Body And Fitness Blog

A question that I was asked recently by a family member, so I told them that it is possible, but don’t expect the results to be dramatic. Of course, you will see some measurable results in a short period of time like two weeks, but the results will be relative to where you are starting from and where you are aiming to be in terms of weight.

And let’s not forget that weight loss is by itself a flawed measure, what we should really be concentrating on is fat loss. Most people who go on diets starve themselves, and as such not only shed fat, but they also shed muscle tissue, which has a negative effect on losing weight as more muscle is lost.

So the remedy is to concentrate on keeping the muscle that you have as this will keep your metabolic rate up, and instead look to burn the fat that is deposited around your body instead. To do this you need a three pronged fat attack!

Exercise

Of course any weight / fat loss programme wouldn’t be complete without some form of exercise. By exercise I am referring to cardiovascular exercise, and my favourite of them all is running. It is well known that running burns more calories than any other form of cardiovascular activity, which is why it’s my favourite. I can burn off more calories in a shorter amount of time going running than I can from going swimming, and it doesn’t cost anything to go running!

If you want to see some noticeable fat loss or weight loss in a short period like two weeks, I would recommend a fairly vigorous cardio workout schedule of four times a week. So you might decide to do Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, taking the other three days off as rest days.

The best way of burning fat while running is to do some interval training, if you already know how to do interval training, try reading my article on high intensity interval training for some new ideas. If you can do two interval training (or high intensity interval training) sessions per week, you will see some results. This would be best when combined with two regular running sessions, where you just aim to run for 20-30 minutes. Similarly, you should aim to do interval training for 15-20 minutes depending on your fitness levels.

To ensure you don’t get bored of your running schedule, it’s best to do interval training on Monday and Thursday, and normal running on Tuesday and Friday. This will also give you ample time to recover from each interval training session.

Weights

So many people just don’t understand the benefits of weight training, it is truly astounding! If you are trying to lose weight (and by this I mean fat), then doing weights will accelerate this hugely. By doing four simple weights sessions each week you will ensure that the muscle mass you already have is kept and not metabolised by your body while you are in an energy deficit (diet in more complex terms).

Similarly to cardio, I would split the weights into a two day split, so Monday and Thursday would be the same workout, Tuesday and Friday the same workout.

A good program to follow is the weight training programme I put together for my article body toning tips, it’s the table of weights exercises at the bottom of the article.

Diet

The last, but by no means the least important aspect of any weight loss program! Lots of people seem to think that they can simply follow an exercise plan and ignore their diet and still lose weight. This is not smart.

Firstly, if you are already over-eating, and therefore getting more calories than your body needs, doing some exercise may not be enough to put you in an energy deficit.

Secondly, if (by some miracle) you are eating roughly the right amount of calories for your body weight and level of activity, by not reducing this, it will take much longer for you to see any significantly weight loss. Now given the attitude towards instant gratification in society today, it’s a fairly good bet that you will give up your programme because you haven’t seen results fast enough.

So to combat this, it’s best to know exactly how much calories you need to eat each day to survive and then eat just that amount. To find out how many calories you’ll need, read my article what is my resting metabolic rate and simply eat your maintenance level of calories, but rather than multiplying it by the figures indicated in the article, simply add 200-300 calories more onto your daily maintenance level. This should see you in a decent sized calorie deficit, which will result in some rapid fat loss.

In addition to the calorie counting, it’s also very important that you eat more protein than you would normally. As such, aim to eat 1.5 grams of protein per kilo of body weight each day. If you need to, buy a whey protein powder, and make yourself low calorie, high protein shakes to ensure you get your protein in without any extra carbs/calories.

Another neat trick, is to eat more frequently than normally, but eat less in each meal. If you can spread your calories fairly evenly over five meals throughout the day, rather than the traditional three meals a day, you will put the body into a fat burning state, because it assumes there will always be a plentiful supply of energy from the food you eat.

To monitor your fat loss during this program, it’s worthwhile having a digital body fat monitor, you can get these from Amazon.co.uk:

I will soon be releasing a FREE e-book about interval training, if you would like to be emailed a copy, please fill out the contact form and let me know. Thanks for reading!

Other useful posts:

• Dymatize Elite Whey Protein Isolate Review
• Bicep And Tricep Workout Friday 1st May 2009
• How Much Protein Should I Eat To Gain Muscle
• Training Journal: Monday 9th February 2009
• Full Body Workouts – Are They A Good Idea?