Summer’ or the July/August holidays, as we know it, is here. It’s that time of year where there are more pool, creek and beach parties. It’s time to lose any extra pounds gained during your workout hibernation and get toned or ‘shredded’ for the season.
Of course, if you’re only now starting you’ve probably left it too late and you need to drop fat fast, so use these shredding tips to get in shape in weeks rather than months.
Lower carb intake while consuming more protein
Protein and carbs have the same caloric value (four calories per gramme) but behave very differently in your body. Protein is rarely used for energy and plays an important role in elevating your metabolism. In contrast, carbs that are not used for energy are readily converted to fat and do not have much of an effect on your metabolic rate. Also, eating carbs causes a more significant rise in insulin levels than protein and insulin inhibits fat burning.
Simply lowering your carb intake and raising your protein intake by the same amount is often enough to produce significant fat loss.
Crank up the NEPA
NEPA stands for non-exercise physical activity and is the term used to describe physical movement done outside of the gym. If you are mostly sedentary apart from your workouts, it would be very hard for you to lose weight and burn fat. By increasing your daily energy expenditure through NEPA, you are much more likely to create the necessary caloric deficit required for getting shredded. Try to clock up an hour of NEPA per day. Examples include:
– Walking for transport
– Washing your car by hand
– Gardening and yard work
– Carrying your groceries in a shopping basket rather than using a trolley
– Taking the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator
– Walking your dog
– Playing sports with your kids
Look for opportunities to get up and move as often as you can for faster fat loss.
Skip a meal
To lose fat, you need to eat less. Opinions vary but most experts suggest you need to create an energy deficit of about 500 calories per day. While you could do this by weighing and measuring your food and then reducing the size of your meals, you can achieve the exact same result by simply eating one less meal a day.
Try replacing any meal of your choice with a scoop or two of whey protein. The protein will preserve your muscle mass and pump up your metabolism, but it provides very few calories.
Superset
Strength training is essential during a shred; it preserves your muscles mass and therefore prevents your metabolism slowing down which is something that often happens when you cut calories. However, strength training itself is not a great fat burner – unless you take steps to make it so.
Rather than rest between sets and waste half of your workout time doing nothing, superset everything to increase the energy expenditure of your training session. Agonist/antagonist (eg push/pull) supersets work great, as do upper body/lower body supersets. If you superset everything, you’ll get more work done in the same amount of time and that adds up to faster fat loss.
Jump rope
Adding 10 minutes of jump rope a day to your current schedule means doing just over an hour more exercise per week which will speed up fat loss without adding more workouts. Do this 10 minutes first thing in the morning, last thing at night, or any time you can find ten minutes.
Make the commitment to doing 10 minutes of jump rope each and every day for 30 days combined with the other shredding tips in this article and you’ll be rewarded with faster fat loss.
Getting shredded might not be easy but it’s not impossible either. Yes, you’ll have to make a commitment to eating clean and training hard but if you do, you’ll soon be looking good for the ‘summer’.
If you want six-pack abs and not a beer keg belly this summer, make sure you start putting these tips into action today.
Stay tuned, friends.
If you need help on building muscle or losing fat, shoot me an email: emmersoncampbell@gmail.com
