Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle-Ventuo

BURN THE FAT
FEED THE MUSCLE
Fat Burning Secrets of the World’s Best
Bodybuilders & Fitness Models
By Tom Venuto
ISBN 0-9724132-0-0
Copyright 2003, Fitness Renaissance, LLC All Rights Reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Medical Disclaimer
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Goal setting: How to set powerful, compelling goals that will propel you forward
and charge you up with unstoppable motivation
Chapter 2: Chapter 2: Why 95% of all conventional diets fail - And the 8 most powerful
strategies to permanently lose fat without diets or deprivation
Chapter 3: Body composition: How to determine your fat to muscle ratio
Chapter 4: Charting your progress: How to use performance feedback to get from where
you are to where you want to be
Chapter 5: Metabolic individuality and your body type: Doing your best with what you’ve
got
Chapter 6: The law of calorie balance and the mathematics of losing body fat
Chapter 7: Secrets of meal frequency & timing: How to turbo charge your metabolism and
turn your body into a fat-burning machine!
Chapter 8: Macronutrient ratios: The optimal combination of protein, carbohydrates and fats
for improving your muscle to fat ratio
Chapter 9: Good fats vs. bad fats: How to speed up fat loss, boost muscle growth, increase
energy and rev up your metabolism by eating the right fats in the right amounts at
the right times
Chapter 10: Protein: The muscle builder and metabolic activator – How much you really need
Chapter 11: Clearing up carbohydrate confusion: Are carbohydrates your friends or foes?
Chapter 12: How to get as lean as a bodybuilder or fitness model using a new twist on the old
low carbohydrate diet
Chapter 13: Why water is essential for fat loss, how much you need, and what else you
should (and shouldn’t) drink
Chapter 14: The BFFM eating plan: How to design your own effective and result producing
meals and menus.
Chapter 15: Supplements: What the supplement companies hope you never find out
Chapter 16: Cardio training secrets for maximum fat loss: Why it’s better to burn the fat than
to starve the fat.
Chapter 17: Weight training for fat loss: Why diet and cardio are not enough
Conclusion: The journey is just beginning.
Appendix
MEDICAL DISCLAIMER
This program is for educational and informative purposes only and is not intended
as medical or professional advice. Always consult your doctor before making any
changes to your diet or nutrition program. The use of diet and nutrition to control
metabolic disorders and disease is a very complicated science, and is not the purpose of
this program. The purpose of this program is to help healthy people reach their cosmetic
fitness goals by educating them in proper nutrition and exercise guidelines.
No health claims are made for this program. This nutrition and exercise program
will not help cure, heal, or correct any illness, metabolic disorder, or medical condition.
The author is not a medical doctor, registered dietitian, or clinical nutritionist; the author
is a fitness and nutrition consultant.
If you have diabetes, chronic hypertension, high blood cholesterol, cardiovascular
disease, or any other medical condition or metabolic disorder requiring special nutritional
considerations, we suggest you consult a health care professional with a clinical nutrition
background (MD, RD, or CCN) for your special nutrition program.
Your nutrition plan will not be effective by itself. You must combine a good diet
with an appropriate exercise program for optimal results. If you have been sedentary and
are unaccustomed to vigorous exercise, you should obtain your physician’s clearance
before beginning an exercise program.
The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that apparently
healthy individuals who are male and over 40 or female and over 50 to have both a
physical exam and a diagnostic exercise test prior to starting a vigorous exercise program.
A diagnostic exercise test and physical examination is also recommended in individuals
of any age who exhibit two or more of the major coronary risk factors (smoking, family
history of heart disease, elevated blood cholesterol, elevated blood pressure, and
diabetes). Any individual with a known history of heart disease or other heart problems
should be required to have a medical evaluation including a graded exercise test before
engaging in strenuous physical activity.
The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any
person or entity with respect to any of the information contained in this manual. The user
assumes all risk for any injury, loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused, directly or
indirectly by using any information described in this course.
Preface and Dedication
This manual will reveal to you all the secrets of permanent fat loss. It is written by a man
who has discovered these secrets the hard way - through long years of trial and error.
Using the information in this manual will allow you master the art and science of losing
body fat by a shorter and less costly route; by “modeling” those who have gone before
you and learning from an expert.
The primary goals of this manual are to help you lose fat permanently without drugs,
supplements or gimmicks and to educate you in the process of losing fat. In other words,
my goal is to turn you into a “fat loss expert”… to teach you the reasons why and help
you to understand the process…and to do so without bias or ulterior motive.
To achieve this goal, I decided - after careful consideration - to self publish and to write
this book in layman’s terms, with a minimum of scientific jargon and without long lists of
scientific references. Instead of long, boring scientific discussions of biochemistry – and
instead of long lists of references to scientific papers - you will find sprinkled throughout
the manual, brief mention of interesting studies and quotes that are important and relevant
to a point being made.
This book was written for you as a simple, yet detailed instruction manual. You get step-
by-step instructions: Do this, don’t do that, eat this, don’t eat that, and so on.
This is not just an informational book – it is a complete system that will take you from
where you are now to where you want to be – in the shortest possible period of time.
There are dozens of outstanding books on the subjects of nutrition and fat loss, but far too
many of them are mired down in technical details and scientific terminology that are
either too difficult to understand or simply too damn boring. Many of these books leave
you with more questions than answers. You begin reading confused and when you finish
reading, you’re even more confused.
Others encode their writing into a cryptic jargon that can only be deciphered by fellow
scientists and academicians. Sometimes I think bodybuilding, fitness and nutrition writers
are more concerned with trying to impress and to receive the approval of their academic
peers than to help their readers achieve their goals.
It never ceases to amaze me how some of these writers can take a simple concept and
make it sound mystical, complex, and a thousand times more confusing than it really is.
They would rather write, “Mr. Aikman propelled the prolate spheroid” instead of, “Troy
threw the football.” Maybe they do it unintentionally – they just have poor
communication skills. Or perhaps they do it on purpose so their reader remains confused
and continues to need the guru’s “help” and “advice” forever. After all, if you learn how
simple the process of fat loss really is, you don’t need a “guru” anymore, do you?
Michael Lebouef, a business consultant and author, once wrote, “A great deal of what we
read in medical, technical and academic documents is little more than the old professional
snow job game - If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with b.s. The
purpose of a great deal of the jargon is to ensure the future of the experts rather than the
consumer.”
My goal is not to please the establishment. If my peers in the fitness industry don’t like
this book, that’s too bad! If they want to criticize the lack of references – bring it on.
This book is not for them.
My only goal in writing this book is to help you reach to your goals, to get you leaner
than you’ve ever been before, and to clear up all your confusion about fat-burning
nutrition and training that may have held you back in the past. If this book helps you
succeed in reaching your fat loss goals, then this book is a success with or without
accolades from the critics.
This book is for YOU and this book is dedicated to YOU, the man or woman on the path
of personal development and the journey to a leaner body.
Introduction
This book is written by a bodybuilder, but it’s not just for bodybuilders.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a gym veteran preparing for bodybuilding
contest or you’ve never worked out a day in your life. If you want to lose body fat and
keep it off forever, without losing muscle, without slowing down your metabolism and
without starvation, drugs or gimmicks, then this book is for you.
If you’re tired of being given confusing and conflicting advice on exercise and
nutrition and you want simple, but detailed answers to all your questions, then this book
is for you.
If you wish someone with integrity (someone who didn’t have a financial interest
in the latest “miracle” supplement or stomach-reducing gadget) would share honest and
unbiased information about fat loss - then this book is for you.
Why would you want to learn about fat loss from a bodybuilder? The answer is
obvious: Bodybuilders have mastered the art of shedding fat while maintaining muscle.
Conventional diets achieve fat loss at the expense of losing muscle, which downgrades
your metabolism. That’s one of the reasons “diets” don’t work. I prefer to call this a
nutrition program rather than a diet.
Not only is the natural bodybuilder’s way to fat loss incredibly effective, capable
of slashing your body fat well into the single digits (if that’s what you desire), it’s also a
lifestyle. Diets don’t work because they are temporary. This program teaches nutrition
habits you can maintain for life.
Before we get into the heart of the program, I’d like to share with you exactly
what you are going to learn in these pages and a dozen reasons why this program might
just be the most powerful fat-burning system ever developed.
1. Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle is truthful, unbiased and objective
The goal of this program is very straightforward - to provide the facts about fat
loss with honesty and integrity. There is no hidden agenda. I have worked in the health
club industry my entire life encouraging people to take up exercise and good nutrition as
a way of life. I have never been involved with the magazine, supplement or exercise
equipment industry. I do not sell supplements nor have I ever been paid to endorse them.
No matter how much money anyone offers me, you will never see me on a late-night
infomercial hawking the latest exercise fad. There are no "back end" products to buy.
There are no prepackaged foods to pitch. There are no creams, pills, powders, machines
or any other gimmicks whatsoever.
My intent is to be a pillar of honesty, integrity and moral character. My website,
Fitness Renaissance (www.fitren.com), has been billed as “The Honest Fitness Site,” and
I have shared this no-hype, no-gimmick, no-B.S., hard work-ethic philosophy with
hundreds of thousands of visitors since 1999. To me, nothing is more important than
integrity. I make my living from the health, fitness and nutrition business, but I will go
broke and starve to death before I will ever “sell out” or compromise my principles.
A brief story will illustrate the level of my integrity: In 1999, the editor of a major
bodybuilding and fitness magazine contacted me with a very tempting proposition. He
had been reading my online articles and said they were very thoroughly researched and
well written. He was so impressed that he wanted to hire me to write for his magazine.
For my first assignment, he offered me $1000.00 to interview some of the top supplement
“gurus” including the CEO of one of the largest nutrition companies in the world. I was
then to write a two-page article about the latest developments with a popular, yet
controversial supplement.
A thousand bucks sounded awfully good, but then he threw in the punch line: He
told me that his magazine was "sponsored" by a large and well-known nutrition company.
I’m sure you can guess what came next. If you guessed that I couldn't write anything
bad about the supplement, and that I had to present it "in a positive light" then you
guessed right! I turned it down. It went completely against my principles.
Magazines are generally considered one of the most credible sources for nutrition
and fitness information. But that's not always the case. You can't believe everything you
read. Many magazine publishers own supplement companies. By putting information
about "new supplement breakthroughs" into editorial format, they appear much more
believable. That’s why magazines are the perfect tools for selling supplements and
weight loss products. As a result, many magazines have turned into nothing more than
thinly-disguised "supplement catalogs."
2. Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is not a very low calorie or starvation diet
Most people are dead wrong in the way they diet to lose body fat.
Almost every conventional diet program ever conceived has one thing in
common: Extremely low calories. Nearly all of these low calorie diets produce weight
loss in the beginning. The problem is, none of them work for long – it’s physiologically
impossible to lose fat permanently by starving yourself. The human body is simply too
“smart” for this to ever work.
When you starve the fat, you also starve the muscle. When you starve the muscle,
you lose muscle along with the fat. When you lose muscle, your metabolism slows down
and your body enters the “starvation mode.” When your body enters starvation mode, fat
loss comes to a screeching halt as your body tries to conserve its energy. When the fat
loss stops, you either give up (and gain back the fat you lost), or you grit your teeth and
drop your calories (starve yourself) even more. If you drop your calories even more,
your metabolism slows down even more. And if your metabolism slows down even
more, fat loss comes to a screeching halt again. Eventually, you always end up throwing
in the towel because you can’t keep dropping your calories forever. It’s a vicious cycle.
You just can’t win the very-low-calorie-diet game.
3. Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is not just a nutrition program; it merges
nutrition with exercise – a combination essential for permanent fat loss.
To lose body fat, you must create a calorie deficit. There is no other way. A
calorie deficit means that you burn more calories than you consume every day. There are
two ways you can create this calorie deficit: 1) decrease your caloric intake from food, or
2) increase the amount of calories you burn through exercise.
Both methods should be used, but of the two ways, burning the calories is
healthier, more efficient and more permanent. That’s where the phrase “Burn the Fat,
Feed the Muscle” comes from: It means, don’t starve the fat with low calorie diets,
instead, Burn the Fat with exercise. It also means keep your muscle mass intact at all
costs with weight training and sufficient amounts of nutrient dense food. Losing muscle
is unacceptable.
Paradoxical as it may seem, the secret to fat loss is to allow yourself to eat more
(of the right foods) and use exercise to burn off the fat. Ironically, most people do the
opposite: They slash their calories to starvation levels and exercise little or not at all. This
slows the metabolism, decreases lean body mass and invokes the body’s starvation
response. Exercise allows you to create the calorie deficit and burn fat without slowing
down the metabolism.
It's amazing what can happen to your body when you put nutrition, cardio and
weight training all together at once. The results are "synergistic." "Synergy" means the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Synergy means that 1 + 1 + 1 may not equal 3,
it may equal 30, or 300! In other words, by using this combination correctly, you can
increase your results exponentially!
4. Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle does not confuse weight loss with fat loss
Weight loss and fat loss are not the same thing. You must learn to distinguish
between the two. The scale can be very misleading if it’s the only criteria you use for
measurement. For example, a woman could weigh 105 pounds and have 33% body fat.
That’s what I call a “skinny fat person.” In contrast, a female bodybuilder could weigh
160 pounds and be quite lean, with body fat in the low teens.
With this in mind, your goal should never be weight loss. Your goal should be
losing fat while maintaining muscle. As long as your body is solid muscle, then you
shouldn’t worry about what the scale says. Your ratio of muscle to fat is what really
counts. Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle will explain to you all the common methods of
body fat testing and teach you how to use body fat to measure your results and chart your
progress. You will also learn how to break a plateau and adjust your approach when your
body fat isn’t decreasing at the rate you want it to.
5. Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is not a temporary “quick fix.” It teaches you new
habits you can maintain as a lifestyle
A "diet" could be defined as any temporary change in your eating behavior to help
you lose weight. This entire concept is flawed. When you say you are “going on a diet”
the implication is that it’s temporary and at some point you’re going to have to “go off”
the diet. This is not a program that you go on and off. The only way you'll ever lose fat
and keep it off permanently is to adopt new habits and keep them for life.
Initially, your new dietary and exercise disciplines may feel uncomfortable.
Sticking with them will take some effort in the early stages. After a short adjustment
period, you will discover that it gets easier until eventually your new behaviors become
deeply entrenched into your daily routine like grooves in a record. Your new habits will
become as much a part of your daily routine as taking a shower, brushing your teeth or
going to work. Your positive new habits will become a part of your lifestyle.
6. Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is not a generic “one-size-fits-all” program - it’s
individualized for your goals and your body type
Certain universal nutrition laws apply to everyone. Once you’ve established a
solid foundation by mastering these nutrition fundamentals (also known as “baseline
nutrition”), then you need to adjust your nutrition plan to fit your goals and your body
type. This program was developed to identify and accommodate for the many differences
in individual metabolisms and body chemistries.
What works perfectly for one person might be completely ineffective for the next.
There are six billion people on this planet and no two are exactly alike. Each person has
a metabolic rate, digestive capacity, hormonal profile, muscle fiber distribution and body
structure as unique as their fingerprint. That's why a generic, one-size-fits-all diet or
exercise plan is always going to fail. You must learn how to adjust your nutrition and
training to fit your unique needs.
This program will teach you how to determine what body type you have and show
you how to individualize your nutrition and training to do the very best you can with
what Mother Nature gave you to work with.
7. Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is not just about cosmetic improvements – it’s
about your health
The recommendations I make in this program for losing body fat are the same
ones I would make for good health: reduce saturated fat, reduce refined sugars, eat a
variety of natural, unrefined foods, eat plenty of fiber, eat small, frequent meals, drink
plenty of water, and so...