12-Week Fitness & Weight Loss Integration plan
Part four of our series covers the integration of all elements of the 12-week fitness and weight loss reset program. Please check the prior posts in the series if you have not already, as this segment will be looking at how all the pieces work together.
Specifically, we will look at integrating the diet, exercise, supplements, and other things you can do to optimize your success.
While I will not detail my martial arts primary training, that schedule is unique to me and most likely will not be the same for you and where you train. To share it at a high level, I generally try to attend three to five Brazilian jiu-jitsu training sessions a week when injury-free. Depending on injuries, I may need to limit training to one to three classes a week. The ones I typically can attend are on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday nights, and Saturday mornings. If needed, I will make up sessions at alternative times as my schedule allows. I also try to attend Muay Thai on Monday nights or Friday and Saturday mornings when possible. If my daughter or I have an upcoming competition, we may do competition training Saturday afternoons and Monday nights.
Below is my typical Daily Schedule. Per the exercise plan, there are no supplementary workouts on the weekends. I will also skip the performance and muscle-related supplements on Sundays, as that is a day where I don’t have primary training or supplementary workouts. With supplements, cutting a day can help your body not become accustomed to them. Much like skipping diet restrictions one day a week, doing the same with supplements can lead to better results.
Upon rising, usually between 5:30 am and 7:30 am, I take the below
Two glasses of water
One capsule, 7-Keto-DHEA
Two capsules, Blade
Three capsules, beta-alanine
Two capsules, MASF Multi
One to two cups of coffee
Pre-Workout, around 10:30 am, includes the below supplements
1 to 2 scoops Vitargo with one scoop Modern BCAA+ with water. Save enough to sip the remainder during the workout.
One capsule, 7-Keto-DHEA
Four capsules, Crea-Tech
One capsule, NiaCel
Supplementary weekday workout, usually around 11:30 am or noon, following the exercise plan’s routine of the day, drinking water as needed.
Within an hour of finishing the workout, lunch is usually at 12:30 or 1 pm. Generally, I will eat 600 to 700 calories at lunch and also take the following supplements:
One glass of water
Two capsules, Jocko Super Krill
Three capsules, Jocko Joint Warfare
Three capsules, Status
Two capsules, Blade
Two capsules, CLA
One capsule, QH-PQQ
Mid-afternoon, usually 2 pm to 4 pm, I would drink the Smashin’ Greens supplement if I did not drink them in the morning to curb fasting window eating urges. I’ll also drink two to four cups of green tea if I feel tired or dehydrated.
I usually have dinner around 6 pm. However, when I train at night, I eat a small meal around 4 pm and another one post-training right before the fasting window starts. The calories I eat are based upon how much training I’ve done and what I had for lunch. My goal is to keep the daily calorie deficit between 1,500 and 1,000. I take these supplements with dinner. On training nights, they are taken with the first small meal.
Three capsules, Zeus Test
Two capsules, CLA
Three capsules, beta-alanine
One capsule, NiaCel
One capsule, QH-PQQ
I usually begin fasting right after dinner, but I may snack if I do not keep my calorie deficit per my target and am low on consuming calories. If so, I start the fasting window by 10 pm.
At bedtime, usually between 11 pm and 1 am, I finish the day with the following:
One glass water
Four capsules, GH Peak
Additionally, I’ll take one scoop of AminoFast if needed to curb eating urges while fasting, and potentially one scoop of Raw Organic Meal with lunch if I don’t have a high-protein meal.
I take the GlycoDrive, optionally, with high-carb meals if I remember. These are usually when I am skipping my normal diet restrictions.
Before we wrap up today, I want to cover other helpful pieces that may increase the plan’s effectiveness. Some of these are just general tips. Others are activities that I try to include but don’t do so regularly.
First, since this is primarily a weight loss program, weighing yourself often is essential. When weighing in, do your best to be consistent about the time of day and what you are wearing. For example, I try to weigh myself first thing each morning right after waking and using the bathroom. If you weigh yourself randomly during the day, the food and drinks you have consumed will be a random variable, and you may get discouraged at your weight bouncing around. Now, even weighing in in the mornings, you’ll see it go up and down, but it is the trend that matters, not any given day’s measurement.
Other ways to track progress include taking photos of yourself through the diet and exercise program period and measuring your body size at the waist and any muscles you are trying to increase. Since many people diet to try to look better, these visual cues and measurements can provide motivation, which, per our previous podcast on the subject, can hopefully drive discipline to stick to the program.
A diet trick that I didn’t previously cover is that people tend to have very good success introducing a full fasting day every month. This can help break through weight-loss plateaus more than the daily 14 or 16-hour fasting window. If you hit a plateau or three or more days without any loss, consider skipping all meals for 24 hours. I suggest sipping on Smashin’ Greens and AminoFast, or your choice of similar supplements, but the goal is to not eat or drink anything with a lot of calories for an entire day.
I also didn’t mention the importance of water intake in the diet plan. Plenty of websites and online calculators can help you pick a starting point for how much water you should drink daily. Make sure you aren’t dehydrated and drink plenty of water to optimize weight loss.
Regarding drinks, outside of the supplements we covered that are mixed with water, I suggest highly limiting or eliminating any beverages with calories. These generally do not add nutritional or diet benefits and often are stored as body fat, especially high-sugar drinks. In addition, some studies have shown that even diet drinks without calories may decrease the effectiveness of weight loss. This is why I generally stick to water, black coffee, and plain green tea as beverages throughout the entire program, except on the no-restrictions day.
Getting enough sleep is another critical factor for this program. Your body essentially has two nervous system modes, one for resting and digesting and one for activities. Your sleep period is when your digestive system is at the peak of performance. If your lifestyle allows it, I suggest nine hours in bed to get eight hours of solid sleep. This isn’t possible for many, including myself, but it should be the goal, with six hours of sleep as the bare minimum target. Your muscles and other body tissues heal the most efficiently during your sleep. Therefore, good sleep is essential to prevent injuries and soreness that may limit future workouts.
Two additional activities often used as part of exercising and diet plans to improve results are cold exposure and saunas.
Cold exposure has been shown to increase fat burning in multiple studies. Ways to get cold exposure would be to take a cold shower or a contrast shower, alternating between cold water and hot water. Swimming in cold water or exercising outside in cold climates are also often used. Ice baths can also be an option. It is important to note that cold exposure used in this way is not related to the” I” in the RICE method we covered on our injury management podcast. This isn’t about using cold to reduce inflammation. It is about getting your core body temperature lower, which signals your brain to warm up, speeding up your metabolism and burning fat.
Saunas are often used for fighters trying to cut weight for fights. When used in this way, it is generally short-term, via sweat and water weight loss that will come back once you re-hydrate. However, when used more consistently, rather than just pre-weigh-in, saunas can help clear toxins from your system, improving muscle recovery, and making your training and workout plan more sustainable.
The last suggestion we will cover is using apps and devices to support your program plan and goals. I personally highly recommend a fitness tracker that will measure your calories burned and pair that with an app that can track your food consumption. I use both an Apple Watch and the Whoop fitness tracker as devices. While one or the other alone could be good enough, I don’t wear the Apple Watch during martial arts training, but the Whoop can be worn during them. The applications I have used, Lose It! and Map My Fitness, can integrate directly with the Apple Watch readings, but not the Whoop. The work-around is to either manually add the data from the Whoop to those apps as a workout, or, what I do, is have the Whoop sync to Strava, and Strava can sync to most applications. It is a bit clunky, but it eliminates manual steps, which is nice.
Using a wifi-connected scale can also help. I use a Withings scale which will automatically update my weight in the apps I use every morning after my weight-in. I drive most of my tracking from the Lose It! app and only need to manually log my calorie intake, which is easy if you have their premium subscription, which supports scanning the barcode of the food you are eating.
I find this level of calorie and fitness tracking very insightful and helpful to me to hit the correct daily calorie deficit numbers I’m going for. However, some people find such detailed tracking too cumbersome or demotivating, so certainly do what works best for you.
There are also apps out there that can remind you about fasting windows. I’ve tried these but don’t see them adding much value. It is easy enough for me to remember to stop eating after dinner and not eat until lunch. If you have a more complicated fasting window or could use the reminders, many free fasting apps are available for almost all phones and watches.
The last topic I will hit today is a quick update on my progress. It has been six days since I started, so not yet an entire week. As I mentioned in part one, I usually can lose five pounds a week without it being challenging, but I’ve dropped my expectations to two to three pounds a week this time. Being six days in, I’ve already dropped five pounds on this program. I started at 214 and am currently at 209. I don’t expect that trend to last, and by the end, it will most likely be at the two or three pounds a week mark, but so far, so good, and I’m on target on the weight side.
For me, a secondary goal was fat loss, which I’m not doing as well in. As my weight has gone down, my body fat percentage hasn’t significantly changed, which indicates I’m losing fat and muscle at approximately the same rate. I would like to see my body fat percentage reduced, not just my overall weight. I suspect this is because I am not minimizing my carbohydrates and keeping a high protein diet. As we move into week two, I will continue to improve in this area.
I also skipped the strength portion of the workout on day four due to DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness, to make sure I wasn’t too tight and sore to do martial arts training that night. This isn’t something I’d ever beat myself over, and DOMS will be reduced over time as my body adapts to more regular workouts. If you are following along with the exercise plan, you should do the same. Listen to your body, and there is no shame in skipping something if that is the best way for you to ensure longevity with the program or participating in other tasks.
This concludes the coverage of the 12-week fitness and weight loss reset program I will be following through March. I will continue to provide updates on my progress, most likely weekly, and I am excited to get back to reporting on other topics, including more martial arts-specific training and news.
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