I often tell clients in Houston, Tx that the more they know about getting and staying fit, the better chance they have of being fit. That’s why I love to do these blogs, to provide that information. Here are some fat loss facts that can help you in your effort to shed weight. You may already know some of them, but others might be contrary to what you heard or knew. Use this information to arm yourself on the road to fitness and weight loss.
In order to lose body fat, you need to eat protein, carbs AND fat.
Most people think that just giving up fat will help them lose fat, but that’s not true. Your body needs fat, but only the healthy kind. Fat comes from other sources besides the marbling of a steak. Avocados, fatty fish like salmon, nuts and even butter made from milk from grassfed cows. Fat is important for your body’s health. In fact, the brain is 60% fat! Your body needs fat to make some vitamins available. It also uses fat for protection for organs, helping protein by acting as messengers, aiding in building muscles and starting the chemical actions in the body to run the immune system, the reproductive system, brain health, cell growth and basic metabolism.
No matter how many ab exercises you do, unless you lose weight, you won’t get a six pack.
Focusing on spot exercises will definitely build your abs, but nobody will see them if there’s a layer of fat covering them. Unfortunately, many people think that doing spot exercises, such as leg lifts, will burn the fat off the abs. That’s not true. In order to show off those beautiful abs you’ve been working on so hard, you have to shed body weight and there’s no way to make it come off just one spot on your body, it comes off the whole body. A healthy diet and exercise can help you get the abs you want.
Once fat cells form, the cells never go away, just shrink.
When you workout, you don’t turn fat cells into muscle tissue. You simply shrink the fat cells and build more muscle tissue. Sadly, studies show that fat cells are created quickly, but never go away, just shrink. It’s why people often have the problem of regaining the weight they lost. The regaining of weight is caused by the fat cells expanding to store excess calories consumed. Even though they’re always there, you can keep them from growing with exercise. Exercise builds muscle tissue, which requires more calories, so it won’t be stored in the waiting fat cells. That’s why making lifestyle changes is so important.
- People often think that running or other cardio is all they need to burn fat. The body doesn’t differentiate where the calories come from, so lean muscle mass is also burned. Strength building exercise build muscle tissue while burning fat. The more muscles you have, the more calories you burn.
- If you’re trying to lose fat, don’t choose low-fat/fat-free alternatives of whole foods. These foods can actually cause you to become fatter by stimulating insulin production.
- After strength training, the body burns more calories for up to 24 hours and the biggest percentage of those calories come from fat.
- HIIT—high intensity interval training—also burns high amounts of calories and continues to burn them after the exercise ends, just like strength training. However, that afterburn increases fat burning up to 24%.