Daniel seemed like a pretty tough guy, defying the government and even staring down lions. I wonder if he ever worked out with dumbbells or barbells, or better yet, swung kettlebells to stay in great shape.
I’m being facetious, of course, but I would imagine that Daniel and his colleagues Hananiah, Misha-el, and Azariah were supremely fit and in top physical shape. I say that for several reasons:
Imagine the difference between Daniel and those living in Babylon, circa 605 b.c., and Americans today, where our eating habits and sedentary lifestyles have produced a populace that’s soft around the middle, among other places. Most people can’t even be bothered to park and walk a hundred feet into their favorite fast food restaurant; instead, they stay in their cars and breeze by the drive-thru lane.
While the main focus of the Maker’s Diet Revolution is nutrition, physical fitness is also essential to good health. In fact, the right kind of exercise is one of the best things you can do for your body, mind, and spirit. Exercise can be both a cleansing and building activity: pumping those legs and arms speeds up the heart and makes you breathe faster, which helps transfer oxygen from your lungs to your bloodstream and increases the body’s natural immune system function. Exercise stimulates the important white blood cells in your body to move from the organs into the bloodstream, where they can mount a defense against invaders and toxins inside the body. Exercise also builds strength and endurance, two attributes in dwindling supply nowadays.
Judging from statistics, consistent exercise is an extremely difficult challenge for most people these days.
I’ve always enjoyed exercising. In my early twenties, I was a certified fitness instructor, and nearly seventeen years later I still love to exercise. But like any father with three children under the age of ten and a lot going on outside the home, there are times when I need to be more … efficient with my routine.
Some mornings, I do an intense workout using combination sets that takes as little as twelve minutes. The combination of high reps, moderate weights, and high-intensity super sets helps me build muscle and lose fat while increasing oxygen uptake. I also love the fact that I’m burning fat for hours after the workout because I exercise on an empty stomach, which causes my body to use stored fat for energy. That’s a double bonus. Remember, I don’t eat my first meal until after noon at the earliest, so I’m still cleansing in the morning.
If you’re like me and don’t have a lot of free time to work out, then this type of exercise—known as functional interval training, surge training, or burst training—could be just the ticket. Burst training involves exercising at 90 percent to 100 percent of your maximum effort for thirty to sixty seconds in order to burn your body’s stored sugar, which is known as glycogen, followed by thirty to sixty seconds of low impact for recovery. Burst training is long on exertion and short on duration.
A good friend of mine, Dr. Josh Axe, author, radio host, and chiropractic physician, has developed a great program utilizing the principles of burst training. Dr. Axe has served as a wellness physician to many professional athletes and celebrities and has a passion for delivering maximum results in limited time.
I asked Dr. Axe to explain burst training and his brand new fitness program he calls BurstFIT. Here is what he had to say:
I think burst training is a great way to experience fast fat loss.
Most people who want to burn fat and lose weight assume that going to the gym and doing traditional aerobic exercise such as pacing yourself on an elliptical machine or jogging on a treadmill is the best way to see results. But recent research is proving that long distance cardiovascular exercise is not the fastest way to burn fat and lose weight.
If you’ve been spending hours on the treadmill and not seeing any results, it’s because long-distance cardiovascular exercise can decrease testosterone and raise the levels of stress hormones such as cortisol. Increased levels of cortisol stimulate the appetite, increase fat storage, and slow down or even inhibit exercise recovery.
A recent study in Psychoneuroendocrinology showed evidence of long-term high cortisol levels in aerobic endurance athletes. Researchers tested levels of cortisol in 304 endurance athletes (runners, cyclists, and triathletes) and compared them to non-athletes. The results showed higher cortisol levels with higher training. The Journal of Sports Sciences found that long periods of aerobic exercise increased oxidative stress leading to chronic inflammation.
If you want to see results fast without the negative effects of traditional cardiovascular exercise, your best option is burst training. Burst training, also known as interval training, combines short, high intensity bursts of exercise with slow recovery phases, repeated during one exercise session. Burst training is done at 85 to 100 percent maximum heart rate rather than 50 to 70 percent in moderate endurance activity.
With burst and other types of interval training, you are getting the same cardiovascular benefits as endurance exercise but without the negative side effects in much shorter time period. Essentially, burst training is exercising like a sprinter rather than a marathon runner.
One of the major benefits of burst training is that it can be done in the comfort of your own home with zero or minimal equipment. An example of burst training would be going to a track and walking the curves and sprinting the straightaways. Or getting on a spin bike and cycling hard for 20 seconds then going easy for 20 seconds then repeating that effort for between five to forty minutes.
Burst training isn’t necessarily new. Elite athletes and Olympians have known this secret to exercising and have been practicing interval training for years. The research proves that anybody— not just elite athletes—can utilize interval training and achieve amazing results.
Research from the University of New South Wales Medical Sciences found that burst cardio could burn up to three times more body fat than moderate cardio. The researchers studied two groups and found that the group who did eight seconds of sprinting on a bike, followed by twelve seconds of exercising lightly for twenty minutes, lost three times as much fat as other women, who exercised at a continuous, regular pace for forty minutes.
The reason burst training works is because it produces a unique metabolic response in your body. Intermittent sprinting causes your body not to burn high amounts of fat during exercise, but after exercise, your metabolism stays elevated and will continue to burn fat for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours!
In addition, chemicals called catecholamines are produced that allow even more fat to be burned. This causes increased fat oxidation, which drives greater weight loss. By the way, the women in the study lost the most weight off their legs and buttocks.
Another study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology in April 2007 researched eight different women in their early twenties. They were told to cycle for ten sets of four minutes of hard riding, followed by two minutes of rest.
After two weeks, the amount of fat burned increased by 36 percent, and their cardiovascular fitness improved by 13 percent.
The key benefits of burst training can be summed up in this manner:
◼ Burst training can burn up to three times more body fat than traditional or moderate cardio.
◼ After two weeks of burst training, fat burning increases by 36 percent.
◼ Your body will continue to burn fat for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours after you’re done exercising.
◼ You can work out in less time and see better results.
Burst training … it’s worth checking out.
Burst training is a type of functional interval training that I’ve recommended in my previous books, including Perfect Weight America. Not only do I see the value of shorter but more intense workout periods, but I’ve personally experienced the benefits of strengthening my heart and lungs, building muscle, and igniting my body’s fat-burning furnace. I urge you to run—not walk—to your computer and check out burst training and start scorching both peripheral fat (found in arms, legs, and buttocks) and visceral fat (found in your torso, mainly the abdominal region) during and after your workout.
By sharply increasing and decreasing your heart rate, you’ll burn more calories in a twenty-four-hour period than if you spend the same amount of time striding at the same pace on a treadmill. Burst training will improve your resting metabolic rate (RMR) as well as your VO2 Max rate, which is the maximum amount of oxygen that can be used by an individual, in milliliters, in one minute per kilogram of body weight.
You see, you can’t lose weight—or sustain the weight you’ve lost after completing the Daniel Diet—without stoking the body’s furnace to burn up reserves of fat. When you complete a series of burst-type exercises, you increase your oxygen intake as well as your heart and lung capacity so that your body turns into a fat-burning engine that incinerates excess fat long after you’ve stopped working out.
You do this by building muscle—or restoring muscle that’s been lost over the years—through functional, body-strengthening exercises. Even if you add a pound or two from gaining muscle, you’ll be better off because one pound of muscle burns thirty to fifty calories a day while one pound of fat burns only three calories a day.
When the body exercises, it works in two basic ways: aerobically and anaerobically. The body is said to be working aerobically when it operates at a pace that allows the cardio-respiratory system—the lungs, heart, and bloodstream—to replenish energy as you exercise. Put another way, aerobic exercise causes the body to utilize oxygen to create energy. This is basically anything that gets the heart going, such as running on a treadmill, cycling on stationary bikes, or stepping on stair stepper machines.
Aerobic exercise is generally associated with non-resistance activities such as:
◼ aerobics classes
◼ basketball
◼ bicycling
◼ calisthenics
◼ dancing
◼ gardening
◼ golfing
◼ hiking on level terrain
◼ ice skating
◼ inline skating
◼ racquetball
◼ scuba diving
◼ snowboarding
◼ snow skiing
◼ soccer
◼ softball
◼ squash
◼ table tennis
◼ tennis
◼ volleyball
◼ walking
◼ water skiing.
Anaerobic exercise is any form of non-sustained physical activity that typically involves a limited number of specific muscles over a short period of time.
Examples of anaerobic exercise are:
◼ lifting weights
◼ using strength-training machines such as Nautilus and Hoist
◼ jumping rope or jumping on a rebounder (depending on duration, can be aerobic as well)
◼ sprinting
◼ working the body’s core muscles through the use of functional exercises with rubber bands, stability balls, medicine balls, and Russian kettlebells
I can explain the differences between aerobic and anaerobic exercise further by using a word picture. Let’s say you’ve been exercising on a stationary bike all winter long at your fitness club. Your usual routine is to pedal two or three times a week for thirty-minute stints. Spring is in the air, so you decide to take advantage of the warm sun by going on an outdoor bike ride. The temperature is just right on this Saturday morning—around 70 degrees. It feels good to pedal briskly in the fresh air on a level bike path. You are performing classic aerobic exercise.
In the distance, you spot a series of hills. You pedal over the first one with little exertion, but you can feel it in your legs on the second hill. The final climb, however, is a killer: to keep up your cadence and speed, you stand on your pedals and give that little extra oomph to clear the rise.
What you’ve just done on Hill Number 3 is switch over from aerobic to anaerobic exercise. You handled the first two hills aerobically, but to maintain speed on the final rise, you needed extra help. When you stood on the pedals and pumped those tired leg muscles, you crossed a threshold and began exercising the body anaerobically.
Chances are you couldn’t sustain that type of energy exertion very long since only elite athletes can do any form of anaerobic exercise beyond a few moments. Yet anaerobic exercise is the best way to build muscle and simultaneously burn fat. Many studies have shown that anaerobic exercise burns more calories and thus more fat than aerobic exercise—up to five times more, according to this Colorado State University study.
Calories Burned in Sixty Minutes of Exercise
| Exercise | During exercise | Two hours after exercise | Three to fifteen hours after exercise |
| Aerobic | 210 | 25 | 0 |
| Anaerobic | 650 | 150 | 260 |
As you can see, we’re talking about a huge difference in caloric expenditures. What happens is that aerobic exercise typically burns 25 percent muscle and 75 percent fat for body energy, but anaerobic exercise burns 100 percent body fat for body energy.
The dirty little secret in the weight-loss world is that the first thing you lose when you diet—and casually exercise—is muscle tissue. Your body cannibalizes muscle tissue to support your energy needs, but the fat stays on your tummy and hips. Trying to lose weight without exercising anaerobically would be like running a 10K race with ankle weights: it’s going to take you a lot longer to reach the finish line. It’s extremely difficult to lose fat permanently without exercising anaerobically.
You can achieve your fitness goals as well as drop unwanted fat by incorporating burst training exercises into your lifestyle. But first I must issue a health advisory: burst training is not recommend for those new to exercise or out of shape. You may have to spend the first week or two, maybe your first month, getting your body reacquainted with physical exertion. You should walk on a treadmill, pedal a stationary bike, or jump on a rebounder before tackling intense, interval training.
So in this sense, it’s a good idea to start slow and easy and make steady progress in your physical conditioning. Once you have a new or renewed foundation of fitness, then kick things up a notch by engaging in a burst training program.
Here are seven simple exercises that Dr. Axe recommends that you can do at home:
The key is giving it everything you’ve got—for a short time. And then resting. And doing it again and again until you’re winded and need a longer rest. Twenty minutes or less is all you need to make burst training a substitute for the old paradigm of exercise.
Of course, if you belong to a fitness or athletic club, you can tap into various high intensity classes that fit the burst training approach. Zumba is a dance fitness craze that seems to be working for many exercise enthusiasts. Cardio muscle classes keep you moving while lifting dumbbells; step aerobic classes is a choreographed routine of stepping up and down a rectangular platform; and spin classes have you performing interval training on a stationary bike. You can seek out studios that specialize in Pilates, a body conditioning routine that can be very intense.
My favorite tool for anaerobic exercise is the Russian kettlebell, which looks like an oversized cannonball with a handle. Kettlebells are an excellent way to work the body’s “core” muscles. When you swing and lift kettlebells, you’re the beneficiary of one of those old-school workouts that really get the heart pumping and stimulate the key muscles of the body.
I began training with kettlebells in 2007 when Pavel Tsatsouline, a Russian who trained Red Army Special Forces back in the day, gave me personal instruction on how to use this powerful tool. Pavel had immigrated to the United States in the 1990s determined to put kettlebells on the map, and I’d say he’s succeeded. Ever since I received my first set of kettlebells six years ago, I’ve been using them almost exclusively in my morning workout programs.
Kettlebells are different from free weights because their handles give them a displaced center of gravity. They come in various weights from 10 to 106 pounds. What I like about kettlebells and Pavel’s unique training sequences is their efficacy and efficiency. Kettlebell training involves exercises that engage the entire body, making traditional Olympic lifts such as snatches, clean and jerks, and dead lifts more functional.
Technique is very important when training with Russian kettlebells. A great beginning exercise is holding a kettlebell by the horns, chest-height, and performing knee bends called goblet squats, keeping your weight on your heels. One-arm kettlebell swinging “is the closest thing to throwing a punch,” says Pavel, which must be a reason why kettlebells are a very popular training tool for boxers and mixed martial artists.
My nine-year-old son Joshua works out with kettlebells, and I’m amazed how quickly he’s learned proper technique. Likewise, Nicki has become proficient in kettlebell exercises.
The kettlebells I use are the original bells brought to the U.S. by Pavel and distributed by Dragon Door. For more information on Russian kettlebell training, visit www.dragondoor.com.
Performing bursts of intense exercises that push the body will help you make great gains in strength, balance, and flexibility. Exercise is essential for cleansing and building the body and is a vital component of the Maker’s Diet Revolution. Without exercise, you won’t achieve or maintain optimal physical health.
Exercise is essential to maintaining any weight loss you experience during the 10-Day Daniel Diet. When you exercise, you’re helping the body remove toxins through breathing more deeply, which releases toxins from the lungs and from perspiration that releases toxins from your lymphatic system.
I think—and this is coming from a very busy guy—that the toughest thing about exercise is not the exertion it demands but finding time to do it consistently. You’ll have to set your mind to getting the body moving again. You’ll have to discipline yourself. The good news is that you don’t have to spend a lot of hours exercising.
By utilizing burst training as recommended by Dr. Axe or incorporating Russian kettlebells into a high-intensity, short-duration training routine, you can build a healthy body in just minutes a day.