Introduction
What can you learn from us that will get you the eyepopping, jaw-dropping, cut physique you’re after? Plenty! After all, we’ve been training together for more than 10 years at the IRON MAN Training & Research Center, and almost every summer during that time we’ve taken our bodies to their limits attempting to get into our leanest, most muscular shapes p o s s i b l e . We’ve experimented with countless fatloss programs and theories during that d e c a d e l e a r n i n g lessons along the way. That trial and erro r ( t h e re were lots of errors!) helped us hone our fat attack to principles that work fast, and we’re positive that you can follow our lead and accelerate fat loss to the extreme (that’s why we wrote this book)
The fact that women have produced rapid results says a lot because women are notorious for having a much more difficult time losing bodyfat than men. A big reason: They have less testosterone, a male hormone that accelerates fat burning, and m o re estrogen, a female h o rmone that promotes fat storage. (Incidentally, the fatter a man gets, the lower his testosterone and the higher his estrogen, so adding fat becomes easier and easier the fatter he gets.
How’s that for a cruel turn of events? Talk about a snowball effect!) One of our female subjects was Becky Holman, Steve’s wife, and the success she had with our X-treme Lean principles and diet were even better than we imagined (and getting there was much easier than she thought; she and Steve hardly argued— and they were both on X-treme Lean diets at the same time!). You’ll see exactly how she did it later in this book.
As for us, our last ripping phase was the most spectacular we’ve experienced. We got in incredible shape, our most muscular and cut conditions ever, and most of those re s u l t s came within a one-month window. The really exciting discovery we made is that it’s possible to burn fat quickly while packing on lean muscle.
Most experts say that you’ll have a diff i c u l t time even holding on to your muscle while losing fat. They insist that muscle loss on a diet is inevitable. Not from our experience. We transformed ourselves, building pounds of muscle as we dropped ugly fat in a mere 35-day period—and no drugs were involved. The quick results we achieved were unprecedented in our many years of ripping up. Even we were stunned when we saw our before and after photos!
How can you possibly eat more and still strip away fat? No, bulimia isn’t the answer. It has to do with eating more often five to six times a day and the composition of each of those meals. Hmm, maybe a diff e rent term is in order because if y o u ’ re used to gorging on two or three big meals a day, you w o n ’t really consider these smaller, more frequent feedings “meals. They’re more like mini-meals designed to keep your blood sugar steady (no cravings or energy dips), your muscle tissue intact (you won’t burn it for energy) and your fat store s shrinking
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T h a t ’s in direct contrast to how most of us were raised to eat the thre e s q u a re-meals-a-day approach. Take a look at what happens when you follow that classic American eating schedule and you’ll see why you can get fatter and fatter if y o u ’ re not careful. A big part of the problem is insulin, a hormone that can shuttle excess calories right to your fat cells (excess energy consumption eating more calories than you can burn off—is also a big part of the problem
