Fat Loss. Why it's not happening.

I exercise, so why don't I look like it? This question is hands down the most commonly asked in the industry. Shoot, before I was set straight, I asked it multiple times a day.

Occasionally, the answer is "because you are a teenage metabolizing machine hard gainer who refuses to eat enough or lift often enough." But more commonly this question is posed by the regular everyday gym goer. This person is usually over 30, is employed full time, exercises 3....maybe 4 times a week. Sometimes twice. Less when life gets really busy. So what's the deal...how can a regular Joe achieve the aesthetic he or she desires?

It's actually pretty simple. Maybe not so easy in today's world, but simple, nonetheless.

Here are the most common pitfalls that the average Joe falls head first into...landing in a soft pillowy vat of unwanted fat.

Light Beer & Supersized Wine

A traditional 5-ounce glass of wine is about 120 calories, give or take. The more commonly seen 12 or 14-ounce glasses contain 288 or 336 calories, respectively. Most domestic light beers are just as bad for you as a soda...and who drinks just one light beer? Nobody...because they are unfulfilling, just like every other diet food on the market. (more on that later) And since alcohol also has the nasty trait of stimulating the appetite, you end up eating more. And since MOST of us wait until the evening to do this kind of drinking...Our sleep is interrupted just as we should be hitting that magic HGH releasing deep REM sleep. This spikes our stress hormone, cortisol and blocks our lean muscle building hormone, testosterone. Ugh...it's just a downward spiral.

Picking Unrealistic Role Models

Strive to be the best YOU there is. Period. Drastic change might be possible with starvation diets, unsustainable workouts or even surgery, but it's usually temporary. The body fights to go back to what it was. Still, that doesn't mean you can't become the healthiest, most functional, best version of yourself. And a healthy and functional body is beautiful. A body, no matter what its genetics, if it's healthy and moves well, has fulfilled its obligation to nature and itself, and that is surely beautiful. So work towards being healthy, lightening your toxic intake, exercising, playing and moving more efficiently. Yes, this takes time, commitment and patience...but you will love feeling like an athlete hauling those groceries to the house in one load.

Eating Prepared packaged "Diet" & "Health" Foods

Technology has created all kinds of diet & fake foods that are largely devoid of calories and nutrients, but loaded with chemicals. These foods often boast: "fortified" with calcium or riboflavin...what ever that is. Unfortunately the cheap mass produced synthetic versions of vitamins and minerals are unrecognizable by your body and tax your kidneys more than necessary as they are filtered out instead of distributed as actual nutrients.

Here's another BIG problem: Since these foods are missing something, they leave you unsatisfied and craving more food. They may be able to fake out your taste buds, but they can't fake out your body.

The preferable course of action is to focus on real foods, i.e., stuff that doesn't come in a box, plastic packaging or pretty much the entire middle of the grocery store.

Empirically, the societies that hold all the health and longevity records are the ones that rely on real food. These people are largely free of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and morbid obesity. Learn from them.

Too Much Focus on Ab & Core Exercises

For some reason, abs have become the most important and most visually appealing metric of fitness. Here's a secret: Everybody has abs. It's just the amount of fat covering them that differentiates us.

Regardless, multitudes of people spend most of their workouts working them. Yes, these people will burn a modicum of calories, but it's more likely all that ab work will just make those cores slowly, but surely, grow thicker.

It's true you can make the abs more pronounced by working them in an intelligent manner, but infinite crunches and twists and planks aren't going to make them "come out." Do some cardio. Do weight workouts that burn fat and build muscle. And most importantly, Eat like you respect your body.

Banking Calories

So you want to enjoy a guilt free dinner out with the crew. You decide not to eat during the day so you can "bank" all those calories. The trouble is, you're human. By the time you meet up, your blood sugar is bottomed out and you're starving. You end up eating far more than you wanted – perhaps a day's worth or calories. Before you know it, you are bloated, uncomfortable and have heart burn. Not a fun night out.

Physiologically, this huge amount of food has created a tsunami of insulin, which ends up ferrying a lot of those calories to storage, i.e. fat. If you know you're going to have a rich meal on a given night, eat smaller, healthier meals during the day and avoid the fat gain caused by calorie banking.

Rewarding Yourself for Exercising

If you are a 155-pound female. An hour of brisk walking could burn around 270 calories, an hour of aerobics could burn about 450 calories. Maybe you're a decent runner and you can average 9-minute miles for an hour. That would use about 700 to 800 calories.

Now consider that a Starbucks blueberry scone has 460 calories and a venti frappuccino has 340 calories. Regardless of whether you just walked, did aerobics, or ran, you're back in a caloric surplus and have literally undone all that hard work.

This is one of the reasons so many people who work out complain about not being able to make any progress.

There's one activity that's somewhat of an exception to this rule and that's weightlifting.

Lifting weights for an hour burns approximately 400 to 500 calories, but what's more important is that it makes your muscles particularly sensitivity to insulin, so if you want to build muscle or curves, "reward" yourself after a workout by drinking (or eating) a protein/carbohydrate meal within an hour after your workout. The nutrients will preferentially be ferried off to building muscle instead of fat storage.

Are you an Egg White Supremacist?

Yes, egg yolks contain lots of cholesterol and fat, but those aren't reasons to avoid them. Cholesterol in your diet is largely irrelevant, as many doctors are starting to reluctantly admit. If you don't eat cholesterol, your liver has to make it for you. This is not your livers primary function...it's already very busy.

True, roughly 61% of the yolk is fat. Some of its monounsaturated, some of it's polyunsaturated, some of it's omega-3 fatty acids, and yes, some of it's the saturated stuff (a scant 1.6 grams or so), not a big deal. The rest of the yolk and all of the white is pretty much all protein, except for grams of carbohydrate, the whole thing only contains about 75 calories.

The most nutrient dense eggs will come from chickens that actually eat real food, like bugs and grass. Not the GMO corn fodder fed to the mass production operations that supply the mega super markets. Buy from a local farmers market or find eggs from PASTURED chickens at your local Whole Foods, Trader Joe's...etc.

Keep them at the ready in your fridge as snacks. Here's a full-proof way to hard-boil them:

Put eggs in a pot and cover them with plenty of water. Turn the burner on medium-high. When the water reaches a hard boil, turn the burner completely off. Cover the pot and leave them alone for 10 minutes. Rinse in cold water to stop the cooking...Enjoy!

Genetics do play a role...kind of.

Ethnicities such as Native American, African, Mexican, South Asian and South Indian are just more prone to being more insulin resistant than people of white European descent. In general, that means they don't handle carbs well. However, given that the whole world is a melting pot, the gene or genes that code for insulin resistance are present in millions and millions of people throughout the world, regardless of ethnicity.

Insulin resistance, genes or not, can also be self-imposed through a rotten diet and a lifetime of sloth. Regardless of where you "got it," insulin resistance (which manifests itself through high blood sugar) makes it far easier to be overweight and/or develop Type II diabetes. As such, it would behoove everyone to do what they can to become more sensitive to the effects of insulin.

Here are a few things you can do to fight insulin resistance or make you less insulin resistant:

1. Whenever you sit down to eat a meal, make sure you first eat the protein, vegetables, and fat before you so much as take the first nibble of carbohydrate.

2. Use an organic apple cider vinegar with "the mother" as your salad dressing to increase insulin sensitivity. You can also add two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar to a 4-6 oz of of water and shoot it just before your biggest meal of the day.

3. Take a couple of teaspoons of psyllium everyday. (It will do wonders for your intestines. You'll be amazed.)

4. Take a high quality fish oil. To make it even more potent, combine it with exercise as the two have a synergistic effect in lowering blood sugar that's greater than the effects of either one by itself.

Cooking with Olive Oil

Those of us in the nutrition business have done society a slight disservice in pushing olive oil. Sure it's heart healthy and contains vitamin E and flavonoids and all that good stuff, but we forgot to tell people that it shouldn't be used indiscriminately.

As healthful as it is, and despite the fact that low-fat diets are pretty much bogus, olive oil is pure fat and as such contains 120 calories per tablespoon. Olive also has an extremely low "smoke point". It literally turns into a toxin once you see smoke...and all of it's nutritional properties are destroyed. Stick to ghee, butter from grass-fed cows and organic cold pressed coconut oil when cooking. AND MEASURE...You can go crazy pretty quickly with the yummy good for you fats.

Ladies.... PMS is Not a License to Binge

For most women, PMS is associated with cravings for carbohydrates, fat, and salt, which is the holy trinity of weight problems and what the majority of snack food companies bank on. And, of course, with the fulfillment of these cravings comes bloating and water retention, sometimes ranging from 5 to 10 pounds.

Blame it on all that progesterone. Which causes your cells to hang tight to all the water. This water weight usually disappears after your period, but any weight that hangs around is because of giving in to all those PMS cravings for carbs, fat, and salt.

Instead, feed yourself protein. It's filling, your body has to work hard to metabolize it, and it levels out blood sugar. In fact, base each of your PMS and during-period meals on protein and combine it with vegetables...many vegis have diuretic properties. Do a quick google search and go to battle against the bloat.

Your snacks should be protein based, too. (Good thing you boiled those eggs.) But you can also experiment with some Cocao recipes...NOT nestles cocoa...REAL ORGANIC CACAO...It's loaded with nutrients and rich dark chocolate flavor. Use it in a smoothie or check out the killer cocao ball recipe that follows...But don't get it twisted. This is still a "cheat food" it's just a super satisfying cheat food with nutrients instead of toxins.

Besides helping with PMS, Clean sources of protein in general should be a mainstay in your month-long diet. If you are a meat eater: Make the bulk of your choices has nutrient dense as possible. Think wild caught fish and pastured meats. It's the overall best nutrient for changing your body composition for the better.

Raw Chocolate Balls

1. These balls are PACKED full of protein, good fats and nutrients.

2. Don't skip the cinnamon it's not only for flavor but to helps with balancing blood sugar.

3. They are incredible easy to make, versatile, and use ingredients that you most likely have hanging around in your cupboard.

4. Store in the fridge...but they can also be enjoyed frozen!

½ cup sunflower seeds

¼ cup hemp seeds, (optional, but hemp seeds are delicious and loaded with protein)

¼ cup brazil nuts or macadamias or cashews

¼ cup almond butter, good quality peanut butter, cashew butter or even tahini...any nut butter you like works here. *2-3 tablespoons of coconut oil may be needed if your nut butter is on the dry side.

2 tbs chia or flax seeds (optional, but adds to the nutrient profile)

¼ cup organic desiccated coconut–not the sugary stuff in a plastic bag.

1/4 cup raw cacao powder

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ cup of real maple syrup or honey, or to taste

A pinch of sea salt

Up to 1 tbs water – depending on consistency

*optional, 1/4 rolled oats

Blitz the nuts and seeds in a food processor or blender. Transfer to a bowl and add all other ingredients except the water. Combine well, and add a little water if needed – the consistency should be firm enough to hold together nicely. Roll into walnut-sized balls, and then roll in a little extra coconut. Store in fridge or freezer and ENJOY!

#fatloss