The Three Simple Steps To Fat Loss

Its unbelievable but being overweight has now moved from a social nuisance and domestic embarrassment to an official disease.

The American Heart Association has announced obesity a dangerous epidemic and a major risk for heart disease. More than 70% of US adults are overweight and that figure is rapidly increasing.

But by following three simple steps in your everyday life you do not have to become one of the above statistics. They are easy to follow without time constraints and don't require a complete lifestyle change. These three steps are:

1. Strength Training - Nowadays you do not have to live in a gym to put on functional muscle. Short high intensity sessions performed once a week is all that is required to elevate the metabolism for total fat burning.

2. A Small Decrease in Daily Calories - Diets don't work (everybody knows this by now) but by decreasing your daily calories by a small amount, the weight loss is body fat alone and not lean tissue and water that is associated with crash diets.

Remember fat accumulates on the body over a long period of time so it must come off slowly.

3. More Incidental Activity - Instead of driving try walking. Walk instead of taking elevators or escalators, and just keep moving through out the day.

Lets have a look at the Three Steps in more detail below:

Strength Training

Between the ages of 20 and 70 the average person loses one quarter of their muscle mass. Running, cycling or other aerobic sports will not prevent this loss.

This is very disturbing because the muscles are the engines of the body and every pound of muscle burns 100 calories every day.

By adding just 10 pounds of functional muscle to your body, you will burn off 60 pounds of fat over the next year.

Providing you take in the same amount of calories, it will keep burning those extra pounds year after year! The amount of fat the body can burn is directly related to the lean muscle your body has.

If you don't perform weight training to maintain your muscle tissue, you will lose half a pound of the fat burning tissue per year after the age of 20 years. In simpler terms the more functional muscle you have on your body the more fat you will burn up.

Small Decrease in Daily Calories

For years now, we have been told to use dieting to rid the excess fat from our bodies.

The trouble with this concept is that the low calorie restricted diet would throw the body into starvation mode, with the body holding onto the fat and using precious muscle tissue for energy.

This would then lower the metabolism causing greater muscle loss and when the diet is broken the unwanted fat would not only return but actually increase.

The way around this is to cut your daily calorie intake by a small amount of calories only. This will stop any starvation mechanisms from clicking in.

You can do this by making up a seven day eating plan and writing down every thing you eat for the week, and then work out the calories you have eaten with a calorie counter. Divide this figure by seven and you have your daily calorie value.

Decrease daily calorie value by a couple of hundred calories per day and no more. This will generate slow weight loss and the majority will be fat loss only. The daily calories should be consumed during the day with small frequent meals.

The calories should come from a balanced diet (no fad diets please) with the required amount of micronutrients, vitamins and minerals. As well as containing the required amounts of fibre, fat, protein and carbohydrates.