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The Ultimate Holiday Survival Guide:
How to NOT Gain 5-10 lbs of Ugly Body Fat from Halloween Day to New Year’s Eve!
By Cassandra Forsythe and BJ Gaddour
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BJ: Hey this is BJ Gaddour with Mission: Metabolism Bootcamp here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and also with Workout Muse.
I’ve got a special guest today. She’s a leading registered dietitian and fellow Bootcamp owner herself in Connecticut, Cassandra Forsythe. Cassandra, say “Hello”.
Cass: Hi BJ! Hi Everybody!
BJ: Great to have her on board again as she is not only a nutrition expert but also a bootcamp owner and she cranks it out just like we do with our campers and her campers. So what we wanted to do actually, we shared an idea through e-mail about putting together the ultimate holiday survival and potentially the meltdown guide as well to help those that might end up gaining 5 to 10 pounds from Halloween Day to New Year’s Eve. Our goal is to help you survive that period of time and not gain weight or potentially even lose fat during that time. We actually have had clients over the years do just that. If they are really, really motivated to get results and don’t want to wait – and I’m sure Cassandra’s found the same – they have and you can make it happen. Granted, it is a tough time of year to stick with your fitness routine and especially eat correctly with all the temptation around us. So we wanted to get together and basically my expertise is more of the bootcamp workout side of things and Cassandra’s our resident nutrition expert. So we are going to start… I’m going to ask Cassandra a nutrition question that I think is of great importance to both myself and our campers and her campers. Then she is going to ask me something from a workout standpoint. Sound good Cassandra?
Cass: Sounds good let’s go!
BJ: Let’s go with the first question here: What’s the biggest nutrition mistake people make during the holidays so we can all avoid it this happening this time around?
Cass: The biggest mistake is that everyone indulges in excessive sugary treats. Sugar is basically a staple of every holiday but because we have so many holidays all in a row, it becomes a sugar haven and we become floating sugar factories in our bodies. What you need to do is politely say “No” as often as possible. So when your coworker is putting chocolate, red, and green M&M’s candies in the candy dish at work or bringing baked goods because you know it’s the holidays and you’re supposed to eat cookies and sugary things all through the holidays. All the desserts that you may have at holiday parties and all of that stuff, just say “No”. The other thing is the sweet alcoholic beverages too because at every party you’re supposed to drink alcohol and most of the time it has to be sweet like with a candy cane or pepperminty, sugary stuff. Basically, you get the idea that it’s all sugar. Sugar is the thing to really worry about and avoid at all costs. Instead, be a forward thinker and do something different than everyone else would do and set a positive example for people around you. One of the tips I gave one of my corporate bootcampers this morning was, instead of bringing red and green M&Ms or Hershey kisses or something like that bring in a colorful veggie dish that is festive for the occasion. So bring in your red and green bell peppers. Put in some white cauliflower in there and you got your green broccoli too. You can do beets or something like that – maybe that’s not so popular. But get it red and green and you can even make a dip that’s green and put a red tomato flowerette at the top. So make it all festive-like, but not killer for the waistline. You can eat as many vegetables as you want and not gain weight from it. So that’s something that your coworkers will probably appreciate. Do it differently. So one day maybe someone will bring in the cookies or the candy but don’t be that person and set a positive example and make a difference.
BJ: I love it! Sounds great.
The broccoli with the tomato flowerette. That was the best part.
Cass: So, BJ, tell us: What’s the biggest exercise mistake people make during the holidays so we can all avoid it this time around?
BJ: It’s kind of a 3 in 1, if you will. The first one is not making that daily workout appointment. I stress this all the time with our campers. It’s just like brushing your teeth; using the bathroom – you’ve got to do it every day. And I hope you do otherwise something else is wrong… It’s the same with your workouts. We don’t miss work. We don’t miss appointments at work. We don’t miss appointments with family. And your workout has to be approached the same way and that can’t slip during holiday season. So that’s the number one if you will there.
Number 2: Not getting in a workout early on in the day or immediately upon waking. There are some people who can’t workout in the morning for various reasons with family, work, whatever and they have to go in the evening. Do what you have to do! By all means workout in the evening but time after time I’ve found that we have to get that workout done early in the morning. The excuses that can arise at the end of a long stressful day… maybe holiday party comes up and you get invited last-minute or it’s really dark if you’re in a northern climate, particularly during this time of year, so it gets kind of tough to workout when it’s dark, cold and dreary at the end of the day. In the morning at least you’ve got the whole day ahead of yourself after that. So if you can workout in the morning, get it done in the morning, especially for when traveling. When you are traveling, getting a workout in at the end of the day is just not going to happen. I can almost guarantee it.
The last thing is the slippery slope mindset where you miss Monday’s workout and tell yourself it’s not a big deal because you’ll make it up later in the week. Then you miss Wednesday’s workout and get that mindset where you’ll skip this week and workout next week. The before you know it, you’re literally in that situation where it’s not even mid-November and you’re saying ‘I’m just going to skip working out until New Year’s and then get back in shape then’. That’s the type of attitude that just cripples our society in general. People have the attitude of all or nothing and it just doesn’t work that way when it comes to fitness. You can lose the a lot of strength and conditioning with even seven to ten days off. And at least one workout a week will help you will maintain your strength levels, and conditioning levels in a good way. At least 80-90% of that maintenance level that you would like. But you know even one workout a week is great but it won’t help you maintain your weight. It might help you maintain your strength, or maybe a little bit conditioning-wise but you’ve got to get in at least two workouts a week, if not three, and don’t let yourself slip for the holidays because you will – like it is guaranteed. You will walk-in with a spare tire into the new year and have to spend four to six weeks working off that spare tire you put on during the holidays. So intend of making progress in January, you’re just working to get back to square one which is very demoralizing. So those are the three things that combined into one that I think are the biggest mistakes from an exercise standpoint.
Cass: I love that BJ, especially the first one with accountability. Like having that appointment with a trainer in a semi-private group setting or the bootcamp setting. Like knowing you have to be there for the appointment. You signed up for it. Other people there are looking forward to seeing you. That makes it a lot of fun and people stick to that. I find that is making everyone in my camps successful too. That’s awesome.
BJ: We all need it! We all need social support and accountability. It’s not a matter of how hard-core you think you are. All the most successful people have that in place – a good support system. So don’t be afraid to use that. My turn Cassandra! What’s your single best nutrition secret to beat the battle of the bulge this holiday season?
Cass: This one I kinda stole from one of my bootcampers who actually told me this after he had successfully lost 16 pounds in just six weeks and he was not a big guy to begin with. He was just someone who went out – he’s in sales, so he was always eating out for dinner. He was always on the road eating continental breakfast and what not. He said this and I think it’s awesome and it does work. Keep telling yourself that candy bars and carbs will kill you, but really, miss the taste of some of the candies in candy machines. Just miss them but know that they will kill you. Put it in your head, say, ‘These things are evil. These are going to make me gain the weight.’ Your weight will just fall off you when you get rid of that sugar when you get rid of all those simple carbs. They just cause insulin to spike, fat storage hormones to go on hyperdrive and your ability to even feel good is marred. Because sugar only makes you feel good for a few seconds, then you crash and then you have to eat again. So it’s just this perpetual vicious cycle of wanting to eat more because you’re not eating something that gives you stable energy or even positive energy. Using sugar can make you feel kind of negative. You can feel irritable and irrational and it also contributes a lot to that spare tire. So, tell yourself that it’s going to kill you or give you cancer or whatever you want to say in your head and you won’t eat it.
BJ: That’s awesome! When it comes down to diet, it’s instant gratification versus long-term satisfaction. Instant gratification with the treats, but then the guilt! The guilt lasts for several days after that 10 seconds of eating that treat for people. So you’ve just got to really think is it worth it? No one wants to feel guilt the entire holiday season and a lot of us do and it’s a vicious cycle right?
Cass: Yes! Absolutely, because you eat one and you want more. It’s so addicting. Sugar is the most addicting chemical because it releases a lot of pleasure hormones in your brain. When you eat it, you get seratonin and all your happy hormones that say “Yeah! Eat! This is good!” And then you don’t really feel good afterwards, but then you want more because you really like that feeling of happiness for that short time period even though it lead to detrimental effects such as fat gain that you’re working so hard to get rid of. Alright! So BJ, tell us what is your single best exercise tactic – or maybe even exercise – to beat the battle of the bulge this holiday season?
BJ: The number one – the foundation of any solid general fitness plan is three times a week of kind of a high intensity, bootcamp-style metabolic, interval workout – and that was a mouthful! Pretty much a bootcamp style workout to speed up your metabolism. Monday, Wednesday, Friday is the classic training split. You know, three workouts a week, 48 hours between workouts to allow for optimal recovery between these high intensity strength or resistance training sessions. The classic bootcamp style circuit – at least that we use over at Workout Muse – is a 50-10 or 30-30 exercise circuit using a knee-dominant movement, a pushing movement, a hip-dominant movement, a pulling movement, and then some sort of core exercise. You’re hitting your whole body and you’re cycling these movements in a way that allows you to maximize rest in between movements, but allows you to work constantly for 20 straight minutes. You get a lot of work accomplished in a short period of time. We’re all busy and we’re all stressed and we don’t have time for these marathon workouts at any time, especially during the holidays.
Here’s another tactic that I think will really break this down in a more simple way: tit-for-tat. For every 100 calorie treat you consume, understand that you gotta perform at least 50 burpee variations in 5 minutes or less to off-set that caloric amount. To give you an idea – that’s a lot of burps! That’s at least 1 burpee every 5 seconds. Some will say, “What if I can’t do that?” Here’s the beautiful answer to that: If you can’t do 50 burpees in 5 minutes or less, you don’t deserve to have a 100 calorie treat. So it’s kind of a very simple thing, if you do eat 100 calories, go through that 5 minutes of burpees and understand that you might have been able to at least off-set that calorie consumption. Appreciate the amount of oxygen deficit and sweat and buggers coming out of your nose that is required to off-set that 100 calorie treat that is probably the size of your pinky. That mind-set, that approach and that perspective I think will help you maybe make less of those bad choices throughout the holidays.
Cass: And it’s not so much as the calories as it is what the calories in those treats are doing to you body. Right, BJ?They are causing fat storage and your insulin levels to go up and temporary satisfaction with them. So you’ll probably end up storing more of those calories versus actually using them for energy. So that you might even have to do more burpees.
BJ: In all honesty, you’re absolutely right. It’s all hormonal when establishing good diet and exercise from the start. Even if you burn off those calories, it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be in a fat-storing state because of the insulin spike associated with a lot of sugar. Again, if you know you can’t - that you’re not actually in the physical condition to knock out 50 burpees in 5 minutes you don’t even have the right to have a sugary treat. That’s just the honesty that you need to have with yourself. And to take that a whole lot further, I don’t really know a lot of people who can do 50 burpees in 5 minutes without having to call an ambulance. So hopefully that helps.
Cass: I’m gonna try that now! Everyone loves burpees, right BJ?
BJ: They do! Add a jump at the top and add a push up at the bottom and I can almost guarantee it will be a life-changing experience. I’m gonna move on to another question! What are some simple and effective dietary strategies to use at some holiday events to try and stay on track? Clearly, people are gonna do what they do. How do we mitigate the damage?
Cass: The biggest thing is that people think, “I’m going to a big holiday party and I know there’s gonna be a lot of stuff there. I’m just gonna eat less during the day,” So that all of those calories they eat at the party will kind of balance out. That is the worst thing that you could absolutely do. First of all, you set your metabolism on slow drive, so when you get to the holiday party, you’re not really ready to burn off those calories. Your body just kind of goes into starvation mode and says, “I’m going to store everything, because I didn’t eat enough today.” Second of all, you starve yourself all day, so when you finally get presented with all of this tempting food, you can’t say no or control your eating because you didn’t eat enough today. That’s the worst thing you could do. If you have a holiday party coming up, do not starve yourself, do not hold back on calories at all to try to say, I will eat more at this party. Just go to the party and remember what you’re there for – you’re not there to eat. You’re there to socialize with friends. You’re there to show off how good you look in your dress or your outfit or whatever you’re wearing for the guys. You want to look good and feel good and show everyone you have control enough to not sit by the buffet the whole night or stand in front of the dessert bar all night because you’re so hungry that’s all you can do because you can’t talk to anyone because you need to keep eating. That’s one of the first things. Don’t do that. Make sure you eat normally during the day and have normal portions when you go there. OK, you can have some of it, but just don’t overdo it. Just remember protein and vegetables rule. You can actually eat all of this stuff until you burst and for some reason the next day, you’ll be a pound lighter. We know what the reasons are. It’s like highly thermogenic. High fiber keeps you satisfied and traps some of the nutrients so you’re not absorbing all of them., doesn’t cause water retention, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All this good stuff. Also the potassium in all the fruits and vegetables balance out any of the sodium that’s usually found in a lot of these party foods. There’s a lot of crazy things that happen in these party foods, so just remember to stick with the veggie tray. Stick with the chicken skewers. A lot of times the protein quality isn’t going to be the greatest at parties, cuz people you know, tend to just buy a lot but not necessarily high quality. So you’ll see like little hotdogs wrapped in their little buns and I don’t know, all these finger foods. Like poppers – I don’t even know what they are because I don’t even buy them – but there’s some crazy stuff out there. Sure they may taste good the second you put them in your mouth and they’re highly addictive and you can’t stop, but they’re not gonna help. So chose wisely when you’re eating and remember you can eat a ton of veggies and fill up on that and not gain weight the next day.
BJ: Just to add one thing, if I could. One of the best strategies I’ve found with this type of thing – because you know, I’ve got a great appetite and I’ve gotten in trouble in the past with this type of stuff. I’m probably best suited to having a meal before I go to events like this. I’ll have a good meal and I might graze on vegetables but I go in with a full tummy. The analogy I’ll give you is that if you’re an emotional eater or if you’re a carb addict, going to these parties really hungry is like bringing an un-neutered dog into a dog shelter. It’s just not gonna work. And that’s exactly what happens. If you starve yourself, like Cassandra mentioned, you’re going to spike your cortisol levels, your cravings for sugar go up and it’s a vicious cycle. So I think that’s a great strategy to take and just like Cassandra said, kill the veggies, kill the protein and it always has a great response for your body.
Cass: The last one is just to stay away from all the desserts and cookies and sweets. I know it looks good, but most of the time, it’s not, unless someone made something really awesome and homemade. Half of the time people are lazy and get store-bought cookies or some store-bought cake and it’s crap anyways. Sorry for my foul language, but it’s not good. Chose one to have. Go through the whole dessert tray and be like, OK, there is this awesome oatmeal raisin cookie, I’m going to have that. That is going to be the thing I have. But if you can possibly just not eat it at all you’re going to be so much better off. You won’t feel the guilt, you won’t feel the fullness, you won’t feel the insulin spike or sugar rush and you’ll feel better for it. Actually, I have one more thing, it’s the alcohol too. Alcohol is this chemical that causes your body to store fat and stops your body from burning fat. So it’s a double-edged sword. So it says, everything that can possibly be stored as fat, which is usually fat and carbohydrates, gets stored, but then it doesn’t let your body release anything as energy either. So it just stores it and doesn’t let it be used for you to have energy for the night. Stay away from alcohol if you possibly can and be the designated driver or do something cool like that. You don’t have to drink at every holiday event or even drink at all. I don’t drink at all and I don’t feel like I miss out on parties because of it. Half the time people wonder if I’m drunk because I have so much energy and I feel good and I’m like, “No, it’s just me.” Be the cool person at the party without alcohol. Alright so BJ, tell us what are some simple and effective exercise strategies that you can do either before or after holiday events to stay on track? So, what can someone do if they do indulge big time at a party and they do still have time to workout, or maybe it’s a lunchtime event?
BJ: Well, here’s the first thing to really clue in on, is understanding that carbohydrate consumption is entirely activity dependent. The less active you are the less carbohydrates you should consume and the less you require. And the more active you are, the more carbohydrates you can get away with in your diet. And that’s the approach you should take for the holidays as well. Now the thing about it is, we don’t have time for extra long workouts throughout the week. But if you know that there’s a party on Thursday night or a Saturday evening party, there might be time then to perform an extra long workout before and/or after the event. What I mean by extra long, I’m talking about taking a 20 minute circuit and moving it into a 40-45 minute circuit just to make sure we are depleting more muscle glycogen or the sugar that’s stored in your muscles. So that you have more of an ability to soak up those sugar stores in your muscles so you don’t store as much fat. The reality is, no matter how much you do or how much exercise, some fat storage will happen when you eat a lot of crap and junk carbs, especially high fat in conjunction with the really high carbohydrate amount. But your body will better handle that sugar within an hour or two of really intensive exercise. Maybe do a double workout. If you’re used to maybe a 20 minute workout, do a 20 minute circuit, take a 5 minute rest, get some water or stretch, then do that same circuit again and just bang it out. Two-for-one it! That’s a great strategy to use to give yourself a bigger appreciation for what’s involved when you go out and have those treats.
Plus, I’ve always found that if you workout, particularly on the weekends, get a weekend workout in – essentially working out Friday and Saturday at some point – it really helps you to prevent overdoing it with food on that same day. Because people just know how hard they worked and they don’t want to just totally off-set that workout. If you don’t workout on those days, I can almost guarantee you that you’re going to be eating crap on those days and at holiday events. That’s one thing.
I would also just look at performing total body exercises within a total body workout. As much as possible. We talked about pushing, pulling, knee, hip, core movements. Try to make every movement as total body as possible, burn as many calories as possible, but burn as much muscle glycogen as possible too. Again, we’re talking the biggest bang for your buck here. We’re talking squat to rows, burpees, any push-up variation, a curl-to-squat-to-presses, lunging variations involving a curl-to-press, and of course whole body exercises like swings, cleans, snatches, jerks, etc. Whatever you can do to combine multiple movement patterns and muscle groups at the same time, do that because you’re going to get a bigger bang for you buck.
And then we talk about what really helps you burn sugar in your muscles. Your goal of your workouts is not to burn fat, I think that’s one thing to really point out too. We’re not trying to burn fat during the workout. It’s gonna happen, but the goal is to burn a lot of sugar and deplete the sugar stores in your muscles so that in conjunction with a lower sugar diet, your body is forced to burn more fat during the recovery period and the days between intensive workouts. What the research shows is that it’s about 30-60 seconds of intensive work that tends to burn the most glycogen or sugar. So when you’re doing these circuits, 30-60 seconds on, about 15-30 seconds off – that type of work to rest ratio in 20 minutes, almost guarantees the perfect workout to allow you a little bit of room during the holidays here. Again, understand that in a 20 minute workout, someone that’s about 160 lbs maybe burns 40-50 grams of sugar max in that time frame. If you double it up, you double the glycogen burn if you do the longer workout, but still… Let’s just say that you consume 100 grams of sugar – that’s a dinner roll or maybe a piece of fruit and then a dessert or two and you’re already at 100 grams of sugar. It doesn’t take a whole lot of food to get to that level. Equate the amount of time it takes to burn sugar with the amount of sugar you have coming in and have an appreciation for that and I think that will help a lot in terms of preventing you from eating the really bad stuff. At least doing enough activity to mitigate and weather the storm.
Cass: Absolutely. And if you start in a lower carb state, you’ll dip into whatever carbs you have in your body and you’ll be able to access the fat much quicker. Your body will turn on lipolytic enzymes and use fat more as a fuel when you’re in a lower carb state. So eating less carbs say the day before or day of an event or something like that and then doing your big workout will help you burn more fat. You can fill up a little of your glycogen stores at the event and then use it at the next day workout to exercise really hard.
BJ: That’s a great lead-in. For those who don’t know, Cassandra actually did her doctorate work in one of many things including low carb diets. That’s kind of the whole thing: low carb weekdays to allow for higher carb weekends. It’s a plan that works well for a lot of people. Let’s go into how you can maintain or potentially lose weight during the holidays while still being able to indulge in moderation. How do we do that Cassandra?
Cass: Well, one of the things I find works extremely well for people is carb cycling. The High/Medium/Low Carb plan or No Carb plan 5 days in a row or whatever you want to do. I find the cycling works really well. Doing no carb days is really tough and it can make you feel pretty tired sometimes depending on if you’re eating enough total calories to just maintain energy levels. Cycling in a Normal/Low/No carb fashion works really, really well to maintain and lose weight. So you can think about planning a party on Friday, maybe that’s going to be your low carb day or your normal carb day. Then prior to that you have a no carb day, then the low carb day, then a higher carb day during the week so that you sort of get in this mode where you’re always being able to use every type of nutrient. So if you’re always eating carbs, always, always, always, your body has no way to burn those carbs or to burn fat as fuel. It turns off fat-burning enzymes. But if you have a day of no carbs or eating fats and proteins and lots of vegetables your body turns on those fat burning enzymes so you can whittle your waist. So you keep every enzyme on high capacity so that you can always burn off as much as possible of every nutrient you’re eating. It just changes your hormonal profile as well when you’re in a no-carb state. Makes you more insulin sensitive so that when you do come to a higher carb day – say you’ve got a party the next day and you know you’re going to be eating like some chips and salsa or some kind of carby food like sweet potato at the holiday event – you will be able to use those carbs as energy or put them into glycogen rather than diverting them into fat cell storage because your insulin receptors are more sensitive and can say “yes, this is a food I can take in” versus going “no, I can’t take it in, I’m going to just store it away cause it’s not useful”. So low-carb eating cycling works really, really well. If you want to go low carb during the week and high carb on the weekend for some people that works well too. I find with women though the carb cycling works a little bit better. Men respond really, really well to the low carb diets in the research I’ve done. Women don’t respond as well so cycling is a little bit easier for them.
BJ: I’ve actually kind of found the same. A lot of guys tend to thrive on the low-carb weekdays and just sort of feel really energetic and tend to feel like crap when they carb load because they don’t handle sugar as well. That’s a great point for women. Can we give an example of the Low/Medium/High – 3 carb rotation and the small difference that happens between each day?
Cass: Well think about your carbs on Low/Medium/High or No/Medium/Normal or whatever you want to call it. Think of your carbs in more grains and starches. So on a normal carb day you would have your oatmeal and whey protein powder for breakfast with some flaxseed or something like that. Then your snack during the day you can have fruit and some nut butter. Then you could do a salad with fruit at lunch and a snack maybe you’d do like rye crackers with almond butter or cheese. Then dinner if you want to have brown rice and veggies and protein. Then at night time just stick to some berries or something like that if you want to have something sweet at night. Then your lower carb day, you would take out some of the fruit, some of the grains so like by dinner time you would skip the rice or you would skip the fruit at your mid-morning snack and you can have something just like mixed nuts. Then on the no carb day you would have eggs for breakfast with lots of veggies. I love to see avocados on no-carb days. I eat like an entire avocado. Like just take a spoon and eat it out. Lots of nuts and seeds. Lots of salads with protein and olive oil and your dinner just load up on the veggies like a side of green beans with another big salad with some fish or pork tenderloin. Then if you still need to eat at night, stick to the veggies. No fruit. If you have to do fruit, just try to stick to berries. But just like veggies and/or some mixed nuts. It works really well. You don’t have to starve yourself on no-carb days, you just got to think: nothing with carbs in it, or no higher carb foods. That tends to be mostly grains and whole pieces of fruit. So you would stick to things more like berries and greens and stuff like that. And don’t forget about eating fat because fats – especially for women – because women use fats very well as a fuel. It’s one of the most oxidized nutrients when we’re working out and just during the day. We just use it really well. So that’s kind of some examples. Don’t starve yourself because if you do, when it comes to a high-carb day, like you’re doing that no-carb day, you might go a little crazy on your higher carb day.
BJ: Some people thrive on a really rigid structure with really no flexibility and that’s the person that might do really well with low-carb weekdays then high-carb on the weekends. But someone that never really overdoes it and likes more balance and likes to know that the next time they can have fruit or whole grain bread is only a day or two away, you’re probably going to do really well with that three day carb cycling. What I found really works well for our campers, you know the low-carb day would be pretty much just vegetables. Mainly green vegetables, even eliminating fruit on that day. A kind of a good medium carb day would be fruits and vegetables, doing the lower G.I., higher fiber fruits like berries and cherries and again lots of veggies as well. Then the higher carb day, like Cassandra was saying, we’re talking about things like beans, whole grains, sweet potatoes, oatmeal. Those things that are higher carbohydrate, but if you cycle it, you can get away with that stuff. Most people can’t have oatmeal and bread every single day. You’ll be overflowing your sugar stores and then you’re storing that as fat in your belly, your hips and your thighs. That’s a great strategy that I think will pay dividends. The people who say they struggle on low-carb diets is because of one of two things. One, they are not drinking enough water or they are not having enough fat in their diet. If you get enough water and enough fat in your diet, I promise you will do really well with either the carb cycling or the low-carb weekday, high-carb weekend approach.
Cass: Absolutely. And you need to have that fat to allow your body to use fat as a fuel. Because if you’re just eating just protein and vegetables with just not even any nuts or egg yolks or anything like that, your body won’t have anything to function on. Your body doesn’t use protein well as a fuel. It uses it a little bit as a fuel but not really well at all and you’ll feel really crappy. Then you’re not going to want to work out and you’re not going to want to eat well the next day. You’ll just give in. It works. The biggest thing with all of it is stay away from any flour products and I meant to say this throughout this whole thing. I’m saying it now. If it’s made from a flour product or a flour, stay away. Think about all flour products as evil. Just like candy, flour is just as bad. The analogy that I was told many years ago and I’ve always said it is that if you get flour wet you can use it as paste. You can use it as wall paper paste. It coats your intestines and sticks to you like glue. So it’s not good. Not good at all. So that means no bread, no cookies, no muffins, no bagels. Some people, that’s all they live on. They have a bagel for breakfast, they have a sandwich for lunch and then at dinner they have pasta. To get flour products out of your life, you’re going to need to get more creative. You’re going to use things like quinoa, whole grains, oatmeal. You’re going to have salads for lunch instead of sandwiches and soup and stuff like that. So think about no flour products, you know, focusing on all real, whole foods and you will see a huge difference in your body.
BJ: I love that.
Cass: Alright! BJ! How can we all still lose weight over the holidays if we don’t have access to a gym or bootcamp. Like sometimes gyms close or they close earlier or the holidays are not open or maybe your bootcamp owner takes a week off for the holidays or two weeks off or something. What can we do if that happens?
BJ: One thing that both of our campers have access to is the equipment free bootcamp to go exercise options with Workout Automator powered by WorkoutMuse.com. That’s something that every new month you get a whole slew of these workouts that you download. Instructional videos show you how and exactly what to do – Levels 1, 2, 3. The soundtracks then tell you what to do so it’s automatic. You just got to take the time to download that stuff and use it if you can’t get to the gym or you’re going to miss a workout due to schedule issues or your on vacation or traveling or it’s an off week. That’s always a great back up plan to have to cover yourself and make sure you get those workouts in.
What are the equipment free exercises, the classics? There are squats, lunge variations, hip hinge or hip extension variations, push up variations and then the pillar variations: the front, side plank, back plank. Those types of things and you just kind of piece them together in a circuit format. We mentioned 50-10, 30-30. 50-10 being more of an endurance based circuit and 30-30 being more of a strength based circuit with higher intensity options and more advanced variations. It really is that simple. You’re picking those movements that work your entire body and you circuit through and get it done in 20 minutes.
People say this all the time, “I only have 5 minutes to workout.” I’ll give you a 4 minute workout here that I can guarantee will have a positive impact. It will be effective. It’s not optimal. 20 minutes does go a longer way than 4 in terms of total calorie burn and the whole metabolic climate we’re trying to create but if you got to get a 4 minute workout in, you do it. It’s basically that 20-10 Tabatas sequence. 20 seconds of maximum effort, 10 seconds of rest, 8 total rounds for a 4 minute total body blast and again you want to select a total body movement here. So let’s give a body weight example – could be a burpee – where you go from a standing position and you squat your hands down to the floor, without rounding your spine, drop at the hips and jump out to push up position, stand up through the heels and repeat for time. You can make that harder by adding a pushup at the bottom or adding a jump coming up. If you have a resistance band, do band squat to rows for 20-10. You’re working your entire body and you’re getting a lot done in a certain time period. In terms of resistance level, mini-bands work well for women, monster bands work well for men. The best place to get bands is resistancebandtraining.com. My boy Dave Schmitz does it better than anybody else. He has the best bands an he is the best in terms of how to use them the right way. Let’s say you have a pair of dumbbells at home. In terms of dumbbells, females we’re talking 8-12 lb. dumbbells are a great start, maybe even a little bit heavier. Then for guys 15-20+ lb. dumbbells are a good fit. I’d go hexagonal dumbbells because again they allow you to get in those pushup supported positions without having to worry about having the dumbbells roll. Target, Walmart, a sporting goods store you can get this for under $30 easily. Especially the lighter the weights are cheaper. Dumbbell curl to squat to presses. You’re doing a pull, a push and a lower body movement all in one. 20 on, 10 off. Crank it. Try to get about 6 to 10 reps minimum per 20 seconds. If you have access to a kettle bell, my favorite is the swing. You can get a lot of mileage and bang for your buck out of swings. They hit just about everything, particularly the back side of the body which we all need a lot of work on. The glutes, hamstrings and lower through upper back. Those are weak areas that we want to hit and a great way to do it is with swings. If you’re a female, we’re talking 8 – 12 kilogram, for guys between a 16 and 24 kilogram and just trying to smoke out at least 10 swings in 20 seconds. So again, I’ve given you body weight, a band, a dumbbell and a kettlebell option. A 4 minute routine. A 20 on, 10 off. The 20 has to be intense and you need to earn the right to get that 10 second rest. If you do it correctly, you’ll feel a big impact from this and it will get that metabolism elevated for at least another 24 hours. The longer workout will have a bigger after burn just because of the duration factor.
Cass: Awesome. I want to add that I workout at home. I’m a new mom. There’s some days the baby’s sleeping and you can’t just be like “OK kid I’ll see you later, I’m going to the gym” So I workout at home and the most motivating thing for me is having the Workout Muse music. Having the “ready, set, go” and having the intense music playing for me to get my heart rate up and make me work and do what I need to do. Often times I just go downstairs in the basement. I have some equipment down there. I don’t have a whole big home gym or anything, I’ve just got some simple things down there like an ab wheel and a couple dumbbells and bands and stuff like that so it doesn’t even have to get crazy and I put that music on and I can crank it. I can get an awesome workout in just 20 minutes if that’s all I have. If I put baby down and I let her sleep for a little bit and me, I have to try to get laundry done or something so I love having that as a motivating factor. I think a lot of people will really benefit from having that music there because sometimes you might say, I’m going to go downstairs to workout and you don’t have anything to motivate you, then you just won’t. So get the music there, it’s awesome!
BJ: I appreciate that. It’s definitely hard to look at the clock. Cassandra is a new mom, she’s got to take care of her baby and work from home all at the same time and she still has time to get in her workouts. So nobody has an excuse. We’re all busy. We all have stuff going on. No one is any busier than the next person. No more excuses, get it done. So Cassandra, what are you and your campers doing this holiday season to survive or melt it down?
Cass: Well, with my corporate bootcampers, I am wrapping up a biggest winner transformation contest and the fist 12 people that joined the competition in the first 6 weeks, there was an 85 lb. loss. Which is awesome. I’m anticipating at least getting to 100 next week when I do their final weigh in and that’s amazing. By doing this transformation contest right before the holidays, everybody feels so good about themselves and thinks I don’t want to gain that weight back. I look good, I feel good, I know how to eat well. So that’s one thing I do is I set them up in a happy place first and keep on them because I’m still teaching bootcamp with them. They now know, stay away from this and that. So I get them the hands on experience they need so that they know indulging isn’t all that great. Then at the local bootcamp, I’m coaching a group maximizing metabolism and kind of nutrition coaching group that is giving them the support they need so that they can look great in their holiday dresses. I’m also considering doing a transformation challenge for the best dressed contest for New Year’s Eve. Everyone can look awesome. Their arms don’t giggle and they don’t feel like they have sausage arms. Usually one wears something long but most women show off their arms and guys don’t have the belly, you can’t button your pants. The coaching group is there at least so we can talk about calories, carbs, protein, what to chose, when to chose it, why – all that stuff. A new coaching group right over the holidays is going to keep everyone on track and have that support and accountability they need to make it to New Year’s without gaining those 10 – 15 lbs.
BJ: That is awesome stuff. Again, that’s why you’re one of the best. I love it.
Cass: Well, you’re one of the best too BJ, so tell me what you guys are doing at your bootcamp to survive or meltdown during the holiday season.
BJ: I always go back to a great analogy that Coach John Wooden used, he coached the legendary UCLA Bruins college basketball team. One thing that I always remember hearing is that they would do the same drills every, every, every single day. Same drills. They would perfect those drills and the cohesion between the teammates was instinctual. By the end of the season when they entered the playoff competition, they were just automatic. It all goes back to the basics. It never changes. It’s always going to be protein, produce and water, every 2 hours. Don’t come to me tomorrow and ask if it’s going to be different, because it’s not. I don’t care if it’s a full moon or half moon or global warming, this stuff is static. This is the stuff that we know is going to be best – protein, produce and water that is going to give you the best results. Those are the fundamentals. Those are the drills we practice every day. We just get better, better and better at those. That’s number 1.
Number 2. You’ve got to plan some things in advance here and that’s one thing we really stress with our campers. Take the November calendar out and just look at it. When are your parties? Can you identify 3 or 4 days that are going to get kind of ugly? What do you think you’re going to do? Well, if you already know it’s going to get ugly and it’s gonna happen, you’ve got to be an all-star on all other days in between. You’ve got to earn the right to have a bit of ugliness on those days. Ideally in moderation, but whatever happens, happens. But if you really do it right and you are perfect between those 3 or 4 other times, you will definitely maintain your weight during the holidays. If you want lose weight during the holidays, you’re going to have to curtail the amount of those days. It’s just planning those days out and a little bit of common sense here goes a long way. Really, most of the damage is going to happen on the weekends typically. Give yourself a 24 hour flexibility period from Friday to Saturday evening. If it’s kind of scattered and you’re in Sales and Marketing and you’re traveling and you have a lot of parties and it’s on Tuesday or Thursday nights, give yourself 1 or 2 preplanned reward meals that you limit the fun to. Keep it social, leave it social and get right back on track afterwards. Earn the right for those rewards – that’s huge. Preplan flexibility. Earn the right to be flexible. You don’t deserve to eat like crap unless you really work hard and eat well 80-90% of the time and even then we really never deserve it.
From a survival standpoint, if you just want to maintain your weight, we expect our campers to make 8 out of 9 workouts each month. You got to make 8 out of 9. I’ll give you one miss because, you never know when there’s an apocalyptic event that might occur or traffic or an unrelated event. I’ll give you 1, but you gotta make at least 8 out of 9, that’s not asking a whole lot, especially when you’re investing in yourself to get better. If you can’t make that workout, use Workout Automator to get it done at another time of day. Just get it done.
If you want to melt it down – these are the people that I think about most from the past. They do their Monday/Wednesday/Friday workouts with us. Then they will do their cardio intervals Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday, their non-bootcamp days. A great example is 60-120 cardio intervals. So 60 seconds of maximum effort 120 seconds of maximum recovery performed on a spin bike. It can be performed using swings or training ropes, battle ropes, squat to presses or those classic cardio or plyometric movements like skater jumps, squat jumps, jumping jacks, stationary running – those types of things. 120 seconds of rest, that can be stretching, foam rolling. I love doing that type of stuff during recovery to make sure we’re getting more flexible and improving tissue quality. Instead of just running in place which is kind of boring. Use the recovery to actually get something accomplished, work on mobility. Or they are going to attend various classes at the Fitness Asylum. We have a new abs class coming out soon – Abs, Butts, Shoulders – A TRX class, a card kickboxing class. Our kickboxing instructor Eloise is phenomenal and people love her class and the class helps get the aggression out at the end of the day. We offer Kettlebell Kaos class on Saturdays. Again, that Saturday morning workout is huge, especially if you find that Friday morning you kill it, you gotta get back on track again Saturday morning. Otherwise you’re going to kill it again on Saturday morning and Saturday evening and Sunday morning you just wake up and your face is bloated. You feel pudgy. You’ve got gas and the gas is horrible and it’s offending your family and friends. So consider that if you can’t get these workouts in on your own on the weekends, take a class. Carbs give you bad gas, that’s something we can all agree on.
Cass: They can do that absolutely! But they fill you up so what do you do?
BJ: We got a lot of content in the last hour. I hope it helps. Anything to end with Cassandra?
Cass: I think that this has been one of the best podcasts and resources for information out there. If you still have questions, I don’t know what else we could give you because you have to plan and learn about what you’re eating. Carbs aren’t the end all. We’ve just been warped into thinking fat is bad and protein is going to make our kidneys explode and that carbs are supposed to be the thing that we should eat all the time and that’s just wrong, wrong thinking and that’s why our society is so big and has so many problems with health. Don’t listen to what you hear on these public health messages because it’s not working and that’s why we need to listen to this. This is what’s right.
BJ: I would like to conclude that this is a mind-set thing. Who are you? Are you someone who is sloppy about the way they eat? And the way they dress? And the way they plan or prepare for their job? It all carry’s through. Don’t be sloppy! Do things the right way. Plan things out. You’re better than caving into sugar. You’re better than caving into the instant gratification. That’s for everybody else, that’s not for you. You are special. You go to camp. You make that appointment. You get it done. You get through a tough workout that most people can’t get through and use that as a tool to earn the right to indulge or empower yourself to not need to eat like crap to have a good time. It’s a mindset thing. Figure out who you are. Throughout this whole time period ask yourself if a lean person eats that? Does a lean person do that? No! Most of the times I bet you’ll probably say no. Because you’re NOT going to be at parties with not a whole lot of lean people if you’re in America or most of the world at this whole point, with the obesity epidemic the way it is. So figure out who you are and if you’re listening to this call and have gotten through to the end, you are definitely a special person because we’ve been on for an hour and it’s been a lot of good content. The people that are special stick around to the end because they are always looking for that last golden nugget to get better and if you’re hearing us right now, that’s you. You’re special. So, thanks for sticking around. Hope this helps. Cassandra, thank you so much. She is absolutely one of the best in the industry when it comes to nutrition. She lives it as a busy mom and fellow bootcamp owner herself. It’s always a thrilling thing to get on the phone with her and share ideas.
Cass: Thanks BJ! It’s been awesome!
BJ: My pleasure! Again, this is BJ Gaddour with Mission Metabolism and Workout Muse. On behalf of Cassandra Forsythe, for The Perfect Body Bootcamp and also a contributor to ProGrade Nutrition. She does some phenomenal nutritional articles for them. Don’t gain weight this holiday season. I will be so upset and I will hunt you down and I will make you do burpees until the end of time. Again I hope this helps all of our campers have a happy, safe and healthy holiday season. I look forward to all of us having a phenomenal new year for 2011. Let’s get after it!
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