Here are the 3 keys to successful and permanent Body Sculpting.
These are the same techniques that I have personally used to lose 70-lbs of fat permanently while reshaping my physique and increasing my productivity dramatically. They are also the same techniques that I use on my clients in order to achieve similar results by exercising less & eating more!
Step 1-Use Subconscious Mind Re-Programming
The first thing that I see clients who fail do is NOT BELIEVE in their ability to achieve the body that they are looking for. As a result, they never invest themselves fully into the program. By not fully committing themselves, they start to miss workouts, they mess up their diet and in short, they self sabotage themselves.
I can’t count how many people come to me and tell me that once they got this right, they really started to commit themselves 300% to the program and as a result, when obstacles would present themselves, instead of sacrificing a meal or a workout they would find a solution that allowed them to continue with the plan.
On the other hand, those who simply did not have the right mindset would jettison the program at the first sign of trouble. This of course would re-enforce the false belief that no program would work for them and that they are not capable of achieving the body of their dreams.
So the first thing that YOU need to do is STOP any self limiting belief that you may have and KNOW that the power to achieve greatness is WITHIN YOU.
Thus, I want you to start acting as if you already have that body and realize that like with anything good in life, obstacles will come but when you have the right mindset you will find a solution! You will also disregard any negativity that comes from your own mind or surrounding people who may tell you that you are wasting your time and that you can’t do this! Again recall that “The Power To Achieve Greatness is Within You!” Just forgive the naysayers and ignore. As far as negative thoughts? Replace them with positive ones. Change feelings of I can’t with I CAN! Keep your eye on the prize which is that dream body of yours.
In summary, to have a mindset that leads to inevitable success you need to:
1) Believe in your ability to achieve the success. Know that “The Power To Achieve Greatness is Within You!”
2) Eliminate any negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones.
3) Take a few minutes each day to visualize yourself with the body of your dreams. Record how you feel with that body.
4) Imagine also that you already have that body and behave accordingly: no missing workouts, no missing meals. Full commitment to the program.
5) Find a solution for every obstacle that comes. For example, if it is too hard to stick to your diet plan because you have no time in the morning to prepare your meals, then prepare your meals the night before.
6) Ignore the haters. Remember that haters will hate when you are doing something right!
7) Ignore your own negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones. Change the “I cant’s” with “I CAN”.
Step 2-Stop Those 2 Hour Marathon Weight Training Sessions Immediately & The Long Traditional Cardio! Instead Focus on Short Highly Targeted Fast Paced Workouts
Shocking and counter intuitive but true. While one would think that the more one trains the more results one gets, too much training is viewed by the body as a stressful activity that may result in the death of the organism. Thus, the adrenal glands located on top of the kidneys start to secrete a stress hormone called cortisol. Cortisol signals the body to burn muscle in order to use its amino acids for energy and to protect/store fat. This is a survival mechanism that the body has. Anyone who has done a Spartan diet and training program has experienced the weight regain that cortisol creates once they discontinue or even cut back on such programs.
People who focus their workouts on short 30-45 minute but fast paced and intense weight training sessions see the fat loss and muscle gains skyrocket by a factor of ten assuming that the nutrition component is in place. While short cardio sessions can be used as a supplement, most of my clients achieve extraordinary transformations with minimal to no cardio at all and only 3 sessions of weights per week! Some clients do 5 sessions of weights and some do 6, like myself, but that is because we love it. Three sessions will get you the results that you are looking for in no time.
Compare that to the poor souls who are at the gym enslaving themselves on the treadmill like a gerbil for hours to an end to only follow that with an extra hour or two of weight training…These poor people not only get nowhere fast, but eventually, stop the program as it is not sustainable. Furthermore, even for the minority that actually get some results from these programs, the minute they cut back or stop it, the weight regain immediately comes! Also note that emphasizing long traditional cardio training and doing too much weight training will increase your propensity to be fat due to a slowed thyroid, reduced calorie burning due to muscle loss and the cortisol increase we discussed above.
So What Does a Kick Ass Properly Designed Weight Training Session Look Like?
It will consist of properly executed free weight exercises that can be done even from a home gym and these exercises will stimulate the most muscle growth from every set and repetition performed.
There are ten (7-Minute) workouts I use to boost my metabolism while building muscle at home (with just a pair of dumbbells). These workouts will definitely give you a great start and set you in the right direction!
Download Your TEN 7-Minute Fat Burning / Muscle Building Home Workouts for FREE << Click to Download (You also get my FREE 1-Hour Body Sculpting Webinar Which Covers All Of These Topics In More Detail)
If you do as I advice and perform 3 bodyparts in one workout, this will allow you to perform a full workout in 21 minutes (7 minutes x 3 bodyparts = 21 minutes) and get ten times the results that you are getting now.
Every pound of muscle gained is 50 calories more that your body now burns every day in order to maintain that muscle. Thus, if you gain 10 lbs of muscle with the right weight training sessions, you can now burn 500 extra calories per day! Do you see why it is important to gain muscle? Instead of the metabolic rate being lowered as in other programs, by focusing on muscle growth as you lose fat you end up with a body that perhaps only burned 1500 calories when the program started, but when you end the program, it may be able to burn 2,500 calories! This is exactly what you want as in this manner, results are permanent!
Take for example one of my many female students who basically could hardly eat 1200 calories at first when she was overweight and at the end of her transformation can eat over 2,000 calories while being leaner than ever! Why is this the case? Because her body is not fighting her. There was never a huge accumulation of cortisol due to improper training and diet and as a result, her body is happy burning all of those calories. Most of my guys start up eating 2,000 calories and end up eating 3,000 calories or more at the end of their transformations!
And now that we have covered proper results producing training, let’s discuss, precision metabolic enhancing nutrition.
Step 3-Implement Precision Metabolic Enhancing Nutrition: Most Regular Diets Will Set You Up for Failure From The Get Go!
I cringe every time I hear someone tell me that they are on a diet that has them consuming 600 calories or some crazy low figure like that. In fact, an obese couple comes to mind They were so happy to tell me about a new liquid diet that their Doctor put them on. Now, I don’t know which Doctor would do this, but at any rate, they just had like a salad a day and various nutrition shakes during the day. Such a diet is not only wrong from the standpoint that the body is meant to operate on real solid food and NOT shakes but even a solid food diet that puts the client in a super calorically deprived state is asking for trouble at many levels.
Long story short they lost a ton of weight in 3 weeks (30-lbs or something but keep in mind that both of these people were over 350-lbs so just water loss alone was probably around 15-lbs and the rest was a combination of muscle loss and fat). They went to a get together after 3 weeks and lets just say that they heavily cheated on the diet. This not only caused a HUGE amount of distress in their digestive system (which by now was not used to solid food anymore and I will spare you the details) but also completely discouraged them as they stepped on the scale on the following day. Needless to say, the diet was abandoned.
Now because of time, I won’t get into all of the health issues that a crazy plan like that causes but I will focus on the main points.
A plan like this will reduce your muscle tissue as too much cortisol will be released since the body sees this as a starvation event. So for each pound you lose, you burn 50 calories less. Lose 10 lbs and now you burn 500 calories less each day. Cool stuff. And also remember that increased cortisol levels protect fat as well! Awesome sauce! Now I’m really excited! NOT!
Furthermore, a plan like this will force your thyroid level (which is the main hormone that regulates the metabolism) to dramatically go down in order to lower the energy cost of your body. Thus, with a lowered thyroid your ability to burn calories gets crippled!
So between the cortisol killing muscle and protecting fat while the thyroid gets toasted do you see how at the end of the madness you will probably gain more weight than whatever you lost?
So what is the solution? What you need is a balanced nutrition that does not deprive you and that will convince your body to lose fat as you gain muscle. As you gain muscle, the diet plan is adjusted in order to compensate for the extra calories that your body burns. So instead of doing like 99% of dieters do, which is to cut calories, you will in fact be ADDING calories since your metabolism should be going UP and NOT DOWN!
I always suggest having a Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner with protein shakes in between. In that manner your blood sugar and energy levels are always stable and you encounter no cravings.
A good starting baseline metabolic nutrition plan consists of
40% carbs (sweet potato, potatoes, oatmeal, brown rice, brown rice pasta, plain rice cakes)
40% protein (chicken, turkey, lean red meats, salmon, tuna, egg whites, whole eggs)
20% good fats (extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, nuts like cashews/almonds, fish oils)
My advice is to record everything you consume.
Collect pictures, a waist measurement and your weight at the beginning of the program and at the end of every 2 weeks.
Based on results, adjust your diet. A good rate of fat loss is up to 3 lbs per week. Due to water rebalancing, on the first week some dieters lose as much as 10-lbs! Now, if after week 1 you lost more than 3-lbs, you will need to up the calories a bit. If you lost less than 1 lb then you need to reduce calories.
Every couple of weeks asses results and based on how you are progressing, then make the necessary changes. In this manner you will find EXACTLY the amount of macronutrients that your body thrives on at a specific time.
You will need to stop only using the scale to measure progress as the scale does not tell you how much fat you lost and how much muscle you gained. For example, if you gain 2-lbs of muscle and lose 2-lbs of fat the scale will show NO PROGRESS! But if you do some caliper readings (or at least use a tape measure to measure your waist) and also take digital pictures, then you will be able to see how much muscle you gained and how much fat you lost.
Remember that as muscle is gained, you will need to recalculate your proteins, carbs and fats so it is imperative that you measure body fat loss and muscle gained via the use of inexpensive calipers.
For more information on the subject be sure to download your Free 7-Minute Workout Report and the super informative one hour webinar on all these topics below.
Download Your TEN 7-Minute Fat Burning / Muscle Building Home Workouts for FREE << Click to Download (You also get my FREE 1-Hour Body Sculpting Webinar Which Covers All Of These Topics In More Detail)
Conclusion
So listen, here is what you need to win if you want to follow the same plan that I used to lose 70-lbs of fat permanently while reshaping my physique and increasing my productivity dramatically; and these are also the same techniques that I use on my clients in order to achieve similar results by exercising less & eating more!
1- Subconcious Mind Re-Programming: Achieve success by knowing that you can achieve greatness, visualizing success, living as if you have already achieved that success, and keeping your eye on the goal while turning self created negative thoughts of “I Can’t” into positive “I CAN” ones and disregarding the Haters.
2- Three Short and Highly Targeted Body Sculpting Sessions: Use short 20-45 minute periodized free-weights based training sessions with short cardio sessions only as an optional supplement. Traditional cardio is NOT needed for this program to work!
3- Precision Metabolic Enhancing Nutrition: Use balanced targeted and a highly personalized nutrition plan that is adjusted upwards as muscle is gained in order to accelerate the metabolism permanently. Track progress using digital pictures, the scale and calipers (or at least a tape measure to measure your waistline) in order to see how much fat you have lost and muscle you have gained.
Again, for more information on all this, be sure to access my informative 1-hour webinar and 7-minute workout report below:
Download Your TEN 7-Minute Fat Burning / Muscle Building Home Workouts for FREE << Click to Download (You also get my FREE 1-Hour Body Sculpting Webinar Which Covers All Of These Topics In More Detail)
Take care and train hard!
About the Author
Hugo Rivera is an International best selling fitness author certified in personal training and nutrition with a computer engineering degree from the University of South Florida. Hugo is owner of www.hugorivera.net, an informational, free fitness and nutrition website. He is author of over 10 fitness books (with over a million copies sold) including his best sellers: Body Re-Engineering, The Body Sculpting Bible for Men, The Body Sculpting Bible for Women, the Weight Training Diary, and the Hardgainers Handbook of Bodybuilding. Today via his website HugoRivera.net, numerous articles, book publications, TV and radio appearances Hugo continues to educate the public on how to achieve the body of their dreams via the use of weight training exercise, good nutrition and correct supplementation. You can follow Hugo via:
YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/hugoriverafitness
Facebook: www.facebook.com/hugorivera.net
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/hugoriverafitness
Google Plus: www.google.com/+HugoriveraNetnaturalbodybuilding
Twitter: www.twitter.com/hrfit
BodySpace: http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/hrfit/
Speak Your Mind