Exercise and Nutrition Tips to Burn More Fat

Introduction

Muscle is sexy, muscle is functional. You don’t want to lose it.

On the other hand, fat is neither functional nor aesthetic, so when you say you want to lose weight, you’re actually thinking of your fat stores.

This is why it’s important to distinguish the two; and yes, you can lose fat effectively without sacrificing muscle mass.

However, that doesn’t mean that the process is easy in any way, because in order to preserve muscle mass while dropping fat, you will need to take a calculated approach to nutrition and training.

What’s more, this challenge will require a fair bit of autoregulation on your part, so you will need to keep you head in the game every step of the way.

Tips To Burn More Fat During Exercise

Have you ever felt that working out was never enough? That you eat better meals, and you spend at least a few hours at the gym, yet you aren’t getting the results you want?

It’s pretty normal at first to struggle with fat loss, but in the long run, it can get extremely frustrating and even stressful. The best way is to find the best possible solutions to solve your problem without harming your body due to overexertion.

Luckily, this article will be talking about different helpful tips on how to burn more fat when exercising. You just have to follow these tips or find the best one that suits your needs, and you’re all set.

Eat Healthy Fats

It may sound weird but did you know that eating healthy fats help you stay full the whole day? Eating anything with a bit of olive oil and nuts like most of the meals in the Medittaranean diet can significantly reduce the chances of weight gain compared to low fat diets.

Eating unhealthy fats like food that is high in trans fat can cause your waist to get bigger and generally increase your body fat percentage. These unhealthy fats may make it harder for you to execute a workout properly due to the added weight and pressure on your back and knees. So the best way to lose weight is to stop eating too much fried food or any snack that has butter.

Get Enough Sleep

Part of weight loss is always recovery and, with that said, you have to make sure you that you get enough sleep every night. There is a connection between sleep and weight gain. Research shows that people who most likely have less than 5 hours of sleep are usually overweight and obese. So sleep early and try to set your alarm a bit later than usual to get at least 7 hours of rest. Enough sleep also affects overall mood and performance when you exercise at the gym.

Drink Supplements

Working out is one thing, but if you want to achieve results fast and in a healthy way, you can use different supplements for faster metabolism, or just to give you more energy. According to Spot Me Girl, there are many supplements like fat burners that can help speed things up, but are still good for your body. Fat burners are really helpful for women because they are genetically programmed to store more fat compared to men. Aside from helping burn fat, these supplements also help boost your energy while you exercise. Just don’t take them close to bedtime or you might stay up all night.

Drink Apple Cider Vinegar

Just add a capful of your favorite apple cider vinegar brand and you’re all set. Vinegar helps with regulating blood sugar aside from boosting your body’s fat burning capabilities. It’s so easy to add vinegar to your daily meals or drinks. If you don’t like the taste when drinking it straight, you can dilute it with a bit of water or even make different salad dressings that are not only delicious, but can also help trim your waistline. Drinking apple cider can also helps with the alkalinity of your body, making it a bit more painless after a gym session.

Eat Food Rich In Fiber

It isn’t a joke when you were told to eat your veggies when you were a child. Fiber-rich foods are a good way to get rid of unwanted fat. Always remember that it is always 80% your diet and 20% exercise. If you aren’t losing enough fat despite the heavy workout, it might be time to check your diet. Fiber also helps you feel more full after a meal, which reduces your daily calorie intake.

Aside from making you feel full longer, fiber reduces your appetite significantly by slowing down the movement of food in your gut so the nutrients, and even glucose, are released very slowly, which, in turn, slows down the release of insulin in your body, thus reducing hunger pangs.

Resistance Training

These workouts are specifically designed to speed up muscle building. It doesn’t matter if you are already lean as there are different kinds of fat, especially the ones that are around the abdominal area, which wraps around the liver and kidneys—which are the dangerous ones.

You can start with basic resistance training like chin-ups, pull-ups or push-ups. These exercises are designed to replace fats with lean body mass so you might weigh the same, but look a lot less bulky. That’s why most gym instructors would tell you to not always rely on the weighing scale.

Tips to Burn Fat and Retain Your Muscle Mass

With that said, let’s break down the five tips that will help you burn fat stores without losing precious muscle mass.

Emphasize Protein Intake

Proteins are the building blocks of muscle mass, and life in general. Before you start calculating your caloric intake or adjusting your workout routine, you need to determine how much protein you should be eating every single day in order to stay in an anabolic, or at least muscle maintenance state, and prevent catabolism. Catabolism is when your body lacks the nutrients it needs to keep your body running, and so it starts stripping nutrients from your hard-earned muscles.

To prevent this, you need to stock up on protein. Needless to say, your every meal should have a decent amount of plant-based, meat, or dairy protein in order to maintain muscle mass. As a general rule of thumb, you should shoot for 1.3 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight. If you are overweight, however, you should use your goal body weight to calculate your protein intake. Always stick to higher protein consumption when you’re cutting.

Keep Up the Strength Work

Increasing your protein intake is not enough to make your body preserve muscle mass while burning fat – you need to actively try to hold on to muscle. The age-old adage “use it or lose it” works very well in this scenario. In essence, you need to keep up with your regular fitness routine and lifestyle, albeit with a couple of key amendments. Firstly, you should include strength training into your program.

No need to train as if you’re going to compete in a strongman competition, but just enough to produce neuro-muscular adaptations in a caloric deficit. In simpler terms, hit your muscles with heavy weights to make them denser and show your body that it needs to hold on to as much muscle mass as possible. A simple 5×5 workout regime should be enough to satisfy strength requirements without fatiguing your CNS. Stick to heavy compound movements such as squats, presses, and rows – do five sets of five reps for each muscle group with heavy weights.

Pre-Workout and Post-Workout Nutrition

Another crucial element of a successful fat-loss journey (in which you retain most of your muscle mass), is nutrient timing. In order to lose weight effectively, you need to be in a slight caloric deficit at the very least. This means that if you don’t supply your body with the right nutrients at the right time, you might inadvertently kick-start the catabolic process.

To prevent this, you need a pre and post workout meal. For the former, stick with something light that your body can digest easily, or have a full meal one and a half to two hours before you hit the gym. For the latter, you’ll want a post workout product rich with proteins and other essential nutrients in order to kick-start the recovery and muscle-building process. Keep in mind that while studies have shown that there is no such thing as an anabolic window per se, there is also no benefit to skipping your post-workout protein shake. In fact, you might even lose out, especially if you are trying to lose weight while preserving muscle.

Don’t Stop Training for Muscle Growth

No matter how much you would love to believe otherwise, weight training is highly disruptive to your body and CNS. When you lift weights, you are literally tearing your muscle tissue apart (on a microscopic level), which is a taxing process your body struggles to reverse during the post-workout recovery phase. Being so disruptive and stressful in general, weight training needs to be optimized during the periods when you’re trying to lose weight.

The reduced caloric intake is doing you no favors here, so in order to compensate and prevent injuries as well as muscle loss, you might need to reduce your weekly workload. For example, if you are used to doing four sets, you might want to bring that back down to three sets, or you might even want to reduce the frequency of training by exercising three days a week instead of four. This will help your body stay in line with your nutrient intake and preserve muscle mass while slowly burning through your fat stores.

Refrain From Excessive Cardio

Lastly, it’s important that we address the question of cardio and its role in muscle retention. Now, there is no denying that cardio exercises boast numerous health benefits and that you should be performing aerobic training on a regular basis in order to preserve and build lifelong health and vibrancy. That said, when it comes to losing weight and maintaining muscle mass, cardio training does not offer much and it could actually have a negative effect if you’re not careful.

Given the fact that you need to reduce your overall weekly workload in order to compensate for the lowered caloric intake, there is simply no room in your training schedule to add cardio into the mix, especially if your goal is to retain muscle mass. Keep in mind that aerobic training is just as taxing and energy-demanding as weight training, but it doesn’t produce the same results. In turn, doing cardio during this phase will do nothing more than damage your recovery potential and eat away at your energy stores. Stick to weight training instead.

Conclusion

Losing body fat won’t be so hard with these tips. Just look for the best alternative that works for you, and see the results.

Always remember that fat loss is tougher than it may seem but is possible with the right food and the right type of exercise and supplements.

Nothing is impossible, especially if you are focused on your goals. It’s all about making these tips work for your body with the goal of looking and feeling better.

If you are afraid of losing muscle when you go on a cut or start reducing your caloric intake, don’t be, natural muscle mass is not easily lost.

That said, you will lose muscle if you reduce your calories too much, if you don’t consume enough protein, or if you exercise too little or too vigorously.

You need to find the perfect balance in all of these aspects in order to lose fat steadily without sacrificing your hard-earned muscle.

Follow these tips and you should have no problem sculpting a chiseled physique.

About Jason Spencer

Jason Spencer has a tremendous enthusiasm for all facets of health, fitness and physical performance that stems from an athletic lifestyle from childhood. Jason was fortunate enough to compete in collegiate football and learned to love the challenges that physical activity placed on the body. As Jason progressed through his higher education and became increasingly aware of how science is applied to physical activity and how it reveals the benefits of exercise, he realized very quickly that he wanted to pursue a career that gives him the opportunity to teach others to compete, challenge, and push themselves towards something more valuable to them than anything else; health, fitness and self worth. Being a fitness professional allows Jason to do this for them and he is always incredibly grateful for that. Jason has a Bachelor of Science degree in Neuroscience from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. Neuroscience and his acquired knowledge of the nervous system and muscle stimulation techniques has been extremely instrumental towards building a unique ability and feel for training the body for optimal form and function. As a personal trainer he is certified with ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine). He's also a strength & conditioning specialist with NSCA (National Strength & Conditioning Association). He has additional certifications in both kettlebell principles & techniques (Equinox), and Flexibility & Corrective Exercise (Swedish Institute of Health Sciences in NY). Jason has worked as a trainer and conditioning specialist in a variety of fitness facilities over the years such as: LA Fitness in Piscataway, NJ, the YMCA in Metuchen, NJ, and Equinox Fitness Clubs in New York, NY. He also does private in-home sessions all over the Manhattan area.