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Your eating and exercise habits determine whether you lose (or gain) body fat. They determine how many calories you take in and how many you use up. To lose body fat, you need to control the number of calories you eat from a balanced diet and increase the amount of calories you burn through exercise.
Research shows overwhelmingly that combining the proper diet with exercise is much more effective for losing body fat than dieting alone. Even the most nutritious low calorie diet without exercise will cause some of your losses to be from muscle. A pound of muscle has only 600 calories – or about 1/6 the calories in a pound of fat – and, therefore, can be lost much quicker than fat. Since a pound of fat has 3,500 calories, you should expect to lose no more than 1/2 to 1 percent body fat per month or 1-2 pounds of fat per week. If you lose any more than that, you’re losing muscle too. You simply can’t rush fat loss. You don’t gain fat overnight, and you don’t lose it that way either; but the losses you do get will be permanent. And with the accompanying changes that exercise will make to your body, the results can be remarkable. Remember to consult your doctor before starting a reduced-calorie diet and exercise program, especially if you have a history of health problems, haven’t had a physical checkup recently, or are pregnant or lactating. The Right Way to Diet Eating properly to lose body fat is easier and more enjoyable than you might think. Most people think of a diet as a temporary way of restricting food until they reach a certain weight goal. It’s not. You don’t need to go on a specific diet that forbids certain foods or tells you exactly what foods to eat each day. That’s something people can stick with for a while; but when they inevitably go off that type of rigid diet, they tend to go back to their old eating habits and gain back weigh they lost. You should never think of being on or off a diet. Instead, you should make your own choices within the guidelines of a normal, healthy diet that you can enjoy and continue for life. Eating fewer high fat foods and more fruits, grains, and vegetables is not only the best diet to lose fat, but also for your lifetime. To lose body fat, there are two things you should think about in deciding how and what to eat: |
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A diet based on these two principles – "balance" and "calories" – is the closest think you can get to a "magic" diet for losing body fat. Eat a variety of foods and don’t eat too much of anything. So what’s a healthy diet?
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How do I put these guidelines into action?
The Pyramid and accompanying information will help you choose what and how many foods to eat from each food group to get the nutrients you need without getting too many calories – or too much fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sugar, or sodium. Your Food Guide Pyramid
The Pyramid calls for eating a variety of foods to get the energy, protein, vitamins, minerals, and fiber you need. Your body needs more than 50 different nutrients for good health. Variety also prevents your diet from becoming boring. The way to assure variety – and with it, an enjoyable and nutritious diet – is to choose foods each day from the food groups shown.
How to Make the Food Pyramid How many servings are right for me?
Regardless of your body fat goals, remember to eat at least the minimum number of servings in each food group. You need them for the vitamins, minerals, fiber, carbohydrates, and protein they provide. Just try to choose the foods lowest in fat from each food group. The servings are intended to be averages over time. They are illustrations of healthful proportions of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins in your diet, not rigid prescriptions. Don’t hesitate to fluctuate your number of servings from each food group from time to time. This will help you from experiencing plateaus by not allowing your body to become accustomed to the same number of calories each day. Don’t skip meals! Research shows that people who skip meals (especially breakfast) don’t lose fat as readily as those who don’t skip meals. Try to spread your daily servings from the food groups out over five to six small meals a day. This can help increase your metabolism by requiring additional energy to digest and process food. Frequent meals also maintain your blood sugar level which sustains your energy level and curbs you appetite making you less likely to eat too much later and store the excess calories as fat. Making The Pyramid Fit Your Goals
The Right Way to Exercise How to Exercise to Lose Body Fat
These guidelines should always be used at a level that’s right for you. Ideally, you should try to vary the type of activity, duration, intensity, and frequency of your exercise to add some variety and prevent boredom. This will also help you work different muscles in different ways which will increase your overall progress and prevent your body from becoming accustomed to the same activity each time. How does exercise help you lose body fat? • Regulates appetite: Although some people mistakenly think that exercise increases appetite to the point that extra food eaten will negate the number of calories burned, this is not the case. Exercise actually regulates your appetite helping you eat fewer calories. • Increases metabolism: Also untrue is the belief that exercise is not worth the effort because of the relatively small number of calories used. For example, walking burns about five calories a minute. Since there are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, it would seem that you would have to walk 11 1/2 hours to lose a pound. The truth is that even moderate exercise creates an 8-fold increase in your metabolic rate (calorie burning) for hours after the exercise. This residual effect, not the exercise itself, is its greatest benefit of exercise for burning calories. • Maintains Muscle: The movement involved with exercise requires you to use your muscles, which causes the necessary physiological changes for muscle to maintain (or even increase) its size and strength. Since every pound of muscle requires 50-100 calories per day to sustain itself and since fat is burned almost exclusively in your muscles, maintaining your muscle is crucial to losing body fat. Without exercise, you’ll lose muscle and reduce your ability to burn fat. When it comes to your muscle, you either "use it or lose it." • Increases Fat-Burning Enzymes: Muscles have very specific enzymes which burn only fat. Research has shown that people who exercise regularly have far more fat-burning enzymes in their muscles than people who don’t exercise. In other words, exercise causes your body to "beef up" its ability to burn fat more efficiently. This means that the more you use your muscles with exercise, the more fat-burning enzymes your muscles develop to burn more fat. • Changes the Body’s Chemistry: Exercise positively affects a number of hormones in your body which are related to fat storage such as insulin, adrenaline, and cortisol. Endorphins, small morphine-like chemicals, are secreted with exercise and can also help reduce fat storage, as well as create a feeling of well-being and alleviate stress. Exercise also speeds food transit time through the intestines to complete the digestive cycle which reduces the chances for digestive disorders and bowel cancer. The benefits of exercise go way beyond losing body fat. A fit body responds differently to things than a fat body. Things like cholesterol, sugar, salt, etc. simply don’t affect someone who’s fit the way they do someone who’s fat. From a health standpoint, exercise positively affects every organ in your body. Exercise also improves your sleeping patterns, energy level, and overall feeling of well being. The more you do, the more you will want to do as the benefits continue to increase and you get the results you’re after. In short, exercise is a must for losing body fat as well as improving the overall quality of life. It will add years to your life and life to your years.
For more exercise tips and products to help with lowering your body fat, visit our partners below:
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Type of activity: This refers to the type of exercise you do. The best exercises for burning fat are those which can be done continuously and involve the most muscle groups (especially the large muscles of the hips and legs). Although some exercises are more efficient for burning fat than others, there is no one "best" exercise for burning fat; anyone who says there is, is probably trying to sell you something.
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