Losing Fat and Losing Weight Are Accomplished Most Simply By...

As a personal trainer, I encounter many people who feel lost and defeated when it comes to fat loss and weight loss. They have tried everything! They work so hard but see very little return on their time and energy investment. Two ideas later they are new clients, excited about working out and getting their foods right, and on-board with a guy who has shown much of Minneapolis, MN how to burn fat.

NOTE: If you want to spend less time trying to figure out how to fix your body and have me work with you directly, please contact me through my website, www.keepyourbetterhalf.com.

The Fat Loss Principle Few Consider: Triggering Survival Mechanism to Burn Fat

Consider this: your body is constantly burning calories, but what kind? It has three options: calories you just consumed (the meal you ate 30 minutes ago) or the two forms of stored energy (muscle and fat). The calorie source your body will burn depends on what your body determines you need to burn. Most of the time our bodies burn muscle...this is a survial mechanism. Our body doesn't know when the next meal is coming, so it saves the best energy stores (fat) and pulls energy from the least effecicent source: muscle.

If you want to burn fat, it is critical to trigger the fat-burning mechanisms in your body. When exercising, this means creating a workout that demands the best energy source (fat) to be used. Heavy exertion (lifting weights, sprinting/interval training) forces the body to burn fat most effectively.

The Weight Loss Principle Few Consider: Consuming Calories That Trigger Fat-Burning

What happens a person consumes carbs? The body uses the energy from the carbs that it can use right away and stores the rest as fat. What happens when a person consumes protein? The body uses the protein to repair muscle tissue, and forces the body to use fat for energy while the protein is repairing muscle tissue. Therefore, the more protein we consume, the more our muscles are repaired (and therefore can't be used for energy), the more fat we burn. How beautiful is that?

Consuming protein throughout the day helps us to burn more fat. Brilliant! We still need carbs and protein throughout the day, but having a protein focus will help us to burn more fat and prevent us from burning muscle.

The Most Damaging Weight Loss Principle: Weight Loss at Any Cost

I cannot count the number of people I have worked that have said, "I just want to lose 15 pounds, I don't care how it happens." This is a dangerous way to think about weight loss!

When weight loss is the only goal, with no care of what type of weight is being lost, muscle is almost always the type of pounds lost. When we lose muscle, our ability to burn calories is decreased. If we can't burn as many calories (muscle cells burn 70% more calories than fat cells), weight gain is right around the corner!

This is why most people lose weight and then gain it back...they lose weight any way they can, lose muscle in the process, and then can't burn as many calories. For healthy and long-lasting weight loss and fat loss, be sure to steer clear of this type of thinking.

AdamErwin is a personal trainer who travels the world working with people who want to experience fat loss and weight loss in record-time. He currently resides in Minneapolis, MN and loves to train the great folks in the Lake Minnetonka area. Visit www.keepyourbetterhalf.com to learn more about his work.