Posts written by Michael J. Mahony

Everyone embarking on a physique transformation hits a turning point at some point in time.  I believe that for me the turning point in my transformation so far has been my planning for this current mission.  I have decided to take things to a higher level and I am making it happen daily.  Because of those decisions made during the planning of this mission I can already see some additional physique changes just 11 days into the second mission.

I've always been skeptical of the ability of any one human being to change their body in such a short period of time, but I can't be skeptical anymore.  It is amazing how hard work during your workouts, finding the sweet spot in your nutrition and just plain grit can change your body in such a tremendous way.  That's another turning point for me.

I believe that when I've achieved the body I want, I will look back and be able to see each turning point very clearly.  They will be major milestones in my path towards success.  It took me a long time to get out of shape, so it is going to take a while to get back into shape.  In the end, I'm not looking for overnight success, I am looking for lasting success.  I am building a lifelong foundation that will carry me through to the end of my life.

(NOTE:  Today I start a new feature called “Word of the Day”)

Accountability Log:

Nutrition Log:

Workout Log:

Word for the Day:

The word for the day is intensity.  Intensity is something that pushes me through to the next day.  It is something that I live for when I'm at the gym.  Intensity is the fuel that drives my transformation.  Without it, I'm done.

Until tomorrow…GET BACK TO LIFTING!

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One of the more common things people ask me when they first start working out is how to increase the intensity of their lifting.  The answer is multi-faceted and deserves a careful examination because the intensity of your workouts will produce results in a proportionate fashion.

First you will need an understanding of periodization.  This is simply the way you organize your workout.  This involves both the daily workouts you do and how they are organized as well as the schedule you use for your workouts.

The idea is to slowly increase the difficulty of your training.  You push your body to its upper limits and then you take a step back and let it catch up with you.  This is a principle I learned from Optimum Anabolics by Jeff Anderson.  You actually gain more muscle in the easier weeks because your body is continuing to adapt to the heavier weeks.  The fact is that as you push your body it starts to expect it.  It will then even respond to lighter weights in the same manner as heavier weights, but only for a short period of time.

One way to push your body to the limit is to use volume loading.  This can be as simple as just increasing by 1 the number of sets you do each week.  You have to listen to your body carefully.  You are going to be pushing it harder and harder as you add sets.  Should you feel fatigued, you'd back down and take it easier to allow your body to catch up.

The next way to push your body to the limit is to use frequency loading.  If you wanted to rotate your frequency through a series of harder and harder frequencies, you'd start out during week 1 doing 2 workouts a week.  In each subsequent week you'd add a workout.  Finally, you would back down and let your body catch up when you had hit 5 to 7 workouts in a week.

The basic measurement of frequency is the number of training sessions for a given muscle group or lift per unit of time (ie. a week, a month, etc.).  Really, the key to frequency is recovery time.  I personally recover pretty fast.  I am generally fully recovered in 48 hours.  I've been following a 3 day a week training program where I cycle through my two workouts as follows:

Sunday — Workout A
Tuesday — Workout B
Thursday — Workout A
Sunday — Workout B
Tuesday — Workout A
Thursday — Workout B

That is giving me 96 hours of rest between workouts.  What I've discovered is I am fully recovered on Tuesday from the workout I did on Sunday.  This wasn't always the case for me.  However, in the interest of listening to my body, this is why I'm increasing my frequency.  My body is ready to be pushed harder and so I'm listening to it.  I am upping my frequency to 4 workouts a week. 

The premise behind upping my frequency is that I am going to push my muscles harder and they will grow more.  I will need to pay extra special attention to my body's need for rest during this time period.  However, by upping the frequency and using a volume loading scheme (as explained above) I am expecting even greater gains moving forward.

Accountability Log:

My M4 was late by 30 minutes so I gave myself a red mark for that meal.  All other areas went well.

I had asked a question on the Burn the Fat Inner Circle forum about the analysis of my results from the past 2 weeks.  I got an answer from Tom Venuto himself.  His advice was to see what results I produce this week.  If my fat percentage increases again I am to cut my calories.  Thus, my plan is to cut my calories by 5% each day if I do gain fat this week (for the second week in a row).

Nutrition Log:

Workout Log:

This was a fantastic workout today. I am still getting the feel for both the Bulgarian split deadlift and the Split good morning, so I have a much lower weight on those than I'm sure I'm capable of. 

Until tomorrow…GET BACK TO LIFTING!

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Today is a high carb day and my calories are at maintenance.  I find it unbelieveable how much food I have to take in.  It takes alot to get to 3050 calories in a day!

I've posted some questions on the internet at sites that I trust the feedback and have been rethinking my plan to do my bulk with Max-OT.  I will probably stick with the New Rules of Lifting because the program is scientifically sound.  It has periodization and frequency issues built in.  It is pretty much a no-brainer and I like that about it.  I've gotten decent results with a caloric deficit and using that program and can only imagine what my results will be when I'm feeding myself enough.

As mentioned in yesterday's post, it is all about fixing the metabolism at this point.  Tom Venuto mentions upping your calories for a week as a means for fixing your metabolism and preparing it to dive back into fat burning (Information: Super Lean Secrets of Achieving Very Low Body Fat, Excerpt #1).  Honestly, I'm sick of the deficit.  I'm ready to increase my calories, so I'm slowly bringing them back up to the maintenance level each day.  The only day I “jump” high is on the high carb day (refeed) in the cycle.  That day is meant to be a maintenance calories day.

Now my newest challenge is the question “How important is the macronutrient ratio?”  Obviously, it is important, but is it important enough that you should hit it exactly?  Is it ok to aim for 55/35/10 and hit 50/40/10?  These are the answers I'm now looking for.  I feel like finding those answers will help me achieve the goals I have.

Accountability Log:

Nutrition Log:

Workout log:

One thing I do plan to change is the frequency of my lifting. I will now move to a 4 day plan of lifting.  I also think I'm going to join Lilla in the 3 days of cardio a week.  Something tells me that in this case, less is more. 

I did my push up video yesterday, but have not had the time to get it onto the computer.  I will take care of that tomorrow.

Until tomorrow…GET BACK TO LIFTING!

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Plateaus – Why Your Fat Loss Stops

Today I'm posting an excerpt from one of two recent teleseminars featuring fat loss excerpt Tom Venuto. Tom had them transcribed and turned into ebooks and MP3 audios that he's actually giving away for free as part of a 3 day special promotion ending February 14th. Go to www.Burnthefat.com for more information on that.

I wanted to share this excerpt from the seminar with you in particular (I got permission from Tom to reprint this). I think you’ll find it fascinating because it explains the real reasons why people hit fat loss plateaus. It happens especially when you get down to that “last 10 lbs” or when you drop a lot of weight, and you hit the “good” body fat category, but you’re an “overachiever” and you still want to get even leaner… all the way to “ripped”, or at least lean enough to see your abs.

Breaking through plateaus is a challenge, but there IS something you can do about them… read on and see what Tom says about it.

EXCERPT FROM THE “SUPER LEAN” SEMINAR

QUESTION: “Our first question says, “Tom, I know you often say that to get to the point to be able to see your abs, you need to get to single-digit body fat. What if I hit a plateau at about 12% body fat? What do I need to do to break the plateau and get my fat% down to single digits? Should I do more cardio, more weight-training, manipulate my diet somehow?”

ANSWER: “You could do any of the above. You could manipulate your calories, change type of cardio, add cardio duration or frequency. You could increase cardio intensity. You could change your weight-training. You shouldn’t limit yourself.

One of the problems I see with quite a few programs is that they’re too dogmatic. If you hit a plateau, the person with the most flexibility in their approach is the person who’s going to be most likely to get through that plateau.

The first thing though is to understand what a plateau really is. This is important, because if you were losing weight, but now you’re not, there’s only one thing that that could mean; you were in a calorie deficit but you’re no longer in a calorie deficit.

You may be wondering why that happens.

There are four primary reasons you hit a plateau:

The first reason you hit a plateau is because your metabolism decreases. While this does not completely stop fat loss, it does slow down fat loss. If you’ve been cutting calories, especially if you cut them severely, your body adapts by decreasing the metabolic rate. That’s sometimes known as the “starvation response” or “Adaptive thermogenesis.”

The second reason is that you need fewer calories after you lose weight. Calorie needs are directly tied into your body weight. One problem is that after people lose a lot of weight, they tend to keep eating the same way they were eating when they were heavier.

So they’re feeding a smaller person the way they were when they were a bigger person, but when you’re a smaller person, you don’t need as many calories, even at rest (your basal metabolic rate is lower).

A third reason is that when you move that smaller body, you’re not burning as many calories. If you strap on a weighted vest or heavy backpack and go out and hike up a hill, you can tell, obviously, that if you’re lugging around extra weight, you’re burning more calories. So now can you see why, after you lose weight, you burn fewer calories?

The fourth reason is that most people either cheat on their diets or they forget to record part of their food intake. This one requires a little bit of honesty with yourself. Even if you don’t do it intentionally and you don’t “cheat” per se, unconsciously, we’re all terrible at estimating how much food we eat.

Some studies have even showed underreporting calorie intake as much as 50%. In other words, you say, “I’m only eating 1,200 calories a day, but i’m stuck at a plateau!” but you’re really eating 1,800 calories a day which doesn’t give you much of a deficit.

All of these reasons for plateaus get amplified in the later stages of a diet, because biologically speaking, your body is doing everything it possibly can to get you to go off your diet and to get weight to stabilize.

After a long period of dieting and after a large weight loss, your body cranks up the appetite, stimulates cravings and tries to trick you into eating more.

The leaner you get, the longer youve been dieting and the more aggressively you cut calories, the more your body tends to defend its weight, and hold on to remaining body fat.

So it’s really common to hit that plateau when you’re dieted down and leaner. Usually it’s nowhere near as difficult for the overweight person to start losing weight as it is for the lean person to get even more lean. The last 10 lbs is usually a lot harder than the first 10.

If you think about it, it’s pretty unnatural from a biological perspective to walk around with really low single-digit body fat. It’s not beneficial from a survival-of-the-species point of view to have low body fat. So this metabolic adaptation becomes more pronounced the leaner you get.

you’re also at a higher risk of losing muscle, because extra muscle is not econmical when there’s a calorie shortage. Having extra muscle is like having an engine that’s bigger than you need – It’s like a gas guzzler.

The ultimate answer to why you plateau, why that last 10 pounds is so hard to lose and why it’s hard to break into those single digits is that you were in a calorie deficit but for all of the reasons mentioned above, you’re no longer in deficit.

The way to break the plateau then is to:

(1) re-stimulate metabolism and re-set fat-burning and starvation hormones, and

(2) re-establish the deficit.

(3) KEEP AFTER IT!

The question was, “How do I do that? More cardio, more weight training, manipulate my diet?”

You could do all of the above. Eating less or exercising more can both increase a deficit. But one thing you might want to do first, is give yourself a little break. Take your calories up to maintenance level, maybe for a week.

The idea there is not to try to accelerate fat loss, because what you’re actually doing is removing your calorie deficit for a short period of time. What you’re trying to do is facilitate the fat loss when you jump back into it.

It gives your body a physiological break from the stress of dieting; it resets some of those starvation hormones and stimulates your metabolism so when you go back to the calorie deficit, your body responds again.

You also get mental break from the diet as well, which makes it easier to stick with the program when you go back to it.

You could also use a calorie cycling approach, to help prevent yourself from hitting another plateau, and we already covered calorie and carb cycling in the last call.

I also recommend, because so many people underestimate how much they eat, don’t take any chances. Count your calories, or at least become really aware of the portion sizes and maybe even consider keeping a journal.

You’ve probably been told many times by a lot of different “experts” that you don’t have to count calories. But when you’re in a plateau, I’d recommend that you stop guessing and really get serious about what you’re taking in.

Then what you need to do is reestablish that calorie deficit using every tool at your disposal.

Use nutrition by pulling back your portion sizes. Or use cardio. And by increased cardio, I mean increasing energy expenditure. You could increase your frequency. You could increase your duration.

But increasing energy expenditure is not necessarily doing longer workouts, just burning more calories. You could also take the same amount of time that you’re spending right now and increase your intensity.

The whole idea is just burn more calories and stimulate metabolism, which gives you your deficit back again or you can pull back your food intake and give yourself a deficit again from the food side.

There’s more than one way to do it and I don’t think that you should lock yourself in. Use all of the variables and remember that there are TWO sides to the energy balance equation, not one.”

# # #

I Hope you enjoyed this excerpt, and mostly, I hope you put the information to good use!

This was just one short excerpt from almost two hours of audio in Tom's new “Super Lean” seminar. Tom is giving away the entire seminar for free with the purchase of his ebook Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle, but only until February 13th.”

You can get more information on Tom's Burn The Fat program AND his new “Super Lean” seminar at: www.BurnTheFat.com

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So after seeing my results for the week and analyzing what I did right and wrong (minutia, trust me), I started studying up on planning my meals.  What a ton of work!  No wonder I eat boring all the time.  It is so much work to get the perfect macronutrient ratios that it is just easier to get it right one time and then just repeat that daily.

I spent the better part of an hour on fitday.com entering and tweaking meals.  I managed to get the perfect high carb day with 3073 calories at 55/35/10 (remembering that a refeed day should be low in fat).  Now I need to work on the perfect low carb day(2500 calories at 40/40/20).  It just takes so much time to get it right that I am too burnt out now to proceed with the low carb day and since tomorrow is a high carb day, I'm set until Tuesday.  I will work on the low carb day tomorrow.

I know that this type of planning will go a long way towards me reaching my goals.  I guess this is why I liked the Metabolic Surge approach.  It made it very simple to “get it right” each day because I'd basically eat protein and vegetables on low carb days, all protein on the all protein days and then all fruit on the all fruit days.  Finally, I'd just add starchy carbs for the first 3 meals on the 40/40/20 days.  At the same time, the starvation mode issue bugged me alot.  Even though Nick says that I don't have to worry about that with Surge, I can't wrap mybrain around that concept.  Seems to me that if 20% deficit is 2500 calories and I'm only managing to hit 1900 calories on Surge, my calories were just way too low.  That risks going into starvation mode. 

I've read so much about how to up your metabolism.  Some will say that you need to first fix your metabolism through a conditioning phase.  What they say strikes a chord with me.  The concept is that you slowly increase your caloric intake up to your maintenance level.  When you hit maintenance, you rotate through 3 lower calorie days. Let's say my maintenance is 3000.  That would mean that a 20% reduction would be 2400 calories.  Thus, I would aim for 2400 calories on Day 1, 2600 calories on Day 2, 2800 calories on Day 3 and 3000 calories on Day 4.  After Day 4 you just repeat the cycle all over again.  It makes alot of sense to me because it totally avoids any one caloric deficit number being kept for too long. 

Planning is the only way to make this all happen the way it is supposed to happen. 

Accountability Log:

Nutrition Log:

Workout Log:

My final conclusions regarding my day is that I had an awesome workout.  I pushed myself extra hard today and managed personal bests on all my exercises.  It was an incredible feeling today to put up the weight I was putting up.  The Barbell Push Press in particular made me feel like a strong man.  I've taken things to a new level today and plan on pushing even harder as the month continues.

Until tomorrow…GET BACK TO LIFTING!

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