Venus Index

Today we have an interview with Katia Rice who placed fifth in the Open category in the latest Venus Index Contest. Check out her pictures: Katia started doing fashion modeling photoshoots and shows a while back. It was entertainment for her. She was working out, had a trainer and was quite happy with the results. She was both healthy and in shape, so everything was going great for her. Then she went to a fitness competition and was absolutely stunned and inspired by this different world. Everybody was in phenomenal shape. She wanted to be more like those girls. She was very motivated and excited. Excited might not be a strong enough word considering that in a few weeks she did her first live fitness competition. She took advantage of what she learn and continued preparing for another show which she won. She also met a fitness model Allen Elliot and he explained to her what he was doing with the Adonis Index, Katia loved that system and the theory behind it. And like she said, Allen has great presence and looks amazing, so that made her even more interested in the system. And then he told her about the Venus Index and how it works. Allen explained to Katia that this system would help her prepare for her next bikini competition, because it's all about proportions and that's what matters in those contests the most. So Katia decided to use her time in the "off season" and give the Venus Index system a try. She followed only this system, because she wanted to see how it would transform her body. She didn't over complicate things by following several programs at once, just this one. And this worked out quite well. The main challenge for her was actually training alone. She never trained alone in her life and wasn't very confident on her own in the gym, even though she knew her way around the weight room pretty well. It was really hard for her to just pick up the weights and work out alone, because it was relatively new for her without a trainer or someone else around. However, the Venus Index systems were pretty easy to follow, she was familiar with the exercises since she had a trainer before, so once she got comfortable with working out alone the game was on. Venus Index was a big confidence booster for her, for the first time she followed a program all by herself, and following it as written, no modifications or tinkering. And the results are amazing, she was very happy with the after pictures. From a diet stand point, she stuck to her old proven approach and followed a high protein diet with lots of veggies, fish and oatmeal. She doesn't like counting calories, but since she was already lean and knows how to maintain her shape, this wasn't necessary for her, so this diet structure alone was enough. Katia thrives with structure in her diet routine. The goal that Katia went for was built around proportions, because that’s what she gets judged on. The bikini competitions aren't about weight, it's all about shape and proportions. So even if you stand next to a girl that is two inches taller and ten pounds heavier, you will still get judged by the same criteria - proportions. It's all about what your shape is like on your frame, which is exactly what the Venus is all about. And Katia is not only competing in bikini, but she still does fashion modeling as well. You will also see her in the future Venus Index Contests. Now, let's say you want to get into fitness or fashion modeling, what do you need to do and know to get there? Are you considering getting into fitness modeling? Here are some tips: The first thing you have to do is link up with people that are in this particular industry If you want to do a fitness competition then finding a personal trainer is not enough. It has to be someone who is familiar and has some experience with fitness contests, those are two totally different things Learn posing,

Today we have an interview with Michelle Acorn. Michelle placed sixth in the latest Venus Index Transformation Contest. Check out her pictures: Michelle Was Ready to Give Up The Venus Index system was completely new approach to her and a pretty shocking workout style. She never tried anything like it, the workouts were challenging and the diet simple, completely contrary to what she did in the past. Michelle worked out in the past, but it wasn't a priority. And from a fat loss stand point, she never dieted in her life, always just looking for better and faster way to lose weight. She never found a good plan and never stuck to any program. Well at least until her co-worker sent her an email with a link to a previous VI contest. Looking at the girls' transformations was a huge wake up call for her. While she'd lost a few pounds in the past, it always got to a point where she stopped. She was giving up, so the Venus Index came exactly at a right time. Michelle decided to enter the contest, she saw it as a way to stay motivated and have some accountability. Once she checked the program and saw the rest of the amazing transformations, she bought it and started right away. And after a few weeks of training she added Eat Stop Eat fasts and started paying more attention to her diet as well. It's All about Calories Fasting helped her understand that in order to lose weight meal timing or food choices didn't matter, it's all about calories in and out. At first fasting scared her, her mind was playing with her and trying to convince her that it's not a good idea, however she gave it a shot and to her surprise discovered that she felt fine and didn't crave any food during the fast itself. It took her as little as three fasts to get used to them. After that she practiced intermittent fasting once a week and on the non-fasting days decided to shoot for 700-1000 calories a day. This worked really well for her. Fat loss is really just a matter of eating under your energy expenditure. The mix of food and the choices are entirely up to you and your own preferences and lifestyle. Sure it's probably not a good idea to eat only pizza, because you would probably not enjoy having just a few slices for the whole day, however you can still have some tasty snacks. For example Michelle was snacking on her kids' 100 calorie snacks, she just kept the amount low. At the end of the contest she stopped fasting and upped her calories a bit. This is the theory behind the Transformation Diet. Here is the thing, most people start dieting slowly, and cut their calories even more when they are closer to contest shape. However, this often times leads to a lack of energy, tiredness, moodiness and all sorts of other unwanted effects. your body can handle a limited amount of systemic stress before you push it over the edge. And this is exactly what most people experience before the end of the contest, and that can lead to a rebound. Believe it or not many fitness models gain as much as 30 pounds right after their contest. What's the point of that? Having a great body for two weeks while feeling like crap to get it? And then immediately rebounding and being out of shape for the rest of the year? No, thanks. There is a better way. The way that Michelle has done it and how the Transformation Diet is designed. Diet the right way from the beginning and quickly get to your ideal bodyweight, once you are there, increase your calories intake to maintenance or BMR and have energy for the final weeks as you become leaner and leaner. This will also prevent you from rebounding afterwards. Workouts Must Be Challenging Michelle did the VI workouts phase one and was pretty sore in the beginning, but after a few sessions she could handle the workouts pretty well. And that's just how it works. If you are not used to a well-designed workout, the first few weeks might be pretty challenging,

Today we have an interview with Roberta Saum, who placed second in the last Venus Index Contest in the Open category. Check out her pictures: Roberta never tried any program specifically designed for look. She was running everyday and lifting in the gym, just following some advice from the guys she knew. Her training plan was pretty similar to a bodybuilding split - chest on Monday, legs on Wednesday and so on. She was doing mostly what the guys were doing, not really thinking about training for a specific shape. She was pretty strong though and over the years she build significant muscle mass. Training combined with running also contributed to pretty good conditioning. However, she wasn't in the shape that she would like. She was stuck and was doing the same stuff day after day and not getting the results she was after - a slim, toned, feminine physique. Venus Index Changed Everything Venus Index is completely different from anything Roberta ever done. Before VI she usually trained for about 30 minutes without any structure that would be getting her towards any specific goal, it was basically lifting to stay fit. This is why she loved the VI workouts, because there is more than one group of muscles trained in every session and it's designed to get you to a specific goal - perfect Venus Index shape. Not having a training plan designed to get you to a specific body shape that is attractive is a pretty common problem and it's more common for women than men. Most women just do cardio and abdominal training while they are at the gym. Then there is a small fraction that lift weights, but it's usually in a manner that doesn't focus on bringing certain muscle groups up and supporting the feminine shape. Only a few women like bikini model competitors actually know how to approach strength training to build a specific looking body. You have to focus on training your body in a way the accentuates your shoulders and hips and minimizes the look of your waist. This requires some thought and variety with your training program, rather than following a male bodybuilder pattern of individual muscle group splits. If you can keep your waist down and work on your hips and shoulders, then you will be moving towards the ideal VI shape. The look is not the only thing you will build with the Venus Index. A interesting 'side effect' that Roberta experienced was a strength and endurance boost. Her running significantly improved since she started training with VI. And while the purpose is the look first and foremost, you will also experience an increase in your strength and conditioning. Roberta also proved that you can do significant work on top of the regular workouts. While she was focusing mainly on building the shape, she didn't give up the running. She still ran 5-6 miles four to five days a week. The combination of running and lifting with VI really worked for Roberta. The only thing that changed was that she no longer puts her running first. Now it always comes second after VI training. It's Okay to Eat Less Food and Feel Slightly Hungry After reading the Eat Stop Eat protocol, Roberta learned to deal with hunger pretty quickly. She started to understand that it's a signal that her body is losing fat and that if she grabbed something to eat like she did before, she would actually be halting her fat burning while her body digested her latest meal. She never had a problem with overeating, but still she never realized how much food she was eating. And that's pretty common. If you don't really watch what you're eating and just go through life 'winging it' on your diet you could end up gaining a few pounds each year, but those few pounds may easily turn into 8, 10 or 15 pounds every couple of years. You see, most people are not obese. The reason for weight gain, is not constant overeating, or medicating with food or some metabolic issue. Most people are perfectly fine.

Today we have an interview with Carrie Gleason. Carrie was third in the last Venus Index Contest in the Open Category. Check out her photos: How to Work Out to Get an Ideal Body When Carrie first saw her pictures she couldn't believe what she was seeing. She literally asked herself whether that's really her. And that happens to a lot of people after a transformation. Your body changes faster than your mind. It'll actually take a while for you to accept and believe it's really you, especially if you were used to something completely different for the past twenty years. Carrie always felt confident in her clothes and felt like she looked good, but she wasn't that comfortable in a bikini. This is a pretty big difference. Clothes can help you show your body, but also hide certain areas that would be exposed otherwise. You could say it feels 'safe' in clothes. If you are not a Victoria's Secret model who is used to spending her days in lingerie in front of a camera, you can go years wearing the same clothes not realizing you have gained some weight. And like Carrie said, she wasn't overweight, but she just didn't have that slim waist and toned body she has now. The Venus Index finally gave her confidence to feel great and sexy in a bikini again. She always focused on weight and didn't think of specific measurements or exact measurable goals. In her own words: "That's what I love on the Venus Index, it's not about the weight, it's all about the proportions and shape of my body". And that is the point, you can build a body that is ideal and attainable for your height, instead if trying to attain the body of a genetic freak fitness model. Carrie loved the fact that she can basically design her body and use specific workout structures to reshape it. The Venus Index is about getting to a specific, measurable goal that comes from a mathematical formula that is based on your height NOT weight. She always felt she needed to improve a bit, but thought that the best way to get in shape is by spending countless hours doing cardio and hundreds of crunches. In high school she did sports like every other girl and since she wasn't exceptional in any of them she decided to start exercising to keep her weight in a healthy range. She started going to the gym, but really to do just running on a treadmill and stair-master. She thought that lifting weights would cause her to grow and become big and bulky. There is this common misconception that lifting weights will somehow turn you into some freak and you will look like a female version of hulk or like some female steroid enhanced bodybuilder. That is not what really happens. A woman's body is different from a man's and you can't build the same muscle size as men even if you wanted. Female bodybuilders who desire the same muscular development as a man start taking drugs to take it to that level...and that is where it gets ugly. For you weight lifting is just a chance to tone your body into its natural and most attractive and healthy shape. This is where the Venus Index comes into play. The most attractive look is the hourglass shape. This realization probably doesn't come as anything new to you. Well, the best advice is usually the one you already know. Take a look at your training, do you train in way that supports this fact? When Carrie got over her disbelief that "weights equal big muscles", she approached it from the wrong starting point. She did what all the magazines told her to do, training one muscle group per day the way advanced male bodybuilders would train. Your Workout is really a tool for you to tone and shape your body, if you want to achieve the ideal, you need to pursue the hourglass shape and this requires a specific workout structure. Like Carrie said, now she is lifting weights for a reason, not just randomly throwing them in however she likes. The workout suddenly has a purpose!

Today we have an interview with Gillian Chase who placed sixth in the third Venus Index Contest in the Open Category. Check out her photos: It Took Her Six Months to Get on Board When Gillian first encountered the Venus Index Program, it took her six months of listening to the podcasts until she decided to jump on board and follow the workout. Once she read through the program she realized that unlike everything else she'd heard of, this made complete sense to her. Especially after her training and diet history. She has been working out on and off from the age of 12 and has tried just about every diet there is, paleo, vegetarianism, veganism, counting macro-nutrients, six bodybuilding meals a day...just to name a few. She always felt completely burnt out. The whole industry was making her sick and she needed a break from all this. In the past she somehow understood that it's all about the energy intake and expenditure. However, she got mislead by the fitness industry into believing things like her metabolism was broken and that she needs to eat six meals a day to keep it healthy. She also believed that there is good food and bad food. In the past she has been in a similar shape, but could only sustain it for a short period of time and the effort it took to get there was enormous. She would rebound after summer and always crave sweets, thinking about chocolate 24/7 and would act grumpy or bitchy (her own words). Why? Well, she couldn't eat what she wanted. She wouldn't eat what her body craved, so it affected her emotions and behavior. That is pretty logical, if you won't allow your body what it craves, it will crave it even more. Venus Index changed it, she could get in shape, maintain her new body for more than a summer and enjoy it all. Gillian is no longer in a constant bad mood and feels awesome since she allows herself to eat what she craves from time to time. And that is the key, to eat what you crave in a small dose. Not overdo it, take just a bit and either leave the rest for later or throw it away, if you can't keep your hands off it. The rebound process after getting in shape is pretty common for people like fitness models and bodybuilders. For example a competitor who does a crash style diet may lose in excess of 20-3o pounds for their show in a short period of time, however this same person can then regain in excess of 30-40 pounds right after it. This is a BIG rebound. Gillian would follow a similar process since she was friends with a fitness model, like she said, the model looked great on stage, but what Gillian didn't see was how out of shape the model looked for the rest of the year. Now it comes down what YOU want. Super cut shape for the day of a show or amazing body year round? Contest & Post-Contest Since she had a history of overdoing things, she told herself that she is not going to put too much pressure on herself and risk getting back to the strict and crazy lifestyle. At the beginning she wanted to just shadow the contest. Health was more important for her at this stage. Ironically enough she got in a great shape and placed. She was determined to take it to the end and prove herself and to others that she can get in shape with less effort, a less strict diet and while being happy everyday and not grumpy towards her friends. She also made a deal that it will be her every day look at the photoshoot. She didn't want to only look amazing for the photoshoot and then rebound afterwards like she did in the past. And at the end she placed in the fitness contest, didn't rebounded and felt great during the whole transformation. Take Home Message from Gillian:  Trust yourself and trust the Venus Index concept Be aware of your limitations Work with what you got, you can always get better, compare yourself to yourself only If you look already good and want to look even better, it’s not obsession, it’s about being happy,

Today's interview is with Elisa Miller, who place fifth in our third Venus Index Transformation Contest. Check out her pictures: Elisa has a history of gaining and losing weight, orthorexia, food schizophrenia and now placing in a onl...

It's time for the next interview, today with Kelly Hancock who won the third Venus Index Transformation Contest. Check out her amazing transformation for yourself:   Kelly said that she feels proud of her body and is very happy with the results and she has a damn good reason to be. A lot of things change when you get in shape, not only that other people will act differently toward you, but your own behavior will change as well. For example what people find out after a big transformation (both guys and girls) is that you become a calm and confident person. Things you are not capable of controlling will stop affecting you and the things that are in your control, well you suddenly realize that you can change them, so there is no reason to get upset because of those either. Kelly's Journey Kelly while at school was an active person, she played lots of sports and didn't really worry about her look. Well, as lifestyle changed after school, her weight changed as well. She wasn't playing any sports and with her job stress became a big challenge. Based on this it probably comes as a no surprise that she gained some weight. In 2008 she started doing cardio on the elliptical for an hour every night and eating salad for dinner. She had no idea how to get in shape, but this seemed like a logical approach. She lost about 20 pounds while doing this. Well, because she had no idea how to lose weight and how to keep it off, due to her lifestyle circumstances she gained it all back. This cycle of losing and then regaining continued for a while and was causing her a lot of frustration. She also joined gym and started reading bodybuilding forums, because she was interested in having a toned and defined body and the gym seemed to be the answer. Ultimately she found the Adonis Index that had some great information, but the workouts were focused on guys. Luckily there was a program with the same approach for women, enter the Venus Index. This was what she was looking for all those years. Losing and gaining showed her that she has no control over her body, so she needed to try a different approach and the information provided at Venus Index was logical, based on science and made sense to her. In November 2010 Kelly bought the program and started doing the workout. She was also very active in the Venus Community and learned some great tips there. For example she found out that fat loss is all about calories and that based on the Eat Stop Eat approach many of girls were fasting on a weekly basis. She incorporated that in her lifestyle as well. She wanted to try a little experiment and fasted six days in a row.  It wasn't scary like you might think, she realized that her body could function without food for multiple days, in fact the only side effect was that she  just got bored. No kidding, it's not exactly a fun thing to do. This was good enough proof for her that it works. She wanted to take it to the next level and fast until she got to 130 pounds and ripped. Well, she did exactly what she set out to do. The only issue was that after 12 days of being without food, she ended up blowing it completely. Kelly started massively overeating and beating herself up over that, which lead to overeating again. This wasn't a good experience and she felt ashamed of those months. Today when Kelly is going through her old diary, the feelings come back and like she said, she felt like a failure and was disappointed by what she did. She was intentionally stuffing herself with food, not working out and all this justifying by her studying and making excuses about not having time for the workouts. Ever did something you knew is not right for you, but you did it anyway and just rationalized the behavior afterwards? Like she said, not a very positive chapter of her life. She felt like she let herself, her friends and the girls in the community down.

Today you get a chance to listen to Alisha's interview. She managed to win for the second time! In the first contest she won the transformation category and in the last one she won the open, so you could say she did it all. Here are her latest pictures, check this out: For the first contest it was very goal specific, Alisha wanted to lose fat and get more fit. However, this time she had to show a completely different look in order to take first place. She had to build more muscle and focus on building a specific shape. What the real challenge for her though was figuring out her "sweet spot" where she could maintain a great looking body and her peace if mind. She worked really hard, and was completely tired afterwards. For the first contest she was afraid of looking too skinny. And while she was excited by how much bodyfat she lost other people were telling her that she was too skinny. Alisha will admit, she probably took it too far, because even people that she met for the first time were asking her if she is okay, because her face seems skinny. But it is really hard to do all in just twelve weeks. It's one thing to lose fat, but building muscle is completely different, that takes more time, especially for women. This is why it takes several contests to get close to your ideal proportions. For this second one Alisha achieved what you could call a body re-composition. Her upper body and face is definitely not skinny anymore, her body is symmetrical and her measurements are near perfect. What Alisha Did Differently This Time Right after the first contest Alisha was decided not to compete again. But she felt a bit left out and started thinking about it. What really changed her mind was seeing the results from the second contest and the fact that a lot of girls that placed in this one mentioned her being a big inspiration for them. For her that was the coolest thing that could have happened. She made up her mind and decide to compete again. This time was a little different. Not only did she have to come up with a new plan, because she needed to show up with different pictures, but this time around she didn't really need to lose much fat. She stopped punishing herself for eating a bit more on certain days and made her weekends maintenance days. Here are her pictures from the previous contest: The difference was that she knew where she started and how many inches and pounds she had to lose to get back to her contest shape. The only thing she needed to do was mark the calendar and get going. Her goal was to win, she wouldn't even submit her pictures if she looked the same. There were 12 weeks of hard work in the gym ahead of her. Weekends were the maintenance days and week days were the "dieting days". Four weeks out she changed the plan and went low carb for the entire week while keeping low calories. This kept away her hunger, however after this trial she realized that she isn't able to lift that much in the gym anymore. She had to adjust to a point where she would get enough carbs in her meals and have energy for her workouts. These are the things you need to figure out yourself and it will probably take you several contests before you do. Alisha now understands her body well, but it took her months of hard work and winning two contests to gain these insights. There are different ways. If you want to try let's say three different approaches and determine which works for you best, it will take three contests until you do determine the best method. Your body is your own experiment. Or as once Madonna put it: I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art. Madonna Once you know what works for you the best, you will have a template you can use over and over again. There Is a Difference between Photoshoot Shape & Everyday Shape What most people don't realize is that you look different in reality than you do on camera or in pictures.

Wouldn't we all like to just cruise through the holiday season without gaining an ounce but still indulging in all of the holiday feasting!? NOTICE: This is an oldie but goodie from last year that we're bringing back up for the holiday season It's entirely possible and in today's podcast we'll explain how, and believe it or not it has nothing to do with how you eat at these big events. It has to do with how you eat when you're alone. The point of eating for weight loss (or even just to avoid weight gain) isn't to avoid social events and all of the celebrations of the holidays but rather to go for it on those days, but do the real work during the 'off' times when nobody is around. The key is to not let anyone see how much work it really is. The more it looks like magic to everyone else the better you're doing. In other words, you should be able to show up to thanksgiving or any other holiday dinner and eat whatever you like and have people come up and wonder how you manage to lose weight, or maintain your figure while eating like that. You don't want to be the person avoiding the potatoes, and stuffing, and pasta, and bread, who just sits at the end of the table eating a salad and calculating how much protein you need to maintain your muscle mass. This isn't and never was the goal.   READ: You can download the transcription of the podcast here: How To Avoid Gaining Weight over the Holidays John

The diet and fitness industry/media has grown exponentially since the internet has become a regular part of our daily lives. You have almost limitless information outlets to consume and confuse yourself with. Unfortunately most of them are providing less information and more entertainment. With the increase in information channels there is a disproportionate increase in incorrect and basically useless information. In many cases it's not only useless but detrimental. It is sometimes hard to know what is true and what is false at first glance. One of the only ways to truly understand is through experience and trial and error. In todays interview Denise DeGrazia will take us to school through her experiences with fitness and lifting weights over the course of the last 3 decades. She relates stories of what it's been like going through many fitness fads, and learning what really works for women and how to build and maintain a strong muscular lean body well into her 50's. Wisdom from Experience Over the years Denise has seen diet and fitness fads come and go, and experimented with many different forms of exercise and dieting. She has the authority of many years of experience on her side and relates it to all of us in this podcast. She has a unique perspective going all the way back to what diet and fitness meant to women of her mothers generation, and then her own generation, and now to the generations below her. The story transcends decades but the final answers for getting lean, strong and muscular will always remain the same. Lift heavy and often, and keep an eye on your calories. When you start strength training it will help build, shape and strengthen your muscle and body for your best shape. Over time the long term benefit becomes that of longevity, quality of life and the ability to live an independent and fulfilling life well into advanced age. LISTEN:  

The third Venus Index transformation and open contests are in the final stretch and it's time to get ready to take your final pictures. I suggest going through and listening to some interviews of previous winners to get a good idea of how to take a good picture at home. You can listen to a previous post explaining picture taking here: How To Take After Pictures Here is an example of some simple competition poses: Marli On Stage Spend some time going through fitness magazines and pick out your top 10 favorite images/poses and try to recreate them with your final pictures. Here is the short list of what you need to send in before midnight Nov 23rd EST to complete your VT3 contest submission. 1. 3 standard poses front, side, back, with current days newspaper front page visible in at least one of the pictures. 2. 10-15 other pictures with your favorite poses, no more than 15. (be creative, look through magazines and previous contest winners and our examples here to choose how to pose) 3. Venus Index contest data chart that you filled out at the beginning of the contest. Complete this chart with all the necessary info including, name, weight, height, hip, waist and shoulder measurements from before and after, including the total change in each measurement as well as how close you are to VI...the chart will calculate all of this for you, but if you've had issues downloading it you will need to do these calculations manually. 4. 250 word essay describing your experience with VI and going through the contest. 5. Re-size all pictures to approximately 500 pixels in height. Keep the original picture in it's full size on your computer, if you  qualify to be one of our cover models we'll need to the full size picture to put you on one of our product covers. 6. Name each picture with your  first and last name and the associated pose ex: "Jane_Doe_Front" 7. Put all of the materials in a file and compress it to a zip file, and name the entire file with your first and last name, and VT3 after pics ex: "Jane_Doe_VT3_After_Pics" 8. Email the zip file to me at johnbarban (at) gmail (dot) com no later than midnight Wed Nov 23rd EST I've outlined all of this with some more info in todays coaching podcast. LISTEN:

Heather placed third in the Venus Index Transformation Contest. She lost pounds of fat and toned her body and now she is very closed to her ideal proportions. Check out her picture: Due to various experience and some personal tragedies in her life, Heather ended up overeating at the age of 14. Before the Venus Index Contest she tried everything. Therapy, all sorts of diets and fat loss programs. One expert told her that the flavored and processed food is the devil, so she stopped eating everything that was highly processed or flavored. After that she heard that sugar is not that bad, but eggs can cause a heart attack and are the root of obesity. So, she stopped eating eggs completely. All of this often times conflicting advice lead her to trying different diets like Atkins and she ultimately ended up being a vegetarian. After being a vegetarian for a while she decided to be a vegan in order to be "really healthy". This new eating style was causing a lot of trouble to her relationships especially to her marriage. Her husband was really struggling with her diet preferences, even though he never said anything it was obvious that he had idea how to help her. Heather wasn't eating with him and their families on holidays like a normal person, she always had her special meals. She wouldn't eat with the family, because it just wasn't part of the rules she acquired. Now when she looks back it just wasn't fair to him, but at that time it seemed like the only option for her. The reason for doing all those crazy things was the fact that she just couldn't stand her weight anymore and wanted to make a change. The thing is, you can't put foods on a 'never have it again' list, because when you label some food as bad you will tend to binge on it even more. The truth is that you can eat pretty much anything you like, the important piece of advice many experts don't know and don't tell is that the key is the volume. The secret is in controlling the amount not limiting the choices. There is really no reason to make it complicated and make a devil of saturated fat or processed food. If you had no education in biology or chemistry and never been influenced by marketing and advertising, what would be your answer to "What is the best way to lose fat?" What do you think a kid would say? ...just eat less. This is the only way to lose fat, create a deficit, so your body will have to use stored bodyfat. Yes, you can create a bigger deficit with cardio and some other physical activities, but the foundation is in the diet, because you can't out train a bad diet. However, in the current conventional fitness community, the approach is quite different. It's not only different, but it's a complete scam made only to increase sales and not help people, no surprise being in shape seems like a fairytale. One day carbs are labeled as bad for you, the next day fat is the evil. And when you try to go on such a diet for a longer period of time that's when things get ugly and you get really frustrated by not seeing any results. The longer it's drilled in your head, the bigger the threat of eating that cake and burger is. And ultimately you will end up overeating big time. For Heather it was happening over and over again. And she just couldn't live like that. She would follow some crazy dietary advice and then after a while crack and overeat massively. This is the pitfall of labeling some food as bad, once you tell someone it's forbidden, the desire to have it is even bigger. Plus it's forbidden for no good reason, because no food is actually bad for you. It's like seduction, if there is an attractive man and he is just not returning calls, always takes days before replying to a message and generally just seems not interested at all, you will feel even more desire to have him. It's a pretty basic law of nature. This is exactly the same.

Suzanne placed 5th in our Venus Index Contest in the Open category. She did a great job and transformed her body, just check out her photos:   If you decide to improve your body, you need to expect and accept that there are going to be challenges along the way. What sets successful people apart from the average, unsuccessful ones is the fact that they are willing to do whatever it takes to overcome any challenge they encounter along the way towards their desired goal. If you can accept that road to success is not easy, the next step is to expect it to be hard and challenging. Once you expect it, you can prepare yourself to get over the roadblocks that will appear along the way. Like many other contestants Suzanne had her own personal challenges or how she calls it her "barriers" she had to get over. Barrier #1 Not Being Patient Suzanne admitted that the biggest challenge for her when it comes to getting in shape was being patient enough or if you believe that patience is a learnable skill then we could even say her biggest challenge was learning to have patience. And this is not true just in the fitness and health area of your life. If you want to take things to the next level and improve almost any area of your life, it will take a lot of patience to keep going till you succeed. Just take entrepreneurship as an example, even though this has nothing to do with building a better looking body, it's a great analogy. When you are building a company from scratch, it takes time, sometimes you end up bankrupt or like Steve Jobs fired from your own company and you have to start again and work your way back up. It's exactly the same with your body. If you are not happy with the way you look, you don't even remember being confident in your own skin or feeling feminine, then you need to accept that the change will take time and require some effort on your part. Sometimes it will even seem like there is no point in working on yourself. This is not meant to be discouraging, not at all, but you need to know what may happen in order to expect it and not be surprised when a challenge will appear. One of the biggest mistakes you might have made in the past is having distorted expectations. For example Suzanne thought that you can make a transformation very quickly. You probably might believe something similar and this is really not your fault considering all the quick fat loss (or get rich quick) scams you are facing all day long from TV or the internet. You probably expect results almost instantly, in a couple of weeks. Well, while you can lose several pounds of fat in just a few weeks, you can't gain pounds of pure muscle in just a few weeks, that's not gonna happen. Losing fat is not comfortable, but is still a pretty simple and quick process. Some people can lose yup to 8 pounds of fat a month, sometimes even more. However, you can't gain 8 pounds of muscle in just one month. Even guys have a hard time gaining muscle mass and they have 10 times more muscle building hormone than you! Yes, while you are more sensitive to testosterone, your body still produces very little of this hormone compared to guys. If you have ever seen claims like gain 30 pounds of muscle, it is either BS or it's possible only for male teenagers who have never been exposed to weight training before and still have juvenile muscle growth on their side. It's more realistic to expect just a few pounds of muscle gain over several months. As a woman you don't even need to gain a lot of muscle mass to truly change the look and shape of your body. A few pounds is going to transform your body shape immensely. Even one pound of muscle is an incredible difference. Barrier #2 Being Fixated on Weight & on the Scale The fixation on the scale and to your weight is pretty common for both guys and girls. Tracking your progress by weighing yourself can be tricky, because you never know if what you have gained is muscle or fat.