“Yea, I guess I don’t worry too much about what I eat.”
I was sitting at a restaurant with some friends, and people had started to ask my buddy Ryan about how he can eat such huge portions of food while still looking like an Olympic athlete.
“I don’t know, I guess it’s ‘cause I work out a lot. Oh, and I swim pretty often too” He said, in between bites of a massive burger and fries.
Ryan is in his mid-40’s and still has a chiseled midsection that makes guys half his age jealous. Especially when they see him eat!
But Ryan has an active job as a lifeguard, and he does resistance training 3 days per week. So even when he’s not working out, he’s still active, moving around on the beach, and cooling off by jumping in the water and swimming out to the buoy.
And even though he would only tell you he works out 3x per week, with the rigors of his job, he’s training more like 8-10x per week!
This is a prime example of Metabolic Snowballing. And while I’m not saying you need to quit your job, move to the beach and become a lifeguard, there are some good lessons to take away from this example.
Build It Up
Increasing your metabolism over time is simple.
Increase activity. Increase calories
Simple in theory, but not easy to do, especially with all the misinformation in the media surrounding diet and exercise.
Here’s why.
The EPOC Principle
“EPOC” stands for “Excess-Post-Exercise-Oxygen-Consumption” (why you don’t use the ‘E’ in exercise baffles me too).
What this pretentious phrase means is:
When you burn calories exercising, you burn additional calories in the following 48 hours rebuilding and repairing muscle tissue.
Now if you’re skimming this article, or that doesn’t seem like a huge deal, let me put it in caps for you.
The amount of calories can vary a lot depending mainly on:
a) the type of workout you're doing
b) the intensity that you're working at
Research shows that the more intense the training is, the more calories you'll spend in your "afterburn" phase.
That means if you're spending the bulk of your training time trying to find hot-girl-from-the-Stairmaster's Tinder profile, you're going to be sorely disappointed in your personal Metabolic Snowballing Effect.
Metabolic Snowballing is kinda like when you were a kid and dropped a baseball sized snowball down a hill. It starts off slow and small, but as it picks up momentum, it starts getting bigger until eventually it’s an unstoppable force of nature.
Metabolic Snowballing simply means that small improvements done daily will eventually amount to a big change.
Metabolic Snowballing 101
If you want to take advantage of this powerful principle, here's what you need to do:
- Start with strength.
- Use resistance training primarily in the form of bodyweight, weights, and bands.
- Finish with interval training
- Ditch long bouts of cardio for fast, hard intervals.
- Prioritize short, intense workouts
Using these guidelines, you can see that it's better to get six 30min workouts per week than two 120min workouts, because it's easier to stay intense if you're only training for 30 minutes.
Let’s Get Real
Yes, it would be great to work out 4 or more times per week or more. But who has time for that? And who even knows what to do at the gym 4 days per week without getting horribly sore or injured?
If you were looking for a magic pill, or some Himalayan Bath Salts that were going to be the “secret” to boosting your metabolism, you you might be dissapointed, because even though these are powerful scientific strategies for looking and feeling your best for the rest of your life, they TAKE WORK.
I can show you how to make that work easier, faster, and more convenient, but at the end of the day, you still have to put in the effort.
For a FREE 9-Day Metabolism Boosting Experience, delivered straight to your email, click HERE
The Schedule
To build your metabolism most effectively and take advantage of the principle of Metabolic Snowballing, we need to train more often.
You’re not going to do that if you don’t schedule your training ahead of time.
Busy people don’t train in the afternoon. They have families that need attention, jobs where they’re putting out fires, and errands to run. The best way to schedule these in is to start early. If that means waking up a few minutes earlier, or turning off the TV in favor of a light workout, so be it, but you need to find the time that you can commit to just 20 minutes of movement and activity.
Find the time, book it, block it off, write it in your schedule, and treat it like an appointment.
Here’s how to break it down
Day 1: Lower Body
Day 2: Upper Body Pushing + Core
Day 3: Lower Body + Cardio
Day 4: Upper Body + Stretching
Day 5: Core + Cardio
Day 6: Full Body
Day 7: Rest
Before you get overwhelmed with the amount of workouts, remember each one is only 20-30 minutes. And I don’t expect you to be perfect this week. This is a process that will eventually yield big results, so expect to dedicate a few months to mastering this.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it didn’t take 28 days for you to gain all that weight around your stomach. Take a deep breath. We’ve got time.
If you’re looking for a program that’s already built out to these specifications, you can check out Bod In A Box - a full program with video links - and if you sign up this month, you’ll get all the equipment you need for FREE. (280.00 value)
If you’re looking for more info, sign up for the FREE Metabolism Boosting E-Course, and you’ll get my favorite Fat Incinerating Home Workout - featuring workouts that can be done literally anywhere in 20-30 minutes.
Takeaways
- The Excess-Post-Exercise-Oxygen-Consumption Principle will help you build your metabolism and burn more fat if you know how to use it.
- Training more often for shorter time periods is the best way to take advantage of this principle.
- Intense interval style workouts are the best to increase this “Metabolic Snowballing” afterburn.
- Six short workouts every week is the best option for burning fat and increasing your energy.
- Make sure to schedule your workouts ahead of time and stick to them.