With holidays and wearing smaller clothing coming to the forefront of our minds getting in shape is becoming more of a priority for many of us. In the first part of this article (The summer good body guide Pt1) I wrote about how to make a significant reduction in your bodyweight and overall appearance.
Part one was based around nutrition and how to calculate how much food we should consume to enable us to lose some body fat.
You can lose body fat by dieting alone, however, it is far more successful if you incorporate movement AKA exercise as well.
Let’s break down training into its fundamental areas and I’ll go through a straightforward 5-Step guide to doing exercise to lose body fat.
1. Why you should exercise
Moving your body uses energy. Body fat is stored energy. Food is energy.
If you eat more food energy than you need you will store more energy than you use.
If you use more energy than you eat, you will use your body fat as energy to make up the energy difference.
Therefore, if you control your food intake AND increase your movement you will reduce your energy store AKA body fat.
2. The effect of training
All training uses energy. The longer, more intense or more frequently you exercise, the more energy you use.
Muscle tissue uses the majority of the energy to create movement and heat.
The more muscle tissue you have, the more energy you use in your movement.
Training with weights or traditional cardiovascular exercise uses a similar amount of energy per hour depending on the intensity.
Training with weights promote increases or retention in muscle mass and will use energy
Moderate to high intensity CV training will use energy but can burn muscle tissue and body fat at the same rate if you’re in an energy deficit.
3. How much exercise to do
Once your food intake is stabilised and balanced combined with little to no extra movement you are neither gaining or losing weight. The addition of any amount of movement at this point will start burning body fat.
Two whole body weight training sessions a week is enough to retain muscle mass
The lower the intensity of exercise you do, the longer or more frequently you need to do it.
1kg of body fat has 7000 kcals of energy. Weight training for an hour uses around 200 kcal, jogging for 30 mins burns around 250 kcal.
It would take fifteen 90 minutes workouts to burn 1kg of body fat.
If you are 10kg over weight that is 150 workouts.
Three sessions a week like this could take 50 weeks to lose 10kg of fat assuming you’re controlling your food intake.
4. Steps to speed up fat loss
1. Decrease the amount of food you are eating
2. Increase the frequency of your training
3. Increase the length of each workout
4. Increase your daily non-exercise physical activity i.e. walking/cycling to work, use the stairs, get out of your chair frequently.
A standard approach to increase fat burning could therefore be: -
· Remove 250-500 kcals per day from your food intake.
· Train five times per week.
· Train before and after work.
· Walk/cycle to and from work.
5. The beginners 12-week fat loss training schedule
Week 1-3
Monday: - 60 mins weight training full body
Tuesday: - walk uphill 30 mins - 15 mins jog - row 15 mins
Wednesday: - rest day
Thursday: - 60 mins weight training full body
Friday: - rest day
Saturday: - interval jog/walk 60 mins
Sunday: - rest day
Week 4-6
Monday: - 60 mins weight training full body
Tuesday: - 30 mins jog - row 15 mins – walk uphill 15 mins
Wednesday: - rest day
Thursday: - 60 mins weight training full body
Friday: - High intensity interval training 20 mins – 10 mins walk uphill
Saturday: - rest day
Sunday: - interval jog/walk 60 mins
Week 7-9
Monday: - 60 mins weight training full body
Tuesday: - 30 mins jog - row 15 mins – walk uphill 15 mins
Wednesday: - 60 mins weight training full body
Thursday: - rest day
Friday: - High intensity interval training 20 mins – 30 mins walk uphill
Saturday: - 60 mins weight training full body
Sunday: - jog or cycle 60 mins 140-150bpm
Week 10-12
Monday: - 90 mins weight training full body
Tuesday: - 30 mins jog - row 30 mins – walk uphill 30 mins
Wednesday: - 90 mins weight training full body
Thursday: - High intensity interval training 20 mins – 45 mins walk uphill
Friday: - 90 mins weight training full body
Saturday: - 30 mins jog - row 30 mins – walk uphill 30 mins
Sunday: - jog or cycle 60 mins 140-150bpm
