Monday, November 29, 2010

Guest Post: New Years Resolutions- Early Edition


I thought that maybe you guys are getting sick of only hearing me day after day, so I decided to spice things up a bit with a guest post from my colleague Steve Trentham. Here is a little information about Steve taken from his website Dallas Underground Strength:

Steve Trentham has been a personal trainer and fat loss expert since 1995. However his passion for fitness and helping people reach their fitness potential started when he was in high school.A Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and Master Level Fitness Trainer, Steve is the Fitness Director at Metroflex Gym in Plano, and the official fitness trainer for Twin Peaks. Prior to this, Steve was the principle director of Priority Fitness, LLC, a private personal training and fitness consulting company.

There he developed fitness and wellness solutions for numerous fitness and athletic performance companies including Lakes Tennis Academy, FIT-BODY Personal Training, and Lean Bodies, Inc. His clinical experiences includes cardiac rehabilitation and physical therapy in various hospitals and allied healthcare facilities in the Dallas / Ft. Worth area. In 2005, Steve created the “2000 Lb. Melt Off Challenge“ and led a group of 68 participants to lose a total of 1,872 lbs in six weeks using a specialized fitness and nutritional program. Additionally Steve has been involved in martial arts for over fifteen years, and he is an instructor at Action Martial Arts in Allen, TX.

Anyway, Steve has agreed to do a guest post today for me on fat loss resolutions, so I hope you enjoy what he has to say and find it useful! Without further ado, here you go:

Ok, I’m breaking from tradition a little bit. While everyone else is getting ready to make their annual commitment to getting in shape come January 1st, I’m giving myself a 30 day head start.

Why put off till tomorrow if you can’t do it today right?

So what I’m going to do is share the "3 Diet Rules” I’ll be following for the next 30 days to jump-start my fitness program. But before we get into that, I want to share with you a couple of things I’ve discovered over the past three weeks. Some of you know that I’m working with an elite level sprinter. Now I’m not talking about a guy that runs for fun, or is just “pretty” good. This guy has a couple high-caliber sponsors (Saucony being one of them), and expectations of him are riding pretty high.

I had the privilege of watching one of his track practices with his team, and was able to meet his track coach. Within this group, there are seven Olympic medals, 12 world champions, and most currently hold, or have held a world record time sometime during their career. Talk about a humbling experience! Not only was I able to watch these guys run, I was able to talk to them about their background, training techniques, nutritional habits, goal setting techniques, the Stock Market (Yeah we talked about the stock market), politics, you name it we talked about it!

One thing I noticed it the level of razor focus and attention to detail these guys had.  
I’m not going to get detailed about their training, but here is an example of their training for that day.
  1. 200m x 1
  2. 300m x 1
  3. 400m x 1
  4. 100m x 1
Keep in mind they did all four sprints then they took a 5-7 minute break and repeated the circuit two more times for a total of three circuits. Oh yeah, they were only running at a 14 second 100/m pace! Now that’s fast!

What I took away from that is the power of sprinting for fat loss. These guys all have extremely low levels of bodyfat (10% or lower), and their muscle tone is impressive! We’ll get more into how you can use sprints to drop massive amounts of bodyfat later, but now I want to share couple of the “rules” I’m following.

Ok, everyone knows I like to keep things simple, so here goes…

“Rule” 1: Eat more…
  • Fruits and vegetables
  • Low-fat and low sugar dairy
  • Whole grains
  • Lean proteins
  • Salads and broth based soups (low Sodium if available)
  • Beans and Legumes

“Rule” 2: Eat less…
  • Cereals and sweetened yogurt
  • White carbs such as bread, pasta and rice
  • “Fake foods” like rice cakes
  • Snacks such as granola bars and wheat crackers
  • Salty or fried snacks

“Rule” 3: Eat a lot less often…
  • Sweetened drinks such as soda and iced tea (even the diet ones)
  • Bagels, muffins, cakes and cookies
  • Butter, mayonnaise, and full-fat salad dressing
Hope this is simple enough to follow. : )

Until next time!

Steve

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Again, the website is http://dallasundergroundstrength.com. Be sure to check it out!

4 comments:

  1. I eat full-fat grass-fed butter, zero whole grains, minimal beans and legumes...guess I'm en route to becoming a fatty.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You know that's not true. Stop confusing my readers, Sausage Link! Just because you basically follow a "paleo" diet doesn't mean everyone else is wrong! Consistency is more important.

    ReplyDelete
  3. My mom is very consistent with her diet, and follows rules very much like those listed. She's also consistently 50 lbs overweight. She swears by her whole grains and skim milk, yet balks when I tell her to get 5g of fish oil and a few tablespoons of coconut oil each day(two thermogenic foods I saw no mention of). Consistency is not more important when you're consistently bad.

    Please don't accuse me of being an evangelical paleo-ist. My comment had nothing to do with paleo specifically, and you know me better than that.

    Just to open up the debate here's a great article precisely identifying the "health" foods wheat/gluten and reduced-fat/sugar-free junk as crap:

    http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/four_healthy_foods_that_arent

    The author just so happens to be the author of the nutrition guide for Cressey's Show and Go Training System as well.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Agreed. Consistency isn't more important if you are consistently bad!

    ReplyDelete

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