Carnival is coming. You are taking the time to get out and get active be it outdoors or in a gym in preparation for the big day.

Some of us want to get absolutely shredded, some just want to see some of the six pack, others just want to take off the corona weight.

Many of us, whether novice or more advanced, may be discouraged by our bodies stubborn insistence on holding on to so much fat. We work harder and harder and still, no progress.

Why?

The narrative that most people have in their heads about exercise to burn fat is usually wrong. For the majority of novice and intermediate gym peeps, you burn less calories in the gym than you think. The calories burned in a gym session, lifting moderate weights, can be easily gained back by eating ONE muffin….or ONE post work out sugar packed fruit smoothie (even with “no sugar added”).

As reference, if you jog 5k you likely burn in the region of 300calories. Google how many calories in one slice of pizza 🙁

The vast majority of calories most people burn per day is just to run biochemical processes needed for life.

Dont get me wrong. Exercise is ESSENTIAL! But you can’t out exercise a bad diet.

What is a bad diet.

The aim of “dieting” is to consume less calories per day than you burn…the difference will come from your body fat causing weight loss.

A western diet makes this a truly difficult endeavour.

Many years ago, a deeply flawed and since debunked study suggested fat intake caused heart attacks. Because of this, fat was removed from most foods (Fat FREE!), but the food tasted like crap without fat, so sugar was added. Huge amounts of sugar.

To this day sugar is added to everything from flavoured tuna to drinks to …… EVERYTHING! This increases the caloric density of all your meals and causes a huge insulin spike which tends to drive fat deposition.

This means in order to consume less calories in a typical western diet you have to eat almost nothing and be starving all day. Cravings will chip in, you will eventually break and get more to eat… it’s not sustainable.

The solution

What has worked wonders for me personally is a low Carb diet and when -ish gets serious, intermittent fasting.

I have greatly decreased my intake of carbs and replaced them with healthily cooked meats (beef and pork), raw vegetables, nuts & seeds and fats (animal and plant). These foods are nutrient dense and tend to satisfy your hunger earlier and for longer. This means less caloric intake but without the gnawing hunger. That point is important as hunger is what causes most diets to fail.

A normal day for me will be like this

Breakfast:

3 egg omelette with cheese, cut of beef or pork, small salad, small pack of mixed nuts, water.

Lunch

Cut of pork (with fat), steamed broccoli and cauliflower, salad with cheese, pack of nuts and water.

Dinner

Avocado (good source of fats), cut of beef or pork, small salad.

The meals are satisfying enough so that at no time during the day am I starving and it’s pretty easy to keep focus.

Just this change in the selection of food, and drinking water instead of juices is enough to spark significant weight loss in almost anyone who tries it….without effort to “diet” or be hungry all the time.

Simply googling low carb or keto diet will get you lots of information on how to get this done with foods available to you.

Intermittent fasting.

I usually leave this method for the final month or so of any prep I do. It can help get you past plateaus in your fat loss journey.

I have my usual breakfast (9am) and lunch(1pm). I then eat a small dinner at 5pm. After 5 I have nothing but water until breakfast the next morning. Alternatively I may have a larger breakfast and dinner without lunch, but again, my eating window is between 9am and 5pm. Nothing to eat outside of that and only water to drink. By 10pm you WILL start to get hungry….drink some water and be in bed before that.

The way I think if it is — you can’t be hungry if you are asleep.

My schedule is geared towards an early morning workout and breakfast right after. If you work out in the evening you may want to consider shifting your 8 hour eating window to end with a meal right after the gym and start 16 hours later–late the next morning

You will see a lot of claims for how fantastic fasting is for biochemical and that other process….I’m a little sceptical of some of them. It is however a great structured way to limit calories by putting the time you are most likely to be hungry squarely during the time you are most likely to be sleeping.

I dont do this on a long term basis though as significant calories restrictions will eventually take away my gainzzzz!! I save it for special occasion where I want to get lean, like carnival.

Remember, for the average Joe, the MOST you should expect to lose per month is about 10lbs if you go all out .

It’s time to turn the screws. Lets get focussed!

See you in Miami.