Hi :)
In this post I will share with you my top 5 fat loss tips.
While it would be impossible to explain each of these techniques in their full depth in a single short blog post, I will point out free resources that you can use to help you fully grasp each technique and utilize it to its maximum potential.
I want to share with you the techniques that I learned to help me transform my physique. I had always been pretty lean, but never close to the ideal physique I wanted, despite working out regularly (tons of weights and cardio) every since the early age of 12. It wasn’t until I learned the tips I’m about to share with you that I was able to really seen my physique transform and get down to 4% bodyfat, achieving my long held ideal physique.
I took a long and winding road through mainstream muscle magazine tips and overhyped garbage “nutritional” supplements, which lead me into some serious health problems, so I am the opposite of a fan of synthetic supplements, fake food powders and fat loss pills. So, if you were looking for a simple pill to take or synthetic supplements to use to try to cheat your way to six pack abs, I’m sorry to disappoint you, that is not my style. I offer to real solutions based on holistic health and fitness science that, if utilized, can create true lasting, actually healthy results. Far too often people sacrifice their health in pursuit of an aesthetic appearance of fitness by taking artificial/synthetic supplements, short sighted drugs and harmful steroids. This is unnecessary and does not create lasting results or that you experience of health and well-being.
I am not opposed to natural supplements; however, they are not the most important part of fat loss. They are, as they are rightly categorized, supplemental support, as opposed to the true foundation of health, fitness and even fat loss.
Without further ado, here are my top five techniques that I use to get down to 4% body fat...
Tip #1:
Correct Digestive Issues
Not only is this an essential step for your overall health, but is essential to optimize your digestion to achieve fat loss. Indigestion is not working right even healthy foods that contain the nutrients you need can occur to your body has a tocsin. I tocsin should be understood as anything your body cannot overcome or utilize… So for digestion is off a lot of healthy foods can occur as toxins. Your body knows those toxins have the potential to poising you if they remain in the bloodstream so it ushers them out of the bloodstream as best it can. Indigestions working well you’ll need them to the colon and kidneys but when you’re nonlimiting toxins well it will have to shove those toxins into compromising places, such as fat cells.
There are a couple super common issues that are frequently the cause of digestive problems. 1. Not producing enough hydrochloric acid (HCL / stomach acid) & 2. Poor / impaired bile flow.
While what it takes to accurately assess your own digestion and correct it goes beyond the scope of this email (because it is a lengthy subject) I would like to point out to you our free four-week digestive issues course available at www.kickitinthenuts.com/courses. You can work your way for free through the digestive issues course and correct with digestive issues you have naturally using individualized nutrition and intelligent observations. Not only will this help you lose the fat you are fighting, but it will also serve your overall health, energy and your experience of comfort in your body for a lifetime. It is well worth the effort to learn how to master your digestion, so please take advantage of the free digestive issues course at www.kickitinthenuts.com/courses
Tip #2:
Keep Insulin Levels Low
It’s important to know that anytime you eat carbohydrates of any sort- be they fruits, grains, coconut water, honey, refined sugars or starches of any sort - your pancreas secretes insulin into your bloodstream.
When insulin is present in your bloodstream the hormone, insulin, tells your liver not to use fat for energy until the insulin is gone. Some people are more insulin resistant than others due to their dietary habits or even genetics, so they need to shift their thinking to understand and it’s not just a few calories of fruit sugar or starch in some sprouted grain bread; rather, it is hours of energy sourcing from carbohydrates instead of fat.
So this technique involves limiting the amount of carbs you eat and also creating long windows of time in which you eat no carbohydrates. An example of this technique in action is the 3 PM carb cut off rule… 3 PM carb cut off rule involves eating no sugar or starch after 3 PM. Fibrous, low starch vegetables, proteins, fats and salt are all acceptable after 3 PM, but no sugars, including fruit, or starches like potatoes, rice or grains, after 3 PM. When you cut out starches and sugars for a long window such as from 3 PM until breakfast the next day your insulin levels can go down triggering your liver start fat metabolism.
This technique is tricky for people with low blood pressure because the often rely on carbohydrates to maintain sufficient blood pressure. When they try to cut carbs out of their diet they can literally go crazy, suffering bouts of anxiety, depression, forgetfulness, and being prone to been cheating on sugars and starches when the blood pressure and blood sugar levels drop dangerously low. So, in order to qualify to use this technique you have to take steps to correct your low blood pressure. You can learn more about low blood pressure and what causes it by taking the free digestive issues course I mentioned in tip one or by working through our 12 week fat loss course, available at that same link www.kickitinthenuts.com/courses. What you will learn in those courses are that low blood pressure states are often caused by poor, ineffective digestion as well as lack of blood sugar stability due to dietary choices.
Our bodies are capable of creating sufficient blood sugar out of protein if we 1: Eat protein in adequate amounts and regular time intervals (every 3-4 hours) & 2: have the digestive capacity to digest proteins and fats for fuel. If you can fix your digestion and adjust your diet to enable your body to start to run more on proteins and fats effectively, then you eventually will be able to reduce your dependency on carbohydrates to maintain adequate blood pressure, which will allow you to maintain lower insulin levels and live more often in the fat burning zone.
The issue of low blood pressure is often completely overlooked in the medical world, and is, in truth, responsible for many cases of chronic depression and anxiety as well as forgetfulness, moodiness, irregular menstrual cycles or lack of menstrual cycles, infertility and many more issues related to low mineralization. As it concerns fat loss, people with low blood pressure are prone towards binging on carbs, usually because their digestive systems are only actually capable of getting energy from carbohydrates since carbohydrates are the easiest thing to digest. This brings us back to tip #1: correct digestion.
Tip #3:
Work with Your Metabolic Type
The term metabolic type has its origins in the work of the great Dr. George Watson. He wrote a fantastic book called “Nutrition and Your Mind: the Psycho-chemical Response.” To discern what your metabolic type is there are a number of aspects of your physiology that need to be assessed to say for certain if you are a fast oxidizer, slow oxidizer, or even a sub oxidizer. In this terminology, when we say oxidizer, whether you are fast, slow, or sub oxidizer, we are referring to the rate at which your body burns through carbohydrates, or glucose.
If you tend to have high blood pressure, low urine pH (lower than 6.0), high blood sugar, and a slow breath rate (e.g. you take less than 15 breaths per minute when at rest) then you have some of the traits of being a slow oxidizer - meaning your body burns through glucose too slowly, such that when you eat carbohydrates your insulin levels are elevated & higher and longer then ideal.
This usually results in keeping you out of the fat burning zone for hours, even if you just have a small amount of carbohydrates like an apple or a single piece of bread. If you are a slow oxidizer it is usually a good idea to try to have less than 20 g of sugar or starch at any given meal. Also, try to implement the 3 PM carb cut off rule mentioned earlier (provided you don’t have low blood pressure), and avoid liquid sugars and high glycemic sugars like white/refined sugar, fruit AND vegetable juices, honey, soda and coconut water.
If you tend to have low blood pressure, high urine pH (over 6.5), low blood sugar, and a fast breath rate (e.g. you take more than 16 breaths per minute when at rest), then you have some of the traits of being a fast oxidizer - meaning your body burns through carbohydrates too quickly. This is usually the case because of overconsumption of refined carbohydrates and/or ineffective digestion. When your body does not have the stomach acid it needs to break down protein, or the bile it needs to break down fat, then carbohydrates are the only fuel it has to run on. Like a plane running on just one engine, it burns through that single fuel source very quickly. This means you have to eat carbohydrates often and in fairly substantial amounts which keeps your insulin levels up and keeps you in the carb burning zone and out of the fat burning zone.
To learn more about the slow/fast oxidizer imbalances and how to assess your metabolic type you can work through the free four-week digestive issues course I’ve mentioned earlier. For a more in-depth look at your metabolic type you can read George Watson’s book Nutrition and Your Mind or take our 12 Week Fat Loss Course at www.kickitinthenuts.com/courses
Tip #4:
Time & Pace Your Workouts in Fat Burning Windows
If you have just eating carbohydrates within the past few minutes or even a few hours your body will use those carbohydrates for energy. This means that if you eat a banana right before your cardio workout your body is pretty much just going to use the sugar from the banana to complete your work out. Wouldn’t it be better if your body use the stored fat you were trying to lose instead of the banana for energy? The way that you can get it to do this I need tap into your stored body fat is to perform cardio at times of day when your insulin and blood sugar levels are low.
First thing in the morning before eating any carbohydrates is an excellent time to tap into store body fat by performing cardio. For most people a sufficient amount of time his 20 to 45 minutes of cardiovascular exercise. You don’t want to push it too hard during your cardio workouts or the increased intensity will pull you out of the fat burning zone. You can either track your heart rate with a pulse monitor on your wrist to help you maintain a ideal heart rate in between 60 to 75% of your max heart rate - or you can use this simple rule of being able to sing along with your music or hold a conversation during your workout. If you are performing cardio and your so out of breath that you can’t sing along with the music you’re listening to or be able to hold a conversation without running out of breath then you are exercising too hard for maximum fat loss potential.
You may think that more intensity is better, but when you push your body too hard during cardio you start to just burn out blood sugar from your muscles rather then give your cells enough time to metabolize stored fat. Your body has tons of potential energy in the form of fat for fuel (no insult intended) compared to the amount of sugar in your muscles, but when you push yourself too intensely and demand your cells to produce tons of energy (ATP) at once to keep up with your intense workout, you do not give your body time to tap into the fat burning metabolic pathway; also known as the phospholipid oxidation metabolic pathway. So when you’re doing your cardio make sure that you can chat with a person next to you for sing-along to music you might be listening to. You don’t have to actually chat with the person next to you, especially if you’re alone or don’t like the person next to you, but you should be able to this far as your breath availability is concerned.
Tip #5:
Strength Train 3-5 Times Per Week
Lastly, and this is the most commonly mentioned of my favorite fat loss tips, is to include regular strength training along with your diet and cardio. The reason this is a key fat loss Tip is that the more lean muscle your body has the higher it’s basal metabolic rate is. The higher your basal metabolic rate is the more energy your body produces when at rest. This “at rest state” is a state in which your body is primarily using fat for fuel, provided you have not spike your insulin levels with carbohydrate consumption. It is sometimes stated that 1 pound of lean muscle burns about 50 calories a day just existing. It takes energy just to maintain the muscle mass, so when someone gains a few extra pounds of muscle they burn a few hundred calories FROM STORED BODYFAT all day long and even while they sleep. The key thing to remember here is that the muscle burns stored energy even while you sleep, and that while you are in the sleep state your body is primarily tapping into fat for fuel because insulin levels are low and the ATP demand on the body is low/slow enough to allow performance of the phospholipid oxidation metabolic pathway. If you’re not sure where to start with strength training I recommend our 12 Week Fat Loss Course at www.kickitinthenuts.com/courses because there are 12 weeks worth of video workouts there that progress from easy to more challenging in a safe, holistically minded fashion.
IN SUMMARY
So to sum up these fat loss tips as a whole you want to:
1. correct what digestive issues maybe present.
2. Try to maintain low insulin levels by following the low-carb (provided you don’t have low blood pressure issues)
3. Correct what metabolic imbalances (slow/fast oxidizer metabolic types)
4. time your cardio for windows of low insulin levels such as first thing in the morning or immediately after a strength training workout. &
5. Perform regular strength training (3-6 times a week) to build lean muscle to increase your metabolism.
Start with our free 4 Week Course on Correcting Digestive Issues at:
www.kickitinthenuts.com/courses
In the process of that free course you will learn more about the different metabolic imbalances and how to assess your metabolic type.
And if you are excited to take things further, follow that same link to go through our full 12 Week Fat Loss Course, which includes 12 weeks worth of workout videos, diet coaching, in depth explanation of how to assess, understand and work with your body’s personal chemistry and tons more (recipes, food charts, meal plans, troubleshooting tips, etc.)
Thanks and happy shredding!
Love,
Will Wolfgang Schmidt
