If you want to lose fat fast, then you’ll enjoy this post.

I’m a staunch believer in quickly getting in shape. What’s the point of doing things slowly when you can do them faster?

Before I go any further I want to make a plea: please, please stay away from any “magic” pills and potions. Those things don’t work. I’ve been where you are: I remember seeing an ad about a pill that magnetically attracted fat and flushed it out of your system, not allowing your body to store it. Now I realize how hilarious that sounds, but at the time it sounded quite probable to me, and I would’ve given it a try had my husband and friends not stopped. My thinking at that time was, “what’s the harm in trying?” but when I went and did some research I found out that there is, in fact, a lot of harm in trying diet pills – from nausea to serious illnesses to embarrassing problems like, er, extreme forms of incontinence.

I know there are many products out there that promise crazy, revolutionarily fast fat loss – like, “lose 10 pounds in 3 days”. Please believe me when I say that it doesn’t happen like that! If you do manage to lose weight that fast, it’ll be mostly water weight. I’ve found that taking a sensible approach works best, and in fact will burn a lot of fat quite quickly.

If you’re interested in getting rid of the fat quickly, then you’ll need to know:

 

What Burns Fat?

Your body burns fat when it gets less calories than it needs. This is the core of burning fat – use more calories, eat less calories. Of course, there are some other things you need to keep in mind, and there are some details to this basic trick of burning fat and some tips to make all this easier…

 

Problem 1: Starvation Mode

If you keep eating less calories than you need on a regular basis, your body goes down into starvation mode aka lockdown (a term I just completely made up). This is where your body stops burning fat because it thinks you’re starving.

The root of this problem is eating too little. That’s why you’ll see some overweight people who don’t eat (and who don’t exercise enough – another problem I’ll get to) and who just can’t lose weight. All that eating like a bird is for nothing!

 

Problem 2: Fat Cell Shrinkage vs Burning Off The Fat

The first time I went on a really strict diet, a friend of mine who’s a doctor told me that dieting will only shrink your fat cells. That’s why, when you go off the diet, the fat comes back again so easily.

In order to really burn off the fat, you need to exercise - exercise zaps away the fat. Of course, if you combine diet with exercise, then burning off those pesky fat cells is even easier, since your fat cells have shrunk due to your diet. This is why the combination of exercise with diet is so killer

 

A Diet For Burning Fat Quickly

I love the saying, “great abs are made in the kitchen”. This sums up the core of my philosophy – you won’t get anywhere unless you have the right diet.

I’ve tried. My first thought when I wanted to lose the fat was, “I don’t want to give up my favorite foods” and I tried exercising instead. Unfortunately that didn’t work at all. Because I wasn’t watching what I ate, and the (wrong kind of) exercise made me hungry, I never lost any weight.

The right diet doesn’t mean cutting out your favorite foods. Infact, I feel like I eat much better now than I did before I went on my healthy diet. It’s true, my tastes have changed a bit, and I’ve gone from being a “gourmand” to being a “gourmet” but I still get to pig out on massive, oily burger and fries if I want to

 

Counting Calories For Fat Loss

The first step to being on a good diet is to count the number of calories you’re eating. Ideally, you should be eating fewer calories than you need, even before exercise (and I’m sure I’m not the only one who occasionally skips the exercise!). The thing to remember though is that you’re aiming for a weekly caloric deficit and not a daily caloric deficit. That means that you can eat too much one day but it doesn’t affect your weight loss and fat burning goals!

 

A Healthy Diet For Burning The Fat

Some people think that “a calorie is just a calorie” and would be happy to eat 1000 calories of cake during the entire day.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way our bodies work.

Sure, you could consume all of your calories in the form of unhealthy foods, but that won’t really help you burn off the fat and get in shape.

Have you ever known anyone who’s stuck to a diet of 1000 calories from cake or other unhealthy foods? I’m sure the answer is no.

Here’s why it doesn’t work: unhealthy foods don’t make you feel full. An hour or two after eating that cake you’ll be hungry. A little later you’ll be super-duper hungry… and you’ll go ahead and have a meal. That’s why things like weight loss shakes don’t work for most people – you can replace one or two meals with those shakes, but you can’t replace all your foods. Doing so just leaves you feeling deprived. I tried some weight loss shakes once, but it didn’t really work for me – I went ahead and ate my “real” lunch soon after drinking my “meal replacement”. I’ve heard of some people who can make this work, though.

Anyway – back to the issue at hand. Eating only some unhealthy food for all your caloric requirements is also disastrous for your health. Even if you have supplements and multivitamins, it won’t take long for your body’s defence mechanism to wear out and you to fall sick – which means you’ll then have to eat more to recover your health – which means you’ll be putting back all that weight.

So in short, try to eat healthy. You can have treats and unhealthy foods, I promise! Just hear me out…

 

A Quick Guide To Healthy Eating For Fat Loss

Ok, so now that we’ve determined you want to eat healthy, you need to set a daily caloric goal for the food you want to eat. You can calculate how many calories you need to eat from this post (you may have to scroll down a bit).

For the first week or so, you’ll want to measure out your foods and be serious about calculating the calories you’re eating. I know it sounds boring and it is, but you need to know the exact-ish number of calories – there’s no point eating what you think is 100 calories if it turns out to be 500. And yes, that’s more common than you’d think. Once you’ve got a good idea of how many calories are in your food, you can just guesstimate going forward – especially if you tend to have the same foods on most days.

To decide what to eat, think about what foods you like to eat. You should try include fruits and veggies, and some kind of protein. Fruits and vegetables are almost always a healthy choice and I like to have fruits to satisfy my sweet tooth without blowing my diet. Most days I will have a serve or two of vegetables at lunch and dinner, an apple as a snack, and some fruit as dessert.

When you’re choosing protein, try to go for leaner cuts, and if you have chicken, make sure it’s skinless – the skin is mostly fat. Beans and legumes are also a good, healthy source of protein.

Here’s what a typical day’s meals look like for me:

Breakfast – rolled oats (no milk, softened with water) with cinnamon and raisins – sometimes with a bit of protein powder if I won’t eat much protein during the day

Snack – apple, maybe some peanuts

Lunch – vegetable soup or 1 slice wholemeal toast with lite olive oil spread or avocado, and a bit of cheese to satisfy my cheese-love

Snack - 10 peanuts or a few pieces of grilled/roasted veggies like broccoli, capsicum, onions, etc; most days I’ll also have a small square of dark chocolate

Dinner – pasta/rice, normally with some cooked vegetables and egg/meat/fish lentils; dessert is seasonal “fancy fruit” like berries, melons, mangoes, etc or a bit of low-fat/natural yogurt.

The diet might sound boring to you, but it’s perfect for me because I love all the food I eat. Yes, even the oats!

The trick to creating a healthy diet that you love is to think about what you love, not what you “think” you should love (I’m thinking of the “typical diet meal” aka salads here…)

I recommend reading the Anything Goes Diet to learn more about how to create a healthy “diet” for yourself. The creator of the diet lost weight while eating a donut for breakfast everyday – not something I’d recommend, but it’s all about what’s important to you, and Anything Goes helps you have those yummy foods while losing weight.

 

Intermittent Fasting For Weight Loss

Please don’t let the word “fasting” put you off – this is a very healthy method, as backed by many scientific studies. Most importantly, it’s super-effective! This is the fastest way to lose weight in my opinion. I follow the Eat Stop Eat method of doing intermittent fasting, and I credit Eat Stop Eat for my quick success.

Basically, with this method, you don’t eat from after dinner one day, to before dinner the next; you can have sugar-free drinks such as water and black tea/coffee though.

Doing this leads to a weekly calorie deficit, and not eating all day means you have a huge deficit. Plus, not eating at all makes it easier to stay on track – there’s absolutely no possibility of overeating accidentally, measuring your calories wrong, going for one chocolate and eating ten by mistake (surely I’m not the only one who does that!), etc.

And of course, all this eating healthy and doing intermittent fasting is made easy by…

 

Overeating – The Fat Loss Secret

Yes, overeating has been one of the keys to my (and many other peoples’) success when it comes to losing the fat.

As I explained in the beginning, if you eat too little, your body stops burning fat because it thinks you’re about to starve. Give your body the message that you’re getting heaps of fatty food by taking one day in the week to indulge yourself on all your food fantasies – burgers, cake, donuts, icecream, whatever your tastes run to.

Known as a “cheat day”, this day is important for two crucial reasons. First, by gorging yourself on the foods you don’t normally eat, you raise your leptin levels, which actually helps you burn fat faster!

Second, one cheat day a week helps you to stay on course with your diet. We’re only human after all, and there’s a limit to how often you can say, “No thanks, I don’t want any cake”. During the week, you can always look forward to the cheat day, and you’ve got the knowledge that you’re not saying “no” to the cake (or whatever) for good, it’s just till Saturday or whenever your next cheat day is.

I often eat myself till I feel sick on cheat days, which means that for the next few days I’m thankful to not be eating much. Somehow cheat days have weaned me off some of my bad habits – about three months ago I had a mega burger and fries, and since then, just the thought of fast-food burgers makes me quite sick. I followed up the burger with some party food and got slightly sick – say what you will about psychological conditioning, but I don’t think I’ll be able to face a burger for at least another three months. Which I guess is a good thing!

I learnt about cheat days and their benefits from Cheat Your Way Thin – an entire diet revolving around cheating While I don’t strictly follow the diet myself (I prefer my combo of Eat Stop Eat and Anything Goes) it’s worked very well for many people and is a diet I can recommend if you’re able to be disciplined (which I’m often not) at least for a few weeks.

 

Exercise: A Crucial Piece of the Puzzle

Exercise and diet are both needed to burn off fat completely.

Without exercise, you’ll just gain back all your weight once you go off the diet.

You don’t have to spend hours in the gym either. I tried many exercise programs unsuccessfully before I stumbled on Turbulence Training by Craig Ballantyne. Craig is all about efficient workouts, and I appreciate that he’s made an effort to create quick, successful workouts. Turbulence Training revolves around weight training coupled with High Intensity Interval Training aka HIIT. This is the best and most efficient workout for someone wanting to burn fat. Once I got very close to my target weight, I switched over to Visual Impact, which has slightly longer workouts but focuses more on creating a shapely, toned body. The woman’s workout focuses on not bulking up with muscle and instead creating a slim physique, while the men’s workout focuses on creating an attractive, muscular physique.

If you’re serious about losing fat quickly, then I recommend you add some steady-state cardio to your workouts.

Good choices for cardio include swimming and spinning. Of course, I recommend you pick some kind of cardio you like doing, and for me that’s Zumba and other dance workouts. If you like running, then running can also be a good choice. I also enjoy going for long walks with the hubby or my best friend, and tend to go on one or two each week.

This has already gotten to be a fairly long post, so I won’t talk too much about exercise here – you can read my post on the best exercise for weight loss if you want more deets.

 

In Conclusion…

Ok, I’ve rambled a lot, and I’ll let you take over now If you have any questions, suggestions or comments, please go ahead and post – I love hearing from my readers!

 

 

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