I have great memories of University. My days were filled with the perfect balance of hanging out in residence, having coffees with my buddies in the University center, going to classes and having the ability to workout WHENEVER I wanted.

Interestingly, even though I was in the gym almost every single day (I also worked in the gym as a supervisor) I never competed in any bodybuilding shows.

For me, the summer was my ‘ON’ season.

I would spend all fall and winter trying to put on muscle, and then starting in about March I would go on a strict diet to get lean for the summer.

I would always follow the 6 meals per day approach to trying to lose weight.

I would start my day with oatmeal and egg whites, 3 hours later I would have a protein shake and some fruit, 3 hours after that I would have chicken, rice and broccoli. Three hours later I would have another protein shake, then do my workout.

After my workout I would have a post-workout shake. Then finally before bed, I would have either another chicken breast or scrambled egg whites with veggies. I did this for the better part of my time in University.

I would spend every Sunday doing my shopping and cooking.

When I had long classes I would measure out my protein powder into a zip-lock bag and pack it along with a shaker cup.

And you know what? It worked just fine. As long as I was cutting my calories back I lost weight.

Luckily, now I know that I really didn’t have to do all that work.  Yep, now I don’t like 6 meals per day.. and I have some very good reasons that I want to share with you.

You may feel like you NEED to eat 6 times per day to lose weight, but I assure you this isn’t true.

Get the whole story about why I am no longer a fan of the 6 meals per day approach ==> Eat Stop Eat vs.  6 Meals per Day

So by now, you’ve probably heard of P90X.

You know… that workout routine you can do at home..the one that EVERYBODY is following (at least, that’s what it seems like looking at all those FaceBook updates).

So here’s my thing…

1) It seems like a good workout for a beginner, or someone who’s been off for a while.

2) the main complaint I see people making…the diet and supplement plan are too complicated.

The solution?

Eat Stop Eat

(Obviously)

Eat Stop Eat can fit into any diet… In fact, I like to think of it as a way to make any diet or exercise program better.

…after all, I don’t tell you what to eat, just what NOT to eat 😉

So if you are trying P90X, and want to give up because you don’t like the diet, do me (and you) a favor, try Eat Stop Eat with P90X first.

I suggested this idea on twitter today and this is what I was told

“I have done ESE and P90X together and it is like pouring gasoline on fat and lighting it with a match- 207lbs to 181 since Mar 1st”

“I’m doing just that. Just completed week 10 of P90X. Down 23 lbs fat since Jan 3rd.”

(seems like a bunch of people are waaaay ahead of me)

The reality is Eat Stop Eat can work with almost any properly designed training program to help you lose weight while also getting in shape.

And while P90x and Insanity are a little to intense for my likings (I’m a good old fashion lift weights kinda guy) lots of people do like them.

Start with the diet –> Eat Stop Eat, then experiment with different workouts until you find one that give you the results you want.

I want to share some reader mail with you regarding using Eat Stop Eat to get six-pack abs.

“Hi Brad,

I Recently bought your book “Eat Stop Eat” and just started applying it by fasting once a week. I am not an obese person but have some fat around my gut.

Every week I exercise for 3 times using weights , swim for 30 min and skip rope for 30 min .

I also watch what I eat and monitor my weight. My One and only goal is to have a 6 Pack. I can feel I have it but the fat around my gut hide it from showing.

My Questions are:

1) Is a 6 pack reachable if I continue doing what I am doing ? Or is it that some people can never see their 6 Pack ever.

My Answer – A six-pack is definitely obtainable. I believe that everyone has the ability to have a six-pack, especially if they’re following Eat Stop Eat and weight training. But be patient. It will require some time and some changes to your current lifestyle.

2) Will your Eat Stop Eat plan help me in seeing my 6 Pack?

My Answer – It will help, as long as you are fasting, weight training, eating responsibly, and follow these five tips.

3) What’s the Body fat percentage that I must have in order to see my 6 pack.

My Answer – Air Displacement measurements show that men typically have visible abs when their body fat is under 10%. Some men have more or less subcutaneous fat covering their abs, though, so it depends on how you measure body fat and how you carry your fat.

4) How thick/thin does the fat around my gut need to be in order for me to see my 6 Pack?

My Answer – Here is a simple way for men to measure their body fat: Multiply your height in inches by 0.447. This is your ideal waist circumference – approximately 45% of your height. In order for you to have visible abs, you’ll need to have a waist circumference that is 46-47% of your height at the most.

5) I am afraid of taking any supplements. Can I reach my goal without taking any supplements ?

My Answer – It is completely possible for you to get six-pack without taking supplements.

6) I heard you have to take growth hormone while you are following Eat Stop Eat, is this true?

My Answer – This is not true at all. The Eat Stop Eat method naturally increases your Growth Hormone while you are fasting. You don’t have to take any drugs or supplements to make the plan work for you.

(As always, my answers apply to “natural” individuals, not to those who are taking steroids.)

This was the email I received yesterday about the Reverse Taper diet:

The Reverse Taper Diet seems to complicate things and go against what I assumed you meant with Eat Stop Eat.  (eg eat what you want, work out, stop eating for 24hr, lose weight, repeat cycle) Why the added complication? Just curious.

A fair question for sure. This was my Answer:

Some people really want to know roughly how many calories to eat, and get confused when I answer ‘it depends on how much fat you have’

For some reason ‘eat as you normally would’ is a difficult concept to some people – they are in a perpetual cycle of over or under eating. For those people I wanted to give them an answer and a
solution.

The answer is easy, but the solution has to change as their bodies change.

That’s the reverse taper diet. It’s based on the theory of fat availability. So it adjusts based on your level of leanness and muscularity. It’s a compliment to Eat Stop Eat, not a replacement
for it.

If Eat Stop Eat is “When to eat”, the Reverse Taper Diet is “How much to eat” given your current fat and muscle mass<– that’s the part that makes it unique.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the Reverse Taper Diet yet, I suggest you go here:  http://reversetaperdiet.net/

After a year of writing, reviewing and editing, the 5th edition of Eat Stop Eat is finally ready, and it’s a BIG ONE!

I’ve included all the recent research on intermittent fasting, as well as new information on hunger, muscle growth, endurance training, testosterone, and cellular cleansing.

You’ll be really happy with how this one turned out, especially with the new chapter on cellular cleansing AND the information on why intermittent fasting may actually be BETTER than traditional dieting if your goal is to build muscle while losing fat.

Finally, if you pick up a copy by Friday April 6th, you can take part in a teleseminar with me where I will personally walk you through all the new information in the newest version of Eat Stop Eat.

I’m really excited about this one!

The whole principle behind Eat Stop Eat is relatively simple:

It’s the combination of fasting and weight training to lose weight and to make sure the weight you lose is mostly body fat.

The fasting creates the calorie deficit and optimal metabolic environment to lost body fat.

The weight training preserves your muscle mass and adds even more insurance that the weight you are losing is from your body fat.

But here’s where some big-time clarification is needed:

You do not to fast and weight train at the same time!

As long as you are weight training consistently at least a couple times a week, you are getting the muscle preserving benefits when you fast (which is muscle preserving all by itself).

But to be clear, to follow Eat Stop Eat properly, you do not have to Weight Train on the days that you fast..you can if you want to, but it’s not a prerequisite.

Keeping it simple.

Fasting is making headlines again!

Here are just two of the subjects of e-mails which have been sent to me in the last week:

“Routine Periodic Fasting Is Good for Your Health, and Your Heart, Study Suggests”

and

“Study: Periodic fasting good for health, heart”

Why all the buzz?

The mainstream media has caught wind of Dr. Ben Horne’s latest research.

Dr. Horne is a friend of ‘Eat Stop Eat.‘ We have exchanged e-mails. I think it’s worthwhile to take a look at his latest findings.

Dr. Horne’s work is based on 24-hour fasts, once or twice a week, which is almost exactly the protocol for Eat Stop Eat. It’s very relevant for those of us who are following Eat Stop Eat. If Dr. Horne had added in some weight training, it would have been a perfect match!

And Dr. Horne isn’t alone in this. He is one of more than a dozen doctors with Intermountain Medical Center’s Heart Institute who discovered the most recent round of physiological benefits from fasting.

Here is what Dr. Horne and his colleagues have found:

During 24-hour fasting periods, Growth Hormone increases to an average of 1,300 percent in women and nearly 2,000 percent in men!

When Growth Hormone is elevated, fat is burned and muscle is preserved. Finding this kind of rise in 24 hours is excellent news for us!

Fasting reduces other cardiac risk factors, such as the presence of triglycerides, and weight and blood sugar levels.

Another bonus for us!

According to a news article, “Dr. Horne believes that fasting could one day be prescribed as a treatment for preventing diabetes and coronary heart disease.” To be fair, I haven’t seen or heard him say such a thing directly, but it is a logical suggestion as far as I‘m concerned.

I should add that Dr. Horne cautions fasting may not be for everyone, and I completely agree. If you have a serious medical condition, discuss Eat Stop Eat with your doctor before attempting to fast.

Now here is the bad news: Even though recent articles show more support than ever for the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle, it doesn’t mean that Eat Stop Eat or fasting is going to go mainstream any time soon, and maybe not ever.

In fact, it the concept became popular, it would be shot down very quickly by a large group of critics.

Food companies, supplement companies, food ingredient suppliers, and anyone else who makes money when you eat don’t want you to stop eating for 24 hours once or twice a week. That would create a financial nightmare for them.

While this research adds to the ever growing body of scientific research which supports our way of eating, it’s not going to change the fact that your friends, family, and coworkers will probably never ‘get it.’ At some point they will most likely give you a hard time about your fasting habits. They will tell you that you need to ‘eat to keep up your energy.’ They will push you to eat in order to make themselves feel better about how much they eat.

We are just going to have to learn to deal with this reaction from others.

Here is what I want you to do: Add this latest round of research to your ever-growing support for Eat Stop Eat,  but don’t expect the research to prevent the funny looks you get when you tell people you are fasting. And when you deal with friends and family, share the Eat Stop Eat concept with those who are ready; those who want to lose weight. Don’t bother discussing the concept with the people who want to argue about it.

I’ve always had a problem with the idea of eating six small meals per day to lose weight. It seems as if it would be an inconvenience to eat that often.

It’s difficult enough to eat three meals per day, especially if you’re preparing them with fresh ingredients and with as few processed foods as possible. Can you imagine doing that much work six times a day?

I also don’t agree with the hormonal effect this style of eating has on a body. While eating several small meals does slightly reduce insulin spikes, it instead provides an almost constant flow of insulin with lower peaks. You end up having your total insulin increased throughout the day rather than having a couple of high peaks. From a health and weight loss standpoint, total daily insulin is more important.

If you’ve read Eat Stop Eat or listened to the Eat Stop Eat Advanced Audio Files, you’ve learned that one of the most important parts of your metabolism is the opposing effects of growth hormone and insulin when it comes to burning fat.

When we are fasting, the growth hormone is secreted, and it directs nutrients toward our muscles. When we eat, we secrete insulin, and nutrients are directed toward fat.

Insulin plus excess calories equals fat storage. That is a simple rule of metabolism.

If you’re trying to lose weight, keeping your insulin level elevated over the course of the day doesn’t seem like a good idea. If you eat six meals a day, you have to constantly monitor the calories you eat, because even the smallest mistake at any of your six meals will cause you to store fat.

Look at it this way: Overeating by as few as 85 calories at each of your six meals would lead to an extra 500 calories each day. That’s enough reason not to bother with six meals per day, but the main reason why I don’t like the approach is because it’s not fair to women.

Six meals per day is sexist.

The six small meals per day diet began with bodybuilders. And most people who read about bodybuilding are men. So when magazine writers are writing new stories for their nutrition readers, they’re doing it for men who follow bodybuilding and whose muscle mass and bodies are larger than average.

That’s when we started hearing about eating six meals per day. When it was originally promoted as a way to lose weight, it was done in bodybuilding magazines – directed toward bodybuilders. The idea made sense to them.

When a 260-pound bodybuilder is trying to lose weight, he might start by lowering his calorie intake to around 2,400 – which is much more than an average person would ever need in a day. At six meals per day, this man would be eating about 400 calories at each meal. Based on this math, this man could actually lose weight by eating a six-inch steak and cheese sub for every meal! That sounds like a great diet!

But a 5’4” woman who weighs 130 pounds isn’t so lucky. If this woman wants to lose weight, her calorie intake is going to have to be much lower than the bodybuilder’s 2,400 calories per day. If her goal was to eat 1,300 calories, at six meals per day, she would only be able to consume 220 calories at each meal. That’s the equivalent of a medium sized banana and a half cup of yogurt.

But if her banana is a little larger than medium sized, she will go over her meal allowance, and she would need to eat even less at her next meal. The six small meals per day plan requires you to be impossibly strict with your eating.

Why do this to yourself if there is no proven weight loss advantage to eating multiple small meals per day?

The six small meals per day approach was designed for a very unique group of people – bodybuilders. But for some reason, it is promoted to the rest of us as a feasible weight loss plan.

Also, if the plan is to be done properly, you have to give in to obsessive-compulsive eating. You are forced to worry about how much you consumed at every meal and what the nutrient breakdown was for everything you ate. You also have to begin thinking about your next meal as soon as you finish the previous one. These are not good habits for living with food. It only makes life difficult for most people.

It’s very difficult to eat only 200-300 calories per meal. It’s also difficult to spend six hours per day preparing meals, so most people end up resorting to the use of supplements or protein bars to get all their meals in without going over on their calorie amounts. And that is probably why this style of eating was designed.

If bodybuilding magazines were the first to make this style of eating popular, and if those magazines serve as the main advertising source for sports supplements – wouldn’t it make sense for them to promote the six meals per day eating style in order to sell more supplements, protein powders and nutrition bars?

Again we see how obsessive-compulsive eating benefit’s the food industry – and how the food industry can have an influence on how we eat.

There is nothing wrong with supplements. But don’t let the way you eat be dictated by the supplement industry. If you want to lose weight, you need to reduce your calories with the method that best suits you.

There is a small group of individuals who may do well eating six small meals per day, but if it doesn’t work for you, don’t do it.

Find the easiest method of reducing your food intake while still allowing you to enjoy the foods you eat – and use that method.

I’m pleased to announce that the Fourth Edition of Eat Stop Eat is finally ready.

I’ve included more research as well as added extra information on Hunger and Inflammation.

I’ve been struggling to really describe all the changes I’ve made, but then I realized, it’s probably better if I just link to a review.

Many people in the fitness industry promote a combination of “fat burning” workouts and “muscle building” nutrition.

I believe this is a completely backwards and highly ineffective approach to improving the looks of your body.

Here’s why:

It’s very difficult to lose weight purely by working out, whether you try long distance running, interval training, high-intensity weight training, or any combination of the three.

Individuals may push their “ultra fat burning workouts,” but the truth is that exercise alone is a poor stimulus for weight loss. Even if the workouts are metabolically demanding, they actually have a very small effect on calorie burning.

Some calories are burned after hard workouts, but it is only about 8 to 10 extra calories per hour, and they usually don’t burn for the 24-36 hour timeframe some people promote. Research concerning after-exercise metabolism boosts is inconclusive at best.

Furthermore, there is very little proof that any type of eating style can build muscle. There are plenty of companies and individuals who say that certain eating methods will help you gain massive amounts of muscle mass, but these claims aren’t backed by science.

I have been researching as I work on my new book, “How Much Protein?” and I can tell you that there is very little evidence that any type of diet can build muscle. Diet has very little to do with building muscle.

Putting the two myths together can get you in a messy situation.

If you follow the myths, you will be eating high protein and more calories multiple times per day to gain muscle, and you’ll be working out with fancy weight training circuits, cardio intervals and lots of ab exercises to burn fat.

Neither approach is effective, so you’ll end up spending a lot of time in the gym and a lot of time worrying about your diet, but you’ll won’t see any results.

It would be better to eat for weight loss and to work out to build or maintain muscle.

Research does prove that eating less will cause you to lose weight. And research also proves that muscle-building workouts will preserve muscle mass, ensuring that weight you lose comes from body fat.

Eat Stop Eat uses a combination of fasting and resistance training. The combination of the two leads to optimal fat loss with the least amount of physical or mental work.

The most ideal way to improve the way your body looks is to eat for weight loss and exercise to build muscle. It sounds simple, but it’s actually rather difficult to accomplish. It’s easy to be distracted by the latest and greatest new ways to burn fat in the gym.

If you’re looking to change the way your body looks, keep your workouts simple and geared toward building muscle, and let your diet take care of your fat loss.

To do this, you’ll have to follow a few simple rules:

• Switch to lower reps. If you’ve been doing 15-20 rep exercises, try increasing the weight and doing sets of 5-8 reps.
• Stop doing most isolation exercises. Instead, use total-body, multi-muscle movements.
• Stop doing crunches and sit-ups. Instead, focus on larger multi-muscle movements.
• Change your workouts frequently.

And for your diet:

• Find an easy way to eat less than it takes to maintain your current body weight, and use that method. (This is the only truly important diet tip for weight loss.)

If you’re stuck spending hours in the gym every day and trying to eat in a way that supposedly maintains or builds muscle, try changing your approach and see what an amazing difference it can make.

When you have begun eating for weight loss and exercising for muscle building, then you can add exercises like intervals or metabolically demanding body weight exercises to speed up the fat burning process. Only do this if you have the first two steps set into motion.