BURN FAT AND BUILD MUSCLES
How many times have you heard a friend say, “I am on a diet”? Then what happens is your friend would lose some weight for a while before putting them all back on again.
I’ll bet you have also seen someone say that “Cardio is the best for losing weight”. This person would then religiously pound the treadmill but results are agonizingly slow. Soon, he gives up and gains back all the weight he had lost, and sometimes even gaining some extra kilos!
Ah, so you thought you’ve finally found the answer to permanent weight loss. You went on a strict diet and ran your heart out. You dropped kilos real quickly. But somehow, something is wrong when you look into the mirror in your birthday suit. Yes, you have lost some weight, but somehow your body shape isn’t as flattering as you would like it to be. And then suddenly, you hit a plateau.
No matter how strict your diet and cardio workouts are, your weight just simply refuses to drop any further. Then horrors of horrors, you actually start to gain some weight! You get disillusioned because with the unrewarding program and soon you succumb to ‘guilt food’ more often, and the weight comes right back up once again. The program fails and you blame it on your bad genes. Why?
To lose fats and keep them off permanently, you have to combine healthy eating habits, incorporate cardio exercises, fast intermittently, and lift weights to build muscles.
For every kg of muscles you pack, you will burn an extra 70–100 calories per day even without doing anything. Can you imagine the benefits of building up 5kg of extra muscles? You will be burning 350 to 500 extra calories a day even if you just laze around. You’ll be burning a Big Mac every day! To further illustrate my point, 1 kg = about 7,700 calories, thus if you burn 500 calories a day because of the extra muscles you have, you will be burning off about 1 kg every 2 weeks simply because of your higher metabolism rate!
Everyone knows that intensive cardio and strict diets cause you to lose muscle mass along with fats. So while you will lose some weight at the beginning, you will look like, well, just a smaller version of you without any muscle tone. That’s not what we want, is it?
So, as you lose more and more muscles, your metabolism begins to slow down. On top of that, your body will start conserving fats and ‘eat’ your muscles for energy because it is reacting to your strict diet. What happens then is that you will hit a plateau and no matter what you do, you will not reduce any more weight and your fats will start creeping up again. This, in a nutshell, is the ‘yo-yo’ dieting effect that we hear so much about.
Losing fats is simple. And notice that I said ‘simple’ but did not say that it is ‘easy’. My pointers will be simple to understand, but the execution will take determination and discipline on your part. It is a lifestyle change to keep the fat off permanently and you will be glad you did because you will get used to the changes in only a few weeks. By then, it will become a cultivated habit for you, especially when you are rewarded with a fitter, healthier, you, together with a glowing complexion to boot!
Lift weights with compound exercises — Forget those puny biceps curls and tricep pushdowns. Go for big muscle groups like legs, back, and chest routines. Why? Because you are working with bigger parts with more mass, and that means more body parts are working, translating into more calories being expended. If you are fit, do giant sets (4 or more exercises or sets with no rest in between sets or exercises).
Here’s an example. Do only one set of each exercise with no rest in between the exercises. Choose a weight of about 60%-70% of what you normally lift and go for at least 25 reps. Do more if you can or until your muscles are fatigued, then stop. Leave the gym. The whole routine should not take you more than 40 minutes.
After thoroughly warming up, start with squats, then dip, bench press, barbell row, and military press. Sounds simple? Not so. You will be huffing, puffing, and sweating profusely. What is achieved? You will have combined a cardio workout with a lifting workout and your metabolism will burn for the next several hours. Do this 3 times a week with at least a day’s rest in between lifting days.
After 4–8 weeks, change the sequence of the exercises. So if you usually squat first, then squat last. Then after another 4–8 weeks, change some of the exercises, like substituting squats with the deadlift, or barbell rows with lat pull down. This is to shock your muscles so that they continue to adapt and grow.
For cardio, go for a run or a brisk walk first thing in the morning or before a meal. If you are running at 65% to 80% of your maximum heart rate (you will be panting and unable to sing or complete a sentence while running), then 20–30 minutes will be enough. You can do this 3–4 times a week.
A great alternative to steady-state cardio is to do high-intensity interval workouts, such as TABATA which will take less than five minutes and will supercharge your metabolism. This is an advanced workout, which is best done after 6–8 weeks of consistently working out and should only be done 1–2 days a week.
With all that has been written in this article the most powerful tactic, you can incorporate is fasting and intermittent fasting.
Here’s why. Fasting boosts your metabolism, boosts growth hormones, prevents diabetes, lowers blood pressure in some people, burns fat, controls weight, controls appetite, cleanses, and detoxes your body at the cellular level.
Fasting is more effective than calorie reduction in losing weight because it does not stimulate hunger in the brain, as calorie-reduced diets do.
You can also workout while fasting to boost fat burning even more although performance may diminish in endurance and strenuous activities.
Don’t worry about losing muscles while fasting. Your body prefers fat over muscle as a fuel source and will burn it before using muscle.
Try the 16/8 fast. Simply eat within an 8-hour window on most days and abstaining from food for 16 hours. This sounds difficult but like any new habit, practice is the key to success.
Oh, by the way, all work and no play makes Jack a dull (and very tired) boy. Do choose a day to relax a week. No exercise on that day. Indulge in your favorite food if you must. Hey, pat yourself on the back and reward yourself for passing another grueling week. After all, your body needs to recover too.
As you reach your fat loss goals and you are happy with your muscular development, you can then take things a little easier. Workout less frequently, with shorter sessions.
You can do this.
Live well!
