Last day in part 2 of my interview with Scott Colby, I talked about what to do if you’re trying to lose fat, but love carbs.  If that sounds like you, then you’ll definitely want to go back and read up on that.

Today we discuss another familiar question – you eat well, workout regularly, but can’t seem to lose the belly fat.  So what should you do?  Let’s find out…

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Scott Colby: Let’s see – our next question, Richard Steele out in Hollister, California.  He says, “I work out three times a week and am active the rest of the week.  I eat as clean as possible, but cannot get rid of the last of my belly pouch. I’m 62 and hover around 8 percent body fat” – that’s awesome, congratulations!  “8 percent body fat at 185 pounds.  I used to weight 250 pounds.

“Maybe I don’t eat enough to free the need to hoard fat for energy.” So basically, he’s 62, he’s lost a lot of weight, 8 percent body fat, and trying to get rid of the last of his fat in his stomach.

Craig Ballantyne: Well, 8 percent’s kind of hard to believe if you do have remaining body fat, because in pictures of me where I’m kind of – you know on my blog at ttfatloss.com or on my website, my famous kind of ab shot, I don’t even think I’m 8 percent body fat in that shot.

So there may be some error in the measurement, which I’m not making any friends here with this answer.  But I just don’t believe that you can be 8 percent body fat and have belly fat that is visible, because 8 percent body fat, that’s what the guys on the cover of Men’s Health magazine are.

So there may be some error in measurement, but then we take into account the fact that you have lost body fat in the past, it may be excess skin.  And that excess skin is going to be difficult to remove at age 62, because that’s when our skin elasticity starts to lose its ability to just kind of rebound.

So really we go back to the same thing that I said to our first guy, George.  We take a look at the NUTRITION.  Is it really as good as we say it is? Do all those things that we talked about.  And then increase the intensity of the exercise.  And that’s really the only two things that are really gonna work here.

Without knowing how many calories he’s consuming, without knowing the exact foods, we can’t talk about that last question that he asked.  But I know we’re gonna get into the how many calories and that type of stuff, so I may as well cover that right now.

How much protein should I consume?

And the answer to how much protein that you should consume per day is gonna be one gram per pound of your ideal body weight. So I’m just answering this because I know we’re gonna cover it.  But one gram per pound of your ideal body weight.

EXAMPLE:

So if you’re 150 pounds and you wanna be 140 pounds, then that’s how many grams of protein you should have is 140 grams.

And then your DAILY CALORIE INTAKE should be this:

It’s going to be – your daily calories are going to be your ideal body weight multiplied by the number of hours you exercise plus 9.5.

EXAMPLE:

So let’s say we’re using 180 pounds as our goal body weight, and our daily calories are gonna be 180, and he’s exercising 3 hours per week, so it’ll be 3 plus 9.5, which will give us 12.5, multiplied by 180.  I had this on my blog at ttfatloss.com.  Now using 180 times 12.5, we get 2250 as a daily calorie intake.

And then from there, we get 180 grams of protein, and then the number of FAT GRAMS we’re gonna want is half of our ideal body weight in grams.

So our ideal body weight is 180 pounds, so fat intake per day is gonna be 90 grams.  Then CARBOHYDRATES is simply gonna be the same as protein, so it’s gonna be 180 grams as well.

So that would be – and I’m getting this equation from Men’s Health magazine, from a guy named Alan Aragon, who I think is a really, really smart nutritionist.  Common sense – lots of common sense there.  And so if you’re exercising 3 hours per week and you wanna be 180 pounds, which would help our gentleman here lose some body fat and belly fat, then 2250 calories per day is maybe what he wants.

Now another thing to do, if that seems high to him – and it may well be – then here’s another thing to do….

Write down everything that you’re eating.  Figure out how many calories that is.

If you’re NOT losing belly fat on that, then chances are you have to decrease that amount and increase the quality of your food. So the very first thing that you do is:

• Make sure that you’re eating ten servings of fruits and vegetables.
• Increase the quality of the food.
• Eliminate anything from a bag or a box.
• Then maybe even recalculating your calorie intake now that you’ve improved the quality of your diet.
• If you’re still not losing weight, then talk about decreasing your calories 10 or 20 percent.

However, if he writes and is concerned that he’s not eating enough, it’s tough to say without knowing the actual numbers here.  And then there’s two actual numbers.

There’s the number of calories he BELIEVES he’s eating, and then the number of calories that we’re ACTUALLY eating after we go through that equation and do the seven day food journal and really find out is there anywhere where we’re doing what’s called mindless eating, which is when you go home from work and it’s between work and dinner.

And you’re just kind of putting your hands in all types of things – a cookie here, a handful of chips there, whatever.  That’s MINDLESS EATING.  It can add up to a lot of calories in a lot of people, and that’s the type of thing that we have to put routines into our life.

Such as instead of going home and doing that, the first thing I do when I go home while I’m preparing dinner is I cut up lots of broccoli, peppers, mini-carrots, and prepare hummus, and that’s what I snack on.  So even if I filled myself up on that, I’d probably only eat 200-250 calories, versus if I had one cookie and a handful of chips, I might have 250 calories and no dent in my hunger was even made.

So that’s the kind of stuff we have to watch out for is the mindless eating.

And then we put those routines in there to make sure that we are not doing that type of stuff.  And then we also figure out from that calorie and food journal are the portion sizes that we’re eating, were they twice as much than what we thought?  And therefore we’re eating an extra 300 calories at breakfast, an extra 150 calories at lunch, an extra 250 calories at dinner.  And if we cut those portions back, then we start getting results.

So there’s a lot of factors.  I mean really every single one of these questions needs to be answered in an entire one-hour sit-down consultation.

Scott Colby: You got that much time, Craig?

Craig Ballantyne: Well, you know there’s so many factors in here.  I’m trying to be pretty straightforward about it and trying to cover every single angle from which we can attack this.  But I think that he’s certainly living a great lifestyle, and he deserves better results than what he’s getting if he’s struggling with that.  So hopefully those are some alternatives that will come through for him.

Scott Colby: Yeah.  All good advice, Craig.  And I’ll send out a link to your blog where people can get that equation that you were determining the calories and the fat grams.

Craig Ballantyne: Sure.

Scott Colby: And we’ve covered weight training and such, and I’ll just recommend maybe he could take a look at his workouts just to make sure he’s changing it up.

A lot of people do the same routine for months, and that may be one thing he needs to do is increase the weight or change the routine of the workout.  And then just something simple, like when I went through a pretty good transformation, one of the big things – and we’ve talked about it – I just cut out cereals and most breads and that made a big difference in my belly fat.

Again, it was stuff I thought was healthy for me that it turned out had too many ingredients that were holding me back in my results.  So just maybe some simple tweaks, but you gave some great suggestions.

Let’s jump to the next question regarding low calorie diets for fat loss.

BY Craig Ballantyne

Today, and over the next week, we’re going to turn the interview table here at TTFatLoss.com and have abs expert, Scott Colby (see photo to left), interview me on some of the most perplexing questions people have when it comes to transforming their bodies.

 This will be a lot fun and probably prove very useful to anyone looking to burn fat, gain muscle, or take their training and nutrition program to the next level….with that being said, let’s get right into today’s question…

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Scott Colby: All right.  Hello, everybody.  My name is Scott Colby.  Thank you so much for being here.  I know it’s the holidays, but wanted to get this interview in before the New Year because I know a lot of you have some good fat loss goals and other fitness goals for the New Year, so I thought today would be a great call.  Some of you probably have the day off from work, so I hope everybody had a great holiday, and thank you again for being with us.  We’ve got a great call today.  My guest is Craig Ballantyne.

 A lot of you already know Craig; he’s out in Toronto, a strength and conditioning coach, and you may know him better as the author and creator of Turbulence Training.  He’s also a contributing author to Men’s Health magazine and a member of the training advisory board for Maximum Fitness and Oxygen magazine.  Now Craig’s fat loss/muscle building websites feature his best-selling Turbulence Training for Fat Loss program, and of course he also has a membership site, ttmembers, which offers access to all of Craig’s turbulence training workouts and video clips.

 They’re actually for men, women, mass-building, athlete, and body-weight-only workouts, so he has a lot of different niches within the ttmembers site.  And of course, discussion forums within the site for support and where you can get all your questions answered.  Craig – just so you know, he’s completed a Masters of Science degree in exercise physiology from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.  And he continues to really get into the LATEST RESEARCH out there, whether it’s training, nutrition, supplementation – anything that’s gonna help you improve your health and wellness as well as your physical and mental performance.

 And I love interviewing Craig because his workouts are similar to mine.  He does a lot of body-weight-only workouts, a lot of dumbbell training workouts without the use of machines.  Things that you could do anywhere, and they’re quick workouts where you don’t need a whole lot of time.  So those are the same philosophies that I believe in, so that’s why I always enjoy having Craig as a guest.  So Craig, welcome to the call.  Thanks for taking time out of your holiday to be with us.

 Craig Ballantyne: No problem, Scott; happy to be here.

 Scott Colby: Cool.  Well, we got a lot of great questions.  Now we won’t get through all of them, but we’ll get through as many as we can.  And these are questions that have come in prior to the call.  I know people are still asking questions; again, we’ll get to as many as we can, and hopefully the audience listening will learn a little bit from each answer that Craig provides.  I would recommend if you are listening to this right now, either live or whether you’re listening to the recording, maybe get out a piece of paper and a pen to take some notes.

 And then try to shut down everything that will distract you like your TV and your email and text messaging and all that stuff.  It’s easy to get distracted.  Craig’s gonna provide a lot of great information today, so you definitely wanna take some notes.  George out in Baltimore – I believe George is here listening live – he wants to know, “How do I eliminate fat from the body?  Does this question make sense?  I run about three to five miles daily.  I’m in excellent shape.  However, I would love to have a better gut.” So Craig, it looks like George is trying to get a little more defined and lose fat, and he runs three to five miles every day.  What would you recommend for George?

Craig Ballantyne: The number one thing, no matter if he wants to do the straight running or if he wants to switch over to the intervals, is INCREASE THE INTENISTY of the TRAINING.  And also – actually, the number one thing is the DIET, because we’re talking about advanced results here.  And when you’re talking about advanced results you’re talking about having to take advanced measures. So he might be eating pretty well.  He might be 80 percent, 85 percent compliance.  But if you wanna go to the next level, you have to take it to the next level with your nutrition.  You really have to be compliant.

You only get one reward meal per week.

 You’ve gotta be that 90 percent compliant, so one reward meal, a couple of reward kind of snacks.  So if you’re eating 6 meals per day, your 38 meals on track, perfect, out of 42 for the week.  I mean it has to be that good, if not better, if you wanna take it to the next level, because nutrition is where it’s at.  You know we’re gonna come back to this over and over again in the call, that nutrition is far more important when it comes to losing fat than anything you could possibly do.  So that’s the first thing that you need to do is to really take a good look at his nutrition.

So writing everything down for a week using FitDay or NutritionData or CalorieKing or SparkPeople.

You know there’s a whole bunch of websites out there that allow you to use that type of calorie tracking.  You don’t

have to do it forever; you just have to do it for a short amount of time until you know exactly how your body responds to foods and how many calories you’re eating, so you can kind of eyeball in the future.

But another thing I just mentioned there is you really have to understand how your body RESPONDS to food.  If you eat a big meal at night, do you wake up in the morning leaner or do you wake up in the morning bloated?

 You have to take a really good look at that, and you have to associate how you feel with what you’ve just eaten.  So many people never make that connection, and it’s really, really disappointing to their results because they never really make that connection that every Saturday at lunch – sorry, every Monday at lunch we have team meeting lunch at Applebee’s and I always end up eating the bread.  And then I’m tired all day, and then I have a bad workout at night.  Well, most people don’t make that connection to the bread, and they just keep on eating it every week, week in and week out.  And that’s the problem.

So FIRST get that nutrition in order, and THEN take the training to the next level of intensity.

So he could continue with that same distance, if he wants, but he has to increase the intensity so he gets that distance done in a shorter amount of time.  I’m not a big fan of doing the long, slow cardio, but I mean three to five miles, really if he’s a fairly fit guy he should be able to cover those probably I guess half an hour for the three miles.  Maybe even 25, close to 20 minutes if he’s really fit.  But you gotta run those miles as fast as you possibly can.

 There’s certainly at least one study, if not more, that shows that when you’re comparing high intensity versus low intensity cardio – not interval training, but just straight-on steady-state stuff – that the high intensity people lose belly fat more than the low intensity.  So if the guy covers five miles as fast as he can versus he goes and does it moderately, he’ll get better results doing it as fast as he can.

 So gonna have to take that intensity up in your diet and in your fat-burning exercise.  And then you know of course I’m all about adding in resistance training too.

 One thing that I’m sure we’ll cover a couple of times is the MINIMUM amount of resistance training that needs to be done a week.  And just talking to people that don’t like going to the gym at all, and they wanna know how much resistance training do I need to do?  I would say you can get your total body in about 2 sessions, 15 minutes each. That is a minimum amount of resistance training that you need to do.  And when I’m talking about that minimum, I’m talking about to help you stay strong, because most people, when they get older, it’s not their cardiovascular fitness that is the restriction on what they can do in life.  It is the strength of their muscles.  So that’s why I’m such a big proponent of strength training for longevity – far more important than thinking about endurance training.

 Everybody thinks about, “Oh, I gotta go out and do cardio.”  But cardio’s not the thing that prevents you from falling when you’re 80; it’s strength.  So that’s why we gotta do that minimum 15 minutes twice a week, preferably three times a week.  And if you get up to 3 by 20, you probably are gonna get 75 or 80 percent of the results that someone who spends 30-40 minutes in the gym three times per week lifting weights is gonna get.  So that’s what we need to do, and that’s what George needs to do.  So pretty long answer there, but bottom line is if you want the advanced results, you have to take the advanced measures, and I just listed them there.

Scott Colby: Great stuff, Craig.  And I wanted to add something to your nutrition answer.  Our last interview when we were talking mainly about a vegetarian lifestyle, you had said something similar about eating 90 percent compliant to get advanced results.  And I made a video soon after that, and my point in the video was a lot of people are eating foods like a granola-type cereal and Lean Cuisine and reduced fat Wheat Thins.  And I think a lot of people think that this counts as part of your 90 percent compliance, and my argument was that was more along the lines of your 10 percent cheats or reward meals, so to speak.

 Because I think people MISCATEGORIZE foods as healthy if they’re looking at just like the front of the box and it says, “reduced fat Wheat Thins,” or “heart-healthy” cereals.  And I just want people to keep in mind that these boxed foods, while you might think, “Hey, I’m eating healthy, because look at the wording on the front of the box,” you’ve really gotta look at the ingredient label.  And a lot of these foods, like cereals and frozen dinners, have a lot of junk in them.  So if you’re eating those types of foods, those would go more in your 10 percent cheat meals, not 90 percent healthy meals.

So you gotta STICK TO your fruits and vegetables and nuts and lean meats and eggs; foods with single or just a few ingredients.  So just wanted to add that.

 Craig Ballantyne:  Another thing to add to that, Scott, is another place where people really end up in trouble with those types of situations is in the portion size.  Now obviously if you’re buying a Lean Cuisine, it’s a single serving, and that’s all you eat, then that’s gonna be calorie restricted.  But Wheat Thins, breakfast cereals – mostly breakfast cereals.  I mean you take a look what an actual serving is of a breakfast cereal, it is a piddly little portion, and it would take the appetite of a bird to really be filled up by that.  So most people end up eating two or three portions, but they only look and think that they’ve eaten one portion and one serving size.

 And so they only really take those calories off the side of the box, but really it should be three times as much.  So that’s a very important point that you just made there.

 Check out what to do if you love carbs in part 2 of my interview with Scott Colby.