Student Fitness

By: Veljko Petranovic  

Give this plan a shot and you’ll likely be satisfied with the results. In the end, it will come down to your own discipline and willingness to endure hardship. If you decide on using a fat burner, your results will improve based on the efficacy on said supplement. Keep in mind that most of them offer false promises and a placebo effect. Caveat emptor!   The summer approaches.

I remember being 18. Two friends and myself were planning on taking a trip to the Adriatic sea and spending our summer holiday there. Fresh out of High School, I had managed to put on some fairly significant muscle weight, but disappointingly, a bit of fat was shrouding my new body. It wasn’t the look I was after.

What will the beach bunnies say? Thus began my extensive search for the perfect fat loss diet.  Surprise, surprise, there was no such thing to be found. A lot of web sites were recommending a lot of different things, pushing a lot of miracle drugs, promising Godzilla-like muscle gains and penile enlargement along with a ripped six-pack. There had to be a simpler way of shedding some fat. Then, I discovered the Atkins diet. It was pretty cool on paper, and the logic behind it seemed sound enough. I tweaked it a bit to suit my individual needs, and lo and behold, in a quick month, I managed to get rid of 10 pounds of excess weight.   

The Atkins diet preaches a no-carb approach, to put it simply. Not knowing which foods contained that evil macronutrient, I whipped out a 1989 manual for the ladies, something along the lines of “Lose the belly inches after pregnancy”. On the last few pages was the food value chart, which I heartily recommend you get your hands on.  Take out a piece of paper and a pen. Write down your typical daily menu, and include everything that contains calories, the drinks as well. Now, calculate how much calories you are consuming and subtract 500 from that number. Now, note that a gram of fat contains 9 calories, whereas a gram of protein or a gram of carbohydrate is only 4 calories. A logical observation would be that the easiest way to restrict calories is to completely remove fat from your diet. Do not do this.

Your body needs fat to function normally. Low fat diets are very effective, though, but this particular type of nutritional strategy is more about calorie manipulation then it is about reduction.  So, if a kilogram of fat contains 9,000 calories, and we have reduced our calorie intake by 500 per day, logic dictates that we will lose a kilo of fat per 18 days. This is where the manipulation comes in. If you’re like most people, your body is dependent on the carbs for energy. When you take carbs out of the equation, something almost magical happens – your body switches to breaking down bodyfat into ketones, and uses them for energy. Nifty! This is a state called ketosis, and is the fundamental of the Atkins diet. It can only occur when your blood sugar levels drop radically. As long as you are ingesting enough protein and supplementing your food with vitamins and minerals, you are not going to lose much muscle mass from the calorie restriction.   

Ketosis ain’t nice. I remember breaking up with my then-girlfriend two weeks into the diet over something trivial. We got back together, eventually. You see, the brain is very much dependent on carbs, and when those aren’t provided, your judgment becomes clouded and your concentration is very low. Not a good thing if you’re preparing for a big exam! The good thing is, after about two weeks, your body gets used to this and resumes normal operation. But the cravings still remain. I remember dreaming of eating chocolate. I remember smelling pizza from, it seemed, a mile away. I remember that, at the time, peas sounded like a heavenly treat.   But don’t give in.

You are going to eat egg whites, various meats and fish and drink water, coffee and tea. This is it. Spread out these foods over 4-5 meals evenly throughout the day for 6 days a week. Remember to subtract the 500 calories from your normal menu. On day 7, you can eat, wait for it, anything you want. Pig out for 24 hours straight. Go on. Indulge yourself. The purpose of this cheat day is twofold. First, you’d likely go nuts and stop the diet without it. Second, the sudden high carb intake will fill out your muscles with glycogen and the rest will be burned for energy, again switching your body to using carbs. But when you resume the diet on day one again, the process is reversed and the body confused. What the…? This “switch” also helps burn a ton of fat.

  If the ketones from the burned fat reach a high concentration in your blood, a toxic state known as ketoacidosis sets in. You notice this when you start smelling like acetone. It is thus fundamental to maintain a workout program during the diet. Combine weight training with cardio for best results. Drink ungodly amounts of water. Set up hard workouts after the cheat day, so you can benefit from the carb intake the most.   That’s it. Four weeks of Hell and, for me, 10 excess pounds lost. It may be different for you, in the sense that “mileage may vary”.

You know your body better than anyone else. If you’re an ectomorph (naturally skinny with a fast metabolism), you can get away with two cheat days per week, as in days 6 and 7. If you decide on using a fat burner, your results will improve based on the efficacy on said supplement. Keep in mind that most of them offer false promises and a placebo effect. Caveat emptor!   The summer approaches. Give this plan a shot and you’ll likely be satisfied with the results. In the end, it will come down to your own discipline and willingness to endure hardship. The prize may be only superficial, vain and shallow, but most of us are in the lifestyle because we bear those qualities, too ;).

Get in the Discussion & Grab your FREEBIES on the Forum

Posted in Eat Right In College, Student Wellness | By Veljko |