Evidence Based Tricks to Lose that Stubborn Fat
Intermittent Fasting
The science behind intermittent fasting is based on altering the body’s metabolism. During a period without eating, insulin levels drop to the point that the body begins burning fat for fuel. Additionally, the thinking goes, by slowing the body’s metabolism, you cause your appetite to drop off and thus will consume fewer calories when you resume eating. Numerous studies have demonstrated the benefits of intermittent fasting for weight loss. However, it’s not clear that it is any more effective than simply restricting calories and following a normal eating schedule. One possible reason for the success of intermittent fasting is that most practitioners have quit the habit of eating during the late evening and night hours. Restricting eating to earlier in the day aligns better with our bodies’ circadian rhythms and is less likely to cause us to store our food in fat cells
Train fasted
Fasting means restricting yourself from consuming food for prolonged period of time. After fasting for eight to 12 hours—overnight, for example—and heading out the door, your body first wants to tap into the carbs (the glucose, really) stored in your muscles and liver for energy. Once your carb stores start running low, your body turns to burning stored fat, but this takes longer to convert into energy. Here’s where that gets complicated.
If you’re sweating at a light to moderate intensity for less than 90 minutes, your body should have a fairly easy time transforming fat into energy, and you can have a great workout without fueling up beforehand. But if you’re doing a high-intensity workout, your performance will suffer from skipping carbs beforehand. It is not possible to mobilize fat stores and burn enough fat during higher-intensity exercise to provide a steady state of fuel, so once the body runs out of carbohydrates, it will no longer be able to continue working at that intensity.
Zigzag diet
Another name for the zig zag diet is “calorie shifting” or “calorie cycling”. Since it involves changing the number of calories you eat each day over the course of a week. The idea is to avoid the inevitable plateaus that come with constant calorie diets.
Some zig zag diets have you eat a different number of calories every single day. But that gets tedious. A better approach is having “low”, “medium”, and “high” days.
Low days maximize fat burning and medium days balance fat loss with muscle building or maintenance. While a weekly high day boosts your metabolism and refills your energy stores.
Eat low calories on days you don’t work out, but make sure you consume at least as much as your BMR. Also, carbs should be less than 20% of calories on rest days. Target medium calories on days you do work out. This is more than your BMR but less than the number of calories you burn. Carbs can be 20-40% when you’re more active. Include one high calorie day per week where you eat about 100-200 more calories than you burn. Carbs can be up to 50% of calories on a refeed day.
Walk everywhere
This is a no brainer, if you prioritise walking instead of taking the elevator, taking your car for a 5 minute distance or neglecting to take your dog for a walk you will see huge differences in your mood, total calorie consumption and overall well-being.
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