The Jeff Franco Project - Part II

In the first part of this series we watched Jeff as he formed some very important lifestyle habits, experienced some rapid fat loss, and then worked hard to start retaining more muscle during the fat loss process.

Month 4 – Getting Serious

After 3 months of hard work it was time for Jeff to take it to the next level.  Having outgrown his small amount of weight equipment at home we asked Jeff to take a big leap and join a gym.  At this point we provided Jeff with a detailed program including exercise selection, sets, reps, and even video clips of each exercise.  While some like to only write the names of the exercises, we find that video provides a more effective means of communicating what would otherwise take much longer to explain.  A video is, in effect, worth more than a thousand words. 

With his personalized routine in hand Jeff went to the gym and was able to execute his program with confidence and his results were exceptional.

Month 5 – The Furnace

It was at the start of this month that Jeff dropped a bomb on us.  Jeff informed us that he’d been shooting a movie just prior to the start of this program and that they were finally ready to continue filming.  For an actor work is always good news, but for us there was only one little problem…Jeff had lost weight.  The whole movie was supposed to have taken place in one day and the continuity of the film might be interrupted if Jeff’s weight loss was too apparent.  In essence, Jeff told us that he had to put some weight back on.

To help Jeff out we thought the best approach might be to temporarily stop fat loss and help him gain some muscle to add some weight to his frame.  This way we’d be giving him the appearance of being heavier without sacrificing all of his effort to this point.  We added healthy starches at breakfast and after workouts and told Jeff to contact us in a week with his weight.

After a week Jeff reported back and he was still losing weight.  Being in such a time crunch we didn’t have much time to take the more conventional, slower route we usually use so we added a healthy starch every night at dinner, cut down his cardio, and increased the number of weekly cheat days from one to two.  That’s right.  We gave him two whole days per week where he could eat whatever he wanted.  Again, this is not normal practice, but Jeff needed to gain some weight ASAP.

After two weeks we hadn’t heard from Jeff so we checked in to see how things were going.  To our amazement, Jeff was still dropping pounds like it was going out of style.  We’d basically turned Jeff, who couldn’t have lost a pound if he tried, into a metabolic furnace.  Everything that he put into his mouth was just fuel for the fire and so long as he stuck to his exercise routine and the habits established in month 1 he couldn’t help but burn fat.  His sluggish metabolism was now a raging fat loss inferno.

It was at this point that Jeff also told us that the weight loss apparently wasn’t that noticeable on camera so he could probably maintain the plan in this form until the completion of filming.  For us this was great news as we would otherwise have had to find a way to ship him crates of food to put the brakes on his incredible fat loss.

Months 6 – Filming

This month Jeff was off in the wilderness somewhere filming and we didn’t have many updates.  Just 2 days ago we were finally able coordinate our busy schedules to sit down again.

Here are Jeff’s most current results.

Since our last update Jeff has lost 17 more pounds bringing his total weight lost to 32lbs!
Starting Weight: 198
Current Weight: 166
Total Lost: 32lbs

Jeff has also lost another 4.9 percent body fat amounting to a total of 7.8 percent lost since our first meeting.  While those who know anything about body fat percentages might argue that Jeff doesn’t visually appear to be 9 percent, we can assure you that we use a very expensive system for body composition testing. However, the system does occasionally read some people a little low.  When this is the case it is important to remember that the absolute value is not of much significance anyway.  The direction and amount of change from the previous measurement is the key to assessing progress with fat loss.

Starting Body Fat Percentage: 17.5
Current Body Fat Percentage: 9.7
Total Lost: 7.8 Percent
Despite dramatically increasing Jeff’s food intake he has managed to drop his waist size by another 2.25 inches for a staggering total of 6.25 inches since the start of the program.

Starting Waist Measurement: 42.75 inches
Current Waist Measurement: 36.5 inches
Total Lost: 6.25 inches

What’s Next?

Since Jeff is finally done filming we’ve decided to up the anti and have Jeff increase his training volume again.  We’ve also revised his diet to facilitate his fat loss to bring out his abs for the beach weather.

Don’t forget, Jeff will be at our Grand Opening on June 24th.  Make sure to come out to show him some support and see his fantastic results in person.

Posted: June 5th, 2007 at 02:08pm By: mark