Three Steps for Losing Weight and Burning Fat

A Simple Fitness Plan: Discipline, Nutrition and Exercise

Oct 10, 2009

Quick fixes like crash dieting cause loss of lean body mass crucial for metabolism. Years of dieting changes body composition, so it's best to adopt a healthy lifestyle.

Years of trying diet after diet will change the body’s composition so it ends up having have less muscle and more fat. This makes weight maintenance more difficult due to changes in metabolism, so nutritional balance and regular exercise is the key to staying trim and fit for life. It’s no easy task though. It takes a tremendous amount of self discipline and commitment, and most of all, perseverance.

Follow these three golden rules and start making them everyday habits to keep in shape for years to come.

Discipline and Consistency

Aim to lose an average of two pounds of body fat a month and keep it off healthily, while gaining muscle. Some find it easier to shed pounds while others takes longer. Those who have been identified as having a body type that easily put on weight and bulk up need to work harder and resist temptations. Weight should be consistent and not like a bouncing ball tipping the scales back and forth in a short amount of time.

Of all the rules, this is one of the most important: No food after 8pm. Eating after this time only results in energy coming in with no energy getting out.

Another important rule is to avoid losing weight through severe energy restriction (crash dieting) as this causes the loss of lean body mass crucial for metabolism. Each person has a WMM (weight maintenance mechanism) that resides in the brain and determines how much a person weighs and how much body fat they have. However, this mechanism can be manipulated through:

Typically, a person needs 2,000 calories per day. Those with an office job need around 1,700 calories, any more then that the excess kilojoules will not be used as energy by the body and will be stored as fat.

A balanced diet is essential and should consist of 55 percent carbohydrates, 30 percent healthy fat, and 15 percent protein. This means, half of the plate should be vegetables of different color or whole wheat bread or rice. The other 1/4 should be lean white meat such as chicken or fish and the rest of the 1/4 should be healthy fat from sources such as avocado or salmon.

Eat frequently throughout the day, and avoid three course meals. Eat in small amounts but more frequently. If your daily recommended requirement is 1800kj, you need to cut that down by 20 percent in order to lose weight. This does not mean skipping meals, but eating more low fat foods.

It is a fact that the body’s first preference of energy source is carbohydrates followed by fat and then protein. So if the aim is to reduce body fat it must burn fat, leading to the next topic.

From research, the body uses protein last to repair muscle damage and uses carbs first. This is because when a person starts to work out, the body in the initial 15 minutes is working Anaerobic (without oxygen). Without oxygen, fat cannot be burned. Thus, the rule is 20 to 30 minutes of aerobic exercises per day in mid intensity to help the body kick into the fat burning zone.

Work in a target training heart rate of around 145 to 175 beats per minute. The best time to work out is in the morning after a glass of water. The body uses carbs first and when a person wakes up the body has less carbs due to the hours spent sleeping, so then it is forced to use fat as a source of energy. But do not skip breakfast -- a meal is needed to replenish some healthy carbs and protein.

Running/cycling/rowing are recommended and should be done a minimum of three times a week for up to 30 minutes each time with the restrictions above. Resistance training helps to build up more muscle fibres to manipulate the “set metabolic rate,” so do “compound exercises” such as multiple muscles/ multiple joints exercises.

The rest period between each set should be kept to minimum of one minute to one minute and 20 seconds because the body should keep in the target training heart rate zone as above.

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