John Romaniello
I decided to hold a short inteview with John Romaniello, author of the Final Phase Fat Loss program to get his tips about fat loss and fitness. Here is the complete interview before you:
Q: I’m here with John Romaniello, creator of the Final Phase Fat Loss program. John, for the sake of my readers, why don’t you tell us something about yourself, your credentials, experience, and so on?
A: Hey, John. Thanks for much for having me, I appreciate it. By way of introduction, I’m a certified personal trainer and strength coach working in the New York area. As a writer, I’ve been published in a variety of fitness magazines, such as SHAPE, Men’s Health, TMuscle.com. I’ve also done some fitness modeling, and my images have appeared in magazines, on underwear packaging, etc. Currently, I’m running a facility in New York and run an online fitness coaching program.
Q: What can you tell us about the Final Phase Fat Loss program? What’s included in the program?
Final Phase Fat Loss is a fully comprehensive fat loss protocol. It includes 6 weeks of training, which is made up of 16 unique workouts—4 workouts each drawn from 4 separate training modalities.
In addition, because I’m a record keeping nerd at heart, I’ve included individual workout record sheets for recording the workouts, each tailored to the specific workouts.
I also include a quick start check list and a progress tracker—again, I really think that keeping record just helps the process so much.
There’s also some cool audio tracks included.
In the deluxe package, we’ve included 6 more workouts, as well as a nutritional bonus from Isabel De Los Rios about how to diet for getting to the Final Phase.
Finally, there’s a really cool bonus called “Peak in a Week” which is a comprehensive packet about peaking strategies for photoshoots, reunions, or anything really. It’s a great piece.
Q: Why do people seem to have the most trouble in losing the last 10 pounds?
A: Ah, that’s the million dollar question. The most common mistake people make when getting that low is not switching gears. Whether you realize it or not, losing the last 10 pounds requires a different approach than the first 10.
First, let’s look at things mathematically.
If I’m 200 pounds and 30% body fat, than I have 60 pounds of fat on my body. Losing 10 of it only represents 1/6th of my total body fat. That’s hard, but it’s doable.
If I’m 200 at 10% body fat, I have 20 pounds of on my body. Losing just 10 pounds is literally losing HALF of my total body fat. HALF.
If you think your body is going to react the same way to those two goals, you’re crazy.
From a standpoint of absolutes, yes, 10 pounds of fat is 10 pounds of fat—however, your body doesn’t work well with absolutes. Your body functions principles of reaction. So from a relative perspective, it’s just going to be an uphill battle.
All of the evolutionary history of the human race has prepared us to hold fat efficiently; and that’s especially true with the last 10 pounds. So, do you really think you can follow the same training program?
Of course not.
You need a program that addresses the specific hormonal issues that occur when you trying to overcome a plateau or get leaner than you’ve been before.
And Final Phase Fat Loss was designed specifically to address the issues of both.
Q: What makes the Final Phase Fat Loss program special?
A: As I mentioned earlier, the workouts are drawn from a multitude of training styles. It’s my belief that the reason my programs are so effective is that most of them are based around a rotation of training modalities within the context of a single training week.
In FPFL specifically, we use dynamic training, lactic acid based training, density based training, and heavy strength oriented training.
This not only challenges the body with frequently changing stimulus, but also allows for the strengths of certain methods to offset the weaknesses of others.
So, rather, than just being additive, the combination of the training styles is actually synergistically more effective.
Q: Is the Final Phase Fat Loss Program for men and women both?
A: Of course! Fat doesn’t discriminate, and neither should training programs. I certainly didn’t include any sort of built-in bias with the program. The main thing is that the workouts are scalable—they go by your level.
While men will generally be lifting more weight than women, that doesn’t mean the program will be more effective for them.
It’s the challenge you place on your body that elicits the changes you’re after. The weight is only part of that.
So yea, women can benefit just as much.
Q: What kind of support do you offer for people who use FPFL?
A: For anyone who buys the deluxe package, they get a comprehensive email consultation with me.
Now, I’ll say that Final Phase Fat Loss is as comprehensively written as I can make it, and I know that there’s a lot of information in the package. And so, either because of that amount of information or in spite of it, I know there are bound to be some questions.
That’s one of the best parts about offer training products on the internet—if you just bought an exercise book in a store, that’d pretty much be it. If you had questions, you’d basically have to Google the answers.
Well, that’s some lame-ass nonsense, and I don’t want any part of it. So instead, I’m going to answer people’s questions personally, as quickly, frequently and directly as I can.
For anyone who buys the basic package, there will be support on my website and blog where they can post questions. Not only will I be able to answer their questions—they’ll be able to get answers from other users.
Q: What are 3 foods that you advise not to eat for anyone who wishes to lose weight?
A: That’s kind of a hard one. I don’t think that any food is bad all the time—I like the occasional cheat day and on those days I’ll easily put away a lot of junk food.
But I’ll say that outside of something like cookies, there’s no reason to eat refined white flour. When you’re eating baked goods, you KNOW you’re making a bad dietary decision—and that’s fine when used rarely.
For everyday living, getting even as little as 5% of Calories from refined carbs is disastrous. So that’d be one.
The second would be milk—I’m not a big fan for fat loss. For muscle gain, I’m not going to hate on the guys who preach that all you need is squats and milk. But for fat loss, milk sucks. The Glycemic index is too high, it’s too sugary, and overall you can get protein from better sources.
And the third would be alcohol. Do I really need to explain this? Bottom line, if you’re trying to cut fat, ditch the booze for 6-8 weeks. No question about it.
Q: Can you give us 3 top tips on how to bust through a plateau?
A: Easy! First, re-evaluate your diet. Most people just aren’t eating enough. I’ve taken clients and jump started fat loss by something as simple as adding 200 Calories from fat per day.
Secondly, start rotating training styles. Nothing is better for fat loss than exposing your body to varying challenges, and nothing is better for that than using various training methods each week.
Third, take a week off from your diet and training every 12 weeks. You could actually take a week off from the diet as often as every 9 weeks. But the point is, your body adapts to anything. Taking time away from the diet and training can be called Strategic De-conditioning (a term I stole from Bryan Haycock, so props to him), and it just allows things to reset to neural so you can get going again after a week. This accelerates progress like you don’t know!
Q: Who do you think FPFL is right for and what sort of person is it wrong for?
A: Great question. I’d say FPFL is great for 3 types of people:
1) Anyone looking to lose the last 5-15 pounds.
2) Anyone who’s been losing fat but has hit a plateau, and wants to revive that progress.
3) Anyone who has been using other fat loss programs in the past and is looking for something more advanced. I have to say Final Phase Fat Loss really is the most advanced fat loss workout I’ve come across. So they’ll get lot out of this.
This ISN’T for someone who’s a total beginner or anyone who hasn’t been training for a while. There’s just too much ass-kicking involved. People need to get their feet wet a bit beforehand.
Q: Wow, John, thanks a lot for the interview and for your time.
For more on John Romaniello’s program, visit Final Phase Fat Loss Review.
Here is a video with John Romaniello in which he talks about the best forms of cardio:
For talks with other expert check out these chats with Craig Ballantyne, Tom Venuto and Chad Waterbury.
