Fat loss for Intermediates- Stepping Up to the Next Level
By Tom Venuto, GHF’s Fat Loss Expert
If you’ve been training for at least three months and now you’re ready to kick it into high gear and start learning more about training and nutrition so you can get better and faster results, then this article is for you. If you’re currently not working out at all and you’d like to know the best way to get started, refer to part one in this series: Fat Loss For Beginners – 8 Tips to Get Started. If you’ve been training for years and consider yourself “advanced,” then the third installment in this series will be for you. But don’t skip this one – you might learn something new you missed along the way.
THE SECRET TO INCREASED FAT LOSS IS:
Ok, so you just got started on a program of walking or light cardio and some basic lifting, maybe some dumbbell work, nothing fancy. You feel better, you’ve lost a few pounds, you have more energy and you’re confident that you’re getting healthier.
But you want more:
You want the results to come faster. You want to look in the mirror and really SEE the difference. You want other people to see the difference too. You want more than “a little tone.” Maybe you want a nice hard chiseled six-pack with a small waist, or maybe streamlined, muscular thighs. Arms like Linda Hamilton perhaps? Shoulders like Carl “Apollo Creed” Weathers? A Brad Pitt “Fight Club” body maybe? Nothing too crazy – not a miss fitness Olympia body or the massive bulk of a Mr. Universe – but definitely better than average.
Well, if you’re prepared to STEP UP to the next level and pay the price necessary to reach the next rung on the ladder, here’s how you do it…. The answer is very, very simple. As you leave the novice stage behind, it’s time to start WORKING HARDER. That’s it! Were you expecting something more esoteric? Some secret Bulgarian periodization program and thermogenic – anabolic supplement stack? Sorry, but the secret is that there is no secret. A great body all boils down to outright effort and hard work.
Not counting the genetic freaks who seem to have been born with muscles and zero fat, there’s one thing that all people with great bodies have in common: they all work HARD, HARD, HARD! If you want to ascend beyond the lowly beginner level you simply have to push yourself harder. And that means DIS-COMFORT. When you’re pushing yourself out of the comfort zone, it hurts. Frankly, sometimes it sucks! But outside the comfort zone is where you grow. Staying inside the comfort zone will only maintain you at best but usually it sends you plummeting into a downward spiral. Most people retreat back into the confines of their comfort zone the minute the effort gets difficult. The comfort zone is a very dangerous place because if you slide back into the comfort zone even once, then it starts becoming a habit.
First, it’s stopping just a few minutes short on your cardio or coasting on level 5 when you could be doing level 7. Then you start blowing off workouts completely. Pretty soon, you’re sliding back in other areas of your life; you slide back from making those sales calls; you slide back from spending quality time with your family, you slide back from saving money and watching your finances. You become…. A BACKSLIDER! You can either be a backslider or you can be an ACHIEVER but you can’t be both and you can’t “hang out” in between – it’s one or the other.
Although you might think you’re safe just “maintaining” in the comfort zone, unbeknownst to you, you are always in motion in either a forward or a backward direction. There’s no such thing as standing still; ask any physicist – everything in the universe is always in motion…vibrating… pulsating… growing or dying. The ACHIEVER is the person who is aware that to “stand still inside the comfort zone” is akin to dying, so he or she is ALWAYS MOVING FORWARD. The only way to move forward is with hard work and effort in the direction of a specific goal.
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AVOID THE TEMPTATION TO SPEND (WASTE) YOUR MONEY ON GIMMICKS…AND LEARN TO RECOGNIZE A GIMMICK WHEN YOU SEE ONE:
Once you begin getting a taste of what real hard training is like, it often becomes tempting to succumb to the error of looking for the “easy way.” An electrode on your abs, a “fat-melting” cream, a pill, a drink mix, a drug – anything and everything except sweat and hard work. But shortcuts will always fail you in the long run. You are setting yourself up for so much trouble if you give in to the lure of the quick fix. You see, it’s all about the Law of Sowing and Reaping.
This great law of life states that your rewards can only come back to you in direct proportion to what you put in. Everything has its price and that price must be paid in advance. If you were a farmer, how ridiculous would it be for you to skip the planting of the seeds in the spring and then go out in the fields looking for a harvest in the fall?
How ridiculous would it be to stand in front of a wood burning stove and say, Okay stove, give me some heat and then I’ll put in some wood? But isn’t it the same thing when you take a pill or attach some electrodes to your stomach, or smear some cream on your thighs and expect to lose the flab without exercise or eating right? Even if you’ve made the decision to avoid gimmicks, in today’s marketplace, how do you know what’s a gimmick and what’s legit? After all, these marketing people are smart – they know how to play on your emotions and make gimmicks sound scientific.
Don’t feel bad; judging by the e-mails I get every day, most other people don’t know the difference either. Nearly all of these e-mails include this sentence: Does “IT” work? Here’s how to tell if “IT” is a gimmick or not: If it makes getting in phenomenal shape sound easy and effortless, then it’s a gimmick. If it addresses the symptom but not the cause – it’s a gimmick. If your gut feeling says it sounds too good to be true – it’s a gimmick. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…. it’s a duck! Do yourself a favor and stop looking for a quick ride to the top. The elevator to success is out of order – you’re going to have to take the stairs.
HOW TO DOUBLE YOUR RATE OF FAT LOSS IN THE NEXT 7 DAYS:
How would you like to learn a way to DOUBLE YOUR FAT LOSS in the next seven days?
I know, I know – sounds like a gimmick, right? Well, it’s not! It’s really quite simple.
To burn more fat you have to burn more calories. Most beginners start off with three days a week of cardio training. Usually they see some results initially because their bodies aren’t accustomed to exercise and any increase in activity above no activity will always produce some results. More often than not, the results begin to slow down a bit within a few months of training. Then they scratch their heads and wonder why it’s not working anymore. This is why: Because three days a week is for beginners, and you’re no longer a beginner. If you want twice as much fat loss and you want it twice as fast, double your cardio.
Suppose you burn 400 calories per workout for three workouts per week. That’s a total of 1200 calories per week burned. If you doubled that to six days per week at 400 calories per workout, you would burn 2400 calories. YOU JUST DOUBLED YOUR FAT LOSS EVERY WEEK! That was a real no-brainer, wasn’t it?
HOW TO TRIPLE YOUR RATE OF FAT LOSS IN THE NEXT 7 DAYS:
While we’re on the subject of burning more calories, what would happen if, in addition to increasing your cardio from three to six days per week, you increased the intensity so that you are burning 600 calories per workout? With six workouts at 600 calories per workout you’re up to 3600 calories per week. HOLY ABDOMINALS BATMAN, YOU JUST TRIPLED YOUR FAT LOSS! Yes it’s that simple and the solution was right there in front of you all along. By the way, this kind of frequent cardio is how I reach 3 – 4% body fat for competitions: MINIMIUM six days per week of HARD cardio, 45 minutes per session.
