Jimmy Smith Interview – Part 2

February 21, 2009 · Filed Under Interviews 

Jimmy Smith: Let’s switch gears to nutrition. If I’m trying to get a six pack what are the five things that I must be doing with my diet?

Jeremy Reeves: Hmm…

1) Well, first of all, stop drinking sugary liquids. That’s a KILLER when it comes to losing weights. I read somewhere that people consume about 30% of their daily calories in drinks. Isn’t that insane?

But when you think about it, it’s really not hard to do. If you have a 150 calorie drink 4 times per day, which is VERY easy to do….that’s an extra 600 unnecessary calories per day.

If you took that out, you’d lose a pound every 5 days by doing that alone!

2) Another thing is that you need to cheat once in awhile. Now a lot of people say you should do this because it boosts your metabolism, which a lot of evidence is showing really doesn’t happen (but that’s a whole interview in itself)…but I think you need to allow yourself to cheat once in awhile because it will prevent you from going on binges which can make you add a few pounds on in just a few days.

3) The third thing is that you need to constantly evaluate how much weight you’re losing. The reason it becomes harder to lose weight as you lose more weight (i.e. losing the “stubborn fat”) is simply because the less you weight, the lower your metabolism goes. So when you get into that stubborn fat you simply have to be extra careful on what you eat and start adding a little more cardio, whether it’s low or high intensity.

4) The fourth thing you need to do, and I know a lot of people will balk at this, is start doing 24 hour fasts. There is TONS of evidence that doing 24 hour fasts will not only help you lose weight without lowering your metabolism, some evidence is showing it actually temporarily boosts your metabolism just a little.

Now if you’re a competition bodybuilder, maybe fasting wouldn’t be ideal for you. However for the average person out there looking to get in great shape, it’s a REALLY easy way to lose weight without sacrificing muscle loss or any other bad effects.

I can’t get into the details of fasting because it would take all day, but I give a little more detailed information in the free report I mentioned earlier so go check that out.

5) The fifth thing you should do is start adding high intensity into your workouts. There are actually a few reasons for that. First, when you do high intensity exercises, your human growth hormone (HGH) levels jump up, and HGH is absolutely incredible for helping you build muscle and burn fat. That’s actually one of the reasons why fasting doesn’t make you lose muscle, because you HGH levels get up about 5-6x higher during a 24 hour fast so it helps preserve your muscle.

Another reason to do high intensity training is that it’s going to boost your metabolism a little. Now a lot of people think it’s going to have some magical ability to make you shed fat in like 2 days, but the reality is that it only boosts it up a little…it’s just that it also helps you preserve and even build more muscle, something low intensity cardio doesn’t do.

Now there’s one thing that really differentiates me from a lot of fitness professionals out there. And that is that I don’t focus on helping people really get “6 packs”, I try to focus on helping them figure out exactly what is realistic for them and help them to attain that goal.

Let me explain a little.

If someone comes to me asking to help them get a 6 pack, I can help them out. However, the majority of people out there WANT a 6 pack but could never actually get one because they aren’t strict enough.

So what I like to do is really get them thinking about not only what they want, but what’s realistic. If that guy wants a 6 pack but isn’t willing to do what it takes to get the 6 pack, I would try to help him realize that it’s OK not to have a 6 pack, and instead try to focus on him either dropping a certain amount of weight or dropping down to a certain body fat percentage.

Because you can still be defined and lean without having a “true” 6 pack.

To be 100% honest, I don’t have a 6 pack right now, nor do I care about getting one. I could get one if I had to or really wanted to, but it’s simply not a goal for me right now.

I’m getting married in September 2009 so I don’t really have to worry about impressing girls, and plus it’s a fact that the majority of girls out there would rather a guy with lean, defined abs and not 6 packs anyway.

One of her friends saw me last summer and told her I had “really nice abs” – and I didn’t have a 6 pack then..they were just defined enough to notice them ya know?

Plus I’m a young guy and don’t want to have to go out with my fiancée and friends to a bar and say I have to drink water because I want to keep my 6 pack.

My current lifestyle allows me to have the body I want to have while still going out for a beer now and then (obviously not everyday, but occasionally), go to parties, etc.

I just personally hate the feeling of not being able to do something.

I don’t like my life revolving around what I eat, when I eat it, when I workout, how I workout, etc. – and my life revolves around health and fitness!

Anyway to sum my thoughts up on that subject…if you REALLY want a 6 pack, it all comes down to dedication.

The more dedicated you are, the faster you’ll get them. I just want to let people know that it’s OK to simply have defined abs, and if you don’t even care about that, then it’s OK to simply be skinnier than you are and in your ideal weight range!

Jimmy Smith: What are you thoughts about cardio? Are you a fan of low intensity or high intensity? How do you add cardio into your clients workouts?

Jeremy Reeves: Ahh, what a fun subject to talk about. I love getting into debates over this with people, haha.

I have kind of a unique perspective on this that a lot of people don’t even think about. Most people think in black and white, they don’t see the pot of gold lying in the gray area.

All I see in forums and even a lot of professionals who I have a lot of respect for is this: “You HAVE to do “this” type of exercising if you want to lose weight. It’s the only way!”

Listen, that’s an elephant sized crock of bull.

When it comes to cardio, I honestly think that if you find out what you LIKE doing, it’s going to be the best thing for you.

Some people really hate jogging (like myself), so they do more high intensity. Some people hate high intensity, so they do things like walking or jogging.

There are also people who simply CAN’T do certain exercises.

For example, my fiancee has Epilepsy and because of that she goes through dizzy spells if she moves her head around too much, so there are certain exercises and certain areas of cardio that she can’t get into.

My mom has MS and she can’t overtax her nervous system so she has to stick to walking and doing other light exercises.

Me, on the other hand, like I mentioned earlier I get bored a lot so I actually mix them both into my routine.

To be more specific, Wednesday and Sunday are my “days off” so I run for 20 minutes slowly on my treadmill while I watch a DVD. I do this purposely because I’m not really doing it to get my lungs in shape or really even to lose fat, but simply to get some blood flowing through my body which will help me recover.

As a side note, I highly discourage watching TV while working out during your regular workouts. I only watch it on my days off because I’m going so slow that I’m not even out of breath at the end of 20 minutes. For example yesterday I was only running a 10 minute mile for 2 miles – it’s simply a recovery type of workout just to get some blood flowing.

Anyway, I’m rambling so let me get back to the point.

For the average person, I would suggest mixing both high and low intensity exercises. I say this because by doing this you work both types of energy systems (anaerobic and aerobic) and get the benefits of both instead of just one of them.

The whole thing that high intensity burns tons more calories is a myth by the way. It sometimes can burn slightly more over a 24 hour period, but your metabolism only increases a tiny little bit – not nearly as much as people think.

The reason I love high intensity is for 3 reasons:

  1. It’s fun as hell

  2. You can burn the same or more calories in a much shorter time period

  3. It helps build/preserve muscle much better than low intensity

Low intensity is great if you have more time because it’s non-taxing on your body and if you do it long enough, can burn a lot of calories.

And that’s kind of exactly why I like to mix them. Instead of jogging for an hour, I would suggest maybe doing high intensity exercises for 20 minutes, then jogging for 40 minutes.

Of course it would depend on what exercises you were doing, but I bet you could burn double the amount of calories doing it like that.

By the way, go back and ingrain that thought into your mind because you could literally double your fat loss just by doing that if you wanted, so make sure you understand it!

Click here to finish the interview by going to Part 3 or go back to Part 1

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • YahooMyWeb
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • TwitThis
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • Pownce
  • MySpace

Post to Twitter

No related posts yet. Please contact me if you have a suggestion!

Comments

Get a Trackback link

No Comments Yet

You can be the first to comment!

Leave a comment

Spam protection by WP Captcha-Free

Security Code: