By Jeremy Likness

This article is to help those who have a lot of fat to lose. It is not for the experienced bodybuilder, preparing for a competition, or even the fitness enthusiast struggling to drop those last 5 or 10 stubborn pounds. This is for those who have a long ways to go. It is for those who always dreamed about being in shape, about fitting into jeans with a 32-inch waist but right now are still struggling with that large silhouette in the mirror. It is for those who realize that they may not achieve their goals in 4 or 8 or even 12 weeks, because they have to drop an amount of fat equivalent to a small child.

As the opening quote suggests, the "answer" to good health and weight loss has been known for thousands of years and is simple. Doing what it takes, however, is not so simple - there are a number of reasons why dropping excess fat can be quite a struggle. I am keenly familiar with the struggle. While I lost over 65 pounds of unwanted fat, after struggling with the extra weight for most of my life, the clients I work with have had twice that much or more to lose! It is a tough battle, but it is one you can win.

I know from my own personal journey that fighting your way through the fat to that lean, fit person you want to be can be like a maze, littered with obstacles and dead-ends. I am painfully familiar with those dead-ends, and hope that by identifying them here, you can avoid the many pitfalls involved with massive fat loss and burn your way to the lean bodybuilder you deserve to be. So, let's find out what the ten fattest mistakes you can make are!


1. Decisions, Decisions...


TRUTH: Don't fail to make the decision up front!

Are you kidding me? Of course you've made the decision. You know you want to get rid of that extra tire, exchange the six-pack of beer for the type of six-pack you can show, rather than share, at the beach. It was a simple choice, wasn't it? You're sick and tired of being overweight, so it's time to go. Right? RIGHT?! Wrong!

The biggest mistake many people make is starting a fat loss program without truly making a decision. Sure, we know you want to get rid of the extra weight, but have you stopped to truly think about why? It may seem trivial, but having a deep, meaningful reason is critical to success. It is one thing to throw the scale into the corner and bust down the gym door with a barbaric yell and start smashing iron around. But these things don't happen overnight - it takes time.

You spent years filling those sacks of adipose tissue with extra fat calories, so why would you expect them to empty their precious load overnight? Eventually, you will lose that initial high, and reality will come crashing down in its entire splendor. You'll prepare a healthy meal and suddenly it will look too bland, or even revolting, and the only thought on your mind will be something taboo - something unhealthy.

Or you will hear the alarm blaring and decide you are just too tired. You might be staring at the treadmill and suddenly get the uneasy notion that it is mocking you, and decide you don't feel like struggling with the sweat and pain today.

It is these moments of weakness that the decision comes into play. See, if you just jumped into the endeavor, chances are, it will be just as easy to jump out. Sure, you are overweight, but man, that meal makes you happy, so you're just gonna sit down and have it anyway, right? Oh, yeah, you wanted to drop weight, but these workouts are tough, and don't you just want to rest? Sure, you can rest. There is always tomorrow to train. You know what? It has been a rough week. Let's just start over again next week. You lull and coddle yourself into a pipe dream that isn't real, but hey, you let it seem real - you let it pull you in. You haven't truly committed to anything, so it gives you a nice, comfortable back door - push the eject button and stay awhile.

Let's get real. You've spent I don't know how long living a certain way. And you know what? You do not know what it feels like to be lean, strong, and healthy. Sure, you can try to imagine it or read articles about it, but how does it really feel? Don't you owe it to yourself to make a choice - an informed decision? I think you do. I think you can handle living a few months differently than you have before, even if you hate every moment of it, if it means emerging from the other side with a new physique, a new you. It might be a battle but then you will know what it feels like to come out victorious. Sure, if it isn't what you had it chalked up to be, feel free to lapse and fall back into old habits... but how will you ever really know for certain?

Make a goal. But don't just make it. Make it real. Make it tangible. It should not be "I will lose weight." Instead, "I will lose 40 pounds," is better. "I will lose 40 pounds by July of next year" is probably best. Did you know that the only difference between a dream and a goal is a deadline? You need a specific deadline. You want something realistic? Consider this: men can typically lose between 0.5 - 1.5 percent of their body weight per week in fat if they are aggressively performing cardio, resistance training, and eating healthy.

Women are more in the 0.5 - 1 percent range. If you are male and sitting at 300 pounds, then look to lose between 6 - 18 percent of your weight (18 - 54 pounds) in 12 weeks. Wow, a big range, I know, but let's get real - you know where you are starting and how well you will stick to it. Slow and steady? 18 pounds is comfortable. You think you're ready to go balls to the wall, all out, and hit it like no tomorrow? Then set those sights high and take the 54 pounds.

Now, it is not enough just to lose the weight. You need compelling reasons. See, your mind will play tricks with you every step of the way. It is very easy to talk yourself into the "I will be happy if I just eat this piece of food - so I am going to do it" if you don't have a solid reason. Just want to drop the weight? Hey, who cares, take an eternity. But if you are doing it for health, then you'll realize this isn't something to stop and start at will - it is a full time commitment. If you are doing it for your children, then you know that you need to set an example around the clock, not just when it is convenient.

Set those goals, know your reasons, and explain how you will achieve the goals. Write these down. Put them on paper. Share the word with everyone you are comfortable with. Print multiple copies and carry them with you. Read them every day. Most importantly, make the decision. Don't lie to yourself and sell yourself short - this is a major decision. If you make it, you'd better be willing to see it through to the end. (Check out Chris Zaino's article, Contract your Goals to Keep You Motivated!)


2. Cardio Until You Crawl


TRUTH: Don't put too much emphasis on cardio!

For some reason, aerobic exercise continues to be pushed as the end-all, be-all answer for fat loss. It does not take much common sense, however, to look around and realize this may not be the case. Now, I have nothing against overweight aerobics instructors - every person has their own reasons for being who they are - but if aerobics were really the key, wouldn't that concept become an oxymoron? And when we look at marathon runners, we see they lean ... but so are sprinters, and I don't know many sprinters who spend hours at a time on treadmills or recumbent bicycles.

This huge stumbling block for fat loss (excess cardio) has a basis in an argument that sounds entirely logical. Let's do a little energy systems 101 and we can better understand why this myth is so prevalent, and figure out what to do to fix it.

First, your body has something called energy systems that are used to fuel activity. Contrary to what some people may believe, your body draws on all of these systems, all of the time. The activity you perform, however, dictates which system is the one mainly being used (not exclusively). Just as your body always gets some of its energy requirements from protein, your body is always using a little bit of each system.

Two systems are anaerobic, which means they do not use oxygen. The ATP-CP system is used for short, intense bouts of work. Without getting too technical, a molecule in your muscle cell is split to generate energy, and creatine phosphate is used to rebuild that molecule so more energy can be produced. This system is especially important for high intensity activity such as weight training, but it only lasts for around ten seconds. Creatine supplementation can increase the capacity of this system.

The second anaerobic system is known as the lactic acid system or anaerobic glycolysis. This system is the predominant system for moderately intense activity that lasts around 2 minutes. This system uses glucose (a form of sugar) present in your blood, or glycogen stored in your muscle cell, for fuel. Post workout nutrition, such as shakes, may help recharge this energy system and keep you primed for the next workout.

The final system, and the one that takes center stage with aerobic activity, is the oxidative system because, yes, it uses oxygen. This system can use protein, carbohydrate, or fat for fuel, but relies mainly on carbohydrates. What is interesting about this system is that, depending on your heart rate; it will use more or less carbohydrate, protein, or fat. The lower your heart rate, in general, the more it will use fat for fuel rather than carbohydrate or protein.

This is where science stops and pure speculation can ruin the whole affair. First, people get excited when they realize that the lower heart rate burns more fat. If you think about it, sitting at your desk or sleeping makes you a fat burning machine! While this is, to a certain extent true, if you focus too closely on the details, you'll lose the big picture. What is most important for fat loss is total calories, period and point blank. The type of activity you perform and the nutrition you use and even supplementation will all affect this, but without the right calorie balance, you will simply not have a net loss in fat.

Choosing a system that uses more energy from fat doesn't necessarily burn more fat. Huh? Let me illustrate. Let's say you are sitting at your desk for a few hours. You may burn, say, 80 calories and maybe 80% of those calories are from fat. I am using arbitrary numbers here to illustrate a point - you just burned 80 total calories and about 64 of those were from fat. Great. Now let's get on the treadmill and run on an incline for 1.3 miles in 10 minutes. You probably burned 200 - 300 calories in 10 minutes. Sure, you may have only used 50% or even fewer calories from fat, but in those 10 minutes on the treadmill, you still burned more fat than in 2 hours of sitting at your desk! So, you can burn a high percentage of calories from fat but a lower number of total calories, or you can burn a lower percentage of calories from fat but a higher number of calories.

The fact is, zeroing in on cardio is oversimplifying and setting you up for failure. Sure, incorporate some cardio. It is great for your heart; it helps to burn calories and will contribute to fat loss. But nutrition is just as important - you will have to stay on the treadmill for a long, long time to make up for one super-sized value meal at a fast food restaurant. Resistance training not only burns a ton of calories when done intensely, but can actually raise your metabolism so that you can burn additional calories even after you are done exercising! Not only that, it stimulates muscle growth. Muscle tissue burns additional calories and contributes to your ability to drop fat.

An interesting fact about gaining muscle is that more muscle tissue means more enzymes and small cellular structures called organelles that are used to burn fat. That's right. Muscle tissue gives your body more materials used in the processing of fat for energy - so its contribution to helping you lose fat goes beyond just burning extra calories. This is why a program that balances proper nutrition with cardio and resistance training is key to maximize fat loss.

I tried to avoid citing specific studies for this article, but a few key examples may help drive home the point - weight training combined with diet burns more fat than weight training by itself or diet by itself (1). Weight training combined with cardio burns more fat than cardio by itself (2). So the best combination appears to be all three! And don't get caught up in that more-is-better mentality, either. Save the extra cardio and exercise for when you are closer to your goal - add too much, too soon, and you will simply burn out with nothing more to give. (Check out the training section for the right resistance training program for you!)

(1)Ballor, DL et al. Resistance Weight Training During Caloric Restriction Enhances Lean Body Weight Maintenance. Am J of Clin Nutr. 47(1): 19-25, 1988.
(2)Westcott, W. Resistance Weight Training with Endurance Training Improves Fat Loss. Fit Mgmt, Nov 1991.


3. Fear Of The Scale


TRUTH: Do not fear the scale!

It seems to be fairly popular for people to run around these days and scream, "Don't believe the scale! It lies!" The truth is, many people use the scale to measure their progress and are successful with using it as a fat loss tool. A good scale does not lie - it tells you exactly how much you weigh. The danger comes from interpreting that number the wrong way, or placing too much emphasis on it. Understand that fluctuations in the scale do not represent pure fat or muscle - it is a combination of both. The scale reflects the amount of water you are retaining along with any food that has not yet been processed by your system.

The key to using the scale is to understand this:


If you have a large amount of fat to lose, the scale will go down. If you are 300 pounds, unless you have access to some cache of steroids like none other on the planet, you will be hard-pressed to drop 100 pounds of fat and gain 100 pounds of muscle at the same time.

Your scale weight will fluctuate from day to day, based on many factors, including the amount of carbohydrate you ingest and the ratio of sodium to potassium in your food (both which pull water into your system - carbohydrate through glycogen in your muscles and sodium through water retention via the ion pump)

You might gain 7 - 10 pounds after a cheat day and even 4 - 7 pounds after a cheat meal. It really depends on your nutrition plan and how drastic the cheat meal is. This rapid gain is not all fat. To gain 10 pounds of fat would require overeating 35,000 calories, a tremendous feat to achieve and one that would be worthy of the record books. Instead, it is more than likely some fat and a lot of water weight.

Don't weigh every day unless you are mentally ready to handle the fluctuations. I weigh each day but I know my body fluctuates, so I do not freak out when I register a 3-pound rise from the day before. I enjoy watching the trend but it is the average weight change over several weeks that I am more concerned with than day to day.
In summary, do not use the scale as your only guide. You might gain 2 pounds of muscle and drop 2 pounds of fat in a given week, and the scale will not move. But taken as an average over time, those with a lot of fat to lose should expect the scale to go down. Very few people actually reduce body fat while the scale remains the same or moves up, and those people are usually lean to begin with. Used in conjunction with tape measurements, skin-fold measurements (body fat), strength, and other parameters, the scale is a great tool for those with a lot of weight to lose. Learn more in my article, 'Learn How To Measure Your Success!'.

Finally, there is one last reason why the scale could be an ally for someone standing to lose a tremendous amount of fat. Research shows that when you are extremely overweight, you are more likely to drop fat than muscle when reducing your size. The converse is also true: a lean person is more likely to lose muscle when they are cutting than fat, which is why preparing for a bodybuilding competition is infinitely more difficult than dropping the first 100 pounds of weight, because more care must be taken to preserve or even increase lean muscle mass.

Therefore, if you are over 30% body fat, focusing on the scale is probably your most accurate measure of success. Tape measurements will help but skin-folds and other body fat assessments are probably not going to be accurate. You can be assured, however, than even an aggressive 1% drop in body fat per week (for a 300 pound person, this is 3 pounds / week) or more is more than likely going to be fat and water weight if you are resistance training and obtaining proper amounts of protein, carbohydrates, and healthy fats from your nutrition plan.


4. Body Fat Worship


TRUTH: Do not live and die by your body fat percentage!

Body fat is, like the scale, another way to gauge progress. But when you are extremely overweight, body fat measurements can be extremely prone to error. It seems like every male over 250 pounds is automatically thirty (30) percent body fat regardless of their height or weight or size. I say this sarcastically but the fact of the matter is that many body fat measurements were not calibrated to extremely overweight people.

The problem with worshipping a body fat measurement is that it can set unrealistic expectations. I remember when I first computed my body fat. I quickly calculated what my lean mass was and then did the math of what I would weigh at 8% body fat if I did not lose any muscle mass. Then I started dropping pounds and eagerly waited for the day I would see my ripped six-pack. Of course, that day came and went - but no six-pack! I was frustrated, and many people at this point make up the excuse, "My genetics must be keeping me from it". The reality was that my "measurement" was off by a long shot and I put too much weight in that one measurement.

If you are curious to track your progress, use a combination of measurements. Sure, body fat is a valid one to use because you do want that measurement to go down. But don't place too much emphasis on it being the exact, correct measurement. While stating that you lost exactly 10.5 pounds of fat and gained 2.5 pounds of lean mass in a given time frame might be great for supplement ads or to promote the latest weight loss fad, numbers that precise aren't realistic without expensive, laboratory-grade equipment or at least a very skilled professional.

Instead, use body fat to track trends along with the tape measure and your scale weight. Don't worry about trying to figure out what you will weigh at a particular body fat, because every person is different. It is hard to predict just how much lean mass you will gain or lose. I have seen so many people frustrated by loss of lean mass due to body fat calculations, who do not even realize what lean mass is.

Lean mass is not only muscle - it includes most of the non-fat substances in your body. Even fat itself contains water, so when you lose a significant amount of fat, you lose a significant amount of water. This will register as a loss of lean mass, but that does not mean you lost muscle!

It is amusing sometimes to see people who are far from seeing their six-pack claim they are 8% body fat while some who are ripped to shreds swear they are 18%. This is an example where the number becomes too much of the focus. Really, who cares except you? You are the key person - if you feel great and like the way you look, does that exact number really matter? Remember, we are not talking about a bodybuilding competition here!

If you are really interested in giving yourself a reality check, consider the fat free mass index. The equation is your weight (in kilograms) divided by your height (in meters) squared. A study of elite athletes who both admitted to using steroids, as well as those who claimed not to have, combined with analysis of 20 Mr. America winners in the pre-steroid era (1939 - 1959) has determined that 25 is pretty much an upper limit for someone who does not use steroids (1). A fat free mass index of 19 is the average for males (2).

So, take your estimated body fat and compute your lean mass. First, subtract your estimate for body fat from 100 to get the lean mass amount. For example, if you believe your body fat percentage is 30%, then your lean mass percentage is going to be 70% (100% - 30%). In decimal, that is 0.7. You will multiply this by your weight to get lean mass.