If you’re looking to lose weight, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve been a personal trainer in Chelsea (and many other parts of central London) for over 20 years, and in that time I’ve helped many clients lose excess body fat and tone up.
Here are some of the habits my most successful weight loss clients used to burn the fat and reach a healthy weight:
Achieve a Calorie Deficit
If you burn more calories than you consume in any 24 hour period, you will lose weight. To avoid losing weight too rapidly, which can be unhealthy, aim for a daily calorie deficit of around 500 calories to force your body to burn your own stores of body fat.
Eat Plenty of Good Quality Protein
Protein is an essential macronutrient for many structures and functions in your body, so make sure you’re getting plenty of protein in your diet. As well as being the building-blocks of muscle, protein is also needed to make hormones, enzymes, blood cells, and to repair skin, organs, bones and pretty much every cell in your body. Protein also helps you keep your immune system strong.
Good sources of protein include red meat, chicken, fish, eggs, yoghurt, milk. If you are a vegetarian, quinoa is the best source of protein as it’s a ‘complete protein’ which means it contains all the essential amino acids (ie- you can only get them from food) in the optimum quantity and balance to enable your body to synthesise the non-essential amino acids.
Vegetarians can combine a variety of foods which contain incomplete proteins, to create complete proteins, so that you’re getting all your essential amino acids from a combination of foods. Bread, lentils, chickpeas, nuts and seeds, can be combined in this way.
Drink Water Between Meals
Most people are dehydrated, and this inhibits the body’s ability to burn fat. Every biochemical reaction in the body requires water, so to boost your fat-burning make sure you drink around 2 litres of water between meals. The right amount for you depends on your body size, your activity levels, how hot the weather is that day.
Avoid Sugary Foods, Junk-Food and Alcohol
All these foods are high in calories and it is easy to over-eat (and drink) these, so you’re unlikely to achieve the calorie deficit needed to burn fat and lose weight.
Eat a Small Quantity of Complex Carbs from Natural Sources
Carbohydrates are the body’s preferred source of energy, but stick to unrefined natural sources such as sweet potato and organic porridge oats, which have a lower glycemic index and release glucose into your bloodstream more slowly.
Eat Plenty of Vegetables and Some Fruit
A good rule is to eat more veg than fruit. Too much fruit means too much fructose, which will inhibit your weight-loss goals. Fruit and veg contain vitamins and minerals, vital for your health, so eat a wide range. Vegetables have the added benefit of giving you that full feeling without being too rich in calories, which will help you lose weight without feeling hungry.
Perform Resistance Exercise
The advantage of resistance exercise (such as lifting weights, doing pushups and squats) is that they build muscle, which boosts your metabolism 24 hours a day. The leaner your body-composition, the more calories you burn even when you’re not exercising, so aim for more muscle and less body fat.
Walk More
Walking is a great way to burn fat, because low-intensity exercise burns a higher percentage of fat (vs carbs) than high-intensity exercise which burns mainly carbs. A good target is 10,000 steps a day. Walking, combined with staying in a calorie deficit, will trigger your body to burn your existing stores of body fat for fuel.
(Dominic Londesborough is a personal trainer in London and an online nutrition coach)
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