Negative Calorie Diet for Boxers

[Mike Brewer]

This is a topic I'm posting due to a dozen or so requests on another thread and in my personal e-mail. Please understand right from the beginning that I'm no nutritionist or doctor, so if you are considering following this plan, consult a physician first. These tips are a result of my own research and experimentation, and while it's worked very, very well for me, I'm sure your personal results will vary. With that said:

The goal of this diet and exercise program is to kick your metabolism into high gear and keep it stoked so that you're burning more fat and excess calories throughout the day. We will use four major tools in order to accomplish this:

1. Water
2. Negative Calorie Foods
3. Exercise
4. Rest and Recovery Time

First, water. Your water intake needs to increase to nearly 2 gallons a day. Negative calorie foods are almost all very fibrous and hard to break down, so your body will require more water for digestion. Water will also keep you hydrated, and assist in recovery, but there's another benefit not too many people know about. The vast majority of people are slightly dehydrated all the time. Especially those of us who train regularly. All too often it's because we trust sugary drinks to kill off feeelings of thirst instead of relying on good ol' H2O. What that does is, it triggers a response by your body that tells it to hold on to any excess fluid it can in order to stay hydrated. In turn, you retain water and you feel sluggish, bloated, and you don't heal as quickly. Increasing your water intake will make that retention subside, and you'll have much greater control of your "water weight" than before. This is useful for athletes who need to make weight without reducing performance. The downside is, all that water will deplete your electrolytes in a hurry. You need to add zinc, potassium, and sodium to your diet, either with supplements or simply by salting your food more than usual. It doesn't take much. You'll know if your electrolytes are depleting because you'll get headaches. Bad ones. When it happened to me, I tried every kind of headache medicine on Earth and nothing worked. Finally, I did some research online under "overhydration." When I read about the electrolytes, I gulped a tablespoon of salt, right out of the shaker on my dining room table. The headache was gone within five minutes. Don't neglect these electrolytes! A serious depletion can literally kill you! You won't likely get there on this program, but it's something to watch.

Next, foods. Basically, when you're talking about weight loss, it doesn't matter whether you get calories from protiens, fats, or carbs. A calorie burned is a calorie burned, regardless of its source. So the goal becomes reducing your intake or increasing your usage to a point where you create a "calorie deficit" every day. Problem is, that usually means reducing your calories per day to under 1500 (I went to 1200), and that can leave you hungry as a hostage! Solution? Negative Calorie Foods. Negative calorie foods are those foods which require more energy to digest than they contain. That is, if you think about a calorie as a unit of energy (which it is, for the record. One calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one liter of water by one degree centigrade, for those trivia inclined among us), negative calorie foods can't be completely processed using the calories they contain. They require additional calories from your body. That's great for us! It means that the more of these things you eat, the more calories you're burning! Additionally, food is one of the main triggers for your metabolism. Your metabolism heats up when you eat in order to digest, process, and utilize the nutrients in your food. Negative calorie foods are hard to break down, so they require the metabolism to heat up for longer periods. In other words, you're kick-starting your metabolism every time you take in food. If you skip a meal, you're letting it cool off. Skiping meals makes metabolic function less efficient, meaning you gain weight. By snacking on negative calorie foods all day long, you keep the metabolism running hot, you burn calories in excess of what you're taking in, and you keep from having the normal dieting hunger pangs you might feel from more restrictive diets. Since there's always food in your belly, you always feel full! The trick is that the food in your belly is using up tons of calories for digestion, instead of adding them to your system like most foods do. Here are some negative calorie foods:
Fruits: Veggies:
Apples Green Beans
Pears Brussel Sprouts
Peaches Broccoli
Grapes Cauliflower
Mango Lettuce
Papaya Celery
Raspberries Carrots
Blackberries Beets
Strawberries Onion
Watermelon Radishes
Canteloupe Leeks
Honeydew melon Asparagus

These foods are great to snack on at any time. Here's an example of how I put my own diet together.

Breakfast:
I'd eat a bowl of Malt-O-Meal or oatmeal with butter and sugar, some toast (wheat), also with butter, 2 or 3 eggs, and maybe a few strips of bacon or a couple of sausage links. The butter and sugar may freak you out, but remember, a calorie burned is a calorie burned, regardless of its source. My breakfasts averaged out at around 700 calories. All through the day, I'd snack on negative calorie foods. I'd take three aplles and a pound of strawberries to work and just keep munching. Sometimes, I'd get a 2 pound bag of carrot and celery sticks and graze all day. I also bought a 1 gallon jug of water, and I'd drink it once at work, in the first eight hours of my day, and then I'd refill it at home and polish it off again before bed. Once I'd finished my two gallons, I'd allow myself some fruit juice or unsweetened iced tea to break up the monotony. Just by eliminating liquid calories, I cut an average of 500 calories a day out of my diet. By the end of my work day, I'd created enough of a calorie defict that breakfast now amounted to just 200-300 calories. My metabolism was stoked, and I could feel a difference in my body temperature. I was warmer than usual. I'd get home, train (we'll get to that) and then have basically whatever I wanted for dinner since the combination of neg. cal. food and workouts effectively put me at -300 or so calories for the day. Dinner was usually based around meats, since I tend toward the carnivorous. A word about what to cut out:

Sodas - Don't drink them. ANything carbonated has a drastic and negative effect on metabolism. Those bubbles are C02, and by drinking carbonated drinks (even sugar free diet ones) you're adding tons of C02 - our body's waste products - to your system. It inhibits your ability to use the nutrients you're taking in, and should be avoided altogether.

Candy - This is my weakness. I have a real sweet tooth. If you can't do without it altogether, do what I did. Buy a big bag of the fun size mini candy bars, and allow yourself two or three of them if you do an extra round that night in training. You'll learn to savor them, and the calories are negligible at that point anyway.

Rushing - Eat slow. You'll feel fuller, faster if you eat slowly. That'll help satisfy hunger too.

If you follow that plan, or one roughly similar to it, you'll be averaging about 1100-1200 calories a day. That will make weight fall off your body quickly. I was 50 pounds overweight when I started, so I had a lot to lose. If you're trying to drop 10 or 15 pounds, you may want to do it more slowly. Me? I ended up losing 43 pounds within 2 months and a day of my first doctor's visit. I know this works for me, and I never once had trouble with energy levels, hunger pangs, or urges to cheat, because I always felt full.

On to training. I am training to be a pro boxer, and my workouts reflect that. Lots of calisthenics and cardio, and a little bit of weight training built around a steady diet of bag work and sparring. I train roughly three hours a day, 5-6 days a week, and I train other people for another 1-3 hours a day on top of that. In my own workouts, when possible, I wear a heart monitor and try to keep my heart rate between 165 and 190, which for me is 75% - 90% of my MHR. Your workout plan is up to you, but stay balanced with the strength training and cardio.

Finally, rest. I need four or five hours of sleep a night, and one day of relative inactivity a week to feel good. That's about what I get on a regular basis. I work a really early shift, requiring me to be awake at 2 am, so I make bedtime 9pm. Sundays are reserved for me, and I don't train or teach that day. I usually break up the routine by taking my wife out on dates and things like that. As a side benefit, the day off usually makes me pretty anxious to train again on Monday, so in addition to recovery, I am getting a psychological boost as well. Each person needs different amounts of rest to recover and function at a peak. Learn about your own, and don't make it a competitive attribute. Rest as much as YOU need to, without worrying whether or not it's more or less than your buddies. One things for sure, though - Rest. It's a functional part of your training.

That's about all I can think of. Please feel free to reprint this for your own use, but do not publish it elsewhere without my written consent. Also, remember my warnings from the beginning. I am not a nutritionist or nutrition specialist. I don't know if this diet is even safe to try. I'm just telling you all what I found from my own personal research and experimentation. Thanks for the interest, and I hope this helps.

Mike Brewer 3-8-05

[academian]

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mike Brewer]

You're most certainly welcome, but try it before you thank me.

Actually, I've given this plan out to four people I work with. They've all had different goals, ranging from taking off ten pounds just to feel better all the way up to a buddy who wanted to go back into the military and had to cut 18 pounds in three weeks. So far, everyone has gotten the results they were after, and they all said there was no hunger - just getting over the blandness of the liquid part of the diet! Water does get boring, but it's the best fluid we can drink, so I'm getting more and more used to it.

As a sidebar, if you drink it very cold, water is also a negative calorie item. SInce it has no calories of its own, and since your body has to warm it up to 98 degrees or so before it will absorb, your body has to spend energy heating up that water, so you're burning calories there, too. Plus, it makes you feel full. Half the times I used to think I was hungry, I was actually just thirsty. Try this:

When you feel hungry, drink one full liter of water and wait half an hour before eating. Most often, you'll find that the hunger passes and you forget all about eating! Just some tidbits I discovered doing this diet.

[eXcessiveForce]

many of you foods you list are very high in sugar.

To achieve a catabolic diet you need to be very aware of protien intake, otherwise if you run low on energy you're body will take what it needs from your muscles.

[Enzo566]

Thank You!!! lol.


Um well during the day i bring like oat bars. u know like a granola but oats, and withs ome peanut butter for protein... Im just wondering what the best diet i can use to get REALLY defined, but at the same time get a little bigger with. Pretty much like a boxer....

I say this extremely loosely but right now im like a less defined version of this... http://film.onet.pl/_i/news/duze/b/bruce_lee_2.jpg

Whereas my goal and what i want it to be more like this.... http://www.hbo.com/boxing/img/fighters_jonesjr.jpg

Any ideas for that kinda shit? Cause it seems as if im having trouble staying defined and gaining size. Well gaining size altogether is hard.

[academian]

Hey there is a new cereal out. Look for it in your local food store...

[Mike Brewer]

X,
Like I said, this is something that's giving me great results, and I won't recommend it for others. I posted because I've had a lot of inquiries both in person and over the net as to how I'm getting the results I have. I am a serious meat eater, and so there are lots of fish and meat protiens in my diet and as far as the sugars from fruits - it just hasn't been an issue. Processed sugars are one thing, but I don't think natural sugars are too much of a worry. The reason I think that is simply because I am keeping up a crazy schedule with absolutely no ill effects, and in fact, I'm feeling more rested and energetic than ever. I train pretty hard 6 days a week, work from 2 am til 2 pm, and get roughly 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Despite that, I am recovering much faster than I used to, I'm dropping body fat, not just weight, and I have the energy to train at an intensity level I haven't matched since my early 20's. And it damn near killed me then!

But, so that you can weigh the pros and cons, my own results look like this:

Weight, dropped from 283 to 238 since late November
Biceps: Up from 17.5" to 18.5"
Waist: down from 41" to 35"
Chest: (around the shoulders) up from 52" to 57"
Body fat: Down from 24% to 16%
Resting Heart Rate: Down from 67 BPM to 48 BPM

Nutshell: I'm not arguing with those results. Whether the diet is nutritionally correct or not, it's doing exactly what I need it to do, so this is one of those cases of function over form.

[eXcessiveForce]

I'm not doubting you Mike, I just didn't see the protien being talked about much in your post, so figured I'd mention it so someone didn't do it and end up with less muscle mass then they started.

When that happens when they go off the diet they have a tendency to gain weight because they are burning less calories at rest due to reduced muscle mass.

That's what happened to people on the grapefruit diet. You end up a yo-yo with weight and a reduced metabolism.

There is lost of info on the net about Catabolic diets such as this.

[Mike Brewer]

I never thought about it much, but you're right. If people build a diet around cutting out virtually any whole food or food group, they'll likely experience that yo-yo effect. I am pretty carnivorous by nature, and so I know my protien intake isn't suffering. If it weren't for my love of fresh bread, pasta, and other baked goodies, Dr. Atkins would have been my hero. Ahhh, well.

The main reason I like this diet is that it doesn't feel like one. I eat all the freakin' time. I eat whatever types of foods I want, including pizza, ice cream, sweets, or whatever. I have managed to cut out carbonated stuff altogether, but I was never that big a soda drinker anyway. The main principle is still just creating that calorie deficit by the end of the day. Between exercise and all the negative calorie stuff, I'm burning more than I take in, which is why it's working.

You're absolutely right about maintaining a good balance, though. The nutrients, protiens, minerals, et al that you need to function have to be there, or the body will start compensating in whatever way it needs to. One example is the electrolyte depletion from overhydration I mentioned before. I had no idea drinking too much water could actually kill you until I looked up why I was getting those headaches. If that's just water, imagine what depriving the body of its building blocks and fuel can do...

[Mike Brewer]

Originally Posted by Enzo566

Thank You!!! lol.


Um well during the day i bring like oat bars. u know like a granola but oats, and withs ome peanut butter for protein... Im just wondering what the best diet i can use to get REALLY defined, but at the same time get a little bigger with. Pretty much like a boxer....

I say this extremely loosely but right now im like a less defined version of this... http://film.onet.pl/_i/news/duze/b/bruce_lee_2.jpg

Whereas my goal and what i want it to be more like this.... http://www.hbo.com/boxing/img/fighters_jonesjr.jpg

Any ideas for that kinda shit? Cause it seems as if im having trouble staying defined and gaining size. Well gaining size altogether is hard.

You need to send a PM to Dr. Griswold. He had the same problem years ago, and if anyone would know, it's him.

[May_Day]

The main reason I like this diet is that it doesn't feel like one. I eat all the freakin' time. I eat whatever types of foods I want, including pizza, ice cream, sweets, or whatever. I have managed to cut out carbonated stuff altogether, but I was never that big a soda drinker anyway. The main principle is still just creating that calorie deficit by the end of the day. Between exercise and all the negative calorie stuff, I'm burning more than I take in, which is why it's working.

True i eat every hour of the day

[Enzo566]

Originally Posted by Mike Brewer

You need to send a PM to Dr. Griswold. He had the same problem years ago, and if anyone would know, it's him.

who is Dr. Griswold????

[Mike Brewer]

He's a good friend who just made contact with me via PM. Actually, it didn't occur to me that he might have done that without becoming a registered user. Let me talk to him and see if he'll post something here.

[GQchris]

Get that book called the Abs diet; I mainly use that but modify it slightly with a cheat day here and there, it helps me to maintain my sanity...

[GQchris]

Also don't forget that beef jerky makes a great snack, almost no fat, and rich in protein, I make sure I keep stocked up on this stuff at the office.