5 Ways to Be a Better Fat Burner

These are 5 factors that influence fat loss and you can practice at home without any special equipment. A few words of advice, if you are trying to change a habit, pick one thing and start with that. The one thing that you feel is most important to you and that you can easily make small changes.

These two words are critical. Important and easy.

Pick one thing that feels important to you. It does not need to be important to your friends, spouse, doctor or anyone else, just you and make it easy. Really, ridiculously easy. The easier something is to do the less motivation you need to do it.

5 Ways to Burn More Fat

These are some of the most important factors that influence your ability to lose body fat, not just weight, while maintaining muscle mass.

Sleep

Getting 7-9 hours of sleep results in fat loss. Even with weight loss, less sleep means less fat loss. Researchers studying fat loss at the Chicago Medical Center found that even with weight loss, people who had adequate sleep lost more fat, about 50% of their total weight loss came from fat. When the researchers deprived people of sleep the weight loss was only 25% from fat loss. Sleep is critical for health, fat loss and muscle building. 

Less sleep is a negative spiral when it comes to fat loss. Lack of sleep increases the hormones responsible for hunger and reduces the hormones responsible for feelings of fullness. Regularly skimping on sleep increases levels of cortisol our stress hormone, causing our bodies to store more abdominal fat. People who sleep less are also less likely to feel motivated to exercise, resulting in poor sleep and continuing the lack of sleep/weight gain cycle.

Exercise

Fat burning, using fat as a fuel source, occurs at lower intensity exercise because fat is not a “quick” fuel. It takes time to access for energy. Stored carbohydrates (glycogen) are an immediate fuel source. This means for most longer duration, less intense sessions you will be burning more fat. Go for a long hike or bike ride, you are using more fat as a fuel source. However, EPOC is also an important consideration especially if you are not being active for more than 90 minutes at a time.

What is EPOC?

Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption is like repaying a debt. When we exercise at a high intensity we need to repay the energy cost of our efforts. This means that shorter, but higher intensity efforts can burn fat for 24 hours post-exercise. High-intensity exercise sessions can be either aerobic, resistance training or a combination. 

Mitochondria for more energy

Breaking down fuel sources into energy require mitochondria. These cells are the critical link in our ability to generate energy. Mitochondria are found in every cell except red blood cells. Endurance exercise and strength training can increase the number and the functionality of your mitochondria. You can increase energy production in skeletal muscles up to 100 times. Training increases the number of mitochondria you have in a muscle cell and increases the ability to use fat as a fuel source.

Inactivity

Inactivity is separate from exercise because even with regular activity you can’t be sedentary all day and burn fat. This doesn’t mean you can’t sit down, but break up your inactivity with exercise snacks. A recommended exercise snack is 2 every 30, stand or move for 2 minutes every 30 minutes. This can be doing a few chair squats, getting a glass of water, or any other type of movement, just don’t be still for long periods of time. For every hour of sedentary behaviour, the risk of becoming overweight increases by 13% and having more abdominal fat increases by 26%.

Nutrition

The best way to lose body fat is to be an inefficient fuel storage system. Our bodies are very adept at storing dietary fat as body fat, but not as efficient at taking whole unprocessed foods and turning them into calories. This process requires more energy. The more unprocessed a food is the more energy it costs to digest.

If your goal is to lose weight any diet will do.

There are mountains of studies that show low fat, unprocessed carbohydrates are effective for reducing body fat long term. Including a study published in Cell Metabolism that showed that low-fat diets cause an 80% reduction in body fat when compared to a low carb diet. This study also showed no difference in weight loss between diets, only a difference in fat loss.

What is an efficient food?

If you are wondering if a food is an efficient (easily stored) source of calories, ie one that requires almost no energy on your part to process and store, does it require a label? Whole foods do not have labels because they are one ingredient. This is fairly accurate, but there some exceptions. For example, white rice, It may have one ingredient, but it has been processed. The fibre has been removed. If you want long term fat loss fibre is your new best friend. It is a very inefficient source of energy storage. 

What about meal timing and fasting?

What about meal timing strategies like intermittent fasting? Eating earlier in the day appears to help people lose weight by lowering their appetite rather than burning more calories. A small study from The Obesity Society is the first to show how meal timing affects 24-hour energy metabolism when food intake and meal frequency are matched. The key to this strategy is to front-load calories at breakfast and lunch and eat a light dinner.

Other studies on meal timing when exercising shows that muscles need energy in real-time, so fasting might be more effective during your off-season or on rest days. Intermittent fasting and exercise have been linked to an inability to build muscle and impaired performance. If you are getting up and going for an easy run before breakfast that is fine, but for strength training or exercise later in the day make sure you have at least a snack. Preferably one that has combines carbohydrates and protein. Like a smoothie.

Stress

Chronic stress, like the kind we are all facing now, can decrease sleep quality and quantity, reduce your motivation for exercise, and increase unhealthy food consumption. It is a perfect storm for gaining weight, not losing fat. Stress increases cortisol, your stress hormone, and cortisol slows your metabolism. One study published in Nutrients showed that women who had more stressors burned 104 fewer calories per day than unstressed women. That is equivalent to 11-pound weight gain in a year.

If you are trying to lose body fat start with one of these 5 strategies and gradually add more. Don’t try to do it all at once, trust me that never turns out well (see stress in the above paragraph). if you need help or have questions join me next Monday for our workshop or send me an email.

Change your mind,change your health,

Shayla