Jim Katsoulis: Talk a little bit about  the Tabata protocol, if I’m pronouncing that right. Talk a little bit about – explain what the Tabata protocol is and how it influenced 7 Minute Muscle and your ideas of training.

Jon Benson: Okay, yeah. Tabata is a Japanese researcher that a lot of fitness guys were quoting in the ‘90s especially when this study first came out in the early 2000, that Tabata, he just – he came up with this ridiculously intense protocol which later just became high intensity interval cardio, interval training that basically pushed people well beyond their lactate threshold for only periods of time, like brief periods of time, 30 seconds sometimes, the protocol for that are that short, followed by duration periods where you’re at – where you’re exercising at a normal pace.

So, it’s just basically – it’s a glorified version of interval cardio. And what the studies where he was most impressive, and that these studies had been duplicated, is the actual – the O2 increase, in other words, your oxygen, how much oxygen can your system use efficiently. And he was seeing just rapid, massive increases in the body’s ability to process oxygen, which means your cardio – it means that your cardio health is increasing basically. And since then a lot of guys had tried to apply that fat burning and it does work for fat burning if you do it right, and if you’re willing to do a little bit of low-intensity walking, things like that, along with it.

But I’ve always believed that fat burning was 80 percent nutrition and so the cardio is just on top of this. So, I have a version of – it’s just totally different than Tabata, to be honest with you. But it’s based – Richard’s study – Dr. Richard Winett came up with a protocol called GXP or Graded Exercise Protocol actually before Tabata if I’m not mistaken and he’s had four different university tests done, and that’s the protocol I suggest that people use.

So, the 7 Minute Muscle protocol, obviously, I developed but I quoted everyone that I actually said this is the guy who influenced me here, this is the guy who influenced me here, but the 7 Minute Muscle is totally different in the way that protocol is put together but it’s influenced by guys like Vince Geronda, it’s influenced by EDP training, by – there’s just a myriad of different influences that come into it. But the cardios are like Dr. Richard Winett’s and – so, Ageless Athletes. It’s a very, very good website. And it’s nine minutes long and I used it for years. I had used it for years. And it’s by far and away more effective than trying to do something ridiculous like the 45 minutes of cardio a day. It is, you know, unless I’m four weeks away from a photo shoot, there’s no point in it.

Jim: Let me ask you this. With organic food, people see it out there and sometimes think it’s too expensive, is organic food worth the extra money and investment, you know, nutritionally?

Isabel Delos Rios:    It really, really is because — and I’ve done extensive research on the strain of conventional food versus organic food. And I did that because when I started eating organic food, I was living in New York City, barely making any money, and it was really a struggle to buy organic food.

But the amount of pesticide and herbicide that are sprayed on the conventional food, may be a little bit on an apple, a little bit on some broccoli, a little bit on some celery, but all of that little bit adds up to such an incredible amount. Now, adults can handle it a little bit better because our livers are fully functioning and can detoxify some of these things. It’s much, much worse for children, and they’re still developing, their livers are still developing, they don’t need these toxins inside their body, so it’s well, well worth it.

Now, for my clients who, this is a difficult transition, financially, they need to do this one step at a time, I always give them the guidelines. If something has a very thick skin and you’re not going to eat it, well, then, you can keep those conventional until you can get those organics.

So, avocados, if I can only get them conventional, I’ll do that. Bananas, if I can only get them conventional, okay, that’s okay. But things like celery and strawberries and apples and pears, things that I’m actually eating the skin, if it’s not organic, I will not even go near it.

If you want to learn more about Isabel De Los Rios amazing book  The Diet Solution, click here.  You can also download a sample 6 week meal plan for free here.

Jim:   You talk about more multi-joint movements; more big movements.  How do these big movements help boost metabolism and burn fat?

Michael:    There are actually a couple of things here.  A lot of the big movements indirectly work your abs and more importantly, the big movements are what really changes your body’s metabolism and burns the most calories; stimulates your fat burning and muscle building hormones.  All of that is so much more important than just trying to target your abdominals.

I do include in my programs a little bit of direct ab exercises, but really 95% of my programs are based around multi-joint full body movements that really change your whole body.  Once people get this, you see the results fast because I remember working with people in the past where I would see them for months and months every day in the gym on the ab mat.  They would be on the ab mat for a half hour doing eight different variations of crunches and ten different variations of leg lifts.

To be honest, I spend about two minutes on my abs.  99% of my workout is these big full body movements like squats and dead lifts and snatches and Cuban presses and stuff like that – lunges; any upper body pressing or pulling; things where you are using most of your body’s musculature instead of just your abs.  I think that’s such an important concept to grasp.

Jim:    What you’re saying and you’ve seen this is that literally you can change your metabolism and that a lot of the way to do it is actually doing these big movements.  I don’t know if you can go into this a little bit because I’m a little new to this idea, but how do those movements affect your body physiologically where it helps to burn fat?

Michael:    Consider this – let’s throw out an example and say that you have a 20 minute workout to do.  Well the typical person if they had to choose a workout and they want to lose stomach fat and get six pack abs will choose to do crunches, leg lifts, leg raises, side bends, torso twists – things like that that are all ab and core exercises.

They haven’t done a whole lot in reality.  At the end of those 20 minutes, maybe you burned a few calories.  Maybe you worked your abs pretty hard.  They might be sore the next day.  They might feel like you actually did something.

But instead of that, let’s forget about all ab exercises.  For that 20 minutes, and I’m not saying this is an ideal workout or anything.  I’m just giving an example since you asked the question about the different in how it affects your body.  Instead of that, let’s spend those 20 minutes doing nothing but squats, lunges, pushups and pull-ups.

Four simple full body exercises that work pretty much every muscle group in your entire body plus you are also indirectly working the abs with a lot of those as well.  Try and do a pull-up without having your abs contracted – it’s not going to happen — the same thing with a pushup.

So those are four body weight exercises.  We haven’t even gotten into weight training.  Just doing those four body weight exercises for that 20 minutes instead of all the ab exercises, you’re not only going to burn a lot more calories during the actual workout, but now you’ve worked every single muscle in your body practically.
So now your metabolism is elevated for hours and hours.

Sometimes the studies you see from an intense resistance training workout your metabolism can be elevated for up to two days following the workout.  So now while your body is trying to repair what you’ve done because you’ve worked your muscles so hard it is using extra calories compared to what you barely had any effect on your body just wasting time doing all those crunches and twists and stuff.

There is no only the caloric effect where you’re burning more calories, but also when you do big exercises like that it stimulates the release of more growth hormones, testosterone.  Hormones like that are also going to indirectly help fat burning and muscle building.

Jim:    Speaking of that, sometimes women get a little nervous when they hear that these masculine hormones are released.  Is that going to affect them?  A woman isn’t going to get bulky from that when a woman does those big lifts.  She’ll be all right.

Michael:    Exactly; it’s going to help balance things out in the body whether it’s a man or a woman.  To be honest, over the years the women that I’ve seen train the heaviest are the ones that have the leanest best bodies.  It’s the women that are afraid to use the heavy weights and won’t use anything more than a three or five pound dumbbell or won’t do weight training at all and will just do cardio – those are the ones that typically struggle with their bodies.

When I can convince them to just give in and start doing some heavier training, I’ve pretty much never seen someone bulk up.  I’ve never seen someone look like a body builder.  But the important thing is that you’re finally actually training your body under heavy enough resistance to stimulate its change; to increase your metabolism; to force it to change.  That’s so important for the women as well.
Jim:    That makes sense.  As far as base metabolism goes, if you have more muscle is it true you’ll naturally consume more calories because there’s more muscle there and that burns more calories than fat?  Is that true?

Michael:    Well yeah.  The more muscle your body has, it’s an active tissue in your body so it is consuming calories compared to fat.  If you added 10 pounds extra muscle on your body you’d have an increased metabolic rate.  Your body would need to burn more calories to maintain that muscle.

That effect is going to be a lot lower if you just had 10 pounds extra fat.  Really the only extra calories you’re burning if you have the extra fat are just from carrying around that extra weight.  So yes, it’s a big difference.

“I really enjoyed the interview with Darin Steen of Fat Loss Lifestyle, but I am confused on what he meant by “do cardio in a fasted state, first thing in the morning”.    I have always heard how bad it is to do any form of exercise before you put anything in your system to start your metabolism for the day; your body will still think it’s starving and burn muscle rather than fat.  What should I do?

This is a great question, so I sent it to Darin and this is what he wrote. “First off, “we must get out on the table in the beginning that the reason why there is so much confusion on the topic of working out and losing fat while at least maintaining muscle (preferably gaining muscle) in a time efficient manner (4-6 hours per week) is because everyone is so different.

Two reasons why you should “do cardio in a fasted state, first thing in the morning” is;

* Your body does not have nearly as much fuel (glycogen and glucose) to supply energy for the session (cause you have not eaten carbs for about 12 hours.  Your body easily burns up all of the glycogen and glucose and then goes into the fat cells for the rest.
* The session is done, which leads to consistency.  Too many things come up when the session is planned for later in the day to interfere with consistency.

There are so many factors that determine when and how to do cardio & when and how much to eat to create 2- 3 lbs. of fat loss per week.  Losing fat slower or faster than that just does not work for the long term.  And for the long term is what we are looking for.  Cause I have seen so many people go “gung ho” and radically change their body in a short amount of time, only to see them a year later, sedentary and heavier than when they started.

If you lose at a slower rate, one will lose interest in the program and maybe not continue long term.  If you lose faster than that; either you are losing other things that you need (like muscle, water, anabolic hormones) or you are living a lopsided life spending too much time working out.

So now let me try to clear the confusion a little bit for you.  There is no one stop answer to this question.  But here it goes.  The best program that I have seen at losing fat that stays off forever is doing intense resistance training 2 or 3 days per week, and doing interval cardio training 2 or 3 days per week.

The #1 key for fat loss is something we call “carb cycling.”    In a nut shell “carb cycling” is eating more calories in the form of starchy carbs (brown / wild rice, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, whole wheat pasta) on days of intense resistance training, and eating only fibrous non-starch carbs (veggies, salads, green beans, apples, grape-fruits) on days of interval cardio performed first thing in the morning.

Now my mantra of “doing interval cardio first thing in the morning in a fasted state” applies to only those who are eating small meals often.  The key to not losing muscle is too make sure that you eat a small portion of protein right before you go to bed.  And if your metabolism is really running fast, consume a small amount of protein upon wakening up.

A few (3-4) egg whites and a tbls. of healthy fat (I use Udo’s oil) works well for me.  I consume the protein and the fat immediately upon wakening then start the cardio session within the next 30 minutes.

If my metabolism is running even faster, (my hunger levels are very high all the time even though I am eating protein and carbs combined together every 3 hours) then I might even wake up in the middle of the night to consume a small amount of cottage cheese or whey protein.

So, I hope this clears a little confusion about how to perform interval cardio first thing in the morning in a fasted state for fat loss.  Not only is interval cardio the best type of cardio to perform to lose the most amount of fat in the least amount of time, but it is proven to be the only form of cardio to actually strengthen the heart and lungs; which is incredibly important for longevity reasons.

If you want to start your own 12 week transformation with a Trainer of the Year, check out Darin’s Fat Loss Lifestyle.

In this call you’ll hear Mike reveal some of the most common mistakes that people make when it comes to getting a six pack and how you can the best results in the shortest time possible. You can listen to this seminar for a limited time by clicking here.

In this call you’ll hear Darin explain how he gets results like this from his clients (regardless of their age).  He also talks about his favorite 2 exercises, how to use your mind to maximize your results, and some motivation tricks for staying on track. You can listen to this seminar for a limited time by clicking here.

Scott: When it comes to the mind, and you teach all the fantastic ways to reprogram it, what are some of the things that people are doing that are holding them back, in regards to their current mindset?

Jim: Well, that is a great question. I am going to kind of break it down, because, people do not realize that they are literally sabotaging their own success, with the way most people think about weight loss. Usually, when you ask a person how they’re going to lose weight, the answer is always they are going to go on a diet.

The problem with a diet is that the presupposition of a diet on a deeper level is that a) it is only temporary, and b) it is going to mean deprivation. Those two things do not create lasting results, obviously.

I spend a lot of time talking about the conscious and unconscious mind; so let me give you a little bit of foundational information on that.

Scott: That would be great.

Jim: We all have a conscious and unconscious mind. Your conscious mind is logical; it understands what you should do. Everyone knows what they should do to lose weight. I mean there’s not a person out there that doesn’t know that. Basically, eat better and exercise more.

Scott: Right.

Jim: The other part is the unconscious mind. And this is the part of our mind that truly runs the show. So we like to think that we’re consciously in charge of everything, but we’re not. There’s too much stuff going on in our lives to consciously think about every little thing.

The example I use a lot to describe this kind of difference in our minds is when we drive. When you first learned to drive, you understood how to do it. You saw your parents doing it most of your life, and it seemed pretty simple. Then you went and got behind the wheel. And you began gunning it, braking too hard, you couldn’t keep it straight. But as you continued driving, it just became completely automatic.So that when you get in the car now, you don’t even think about driving.

And if you look at all the things that are like this, all our lives become pretty routine. We don’t have to think about it, it just kind of happens. And that’s the unconscious part of our mind.

Scott: Sort of like what happens to me a lot, where I follow the same path to work all the time. And if I’m going down the same road with a different destination and my mind is somewhere else, I catch myself continuing along that path when I really should have turned a couple of miles back.

Jim: Sure, sure. That’s a common phenomenon. They call it “highway hypnosis, ” and everyone’s experienced where you’re driving and you kind of go past the exit. You’re just lost in thought. So, when you’re lost in thought, who’s driving the car? It’s your unconscious mind.

And if you look at reading and writing, at one point that was extremely difficult to do, but now it’s completely automatic. It’s so automatic that if I held a word up in front of you on a piece of paper you couldn’t even not understand it.

That’s how quick your unconscious mind is. So that’s what runs most of our lives. Now, we can obviously make decisions. Our conscious mind matters. But most of our behaviors are automatic. They’re kind of programmed into our unconscious mind so that we don’t have to think about them.

When you get up in the morning, you go through the same routine. It just becomes a process. You don’t have to be thinking about it. But the problem is that our eating behaviors, our exercise behaviors, those are in the unconscious mind as well.

The important part is this. The conscious mind is logical. We all know what to do, right? I mean if we could run everything consciously, no one would smoke. Everyone knows it’s bad. But the unconscious mind is in control, and the unconscious mind is not logical. It works by association.

The classic example is, you’ve heard of Pavlov’s dogs, right? He was a Russian scientist, he was studying dogs, and he came up with this experiment where he put the food in front of the dog and they would salivate. And every time he did this, he would have someone ring a bell. Put the food in front of them, salivate, and ring a bell, over and over and over again. Eventually, all they needed to do was ring the bell and the dogs would salivate. Because in the dog’s mind, the sound of the bell and the food had become one, and now elicited the same response.

So, that’s called associative conditioning, and that’s how our unconscious mind begins to work.We can’t approach it in the same way that we do consciously.

That’s why when people do dieting, they know what’s good, they know what they should do and all the rest of it, but they never go to the unconscious level where they begin changing up their association for what these things mean. They’ll say, “I know I need to eat healthy food, ‘ but on a deeper level, they think healthy food is boring, gross, not fun.

So, they’re constantly fighting against these associations that they have. That’s how most people start. They rely completely on willpower to do this.”

Willpower is not the most effective way. I say if your willpower is so strong, do you want to take your breathing and let your conscious mind be in control of that? Or your heartbeat, do you want to consciously control that?” So, the most powerful part of your mind is your unconscious mind, and you need to learn a few basic techniques on how to influence it and how to program it so that you have the connections and the associations that you want.

So, that’s kind of the beginning on the conscious and unconscious mind.The next two things I want to point out, and this is kind of the foundation that we will keep referring to, is that the unconscious mind, first of all, does not understand negatives. Now this is very important.

What I mean by this is, most people, when they start dieting, are totally focused on everything that they can’t have.Now if I tell you… Use all the will power you guys have got. Get all your will power in your body, because I want you to not think about what I’m about to say. And everyone who is listening to this: get ready. Don’t think about what I’m about to say. Don’t think of a yellow banana. Don’t think of a yellow banana. Yellow banana.

Scott: [laughs]

Jim: All right, what happens? [laughs]

Scott: Total banana in my head right now.

Jim: It’s impossible not to, because your unconscious mind needs to think about it first in order to understand what I’m even saying. So it’s very difficult not to think about what I’m saying. There’s very little difference between your experience when I say: “Think of a yellow banana. Don’t think of a yellow banana.” “Think of sundae. Don’t think of a sundae.” “Think of a cookie. Don’t think of a cookie.” “Don’t think of a cookie.” [laughs]

But this is what people do themselves on diets constantly. They keep telling themselves what they can’t eat, and then they are unintentionally focusing on exactly what it is that they want to reduce in their lives.

Scott: Right.

Jim: That’s one problem. And the other thing is this, and this is very important. The unconscious mind cannot tell the difference between vivid imagination and reality. The unconscious mind will respond to vivid imagination.This is why horror movies exist, because you can go watch a horror movie, you’re in a theater with a hundred other people and you’re safe, but you’re sitting there and you’re all tense, you’re nervous, you’re not breathing, because you’re living through the movie. You’re vicariously living in that movie, pretending you’re the character or in that situation, and you start to actually have the physical response like you would have if you were in that situation.

Scott: Right.

Jim: So when you add these two things together, what people on diets are doing is… I mean, think about it right now. Think about your favorite dessert. Think about it in really vivid colors. Think about the most enjoyable time you ever had it, and you might find your mouth start to salivate.

Scott: That’s right.

Jim: Now this is what people are doing to themselves 24 hours a day when they go on a diet. And they’re actually increasing this. They’re increasing, physiologically, their desire for these foods [laughing] that they want to avoid. So you can see how it’s almost like self-torture.

Scott: Totally!

Jim: And this is why a lot of times people find it very difficult to stay on a diet, because they’re concentrating exactly on what they don’t want.

This interview was an excerpt from the MP3 audio interview program, Unstoppable Fat Loss . To  get the complete interview and many more, click here

In this call you’ll hear Scott explain how he handles setbacks and failures, how to become passionate about your goals, and the secrets to continually getting amazing results. You can listen to this amazing seminar for a limited time by clicking here.

Jim: You personally have shifted the way that you eat; the way that you look at things; how do you keep yourself motivated and how do others create motivation for fat loss?

Holly:    This is a great question and it’s so funny that you ask me this because I just held a coaching call last night for my Fit Yummy Mummies.  It was all about motivation because a lot of women are like “Ah how do I keep this motivation?  I’m so excited.  I don’t want it to go away.”
For them, I mentioned four strategies that they need to do up front right away when they begin to help their motivation; keep them going strong.  The number one step is absolutely goal setting.  You have to know what you want and most importantly why you want it.  Then of course put your goals in a place where you can see them on a daily basis so you keep focused.

The second strategy is daily affirmations.  Watch your . . . putting positive phrases and words in front of you and watching your self talk.  Women are notorious for beating themselves up and filling their minds with negative things.  It’s important to switch that around to a more positive outlook.

The third strategy is creating a vision board which is taking the goal setting to another step.  It’s actually a collage of your goals.  It’s a very fun project, but it really puts meaning into what you’re doing.  I told the ladies “Bring the belief you have in yourself to life by creating a vision board.”

Of course, recruit assistance and with my community – my Fit Yummy Mummy club – it’s all about staying connected and blogging and ask for help when you need it.  Because they have access to each and every one of the members, they can also read through the successes of others and feel inspired to be able to do the same.  Staying connected is very important.

For me to stay motivated, like I shared with them the healthy habits that I practice day in and day out are just that. They’re habits for me at this point because I’ve been practicing them for so long.  It just becomes something that I do.  I don’t really think twice about it.  Of course we associate habits with brushing your teeth.  You don’t think about it.  But unlike the mindless monotony of this habit, there are so many immediate rewards attached to the healthy habits of eating right and exercising.  I absolutely look forward to eating my supportive meals and I crave my workouts.

Yes, I’m human.  I have days where I have to talk myself into it; however, I stay motivated because I remind myself of how good I will soon feel.  I do it also by considering from the inside out.  I always focus on the positive outcomes physically and emotionally.

First and foremost my energy levels – I love the energy I get from my workouts and from my meals.  A lot of clients that I work with — one of their major obstacles is later in the afternoon when they feel they want to take a nap or they’re craving those high sugar processed carbs to give them a quick pick me up.
When if you – this is the coolest thing I’ve noticed since I’ve lived this healthy lifestyle is that I don’t have those any more.  Yes, my exercise plays a role in it, but it’s also because I’m choosing to eat different types of foods.  I don’t get that drop in energy in the second half of the day.  I’m more productive the second half of the day.

I also love how empowered I feel after I get my workout in.  It helps me to make better choices for the rest of the day.  I love how my mood has improved.  I love how I’m less stressed.  Improved mood and reduction in stress together these two outcomes are what allow me to truly enjoy the time I spend with my husband and my son.  That improves the quality of my relationships.  Physically it feels good to feel lean and toned.  Your posture changes.  You feel strong from the inside out.  This is what truly motivates me.

Jim:    That’s my favorite part of any of these calls is because you’re so congruent in the way that you’re saying it.  So many people are surrounded by people that maybe don’t have the health or body that they want and so they’re constantly hearing those beliefs and those perceptions.  To hear you describe it so congruently, we know you live it.  It’s so great for you to be explicit about it.

One of the things I’d like to point out is that because you didn’t bring out the physicality of it until the end.  Sometimes people go into it and they’re just focused on the weight.  They are focused on the size clothes.  They wonder why they can’t maintain the motivation.  The things you just described that really kind of jazz you up continuously are so much deeper than that it sounds like.

Holly:     That’s where the lasting power is.  People are like “How do you stay motivated?  Where do you get it from?”  This is where it is.  You can have this too.

Jim:    It sounds like it depends on how you look at it.  That goes hand in hand with what you started off with – those four steps.  That makes a lot of sense.  Again, anyone who is looking to jump into something and really get going with something, start by right off the bat doing something different.  Re-describe why you want to do it, not just the size clothes or the weight loss, but the emotional reasons; the energy levels and the things that are really going to affect the quality of your life.

Tom really put on a master class. He reveals which exercises are the best for boosting up your metabolism, his 10 rules for nutrition that keeps you lean, and the most common limiting beliefs that people have when it comes to transforming their bodies. This call is so good, that I’m going to keep the replay up througout the weekend for free.  You can listen to this amazing seminar for a limited time by clicking here.