Category: Losing Fat

Do you not like the idea of going to the gym or sticking to a rigid workout schedule? if you don’t like the idea of a fixed workout schedule then this article is about exploring some alternative ways of exercising, losing weight and keeping fit.

Most people are turned off by the idea of going to the gym, or they think exercising requires a lengthy gym workout which requires getting changed into your workout gear, driving to the gym, spending an hour or two there, then getting a shower and changed again.

The whole process can seem time consuming and repetitive, so much effort several days a week, this puts so many people off going to the gym or exercising in general.

However there is an alternative

This is something that I used to do when I first started out. It’s based on the idea of simply burning as much energy or calories as possible. Burning more calories than you are consuming which should trigger your body to start converting your fat cells into energy, or in other words to burn off body fat.

So the goal is to keep active as much as possible. So for example if I was watching the TV alone, after 20 – 30 minutes I would get up and start performing certain exercises for around 5 minutes. I would perform exercises such as jogging on the spot, star jumps, squat thrusts and arm circles. After a few minutes of doing this I would sit back down and continue to watch the TV.

You obviously can’t really do this if other people are in the room because it would seem a bit strange. You could always run into another room for some exercise privacy.

You can do this with or without exercise equipment, if you have some equipment in the living room like some dumbbells lying around you could use them.

You can perform both cardio and resistance exercises, which can lead to fat burning and muscle development and generally having a more toned physique.

When can I do this?

This way of exercising could also be used if you are working at home, on the computer, playing a computer game or watching a movie.

You wouldn’t have to commit to a formal workout, however best results would be achieved by exercising in this way plus other forms of exercising, like walking as much as possible or visiting the gym a couple of times a week.

So next time you find yourself at home by yourself just watching the Television, why not get up every now and then and perform a few exercises for a few minutes.

Just be careful your room or location is safe to exercise in, and that you have good fitness levels so you don’t put yourself at risk of injury. Also start off with exercises which are less intense in order to warm up your body.

Example Exercises

• Lunges
• Squats
• Star Jumps
• Squat Thrusts
• Press Ups
• Tricep Dips
• Arm Circles
• Hip Rotations

If exercise and getting fit is important to you, there is always time, nobody is too busy that they can’t find 10 or 20 minutes at some point during the day. Those who say they are too busy are lying, they just don’t want it bad enough.

So how does someone get that highly sought after V Shaped Abs look in the lower stomach area?

What is V Shaped Abs?

V shaped abs is the appearance in your lower abdominal area. It’s two cuts which can be visible with a low enough body fat percentage. These cuts start in the lower oblique area and then go down and angle inwards to create a sort of v shape.

How to achieve the V Shape

For these cuts to be visible a body fat percentage of around 10% or less is needed. The lower your body fat percentage is the easier it will be for those cuts to be visible.

You may think the best way to achieve this look is to perform loads of stomach exercises, abdominal crunches and sit ups and that sort of thing. However this is not the right way to go about it, for the simple reason that these types of exercises are not the best way to lower your body fat percentage. You would just end up with strong abdominals with the same level of body fat covering them, so they will never be seen.

Step 1 – Lower Your Body Fat Percentage

Start with modifying your diet, don’t go on a diet just improve your current diet. It’s impossible for me to know what sort of diet everybody has so I will just give some general diet tips.

Get an idea of how many calories you should be consuming each day to maintain a healthy weight. On average it’s around 2000 calories per day for men, and 1600 calories per day for women. So now you have a number to work with. The next step is to find out actually how many you are consuming per day.

The key to burning body fat is to burn off more calories than you consume. So now you have a roundabout figure of how many calories you should be consuming and what you actually are consuming. If your intake is higher than what it should be then simply start reducing your intake.

Calories are important however it’s not the only thing to be aware of. Improve your diet by dropping or reducing certain foods and replacing them with others. Eat plenty of fruit, vegetables and good clean quality protein sources for example tuna, milk, eggs, beans and nuts.

Step 2 – Exercise 

High intensity interval training (HIIT) is a new and great way of exercising for effective fat burning. High interval training is great for cardio and muscular development, both are great for burning off some body fat.

So train regular with decent intensity. HIIT, cardio and weight training are all good for burning off calories.

Step 3 – Develop Those Abdominals

Performing stomach exercises will help those V shaped cuts and your abdominals to become visible. Developing your abdominal area will push out the abs and those V shaped cuts to make them more prominent.

Ideally you want to be targeting the lower abdominal area, here is a list of exercises to help with that.

• Russian Twists
• Leg or Knee Raises
• Crunches

There is so much information on this available online, so what’s the best way to lose weight and keep it lost so you never have to worry about your weight again?

I dislike using the term “weight loss” because it is not fully accurate and it can be misleading. What we are really talking about is fat loss, not water loss, muscle loss or loss of food in our stomach, just burning body fat to lower our body fat percentage.

Forget about the idea of fast weight loss, the idea in itself is flawed. Fast weight loss techniques are always unhealthy, such as starvation or fasting which can damage our organs and lead to muscle loss. Starving yourself can reduce the body’s ability to burn off fat, which is exactly the opposite of what the person is trying to achieve.

Best way to lose weight?

I say the best way, not the fastest way. The best way is the healthy way, and the only really good and effective way.

Ok so this best way is to maintain a Caloric Deficit. That’s it! that’s all you need to do. For anybody that doesn’t know what this means, it’s simply maintaining a lifestyle which leads to the body using up more calories or energy than is being consumed. If you consume 2000 calories in a single day, and if your body uses up 2500 calories in that same day your body will require extra energy, if it cannot get it externally(Food) it will look for internal sources of energy, Ideally body fat.

Many people who hear this simple explanation will disregard it, stating it doesn’t apply to them because they have a slow metabolism, bad genetics or some other nonsense. It’s true, genetics and our metabolisms can have an affect, however the affect is massively exaggerated. While metabolisms do differ it’s only slightly and it’s greatly affected by our lifestyle and fitness levels, therefore partly under our own control.

This is a very simple explanation and idea, however it does go into much complexity and it’s backed up by recent scientific research.

Forget about low fat, low carbohydrate diets because if even if you eat low carb, low fat foods you can still consume too much, which will cause you to gain body fat. What you do eat still matters, ideally your calories should come from good quality nutrient rich foods. These foods will help your body to function better and help to maintain a healthy weight or more accurately a healthy level of body fat.

Some people will say this can’t be true because they claim to eat very little, yet they continue to gain body fat. I my experience this is only a self deception, if this applies to you, the only way you will know for sure is if you actually count and keep track of what you consume on an average day.

How much fat will you burn and how fast?

Maintaining a caloric deficit works! however how successful it will be depends on a few important factors.

• How big the caloric deficit is.
• How often you achieve a calorie deficit.
• What foods you are actually eating.

If the caloric deficit is only very small, you will not see a difference any time soon. Also if the caloric deficit is not continuous, for example day 1 calorie deficit, day 2 calorie surplus, if this is the case you are unlikely to see any results. If you are achieving a calorie deficit, however if those calories are coming from poor foods it could affect your health, metabolism and reduce muscle, all thing which can affect the body’s ability to burn body fat.

So forget about all the nonsense diets and techniques, if you don’t have a caloric deficit they won’t work, so save yourself some time and money.

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So it’s that time of year again! new year’s resolutions! and one of the most common new year’s resolutions is to lose weight and get into shape. In fact resolutions about losing weight makes up for about 35 percent of all new year’s resolutions which is not surprising.

The trouble is most don’t stick to those resolutions. It all sounds good in theory, people don’t worry about it in December and then as soon as the 1st of January comes around that’s when their plan goes into overdrive.

The below tips are aimed at helping you to achieve your fitness goals long term. Be persistent and then be consistent.

Top 10 Tips to lose weight this new year!

• Keep to it

Be persistent, it takes time for new things to become habit and even longer before it becomes part of our lifestyles. In time it will become apart of you, after enough time it will become a part of your personality. Read more on developing good habits.

• Make small targets

Be realistic about your goals. Achieving a small target will help to keep you motivated. Failing to achieve a big target will only lead to demoralization and you quitting completely.

• Be patient!

Change takes time, don’t go scanning your body or weighing yourself every day. It takes time to start seeing results. If you are going to weigh yourself, only jump on the scales once a week. Personally I don’t really like the scales, I much prefer to judge progress on appearance. Only relying on the scales to judge your progress can be counterproductive.

• Don’t take things to the extremes

Don’t say you are going to hit the gym everyday all day and plan to eat nothing but lettuce and carrots. That is just not going to happen, not for very long anyway. After a few days or weeks you are going to become miserable and probably just quit until next January comes along.

• Don’t allow yourself to become too hungry

Often people skip meals, breakfast being the most common one. When we miss meals we can become very hungry and it’s when we become very hungry that we become less picky about the things that we eat.

• Keep track of your daily calories

I can be difficult to keep track of our daily food intake, sometimes we even lie to ourselves about how much we are actually eating. Tracking your calories will help us to keep honest with ourselves and it will be a clear indicator of where we are going wrong or going right.

• Red, Orange and Green

This is the rule of making sure your meals have at least one food, Fruit or Vegetables (Not Sweets) that is Red, Orange or Green. This is key to maintaining a healthy fat burning body. Fruit and vegetable colors.

• Drink plenty of water

Drinking water is not only great for maintaining a healthy body but it also fills up our stomach and makes us feel fuller so we are less likely to over eat.

• Think about the nutrients

Try to think a bit more about what you are eating, does what you eat actually provide your body with any nutrients? Giving our bodies the nutrients it needs can be very important in preventing over eating and snacking.

• Treat yourself

It’s okay to treat yourself to a food you love, even when trying to lose weight. You can use this idea to reward yourself for achieving a particular goal.

I personally dislike using the term weight loss because it’s not fully accurate nor are the techniques always healthy, what I mean by this is that there is more to getting fit than simply losing body weight.

I realise that peoples goals can be very different. Individual goals may range from simply losing a few pounds to reducing their body fat percentage considerably. Whatever your goal, it is important to focus on the healthy part of weight loss.

Weight loss is not bad but it’s healthy weight loss that we should keep our focus on. If we focus too much on our actual weight it can lead some people to focus on the scales, and this is not necessarily the best way to judge if we need to lose some body fat.

Our weight can change day by day by several pounds or kilograms depending on various factors. Such factors as how much we have eaten that day, how much exercise we got, how much we drank and the current weather and temperature to name a few. It is important to keep in mind that if our weight goes up or down it doesn’t necessarily mean that our body fat has actually increased or decreased.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you improve your eating habits and begin exercising on a regular basis you may increase the amount of muscle mass you have, which may add a few pounds to your body weight. (A slight increase of weight on the scales is not always a bad thing!) sometimes a little extra weight is healthy.

How to tell if we are overweight?

The best way is to simply take a look in the mirror, or give yourself a little belly fat pinch test. Keeping track of our weight can be helpful, however try not to rely on it too much, or get obsessed with the scales.

Some people weigh themselves constantly, and if they don’t see a good reduction, or even worse they even gain weight, then that can be massively demoralizing. Possibly leading them to completely give up their efforts or even causing depression.

It would be beneficial if people just forgot about their actual body weight completely. Focusing too much on our weight can lead to bad habits, including extreme unhealthy diets such as staving oneself, which is obviously not good.

Remember to always include the word healthy in weight loss, or replace it with fat loss which is much more accurate to our goals.

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