Fat Loss for Busy Men & Women

Looking through the Turbulence Training archives this weekend, I dug up another fat burning interview about Turbulence Training and why it works so well for busy men and women.

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Question: Let’s cut to the chase. What’s your number one fat loss tip that you can give everyone here?

Answer: I wish it was simply, “Use Turbulence Training”. However, it’s not.  The #1 tip everyone must follow to lose fat is to CUT OUT sugar and  processed carbohydrates from your diet. Stick to a whole, natural  food diet  of vegetables, fruits, nuts, healthy fats, and protein sources.  If it is at all modified from its regular source, then skip it and find something closer to its original form.

Question: Where are most people going wrong in their fat loss mission?

Answer: Most people are still being ambushed by hidden calories and sugar.  That’s why I recommend avoiding foods in a bag or box. Heck, here in Canada you can call something “Trans-fat free” even if it still has Trans-fat in it! It’s outrageous. Starbucks is a big culprit in adding calories…so stay away from the sugary  drinks here!

Priority #1 for everyone is getting the diet in order.  As far as workouts go, most people will get more results in less time if they cut out the “quantity” and increase the “quality”. No more treadmill walking for warm-up.  Do bodyweight circuits instead.  No more isolation strength training exercises. Do fewer multi-muscle exercises and you’ll get more results in less time. No more long, slow cardio. Do interval training for only 20 minutes instead.

Question: What are your three favorite exercises for optimizing fat loss?

Answer: I put out a program that was available for the month of May – called “The Big 5 circuit”…and it uses my top five fat loss movements…  But I’ll cull that down to 3 for this question.

They are…

A) A squat movement
B) A total-body pushing movement
C) A total-body pulling movement

Specific examples would be…

A) Bell squat
B) A pushup of any kind (from kneeling – for beginners – to decline spiderman pushups – for advanced)
C) Inverted rows or pullups or dumbbell rows (Depending on your fitness level and equipment availability)

Question: You’re known as the guy who really dislikes Cross Trainer/Elliptical machines, which are usually a favorite of most gym  goers. Why are these machines just not effective for fat loss in your  book?

Answer:  Couple of points here… If you’re like me, you’d probably agree that we weren’t “designed” to  workout inside on a machine where we repeat the same movement hundreds of times per minute and thousands of times per workout. That sounds ridiculous if you think about it.  It’s an overuse injury guaranteed to happen. So I strongly recommend getting outside to exercise.  Frankly, I think 90%+ of cardio-machine users are ADDICTED to the calorie- readout counters on the machine. They take those numbers as written in stone, but a CBS news report once found them to be highly inaccurate!

So most folks need to take a deep cleansing breath, and realize that they  can get exercise from other ways besides going nowhere on a cardio machine. Yes, I know it’s tough in certain environments and weather conditions, but whenever possible, I suggest a real world alternative. Second, elliptical machines fail my “human nature test”.

Here’s the test… Put 20 folks in a room filled with 20 treadmills and 20 elliptical machines. Tell them they all have to exercise for an hour, but they can choose whichever machine they want. What do you think would happen?  I bet we’d get a 16-4 split, with 16 people choosing the elliptical.  machine…possibly even more! Why? Because they are easier! You can use more momentum. I’m just not convinced people will get as good of results with the Cross-trainer as they would with the treadmill.  Plus, it’s harder to read on a treadmill!

Question: You’ve got some pretty cool testimonials, and of course, results on your site, and you’ve just finished your first ever transformation contest -which had some awesome body transformations, by the way. What has been the feedback  from running this and when is the next one?

Answer: I’m going to make a damaging admission here, and say that the results have even shocked me as to how great the results were for the dozens of men and women who finished the 1st ever Turbulence Training Transformation contest.  Our winner, by a landslide, was a gal named Emily Johnson…and she has some incredible “real life” after shots than any girl with a pair of skinny jeans  would aspire to… And for guys, our second place winner lost the most weight of anyone in the  contest, an astonishing 33 pound in 12 weeks, and lost 7.5 inches  from his  gut…oh yeah, and he looks a heck of a lot younger too.

Check out www.TransformationContest.com/rules for the details on the next contest. The greatest thing about the contest is the social support that everyone gives, gets, and shares on the member’s forum (which is included when someone starts with Turbulence Training).

Question: When I look at your members forum I see that it has grown a bit of a cult following hasn’t it? Why do you think this has really taken off?

Answer: The forum offers social support, so we have members all over the world doing the same workouts, going through similar trials and tribulations, and helping one another out. It’s so interesting to wake-up to hear from Lisa and John no down in NZ and  Oz sharing their thoughts, and then we here in North America post our  workouts and thoughts while they sleep. And sometimes we overlap, but it’s just so great to have people doing this all over the world – and helping  one another.

And the thing that holds everyone together is the common bond of being busy, of having a stressful job and hectic family life, but the workouts are short and infrequent, so it allows for a regular lifestyle at the same time as actually getting results. No more hour long cardio sessions everyday with nothing to show for it.

Question: I’ve written a number of times about how most weight machines in gyms are a total waste of time. What are your thoughts?

Answer: Well, it depends on what you mean by machines. However, generally, I probably agree. First off, most machines are built for a guy of average height…so right off the bat that eliminates short men and women and taller men and women from getting the most out of the exercise. Free weights and bodyweight exercises don’t discriminate on height.

Second, most machines tend to focus on body parts or single muscle groups. That just doesn’t fit the busy person’s schedule, so I don’t use them in my  programs, plus, I’ve built my programs for folks that exercise at home, and can’t afford the money or space on gym machines.

Question: On a lighter note, if you were stranded on a desert island, what three items would you want to take with you?

Answer: My dog. A Really, really, really big bag of dog food. And a BOAT.