Physical activity can represent 20-30% of your daily energy expenditure – this is comprised of your normal physical activity (for example, lifting the kids or groceries, washing the car, walking, etc.).

So that leaves 60-70% of your daily energy expenditure coming from – get this – DOING NOTHING! That’s right, sitting around watching TV, sleeping, etc. Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is where most of your calorie burn comes from! When you hear people blame a “slow metabolism” for being fat, they are partially right – their RMR is not what it should be to burn the amount of calories they consume!

So, last time we learned that eating more frequently increases your TEF, but how do you increase your RMR, which is REALLY going to get the fat burning?

It’s really simple – the more muscle you have, the higher your RMR will be. When you workout, you are breaking down muscle fibers.  The process of rebuilding that muscle is intense – it requires rest and protein, and subsequently raises your metabolic rate. Once you have built the muscle, it will keep your RMR elevated as it takes a lot of the body’s effort to maintain it.

Also, the high intensity intervals, the cardio where you do all-out bursts for a short period of time followed by recovery, creates the
same demand on your metabolism as resistance training. If you choose to do cardio, this is the kind of cardio you should be doing.

So to wrap this up, science tells us these things are the most effective things you can do to lose fat:

1. Eating more often (shooting for 6 small meals per day)
2. Resistance training
3. Interval cardio

There are two more things to add to this list that I’ll cover next time.

Besides burning calories, exercise helps your brain stick to a diet.  Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh studies overweight adults for two years, and found that the participants who didn’t follow a 3-hour-per-week exercise plan ate more than the 1,500 calories per day the study allotted.  The reverse was also true – sneaking in extra snacks sabotaged their workouts.  You need diet AND exercise to maintain long-term weight loss.  Both actions serve as reminders to stay the course, reinforcing your fat loss goals and drive.