Friday, January 18, 2008

Fat Loss Made A Little More Simple

Hey guys, I'm getting quite a few emails in the last few days with questions about losing fat. Many of you have read my articles about burning fat, but still have questions clarifying things. One question I'm getting is if I can design a sort of fat burning workout without just the normal treadmill for 30 minutes type thing. Let me see if I can break this down a little better and then I'll post a good fat burning workout.

Alright, in order to break down and burn the fat in your body, you have to do two things. Cardio and diet. Cardio is what actually burns the fat you have now. Cleaning up your diet is to help prevent from gaining anymore fat. Changing up your diet can also be beneficial in losing fat as well. In my previous posts, I said you need to be eating about six small meals a day. The reason you do this is to speed up your metabolism. When your metabolism is fast, you will burn off the food you eat faster. Metabolism begins to slow down with age, so spreading your meals out during the day can help counteract this and speed it back up. That's really all there is to it.

Now, in my other posts I say you don't want to eat carbohydrates past about 7 o'clock. When you sleep, any carbs that were not used up and burned off during the day turn into sugar while you sleep. That sugar is then turned into fat and stored in your body. The same thing can happen with excess calories. If you eat a lot before you go to bed, many of those excess calories may not be burned off while you sleep and are turned into fat. I like to use the college beer belly to explain this. You know many kids go off to college and gain the "freshman 15" and develop a beer belly. This is because of all the excess carbs and calories they get at night from drinking. If all this drinking started say at 10 in the morning and was done by mid afternoon, and then they went on with there day, they would not develop the beer belly. I'm not saying skip class and start drinking, but the excess calories would be burned off during the day with normal activity. Hopefully this helped simplify the process a little bit. If not, email me and I'll try to help you out even more. The following is a great fat burning program that you can start doing. It will be a little bit more interesting than just jumping on the treadmill. Good luck and enjoy.

Jumping Jacks –1 minute
Bodyweight squat (one-leg squat for advanced) – 15-20 reps
Push-ups (slower reps for advanced) – as many reps as possible
Kick butts (jog in place and kick your rear with both heels) – 1 minute
Hamstring floor bridge (use swiss ball or one leg for advanced) - 15-20 reps
Superman (lying on stomach w/ arms out to side, lift legs and chest off floor) – 15-20 reps
High knees (jog in place lifting knees as high as possible) – 1 minute
Stationary lunge – 15-20 reps
Torso rotations/twists – 20 reps each direction
Side bends/reaches – 20 reps each direction
Mountain climbers – 1 minute (if you can J)
Wall sit – as long as you can hold it
Dips (use chair/bench/stairs) – as many reps as possible

Go right down the line and do all these and you will be feeling it after...I promise.

the fitnessexpert

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