Customizing how much of each, as well as what supplements and herbs each person should take, is what I do for our personal training and weight loss clients.

However the best diet is the one that you can do!

We don’t live in the Olympic training center and we don’t have the perfect life for mass building, weight loss or fat burning. 3x a day training, perfect meals, lots of sleep.

So I need to modify things according to what each client can do.

Recently one of my clients wrote me a great email with lots of questions. I won’t use his real name here, but you will be able to relate to this.

My reply and advice is given at the bottom of the post. Is it the same as my usual advice…? probably not, but its the BEST that this client can do at the moment and that is what matters.

This is not a guy who is trying to find an easy way out, it’s a client with real trouble, so I’m going to help him find a good, or at least “least bad” solution so he gets results.

Hi Coach Jon,

I am finding it difficult to stick to the diet plan.

I can’t seem to find a suitable breakfast. I get up at 6:30am and hit out to your gym by 7:00am so that I can work out before work. Cooking breakfast just is not an option for me. The only choice I have around me conveniently is to grab some breakfast on the way out at the Kopitiam, i.e. Horlicks and Half boiled egss.  I thought some instant oats or cereal would be a good choice. Or would some berries and fruit be a better choice.

As for lunch, I normally take customers out to lunch. Meaning I can grab Japanese or a Steak, which is presentable enough for customers. I avoid rice, bread and potatoes. So I guess this is ok.

As for dinner, I am not much of a dinner person on the weekdays, because I am either stuck in the office, where I have only instant drinks or muesli bars or biscuits with me. If I manage to go home on time, (rarely), I grab dinner at the nearby kopitiam, i.e. mixed rice, where I normally have half a bowl of rice, meats and veggies.

I would like to be more committed to a sustainable diet plan but I am lack of choices.

Are meal replacement drink advisable? Or any other alternative?

Thanks.
My reply:

Hi Jack (name changed), I appreciate your desire, dedication and great attitude! Nutrition is a super important part of success.

The best diet is the one that you can do!

Best option – prepare food on weekends for the entire week
Next best option – Whatever you can do…:)

Unfortunately from what you described as your food intake, its pretty far from what you need to do to get good results. So here is what I would do If I were you:)

I would get an organic protein shake called “Whey Stronger” and another one called “Primal Clear Px” along with what are known as “branch chained amino acids”, you can use these to replace meals.

For breakfast, One day I would take the whey stronger, the next day, the primal clear. I would get both so that I don’t eat the same thing everyday which can lead to allergy.

While it’s not as good as meat, a good shake + some nuts is a decent option for those meals that you skip.

I would also get an organic veggie and fruit drink called “primal greens” and “primal reds” so that your alkaline and anti-oxidant needs are met. I would drink this 2-3x/day and it tastes pretty nice (for a veggie drink!!).

Lunch seems ok. Steaks  or sashimi are great. Fries + sushi or rice filled handrolls are not:) So just beware of your food choices. Remember to eat the ginger with the sashimi because the pickled ginger helps prevent absorption of heavy metals found in the fish.

For dinner, instant drinks + museli = instantly fat so we need to work on that.

You can have another shake for dinner that would be fine.

For snacks you can have the veggie drink, a few nuts, eggs if possible, and 10-20 amino acid capsules. This snack should keep your body in fat burning and muscle building mode!

Just over a month ago I attended a seminar/internship with Canadian National Weightlifting Coach Pierre Roy. His method of teaching the very technical Olympic lifts was the fastest and most effective I have ever seen.

My own technique has improved alot ever since practicing for a few weeks since I’ve been back from this internship.

The way Coach Roy teaches, may be equivalent technically to what is used in other countries Olympic lifting coaching. But the main point is that it can be taught in … 1 hour as opposed to 1 year! (For a fairly coordinated guy).

Just the same for anyone trying to achieve their fitness goals. Both our fitness bootcamp and personal training programs have the same idea – time saving, maximum efficiency and world class results.

• CVS Pharmacy, Inc.
• General Nutrition Corporation (GNC)
• NOW Health Group, Inc.
• Omega Protein, Inc.
• Pharmavite LLC
• Rite Aid Corporation
• Solgar, Inc.
• Twinlab Corporation

I recommend only medical grade brands with proven track records. At our gym we use mostly Poliquin brand supplements. An article written about the latest fish oil contamination situation is at Poliquin’s website here.

While the report is not outright against these brands, my tolerance for contamination in supplements is… ZERO! I mean… how much poison would you like to eat? Just a little? Of course not… NONE at all! (Or at least as little as is humanly possible). Because the supplement industry is so unregulated, I choose carefully which products and which brands to sell. And my clients never have to worry about reports like the one in this link to ABC news.

After all, the bulk of the cost of producing fish oils is not the extraction of the oil. It is the PURIFICATION of the oil. So that is where the sub par companies (all except a few in the world) will cut costs.

Supplements are not something you want to save a few dollars on. The great supplements cost just a bit more, but have alot less nonsense in them, and have alot better potency!

For higher volume work, try creatine with beta alanine:) To use beta alanine (contact me to get some:)) test the dosage by starting at 2-3g pre and during workout. Then up the dosage gram by gram each workout till you find a itchy/tingling sensation on your skin. That is the limit for you and your tolerance.

Results:

• Body fat (everybody wants to know this!): 1-2% drop. 2mm on the 1 site supra illiac. 2mm on the abs. I did not biosig myself (because I can’t self measure 12 sites!) but there is a clear difference.
• Waist drop 3cm each down to 78cm (smallest point) and 81cm (around belly button)
• Weight down 2kg total.
• I did the same food today, and I feel quite drained (did not take an off day the last 7 days to keep the lymph fluid flowing) so I just did some lower weight prowler pushes. Anaerobic capacity was not bad I still managed 8 laps of my gym’s 35m track with only a slight desire to throw up haha.
• Bowel movements were good, I am also getting great sleep. At least 7 hours straight at night and a nap in the day. Once again, the topical magnesium + capsule magnesium combination seems to do very well. I highly recommend this combination especially if you KNOW that your digestive system has issues. The topical application (on skin) is wonderful for absorption.

I would probably do shorter cleanses of 1-3 days every month for health. In the future I will rotate the “extra supplements” to detox new things. I have a package for detoxing heavy metals, one for plastics and one for estrogen. All the detoxes will start when my far-infra red sauna comes in.

I’m very sure many of my personal training and fitness boot camp clients will benefit from a detox.

I am a healthy and quite a “clean” guy and I benefitted. Imagine somebody who has not taken care of themselves in the past or has worked/lived in a more toxic area or has genetic tendencies to store/be affected by toxins. They will benefit even more!

I lost a bit of fat although this is NOT I repeat NOT a fat burning plan. There are ways to burn fat faster. It is just that those ways get “stuck” by poor health or toxicity. That is that this plan is for. Detox removes obstacles to future progress. And that is part of reaching your goals!

Athletes benefit because toxicity can affect tendon and muscle strength. As well as aerobic and anaerobic endurance as it prevents cells from producing energy effectively. So guys and girls wanting to be strong should be on a detox at least twice a year as well.

THE END of detox!

I will slowly reintroduce food to my life! I think I need to put some fat back into my diet ASAP. I miss it even more than protein.

A question came in about carbohydrate levels, yes they are quite high during the detox because the protein used is rice based and will have some carbs. But its only 100+g which is not going to help you strip fat, but its not high enough to make you a tubby either. Also the carbs are always with protein and often with fiber so its not so bad:)

The diet is same as before. But today was hard to resist. I had a family dinner with really nice food. Satay, Salmon soup and veggies with garlic. Very healthy and actually good for you food! And for the sake of the detox (and all of you readers!) I ate NONE OF IT! It was hard! But if I can do it, so can you when you detox!

Bowel movements are evening out. I think the majority of the bad stuff is out, now the bowel movements are smooth but the volume is alot less.

So far the results…

• Leaner by about 1.5% body-fat
• Maintained muscle (due to high doses – up to 70-80 caps of amino acids/day)
• Better sleep
• Better bowel movements
• More energy (due to better sleep)
• Many other people report clearer minds, but I did not notice that that much – but I’m pretty clear headed usually haha.

But am getting tired of the taste and thats part of what made sitting at the dinner so hard!

Training was alright, power snatch weight for 3 reps stayed alright at 75kg. Can’t wait to train hard again and eat lots of good quality food!

Me looking sad and not eating the yummy stuff

See my plate with medicinal food, while there was much nicer stuff all around!

Food was same except I ate a big bowl of seaweed + veggie soup at lunch.

I trained arms and shoulders today, the strength is clearly lower, and so is the ability to recover between sets. Most body fat sites are dropping a little 1-2mm which is quite slow considering considering the results I can get for clients haha. But because this is kind of a higher carb diet than I usually have (100+g/day) my love handle site (carb intake related) isnt dropping much.

Im not too worried though. This isn’t some radical fast fat burning diet, it’s for cleaning up stuff inside. I believe it potentates further fat burning in the future and sets your potential “standard” bodyfat level lower.

Some things to take note if you want to try such a detox program

• You need to be taste tolerant – this is not for gourmet taste buds
• You need to be good at swallowing capsules – there are lots of these and it would be best if you can swallow at least 4 at one time easily
• You need to be able to handle social situations and get out of messing up the detox. I had a lunch today with an old friend from school. I managed to eat a small house salad and some broccoli while he ate a large yummy rib-eye ARGH.

Bowels were great as usual, weight loss is not too much considering the limited amount of food I’m eating. So far about 1-1.5kg in 4 days.

Some water/glycogen loss. It can be felt in workouts, the first few sets are ok, but feel drained after that.

Gasp on my 5th set of chin-ups I could only do 6 good ones- barely! Normally  I can do 6 with 30kg weight added! But its only temporary. I also think heavy lifting is slightly affected because there is ZERO fat in this detox.

Fat is important in building the nervous system. You can maintain muscle (like I do with the big bunch of amino acids) but strength is hard to keep without saturated fats – yes that’s right nutritionists – go have a spasm!… saturated fats!

Sleep was not as good last night. I actually stayed up late reading. Also I forgot to move my work phone away from my bed. No mistakes tonight!:) Sleep is important!