The 3 Best Ways to Lose Body Fat
By Jeff Smith
Want to know the best ways to lose body fat? Here my top three tips to help you maximize your efforts when it comes to achieving your fat-loss goals. These are hands down the best and proven ways to lose body fat. Stick to these three guidelines and fat loss will inevitably happen. The most important thing is to think long-term consistency.
Highlights:
1. Nutrition is your top priority
Beg, borrow, cheat, and steal. Whatever it takes, get your nutrition in order and stay consistent.
2. Muscle is your friend in the fight against fat.
There are untold benefits from gaining a little extra muscle.
3. Train hard, train fast.
Get in, get out, get on with your life.
1. Make nutrition you’re number one priority
If you’re serious about stripping off kgs of fat this has to be the number one thing you focus on! You have to take the time and/or spend the money to get your nutrition in order. Meal prep, food delivery, meticulous planning before going out to eat, whatever you do you simply have to do it and do it CONSISTENTLY!
It’s important to note that not eating is not good nutrition. That’s malnutrition (mal=bad). Believe it or not, your body likes food. It’s kinda hard to drive a car without gas right? Well, your body works the same way. Fuel your body but make sure you’re using premium unleaded. Giving your body good nutrition will aid in recovery from workouts, improve fat-loss, and maintain or build muscle. If your body thinks you are starving, guess what, it’s going to do everything it can to hold on to fat stores and sacrifice calorie expensive stuff like muscle to survive. More on this below.
As for what to eat, there are no laws saying you have to follow a particular diet. Keto, Paleo, Intermittent Fasting (IF), If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM) (check out our Ultimate Diet Guide to see what these are), or simply taking pictures of your food as you go through your day will make you more aware of what you’re putting in your body. This alone has been shown to help people lose body fat.
Moral of the story, pick something and stick to it.
2. Get strong!
Yes, you should pick up those heavier dumbbells! Getting strong has so many benefits. Far too many to list in this post. So here are just a few. And this applies to both males and females.
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- Muscle is 18% more dense than fat. A perfect example of this is if your weight stays the same but your pants are feeling looser. That’s because you’re not only burning fat but your also building muscle. The perfect combination! Stop worrying what the scale says and focus on your body composition or your ratio of fat mass to lean body mass. This is so much more important to your overall health, well-being, and quality of life. In fact, the overweight category on the BMI scale has been shown to be the healthiest category. Why? MUSCLE!
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- Muscle burns more calories per hour than fat. Want to be a calorie burning machine? Put some muscle on that frame. You’ll burn more calories throughout the day. Relatively speaking, losing fat is easy, building muscle is hard. It requires more calories to build and maintain. This translates into more of those consumed calories going to maintain muscle rather than expanding your gut.
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- Improve your overall quality of life. When you’re strong you feel strong inside and out. This builds confidence and a sense of independence.
- Strength also helps prevent or delay the onset of so many age-related diseases. This includes but is not limited to cancer, osteoporosis, arthritis, and atherosclerosis.
3. Train with intensity.
If you want to lose fat you’re going to have to work hard for it.
Imaging the engine of a car, if you run it hard the engine is going to get really hot. After the engine is off it’s going to take some time to cool back down, right?
The same thing happens in your body. Get that metabolic engine revving high and it’s going to take time to cool back down and return to homeostasis, this requires calories. Guess where the majority of these calories comes from… YOUR FAT STORES! We call this the afterburn or EPOC effect.
The best part about it, you can train anywhere from 45-60 minutes to get all the benefit you need from it. HIIT and Metcon training are the best ways to accomplish this. Think, BASECAMP, BASE X, BASE BURN, and The Works. Intervals-based classes like these get the engine red-lining and then allow a quick recovery to do it again and again and again.
Use this scale next time you’re working out. It’s called the “Rating of Perceived Exertion” or RPE. This scale works on a 1-10 rating, 1 = lying down / 10 = all out effort.
During work sets, try to maintain a rating of 8 or 9 and then complete rest during your breaks at a rating of 2 or even 1 (for some).
It’s important to pay attention to your RPE. Coasting through a workout will not create the afterburn effect to really tap into those fat stores. On the other hand, going all out during the first couple intervals won’t allow you to effectively train for the remainder of the session.
It’s best to keep a consistent RPE across all work sets. This will allow for the maximal afterburn effect we’re looking for.
Recap
There is no effective one size fits all training and nutrition plan. What works great for one person may not work for the next. This is due to internal factors such as training age and genetics but also external factors like environment and support from friends and family. The most important thing is to take that first step and apply the basic principles listed above. By taking that first step you’ll quickly see your next step. As long as you stay consistent and commit to the program you’re making progress.
Just remember to stay consistent, stay committed, and the results will come. Hey, if it were easy we’d all be fit and strong, right?