Excuse Proof Fitness Survival Guide by Derek Doepker - HTML preview

12.

Eliminate most dairy all together when attempting to lose fat outside

of optional cultured dairy like kefir and/or a quality (homemade) yogurt.

13. Don't stress about how many meals, the size of your breakfast, or eating

too late in the night. They are very minor details. Simply shoot for 3-4 balanced meals a day.

"If man made it, don't eat it" - Jack LaLanne

Strategy 5 : Restore Deficiencies

Successful Outcome:

Assists body to maintain a lean fit body on a daily basis

Hormones are optimized to burn fat and nourish muscles

Inflammation is dramatically reduced preventing aging and disease

Health and energy levels improve

Toxins are safely eliminated resulting in a clean body

The immune system improves preventing and fighting disease

Body becomes stronger and more resilient to stress

Why This Works:

This strategy works in close conjunction with a whole foods way of eating to

allow the body and the genetics to "reset" to that of a more youthful, vi-

brant, health filled and downright sexy version of you.

Even if those were never qualities you've had due to a lifetime of health is-

sues, the body is almost always capable of repairing itself when given the

tools it needs.

The body often doesn't want to store excess amounts of fat unless it feels it

needs to for survival purposes. Our ancestors may have benefited from ex-

tra fat for periods of famine, but in today's day and age that same quality is

destroying many people's health.

Three big interrelated physiological reasons the body may store more fat

than is ideal is because of hormone imbalance (leptin, insulin, estrogen,

cortisol, thyroid T3/T4, etc.), inflammation, and environmental toxins.

Stress management and certain herbs can help with cortisol while whole

foods can assist with some of the other hormone imbalances. More in depth

details for easily dealing with all of these hormones and detoxification of tox-

ins can be found in the various "Excuse Proof Fitness" programs and re-

sources.

The key thing to ask is "why are these things whacked out in the first

place?" Chances are, it's because the body is not living the way it should.

It's being exposed to harmful toxins on a level it was never designed for, not

being physically active which moves lymph and fluids through the body, and

hasn't been given the resources it needs to carry out all of it's biological

functions in addition to being over stressed emotionally which has some of

the biggest impact.

In other words, the body has to compromise looking and feeling sexy in or-

der to just stay alive.

How to Do It:

1. Restore magnesium levels.

Magnesium deficiency is the most common mineral deficiency and it is re-

sponsible for over 300 enzymatic processes as well as blood sugar regula-

tion. Difficulty sleeping, anxiety, restlessness, are all symptoms of magnesi-

um deficiency.

Magnesium oil, magnesium bath flakes, and magnesium rich bath salts like

dead sea salt are the fastest and safest way to restore magnesium, mag-

nesium taurate in addition to other chelates are acceptable but slower and

have more potential risks, and raw cacao (raw chocolate) is one of the

highest food sources of magnesium. 500-1000mg if not using oil or food.

2. Get adequate sleep.

Sleep in a darkened room, and before bed reduce exposure to artificial light

like computer screens and tv's to produce melatonin.

Lack of sleep disturbs the body's hormone balance and is associated with ex-

cess fat gain. We produce growth hormone during deep sleep which is re-

sponsible for fat loss and muscle gain, particularly in women. The body also

repairs itself from exercise during deep recuperative sleep. Lack of sleep in-

creases stress levels in the body reducing performance and promoting fat

gain.

3. Restore vitamin D levels. Nearly everyone who doesn't take steps to re-

store vitamin D will be deficient; it influences over 200 genes. Some sun-

shine (not too much as to cause sunburn!) is good for overall health and to

produce vitamin D. For those who either can't get enough sun or are at risk

for too much sun and burning, supplementation can be done with vitamin

D3. 5000IU a day of soft-gel or liquid form is a good starting point for

adults. Get tested to prevent toxicity.

4. Restore Omega 3 levels.

Like magnesium and vitamin D, Omega 3 levels are low in almost everyone.

Include a high quality marine oil like fish or krill oil. Vegans may use Algae

oil although it is less ideal. Around 3 grams a day of a standard dose fish oil

is a good starting point.

If consuming lots of fish, watch out for mercury toxicity. Eat wild caught,

smaller fish from cleaner waters. Fish oil (omega 3s) are particularly im-

portant for those wishing to lose fat as it helps with inflammation and insulin

levels.

5. Correct Your Unique Deficiencies:

Getting a nutritional test done is a safe objective way to tell you what you

should and shouldn't be consuming.

Spectracell.com offers a variety of tests to accurately determine deficiencies.

Correcting deficiencies through whole food sources is recommended before

attempting to supplement with less effective vitamin and mineral products.

For sources of supplementation and discount prices, see the resources sec-

tion at http://excuseproof.com/

For more resources on correcting various health and body imbalances for

rapidly reducing fat, gaining muscle, and improving energy levels, be sure to

check out the books and programs from "Excuse Proof Fitness."

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food" - Hippocrates

Strategy 6 : Strengthen Your Sexy Body

Successful Outcome:

Have less fat and stronger muscles. Look more athletic, fit, and straight up

sexy

Shape the body towards your desired look

Prevent injuries and allow for daily tasks to be handled with ease

Improve confidence

Assists body to maintain a lean fit body on a daily basis

Hormones are optimized to burn fat and nourish muscles

Health and energy levels improve

Toxins are safely eliminated resulting in a clean body

The immune system improves preventing and fighting disease

Body becomes stronger and more resilient to stress

Why This Works:

When it comes to getting fit and sexy, there's some debate as to what is

more important: diet or exercise.

Here's an insight, they're both important. With regards to pure fat loss or

fat gain however, diet will have the biggest impact.

That being said, for maintaining and adjusting the body's fat "set-point," exercise is incredibly important.

That's because vigorous intense exercise not only burns fat (and glycogen)

for energy, but it also increases the body's metabolism throughout the day.

Plus, a body that is used to moving around a lot doesn't want to carry extra

weight. Sedentary living, sitting at a desk or on a chair all day, and other

forms of inactivity are fat's greatest allies and a sexy body's greatest threat.

Resistance training promotes favorable changes in hormones to decrease the

amount of nutrients that are stored as fat, and increase the amount of nutri-

ents like glycogen stored in muscles.

Muscle is also metabolically active. That means the more muscle someone

has, the more calories they burn each day and the more they can eat

without storing fat.

The muscles are like a bunch of furnaces constantly working to burn off the

calories you eat and acting as an insurance against gaining fat.

Keeping your muscles strong and active also promotes the favorable burning

of fat over muscle tissue when restricting food intake. If you drop 10

pounds, would you rather lose 5 pounds of fat and 5 pounds of muscle or

only lose 10 pounds of fat?

Either way you lose the same amount of weight, but the latter will look much

better than the former.

When people go on hard-core crash diets and lose lots of muscle along with

fat, they also risk a rapid rebound of gaining all the lost weight back and

then some. Their metabolism slows down to a crawl as they are dieting; ex-

ercise is a great way to keep the metabolism running hot even when a per-

son isn't eating as much.

Women, do not fear adding muscle or getting "bulky" from working out to hard! It's not going to happen! You don't have the hormones to gain significant amounts of muscle or get super ripped. You can train as hard as

Arnold Schwarzenegger in the gym and never be mistaken for anything but a

super, sexy, fit woman. You will never look "bulky" as so many women are

afraid of.

If you as a woman do gain muscle more easily than you'd like, reduce the

amount of resistance training done, but still include it to maintain the

amount of muscle you'd like and add it in the right spots. Hint: Most women

love having a stronger firmer set of glutes (butt) which comes from hard

training, not whimpy aerobics classes.

Guys, it's harder to gain weight than you think. If you don't want to be

"huge" you should still train hard. If you DO want to be "huge," you'll need to eat hard.

Even if you only want to gain 5lbs of muscle, you still want to reach that goal

quickly.

When people say: "I don't want to build a lot of muscle, I just want to get a

little more toned," and so they train using pink dumbbells and text on their

phone while using a machine, it's sort of like a person saying: "I don't want

to dig a 10 foot ditch, just a 1 foot ditch so I'm going to use a spoon instead

of a shovel."

Although different body shaping and performance goals do have different

means of training for them, I do recommend always including some heavy

resistance training to preserve your muscles and keep them strong.

90% or more of people want the same thing. A little more muscle, a bit (or

lot) less fat. Man or woman, the means to get there quickly doesn't vary

that much.

In addition to resistance training, cardiovascular training is important for im-

proving heart health, circulation, and promoting fat loss. From a fat loss

point of view, short bouts of intense exercise are more effective than longer

cardio sessions.

Resistance training can also be a form of cardiovascular exercise when done

with higher amounts of sets and/or reps combined with minimal rest. In

fact, circuit style training is excellent for combining muscle building and fat

loss efforts into a single training session.

Both resistance training and cardiovascular training utilizing shorter intense

bouts of effort and occasional longer bouts of activity are recommended in

addition to the daily habit of moving around more.

How to Do It:

Resistance exercises should include upper body pushing, upper body pulling,

and lower body pushing. More advanced training will hit both the horizontal

and vertical plane for total upper body development and have single leg

work for lower body.

A basic routine can include any variations of pushups (upper pushing), rows

(upper pulling), and squats that will challenge the body.

Once proper form is established, the exercises can be done to reach near

muscular failure in 15 repetitions or less while using a rep speed that is con-

trolled all throughout the movement such as 3 seconds up and 3 seconds

down. Rest 2 minutes between sets or cycle through each exercise one after

another with little to no rest for increased cardiovascular training.

(An expanded routine can included pushups and overhead press for upper

pushing, pullups for upper pulling, and lunges for lower body)

The entire body is trained three times a week to begin with full body ses-

sions each time. As you improve, decrease the reps to 5-10 with more res-

istance.

A similar routine may be done in the gym swapping pushups for bench

presses and overhead presses, using rows and pullups/pulldowns, and

squat/lunge/deadlift/leg press variations for legs.

The key for beginners is to master form of the major movements that chal-

lenge the most muscles on a single movement. Focus on compound move-

ments to begin and work with exercises that avoid stressing any joint issues.

High intensity interval training or circuit training is ideal for conditioning.

Example: All out effort (sprinting, fast cycling, etc.) 30 seconds followed by

light effort for 1:30 repeated for 5-8 cycles 2-3 times a week at most.

High intensity workouts should last between 15-30 minutes.

Walking as fast as possible for 15-20 minutes also works or walking on an

incline at a moderate pace for 20-30 minutes are also great options for those

wishing to improve conditioning with less joint impact.

Additional lower intensity conditioning work such as walking or swimming for

45 minutes to 1 hour may be done 1-3 times a week.

These may be some “basic” routines, but they are highly effective and es-

sential to master before moving on to more advanced movements and pro-

tocols. After a while you'll need to challenge your body more, and go bey-

ond what is listed here to continue to get results as well as avoid boredom.

That's why you'll want to check out the full Excuse Proof Fitness book and

programs. You can also check out http://excuseproof.com and go to the resources section for access to a large number of free detailed home and gym

exercise training routines that meet your current needs and for additional

variety. There are no shortage of good training protocols out there for any

body type, goal, and circumstance and we'll show you some of the best.

"Everyone pities the weak; Jealousy you have to earn."

- Arnold Schwarzenegger

Objective 3: Enjoy Your Sexy Body (Forever)

Strategy 7 : Make Fitness A Habit

Successful Outcome:

You stay lean, fit, strong, and sexy permanently

Enjoy your favorite treats, deserts, and pleasures without losing your

physique or regaining fat

Spend more time doing what you love and less worrying about your body

Continually improve your health, fitness, and appearance with less effort

Enjoy on-going success on "auto-pilot"

Why This Works:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the the "get-fit-quick" concept in the-ory. In fact, some of the methods used for extremely rapid fat loss are safe and effective, and getting slow to no results is usually just a matter of following ineffective methods or not treating an underlying condition.

Deep down inside though, most of us are torn between two conflicting ideas.

One is the desire for there to be a "magic bullet" or "secret technique" that gets results extremely quickly with very little effort. Most of us are programmed for instant gratification.

But another part of us knows these things are usually "too good to be true."

We are skeptical because we inherently know that anything worthwhile

rarely comes without effort. Or at the very least, nothing worthwhile sticks

around without effort.

There's some good news and bad news.

The bad news is that "get fit quick" concepts rarely deliver their hyped up promises for the vast majority of the population, and when they do, people

often regain lost weight and fail to keep their results. What good does it do

to lose 30 lbs in 30 days if after another 30 days the person has gained back

the 30lbs and then some?

The good news is that there are effective and efficient means to get rapid

results without spending a lot of time and effort cooking meals and going to

the gym. In fact, maintaining a high degree of fitness rarely requires more

than a few hours of dedicated effort a week.

Most personal trainers and educated individuals like myself know a number

of powerful tricks to rapidly drop fat and/or build strength and muscle.

Some of them aren't terribly difficult either.

But there's a catch. Focusing only on these methods, while they may be

great for getting movie stars in shape quickly for a role or helping motivate

very out of shape people by showing them how quickly they can get results,

these methods aren't always the best for long term use for the average per-

son wanting to get lasting results.

The trick to lasting success though is to get out of the frame of mind that is

HAS TO BE easy, instantaneous and effortless.

It CAN BE these things, but a much more empowering mindset is to simply

value health and fitness like you value your job, family, friends, and other

things you prioritize in your life and do what it takes to see the results you

want.

If you only want it to be easy, it may be harder than you think.

If you go into it accepting it may be a challenge, you could find yourself

pleasantly surprised at how easily you can overcome the obstacles you'll face

and yes, you will face obstacles.

The problem with the "it should be easy" mindset is that people give up

when the going gets tough or think they're doing something wrong.

The problem with the "it should be hard" mindset is that it can result in doing things inefficiently and thinking it's normal to not see results for long

periods of time. Or doing way more work than is actually necessary or even

ideal.

Say/think: "it may be easier or harder at times, but it's important to me so

I'm just going to do whatever it takes and just enjoy the ups and downs."

The underlying root problem for many people is that they're so focused on

the end goal, they lose sight of the process.

This not only makes it much harder to stay motivated, particularly when res-

ults aren't always blatantly obvious, but it always delays happiness and ful-

fillment to some point in the future.

Instead, why not enjoy the process and treat the goals as stepping stones?

Goals will always come and go. If reaching point X is all you want to do,

what are you going to do after you get there? Give up all together? Stop

taking care of your body and health?

No. Why not treat point X as merely one point of many that you go through

in life?

If you see health and fitness as a way of life, then doing all the things you

need to do will come much more easily, and you'll make them into habits

rather than forced behaviors.

Habits run on auto-pilot in the subconscious mind. So just like you may

have some bad habits that hold you back, imagine how powerful you'd be if

you had good habits installed.

How easily could you keep your sexy body if it was natural for you to eat

healthy and exercise regularly?

It would actually be a challenge for me to eat junk food and not exercise be-

cause they're such a regular part of my lifestyle. It would be harder for me to get out of shape than it would be for me to stay in shape because I've

made the required behaviors habitual.

Ask yourself, do I just want to get a sexy body, or do I want to have a sexy body?

Getting a sexy body for a day is a different task than having a sexy body for a lifetime, and the difference lies in whether you make the beneficial behaviors needed for achieving a fit body habitual.

Another benefit of having good habits installed is that you can occasionally

take a break and eat some treats, miss some exercise sessions, and still

maintain good results. That's because you'll fall back into good habits and

those things were just a slight deviation.

It's important to recognize that a person just starting out breaking bad

habits will have a much more difficult time if they eat an addicting junk food

than a person who has broken their addictions and can freely eat those

things without it turning into a downward spiral.

Look at beneficial habit development as an opportunity to enjoy your favorite

things without the fear or anxiety that you're going to lose all that you've

worked hard for.

Trust me, I can eat any junk food or a treat or take a break from the gym

and never have to worry about losing my sexy body as I'll get right back into

my good habits of healthy eating and exercise.

This takes time though to develop, and it's very important to uninstall the

bad habits and put in the good ones before this is a luxury that most can en-

joy.

How to Do It:

Focus on the process rather than the end. There is no "end." Health and fitness is a lifestyle.

The goals are all stepping stones and calibration points to figure out how

well what you're doing is working.

They also serve as useful means of motivation such as a goal to compete in

an event or break a record in the gym. But the goals are never what it's all

about. The goals are there to help fine tune behaviors and instill positive

habits.

Focus on doing a few manageable things at a time. A lot of people make a

New Year's Resolution like: cut out all sugar, processed foods, run 10 miles a

week, lift weights 4 times a week, etc.

If they're not eating anything healthy or exercising at all when they make

this resolution, they're almost guaranteed to fail.

A better approach may be to do all those things by the END of the year, but

start out gradually. You can do something like:

Month 1 January: Cut out all soft drinks to one a day and replace with green

tea. Carry a large water container at all times filled with spring water and

lemon juice.

Month 2 February: Replace all soft drinks with water and tea. Start to run

twice a week for at least half a mile and up to 3 miles at a time.

Month 3 March: Replace lunch with a spinach and mixed vegetable salad.

Experiment with recipes to find a great tasting healthy homemade salad

dressing. Go to gym at least twice a weak to do resistance training.

Month 4...

You get the point. Each month a person would take on a new behavior that

is a challenge, but totally manageable. They don't overwhelm themselves

with a bunch of new stuff to keep track of and try to do and set themselves

up for success.

After a month of doing their new behavior it will probably be pretty much a

part of their daily routine, so that they can add in new things each month

without it causing too much stress or over thinking things.

Now there's nothing wrong if a person is so fed up with their condition they

want to make a lot of changes at once. But each person must be realistic in

how much change they can make at a single point in time balanced with

work, family, and other obligations.

The key point is to develop a new habit each month. By the end of the year

they not only have reached their goal, lost a lot of fat, gotten in better

shape, but going into the next year they'll be able to easily sustain their res-

ults because they've programmed those beneficial behaviors into their sub-

conscious mind as part of their daily life.

They did things gradually so they weren't overstressed. And they only had

to "force" themselves to do a few things at a time until they became effortless.

I highly suggest writing down goals, reading them aloud daily and telling a

supportive person about what you are doing and recruiting them as an "ac-

countability partner." Getting accountability is one of the most sure fire

ways to improve your compliance. How much harder will you work when

you have a boss to answer to than when you're on your own?

Excuse Proof Fitness focuses heavily on the use of strategies rather than

strict plans. Counting calories isn't sustainable over the course of a lifetime;

knowing a few healthy low-calorie nutrient dense recipes that are quick and

easy to make can keep you in great shape for years.

Have a number of "tools" in your tool belt for when things get tough. Learn a few recipes that only take 5 minutes to prepare. Cook in bulk in a slow

cooker or