The Fastest way to lose your body fat, get lean and toned

  Here it is:  Burn more calories than you consume.  Teach your body to become more sensitive to insulin by properly using restricting high glycemic carbohydrates and changing up your meal frequency by either increasing or decreasing how often you eat.  Create the best environment for fat loss by getting the proper nutrients and getting adequate quality sleep to ensure proper recovery .  You want make sure your body doesn’t get too adapted to any one type of exercise or nutrition regiment. And of course, manage physical and mental stress.

Lets consider the out of shape, very sedentary, overweight individual.  If that is you, you’ll burn fat and lose weight faster than any in-shape person ever will.  However, if you’ve been working out for month or longer then you need to take a few additional things into consideration.  There is no one-size-fits all approach to lowering body fat % percentage quickly. I use to believe that it was all about calories in vs calories out.  It turns out that just doesn’t work that way for everybody.  So there needs to be some customization to your fitness programming so that you keep moving in the direction of your goal. Let’s take these two examples.
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Let’s take John, who is 24 years old and is 5’8” 185lbs and wants to get down to his “ideal” weight of 175lbs. He’s been busting his ass, working hard and has lost 30lbs in last 8 weeks. John has hit weight loss plateau.  John is stuck, and has been around the 185-ish for about 3-4 weeks. He’s been running for 30 minutes 4-5 days a week and weight training twice a week (high reps, light weight).

What’s the fastest way for John to lose this weight and get down to this goal weight?

The short answer:The over simplified answer is take a break from dieting and change up his workout program to either be more weight training or cardio (not both).

The long Answer:  I would do a drastic overhaul of his nutrition program.  Based on the information provided, I would have him stick to a very strict and regimented low calorie intake that is high in protein.  However, prior to doing this I would have John do one of the two following things: 1.) Eat whatever he wants for the next 3 days but don’t go crazy on the sugar intake or 2.) Take an overall break from dieting and eat maintenance calories for a week. Then based on how his body changes over that 10-14 day period I will decide if he should continue or change things up again.

More thoughts on losing body fat quickly for John
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Example 2:

Let’s take Jane, she is 38 years old, 5 ft 5 inches tall, has 2 kids (the youngest is 4 years old) and weighs 175lbs.  She’s lost about 10lbs and can’t seem to get any lower. She hasn’t been working as hard as John, but she’s been taking aerobics classes 3 days a week for the past 8 weeks and doing weight machines 1 day a week.

What’s the fastest way for her to break this sticking point?

The short answer: Exchange some of her cardio with weight lifting.

Detailed Answer: Jane needs to get her protein intake up.  Most women tend to be adverse from eating meat (I don’t know why), but doing this usually results in increased fat loss as well as overall improved fitness performance.  Based on her 2 week results of increased protein intake and calorie monitoring, adjustments will be made if there isn’t a significant drop in body fat percentage.  Based on her information, it looks like she needs to be intaking about 1100-1350 calories a day.
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It’s  pretty obvious she needs to increase how much time she spends weight lifting.  She can keep doing the aerobics classes, but she needs a structured 3 day a week weight lifting program.  I would start her on a full body 10-12 reps near failure per large muscle group.

More thoughts on losing body fat quickly for women who are having trouble..

The fastest way to lower your body fat percentage will be based on several factors related to your fitness history.  It depends on your age. It depends if you have any pre-existing medical conditions that affect metabolism.  It depends on your ability to work out and recovery optimally.  There are just so many factors to consider. So what’s the best solution for you?  What should you do to lower my body fat percentage and get lean in the fastest way possible? I’ll provide a few more practical steps towards deciding your fastest weight loss course of action without getting too deep into the geeky scientific stuff.

When I have a client who is stuck at a plateau point, the obvious first place to look is their nutrition. Most weight loss plateaus are due to nutrition short comings. Your calories need to be in check and your high glycemic carb intake needs to be in check as well.  The tried and true weight loss method that’s simple but hard to do is the meat and vegetable diet.  You might be asking what is the meat and vegetable diet.  It means you eat nothing but meat and green leafy vegetables.  It is very difficult to do, but it works.

Someone might ask me, “Can I have fruit? Can I drink orange juice? What about potatoes? Is a fruit a meat or a vegetable? The answer is no.  

Is a potato a green leafy vegetable? The answer is no. Why can’t I eat fruit?

 In another post I’ll explain why fruit isn’t great for fat loss for most people.

Counting calories and keeping an accurate food journal is another important factor when your weight loss begins to slow down or if you’re stuck at a weight loss plateau.  You should know how many calories you’re burning and how many calories you need to eat to ensure the appropriate calorie deficit for your weight loss target.  One of the problems with counting calories is that most people aren’t accurate.  Keep in mind that there many common mistakes people make when trying count calories to lose weight. It’s important you learn how counting calories for weight loss.
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Okay, let’s talk about exercise. The first question that comes to mind when I have a client having trouble losing weight is I think about what they’ve been up to. Have they been doing more cardio than weight lifting or is it the other way around? Are they counting Zumba as intense cardio? (I have nothing against Zumba.)

To lower body fat percent quickly, you must choose the modes of exercise activity that my you’re least accustomed to.

So if all you’ve been doing is 7 hours of cardio a week, you will probably get a favorable metabolic fat loss boost from cutting the cardio.

If you’ve been doing high intensity circuit training for the past 3 months; switching modes to a hybrid of very heavy weight lifting, low reps along with less circuit training will provide you with a faster fat loss result.

The Key to quickly lowering your body fat

Optimize your workout plan. What is ideal for what you’re already doing? What are the best exercises to do for your other goals. In part 2 I will adress more case studies on what works best for different goals.

What if you haven’t been doing any exercise at all?

This simply means you’re not accustomed to anything and just about any type of working out will result in accelerated fat loss as long as your nutrition is properly set up to do so.

Nutrition is approximately 70% of weight loss results and 99% of weight maintenance. I can easily get into a rant about how exercise is not a good way to lose weight, but I will save that that for another time. I will narrow it down to an old cliche, “you are what you eat.” If you eat crappy food you will have a crappy body composition and perform poorly. If you eat high quality food you will perform at a higher level.

I know you probably knew that and didn’t want to hear it; but that’s how it is! You need to nail down your nutrition to lose weight the fastest way possible. There is no amount of exercise that will be equivalent to having a sound nutrition plan. Of course, exercise will speed things up but the right nutrition plan will go 10 times the distance, but usually more.

If there is one thing that I want you to take from this article, it’s that there are many philosophies out there to weight loss, building muscle and getting lean. What matters most is “what’s working?” If your results are stagnant, do something to change it.

If you are making progress in body composition, strength and endurance stick with that until it runs out. If you need more structure and a more thorough design, I have my New 7 Fat Loss Food Secrets Guide that You can get for free here.

If you found information in this article helpful for you, please “like” or share it. Thanks for reading!

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