Authors: Yuri Elkaim
Interval Speed Burst #2: Intermediate
| 10 seconds at 100 percent effort |
| 30 seconds at recovery pace |
| Repeat 5 times (just over 3 minutes of total work) |
Interval Speed Burst #3: Advanced
| 10 seconds at 100 percent effort |
| 10 seconds at recovery pace |
| Repeat 15 times (5 minutes of total work) |
If you’d like the “follow-along” versions of these workouts, go to my Web site,
alldayfatburningdiet.com/resources.
Before
you even attempt any of the above interval protocols, make sure you spend at least 5 minutes warming up your muscles to prevent injury and generate more bloodflow for the work ahead.
A good warmup should consist of the following:
•
Aerobic component: 2 to 5 minutes of cardiovascular activity (jogging, cycling, skipping, etc.) that gradually increases in intensity. You should notice your body getting warm and even breaking a little bit of a sweat.
•
Dynamic movement component: Now that your body is warm, it’s time to work out the kinks, dust off the cobwebs, and get your muscles and joints used to the ranges of motion and movement patterns that you’ll be encountering during the workout. At this stage, the goal isn’t to stretch but rather to go through movements that will progressively loosen your muscles and lubricate your joints. Examples of dynamic warmup movements include lunge walks, inchworms, pushups, leg swings, and any other bodyweight movement that emphasizes flexibility, strength, and range of motion.
Your warmup should take about 5 to 7 minutes total and prepare you for the more intense activity you’re about to undertake. Check out the following blog post for a great warmup:
yurielkaim.com/1474/dynamic-warm-up-exercises/.
A CLEVER TRICK TO BURN MORE FAT
Pssst. I have a secret to share with you. It’s a trick to help push your fat-burning capabilities further. Remember, immediately after you finish your speed bursts, free fatty acids (from broken-down fat) will flood into your bloodstream. Countless studies have shown that this is the time when your body, since it’s recovering, really relies on those fats for fuel. For instance, a 2008 study showed that even though carbohydrates were the predominant fuel source during the actual workout, for more than 3 hours afterward, fats became the main contributor to energy.
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Basically, the most fat was burned postworkout. But again, workout intensity sets the stage for this to happen.
Now,
to really take advantage of this fat-burning window, I strongly recommend following your speed burst activity with 30 minutes (or more) of low-intensity cardio. This will help shuttle those free fatty acids floating around in your bloodstream into your muscles to be burned as fuel. Since I live in the Great White North, when it’s warm outside, I’ll go to the park and run sprints for a few minutes. Then, I’ll simply go for a 30-minute walk with my dogs and kill two birds with one stone—walking the dogs and burning extra fat from exercise I would have done anyway. Or, if I’m traveling and happen to be close to the beach, I’ll run sprints on the beach and follow up with a nice, long walk to discover the local area.
Remember, these low-intensity sessions are when your body prefers to use fat as its main fuel source—something most people don’t understand. So make low-intensity activity work for you and pluck more of those low-hanging fruits (or, in this case, fats). The key is to keep moving so that your body uses the free fatty acids released from stored fat instead of being converted back into fat—a process known as
re-esterification
. It’s really quite simple to make this work for you.
SHOULD YOU EXERCISE ON AN EMPTY STOMACH?
For years, this has been one of the most common questions I’ve been asked by people looking to lose weight. In my mind, and according to a lot of the research I’m about to show you, it makes total sense to train in a fasted state on some workout days. I can tell you from firsthand experience that fasted high-intensity cardio like the interval speed bursts you’ll be doing on Low-Carb Days produces superior fat-loss results.
Now, I know this goes against the golden rule of meal timing that I talked about earlier—that your biggest meal should come right after your workout—but on this one day, we’re going to change things up and keep your body in a fasted state a little longer (1 to 2 hours) after you finish your short bout of sprints. I’ll show you why in just a second.
But
first, whenever you exercise in a fasted state, you must make sure of the following:
1. Intensity is high.
2. Duration is short.
In fact, intensity and duration are inversely related. After all, you can only sprint for so long, right? So it follows that if you’re training for an hour, your intensity must be reduced to allow you to last that long. That’s not what we want here. Remember, on your Low-Carb Days we’re talking about 5 to 10 minutes of high-intensity work with the option of following those interval speed bursts with some light cardio for another 30 minutes or so.
Intensity is the key to losing fat and staying lean because it triggers the release of hormones that preserve muscle (i.e., growth hormone and testosterone) and help unlock stored fat (i.e., epinephrine). If possible, do your best to perform your interval speed bursts (and most of your workouts in this program) first thing upon waking in the morning after an overnight fast. If your schedule only allows you to work out later in the evening, make sure to wait 3 to 4 hours after a meal before training for maximum fat burning. This will ensure that insulin is low and your body more readily taps into its fat stores as a source of fuel for your workout.
Research has suggested that carb intake before or during an exercise session can blunt the expression of several metabolic genes following exercise. Insulin may play a role here.
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Another way to think of it is that providing nutrients to the body makes it experience exercise as less of a stressor than fasted-state training. Why should it adapt or compensate when all the fuel it needs has been provided?
So should you exercise in a fasted state all the time? I don’t think so. But you certainly can on certain days, like your Low-Carb Days, when carb intake (and thus insulin) will be low anyway. Or you can simply listen to your body and, if it’s okay with training in a fasted state, go for it. You’ll burn more fat as a result. I wouldn’t recommend this approach for athletes or those looking to pack on pounds of
muscle,
but again, that’s not the focus of this program. We’re here to burn fat and turn your body into a 24/7 fat-burning machine.
Fasted exercise means that you’re working out when your blood sugar and glycogen stores might be a little low. This often makes fasted workouts more challenging—you simply don’t have enough fuel in the tank. But again, we’re exercising at a high intensity for only 5 to 10 minutes here, so you should be fine.
In general, I do suggest that the great majority of your daily allotment of calories and carbs be ingested in the postworkout period, not before. If you must eat before you train, the immediate preworkout meal should contain very few low–glycemic index carbs. And if it’s a Low-Carb Day, you’re exercising for only 5 to 10 minutes, in which case your body already has plenty of glycogen fuel to draw on.
You don’t have to do all of your workouts for the rest of your life in a fasted state, but at least for these 21 days, I recommend that you do your Low-Carb Day interval speed bursts that way. The cool part about fasted exercise and higher-intensity exercise is that both train your body to become a better fat-burning machine. And they’ve even been shown to have favorable effects on muscle building compared with training in a fed state, especially where strength training has been employed. This can be very helpful to keep in mind on your 1-Day Feast and Regular-Cal training days, so I’ll go into more detail about it in those sections.
If you absolutely must have something to eat before this short workout, then have a small amount of protein (such as protein powder in water) because of its beneficial effect on your metabolic rate.
To summarize:
•
Ideally, do your interval speed bursts on an empty stomach to keep insulin levels low and to allow your body to rely more heavily on fat.
•
Alternatively, ingest 30 grams of protein 10 to 15 minutes before exercising.
•
Break your fast postworkout. Your biggest meal should come within 1 hour of your workouts except on your Low-Carb Days, when I challenge you to stay in a fasted state for 1 to 2 hours postworkout.
•
If you have blood sugar issues and feel you need to eat something right after your workout, then please do so. That’s better than passing out, right? As always, consult your doctor.
WHAT TO EAT AFTER YOUR WORKOUT
I believe your most important meal of the day is your postworkout meal. After a workout is when your muscles are ready to soak up carbs to refuel and protein to rebuild, as well as other vital nutrients. However, I’m making an exception on your Low-Carb Days because, after your interval speed bursts, you can maximize your reliance on fat post-workout (without compromising your lean muscle mass) by not eating anything for a little while longer.
We’ve seen that high-intensity exercise forces your body to release all kinds of fat-burning hormones by ramping up your sympathetic nervous system. This is what helps create a fat-burning hormonal environment inside your body. However, the minute you consume calories, you’ll spike your body’s primary storage hormone—insulin. Again, this is totally fine on most days, when we want our biggest meal right after our workout.
The beauty of occasionally not eating right after a workout (at least on your Low-Carb Days) is that the absence of insulin and presence of adrenaline set the stage for a heavier reliance on fat breakdown instead of fuel storage. The other amazing part of a short fast postworkout is that the body actually releases more growth hormone (GH) as a way of preserving lean muscle tissue.
Fasting and intense exercise are two of the only natural ways (in addition to deep sleep) to increase GH. And that’s very important for preserving your muscle mass, which keeps your metabolic rate highly active and churning through fat all day long.
Your body knows what it needs to do to survive. In a short-term fasted state, your body will go to great lengths to preserve its muscle. And the more muscle you maintain, the healthier your metabolic rate and the more fat you burn. This is contrary to the old-school advice that not eating will put you into fat-storing survival mode, deplete your muscle, and ruin your metabolism.
DAY
2: THE 1-DAY FEAST
Full-Body Metabolic Conditioning
The only thing as damaging to our waistlines as the popularity of the low-fat movement of the 1980s was the “cardio is better for weight loss” movement that gained popularity during the same time. What a mess it has caused.
As you’ll see in this program, the only cardio I’m recommending is your 5 to 10 minutes of interval speed bursts and the occasional 30-minute light cardio session when you’re in a fasted state. Walking on a daily basis should be a given. Other than that, we’re going to stop wasting hours upon hours slaving over cardio machines.
In the last decade, a lot of research has revealed that long, slow cardio workouts can actually sabotage your ability to burn fat. Think about that for a moment. If you’re tired, fed up, and disappointed with the results you’ve been getting from your current workout, then I want you to know that this cutting-edge research is going to change your life. You’ll also see exactly how the entire fitness industry—from personal trainers to gym owners to equipment manufacturers—has it all wrong when it comes to losing fat.
The good news is that the tide is slowly shifting. If you’ve been told that you need to do up to an hour of cardio per day to lose weight, then you should know that’s a big fat lie. Remember, exercise—especially when done improperly (like doing too much cardio)—is a big stress on your body. It puts your body into survival mode, in which it switches to its “store and hold on to fat” setting. Other studies show that excessive cardio can not only make you fatter, but accelerate the aging process.
The truth is that when you switch from relying on cardio to doing the unique, short-burst workouts in the All-Day Fat-Burning Diet, you’ll shed fat quicker and feel better in just a few weeks. I’m tired of seeing well-intentioned people waste their time in the gym. I don’t want you to feel stuck. I don’t want you to hate your body and feel ashamed of the way you look. Most people believe that the key to losing fat and getting in shape is to spend lots of time running on a
treadmill.
And as a former pro soccer player who’s seen firsthand what too much running can do to your body, I can tell you that excessive cardio is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. You see, long-duration cardio actually trains your body to store fat. It makes your body
guard
its fat. Why? Because of what it does to your hormones.
We’ve seen many times already in this book that your hormones are largely responsible for whether or not your body is a fat burner or a fat storer. According to a study in the
European Journal of Applied Physiology
, 20 weeks of daily cardio among women led to significant decreases in T3 (that vital thyroid hormone that controls your metab
olism)
and leptin (the “I’m full” hormone). The researchers speculated that these unfavorable hormonal drops were a means of energy conservation in these exercising women.
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Why would they need to conserve energy? Because their bodies were stressed by the sheer amount of exercise. And what happens when your body undergoes prolonged stress? It switches to fat-storing mode. It slows down your metabolism as a way of conserving energy, which means you won’t be burning fat. But it gets worse. Prolonged endurance training, particularly running, is linked with protein loss from muscle partially induced by cortisol and lowered testosterone levels.
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Less muscle means a lower metabolic rate, which means fewer calories burned. Plus, those who consistently do cardio endurance training typically have a higher cortisol response.