I’ve given fat loss diet plans and training regimes to many clients and a large percentage will naturally try to cut corners. Here’s where they and maybe you could be wasting a lot of time!
The more I study about fat loss, the more I realise how the truth of losing fat is quite solid and unavoidable. It’s like that big black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s standing there, blocking the sun and can’t be hidden, side-stepped or obscured with a tea towel.
It’s time to wake up guys. You either want that fat-loss goal or you don’t and your body will reflect whether the fight is in you or isn’t, and believe me – it’s a fight!
So here’s a few truths about fat loss that are unavoidable, despite what the magazines and newspapers and abdominizer adverts (a.k.a. lying, money-grabbing scum bags!) have been telling you.
Fat loss truth 1: you’re focused on ‘getting the weight down’ rather than burning fat.
I talk about this all the time and it’s possibly the biggest hurdle for female clients who, in the uneducated fat-loss world we live in, are brainwashed into follow the scales.
Losing weight is for weight-categorised professional fighters only.
The fact is, your weight is not the problem, it’s your ratio of muscle tissue to fat tissue. Increased muscle tissue is linked with decreased body fat. Your body has to burn fuel to get it and burn fuel to keep it. Muscle is your fat loss furnace!
Fat loss truth 2: you want to lose fat but don’t care about building muscle. Big mistake.
Even most male clients I have trained tell me “well, I don’t want to get too big.” In other words they don’t want to make too much effort.
Let me say this now for the entire world to hear: “You are NOT going to get too big. End of story.” In fact you’re not even going to get big, you’ll just go from having no shape to some shape. To go from ‘some shape’ to big requires either drugs, naturally athletic genetics or insane amounts of effort and calorie intake.
Let’s get back on track though, there is nothing that burns more calories while at rest (which usually means from body fat which burns at lower intensities) than heavy weight sessions.There’s the calories involved in the exercise itself, a post-workout calorie burn which is higher than any cardio exercise and then the repair, increase and maintenance of muscle tissue.
Come to think of it, let’s feed truth 2 into truth 3 as we talk about just what kind of weight training we need to be doing…
Fat loss truth 3: you’re lifting weights in the style of an infant or physiotherapy patient.
It’s funny how often this one creeps up, despite multiple explanations to the client.
“You do your legs on ONE day per week. You do them HARD. You let them recover for the rest of the week. If you were a bodybuilder you might do them more frequently but this is fine for you. Legs are the most important body part for fat loss, they need hitting hard.”
This is something I’ll say to all my clients. Every client gets the leg speech and it looks something like the above rant. I should record my speech and play it while I do their body fat calculations to save time.
Next week comes “So, what exercises have you done since you last saw me?” I will ask, hoping and praying my lessons have sunk in.
“Well, I did those leg ones you showed me every day for 10 minutes.” Is a mild exaggeration of what usually comes back. Mild mind you.
I can’t emphasise this enough. You have to lift progressively heavier weights and work all your body (not on the same day though) – especially legs and back as they’re the biggest muscle groups. This is your fast track to fat loss – not Zumba class!
Your muscles adapt to stress very quickly. They need shocking. You need to hear them say “What the hell is going on? I can’t cope with this… help, help!”
Which brings me to point 4.
Fat loss truth 4: you’re staying inside your workout comfort zone and focused on exercise that’s fun. If it ain’t entertaining you, you ain’t doing it.
This one is a tricky one. So you do your stuff, and do it regularly enough and it feels tiring. Fair enough. We can all be forgiven for doing that and thinking it’s enough to burn fat and build muscle. That works for a couple of weeks. Then our bodies get bored.
This is a similar issue to the above issue of how to lift weights but is more focused on the mindset of comfy workouts. Comfy workouts equal comfy tummy fat that can be used as a pillow.
Our bodies hate burning fat and the trick is to burn fat around the clock and not just at workout time (the former being muscle building, the latter being cardio). The only way we can do that is to stress our body out so much that it spends much of its time recovering i.e. using fuel from fat to recover.
Get in the zone, remember your goals and go punish those abs! Eye of the tiger!
As a rule, it is a good sign if you hurt (in a good way) the next day/next few days.
Fat loss truth 5: you’re attitude to food is broken due to society’s lies and the corrupt food industry.
Food is not just a pleasure. It’s just a fact – the better something tastes, the fatter it will make you. Exceptions are few. If you want to get rid of the fat you spent years putting on, you can’t continue to see food as a ‘pleasure only’ deal.
The leaner you get, the more you will be able to have the naughty foods but you must earn them. Besides, I have a theory that when we eat lots of crap foods, we’re not even enjoying them consciously. We might sit down and watch TV while eating our favourite snack but are we appreciating the snack or just mindlessly eating it?
Saving your naughty foods for once in a blue moon massively heightens your appreciation of it. Plus, from my experience with Personal Training clients, long periods of abstinence from certain bad foods often causes the client to grow an indifference to such foods.
So eat the rice, drink the protein shake, throw away the cheap oil and get on with it. Let the results be tasty instead!
Fat loss truth 6: you strive for a low-fat diet. Again, society is to blame. Eat healthy fats for fat loss!
Another tricky one. Society tells us that fats are bad. How? By writing “Low in fat!” on every damn food package in the supermarket.
Fat, in theory, is our friend. But we must eat the right kind. This is where it gets tricky. Without writing a long piece about fats here I’ll just be brief and say that you need somewhere in the region of 10 tablespoons (around 100g) of healthy, cold pressed oil every day while on a fat loss diet. Some good oils/fats:
- Hemp seed oil
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Flax oil
- Coconut
- Grass-fed cow’s butter
- Free range eggs
Another reason you need this oil is because a fat loss diet is a low carb diet. If you’re not eating much carbs, or fats then all you’re eating is protein. If you need, say, 2200 Kcal a day, without fats (which are high in calories) then I can promise you’re only getting half of your daily calorie needs at best!
A diet low in calories, is a diet that slows metabolism and is a fat storage diet.
Fat loss truth 7: you think you can just get the fat off by avoiding carbs or hardly eating any. Damn those Atkins dieters!
So, here’s why the Atkins approach is bad:
- If you don’t give your body carbs it will just convert other foods to carbs instead. Your body’s way of saying “Balls to you!”
- We need carbohydrate to release insulin moderately (i.e. slowly, using good carbs, not quickly using sugar). Without insulin we can’t build muscle.
- When you start eating carbs again, your body will store those bad boys as fat for the next time you decide to starve it!
- Similarly to point 2, if you don’t eat any carbs, there’s every chance your body will just eat its own muscle for fuel when you work out. Why not, it doesn’t have any high intensity fuel (stored carbohydrate) to use!
Fat loss truth 8: you don’t eat constantly/enough because it seems alien and difficult.
Your average female will need (very approximately) 2000 Kcal a day for a lifestyle that includes a fat loss exercise regime. Men can need from 2500 to 3500 if they’re big chaps. More if they’re bodybuilders.
You ain’t getting that from eating 3 meals a day. No sir.
Breakfast is your chance to eat big. If you can’t eat big then eat medium and drink big (I’m talking about shakes here).
After breakfast you wait 3 hours then eat again. And then rinse and repeat.
After a few weeks of doing this you’ll develop a healthy appetite and actually want the food after 3 hours.
To miss a meal is to disrespect the fat-loss god and he will smite you with a slower metabolism. Don’t do it. Ever. It must be your new lifestyle – eat every 3 hours without fail while on the regime.
And in conclusion…
Fat loss is hard, guys. Very hard. But then it wouldn’t be fat loss.
The only way our fat-storing bodies can use fat as a fuel is by shocking the hell out of it for a long time. It’ll take around 3-4 months to get from fairly lean to shredded, about 4-5 months to get from chubby to somewhat lean and if you’re obese you need to be in this for the long term.
It’s better to be realistic though. Quick fixes don’t just hinder progress they reverse it. Especially where body fat is concerned.
So, swallow the truth, understand it and take it with you. Don’t try to run from it or deny it because fat loss truth is stubborn and won’t change for you or anyone!
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