Jan 12 2010
Weight Loss Secret: How To Lose That Body Fat
Guest author and fitness expert, Kathy Ekdahl shares her secrets to loosing that extra weight.
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What is the most effective way to lose body fat?
Losing body fat is different than just “losing weight.” So, your question is a good one. Losing weight is easier…. Just go on a crash diet, lose lots of water and muscle tissue (up to 30% of your weight loss) as well as a little fat, and you’ll weigh less. But it won’t last- your crash diet lowered your metabolism by wasting muscle tissue, so now you gain weight back faster. Diet alone never results in permanent weight loss.
Instead, losing body fat means doing everything nutritionally and exercise wise to promote or maintain muscle tissue while losing body fat. This means you can not go too low in calories, or you will cannibalize muscle, and you must exercise hard to elevate your metabolism and stimulate muscle tissue growth.
As far as exercise, years ago, most fitness experts felt that cardiovascular training was the best way to lose body fat, but, recent research has highlighted the importance of hard strength training and high intensity aerobic work in body fat loss. By hard strength training, I mean multi muscle group exercises that produce muscle exhaustion. What you do, and how you do it, depends on your baseline fitness level, but whole body strength training 2-3 times a week is suggested. As far as cardio, steady state cardio (like walking or jogging) does not produce the same metabolic increase that intervals of high intensity cardio do. SO- add some intervals of hard cardio 2x a week, and you’ll really start to burn fat.
Finally, as I mentioned above, healthy nutrition is the key to success. This is where most people really have a hard time. Many people need to dramatically change their diets, but most are unaware of what they eat and when, so food logs are an absolute. You must have adequate- but not too much- caloric intake and you must eat with regular frequency, never going too long between meals. Under eating during the day only leads to over eating at night, so skipping meals makes no sense. I believe that reducing processed foods, high fat foods, and refined and “starchy” carbohydrates can dramatically improve your health. Instead of these foods, add more lean protein, vegetables, healthy fats and fruits, and you will lose body fat. Eat whole, from the earth, unprocessed foods, and you can’t go wrong!
Kathy Ekdahl, ACE cPT, CSCS, is a nationally certified personal trainer and strength and conditioning coach, who lives in Hudson, Mass. Kathy has worked for over 20 years in the fitness industry, and is the coach of the Hudson High School Women’s Varsity Lacrosse and Field Hockey teams. She will be answering your fitness questions each week in this column, and welcomes your questions. To send a question, email Kathy at: kathy@personalbestpersonaltraining.com.
