The fat-loss hacks I wish I’d known earlier.
Two years ago I weighed 93kgs. During that time I suffered from overall fatigue, poor quality sleep, and unfavorable temper that negatively impacted my professional and personal life. This is when I decided to pursue a healthy lifestyle and fitter physic.
I did everything I was told to do to shed the extra pounds. Ate heaps of salad, cut carbs and alcohol, moved more often, drank liters of water, ran every day, and eventually I lost a few pounds till I reached a fat-loss plateau when I frustratingly couldn’t see any further change.
Since then, I realized that I needed to focus on quality rather than quantity.
Instead of wasting time following superficial guides or juggling between diets, supplements, and less efficient constant training, I started my personal trainer diploma where I got a deep understanding of how our bodies work.
I can confirm that nothing I’d done beforehand was even close to the truth. In fact, what I’ve accomplished within 6 months just after my diploma has quadrupled the results of one years worth of excessive training and a strict diet.
The good news is I managed to sustain my body composition over time, even during the lockdown and without exercising!
So, what can you do differently and how can you apply what I’ve learnt to save yourself time and money?
1- Clean up the kitchen
I don’t mean wiping the dirt over the surfaces (although that would burn off some calories), instead, do a deep clean into your fridge and kitchen cabinets from all refined foods. Sounds tough, I know! Especially when you are about to remove all the food that tastes AMAZING. But here’s why you need to do that immediately:
- Refined food, as you may know, is packed with hidden calories due to the excessive amount of sugar and trans-fat.
- It’s easy to digest, which makes it difficult to control consumption.
- Refined food contains little nutritional value which means you end up eating more while benefiting less.
Getting rid of all the refined food will prevent any temptation that might occur due to boredom or stress.
2- Create a calorie deficit
I am assuming that you’ve done the first step tearfully. WELL DONE! You are one step closer! Moving to the most important step in your transformation journey, Calorie deficit, as it sounds, you consume fewer calories than you burn. Simple, but how exactly could you do that? First of all, head to the BMR calculator, fill up your metrics, and hit the “calculate” button. You will get the number of calories your body requires to function. Now, consume those calories from a balanced diet and do some extra work to burn more than what you’ve consumed.
Some of the activities I used to do involved:
- Walking to the grocery shop.
- Using the stairs more often.
- Rearranging my library’s shelves every now and then.
- Cooking my own meal instead of ordering in.
- Doing the household chores myself.
- Dancing to my favorite song.
3- Watch your calories
Food can be tricky sometimes (I mean often), you eat without knowing how many calories you’ve just consumed. That’s why it’s important to keep an eye on what you are eating and how much you eat. Sounds boring, but necessary. First, buy an affordable food scale to weigh your food. Second, download MyFitnessPal , one of my favorite FREE applications of all time. You can simply enter each food you’re about to eat, and get a precise number of calories involved. Also, you can easily enter your calorie goal, divide it into meals and snacks, and the app will do the maths for you.
4- Persevere with resistance training 3 times a week
To lose body fat you don’t really need to spend the rest of your life exercising (unless you have nothing better to do). In fact, research has concluded that doing resistance exercise 3 times a week for 45 minutes at high-intensity levels can double the amount of fat you lose every month. That’s because resistance exercise promotes muscle growth. The size of your muscle mass plays a key role in dictating the number of calories you burn throughout the day by increasing your basal metabolic rate (the number of calories you burn during resting time).
According to Wharton University, every 10 pounds of muscle will burn 50 calories during the resting time.
5- Adjust your cardio techniques
Cardio exercise has been misled in the fitness space. You may perform it 7 times, 7 days a week, yet frustratingly can’t see any change. What can you do differently here? Cardio, similarly to any other exercise, has its own techniques, and your goal determines which technique to apply. As your primary goal here is fat loss, first, you have to identify your fat-burning zone, or the maximum heart rate you need to reach to use fats as fuel instead of sugar and carbohydrates. Start with calculating your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220. Then do your cardio within the recommended range of the fat-burning zone, 70–80% of your maximum heart rate for a minimum of 30 minutes.
How often should you do cardio?
Moving to the second tricky question that might pop up to your mind. As I mentioned in step 4, the size of muscle dictates the number of calories you burn throughout the day. Therefore we need to be mindful when we do cardio. To prevent the catabolic state (when your body breaks down fat and muscle tissues to keep your body running) and to sustain adequate energy for resistance training, aim to do cardio twice a week within the mentioned intensity range and duration.
6- Don’t compromise on high-quality sleep
This is my favorite part, and I bet yours too! Giving your body sufficient time to rest is when you reap the benefits of all your hard work. In addition to its substantial benefits for your overall health, sleep can balance your hormones by:
- Reducing the hunger hormone (ghrelin) and increasing the fullness hormone (leptin) which impacts your eating habits.
- Boosting the growth hormone which is necessary for muscle growth and repair.
As per the National Sleep Foundation, the recommended hours of sleep is 7–9 hours for adults. Adjusting and maintaining your sleep pattern will change your life drastically, and boost your productivity which will reflect on your performance throughout the day.
Final Thought
There is one step left that nurtures the whole journey, which is consistency. Being consistent is the key to seeing tangible results in less time. Whatever you have gained over the years can’t be lost overnight, but with discipline and consistent actions you are right on track towards your heyday time.
