But I recently decided to tighten up a little, so I had to make a change.  My schedule has led to me making some not-so-great food choices and my workouts have been less frequent, and I had gotten a little soft.  I also have something motivating me to get my act together, but more on that later. 

I knew Omar and I had to stop meeting each other like this – so I changed my route to get to work.  Instead of the way I always walk to work, I immediately cross the street and avoid the lure of Omar altogether.  He’ll survive without me, and for the short term, until I get back to where I want to be, I’ll live without him too.  Sometimes something simple like changing your route to work will force you into a better decision and you’ll forego the temptations that convenience provides.  So if you see Omar say hello for me – tell him I’ll stop by in the spring.

———————————————————————————-

Mike: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview. First so we all have some perspective, how long have you been a trainer?

Alwyn Cosgrove: I started training people in 1989. Actually 1987 if you count teaching martial arts classes.
In 1995 (after college) I went full time. Since day one I’ve been very particular about what I do. I track and tweak everything. When we opened Results Fitness in 2000, we really started to gather a lot of data. We currently have 250 members and we track all their workouts and body comp changes week in and week out.

Mike: So it is like you run your own fat loss studies at your gym?

Alwyn: Exactly. We had read all the studies showing interval training to be superior for fat loss than steady state training. This confirmed what we were seeing with our clients. But I am a big belier in that there is no physiological limit to the amount of weight a person can lose in a week, month, or year so I kept tweaking and tracking the results.

Mike: What has been one of your biggest breakthroughs lately?

Alwyn: One day it hit me — cardiovascular programming is an ass-backwards concept.

I don’t know when I first thought this – but it was confirmed to me when viewing Lance Armstrong’s performance in the New York Marathon.

I’d been taught through my college education and countless training certifications and seminars that cardio vascular exercise was necessary to improve the cardio vascular system and subsequently aerobic performance.

But there seemed an inherent flaw in that argument….

Why didn’t Lance Armstrong – with perhaps one of the highest recorded VO2 max levels in history – win the New York Marathon? Or beat people with lesser aerobic levels than himself?

The greatest endurance cyclist (and possibly endurance athlete) of all time – the seven time Tour De France winner – finished 868th and described the event as the “hardest physical thing” he had ever done.

Runner’s World Magazine actually examined Lance’s physiology (and VO2 max which was tested at 83) and compared them to the numbers of Paul Tergat (the World Record holder and defending NYC Marathon Champion at the time).

They concluded:

“This figure wouldn’t mean much if it weren’t for the pioneering research of famed running coach Jack Daniels, Ph.D., who first published his Oxygen Power tables in 1979– According to Daniels, who’s rarely off by more than a smidgen or two, a max VO2 of 83 is roughly equivalent to a 2:06 marathon”

Based on his other physical qualities the magazine suggested that Lance was capable of running 2:01:11.

The world record at the time was 2:04:55

Lance ran 2:59:36 (and don’t misinterpret me – that’s still a great time). But it’s clear that the physiology didn’t transfer the way event he running community expected.

The flaw in this thinking was looking solely at aerobic capacity — VO2 max – the “engine” as it were. And it’s fair to say that Lance had a “Formula One” engine.

But he didn’t have the structural development for running. Lance was a cyclist – his body had adapted to the demands of cycling. But NOT to the specific demands of running (in fact Lance had only ran 16 miles at once EVER prior to running the marathon). Lance had developed strength, postural endurance and flexibility in the correct “cycling muscles” – but it didn’t transfer to running the way his VO2 max did.

From this example we know that cardio training doesn’t transfer well from one activity to another – and it only ‘kicks’ in because of muscular demand – why don’t we program muscular activity first – in order to create a cardiovascular response. Makes total sense.

So how does this relate to fat loss? We have found that our most successful fat loss programs center around stimulating the muscles to burn more calories not ramping up and down the cardiovascular system. What matters is total calories burn and how much you can increase the person’s metabolism. It is a total shift in thinking.

Mike: Wow. So it is this the death of intervals and cardio? How to you put this into action with clients?

Alwyn: What we have found is so great about this approach is that you burn more calories, lose more weight, while putting a lot less stress on your joints.

Here’s how I like to think about it. Let’s look at traditional interval training which uses running.

Depending on stride length – walking a mile takes about 2000 repetitions and running takes 1000-1500 and will burn on average 100 calories or so.
So if we use an interval training model of running and walking – we’re looking at around 1500 reps to burn 100 calories.

If we take traditional models of caloric burn – this means we’d need to do 35 miles to lose one pound of fat from our interval training efforts discounting the metabolic afterburn for now).

So we have a problem. It’s a very poor “rate of return” on our “rep investment”.

Additionally – running applies a vertical force of 2x bodyweight on the joints of the lower body.

So now we have a dilemma.

Let’s choose a 180lb deconditioned overweight client.
1500 reps x 360lbs = 540,000lbs of force to burn 100 calories. (The 360lbs is 2x 180lbs)

That’s a lot of stress on the joints. Now no one was getting injured, but it seemed like there had to be a better way.

So — we started to think of how we could use different interval training methods other than running to get the same metabolic effect without stressing the joints so much.

We used the airdyne bike, other bikes in order to create a training effect with less load. But whenever you take the bodyweight out of the equation in cardio – you have to work harder to burn the same calories. So this usually needs more reps. So that didn’t seem like a much better idea.

At this point we started using metabolic training with weight training implements/kettlebells and bodyweight in the same interval format.

So a circuit of five exercises, performed three times round (15 total sets) would actually burn more calories than the same time spent doing traditional cardio. That was a plus.
But we could also do sets of 10-15 reps. So we’re looking at 225 total reps (with a force LESS than your bodyweight) as opposed to 1500+ reps at double bodyweight.

We gave it a try. Clients loved it (which was a plus), and actually started to get better results than we were getting with intervals.

So we get more fat loss, less stress on the body, and happier clients. It is a win-win-win. Currently we don’t program traditional interval training our regular fat loss clients.

So, yeah…it is the death of traditional intervals.

You can get a sample workout using this kind of training program at:

http://www.warpspeedfatloss.com

Mike: This is great stuff. Thanks for taking the time. I definitely recommend that everyone go to:

http://www.warpspeedfatloss.com
and pick up the workout to try.

I’m all grown up now, and my tolerance for vegetables has increased, but they are just not a staple in my diet.  I’m not much better with fruit.  I’ll have the occasional fruit salad on a warm summer day, and sometimes I will throw a few berries into a protein shake just to mix it up a little.  So, I’ve tried a few different ways to get fruits and vegetables into my diet.

I started out drinking juices like V8, but the standard versions have way too much sodium, and the reduced sodium versions (to me) don’t taste as good.  If I’m going to drink tomato juice, I’d prefer to have some premium vodka and spices mixed in for a kick butt Bloody Mary

So, I found a product that helps me to get the necessary fruits and vegetables into my diet without compromising quality.  One serving of Greens+  is equivalent to 5 full servings of fresh fruits and vegetables.  I take two servings a day to supplement the fruits and vegetables I’m already consuming.  I throw it into my protein shakes and it mixes in great.

I don’t think I have to tell you how important fruit and vegetables are in terms of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.  They also contribute to your overall energy and vitality as well as speeding recovery from your workouts.  Isn’t it time you go green?

Carbohydrates play an important role in any fat loss diet. You need them to help you recover from your workouts but you need to limit them so that they don’t inhibit your fat loss. So what is the right balance of carbohydrates in your diet? When you eat carbs and what kind of carbs you eat depends on your body type and the time of day. Let’s look at this idea a little more closely.

The degree in which your body does not ‘handle’ carbohydrates well is known in sciency terms as insulin resistance. While there are many factors that impact insulin resistance; the most important is your body fat. Lots of Visceral body fat (the kind that sits inside your gut surrounding your organs) leads to increased insulin resistance. The greater your insulin resistance the worse your body is at processing carbohydrates.

The best way to deal with insulin resistance from a dietary standpoint is to use lower impact carbohydrates. The ‘impact’ of a carbohydrate is the level in which it effects your blood sugar levels. This can be measured in terms of ‘glycemic load’ (higher glycemic load leads to greater effect on your blood sugar levels). One of the world’s top glycemic load researchers, David Ludwig, discovered in one of his research studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that people with insulin resistance lost more weight when they were on a low glycemic load diet vs. a low fat diet.

Low glycemic load diets are typically lower total carbohydrates and higher in protein and fat than a typical low fat diet. This is the perfect kind of diet for weight loss. You can easily eat this way by switching out rice, pasta, potatoes, breads, etc for spinach, broccoli, tomatoes, green beans, chick peas, etc. These are the kinds of carbs that you want to focus on eating throughout the day as they are low in total carbohydrates and sugars but higher in fiber.

While low ‘impact’ carbs are important for controlling insulin levels and increasing your rate of fat loss, fast acting carbs are also an important part of a fat loss diet. A 2006 study published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology showed that when people drank a sugary shake during their workout over the course of 12 weeks, they lost just as much weight as the ones that did not drink anything. Carbohydrates during your workout will allow you to train harder, burning more calories, and thus losing more fat. Fast acting carbs during your workout will also allow you to recover from your workouts faster, allowing you to continue training hard and losing weight fast.

The final important point that needs to be made is that when low carbohydrate diets are compared to low fat diets, the people on low carb diets consistently lose more weight after 6 months on the diet and they do not need to focus on cutting calories – they just eat however much they want. People on low fat diets need to focus on restricting calories and they don’t lose as much weight. Which diet would you rather be on?

If you are truly serious about losing weight as fast as possible then you need to adopt a low carb approach during the day but allow for a fast acting carb workout shake when you train.

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 visit WarpSpeedFatLoss.com. Mike Roussell is a nutrition doctoral student at the Pennsylvania State University. Mike’s writings can be found in magazines such as Men’s Health, Men’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 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.

The 90/10 rule is very simple – if you are on your program 90% of the time, then you will not be hurt by the 10% of the time you are not on your program. Your fat loss plan should have a minimum of 5 meals per day, with 6 meals a very good goal. So following the 90/10 rule with 6 meals a day (or 42 meals a week) means that you have 4 meals a week where you can go off your program without halting progress.

So is that permission to eat 50 chicken wings and a 12 pack of beer for breakfast tomorrow? Not exactly! But if you wanted to have a couple of slices of pizza with two beers, or a burger, fries and a shake (NOT super sized!) then go ahead. Maybe a piece of chocolate cake after your on-program dinner? Sure! Just get back on your program with your next meal. I try to stick to 2 meals a week where I go off-program, but that can vary depending on my schedule.

Same rules apply to exercise. Let’s say your schedule permits you to work out 4 days per week. So in a month, you have 16 workouts – and following the 90/10 rule, you can miss 1 or 2 workouts without derailing yourself. However, I don’t encourage you to skip workouts just because you can. Save your “skips” for times when you really need to skip – like a poor night’s sleep, illness, or hectic travel schedule.

Besides burning calories, exercise helps your brain stick to a diet.  Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh studies overweight adults for two years, and found that the participants who didn’t follow a 3-hour-per-week exercise plan ate more than the 1,500 calories per day the study allotted.  The reverse was also true – sneaking in extra snacks sabotaged their workouts.  You need diet AND exercise to maintain long-term weight loss.  Both actions serve as reminders to stay the course, reinforcing your fat loss goals and drive.