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Tom Venuto and Burn The Fat Inner Circle Present…

Transformation ChampionsSuccess Secrets

Volume 2:The Success Puzzle, Put Together

Featuring Audrey Eickwort, Overall Women’s Champion,Burn the Fat Body Transformation Challenge, Season 4

This special report is one of many Burn The Fat Transformation Champion interviews featured inside the Burn The Fat Inner Circle: The Fitness Support Community for Motivation, Inspiration, and Transformation. To see more incredible transformations like this one, visit:

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Transformation Champions Success Secrets, Vol. 2: The Success Puzzle, Put Together

IntroductionLike many of our Burn the Fat Challenge champions, Audrey Eickwort, season 4 women’s overall winner, looked like a completely different person in her “after” photo. On the outside, the changes were incredible:

Body weight: 33 pounds lighter

Body fat: 18.1% lower

Lean body mass: 6.6 pounds higher

Waist circumference: 7 inches smaller

Her health, attitude and lifestyle changes were equally impressive. There’s so much we could say about Audrey and her amazing 98-day transformation, but there’s no better way to introduce this champion than to let her do it herself, by sharing her winning contest essay.

In the Burn the Fat Body Transformation Challenge, each contestant writes an essay at the end, along with submitting before and after photos. The essay counts in the scoring as much as the photos. Audrey’s essay was one of the best we ever read. It drives home one of the most important and powerful lessons about body transformation:

Transformation is not achieved by using a single strategy or tactic.

There are many pieces in the transformation success puzzle. Your transformation begins the day you understand what they are and put them together and into practice. Enjoy this inspirational essay and the in-depth interview that follows.

When It All Comes Together, by Audrey Eickwort

It’s cliché to begin a weight loss success story saying, “My life was in pieces before this program.” I know it’s cliché, because I’ve read hundreds of these stories. I spent a decade obsessed with fat loss. My battle to be thin monopolized my time, energy, and money like a holy mission. I dieted relentlessly, but only managed to look and feel worse with each passing year. I worried I was just too hopeless to write my own happy ending.

A confession: I have enough “before” pictures from unfinished challenges to fill an album. What’s different this time? Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (BFFM) and the Burn the Fat Inner Circle. I could describe the many obstacles I’ve overcome

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to finally get here, but I won’t. The hardships I’ve endured no longer define me. I’ve been given the skills and support to stop mourning the pieces of my old life and begin assembling the pieces of a new one.

Knowledge was the first piece.

BFFM liberated me from dieting hell. I can’t afford a personal trainer, but Tom was my trainer. The baseline plan fit my life, and it worked. I felt better from day one.

Stress was my favorite old excuse. I run a small business and home-school an autistic son. Money is tight, there are no days off, and my son’s needs are endless. I doubted I could exercise and resist comfort food while so overwhelmed.

I ignored how inactivity, unstable blood sugar, excess fat, and illness drained me. The BFFM lifestyle promotes resilience against stress. It balances my body, energizes my mind, and boosts my mood. When I’m vibrant, my productivity soars. More importantly, my enjoyment of life soars. Comfort food fed me, but happiness and success nourish me.

Mental programming was the next piece.

BFFM taught me to train my mind as hard as my body. I create big goals with reasonable deadlines and visualize success until it’s palpable. I feel myself slipping into my goals like a comfy pair of (size 6!) jeans. For the first time, consistency seems effortless. My mind changes, and my body naturally follows. I’m no longer at war with myself.

Flexibility is a piece.

BFFM supplied the marching orders, but also empowered me to track my results and change course as needed. It planned for days when plans fail. That’s ground-breaking and also essential, because healthy fat loss is a winding road. When I expected perfection, I was frequently discouraged. When I learned to expect setbacks and surmount them, I became unstoppable. I’ve lost 70 pounds of fat since January.

Community is a piece.

Like many overweight people, I felt self-conscious. Isolation became comfortable. I thought, “I’ll socialize once I’m thin.” A new world opened up when I decided I don’t have to do this alone.

Willpower is great… until it fails. Nobody’s perfect. My Inner Circle friends encourage me when I stumble. They teach and inspire me. They keep me







accountable. I don’t have to be perfect, because their support makes it harder to fail than to succeed. I’ll never underestimate the power of teamwork again.

Faith and focus are pieces.

What I’ve accomplished in 14 weeks electrifies me. This challenge restored the courage of my convictions. I have faith in myself again.

I expand my comfort zone daily. Whether I’m confronting a limiting belief or fighting for one more rep, I know progress means tolerating moments of uncertainty. I can endure these moments. The rewards are worth it.

I believed I couldn’t do many things, because I’d never done them. My mindset was, “I’ve tried nothing, and it’s not working. It’s hopeless!” Now I ask, “How will I overcome this obstacle?” I am positive, and that makes me powerful.

I lived with purpose and intensity every day of this challenge. I bled BFFM. I visualized myself winning and asked, “What did the winner do today?” Whatever my answer, I did it.

I gave myself the gift of unconditional commitment for 98 days. My devotion elevated a summer project into a defining experience. I’ve enjoyed moments of clarity, joy, and triumph I’ll cherish forever.

Balance is a piece.

I played hard to win, but I can’t control everything. When I saw my peers’ outstanding accomplishments at the half-way point and realized my best efforts might not be enough… it hurt. I desperately wanted to win, but I was already using every healthy peaking strategy in the book, pushing my body to the limit and eating only for fuel. In spite of myself, I considered resorting to unhealthy strategies.

This was my biggest test and greatest opportunity. It forced me to draw a line in the sand. Who is the new me? Is my progress merely cosmetic? What do I really value anyway?

I feel proud saying I lost every ounce the right way. I value my health & happiness, and I trust this program. Therefore, I dream big and work hard, but balance comes first.

Whether I place 1st or 101st, I am victorious. I adore how my new body looks and feels. I’ve earned every pound of freedom. I entered this challenge to win and discovered I’m already a winner.







I’ve lost weight before, but BFFM transformed my body and my spirit. I am vibrant. I am resilient. Obstacles no longer immobilize me. I feel confident and connected to my deepest values. Those are enduring rewards. My fat loss will also endure, because this time I built my house upon rock.

Sum It Up

I’ve imagined this essay for 10 years, and now I’ll complete it: I dedicated heart and soul to this challenge, and I finished.

When knowledge, belief and action come together… when people come together… the sum is greater than the pieces. My happy ending is merely the beginning. The skills I’ve mastered here are adaptable to any goal. My ability to create success feels unlimited. What’s coming together now is the rest of my life. Thank you, Tom, and dear Inner Circle friends.







Before and AfterAudrey Eickwort, Women’s Overall Winner of the Burn the Fat Body Transformation Challenge, Season 4

Day 1 Day 98







Transformation Champion InterviewTom Venuto: Hello, everyone. This is Tom Venuto here, from BurnTheFat.com,

BurnTheFatBlog.com and, of course, BurnTheFatInnerCircle.com, which is the home of the Burn the Fat Challenge. It’s that time of the year again. The Burn the Fat Challenge for the summer has ended and we now have new Grand Champions. On the phone with me right now is our Women’s Champion, Audrey Eickwort. Audrey, welcome to the call, and thanks for joining me.

Audrey Eickwort: Hi, Tom, and hi to all my Inner Circle buddies and to everyone else who’s here today.

Tom Venuto: First, a big congratulations is in order. You’re the new overall Women’s Champion for the Burn the Fat Summer Challenge. For any of our new listeners, that’s our body transformation contest that runs 98 days (14 weeks) over the summer. This year, more than 1,700 people entered, and half of them were women. Out of all of these people, Audrey, you came out on top. It’s an amazing achievement. You burned off 33 pounds over the summer. You’re looking like an athlete, rocking the bikini, and I suspect you’re going to be showing off the new bikini on the beaches of Maui soon?

Audrey Eickwort: Oh, definitely. My whole family is thrilled.

Tom Venuto: If you want to, we could exchange that for a week at the Jersey Shore…

Audrey Eickwort: That is really tempting, but I think maybe I’ll pass!

Tom Venuto: All right, never mind. Bad joke from a New Jersey guy. Anyway, you are the quintessential body transformation success story. What I mean by that is, you made a total turnaround. You didn’t just lower your body fat, you transformed your body, your health, your life, everything! But from what I understood—after reading through your journal—it wasn’t always that way. You’re not a professional fitness model. You’re probably not genetically gifted for natural leanness more than anyone else and I’ve seen that you’ve had a history of struggles with your weight. You’ve been overweight. Then you lost weight. And after a period of time, you gained it back.

But before we talk about the big success you just had, could you tell us what it was like before you started the challenge? Go back a while, not just before the Burn the Fat challenge, but back to at least 2010, or even a few years earlier. Think back to the kind of shape you were in when you were the least satisfied and










the most unhappy with your body. What was it like? What did you look like? What was your weight? What was your life like, and how did it affect you?

Audrey Eickwort: I was 215 pounds at my heaviest, and about 48% body fat. And that’s just an estimate because when I was weighed (in the water) I kept floating to the top. I was so fat, they couldn’t get a firm reading on me, so the 215 was just an estimate. I had a 40-inch waist and wore a size 22. I also had a ridiculous number of health problems for someone my age. In fact, my doctor told me that I reminded her of patients that were twice my age.

I isolated myself and I never wanted to go anywhere because I felt so unattractive and so self-conscious all the time. I felt really out of control, I was ashamed, and I felt like people could sense that just by looking at me. Even though I knew it was superficial, I isolated myself because of my weight. I just couldn’t get over it, and I obsessed about the problem constantly.

Then, in January, a few things happened that really shook me up. I went to my doctor and she told me I should think about whether I wanted to see my son grow up because my liver was in terrible shape. My mother died of liver cancer when I was 14. So that really hit home for me. That same week, I interviewed for a part-time job that I really wanted. It had great hours, the pay was extremely good and it was in a Pilates studio, which meant there were going to be free lessons—which really excited me.

They were looking for some pretty diverse qualities in the person who was going to perform the job, and I fit the bill perfectly, except for one thing: they wanted someone who looked athletic so they could better promote Pilates to their clients. It was pretty awkward, because it was evident that I was like the elephant in the room. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job, and I felt really bad about it. That got me thinking about how everything in my life revolved around my weight and how nothing was working. It was really a combination of everything at that point. So I decided right then and there that I had to do something.

Tom Venuto: Correct me if I’m wrong, but you did try to do some things before. In fact, I don’t think you just tried other diets or workout programs before. You actually tried fitness contests and body transformation challenges. I think one of the pictures you posted in your journal was from a previous challenge, but there was no after picture. Did you finish? What happened?

Audrey Eickwort: Well, in the very early years, I tried all the gimmicky stuff, because I just wanted to lose weight fast and was confused about how to do it. I did lose weight fast, but then I gained it back. You know, I stopped needing to lose 20 pounds. I needed to







lose 40, and then 60. So over time, I started looking at more reasonable programs, and I started exercising. I’d make a lot of progress but then I’d hit a rough patch and lose all my progress. My life was pretty chaotic, like most people’s lives are, but I would always try to barrel through with willpower. What I found was that willpower just wouldn’t work very well for me as a strategy, except in short doses.

I have an endomorph body type and a history of going to excess with food. I can do everything right six days of the week, then have one bad day, and still gain weight. So my strategy of waiting for life to get easier or just using willpower to white-knuckle it simply wasn’t working. I kept losing and gaining the weight over and over.

Tom Venuto: You’ve been through a lot, and many of the things you tried didn’t work. We know you started on the Burn the Fat program earlier this year and then entered our transformation challenge over the summer. After all those years of trying different things and not succeeding, or trying things that worked, but then you relapsed—what was so different this time? What did you do, in a big picture kind of way, that finally worked so well?

Audrey Eickwort: The biggest thing was I started posting at the Inner Circle forums instead of just lurking. I really can’t stress that enough. It was something I resisted for a long time because I was so used to isolating myself that it was way outside of my comfort zone to join. And because I didn’t want to join, I was really good at rationalizing why it was a bad idea. I thought to myself, “You know, I work best alone. I can do this alone. Forums are really big and impersonal. I won’t make friends there. All the forums are filled with nonsense and drama, and I don’t want that.” I also had this misconception that everyone in the Inner Circle would be buff and nobody would understand me.

But I went out on a limb one day and put myself out there. And the minute I reached out to other people, people started reaching back. They were really cool people, and I actually joined the Burn the Fat Brigade within the first 24 hours of signing up for the challenge. That was a group of 25 people who got together in the forums in teams. We created teams of five, but we also had the comfort of that bigger group. They placed me on the Echo Team, with four other extraordinary people. I also made friends with probably 50–100 other folks. I had so much support. It was incredible. What I found was I really needed that, and it was that kind of support that I was missing.







I think it was 4–5 weeks into the challenge when I threw my first really huge tantrum. My husband had taken some photos of me and I decided that I didn’t see very much difference from day one. I got really discouraged and pitched a fit about it. Thankfully, my team “talked me down from the ledge.” That was one critical point where I could have quit, but I didn’t.

There were also a lot of other times like that; but all these people were so good to me—they were so awesome. I knew that I was accountable to them and had promised them I wouldn’t quit. So it just got to the point where I didn’t need willpower and I didn’t need to be perfect, because they had my back, all the time. I felt really at home at the Inner Circle, so I wasn’t going to give that up and quit, and give my friends up for anything. That made it a lot harder for me to fail than to succeed.

Tom Venuto: The support factor is huge. I’m so glad you mentioned that, and I’m so glad you mentioned the teams, and about “delurking,” because the whole delurking thing has become quite a movement. We probably had hundreds of people who never would have posted anything on the forums, but because they saw the effect it had on people who got involved, an entire “Delurking Society” emerged where we now have the lurkers joining in, and what a difference that made for everyone.

I’m glad you mentioned the teams too, because I wanted to mention something. We had almost a dozen teams, and it can be tough to keep a team together. You mentioned the Burn the Fat Brigade. That was a bigger group of five teams of five, and if I’m not mistaken, all five teams finished, which is amazing.

I want to give a shout out to the whole Burn the Fat Brigade because that is one heck of an amazing achievement. In the first two seasons of the challenge, we saw many teams fall apart, but then I think people started to get the hang of it and the finish rate went way up. But to see five teams of five band together and have a 100% completion rate is the best testament for the premise that group support is the real deal.

You mentioned your summer weight loss was 33 pounds. But I know you already had quite a bit of success earlier in the year; I think around January. What was your total weight loss for the whole year, your body fat burned, and measurements, before and after?

Audrey Eickwort: I lost 75 pounds of body fat and gained about 7 pounds of lean body mass. I lost 12 inches off of my waist and went from a size 22 to a size 6. I’ve probably delivered about 50 bags of clothes to Goodwill.







Tom Venuto: That is awesome. You know, every once in a while, we hear a criticism like, “You guys are just focused on the cosmetics and the body fat percentage.” But it’s not all about the body fat percentage. That’s a big part of it—I mean, we all want to look good, right? But I know for you, and for many other people, this has gone way beyond the body fat percentage. Would you tell us how this has affected your whole life? Anything—family, career, outlook, how people treat you, your lifestyle. How has it affected your personality and you as a person in general?

Audrey Eickwort: Oh my gosh, there are so many ways. First and foremost, my health has improved dramatically and I’m saving a ton on doctor bills and prescriptions. I’m also no longer in pain all the time. My husband and young son are very active, and before, I could never do anything with them. The first time my son saw me run, he was actually really surprised because he believed that I wasn’t capable of running, literally! I went out to play with him one day and he was shocked. Now we have so much fun together all the time. He sees me totally different now and is really proud of me.

Another big thing is my self-confidence. I didn’t realize how self-conscious I was until I stopped feeling that way. A new neighbor moved in and I went right over and started chatting with her, and it dawned on me afterwards that I would never have done that in the past. I do a lot of things like that now, without even thinking about it.

Part of it is that I look better, and that feels wonderful. It feels great! But the other part is, I’ve had this amazing experience by keeping a huge promise to myself and I had to overcome periods of self-doubt and discomfort to do that. I had to take a whole new approach to problem-solving too. In my challenge essay, I said that my attitude used to be that “I tried nothing, and it’s not working.” But now I have faith that there’s some solution out there. I just look at it like a challenge and try to focus on what I’m going to try instead of getting caught up in the struggle.

For me, that’s been a huge transformation because I’ve always been a negative thinker. When I started the challenge, I said in my journal that, “I’m going to have zero negative thoughts this challenge,” but that was completely unrealistic. I’ve had tons of negative thoughts along the way, but I was able to plow through them for two reasons: I had a ton of support from the Inner Circle forums, and I wanted to do well in the challenge. That allowed me to pile up positive experiences over and over again, which in turn helped quiet those negative thoughts (for the first time). The experience changed how I see myself and how I see life on such a profoundly fundamental and powerful level. It really did change everything for me.







Tom Venuto: I’m always amazed at how these physical changes transfer into every area of your life, both the tangible and the intangible. There are a lot of benefits people have never thought about before that go beyond looking great—the intangibles, like the increase in self-confidence and how that improves everything else you do. And the other example you gave— the money you said you saved on prescriptions—getting healthier can save you a lot of money. A lot of people just don’t think about that.

I’m sure you want to keep the ball rolling on this. I know that after contests, some people fall into a lull, or they get worried because they read about the relapse statistics, that “X amount of people gain all the weight back.” I sense that’s something you’ve given a lot of thought to already because you come across to me as someone who’s determined to stay lean and motivated and to turn this into a lifestyle. But when you consider how high the relapse rates are, what’s your plan for transitioning into the lifestyle phase?

Audrey Eickwort: Well, first and foremost, I’m going to burn up that five-year membership I won to the Inner Circle because I feel extremely confident that I can keep improving myself as long as I’m in there and getting support. That’s completely empowering. I’ve never felt that way before. At the Inner Circle, there’s always somebody who’s one step behind me on the path and somebody who’s one step ahead, so there’s constant inspiration to move forward. There is also a constant incentive to be someone else’s inspiration and to not let that someone else down.

Beyond that, I focus really hard on building habits. Where food is concerned, I don’t really get off track very often because my meals are always ready to go and I eat things that I enjoy eating. It’s actually more of an effort now to order a pizza than it is to just stick to my plan.

In terms of exercise, I get up really, really early and get everything out of the way, first thing in the morning. Then I don’t have to think about it after that. Then, I also have a ton of energy for the entire day and that’s a great way to start the day. I never thought of myself as a morning person. In fact, I hated mornings. But now it’s a habit. I feel like I am a morning person now and I really like that.

On the mental side, the goal-setting and visualization are like safety nets for me. As long as I have my goals up, like on neon signs in my brain, they take on a life of their own, especially if I keep going back there and focusing on them. Once they have that life of their own, then I just have to get out of the way and let it happen, and it does happen.







Tom Venuto: That sounds like a great plan. Let’s talk now about how important health is. I mean, what good is having a ripped body if you don’t have your health? Especially if it actually costs you your health, because I know some people do dumb stuff to get lean. They may take drugs that are harmful or do drastic things to their bodies. You did it the right way, and so the reward wasn’t just a lean body, it was a healthier body too. Can you tell us about how your health improved?

Audrey Eickwort: In January, I was ridiculously sick for someone my age. I store my fat in my abdomen and my doctor told me that it was like creating the effect that I was a pregnant woman in her third trimester. I was constantly coughing up stomach acid, and for most of my day, I would need to clear my throat. I lost my voice all the time and would have to rest after I ate, because I would cough so hard, that it would be physically exhausting. I was always in pain.

Then, one day, I fell asleep at the wheel of my car and ran a red light. There were two other cars in the intersection, and I have no idea how they got out of the way. So I went to a sleep study and was diagnosed with sleep apnea. I found out that I was never getting past stage one sleep, because I would stop breathing and wake myself up.

Then I had the abdominal ultrasound and was told my liver was covered in fat. As I said, my mom died of liver cancer. At the time, no one knew about fatty liver disease. She didn’t have hepatitis and she didn’t drink, so we couldn’t understand how this had become her primary source of cancer. But it made a lot of sense to me when I was diagnosed. Then my doctor told me that I had about 5–10 years left before I would develop cirrhosis of the liver. I never heard that someone could develop cirrhosis just because they were fat. I was 34 years old and was a complete mess. It was ridiculous.

Tom Venuto: You mentioned earlier that about halfway through the challenge, maybe around week 4 or 5, you ran into some roadblocks. I think the one you mentioned in your journal was that the numbers didn’t seem to jive. You felt like you should be making more progress. You thought you should have lost more weight. You felt some kind of frustration. But obviously, you found a way to work through it, because here you are.

I know you said the support was a big help. What else did you do to keep your progress going, when you felt like you were plateaued or stuck, with regard to nutrition and training? And what about the mental side of it? I know there’s a head-trip involved when the results come in and it looks like you didn’t make any







progress for the week. It’s a challenge for people to stay focused, and some people just quit right then.

Audrey Eickwort: Well, it’s funny because at that point, I didn’t need to change my nutrition or training program, because I hadn’t really plateaued. I was getting results, but I wasn’t satisfied with those results, so I went into “all or nothing” thinking mode. If I didn’t get the exact results I wanted, I felt like nothing was working and I was going to quit.

That was one of the “tantrums” I had with my team. But I talked to them about it, and they helped me see the bigger picture and that I was making wonderful progress. And that I really wanted to finish. I wanted to do it with all my heart and nothing had changed about that. They kept me on track, and then they laughed at me a few weeks later when I took my mid-contest pictures and was absolutely in love with my progress. So support was a big part of it, again.

Beyond that, my strategy for the entire challenge was to accept the fact that fat loss is a really messy process and to keep shaking things off when they didn’t go the way I wanted. I learned it was okay to look foolish or to not know what I was doing, to feel confused and to admit my mistakes to others. You have to get rid of that idea, that I think everyone has on day one, which is: “I’m going to do this perfectly. It’s going to be awesome. Everything is going to be great. I’m never going to have a negative thought or a rough time.” Once I got rid of that kind of thinking, it became a lot easier.

Tom Venuto: That’s great advice, thank you. Why don’t we move on and talk about nutrition? I got requests from members who wanted to know about your nutrition program. We already have a rough idea of what you eat, because we all have Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle in common as sort of our master plan. But everyone seems to adapt the program differently for their own goals and their own personal tastes. Could you tell us about what you were eating on a typical day when your goal was fat loss and give us a general breakdown of your daily meal plan?

Audrey Eickwort: Okay. If I was doing fasted cardio in the morning, I would usually have a whey protein shake, which I guess doesn’t really make it “fasted cardio,” but it’s not a full meal. I feel like at least that’s some extra calories and it boosts my energy and I really need that. I’m really sensitive to being hungry. I’m also a really picky eater and I don’t like building menus. I don’t think anybody likes building menus. So I eat the same things a lot, and I just add more starchy carbs on my high calorie days. I’m kind of stubborn about needing to eat things I like, even if my diet isn’t exactly perfect. I tried, in the beginning, to do it the way I thought would be







perfect—to eat chicken and broccoli, salmon and broccoli and tuna and broccoli—but that just didn’t work for me.

For breakfast, I’ll usually have a Kashi waffle with a Greek yogurt and fruit, or I’ll also have oatmeal and protein powder and peanut butter. Sometimes it’s cottage cheese with fruit and a shot of fish oil. For lunch, I’ll have chicken or beef or eggs, usually with beans. And if it’s a high-calorie day, I’ll have a tortilla and make a wrap. In the afternoon, I’ll have Greek yogurt with Uncle Sam cereal. Dinner is always some kind of lean meat with vegetables or avocado. Then before bed, if I’m hungry, I just have another protein shake using Casein. I just do that over and over again.

Tom Venuto: So, for the year, with that approach, you lost a total of 75 pounds; and doing that over the summer, you dropped 33 pounds, and we know it was all pure fat because you said you actually gained some lean body mass according to your body composition test. You also said you were eating starchy carbs. I even heard you mention whole grains, tortillas and cereals. A lot of people think to make a really dramatic transformation and a big decrease in body fat, you’ve got to slash your carbs. Some people are at the point where they’re getting paranoid about carbs. I call it carbophobia. You don’t seem like a carbophobic to me at all.

I read your journal and saw you made some comments about carbs, and to me, you seem to have some pretty clear opinions on carbs and actually some pretty impressive knowledge as well. You mention ketosis and carb cycling, and you also seem to have a good grasp on how to deal with carbs from a practical point of view, like adjusting them on various days. You also seem to have a good idea of how your body responds. Why did you decide to take the carb approach you did? Basically, what’s your philosophy on carbs for fat loss?

Audrey Eickwort: I know there are a lot of people who get great results doing the low carb diet. But for me, especially when I was working so hard during the challenge and exercising so much, I realized it was just not going to work for me, to hit that activity level without carbs. I know some people are able to push through the fatigue and the moodiness and still put in a good workout; but me, I become a blubbering mess and I get so stupid I need a helmet. It’s terrible.

Last year, every time my husband heard I was going “low carb,” he would be terrified. So, I do limit my carbs to 40% usually, and I use the technique of bracketing my workouts and then letting my carbs taper during the day so my final meals don’t have many carbs. For fueling my workouts, that’s what I needed.







I realized, eventually, that I was getting good results doing that, so why mess with it?

Tom Venuto: Right. The key point you mentioned there was, “fueling the workouts” and how if you’re doing a low carb diet when you’re training hard, that they don’t go too well together. I don’t know many athletes who do a low carb diet. When you’re training like an athlete, you’ve got to eat like an athlete. Then, of course, you do have the mental clarity side of things.

I don’t know if I ever told this to anybody in the Inner Circle before, but I had an old nickname. When I went on low carbs, they would call me “Fog Boy,” because I was always in a fog, or they would just call me a zombie. I eventually did what you did and I found a nice balance between the amount of carbs I ate, the cycling of the carbs and how to best bracket them around workouts. It’s a really smart strategy to figure out how to use carbs, based on how hard you’re training, instead of completely demonizing them. I’m glad to hear that from you because everywhere you go on the Net today, there are debates about low carb versus high carb, and I think it’s important to put it in perspective.

That also leads me to the next question about calories. Calories are a priority above carbs, because if you had a zero carb diet, but you were eating so much fat and so much protein that you’re in a surplus, you’re not going to lose any body fat. I always find that talking about calories with different people is interesting. We bump into people with different diet philosophies and into some contrarians who keep insisting that calories don’t matter. “Just eat from this list of foods and you’ll get lean.” Or “Just cut out this group of foods, and you’ll get lean. Don’t worry about calories.”

Obviously, we know that not to be true. We know calories matter and we know there’s an energy balance equation. If you disobey the law, you’ll pay the price. But what I find interesting is that some people—even some people in our Burn the Fat community—they definitely understand the calorie thing; they understand the energy balance equation, about the surplus of calories and the deficit, but they still prefer to take a more relaxed approach. They eyeball their portions, so they know how much they’re eating, but it’s by size or portion. If they’re not losing the fat they want to lose, they decrease the portion size. So they know they’re eating less, but they don’t know how many calories they’re actually eating.

I think we have a lot of number crunchers in our community and a lot of people who are meticulous about counting everything. But we do have both types, and they both lead to the same result—which is a deficit. I’m curious to hear about







what you did and what you think about calories. Do you count them meticulously and precisely? Do you track them? If you track them, how do you track them? And how do you make sure you’re getting that calorie deficit? Because we know that’s the one thing that we all have to hit if we want to get leaner.

Audrey Eickwort: I’m really religious about tracking my calories. I use an Excel spreadsheet and it was really important during the challenge because I actually had to change my calories several times when I started exercising more, and that increase allowed me to have more endurance and allowed me to up my intensity. If I hadn’t known exactly what I was doing the prior week, then I wouldn’t have been able to change things so quickly when I needed to.

If I could eat intuitively and get away with it, I would definitely prefer that. But my weight loss slows down that way. It doesn’t work as well for me. I create my menus ahead of time, and I eat the same things so I don’t really have to reinvent the wheel all the time. It’s just all worth it to me because it makes my results so much better.

Tom Venuto: I feel the same way. I also feel the same way about eating the same or similar things every day; then calorie counting is not really a chore. The way I see it, counting calories is reactive. For example, when most people think of counting calories, they think, “Oh, man. I’ve got to walk around with this little electronic device, or a notebook, and then every time I eat something, write it down. But that’s not how most people do it with Burn the Fat. We’re more proactive. We create a meal plan in advance. We already calculated the calories in advance, we just have to sit down and do it once, when we create that meal plan. Then you just follow that meal plan, right?

Audrey Eickwort: Right. And if I get sick of a meal I’m eating, I just switch it out for something that has similar calories and macronutrients. So it’s very easy. I can still have variety.

Tom Venuto: Yes. That’s one way to ballpark the calories pretty well: Make one meal plan and calculate all the calories. Then use an exchange system by food group when you want variety. Let’s say eggs and oatmeal were in your breakfast plans, and you know exactly how many calories are in that breakfast. All you have to do is say, “Instead of eggs today, I’m going to stir some protein powder in my oatmeal.” Even if you don’t know exactly how many calories are in that, making a protein-for-protein swap keeps you in the ballpark.







What about training? Let’s move on to training. We don’t need all the intricate details of your workout, but how about giving us a general overview of your contest-winning workout strategy?

Audrey Eickwort: I used The New Body Building (TNB) Workout four times a week, and also added the super cool delt workout—which I love—that you put up in the Inner Circle training department. That was pretty steady, and I did a lot of cardio. I did “fasted” morning cardio 5 or 6 days per week. Then I would eat breakfast and do my strength routine or more cardio. Then my husband would leave for work and I would take care of my son. I home-school him and work from home myself. Then, when my husband came home, he would watch our son again and I would do another 30-60 minutes of cardio; so I should add that I couldn’t have done this without my husband. He’s been incredible. I was definitely doing a lot of exercise.

Tom Venuto: So, you did TNB and that’s a two-day split, meaning you had your workouts split in half. Half your body one day and the other half the other day. That’s gotten amazingly popular. It’s a great workout. What was the super cool delt workout you mentioned?

Audrey Eickwort: There was a question in the Inner Circle where someone said, no matter what they did, they were having trouble building their deltoids, and you wrote that article on how to get the “shoulder caps” like a figure athlete or bodybuilder. I wanted to build my delts into something that would be impressive, so I started that just three weeks before the pictures were taken and I had delts in those pictures! It was very cool and it happened really fast. The whole time I was thinking, “Gosh, I hope my competitors don’t find this workout until it’s over. When it’s all done, I’ll tell everybody how cool it was.”

Tom Venuto: They all know about it now. Well, I have to tell you, your shoulder development and your lateral deltoids were absolutely noticeable in your pictures. The muscle in your legs was very noticeable too, but definitely your delts stood out. Now, everybody who has the opportunity to hear this call right now is getting the ultra, top-secret secret to transforming the way your body looks today: “Get your waist to shrink down and build out the side deltoids.”

For you, it really changed the way you looked. It changes your whole body shape. I know a lot of women who are afraid to build muscle size anywhere. They just don’t want to get bigger. But if women actually would build out their side delts, it would really improve their figures. That is one of the number-one secrets of all female physique, fitness, figure and bikini athletes. That was a great strategy.







Audrey Eickwort: It’s definitely what I get the most compliments about. My female friends are incredibly jealous about it. I still have quite a ways to go with my body and I still have a lot of goals. But I feel like it sort of gives me “street cred,” and it makes it easier to gloss over the extra fat I’m still carrying on my belly and some of my other problems. It makes me feel a lot more confident too, so it’s pretty cool.

Tom Venuto: It’s also a statement of paying attention to details too. Because if you do a lot of reading on the Net, there are a lot of people saying, “Don’t bother with the isolation exercises. Just do the big lifts.” But I would say shoulders are a very big exception right there. If you focus on those side delts, it makes a big difference.

Audrey Eickwort: I agree.

Tom Venuto: In terms of the intensity, I know you trained really, really hard. I mean, we’re not claiming any magic here. Your results came from a lot of hard work. I got the impression, and correct me if I’m wrong, that you were working your butt off, right up to the max—right up to the point where that level of training might not be sustainable long-term. It was definitely a peaking program, to peak for this contest. Am I right about that? If that’s true, then what are your plans for sustainable training, in terms of intensity level and volume, in the future?

Audrey Eickwort: I was definitely maxing things out because I really, really wanted to win this challenge. And because I was active in the Inner Circle, I was aware that there were some powerhouse women in the contest who were also working really hard. I was friends with a lot of them; so they kept me on my toes. I looked at it from the perspective of an athlete and I really loved having that experience. I’ve never felt that way before.

I don’t necessarily know that I could do it again, or that I would want to do it again. But I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. It was really, really cool. In fact, I’ve totally changed my schedule since the challenge. I still do strength training four days per week, but I dropped my cardio down to 3-4 days. I’m taking a day or two off each week now. I know my fat loss is going to slow down, but I’m comfortable with that. What I’m doing feels really balanced to me now.

Tom Venuto: You said something just now that was interesting. You said, “I know my fat loss is going to slow down, or maybe it will taper off to a maintenance level.” I know a lot of people who are scared that when they stop the high-level cardio, they’re going to start gaining all their fat back. We’re talking now almost two weeks since the contest ended, so what’s happened since you cut down your training volume in the last couple of weeks?







Audrey Eickwort: I gained just a little bit of weight, but I’m keeping track of it. Right now, I have an intuitive feeling that all the right things are happening in my body. I feel like it was time for the reduced load. The hormonal balance feels better and I think ultimately, this is going to boost my metabolism. I feel like I’m in a really good place to build some more muscle with what I’m doing now, which is also going to boost my metabolism.

I’m anticipating that I’ll probably be surprised, and that I’m going to burn more than I think. I did expect my results to be kind of wonky for a few weeks, particularly because, like I read in the Holy Grail Body Transformation e-book, that it’s ideal after a contest to gradually taper down. But I was just beat up after 14 weeks, so I just decided to take a week off to see what happens. I feel really confident I’m going to keep moving forward, as long as I’m part of this community.

Tom Venuto: What was your motivation through all this? I think I know the answer to this question, because I read something in your journal about it. But for the benefit of everyone listening, who hasn’t read your journal yet, if you were to pin it down to the number one source of motivation, during your 98-day challenge, what was it, and why?

Audrey Eickwort: I think it would be my son, because I wanted to live with him, or live for him, for one thing. I also want to have a good, vibrant life with him, and I want him to respect me. Once he started to understand what my goal was, I felt like I couldn’t let him see me quit, because I had said it so clearly, “I want to finish this challenge.” I couldn’t let him see me quit. I wanted him to have the experience of seeing someone work hard for something and accomplish it.

I’ve actually heard him say on a couple of different occasions, “My mom was really fat, and she was able to do this, so I can do this thing that I want to do.” I also made the mistake early on of letting him hear that the prize was a trip to Hawaii. And so I never heard the end of it. All summer, he would say to me, “Why are you just sitting there? Couldn’t you work a little harder? Shouldn’t you be exercising?”

Tom Venuto: That’s good motivation! I know you also had the support of the Inner Circle, your Team, and the Burn the Fat Brigade. Was there anything else that motivated you?

Audrey Eickwort: Well, I had an obsession for a while, that I had to finish the challenge. Back in the “Body for Life” heyday, I probably entered at least 50 times and never got anywhere. I was in my teens and twenties; those times were really hard. My mom







died. My dad had heart attacks and strokes and then he died. I had a high-risk pregnancy with my son. I was on bed rest for six months, and when he was born, he had all kinds of problems. I got through everything by telling myself I was going to come back stronger from it all and I was meant to do something and use those experiences for good. I just felt like I needed my life to be a comeback story, but it wasn’t happening. Things just kept getting harder.

Then, when my obsession became my weight problem, that became the theater where my emotional battle was going to play out. I just had to finish it. Then, once I joined the Burn the Fat Brigade, I was really motivated, because I didn’t want to let them down. A lot of people had hardships and a lot of people talked about quitting at different times, but no one did. That team was my other big motivation.

Tom Venuto: You had a lot reasons to be motivated. A lot of things get in the way of our motivation sometimes, even our own family or friends. I noticed that someone asked you, right on the message boards, “How did you deal with obnoxious relatives who tried to guilt you into eating junk?”

Audrey Eickwort: Yeah, that happened sometimes. The first thing I did was to try really hard not to merge with them and get confused about what their needs were versus my own. With some of my family, they mean well. They’d cook me something really nice because they wanted to connect with me that way, so I just tried to acknowledge their need and to meet that need without food. I told them how much I appreciated the hard work and their company, and that it meant a lot to me. That usually worked.

But sometimes—and this is actually more true of friends than of family—if there would be sort of a more sinister motive behind their intentions, I would just acknowledge it to myself and remind myself that it’s their problem and not my problem. In either case, I’d just tell people directly how I felt and what I needed. It’s as simple as, “I don’t feel good when I eat certain foods, and I need to take care of my health.” I didn’t feel like it needed more of an explanation than that.

Tom Venuto: What about this one: Motivation versus cravings. What do you do when the cravings hit? They hit everybody. I’m telling you they even hit the most disciplined bodybuilders. Some people have a strategy to beat it and some people give in. What did you do?

Audrey Eickwort: Well, if I know it’s physiological, then I just take it as a sign that I need more calories and carbs. That is pretty easy, as long as I get past the desire to just







immediately stuff my face with carbs. I’ll just eat some slow-burning carbs, up my calories for a few days, and rest. That takes care of that.

If it’s an emotional craving, then I try to recognize that what I’m really looking for is some kind of comfort. I have respect for my brain; it’s smart, so I know I’m going to get comfort one way or another. I just try to fill that need in a healthy way by trying to figure out what genuine need I’m confusing with what I think is a need for ice cream or cake. If I can fill that need, the real need, then I do that. Or, I distract myself with some kind of healthy, natural pleasure that makes me feel better. Or sometimes I just realize, I’m too far down the hole to deal with this; and that’s when I use my support system. Sometimes I just can’t do it on my own.

Tom Venuto: Very good. We’re getting close to the end of the time we have. We talked about a ton of great stuff today, but in case I missed anything, is there anything else you’d like to talk about that you think was a major key to your success that you’d like to share?

Audrey Eickwort: I guess I could give everyone the advice that my son gave me at the beginning of the challenge. It was when I was showing my husband pictures of the finalists from the past and asking him if he thought I could do that myself. My son came by and said, “Well, that looks like that’s 50% strength training, 40% cardio and 10% tan.”

Tom Venuto: Get a tan! That’s a good one. We noticed your tan too.

Audrey Eickwort: I’m in Florida, and I have to say, we didn’t go to the beach before I started this, but we’ve gone to the beach a lot this year.

Tom Venuto: Okay, so now we know it was a real tan too, not a spray-on tan.

Audrey Eickwort: Well, I had to spray-tan my belly, because I had never worn a bikini before. When I started wearing them to the beach, I had a very white belly.

Tom Venuto: There’s no shame in spray tan. I could tell you stories about getting painted for body-building shows, but I’ll spare everybody the details. Before we wrap up I have to ask you to promise to send us a bunch of Maui vacation pictures. Will you?

Audrey Eickwort: Oh, absolutely. They’ll be on my progress journal.







Tom Venuto: Great, because we all want to live vicariously through you, not to mention it’ll be huge motivation for the next group coming through for the next challenge. We’ll look forward to it, thank you.

One last thing, and then I’ll let you go. There are hundreds of thousands of people on our email newsletter list. And there are tens of thousands on the Burn the Fat Customer list. Everyone on our lists hears about the Burn the Fat challenge contest and the subscribed and confirmed Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle e-book owners all get personal contest invitations to enter for free.

We had good participation in that last challenge—1,700 people entered—and we would love to see more people get involved. But for whatever reason, most people who get the invitation don’t enter. I’ve always wondered why. I’ve heard all kinds of reasons, from being afraid to take a before picture or not wanting other people seeing their pictures, or they’ve heard that most people who enter don’t finish and they figure, “I’ll never finish either.”

So this is my last question. A two-part question, actually. The first part is, did you have any doubts about entering at first? And the second is, what kind of encouragement could you give to some of the people on the fence, to nudge them to jump in and participate in the fitness challenge contest the next time?

Audrey Eickwort: I definitely felt a little nervous about putting up my pictures. But let me quote one of my Inner Circle friends, Rob. He always says, “You should never be ashamed of where you are, if you’re proud of where you’re going.” That’s really the attitude of everyone I’ve met at the Inner Circle.

I used to be really intimidated by some of the buff people I would meet there. Then I’d find out that a year ago, or two years ago, they were overweight. Everybody understands. There’s just no judgment there at all. Besides, the only way someone is going to see your picture outside the Inner Circle is if you win or make the finalists. I love my before pictures right now. I even posted them on Facebook. I never would have let my friends see them before; but now I say, “You’ve got to see my before pictures. Look where I came from.” That’s what’s so awesome about it. It’s just a great, great experience and so worth it.

And about finishing: If someone wants to join and they’re uncertain about being able to finish, I don’t believe those statistics apply to people who are active in the Inner Circle during the challenge. I kept waiting for people that I cared about to quit. I thought, “80–90% of these people are going to quit,” so I told myself I shouldn’t get too emotionally attached. They didn’t quit, so those statistics can’t apply to people who stay really involved. If people want to feel confident that







they’re going to make it, they should become active in the forums for the support and accountability, and it will dramatically increase their odds of finishing.

Tom: Well, there you have it. Enter, and don’t lurk in the shadows—get involved once you’re entered. That’s the key. All right, Audrey. It’s been a real pleasure, and I really appreciate you taking a whole hour to talk to me. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you a lot at the Inner Circle. Thank you very much.

Audrey Eickwort: Thank you. Thanks everybody, for everything. It’s been wonderful.

Tom Venuto: And I want to thank everyone else who’s listening too. I hope this has been useful and informative and as fun for you guys as it has been for me. It’s been inspiring and motivating. We’ll be back soon with more success stories and I hope to see you all at the next challenge. Until then, train hard, everyone, and expect success.







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