I’m a firm believer in the rule that a good

article starts with a thorough introduc-

tion. It’s like the “warm-up sets” we do

before we get to the serious reps. But,

like most rules, there are exceptions. This

is one of ’em. You see, the advice in this

column is so simple—so basic—yet so

powerfully important, it just doesn’t need

a long, fancy intro. I think something

short and to the point, like this, will work

just fine: if you want to build a leaner,

healthier body, follow these tips!

1 Do aerobics in the morning.

The temptation to eat muffins and drink coffee may be over-whelming (just as looking in the mirror, rubbing your belly, and grunting might be), but doing some form of aerobic exercise for just 20 minutes, first thing in the morning, is more effective in burning fat than a full hour of aerobic exercise per-

formed later in the day after you’ve eaten a few meals. You see, after an overnight fast, blood-sugar levels are low, as are carbohydrate reserves. Exercising before you eat causes the body to dip right into stored fat to come up with the energy required to make it through whatever rude awakening you’ve subjected it to.

2 Don’t starve yourself.

Reducing your calorie intake to an amount less than eight times your bodyweight may cause your metab-olism to institute severe energy-saving measures that will make you dim-witted and grumpy, as well as reduce the rate your body burns calories. It may also cause a reduc-tion in lean body mass or muscle. (Yikes!) For some reason, during severe calorie restriction, excess muscle is regarded as expendable, and fat reserves are not.

3 Eat six times a day.

This is a tip I’ve given dozens of times over the years, but for some reason, it’s one people overlook. By feeding your body frequently throughout the day, you can avoid hunger cramps and maintain stable energy levels and a healthy metabo-lism. It’s also a great way to provide your body with the nutrients it needs to recover from weight-train-ing exercise and squelch cravings, especially those uncontrollable urges to binge during the evening. One of the ways to make it a lot easier to consume six meals a day is to consume three regular, whole-food meals, each consisting of a portion of protein and carbohydrates, and consume meal-replacement drinks such as Myoplex for the other three meals.

4 Work out consistently.

Everyone knows exercise burns up calories while you’re doing it, but University of Missouri researchers say your metabolism is revved up for as long as nine hours after a workout. Their test subjects burned 600 calories in 1 hour during intense workouts, but they also burned 120 more calories during the next 9 hours than they would have nor-mally had they not exercised.

5 Eat protein and carbs each meal.

For example, a healthy breakfast might include six egg whites and a small bowl of oatmeal with skim milk. Lunch and dinner might consist of a serving of chicken or fish and a small baked potato or brown rice. By combining protein and carbohydrates in each meal,

you’ll maintain more stable energylevels and provide your body with aconstant supply of amino acids andglucose which help support muscletissue.

6 Count “portions,” not calories.

There aren’t many people whocan keep track of their calorie intakefor an extended period of time. Asan alternative, I recommend count-ing “portions.” A portion of food isroughly equal to the size of yourclenched fist or the palm of yourhand. Each portion of protein orcarbohydrates typically containsbetween 100 and 150 calories. Forexample, one chicken breast isapproximately one portion of protein,and one medium-sized baked potatois approximately one portion of car-bohydrates.

7 Prepare meals ahead of time.

Most of us are too busy to preparehealthy, low-fat foods every day:that’s the secret to the success offast-food restaurants. One possiblesolution would be to prepare somelow-fat meals on Sunday night orwhenever you have some extra timeand then freeze them.

8 Keep the alcohol to a minimum.

For some reason, people tend toregard anything liquid, transparent,and non-sweet as noncaloric. Every-one knows that’s not necessarilytrue, yet habitual beer and winedrinkers are often reluctant to give upthe beverage of their choice whiledieting. Not long ago, a patient whowas enrolled in a doctor-supervisedweight-reduction plan came to usafter her diet had failed. We inter-viewed her briefly and found that, inaddition to the food prescribed bythe weight-loss plan, she was drink-ing an entire bottle of wine eachnight! A bottle of wine or a six-packof beer can add anywhere from 625to 1,100 calories to your diet. In addi-tion, a gram of alcohol has about

seven calories—nearly as much as agram of fat, but both are metabolizedand stored by the body very easily.

9 Snack frequently but wisely.

It’s been shown that spreadingyour calorie intake throughout theday by eating more often increasesyour metabolism. Obviously, thechoice of food ingested duringthese frequent feedings is alsoimportant, e.g., a slice of skinlessturkey breast instead of an entireham hock or air-popped popcorninstead of a Snickers bar. Eating ahigh proportion of refined or simplecarbohydrates provides the bodywith energy a little too quickly.Since simple carbohydrates areused more easily than complex car-bohydrates, a lot of excess energyis provided to the body in a rela-tively short time. If the energy is inexcess of what the body needs atthat particular time, the excess isquickly stored, most likely in theform of fat.

10 Build more muscle.

If you’re a regular reader of thismagazine, then odds are you’re alsointerested in building muscle. Luckilyfor you, muscle has a twofold cos-metic function. It not only helps youlook leaner and stronger but alsomakes your body more metaboli-cally active. Muscle burns caloriesjust sitting there counting itschange. It makes sense, though. Fatis metabolically inert. It’s simplystored, like a bowling ball in acloset. It isn’t useful until it’sneeded. Muscle, on the other hand,is constantly demanding, “Feed me,feed me,” à la the blood-drinkingplant in the Little Shop of Horrors.The more muscle you have, themore calories you need just to main-tain your present weight.

11 Watch the fat content.

Most of you have heard a gram offat contains roughly nine calories

while a gram of carbohydrates orprotein contains just four. Foryears, dietitians and scientists alikeassumed one calorie was prettymuch like another, and if you ate toomany of them, they’d all end upbeing stored as fat. It turns out that’snot necessarily true—it seems thebody can convert dietary fat caloriesinto bodyfat more easily than it canconvert carbohydrate calories orprotein calories into bodyfat. Studiesat the University of MassachusettsMedical School point to the follow-ing: if you eat 100 calories ofcarbohydrate, it takes the bodyabout 23 calories just to process it.The energy “cost” to digest proteinis even higher. However, if you eat100 calories of fat, it takes the bodyjust 3 calories to process it anddeposit it, most likely on your hips,rear, or waist. So by switching toprotein instead of fat, you’re notonly saving yourself from eatingextra calories, you’re also ingestingfood that’s more difficult for thebody to store as fat.

12 Be wary of fatty fish.

Not all fish are low in fat. The fatcontent of fish varies enormouslydepending on the species, but gener-ally, the fish are fatty because eitherthey’re cold-water fish (they needmore insulation), or they’ve beenpacked in oil. Let’s set some parame-ters first: lean fish have under 5grams of fat per 3.5-ounce serving,while those that have more than 5grams of fat should be consideredfatty. (There aren’t many truly fattyfish, i.e., those that have more thanten grams of fat per serving, but thereare a few, such as herring, mackerel,salmon, pompano, sardines, andshad.) Feel free to indulge in lean fishlike cod, flounder, haddock, monkfish,orange roughy, perch, pike, redsnapper, rockfish, sea bass, or tuna.Fish that you may want to avoid oreat only occasionally include: catfish,shark, and bluefish as they all containbetween five and ten grams of fat.

“By feeding your body frequently throughoutthe day, you can avoid hunger cramps and

maintain stable energy levels…”

“The more muscle you have, themore calories you need just tomaintain your present weight.”

13 Be wary of ground turkey meat.

Turkey is highly nutritious, butwhen you buy it from the butcher,make sure you’re getting groundturkey breast, not skin or dark meat.Ground turkey breast is about 98%to 99% fat free, while skin or dark-meat turkey may only be about 80%fat free, in which case it wouldequate to a carton of Häagen-Dazswith wings.

14 Keep your protein intake high.

One way to help prevent muscleloss while dieting is to keep yourintake of protein relatively high—atleast a gram of protein per pound ofbodyweight a day. For example, ifyou weigh 170 lbs, try to eat at least170 grams of protein a day.

15 Not all vegetables are low fat.

It’s hard to believe it by looking atan ear of corn, but most of the fats inprocessed foods come from the veg-etables. Still, it takes about a bushelof corn or most other vegetables tomake a bottle of vegetable oil, butthe fat content of certain vegetables(or fruits, depending on what botan-ical school of thought you’re from)like avocados and olives is enor-mous. An average avocado derivesabout 86% of its calories from fat,while the number for olives is evenhigher at about 95%.

16 Don’t eat nuts as a snack.

Sure they’re natural, and surethey contain a lot of protein, butthey’re extremely high in fat.Consider that many nuts derive upto 97% of their calories from fat. Theonly exception to this high-fat rule ischestnuts, which derive only 8% oftheir calories from fat. You’re proba-bly thinking to yourself, “Whatabout those articles in the newspa-pers that said eating walnuts couldreduce your cholesterol rate?” Well,the test was financed by the walnutindustry, and in a nutshell, the studyinvolved two groups of men, one

control group and one of which sub-stituted walnuts for fatty foods likemeat and butter. Since the walnutscontain less saturated fat than thebeef and butter and have no choles-terol, the cholesterol levels of thewalnut eaters dropped. Using thissame type of logic, they could havemade a case to support eatingbacon or eggs to reduce choles-terol levels—sure it does—when itreplaces eating sticks of butter.

17 Cholesterol is not fat.

Cholesterol has nothing to dowith the fat content of a food.Cholesterol is chemically a steroid(not the anabolic type, of course),and it’s produced by the liver.Only animal products contain it.Consequently, a food item can haveno cholesterol yet be high in fat.Conversely, something can be highin cholesterol yet low in fat, such asshrimp. Despite the difference in fatand cholesterol, a diet high in fat,particularly saturated fat, can indeedraise cholesterol levels.

18 Don’t eat with fat friends.

On the surface, this may seem alittle flippant, but the point of this tipis not to avoid fat friends; just don’tfall prey to the same eating habitsthat may have had something to dowith making them fat in the firstplace. If you eat with people withpoor eating habits, don’t use theirdietary shortcomings to justify slip-ping into similar eating habits, evenif it’s only during one meal. Forinstance, if everyone’s eating cheese-cake, don’t let them pressure youinto being one of the crowd becausesooner or later, you really will beone of the crowd... the fat crowd,that is.

19 Frozen yogurt is not so great.

First of all, not all frozen yogurt islow fat. Some varieties averageabout eight grams of fat per cup.Secondly, there’s hardly any way of

telling what the fat content is of thelocal neighborhood yogurt stand’sfrozen offerings. If you’re absolutelysure of the fat content, and it’s onegram of fat or less per serving, goahead and have it as an occasionaltreat.

20 Defat your cheese.

A recent survey indicated that themost difficult food to cut back onwhile dieting was cheese. Under-standably so. If you’re preparing adish that requires it, try defattingyour cheese—zap an ounce of full-fat cheddar in the microwave on thehigh setting for two minutes, andmuch of the fat will liquefy and forma pool on top of the cheese. You canthen pour it off, and this method willreduce the amount of fat by aboutfour grams. This method works bestwith cheddar or mozzarella.

21 Watch out for salad dressing.

Two tablespoons of regular saladdressing, about the amount con-tained in a ladleful at a restaurant,contain about 200 calories. To putthat in perspective, hot fudge hasfewer calories and a lot less fat. Iflight dressing isn’t available and youjust can’t do without it, ask for thedressing on the side and use it spar-ingly. An alternative might be to mixit half and half with vinegar orlemon juice.

22 Get creative in the kitchen.

Try using calorie-cutting mixeswhen you make a snack or pouryourself a glass of something todrink. Consider cutting your orangejuice with an equal part of carbon-ated water or seltzer. If you just haveto have peanut butter (even thougheach two-tablespoon serving ofpeanut butter has more than onetablespoon of grease), then mix itwith a mashed banana. All out ofnonfat mayonnaise? Cut down thefat content of regular mayo bymixing in some mustard.

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23 Caffeine may help burn fat.

Supplements like Phen-Free, which contain caffeine, used 30 to 60 minutes before an aerobic workout, may allow you to burn fat faster. In scientific studies, caffeine has been shown to help liberate fatty acids from bodyfat stores, thus possibly increasing your body’s ability to burn fat. It may also increase strength and focus during a workout and is often used for this purpose.

24 Deep-six the potato chips.

Eating 8 oz of conventional potato chips is like adding 12 Tbsps of veg-etable oil and a teaspoon of salt to an 8-oz potato. However, consider this: you would have to eat 2 quarts of plain unbuttered popcorn to get the calories in 1 oz of chips (about 15 chips). By substituting, you save ten grams of fat. Of course, if you need your chips, try the Baked Lay’s Potato Chips that can be found at better grocery stores everywhere.

25 Cut back on carbs at night.

It’s a scientific fact that your body cannot burn fat when your insulin levels are elevated. It’s also a fact that carbs cause insulin levels to go up. So, it’s especially important to limit your carb intake of foods like bread, pasta, candy, juices, crackers, and bagels in the evening after, say, 6:00 p.m. Carbs consumed in the evening are more likely to be con-verted to bodyfat and/or reduce the amount of fat your body may burn during sleep.

26 Try using the supplement HMB.

HMB has proven itself in the labo-ratory and in the real world. It’s one of the most thoroughly studied sup-plements on the market. This patented amino acid metabolite,

discovered by research scientists at Iowa State University, may work especially well in a fat-loss program because when you’re working out hard and cutting calories, HMB could help you burn even more fat while also guarding against muscle breakdown.

27 “Pig out” once a week.

No one can eat “perfectly” all the time without going crazy! If you’re craving something like apple pie, French fries, pizza, or candy, hold off that craving until your “free day.” One day a week, forget calorie count-ing, portion control, etc., and eat whatever you’d like. By giving your-self this option, you can maintain the discipline you need to be successful the other six days of the week.

28 Don’t eat carbs before exercise.

If you supply the body with carbo-hydrates to use as fuel when

exercising, it will prevent fat burning and preserve bodyfat stores. A recent study confirmed that if you keep taking in carbs, your body will burn carbs. Cut back on the carbs, and your body will burn fat more readily and quickly.

29 Fail fast and change direction.

If what you’re doing now isn’t working, make a change! Don’t believe that if what you have been doing isn’t working, it will all of a sudden start working for no appar-ent reason. If you want different results, you have to take a different approach!

30 Don’t just read these tips!

If you want to build a leaner, healthier physique, you have to apply these fat-fighting tips. As they say, “Knowing what to do and doing what you know are two entirely dif-ferent things!”

“Carbs consumed in the evening are more likely to be

converted to bodyfat…”