Why do you want to loose your weight?
This is a question you have to ask before you start any exercises. The most important thing is the motivation. You have to set a goal, a real goal, that will motivate you. Please read my previous article about setting goal by feeling it.
Now we talk about the road map in loosing weight. The easiest way is take off some teeth of yours. You’ll loose about 1-2 kg instantly. Just joking! We have to know, what part of our body that we want to get rid off. I think we all know the answer. It’s not our teeth, muscles, bones, etc but it’s our fat. So we will focus on how to burn this fat later on.
Loosing weight is about diet and exercise. Diet doesn’t mean that we don’t eat. We just have to know our food and how to eat them. In the beginning, I don’t reduce my portion since I just can’t, but I reduce some foods that make me fat. Oily food is obvious. I reduce most of them. I also reduce carbohydrate food such as rice and noodle. Why? Excess carbohydrate will become fat. I also reduce food from white powder such as white bread. White powder is worst than rice and noddle. Since I have to eat at my portion to feel good, I reduce all of above food, I put more meat, fish or chicken. I also put more vegetables.
Let’s us understand how our body work. There are 2 different times our body burn fat. One is when we do some burn fat activities which I’ll explain later. Two is when we sleep. I’m not joking. Yes, our body burn fat mostly when we’re sleeping. How much it burn is really depends on our body metabolism.
Burn Fat Activities
When we do some activities like sport, our body will firstly burn water, next glucose (sugar), third other carbohydrate, then fat. Sugar is normally in carbohydrate group, but this time, we differentiate them. For example, we run for 2 minutes in maximum speed and stop, we won’t burn our fat. Our body will mostly burn water, sugar and carbohydrate. We’ll sweat heavily during the first minutes. But that’s water. Don’t get it wrong. Most people think that it’s fat. When we run, our heart rate is high. We need a lot of instant energy. Since fat is difficult to burn, our body will burn others that can easily be converted to energy such as water, sugar and carbohydrate.
So how do we burn our fat? We have to exercise constantly for about 20 minutes to get to the fat part. Any heaviest exercise that we can do constantly (without stopping) for about 20 – 30 minutes will burn fat. I say the heaviest. You take walking as the exercise. You have to walk faster and put more inclination. The theory says you have to keep your heart rate between 60% – 70% of your rate.
This is how you calculate your heart rate. 220 – your age is your max heart rate. I’m 30 years old. So my max heart rate is 220 – 30 = 190. 60% is 114. 70% is 133. So I have to exercise between this rate. It kinda hard when you don’t have the equipments with you. So I would say, any heaviest exercise that you can do for 20 – 30 minutes will do.
Some tips:
- Do other exercise such as weight lifting before you do above exercise.
- Exercise in the morning before you eat any carbo.
The purpose is to use the carbo in your body before doing the fat burning exercise. Since no or less carbo in the body, body will start burn fat faster
Burn Fat While Sleeping
Our body does its most work while we’re sleeping. Why? Because when we sleep, we basically don’t need anything. We don’t need any energy to talk, stand, open our eyes, etc. So our body will do other jobs like repairing cells, growing and also burning fat. How much it burns will depend on our body metabolism.
For regular people, the body metabolism is around 2000 calories. If you notice in any packed or can foods nowadays, they show their percentages of fat, carbohydrate, protein based on 2000 calories.
So how do we increase our metabolic rate?
First, get healthier. If you feel you don’t have enough vitamins, then get multivitamin pills. Exercise regularly. Have enough good sleeps.
Second, do metabolic exercises. Like what? Do exercise to put your heart rate at maximum for 5 minutes (if you can’t do it in 2 – 3 minutes first) and then stop for 2 minutes. Then continue again. Repeat it until about 30 minutes.
For conclusion, there are two ways to burn fat, so which one is the best? Both of them! Do the burn fat activities for 3 times a week and the metabolic twice a week or may be three for faster result.
Weight Lifting Exercise is also important part of fat burning. Not the weight itself is important but more the repetitions. So get enough weight, do it in minimum 20 times x 4 set each exercise. If you want to burn more fat in your abs, do more exercises for your abs.