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Your Fat Loss
Success!
A Candid and Revealing Conversation With
Fat Loss Expert Tom Venuto
Author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle
Copyright © 2006 Burn The Fat Enterprises
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.
Published by Tom Venuto and Burn The Fat Enterprises in the United States of America.
Skyrocket Your
Fat Loss Success!
A Candid and Revealing Conversation With
Fat Loss Expert Tom Venuto
As interviewed by Tom Nicoli, Clinical Hypnotherapist Featured on Dateline NBC’s “Ultimate Weight Loss Challenge”
Tom Venuto is the author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle:
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Skyrocket Your Fat Loss Success!
SKYROCKET YOUR FAT LOSS SUCCESS!
An Exclusive Interview with Fat Loss Expert Tom Venuto By Tom Nicoli, Clinical Hypnotherapist
TOM NICOLI:
Hello, everyone. This is Tom Nicoli of TomNicoli.com and SkyrocketPersonalSuccess.com. The information I have gathered, through the variety of experts in all areas of personal success is simply the best, and today is yet another example. We all know in order to achieve personal success, it takes more than effort and time. The journey to personal success requires physical fitness and health, and today that’s what we’ll be talking about.
My guest today is Tom Venuto of www.burnthefat.com, one of
the world’s leading experts on burning body fat. Tom is a natural bodybuilder, personal trainer, nutritionist, best selling author, and success coach. I guarantee you that what Tom will tell you today is going to surprise you, because I know I was amazed when I first learned what he had to say.
Be sure to get ready to take notes, because what Tom will share is unique information you won’t hear from many experts in the weight loss and fitness industry. So first let me say, welcome, Tom, and thank you so much for taking this time and for sharing what I know is incredibly important for anyone listening who wants to skyrocket their own personal success.
TOM VENUTO: Thanks for having me on the call, Tom.
TOM NICOLI:
Now, Tom, the first thing I’d like to ask, before we begin, is to please share a bit of your background and what you do in the area of physical fitness and training.
TOM VENUTO: Sure, be glad to. I’ve been involved in the health and fitness field my entire life. I started working out when I was 14, and I started training other people by the time I was 20. When I went to college, 2 Tom Venuto
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I earned a degree in Exercise Science. I then got certified by the top exercise organizations in the world, the American College of Sports Medicine and the National Strength and Conditioning Association, and then I immediately went to work as a personal trainer for various health clubs. Later I got involved more in the business aspect of health clubs—owning and managing them.
More recently, I’ve become an Internet publisher, and that has allowed me to reach people all over the world through my websites, my newsletters, and my e-books. In 2003, I launched a web-based program called Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle at
www.burnthefat.com, which is the world’s most effective fat loss system. There are now Burn The Fat users in 125 countries, so the Internet has been an incredible tool for spreading the word. It has let me reach a much, much larger number of people than just working one-on-one in the health clubs.
TOM NICOLI:
You just mentioned that not only have you become successful in the area of physical fitness but also as a business owner and in the Internet. Tell us how necessary or important do you feel that the physical fitness aspect has helped you in the other areas of becoming successful?
TOM VENUTO: It’s vitally important. I don’t think you can say you’re completely successful unless you’re successful in all the areas of your life, including your health.
Success means different things to different people, but surely it means balance. If you’re financially successful but you don’t have your health, then I don’t think you’re really successful. Or if you have your health and you’re struggling to pay the bills and you don’t have good relationships, I don’t think you’re successful.
When you have it all; when you’re physically fit, and you have your health and you have energy, when you have financial success, relationship success, success in your spiritual life, then everything in your life just works better. It all comes together and falls into place.
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Without the health and without the energy and the fitness levels, you’re not going to feel good, and you’re not going to be as effective in the other areas of your life, so each plays off each other.
TOM NICOLI:
You know, Tom, that leads me to mention something I learned about you, which was quite surprising at first, about how you do cover all aspects of yourself. What many people listening don’t know is that you’re not the typical fitness expert. What I mean by that is, like myself, you’re trained in neurolinguistic programming (NLP) and hypnosis, the mind techniques for change. So let me ask you, why did you go into the area of developing your mind as well as being this expert in physical development?
TOM VENUTO: Well, the mind is really the missing link for so many people who are trying to reach their fitness goals. If you know where you are now and you know where you want to go and you want to change, what’s missing are the resources and the tools you need to get to your destination. For example, if you want to travel and you know where you are and where you want to go, the car and the map and the itinerary are the resources that you need. To get in shape, the first resource you need is information. You need nutrition and training information, or what Napoleon Hill called “specialized knowledge.”
What I’ve discovered is that some people will learn the nutrition and training information, and they’ll take that ball and run with it, and they will reach all their goals and be very successful. But I also see many people get the exact same information and resources as other people, and yet there’s still something missing. They’re blocked, and they can’t seem to reach their goals. They can’t apply the information or they apply it inconsistently, or they sabotage themselves in one form or another.
The difference between those two people is on a psychological level. You have to approach fitness and health and reaching your ideal weight on both the physical and on the mental planes. There could be a variety of things holding people back: negative programming being put in, old conditioning, limiting beliefs, secondary gain (which is some kind of strong reason to stay the 4 Tom Venuto
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same), poor self-image, lack of clarity in values and priorities. All these things are mostly on a subconscious level.
TOM NICOLI:
This is fantastic, because it all ties in. Everything you just said ties in with the whole purpose of me creating
SkyrocketPersonalSuccess.com, where people who are visiting this site and hearing these interviews, are seeing that we are offering all of these areas of attention and information. Because, as you said, it’s almost as if people find just one thing to latch onto.
That would pretty much be like having a steering wheel, but not having the accelerator, or having some form of transportation, but not all the components. That’s fantastic.
Now, I know you’ve been a bodybuilder for 20 years. Does your
Burn The Fat system lend itself only to someone who’s interested in bodybuilding and self-image? Or is it for anyone simply wanting to be healthier?
TOM VENUTO: What I teach is for everyone, for health as well as for looks. I have heard some people say that they shied away from my material at first because they saw that I was a bodybuilder. They figured, “Oh, well, I’m not a bodybuilder, so it’s not for me.” Or they got intimidated when they saw the word “bodybuilder,” because my book is subtitled “Fat burning secrets of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models.” I think it would probably be more accurate if I changed the subtitle to, “What every man and woman can learn from bodybuilders about permanent fat loss.”
What I did is I just found and modeled the most successful people.
It was simply a matter of finding people who had achieved the right outcome and then copying what they did. I knew from having been a bodybuilder for so many years that bodybuilders were the best people to model, because they don’t just focus on weight loss.
Out of necessity, they must focus on keeping muscle while losing the fat, and that’s a very key distinction.
The conventional diets, which are what most people gravitate toward because that’s what’s most advertised in the mainstream media, are very much focused on scale weight and pounds. I’m sure you’ve seen the ads, “Lose 30 pounds in 30 days,” or “Lose 9
pounds every 11 days,” or—this one’s very common, especially
Skyrocket Your Fat Loss Success!
with the low-carb diets—“Lose 8 to 15 pounds your first two weeks.” It sounds great, but you really can’t lose 8 to 15 pounds of body fat in two weeks. If they say the weight is fat, then these are bogus claims, and I know the FTC will agree when they catch them. If you do lose that much weight, you might lose a few pounds of fat, several pounds of muscle and a lot of water. But that’s entirely the wrong goal. So I think it’s important that you choose the right goal and the right role models. Bodybuilders have a system for losing fat and keeping muscle, that no mainstream diet program can touch with a ten-foot pole, and that’s what I teach to anybody and everybody.
It’s not even a diet program; it’s a lifestyle, really. It’s a way of eating and exercising that you stick with for the rest of your life, not for the next 30 days or the next 12 weeks. It’s incredibly effective, and it achieves the right outcome, keeping the muscle and losing the fat.
So these principles can be applied by anyone, and I don’t think anyone should be intimidated by the word “bodybuilding.” I mean, if you think about it, anybody who picks up even a 5- or 10-pound dumbbell is bodybuilding. Lift weights, and you’re building your body.
TOM NICOLI:
You know, that information is fantastic. When I work with people (and as a hypnotherapist, I’m working with the mind exclusively, which leads to what the body can do as we change behaviors), my most difficult time with weight-loss clients, I have to tell you, is reframing their way of thinking. That is, it’s not about weight, it’s about fat, and that this is not a timeframe situation. That the time will pass regardless, and depending on what we do today will dictate the results over time.
So there is obviously the one proven result, one proven method, and that is healthy eating and exercise. And even the FDA has put out a report, and it was put out a long time ago, but was again recently updated, which warns people of the dangers of magic pills, the magic bullet, and how harmful and potentially dangerous taking that approach of getting the quick fix can be. But what you and I both realize is that we’re up against the impatience of human nature and this instant gratification society we live in, but yet life 6 Tom Venuto
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isn’t an instant. Life is ongoing, and that’s what people are missing. Aren’t they?
TOM VENUTO: Yes, absolutely.
TOM NICOLI:
I know that too many times people are either overwhelmed with information they really can’t apply, or they don’t receive anything that can really help them. You say that what you’ve developed is a 100% guaranteed system for losing body fat, based on the little-known nutrition secrets of bodybuilders. Will you share a few of your best nutrition secrets with our listeners right now?
TOM VENUTO: Yes, absolutely. But first, I do think you hit on an important point there when you said, “most people are overwhelmed with information.”
You know, in this day and age, the problem isn’t the lack of information. It’s too much information. So sometimes I think that looking for “the little known secrets,” if you mean the little details, can, in the beginning, be detrimental and actually cause what I call
“paralysis by analysis.” Paralysis by analysis is where people are afraid to start, they’re afraid to make a mistake, they’re afraid to look foolish, or they’re afraid to fail, so they don’t do anything at all until they have all the details first, or because they have too many little details and it’s so overwhelming, they don’t know where to start.
I think that details matter, and there are some nutrition methods you could certainly call secrets that most people in the general public aren’t aware of. But before you get into those details, I think it’s more important to focus on the more “obvious”
fundamentals.
There’s something called “The Pareto Principle,” which is also known as the 80/20 rule. It was created by the Economist Vilfredo Pareto in the beginning of the 16th Century, and to paraphrase him, he said that you have to separate the vital few things from the trivial many things. In other words, the very first thing you have to do is master the fundamentals before you worry about little details or “secrets.”
Skyrocket Your Fat Loss Success!
In my fat loss system, there are four fundamental pillars that must support your program. The first one is Strength Training; the second is Cardio Training; the third is Nutrition; and the fourth is Mental Training, which we already touched on. If you’re missing any one of those four, then all the attention to details and all the cutting edge nutrition secrets in the world aren’t going to help you.
Most people just go on diets, and what we don’t need is another diet. We need to change our habits, change our behaviors, and change our lifestyles.
What’s missing from most weight loss programs is the exercise part. I believe that it’s better to burn the fat than starve the fat.
When you starve the fat with strict diets and you cut calories too low, it works initially, and you see that very gratifying initial drop on the scale. But what happens to everyone eventually is you plateau, because your body adapts, and your metabolism adjusts to the reduced food intake. Your body thinks you’re starving, so your body just starts burning fewer calories. Strength training and exercise help because strength training increases your lean body mass. It helps you keep your muscle, which prevents your metabolism from slowing down. It also allows you to eat a little bit more. So instead of a severe cut in calories, you’re burning the fat instead of starving the fat.
TOM NICOLI:
Tom, I’m going to stop you right there, because I think people need to hear that again, because I know—and I’m sure you’ve experienced this—that people are floored when they hear “you can eat more.” They’re so used to starving themselves and, as you know from your education and training in hypnosis and NLP, the subconscious, instinctive part of us goes right into that survival mode and doesn’t release anything, thinking we can’t find or kill food.
TOM VENUTO: Exactly.
TOM NICOLI:
So, continue, please.
TOM VENUTO: Well, you start with these four fundamentals—I like to think of them as pillars, because they literally hold up your success—and without all of them in place at the same time, you’re in a 8 Tom Venuto
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precarious position where your success could easily collapse and crumble.
TOM NICOLI:
Yeah, mention those again, Tom. And please, everyone listening, write these down, because this is obviously the foundation.
TOM VENUTO: Right, the foundation.
Pillar number one is Strength Training. Weight lifting, in my opinion, is the best form of strength training, and I strongly recommend that every man and woman start a weight training program immediately. Don’t wait until after you’ve lost the fat—
start now. But I do know a lot of people who start strength training with body weight exercises instead of barbells, dumbbells, or machines. I mean, if you do a push-up, you are lifting your body weight...
TOM NICOLI:
Sure.
TOM VENUTO: ...There are various forms of strength training, but some form of strength training must be in the mix if you want to be successful, long-term. Without it, you’re going to lose muscle when you diet.
The second pillar is Cardio Training, which is also known as aerobic exercise, which could be walking, jogging, cycling, cardio machines, classes—whatever you enjoy.
The third pillar is Nutrition; and the fourth is Mental Training—
addressing various issues on a subconscious level, setting goals, looking at your value and belief systems, and becoming more aware of what you think about and dwell on mentally every day.
Now, once you have those four pillars in place, you’re going to start getting good results—guaranteed. And that’s when you can fine-tune and start nitpicking and working on specific details and using “little known secrets” to take it to an even higher level.
Some of the techniques in my program that aren’t so well known in the mainstream, are ways to accelerate fat loss by customizing your nutrition and training program. No two people are the same.
There are different body types, different body structures, and there are different metabolic types.
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I think one of the most important distinctions that you can make is to understand how well your body processes carbohydrates. In other words, are you carb-tolerant or carb-intolerant? One of the big debates in nutrition today is still, “Should you do the low-carb diet, or do you do the high-carb diet, or somewhere in the middle?” Ultimately, the truth for most people will probably lie somewhere in the middle, with balance. “Balance” is just common sense in my book. But some people will undoubtedly do better with a little bit less carbohydrates; some people with a little bit more. So what I teach people is how to tweak and fine-tune your carbohydrate level to fit your body type and your metabolic type.
It’s really important to understand your body type. There’s an entire chapter in my book about how to figure out your body type and how to tweak and fine-tune your nutrition program to fit your body type. Understanding that one size doesn’t fit all is very, very important.
TOM NICOLI:
Now is that information difficult for people to understand and apply?
TOM VENUTO: It’s very simple. You know, some people have complex nutrition systems where they talk about metabolic typing, and they may have you go and get blood tests, or you may have to fill out a complex questionnaire. Those things are fine and can be helpful, but what I do is much, much simpler.
What I recommend is to start with a baseline. This baseline consists of fundamentals that apply universally to almost everyone. Without these fundamentals in place, the fine tuning will have much less impact on your results. Once you have your baseline in place, you can simply begin to systematically adjust your intake one variable at a time, things like grams of carbohydrates, for example, and by getting in a feedback loop, you can figure out exactly how your body processes and responds to food in a very, very short period of time.
So you start on the baseline plan. You follow the plan for seven days and then you measure. The way to measure is not just with the scale, but you measure body fat. You can do that with a variety of methods. The most common is the skinfold caliper. Then you’ll 10 Tom Venuto
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figure out how much of your weight is fat, how much is muscle, and you’ll see the difference over the previous week.
If you improve, then you don’t change anything. You just keep doing the same thing. You find what works. You do more of what works.
If a week goes by and you don’t improve, then you’re going to make an adjustment. You’ll tweak one of the nutrition or training variables that I explain in my program (such as your food type selections, your carb gram intake, your caloric intake, or the intensity, frequency, or duration of your cardio training). Then you continue for another week with your newly adjusted regimen and measure results again.
Iit’s primarily a matter of getting yourself into a feedback loop and adjusting your program based on your results. A lot of people tend to get caught up on a rigid system, following rules, and yet they’re not paying attention to their actual real world results. That’s really what it’s all about; the results you get.
TOM NICOLI:
You know, I taught a class one night, which I do monthly for my clients. I have a lot of nurses that come to me, you know, wanting to stay healthy, being in the health field. And one of them mentioned the blood test that you were talking about and said it was very expensive. And yet, I don’t think that it really mattered because, after she got the results, she didn’t know what to do with them. And what you’re saying is that by just learning this information in your system and in your program, in your book, that people can do this in the privacy of their home. Quite frankly, it’s understandable that some people are embarrassed to get all kinds of tests, and they’d like to be able to do this on their own, because they don’t want to be embarrassed with themselves. So there is an expedience factor there, and there’s a comfort zone in your system as well.
Now, Tom, when I was looking at your site, I noticed that Chad Tackett, who’s the President and CEO of Global-Fitness.com, wrote, “Tom Venuto, in my opinion, is the leading, very best fitness expert and author of our time, and much of my and our clients’ success is due to his teachings. He and his fat loss system
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are on the cutting edge of science and don’t miss a nutritional tip, trick, secret, or strategy in achieving amazing results. What’s more, they are offered in an easy-to-understand and easy-to-follow format.”
That’s very impressive. But you know, Tom, honesty is the only key here, and honestly, I can say anything and you can say anything, and people expect us to say things like this, and a lot of people listening may expect somebody like Chad Tackett to say something like this. However, I also saw in the stacks of testimonials that I know you have, that there are some really, really impressive success stories. And I’d like to read a few of them because real people experiencing real results are what really matter.
Let’s face it: it doesn’t matter if somebody who has all the tools and all the appliances and all the fitness equipment available to them can make this happen. But I want to hear about people in real-life situations who have to get through their day.
Jerry McBride of Philadelphia, wrote, “When I started the program in September, I was 248 pounds with 24% body fat. With Tom’s information, I’ve been able to lose 43 pounds, all of it fat.
My body fat is now 12%. I also no longer spend $400 a month on supplements.”
And another from Tracy Heptin, who said, “Thank God for your program, because I’ve only been on it for just over a week and I’m already seeing results. I’m fitting into pants that I couldn’t get into seven days ago. It’s a wonderful thing to finally find something that works. How refreshing.”
And one more that I thought stood out, from Lynn Ramirez in California, “Burn The Fat, Feed the Muscle has changed my life. I have lost three dress sizes in four months and feel better than ev