Part 12 - An Exclusive Interview With Fat Loss Expert Tom Venuto By Tom Nicoli

Skyrocket Your Fat Loss Success!

Tom Venuto: It’s very much a matter of reframing. I think it’s more mental than anything. You know, each week you have a goal, and you can make progress each week. But just because you haven’t made progress that week doesn’t mean you failed.

Tom Nicoli: You know, you used a great word there when you said it’s feedback. You know, the word “reframe,” and we can explain it to people listening.

Reframing is simply taking something you’re thinking right now and changing it. For instance, “I felt bad that I had no shoes, until I saw a person with no feet.” You immediately reframed your emotion and your approach. And what I explain to people is that, quite honestly, I don’t fail, ever. I’ve made some serious mistakes, but they were learning experiences.

I remember, as a child, somewhere in the eighth or ninth grade, as a young kid. Didn’t we learn the scientific method? That even scientists call it “trial and error.” There is no failure. It’s just a learning experience. And that way people can reduce the emotional negativity. “Oh, I’m no god.” “I’ll never be able to do this.” “See, I knew I couldn’t do this.” But if you do, out of 30 days, 20 to 25 good days, then you’ve had progress, and progress is progress.

Let me ask you this, Tom. Because this is something I speak about with clients when I’m dealing with “weight loss” (fat reduction). People use the scale, and I want to know if you agree with this concept that the scale is an emotional tool. Because if we lost six pounds of body fat, and we increased three pounds of muscle, well, we really didn’t lose three pounds, though the scale says that. What we did was we lost six pounds of fat, and increased three pounds of very necessary lean muscle.

So what’s more important for people? To focus on what they wear – their clothes are their gauge – once they’re adults? Or to weigh themselves and follow along on a scale?

Tom Venuto: The scale can be helpful. But if it’s the only thing you use, it can be very misleading. Just like you said, it doesn’t distinguish between fat and muscle. It goes back to the beginning, when you need to select a well-formed goal. “I want to lose weight” is not a well-formed goal. “I want to permanently burn of 24 pounds of body fat and get my body fat percentage from 20% down to 14% within three months.” That is well-formed goal. With that goal, you made the distinction between fat and muscle, and you gave yourself a deadline.

What I recommend is that you have tools available, where you can track the difference between fat and muscle. There are number of methods to do that. One common way is the pinch test with skinfold calibers. This measurement will tell you your percentage of body fat. You can have it done every week or at least every other week to track your progress.

Then if you weight yourself, when you have both your scale weight and your body fat percentage, then you can calculate pounds of lean body mass and pounds of fat. I recommend keeping a chart of your measurements so you have a visual of your progress as well as an accountability tool.

I recommend measuring at least every two weeks, if not every week, if you want to keep a real close eye on things. With this information, you get a much better picture of what’s really happening. Are you losing fat or are you losing muscle? Your focus should be fat loss, not weight loss.

Tom Nicoli: Tom, you mentioned measuring body fat with calipers. Is this something that is an inexpensive instrument that people can use at home?

Tom Venuto: Yes. In fact, there is a caliper designed especially for home self-testing. There is a learning curve, but there is a learning curve even for a fitness professional to learn body fat testing. One caliper is called the AccuMeasure, and if you type that phrase into any search engine, you’ll find it all over the Net. It’s very inexpensive, around $20. And it’s a one-site pinch test. This is one of the few methods you can use to test yourself.

One of the problems with getting a body fat test in the past was that you needed someone else to test you because there are multiple measurement sites. For example, to get your total body fat percentage, you would have to measure, for example, your thigh, the side of your waist, the back of your arms (your triceps), and your upper back. Unless you’re the human pretzel, you can’t reach your upper back. So somebody came up with a caliper that measures your body fat based on one skinfold site. It may not be as accurate as the other methods, but pure accuracy isn’t as important as reliability and consistency from one measurement to the next. So in the privacy of your home, you can get this caliper, take a skinfold measurement on the side of your waist, and see how thick the skinfold is in millimeters (because most of your body fat is right below your skin).

Log the skinfold thickness, fat percentage, total body weight, and lean body mass onto your progress chart, then go to work for the next week and measure your body fat again. And then you’ll get a really accurate picture of your progress.

Ultimately, the best way to chart your progress is with body composition and to know the difference between fat and muscle, but I’d also recommend you use as many methods for measuring progress as possible. You can use your clothes size. You can do measurements: your waist measurement, hips, arms, legs – wherever you want to measure. The more feedback you get, the better. Waist measurement is particularly valuable because it does correlate strongly with body fat and it is a strong indicator of disease risk.

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Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto

Part 11 - An Exclusive Interview With Fat Loss Expert Tom Venuto By Tom Nicoli

Skyrocket Your Fat Loss Success!

Tom Nicoli: That’s great. You know, you mentioned food portions. A lot of people think if they eat – and we hear this contradiction all the time from different sources – you can eat anything you want, as long as you eat a small amount. Or you can eat all you want, as long as you’re eating the right foods. So if your food portions are small, does that mean people can get away with eating the foods that they really shouldn’t?

Tom Venuto: For most of my clients, excerpt maybe competitive bodybuilders, I like to go by a 90/10 rule, because if you try to be too strict and you limit yourself to totally natural food groups and you don’t allow yourself that free meal every once in a while, you may be setting yourself up for craving and binging. You may be setting yourself up for failure.

If you build into your program a little bit of flexibility and give yourself two or three free meals a week, or you allow yourself some leeway for things that just happen to you in life, like birthdays, holidays, and parties, and let yourself enjoy those, you’re more likely to stick with your plan the rest of the time. It becomes more do-able because you’ve allowed yourself that wiggle room, because you’ve said it’s okay, and given yourself permission in advance to eat what you want 10% of the time. You’re going to be much more likely to stick with it in the long-haul, than if you’re on a totally rigid diet.

You should allow yourself small amounts of the things you enjoy every week. On the other hand, you can’t eat unlimited amounts of any food, even if it’s healthy food. Too much of anything will get stored as fat, even the healthy food. So on your “cheat days” or “free days,” enjoy what you want, but always, always be mindful of the law of calorie balance.

Tom Nicoli: So it’s important to keep a balance and to not create internal spite. I even recall, years ago, hearing Jake (Body By Jake), say, “Saturday is when I allow myself a piece of pizza.” So that way, you decrease that little spiteful mode that may kick in, in feeling that deprivation and sacrifice?

Tom Venuto: Exactly. There’s even some physiology behind allowing yourself to eat more periodically, in terms of caloric intake and food quantity.

When you’re in a calorie deficit, and the caloric deficit is very aggressive, your body can perceive that as starvation, and it begins to fight your efforts to lose fat by decreasing your metabolism. Your rate of calorie burning slows down, your appetite increases, and all kinds of hormonal and enzymatic changes take place that will make it more difficult to lose fat in the future if you keep cutting calories even further. So it’s actually a physiologically correct idea to eat substantially more food every few days, or to have a day each week when you eat more.

Tom Nicoli: Now, you just mentioned enzymes and internal processing. I think that’s very important, because you see this much more than I, being a physical fitness trainer and owning gyms, how the revolving door is incredible, how people give up so quickly. Can you explain to the people listening how important it is to know and understand what’s going on internally before they even see the external results?

Tom Venuto: There are so many things going on inside the body as a result of dieting, the physiology could fill an entire book. One of the things that I believe – and I think that anyone who wants t lose body fat should really tune in to this - is that it’s possible to get results every single week. But most often, because of the way the body works and the way your body has multiple redundant systems to protect you from starvation, people tend to zigzag their way to a goal. There are weeks when everything goes perfectly, and they hit their weekly target. Some weeks they’re ahead of their weekly target. Some weeks they’re a little bit below it, and some weeks go by and nothing happens.

What you have to do is frame this from the beginning, that when this happens, it’s not failure. It’s feedback, and it’s a learning experience. If you pay close attention to what’s happening, you can figure out what adjustment to make, whether it’s nutrition or training, and then the following week, get back on track. Sometimes people expect 100% success all the time. But if you look at anybody who’s a huge success in any field, it’s usually more like failure, failure, failure, failure, massive success.

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Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto

Part 10 - An Exclusive Interview With Fat Loss Expert Tom Venuto By Tom Nicoli

Skyrocket Your Fat Loss Success!

Tom Nicoli: But Tom, when you say meal, I know a lot of people right now are picturing a dinner plate and variety of foods. What can a meal consist of?

Tom Venuto: Well, that goes back to when I was talking about balancing your macronutrients. Macronutrients are just protein, carbs, and fats. If you visualize your plate, on one side of your plate you put a lean protein. That’s the foundation of your meal, the lean protein food. If we’re talking about dinner, maybe that would be salmon or chicken breast. Okay? So you have a lean protein, but that’s not a complete meal yet. To balance it, you need a natural carb, so for example, you put brown rice on your plate. Then you could add a fibrous carb, which could be a green vegetable, so maybe you add asparagus or broccoli to your plate, or maybe a green salad with salad vegetables.

The amount of protein tends to be somewhat fixed, while the amount of carbs can vary quite a bit. There is a small amount of good fats in that salmon, the essential fatty acids, so you don’t have to add in additional fat. So there you have a very, very well balanced, whole food meal.

Tom Nicoli: Now, there’s something I know a lot of people have a misconception of. They think that, at first, they’re feeling hungry, and their subconscious, their instinctive self is sending them that signal, “Hey, you have to eat. You know, we need to survive here, and I’m sending you a signal that it’s time to feed the body. Fuel the system.” But then they ignore it and the hunger pain gets stronger and stronger. And I know that a lot of people, from what I hear through my clients, is that the stronger that hunger pain is, the more they think they need to eat. Now is this true?

Tom Venuto: Well, you have to distinguish between physiological hunger and emotional hunger, or…

Tom Nicoli: Let’s talk about real growl, that physical emptiness in your stomach and how the feeling can get stronger and stronger. As it gets stronger, as you feel hungrier, physiologically, do you really require more food at that time?

Tom Venuto: Usually, that’s a pretty good indication that you do need to eat. Your body is sending you signals for a reason. But you probably won’t get that kind of ravenous hunger if you choose your meal frequency and food choices properly. The most common daily menu pattern I see is skipping breakfast, or having a skimpy breakfast like coffee and a bagel, and that’s not really a substantial meal. If you would eat a substantial breakfast – in fact, make it the biggest meal of the day - and if you would get a mid-morning snack or small meal, and if you would get that lunchtime balanced meal, then you’re already on meal four in the middle of the afternoon. When you get to dinner, you’re not going to have those ravenous hunger pains, craving, and a growling stomach.

If you’re combining the foods properly and you’re avoiding refined sugars, and you’re eating lean protein and enough good fat, your blood sugar and insulin aren’t going to be yo-yoing all over the place, which triggers that type of hunger.
Your food choices have a tremendous impact on your appetite and level of hunger. So if you’re experiencing really severe hunger, you might want to ask yourself, “What’s the cause? Am I skipping meals? Am I eating too much sugar? When I’m starving later on, am I overeating as a result of that? Or am I feeling myself, like stoking a furnace, in small amounts at regular intervals throughout the day, keeping my blood sugar and insulin on an even keel and my hunger under control?”

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Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto

Part 9 - An Exclusive Interview With Fat Loss Expert Tom Venuto By Tom Nicoli

Skyrocket Your Fat Loss Success!

Tom Nicoli: You just mentioned powders and whole foods. That went by quickly, but I think it’s very important to go back to that for a moment.

We can walk into a store and let’s pick one of the – we won’t say the brand name – but a store that’s very popular, and there are walls and walls and walls of powders and mixes and shakes. I’m sure that there’s a benefit to introducing some of these products to your body. However, a lot of people will omit the foods and replace with these powders. Please speak on that for a moment.

Tom Venuto: Sure. Some of the products may have functional properties or health benefits, and many are great for convenience like protein powder, or meal replacement products, which usually come in a packet and have protein and carbs, and you make it into a shake and “drink your meal.” But some people overdo it. The idea of two shakes a day and a so-called healthy dinner, that’s not effective. What you want to do is emphasize whole foods first. When you have a choice, choose whole foods over supplements.

Tom Nicoli: I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before, Tom. That’s enlightening.

Tom Venuto: Well, there’s so much push for supplements these days and so much advertising, that I’m not surprised you haven’t heard it before.

Tom Nicoli: The profit margin dictates, right?

Tom Venuto: Right. I emphasize food because no supplement, powder, drink, or meal replacement will ever be better than real food. I don’t emphasize supplements because I’m not associated or affiliated with any supplement company. When you read my book, you’ll realize that it’s not just a promotional vehicle to sell supplements. Most of the advice you read these days serves the bottom line of a supplement or diet pill company rather than serving your body. You can get everything you need from whole foods. Supplements should be used for convenience.

Now, the five or six small meals a day is the biggest challenge for most people. Clients tell me, “How do you do it?” Five or six meals means you’re eating every three hours.” The meal replacement can be really beneficial in situations where you have a hard time getting all the meals in. If you’re traveling, you simply replace one or maybe at the most two of the meals with a meal replacement shake, and that can allow you to easily get the five or six small meals into a busy day.

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Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto

Part 8 - An Exclusive Interview With Fat Loss Expert Tom Venuto By Tom Nicoli

Skyrocket Your Fat Loss Success!

Tom Nicoli: That makes complete sense. Establish a baseline, get the fundamentals in place, then be flexible enough to make changes if it’s necessary.

Okay, assuming you have that down, I asked you earlier about some of your best nutritional secrets. Can you give us some more of those specific and simple secrets of nutrition that people can begin applying immediately after they hear what we’re talking about today?

Tom Venuto: Sure. Let me finish going over a few of the basics, and then give you some secrets on how you can fine-tune and really take it to the next level.

The fundamentals is nutrition, when people hear them, sound so much like plain common sense that they tend to disregard their importance, because they’re looking for some new breakthrough. But here’s where you have to start: It all starts with calories.

“Calories in” versus “calories out.” There are people who dispute the calorie theory, but energy expenditure is easily quantified and measured, and energy balance is a simple law of physics. If you want to lose body fat, you need to burn more calories than you take in, period.

Tom Nicoli: It sounds pretty simple.

Tom Venuto: Yeah, simple. Sometimes not easy, but it is simple. The lesson here is to watch your portion size. Don’t overeat in one sitting.

Many people don’t realize, especially when eating in restaurant, that their meal has 1,000 calories or more. A typical meal for losing body fat for women is probably going to be in the neighborhood of 300 or 250 calories, and for men a little bit higher than that, maybe 400 to 475 calories. If you’re eating healthy foods, natural foods, lean proteins, unprocessed carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables, that’s a lot of volume. So you don’t ever have to go hungry if you choose the right foods.

When you combine the law of calorie balance with eating small frequent meals, there’s no need to ever go hungry. My clients are often surprised at how much food they can eat, when it’s clean, healthy food. They’re use to restaurant food, packaged food, and a lot of fast food which is highly concentrated, calorie-dense food. So you need to pay attention to calorie density. Refined foods have more calories packed into a smaller unit of volume, so it’s easier to over consume calories.

I recommend counting calories in the beginning, in the form of creating a menu. I like to create menus on a spreadsheet or using nutrition software. I will print out a menu that has all the calories, proteins, carbs, and fat all added up, and then you have a visual. This lets you see your calories. It’s like an eating goal for the day. You can take your menu and, with a magnet, stick it on the refrigerator, and there’s your menu right in front of you every day. So be aware of calories. Spread them throughout the day in four, five, or six small meals, as opposed to two or three big meals.

Next, you have to balance your macronutrients in every meal, meaning, eat a lean protein and a natural carbohydrate with every meal. Lean proteins include lean meat, chicken, turkey, fish, egg whites, and you can supplement with protein powder if you want to, but emphasize the whole foods first. Then combine your lean protein with a natural carbohydrate.

Some people lump all carbs in the same category, and some people think that carbohydrates are fattening. What you need to do is to make better distinctions between processed, refined carbs and natural carbs. Natual carbs are the foods that grow from the ground or from a plant or tree. That includes sweet potatoes, brown rice, all the vegetables, fruits, beans, legumes, and whole oats. Those are some of the natural carbs. So each meal now has a lean protein and a complex carb. You can also include small amounts of the healthy fats from sources like flax oil, fish oil, flax seed, fatty fish, seeds, nuts, almonds, walnuts, extra virgin olive oil. You now have a balance between the macronutrients: proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.

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Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto

Part 7 - An Exclusive Interview With Fat Loss Expert Tom Venuto By Tom Nicoli

Skyrocket Your Fat Loss Success!

Tom Nicoli: Now, when you mentioned cardio and strength, I had a client recently tell me that he has a friend who’s pretty fit, and he has pretty much tired to dominate his thinking, telling him he absolutely must get 45 minutes of cardio every time they go to the gym. This client of mine tells me that when he was in a program doing 20 minutes of cardio mixed with his strength training, he had better results doing less. Is this another trial and error, like you mentioned previously, with the carb intake and types of food you’ll eat, that you put forth the effort to do “X” amount of time cardio and “X” amount of time strength training. And if you are or are not getting results, you shift and change?

Tom Venuto: Yes, trial and error is a part of it, but you can bypass most of the trial and error by starting with a proven baseline diet and training system as your foundation. You can adjust from there if necessary, based on how your body responds. For example, the baseline for cardio training is my recommendation of three days a week at the appropriate heart rate and intensity. Add more if necessary, but use a proven and logical starting point.

With cardio, there are also ways you can make your workouts a lot more time efficient, which is probably what the person you mentioned did in order to get more results in less time. High-intensity interval training is one example, where you would do a minute or two of moderate intensity exercise followed by a minute of high intensity exercise, where you’re really pushing the heart rate above your normal training zone, and then you drop back down to moderate. You’d repeat these intervals for the duration of your workout.

What research has shown is that, not only does this burn a lot of calories during the workout; it keeps your metabolism elevated afterward for a longer period of time than if you go with low-intensity, long duration cardio such as walking. So there are ways, if you are extremely busy like so many people are these days, that you can make your workouts more time efficient. But I think you also need to have the willingness to do what it takes to reach your goal as well as have a certain amount of flexibility in your program.

Too many weight loss programs are extremely dogmatic and recommend only one type of workout, as if there were only one way to do it. There are some programs out there today that say, “Follow my program or else!” “The workout is 20 minutes three days a week, period,” and there’s no flexibility. It’s really more effective in the long-term if you allow yourself flexibility.

Look at your baseline program as a starting point, then fine-tune your senses and pay attention to your results and get measurements, get feedback, and adjust your program according to your results. I think that’s what most people miss. They get so lost in the dogma of a particular program of guru’s formula, that they’re not willing to experiment or change or test new things that might be the key to greater results.

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Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto

Part 6 - An Exclusive Interview With Fat Loss Expert Tom Venuto By Tom Nicoli

Skyrocket Your Fat Loss Success!

Tom Nicoli: So Tom, tell us: How much time is needed for your system?

Tom Venuto: Well, one of the things you have to do first is look at this as a lifestyle change, not a temporary change. There are new things you’re going to have to do everyday. What you ultimately want is for the things you need to do every day to become habits, where they’re completely ingrained into your lifestyle. Especially on the nutrition side of things, you want to get to the point where you don’t have to think about them consciously anymore. So you’re reaching for the right foods and taking the right actions every single day, automatically, just as easily as you would take a shower, or brush your teeth or get dressed in the morning. These are behaviors that are ongoing, so I wouldn’t look at them in terms of a time investment as much as habit development and lifestyle change.

If your perspective is, “Okay, I’m going to be on this diet for 12 weeks,” and you say, “This is going to take 12 weeks of my time,” I think you’re setting yourself up for failure. What happens on day one of week 13? You have to have a long-term perspective. It’s got to be a part of your life. You’re going to eat the same fods as a lifestyle whe you want to maintain your results for the rest of your life as you do when you want to lose body fat. The difference is, you’re going to eat a little bit less, you’re going to eat smaller portions, and you’re going to exercise more.

In terms of time required for your exercise program, you can really get good results with as little as three days a week, 45 minutes to an hour. What you must do during the time you spend is make some time for some strength training and for some time for cardio training. Both need to be a priority.

Now, when your goal is fat loss and losing fat at the maximum rate, it’s beneficial to add additional cardio, beyound three days a week, but as I mentioned earlier, the amount should be based on your results. It’s hard to put a specific number on how much time it’s going to take, but in general, I think that everybody should be committing themselves to about three days a week and making that a part of their lifestyle.

If you want to burn more calories in order to increase fat loss, then you can do the cardiovascular workouts more often. I know some people who exercise every day or do it six days a week with one complete rest day per week. Ultimately, however, there is no magic number of days per week or minutes per day. What you must do is adjust your exercise frequency and duration according to your results. My Burn The Fat program explains exactly how to do that.

burnthefat.com

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto