The three key components to weight loss are proper nutrition, resistance training, and cardiovascular exercise. That’s it. No pills, nothing high-tech. However, you can optimize your weight loss results by understanding how these components relate to one another and the effect that each has on your body.
When, What, and Why to Eat
You already know that the best food choices for weight loss can be found around the perimeter of your supermarket: fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats, low-fat dairy, whole grains. You also likely know the benefits of preparing most of your meals at home versus eating out. But did you know that the number and frequency of meals consumed is just as important as your food choices?
If, like much of America’s adult population, you’re mostly sedentary---sitting at a desk at work, for example---you’ll benefit from eating more frequent, smaller meals, typically 5-6 per day. Large meals are great if you require a big spike of energy for difficult physical tasks, such as farmwork. But if you’re inactive and eat large meals, you can experience huge dips in your blood sugar---and therefore energy---levels, resulting in sleepiness after lunch or lack of motivation to exercise after work.
Additionally, if you’re exercising, you have extra energy requirements, such as glucose to fuel your muscles and protein to repair them post-workout. Keeping these things in mind, here’s a few dietary guidelines to follow:
- Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus a few small (average 150 calories) snacks in between.
- Eat every 3 hours at most to keep energy levels up---if you go too long between meals, you’re sure to overeat.
- Aim for a mix of protein, unsaturated fats, and carbohydrates at every meal.
- Your post-workout meal or snack in particular should consist of a mix of protein and carbs.
The Relationship between Strength Training and Cardio for Weight Loss
Cardio is an important component of your exercise regimen: it keeps your heart and blood vessels strong, can improve cholesterol levels, and is calorie-burning. But cardio alone is not the best way to lose weight. Why? If you only do cardio, you’ll likely burn some fat, but you’ll also lose water and muscle weight. Muscle is the most calorie-burning tissue in the body; therefore, if you drop pounds of muscle, your metabolism decreases. Over time, it will become harder to lose weight, and the decrease in metabolism almost always causes the weight to come back.
So you do cardio and strength train to lose fat while building and/or maintaining your muscle mass. But how often, and which comes first?
- Do cardio and strength every time you work out, aiming for about 30 minutes of each.
- Do this combination a minimum of 3 days a week for weight loss results.
- Ideally, do your strength training before cardio training: strength training to burn up excess glycogen, or carbohydrate, then cardio to access energy from your body’s fat stores.
- Warm up with 5 minutes of cardio before your resistance workout to reroute blood flow to large muscle groups, making muscles more pliant and reducing the risk of injury.
- Train large muscle groups in combination to optimize calorie-burning results: shoulder presses combined with squats, rows with stiff-legged deadlifts, biceps curls with lunges.
- Don’t sit on machines the whole time. Pick exercises that move your entire body, like push-ups or walking lunges.
- Arrange your exercises circuit-style to avoid long rests in between sets and maximize time efficiency.
- Follow your strength session with a minimum of 20 minutes of cardio.
- During your cardio workout, alternate bouts of high intensity (e.g. 30-60 seconds at 85-90% intensity) with longer periods of recovery (e.g. 1-3 minutes at 65-70% intensity) for maximum fat-burning results.
Don’t forget that you won’t be able to employ these techniques successfully if you don’t take the time to understand why you gained weight in the first place, and what personal factors may have prevented you from losing it sooner. If you don’t feel like you can go it alone, consider hiring a trainer, someone who will take the time to analyze your individual circumstances and needs, before beginning your weight-loss program.
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