How to Lose Body Fat - Beat Plateauing and Start Losing Serious Weight
How to Lose Body Fat
This article will teach you the fastest way to lose body fat. The diet and workout I prescribe here is not easy, nor for the faint of heart, but if you are serious about losing body fat, it is for you. I guarantee you will drop 1 to 2% body fat in a couple weeks using the information provided here. It is THAT powerful.
Let's begin!
Interval Training
The most effective exercise to lose body fat is NOT plain old steady state cardio, believe it or not. If you want to lose body fat as fast as you possibly can, it is vital you incorporate High Intensity Interval training or (HIIT) three to four times per week.
How do you do HIIT? It is simple. You do a five minute walking warm up, then proceed to go into your first round. Each round consists of one minute of sprinting all out as hard as you can, without slowing down, followed by two minutes of light jogging to recover and prepare for your next minute long sprint. Each round lasts the duration of three minutes. So do your 5 minute walking warm up, about 5 rounds (15 minutes total) and then another 5 minute walking cool down. Your entire HIIT workout should last 25 minutes. Over time, begin to increase the speed of your sprints. I've been doing HIIT for a while now and I have gotten my minute-long sprints up to 11 miles per hour without slowing down at all. Work at it long enough and you'll start to see great results.
The benefit of doing HIIT is that your body continues to burn calories for up to 24 hours after stopping! Yes, it is only 25 minutes, but your body will continue doing the work for you with a supercharged metabolism afterward. Whereas with normal cardio, the second you get off the treadmill, your body stops burning fat altogether.
The problem with regular steady state cardio is that it's like a drug, in the sense that the more you do it, the bigger doses you need to keep getting the same effect. In other words, the more you do cardio, the longer you must do it each day to keep from plateauing. If you had an infinite amount of time to keep running all day long, it would still be a problem and here's why. After running for more than an hour, studies show that the body releases huge amounts of cortisol. As we all know, cortisol works to maintain fat and produce even more of it as a defense mechanism.
Even further proof that HIIT is better for your physique than long, steady state cardio training is the builds of the people who do each. Compare the lean, ripped hard bodies of professional sprinters to the skinny, but loose and saggy bodies of your average marathon runner. Which of the two would you rather look like? If you answered the former, it's imperative you stop all steady state cardio and start doing interval training.
Sleeping Habits
Good sleeping habits are critical to your body's ability to lose body fat. You burn a ton of calories when you are in deep sleep each night, so if you are cutting yourself short and depriving yourself of that, your results with losing body fat are bound to be cut short as well.
If you find that you're having a hard time sleeping, I wrote another article for you as well. It's called How to Sleep and it will teach you a few tricks that you probably should be using to make sure your body is sleeping as deep as it should and is burning the optimal amount of fat as it can each night.
To read, How to Sleep, click on the following link:
Diet
The first and most important part of how to lose body fat lies in what you are putting into your body each day and how often you put it into your body. No matter how hard or how fast you run, unless your diet is in check you will not lose body fat whatsoever.
You should really avoid processed sugar altogether, if you are serious about getting results. It is one of the most fattening things you can put in your body. Also, try and cut out the majority of saturated fat you've been getting. The foods you should be eating should be protein and fiber rich. Instead of eating simple carbohydrates like chips, you should be eating complex carbohydrates like brown rice, oatmeal, fruits and vegetables. I know, I know. They don't taste as good, but it is vital your give your diet a make over if you want your body to look like it's had one.
How many calories a day should you be getting? Excellent question. Use the below link to calculate that.
Conclusion
By taking the above diet, sleep and exercise guidelines into consideration, you can greatly reduce your amount of body fat in a short amount of time. It takes hard work, dedication and commitment, but if you really want to lose body fat, it's all necessary. No matter what con artists trying to make a quick buck will tell you, there is no pill you can easily pop in your mouth and magically start burning fat with. You simply can't bottle the effects of hard work, diet and exercise.