This is a little long, but even if you don't want to get involved it can give you so great motivation.
One of the best ways to succeed is to model successful people. Instead of trying to re-invent the wheel, you copy a winning formula that already exists. This can short-cut your trial and error learning curve by months or even years. The problem is, where do you find a role model? Who do you trust? Whose advice do you listen to? If the success you want is a better body, then who better than a body transformation contest winner? (like the amazing champion you’re about to meet…)
On May 24th, we are opening registration for our Burn The Fat 2010 Summer Body transformation challenge. “Contest central” will be located at the Burn The Fat Inner Circle.
With this new challenge coming up, I figured it would be a perfect time to call upon our last year’s champions to pick their brains and find out how they achieved body transformations so amazing that it won them the title of Overall Burn The Fat Champion.
Today I’d like you to meet Hannah Mauck, 2009 Burn the Fat Feed The Muscle Holiday (winter) Challenge women’s champion. Hannah slashed 12 pounds, and burned off 6% body fat in just 7 weeks.
You can’t help but be amazed at the results you see in her before and after photos. But what the pictures don’t say is that Hannah is also a mom of three, ages 5, 3 and 1. She made her contest winning transformation even while taking care of her children, over the busiest time of the year, with the most temptations (the winter challenge ran from Thanksgiving through New Year’s!)
That really puts her achievement into a whole different perspective, not to mention it kills any excuses you might have about family obligations getting in the way.
We interviewed Hannah after her win and pulled out her top body transformation tips. Whether you’re planning to enter our upcoming summer Burn the Fat Challenge or you just want some body transforming tips for your own personal use, this advice is pure gold!
Hannah: Thinking I didn’t have time was exactly the reason I was in the predicament I was in, health and body-wise, in the first place. But when I found your Burn the Fat book and I read through, it really clicked with me. I knew that I could do it in a manageable amount of time.
All your techniques – the tracking, the accountability methods and the planning of the meals and workouts actually led me to having a lot more time, because I was more organized and I wasn’t trying to put something together at the last minute. I knew exactly what I would be doing and when I would be doing it.
Also, losing weight and spending the time working out has given me so much more energy and brain clarity, that actually, I have more free time. I’ve been able to get more done by investing time in working out. Not having time is not an issue once you actually focus on your goals. As far as getting my pre-baby body back, my body is better than before I had babies. So that’s not an excuse either.
Tom: It seems like you were pretty meticulous about what you were eating. How closely did you track your calories or your macronutrients, the grams of the protein, carbs and fat? If I read your journal right, you used some kind of electronic device to track everything. How did that work for you?
Hannah: I did track pretty closely. I didn’t even know what a macronutrient was, by your definition, until a couple weeks into your program. Then I realized that was important. I started putting that data in and that really helped me to see where my downfalls were. It leads to a lot of accountability when you have to enter food.
Using the iPod for tracking was really great. I got that idea off the Burn the Fat Feed The Muscle Inner Circle forums, where somebody else was using a program on their iPod. It’s really convenient, because you can have it with you all the time and you can enter your data right away and you can actually make adjustments throughout your day by what you’ve eaten or haven’t eaten. That was really helpful for me.
Tom: Obviously, you got a lot leaner, so that revealed the muscles that might have been there already, but you definitely showed more muscularity in your after picture. This is where you can really help us out. You can help the “greater cause” for us: that is, convincing women to lift weights, when they think they’re either going to get bulky or unfeminine. What do you have to say about that now?
Hannah: It’s not an easy task for women to put on muscle and you don’t look bulky even after you do. But I would also add that we all have different body types. Some of us are going to work out and we’re going to stay looking tall and lean and slender. Others are going to work out and we’re going to be a little bit more muscular naturally.
I think everyone should just embrace their fittest body and learn to be comfortable with their body type, whether you’re a little bit more muscular, or you’re more of the ectomorph or leaner type. I think my body type is a little more mesomorph – It’s a little easier for me to gain muscle, but that in no way added any bulk. We just become a little more defined.
The muscle showed once I lost the fat. But none of my measurements were bigger than before I started the challenge. So it did not, definitely did not add any bulk.
Tom: Some people get overwhelmed with the amount of information in the Burn The Fat book, let alone the huge archives we have at the Burn the Fat Inner Circle. Even though you were a relative newcomer to our community, you went right to work and picked it up so fast. What’s your secret? How did you learn all this so quickly and put all the information into practice so fast?
Hannah: I think the key for me was timing. I stumbled onto an ad of yours on the internet for Burn the Fat, then very shortly after that, you announced the Burn the Fat Challenge over the 2009-2010 holidays. I felt like my babies were old enough and I just needed to get busy, so I was mentally very ready for a change at that point. So I do think you have to be ready to change. .
Then, enrolling, and being involved in that challenge was really the key for the implementation. The holiday challenge was 7 weeks so I didn’t have time to just say, “Oh, I’m going to read that later” or “I’m going to do that later.” I had a goal and a deadline and a challenge so I had to focus and read it and do it now. I think it was really the challenge that helped me to implement everything so fast.
Tom: You said that you had days with low energy and days you felt really hungry. That’s going to happen to just about everybody who has their calories reduced for fat loss. So what did you do, either physically or mentally, to stay on your eating plan even when you were hungry, and stay on your training plan even when you were tired?
Hannah: One thing is I would tell myself that I’m in charge of myself, so I can have anything I want, as long as I wait 30 minutes. A lot of times, just delaying that instant urge to put something in my mouth would be enough to either make it to the next meal or realize I didn’t want it. Another thing was that being around kids and food all day long, I had to tell myself I wasn’t the garbage disposal. That may sound funny, but when you’re picking up food all day long, it’s easy to finish off the kids’ portions of this or that. So I put a halt to that and it really helped me. Drinking a lot of hot tea was another way that satisfied both my sweet tooth and cravings for other things.
As far as being tired, sometimes it was just mental and I pushed through it. I really saw a reward and felt more energy from just getting up and doing the workout. Other times, especially as a mom, I think you have to listen to your body and sometimes you need sleep. There were nights where I was up all night with a sick kid. The next day, I just allowed myself to sleep, or have a nap. That really helped with being able to recover and stay on track, because if I got overly tired, I was not able to make good judgment decisions, as far as what I was eating. Sometimes you just need to sleep.
Tom: In one of your very first challenge journal posts, you wrote, “Blechhh. I can’t believe I posted those pictures.” I know that posting before pictures takes a lot of courage. A lot of other women – and guys – in the challenge felt the same way, because I heard it from so many of them. People asked me, “Do we really have to post pictures to be in this contest?” So I’m curious: Looking back, how do you feel about having posted your before picture, when you can now put it next to your after picture?
Hannah: At the time, I definitely thought I was insane. That’s not the type of thing I would have ever done or considered doing at that point. The pictures were almost what made me not do the challenge. But now, I feel like that was invaluable and I totally understand that requirement today. Measurements and numbers are great, but they’re hard to believe in your head. Being able to actually see the change in your body in a picture – that’s totally invaluable. I wouldn’t be able to believe the numbers without seeing the picture. The picture also really kept my feet to the fire. There was no way to hide what you really looked like with the pictures right there.
And the difference between pictures and the mirror??? HUGE. I can’t really even explain that. Something happens when you look in the mirror that does not happen when you look at a photograph. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know how our brains fool us that way. But I could look in the mirror all day long and not see what I can see from a photograph.
Tom Venuto: For anyone who’s thinking about entering the next challenge and they’re terrified to take their picture and post it in the website, what would be your advice to them – coming from someone who felt the same way, but did it anyways?
Hannah: I completely sympathize and I understand how hard it is. But it really is invaluable and it’s the best way to really admit where you’re currently at and to see the milestones you pass and be able to see the changes in your body. It’s definitely invaluable.
Tom: Our summer transformation contest is the big one – 98 days across the entire summer, but our winter contest only ran from Thanksgiving to the first week of January. You came down 6% body fat in those 7 weeks. To put that into perspective, for most people, it would take 12 weeks to drop 6% body fat. About a half a percent a week is typical fat loss. How did you get results that were so far above average and what is your advice for other people who want to make a “results not typical” transformation?
Hannah: The first thing would be the goal setting techniques from your book. The goal card really helped me – just having that written down goal, instead of some vague idea that I needed to improve, kept me totally focused. Second was using feedback from measurements and actually tracking my progress numbers and being accountable to others on the forum. Third was the pre-planning of when exactly I would work out and what I would do, and menus that I would follow.
Tom : Do you think this whole Burn the Fat Feed The Muscle challenge changed your perception on how much you can transform your body in a short period of time, as in our 7 week challenge?
Hannah: Absolutely. I had no idea it was possible. I’ve always looked at those ads, showing pictures of people changing and I thought like that was just a huge fake. I thought it really wasn’t possible and that it would take at least a year to see visible changes of long, hard, hard work, and that has always been a deterrent for me. So knowing that I can put in a concentrated effort for a certain amount of time and actually see visible results is really encouraging to me.
I feel like you could probably advertise the next challenge by saying that if you just finish the challenge and stick to your goals, you will achieve the untypical results, the above average results. Because so many of the finishers did, just by having the accountability of a challenge like this that you don’t have doing it alone. So many of them worked so hard and lost so much weight or changed their body composition so much. It was just amazing to see.
Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle
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