| Friend,
Okay, I'm going to tackle the last piece of the fat loss puzzle today. Here goes...
The 80% Solution
Yesterday, I gave you the exact same weight loss plan that I start ALL my clients on when they come to me wanting to lose weight. And those of you who know me know that I like to 80/20 everything. Well, the program I described to you yesterday consists of the 20% of weight loss habits that will get you 80% of the results you want.
That program works extremely well for jump starting people who have been eating a crap diet, and who are deconditioned and just getting back into a committed exercise regime. And, it's exactly what I'm doing right now to drop the weight I've put on over the last few years.
But here's the thing about that nutrition program... for most people, it's effective in getting them about 80% of the way to their weight loss goal. For the most part those are really easy pounds to lose. Once you become accustomed to eating clean and exercising daily, those pounds start to come off pretty painlessly.
When 80% Isn't Good Enough
Yet, at some point (and it happens with just about everyone), people who stick to that program will drop the majority of the weight they want to lose, see some body reshaping happening, and then it's like they hit a brick wall. Those last few pounds just do not want to come off.
Some people are completely okay with hitting 80% of their goal. It's usually enough to take a guy to around 15-17% body fat, and a woman down to 20-22% body fat. Not six-pack territory, but definitely in the realm of looking good.
Still, I don't like getting things only 80% done. And a lot of my clients didn't either. So, I had to come up with a way to get them 100% of the way to their goals.
The Solution for Losing The Final 20%
That's where carb cycling comes in. Up until a few years ago, most people had never heard of carb cycling. In fact, when I published a guide on the topic on Amazon, mine was the first Kindle ebook ever published* on how to use carb cycling to drop stubborn fat.
I first learned about it because years ago I had developed an interest in Russian Cold War-era sports training methods, and read everything I could get my hands on about how they were training their athletes to dominate the Olympics. One of the things I came across was how they used carb cycling to help their athletes drop fat while maintaining muscle mass... without tanking their athletes' metabolisms.
So, I read up on it and dug through some dry, boring, scientific material (and a lot of bro science on body building message boards and forums) to get to the good stuff. Then I experimented on myself, and figured out a simple carb cycling pattern that seemed to get good results for getting rid of stubborn fat.
And finally, I started putting my "advanced" clients on that program when they were struggling to lose those last stubborn 5-15 pounds.
Why I Like It Better Than Other Programs
The results were pretty amazing. People who thought they'd lost all the weight they could lose would drop the rest of their weight and lean out. Also, athletes who needed to make weight said they were easily able to hit their competition weight without having to "cut" and burn themselves out.
In short, it works really well for leaning out without feeling like you're totally tanking, like other programs will. For example, bodybuilders prepping for competition will often eat nothing but lean chicken and cruciferous vegetables for the last several weeks leading up to a competition (basically, a strict ketogenic diet).
Unfortunately, this doesn't leave much in the tank for them to train, which is one of the reasons why you see a lot of body builders using PEDs (performance enhancement drugs).
Same thing goes for fighters. When I was young, I used to train with amateur and pro fighters, because I liked the training intensity in the gyms where they trained. When it came to making weight, often trainers would put fighters on a similar diet in the weeks before a fight, and they'd make them sweat down their weight in the hours coming up to a weigh-in (sound familiar?)
Let me tell you, extreme low-carb eating and dehydration make for sub-optimal sports performance. Plus, both these methods absolutely wreck your metabolism over time, making it harder to cut weight each time you follow that cycle.
How It Works
However, carb cycling eliminates those issues. Here's how it works: - Just like the name implies, you are cycling your carbs. You have days where you follow a strict ketogenic diet, days where you limit your carbs to a few "safe carb" foods, and days where you can eat limited amounts of bread, pasta, and rice.
- Usually you'll have one or two moderate carb days, followed by a strict "no-carb" day, followed by a high-carb (refuel) day.
- The effect this has is simple, but profound. By cycling your carb intake up and down, during the down periods your body burns fat for energy, and you drop body fat.
- But just before your body starts to freak out and you go though those hormonal changes that slow down your metabolism and cause you to catabolize muscle for energy, you spike your carb intake. Suddenly, your body says, "Oh, I guess we're not experiencing a famine; carry on then."
- In other words, it keeps your body in an anabolic state, while you're still dropping fat. So, you maintain muscle while you're leaning out.
I know, it sounds too good to be true, but this approach to weight loss came from the country that spent BILLIONS of dollars on athletic performance research in order to dominate international sports competition for years.
Sure, they had their athletes on PEDs half the time, but PEDs only keep your body from breaking down; they don't do the real work for you. Without the best training and nutrition programs, steroids and other performance enhancing drugs won't do jack squat.
And after a lot of research, this is the program that the Russians decided worked best for helping athletes make their competition weight while retaining muscle mass.
Wrapping Up
There's a lot more to the program than what I describe above, but that's it in a nutshell. If you want more info, you can just Google "carb cycling for weight loss" or you can pick up the guide I wrote for a few bucks on Amazon. If you're just starting to lose excess weight, you won't need it for a while, but the info might be helpful later on.
Alright, that wraps up this series. I'm going to post an abridged version on the MA Biz Daily blog next week, and I'll link to it on the Facebook page in case you want to refer back to it occasionally.
So, good luck with getting back into shape. Trust me, if you're in that boat I know what you're going through, because right now I'm going through it, too.
Just stick with the program, be consistent, and by this time next year you'll be a completely different person.
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
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P.S. - *That short little book hit best-seller status very quickly after I released it--I was selling more books than some of the TV trainers you might be familiar with from shows like The Biggest Loser (ugh) and Extreme Weight Loss. But within a few months, a ton of copycat books started popping up, and I noticed I was getting a lot of senseless negative reviews for my book (a common practice among scammy Kindle ebook publishers).
In hindsight, I should've spent more time marketing it and positioning myself as THE carb cycling expert, instead of just releasing it and waiting to see what happened. It's pretty much the same thing that happened years ago when I introduced the concept of martial arts fitness boot camps to the MA industry; I released the idea too soon because I thought people could benefit from it, and before I knew it everyone and their brother jumped on the bandwagon and copied my ideas.
So, learn from my mistakes. If you have a unique idea for a book and it's something no one else has done, hire a publicist and try to squeeze everything out of it you can, before the copycats come along and steal your thunder.
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