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THE BASIC TRUTHS OF FAT LOSS: Part 1

 At some point, everyone will want to lose weight, specifically body fat, and for the vast majority of personal training clients, this is the main goal. But for every person who wants to lose weight, there seems to another expert selling a brand new way of losing weight and getting slim, and every different technique seems to contradict all the others. So what’s the truth?

 At the root of all fat loss programs and regimes, there is (or should be) a basic truth, which we call the calorie balance equation, which says that to lose weight, you must use more calories than you consume, so MORE CALORIES OUT & LESS CALORIES IN = WEIGHT LOSS. It really is that simple. Every single technique you have ever heard of that says it will make you lose weight is simply a way of making this process easier or more effective. There is no magic pill. There is no easy short cut. There is no super food for fat loss. There is no one exercise or type of exercise that will do it for you. If there was, I wouldn’t have a job and everyone would be happy, and we wouldn't have an obesity epidemic. The only thing that will help you lose weight is if you EAT LESS AND MOVE ABOUT MORE. That’s it.

 So what sort of things do you need to be doing to make sure you MOVE ABOUT MORE? There are countless different types of exercise, some are good for fat loss, and some are not. As a general rule, the more parts of your body you are moving at the same time, the better the exercise is for fat loss. This is because it takes more energy (calories) to move more body parts. So, yoga for fat loss? Lying down on the floor or holding a pose? No. A couple of sets of leg extensions or bicep curls? No. Stationary cycling in the gym? Sitting down moving your legs a bit? Not really. We need to be thinking big movements, like walking and running for CV training (and rowing and cross trainer as well), and squats, lunges, bench press etc. for resistance training.

 Lifting weights? Really?

 Yes, lifting weights helps you lose fat. How? A muscle takes about 10 times more energy (calories) to keep it alive than a fat cell. So the more muscle mass you have, the more energy (calories) you will burn just keeping that muscle alive. And remember, MORE CALORIES USED = MORE WEIGHT LOSS. Not just that, after any training session, your body will continue to burn calories for a period of time after the session has finished. For a cv session, this might be 30 minutes, for a good weights session, this can be 2-3 hours, so 2-3 hours of free extra calories used, and research has shown that this calorie afterburn following resistance training comes mainly from fats. Result!

 The second part of this article will tell you all you need to know about cardio training for fat loss: how hard? how long? and how often? Many people will say you need to do really high intensity training for the best fat loss results, and I agree and I will tell how to do this in a future article, but these current articles are written with newbies to exercise in mind, so are aimed at lower intensity exercise, just to get you in the groove and to improve your fitness to a point where you can do the harder stuff without feeling like your lungs are about to come out through your nose. The third part of this article will tell you in more detail what types of resistance exercises are best for fat loss, and how to put them into a training program for fat loss.