As a fitness professional and owner of Crux Fitness (3 locations servicing the greater Vancouver Area in Canada), I would say 95% of the clients come to us for fat loss. 

(you can read about why I got into the fitness business in my introduction post: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@mjctraining/introduction-why-i-do-what-i-do)

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Such as Ryan who lost over a 100lbs while training with Crux Fitness, changing his eating habits, and also creating a sustainable fitness lifestyle.

He is now big into Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and making a name for himself in our local BJJ community.  

Big congrats on turning your life and health around brother!

Anyhow, since most of my livelihood hinges on helping people lose weight.

**And since losing weight really is all about an combinations of:**

**1. Training the right way at the right intensity that fits into your specific goals**
**1. Eating the right way to support your goal**

A huge part of what I did was to test out different training methods as well as nutrition approaches.  

# The raw vegan diet strikes again

So when I tested out a raw vegan diet, I quickly found out that it helps you drop weight FAST.....

In just a matter of 2 weeks, I dropped from 155LBs to 140LBS. 

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I didn't mind.  I was doing a lot of rock climbing at the time and being 15 lbs lighter was actually a plus. 

Yeah, thats a picture of me at 140lbs.  

I didn't think much of it until a friend worriedly approached me one day asking me if I was ok?  

Then I realized that I got so skinny compared to before in such a short amount of time that a few friends and clients were beginning to worry, thinking that I might be sick.

Not to mention that the whole raw vegan thing really wasn't going to work for me long term. 

# Gaining Weight FAST

Now the challenge has become how to gain back the weight fast.  

And since I am all about experimentation, I have decided to challenge myself by gaining even more weight than before.  And at the same time, minimize fat gain. 

Coming up with the training plan and the eating plan was pretty straight forward.  

Here is a quick rundown of it:

Given that I was really active, exercising more than 15 hours a week, to calculate the daily total calorie that I need to gain weight fast:

***Multiply my current weight (140 lbs) by 21 = 2940 kcal***

Now I have a ball park figure of my approximate daily caloric need, now I have to make sure I have the right macronutrient breakdown.

To take into account that I have high metabolism and NOT training for bodybuilding but rather needs to be able to continue doing rock climbing and training Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, I have decided to go with:

***30% Protein, 40% Carbs, 40% Fat***

Now the only thing left to do is execution.

Only that after a few days of trying to go from eating raw vegan diet to now eating a much higher caloric intake.  I find that it was very difficult for me to finish all of my food.

Eating 3000 Kcal of JUNK FOOD is easy.

Eating 3000 Kcal of healthy whole foods is a completely different story.

After struggling to up my food intake, I remembered one thing that we learned in nutrition class.

That our "satiety mechanism" doesn't kick in until after the first 20 minutes of eating. 

Meaning that no matter how much food you eat in the first 20 minutes, our brain is slow to process the signal and will not let you feel full until we hit that magic number. 

That is also a big reason why so many people overeat.  They stuff their faces in the first 20 minutes with WAYYY too much food and then just feel bloated and guilty afterwards.

Luckily, I can now use this trick to my advantage!  I started practicing Speed Eating, set a timer to go off every 5 minutes so I can keep up the pace of my eating and finish everything within the first 20 minutes.

And just like that, coupled with the training protocol, I was able to gain 35 lbs in 3 months time. 

I went from 140 lbs, and ended up at 175 lbs.

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The moral of the story is that, you can use this information to your advantage!  

If what you desire is to lose weight, then a very important skill to master would be the skill of eating slowly.  So you can really start listening to your body's hunger cues.

Eat slowly, so once you hit the 20 minute mark, you can take a moment and put your utensil down and take notice if you are feeling 80% full (if so, stop), or not quite?

And on the flip side, of course, if you want to gain weight fast.  Eat away, and eat fast!  And don't ever look back.

# My other articles

Read about the one big fitness mistake that I made that also made me lose money trading cryptocurrency: https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@mjctraining/how-i-made-this-rookie-fitness-mistake-that-could-be-stopping-me-from-ever-getting-that-lambo