All Diets Die is the last weight loss book you will ever need. No more gimmicks, no more yo-yo fad diets, no more confusion. Just the truth behind losing unwanted body fat. . . . permanently! Through years of working with thousands of adults trying to look and feel their best, John L. Pantera has comprised a collection of simple techniques and principles to help you shed excess body fat and keep it off forever.
ALL DIETS DIE
How to Win & Be Thin (for life!)By John L. PanteraAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2009 John L. Pantera
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4389-8186-4Contents
Medical Disclaimer.........................................................................................................viiAbout the Author...........................................................................................................ixIntroduction...............................................................................................................xiiiSECTION I Where Do I Begin?Chapter 1: Americans Are Getting Fatter Each Year: Why all diets die and ultimately cause you to fail......................3Chapter 2: Where to Start: The power of the positive mind and effective (yet easy) goal setting............................11Chapter 3: Accountability: Why each of us desperately needs it to succeed..................................................22SECTION II Everything You Need to Know About Losing Body FatChapter 4: The Concrete Laws of Losing Body Fat............................................................................31Chapter 5: The 10 Undisputable Keys to Stoking Your Metabolic Fire Inside..................................................48Chapter 6: The Nutrient Balancing Principle: The Truth About Protein, Carbohydrates and Fats...............................59Chapter 7: We Are Human Water Beings: The role of water (and its enemies) in your fat loss achievement.....................76Chapter 8: Supplement Myths and Truths: Do I need them to succeed?.........................................................88SECTION III The Ultimate Fat Burning Exercise Plan (Simplified)Chapter 9: Weight Training and Burning Fat.................................................................................95Chapter 10: Cardio Training and Burning Fat................................................................................112Conclusion (This is just the beginning ...)................................................................................127
Chapter One
Americans Are Getting Fatter Each Year: Why all diets die and ultimately cause you to fail
"Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we diet." - Wendy Morgan
"Enjoy life. Think of all the women who passed up dessert on the Titanic." - Unknown
"In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eat about twice as much as nature requires." - Benjamin Franklin
Okay, let's get it out there: Americans are in trouble! As a nation, we have never been collectively more overweight than we are now. I'm sure you've heard that before, and with all of our technological advances and so much information at our fingertips, it's sometimes shocking that we haven't all figured out the big fat loss mystery.... right?
There are several reasons for this weight gain phenomenon, and depending on who you talk to, you'll get more than one viewpoint. The most obvious factors are the following:
1. As a whole, Americans have drastically reduced the amount of calories we burn throughout the day. This is due to our society moving from an extremely laborious workplace to much more of a technological workplace, where most of us work sitting at a desk. Even our children have become virtually inactive, with a drop in gym class requirements and a rise in video game popularity.
2. The amount of processed food we ingest has increased tenfold, diminishing the amount of macro and micronutrients that come from natural sources of food.
3. Because we are all in a rush, we seek convenience when we eat, which usually leads us to fast food spots and large portions on the go. Or even worse, we neglect or even forget to eat altogether, causing a massive metabolic slowdown. Also, most of us eat out quite often, and the portion sizes here in America are HUGE! The average size of a dinner out is a big enough portion to feed 3 adults. Yet most of us clean our plate each and every time we dine out, not to mention the double portion of wine or the 22oz. draft beer, dessert and coffee specialty drinks.
4. We all have tried different fad diets, and without question, the fad diet ended abruptly, or died. In the process, most of us have triggered a starvation response in our bodies due to the low-calorie nature of most diets. We will talk later about your metabolism, but this process of starving yourself and subsequently `falling off the wagon' causes a drastic change in the way our bodies digest and process calories. Many ups and downs of this pattern that cause us to repeatedly gain and lose weight, or the "yo-yo effect," greatly contribute to our inability to correctly and permanently lose body fat.
5. There is an overwhelming amount of information on losing body fat, including diet books, exercise programs, and infomercials promising 5-minute solutions - this is because the weight loss industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Clearly, the demand is being exploited for profit. Every month there seems to be a new breakthrough program or pill or machine that has never been discovered until now! Many of us jump on the bandwagon hoping that our body fat woes will disappear with little or no effort. So, without changing our lifestyles, we are falling into that yo-yo pattern yet again, and none of us seem to know what path to take for permanent results.
6. Drugs, medications, diet pills and other unnatural substances have done a number on our bodies through the years. Too many of us have surrendered to popping pills for "health" rather than getting back to the basics of sound nutrition and exercise. These unnatural substances have severe effects on our digestive, endocrine, circulatory and central nervous systems, not to mention the fact that they contribute significantly to weight gain.
These are just some of the factors; there are many more. The bottom line is that you now have a choice. You are at a crossroads. Path #1 is the path you have been on up until now. If you had stayed on that path, it would continue to lead you on a frustrating roller coaster of up and down weight gain/loss. Path #2 is the path of truth. The instant you began reading this book, you veered off Path #1 and began down the path of truth. Way to go!
FACT: ALL DIETS DIE!
The definition of a diet, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is the following: diet; a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one's weight. This has always been interesting to me, and if you read it twice you'll notice a couple of things. First, the word sparingly is used. This implies a low calorie regimen. With a low calorie regimen comes the feeling of deprivation and restriction. This hardly sounds like a lifestyle change, and very difficult to maintain long-term.
Secondly, the goal is just to reduce one's weight - not fat. We will discuss the difference between body weight and body fat later, so keep this in mind. All diets work to some degree if losing weight is your only goal. If you want to permanently lose body fat, this definition is not the answer.
Lastly, it says nothing about maintaining a long-term result or permanent change. This implies that a diet is temporary until the goal is met. Most of us have seen some success from a diet, but once the diet dies, we gain the weight back and then some. This is the most frustrating and damaging part of the dieting cycle.
Dieting has been around for quite some time. The concept of the diet gained popularity throughout the 1980's with the emergence of countless fad diets; it'll make your head spin if you take a look back to that time. Do you remember the cabbage soup diet? How about the grapefruit diet? Then along came the diet revolution that was headlined by the Atkins diet, the Zone diet and more recently the South Beach diet.
While many of these fad diets of the past certainly had good intentions, they are all seriously flawed, and some downright unhealthy. I will not point fingers or single out any one diet mentioned above. Rather, let's look at some reasons why many diets, such as these, ultimately fail (and eventually die), causing you to feel and look worse off than when you began.
THE HUMAN BODY'S NATURAL STARVATION TRIGGERS
The human body is a wonderful and beautiful thing. We are alive! Our bodies, regardless of your belief system, have evolved over many centuries to adapt to our physical and mental needs in order to promote survival. Throughout the years, as humans went from being hunters and gatherers to a more agricultural/industrial society, our process of eating food and drinking fluids has changed dramatically. We now know where our next meal will come from, and we have so many choices to fulfill that task. Food processing and distribution is big business in this day and age, especially here in America.
Long ago, we did not have such a luxury. Families had to rely on their own ability to hunt for food and sometimes went weeks if not months without nourishment. For that reason, the human body took on certain metabolic functions in order to slow down the rate at which calories are burned in order to allow for long periods of "starvation." The good news from this is that we can actually live without food for many weeks. The bad news is that we no longer need this natural benefit, and this survival mechanism has now been working against us while we attempt to lose body fat. Let me explain ...
A typical adult female, let's call her Jane, decides to start a diet. Jane has tried all the diets. Over the years she had gained and lost the same 50 pounds multiple times. With every diet she began, she saw great results, typically losing a quick 15 pounds. After a few weeks, the weight loss started to fizzle, and when she did her twice-daily weigh in on her scale, it just seemed to stop moving. Before long, she gained all of her weight back, and a few extra pounds to boot. Sound familiar?
Here's the problem. This is undoubtedly the most damaging cycle a human being can put their body through, and it seems as though most of us at some point have followed this pattern. It starts with a very low calorie diet. As with most diets, low calories leads to an initial weight loss, most of that weight being water weight. Because we see a drop on the scale, we keep going and think that we are actually succeeding.
Very quickly, our bodies catch on to the fact that we are slowly depriving ourselves of key nutrients and enough calories to sustain our muscle mass and give us energy. Because the body does not know where the next meal is coming from (the hunter/gatherer defense mechanism), the body is smart enough to slow down the rate at which we absorb, digest and use calories. This is your metabolism! And it is slowing down!
What happens next is that our system gets used to a lower rate, and when we do actually eat food, that food gets processed very slowly. It's important to note that your metabolism declines with age naturally, something we cannot change. But what we are doing in this cycle is pushing along the natural aging process so that our bodies are acting as if we are much older than we really are. Does that sound like it's a good thing?
The worst part is when the diet stops. Inevitably we go off the diet, because no one can restrict the foods they love forever, nor should anyone have to. So, our calorie total for the day shoots way back up. Guess what? Our metabolism is so slow that our body simply cannot process the excess calories and those extra calories end up getting stored away as body fat! Anyone that has ever been a victim of this knows that feeling. The weight seems to go back on about ten times faster than it went away. Not fun!
Too many of us repeat this viscous cycle for years and years, and each time our internal systems grow weaker and slower. Obviously this is frustrating, and when the weight comes back you feel like a failure. So we give up completely.
THERE IS SO MUCH MISLEADING INFORMATION OUT THERE!
Go to Google.com and search the word "diet." There are over 26,000,000 results that pop up! I think it's safe to say that diets are a popular thing, and that most adults have tried at least one diet at some point in their life. There certainly is no shortage of information on the topic, and the truth of the matter is that over 90% of the information you find out there on dieting is misleading, false or downright unhealthy.
How can this be? One word: GREED. There have been, and continue to be, countless ways for individuals and companies to make a lot of money selling diet pills, drinks, exercise gimmicks and the newest, greatest fad that can be thought up. As a result of the rapidly growing fat loss market, a wave of bad information has flooded the Internet and the book stores, resulting in more confusion than ever.
Are carbs good or bad? Should I limit my fat intake, or is high protein the way to go? Does the the Ab Wheel really work that well? What's all the fuss about the Atkins Diet? Is the South Beach Diet better? How about cleansing? There's a diet pill now endorsed by the FDA, so it must work, right? Phew ... that's a lot of options, and a lot of different opinions. Most of my clients have expressed much confusion and the feeling of being overwhelmed each year with the newest fad weight loss gimmick.
While dieting through the years and gaining and losing weight, people have done so in often unhealthy ways due to the misconceptions of exactly how to do it right. This ongoing cycle has caused most Americans, adults and children alike, to be severely overweight and unhealthy, and trends seem to be getting worse.
THE CYCLE ENDS NOW
There is hope. I can tell you first hand that many people that I have worked with have been through the yo-yo and the roller coaster for years upon years only to ultimately give up on their situation ... until they decided to do it right.
In order to break this cycle and to look and feel the way you want to, you must commit to change! You must commit to give up on all gimmicks and diets, and commit to changing your lifestyle. Presented to you in this book is all of the tools and knowledge you will need to dispel any myths and cut a crystal clear path to success. If you can't commit, stop reading now and give this book to someone else. If you CAN, keep reading - your life is about to change for GOOD!
RAPID RECAP
1. There are many significant reasons why most Americans are obese in these days and times. Despite what your struggle might be, there is a way out.
2. The word "diet" implies temporary results and losing weight, not body fat. All diets eventually die.
3. Your body has a natural way of surviving when faced with a severe calorie restriction. This "starvation response" happens when you diet for too long, and it causes your metabolism to slow down. This makes it virtually impossible to lose body fat.
4. There is so much bad information out there it is no wonder people are confused. Most of the information presented to you is misleading and unhealthy. You will now learn the true way to be healthy and lean for life.
Chapter Two
Where to Start: The power of the positive mind and effective (yet easy) goal setting
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing." - Abraham Lincoln
Stephen R. Covey said it best in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Begin with the end in mind. You've heard it many times before, and it's become somewhat of a clich these days, but how can you get to where you're going without knowing where you want to be? Too often people neglect to set goals in their personal and professional lives, and guess what happens? They end up not getting there.
Also, too many clients in the past that I have seen had the wrong perspective on their situation, and I witnessed many self-fulfilling prophecies of failure. Henry Ford had one of the all-time classic motivational quotes when he said, "Whether you think you can or you can't, either way you're right."
This chapter will focus on two things: positive affirmations and goal setting. I will simplify this for you so that it is easy yet very powerful. This might be the most important chapter in this book, because it's all about getting your head on straight to succeed! Without the right mindset and without a crystal clear roadmap of where you're going, nothing else matters.
WHY MOST PEOPLE NEVER ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS Fact: 98% of people do not have written goals. I realize that you probably fit into that 98%, but the good news is that it's okay, that's why we're here! That ends today. When I think about why most of us do not write down our goals, a few reasons come to mind:
1. We discount the importance of writing down our goals.
2. We have no idea what we would like to accomplish.
3. We are afraid of failure.
4. We are afraid of success (yes, this does happen, I'll explain this one below ...).
5. We don't have time (my all-time favorite excuse!). 6. We don't know how to put our goals into a format that makes sense.
7. We have no personal emotional reasons for achieving our goals.
8. We have no one to hold us accountable!
9. We haven't ever thought about setting goals ("the thought never entered into my mind").
10. We feel our goals are unattainable, so why bother?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from ALL DIETS DIEby John L. Pantera Copyright © 2009 by John L. Pantera. Excerpted by permission.
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