Getting Maximum Results in Minimum Time

Turbulence Training for Fat LossIn part 5 of my interview with Scott Colby I shared with you the reasons why transformation contests work so well, and today I want to further this discussion by letting you in on how to get these significant fat loss results to transform your body in the least amount of time….because after all, who has 1-2 hours a day to workout….not me!

Let’s get into it….

*********************

Scott Colby: We got a lot of other questions coming in, so we’ll crank through as many as we can.  Angie out in Pocatello, Idaho, she had a lot.  Let me see if I can get like a couple questions here.  She has a good one.  She wanted to know what is the least amount of exercise one can do per day or week and still continue to lose weight.  So what’s the least amount of exercise one can do per day or per week, and continue to lose weight?

Craig Ballantyne:
I think that’s actually a really good question, and it really should be the mindset of a lot of people.

I mean certainly there’s something to be said about people that like to exercise, and then we have to kind of reign those people in and make sure they’re not doing too much and they end up with overuse injuries and all that type of stuff.

But there’s nothing wrong with trying to get maximum results in minimum time.  So really the ANSWER in my opinion is to simply find something that you like to do, that you prefer to do, and not even think about that “how little can I do” mentality just yet.

But how can I find something that I like to do where I don’t even think about how little can I do, and then just add in that bit of strength training that I mentioned that really isn’t just there for fat loss.  It’s there for your health and fitness forever and for life and for being strong when you’re older.

So you can get away with TWO WORKOUTS of 15 minutes for total body RESISTANCE TRAINING, including a bit of warm-up there, so that’s all you need to do for resistance training.  And then the activity that you need to do to actually lose weight is relatively minimal, because DIET is the MOST IMPORTANT thing when it comes to the weight loss.

So if you are very, very strict and you have lots of routines in there, and you’re very compliant with your nutrition program, then the amount of exercise that you have to do to actually lose weight is not significantly large.  But most of the studies do show that people who get diet and exercise tend to get more results, so I would say that in addition to the two rounds of 15 minutes with resistance training, if you really want to – if you don’t wanna use my other recommendation of finding an activity like dancing or sports or something that you really look forward to doing, and you just wanna focus on structured exercise, then I would add in an additional 3 times of 15 minutes for interval training.

So you could do 2 30-minute workouts and one 15-minute workout where you do the resistance training, then the intervals.  Day off, resistance training, intervals, day off, and then a third round of interval training.  And combined with an excellent diet, you should see very, very good results.

And that’s about the MINIMUM that you can get.

However, as mentioned before, we do need people to stay active on their off-day, and not so much for fat loss – we’re not expecting people to lose fat.  But we’re thinking about LONG-TERM MOBILITY, because most of us just sit in a chair with a rounded posture, and we need to get up and get moving.

We need to work on our shoulder mobility.  We do need to work on our flexibility, and therefore we do need to stay active on our off days.  But we don’t consider those to be workouts; we just consider them more to be daily activities.  So you could just be doing a little bit of walking combined with a little bit of stretching, and 30 minutes of moving around keeping your butt off the couch, and you’re just doing something.

Again, counteracting the bad posture that we often have all day in 30 minutes on those off days will really help, so that’s pretty much the minimum program.  I thought about this quite a bit, and I think that’s what we can pull off there for maximum results.

Scott Colby: Well, that’s a good answer, Craig.  And I’m a big fan of the short workouts as well, and I know back in the day I used to be in the gym like an hour and a half, possibly, maybe even two hours, and that seemed to be like the standard.

And it was funny – I was interviewing Jason Hunter recently, and his workouts are really short, too, like 15 minutes.  And he’ll walk in the gym and come out 15 minutes later.  He was like the front desk people stare at him like, “What?  Is that all you’re doing?  You’re done already?”

But really if you jack up the intensity like Craig’s been saying, you DON’T NEED a real long workout at all.

You can get effective fat loss results in just a few minutes, really, so that’s cool.  Yet there are still people that do those hour and a half, two hour workouts.  All of those folks are resting three minutes in between sets or staying on the treadmill for an hour or so.

But what if you’re a vegetarian – can you still experience similar fat loss results? Find out in part 7 of the interview.