Easy start fat loss tips, part III....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 4-21-2016

A recent Parade Magazine article covered a number of ways people have successfully lost weight.

So, it occurred to me to leverage their article into a set of things that can be easy to do to start successful fat loss after reading it.

This is part III of the part II post I did a week ago and the first one I posted two weeks ago!:

Last time, Thursday, 4-14-2016, we said this one would have:

a) What kinds of exercises work best for fat loss?

b) How to eat enough health OK carbs to avoid excess hunger WITHOUT de-railing fat loss-- while also removing more fat each month.

c) And, how better sleep helps you be healthier, think better, AND be less fat—

-- plus the set of the easiest things to do to help create better sleep you can do right away.

Before we present those, here is a quick review of what is in part I & part II:

The first two parts mostly had what to eat and drink and what NOT to eat and drink.

Simply put:

a) Stop entirely eating & drinking the things that make you fat and sick. (That list is long!)

b) Learn how to find and eat real foods that keep you healthy, prevent disease, and tend to keep you lean. (That list is also long.)

Then eat that way until you get a regular pattern of meals that use those foods to make an eating plan customized to you and what you like.

Doing both of those things will tend to prevent excess hunger and cravings once you become used to it.

Within a few weeks, your blood indicators of health will often drop out of the danger zone.

And, if you were eating and drinking the temporarily normal diet (1965 to 2005) of junky foods and drinks before, within two or three months you may lose 25 pounds of fat or more without any effort whatever to eat less than you are hungry for.

Astonishingly, you may find you are less hungry and have fewer cravings too!

But what if you want to lose all your excess fat?  What if you want to get rid of it faster?

What if even after you lose 20 or 30 pounds doing that first set of things, you still look fat and clearly have a good bit more fat to lose?

That’s what’s in this part III post!  It has:

a) What kinds of exercises work best for fat loss?

b) How to eat enough health OK carbs to avoid excess hunger WITHOUT de-railing fat loss-- while also removing more fat each month.

c) And, how better sleep helps you be healthier, think better, AND be less fat—

-- plus the set of the easiest things to do to help create better sleep you can do right away.

[Do some people need even more things to lose fat successfully?

Yes. Here’s the story:

If you do all these things well in these three posts, even if there are extra obstacles to your fat loss, you will lose fat anyway.  You may even lose well over half of it. Most people do.  And, you will still get almost all the health benefits.

AND, for each of these obstacles there are solutions!  In our upcoming fat loss support membership site we will have the solutions for each of these obstacles.]

a) What kinds of exercises work best for fat loss?

*Would you like all the weight you lose on the scale to be fat only?

Eat enough protein and do these exercises and it will be.

*Would you like to be able to eat enough more food while still losing fat, that you avoid excess hunger and it’s doable to keep the fat off that you lose?

You can with the right exercises. That’s why they are the biggest key to permanent fat loss!

*Would you like to lose enough more fat that you look better even more than you can with eating right alone?

Yes.  The right exercises do that.  And, as a bonus they slow aging best!

*Would you like to begin to get the higher self esteem and feeling better that you are losing fat to gain right away AND even before the fat comes off?

Just beginning the right exercises is proven to do just that.  And, as a bonus, it makes eating right easier too!

*Would you like to lose fat faster than you can just beginning to eat right?  For many people, the right exercises deliver that to you also!

What kinds of exercises work best for fat loss and to do all those things for you?

Effective strength training.

Variable or interval cardio using high intensity exercises.

Short brisk walks in an interval cardio style.

They can be surprisingly time efficient and still effective.  They cause you to burn calories even when you are at rest enough that they will add to and speed fat loss.  And, when added to enough protein have been shown to ensure ALL the weight you lose is fat.

Two other kinds of exercise are worth doing but those three are the foundation do first and keep doing.

The other two kinds are those which:

a)  Focus on stress relief or flexibility or learning a physical skill or a combination of those.

b) A low effort activity you do for half an hour or more a day.

This post focuses on the three foundation blocks. 

But we also include a bit on those two kinds as they can add to fat loss -- and you may do them already or like trying them if you can fit them into your lifestyle too.

*Effective strength training:

Doing slow rep strength training is BOTH safer and more effective and can be done in less time than normal speed strength training.

Instead of moving the weight up in half a second and down about as fast take closer to 4 to 10 seconds to go up and about half that to let it down.

Because this avoids the initial snap to start the weight moving suddenly AND you will use slightly lighter weights, slow rep training causes dramatically fewer injuries.

The payoff is that if you use enough weight for 8 or so of these slow reps for each exercise and each time you try hard to do one more even if you only get a half rep on the last one, you get something like ten times the effect!

When I first did a workout this style after getting little feeling of my muscles being exercised the old way, I found every single muscle felt bigger and super well exercised.  And this happened as soon as I was done with the session.

Best of all, this is so effective, you can get MORE results in ONE set than you can doing three sets the old way!  So with slow rep strength training, in 20 minutes to half an hour you can get more results than you could in an hour to hour and a half without it!

It also helps to do exercises for your larger muscles in your legs, butt, and lower back by doing leg presses with a high foot position or deadlifts with a barbell.

(For more information, See The Perfect Workout   www.theperfectworkout.com/  They specialize in slow rep exercises using machine and adding a personal coach.  They are great to help you learn this style and for women who otherwise wouldn’t know how to work out or use enough weight.  And their 20 minute workouts that take about half an hour to do once or twice a week are a way that someone too busy for more, can get results anyway.

The downside is that the sessions are expensive and not yet available everywhere.  But if you have access to one, need the service, and can afford it they are quite an asset.)

(And, although he doesn’t aim for health as much as I, see www.muscleforlife.com with Mike Matthews to learn how to use strength training plus high protein eating plus some restriction of carbs and calories to lose fat effectively.)

* Variable or interval cardio using high intensity exercises.

If you do a cardio exercise hard for more than a minute or so, you get two nasty problems:

It can harm your heart enough to give you a heart attack and has done so quite often.

You can do an hour of it and not get the fat loss you can get with a few minute session of variable or interval cardio using high intensity exercises.

With variable or interval cardio using high intensity exercises, when you begin, to make it safe you do each set just hard enough to begin to be out of breath.  Then as soon as that happens, you stop to rest until you recover or you slow down enough and for long enough you recover.

Then you begin over time to get to higher intensity with shorter rests or slow parts.

You can do this by doing one set of four different abdominal exercises. (I do this now and my sessions take about 7 minutes a time.  And I do three sessions a week.  So it can be quite easy to fit them in!)

I used to do variable cardio on a NordicTrack. I warmed up for one minute; did an eight minute variable cardio session that I kept doing better at; then a cool down for one minute.  I was quite fit from doing this one.  And I only did it once  a week – though that was in addition to the 3 sets of abdominal exercises the rest of the week.)

Jump rope is extremely good.

When I added 3 or 4 sets of 98 twice a week, they didn’t seem that hard though I was out of breath enough at the end of each set I did have to wait a minute or so before the next one.

But they were more effective than I realized because I promptly began to set new records on my NordicTrack while finding it easier to do!

These brief sessions also burn calories while you recover enough to add to fat loss; and they can be quite time efficient.

Strength training is the number one priority for fat loss.  But adding these variable or interval cardio using high intensity exercises for a few sessions a week too will make the fat loss greater or easier to do or both.

* Short brisk walks in an interval cardio style.

Four or five half mile walks done in variable cardio style with race walking sessions or even short runs -- alternated with slower walking has been shown to have substantial heart protection benefits.  After you get good at them, you can do them in as little as 6 minutes a time.

Without doing those, you can be strong and fit from the first two kinds of exercise; but find that even though you have the strength and fitness to walk fast in ordinary life when you need to, you have to make an effort to do so.

By adding these walks, such fast walks will be easy enough to almost be fun to do.

And, again by adding this 200 to 350 calories of exercise each week, you can eat a bit more and still lose fat.

The other two kinds of exercise are those which:

a)  Focus on stress relief or flexibility or learning a physical skill or a combination of those.

Things like yoga and Tai Chi can create stress relief which helps lose fat and belly fat. Martial Arts training has benefits. And for some people dancing works well because they enjoy it.

If you have time and have one of these you know and like, they can be a great addition.

b) A low effort activity you do for half an hour or more a day.

For some young people and for retired people things like gardening or hiking or even lower speed walks looking at interesting or scenic things for up to a few hours a week can be a great addition.

But for those of us who work, there used to be no way to fit this in.

Now, finally, there are beginning to be good solutions that can enable you to get this kind of exercise while you are at your desk working!

Those will be in our website for fat loss coaching and support as they become available.

Unfortunately, these will be in Part IV next week because I am out of time today:

b) How to eat enough health OK carbs to avoid excess hunger WITHOUT de-railing fat loss-- while also removing more fat each month.

c) And, how better sleep helps you be healthier, think better, AND be less fat—

-- plus the set of the easiest things to do to help create better sleep you can do right away.