Five Easy Steps To Reducing Body Fat
When people think about reducing body fat, they instantly think that all they need to do is start eating less and they will lose weight. In most cases this is correct, if you eat less food you will lose weight, but is this weight body fat. Depending on what types of foods you are eating and the amount of physical exercise will determine if most of this weight loss is FAT. Most people think by starting the best crash diet plan. The weight will fly off them and 9 times out of 10 it will. But let me tell you this crash dieting is not only dangerous to your health. But research has shown that the majority of the weight loss is lean muscle mass. Which is not good at all because you are probably fatter even those you have lost weight. It doesn’t end there your metabolism is now running at a much slower rate which means once you start eating normal again the weight will quickly return.
The secret to successful weight loss is by reducing body fat. Look to lose around 2 pounds every week.
Step One
To reduce body fat you must start by knowing what your body fat percentage is first. There are many ways that you can do this. You can quickly get a rough estimate using our free body fat calculator. Or you can measure it on a set of body fat scales like I do every week. These scales are much more accurate than they use to be and you will be able to know your body fat percentage within seconds of stepping onto them.
Step Two
Once you know what your body fat percentage is it’s time now to make yourself a body fat chart and record your progress on this chart every week at your weekly weigh in. I find Friday to be the best day to record your weight and body fat. Why because its more likely that you are going to stray slightly from your diet plan over the weekend. By weighing yourself on a Friday you are giving yourself the best chance of having a good run of days sticking to your diet plan and reducing body fat ready for your weekly weigh in.
Step Three
Its time to start a diet and exercise program that is designed to help build or at least maintain muscle mass and lose fat. Your exercise program should be a combination of weight training and cardiovascular exercise. You should follow a diet plan which is high in complex carbs and lean protein and one which is low in fat.
Step Four
Stick to the program and don’t lose motivation, some weeks you will see better results than others. Even those the weeks that yield bad results you worked your butt off. Its weird but the weeks that you feel like you not done well are usually the weeks that get the best results come your weekly weigh in.
Step Five
Reducing body fat is a long and slow journey one which you will reach if you stick at it. Once you get to your required weight and body fat percentage. It doesn’t end there your new lifestyle should become part of your life. Make going to the gym and eating right feel like your day job. It’s just something that you have got to do. If you make exercising fun there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t carrying it on for many years to come.
Summer Weight Loss
I’m from the UK and the weather over the last week has been fantastic, I find losing weight seems to be a lot easier during the hot summer months. Having just returned from Spain were the weather was hot. I still managed to lose weight even when the odds were stacked against me (lots of beer and junk food). My aim at the moment isn’t really to lose weight it to reduce my body fat percentage and try to maintain as much body weight as I can.
Losing fat and gaining muscle isn’t easy. I’ve had a few weeks were I have been able to achieve it. But this was due to me eating lots of protein and doing lots of cardio and weight training sessions. Over the last couple of months I have been exercising like a mad man. My exercise has slowed down slightly, and I’m feeling a bit down because I know that if I reduce my exercise I will see a reduction in my progress. The bottom line is though I just couldn’t keep all that exercise up, there just wasn’t enough hours in the day.
Its all about me now finding a happy place, were I can eat delicious food and not spend to much time exercising. One hour per day exercising is the maximum I ever want to be doing, and doing diets that are like eating rabbit food is not for me. I pretty happy with my diet plan so far, I’ve been able to eat a lot of junk and still see weight loss results. I’ve lost 38 pounds so far this year. Could this of been better, your damn right it could be. If I was 100% strict with my diet plan this would be much much more. Which to be perfectly honest I so glad I didn’t do. My motivation would of been really low because I would of not been able to eat the food that I like to eat sometimes.
The summer is here so hopefully, the warm weather will keep me motivated to keep losing fat and moving forward with my body fat reduction journey. I keep seeing results though, so I should be a happy man. I know that I can do better and I will do better. In fact I know that I need to do better if I’m to reach my body fat percentage target of 10% at 200 pounds before the end of 2009.
Upping Your Game To Lose More Weight
I got up this morning at 6am and instead of putting on my sweat suit and jumping on to my stationery exercise bike for one hour. I made the decision to get back into bed and reset my alarm clock to 7 am. Apart of me is really upset that I did this, but there’s another part of me that’s saying I’m glad I did it. At the moment I’m feeling a little over trained combine that with my reduced calorie diet and I so needed that extra one hour in bed this morning.
I woke back up at 7am feeling much better and went off to do my day’s work. When I got home from work my brain was telling me you need to step it now. So I jumped onto the exercise bike and instead of training at level 4 for one hour which I have been doing for the last 4 weeks. I decided to up my game a little and train at level 5. The results at the end of the one hour session were a little bit more painful I could really feel the burn in my thigh muscles. But by increasing the resistance from level 4 to level 5 I have been able to burn off an extra 90 calories. Which is going to really help me on my 50,000 calories in 50 day challenge. Which I’m still slightly behind on even though I’ve had a fantastic week so far and burned off a load of extra calories through exercise.
It’s my weekly weigh in, in the morning and I must say I’m really looking forward to it. I feel like I’ve made some more progress this week. Hopefully when I step onto my body fat scales in the morning I will see another drop in my body fat percentage. My target weight is 200 pounds and I’m almost certain I am going to reach that this week, but losing weight isn’t what I’m thinking about at the moment it’s reducing my body fat percentage that is the most important thing to me now.
I’m not finished with my cardio workouts today though I intend on getting a quick 30 minute high intensity interval training workout in, which will allow me to burn off a further 400 calories. Then I’m going to pamper myself and have a nice hot soak in the bath for one hour. No distractions just me and my music. Thanks to this blog and the kind words from some of my readers I am feeling more focused and motivated than I have ever been in my whole entire life.
