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Ah… the age of sensationalism. Where people make ridiculous claims based on unproven theories and NON real world results.
And perhaps, right about now, you’re thinking that I’m about to rake you over the coals with some “magic” fat loss formula that only exists in Peter Pan land or that can only be achieved by those with no job and no social life.
Nope.
Not even close.
What I’m about to share with you is the result of over 2 years of tweaking and is proven to work in a “free range” environment…
… and never fails.
It doesn’t require that you understand hormones… it doesn’t require that you understand how fat is oxidized… it doesn’t require you understand the difference between protein, carbs, and fats…
In fact, it’s like driving a car.
You likely don’t understand how power steering works, or the flame speed of gasoline, or whether the engine represents an adiabatic, nonisentropic process or not, or whether the fuel mixture is “rich” or “lean” or in stoichiometric proportions, or the drag coefficient of your car…
… because you don’t need to.
You just know that if you put the key in (or push the button), shift out of park and hit the gas, you get the result you want.
But, just in case you ARE a fanatic about the hormones, etc of fat loss, the method I’m getting ready to show you naturally takes all of this into account, WITHOUT you even having to worry about it.
I REPEAT. It ALL is NATURALLY accounted for… without ANY extra focus on your part.
And again, it’s been tested relentlessly over thousands of people in the free range.
(Free range = people do it for themselves with no exterior coaching or accountability… it’s all on them. Having a personal trainer or diet coach looking over you is NOT free range)
It’s also “healthy”. So far, every person that’s gotten all of their “health” measurements checked have come back “normal” or “above normal”… which I guess is the only way you can truly measure “health”.
Also, I promise you this:
Although this process ISN’T magic… it will surely feel like it is. Just give it a week and test it out.
Okay, lets get started.
First, we need to understand the “primary driver” of fat loss… and there is only one. It is simply: Fat loss requires a caloric deficit over time. Create it however you want but regardless of the how… the deficit MUST be achieved in order for fat loss to occur.
It is a non-negotiable law.
In fact, it’s really the only RULE of fat loss, everything else, all of the methods (even this one) are governed by this rule. They must ALL fit inside this bucket in order to work. This is why there are so many diet books and programs… they all can pretty much “work” as long as they don’t violate this rule. Yet, most methods FAIL because they don’t allow for the 2nd step in this method.
Second, you need to understand and map out your lifestyle CONSTRAINTS.
You need to do this.
Before you figure out how you want to tackle fat loss, you have to understand the “rate limiting steps” of your life. Face it, if you’re slammed ALL day, have limited financial resources, with 7 kids and the nearest gym is 40 miles away, you have different constraints than a person with no kids, a gym next door, no job because they were left a fortune and have all the time in the world.
Yet, many plans and programs superimpose the plan that “works” for person B on person A and expect it to work… and blame your laziness or willpower when it doesn’t because the plan is (cough) PROVEN. This is akin to one person being able to dunk a basketball on a 20 foot goal on the moon, and another person NOT being able to dunk an 8 foot goal on earth… even though they did the same exercise program.
Not only do initial conditions matter (where you start)… but the constraints and build up of your life matter as well.
You need to IDENTIFY your constraints and work them INTO your plan, not try to expend all of this energy trying to ELIMINATE the constraint. Face it. You have certain responsibilities in your life and some things even though you COULD change them, the energy it would take to change them is so much, it’s not worth it.
And, guess what. You don’t have to.
Here’s an example:
I eat dinner with my girlfriend every night. In the past, I would have imposed certain rules on this dinner and it just feels weird. It’s kinda like not eating dinner with your kids every night and having them ask “Why isn’t mommy/daddy eating with us?” Basically, I know this is going to happen each night and it’s imperative for our relationship that I let it happen. We get to reconnect and debrief each other. Overall, it’s good for my sanity.
If you have a job in sales, then you KNOW that you’ll be entertaining clients and taking them to dinner. But, you also know that you can’t order a salad when everyone else (your potential sale) is eating steak because part of sales is NOT insulting the client. (if you’re in sales, you get this comment, if you’re not… I’ll explain “mirroring” another time).
So you KNOW that this is a constraint of yours.
What about exercise? How much time can you create a week for it? How do you fit it in?
(As an aside, at this stage, you can’t worry about local optimums or whether something is the “best” way or if certain TIMES are better than others. At this stage, you have to get a handle on the hand you’re working with, not WISH for another hand. Also, if certain TIMES of the day were the only times that you could exercise for results, personal trainers would be REALLY expensive because they’d only be able to work you out between 7am and 8am each day. There would BE NO OTHER TIME SLOTS… think about that.)
Ultimately, this is called “Seeing The Battlefield” and your ability to do this will determine your success or failure.
Now, after we’ve determined all of our “lifestyle constraints” – oh, and these could be “health constraints” as well like diabetes, a broken foot, etc. (Funny that people and coaches tend to take “health” constraints seriously but tend to overlook and ‘blame game’ lifestyle constraints with accusations of willpower deficiency, etc. Trust me when I say that no one EVER needs willpower to continue doing something THAT IS EFFORTLESSLY WORKING FOR THEM… this is an important thing to know, as we’ll soon see)
Next, we have to set up our measurement protocols and goals.
How are we going to determine our results? How are we going to measure our progress and MOST IMPORTANTLY… where do the ERRORS in any measurements occur?
Here’s a fact:
ALL conventional (ie accessable to you… not in a lab) measurements for both caloric intake and caloric burn have error rates that are completely unacceptable in all other scientific and engineering research. Where as most error rates in other fields need to be less than 0.1% of the unit of measurement to be “acceptable”, measurements for both caloric intake (labels, etc) and caloric burn (calorie counters on machines, body bugs, and other formulas) have error rates that can exceed 30%!
For example, you could read your food labels and think you’re getting 1000 calories of food, but because of “rounding” on the labels and maybe your servings were larger than the average ‘batch size’, you could very EASILY consume 300 calories MORE than you think.
Couple that with thinking you burned 1000 calories in a workout when you only burned 200… and you can see how crazy this gets.
Naturally, some people may say, “Well, I’ll just get a food scale and measure my food” – and that’s completely fine – UNLESS you have a time or money constraint and can’t make it work in your life.
This is why we determine CONSTRAINTS FIRST… before we decide on plan of attack. You can’t have an aerial bombing run if you’ve got no planes, right?
Now, because of the insane errors that occur with all forms of calorie counting (both in and out)… we’ve come up with the following guidelines and frame work for you to work within.
1. Assume that the amount of calories you are burning through exercise is LOWER than you think.
2. Assume that the amount of calories you are taking in through food is HIGHER than you think.
3. Assume that you CANNOT and WILL NOT drop any fat WITHOUT some sort of dietary controls on food volume.
4. Assume that you CAN lose body fat through calorie restriction ALONE (ie no exercise needed)
Now, I can go through rigorous proofs on how this all really works but lets just say that exercise alone generally causes compensatory effects in most people (ie sleep longer, take a nap, eat more) when the other variables aren’t strictly controlled.
So, what’s the easiest way to wrap all of this up into one nice little guideline to follow?
Free Range Guideline: “Assume that exercise and daily activity burns NO EXTRA calories in your day and use your calculated BMR as your calorie starting point for the day”
Sure, sounds harsh, but it actually makes more sense than you’d think.
1. If exercise introduces a compensating effect, then the calories you ‘burned’ off could be re-injected at some point during the day.
2. Exercise generally burns LESS calories than you think – unless you’re exercising more than 2 hours a day, which goes back to our constraints
Therefore, we can effectively view the calories burned by exercise as a ‘wash’ for all practical purposes and in fact, with the errors involved, is really the only way you can be SURE you have a handle on this part of the equation.
So, for example, I just went to a BMR calculator and got that my BMR is roughly 1861 calories burned per day. I just rounded up for simplicity and use 1900 as my “base number”.
Now that I have my base number… which is the only number I’ll need… I just multiply this number by 7 to get my maximum weekly caloric load.
1900 x 7 = 13300 calories per week
So, now we see that I have a MAXIMUM budget of 13300 calories per week and still lose SOME fat. (because of our assumptions, this will be a LITTLE lower than your maintanance in general, but it guarantees you’re under the bar for all PRACTICAL purposes.
Next, we apply our constraints.
Applying your constraints to exercise generally yields this recommendation:
Weight training is your foundation… cardio is your “extra”. If you have a time constraint on either DAYS you can work out or TIME PERIODS or BOTH, weight training will ALWAYS take presidence over cardio work UNLESS another constraint prevents it (broken bones, etc).
We can go over the “health benefits” another day but for all practical purposes, most people hate cardio… so they won’t do it… lol. (pseudo constraint)
(Now, remember, exercise is NOT necessary for fat loss… so don’t get your panties in a bunch if this is a toughy for you. If you can’t workout for a week straight, no biggie, just work with the “diet” portion and inject your workouts back in when you’re able)
Applying your constraints to “diet” will likely look like this:
1. What are the lifestyle constraints? These include work, kids, time, and social activities. Dropping body fat for most people represents a SOCIAL problem and most plans fail when you get around the pressures of others. More on this in a bit.
2. What are your FOOD constraints? What do you like to eat? What do you hate to eat? What about drinks? Hate water? ETC. If your plan requires you to eat things that you don’t like, you won’t stick with it, lets be honest and upfront about this.
3. Establish scenarios where WILLPOWER may be needed due to “aroused” states and eliminate or incorporate these scenarios into your program. In other words, if you have plans to meet your friends at a sports bar to watch the game and you like beer, either ACCOUNT for this proactively in your plan OR don’t go. Never let WILLPOWER be the thing keeping you on target when you can take care of it ahead of time. THIS IS IMPORTANT. Your fat loss strategy SHOULD NOT be willpower driven.
4. Take your maximum weekly caloric load and subtract out 3500 x the ideal number of pounds of fat you’d like to drop that week. I say ideal because with all of the error built in PLUS the fact that we’re likely going to “eyeball” our food for the week with guess-timations, and the fact that our daily “targets” are more “beacons” than exact numbers, this works well.
So for me, I subtracted out 7000 calories (2 pounds of fat) per week to give me a “balance” of around 6500 calories per week to consume.
(Sounds rough doesn’t it? Hey, it’s your plan and you can adjust however you want as LONG as it’s something you can stick with… that’s the key if you haven’t noticed. This WHOLE process of deriving your plan has NOTHING to do with hormones and local optimums and EVERYTHING to do with the deficit YOU CAN STICK TO OVER TIME)
5. Take your “adjusted” caloric load, apply your constraints to it, and map out your week.
For example, I know that Saturdays we generally go out and its important for me to be social. I also know that I’m eating dinner with my girl EVERY DAY. So, I start there and wrap EVERYTHING ELSE AROUND THESE 2 THINGS.
I’m not going to “best case scenario” my plan on willpower and assume that I won’t want a few drinks. What if I see a friend that I haven’t seen in a while? Instead of willpowering my way through, I just build this in. So lets say Saturday is a 2000 calorie day. That’s the “allotment”. That leaves me 4500 calories for the rest of the week.
Next, I assume that on average, each dinner meal for the rest of the week (that I control because I do the grocery shopping) is going to be about 500 calories give or take… so that’s 3000 calories out as well.
That leaves me 1500 calories to spread throughout the week.
And, with my work schedule, I generally don’t eat breakfast and lunch is rare unless I dine out… so I essentially “fast” for a few days per week… even though that’s not the plan, it’s just how my life works.
Here’s my general fat loss plan for myself:
Monday: 500 calories (dinner only)
Tuesday: 1000 calories (lunch and dinner or all dinner)
Wednesday: 500 calories (dinner only)
Thursday: 1000 calories (lunch and dinner or all dinner)
Friday: 500 calories (dinner only)
Saturday: 2000 calories (lunch, dinner, maybe some drinks)
Sunday: 1000 calories (lunch and dinner, or all dinner)
… and I generally get 4-5 days of exercise in. 20-30 minutes of walking to read and clear my head per day and 45-60 of weight training… but sometimes I skip the walk if time is an issue.
Also, my days are interchangeable so if a buddy of mine calls on a Wednesday and wants to do lunch, I just go ahead with it and let Thursday be Wednesday.
Now, are all of these numbers exact?
Heck no.
But they give me a great ballpark or “beacon” to shoot for each day and all of the possible errors are already built in to the program, so even if I “accidentally” overshoot by a bit one or two days out of the week, I’m still all good.
Some things to note:
1. Eliminate or account for ALL willpower challenges. For me that means generally I go to the grocery store each night for dinner to eliminate the extra food that may be available in the house if I wake up in the middle of the night… because even if I’m not hungry, I tend to want to put something in my mouth. Controlling food availability is one way to eliminate the need for willpower. Make sense? This is just an easier battle to fight than struggling and eventually giving yourself a reason to eat the pop tart that’s staring at you.
2. Your food choices are going to be based on your plan, so in general, you’ll be eating more veggies by default. It’s really the only way to get in a higher volume of food and still stay under “budget”. You’ll also probably find that protein sources help with hunger… although after the first week, it’s generally not a huge issue to contend with. With that said, you’ll probably stay away from processed carbs because they make you hungry after you eat them… so it just makes sense to make it as easy as you can on yourself. But, then again, they may NOT affect you in this manor.
3. You’ll probably employ strategies like “intermittent fasting” and “cheat meals” by default, because that’s just how your life works out. So your “hormones” that everyone is trying to scare you about… well, they’re taken care of.
In conclusion, I’ve lost of 35 lbs using this method and my muscle size and strength are for the most part, the same (when I normalize back to eating regularly).
Each winner of our transformation contest has used this method, even if they didn’t KNOW IT, to win their respective divisions.
Barban used this in his quest to drop 35 lbs as well.
It’s been tested on 1000′s of “free range” people. It doesn’t require a coach, just simple math and applying your personal constraints to the problem FIRST. Quite frankly, it’s the ONLY way I know that takes all of the mystery and scare tactics out of fat loss and applies the REAL REASONS you never get results to your problem.
Oh, and don’t forget, by ALL measurable markers… it’s “healthy” as well.
And I just gave it to you… for free.
Oh, and by the way, because you’re accounting for ALL of your social events and gatherings, NO ONE will ever know that you’re trying to lose body fat. Everything you’re doing is “covert”… it’s under the radar.
That means, that NO ONE can persecute you because they have no IDEA that you’re doing ANYTHING… because you’re not BROADCASTING it to the world!
In fact, they’ll probably start accusing you of having a RAVENOUS METABOLISM… how funny is that?
This is truly the only method I’ve ever seen that:
1. Eliminates most of the need for “willpower”
2. Eliminates the social pressures of “going on a diet” and the persecution of “friends and family” challenging your diet with other “diets” and “that’s not healthy” talk
3. Takes into account YOUR life YOUR constraints
4. Bases food choices on numbers and what you like, not on trying to eat a “certain” way
5. Keeps your “hormones” in check… by all “guru” accounts (insulin, leptin, growth hormone, etc)… and WITHOUT you having to hassle or worry about it.
Our Adonis customers have been using this “Covert Nutrition” for a while now and in fact, if you want, you can find out MORE about it by picking up the Adonis Index Systems today. Take the test drive and after you order, before you download everything, you’ll be presented with an unbelievable deal to pickup this “Covert Nutrition” bundle where you can discover all of the basic in’s and out’s of why this method is so effective.
Look, if you’ve had some issues trying to drop body fat, give this method a try for a week. In one week, if you identify all of your constraints and apply this method just as I’ve outlined, you’ll weigh less 7 days from now… guaranteed.
And yes, it’s healthy (I know I’m gonna get blowback from this… this “healthy” talk, but we’re the only people you know that have HARD “free range” data and health measurements from people just like you that have used this).
Give it a try.
Stay cool,
Brad
p.s. If you’re not losing weight on the scale, don’t fool yourself into thinking that you’re “turning muscle into fat”… muscle doesn’t grow as fast as fat disappears. So even if you are gaining muscle and losing fat, the scale will be going DOWN.
{ 57 comments }
This is a FANTASTIC post!! I have been struggling to lose my 30 lbs and this post has helped me realize it is the “weekly” defecit and not daily (although they go hand in hand). I know…no brainer, but it was the weekends that blew me out of the water.
Easy way to break it down dialy to help weekly with all the contraints of life – thanks Brad!!
No prob, glad I could help.
B
I don’t think eating this far below your basal metabolic rate over a prolonged period of time is good for you. It would work well in the short term and you would lose fat fast, but in the long term you would be so hungry all the time you’d develop an unhealthy obsession with food, and maybe even an eating disorder (have you heard of the Minnesota starvation experiment?). I’ve been using eat stop eat and its working well for me, but this I think just takes the calorie intake WAY too low.
Not really. You get used to it.
Also, my personal setpoints are things to shoot for. The days end up higher on almost all accounts. This helps me out.
Others, naturally can up their calories and add 3500 in if they want which for me would add in an additional 500 or so per day to may plan.
Also, one of my constraints is that I travel a LOT so I tend to have “pockets” to work with where I can be consistent over a 3-4 week period.
I also have a fine relationship with food, which is evident by how I indulge when I travel.
You have to work within the constraints you have in life… that’s the main point. For you, ESE works because you can fit it in on a consistent basis.
Oh, one more thing.
When you’re using the Adonis and Venus Indexes as your guide and your goal is proportions, the indexes
themselves act as a ‘buffer’ to any of this… as you’re not looking to get as ‘skinny’ as possible, but to decrease your waist size.
You view it as a tool to get to the goal… and the goal has a finite endpoint… instead of a skinny at all costs neverending struggle.
Make sense?
B
I have to say that article was way more complicated than it needs to be. I pretty much understood all of this after reading “Eat Stop Eat”. I guess this is good info for people who haven’t read that book, but I just think losing weight is way more simple than this article suggests. I reached my TL;DR threshold about halfway through the article and realized that I was already doing what was proscribed. I’ve lost about 15 lbs so far after reading “Eat Stop Eat” and I expect to lose another 10 in the near future. I’ve always been good about getting my ass into the gym and excercising as part of my lifestyle (walking to and from work, twice daily yoga)
but yeah, you could have just said:
read “Eat Stop Eat” and eat mostly healthy foods.
And that would be just as good.
You could.
But then what happens to the person that ESE doesn’t work for.
What if they get a lot of backlash from their friends and family about “fasting” (the main question Pilon gets is how to explain it to friends and family… and that’s where a lot of this is derived from)?
For a lot of people, diet persecution keeps them from results as they never stick to anything… thus, in a free range situation, you have to take it into account and give people a “heads up” on how to attack it.
ESE is a method that falls within this for sure. It’s unsaid, but essentially you’re loading your deficit over one or two days per week and for a lot of people, this is manageable from both a social and a consistent manner.
So, someone whose successful on ESE will likely have a caloric load that looks something like this:
Monday: 500 (dinner only)
Tuesday: 2000
Wednesday: 2000
Thursday: 500 (dinner only)
Friday: 2000
Saturday: 2000
Sunday: 2000
… yet someone that doesn’t have success will look like this:
Monday: 2000 (dinner only)
Tuesday: 3000
Wednesday: 3000
Thursday: 2000 (dinner only)
Friday: 3000
Saturday: 3000
Sunday: 3000
… because they think the “magic” is in the fasting itself, not in the rejiggering of caloric deficit to fit a lifestyle, which ESE is GREAT at.
B
You just can’t win. People ask you to explain, then they say you over explain. You don’t explain, you didn’t do enough. I think the article was great. Sometimes people see things differently. I like breaking things down. This broke it down for me. Very cool. Thank you for doing this!!!
Well believe it or not, this is what I’ve unconsciously doing (more or less) for the last 11 weeks and I’m down 15 lbs with another 25 to go.
I’m just eating same as before but smaller portions and not buying food in.
I just retired so I use the gym 2 days a week and do at least an hours brisk walk on the other 4 (1 days rest at my age) I also have a day when I eat a Chinese take out or Pizza.
I been at the weights and fitness stuff since I was 13 and I’ll be 66 in June, so I must have picked up some things without knowing it.
Never had a weight problem till I got a suit job 10 years back and gradually 4 stone appeared. Anyways 4 stone is gradually going again.
Keep up the good work guys.
Phil
I believe it.
For ESE, is there any difference between fasting for 24 hrs and eating an 800 calorie meal, or just eating 4 meals of 200 caloreis each during the same time. Will there be any difference.
The biggest difference is in trying to measure out 200 calories, which you’re bound to overshoot every time.
So instead of 800, you’ll likely go 1200 as overshooting by 100 calories is really easy.
Hi Brad, really enjoyed the article. I do have one question though….eating low calories doesn’t scare me and I know Brad Pilon believes that we need a lot less protein than was previously believed. But on such low calories, how on earth are you able to get enough protein to stop you from losing muscle? I would have thought that you needed at least 100 grams a day, at least on a rolling basis? Do you take a protein supplement instead?
Not really.
I’ve done shakes in the past and I do have a bottle of Muscle Milk under the counter just in case I want a low calorie meal.
But, my intake is a little higher in protein right now… that’s just how the numbers work out.
Don’t forget that it’s 100 on AVERAGE over the week, and that’s easy to get for the most part.
great article!!!
It was time to pause the podcasts…
written material is so much more usable.
Could you write something about what protein quantities, & how to time them, during a caloric deficit period should we eat so that muscle size stays the same.
Also how many weeks/days are optimal to lose fat but not muscle?
Thanks for everything!
We’ll be transcribing the podcasts as of this next one by the way…
Sounds pretty familiar to me!
Although I do have one question. When you reach your ideal waist, can you go all way back to the maintenance calories?(My answer would be yes, I just ain’t sure.)
And I can say that doing ESE and AI workouts have worked for me. Waist is getting leaner and my shoulders are getting leaner AND bigger.
Nice work guys!
Yep… as long as you know where your maintenance really is.
Here’s a hint:
ESE makes this REALLY easy.
Eat roughly how you want and fast once or twice a week to maintain. It’s cake.
B
Great article, I have been stuck at 177lbs for a lil over 2 months now, I’ve been fasting, but I just realized after my fast, I overeat & undo what fat lose I had done & I knew I was missing a point in my eating less but I couldn’t pinpoint it. But this has put everything in perspective & it seems like weekends are my downfall & I eat at or above maintenace. The weekly counting makes it so much easier.
Yeah, you don’t have to be exact, but you have to have somewhat of an idea of what your true maintenance levels are… and guess what, if what you’ve been doing has been maintaining your size… then start from there
thankyou so much for this explenation, much easier to understand and follow brad. just a quick question
i remember doing lyle’s rapid fat loss. i was eating 4 meals a day at 30g protein each meal. this came out to about 120 cals a meal and so 460 cals. obviously i took more cals in because of the oil i cooked in, and nuts i ate. so im gonna go ahead and say that i ate about 750 cals a day, and did this for 5 weeks. if the metabolic slowdown does not exist, why is it that i lost ( in total) 5kg of fat in the first week, but NOTHING, in the 4th and 5th week. I did not cheat at all, besides having a carb up on saturday ( i really doubt i could undo that calorie deficit on one day, because i wasnt binging). now no matter what i do i cant loose any more fat and everyone seems to be telling because im starvation mode now.what do i do?
How tall are you and how much do you weigh a) now b) when you started?
Wow, excellent post, very systemic in nature, it really is holistic not like other crappy theoretical programs that don’t work deliver.
Keep in mind, technically they ALL likely work… but it depends on the lifestyle constraints of the user that really determines any diet’s “effectiveness” on any given person.
Man, this is the most helpful post i´ve read in “designing a diet”, I´m a personal trainer and I´ve used some of this methods with my clients and myself, but the way you just explained it is AWESOME, thank you very much
As a trainer, you’ve got a huge leg up if you can get people to understand this…
… even though it’s simple, it’s an uphill battle for sure.
sorry i didn’t mentions my weight before. my height is 173cm, 5 feet 8 inches. this did not change through out. i started at 85kg, and as i said first three weeks= 5kg fat loss, then stuck at 80kg.
its has now been over 2 months and i have tried ‘taking a break’ or carb ups or more exercise or whatever, but it seems i can not get below 80kg, because of my metabolism(?).
sorry about the wall of text, but one quick questions, how did you find your BMR, if it is so inaccurate to use calculators?
thanks
It’s inaccurate to use the “activity factors” in the calculators.
BMR calculators, for our purposes are generally fine and all seem to converge around the same rough number +/- 50 calories.
I’m guessing right now from your numbers that you’re sitting on a 35ish inch waist and that your goal weight is likely somewhere between 150-155.
Your metabolism hasn’t crashed.
You’re likely just storing water where the fat was… it happens. You’ll be moving along dropping weight and then one week, you stall, but then all at once, the weight rushes off… it’s dieters adema.
Typically a refeed takes care of it (eating back up to maintenance or over) but from what I’m seeing, you just need to get your calories back lower and charge ahead
Brad,
Really well done post! The amount of common sense knowledge and advice you and John provide is so friggin’ right on! Thank you both!
Thanks!
okay brad good to know, thanks.
just to let you know i did to a refeed for a week, i gained 5kg then lost it back in a week but then stuck again at 80kg lol. i mean i really wish i could be another to prove you right in that my metabolism hasnt slowed down, so i will be doing what you said and getting cals low again, i’ll weight in on monday
(started last monday at 80kg)
any chance i could keep you posted on progress somehow?
Yep, just reply in this thread.
i replied below
How do you prevent the weight loss to be of muscular mass instead of fat ?
Lift heavy.
hey brad the results are in but they are weird. let me tell you before hand that i weight my self on monday morning before breakfast. so last week i was 80kg, this morning before breakfast i had weighed 78kg (YAY, anything less than 80 and i was happy as i had been stuck for so long). so i came back home after work and weighed my self just out of curiousity and i went back up to 80kg? all i ate was 3 fried eggs and 120g tuna with roughly 1 litre of water, how did i gain 2kg in about 8 hours?
also just wanted to make sure of the muscle loss, i went to the gym today and my bench went down because i simply could not complete the last 2 sets, when i noticed this i really was worried about the drastic deficit im making because i literally eat about 600-700 calories, then miscellaneous calories from something like ( 10 grapes or 5-6 raisings). does this loss of lifting weight mean muscle mass? or does it return when i start to eat carbs? maybe im eating too low?
thanks
Makes sense, less glycogen in the muscles due to less food. Very common.
Nothing to do with muscle loss.
Brad,
Is there a reliable source for determining what a particular food or food group provides in calories? I know a hamburger with french fries or pizza is high in calories but if we’re following the eat stop eat it helps me get an idea what foods are equal to a certain amount of calories. This way I can gauge or plan my calorie intake weekly.
Thanks : )
There are a few that do okay like fitday.com
I just google “calories in ______” and a few sites pop up. Most of the calculations are similar on each of the sites so it should give you a decent ballpark.
here is a pretty good one – http://www.thecaloriecounter.com/
Thanks Brad!
This is one awesome article post.Really thank you! Really Cool.
hey Brad,
when you are below 31 inches on your waist and you are wanting to maintain and gain some mass, do you totally cut fasting out or do you still fast and maybe consume more calories? You said your BMR would equal 13,300 cals a week, so do you just schedule that during the week and eliminate fasting until you get your waist back up? I ask this because my waist is too low and look skinnyfat. Thanks.
Chris
If your waist is already low, then this post really doesn’t apply
Try eating BMR +500 as a start.
I find this interesting because one of the most consistent findings from the National Weight Loss Registry, which collects data on individuals who have lost a certain minimum of weight and kept it off for at least 18 months, is that people eat breakfast. Yet that is the meal that is consistently missed here. Do you think that the fact that it sounds like you have relatively substantial meals, rather than “diet” meals helps make it easier to stick to? Or maybe these aren’t substantial meals for a man. Would a woman have to be eating smaller meals? I stayed on a 1200 calorie a day diet for several months 20 years ago, but went crazy afterwards and gained 50 lbs, that I’ve been struggling with since then. This sounds like it won’t prevent any of the problems that many dieters have over the long run, but I guess works if you don’t have any food issues. Do you have stats on a random group who followed it and also track them a year after they got to goal weight?
This “result” is what I figured out works for my own life.
You could include breakfast if you wanted. The point is to move and shake so that you can stay consistent knowing what social responsibilities you have.
We don’t have stats on a random group, it’s basically the process that EVERY person that loses has to use, they just don’t know they are using it. If you can’t fit your “process” in your life, you will fail.
This is NOT a crash and burn diet. The way I set up MINE is very aggressive mainly because I travel a lot and don’t have a lot of opportunity to stay consistent while traveling.
You don’t have to set yours up this way. This is just the framework to success, your overall path doesn’t have to match mine, but whatever you figure out that works will fit.
And yes, women will eat less than men in general.
Also, regarding breakfast, you can’t confuse correlation with causation. Does this data skew to one demographic, and completely
neglect any other demographics.
It’s very EASY to gain 50 lbs. You could do it in a year. 500 calories a day over on average and you’re there. AND THAT’S EASY TO DO,
when you account for all of the errors.
So I wouldn’t call that “going crazy”, you gained 50 lbs over 20 years (so it sounds). That’s just called living life.
Finally, how you act after you get the lbs off is your responsibility. It doesn’t give you permission to eat like you were because THAT’S what got you there in the first place and THAT’S what will put you back there in the end.
You have to get a handle on what your body TRULY needs per day to maintain.
The reason people bump up and down due to “crash diets” isn’t because of crazy hormones, etc, it’s because they never get a chance
to see where their maintenance levels are…
When you diet “slower”, you get a better view of it and understand it because you’re closer to it at all times.
Enlightening.
This is exactly how I was intuitively approaching the VI program – thinking ways to fit the program into my life AND personal preferences. For example, I was going to ask you about the possibilty of a 3rd day of fasting (if not a 4th, given my crazy schedule), and with this I already know the answer… Another important thing for me is that I have to enjoy what I eat – that means I can’t do it without cheese and my weekly dose (more like a pint ^^) of hagen dazs.
Come to think about it, that’s how I did it back when I was fit year round and fitter in summer. So I know I can get and stay lean with regular indulges. But back then I didn’t call it a diet. The calorie deficit was there, yes – but there was no energy lost in willpower games (you need your cereal breakfast, cheese is fattening, etc) . The few hunger pangs were interpreted as normal (VS OMG muscle starvation) because – well, I was trying to lean out a bit, after all…
BUT that was before i got brainwashed with the Conventional Fitness Advice.
Thank you for the chance of getting my brain back xD
My only concern is how low is too low, and not because I can’t hande it but because I need mental performance to do it well on exams. I will stick to Brad’s advice though, leaning towards the lower.
Hey AngelaN (sorry, not my place really),
But I had a trick for exams – I’d take a milkshake (a nice Frijj) and some raisins in. I’d I’d not eaten before it would not matter and I’d be looking forward to the treats (I love Frijj and yoghurt coated raisins). Plus I’d not get that ‘just eaten slump’ if I ate before the exam, and I’d be on all cylinders during, and able to celebrate afterwards.
Break a leg!
Hey Brad,
Thanks for the post and responses. Well thought out stuff that keeps us grounded.
Hello Brad,
The “Anything Goes Diet” tells you to use RMR. In your article above you mentioned using your BMR. Which metabolic rate should I be using to set as my baseline?
Thanks
Whichever is lower
Hello Brad,
Do you suggest recalculating BMR weekly. As I lose weight won’t my BMR change accordingly
Thanks in advance
Great article!!!! Question, how much water is consumed with this plan? Should a person increase their water intake or keep it normal? The question centers around managing water weight. Thanks.
Hey Brad. I’m really intrigued by the AI program and have just started with great motivation. The eating program tends to confuse me. The type of meal/cal schedule you show above seems contrary to what other programs suggest and I know that the general information out there is not correct, but what about the body going into starvation mode? Or is that when you eat under BMR? Eating only 500cal/day wouldnt bring your leptin levels down to a point where your body retains fat? Thanks!
Hey Mark,
Yes, it’s contrary. But it works like gangbusters. The point is to find the best way for you to stick to a deficit over time.
You aren’t eating 500/day everyday, only a few days. My weekends here were higher.
I wouldn’t worry about hormones, they take care of themselves and normalize at maintenance… in other words, may be overkill for you.
Keep it simple, my friend.
Hey Brad,
Thanks for the article. This was interesting stuff. I do have a question for you if you don’t mind.
What are your thoughts on the now popular rise in the glycimic index type diets?
I mean there seems at least to me one show on tv that is touting that you can eat the foods you are used to but eat it a certain way. To me it sounds like hog wash but still could there be something to it?
Thanks again for the article.
Hey Brad great article. This really has helped me greatly. I was using ESE but I was going crazy on weekends and I ended up just maintaining my weight. (which turned out to not be a bad thing because now I know what to do for maintainace once I reach my goals). This plan has really helped me to get my numbers in check. Thanks a million. Especially great that it was free of charge but worth a million bucks imo.
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