Avoid Fat Producing Foods

Avoid Fat Producing Foods

By now you’ve had it drilled into your head many times that too much of anything will get stored as fat and that calories are the most important factor in fat loss. However, certain foods are more likely to be converted to fat than others – even at the same calorie level. This is due to their thermic effect, the way they are metabolized in the body, or the way they affect your hormones.

The Three Types of Food that Promote Fat Storage the Most Include:

(1) High fat foods (high calorie density; 9 calories per gram, low thermic effect)
(2) High sugar or refined carbohydrates (high calorie density, absorbed too quickly)
(3) Alcohol (high calorie density; 7 calories per gram. Suppresses fat-burning)

Avoid Fat-Producing Food Combination

In addition to certain individual foods being more “fattening,” certain food combination are doubly disastrous when you’re trying to lose body fat. The worst of all possible food combination is fat combined with sugar because it elevates your blood levels of fat, sugar and insulin simultaneously. Dallas Clouatre, author of “Anti-Fat Nutrients,” explains, "When fat is eaten at the same time as simple carbohydrates, both the fat and the carbohydrates are pushed into fat storage. The 'bad' coupling of fats with carbohydrates slows down your metabolism and causes you to gain weight.”

The One Food Combination that You should Never, Ever Eat if You want to get Lean

Even though it’s a wise idea to allow yourself a cheat meal once a week, some foods or food combinations should be avoided as much as possible. The fat and sugar combination is undoubtedly the worst of all. It’s a sure-fire way to gain body fat so fast you won’t even know what hit you. Low quality fats and refined sugars, eaten together, are also contributing factors in the development of nearly every major disease. A few obvious examples of the fat + processed carb combination include ice cream, doughnuts, peanut butter cups, and fettuccini Alfredo.

The second worst combination is sugar and alcohol. Alcohol that is mixed in high sugar drinks can contribute to literally thousands of calories over the course of an evening. Alcohol inhibits fat burning. One night with a high-fat, high-carbohydrate dinner followed by un-moderated drinking could set you back an entire week!

Don’t Choose Empty Calories & Junk Foods

All calories are not created equal. If a calorie were just a calorie, then any two diets at the same calorie level would have the same effects on your body composition regardless of their macronutrient profile. If a calorie was just a calorie, then a 2400calorie diet of 100% sugar would have the same effect as a 2400-calorie diet of 100% lean protein - but it doesn't! “Junk foods” have little or no nutritional value and they don’t boost your metabolism. That’s why they’re also called “empty calories.” You simply cannot eat “junk foods” on a regular daily basis and expect to get good results.

Guidelines for Choosing Fat Burning Foods

Guidelines for Choosing Fat Burning Foods

Food quality doesn’t fall gracefully into two categories: “good” or “bad.” Rather, food quality arrays from very poor, to poor, to fair, to good and to excellent. It’s a scale or spectrum – the same way temperature and color are spectrums. At what temperature does hot become cold? Where does black become white? Black and white are simply two ends of a spectrum. It’s the same with food choices. Food quality can range from highly processed with zero nutritional value on the low end (an “F” grade) to all-natural with high nutritional value on the high end (an “A+” grade).

Your goal is to make the best choice possible from the foods available to you in any given circumstance. You may not always be able to eat the best thing possible, but you don’t have to eat the worst thing either. If you‘re faced with a choice between bad and worse, take bad. Faced with good and great, choose great. With enough advanced planning, scheduling and preparation, you can ensure that you have “A” and “B” grade choices ninety-nine percent of the time. Here are several guidelines to help you make the best choices possible.

Choose Foods with a High Thermic Effect - Metabolism-Boosting Foods

There are two food groups that have a higher thermic effect than any other foods and these will increase your metabolic rate the most. These food groups are: 1) lean proteins and 2) natural, fiber-containing complex carbohydrates.
Protein foods stimulate the metabolism the most. Studies have shown an increase in metabolic rate of up to 25-30% after eating lean protein. This is one of the many reasons you will be eating a serving of lean protein with each meal.

Natural, fiber-containing complex carbohydrates also have a high thermic effect and boost the metabolism. Complex carbohydrates include fibrous vegetables, whole grains and natural starches such as yams, beans, brown rice, and oatmeal.

Of all the foods, fats have the lowest thermic effect. Refined simple sugars also have a low thermic effect.

Choose Nutrient Dense Foods

Your goal isn’t just to eat a specific number of calories. Your goal is to get the maximum nutritional value, or “nutrient density,” from every calorie you eat. Any food that has been refined, enriched, preserved, processed, canned, boxed or frozen will usually have less nutritional density than fresh foods in their natural state.
Choose natural foods

The best choice you can make is to eat foods the way they appear in nature. You should choose fresh foods over canned or frozen foods, and natural unrefined foods over more processed foods. For example, vegetables, potatoes, fruit, rice, and oatmeal are less processed and more nutrient dense than crackers, enriched bread, pretzels, or bagels. Remember the “acid-test” question for whether a food is natural or not: “Did this food come out of the ground or off the tree/plant this way?”

Meal Planning and Menu Creation - Making Right Food Choices

Meal Planning and Menu Creation - Making Right Food Choices

In previous sections I have taught you all, you need to know about your daily nutrition requirements to lose fats and build lean muscles. Now I guess the question is in your mind that which the best foods are containing the best nutrition for building Lean Muscles and losing the fats. In this section “meal planning and menu creating”, I am going to give you all the nutrition theory together into a real-world, actionable plan that you can follow easily on a daily basis. I will tell you exactly which foods are the best for building lean muscle and which ones are the worst.  I have revealed a simple formula for merging individual foods into fat-burning meals and I will teach you how to turn those individual meals into a daily menu plan for fat loss and building lean muscles. Most important of all, you’ll learn that you must plan your diet in advance and never “wing it.” As achievement expert Brian Tracy warns, “Lack of planning is the cause of all failures.”

You are what you eat, everything you eat either helps or hurts. If you’ve been blessed with an efficient metabolism and you think you can "get away" with frequent dietary indiscretions, you’d better think again! Everything counts. No food has a neutral effect. Everything you eat burns your body fats or feed your belly fats. Once you understand and accept the maxim that you are literally what you eat, and that every food you eat either helps or hurts, you'll start to get extremely careful about creating your menus and planning your meals.

How to Make the Right Food Choices

The results you get on this program will be equal to the sum total of all your food choices. Every little thing you eat counts and add up over time to produce an increasing result. This end result – a fat free lean body – is achieved one tiny step at a time, one meal at a time, one workout at a time. As Motivational speaker Jim Rohn puts it, "Success is a matter of a few simple disciplines, practiced every day. Failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated every day." This is so true when it comes to nutrition. Every choice you make must be thought out and carefully planned into a written daily schedule. When it comes to food, acting without thinking can be disastrous. You’re more likely to eat the wrong things when you don’t have a written plan and schedule. Without planning and preparation, you’re leaving yourself at the mercy of whims, cravings and circumstances. So be ready to learn the real world secrets in planning and creating your menus and don’t let your self-made excuses come in your way.

There are never any good reasons for diet failure, only excuses

Being a consultant in the health and fitness, I must have heard every excuse ever invented for why people eat the wrong things or “fall off the wagon:”
“I was traveling.” “I didn’t have anything else with me.” “I had to eat airline food.” “The only place to eat was mcdonalds.” “It would be rude to turn the food down because I was a dinner guest.” “It was the only thing on the menu.” “I couldn’t help myself…I had a major craving.” “I was starving – I had to eat something.”

This is just a small sampling of the reasons i’ve heard for why people don’t eat what they know they should eat. The fact is, there are no good reasons, only excuses, because you always have choices. Even if you’re eating at a fast food restaurant, you still have choices, don’t you? You can have a chicken salad instead of fried chicken nuggets. Even when it appears that you have no choice at all, you still have a choice: You can choose how much food you’re going to eat. It’s better to have a small serving of something bad than a large serving of something bad. The nutritional value might be poor, but at least you’re obeying the law of calorie balance.

Fine Tuning the Carb Cycling Method

Fine Tuning the Carb Cycling Method

As you get leaner and leaner, you may find that you lose weight too quickly on the 3:1 carbohydrate cycling plan (no kidding!) As you learned in earlier sections, it’s not a wise idea to lose more than 1.5 to 2.0 lbs of body weight per week. If you lose more than two pounds per week, you are much more likely to be losing Lean Body Mass with the fat.

If you lose lean mass or drop weight too quickly, you should adjust your high to low day ratio by increasing your carbohydrates (and calories) overall or by keeping your low days the same and adding more high days. You can do three low carbohydrate days followed by two or three high carbohydrate days. Taking two or three high days after three low days will not only help reduce muscle loss, it may allow you to gain small amounts of muscle as you lose body fat. It’s not uncommon for my clients to lose 18-24 pounds of fat in three months, while gaining three to four pounds of muscle in the same period while using the is technique.

It’s very difficult to put down one single example of 3:1 carbohydrate cycling as I’ve described it here and have it apply to everyone. A little bit of experimentation and fine tuning will be necessary to discover what amount of carbohydrate works best for your high and low days. It’s absolutely essential for these types of advanced diets to be customized.

On average, women would consume about 90-130 grams of carbohydrates on low days and about 200 to 250 grams of carbohydrates on high days. Men would consume 150-200 grams of carbohydrates on low days and 300-400 grams of carbohydrates on high days. Here are examples of what “typical” high-low cycles would look like on a fat loss program for the average person:

Men/2200 calories/3 days low carbs:   Men/2700 calories/1 day high carbs

Protein 45% = 990 calories = 247 g Protein 30% = 810 calories = 202 g Carbs 30% = 660 calories = 165 g Carbs 50% = 1350 calories = 337 g Fats 25% = 550 calories = 61 g Fats 20% = 540 calories = 60 g

Women/1400 calories/3 days low carbs:  Women/1800 cal/1 day high carbs

Protein 45% = 630 calories = 157 g
Protein 30% = 810 calories = 135 g
Carbs 30% = 420 calories = 105 g
Carbs 50% = 900 calories = 225 g
Fats 25% = 350 calories = 39 g
Fats 20% = 360 calories = 40 g

These are just averages, as every person is different. The only way to determine how many grams of carbohydrates are right for you is to experiment until you find your "optimal level" and the results start coming.

On your low carbohydrate days, eat protein and starchy carbohydrate in your early day meals (meals one through three), then in your late day meals (meals three to six) eat protein with only fibrous carbohydrates like green vegetables and salad – no starchy carbohydrates! On your high days, you can eat starchy carbohydrates with every meal (and if you’re going to have a “cheat day” make it on a high day).

Last Words
So that’s it! I’ve absolutely emptied out my brain and revealed my most mega-effective secrets to maximum fat loss. These are some very powerful techniques, but remember; carbohydrate cutting taken to the extreme will do more harm than good. Never cut your carbohydrates out completely and never stay on low carbohydrates for a long period of time. It's usually not wise to go to extremes in anything and this is as true for dieting as with anything else in life: Moderation is the key.

High Carb days and Low Carb Days

High Carb days and Low Carb Days

Carbohydrate cycling is based on the concept of rotating low carbohydrate days with high carbohydrate days instead of keeping carbohydrates low all the time. Every fourth day your glycogen levels are restored with a “carb load” or “high carb day” also known as “high day”. Your energy stays up, your muscles fill out and tighten and your metabolic rate gets a boost as if you squirted lighter fluid on a dwindling fire.

The high day also makes your entire diet easier to stick with because no matter how difficult it is to get through those three low days, you have a “high day” to look forward to (Believe me, eating all those yummy carbs after three days without them is like getting a “high!”). The “high day” also bypasses all the side effects. You get noticeably leaner with every three-day low carbohydrate cycle as your body dips deeply into stored body fat without the carbohydrates readily available for fuel. Surprisingly, you may even continue to get leaner even on the high carbohydrate days because of the boost in metabolic rate.

Carbohydrate cycling also prevents your body from becoming inefficient at using carbohydrates for energy. When you cut your carbohydrates out for a long time, your body begins depending on fat for fuel and it learns how to use fat for fuel more efficiently. You often hear low carbohydrate diet proponents say that the low carbohydrate diet turns you into a “fat burner” while a high carbohydrate dieter turns you into a “sugar burner.” This may be true, but there’s a huge downside to staying on low carbohydrates all the time and becoming an exclusive “fat burner:” Your body becomes lazy and inefficient at burning carbohydrates. When you eat them again after a long absence, your body doesn’t know what to do with them. This is one of the reasons you will simply blow up overnight and gain weight back the minute you re-introduce carbohydrates after a long absence. Unless you plan on never eating a carbohydrate ever again, you’d better think twice about long-term carbohydrate restriction. Low carbohydrate diets are NOT “lifestyle” programs.

What’s the alternative? Carbohydrate load every fourth day. When you carbohydrate load a depleted muscle, the carbohydrates are quickly soaked up by the muscle on that fourth day because the muscles are “hungry” for carbohydrates. By repeated cycles of depletion and re-loading, your muscles become extremely efficient at storing carbohydrates as muscle glycogen rather than partitioning them to body fat.

Carb Cycling – The Most Effective Fat Burning Technique

Carb Cycling – The Most Effective Fat Burning Technique

A low to moderate carbohydrate and high protein diet will cause much faster fat loss than a high carbohydrate diet. However, it may seem like the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. Fortunately, there’s a solution to these problems and it’s called “carbohydrate cycling.” Some people refer to carb cycling as “zig-zag” dieting, “Hi-low” dieting, “carbing-up” or carbohydrate “re-feeding.”

Regardless of what you name it; carb cycling is probably the most powerful fat burning strategy on the planet. Nothing else even comes close. It is the ONLY guaranteed way to outwit the body’s starvation response when calories and carbohydrates are low. Not only do you avoid a negative response, but you also invoke many positive responses that do not occur when holding your carbohydrates and calories at the same low level day in and day out. That’s the main problem with conventional low carbohydrate diets – they suggest that you drop your carbohydrates and keep them low. What I am suggesting is that you drop your carbohydrates for a few days, then increase them again before your body figures out what the heck is going on!

Carbohydrate cycling has been a well-kept secret of bodybuilders and fitness models for decades, but anyone can use it to accelerate fat loss or break a plateau. The beauty of this method is that it allows you to get all the fat loss benefits of low carbohydrate dieting without the low carbohydrate side effects. Most important, it keeps your metabolism elevated and prevents you from going into starvation mode.

Why you shouldn’t stay on low carbohydrates for more than three days in a row

After three days in a row on low carbohydrates, your glycogen levels will be almost completely depleted. If you were to continue on low carbohydrates for a fourth day, fifth day, or beyond, you would notice your energy and training intensity begin to diminish. You would also notice that your muscles would “flatten out” and become softer. Your metabolic rate would begin to slow down and your thyroid gland would decrease its output of thyroid hormone.

Basically, your diet would become less and less effective the longer you stayed on low carbohydrates beyond the three day period. Your body is so “smart,” it simply makes changes in physiology and metabolism to compensate for the prolonged lack of carbohydrates (which it interprets as starvation). That’s why you have to “shake things up” and keep your body off guard by throwing in a high carbohydrate day every fourth day.

The Low Carbohydrate, Very High Protein Diet for Bodybuilding and Fitness Competition

The Low Carbohydrate, Very High Protein Diet for Bodybuilding and Fitness Competition

For very brief periods, bodybuilders often decrease their carbohydrates to only about 25% of their total calories. This is considered a “low carbohydrate” diet. This type of program would only be appropriate for an extreme endomorph or a competitive physique athlete that’s why it’s often called a competition diet.

The Competition Diet, Low carbohydrate, very high protein 25-30% carbohydrates 50% protein 20-25% fat.

For the average male, the competition diet is about 150 to 200 grams of carbohydrates per day. For the average female, the carbohydrate intake is about 90 to 130 grams. This is just enough carbohydrate to stay alert and fuel high intensity workouts. A larger drop would be overkill.

The protein intake is often extremely high for large and highly active individuals - as high as 300 to 375 grams per day for men and 180 to 220 grams for women. This usually works out to about 1.5 to 2.0 grams per pound of body weight. Most people – except the world’s best bodybuilders, of course – would argue that this is far too much protein, which it probably is if you stayed at this level all the time. However, if you reduce your carbohydrates to 25-30% of your total calories and you don’t increase your protein and or fat to compensate; your calorie deficit will be too large. Whenever the calorie deficit is too big, you trigger the starvation mode. If you’re uncomfortable with the idea of consuming this much protein, then you’ll have to make up the difference in calories with essential fats (for example, 30% carbohydrate, 30% fat, 40% proteins).

Keep in mind that the extremely high protein levels are temporary and they shouldn’t be maintained for more than 12-16 weeks prior to the contest or photo shoot. Afterwards, you would gradually shift back to a baseline diet with more carbohydrates and less protein for maintenance.

Sample low carbohydrate menu

Meal 1 – 7:00 am:       oatmeal, 2 scoops whey protein
Meal 2 – 9:30 am:     oatmeal, egg white omelet with pepper, onion, tomato
Meal 3 – 12:30 pm:     small serving brown rice, top round steak, broccoli
Meal 4 – 3:30 pm:     Chicken breast, green beans, 1 tbsp flax oil
Meal 5 – 6:00 pm:     Salmon, asparagus
Meal 6 – 8:30 pm:     mixed green salad, olive oil & vinegar dressing, tuna fish

This menu also uses the carbohydrate tapering method, only in this case, the starchy carbohydrates are cut off after 12:30 pm. Meals one through three have a lean protein and a starchy carbohydrates while meals three through six contain only lean proteins and fibrous carbohydrates. In addition, the serving sizes of the starchy carbohydrates in the first three meals has been reduced

The Moderate Carbohydrate, High Protein Diet for Carbohydrate Sensitive Endomorphs

The Moderate Carbohydrate, High Protein Diet for Carbohydrate Sensitive Endomorphs

How many grams of carbohydrates you should eat for optimal fat loss depends a lot on your body type. Some people have the genetics to “get away with” eating bagels, bread, pasta and other high carbohydrate foods all day long, and as long as their calories are in a deficit, they lose fat without difficulty. Other people seem to be doing everything right, but they lose fat very slowly or sometimes not at all – even with a calorie deficit! This is extremely frustrating to many people.

If you’re a carbohydrate-sensitive, slow metabolism, endomorph type, you will get better results with a decrease in your percentage of carbohydrates. A 10% – 15% reduction in carbohydrates with a corresponding increase in the percentage of protein and good fats can sometimes work wonders in losing “stubborn body fat.” The adjusted ratios might look something like this:

Maximum Fat Burning Diet Moderate Carbs, High Protein 40% carbohydrates 40% protein 20% fat.

These ratios can have a 5% float in either direction. For example, if the carbohydrates were 45% and the protein 35%, the results would be similar. Forty percent carbohydrates would not be considered a “low” carbohydrate diet by most people’s standards; rather it’s “moderate” in carbohydrates. However, even this moderate reduction is often enough to make a substantial difference for those who are carbohydrate sensitive. (By the way, you may have noticed that with one small shift – adding 10% to the fat and subtracting 10% from the protein, turns this into a 40-30-30 “Zone” diet. In fact, the Zone ratios are very similar to the Maximum Fat-Burning Diet. The moderate carbohydrate diet is simply higher in protein, which is what most bodybuilders prefer.)

In some circumstances, (as during a “competition diet”), larger reductions in carbohydrates may be called for, but there is a definite point of diminishing returns. This point is not the same for everyone, and will require a certain degree of experimentation. You’ll definitely know it when you reach your “critical level,” because as soon as you’ve dropped your carbohydrates too much, all the side effects I mentioned earlier will begin to become more apparent. Even for the serious bodybuilder or fitness competitor preparing for a contest, my recommendation is that 25-30% of total daily calories is the lowest you should ever go. You always need some carbohydrates.

Sample moderate carbohydrate menu
Meal 1 – 7:00 am:     oatmeal, whey protein, grapefruit

Meal 2 – 9:30 am:     whole wheat bread, egg white omelet with pepper, onion, tomato

Meal 3 – 12:30 pm:     Brown Rice, chicken breast, broccoli

Meal 4 – 3:30 pm:     Sweet potato, chicken breast, green beans1/2 tbsp flax oil

Meal 5 – 6:00 pm:     Salmon, asparagus

Meal 6 – 8:30 pm:     mixed green salad, olive oil & vinegar dressing, tuna fish

Notice how the carbohydrate tapering method has been used here: there are no starchy carbohydrates in meals five or six (after 3:30 pm). The result is an almost automatic reduction of carbohydrates to about 40% of total calories. Meals one through four all contain a lean protein, and a starchy carbohydrate.

Secrets of low carb dieting: How to get all the low carb benefits without the low carb side effects

Secrets of low carb dieting: How to get all the low carb benefits without the low carb side effects

Reading the list of side effects and disadvantages might be enough to make you steer clear of ever using a reduced carbohydrate diet. However, most of these problems occur by using a “conventional” low carbohydrate diet. Bodybuilders do things a little differently, and the result is often magnificent muscularity and rock bottom body fat levels – without the negative effects!

There are three secrets to getting all the benefits of low carbohydrate dieting without all the side effects. The first is carbohydrate tapering, which is the practice of eating more carbohydrates early in the day and fewer later in the day. The second secret is using moderate carbohydrate reductions, not the removal of all carbohydrates. The third is carbohydrate cycling. When combined, the results of these three techniques can increase fat loss beyond your wildest dreams and expectations! Lets take a closer look at each one.

The carbohydrate tapering technique for maximum fat loss

In previous section, we talked about meal frequency and timing. I mentioned that although you’ll be eating a meal approximately every three hours, not all these meals have to be the same size. If you want to get leaner quickly, a simple way to accelerate fat loss is to reduce the size of your late day meals. This technique is known as “calorie tapering” or “carbohydrate tapering.”

Simply cut out the starches in your evening and late afternoon meals, leaving the green fibrous carbohydrates, lean proteins and essential fats. Examples of late day fibrous carbohydrate and lean protein meals include; (1) broccoli and chicken breast with a 1/2 tbsp of flaxseed oil, (2) tuna fish in a green salad with olive oil & vinegar dressing, (3) Asparagus and salmon. When you drop the starchy carbohydrates from your last two meals, your ratios will automatically shift towards less carbohydrates and higher protein. It’s an incredibly simple and easy technique to use, yet it can cause massive increases in your results.

Low Carbohydrate Diet and Ketosis

Low Carbohydrate Diet and Ketosis

The goal of some very low carbohydrate diets is to produce the metabolic state known as ketosis. In the absence of carbohydrate, fats burn incompletely, causing by products called ketone bodies to accumulate in the bloodstream. Being in ketosis is a sure-fire indicator that your body has been forced to run on fat for fuel. That’s why achieving ketosis is the primary goal of so many low carbohydrate diets.

Ketosis can occur when your carbohydrates are dropped below 100 grams, although most people don’t stay in ketosis until carbohydrates go below 30-70 grams a day. Ketosis can be detected with a urine test. Paper strips called “ketostix” are dipped in the urine and when they change to a certain color, this indicates you’ve achieved a ketogenic state.

The “high carb gurus” often argue that ketogenic diets are dangerous and unhealthy. Ketogenic diets might be dangerous, depending on the parameters of the diet and a person’s health status, but no sweeping conclusions can be made about their safety because the research is inconclusive. Many people have stayed on ketogenic diets for months or even years without complications – including epileptics who use ketogenic diets to treat their condition.

Whether or not ketogenic diets are unhealthy is uncertain, but the real reason you should avoid them is because ketosis is not a requirement to burn fat. Only a calorie deficit is necessary to burn fat. Ketogenic diets are extremely strict and nutritionally unbalanced. They are what you could call “extreme measures.” It’s an irrevocable law that the more “extreme” a nutrition program is, the greater the side effects will be and the more difficult the diet will be to stay on. (Imagine trying to stay on a diet that only allows you a few cups of salad or veggies and nothing but fat and protein for the rest of the day.)

It’s simply not necessary to remove all your carbohydrates or go into ketosis to accelerate fat loss. A moderate reduction in carbohydrates is often all it takes to help to control blood sugar and insulin better. It’s really just a matter of balancing carbohydrates with protein instead of eating mostly carbohydrates and small amounts of protein. Bodybuilders have been doing this for decades, but the mainstream has been very slow in catching on.