Health and Fitness Tips

Burning off excess fat is one of those things that you have to get your calculator out if you want to do by the book, even though some people achieve great success by winging it, you are better off knowing how many calories to take in if you want to lose weight.

If you want to drop a few lbs – stick with me and I will show you how to do it damn quick, and why most fail.

The reason some people lose weight even though it seems they aren’t trying or are just naturally skinny have been blessed with a fast metabolism – this means they can eat more and their body will just burn up any excess instead of storing it as body fat.

This is because we are born with a certain body type, and over the years the amount of exercise we do and foods we are fed create the body that we currently have.

There are 3 main body types – the endomorph, ectomorph and mesomorph.

The ectomorphs are those naturally skinny people, mesomorphs are naturally muscular and endomorphs are genetically dispositioned to store body fat easier than other body types, so these people will have to take more care with nutrition and exercise to get the best results possible.

A body with more muscle on it will burn more fat even while resting because muscle needs a lot of energy just to stay alive and working, while body fat obviously doesn’t need any energy to stay there, body fat is just stored energy. This is often the reason that teenage boys can eat mountains of food and stay in great shape and stay lean even though in theory they should be getting fat – the food they eat is going straight to their muscles.

Some people let their genetic disposition be an excuse for being out of shape, but that is just laziness.

Just because your parents are overweight or your family is, it doesn’t have to be that you are overweight for life too.

Losing weight is one of those things that is easy in theory, kinda like saving money or getting a promotion, you just spend less and work harder. You just have to eat right and exercise right, but sometimes these are quite hard things to do, especially if you have a life, job, kids, friends, hobbies or other annoying things that get in the way.

What I do is kind of different to what the average guru advices, here are a few of my personal shortcuts I use to drop the fat fast.

#1 – I don’t count calories, but I have before.

It is important I believe for everyone to count calories for about a week, or if you are mega lazy, even just a few days. It is vital to know roughly how many calories are in the average piece of food or meal you are consuming if you want to have a chance at losing body fat.

The difference between meals can be staggering.

A takeout meal from any fast food diner can easily top 1000 calories, and if you add a soda or other treat you can almost eat an entire days worth of calories in one sitting. Then when you factor in the lack of nutrients in those meals and how you get hungry a few hours later you can see how it is very easy to over eat.

A chicken salad with unlimited amount of vegetables and a cup of tea or iced water is going to make you feel like a million bucks, won’t weigh you down and will probably total around 350 calories.

Compare that to a few 1000 calorie meals per day and you can see how easy it is to overeat and get fat if you only need 2000 calories per day to maintain your current weight.

Here is the formula to calculate how many calories you need to maintain your current weight:

English (Imperial) BMR Formula

Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )

Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) – ( 6.8 x age in year )

American (Metric) BMR Formula

Women: BMR = 655 + ( 9.6 x weight in kilos ) + ( 1.8 x height in cm ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )

Men: BMR = 66 + ( 13.7 x weight in kilos ) + ( 5 x height in cm ) – ( 6.8 x age in years )

Take the number that this formula spits out and multiple it by one of the following:

1. If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : = BMR x 1.2
2. If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : = BMR x 1.375
3. If you are moderately active (exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : = BMR x 1.55
4. If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : = BMR x 1.725
5. If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x

training) : = BMR x 1.9

This calculation should take you about 2 minutes if you have higher than kindergarten education, but it will serve you for life. Obviously if your weight goes up or down drastically you will need to recalculate, but this will help you.

Figure out how many calories you are taking in each day and see if it matches up to your TDCE (the end result is called your Total Daily Calorie Expenditure).

#2 You have to get movin’ pal

Exercise is one of those things that is talked about so much now days – I see it all over the place and all the recommendations, okay, here just for you is a few things I have heard people saying on the net:

• Cardio is old fashioned, HIIT is the only thing I do now
• Quick workouts are better
• Running is old and outdated
• Lifting weights is old fashioned – kettlebells are the only way to go now
• Bodyweight exercises are only good for warm ups or a light workout

You get the idea..

The fact is that every one of these is just some single personal opinion of someone.

Cardio is still the number one recommended exercise to lose body fat by fitness models, bodybuilders, celebrity trainers, doctors and scientists.

The facts are out there, sure HIIT can be a great workout, but the truth is that sustained cardio for half an hour burns just as many calories as an intense 15 minute HIIT session, however a lot of people who claim they practice HIIT are in fact just doing cardio for shorter periods of time – they misunderstand the “High Intensity” part.

HIIT has to be done in a manner that almost makes you feel like vomiting after you are finished – it has to be damn intense and literally leave you breathing so heavily you feel like a dog.

Cardio, HIIT, biking, swimming, whatever you do – don’t listen to the idiots out there saying one is better than the other, then switch over to something you don’t enjoy doing and end up quitting.

I actually enjoy going running up mountains and through nice tracks, boxing, lifting weights, bodyweight exercises and occasionally something else just to mix it up.

So I only do exercise I enjoy – and you should too.

Just because you read in a forum that some dude lost 50 lb swimming each day doesn’t mean you should blindly follow his formula, just like somebody who got a promotion from sleeping with the boss doesn’t mean you will get the same results.

I think it will do you some good to just focus on your gut feelings about exercise – workout hard, at least 30 minutes and enjoy getting hot and sweaty and make a game out of it – do more than last time.

#3 Stay hungry

You have to want it more than the next guy, you have to work harder than him and train longer. You have to more vigilant about what you put on your plate and how many drinks you have after work if you want to be the best.

If you have made it this far, I am guessing you don’t just want to have an average body with a pot belly and be constantly complaining – you want to shoot for the best, a lean, carved from stone, sexy and strong figure.

Don’t let a day go past where you don’t do some type of exercise – even just dropping and pumping out 3 minutes worth of squats and 3 minutes worth of press ups before you have a shower will do you a lot of good.

I find that sometimes before a workout I need a bit of a boost – some days I just don’t feel it so I go online and watch something motivating such as famous boxing fights, hardcore training videos, amazing feats of human strength, reruns of Fight Club, whatever.

I play some music to get me psyched up – normally some heavy metal or dance music, Ministry Of Sound are great up loud, but so are some old school metal albums like Kill ‘Em All by Metallica.

Anything to get you in the zone.

I hope that you have got even one idea out of this article you can implement into your training; I have really enjoyed writing this and thank you for reading.

This is a guest post by Johnny. Johnny is a more interested in writing about how to get abs. And you can also read his extreme weight loss tips at his blog.

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