I have fallen victim to a lot of wrong ideas about diet. A lot of information on nutrition is misguided, outdated, and outright lies. Some books I read were merely a pitch for an author’s supplements or biased toward a diet that worked for the author, which will not work for everyone. Many books promoted diets that current research show to be dangerous or unhealthy. With so much wrong information, you need to arm yourself with a little knowledge so you can decipher BS when you read it.
Reducing body fat and reducing body weight should not be approached in the same way. Reducing body weight is simply a matter of creating a caloric deficit while reducing body fat is about changing your body composition. If done slowly over time it may involve a caloric deficit, maintaining your intake or even increasing it.
The human body is a remarkably adaptable machine. Even if years and years of neglect have allowed pound after pound of fat to fill out your frame, you can rid yourself of that lard at a much faster rate than you brought it on board. In that sense, time is your side!
Take these nine easy-to-implement tips to heart, and progress will come in a hurry!
- Stay Off The Scale:
That you can gain muscle and lose fat is one of the reasons I stress to people not to follow the scale. Body composition and how you look in the mirror matters more than what the scale says.
You could train hard and eat ideal and build five pounds of muscle mass and lose five pounds of fat, and what will the scale say? That you still weigh the same.
Frustrating, actually thought you’ve made good progress. Use the level as a guideline, but how you look in the reflection, how you feel, and how your clothes match are much better signals of your progress.
- Reduce Your Calories Gradually:
If you’re looking to lose fat, may help to make huge calorie cuts. This will stop your body into starvation mode, reducing your rate of metabolism and making it harder to burn off the excess fat.
To prevent this metabolic slowdown and allow your body to burn fat at an optimal rate, help to make smaller calorie reductions every week or two.
- 3. Vary Your Caloric Intake:
By varying your caloric intake every few days instead of eating the precise same amount of calories every day, keep the starvation mechanism in check and continue to burn fat.
“Although in today’s society food tends to be accessible and abundant, our bodies are designed to store while much energy while possible to prepare for occasions of scarcity. One way the body does this is definitely by modifying its metabolic rate centered on calorie intake.
If you stick with the same calories every single daytime while dieting, your body will change by lowering metabolic rate to prevent you from burning off too much body fat. It’s all about hormones.
When leptin levels are high, your metabolic rate stays high; when leptin levels drop, so does your metabolic rate.
When calories are low and constant, leptin levels fall and so does metabolic rate. Eating higher calorie consumption on some days and lower calories on others help to keep leptin levels up.”
- Train With Weights:
Resistance teaching helps with fat loss in a number of ways. Excess weight teaching itself burns up calorie consumption. Studies also show that, unlike aerobic exercise, excess weight teaching raises the calories you burn at rest for up to 39 hours after your workout.
In addition, the more muscle mass your body offers, the more calorie consumption you burn each daytime.
Actually, if your goal is solely to lose body fat, you need to train with dumbbells. This will help prevent any of the excess weight you shed from becoming muscle mass.
Were that to happen, your rate of metabolism would slow, stalling your fat-loss attempts and turning you into a skinny-fat person.
- Do High-Intensity Time periods (HIIT):
This means alternating a brief period of high-intensity exercise with brief rest periods.
One of my favorite period methods is jumping rope. You may need to practice a bit on this one. After a brief warmup, I’ll jump rope as fast as I can for 10-20 mere seconds, adopted by a half a minute at a slower cadence.
- 6. Eat More Fat
Consuming enough of the good fat will help you shed fat, build muscle mass, and recover faster from your exercises. Healthy body fat also has myriad health benefits, including becoming good for your heart.
So which fats are “good” fats? The polyunsaturated ones (especially omega-3h), such as those from fish and nuts, and the monounsaturated kind, such as those from peanut butter, olive oil, egg yolks, and fish oil.
- Cut Carbs
The attention focused on low-carb diet programs has divided many persons into “pro” and “anti” low-carb camps. Whichever part you’re on, the bottom collection can be that reducing your carb intake-especially sugars and starches-when trying to shed excess fat will help.
Those carbs you do consume should come from sources such as oatmeal and vegetables.
- 8. Boost Your Protein
Increasing protein intake will boost your metabolism and help to maintain your muscle mass, all of which helps with fat-burning. In truth, your body burns up more calories when you eat protein than when you break down either fat or carbs.
Yes, you read that right, Grasshopper: Many dieters actually gained muscle mass without working out, just by feeding on a high-protein diet.
- Eat 6 Smaller Meals Per Daytime, Not 2-3 Feasts
This will ensure that you supply your body with the nutrients necessary to build muscle and burn fat.
If this happens, your body will start burning muscle mass for energy and increasing your body-fat stores, as well as slowing down down your rate of metabolism. This is definitely the precise reverse of what you need to happen.
Maybe the kind of person who complains about your scenario but by no means does anything to improve it. May become “happy” with the status quo of becoming unpleasant. Right now use this knowledge to take action!