Fat Loss For Idiots

Chris Chew asked:


Do you know that you are actually fighting against nature when you are attempting to lose weight? You see, way back long ago, when a caveman’s next meal was uncertain and he was hungry, the body will store and conserve as much fat as possible to ensure its survival.

Furthermore, it will lower the metabolism rate so that less fat is being burnt for energy. Therefore we all have this built-in survival mechanism and this is the reason why skipping meals when trying to lose weight is not such a good idea. Now, you can see why it is so easy to gain weight and so difficult to lose them?

Although we now have certainty when our next meal is coming, our body will still instinctively store fat for it is a natural survival mechanism since the body can’t think. Fortunately, there are a number of ways we can raise our metabolism and keep fat at bay.

If you want to burn fat by raising your metabolism, try lifting weights. Lift weights using compound exercises with high repetitions. The idea is not to build muscles but to raise your metabolism in order to burn fat. Since compound exercises such as dead lifts, squats and bench presses work on many muscle parts, you will be puffing and panting. In other words, you are having a good fat burning cardio work out.

Because the exercises work on many muscle parts, more calories are expanded and that meant more fat is burnt. Don’t waste your time doing puny exercises like bicep curls or tricep extensions. Yes, these exercises have their places, but they are not efficient for fat burning.

You should also limit the number of sets of each exercise to 3 or 4 sets since there are some studies showing that there is no difference in doing four or six sets for fat burning purpose.

Next, do pay close attention to how long you rest in between sets. Resting for too long, say for 2 minutes will clear a fat burning hormone releasing chemical called lactate from your bloodstream. Therefore if you want to burn fat, you need to keep lactate in your blood stream for as long as possible. Therefore do not rest more than a minute in between sets.

Yes, you say that there is not sufficient recovery time after the last set and performing the next set before recovery will not be efficient. Well, you can get around this easily by alternating the exercises such as doing a lower body exercise, and then do an upper body exercise next.

Tempo when lifting weight is vitally important. By swinging your weights up and down will get you nowhere, perhaps even getting an injury. This is because when you swing the weight up, you are using momentum and when you lower them quickly, you are using gravity to assist you.

Therefore, slow things down to a consistent rhythm but fairly quickly enough to get a cardio workout.

Although the above exercise techniques are not meant for building muscles but for raising metabolism to burn fat, if you have never lifted weights before, you will also gain some muscles. Do know that muscles are natural fat burner and the more muscle mass you have, the higher your metabolism. When you have gained enough muscles, you will become a natural fat burner.



The Body Already Knows How To Lose Weight

Bill Mann asked:


A lot of people don’t seem to grasp the difference between losing weight and burning fat. Not understanding the difference between the two can be the difference between getting the body you want and actually getting less fit. Keep reading any you’ll understand the difference. You’ll also know how to get what you want.

Those who want to lose weight aim to see a certain number on the scale. If you are one of them, you need to learn the difference, or your 6 pack quest is doomed to failure. You need a different goal. It’s easy to see why many people make this fundamental mistake. They think about when they were young and fit and sexy, and remember that they weighed 110, 130, 150, 170, or whatever the number was. Then they figure if they looked so hot at that weight, all they’ll need to do is lose a few pounds beyond that to have an even fitter and sexier body. A few more pounds after that and they’ll be sporting 6 pack abs and looking like a fitness model. But it doesn’t work that way.

To a large extent, the number you see on the scale is meaningless. It doesn’t much matter what you weigh. The number on the scale tells you nothing about what really matters if you’re trying for that 6 pack. Sure, if you’ve got a beer belly hanging over your belt, losing weight will improve the situation. It won’t however, take you anywhere near your target. To get a body like a top athlete or fitness model, you need to burn fat, not lose weight.

As we age, our bodies tend to lose muscle mass. Without the proper exercise and nutrition, a person typically loses 5-10 pounds of muscle every decade after the age of 25 or so. If you’re losing muscle, but maintaining your weight, you are actually just trading muscle for fat. So for most people, even maintaining the same weight you had a decade ago means you are losing ground. You’re body is gaining fat and losing muscle, even if your weight isn’t changing.

Even worse, it takes less energy for your body to maintain a pound of fat than a pound of muscle. So if you’re losing muscle mass and gaining fat, it takes less and less food to maintain your weight. This makes it that much harder to even keep that number on the scale steady, much less actually build the body you want.

Clearly, you need to take a different approach to this problem. Your goal has to be to burn fat, rather than lose weight. Why? When you look at people with 6 pack abs, you’re looking at someone who has a very low amount of body fat. No matter how much they work out, no matter how fit they are, you’re not going to see the kind of muscle definition we’re talking about unless they have got their body fat levels very low.

The way they do this is by working out very hard, not by dieting. The leanest people out there all exercise very hard. They work out long enough and hard enough to force their bodies to draw on fat reserves for fuel. They literally burn fat for fuel, pulling it out of the bodies storage areas and use it to power their workouts. Combined with appropriate eating, the result is that they lose body fat.

And here’s an added bonus. The kinds of workouts that do this best (think sprinting and weight lifting) also force your body to rebuild your muscles bigger and stronger to handle the stress. And that takes energy, which means their bodies burn fat to do the work even after the workout is over.

And there’s yet another bonus. The additional muscle their bodies build to handle the stress of hard workouts requires extra calories to maintain itself. So their bodies burns more calories during the day, even when they’re not working out. That makes it easier for them to stay lean.

Which brings us to the final reason why burning fat rather than losing weight should be your goal. If you do this right, you’ll be adding significant amounts of muscle mass while simultaneously reducing the amount of fat you carry around with you. You might lose weight, you might stay the same, you might even gain weight on the way to that 6 pack. The number on the scale says nothing about the amount of muscle on your frame, the fitness of your body, or what you see in the mirror when you take off your shirt.

So now you know why burning fat, not losing weight, is the best way to develop the great abs you’re looking for.

Daniel Millions asked:


If you are reading this, you are probably one of many people who is not satisfied with how they look. Most of us would love to have a trimmer waist, and if not, have a more muscular physique. How can one go about burning away unwanted fat while building a trim muscular figure?

There are a number of theories, but some are superior than others because some adhere to a few simple principals that will be outlined below.

The body is a machine. It is built for adaptation, procreation, and survival. This is what has kept us alive as a race for the millennia. The problem is that only recently has our sedentary lifestyle demanded that we lose extra energy that we store as fat around our waist, thighs, and other places. When we used to hunt for food, we not only ate more nutritious food, but we worked very hard, burning many calories acquiring every meal.

None of us has any trouble ordering a fast meal at a local diner, and this has led to the accumulation of fat in the body that has unsightly and unhealthy consequences. So how will you go about losing this fat? Well, fat is essentially stored energy. In order to get rid of it all, you need to do is burn more of it than you replace through eating. Sounds simple? Well, ask anyone who has ever dieted and you will soon find it isn’t anywhere near as simple as it seems.

Why? Because many people focus on long bouts of cardio which do burn energy, but do not increase metabolism. The key to truly losing weight and building muscle is increasing metabolism, or your body’s rate of burning fat; while also increasing the rate at which your body builds muscle. Here are some tips that will help you.

The first aspect is diet. I am sure many of you have tried dieting without much success. Well, your body is an adaptive machine. If you would like it to burn fat while you are sitting watching television of reading the paper, it will. Believe it or not, all your body needs is the proper queue to increase its basal metabolic rate, or the rate it burns energy while resting.

You can actually make your body burn more fat than it normally does, but you wont achieve this by running for miles on end. No, a more sound approach would be to do intense BURSTS of anaerobic activity, namely sprinting for about 20 seconds, then jogging for about 20 seconds, then repeating this 5 times twice. If you do this, your body will believe it has become necessary to sprint for survival. Sprinting requires a large amount of energy, and your body while preparing itself to always be ready for a life or death sprint will keep a lot of energy ready for the burning, and in the meantime will burn much more calories than it usually does.

Don’t believe it? Check out any sprinters physique and get back to me. So take home point-do not worry about what you put in as much as what you put out. The second major influence is your training habits. You need to focus on performing some intense work at least three times per week. I am sure this sounds low to many of you. Well, instead of jogging for an hour each day, do sprints every other day for a total of 10 minutes and you will reap benefits that will astonish you.

If you want to build muscle, the sprinting actually increases the amount of growth hormone your body produces, so yes, sprinting coupled with sound resistance training is your ticket to burning fat while feeding the muscle. Do not take it from me, get out there and train!



Crash Dieting Doesn’t Work-But This Does!