OPERATION RE-BURN ..... PHASE III

Objectives

At the end of this phase, you should complete the following: 

• Learn and perform your first Circuit Training (CT) workout
• Identify ur caloric needs (the minimum number of calories u need)
• Adapt healthy eating habits (and avoid bad ones)

1 -  Circuit Training (CT)

If I have to recommend only one workout for effective weight loss, I would recommend circuit training. CT is very effective, it requires little time (15-20 minutes per session). It requires little training, and it can be designed to fit anyone’s needs, goals, fitness levels, and available facilities.

This makes CT suitable for beginners or professionals, women or men, young or old, with or without equipment, anywhere, anytime. This is the beauty of CT, it’s very effective and highly customizable.

Your First CT workout

As you can see from the figure below, the guy starts with Squats, followed by pushups, followed by Steps, and  so on till he returns to squats. As if he is running in a circle, or a “circuit”, hence the name. The exercises are called “stations”, and so the guy will be moving through the stations with little to no breaks. 

 (Click to enlarge)

Do not panic, I am not asking you to perform the above circuit, you are not ready. Instead, you can begin with a very simple - but just as effective - circuit. Your circuit contains only three stations, they are:

• Crunches
• Jumping jacks 
• Legups

Now, I am sure you might be familiar with these exercises/activities, but being familiar is not enough for CT, you must perform these activities in proper form to maximize the benefits and avoid injury, and so this is going to be your homework before you begin your CT.

Learning Proper Form

Fortunately, this is very easy to do. For example, if you want to learn more about pushups, all you have to do is to type “pushups videos”, or “pushups, proper form, videos” in your favorite search engine, and you will find plenty of videos with instructions. You can do the same for other activities.

All in all, you need to learn proper form for the following activities before you begin your first circuit: Pushups, Crunches, Stretching, Warm-up and Cool-down, and Jumping Jacks. In case you don’t have access to the web (for whatever reason), then you can use the gym. Remember those single entry passes?

On your next visit to the gym, you can ask someone (one of the trainers) to comment on your pushups (or crunches, etc), and whether you are doing it properly or not. Once you are familiar with these activities, you’d be ready for your first CT.

The first CT session.

Begin your session with warm-up & stretching. Then, drop down and do 4 Crunches, then get up and do 15 jumping jacks, then drop down again and do 4 LegUps, then rest for a minute. This would be one cycle. Perform two cycles, and then finish your session with cool down & stretching, and that’s it.

On your first week, you will do only 1 or 2 CT sessions, in each session you will do only 2 cycles. The rep count for Jumping jacks (JJs) is always multiplied by 4, so when the rep count is 3, the rep count for JJs is (3 x 4 = 12), and so on. 

On week two, try adding more cycles in each session, or try adding reps, and work ur way up. In the first few weeks of CT however, i suggest u take it easy on urself and go slow, remember, it's a new habit and u still need to get used to it. 

In the next phase, we will talk on how to further enhance the efficiency of CT, and how it could be a great tool for weight loss if combined with effective cardio (how it can be used to make ur cardio far more effective). 

2 -  Determining your Caloric Needs

As we discussed in Phase II .... your caloric needs are based on three components ... your Basal Metabolic rate, the energy needed for physical activities, and the energy needed to process food.. 

Determining your caloric needs could be a very easy task, all you have to do is search this term "Determine your caloric needs" on the web and you will find plenty of websites that will provide easy calculators whereby you'd be answering simple and straight questions, and the site would do the calculations in the background (and save u from all that math) and give u the outcome 

Figuring out the BMI and the TEF are straight forward, they are based on your physical attributes (age, gender, height, etc) .. and therefore very simple to determine. but figuring out the energy for physical activities are not that simple. 

You see, a chicken and egg situation, exercise needs calories, but u want to exercise, because if u dont, you wont burn calories, and therefore you wont lose weight, confused already? 

Remember .. why r u doing ANY workout? 

Let's take another look at the example below

• John needs 2,000 calories per day
• He cut his food intake to just 1500 calories
• However, his body adapted to this, and reduced its caloric needs
• But, John performed some exercise to increase his caloric needs
• As such, his current his caloric needs are: 2,000 - 500 + 500 = 2,000
• So, currently, John’s body is burning (2,000 out – 1,500 in )= 500 cals
• As such, John is losing 500 calories worth of fat every day.

Therefore, the REAL point of workout is to maintain ur caloric needs and avoid starvation ... something that would happen if u simply cut on ur food (alone). unfortunately, the example above is not entirely accurate, i simplified intentionally to make a point (then) but now u need to understand the bigger picture. 

When john planned to do his workout, he needed to include the calories needed for workout for his "caloric needs", then later when he cuts down on food, he needs to cut the difference. here is the same example, this time properly done .... 

• Based on John's physical attributes, and the amount of workout he PLANS to perform .... John figured he needs 2,500 calories per day
• He decided that 500 calories per day is a good, balanced cut off. 
• So, he consumes only 2,000 calories.
• Therefore, his body now needs 2,500 but is getting only 2,000, or (2,000 - 2,500) = - 500
• Since John is working out, as planned, his body will not go into starvation
• Also, John is careful not to consume more than 2000 cals a day
• Therefore, John is burning 500 calories worth of fat every day. 

So, let's recap how u gonna go about this, first review your daily activities (recreated below)

06:00 – 07:30      Wake up, morning chores (shower, shave, Make breakfast, take out the trash)

07:30 – 08:30      Drive to work (Park at a distance and walk more, take the stairs)

08:30 – 05:00      Work (take a 5 minute  walk every hour, or do 5/10 pushups)

05:00 – 06:00      Drive home

06:00 – 07:00      Workout hour

07:00 – 08:00      Evening chores (shower, Make dinner, Do the laundry, Wash the dishes, etc)

08:00 – 11:00      Family time (Watching TV, etc), followed by sleep

Which u created in Phase I (making workout a natural habit), now looking at ur daily activities, classify ur activities (seated, walking, standing, vigerous workout, etc) and roughly identify the duration for each activity. u dont need to be minute specific ... a good estimate is fine here .... try to determine ur  average duration of each type of activity.

Then, when u go these website and ask u to determine "how physically active u are ?" based on your daily activities, you would be answer that question. the terms "idle, Casual, Active, occasional" are directly related to ur weekly activities. if u r really active, then choose it, and so on.

Then, once u choose the proper description, the website will calculate and return the number for you. I suggest u try multiple sites to get an accurate outcome, perhaps u could choose the average of all.

But wait, there is a catch

if u chose "active" then you have to be active. because simpley speaking, if choose "active" but remain "idle" then u would consum MORE calories that what u really need. In which case you will gain weight.

So, for example, my own Diet plan calls for me to consume 2,500 calories a day, but this plan also requires me to workout 5 days a week, with a combination of Cardio, CT, and Weight lifting exercise. therefore, i know that for me to reach my target does not depend on just dieting, but on being extremely disciplined when it comes to workout. 

3 -  Adopting Healthy eating habits

Now we discuss your second right of healthy food, eating food at the right eating habits. Even if you eat the right amounts of the right food, but ignore the eating habits, you could really hamper your efforts, if not make them useless altogether.

Never ever skip Breakfast            

I know, you’ve probably heard this before, that’s because it is a great advice. You see, skipping breakfast will put you directly into the starvation mode. That is why I said “never ever”. 

After a long night sleep, your stomach has been empty for many hours. However, your body will not go to starvation, because it is designed not to do so while you are asleep. Instead, your metabolism will be maintained at a certain level. That’s how we can go to sleep for many hours uninterrupted. 

But as soon as you wake up, your body will be expecting food real soon, if you don’t eat anything within 60 minutes, your body will go into starvation mode. After which, any further efforts for weight loss, such as morning chores, getting active, etc. would be greatly hampered, if not null. 

I know, I know, in the morning you don’t have an appetite for food and you may not feel like eating, well, the solution is easy. Just eat (or drink) something, just to prevent the starvation, and later eat your proper breakfast, but whatever you do, you cannot skip your breakfast.

Do not starve yourself

Again, we already discussed this. You should not go more than 3 hours between meals. Actually I usually eat every two hours, but if I am busy or stuck, then I target for 3 hours. It is my absolute maximum.  

Even if you are not really hungry, you must eat within 2 to 3 hours. In fact, that’s the point. You see, the natural result of starving yourself is you eating like a pig later. Furthermore, if you are starving, it will be very difficult for you to eat healthy food, or proper amounts.

Do not eat a heavy meal before sleep

There are two reasons why you should not eat right before sleep. The first is obvious, you are going to sleep, meaning your body will not do any physical work. Therefore, that energy you just consumed will not be used, i.e. will be stored as fat. The rule is simple, no heavy meals 2 hours before sleep. 

The second reason why you should not eat right before sleep is comfort. If your stomach is full, you might not be comfortable sleeping altogether. And after processing the food, your body might produce human waste (especially urine), that would need to be released. All of which could disturb your sleep.

Eat only because you are hungry

This may sound funny, but it’s true. There many situations where we eat for no reason. For example, while watching a movies at the cinema (an absolute NO by the way), at coffee shops, while watching TV, in meetings, when depressed. In all of these situations (and many more), you are really eating extra. 

In all of these situations, you are eating extra calories, because these meals do not really count as real meals, they are just “part of the fun/experience”. You are still going to eat real meals later. So, the rule is simple, DON’T. You can either skip, or greatly reduce the amount of food you eat there, or switch to healthy alternatives (mineral water, black coffee, fruits, etc). 

Welcome to the small meals eating plan

If you look closely, you will notice that all of the above advises are connected. You cannot skip breakfast, you have to eat every few hours, you cannot over-eat, and you have to eat only for hunger, i.e. no snacks. If you put them all together, you will find yourself applying the small meals eating plan. 

Obviously, you have to reduce meal size if you want to eat every two hours. If you don’t, you will put on a gigantic amount of fat. In other words, you have to switch from the traditional 3 large meals a day eating plan to 6 to 7 small meals a day eating plan.

The small meals plan is a weight loss technique on its own. Meaning you can apply this technique alone without modifying your diet, or doing any workout, and you still going to lose weight. I have already tried it for a complete month, I managed to drop 2 kilos in that month. 

The effectiveness of the small meals plan comes from many reasons, first it prevents you from starving yourself, secondly it prevents you from over eating, and because you eat at specific times with no snacks in between, you don’t eat any junk (you eat only for hunger). Finally, since your body is working all day processing food, you will burn more calories due to the Thermic Effect of Food.

However, there is a catch !

There is a fundamental drawback with the small meals plan, it's YOU. In order for this plan to work, you must be disciplined, you cannot skip any meal, and you must stick to the small size of the meal. If you falter on either point, the effectiveness of this plan will be gone.

In the end, the problem is habits. You are used to the traditional 3meals plan and it’s going to take some time (a couple of weeks maybe) for you to get used to the small meals plan. 

OK, how small is small?

At the end of the day, your small meal plan must provide you with your daily caloric needs. if ur small meals gives u more calories, you will gain. therefore, knowing your caloric needs (the previous step), all u have to do is divide that number over 6 or 7, and you will get the proper meal size. This brings us to the next question ....

How do i know my meal size is appropriate ?

 

For example, if u determined that ur average meal size is 300 calories, how do u make ur meal 300 calories ??? .... in order to do so, you need to develop what is called "calorie sense" ... or the ability to determine the caloric size of food by only looking at them ....  this will do together in the next phase, which will also be our final phase.

SO ..... It's Time To Go to WORK.

OK, by now you have a complete picture of you need to do, here is a refresher.

• Learn and perform your first Circuit Training (CT) workout
• Identify ur caloric needs (the minimum number of calories u need)
• Adapt healthy eating habits (and avoid bad ones)

Just remember, that awkward feeling of discomfort, which you are feeling right now is perfectly normal and is temporary. Remember our discussion in “Before you begin”?. You just need to make an initial effort, and the more familiar you get, the more comfortable you will get.

So .... all the best, and i will keep in touch !!