Welcome to Fat Loss Made Easy, answering all of your fitness related questions. Today we will cover the top five fat loss cheat codes that will lead to better and faster results during your fat loss journey. JD here, lets get right to it.
1) Buy a Smart Watch
What does not get measured does not get improved.
Ever wonder how many calories you actually burn throughout your entire day? How many miles you walk, steps you’ve taken? Ever wanted to know just how many hours you slept the night before, how well rested your heart is today, or even the amount of oxygen in your blood as of now?
Well then look no further than a smart watch. These futuristic gadgets can cover all of those questions above and so much more. Testing and gathering these metrics used to be a multi thousand dollar and multi step procedure, only afforded to the very top level of performance athletes. Now a days that same sci fi technology can be had for under $100. Nothing illuminates your fitness journey better than cold hard metrics. Either you are hitting your daily steps/calories goals or you’re not. Either you’re improving your resting heart rate or not. Either you’re getting better sleep or not.
Once you have an understanding of how many calories you burn throughout a full day, you use this information to control your eating habits. If you know you are burning 2500 calories a day on average, then you simply need to eat less than 2,5000 calories of food to begin losing weight. You need to be in a 3,500 calorie deficit to burn 1 pound of body fat, so if you divide that by 7 days in a week, a healthy number to shoot for is 500 calories a day less than what you normally burn. In this case, that would be aiming to stay under 2,000 calories a day of food intake a day. If this person wanted to eat more food and still lose weight, then they will have to move more and increase their daily average calorie burning.
Track your activity and take control of your calories with a smart watch, and get ready to be amazed at the results.
2) Walk an Hour Every day
There is nothing better for your health than an hour of low intensity cardio done every single day. Nearly every aspect of measurable health improves drastically when one partakes a daily walking regime. From improved strength, flexibility, endurance, Resting heart rate, lower body weight, lower body fat percentage, improved cognitive functioning and memory, greater calorie control; the list of benefits are endless. I mean it, endless. You do not need to sprint for an hour to get in shape. You do not need boxing classes, cycling classes, or group dance classes. You don’t even need to play a sport. Not even join a gym! Just walk one hour a day, every day, no matter what. The average human will burn more or less 400 calories during that hour of walking. Although this may not sound like much, to the average American burning no more than 2000 calories a day, this is an increase of 20%!
Start slow and easy! There is no rush, ever. Time is passing by right now as we speak, nothing we can do will ever change that. Tomorrow you will still be questioning whether you should begin or not, when all you have to do is move for one hour a day, you have total freedom to choose the activity, the pace, and the intensity! Just make sure you choose something you can do EVERYDAY. Meaning low intensity, easy to do, and not boring. Walking is fantastic because it allows you to either go with a friend and or family member (almost all of us can walk at about the same speed) or allows you to listen to music or podcasts as you go. As the options to audio entertainment are endless, and we all have a friend or two needing to shed some extra pounds, these can turn into powerful motivators for you to create and keep your new habit going. It does not matter if you need to lose one hundred pounds or just one, there will be unbelievable benefits for both. Find a great playlist, audio book, or just grab your spouse for some juicy gossip about work. You’ll be amazed at how your relationships will flourish when you mix the endorphins of exercise and getting fitter, with sharing that effort with a loved one, and opening dialogues you never imagined possible!
Oh! The right pair of shoes goes a LONG way in preventing sourness in your legs and feet the next day. Some fantastic options for most steady, low intensity bouts of cardiovascular training such as walking, jogging, or hiking are the Adidas Ultra Boost line, and the Nike Pegasus line. You cannot go wrong with either one, check them out, you will be glad you made the investment.
3) Protein Shake After Every Meal
So now we own a smart watch to track our fitness metrics, and have started walking outside one hour every day, whats next? Now we have to control the kind of weight we lose by making sure one macro nutrient in particular is always well represented in our diet.
Remember, all fat loss is weight loss, but not all weight loss is fat loss. Even though you are in a calorie deficit, the type of body tissue you end up losing is dependent on the macro nutrient ratios contained in your food. The macro nutrient we are focusing on is the one and only, Protein! Also known as amino acids, this macro nutrient food category is the most vital in building and maintaining muscle. Simply put, your body uses the protein you absorb from your food to repair and build up your muscles and body tissue. Where the carbohydrates and fats from your food is used as energy, your body will only turn protein into energy when the first two are absent from your diet. Therefore, as long as you eat carbs and fats as well, your body will use all the protein you consume for tissue building. The more protein you consume, the more amino acids will be available for muscles, while leaving less calories left over to be stored as surplus body fat. For best results, shoot in between 0.8 grams – 1.0 grams per DESIRED BODY weight
Now, not everyone is either good at math, or care enough to track their protein intake throughout a day. But, this is where you can make getting your protein intake really easy for yourself. Regardless of what you eat during your meal, take a protein shake after it as the dessert. This will insure that at the worst, your still getting a sizeable amount of the macro nutrient to discourage the spiking of your blood sugar level, thus keeping you from storing all those calories as fat.
The key is to find a pre made protein shake with as few calories as possible, but with as many grams of protein per serving as possible. There are hundreds of brands of these pre made shakes available every where from Walmart to Gas stations, even at bus stations and stadiums. Some well known examples are Monster Milk, Premier Protein, and Core Power. A great shake will have about 30 grams of protein for every 150 calories.
See this as a diet cheat code to building more muscle and losing more fat while still eating regular food. No matter what you end up eating on your plate, finish the meal off with a one of these shakes.
It will make hitting your protein consumption goals very manageable.
4) No Liquid Calories
Honestly, outside of black coffee and tea, water should be your only go to. No other beverage actually hydrates you quite as well as normal water does, sorry electrolytes. You are made up of 70% of water, not Gatorade. Muscles are up to 85% water, so it helps quite a bit to have its main ingredient in abundance. Not only will water hydrate you better than any other beverage, it will spare you all those empty calories found in juices and sugary coffees. Every calorie counts when you are trying to lose fat, so don’t find yourself drinking all of your hard work away.
Like with walking, the list of health benefits of drinking water are endless, from younger appearance, more energy, better blood sugar regulation, improved heart health, improved vision, decrease in migranes, etc, etc. If you are a regular juice or soda drinker, this single step alone may cause the grand majority of your initial fat loss. Like with everything else in life, once you get used to reaching for a glass of water instead of a fruit smoothie after a good workout, you will find yourself with the same attitude when it comes time to skipping that glass of juice with your lunch as well. Save your “extra” calories for some yummy food, not some useless pot of sugared water.
That leads us to the most abused drug of them all, alcohol. Look, as we’ve mentioned plenty of times in other podcasts, we definitely believe one can get in great shape while still drinking alcohol regularly, the question is, why? Those two things simply do not mix. Alcohol has no health benefits what so ever. Those studies done about glasses of wine or one beer a day have all been debunked. No amount of alcohol is good for your system, ever. It is literally a poison, and your body goes through a massive amount of stress to get rid of it as soon as possible. Not to mention those pesky, useless calories you ingest with every sip, and alcohol has plenty of calories. You will not burn an ounce of fat until your body has handled every spare gram of ethanol in its system. Regular drinking leads to worsening performances at the gym, at the track, at work, and even in your love life. Trying to get in shape while drinking every day is the same thing as trying to race a car in formula one with half a tank of gas. Sure, you can keep at it for a while, but sooner than later, your system will run out of steam and you will crash. Leave it for the best days of the year. The celebrations of loved ones accomplishments, birthdays, vacations. Not every day with your pasta.
Aim for at least 6 glasses of water for best results.
5) Get Stronger in the Gym – Progressive Overload
Progressive over load is the secret to achieving in life. It teaches you that big achievements are made from small, daily gains, in the same area. Look to lift a little bit more weight, or do a couple more reps of that weight every time you go do an exercise. Try to run that mile 5 seconds faster than the last. Do five more crunches. Go that extra week without drinking. You get the drift. Don’t only perform your actions and exercises, actively look to get better at them. Small gains eventually lead to huge achievements. Make it a habit.
There is no such thing as toning! You can not tone anything on your body. You can lose fat or build muscle, but you can not sculpt off the fat around your arm muscles by doing 1000s of light bicep curls, that is hilariously idiotic. Muscle growth comes from strength growth. You must lift more weights over time for your muscles to continuously grow. It is why a big muscular dude is so impressive to look at in the first place! It takes enormous dedication to getting that strong to get that big. Arnold could squat over 500 lbs! Ronnie Coleman could dead lift over 800 lbs! Thorjohnson the Mountain can bench press over 700 lbs! That is why they are so big and muscular. Sure, you can scream steroids from the top of your lungs, but trust me, without the dedication to improving their strength, they would have never reached their muscular proportions. This goes for you too ladies! You will not grow the booty of your dreams by doing hundreds of body weight exercises. Your hypertrophy will stall quickly as your muscles quickly adapt to the easy demand that is your body weight. The more weight you squat, the larger your quad muscles will get, the more you hip thrust, the larger your glutes will get, etc.
The easiest way to do accomplish this is to keep track of the weights you use on each exercise, aiming to improve in every workout gradually. This can be done by doing one more rep in each set, by adding more weight to the total resistance, by doing additional sets, resting less in between sets, etc, compared to the last time you did the exact same routine. So, for instance, let us look at the bench press. If you can bench 135 pounds for three sets of 10 with great form today, the next time you go bench, you should be aiming to lift 140 lbs for the same three sets of 10 reps. If successful, add another 5 pounds the next time you bench, if not, try 140 again until you fully complete all three sets. Repeat. Forever. That’s all there is too it folks, slow and gradual strength gains will lead you to slow and gradual muscle gains.
And there we have it! The top five fat loss cheat codes; buy a smart watch device, walk an hour a day, take a protein shake after every meal, drink only beverages with no calories in them, aka water, and work to get as strong as you can in the gym through progressive overload. This has been Fat Loss Made Easy answering your fitness questions, thank you for reading.