The Fat Burn Files - coming or going, which am i and which are you?

Transcription

Copyright © 2006 Fitness Renaissance, LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations
in a review, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.
WARNING: This ebook is protected by Federal copyright law. It is illegal to re-sell, auction,
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Published by Tom Venuto and Burn The Fat Enterprises (a division of Fitness Renaissance, LLC)
in the United States of America.
Editor: Lee A. Howard
A WORD OF CAUTION: DISCLAIMER
This book is for reference and informational purposes only and is no way intended as medical
counseling or medical advice. The information contained herein should not be used to treat,
diagnose, or prevent a disease or medical condition without the advice of a competent medical
professional. This book deals with in-depth information on health, fitness, and nutrition. Most of
the information applies to everyone in general; however, not everyone has the same body type.
We each have different responses to exercise depending on our choice of intensity and diet.
Before making any changes in your lifestyle, you should consult with a physician to discover the
best solution for your individual body type. The author, writer, editors, and graphic designer shall
have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any damage or
injury alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.
The Fat Burn Files
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iii
Important Copyright and Legal Notice
iv Tom Venuto
Copyright © 2006 Burn The Fat Enterprises. WARNING: This ebook is protected by Federal copyright law. It is illegal
The Fat Burn Files
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Mission: Abdominals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
David Grisaffi Interviews Tom Venuto
Superstar Fat Loss Tips: Diet, Cardio, and Weight Training Secrets to Get You
Leaner, Faster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Alwyn Cosgrove Interviews Tom Venuto
Extreme and Controversial Fat Loss Techniques, and Current Fat Loss Trends . 61
Craig Ballantyne Interviews Tom Venuto
Succeeding in Fitness, in Business, and in Life: A New Viewpoint on Motivation . 73
Charles Burke Interviews Tom Venuto
An Introduction to the Fat Loss Guru’s Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Kyle Battis Interviews Tom Venuto
All-Natural Bodybuilding and Fat Loss Secrets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Jeremy Likness Interviews Tom Venuto
The Bodybuilder’s Method to Maximum Muscle Gain and Minimum Body Fat. 147
Jon Benson Interviews Tom Venuto
Overcoming Fat-Loss and Muscle-Building Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Mike Shimon Interviews Tom Venuto
Inside the Life and Mind of a Natural Bodybuilder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Rob Cooper Interviews Tom Venuto
A Dissertation in Muscle Mass Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Chris Mohr, PhD, Interviews Tom Venuto
Resources for Your Advancement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Firm and Flatten Your Abs by David Grisaffi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Fit Over 40 by Jon Benson and Tom Venuto. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Turbulence Training by Craig Ballantyne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Afterburn Training by Alwyn Cosgrove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
www.TheFatBurnFiles.com
v
Contents
Bodybuilder MP3 Interviews by Rob Cooper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Home Gym Secrets by Kyle Battis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Lose Fat Not Faith by Jeremy Likness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Synchronicity Secrets by Charles Burke. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Choose to Be Fit Personal Coaching by Mike Shimon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Weapons for Mass Construction: Secrets for Muscular Growth by Chris Mohr. . . . . . . . . 258
vi
Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
Introduction
The Fat Burn Files
Throughout the pages of this book, you will get a rare, “fly-on-the-wall”
glimpse inside the mind of an all-natural bodybuilder as he was put on the
spot, grilled, and forced to divulge his best kept body-transforming secrets.
This wealth of knowledge and insight is based on more than two decades of
serious training and studying exercise and nutrition science. The bodybuilder
being interrogated in these everything-revealed interview sessions is yours
truly, Tom Venuto.
It’s fortuitous that this information was ever released. I’ve always been a
very private person, preferring for many years to avoid the mainstream
media and stay out of the public eye. For years, I quietly and happily trained
hundreds of men and women, one on one, at my health club or through
phone and email coaching, using my trademarked systems of burning fat and
building muscle. Outside of these private client sessions, I had always
reached people only through the written word.
Since the release of my first ebook, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, an
amazing phenomenon has taken place. I was quite literally forced to stand
naked in the spotlight and spill my guts about how I achieved such success
with my one-to-one personal coaching clients and in my own bodybuilding
endeavors, completely drug free, nearly supplement free, and in certain
areas, very much against the grain of popular opinion. Let me explain…
Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle has become the fat loss bible to
thousands of men and women in more than 130 countries. With the
worldwide success of the ebook—the number one ebook of its kind in
Internet history—it was inevitable that people would want to know more
about me and my fat loss and muscle building methods—especially the
latter, because most of my previous focus was on burning fat. That’s exactly
what happened. The phone started ringing.
Before I knew it, on an almost weekly basis, I was being asked to accept
interviews or speak live on various shows. In the beginning, as strange as it
may sound, I declined, because I had no desire to become a public speaker,
and I preferred anonymity and a quiet life out of the limelight.
www.TheFatBurnFiles.com 3
Introduction
But they didn’t go away! The host of one particular show pestered and
pleaded with me for nearly half a year to record an audio interview. Well, as
water eventually wears away rock over time, I finally gave in. The interview
not only went incredibly well and brought in great feedback, it also
stimulated more requests for me to speak.
Over the year and a half that followed, I appeared on literally dozens of
radio shows, podcasts, audio interviews, and teleseminars. A few were
broadcast live in public. Others were strictly closed-door affairs for paid
membership sites or small private groups. Fortunately, almost all of these
events were recorded.
When it dawned on me the sheer volume of information that had been
recorded and archived in these sessions, I decided that it would be a shame
to have valuable information like this be broadcast over the airwaves only
one time and then forgotten forever, or to have the private material remain
under lock and key.
Compiling and consolidating all this great material into one killer
resource became my mission. The trouble with many of the recordings,
however, was that the audio wasn’t up to production CD quality. Some of the
radio shows had numerous commercials, telephone connections had static,
or most commonly, the volume level faded in and out. I suppose that’s to be
expected, because these recordings were not done in a studio.
Because Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle was so well received as a
downloadable ebook, the solution I came up with for this new project was to
transcribe all the audios into writing and publish them in the form of another
ebook. That’s how The Fat Burn Files was born.
My first task was to gather together and listen to every minute of each
interview—there were dozens of them. After a difficult process of
elimination, I selected the absolute best, most info-packed interviews, and at
considerable expense, had the recordings carefully transcribed. Then I spent
many weeks laboriously editing and revising the transcripts for book format.
Lastly, the book was edited a second time by a professional editor and was
typeset, designed and converted into Adobe Acrobat PDF ebook format.
After five months of painstaking hard work, the end result you now have
in front of you is a fabulous compilation, considering where and what state
the original material came from. The interviews are still presented in
question-and-answer form with dialogue, but they read smoothly like any
first class high quality book, not a like raw transcript of a casual
conversation, which has “ums,” “ahs,” sentence fragments, and so on.
4 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
Best of all, in the editing process, I removed outdated information, added
new material, and expanded on some of my answers to create something
brand new. As a result, the material in this finished product—The Fat Burn
Files—has never been seen before.
Some of these interviews were never released in public to begin with, and
some are brand new, but even the ones that were initially broadcast on public
podcasts or radio shows have been updated, edited, and revised to create this
exciting new collection.
As the title implies, The Fat Burn Files contains the answers to nearly
every question you could ever ask about burning body fat. However, it
doesn’t stop there. This is not just a fat loss book. You will also learn in great
detail about the other half of the equation—bodybuilding and gaining
muscle.
The topics of discussion are incredibly diverse, and the commentary
could not be more intelligent and relevant, because the people doing the
interviewing are world class fitness experts in their own right, not just
everyday journalists. As such, they were great “interrogators,” and they
drew out of me exactly what they wanted their listeners to hear.
Furthermore, the answers I gave to their questions are not only incredibly
thorough, as anyone who has ever read my newsletters or syndicated Q & A
columns will attest, they are also as candid and honest as you will ever hear
from any fitness professional. Some of the information may even surprise or
shock you, but deep down, you will probably appreciate being told “the way
it really is,” even if that challenges your paradigms or shakes you up a bit.
Beyond the enlightening facts about burning fat and gaining muscle, you
will also learn motivational strategies, life success principles, the truth about
supplements, current trends in fitness, and so much more.
Without question, this is truly a unique book in content, style, and
delivery, but as with all books or educational products, the true value of the
work is not in the reading, but in the application. The Fat Burn Files ebook
is filled with practical ideas you can apply in your daily life. If you use them,
you will improve your results, possibly in a very dramatic way. If you don’t
use them, then you are no better off for having purchased this book.
Remember—you don’t have to completely overhaul your life tomorrow.
Sometimes tiny steps and small changes in your diet, your workouts, and
your lifestyle are best, so that you don’t feel overwhelmed with information
overload. As you read this book, look for those ideas that you can pull out
from these pages and most easily plug into your life immediately.
Introduction
If you take just one tip or technique from this book and apply it with
consistency, the results from the application of that single idea will make
your small investment worth it many times over. The best part is, these pages
contain hundreds of those ideas.
Train hard and expect success always,
Tom Venuto, CSCS, NSCA-CPT
Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
Bodybuilding & Fat Loss Coach
www.TomVenuto.com
www.BurnTheFat.com
www.BurnTheFatBlog.com
www.TheFatBurnFiles.com
www.AmazingAbdominals.com
www.BodybuildingSecrets.com
www.BurnTheFatInnerCircle.com
www.BurnTheFatMP3.com
6 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
Mission: Abdominals
David Grisaffi Interviews Tom Venuto
David Grisaffi:
Tom, before we get started, I just want to say thank you for taking time out
of your busy schedule for this interview.
Tom Venuto:
Always a pleasure, David.
David Grisaffi:
Let’s jump right in and talk about a very popular topic in today’s fitness
news—abdominal fat. Many products claim to reduce abdominal fat. A few
years back there was Cortislim, and today we see new products on TV, like
Relacore, that talk about reducing abdominal fat. Would you tell us your
thoughts on this subject?
Tom Venuto:
There are all kinds of products claiming to reduce belly fat through all sorts
of mechanisms including controlling insulin, reducing appetite, increasing
thermogenesis, and others. The two products you mentioned claim to reduce
abdominal fat by suppressing the hormone cortisol.
No matter what the mechanism involved, I can’t put it any softer than to
say this whole concept of “take a pill to lose your belly” is the wrong
approach and a great way to burn your money, get taken advantage of, and
end up frustrated, discouraged, or even harming yourself. If pills really
worked in the long term, they would have stood the test of time, but instead,
there’s a new miracle product every year. That’s how the marketing machine
works—they keep hooking you with the “next big thing.”
People get bombarded with so much advertising that they’re conditioned
to think that a pill is the answer. But if you look at the history of the diet pill
market, it’s been one bomb, one scam, and one fraud after another.
The products you mentioned are perfect examples. In 2004, the Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) filed lawsuits against the makers of Cortislim and
Cortistress, charging them with making false and unsubstantiated claims that
their products can cause weight loss.
The last news I heard, which was in late 2005, the defendants were
paying $4.5 million in damages to settle, and they were banned from making
certain claims in their advertising and from misrepresenting the results of
Inside the Life and Mind of a Natural Bodybuilder
tests or scientific studies. They were also prohibited from using what the
FTC called “deceptively formatted television and radio advertisements.”
What I want to point out about all this is that Cortislim is still for sale and
so are about a dozen or more copycat products. These companies were not
banned from selling their products, they were only banned from making
certain claims about their products.
You’ll notice a lot of them will say something like this: “Cortisol has been
scientifically linked to abdominal body fat. Stress causes cortisol release.
Therefore, stress causes belly fat. Our product contains ingredients that have
a calming effect and reduce stress.” Some of the ads do not necessarily close
this loop by saying, “Therefore, taking our product shrinks belly fat,” that
claim is simply implied as the next step in the chain of causation. Others are
still making fraudulent claims; the FTC just hasn’t caught up with them yet.
One of the things that really bothers me about the advertising in one of
the current crop of products is that their ad says, “Excess tummy flab is not
your fault.” Oh really? Well whose fault is that belly of yours? Your
husband’s? Your kids’? Your neighbors’? McDonalds? Krispy Kreme? Your
parents’? Yeah, maybe it’s all genetics. A glandular problem? Yeah, it’s a
glandular problem all right—your mouth gland is malfunctioning several
times a day, eating too many calories and too much junk food.
Most people are happy to take the praise and credit whenever they
succeed or produce a positive result, but they won’t accept the blame when
they fail or produce a negative result. Taking 100% responsibility for your
body and your health is one of the most important concepts I teach.
Not a lot of people are willing to do that. Instead they make excuses or
blame it on something else like genetics or lifestyle factors that they perceive
to be out of their control—such as stress—and stress is what these new
products are hanging their hats on. Clever marketing hook too, because who
doesn’t feel at least a little stressed in this day and age we live in?
With products like these, there is usually a thread of scientific truth
woven into a fabric of lies, and that’s what makes it difficult for the average
lay person to separate the two.
In this case, there’s a scientifically proven correlation between the stress
hormone cortisol and intra-abdominal body fat. But that doesn’t mean taking
a pill that suppresses cortisol will remove body fat that is already deposited.
It takes a calorie deficit through proper diet and exercise to do that.
Pop all the pills you want and suppress cortisol all you want, but if you’re
eating more than you’re burning, you’re going to keep gaining even more
body fat.
10 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
To avoid legal or FTC issues, some companies are making it a point to
post disclaimers emphasizing the importance of nutrition and exercise in
addition to taking their pill. This is a good thing, but on the other hand, it
also complicates matters because, if you’re working out and dieting, there’s
no way to tell whether the weight loss you achieve is a result of the pill or
the exercise and nutrition. Most likely, it’s 99% the exercise and nutrition, if
not 100%, and between 0% and 1% the supplement.
If you’re under a lot of stress, you don’t need a pill to suppress the
cortisol produced by the stress, you need to reduce stress! That’s obvious to
the point of “DUH,” but people always seem to want the magic pill, don’t
they?
I’d recommend taking up a stress reduction program that could include
meditation, time in nature, yoga, deep breathing exercises, vacation time,
daily and weekly timeouts to decompress and relax, and high quality sleep.
You also need to balance your training stress properly with the right amount
of recovery.
My advice: Never waste your money on a pill that claims to reduce fat or
belly fat. Exercise and proper diet are the way to go if you want permanent
results. When you combine those with a proper balance of work and rest,
then you have everything you need for great health and amazing abs.
David Grisaffi:
What about hoodia gordonii? The ads say, “It’s the newest phenomenon and
most exciting fat loss product available, as seen on 60 Minutes,” and so on.
What are your thoughts?
Tom Venuto:
I have never seen so much hype as this hoodia thing, but I guess that’s what
60 Minutes and BBC prime time will do. Not to mention millions of spam
emails.
If hoodia does anything, it’s a quick fix. At the very best, if it contains
what it says it contains, and does what it claims to do, it might suppress
appetite so you eat less. That might be of value to some people some of the
time, but I don’t believe suppressing appetite is the right strategy to begin
with. Suppress your appetite so you can starve yourself and slow down your
metabolism and lose muscle? Great logic there. You need to feed your
muscle, not starve it, and burn the fat with exercise.
It’s also totally senseless to take pills that you are completely uneducated
about. Many people are taking hoodia because of the hype, but they don’t
even have any idea what it is or what it’s supposed to do.
Hoodia is a plant from Africa that has reputedly been used by the
Kalahari bushmen to suppress appetite while they went on long hunting
trips. In 1997 it was licensed to a British pharmaceutical company called
11
Phytopharm. Phytopharm did one in-house study with a small group of
subjects, but so far there is not one single independent study in a peerreviewed journal that proves hoodia is effective for helping with weight loss.
All this hype is based on anecdotal evidence and a couple of reporter’s
personal testimonials broadcast to millions of people.
There are a lot of educated and respected fitness professionals who say
that controlling appetite with various compounds (drugs or natural
supplements) is a completely acceptable and effective way to help people
lose weight. That may be true if you’re talking about temporary weight loss
and if you’re okay with using drugs, and a lot of people are. Personally, I
think that’s short term thinking, especially when you figure that you can
control appetite just by eating properly.
I believe that if you’re not thinking about long term permanent fat loss,
then you’re wasting your time. We don’t have a problem with people losing
weight. The problem is the inability to keep weight off. 95% of the people
who lose weight gain it back within a year. That’s because 95% of the people
who lose weight are losing weight the wrong way—with pills, crash diets,
and other quick fixes.
One last thing worth mentioning is that this hoodia gordonii plant is
apparently quite rare, and there is a limited supply and a large demand. As a
result there has been at least one case of a company selling phony hoodia,
and I read one statistic that estimated that two-thirds of the hoodia on the
market is phony. That’s just one more reason not to bother.
David Grisaffi:
Good information, Tom, thanks. Why don’t we stay on this subject of hyped
weight loss products. Another one of the new ones is the diet patch. What’s
your opinion of this product?
Tom Venuto:
The diet patch just makes me laugh even before I analyze the ingredients it
supposedly delivers, because like a pill, a patch is not addressing causes, it’s
just another attempt at treating a symptom. What about fixing the cause—
inactivity and poor diet—with exercise and good nutrition?
Usually when I say that, someone says back to me, “Yeah, Tom, I will
diet and exercise while I’m using the patch,” and I say, if you ate right and
exercised right, you wouldn’t need the patch even if they did work, and you
could save your money! Spend it on better food, a gym membership, or
home gym equipment.
Let’s play devil’s advocate, assuming it’s possible there might be
something valid here, because patches are a legitimate method to deliver
drugs transdermally, which means through the skin. Examples include
scopolalmine for motion sickness, the nicotine patch for smoking cessation,
12 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
and the testosterone patch for low male hormone levels and the problems
that come with that.
The over-the-counter diet patches of course are not delivering weight loss
drugs, but simply claim to contain all kinds of over-the-counter ingredients
including guarana, lecithin, L-carnitine, sida cordifola, and others that claim
to increase your metabolism or decrease your appetite.
You have two questions to consider here. First, are any of these
ingredients scientifically proven to help you lose weight to begin with?
Second, does the over-the-counter patch effectively deliver the ingredients
through the skin the same as the prescription drug patches? I would say in
almost every case the answers are no and no.
Here are some even more enlightening facts:
In 1988, The FDA seized a supply of Appetoff patches, which were
nothing more than circular Band-Aids that instructed users to place a drop
of supposed fat-burning liquid on it. The patches were tested and found to
contain no active ingredients. If you’re wondering whether anyone would
be dumb enough to buy such a thing, then consider that $22 million worth
of these patches were seized when the FDA busted down the doors.
In November 2004, the attorney general filed a lawsuit against a Nevada
corporation, Diet Patch, Inc., for luring consumers to their website with
false claims and free trial offers for their diet patch. They were charged
with multiple violations of the consumer fraud and deceptive business
practices act.
In March 2005, The FTC ordered the shutdown of “The Amazing Diet
Patch” after massive numbers of consumer complaints flooded in about
the product not working as advertised and about unauthorized billing of
their credit cards after agreeing only to a free trial.
In January 2006, A Michigan man was sentenced to two years in jail after
being charged with sending millions of spam email messages to sell
phony diet aids including the Avatar diet patch. (FTC vs. Phoenix Avatar.)
This is only a tiny portion of the cases, and all this information is
available on public record for those who care enough to do their homework
before spending their money.
This is not one of those products that might work or could work or needs
more research—it’s a scam. One of the FTC’s red flag criteria for weight
loss scams is if the product claims to produce weight loss by wearing it on or
rubbing it into your skin. The FTC also says that diet patches have never
been shown to be safe or effective and never received FDA approval.
Unless you like making scammers and spammers rich, stay away from
diet patches.
13
David Grisaffi:
Interesting. So what, if any, rules or regulations should be attached to dietary
supplements to help stop these scams?
Tom Venuto:
That’s a tough question. It would be good to get some kind of control over
this for the sake of consumer protection, but on the other hand I’m a very
strong believer in an individual’s freedom to choose and in a business’s
freedom to sell what they want to sell as long as it’s done legally and
ethically.
Even if I don’t believe in a product, as long as there’s no serious danger
and companies are not breaking the law, then I don’t think the government or
any regulation agencies should step in and take away our freedom to choose.
I don’t think it was necessary to pull ephedrine off the market, for example.
I think we simply need more fitness professionals to stop selling this crap
for the sake of the quick buck and start being role models and providing
nutrition and exercise education and the proper warnings.
David Grisaffi:
Let’s move on and start talking about abdominal training. I’ve written an
abdominal training book called Firm and Flatten Your Abs, which of course,
I know you are very familiar with because you wrote the foreword for me—
thank you again, by the way. The book explains my philosophy of functional
training for your abdominals and your entire core. I come from a sports
training and functional training background, and I’d be interested in hearing
which abdominal exercises you would recommend since you come from a
bodybuilding background. Also, from a bodybuilder’s perspective, I’m
wondering what you see as the difference between training for function and
training for form.
Tom Venuto:
A lot of what we do in bodybuilding for cosmetic goals and building muscle
mass is different from what athletes do in their training for performance and
function goals. But no matter what you’re training for, you have to train
smart so you stay injury free, and functional training has a lot to do with
avoiding injury.
When we say “function” or “functional,” we are talking about how you
perform on the playing field and in day-to-day activities. When we say
“form,” we’re talking about how you look.
Bodybuilding is a unique sport with unique training needs and
requirements. In bodybuilding, we are not judged on performance, we are
actually judged on form or looks. It doesn’t matter how much I lift, how fast
I run, how hard I hit, or how high I can vertical jump. As a bodybuilder, my
purpose is to look better on stage. If that’s true, then I could say that
anything I do that helps me look better and keeps me free of injury is
functional.
14 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
All training that leads to injury is faulty, non-functional training, and
bodybuilders are often guilty of mistakes in program design and exercise
performance that get them injured. To add insult to that injury, it’s selfinflicted because there’s no physical contact with another player as there is
in other sports.
A common bodybuilder mistake is training for your ego and being only
interested in how much you can lift regardless of your exercise form or the
effect on your physique. Another mistake is using machines exclusively.
There are functional training experts that say you should never use
machines, and I would say that whether machines are appropriate depends
on the context. It may be wrong to put athletes on machines in favor of free
weights, but machines are an extremely valuable tool for bodybuilders and
those with bodybuilding goals.
There are machines that can work a muscle group from an angle that free
weights cannot duplicate due to gravity and resistance curves. Bodybuilders
should train lots of different angles and lots of different exercises to fill in
“holes” in muscular development or to target certain small areas to improve
symmetry and proportion. For example, the lateral deltoid or the rear deltoid
is incredibly important to enhance the illusion of the V-taper and a small
waist, but when does a football player need to worry about his lateral or rear
delt development?
An important part of bodybuilding training is to balance the workload and
strength development between the muscle groups. For example,
bodybuilders often blast their quads, then do hamstrings last when they have
no energy left, and they end up with three or four half-hearted sets of lying
leg curls. They should be balancing their hams with their quads not just for
proper physique development but to prevent muscle imbalances that can lead
to injury or joint instability.
It’s the same thing with abdominal training. You see a lot of overuse of
the crunch. If you do nothing but floor crunches without working your lower
back and using variety in your exercise choices, you may be setting yourself
up for problems.
Many people believe that weak abs are a major cause of lower back pain,
and those are factors, but a lot of people with lower back problems simply
have weak backs and weak spinal stabilizers due to sheer neglect. Look at
the average training program of anyone training for bodybuilding and
general fitness, and I can almost guarantee there are far more reps of ab
crunches and flexion being done than lower back and extension work.
Having said all this, I like to mix the traditional bodybuilding ab exercises
with the core exercises that are so popular today, not relying on one or the
other. I’ve heard so many times trainers saying, “Crunches are totally
15
worthless,” but there is a place for all kinds of ab exercises. The key is
balance and variety.
Here are some of my favorite abdominal exercises:

Crunches (various types)

Weighted crunches (various types)

Kneeling cable rope crunch (straight on or with an elbow-to-knee twist)

Twisting crunch (elbow to opposite knee)

Side crunch

Reverse crunch

Reverse crunch on incline slant board

Hip lift (toes to sky)

Hanging knee-ups from ab slings

Hanging leg raises from ab slings
Recently, I’ve added a lot more core work, stability ball work, and
rotational work. I didn’t throw out the staple exercises I depended on for all
those years, I just balanced my routine with exercises such as:

Stability ball crunches

Stability ball reverse crunches

Stability ball side crunches

Stability ball jackknives

Side planks

Planks

Upper body Russian twists on the Swiss ball, holding plate or medicine
ball

Lower body Russian twists, bent-knee or straight-legged (aka windshield
wipers)

Cable woodchoppers
I admit, I was stubborn at first about adding the new stuff. I remember the
first time I ever saw the plank exercise years ago. I was working out with a
female friend of mine. She showed me the plank and I laughed at her and
said, “What the heck is that—that doesn’t do anything for your abs!” It was
my typical bodybuilder mentality at the time. I was the same way about the
Swiss ball at first—I wouldn’t have been seen on one of those things if you
paid me. Now I know what these exercises can do, and it’s more than just
about six-pack abs—it’s also about keeping a strong and stable spine and
core so I can do my bodybuilding exercises like squats and rows safely.
16 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
Changing your exercises and using a lot of variety helps your
development and also prevents you from getting bored. As you said in your
book, there are hundreds of exercises and variations you can do for your abs.
But most people just keep doing the same old thing—crunch, sit-up, and leg
raise, and that’s it.
David Grisaffi:
While we’re on the subject of bodybuilding training, I’d also like to know
how much cardio and weight training you would recommend for burning fat
and for getting chiseled and defined abs like you have.
Tom Venuto:
Getting chiseled and defined abs is mostly nutrition. If your diet isn’t in
place, then you can’t support your training or maintain an efficient
metabolism. If your diet is a mess, put the most focus on fixing that first.
The second factor is the exercise. You need weight training and specific
abdominal exercises to develop the six-pack look, but most people also need
cardio to burn the fat off so you can see the six-pack. You could have
awesome abs that are completely covered up with a layer of flab.
I look at cardio as fat burning exercise and weight training as muscle
building exercise. Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about weight training
being great for fat burning, and it is. The only problem is, the more you turn
your weight training into circuit training for fat burning, the less strength and
muscle growth you’ll get and the further you’re getting away from
bodybuilding.
There’s a happy medium for people with weight loss and general fitness
goals, where weight training can kill two birds with one stone for time
efficiency. Alwyn Cosgrove’s Afterburn Training and Craig Ballantyne’s
Turbulence Training are good examples of that style of training, and its great
for really busy people. For bodybuilding purposes, however, I separate
cardio for fat burning from weight training for muscle building, and I use
bodybuilding split routines.
Each person has to adjust his training style and frequency to his own body
and personal goals. For most people, weight training three times a week is
ideal. Four days a week would be the max. For bodybuilders on split
routines, four days a week is ideal and five days a week would be the max.
I don’t recommend a single amount of cardio. I do as little as I can get
away with but as much as is necessary. I prefer to burn more calories as a fat
burning strategy rather than to cut calories.
I focus on a calorie deficit, of course, but I also focus on the total calories
burned. A 500-calorie deficit at an intake of 3000 calories is in no way the
same 500-calorie deficit at 1500 calories a day. At 1500 calories a day,
you’re getting half the vitamins, half the minerals, half the phytonutrients,
17
half the macronutrients, and half the thermogenic effect of a 500-calorie
deficit at 3000 calories per day, without the benefits that come from the
exercise.
People have different body types and vary on how much cardio they need,
so I’ll tell you what I do, but it may not be the same for you. We all know
some genetically gifted type who does zero cardio and has shredded abs all
year round, but most people need cardio to get lean and see defined
abdominals. Three days a week for 20–30 minutes is a good starting point
for cardio, and you can increase from that point based on results.
I usually increase to 30–45 minutes of cardio daily before contests or
whenever I want to get really lean. If I have to, I’ll even do two 30-minute
sessions a day to knock off the last bit of fat. Then I back off to one session
in the final couple of weeks and cut the cardio completely the last three to
seven days before the show to let myself fill out a bit. Then it’s back to three
days a week for maintenance.
The hot thing now is interval training and interval training is very
effective, but it’s not the only way to do cardio and it’s not appropriate for
everyone. I’ve used steady state cardio successfully through most all of the
28 bodybuilding competitions I’ve done, so you can’t say steady state cardio
doesn’t work, even though I hear trainers actually say that sometimes. What
you can say is that higher intensity cardio burns more calories in less time. I
think there is confusion because some people equate steady state cardio with
low intensity, and they’re not necessarily the same.
For some people, lower intensity cardio like walking is great, especially
beginners, those out of shape, or the elderly. Based on what you read in some
of the magazines these days, you’d think that if you’re not doing wind
sprints or high intensity intervals, you’re doing it all wrong, and that’s just
not true; that’s simply a reflection of what is trendy now. I know drug-free
bodybuilders who walk on the treadmill for an hour a day and, when
combined with their diet and weight training, they’re the most ripped and
muscular athletes on the face of the earth. I also know very obese men and
women who were 300 or 400 pounds to start, and they lost all the weight
with walking, weight training, and good nutrition.
There are many opinions about cardio, and many opinionated people, but
choosing your cardio comes down to personal goals, personal preference,
how important time efficiency is to you and—most important of all—what
kind of results you’re getting. If whatever type of cardio you’re doing is
working, keep doing it!
David Grisaffi:
18 Tom Venuto
Right. Cardio is important for your health too, and walking has great health
benefits. But let me ask you this: Training for bodybuilding is a completely
The Fat Burn Files
different concept than training for health. At what point does training
become excessive and unhealthy?
Tom Venuto:
I hope you don’t mind me rephrasing your question because I understand
what you’re asking, but the way you phrased it could be interpreted as
meaning that bodybuilding is inherently unhealthy. That’s not true if it’s
done intelligently and without drugs.
Unfortunately, bodybuilding is infested with anabolic drug use, and that’s
one of the things that could make bodybuilding unhealthy. I believe that
natural bodybuilding is one of the healthiest lifestyles anyone could ever
adopt. As long as bodybuilding is done drug free and is kept in balance with
other things in life, then there’s nothing unhealthy about it. At the
competitive level, it requires extreme dedication and discipline, but that’s
true for any sport.
Wrestlers probably put their body through more stress than bodybuilders
do, and look at the literal pounding that boxers and football players take. Is
that unhealthy? Well, I guess that depends on how you look at it. I think it’s
just part of what competitive sports are about. Just keep everything in
balance, don’t push to the point of injury, and avoid the “win at all costs”
mentality.
David Grisaffi:
You were talking earlier about the importance of functional training for
injury prevention. You’ve confided in me in the past about your bouts with
lower back pain, and I know you’ve had some considerable success in
overcoming a pretty serious disc injury. What steps should someone take
when they are faced with lower back pain and they still want to train and
lose body fat?
Tom Venuto:
First I’m going to give you a shameless plug and tell everyone they should
buy your Firm and Flatten Your Abs book, because I learned a lot from your
book and from all our conversations these past few years.
I’ll sum it up with a punch list. This is also assuming you are working
with a doctor or therapist. If you’ve had a lower back injury, don’t do
anything without checking with your doctor first.
1. Don’t do traditional ab exercises like crunches and reverse crunches
exclusively. Be sure to do some work including Swiss ball exercises,
rotational exercises such as the cable woodchopper or Russian twists, as
well as core stabilization exercises like the plank and side plank.
2. Be cautious of exercises like sit-ups and Roman chair sit-ups. If you have
existing back pain, you’d should be careful with exercises that
19
predominantly use the hip flexors, even if you see other people doing
them all the time.
3. Use progression in your training. If you try advanced exercises without
building up slowly, you’re likely to injure your back even further. For
example, don’t try hanging straight leg raises if you can’t even do them
bent-kneed with good form. If you can’t lunge properly with your body
weight, don’t do lunges with dumbbells or a barbell.
4. Add some exercises for the spinal stabilizers. In your book, David, you
recommend the horse stance exercises, and prone alternating arm and leg
raises, which are great. I know other trainers and therapists who really
like the prone (lying on your stomach) superman and the cobra exercise as
well. All these movements have the same purpose, which is to strengthen
the spinal stabilizers.
5. Work on as much spinal extension as spinal flexion. The flexion is the
crunches, and if you do hundreds of crunches a day and you neglect
extensions and the lower back, you’re asking for trouble. I like the lower
back extensions, also called hyperextensions, and I love the reverse
hyperextension, which you can do on a special bench or with a Swiss ball.
6. Avoid high-risk exercises like bent over rows, deadlifts and squats. If
you’re able to do them, then do them with impeccable form and avoid
heavy weights. There’s no need to go heavy when you can make a
moderate or light weight feel heavier with stricter form and variations in
technique.
7. Do your ab exercises slowly and deliberately with physical and mental
concentration on the quality of contraction. A lot of people are
conditioned to do ab exercises such as sit-ups for time, but fast reps
reduce the quality of muscle contraction because the movements are
being executed with momentum and not muscle action. This can also
increase the likelihood of injury. Slow down and squeeze!
David Grisaffi:
Good advice. It sounds like you actually did read my book! Okay, next
question. A lot of women would like to know more about cellulite. Many are
confused about what it really is, how it develops and, of course, how to get
rid of it. Can you shed some light on this for us?
Tom Venuto:
Cellulite is just body fat. The only difference is the dimpled appearance,
which most experts say is from the connective tissue mixed in with the fat.
I’ve encountered women so adamant about thinking cellulite is totally
different from body fat, that they actually argue with me about it and insist
they need something else besides nutrition and exercise.
20 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
The reason women are confused is because of the way cellulite is
portrayed in the media and in the advertisements as something that requires
special remedies. An entire $100-million industry has been spun around this
one idea. The truth is, you lose cellulite the same way you lose any other
type of fat—with nutrition and training.
David Grisaffi:
Women also tend to gain weight and have trouble with lower abdominal
pooch when they get older and go through menopause. Is it because their
metabolism slows down that much?
Tom Venuto:
The physical decline you see in most men and women as they get older is
30% due to our genetic code and the fact that the body will age no matter
what and we will all eventually die someday. But the other 70% of how well
we age is lifestyle.
We are not supposed to get weak, fat, and incapacitated as we get older.
These are all the effects of lifestyle choices we have made and that we are in
control of. Sure, it gets a little harder as you get older, especially past 50 and
60, but 70% of the effects of aging that we see in the general population are
due to neglect and lazy lifestyle. Exercise and nutrition must be lifelong
commitments, and you have to use it or you lose it. If you do use it, you can
lose fat, get a flat stomach, and look fantastic at any age.
David Grisaffi:
How does weight training benefit the elderly?
Tom Venuto:
I co-authored an entire book on this called Fit Over 40; Role Models for
Excellence at Any Age, and I recommend that everyone over 40 look into it.
I’ve posted a review that tells more about the book at
www.TheFatBurnFiles.com/fit-over-40.shtml. To summarize the whole
thing: I’m convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that keeping the muscle
you have and building muscle through strength training is as close to the
fountain of youth as you will ever find.
David Grisaffi:
Many people email me about fat loss plateaus. They lose fat successfully for
a long time, then it’s always that last little bit of fat that keeps sticking to
their lower abs and love handles, and it’s usually just enough left that they
can’t quite see their abs yet, but they’re so close. I’m familiar with your
philosophies on this, and you cover the topic of breaking fat loss plateaus as
thoroughly as anyone. Could you give our readers some information that
they could use?
Tom Venuto:
Most people hit plateaus after very successful initial weight loss because
they took the wrong approach from the beginning—not enough calories, not
enough exercise. When you start with low calories you have nothing to fall
21
back on except even lower calories, and that digs you deeper into a
metabolic hole.
This is part of the reason why my Burn the Fat system works so well—
because it has so much flexibility built into it. If one thing doesn’t work, you
have dozens, hundreds even, of other methods you can fall back on.
If your diet or training program is too rigid, and you hit a plateau, you’re
stuck aren’t you? The important thing is that if your progress has stopped,
you have to make a change. More of the same will only bring more of the
same.
Part of choosing your plateau-breaking strategy depends on how well
you’ve been sticking with the program. The first thing I ask my clients is,
“Rate your last week on a scale from 1 to 10, with 9 being 90% compliance,
7 being 70% compliance, and so on.” If it’s not at least 90% compliance,
there’s no plateau to break; you’re just not being strict enough—you’re not
following the program.
Another part of which strategy to choose—whether it’s stricter diet, fewer
carbs, more cardio, or whatever—is to look at what you’ve been doing in the
past few months, not just the last few days.
For example, it seems counter intuitive, but if someone has been doing an
hour and a half of cardio a day for the past year, I might suspect aerobic
adaptation and have him or her cut back on the cardio for a while and focus
more on weight training and interval cardio training. I’m very much in favor
of using cardio liberally, but the trouble with cardio is that if you do too
much of the same thing for too long, you adapt to it. You have to cycle the
volume or at least change the type and program design dramatically.
On the other hand, if I have someone who is only one month into a
training program with three sessions of cardio per week, who was inactive
before starting the program, then increasing cardio would be my first
plateau-breaking strategy because aerobic adaptation is definitely not the
cause of the plateau in that case, and I like to increase calories burned first
before decreasing calories consumed. There’s a lot more info on plateaubreaking strategies in my Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle book.
David Grisaffi:
22 Tom Venuto
If you can keep getting leaner and leaner using all these strategies, how far
should you go? Being very lean is held in high regard in our culture, and
fitness models, fashion models, and movie stars seem to be setting a standard
of beauty and attractiveness, so some people are really pushing themselves
to get as lean as humanly possible. What are your suggestions on safe body
fat levels?
The Fat Burn Files
Tom Venuto:
The most important suggestion I can give is to focus on self-improvement.
Become better than you used to be, not better than someone else.
Even if you’re in a competitive situation such as a figure, fitness,
bodybuilding, or transformation challenge competition, ultimately the best
thing you can do is compete against yourself. Each time you step on stage or
do a photo shoot, aim for an all time personal best.
It’s not wrong to use other people as role models to encourage us to aim
higher and even to raise our standards, but we each have unique genetics and
unique gifts and talents, and we need to be aware of those and do the best
with what we have. Some people set their goals too low and set their
standards too low, and role models help us aim high and give us the
inspiration to go for it.
The trouble happens if you look at someone else, like a magazine cover
model or a movie star, set that physique as your standard and also set your
expectations accordingly—without taking into consideration your own body
type, genetics, and the lifestyle you’re willing to lead.
What can happen then is you may get discouraged if and when you don’t
end up looking like your role model. This leads people in one of two
directions: discouragement or disorder. Discouragement can lead to quitting,
or it can go the opposite direction and you can become obsessive. Someone
once said that “obsessed” is a word that the lazy use to describe the
dedicated. This may be true, but you have to consider the issues of
disordered eating and excessive exercise addiction or over-training.
When you look at recommended safe body fat levels, it’s important to
realize what is your year-round maintenance or lifestyle level of fat and what
is peaking for competition or photo shoot level, because those can be two
totally different things. What you see in the magazines is usually the day of a
competition peak.
The idea is to stay lean all year round, then get very lean or ripped for
only short periods of time. A lot of people do that anyway—they stay in
shape all year, but they really kick it into high gear to get in top shape for
summer beach weather. If you understand this concept, you’re not going to
endanger your health so long as you reach that peak condition the natural
way without drugs or extreme measures.
David Grisaffi:
Okay. What is your real opinion on leanness? How lean do you have to be to
see your abdominal six-pack?
Tom Venuto:
There’s no single number or chart that will apply to everyone because the
physical appearance different people have at the same body fat level can
vary a lot. One woman can look totally ripped with six-pack abs at 16%
23
body fat and another can look as if she’s still holding a little visible fat in the
abs at the same 16%. This is just genetic uniqueness in how and where we
store our fat.
Body fat measurements should be used as a way to track your progress
from one week or one month to the next, not to compare yourself to
someone else or to a certain standard on paper. There are some good
guidelines, though, and one of them is the body fat chart I created for my
Burn the Fat program:
Burn the Fat Body Fat Guidelines
MEN
Competition Shape (“ripped”)
3–6%
Very Lean (excellent)
9% or less
Lean (good)
10–14%
Average (fair)
15–19%
Below average (poor)
20–25%
Major improvement needed (very poor)
26–30+%
WOMEN
Competition Shape (”ripped”)
9–12%
Very Lean (excellent)
15% or less
Lean (good)
16–20%
Average (fair)
21–25%
Below average (poor)
26–30%
Major improvement needed (very poor)
31–35+%
As a general guideline, most men will start to see some abdominal
definition when they drop under 10% body fat into the single digits. For a
totally ripped stomach with virtually no visible fat whatsoever, you are
talking about low to mid single digits—4%–7% body fat or so.
Women usually start to show abdominal definition when their body fat
drops into the mid to upper teens, and look ripped in the lower teens.
Competition shape for female bodybuilding, fitness, and figure competition
ranges from low teens to high single digits. Single-digit body fat is rare for
24 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
women except for physique athletes and endurance athletes, and it’s not
realistic to expect to stay that lean and probably not healthy either.
David Grisaffi:
Since we’re on the subject of body fat and abdominal body fat, what are
different ways to measure body fat? I think many people get confused about
the measuring process. Why would you want to measure? I always tell my
clients the mirror tells all like in Cinderella! What do you think?
Tom Venuto:
The mirror alone might be better than the scale alone, but knowing your
body composition does have great value. I know a lot of bodybuilders who
never measure body fat, and they can time their competition peak with the
precision of an F-16 landing on an aircraft carrier. All they use is the mirror.
However, these are athletes with high levels of what I call “sensory acuity.”
That means they can tell by feel, touch, sight, and even pure instinct exactly
when something is working and exactly when they are making progress or
stalling out.
The advantage of body fat testing is that it gives you objective feedback
and lets you track your fat weight and lean weight and not just your total
weight. Total body weight losses on a scale can be very misleading. Much of
that is from loss in water weight that happens when you start a lot of diets,
especially low carb diets. But you have to realize that some of the weight
you lose could also be muscle, especially if your calories are too low or if
you’re not doing any weight training. A body fat test, like a simple skinfold
caliper test, will tell you what you’re losing—fat or muscle.
I know what you’re getting at when you suggest that the mirror is where
it’s at, but I think body fat measurements are very valuable, and if you have
access to accurate testing you should take advantage of it. The more
feedback you have to chart your progress the better. It’s also a great
motivational tool.
The only trouble is when your body fat percentage number becomes some
kind of Holy Grail to you and it’s the only thing you focus on. I’ve seen that
happen a lot. I’ve seen people go from elation to total depression just based
on the results of their weekly pinch-an-inch test, and they walk around
mentally defeated for days. That is not productive.
David Grisaffi:
Tom, as an expert on diet and nutrition, I’d like to ask your thoughts on low
carb eating. Is it safe? How long should we do it? Are there any long term
risks?
Tom Venuto:
Reducing carbs can help accelerate fat loss for short periods during fat loss
programs. I just do it differently, more sensibly, and with more flexibility
than traditional low carb diets.
25
The problem with low carb diets in general is that most people don’t take
into account their unique goals and body type, so they follow a one-size-fitsall prescription of the latest low carb program and they take the carb
restriction too far. Zero carb or close to zero carb diets are, in my opinion,
completely unnecessary, way too extreme and possibly unhealthy.
A common problem with sustained very low carb diets is the rebound
effect. The lower you drop your carbs, the more likely you will be to have a
relapse and gain the fat back when you put the carbs back in, unless you
have the willpower and discipline of an elite athlete and you can slowly ease
back into higher carb eating.
Reducing carbs does help fat loss in many cases because it helps control
your insulin and blood sugar more effectively than a high carb diet, and that
has a lot to do with how your body stores fat. The high protein in these diets
also speeds up your metabolism because of the “thermic effect” of protein
food.
You also can’t forget that if you cut back on grains and starches, it’s a lot
harder to over-consume calories. Unless you’re really indulging on the fats,
a low starch and low grain, high lean protein and high fibrous carb diet has
built-in calorie control. You have to be careful, though, because without at
least some complex carbs, you won’t have enough energy to train hard.
When you’re talking about low carb diets you also need to pay close
attention to the type of carbs you eat. You can’t just say eat less carbs
altogether—that’s too simplistic. It’s not just the quantity of carbs, it’s the
quality.
Before you even bother with reducing carbs, get all the junk out and get
off all processed carbs including refined bread, crackers, pretzels, pasta,
bagels, and switch only to natural, unprocessed carbs like fruits, vegetables,
oatmeal, yams, rice and so on. Once you’ve done that, then you can start
thinking of backing off even the natural starches and grains or cycling carbs
if you’re not very carb tolerant.
David Grisaffi:
Great information, Tom. What’s a good carb cutting cycle to lose body fat
and get lean?
Tom Venuto:
Carb cycling is an awesome method for fat loss. It’s much better than staying
on low carbs all the time. It helps accelerate your fat loss, prevents your
metabolism from slowing down into “starvation mode,” and at the same time
makes your diet easier to stick to because you get to “re-feed” and eat more
on the higher carb/higher calorie day.
There are a lot of ways to do this. One of the older methods is five days
on a strict very low carb or ketogenic diet, then two days of “pigging out” on
26 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
high carbs on the weekend. Some people had results with this, but I see
flaws in it. By the fourth and fifth day, you’re starving and craving
everything, and you tend to binge on your high carb weekends.
Some people cycle up and down at random, or time their carb intake with
their training days, and that can work too. I prefer three days of low or
moderate carbs followed by one to three days of high carbs because of its
sheer simplicity and because it’s hormonally and physiologically correct.
Here’s an example of how I use this carb cycling method myself: For
three low carb days I eat about 175–200 grams of carbs with most of the
carbs eaten early in the day and only lean protein, fibrous carbs, and good
fats in the evenings. Every fourth day I cycle my carbs by having a high carb
re-feed day of about 300–400 grams of carbs.
Women will probably be closer to 100–125 grams on low days and 200–
250 on high days, but it varies based on energy output, carb tolerance, and
the results you’re getting. It could be a little bit more or a little bit less. If
you’re really depleted and losing weight too fast, you might do a second or
third day on high carbs or eat more carbs on the high days before going back
to the low carb cycle. If you’re not losing fat fast enough, you would stay
with three low days to one high day, and you might eat fewer calories and
carbs on the low days.
David Grisaffi:
Low carbs were all the rage for a long time and it’s now starting to cool off,
but the low fat craze is still in vogue for some people. What are some of the
downsides of fat free diets or fat free foods for your body or weight loss
goals?
Tom Venuto:
People are finally starting to get educated about good carbs and bad carbs
instead of just no carbs, and they’re also getting educated about good fats
and bad fats instead of just no fat. But you’re 100% correct that low fat is
still very much in vogue with many people. One reason is because of the
word “fat.” Dietary fat and body fat are two different things, but people
simply make a mental association and link the two together, and they’re
scared to eat fat.
I have to admit I went through this fat phobia myself. I remember one
medical doctor who wrote a low fat diet book and his mantra was, “The fat
you eat is the fat you wear.” Years of “eat fat, get fat” programming can be
really hard to get out of your head. When I was in high school and college,
low fat was the thing. But it wasn’t just a fad diet book trend, it was being
taught by MDs and nutrition professionals, so I cut almost all the fat out of
my diet for a long time. When I went from a diet that was 7–10% of calories
27
from dietary fat to about 20% of calories from well chosen dietary fats, the
results were noticeable in muscle growth, fat loss, and energy.
One of the downsides with fat free foods is that you tend to over-eat them
and they don’t satisfy you or fill you up. Paul Chek calls that the “Just can’t
eat one syndrome,” and I think there is actually a snack food company that
uses that as their tag line on the package.
Did you ever sit in front of the TV with a box of “no fat, no trans fat,
100% whole grain” crackers thinking it was great healthy stuff, and before
you even put a dent in your stomach, you had eaten half the box, or even the
whole box? How about the tub of no fat frozen yogurt or fruit sorbet? Same
thing, right? Did you ever realize you can slam down 500, 800, 1000 calories
at a clip that way? It’s excess calories that makes you fat, not necessarily
dietary fat, and it’s easy to go overboard on calories with those types of nonfat snack foods.
Also, we talked earlier about moderating carb intake based on your body
type. Well, these low fat snack foods can provide high calories and carbs
without the fat and fiber, so you get the insulin spike and blood sugar
fluctuations that you want to avoid. Your best bet is to avoid packaged,
boxed snack foods or, if you’re carb tolerant, eat them in very measured
amounts. Focus more on eating foods the way they came out of the
ground—lots of fruits and vegetables.
David Grisaffi:
Let’s stay on this subject for a minute: insulin, blood sugar, and carbs. The
glycemic index is the scale that measures the rate at which food causes
glucose levels to rise in the blood after you eat carbs. Is this really an
effective method for losing body fat?
Tom Venuto:
Glycemic index (GI) isn’t the critical factor in weight loss that a lot of
people and diet books say it is. There are several books written on the
subject that put the GI up on a pedestal as the deciding factor, but it’s only
one factor.
GI goes by a scale of 1 to 100 that measures how quickly carbohydrate
foods are broken down into glucose. According to advocates of the GI
system, foods that are high on the scale such as rice cakes, carrots, potatoes,
watermelon, or grape juice are “unfavorable” and should be avoided because
high GI foods are absorbed quickly, raise blood sugar rapidly, and are
therefore more likely to convert to fat or cause blood sugar-related health
problems.
Instead, they tell us to eat carbohydrates that are low on the GI scale such
as black-eyed peas, barley, old fashioned oatmeal, peanuts, grapefruit,
28 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
apples, and beans, because those foods are low on the GI scale and do not
raise blood sugar as rapidly.
The GI has some practical uses for those with blood sugar regulation
problems. In fact, the original purpose for the GI was as a tool to help
diabetics keep their blood sugar under control. The reason I don’t put much
emphasis on GI for fat loss is because there are flaws in strictly using the GI
as your only criterion to choose carbs.
For example, the GI scale was developed based on eating 50 grams of
carbohydrates by themselves in a fasted state. If you’re following effective
principles of fat-burning and muscle-building nutrition and you’re eating
small frequent mixed meals of protein and carbohydrates, not just carbs by
themselves, then the GI loses some of its significance because the protein
and fat slow the absorption of the carbohydrates (as does fiber).
The glycemic load was developed to account for some of the flaws in GI,
but then you have another chart to worry about, so I don’t bother with that
either. A more important and relevant criterion for choosing carbs on a fat
loss program is whether they are natural or processed.
High GI foods like carrots and potatoes don’t necessarily make you fat,
and eating low GI foods doesn’t guarantee you will lose fat. You have to take
in the bigger picture, which includes calories/energy balance, meal timing
and frequency, macronutrient composition, choice of processed versus
refined foods, as well as how all these nutritional factors interact with your
exercise program.
David Grisaffi:
That’s a good way to put it in perspective. I know you and I have talked
about organic foods in the past. I’m a big believer in organics; however, you
were a little slower to come to the table. What is your opinion of them now?
Tom Venuto:
You’re right. I wasn’t even aware of organic farming and organic food for a
long time, and then I was aware of it for a while but I still didn’t eat organic.
The more I studied the subject, the more the organic argument started
making sense.
Here’s what I learned from my research, a lot of it from Paul Chek and
resources he recommended, by the way. The Food and Drug Administration
lists more than 3,000 chemicals that can be added to our food supply, and
one billion pounds of pesticides and chemicals are used on our crops every
year. Depending on what source you quote, the average American consumes
as much as 150 pounds of chemicals and food additives per year.
Food grown on certified organic farms doesn’t contain pesticides,
herbicides, fungicides, hormones, antibiotics, or chemical fertilizers. It is
also not irradiated or genetically modified. Supporters of organic food also
29
suggest that the vitamin, mineral, and phytonutrient content of commercially
grown foods can be anywhere from a little bit low to virtually absent.
I mentioned organic food to a friend of mine last week, and he asked, “Do
you mean like what you get at Whole Foods?” I said, “Yes, exactly… that’s a
natural food and organic supermarket.” He said, “Yeah, well, that place costs
so much, I call it Whole Paycheck!”
It’s true that organic food is more expensive but I think it’s probably
worth it, and if money is not an object for you, then why not invest in
premium fuel? Look at it this way: If you put the cheapest fuel in your
luxury car, how well is it going to run and how many miles are you going to
get out of it? You can buy another car, but you only have one body.
I eat much more organic now, but I can’t say I eat entirely organic. If I’m
eating an apple or some blueberries, and it doesn’t happen to be organic, I
don’t freak out over it. When you really look into the subject of food
processing, industrial pollution, and commercial farming, it can almost scare
you half to death, but I don’t recommend becoming an alarmist. There’s an
old proverb that the people who live in fear of disease are the ones mostly
likely to get it.
As for my own results, I can’t honestly say I noticed any dramatic change
in my physique or in the way I feel yet. I was a successful natural
bodybuilder for many years before I started eating things like grass-fed beef
and organic food. However, I think this is probably the type of nutritional
lifestyle change where you’ll get benefits over the long term, even if you
don’t see an immediate transformation.
One thing I would suggest before running out for organic foods is
consider what kind of shape your diet and your lifestyle are in right now. If
your diet is such a total mess that you’re drinking alcohol, smoking, abusing
coffee and stimulants, not eating any fruits and vegetables to begin with,
then I think it might be moot to worry about whether your food is 100%
certified organic. Just start cleaning up your diet and establishing new
healthy habits, one step at a time.
I know this topic is controversial and debated, but what I would
recommend to anyone, whether they choose organic or not, is to
continuously look for ways to improve their nutrition above the level it’s at
now. For some people, going organic is the next level. Some people aren’t
ready for that type of change yet.
I also recommend that everyone at least be educated and be aware—know
what’s in your food and then you can make better decisions. A great resource
on this subject is Paul Chek’s audio program, “You Are What You Eat” and
his book, Eat, Move and Be Healthy.
30 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
David Grisaffi:
What about detoxification? Detoxification is a new buzzword around the fat
loss and health communities. Could you explain a little about this process?
Tom Venuto:
Detoxification is a buzzword and it’s very popular and trendy today, but
unfortunately it’s really an undefined word that could be referring to
everything from legitimate and important nutritional concepts to total
gimmicks and crash weight loss diets which are ineffective and unsafe.
We definitely live in a polluted environment where the commercial food
supply is full of chemicals, so we all owe it to ourselves to become educated
about what is in our food. But we also have to be careful because this detox
thing—especially in the context of weight loss—is full of pseudo science
and gimmicks that are as bad as the diet patch and diet pill.
Whether you’re for or against any kind of detoxification, one thing is hard
to dispute: Fasting, cleansing, or detox protocols used to initiate a weight
loss program are clearly very sneaky ways to achieve rapid, dramatic losses
of body weight. This makes the diet appear highly effective because of the
large weight loss right out of the gate—sometimes 15 or 20 pounds in the
first week or two. I say, “Big deal!” Do you want to temporarily lose body
weight or permanently lose fat?
I see this as a quick fix approach to quickly knocking off a large amount
of body weight—mostly water and lean tissue—to pander to the instant
gratification needs of most dieters, and fill the pockets of their promoters.
Look at the weight loss recommendations of any legitimate science-based
health and fitness organization such as the American College of Sports
Medicine, the International Society for Sports Nutrition, the National
Strength and Conditioning Association, or the American Dietetic
Association, and you will see the same healthy, sensible recommendation
repeated over and over again: Lose one to two pounds per week, or no more
than 1% of total body weight per week (2.5 pounds if you weigh 250, etc.).
Remember what we said about the FTC earlier: Claims of anything over
three pounds per week can land a company in court.
If you’re consulting with legitimate professionals and organizations,
you’ll hear absolutely no mention of detoxification, fasting, losing 10
pounds over the weekend, “cleansing yourself internally,” or anything
remotely similar. Why? Call them conservative if you want, but the fact is,
the legitimate and respectable organizations don’t deal in pseudo science or
gimmick fads.
As for other types of detoxification, it’s difficult to make general
conclusions because there are so many different things that fall under that
term. You might say that eating organic is detoxifying, and if that’s your
31
definition, then I wouldn’t argue with that, but most detox protocols have
little scientific evidence supporting them and some are downright kooky!
Do I believe it’s important to “detoxify” the body? Yes, but I believe that
detoxing is not necessarily a regimen of supplements, herbs, special drinks,
fasting, or weird internal cleansing procedures. Detoxification is something
that you should be doing every single day of your life by making better food
choices and avoiding harmful chemicals in the first place. An ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure.
You stay non-toxic by drinking large amounts of pure water, by eating
natural foods, and avoiding man-made food, refined carbohydrates,
processed fats, packaged food, and other “chemical cuisine” as much as
possible. You could take it a step further by eating organic foods that are
even less likely to contain chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides.
If detoxing or fasting are important disciplines to you for personal,
philosophical, or spiritual reasons, or if you believe you’re getting some
measurable benefits, then don’t let me discourage you. But it always comes
back to permanent lifestyle change. There’s no quick fix. What use is it to
detoxify or cleanse or whatever you call it, for 24 hours or three days or
seven days, or whatever, if you’re going to go back to the same toxic foods
you were eating before anyway? Why not just make the lifestyle change?
David Grisaffi:
Speaking of toxins, many people drink alcohol these days. Wine, beer, and
spirits are the main alcoholic beverages. Could you talk about the beer belly
phenomenon and how alcohol intake defeats body fat reduction?
Tom Venuto:
When you talk about alcohol and fat loss you have a few problems. First of
all, alcohol is a calorie-dense liquid, so immediately you have a problem
with excess calorie intake if you add alcohol and you don’t account for the
alcohol calories.
If you do account for calories in the alcohol by decreasing food intake,
then you have another problem and that is displacement. By allowing for
those alcohol calories, you’ve pushed out of your diet other important foods
that contain not just energy, but also vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals,
fiber, amino acids, and other good stuff you need to be healthy and lose fat.
Alcohol also slows down or stops fat burning in the body. In addition to
messing with your hormones that are responsible for efficient fat loss, when
alcohol is in your system, fat burning virtually comes to a standstill while
your liver is metabolizing the alcohol.
Alcohol can also impair blood sugar and insulin sensitivity, especially in
large doses or when consumed by itself. Blood sugar and insulin
32 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
management is very important for maximizing the fat burning process as
well as for your health.
Alcohol in large doses can also increase cortisol release and, for the guys
who drink regularly, pay attention, because when consumed chronically,
alcohol can decrease testosterone and elevate estrogen. Last but not least,
alcohol can interfere with the nighttime release of growth hormone that
occurs soon after you fall asleep and, as you know, most people drink late at
night.
If you’re on a serious fat loss program, you’re compromising your results
if you drink at all. The rest of the time, if you drink, you should drink in
moderation and infrequently, and not every day, because drinking even small
amounts daily is habit-forming.
David Grisaffi:
You mentioned Paul Chek earlier. There is a group of basic rules for dieting
that I learned from my internship at the Chek Institute, and I’d like to pick
your brain on those topics. What are your recommendations on water intake,
sleep, rotating foods, and food intolerances?
Tom Venuto:
I’m familiar with Paul Chek’s recommendation for water intake, and that is
to drink at least half your body weight in pounds per day in ounces of water.
So if you weigh 200 pounds, drink at least 100 ounces of water. There are a
couple of reasons I like that formula and one is because it’s easy to
remember. Another is because it’s individualized in the way it takes body
weight into account.
In my book, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, I used the National
Research Council’s water recommendations simply because it individualizes
even more by taking into account calorie expenditure too.
The NRC’s recommended water intake is 1.0–1.5 ml per kilocalorie
expended per day. So if you’re an average female with a 2200-calorie-a-day
energy expenditure, then 1.0–1.5 times 2200 calories is 2200–3300 ml.
When you convert the milliliters to ounces, that’s 74–111 ounces. That’s
right in line with Paul’s recommendation, although you can see that water
intake can be influenced by your energy expenditure. When you exercise
more, you should drink more.
The traditional guideline of eight to ten eight-ounce glasses a day is 64–
80 ounces, but that’s not individualized—it doesn’t account for body weight
or activity, so that could leave you short, especially for men or for highly
active people of either gender.
As for food intolerances, two of the most common are lactose intolerance,
which is the body’s inability to digest lactose, the natural sugar in milk
products, and intolerance to gluten, which is the protein found in wheat.
33
Dairy and wheat are often problematic for a fairly large number of people,
and they can cause digestive problems and disturbances.
One thing Paul teaches that will be of interest to people who want better
abs and a flatter stomach is that food intolerances can be a contributing cause
to a distended lower abdominal area. Most people realize that bloating and a
distended stomach can result from gastrointestinal disturbances, but Paul
points out that it can go further than that.
He says that when there’s trouble in the small intestine, bowel, or any
digestive organ, it can cause weakness in the corresponding region of the
abdominal wall. He also points out that food allergies and intolerance are
common causes of inflammation in the gut, and the greater the level of
inflammation in the digestive system, the greater the chance that the muscles
of the abdominal region won’t respond properly to exercise. So basically
when you resolve nutritional and digestive issues you can respond to training
better.
You could start to address food intolerance by considering the most
common of foods that cause problems such as dairy and wheat or gluten.
Then consider other common allergenic foods which include corn, soy,
shellfish, peanuts, and egg whites. If you’re eating a food and you suspect
it’s causing problems, you can use a simple elimination process to identify
offending foods by removing only that food from your diet for a full week to
see if it makes a difference. If that simple at-home trial and error process
doesn’t work, and you have no clue what is causing the problems, then you
could see a healthcare professional. There are blood tests you can take for
food allergy and intolerance.
Rotation… I know one of the things Paul recommends is rotating your
sources of protein to reduce the chance of overexposing yourself to any
particular pesticide or heavy metal, especially the mercury in fish that are
high on the food chain. That’s something to think about, especially for
bodybuilders and weight training enthusiasts who eat so much meat and tuna
fish in particular.
Rotation in the form of eating a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and
other foods is good advice because you get a wider variety of vitamins,
minerals, and phytochemicals that way. Different kinds of fruits and veggies
each have their own particular benefits. The different colors correlate with
different phytonutrients, so varying the colors is also a good idea, such as red
peppers, green beans, yellow squash, orange carrots and yams, and so on.
Sleep? Sleep is for wimps. Just kidding. Actually, I do sleep less than
most people. I average six to seven hours and I thrive on it, but it’s really
high quality sleep. Sleep quantity is important, but so is sound,
uninterrupted, high quality sleep. Here are my top tips for sleep quality:
34 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files

Most people should get 7–8 hours of sleep although some may need more,
some less. Quality may be as important as quantity.
Go to bed early and maximize daytime hours awake and nighttime hours
asleep because our bodies are in sync with daytime and nighttime cycles.
There’s an old proverb that each hour of sleep before midnight is worth
two after.
Make sure it’s totally dark in your bedroom. When light hits your eyes,
your body thinks it’s daytime and can release cortisol and stress hormones
associated with normal daytime activities while suppressing melatonin.
Establish a regular schedule of going to bed at the same time every night
because your body can train itself to prepare for sleeping and waking at
those times.
Avoid caffeine and other stimulants in the afternoon and evening because
they activate your sympathetic nervous system and disrupt your sleep
cycle.
Don’t drink alcohol right before bed.
Stay on a regular exercise schedule because that can help you sleep better,
but avoid intense exercise late at night as that may keep you awake and
disrupt your sleep cycle.
Keep stress to a minimum.
David Grisaffi:
What are some of the worst fad diets you have ever had the displeasure of
reading about, and how would you suggest that consumers protect
themselves from becoming victims?
Tom Venuto:
I can’t think of one in particular, but in general, the diets that give me the
most displeasure are the ones promising super fast weight loss. Just
yesterday I saw on the cover of a magazine, “The Weekend Diet: Be 10
Pounds Lighter by Monday.” Just another new twist on the same old theme.
These quick fix diets are the ones that irk me the most because they’re
being put out by people who claim to be in our industry to help others, but
they’re only helping perpetuate the problem. They’re definitely not part of
the solution.
The solution is education. Professionals who are committed to serving
people and telling the truth need to step up and explain loudly and publicly
that it’s important to lose weight slowly, to work hard, to be patient, and then
you will get results that last for life.
Government agencies are also trying to help. A couple of years ago, the
FTC, which is the watchdog agency that monitors deceptive advertising in
the United States, published their new Red Flag brochure. It was created to
help people on both sides—advertisers and consumers—screen out bogus
35
weight loss claims for nonprescription drugs, supplements, creams, wraps,
devices, and patches.
The FTC listed seven bogus claims that should raise red flags because
scientific evidence doesn’t support them. This is a pretty good list, and
you’ll be surprised how many products and diets get knocked off the chart if
you go by this list.
1. Causes weight loss of two pounds or more per week for a month or more
without dieting or exercise.
2. Causes substantial weight loss no matter what or how much you eat.
3. Causes permanent weight loss even when you stop using the product.
4. Blocks the absorption of fat or calories to enable you to lose substantial
weight.
5. Safely enables you to lose more than three pounds per week for more than
four weeks.
6. Causes substantial weight loss for all users.
7. Causes substantial weight loss by wearing it on your body or rubbing it
onto your skin.
The reason companies get away with these claims is because the FTC just
can’t keep up with them all, especially today when a company can set up
shop on the Internet, then close down and start up all over again under a
different name. But the big ones get caught when they become visible
enough in the marketplace.
The companies that are getting away with making these bogus claims are
causing some serious problems. It makes it really hard to educate people
when we’re up against these advertising messages that bombard everyone all
day long. As the FTC says in their report, “Fast and easy fixes undermine the
reality of what it takes to lose weight. People are buying empty promises.”
Quick fix promises also cause unrealistic expectations.
Here’s the link for the Red Flag brochure and Deception In Advertising
workshop. I’d recommend everyone read this material and take it to heart.
It’s not just some boring government document—this is the truth about
weight loss.
Federal Trade Commission’s Red Flag brochure (11 pages, free
download):
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/redflag/index.html
Deception in weight loss advertising workshop (74 pages, free download):
http://www.ftc.gov/os/2003/12/031209weightlossrpt.pdf
36 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
David Grisaffi:
What role has the Internet had in this proliferation of false claims? How
useful is the well meaning information found on the Internet with regard to
nutrition, supplementation, and health?
Tom Venuto:
The Internet is an incredible technology, educational tool, and an
opportunity, but unfortunately, opportunities attract opportunists. There are
pros and cons to the Net both for consumers and business owners.
If you don’t know what to look for when you’re surfing for information,
if you’re not familiar with the red flags for example, there’s no way you can
tell who is well meaning and who is an opportunist out to make a quick
buck. The sheer volume of web pages can also be major information
overload for a beginner.
The upside of the Internet is that people like you and me can get online
and publish the truth about diets, weight loss, and fitness training without
being edited, screened, or censored. It’s a platform that allows true freedom
of speech. In online publishing you’re not influenced by the advertising
dollars that are necessary in print publishing to keep magazines in
circulation.
The downside of the Internet as a source for health and fitness
information is that there’s no barrier to entry whatsoever. Any scam artist or
ignoramus can start a website and have it online five minutes from now and
start selling anything and saying anything he wants.
David Grisaffi:
We’ve been focusing mostly on fat loss and getting great abs, but before we
wrap up, let’s look at the other side of the coin—gaining muscle. Of all the
nutritional supplements on the market, which one is the best for gaining
muscle?
Tom Venuto:
Food! I don’t recommend supplements for gaining muscle unless I know a
client is doing everything right in their training and in their diet, eating
whole foods first. I just can’t emphasize that enough. There’s no quick fix
for losing weight and there’s none for gaining muscle either.
Get your diet in order before considering any supplements outside of
essential vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids. It’s calories combined with
progressive resistance training that makes you gain mass, not supplements.
However, if supplements help you get the calories you need to gain
weight, then that can be very valuable. That can include weight gain drinks,
protein drinks, post-workout drinks, and various meal replacements. These
products aren’t magic—think of them as powdered or liquid food—but they
can definitely help with your calorie surplus.
Outside of calorie-containing weight gain supplements, creatine is
definitely a winner, although I’ll dare go out on a limb and say that even
37
creatine is overrated and overhyped to some degree, especially new versions
of it.
David Grisaffi:
One last question. Tom, I know you’ve had a lot of experience in the fitness
industry, doing just about everything from being a bodybuilder, personal
trainer, success coach, gym owner, and now health and fitness publisher.
From all your experience combined, what do you think is the one thing most
needed to change a person’s lifestyle and improve their health?
Tom Venuto:
A committed decision to reach a predetermined specific goal, combined with
burning desire, followed by immediate, massive action repeated consistently
for as long as it takes until you reach your goal.
David Grisaffi:
That just about sums it all up. There’s no quick fix to a lean body with great
abs. It takes good information, focus, hard work, discipline, and persistence
to reach your goals.
Well, Tom, that’s about it. As always, you’re a wealth of knowledge, and
I know all our readers are going to benefit a lot from this information, as
well as save a lot of money and frustration if they follow your advice. Thank
you.
38 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
About Tom Venuto
Tom Venuto is an NSCA-certified personal trainer (CPT), certified
strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS), lifetime natural
bodybuilder, freelance writer, success coach, and author of the #1
bestselling ebook Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (BFFM): Fat
Burning Secrets of the World’s Best Bodybuilders and Fitness
Models. He is also co-author of Fit Over 40; Role Models for
Excellence at Any Age.
Tom has written hundreds of articles and has been featured in
IRONMAN Magazine, Australian IRONMAN, Natural
Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Olympian’s News (in
Italian), Exercise for Men, and Men’s Exercise. Tom’s inspiring
and informative articles on bodybuilding, weight loss, and fitness
motivation are featured regularly on dozens of websites
worldwide. For information on Tom’s Burn the Fat ebook, visit
www.BurnTheFat.com. To subscribe to Tom’s free monthly
newsletter, visit www.TomVenuto.com.
About David Grisaffi
David Grisaffi has been a sports enthusiast his entire life. His love
for sports led him into a career in sports conditioning and fitness
training. David majored in physical education and holds multiple
certifications including three from the prestigious CHEK Institute:
Level II High Performance Exercise Kinesiologist, Golf
Biomechanic, and Health and Lifestyle Counselor. He is also
certified with the International Sports Sciences Association as a
personal trainer and specialist in performance nutrition.
David was a high school wrestling and baseball coach and is
currently an independent trainer and strength coach. He has been
sought after by some of the top athletes in professional sports
including world champion boxer Greg Haugen and professional
golfer Michael Putnam.
David’s ebook, Firm and Flatten Your Abs, is an online bestseller
that teaches you how to lose body fat, develop six-pack abs while
improving strength, function, and athletic power. You can contact
David or learn more about his programs at
www.FlattenYourAbs.net.
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40 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
Superstar Fat Loss Tips:
Diet, Cardio, and Weight Training Secrets
to Get You Leaner, Faster
Alwyn Cosgrove Interviews Tom Venuto
Alwyn Cosgrove: Thank you for the interview, Tom. Why don’t you start by telling us about
your educational or previous career background? How did you end up as a
fat loss guru?
Tom Venuto:
My education started with an undergraduate degree in exercise science in
1990. The year I graduated, I received my first certification from the
American College of Sports Medicine as a Health Fitness Instructor, and I
started working in health clubs as a personal trainer. I later became a
certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) and certified personal
trainer (CPT) through the National Strength and Conditioning Association
(NSCA). I also became heavily involved in health club management.
I think I came to specialize in fat loss because I had such a hard time
losing fat myself. I started training when I was 14, but never had ripped sixpack abs until I did my first bodybuilding competition at age 20, even
though I tried for years. That fueled my desire to learn everything I could
about fat loss—especially nutrition. I became a voracious reader, and I
experimented with diets to the point of becoming a “human guinea pig.”
Even after I understood the process, I was fascinated with pushing myself
to further extremes of low body fat—without drugs. Many people say you
can’t get ripped to shreds without drugs, but that belief is totally false. It’s
very difficult, but not impossible. Being a natural competitive bodybuilder
and not having freak genetics forces you to learn what really works for fat
loss, and you can’t get away with dietary and lifestyle indiscretions because
you don’t have those crutches to lean on. It’s just you and your diet and your
training.
Alwyn Cosgrove: What’s your training background?
43
Superstar Fat Loss Tips
Tom Venuto:
I started training in 1983, and I started competing in bodybuilding in 1989.
Since then, I’ve entered 28 competitions in many of the natural (drug-tested)
federations and also in the National Physique Committee (NPC), and I still
compete today.
I was literally brought up completely immersed in the competitive
bodybuilding culture. Try not to cringe, but in my teenage years, my only
source for information was bodybuilding books and magazines like Muscle
& Fitness, Muscle Mag International, and IRONMAN, as well as gym
owners and other bodybuilders. The first book I ever read on the subject was
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Education of a Bodybuilder, and the first
workout routine I ever followed was Arnold’s routine straight from the back
of that book.
It wasn’t until college when I took courses in exercise physiology,
program design, and nutrition that I was exposed to anything other than
bodybuilding dogma, and it wasn’t until years later that I openly embraced
the idea that there were other ways to train than with bodybuilding style
routines.
My indoctrination into the bodybuilding world was a curse in some ways,
as it took me a long time to work through my bodybuilding biases in order to
better serve my non-bodybuilder clients. However, it was also a blessing
because I have a more balanced and broader education today. I still have the
advantage of 23 years of bodybuilding experience, which gives me a
perspective on building muscle and losing fat that most traditionally
educated non-bodybuilder trainers don’t have.
Alwyn Cosgrove: Tell us little bit about your current coaching commitments.
Tom Venuto:
44 Tom Venuto
My current coaching commitments are different from what they were years
ago. For the first six or seven years I was in the business, I made my living
as a full-time personal trainer. I also created a 12-week coaching program
which expanded my geographical reach and the number of people I could
work with, because my clients not only met me in person at my club, but
also worked with me by phone and later through the Internet and email.
As the years went on, I got more involved in the health club business,
including management, sales, marketing, and ultimately became a co-owner
and operator of a chain of clubs in New Jersey and New York. As my health
club business commitments increased, my personal training commitments
decreased until at one point, I completely phased out of personal training
with the exception of managing our staff of trainers.
It wasn’t long before I realized that as much as I enjoyed the business side
of fitness, I wasn’t doing what I really loved, so I began to take on a few
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clients again. However, personal training is a very small part of what I do
today. I now spend the majority of my time helping my clients with their
diets, especially fat loss and contest preparation. I’m also a fitness writer and
publisher on the Internet and in print, and I’m a marketing consultant for
health clubs and personal trainers.
Alwyn Cosgrove: What are your typical clients and personal achievements as a coach?
Tom Venuto:
I work with anyone interested in losing fat or gaining muscle, but my
specialties are fat loss and bodybuilding, fitness and figure competition prep.
During the earlier years of my career, I personally trained hundreds of
people, and more than 600 people have completed my 12-week personal
coaching program.
I’ve also been able to help educate a lot of people through my writing and
online publishing:
I’ve written over 170 articles
My Fitness Renaissance website has had nearly three million visitors
since it launched in 1999 (it’s now called www.TomVenuto.com)
My Burn the Fat website (www.BurnTheFat.com) has had more than
two million visitors just since 2003
Tens of thousands of people in 126 countries have used my Burn the Fat,
Feed the Muscle program to lose body fat.
I’ve never been heavily involved with sport-specific training. I remember
reading something you wrote that said a bodybuilder probably wouldn’t
have much to offer in the way of training a professional athlete. I know some
bodybuilding trainers who might take offense to that, but when I read it, I
had to nod my head in agreement.
For sure, there are some bodybuilders who are also great strength coaches
for sports, but competitive bodybuilding training is in some ways the exact
opposite of training for sports, and proficiency in one does not necessarily
mean the reverse. My achievements have been primarily focused on the fat
loss and bodybuilding areas.
Alwyn Cosgrove: Can you describe what a typical training session consists of for your clients?
Tom Venuto:
What I do the most today is coaching and nutritional counseling for fat loss
and physique contest prep, so a typical session might be over the phone or in
the office, not just on the gym floor, but I still work with a handful of
personal training clients. By choice, almost all my training clients today are
bodybuilders or fitness/figure competitors, so naturally, the programs are
bodybuilding style workouts. I typically use a three- or four-day split routine
45
with a two-days-on, one-day-off schedule, although frequency is highly
variable depending on the individual.
We start with warmup and dynamic flexibility, then hit two or three body
parts per workout for advanced bodybuilders. Rep ranges vary from as low
as four to six on strength days to eight to 12 on hypertrophy days, with high
reps thrown in occasionally, especially for lower body. I often mix heavy and
medium work in the same workout as well. I use a lot of supersets, as I think
it’s one of the best techniques because of the way it increases results while
improving time efficiency. I also use a lot of my own unique intensity
techniques as opposed to just doing straight sets of straight reps. I try to
expose the body to some type of new stimulus at every workout while also
maintaining continuity and progression over the previous workout at the
same time. I finish with static stretching. Workouts usually last 45 minutes to
an hour.
Alwyn Cosgrove: Tom, you are known in the industry as a fat loss superstar. What
are your thoughts on nutrition for fat loss?
Tom Venuto:
A lot of people debate the question, “Which is more important, training or
nutrition?” Some people have put a number on it, like Vince Gironda who
was famous for saying that bodybuilding is 80% nutrition. I think it’s
difficult to pin it down to a specific percentage, but if nutrition is not in
place, then there’s no question that nutrition is the most important factor of
all for fat loss. The ideal approach combines nutrition, strength training, and
cardio, but even one major mistake in your diet can completely prevent you
from cutting body fat, and fixing a poor diet alone can create some rapid and
dramatic changes in the physique.
Alwyn Cosgrove: Can you outline a very basic fat loss routine for our readers?
Tom Venuto:
46 Tom Venuto
Any good fat loss program consists of three components: strength training,
cardio training, and nutrition. Unlike highly motivated athletes or
competitive bodybuilders, for most overweight people, the psychological
aspects of behavioral change are also every bit as important as the training
and nutrition, so you could say that motivation makes a fourth component to
successful fat loss. Addressing fat loss with diet alone is a very common and
very big mistake. The synergy created between diet, cardio, and weight
training is powerful.
The strength training will vary depending on each person’s goals and
physical condition. For example, I would train a bodybuilder with a split
routine working two or three body parts per session, using a lot of supersets
and keeping rest intervals brief most of the time. If my client is not a
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bodybuilder, and simply wants fat loss and general fitness, I might use a
two-day split routine training half the body each session or even a full body
workout, with three to four workouts per week, using a lot of supersets and
tri-sets.
The cardio training is highly variable. I don’t believe in one prescription,
and I’m not afraid to do no cardio if it’s not needed or to increase cardio to as
much as every day if it is needed. I prefer to eat more and do more cardio
than the reverse.
The nutrition program for fat loss will also vary a lot from person to
person based on goals, genetics, current fitness level, body type, and
metabolic type. My favorite way to knock off body fat is to use a cyclical
low- or medium-carb diet with a caloric deficit for three days, then a small
caloric surplus for at least one day of high-carb, clean food re-feeding, then
repeat the cycle. Carb tolerance is a very individual issue, but generally I see
maximum fat loss results by getting the carbs down to 20–30% of total
calories on the low-carb days, but rarely lower. I don’t like zero carb or
ketogenic diets, but there’s no question that carb restriction accelerates fat
loss.
Alwyn Cosgrove: What are the three best tips for fat loss?
Tom Venuto:
Tip #1: Cycle your calories and your carbs. Some people call it the zig-zag
method, or you could describe this as nutritional periodization. It’s not only
powerful, it’s physiologically and hormonally correct. Your body has a
weight regulating mechanism that could be compared to the thermostat in
your home. When your body detects a chronic deviation in the normal levels
of food intake (your calories are too low), or there is a deviation in the
normal levels of body composition (your body fat gets too low), your body
makes adjustments to bring you back up to normal just as the thermostat
automatically adjusts temperature to bring it back up to a comfortable, preprogrammed level. Carb and calorie cycling is how you bypass your body’s
normal adaptive starvation response.
Tip #2: Understand your level of tolerance to carbs and eat accordingly.
Why is it that some people lose weight and feel great on a high-carb, low-fat
diet while others are most successful on an Atkins-style low-carb, high-fat
diet? Obviously there are great differences in metabolism and the way each
person processes food. Avoiding extremes and balancing the macronutrients
evenly might be the best approach for the long term for most body types, but
adjustments must be made for each individual.
Tip #3: Eat natural foods and avoid refined foods. In my opinion this
single tip will give more people more mileage than any other nutritional
47
advice, and it’s so embarrassingly simple, it’s almost like something your
mother would tell you. (In fact, your mother probably did tell you this!) Jack
Lalanne has been preaching it for decades: “If man made it, don’t eat it.”
Regardless of your metabolic type or genetics, everyone can and should
follow this advice, and the results can be incredible.
Alwyn Cosgrove: And the three biggest mistakes?
Tom Venuto:
Mistake #1: Too severe of a calorie deficit and too rapid weight loss. This is
the fatal flaw in almost all popular diet programs, and it’s the reason most
diets work in the beginning but don’t work for long. Most diets put calories
at starvation level and encourage weight loss greater than two pounds per
week. Ideally, you should use a conservative calorie deficit (15–20%) and
lose weight slowly (one to two pounds per week).
Mistake #2: Too prolonged of a calorie deficit. More than 12–16 weeks
of dieting in a significant caloric deficit will almost always result in a decline
in metabolism, a fat loss plateau, and/or a loss in lean body mass. This
makes the case for “nutritional periodization” or cycling calories and carbs.
Mistake #3: Over-training while under-nourished. A lot of people believe
that doing too much cardio is the primary cause of muscle loss. On the
contrary, I believe that over-training, especially when you are very lean, in a
severe calorie deficit, on low carbs, or have been on a diet a long time, is by
far the most guaranteed way to lose muscle, because you break down muscle
tissue but the raw materials to rebuild it are simply not provided. You can
sustain a surprisingly high exercise volume without muscle loss if the proper
nutritional support is provided.
Alwyn Cosgrove: How do you monitor training intensity—how far do you push your clients?
Tom Venuto:
48 Tom Venuto
I prefer to keep workouts very brief and very intense. You can’t train long
and hard—it’s one or the other. Nearly all my sessions are less than an hour,
and if you train with intensity and keep your tempo, you can often finish in
as little as 30–45 minutes when time efficiency is a priority.
With my bodybuilder clients, I do have them train to failure often, but in
bodybuilding we have to be careful not to worship the lift-till-you-puke,
squat-till-you-can’t-walk-for-days mentality. It’s almost comical, but many
bodybuilders really do believe that it’s a sign of a good leg workout if you
throw up afterward.
Progression is the name of the game, and in the end, results are the
bottom line. If your strength is increasing and you’re gaining lean body
mass, then you know you’re not pushing too far, although you also have to
step back and keep your eye on the big picture. You can see great results
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from a high intensity program for a week or two, and then rapidly see a
decline in results as over-training sets in. Intensity of effort needs to be
factored into the periodization cycle just like sets, reps, rest intervals, and
poundage.
Alwyn Cosgrove: Do you train males and females any differently? Particularly with
regard to fat loss?
Tom Venuto:
I train men and women the same, relatively speaking. I train people
differently based more on goals and body types or metabolic types than on
gender. If men and women should train differently, it’s because women in
general have different goals than men. If a man and a woman have the same
relative strength and fitness level, the same goal and the same body type,
then I will train them the same. The fact that women want “workouts for
women” is more influenced by marketing and perception than anything else.
Women in general want toning, firming, and shaping, and they are still
terrified of getting “too big.”
Alwyn Cosgrove: I’m known for not recommending much in the way of steady state
aerobics for the general population. (I prefer interval work.) However,
for the competitive bodybuilder, it’s a different story. How do your
recommendations change when we’re talking about “beyond
lean?”
Tom Venuto:
A lot of people snub cardio just because they hate doing it. Believe me when
I tell you, I don’t enjoy cardio any better than the next guy. I think the ideal
amount of cardio is the absolute least you can get away with, but more
cardio is often a necessary evil. Getting better than average body fat—such
as 12% for men or 18% for women—is one thing, but getting men to low
single digits and women to high single digits usually requires more cardio
combined with serious weight training and an extremely strict diet.
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is becoming more popular even
among bodybuilders, but most of them still do steady state cardio. There are
plenty of bodybuilders who successfully get ripped for competitions by
walking on the treadmill 30–60 minutes a day, so I don’t think it’s fair to say
that conventional steady state, long duration cardio doesn’t work or is
worthless, only that it’s the least time efficient and most boring way to do it.
I often recommend brief, infrequent HIIT to bodybuilders and the general
population alike because it’s effective, engaging, and time efficient, but I
also recommend more frequent and longer duration cardio when I think it’s
necessary. Regardless of frequency and duration, I almost always favor
moderate to high intensity over low intensity cardio.
49
Intensity and duration are inversely proportional, so as duration increases,
intensity must decrease, but that doesn’t necessarily mean “steady state” and
“low intensity” are one and the same. Steady state cardio can be maintained
at a moderate to moderately high intensity level, and this can be very
effective for fat loss. You can also increase the duration of your interval
training.
Where people go wrong is by keeping their intensity too low because they
believe this helps them stay in the “fat burning zone.” This is a myth based
on the fact that you burn more fat at low intensities, and more carbs at high
intensities, but the problem is, low intensity cardio doesn’t burn very many
calories. Higher intensity burns more calories, and more calories burned
equals more body fat burned.
You can also burn more calories by increasing frequency. HIIT is most
often recommended by trainers only three days a week for brief workouts of
20 minutes or even less. If your three days times 20 minutes of cardio
doesn’t work, what then? Are you going to cut calories? If so, what if that
doesn’t work, or you reach another plateau quickly, what then? Cut calories
some more? How many times can you repeat this before you’re starving?
Under-nutrition, in my opinion, is far more dangerous than a little extra
cardio. Remember: With every cut, you’re not just reducing your caloric
intake, you’re cutting your macronutrients and micronutrients as well.
The need for cardio can vary so much from one person to the next, and
the body adapts so quickly, that it doesn’t make sense to give the same
prescription to everyone and never change it. I believe that cardio frequency,
intensity, and duration must be prescribed:
1. On an individual basis
2. In response to weekly results
3. In a periodized fashion
4. Progressively, and
5. According to the need for time efficiency.
What’s most important to me in a cardio program for fat loss is not
whether it’s done in steady state or in intervals, but the total amount of
calories burned, including the caloric burn that comes from increased
metabolism. You can increase the calories burned each week by
manipulating all of the variables: type, duration, frequency, or intensity.
Why limit yourself by only manipulating intensity?
I will usually add a fourth, fifth, sixth day of cardio before I will cut
calories below the initial starting deficit. If necessary, the duration can
increase progressively to 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 minutes, and in a few cases I will
50 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
even recommend two brief cardios a day for physique athletes during very
short periods of peaking before competition. After the competition, cardio is
gradually tapered off to a minimum maintenance level. Year-round highvolume cardio is a bad idea—cardio must be cycled—and when it is cycled,
it’s all the more effective when you do increase it.
For the general population, you can improve time efficiency and reduce
the need for cardio by maximizing the fat burning effects of weight training
using short rest intervals and emphasizing loads which increase lactic acid
production and GH release, by supersetting or tri-setting exercises and by
selecting high metabolic cost, big “bang-for-your-buck” exercises. Your
Afterburn Training is a perfect example of this.
For bodybuilders, however, the problem with using strength training as
the primary fat loss tool is that, the more you turn your weight training into
cardiovascular or fat burning exercise, the less effective your weight training
becomes for building muscle and gaining strength. You’ve sacrificed one
thing for another. As a general rule, you should never compromise your
primary objective. That’s why bodybuilders use weight training for muscle
development and use cardio and diet to cut the body fat.
Alwyn Cosgrove: I know you study the field a lot. Who do you go to for training advice?
Tom Venuto:
I study anything and everything I can get my hands on, and I often read two
or three hours a day. I have a huge library, and there are training books and
videos on my shelf from Ian King, Charles Poliquin, Paul Chek, Charles
Staley, Mike Boyle, Juan Carlos Santana, Gray Cook, William Kraemer, Ken
Kinakin, Vladimir Zatskiorsky, J. P. Catanzaro, Mel Siff, Fred Hatfield,
Frank and Victor Katch, Michael Stone, and of course there’s that guy,
Alwyn Cosgrove!
In the nutrition field I’ve read material from John Berardi, Jose Antonio,
Udo Erasmus, Eric Serrano, Lonnie Lowery, Mauro DiPasquale, Thomas
Incledon, Doug Kalman, Jeff Stout, Lyle McDonald, Chris Aceto, Will
Brink, and many others. I also read textbooks, and I even read all the popular
bestselling diet books and magazines too—even the ones that suck—just to
stay current on nutrition trends.
I’m also a member of the National Strength and Conditioning Association
(NSCA), the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), and the
International Society for Sports Nutrition (ISSN), and I read the publications
and attend the events of these organizations regularly.
Alwyn Cosgrove: Who else in the field has influenced or helped you? What are the
best tips you learned from them and can pass on to your readers?
51
Tom Venuto:
In the bodybuilding field, I think I’ve learned more from studying the top
bodybuilders than any guru or academic expert. Every time I meet a
successful bodybuilder, even if they come to me for advice, I pick their
brain:
What is your off-season versus pre-contest body weight and body fat?
How many carbs do you eat off-season and pre-contest?
Do you keep your calories and carbs stable or cycle them?
How much cardio do you do pre-contest and off-season?
What do you do with your water intake the last seven days before a show?
How often do you train each muscle group?
How much weight do you use?
How do you split your routines?
How many sets and exercises per muscle group?
How often do you train to failure and beyond?
And so on.
I’ve learned that there is great variation in what works for each person,
and since all of these people are successful, there is obviously no single best
way to train or diet, so I like to look for common denominators. I find it
fascinating to see that there are certain nutrition and training methods that
virtually all successful physique athletes use. By focusing on those
commonalities, I’ve come up with some very dependable principles that will
work virtually 100% of the time in 100% of people.
Alwyn Cosgrove: What tips could you add of your own?
Tom Venuto:
Don’t feel that you have to accept one person’s teachings completely or not
at all. Take what is useful and ditch the rest. For example, I was exposed
very early to the teachings of the late bodybuilding guru Vince Gironda. I
learned a tremendous amount from studying his books and courses over the
years. On the other hand, some of what he taught was later proven to be
scientifically inaccurate, dangerous, or you could say, just plain weird. But if
you were to discard everything he taught just on the basis of a few things he
said that you disagree with, you would be throwing out the baby with the
bathwater.
Alwyn Cosgrove: Do you use any supplements?
Tom Venuto:
52 Tom Venuto
When it comes to supplements, I think it’s important to look at the research,
but not without also looking at real world results. This is very important
because:
The Fat Burn Files
A. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that much of the supplement
information and research that makes it into the magazines is thoroughly
“bought and paid for,” in more way than one, and
B. Many supplements that look good on paper have fallen flat in the real
world.
I’m very much a supplement minimalist, but I do take the basics and use
some products occasionally for convenience. For example:
A multi-vitamin
Flax oil, an essential oil blend, and/or fish oil
Creatine
A post-workout drink (whey/simple carb) during off season on mass
building programs.
I use meal replacements and protein powder occasionally, but I have no
problem eating six whole food meals a day, so my use of powders is
minimal. I recommend them to clients for convenience only. The importance
of real food as the majority of your calories can’t be emphasized enough.
If you think about it, shakes—and definitely the bars—can fall under the
category of processed manmade foods, which violates #3 of the top three fat
loss tips I mentioned earlier.
I don’t doubt that many other supplements have benefits, including health
benefits, but I believe that most supplements are overrated and overhyped,
especially when muscle growth or fat loss claims are made.
On the other hand, If I were an elite professional athlete, I’d probably be
taking every product I could get my hands on which was legal and had any
scientific support behind it because, at the elite level, the line between
winning and losing can be as fine as a razor’s edge. But since I’m not in a
position where a tiny fraction of a percent improvement in my performance
will matter that much and I don’t have a multi-million dollar sports contract
at stake, then I don’t bother with all the “might work” supplements, because
the cost-to-benefit ratio is not in my favor, and I think that popping pills all
day long is a royal pain in the ass. I’d rather eat food than pop a pill to get
what’s already in the food anyway.
I’m not a fan of weight loss supplements at all, and the advertising tactics
used in this segment of the industry make me sick. The entire concept of
taking a pill to lose weight leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. No matter
what the reputed mechanism involved (thermogenic, thyroid-stimulating,
insulin-managing, appetite-suppressing, whatever), you’re treating
symptoms, not causes. Many “fat burners” are complete scams, and even
those with some scientific support are overrated in my opinion. With the
53
right training and nutrition, you can get as lean as you ever want to be and
save a lot of money in the process.
Alwyn Cosgrove: What are your goals as a coach?
Tom Venuto:
My goals are to remain a completely objective, unbiased source of
information and to bring science and common sense into bodybuilding while
helping to take the drugs out. I’d like to have an influence on young
bodybuilders and athletes in making the right choice about drugs. Scare
tactics rarely work, but role models do.
If people see with their own eyes what kind of results they can achieve
naturally, that’s proof that it can be done. But there aren’t enough drug-free
bodybuilders or athletes who are stepping up and saying, “I am natural,”
and, “This is what you can achieve naturally.”
I believe that more coaches, personal trainers, and fitness professionals
should realize what kind of statement they’re making with their own
actions—with the way they live their lives and the way they look. Their
clients, students, and fans are watching their every move. They’re looking at
what they do, not just what they say. You have to be what you teach.
Alwyn Cosgrove: Okay... You’ve got eight weeks to get Mr. Smith ready to be a Hollywood
action hero. He’s about 30 pounds over-fat. What do you do?
Tom Venuto:
54 Tom Venuto
Thirty pounds in eight weeks? I send his fat ass to you! Seriously, though, if
Mr. Smith were a bodybuilder or seasoned athlete, I would first chew him
out for getting 30 pounds out of condition. No athlete should let himself get
30 pounds out of peak condition, let alone expect to get back into peak shape
in eight weeks.
I would help Mr. Smith lose the most fat possible in eight weeks and push
hard for a “results not typical” type of transformation, but I wouldn’t
guarantee 30 pounds of “fat loss.” That would be quite a feat for a
genetically average person who is not using drugs. If he wants 30 pounds of
“weight loss” and he doesn’t care if a lot of it is muscle and water, that
would be easy, but I would be sure to explain the difference between fat loss
and weight loss before we started.
I would tell Mr. Smith that if we achieve 1.5–2.0 pounds of fat loss per
week we are doing well, and if we have a week with 2.5–3.0 pounds of fat
loss, we are doing fantastic, and that would be better than average results. In
the first week going on restricted carbs, greater weight loss would be likely,
but that initial weight loss will include water weight.
Given the time restriction, I would start from the first day with an
aggressive and strict program—there would be no gradual “break-in” or
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“clean-up” period. Essentially, it would be almost the same as a
bodybuilding competition diet. We’d dive right in with a carb cycling
program: three days on low carbs with an aggressive deficit, followed by one
higher carb, higher calorie re-feed day at maintenance or a small surplus.
Carbs and calories would be tweaked weekly based on results and how Mr.
Smith feels.
All processed and manmade foods would be off limits. No cheat days.
Not when there’s no time to lose—he has to suck it up! He gets to eat a lot
more every fourth day, but it’s clean carbs, not junk. Most days would
consist of five to six small meals of lean protein, green veggies, good fats
with starchy carbs, and limited grains, only early in the day and after
workouts. Calories and carbs would be tapered, with only fibrous carbs and
lean protein in the evening and no high-calorie meals of any kind at night. I
would use as much whole food as possible and limit powders and meal
replacements to what Mr. Smith needed for convenience.
Weight training would be three to four days a week, and we would
maximize it for fat loss with brief rest intervals, compound exercises, and a
lot of supersets. Cardio would probably be six to seven days a week at 30
minutes, but that would depend on his rate of fat loss. Based on weekly
results, we would adjust the frequency, intensity, and duration of the cardio.
All the training—even the cardio—would be done with progression, so we
built him up to his peak condition for the day filming starts, the same way
we would peak a bodybuilder for the day of a contest.
Alwyn Cosgrove: In a nutshell, what is your training philosophy?
Tom Venuto:
Results are what count. You can never argue with results even if they were
achieved with methods that you consider weird, unconventional, or which
don’t fit your personal paradigm. If what you’re doing is not producing
results, do something else! If what you’re doing is producing results, do
more of it, and don’t second guess yourself—regardless of what anyone else
tells you.
Alwyn Cosgrove: What about recovery techniques? Any suggestions?
Tom Venuto:
Aside from all the usual stuff such as overall nutrition, post-workout
nutrition, massage, stretching, quality sleep, and stress reduction, I like to
pay close attention to training frequency as a recovery variable. Out of all
the training variables, this is the one that I’ve seen have the biggest variance
from one person to the next. One extra day of recovery can have a major
impact on results, especially for the drug-free trainee. You have to consider
not just how many days before working the same body part or movement
55
again, but also how many days in a row of training it takes to get complete
systemic recovery, keeping in mind that this can change with age.
Alwyn Cosgrove: Anything else you’d like to mention?
Tom Venuto:
I’d mention that it’s extremely important to train appropriately for your sport
and your specific goals, and not be swayed by absolutes or by “gurus” who
claim that their way is the only way to train and that everyone else is wrong.
There are many ways to train depending on what your goals are, and there
are even multiple pathways to achieve the same goal. Four people can start
from the north, south, east, or west side, respectively, and still reach the
same destination at the center of town even though they all take different
routes.
Bodybuilding, for example, has become the “red-headed stepchild” of the
strength training community. Bodybuilders are often stereotyped and
criticized as being vain, non-athletic, and non-functional drug addicts. The
truth is, some of this criticism is valid, but most of it isn’t. For every bloated,
steroid-using bodybuilder you can point your finger at, I can introduce you
to an aesthetically built, all-natural bodybuilder that most men would die to
look like and most women would drool over. I can also show you just as
many steroid-bloated football, hockey, or baseball players. The drug use is
there in all sports; it just happens that bodybuilders wear it on their
shirtsleeves. And for every “stiff, bulky, non-athletic” bodybuilder you can
point your finger at, I can introduce you to a lean, massive bodybuilder with
multiple black belts who is lightning fast, can do full splits, smash cinder
blocks with his bare knuckles, and bench press more than 400 pounds.
It has reached a point where some trainers and coaches are calling
bodybuilding workouts “faulty,” or even “worthless” in general. The fact is,
bodybuilding programs can be very intelligently and effectively designed,
and a bodybuilder should train like a bodybuilder, just as an athlete should
train like an athlete. In some respects, the methods may be completely
opposite each other, but it doesn’t make one right and one wrong, outside of
the context it’s being used in.
Every modality has its place and its benefits, and the secret to knowing
which methods are best suited for you is to have total clarity about why you
are in the gym in the first place. If you’re 100% clear about your goal, then
creating the right program is easy.
Alwyn Cosgrove: Where can people read more about your theories and programs?
56 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
Tom Venuto:
You can read my articles, subscribe to my newsletters or find out about my
products and services at:
Site
Description
Link
Tom Venuto
This is currently a free informational site for general health and www.TomVenuto.com
fitness.
Burn the Fat
This fat loss website provides
information on my Burn the Fat,
Feed the Muscle ebook.
www.BurnTheFat.com
My competitive bodybuilding blog
where I will soon release a series
Bodybuilding Secrets of training courses specifically for www.BodybuildingSecrets.com
bodybuilding and hypertrophy
training.
57
About Tom Venuto
About Alwyn Cosgrove
Born in Scotland, Alwyn Cosgrove began formal studies in Sports
Performance at West Lothian College and received an honors
degree in Sports Science from Chester College at the University of
Liverpool. Alwyn is certified with distinction as a strength and
conditioning specialist with the NSCA and has been recognized as
a Master of Sports Sciences with the ISSA. Alwyn is also certified
by the NASM, the ACSM, Kingsports International, the Society
for Weight Training Injury Specialists, USA Weightlifting, and the
Chek Institute.
A former athlete and Taekwon-do champion, Alwyn has worked
with Olympic and national level athletes, world champions and
professionals in a multitude of sports including boxing, martial
arts, soccer, ice skating, football, fencing, triathlon, rugby,
bodybuilding, dance and fitness competition. Alwyn is also a
sought after expert for several of the country’s leading
publications including a monthly column in Men’s Fitness
magazine. You can find him online at www.AlwynCosgrove.com.
58 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
Extreme and Controversial Fat Loss
Techniques, and Current Fat Loss Trends
Craig Ballantyne Interviews Tom Venuto
Craig Ballantyne: Tom, you’ve written a great report called, “Risk-to-Benefit Ratios of
Extreme and Controversial Fat Loss Techniques.” I first read it a while ago.
Have your thoughts changed on any of the rankings since you wrote that
report?
Tom Venuto:
That report pretty much sums up my current thoughts about fat loss. The
article looked at techniques for fat loss that are controversial, like not eating
for two to three hours before going to bed or not eating carbs after a certain
time of day, or doing early morning cardio on an empty stomach. Some
experts recommend these methods; others strongly recommend avoiding
them. Some say they work well; others say they don’t work at all.
The main message I wanted to get across is that when you generalize by
saying things like, “This technique is good,” “That technique is bad,” or
“Never do this,” “Always do that,” you’re limiting yourself. I believe in the
philosophy that the person who has the most flexibility and the most choices
is the person with the most power to get results and to break past barriers
(which, unfortunately, are often self-imposed by all-or-none thinking).
Instead of making generalizations, I prefer to approach training and
nutrition from the viewpoint of personalization and risks versus benefits. If
you think about it, all exercise has risks. Squatting has risks. Running has
risks. Competing in sports has risks. You can’t avoid risks. Heck, being alive
has risks! The idea is to manage risks, not try to eliminate them.
Take fasted cardio in the morning, for example. Are there risks in using
this technique in an attempt to accelerate fat loss? Yes, absolutely. Cortisol is
higher in the morning, so you are more catabolic and you might lose muscle.
Does that mean there are no benefits and you should never use this
technique? Not necessarily. Does doing cardio on an empty stomach
guarantee you’re going to lose muscle? No, it only increases the possibility.
Yet many trainers, strength coaches, athletes and bodybuilders approach
techniques like these with, “It’s good,” or “It’s bad,” with no shades of gray
in between.
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Fat Loss Techniques and Trends
The truth is, the value of each technique depends very much on the
context. I remember reading something Charles Poliquin wrote about how
ridiculous it was to think about his “manly men” athletes (as he called them),
such as a six-foot, 220-pound hockey player, doing any kind of conventional
“aerobics.” That makes complete sense to me—in that context. If the athlete
shows up after the off season carrying some undesired body fat, he can
easily shed that weight with strength training and nutrition. Combine that
with energy expended from practice time, and no aerobics are necessary.
But does that mean “All aerobics are bad,” or “Cardio is completely
worthless”? Again, it depends on the context. Bad or worthless when? How
much? How intense? What kind? Under what circumstances? And for
whom? Are we talking about a 55-year-old sedentary woman with 35%
body fat, an elite shot-putter, or a bodybuilder six weeks out from a
competition?
I think these rigid all-or-none beliefs get formed gradually over a whole
lifetime of experiences. We tend to collect our own personal biases and carry
them along with us—I know I had to overcome my “pure bodybuilder”
mentality and develop more flexibility in my approaches in order to really
serve my non-bodybuilder clients the best. I specialize in fat loss—including
nutrition, exercise, and the psychological and emotional aspects—and my
personal interest is bodybuilding. I don’t train people for sports, so I don’t
have the perspective that most strength coaches do. In the same way, I
imagine that many top strength coaches have developed an anti-aerobics bias
from their experience working with power, speed, and strength athletes who
have always been told that aerobics kills your strength, and maybe they
generalize their beliefs to apply to everyone.
Bottom line, and the whole point of my article, was that there are no
absolutes; everything is context-dependent.
Craig Ballantyne: You rank “fasted cardio in the morning” as a high-risk, high-benefit activity
for fat loss. Is this something that you use yourself or with clients?
Tom Venuto:
62 Tom Venuto
Because it’s high risk, it’s not necessarily a fat loss technique I recommend
for everyone all the time. But I’m not afraid to use it, and I believe it has
benefits that can outweigh the risks, depending on the circumstances. I
usually do fasted cardio in the morning about eight to 12 weeks before a
bodybuilding competition. But it depends on my weekly results. If I’m
losing fat quickly and easily, I don’t need to use any high-risk techniques.
Sometimes I’ll still do cardio in the morning, because I like doing it then, but
I’ll have a whey protein drink or even a whole meal shortly beforehand.
The Fat Burn Files
I like to have an enormous amount of flexibility in my approach. If there’s
a plateau in fat loss, I want to be able to dig into my bag of tricks and have a
lot of stuff in there to pull out when I need it. If you only have one way and
you get stuck, you have a problem. I don’t like rigid formulas; I like freedom
to choose my approach according to how things are going.
Craig Ballantyne: Most of my articles and interviews on my site promote interval training.
However, traditional cardio has worked for many people. In your opinion,
how does traditional cardio compare to interval training? What are the pros
and cons of each?
Tom Venuto:
I would agree with what Ian King wrote recently in one of his Q & A
columns:
As to whether you respond best to higher intensity interval training
(HIIT) or lower intensity steady state training will depend a lot on you.
You should try both (not concurrently) and compare.
You simply have to experiment. Test and discover for yourself what
works best for you. How do you know what works best if you don’t test it
and measure the results?
I don’t necessarily create programs based on what the latest research says
or what the popular trend is. I look at the research and pay attention to what’s
going on at the “cutting edge,” but I don’t live and breathe by it. I do what
produces results, period. There’s no doubt interval training is effective and
supported with research. A great benefit of interval training for many people
is time efficiency. Another is that it is mentally and physically engaging.
Long duration, conventional cardio can bore some people to tears.
My personal preference for my own fat loss cardio training is to work at
the highest heart rate I can comfortably maintain for the entire duration of
the workout, 20–30 minutes. During pre-contest preparation, I often
increase—in a progressive fashion—to as much as 30–45 minutes, so my
program to this day is primarily conventional cardio, but its not low intensity
cardio. I occasionally add in interval training more for variety than anything.
I do like stair and hill sprinting, though, and have done that for years. Oddly
enough, I never really considered it cardio—I looked at it more as an adjunct
to my leg workouts, although I’m sure I got fat loss benefits from it.
We’ve all seen the research that compares low intensity, long duration
cardio to HIIT, and we’ve seen the superiority of HIIT for time efficiency,
but I’d like to see some research comparing fat loss effects of 20 minutes of
HIIT with 30–45 minutes of challenging steady cardio at the top of your
target heart zone. I find this type of cardio extremely effective, and I imagine
63
there’s a pretty substantial post-workout afterburn in addition to the very
large burn of fat calories during the workout. It’s good to know, though, that
you can get a productive workout in just 20 minutes or less with HIIT.
Regardless of whether we’re talking about interval training or
conventional cardio, you want to burn as many calories as you can, given the
time you have. I definitely don’t believe in the idea that low intensity cardio
burns more total fat. That myth has clearly been debunked by research, even
though it still persists.
Naturally, beginners and de-conditioned people need to build some kind
of fitness base before doing the really high intensity stuff. HIIT can be risky
for certain people. Simple conventional cardio like walking is fantastic for
the elderly and overweight, although cardio shouldn’t take precedence over
weight training in any population.
Craig Ballantyne: Given all these pros and cons, what’s the best training approach for the
masses looking to lose fat and maintain (or even gain) muscle?
Tom Venuto:
64 Tom Venuto
Depends entirely on the person. Nutrition and training have to be
customized. There’s no such thing as a single best approach. We see people
make great gains on abbreviated high intensity training and also on high
volume. We see people lose fat on conventional cardio and HIIT cardio…
with high carbs/low fat and low carbs/high fat. However, one thing is always
true: There are fundamentals that apply to everyone. Each person must
master the fundamentals first. Once you have those down, you begin to
personalize.
That’s where a really good fitness professional comes in—to evaluate an
individual’s situation and make the optimal exercise prescription within that
particular context. There is no single best training approach because
everyone is so different.
The nutrition fundamentals are important, of course, but strength training
is really the key fundamental for everyone. It’s a shame that strength training
is still underplayed in the weight loss mainstream. Dieting is still king, but
ironically, low-calorie dieting is part of the problem it purports to cure.
Weight training is critical to fat loss, and I have no argument against
structuring weight training program parameters for fat loss with supersets,
circuits, short rest intervals, or whatever. Results are what counts, and time
efficiency is more important to some than others. I simply think that some
people have taken their anti-aerobics sentiment a bit too far.
Just a couple decades ago the entire health and fitness movement
revolved around aerobics, while strength training was ignored and ridiculed.
Today, in certain strength circles, the pendulum has swung completely to the
The Fat Burn Files
other side; aerobics is ridiculed and strength training is said to be the best
way to burn fat. I actually find it kind of funny when trainers are so against
cardio that, when they do recommend it, they won’t even call it “aerobics” or
“cardio,” they call it something else: “Energy system training.”
Strength training has a critical role in fat loss, but is it really more
important than cardio? The negative effects of excessive cardio volume on
strength have been clearly proven, but how much is “excessive”? Can’t the
two work synergistically together if work and recovery are carefully
balanced? For people who are not strength/power athletes, is a little bit of
extra cardio really such a big concern? Shouldn’t training always be
organized around priorities with the main priority never compromised?
Using strength training to burn fat is not a new concept. We had PHA
(peripheral heart action) training and circuit training many years ago.
Bodybuilders have been reducing rest intervals (increasing density), and
using supersets, tri-sets, or giant sets during pre-contest phases since
bodybuilding began. Maybe they didn’t understand growth hormone, excess
post-exercise energy expenditure and the other mechanisms that made them
work—they just did it instinctively—but they also did cardio. The problem
is, the more you turn strength training into cardio (“circuit training”), the
more you compromise your strength and muscle mass increases. I like the
balance between conventional (and heavier) strength training, moderate
cardio, and nutrition the best, although I certainly use increasing density and
supersetting during fat loss programs.
I’ll say that the preferred fat loss approach, most of the time, for most
people, is a healthy balance between strength training and cardio training.
Whether you go with conventional cardio or interval training is up to each
person to decide. I think they both have a place, depending on your goals,
your current level of fitness, and your need for time efficiency.
Craig Ballantyne: Do you ever have some individuals that just don’t lose fat even though they
are “doing everything right”? What do you do in these special cases?
Tom Venuto:
Very rarely. If someone is honestly doing everything right, then they get
results. However, I’ve worked with people who got results very slowly. If
someone was journaling their training and nutrition and I knew they were
honestly doing everything right and getting poor results, I might refer them
to a physician or health professional for some testing, but I usually look
closely at a few factors first.
What I’ve discovered over the years is that there are big differences in
how people respond to various diets due to their metabolic type or
somatotype. “Somatotype” generally refers to the physical body structure:
65
ectomorph, mesomorph, or endomorph. “Metabolic type” refers more to
how efficiently an individual metabolizes proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and
specific food types. Prescriptions by macronutrient ratio are often given
according to metabolic type. I think there is value in metabolic typing if
someone is stuck on the standard conventional fat loss diet, but I find some
of the metabolic typing systems and questionnaires overly complicated and
unnecessary.
In terms of metabolic typing, the single most important distinction you
can make is simply a person’s response to concentrated carbohydrates. Some
people handle a diet of 50–60% carbs perfectly, while a small handful seem
to only respond to getting rid of the grains and starches (and sometimes even
limiting fruits). That leaves lean proteins, healthy fats, nuts, seeds, all types
of vegetables, and some fruits. The amount of starch or grain the person can
handle is the “X factor.” That’s the factor I would test and manipulate if
someone is on a diet such as 50–55% carb, 25–30% protein, 20% fat, doing
everything right, but nothing is happening. You can do it without
complicated lab tests or long questionnaires—it just takes a little trial and
error playing with your X factor.
If you asked me 12 or 15 years ago, I would have been the one saying,
“Never eat a low carb diet.” Today I’ve experienced first hand that carbs
must be manipulated for some people to really get results. Over time as the
person gets leaner and increases lean body mass, I find that the tolerance to
carbs increases so that more carbs can be included during maintenance.
Another thing I do when someone isn’t losing fat is that instead of just
looking at what they’re doing now, I like to know what they’ve been eating
and how they’ve been training over the past three to six months. If someone
has been chronically dieting and chronically over-training for many months,
sometimes the best thing they can do is take a layoff, or eat more!
More often than not, the client will be resistant to both ideas. If you give
them some hard data, it’s not difficult to persuade them. There are reams and
reams of research on the effect of very-low-calorie dieting on metabolism,
hormones, and body composition. When I explain the consequences of
prolonged very-low-calorie dieting, they’re more likely to listen than if I say
do it just because I say so. Show any man a study proving that extremely low
calorie diets lower testosterone, and you get his attention quickly. Many of
the strategies that are most effective for fat loss are counter intuitive to what
the average person believes. People are sometimes slow to change, but it’s a
matter of educating them.
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The Fat Burn Files
Craig Ballantyne: Another area of debate is the use of cardio during muscle building programs.
What’s your opinion of doing traditional cardio training when a client is
trying to build as much muscle as possible?
Tom Venuto:
Cardio should be kept to an minimum on muscle building programs. In some
cases it can be dropped completely. I prefer to keep three days a week for 20
minutes year round. I like the way it makes me feel, and I believe it helps me
stay leaner while gaining muscle without interfering with my gains. When
the fat loss season arrives, there is a progressive and gradual increase in
cardio frequency, duration, and intensity. I don’t recommend high volume
cardio year round. It’s too easy to adapt to high volume cardio. Cardio
should be periodized just like strength training.
People who are strongly opposed to aerobics often like to use aerobics
instructors as the example of “why cardio sucks.” “Why did a survey reveal
that the average aerobics instructor has twenty-something percent body fat?
Why aren’t they leaner?” The answer is because they don’t periodize their
cardio like bodybuilders do. Lay off the cardio when you want to gain
muscle. Gradually increase and build to a peak when you want to get ripped.
Your body will be more responsive this way when you do add in the cardio.
Craig Ballantyne: What levels of cardio do you recommend for general health purposes? Can
you have good health without cardio?
Tom Venuto:
You can definitely have great health without cardio. Even the medical and
scientific communities agree on this now. In 1990 the American College of
Sports Medicine revised their position on the recommended quantity and
quality of exercise to include strength training. Today other organizations
have finally followed and publicly recognize the health benefits of strength
training.
We know that lifelong health and permanent fat loss can only be achieved
if a client adopts exercise as a lifestyle and sticks to it. If a client won’t stick
to a program, he or she isn’t going to get lasting results. So when you make a
recommendation, you have to consider what your client’s preferences are. If
you have clients who hate weight training, I’d still persuade them to include
a few brief strength workouts every week and explain in excruciating detail
why they need it. But if they love being outdoors cycling, walking, hiking,
rollerblading, I would also factor those personal preferences into their
program. I teach my clients that, when it comes to your health, all exercise
counts, and I encourage them to simply be more active in general.
Craig Ballantyne: Any final words, tips, or hints to help our readers lose fat?
67
Tom Venuto:
68 Tom Venuto
Be flexible. Customize. Know your body type. Test and experiment with
various methods and make up your own mind. Let your results dictate your
approach. Don’t try to avoid risks, manage them. And work your butt off.
There are still no real “secrets” or “breakthroughs”—nothing works like
hard work.
The Fat Burn Files
About Tom Venuto
About Craig Ballantyne
Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, M.Sc., is a Toronto-based fitness expert
and member of the Men’s Fitness magazine training advisory
board—one of the most popular fitness publications in the world.
Craig’s fat loss and workout tips are featured every month in
Men’s Fitness, and his sports training articles and workouts can be
found on numerous websites. His trademarked Turbulence
Training workouts and his comprehensive Workout Manuals
(including Get Lean! and The Executive Lifestyle Manual) are
featured on his website, www.TurbulenceTraining.com.
Craig’s areas of expertise include helping busy executives lose fat
and gain muscle, and training young athletes to improve
performance in team sports. Craig also has an extensive research
background and keeps up to date on the latest scientific findings
that will help improve your health and wellness and your physical
and mental performance.
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70 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
Succeeding in Fitness, in Business,
and in Life: A New Viewpoint on Motivation
Charles Burke Interviews Tom Venuto
Charles Burke:
Hello, everyone, I’m Charles Burke of www.CharlesBurke.com, and today,
our guest is Tom Venuto of www.TomVenuto.com and
www.BurnTheFat.com. Tom is a longtime body builder who has built an
entire career on fitness. Welcome, Tom.
Tom Venuto:
Thanks for having me on the call, Charles.
Charles Burke:
Your name is pretty well known in the fitness arena, since you’re the author
of ClickBank’s all time bestselling ebook on weight loss. It’s titled, Burn the
Fat, Feed the Muscle. On the off chance that one or two people aren’t
familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?
Tom Venuto:
Sure. I’m from Hoboken, New Jersey, which is right across the Hudson
River from New York City. I have been a bodybuilder, and an all-around
fitness fanatic, for more than 20 years. I started training with weights when I
was 14 years old, and I knew instantly it was what I wanted to do with my
life—you could say I knew it was my calling. So, when I got to college, I
pursued a degree in Exercise Science. Then, I went after all the top personal
trainer certifications, and went right to work in health clubs as a personal
trainer, and that’s how my career in fitness got started.
What happened over the years is that, in addition to training people, I also
started getting interested in the business side of fitness, especially health
clubs. Eventually, instead of doing personal training full time, I also started
managing clubs. We reached the point where our health club company had
five locations, and I became a co-owner and a manager, and was in charge of
all the marketing, sales training, and a good part of operations for all the
clubs.
I spent about 10 years in the health club management business until 2004,
when there was a big shift in my life. In 1998, when I first discovered the
Internet and got online, I saw the potential to reach a lot of people through
this media. I put up a website, which you mentioned,
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Succeeding in Fitness, in Business, and in Life
www.TomVenuto.com, and I offered personal coaching through my
website. The Internet allowed me to work with people not only locally in
person at my clubs, but all over the world by phone and by email.
It built up so quickly that I reached a point where I just couldn’t work
with any more clients. I was always booked. I didn’t even have to advertise
other than having a page on my website; it was mostly from referrals and
people finding me through my site. You can only coach or train so many
people one on one, but I wanted to find a way to reach out and help more
people. So I took my coaching system, put it in writing, and turned it into an
ebook. People all over the world began to download it and get the
information immediately.
In May 2003, I published Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle as an ebook,
and since then, it’s gone on to become the number one diet and fitness book
according to ClickBank.com, which is the company that sells and ranks
ebooks. Tens of thousands of people use the program in over 100 countries,
and it’s still growing.
Charles Burke:
And the website for that book is?
Tom Venuto:
I have many websites, but www.BurnTheFat.com is the home site for the
Burn the Fat ebook, and my other primary site is www.TomVenuto.com,
which you mentioned. That’s a free health and fitness content site dedicated
to the natural approach. There are hundreds and hundreds of articles and
question-and-answer columns there.
Charles Burke:
You say that you very quickly filled up with clients and got to the point
where you just couldn’t accept any more. Now, a lot of people would
consider that a major success; that’s sort of the Holy Grail that they’re
chasing. What did you do special to reach that point?
Tom Venuto:
I built my whole business on a foundation with two pillars:
#1: Producing something of quality and substance, which are sorely lacking
in our industry. We know how many diets there are, and we know how many
don’t work, and that’s most of them. The marketplace didn’t need another
diet program that didn’t work or another diet program of questionable
quality.
I wanted to create something that would really change people’s lives,
something of high quality, something of substance. Starting with that
foundation, I knew the business would grow, and it would spread just by
word of mouth. When you give people quality and substance, people start
getting results, and when they get results, they tell other people about it.
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#2: Secondly, I built my business on a foundation of integrity. One of the
problems I have with many of the programs being promoted today is they’re
mainly a vehicle for selling other things—namely, diet pills and diet bars. I
wanted to produce something that was pure—strictly honest information
about how to lose weight the natural way, and there were no supplements to
sell. I think both of these things are what built up the coaching program and
the ebook to the point where they are today.
Charles Burke:
I think it’s significant, too, that you start off your book with 21 pages of very,
very tightly packed information on how to set goals and motivate yourself.
Tom Venuto:
Yes. That’s the first step. People come to me and say, “What do I eat? How
do I work out?”, and I say, “Wait, hold on, let’s backtrack. Let’s start with
what you want. Tell me exactly, specifically, what you want first, and I’ll tell
you how to get there.”
I laid out an entire system on how to set goals, how to set them
specifically to stay focused on them. Once we know what you want, we can
design a program that is individualized for you, so you’re doing the right
thing for you, not for someone else. Everybody’s different, everybody wants
something different, and they have different bodies and different goals.
Charles Burke:
Out of curiosity, how do you deal with the people who seem to sabotage
themselves? How do you help people like that? What do you give to them?
Tom Venuto:
A lot of it has to do with self image, and this is something in the fitness field
that even the best trainers and nutritionists miss because they are usually
only focused on the daily mechanics of eating and training. Everybody has a
picture in their mind of what they look like. That’s the self image. The best
way to understand your self image is to take a piece of paper and write “I
AM” and then a blank line. Then, you fill in that blank line. That’s the way
you describe yourself. Those words will make a picture pop into your mind.
That mental picture is your self image.
As long as you have an image of yourself as an overweight person, or an
unfit person, you will continue to manifest more of that in your life. No
matter what training program you go on, no matter what diet you go on, you
will sabotage yourself every single time if you don’t change the mental
image of yourself.
Charles Burke:
Speaking of mental images, when people go into business, a lot of times they
have a mental image that sort of lags behind. If they do meet with success,
and they jump into the major leagues—especially if it happens quickly—
they get really uncomfortable with that, and they become intimidated. How
have you mentally handled the big steps forward every time they came?
75
Tom Venuto:
You’re 100% correct. Not only do people get uncomfortable and
intimidated, they sabotage themselves in business the same way they do in
their weight loss efforts. If you reach a level of business success or personal
income that is not consistent with your self image, then you will do
everything in your power to sabotage your success or lose the money. You
have to change the mental image first.
There was never anything for me to be intimidated by or to handle
because I already took those steps in my mind first, before I took them
physically. I was already living my success in the mental plane before it
came to me on the physical plane. I was expecting the physical success to
arrive. It’s not like I succeeded and hit the big leagues in anything I did by
accident—in business, in online marketing, publishing, or bodybuilding—
and then didn’t know how to handle it. When I went from the minor leagues
to the major leagues, I succeeded on purpose by aiming for the big leagues in
the first place, believing I could do it, and that I was worthy of that
success—seeing myself being successful in my mind first.
Charles Burke:
I think this is an important distinction that most people miss. I remember
reading an interview with Willie Nelson years ago. He’d been around, been
singing and recording for years and years, but then all of a sudden, he had a
big monster hit or two, and an interviewer asked him, “Are you surprised
now, when you show up at a gig, and there are all these thousands of people
out in the audience?”
Willie Nelson just laughed, and said, “Actually, no, I used to be surprised
they weren’t there.” I think fixing your expectations ahead of time is your
secret.
Tom Venuto:
Absolutely. You have to expect success.
Charles Burke:
Do you have a favorite or a special method you use to focus your energies?
Tom Venuto:
I think the most powerful way of focusing your energies is the simplest
thing: writing everything down, prioritizing that list, and then keeping it in
front of you so you don’t lose focus of what’s the priority.
I personally write absolutely everything down. I journal my training. I
review my fitness and bodybuilding goals every day. I write down my
personal goals and my financial goals. Everything is in writing, and I believe
the real key is to do it daily. Spaced repetition may not be glamorous, but it
works.
You should look at goal setting and doing it in writing as a daily habit.
For a lot of people, it’s an inconsistent, or a once-a-year thing every January
first. At that point, it’s a flimsy resolution, at best. Once you’ve committed to
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The Fat Burn Files
setting goals, doing it daily, and writing them down, then to focus your
energy even further, you must prioritize those goals.
You can actually defocus yourself if your to-do list and your goals list get
too big, because then it just gets intimidating. That doesn’t mean you should
set fewer goals. I read that Mark Victor Hansen, the bestselling author of all
time with the Chicken Soup series, has something like 5,000 goals in writing.
Wow! Well, how do you keep track of that many goals? You just have to
work on the art of prioritizing. You have to work on the art of saying, “Okay,
here’s this huge list of things I want to have, be, do, and achieve. What’s the
one thing that if I did it immediately, is going to have the biggest impact on
my life, or my health, or my business? What’s that one thing?”
Then put that first, focus on it, push all the distractions out of the way, and
go to work on it. Stay on it without getting distracted until that one thing is
finished, then go on to the next thing. Sure, you can juggle a few things at a
time, but still, there has to be prioritization.
Charles Burke:
Do you have a special place for delegating—getting other people to do the
minutiae?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, and that was a big breakthrough for me in reaching a higher level of
success in my life, and something I still work on. One of the things that I
didn’t excel at in the health club business as well as I would have liked to is
delegation. I didn’t want to let go. I wanted to always have my hands on the
steering wheel. What you have to do is to figure out what type of people you
need to help you, get that image in your mind, and attract that type of person.
Delegate everything you possibly can to them. You should be spending
time on the things that only you can do in your business. Anything else
should be delegated to somebody else. Then, what you need to do is just let
go. In the health club business, I found myself just holding on and holding
on and not letting go.
That led to me becoming one of those guys that worked 60, 70, 80 hours a
week in the gyms for years and years, and I was exhausted. I was successful,
but if you counted the number of hours that I put in, the returns weren’t in
proportion to the effort, and I had no one to blame but myself.
Charles Burke:
And the fun—how much fun were you having?
Tom Venuto:
There were high points, but there was a lot of stress too. When I got out of
the bricks-and-mortar health club and personal training business and into the
online world of health and fitness publishing, I promised myself that I was
going to make this business free me, and not imprison me. I was going to do
that by delegating. I got an assistant from Elance, and she is just wonderful,
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and has made my life so easy. Then I got another virtual assistant, and I
outsource just about everything imaginable.
For example, if you’re in my position, you can get buried online in a
mountain of email. Charles, you sent me the email yesterday that you come
back from five days out of the office, and you had 8,900 emails in your
inbox. I can relate to that. I’m getting upwards of 20,000 emails a month or
more. Where do you even begin to sort through them, let alone answer
them? Well, I came up with a system of “email triage” to sort through what
was urgent and important, and I had my assistants answer absolutely
everything except mail that only I could answer personally.
Once you master the skills of delegating and outsourcing, you can focus
your time on the things that are most important that only you can do, and
things that are really going to generate some results, and sales, and major
benefits in your life. I think, even more importantly, you can spend your time
doing what you love to do the most.
Charles Burke:
I’ve heard it said that, if you’re doing something that pays less than, let’s say,
$100 an hour (or whatever the value is for your time), if you’re doing
anything that pays less than that, hand it off.
Tom Venuto:
Yes, that’s a very important concept! In fact, I was just listening to a
recording of Dan Kennedy’s (a top direct marketing expert), and he was
talking about that exact thing. He said, “Calculate exactly what your time is
worth, and when you do the calculation—if anything—overestimate. Only
take into account your productive working hours.” Now, if you take
somebody that works 40 productive hours a week, maybe they take two
weeks of vacation a year, they make $40,000 a year. Their time is worth
about $20 an hour.
To move up, and to increase your income, you can’t afford to do anything
that is a minimum wage job; that’s a six-dollar-an-hour task. You can’t even
afford to do a 15-dollar-an-hour task. If you do that, you’re never going to
move up. The more you move up in success and income, the more you have
to become aware of the value of your time. If your time is worth $150 an
hour, sometimes it’s really hard to delegate certain things, but even if it’s 50dollar-an-hour work, you’ve got to get somebody else to do that work.
In fact, if your time is worth $150 an hour, and we’re talking about 100dollar-an-hour work, you’ve got to get someone else to do that work. Many
times, people do not want to let go, but when you have a dollar figure on the
value of your time, that will help you focus on the activities that are most
productive and valuable, and that will give you the most return for the time
invested.
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Charles Burke:
Years ago, I had a little house painting business, and I never hired anybody. I
tried to a couple of times, and my biggest problem was personal insecurity. I
had this image in my mind of how hard it would be to criticize somebody if
they did the job wrong. That was my own personal problem. That was one of
the things that held me back.
Over the years, I worked on that. It’s an easy thing now, it’s no big deal.
Back then, that was the battle that I needed to fight, and I didn’t.
Tom Venuto:
For my business partners and me in the health club business, the thing that
held us back was a belief system that, if you want to do something right,
you’ve got to do it yourself. Until we got over that, we were working 60, 70,
80 hours a week without relief.
Charles Burke:
Were you able to help your partners with that in any way as you developed
these ideas?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, but it took a long time. If I look back on things that I could have done
differently, I would have delegated a lot more and worked a lot less.
Another belief system that we all had was if you want to be a successful
entrepreneur, you’ve got to put in long hours—you have to put those 80
hours a week in. I’m not against doing that in the beginning to get a venture
rolling, but if you know your values, and one of your values is freedom, then
you have to set up your business to free you in the long term so that you can
enjoy friends, family, life, and all its experiences.
Charles Burke:
You just mentioned something that a lot of people aren’t clear about. We talk
about goals a lot, but there are also values. A lot of people are not clear about
how to find their own values, and how to set them, and what to do with them
once they find them. Do you have any brief words of advice on that?
Tom Venuto:
The way to find your values is just to ask this question: “What’s important to
me about _______?” Now, I say “blank” because it could be different areas
of your life. You could have financial values, and you could have business
and personal values. You could have a list of values, and all you have to do is
ask, “What’s important to me about _______,” and that will be your values.
Once you know your values, then you can organize your whole life
around them. Making decisions will be easy when you are conscious of your
values, because values are like your boundaries. They are your sidelines. If
you’re violating your values, you know right away that you’re stepping out
of bounds. Then you can get moving back in the right direction so that
you’re back on purpose.
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Charles Burke:
You write down your goals very meticulously. What do you do when you
find your goals changing or shifting? For example, when you decided to get
out of the bricks-and-mortar fitness business and into online business.
Tom Venuto:
Each time I achieve a goal, I always set new ones. With every mountain you
summit, your new view lets you see more mountains in the distance. But
sometimes long term goals do shift or change because what you want
changes. I expect to—and I’m open to—evolving and changing. One of my
values is self actualization, and constantly improving, and becoming more,
so I understand that my goals may change, and that I may evolve as a person,
and that I may reach a point where doing the same thing over and over again
becomes a drill.
Drill, drill, drill, one, two, three, four, left, right—sometimes what you
once loved becomes the same old routine and loses the appeal that originally
drew you to it, and you want to find something new that’s going to challenge
you and excite you. I want to find work that will help me become more,
instead of just repeating the same success over and over again. That was a
philosophy of Walt Disney, you know. Walt said that he never liked to repeat
past successes. He just kept imagining and creating new and different
challenges that had never been dreamed of before, and look at what his
always-expanding vision turned into. I want bigger challenges, but also
sometimes, new challenges. I’m open to wherever the path may lead me.
Things change as you get older and wiser too. Some of my goals are going to
change, and I’m ready for it.
Charles Burke:
Everybody is different. Some people seem to have endless drive and energy,
but most people don’t. What can a so-called “ordinary” person do if they just
can’t seem to drive themselves forward?
Tom Venuto:
You can start by having a big picture, a mission or a vision, not just a goal.
You need something bigger than yourself that you can buy into which will
pull you forward. I think the vision, the big picture, is not even a goal, really,
because a goal is something that you reach, and then you’ve got it. A vision,
that big picture, is something that doesn’t change your whole life because it’s
that big and broad. It’s something you can continue working toward
constantly.
If you don’t have a vision, you’re going to start to flounder, and you’ll
lose focus. Once you have that big vision, you can just backtrack with the
smaller goals, which are the little steps between where you are now, and that
will keep you driven.
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Charles Burke:
When you were just first starting out at age 14, you already knew what you
wanted to do. You had a vision for your entire life. Where do you think that
fire came from?
Tom Venuto:
From role models and seeing other people who had done these amazing
things. Like a lot of teenagers in the 1980s, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a
big inspiration for me. He is the reason that so many people got into
bodybuilding or into fitness. Not that the big, larger-than-life icons like
Arnold are necessarily the best role models; sometimes it’s not just the big
stars, it’s everyday people, ordinary people, who are great and inspiring role
models.
When you see people just like you who achieved what you want to
achieve, you say to yourself, “Hey, if they can do it, I can do it, too.” One of
my high school buddies competed in bodybuilding at the age of 17, before I
did, and he won. I was in the audience, and I got to go backstage with him.
And I thought, “If he can do it, I can do it.” So, look for role models.
Charles Burke:
What was your family’s initial reaction to this? How did they react to your
driving interest in this?
Tom Venuto:
They’ve always been supportive. They’ve supported me a thousand percent
in everything I did. When I was living with them in my teenage years, I did
some pretty bizarre things with my diet—all kinds of experiments like eating
three dozen eggs a day, and pounds and pounds of meat. At one point, they
went to a farm, bought a whole cow, and put it in the freezer, and I basically
ate it all myself.
They were very good sports. They supported me totally. I don’t know if
they really took me seriously in the beginning, though, because I had a really
big mouth, and I kept talking about what I was going to do. I was going to be
the greatest bodybuilder who ever lived, and I was going to win contests,
and I had always talked about other things I was going to do in the same
way.
When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a doctor, then a fireman, then the
next year an astronomer, the next year a biologist, a pro skateboarder, pro
soccer player, and on and on. I remember one year I wanted to be a
herpetologist, that’s a reptile expert like Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter.
So, every year there was some new career or something different I wanted to
do. Every year, my parents said, “That’s nice, dear, whatever you want, go
for it.” So they supported me from the earliest days I can remember, but I
don’t know how seriously they took me.
I’ll never forget the night that I came home with my first trophies. After
winning the Natural Pennsylvania bodybuilding competition, I won my
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weight class and the overall title as a middleweight, beating out the bigger
guys in the light heavyweight and heavyweight division, and when my
parents saw me come home with the trophies, they were just thrilled. Instead
of talking about it, I had finally done it, rather than talk about it, and ever
since then, they’ve supported me even more.
Charles Burke:
Your whole family has been pretty much achievers?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, although I definitely pursued the path of goal setting and goal achieving
on my own. My parents were always people to go after what they wanted,
and encouraged me to go after my dreams. My mom and dad are the only
people in the world who have never told me not to do something that I
wanted to do, or to tell me that I couldn’t achieve something that I wanted to
achieve. Even some of my best friends have been known to tell me some of
my goals were unrealistic or that I would never do it, but not my family.
Charles Burke:
Not everybody’s blessed with that kind of supportive family. What can
people do if they’re constantly bombarded with skepticism all around them?
Even better, how can they win their family’s support?
Tom Venuto:
One thing is to lead by example. I hear this all the time. I may have a client
who wants to lose weight, to get in shape, pick up the fitness lifestyle, and
the rest of their family wants to keep drinking beer and eating corn chips,
and watching TV six hours a day. You have a choice: You can either stay
with them and drink beer and watch TV six hours a day, or you can make a
commitment to do something different and be a leader.
Other people are always attracted to a leader—somebody who is walking
the walk and who stands out and stands alone. When you start to get results,
eyes and ears will perk up, and they will say, “Wow.” As I was saying about
role models before, being a leader and a role model are synonymous. Many
times, you’ll be amazed at how they become followers, if you’ll be a leader.
Being a leader takes a lot of effort and courage, but that’s the commitment
you have to make sometimes when you’re in that kind of situation.
Charles Burke:
Do you have anybody you recommend—a writer or a teacher? Somebody
who is especially good at teaching people how to make themselves over into
this leader image?
Tom Venuto:
There are so many. I’ve had a lot of mentors. There’s one man who’s been of
great influence over me in the past few years, and that’s Bob Proctor. He’s a
master success coach, and he teaches success principles and goal achieving,
and one of the things he teaches is to be a leader. He wrote a book called You
Were Born Rich, and it’s not just about financial wealth like the title implies.
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It’s about prosperity in all aspects of your life. That’s a good place to start
with Bob’s teachings, and I highly recommend it.
Basically, all the personal growth authors have influenced me, and in
addition to Bob, I’d recommend that all the people on this call look into
teachers and coaches such as Anthony Robbins, Jim Rohn, and Brian Tracy,
especially.
We’re talking about focus, motivation, and goals tonight, and Brian Tracy
has written a lot about focus and clarity and goals. He has one book in
particular that I think would be of interest to everybody on this call who’s
interested in getting more focused on priorities. It’s called Focal Point. It’s
about 200 pages; it’s a quick read, and his material is fantastic.
Charles Burke:
You also tell the story that you ran across some Tony Robbins stuff, you sort
of used it, and then you came back a few years later, and found out you
didn’t really use it after all. Could you go through that story? This is
interesting.
Tom Venuto:
I picked up on Tony Robbins’ work right when he first came on the scene. I
must have still been in high school. I think it was 1986, maybe, or in 1987, it
was the late eighties. He first came out with his books, Unlimited Power, and
then Awaken the Giant Within. When I read the book Unlimited Power, I
immediately thought, “Wow, this is powerful stuff,” and different too. I
didn’t know what Neuro Linguistic Programming was at the time, but now I
know that NLP was a big part of what made Tony’s approach so different
and effective.
Then I saw him on TV. Tony is known for selling more personal
development tapes via infomercials than any other guru in history. I got his
tapes, and I listened to the tapes. On one of the tapes about goal setting, he
says, “What I want you to do is stop the tape now, and write down your
goals.” I said to myself, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard this a thousand times,
I know what my goals are: I’m going to be the best bodybuilder who ever
lived, and I’m going to own my own gym, yadda, yadda, yadda.”
I didn’t write it down. I had goals, but they were only in my head. I
finished the tapes, and went about my business. I found for several years
after that, I achieved some success. Five, six, seven years went by, and I was
making progress, but it was slow, and I hadn’t reached the big goals.
Somehow, I came back to his tapes again. I think it was because I had just
moved and I was unpacking boxes and there were the Tony Robbins tapes
again in a box I unpacked, and I said to myself, “Okay, I’m going to listen to
these again,” and then it struck me after listening to them the second time
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that I never did write down my goals exactly the way Tony said to write
them down. So this time, I wrote them down—in painstaking detail.
I made a very, very detailed list, and I carried that piece of paper with me
wherever I went, and I had it posted on the wall in front of my desk. It was
almost uncanny to see how, one by one, the things on that list just got
knocked off, one at a time, to the point where virtually 100% of the things on
that piece of paper I wrote down had been achieved a few years later—I’m
talking about big goals.
Charles Burke:
It makes a difference, doesn’t it?
Tom Venuto:
It makes all the difference.
Charles Burke:
When we get through here and we unmute the lines, I’m going to ask if
there’s anybody on this call who has written down their goals and repeated
them, just like all the gurus and the experts recommend. I’m willing to bet
it’s not 100%.
Tom Venuto:
I willing to bet it’s probably closer to five percent.
Charles Burke:
Three to five percent—that’s the percentage of people who actually achieve
their goals. That’s just about the same percentage of people who write down
their goals. Now, this is not criticism, this is just recognition of how things
are. Until you recognize how things really are, and how things work, it’s just
almost impossible to change them. Awareness is a powerful thing.
What do you count as your biggest success so far?
Tom Venuto:
I’ve had so many successes and I’m grateful for them all. It’s hard to pick
one. It’s easy to count a business success, because it’s so measurable; you
can keep score in terms of dollars and products sold. If I had to pick one, it
would be the success this past year of the Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle
program online.
It’s been almost too good to believe. Going from zero books sold May 1,
2003, to, only six months later, being number one on ClickBank—which is
like the equivalent of the New York Times bestseller list for online ebooks—
and, within 12 months, dealing with people in 100 countries, and having tens
of thousands of people on the program. But, most important of all, is seeing
people getting results.
Getting emails with people saying, “I’ve lost 20 pounds... I lost 50
pounds... My cholesterol’s down... My blood pressure’s down... Thanks for
the program....” That, I would have to say, has been the biggest so far.
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Charles Burke:
Your influence on other people’s lives. I know what you mean. If there’s
anybody on this call who has an ebook that they’re trying to sell online, I
want you to pay close attention to what’s just been said, because this is
important.
What about memorable steps forward? Is there anything unusual, or any
special breakthroughs you’ve ever made in your business?
Tom Venuto:
I think the big breakthrough in the past year that made for the success of my
business and the Burn the Fat program was when I realized the value of
cooperation with other people. On the Internet, that’s often done through
joint ventures and affiliations. Most people going into business for
themselves think in terms of scarcity and competition instead of creation and
cooperation.
For example, if they put out a weight loss book, they’re thinking, “Oh,
man, there are so many other weight loss programs, and there are so many
other fitness programs, I have all this competition.” I didn’t think that. I
started looking at how I could create something very unique and how I could
cooperate with other people, and finding partners so we could help each
other.
It was the relationships, affiliations, and alliances with other people that
really made the success of the program. After all, I’m just one man, and I
only have this little website, just a little speck out there on the Internet. But
there are thousands of other health and fitness sites and people who have
been online longer than me, people who have newsletter subscriber lists, and
they have customers that are satisfied.
They may be interested in what I have, but they’ve never heard of me
before. By aligning with these other websites and business people, and by
partnering with them and cooperating with them, they can go to their
customers and say, “Hey, this guy, my friend Tom, just gave me a copy of his
ebook about nutrition for fat loss, and it’s a great program. You should go to
his website and take a look at it.” If all of these people go and take a look at
this website, and they like what they read, they’ll buy a copy of it.
Then I can do the same for them. I go to my subscribers and say, “Hey, I
found a great book on diet supplements. It’s so hard to figure out who to
trust. Do these pills work or not? Should you take protein powder or
creatine? If so, what kind? There’s this guy who wrote a book on all that. It
clarifies everything. Go check out his site.” So he was helping me and I was
reciprocating, and I was helping him because we both had high quality
products of substance that were complementary to each other.
If I took the same attitude as most other people, I might have seen this
other book author as my competition, but instead, we built an affiliation with
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each other, and it was that type of business friendship and relationship online
that was the big, big breakthrough. There’s a lot of power in cooperation and
joint venturing.
Charles Burke:
You were thinking without any walls. All those other customers were not
closed off to you. It was just wide open, right?
Tom Venuto:
Right. Sometimes, it might seem like, being that you’re in the same industry,
that you are in competition, but you’d be amazed how much people want
good information. They’re hungry for additional information, and they want
to know who to trust. If you can turn them on to another product that’s as
high in quality as yours, then why not refer them, because everybody wins.
It’s win, win, win. You win, the customer wins, your partners win.
Everybody makes out.
Charles Burke:
I think one of the common misconceptions when people first get into online
business, they hear the word “joint venture,” and I know I made this mistake,
I was thinking, “Yeah, that’s for giant, multinational corporations, and I had
this huge image. Actually, it’s not like that at all. It’s just resource sharing.
That’s really all it is, just sharing.
When you see people choosing goals, setting goals, what’s the most
common mistake you see people make?
Tom Venuto:
They set their goals too low. I remember a quote from Abraham Maslow. He
said, “The story of the human race is the story of people selling themselves
short.” Most people pick a goal for something that they think they’ll be able
to get, not for what they really want. For example, Let’s suppose somebody’s
earning $40,000 a year, and they really want to earn $140,000 a year.
But they’re afraid of trying and failing, so as a result, they’re afraid to set
that big goal, so they don’t. When they’re sitting down with pen and paper,
they’ve decided to set goals, but they chicken out and don’t set the big goal.
They just don’t think they can do it. What stops them and creates the fear is
they don’t know how to achieve the goal, and for that reason, they don’t even
set it. Instead, they settle for less.
They say, “Okay, I’m making $40,000 now, I’m going to increase my
income by ten percent,” and they set their income goal for $44,000. I did this
kind of thing for many, many years. I thought that was what you were
supposed to do. What’s the Japanese term—kaizen? Constant and neverending improvement?
Kaizen is a great concept and an important one in so many areas of your
life, but if someone thinks only in terms of small incremental improvements,
then they may miss opportunities to take quantum leaps. Someone may tell
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himself, “If I make tiny increases continuously, I’m going to have a nice
income when I retire.” Well, it never even dawns on them that they could set
their goal for $400,000 or $4 million. Their brain just doesn’t compute those
numbers, their circuits just aren’t wired that way, their thinking doesn’t
operate on that plane. But what if it were just as easy to go from $40,000 to
$400,000 as it is from $40,000 to $44,000?
In some situations, you may not be able to make a leap like that. For
example, if somebody weighs 300 pounds and comes to me and says, “Okay,
Tom, I’m going to follow your advice on goals—I’m not going to set my
goal too low. I want to weigh 150 pounds three months from now.” That’s
different. I would still say, “Go ahead, set the goal to lose 150 pounds. Set
the goal, you can do it. Now let’s find out what the right time frame is for
achieving that goal. But set the goal, and don’t sell yourself short.”
Set big, big goals. Not doing that is the biggest mistake.
Charles Burke:
When I was first starting on the Internet, I decided I would set some goals,
so I did. It was going nicely, and it was all incremental stuff. I didn’t know
what I could do and what I couldn’t do. I decided, “I need a good bump in
income.” So, I set a goal several times what I’d been making per month, and
I set it for three weeks, which is totally unreasonable.
But I would hang on to that goal. I set it, and I’d wake up in the middle of
the night, “Oh, man, I’m never going to make that.” Then I’d get up, and I’d
walk into the living room, sit down in the dark, and tell myself, “It doesn’t
matter how. I don’t have to know how.” Sure enough, a lady contacted me
with a business proposition, a joint venture, and the income from that totaled
exactly the goal that I had set. It just came out of nowhere.
Tom Venuto:
That happens so many times when you make that leap and set the big goal. If
you just dare, and you believe in yourself, and you just keep focusing on that
goal until it sinks into your subconscious mind, it happens—sometimes in
amazing and unexpected ways. You’re expecting it to come in through the
front door, but it comes in through all the windows instead.
You said something really important: You said, “You don’t have to know
how you’re going to reach the goal.” That’s right. You just have to know
what you want. Just stay focused on it, and the ways and the means will
unfold as you go.
Charles Burke:
That was when I learned an important lesson. Setting the goal, doing the
affirmations or the visualizations, or whatever system you use, that’s
important. But the place where you really earn your achievement is when
you refuse to let it go. When you start doubting, and you just refuse to doubt,
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and you fight for your goal in your own mind, that’s when it really takes
hold, and becomes yours.
Now, we’ve talked about a lot of positive things, but what about
mistakes? What would you say is your biggest mistake to date?
Tom Venuto:
The same thing we were just talking about—setting my goals too low. Going
back to the Anthony Robbins story, when I did choose my goals, even those
goals I only had in my mind and not on paper when, as a teenager, I first
started to get interested in personal growth, they were too low. I often
wonder today where I would be if, when I was 19, I’d just had the courage to
think bigger. But as I was saying, my brain wasn’t wired to think that way. It
didn’t even occur to me as a possibility. My awareness hadn’t expanded to
that level yet.
If my mind were working back then like it is now, I often wonder where
I’d be. That’s just curiosity, though; I don’t have any regrets. You had to go
through everything you went through to be where you are now, and you have
to go through what you’re going through now to be where you’re going to be
in the future. We all do the best we can with the knowledge and awareness
that we have at the time.
Today, if I’m in doubt, I set my goals too high. If I fall short, I didn’t fail,
I just underestimated how long it would take. I’ll just reevaluate my time
frame, and keep pressing on.
Charles Burke:
You know, that raises an interesting question. If you had set goals at age 19
like you would set them now, where would you be? At, say, age 19, what if
you set your goals now to be where you would have been a year from now
and make up the difference? It’s never too late. I think a lot of people just
give up on the top register of what they could do.
After you’ve been working on a goal for a while and some of the “new”
wears off, it can start feeling like an endless routine. You’re reading these
goals every day, every day, and maybe morning and evening, how do you
keep your enthusiasm up and keep the excitement fresh?
Tom Venuto:
88 Tom Venuto
Part of staying enthusiastic is the routine of setting goals and reviewing
goals continually as a habit. Consider the things you do daily that are habits;
like, you take a shower, you eat the same cereal for breakfast, you brush your
teeth, and you take the same route to work. They’re habits, and you don’t
think about them. You can get to the point where setting goals daily is an
automatic habit. Keeping my focus on my goals daily keeps me very excited
because I’m always working toward something, and because the goals are
changing and being upgraded too.
The Fat Burn Files
“What am I going to achieve next?” Asking yourself that question often
can really keep your enthusiasm up because you never stop asking that
question. It’s a process, it’s a journey. It’s something that you’re doing every
single day. It’s not something you do once a year and that’s it. You continue
doing it, and you keep expanding on what you’ve done before.
Sometimes things change, and you evolve and your priorities shift, and
you do change your goals. Your vision grows. I’ve taken a whole turn of
direction in my life. If you would’ve asked me five years ago, “What are the
chances of you leaving the health club business?” I would have said, “No
way, not in a million years. I’m going to be in the gym business the rest of
my life.” Here I am, just recently, resigned from the gym business because
priorities shifted, goals changed, and the vision grew.
Every single day, I keep thinking about what I want, and I keep writing
them down, and it keeps growing and expanding and unfolding. That’s really
exciting. That keeps the excitement fresh.
Charles Burke:
On the occasional difficult days, when things just seem to fly off in the
wrong direction and don’t seem to go right, how do you keep your head
together, maintain your own motivation?
Tom Venuto:
First of all, you have to realize you’re going to have difficult days. You’re
going to have ups and downs. If you didn’t have lows, then how would you
even realize what a high is? There will be seasons, you know, there will be
winters. Expect that. When you’re expecting it, you can prepare for it and
handle it.
When you’re expecting it, take your difficulty and don’t call it a
difficulty. Call it a challenge. Don’t use the word hard, or difficult, or
problem, because there’s something really motivating about a challenge.
There’s a different gut-level response when you hear, “Charles, you have a
big problem,” than when you hear, “Charles, I have a challenge for you.”
When you hear “problem,” you go, “uh-oh,” and your stomach kind of
sinks and gets knotted up, but when you hear “challenge,” your gut-level
response is, “bring it on,” and you rise to the occasion. So, when you have
difficult days, say, “Okay, this is a challenge.” That helps you keep your
head together and your motivation high.
Charles Burke:
In other words, it’s all in mindset and being prepared ahead of time. You
spoke earlier about some of the people you’ve listened to, and you’ve read
their material. Are there any that you consider especially your mentors?
Tom Venuto:
Do you mean in terms of personal growth and development, or in financial,
or in fitness? Because I’ve really had a lot of people that I consider mentors.
89
Charles Burke:
Well, I believe this is important because I don’t think people realize you can
have mentors in different areas. Just whoever you would care to mention,
and your reason.
Tom Venuto:
In the last couple of years, one man that comes to mind first, who’s
influenced me a lot as a success mentor, is Bob Proctor. He helped me make
a huge breakthrough in terms of prosperity thinking.
We were talking about the ability to set that bigger goal, such as in
income. Like, for example, the person who’s making $40,000 a year now, is
probably not going to set a goal to make $400,000 next year, just because
their thought process is not going in that direction. One of the things that
Bob said to us in his coaching program is, “What would happen if your
annual income became your monthly income? Then, what would happen if
you did that again the next year?”
That’s the kind of level of thinking that he operates on, and that’s what he
taught me and the others that were in his coaching program. I can tell you
this, since I’ve been in his program, my income has increased 600%. I’ve
learned an enormous amount from him, and I just keep studying his
materials over and over and over again. He’s really had a major influence on
me, and I recommend his work highly.
Charles Burke:
What about other areas?
Tom Venuto:
I’m a voracious reader. I have a library at home that’s over 2000 books, and
then some, and probably half of them are business, personal growth, and
entrepreneurship, and the other half are health and fitness. Some of the
people in the fitness and nutrition and bodybuilding field that I really
recommend to others and look to myself for information are: Charles
Poliquin, Ian King, Charles Staley, Paul Chek, Chris Aceto, Will Brink, and
John Berardi.
In the world of business and marketing, I look to people in direct response
for advice. Those are the people such as Dan Kennedy, Gary Halbert, Jay
Abraham, and John Carlton. In personal development, I already mentioned a
few earlier like Brian Tracy, Jim Rohn, and Anthony Robbins. Those are just
a few. I have a vast library, and there are many others.
Charles Burke:
Some of our listeners may be putting off starting something new because of
all the self-discipline and the work. Maybe it just all sounds hard. What
would you say to them?
Tom Venuto:
Almost everything that’s now easy was once hard. You just have to start, and
it will get easier. Many people put off starting. Sometimes they make
excuses. Sometimes, they’re accumulating information, and going to more
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The Fat Burn Files
seminars, and getting ready to start. I say, don’t just stand on the edge of the
pool and bug the people in the water, asking, “Is the water cold, and how
deep is it?” Just jump in.
Stop making excuses. Stop being a book collector and archivist, and just
take action. Just jump in and do it. There is no easy way to start—just start. It
will get easier. Make that first step, and if it still seems hard for you, make
that first step a little tiny one—a little bite that you can swallow. The old
saying is, “The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.” So, just
take a little bite.
Charles Burke:
The hardest bite is finding the elephant. After that, it’s easy. I’ve heard it said
that when you start something, it’s supposed to be hard. So, when it starts
getting easy, you know you’re on the right track. I think everyone wants it
easy from the get-go. I think the reason that we do that is because we’re
looking at it from this side, instead of from that side, where it’s already
finished. Our viewpoint is from the wrong side. We need to look at it from
the finished side, and look back at it. Then that will just pull us forward.
What’s next? Where do you intend to go from here?
Tom Venuto:
I took a few years off from competing in bodybuilding, but I’m not done
with the competitive side of bodybuilding yet. My last competition was in
2001, and I’m getting back into competition this year. I’ll never retire from
bodybuilding and fitness. It’s a lifestyle; that’s how you have to look at it.
As for business, I can see more books, re-launching my coaching
program in a new format, new seminars, audio, and video. The sky’s the
limit.
Charles Burke:
Fantastic. I’m pretty sure everybody’s got some questions now. We only
have a few more minutes, but how about I open up the phone lines and we
take a few questions?
Tom Venuto:
Sure.
Charles Burke:
Who has a question?
Participant:
Hello. I’m calling from Sedona, Arizona. I don’t really have a question. I
just wanted to say that I just started using the Burn the Fat, Feed the
Muscle book. I’m one of those original people. I got the first edition a
couple of years ago, when it first came out.
It’s one of those things, when I first got it, I thought, “This is too much
information,” and I put it away. But now, I just thank you so much. I’m
enjoying it, and I’m really going for it. I made my Excel menu spreadsheets,
91
and I’m doing the whole thing. I’m writing my goals down, and I’m very
inspired by it. I wanted to say thank you very much for putting it out there.
Charles Burke:
Are you finding it easier than you thought it would be, once you got started?
Participant:
Definitely. Most of it is just getting over that first belief that, “This is so
much information, it’s too much.” I’ve been a collector of all kinds of stuff,
and I love to read. In fact, I found out about Tom’s website because he
bought a used book from me through Amazon. When I saw this Burn the
Fat, I thought, “This looks like an interesting website,” and that’s how I
found out about his Burn the Fat book.
Listening to this call tonight, I’m just finally putting these things together.
There were different times in my life where I would feel motivated but not
stay with it. I was doing triathlons 13 years ago, but I went into a slump and
I’ve put on about 45 pounds. I’m ready to really go for it now.
Tom Venuto:
That’s fantastic. Keep after it. If there’s anything I can do to help, I can be
reached through either one of my websites anytime.
Participant:
Thank you. I’m feeling really good, just from following the food program,
and doing the calculations. One of the greatest things is, I’ve been talking to
my friends, and just sharing my enthusiasm. One of the best things, I feel, is
doing something in life that helps inspire other people. That’s where the gold
is. Thank you so much for this phone call tonight, too. This is just awesome.
Charles Burke:
Glad you came. Do we have another question?
Amy:
Yes, actually, I do. This is Amy, and I’m calling from New York. I am
finishing up the Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle book, and I am starting now
in my menu planning and exercising. I’m just curious… the initial program
is a 12-week “overhaul,” if you care to look at it that way. During that time,
there are going to be certain upheavals in a person’s life, say, travel
expectations.
How do you tell people to stick with their goals? For example, right in the
middle of it, I’m going out of the country, where I have no idea about the
calories and the fat content of foods that I’m going to be eating. How would
you go about telling a person to stick with their goals?
Tom Venuto:
First, remember to call it a “fun challenge.” Traveling is fun, and eating right
when traveling can be a challenge. For a lot of years, I didn’t go anywhere.
When I was in the workaholic stage and was working 60, 70, 80 hours a
week, it was easy. I would cook all of my food at home, and bring it with me,
and I always had my food with me. When I started traveling recently, I
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The Fat Burn Files
realized it was harder than I thought, but I took on the challenge myself
because I saw there are people that travel all year round, and they manage to
do it.
If someone else has been in the same challenging situation as you are, and
they can do it, then you can, too. It takes a goal that you are going to do the
best you can while traveling, and it takes planning. It really takes planning.
When people travel, I think they get caught off guard because they didn’t
have a plan.
Then they end up winging it, and grabbing whatever happens to be in
arm’s reach. You have to plan in advance. Where are you going to stay?
Does it have a kitchen? What are you going to do for food? You can do
things differently than usual for convenience sake, and it might be a slight
compromise, but you could bring meal replacement shakes and drink a shake
instead of a meal. You can take fruit with you or cook other portable foods.
And you can always make a choice. You can make the best choice that’s
available. There’s a nutritionist from Texas, Keith Klein, and he’s always
had this saying, “If you’re going to make a bad choice, make a better bad
choice.”
Charles Burke:
That’s a great answer. It looks like we’re out of time, so that wraps up
everything, Tom.
Tom Venuto:
Fantastic. It was a great call.
Charles Burke:
I had a great time. I think everybody here got a lot of really solid
information. Tom, on behalf of our listeners, I’d like to thank you for joining
us today and giving us a whole new viewpoint on motivation.
Tom Venuto:
Charles, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Charles Burke:
Goodnight, everybody, and thanks for attending.

93
About Tom Venuto
About Charles Burke
Charles Burke was born in Georgia in 1943, where he spent many
years in a wide variety of odd jobs and occupations including work
in camera shops, photo labs, loading docks, bakeries, and
department stores. He painted houses, pumped gas, drove taxis,
made deliveries, and was a door-to-door brush salesman. In 1985,
Charles moved to Japan and became a freelance editor and
advertising copywriter for Isuzu, Toshiba, Pioneer, and Sony. He
received calls for ad hoc modeling in product catalogs, walk-on
parts in promotional videos, narration jobs and PR for companies
such as Hitachi and Sanyo.
Drawing on his broad life, career experience, and success, Charles
became a motivational speaker, writer, and Internet publisher.
Charles is the author of Inside the Minds of Winners, Command
More Luck, and other titles. Charles is also creator of numerous
websites and online newsletters. His most recent blockbuster is
Synchronicity Secrets, where he probes the minds of some of the
most successful business and motivational experts in the world to
uncover their secrets of success. See www.SynchronicitySecrets.com. For more information on Command More Luck, see
www.MoreLuck.com.
94 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
An Introduction to the
Fat Loss Guru’s Guidelines
Kyle Battis Interviews Tom Venuto
Kyle Battis:
Hello, this is Kyle Battis, from www.HomeGymSecrets.com and
www.TravelersTraining.com. Today I’m talking with Tom Venuto, author
of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. I remember when I first read this book,
probably about two or three years ago, I think, I was blown away by the
amount of great information that Tom shared in there. It was just an
awesome book, and it really helped me out with my personal journey from
an ex-couch potato to becoming a fitness professional. I knew a lot of the
science originally. I understood a lot of the concepts, but I was really bad at
applying some of the basic ideas, and then how to take that scientific
knowledge and turn it into real world habits and practices. And I got a lot of
great tips from Tom’s book, as far as how to do that and turn them into
practical habits that carried over into helping me lose a ton of fat, and
become the pretty lean and healthy fitness professional that I am today.
So that’s kind of what we’re talking about with Tom today. We’re going
to go into the “Fat Loss Guru’s Guidelines,” a great new project that Tom
has in the works. We’re the first ones to be hearing about Tom’s new project.
I’m sure it’s going to help out a tremendous number of people. So, Tom,
thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today.
Tom Venuto:
Thanks for having me.
Kyle Battis:
It’s my pleasure. I’m sure we’re going to hear a lot of great tips that we can
practically implement today. So tell us about your Fat Loss Guru’s
Guidelines. Maybe how and why you came up with the idea.
Tom Venuto:
Well, this is a new direction I’m taking in my work, and it started when a
good friend and colleague planted the seed for it in my mind. I had been
speaking with him in person and by phone over the past few years, and he
always kept calling me the “Fat Loss Guru.”
97
Introduction to the Fat Loss Guru’s Guidelines
I would say to him, “No, no, I’m no guru. There are guys in the industry
that are so on top of the cutting edge and they stay on top of every bit of new
research that they’re light years ahead of me.”
He said, “No, you are the Fat Loss Guru because you do something
different from them. You bring it home. You bring it down to earth and
simplify it instead of making it more complicated and always confusing
people by focusing on what’s new, what’s the latest and what’s the cutting
edge. That stuff may be helpful for elite athletes and pro bodybuilders, but
what you’re doing is helping millions of regular people with concepts that
they can actually use in their daily life, instead of talking about control
groups and placebos and test tubes. What you’re doing is helping the regular
people, the ordinary people, the 120-some-million overweight people in the
United States.”
That reminds me of a statistic I recently heard: There are one billion
overweight people in the world, so I realized my friend was right and that
there was a real need for this type of practical, real world information.
What I’ve been working on is creating and providing a practical set of
tips, techniques, and guidelines that are highly effective and that every one
of those people can use in their day-to-day life without having to be PhD
research scientists to understand. Like Einstein said, “Make everything as
simple as possible, but not any simpler.”
In fact, I started thinking, instead of constantly focusing on, “What does
the latest research say? What’s the latest breakthrough”—which is what the
book and magazine publishing industry must do to keep up sales—why not
make it simpler and boil fat loss down to its lowest common denominators?
The lowest common denominator of fat loss is your everyday behaviors
and everyday mindsets or attitudes that increase the probability of success.
When you break down the complex into simple guidelines about what to do
and what to think, these are things that every single person can understand,
relate to, and use in their daily life, and it’s going to make a much bigger
difference in their results.
Looking at what’s new has value, of course, because there is new science
coming out all the time that can help us get better results. But what it all
boils down to is, if you focus on new breakthroughs first but you miss the
fundamentals, all that new stuff isn’t much more than minutia. It reminds me
of something the motivational speaker Jim Rohn once said: “Beware when
someone says they’ve come out with a new fundamental. That’s like
someone saying they’re opening a factory manufacturing antiques.”
Kyle Battis:
98 Tom Venuto
I agree one hundred percent, Tom. I went to college for Exercise Science and
Sports Medicine Training and then recently went for just Sports Medicine
The Fat Burn Files
Training. Halfway through I realized, “If I take a couple of extra classes and
do a couple of internships, I can get a double major in Exercise Science, and
that will look really good on my resume.” And that was my main impetus for
studying Exercise Science at first. But, you know, I was the typical college
kid. I drank a lot, and I ate a lot. I didn’t exercise, and I was in awful, awful
shape.
So I graduated from college, but I didn’t have a job from which I could
step right into in the Sports Medicine field, so I said, “Hey, I’ll go to the gym
and I’ll be a trainer.” So here I was, this fat, overweight trainer, and I had no
idea what I was doing. I knew the science behind some of the things, and I
was up on the research from having just studied it in school, but I had no
idea how to practically implement some of the ideas that you’re talking
about. I was first introduced to some of those ideas from your book, and it
helped me out a tremendous amount with the practical application of this
stuff. I think that’s the missing link for a lot of people. They see the science,
but then still ask themselves, “Okay, so what do I do with that information
today to help me get to the body I want to have?” So maybe you could jump
into some of those ideas.
Tom Venuto:
It’s primarily a matter of focusing on behaviors, rather than theories. You ask
yourself, “What must I do today to reach my goals?” There’s also something
that comes before the behaviors, and that is setting goals and then going into
the endeavor with a certain mindset. Or in other words, mindset means
having the right attitude. That brings us to one of the first and most
important of the Fat Loss Guru’s Guidelines, which is where I start with
everybody, and that’s a mindset which is all boiled down in the title of my
book, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle.
The first guideline is, Burn the fat, don’t starve the fat. The most
typical way that people want to lose weight is to go on a diet, and most diets
are extremely low in calories. A typical diet book that you pull off the shelf
in the bookstore might recommend 1200 calories or even less. This is
starvation, especially for men who have higher energy needs, not to mention
that the diet approach is missing the important exercise element.
So my fat loss guideline is, Burn the fat with exercise, don’t starve the
fat with low calorie diets. In other words, my preferred approach is to
exercise a little more and eat a little more. Now, most people don’t have a
problem with the eating a little more part of that equation. The exercising a
little bit more is the part that most people have a problem with.
Exercise more is not a popular idea, especially out in the general public.
People are inherently lazy; that’s just human nature. Marketers and
advertisers know that, and they realize they are going to make more profits
99
by selling you a pill where there’s no exercise involved, than selling you an
exercise program. That’s why we hear so much of the “no exercise
necessary” sentiment in the marketplace.
The real key is the combination between nutrition and the training, and
specifically weight training and cardio training, not one or the other. The
ideal approach is to burn the fat, don’t starve the fat. It’s not only effective,
it’s healthier, and it’s physiologically and hormonally correct.
When you exercise, for example, especially something like High Intensity
Interval Training for your cardio, combined with a properly designed
strength training program, you’re getting a very substantial increase in your
metabolism. And when you eat more, you’re getting a slight increase in your
metabolism through the form of thermogenic food. So this amounts to a
double boost in metabolism.
If you look at the opposite approach, where you decease your calories
drastically with no exercise, you’re actually going to start losing muscle.
There’s been a lot of research on this. One study by the obesity researcher
Albert Stunkard showed that dieting without exercise will result in one
pound of muscle lost for every three pounds of fat lost. Personally, I think
that’s on the conservative side. The way most people are starving
themselves, I wouldn’t be surprised if half the weight they lose is muscle and
maybe even more. That loss of muscle causes a decrease in metabolism, and
the decrease in food is perceived by your body as starvation, so that’s
another decrease in metabolism, so you’ve got a double decrease in
metabolism. Now which would you prefer? A double increase in metabolism
or a double decrease in metabolism?
Kyle Battis:
I’d definitely have to go with the increase. But to be honest with you, I
screwed up. When I first started, I was doing what everybody else did, and I
was following the diet-only route, but I was really dissatisfied with my
results, so that’s why I started looking other places for solutions.
Tom Venuto:
I’m amazed at the resistance so many people have to exercise, especially
women with weight training, but some people just don’t know better. They
think the way to lose weight is just diet. That ties right in with the second Fat
Loss Guru’s guideline and that is, Focus on burning fat and not on losing
weight. I’m still amazed how many people only have one thing on their
mind and that’s losing body weight.
It’s easy to lose body weight. I have a good friend who is a wrestling
coach, and I had a lot of friends in high school and college who were
wrestlers because where I went to high school and college in Pennsylvania
was big time wrestling country. I was stunned at how much weight they
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The Fat Burn Files
would lose to make a weight class, and even more stunned at the extreme
ways they did it. But what I learned from that is just how much water weight
can affect the scale.
Weight is not fat! With these extreme measures, you also lose a lot of lean
body mass as well as strength, and between the water weight loss and lean
tissue loss, the weight loss can be dramatic. You see the same thing with
conventional diet programs: You may lose five, eight, even 10 pounds in the
first week. But the question is, “Ten pounds of what?”
Kyle Battis:
Exactly.
Tom Venuto:
So a mindset you really need before you even start a fat loss program is that
you don’t want to lose weight. You want to burn body fat. To understand,
measure, and track the difference between body fat and lean tissue, I highly
recommend using some kind of body composition test.
Body fat tests are not infallible, especially skinfold tests. There is a
margin for error, and there is a learning curve, but if you get an experienced
professional to measure you, or if you can measure yourself as accurately as
possible, it’s valuable feedback, because instead of just looking at your scale
weight, you’re looking at fat and muscle weight.
Kyle Battis:
A quick question for you, Tom. I test all of my personal training clients with
some really nice 300-dollar skinfold calipers, but what about the person who
doesn’t have access to a personal trainer or can’t afford a personal trainer? I
know you have a short ebook on measuring your own body fat with a tool
that people can use at home. It’s inexpensive and very easy to use. Could
you share that with our listeners today?
Tom Venuto:
Sure. I wrote a short ebook called, How to Measure Your Body Fat in the
Privacy of Your Own Home. There are pros and cons of measuring yourself
at home, but it can be done accurately, and it’s private and convenient. There
are a few different methods, but one of them is a special skinfold caliper that
was designed for self-testing. The conventional skinfold test has multiple
sites. It may be three or four, or maybe as many as eight or nine different
skinfold sites. To measure skinfolds in locations like your upper back,
obviously you need to have somebody else test you, unless you’re a
contortionist. So a company came out with a home-testing skinfold caliper to
solve this problem. It’s called the Accu-Measure.
The Accu-Measure is a skinfold caliper one-site pinch test, where you
take the hip bone skinfold measurement, and based on that one pinch, you
can use the body fat interpretation chart to convert skinfold thickness in
millimeters into percentage of body fat. It may not be as accurate as a multi-
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site test, and again, there’s a learning curve in learning how to test yourself,
but it’s worth going through the learning curve to get that kind of feedback at
home.
There are other methods like the popular body fat scale which uses bioelectric impedance analysis. I’ve heard mixed reviews on this method, and I
have mixed feelings about the body fat scales as well. What’s most
important, regardless of the body fat testing method you choose to use, is
that you use the same method each time and that you’re able to get a
consistent reading. The body fat scales, for example, are the type of
equipment where I have seen someone get on it and measure 20% body fat,
then step off, get back on ten seconds later and they measure 17% body fat.
Don’t we wish.
Kyle Battis:
I know, I know.
Tom Venuto:
In this case, the variation in the readings is so large, that it’s unacceptable for
really charting your progress, but if you can get consistent repeated
measurements, that’s what counts.
Kyle Battis:
I agree.
Tom Venuto:
You can order skinfold calipers online very easily just about anywhere in the
world right now. Worst case scenario, at the very least, is to measure your
weight, take some circumference measurements, and be sure to at least
intellectually understand the concept of body fat versus body weight.
Understand that it’s fat you want to lose, not weight, and that if you’re losing
a large amount of body weight—more than two to three pounds per week—
then you know some of that is not fat, and there will be long term
consequences to that including a decrease in muscle and a decrease in
metabolism.
You can take measurements too. Waist measurement is especially
valuable. Now, that’s not going to tell you your percentage of body fat or
your amount of lean body mass, but there is a strong correlation between
waist measurement and body fat. So if your waist measurement is going
down, you can be pretty confident your body fat is going down and, along
with that, so is your risk for a lot of diseases, because waist measurement
over 40 inches for men and over 35 inches for women correlates strongly
with health risks.
Kyle Battis:
Yes, absolutely. So now we’ve talked about burning fat, not starving fat, and
measuring and understanding the concept of losing body fat instead of losing
weight. Once we understand these concepts and make them part of our
mindset, we can say, “Okay, Tom. We understand that part.” How do we
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The Fat Burn Files
actually start losing the body fat, and what are some practical tips we can
apply in our daily lives to make that happen?
Tom Venuto:
There are a lot of directions we can go. I have pages and pages of notes
about these fat loss guidelines and how to apply them in a practical way in
your daily life. But the very next guideline that popped into my head is to
plan your menus on paper. Menu planning falls into the same category as
goal setting.
We could have an entire conversation just about goal setting. It’s a subject
that’s really been beaten to death, and yet at the same time, most people who
teach goal setting just skim it superficially, and they don’t really understand
the power of getting a goal implanted into your subconscious mind and how
the instructions that go into your subconscious will translate eventually,
automatically, into your daily behaviors. So when you’re talking about
changing behaviors, the easiest way to do it is to develop habits. A habit is a
behavior pattern fixed in your subconscious mind so you do it daily without
even thinking, but it takes the direction of your will and conscious thinking
at first to establish the new habit.
Now one thing that most people don’t consider to be a goal is having a
menu plan. I consider that as having a daily goal. It’s a food goal. It’s an
eating goal for the day when you have it on paper. If I ask or survey a group
of people who want to lose body fat, “Can you show me your menu plan on
paper?”, most people can’t. I mean they can be reactive and go backward,
and do a diet recall and retrace their steps and write down what they’ve eaten
over the past several days—although not surprisingly, most people
underestimate their calorie intake. This is something many dieticians do with
new clients to see what they have been eating. However, when I say, “Do
you have a menu plan in writing?”, very people do. We realize the
importance of setting goals, but so few people have an eating goal for the
day in the form of a menu plan.
This ties in with the concept of calorie counting as well. People wonder,
“Is it really necessary to count calories?” When you hear the words,
“counting calories,” most people get an image in their mind of eating a meal
and then walking around with a little computer device, a PDA, or a notebook
and writing down what they eat, and having a calorie book and opening it up
and looking at the calories and writing them down and adding them all up.
That is a pretty cumbersome chore, and it’s a pretty tough concept to handle
if you think about doing it for the rest of your life. That’s not what I mean
when I talk about calorie counting.
When I talk about calorie counting, I’m talking about menu planning.
What I recommend to everybody is to plan and write out their menus. This
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can be as simple as opening up a blank sheet of paper, a notebook, and
writing down what you’re going to eat, opening up the calorie guide,
crunching the numbers, including calories, proteins, carbs, and fat. An easy
way to do this is with a spreadsheet, like Microsoft Excel. There’s also some
good nutrition software out there.
Now, if you’re proactive and you take the time to create your menu on
paper, you’ve set an eating goal for the day, haven’t you? You can carry that
with you. You could put it in your daily planner. You can stick it on your
refrigerator, which is a very good place for it. And in truth, then, you really
only had to count your calories once. Isn’t that right?
Kyle Battis:
Yeah, absolutely.
Tom Venuto:
So when you think of calorie counting, it’s not quite so cumbersome as
writing down everything you eat every single day for the rest of your life.
That may not be a realistic guideline or behavior as a long term lifestyle.
However, if you don’t have an understanding of calories and proteins and
carbs and fats, you’re running blind. But if you do it once in the beginning,
it’s an incredible educational experience, so I do recommend that, during
your fat loss program, you take the time to create your menus or have a
nutrition professional design them for you.
Kyle Battis:
Yeah, that really helped me a lot, Tom, when I did that for myself. And I
even came up with a few different meals for breakfast, a few different meals
for lunch that I typically eat, and the same thing for dinner, and even some
snacks in between with some different options. But I calculated them all out
and made sure they fit into where I wanted to go, as far as my menu plan,
and that guideline helped me out quite a bit. So what other great Guru’s
Guidelines do you have for us, as far as menu planning and just carrying on
to our goal of losing some fat?
Tom Venuto:
Well, here’s one that’s really simple. It’s so simple, it seems like a nobrainer, and I will show you a way to take this simple guideline to a higher
level. I’ve had clients sit in front of me and say, “Tom, I can’t stop eating this
chocolate. I just can’t stop.” And I say matter of factly, “Well, don’t keep
chocolate in the house.” And they said, “Uhhh, oh, okay.”
You can’t underestimate the importance of your environment, and that
includes your home and kitchen. So the next Guru’s Guideline is to set up
your home and kitchen environment for success, and don’t keep in your
house what you don’t want to be eating. That’s simple enough, and it
works, but I think you have to take that one step further because, if you
remove something from your life, it creates a vacuum. A vacuum is always
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begging to be filled. So don’t stop there. Figure out what should not be in
your house. Get it out of your house and then find a replacement for it.
For example, with the chocolate, she’s got chocolate bars stashed all over
the house. She should get rid of them and keep fruit in a bowl, in sight, on
the table, right in her kitchen. Each time the craving for chocolate or sweets
strikes, instead of doing nothing, do something else—reach for a piece of
fruit. Yeah, it’s simple, a no-brainer, but it’s also powerful, and you can do
this with just about anything. This is a way to break any habit. Breaking
habits is difficult to do cold turkey unless you’ve gone through some serious
life-impacting emotional experience or you have the willpower of a
dedicated athlete. Some people do succeed with trying to stop cold turkey
and fight the old urges, but it’s difficult. The better way is to replace the old
habit with something new.
For example, I know some people who drink coffee all day long—not just
a pre-workout cup or a morning cup because they enjoy it—but non-stop as
a pick-me-up or because they’re addicted. They sit at a desk every day, and
they’ve got a cup of coffee in their hand all the time. They want to kick the
habit, but they don’t know how because it is a habit. Well, it’s simple.
Replace the old negative habit with a new positive habit. How about
water? Get an urge for a cup of coffee, and tell yourself that what your body
really wants and needs is water, and get a drink of water instead of coffee or
instead of nothing. Or even better than that would be green tea, because now
you’ve got a hot beverage that’s got nutritional benefits and even a mild
thermogenic effect. That’s a really easy way to kick a habit while replacing it
with a benefit.
Kyle Battis:
It’s funny you mentioned that, because I used to drink a lot of coffee, and I
switched to drinking green tea. I think I even noticed improvements in fat
loss from it, and I know it’s a heck of a lot more healthy for me than coffee
is. I like that idea of, if you take something out of your life, it leaves a
vacuum and vacuums like to be filled. That’s a powerful concept. I never
heard it explained like that, but it really hits home for me for sure, so that’s
great. What other Guru’s Guidelines do you have for us?
Tom Venuto:
Here’s a really important concept regarding stress and recovery: You have to
balance your stress and your work. This includes the stress of your training
and the stress of strict dieting. Always balance stress and work with
recovery. Now the important concept here is that stress and intense work,
including intense workouts or large volumes of workouts at certain times,
are not a bad thing—they are essential for growth and advancement. The
trouble is non-stop stress and non-stop hard work without a break.
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Continuous stress is ultimately going to lead to over-training, a health
problem, or some other type of breakdown or loss of performance.
So the lesson here from this guideline is, don’t be afraid to push yourself
hard at times or to workout more if that’s what it takes to reach your goal.
But the Guru’s Guideline is that you must balance hard work with rest,
renewal, and recovery. That’s a lesson I had to learn the hard way, because
I was an over-enthusiastic bodybuilder for many, many years. I was one of
those guys who started training every single day—way too much weight
training. I’ve done weight training workouts that were too frequent, too long,
and too intense, and I’ve done cardio workouts that were too frequent or too
long. The interesting thing is, for a short while, I made incredible gains and
great progress, but then I reached the point where I didn’t realize that I’d hit
the point of under-recovery and over-training, and I hit a plateau very
quickly. When I finally figured out where to insert the recovery and rest
phases in between phases of aggressive fat loss or muscle building training,
then my results went to an entirely different level.
Here’s how you can translate this information into your daily life. If your
goal is fat loss, then, to balance your dietary stress with recovery, don’t stay
on low calories for a long period of time. All diets work if they’re low in
calories, but none of them are going to work for long. Your body is
incredibly adaptive. Your body knows when your calories are too low and
sends signals to your brain to do something about it. Your body thinks you’re
starving, so a whole cascade of events take place: physiologically, your
hormones are affected. Fat storing hormones increase; fat burning hormones
decrease. Your metabolism slows down. Your body holds on to its fat stores
and easily burns muscle because maintaining muscle is metabolically costly,
and your body is now trying to conserve and not burn calories.
To avoid all these negative side effects, insert a break into your diet. It
can be done on a short term level with “re-feeding” days and “zig-zagging”
your calories, where you put yourself under the stress of a fairly strict diet
only for several days. I prefer not to stay on low calories for more than three
days in order to avoid “dietary stress” and prevent the starvation mode.
Then, every fourth day, increase your calories back up to maintenance or
even slightly above maintenance.
That’s the practical short term application of this guideline. You should
also think long term as well. We all know somebody who is always on a diet
with calories very low. If someone has been dieting for months on end
without a break, you pretty much know that person has got a malfunctioning
metabolism with all kinds of metabolic problems. If you stay on a strict lowcalorie diet for no more than 12–16 weeks with an aggressive caloric deficit,
then give yourself a break from the dieting stress, you will get much better
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results and avoid plateaus and the “last 10 pounds” syndrome. I recommend
a full week at maintenance calories for every 12–16 weeks of strict dieting.
Give your metabolism a chance to recover. This also has psychological
implications because we all know that you tend to crave food in general
when you have been deprived of it, and you tend to crave specifically what
you cannot have.
After your diet break, if you haven’t reached your long term goal yet,
when you go back to reduced calories, you’re going to get a spurt of results
again like you haven’t seen in a long time. If you’re stuck on the last ten
pounds, you can kiss them goodbye!
The last thing I’d like to mention about this is that the stress and recovery
cycle is just as true for your nutrition as it is for your training, and it’s true
for the stress that takes place in your life too. If you’re a workaholic, you
have to learn when to take a vacation. Two books on this subject that I’d
highly recommend are Stress for Success and The Power of Full
Engagement, by Jim Lohr, who is a top sports psychologist.
Kyle Battis:
The stress and recovery cycle is a powerful concept, and I think it really hits
home for many people. A lot of clients I work with seem to have a mentality
of, “I’m either 100% on a diet, or I’m eating anything I want and just
completely not working on it at all.” You know, it’s that black or white,
100% on-or-off mentality. I really like your idea of the zig-zagging
approach. Well, maybe you diet hard for a few days, but then you increase
back up to maintenance calories for a day and then you go back. So that’s
pretty powerful stuff. It may help a lot more people practically fit the
progress toward their goals into their lifestyle already, so that’s awesome.
Tom Venuto:
Absolutely, and I don’t think you should underestimate the psychological
benefits as well. We tend to crave what we can’t have. The longer you keep
something that you want out of your life, the more you’re going to crave it
and want to put it back in. Now, there’s a difference between a high calorie
day, also known as the re-feeding day, and a cheat day, and I think you need
to allow yourself both of those. An entire day of re-feeding and especially an
entire week-long break after a few months of dieting has some major
physiological benefits. A single cheat meal may not boost your metabolism
much or reset your hormones, but it sure has a lot of psychological benefits
and makes a diet a lot easier to follow.
Kyle Battis:
You’ve got to keep it all in perspective and in balance, right? That’s pretty
powerful, and it kind of convinces your body that you’re not going to be
starving yourself for extended periods of time, so it has no need to destroy
all the muscle mass that you worked hard to build.
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Okay, what else do you have for us, Tom? I love these. These are great
guidelines.
Tom Venuto:
108 Tom Venuto
Another extremely powerful guideline is to understand that there is no
failure. There is only feedback. You only get results. This is a carryover
from Neuro Linguistic Programming, or NLP, for short. The first time I ever
heard this concept was from Anthony Robbins, and it stuck with me because
it’s very, very powerful. Even if you don’t have a lot of the technical
nutrition or training knowledge yet, as long as you’re paying attention to the
feedback that you’re producing, you’re going to know whether what you’re
doing is working or not. If you know what’s working, then you can do more
of it, and you don’t even have to know why it’s working any more than you
have to understand electricity to flip the switch to light your house.
A lot of people will second guess themselves and they’ll bail out and quit,
just because what they try at first doesn’t work. They consider it a permanent
failure, but all they need is a little attitude change, a mindset change, or what
we call a “reframe.” Instead of saying, “This is failure,” they can say to
themselves, “I produced a result,” and “This is only temporary.” This change
in perspective is going to modify the way they move forward and how they
mentally process and explain the experience. It turns into a learning
experience and valuable feedback for a course correction and not a failure.
Dr. Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of
Pennsylvania, did some incredible research on this subject and reported it in
his book, Learned Optimism. Dr. Seligman noticed that the difference
between people who give up and people who persist and never quit is what
he referred to as “explanatory style.” He said that explanatory style is the
way we explain or interpret bad events or failures. People who habitually
give up have an explanatory style of permanence. They hit a plateau in their
diet and explain it by saying, “Diets never work,” or “I have bad genetics, so
I’ll always be fat.” These explanations imply permanence. Other people hit a
plateau and explain it by saying, “I ate out too many times this week,” or “I
haven’t found the right diet for my body type yet.” These explanations of
your results imply temporariness.
The people who see obstacles as temporary and as valuable learning
experiences are the ones who never quit. If you learn from past experiences,
not repeating what doesn’t work, and if you never quit, you eventually must
succeed. Those who see obstacles as permanent failure are the ones who
give up easily and often generalize their failure to other areas of their lives.
Another guideline is to create a plan, but have a lot of flexibility in
your plan. There are a lot of people in the diet and in the training industry
whose philosophy is, “It’s my way, or the highway.” They’re pushing the
The Fat Burn Files
idea that there is only one way to do it. So, for example, if you’re following a
program for a week or two and you measure the results and you haven’t
gotten any result, you tell yourself, “This isn’t a failure. I’ve just learned that
what I’ve done over the past week or two has not been effective yet, and I
need to make a course correction; I need to change something.” However, if
you’re locked into the “only one right way to do it” philosophy, whether
that’s nutrition or training or a certain amount of calories you’re fixed at, a
certain amount of food choices, a certain frequency, duration, or intensity of
your cardio training, then you’re pretty much stuck.
On the other hand, if at that point, you’re flexible enough to change your
plan, then you go back at it the following week and measure the results
again, collecting feedback, if you get the results you want, then you found
out what works and you continue with that. If you don’t get the results you
want, you just continue to repeat the process over and over until you get
there. This is as much a mindset as it is a matter of having options to choose
when you do hit a plateau.
Kyle Battis:
That’s great. Very powerful stuff. I developed some decent muscle bulk
when I first started training, but then I tried something new for four weeks.
Truth be told, I didn’t really know what I was doing and I probably didn’t
pick the best option, but I was very frustrated at the end of that four weeks
because I didn’t get the results I wanted and I got down on myself. Then I
started reading more about motivation and all this stuff you’ve been talking
about, and it really helped me to understand that the only way you really lose
is when you quit completely. You’ve just got to keep going and keep trying
different methods until you find what works for you.
You know, we’re all different people, and everybody doesn’t respond the
same way. Like Tom says, you’ve got to find what works best for you, so
that’s awesome.
All right, Tom, this is great stuff. What other brilliant Fat Loss Guru’s
Guidelines do you have for us? Give us something that we can apply today
to help us get clear to do our fat loss goals.
Tom Venuto:
The next Guru’s Guideline is to analyze and then redefine what food
means to you. And again, this is probably more an attitude or a mindset—a
concept—than it is specifically me saying, “Eat this,” and “Eat that,”
although your answers to this question will most definitely impact what you
eat.
What does food mean to you? I mean, what do you associate with food?
What images and thoughts and emotions come up when you think of food,
and what do you think food is for? You know, if somebody is struggling with
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body fat, I can almost guarantee you that they’re thinking about food in the
wrong way. They may have thoughts like, “Food is the reason I’m fat. Food
makes me fat. I have to starve and hardly eat any food to lose fat. I have to
eat bland, tasteless rabbit food to lose fat.”
Some other beliefs about food are, “Food is only for my own pleasure.
It’s only for my own tastebuds’ satisfaction. Food is the only thing that
makes me feel better when I’m feeling bad. Food is for social occasions.”
And those are just a few of the common belief systems that people have that,
ultimately, are going to program them for failure.
It’s true that food can be one of life’s pleasures and that it’s a focal point
for social and family occasions. The real trouble is when these things are all
that food means to you, because you’re failing to consciously bring into your
mind the power of food to transform your body and your health, because
that’s what food is really for, as well.
So the first step is a shift in your mental patterns and your thoughts when
it comes to food. You have to redefine or reframe what food means to you.
Here are a few beliefs that I encourage all my clients to instill in their minds,
if they want to transform their bodies. The first one is, “Good food is fuel
and for creating energy.” If you internalize that, can you begin to picture
how your choices are going to change automatically, as a result of a new
belief?
Kyle Battis:
Absolutely.
Tom Venuto:
This is one that really motivates me: “Food is for building muscle.” Or
alternatively stated, you could say, “Good food is construction material.”
You know the saying, the old cliché, “You are what you eat.” It’s absolutely
and literally true. When you’re sitting there in front of something that is just
processed, manmade, refined gunk, and you’re about to eat it, and you know
it’s just a chemical stew and you can’t even pronounce half the ingredients
on the label, stop for just a minute and think about the literal truth... “This is
actually going to turn into the cells of my body. This is my building material.
This is the construction for my body.” It really stops you dead in your tracks
and makes you rethink and ask yourself what you’re doing.
Here’s one that really throws people for a loop: “Food is for burning
fat.” Now there’s a concept that is the exact opposite of what most people
believe.
Kyle Battis:
Yes, that’s very counter-intuitive for sure.
Tom Venuto:
Right. Most people say, “Food is what makes you fat,” and if that is one of
your deep-rooted belief systems, can you imagine how that will affect your
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behaviors when it comes to food? On the extreme end, it could be the
beginning of an eating disorder.
I often teach that good natural food is a metabolic stimulator, and this is
literally true. Digestion requires energy, and certain foods have a higher
thermic effect than others—lean protein foods in particular and also the
natural complex carbohydrates, especially fibrous carbs. When you
understand the way your body processes whole, natural food, you realize
that, every time you eat, it’s not going to turn into fat. Every time you eat,
it’s like throwing coal into a fire; it’s turning up the heat and creating and
burning more energy. Food—properly chosen food—turns up your
metabolic furnace and literally burns fat, so each meal is an opportunity to
get leaner, more muscular, and more energetic.
The last of the beliefs about food is that food is for creating optimal
health. Food provides you with essential nutrients, essential vitamins,
minerals, fatty acids, and phytochemicals. Scientists have discovered over
2000 phytonutrients in our food, and hundreds of them have been closely
studied. Each one has an important role in creating optimal health and the
prevention of diseases like cancer. When you understand what’s really in
your food, you can realize that food may be the most powerful drug of all.
Kyle Battis:
That’s very true. Definitely. That’s awesome. When I made that mental shift
right there, from understanding that there are certain foods that can help me
burn fat faster and ways of eating that could help me burn fat faster, that’s
when I made significant progress. And a lot of it came down to food choices.
You know, like you said, it’s a very simple thing, a very practical thing.
But I stopped eating a lot of processed food and started eating things that
were going to fuel my body, instead of satisfying certain cravings that I had.
That’s awesome. Let’s keep going. What other fat loss guidelines do you
have for us?
Tom Venuto:
Since I’ve already written so much about the actual mechanics of how to
work out and what to eat in my Burn the Fat book and in my previous
writings, let’s stay with this concept of the attitudes and mindsets that you
want to make a part of your daily life.
This is absolutely one of my favorites. We already touched on it briefly in
the way we explain or perceive failures and bad events, and how this will
impact whether you quit or keep going. So here’s another way you can
explain it.
My next guideline is, accept everything as a challenge. Think about it:
There’s something extremely motivating about a challenge. If somebody
says, “You have a big problem,” it is a really different feeling than when you
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hear, “I have a big challenge for you.” A problem is negative and
demotivating, but a challenge is positive and motivating.
Kyle Battis:
That’s great.
Tom Venuto:
People often ask me how can they get motivated? Lack of motivation is one
of the biggest stumbling blocks for people losing body fat. You and I have
both worked with athletes, and I have worked extensively with competitive
bodybuilders who don’t usually have problems with motivation. But there
are plenty of other people who understand nutrition and have started good
solid programs, but they just can’t stay motivated to stick with them.
You have to acknowledge the need for motivation and have a strategy for
it. A great way is to reframe everything in your life as a challenge—not just
your quest for a leaner body, but also adversity and difficulty. It’s amazing
how this can really transform your outlook on life and your level of
motivation. You can also find some kind of benefit within every problem
you have if you just look for it and ask questions. It’s all a matter of
perspective. How you decide to look at things is your choice. Two people
can look at the same event and see two completely different things.
Here’s an example. You and I were talking on the phone earlier about
how I had a challenge in my own training, having herniated a disc in my
lower back many years ago, which still makes training challenging to this
day. I looked at it as a challenge, and I also looked at it as an opportunity,
and it changed my perspective. I said, “Well, this is a great opportunity”
because you were telling me about this new type of rehabilitation program
you recently got certified in. I could learn some new techniques about rehab
to improve myself and at the same time expand my knowledge base and pass
that on to my own clients. So I’m turning a problem into a challenge and into
an opportunity.
Kyle Battis:
That’s awesome.
Tom Venuto:
When you approach it with that mindset, everything changes. What happens
is that you will learn to become unstoppable. I love that word, unstoppable.
You will not run into roadblocks and let little things stop you. It’s incredible
how the little things, the little setbacks, can stop people. People run into a
little rock in the middle of the road, and they mentally turn it into a giant
boulder. They come up to that little rock and stop, and they could just as
easily tackle the challenge and go around it, go over it, go under it, smash it
into pieces and go through it. But they stop and they turn around, or they
quit, even though it was such a little thing. A slight change in attitude will
get you past almost any obstacle.
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Kyle Battis:
That’s super powerful right there. And if you have that concept down and
you just follow that one idea, the answers will come in time. You know,
nobody starts with all the right information. Even fitness professionals like
Tom and me are still discovering new things and learning new bits of
information that can help us help you guys even more effectively, and also
help ourselves.
I just discovered a couple of new techniques this past weekend that
helped me make some big improvements in my body and how well I
function. There are always new things out there to learn. But the key thing is
to stay focused on where you want to go with these ideas and techniques.
And you know, have faith that they will come, and they will come, and the
opportunities will be there, but you must have your eyes open to be looking
for those opportunities for sure.
That’s great, Tom. Do you have any closing tips for our listeners, before
we wrap up this call? Any closing thoughts or recommendations?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, the last guideline is probably one of the most important ones, and it
should be placed over and above all of the other guidelines. That guideline
is: Do whatever works and whatever is useful for you.
The formulas and systems and diets and workout programs that fitness
professionals like Kyle and I and many others put out there, help you
provide structure and give you action plans. But if any system becomes a
sacred cow and it’s followed to the letter, even it’s not working for you, then
it stops your creativity and it just guarantees being mediocre.
Training systems should be generative, and there are unlimited
possibilities. Don’t get bound by formulas. The master guideline then is to
take whatever is useful for you and whatever works for you and ditch the
rest, because getting results is more important than anything else. Don’t be
afraid to take what works and throw away the rest. Ultimately, you’ll end up
developing your own personal system.
Kyle Battis:
Great parting words for our listeners. So Tom, where can people learn more
about these guidelines and keep abreast of your latest projects and
developments?
Tom Venuto:
My home-base site is www.TomVenuto.com. That’s where you can find out
about any new websites or products I’m working on, such as the Fat Loss
Guru’s Guidelines program.
Kyle Battis:
Great. Well, thank you so much, Tom, for taking the time for us and sharing
your practical experience with us today. I know a lot of people in the
industry and the people who are just trying to get results look up to you
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highly because you’ve achieved some great results yourself and you’ve
helped a lot of other people achieve great results through your efforts. We
really appreciate all your hard work and the fact that you’re sharing your
knowledge with us. So thanks again.
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About Tom Venuto
About Kyle Battis
Kyle Battis owns and operates Professional Fitness Coaching
based in Concord, New Hampshire. Kyle specializes in athletic
performance enhancement, injury rehabilitation, and body
transformation programs. Kyle graduated from Colby-Sawyer
College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Athletic Training
and Exercise Science.
Kyle holds numerous certifications including: Certified Strength
and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and Certified Personal
Trainer (CPT) through the National Strength and Conditioning
Association (NSCA), Certified Athletic Trainer (ATC) through the
National Athletic Trainer’s Association (NATA), Certified Club
Coach through United States Weightlifting (USAW), Certified
Renegade Trainer, and Certified Z-Health Trainer.
Kyle writes for numerous magazines and websites, and he
operates many successful fitness websites of his own. Kyle is
passionate about helping people achieve their fitness goals. His
bestselling programs include Home Gym Secrets and Traveler’s
Training. You can visit Kyle on the web at
www.HomeGymSecrets.com and www.TravelersTraining.com.
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The Fat Burn Files
All-Natural Bodybuilding and
Fat Loss Secrets
Jeremy Likness Interviews Tom Venuto
Jeremy Likness: This is Jeremy Likness, the CEO and founder of NaturalPhysiques.com,
and you are listening to the weekly Become Your Best coaching podcast.
Without any further ado, I’d like to introduce our guest for today.
The person we’re bringing on board is a personal trainer and a strength
coach. But more importantly, he’s the author of what I believe is one of the
most transformational books in the health and fitness industry. It’s the
#1 bestselling ebook in the health and fitness sector. But also, through the
online communities that have been created around this book, through the
testimonials, through the people’s lives it’s touched and changed, this has
really truly single-handedly created just a massive impact both online and in
people’s lives offline. Now this individual has written dozens and dozens of
articles, in fact over 170 articles. He’s been published in major magazines,
and his name is none other than Tom Venuto. Tom, welcome to the call.
Tom Venuto:
Thanks for the great introduction.
Jeremy Likness: You’re welcome. Now I have to warn our listeners, Tom is in the middle of a
carb depletion phase of his bodybuilding contest diet right now. Is that true,
Tom?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, that’s right.
Jeremy Likness: I know what comes with that because I’ve had my share of low carbs. In
fact, I was actually just reading about some of your training and workout
techniques on your blog, which is at www.BodybuildingSecrets.com. Tell
us a little bit about what you’re training for, Tom.
Tom Venuto:
My competitions are coming up in a couple months and they’re both
sanctioned by the National Physique Committee, or NPC, for short. The first
is the South Jersey Championships, and the second is the New Jersey Golds
Classic.
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All-Natural Bodybuilding and Fat Loss Secrets
I’m a lifetime natural bodybuilder so I usually compete in drug-tested
shows, but these are open competitions, which means I’ll be a natural athlete
competing in a contest where there is no drug testing. These will also be the
first contests I’ve done in four years. I’ve competed in 26 shows and, for a
long time, I competed every year, sometimes several times a year.
Over the past few years I got involved in a lot of different business and
personal projects. I continued training, of course. Bodybuilding is a big part
of my lifestyle, so I never stopped training; I only took time off from
competing. Now after four years away from the competitive part of the
sport, I’m very excited to get back up onstage and compete again because
there’s something about competition that brings out the best in you in a way
that training for recreation, health, and fitness alone never can.
Jeremy Likness: That does sound exciting. Now for the listeners, some may not be familiar
with the difference between competitions. People say, “Well aren’t all
bodybuilding shows natural and drug free?” What is that distinction when
you say you’re entering a natural bodybuilding competition? What makes it
basically have that title, specifically?
Tom Venuto:
120 Tom Venuto
A natural bodybuilding competition is drug tested, and that can include a
variety of different tests. Usually a contest promoter will polygraph—that’s
the lie detector test—every person in the show, and then they might
urinalysis test winners or class winners, and that’s the extent of the testing.
The testing policies and rules can vary from one natural organization to the
next. Currently, none of the federations require you to be natural for life, but
some of them require you to be drug-free for many years to be eligible. The
World Natural Bodybuilding Federation (WNBF), for example, has a strict
seven years drug-free requirement.
Other organizations have a less stringent policy, such as the one-year drug
free requirement in some of the National Physique Committee’s (NPC)
natural shows. A one-year drug test, of course, means you could enter a
show that is called “natural” and you could be natural for life, but you could
be competing against people who took drugs their entire lives and came off
them just 12 months ago. You’re also assuming that the competitors are
being honest and not trying to cheat the system. I have more respect for
people who take steroids and are honest about their drug use and compete in
untested contests against other drug users, than people who take drugs, lie
about it, try to beat the tests, and compete in natural shows. That’s downright
despicable, but it’s more common than you think.
Regardless of the drug testing rules or procedures, for a show to be called
natural, there must be some type of drug testing, but not all bodybuilding
shows are drug tested. When you look in some of the major muscle
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magazines and see the massive bodies, the big guys who are, you know, five
foot six, five foot seven, and they weigh literally 250 or 275 pounds of solid
muscle—the competitions that those guys are competing in are not drug
tested, and that explains the big difference in their physiques, of course.
Jeremy Likness: Absolutely. I believe this is something that confuses and sometimes steers
people in the wrong direction when they see the images and pictures of these
massive physiques and then they go out and pursue bodybuilding naturally
without taking illegal drugs to assist with that endeavor. Then they’re
surprised when they find out that they’re nowhere close to the pictures that
they saw.
Tom Venuto:
That’s 100% right. A lot of people get unrealistic expectations. The
magazines really, for the most part, are not forthright and honest about what
goes on in the sport and the degree of drug use in the sport. I started training
when I was 14, and I don’t think it was until I was 20 or 21 years old that it
hit me like a ton of bricks, and I realized that almost all the pro bodybuilders
in the non-tested organizations were on drugs—and a lot of different
performance-enhancing drugs, not just steroids.
Looking back, you could say that I was naïve, but there was really no way
for a young impressionable teenager to know better, if you were only getting
your information from the mass-marketed magazines. At that time, when I
was first pursuing bodybuilding, there was no Internet, and the magazines
made the sport look snow white.
Today there is a lot more information about drugs available on the
Internet, but this is a double-edged sword, because young people may get
exposed to the extent of drug use in bodybuilding and other sports, and so
they know the truth, but at the same time they are also given the false idea
that you must take drugs to succeed. They’re given easy access to
information about where to buy drugs on the U.S. black market, or in other
countries, and how to take them, right down to how to inject themselves. It’s
scary.
In recent years, because of drug use and the publicity about drug use in
other sports, especially baseball, the issue has come more into the public
eye. It’s unfortunate that so many athletes depend on drugs—athletes who
were our heroes and role models. The good news about bodybuilding is that
after competing in more than two dozen drug-free competitions and seeing
what the current crop of drug-free competitors looks like, I’ve realized just
how much you can accomplish without drugs. The look is different. It’s
smaller, but in my opinion, it’s a much better look. It’s a natural look. It’s a
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healthier look. It’s more aesthetic. It’s more symmetrical. It’s more like a
Greek sculpture, as opposed to just a huge hulking mass.
It’s a look that more people can relate to. You don’t hear too many people
who look in the muscle magazines say, “I want to look like that guy,” and
they’re pointing at some monster who weighs 300 pounds at five foot nine
and has 32-inch thighs and 22-inch arms. So I think the natural bodybuilders
are better role models for most people, and it’s a look that many people
want.
Jeremy Likness: I agree 100%. In fact, I had the pleasure of attending a few natural shows
when I was living in Atlanta. This was over a year ago. And you’re right—
it’s incredible the difference in physique. One of the things that I noticed
right away was in the female divisions, the females were able to show off
musculature and leanness while really retaining their feminine qualities. I
think there’s a large myth out there that when women weight-lift, suddenly
they start to look like men and have these big hulking muscles, and I believe
the natural competitions show that it’s possible to build a musculature that’s
still feminine in nature. Would you agree?
Tom Venuto:
Yes. In fact, it’s the untested professional female bodybuilding scene that is
probably more responsible for myths about women and weight training than
any other source, because women look at the pictures of female pros on
steroids, not realizing that it’s steroids that make them look that way, not
weight training.
If a woman is taking steroids, which are the equivalent of male hormones,
this quite literally makes them more masculine. The facial structure becomes
more masculine and square-jawed, and the low body fat levels only make the
jawline even more prominent. Women can actually grow facial hair. Their
voice deepens and they take on other male characteristics. They literally do
begin to look like men, and they develop muscle size and bulk, which would
not be possible without the drugs.
So the average female, who just wants to be toned and lean, looks at that
and says, “Oh yuck! I don't want to look like that, so I’m not going to lift
weights.” What they don’t realize is that at the professional level, a lot of the
women are taking drugs. In fact most of the women are. This is a big reason
why so many women are afraid to get too big. They think weight training
makes them bulky or masculine, when it’s really the drugs that make female
bodybuilders bulky and masculine.
When women weight-train, and when they do it the natural way, it only
makes them more shapely and more feminine, and it improves the curves
and the lines, increases their metabolism, and it’s good for their health too.
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For women who doubt what I’m saying, just go back to the late 80s and find
pictures of the very first female bodybuilders like Rachel McLish, who was
beautiful and totally feminine by anyone’s standards, and see how they
compare to today’s pro female bodybuilders. Put the photos side by side.
The difference between the female bodybuilders of today and of 20 years
ago is like night and day, and the difference is primarily from drugs.
The result of all this is that bodybuilding for women has actually
decreased a lot in popularity. Fortunately, what has replaced it lately is the
new figure division, where they’re looking for a smaller physique that’s lean
but still very feminine to the point where judges score you down if you are
too muscular. Figure is becoming very popular. In fact, I think that female
fitness and figure competition is saving female physique sports, although I
would love to see all-natural women’s bodybuilding come back in popularity
as well.
Jeremy Likness: How do you feel the landscape, as far as natural bodybuilding is concerned,
has changed in terms of nutrition? I mean, it’s amazing what people can do
with their physiques naturally, without illegal drugs, and it looks like the
natural physiques are getting better and better every year. What would you
say the major breakthroughs, say over the past 10 years, have been that have
allowed it to come forward?
Tom Venuto:
There have been advancements that could be called breakthroughs, and there
are definitely some supplements like creatine that we know are effective that
weren’t around 20 years ago. With supplements, however, I think they are
overemphasized and overhyped. It’s like the old 80/20 rule—80% of your
results come from 20% of your actions. The rest is minutia, and I believe
that supplements are minutia, not major breakthroughs. They should be
looked at as the icing on the cake after you have the important stuff in place.
Nutrition is really the first step because, if your nutrition is not in place,
then it really doesn’t matter how you train in the gym. If you’re not
supporting your training with the proper nutrition, you’re not going to get
the results you want. With bodybuilding-style nutrition, even if you’re not a
bodybuilder, you can produce some pretty awesome results in increased
muscle and decreased body fat.
I’m really pleased to see that a lot of these bodybuilding nutrition
techniques are moving into the mainstream. Even some of the popular diet
books, where the word “bodybuilding” is never used, are starting to pick up
on some of these techniques. There are certain features that you will see in
all bodybuilding-style nutrition programs, and they include such things as
eating five to six small meals per day; eating lean proteins with every meal,
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including the right types of essential fats; eating the right types of natural
carbs; and avoiding the refined carbs and white flour and sugar. And then
you have the carb cycling techniques that are so popular with bodybuilders
these days.
All these methods have been around a long time in bodybuilding, though,
so I don’t think you can say they are breakthroughs, either. It’s just that they
have stayed inside the bodybuilding and fitness community and only
recently have become more mainstream.
I think the advancing physiques in natural bodybuilding definitely have
something to do with people getting smarter and more educated about
nutrition as more research is done and more information becomes available.
But at the same time, I think many of the improvements are the same
phenomenon you see in every sport: Someone keeps raising the bar, and
everyone else must follow to keep pace. Every ship rises with the tide, as
they say.
It’s the three-minute mile phenomenon. Most of us are familiar with the
story of how Roger Bannister achieved what everyone said was impossible
by running a mile in under four minutes. But that’s not the best part of the
story. The best part is what happened afterward. In the year following
Bannister’s record-breaking run, 36 other runners also ran a mile in under
four minutes. Since human physiology didn’t change, where was the real
breakthrough—outside of us with nutrition or training or supplements, or
inside of our own minds and our perception of what is possible and what is
impossible?
Take a look at a chart listing the world records in Olympic sports over a
period of decades, and you’ll see an incredible progression of new records.
Every time you think we have reached our limits, someone comes along and
breaks the record again. How far can we go? Who knows. I don’t think we
should set limits on what we can achieve.
There’s no question that nutrition and training science has advanced and
contributed to better physiques, but I don’t think there has been or will be
any major breakthrough in nutrition or training that will be more important
to natural bodybuilding success other than changing what goes on in our
own minds. When you master the no-limits mindset, that’s the real
breakthrough in my opinion.
Jeremy Likness: Let’s talk about your program, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, a little bit,
because this is how I and many other people were first introduced to Tom
Venuto. I know you have been writing and publishing articles for some time
and you have a website that we’ll talk about. But Burn the Fat, Feed the
Muscle has really been an amazing phenomenon, and I’m not exaggerating
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when I say it truly has changed the online fitness landscape. I mean, I’ve had
the pleasure of participating in an online Burn the Fat community that
literally has thousands of people who join and participate just because of this
book. Let’s take it back to the beginning. When did this become an idea, and
how did you decide to innovate, bringing out this information in the way that
you did?
Tom Venuto:
The ebook first came out in May of 2003, but the roots of the program were
growing long before then. I started in the health club industry many years
ago, working in health clubs as a personal trainer. I was usually fully booked
as a trainer, working one on one with clients in the gym, and I found that the
limitation with this was that I could only work with so many people. Then I
was introduced to the concept of coaching, where I didn’t necessarily have
to meet with people in person. I could also coach them by phone—even long
distance. Later on, when the Internet came around, I found that the Net and
email were a great source for coaching people as well.
As time went on, I moved more and more away from personal training
and into personal coaching. To provide more service to my clients, instead of
just providing consulting to them over the phone and speaking and meeting
with them in person, I also wanted to give them some written materials that
would help educate them. So, as I developed my personal coaching
programs, I began to put together a coaching manual. Over many, many
years, this manual grew and evolved. It started out as a little packet of maybe
25 pages that detailed my recommendations for fat-burning and musclebuilding nutrition. As I got more and more questions from my clients, I kept
expanding it.
When I got so busy that I really couldn’t handle any more clients, I said,
“Why don’t I just take this manual and turn it into a complete book so I can
offer this to anybody, anywhere, and they can follow the program on their
own, even without personal coaching?” It was at that point that I decided to
turn my coaching manual into a stand-alone book. A year later, I learned
how to publish ebooks and made this material available all over the world.
Within about six months after it was released as an ebook, I had people using
the program in 60 or 70 countries.
Jeremy Likness: One of the elements that you touched on is a very powerful component of
what you did. It sounds like it started out as something small, but a lot of the
growth of the book apparently was driven by your actual customers, your
actual success stories, your clients out in the field, and so that is perhaps why
it connected with so many people who downloaded the ebook.
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Tom Venuto:
That’s exactly how it was developed. A coaching or a personal training
client would ask me a question and I would say, “Wow, that’s a really good
question,” and I would answer them, and then put that answer in writing and
incorporate it into the book. Then it just expanded and expanded and grew.
So it developed out of people’s actual needs and wants and questions. As a
result, the ebook answers almost any question anyone could ever have about
fat-burning nutrition because it was developed based on every question
everyone ever had for me about fat-burning nutrition.
Jeremy Likness: That’s amazing. Now I know that one of your special reports that you’ve
written is called Big Fat Lies. I love the title of that, and I know there’s so
much information out there that is myth and hype, and so many people are
being confused and misled. What would you say are some of the more
common ways people are misled, and how they might be able to avoid going
down a dead-end path or falling into a pitfall because there’s so much
nonsense out there?
Tom Venuto:
Well, one very easy way to avoid most of the fat loss lies and myths is
simply to understand the basic principle that there is no free lunch. You
cannot get something for nothing. The “something for nothing” mentality is
going to send you down the wrong path every single time, no matter what
kind of diet program or supplement or product or promise is made. If you
expect to get something easily, overnight, and without effort—without
putting the work in—if there is any benefit, it’s going to be temporary and
short-lived. Rule number one is that you can only take out what you’ve put
in. There’s no free lunch. Nothing good comes easy. Like you see in any
other area of life, it takes work and it takes effort.
Jeremy Likness: That’s right, and too many people, when they go to tackle a program, they
want that quick fix or magic bullet. I do a lot of what you referred to, the
coaching over the Internet and the phone. I found that a lot of people want to
have a diet handed to them, so that every single meal of every single day is
spelled out without them having to do any work. And while that is a way of
getting precise, what I found too is that it’s a way of almost giving up
responsibility. Right? Because I can focus completely on the plan instead of
doing what I’m doing, and then if something goes wrong, I can blame it on
the plan.
I noticed, for example, in your book, you have different categories of
foods, different ways to put them together, and also the strength training and
the cardio. Does that reflect the sort of approach that you took as a coach?
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Tom Venuto:
Absolutely. It’s just like you said—people would prefer to have all the work
done for them, including when it comes to things like menu and meal
planning. It’s great to have someone write your diets or training programs,
but in the long term, I don’t think there’s any substitute for learning the skill
of how to design your own programs.
Most of the popular diet books have everything spelled out in day-by-day
menus, and that’s fine and useful, but if that’s all you do, it may not give you
enough flexibility. Structure helps, but being too structured can limit you.
I like to teach the fundamentals of nutrition and training and even give
them a structure, but also leave a degree of flexibility within that structure
for each person to fine-tune and individualize their programs according to
their needs. Everybody’s different. People have different goals. People have
different body types.
It’s easy enough to hand somebody a sheet of paper and say, “Eat this,”
and then hand them another sheet of paper and say, “Follow this workout
program.” But if that’s all you do, are you really helping them in the long
term? Well, there is definitely a place for this type of exercise and nutritional
prescription, especially when you start to get stale, because when you design
all your own programs, you can be a victim of your own habit patterns. I
sometimes even have my training programs designed by another trainer, but
I also know how to design my own. You’re going to benefit the most if you
have a structure. But you should also know how to design your own
programs and individualize them to fit your needs so that you understand the
reasons why you’re doing it the way you’re doing it.
Jeremy Likness: I agree 100%. I think that approach from the inside is what really happens. I
tell a lot of people that with coaching, we can leave some breadcrumbs and
show them the clues to what’s really going on, but until they take that
responsibility of actually looking beyond and seeing where it leads to, then
it’s going to be temporary. It’s like the difference between motivation and
inspiration.
Speaking of motivation, something that sets you and your writings apart
from others is that you do have a large body of information that relates to
goal setting, mindset, and behavioral change. I know you’ve done a lot of
research in this area and even become certified in certain techniques related
to the mind, such as hypnosis and NLP. Can you tell us a little bit about that
and how living healthy and getting fit is about more than just the calories or
the training program?
Tom Venuto:
Sure. I’ve studied many aspects of success psychology for many years.
When I was a teenager, I started reading books like Think and Grow Rich,
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The Power of Positive Thinking, The Magic of Believing, and The Magic of
Thinking Big, and I never stopped studying. I was fascinated by how
scientific and predictable success could be, and how you can succeed on
purpose, intentionally, by learning and obeying a few laws and principles
about how your mind works, how the universe works, and how your
thoughts and what you put in your head control your behavior.
Human beings do some things sometimes that are kind of strange. We say
consciously, “I want to lose body fat. I want to get in shape. I want to be
more healthy.” But on the other hand, our behaviors don’t match what we
just said. You have good intentions, but before you know it, you’re on your
third and fourth and fifth slice of pizza, and you’re on the fourth and fifth
beer, or you start on the program and fall off the wagon.
Why? Why do we do the things we do? Why do we behave the way we
behave? It all boils down to the subconscious programming and what you’re
putting in your mind.
No matter what angle you approach this from, every success book, every
philosophy, will all boil down to the same thing, and it’s the same thing
every philosopher, metaphysician, and self-help teacher has taught for
thousands of years, and that is to become aware of and take control of your
thoughts. “As you think, so shall you be.” How old is that proverb? Success
principles are timeless—they never change—they are only delivered in new
packaging. You might as well go straight to the essence of it all.
What you think repeatedly over and over and over again is going to get
programmed into your subconscious mind. What’s programmed into your
subconscious mind gets expressed in your body, through your body, or
through your behaviors. So if you want to change your behaviors, and you
want to change the way you eat and the way that you move, you need to
change what you’re putting in your head. You are what you eat, but you are
also what you think.
A good place to start in this area of mental change to stimulate physical
change is to set some specific goals that you’re really emotionally jazzed
about, and then write your goals in the form of affirmations, which can help
you begin to change the cycle of negative thinking and direct your thinking
in a positive direction, which will create positive action.
Jeremy Likness: That’s incredible what you just said. And I feel that so many people overlook
that aspect, or they don’t believe that it can make such a difference. They
say, you know, “Affirmations are great.” I include them in my coaching
programs and customize them for my clients in certain cases. But they say,
“Yeah, the affirmations are nice, but show me the menu. Show me the
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training.” And I was just reading a book this weekend called, Blink, by
Malcolm Gladwell.
Tom Venuto:
Great book.
Jeremy Likness: Yes, a great book, and he talks about these experiments where people are
asked to scramble words, and they scramble these words into sentences, but
just by changing the verbiage and the word selected, they can create words
that imply impatience and rudeness, or they can have words that imply
patience and calm. The subjects would unscramble these, thinking they were
just doing word scramble puzzles. Afterward, when their moods were
monitored, their moods were actually impacted by the types of words that
they had been focusing on.
For example, if the words happened to be “old” and “tired,” people would
literally walk more slowly out of the room after doing this. And when I was
thinking about that, I thought about the implications of the people who have
the Constant Negative News Network dot-com, you know the acronym for
that, set as their home page, and that’s what they read every morning when
they wake up. What happens to the mind when that’s what it’s fed day in and
day out?
Tom Venuto:
Put garbage in, garbage comes out.
Jeremy Likness: Let me ask you another question. With the success of your ebook, Burn the
Fat, Feed the Muscle, I’m sure you will be following it up with some other
projects. Do you have any projects on the horizon right now that you can
share with us, as far as writing books or anything of that nature?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, there are actually quite a few things, but I put them temporarily on hold
while I’ve been spending so much time focusing on my own competition
training. We do plan on launching a community and member’s-only forum
for Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, and that project has been in the works
for a while.
You mentioned earlier, there’s already a Burn the Fat group online. It’s a
Yahoo group, and it’s got over 4000 members. It’s a free group, open to the
public, and it’s a very active group. The website for the Burn the Fat Yahoo
group is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bffm/.
However, we wanted to go even beyond that by putting together a
members-only forum and website that would be, more than anything else, a
support community website to bring people together, to give people the tools
they need to follow the program.
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I got the idea to do this because we saw the Burn the Fat ebook getting
rated and ranked very well on weight loss review websites right alongside
program like The South Beach Diet and Weight Watchers and online
programs like e-Diets. And as optimistic as I am, I was really surprised to
see my ebook, Burn the Fat listed on the same page as those programs. I
ended up talking to some of the owners of those review sites and they said,
“We love your Burn The Fat program, it’s great. In fact, the only reason we
didn’t rank you higher is because you didn’t have any kind of online support
to go with it, and some people want the accountability and group support,
and that’s one of the reasons people go to programs like Weight Watchers
sometimes.” So we’re putting together a community, and it’s going to be
fantastic. The site will be located at www.BurnTheFatInnerCircle.com.
Another project I have on my plate is something I wanted to do for many,
many years, and that’s the “Bodybuilding Secrets” training courses, and
those are well underway, and they are going to be for serious bodybuilders or
anybody interested in weight-training techniques for gaining muscle. I’ve
been taking my time on these, because there is so much redundant, repetitive
bodybuilding information out there, and my intention is to create something
that’s as unique as it is effective.
Jeremy Likness: Now, is that going to be an ebook series as well? Or is that video or
something else?
Tom Venuto:
I’m not certain if it’s going to be an ebook or if it’s going to be a physical
book. There will definitely be videos, and I’m considering collaboration
with other people to produce the videos. Some of these courses would
definitely best be communicated and illustrated by video because they will
be exercise instruction. Some of them will also be written. But I’m very
excited about that project because bodybuilding is one of my real passions in
life.
Jeremy Likness: That sounds exciting, and for those listening, I’m sure they’re excited as well
to find out that you’re going to be bringing training information out to the
market, because I know that so many people might start with something like
Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle or a few other programs that are out there.
But once they get “bit by the bug,” so to speak, of getting lean and training,
they’re ready to take it to the next level. That’s something I see all the time.
They ask, “Okay, what’s next? What if I want to be a natural bodybuilding
competitor like Tom Venuto, what’s the next step? Where do I go from
here?”
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Tom Venuto:
That’s a good question because Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is primarily
a fat loss program, but the principles can be used for any fitness goal. If you
want to gain lean body weight, you can just eat more calories and follow the
same guidelines in the program. A lot of people will successfully lose a lot
of body fat on my programs and the next thing I hear from them is, “Okay, I
want to gain muscular body weight now. What do I do?” Yeah, the need is
out there for more information on bodybuilding, weight training, weight
gaining, and on how to do it naturally and what to expect naturally.
Jeremy Likness: Let’s talk about that for just a moment, because I know there’s a lot of
expectation out there. I have people approach me and say, “Okay, I lost the
fat and I’m ready to gain muscle. I’m setting up my goals, and I think it’s
realistic for me to gain about 20 pounds of pure muscle and no fat in
12 weeks.” And I say, “Well, you know, let’s sit down and talk about this
time frame you set for your goal.”
In your experience, what is realistic? What can people expect when
they’re reversing the engine, so to speak, and they’re not going for fat loss,
but they’re going for muscle gain, and they want to build this competitive
physique? Is this something that happens over a matter of weeks, or does it
take more time than that?
Tom Venuto:
Well, 20 pounds in 12 weeks is possible but not probable—at least if you’re
talking about pounds of pure lean tissue. That would be what I would call a
“results not typical” transformation. I have a really good idea of what’s
typical because I kept count of how many people went through my 12-week
personal coaching programs. 605 people completed the program with me
over a period of many years. The majority wanted to lose body fat, but a
good amount of those 605 people wanted to gain weight. So I was able to
collect a lot of statistics on how much lean body weight the average person
will gain. What I came up with, for muscle gain programs, based on the
averages, is about one pound a week of lean body mass with no increase in
body fat. That’s an average. I’ve seen people gain more and some gain less.
So if somebody gains a pound a week for 12 weeks, they have 12 pounds
of solid muscle in 12 weeks, that is very good and actually very typical for
the first 12 weeks for someone who is doing it right. If they gain only 6
pounds in 12 weeks, that’s not so bad either, because it’s progress, and if
maintained, that would be 24 pounds in a year.
What tends to happen, though, is that the more muscle you gain and the
closer you get to the ceiling of your genetic potential, the slower the weight
gain comes. I have seen many, many people gain the first 12 pounds of
muscle in 12 weeks, but then it’s less common to see someone gain another
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12 pounds in the next 12 weeks. Usually the rate of muscle gains will start
coming slower. This is where you will hear top-level bodybuilders say that
they’re thrilled to gain 4 or 5 pounds in a year. That may not seem like very
much muscle. But if you’re talking about “stage weight” and a 10-pound
gain in two years and a 15-pound gain in three years, you’ve moved up a
weight class and become much more competitive. So it takes time and it
especially takes patience if competitive bodybuilding is your goal. It doesn’t
happen overnight.
I’ve seen people go from raw beginner to getting onstage in a year, and
I’ve seen people make some pretty remarkable gains in a matter of months,
but it all takes time. To become an outstanding bodybuilder, to become a
top-caliber, top-notch bodybuilder, it usually does take a few years to get
there, and then you can continue getting better and better as you get older.
That’s one of the great things about bodybuilding and physique sports—
you can get better as you get older, definitely into your 40s, probably into
your 50s. Of course, you can continue to improve your entire life, but what
I’m saying is that you can continue to move toward an all time personal best
and be competitive on any stage into your 40s, and there are plenty of 40plus natural bodybuilders who are at the top of their games and still haven’t
peaked yet.
Jeremy Likness: That is great to know. You mentioned about what it takes to be a competitive
bodybuilder. I know that you currently have a web blog available at
www.BodybuildingSecrets.com, and you’re actually posting your training
journals as you lead up to a competition. Tell us a little bit about that blog
and what people can expect to find there, and what value it will bring to
them.
Tom Venuto:
I’ve almost always kept a training journal, and I believe it’s an important
discipline to write down your workouts. This way you can progressively
keep improving, and also you have a record of everything you’ve done over
the years.
It was only fairly recently that I discovered what a blog was. I had heard
of them for the last year or two but didn’t have one and wasn’t exactly sure
how it all worked. I learned that a blog is basically an online diary. The first
thing that came to my mind was, “Well, if it’s an online diary, why not post a
diet and training journal online? That sounds like a great idea.” So that’s
exactly what I did at www.BodybuildingSecrets.com.
I did this for two reasons. The first is to provide a service to others. The
second is as a motivational tool for myself. It’s a method of accountability.
As a coach, Jeremy, you understand the power of accountability. But where
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does the coach get his accountability? Coaches have their own coaches, of
course. I do, and I know you do too, but I wanted something more. Enter the
blog.
Three months ago, I created www.BodybuildingSecrets.com, where I
started blogging my diet and workouts. I basically said to the whole world
there, “I’m going to compete on such and such a date.” Once I did that, there
was no backing out. Some people debate whether they should announce their
goals or keep their goals to themselves. I think there are advantages to both,
depending on your personal situation. In my situation, announcing my goals
gave me some pretty good leverage and a lot of motivation. During my
contest prep phase this year, I have not missed a day of workouts, and I’ve
not missed a single day posting those workouts on the blog. It’s been a
motivational tool for me.
The bodybuilding blog has also been a great free service for other people
who just want to see what goes into competition training. What I have on
that blog is my actual workouts and my actual diet. It’s not necessarily
workout instruction for other people, because some of my workouts are just
off the map on intensity and difficulty, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone
but an advanced competitive bodybuilder try to follow them.
Jeremy Likness: Yes, I was reading about your “quad hobbler” workouts.
Tom Venuto:
Yeah, those workouts leave my quads sore for days—they’re killer—and
definitely only for the serious bodybuilder, but everyone could pick up
something from the Bodybuilding Secrets blog, even if just motivation and
definitely some variety in workout methods.
I use a lot of muscle confusion in my workouts, which means I don’t
repeat the same workout for long, and there’s usually something different in
every session. I usually stay with a workout program for three to
five workouts and then change, because your body adapts so quickly when
you’re an advanced bodybuilder and you’ve been training for many years.
You have to keep surprising or even shocking your body. Because I change it
up so much, there are dozens and dozens of different workouts and different
workout techniques posted on my blog. I think there are probably more than
100 posts now, and I’ve also started posting some articles on there that are
all bodybuilding specific. It’s a great resource.
This will also be the website where you can get information about my
bodybuilding courses and the videos, when they’re finally ready. But right
now it’s just a free site with all of my workouts logged in every day, and
some new features such as interviews are on the way.
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Jeremy Likness: That’s great. Now, I noticed on some recent entries you talked about your
diet, and I made that joke at the beginning of this call that you’re carbdepleted and you’ve actually lowered your carbohydrate intake. I have some
people who approach me and they get a little bit confused. They say, “You
guys are telling us that low carb is not the long term key to weight loss, that
we can’t just cut out carbs and that’s it. But now you’re saying that as you
get close to a competition or a photo shoot that you are reducing carbs. So
what gives? Why are you doing that, and why is it okay at some times and
not okay other times?
Tom Venuto:
134 Tom Venuto
That’s exactly the point. Low carb is appropriate at some times and not other
times. It’s more suited for some people and not for other people. To know if
you should use carb restriction, and when to use it, you have to understand
your body and be clear about your goals. Different diets for different people
and different diets for different goals. If somebody wants to maintain their
weight, or if they want to gain lean body mass, they wouldn’t want to reduce
carbs at all unless they had some clinical reason to do so. That would mean a
moderate or even a high carb diet containing somewhere around 50% of
their calories from natural carbs.
On the other hand, there are some advantages for reducing carbs when it
comes to fat loss. For example, when you reduce or eliminate all the refined
sugars and processed carbohydrates in your diet, that alone is going to
increase your health and improve fat loss right off the bat. But even with the
natural carbs, the types of foods that you’d consider healthy—such as rice,
potatoes, yams, and whole grains—pulling back on them a little bit and
increasing the lean protein helps you easily control calories and gives you
what’s called a greater thermic effect of food in your diet.
A lot of people don’t realize just how profound the thermic effect of food
can be, especially lean protein. So if you shift the ratio in favor of proteins, a
little bit less carbs, you actually speed up your metabolism because just to
digest the food has an energy cost. The energy cost of digesting protein food
is higher than other foods. So that’s one mechanism in a moderate carb or a
reduced carb diet that can be beneficial.
Another mechanism through which the low carb diet works is it helps
control your blood sugar and insulin levels. Eating excessive amounts of
carbs or excessive amounts of refined sugar and processed carbs can cause
spikes in your blood sugar and insulin, and not only is that unhealthy, but it
can also increase fat storage.
So there you have two mechanisms where a slightly reduced carbs diet
can improve fat loss. But the main key to losing body fat is still in the calorie
deficit, not in the carbohydrate reduction. You can’t escape it. You have to be
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consuming fewer calories than you burn to lose body fat. Yes, I’ve decreased
my carbs a little bit for a bodybuilding competition diet, but I haven’t cut
them all out. What I have done first and foremost is I have reduced the
calories. I might be eating 2700 before a contest, 3300 to maintain, and
3600–4000 to gain. For fat loss, I’m burning far more calories than I’m
taking in, and what’s really generating the fat loss is the calorie deficit more
than anything else.
For a competitive bodybuilder, as you get really close to the show and
you reduce your carbs a little bit more, it also tends to dry you out. I don’t
mean that in a way you’d normally think of dehydration, because I’m
drinking a gallon or even a gallon and a half of water a day. By drying you
out, I mean you tend to get a little more sharpness in the muscles and less
water retention under the skin because with a high carb diet, you tend to
retain a little bit more water. So for the competitive bodybuilder, there are
additional advantages to reducing carbs when extremely low body fat and
sharp muscle definition is the goal, but this is a temporary effect.
For me, though, low carbs is about 150–200 grams a day, so we’re not
talking about anything like Atkins or a ketogenic diet. We’re not talking
about an induction phase where you deplete yourself to 20 or 30 grams of
carbs a day. We’re not talking about zero grams or 50 grams or even 100
grams. Most of the popular low carb diets take the extreme. If reducing carbs
a little bit can accelerate fat loss, they figure, “Why not cut all the carbs out
to accelerate fat loss even more?” The problem is that this is extreme, and
extremes can’t be maintained for long and may not be healthy, so I prefer to
take a little more conservative approach and reduce my carbs, but I don’t cut
them all out.
Jeremy Likness: That’s great to hear, and I think it’s important what you said too about the
changes that happen in preparing for a show. I find a lot of people who go
out and do research and find out that there are these advanced techniques
that bodybuilders use to prepare for competition and reach very low singledigit body fat. But these people might have 120 pounds to lose, and they
want to go out and try these bodybuilding contest diet techniques like water
loading and depletion, sodium loading, cutting the carbs severely, and expect
the same result—see a phenomenal result and change. But it’s just not the
same when you’re leaner, the changes come more quickly and they’re more
visible because you have less body fat underneath the skin basically.
Tom Venuto:
Exactly. I found that for most non-bodybuilders, the majority can lose body
fat effectively without any carb restriction at all, just simply restricting their
calories and increasing their activity.
135
There are two ways you can create a calorie deficit. One is to burn more
calories by exercising more, and the other one is to consume fewer calories
by eating less. The ideal approach is a little bit of both, with an emphasis on
a lot more activity and a conservative calorie deficit. But it’s not necessary to
cut carbs at all to lose body fat, except maybe for those who are seriously
carb sensitive or those who are training for extreme goals like bodybuilders
who need to be onstage at four or five percent body fat.
What is necessary for any fat loss goal is that you have a calorie deficit.
Without a deficit, you will not lose fat, even if your carbs are low. For
example, if you followed a diet of only protein and fat—zero carbs—but you
consumed more calories than you were burning up in a day, you’re still not
going to lose body fat. You may even gain body fat, even though there are no
carbs in your diet.
You need to focus on the calorie deficit, on exercise, and on the quality of
the carbs and other food you’re eating more so than just the quantity of
carbs. I prefer to start with a conservative approach and then, as you get
closer and closer to a long term goal, or a really challenging goal like
competing in a bodybuilding competition or doing a photo shoot, that’s
when you make the diet more and more strict.
The tendency most people have, which is encouraged by diets that have
induction programs or quick-start programs, is to just dive into the strictest
diet first to get the satisfaction of rapid scale weight loss. The truth is, you
don’t need to be so extreme. You can just as easily make some small changes
one or two at a time, that you can maintain as a lifestyle, eating smaller
portions, eating more frequently, cutting the refined foods and increasing
activity, and you’ll start losing body fat without using any of these extreme
crash diet techniques.
The more extreme you go, any extreme, the less likely you’re going to be
able to stay with it long term. When the day comes that you reach your goal,
then what? You wind up going off, hard.
Jeremy Likness: That’s right. That’s exactly why I’m so focused on the coaching aspect of my
practice. I call it, “Become Your Best” coaching. I joke about these extreme
diets in my book. I call mine, “The Likness Lettuce Diet.” Actually I don’t
call it that and I don’t have a specific diet program, because as you said, for
it to be lasting, there are a lot of elements, and we won’t go into all of them.
But you know, people need to enjoy what they’re doing to stay with it. They
need to be able to respond to it, and many people take it to the level of
creating stress, because their changes are so extreme they’re actually doing
more harm than good.
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We talked about how your Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle can be used
for muscle gain, but it is definitely a book that has a strong focus on fat loss,
and it has impacted thousands and thousands of people. I know one of the
reasons why you have that focus is because there is a high rate of overweight
and obesity. I wanted to talk a little bit about that and get your perspective,
especially your having the #1 bestselling ebook in this area.
First off, I have three questions for you. The first one is, do you feel there
really is an obesity epidemic, or do you think it’s being overblown right
now?
Tom Venuto:
Oh, absolutely there’s an epidemic. Epidemic is not just a word that
government agencies use to describe the obesity problem because certain
numbers and statistics were reached; you can see it with your own eyes
when you walk down the street. It’s there, and it appears to be getting worse.
The people who keep track of these things keep putting out the statistics, and
the statistics show that it is getting worse too, worldwide. We have a health
epidemic that’s going along with the obesity epidemic—diabetes, heart
disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. It’s a problem.
Jeremy Likness: It is, and one of the things that has struck me is, before I started my own
business, I was employed by a company that worked with a lot of hospitals,
and we managed some of their healthcare systems. It was 1999 when I first
stepped into this and I picked up my first book and thought, “Hey, carrying
around 245 pounds might not be good for me.” At that time, there was
something that people referred to as Adult Onset Diabetes. Now, Adult
Onset Diabetes still exists, but I noticed more and more today, when you see
a reference to it, that reference is Type 2 Diabetes, because more and more
children are actually coming down with “Adult” Onset Diabetes. That’s
disturbing. I agree that there’s definitely an epidemic. The statistics don’t lie.
I’m sure there’s some debate over how much it really impacts health and
if the obesity is a symptom of some other cause or if the obesity itself is what
contributes. But let’s talk about this. The next question is, What do you feel,
in your own opinion—and I know this is just opinion; we’re not going to
solve the issue right here—but what do you feel are the factors most
responsible for the problem? Why are so many people today obese?
Tom Venuto:
I think it’s absolutely multi-factoral. This is a common question and there
are many answers. I don’t think there is a single answer because there are so
many causes contributing to the overweight problem, but there are two
major factors responsible that I think just about everyone would agree on.
The first is simply the modern society we live in. We live in the age of
information, technology, and especially convenience. We were just talking
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about statistics. Looking at a snapshot of the current statistics is pretty
alarming. But if you really want a rude awakening, look at the trends over
time. If you compare obesity and disease rates today to 100 years ago and
then if you look back even farther, some of these modern ailments were rare
or did not even exist. Did you know that in some cultures that have not been
touched by modern conveniences and food processing, they don’t even have
a word for cancer? What is that telling you about the modern, Western
lifestyle? What is going on in people’s lives today that’s impacting their
health that wasn’t going on 150 years ago or 15,000 years ago?
Look at processed food, for example. There was no McDonald’s 100
years ago. There wasn’t all this fast food, convenience food, and cheap junk
food. Food was much less processed and less refined years ago, and I think
it’s very important to start thinking about what’s been done to the food we’re
eating. Instead of focusing on carbs as the culprit, or dietary fat as the
culprit, or whatever the current multi-million dollar diet trend dictates, I
think we really need to point the finger at processed and refined foods as one
of the biggest parts of the problem and focus on getting back to eating
natural foods, the way they came out of the ground, from the plant or off the
tree.
It’s not just foods that are boxed, packaged, and conspicuously refined
either. There are things going on that you wouldn’t even suspect. Look at
what has happened to our food supply—even lean meats and fruits and
vegetables. You could be following a diet that appears to be totally healthy
or even what I would consider bodybuilding-style nutrition, but have you
considered what’s in the chicken, beef, eggs, and fish you’re eating? Or
what’s not in the fruits and vegetables you’re eating?
Our food supply has been contaminated and grown with all types of
chemicals. Animals that roam and graze on grass in their natural state are
being raised in pens and cages and fed corn or grains that not only are not
part of their normal diet, but also the feed is grown with all types of
chemicals. The animals become what they eat, and we become what we eat.
Our fruits and vegetables may not contain the nutritional value that they did
in years past, and they may contain all kinds of herbicides, pesticides, and
fungicides. You have to give some really serious thought to what you’re
putting in your body every day.
And nutrition is only half of the equation. The other half is the exercise
and the activity. What was the activity level like for our ancestors 100 years
ago? How about 1,000 years ago? And 10,000 years ago? That is not even a
blip on the radar in terms of our genetic code, so it’s logical to assume that
our bodies have not changed and are expecting to receive the same nutrition
and activity they did 10,000 years ago.
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Our ancestors had to hunt, fish, forage, farm, and move just to stay alive.
150 years ago, an eight-hour work day really was a work day—it was
physical labor all day long. Compare that to today. We have cars, riding
lawnmowers, and people sitting in front of the TV for hours after sitting in
their office chair for eight hours. TV-watching statistics are appalling. What
is the average number of hours that people watch TV in a day? Five or six
hours a day of TV-watching or something like that, and now we have the
Internet, and kids hooked on computer games as well.
Jeremy Likness: These are the same people who don’t have time to exercise, though.
Tom Venuto:
Yeah, isn’t that the truth. You know, lack of activity and the dependence on
processed and refined foods have become so commonplace, it’s an accepted
part of our modern culture. It’s not even questioned. We take for granted that
it could be any other way, and it’s a big part of the problem. These aren’t the
only problems that cause obesity. We could have an entire call just on
specific causes of obesity, but in broad terms, those are the two big ones
right there.
Jeremy Likness: Sure. And you touched on a third point, and I want to delve into it a little bit
more. There are millions of dollars in the weight loss industry. It’s costing
billions of dollars in monies, whether it’s taxpayers’ monies, healthcare
costs, employers’ costs, and there are thousands and thousands of products
that promise to resolve the issue. What do you feel is the key to overcome
this epidemic? What steps, not only for people to take themselves, but what
can we, the personal trainers, the people with the websites that reach people,
do to help overcome this issue?
Tom Venuto:
We’ve got to be honest, and sometimes it’s hard to be honest because
business is business, and some people will justify just about anything to pay
their mortgage, put food on their table for their family, or simply for the sake
of personal and corporate profits. Look at what happens when a business
goes public. The responsibility very much ceases to be to the customer. It
goes to the shareholders, and decisions are made based on what’s best for the
bottom line, not on what’s best for the customer.
We need to put our customers and clients first and focus on service first,
and we need to tell the truth. We need to say no to what so many infomercial
marketers are doing, which is selling “quick and easy.” The way to sell a
weight loss product is basically to say, “Take this pill. Go to bed. Wake up
skinny. No exercise needed. It’s fast. It’s easy.” Well, IT’S NOT EASY! It’s
simple, but it’s not easy. It requires lifestyle changes, and changing your
lifestyle takes hard work, discipline, and a strong desire to change. We need
139
to encourage people to become hard workers and to avoid quick fixes, not to
be the ones selling the quick fixes for a quick buck.
We need to explain to people what it really takes to achieve health and
fitness success. Instead of promising you’ll lose 30 pounds in 30 days, how
about something optimistic but realistic? How about two pounds a week of
pure fat gone forever while improving your health at the same time? Yeah,
there’s always going to be somebody that will sell you the pill that promises
two pounds a day not two pounds a week. There’s always going to be
somebody that will sell you the piece of exercise equipment that promises
results in two minutes a day that is really just junk. As fitness professionals,
we need to be more responsible and move away from that. I believe that in
the end, everyone will prosper and succeed if we do the right thing.
I also think that most consumers who want and need to lose weight really
appreciate it when a fitness professional comes along and tells it to them
straight. Although the gimmick products continue to sell by the millions, I
think most people have really good BS detectors. It’s just that being
overweight is such an emotional problem that even when someone’s BS
detector goes off, they want to get out of the pain of carrying excess weight
so badly that they don’t listen to their own common sense instincts and they
buy the latest pill or whatever anyway.
Jeremy Likness: And I know that honesty and integrity are a large part of how you do
business. In fact, I’ve heard your website, which is www.TomVenuto.com,
is referred to as the most honest place on the entire Internet. Tell us a little bit
about your vision and your mission behind that website and what people can
find there.
Tom Venuto:
140 Tom Venuto
Fitness Renaissance was my first website, and that went online way back in
1998. I later changed the name to www.TomVenuto.com. I started
publishing a monthly newsletter shortly after I went online. My mission was
exactly what we were just talking about, to tell the truth about fitness,
bodybuilding, and weight loss. It’s hard to find that in the media. It’s hard to
find in the magazines because the magazines are sponsored by supplement
companies or supported by supplement company advertising. Again, the
priority goes to running a profitable publication and having profitable
sponsors and advertisers first before all else.
Another part of my mission is to encourage people to do it naturally and
to teach people how to do it naturally. It’s so easy to take the shortcut and to
say, “I’ve tried everything. I’m going to try steroids or clenbuterol now. I’m
going to try a weight loss drug now.” The truth is, when you put all the
nutrition together and when you put the proper training together, and when
you put the goal and the right mindset together, the results can be pretty
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amazing, and they can be permanent. Drugs are a crutch that, when taken
away, leave you unable to walk on your own.
So www.TomVenuto.com is basically about the honest and natural
approach, and about what it really takes to become fit, lean, and healthy. You
can go to that site and you’ll find out the truth about weight loss, about
bodybuilding, about supplements. No punches pulled. I just tell it like it is.
Jeremy Likness: Well, that’s great. I think people do appreciate having honesty even to the
point of bluntness. Some people aren’t ready for that, and we’ve both, I
imagine, experienced that. You’ve coached hundreds of people over many
years, and I’ve coached dozens just over the past few years, and there are
definitely people who are not ready to hear that message.
But for those who are ready, that direct approach— “It is what it is, here’s
what you have to do”—is best, because people want to know up front what
the sacrifice is so they can decide if it’s important enough for them. For
some people, for whatever reason, it seems health is not the priority. They’re
adults and that’s their decision, and they can decide for themselves what’s
important to them at any given time in their lives. But for those who have
made it a priority, as you said, we say one thing and we often do something
different, so it’s important to know how to marry those two together.
We’re coming close to the end of the hour. I wanted to touch on one other
topic and then see if you had any closing comments. There are people out
there who say, “Wow, Tom has put together an amazing book, Burn the Fat,
Feed the Muscle is a phenomenal resource, and some great websites. I want
to learn that information myself. I want to become someone who really
knows fitness. So beyond becoming a personal trainer, or a strength coach
who’s certified through the NSCA, what else can people do to educate
themselves and raise their level of awareness about fitness?
Tom Venuto:
They can spend a lot of time on websites like your NaturalPhysiques.com.
I’m not just saying that because you’re interviewing me and we’re friends; I
mean that seriously. People need to read, research, and educate themselves,
but they also must be able to distinguish between the educational materials
that are legitimate and the ones that are marketing hype. The acid test for
that is to see if someone is promising you a free lunch, because that’s the
dead giveaway that you’re not dealing with a legitimate coach or educational
resource. Once you’ve found good resources, you need to take what you
learn and apply it and incorporate it as a part of your lifestyle. Do it one little
step at a time, if necessary, rather than performing a complete overhaul. Not,
“I’m going to do this for 12 weeks,” or “I’m going to do this contest,” but,
“Bodybuilding is my lifestyle,” or “Fitness is my lifestyle.”
141
Jeremy Likness: Great advice. Both of our websites, www.NaturalPhysiques.com and
www.TomVenuto.com contain dozens of free articles. In fact, I’ve
republished several of Tom’s articles on my website, because as he said, they
pull no punches. They cut directly to the chase and give you that information
you’re looking for.
Tom, we’ve been corresponding for, I believe it’s well over a year, and it
has been a pleasure to finally be able to sit down and have this conversation
with you over the past hour. I want to thank you. I know you have many
projects going on. You’re preparing for a competition and you took this hour
to share your heart and information with us. So I deeply appreciate that, and
I wanted to thank you for coming on the call and also find out if there is
anything else you wanted to share with anyone listening before we close this
down and open the floor for questions and answers.
Tom Venuto:
I want to thank you for having me on your show. I’m really glad that we
were finally able to connect and do this call because, as you said, we’ve been
talking about it for a long time. I really appreciate what you’re doing online.
I think the resources, like your website and podcast, are just amazing. I’d
encourage everybody who’s on this call not just to visit my site but also
Jeremy’s site and listen to all of the other calls that he has posted there.
Jeremy Likness: That’s great. Thank you very much, Tom.
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About Tom Venuto
About Jeremy Likness
Jeremy Likness is a Certified Fitness Trainer and a Specialist in
Performance Nutrition with the International Sports Sciences
Administration (ISSA). These certifications, combined with his
vast experience assisting clients with physique transformation,
have earned him his reputation as a top international health coach.
Jeremy has transformed his own body from overweight to 6%
body fat by experimenting with various methods of nutrition—
from low carb to vegan to Body-for-LIFE™ and has worked with
many others to help them achieve the same results.
Jeremy is the founder and CEO of Natural Physiques, a company
with a mission to empower individuals to lose weight and live
healthy. Jeremy specializes in working with those who suffer from
obesity or who are extremely overweight. Jeremy is also a prolific
writer who has been published at Bodybuilding.com,
Dolfzine.com, Ian King’s Get Buffed Newsletter, and
ProTrainerOnline.com. Jeremy Likness is the author of the ebook,
Lose Fat, Not Faith: A Transformation Guide, which is available
at www.Amazon.com.
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144 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
The Bodybuilder’s Method to Maximum
Muscle Gain and Minimum Body Fat
Jon Benson Interviews Tom Venuto
Jon Benson:
We’re here today with Tom Venuto. Tom is a bodybuilder, personal trainer,
and nutritionist from the New York City area. Tom’s website is
www.TomVenuto.com, where he’s got a wealth of information on all
aspects of training, diet, nutrition, cardio training, weight training, etcetera—
a great resource for you to check out.
Tom and I slightly differ on our approaches, which is actually one reason
I wanted to have Tom on the show, because a lot of my subscribers don’t fit
into the “I have to eat low carbs or I get unhealthy” category. Tom is an ideal
source to turn to for that type of dieting as well as strategically implementing
low carb dieting, and Tom, I want to address all those issues with you as well
as your philosophy on cardio. But first, can you give us a little bit about your
background, your education, and how you got started in training and
bodybuilding?
Tom Venuto:
Sure. I started bodybuilding when I was 14, and like a lot of other people,
Arnold Schwarzenegger was my original influence. I saw him in the movie
Conan, and I just couldn’t believe a human being could look like that. I was
in awe. So after seeing the movie, I picked up his autobiography, The
Education of a Bodybuilder, and I used his workout routine to the letter right
out of that book—first bodyweight exercises, then getting into the weight
training exercises—and from then on, I was hooked for life!
I trained from age 14 to age 20 nonstop, but it wasn’t until age 20 that I
entered my first competition and took second place. My second competition,
I won my weight class, and my third competition, I won my weight class and
the overall title. Since then I’ve done a total of 26 competitions, and I plan to
keep competing until they nail me into the box.
As far as my educational background, I went to school for exercise
science, got certified through the National Strength and Conditioning
Association and the American College of Sports Medicine, and did quite a
few years of personal training. Recently, I’ve gotten more into the business
end of fitness with managing health clubs, and I’ve moved out of personal
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Bodybuilder’s Method to Maximum Muscle Gain and Minimum Body Fat
training and shifted into personal coaching, consulting, and fitness
publishing, which has been great because the Internet has allowed me to
work with people all over the world.
Jon Benson:
That is cool. The Internet has opened up many avenues for a lot of people.
Speaking of that, what do you think makes your website different?
Tom Venuto:
Well, it’s a very honest site—almost to the point of bluntness, you could say.
It’s a no BS, straight-talking, and unbiased resource. A lot of websites and
books now are just a sales pitch for a line of supplements and there’s a real
need for information on nutrition and exercise without the sales pitches for
all the pills and powders. But that’s hard to find today because there’s so
much money in the supplement business.
It’s such easy money, it’s hard for a lot of people in our industry to
resist—and that includes everyone from the competitive bodybuilders
signing endorsement contracts for products they never even used, all the way
to the PhD research scientists who also want a piece of the pie by creating
the supplement formulas or doing the research to support them. There’s a lot
of money to be made in selling supplements. Millions. Billions, actually.
Jon Benson:
One thing I noticed is that you don’t sell anything on your website except
your book, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (BFFM), which is an excellent
manual for everyone to get. I highly recommend it—I have one myself—but
other than that, you sell no supplements and you don’t even endorse any
supplements, so it’s pretty straightforward. You’re not trying to pitch XYZ
product because that’s what your site is driven from, and that’s one reason I
found your site very refreshing.
As far as the honesty and the no-hype approach, a recent issue of your
monthly newsletter really came out strong. You said, “I’ve had it up to here
with all the hype and nonsense,” and you talked about the guy who said he
was getting ripped by eating a candy bar, which I found very funny. Why
don’t you tell us a little more. I know you have a very strong whole food
philosophy and a little bit of an anti-supplement philosophy. Can you tell me
where you’re coming from with this and elaborate a little more for our
listeners?
Tom Venuto:
148 Tom Venuto
My overall philosophy is bodybuilding-style training and bodybuilding-style
nutrition. There are other ways to do it than the bodybuilding model, and
athletes in certain sports, for example, might take a different training, cardio,
and nutrition approach. But, I believe that for any goal that is body
composition related—in other words, you want to build muscle and lose
The Fat Burn Files
fat—I don’t think there’s any better approach than the bodybuilding style of
eating and training.
The bodybuilding model is very straightforward; it’s a lot of
fundamentals that you’ll hear often in bodybuilding-inspired programs such
as frequent eating, and eating lean proteins with every meal; eating whole,
natural foods; and avoiding refined foods. I don’t believe you need any
supplements. You can use them for convenience, but it’s not absolutely
necessary. In fact, I believe that a nutrition program that is based primarily
on a variety of whole foods will give you even greater results than one that is
based on a lot of shakes or drinks or bars or powders.
You’ll see a lot of bodybuilding fundamentals in my philosophy. If you’re
looking for the cutting edge and you’re really into the whole “guru culture,”
then what I teach may not seem like anything earth shattering compared to
the constant stream of new stuff that some of the gurus are coming out with.
What I teach is fundamentals, and you need to master the fundamentals first.
I absolutely love the coaching philosophy of the great Green Bay Packers
coach, Vince Lombardi. Lombardi said, “Fundamentals win it. Football is
two things: it’s blocking and tackling. I don’t care about formations or new
defenses or tricks on defense. If you block and tackle better than the team
you’re playing, you’ll win.” We could say the same thing about losing fat
and building muscle. I don’t care about what the latest breakthrough
supplement is—whatever it is and whatever the research says about it, either
way, it’s still minutia. Almost all your results come from repeating a few
fundamentals day after day after day.
I also believe in and promote a hard work ethic philosophy, and I’ll quote
Lombardi again on that. He said, “The only place that success comes before
work is in the dictionary.” I don’t believe in looking for a shortcut in terms
of a pill, or a supplement, or a “secret” training program that says you can
get more from doing less. I think you should constantly search for ways to
improve your results, but not in the sense of an easier, “overnight” way, only
a better, more efficient way.
Jon Benson:
Sure, efficiency is a lot different than laziness. I think we both agree on that.
As far as the supplements go, I believe what Tom is referring to is replacing
whole foods with meal replacement products (MRPs). Bars, especially, are
definitely not the optimal way of going about that. But there are certain
supplements that I address as a nutritionist, and that doesn’t fall under the
line of what you are talking about, is that right?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, I believe there is a place for some basic supplements such as a multivitamin, protein powder for convenience, some of the essential fatty acids—
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whether you’re talking about flaxseed oil or an oil blend like Udo’s Choice
or fish oil—and some other basics, and there may be some supplements with
value for health reasons. But taking a pill, shake, or a powder and thinking
that it’s going to increase fat loss or increase muscle growth in any
measurable degree is complete baloney. Some of the bars that are passed off
as health food are really just candy bars made with protein powder.
Powdered meal replacements are mainly food derivative; the main benefit is
convenience.
Jon Benson:
It is a convenience, and as you say in your own articles sometimes, it’s a
necessary evil. In fact, I think you mentioned in one of your articles that you
keep some packages of meal replacements in your trunk just in case, right?
Tom Venuto:
If I’m traveling, yes, absolutely. It’s a challenge to eat six meals a day when
you’re flying in airplanes, driving rental cars, and staying in hotels for days
on end. That’s the type of situation when the convenience factor of
supplements comes into play.
Jon Benson:
I think that’s a very wise way of approaching things. Because of my
schedule, I tend to drink one MRP per day, and I like to make it myself
because I’m an anti-aspartame person, and most MRPs you buy at the health
food store still contain aspartame. But still, my philosophy is centered
around whole foods as well.
One thing that struck me as being the strongest component of your
philosophy, one that challenges my notions and will probably challenge a lot
of other people’s notions—and I was really influenced by it, by the way—is
your concept about the amount of cardio you do. Also, the fact that certain
areas of the body that certain people tend to look at as fat-resistant, or who
say, “I can’t lose it because it’s genetic, and I’m stuck with this layer of fat
on me,” you say that’s nonsense. You can get it off; it just takes a lot more
work. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?
Tom Venuto:
150 Tom Venuto
Sure. A lot of people are under the impression that I’m an aerobics freak,
that I’m an hour of cardio a day guy, or a two sessions of cardio a day guy
because I’ve written about having done that myself to peak for a
bodybuilding competition, and I’ve written about doing more cardio on fat
loss programs. But it’s not so much that I’m a pro high-volume cardio
person, I just believe in doing as much cardio as it takes—no more, no
less—just as much as it takes. It’s a concept of willingness, because some
people don’t want to have to do cardio every day, but I’ve found that for
some people, more cardio is necessary. To tell you the truth, I’d rather be
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pumping iron, but to me it’s just a matter of doing what it takes to get the job
done.
I would suggest as a baseline or starting point for anyone with a fat loss
goal to do cardio at least three days per week for about 30 minutes or so,
which is not that much, and then measure the results carefully to decide if
more is needed. There’s accountability in my programs—I use body
composition testing and a progress chart—it’s all on paper, and we log in the
results religiously. If we don’t hit the weekly goal, then we look at the
nutrition first, and see if the nutrition was in place 100%. If not, you fix the
problem in your diet.
Nutrition always has to be in place first. If nutrition was properly in place,
then the next step is to increase the cardio. If it takes four or five or six days
a week of cardio for 45 minutes a session to get where you want to go, then I
believe in doing that.
I see a lot of people, especially in the athletic and strength training
community today, that are cardio bashing. They’re telling people, “No,
cardio is not the best way to lose fat. Weight training is the best way to lose
fat.” Well, of course! That’s a given. I’m going by the assumption that
weight training is already in place—it’s a must.
Weight training plays an important part in fat loss by increasing lean body
mass, which increases the basal metabolic rate. As long as you maintain that
lean body mass, that’s a permanent increase in metabolism, too, so in that
regard, weight training is definitely the best way to burn fat long term if you
look at it from that perspective.
In the short term, you also burn calories during weight training workouts,
and you burn calories after weight training workouts. This happens because
of what’s called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC, which
is also known as the “afterburn effect.” Weight training has the highest
afterburn effect of all because, when you break down muscle tissue, the
repair process is metabolically costly.
My approach to fat loss training is weights and cardio, not one or the
other, but I’ve found that, except in genetically gifted types, weight training
alone is rarely enough for maximum fat loss. Based on your weekly progress
chart results, you can burn more calories and increase your fat loss by
increasing the frequency, duration, or intensity of the cardio. There is no
fixed or specific amount of cardio that I recommend. The weight training
volume is fairly steady, but the cardio is a lot more variable. It all depends on
your results, which does depend somewhat on genetics and body type. Some
people need more cardio.
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Jon Benson:
Okay, when you talk about the intensity of cardio, what percentage of heart
rate max do you mean, so our listeners will know what you’re talking about.
Tom Venuto:
Low intensity cardio at a low heart rate isn’t very effective or time efficient
for fat loss except when someone is deconditioned, overweight, older, or
troubled with orthopedic problems. That’s because lower intensity cardio
doesn’t burn very many calories or have much impact on post-exercise
metabolism. When I talk about cardio for maximum fat loss, I’m talking
about longer duration, moderate intensity steady cardio or shorter duration,
high-intensity interval cardio. In my own workouts, I’m doing it as high in
intensity as I can, provided that I can maintain the workout for the duration I
was shooting for.
I don’t believe in intentionally going slow for the sake of some imaginary
“fat burning zone.” Sure, you burn a greater percentage of calories from fat
at a low intensity, but if you’re going to take that line of reasoning, then why
not take it to its conclusion and just go real low in intensity like flipping the
switch on your remote control on the couch in front of the TV. That’s about
as low in intensity as you can get, and a very large percentage of calories
will come from fat when you’re channel surfing. The problem is, you’re
hardly burning any calories sitting there on your rear end! Again, the most
important factor is how many calories you burn. More intensity means more
calories burned during and after the workout. Focus on burning calories.
Naturally, if your intensity is too high, you can’t last for the duration I’m
talking about. For a sustainable fat-burning heart rate training range, I
usually recommend 70–85% of estimated maximum heart rate for healthy
people, which is 220 minus your age. For someone 30 years old, that’s 190
estimated max heart rate, and 70% of that is going to be somewhere around
the low 130s and the upper end, 85%, is going to be close to 160 beats per
minute. So this is moderate to moderately high intensity exercise, sustained
nonstop for 30–45 minutes for fat loss.
For most people, the target heart rate is going to be somewhere in the
ballpark of 130–150 beats per minute, so this is not low intensity, but its not
maximal intensity either. Heart rate is one way to measure intensity, and I
also like perceived exertion methods such as monitoring breathing to
measure intensity level. If you’re breathing heavy and it feels like a workout,
it feels like you’re accomplishing something, you’re sweating, then you’re at
the right level. I think walking at a slow pace is too low in intensity for most
people. That’s more like a method of locomotion than a workout, except for
the beginner, but for men and women who are overweight, walking is a great
way to start.
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The Fat Burn Files
Jon Benson:
I believe that brisk walking is a great way to get your heart rate into the 130s
zone and great for health benefits. Now, the big question is—and I know a
lot of my High Intensity Training (HIT) readers are going to want to know
about this—how do you blend this in without causing massive amounts of
over-training, because I know for myself in my past, when I tried to do too
much cardio, the results have always been that I get much more fatigued in
the gym, and I simply crash.What I understand from reading your manual—
and I did read your entire BFFM manual—is that one of the things you’re
suggesting is that you should just eat more food. Is that the first thing you
would come back and say, that you’re probably just not eating enough?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, eat more is the very first thing I would say, because the first thing that
comes to people’s minds when they want fat loss is to simply eat less and
that’s it, but what I’m saying is that you should eat more and at the same
time, train more. When you increase your calories, your metabolic rate is
going to increase. When you exercise, your metabolic rate is also going to
increase. I consider eating more and doing more cardio as a double increase
in metabolism. Some exercise scientists are starting to acknowledge this, and
they call it increasing energy flux. Increasing energy flux is a way to boost
metabolic processes, increase tissue turnover, and improve body
composition.
I’ve seen this in my own contest prep and it’s incredible. I make some of
the best progress of my life in the very early stages of my contest diet and
training. This is the period where I’m still eating a lot of food, around 3700–
4000 calories a day, and when I have just kicked in my cardio from my offseason level of about three days a week up to every day for 30 minutes or
more. During this time I seem to continue gaining muscle and strength while
getting leaner at the same time. Why? It’s high energy flux—eating a lot and
training a lot.
The opposite idea is to minimize training and decrease your calorie intake
from food. That produces a lower energy flux. As a result, you’re getting a
decrease in metabolism. Less food equals less thermic effect of feeding, less
metabolic cost. Less exercise equals less energy expended, less excess postexercise energy expenditure. That’s a double decrease in metabolism, if you
ask me.
If that’s the case, then why is the idea of exercise more, eat more
unpopular? That’s pretty obvious to me—twice the boost in metabolism
requires twice as much hard work. We were already talking about how hard
it is to eat six meals a day. Eating a lot of whole food is hard and time
consuming. Exercising more is hard and time consuming. So this is a very
unpopular and unsellable idea. Can you imagine trying to create the next
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weight loss sensation with that approach? It will never happen. Most people
won’t eat more and exercise more because it’s just too much hard work. The
only people who do it are those crazy bodybuilders and physique athletes
before competitions, and look at their amazing bodies.
Also, a lot of people believe that eating more and exercising more would
cancel each other out, but they don’t—they enhance each other. As for overtraining, this has been studied in depth by the scientific community and
entire books have been written on it, like Overtraining in Sport by Krieder
and O’Toole. It’s a legitimate issue and one to be aware of, but by and large,
I’d say over-training in a large percentage of cases is really just undernutrition. You’d be surprised how much training volume you can sustain if
you provide the proper nutritional support, and signs of over-training are
pretty easy to spot if you’re paying attention.
Jon Benson:
Okay, I’m interrupting you here, Tom, but it’s because you’re throwing out a
lot of great stuff. Do you have a formula you base things on? For example, if
someone comes in and says they have 26% body fat versus someone who’s
genetically more gifted and they have 12% body fat, do you have a base
caloric formula that you start people on, so you can say, “This is roughly
how many calories I think you should eat in a day along with this type of
cardio”?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, the formulas I use for calorie calculations are all in my book, Burn the
Fat, Feed the Muscle in the chapter about calories. There are a couple of
different formulas, but if you know your body composition and lean body
mass, which you should, there’s a formula called the Katch-McArdle
formula based strictly on lean body mass that you should use to calculate
your basal metabolic rate. From there, you select an activity factor, which is
an estimate, and then calculate your total estimated calorie expenditure for
the day.
It’s pretty predictable for most people. For most women, a maintenance
level is going to be between 1900 and 2300—that’s maintenance, not fat
loss. For most men, it’s going to be somewhere between 2700 and 3000, but
that varies a lot based on activity and body weight, lean mass, and age too.
There’s also that genetics wild card as well, but you can see how that card
plays out after you’ve established a baseline, started training and gathering
feedback. Once we have your baseline, we take a small calorie deficit,
maybe only 15–20% below your maintenance level for starters.
So if someone has a 2500 calorie per day maintenance level, we’re going
to start by dropping only slightly, maybe to 2200 calories per day, and
increase the cardio to create the rest of the deficit we want. Then what we do
is get to work in the gym on the weights and cardio and on that 2200 calories
154 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
per day nutrition program, and then we measure the body composition
results after one week.
After seven days, we decide whether to adjust the calories or cardio based
strictly on real world results. If we achieved the results we wanted, we don’t
change a thing; we don’t touch the cardio volume—no more, no less—and
we don’t change the calories. If we don’t achieve the results we wanted, we
look closely at the last seven days and see if we followed the program 100%.
If not, we re-focus and go back to work with the original plan. If we were on
point with the diet 100%, then we make a change, and the first change I
make is more cardio, not a decrease in calories, so we might go to four days
a week or stay with three days and up the duration to 40 minutes. We repeat
this process systematically until we reach the goal, and it always works.
Jon Benson:
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I bet you, personally, write down
everything that you do in the gym.
Tom Venuto:
Absolutely, especially before competitions. You want to know the best
motivational technique in the world? Write everything down! I keep a
training journal, of course, and I also keep my nutrition in writing. I don’t
keep a nutrition journal every day like I keep a daily training journal, but I
have one or two menus calculated on a spreadsheet, and I tape them up on
my refrigerator, so I know off the top of my head what I’m eating every day.
It’s practically memorized. I recommend to my clients in the beginning
when they’re just getting started, that if they’re not familiar with calories,
protein, carbs, and fat, to write down everything they eat and plug the
numbers into a spreadsheet even though it’s time consuming.
Jon Benson:
I totally agree, and I actually have online my own dietary and training logs
that I encourage people to use on a daily basis, especially if they’re going
through a 12-week program for body fat loss, or if they’re preparing for a
show. It’s imperative because no one has a perfect memory. For example, I
train body parts once a week, sometimes twice, but there’s no way I’m going
to remember the last week exactly—how much weight, how many reps, how
much rest between sets, and what tempo.
Tom Venuto:
The training journal is even more important to me at my stage in the game
than a nutrition journal because I’m a believer in very, very meticulous,
progressive overload. It’s a whole mindset that, every time you go in the
gym, you’re going to beat what you did before. You’re going to constantly
keep reaching new personal records. And it’s very motivating to keep hitting
these new records all the time, even if it’s just one more rep or five more
pounds, and if you keep a list of every time you break your personal record,
155
it’s pretty amazing looking back on that over the years and seeing how much
progress you’ve made. That’s the key to gaining muscle, too—constant
progressive overload.
Jon Benson:
I totally agree. That’s the number one thing I see most people fail at. And
tying in with that, we have a background of reading a lot of the same books,
and one of the resources I know we have both quoted is Chris Aceto, who is
the nutritionist for so many top pro bodybuilders. I remember Chris saying
that he believes the best way to lose fat is to do high intensity, six to 12 rep
training; in fact, I think you have that quoted in your manual. Weight
training cannot be overlooked for fat loss. Where I see most people fail—
and tell me if you agree with me—is progression. Tell me a little more about
how you chart your progression. If you’re hitting PRs frequently, I’m
assuming you’re training pretty frequently, and a lot of my subscribers are
training HIT, so tell me a little bit more about how you chart that.
Tom Venuto:
In the off-season, it’s pretty basic and straightforward. I go with a lot of
compound, multi-joint exercises like rows, presses, dips, stiff-legged deads,
front squats, leg presses, and so on.
The squat, for example, is a primary exercise that stays there during the
whole off season, so let’s use the squat example: I’ll start a training cycle,
which is a program I might follow for six, eight, or even 12 weeks, and I’ll
start with moderate weights. The first couple workouts are not maximum;
they are intentionally submaximal weights. Then what I do is keep
increasing the weight gradually over a period of eight or 12 weeks or
whatever, with a goal of beating my previous record by the end of that cycle.
It takes patience and little steps forward.
So if my best squat was 405 for six reps, my goal might be 405 for eight
or 415 for four. I might start far short of that, like maybe only 250 or 275
pounds on the first workout, and hit high reps, and I’m going to gradually
increase the weights every workout during that cycle, decreasing the reps,
and by the end of that cycle, I’m going to beat my PR, even if it takes
months to do it. I write everything down, and before every workout—the
night before usually—I’m looking at my training from the previous workout,
and I’m saying to myself, “Okay, I did 315 for eight on my last workout.
This time I’m going to do 315 for 12, or 325 for eight,” or whatever the goal
is—but I’m going to beat my previous workout. I do this with every
exercise. This is just basic linear periodization. Nothing fancy there, but it is
effective.
What is probably even more effective, at least for me with the way my
body responds, which probably has to do with my fiber type makeup, is
using alternating periodization, where I alternate heavy and light workouts.
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That’s great for muscle mass because you hit every type of muscle fiber, and
it’s a little easier on the joints because you unload and work maximum pump
and circulation every other workout. Some trainers like Charles Poliquin call
this “accumulation and intensification phases,” but that’s just a fancy way of
saying you’re using a heavy/light system with different rep ranges that cause
different adaptations within the muscle.
The only difference in training before competitions—when I’m more
depleted and I’ve brought the carbs down a little bit, there are fewer calories,
more cardio, I’m more tired—is that I don’t go quite as heavy. I still go as
heavy as I can. Going with light weights and high reps for burning fat—
that’s a myth. The fat loss comes from the diet and cardio. What put the
muscle there is going to keep the muscle there, but I’m using other methods
of progression: I’m using shortened rest intervals and supersets, which are
two methods of increasing density; I’m using different tempos; slowing
down the repetitions, which is increasing the time under tension; and the list
goes on and on.
Increasing resistance is one method of progressive overload, but it’s not
the only method of progression. Progressive overload is any increase in
workload above and beyond what you did in the previous workout. Right
before the contest, especially in those final weeks, increasing density and
time under tension or using set extension techniques like drop sets, are my
preferred method of progressive overload, because continuing to push
yourself to add more weight in such a depleted state could get you injured or
lead to over-training.
Jon Benson:
What is your opinion of HIT training?
Tom Venuto:
I can’t really answer that unless I know what your definition of HIT is. If
we’re talking about one set to failure, I never found that to be very effective
for muscle size for myself, and I found the promoters of these systems to be
way too dogmatic. I don’t think it was enough volume for maximum
hypertrophy. Anything can make you grow for a little while, and you have to
keep your body guessing, but in the long run, you need time under tension
and volume for maximum hypertrophy. What I did see was a pretty good
increase in my strength. In fact, every time I went on one of those programs,
by the end of the cycle, I got so strong that I began to get joint pain; the
elbows and knees were hurting, the shoulders and lower back, and so on.
I experimented with all kinds of high intensity training: the Mike Mentzer
method, the Ellington Darden workouts, the Stuart McRobert abbreviated
training workouts, full body one-set-to-failure workouts, Randall Strossen’s
Super Squats program, and I’ve done various halfway adaptations of high
157
intensity, which were kind of in the middle, like medium volume, like just
three or four sets per body part, and the Dorian Yates style of HIT. The
results were positive for a short while in terms of strength, but I always hit a
plateau fairly quickly, and always gravitated back to a volume of around
nine to 12 sets on the big muscle groups and eight or nine sets on the small
muscles.
Jon Benson:
And that’s training each body part once or twice a week?
Tom Venuto:
For bodybuilders, I like split routines with a frequency of each body part
trained once every four to seven days. Within that range, it depends on the
individual, since recovery time is one of the most individual of all the
training variables. Personally, I hit each muscle group on a four-day split,
training two days on, one off, so that each muscle group is worked once
every six days.
Jon Benson:
So that’s basically once per week. That’s very interesting, and I hope
Richard Winnett is listening to this interview, because he has written a lot of
things on AgelessAthletes.com about the difference between strength and
hypertrophy, which is, I think, what you’re talking about. I noticed myself
that on HIT training, I gained both muscle size and strength, but my muscle
size stopped at a point.
During my last training cycle when I peaked in November, I definitely
incorporated more volume, and I definitely saw more muscle size, no doubt
about it. So that’s definitely nuking the “There’s only one way to train”
theory that Mike Mentzer propagated throughout his career. Still, definitely
the strength gains are there, and many people assume that if I’m getting
stronger, I’m going to get larger, and that’s not necessarily true is what
you’re saying.
Let’s talk a little bit about dietary protocols, because I know that you lean
toward a slightly higher carbohydrate diet, but you lower carbs during a
peaking cycle. How would you go about designing a healthy, lower carb
version of your diet?
Tom Venuto:
I’m a believer more in moderation and balance. I don’t prescribe going to
either extreme: very high or very low carbs. I’ve seen people get absolutely
ripped—shredded—on very-low-carb diets, but it was like going through
torture. It’s extreme. I’ve seen people go as far as literally tuna fish and
water, and it works, of course, when you reduce the carbs that far, but there
are tradeoffs and consequences when you do anything extreme.
On the other extreme, I don’t think the very-high-carb diets are as
effective for fat loss as something that’s in the middle and more balanced.
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For cutting in a bodybuilding context, I like a diet that is very high in
protein, around 40% protein, with 40% carbs, and 20% fat. It might vary five
percent either way, so my personal approach isn’t too far off from Barry
Sears’ Zone diet, which, aside from the single macronutrient prescription for
everyone, I think is a good program. If you take what I usually do and drop
10% off the protein and add 10% on the fat, you have 40-30-30.
I also like to cycle the carbs. If I do drop the carbs lower, which for me
would be around 150 grams or 175 grams a day, I bring them back up every
fourth day, and I think that a carb cycling strategy is the key, because—after
three days down on low carbs—you need to replenish glycogen if you want
to keep training hard, keep your fat-burning hormones at a normal level,
keep your metabolism cranking, and just plain keep your head on straight.
Jon Benson:
Especially if you’re running off carbs to begin with. I know a lot of people
I’m working with who, clinically speaking, can’t handle more than 80 grams
or 100 grams of carbs a day. They just can’t do it—their triglycerides go
through the roof; their bodies are just not capable of handling that much
sugar. Myself, I simply feel better on 80–100 grams of carbs a day and I can
train just fine. My body has no problem turning protein into sugar.
So everybody has to be slightly different in their approach, but the one
good thing about increasing carbohydrate intake is that you can obviously
get more variety in your diet and you can stay on your diet longer. Nobody is
going to stay on a fish and water diet for the rest of their life, and I think
what you’re talking about is lifestyle-oriented eating and training.
Tom Venuto:
Right. I also cycle diets throughout the year. The diet I’m using in the offseason is not even close to the diet I’m using two or three weeks before a
contest. Off-season there’s much greater variety, just like you said. For
example, I’ll throw in some whole grain bread and whole grain pasta if I
want it, whereas I wouldn’t touch them before a contest. I’ll also eat nonfat
dairy products, a lot more fruit, more carbs overall, plus a couple of cheat
meals if I want them. There are no cheat meals before contests.
Off-season, my carbs might go up to half of my calories or a little more,
so after a long period of low carbs, I like to bring the carbs back in and, as
you said, its easier to stay on—it’s livable, it’s do-able. I’m a happier
camper! My off-season diet is not a diet, it’s lifestyle eating. My pre-contest
diet is a diet, if I use the definition of diet that I used in my Burn the Fat
book: The definition of a diet is an eating plan that you use temporarily and
not long term.
Jon Benson:
Have you seen any health benefits of increasing carbohydrates or any health
detriments of increasing carbohydrates in yourself or with your clients?
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Tom Venuto:
A healthy young person in a non-clinical situation isn’t going to have any
health detriments from increasing natural carbohydrates. It’s only in clinical
cases like your clients you mentioned that a high carb diet would have health
detriments, and in all cases it’s the refined carbs and sugars that are the
worst. There are a pretty good number of people with metabolic syndrome
and disorders of blood sugar and carbohydrate metabolism. The National
Institute of Health says it’s 22% of the population, but it’s higher in the
elderly and obese. Feed those people a high carb diet, and they can have
serious health problems.
When I was a teenager just starting in bodybuilding, I used a diet that was
60% carbs, 30% protein, and 10% fat, because it was what everyone else
was doing. Everybody said fat was bad and carbs were good, so I cut almost
all the fat out of my diet and carbs made up most of the calories.
I was extreme about that, actually. I was down in the single digits for
dietary fat. But I don’t think that the very-high-carb, very-low-fat diet was
detrimental to my health for me because I was young and healthy, and it
wasn’t the typical American high carb diet of white sugar and white flour. It
was all bodybuilding foods: rice, potatoes, oatmeal, yams, whole grains,
whole wheat pasta, fruits, and veggies. But I do know it know it wasn’t as
effective for getting lean and muscular, because I kept struggling to reach
that completely shredded look while maintaining my muscle size, which I
didn’t achieve until years later in my 20s when I started eating more healthy
fats and brought the carbs down a little bit.
Jon Benson:
Sure, Udo Erasmus talks about that same thing—that it’s almost biologically
impossible to burn fat efficiently unless you’ve got your dietary fat up to at
least 15% of your calories. Basically, there’s a little bit of give or take with
everybody, and one of the reasons I’m interviewing Tom for my listeners is
that, just because I do things differently or we don’t see eye to eye on
everything, there are definitely people out there who would fare very well on
this program, and I try to find people who have a very good handle on both
sides of the issue like Tom does, and more importantly, someone who lives
what he preaches. If you just go to Tom’s website, you’ll see what I’m
talking about—the guy looks great.
I’m not into following, for example, the Barry Sears approach to dieting,
because who wants to look like Barry Sears, right? I’m not trying to knock
Barry Sears, he’s a very knowledgeable guy, just trying to make a point.
Speaking of diet gurus, I mentioned Don Lemmon to you the other day in
an email about food combining, and I also know that Don subscribes to—
and even believes he invented—the High Intensity protocol, and he says
things like, “I only need two days a week and that’s all you need to train,”
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and I wanted to ask you about this... you said you train roughly five days a
week in the gym, is that right?
Tom Venuto:
Four days a week on the weights; five is the max. Cardio varies between
hardly any in the muscle-building season to every day before contests. I
don’t doubt that some people can maintain an excellent physique with two
workouts a week, especially if their diet is totally on point and those are two
killer workouts, but you have to ask whether that is a really busy person,
trying to maintain with the bare minimum possible for time efficiency
reasons, or someone who is claiming to get maximum results. There’s a big
difference between the minimum it takes to maintain and the optimum level
for maximum growth.
Jon Benson:
As far as recovery goes, do you notice times when you have to take a few
days off on that schedule, or is your recovery pretty strong?
Tom Venuto:
My recovery ability is very strong, and I’ve also gotten to know my body
inside and out. I know the right frequency for me, and I know my body’s
signals if I’m pushing too hard. I’ve gravitated into not training more than
two days in a row. When I first started out, I was very enthusiastic and I was
doing six days on and one day off, and I actually grew off that back then, but
I don’t think I’d grow off that now.
Then I moved onto three days on, one off, then four on one off, and
ultimately onto two days on, one off. I imagine that if somebody thinks
they’re a hard gainer—which is not a label you should put on yourself—but
if gains come slowly for you, then you might even go with an every other
day program. But for me, for most of my clients, and for most of the
competitive bodybuilders I know personally, the two on, one off works very
well and gives you plenty of recovery.
Recovery is not just how much time you allow between each body part,
it’s also the number of days in a row that you’re training. You have to allow
for complete systemic and nervous system recovery, not just metabolic and
individual muscle group recovery.
Jon Benson:
There are a few other things I want to ask you about and one of them is
women’s training. Quite a few of my clients and readers are female, and
often they feel left out as soon as we start talking about bodybuilding.
For example, when my girlfriend wanted to get into weight training and I
told her she was going to be bodybuilding, she said, “No, I just want to
tone.” Well, there’s no such thing as toning, and that’s something I read
about in your Burn the Fat book, which is funny, because you and I wrote
about a lot of the same things before we even knew each other.
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I definitely subscribe to the idea that you can either build muscle or lose
muscle, but there is no in between or gray area, so tell me how you go about
training women. Is it different than men, or is it pretty much the same?
Tom Venuto:
It’s pretty much the same, relatively speaking. Most women can’t gain
muscle easily because they lack the testosterone that contributes so much to
muscle bulk. It’s hard enough for us guys who want to gain muscle.
But I have known women who gained muscle very easily and they swore
that, for example, their legs got too big if they squatted heavy. If that’s true,
that’s what you call a mesomorph body type, which is the type of person
who genetically gains muscle easily.
I do train people differently based on body type—such as whether they
are endomorph, mesomorph, or ectomorph. I also train people differently
based on their goals—such as whether they want muscle mass, weight loss,
or athletic performance and so on. But if a woman and a man have the same
goals and same body type and neither one has any orthopedic problems, then
I would train them the same.
With the mesomorph female who doesn’t want a bodybuilder physique, I
might have her go ahead and use less weight and do higher reps, or instead
of using heavier weights for progressive overload, I’d use shorter rest
intervals and train her very quickly, with supersets, tri-sets, or circuits.
Jon Benson:
Still with progressive overload in mind?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, definitely. Even on circuit training, high density training or superset
training, each workout still builds on the previous one.
Jon Benson:
Exactly. For women like my girlfriend who is five feet two inches, 110
pounds, very ectomorph body type, you don’t have anything to fear, like
turning into Arnold Schwarzenegger overnight. But there’s that fear of “I’m
going to wake up one morning and all of a sudden have 15-inch arms, and
I’ll hate myself,” and I try to break them away from that to get them to train
so there’s enough muscle there to burn the calories to get rid of the body fat,
which is what they want.
Next, stubborn body fat. A lot of people have trouble with this, including
myself. I’ve had pockets of stubborn fat from being obese at one time, and
your prescription for that is simply to do the amount of cardio necessary
until you see the stuff go away, am I pretty much hitting that on the nose?
Tom Venuto:
162 Tom Venuto
Yes, in combination with the weight training and nutrition, which may
include dropping the carbs lower and cycling the carbs.
The Fat Burn Files
There has been an interesting shift in opinion on this topic by a number of
experts in recent years. More and more exercise scientists and nutritionists
are now pointing out that fat cells are not just fat storage depots, they are
endocrine glands with various types of receptors that are in communication
with the rest of the body. Because of that, there may be a hormonal influence
on how and where you store body fat. For example, we now know for certain
that intra-abdominal body fat is correlated to insulin resistance and cortisol.
It’s also highly correlated to disease risk.
I have an open mind and have paid attention to developments in this
subject, but I still think it’s pointless to try to focus on spot reduction of
stubborn fat because the same things that will reduce abdominal fat are the
same things that reduce overall fat and improve overall health. Get your
nutrition and training in order, and your hormonal and health situation will
improve. Proper nutrition and diet will improve insulin sensitivity. Proper
rest and recovery cycles will reduce cortisol. You don’t need the latest spot
reduction wonder—whatever that is—whether its topical fat loss gels or
special herbs or anti-cortisol pills or whatever. The stubborn fat will go, it
will just be the last to go. Nothing special there, just persistence. Keep at it
till the fat is gone, and make sure you don’t screw up before then by starving
yourself and getting yourself stuck with ten pounds still clinging to your
lower abs and you have a dead metabolism.
I like the swimming pool analogy. When you drain an in ground
swimming pool, the deep end will drain, but it will be the last part of the
pool to drain. No matter how much you protest, you can’t get the deep end to
drain before the shallow end. Gravity doesn’t work that way. Think of your
lower abdominal and other stubborn fat areas like the deep end of an in
ground swimming pool.
You also can’t forget about the effect that cardio and weight training has.
Exercise not only burns calories and burns body fat, it’s especially effective
at improving insulin sensitivity. According to the National Strength and
Conditioning Association, exercise is the first line of treatment for metabolic
syndrome. Training more quickly in the 10-rep range with short rest
intervals may also help fat loss by increasing lactic acid and growth hormone
release. Compound exercises, especially things like high rep squats, can also
have a major influence on your hormones and your metabolism.
Jon Benson:
I know Randall Strossen wrote a book on that: 20-rep squats, breathing
squats, they used to call them. Are you referring to breathing squats where
you take a weight you would normally do ten reps and you force 20?
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Tom Venuto:
Not necessarily. I was referring to high rep compound exercises as a way to
increase fat loss with your weight training. The Super Squats program is a
different animal altogether.
Jon Benson:
Tell us a little bit about your Burn the Fat program and how our listeners
can learn more about it.
Tom Venuto:
Sure. In 2002, after about two years of writing and rewriting of my old
personal coaching program manual, I finally combined all my training,
nutrition, motivation, and goal-setting philosophies into a single standalone
book, and even though it took two years to get it on paper, it’s really the
culmination of everything I’ve learned and read and studied for the last 15
years. It’s 340 pages, and it’s so complete it’s really more like four books in
one because it covers motivation, nutrition, cardio, and weight training for
fat loss. The best way to get information about it is to go to the Burn the Fat
website at www.BurnTheFat.com.
Jon Benson:
Lastly, stats. What are your physical measurements and stats, because people
see your pictures and see that you’re super ripped but wonder if you weigh
250 pounds or 150 pounds?
Tom Venuto:
Actually, most people who see me in person after only seeing my pictures
say, “I thought you were taller!” No “vertically challenged” jokes, please;
five feet eight inches isn’t that short. My weight fluctuates. Off-season I can
go as high as 200–205 pounds, and when I compete, I’m a middleweight, so
I drop all the way down to 176, although that stage weight is a little
dehydrated, so I’m really more like 182–185 a week or two before the
contest, then I do the usual insanity to make the weight class. I don’t do
measurements, haven’t in years, so couldn’t tell you.
Jon Benson:
I’m curious. In the off-season with that body weight, are we still seeing those
abs that we see in the picture on your web page?
Tom Venuto:
Well, almost! I like to keep my body fat in the single digits, so the abs are
always there, but are they shredded like in that picture? Not exactly. Let’s
say they’re visible but slightly blurry. My best, really lean bodyweight is
probably in the neighborhood of 194–197, but I have a pretty high
endomorph component, and it’s a challenge for me to stay totally ripped and
put on maximum mass at the same time, so I really don’t mind getting
heavier as long as there’s at least some sign of abs!
Jon Benson:
Well, single digits is still awfully lean. Thanks for all your time today. You
shared some great information, Tom. Thanks again.
164 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
About Tom Venuto
About Jon Benson
Jon Benson is an internationally recognized Transformation
Lifecoach, specializing in mental strategies for the excellence
lifestyle, fat-burning nutrition, and physical fitness. He is living
proof of his methods, as a mere seven years ago he was clinically
obese and near death. Jon’s 48-week audio and one-on-one ecoaching program, the M-Power Series, has won him critical
acclaim in publications such as Shawn Phillips’ Real Solutions,
Master Trainer Magazine, and in paralympian motivational
speaker Kevin Saunder’s book, A Nation at War.
Jon is the creator and co-author (with Tom Venuto) of the
bestselling ebook, Fit Over 40; Role Models for Excellence at
Any Age, an ebook that profiles 50 real life role models who have
transformed their bodies at various ages, ranging from age 40 to
80. Jon studied nutrition at The Cooper Clinic, and is currently
working on completing his masters degree in nutritional science.
You can learn more about Fit Over 40 and M-Power at
www.FitOver40.com and www.MPowerSeries.com.
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The Fat Burn Files
Overcoming Fat-Loss and
Muscle-Building Challenges
Mike Shimon Interviews Tom Venuto
Mike Shimon:
Hello, this is Choose To Be Fit. My name is Mike Shimon and it’s another
wonderful day here in radio land, or Internet radio land. Very quickly, my
website is www.ChooseToBeFit.com, and today I have a very special guest
returning for the second time. His name is Tom Venuto.
Tom is the author of a phenomenal book that’s had great success, called
Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, or BFFM, or Burn the Fat for short. He has
a lot of other fun, interesting, and challenging opportunities coming up this
year, which he will discuss with us. Tom, welcome to the show.
Tom Venuto:
Thanks for having me back, Mike.
Mike Shimon:
My pleasure. All right, one of the things that I wanted to talk about was your
return to bodybuilding competition, and last year you competed again and
blogged your progress along the way. First of all, what was your feeling
about the competition?
Tom Venuto:
It was great to be back on stage, because it was my first competition in three
years. I never stopped training of course, because to me, bodybuilding is a
lifestyle, not just a sport. I can’t imagine going weeks without training, let
alone months or years, but on the competition side of things, I had hung up
the posing trunks for three years. Getting back into it made me realize how
much I missed it and how much I need to compete to feel fulfilled and to
become my best. It was definitely a learning experience going through the
contest, dieting and training again after not having done it for 36 months.
Mike Shimon:
What did you learn this time? How was this one different than from other
two dozen or so contests you’ve done, or what had changed in the three-year
span, whether from the judging standpoint or just from your training or your
mental outlook?
Tom Venuto:
One thing I learned is that, if you want to be a top competitor or the best you
can be, you have to stay in the game. You have to compete. Sometimes in
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Overcoming Fat-Loss and Muscle-Building Challenges
life we have to juggle and rearrange priorities where certain things in life
might go above sports or competition, as it well should be. But you’ve got to
stay on top of your game, and competition is an important part of that.
There’s a huge difference between bodybuilding for recreation, fitness,
health, or enjoyment and bodybuilding to compete and win. You have to
make sacrifices if you want to be a champion bodybuilder—even a
successful amateur bodybuilder—just as you do if you want to be at the top
of any field. Consistency in training and nutrition is one thing, but
consistency in competing is a major factor. Most of the top physique athletes
are competing every year, and even multiple times per year in order to stay
on top of their games.
What was different this time after three years absence from competing, is
that it was definitely more of a challenge to peak and get the timing right. It
was probably a bigger challenge to hit top peak shape this year, right on time
for the show, than ever before. The only exception I can think of was my
very first competition, because when you compete for the very first time,
there’s a lot of unknowns and you’re nervous and uncertain because you’ve
never peaked before. After you’ve competed once, you know you can peak
again, it’s just a matter of nailing the timing and, hopefully, improving on
your best previous condition.
Having not been on stage for three years, it was harder to time the peak,
or you could say it took a little longer. I even decided to bump the first
contest date and wait two weeks for a different show to give me more time to
fine tune. When you compete every year or multiple times in a year, you stay
more in tune with your body, for sure.
That experience this year made me refocus on staying in it and competing
every year. I think that pushing yourself through the contest experience,
hitting your peak, getting onstage next to competitors and being judged are
an important part of becoming your best. If you don’t have that kind of
contest goal, there’s no way you’re going to train as hard. No way.
Mike Shimon:
Did you find that it took longer for your body to respond than it did three
years ago? In other words, did getting three years older have an impact?
Tom Venuto:
It did take longer to reach my peak, but you could look at that a couple of
different ways. Was fat loss slower because I am older, or was it because I
didn’t start my diet early enough for my condition after a three-year layoff? I
think I just lost touch with the timing a little bit from not being onstage in a
few years.
There are plenty of ripped bodybuilders in their 40s and 50s and beyond,
and I’m only in my 30s. It wasn’t an age issue; it was just timing and
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The Fat Burn Files
bringing it in for a landing on time. Imagine peaking for contest day being
like landing a plane on a tiny island runway strip in the middle of the ocean.
Land too early, you splash down in the ocean. Land too late, and again, you
get wet. Timing is everything.
I also may have just let myself gain too much body fat after three years,
too. It creeps. It creeps up on all of us, bodybuilders included. When I started
my contest prep this time, I had my body fat measured at 10.8% and that was
after two weeks of dieting. That’s low for most people. In fact, that’s a long
term goal percentage for many people, but for my standards as a competitive
bodybuilder, it was higher than I would like to be in the off season, and it
was probably as a result of not competing in three years. You simply don’t
demand as much of yourself when you’re not thinking about the next
contest.
You shouldn’t expect to stay ripped all year round, but the farther you get
off from contest condition, then the more work you’re going to have to do to
get lean. If you’re coming down from 11% or 12% body fat to 4% body fat,
obviously that’s more work than coming down from 8% or 9% to 4%, and
the difference in terms of prep time and effort is more substantial than you
might think.
Mike Shimon:
What was it like having the blog, writing and sharing the contest experience
with other people—letting them into your inner sanctum?
Tom Venuto:
Journaling my training on the www.BodybuildingSecrets.com blog was
fantastic. I blogged almost 100% of my workouts, so it was time consuming,
but it was fun—a labor of love, you could say. I didn’t even know what a
blog was until about a year and a half ago. Being that I’m an Internet
publisher, I kept hearing about them all the time. I kept asking, “What the
heck is a blog? I mean, why would you want a blog—it’s just another
website... what’s so special about it?”
What I learned is that a blog is a search engine-friendly, website
publishing and content management software tool that basically amounts to
being an online journal. For me, it was a way of sharing my experience with
other people and being of service to other people, and that’s something I
really enjoy doing. But beyond that, for my own benefit, it gave me an
accountability factor.
The site had a lot of traffic. A lot of people were logging in to see how my
diet and training were going. I knew a lot of people were going to be reading
and following along with my progress, and I had promised that I would post
my pictures. I think that kept me on my toes and made me push a little bit
harder. That’s one of the reasons I also work with a trainer sometimes, too,
171
even though I’m completely capable of training myself, because that keeps
you on your toes, also, as an accountability factor. You push yourself harder
with someone looking over your shoulder and barking, “Three more reps!”
The blog added yet another level of accountability.
I think anybody who has a personal blog on the Internet now who’s
logging in their fitness journey, knows what I mean. I know many people are
following my Burn the Fat program, and many of them journal or blog their
progress online. It’s easy to do, and it’s cheaper than ever. In fact, you can go
to a place like blogspot.com if you don’t have your own site, or you can
install WordPress on your own site to get a blog totally free if you don’t want
to pay for software or license fees. A blog definitely adds accountability—
especially if you post your pictures—and it’s a great way to share your
experience with other people and help motivate other people.
Mike Shimon:
Excellent. I want to ask you, what are the standouts or the things that you
remember most about the feedback from your readers while you were
blogging? I’m really curious to know what those are.
Tom Venuto:
Aside from the people who just said my blog entries motivated them, one
thing I was surprised about is the number of really serious, or I guess the
word would be, “hardcore,” bodybuilders who had logged in, printed out my
workouts, and then tried them for themselves.
In the beginning, I put up a disclaimer because I didn’t know who was
going to be reading this blog. It was a different kind of project compared to
other things that I’ve done on the Net. I’ve been talking to large masses of
people about weight loss and general health and fitness, and now I’m
revealing to the public this new side of me, the very serious hardcore
bodybuilder side. So I put up a disclaimer that said, “This isn’t training
advice. This is just me journaling and sharing my own personal workouts,
and I train very, very intensely, so don’t try this at home!”
Well, it turns out that my audience at the Bodybuilding Secrets website
consisted of a lot of serious bodybuilders, and many of them did try my
workouts. Then they came back on the blog and posted comments. They
said, “Wow! I can’t believe these workouts. How come I’ve never heard of
these techniques before? These are the best workouts and best results I’ve
ever gotten.”
Mike Shimon:
For somebody hearing this today for the first time, if they wanted to go back
and see all your workouts, is the blog still up?
Tom Venuto:
They’re all archived. There’s about five months worth of training. This year,
I have not been blogging all my workouts. I’m probably going to put in one
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The Fat Burn Files
or two of my workouts each week this year, and some informational articles
along with a new interview series I’m planning.
Last year, I literally logged almost every workout. That was the
commitment I made and I followed through on it. I planned my whole
training schedule in writing four months in advance. I had literally written
every single workout I was going to do. There were changes along the way,
of course, and I never had a clue what kind of “torture” my friend and trainer
Richie Smyth was going to put me through until each day we met—that’s
how he operates—with the shock, surprise, and muscle confusion method,
but all my own workouts were scheduled on a calendar, and I followed
through. I don’t think I missed more than two or three days of blog posts. It’s
all logged on the site at www.BodybuildingSecrets.com.
Mike Shimon:
In terms of this last round of training, or let’s say just in the last year, in
general, what are you doing differently than you were doing in previous
years? Let’s break it down. First the workouts.
Tom Venuto:
I did have my share of challenges to work around. Many years ago, I
ruptured the fourth lumbar disc in my lower back. It was pretty severe, to the
point that a neurosurgeon told me I could forget about bodybuilding. “You
should never lift more than 40 pounds.” Those were his exact words. I saw
other specialists. I made my rounds through all the chiropractors,
orthopedics, exercise specialists, and neurosurgeons. Some specialists told
me, “No, you don’t need to stop lifting. You can still work out, but I would
recommend you never squat, row, deadlift, or do anything that puts your
back at risk.” I listened to what they were saying, but I never accepted that I
wouldn’t be able to bodybuild anymore. I’d heard of too many people who
had overcome far worse to believe that.
I always remember the story of Dr. Judd Biasiotto, who was an elite drugfree powerlifter, who blew his back out and had major lower back surgery.
Afterward, he went on to squat 600 pounds drug-free at a body weight of
132. Pound for pound, that is one of the greatest feats of physical strength in
powerlifting history, but when you consider that his lift was done after the
injury, it hits home that his achievement was nothing short of other-worldly.
It took incredible mental as well as physical strength, and Judd talks about
his experiences in many of his books like Search for Greatness, 2001: A
Sports Odyssey, and Hypnotize Me and Make Me Great.
Dr. Judd is a sports psychologist who made a career of studying hypnosis
and the power of the mind for many years. I wasn’t there and I don’t know
Dr. Judd personally, but from what I’ve read about him, I can almost
guarantee you that as they were wheeling him into the operating room, he
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was already thinking about his complete recovery and seeing himself
training for and breaking the record.
So I resolved that I was going to get through it. I did rehabilitate myself
almost completely, but to this day I have to be careful, even though it’s an
old injury. I found that I had to be a lot smarter in my training, because I did
experience some back pain again last summer and had to modify my training
to work around that.
I also had to make training adjustments because of my pec. In the summer
of 2004, I partially tore my left pec. I guess you could say it was minor, but it
was serious enough that you could see a slight physical indentation in the
pec. I had to skip a few chest workouts and then train light for quite a few
weeks afterward. If you look at the 2005 competition photos of me when I’m
flexed into the most muscular, you can see the tear. Nice reminder.
I was a guy who was doing 315-pound benches for six reps, 125-pound
incline dumbbell presses for sets of six, and 70–80-pound dumbbell flyes. I
wouldn’t want to even attempt close to those weights right now. I had to
adjust my training to work around it. For example, I can still do flyes, but I’ll
take 45- or 50-pound dumbbells and just slow down my tempo or shorten the
rest intervals, avoid deep range of motion, or superset the flyes with another
exercise. I made these training changes successfully, but it was a very
different way of training than before. I wasn’t doing the really heavy training
that I used to.
Mike Shimon:
I’ve had people, who got your book and belong to the Burn the Fat
discussion group ask me, “I have back problems too. What should I do?”
And I say, “Why don’t you email Tom or find out what he did, because he
had the same thing.”
I realize you’re not a doctor, but when you say, “Modify your training,”
can you give some more specifics? One thing I’m assuming right out of the
gate, that would be ground level is, don’t jerk the weights against that
muscle grouping. Beyond that, what kind of modifications did you
specifically do?
Tom Venuto:
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That’s correct. Tempo is a major variable I manipulate. Although quick
movements like power cleans and so on are perfectly safe in a trained and
healthy athlete and actually the right way for a lot of power and speed
athletes to train, for someone in my situation—a bodybuilder working
around an injury—you wouldn’t want to jerk the weight, bounce out of the
bottom of an exercise, or use ballistic movements. Strength coaches for
athletes often say, “Train slow, get slow,” but that advice is not necessarily
aimed at bodybuilders.
The Fat Burn Files
When you decrease your rep speed, you are increasing your time under
tension while decreasing the load required to get a muscle growth effect. It’s
also a new stimulus if you are unaccustomed to slower tempos, and any new
stimulus is good for growth. Some people only think of changing their
exercises when it comes time for a program change, but you can also stay
with the same exercise and change tempo and rep ranges.
There are also ways you can manipulate mechanical advantage and
remove momentum to make an exercise harder with less weight. By harder, I
mean more stress directly on the muscle group that you want to grow. Heavy
training is necessary to a degree, and there is a correlation between strength
and muscle size, but the idea that you always must train as heavy as possible
to gain muscle is wrong. You can get great muscle growth and, in some
cases, better muscle growth with less weight and a few changes in form and,
in my situation, that’s exactly what I do.
I’ve squatted 405 for sets of four to six many years ago, and 365 for eight
to 10 reps as recently as a few years ago, but I just don’t see the need to do
that anymore when I can take 275 or 245 or even 225 and use supersets,
tempo training, or constant tension training, or high density training, or high
rep rest/pause training and get the same or better muscle growth without as
much risk to my lower back.
In a word, the exercises have to become stricter—not only in terms of
perfect, biomechanically correct form—but in actually making the exercise
harder to do with less weight, whether that’s with changes in leverage or
changes in tempo or whatever. For example, if heavy squats are out, then I
might squat a much lighter weight using a slower tempo of four seconds
down, three seconds up, and only come up three-quarters of the way to keep
constant tension. With that technique, you could cut your weight by 30–40%
or more and still get great growth while putting less compressive force on
your spine. I guarantee you’ll also find that type of workout very challenging
and maybe even harder than your heavy weight, low rep sets because of the
metabolic demands versus simply neural demands.
These types of high tension workouts are great for muscle hypertrophy,
but not as ideal for strength. But me, I’m not a strength athlete, I’m a
physique athlete—big difference there! I’m not a football player or sprinter
or a power lifter or an Olympic lifter, where speed or absolute strength is the
most important factor. I’m training for cosmetic effect, and I only need
strength to the degree that it helps me build more muscle mass and achieve
my bodybuilding goals. So the changes in my training didn’t hurt me, they
probably helped me.
The choice of exercises, I definitely had to change. I squat when I can,
although sometimes against my better judgment, I must admit. I have to be
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careful when I squat. It takes impeccable form. The minute your form breaks
on an exercise like the squat, especially under heavy loads, the stress goes
right off the target muscle and can go straight to your lower back and spine
or knees, whatever the case may be. You have to be very careful, and you
should definitely consult your doctor about it if you have back pain.
One thing I did was a lot of front squats, where you hold the bar on the
front of the shoulders and that lets you keep your torso more upright. I front
squat much more often than I back squat. There have been times that I don’t
squat at all, when I need to unload my spine for a while and I’ll work on all
kinds of lunge, split squat, or step-up variations along with leg extensions,
leg presses, and hack squats. Along the same lines, I could not deadlift. I
couldn’t do heavy bent over barbell rows, but I found I could do rows with a
modification. I used a Smith machine, pitched my body at a higher angle,
and used a reverse grip. That let a lot of strain off my lower back.
I also had to do some rehabilitative work. There were specific
strengthening exercises for the lower back and the core. These weren’t
bodybuilding exercises, but were more rehabilitative. For example, working
the spinal stabilizers with supermans, prone cobras, or horse stance
exercises, and then moving into the reverse hyperextension machine, which
is phenomenal. I did a lot of those reverse hypers in addition to lower back
extensions. A lot of people with back pain have weak lower back muscles
and lack the strength to stabilize the spine under a load. My friend David
Grisaffi has a great book called Firm and Flatten Your Abs that shows a lot
of these exercises. It’s an ab training book, but it includes a lot of exercises
for the core and lower back as well.
One of the things that I found that has been the most important to me is
flexibility. I’ve always been a guy who hated stretching, to the point that I’m
always joking around about it with the guys in the gym. I’d say, “Stretching
is for girls.” I’m just joking about that, of course, but the truth is, I really
never liked stretching, but I have to do it and do it daily. When I do it
religiously, I would have to say that one single factor made the biggest
improvement in pain relief. I think a lot of back pain can be caused by tight
muscles and also imbalances between muscle groups, not just in strength,
but in flexibility.
You know, I even found it interesting, hearing the reports in the media
this year about how yoga was a good way to relieve back pain. I’m sure it
has a lot to do with not only the exercises, but also the flexibility work that’s
involved.
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Mike Shimon:
Right. As a matter of fact, Ian King made a strong point in our interview. He
felt that stretching was under-rated and that a lot of people just downplayed
it, but really needed to pay more attention to stretching.
Tom Venuto:
I agree with Ian. Ian is a great resource for regular people as well as fitness
professionals, and I really like Ian’s common sense advice that sometimes
goes against the trends because, in the fitness training community, there is a
lot of debate and different opinions about the value of stretching, and there
have been some changes in recommendations over the past years. Like, for
example, that you should not do static stretching before you lift, because it’s
going to decrease your strength and that static stretching should only be done
afterward. There’s also controversy about the value of stretching overall for
injury prevention, but as far as I’m concerned, stretching for injury
prevention purposes, is an absolute must, especially if you have lower back
pain.
Mike Shimon:
Right. Okay, how about your nutrition. Did you eat differently going into
this competition than you did in any of the other ones?
Tom Venuto:
My nutrition was mostly the same as it was for every other contest. I’m very
consistent there. If anything was different with my nutrition this time, it was
that I started out more conservatively. I was eating a lot more food and still
losing fat in the beginning, but toward the end, time was running out and I
didn’t feel like I was on schedule, so I cut down the calories, dropped down
the carbs, and really tightened it up to lose fat faster.
Initially, I dropped carbs to about 175–200 grams on my low days, and
then I went even lower at one point only for a couple of three-day low carb
cycles, which I would say was probably a mistake for me because I’m not a
low carb responsive type, I’m more of a balanced mixed type, but when the
pressure was on, I felt that I had to crank things up at the end as I ran out of
time. When you’re working with a deadline, you have to peak on the day of
the competition and like I said earlier, timing is everything.
Mike Shimon:
Sure. I have some questions that were sent in by email from some people
that are a part of your Burn the Fat community. The first one is, “What’s
your take on food combining diets? Specifically, what research has been
done in support of, or what research exists that denies the validity of, the
claims of these diets?”
Tom Venuto:
That’s something that I cover step by step in detail in my book, in chapter 8,
which is all about macronutrient ratios. What bothers me is not that there’s
no validity behind food combining for any reason, but the claims being made
about the benefits. For example, some proponents say that food combining is
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the ideal way to lose body fat or gain muscle. I doubt you’re going to find
any scientific support for that statement.
On the other hand, many people say there is benefit in separating certain
foods or combining certain foods in order to prevent digestive or
gastrointestinal problems from eating protein and carbs together. But if you
look at the research from a body composition improvement standpoint—by
that I mean both losing fat and gaining muscle—you want to take in lean
protein at every single meal and space the feedings about three hours apart.
There are different definitions of food combining, but one implication is
that you won’t be eating lean proteins with every single meal because they
supposedly don’t combine properly with other foods, so you have to separate
them. The problem with that is, unless you eat lean protein at every meal,
you’re not going to maximize body composition improvement. I’m not
saying you can’t gain any muscle that way, only that you won’t be gaining
maximum muscle. That’s also not to say you can’t lose fat either, because
losing body fat can be achieved on any diet where the calories are in a
deficit. If you’re looking for maximum results, and if you don’t have
digestion problems that you know for certain that separating certain foods
will remedy, then I would recommend that you eat protein and carbs
together.
One perspective on food combining that I found really interesting I heard
during a lecture given by Paul Chek. He made a really good point on this
subject. He said that if you eat carbs and proteins together and get digestive
problems as a result, instead of separating them, maybe you should consider
the reasons why you are having digestive problems in the first place.
Consider that they might be solved with proper food choices, eating small
meals frequently, avoiding chemicals, toxins, and alcohol, reducing stress,
and avoiding certain foods altogether if you suspect you may be intolerant or
allergic to them. Some of the most common allergenic foods are wheat or
gluten, dairy, corn, peanuts, and shellfish, to name a few. So you should ask
yourself, is separating all your proteins and carbs really removing the cause,
or is it treating a symptom of poor digestion that is being caused by
something different altogether? Could removing one offending food do the
trick?
Mike Shimon:
You basically covered my next question. Somebody wanted to know about
mixing proteins and carbs, but they also wanted to know how long you
recommend staying at certain nutrition ratios before deciding it isn’t
working, or it’s peaked, and then shifting the ratios?
Tom Venuto:
Part of choosing and adjusting nutrient ratios depends on your level of carb
sensitivity, or call it metabolic type if you prefer, and part of it depends on
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your goal at the moment. For most people, I’m in favor of a slight reduction
in carbs, with more lean proteins and healthy fats, when your goal changes
from muscle gain or maintenance to maximum fat loss. The refined carbs
and simple sugars definitely get cut, but even the grains and starchy carbs
that most people consider healthy foods might also get reduced on fat loss
programs.
You also must be aware of your individual level of carbohydrate tolerance
and do some kind of assessment in the beginning to help you with your
starting point. If you’re carb intolerant, you’ll eat fewer starches, grains, and
simple carbs across the board. Insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome are
becoming much more widespread. Part of metabolic syndrome is the
inability of your body to efficiently process sugar, the excess secretion of
insulin and a group of risk factors that comes along with that, which includes
abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides,
high fasting blood glucose.
If you have those symptoms, then you may have metabolic syndrome and
you may be carb sensitive. In that case, you’re going to adjust your ratios
and pull your carbs down more than other people. I think just about anybody
would benefit from a slight reduction in carbs during a fat loss program, just
because it improves insulin management and enhances metabolic rate from
the higher thermic effect of food.
I prefer to start with a baseline nutrition program that’s very balanced
with plenty of natural carbs—50% or 55% for anyone who is carb tolerant.
From there, you can drop down your carbs gradually as you progress into
your fat loss program. That’s not the most common way to do it, because it’s
the slow, patient way to do it. When it comes to fat loss, who’s got patience,
right? Well, we should all have a little more because it’s also the sensible,
healthy, intelligent way to do it, in my opinion.
Most people want instant gratification and that’s why there are so many
strict low calorie and extremely low carb diets that have an induction phase.
The way I see it, an induction phase is the same as saying, “Don’t do it the
slow steady way, let’s kick start you and immediately slash your ratios from
high carb to almost no carbs in one fell swoop. It will be good for your
motivation when all that weight comes off in just the first week.”
On the extreme end of that sentiment, you have Atkins, which has a 20
gram induction phase and then slightly higher—somewhere around 70
grams if I’m not mistaken—for the ongoing weight loss phase. Then you can
bring your carbs back in after you reach your goal. On a program like that,
you just slash your carbs right from day one. It gives you the instant
gratification and you get the 8- or 10- or even 15-pound drop on a scale in a
couple of weeks. But of course, a lot of that is water and glycogen. It’s not
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body fat, and the long term success rate of extremely low carb diets is no
better than any other diet after 12 months.
I’m much more in favor of starting with a balanced baseline diet and
bringing the carbs down gradually. You’ll tend to find a point where fat loss
really kicks in, and you stay at that level, or stay at that level with occasional
re-feeds, then bring your carbs back up to a maintenance level after you
reach your goal.
Mike Shimon:
Tom, to continue in this thread, one of the recurring questions that I’ve read
on the Burn the Fat discussion group site was when people are trying to
decide their ratios. Should they be eating 40-40-30 like The Zone diet, or 4040-20 like Body for Life, or 50% carbs like your baseline diet, or whatever
the ratio is. What should someone do with their ratios if they’re confused
about it?
Tom Venuto:
First of all, I would say that if you’re confused about this, then boil the
whole thing down to its simplest essence. Take a step back and make sure
you can see the big picture. Be sure you have your fundamentals covered
before you start nitpicking and obsessing over every percentage point.
For anyone who doesn’t know what a macronutrient is, there are three of
them and they are simply protein, carbohydrates, and fat. When we talk
about macronutrient ratios, we’re just referring to the percentage of each
macronutrient relative to your total caloric intake. What percentage of
protein? What percentage of carbs? What percentage of fat?
When you talk about these ratios, you may be referring to those totals for
an entire day or for one particular meal. This idea really got popular when
Barry Sears came out with his book The Zone, because the whole program is
based on 40-30-30, meaning 40% carbs, 30% protein, and 30% fat. The
entire program is based on a ratio, and it’s a good ratio. If you want to say
it’s flawed, it’s only flawed in the sense that it’s a program that prescribes the
same ratio for everybody, but it’s balanced, which makes sense.
I recommend you choose a baseline first, and choose that baseline based
on what you know about your body type and based on your goals. If you’re
carb tolerant, you might start with 50% carbs, 30% protein, and 20% fat,
which is the baseline for my Burn the Fat program. After you’ve
established a baseline, it does pay to fine-tune it further and find out what
works best for you, and that’s where it might start to get confusing because
experts bicker back and forth over which is the right way to do it.
There are experts that say the right ratios should be 60-30-10. That was a
very popular bodybuilding diet for many years with 60% carbs, 30% protein,
and only 10% fat. Some people went even further into higher carbs. For
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example, the Pritikin diet was very high carbs—around 70% of total
calories.
Then all the way on the other end, you have Atkins and ketogenic diets
with very low carbs, high protein and fat. I don’t think a ratio is even
mentioned, but the carb ratio is very low, maybe around 10 or 15% of total
calories. Some ketogenic diets are almost zero carbs. Some people think
those diets are high protein, but they’re really more high fat than they are
high protein.
These opposite approaches, all from respected experts, have created a lot
of confusion. If you get confused with the subject of nutrient ratios and
percentages, even after reading a book like my Burn the Fat, Feed the
Muscle, step back and boil it down to the essence. The essence is, pick a
starting point based on a balanced diet with a lean protein and a natural carb
with every meal. That idea was made popular by Bill Phillips in Body for
Life. You have to hand it to him for simplifying this whole macronutrient
issue down to its most basic level. He did in fact mention a specific ratio of
40-40-20, but the basic concept was: Eat a portion of lean protein and a
portion of carbs at each meal. Period. That’s it. What could be simpler and
easier to understand?
So, for example, you can pick chicken breast as your protein, and then
you can choose an all-natural carb such as brown rice and veggies, and you
can put the chicken and rice together, whether its plain or with whatever
seasoning or spices or in whatever healthy recipe you want, and then you can
call that a complete fat-burning, muscle-building meal. If you don’t want to
get more exacting with calorie counting and number crunching, fine. Just
putting lean protein and natural carbs together like this is a good start, and
the most important thing is to get started.
On the other hand, I do think it pays for everybody, at least in the very
beginning of a fat loss program, to do some menu planning, and a part of
planning is number crunching. So the next level for you—and this is a part
of what Burn the Fat is about—is to stop guessing at portions and get
precise about your nutrition. Being precise means going to the next level by
creating menus and crunching numbers and then fine-tuning those numbers
according to results as you go along. This is a process that enables you to
become one of the most educated people in the world when it comes to
nutrition, not to mention really understanding your own body and how it
responds to various combinations of food
Having a menu on paper gives you a goal, too, because you have a real
menu that you can physically have in your hand and tape up on your
refrigerator instead of only having vague nutrition concepts in your head.
The menu really helps you focus. You can use a spreadsheet or you can use
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software, and then you can crunch the numbers and see exactly what your
ratios are, and you can begin to experiment with the different ratios based on
your goals.
Once you have that starting point, then you can tweak it, if necessary, as
you go. If your goal is serious fat loss, you might pull your ratio of carbs
down, but also remember to consider your activity when you’re thinking
about how many carbs to eat. If you’re extremely active, you’re going to
need your carbs. If you’re an athlete with a high energy expenditure, then
you might push your carbs up higher.
Any time, if you ever have any confusion, just go back to fundamentals.
Forget about the fine-tuning and tweaking until you’ve mastered this
concept: Eat a protein portion and a carb portion with every meal, with a
small amount of good fat mixed in, and focus on learning which protein,
carb, and fat foods to choose.
Mike Shimon:
Okay, it is pretty simple when you look at it that way. Another thing that I
hear people struggle with a lot are body fat measurements, whether you’re
using calipers, or you’re using a body fat scale or whatever. What would you
say to help those people get started?
Tom Venuto:
There is definitely a learning curve with body fat testing. It takes a little
effort, but it’s worth the effort to get that kind of data on lean body mass
versus fat tissue. Some people will use a skinfold caliper like an AccuMeasure or Fat Track a couple of times and get inconsistent readings and
then say, “Oh, this doesn’t work.” Well, learning how to do anything takes a
little effort and practice.
Even fitness professionals go through a learning phase. When I took my
first certification many years ago from the American College of Sports
Medicine, I went to a week-long workshop in Long Island, and we did a
session on body composition testing. I remember very clearly that the
instructor said, “For you to reach expert proficiency in body fat testing, you
have to do at least 100 tests.” That’s a lot of practice. I think you can pick up
the self-testing methods much quicker than that, but don’t get discouraged if
you don’t get it right on the first try.
If you’re doing your testing at home, you can invest in one of the AccuMeasure calipers, where you do a simple pinch test on yourself at one hip.
It’s a very simple test, although there’s a learning curve on that too, just like
there is for a multiple site skinfold test.
I recommend you use your body fat tests as a tool for charting your
progress from one measurement to the next and don’t get too hung up on the
accuracy of the number as much as the difference from one reading to the
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next. That’s what testing is for—progress charting and, for charting progress,
you need consistency more than accuracy.
If you wanted the absolute most accurate measurement, you could get
magnetic resonance imaging or DEXA scans or all kinds of really high tech
stuff. There is technology right now where you can literally tell if your left
arm has more fat than your right arm, and you can find out truly what your
body fat really is. But who cares? That’s not what matters.
The purpose of body fat testing is to get feedback and chart your progress.
It’s to see where you are now compared to where you were. So what’s more
important than accuracy is consistency. To be consistent, practice your
technique. If you’re testing yourself, use the same tester. If someone else is
testing you, use the same testing method every time. For example, don’t get
a bod pod test this week, then a seven site skinfold test next week, then
underwater weighing the next week, and so on. Those measurements will
not be consistent. With consistent measurements using the same method,
you’re getting valuable information that you can use.
The alternative to measuring yourself with the home testing methods is to
find a professional who is very experienced. If you find a trainer who
measures people’s body fat every single day in the gym, and has done
hundreds of tests, you’re going to get a pretty accurate reading.
Last resort: If you’re getting really, really frustrated with the whole body
fat testing thing and you feel like you’re getting different results every time
and you don’t have any consistent data to work with, then just use a weight
scale and a tape measure to record your progress and pay close attention to
what you see in the mirror.
The waist measurement is an important measurement. We found in recent
years just how well your waist size correlates with disease risk. If you’re
female and your waistline is more than 35 inches, or if you’re male and your
waistline is more than 40 inches, that’s a risk factor for health problems.
Your waist measurement won’t tell you your exact body fat percentage,
but it does correlate highly with body fat percentage. If your waist
measurement is going down, you can be pretty certain your body fat is going
down, and you also know your disease risk is going down.
As for the scale, some people say, “Throw out your scales.” It’s true that
body weight isn’t what’s most important, because body weight includes
water, glycogen, muscle, bone, internal organs, and everything else. What’s
most important is fat weight versus muscle weight. When you lose weight,
the question is, what are you losing? Having said that, if you’re having
trouble with fat testing, use the scale and use the tape measure, and as you
look at your weigh-in results, understand intellectually this concept of fat
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versus muscle, so that if you see five pounds dropping off the scale every
week, you know it can’t be all body fat. About 1% of your total body weight
per week or 2 pounds per week, whichever is greater, is about the most in
pure body fat that you can lose, physiologically speaking. If you lose five
pounds, you know that part of that is water weight, or lean tissue.
Mike Shimon:
One of the questions that I was thinking about myself was that sometimes
people will say, “I’ll give this a try for a week, and then if I don’t see the
results I want, I’ll figure it’s not working and I’ll change to something else.”
Tom, what’s your take on that?
Tom Venuto:
That’s a really good question, because on one hand you want to stick with a
certain workout program or menu and stay with it for at least a week or two
to gather some feedback and measure the results of that particular formula or
combination. I often recommend getting frequent feedback and doing some
kind of measurement, weigh yourself, take a body fat measurement, and so
on, as often as once a week. Then if you don’t see the result you want, don’t
be afraid to make an adjustment. But that doesn’t mean change the whole
thing every day or abandon the entire program! That means make an
adjustment. Tweak. Fine tune. Then give it a week or two and measure the
result.
If you’re constantly changing and testing and tweaking too often or too
many different things at once, then you have no idea which variable was
responsible for the improvement if you do start improving. It’s a better idea
to test one variable at a time. The art form is knowing which one to test
based the results of your last week or two of training and dieting.
The last thing I’d suggest is patience. Your metabolism can be sluggish
after months or years of poor eating, and it may take a little while to kickstart it, and that’s just a matter of patience. It’s one thing to make a small
tweak to your diet after a week, or after two weeks, but it’s another thing to
get impatient with your results and throw in the towel or completely try to
overhaul your program, or say the program as a whole isn’t working when
you haven’t given it enough time to work.
Mike Shimon:
Right. Here’s another question that was sent in by email before the show. It
says, “The short and long term effects on female hormone balance and
physical consequences of going low in body fat are well documented. But
what about men? Are there particular things men need to be aware of in
pursuing low body fat? I myself experienced getting cramps more easily
when going below 7% body fat and then a noticeably lower libido when
getting even leaner, around 6%. Does maintaining a low body fat for a
longer period have documented effects on the male hormone balance and
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have consequences on your health, bone structure, kidney and liver
functions, etc.?”
Tom Venuto:
I’m not sure exactly what all the literature says about extremely low body fat
in men, but I’ve seen data that shows it decreases your immune system
response, and it may decrease testosterone, which might explain the libido
part. Extremely low body fat also throws your whole body into starvation
mode, even if you’re eating a fairly decent amount, because body fat levels
alone can be an indicator of starvation.
Your food intake is only one of the factors your body is paying attention
to that would trigger a starvation response. This has a lot to do with the
hormone leptin, which is an anti-starvation hormone released primarily by
the fat cells. When your food intake goes down, leptin goes down, and low
leptin is a signal to your brain that you’re starving, so your body goes into
starvation response and it starts to fight further fat losses.
The same thing happens with low body fat. Your fat cells literally
communicate with your brain and tell your brain if energy reserves are
running low. That’s why it gets harder and harder to lose body fat as you get
leaner. If your brain gets the starvation signal, that turns up the appetite
switch, turns down the thyroid switch, and a lot of other things.
So in addition to possible weakened immune system and decreased male
hormone levels, you’re also on the borderline of starvation mode because, as
far as your body is concerned, if you’re walking around with 3, 4, 5% body
fat, you are starving. Being ripped is not good for survival. Being fatter is
better as far as your evolutionary survival needs are concerned.
I don’t think it’s unhealthy to hit extremely low body fat if that’s a
temporary peak, but it’s probably not healthy to try and maintain extremes of
low body fat for a long time. It’s definitely not healthy for women, and there
may be risks for men. Obviously the risks are much higher for being obese,
so this is not an argument to carry a lot of body fat, only to be sensible in
your expectations about what you can maintain all year round.
I usually advise people to think in terms of diet seasons or cycles and in
terms of hitting a peak. Keep in mind the definition of a peak. A peak is a
high point surrounded by two valleys or low points. By this definition, any
condition you can maintain all year round is not your peak condition is it?
It’s important to understand the concept of temporarily holding a peak,
like for a bodybuilding contest, and then maintaining a very lean but healthy
body fat level the rest of the time. The numbers are different for different
people. For me, I wouldn’t have any difficulty maintaining a 7% or even 6%
body fat all the time, if that’s what I wanted to do. I don’t think it would have
185
any negative impact on my health. But to walk around at 3–4% body fat,
that’s an extreme achievement and it’s a peak condition—contest ready.
Body fat that low is not something you’d want to maintain, but actually it’s
probably a moot point, because it’s almost impossible to maintain even if
you tried, unless you are extremely inclined toward the ectomorph or ectomesomorph body type. Have you ever seen the meal a bodybuilder eats the
night after the contest is over—it’s all they talk about for weeks while
they’re dieting and all day long the day of the contest! That meal is a ritual—
it’s a really big deal. Think about it... Why is that? Your body has that kind
of intuitive wisdom that it does everything in its power to get you back to a
normal body fat level. When you have no body fat and you’ve been starving
on low carbs for three months, your body is screaming for food, and it’s
virtually impossible not to obey the call.
Mike Shimon:
Here’s another question that was emailed to us. This one says, “When Tom
says you cannot add on lean body mass and subtract fat from the body at the
same time, then how is it that so many of us when we start out, seem to be
adding lean body mass as well as leaning out? I have added something like
10 pounds of lean body mass, give or take a margin of error with a caliper
reading, in about seven months while losing fat at the same time.”
Tom Venuto:
I’ve seen a lot of people gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. But it’s
always a small increase in lean body mass with a large decrease in body fat,
or vice-versa, a large increase in lean body mass with a small decrease in
body fat. I have never seen a natural—meaning non-steroid-taking athlete—
get a large increase in muscle mass and a large decrease in fat at the same
time. Why? Because they are opposite and incompatible goals.
If you think about a man with a 3000-calorie maintenance level, the fatloss diet is 2500 calories and the muscle-gaining diet is 3500 calories. So
you have two diets that are 1000 calories apart. So basically it’s impossible
to gain maximum muscle and lose maximum fat at the same time. It’s better
to focus on one or the other. If you choose fat loss as your primary goal, and
you happen to gain a few pounds of lean mass, you did great. Be happy
about that, but always have a priority and prime area of focus so you can get
best results in that direction as quickly as possible.
How do you explain it when muscle is gained and fat is lost at the same
time? In a beginner, a lot of that has to do with the untrained body’s rapid
muscular and nervous system adaptations to weight training. We know for a
fact that a lot of the initial strength gains in beginners are from nervous
system adaptations.
186 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
Gaining muscle while losing fat at the same time may also have to do
with something called nutrient partitioning. That means if you’re feeding
yourself properly with the right frequency and in the right quality and
quantity at certain times of the day, such as after a workout, then all the
necessary nutrients are directed into the muscles and the cells when and
where they are needed. You can enter an anabolic phase over a period of
hours and gain muscle during that short period, even if you are in a calorie
deficit and losing fat the rest of the day.
In other words, you might want to think of your calorie balance and your
body’s metabolic state—anabolic or catabolic—as being in flux on an hourly
basis rather than on the traditional model of 24-hour calorie expenditure,
which looks at only whether you were in a deficit or surplus for 24 hours and
suggests that you are either gaining muscle on a particular day or losing fat
on a particular day. Whoever said that muscle is gained and fat is lost only in
24 hour cycles? We have 24-hour biorhythms or circadian rhythms—dozens
of them—sleep cycles, hormone production cycles, body temperature, and
so on, but your body can and does fluctuate through shorter periods of
anabolic activity and catabolic activity throughout the day. With proper
nutrition, training, and recovery, you could definitely tip the scales in favor
of more anabolic and as a result gain some muscle while you’re on a fat loss
program.
You could also intentionally zig-zag your caloric intake between daily or
weekly periods of caloric surplus and caloric deficit to try for a net muscle
gain and fat loss over time. The problem with this is that you achieve neither
one of those goals with maximum efficiency. It’s more like you sacrifice a
lot of one or the other for a little bit of both.
The important thing to remember is the concept of prioritizing your goals.
You’ll never be gaining maximum muscle in a calorie deficit, especially in a
large calorie deficit. And if you’re anywhere near starvation mode, there’s
no way you’re going to gain muscle, because your body wants to ditch
metabolically costly tissue. The easiest way to do that is get rid of muscle.
With less muscle on your body, you burn fewer calories, so shedding muscle
is one of your body’s ways of conserving energy when it senses starvation.
Mike Shimon:
Here’s another good question I received and then I want to shift gears and
ask you some personal questions. It says, “I’m new to the Burn the Fat
group and have just recently started reading the Burn the Fat ebook. I’m a
34-year-old female, and I know that in order to lose fat, you need to consume
less than you burn. However, since there’s such a fine line between keeping
your food intake down and entering into that starvation area that lowers
187
metabolism, I was wondering if there was a good place to figure out where
my calorie intake should be. Can you help?”
Tom Venuto:
188 Tom Venuto
Yes. It’s a good question. It’s the right question to ask, because there is such
a fine line when it comes to calories. One of the biggest mistakes most
people make in fat-burning nutrition is cutting the calories too low. That’s an
approach that almost always works in the beginning—for instant
gratification—and then always fails in the long run.
I have a few suggestions: First, keep your caloric deficit small and
conservative—only 15–20% below your maintenance level, which is your
starting point. That’s what I call a conservative calorie deficit for fat loss,
and for most women that will be between 1400 and 1800 calories a day. For
most men that will be between 2200 and 2700 calories a day. If you want to
get more aggressive later, you can, but I would never recommend less than
1200 for women and 1800 for men, or 1000 below maintenance, whichever
is higher.
If you do get more aggressive with the calorie deficit, like 25% or 30%
below maintenance, for example, then that leads me to my second
suggestion: Cycle your calories and/or your carbs, which means not staying
in a large calorie deficit for a long time, but instead, increasing calories at
regular intervals. The more aggressive your deficit, or the closer you get to
your maximum deficit, the more I recommend using this method. It’s very
effective.
There are different ways to do this, but the method that I recommend the
most is three days of lower calories and/or lower carbs, with one higher
calorie, or higher carb day. Some people call that a re-feed day, other people
a high carb day. This is not the same as a cheat day or cheat meal. This is
simply eating more clean, healthy diet foods to boost metabolism. A couple
cheat meals a week is fine, but that’s a different animal.
My third suggestion would be in terms of looking at the longer term
cycling of diets. Over the long term, don’t stay on a very-low-calorie diet for
more than 12–16 weeks without taking a break. How many people stay on
1500 or 1200 or even 1000 calories a day literally for years? Well, I
guarantee anyone that does will have a sluggish metabolism because their
bodies have adapted and learned to compensate and function on that low
intake by decreasing energy expenditure.
To kick-start your metabolism and your hormones, give yourself at least a
week at maintenance level calories or even a slight surplus. If you have an
interest in building muscle, then cycling between fat loss and muscle gain
cycles of three or four months each is also a great strategy because the
higher calories in the muscle growth phase really kicks up your metabolism,
The Fat Burn Files
and the lean tissue you gain also kicks up your metabolism. Between those
three strategies, you’re not going to have to worry about being in the
starvation mode.
Mike Shimon:
Excellent. All right now, let’s get into something personal. What’s new for
Tom Venuto? What’s new for his followers? The masses of Burn the Fat
followers seem to be increasing by the minute.
Tom Venuto:
Oh, I’ve got so much going on, I feel like a Cirque du Soleil juggler. I guess
the biggest problem is I’m jumping around from one thing to the next and a
lot of things are still half done. It will all happen in time though. One thing
that I did get completely finished, just recently, is a new website called
www.AmazingAbdominals.com. It’s a little different from what I’ve done
before.
I’ve done a lot of my own writing before in my Burn the Fat newsletters,
on www.TomVenuto.com (which used to be called Fitness Renaissance, by
the way), and for some of the print magazines like Natural Bodybuilding,
IRONMAN, and Australian IRONMAN. I started out doing all my own
writing. I just recently started wearing the publisher and editor hats and
publishing work from other authors on the Internet. I really enjoy it because
it’s something new, and I’m learning a lot and getting to correspond and
meet some of the top experts in the strength, bodybuilding, fitness, and
nutrition field.
On this new Amazing Abs site, we picked a very hot topic that I get
questioned about constantly: Getting a six-pack, abdominal training, burning
ab fat, core training, and so on. Rather than writing everything myself, I’ve
gotten some of the top names in the field to write just on the subjects of
abdominals and fat loss.
We’ve got some great people writing for the site such as John Berardi,
who is a PhD nutrition expert and one of the best nutrition writers on or off
the Web, in my opinion. Alwyn Cosgrove is one of the top strength coaches
and trainers in the world. Craig Ballantyne is one of the Men’s Fitness
advisors and writers. Christian Finn is a top fitness expert from the UK. And
we’ve had David Grisaffi, Will Brink, Josh Henkin, Kelli Calabrese, Kyle
Battis, Jon Doyle, and a lot of other real pros.
We’re publishing articles on training and diet, and we’re also reviewing
products. For example, if you ever wondered about the infomercial gadgets,
we’re going to review them all. Do they work or not? We’re going to review
different diets, and we’re going to provide a lot of abdominal training
routines and training programs for all kinds of goals—fitness, sports
189
conditioning, bodybuilding fat loss, you name it. Everything you ever
wanted to know about abs.
Mike Shimon:
All right, give out that site again.
Tom Venuto:
It’s www.AmazingAbdominals.com or, for short, www.AmazingAbs.com.
Even though it’s premium information from the top names in the business,
the site will always be free. It’s supported by some Google advertising and
affiliation with some of the products from our authors, which I’d highly
recommend everyone check out.
Mike Shimon:
All right, then. What else is new?
Tom Venuto:
The real big thing that is under construction is a Burn the Fat members-only
area. There is already a group online, which I didn’t start, actually. It’s a
public Yahoo group, a Burn the Fat Yahoo group. If you go to Yahoo Health
Groups, you can find it under BFFM (which is the acronym for Burn the
Fat, Feed the Muscle). It’s got over 5000 members now. That’s a free public
group. But the Burn the Fat community has grown so much that it was time
to put together an official members-only site.
It’s going to be fantastic. It’s going to begin with a simple members-only
forum, a discussion group. Burn the Fat is one of the most in-depth detailed
fat loss programs out there. People are calling it “The Fat Loss Bible.” So
it’s a lot of information to take in, and beginners will probably have a lot of
questions, so this is going to be a place for people to get together and discuss
the topics, and it’s also going to be a support community and a support
group.
Long term, as it grows, I plan to add all kinds of other features, and
multimedia. There are going to be live action videos, exercise demos,
lectures, screen-captured lecture videos, audios, interviews. There are going
to be exclusive articles that you’ll find there, only for the members, that you
can’t find anywhere else on the Internet, additional workout routines beyond
the basic ones included in the Burn the Fat program, and a lot of tools like
calorie calculators, and so on. The future website for the Burn the Fat
community is going to be www.BurnTheFatInnerCircle.com. We don’t
have an opening date yet, so right now that web page is just a place holder.
Mike Shimon:
That’s excellent. And might there be anything else?
Tom Venuto:
You mean unrelated to Burn the Fat?
190 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
Mike Shimon:
Yes. Everything you talked about was expanding on the initial success of
Burn the Fat, in the same arena. Since you said you were juggling a lot of
projects, I’m wondering what else you’re doing that’s off that page?
Tom Venuto:
Well, I still love bodybuilding and I’m never going to leave that community.
I don’t want to forget where I came from. I plan to keep doing my
Bodybuilding Secrets blog and working on my bodybuilding courses, even
though this is specialized material that may interest only a relatively small
group of serious bodybuilders and weight lifting enthusiasts as compared to
the huge masses of people who need help with weight loss. Bodybuilding is
where I came from. I love it. It’s my lifestyle, and being in it and helping
others with their bodybuilding is really my biggest passion of all.
Mike Shimon:
Tom, that’s great. Thank you very much for being our guest again on Choose
To Be Fit.
191
About Tom Venuto
About Mike Shimon
Mike Shimon is a San Diego-based health and fitness coach and
personal trainer who was overweight and unhealthy for most of his
adult life. After losing weight and completely transforming his
own body, he turned fitness into his life’s work. Today Mike is a
host of the popular CHSR Healthy Life radio show, and his guests
have included such renowned fitness and health celebrities as Udo
Erasmus, Ian King, Dr. Robert Young, and many others.
Mike says that in these times of junk food, junk information, and
self-proclaimed experts on every subject, it’s hard to know where
to turn for good information. Mike has dedicated his life to
bringing the public all the latest breakthroughs in health, nutrition,
exercise, and how to live a better quality life. Mike provides
customized health and fitness programs, personal coaching,
nutrition counseling, and virtual fitness training from his website,
www.ChooseToBeFit.com.
192 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
Inside the Life and Mind of a
Natural Bodybuilder
Rob Cooper Interviews Tom Venuto
Rob Cooper:
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever the case may be in
your part of the world. My name is Rob Cooper, and I’m the Former Fat Guy
and your host for today. In 1990, I weighed in at 475 pounds and then I
decided to do something about my health. I began to explore natural health
and fitness and was able to burn over 300 pounds of fat while also putting on
lean muscle tissue. I believe with each passing year I’m in better and better
shape, as well as becoming a better person. I’ve always wanted to get the
quickest results in whatever it is that I do, and I find that mentoring other
people who’ve been there and done that lets me skip past all the crap and get
to the source much faster.
The idea behind this show is for you to find a mentor, to find out how
they think, what they do and how they act, and then model them.
Discovering all the flaws along the way can be a very powerful way to learn,
but much slower. By modeling someone who you admire who has the same
results you want, the benefits come quicker and are longer lasting. In the
next 60 minutes, I’d like to invite you inside the mind of a natural
bodybuilder while I talk with my very special guest, Mr. Tom Venuto.
Since 1989, Tom Venuto has been in the fitness industry as a personal
trainer, a nutrition consultant, a health club manager, an Internet publisher,
and success coach. Tom has written over 170 articles and has been featured
in IRONMAN magazine, Australian IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding,
Muscular Development, Olympian’s News in Italian, Exercise for Men, and
Men’s Exercise. Tom’s articles on bodybuilding, weight loss, and fitness
motivation are also featured regularly on dozens of websites worldwide,
including Lee Labrada’s Lean Body Coaching program; Will Brinks’
MuscleBuildingNutrtition.com, BodyBuilding.com,
BodyBuildingAbout.com, AtoZFitness.com, SelfGrowth.com,
GlobalFitness.com, and many others.
Tom’s educational background includes a degree in Exercise Science and
he is also a certified personal trainer and certified strength and conditioning
195
specialist with the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Tom is a
lifetime natural bodybuilder and has won many competitions including three
natural state titles—the New Jersey, the Pennsylvania, and the New York
State championships; three regional titles including the natural mid-Atlantic
states, the NPC Natural Eastern Classic, and a runner-up in the Natural
Mr. USA, and Natural North America. Tom Venuto’s ebook, Burn the Fat,
Feed the Muscle, is rated by ClickBank.com as the #1 fitness ebook and the
number one diet ebook on the Internet with users in over 100 countries.
Welcome, Tom.
Tom Venuto:
Thanks for that great introduction, and thanks for having me on the show.
Rob Cooper:
Well, thank you. I appreciate everything you’ve ever done for me. We’ve
known each other for about the last six months, I’d say. It was reading your
Burn the Fat book that helped take my already fairly successful weight loss
to the next level, and I appreciate you for all the knowledge that I’ve gotten
from you. So I’ve read your bio, and we know sort of who you are, but I
want to hear more about who Tom Venuto is. A lot of people know that
you’re a bodybuilder, but let’s focus even more on your natural bodybuilding
experience. We’re going to step away from the whole weight loss thing right
now and go straight into bodybuilding to find out what it is that got you
started and led you to where you are now.
Tom Venuto:
Bodybuilding is what got me started in this whole fitness industry. I’ve been
training for 22 years and competing for 16 years. I got started in
bodybuilding the same way a lot of other people did. I saw a picture of
Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I was blown away. I could not believe it was
even possible for a human being to look like that. The only way I can
possibly describe it is like when a priest gets his calling, he knows that’s
what he’s meant to do. I took one look at those bodybuilders like Arnold and
said, “That is incredible. That is what I want to do.”
I started training when I was 14, and I trained all the way through high
school. By the time I was 20, I decided to take it to the next level. With some
encouragement from friends and training partners at the gym, I did my first
show and took second place in the Natural Lehigh Valley, which was a local
competition in Pennsylvania. A month later I competed again and won my
class at the Natural New Jersey, and the following year I won the overall
Natural Pennsylvania. Since then, I’ve competed 26 times. After three years
away from competing, I’m getting ready to get back on the stage and
compete in two NPC shows this fall.
Rob Cooper:
196 Tom Venuto
Awesome. Good for you. So what led you to choose to compete again?
The Fat Burn Files
Tom Venuto:
You know, it’s kind of a joke about bodybuilders retiring, because it’s the
type of thing that always stays in your blood. You may stop for a while, but
the bug just comes back and bites you, so sometimes you can’t really help it.
You just get the urge to compete again, and you have to do it. The main
reasons for me, though, are because first, I feel that competition is really the
best way to bring out the best in you, and second because I feel that I have a
whole other level to take this to.
One thing that really motivates me is fulfilling my potential and avoiding
reaching the end of my life left with unfulfilled potential. The one thing that
I can’t live with is knowing that I’m capable of achieving something and
wanting to achieve it and not doing it. So I haven’t competed in three years,
and I took it to a fairly high level, to winning several state and regional
competitions, but I never won a national show or turned natural pro. So
there’s more to do. There’s more to achieve. Knowing that I’m capable of it,
and that I have the potential in me, I have to compete. I have to keep going.
Rob Cooper:
About the potential... Tell me about natural bodybuilding competitions. I
know about Mr. Olympia and Mr. Universe and those sort of things, but
what kind of levels can you go to with natural bodybuilding?
Tom Venuto:
Who knows how far you can go? I want to find out. My advice to all
bodybuilders is don’t even set limits. “No Limits.” Make that your motto. I
think the biggest mistake people make in natural bodybuilding is they put
limits on themselves. You hear accusations all the time, as soon as somebody
reaches a certain level of development, they point fingers and say, “There’s
no way that guy’s natural.” By doing that, they’re only limiting themselves.
They might as well come out and say, “I don’t believe it’s possible to look
like that without drugs.” And by saying that, they’ve just set a limitation on
themselves and made it literally impossible to achieve.
I have seen some amazing natural bodybuilders, and they keep getting
better. They have reached levels of development that most people don’t
think are possible without drugs. I think if more people knew how far you
could go without drugs, fewer people would be taking drugs. The mass
monsters you see at the Mr. Olympia make for a very entertaining event that
draws the crowds and sells the tickets, but a top-flight natural physique, in
my opinion, looks better.
Rob Cooper:
I agree.
Tom Venuto:
In the untested competitions, you’ll see physiques of men my height, five
feet eight inches tall, who weigh 320 pounds in the off-season and 270–280
pounds ripped, and at that size, they’ve lost all sense of proportion and
197
symmetry and the classical lines. A guy at five-eight could weigh 175
pounds or 185 pounds and look much bigger than he is, but more important,
he could have a beautiful physique, like a Greek sculpture. Do you
remember Steve Reeves? That’s what natural bodybuilding is all about to
me—the human body as art, as a living sculpture, not the most bulk at all
costs.
Rob Cooper:
Speaking of weight, I recall reading about you weighing 174 in one of your
competitions, in ripped shape. Correct?
Tom Venuto:
That’s correct. I usually compete as a middleweight in competitions where
there are weight classes. The cutoff for middleweights in the NPC is 176-¼
pounds.
Rob Cooper:
And what kind of body fat are you looking at, at 175, 174 pounds?
Tom Venuto:
Very low single digits. Usually 3.5% or 4% body fat, in that neighborhood.
Definitely below 5%.
Rob Cooper:
Okay, cool. Now, I know we recently talked and you said you’re currently at
205?
Tom Venuto:
Yeah. That’s close to my all-time heaviest weight.
Rob Cooper:
Do you figure you’ve gotten more muscular? Do you think you’re going to
be competing in a higher category?
Tom Venuto:
I wouldn’t mind getting bigger and being a light heavyweight, but I would
have to get a lot bigger because you don’t want to be the lightest guy in your
weight class, and light heavies go up to 198. This year I’ll still be a
middleweight on contest day, but actually my strategy is to technically be a
light heavyweight by weighing around 180 to 185 and then to actually cut
water weight and make middleweight. That will give me an advantage by
being one of the heavier guys in my weight class. This is a necessity for me
because I’m a little tall for a middleweight. A guy who is five feet, five
inches tall at 176 looks much bigger on stage than a guy who is five feet,
eight inches at the same weight.
There are differences between natural versus non-tested shows. One thing
I noticed is that in national qualifying or national level competitions that are
not drug tested, it’s rare to see a middleweight compete successfully at my
height. 176 pounds at five feet, eight inches tall is usually not enough muscle
mass to compete with those guys. Most middleweights in open divisions are
about five-five to five feet, seven inches tall. However, in the natural shows,
many of the guys are much taller. They still look great, just not as much
198 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
muscle mass per inch. In the non-tested shows, as you would expect, the
competitors carry more muscle per inch than in the natural shows. A tall guy
needs to build more muscle to fill out his frame. Body weight can be
deceptive, though. A guy who weighs 175 pounds can look massive if it’s
well proportioned on the right sized frame.
There are some organizations that go by height classes, where you don’t
have to worry about your weight. But in the National Physique Committee,
which is the premiere organization for amateur bodybuilding, it’s a 176
cutoff. So I’ve been working really hard in gaining more muscle mass to
increase my stage weight. I have the type of body where I lose water weight
very easily, so in a perfect world, I’d like to weigh about 185 and be
shredded at least a week before the contest and then actually have to lose a
lot of water weight to make the middles, and come in razor sharp.
Rob Cooper:
That’s interesting. Let’s go back a bit to your growing up days in high
school. Did you do any kind of sports? Or were you just in the gym?
Tom Venuto:
I did a lot of sports when I was younger. From elementary through middle
school and partially into high school, I dabbled in just about everything.
Basketball, a little bit of baseball, football for two years. Don’t laugh, even
bowling—and I was pretty good at it—had a 200 average for an entire
season. The one sport I excelled at and stuck with for a long time was soccer.
I played soccer starting at seven years old and kept at it until I was 17. I only
stopped playing soccer when I went to college because our university didn’t
have a really big soccer program, and I was getting deep into bodybuilding
at that point, so that was the end of soccer for me.
When I got into bodybuilding, what appealed to me was the individual
nature of the sport. Working together with a team has its appeal, but an
individual sport appealed to me more because I was totally responsible for
my outcome. If somebody else screwed something up and I ended up being
on a losing team as a result of that, I felt a little helpless because it was out of
my control. In bodybuilding, everything is in my control. I’m responsible
100% for my results. I think that’s what got me into bodybuilding the
most—just the fact that it’s an individual sport.
Rob Cooper:
Interesting. Does that play out in any other areas of your life? The things you
like to do?
Tom Venuto:
Well, the idea of personal responsibility is an important part of my entire
life’s philosophy. I guess that’s why I became a bodybuilder and an
entrepreneur. I wanted to be in control of my own destiny, physical and
financial.
199
No matter what situation we might seem to be locked into right now,
we’re all in control of our own destinies if you really think about it, because
we have free will. You may be in a situation where you think you’re being
limited by other people, whether that’s a team or a job or an entire career, but
you have the free choice to leave that situation if you want. You can change
your sport, change your career, change where you live, change anything.
You can put yourself in a situation where you’re the boss in every way,
and if you win, you’re responsible, and if you lose, you’re responsible. In
either case, you can’t blame anyone or anything else. It was all you. I believe
we all have to take an attitude of responsibility, and have the guts and
wisdom to say, “I’m responsible for my results, and I will be held
accountable for my own results.” If you take on this attitude, it will
definitely affect every area of your life—business, personal, health, and
sports. It does carry over. It’s a universal law, you could say.
Rob Cooper:
When you first started training, starting out in high school, what kind of
workout routine did you do? How did you start, and how did you progress?
Tom Venuto:
When I started, I followed verbatim the workout program from Arnold’s
book. The first book I ever got about bodybuilding was The Education of a
Bodybuilder, which was part biography and part training manual. The first
half is Arnold’s biography from the early years of his life and the second half
is the training routine. I did exactly what he said to do. I mean, I followed it
to the letter.
The first routine was actually a body weight routine, but that didn’t
maintain my interest or my results very long, so then I moved up into the
weight training routine. I started out training almost every day, and I grew
from that. You can grow from daily training for a while when you’re young
and fresh, but you reach a point where you have to evolve in your training.
So I progressed from full-body routines into two-day splits, and then
three-day splits, and then four-day splits, and then four-day splits two days
on and one day off.
Rob Cooper:
How is your routine set up, and how often per day do you train right now?
Tom Venuto:
My current weight training program is a four-day split, designed specifically
for bodybuilding. There are a lot of training methods being promoted today,
but many of them are designed for athletes or the general public, not
bodybuilders. Body part split routines are the ideal way for a bodybuilder to
train the majority of the time.
I have done double split routines in the past, which means I would do two
very short sessions in a day such as quads in the morning and hams in the
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evening, or I’ll do two body parts in the morning and come back later in the
day for small body parts like abs and calves, but I usually do only one weight
training session a day with two or three body parts per workout. Most of my
workouts are done in just under an hour.
My four-day split is set up on a two days on, one day off rotation. I don’t
train more than two days in a row, and I found that this gives me ideal
recovery. With this program I’m hitting each muscle group once every
six days. Sometimes before competitions, I’ll take that up a notch and move
it up to three days on, and one day off. This way I’m training with higher
frequency. As long as I can keep recovering from that, then I’ll continue
doing that right up till the day of the contest, but my training frequency is
recovery dependent.
Rob Cooper:
Have you always been as lean as you are, or has that ever been a challenge
for you?
Tom Venuto:
I’ve never been overweight, but I definitely was not naturally lean when I
was younger. In fact, I always had a little bit of extra fat, you know, that little
roll around the waist. I could never see any ripped abs when I was a
teenager.
Rob Cooper:
You had a fat roll?!
Tom Venuto:
Oh, yes.
Rob Cooper:
Got any pictures of that, Tom?
Tom Venuto:
I do. But I don’t think I’ll be posting them on a website anytime soon! Let’s
just say they’re “archived.” It was actually very frustrating. From when I
started working out, when I was 14, I wanted to get more muscular, but I
also wanted to get more ripped.
When you’re a teenager, and you start dating, and you want the respect
from other guys and your peers, you want to look good. Taking your shirt off
in the locker room or for a swimming class is a big deal. You want a great
physique for every reason, but I could never get the abs. I had no problem
gaining muscle and getting stronger. From age 14, I went from weighing
around 140 pounds up to about 200 pounds by the time I was 19, but I’d
never seen my abs.
It wasn’t until I stepped up to the challenge of competing that I actually
got ripped. That was what put me over the edge and gave me the motivation
to get down into single-digit body fat. Nothing else worked. Going on the
bodybuilding contest diet and knowing that I was going to be on stage in
posing trunks is what did it for me. I think that’s a lesson for everyone. It
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takes real commitment, a big, compelling goal, and then massive action to
change.
Rob Cooper:
Did you develop that contest routine yourself, or whatever diet it was you
followed, to get ripped for that first show, or did you have a mentor?
Tom Venuto:
I’ve had a lot of teachers and mentors, some of them in person, some of them
in the form of books, but I’m very much self-taught. I was always fairly
open minded too. I didn’t buy into the “only one way to do it” mentality. I
took bits and pieces from one person’s system and then bits and pieces from
somebody else’s, and tested and experimented. Ultimately what happened is
I developed my own philosophy that came from many sources, combined
with my own trial and error experience.
It’s really important to understand how your own body works and
responds to training: what kind of training volume, what kind of recovery
time. People are different. Some people thrive on infrequent high-intensity
workouts, the high-intensity training, the Mike Mentzer type of programs.
Other people will thrive just as well on high volume. I’ve seen it too many
times to dispute that either way can work and that there is more than one
way to do it. There are many, many ways to do it. You have to find which
methods work best for you, and you can’t be dogmatic.
If you’re the volume training type of person and you buy into the idea that
there’s only one way to do it and you insist on training with low volume,
high-intensity type of training, because some guru or trainer said it’s the only
way, you’re not going to get the results you want. You have to pay attention.
You have to pay really close attention to see what kind of results you’re
getting and adjust your training according to those results. Remember the
definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again while
expecting a different result.
Rob Cooper:
So how do you not only pay attention, but also how to you document all
your experimentation, because you’ve been doing this for years, obviously.
Tom Venuto:
You’ve got to write everything down. A training journal is one of the most
valuable tools you could ever have. It’s not just a necessity for workout
planning, it’s also a great motivational tool. I’ve recently become more
meticulous about that than ever, because right now I’m logging my training
journals on the Internet in a blog.
Rob Cooper:
Are you really? Tell us about that.
Tom Venuto:
When I started training, of course, we didn’t have blogs. We didn’t even
have the Internet. A training journal was just a notebook. It still is, but now
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we also have technology. Not only do I have a written record of everything
for recording progress and planning workouts, I’m also creating personal
accountability because people are going to the website blog where I’m
posting my training publicly.
How can you really train progressively without a training journal? I
mean, the one overriding foundational principle of all strength training
programs is progressive overload. You can’t trust everything to memory.
How does the old saying go, “The palest ink is better than the best memory.”
When you pull out that piece of paper and see what you did at the last
workout, you can plan your next workout in advance. You can walk into the
gym with that piece of paper, ready. You can set a goal for the next workout
and know exactly what you have to do to beat the previous workout and you
are guaranteed to grow and make progress if you beat that previous workout,
provided that the nutritional support’s in place and the recovery is in place.
So that’s number one, to keep a training journal. That’s very, very important.
I also chart my progress, in terms of weight and body fat. I have progress
charts going back years and years, especially before competitions. I’ve kept
some charts in the off-season when I was working on gaining, but always
before competitions. I’ll have somebody take my body fat percentage,
calculate lean body mass, and it’s absolutely fascinating to watch the
patterns and the trends on a chart. You can see exactly what’s happening
when you capture it all on paper. If you’re just looking in the mirror, of
course, a trained eye can tell when progress is being made, but the more
things you measure, and the more feedback you have to collect, the more
you’re going to be able to fine-tune your nutrition and your training and just
nail a program that works perfectly for you.
Rob Cooper:
So keep meticulous logs, even about nutrition, as well as training?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, diet too.
Rob Cooper:
The way I explain it, I tell people that there are certain variables that a
person needs to be able to track, day in and day out, so that when you do
your weigh-in and your skinfolds or whatever else you’re tracking, that you
can modify those variables based on the results you’re getting.
Tom Venuto:
Exactly! Now with nutrition, it’s a little bit different from training. With
training, I am literally logging what I do every day. With nutrition, I don’t
necessarily keep a diet journal or daily diary per se where every time I eat
something, as soon as I finish eating it, I go write it down. A full-fledged diet
journal is great to do especially when you’re a beginner for a learning
experience, but to me, it’s reactive when you eat something, then write it
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down afterward. I do it proactively. I write something down first, then eat it
afterward. I create my menu first. I don’t start my day until I’ve finished it
on paper. Sometimes it’s a single menu. It’s always taped on my computer
monitor. It’s taped on my refrigerator. It’s in my Day-Timer. I can look at
that and it’s like a goal—it’s an eating goal for the day.
If I’m doing any kind of cyclical dieting where my nutrition is going to
vary from day to day with high, medium, and low carb days, then I’ll have
more than one menu and I’ll have them all printed and posted. That’ll stay
fixed for at least seven days. When I do the weigh-in and the body comp test
every week, and I look in the mirror and I see how things are going, if
everything is going according to the plan, I don’t need to change anything.
My nutrition is very consistent before contests. I eat primarily the same
thing every day. There are some substitutions for variety, for example, I
substitute a peach for blueberries, or spinach for cauliflower or whatever, but
it follows the same template every day. If there’s a plateau—which to me
means that even if as few as seven days goes by and I don’t see progress—
then I’m going to make an adjustment, either to the training or to the
nutrition, and then I’ll type up the change on a new menu. I print that out and
stick it up on the refrigerator. Everything, even to this day, at least when I’m
competing, is planned out in writing, just like it was when I started 20 years
ago.
Rob Cooper:
So let’s go back to training for a minute, the training journal. You say you’ve
got it on paper. But what kind of format is that? Is it an actual book or do you
have scraps of paper, or how do you do that?
Tom Venuto:
I have a notebook. I just write it down in a plain old notebook. I have a
whole box of notebooks, of old training journals. What I’ll often do is I’ll
make a photocopy or just transfer by hand the previous workout along with
my goals for today’s workout onto a loose piece of paper. I walk into the
gym with a piece of paper in my pocket with the last workout and goals for
this workout.
Rob Cooper:
Yeah. So do I.
Tom Venuto:
I look at my last workout. My goal is, beat that. That’s almost always the
goal. I review that the night before. I’ll mentally rehearse the whole
workout, literally to right down to the reps. It’s called vivid visualization. I
know exactly what I’m going to do, because I’ve already rehearsed it
mentally, and it’s amazing to see what you do in the gym the next day, how it
plays out in real life just the way it did in your mind.
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There’s a night-and-day difference between planning the workouts in
advance and winging it. I can’t emphasize enough how profound this is.
Winging it is one of the biggest mistakes you can ever make in your training.
People just walk into the gyms and they have no idea what they’re going to
do that day. They walk in with their training buddy and say, “Hey, what do
you want to do today?” The other guy says, “I don’t know. What do you
want to do?”
Rob Cooper:
People do that?
Tom Venuto:
Are you kidding me? Oh, yeah, that’s how most people do it; there’s no plan.
Sure, they know it’s chest day, but that’s it.
Rob Cooper:
Maybe the way I’ve been training is so automatic now, because I always
know what I’m going to do each day. I know what my goal is. I know what
the result is going to be, or hopefully is going to be. I can’t imagine people
not going in with a plan.
Tom Venuto:
Neither can I, but I’d say that it’s more the rule than the exception with most
people, and it’s one of the reasons they’re not getting the results they want.
You plan and look at your results.
Rob Cooper:
I guess that’s part of that whole idea about needing to see the destination
first, and then plotting all the steps in a row to get to that destination. If your
idea is, “I want to exercise,” then you could go in and wing it. But if you
were specifically going to compete or you wanted to see your abs, you’ve
got to plan out all the steps, day by day, that it will take to get you there and
know what it is you’re going to do every day.
Tom Venuto:
People get some results with all sorts of bad programs and with poor
planning, but how much more could they achieve with strategic planning?
The bigger your goals and the more that’s at stake, the more the planning
becomes essential. When you’re training for competition, I’d say it’s
absolutely essential. In fact, that’s literally what I’m doing right now. I’m 98
days from a competition, and every day, I know how many days are left
because I’m counting backward. I have a calendar with the number of days
left, and I have every workout scheduled for the rest of those 98 days.
Rob Cooper:
Wow, that’s commitment.
Tom Venuto:
It is, but it was only a few of hours of planning. I got on the computer and I
used a little calendar. I plugged in the dates. I had to hand-type the dates in,
and I did a “contest countdown.” I counted backward and numbered each
square for each day and then I typed in the body parts. With the two on, one
205
off split that I use, there’s a little bit of flexibility built into that, so I could
easily go three on, one off, then one on, one off and I’ll still be on schedule,
but I always get back on schedule. I’ll never be off schedule more than one
day. It’s planned out to that degree.
Rob Cooper:
Okay. Let’s change gears and let me ask you something different. Part of
your bio is that you own a gym. Do you still own a gym?
Tom Venuto:
I still have some involvement as a sales and marketing consultant, but I
guess you could say I’m semi-retired from the health club business, as of
about one year ago. I don’t spend eight- or 10- or 12-hour days working in
the business any more like I did for so many years.
Rob Cooper:
And you coached and took on clients, personally training them in the past,
correct?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, I did a lot of personal training and personal coaching for many years,
but I did less as I got into managing health clubs and even less today since I
went full time in online publishing.
Rob Cooper:
Define “many years.”
Tom Venuto:
When I went to college, I got my degree in Exercise Science, and I think I
was 19 or 20, so that must have been around 1990, and I immediately started
going into personal training right after I graduated. I did personal training
mostly full time for the first six or seven years of my career, although I stuck
my foot into health club management very early on as well.
I’ve been in the health club business in one shape or form my entire life. I
was very successful and very busy as a personal trainer. When the coaching
movement started to get popular, people didn’t have to work with me
physically in the gym, because I could coach them by phone and create a
program for them. That’s assuming they were somewhat self-motivated and
they had enough exercise technique knowledge to take the workout program
that I created for them and follow it on their own. To create accountability,
we would just speak on the phone every week. They would send results
weekly and we would make adjustments, and that’s how the coaching
program got started. I did that for many years in addition to personal
training. As my career progressed, I got more involved with actual
management and the business operations of the health clubs.
Over the last year, I’ve kind of moved into yet another phase of my life.
I’m now in the health, fitness, and personal development publishing business
full time. I’m doing a lot of things on the Internet, and I’m an author and
writer. I will be doing some more coaching in the future for sure,
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individually and in larger groups. It’s something I really enjoy—helping
people and working with people one on one. I guess you could also say I’m
also a full-time bodybuilder right now too.
Rob Cooper:
Awesome. Before we go into diet, which we’re going to talk about in detail
in just a minute, because I really want to hear your advice about
bodybuilding nutrition, I first want to ask you about personal trainers. I
know you’ve been training people for a long time, so you’re a believer in the
value of personal trainers. I also wanted to know if you have ever had a
personal trainer of your own, and what do you say to people who need an
extra push in believing about the value of a personal trainer?
Tom Venuto:
Everybody needs a coach or mentor of some kind. Think about it for a
minute. The best athletes in the world, every single one of them has a coach.
Some of them have several coaches for different aspects of their game. Is
there a world-class athlete that doesn’t have a coach? It’s unthinkable and
yet, when it comes to their own personal health and fitness program, some
people say, “Well, I’m advanced enough, I know enough that I don’t need a
coach.” When you have a tax problem, you go to an accountant. When you
have a legal problem, you go to a lawyer. When you have a tooth problem,
you go to a dentist. Do you try to fix all these things yourself? No. So why is
it that when you have a health, body weight, or fitness problem, you refuse
to go to a professional?
There is absolutely no comparison between having a good trainer, a good
coach, or at least someone in your corner, and doing it on your own. I started
working with a trainer, believe it or not, about 10 years ago. He helped me
take my bodybuilding to a completely new level. He’s a hardcore
bodybuilder himself, so he was the perfect trainer for me. I don’t want a
trainer who deals in theories and book knowledge. I want someone who has
already done what I want to do and who has helped others do the same. I will
never, ever follow someone who doesn’t walk the walk.
It’s also important, when looking for the right trainer, to get somebody
who meets your needs, who specializes in what you do. For example, a
bodybuilder would not be wise to hire a trainer who specializes in sports
conditioning who has never trained or competed in bodybuilding. An athlete
like a baseball player would not be wise to hire a bodybuilding trainer who
has no experience in sports conditioning. But sure enough, there are plenty
of trainers out there who specialize in nothing and think they know
everything about everything or who specialize in one thing and try to coach
people in areas outside their expertise. I’m a bodybuilder, so I got a
bodybuilding trainer. All I can say is, get a trainer and get the right one.
207
Rob Cooper:
I agree. After 14 years on my own, doing my own training, I ran into a
personal trainer about 18 months ago, and switching to her advice and
following her routines had a dramatic effect on my physique and on my
capabilities for endurance. I’m a mountain climber. I love climbing, and she
was able to develop the specific muscles that were under-developed, that I
had been missing. This whole principle of core training completely changed
my strength, my lifts, and the ability to carry a pack more safely.
I totally recommend a trainer because it’s so easy to get stuck in a rut, in
an ordinary routine. It has also been kind of, what’s the word, “releasing,”
because I don’t have to worry about creating my own programs anymore. I
let her take care of it. It’s something else off my plate.
Tom Venuto:
I feel exactly the same way. I think it’s important to understand how to create
your own programs, but one of the things I like about working with a trainer
is that it can take all of the thought process out of designing your own
programs. All you have to do is put forth the physical effort. This isn’t
winging it—it’s just someone else doing the planning for you. Writing
strength training programs is definitely work, and before a contest, it takes a
lot of physical effort and mental toughness to get through the dieting and
weight training and cardio, so I don’t mind focusing on the physical effort
and letting my trainer write some of my programs.
You also said something about getting stuck in a rut. That’s a really, really
important reason to have a trainer, because when we write our own
programs, if we’re not very conscious of what we’re doing, we become
victims of our own habits and our own patterns, and we don’t even see it. We
just gravitate naturally to the same exercises, the same principles. For most
people who just wing it and don’t do any planning at all, I guarantee you,
they always go right back to what’s familiar every time they walk into the
gym.
Somebody who’s got a little bit of distance can see from a different
perspective, bring all new perspectives, and have you do new things that
you’ve never done before. That’s another foundational principle, what I call
muscle confusion, and that means to expose your body to something it has
not done before. That’s actually a form of progressive overload in itself. If
you keep staying in the same pattern, sometimes that’s the exact reason that
you stay stuck in a rut. Or at least, if you are making progress, you’re not
making progress to the degree that you could.
Rob Cooper:
Let’s move into talking about food, Tom. I love food. You’ve got a book that
has taken my thoughts on food and nutrition to a whole new level. When I
first got a hold of it—I think when I reviewed it, I said, “Why would a guy
who has already dropped 300 pounds be interested in buying another book
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on fat loss?” My answer was, “I’m looking for anything to improve anything
at all that I can. If I can take out one piece of information that’s going to
make a change in my physique or the way I feel, then that’s awesome and
totally worth it.” Well, I got more than one thing; I got at least five or six
very important and major concepts out of your book. Your book is Burn the
Fat, Feed the Muscle. Let’s talk about how that came about.
Tom Venuto:
It was really an offshoot of my coaching programs. After I started coaching
dozens, and then hundreds of people, a lot of the same questions kept
popping up. So I took the questions and I wrote the answers in a booklet that
I gave to all my clients. That eventually expanded into a 200-page coaching
program manual. For many years, the only people who got that manual were
the people in my coaching programs.
When I reached the point where I was booked and I couldn’t take any
more clients, I said to myself, “I’ve had such good results with my clients,
how can I get this information out to more people?” That’s when the idea hit
me to turn it into a book. At about that time, ebooks were becoming very
popular on the Internet, so I decided to release it as an ebook. It was amazing
the way it took off. The ebook format allowed it to get into over 60 countries
within the first six months of its release. As of this month, it’s been
downloaded in 119 countries. That kind of distribution never could have
happened as fast with hardcopy publishing.
Rob Cooper:
Wow, that’s awesome. Okay, so let’s talk more about your bodybuilding diet
plan. Certainly the focus of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is fat burning
nutrition, but I want to know more about your diet specifically for
bodybuilding and bodybuilding competition. How is it different than what
you would normally eat the rest of the year, and what specifically do you
eat?
Tom Venuto:
The basic principles are the same all year round, whether your goal is fat loss
or muscle growth, but it does get stricter before a competition, and there are
things you do differently before contests, beyond the obvious reduction in
calories. It’s important to distinguish between what’s healthy lifestyle
nutrition and what’s a diet. My definition of the word “diet” is that it’s
something you’re going to go on and you’re going to go off.
Rob Cooper:
Right. Let’s call it a food program.
Tom Venuto:
Right, a food program or a nutrition program, but I want to make that
distinction between lifestyle nutrition program and a diet, because
sometimes you have to go on a diet, like before contests. The ideal solution
209
for fat reduction is a nutrition program or eating program that is a lifestyle,
and that primarily means cleaning up your choice of foods.
However, when we talk about bodybuilding nutrition, you really are
taking it to a much higher level, and it becomes much stricter and sometimes
even extreme. If you’re going to set an extreme goal like 4% body fat, it’s
only logical that it may take an extreme diet, and when I say diet, I’m using
that word as I defined it. A contest diet is not something you’re on all year
round. What works to get the average person from 25% body fat or 18%
body fat down to 15% or 10% body fat may not work to get you down to
3%. So basically, it takes a much stricter, more Spartan way of eating, and
you could say that that’s a diet—a pre-contest diet.
The basic underlying nutrition principles are the same, though, and it’s
pretty straightforward. Anybody well-read in fitness or bodybuilding will
have heard this stuff before. There are about half a dozen basic bodybuilding
nutrition principles. I start with small frequent meals, six small meals a day.
This recommendation applies across the board for almost everyone who
wants to build muscle and lose fat. It’s a bodybuilding nutrition principle,
but it’s something that works for everyone for lifestyle eating.
The next bodybuilding nutrition principle is to eat lean protein at every
single meal. Egg whites are a staple. Chicken, turkey, fish, tuna, lean red
meat, and game meats are all bodybuilding nutrition staple foods too.
The next principle is the very careful selection of carbohydrates. Natural
sources of carbs are best. Vegetables are a staple in any fat loss or
bodybuilding contest diet as well as for lifestyle eating because of their high
nutrient density and low calorie density. Natural starches and grains, such as
oatmeal, barley, yams, sweet potatoes, beans, and brown rice also make up a
good portion of the macronutrient split, and you eat more of those in the
muscle-building season and fewer grains and starches in the pre-contest, fat
loss diet phase. Some bodybuilders remove fruit. I used to do it, but when I
left it in I, noticed no reduction in fat loss, and you can’t beat fruit for
nutritional value as a part of your lifelong nutrition program.
Then you have the good fats. There is some good fat inherent in the food
you eat, but many people are short on the good omega-3 fats and heavy on
omega-6 fats, saturated fats, and the really nasty fats, the trans fatty acids.
There is no safe intake of trans fatty acids—they are chemically altered
manmade fats—so that’s why, even on cheat meals when you can pretty
much eat what you want, I still often recommend that you almost never eat
foods high in trans fats. So that’s your macronutrient split on a bodybuilding
nutrition program. A little bit of lean protein, a little bit of natural complex
carbs, and a small amount of fat at every single meal.
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These are just basic principles that apply to anybody. If you want to take
it to the next level in competition, it becomes stricter. Then what you’re
probably going to start doing is manipulating your carb intake, and that
varies depending on the person, because people have different levels of carb
sensitivity. Some people don’t process carbs very well, and even carbs that
are usually considered healthy, like whole grains, can increase triglycerides
and cause blood sugar problems in some people, along with making fat loss
difficult.
On a bodybuilding contest diet, almost every competitive bodybuilder
will decrease carbs to some degree in order to get ripped. This doesn’t mean
it’s a zero carb or a ketogenic diet, where almost all the carbs are removed.
My preferred way to do a low carb diet is a modified low carb diet. It’s
actually more like a medium carb diet.
A typical competition diet for me is about 150 to 200 grams of carbs on
low carb days. What I do that’s different from a conventional low carb diet
that you might find on the diet bookstore shelves is that I don’t stay on low
carbs for long. It’s called a cyclical low carb diet, which means I cycle
between low or medium carbs and high carbs. At least every fourth day, I eat
more calories in the form of carbs.
So I’m simply adding in more whole grains and natural starches every
fourth day. In other words, there’s a re-feed day, or you can call it a carb-up
day. It makes a low carb diet incredibly effective as compared to staying on
low carbs or low calories all the time, and it’s also easier to follow because
you have more food to look forward to on those high days.
If you stay on low calories too long, your body catches on quickly. Your
body thinks low calorie dieting is starvation and so your metabolic rate
begins to slow down to protect you from quickly starving to death. Also if
you’re very active—if you’re in a gym strength training four days a week
and if you’re doing cardio—a low carb diet is not conducive to high energy
levels and a good workout.
Rob Cooper:
That’s for sure.
Tom Venuto:
The solution to that is, if every fourth day you’re re-feeding and re-carbing,
that’s going to give you the energy you need to carry you through your
workouts with intensity while still getting the metabolic benefits of the low
carb diet.
Rob Cooper:
So basically, you’re sort of resetting all your hormones too, telling your
body, “Everything’s okay, there’s a lot of food”?
Tom Venuto:
That’s exactly what happens.
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Rob Cooper:
Now let me ask you this—and give us some numbers, so we have a real
example and people know how this works. For three days in a row, you’re
balancing your proteins, carbs, and fats at certain levels, with carbs based on
your carb sensitivity. Then on the fourth and fifth day, you’re re-feeding by
increasing your carbs and you’re increasing your calories as well? Or do
your calories stay the same?
Tom Venuto:
The calories go up too, because you’re adding in calories in the form of
carbs. You’re not just changing your nutrient split, you’re eating a lot more
on your high carb days. For example, let’s suppose I’m on a medium or low
carb diet of about 175 grams of carbs on my low carb days. I would literally
double that and go up to 350 grams on my high carb days. I’ve added 175
grams of carbs at four calories per gram, so that’s going to increase the
calories on the high carb days by 700, right? That’s a pretty big jump up in
calories, and it’s all carb calories. It’s as simple as keeping the same diet on
low carb days and adding some starchy carbs on top of that on the high carb
days.
Rob Cooper:
Do people ever complain that this is a lot food and it’s hard to get into?
Tom Venuto:
Oh, they do. It is hard. If this were easy, you’d see a lot more buffed bodies
on the street wouldn’t you? In fact, eating six meals a day is probably the
most frequent complaint. Many people think that to lose body fat, you just
have to eat less and they’re conditioned culturally to eat three meals a day:
breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They just can’t accept the idea that you could
eat more and still lose body fat because it’s counter-intuitive. By spreading it
out so you’re eating every three hours, in smaller feedings, you’re
optimizing your metabolism, among other benefits. You get to eat more, but
it’s not easy to do. It takes a lot of discipline. It takes preparation. You have
to cook your food in advance. You have to always be thinking ahead.
Sometimes you have to bag it or put it in portable containers and carry it
around with you, but it’s all worth it.
Rob Cooper:
That reminds me, two months into following your program, Burn the Fat,
Feed the Muscle, I actually wrote an article about things you don’t think
about when going on this kind of a program in terms of what’s required and
what kind of commitment it takes and other changes you have to make. For
example, the amount of laundry you’re doing. If you’re in the gym two times
a day, or three times a day, you’ve got a lot more laundry. You’re buying a
lot more food. You’re cooking a lot more food. You’re buying containers to
carry the food. You’re buying ice packs to put in coolers to carry your food,
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if you’re going out. There is a lot more involved, but you’re right—if you
put in the commitment, you always get the results. The results pay for it all.
Tom Venuto:
Those new behaviors and commitments and changes you make in your life
get turned over to habit too, and in not too long a period of time, you go from
not thinking about these things, to thinking about them, to eventually not
needing to think about them anymore because they just go on auto pilot after
a short period of committed, conscious willpower and effort.
Rob Cooper:
Sure, it becomes a lifestyle. Okay. I have a specific question regarding food
and training. What are your thoughts on post-workout nutrition? My
thoughts and my experience are, just to kind of guide you toward the
information I’m looking for, that during the post-workout period, your body
is wanting a lot more simple carbs. So is that going to affect the planning of
your meals for the rest of that day?
Tom Venuto:
How you approach post-workout nutrition is going to depend a lot on what
your goal is at the time. If your goal is gaining muscle mass, you might
approach it differently than if you were on a strict fat loss diet before a
bodybuilding competition. Post-workout nutrition is very important, no
question about that. The debatable part is whether or not it’s a must to get it
in the form of liquid sugar or simple carbs when your goal is maximum fat
loss such as a pre-contest diet.
Taking in simple carbs and protein immediately after a workout is going
to enhance your recovery, glycogen storage, and muscle growth. Chugging a
shake that is mostly sugar like glucose, dextrose, and or maltodextrin seems
like it wouldn’t be a good idea because we’re so used to reading about
avoiding sugar and about the importance of natural carbs, veggies, fruits,
whole grains, and natural starches from whole foods. As counter-intuitive as
it seems, though, there’s a ton of research showing benefits of carbs of the
simple variety during that post-workout period.
On a weight gain program, I would say take advantage of the commercial
post-workout drinks available to you because on a lean mass-gaining
program, it’s difficult enough to get in all those calories. In addition to any
other benefits, a post-workout drink is a convenient and easy way to get
more calories.
Where I question this practice is when you’re shifting gears from muscle
and weight gain into fat loss. I would prefer to continue focusing on the
importance of post-workout nutrition, but to get my post-workout nutrition
in the form of solid food and the usual complex and natural carbs. A
principle that I always live by is don’t compromise your primary objective.
If your primary objective is fat loss, I can’t see taking in a large amount of
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pure sugar post-workout as a good strategy to maximize your fat loss. It may
improve muscle growth and enhance recovery, but it might not enhance your
fat loss.
I’m fully aware of the experts who say that you should always drink a
post-workout drink, and I understand and respect their arguments, but so
many of them are connected to supplement companies that sell these drinks.
Can you really take their word for it? I’m speaking as a bodybuilder with 16
years and 28 contests under my belt, who is not connected to any supplement
company.
I won’t go so far as saying those drinks will make you fat—that’s unlikely
to happen because your body is going to use what you feed it after the
workout, but I can tell you without a doubt that personally—as an
endomorph body type who is slightly carb sensitive—I get leaner with
whole food.
Because post-workout nutrition is so important and because commercial
post-workout drinks can be so beneficial in so many ways, one way to tackle
this fat loss issue is to leave your post-workout drink in during the early
stages of the fat loss program, and then if your fat loss slows down or you
plateau, the drink is the first thing to cut. Then it’s just six meals a day and
one of those whole food meals falls immediately after weight training.
That’s your post-workout meal.
Rob Cooper:
Give us a specific example of a post-workout fat loss meal, then a musclebuilding, weight-gaining post-workout meal.
Tom Venuto:
A typical fat loss post-workout meal from whole food is usually white
potatoes and egg whites, or I’ll have chicken and rice. Those aren’t very
different from any standard bodybuilding meal, although I do choose high
glycemic carbs such as white potatoes or quick rice, and I make sure the
meal is low in fat, because you do want to get that nutrition in you quickly,
and fat slows the absorption of the meal.
The post-workout meal can also be bigger than other meals of the day.
Generally I recommend that breakfast and the post-workout meal are the
largest meals, if that’s practical. What I like to do on contest diets is to train
in the mid to late morning so I can get one or two meals in before training
and get a big high carb meal after my workout, then taper my starchy carbs
as the day goes on, so basically I’m front loading my carbs early in the day. I
believe very much in the concept of eating less later in the day for
accelerating fat loss, but if you train at night, then it’s still not a bad idea to
make that post-workout meal a big meal with starchy carbs.
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On a muscle growth weight-gaining program, I sometimes use a
commercial post-workout drink product. Most of them are made with whey
protein. For simple carbs, they’re using maltodextrin or glucose or dextrose.
One thing the researchers definitely point out is that the protein and carb mix
is better than just protein or just carbs on its own.
Rob Cooper:
Any kind of specific ratio?
Tom Venuto:
For bodybuilding, I’d say two parts carbs to one part protein. Depending on
what research you look at or who’s giving you the advice, you may hear
upwards of three parts to four parts carbs to one part protein. Usually that is
geared toward endurance athletes. For endurance athletes, carbing up after
the workouts used to be the popular approach, but now they’re adding in that
little bit of protein. It’s not a lot, it’s like four parts carbs to one part protein,
but again, that’s endurance. If you look at what the bodybuilders are doing,
their preferred post-workout drink products are usually two parts carbs to
one part protein.
Rob Cooper:
That’s good to know. All right, next subject. What about rest? How
important is rest?
Tom Venuto:
That’s when you’re going to grow—when you’re resting. Recovery is a very
important part of the equation. When you’re talking about recovery, one of
the things you’re talking about is your training frequency. You’re talking
about sleep, too, but when I think of rest, I don’t just think of sleep or taking
naps. I’m thinking of days off, and how often you can hit each muscle and
allow that muscle to recuperate.
For bodybuilders, training frequency is usually training each muscle
group once every four to seven days. If you let more than seven days go by,
that’s not often enough. Although a lot of research says you don’t detrain
that quickly, in my opinion, from a bodybuilding standpoint, you are starting
to detrain if you’re not following optimal frequency because you’re not
gaining. Bodybuilding is not about standing still and maintaining, it’s about
progress, growth, and advancement.
On the other hand, if you train each muscle group more than once every
four days, almost anyone except a genetic superior is going to be overtraining. This is bodybuilding training we’re talking about. Training for
other purposes might involve working each muscle two or three days a week
in full body or two-day splits, but that’s a different conversation. For
bodybuilders, within that once every four to seven days time frame, you
simply have to experiment for yourself to find what works best for you.
Once every five or six days works very well for me.
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The other factor is how many days in a row are you going to train before
taking a rest? That’s a completely separate variable than how many days
between working each body part and a lot of people don’t consider this.
Rob Cooper:
So I guess then, there are more variables that lifters would have to discover
for themselves based on their intensity level, their body type, their nutrition,
that sort of thing. Would that be correct to say?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, but I’m giving you some good guidelines to use as a baseline, so it’s not
total trial and error from scratch, just fine-tuning it for you and your body
type. As an example, somebody who’s a “hard gainer”—although I really
don’t like that phrase—let’s call them an ectomorph body type—they might
even need more recovery. They might be better off training every other day
on a one on, one off routine.
The typical ectomorph type program tends to be just three days a week.
They usually gain better on that, whereas they over-train on high volume
programs. Their nervous systems cannot recover from frequent training. You
have to look at not just the muscular system recovering, but the nervous
system recovering, and these types of people who are naturally skinny, are
often high strung and nervous to begin with, so the rest is extremely
important. There are definitely individual variables involved, and it takes
experimentation. By looking at what other people have done successfully,
you can at least narrow it down to a window and have a good baseline on
where you should start, and then all you have to do is tweak it a little bit.
Rob Cooper:
What are some signs of over-training?
Tom Venuto:
A big one is your strength. Ideally, your strength should be going up every
workout. That’s usually a dead giveaway of over-training, when your
strength is going down. It shouldn’t be going down; if it is, you’ve probably
over-trained. Right along with strength are your muscle gains and just your
overall progress. Have you stagnated and hit a plateau? Other signs are sleep
disturbances, muscle soreness that lasts longer than usual, loss of interest in
training, and just general fatigue and a feeling of the blahs. Those are all
good indicators that you may be over-trained.
Rob Cooper:
I know two other signs are noticing you’re getting sick or feeling like your
immune system has been taxed. So what happens if you realize you are overtrained? What’s the first thing to do?
Tom Venuto:
Sometimes it takes a layoff. Sometimes it just takes a change. It’s not a bad
idea to take a full week off once every 12–16 weeks. So you can ask
yourself, “Am I showing multiple signs of over-training, and have I been
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training my butt off for more than three to four months straight without a
break?” If so, then the time off is usually the best thing you can do. If your
motivation isn’t lagging and you’re highly motivated, that can be hard to do,
but sometimes it’s the best move. Sometimes the change is better than a rest.
A change is not just a change in routine, but a change in volume or intensity.
You may be over-training on volume, and you can shorten your workout
substantially and that can re-stimulate gains.
Rob Cooper:
Very quickly, would you change diet during that week off?
Tom Venuto:
If your activity decreases from a total layoff, you would want to decrease
your calories or you may gain body fat. The more active you were, the more
this is likely to happen. That’s the biggest mistake people make during a
layoff—they don’t decrease calories to reflect their lower calorie
expenditure.
Rob Cooper:
Good answer. Now you seem the type of guy who obviously is very selfmotivated. You’re very driven to improve. That’s obvious. What do you do
for learning? Who are your mentors? What kind of courses do you do?
Workshops, anything just to improve yourself?
Tom Venuto:
I’ve been a junkie on self-improvement ever since I was 19 years old when I
picked up the book, Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. I’ve been
completely hooked on learning and on personal development literature ever
since. You would pass out if you saw my library. My office is wall to wall
shelves, and I had a walk-in closet turned into a library. I read a lot of
motivational books in addition to all the fitness and nutrition reading I do.
Some of my favorites are the classics like Napoleon Hill, Earl
Nightingale, Robert Collier, and Og Mandino. Also Jim Rohn, Brian Tracy,
Bob Proctor, and Anthony Robbins. I’ve been influenced by all of them at
one time or another. I usually read a couple of hours every day both in my
field (in nutrition or training) and also in personal development, or I’ll listen
to audiotapes. Sometimes that’s how I’ll spend the time when I’m doing
cardio and always when I’m driving. I never listen to the radio and almost
never watch TV. The TV is the greatest time wasting and income reducing
device ever invented. Anyway, these people have all been my mentors
through books, and several times a year, I get out to seminars and learn from
them in person and immerse myself in a motivational environment and
network with like-minded people.
As for bodybuilding and staying motivated and focused on bodybuilding,
I immerse myself in the sport. When I set a goal to compete, I’ll start going
to every show that’s within driving distance. When I sit in that audience, that
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alone gets me fired up, seeing other people on stage. I start reading
bodybuilding books, reading bodybuilding magazines, and watching
bodybuilding videos. I start spending time with other bodybuilders. Most
people don’t realize how much the people in your peer group will influence
you. It’s a major, major factor. You’ve got to take a real close look at your
group of friends because you’re going to end up just like them.
Rob Cooper:
I agree. Thank you for saying that. In fact, 15 years ago, when I was at my
heaviest weight of 500 pounds, I was heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol.
I wanted to quit, and I had to leave a lot of the people behind that I was
friends with just to get rid of that whole environment. I found out later that
they weren’t friends. They were just drinking buddies. So yeah, surround
yourself with people who are in the same sport as you or have the same goals
as you. Another good one here is if you want to be rich, hang out with rich
people.
Tom Venuto:
Yes, and not only hang out with rich people, hang out with people much
richer and much more successful than you. I remember hearing a story about
a millionaire businessman who was very successful, but not nearly as
successful as he wanted to be. He had even gone so far as to develop a
mastermind group, which is one of the success principles Napoleon Hill
wrote about in Think and Grow Rich.
The idea is to get together a group of like-minded people, and the
principle of synergism comes into play where one and one doesn’t equal
two. One and one equals three, or 33, or 100, or 1000. Despite his past
success, this businessman wasn’t reaching his goals, so he went to a multimillionaire coach and the first thing his coach asked was, “Do you have a
mastermind group?” After answering yes, the second and third questions
were, “Who is in your mastermind group?” and “What are their incomes?”
The businessman said, “Well, it’s a great group, they’re all millionaires.” He
said, “That’s the problem. In my mastermind group, they’re all billionaires.”
I do the same thing in bodybuilding. I hang out with people who are more
developed than I am. I often train with people who are stronger and bigger
and on a much higher level than me. I look at them and use them as a
standard to make me raise my standards.
Rob Cooper:
Okay, I have some personal questions for you. What do you for fun, buddy?
Tom Venuto:
Everything we’ve talked about is fun for me. Bodybuilding is fun.
Rob Cooper:
Let’s go into hobbies. Do you golf?
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Tom Venuto:
Nope, don’t golf. Hobbies? Well, you know, bodybuilding really is my
biggest hobby. It’s a sport, a hobby, a lifestyle, and it’s fun. A lot of people
look at it as just hard work and discipline and effort, and it can be all of that,
but that’s exactly what’s so rewarding about it.
As I mentioned earlier, when I was a teenager, I knew this is what I
wanted to do with my life, in one shape or form. I love everything about the
sport. Being able to develop a career around this lets me have fun all day
long. The Internet work I do building websites is definitely a fun hobby,
even though it’s my business. I never go to work, because my work is my
fun. I don’t call it work, really, I play all day.
Rob Cooper:
Let’s say that there’s somebody out there who really, really, really wants to
know what it is you do on your off time?
Tom Venuto:
More recently, I did start to travel a little bit, and I want to do more of that. I
took up a little bit of hiking, and I’m sure I’ll do more of that in the future,
too, but there’s not much in the way of scenic trails here in the New York
Metropolitan area. Right now, honestly, my biggest hobby is reading. I don’t
watch any TV. I read. I’ve got a huge library, so that’s a big hobby for me. I
guess I don’t have very many hobbies outside of that.
Rob Cooper:
The reason I’m asking all this is because most people who’ve gotten into the
sport of bodybuilding have built their bodies up, but I’m always curious—in
fact, I always ask my bodybuilder guests what they do for fun. They’ve built
this body, so I’m curious about how they use it. You’ve got an awesome
cardio system. You’ve got an awesome physique. How do you use it? What
do you do? I guess you answered my question.
Okay. What about pets?
Tom Venuto:
Nope, no pets. Too much high maintenance.
Rob Cooper:
A pet rock.
Tom Venuto:
Yeah, exactly, that would be perfect.
Rob Cooper:
We have a little bit of time left, so back to bodybuilding nutrition. What are
the top five supplements that you would recommend or use or tell people
about? They can be anything.
Tom Venuto:
I’m fairly minimalistic with supplements, and I look at them in terms of
nutritional insurance first. For nutritional insurance, your basic supplement
is obviously a multi-vitamin. I would put essential fatty acids (EFAs) in that
category as well, because they’re so important. You can get them easily from
your food, especially nowadays that you can get omega eggs, wild salmon,
219
grass-fed beef, free range chicken, flaxseed, and so on, but because they are
so critical and many of us don’t always get the optimal amount or the right
ratios of EFAs from our food, I would say supplementing with these is
worthwhile. You have a few options. You could use a balanced essential oil
blend like Udo’s Choice, or you could use straight flaxseed oil, and fish oil is
probably the most popular these days.
Another category is supplements for convenience. This is a consideration
because eating the small frequent meals is difficult, and if you can’t get a
meal from solid food, you can use a meal replacement. You can also use
protein power to replace protein food, so that’s also a convenience
supplement.
A third category for supplements is performance enhancement. Creatine
monohydrate—even though it’s old news and has been out for at least
15 years—is one of the few if any worth taking. That’s one supplement for
strength and muscle mass that’s got a lot of scientific support behind it.
Outside of these categories, I don’t take or recommend much of anything
else.
Rob Cooper:
Okay. Do you recommend cycling creatine it, or just staying on it?
Tom Venuto:
If you look at the research literature, most of it will say that there’s no reason
you have to cycle it, meaning no dangers of staying on it non-stop and no
advantage of cycling off and going back on. Of course, if you ask the
supplement companies, they would never tell you to cycle it, because they
want you using more product.
I don’t have any data to quote to back this up, but to me, it makes sense
that your body is adaptive in nature. So personally I use creatine in an onand-off fashion, and I’ll take it when I’m on a muscle mass or strengthgaining phase. Then I’ll cycle off of it and then go back on it. I responded
very well to creatine many years ago the first time I took it, but these days I
can’t say I notice that much of a difference, but I’d say it’s definitely worth
trying to see how well you respond.
Rob Cooper:
Last but not least, if anybody wants to get Tom’s book, Burn the Fat, Feed
the Muscle, you can go to my website www.BodyBuilderInterviews.com/
btf and btf is for Burn the Fat. Anything else coming up, Tom?
Tom Venuto:
I do plan on releasing a series of courses specifically on bodybuilding, and
hopefully even a set of videos. These projects have been on the drawing
board for a long time, but they’re not things I want to rush, because I’m
working really hard to come out with something unique. I have no intention
of churning out another one of the same old bodybuilding books that you can
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already find dozens of on any bookstore shelf. When they’re ready, you can
find out more about them on the www.BodybuildingSecrets.com website.
Rob Cooper:
Great. Awesome. My guest today has been Tom Venuto, who’s a lifetime
natural bodybuilder. He’s won numerous competitions including three state
titles, numerous regional titles, runner up in the Natural Mr. USA and
Natural North America, and most recently the middleweight champion at the
NPC Natural Eastern Classic. I’m so thankful to have him on the show to
share his information and knowledge.
Tom Venuto:
It’s been great. Thanks for having me.
Rob Cooper:
You bet. Thanks, Tom.

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About Tom Venuto
About Rob Cooper
In 1990, Rob Cooper weighed almost 500 pounds. He was
addicted to drugs and alcohol and completely sedentary. At the age
of 22, he nearly died. At that point, Rob knew something had to
change, so he began a program of natural health. With the right
exercise and nutrition, he dropped over 300 pounds of fat. At his
lowest weight of 187, Rob began serious weight training and
added more than 50 pounds of muscle.
With his new fitness lifestyle, today Rob enjoys extreme sports
including skydiving, mountain climbing, backpacking, white
water kayaking, and scuba diving. Rob is an active spokesperson
and online publisher of health, fitness, bodybuilding, and weight
loss information. He is founder of www.FormerfatGuy.com. Rob
was so inspired by his various fitness, bodybuilding, and nutrition
role models that he also ventured into fitness radio with his
Former Fat Guy Show. The all time best of Rob Cooper’s shows
are still available at www.BodybuilderInterviews.com.
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A Dissertation in Muscle
Mass Construction
Chris Mohr, PhD, Interviews Tom Venuto
Chris Mohr:
You’re best known as a fat loss expert, but I also know that you’re a
successful bodybuilder, and today I’d like to focus on the subject of building
muscle mass. So let me start by asking you, if you were to train someone to
gain lean body mass, how would the training differ from training for fat
loss?
Tom Venuto:
The first thing I would point out is that there is no single best training
program for gaining muscle mass, so I can’t give you one perfect training
program. It doesn’t exist. There are thousands of training programs that can
work. Actually, there are an infinite number of training programs that can
work. I’ve seen people gain muscle on all kinds of different routines, some
of which were almost exact opposites. I’ve even seen people make some
gains on lousy programs. The methods are endless. But it’s like Alwyn
Cosgrove always says, “Methods are many, principles are few. Methods
often change, principles never do.”
So what you want to do is identify and then focus on the principles and
fundamentals of building mass. Keep those fundamentals in place while you
test new techniques and experiment with different methods. Experiment
continuously, but try not to get too distracted with whatever the next big
thing is in bodybuilding training because the basic principles never change.
It’s like Jim Rohn the motivational speaker once said, “There’s no such thing
as a new fundamental. That’s like someone saying they have just opened a
factory manufacturing antiques.”
To a bodybuilder, there really aren’t that many differences between fat
loss training and muscle growth training. There are a lot of bodybuilders
who train almost exactly the same before competitions as they do in the offseason with the exceptions of using a little less weight, less rest between
sets, and more supersets. The biggest difference is in the diet and the calorie
deficit, and the addition of more cardio during the fat loss phase.
If there is any other change in a bodybuilder’s weight training, it usually
involves decreasing the rest intervals in order to increase the density of the
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A Dissertation in Muscle Mass Construction
workout. Density means the amount of work performed in a specific amount
of time, and it’s a great method of progressive overload.
When you talk about progressive overload, that could mean progressive
resistance, which is increasing the weight, but progressive overload and
progressive resistance are not one and the same. Progressive overload is
forcing your muscles to do any type of work they have not performed before.
Progressive resistance is forcing your muscles to lift more weight than they
have before.
As you get leaner and leaner and your diet becomes stricter, it can be
more dangerous to continue to progressively increase weight, so what many
bodybuilders do instead is increase the density of their workouts by
shortening rest intervals from one to three minutes or whatever their rest
interval is for off-season strength training, down to 45 seconds, 30 seconds,
or even less. This forces a reduction in weight, but it’s still an overload, so
they can achieve muscle growth or at least maintain with this method, even
though they’re not training heavier. This was a favorite method of Vince
Gironda who was the North Hollywood trainer who turned out more
bodybuilding champions in his heyday than any other trainer in history.
Another way bodybuilders use density training in fat loss programs is to
use a lot of supersets. Supersets are where you perform two exercises in a
row with no rest in between. They can be done for the same muscle group,
like a bench press supersetted to a dumbbell flye, or for opposite muscle
groups like a bench press supersetted to a barbell row. Either way, supersets
are an awesome technique, especially during fat loss programs.
What’s different during mass training programs is that you will probably
be training heavier and doing more straight sets with longer rest intervals to
allow yourself to use the maximum amount of weight possible. When you
superset or use short rest intervals, your weights are compromised.
Now, for non-bodybuilders, fat loss weight training can be very different
from muscle mass weight training. Not only can you use supersets for
opposite or non-competing muscle groups, you can do the exercises three in
a row for tri-sets or even in mini circuits.
Several top trainers, including Alwyn Cosgrove and Craig Ballantyne,
have developed excellent fat loss training systems around this concept. They
let you burn fat effectively using weight training, and the workouts are
incredibly time efficient. They are doubly time efficient because they reduce
the need for cardio, since the weight training sessions kill two birds with one
stone. You could count them as both a muscular and cardiovascular workout.
For the busy executive or housewife with kids to look after, this style of
training can be ideal for practical purposes as well as for results. For a
bodybuilder or someone going after maximum muscle mass, this may not be
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the best approach. For example, on a fat loss weight training program, you
might superset squats or lunges with seated rows. Here you have two
compound exercises for unrelated muscle groups with high metabolic
demand and high energy expenditure.
When you get to the seated rows, however, you may find yourself
breathing hard, and then you have to perform your rows in that oxygendeprived condition. That’s the whole idea with fat loss weight training, but it
can compromise the muscle mass gains—at least to some degree—because
you can’t put the intensity, strength, or mental focus into the quality muscle
contraction of the lats and upper back on the rows if you’re exhausted and
sucking wind from the set you just did before it.
When you’re deciding on how to design your training program, a good
principle to follow is to keep in mind your lifestyle situation, your need for
time efficiency, and your goals, and then design your program so you never
compromise your primary objective.
Chris Mohr:
How about with regard to diet? Aside from an increase in calories, would
you vary the nutrient intake at all?
Tom Venuto:
Yes, absolutely. Calorie intake is worth emphasizing first, though, because
there’s no question in my mind that the biggest reason people who want to
gain lean body weight don’t gain lean body weight is because they’re not
eating enough.
I don’t know who started the idea that you can gain muscle in a calorie
deficit, I think it goes back years with those metabolic optimizer powder
supplements, and one of the meal replacement companies who claimed that
there was something in their powder that voided the law of thermodynamics.
The truth is, you can’t get around the energy balance equation. If you
want to gain muscle, you need a calorie surplus, and I strongly recommend
starting a muscle gaining program by doing the math and calculating your
calories and writing a menu, or getting a professional like yourself, Chris, to
write a menu for you. Don’t guess.
If you want a general guideline, add 500 calories on top of your
maintenance level as a starting point for gaining lean mass. If you want more
individualization, use a 15% surplus. For example, if your maintenance level
is 3000 calories per day, 15% of that is 450 calories, so your starting caloric
intake would be 3450 calories per day.
Outside of calories, the first thing that comes to mind is the macronutrient
ratios. On fat loss diets, a lot of people will benefit from carb restriction—
not necessarily zero carb or extremely low carb, but at least moderately
reduced carbs—based on a person’s level of carb tolerance. Most
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competitive bodybuilders use some degree of carb restriction to get lean
before contests, but in the off-season they eat tons of carbs.
In the case of gaining muscle mass, you wouldn’t want to restrict your
carbs at all. You need those carbs to help you get your calorie surplus, and
you need them to keep your energy up for hard and heavy training sessions.
I’d suggest 50–55% of your total calories come from natural carb sources on
a mass gaining program, maybe slightly less for someone carb sensitive,
with more fat and protein to make up the difference.
As for specific foods, it’s important to understand the concept of calorie
density. The secret to packing on pounds of solid muscle mass is simple: Eat
more! But “Just eat more” is easier said than done. Sometimes it seems like
you’re doing nothing but shopping, cooking, and eating all day long. In fact,
a lot of top level bodybuilders are well known for saying that eating is their
job, and they mean it literally.
One way to make gaining weight and forcing down all that food less of a
chore is to choose foods (or supplements) with a high calorie density. By
doing so, you can get more calories in the same amount of food. All proteins
and all carbohydrates have four calories per gram, and all fats have nine
calories per gram, but not all foods have the same number of calories per
unit of volume.
Here’s an example: Picture two kitchen measuring cups side by side. One
filled with chopped cucumber and one is filled with raisins. Each cup now
contains exactly the same volume of food, right? But the cup of raisins has
37 times more calories. The cup of cucumbers contains 14 calories, while
the cup of raisins contains 520 calories. If cucumbers and raisins both have
four calories per gram, then how could this be? The cucumbers have a lower
calorie density. The calories in the raisins are more concentrated.
Fibrous carbohydrates and vegetables such as lettuce, asparagus,
cucumber, and broccoli have very low calorie densities because they are
high in water and fiber and your body can’t absorb the caloric content of
fiber. That makes veggies an excellent choice when you want to lose body
fat. Before competitions, bodybuilders are budgeting their calories, so they
usually reduce or remove high calorie simple sugars and starches from their
diets and replace them with fibrous carbohydrates. Goodbye bagels and
pasta, hello broccoli and asparagus!
On the other hand, the low caloric density of most vegetables is the very
reason that they don’t help you gain weight. Think about it: You would have
to eat a wheelbarrow full of lettuce, broccoli, cucumbers, or spinach before
you consumed enough calories to make the scale budge at all! It’s important
to always include vegetables in your diet because of their health value, but
you won’t get enough calories to gain weight from veggies alone. You have
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to eat lots of high density foods including fruit, natural starches and whole
grains, or you’ll be fighting an uphill battle. Complex carbohydrates
(starches) such as whole grains, whole grain pasta, whole grain bread, whole
grain cereals, oatmeal, barley, legumes, beans, yams, potatoes, and brown
rice are staples in weight gain programs.
Simple carbohydrates such as fruit often have higher calorie densities
than vegetables because simple carbs are more concentrated. Fruit juice is
even more concentrated than the fruit itself. A medium-sized orange
contains about 60 calories. A glass of orange juice has about 160 calories.
Fruits like bananas, raisins, and fruit juice, make great additions to a weightgaining program, and whole fruit is great for blending in with your meal
replacement or protein shakes to boost the calories as well as add fiber and
nutrients.
When we talk about simple carbs, though, you have to be aware that
when taken to the extreme, concentrating and refining carbohydrates results
in empty calorie products like white sugar and white bread. Although these
are calorie dense foods, they have little or no nutritional value. You don’t
want to add high calorie density, low nutrient density refined foods to your
mass building diet just for the sake of more calories. You want nutrient
density and calorie density. Look for foods that are high in calories that are
unrefined and as close to their natural form as possible (the way they came
out of the ground). The only time sugars are acceptable is after your
workouts.
Fat can also have a major impact on the calorie density of foods and can
help you get your calorie surplus. Fats have more than twice as many
calories per gram than carbohydrates or protein (nine calories per gram
versus four calories per gram), so foods that are 100% fat have the most
calories per volume. Any food that has a lot of fat in it will have a high
calorie density. Peanut butter, for example, has 1600 calories per cup. Most
types of nuts have 600–800 calories per cup. Olive oil contains 1920 calories
per cup.
Healthy fats are not only good for you, but they can help you gain weight
more quickly than if you ate no fat at all. Just one tablespoon of flaxseed oil
as a supplement and two tablespoons of natural peanut butter or a couple of
handfuls of nuts would add nearly 500 calories to your daily diet, and you’d
hardly notice that any extra food was added. Nuts like walnuts and almonds
are also an easy and painless way to add in extra concentrated calories from
healthy fats.
The best proteins for gaining muscle are the lean ones like chicken, lean
beef, egg whites, turkey, and fish. Lean cuts of red meat such as round or
flank steak are excellent for gaining weight. Because of the higher calories
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and the essential fatty acids (good fats), cold water fish such as salmon, is
another great addition to a muscle gaining program.
I’m a big believer in always emphasizing whole foods over supplements
whenever possible. However, it’s not easy to eat whole foods six times per
day if you have a busy schedule. If you have a hard time getting enough
calories from food, then you should consider using a weight gain or meal
replacement product because drinking your calories is a lot easier than eating
them.
Meal replacements are usually powdered products that you mix with
water, milk, or juice. You can also increase the calories further by adding
natural peanut butter, flax oil, fruit, or your other favorite ingredient and
mixing up the whole concoction in a blender.
One thing to take note of is that most meal replacement products were
designed with fat loss in mind. These usually come in individual serving
packets. They only have about 300–350 calories per serving, and they
contain more protein than carbohydrates. This way, they fit into the
guidelines of a moderate or low carbohydrate, high protein, fat-burning diet.
By themselves, these products might not be as effective when you’re
trying to gain weight because 300 calories is not enough for a mass-building
meal. If you decide to use this type of product for weight gain, you’ll need to
mix it with a calorie containing liquid such as juice, skim milk, or even
yogurt, or blend it with fruit to bring the calories up to 500–700 (or whatever
your muscle mass-building diet calls for).
When you want to gain muscle, you could also choose a meal
replacement product that was specifically designed for that purpose. These
“weight gainers” are much more concentrated in calories and contain more
carbohydrates. Be sure to pay attention to ingredients, however, because
some might use simple carbs (sugars) and skimp on the protein. Read the
labels and avoid any product that is mostly sugar with very little protein. The
only time you want those simple sugars is in your post-workout drink, not in
meal replacements throughout the day.
A good product for bodybuilding purposes will have approximately one
part protein for every two parts of carbohydrates, with only small amounts of
fat. For example, a drink mix with 40 grams of protein, 80 grams of carbs,
and two grams of fat would provide almost 500 calories. If you wanted even
more calories, you could mix the powder with skim or low-fat milk or juice
instead of water.
Most people don’t realize that you need to customize your meal
replacement or weight gain drink to your exact calorie needs. Just because
the package says there are “1000 calories per serving” doesn’t mean that’s
how many you need. Adjust the serving size to fit your own energy
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requirements. For example, if you need 3500 calories a day to gain weight,
that breaks down into five 700-calorie meals or six 583-calorie meals.
There’s no need to shovel down 1000 calories at a time just because the label
says so—that’s only going to make you fat.
Chris Mohr:
What are your top five favorite energy-dense foods that are good for packing
on solid muscle?
Tom Venuto:
My top five carbs are:
Fruits
Oatmeal
Yams
Brown rice
Potatoes
The only reason I didn’t mention vegetables is because of their low
caloric density, but naturally, of course, they should be a part of any diet.
My top five proteins are:
Chicken
Salmon
Lean red meat, especially grass-fed beef
Egg whites and limited yolks
Protein powders as a supplement
Chris Mohr:
I think we understand that protein is an important nutrient for gaining lean
body mass. What about carbs and fats, though, which often fall by the
wayside?
Tom Venuto:
Protein is very important, but try to eat nothing but protein all day long and
see how far you get in your muscle gains. It’s a very common misconception
that eating a high protein diet is the primary factor for gaining lean body
mass, but it’s not. Getting enough protein is easy. Getting enough calories is
the primary factor and the most challenging one for most people. We already
covered that in detail when I was talking about calorie density and calorie
surpluses.
Chris Mohr:
Do you think the timing of nutrients is important in addition to the overall
increased consumption that’s required for packing on mass?
Tom Venuto:
Without a doubt. There’s a ton of research on this, and Drs. Portman and Ivy
wrote a whole book on it called Nutrient Timing, which does a good job
covering all the science behind it. It’s pretty much accepted across the board
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that it’s very important to eat a substantial meal immediately after your
strength training because this is a critical time period for muscle growth and
recovery. Some people call this the post-workout “window of opportunity.”
Your post-workout meal can be a commercial or homemade drink, but
personally I feel that whole food works just fine. I know there are a lot of
people who say the liquid meal is a must, but I have never seen a difference
in my results between whole food and liquid food especially in the context
of a six- or seven-meals-a-day mass gaining diet. I think whole food may
even be better on fat loss programs (especially strict fat loss programs like
bodybuilding or fitness/figure competition diets), but I definitely
recommend the post-workout drinks on mass gaining programs even if it’s
just for the ease of getting enough calories in.
The post-workout meal should be protein and carbs, not one or the other.
A lot of people think carbohydrates alone should be emphasized after a
workout as a way to replenish glycogen and energy reserves after workouts.
Other people insist that post-workout protein is more important. The science
shows that the optimal meal contains both.
There are all kinds of formulas to calculate exact calorie, protein, and
carbohydrate amounts for your post-workout meal. For example, 0.8 gram of
carbs per kilogram of body weight, and 0.4 gram of protein per kilogram of
body weight is a common recommendation. But if you’re eating six times a
day and your workout falls somewhere between two of your meals, then
your post-workout (and pre-workout) nutrition is pretty much taken care of
automatically.
You can make the post-workout meal one of the larger meals of the day. I
like to frame my workouts with two large high-carb meals. The meal before
weight training and the one after weight training are two of my highest
calorie and highest carb meals. Some people call that bracketing. I don’t
have a formula for this—it’s not rocket science—just surround your workout
with two of your biggest meals and be sure you’re in a surplus for the day.
That’s all there is to it.
After your weight training is one of the best times to consume your carbs.
The carbs you eat after weight training will replenish glycogen, restore
blood sugar, and cause an insulin spike, which will suppress the catabolic
hormone cortisol, and drive amino acids into the muscle cells. Glycogen and
protein synthesis is achieved faster when protein and carbs are consumed
together. The ideal carb source, like the protein, is one that is quickly
absorbed. High glycemic foods such as white potatoes or quick rice work
well at this time. Most commercial post-workout drinks use maltodextrin (a
quickly digested carbohydrate), dextrose, glucose, or a combination.
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If you choose a liquid meal after your workout, you can use a commercial
drink found at your health club or health food store, or make your own by
combining whey protein with maltodextrin or a maltodextrin/dextrose 50-50
mix. Some people mix Gatorade and whey protein. If you use a drink, you
take that immediately after your workout and then simply take your next
regular food meal about an hour or so after that.
Chris Mohr:
Let’s switch gears for a minute to supplements. Are there any supplements
you suggest for folks trying to pack on mass?
Tom Venuto:
It’s a real short list. I think way too much emphasis is put on so called
muscle building supplements these days, especially in the magazines, and
not enough emphasis on good old fashioned food and hard training.
Here’s what I recommend:
Creatine
Multi-vitamin/mineral
Essential fatty acids such as flaxseed oil, an oil blend like Udo’s Choice,
or fish oil if you don’t eat fish, at least two or three times a week
Any liquid or powdered meal replacements that help you get your six
meals and all your calories
Post-workout drinks
That’s about it. Other supplements range from marginally effective and
highly overrated to completely worthless, in my opinion, especially in the
bodybuilding and muscle gaining sector.
Chris Mohr:
There are an infinite number of training principles. Do you feel there’s an
important role for descending sets when trying to gain lean body mass?
Explain why they may be beneficial or why you think they’re not.
Tom Venuto:
Descending sets are awesome. Descending sets may not be appropriate for
maximum strength training programs, but in my opinion, supersets and
descending sets are two of the best training principles for building muscle. I
like them so much I wrote an article about 12 different ways to do drop sets,
which was published in Natural Bodybuilding and Fitness Magazine a few
years ago.
There are many ways you can do a drop set, but here’s the basic principle:
Suppose you’re doing bicep curls with 115 pounds for a set of eight reps.
The sixth rep is difficult. The seventh rep is extremely hard. The eighth rep
takes an all out supreme effort. Gun to your head, you couldn’t do a ninth
rep. You’ve hit failure. But if you strip about 15–20% or so off the bar—
about a 10-pound plate off each side—you can keep going and do more reps.
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You can even go to failure once more and then strip weight off again, which
is a common method of descending sets called a triple drop.
Most people would have figured the set was over after eight reps to
failure. However, even though you may have reached a point of momentary
muscular failure, you didn’t reach absolute failure; you’ve only reached
failure with that poundage. In a single straight set performed to failure, you
don’t activate every fiber in a muscle group. You only contract the number
of fibers necessary to lift a particular weight for the desired number of
repetitions. By stripping off weight and continuing the set, you can continue
and cumulatively recruit more and more “reserve” muscle fibers, causing
growth that normally couldn’t be achieved by stopping after a single straight
set.
Drop sets are intense, and they require caution and common sense like
other beyond failure techniques. If you used them all the time, you would
quickly burn out and over-train. One great way to use drop sets is to do three
sets on an exercise: the first two as regular straight sets and the last set as a
drop set. This also helps you finish up with a good pump, and getting
maximum pump can also help increase your rate of muscle gain.
Chris Mohr:
If someone is trying to pack on mass, discuss a little about the rep ranges you
would suggest for them.
Tom Venuto:
When you train with low reps in the one to five range, you are training for
maximum strength, and the adaptations are mostly neurological: You
develop an increased ability to recruit more muscle fibers; you stimulate the
higher threshold fibers that are not activated with high rep, low weight sets;
you decrease neuromuscular inhibition; and there’s increased coordination
between the muscle groups.
Many people will notice that five reps or fewer seems to make them much
stronger, but not necessarily bigger, and that’s because the strength gains
come from adaptations in the nervous system—the muscle fibers and other
muscle cell structures do not hypertrophy (enlarge) as much as with six to 12
reps. A lot of this may have to do with your personal fiber type. I have seen
people stay primarily in the four- to six-rep range, and they built tremendous
muscle mass. Natural bodybuilder Skip Lacour comes to mind as a guy who
got not only incredibly strong but also massive by training mostly in the
four- to six-rep range.
When you train with medium reps (six to 12) the adaptations are more
metabolic and cellular and only moderately neurological. This is why six to
12 reps is the range most often recommended for bodybuilding and
hypertrophy. You get bigger and stronger in this rep range, but your strength
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gains are not maximal. This explains why some bodybuilders who never do
any lower rep work are often very big but not that strong.
When you train with higher reps (13–20+), the adaptations are mostly
metabolic and cellular. This rep range produces local muscular endurance,
increased pump and blood flow, and a small degree of hypertrophy in certain
cellular components such as the mitochondria and the capillaries, but very
little strength—only strength endurance.
By the way, it’s a myth that high reps get you cut and low reps get you
bigger. High reps do not get you leaner. You get leaner with a calorie deficit
and you get bigger from your calorie surplus.
Low rep training is trendy right now. I’ve read books by some experts
who insist that you should be training in the one- to five-rep range all the
time, even muscles like your abs, but I think you should be training in every
rep range when your goal is an increase in muscle size. Fred “Dr. Squat”
Hatfield wrote about this a lot in his scientific bodybuilding books. He called
it holistic training.
Speaking of squats, I was always a Tom Platz fan, and of course he is
known for being the man who had the best developed legs of all time. If you
look at how he trained his legs it was across every rep range, and he was
known for amazing feats of squatting like 500 pounds for 23 reps, 315 for
50, and 225 for 10 minutes. I’m sure part of this was genetics and fiber type
makeup, but I have seen this time and time again especially when it comes to
legs: The guys in bodybuilding with the most massive legs are usually doing
multiple rep ranges, they’re not just squatting sets of five and six.
The bottom line is that for mass, you should train across all rep ranges,
but you should emphasize the six- to 12-rep range and especially eight to 10
for pure hypertrophy. You can approach this with a periodization plan by
doing heavy, moderate and lighter days, by alternating between three- to
four-week intensification phases (higher intensity, lower volume) and threeor four-week accumulation phases (higher volume, lower intensity), or by
combining various rep ranges in the same workout.
Chris Mohr:
How often do you recommend changing a workout?
Tom Venuto:
You change your routine the minute it stops working—whether that’s in
three workouts, three weeks, or in three months—or better yet, you get to
understand your body and you anticipate when your routine is going to stop
working and change just before that happens.
The one thing you should not do is keep pressing on with an old routine
that’s not working anymore under the illusion that you’re just being
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persistent. I like the Emerson quote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin
of little minds.” When the game changes, the game plan must change.
You don’t necessarily have to change the entire routine, but some new
stimulus must be put into the program or you’re not likely to make anymore
progress. Changing often is also a good idea for adherence because it helps
prevent boredom and lack of motivation. New routines keep things
interesting.
How often you should change depends on how long you’ve been training
and what your goals are. When you’re a beginner, you can usually make
progress on the same workout routine longer than someone who is advanced.
Beginners should change at least every 12 weeks, although they can change
workouts each month for variety if they choose.
The more advanced you get, the more quickly you’ll adapt and the more
often you’ll need to change and the more dramatic the changes will need to
be. The word “shock” training is often thrown around in bodybuilding
circles, and some strength coaches make fun of the bodybuilding lingo, but
shocking your body is an accurate description of what you have to do to
keep stimulating gains.
I’ve been training for 20 years, and I seem to adapt to a training routine in
as little as three to four weeks—sometimes in as little as three workouts!
Personally, I usually change my program every month or approximately
every five to six workouts or so, although there’s often one part of my
workout that is different every time. I call that confusion with continuity.
Part of my workout stays the same in terms of exercises, sets, and reps,
except I aim for beating my previous workout. That’s continuity. Another
part of my workout is totally different. That’s the confusion or shock part of
the workout.
Some bodybuilders use the muscle confusion principle and they change
their workouts constantly, never doing the same workout twice. I have to
say, I’ve seen some awesome bodybuilders who do this. The problem with
changing routines too often is that it doesn’t provide any continuity.
Except for highly advanced bodybuilders who are really in tune with their
bodies, I think it’s more efficient to progressively “milk” each block of
training for all its worth, then change, than it is to change everything every
workout. Going into the gym and changing things at random is also
haphazard and reflects lack of planning. There are also psychological
reasons why you should plan your workouts in advance, so that you can
mentally rehearse the workouts beforehand, which always makes for an
effective session.
As for specifically what I change, I mix it up and change everything—
exercises, order of exercises, number of exercises, load, rep ranges, sets,
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tempo, range of motion, intensity techniques like drop sets or supersets, and
so on. Exercise variation is important, especially for bodybuilding, but I also
think that you will adapt to a rep range faster than you will adapt to an
exercise. For example, you could squat for months on end, but you could
change the rep range, change the tempo, change the range of motion to nonlockout squats, add a superset, or add any other intensity technique so the
workout is the same because you’re still using the squat, but it’s different
because you’re changing how you’re squatting.
Chris Mohr:
Are negatives an important part of your training regimen to gain mass?
Tom Venuto:
That depends on your definition, because negatives can refer to different
things. If you mean simply slowing down your tempo and emphasizing the
negative portion of the rep, then yes, I think that’s one of the best techniques
for gaining muscle.
The muscle growth process is very much a matter of breaking down
tissue. Then you provide the recovery and nutritional support necessary so
the muscle fibers super-compensate and rebuild themselves bigger and
stronger than before. Research has shown that the eccentric portion of the
rep, where you are lowering the weight and the muscle lengthens, is the part
of the rep that leads to the greatest amount of microtrauma or breaking down
of muscle tissue.
The type of negative emphasis I use the most is an adjustment in tempo. I
simply slow down the negative portion of the rep. Tempo or repetition speed
is important because different lifting speeds produce different training
effects.
Boiled down to its pure essence, developing muscle size is a matter of
high intramuscular tension coupled with progressive overload. Faster reps let
you use heavier weights, but reduce tension and the quality of muscle
contraction because momentum is moving the weight. When you slow down
the eccentric you increase muscle tension and you can improve the quality of
the muscle contraction.
If you’re ever in doubt about how fast to do your repetitions for
developing muscle size, a concentric of two seconds and eccentric of three
seconds is a good rule of thumb. This is a “controlled” rep. There’s definitely
a place for explosive reps and accelerating on the concentric, but that’s
another conversation.
You can record your rep speed with a tempo prescription. For example, a
standard rep in the barbell curl would have a three-second eccentric
(lowering the weight), a zero-second pause in the stretch (bottom) position, a
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two-second concentric, and a zero-second pause in the contracted (top)
position. This is written as a tempo prescription of 3-0-2-0:
3 – Eccentric contraction
0 – Stretch position
2 – Concentric contraction
0 – Contracted position
Your natural tendency on almost any exercise will be to let gravity take
over and drop the weight. Resisting this urge and “fighting the negative” will
improve your results dramatically. All else being equal, the set with the
slower eccentric is more hypertrophy-stimulating because it eliminates
momentum and increases time under tension for the set and total time under
tension for the entire workout.
To increase the intensity of your workouts, you can experiment with even
slow negatives of varying speeds from four to five seconds and occasionally
even longer—like up to 10 seconds as in the “super slow” method. You’d be
surprised how much more challenging a negative speed of five seconds is
compared to two or three seconds.
Some trainers claim that super slow or “negative only” repetitions are the
ultimate methods for developing muscle mass, but you can take slow or
negative emphasis reps too far. The claim that super slow is the best training
method is an example of overestimating the importance of a single tactic.
Extremely slow reps are a valid technique, but that doesn’t make them the
best way or the only way to train. Slow reps are only one way. If you only
used one single technique such as very slow reps, you would rapidly plateau.
You have to change your programs continually, and that includes tempo.
Another problem with super slow is that if your reps get too slow, such as
a 10-second negative, the reps and sets can become too long in duration, and
that forces you to reduce the load so dramatically that you don’t get the
adaptation you were after in the first place.
Another more intense way to use negative training is going to complete
concentric failure, then having a training partner help you lift the weight
while you continue to lower the weight under your own strength. The reason
you can keep doing more negative-only reps after concentric failure is
because you are about 40% stronger on the negative portion of the rep. Like
drop sets, this method should be used sparingly because it’s easy to overtrain if you do too much of this.
There’s an even more intense form of negative training, and that’s pure
negatives where the bar is loaded to more than 100% of your one-rep max,
and you only lower the weight through the eccentric action, and your
training partner or partners have to lift it completely. I’ve used this method
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in the past but don’t any more because I don’t think the risk-to-benefit ratio
is worth it.
Chris Mohr:
There are a ton of different styles, articles, experts, etc., on training. Let’s
say an 18-year-old senior came to you looking to gain lean body mass for
football. What do you suggest for the frequency of training, and would you
suggest split body workouts for this individual?
Tom Venuto:
I would probably refer him to someone who specializes in strength training
for football because sports training is not my specialty. Athletes usually
shouldn’t train like bodybuilders.
A bodybuilder might train on a four-day split. For example, chest and
biceps on day one, quads and hams on day two, back and calves on day three
and shoulder and triceps on day four. Usually this would be done on a two
days on, one day off schedule.
If a football player did a split routine, it wouldn’t be a bodybuilding body
part split. Instead it might be three or four workouts a week on a two-day
split with pushing and pulling movements on alternate days, or you might do
lower body and upper body movements on alternate days.
The principle in sports training is train functionally, train energy systems,
and train movements, not muscles. The principle in bodybuilding is to train
muscles and specific body parts, and hit them less frequently but with more
volume.
Chris Mohr:
Name your top five greatest mass building exercises—the ones your
competition are clearly doing!
Tom Venuto:
First is the squat, of course—that’s a given. Not everyone can squat because
of orthopedic issues, but if you can squat safely, you must squat. Don’t ever
underestimate what the squat can do for you if you do it right and you get the
poundage up into a respectable range. Also don’t underestimate what highrep squatting can do for you in terms of bodybuilding goals, muscle mass,
and even fat loss. I’m not talking about high reps and light weight, I’m
talking about high reps with heavy weight like the classic 20-rep squat
routine where you do 20 with the weight you would normally do for 10.
You’re probably wondering how the heck you could do 20 with your 10rep max? Simple. Breathing reps or rest pause reps. When you get to rep 10,
you lock out at the top and take a few deep breaths. The weight is still on
your shoulders, but your legs recover just enough from that pause to
continue for another rep. You repeat that until you get to 20. It’s the most
difficult training you will ever do in your entire life if you are doing it right.
239
If you want to gain muscle mass, read the book Super Squats by Randall
Strossen. Even if you’re a diehard split routine trainer like I am, you have to
try the classic full body 20-rep squat routine at least once in your life, and
you can also experiment with 20-rep squats in a standard bodybuilding split
routine.
When I say squats as number one, that includes all types of squats, and I
have to mention the front squat too, although the front squat is an exercise
my competition is probably not doing, and I’m very happy about that
because this is one great leg builder. It builds a great looking leg too with
less stress on the lower back, less emphasis on the butt and hips, and more
focus on the quads. Front squats in the Smith machine are an incredible
bodybuilding exercise too, especially when you do them deep with constant
tension and no lockout at the top.
Number two is the stiff-legged deadlift. I could easily say the regular
deadlift, but for some reason in my case, my lower back tolerates the stifflegged deads but it doesn’t tolerate regular deads. Fantastic hamstring
builder, great overall body stimulator, and you’d even be surprised how
much this will thicken your upper back just like regular deadlifts when you
get up to some decent weights.
Number three is bent over rows. I prefer the barbell, and I use both
grips—reverse or supinated grip as well as overhand or pronated grip.
Occasionally I do these in the Smith machine, but I’m very partial to free
weights on this one. I have to mention one-arm dumbbell rows too, because
they’re a very close second to barbell rows. I’ve seen the best results for
muscle mass using the 10–12 rep range. I use the six-rep range too, but six
reps on bent rows is a totally different animal than sets of 12. Sets of 10–12
are incredibly demanding metabolically. They leave you literally gasping for
air and, when that happens, you’re really stimulating not just the back
muscles, but your metabolism and your anabolic hormones.
Number four is the seated military press with a barbell or dumbbells. This
is your classic shoulder builder. They can be done standing, which will call
more of your whole body and core into play, but for bodybuilding purposes,
I prefer to do them seated with the back supported.
Number five is the bench press with barbells or dumbbells. This is your
classic chest builder. I prefer dumbbells over the barbell bench press because
I find the barbell bench is a great strength and upper body size builder, but
it’s responsible for a lot of shoulder injuries if it’s overused or misused.
For the smaller muscle groups I’d give honorable mention to dips, lying
tricep extensions, barbell or dumbbell curls, dumbbell flyes, lateral raises,
upright rows, leg curls, standing calf raises, calf presses, and the other usual
standard bodybuilding exercises, but one thing to remember about gaining
240 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
lean body weight is that no exercises compare to squats, deadlifts, and rows.
If you are skimping on these exercises, you are not coming even close to
your maximum potential for muscle size gains. Do not kid yourself. Lat
pulldowns and leg extensions are not the same thing.
If you can squat and row and deadlift safely, then you must. Your legs and
back are enormous muscle masses, and I’ve always noticed that if you’re
paying attention to nutrition, that the scale usually tends to tick upward in
the days immediately following hard and heavy back or leg training.
Chris Mohr:
I’ve recently been doing a lot of reading about full body workouts. Do you
believe this same type of workout is effective for gaining mass, or would
you suggest something different?
Tom Venuto:
Sure, they can be effective for gaining mass, but full body workouts would
not be my first choice as my standard year round program, only a way to
change up the routine occasionally. Bodybuilders are best with split routines
as their standard mass building program. For other goals and other
populations, full body workouts may be ideal for convenience and lifestyle
reasons as much as for the specific training effect they’re after, and they’ve
become fairly popular again.
In the context of fat loss, you have training experts like Alwyn Cosgrove
who like full body weight training for that purpose. By taking large muscle
group, high metabolic cost, and high energy demand compound exercises
and doing them in supersets or tri-sets for the whole body in one session, you
can achieve a high calorie burn during the workout, a high post-exercise
energy expenditure or afterburn effect, and you can make your training more
time efficient because your sessions are shorter and you need less cardio.
Three full body sessions a week in that format and three cardio workouts can
get great results for a lot of people.
In the bodybuilding community, you have guys like Brian Haycock, who
put together a program called hypertrophy-specific training or HST. His
program is also based on full body workouts but is designed for muscle size.
Haycock believes that there is a downside of using split routines where you
only hit each muscle group approximately once a week. He says that the
research shows that most of the acute responses to training return to normal
within about 36 hours and that recovery can occur within 48 hours, so you
can load the muscle again. If the anabolic period from muscle loading only
lasts two days, then he says you should load more often.
I’m sure this can work for a while just like the Super Squats full body
routines can work well, and some people may have a personal preference for
this style of training. What I’ve found—and I think you’d hear the same
241
thing if you surveyed other bodybuilders—is that these full body workouts
are great for variety. Going from split routines back to full body workouts
every once in a while is a good idea, and you’re likely to see some pretty
good results from it simply because you’re not used to it. But in the long run,
you always come back to split routines when pure muscle mass is the goal
and especially when bodybuilding is your sport.
Body part split routines are the training mode of choice for bodybuilders
for muscle size because they let you work multiple sets of multiple exercises
with sufficient volume and time under tension, while getting in and out of
the gym in less than an hour. Full body workouts don’t allow you to do very
many exercises or sets, or else the workouts would last hours.
When you do full body workouts, another major drawback is that
whatever you do last is seriously compromised because your energy reserves
are running low at the end of your workout. This is true of any workout
system, but especially full body training.
Chris Mohr:
One of the popular fitness magazines recently suggested a beginner program
claiming you can gain up to 12 pounds of lean body mass in 30 days or less,
guaranteed. Are these results attainable naturally?
Tom Venuto:
It’s possible, but extremely unlikely. I’ve seen weight gains of that
magnitude in that time frame with my own eyes, but you have to look at the
physical state the person was in prior to the weight gain because that can
often explain unusually large gains.
For example, if someone is coming off of a three-month low carb diet,
then he could easily gain 12 pounds in 30 days. A bodybuilder could
probably gain back 12 pounds in three days after a contest, but this is mostly
water and glycogen. Assuming someone is in a normal, well fed, nondepleted or non-dehydrated state, then lean weight gains like these are not
going to happen naturally.
The advertising you see for gaining muscle mass is a lot like the
advertising you see for losing body fat. The claims are often inflated and the
before and after transformation success stories are usually based on unique
situations such as those I mentioned. The success stories you see in the
magazines also represent the best success stories possible—in other words,
read the fine print where it says “results are not typical.”
Rates of lean weight gain depend a lot on genetics too. Obviously, you
have your genetic freaks who put on muscle at incredible rates, especially
after layoffs. Add steroids into the mix and forget about it!
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A beginner or untrained person is also more likely to make large spurts of
gains exceeding one pound per week because they’re the farthest from their
genetic potential and their untrained bodies are so responsive. On the other
hand, you sometimes hear pro bodybuilders saying they are thrilled to gain
only five pounds of stage weight in a year from contest to contest because
they were much closer to genetic potential.
We all know that before and after photos are easily doctored, but some
really exceptional before and after muscle gain transformations may be
showing actual results. However, these exceptional results might be due to
the fact that lost muscle was simply being regained. This is known as muscle
memory.
If you look up “Casey Viator, Colorado experiment” in a search engine,
you’ll find many references to the famous 39 pounds in 2 weeks weight gain
(or 61 pounds in one month) achieved by the former Mr. America in 1973.
Viator was a genetically superior pro bodybuilder coming back from an
accident, and his muscles were severely atrophied.
This story is often re-told as a testament to the effectiveness of high
intensity training (HIT), Arthur Jones style, which is the training method he
used to gain all that weight, but it’s more a testament to muscle memory than
anything. We also don’t know what other factors were involved in this
weight gain.
I think it’s important to understand what is a realistic amount of lean
muscle that can be gained naturally for an average person. This will give you
some type of benchmark for setting goals. It will also let you know how
you’re doing in your training and nutrition endeavors on a weekly basis. I
suggest setting long term goals for body weight, but focusing on 12-week
phases at a time and reassessing and resetting goals after each 12-week
period.
If you look for hard data recommendations on weight gain from a
reputable research-based source such as the National Strength and
Conditioning Association (NSCA), you will hear something like this: “350–
700 calories above maintenance would supply the calories needed to support
a one- to two-pound weekly gain in lean tissue.”
Based on 17 years of measuring weight and body composition in
hundreds of clients, I can tell you that anything over one pound of lean body
weight gained per week is unusual in the natural and genetically average.
When gains over a pound a week are achieved, they are usually growth
spurts and unlikely to be sustained for long. Women generally gain lean
weight more slowly—as low as half the rate of men, but I’ve seen
exceptions.
243
I’ve also found it rare for people to sustain natural gains of more than one
pound per week for more than three to six months. Usually the rate of
muscle gain begins to taper off after three months, and nearly always after
six months. This doesn’t mean lean weight gain beyond one pound per week
is not possible—it’s just not common (or easy).
What I recommend for my clients on weight gain programs is, if two
weeks go by with no increase in LBM, that indicates that your nutrition,
training, and or recovery need to be adjusted. The most common adjustment
I would recommend is to simply increase calories, assuming of course
you’re training properly and recovering fully.
This increase in calories must be consistent. A big mistake many so called
“hard gainers” make is inconsistency in their calorie intake. They might
shovel down 4000 calories one day and only 1700 the next. They seem to
forget that with this on and off approach, the average calorie intake per day
over the course of a week is only 2850, which is actually below
maintenance.
Chris Mohr:
What do you believe are the primary differences between novices and
advanced trainees? Should they hit the iron differently?
Tom Venuto:
There’s a concept called training age, which is not chronological age, but the
number of years you’ve been training. One thing we already talked about is
that with training age, you have to change your workouts more frequently
and pay closer attention to periodization, which means having a strategic
plan for the changes you make as opposed to changing your routines at
random.
Another thing you may notice is that your need for recovery may increase
with time. When you’re 21 and full of testosterone, you may be able to grow
with more frequent training than when you’re 51. I’ve had a lot of
correspondence with master bodybuilders and I hear more often than not that
they train less often than they used to but they continue to get the same or
better gains.
Set volume also varies with training age. A beginner will get good results
on one or two sets per exercise. Most advanced trainees get optimal results
with three sets per exercise.
Some strength coaches also say that as your training experience increases,
you will benefit more from lower reps and higher sets. I haven’t found that
to be true for me personally, but I know that your set and rep scheme and
training volume are influenced by your muscle fiber makeup, and if you’re a
slow twitch dominant person, then you will thrive more on higher volume. I
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like to use a variety of methods, but the volume method works best for my
own body type, no doubt about it.
Chris Mohr:
This is more of a personal belief question, but I’ve seen a lot of debate over
the “king of mass building exercises.” Some say the squat, others say the
deadlift. Your thoughts? If you could only do one exercise for the rest of
your life, which would it be and why?
Tom Venuto:
That’s tough. Squats have a beneficial effect on your entire body, but the
muscle mass growth will occur primarily in your quads. With deadlifts, you
hit the lower body and also your entire back, so you could say it’s a more
complete exercise. If I could do deads without the lower back becoming
troublesome I’d choose deadlifts, but the way my body is, I have to go with
the squats. I’ve seen some pretty insane mass gains from 20-rep squat cycles.
Chris Mohr:
Some magazine articles recommend up to 20 sets for body parts. Others,
such as the high intensity training disciples, believe you only need one set to
failure. Your thoughts?
Tom Venuto:
A drug-free genetically average bodybuilder could never maintain 20 sets
per body part for any length of time without over-training. If you were used
to low volume, and you switched to high volume, you might actually grow
off 20 sets per body part in the beginning, but it wouldn’t last for long.
All training methods can be used at times—higher volume sometimes and
lower volume at other times—but keep in mind volume and intensity are
inversely proportional. As your volume goes up your intensity goes down,
and you are fooling yourself if you think otherwise. If you can do 20 sets per
body part, you’re dogging it on the final sets, or you held back on the early
sets.
Intensity is an extremely important factor, maybe the most important one
of all. If you’re in doubt, it’s probably better to opt for fewer sets and higher
intensity, but for hypertrophy training and bodybuilding I also believe that a
certain amount of volume is necessary. There’s a fine balance between
volume and intensity that you have to find.
In my opinion, the ideal volume for building muscle mass is the amount
that you can fit into a 40–60-minute session. If you’re on a split routine
hitting two or at most three body parts, you’re looking at nine to 12 sets for
large muscle groups and about six to nine sets for small muscle groups,
leaning toward more sets if you’re using high density, high volume training
methods, and fewer sets if you’re using high intensity, low volume training
methods. The total set volume for the workout will probably fall in the 15–
20-set range. I’m talking about bodybuilding and maximum mass building
245
here, not your average Men’s Health or Shape magazine reader who wants to
gain a little muscle. You can achieve casual muscle building and fitness
goals with almost any program.
For all the talk I hear about one set to failure training, I have to tell you,
after 23 years of bodybuilding, I hardly know any successful competitive
bodybuilders who train that way. I have no doubt you can get results on one
set per exercise if the intensity is high enough—but it has to be extremely
high—most people can’t generate that kind of physical effort to make it
worthwhile. Also, the ones who do use the one set to failure method
successfully are almost never doing only one set per body part, they’re doing
one set to failure on multiple exercises. They say they are only doing one set,
but one work set to failure on three different exercises is not one set, it’s
three sets, and that’s not counting warmup sets. If you count warmup sets it
looks a lot like conventional bodybuilding training to me.
Volume should be changed like anything else. I’d rather use the high
intensity, lower volume method for a month, then go to a volume method for
a month than be labeled a disciple of one or the other. The biggest irony is
that the method you’re not using is probably the one that will get you the
best results. I see it all the time. The volume guy takes a week off, starts up
on a HIT program and makes the gains of his life. He says to himself and all
his gym buddies, “Wow, this is it! Mike Mentzer was right! I’ve been
training wrong all these years!”
But sure enough, five weeks later he is plateauing already and he says,
“I’m going back to my old method—this HIT stuff is not so good after all.”
Lo and behold, he starts making gains again when he goes back to volume.
Again I’ll say there is no best training method, only fundamentals,
guidelines, and general principles to follow. Everything else should be
changed constantly, or your body will adapt to it. I will say, though, that a
certain amount of volume is an important principle of hypertrophy training. I
really don’t believe anyone is going to get maximum mass from using
exclusively one set to failure training over the long run.
Chris Mohr:
Do you have to train to failure to be successful in gaining mass?
Tom Venuto:
No you don’t have to train to failure to gain mass. Progressive overload is
more important than training to failure. If you stop short of failure, but you
are progressing with every workout, you’ll gain muscle.
However, for bodybuilding, I’m a believer in training to the point of
failure or just short of failure most of the time. When your set volume is
lower, then training to failure is even more important.
246 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
I think it’s the forced reps and beyond failure techniques that you have to
be the most cautious about, especially when you’re training heavy on
compound exercises. It’s easy to over-train and over-stress the central
nervous system when you train past failure, especially on big compound
exercises, and especially when your workout volume is high.
Chris Mohr:
If someone comes to you and wants to lose fat and gain muscle at the same
time, what would you recommend?
Tom Venuto:
I’ve answered this question many times before and I have a standard answer
which is, don’t make that your goal. Focus on one or the other. If you gain a
few pounds of muscle during your fat loss phase, great. Consider that an
extra bonus. If you lose a little fat during your mass building phase, great,
consider that an extra bonus. However, it’s far more physiologically and
psychologically efficient to put your focus on one goal or the other because
each objective requires a totally different nutritional approach.
Remember what we said about calories for gaining mass. In our example,
we said 15% or about a 500-calorie surplus. That would be about 3500
calories a day with a 3000-calorie maintenance level. For fat loss you need a
deficit of at least 500 calories and sometimes an aggressive deficit of 1000
calories. That would be 2000–2500 calories a day. How are you going to
gain maximum mass on 2000–2500 calories a day? You’re not.
The only way to achieve this goal is to alternate between periods of
caloric deficit and caloric surplus, but then you are compromising both,
right?
I’ve also found that people who want to gain mass who also want to lose
fat or who are very concerned about gaining fat, tend to under-consume
calories, and they end up not gaining any mass at all. You need a very strong
commitment and mental focus on your mass gaining goal if you want to be
successful at it.
Chris Mohr:
Suppose you have a client who claims to be a hard gainer. How would you
work with this kid to ensure he’s on track for a solid weight training and
nutrition plan?
Tom Venuto:
First we handle the psychological baggage and ditch the label “hard gainer.”
That’s a terrible thing to call yourself. You always become the labels you put
on yourself as a form of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Once that’s out of the way, then we make sure he has a nutrition and
training plan to begin with and it’s all on paper. A lot of people don’t put the
necessary time into strategic planning. If you don’t have everything on paper
and keep a journal, and you’re just “winging it,” then when you say you’re
247
stuck and not gaining, then how do you have any idea where to start
troubleshooting?
Chris Mohr:
Tom, this has been great. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with our
readers.
Tom Venuto:
My pleasure, Chris.
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The Fat Burn Files
About Tom Venuto
About Chris Mohr
Dr. Christopher Mohr is a respected consultant, author, speaker,
and freelance writer in the health, fitness, supplement, and weight
loss industries. As a registered dietician who holds a PhD in
exercise physiology, Chris has helped thousands of people around
the world achieve their personal health and fitness goals through
his personal consultations, books, and articles. Chris is currently a
consultant for Discovery Health Channel and the National
Exercise and Sports Trainers Association and has worked with
numerous supplement companies to provide research and
formulations for dietary supplements. He is on the Advisory Board
for Men’s Fitness, he is the Nutrition Editor for OC FLAIR
Magazine, and he has also written nearly 500 articles for consumer
publications. Chris has co-authored a sports nutrition textbook,
contributed three chapters for other textbooks, and is also the
author of the bodybuilding book, Weapons For Mass
Construction. For more information, visit
www.WeaponsForMass.com.
249
250 Tom Venuto
The Fat Burn Files
Resources for Your Advancement
Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto
Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, the #1 bestselling diet ebook on the Internet, is completely unique and different from other programs on the diet market because it’s not a weight loss program—it’s a fat loss program. Once
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Firm and Flatten Your Abs by David Grisaffi
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Firm and Flatten Your Abs provides many valuable tips on nutrition and
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253
Fit Over 40 by Jon Benson and Tom Venuto
Find out how an obese couch potato discovered an amazing anti-aging fitness secret so simple, yet so powerful, even his doctors were scratching their
heads when they saw his stunning transformation! This inspirational antiaging, health, and weight loss ebook written by Jon Benson and Tom
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Turbulence Training by Craig Ballantyne
This is the training method that Men’s Fitness magazine and elite personal
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and you can even do it in the privacy of your own home because so many of
the exercise use your own body weight. To learn more, click here:
www.thefatburnfiles.com/turbulence-training.shtml
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The Fat Burn Files
Afterburn Training by Alwyn Cosgrove
One of the most respected and sought after trainers in the world, Men’s
Health contributor and bestselling fitness author, Alwyn Cosgrove has
developed a complete a 16-week training program designed to blowtorch fat.
Afterburn is filled with powerful tips about burning fat, but this is not a textbook or lecture format manual. Afterburn is a week-by-week, step-by-step
workout and nutrition plan that takes you from fat to lean in four months or
less. The workouts are laid out for you exercise by exercise, set by set, rep
by rep, complete with photographs. Every three to four weeks, the training
programs change to keep your body guessing and keep the fat melting away.
If you’re bored with traditional bodybuilding body part split routines—
and especially if you’ve been doing hours of cardio for months on end, and
you’d like to discover how to burn the most fat in the least time by
increasing intensity using interval training and superset training—then you
will love these workouts because they are so brief, unique, and effective. Get
more details at:
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Bodybuilder MP3 Interviews by Rob Cooper
On the Former Fat Guy Show, host Rob Cooper had the rare opportunity to
pick the brains of some of the top superstars in bodybuilding and fitness.
Having made an amazing transformation from 475 pounds to a lean 230,
Rob had the personal experience to make fascinating discussion with his
world-renowned guests. These interviews are now available as MP3 files.
You’ll hear bodybuilding legend Bill Pearl tell how he became five-time
Mr. Universe and get his advice for staying fit into your 60s, 70s, and
beyond. Next, fat loss expert and bodybuilder Tom Venuto shares how he
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Fitness magazine and bestselling author, still keeps his body fat in the low
single digits in his 60s. Visit this page to find out more:
www.thefatburnfiles.com/bodybuilder-interviews.shtml
255
Home Gym Secrets by Kyle Battis
A home gym can be an incredible time saving resource. Between hectic
schedules and fighting crowds at commercial gyms (especially if you train at
night after work), home gym training is the most convenient, private, and
distraction-free way to fit effective workouts into your busy schedule. It can
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The Home Gym Secrets ebook teaches you exactly which machines and
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improve your fitness level in the most time efficient manner—even with no
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www.thefatburnfiles.com/home-gym-secrets.shtml
Lose Fat Not Faith by Jeremy Likness
What if you could wave a magic wand and suddenly look into your mirror to
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any diet or exercise program more effectively. Available at Amazon.com or
visit this page for more information:
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Synchronicity Secrets by Charles Burke
Luck, opportunity, money and success seem to be attracted like a magnet
into the lives of a small group of people, while passing everyone else by.
However, you’re wasting your time if you’re sitting around waiting for
opportunity to knock. That’s not the way opportunity and success work.
They don’t do cold calls. They won’t come knocking, offering to adopt you.
Only a very few people—3%–5%—really understand success, opportunity,
and “luck.” This is the same 3%–5%, by the way, who consistently rack up
major achievements in life. They know how things work in this universe of
ours. They confidently and sure-handedly capitalize on one exciting opportunity after another. Life is not the same kind of struggle for them that it is
for most people.
In Synchronicity Secrets you can learn from some of the most successful
men and women in the world about the true meaning of the laws of luck,
attraction, and success—and how to make them work for you and become a
part of this hyper-successful group yourself. To get more details, click here:
www.TheFatBurnFiles.com/synchronicity-secrets.shtml
Choose to Be Fit Personal Coaching by Mike Shimon
There’s a recipe for success in fitness and in life. One way to discover the
recipe is to try mixing all the ingredients at random, hoping you will stumble
onto the winning combination. But the odds are against you with that
approach. The other way is to get a coach who already knows the recipe,
simply get the recipe from him, and use it yourself.
Mike Shimon’s Choose to Be Fit personal coaching program includes all
the ingredients you need for health and fitness success: nutrition, exercise,
motivation, and lifestyle change. Mike should know. He’s the host of the
internationally syndicated Choose to Be Fit radio show and he has
transformed his own body, so you can see he practices what he preaches (the
hallmark of any great coach).
Choose to Be Fit is a personal coaching program ideal for those who
want one-to-one guidance, and who also want to transform their bodies,
improve their attitudes, alter their lifestyles, and become more passionate
about life. Mike’s program will challenge you to take your best and become
even better. Learn more at:
www.TheFatBurnFiles.com/choose-to-be-fit.shtml
257
Weapons for Mass Construction: Secrets for Muscular Growth by Chris Mohr
As featured in Muscle & Fitness magazine, Weapons for Mass Construction
is a 12-week step-by-step bodybuilding nutrition and training program that is
guaranteed to put your “hard gainer” days behind you.
In the first half of the manual, Dr. Chris Mohr, a registered dietician who
holds a PhD in exercise physiology, teaches you muscle mass gaining rules
and guidelines throughout nine fascinating chapters. In the second half, Dr.
Mohr gives you a different muscle mass gaining menu for 84 days in a row
to go with the training program. There’s no number crunching or
calculating—it’s all been done for you. If you were to hire Dr. Mohr or any
registered dietician to create your menus by hand for three months, it would
cost you thousands of dollars, so this is without a doubt the most valuable
part of the program.
Weapons for Mass Construction is ideal for bodybuilders, athletes who
want to gain weight for their sport, or skinny guys who just want to add
more size strength, power, and overall mass to their physiques.
www.TheFatBurnFiles.com/mass-construction.shtml
258 Tom Venuto
Weapons for Mass Construction: Secrets for Muscular Growth by Chris Mohr
As featured in Muscle & Fitness magazine, Weapons for Mass Construction
is a 12-week step-by-step bodybuilding nutrition and training program that is
guaranteed to put your “hard gainer” days behind you.
In the first half of the manual, Dr. Chris Mohr, a registered dietician who
holds a PhD in exercise physiology, teaches you muscle mass gaining rules
and guidelines throughout nine fascinating chapters. In the second half, Dr.
Mohr gives you a different muscle mass gaining menu for 84 days in a row
to go with the training program. There’s no number crunching or
calculating—it’s all been done for you. If you were to hire Dr. Mohr or any
registered dietician to create your menus by hand for three months, it would
cost you thousands of dollars, so this is without a doubt the most valuable
part of the program.
Weapons for Mass Construction is ideal for bodybuilders, athletes who
want to gain weight for their sport, or skinny guys who just want to add
more size strength, power, and overall mass to their physiques.
www.TheFatBurnFiles.com/mass-construction.shtml
258 Tom Venuto