Weight Loss Tips

By: Fitness Pro: David Cheeks (dcheeks01@gmail.com)

Keys getting your best-looking body!

1. Strength Training

While most people understand that getting stronger is important for building muscle and enhancing performance, its relevance for fat loss is often overlooked. When your goal is fat loss, you want to burn as much fuel as possible. To do this, you want your body to be as fuel inefficient as possible. One of the huge problems with cardio for fat loss is that the more you do, the better you get at it and thus the more fuel efficient you become. With resistance training the opposite is true. The better you get at strength training, the more weight you can lift and the more it takes out of you. Spending some of your training time getting stronger allows you to do all your other forms of training (e.g., metabolic resistance training, conditioning) at a higher/faster level and this makes them even more effective for getting rid of unwanted body fat. Larger muscles burn more calories and more fat. While cardio burns calories and fat when you're performing it, high rep strength training has what is known as high EPOC or "Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption." This is a fancy term for saying how long your metabolism is elevated after exercise. It is an error for treadmills, cross trainers, and rowers to be the main focus of a fat loss training plan. The real focus should be on strength training. Utilizing big compound lifts should be your priority when seeking fat loss. Low rep ranges (3-8 reps) instruct your body to maintain your existing muscle mass even when you're is operating on a calorie deficit. This kind of training also raises your metabolism, increases your lean mass and keeps your hormones at optimal levels. Tracking your strength training workouts help give you a very good idea of how successfully you are at targeting your fat stores. If you can't make strength gains or maintain your strength you had when you started your fat loss plan, that's a pretty sure sign that you are losing your muscle mass and need to address your nutritional intake. Years ago exercise scientists told us to do long, slow cardio in order to burn fat. However, this answer was a response to the wrong question. Fat loss training isn't about what burns the most amount of fat during a training session, it's about what burns the most amount of fat in a 24 hour period. Short, high-intensity exercise creates an oxygen debt (known as E.P.O.C., or excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) and this results in a metabolic boost long after the training session is over.

2. Increase Vegetable Consumption

Vegetables are nutrient-dense, meaning they pack maximum nutrition value with minimal calories, leaving you more full on fewer calories. Consume five servings a day of veggies, Vegetable intake has many benefits, such as contributing micronutrients, fiber, and phytochemicals that are associated with reductions of risk for things like heart disease, certain cancers, and diabetes. They may even be able to help satiate hunger. In fact, it appears that people may experience different effects on hunger perceptions from higher fiber diets, at least in the short term. “Since the management of hunger seems very important to maintaining a lower calorie diet, identifying foods that are lower in calories but reduce or delay hunger feelings may be useful. These may not be the same for everybody, but each person can experiment for themselves.

3. Sleep long and well (same every day)

Studies have shown that inadequate sleep affects our ability to lose body fat by up to 55%. There are many reasons to sleep longer, including better muscle recovery and less stress. The most influential factor appears to be the presence of a hormone called Ghrelin, which is triggered by a lack of sleep. An increased level of Ghrelin causes us to be hungrier and reduce our energy expenditure. We're also more likely to make bad food choices when fatigued.

4. Diet high in green leafy vegetables

Greens are recommended as a weight-loss food. You might think this is because greens are low calorie. But there’s more to it than that! Yes, greens are low caloric while still being packed with nutrients and other active compounds, however, greens’ effect on weight loss goes beyond just calories. Greens contain nitrites, which have been associated in browning fat cells, meaning converting fat-storing white cells into fat-burning brown cells. This creates extra fat burning and ultimately, weight loss.

5. Run Sprints / Agility Drills /Plyometrics

Train like a professional athlete with these heart-pumping, fat-burning exercises and look like a professional athlete. These drills will also help you increase your speed, agility, quickness, stamina, coordination, balance, and lateral speed, strength in the tendons and muscles in each leg and endurance plus, it’s great for sports that require the ability to accelerate and decelerate quickly.

6. Exercise Using Different Strategies

With fat loss programs, you need to switch as needed to different strategies such as metabolic resistance training, heavy strength training, bodybuilding, and strength plus conditioning. Too often people trying to lose body fat just use intense metabolic resistance training and HIIT (high-intensity interval training).You should rotate between different types of alactate (without lactic acid) conditioning that consists of short, intense work and lactate (produces lactic acid as a byproduct) conditioning that consists of longer duration work.

7. Drink Water

If you are dieting, it is important to drink water so your liver can effectively metabolize body fat. ... It's also possible to argue that drinking water can help you lose weight because it makes you feel full and therefore less apt to eat. filling your belly with water will naturally make you less likely to overeat, she says. Plus, some symptoms of dehydration may actually be what's causing your rumbling belly, so sipping some water before you eat may eliminate your "hunger" altogether.