In Louisville, KY, people are searching for easy ways to burn fat and keep it off. It’s not just a local phenomenon, it occurs everywhere. Some quick fix programs help you lose weight, but the weight is often water weight that returns almost instantaneously. Other programs may help you lose fat, but those often involve restrictive diets that aren’t meant for long-term use. Again, the fat returns. There is one option that keeps fat from returning. It requires lifestyle changes that become habits that are hard to break.
Start by moving more.
Consistently burning calories means being more active regularly, including an exercise program. Exercise does more than just burn extra calories. It builds muscle tissue. If your body has more muscle tissue, you’ll burn more calories. Why? There are two reasons. First, muscle tissue requires more calories for maintenance than fat tissue does. The more you have, the higher your metabolism 24/7. A second reason is that exercise releases irisin. The body has both brown fat and white fat. Brown fat mitochondria burn more calories. The lumpy, hard-to-lose white fat insulates the body. The irisin exercise releases white fat into brown fat, which increases calorie-burning by 20%. The more you exercise, the more calorie-burning brown fat you develop.
The key to fat loss is your diet.
No matter how much you exercise, you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. It doesn’t matter if you run marathons or workout at the gym, if you’re consuming an unending amount of unhealthy, high-calorie foods, you’ll gain weight in the form of fat. Fat is the way the body stores excess calories. Your body needs micronutrients like vitamins and minerals, phytonutrients like anthocyanin, and macronutrients, which include protein, fat, and healthy carbohydrates.
You need other factors for a healthy lifestyle to make keeping fat off easier.
If you dehydrate or lack sleep, you’ll lose energy and be less active. That can cause a drop in the calories you burn, plus put stress on your overall health. Lack of sleep also causes the body to produce more ghrelin, the hunger hormone, and less leptin, the hormone that makes you feel full. That makes it difficult to resist temptation, plus causes you to crave sweets to get the burst of energy it provides. Food high in sugar causes blood glucose levels to rise quickly. Just as quickly as it rises, it drops dramatically, making you crave more sugar. It becomes a cycle of destruction.
- Eliminate food with added sugar. The high glucose level caused by increasing sugar in the diet also causes a high insulin level and inflammation. Both can cause an increase in fat, particularly around the midsection.
- Just working out may not be enough. An active lifestyle outside the gym helps. People sitting at a desk all day need to take five minutes every hour to get up and move to preserve the benefits of regular exercise.
- Learn portion control. Healthy eating doesn’t mean giving up everything you love. You can still eat your favorite food, but not as often, and with portion control in mind.
- Living healthy also means getting adequate sunshine. Sunshine provides you with vitamin D. More recent studies show that a higher percentage of obese people have a vitamin D deficiency.
For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training