The Fire Within

It is my belief that circadian rhythms play a huge part in how we should take care of our bodies. Believe it or not, when you shower during the day, what time you take vitamins, how many clothes you’re wearing at different times of the day and many more time-related issues affect our well-being.

What are circadian rhythms? These rhythms are a cycle that follows very closely with the earth’s rotation and are in relation to the sun and the season. Our body’s cycle is approximately 24 hours and can be “synchronized” merely by seeing sunlight. Sounds like a bunch of hocus pocus, eh? Read on.

In the summer we’ll have a different rhythm than in winter. Our body temperature will fluctuate as will our metabolism, based on this rhythm. We will also release different hormones depending upon our location within the rhythm. Sounds intriguing? Trust me, I didn’t come up with this. There are hundreds of sources with the same information; I just want to open your eyes to how we can use this knowledge to better lose weight.

Let’s think of the circadian rhythm as our base flame in our fire. The rhythm is based on the temperature of our environment and the amount of light in the sky. As the temperature and light in our environment changes, so does our body. Not as drastic as a cold-blooded reptile, but similar to how their system works. During night time when the earth is coldest and darkest, our metabolism, thinking, digestive enzymes and body temperature are also at their lowest. In contrast, our body is at the opposite end of the spectrum from 8-11am. This is a window where we are at our peak in performance.

How can we take advantage of this idea? Well, if the fire within us is strongest at 8am, then we need to fuel the fire the most at that time, right? If we have a high flame then we should also fuel the flame with the most oxygen at this point. This means early morning is a great time to work out. This is when we should eat the most calories and be the most productive. What more? Our digestion system is fully awake and this is a great time to take multi-vitamins. If you want to do some work? You got it, bright and early is the best time of the day to be productive!

Now, the opposite can be said for 11pm-5am. This is a time when our body is ready to sleep. The exact time isn’t the same for everyone, but the idea is. While we can condition our bodies to think differently, our natural rhythm falls somewhere very close to this time. Depending on when we are exposed to heat, cold and mainly sunlight – our body will adapt our metabolism accordingly. If you’ve ever flown from one side of the earth to the other, you’d realize firsthand how we all experience being out of sync with our body. We call it “jet lag”. Jet lag is the layman’s term for coming out of synchronization with our circadian rhythm.

At the lowest point in our rhythm, we release chemicals such as melatonin which tell us to rest. I highly recommend sleeping during this time.

The most important factor in longevity and enhancing our performance is to recognize the differences in our flame’s level. If we want our fire to be optimal, we must take great care of it in times when our flame is nothing but embers and then fuel it like crazy when the flame is highest. This means to eat a large breakfast with a hardcore workout in the mornings followed by rest with very little on the fire at night time.

It is obvious that your body would rather be sleeping when the temperature of the earth is coolest regardless if you try to train it otherwise. Just look at the major catastrophes in world history. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island both happened due to human error in the earlier hours of the morning. Recent studies also show that shift work may increase the risk of cancer. This is a serious issue that businesses should look into if they have a 24-hour work schedule. If you work late at night, then I highly suggest researching this subject more in-depth if you care about longevity.

For everyone else, if we realize our fire is down to mere embers during this time, then we’ll know how to feed it more appropriately. With such harsh conditions outdoors at night time, we would constantly be putting on twigs and tinder to keep the fire blazing. The fire has a natural tendency to get lower at this time of the night and it is difficult to keep the fire high enough to warm us without adding extra blankets.

Just like the fire, our body would rather be sleeping. I’d prefer you let it do just that. If you are forced to be awake at this time for whatever reason, then you, too, need to keep the fire going higher than normal with tinder and twigs. This means only carbs or simple proteins and fats this late at night. No big logs will help out – they’ll just get stored and get in the way of the flame. So if you want large logs, the best time is to utilize them is early in the morning. Then, as the day goes on, make your meals smaller. Easier said than done.

There are also a few tricks we can do to kick-start the flame once morning arrives. If we wake up at 5am and our rhythm hasn’t warmed us up yet, then why not give it a boost? How about a cup of coffee, half a banana and a nice hot shower? This will not only break our fast cycle but also bump up our core temperature before we start any daunting task for the day. Since the rhythm gets synchronized with light, how about going on a morning run outdoors or buying dawn lights? Dawn lights can be installed in your home and they gradually come on over the course of two hours to simulate a sunrise. This is a great tool for those of you who have a hard time waking up in the morning.

With our fire blazing higher in the morning more than any other time, this is also a nice time to eat any sweets. I’d prefer you have them in the form of fruits, but if you want chocolate or candy then do so before 3pm. This is one of my golden rules: Only eat sweets before 3pm. After 3pm your metabolism is starting to die off and I worry that you’ll start storing these sugars as fat instead of burning them off as easily as we do in the morning.

It is also believed that with jobs indoors and with us using heaters and air conditioners we sometimes forget what the real temperature or light level is. If you’ve had a clock for a long time, you know you have to check the validity of the time after a while. Our body must do the same. At least once a day for an hour, our body prefers to be outdoors in the sunlight so it can readjust its core temperature. I believe we have another code word for this – cabin fever. If you live in a 4 season environment, you know what it’s like to be cooped up inside so long that you don’t feel like yourself anymore. I’d advise everyone to get outside at least one hour a day to tune your body with nature. This will realign your circadian rhythm with nature and you’ll be well on your way to better fitness!

Above, you see I mentioned the acronym HIIT twice in the more technical workout. High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT Training is a concept that is becoming more and more popular. HIIT also has the highest EPOC of any workout possible. Unfortunately, I feel that the few who know about it don’t execute it properly. There is a cousin to HIIT Training known as Interval Training that most end up doing.

Let me paint a picture. You walk into the gym and put your wind suit on. You walk out into the cardio room and find an open treadmill. You step aboard and slide the speed up to 3.2. After about five minutes, you move the speed up to 5.5. You then move the speed back down to 3.2 after you feel winded. You repeat this process for about 45 minutes and call it a day. Sound familiar?

This is called Interval Training. Much better than hopping on the treadmill for a monotonous jog at a constant 4.8, Interval Training is still not as efficient as HIIT Training in achieving weight loss. Here is how HIIT differs:

You have the same wind suit on and you even hop on the same treadmill. You start out at a walk at 2.8 and let your body warm up for about five minutes. You then hop off the treadmill and start stretching. My clients always get worried when they see how long I’m warming them up. My mottos is, “If the warm up is long, then you know the workout is hard!”

After a nice, deep stretch, hop back on the treadmill and go at 4.2 for about 3 minutes. By this time, your muscles should be limber and you should be ready for one minute of pain. I now want you to crank the treadmill up to the highest speed possible without killing yourself. For most people, this is about 8.0. You should only be able to maintain this for one minute. If you can handle it any longer, you aren’t going fast enough. If the treadmill doesn’t register as fast as you can go, then take your workout outdoors. If at the end of 1 minute, you aren’t praying to just reach the slider to slow down the treadmill, then you didn’t have it fast enough! I’m talking about life or death speed here! If you want a killer body, you gotta give me 1 minute of pain.

After one minute, slow the treadmill down to a crawl. The purpose is to get your breath back for another heart-pounding minute. This usually takes about three minutes before your heart rate returns to 120-130bpm. After you have your breath back, crank the treadmill up again and give it all you’ve got for one more minute!

Repeat this cycle five times. After the fifth cycle, put the treadmill on 3.0 and cool down for five minutes. Step off the treadmill and do another stretch. Take your time and continue stretching until your heart rate is completely back to normal. Congratulations, you’ve just completed your first HIIT Training session.

If at the end, you don’t feel completely exhausted, then you may consider making your maximum effort harder next time. I personally go outdoors to run with a weighted vest and run uphill in order to get my heart rate as high as needed for HIIT training. This means that eventually even running as fast as you can outdoors isn’t enough resistance.

The idea is to give your body 5 minutes of pain over the course of a 30 minute workout. Really take your time in between bouts to make sure all lactic acid leaves your muscles and you’re nice and relaxed for your next set.

I’ve coached hundreds of athletes who do mediocre interval training and think they are doing HIIT training. If you don’t feel like you are going to die at the end, then you only did interval training and not HIIT training.

I also mentioned HIIT Style Boxing on one of the workout days. I believe this is a very fun workout that also incorporates HIIT Training. If you’ve ever seen a professional boxing fight, you may have noticed how exhausted they are after a boxing match. It is astounding to know that these boxing matches rarely last more than six minutes! This is the epitome of HIIT Training. The boxer goes in for a three minute round and pummels his adversary as if it is life or death – sometimes it is. After only a few rounds, the bout is over and a winner is declared. Both contestants are drenched with sweat. It is no surprise that boxers have some of the greatest physiques of all time. They are consistently doing HIIT training and their cross training also results in high EPOC.

EPOC or Excessive Post Oxygen Consumption is basically a measurement of how much we breathe based on different workouts. The higher the EPOC, the more oxygen you consume. What is most interesting about this idea is that you continue to consume more oxygen for 24 hours after you stop working out if you perform the correct type of workouts. This is important for all you calorie counters out there. Let’s take a closer look at what this means.

If you consume 1,500 calories a day, and your general schedule of walking around, sleeping, watching TV, etc. burns off 1,300 calories, then you are left with 200 extra calories. If you choose to do nothing else, then you’ll just store those extra 200 calories. If you work out, your goal should be to burn off 200 calories, right? Well, if it were black and white, then this would work. But, unfortunately, it isn’t that simple.

If you do a slight jog until you have expended 200 calories, then you burned off just the 200 calories. That’s not the only way to get 20 calories off, though. You could also lift heavy weights. You might only burn 140 calories during your 20 minute weight lifting routine. This is more beneficial though because now every hour thereafter you will burn an extra 10 calories up to 24 hours later. This means from the 20 minute lifting routine, you actually burned 380 calories by the end of the 2nd day!

How did I come up with 380? Well, let’s say you expend 140 calories lifting weights. Then you expend 10 calories for every hour thereafter for 24 hours. That is 10 x 24 = 240 extra calories just by watching the clock go by. 240 + 140 = 380!

This complicates how we can accurately measure how much energy we expend. There are different studies that state how much energy we expend on each workout, but quite frankly I think there isn’t enough evidence or large enough reviews to make statistical claims.

What I do know is that higher EPOC workouts are more beneficial in keeping our blood sugar from plunging. I’ll explain in detail the types of workouts that have the highest EPOC and how to do them.

If you just got your blood sugar up to 120 mg/dL and then you are worried about burning off 300 calories, then your blood sugar will plunge back down to 80 quickly after a typical workout. Or you can do a quicker, high EPOC workout and your blood sugar will only drop down to 100 mg/dL. Then, you’ll have to either eat more often throughout the day because your blood sugar will be dropping more quickly than usual due to the EPOC, or let it go low and experience weight loss! Check out the next two charts how a high EPOC will change your blood sugar level for the rest of the day.

In this chart, you can see that the person was able to stay in the target zone for the majority of the day. Each meal took about 3-4 hours to wear off. They had four meals. This is ideal without any variables taken into consideration.

In the second chart, you can see a drastic change. The gentleman decided to work out with a High EPOC workout at 9am. You can see the different in his blood sugar. He got hungry much more quickly, with his meals lasting two to three hours, even though they were the same size portions as before. If he chooses to eat the same amount of total calories as when he didn’t work out, he will lose weight. If he decides to eat seven times a day and bump up his caloric intake as I have depicted in this diet, he will gain muscle, endurance, strength and energy but won’t lose any weight. I prefer the latter until he has muscle and a strong immune system, then he can taper back on calories. Note the weird double hump at the beginning of the day. That is because he ate half a banana, did an intense workout, then immediately had a protein shake. So he spiked his blood sugar, worked out and burned off the banana. Then he replenished himself immediately with a protein shake.

I hope I haven’t confused you, I know this is a lot to digest. More simply put, just do the high EPOC workouts I’ve listed below, after you’ve hit a plateau with regular workouts, and you’ll find new success. Don’t get too excited about High EPOC workouts though. If you’ve yet to master Chapter 1, you could actually harm yourself instead of helping yourself with such intense routines.

Let’s look at our fire with nice consistent oxygen being blown over it. What if a wind storm came in and blew as hard as it could on our fire? The fire would die down to merely nothing. If we fed the fire rapidly, it would blaze back up and then another storm gushes in and knocks the flame back to nothing. Believe it or not, this happens all the time with our bodies. This is what I call the weekend warrior. They work out like crazy on the weekends and then eat like crazy during the week. This cycle doesn’t lead to a good outcome.

It’s much healthier to work out only for 20 minutes consistently throughout the week instead of combining everything on one day and trying to make up for lethargy in the past.

Also, I’ve found a secret to how often and on what body part we should be training. Let’s look at that flame one more time. In Chapter 1, we learned how to find the best fuel for our fire. Now, let’s assume you already have a good flame going. Now what? What if you want your fire to expand? Then you’ll place some logs around the edge and start a new fire, right? Then you’ll put some logs on the other side and start one over there, too. After you have about 5 fires going, you can collectively call it a bonfire.

The same is said for our body. We first need to learn how to at least get a fire going in our belly. Our core needs to have enough fuel and oxygen to keep our vital organs functioning well. Beyond that, we should fuel the fire throughout other sections of the body. If you have a high EPOC workout on your legs one day, then a high EPOC workout on your arms the next, then a high EPOC workout at your core the following, you’ll be well-rounded and creating a strong bonfire.

Another method would be to give a consistent breeze all across the fire as to supply oxygen to every log evenly. Either method works. Recipes for disaster include no oxygen at all or a wind storm. The former puts out your flame and causes you to gain weight; the latter is catastrophic and can cause all sorts of problems.

A well-rounded workout routine will look like the following:

Monday: Weight Lifting Upper Body
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Weight Lifting Lower Body
Thursday: Off
Friday: Cardio
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off

This is an excellent start to a training program. Each workout is blowing concentrated oxygen on different parts of the flame.

A routine equal in success would be the following:

Monday: Full Body Workout
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Full Body Workout
Thursday: Off
Friday: Full Body Workout
Saturday Off
Sunday: Off

Too often, I see people doing too much on each day to the point their body has too much stress and not concentrating on diet enough. If you do a full body workout, your goal shouldn’t be to completely fatigue yourself all over. You want a sense of being sore, but just a little. Think of this as a constant but subtle breeze blowing over your fire. If you only work that body part out once a week like in the first example, then you have free range to completely exhaust yourself. Since you’d be giving your body a full seven days to recover before working out that body part again, you would want to exhaust each muscle group to the point of failure as opposed to a more easy going full body routine as seen in the second example.

But remember, no matter how much oxygen you blow on your flame, if your fuel is made of garbage – it is not going to catch blaze or stay ablaze!

This information is even more valuable once you get to the point where you are training for competition. Once you are ready for that type of training, I suggest a program like the following:
Monday: Upper Body High Resistance/Low Rep
Workout + 20 Minute Morning Jog

Tuesday: Plyometrics + Massage
Wednesday: 60 minute run @ 90% capacity
Aqua Jogging or HIIT Style Boxing + Jump Rope
Thursday: Lower Body High Resistance/Low Rep
Friday: Workout + 10 Minute Jog + Jacuzzi
Saturday: Off
Sunday: HIIT Sprints

Ok, hopefully I didn’t scare you away. Some of the above words are fitness jargon that I’ll explain later. The overall idea is that I’m crafting a hard core workout around areas of your body that aren’t sore. As soon as you start to heal in one area, we work it out again. There is usually a 3 day rest in between training each muscle group. I believe there are 3 different areas that we can train:

1. Upper Body
2. Lower Body
3. Heart

If we switch up our workouts and cycle through these 3 priorities, then we’ll be supplying oxygen to the 3 main areas of our fire.

Too often, I see endurance athletes only training their legs. How absurd! Come on, people. Your arms are attached to the same frame that you take on those long runs. If you just keep blowing on the same area of your flame, it can only handle so much. Learn the art of cross training and incorporate high EPOC workouts into your exercise regimen.

If you’ve ever tried to build a fire with the best logs possible and no air, then you know what happens. No fuel or spark will make a difference. Even though the oxygen is often overlooked, it’s a vital part of a fire. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to best utilize oxygen to feed your flame.

The second most important element of success in weight loss, after the right fuel, is exercise. I seriously believe nutrition plays a role of 80% in your success, if not more. It would be foolish to neglect how simple it is to change your eating habits and try to work out like a madman to see success. I have helped many clients lose tremendous amounts of weight with diet alone. This chapter is for those who have already mastered Chapter 1 or those of you who care to multitask to see success.

In my practice, clients who see the most success concentrate on their diet 80% and their workout about 20%. This gets much more drastic success than the opposite.

Now that you realize nutrition is the #1 priority, let’s move on.

There are a few different elements that make working out important. The first and foremost is oxygen consumption. In my opinion, the only reason to work out is to increase oxygen consumption. If you merely walk around all day instead of sitting down, you’ll breathe more. If you breathe more, you also exhale more. This means you’re burning off more energy. It’s a simple process.

Yet, there are ways to increase how much we breathe throughout the day with different types of workouts which I will bring to your attention. In Chapter 1, you learned how to eat small, frequent meals. This is a no-brainer for most and has been preached about for years by many health professionals. The difference in what I preach is combining fats and proteins to balance out our high consumption of carbohydrates. This still baffles people even after reading the science provided.

The same applies to workouts. I have a few simple rules to working out. When you first start working out, doing anything at all is an accomplishment. Just get off the couch and go for a walk. If you’re too far out of shape to walk, then swim. If you’re too out of shape to swim, then play video games. Anything that is more interactive than the TV. I’m not joking about the video games. One hour of first-person shooters expends about the same amount of calories as jogging a mile!

After you have mastered getting off the couch at least three times a week for 30 minutes, it’s time to add more technique to your workouts.

Some workouts actually hurt more than they help. If you put too much oxygen on your fire, you can actually blow out the flame! If you don’t add enough oxygen, the flame will die as well. The key here and everywhere else in life seems to be balance.

I often see people in the gym for two to three hours at a time and they see no progress after months of the same routine. This saddens me because I know a method that only takes 30 minutes three times a week to see much better results. Enough success to get six-pack abs and the body of their dreams. Just look at all the aerobics teachers who are out of shape. People! Obviously aerobics classes aren’t the answer!

As I mentioned before, getting the right balance of oxygen to the flame is the only reason we work out when trying to lose weight. With this in mind, let’s look at a few different concepts.