WEIGHT LOSS TIPS
3 Ways To Lose Weight Without Eating Less or Living In The Gym
Sweat & Hunger aren’t the only tools in our Fat Loss arsenal
Exercise is a really slow and soulless way to try and lose some damn weight.
Spending 45 minutes on a cardio machine or getting out running burns 500 kcals-ish. You need to get into a calorie deficit of 3500 kcals to lose a lb of body fat.
That means if you eat at your BMR every day, and spend 5 and a bit hours a week doing cardio then you’ll lose 1 whole lb of body fat. Woo freakin hoo.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going off-script here and advising you to stop exercising. If you’re trying to get fitter and healthier and lose some weight, please keep working out. BUT you just need to see all your working out for what it is:
a way of building a bulletproof, healthy and eventually spectacular looking body for your age.
It shouldn’t be the main thing you’re doing to lose your belly, because as clichéd as it sounds, not eating 500 kcals is easier than burning 500 kcals.
The Two Choices We Have When Fat Loss Stalls
But if you’re:
- already working out regularly, and
- already feeling like you’re eating as little as you can sustainably stick to to lose some weight,
and things aren’t moving, you can feel stuck. Like you only have 2 choices, to get into even more of a Calorie Deficit to lose more weight:
- Work Out More or
- Eat Even Less
But if you’re already working out more than 3–5 times a week, more exercise could actually be counter-productive.
It won’t move the needle much fat loss wise, AND it will possibly ramp up your Cortisol because your 40+ body can’t recover between workouts. This means your body is stressed and your metabolism slows down anyway. Not great.
And if you go the Eat Even Less route, you’ll feel really grumpy and sorry for yourself.
You’ll get demotivated because you’re hungry and everyone around you seems to be feasting on cake and wine, while you nibble on a piece of apple and sip your Coke Zero.
But there’s good news — those aren’t your only two options for ramping up your fat loss. There are 3 other tactics we can employ, without having to eat less or live life in the gym…
Fat Loss Tactic #1:Cortisol Control
Cortisol, our stress hormone, goes up and down each day as and when something physically or mentally stressful happens.
That could be a workout or your team scoring (or conceding!) a last-minute goal.
But if you are chronically stressed because:
- your life is nuts or
- you’re working out too much or
- you’re not sleeping enough to recover from your days,
then your Cortisol stays high, and that’s bad news for us in many ways. But let’s look at what that means for fat loss.
It makes you insulin resistant, messes up hunger signals, and ultimately affects your body’s ability to burn body fat even if you’re doing everything right with exercise and healthier eating.
Bummer right?
This is often what’s going on when I talk to coaching clients who are stumped about why they can’t lose weight. High Cortisol is the culprit, and there are a few ways to lower it:
- get enough sleep
- don’t work out like a madman every damn time so you struggle to recover, and
- supplement with Ashwagandha.
That won’t necessarily make all your stressful problems in life disappear, but it will help bring your Cortisol under control so you can burn body fat more easily.
Fat Loss Tactic #2: Use The Thermic Effect of Food
You can burn more calories daily to get into a calorie deficit and lose weight as a result of what we’re eating, not just how little.
The Thermic Effect of Food dictates that your body needs to work harder to digest and metabolize protein. That work burns calories. The body doesn’t need to work as hard to metabolize fats or carbohydrates.
Let’s say you aim to eat 120g of protein per day across all your meals and snacks — about a 1lb of meat/fish or include things like eggs and dairy. **That’s a great amount for a guy to eat for muscle retention, muscle gain and fullness**
If you manage that, your body burns 120kcals.
That adds up to around 3,600 kcals a month, so 1lb of extra fat loss per month (assuming you’re eating at your Basal Metabolic Rate), and 12lbs in a year, without working out more or eating less. Nice.
Fat Loss Tactic #3: Non Workout Daily Activity
Too often we get stuck in a rut of thinking that exercise needs to be a scheduled thing we do.
If we’re not in our workout gear, we’re not moving.
But think about our grandparents generation. They were on average a lot slimmer than us and yet I’m pretty sure your Granny wasn’t going to Body Combat classes or Zumba.
Life just involved moving more! Let’s take a leaf out of their book then. Thirty minutes of
- walking
- playing with your kids in the garden
- gardening
- doing housework; or
- generally just moving about (!)burns about 200 kcals.
Nothing earth shattering I agree BUT let’s say you find reasons to move for a half hour extra each day, just in your regular clothes?
Or how about using your 1:1 meetings at work as an opportunity for you both to get out and walk?
Burning just 200 kcals more per day means 6,000 kcals a month, or 72,000 kcals a year… that’s another 20lbs fat loss, just from moving a bit more each day.
Repeat After Me: “Sleep! Chicken! Walk!”
32lbs is what you could theoretically lose in weight, if you can just add more protein to your diet, and commit to moving each day outside of any planned workouts. Especially if you can sleep better and lower your Cortisol levels.
Losing weight shouldn’t need to involve practically living in the gym or saying No to cake each day. And those 3 simple lifestyle changes can shave off a surprising amount of body fat without a whole lot more effort, right?
Sound doable? Let me know in the Comments!
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