5

Ready, Set, Stop

Copyright 2002, Terry Duschinski.

Ready to get started? The correct answer is NO, not yet. Actually, we have started because everything discussed to this point is a building block of your success. You’re probably eager to dive into the fitness regimen itself; tired of waiting to initiate the specific measures that are going to shed pounds and inches from your body.

We are gearing you up for a process involving a carefully kept one- or two-week food diary, from which we will formulate a specific 6-week moderate-calorie balanced eating plan to be coupled with 3-time-per-week half-hour circuit strength-training workouts. Along the way as you personally experience this program, we’re hoping to also empower you with information so that you can eventually customize ongoing, lifelong lifestyle habits that incorporate calorie-intake management and time-efficient exercise. The exercise sessions will eventually incorporate aerobic workouts in addition to circuit strength training.

You may feel a little like the youngster in the movie Karate Kid, but please be patient with these preliminaries. This may seems like “wax on, wax off” (if you saw the movie, you’ll understand the comparison), but please pay careful attention, and apply yourself to everything suggested. Once you start into the fat-shedding phase, a number of defining moments will present themselves. This preliminary groundwork is the stuff that fortifies your resolve so that you will define each of those moments successfully.

Perhaps an overview of our strategy will sustain your interest.

I know the textbook, correct, doctor-approved, holier-than-though, sacred means of oxidizing body fat. You exercise aerobically and anaerobically 3 to 5 times per week, and eat 500 calories a day fewer than you need from a variety of foods in proportions something like 60 percent carbohydrate, mostly complex, 25 percent protein, and 15 percent fat, mostly unsaturated. Such effort should result in a 2-pound loss every week, continuing until your ideal body composition is reached and you live happily ever after. That’s simple.

If you can execute such a strategy, I’m standing in your corner cheering you on. But very few people can. If they could, we wouldn’t have a $30 billion per year diet industry in the United States filled – at least partially -- with quacks, phonies, and frauds.

The ultimate, sensible means of weight control lacks the ability to capture our imagination. It is as though it never cracks a certain threshold. Not that I want to stray very far from it, but I believe we can reshape our bodies in a way that both excites us into consistent action and sustains long-term success.

I believe in surges. I believe in periods of shedding at least two if not four pounds of fat per week, followed by equal periods of holding what you’ve lost … but losing no more. It’s a time to cement new habits, transforming them from novelty to lifestyle. Take the hill and hold it before moving on to the next hill.

A 6-Week Fat-to-Muscle Makeover enables the typical woman to lose 2 to 3 inches off her waist, 3 to 4 inches off her hips, and 2 to 3 inches off her thighs. Actually, for reasons that I’ll explain in a later segment, of the inch reductions given for those three areas, two of them will usually hit the numbers and one of them will shrink only about an inch, if at all.

The typical male can launch a 6-week strategy to shrink his waistline by 3 inches and add muscle to his chest, arms, shoulders, and lower body.

These figures I’m quoting are what I achieved with clients over and over again for 10 years. Find that 6-week segment where you can concentrate on this endeavor, and you’ll make an improvement in your body if you follow our plan.

In 6 weeks, the typically pudgy person can reasonably expect reduce an amount of fat equal to approximately 10 percent of his or her bodyweight.

What do you do at the end of 6 weeks? Hold it. Nail it, actually. Hold it tight for at least another 6-week spell, if not 3 months, if not 6 months. If you’ve still got fat you’d like to lose, fat-loss season will come again – but only after you’ve proven sustainability. We don’t want you losing the same 15 pounds over and over again.

Signing on for lifelong change is a formidable challenge, but your body composition – aside from genetics -- is a product of daily habits. To maintain your slenderized figure or physique, you will need to maintain a regular core exercise program and your new guidelines for eating well and maintaining hydration.

Our 6-week eating regimen consists of what we hope is an approximate 500-calorie-per-day deficit during the first two weeks; 750 daily calorie shortfall the next two weeks; and 1000 calories too few per day the final two weeks. Actually, your calorie intake won’t vary that drastically, we’re counting on added muscle raising your basal metabolic rate.

Workouts will consist, hopefully, of half-hour circuit strength training on machines three times per week. At the end of 6 weeks, we will revise the workout regimen to probably two strength workouts and two to four cardio workouts per week. But don’t be rushing ahead to that point—there is good reason not to do so.

There is a lot more information about exercise, including something that might be new to you – the concept of metabolic conditioning – coming in future sessions.

This is a course with achievable goals set before you, and the strategy has a solid track record. Try not to do more or less than what we advocate. More details on each of the components will be unfolded in following segments.