Fad diets, fancy boutique fitness studios, "miracle" weight-loss shakes — embarking on weight-loss journey [1] can be overwhelming. So what's worth spending your hard-earned money on and what can you skip?
To shed fat, you just need to pay attention to what Eric Bowling, an NASM-certified personal trainer at Ultimate Performance [2] in Los Angeles, calls the five cornerstones of fat loss. Success doesn't require any pricey supplements or specific fitness gear or an all-organic-non-GMO-dairy-free-no-fun-no-smiles diet. If you boil it down to these five basics, with a little sweat, hard work, and consistency, you will see results.
Scroll ahead for Eric's weight-loss tips to shed body fat [3] and reach your goals.
Get Active Outside of the Gym
After a particularly tough sweat sesh at the gym, you probably feel particularly wiped and like your activity is done for the day. In reality, it's what you do outside of the gym that has the biggest impact on your fat-loss success.
"At Ultimate Performance, we encourage all of our clients to be more active outside the gym," Eric said. This means increasing your daily activity, or NEAT: nonexercise activity thermogenesis [5]. It refers to the activity you do each day outside of formal exercise. He encourages his clients to get in 10,000 steps per day minimum [6].
"This little addition will increase your daily activity and rapidly boost the total amount of calories burned throughout the day," he said. In fact, he added that NEAT is one of the most effective fat-loss tools that people overlook. And it doesn't just have to be walking; other NEAT activities include gardening, doing chores, and playing with your kids.
Weight Train Three Days a Week
When you do make it to the gym (and you should!), your focus should be on strength training. While cardio can help you burn calories and put you in an overall calorie deficit, strength training and lifting weights will help you lose weight long-term [7] because strength training helps you build muscle, and more muscle mass means your body burns more calories at rest [8].
Eric recommends his clients strength train three days a week starting out. You can increase that number as you progress and see results. But in order to build muscle and see improvements, you need to implement progressive overload [9], which he describes as "doing more than you did before."
"This can mean more reps, sets, weight, etc.," he explained. "It can also mean you rest less between sets, you improve the range of motion of each movement, or you have a better connection with the muscle than you did last session." Not only will this help you see progress, but it will also burn more calories during each session.
Add HIIT to Your Fitness Plan
Although you may not be focusing on cardio in your fat-loss fitness plan, you should still incorporate HIIT, which will get your heart rate up and help you torch calories. HIIT, which stands for high-intensity interval training [10], can help you get in an effective workout in a shorter amount of time. In HIIT, you do a period of all-out exercise followed by an even longer period of rest. You can do HIIT with bodyweight exercises [11], weightlifting moves [12], or cardio [13], such as sprinting on the treadmill [14].
Eric recommends people do HIIT one or two times a week to lose fat. HIIT can also help you achieve EPOC, or excess postexercise oxygen consumption [15], also known as the afterburn effect, during which your body keeps burning calories even after the workout.
To get started, check out some of our favourite HIIT workouts [16].
Eat in a Healthy Calorie Deficit
"The most important component for fat loss is being in a caloric deficit," Eric said. "Without a deficit in place, the other [fat-loss tips] will be rendered completely useless." He added that at the end of the day, calories count; in order to lose fat, you need to burn more calories than you consume.
To lose about a pound a week, you need to eat 500 fewer calories a day. Just make sure you don't eat fewer than 1,200 calories a day for women; eating too few calories will slow down your metabolism [17] (not to mention make you deprived of essential nutrients [18]!)
To find an approximate daily calorie target to lose weight, use this formula [19]. However, it's not just the quantity of calories that matter but also the quality. You need to focus on nutrient-dense foods that give you more bang for your buck. Think: leafy greens, nonstarchy vegetables, and fruit.
"The calorie deficit is the secret behind any diet. There's no inherent magic about a particular diet for fat loss, just the fact that it creates a negative energy balance," Eric explained. "The best diet is the one you can stick to longest and make the most sustained to get the results you want."
Get Enough Sleep
So we've covered diet and activity for fat loss, but what about your sleep hygiene — are you getting enough hours? Can you fall asleep OK? Not logging quality zzz's can seriously impede your results.
A lack of sleep could increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol [20]. "When you are sleep-deprived, and cortisol levels increase to keep the body running, you will likely experience fatigue, increased food cravings [21], mental fog, and lower 'real' energy," Eric explained. "All of these will impact your effectiveness in the gym and impair your adherence to an eating plan." Aim to get seven to nine hours of sleep [22] a night.