Step 3: Rebound Fat Loss (not weight gain)

Rebound Fat Loss is when your body accelerates the fat loss process over time.

Before we discuss Rebound Fat Loss though, let’s just make sure we’re on the same page about Rebound Weight Gain and why it happens:

Crash Dieting Crushes Your Metabolism and Makes You Gain Weight

Crash Dieting. Crash Dieting makes it so that your body is in starvation mode and eats its own muscle. Since muscle consumes a ton of energy (calories) for your body, your metabolism naturally decreases over time. Unfortunately, as you reduce your caloric intake and lose muscle at the same time, your body’s reward for the weight you lost is less food and a slower metabolism.

On the other hand...

Rebound Fat Loss is when you hit a fat loss goal, and then you decide to go for another one and hit it faster. Most fat loss programs actually slow down in results over time, no matter how much harder you work to see any change.

This is yet another reason that a record-setting fat loss program is designed to actually increase your metabolism over time, improve the neurological signal to your muscle, and re-connect your body. In doing so, your results actually begin to accelerate.

But it wasn’t always this easy for me...

I used to feel the same way - Right here, you’ll see a picture of me from just a few years ago. I’m not quite sure when I got so imbalanced that I could no longer feel my abs while walking... In fact, I don’t think that I even realized that my imbalances were preventing me from losing weight; they were slowing down my nervous system. And I may have never figured it out if I hadn’t gotten in shape and started to feel my abs ‘turn on’ with every step I took... it was the most amazing feeling.

Since then, I’ve learned that you can actually create a Metabolic Shift by increasing your caloric expenditure with every workout. Basically, taking your muscles to “momentary muscular failure” (MMF), you are stimulating a repair process for the next 2-3 days, as your muscles heal from the trauma induced to them.

Well, this healing process costs more calories, which means that your metabolism is higher for this entire period. Over the next 2-3 days, you’re actually burning calories from exercise you did on Day 1. Awesome.

Now, let’s say that you exercise at least every 2-3 days throughout the week. Over time, your body adapts and learns that this is the new base and your natural metabolism rises. This takes place over about 4 months, but take a look at the caloric burn you’re experience in the meantime:

When you create EPOC, or Excess Post-Oxygen Consumption, through exercise, your caloric burn goes on for days. In the chart above, you’ll see what happens to your caloric expenditure when you multiply the calorie burn by 3x through the repair process to follow. Many sources say that this is truly as high as 9x greater fat loss.

The most important take-home message here, regardless of numbers, is that your metabolism can increase over time by challenging your muscles to MMF and all of your energy systems at once:

1. ATP-PC - quick 0-2 second energy
2. Anaerobic - sprint, 2-60 second energy
3. Aerobic - endurance, 60 seconds and beyond

When you do this, and you hit momentary muscular failure with every exercise, your body naturally excites fat loss for days to come. This extended fat loss burn allowed me to experience Rebound Fat Loss for the first time a few Christmas’s ago.

I ate so much I felt like I was going to explode. In fact, I was sure that I was going to gain at least 10-15 pounds from the last few days of gorging myself with delicious family treats that we tend to only see around Christmas.

To my great surprise, when I stepped on the scale on the 26th, I learned that I was 2 pounds lighter. My metabolism was finally in my favor.

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering what happened...

I was too. Several years later, it all makes sense.

What I considered to be a lot of food no longer was for my body. My metabolism had actually gone up!

Our bodies constantly want to take the easiest path to achieve anything.

I refer to this as human energy conservation. Basically, the more our bodies conserve energy, the less chance we have of starving. If our bodies conserve our food and its natural resources, we’ll survive if our food supply runs out.

Initially, it took more energy to sustain a lower body fat percentage, because my heart had to adapt to my new fitness level, my blood pressure had to adjust, my cholesterol was moving through my arteries, and my digestive system was getting used to processing more food but keeping less as fat. This all took work.

Over 4-6 months, my body learned how to cope with less bodyfat, less weight, and more muscle. Eventually, it became inefficient to gain weight agin.

I had reached a new equilibrium, and a higher metabolism.

I believe you can do the same thing. In the next post, we’ll talk about all 10 Fat Loss Commandments, and how you can guarantee that you’re on your way to a Metabolic Shift.

Look out for an email with the subject line:

Top 10 Fat Loss Commandments <--- [Required Reading.]

have a great day,

Kareem

P.S. You guessed it! Another workout today, but this time we’re going to be adding 2 more exercises to the mix:

Perform all 10 exercises, as follows:

50 seconds per exercise, alternating as needed. You have 10 seconds to rest/transition to the following exercise. This entire workout will take you 10 minutes, and you’re going be blown away by the way you feel when it’s over: