My Personal Experience With Xtreme Fat Loss Diet

My Personal Experience With Xtreme Fat Loss Diet
By Flavia Del Monte

Many women have been asking me about fast days. Most, I assume, are familiar with Joel Marion’s Xtreme Fat Loss Diet. I thouht I’d share my personal experiences of the ups and downs I faced, while helping me get photo-shoot ready for one of my happiest memories in my life.

November of 2009, one of my closet friends tied the knot in the Dominican Republic. My husband, Vince Del Monte, seized this opportunity to make this trip extra valuable by adding a photo-shoot. So here we are at Bush Gardens with the fitness crew and I was complaining about 5 pounds of fat I still had to lose for this photo-shoot and only had a month to do it!

Joel pipes up in a very sarcastic voice, “Umm I happen to know the creator of this 25 day diet called ‘Xtreme Fat Loss Diet’ and I happen to know that it works.”

So of course I tried it and it worked. I lost 5 pounds of fat in 20 days from an already lean state. This was no easy task…Joel does not call it Xtreme for nothing…this diet is tough.

If you are ready for an extreme fat loss program that will make you lose wight and lose it fast…..keep reading. If you are happy with The Deadline Diet or No Brainer Nutrition Strategies…or whatever diet or food strategies you are following…please keep doing them.

3 Reasons Why I Loved Xtreme Fat Loss Diet

1. There is a cheat day every 5 days….yes an entire day that is a MANDATORY part of the program.

My husband and I made the very most of every cheat day…we had so much fun on our date day…meeting for dessert, popcorn at the movies.

2. Everyday is structured differently.

I love that I didn’t have to guess what to eat. Joel lays everything on the table…tells you exactly what to eat. I also love that everyday is something different and you only had to get through that day…getting through that day was the goal and tomorrow would be something new.

3. I lost weight, it works and I looked smokin hot! And by the way, I got proposed to on that trip!! I had amazing photos from one of the happiest days of my life.

3 Reasons Why I Ended The Diet At Day Twenty

1. I had a few very tough days, may have involved some crying and anger, followed by laughter and energy. Hormones anyone?

2. I struggled with my energy levels but realized this was only for a short period of time and the results were worth it.

3. It was interfering with my world. People don’t understand what extreme dieting is and it is tough to see family and friends while carrying around the magic bullet to make shakes for your shake only days (which were yummy). This did also boost my confidence when I was able to say no and carry out my meal plans.

Joel’s Xtreme Fat Loss Diet will make you curse, get angry, take you to your breaking point, make you feel confident, make you lose fat and drive your focus up 3 notches. This plan is backed up by science and strategy, but make no mistake, this is not for everyone! This is like a roller coaster ride and you will have highs and lows. But at the end of the ride will have experienced the fastest and most exhilarating transformation ride of your life.

As always, I welcome your feedback and questions. Let’s keep the questions specific to extreme diets and anything related to Joel’s XFLD and I’ll help you out today before it goes on sale.

Flavia Del Monte

How I Plan On Losing 3 Pounds In 18 Days!

After filming FULL-BODY-LICIOUS at 13.4% body fat, I went into maintenance mode and gained 4 pounds of fat and muscle, bringing my body fat percentage to about 15%.

I decided I wanted to add some muscle to my legs so I began eating carbohydrates pre-workout and post-workout. By adding carbohydrates at these times, I ensured I would have enough energy in the gym to lift heavy and enough of the right calories to help re-build the muscle I had broken down in the weight room.

So what about now?

I was told, yes told, that I was going to be on the cover of a fitness magazine AUGUST 1st, 2011.

I was also told on June 1st, that the photo shoot had been moved up 10 DAYS, to June 21st. This left me 20 days, 4 of which I was in San Diego with friends…bummer! Taking out the monday before and the day of…this left me 18 days to get my six pack in top shape.

Plan of Attack

Goal: Lose 3 pounds of fat by June 19th.
Workout Plan: Use FULL-BODY-LICIOUS and add another 3 days of HIIT in the mornings to my previous routine, leaving only Sunday as a full recovery day.
Nutrition: Starting the first 3 days with Xtreme Fat Loss Diet…fast, shake and moderate-carb day, followed by The Deadline Diet, carb and calorie cycling for 16 days. June 20th will be a carb up day, in which I will enjoy a glass of red wine and chocolate cake the night before to really fill me out!

By cycling through low calorie and carb days, while training hard, I will be depleting my muscles of carbohydrates. Therefore, the night before my shoot, I will consume carbs that will make my muscles swell and look defined and full. Red wine causes vasodilatation, and also dries you out. Water is a major contributor to looking boated, so I will cut my water around 8pm the night before and drink pedialyte made up of electrolytes during my photo shoot.

These techniques are not necessary but are helpful in coming in a little tighter.

Hope you have a successful June, getting into TIP TOP SHAPE with me! Leave me a comment and tell me how you are doing this month. Can’t wait to show the photos when I come back.

Flavia Del Monte

5 Women Fitness Tips For Traveling

I arrived home safe and sound after a great memorial weekend in San Diego. Vince and I had a dedicated weekend of socializing, fun and yes, training. We never missed a single workout, ate healthy foods for the majority of our trip, including the airport…both ways! Here is how we stuck to our healthy lifestyle while

1. We booked a hotel very close to Fit gym, a gym we had trained at last year and loved. Although our friends stayed along the marina, we chose to book our hotel right next to a gym to make fitting in training sessions a lot easier.

2. We pre-packaged and pre-cooked our meals before we left. Vince and I bought packaged salads and nuts for the plane ride down. We brought our shaker cups and protein powder and took a greens product and multi-vitamins incase we missed out on any veggies.

3. Planning our workouts! We woke up early each morning to fit in cardio. This means we also went to sleep at a decent hour all nights except one! Planning is everything. We strategically planned our workouts before we left home. We chose to take Thurs and Mon off training as these were our travel days. We added weights on the nights we could and if we didn’t want to go back at night, we simply just added some cardio post weights in the morning.

4. We found a grocery store as soon as we got to the hotel and asked for a microwave and mini-fridge for the room. First thing we did after check-in was take a trip to the healthiest food spot for convenient food that matched our nutrition criteria. We brought these foods back to the hotel and used them pre and post workouts. We not only saved money, but a lot of calories. When it came time for dinner, we passed on what we wanted to pass on and also indulged some too.

5. We said NO to a lot of bread, dessert, and alcohol…and said yes on a few occasions. Notice I used the word few. Taking opportunities to skip on unhealthy empty calories makes the difference of looking good VS. looking average.

Take those tips with you on your next trip to make sure you don’t come back feeling guilty and regretful. Every time you come out of a situation as an achiever, you become stronger and the difficult choices become easier. This summer choose to enjoy yourself without over indulging, make plans before you go out or travel and remember that saying no is really saying, I care about my body.

Share your favorite travel tip below to keep us all motivated while training and eating smart.

Flavia Del Monte

Why Low Calorie Diets Will Make You Fat, a Women Fitness Blog exclusive

Why Low-Calorie Diets Will Make You Fat!

By Flavia Del Monte – RN, CPT, Precision Nutrition Certified

Science shows that diets that restrict calories can actually make it harder to lose fat and keep it off. Learn how to stop the never-ending struggle with stubborn fat in your women fitness routine.

Being a woman is tougher than ever with all the hype and “1 strange weight loss tip” on the market. Celebrity diets have populated the magazines; even gaining favor in television shows. Horrible!

Low calorie diets rave how “normal” people like you and me can look just like celebrities. But do you really want to be starved of nutrients, while your hormones are completely unbalanced, causing feelings of helplessness and depression?

“Everything in moderation.”

Ever hear that one? Although there is some weak truth to that, eating everything in moderation will keep you overweight!

Women all over the world are suffering from eating disorders who are clearly unaware of having one. If you’re skipping meals or eating very little i

n order to lose weight….STOP!!

These actions will only make you pack on the pounds, sometimes at rapid rates.

FACT

Eating less than your body requires will slow your metabolism, making weight loss impossible and will negatively affect your health.

As you have heard, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and yet many people still confess to eating only a piece of fruit for breakfast.

THE SCIENCE

Food is used for energy, cell structure, regulating hormones and chemical reactions. Food takes one of three directions upon ingestion: energy use, storage, or excretion.

The body receives energy from carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. If our stores of carbohydrates and fats are in short supply, our body will turn to muscle for breakdown of amino acids (stored proteins) for energy, causing muscle atrophy.

Let’s Not Be Mean But Who Looks Better? Higher Calorie Girl or Lower Calorie

LOW CALORIES = MUSCLE WASTING

• Low Carbohydrate diets deplete the liver and muscle of energy, which causes muscle wasting, lack of energy, and will compromise your health.
• Low Calorie diets, while reducing body weight (usually for a short period of time), will ultimately poorly affect your health and in most cases will have a rebound effect.
• Low calories will reduce muscle mass and strength.

When nutrient intake is low, the metabolic rate will become low for three reasons: Decreased thyroid function, reduced thermic effect of eating and reduction in muscle mass.

While reductions in muscle mass causes a lack of endurance (especially during exercise), in turn will lead to osteoporosis and lack of independence as you age.

The Worst Part: FAT STORAGE

Fat storage is the largest form of storage in the body. Low calorie diets, and long waits in between meals, signal the body that starvation is occurring. With this signaling, the body will turn on the storage mode.

Eating every 2-4 hours has been researched to show a positive effect on body composition and overall heath. Frequent eating boosts metabolism, regulates blood sugars and maintains muscle mass.
Expert Nutritionists believe obesity occurs from a lack of nutrients in diets. Hunger never subsides as the body is signaling for nutrition to be ingested. We are seeing vitamin deficiency diseases come back that haven’t been around for decades.

Your body doesn’t understand what to do with processed foods. Diets high in sugar, sodium and processed foods do not seem to signal the body of being full and therefore leads to hunger.

THE SKINNY

EATING TOO LITTLE IS WEIGHT LOSS SUICIDE

Eating fewer calories than body requirement will deprive your body of essential nutrients that will poorly influence your health. If you have any questions, I always welcome them below. Keep your questions specific to the article content above.

– Flavia Del Monte
R.N., C.P.T., PN Certified

What Is The Best Type Of Cardio To Burn Fat Faster Just For Women Fitness?

The simple answer to this question can boil down to a number of complicated factors, but let’s shoot straight, it really boils down to one question: Which type do you want to do?

Unless you’re stepping on stage or getting ready for a photo shoot in a few weeks, then one of the key factors in determining your cardio type should be what you enjoy doing.

My husband hates doing cardio so would say, “I don’t have any kind of cardio I enjoy doing.” However, an easy solution for him is to listen to one of his motivational CD’s on his iPod to mask the boredom. It’s funny because he’ll tell me, “I didn’t want to stop my cardio today until I finished my audio!”

Before we dive into the science, keep in mind the “best” type of cardio is the type you’ll actually do. This is a motto I apply to my training and even nutrition for that matter. It’s often better to stick to what’s “enjoyable” rather than what’s “ideal” for long-term results.

Your Two Cardio Options

There are essentially two types of cardio: high-intensity and steady-state. Before we go any further, let’s make sure we’re on the same page as to how we define each of these two.

Often, when I mention high-intensity cardio to someone, they immediately say, “Yeah, the cardio I do is high-intensity.”

Then I ask them how long their intervals are and they either look at me like I’m from another planet, or they think they miss understood what I’m asking and say “I go for 30 minutes.”

Wrong answer, Private, wrong answer.

High-intensity, at least as for purposes of this article, is defined as something so intense that you couldn’t keep it up for more than 60 seconds — no matter how badly you wanted to! So even though your incline treadmill walk may feel like “high-intensity cardio,” it ain’t.

Running at 10 mph on a 10 degree incline for 10 seconds; now that is high-intensity!

Now that we’re on the same page as to the definition, you can clearly see that to do high-intensity cardio, you’d have to do it in spurts — do some, rest, then do some more, and so on. That’s exactly what we call high-intensity interval training, or HIIT (pronounced “hit”).

When most people think of cardio, they think of steady-state cardio. For that reason, I often simply refer to it as regular cardio. Since high-intensity cardio has it own, cool acronym, let’s refer to steady-state cardio as “SSC.”

Steady-state cardio is any cardio that’s done at an intensity low enough such that it can be maintained for a longer period of time. While you may warm-up and cool-down, any cardio session where you keep roughly the same pace throughout your session is steady-state.

That’s right, even if you’re sweatin’ like a whore in church, it’s still not high-intensity if you can do if for more than a few minutes.

What you probably don’t know, is that while you are slowly burning “some” calories, others[1] are stripping twice as much fat off their bodies and in half the time!

FACT

You can burn fat 2x FASTER and in HALF the time by incorporating High Intensity Training (HIT) into your exercise routine.

• Cardiovascular exercise (slow and at a steady pace) burns much fewer calories than HIT.
• Doing too much cardio is tough on your joints and ligaments.

• Too much cardio will result in burning muscle instead of fat.

THE SCIENCE

When it comes to weight loss, it doesn’t matter what type of fuel (food) you use. What matters is how many calories you burn as opposed to how many calories you take in.

As already stated; In order to lose fat, you must have a negative energy expenditure. Simple!

Energy out > Energy in

The Basics of Burning Fat

Our energy comes from fat , carbs and protein. But which one our bodies utilizes depends on the kind of activity we are preforming.

Now, most people want to use fat for energy. Sounds legitimate as we assume, the more fat we can use as fuel, the less fat we’ll have in our bodies. But, using more fat doesn’t automatically lead to losing more fat.

Understanding the best way to burn fat starts with some basic facts on HOW your body gets its energy:

• The body primarily uses carbs and fats for fuel. A small amount of protein is used during exercise, but protein is mainly used to repair the muscles after exercise.

• The ratio of these fuels will shift depending on the activity you are doing.

• Given the metabolic pathways available to break down carbs for energy are more efficient than the pathways available for fat breakdown, the body will rely more on carbs for fuel than fat during HIT. This is good.

• For long, slower exercise, fat is used more for energy than carbs.

When it comes to weight loss, it doesn’t matter what type of fuel you use. What matters is how many calories you burn as opposed to how many calories you take in.

That said…..you burn WAY more calories during High Intensity Training than your standard aerobic exercise.

Think about it this way: When you sit or sleep, you’re in your prime fat-burning mode. But, you’ve probably never contemplated the idea of sleeping more to lose weight, as lovely as that thought is.

The bottom line: Just because you’re using more fat as energy doesn’t mean you’re burning more calories.

THE SKINNY

The more intense the workout, and the more muscles utilized, the more oxygen is consumed as muscles use energy when they contract. The more oxygen is consumed, the more energy is expended; the more calories you burn!

Flavia Del Monte,
R.N., C.P.T., PN Certified (Sports and Exercise Nutrition)