Reviewed by: Tim Pittorino, BHSC
You’ve worked hard on your gains, but there’s that little bit of body fat to go. Here’s where the temptation to literally work your butt and curves OFFÂ can creep in.
Let’s be smart about sculpting your body and maintaining the goods, while melting the jiggly bits to reveal it’s glory!
Weight Training:
This is such a fantastic way to not only preserve your shape while you are working on reducing your body fat percentage, but it can actually enhance how great your structure is by boosting your shape with definition.
Essential Fats:
Making sure that your approach to your nutrition is inclusive of healthy/essential fats is at the forefront of successful body fat loss.
This aids vital processes in the body to occur ANDÂ has these fats as a source of fuel for your body to use. This helps to prevent the breakdown of muscle while you are working on reducing body fat.
Protein:
Protein forms the binding blocks of muscle growth, repair and recovery. Therefore, ensuring that you are getting enough is imperative to sustaining those lovely curves. Protein is key in maintaining your lean mass.
Consistent Calorie Levels:
A common trap amongst people ‘leaning out’ is going too far under in their total calorie intake for the day.
Being in a huge deficit vs a structured and sensible method can be detrimental to your muscle maintenance, as your body may need to tap into this tissue for fuel if there is not enough coming from food.
Drop Cardio Neurosis:
Contrary to what you may think is the most effective way to lose fat, NOT performing a thousand hours of cardio per week is often a better strategy for this goal.
It’s important to know your body type if cardio is your jam, as, if you’re the type of person that struggles to hold on to muscle, it’s likely that lengthy or frequent sessions of cardio can tap into your muscle stores to fuel these workouts.
Be Patient:
The journey to revealing your muscle definition takes time and patience. Going too hard with your exercise can be a contradictory and frustrating practice and the vicious cycle of building muscle, to burning it just as quickly is a common trap.
It’s important to allow the time for you body to do it’s thing and this means, cooperating with it… not confusing it with mixed messages.
Keeping Track:
Tracking your activity and your calories is a good preventative method for the purpose of not under eating/over training. This helps to base line your foundation and can serve as a great benchmark to achieve daily levels.
Recording girth measurements and body fat percentage at intervals is a good way to monitor progress.
Use NSVs:
In contrast to what many people use to measure their progress for fat loss, weighing yourself on a set of scales can be a super discouraging and unreliable marker.
How ‘heavy’ you are on the scales does not represent your body’s composition, so it’s not necessarily helpful to have a reduction of this number, if your goal is for true body fat loss.
Using non scale victories to log your improvements can open up so many ways to celebrate achievements!
Measurements, how your clothes fit, energy levels, strength and moods are among a few.
Stay strong – not skinny!
Also Read: Why Running on a Treadmill can feel like Forever
