Fashion models depend on their slim figures for their livelihood, so it’s imperative that they always look good. Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting that you should embark on a diet of leaves and nuts. I’m not an advocate of the size zero, but I’m sure you’ll find it interesting to know what sort of diet a fashion model would choose.

The Fashion Models Diet Plan

A favourite way for models to look good is to “Cleanse” or “Fast”. This is not a complete starvation diet, as it will include the intake of soups and fruit juices over a 3 to7 day period. It is more of a detox routine and is gernerally only carried out once or twice a year.

The benefits of this detox is to obviously rid the body of harmful toxins, such as preservatives and food additives together with inhaled smoke and fumes. It also gives the colon a chance to rid the digestive system of any fecal build up. The results can be dramatic as the liver and kidneys are able to repair and replace damaged cells instead of continuing to rid the body of toxins.

A typical “Cleanse” diet might consist of a combination of fresh carrots, celery, beet, spinach, apple, coconut, broth and juices. Citrus and tomato juices are too acidic to drink while fasting so these should be avoided. It’s important to drink plenty of water during the detox and avoid consuming any unnecessary medications or supplements.

The advantages of a detox are weight loss, reduced body odour, shinier finger nails, stronger hair, reduced cellulite, a glowing complexion and more beautiful eyes.

After the detox, the typical fashion model will then begin her normal eating habits, which to some people may appear to be a “real” diet. However, it will simply be a healthy balanced diet, which might typically consist of the following:

—Breakfast (9am)
One boiled egg with a slice of wholewheat bread
A bowl of cereal with skimmed milk
Black coffee
Total 369 calories

—Lunch (12.30pm)
Turkey salad with balsamic vinaigrette
Cup of tea with skimmed milk
Total 320 calories

—Early Evening Snack (4.30pm)
Low fat Jell-O pudding
Total 100 calories

—Dinner (8pm)
Lean Cuisine chicken a l’orange with rice
2 slices of low fat cheddar cheese with wholewheat crackers
Total 448 calories

The total calorie intake for a typical day is 1237. The aim of the diet is to keep the daily calorie count below 1500.

This is a typical example of a fashion model’s diet, which will also involve some form of aerobic exercises 3 times a week.

So, as you can see it’s not at all what you might have originally thought. It’s just a sensible eating plan and a sensible exercise routine. However, if even this diet seems a little too much to stomach, you could try a natural herbal diet remedy.

Here are the top 5 tips that fashion models highly recommend for staying in trim.

1. Decrease your alcohol consumption. Alcohol suppresses the body’s ability to burn fat.

2. Eat more Black Pepper, Ginger, Chile Peppers. Spicy food helps speed up the body’s metabolism.

3. Increase your muscle mass. Muscle burns fat, so adding 5lbs of muscle will help you burn another 250 calories a day.

3. Increase your vitamin B and Calcium intake. The B-Vitamins give you more energy and increase your metabolism.

4. Drink More Water. A healthy, well-hydrated body is important to flush out toxins and aid in metabolising fats

5. Increase your intake of Omega-3 Fatty Acids. Omega 3 fatty acids can help to balance blood sugar levels and control appetite.

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1. Almond Butter with apple sauce with cinnamon sprinkled on top – a great after dinner snack if you’re looking for something sweet.

2. Almond or Walnut Butter on pretty much any fruit. My new favorite is almond butter on fresh figs…yummy!

3. Nut Butter and Apple Butter Sandwich – one of my favorite on-the-go breakfast options. I use 1-2 tbsp of nut butter and 1 tbsp of apple butter on 2 slices of sprouted grain bread and out the door I go.

4. Cashew Butter on celery sticks – add a few raisins for a little sweet taste.

5. Walnut Butter in oatmeal – I mix the walnut butter right into my warm oatmeal. Sometimes I add 1 tsp of honey as well.

All of these options are a great way to get a ton of healthy fats, especially Omega 3’s, into your daily meal plans.

Rather than dieting excessively in order to create a calorie deficit, we are now looking to enter into energy debt…and we do this with intelligently designed training protocols. That’s because keeping energy intake high ensures that Leptin levels don’t drop and throw another hormonal monkey wrench into the machinery.

You see, when you’re getting very lean or you’ve hit a plateau, fat loss is not just about calories in vs. calories out. It’s about your hormonal environment and the way that affects fat storage, and thereby fat loss.

When you’ve lost the first 20 or 30 or whatever pounds, you’ve lost the “easy” fat. What you’ll notice about your body is that you’re now holding fat specifically in your trouble areas; and those trouble areas are determined by your specific hormonal environment.

It’s not just about energy debt or cardio or to a lesser extent, diet (although all of those things do factor in quite a bit, obviously). When your fat loss has stalled and you’re trying to break through that wall, or when you’re trying to rid yourself of those last stubborn 5-10 pounds, it’s a hormonal battle.

And there is only one way to win: fight hormones with hormones.

So, let’s look at the three specific hormones that cause the most common types of regional fat storage.

1. Estrogen – The female sex hormone responsible for lower body fat storage patterns.

2. Insulin – Or rather, insulin resistance. This nasty little dude heavily influences fat storage in the love handles and lower back area.

3. Cortisol – The appropriately dubbed “stress hormone” is part of the reason you’ve got more flab than ab.

There you have it…those are your enemies!

Now, I want to talk to you about how you can actually increase the production of other hormones through the manipulation of training methods in order to offset the above mentioned “bad” hormones.

In this corner…
Estrogen vs. Testosterone

Now that we’ve established estrogen is the main reason lower body fat storage occurs, we need to know how to work around that.

Well, how else would you combat estrogen but with testosterone?

To put it bluntly, when it comes to fat loss and muscle gain…

Testosterone GOOD – Estrogen BAD

It’s for that reason that professional athletes, bodybuilders, and the juicers down at the Jersey Shore use illicit steroids that are derivatives of testosterone.

Of course, that’s not an option for us – and certainly not desirable.

Instead, we are going to increase testosterone levels naturally; through training. Not only will this increase the net fat-burning effect of all exercises, but more appropriate to our purposes here, it will also facilitate in getting rid of lower body fat.

I should mention something here to alleviate any concerns. It is NOT possible to produce a detrimental amount of testosterone through training. So ladies, you don’t have to worry about any masculinizing effects.

Instead, training produces what we would term a “high” amount of testosterone from a physiological perspective, relative to what your body normally produces. For the guys, this means that such training will help you put on a bit more muscle – just not steroid muscle.

Got it? Okay, moving on.

At this point, I know you’re thinking, “All right Roman, get to the point, what do I do?”

Great question! Well, the answer is Density Training.

Training in a way that seeks to increase training density is one of the best ways to spur your body to produce and release more testosterone, which will (obviously) help you lose that estrogen related fat storage.

Training density can be defined as the amount of work you do in a given amount of time during a training session. So, if you want to increase density, you can…

(1) Do more work (sets, reps, or both) in the same amount of time
OR
(2) Do the same amount of work and decrease the time in which you do it

However, I’ve come up with a method of Density Training that is specific to radical fat loss! This means that not only will you produce the testosterone necessary to mitigate your regional fat issue, but you’ll also lose more fat on the whole.

Pretty cool, eh? So here is how we do it…

As an example, let’s pick 3 exercises: the overhead press, the dumbbell row, and the squat.

Setting these up in a circuit fashion, you perform them one after another with little rest in between.

Sounds like just about any circuit training protocol, right?

WRONG!

Instead of having a set number of reps, we’re going to be performing each of these exercises for TIME – you simply have to do as many as you can in a given time period.

To make it easy, let’s say you did each of the above exercises for 30 seconds. In performing such a circuit, your results might look like this:

Overhead Press – 25 pound dumbbells for 20 reps
DB Row – 40 pound dumbbells for 18 reps
Squat – 100 pound barbell for 22 reps

Not too shabby. Now, HERE is where it gets crazy.

We’re going to take advantage of some cool things that happen in the body; triggers that will make you more efficient and more capable.

So, to do that, we’re going to INCREASE the weight by 10-20% and try to do MORE reps.

Does that seem impossible? It isn’t.

Due to neuromuscular junction and neural activation, in almost ALL cases, you’ll be able to do just that.

Your second attempt at that circuit might look like this:

Overhead Press – 30 pound dumbbells for 23 reps
DB Row – 50 pound dumbbells for 20 reps
Squat – 120 pound barbell for 25 reps

Now, I know you’re having trouble believing that outcome is even possible (much less common), but I implore you, try it for yourself!

Density Training is fun, challenge-based, burns a heck of a lot of fat, and most importantly, is one of the best training modalities around for increasing testosterone production and release. And that’s why training for increased workout density will help you shed stubborn lower body fat AND more fat on the whole.

Insulin Resistance vs. IGF-1

Insulin resistance is combated very nicely by a hormone called IGF-1, or Insulin-like Growth Factor One.

Producing extra IGF-1 via training will help you (and me!) improve insulin sensitivity and begin to rid ourselves of our love handles and lower back fat.

We know that insulin resistance is very common, particular in people who were previously overweight. So, if you have lost some fat and you’re now struggling to lose a bit more (and that fat happens to be in your love handles), I’m willing to bet you’re suffering from some degree of insulin resistance.

In order to get rid of that fat, we need to do fat burning workouts (obviously) and increase insulin sensitivity to the greatest degree that we can. As a result, we need to employ what I call Dynamic Training.

Dynamic Training is pretty much the over-arching concept of how I design fat loss training programs; it consists of using fast-paced movements to teach the body how to move more efficiently.

Because this style of training is extremely expensive in terms of energy (calorie) demand, Dynamic Training is excellent as a general fat loss modality.

Perhaps more importantly however, is the fact that utilizing these types of exercises and setting them up in a non-competing circuit fashion under the Dynamic Training umbrella is an incredible way to produce IGF-1. And doing that is one of the most effective methods to mitigate insulin sensitivity.

Take it from someone who knows!

Nothing is better for combating love handle fat than increasing insulin sensitivity – and like I said, one of the most effective ways to do that is to produce more IGF-1 through Dynamic Training.

Cortisol vs. Growth Hormone

And now we come to our final bout of the evening–the main event, as it were.

We have touched on cortisol a bit, so I won’t rehash that too much. Suffice it to say that the higher your cortisol levels are, the more fat you’re going to be storing on your belly. Given that fact, it stands to reason that if you store fat primarily in the abdominal region, you’re a victim of high cortisol.

Never fear, though: Growth Hormone is here!

Also known as the “Fountain of Youth”, growth hormone is the single most effective compound your body can produce to affect both fat loss and muscle gain. The more of it you produce, the faster you’ll lose fat and build muscle. It’s just as simple as that.

Now, in addition to that awesome little fact, growth hormone is going to whoop cortisol’s butt AND help you burn belly fat.

Also, you’ve probably heard that one of the ways to reduce your cortisol levels is to get more sleep. That’s something you hear on nearly all of the medical TV shows. What you don’t hear is the reason.

You see, sleeping is one of the main ways by which your body produces growth hormone. In other words, while you’re sleeping, it’s your body’s primary opportunity to produce growth hormone. And, as I stated previously, growth hormone is one of the main hormones that reduces the effects of cortisol.

So, sleep more and you’ll produce more GH! Produce more GH and you’ll have less cortisol! Therefore, sleeping more, results in lower cortisol levels. Got it?

Of course, I’m not suggesting you can just sleep your way past a fat loss plateau (although getting more sleep does help). I’m merely illustrating the relationship between cortisol and growth hormone.

Which leads us to the production of growth hormone as it relates to training…

While nearly all forms of exercise produce both growth hormone and cortisol, some types are better than others.

For example, cortisol is heavily produced in long duration cardio sessions. But let’s not do that.

Instead, we’re going to utilize a style of training that produces more growth hormone…Lactic Acid Training (in order to get to the growth hormone, you must first produce lactic acid).

By definition, lactic acid is a by-product of the chemical reactions that take place during exercise. This substance is wildly irritating to the nerves, and your body responds. Think of lactic acid as a type of oil…igniting fires as it flows through you. Your body will put those fires out by dousing them with soothing, cooling growth hormone.

Okay, maybe I’m being a little simplistic with my metaphor, but it gives you a general idea.

In any event, we must structure training to produce the most lactic acid possible. And because lactic acid is primarily produced in the concentric (positive) phase of anaerobic exercise, we will extend that period, and decrease the eccentric period.

What that means is that we lift the weight very, very slowly. And then we lower it very, very quickly so that we can have a fast turn around.

As an example, if you’re doing a squat, you’ll descend to the bottom of the squat very quickly (drop down fast, but still controlling the weight somewhat) and then lift the weight sloooowly, oh so sloooowly – over a period of 4-6 seconds.

This will create tremendous amounts of lactic acid, which will in turn send GH production into overdrive.

Now, I must mention that training in this way necessitates the use of lighter weights than you would normally use on any given exercise. Therefore, if you’re interested in Lactic Acid Training, I suggest you reduce the weight you’d use on any exercise by about 30% in order to be both safe and effective.

With traditional training methods, you’d lift the weight pretty quickly and lower it slowly. Here we’re doing the opposite, in order to produce the most lactic acid possible…which will then lead to a corresponding increase in the production of growth hormone.

This will result in not only reducing cortisol, but also reducing cortisol related fat storage in your belly. And on top of it all, it’s great for fat loss in general!

Such a focus makes sense of course, because if there is a universal truth to fat loss, that’s it.

This is what we call “energy balance.” In order to lose fat, you have to create what we call “energy debt” or “energy deficit” – that is, eliminate the balance and instead be on the negative side of the balance scales.

Of course, that works very well for “beginning” fat. However, success doesn’t last forever.

As anyone who’s ever been on a diet and exercise program of any kind can tell you, at first it’s pretty smooth sailing. Eat less, do more, lose fat.

And then it stops! And as those same people can also tell you, it usually stops suddenly.

Of course, the first instinct people have is a very natural one…to simply do more of what was bringing them success in the first place.

So they eat even less and do even more.

And…have no results.

You see, what these people fail to realize (and what most fat loss programs fail to address) is…

After a certain point, simple energy deficit no longer covers the tab.

It becomes more about what type of deficit.

Speaking generally, you actually have to eat closer to maintenance calorie levels (instead of far below) and expend more calories through exercise.

Even then, things don’t always happen as quickly as you want.

You see, once you’ve hit a fat loss plateau or when you’re trying to lose the last few pounds (like I was when I was dieting for the beach house), fat loss becomes less about energy balance and more about hormones.

You see, some hormones, such as Leptin, actually control the majority of your general fat loss efforts and all of the factors thereof: appetite, satiety, “starvation mode.” However, assuming you’re eating enough and trying to create an energy deficit through training, Leptin isn’t the issue.

In Final Phase Fat Loss though, you’re never on a severe diet, so you don’t have to worry about Leptin.

There are other hormones however, which are a bit more insidious in their effects on your physique. They don’t just determine IF you gain fat – they determine where you gain it, and whether you’re able to lose it from those areas.

Those “problem” areas on your body are there for a reason.

“Problem areas” are created by your hormonal environment, and it’s your hormones that force your body to have particular fat storage patterns.

In this article, we’re going to talk about the three most common types of regional fat storage, and the hormones that cause them.

Back Got Back: Low Body Fat Storage

One of the most common types of fat storage that we see in women is the “pear shape” – fairly thin on top but heavy on the bottom (and IN the bottom, if you know what I mean).

This is so common that we often refer to a “pear shape” as a body type. This is true to an extent, but this type of fat storage is also heavily dependent on the female sex hormone estrogen. This is one reason why you see this type of fat storage primarily in women.

High levels of estrogen are awesome for enjoying Grey’s Anatomy and makin’ babies, but terrible for fat loss – which is why women usually have more trouble losing fat than men.

However, anyone—male or female—with high estrogen levels will have trouble losing fat, especially from the lower body. In essence, the higher your estrogen levels, the greater the likelihood you’ll store fat in your lower body; mainly in the hips and thighs.

And yes, it IS possible for men to have high estrogen levels. Unfortunately, outside of having to deal with a declined rate of fat loss and lower body fat, these guys ALSO have to deal with the ignominy of man-boobs.

On the whole, estrogen related fat storage is a pain in the butt (get it!?) but it is not completely unmanageable. You see, you can offset this phenomenon with certain types of training.

No worries, ladies (and gents!), I’m here to help.

In addition to helping you lose fat stored in the lower body, these specifically designed workouts will also be great for fat loss in general. Essentially, they’re great for burning calories and for shedding lower body fat through estrogen management. Combine the two and the result is rapid fat loss, with a heavy concentration on lower body fat stores.

Muffin Tops: No Love for the Love Handles

Probably my least favorite incarnation of regional fat storage is love handles and lower back fat. This is, of course, because I personally suffer from such.

Even when I am in lean condition – I’m talking shredded pretty much everywhere else – I store some fat in my love handles and lower back. It used to take me an extra 3 weeks to get rid of it!

The reason I tend to store fat this way is because of how my body reacts to certain hormones, and because of the effect those hormones have on fat storage.

When I was a fat kid and ate lots and lots of goodies, I screwed by my endocrine system a wee bit. Nothing too serious, but a decade of eating rapidly digesting carbs followed by, well, more rapidly digesting carbs, made my insulin spike and crash and spike and crash all over the place.

On top of making me fat in that immediacy, it also completely had a pretty negative effect on the way my body processes and handles insulin period.

The degree to which you are able to process and respond to glucose (sugar) in your body is called insulin sensitivity. The higher this is, the easier and more efficiently your body utilizes carbohydrates for energy, and the less like you are to store carbs as fat.

On the other hand, insulin resistance is the opposite; you don’t deal well with carbs. And anything other than a low carb diet pretty much means you’re gonna hang on to some fat.

And, to make matters worse, as I mentioned previously, there are regional effects. It’s been shown that people who store fat in the love handles are generally very insulin resistant – and therefore it can be reasoned that insulin resistance leads to love handles and lower back fat storage (which of course, means that insulin resistance makes it very hard to lose fat from that area as well).

I’m sure many of you out there who have been heavy before are experiencing much the same problems that I used to have.

The good news is that insulin resistance (and the resulting regional fatness) can be mitigated with certain types of training. For example, with careful planning and selection of exercises, you can start to whittle away at your love handles and lower back fat while you increase insulin sensitivity.

The better news is that I’ve figured out a specific series of training sessions that will do just that.

The One, the Only: Belly Fat

Without question, the most common type of regional fat storage is belly fat. If this isn’t you, it’s someone you know.

Abdominal fat storage obviously has a lot to do with your diet and overall body fat level; that should be obvious but it never hurts to touch on it.

Outside of that, it’s hormones baby, hormones.

The one we’re talking about here is cortisol. This hormone has been in the media a lot in the past few years, and I’ve talked about it a bit, so by now you know that cortisol is sometimes called a “stress” hormone.

That moniker is more appropriate than you know.

Basically, that means your body will produce cortisol (and encourage belly fat storage) under conditions of nearly any type of stress – both emotional and physical. So to combat cortisol, it’s not enough to just get more sleep or stop drunk dialing your ex-girlfriend (although that helps, I’ve heard).

Instead, it is of far greater effect to combat cortisol through resistance training.

Now, if you’re observant, you may have noticed what seems to be a contradiction.

As I said, cortisol is also produced through physical stress. In fact, training is actually one of the primary means through which your body will produce this sneaky little hormone.

Additionally, because cortisol has been linked to overtraining and has a catabolic (muscle wasting) effect, producing too much of it through training is certainly counterproductive.

It’s important to note, however, that long duration cardio and extended lifting sessions are what produces the most cortisol, and I always recommend against those.

Instead, short, intense training sessions using a particular type of training modality will help to counteract the effects of cortisol; both the muscle-wasting effect and the cortisol related belly fat storage.

Are you ready to fight these hormones?!