What are the 3 fastest ways to burn fat? Diet, cardio-aerobic training, and strength training. This is the ultimate combination.
How many calories do I need to burn? How important is Aerobic exercise?
It is generally accepted that it takes around 7700 calories to burn one kilogram of fat; this comes down to the battle between calories in versus calories out. But a healthy diet is only half the battle – while you’re reducing calories in, it’s important to employ effective exercise to boost calories out.
So what kind of exercise is best for achieving this? In studies on this matter a surprising difference has emerged showing subjects in the study group engaging in aerobic exercise burnt up to 67% more calories than subjects trialling with resistance strength training.
Now as for the type of aerobic exercise, HIIT (or High Intensity Interval Training) has proven over many studies to dramatically increase calories burnt. Body Attack is a great training group employing the HIIT method with a variety of aerobic exercise that will get your whole body working.
Is Strength and Resistance Training still important?
Don’t take the first paragraph as evidence to turn your back on strength training. Combining diet, cardio-aerobic and strength training is the ultimate combination for getting the body you want. For starters, without any strength or resistance training while engaging in cardio and diet you will find you’re losing fat pretty quickly but also muscle density and tension will also be lost. It’s best to do your strength training before cardio; lower weight to achieve higher reps will be most effective, and be sure to limit your break time.
Blackwood Fitness Facilities are great for this with an extensive variety and number of weight machines and free weights. You can keep working all your muscles and keep moving without having to stand around and wait for another machine to free up, or mess around changing cable positions to get what you need. High rep training gives you the added advantage of EPOC (or Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption), effectively elevating your Metabolism for up to 38 hours after your workout!
Don’t be shy about pumping up the weights when you can too, because it is a well-known fact that bigger muscles need more energy to function, thus burn more calories.
Discipline, Lifestyle and Planning
How frequently should I eat? Every three hours!
It’s important to set out how many calories you need over a whole day and divide it as evenly as possible over all your meals. While not consuming any more calories but spreading it out, you will be increasing your metabolic rate, better balancing your body-sugar, and will find you feel generally more energetic.
So what food should I be eating? Plenty of protein, food for your muscles and easily metabolised so as to not slow down your weight loss. Chicken, Turkey, Lean Red meat with fat removed, eggs, fish (tuna is a convenient affordable option), soy milk and tofu, Legumes and beans, low fat dairy (e.g. Skim milk, natural yoghurt), nuts and seeds are all great high protein low cab options.
Low carb or no carb? Low carb doesn’t by any means mean no carb. Your body needs carbs to function, and with to low a level of carb-intake you can expect to be feeling very flat and struggling to maintain your exercise routines. Make sure you’re “making the most of your carbs” avoiding sugar in your carbs and aiming to get the most nutrition out of them; multi-grain bread, whole-wheat pasta and brown rice give you a lot more bang for your buck when it comes to nutrition.
What about Dairy, good or bad? There’s much argument around dairy being an important part of a healthy diet or being something to avoid altogether. At the end of the day dairy is for baby cows, not humans; however, that’s not to say you should stay away from it altogether.
Small amounts of dairy are great for high delivery of nutrients, including calcium to keep your bones strong – very important for those engaging in heavy exercise.
How do I get the most out of dairy, without getting too much? Keep dairy portions small, they can bloat you and take a while to digest if you take too much in one hit.
Make sure you’re getting the most out of it, natural yoghurt is better than most of the popular yoghurts as it is real yoghurt teeming with live cultures. Go skim milk, vitamin A and D are added to make for the loss from whole milk, during the reducing process, so all the nutrients are there without the fat.
