23/03/2016
How to lose 4+ kgs of fat a month- even if you have a slow metabolism
If I had to list 3 things everyone wants, I would say:
• We want more money
• We wish TV shows had less commercials
• We want a slimmer waistline.
I cannot help you with first 2 items on list- but fortunately, I specialize in helping people lose weight. As it happens, you can slim down, flatten your belly, & fit into your old jeans- &best it doesn’t have to take years. In fact, it is entirely possible to lose more than 4 kgs a month if you know what you’re doing.
Losing weight is simpler than you think
Fat loss is just a matter of burning more calories than you consume. Since a pound of fat contains somewhere between 3000 & 3500 calories, losing ten pounds a month requires a caloric deficit of 1000–1200 calories a day.
To lose fat quickly & safely, & avoid rebound weight gain, you just need to do four things:
• Consume fewer calories.
• Burn more calories.
• Maintain good nutrient partitioning, so that you’re losing fat but not muscle mass- this is crucial to preventing metabolic slowdown & rebound weight gain.
• Build systems & psychology to ensure that you stay consistent with your fitness plan.
This doesn’t require a starvation diet. In this article, I’m going to show you exactly how to cut calories without starving yourself, burn more calories without spending hours a day in gym, & prevent yo-yo dieting before it happens.
1. Eat less calories
Count calories & macros. You’ll need to track calories & macros (grams of fats, protein & carbohydrates) religiously, at least for first month. Your daily calorie targets are 1000 less than TDEE on days you lift weights, & 1200 under TDEE on days you either don’t work out, or only do cardio. On all days, eat at least 30 grams of protein with every meal & 10 grams with every snack.
Eliminate sugar & liquid calories. In addition to obvious culprits, watch for hidden sugars in things like fruit, sauces/condiments, & “healthy” foods such as protein bars.
Drink a lot of water. Staying hydrated is a great idea on general, but dehydration also sends thirst signals to your brain that can get misinterpreted as hunger. Drink at least a gallon of water a day if you’re male, or 3/4 gallon if you’re female, & have a glass before every meal.
Practice intermittent fasting. Skip breakfast & compress your daily eating into a smaller window of time. If you’re a man, fast for at least 16 hours & eat in an 8-hour window every day- noon to 8 PM works best for most people. If you’re a woman, fast for at least 14 hours & eat for 10. In either case, this means you’re having two small meals & one smaller low-calorie snack each day.
Eat slowly & stop eating as soon as you’re not hungry. There’s a delay of up to a half hour between when you eat something & when it makes you less hungry- & that’s a half hour in which you can end up eating food your body doesn’t need. To make sure that doesn’t happen, spend at least ten minutes eating every snack & a half hour on every meal.
Finish your meals in thirds, starting with veggies, then eating your protein, before finally getting to carbs. Take 5-minute pauses between each third of meal to give your brain time to catch up to your stomach. As soon as you no longer feel hungry, stop eating- & don’t confuse “not hungry” with “full.”
2. Burn more calories
Make workouts short, intense, & frequent. Work out six days a week, for 20–40 minutes at a time. Your workout split should be as follows: 3–4 days of circuit-based weight training workouts, & 2–3 days of high-intensity cardio workouts.
3. Improve nutrient partitioning
Get moving before/after every meal. Before eating, either take a short walk or spend a couple minutes doing air squats & pushups. This activatesGLUT-4 receptors in your skeletal muscles so that more of food you just ate goes to your muscles, rather than fat stores. Shatapaavli they say.
Sleep at least 7 hours a night. Eliminate all sources of light from your bedroom. Get to bed at least 8 hours before you expect to wake up, & spend last hour before that relaxing with lights turned down.
No alcohol. Alcohol contains more calories than carbohydrates, disrupts your sleep, & raises estrogen levels so that your body stores more fat. Cut it out entirely until you reach your goal weight.
4. Create systems to make compliance easier
Remind yourself of your mission. Take a set of “before” photos, print them off, & post them somewhere you’ll see them every day- such as your bathroom mirror.
Surround yourself with encouraging people. Your social environment has a huge impact on your success, so make sure people you talk to are encouraging you to stay fit. Ideally, you should have a few friends who are losing weight or have done so in past. Note that friends who want to lose weight but have never done so may not be supportive- look for successful people who will bring you up with them.
If you don’t have friends who can fill this role for you, start taking a fitness class, or talk to people online in places likeBodybuilding.com forums or reddit.
Keep public logs of meals & workouts. Get a workout app such as JEFIT, GymHero or Bodyspace & record all of your workouts with it. Snap a photo of everything you eat before you eat it. Upload photos to a dedicated Facebook folder or Instagram account, & post your latest workout stats to Facebook once a week.
Schedule workouts & meal prep times. Keep your workouts in your calendar. Additionally, schedule two blocks of time each week to prepare meals in bulk, so that you have healthy food in fridge ready to eat at all times. Set reminder alerts to go off an hour before each workout & meal prep, & treat this as work- only a real emergency should stop you from getting it done.
“But this won’t work for me! My body is different!”
Yes, it will. It will work as long as you actually do it.
Your body doesn’t violate laws of physics. If you “can’t” lose weight, reality is that you’re eating more calories &/or burning fewer than you think you are.
Don’t have time to work out? Do 20-minute bodyweight workouts at home, & interval sprints in street outside your home. You can find time.
Worried about hunger? Drink caffeine in morning to kill your appetite until lunch, eat a lot of vegetables & protein, drink a lot of water, & make sure to have your sugar water at night. First few days can be tough, but hunger goes away a lot faster than you’d think.
Rapid weight loss isn’t easy, but neither does it have to be a grueling exercise in self-torture. With commitment & discipline, you can get healthy & build body you’ve always wanted- & you can see a difference within weeks, rather than years.
