Q: I need to lose 20 pounds. I’ve gained a bit of a gut during this interesting year, and I have a goal to lose it in two to three months. If I succeed, I should look pretty good for spring and summer. Is that possible? What’s the number-one thing I should do to get it going? I’m stoked to see abs, so I’ll starve if I have to.
A: Well, the first thing you should NOT do is starve by making a huge calorie cut. That’s the big mistake most people make due to excessive motivation and/or impatience. A giant calorie reduction all at once sends your body into starvation mode. That preserves fat and burns muscle tissue—which then slows down your metabolism to a crawl. Not what you want…
What you do want is to gradually reduce your calories. So the #1 step to fast fat loss is to first clean up your diet—no junk—and eat six smaller meals every day. Most of those meals should contain about 30 grams of protein with some clean slow-burning carbs—usually vegetables or fruit. A meal replacement, like a well-balanced shake or bar, between solid-food feedings, can help you get enough protein to keep your blood sugar stable—no starvation—and build muscle!…
Junk food is acceptable at one or two weekly meals, preferably on the weekends. Don’t deny yourself completely. Satisfying those cravings will prevent all-out binges that can derail fat loss, causing you to give up.
Can you do it? Absolutely! If you strive for a healthy two-to-three-pound fat loss each week, in two months you will have dropped 20 pounds easily. Let’s be conservative and say you lose only 2 pounds a week. That means you’d shed 2 pounds x 8 weeks, which is 16 pounds of ugly fat. Perfect—and you should drop even more than that if you lift weights regularly and build muscle—because muscle stokes your metabolism to burn more fat…
Also, as we’ve said, don’t rely on the scale. If you add muscle and lose fat, your actual bodyweight may not change much at all. Go by how you look and feel, not by what you weigh—and you’ll be more ripped than ever in 60 days!
Note: For meal-by-meal diets, more fat-loss tips and tricks, and ripping workouts, see the X-treme Lean e-book. Or you can get X-treme Lean along with 2 other best-selling fat-loss guides, The Ultimate Fat-to-Muscle Workout and X-traordinary Abs, for a limited-time money-saving price. See the Triple-Shredded Combo Offer.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
What Would You Do to Protect Your Family?
Mike Westerdal is a renowned personal trainer and national best-selling physical preparedness author, but he’s also a father and a husband… who would do anything to protect his family.
He used to get pushed around when younger and spent years building up his body and becoming stronger, getting mentally and physically tough the hard way. As he got bigger, he learned to handle himself, and working in security, he learned first-hand how violence really plays out.
Some of the other guys online who show off their self-defense videos and books need to get a grip. The level of skill needed to pull off their basic moves is CRAZY for most ordinary people.
- If a defense system requires more than a few hours to master, it’s not a program.
- The only techniques you will ever use are the simple ones.
- They need to work for an ordinary person without prior training, technique, or ability.
- So even if you think you don’t have time to learn how to defend yourself…
- You don’t need to spend years training to be a martial artist.