Here’s How I Lost 11 Lbs,
Trimmed 3 ½ Inches Off My Waist
And Lost My Beer Belly In Just 4 Weeks,
And Why I Believe You Can Do It Too

My name is Peter. I’m the editor of this and several other websites devoted to natural foods and alternative health, I run an online health membership site which gives out valuable information on the alternatives to drugs and I’m also an e-zine articles.com expert author.

Over the years, many of my readers have asked me, “What is the best and healthiest way to lose weight?”

Although I know a lot about health and nutrition, the truth is, I didn’t have an answer to the weight loss question. In fact, I was a bit frustrated with the whole weight loss thing myself, because I eat VERY clean, healthy and natural foods and yet I still had a problem with stomach fat. Not that I was obese or anything, but even having a little bit of a belly is annoying and even embarrassing.

So, to help my readers as well as myself, I started a little research project. I scoured the Internet for knowledge about losing weight, looking better and most importantly, doing it in a way that was healthy and natural.

In my searches, I came across a lot of the same sites you’ve probably seen - I heard all the usual hype about diet pills, exotic weight loss berries, 4-minute workout routines, ab machines, as well as sites telling you about the worst foods in America and everything you were forbidden to eat.

Then I came across one website that sounded different: “Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle.”  I said to myself, “That’s exactly what I want to do - burn off the fat and feed my muscle! I know I need to eat healthy, but I don’t want to deprive or starve myself to death just to get a flat stomach.”

To be honest, it sounded great, but don’t all these programs on the Internet sound great at first? Was this just another one that will fail me in the end? I was intrigued enough that I decided to start investigating this one a bit further.

It turned out this program was an e-book written by a guy called Tom Venuto who at the time, I must admit, I'd never heard of. From reading the web page, I found out that Tom Venuto was a champion body builder who claimed to have a natural way to achieving long term sustainable weight loss.

This is what piqued my interest even more: It was a natural approach, focusing on whole foods not a bunch of diet drinks or pills, and it was sustainable for permanent results.

One of the principles behind the program is that we shouldn't be so focused on the “losing weight” issue - what’s more important is “body composition”, which is the fat to muscle ratio. The idea is keep your muscle and burn the fat.

It seems that those individuals who make their living from being both lean AND muscular - people like bodybuilders and fitness models - have adopted this theory that Tom Venuto writes about, which is burning fat, while sustaining all the lean muscle tissue. Venuto was also very adamantly against steroids and all in favor of doing it naturally. No weight loss drugs or potentially dangerous diet pills either.

So that’s what made me decide to give it a try. I investigated it thoroughly before I paid my $39 bucks so I believed it was legit and so was the author, based on all his credentials and bodybuilding experience.

Plus it was ranked as one of the best selling ebooks in history, online since 2002. Since it came with an 8 week money back guarantee, I figured what do I have to lose. If it doesn’t work, I’ll get my money back and I’ll write up a thumbs down review on all my health sites. 

"Eight weeks" I remember saying to my wife, “Eight weeks and I want the honest truth from you - tell me how I look in eight weeks.  Don't just say I look okay if I don’t - I want the cold, hard truth, okay?”  Actually, I didn't really need to say that to her because she had been busting my chops about my “beer gut” for months! Ha! I don’t even drink beer, I just had a gut!  So I was READY to give this whirl.

The nutrition was totally not what I expected. By that I mean, it’s not a low carb, high fat ketogenic diet, which I had heard of before, and it wasn’t even necessarily a high protein diet, which you would expect from bodybuilders.

It turns out that this program has three phases and while one of them is lower in carbs and higher in protein, the main program actually allows you generous amounts of carbs, as long as you eat the right ones.

Well, that sounded good to me because I like my carbs, and it made sense to me that not everyone should eat or wants to eat the same amount of protein and carbs. The right diet depends on the individual. There’s just no one size fits all type of program that works for everyone.

Well, I could tell you about the results, but let me show you. Here are my before and after photos. Sorry about the quality, I had to take them myself with one hand using a mirror because my wife wouldn't. Don’t ask me why.

I don’t think she wanted my pictures on the net, but I cropped my head off the pics anyway, for a little anonymity.

Inside the book, Tom tells you all about the calorie equations you need to know and he has a whole chapter about the body fat testing, where you do a caliper test to figure out body fat percentage and lean mass and you keep a progress chart, etc. etc. 

I appreciate the concept of burning the fat and being sure you keep all the lean muscle tissue, but I wasn’t all that interested in the number crunching. For me the proof is in the pudding. How would I LOOK afterwards?

Well, it didn’t even take 8 weeks. At FOUR weeks, my wife started to get “fresh” with me, and if you knew my wife, you’d know that’s a bit of a novelty.  

After 4 weeks, my stomach didn’t look all that bad anymore. The “beer gut” was pretty much gone and I must say for sure I felt really great. Look at the pictures - my stomach looks somewhat better, don't you think?

By the way, I swear I wasn’t pushing out my gut in the before picture, it just kind of hanged over before and I always felt like I was bloated before. That bloat was gone too after 4 weeks.

I realize some people have a LOT of weight to lose and I wasn’t really overweight, so for some people it's going to take longer than 4 weeks. I only lost 11 pounds, but what’s great is that it definitely all came from my belly. My chest and other muscles are still there, not that I’m a bodybuilder or anything, but I didn’t get skinny except where I wanted to - in the waistline.

My body is more toned now too. I know this wasn’t some huge transformation, but even with this little change, I feel like a different man and I’m going to keep following this plan because it’s really a lifestyle not a diet.  I simply get to eat more of the same foods now that I’m on the maintenance phase.

If there’s any down side to this book, it’s that I would have preferred to see more exercises rather than a whole book full of nutritional information. There are only two chapters on exercise - one on weight training and one on cardio training and the weight training chapter doesn’t have any pictures so it assumes you already know how to do the weight lifting exercises.

Fortunately, I had done some lifting years ago, which I learned from my local gym instructor and I still remembered how to do them. I emailed the author and suggested that he add photos in a future edition. He actually wrote back to me - more than once and said he probably would do that.

As I said before, one of the big plusses to Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle is that the program is different for everyone. There are different phases to the nutrition program, there are different exercises and the whole thing can be adapted for each person.  When you read the book, you will understand. It shows you what you need to do for YOUR OWN body type and how to do it. It makes sense, and it really works.

Another thing about this book is the attention to detail - it was surprisingly good, unlike so many of the other e-books I've reviewed in the past. A lot of ebooks these days aren’t’ even like books, they’re like 50 page reports, but this one is different, it’s a real full length book in digital format (it’s an adobe acrobat PDF download). It IS 341 pages long though, so plan on taking a few days to get through it.

By the time you finish reading this book, you’ll be a like an expert in nutrition. You’ll probably know more about nutrition than most doctors! That’s not too surprising though, the way most doctors these days want to write you a prescription for everything instead of exploring nature’s own cures and remedies. But that’s a rant for another day.

This book, as well as Tom’s emails and newsletters, reveal many of the lies we have all been told and debunks so many of the claims we’ve all heard in the past and explains why they didn’t work long term. It was really very valuable to learn why most people gain back the weight, because when you know this, you know what NOT to do as well as what TO do.

Well, that’s my success story. It worked and I'm going to recommend this one, as the proof is in the pudding and I saw the results for myself and you can see them too in my pictures. What you can’t see in my pictures is the feelings of well being and confidence I have now. My pals at the tennis club are talking about me again. And this time, they’re not making fun of my gut - they’re giving me compliments!

By the way, Tom is an excellent writer - not only is his book well written - he has published something like 400 articles in all of the major fitness magazines and websites, so I’ve also posted (with his permission), some of his most nteresting articles here on this site. You can check them out by clicking on the links in the right hand navigation bar for whatever subjects might interest you.

Here’s a picture of Tom just for the heck of it. I don't quite look like Tom Venuto but who know what the future might bring. I strongly suggest that you get yourself a copy of this book, Burn the Fat, Feed the muscle. You can order by clicking the order link in the right hand navigation bar, or you can get more details from Tom's website at www.burnthefat.com. 

To your good health,

Peter,

Editor in Chief