If you are in the world of dieting today you have probably been told to “watch/count/restrict/limit” your calories or have a pretty close eye on them. Today I’ll share how you can lose fat without counting calories and it’s very simple too. It all boils down to the 3 pillars of fat loss: Nutrition, Strength Training & Cardio. Each have their place and are of the same importance as their order mentioned.
Nutrition is important when it comes to fat loss. You don’t want to have to count calories or you will go nuts, especially if you are just a normal person and not some bodybuilder freak or fitness model. You just want to lose weight and keep a mindful eye on your diet and be that type of person who doesn’t discuss with friends how many calories are in whatever goes in your mouth.
Well, there are some basic guidelines that I try to follow with food and it has never made me fat in combination with exercise, I actually lose fat and gain muscle following these rules:
- Eat more frequently, but smaller portions, 4-6 times per day.
- Eat protein with each meal.
- Eat fruit and/or vegetables each meal.
- Eat healthy fats each meal. (Omega-3, fish oil, flaxseed oil, olive oil, etc)
- Keep out as much sugar and refined foods as possible (No soda, sugar juices, fried food, etc)
- Keep all your food as natural as possible and use fresh food that you cook yourself. (fruits, veggies, lean meat, milk, good fat, etc)
These are basically all the rules I try to stick to. When I do I see dramatic results in people who stick with them, and I also obide by them as best I can. Of course you will deviate at times and have a fast food meal, or a cake or a candy bar or chips or whatever else that is not on the list of accepted foods. But as long as you are making a concious choice, and not an uncontrolled (look over that mistake) kind of choice you will be safe.
You should not deprive yourself of foods you like. Eat cake, have chips, order pizza, go have a burrito… As long as it’s part of your plan, it’s safe. When you eat it and ignore the fact that you did and do nothing about it, such as train hard and keep strict 90% of the time it won’t hurt your efforts too much. Just don’t make it a daily habit!
Eat clean 90% of the time and indulge on weekends for example, or like me, I only eat “bad foods” if they are served to me at a friends house. I try to not go to friends houses too often, and even still keep the bad foods to a minimum.
2. Strength Training – Training your muscles to be strong and vibrant is the other key to successful fat loss. You will gain muscle, strength and lose fat when lifting weights. This is great! I tend to go as heavy as possible for 5-7 reps. I find this builds strength the fastest for me. Sometimes I’ll throw in a 12 rep set at the end of a workout because I feel like it, usually with a lower weight (preferably the big compound movements).
I focus mainly on “big lifts” that recruit the most muscle per time invested. I don’t want to isolate my muscles, but rather use my whole body to do the lift to activate the most metabolic demand in my body. These are lifts such as, Squats, split squat, lunges, squat and press, jump squat, pull-ups/chin-ups, push-ups, benchpress, deadlift, overhead press, military press etc. The only ab exercise I ever do now a days is the plank. It activates the whole upper body and sucks in your gut + builds enormous strength in the abdomen. It also helps make them “bigger” and deeper.
I stay away from machines for the most part. A bicep machine is the only machine to use, but I like to use the free weights here as well.
You will be burning a lot of calories from the weight lifting, which helps with fat loss. The heavier you go the more your muscles need to use energy to re-build the muscle after breaking it down at the gym (don’t worry, it’s a good kind of breaking down, lol)
3. Cardio – A very important part of losing body fat is cardio. This is exercise that you do for extended periods of time, usually jogging, biking, cycling, swimming. Swimming being one of the most calorie expensive, followed by cycling.
The best way to do cardio for direct fat loss is: HIIT. The problem with HIIT is that it is very difficult and straneous on the body. It takes a lot of energy and a strong mind to do HIIT the right way. I can’t go into detail about it here, but be sure to notice that cardio is important. At least 3 x 45 minutes per week if you are doing low intensity and 2-3 times per week at 16 minutes each on HIIT. HIIT will burn more fat overall during that same week due to increased EPOC (afterburn).
There’s a lot of science behind it and I don’t want to bore you with it in this article, you just wanted to know what works for fat loss without counting calories. Now you know. A solid nutritional plan that’s as clean as possible of sugar and crappy food, combined with strength training and HIIT or cardio.
A solid program that adresses each one of these is: Fat Loss Factor . Read this review on Fat Loss Factor Review and get an educated opinion of this program is right for you!