Losing weight fast is a relative idea. It would be best if you did not lose weight so fast that you risk losing muscle mass in the process, not so slow that it takes you forever to get visible results when you can do it quicker.
Also, by weight, you need to focus your attention on actual fat tissue, not generic weight (fat and water).
A great deal of talk about the best way to shed those unwanted extra pounds fast and effectively. Some ideas are good but complicated and unpractical to implement. Others are just hype preying on people’s need to shed excess weight at any cost.
As often as it happens in life, simplicity turns out to be your best friend, making nonsense of all the extra data and unnecessary complications that create more problems and aggravations than the ones they are supposed to cure.
Keep it basic and simple and stay to the core of body physiology, and you are on the right track to crack the code of the practical and comparatively fast fat-burning process.
That you need to eat fewer calories than the ones you spend is no mystery. This is the way your body will go into a catabolic state, forcing it to open the door to your fat storage and take the calories it needs from there.
However, how many calories and what to eat for this situation is often overly complicated, while all you need is to stick to 3 generic foundation principles.
1 – Keep Insulin levels low.
Insulin is an essential hormone with a significant impact on fat storage and fat burning, depending on its levels in your body. The higher the level, the greater the fat storage and the inability of your body to use your body fat to burn calories.
The lower the level, the easier your body can access fat storage and burn it, rather than using food.
The main reason for the global overweight/obese trend mostly comes down not just to overeating, but primarily to eating too many sugars and carbs.
So the key is keeping insulin levels down and steady to encourage your body to draw the calories it needs from your adipose (fat) tissue reservoir. How do you do that? Simple: avoid carbohydrates and sugar.
When they enter your bloodstream, they create a spike in insulin levels, preventing your body from using your extra fat.
This means that even if you are dieting and take in fewer calories than you should, you will never burn fat and reduce body weight if you keep eating rice, pasta, pizzas, let alone sugary drinks, cakes, candies even if you eat less of those.
High insulin levels are a recent disaster in the history of humankind associated with the easy availability of carbs and sugars in industrial quantities. Not so long ago, our ancestors did not have access to unhealthy amounts of carbs and sugars.
As a result, they were lean and athletic. What you should do is avoiding them altogether to lower your insulin levels constantly.
2 – Replace carbs and sugars with proteins, vegetables, and fats, yes fats.
By the time you cut your body off carbs, it will be forced to get the missing calories it needs from your fat storage. However, do keep your diet high in proteins from sources like chicken, beef, fish, eggs to make sure your muscles have all they need for replenishment, primarily if you work out, but not only.
Vegetables contain all the vitamins, minerals, and fibers your body needs, but they only make up for a tiny fraction of your calorie intake, even in significant quantities.
Always accompany your proteins with plentiful vegetables like lettuce, salads, cauliflower, broccoli, and the likes. Not only that, but they are also bulky and naturally full of water, so they will make your stomach feel full, preventing overeating.
Last but not least on the list is fats. Fats may seem counter-intuitive since you are trying to lose fat, but as we have seen, carbs and sugars cause you to be overweight, not fats.
Carbs and sugars are much more easily converted into fat than fat itself. This characteristic causes a double negative effect:
They are stored as extra fat.
They also spike your insulin levels sky-high.
This situation prevents your body from burning the same fat deposits that the sugars have caused in the first place—a self-feeding vicious circle.
Instead, fats like olive oil, fish oil, and nuts are rich in calories that they cannot convert into fat because your body is already burning its fat reservoir thanks to low insulin levels.
In addition, fats are harder to convert into fat. Instead, they will provide a steady, slow source of energy levels.
3 – Listen to your body.
With the basics of your diet structured around more proteins, more fats, more vegetables, and little or no carbs and sugars, your body will be primed to work at its best, restoring its functions at the natural levels they are supposed to work.
As a consequence of low insulin levels, your appetite will naturally decrease without suffering any energy drops since repeated bouts of hunger result from excessive consumption of unnecessary or excessive carbs and sugars, resulting in low energy levels once digested.
Your weight loss rate will naturally tend to be faster at the beginning of such a restructured diet when you are more overweight, less and less so, as your body fat levels will decrease.
The more overweight you are, the more calorie deficit you can afford; the less fat you are, the more food you can afford to eat.
When you reach a balance point with low body fat, you keep the low carbs, high proteins, fat, and veg ideas outlined above and do not fall for carbs and sugars again.
My name is Deborah Foster and I am a Weight Loss Coach with a background in Nutrition Coaching and Personal Training. I specialize in helping women and men break through the yo-yo diet cycle and lose weight for good, without being miserable in the process.
