Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle: Transform Your Body Forever Using the Secrets of the Leanest People in the World

by Tom Venuto

2. Maintain your muscle. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is well known for saying that rule number one in making money is never lose money. It’s the same with making a body transformation. A simple strategy for permanent fat loss is never lose muscle. Muscle is your fat-burning secret weapon. Muscle is your metabolic furnace. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn at rest as well as during exercise. Obviously, weight training is a huge factor when it comes to keeping your muscle while you’re shedding the fat, so when you get to the chapter on training, read it carefully and take it seriously. On the nutrition side, the biggest keys to maintaining muscle include getting enough protein and being conservative with calorie cuts.

The scale, tape measure, and mirror are all helpful, but alone they’re not enough. Why not go strictly by the mirror? After all, if you’re happy with how you look, that’s what really counts, isn’t it? The problem is, when you look at yourself in the mirror every day, it’s difficult to see daily and weekly changes because they’re taking place so slowly; it’s like watching the grass grow. It’s also difficult for most people to judge their progress objectively. You rarely see changes in your own body as easily as others do. That’s why you need an objective, accurate, and scientific method for measuring your body composition.

Ketogenic low-carb diets are actually high in fat, with modest amounts of protein and of course very few carbs. Despite being extremely unbalanced in macronutrients, these controversial diets attract a lot of interest. Advocates say that the metabolic state of ketosis produces greater fat loss than other diets. That claim has never been proven. They also claim a high fat intake is not inherently unhealthy. On this point, they’re not entirely wrong.

Ketogenic diets that are low in carbs and high in fat still have an enthusiastic cult following in the mainstream weight-loss world. But they’ve never been the nutrition plan of choice in the physique world, where training is such an important part of the lifestyle.

For high-intensity training, muscle glycogen is your body’s preferred and most efficient fuel. Glycogen is restored by eating carbs. If you eat too much fat, it displaces your carbs

and depletes your glycogen, which may make your training suffer. If your training suffers, your muscle gains suffer. Even worse, studies have shown that training in a glycogen-depleted state has catabo...

Complete Lean Protein Foods ✓ Eggs (whites and whole eggs) ✓ Dairy products (low- or nonfat milk, cheese, cottage cheese, and yogurt) ✓ Milk, egg, casein, and whey protein powders ✓ Lean beef ✓ Bison, venison, and other game meats ✓ Chicken breast ✓ Turkey breast ✓ Lean pork (tenderloin) ✓ Fish ✓ Shellfish

TEN REASONS TO AVOID PROCESSED CARBS 1. Processed carbs can increase body fat. 2. Processed carbs can increase triglycerides. 3. Processed carbs can decrease good HDL cholesterol. 4. Processed carbs can suppress your immune system.

“How processed is this? How calorie dense is this?” The more a food is processed and the more calorie dense a processed food is, the lower the grade.

The less a food is processed (the closer it is to its natural state), the higher the grade. Salmon, broccoli, and a sweet potato are A+ foods, making an A+ meal. A cheeseburger, fries, and milk shake get an F.

The Terrible 12 • French fries and other deep-fried foods • Ice cream and milk shakes • Doughnuts and pastries • Candy and confections • Sugar-sweetened soft drinks • Sugar-sweetened juice drinks, energy drinks, teas, and dessert coffees • White bread and white flour products • Potato chips, corn chips, and fried tortilla chips • Bacon, sausage, and processed lunch meats • Hot dogs and fast-food burgers • Pizza with thick crusts and fatty meat toppings • Sugary breakfast cereals

What you eat occasionally has little impact on your health or body composition. What you eat every day is what matters the most. Take it seriously.

By eating as many of your daily calories as possible from natural, nutrient-dense food, you’re doing more than losing weight: You’re building health.

Lean protein foods have the highest thermic effect and suppress your appetite better than any other macronutrient. This is one of the many reasons you include a lean protein with every meal.

Fibrous vegetables are always a superb choice because they’re high in fiber and low in calories. The most “fat burning” of all meals is lean protein plus fibrous carbs (fish and broccoli or chicken and a green salad, for example).

Whole fruits and natural, high-fiber starchy carbs are also good choices, although you must control the starchy carb quant...

The Terrific 12 ✓ Whole fresh fruit ✓ Vegetables (any fibrous carb or nonstarchy vegetable) ✓ White potatoes (or sweet potatoes) ✓ Fish and shellfish ✓ Oatmeal, rolled or steel-cut (unsweetened) ✓ Brown rice ✓ Beans and legumes ✓ 100% whole wheat or whole grains* ✓ Low- or nonfat dairy products* ✓ Chicken and turkey breast ✓ Eggs and egg whites ✓ Lean cuts of red meat, game meats *If you have allergies or intolerances, you may need to avoid certain foods, such as dairy or grains.

Proteins are narrowed down into lean proteins, because we usually don’t want the extra fat calories (with some exceptions, such as fatty fish).

Dairy products are narrowed down to non- or low-fat (to save calories), and fats have their own category. That makes six food groups, and the foods within each group can be exchanged.

Step 1: Choose a lean protein for every meal. Step 2: Choose a starchy carb for every meal. Step 3: Choose a fibrous carb for every meal. Step 4: Add healthy fats into some meals as needed to reach your daily goal. It doesn’t get

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lean proteins, starchy carbs, and fibrous carbs, it’s as easy as one, two, three.

Include snacks in your daily meal plan. Most people already eat at least four or five times per day,

If I wrote one set of meal plans and said you had to follow them to the letter, it might create some problems. What if you were allergic or intolerant to half the foods? What if you don’t like some of the foods? The fact is I don’t know what you like to eat. No other diet expert knows, either, without consulting you personally. There are nutrition principles that everyone must follow, but if you want the best results and the most enjoyable experience, the ultimate solution is to customize your meal plans rather than follow someone else’s. Suggested food lists, sample meals, and sample daily meal plans are helpful as idea starters, but you should be able to fill in the blanks and make swaps easily. The best news is that all it takes to get started is one good meal plan that you enjoy.

sauces, lemon juice, light dressings, low-calorie marinades, rubs, salsa, or noncaloric sweeteners (if you wish to avoid artificial sweeteners, stevia is popular and widely available). If you use any condiments that have calories, be sure to add those into your meal plan totals because little things forgotten can add up to an “unexplainable” plateau over time.

You’ll focus on weight training for gaining strength, building muscle, and reshaping your body. You’ll focus on cardio training for heart health, conditioning, and fat burning.

Let me put it this way: If I were overweight and I knew what I know now about fat loss, I would be doing cardio every day, possibly even twice a day, seven days a week, until I was happy with my weight. Only then would I taper down to a maintenance program.

If you want to burn the most calories possible during a workout, the way to do it would be through high intensity and long duration.

For fat-loss goals, the duration needs to be long enough so the calorie burn adds up, but with interval training, you can get an effective fat-loss workout in as little as 20 minutes. That makes HIIT one of the most time-efficient types of cardio and a favorite for busy people. For cardiovascular conditioning, some types of HIIT are amazingly effective, even when the workouts are shorter.

So if you do cardio and weights in the same session, which should come first? The answer is: whichever is the higher priority. On Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, maintaining muscle is the top training priority, so weight training goes first and cardio second.

Cardio helps increase nutrient clearance from the blood and uptake into the cells.

It can increase capillary density, which enhances delivery of oxygen, nutrients, and hormones to the muscles.

Endomorphs usually understand that they do better with more cardio all around.

However, no fat-loss program is complete without resistance training because it plays such a crucial role in getting leaner.

The combination of nutrition, cardio training, resistance training, and mental training together becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

The law of energy balance says that if you’re in a surplus, excess calories will be sent into fat stores.

The law of energy partitioning says that if you’re in a surplus, but you’re weight training, some of those excess calories will be sent to your

muscles for repair an...

Imagine two people following the same meal plan with a calorie surplus. One lifts weights and the other doesn’t. The one not lifting weights gets fatter. The one lifting weights not only doesn’t get fatter, he gets more muscular by eating more! This partitioning of calories and nutrients is even more interesting in the other direction. Two people go on the same meal plan in a calorie deficit. One person is lifting weights and the other isn’t. Since the laws of thermodynamics can’t be violated, you know they’re both going to lose weight. The real question is: What kind of weight will they l...

Weight loss is a matter of energy balance. Body composition is a matter of energy partitioning. Your food choices, genetics, lifestyle, and hormones can all affect partitioning.

Wouldn’t you love to see the food you eat get delivered to your muscle cells for growth and recovery instead of being stuffed into your fat cells?

you do a lot of energy-demanding exercises like squats, lunges, rows, presses, dead lifts, and other compound lifts.

The best and fastest way to achieve the “fitter and firmer” look women want is the same way that men achieve the “muscular” look they want: with weight training. And without it, a woman will never get much stronger. A muscle either gets stronger

TIPS FOR ACCELERATING FAT LOSS WITH REDUCED-CARB MEAL PLANS 1. Eliminate refined carbs. Reduce starchy carbs and grains. Eat more fibrous carbs and leafy greens. 2. You may use nonfat and low-fat dairy products, but emphasize lean meats, fish, eggs, and fibrous carbs first. Many physique athletes prefer to remove dairy products on competition diets. 3. Initially set macronutrient ratios at approximately 40 percent carbs, 40 percent protein, and 20 percent fat, give or take 5 percent. If you reach a fat-loss plateau or want to accelerate fat loss, you can reduce starchy carb calories more (to about 25 percent to 30 percent of total calories). That leaves mostly fibrous carbs and lean proteins with small amounts of healthy fats. Starchy carbs will be very low, but not removed completely. 4. Use the nutrient-timing method on weight training days, saving most of your carbs for around your workouts. If you train early in the day, front-load your carbs early. If you train later in the day, save most of your starchy carbs for your evening postworkout meal. On nontraining days, place your starchy carbs wherever you want them. I prefer having them for breakfast and then eating fibrous carbs and protein the rest of the day (carb tapering). 5. Always include at least one or two servings per day of healthy fats. When you cut your carbs significantly, some people feel fuller and more energetic by compensating with a slight increase in fat. If calories get too low, you can increase...