The All-Day Fat-Burning Diet: The 5-Day Food-Cycling Formula That Resets Your Metabolism To Lose Up to 5 Pounds a Week (21 page)

Cortisol is associated with heart disease, cancer, and visceral belly fat. That’s the kind of fat that hangs around your waist—nobody wants that. I should note that the short, intense workouts in this program also increase cortisol, but to nowhere near the same degree as do high-volume, long-duration cardio workouts. Again, it is important to distinguish between acute (short-term) and chronic (long-term) cortisol release. When muscle glycogen concentrations run low, cortisol is released and fuel use shifts toward fat so that judicious use is made of the little glucose (sugar) that remains. However, in the long term, with too much cardio, excessive cortisol will encourage fat synthesis and storage and even age you faster.

Doing too much cardio is similar to constantly being stressed out. Eventually, you’ll pay the price. So let me ask you a question: How many professional athletes do you see playing past 35 years of age? Not many, right? You could probably count them on one hand. And those who have managed to make it past 35 probably look 5 to 7 years older than they really are. The reason is simple—it’s a question of wear and tear. Too much and the wrong type of exercise wear you down and will age you faster than a grape sitting in the sun.

An article in the
Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research
found that cardio causes immense oxidative damage and a flood of
free
radicals in the body.
¹⁰
Free radicals are molecules that cause rapid aging in your body. During long cardio sessions, your body is filled with free radicals that float around in your bloodstream and attack your cells like street thugs. Not only do free radicals cause damage to all your organs, but doing cardio also damages your skin and makes you look older. That’s why many hard-core runners and older pro athletes look like 60-year-old sun worshippers. That might be a bit of a stretch (no pun intended), but you get the idea. They look and feel older than they are. You don’t want that, do you?

Now, if high cortisol, low T3, and accelerated aging weren’t bad enough, endurance cardio training also increases your appetite. In fact, your body reacts to cardio like a dramatic teenager to the word
no
, making you do exactly what’s bad for you—eat more and more food. Even worse, you always end up eating more fat-promoting calories
after
you work out, which means that you gain more and more weight. A 2008 study in the
International Journal of Obesity
found that after cardio exercise, the subjects ate 100 calories more than they had just burned off in their workout. The researchers found that even reading had less of a calorie rebound effect than these workouts.
¹¹

I hope you’re starting to realize that too much cardio is really a big waste of time and sets you up for fat-loss failure in the long run by disrupting your precious hormone balance and sabotaging your body.

When Is More Not Better?

Cardio is not the only problem. Too much of any kind of exercise is just as bad. The trouble is that nowadays we’re surrounded by infomercials and exercise programs that have you working out like a navy SEAL six or seven times per week. No wonder the very mention of the word
exercise
is so terrifying! Sure, you’ll see visible results from doing such work, but you’re also laying the foundation for severe problems down the road.

Exercise is a form of stress, so more is not better. Too much training has been shown to have harmful effects on the immune system.
Research
has shown that the cellular damage that occurs during over-training can lead to nonspecific, general activation of the immune system, including changes in natural killer cell activity and the increased activation of peripheral blood lymphocytes. This hyperactivity of the immune system following intense overtraining may possibly even contribute to the development of autoimmune conditions.

Earlier we discussed how using short, interval-like exercise is terrific for burning fat. But as with anything, the poison is in the dosage. One study had men go through two intensive interval-training sessions per day for 10 days, followed by 5 days of active recovery. Not surprisingly, these men became acutely overtrained, as indicated by significant reductions in running performance from day 1 to day 11, severe fatigue, immune system deficits, mood disturbances, physical complaints, sleep difficulties, and reduced appetite.
¹²

I often tell my clients that there’s a lot to learn from the extremes. My experience as a pro soccer player and collegiate strength and conditioning coach has given me some unique perspectives about training intelligently, whether the goal is improved performance or fat loss. Let’s look at the case of marathon runners—perhaps the best example of how too much training can harm your body. Countless studies have shown that marathoners, although touted for their athletic prowess, are actually very unhealthy. I can relate. As an extremely active teenager, I was fit but very unhealthy. And ignoring that fact led me to develop an autoimmune condition.

It’s been shown that marathoners are at an increased risk of developing upper respiratory tract infections following races and periods of hard training, which are associated with changes in the immune system. Furthermore, it has been hypothesized that during this period of immune suppression, viruses and bacteria can gain a foothold, which can increase the risk of infections.
¹³
The two elements that may have been destroying your body and sabotaging your fat loss—long cardio training and too much intense training of any kind—are not present in the All-Day Fat-Burning Diet. The goal of this program is to reset your metabolism, improve your hormonal function, and help your body
regain
its fat-burning capabilities. For that reason, we eat and train in ways that are smarter and less stressful on the body.

“Okay, Yuri, if cardio and too much exercise are so bad for me, what should I do instead?”

I’m glad you asked. Right now I’m going to show you exactly what you should be doing instead of cardio and daily workouts that run your body into the ground. The workout plan I’ve laid out for you in this program has been used for years by thousands of my clients and produces astonishing body transformations without fail. The best part is that you’ll be working out for only 90 minutes
per week
to get an amazing body.

Let me put that into perspective for you. Ninety minutes is:

•
The duration of one soccer game

•
The average length of a movie

•
The length of a flight from Toronto to New York City

And none of those activities is setting you up for the body you deserve. So let’s be honest—you can do this. You can find time just three times per week to make smart exercise a priority for you. Note that I didn’t say “squeeze in a workout” because the truth is that your workouts should be scheduled into your calendar like anything else that’s important in your life.

The workouts you’re going to perform in this program involve the LIFT method that I described earlier and are fundamental to keeping you lean and strong. We’ve discussed the importance of exercise intensity—when used properly—for burning fat. And we’ve seen that spending all your time slugging away on the cardio machines—although better than doing nothing—is really wasting your time because it makes your body hold on to fat and break down more quickly. The best part of the All-Day Fat-Burning Diet workouts is that instead of doing an hour of weights and then spending an hour on the cardio machines, you’ll get greater results by merging both into a shorter, more intense workout. You’ll end up spending about one-third the training time but getting
double
the results.

If it sounds like I’m selling you snake oil, let me reassure you that
this
method of training has been proven to be more effective than just about any other workout method out there. The science speaks for itself. One study looked at obese premenopausal women to figure out whether traditional steady-state cardio was as effective as what I’m describing for burning fat. Each group exercised three times per week for 8 weeks and expended 300 calories per exercise session. Max VO
₂
, body composition, and resting metabolic rate were measured before and after training.

Not surprisingly, both max VO
₂
and body composition did not improve in the steady-state cardio group but improved significantly in the higher-intensity exercise group. Plus, resting metabolic rate remained elevated in the latter for an additional 24 hours, meaning that more fat was burned for an entire day after the workout was over!
¹⁴
For some reason, resistance training has often been overlooked by the many men and women who want to burn fat. But it shouldn’t be because it’s arguably the most important element in getting that strong, lean look. Even folks who do resistance training traditionally see it as separate from cardio. That means they end up spending more time working out to address both components. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have all day to be doing hours of both cardio and resistance training. Thankfully, you won’t have to with this program.

Not only is resistance training critical for building strong bones and preventing osteoporosis—especially for women—but it’s really the only way to ensure that you build and preserve your lean muscle, the driving force behind your metabolic rate. I like to think of resistance training as a long-term investment in your body. As you stimulate, build, and preserve your muscle tissue by working against resistance (bodyweight or weights), you set up your body to burn fat 24/7 for a long time to come. Long-duration cardio, on the other hand, is a short-term investment at best since it has zero positive impact on preserving your lean muscle mass in the long run. In fact, it actually breaks it down, which sends your metabolic rate plummeting.

One of the reasons many people gain weight as they age is the slowing of their metabolic rate. Since muscle is the most metabolically active (i.e., calorie-churning) component of your body, losing it slows
your
metabolism and increases your chances of gaining weight. This naturally occurs in all humans, as we begin to lose muscle mass on a yearly basis starting at about 30 years old. So keeping muscle is imperative to get the body you want. The All-Day Fat-Burning Diet workouts address the limitations of traditional exercise protocols and provide more effective fat burning while saving you a lot of time. These resistance-training programs come in two flavors, and I recommend that you use them on specific days of the 5-day caloric-cycling plan. I call them
full-body metabolic conditioning (FBMC)
and
eccentric strength workouts
.

Full-Body Metabolic Conditioning (FBMC) Workouts

Here, resistance-training exercises (using both bodyweight and weights) are structured in a way that challenges your muscles while eliciting a great cardiovascular workout. These workouts will make you huff and puff and get you sweating—two hallmark features of a high-intensity workout that will burn calories both during and after your workout. Over the past 15 years, I’ve developed thousands of FBMC programs. The number of ways to structure these workouts is truly endless.

In this program, you’ll benefit from the fat-burning magic of my famous
minicircuits,
in which you’ll perform three full-body exercises back-to-back with limited rest (anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds). You’ll repeat this three-exercise minicircuit, then follow it up with interval speed bursts. Next, you’ll tackle a new three-exercise minicircuit, also performing it twice and following it with a set of interval speed bursts. This workout strengthens and tones all the major muscles in your body and gets your heart rate pumping (great for cardiovascular health) in less than 30 minutes.

A ton of research has shown that this type of intense training, using full-body exercises known to significantly elevate your heart rate along with minimal rest periods, provides maximum fat burning in very little time.
^15
,
16
,
17
Why do these FBMC workouts burn fat so well?

First, resistance training, which challenges your muscles, contrib
utes
significantly to the amount of fat burned during a workout.
¹⁸
Second, when resistance-training exercises using multiple large muscles are combined with very little rest between sets, they elicit aerobic and metabolic benefits that last for hours postworkout—a concept known as EPOC (which I’ll describe shortly).
^19
,
20
Additionally, the higher intensity of these workouts increases the level of fat-burning catecholamines such as epinephrine and muscle-preserving growth hormone found in the blood both during and after your workout.
^21
,
22
And, with limited time to recover, shorter rest periods force your muscles to demand more oxygen, which leads to a higher heart rate (to deliver that oxygen). All of these factors contribute to burning more calories.