Reader Tip On Losing Fat

Here's another great tip from subscriber Dave Beseke. Dave is offering some great advice to Greg who wrote in a few weeks ago about losing body fat.

Dan,

I have another idea for Greg - this method works for me when I'm trying to lose fat. It seems like my metabolism changes after about 2 weeks on any given diet program. I think the body just adjusts to a certain level of calories/exercise and then you have to change something. What I've done in the past to get around that problems is something I got from the handbook that used to come in the old 20 pack MetRx boxes.

Determine your calorie baseline first, then calculate 2 numbers - 30% under and 30% over(that works best for me - you may need to adjust it) based on lean body mass only.

Now, each morning, flip a coin. Heads means low day, tails means high day. The only exceptions are if you get more that 2 high days or 4 low days in a row, in those cases you automatically switch to the other level the next day.

You should also experiment a bit with these limits - yours may be different. If you are really overweight you may also want to start with a couple of low days before you begin flipping, just don't do more that 3 or 4. This seems to keep my metabolism from dropping, and the high days also seem to help preserve muscle mass.

For each 10 lbs of fat loss you should recalc the numbers using whatever formula you are using to calc your baseline. The randomization also appears to be important to keep your body guessing - just flipping between the 2 numbers on a set schedule does not work as well.