Five Tips To Help You Achieve Lasting Fat Loss And Optimal Health
Whether you’re looking to improve your overall health or get rid of a few pounds, finding the right workout program for your body type can be quite a challenge. Along with exercising regularly, you need to look after your nutrition and calorie intake. At such times, it’s best to enlist the services of an experienced fitness trainer to provide you with one-on-one personal training. While a personal trainer can motivate you and lead you closer to your fitness goals, there are also a few tips and guidelines you can follow to help optimize your body. To increase awareness and ensure your body stays in the best shape possible, Tyron Piteau Fitness has listed five tips to help you achieve lasting fat loss and optimal health. Keep reading to know what they are.
Tip #1: Eat more protein
To develop a lean body, you require a low level of body fat and the right amount of muscle mass. For both of those goals, high protein works very well.
Decreasing body fat means decreasing fat calories (if you are already low to zero carbs on the keto or carnivore diet). To sustainably reduce fat calories, you should up your protein intake. This also applies to muscle mass. High protein diets have been repeatedly shown to increase muscle mass, decrease fat mass, and improve metabolism.
Increasing your protein: energy ratio (more protein grams, fewer fat grams), you generally will be satiated on far fewer calories while maintaining lean mass.
As a guideline, aim to consume at least 1g per pound of lean body mass (fat mass – total mass = lean mass.) You can go well above this! The more protein you consume, the more satiated you will be, and it’s relatively difficult for your body to utilize protein as energy, so it’s less likely to be stored as fat. When in doubt, eat more protein. Beef, eggs, fish, cheese, liver are all great choices.
Tip #2: Keep fats moderate
Although I don’t advocate a low-fat diet, I do acknowledge that fat loss ultimately is a game of energy balance in the body! You need to consume fewer energy calories (fat and carbs) to allow your body to liberate more of its stored energy (body fat).
There are many ways to do this. Some people fast more, some train like crazy, and some people count calories.
The easiest way? Eat high protein animal foods with a good amount of fat on them, such as whole eggs, salmon, ground beef, steaks. These amazing foods come with their own fats that will fuel your body. These are called ‘whole food fats.’
Avoid ‘added fats’ like adding butter, tallow, bacon fat, olive oil, coconut oil, etc. to your diet. These are not nutrient-dense, and I see them as wasted calories. You’re better off eating another steak than pounding tons of butter and tallow. The steak will give you more protein, more B vitamins and iron, and more fat!
The ultimate takeaway? Whole food fats over added fats.
For fat loss, aim for 2 grams of protein for every 1 gram of fat. Once you have achieved your weight loss goals, aim for 1 gram of protein for every 1 gram of fat.
To go for 2:1 protein to fat grams, you can drain the fat from ground beef after cooking, use minimal fats for cooking (just enough to grease the pan), and trim the fat off steaks.
Tip #3: Perform weekly intermittent fasting
Intermittent fasting is a powerful way to increase your fat loss results. It increases satiety during your meals (one to two big meals a day is extremely satiating). It also optimizes many key fat loss hormones—insulin goes down, growth hormone spikes, and adrenaline increases to improve fat loss.
Black coffee in the morning can make fasting much easier and more enjoyable. It’s best to enjoy it black as adding heavy cream can slow fat loss results, and adding sweeteners can increase sugar cravings. One to two cups of black coffee during your morning fast can help the fasting process along and even encourage greater fat burning.
People can absolutely overdo fasting, but this will slow results. It will impact your thyroid and cause water retention, as well as compensatory hunger which will make you overeat during your meals.
Best way to fast? Fast as long as you can into the day and wait to eat until you truly feel hungry. True hunger (not just being snack-ish) may hit you early in the day, especially after a heavy workout. It may hit you later in the day. But when it hits, obey it!
Don’t force yourself to extend your fast past hunger for supposedly increased benefits. This will simply cause unnecessary stress to your body.
Tip #4: Exercise five to six days per week
Yes, daily exercise is recommended! Getting into a daily exercise routine will keep you consistent and will overtime lead to greater daily caloric expenditure. This will help push your body’s natural weight set point lower.
Try a coffee+salt pre-workout combo for a great workout. I don’t recommend actually combining them, but having some salt pre-workout will lead to better muscle contractions and greater strength. Coffee has been proven to have benefits for workouts. In the mornings, I like to have about half to one tsp. of Redmond’s Real Salt (with some water), and then I’ll have my cup of black coffee.
Aim to lift weights or perform resistance training three times a week. On the days in between, try to lower workout intensity or do some low-intensity cardio. The body needs to recover from your workouts, and on a keto, low carb, or carnivore diet, you’re not consuming carbs to replenish muscle glycogen, so give your body ample time to replenish glycogen with fat and protein. Take it easy on the days in between!
If you go high intensity every single day, your appetite will spike over time, and you will have greater hunger pangs. Not great if your goal is fat loss! Appetite management is crucial to make fat loss easier.
Tip #5: Add lots of salt to your diet
Salt is especially crucial on a low carb, keto, or carnivore diet! A number of things deplete salt in the body such as:
- Low carbs
- Exercise
- Fasting
- Sweating
- Stress
- High protein diets
- Sleep deprivation
Many people have a combination of these stressors in their lives. It’s critical to maintain a high salt intake on either one of these diets. I always salt my meals to taste, but I will also include salt around my workouts just to maintain electrolytes as well in each glass or bottle of water I drink.
Don’t force yourself to drink water if you’re not thirsty. Just like hunger, thirst is a process that our body is efficient at regulating. So the whole ‘gallon of water a day’ thing? Pointless. Eat when hungry, and until full. Drink when thirsty. Your body knows what it’s doing.
If you’re looking for the best online coach/personal fitness trainer in North Vancouver, BC, reach out to Tyron Piteau. I am a fat loss expert, kinesiologist, and pre-medical school student specializing in one-on-one personal fitness training and online fitness training for strength, hypertrophy (size), and fat loss with a passion in functional medicine and nutrition. I can help you by designing a fitness program tailored to your needs and ability, keep you motivated, and ensure that you achieve your fitness goals.
I serve locally across North Vancouver, West Vancouver, East Vancouver, Vancouver, and Burnaby, as well as internationally all over the world.
To learn more about the services I offer at Tyron Piteau Fitness, please click here. To get in touch with me, please click here.