Learn How To lose Fat The Healthy Way
When we decide that it’s time to lose some excess fat, it’s usually driven by a goal to look or feel a certain way by a certain time. It may be that you have an event coming up that you want to look smoking hot in a dress and heels, or maybe you have just made yourself a deadline because you work better under pressure. Whatever the reason is, a fitness goal becomes our priority and our main focus for the time we give ourselves to reach that goal. But it’s during this time that we can become so obsessed over getting that result that we neglect our health and well being.
The two main components to burning fat are DIET and EXERCISE
To lose excess fat we need to have some sort of calorie deficit so our bodies can turn to burning fat for fuel, rather than just the food we eat. The food we eat must be healthy and nutritious for our body to get what it needs to replenish and rebuild muscles. And to kick-start the fat burn, a regular exercise regime is great to tone and increase muscle strength and endurance.
The problem?
When we take either of these components too far, by either not eating enough or exercising too much, we put our body under stress and can actually have an adverse effect on your health.
Here are my three rules to losing weight the healthy way:
1. Fuel your body with enough food
Make sure you don’t cut your calories so much that you are depriving your body of what it needs to function properly. Sure, its great to reduce the amount of dense calorie foods if you want to lose body fat. But don’t starve yourself! You still need to be eating enough to provide your body with the essential nutrients it needs to do necessary things like cell repairing, building lean muscle, and fueling you through workouts and daily activities. When you don’t fuel your body with enough food, you will end up feeling tired with low energy and no drive to continue towards your fitness goal!
2. Take rest days and recover
During a regular exercise regime, it is so important to give your body the rest it needs by using active recovery techniques and complete rest days. Don’t be tempted to workout too much and skip the rest just because you want to reach your goal faster. If your goal is to reduce the size of your waist, don’t do day after day of ab and core work. Instead, use active recovery and walk/jog on days in between targeted workouts. And remember to set aside one day a week to give your body a rest and recover from the week's workouts.
3. Get quality sleep
You might not need to be told to go to bed, as you should be tired out from all the exercise you’re doing! Getting a good night sleep is so important for our muscles to repair and rebuild from the exercise and activities they’ve done that day. The body uses the time we are asleep to do so much work, just like we use the day to work on our bodies! Allow a good 7-10 hours sleep each night so you get the most out of both the night and the following day.
