It’s wedding season and it will soon segue into ‘summer’ vacation season. So if you need to shed a few pounds to fit into that suit, gown, dress, bikini or board shorts keep reading. I have some tricks up my sleeve to help you to accelerate shedding that love handle or that extra belly fat.
Losing weight typically involves moving more and eating less to create a calorie deficit. This deficit will then be met by your fat stores and you will lose weight as a result.
This process is not especially fast, and most experts agree that losing one to two pounds or so of fat per week is what you should expect.
While this is in no way insignificant, there are a few things you can do to help speed up that fat loss.
Reduce carbs
If you reduce your carb intake to less than 100 grammes per day, your body has no choice but to use fat for energy. When deciding which carbs to eat, choose foods that are either natural or as close to natural as possible (eg brown rice over white rice, fruit over fruit juice, whole grain oats over oat cereal). Carb sources from vegetables are preferable to any other carb sources such as breads, pastas and potatoes.
If a food is heavily processed, avoid it like the plague.
HIIT for faster fat loss
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is a form of cardio where you alternate intense, short bouts of exercise with longer rests. For example, you might sprint for 30 seconds, walk for 90 seconds and repeat ten times to create a 20 minute workout. You can also use a gym circuit with multiple exercises and short rest periods.
Many people believe that fat burning workouts have to be long and slow so that they stay in the fat burning zone. While long, slow, workouts do preferentially use fat, they use very little of it. HIIT uses less fat but a much higher total amount of calories and that is much more important.
HIIT triggers something called EPOC, short for Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption which, in simple terms, describes how your metabolism remains elevated for several hours after a HIIT workout resulting in even more calories burned!
Go heavy in the gym
Muscle is metabolically active tissue; it needs calories to sustain it. The more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn at rest. Dieting for fat loss inevitably leads to muscle loss – a problem compounded by lots of cardio.
This leads to a lowered metabolic rate and slower fat loss. Many people mistakenly believe that dieting means they should use lower weights and do higher reps to tone and shape their muscles. This actually speeds up muscle loss.
Your body works on a ‘use it or lose it’ principle and if you want to maintain your muscle mass to maximize fat burning during a diet, you must challenge your muscles with heavy weights.
Intense strength training also triggers EPOC and you already know how beneficial that can be.
Fat burners
Fat burners are nutritional supplements that claim to help to increase your resting metabolic rate by increasing thermogenesis, causing an increase in resting energy expenditure, so you burn more calories throughout the day.
They contain a number of ingredients—including caffeine and green tea, which have been proven to have metabolism-enhancing qualities—that, individually, have some effect on boosting energy levels, mobilizing fat to be used as energy, improving transportation of fatty acids, suppressing hunger and reducing absorption of calories. It is claimed, therefore, that when combined, these ingredients have additive effects. And according to reports from the industry, fat burners are the icing on the cake and provide that last key piece to the fat loss puzzle, along with hard work and a correct diet.
Stay tuned, friends.
If you need help on building muscle or losing fat, shoot me an email: emmersoncampbell@gmail.com
