Wednesday, September 4, 2013

The Four Most Important Aspects Of Losing Weight And Keeping It Off

By Russ Howe


If you were to ask any online search engine how to lose weight you would likely be met by a world of over-complicated, conflicting information. Likewise, in the real world many trainers will tell you so many different opinions that fat loss can occasionally come across as a fine art or rocket science.

If you were to ask a thousand people in gyms across your country for their biggest problem in the gym, weight loss would almost certainly top that list.

Despite the fact that it is one of the most asked questions in the fitness industry, losing unwanted weight remains one of the most confusing subjects. That is largely because it has become a multi-million dollar industry, with many instant fixes and gimmicks out there trying to cash in on your desperation. If you want results you can obtain and sustain, however, the facts are very, very simple.

The four rules to fat loss are as follows:

1. Look to improve your protein intake.

2. Avoid cutting out nutrients like carbohydrates and fats.

3. Get in your barn and find those old dumbbells. Lifting weights is highly recommended.

4. Replace long aerobic exercise with short HIIT workouts.

From the three major nutrients we eat, protein has far less impact on our body's fat storage cells, making it the ideal food to eat if you are trying to shed fat. Despite this fact, it is often falsely labelled as something which is designed to build huge muscles and create a physique that most people, especially ladies, do not particularly want. Make no mistake about it, if you are trying to get leaner and more toned then you need to be eating regular protein either in food or supplement form. Around 1.5 grams for every kilogram of your goal body weight is adequate intake for the vast majority of people who workout.

This will do you no good, of course, if you then fall for the commonly made mistake of avoiding fat and carbohydrate based foods. This misconception was first made popular in the early 2000's by celebrity diets who believed that cutting these two vital nutrients would lead to quicker weight loss. It did, but at a very high price. Individuals often felt very ill and then piled on any pounds they had lost the moment they went back to eating a regular diet. An eating plan high in protein, moderate in carbohydrate and quite high in healthy fats is a perfect match here.

Now that your diet is finally on track, you will begin looking for ways to improve your existing exercise routine. Well, you can begin by heading into your barn and finding those old barbells and dumbbells you bought years ago.

As soon as people think about dieting, they couple that thought with cardiovascular exercise. For some reason, weight training is relegated to the status of afterthought, something which they later come to regret. Resistance training has been shown to burn considerably more body fat than steady state cardiovascular exercise, as well as helping you to take advantage of an increased protein intake and getting your muscles leaner for when you lose some body fat.

If you have never previously trained with weights at all then you should be able to enjoy fabulous results by hitting a three day program each week. Try to focus on full body workouts, beginning with the safety of the resistance machines in your local gym before moving on to free bar work when you feel confident enough to do so.

The other important aspect of any effective fat loss program is, of course, cardiovascular exercise. Just as many people wrongly believe that lifting weights won't aid fat loss, many people also wrongly believe that the way to build a better body is to spend two hours per day jogging on the treadmill. High intensity interval training, otherwise known as HIIT for short, allows you to complete your cardiovascular work in far less time and has been proven to burn more than six times the body fat of a much longer aerobic workout.

A combination of HIIT with a targeted resistance training routine is definitely a move in the right direction if you are learning how to lose weight that you can keep off forever once it is gone. It's easy to progress, unlike steady state cardiovascular routines, and it offers a much needed dosage of variety into your training sessions.




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