I’m sitting here, early Monday morning, a little flabbergasted. When I woke up this morning and realized it was a weigh-in day, I started composing my blog post in my head while I was still in bed trying to wake up. Meaning, before I even weighed-in! Even though I did well food-wise last week, I knew the results would be off because we had friends over for supper on Saturday night. And, well, you know how that goes, right? Wine, appetizer, wine, meat and vegetables, dessert, another small slice of dessert, coffee. I was motivated to eat well and exercise hard on Sunday, believe me. (Cardio Coach 7 was brutal…but in a good way… heh heh.)

I know how my body usually reacts to a week-end like that, but it surprised me this morning. I do believe my body is turning into a fat-burning machine. It finally “gets” what I want it do!

Here are my starting measurements, plus last week’s and this morning’s weigh-in:

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Had some great results this week! And I reached my body fat goal from my last challenge (where I missed by just a small percentage). One thing about goals and deadlines: I’m reading The Body Fat Solution by Tom Venuto (review coming once I finish the book). In it, he talks about setting your goals in pen and your deadline in pencil. In other words, your goal is fixed but the deadline can be a bit more flexible. Not that you shouldn’t be focused on the deadline, but sometimes we underestimate how long something will take.

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I took a break from exercise and calorie counting after ending my last 12 week challenge (see the final results here). I didn’t go overboard and overindulge myself. I found I kept pretty much to plan, except for a bit of extra chocolate and bit of extra wine. The big difference was no exercise. But I did walk, got in 1 heavy Cardio Coach session (Volume 6) and one 7.7 (4.75 mile) hike.

As for my fat loss goal, it’s harder to lose the fat as you get lower down in body fat. I’m assuming I may not be able to achieve a .5% average of body fat percentage loss per week, so I’m going to be a bit conservative in my goal. But I could be wrong and make my way down even further!

So, without further ado, my fat loss goals and starting measurements for this 9 week challenge:

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This is the start of a brand new challenge after finishing my last 12 week challenge (from July 12th to October 5th). I’ve got a lot of momentum now, so I have a bit less preparation to do. If you want to read a more detailed post on getting ready for a weight loss challenge, read this post.

Some of you may note, I’m calling it a “fat loss” challenge. I know a lot of people focus on weight, but, to me, it’s all about losing body fat. I don’t want to lose weight, if it means losing muscle. But I’ll kiss that fat good-bye without a second thought!

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QUESTION: Tom, If you accidentally pig out or over-indulge at a meal, (a Holiday party for example), are you better off skipping your next meal to keep your daily caloric intake on target, or should you just go ahead and eat your next planned meal and not worry about being somewhat “over” your planned calories for the day?

Michael
Wisconsin, USA


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By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
www.TurbulenceTraining.com

One of the biggest myths in fitness is that you have to maintain a certain heart rate in order to lose fat. But that’s just not true. Unfortunately, this myth has led to a whole lot of low-intensity training and therefore, a whole lot of failed programs.

The quicker you lose the “high heart rate equals the best workout” mentality, the quicker you will start to change your body.

In the Turbulence Training workouts, you are going to burn more fat and more calories when you are OUT of the gym because of the high-intensity training methods that you will use. Not because your heart rate increases during the workout (even though your HR will be up there from the supersets and intervals).

In the last 10 years, research has shown us two very important things about exercising for fat loss. First, lifting heavier weights leads to burning more calories after the workout when compared to lifting light weights. So that’s why 8 repetitions per set is better than 12 reps per set. And that’s one of the foundations of Turbulence Training.

And the second thing we have learned is that interval training is superior to slow, steady cardio for fat loss and post-exercise calorie burning. So it is more effective and more efficient to use short high-intensity interval training workouts instead of slow, long cardio sessions.

The only time you might need to know your heart rate is during the recovery period of the interval training. It’s important to take enough time between intervals so that your heart rate drops significantly (let it drop to less than 60% of your maximum heart rate).

That way you get more work done when it counts. You don’t want to start your next high-intensity interval too soon, nor do you want to exercise too hard during your recovery interval.

All of these details are provided in the interval guidelines in the Turbulence Training e-book. And I’ll show you how to properly structure your intervals so that you have enough recovery between each. That way, you don’t have to worry about monitoring your heart rate or anything fancy. Just follow my instructions.

So the bottom line:

Don’t worry about your heart rate during exercise (unless you just like to keep track for interest sake). Instead, make sure that you are working at a high-intensity during each lifting and interval session.

The TT workout guidelines will give you all the details you need on the specific rest periods to use between supersets and intervals.

There is a better way to train.

By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Here is the Myth:

You have to do cardio after lifting for fat loss because your glycogen is low from the lifting, and that way you will burn more fat.

And now, the Truth:

First off, this quote, “glycogen is low right after lifting” isn’t always true. If you just did an upper body workout, your legs are still full of glycogen.

Glycogen is the stored form of carbohydrates in our body (found in the muscles and liver). It is one source of energy when you are doing strength training, interval training, and aerobic training. Your glycogen levels go down after exercise, but increase after you eat carbohydrates.

It’s incorrectly believed by many that strength training will use up all of your glycogen and then you will only have fat to burn during slow, steady, monotonous (& useless?) cardio. Well, there are a lot of problems with that assumption as well.

First, you’d have to exercise for at least 90 minutes at a slow, steady pace to fully deplete your muscle glycogen. And even an advanced, higher-volume strength training workout will only deplete your muscle glycogen by about 50-70% (and that is only if you perform multiple exercises and sets for one muscle group).

Second, muscle glycogen only goes down in the muscles that are worked. Therefore, if you only do upper body exercises, your leg muscles will remain nearly full of glycogen.

Third, you require glycogen in order to perform a hard interval or cardio training session. If you truly were glycogen depleted, your workouts would suffer.

The bottom line is that you are better off performing strength training and interval training to lose fat, and not worrying about being glycogen depleted.

Don’t get suckered into thinking that you have to worry about scientific details. Unless you are a trainer, you have better things to occupy your mind, I’m sure. Just stick with an efficient, effective workout that gets you in and out of the gym in less than an hour.

No need to stick around longer than that. Do your weights and then your intervals. Or feel free to do your intervals on your off-day. It’s consistency, not timing, that matters.