Disclaimer
This book offers health, fitness and nutritional information and is designed for educational purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace, professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The advice and guidance in this book should only be undertaken by those over 18 years of age or with the approval and guidance of a parent/guardian or doctor. If you have or suspect you have any sort of underlying medical condition, always seek your doctor’s advice before beginning a weight loss program.
Foreword
I see problems with all the popular fat loss methods out there, and I’ve tried them all. I've tried the systems like Weight Watchers and Atkins. I've tried restrictive diets - Low fat, Low carb, intermittent fasting, keto. They all get one thing right and many things wrong. When I was eating low fat, my sex drive decreased and I got sick all the time. When I was eating low carb, my workouts and sleep suffered and the food cravings were awful. When I practiced intermittent fasting, I overate in my eating window and never lost weight.
You've probably accepted the idea that you have a naturally "slow" metabolism, just as I did, and I need you to understand this idea is complete bullshit. Your metabolic rate is shaped by the food you eat and the work you do, pure and simple. When you try to manipulate your diet to lose weight, your body adapts to slow your weight loss. We have to find a way to beat these adaptations without damaging our health, and The Ladder System is the way.
With The Ladder System, you will see consistent fat loss week-to-week, but the amount you lose each week is up to you. As much as The Ladder System calculates and programs your calorie intake, it presents you with a choice. You can meet your macronutrient goals with any foods you like. You could eat fast food all day and as long as you hit your carb/fat/protein goals, you’re adhering to The System and you will see consistent fat loss.
But the negative health implications of eating fast food all day, every day regardless of fat loss are too vast to quantify... and besides that, you could have lost 2 pounds that week but instead you only lost 0.4 pounds for various physiological reasons related to eating poor quality food. You still lost weight, but you get my point.
You have to slow it all down and accept it. I want to slow it all down. I want to enjoy the time I have here and not have it pass by me in a blur. I want to enjoy my life and my body.
Don’t you?
The Ladder System is about slowing it down. Take the time to heal your body and take control of your life - the right way. It’ll come in time if you stay the course, and it’ll come faster as you unconsciously begin to make better food choices. Slow it down and trust the process.
Are you ready?
Chapter 1 - What is The Ladder System?
The Ladder System, in simplest terms, is a safe and effective fat loss method. This is not a crash diet. This is not a restrictive diet. This is not even a “diet” at all…
The Ladder System is an eating structure. It doesn’t tell you what foods to eat but rather how many calories to eat and in what macronutrient breakdown on each day of a 7-day cycle.
The aim of The Ladder System is simple: Allow one to drop body fat continuously for weeks and months on end without the adverse health effects of long-term calorie restriction. After all, there are plenty of weight loss methods out there, but many fail people when they must be undertaken for a long period of time. Here’s a list of problems that commonly arise from a long-term calorie deficit:
Metabolic damage
Loss of muscle mass
Low energy
Weakened immune system
Low sex drive
Food obsession
Re-gaining weight post-diet
And these are just the main adverse health effects of dieting. Using The Ladder System, you will avoid all these issues. Many will even see vast improvement in these health markers as they run continuous cycles of The System.
Sign Me Up! How Do I Do It?
The complete "How-to" is coming in Chapter 3, but in short, there are four keys to consistent fat loss when using The Ladder System:
1 Measure your body fat percentage and weigh yourself.
2 Feed those numbers along with your activity level number into The Ladder System Plan Creator at www.theladdersystem.com to calculate your 7-day cyclical eating plan.
3 Track macronutrient intake and stick to daily macro and calorie goals.
4 Supplement key vitamins and minerals for nutritional support as indicated in The Ladder System Supplement Guide in Appendix A
And that’s it. There is no guesswork at how much food you should be eating. You simply stick to the calculated macros each day, and if you have accurately measured your body fat and haven’t under/overestimated your activity level, you will consistently lose body fat each week.
Food Tracking? Boooo!
I understand food tracking is not convenient. For most of your life, you just put food on a plate and ate it and now I’ve given you this chore every time you eat.
You can mix it up, tracking when possible, i.e. when you are meal prepping or cooking meals at home, and estimating portion sizes when it’s just not convenient to weigh or measure your food. This certainly won’t yield the same results as consistently tracking, but it should put you in the ballpark for consistent fat loss.
If you spend a considerable amount of time weighing and measuring, you will find yourself able to estimate quite accurately and easily. Besides, tracking becomes easy once Chapter 4 has armed you with the tools and knowledge to track accurately and efficiently. Tracking each meal shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes with a good phone app and digital food scale. It’s not as if you don’t waste hours each day on your phone anyways. Might as well put it to good use.
The worst you can do is attempt to diet intuitively. Some can do it successfully, but they are exceptions to the rule. For most of us, the reason we acquired so much excess body fat in the first place is because we simply had no idea how many excess calories we were consuming. If you’re not even estimating your macros and calories, you simply can’t know.
There are problems that commonly arise when dieting intuitively, and the first two are as obvious as you might think:
Overeating - believing you are eating at a deficit but not realizing how calorie-dense some of the food you are consuming is.
Undereating - other side of the coin. Eating far too little food to get adequate nutrition putting health and quality of life at risk.
Mental breakdown due to food restriction - some intuitive diets seek to create a calorie deficit by restricting certain high-calorie foods that the dieter craves. This leads to a binge breakdown and weight regain (and then some) for so many.
Lack of energy balance awareness - Say you go on a diet because you've been abusing food for a long time. Then you go into a calorie deficit - i.e. starve yourself for a while - to lose weight. Congrats! You did it! You dropped 50 pounds! Now what? How much food are you supposed to eat to maintain your new figure? You went from way-too-much to way-too-little. You have no idea what maintenance calories look like. So, you either continue to diet endlessly destroying your body or you balloon to twice the size you were before. Either way you’re in big trouble. Probably should have tracked macros but that’s none of my business.
*sips tea*
Sounds Attractive, But I’m An Ovo-Lacto