By Derek Bye, B.S. Exercise Science & ACSM-CPT
According to a report from the United Health Foundation, it is estimated that about 31.3% of Americans are obese while more than double are overweight! This number has been climbing, and is projected to continue to climb into the future.
Now we could get into all the reasons why Americans are becoming so overweight (increased sedentary behavior, more processed food options, high availability of low-cost foods to name a few) but the purpose of this post is to get you to understand what we can do to cut off the fat for good and start living a healthier lifestyle. The solution is simpler than you might think.
While the rate of overweight/obese Americans continues to increase, so hasn’t the amount of people that have decided to sign up for a gym membership. This tells me that there’s a huge issue in the fitness industry where people are attempting to get back into shape, but they simply don’t understand exactly how to get there.
My goal is for anyone reading this article (whether you have a background in health or you work full time as an engineer) to understand exactly what they’re doing next time they go into the gym. I know everyone has heard that they need to “exercise and diet” to get the results they’re looking for, but I’m going to share with you the biggest mistakes that people make over and over again that’s costing you more money and wasting your time.
Fat Loss: The 3 Pillars
1. Exercise
2. Diet
3. Sleep
Exercise: When most people think about weight loss, they think about ruthless hour long sessions of doing cardio until they’re drenched in sweat. The truth is, cardio actually ISN’T the best way to burn fat. The BEST method of burning fat is to increase our metabolism so that we burn more energy even when we’re sitting on our couch watching TV. Get ready because I’m about to let you in on the secret on how to increase your metabolism and the simplicity is going to blow you away. All you need to do is buy my nitro fat-burning metabolizer 3000 pill (just kidding). What you REALLY need to do is replace your FAT MASS with LEAN BODY MASS.
This is where things get interesting. 1 lb of muscle burns about 50 calories per day, while fat burns 0 calories per day. This means that in order to increase your resting metabolic rate (the amount of calories you burn at rest) you need to add more lean muscle tissue onto your body. If you add 10lbs of muscle tissue, that’s an extra 500 calories (10lbs muscle tissue x 50cal) being burned every day while you’re not even doing anything. This also equates up to 3500 extra calories burned per week! On top of the those calories being burned each day, you’ll also be burning even more calories when you’re in the gym weight training. This right here is one of the keys to finding long-term fat loss success. Simple, right?
Diet: Diet is one of those topics that’s constantly being made out to be overly complicated. Even top scientists within the fitness industry are constantly debating about what methods are the most effective for our health. With the thousands upon thousands of studies that have been done, there still isn’t a clear answer.
While people are constantly hopping on new trendy diets (keto, paleo, intermittent fasting) it can be extremely overwhelming to choose what is best for you. Right now I want to help you make that decision as simple as possible. The best decision for you is something that you can do LONG TERM and that you can actually enjoy. In the fitness industry, many people consider this to be called “flexible dieting”.
Flexible dieting basically means that you can still eat the food you love but there’s a few rules that you need to follow to get where you need to be.
1. You need to be consuming enough protein; protein is the building block for our muscle tissue and without we can’t build new muscle and we can’t increase our metabolism. Look to replace some of your starch foods with foods that are higher in protein, and make a conscious effort to consume more protein on a daily basis.
2. We need to reduce the total amount of calories we’re eating; this seems obvious but here are a couple of “life hacks” to reduce your calorie count. One thing you can do is cut out any juice or soda from your diet. These drinks are packed with sugar/calories and they don’t fill you up. It’s no wonder why people are getting fat after eating a cheeseburger from McDonald’s with a large Coke. Next time you go to McDonalds, get the cheeseburger but choose the Diet Coke or (even better!) a nice refreshing cup of cold water to wash it down. Another thing we can do to keep our calories lower is to eat foods that are more filling so we don’t continue to get hungry and snack throughout the day. Foods that aren’t going to fill you up are processed foods that are high in sugar/refined carbs. To make this simple, if you can picture it being in a vending machine, it’s probably loaded with unhealthy carbs. It’s okay to have some of this food, but let’s try not to make a meal out of them.
Sleep: People are always surprised when they find out that sleep is actually one of the most important factors in losing body fat. There’s two main reasons that sleep is essential in helping change our body composition. One reason is that growth hormone reaches its peak while we’re sleeping. Growth hormone is responsible for slowing the aging process and allowing us to build new muscle tissue (which we need in order to increase our metabolism). The second component of sleep is that it reduces our stress levels. When we don’t get enough sleep, we increase our levels of cortisol which is a hormone released in response to stress. Cortisol actually breaks down muscle tissue and puts our body into fat storage mode.
In summary, here’s what you can do immediately to start shredding body fat.
1. Lift weights
2. Eat more protein
3. Reduce total calorie intake (reduce consumption of snacks/sodas, eat real food that’s actually filling)
4. Get more sleep (7-8 hours)
There it is, these are the secrets to fat loss that nobody tells you about because it can’t be packed and sold off of a shelf. If you made it this far, congrats! You’ve just made a giant leap in reaching your fitness goals!
All I ask is that you share this post with somebody that may find it helpful!
Any questions feel free to email me at dbye1023@gmail.com
D-BYE Lifts 