General rules for affective Fat Loss

General Rules to Affective Fat Loss

“madness is doing something over and over again and not seeing results, but then expecting fat loss to happen all of sudden overnight” – “Madness?????

1. Hours of cardio isn’t always best – Simply doing cardiovascular exercise is only one part of the puzzle. Cardiovascular should be kept short and to the point. HIIT (high intensity interval training), is a more beneficial way to burn a high percentage of energy from body fat, and to keep burning fat after you’ve stopped working out. You could be spending hours a week performing aerobic exercise at a moderate (65%-75%) of your MHR (Maximum Heart Rate) to try and burn fat, but the reality is that after you stop exercising you body goes back to normal homeostasis, BMR (basal metabolic rate) approx 30 min’s after you finish the aerobic workout. With HIIT it has been reported to raise your metabolism for up to 36 hours after you’ve stopped exercising. This is because your body is put into a state of oxygen debt called EPOC. So basically means your burning extra calories by doing nothing.

2. Consistency is key! – Being honest with yourself on the consistency of how often you can get to the gym (there is 168 hours per week, tell me you can’t workout 3 of those?!), how hard you work when you get there, and also your nutrition is extremely important. Exercising to lose weight is a lifestyle choice, not a 3 month, 6 month plan!! If you aim to go to the gym for 3 months to lose weight and then leave, then you have to be prepared for your body to go back to the way it was! Yo-yo dieting, and exercising periodically is what de-motivates people, leaving them feeling that they have tried everything, and nothing works…..consistency is key!!!

3. How are you going to get there, if you don’t know where you’re going! – Having clearly defined goals is of up most importance. Going into the gym to achieve a result, but not knowing fully what that goal is, is a recipe for failure. Having well defined goals and objectives before commencing an exercise/nutritional program should be one of the first things you do, and include the reasons why! It’s so important to know exactly why you’re doing something, for most people it’s because they want to look better! This is your first piece of motivation! Have these goals and write them down, and make sure you can see them every day; in the morning, evening, and at work, have them everywhere!

4. Best time of the day for working out? – There has been recent research showing that cardiovascular training first thing in the morning on little food has a higher benefit to burning body fat. But anytime of the day that fits in with your lifestyle is the best time.

5. Lift those weights – It’s been well documented that resistance training is just as important to losing body fat as cardiovascular training. To clarify why? Your BMR (basal metabolic rate) is the amount of calories your body burns at rest for 24 hours. Therefore raising your metabolism will make you burn more calories by doing nothing. There are a great many things that can help with increasing your metabolism; increasing your active tissue (your muscle) is one of the best. The more muscle you have the more calories burned at rest!!

6. Other ways of Increasing your Metabolism – One way is spreading your food out throughout the day. When I ask people what is there biggest meal of the day, majority of them say “in the evening”, your body needs constant fuel for basic everyday functions. Eating the majority of your calories in the evening is a recipe for disaster! To stimulate your metabolism in the morning, make sure you eat within an hour of waking, making sure you include lean protein, slow releasing carb’s, and good fats.

7. Eating HIGH Thermic foods – The thermic effect of food means how much energy it requires to digest and process, for example; the highest thermic foods are lean proteins, such as tuna, chicken etc. 30% of the calories is burned up from just digestion, compared to “fast releasing” carbohydrates, which can be as low as 5-10%.

8. Tea is not plain water! – Drinking sufficient amount of water is paramount when attempting to reduce body fat. Plain water is plain water, hydration is key. Ever process in the body requires water to come about, if there is lack of water there is lack of processes happening. When you don’t give yourself enough water your body will hold onto what it already has, and that can turn into water retention. The water floods around the fat cells, and gives the appearance of ripples on the surface of the skin. There is also another for water retention that we will touch on next.

9. Liver is the organ that metabolizes adipose tissue (fat cells), take care of it – Think of the liver as the filter of the body, it has to deal with all the waste that is produced by the body, plus then comes along external waste, such as; alcohol, pesticides on food, growth hormones in meat, lactic acid produced by exercise, the list is endless. The liver has a vast amount of jobs to perform in the body which are essential to a healthy life. When the liver is over worked it slows down, one of the roles it does as well as a filter is the breaking down of fat cells, to be burned off. With an over load of work the liver slows down it burning of body fat, thus people finding it hard to lose weight but doing relatively the right things. An example of this is; a pickle liver in an alcoholic! Action to take, eat whole organic foods! Anything processed, chemically enhanced is going to put extra pressure on your liver.

10. Diet products generally and diet at all! – The food industry is a multibillion dollar industry - everyone has to eat,… right?!.........society as a whole has become more health aware. With the vast amount of celebrities endorsing slim physiques and generally society telling us we have to lose weight, the food industry has took advantage of this. For example – DIET COKE – a huge product all over the world. A regular can of coke would have the equivalent to 12 table spoons of sugar in it, so the “clever” company has taken the sugar out and put in aspartame! This is a sweetener. The amount of sweetener in the can of diet coke will take your liver around 18 months to process!!!!!!! Again I say eat whole unrefined, un processed organic foods.