CrossFit Blackbrook
  • Home Page
  • What We Do
  • SUCCESS STORIES
  • FAQ
  • Gallery
  • Your Coaches
  • Class Times
  • Contact Us
  • Blog

CrossFit Blackbrook Rapid Fat Loss Report
My first draft of this guide was, although very informative, far too long… And let’s face it, people wanting to get lean as quickly, safely and easily as possible really don’t need or want to know the ins and outs of thermodynamics, why the ‘calories in, calories out’ hypothesis is flawed when it comes to gaining and losing body fat, nor why jogging and cardio will not help fat loss in the long term…

This guide is a quick and easy to apply set of principles that, if applied, will allow you to quickly and safely reduce body fat. For the ins and outs of these principles, the first version will be published sometime in 2017.

Before we dive in, I have 4 points.

1/ This a rapid fat loss guide. It is hard to implement everything all at once, but if you do, it will work, and it will work very quickly…

2/ I am currently working on an even faster method; it looks to be incredibly effective… Like, you’ll need new clothes in two weeks, effective… Details will provided via email later on in the year...  

3/ All that said, most people will have far more success with a slow and steady, step by step plan - something relaxed, healthy and easy to implement, specifically designed to instil long lasting, sound nutritional habits. I use such an approach with my members, one-on-ones and online clients. In 4 months, they are completely different people without even realising it.

4/ And finally, do you even really need a rapid fat loss guide? If you are classed as overweight but you’re happy - you like the way you look and feel - then you are far healthier than some lean, beautiful person who can’t eat a small piece of birthday cake without crying and running 9 miles, scolding themselves with every step… It’s just something to think about before you start choking down an unholy amount of bok choi...

Alright, now that’s out of the way, we’ll crack on…
​ 


Principle #1 - Vegetables
Briefly, whenever you consume something, there follows a cascade of hormonal responses and changes… Rather than bore you with the details, I’m going to hit you with some common sense: 2000 calories of cucumber will have a different effect on your body than 2000 calories of Big Macs... We all know this to be true; no one ever got fat eating cucumber, and no one ever cured their skin problems by eating Big Macs... Since this is true it means that a calorie isn’t just a calorie, and a carb isn’t just a carb.

For those interested in the glycemic index, nutrient timing and fat storage, you’ll have to wait for the first guide to be published.

The vegetable principle, then, is quite simple… For the first two weeks, eliminate all carbohydrates apart from vegetables. After two weeks of implementing just this one change you will already have lost a decent amount of body fat.

It is critical you do not eat any other form of carbohydrates in this phase - carbs like bread, beer, chocolate, potatoes, etc - it will set you right back to the beginning!

When these two weeks are over you can then add in more carbohydrates to your diet - a couple of cheat meals or even a cheat day. These cheat meals are not required, but if you must indulge (and you probably should for the sake of your sanity…) then space your cheat meals apart by 5-7 days for the fastest weight loss results.

Low glycemic vegetables should make up the bulk of your carbs, limit the higher glycemic vegetables (sweet potatoes, etc) unless you’re training hard. By making the bulk of your carbs low glycemic your carb intake will fall below 50g per day, meaning your body will switch from using glucose as a fuel source to body fat instead.

Good choices include: all green vegetables, peppers, onions, aubergine, cucumber, cauliflower, mushrooms, courgette - you get the idea…

Principle #2 - Protein & Fat
Animal protein and beneficial fats at every meal. The good old days of cereal and pancakes for breakfast are gone…

For fast, healthy fat loss, all of your meals should consist of animal protein, beneficial fats and a boat load of vegetables. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Beneficial fats are:
- Organic, grass-fed butter,
- Organic, extra virgin coconut oil,
- Organic, extra virgin olive oil,
- Avocados,
- Nuts,
- Fish oil,
- Cod liver oil, (fermented, mixed with high vitamin butter oil is fantastic!)
- Pretty much any fat found in wild meats and fish...

Things to avoid are:
- Hydrogenated / partially hydrogenated fats (the ‘plastic fats’ that the food industry uses)
- Trans-fats & commercially produced vegetable oils… (essentially just free radicals in a bottle...)

If you want to know why these are good and bad, wait out for the longer guide…

It is important to eat fat: a low fat diet will NOT help the body shift to a fat burning mode, it will instead rely on glucose… And if your carb intake is low (by relying on vegetables as a main carb source) if you go low fat you will just feel tired and miserable. Further, fat soluble vitamins are VITAL for health, more on that in the next principle…

Principle #3 - Animal Protein
Eat high quality animal protein at every meal.

High quality animal protein - grass fed & organic - provides the largest amount of fat soluble vitamins AND amino acids per calorie, providing you with some serious health and fat loss nutrition.

Fat-soluble vitamins are essential for health; they not only synergize with each other but cooperate with many other nutrients and metabolic factors - magnesium, zinc, fat, carbohydrate, carbon dioxide, thyroid hormone, etc, all rely on the presence of A, D, E & K in the body (diet) - without these, you will just flat-out suffer through life.

As for fat loss, studies show that people consuming 10 essential amino acids per meal reduced body fat significantly (think of amino acids as the building blocks of protein).

**There are 9 essential amino acids (with a further 8 considered essential that fall into the ‘non-essential’ bracket because the body can only produce small amounts… Don’t worry about it - eat high quality animal protein and forget about the numbers...)

A high quality, high protein diet will help to increase your resting metabolic rate whilst improving health and sparing and-or even  increasing your lean body mass, leading to fat loss, both short term and long term.

Principle #4 - Calories… From Fat… For Weight Loss…
Hear me out…

If you feel ill or lack energy on a low carb diet, eat more fat. It is still unclear what is going on - it could be a difficulty in the body adapting to burn fat over glucose, it could be lack of calories, it could low thyroid function due to lack of glucose, low iodine intake, etc - but what we have seen is that consuming more beneficial fat seems to help.

I’ll keep this explanation as brief as possible: as mentioned earlier 2000 kcal of vegetables will have a different effect on you than 2000 kcal of Big Macs… We all know this to be true - no one ever got fat eating apples, and no one ever cured their acne with Big Macs… 1000 calories in is still 1000 calories in according to the first law of thermodynamics, but that doesn’t explain why 100 calories are allocated to growth, 100 to movement, 100 to fat reserves etc… Why some foods promote health, and others the opposite…

So what determines where calories go? It is in fact your hormone response that dictates which calories are sent where, and hormones are released in response to the foods you eat…

So, although how much you eat will generally determine how much weight you gain or lose, it is in fact what you eat that will determine the composition of that weight - fat or otherwise… Make sense?

Briefly:
- Carbs trigger an insulin response - insulin is a storage hormone - calories are stored.
- The higher the glycemic index, the greater the insulin response, and therefore storage...
- Fat doesn’t trigger an insulin response - calories aren’t stored.

There’s a lot more to it than that, obviously, so you can either wait for the next guide or you can check out books like “Why We Get Fat” by Gary Taubes.

The take home is this: rapid fat loss is great, but not if you feel terrible. Up the calories a little from beneficial fat sources if you feel off.  
Picture

​Principle #5 - Smart Training
5A/ Aerobic Vs Anaerobic
By adhering to the previous principles you will lose fat. But if you want to lose fat very quickly then you need to train, and train smart… 

First, some definitions...

Aerobic – when oxygen is used to meet energy demands – examples of aerobic exercise include anything longer than 2 minutes – running 18 miles, sleeping, a 2km row, watching TV, etc…


Anaerobic – Energy is produced without oxygen – examples of anaerobic exercise include anything under 2 minutes…100m sprint, 1 rep max deadlift, amateur boxing, etc…

Aerobic stuff - jogging and the like - can benefit your cardiovascular system and can initially help decrease some body fat – it is a moderate, low power activity. Those that do this type of thing regularly will see a drop in muscle mass, strength, power and speed, and an increase in stress hormones. Anaerobic stuff - Crossfit, weightlifting, sprinting and the like - will also benefit your cardiovascular system and help decrease body fat, only those that engage in this activity will see an increase in muscle mass, strength, power and speed… If you still aren’t convinced, compare pictures of a marathon runner to that of a sprinter… 

The fastest way to burn fat is to combine anaerobic training with a clean diet. People think that long slow cardio is the way forward when it comes to weight loss, but the reality is that anaerobics wipes the floor with jogging as a fat burner (and as conditioning, as a muscle builder, and as a useful ability / functional survival tool, etc…)

The following study was conducted in 1994 – participants either followed a 20 week steady state endurance program, or a 15 week interval program (15 sprints of 30 seconds each) – The interval group lost nine times the body fat, and 12% more visceral belly fat than the aerobics group.

A 2008 study compared two groups of 20-30 year old, normal-weight women - one group trained aerobically, the other, anaerobically. The anaerobic group lost an average of 2.5kg of body fat and gained 0.6kg of muscle. The aerobic group gained an average of 0.4kg of body fat by the end of the study…    

Numerous studies have found that aerobics decreases muscle mass... Muscle is the only tissue that burns calories… This will help explain the following: in 2006, the findings were published from a 9 year study that only the runners who tripled their weekly mileage from 16km per week to 64km per week did not gain fat over the 9 year period. Those who did not at least triple their mileage all gained body fat. That is a huge increase in time, effort, and distance just to maintain your current physique… 

Compare that with this: “A 2010 study found that 6 sessions of 6 30 second sprint intervals, over a period of two weeks resulted in a leaner waist by 3cm, and a significantly higher use of body fat for fuel…”

Read those last few passages again until it sinks in: jogging will make you fatter in the long run.

5B/ Weightlifting
Physical strength is one of the most important things in life. Granted, it may not be quite as critical as it was for our cave dwelling ancestors, but it is still the only thing that determines the quality and quantity of our lives on this planet. For our ancestors it determined how much food they ate, how long they survived, and how well they passed on their genes – for us it determines how well we function, how long we avoid the nursing home, how well we cope with life’s little inconveniences, how well we perform, and just how sexy our six packs are…

Not convinced? If you needed help moving house, who would you call, the jogger or the weightlifter? That’s what I thought... And did you know loss of strength and mobility is the number one reason why people are put in nursing homes? Probably, but you just never thought about it… Until now… 

Want more proof that heavy lifting is good for you? Read on…

A study on 28 slightly overweight and untrained men found that a hypertrophy (size) program followed three times a week for eight weeks lost 3kg of body fat – a decrease of 13% body fat – and gained 3kg of muscle. 


This may seem startling to some of you, but, and putting chemistry and biology lessons aside for a second, let’s look at some common sense stuff – the more muscle you carry, the more calories you’re going to burn, plus the more you can eat due to the higher metabolic cost of maintaining that muscle. Add to this the afterburn effect of strength training (which can last up to 36 hours) and the fact that lifting heavy induces the secretion of both fat burning and muscle building hormones, and it should all become a lot clearer.

Strength training has been shown time and again to improve heart function and decrease blood pressure. It improves arterial function and decreases inflammation. As far as blood pressure goes – a review found that across eight trials, systolic blood pressure was reduced by 6.2mmHg – more than double the benefit of typical blood pressure lowering medications. Less inflammation, lower systolic blood pressure and improved arterial function can only mean good things – a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.

Strength training and a clean diet also have a dramatic effect on other diseases. These two combined have a positive effect on blood sugar and insulin. We know that building muscle increases your lean tissues receptivity to insulin and your muscles need for glucose. Pulling glucose out of the bloodstream and into the muscles contributes to diabetes prevention, in addition to enhancing your physique.

Lifting heavy builds bone. Former athletes who incorporated heavy weight lifting into their training had much stronger bones as they aged – this meant a 50% lower chance of fracture in men, and a 20% lower risk of fracture for the women.

Low muscle mass has been linked with accelerated aging, poor posture, diabetes, osteoporosis, certain cancers, and just a seemingly endless list of bad stuff. If you aren’t lifting yet, now is as good a time as any to start.

You will age better and live longer – think about it. More muscle mass means greater strength and mobility, stronger bones and lower body fat, meaning a better quality of life for longer… 
Picture
Picture
​5C/ Resistance Training For Women
Now, the girls reading this are probably thinking “that all sounds wonderful, but I don’t want to get massive...”. Don’t worry, you won’t. The key factor for changing your body composition is hormone response, and it is the hormone testosterone that plays a vital role in the large increases in muscle mass seen when guys lift weights.


Normal testosterone levels in men are 200-1200 ng/dl and normal testosterone levels for women are 15-70 ng/dl. As you can see, men’s testosterone levels are a lot higher than women’s. Even if a guy is at the low end of men’s normal testosterone range (200 ng/dl), he still has more than twice the amount of testosterone as a woman at the high end of the women’s normal testosterone range (70 ng/dl).

If we take the mid-range testosterone levels in men and women, 700 for men and 42.5 for women, we can see that, on average, men have 16.5 times more testosterone than women, making it physiologically impossible for women to gain muscle like men unless they ingest testosterone on purpose.

Further to this, men and women do not respond to exercise the same way. Guys increase their testosterone levels by lifting heavy, and tend to experience a boost in testosterone straight after a workout. When women lift heavy they elevate their levels of growth hormone which will primarily burn body fat; as an added bonus, growth hormone also helps build muscle – basically, this means that for every kg of muscle you gain, you will lose the equivalent in body fat. More muscle and less fat means you will have an hourglass figure – strong glutes, visible abs, and with a little work, the ability to deadlift twice your bodyweight – this will have a positive effect on your self image.

5D/ How To Train For Rapid Fat Loss
There are many set and rep ranges out there, and training can be a very confusing topic... In brief:

Commit: commit to an hour of exercise, four or more times per week. Ideally this would comprise of heavy resistance training and/or interval training / sprinting / high intensity circuits. 

Train for strength and size: pick compound movements with barbells, not machines. Stick to set and rep ranges of 5 sets of 6-10 reps, or 3 sets of 12. 

Find a professional: in weight training, correct and efficient positioning means the difference between a safely performed exercise yielding sexy results, and an unsafe exercise yielding little in size and strength but dramatic increases in your chance for injury… Hiring a personal trainer is expensive, around £45 per hour on top of your gym membership, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. 

Find a professional part 2: training optimally is the goal. Programming is an art form, but at it’s most basic it is a plan - without a plan, you plan to fail. Programming optimally follows the format below.

1. Define The Purpose
2. Injury Considerations
3. Structural Balance Considerations
4. Organise The Basic Hierarchy Of Your Routine
5. Structuring The Program
6. Exercise Selection
7. Exercise Order
8. Consolidation Of Exercises Into A Routine
9. Stress, Adaptation, Supercompensation, Fitness & Fatigue Considerations
10. Periodisation
11. Implementing Concentrics, Isometrics, Eccentrics
12. Optimal Reps & Sets
13. Timings

Like I said, it’s an art, and if you’re not familiar with it, pay someone who is to do it for you.

Favour anaerobic training: sprints or interval training will accelerate fat loss, maintain muscle mass, and will be over far quicker than the usual 60 minute, steady state stint on the exercise bike…
Picture
Picture
​
At 
Crossfit Blackbrook the programming is taken care of so there’s no guess work for our members. This programming is then adjusted to the needs of the individual. They’re always watched and coached by experienced trainers, meaning correct and efficient positioning is ensured, guaranteeing the sexy results they’re after. They are part of a very supportive network - essentially a group of friends - all moving in the same direction, all taking positive steps, all on a life changing journey…

Health is a necessity. We all know the dangers of being overweight, and now you know the benefits of our type of training - it’s up to you to make it happen. 


~ Coach Collins 

Copyright 2017
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.