Archives for 2011

Heather placed third in the Venus Index Transformation Contest.

She lost pounds of fat and toned her body and now she is very closed to her ideal proportions.

Check out her picture:

Due to various experience and some personal tragedies in her life, Heather ended up overeating at the age of 14.

Before the Venus Index Contest she tried everything. Therapy, all sorts of diets and fat loss programs.

One expert told her that the flavored and processed food is the devil, so she stopped eating everything that was highly processed or flavored.

After that she heard that sugar is not that bad, but eggs can cause a heart attack and are the root of obesity. So, she stopped eating eggs completely.

All of this often times conflicting advice lead her to trying different diets like Atkins and she ultimately ended up being a vegetarian. After being a vegetarian for a while she decided to be a vegan in order to be “really healthy“.

This new eating style was causing a lot of trouble to her relationships especially to her marriage. Her husband was really struggling with her diet preferences, even though he never said anything it was obvious that he had idea how to help her.

Heather wasn’t eating with him and their families on holidays like a normal person, she always had her special meals. She wouldn’t eat with the family, because it just wasn’t part of the rules she acquired.

Now when she looks back it just wasn’t fair to him, but at that time it seemed like the only option for her.

The reason for doing all those crazy things was the fact that she just couldn’t stand her weight anymore and wanted to make a change.

The thing is, you can’t put foods on a ‘never have it again’ list, because when you label some food as bad you will tend to binge on it even more.

The truth is that you can eat pretty much anything you like, the important piece of advice many experts don’t know and don’t tell is that the key is the volume. The secret is in controlling the amount not limiting the choices.

There is really no reason to make it complicated and make a devil of saturated fat or processed food.

If you had no education in biology or chemistry and never been influenced by marketing and advertising, what would be your answer to “What is the best way to lose fat?”

What do you think a kid would say?

…just eat less.

This is the only way to lose fat, create a deficit, so your body will have to use stored bodyfat. Yes, you can create a bigger deficit with cardio and some other physical activities, but the foundation is in the diet, because you can’t out train a bad diet.

However, in the current conventional fitness community, the approach is quite different. It’s not only different, but it’s a complete scam made only to increase sales and not help people, no surprise being in shape seems like a fairytale.

One day carbs are labeled as bad for you, the next day fat is the evil.

And when you try to go on such a diet for a longer period of time that’s when things get ugly and you get really frustrated by not seeing any results.

The longer it’s drilled in your head, the bigger the threat of eating that cake and burger is. And ultimately you will end up overeating big time.

For Heather it was happening over and over again.

And she just couldn’t live like that.

She would follow some crazy dietary advice and then after a while crack and overeat massively. This is the pitfall of labeling some food as bad, once you tell someone it’s forbidden, the desire to have it is even bigger.

Plus it’s forbidden for no good reason, because no food is actually bad for you.

It’s like seduction, if there is an attractive man and he is just not returning calls, always takes days before replying to a message and generally just seems not interested at all, you will feel even more desire to have him. It’s a pretty basic law of nature.

This is exactly the same.

We want things we can’t have and that are forbidden.

It Took Her Years to Find the Truth and Learn the Lesson

Heather went through years of failure until she realized what the truth was and learned her lesson.

She’d gone through extremes, tried all sorts of things. Eliminating sugar, fat, processed food, eggs and the list just goes on.

Later on she realized that the devil is always in the dose and not in the food itself like all the “fitness experts” keep saying.

After listening to several of them you would even believe that chocolate or a burger can kill you. In reality there is nothing wrong with a burger or sweet chocolate. What can screw up your weight and health is having those foods every day and over eating on them.

Obviously there is nothing wrong with the occasional chocolate bar, cake or fries with a burger, as long as you account for those meals in your weekly calorie budget you are fine.

This is why the “concept of dosing” is so amazing. There is no more flexible and more enjoyable diet than this one. You can be someone who can eat whatever she wants. The benefit of not overeating is also the fact that when you don’t overdo it, you don’t feel stuffed and enjoy it, it’s positive reinforcement. You can actually feel great after eating, not full and guilty, what a change, huh?

Controlling calories only and not the meal choices gives you the ability to go out, have a meal wherever and whenever you want, not be a pill, enjoy the company of others in a restaurant and not worry about saturated fat and processed foods.

Obviously if you have spent the last 15 years overeating then it’s not going to be pretty at the beginning, it will require some effort, strong motivation and serious work on your will power and dedication. It is pretty similar to strength training. You need to make a habit of it and balance the past 15 years of doing it (eating) the wrong way. It’s like doing reps and sets in the gym. The more you do, the easier it becomes and the better the results will be. After a while it will all become natural to you.

Of course you will always have to watch how much food you eat and stay in a healthy caloric range, but it will be pretty natural and most of the time not even a conscious decision. Something to look forward, don’t you think?

Take home message from Heather:

• Make a diet based on your preferences, remember that you need to enjoy your food
• Never identify yourself with your food choices – Atkins girl, low calorie girl, vegan girl etc.
• Accept that the amount of calories your body needs is very low (RMR + daily activities, for average woman it’s around 1400 calories!)
• We want magic, but reality is different, you can’t eat 5000 calories divided into chicken wings, pasta and ice cream
• You need to find a way how to make it enjoyable and transforming at the same time
• You can and will enjoy food when eating less of it, it is a completely different experience
• If you don’t want to do cardio, you don’t have to, you can just add some low intensity walk, cardio will increase your appetite, so it might be even better to cut it or completely eliminate it from your schedule – Find your sweat spot with cardio and diet
• Keep it simple – Diet for fat loss and training for muscle growth and body shaping
• If you want to do something for relaxing your body and mind and stay away from injuries you can try yoga, such an activity won’t take a lot of physical energy from your workouts
• In this society overeating can get out of control very quickly,  we just tend to overeat a little at a time, but consistently, be aware of the amount you eat and then you will stay immune to all the advertising

 

Quote to remeber:

“It’s easier to eat less of the food you like rather than the food you don’t like and cut out what you like completely.”

John Barban

 

Words & phases mentioned in the podcasts:

• RMR/BMR – Resting Metabolic Rate/Basal Metabolic Rate (The amount of energy your body burns per day at rest, calculated in calories) – To get a somewhat accurate number without having testing yourself in a lab, try the WHO Equation
• AGD – Anything Goes Diet
• Venus Index Workout
• Venus Index Workout Specializations for additional muscle growth
• Venus Index Community and Forum
• Venus Index Podcasts
• Erik’s interviews – Links to Part 1 and Part 2

 

Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Suzanne placed 5th in our Venus Index Contest in the Open category. She did a great job and transformed her body, just check out her photos:

 

If you decide to improve your body, you need to expect and accept that there are going to be challenges along the way.

What sets successful people apart from the average, unsuccessful ones is the fact that they are willing to do whatever it takes to overcome any challenge they encounter along the way towards their desired goal.

If you can accept that road to success is not easy, the next step is to expect it to be hard and challenging. Once you expect it, you can prepare yourself to get over the roadblocks that will appear along the way.

Like many other contestants Suzanne had her own personal challenges or how she calls it her “barriers” she had to get over.

Barrier #1 Not Being Patient

Suzanne admitted that the biggest challenge for her when it comes to getting in shape was being patient enough or if you believe that patience is a learnable skill then we could even say her biggest challenge was learning to have patience.

And this is not true just in the fitness and health area of your life. If you want to take things to the next level and improve almost any area of your life, it will take a lot of patience to keep going till you succeed. Just take entrepreneurship as an example, even though this has nothing to do with building a better looking body, it’s a great analogy. When you are building a company from scratch, it takes time, sometimes you end up bankrupt or like Steve Jobs fired from your own company and you have to start again and work your way back up.

It’s exactly the same with your body. If you are not happy with the way you look, you don’t even remember being confident in your own skin or feeling feminine, then you need to accept that the change will take time and require some effort on your part. Sometimes it will even seem like there is no point in working on yourself. This is not meant to be discouraging, not at all, but you need to know what may happen in order to expect it and not be surprised when a challenge will appear.

One of the biggest mistakes you might have made in the past is having distorted expectations. For example Suzanne thought that you can make a transformation very quickly. You probably might believe something similar and this is really not your fault considering all the quick fat loss (or get rich quick) scams you are facing all day long from TV or the internet.

You probably expect results almost instantly, in a couple of weeks. Well, while you can lose several pounds of fat in just a few weeks, you can’t gain pounds of pure muscle in just a few weeks, that’s not gonna happen.

Losing fat is not comfortable, but is still a pretty simple and quick process. Some people can lose yup to 8 pounds of fat a month, sometimes even more. However, you can’t gain 8 pounds of muscle in just one month. Even guys have a hard time gaining muscle mass and they have 10 times more muscle building hormone than you! Yes, while you are more sensitive to testosterone, your body still produces very little of this hormone compared to guys.

If you have ever seen claims like gain 30 pounds of muscle, it is either BS or it’s possible only for male teenagers who have never been exposed to weight training before and still have juvenile muscle growth on their side.

It’s more realistic to expect just a few pounds of muscle gain over several months. As a woman you don’t even need to gain a lot of muscle mass to truly change the look and shape of your body. A few pounds is going to transform your body shape immensely. Even one pound of muscle is an incredible difference.

Barrier #2 Being Fixated on Weight & on the Scale

The fixation on the scale and to your weight is pretty common for both guys and girls.

Tracking your progress by weighing yourself can be tricky, because you never know if what you have gained is muscle or fat. Therefore pictures will do a much better job for you as far as progress tracking goes. It’s better to compare your pictures than numbers from scale.

Setting weight goals is also a pretty inaccurate thing to do, you should aim for shape not weight. Weight can lie and will tell you nothing about how you look. For example after you transform yourself, you might weigh exactly the same, but pictures will be completely different. How could that happen? Well, you can lose 5 pounds of fat and gain 5 pounds of muscle.

Another thing is that what you eat and drink during the day can be as much as 5 or 6 pounds, it depends on how tall you are, but overall the daily fluctuation of your weight can be significant.

Conclusion? Use measurements and pictures and focus on body shape instead.

Barrier #3 Thinking that You Need More Calories than Your Body Burns

How much calories your body needs and how much calories fitness experts tell you it needs are usually two completely different numbers. And if you want to lose fat, it will be even less than you think.

Finding about this was a pretty hard lesson for Suzanne.

Calculate how much food you eat and how much food your body needs (RMR + physical activity). Then calculate the difference. If the difference is positive, you are eating more than you should, thus gaining fat. If there is zero difference, you are eating around your maintenance. If the difference is negative then you are losing fat (this is a state where you want to be if you want to lose weight).

One of the best things you can do is to start intermittent fasting on a regular basis. You can use the Eat Stop Eat protocol like Suzanne did or some other, no matter which protocol you choose, if you incorporate any kind of intermittent fasting into your lifestyle you should see rapid changes.

Fasting will also help you understand things like why you eat and how many calories you actually need. It will help you control your appetite and see food in a completely different way.

Intermittent fasting is very liberating and when Suzanne tried fasting she realized that you don’t have to eat that much, you don’t have to snack, you don’t have to eat 6 times a day, you can throw away food and that you don’t have to eat just because someone gives you food. You don’t even have to eat breakfast.

You read so much about metabolism slow down, starvation mode and the like, but once you dig deeper you will find out that there is very little substantial evidence. And when you try fasting you will experience the positive change for yourself.

Barrier #4 Not Lifting Heavy Enough

If your goal is a fit, healthy looking, feminine body and you want to undergo some body re-composition, you need to lift heavy. There is no way around it. Muscle mass is important and for your best look you need both to lose fat and gain muscle.

This is one of the biggest challenges for women.

If you think you will look like a male bodybuilder, forget it. Those guys not only have 10 times more testosterone, but have amazing genetics and most importantly are on an incredible amount of drugs. Something similar applies for most of the female bodybuilders and fitness competitors as well.

There is a saying that what is natural is attractive. As long as you follow this saying you are going to look good and be healthy at the same time.

If you pick heavy weight instead of those 2 pounds dumbbells, you will end up with a toned and feminine physique that no guy will be able to keep his eyes off (and probably his hands as well).

Cardio is great for overall health, proper blood circulation and creating bigger caloric deficit, but it’s not going to shape your body.

You need to get a strength training workout program. You can use the Venus Index Workout that Suzanne used or try a different one, but it has to be professionally designed and you need to follow it with heavy weights.

Take home message from Suzanne for you:

• Photos will tell you how you’re doing along the way
• Find a supportive community that will help you keep going when you most need it (ex.: Venus Index forum)
• Be honest with yourself and learn more about your body
• Believe in what you are doing, even though it may seem strange at first, if you stick to it, results will come
• Have monthly expectations for fat loss and yearly expectations for muscle growth
• Logging calorie intake might help you to control your weight and how much food you eat
• It’s best to not have the food you tend to overeat on in your house
• Get over the disbelief about fasting, open your mind to different ways
• Acquire a flexible approach to nutrition
• Start lifting heavy, it’s a must if you want a feminine, fit body. Heavy weight lifting equals lean and defined figure
• Expect and accept the fact that the road to success is not easy
• Realize that you can achieve more than you think
• You can keep progressing as long as you remain consistent with your workouts, consistency is key
• Don’t compare yourself to other people because you have your own look, you can and should only compare yourself to yourself
• Pick a body shape target that is really close to how you do look and model it
• It’s hard to be objective about yourself, but taking pictures can help you do that
• You have to keep going even if it’s difficult, you will be challenged along the way, but you should see these challenges as lessons that will make you stronger
• You CAN do it, but will you?

 

Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download