The See-Food, Reach-Food Diet

By Tom Venuto
Author of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

You’ve heard of the “See-Food” diet haven’t you? No, that’s not the diet where you load up on fish, lobster, crab and mussels. The See-Food Diet is the one that so many of us crack jokes about – it’s the diet where you eat everything in sight! But don’t laugh too hard. Scientists at Cornell University and other research institutions have proven that you actually WILL eat more food if you see food more. In fact, if you can see it and it’s within arm’s reach, you could eat yourself obese within a few years and not even know what hit you because the eating happens unconsciously.

It should be common sense that when you’re constantly surrounded by food, you tend to eat more.

But one thing that hasn’t been clear until recently was how seeing food (visibility) and having it within reach (proximity) could influence unconscious eating (and how it influences what I call “eating amnesia”).

Developmental psychologists tell us that the more effort or time you invest in a unique activity, the more likely you’ll be to remember it.

In other words, if you have to go out of your way to get food, you’ll remember eating it. If the food is right there within arms reach, you’ll munch away and more easily forget it.

For years, Dr. Brian Wansink of the Food and Brand Laboratory at Cornell University has been conducting fascinating experiments to find out what really makes you eat more food than you need.

Some of his previous studies revealed that taste, palatability, mood, stress, social context, role models (parental influence), visual cues, visibility and convenience can all influence how much you eat (Eating behavior is environmentally and psychologically influenced – appetite is not just biological).

To explore the influence of food proximity and visibility on eating behavior, Wansink set up an experiment using 40 female staff members from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champain. The subjects were not told it was a weight loss or calorie-related study. They were told that they would be given a free candy dish filled with chocolates (candy “kisses”) and they’d be contacted and surveyed about their candy preferences. They were also told not to share the candies, take them home or move the dish.

Participants were divided into four groups:

1) Proximate and visible (can see and reach)
2) Proximate and non-visible (can reach but not see)
3) Less proximate and visible (can see but can’t reach)
4) Less proximate and non visible (can’t see, and can’t reach)

During each day of the four week study, 30 chocolates were placed in 20 clear containers and 20 opaque containers and delivered to the 40 subjects. The containers were replenished every afternoon. They were kept in the same location for 4 straight business days and then rotated on the following week. Researchers kept a daily record of the number of chocolates eaten from each container and comparisons were made from the data collected.

At the end of each week, each subject was given a questionnaire which asked them how much they thought they had eaten over the entire week and asked them about their perceptions regarding the chocolates (such as “it was difficult to stop eating them,” “I thought of eating the chocolates often,” etc).

When the results were tabulated, here’s what Dr. Wansink and his research team discovered:

The visibility and proximity of the candy dish also influenced the subject’s perceptions. Regardless of whether participants could actually see the chocolates, if the candies were sitting on the desk (as opposed to being a mere 2 meters away), they were rated as more attention-attracting and difficult to resist. Candies in the clear containers were also rated as more difficult to resist and more attention attracting.

Most interesting of all, this study confirmed that when food is close by and visible, you’ll not only eat more, you’ll also be likely to forget that you ate them and therefore, underestimate how much you’ve eaten (I like to call that “eating amnesia.”)

Is a few extra candies a day really a big deal?

If it becomes habitual it sure is! Over a year, the difference between the candy dish placement would mean 125 calories per day which adds up to 12 extra pounds of body fat over a year.

When given the advice to keep junk food out of the house and office, I often hear complaints that it’s “impossible” to do because the rest of the family would have a fit, or simply not allow it. As for the office, one of the biggest excuses I’ve heard for diet failure is that the temptations are always there and it’s out of your control to change. Invariably someone else brings doughnuts or candy to the office.

Now you know what to do to reduce temptation and successfully stick with your program more effectively:

If you can’t keep it out of your office or house, keep it out of sight and out of arm’s reach. That alone is enough to reduce consumption.

At home, if your significant other or family is not willing to remove all offending foods from the premises, then get their agreement that their food is not to remain in plain sight - it goes in the back of a refrigerator drawer and not on the shelf at eye level, or if non-perishable, it goes inside a cupboard that is exclusively the domain of the other person.

At work, tell your office pals to keep the candy, doughnuts and other temptations off your desk, at a distance and out of sight. If they put any unhealthy snacks on your desk, promptly remove them!

Environmental cues can trigger you to eat impulsively. If you can see it and reach it, you’ll eat more of it, and you’ll forget how much you ate. So get the junk out of your home and office now and if you can’t, then get it out of your sight. If you can’t do that, get it out of arms reach.

Better yet, setup an "environment for success" with a lifestyle program like my Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle system.

Tom Venuto, author of
Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle

Founder & CEO of
Burn The Fat Inner Circle


About the Author:

Tom Venuto is the author of the #1 best seller, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle: Fat Burning Secrets of the World’s Best Bodybuilders and Fitness Models. Tom is a lifetime natural bodybuilder and fat loss expert who achieved an astonishing 3.7% body fat level without drugs or supplements. Discover how to increase your metabolism and burn stubborn body fat, find out which foods burn fat and which foods turn to fat, plus get a free fat loss report and mini course by visiting Tom's site by clicking HERE or on the button below

What No One Is Telling You About Calories In VS Calories Out

By Tom Venuto

Author of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

I'm going to share with you the most crucial weight loss strategy that will literally make or break your success. This is the number one fat loss tip I could ever give you. If you don't get this right, you can kiss your fat loss results goodbye. This is the one absolute requirement for weight loss, and it’s something you’ve probably heard of before. However, there’s one critical distinction about this familiar advice that you might not have considered - and this one thing makes all the difference in the world…

Let me quote Melvin Williams, PhD, professor emeritus of exercise science at Old Dominion University and author of the textbook Nutrition for Health, Fitness and Sport (McGraw Hill):

“Human energy systems are governed by the same laws of physics that rule all energy transformations. No substantial evidence is available to disprove the caloric theory. It is still the physical basis for bodyweight control.”

There are a variety of diet programs and weight loss “gurus” who claim that calories don’t count. They insist that if you eat certain foods or avoid certain foods, that’s all you have to do to lose weight. Dozens, maybe hundreds of such diets exist, with certain “magic foods” put up on a pedestal or certain “evil fat-storing foods" banished into the forbidden foods zone.

Other weight loss “experts” invoke the insulin/carbohydrate hypothesis which claims that carbs drive insulin which drives body fat. That’s akin to saying “Carbs are the reason for the obesity crisis today, not excess calories.”

They are all mistaken.

Of course, there IS more to nutrition than calories in vs calories out. Food quality and nutrition content matters for good health. In addition, your food choices can affect your energy intake. We could even point the finger at an excess of refined starches and grains, sugar and soft drinks (carbs!) as major contributing factors to the surplus calories that lead to obesity.

However, that brings us back to excess calories as the pivotal point in the chain of causation, not carbs. A caloric deficit is a required condition for weight loss - even if you opt for the low carb approach - and that’s where your focus should go – on the deficit.

Now, here’s that critical distinction…

You’ve heard it said, “exercise more and eat less” a million times. However, saying “focus on the calorie deficit” is NOT the same thing. If you don’t understand the difference, you could end up spinning your wheels for years.

You could exercise more, but if you compensate by eating more, you cancel your deficit.

You could eat less, but if you compensate by moving less, again you cancel your deficit.

This type of compensation can happen unconsciously, which leads to confusion about why you’re not losing weight or why you’re gaining. That often leads you to make excuses or blame the wrong thing… anything but the calories.

Therefore, “focus on the calorie deficit” more accurately states the most important key to weight loss than “exercise more and eat less.” Make sure you understand this distinction and then follow this advice.

Last but not least, keep in mind that there are a lot of ways to establish a deficit and many of those ways are really dumb. Eating nothing but grapefruits, cabbage, twinkies… but in a deficit?… Dumb!

The bottom line is that a calorie deficit is required for fat loss, but once your deficit is established, the composition of your hypo-caloric diet DOES matter. That’s why any good fat loss program starts with "calories in vs calories out" but doesn’t stop there - you also need to look at protein, essential fats, macronutrients, micronutrients, food quality and how the diet you choose fits into your lifestyle. This is the pivotal strategy that my entire Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle system hinges upon.

Don’t let the simplicity of this idea fool you. This is the #1 key to your successful weight loss now and in the future: Focus on the deficit!

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto, author of
Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle


About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a fat loss expert, lifetime natural (steroid-free) bodybuilder, 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 clicking HERE or on the button below

Why Cardio Doesn't Work For Some People: A NEAT Explanation

By Tom Venuto
Author of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

At the Burn the Fat Inner Circle member forums, I get a question which comes up with alarming frequency: “Why isn’t my cardio working?”  Despite not only doing regular cardio for weeks, but actually increasing the duration of her workouts, one member still saw no added fat loss and started wondering what she was doing wrong… or what was wrong with her!  I gave her the surprisingly simple answer, which I’ve printed for you as well in this article and new research has added even more to the answer – it’s a NEAT explanation…

How is it possible that some people do tons of cardio and don’t lose weight?

Simple: Weight loss is a function of caloric deficit, not how much cardio you do. Cardio is only one of the tools you use to create and increase a caloric deficit.

Endurance athletes are a perfect example for illustrating the error in thinking that “an hour a day” (or whatever amount) of cardio will guarantee weight loss…

They might train for two, three, even four hours or more on some days, but they are often not trying to lose weight. They (have to) eat huge amounts of food to fuel their training and keep their weight stable.

It’s not unusual at all for a cyclist to burn 4000 or 5000 calories per day and not lose any weight. Why? Same reason you’re doing a lot of cardio but not losing weight:  there’s no calorie deficit. Calories in are equaling the calories out.

What you need to do is shift your focus OFF of some kind of prerequisite time spent doing cardio and ON to the REAL pre-requisite for weight loss: a caloric deficit.

If your caloric intake remains exactly the same and you add cardio or other training or activity you will create a deficit and you will lose weight, guaranteed.

With all this talk about “cardio” and “training” one important area that people often forget about is all the other activity in your life outside of your cardio and weight training. There’s a name for that:

Non exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT

NEAT is all your physical activity throughout the day, excluding your “formal” workouts.

NEAT includes all the calories you burn from casual walking, shopping, yard work, housework, standing, pacing and even little things like talking, chewing, changing posture, maintaining posture and fidgeting. Walking contributes to the majority of NEAT

It seems like a bunch of little stuff – and it is – which is why most people completely ignore it. Big mistake.

At the end of the day, week, month and year, all the little stuff adds up to a very significant amount of energy. For most people, NEAT accounts for about 30% of physical activity calories spent daily, but NEAT can run as low 15% in sedentary individuals and as high as 50% in highly active individuals.

I’m always telling people to exercise more – to burn more, not just eat less. This is not only for health, fitness and well-being, but also to help increase fat loss.

But some people say that increasing exercise doesn’t always work and they quote from research to make their case.  It’s true that some studies paradoxically don’t show better weight loss by adding exercise on top of diet.

But there are explanations for this…

If you add training into your fat loss regime but you don’t maintain your nutritional discipline and keep your food intake the same, you remain in energy balance. If a study doesn’t monitor this type of compensation, or if the researchers trust the subjects to accurately self-report their own food intake (hahahahahahahaha!), it will look like the exercise was for nothing.

In studies where the food intake was controlled when exercise was added… surprise, surprise, weight loss increased!

Stated differently, all these “experts” who keep saying that exercise doesn’t work for weight loss are  ignoring or not understanding the concepts of calorie deficit and energy compensation.

Why  Exercise “Doesn’t Work” – The NEAT Explanation

So a handful of people exercise and then eat more than they were eating before and then scratch their heads and wonder why they aren’t losing. DUH!

Or, they go on some idiotic crusade against exercise. “SEE! exercise is a waste of time… all you have to do is follow the ‘magic’ diet!”

Wrong. Dieting alone is the worst way to lose weight because without training, the composition of the weight you lose is not so good (goodbye muscle… hello skinny fat person!). Want to avoid skinny fat syndrome? It’s nutrition, then weight training, then add in and manipulate the cardio as your results dictate.

There’s another type of compensation that researchers have recently started studying.  When people increase their training, especially high intensity training, sometimes they also compensate by moving less later in the day and in the days that that follow!

For example, you work out like an animal in the morning, but then instead of your usual walking around and doing housework the rest of the day, you crash and plop your tired body in your LAZY BOY for a nice nap and a marathon session of TV. The next day, the delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) sets in and then you REALLY don’t feel like moving!

Research on NEAT is extensive and it tells us that NEAT plays a major role in obesity and fat loss. Finding ways to INCREASE NEAT along with formal exercise can be a promising strategy to increase your total daily calorie burn and thus, increase fat loss. The flip side of that equation is finding ways to avoid decreases in NEAT that we might not have been aware of. Because NEAT is so completely off most people’s radars, most people miss this.

(NOTE: For a real eye-opener, try a using a pedometer or bodybugg for a while)

Previous studies have confirmed that many people compensated and decreased their activity (NEAT) during the remainder of the day or on rest days after exercise training. This led anti-exercise pundits once again to spit out their party line, “see, exercise doesn’t work! You might as well just diet.”

However, a study published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise found no immediate debilitative effect on NEAT on the day of exercise or on the following 2 days. In fact, there was a delayed reaction and NEAT actually INCREASED 48 hours after the exercise session (60 minutes of treadmill walking at 6 kph @ 10% grade with 5 minute intervals at 0% grade).

Why the conflicting findings? Scientists aren’t 100% sure yet, but they have discovered that part of it has to do with exercise intensity.

Moderate Intensity vs High Intensity cardio: Effect on NEAT

You sometimes hear certain trainers claim that only high intensity exercise is worthwhile and everything else is a waste of time or at best inefficient. That’s not always true, on many levels, and one of them involves NEAT.

It looks like higher intensity training has more potential to DECREASE NEAT later on than low or moderate intensity training. You burn a lot of calories DURING the workout when training at high intensity. However, the calories burned during the formal training can be at least partly canceled out by a decrease in NEAT outside the training session.

It also appears that moderate intensity exercise may be better tolerated than high intensity exercise by some people, especially beginners and obese individuals. The low or moderate intensity workouts don’t wipe them out so much that they don’t become fatigued, sluggish and sore later in the day…. and there’s no decrease in NEAT.

Am I saying you shouldn’t do high intensity exercise? Not at all.

High intensity training can be very effective and very time efficient and a mix of high and lower-intensity training might be ideal. But if you do a lot of high intensity training, you have to be aware of how OVER-doing it might affect your energy and activity level outside the gym – on the day of training, and even in the days that follow the intense workout. Otherwise, you might end up with fewer total calories burned at the end of the week, not more.

If you don’t understand the calorie balance equation and the calorie deficit… if you don’t understand the compensatory effect of NEAT on energy out and you don’t understand the compensatory effect of eating behaviors on energy in, then you can do cardio until you’re blue in the face and you’ll still be in energy balance… and your body fat will stay exactly the same.

Important points

1. This study SUPPORTS the role of exercise for weight loss and debunks the idea that exercise doesn’t work for weight loss, provided all else remains equal when exercise is added on top of diet.

2. Exercise intensity can affect NEAT for days after a workout is over. Too much high intensity work might zap your energy and activity outside the gym, resulting in a lower level of NEAT. You have to keep up your habitual activity level outside the gym after pushing yourself hard in the gym.

3. This information supports the role of low moderate intensity exercise (like 60 minutes of treadmill walking) based on the effect this has on your activity outside the gym. It is not true that only high intensity training is worthwhile. There are pros and cons of training at various intensities.

4. If you can keep up your NEAT, you can increase your weekly calorie expenditure and increase your fat loss.

5. It’s important in research to look beyond short term results (during a workout bout, 24 hour studies, etc), and also consider longer term effects. We should watch out for more studies on NEAT that go beyond 24 hours to learn more.

NEAT is a great way to improve your total fat loss results, but it can also undermine your efforts if you don't consider the toll it takes on your daily energy expenditure. The best thing you can do is follow a fat loss system like my Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle Program that takes account of the big picture, including NEAT.

Train hard and expect success!
Tom Venuto, author of
Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle


About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a fat loss expert, lifetime natural (steroid-free) bodybuilder, 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 clicking on the following link- HERE or on the button below

What is the Ideal Body Fat to See Your Abs?

By Tom Venuto

Author of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

Measuring your body fat percentage is a valuable tool to chart your progress on your quest to get six pack abs. Hopefully most people realize by now that abdominal exercises don’t burn fat off your stomach. Abs are made in the kitchen, not just in the gym. No matter how much you work out, if you don’t eat right and achieve a calorie deficit, your abs will remain covered in a layer of adipose.

When the realization hits you that you must reduce your body fat percentage to see your abs, one of the biggest questions that pops into your mind is, “how low do I have to get my body fat percentage to see my abs?”  It’s a tough question and the answer may be different for men than women.

Here's what I'd recommend:

First, get familiar with some benchmarks for body fat levels.

My Burn The Fat System has a body fat rating scale, which includes averages and my suggested optimal body fat percentages. This is my own chart, which I created with a combination of research literature and my own personal experience.

Burn The Fat Body fat rating scale:

WOMEN:

Competition Shape ("ripped"): 8-12%
Very Lean (excellent): < 15%
Lean (good): 16-20%
Satisfactory (fair): 21-25%
Improvement needed (poor): 26-30%
Major improvement needed (Very poor): 31-40%+

MEN:

Competition Shape ("ripped"): 3-6%
Very Lean (excellent): < 9%
Lean (good): 10-14%
Satisfactory (fair): 15-19%
Improvement needed (poor): 20-25%
Major improvement needed (Very poor): 26-30%+

Just a quick note: You're not destined to get fatter as you get older, but in the general population (not fitness and bodybuilding folks), the average older person has more body fat.

What I did to accommodate this was to include a body fat range instead of one number, so younger people can use the low end of the range and older people can use the higher number.

Also, just so the average reader can keep things in perspective, single digit body fat for women and low single digits for men is far beyond lean - it's RIPPED - and that's usually solely the domain of competitive physique athletes.

Competition body fat levels were not meant to be maintained all year round. It's not realistic and it may not be healthy, particularly for women.

For most women, 12% body fat or thereabouts is ripped, and for many, that's contest ready (figure or fitness competition).

Just for comparison, I've done over 7,000 body fat tests during my career, and the lowest I have ever measured on a female was 8.9% (4-site skinfold method). She was a national-level figure competitor and she was shredded - full six pack of abs... "onion skin!"

However, I do know some women who get down to 11-13% body fat - by all standards extremely lean, complete with six pack abs - but oddly, they still had a few stubborn fat spots - usually the hips and lower body.

What about guys? Well, I know a guy who looks absolutely chiseled in his abs at 11% body fat, but other guys don't look really cut in the abs until they get down to 6-8% body fat. Bodybuilders usually aren’t ready for competition until they get below 6%.

That's the trouble with trying to pin down one specific body fat number as THE body fat level for seeing 6-pack abs (or being ripped and contest-ready): Everyone distributes their body fat differently and two people may look different at the same percentage.

The average guy or gal should probably aim for the "lean" category as a realistic year round goal, or if you're really ambitious and dedicated, the "very lean category."

You'll probably have to hit the "very lean" category for six pack abs. However, the bottom line is that there's no "perfect" body fat percentage where you're assured of seeing your abs.

Besides, body fat is one of those numbers that gets fudged and exaggerated all the time. I hear reports of women with body fat between 4% and 8% and I usually dismiss it as error in measurement (or there's some "assistance" involved).

Body fat testing, especially with skinfolds, is not an exact science. All body fat tests are estimations and there is always room for human error.

The low numbers are nice for bragging rights, but the judges don't measure your body fat on stage. What counts is how you look and whether you're happy with that (or whether the judges are happy with it, if you're competing).

You can use my chart to help you set some initial goals, but for the most part, I recommend using body fat testing as a way of charting your progress over time to see if you're improving rather than pursuing some holy grail number.

In my Burn The fat, Feed The Muscle program, you can learn more about how to measure your body fat - professionally or even by yourself in the privacy of your own home.

Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle explains why body mass index and height and weight charts are virtually worthless, and shows you how to track your body composition over time and "tweak" your nutrition and training according to your weekly results.

Get more details at by clicking at the link- Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle 

Tom Venuto, author of
Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle

Founder & CEO of
Burn The Fat Inner Circle

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a fat loss expert, lifetime natural (steroid-free) bodybuilder, 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 clicking on the following link - Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle or on the button below

An Explanation and Solution For Slow Female Fat Loss

By Tom Venuto

Author of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

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

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:
Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

10 Things You Need To Stop Doing if You Want to Lose Weight

Are you beginning to think that you can't lose weight? Does it feel like all of your diet efforts backfire and
cause weight gain? If you want to shed pounds, find out which common weight loss mistakes might be preventing you from getting the results that you want.

10 Things to Stop Doing if You Want to Lose Weight

Stop choosing the wrong diet.

How often have you chosen a diet because it worked for a friend? Perhaps you were inspired by a celebrity spokesperson? A diet might be perfect for someone else, but their needs, their lifestyle, and their food preferences could be completely different from yours.
Instead, ask yourself five important questions about your diet history, medical background, and sources of support. The answers will help you to identify your specific needs as a dieter and help you to choose the best weight loss plan for you.

Stop setting unrealistic goals.

Dieters are often highly motivated and full of excitement at the beginning of their weight loss program. It is often during this phase that they set unrealistic goals for weight loss. But unrealistic expectations can cause weight gain when lack of progress leads to lack of motivation.

Instead, take the time to sit down and set both short- and long-term goals. By setting up small, achievable steps on the way to your larger goal, you set yourself up for gradual success. Incremental steps will also help you to stay motivated through the entire weight loss process.

Stop using "lack of time" as an excuse.

One of the most common barriers to weight loss is the belief that you don't have enough time. One study
found that 41% of women cited "lack of time" as the reason that they didn't eat better and 73% of women said they didn't exercise because they didn't have the time. The bottom line is that if you want to lose weight, you have to find a way to carve out time for healthy activity.

Instead of giving up, get out an old-fashioned paper calendar. Find windows of time that are not consumed by absolute necessities. Then schedule time for healthy food preparation and exercise. Pen in these items and schedule everything else around them. Don't be afraid to put other priorities on the back burner or ask for help (see item #4) so that you can take the time you need to make your health a top priority.

Stop isolating yourself.

In a recent interview with Biggest Loser runner-up Hanna Curlee, she said that the most important thing she learned during her successful weight loss experience was to ask for help. "I was ashamed to ask for help," she said. "I could have called someone and reached out for help, but I thought I didn't have anyone." She realized later that she had friends and family who were willing and able to help her through her weight loss journey.

Instead of isolating yourself, learn how to get diet support from family and friends. Take the time to identify your needs for yourself and then approach others. That way, you'll be clear about defining specific ways in which they can help.

Stop underestimating your food intake.

Do you really count all of your calories? Remember that even tiny 25-calorie nibbles here and there throughout the day can add up. Snacks count, food from your dining partner's plate counts, and calories consumed during food preparation count.

Instead of relying on guesswork, use a food tracker like the one at CalorieCount.com. The website provides a great tool, and there is even a mobile app that will help you track every food that you consume. Make your entries more accurate by purchasing an inexpensive food scale. The tool will allow you to report the exact size of each portion you consume. Compare prices to find a scale that fits in your budget.

Stop believing that "healthy" foods will cause weight loss.

Several studies have shown that people are more likely to overeat foods that they perceive to be healthy. One study at the University of Michigan found that when a food was labeled "organic," dieters ate more of it. There may be health benefits to the food you are eating, but if you eat too much of it, it will cause weight gain.

Instead of reading product claims on packages, read nutritional facts labels. Start by assessing the serving size, then see how many calories and how much fat is in the product. You may find that your "healthy" snack is causing unhealthy weight gain.

Stop sitting all day.

Non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, is a fancy term for all of the non-exercise movement that you
do every day. It can account for up to 15-30% of your total calorie burn. If you spend your day sitting at a desk or your evenings lying on the couch, the calories you burn from NEAT will be minimal.

Instead of being sedentary, increase your daily activity. If you have a desk job, get up every hour and walk to the restroom on a different floor, refill your water, run an errand on foot, or climb the stairs in your office building. If you like watching television at night, fold laundry or dust furniture instead of just lying on the couch.

Stop overestimating your exercise activity.

Many people who want to lose weight join a gym. But you actually have to go to the health club to burn calories. And your workout time is only the time you spend exercising. It should not include the time you spend in the locker room, parking your car, and chatting with friends.

Instead of using ballpark figures, invest in a heart rate monitor. There are quite a few models on the market, so compare prices to find one that fits your budget. A heart rate monitor not only lets you know how hard you are working, but most models will measure your "time in range" to let you know exactly how many minutes you can count as exercise.

Stop compensating for exercise by eating more.

It is normal for your appetite to increase when you begin to exercise. A common weight loss mistake is to indulge in extra snacks and treats as a reward for the workout. But eating those treats can cause weight gain.

Instead of overeating after your workout, plan to eat a healthy, low-calorie snack right after you exercise. Combine a lean protein with a carbohydrate to satisfy your hunger and replace nutrients lost during the workout. A glass of skim chocolate milk works well and tastes decadent enough to feel like a treat.

Stop expecting major results from minimal change.

It's easy to believe the advertising claims made by numerous weight loss pills, supplements, and fad diets. Too many of them claim that major weight loss is easy. But weight loss is hard. Don't let the difficulty of the process deter your best efforts.

Instead of getting frustrated, focus on small accomplishments as you lose weight. At each stage of the weight loss process, find an accomplishment to be proud of. Then focus on what you have gained. For example, if the scale isn't giving you the weight loss results that you want, then celebrate the fact that you ate a well-balanced diet during the day and remind yourself about the health benefits you gained from eating well. Your exercise plan may not be resulting in weight loss yet, but it may help you sleep better at night and feel better during the day. Look for and acknowledge the little perks along the way.

Lose Fat With Metabolic Cooking

Metabolic cooking is a fat loss recipe programme by Dave Ruel and Karine Losier, aka the “Musclecook & Lean Kitchen Queen”. The programme claims to help both males and females with losing body fat by turbo charging your metabolic rate. It’s actually a group of 9 cookbooks which lists 250 recipes which skyrocket your metabolism thus helping you lose weight.

Here is a quick list of the pros and cons of the program

Cons

Nothing's perfect and here are the flaws I noticed in this diet plan:

• As this is a collection of cookbooks so it might seem like a daunting task for someone who inexperienced when it comes to cuisine. It could take a novice a couple of days to get the hang of it.
• Some of you who are expert fitness trainers might find this a bit too basic but you have to understand that this was written keeping in mind the average Joe who doesn’t know much about weight loss so it covers the basics and then moves onward.
• There are over 200 recipes in there so it took me quite some time to sift through them all and decide which ones I would like the best – according to my taste of course.

Pros

• Simplicity: This is their fault and the reason of their success. The simplicity of the book is outstanding. I didn’t get confused even once. It takes you by the hand and explains everything in detail. 
• Cutting Down on Your Favorite Dishes: Probably the best thing about this system- You don’t have to let go of your favorite dishes. You can eat whatever you want; you just have to follow the guidelines of the book while making it; which by the way, for me improved the taste even more!
• Limitless Weight Loss: The amount of weight loss depends on you and you alone. You can lose 5 pounds or 50 pounds. Your choice.
• Economic Factor: This system proved very economical for me. The ingredients in the dishes are pretty cheap and easily available everywhere.
• Metabolic Nutri-Profile: This is a unique profiling system that designs from scratch a nutritional profile which varies for every person. This is what it looks like:
• Guarantee: Though I don’t see why this system wouldn’t work for you. But if for some reason you are not satisfied they will refund you every cent no questions asked!

Want to read more about it? Click here or on the button below!

5 Interesting Facts You Don't Know About Body Fat

We dissect the science of fat to help you pick the smartest strategies for losing it

Fat is the ultimate three-letter word, especially the kind that you spend so much time watching your diet and hitting the gym to keep at bay (or at least to keep off your butt). But beyond making you look less-than-svelte, fat can have significant physical and emotional implications. We talked to Shawn Talbott, Ph.D., a nutritional biochemist and author of The Secret of Vigor: How to Overcome Burnout, Restore Biochemical Balance, and Reclaim Your Natural Energy, to find out a few essential facts that might surprise you.

1. Fat Comes in Different Colors
More specifically, there are different types of fat that have different hues and functions, according to Talbott: white, brown, and beige. The white fat is what most people think of as fat—pale and useless. Useless in that it has a low metabolic rate so it doesn’t help you burn any calories the way muscle does, and it’s the predominant type of fat in the human body, encompassing more than 90 percent of it. In other words, it’s a storage unit for extra calories.

Brown fat is darker in color due to a rich blood supply and can actually burn calories rather than storing them—but only if you’re a rat (or other mammal); certain critters can activate brown fat to burn calories and generate heat to keep them warm in winter. Humans, sadly, have so little brown fat that it won’t help you burn calories or keep you warm.

The third type of fat, beige fat, is in between white and brown in terms of its calorie-burning ability, which is actually very exciting. Why? Because researchers are looking into ways to shift white fat cells into more metabolically active beige ones via diet and exercise or supplements. In fact, there is preliminary evidence that certain hormones which are activated by exercise may convert white fat cells into beige ones, as well as some evidence that certain foods such as brown seaweed, licorice root, and hot peppers may have the ability to do this as well.

2. The Fat On Your Butt is Healthier than the Fat on Your Belly
It’s probably safe to say that no woman favors the fat on one body part over another, but it’s actually safer health-wise to be more of a pear than an apple, Talbott says. Belly fat, also known as visceral fat, is much more responsive to the stress hormone cortisol compared to the fat on your thighs or butt, so when stress hits hard (and you don’t find a healthy way to handle it), any extra calories consumed are more likely to end up around your middle.

Belly fat is also much more inflammatory than fat located elsewhere in the body and can create its own inflammatory chemicals (as a tumor would). These chemicals travel to the brain and make you hungry and tired, so you’re more likely to overeat or eat junk food and not exercise, thus creating a vicious cycle and perpetuating the storage of more belly fat. The good news is that anything that helps you reduce inflammation helps reduce those signals to the brain. Talbott recommends fish oil (for the Omega 3’s) and probiotics, which you can take in pill form or get by eating yogurt with active cultures.

3. First You Burn Calories, Second You Burn Fat
The term “fat-burning” is thrown around willy-nilly in fitness circles, but as an expression of weight loss, it’s indirect. Before you “burn” fat, you burn calories, whether those calories come from stored carbohydrates (glycogen and blood sugar) or from stored body fat. The more calories you burn during each workout, the bigger deficit you will create and the more fat you will lose.

You can also create a calorie deficit by eating less. The trick, though, is time, since it’s hard for most people to put in the time needed to burn enough calories to make a weight-loss dent. Talbott (and many other experts) advocates high-intensity interval training (HIIT) to burn as many calories as possible in as short amount of time as possible. This method, which alternates between hard/easy efforts, can burn double the calories in the same amount of time spent exercising in a steady state.

4. Fat Affects Your Mood
Certainly there is no easier way to ruin your day than seeing you’ve gone up a few numbers on the scale, but having excess fat—especially around your belly—activates that inflammation/cortisol cycle, which studies show may be a factor in serious mood disorders like bipolar disorder. If you’re stuck in a stress/eat/gain/stress cycle, however, you’re likely to experience at least a perpetually low mood, even if you don’t have an actual clinical condition.

To help break the cycle, try eating a square of dark chocolate, suggests Talbott; there is just enough sugar to satisfy a stress-induced craving, but the healthy flavonoids help calm inflammation that leads to more stress. Low-fat dairy products like yogurt can have a similar effect—the combination of calcium and magnesium can help calm the stress response.

5. Even Skinny People Can Have Cellulite
The dreaded c-word is caused by fat trapped under the skin (known as subcutaneous fat). The overlying skin "dimples" are created by connective tissues that tie the skin to the underlying muscle, with fat trapped in between like a sandwich. You don’t need a lot of fat to cause a dimpling effect, so you can be in great shape and have low body fat but still have a little pocket of dimpled fat, for example, on your butt or the backs of your thighs.

Building muscle while losing fat (and the fat loss part is key—you have to have it to lose) can help minimize the appearance of cellulite; cellulite-specific creams and lotions can also help minimize the look of dimpled skin (though they can’t do anything about the trapped fat beneath).

Lose Fat With Metabolic Cooking

Metabolic cooking is a fat loss recipe programme by Dave Ruel and Karine Losier, aka the “Musclecook & Lean Kitchen Queen”. The programme claims to help both males and females with losing body fat by turbo charging your metabolic rate. It’s actually a group of 9 cookbooks which lists 250 recipes which skyrocket your metabolism thus helping you lose weight.

Here is a quick list of the pros and cons of the program

Cons

Nothing's perfect and here are the flaws I noticed in this diet plan:

• As this is a collection of cookbooks so it might seem like a daunting task for someone who inexperienced when it comes to cuisine. It could take a novice a couple of days to get the hang of it.
• Some of you who are expert fitness trainers might find this a bit too basic but you have to understand that this was written keeping in mind the average Joe who doesn’t know much about weight loss so it covers the basics and then moves onward.
• There are over 200 recipes in there so it took me quite some time to sift through them all and decide which ones I would like the best – according to my taste of course.

Pros

• Simplicity: This is their fault and the reason of their success. The simplicity of the book is outstanding. I didn’t get confused even once. It takes you by the hand and explains everything in detail. 
• Cutting Down on Your Favorite Dishes: Probably the best thing about this system- You don’t have to let go of your favorite dishes. You can eat whatever you want; you just have to follow the guidelines of the book while making it; which by the way, for me improved the taste even more!
• Limitless Weight Loss: The amount of weight loss depends on you and you alone. You can lose 5 pounds or 50 pounds. Your choice.
• Economic Factor: This system proved very economical for me. The ingredients in the dishes are pretty cheap and easily available everywhere.
• Metabolic Nutri-Profile: This is a unique profiling system that designs from scratch a nutritional profile which varies for every person. This is what it looks like:
• Guarantee: Though I don’t see why this system wouldn’t work for you. But if for some reason you are not satisfied they will refund you every cent no questions asked!

Want to read more about it? Click here or on the button below!