Losing Body Fat with the Metabolic Campfire

Today we have a guest blog from a good friend of mine, Tom Gifford.  Tom is a Fitness Professional from PA and is the author of www.TheFatLossZone.com and www.TheGreatCardioMyth.com. 

Tom is an expert on what makes a cardio program work or not work. He is a master at fixing broken cardio programs, and how to use intensity to supercharge a working cardio program.

Tom has a brilliant campfire metaphor that he uses with his clients. 

I asked him if he’d be willing to share it with you girls and guys.  We were lucky enough that he said yes.

Check it out, you guys are going to be stoked.

Losing Body Fat with the Metabolic Campfire

Just about everyone wants to lose a few pounds of body fat.

So what is the common recommendation?

"You need to diet and exercise."

Now, that it is fine and dandy and everything, but unfortunately those instructions are extremely vague and don’t provide much guidance.

With my clients, we take a different approach that still focuses on the fundamentals, looks at the bigger picture, and is incredibly effective.

Introducing "The Metabolic Campfire"

We are going to change your focus from "diet and exercise" to "fire up your metabolism."

This is a simple analogy that will put things into perspective for you and give you a basic understanding of how the right nutrition choices and the right kind of exercise impacts your metabolism and helps you burn mega calories around the clock.

Goodbye "diet and exercise"

Hello to "the Metabolic Campfire"

 

HOW YOUR "RESTING" METABOLISM WORKS

I want to you look at your metabolism like a campfire that is always burning a little bit. This little flame is called your "basal" or resting metabolism.  You could sit on your butt all day watching Jerry Springer and your body will still be burning the necessary calories it takes for you to stay alive.

The goal is to take this small flame that is always burning calories and make it bigger, make it burn longer, and make it burn more overall calories. 

I want you to think of your metabolism as if it were the flame of a campfire.

=

 

"WET LOGS AND DRY LOGS"

Wet logs = crappy, processed, unhealthy junk food such as fast food, fried food, potato chips, pizza, donuts, etc.

Dry logs = whole, unprocessed, natural, high quality protein such as lean meats, "good" carbohydrates such as fruits and vegetables, and healthy fats.

Now, think about what would happen if you put a bunch of wet logs onto a campfire that had a small flame burning. On top of that, you throw on a bunch of wet logs in the morning, in the afternoon, and then a whole pile of them in the evening.

What would happen?

The wet logs would not burn much at all, and they would just keep piling up higher and higher.  If you did this consistently overtime, you would end up with a huge pile up wet logs that just sit there and don’t do anything. The small flame keeps burning, but not enough to use the wet logs as proper fuel. 

This is what happens when you constantly feed your body crappy, processed, unhealthy junk food. It accumulates and is stored as body fat.

Now, think about what would happen if every 2-3 hours you added high quality dry logs onto that small campfire.

What would happen?

The dry logs would keep burning and the small flame would get bigger and bigger. Since the dry logs burn so efficiently and they cause the flame to burn hotter, they would not pile up.

This is what happens when you feed your body healthy, unprocessed, organic, high quality food.  It starts to ignite your metabolism!  These foods when eating at the right times and in the right amounts do not get stored as body fat.

 

"THROWING ON SOME LIGHTER FLUID"

Now, I want you to think of exercise as throwing some lighter fluid onto the flame.

The more intense the exercise = the higher the amount of lighter fluid throw on the flame

By using the right types of exercise we can now jack up your metabolism even more by making the flame burn hotter and more intense.

 

Here is how it works with cardio:

Slow, low intensity cardio = a little drop of lighter fluid.

High intensity interval training = a bucket of lighter fluid

 

Here is how it works with strength training:

Lifting light weights = a little drop of lighter fluid

Heavy weights or timed circuits (like in phase II of Josh’s Stubborn 7) = a bucket of lighter fluid

Like Josh says all the time, the hottest girls in the gym are the girls who lift the heaviest weights. 

Now you know why. Heavy weights and intense exercise are what ignites your metabolism for hours AFTER the workout is over.  Low intensity exercise burns a few calories while you do it, but has very little effect on your body afterwards.

The goal is to use exercise as a tool to ignite your metabolism and make it burn hotter, longer, and more intense.

 

KEEP THE FLAME BURNING

So many people try to eat 1 meal per day, do endless hours of slow cardio, and avoid any kind of strength training.  If you put wet logs onto a small campfire once a day and added a drop of lighters fluid a few times per week, do you think that flame would burn very much?  I don’t think so….

BUT…

The people who are the leanest are the ones who eat high quality food every 2-3 hours and keep their workouts hard and intense.  If you put dry logs onto a campfire every 2-3 hours and were consistently pouring lighters fluid onto it, do you think the flame would get bigger and hotter? YES!

SO….

The morale of the story is to stop dieting and exercise and start "eating dry logs" and using "lighters fluid" to burn body fat.

The hotter the metabolic flame burns = the hotter you become!

by Tom Gifford

Tom is a Fitness Professional from PA and is the author of www.TheFatLossZone.com and www.TheGreatCardioMyth.com.

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Josh News: The Mile High Music Festival! 

If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you know that wife and I went to the Mile High Music Festival. Now I’ll give you a little more detail.

I’d never seen Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers before.  We managed to work our way to the front, through row after row of beligerant drunk people, and see Tom rock the stage with our own eyes.  Tom put on a wicked show, but really the magic is that he writes classic, anthem songs that everyone knows the words to.  Holding my wife, with 20,000 people singing along to "Free Fallin’" is one of those things you never forget.

Dave Matthews put on an awesome show.  I’m talking an unbelievable performance.  Plus I love Dave’s songs, and back in the day when I played guitar I was always amazed and frustrated by Dave’s style.  Really fun show, I only caught the last two hours, and that was about all I needed.

The Flobots are my favorite local band, and they recently hit worldwide.  So I’m stoked to see ’em back in town.  I’m just used to seeing them closer up – back in they day I’d see them in these small clubs and they’d be like five feet away.  And then filming the video for Rise I was about that close also.  So seeing them with several thousand people was different.  But they put on a really kick ass show.  I really dug hearing all of the songs off of the new album live.  Maybe I’m just a super die hard fan, but I thought the encore was the most fun part.

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