Burning Fat

Last week I discussed the importance of body composition and that maintaining adequate muscle over fat is considered to be the most important factor in longevity and aging gracefully.  This week I happened to find an article that discussed the two most important methods of improving this body composition by reducing fat.  Obviously, these methods are diet and exercise, but this particular article included some specific strategies and associated science to get the best results.

Regarding exercise, when it comes to improving your fat-to-muscle ratio, all the research agrees that high intensity interval training (HIIT) is the optimal method.  As I’ve written in the past, HIIT involves warming up for two minutes followed by increasing and decreasing your workout intensity to raise and lower your heart rate for 16 more minutes and finishing with a two minute cool down.  You can do this when you run, swim, bike, or any other kind of cardiovascular workout.  The reason HIIT delivers such impressive fat-burning results is because there are several benefits to raising and lowering the heart rate repeatedly.  First, this workout burns more calories during workouts, but also during recovery time.  According to the American College of Sports Medicine, the calorie burn is 6-15% greater than other workouts.  Perhaps most importantly, HIIT workouts increase human growth hormone and testosterone.  These two hormones combined are a potent formula for building muscle at the expense of fat.  Finally, HIIT is more efficient – you can achieve a better workout in 20 minutes than most do in an hour.

In a very similar way, because of its efficiency in fat burning, there is a method of eating that is getting a great deal of attention.  Intermittent fasting may be the best way to shed excess fat and prevent the most common forms of chronic illness.  This method helps regulate your insulin by shifting your metabolism into a fat-burning state rather than and sugar-burning state.  There are several strategies for intermittent fasting, but all of them require you to take 2-3 days each week where you don’t eat for approximately 16-20 hours.  The most popular method was proposed by Dr. Crystal Varaday where you eat whatever you want every other day and you fast on the alternate days.  A more health-conscious model was proposed by a Dr. Mosley who believes it’s better to eat a diet low in sugar and processed carbs three days per week and fast on just two days.  With both of these methods, you are allowed a single 400-500 calorie meal (snack) during fasting days and only water and tea after that.

The benefits of both of these fat-burning strategies are very impressive and well researched.  If you’ve struggled with weight loss and shedding belly fat, I encourage you to learn more about both of these methods and really understand how and why they work.