looking for - steady progress – even if slow.

It's entirely possible that you HAVE been making progress, only very slowly. With the way water weight and glycogen levels can fluctuate (and lean mass may increase), a half a pound or pound fat loss in a week could have been easily masked... and therefore, missed. That's one of the drawbacks of going by the scale alone.

Understand the calorie math I explained above and be patient, watching for slow and steady progress, paying special attention to the trend over time on your progress chart.

Keep after it - the persistence will pay, I promise! Train hard and expect success, Tom Venuto, author of Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle
http://www.BurnTheFat.com

PS. You can learn about more fat loss strategies (including the details about the carb cycling method) inside my e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle. Learn more and see some of the inspiring before and after success stories at: BurnThefat

About the Author:

No Pain No Gain: Fitness Myth or Ultimate Fitness Truth?

2009-10-19T06:21:00.000-07:00

By Tom Venuto
BurnTheFat.com

No Pain, No Gain. Is this aphorism just a fitness myth and downright bad advice? A lot of people seem to think so. As a bodybuilder with 25 years of training experience and more than two dozen trophies on my shelf, I have another perspective to offer you. Success with your body and in every area of your life is all about stepping outside of your comfort zone and that means embracing pain.

To reach high levels of physical and personal success you must approach your training, and your entire life, as an endeavor in constant growth. The ultimate truth is, you are either moving forward or moving backward; growing or dying. There’s no such thing as comfortably maintaining.

To grow, you must step above past achievements; beyond your perceived boundaries and limits. That means stepping out of the known, into the unknown; out of the familiar and into the unfamiliar; out of the comfortable into the uncomfortable. You must get out of your comfort zone.

The Late Cavett Robert, who was founder of the National Speakers Association, said something I’ll never forget: “Most people are running around their whole lives with their umbilical cords in their hands and they’re looking for some place to plug it back in.”

Most people are scared of the unknown. They prefer to stay in that womb of comfort. When the going gets tough; when the effort gets painful, when the work gets hard, they always pull back into safety. But the extraordinary people do the opposite. They know they have to get out of the comfort zone, and into new territory or they’ll stagnate and die.

Walt Disney once said that he never wanted to repeat a past success. He was always creating something new. They called it “Imagineering.” Disney’s mission was to continuously dream up and create things they had never done before, and look at what Disney has become today.

Here’s a little quote that you should post on your bulletin board, your computer desktop or somewhere you will always see it:

“Do what you always did, get what you always got.”

You can't grow or change by doing what you’ve already done. You’ve got to train just to prevent yourself from going backwards. Maintenance doesn’t occur when you do nothing, maintenance is working to fight entropy, the tendency for things to naturally deteriorate.

Still, most people won’t leave their comfort zones. They won’t do it in business, they won’t do it in their personal lives. They won’t do it in their sport. They won’t do it for personal health and fitness. Why? The answer is simple… It hurts.

By definition, what’s it like outside the comfort zone? It’s UN-COMFORTABLE, right? Change is uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s physically painful, but it’s always mentally and emotionally painful, in the form of discipline, sacrifice, uncertainty and fear.

The maxim, “no pain no gain” gets knocked all the time as if it were bad advice. The fact of life is that you don’t grow unless you’ are constantly stepping outside the comfort zone, and outside the comfort zone is discomfort and pain.

I find that it’s mostly the non-achievers who make out “no pain, no gain” to be a bad thing. But the winners get it. The champions understand stepping outside the comfort zone in a healthy context, so they embrace it.

When you’re talking about the Olympics, or pro bodybuilding or the Super Bowl or a world championship, you’d better believe it’s physical pain, it’s discipline, it’s sacrifice, it’s blood, sweat, and tears - literally. But for most people who simply want to go from unfit to fit, from overweight to ideal weight, it’s not so much about physical “pain”; it’s more like stretching yourself.

How do you develop flexibility? What does your trainer tell you? You stretch to the point of discomfort, but not to the point of pain, right? You get into a position of slight discomfort and you hold it just long enough, then what happens? The discomfort goes away, because the muscle becomes more pliable, and the range of motion is increased.

Each time, you stretch a little further, just barely into the range you’ve never been in before, and eventually, you’re doing the splits. And why do you approach it like that? Because you don’t want to injure yourself. Stretch too far, too fast and your muscle tears.

The elite athletes and high achievers really have to push themselves; they’re going to push their boundaries and test their limits. But if you’re not an elite athlete or seasoned bodybuilder, and you take the advice, “no pain, no gain” too literally, you’re going to end up getting injured.

I always say to my training partner when I watch him cringing during a set and he finishes up with that pained look on his face, “Are you injured, or just hurt?” He knows what I’m talking about. If he says he’s hurt, I say, “OK, good. As long as you’re not injured. Let’s get on with it. Next set.”

It’s not about injury. That is bad pain. That is stupidity. But do stretch yourself. You can’t improve unless you stretch yourself. If that’s what some people want – if they just want to “stay fit” – OK fine. It actually doesn’t take that much to stay fit, once you’ve already achieved it.

But what if you want to improve? What if you want a new body? What if you want to change? If that's what you want, you’ve got to push yourself a little. You’ve got to break comfort zones. And if your body is not changing, then I don’t care how hard you think you’re working, whatever you’re doing right now is inside your comfort zone.

The statement “no pain, no gain” has been misinterpreted, criticized and labeled a fallacy by many. However, the people doing the criticizing are almost always comfort zoners who haven’t achieved much. Don’t listen to them. Instead, follow the small percentage of people who step out and achieve great things. If you don’t like the sound of it, then say, “No effort, no gain.” We’re still talking about the same thing.

Embrace the discomfort like the champions do. Soon it subsides, you enjoy the benefits of the change and the pain is forgotten. You’ve reached a new, higher plateau of achievement. Enjoy the view for a short while. But be on guard because it’s not long before that higher level becomes your new comfort zone and then its time to press on again.

About the author

Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural (steroid-free) bodybuilder, freelance writer and best selling author of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle: Fat Burning Secrets of the World’s Best Bodybuilders and Fitness Models. Tom has been featured in IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN, Italian IRONMAN (Olympian’s News), Natural Bodybuilding and Fitness, Muscular Development, Men’s Exercise, and Men’s Fitness Magazines. Tom’s hard work, no-quick fixes approach has won him multiple titles in drug tested bodybuilding including Mr. Natural Pennsylvania, Natural New Jersey, Natural New York State, Natural Mid Atlantic States and NPC Natural Eastern Classic championships. More important, tens of thousands of people in 141 countries have used Tom’s Burn The Fat program to lose as much as 253 pounds or just the last stubborn 5-10 pounds and achieve that coveted 6-pack of abs. To learn more about Tom’s all-natural approach to fat burning, visit his site at BurnTheFat.com

Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

2009-10-19T05:44:00.000-07:00

Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle