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Today we’re here to share with you the cutting process of our client Selmo Santos. When Selmo contacted us, he already had a pretty good physique, as you can see from his initial pictures.

Selmo’s goal was to get lean, but he was afraid to do a low calorie diet on his own with no help, and was also afraid of losing great part of his muscle gains, which frequently happens to those who do highly restrictive diets. Basically these people only eat fish, lean meat and vegetables, which originates a very low calorie consumption and hormonal production deficits, due to the lack of fat intake. So, what this leads to is a poor distribution of the 3 macro nutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fats (especially saturated fat, which is the fat responsible for the production of androgenic hormones ex: testosterone)). With this in mind, Selmo made the right decision by contacting us. Most people who contact us want to get lean in the first week, which normally is the wrong approach. Someone with a physique like Selmos should not enter a deficit without knowing how his body and metabolism work.

In an initial phase, Selmo was increasing his calories for 6 weeks until he achieved a daily intake of 230g of protein, 350g of carbs (30g to 50g of which fiber) and 70g of fat. From the 6^th week onward we begun the cutting phase. Now, after 6 weeks of having started this phase (now a total of 12 weeks of coaching), we show you the results achieved. We used no cardio (and we won’t use it for a long time, at least while it’s feasible to increase his caloric deficit through food cuts). During his first 6 weeks of coaching, we were progressively increasing his metabolism by increasing his macros. This is the only way to increase your metabolism, all the rest are myths! Currently Selmo still consumes 230g of Protein, 295g of Carbs and 50g of fat on a daily basis!! You must be patient!

Not everyone trusts their coach enough to be “marinating” for 6 weeks without losing fat. Most people would have been impatient and would have complained and even given up. So, don’t expect to obtain the same results if your subscription is of just 8 weeks. The more weeks you subscribe for, the better your results with us will be. This is because you give your coach more time to get to know your body/metabolism, which will provide better results in the future. So, the more time you spend with us, the better your results will be. Our methods are scientifically proven and regarding these methods’ application, we assure you you’ll get the best results you can.

To get to know our work methodology, so you know what you need to do to get started on your transformation, get in touch with us through our Contactos page.

Today we share the transformation and testimonial of another one of our clients, André Marques. It was thanks to our help that, throughout 14 weeks, André managed to be consistent in his nutrition as well as his training. He had already tried many times before to follow a diet to lose body fat, with no success.

Here is André’s transformation:

Despite it having been me looking for help, the beginning of my journey with Team Transformerz wasn’t the best. For a person as stubborn as I am, there were many things that didn’t make sense, but with time I understood that I was in good hands and progressively learnt how to improve my diet. By learning my coach’s method, I started to have much more variety in my diet, without many restrictions. Also, I stopped wasting my money on supplements that promise the world and give you nothing.

Step by step I learnt that there are ridiculous myths and efforts that are unnecessary (ex: not eating carbs at night) and end up making things much harder in the long run. I tried twice to lose weight on my own but I got nowhere. Either because the diet was too strict or because I drastically reduced my calories

My coach was always willing to enlighten me when I had doubts and helped me realize that there is a path that’s less complicated, which works much better for me in the long run.

SEE ALSO: WHY WE SHOULD EAT PIZZA!

Like we always say, we aren’t here to trick anyone. We don’t want to give you the impression that we transform water into wine, we just want to show you that we present consistent results, that are attainable by everyone., as long as you have the necessary motivation to follow our advice.

What we can always guarantee is that if our clients follow our directions and guidance, always send their weekly feedback saying how their body, nutrition and training have progressed, we will always deliver the intended results.

What we mean is that if our clients dedicate themselves enough, follow our directions and give us weekly feedback, and even then aren’t able to get the results they set out to get, we will fully reimburse your investment.

To get to know our work methodology, in order to know what you need to do to become the person you have always dreamed of, reach us through our Contactos page.

This is Tiago Ferreira’s transformation (instagram: tiagoferreirafitness) done in around 8 weeks.

In his testimonial, Tiago explains the difference between being coached by Team Transformerz or by other coaches who defend absurd myths that have been proven wring by scientific research and that are, sometimes, prejudicial enough to not allow you to achieve any results.:

“I started my bulk phase with a coach that was against counting macros. All my diet was done by “the feel”. I started out at 76kgs and ended up at 102kgs. Throughout the coaching, the coach would tell me to “eat clean” during the week and on the weekends I could eat whatever I wanted. Obviously, I ended up eating many unnecessary calories and enormous amounts of food. At the time I actually felt good, because for an 18 year old to be 102kg was awesome, I felt huge. Unfortunately, I realized that I didn’t have the muscular definition I always wanted to and also felt that my metabolism was slower, making me accumulate a lot of fat. In my friends’ eyes I was “fat”, plain and simple.

SEE ALSO: JOAO MARQUES’S TRANSFORMATION

Meanwhile, I contacted many online coaches, asked for advice and payed for many programs, which I followed religiously. I usually got results in the cutting phase, but always through huge caloric restrictions where I was forced to eat the same food every day. That made me constantly worry about meal timing, taking Tupperwares everywhere I went… Also, I avoided going to parties, vacations…

After a while, I discovered Team Transformerz’ page, and started working with the. From that day onwards, my coach didn’t become only my coach, he became a great friend of mine.

After a few weeks I started to see very good results, I learnt to control and adapt my diet according to my lifestyle and stopped obsessing about nutrition. I learnt that the most important thing is to be consistent so that you achieve sustainable results. There’s no doubt that when I was following a highly restrictive diet, I didn’t manage to achieve the goals I wanted, because it’s impossible to maintain for a medium/long period of time.

All of this just to tell you: “Diet isn’t torture”, so, make the right choices, learn how your body works and never forget that we only live once, one of the best things in life is eating.

To get to know our work methodology, so you know what you need to do to get started on your transformation, get in touch with us through our Contactos page.

As you can imagine, it’s very hard for us to share our clients’ pictures, because many of them aren’t comfortable with public display.

SEE ALSO: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR CALVES

But still, José Riachos was one of the rare exceptions, so here is his transformation and testimonial for you to see. He already training for a few years before starting to work with us (picture on the left), but he felt stagnated even though he had already tried numerous workout programs and followed a “clean” diet.

Here is José’s testimonial, where he explains his evolution and the importance of Team Transformerz’s coaching throughout this journey:

I already trained regularly for a few years and despite being rather disciplined in my workouts, I felt stagnated. I tried a multitude of workout routines, where results were little or none. In terms of nutrition, I based what I ate on said “healthy foods” and, in most recent times with the goal of increasing muscle mass, I increased the doses with no regard to the number of calories or macro breakdown of what I was eating. I ate many times a day, because that’s what I though would work to increase muscle mass. The result was a weak increase in muscle mass and a lot of fat accumulation of fat and water, specially in the abdominal region. I felt it was time to change something. That was when I found Team Transformerz. I sought out to discover how they operated and one of the aspects that caught my eye was the fact that, whether it be workouts or nutrition, they were very methodic and based their work on scientific evidence. When I started the program I realized that, specially regarding nutrition, many of the concepts I believed in were wrong and that you can in fact eat a little bit of everything, as long as it is in the right amounts and according to your goals. That’s a sustainable diet. After the 4^th month I had lost almost 10kg, going from 94kg to 84,9kg, also from 17% body fat to 11% body fat. Best of all, eating what I love! I am currently in the 6^th month of coaching and after an initial fat loss phase, I am in a muscle gain phase. I am currently at 86,5kg and 10% body fat. The results are undoubtedly positive, which is why I strongly advise you start working with Team Transformerz.

To get to know our work methodology, so you know what you need to do to get starter on your transformation, get in touch with us through our Contactos page.

Today we share with you the transformation and testimonial of another one of our members, João Marques. João went through this cutting phase for 12 weeks using a flexible diet, without any long cardio sessions, without fasted cardio and only a minor caloric deficit.

When he came to us, he thought he would only achieve his goals through a series of food restrictions and long cardio sessions. Basically, he thought the law of thermodynamics didn’t apply to him.

My name is João Marques, I am 20 years old and I discovered Team Transformerz through their website. I decided to contact them after I had had a bad experience with coaching and too much time wasted fighting against myself. I was little suspicious beforehand, but I was treated very well and soon all of the concept of flexible dieting was explained to me.

SEE ALSO: DARIO ALVES’S TRANSFORMATION!

When I got in Team Transformerz I was looking for more than a coach. I wanted a teacher, who more before selling me his tuna, would teach me how to fish. Even though I study sports and have participated in many different types of sports, I took everything very literally and let out many shots in the dark. I supported myself on supposedly “clean” foods and on the concepts of “bulking” and “cutting”. I stayed more or less where I started because eventually, I cheated on my diet. I would never judge those who follow this “clean eating” process because it really is a way to do it, but for me, it just doesn’t work. Not because I minded eating clean or eating out of Tupperwares- because I still do it- but simply because I didn’t understand why I had to eat the same thing day and day out. The answer to that question was given to me very readily and with time this becomes mechanical. I can tell you that every day I prepare my menu for the next day. That doesn’t mean I am going to eat “garbage”, specially because I defend both concepts and ally clean eating to being flexible, which makes food not be a problem for me and It allows me to have a healthy relationship with food. This allows me to follow a sustainable diet for an extended period of time, that is balanced in terms of macro and micro nutrients, without seriously affecting my sanity (I say seriously because there are people who find it uncomfortable to weigh each gram of food, but to each his own).

My coach (Tiago Faria), is who I must thank a great deal. Since the first contact he has always been impeccable to me, put up with many of my doubts, mental breakdowns and even in times where I might have been unfair he maintained himself focused where it was needed.

Workouts in Team Transformerz aren’t experiments and aren’t the same for all the clients. They are custom and correctly adapted to the phase where us (clients) are. I can say that I lost between 12 and 13kg and I did no fasted cardio (thank God because I hate boring cardio and I am a zombie in the morning) nor did I ever have extremely restricted calorie goals. There was an adequate balance between the calories I consumed vs. the calories I burned and that allowed for my fat loss to be very great. Now, there is no doubt that you need persistence, will power and patience, because you must be aware that changes don’t happen in 2 weeks and also that we aren0t all the same. Each individual takes his own time to make progress, the important thing is not to give up because we all can achieve the goals we want, all we need is to believe in that and push through.

To get to know our work methodology, in order to know what you need to do to become the person you have always dreamed of, reach us through our Contactos page.

As you can imagine, it’s quite hard for us to be able to post our clients transformations, because we can only do that with their authorization.

This is the transformation of our client António Geraldes, who already trained when he started working with us (left photograph), but didn’t have any knowledge regarding nutrition and was very undisciplined in terms of his meals.

More or less 24 weeks have passed since we started working on António’s transformation and got him into the flexible dieting world. We stopped all of his absurd cardio sessions during the week and eliminated his outrageous cheat meals on the weekends. In these meals he was capable of ruining the whole week’s progress.

Cardio now plays a very scarce role in his routine and now he can eat, within moderation, all of his favorite foods on a regular basis. We managed to make his metabolism more “efficient” throughout the coaching program. The best part is that along the way he gained the necessary knowledge to keep going by himself, and be sure he achieves the goals he desires.

To get to know our work methodology, in order to know what you need to do to become the person you have always dreamed of, reach us through our Contactos page.

This is the only type of cardio we should do fasted, because as you can read in this article http://www.jissn.com/content/11/1/54/abstract fasted cardio doesn’t bring you any additional benefits.

We can conclude that it isn’t relevant, in terms of fat loss, for us to do fasted cardio, contrary to what many people may think. Most people think about the amount of fat they burn during exercise and not about what happens throughout the 24 hour period. When the total caloric deficit is the same throughout a period of 24 hours, the fat loss will be the same as long as all the other factors are the same (for example, protein consumption).

Watch out! The phrase we wrote was “fasted cardio doesn’t bring any additional benefits”. In this case we must underline the word additional. For example, if a certain individual that is on a caloric deficit diet starts stagnating within his results, evidently, if he starts doing fasted cardio he will get results, because he will increase his caloric deficit due to more exercise. What we mean is that this article states that there aren’t any additional benefits from being fasted while you do cardio. The main problem with steady state cardio is that despite it being quite effective in terms of calorie expenditure for that short period of time, our body can adapt to it and start becoming dependent.

When we talk about athletes, they can’t become dependent of doing fasted cardio to be successful in losing fat. Fat loss isn’t an immediate process, it occurs throughout days, and not hours.

When we do fasted cardio we have the advantage of being able to do 2 daily sessions of cardio, which should not be a solution either, because we believe the diet should be the foundation for all of our results, not cardio sessions. That would make us hostages of these cardio sessions in order to burn fat.

Speaking in more scientific terms, if we want to burn more fat during exercise, we will burn more fat during rest and vice-versa. What we mean is that fasted cardio reduces the thermogenic effect, compared to when we eat before a cardio session. So, if we eat before physical exercise, we will increase fat burn through the increase of body heat and of our metabolic rate (thermogenic effect).

On the other hand, fat loss is a process that involves 2 factors: lipolysis and oxidation. Lipolysis is the process where fatty acids are released from our adipose tissue (fat) into the blood stream. That’s where tissue like the heart, liver and muscle can absorb them and oxidize them for energy production. During exercise, what limits total fat loss is oxidation, not lipolysis. During exercise our body tends to release many more fatty acids that it is capable of oxidizing for energy production. Fatty acids in excess, that aren’t oxidized, are simply given back to adipose tissue.

In conclusion, fasted cardio causes a greater release of free fatty acids than other forms of cardio. But, that doesn’t mean that it increases the fat oxidation rate. So, there isn’t any difference between traditional cardio and fasted cardio.

On the other hand, HIIT cardio brings various benefits when compared to other forms of cardio. It’s been proven more efficient for fat loss throughout an extended period of time and is also more effective in maintaining muscle mass. Anyway, we recommend you read these two articles that demonstrate the main advantages of implementing HIIT cardio in our routine:

http://www.fmh.utl.pt/…/112/LaursenIntervalTraining.pdf

http://www.jissn.com/content/11/1/16

Like we have already told you, if you’re interested in building an athletic and muscular physique, HIIT (high intensity interval training) should be the most prominent type of cardio in your program. It has been proven that HIIT is more beneficial for fat loss in the long run and that it helps maintain muscle mas when you follow a balanced diet.

We can do these sessions anywhere. For example, we can sprint on the street for 15-30 seconds at maximal intensity, followed by low intensity recovery for 1-3 minutes. After that we can easily increase the difficulty of our sessions, because all we have to do is increase the duration of our sessions, by increasing sprint duration or number, or even by cutting recovery time.What’s important in HIIT sessions isn’t the speed we hit but the intensity with which we perform the intervals.

We aren’t saying we should do HIIT everyday, because that would lead to a decrease in performance in our weight training. On the other hand, we aren’t saying that low intensity steady state cardio is useless. We should use a combination of both to maximize fat loss, without sacrificing the intensity of our weight training.

To wrap this up, an extended caloric deficit must be implemented mainly through our diet. Like this we will consider cardio as the “last card in hand” at an advanced phase where we are already in a big caloric deficit.

Q: Is it possible to loss body fat and build muscle at the same time?

A: Basically – No! The best advice we can give you is to stop trying to prove science is wrong. Trying to build muscle and burn fat at the same time will only harm your progress.

To build lean mass (“muscle mass”), it’s necessary for us to be in a caloric surplus, which will bring collateral damage and make us gain fat mass as well (this process is called a “bulk”), The size of the caloric surplus will determine the speed at which we will gain the excess fat mass. This is clearly the opposite of what we want when we want to lose fat.

Fat loss requires a caloric deficit, which will bring as collateral damage the loss of muscle mass (this process is called “cutting”). The size of this deficit will determine how much muscle mass we will lose. This is obviously the opposite of what we want when we are trying to build muscle mass.

Despite it being practically impossible, there are a few scenarios in which both processes can happen:

1) When we resort to chemicals, like anabolic steroids.
2) When we start weight training for the first time.
3) When we are very over weight.
4) When we are a long time without weight training.
5) When we’re genetic freaks.

So, the best thing is to focus on one of the options at a time, and afterwards proceed to the other one. This is the fashion in which traditionally, most bodybuilders use. First they focus on building muscle (“bulk”), then they focus on burning fat (“cutting”). This way they can reveal the gains they made during the muscle building phase.

Stop trying to walk on water and focus on one goal… “make some gains” J

If you want to work on your transformation without useless sacrifices, send us an email to geral@teamtransformerz.com

When we ruin our daily goals, whether it be by not fully hitting our daily macros or ending up eating twice what we should, this doesn’t make us weak. It just makes us human.

It’s completely normal for this to happen. The best decision we can do when that happens is accept what we did and remember the goals we have set for ourselves, proceeding to move on. No one fails one wants to fail on purpose, so we shouldn’t waste time thinking about our mistakes and beating ourselves up over them.

SEE ALSO: SWEET POTATO CAKE RECIPE!

Trust us on this matter, because in the past we have had our own battles, we have been where you are, struggling with food cravings, anxiety and guilt. But if there’s something we’ve learned is that guilt is a waste of an emotion. Use your extra calories to fuel an incredible workout, and that way getting back on track with your diet and macros.

The most important thing is: DON’T cut your calories or double your physical activity in the hope of correcting your mistakes. Experiencing hunger is something that shouldn’t happen to anyone, specially those who have the means to not experience it. Also, if you start doing cardio marathons as if you were going to participate in the Olympics, you’re bound to be on the verge of an eating disorder, which is the worst approach to maintaining a sustainable diet in the long run.

Remember that sometimes, sh*t happens. A bad day doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to have a bad week or month. If you make a mistake, accept it and go back to your normal diet, no calorie cutting, no extra training sessions and DEFINITELY, no extra cardio sessions.

We shouldn’t be afraid of sodium! It performs an essential role in body fluid regulation. With this being, there is absolutely no reason to limit your sodium consumption unless you have a tendency to have hypertension (high blood pressure).

Normally we think that ingesting a lot of sodium will increase fluid retention. Actually, avoiding sodium is what can cause this problem!

Sudden sodium spikes can contribute in some form to water retention. So, we should try to maintain steady levels of sodium in our food intake. If we consume a large amount of sodium, our body will get used to this consumption.

Sodium is vital to obtain “pumps” and incredible vascularity. It is also essential in the transport of potassium to the muscle cells, which will make us have a fuller look (note: a fuller look means that our muscles have a larger volume).

When we remove sodium from our diet with the purpose of “losing water”, our aesthetics will suffer immensely because we will look flat (note: a flat look means our muscles have lost volume).

So, we shouldn’t restrict sodium intake, but we should maintain steady levels of it in our blood stream and maintain a consistent fluid intake. Normally we drink 4 to 5 liters of water per day, because contrary to what people believe, water consumption doesn’t hurt our muscular definition. Very much the contrary, it helps it.

Always remember that we aren’t smarter than our body. So don’t try to trick it into looking like something it isn´t by restricting something it needs!

SEE ALSO: SUPPLEMENT MYTHS

Note: We know it’s quite hard, but try to draw your attention away from his vascularity. Look at these quads! What an incredible physique!

References:

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/71/5/1013.full
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=899663

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GRID VIEW

Selmo Santos (12 weeks)

André Marques (14 Weeks)

Tiago Ferreira (8 weeks)

José Riachos (16 Weeks)

João Marques (12 Weeks)

António Geraldes (24 weeks)

Should we do fasted cardio? No!

Is it possible to build muscle and lose fat at the same time?

Ruining your diet? Our solution…

Low Body Fat = Sodium Restriction?!

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