How do I lose weight?

How do I lose weight?

If you read my first blog 'Top 5 weight loss mistakes' you will know that most people’s training objective is to lose weight.  I listed what I thought were the top 5 mistakes people are making when it comes to this. 

I am now going to explain one approach you could look at when attacking your fat loss goal.  I prefer the term fat loss as this suggests a change to your body’s composition (ratio’s between body fat and lean mass) instead of the overall weight loss.  You should always look at this as a fat loss goal too.  So, I hope this helps!

The first thing you should always look at when tackling any fat loss goal is nutrition.  If fat loss is your goal, you simply must sort out your diet.  There’s almost nothing you can do to ‘out-train’ a bad diet so this has to be the first thing you address.  You simply have to create a calorific deficit to lose weight whilst ensuring you eat enough protein and essential fat. 

To do this you must work out your Basal Metabolic Rate.  Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the rate at which your body consumes/burns calories for basic metabolic functions like maintaining internal temperature, repairing cells, pumping blood, powering muscles at rest, etc. In other words, it is the rate at which your body consumes calories at rest. 

Now, you’re probably wondering how you can find this out.  This is something that varies from person to person as it is determined by multiple factors such as age, weight, life style etc and is something that I don’t think should be generalised.  I calculate my clients BMR by doing a body stat analysis every 2-3 weeks (I re-test to ensure it is increasing) and I recommend you do the same.  This leads me on to my next point.

The next thing you should do when trying to lose weight is increase your BMR.  As discussed, your BMR is the rate at which your body burns calories at rest.  The more calories your body burns at rest, the easier you will find it to maintain/increase fat loss.  One of the best ways to increase your BMR is to build muscle, the more muscle your body has the more calories it will require.  Try to add activities to your exercise programme that promote muscle gain. In fact don’t try it, do it!

So, activities that promote muscle gain are activities that include weights (full body movements are better). When I train my clients we generally stick to compound movements (multi-joint) which include exercises such as squats, bench press, chin ups, pull downs etc, and we tend to stay away from single-joint exercises such as bicep curls, tricep press etc because the benefit you get from single-joint exercise isn’t generally worth the time spent doing it.  You see much greater gains doing bigger movements.

How heavy do you go?

I generally try to get my clients to go as heavy as possible (through a specifically targeted rep range).  Going heavy creates a much bigger stimulus making the muscle work harder which leads to quicker gains.  I tend to aim for 10-15 reps per set, the muscles involved then spend approx 50-75 seconds under tension which is how long roughly it takes to fatigue motor units and force the body to recruit more. 
It is also very important to consider rest times between sets.  Not enough rest can lead to exhaustion of motor units, where too much rest can allow the motor unit to completely recover therefore making the second set not as beneficial.
 It actually begins to get quite complicated when you start factoring in rep ranges, rest periods, movement patterns, muscular imbalances, ranges of movement etc. This is where seeing a personal trainer becomes very beneficial as they can ensure you’re training is designed well so that you avoid injury and also ensure you get to goal quickly!

I hope this has helped to clear up some misunderstandings associated with fat loss.  Any questions don’t hesitate to comment below or email me directly at scott@boompt.co.uk

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Top 5 weight loss mistakes

I have worked as a Personal Trainer for 4 years now and the majority of my clients have had weight loss goals. 

Before i sign any client up i go through their goal related history.  This includes what exercise they have done in the past, their injury/medical history, if they have followed 'diets' in the past etc etc.  And you wouldn't believe how many people are making the same mistakes time and time again leading to nothing but disappointment, discouragement and lower self esteem.

So, I thought i would try to shed some light on this topic which i hope will help you.

1.  Slower is Better

The problem most people have in this day and age is they want results, but they want them NOW! This then leads people to follow very strict ‘lose 10lbs a day’ diets (now obviously that diet doesn’t exist but I think you get what I mean) With these diets, the idea is to create a HUGE calorific deficit which will force the body to lose weight. 

The problem is, this causes people to deprive their bodies of some essential nutrients which can lead to major health problems but also just creates huge cravings! People then tend to give up as the diet is too strict and not maintainable.  This is when the ‘Yo-Yo’ diet starts to happen. You do it for one week but give up for the rest of the month therefore not achieving anything but feeling dissatisfied.

2.  Exercise beliefs

Resistance training is more
beneficial

Most people believe that cardio-vascular training is the best way to  lose weight.  Now, what I mean here is activities such as running, walking, cycling etc.  Research is now proving that this is one of the worst methods to use when it comes to fat loss.

3.  Not eating enough

A lot of people assume that the less you eat, the faster you will lose weight. One of the biggest mistakes people make is not eating enough. Your calorie range is based on your current weight, goal weight, how aggressive your goal is etc.  The problem with not eating enough is that your body will take everything that you do eat and store it, then when you come off the diet whether you’ve achieved your goal or not, you’re metabolism is still slow so you will pile the weight straight back on and potentially more!

4.  Not enough fat

Mono-unsaturated fats are found in foods
such as Avocados

If your main goal is to lose weight the chances are you avoid the word ‘fat’ like the plague.  The problem with this is that fat is actually very essential! Deciding what fats are the good fats is what is key here.  Also make sure you are eating the correct quantities!

5.  Giving up too soon

I find that people don’t have enough long term will power, as mentioned in point 1, people want results to happen too soon! And if what they're doing doesn’t appear to be working they tend to give up.  The way I look at this is if you keep doing the same thing, you will always get the same result.  So if what you are doing doesn’t seem to be working….try something else!! Giving up is only going to take you right back where you don’t want to be.

Working alongside a personal trainer I believe is the only way to achieve real results, when you hit plateaus they will help you to progress, allowing you to get closer to that slimmer you!

Please feel free to comment on this

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