In part one of this article, I talked about how avoiding diets is one of the best things you can do for your long term health and fitness success, espcially if you want to burn fat. In this second part, I'll show you how you can start to transition from your current lifestyle to one that creates a lean, strong body and lasting health.
From a nutritional standpoint, you need a healthy balance of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats in your diet to keep your metabolism firing on all cylinders, constantly burning fat. Fad diets have a coolness factor to them that sometimes makes them irresistible at first. But in the long run I've found it best to go back to the basics of what your body craves. Let's talk about that...
Complex Carbs (whole grains, breads, cereals, etc.) are vital to maintaining your energy throughout the day and do a host of other things within your body including keeping you feeling full. I'll also lump fruits in with complex carbs, because of their high fiber content and slow absorption into the blood stream, keeping our insulin level in check, which is important for less fat storage and a higher chance of burning stored fat.
Simple Carbs, or sugars (candy, soda pop, white processed baked goods, etc) are to be avoided and kept to a minimum for the most part. They provide little nutritional value to you and are what I often refer to as empty calories. They just add calories to your body with little or no nutritional value that are going to end up in your fat stores if you're not careful with how much you ingest. Forget about maximum fat burning here. Of course, many people are aware of the blood sugar and insulin connection with eating too many simple carbs. Our insulin regulates are blood sugar level and takes any excess sugars and stores them as fat. We then are stuck getting tired and hungry, making repeating this cycle far too easy. The best way to avoid this, I've found, is eating a sensible amounts of complex carbohydrates instead.
Proteins (lean meats, fish, poultry, soy, beans and legumes, etc.) are important to maintain the cellular structures in your body and provide the building blocks for the lean muscle you're after, which is vital if you want to burn fat fast. But with anything else, don't go overboard with protein. Some fitness experts claim that you'll need a minimum 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight each day. There is no real proof that this is the case, and ingesting more protein than your body needs ends up going to your fat stores...plus it doesn't do your kidneys or liver any good either. I've found that keeping protein to around 0.5 grams per pound of bodyweight each day more than sufficient in feeding the lean muscle growth that my Fat Burning Furnace students stimulate with their properly performed resistance exercise.
Another important aspect of protein involves whether or not you're getting your protein from animal or plant based sources. While the traditional American diet recommends most animal based proteins, recent data suggests that too heavy a reliance on animal proteins increases risks for disease. On top of that, animal proteins contain almost no fiber, which doesn't go very far in keeping you feeling full, and negatively effects your ability to burn fat. When choosing your protein sources, make sure you eat a good portion of your protein from plant sources (soy, beans, legumes, etc.). You don't have to be a vegetarian, but I recommend keeping your animal proteins on the low side.
Fats (found in many proteins, nuts, oils, etc.) are essential to maintain certain bodily processes like hair, nail, and skin regeneration. There is a lot of confusion with fats out there, some recommending extremely low fat diets and others even recommending a very high fat diet. If you are focusing on lean protein choices in your meals, and including small amounts of healthy oils, nuts, and seeds in your diet, your fat intake will be in order.
So how much of each of these macro nutrients should you be eating to maximize fat burning and get that lean fit body you're after? It's easy to get caught up in the percentages and counting calories, but the easiest way I've found is to count portions instead of calories. An easy way to ensure that this happens is to make sure you eat both a portion or two of complex carbs and a portion of protein at each meal. Add as many green veggies as you can eat, as they're super low in calories and provide more fiber, enzymes that aid in digestion, and vitamins and minerals that will be more than adequate for most people. Remember, focus on nutrient rich foods and you'll find that burning fat and getting healthy will seem like a natural.
How many times per day should we be eating to burn the most fat? I can tell you that three meals a day is not going to cut it when trying to burn fat fast and get lean, at least not in my experience. In fact, if you wanted to get as fat as possible, you should eat all of your daily calories in one meal. Eating smaller more frequent meals throughout the day is the fastest way to fat loss. It fires up your metabolism, as every time you eat something, the metabolism kicks it up a notch. Try and eat 5-6 smaller meals per day, spaced about 3 hours apart.
Now, I know many people don't want to be taken out of their breakfast, lunch, and dinner routine...so you can still eat at those traditional meal times, but try cutting back a bit on how much food you eat at those meals and add those calories into 2 or 3 snack meals in between. A snack meal could be a protein/energy bar or maybe even a piece of fruit and a slice of whole grain bread.
So you see, eating for a lean, strong, and healthy body isn't so difficult...and it doesn't require you to eliminate essential foods like complex carbohydrates from your diet. In fact, doing so will put you into the cycle of confusion of fad diets that is all too prevalent in fitness today. And that's a cycle that's tough to break out of. Focus on foods your body craves naturally instead, and the rest of the details will be easy to implement into your lifestyle. Before long you'll start to burn fat faster than you might have thought possible.
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Rob Poulos is a fitness enthusiast, fat loss expert, and the founder and CEO of Zero to Hero Fitness. Rob spent the majority of the last decade searching for the most effective and efficient ways to get and stay lean, strong, and healthy. In those past 10 years, Rob experimented with and analyzed numerous exercise and nutrition strategies and protocols promoted by fitness centers, magazines, books, late night TV ads, and the so-called fitness gurus.
After several attempts that didn?t meet the high standards Rob had set for himself, he became so frustrated with the loads of misinformation on the market that he personally committed to finding the secrets that were hidden in all of the hype and sensationalism all to prevalent in the industry.
Finally, after having amassed a great deal of life-changing knowledge and truths, Rob founded Zero to Hero Fitness and created the Fat Burning Furnace fitness system so he could spread the word to others interested in seeking out life long fitness and health.
http://www.fatburningfurnace.com
