Its 2017, and the Battle of the Bulge is alive and well. For example, Americans in 2013 alone spent upwards of $65 BILLION on diets, equipment, gym memberships, etc. Also, a lot of diets flat out dont work. One way that athletes, entertainers and serial dieters lose weight quickly is cutting weight. MMA fighters popularized the method via The Ultimate Fighter series and subsequent articles, videos by the MMA community. Anyway, there are very sane and safe ways to cut weight. Here is a compilation of my picks to cut weight SAFELY.
NOTE: Always consult your primary care provider before starting any weight loss or exercise regimen. Listen to your body and make good, sound decisions. This is your health were talking about here. Now, the list.
Im sure everyone has that one friend who is so genetically blessed that he can blink an eye and magically drop to sub-10-percent body fat. Everyone else has to dial in their diet and tweak their training.
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, fat doesnt fall off from your body as quickly as youd like. The first instinct might be to dramatically increase calorie deficit and caloric expenditure, but that can bring about detrimental long-term effects on your body.
Instead, try incorporating in one or more of these techniques to strip off that final layer of fat. Not all techniques are meant to work for everyone, but finding one that works for you should help you see the changes and progress you desire.
Many folks, especially men, have seen great success with intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting allows only a small feeding windowtypically, eight hours before and after which you dont eat anything. The idea is that the practice would force your body to subsist on body fat storage for fuel during the fasting window, improve insulin sensitivity, and allow you to eat more diverse foods during your feeding window.
Some bodybuilders use this trick: make sure to eat the last meal of the day at 6:30 pm. Then wake up in the morning and do my cardio in a semi-fasted state, after thirteen and a half hours have taken place. After that, have breakfastthe first meal youll have consumed since the night before.
You may not want to do this all the time since its long-term effects on hormones, especially in women, are somewhat dubious at this point. However, for a period of one or two weeks, it can speed things along.
Carb cycling means youll eat your target carbs on training days and approximately 50 percent of your normal carb intake on non-training or light cardio days. This strategy helps blunt fat storage on resting days and restores muscle glycogen in a supercompensated fashion. It also combats the metabolic crash associated with conventional low-calorie diets and keeps a strong satiety signal throughout the body.
If you find yourself at a loss for what to eat on training days, whey protein is a great way to keep up with your protein macros. The fiber will also keep you full, decreasing the likelihood youll binge on empty carb-loaded calories when a craving hits. Choose a whey thats low in carbs on your training days, and reserve the mass-gainer protein for days when you want to carb load.
Dropsets can also be an effective way to turn up your metabolic furnace. To perform a dropset, you simply perform an exercise at a heavy weight until failure, then immediately drop the weight and bang out more reps until failure.
Continue this pattern until your muscles scream in agony. When incorporated correctly, dropsets will tear into your muscle glycogen, which will then create a greater post-exercise metabolic response from the intensity and will need to restore your bodys sapped glycogen.
Remember that too many dropsets is bad, especially for the central nervous system. This is especially true if you dont get enough carbs throughout the day; use this technique wisely.
You need to ditch your habits of weighing your food to the gram at your desk and crunching numbers throughout the day. The less you stress about eating, the better are your chances to stick with your eating plan and avoid making decisions that could set you back. After all, it just takes one giant binge to completely erase a weeks worth of effort, so make every bite count.
Just take one day of the weeksay, Sundayand spend all day in the kitchen, preparing and portioning out all your food among towers of Tupperware. While your friends and family may laugh at the sight, you know a weeks worth of muscle-fueling, fat-bashing food will be within arms reach.
L-carnitine might just be one of the hottest fat loss supplements around. I dont recommend you put all your eggs in this fat-loss basket, but supplementing with carnitine if you practice vegetarianism, veganism, or otherwise have a low dietary carnitine intake from meats might help you with fat loss.
When paired with exercise, carnitine supplementation can boost activity of the beta-oxidation pathway when paired with exercise. Basically, you could be increasing the bodys fat-burning potential.
Many people default to a full-body workout program to include intense compound exercises and make workouts more efficient. Why not add compound supersets?
By pairing two major exercises back-to-back like thisthe squat and bench press, for exampleyou end up recruiting many more muscle fibers over a shorter period of time. Youll not only burn more calories during your workout, but youll continue to burn more once its over.
Fat loss responds best to the most reductive nature of this calorie balance equation: Calories consumed must be less than calories burned. In order to hit that deficit, use cardio to achieve proper balance in your routine.
For example, your steady-state cardio in the morning is the first layer of the foundation, and you can do anywhere from 25-35 minutes on the elliptical, five days a week.
Double up your workout with a resistance training session later and squeezes in 90 seconds of high intensity cardio between sets. For example, the jump rope (its portable) can be a great option. If you end up doing 18-20 sets in a session, this adds up to an additional 30 minutes of cardio training. Cardio does not need to be performed continuously on a machine for it to be cardio.
Using fish oil supplements isnt unique to weight loss. Studies have shown the benefits of omega fatty acid supplementation regardless of your physique goal. A good omega 3/6/9 blend containing CLA should be a part of your arsenal, as part of your daily supplement stack. Pair up 1000 mg of CLA with the omegas for maximum results.
CLA is not only helpful for reducing body fat- but omega fats are also crucial for enhancing your overall health.
Remember, even though fat loss may be your primary short-term goal, health optimization should NEVER take a back seat.
As you move closer and closer toward your ideal body fat count, your energy levels may start to waver from the accumulated energy deficit. You might not be able to sustain as much volume in the gym as youre used to since youre not eating as much and your muscle glycogen is never fully saturated. Overall, youve just seen better days.
This isnt permission to take your foot off the gas. Rather than cheating every rep, concentrate harder on perfecting your form. By focusing on each muscle contraction and isolating the working muscle group, you can maximize the training benefits you get from each working set. This makes a lower volume workout that much more effective.
While you definitely dont want to get into the habit of regularly skipping workout sessions, you might benefit greatly great from taking a full rest day. Listen to your body. If youre hitting it hard, and youre worn down from workouts and your everyday life- let your body rest, for crying out loud.
No matter if youre trying to get lean or strong, an adequate rest is an integral part of the process for results.
In closing, this is not a definitive list, as this is not a one-size-fits-all schematic. Please use this as a bedrock for your weight-loss goals. Let this be your new basic baseline for fat loss. THE BASICS ALWAYS WIN.
Read the rest here:
How To Cut Weight Safely - seattlepi.com (blog)
