Fat loss; If you’re having problems with it, this post might help…
I have a little project for you to help you hit the ground running for New Years. I want you to start now…. As in right now – right this very minute.
And what I want you to do is a little thought experiment.
I want you to STOP thinking about exercise as a way to burn calories and lose fat.
Stop it. In fact, I want you to pretend that it’s not even possible, that somehow workouts don’t burn any calories at all.
(I’m not saying that it’s actually impossible, I just want you to THINK that it is)
I also want you to stop thinking about ways to build muscle with your diet.
STOP!
Obviously you do need food to build muscle, but for this experiment let’s stop thinking of magic combinations or timings, or reasons to massively overeat…
Instead I want you to embrace the Eat Stop Eat approach and think of your workouts as a way to build or maintain your muscle, and think of your diet as how you lose body fat and maintain low (but healthy) levels of body fat.
That’s it.
No cross over. Because from my experience that’s when the trouble sets in. Mindlessly killing yourself in the gym to burn fat, then purposefully overeating to ‘feed the machine’. This becomes a viscous cycle of doing a LOT of HARD work, but never really accomplishing anything.
If you settle down a little bit, and keep your mind set on building muscle in your workouts and losing fat through your diet everything stays optimized.
You don’t start confusing your goals. You don’t do hours of super strenuous workouts to burn fat, only to come home and overeat in the name of ‘building muscle’. You can also approach your workouts with a purpose – it gives you a bit more clarity when you are deciding what to do in the gym, or even maybe if it’s time to simply leave the gym and go home (you’ve done enough) rather than doing an extra 45 minutes on the elliptical machine.
So try this experiment, rethink workouts and rethink diet… It may just help you hit the ground running in January.
Shift your focus and divide and conquer.
Workouts = Muscle
Diet = Fat loss.
Give it a try…I find it simplifies everything and provides a lot of clarity – helping to define exactly why we do what we do.
Four Three and a half weeks is more than enough time to make a big difference.
BP
