I’m often asked, “how can I lose my gut?” or “what can I do to make my bum smaller?” Which is kind of funny when you think about it, because these questions do not have simple answers, although they’re posed that way. To get a really good answer, you’ll need to learn to ask better questions. So maybe what you ultimately mean to say is, “how can I reach my weight loss goal in the shortest period of time possible while ensuring that I am able to maintain my results once I get there?” This is the question this article hopes to be able to answer.
In a nutshell, you’ll want to integrate these three synergistic elements: eat the right foods, do moderate cardiovascular exercise, and incorporate some type of a concern for building, or at least maintaining lean muscle tissue. Now this may be a bit of an oversimplification, but once you begin to get a better grasp of the overall picture, losing weight can be quite simple. It may not be easy, but at least it can be simple.
Having the right nutrition begins with recognising that food is not simply a source of pleasure, but it is fuel for your body. Would you fill up a high performance race car with an inferior, low-grade fuel? Well, guess what, your body is the most important machine you have, and if you want it to look better and perform better you’ll need to adopt better eating habits. Period. This means eating a lean protein, a starchy carb, and a fibrous carb, of visually equal portions every 3 to 3 1/2 hours. Put fuel in the tank!
This combination of foods will stimulate your metabolism because your body will need to expend a lot of energy in digesting and absorbing them. To best take advantage of this calorie-burning effect of food, you need to eat! In fact, more often is better.
Learn to avoid simple sugars, because they are quick energy for your body, which means eating them essentially puts your body’s fat-burning efforts on hold. Let me put it to you this way, why would your body need to burn fat as a fuel when there is something as easy and available as sugar? Fat loss is more complex, so if you do not first put your body in a state where it is willing to release fat, you can’t burn fat!
Minimize saturated fats and avoid hydrogenated fat. While you do need some fat, your preferred sources are the poly and monounsaturated fats found in things like fish, nuts, grains, olive oil, and flax seed oil, for example. The saturated and hydrogenated kinds stick around in your body a lot longer causing weight gain and other negative effects to your health.
Enjoy a weekly cheat day. Look, any plan that is based on depriving yourself cannot succeed in the long term. Long term success with your nutrition plan requires a more evolved mindset, and really a healthier relationship with food. Foods are not “good” or “bad”, they are either superior or inferior sources of fuel. So learn to make better choices, but also be sure to allow yourself the room to enjoy the foods you love and reward yourself for being good, recognising that if you eat well most of the time, this affords you the opportunity to cheat and not suffer for it. Now isn’t that truly where you’d rather be?
Cycle your training and make it progressive. Learn to challenge yourself a little bit more each workout. Just “going through the motions” won’t get the job done. And the routine must be systematically varied if you want to keep seeing results. You cannot keep doing the same routine indefinitely and expect to continue improving. Your body very quickly adapts, and once that happens, progress ceases.
Your comprehensive workout plan must integrate weight training and cardiovascular exercise (good for your heart). Doing cardiovascular exercise without a concern for building or maintaining lean muscle tissue in an ineffective way to lose fat. While doing cardio may burn fat, it can equally burn muscle tissue, which in turn reduces your metabolism. You see, because muscle requires and consumes energy, the more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn, even while resting. That is why adding new healthy lean tissue by means of a good resistance training program is truly the key to rapid and sustainable weight loss.
Most of all, just be consistent and give yourself time to build in the new lifestyle habits required. Consistent efforts over time produce results every time. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean you need to be perfect. NOBODY does all of this perfectly, all of the time. If you just try to get a little bit better each week, that is enough of a reason for your body to change. So you cheated on your diet five times this week? Try to do it not more than 4 times next week. Skipped breakfast twice? Do it only once. Push a little harder each workout, add in an extra workout (even a short one!), go for an extra walk, or even just do something, if you didn’t last week. Just always seek progress.
It probably sounds a bit complicated to you right now, but it’s really not. Once again, here’s what you’ll do:
- Integrate the right nutrition with moderate cardiovascular exercise and weight training.
- Attempt to get a lean protein, a starchy carb, and a fibrous carb of visually equal portions every 3 to 3 1/2 hours. If this is difficult for you, consider the use of a good meal-replacement powder, or learn about some healthy snacks.
- Avoid simple sugars, as eating them puts your body’s fat burning efforts on “lockdown” and leads to poor energy levels and cravings for more sugar!
- Minimize saturated fats and avoid hydrogenated fat. This starts with educating yourself and reading labels!
- Enjoy a weekly cheat day. Gives you something to look forward to and helps to reward and reinforce good food behavior.
- Cycle your training and make it progressive. You can’t do the same thing all the time and expect to keep seeing results!
- BE CONSISTENT: Seek progress, not perfection.
If you work on improving each of these areas consistently, before long people will be asking you “how did you get your bum so much smaller?” or “what did you do to lose your gut?” Live healthy and strong!
