A lot of people go to the gym in the hopes of losing weight and burning fat without knowing how the body actually does this. It is crucial to understand the basics of how your body fuels itself if you want to lose weight and burn fat. To start off with we will look at the primary energy source your body uses which is glycogen.
The body is designed to burn glycogen (stored carbs) as energy before it will burn fat or protein. If there is no glycogen available then your body will turn to its secondary fuel source which is fat. Because of this fact if you are doing any cardio for the purpose of losing fat you need to factor this into the equation. If you are not familiar with glycogen it is simply how your body stores carbohydrates for later use as energy.
The average person has enough glycogen stores for about 30 minutes of medium intensity cardio, so basically your body is burning stored carbs in the form of glycogen for the first 30 minutes of your workout. If you are doing 45 minutes of cardio then your body will only be burning 15 minutes worth of fat stores, even though you have been working out for 45 minutes.
There are ways to get around this such as working out as soon as you wake up before you eat any breakfast. As you sleep for 8 hours your body is burning the stored glycogen for energy so by the time you wake up your glycogen stores are depleted so any cardio at this time will be burning just fat.
If working out upon waking is not an option then doing another activity prior to your cardio is a good idea such as weight lifting or walking to the gym etc. If depleting your glycogen stores is not an option prior to your cardio session don’t worry it just means you have to do more cardio to burn the same amount of fat.
Another way to burn just fat during your cardio sessions is to alter your diet and decrease the amount of carbs you take in daily. If you are not taking in any significant amount of carbs then your body cannot store it as glycogen, and if you have no glycogen stores then in theory you will just burn fat when doing cardio. This type of diet is commonly know as the Atkins diet and has been very popular in recent years due to the fact that it works.
Knowing what glycogen is and how your body uses it will certainly help you maximize your cardio sessions to burn the maximum amount of fat, but this is not the only factor that comes into play when trying to lose fat. Below are a few other tips in other areas that will help you to lose fat.
- Keep a training journal with a record or your meals and the calories for each meal. Also keep a record of your workouts as this combined with your meal record will allow you to look back over time and see what your were doing and eating when you had the most success and fat loss. Everyone is different so what works for one might not work for you, so this journal will allow you to tailor your meals and workouts for you and what works best as proven over time.
- Eat a small meal every 2 hours. This will help to keep your blood sugar level throughout the day, and when your blood sugar is level and does not spike up or down you avoid crashes that are often seen after eating sugary foods such as candy etc. It also helps to prevent undue fat storage by the body. You should eat 6 to 8 of these small meals per day and the calories per meal should be determined based on your daily caloric needs. Just make sure to have plenty of protein and good fats in eat of these meals and carbohydrates, unless you are on a no carb diet.
- Avoid empty calorie sources such as fruit juices and sodas, in some cases one glass can contain over 100 calories and if you drink several glasses per day that is like eating an extra meal everyday! Eliminating empty calorie sources such as fruit juices can be the easiest and quickest way to cut calories out of your diet. If you have to drink juice try to limit the amount to one glass per day and make sure it has no added sugar as this will cut the calories greatly, and do not drink any artificial juice drinks as they serve no purpose and add nothing nutritional to the diet, soda is also included in this.
- Drink plenty of water everyday! For an added metabolic boost try drinking only ice water as the body will have to heat up the water in order to absorb it and this heating of the water requires the body to burn calories.
- Don’t skip the little things! What is meant by this is do not assume that little things don’t do anything. For example parking on the far end of the parking lot and walking an extra 100 meters to the door. Think about it, if that extra 100 meter walk burns 10 calories and you do that 3 times per day for 1 month that equals 900 extra calories burned per month and over a year it is 10,800 calories! So think if you had other little things you could do daily like taking the stairs it would all add up together.
