The 4 E's of changing your metabolism

Hello and good day, my name is Joe Wilson.  I want to help you with goals you may have that deal with your health, physical shape, or if you have a particular time when you want to look or feel your best.

 

What I want to tell you are the particular principles to change the biological dynamics of your metabolism... this is your natural fat burning body machine.  Understand that this will not happen over night, but you will feel it gradually after your first few days.  You may actually still feel it in the morning or the next couple of days.  When I change up my routine, I sometimes feel the soreness two days after working out those muscles!

 

The 4 principles that I want to mention are pretty simple to understand, I call them my "4 'E' Principles" - Exercise, Eat enough, Eat often, and Eat right.  Notice that 3 out of those 4 have to deal with 'Eating'.   This is the key to understanding how to burn off that stubborn fat.  Don't get the presumption that you will become a bodybuilder from these tidbits, it takes years to gain the knowledge and application of these principles to gain the status of a professional bodybuilder, let alone to get on stage and show it off after only a year of training and dieting.  You can achieve great results if you follow these simple guidelines and apply it to your routine of a lifestyle... you never know, your lifestyle could change supernaturally!

 

Well let's get to it, the first of the 4 E's, Exercise:

There are a ton of exercises out there on the internet and in magazines and journals that work and have proven its results.  This principle of muscular and physique change depends on your intensity of gaining strength and muscle, losing fat, toning the muscle, or keeping it in conditioned shape.  What I mean is, are you performing workouts to truly gain muscles and engage the nervous system, stretching, doing yoga, stretching, warming up correctly with dynamic movements prior to resistance training and static stretching afterwards, getting enough rest to allow your muscles and your body to recover and heal itself, or are you simple going through the motions by "going to the gym" and sit on your butt and talk to people about your training without seeing results.

What I recommend with your exercises is that you keep with your same workout every 4-6 weeks to see your strength gains, but change the routine to prevent plateau-ing.  Plateau-ing means that you don't see any significant changes (either physically or strength-wise) after doing a consistent routine for a long amount of time.  Read through those journals, look at those workout websites, and even do your own research about finding routines that you enjoy doing and don't get burned out on.

Ultimately, you want to talk to a trainer to receive the proper training to perform the exercises correctly with the right technique so you don't injure yourself and for them to guide you on how to achieve the proper muscle growth the way that you want.

 

The next of the 4 principles is Eat enough:

Your body runs off of a certain amount of calories everyday (depending on your muscle mass) - this is what you call your natural metabolism.  I, for example, probably burn 2000-2200 calories per day just to maintain homeostasis (breathing, walking around, talking, digesting,..etc.).  My weight is 210 lbs and my bodyfat is about 6%.  That means I have about 195 lbs of muscle on my frame.  Muscle burns fat much better than fat burns fat folks, so I require much more energy to maintain my muscle.  However, I also workout intensely and do cardio everyday.  So to prevent my body into burning off hard earned muscle, I will take in an additional 1200 good quality calories.  So I try to take in 3000+ calories a day.

Depending on your personal goal - mentioned earlier, this is the calorie number you want to aim for everyday.  A huge recommendation to benefit the most from this diet advice is to track your calories with a digital scale and diet log...  Many diet consultants already do this and so they already know what you need to eat.  This way, you can save some money and learn it for yourself.   When you decide to lean down and start burning off fat, you want to decrease this calorie number by about 10% of your calorie intake and keep it there for four weeks.  The next phase is to drop it 15% more (from your original calorie intake #) for another 4 weeks.  The last phase is to drop is 15% more the last four weeks.  Watch your progress and enjoy it.  This will change your lifestyle because you will pay more attention to your quality calories and you will feel much more satisfied with yourself.

 

The third principle is to Eat often:

I love to eat, and my metabolism looks forward to every meal.  The reason that you'll need to eat often is to provide yourself with a constant supply of nutrients daily and to prevent "starvation mode".  This is where your body will not want to burn off fat since it wants to "hoard" and store the calories for normal function.  Your body will not want to burn anything if you don't eat 5-7 well proportioned meals a day spaced 2-3 hours apart.    A great tip that I myself do is to cook and portion out my meats (not eggs), rice and potatoes on Sunday and/or Wednesday for the entire week of my meals.  After I portion and weigh my meals the way I want, I put those foods in zip-lock storage sandwich bags and put them in my refrigerator; ready to easily grab my perfect meals everyday before I get ready for work.  Have a microwaveable canister and fork ready everywhere you go.  Protein bars, powdered protein shakes and RTD (Ready to Drink) proteins shakes are great on the go meals.  Don't get too carried away with those meals though.

 

This is the last one and the hardest one though Eat right:

You need to find what your body can tolerate through the proper amounts of fat, protein and carbohydrates.  You MUST take in moderate amounts of EFA's (Essential Fatty Acids) to allow nutrients and minerals to be transported through your body and allow normal organ functioning and processes.  Some good fat sources would be olive oil, fish oil, flax seed, safflower oil, and Krill Oil to name a few.  There are other many great sources of fat - my favorite is peanut butter.  Mmmmmmm.  For protein, this is a hit and miss for many people because it depends on their able-ness to workout.  For the person that can consistently workout, I usually recommend 1 - 1.5 grams of protein intake per body pound (it's up to you to choose the pounds from your actual muscle weight or your total weight).    Ex: I weight 210 pounds currently - I try to take in between 210-315 grams of protein daily.  Most of your daily protein should comes from "whole complete" protein sources such as chicken, fish, beef, eggs/whites, turkey, pork just to name a few.  However, you do get sources of protein from your vegetables sources as well.  If you portion out your meals properly, you should intake the same amount each meal (except after an intense workout - which you could take in more protein from a post workout shake).  For example, if you weigh 180 pounds and workout 4 times a week, you would be taking in about 200+ grams of protein per day, this should come to about 30-45 grams of protein per meal.  I recommend that you don't take more than 3 protein supplements per day (protein shakes, meal replacements, or protein bars).  You need real protein food sources for digestion and absorption purposes.  Carbohydrates sources - best ones are old fashioned oatmeal, potatoes (white or sweet - not fried, these don't count), corn and brown/white rice.  These are unprocessed carbs and the easiest ones to remember to eat.  The amount of carbs to eat depends on if your trying to gain serious mass or burn off the fat.  You do get carb grams from vegetables, so don't neglect those in your carb count for the day.   If you're trying to burn off the fat, avoid dairy products, sugar, fruit, and processed foods (like bread, pasta, and many frozen foods).  I know it's going to be tough to drop these, but it's just for a little while - how much discipline and application are you willing to do to get that fat off the fastest?  Last bit of info for losing fat... don't eat 2-2.5 hours before going to bed and don't eat any complex carbs the last two meals of the day.