As beach season arrives, I’d like to initiate dialogue about fat-loss, and even turn the blog into a Q & A or troubleshooting hub for general adipose tissue — AKA, fat — destruction. The first installment features 10 fat-loss tips for men:

1. Weigh yourself daily

No, this is not unhealthy obsessive behavior. Yes, I realize water and sodium and carbohydrate intake can cause significant fluctuations in weight, even on a day-to-day basis. Still, excelling at anything requires constant, impartial feedback. Daily scale accountability will focus you on your goal every morning.

2. Don’t watch mindless TV

Merely seeing food can trigger a physiological hunger response. And let’s be honest, the types of foods seen in commercials aren’t conducive to visible abs. Boredom, too, destroys physiques: if women eat their feelings, men eat their boredom. Do something, and you won’t snack; do nothing — e.g., watch TV — and you will be tempted. Aim for output: creating something — anything — activates higher brain functions which relegate hunger to the back burner.

3. Avoid excess hunger

Hunger potentiates salty and sweet taste buds; salty or sweet foods will taste better when you’re hungry. This spells disaster for those with bingeing tendencies: miss a few meals during a hectic workday and a slice or two of frozen pizza when you get home becomes the entire pie with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s to boot. The solution? Eat offensively: every few hours. Don’t go hours on end without food and previously irresistible cravings become negligible.

4. Snack on nuts/monounsaturated fats

Most nuts are rich in monounsaturated fat, protein, and fiber. This combination exerts a powerful hunger-blunting effect. 15-20 nuts constitutes a snack (try adding a protein shake for a host of additional benefits), and 50 nuts can be used as a meal replacement. Monounsaturated fats in general are very satiating; consider adding high quality extra-virgin olive oil or my personal favorite, macadamia nut oil, to your pantry. (Don’t skimp when purchasing olive oil; real extra-virgin olive oil has a natural peppery finish and a deep, green aroma of grass and artichoke. It is not bland and not merely used to grease pans.)

5. Make your intentions public

Set a target weight-loss date and share it with a loved one, or participate in a team-based fat-loss contest. Enter into a head-to-head bet with a friend, with sizable stakes — men flourish in competition. Added social incentives are powerful motivators. Like Warren Buffett says, you want some “skin in the game.”

6. Make one small nutritional improvement per day, and one large behavioral change per week

Look, I get it: fat-loss is a very emotional process. When people embark on a diet, they want to lose 10 lbs. yesterday. They depart culinary hedonism — burgers, fries, and soda for lunch and pizza and beer for dinner — and opt for a monastic diet of ice water and steamed tilapia filets. And an asparagus spear. Coupled with hundreds of dollars of supplements. This lasts all of three days, and when they inevitably fall off the wagon it’s bad: 17 Pop-Tarts bad. A whole cheesecake bad. Too much change all at once overwhelms.

Bypass this ascetic doom loop and instead implement the above advice. When compounded over several months, it leads to dramatic changes in appearance and healthy, new habits; when examined microcosmically, in the course of a week or two, it’s painless. Exchange lunchtime soda for water (small daily improvement), and establish a Sunday ritual of grocery shopping and planning your meals for the upcoming week (large behavioral change), for example.

7. Eat a man’s breakfast

Yes, carbs can be beneficial in the morning, but protein and fat bestow real fullness. Don’t shun whole eggs in your omelet or peanut butter on your toast; man cannot subsist on cereal alone. Consume more calories in your first meal of the day and you will eat less during the rest of it.

8. Practice slow meals and hara hachi bu

Eat slowly and mindfully. Learn to savor, and actually taste, food. Converse with friends over dinner, listen and contribute. Don’t bolt down your food in a hectic rush to return to whatever you were last doing. The quicker you eat, the more you tend to eat. Experience one thing at a time, including meals; they weren’t meant to be multitasked.

Why? It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to send “I’m full” signals to your brain. Complete a meal in less than that, and you’ll have no biofeedback on how much you ate until it’s too late. Meals that exceed 20 minutes confer two-fold weight-loss benefits: you’ll be fuller longer, and you’ll feel full from less food.

Hara hachi bu is a Okinawan phrase meaning, loosely, “eat ’til 80% full.” Okinawans also have the longest life expectancy in the world; they’re doing something right. If that doesn’t appease you, elite Russian athletes have a saying, “always be a little hungry,” which they rigorously apply in the gym and in the kitchen. Turns out humans weren’t meant to eat until drowsy.

9. Don’t drink calories

Think of your apportioned daily calorie total as a bank account: you only have so much to spend before you’re broke. If I can “spend” 2,500 calories in a day without blowing my budget — i.e., I can still lose weight — then I’d much rather spend those calories on food than drinks. Why? Because there’s plenty of things I can drink that cost me nothing. Tasty, zero-calorie beverages abound: water, teas, coffee (black), diet sodas, and Crystal Light. There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but there exists a free refreshment to go with it, at least when we’re talking calories.

10) Butt in gym

Don’t complain about lack of weight-loss if your butt is not in the gym. Regularly. Make a routine, and adhere. Also don’t obsess over the workout itself; consistency trumps any “magic” program. Here’s a rule of thumb: when you leave the gym, someone walking in should readily perceive that you just worked out — that you exerted yourself. Sweat, lose your breath, exhaust some muscles. Don’t just show up, get your butt in the gym.

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Questions on how to pair this advice with some supplements that work? Call us at 800-499-4810

Buy iForce Adipoxil from Best Price Nutrition for $24.99

Just as Jack3d’s retail price caused an upheaval in the pricing structure of pre-workout powders, iFORCE’s Adipoxil is turning the fat burner category’s baseline pricing upside down. 120 capsules for $24.99 is unheard of, and doesn’t come with a dubious dosing schedule as seen on many similar products, e.g., “take 3-4 capsules, 3 times per day.” With a maximum consumption of 4 capsules per day - many people only needing 2 per day, at least initially - Adipoxil is perhaps the best balance of price and quality in the fat-loss category. Even if you aggressively dosed it at 4 capsules right out of the gate, you would still get a 30-day supply for less than a dollar a day ($.83, to be exact), and the blend appears to be more than on par with many of the less affordable products, too. If you need to iFORCE yourself to lose some weight for the impending summer swimsuit season, look no further (but please overlook my egregious pun).

Adipoxil is based off of three matrices (iFORCE is really big on matrices nowadays, take a look at any of their products): uncoupling metabolic adipose destruction (UMAD) complex, thermophoric mental incinerator (TMI), and lipolytic oxidation protocol. As to why the first two have acronyms but the third one does not, or why the first is a complex as well as a matrix and the third is both a protocol and a matrix, is beyond me. I also cannot read the first one, “UMAD”, with mentally answering, “yes, I am mad, damnit.” Sometimes this industry just leaves me scratching my head. Does this product come with a secret decoder ring, like in Christmas Story? “Be sure to… take your… Adipoxil?” Alas, the matrices do have potent ingredients, despite their names. I’m sure they meant well.

I like my matrices as compounds AND protocols!

The first matrix is the UMAD complex, which consists of 3,3 diiodo L-thyronine, 3,5 diiodo L-thyronine. This compound can be referred to as T2, whereas the main form of thyroid hormone in your body is T3 (triiodo L-thyronine). Although some people have referred to T2 as a prohormone, it is very much an active thyroid hormone (albeit one that your body doesn’t produce or use on its own). Here’s a list of effects that thyroid hormones have in the body:

• Increased oxygen consumption (metabolic rate)
• Increased thermogenesis (heat production)
• Increased number of beta-adrenergic receptors in the heart, skeletal muscle, adipose tissues, and lymphocytes (these receptors bind fat-mobilizing hormones)
• Increased sensitivity to catecholamines (fat-mobilizing, fight-or-flight hormones)
• Increased number of red blood cells and increased oxygen delivery
• Increased lypolysis (breakdown of fat)
• Increased liver glycogen breakdown
• Increased liver glucose production
• Increased intestinal glucose absorption
• Increased protein turnover
• Decreased cholesterol levels

Many of these effects make thyroid hormones very beneficial in fat-loss efforts. The second matrix is the thermophoric mental incinerator. The main component of this is Advantra Z, which is a patented extract of bitter orange (citrus aurantium). Specifically, it contains the adrenergic amines synephrine, N-methyltyramine, hordenine, octopamine, tyramine. It is touted to do the following:

• Stimulate thermogenesis
• Reduce weight
• Increase lean muscle mass to total body mass
• Improve athletic performance
• Suppress appetite

There is some research showing that these ingredients can work in synergy with one another, i.e., this amine blend would be superior to any similar dosage of one of them alone. It is worth noting, too, that I’m unaware of anyone else using Advantra Z in a fat burner right now, so it certainly is novel and anecdotally it definitely “feels” different than most other products I’ve used. It is not a jittery fat burner by any means. The company with the patent on Advantra Z attributes this to the amines used not being readily able to cross the blood brain barrier, and thus the effects are exerted more in the peripheral nervous system/tissue than in the brain. Additionally, the amines preferentially stimulate the beta-3 adrenergic receptors with minimal impact on alpha 1,2 and beta 1,2 receptors, which means that Advantra Z increases the metabolic rate (thermogenesis) without affecting heart rate or blood pressure. There is also additional octopamine HCL, presumptively due to its strong affinity for, again, the beta-3 adrenergic receptor.

The final matrix is the lipolytic oxidation protocol. This section has perhaps the most “common” ingredients you might see in a product in this category, but that’s not to say that they’re bad. Rather, you might consider this section the “usual suspects”: cayenne pepper, raspberry ketones, caffeine anhydrous, chlorogenic acid (50% green coffee bean extract), fucoxanthin, and 10% yohimbine HCL. Just as the name implies, many of these ingredients are aimed at liberating and releasing free fatty acids to be used for energy (oxidized). The newcomer in the group might be chlorogenic acid (50% green coffee bean extract). Watch for this one to become more prevalent in the industry; it has some very interesting effects on blood sugar stabilization and preferential fatty acid oxidation (rather than glucose).

Green coffee beans: little known fat-loss weapon?

When I discuss fat burners, I have often said that it’s the indirect effects that ultimately allow you to burn fat: you will have more energy to train harder and thus burn more calories, your appetite will be suppressed so you will eat less calories, and the beneficial effects on mood may allow you to adhere to a diet plan because you don’t feel lethargic or deprived. Most “fat burners” don’t directly burn fat - it’s somewhat of a misnomer. Adipoxil, however, may be ready to turn this aspect of fat-loss on its head too. From feeling this stuff firsthand and seeing the synergy amongst the ingredients, I think it’s about as close as anyone has come to a true fat burner in the literal sense: something that directly oxidizes a greater amount of fatty acids than you would without. And at $24.99, just about everyone can use a bit of direct fatty acid oxidation this summer, don’t you think?

Buy iForce Adipoxil from Best Price Nutrition for $24.99, or give us a call at 800-499-4810 if you still have questions!

*All these drinks are “diet” drinks because they have no or negligible calories, but you can certainly enjoy them whenever. I also probably would not be able to diet successfully without them.*

1. Holiday Mocha

These taste fantastic. I’ve been drinking one every morning, especially since the weather has turned here in Chicago.

2. Hot Green Tea

When dieting, I take green tea extract (as should you), but I love hot green tea as well. I feel this “heats me up” just as well as the extract. Usually I buy an enormous 100-bag matcha blend from Costco’s Kirkland brand.

3. Yerba Mate Tea

This is a unique tea that contains the full “theo/thea” line of amino acids: theanine, theobromine, and theophylline (you may recognize theanine from green tea and theobromine from chocolate). I think I read somewhere that it is the only known source that has all three, or maybe the only tea, but don’t quote me on that. In any case, it’s not common to find all three together and you get a really smooth energy/alertness from it.

We sell this one, and I’m also enamored with Cruz de Malta Yerba Mate. Finally, there is an awesome offer from Tim Ferriss and our friends at Samovar where you can buy this 4-Hour Workweek Organic Mate Set; 100% of profits go to charity and you can pick the charity of your choice through DonorsChoose.org. The last one makes an awesome holiday gift.

4) SoBe 0 Cal Life Water

Unbelievable taste for something that contains no artificial sweeteners or sugar. Uses stevia and a natural sugar alcohol called erythritol. My favorites are Açaí Fruit Punch and Yumberry Pomegranate.

5) Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi

I’m sure that I’m going to catch a lot of flak for this, but I really don’t think that aspartame is proven dangerous in humans. Before you throw PubMed links at me, remember: humans aren’t rats. Aspartame is irrefutably less deleterious than diabetes, so don’t throw the “regular pop is better than diet” argument at me, either.

Look, the jury is still out and there’s no body count; no coroner has ever pronounced death from acute or insidious aspartame poisoning. And damnit, these are great when you’re starving on a diet. File this last bit under “things I know, but can’t prove”: the carbonation in pop fills you up and blunts hunger, too.

6. Xyience Xenergy Drinks

These things are sinfully good. An indulgence with just enough caffeine to wake you up, but not enough that you can’t drink 3 per day and stack with Cytolean V2. The kicker? These don’t have any aspartame or artificial coloring, either, so if I wasn’t able to talk the anti-aspartame zealots off their pedestal, no worries with these.

Seriously, try one. This list isn’t in any particular order but if it was, these might be my #1, especially Blueberry Pom.

7. Kukicha Tea

This one’s a bit more unorthodox, but it’s an awesome tea that not many of people are aware of.  Kukicha is made from twigs and it has a sweet creamy flavor. It’s also great because it has the lowest caffeine content of all traditional teas so you can drink it later in the afternoon/evening in lieu of undesired snacking. I enjoy Eden Foods’ organic offering.

8. Crystal Light

Do I really need to explain this one? An absolute staple to keep in your refrigerator at all times to fend off moments of weakness and kick a sweet tooth to the curb. Cran-Apple is the best, in my humble opinion.

9. Diet Snapple Iced Tea

There are three great flavors: peach, lemon, and raspberry. Crack one open and pour on ice after workouts to quench thirst. Repeat as needed.10. Water

Like that girl (guy?) you dated in high school you always call when you’re home on break from college, water is comfortable, familiar, and tasty (hopefully). And it’s also always there when nothing else sounds appealing. So drink it (or, you know, death is imminent).

Need help with other products for fat-loss or dieting? Give us a call at 800-499-4810, and we’ll help you find the stack that’s right for you.