5 Most Effective Tips to Burn Fat (All-Natural Solutions)
What if I told you losing weight is much simpler than you may think?
How complicated and cumbersome does it seem to lose weight? Think about it. Every time you go online you find some sort of “new hack” or some “secret” that you’ve been missing this whole time! You hear people say things like eating cage-free eggs, taking a shot of apple-cider vinegar in the morning, or, my personal favorite, going on fad diets.
If I have to hear one more time about someone going on the keto-diet and loving it I’ll pull my hair out.
They love it, because you lose weight so fast! But only at the beginning. This is due primarily to a loss in water-retention when you go on it; not fat loss.
In truth, about 80% of people who do the keto diet are likely to recommend it. If it works for you, that’s great; keep on doing what you’re doing. But in my experience with family and friends who have tried it, as well as clients when I was their personal trainer, it’s not sustainable long-term. Due to the extreme restrictions on carbohydrates, some may be able to do it for the short-term, but long-term is very unlikely. But this is just my opinion.
But I digress… Like I said, weight loss is actually very simple when you think about it, and you don’t need “hacks”, “secrets”, or any “fad diets” to achieve the life and look you want; you just need education and a plan.
In order to understand how to lose weight, we need to know why our body stores fat in the first place.
What is Fat?
The fat we generally talk about getting rid of is the bodyfat we don’t want; most commonly this is in the stomach region, but it can be anywhere, such as face, thighs, glutes, etc. When we talk about body fat, the medical term for it is Adipose Tissue.
Although we may not like having body fat, our body does it for our protection. While it’s not needed in modern-day society, it was needed back then. Thousands of years ago, when food was more scare and not so processed, we needed to preserve as much energy as possible in order to keep us alive. Therefore, any extra energy that was consumed that we didn’t need immediately would be turned into Adipose Tissue for later use.
In one pound of fat, there are 3500 calories.
Okay… sooooo what does that mean for us?
Let’s say you want to lose weight, and you decide to go into a caloric deficit of 500 calories per day (more on this is discussed in Tip #1). That means that per day, you are depriving yourself of 500 calories; if you’re depriving yourself of it, that means your body has to get that 500 calories from somewhere - that somewhere is your fat.
If there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat, and you’re in a deficit of 500 calories, that means in one week, you will burn a pound of fat! Hooray!
Unfortunately, we live in modern times and don’t need to store fat like we used to…
Although that’s the main function of it, according to Cleveland Clinic, her are a few additional things it aids in:
Insulation from cold and heat.
Maintaining energy balance.
Regulating glucose and cholesterol.
Metabolizing sex hormones.
Like what was said before, the main purpose of fat is to store excess energy for later use. This detail is very important for us.
Calories ARE Energy.
When we talk about energy, think of calories. In the simplest way, fat is the stored version of calories. Like we said earlier, energy (calories) is stored for later use.
Therefore, in order for us to reduce the amount of fat we have, we need look at the calories.
We can do one of three things to therefore reduce fat: reduce the calories we consume, increase the calories we burn, or both. If we do one of these our fat will decrease.
At the heart of it all, that’s what weight loss comes down to: Calories In, Calories Out. Calories in are the calories we consume (through drinks, food, etc.), and calories out are how we burn those calories (breathing, movement, bodily functions, exercise, etc.).
If we base our health-choices around this fundamental principle, that’s how we lose weight.
If you do these 5 tips, I PROMISE you will lose weight.
It’s not a question of IF; you will lose weight if you follow these five tips. No more fad diets, no more hacks. Read on to learn more.
1. Reduce The Calories You Consume
If you have to pick one thing to from these five tips, this is EASILY the most effective.
Fat is the stored version of calories; therefore, if we reduce the calories, we reduce the fat!
If you do this, make sure to do it in a safe manner; anything extreme may be harmful or dangerous. Follow these four simple steps to make sure you do it safely.
Step 1: Calculate Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR).
Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the number of calories your body burns while performing life-sustaining function. In other words, it’s the energy your body needs to do the bare minimum, such as breathing, digestion, organ function, etc.
There are formulas you can use to calculate this… but if you’re a sane person you probably don’t like math. That’s why I’m attaching a calculator to calculate your BMR!
Click here to use the BMR Calculator
Step 2: Calculate Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE)
STAY WITH ME! If you don’t know what this is I promise it’s a lot simpler than it seems.
Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is how many calories your body uses per day to sustain your current weight. That’s it!
If you take your BMR, and then add to it the amount of physical activity you get on average per day (e.g. walking around at work, going to the gym, etc.), that adds up to be your TDEE.
Click here to use the TDEE Calculator
Step 3: Adjust Your Calories For Weight Loss
We need to reduce our calories so we’re in a caloric deficit.
Now that you have your TDEE, depending on how quickly you want to lose weight loss, subtract 250 to 750 calories from your TDEE. This will be the TDEE you want to aim for.
Let’s use an example! Let’s say your current TDEE is 2000 calories. You’re looking to lose weight, so you decide to reduce it by 500 calories. Therefore, the new TDEE you’ll aim for is 1500 calories; meaning every day, you’ll consume no more than 1500 calories.
Step 4: Check to Make Sure the New TDEE Isn’t Below Your BMR
This is more of a caution than a step… but it’s important.
You remember how the first thing you did was to calculate your BMR? We want to make sure that the new TDEE we calculated is not lower than the BMR. Here’s the main reasons why:
Health Complications - Having too low of a calorie goal can limit the nutrients you need, such as proteins, fats, micronutrients, etc. To stay healthy and live long, we generally don’t want to be below our BMR.
Slowing of Metabolism - When you think of “Metabolism”, just think of the energy your body needs to function. If our body needs a certain level of energy to survive, if we go BELOW that amount, it will respond by reducing that energy level. It can do this by reducing muscle mass, lowering energy levels, etc. If this happens, it will feel much harder to lose weight due to your calories naturally being burned being reduced. In short, we don’t want our metabolism slowed down.
Just make sure your new TDEE isn’t less than your BMR. If it isn’t, then you’re good to go! If it is, then increase your new TDEE to be more than your BRM.
2. Get Movement In
Desk jobs and fat-gain go hand-in-hand. As we’ve said, calories are energy. And any movement we do with our bodies, even something as trivial as fidgeting with our hands, burns calories.
It’s great if you have a job with lots of movement and physical activity, but for those that don’t, it can make it challenging.
The more movement we do, the more calories we burn; the more calories we burn, the less fat we have.
So, how do we get more movement in?
The tried and true way I always recommend is walking: low-impact, enjoyable, therapeutic, and not difficult at all.
For health benefits alone, walking can play a significant role in reducing chronic health conditions. It’s been found that taking more than 2500 steps can significantly reduce your risk of dying; furthermore, people who take 8000 steps per day are 50% less likely to die than those that take 4000 steps.
To effectively decrease risk from health complications, here’s recommended daily steps:
Adults 60 and older: Risk reduction increases until 6,000 to 8,000 steps.
Adults younger than 60: The benefit plateaus after 8,000 to 10,000 steps.
Walking, however, is not the “end-all-be-all.”
It’s not the most effective form of cardio, but it’s a good starting point. Make sure you’re tracking how many calories you’re burning with walking, keeping a good pace, and consistently getting steps in. According to Healthline, if you walk consistently at 2.5mph, on average, you will burn 210 to 300 calories.
My personal favorite form of burning calories is walking on an incline; the tried and true method for professional bodybuilders. It’s consistent, low-impact, and it’s a calorie torcher; you can increase your calories burned by as much as 60%.
Here’s my biggest takeaway when it comes to movement:
Make sure you enjoy it. Remember: if you don’t enjoy it, how do you expect yourself to stick with it?
You can do whatever form of cardio you want - HIIT workouts, elliptical, Stairmaster, running in circles like a madman around your backyard - as long as you enjoy it and can stay consistent with it, that’s the form you should do.
3. Increase Protein Intake
There are three macronutrients: Protein, Carbohydrates, and Fat. In all my experience with coaching, there’s one of these people don’t consume enough of? Can you guess what it is?
According to a study done by Christopher A. Taylor, Ph.D - professor at Ohio State University in Columbus - up to 46 percent of the oldest participants in the study did not consume enough protein on a regular basis.
Not even considering weight loss, protein offers a myriad of health benefits. According to Harvard Health Publishing: We need it to build and repair cells, and make healthy muscles, organs, glands, and skin.
When it comes to weight-loss, here are the three primary ways it aids in this department:
Takes more energy to digest - Due to the structure and biology of protein, it requires your body more energy to digest than the other macronutrients; if more energy is used in digestion, that means less energy to be stored as fat.
Gives your body a feeling of satiety - You feel more full after eating protein than any of the other macronutrients. From PubMed, “…higher protein preloads increase fullness ratings more than lower protein preloads under tightly defined conditions.”
Promote muscle growth (if paired with resistance training) - Protein aids in the rebuilding of muscle fibers within the body after resistance training; if you don’t consume enough protein, you can’t fully repair these muscles. More detail on this is given in Tip #4.
How much protein should you consume?
A rule of thumb is to calculate how many grams of protein per pound of your current bodyweight you need to consume. For example, if I’m looking to consume 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight, and I weight 200lbs, I would consume 200g of protein per day.
Less active individuals need less protein; more active individuals need more protein in order to properly repair muscle fibers post-workout.
Use these guidelines below to determine how many grams of protein per day are good for you.
Less active individuals - Aim for 0.54g/lb to 0.7g/lb of protein.
More active individuals - Aim for 0.7g/lb to 1g/lb of protein.
According to Harvard Health Publishing, here are a few examples of good sources of protein, and how much protein is in each one:
3.5 ounces lean chicken (31 grams)
3.5 ounces salmon (24 grams)
1 cup cooked beans (about 18 grams)
6 ounces plain yogurt (17 grams)
1 cup skim milk (9 grams)
¼ cup nuts (7 grams)
1 egg (6 grams)
4. Increase Muscle Mass
I’ve seen it time and time again where people are so focused on cardio for weight loss that they forget about resistance training!
It’s absolutely important and effective for fat loss.
It takes your body energy to maintain muscle mass; therefore, the more muscle mass you have, the less energy there is to go into storing fat. The beauty of this is even if you’re sitting a doing nothing, you will be burning calories naturally.
According to Stronger By Science, when you’re not working out, your body burns about 9 to 10 calories per pound of muscle, meaning if you have 10lbs of muscle, you will be burning 90 to 100 calories extra. During and after working out, it burns even more.
So in order to stimulate muscle growth, you need primarily two ingredients: protein, and the stimulus, which is resistance training.
What is Resistance Training?
Here’s the way I like to explain it: Cardiovascular training works out your heart and lungs, and resistance training works out your other muscles.
Anything that strains and damages your muscles is resistance training. This could be many things, such as squats, bench press, push ups, sit ups, kick boxing, lifting a bunch of heavy boxes, bicep curls, etc. Anything that strains and damages your muscle is resistance training.
After you resistance train, your muscles are damaged and need to repair themselves; to do that, they need a sufficient amount of protein (this was discussed in Tip #3)
5. Improve Sleep
How many times have you thought about your sleep and been like, “Yeah… I should probably work on that”? Most people do, and if you’re not one of those, then you’re lucky.
Not only does sleep affect our overall wellbeing and quality of life, but it can have an impact on our fat retention. According to UCLA Health, not getting enough sleep is linked to higher rates of obesity.
Lacking Sleep Affects Weight Retention Physiologically and Psychologically.
Let’s start with physiological.
Lack of sleep affects your hormones, primarily Cortisol, Leptin, and Ghrelin.
Cortisol is your body’s main stress hormone; it works with certain parts of your brain to control your mood, motivation, and fear. When you lack sleep, your body responds by elevating your Cortisol levels, and one of the side effects of this is fat retention. Even if you’re just feeling stressed for prolonged periods, this can elevate your Cortisol, leading to weight-gain.
Leptin and Ghrelin go hand in hand. According to UCLA Health, “Leptin is often called the “satiety hormone” because it’s the one that signals your body to feel full after a meal. Ghrelin has the opposite effect. It stimulates your appetite and makes you feel hungry.”
In short… Leptin makes you feel full, and Ghrelin makes you feel hungry. If you ever get a feeling a fullness or hunger, it’s your body releasing these hormones. When you lack sleep, your Leptin levels are raised and your Ghrelin levels are lowered.
You feel fuller less often, and hungrier more often.
Let’s move onto the psychological.
Your overall decision making and mental clarity is dampened when you don’t get enough sleep.
According to WebMD, here’s a list of several side effects of sleep deprivation that can indirectly lead to weight-gain:
Dulls activity in the brain’s frontal lobe, leading to poorer decision making.
Your brain’s reward center is revved up more than usual, meaning you’ll naturally seek out more rewarding - generally unhealthier - foods.
More likely to snack, primarily snacks higher in carbohydrates and fats.
More likely to eat bigger portions of food.
Every one of these correlates directly to consuming more calories.
So how much sleep should you get?
For the average person, it’s recommended that you aim for 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. When you’re younger, you need more sleep, as you age and get older, this amount reduces.
The most important tip you’ll ever hear for improving sleep:
This is something I will ALWAYS preach, and I’ll be preaching it ‘till I go to the grave: sleep QUALITY is more important than sleep QUANTITY.
You always hear people talking about how much sleep they get, and you always hear that magic number of 8 hours of sleep per night, but you never hear about a certain quality of sleep.
Your quality of sleep will trump the number of hours of sleep you get. Period. When we sleep, we have cycles that we go through, and one stage of this cycle is REM sleep, which is the most important stage. According to Harvard Health Publishing, the benefits of REM sleep include:
Improved learning
Mood regulation
Brain development
Protection against dementia
When we determine how much sleep to get, we should really be talking about how much REM Sleep to get. The lower quality our sleep is, the less REM Sleep we’ll get.
How do we improve our sleep quality?
In order to improve sleep quality, here are some steps you can take (the first one being the most effective in my opinion):
To go bed at a consistent time every night, no more than a 2-hour difference per night.
Staying active (cardiovascular and resistance training exercise).
Avoid consuming alcohol at least a few hours before bedtime.
Avoid consuming caffeine at least 8 hours before bed.
Avoid looking at anything that produces blue light at least 2 hours before bed.
Avoid eating heavy meals right before bed.
Try to relax! Take a hot shower, do some stretching, have a warm cup of decaffeinated tea, read a book.
In Summary
Burning fat may SEEM complicated, but in reality it’s not. When you understand the principle of trying to reduce calories that are consumed, and raise calories that are burned, you’re on the right path to success.
In summary, the five tips to effectively burn stubborn fat are:
Reduce the Calories You Consume
Get Movement In
Increase Protein Intake
Increase Muscle Mass
Improve Sleep
You’ve got this! Take it one step, one day, at a time. Whether you feel like you need to work on one of these points, or you feel like you need to work on all five, the key is taking it one step at a time and being kind to yourself. We’re all human, and change is hard. But possible.