Optimizing Fat Loss
Do you exercise 3-4 times per week, eat pretty healthy, yet still can’t seem to get down to the weight you are shooting for? Below are a few tactics to help promote building muscle while aiding in a reduction of body fat.
Don’t let your weekends derail your progress:
For most of us, the structure of the week with work, kids, workouts, and a more consistent schedule allows for us to plan, prepare and pack healthier meals. But come the weekend, we are tired and would rather not cook dinner, and ordering in or grabbing dinner out just sounds better. We often spiral into a routine of a Friday-Sunday habit of eating and drinking whatever we want. 3 Days of this kind of nutrition intake is sure to erase a strong week of eating healthy pretty much every time.
TRY THIS: Instead, decide that you get 1 cheat meal each weekend to splurge on whatever you want. 1 meal. Not 1 full day. Or, often times we have clients decide between having drinks or eating what they want. If they go out and want to have 2 or 3 drinks, then their food selection needs to be healthy. The flip side would be ordering a meal that isn’t as healthy, but having water with it.
Drink More Water
Water is naturally satiating and supports healthy metabolism in the fat burning process. It also helps our body retain less water (because we’re actively hydrating it) and makes us less puffy.
A good rule of thumb is to consume between 1/2 an ounce to 1 ounce of water per pound of body weight. For example if you weigh 150 lbs, try to consume between 75-150 ounces of water per day.
TRY THIS: Buy a measurable water container that allows you to track and gauge how much you consume each day.
Make Sleep A Priority
Studies suggest that people who sleep fewer than 6 hours per night gain almost 2x as much weight over a 6-year period as people who sleep seven to eight hours per night. In fact, bad sleep can decrease caloric burn 5-20% the ENTIRE NEXT DAY.
So instead of trying to correct your physique and burn fat with BS supplements, crash diets, fads, or even perfection with strict macro counting, fix your base level physiology first- Your hydration and your sleep. If these 2 are not a focus point and consistent habit, there is no reason to jump to other things.
TRY THIS: Begin your nightly winding down routine an hour earlier each night.
Eat More Protein
Most people greatly underestimate how much protein they actually eat, and nearly everyone fails to meet the necessary levels to support fat burning. Protein is the macronutrient that most supports the development and sustainability of your lean body mass, and if you can pick up on a theme from every recent post or newsletter we have put out, it’s that building and maintaining lean muscle on your frame supports and promotes healthy and increased metabolism. Basically the more lean muscle we have, the more calories we burn each day.
Protein also has the highest Thermic Effect of Eating (TEF). It’s the hardest macro for our body to breakdown, so just the mere act of eating it is a calorie burning endeavor. For this reason, you want to try and stick to whole food proteins as best you can. Shakes are great, but since they are liquid we lose a bit of that TEF. Still, shakes are better than nothing so take what you can get.
TRY THIS: Aim for .75=1g of protein per pound of bodyweight per day, and shoot to get a serving of whole food protein at every major meal: eggs, chicken, lean red meat, fish, seafood, turkey, lean pork, or any other animal protein is ideal. About the size of 1-2 open palms.
Pick Up Heavier Weights
Busting through workouts with light weight at a speedy pace to be the first one done may shed fat from the initial shock to your body. This is the exact reason why so many become addicted to it, when in reality, any activity for beginners will burn fat at the onset of a new program. Eventually, as you become more of a seasoned client, your body will adapt and you must continue to challenge it with new stimulus: heavier loads.
Performing set after set of 20# DB chest press is not going to move you forward if you’ve been camped out there for months. Doing them faster may be good for your conditioning but will not translate into fat burning once your body is adapted to that particular movement at that particular weight and it no longer is challenging for you.
Focusing on your personal output and targeting of strengthening and developing muscle tissue will have a noticeable positive effect on body composition. It increases energy expenditure, anabolic hormones and overall work capacity. As opposed to mindlessly performing fast, meaningless sets, filling your body with cortisol, at weight that’s too light to create any change.
This is not to say you need to turn yourself into a heavy weightlifting monster. Simply setting a goal of increasing your deadlift or squat ten pounds, bumping up one or two levels on your kettlebell work, or pushing yourself to a tougher band on your pull-ups can present enough stimulus to insight change. Your body and fat loss will appreciate the change of pace and the increase in intensity.
TRY THIS: When given the choice, seize opportunities to bump up weight or push a little harder than you are used to!
STOP Hyper-focusing On Your Scale
Constant scale watching makes our actions incredibly short-term focused which more often than not leads to long term adherence failure. Scale watching can be incredibly dangerous for people who join the gym for the first time, because the scale will never tell you the truth. You may not see the scale come down for a month or two, but in reality, you are very likely getting stronger and changing your overall physique.
Remember, this isn’t spin or Orange Theory. You are lifting weights and developing new lean muscle. And if you really want to see what’s happening in the body, doing an InBody Scan will show you water weight, muscle mass, fat mass, body fat percentage and more! This is what really matters. NOT just the number on the scale.
You cannot get fat while working out and eating right, so checking the scale and stressing about it every day has no productive benefit to you whatsoever.
Mix It Up
Like Einstein said about insanity, “It’s doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Remember, creating adaptation in the body is all about giving it the correct stimulus and it may be that your body is just completely adapted to your current routine. You may just need to shake it up.
- Get more sleep.
- Drink more water.
- Eat more protein.
- Go for a run a few nights per week.
- Start picking up heavier weights.
- Stop thinking fruit is making you fat.
- Start getting a minimum of 10K steps per day
- Stop going heavy all the time.
- Start eating cleaner on the weekends.
