Losing fat in general isn’t the hardest thing in the world. Eat less, move more.
Doesn’t sound too bad, right?
Wrong.
Telling people to eat less and move more is the exact reason so many Americans yo-yo year after year. They starve themselves, run until they pass out, and lose all their weight. Then, 6 months later, they’ve gained more body fat back than they had in the first place.
This has GOT to stop.
To make it stop, we need to approach fat loss differently. We need to not only make a plan to lose fat, but make a plan to keep it off as well.
The key to keeping the fat off is losing the fat in the most sustainable way possible. Let me give you an oversimplification for example. Let’s say Linda want’s to lose 50 pounds. She walks 30 minutes per day and loses the 50 pounds. That is VERY sustainable. After she has lost the weight, she will likely continue walking for 30 minutes per day. If Linda lost the weight eating 500 calories per day, and running for two hours per day, the chances she maintains that after she loses the weight are extremely low. I have a better chance of developing the worlds greatest calves.
It ain’t happening.
Linda needs to lose this weight as sustainably and realistically as possible, and so do you. Here are three keys to getting lean and staying lean.
#1: EAT ENOUGH PROTEIN
Too many people seem to think that higher protein intake is just for meatheads and bodybuilders. Nope. It’s for the rest of us, too. Protein serves so many different functions, but let’s talk about why increasing your protein intake can help you get lean and stay lean.
The major reason protein is important along your journey is because it helps preserve and build lean muscle tissue. Muscle tissue is expensive to maintain. This means that your body will burn lots of calories working to preserve that lean muscle.
More muscle (even a tiny bit more muscle) means more calories burned at rest. The more calories you burn at rest, the easier fat loss is.
This is exactly what I help my clients do. Before most of them work with me, they can’t figure out why they won’t lose fat. Well, the reason they won’t lose fat is because their metabolism is slow. They’re eating 1200 calories per day and are still not losing weight. If that’s not a red flag signaling a slow metabolism, then I don’t know what is.
To improve their metabolism, I have them eat plenty of protein to preserve and build lean muscle.
And as an added bonus, they end up getting that tight and defined look they’ve always wanted.
Unless you’re highly overweight or obese, I recommend getting anywhere from .6-1g of protein per pound of bodyweight. There is individual variance, but I have found that sticking around .8g of protein per pound of body weight works real well for my clients.
#2: LIFT WEIGHTS
Another part of speeding up my clients’ metabolisms is weight lifting. I have preached this 1,000 times over and I will continue to do so. Because it WORKS.
When we lift weights, we send a signal to our body to become stronger and increase lean muscle tissue. This also means that your body will burn more calories throughout the day.
Lifting weights will speed up your metabolism.
The actual muscle tissue that we add to our body doesn’t equate to massive amounts of additional calories burned at rest, but something else is going on when we lift weights.
We don’t quite know what it is yet, but we know that it works.
Take Joy for example. She was a client of mine years back. When she first started working with me, she was lifting but not optimally for the results she wanted. She was maintaining her weight at about 1600 calories. Which isn’t bad, but it didn’t leave her much room to reduce calories if she wanted to get leaner and stay leaner.
So, over the course of 6 months or so, we tweaked her lifting and introduced more protein into her diet. By the end of our time together, she was maintaining her weight at 2800 calories.
What did we tweak with her lifting? Well, we shifted her focus. And this is what I recommend a large majority of you do.
You see, simply lifting weights isn’t going to cut it. I can go to the gym, grab some five-pound dumbbells, and go through the motions, but just because I’m lifting weights doesn’t mean my arms are going to get any bigger.
If I want my arms to change, if I want my body to change, I need to demand it to change based on the exercise I am giving it when I am in the gym.
You need to lift with a different intent. You need to be purposeful. Think about going to the grocery store. If you just need to go to the grocery store, you drive there. You’ve done it hundreds of times. You take the same route and it is almost automatic. You get in your car and next thing you know, you’re there. But what if you want to get to the grocery store in ten minutes, in the middle of rush hour, with road construction? You’re going to be driving with intent, taking backroads, timing lights, etc. Same goes for lifting. You need to use the weights and how you’re lifting them to tell your body to change.
For most people, simply shifting your focus to strength and getting stronger, rather than sweating and getting your heart rate up, will do wonders. Sweating and getting your heart rate up doesn’t really help with getting lean and staying lean sustainably. Would you rather maintain your results lifting three days per week, or running seven days per week?
#3: REDUCE PROCESSED FOOD INTAKE
Hear me out.
Processed food in and of itself doesn’t make you fat. Take a look at the Twinkie professor from Kansas State. The dude ate nothing but a Twinkie every three hours and lost a butt ton of weight. Sure, he lost muscle and he probably didn’t feel well, but the point is that no one food inherently makes you fat.
However, processed foods will make your getting lean and staying lean journey a b*tch. They are engineered to hijack your taste buds and neurological pathways to make you want more and eat more.
You know how it’s really hard to eat a potato chip and not eat another. Almost impossible! Yeah, that isn’t an accident. They intended it to be that way.
Here’s a fun fact for you. There are about 4-5 potatoes in a bag of Lays chips. I don’t know about you, but I could easily down a bag of Lays potato chips. No problem. But eating 4-5 baked potatoes? Forget about it. That ain’t happening.
The point is, whole natural foods help you regulate your hunger and satiety levels. They don’t trick you into wanting more when you don’t need more. They nourish your body and keep you fuller for longer.
Highly processed foods do not. They cause you to crave more and eat more. And to make it worse, they are very calorie dense and lack in quality nutrients.
Does this mean you need to avoid highly processed foods at all costs? Absolutely not. For goodness’ sake, live a little. Eat a cookie.
But, the more processed food you eat, the harder getting lean and staying lean will become.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam is a fitness professional, baseball fan, and cookie fanatic based in Fort Collins, Colorado. After hanging up the cleats, he found a strong interest in the human body and how it performs. Since then, Adam has been transforming lives through fitness in a fun and encouraging atmosphere. As an ACE CPT and Fitness Nutrition Specialist, he is constantly moved to help people improve in all walks of life.
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