Tag Archives: Cardio

Don’t Overthink Your Fat Loss Diet

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In case you don’t follow baseball, Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees recently hit the 600th home run of his career which is a major milestone for him personally as well as historically – only six other players have reached that milestone in their careers.  But, it took A-Rod (as he’s known in the sports world) 46 at bats to go from home run number 599 to home run number 600, almost 2 weeks worth of games. 

Undoubtedly there was a lot of pressure from the attention – fans packed the stands and snapped lots of photos with every pitch and swing.  But my guess is A-Rod suffered from overthinking paralysis – how else could you do something 599 other times in your career with relative ease and then, all of a sudden, not be able to do it?  I think (and I’m not a pyschotherapist) that he was focused on everything but what he gets paid to do, and what he is best at – hitting the ball as hard and far as he could.

The same thing happened to me yesterday on the golf course.  I got over the ball after looking at the hole layout, and was getting ready to do what I had done thousands of times – hit the ball as long and as hard as I could.  But I started to think about my tempo, the distance to the far end of the fairway (it was a dogleg right), and I decided to reposition myself slightly and hit toward the trees that were lining the fairway, thinking I could cut the dogleg and pick up a stroke.  What did I do? I caught the very top of the tree (a very strong branch, by the way) which forced the ball down and left me with an awful second shot.  Result?  I got a bogey when I thought I could cut the dogleg and go for birdie.

Alright, so what does all of this have to do with fat loss?  Well it is pretty simple.  I got emails from people asking “what is the best X for losing fat?” – you can replace X with exercise, protein, diet, cardio or a host of other words.  We suffer from what I call the Consumer Reports culture – need to know the reviews, information, etc. before we act.

The problem is that most people never end up acting.  Fat loss is really, really simple for most people:

  • Eat less
  • Move more

Unless you are a world class athlete, body builder, or someone who relies on their appearance for income, then this is all you really need to know.  Don’t overthink it – it really is that simple.

Most people who I have worked with have kept a food diary at the very beginning to see exactly what they were eating.  More often than not, it revealed that most people ate 1.5 – 2 times the number of calories that they needed per day to maintain their weight – said another way, they were eating twice the amount of food that they really needed.

A really simple way to get started?  Cut your meals in half – eat half a muffin for breakfast, eat half a sandwich for lunch, and cut your dinner portions in half.  Fill in the gaps with an apple or handful of broccoli, drink some more water and see if you miss the extra food.  Monitor your scale weight before and after and see what happens in 14 short days.  As you progress you will need to refine your program, but for most people, this is an easy way to get started without spending a ton of time or money.

How do you move more?  For me, I strapped my golf bag to my back and walked 18 holes yesterday.  Lugging 30 pounds for over 4 miles was a good workout, but it wasn’t a dedicated workout – it was a way to move more while doing something I loved.  Take your kids or pets for a walk, swim some laps while lounging at the pool, play a little soccer in the backyard, skip the subway and walk to work.  You don’t have to join a gym or buy an infomercial gadget – just stop watching TV and go do something!

Part 2: The Science of a Fat Loss Diet

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Last time we talked about the Thermic Effect of Feeding (TEF) and its role in burning fat. TEF can represent as much as 10% of the calories burned in a day. So how do you burn the other 90%?

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.

In Order to Burn Fat, You Must Go Into Debt

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This was one of the e-mails from my newsletter at leanstate.com  It is the opposite of everything you have ever heard about the most effective way to burn fat, and it took me a LONG time to finally get through my thick skull.  Remember, it is NOT about the calories you burn while exercising, it is about the calories you burn when you are NOT exercising.

No, I’m not suggesting you sink all of your money into every fat loss product imaginable.  In fact, you can go into this kind of debt without spending a nickel.  I’m talking about oxygen debt, and it is critical to fast and efficient fat loss!

Traditional “cardio”, where you do long bouts (45 minutes or more) on a treadmill or an elliptical machine at a moderate pace has always been the recommendation of doctors and trainers.  Why? Because at a moderate pace your body is using stored body fat for energy.  You’ll often see this referred to as the “fat burning zone.”  So, why is burning body fat a bad thing?  Have I finally lost my mind?

Your body is a pretty complicated engine, so when the fat is being burned, it says “well, I better save up some fat for the next time we go through this.”   So, what does it do?  It uses your lean muscle tissue to help preserve fat.  Now, that doesn’t sound right, does it?

Confused?  It’s really quite easy.  You don’t exercise to see the results that happen to your body during exercise – all of the magic actually happens after, not during, exercise.  So, while you rest and recover, your body is burning the fat.  Yeah, baby!

Intervals, which are short bursts of exercise followed by recovery, don’t use fat as their energy source.  During interval training, your body will call on carbohydrates which are stored in your muscles.  The effort that your body needs to go through to replace the carbohydrates stored in your muscle is much more intense, therefore it needs to call on the stored body fat for up to 24 hours after you’re done.  So, would you rather burn fat for 45 minutes or 24 hours?

Back to oxygen debt – this is how you can judge the proper intensity of your interval training.  Simply put, your interval needs to be of a high enough intensity that, when you stop and start recovery, that you are left panting.  This means that your body is asking for more oxygen than you currently can provide.

You can also monitor yourself with a heart rate monitor.  If your interval was intense, your heart rate will actually bump up when you stop before heading downward.

In 20 minutes or less, you’ll be revving up your fat burning engine like never before.  At some point I’ll share some of my favorite interval workouts with you.  But for now, even if you’re just walking outside, crank up your intensity for 30 seconds, followed by 60 seconds of recovery at a slower pace for 20 minutes total.