Sometimes in the quest for those ripped abs and tight glutes people can become, shall we say, a little obsessive. I have personally witnessed natural bodybuilders weigh out every oz of food and eliminate one food over another because of a difference of a few calories or a gram or two of fat or carbs. Also people interested in general wellness or life extension have been know to be very restrictive when it comes to food selection. I am all for following a properly designed diet and training program but I will let you watch the video below and decide if chasing ultimate health can be taken too far.

I have been competing in natural bodybuilding for over 20 years. I have eaten a few meals cold out of a tupperware container. Probably a few thousand. Thats just what you do. You make a plan, and you stick to the plan.

I am now 10 weeks out from my next competition and I have been “sticking to my plan” for quite some time now. As a matter of fact yesterday I had lunch after my workout at a well know pizza joint in town, just as planned. I know what your thinking. “oh that must be your cheat meal” or something to that effect. Well it wasn’t. It was just a regular day that we had just happened to plan to go out for lunch. The key word there is plan.On Friday we decided we would go for lunch after working out on Saturday. I took a few minutes Friday night to pull the nutritional information for some restaurants off the internet. That is the nice thing about large chain restaurants. They all post their menu info online. Because I know how many calories and what breakdown my average meals are, I was able to skim through this information and in a very short time knew exactly what I could order. I did not even have to look at the menu when I got there.

When I am discussing fat loss plans with clients the issue of planning ahead always comes up. It has to. It is the single biggest thing that will determine if you will succeed or not. Planning ahead does not mean you are sentenced to a life of solitary eating, shunned by the rest of society. You just have to take those extra few minutes and plan your restaurant meals the same way you plan your home meals. The only difference is someone else does the cooking! What could be better than that? And before I sign off I just want to say to those of you that are going to claim you don’t have time or the technical savvy to find the food information, bullshit! If you can figure out how to find this blog (and I am glad you did) you can find the restaurant info. Happy dining.

In the past 25 years I have heard it all when it came to cardio and fat loss or a least it seems like it.” Cardio must be done on a empty stomach first thing in the morning”. “steady state cardio will not make you ripped, you must do intervals” and of course the ever popular “cardio must be done in the target “fat burning zone” to be effective for fat loss. All  of these statements are backed up by reams of scientific studies, sometimes the same study is even used to prove two opposite opinions.

There is nothing wrong with scientific studies. Many amazing life changing things have been discovered,either on purpose or by accident, by such studies. It actually amazes me that so much time and money has been spent on the subject of exercise and fat loss. It seems like such a waste of time for the rats and untrained college students that are usually the subjects in the studies. Isn’t there cheese to be eaten and beer to be drunk? This would seem like a much better use of this resource.

Why not look at more relevant examples for the answers. People that actually get lean for a “hobby” Subjects that get themselves into single digit bodyfat land just for shits and giggles. Yes if you have not guessed it I am talking about the lowly bodybuilder. More specifically the natural bodybuilder because you can not attribute his extreme leanness to some pharmaceutical concoction. He or she has had to achieve this leanness through their training protocol. Surely the answer must lie with these speedo wearing hairless creatures. Funny thing though, when you examine the cardio stategies employed by this group.  Some swear by early morning cardio, some by slow long steadystate and others worshiped at the interval alter. There isno more agreement among this group than the lab coat wearing pencilnecks.

The simple fact is all of these methods have been used with success to achieve extreme leanness. But how can this be?  Surely there must be a best way! Well sorry, there is no best way to do your cardio to promote fat loss and here is why. cardio is not the biggest factor in getting your body to lose fat. In My opinion there are two factors that are much more important.

1) calorie deficit

 2) efficient metabolism

The single biggest fact that effects these two thing is, drumroll please, DIET. A properly designed diet can effectively put you into a calorie deficit while still maintaining a efficient fat burning metabolism. No matter what type of cardio you do if your diet is not on track you will not achieve extreme leanness, not even close. And the beauty is the better your diet the less cardio you will have to do before the six pack makes its grand entrance.

So lets end the debate about the hows, and whens, of cardio. Put some of that time into tightening up your diet and then do whatever type of cardio you chose. Just be careful not to step on any  rats doing wind sprints along the way.

Let me take you down a familiar road. Perhaps you have been there yourself or have been down it with someone else. This journey usually begins for me with a client, usually one that does not know me to well, standing before me and with the best of poker faces claims to be doing everything I have told them to do, but is not making any progress in fat loss. I usually listen to their story for a short while and don’t say a word. Just looking and listening. Then i begin to ask basic, small questions. Like a well seasoned investigator i begin to pick apart there stories little by little. Very soon it is obvious to us both that they are not following the plan at all. The seemingly small insignificant facts that were left out of the original tale made all the difference. The moral of the story is, very rarely is the plan “failing”. You are failing the plan. Just because you tell yourself close enough is good enough does not make it true.