Discover The Weight Loss Secret
March 25, 2016 12:50 am
This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on how to lose weight fast:
Part 1 – [You Are Here] Discover The Weight Loss secret
Part 2 – What Everybody Ought to Know About How to Lose Weight Fast
Part 3 – Coming Soon
We are in the middle of an obesity epidemic.
According to the Canadian Obesity Network 1 in 4 adult Canadians and 1 in 10 children have clinical obesity. This means 6 million Canadians living with obesity may require immediate support in managing and controlling their weight.
One Canadian study estimates that the proportion of all deaths among adults 20-64 years of age that could be attributed to being overweight grew from 5.1% in 1985 to 9.3% in 2000.
Despite fat loss being the number one goal of most, exercise programs showing folks how to lose weight fast is actually a new concept and to be honest just wasn’t needed in the past.
People were leaner.
People moved more.
The purpose of an exercise program 30 years ago was to enhance your already active lifestyle.
Now, in an almost completely automated, time-crunched society, we have had to create exercise programs specifically to induce fat loss.
Leg Warmers Anyone?
We originally designed fat loss programs by copying what endurance athletes were doing and hoping that somehow the training program of a marathon runner would work for fat loss.
But fat loss was never the goal of an endurance athlete, it was a side effect.
We then turned to bodybuilding for ideas on how to lose weight fast.
And we failed again.
We took what professional bodybuilders were doing and tried to make it work for the general population.
Bodybuilders just happen to be some of the most dedicated and driven people on the planet.
For instance, I had a colleague who competed as a professional bodybuilder. He slept 8-10 hours a day consistently, never had less than 6 full meals a day and didn’t miss his daily workout for over 10 years despite major life events like death in the family.
My point is: it’s probably the dedication and discipline that makes a bodybuilder’s approach effective.
But without dedication – how can we translate those programs to the average person?
At least, fat loss was the goal for bodybuilders.
The low body fat percentage a contest bodybuilder has is largely a result of their increased muscle mass. However, it would be naive for us to ignore the impact steroid use has had on bodybuilders’ physiques.
We respect the hard work but there is NOTHING we can learn from these competitors due to there steroid abuse.
There is very little information a drug-free stay-at-home-mom training 3 to 4 times a week can take from the program of a drug-using professional bodybuilder.
Despite advances in the methods of training in the last 5 – 10 years, the fitness industry has yet to truly provide a complete fat loss solution.
We have regurgitated programs for other goals, recommended the wrong diets and ineffective plans, all the while never questioning where this information came from.
Hopefully, this article helps begin to cut through the junk and poor recommendations that media and (to be honest) the fitness industry have continued to propagate for the last twenty years.
But before we start…
…I need to make a confession:
There is NO SECRET to fat loss.
There is none (sorry).
No quick fixes.
Fat loss is a simple process that unfortunately requires hard work and a long-term approach.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I want to share some good news with you.
Fat loss is a very simple concept.
Simple, but not easy.
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “I have a slow metabolism” or “I have a fast metabolism” usually in reference to how hard it is for one to lose weight or about how much food they can consume.
But what is actually meant by the term metabolism?
Your metabolism is a reflection of the rate at which you burn calories daily.
It is affected and controlled by:
- Your thyroid
- How much muscle you have
So how can we manipulate our metabolisms to turn our bodies into fat burning machines?
To understand how to get the fat loss process started you need to understand what factors affect your metabolism.
Factor #1 – Resting Metabolic Rate
Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) represents about 60-70% of your total energy expenditure. It represents how much calories your body needs to get you through a typical day.
The rate differs significantly from person to person.
Factor #2 – The Thermic Effect of Food.
To break down the foods we consume requires a certain amount of energy.
Different types of food are harder to break down than others, for example protein is much harder to break down than fat so it would require a lot more energy to consume.
The calories burned from breaking down food can count for up to 10-20% of your total calories burned for the day.
Factor #3 – Exercise
Exercise makes up the rest of the 20-30% that is left behind.
This is the easiest part to understand and adjust and has become the sole focus of most fat loss programs.
When exercise routines are performed correctly, we can create a caloric deficit that result in fat being burned.
So Metabolism is the sum of Resting Metabolic Rate, the Thermic Effect of Food and the energy cost of physical activity.
So I know what you’re thinking…
You want to find out how many calories you burn daily and only consume that many calories – or even less.
Surely this would create a massive deficit so you start losing fat extremely rapidly!
Right?
WRONG!
While it’s true that the idea of any fat loss plan is to burn more calories than you are taking in…
…it’s also important to note that when we consume too few calories, the body basically just shuts down as it doesn’t have enough energy to function efficiently.
Extreme low-calorie diets burn away muscle.
As lean muscle is a major factor in resting metabolic rate – losing muscle will actually cause your metabolism to lower quickly.
FACT: We have found at Thrive Fit the majority of our members who come in to work with us (especially women) have a lifetime history of dieting and have lost muscle, as described above, over and over and over again by doing low calorie diets.
Eventually, their body gets to a point where their muscle and therefore their metabolism is so low that the low calorie diets that have worked in the past no longer work and that’s when they decide to hire a professional.
Keep in mind that usually by the time they turn to us they have a history of low calorie diet that we have to “undo”
So increasing activity levels, increasing muscle and as a result, increasing your Resting Metabolic Rate is a more effective approach than just cutting calories from your diet.
I’m not claiming that dieting doesn’t work.
Obviously it works to an extent – but speeding up your metabolism is the more effective long term approach.
So to summarize how to lose weight faster:
1. Burn as many calories as possible by raising your Resting Metabolic Rate (lean muscle is metabolically active so building muscle is extremely important).
2. Burn more calories through the Thermic Effect of Food, by adjusting meal frequency and manipulating macro nutrients (the thermic effect of protein is twice as high as the thermic effect of fat or carbohydrates).
3. Burn calories through a well-designed resistance-training program (start lifting those weights!).
Seems simple right?
This is a heavy subject so if you’re feeling confused leave a question below.
If you’re ready to get started we have another article on how to lose weight fast here.
Additionally, be on the look out for part 2 of this 3-part series. We’ll begin discussing EPOC and how creating metabolic disturbance can allow you to turn your body into a fat burning machine.
