7 Ways Fasting Can Rev Up Your Fat Burning Furnace

By line: By Brad Pilon, MS

Click Here to see Brad’s WEB-site

Flexible intermittent fasting is becoming a very popular way to use your body’s natural ability to burn lots of fat in a short period of time.

Here is a list of the ways that flexible intermittent fasting will turbo charge your fat loss.

1. Increases Fat Burning Hormones

Hormones are usually at the root of most of your metabolic functioning, and fat burning is no different. Growth Hormone is the most important fat burning hormone in your body. Fasting pushes growth hormone production into high gear and this makes your fat burning furnace start to work overtime. Fasting also decrease your insulin levels, which ensures that you burn body fat instead of storing it.

2. Increased Fat Burning Enzymes

Fat burning hormones need the help of fat burning enzymes to get their job done. Fasting will sky rocket the activity of two of the most important fat burning enzymes in your body. Adipose tissue HSL (Hormone Sensitive Lipase) is the enzyme responsible for allowing your fat cells to release fat so it can be burned as energy in your muscles. Muscle tissue LPL (Lipoprotein Lipase) is the enzyme responsible for allowing your muscle cells to take up fat so it can be burnt as a fuel. Fasting increases both of these enzymes to optimize fat burning - A perfect combination.

3. Burn More Calories

Short term fasting (12-72hrs) actually increases your metabolism and adrenaline levels. This causes you to increase calorie burning during the fast period. The more calories you burn the faster you can lose weight. The extra energy you get from the fast might actually help you through a workout or get more work done at work or around the house. When I did my first fast I was shocked at how awake and energetic I was. My fasting days are now my most productive days of the week.

4. Burn Fat Instead of Sugar

Fasting shifts your metabolism from burning blood sugar to burning mostly body fat. When you eat a meal your body likes to burn carbs first, then the fat from your food. Any extra fat that your body can’t burn in the few hours after you eat get stored as body fat. When you fast your body has no choice but to burn stored body fat. By the end of a 24 hour fast your body is burning way more fat than it would during a regular day of eating.

5. You’ll Find Out Why You Eat

The most surprising benefit people report back when they start fasting is a new found awareness of what causes them to eat. When you make a conscious decision to fast for a day your less than flattering eating motivations become painfully obvious. This is the first and most effective step to getting rid of bat habits for good. Knowing what your motivations are for poor eating choices is essential before you can change them and build better habits.

6. Builds Positive Attitudes Towards Yourself and Food

Each short fast is an accomplishment that can build self confidence and gratitude. At the end of a 24 hour fast you can feel good about your accomplishment and start feeling good about your relationship with food again. The positive empowerment from each fast builds on the last until you feel completely in control of your food choices.

7. Eat All The Foods You Love Guilt Free

Short term fasting allows you to lose weight and burn fat without restricting any of the foods you love to eat. With this style of eating you can consume any and all of the foods you like whenever you choose without feeling guilty about it and still lose weight. You will never again have to be sitting in a restaurant picking at a salad while everyone else at the tables indulges in their favorite entrée and dessert.

Eating for fat loss doesn’t need to be complicated and food should never be a source of anxiety or guilt. Mixing in a few 24 hours fasts to your week can liberate you from the dieting prison and allow you to enjoy food again.

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Brad Pilon is a nutrition professional with over eight years experience working in the nutritional supplement industry specializing in clinical research management and new product development. Brad has completed graduate studies in nutritional sciences specializing in the use of short term fasting for weight loss.

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, Click Here

3 Keys to Losing Fat and Maintaining Muscle at The Same Time

By Brad Pilon, MS

Click Here to visit Brad's WEB-site

There are three main keys to losing fat and gaining muscle. If you’re missing any of these you will most likely fail in your attempts to build a lean muscular body. So what are they?

1) Eat Less Calories than you burn off

2) Resistance Training

3) Eating enough protein to maintain muscle mass

That’s as short and sweet as I can put it.

Any diet can work as long as it gets you to eat less calories than you burn off. The key is to find a diet that suits your personality and your lifestyle. If you’re like me you don’t have time to spend on diet rules and focusing on good foods and bad foods, and what to eat and what not to eat, and meal timing and all of that.

The diet that will work for you will most likely be the one with the least amount of rules, or in fact no rules at all but rather just provide a guideline or two. For me that diet is Eat Stop Eat. It is the simplest nutrition program I have ever come across. There is only one guideline, and that is to take a 24 hour break from eating once or twice per week. That’s it, simple and effective.

This type of eating program might work for you, or it might not. You just have to try it first. As long as you can find a diet you can stick with for the long term you’ll be able to lose weight, the next key it making sure all of that weight comes from fat. This is where resistance training comes in.

You have to do some form of resistance training in order to maintain and build muscle mass while you’re losing fat. If you are following an effective diet without doing resistance training you could end up losing muscle mass along the way. If this happens you could lose body weight without actually improving the look or shape of your body.

Your actual bodyweight doesn’t matter as much as your percentage of fat. If you can lose 5 pounds of fat, but gain 3 pounds of muscle you will only lose 2 pounds of bodyweight on the scale, but you’ll look 8 pounds different. Even though 2 pounds doesn’t sound like much, the difference on your body fat percentage is the key.

This is why weight training is so important while dieting. Weight training is the best way to make sure you don’t lose muscle while you diet, this helps with overall health as well as improving the overall look and shape of your body. After all when you diet the goal is to show off the lean muscle that is under the fat.

The third key to building muscle while losing fat is protein. You have to eat just enough protein to make sure your muscles can grow. This is a controversial topic that many nutrition ‘experts’ still don’t agree on. But the bottom line is protein is your friend when it comes to building muscle and especially when you’re dieting.

Mix these three key ingredients together and you’ll have a potent fat loss and muscle building program that can transform your body in no time.

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Brad Pilon is a nutrition professional with over eight years experience working in the nutritional supplement industry specializing in clinical research management and new product development. Brad has completed graduate studies in nutritional sciences specializing in the use of short term fasting for weight loss.

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit Click Here

Find Out If Protein Guilt Is Sabotaging your Weight Loss

By Brad Pilon, MS
Click Here to visit his WEB-site

Carbohydrates and Fats have both taken their turn as the evil food that you should never eat, but protein is always the golden child that can do no wrong.

Or can it?

I think protein has been put so high on a pedestal for both weight loss and muscle gaining that you can begin to suffer from something I like to call “protein guilt”.

So what is protein guilt? Well I’ll tell you.

If you eat any food and especially EXTRA food simply because you think you need it for protein, then you have protein guilt.

I realized I had protein guilt a few years ago when I used to analyze every meal I ate for the protein content. If the meal I was eating didn’t have at least 30 grams of protein I went out of my way to eat something else to make sure I got my 30 grams.

This is a perfect example of protein guilt – I felt guilty if I didn’t eat a precise amount of protein at every meal. I couldn’t just enjoy food anymore, I could only think about the protein content because I believed protein was so important for burning fat and gaining muscle.

Now I realize that I was actually OVEREATING because I felt the need to get more protein into my body. I would drink an extra glass of milk or make sure I ordered double chicken breast when I ate salads, anything to make sure I was eating MORE protein. I was denying the fact that I was overeating just to get more protein.

And it showed around my waistline.

This is how protein guilt can sabotage your weight loss efforts, namely justifying overeating just to get more protein in your diet.

To this day I still struggle with protein guilt (I use it to justify my chocolate milk cravings) but now at least I can eat an apple without forcing myself to have some milk or chicken to bring up the protein content of that meal. Doesn’t this sound crazy?

I’m getting better for sure, but I still feel twinges of protein guilt almost every time I eat. If you’re anything like me you know exactly what I am talking about.

If you live in any modern industrialized society you most likely already eat enough protein without even thinking about it. Even though I now know better, this protein guilt still bothered me enough that I researched and wrote an entire book about protein just to ease my mind about how much protein I really needed to build muscle while losing body fat.

I know this sounds a bit extreme but this was the only way for me to get over my protein guilt. Fortunately for you I’m done writing the book and you can get the final answer about protein without having to do all the research and write your own book.

So if you want to find out how much protein you really need to build and maintain lean muscle and your fat burning metabolism, and if you want to know the TRUTH about protein supplements, post workout protein, and protein guilt, then you need to check out my new book “HOW MUCH PROTEIN”

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Brad Pilon is a nutrition professional with over eight years experience working in the nutritional supplement industry specializing in clinical research management and new product development. Brad has completed graduate studies in nutritional sciences specializing in the use of short term fasting for weight loss.

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, Click Here

Top 10 Diet Rule Experiment: How To Tell If a Diet Will Work For You

By Brad Pilon, MS
Click Here to visit his Web-site

If you and I went to the local magazine stand and scanned the covers of the fitness magazines we would find dozens of ‘weight loss’ rules.

In fact we could spend the rest of the week reading magazines about the latest greatest weight loss tricks many of which may actually work for someone. But realistically there’s just no way you could actually follow ALL of them. So how do you know which ones are right for you?

The easy answer is you have to decide which rules fit best for YOUR life and then try to stick to just one or two that will make the most sense for you and have the most benefit.

This may be the first time in your life you become a scientist, and your experiment is you. Here’s what you do…

Browse any of the popular magazines, blogs, websites or anywhere you like to get fitness information. Read up on the diet and weight loss tips and tricks, these could be simple changes like not drinking calories, or a bigger philosophy like limiting the amount of carbs that you eat.

Make a top 10 list of diet strategies you’d like to try, and that sound doable to you. At this point add one new diet strategy to your life for two weeks. Record your body weight at the beginning of the two weeks and again at the end. If you haven’t lost any weight this strategy doesn’t work (for you). Discard it and move on to the next one.

This is the simplest way to tell if something will work for YOU. If the strategy you picked sounds like a good idea but seems too difficult for you to manage then it’s simply not a good fit for you in this stage of your life. If it worked for your friend but not for you that’s ok, there will be one that works just for you, this is why you make a top 10 list and try each of them, one at a time.

Let’s suppose you find one that works over a two week period and you don’t want to stop. That’s fine, just add the next one in the list, if you can handle more than one strategy at once more power to you and you’ll probably lose fat even faster. My guess is that sticking to more than one or two rules will be almost impossible, so it will be pretty easy to tell which strategy is really working.

For me the simpler the diet is the better, (which is the main premise behind Eat Stop Eat).

Even when you are following the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle you can still use the top 10-diet rule as a way to guide how you eat on your ‘eat days’.

The top 10 diet rule experiment is the fastest way to find dietary habits that work for you - after all you’ll never know until you try.

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Brad Pilon is a nutrition professional with over eight years experience working in the nutritional supplement industry specializing in clinical research management and new product development. Brad has completed graduate studies in nutritional sciences specializing in the use of short term fasting for weight loss.

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, Click Here

Lifetime Fat Loss

By Mike Roussell Phd(c)
www.WarpSpeedFatLoss.com


This past weekend I got to catch up with a friend (Jack) whom I hadn't seen in several months. Like most people Jack hadn't really changed in appearance since the last time we saw each other (around the 1st of the year). Jack and I talked for a while about stuff (Mario Kart for the Nintendo Wii, the increasing price of corn, how summer TV is really bad, you know the usual) then as many of my conversations seem to go Jack started asking me about nutrition and fat loss.

Basically Jack was pretty frustrated. He said that he had been dieting for "as long as I can remember" but somehow he still had 15lbs to lose. Some further interrogation (okay I wasn't interrogating my friend) Jack 'fessed up that while he was a lifetime dieter his compliance to his fat loss diet was pretty bad.

This resulted in something that I find with a lot of people. Because Jack was supposed to be "dieting" he would never feel like he could enjoy non-clean foods or foods in normal/larger quantities, so he'd feel guilty when he ate them, get discouraged, fall off the wagon, wait until Monday, and start dieting again.

This cycle would repeat week after week, month after month. The end result was Jack wasn't losing the weight he wanted and he was burnt out and discouraged because he felt like he had been dieting forever and not getting anywhere.

Have you found yourself in this situation?

Do you find yourself in this situation?

The best cure for the lifetime dieter that I have found is an all out blitz. Jack has been getting lost in 12 week fat loss programs, so shorter (and more extreme) program is better for him. I told Jack about Warp Speed Fat Loss and explained that there were a couple rules he needed to follow if he was going to do the program.



1. No Cheating - He needed to stick to the diet 100%



2. No Skipping Workouts - There are only 24 workouts so he has to do everyone



3. Completed Focused Effort - No training for a marathon, spinning classes 3x a week, etc. All his efforts needed to be focused on losing as much weight as fast as possible.



4. He Had To Let People Know - Tell people about what he was doing would put the pressure on Jack to really make the 28 days fat loss sprint work. 28 days isn't that long and if he told friends and coworkers they were sure to check in with him to see how he did (plus most people would assume that losing 15lbs in 3-4 weeks isn't possible so they would be intrigued enough to find out what happened).



He agreed that rapid weight loss was what he needed to end his lifetime of dieting, he agreed to my 4 stipulations, and he started Warp Speed Fat Loss on Monday.



Now, have you been dieting forever?



If you are tired of 12 week diets and just want to get the weight off and get it over with then check out the complete rapid weight loss system I put together with expert trainer Alwyn Cosgrove here.



But you need to agree to the above 4 rules too.



The time to end a lifetime of dieting is now and you deserve to be in the best shape of your life.



Let's make that happen together.



About the Author/More Info:

Warp Speed Fat Loss is a complete 28 day diet and training system crafted to help you lose 10,15, or 20lbs of body fat in just 28 day. To start losing weight fast click here . Mike Roussell is a nutrition doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania. Mikeт��s writings can be found in magazines such as Menт��s Health, Menт��s Fitness, and Testosterone Nation. Mike specializes in fat loss nutrition and diets for busy men and women who need to lose weight fast without it interfering with their lives. Warp Speed Fat Loss (Click Here) is a complete Done-for-You A-Z Fat Loss Blueprint that gives you exactly everything you need to eat to lose weight in record time.

Speed Eating and Fat Loss: Diet Advice Your Mom Was Right About All Along

By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com

A new study just published in a recent issue of the journal Obesity has revealed that thin people eat very differently than heavy people at all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants.

Researcher Brian Wansink and his team from the Cornell University Food and Brand Laboratory observed diners at 11 different Chinese buffet restaurants across the United States.

Their goal was to find out whether the eating behaviors of people at all-you-can-eat buffets varied based on their body mass.

Trained observers recorded the height, weight, gender, age, and behavior of 213 patrons. The various seating, serving and eating behaviors were then compared across BMI levels.

The heavier (higher BMI) patrons:

• ate more quickly
• chewed more food per bite
• used forks
• sat facing the food buffet

The thin (lower BMI) patrons:

• ate more slowly
• chewed less food per bite
• used chopsticks
• sat facing away from the food buffet

This study confirms earlier research from the University of Rhode Island published in the journal of the American Dietetic Association which found that eating slowly leads to decreases in energy intake.

Scientists even have a name for this now:

"TIME-ENERGY DISPLACEMENT"

Time-Energy Displacement means that the more time you take to eat, the less energy (calories) you are likely to consume. The faster you eat, the more energy (calories) you’re likely to consume.

But wait, there’s even more! A study from the University of Alabama looked at satiety (how full a food makes you feel), energy density (calories per unit of volume) and eating time of various foods. To maximize the effects of Time-Energy Displacement, it was found even more advantageous to choose foods that FORCE you to ingest calories more slowly.

This includes choosing more:

Foods that have a high satiety factor such as high fiber and high water foods (so you feel fuller more quickly):

• Peas
• Red beans
• Raspberries
• Broccoli
• Green beans
• Chick Peas

Foods with a high “chew factor” (so you can’t eat them fast if you tried; you have to chew them thoroughly):

• Lean meats such as top round, lean sirloin
• Celery
• Apples
• Pears
• Peaches

Foods with a low energy density such as salad vegetables and greens (so you’d get tired of eating before you took in a lot of calories):

• Tomatoes
• Artichoke
• Cucumber
• Salad Greens
• Cabbage
• Okra

These results also confirm all the studies that have been advising us not to drink our calories. Liquid calories, especially soft drinks and dessert coffees are two of the biggest sources of excess calories in the typical American’s diet.

The problem: calories in liquid form can have a very high caloric density and can be consumed very quickly. Liquid calories also do not activate the satiety mechanism in your brain and gastrointestinal tract the way solid food does.

"Don't inhale your food" used to be an admonishment about proper eating etiquette you heard from your mom. It is now scientifically-proven fat loss advice.

To learn more research-proven tips for burning fat, visit the “Burn The Fat” website at

www.BurnTheFat.com

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” 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 visiting: www.burnthefat.com

Avoid This Killer Weight Regain Mistake

By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com

If you want to burn off fat and keep it off permanently, there are a few things you absolutely must do, and a new study from Wake Forest University has just uncovered another one…

Previous research has concluded without a shred of doubt that high levels of exercise are one of the keys to keeping fat off and maintaining your ideal weight. In this new study just published in the October 2008 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, researchers found for the first time, proof that the drop in physical activity that happens automatically during calorie restriction is directly correlated to weight regain.

We’ve known for some time that when you restrict calories, your level of non exercise physical activity (non exercise activity thermogenesis or NEAT), drops spontaneously, even if you don’t realize it’s happening.

Your physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE) also tends to drop when you restrict calories.

Basically, when you cut calories, you get sluggish, you move your body less, you don’t feel like exercising and if you do exercise, you do it with with less “gusto.”

This means that unless you intentionally counter this tendency by pushing yourself to keep active and keep up the intensity, despite your low calorie intake, your weight loss will slow down automatically as you continue with caloric restriction. (can you say, “fat loss plateau?”)

The new twist to this story is that in this latest study the researchers followed up on the subjects through the maintenance period - with 6 month and 12 month checkups.

This is significant, because most fat loss “success stories” are reported immediately after the weight loss phase, but you never know what happened to them afterwards.

Not surprisingly, it wasn’t much of a “maintanence” period… almost everyone regained most of the weight.

The surprise was WHY they regained back the weight and WHO regained the most…

The drop in physical activity during the diet was directly related to the weight regain after the diet!

The researchers wrote,

“The greater the decrease in physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE) during the energy deficit, the greater the weight gain during the follow up.”

“That won’t happen to me,” you say? Think again. That drop in activity usually happens unconsciously. It’s part of the “starvation response” (or “weight-regulating mechanism” if you prefer). Your body tricks you in countless ways, in order to restore energy balance and stabilize your weight.

If you believe that diet alone is the answer or that you can skimp on the training, you are shooting yourself in the foot and thinking short-term.

When you extend out your time frame to a year or longer, you get a whole new perspective.

For years, I have been imploring my readers and subscribers to “burn the fat” with higher levels of exercise - strength training AND cardio training - while “feeding the muscle” with a higher intake of clean food, instead of simply “starving the fat” with low calorie diets and little or no exercise.

“Eat More, Burn More”… “BURN The fat FEED the muscle.” those are the mottos you want to remember.

Can you lose weight without exercise? Of course. Just be sure you have a dietary-induced calorie deficit. Is it the best way? Not by a long shot.

Bottom line: If you want to MAXIMIZE your fat loss, and keep fat off permanently, it is imperative not only to keep up a high level of energy expenditure (BURN calories not just cut them), but also to make a conscious effort to make sure your activity level does not drop as you lose weight during the calorie deficit.

If you’d like to learn more about this effective and proven approach to fat loss: “eat more, burn more,” then please visit my “Burn The Fat” website at www.BurnTheFat.com

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com