Jillian Michaels’ Weight Loss Fitness Tips and Oxidizer Quiz

I found this helpful interview Pat Robertson did with Jillian Michaels on the 700 Club. Jillian is one of the nation’s toughest fitness gurus. A while back she wrote a bestselling book on weight loss, “Winning by Losing.” Here’s what she had to say about weight loss and fitness.

Pat: You coached your team on the Biggest Loser, I saw those fat people, there’s no way they’ll lose that much weight and together they lost 450 pounds.

Jillian: Yeah, but that was actually season one. On season two they lost even more. And Pete, who you recently had on your show lost a 185 pounds in 7 months.

Pat: What did you do? You know, when I see someone like that overweight I say, heart attack in the making. How do you keep them from falling over dead.

Jillian: Well truthfully, when they come to the show they are screened by a doctor, so they are given EKG’s and stress tests before I get my little paws on them, (laughter) for that very reason.

Pat: You are brutal. What are some of the weight loss tips. What do you do them to get them in that kind of shape?

Jillian: Well in my opinion, my success in helping people who want to lose weight is based on three things: Number one, Self. I help them understand the emotional reasons behind their weight gain, so we can get to the bottom of it and teach them to commit mental resources towards change. Number two, the Science of Diet and Proper Nutrition. And then Number Three, Sweat. You know, you have to workout in order to be healthy and lose weight.

Pat: People said he did, what was it four hours a day of work? I mean, that is a lot of training.

Jillian: It’s craziness, I’m not going lie to you, it’s insanity. I mean and unfortunately because you know it is a reality TV show and moves at a very accelerated pace, in my book I recommend four hours a week not four hours a day.

Pat: Oh I see…

Jillian: It is a TV show, that why it’s happening like that.

Jillian’s Oxidizer Quiz and Weight Loss

Pat: Well, you use terms like fast oxidizer and slow oxidizer and balance; What are you talking about, is it body types you are talking?

Jillian: What I’m talking about when I’m speaking of an “Oxidizer” is how people oxidize their food, ie. how quickly do they metabolize their food and turn it into fuel. And that’s why you’ve got all these different diets out there like South Beach or Atkins or Pritikin, and they really are is a different macro-nutrient ratio, meaning, some diets are no fat, higher carbs, lean protein. Then some are equal fat, equal carbs, equal protein. Then some diets like Atkins or zero carbs, fats and proteins and people don’t know if they’re coming or going. And the truth of the matter is that there is no one size fits all approach to nutrition. Therefore I hope people identify which one of those macro-nutrient ratios is right for them.

Pat: How are they going to know?

Jillian: Well, there’s a quiz in my book and it basically talks about the physiological traits, you know, your energy levels, your preferences and again it goes back to what you were saying about knowing your body, learning to listen to your body. It’s like, OK well when you just have fruit for breakfast in the morning are you sustained or are you hungry within an hour. It’s like learning to listen and really pay attention. And a lot of times they’ll take the quiz in the book and they’ll think, gosh you know, I never thought about this I don’t know and it takes them time and think about it.

Pat: Let’s say somebody is a fast oxidizer what should they eat?

Jillian: Well, at the end of the day the one universal truth when it comes to diet in my opinion is math, it’s calories in, calories out. That said, you know the oxidizing quiz is helping you identify the best foods for you so you’ll have the most energy possible. The fast oxidizer would do better with less carbohydrates because they would take carbs that already breakdown more quickly in their body and it would give them quick energy and then they would have a sugar crash. so for them, they are going to do better on foods that are a little bit heavier like, steak, natural fats, salmon, nuts, eggs, things like that and of carbs that are more complex.

Pat: What about the balanced oxidizer, what do they do?

Jillian: They are pretty lucky. Then can take leaner proteins and heavier proteins, They can choose a wider variety of carbohydrates, vegetables, fruits, grains and they would have a more balanced meal, so for example equal portions of carbs fat and protein in their meal.

Pat: None of them can eat candy and cake and pies and sweets, right?

Jillian: None of them… (laughter), I mean the occasional Reeses Peanut Butter Cup is not a tragedy but, you know.

Pat: Ok, people have thought that cardio was the way to go and your saying cardio, straight cardio may not be the answer anymore. What is it?

Jillian: Well, I mean we are doing the show about heart health today, cardio is important for that but that said the way I’d do resistance training is very cardiovascular so in my opinion cardio is, burns your calories, gets your heart rate up fantastic but that said, the most effective way is to do resistance training in a cardiovascular fashion. So you’ll do things like squats and lunges and presses and bicep curls, but no stopping, keep yourself moving at the gym to keep your heart rate up. 85 percent of your maximum heart rate is really most effective for heart health in my opinion.

Pat: That gets your the muscles as well as gets your heart pumping.

Jillian: Exactly, it tones and conditions your cardiovascular system, helps you burn more calories as well.

Pat: Ok, how often do people do all this in your opinion?

Jillian: I like for people to do their resistance training four times a week and then I say throw some extra cardio in for gravy. Because I think if you train each muscle group more than twice a week you can begin to break it down. You need adequate time for your muscles to rebuild or recover.

Pat: Well I’m for that one, but anyone… (laughter). My specialty was the leg press. I like to do heavy leg presses.

Jillian: I saw a picture of you pressing like a thousand pounds or something, that’s an elephant you know.

Pat: Two thousand pounds… I did it once. One rep.

Jillian: (laughter…) That’s amazing.

Pat: It’s like a small Volkswagen. But anyways, you get used to it, you build up to it.

Jillian: Yeah, apparently.

Pat: I used to warm up at 500 pounds and go up from there. But anyways, you get used to it.

Jillian: Laughs…(jokingly) Sure, yeah Ok I’m going to get used to that… that’s amazing I have to say.

Jillian Michaels, the toughest fitness guru, takes a triple threat approach to total health. Take her test to see if you are a balanced, slow or fast oxidizer and adjust your diet accordingly. Order her book Winning or Losing on Amazon.com

Excerpt from the book, Winning by Losing:

The Weight Loss Oxidizer Quiz: DETERMINING YOUR METABOLIC TYPE

For many years nutritional science has taken a generic, overly standardized approach to health and weight loss. This is why there is no one diet that works for everyone. There was all that hype about the Atkins diet, but Kelly, one of my contestants on The Biggest Loser, lost just one pound in a month of sticking to Atkins. Because I know that we are all different and need to diet according to our specific body’s characteristics, I was able to coach her to lose fifty-five pounds in three months. We were working together on the show, and she lost thirty-five more after that.

Why? Inherited genetics make each one of us unique, from the color of our hair right down to the way our organs function. This uniqueness extends to the way our cells convert nutrients into energy. In order to know how to get the most nutritional bang for your calorie buck, you need to understand your unique metabolic type. Once you do, you can begin to custom design your new dietary lifestyle around the foods that will help you achieve and maintain your ideal weight while also optimizing your physical energy, strength, and mental clarity.

Metabolic typing is really just fancy talk for figuring out how your body processes what you eat—more specifically, how your body deals with the three basic macro-nutrients in food: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Imagine that you are a furnace: your body takes the food you eat and burns it with oxygen to convert its caloric content into energy. This process is known as oxidation, and it’s how the carb content in your food gets turned into glucose and released into the blood. When glucose is released into the blood, the pancreas is cued to release insulin to “clean” your blood of any sugar that is not being used by the body as energy and carry it to your cells, where it gets stored as fat. The fact that we all oxidize the nutrients in our food in different ways is the reason why a particular diet will work for one person and not for another. If you know more about how the nutrients in your food act on your system, you can avoid a lot of unnecessary pitfalls and really maximize your results as you continue on your journey toward total health.

Although rates can vary a lot from one person to the next, most people can be classified according to three basic groups: