You know what kills me these days?

It’s watching people poor huge effort and consistency into their training regimes with little to no reward.

Uncommon? Nop. This is absolutely rife within the fitness industry.

So simply put – it’s due to a combination of two main factors:

• Incorrect training
• Following a misinformed nutritional protocol (or worse… no nutritional protocol)

Unfortunately it took me over 8 years of blood, sweat and tears to figure this out – but fat loss is achieved in the kitchen.

Are high intensity intervals 4-7 times a week absolutely necessary? Nop.

Is cutting all the nice food out of our diets necessary? Nop.

Do we need to compromise fully on enjoying our lives for the sake of  ‘getting shredded’? Hell no.

I don’t know about you, but fat loss and weight maintenance needs to be easy and sustainable…

So here it is – the 5 key fundamentals which allowed me to finally lose 35 pounds of Fat in 5 months.

1 – CLEAN UP THE DIET:

There’s no doubt that the majority of the food you eat needs to be clean. Simply put it:

• Clean food hasn’t been messed with in production, the nutrients will be absorbed properly and it’s good for the ol’ digestion system. You’d genuinely be surprised how difficult it is to eat enough clean food to gain body weight (in this case fat) through eating 100% clean.
•  Unnatural, refined foods tend to be the problem for most – why? They’re incredibly calorie dense (like pizza and cupcakes) and very easily shoot your energy intake through the roof. This is why (at the beginning at least), it’s best to go cold turkey and learn how to go without.

2 – BECOME A MASTER TRACKER:

The fat loss formula: Consume less than what is burned.

How do you know what the hell your body is expending? In my experience if you’re looking to get from obese back down to a ‘normal’ weight – seriously just become aware of the junk and make an effort to move more. If you’re after more precision and lower body fat levels the only way we can do this is through sustainable tracking. Track the food and track bodyweight over the course of one week to get an idea of what’s going into your body and what’s happening to your weight. By the end of that week you should know how high the volume of food consumed over the course of the week has been. Has your bodyweight increased or decreased? Likewise with waist measurements. I recommend jotting this down on a notepad when you eat or download a very useful app like ‘mynetdiary’. This easily tracks your intake and takes literally 2 seconds after you’ve eaten to input the data.

This principle is so, so important.  ” I don’t want to count calories ” is what most people react with. This is the same as saying ‘I’m not serious about creating optimum health’ and is as logical as driving across the country without caring about how much fuel is in your tank and with no idea of which fuel to use when you run out.

Counting calories and meal planning are vital keys to understand and regulate food intake. Metabolism is an energy system – consistent fat burning means consistent and regulated energy intake. Get this down and you’ll be well on your way already.

3 – CREATE & MAINTAIN A CALORIE DEFICIT

Understand that everyone has a formula for weight loss. Firstly (having diligently tracked your food and energy intake) look at the total energy intake and reduce it. I recommend slashing 4-500 calories off this total to begin with but no more than this. Reducing total calories more than this will make you lose weight, sure, but for a very limited period of time before falling flat. Why? We have a basal metabolic rate (total energy expenditure when completely resting). Severing calories too low and toying with this threshold isn’t pretty unless you know what you’re doing. So, in this case – stick to a moderate deficit.

This is what everyone does in January – they start a new regime and fall flat within 3 weeks and regain every ounce they lost (and then some). This is purely from the incorrect application of training and slashing food intake too low to support themselves. Usually – people will train too much and eat too little. As you can see this is doomed for failure. The deficit must be at a moderate level below your baseline  to:

– Fuel the body adequately for essential function.

– Keep hunger at bay and satiety high (this in turn helps limit cravings)

4 – RE- FEED THE BODY STRATEGICALLY

Re feeding your body? Cool, so that means I can binge out on whatever I want… unfortunately not.

Re feeding is needed to maintain optimum  metabolic health and restore proper, healthy hormone function. The body will down regulate the metabolism (reducing total energy expenditure) from being in a prolonged calorie deficit – this is purely a safety mechanism to help prevent us from starving to death, but it’s expected. The re-feed is a trick of the trade to rev up the metabolism and help ensure continued fat loss.. I made this mistake… I had great results and decided to scrap the re feeds – I wanted more of the same. Until I stalled, felt pretty terrible and had little energy to do anything other than stare at my fridge wishing I bought chocolate muffins. Implement re feed days to up-regulate your body and provide vital additional fuel for the subsequent deficit days.

5 – ADOPT A STRENGTH TRAINING ROUTINE

This is vital component whether you’re a girl or a guy. Maintaining muscle mass during targeted fat loss:

• Helps keep our metabolism running smoothly (lean mass and metabolic function are directly related)
• Helps prevent breakdown of lean tissue (correlates with the above – to keep metabolic function ticking)
• If you’re a beginner you actually build muscle even during the deficit. Ladies, if it’s ‘tone’ you’re after this is how it’s done – through building muscle mass.

Without this component the physique simply won’t be there after the fat begins to melt.
Stay strong,
Andrew