Counting calories is boring, confusing, and totally unnecessary if you want to lose the gut.
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Calories, calories, calories—it’s all you hear when it comes to losing weight.
Take in less. Burn more than you need. Create a “calorie deficit” to help reduce the beer belly. Okay, we get it.
But what if all this calorie counting and becoming some sort of macronutrient mathematician is getting a bit annoying? To the point where you want to eat the nearest edible object that contains no less than 4,578 calories.
Overnight your body has already been fasting, while repairing itself, dealing with toxins etc.
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Us guys have got wayyy more important things to be doing than counting calories anyway. Trying to keep track of all those numbers on your plate is boring and stressful, especially when your waistline hasn’t shifted even half an inch with it all.
Here are six sure fire steps to losing weight successfully—without calorie counting
#1 Have a Cuppa—of Green Tea
The polyphenols in green tea increase levels of norepinephrine, a key fat-burning hormone. These have also been shown to prolong thermogenesis, which equates to even more calories being burnt.
For good measure, green tea also contains antioxidants and supports a healthy immune system.
#2 Mini Fast Part One—Delay Your Breakfast
Intermittent fasting is a fat-burning fitness trend that came along a few years ago and hasn’t left us. That’s because it works. Really well. Fasting lowers your body’s glycogen stores and the body then turns to fatty acids for fuel. It also helps optimize the ‘master’ hormone leptin (which we’ll talk about next.)
Overnight your body has already been fasting, while repairing itself, dealing with toxins etc. Extend that food fast by a couple more hours each day to ramp up fat burning. Even better if you can hold off until lunchtime once or twice per week.
#3 Mini Fast Part 2—Take Longer Breaks Between Meals
Snacking regularly—especially with processed junk foods—is not the way to go when you’re looking to lower your fat levels. This can lead to insulin and leptin resistance, which equates to fat gain. Leptin regulates your fat levels and is also the master hormone in control of all other hormones.
Hormone optimisation expert Mike Mahler says:
The way to get out of leptin resistance is to give your body a break. Just like we need vacations from work, our receptors need a vacation from having to deal with large volumes of food delivered often. Trying to lose fat? Take a page from Byron Richard’s outstanding book ‘Mastering Leptin’ and stick to two to three meals a day, with five to eight hours between meals. The extended food-free meal breaks provide opportunities for the body to call on stored fat for energy. Instead of snacks, your body will fuel itself with free fatty acids.
#4 Get OFF the Treadmill—Lift Weights Instead
Forget standard cardio training like running on the treadmill or hopping on the exercise bike. It’s literally getting you nowhere. Lift weights and focus on compound exercises; aka single movements that hit various muscle groups at once.
A group of them that exercised before breakfast gained almost no weight and showed no signs of insulin resistance, while the others gained weight.
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By doing weight training using compound exercises you’ll not only develop muscle tone and build strength, but also burn fat and improve your cardiovascular health. This is because training multiple muscle groups has been shown to promote an anabolic environment in the body.
You can learn all about the most effective exercises and download a free guide on them here:
#5 Exercise in the Morning on an Empty Stomach
Roll out of bed and straight into the gym before breakfast to supercharge fat loss. A study ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20837645 ) carried out by sports scientists back in 2010 showed that exercising in the morning, before eating, was effective in burning fat and countering the effects of a poor diet.
Researchers recruited 28 healthy, active young men and fed them a high calorie unbalanced diet for six weeks. A group of them that exercised before breakfast gained almost no weight and showed no signs of insulin resistance, while the others gained weight. The study showed that those exercising on an empty stomach burned the fat they were taking in more efficiently.
#6 Have a Cuppa Coffee—Before Your Workout.
A black coffee can be your secret weapon when it comes to burning fat because the caffeine provides a boost in energy (perfect when you’re training on an empty stomach) and it also increases metabolism.
By coffee, I mean an organic quality brand – and without the cream and sugar.
Making healthier food choices—which are naturally lower in calories anyway—and being clever about meal timing is a much better approach. Add the right form of exercise into the mix and you can turn your body into a fat burning machine.
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Photo: Getty Images