What is the best way to lose 5lbs of fat?
Everywhere these days you’re hit square in the face by the “best” and “the only” effective way to burn fat. These are things such as “You have to do HIIT training due to its high intensity which melts fat away”. “Low intensity is best for fat burning because thats what keeps your heart rate in the fat burning zone for longer periods of time”. “The most effective way is do insanity as its super high intensity workouts will have you burn the most calories per minutes”.
Then theres even the must have exercises to include in your workout as they have the highest calories burning potential. Some examples you hear are:
“Burpees are one of the highest burning calorie exercises there is, they burn 10-12 calories per minute, thats 720 calories per hour”. But how long are you going to keep your speed and effort at maximum? Probably less than a minute before you’re a collapsed mess on the floor, therefor only burning the 10-12 calories.
What about skipping? “Skipping is the best way to burn calories as it can burn around 10 calories per minute and you can keep it up for longer than burpees!” You could probably keep skipping up at full pace for 10 minutes and thats if you are good at skipping, giving you a potential of burning 100 calories in those 10 minutes.
Im sure at some point you have all heard “running is the most effective way to shift that 5lbs of fat because you can burn around 100 calories per mile” (speed and weight dependant of course) so if you were to run 5 miles a day thats 500 calories per day right?
You are probably thinking where the heck am I going with all this but bare with me. Now in no way am I discrediting these exercises or saying they are all lying, each one is great for burning calories and adding into your routine and achieve great results. However these are not the most effective ways to lose 5lbs of fat, are you ready to hear what the best thing to do to lose 5lbs of fat is? Drum roll please, its’s ……..……………. YOUR DIET!!! You can do all the exercises above till your blew in the face and a sweaty mess on the floor but if you are going home and eating too much food then you will not lose anything. Even if its too much of the right food, you could gain weight if you ate too much chicken and broccoli, it would be hard, but could still happen. The mistake people make is jumping into the exercise they’ve been told is the best way to burn calories and then preach it like its a cult and that it’s the only way to burn calories. No wonder why people get confused, they are told this is the best way to burn calories but are seeing no weight loss. They do the workouts religiously but still not a shift in weight, this then leads them to think they are incapable of losing weight and soon give up.
If you are looking to lose 5 lbs of fat then before you jump into the deep end and kill yourself with these workout look at your diet first. At the end of the day it is your bad eating habits that have led you to being over weight, not because you haven’t been doing someone’s HIIT class. You need to address the root of the problem first and establish better eating habits, you can lose weight simply from your eating. Lets skip 2 weeks ahead, now you have changed a couple of your bad eating habits lets get you healthy as well, lets aim for 10,000 steps per day and strength training 2-3 X per week. The more lean muscle you have the more calories you burn per day even at rest. Therefor either placing you into a greater calorie deficit to burn fat quicker or to allow you to have extra calories throughout the week where you can introduce a snack when you’ve been feeling hungry. If you can start the 10,000 steps and strength training from week one then do, but if you feel its too much of a big change to start then don’t. But the quicker you do introduce those two things the better.
Once you are feeling fitter and happier about your weight you can introduce the high calorie burning exercise’s into your routine. By no means are they a must though. As long as you adjust your calorie input vs output so you are in a deficit. Workout 2-3 X per week to maintain and build lean muscle and perform some form of cardio to increase your lung capacity and strengthen you heart then you are well on your way.
Weight loss doesn’t need to be hard yet so many people fall into the trap that you have to put yourself through these punishing workouts to get there. They also fall in to the trap that the best way to lose weight is what they over heard by someone in great shape. Exercise is not a one size fits all, find something you enjoy and stick at it, this will bring you better results than “the best workout” will.
Points to take away:
Find out how many calories you are burning (My Fitness Pal or the internet)
Strength train 2-3 X per week
Reach 10,000 steps a day
Then introduce high calorie burning workouts, if you want to
And remember I'm not saying your favourite type of exercise isn't great for achieving results, but they aren't great for everyone.
If you have any other questions you can contact me through my facebook page The Lemon Frog Fitness Company, my Instagram @lemon_frog_fitness or email louis@lemonfrogfitness.org.
Thanks for reading :)