You are trying hard to lose weight and you are cutting the calories and are exercising. You know that the calories ‘out’ are greater than the calories going ‘in’. You should be easily losing body fat but if you are not you may be not paying enough attention to an often forgotten fact of weight loss – your metabolic fitness.
Your metabolism (your body’s engine) is the sum total of how many calories you are burning each day. But there are things like the food you eat and the type of exercise you do have a significant impact on your metabolism. For example, if you are not eating enough (instead of following a proper fat loss eating plan) your metabolism can slow down and put the brakes on fat loss.
Metabolic fitness is everything
This is not good as if your metabolic motor slows down, it will mean your calories ‘out’ will be less than you anticipated and that means no more fat loss. Even worse if may mean a continuing gain of body fat.
To lose fat you only need to drop a hundred or two calories per day from your diet. Any more and you will trigger the ‘starvation mode’ which is where you body goes into a kind of ‘diet shock’ and holds on to every scrap of fat it can as it thinks there is a famine in process.
Eating high quality unprocessed foods is another neglected factor in fat loss programs. Each of your 5-8 small meals should contain at least 20 grams of protein and the balance made up of vegetables and a small quantity of complex carbohydrates.
It is important to control blood sugar and insulin levels as when these fluctuate wildly it can cause you to experience foods cravings that will likely cause you to abandon your diet. Controlling your hunger and appetite hormones is the biggest neglected factor in most fat loss programs.
Metabolic fitness needs strong toned muscles
The next thing you need to get right is that your exercise program must address your metabolic fitness. Strength training exercise is the best and only way to do this. The health and condition of your muscular system is what drives the metabolism – your fat burning machinery so maximum toning is paramount. Weak, flabby muscles will not help you achieve a strong, lean, slim healthy body.
You also need to do your strength training program with the correct level of intensity (degree of difficulty) so that you get the release of the necessary hormones to trigger fat burning in your body. When you have them working for you more calories will be utilized day and night. This means you have achieved good metabolic fitness which is what you need to reclaim that slim trim body.
So, if your metabolism has slowed because your approach to losing fat is not quite right make these changes to help you get back on track towards your goals. Once you get your metabolic fitness back up to scratch it is only a matter of time till you achieve that strong, lean, slim, healthy body.
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