Your body wants you to be fat. Not obese or overweight, but not so lean that your six-pack is on show either. It isn’t that it’s incredibly modest, but from an evolutionary perspective excess body fat is what kept your ancestors alive. When food was scarce their fat stores gave them the energy to survive and, more importantly, breed.
But just because your body wants to maintain a decent level of body fat to ensure your survival should times turn tough, it doesn’t mean you can’t significantly reduce the amount you carry by following the right training and nutrition plan.
DO IT RIGHT
However, if you thought the best way to burn away your excess body fat was to go for regular long-distance runs at a steady pace, it’s time to think again.
For years people have mistakenly believed steadystate cardio endurance exercise is the most effective method to lose weight. In fact, regularly performing such long, slow sessions – whether of running, rowing, cycling or swimming – isn’t the right way to get thinner. This is especially true if such training is complemented by a nutrition plan based around carbohydrates such as pasta, potatoes and bread.
OPPOSITE EFFECT
In some cases too much cardio training can actually lead to an increase in body fat because running for hours on end places a great deal of stress on your body. An increase in the stress hormone cortisol instructs your body to store more of the energy you consume as fat and also has a nasty side effect of breaking down muscle tissue.
Long, slow sessions do not keep your body into the mythical ‘fat-burning zone’, where body fat is prioritised over other energy stores to fuel your efforts (see the box, below). Still need convincing? Just look at amateur marathon runners. The majority don’t have rippling muscles, lean waists or six-packs.
GET INTENSE
The best method of torching body fat is to combine weight training with high intensity cardio sessions, during which you run, row or cycle at intense levels for short periods.
Both these methods have a similar effect on your body. They cause a spike in testosterone – the male sex hormone responsible for a host of functions ranging from increased libido to higher muscle and lower body-fat levels. Levels of human growth hormone are also heightened after weighttraining workouts, which instructs your body to burn fat and build new muscle tissue.
Weight training and high-intensity cardio also significantly work your cardiovascular system. Increasing the rate at which your heart and lungs have to work to pump blood, oxygen and other nutrients around your body has a positive effect on reducing body-fat levels.
DEBT PAID
During intense periods of exercise your lungs can’t take in enough oxygen to provide your body with what it needs. This has the effect of creating an ‘oxygen debt’ within your body.
Just like any debt, this deficit needs to be repaid. Your body does this by increasing the amount of oxygen it to provide your body with what it needs. This has the effect of creating an ‘oxygen debt’ within your body. Just like any debt, this deficit needs to be repaid. Your body does this by increasing the amount of oxygen it which you burn calories (for a more detailed explanation of how EPOC works to burn fat, see the box, right).
Another benefit of any form of high-intensity exercise is that it causes lactic acid to accumulate in your muscle cells. While this build-up is responsible for the unpleasant feelings of ‘muscle burn’, elevated levels of this compound – which is a by-product of glucose metabolism – are thought to lead to an increase in the release of fat-torching growth hormones in the hours following your workout.
TIME TO PAY OFF YOUR DEBTS
Why working out at a steady pace won’t get you the results you want. Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, more commonly referred to as EPOC, is the process by which your body increases the amount of oxygen it consumes to repay the oxygen deficit accumulated during a period of intense exercise. This is vital for increased fat loss because it has the effect of increasing your resting metabolic rate (RMR), which is the speed at which your body burns calories while at rest. The higher your RMR, the more calories you burn over the course of a day.
BIG PUSH
The harder you push yourself during training, the greater the oxygen debt you accumulate and the longer it will take your body to return to its pre-training levels. During this period you burn a greater number of calories than normal and are more likely – if you stick to the nutrition plan – to start using your stores of body fat as fuel.
REST ASSURED
But while lifting weights is one of the best ways to burn fat, simply picking up a heavy bar once and then walking away isn’t the right approach to take. Yes, doing so will eventually make you stronger, but it will have very little effect on your body-fat levels.
You need to lift weights in a specific way to elicit the desired fat-burning response. For this programme that means you need to approach your three weekly weight training sessions in the same manner as you do the cardio session. That means working hard for a set period and then taking a short rest before lifting again.
Never giving your body quite enough time to recover is critical to whether your efforts to burn fat will be successful or not. This technique, which really pushes you out of your comfort zone, is known as ‘accumulated fatigue’ and results in the maximum number of muscle fibres being broken down. It’s also responsible for elevating lactic acids in your muscles and forcing your heart and lungs to work really hard. These factors combine to increase lean muscle mass and reduce fat stores to give you a better body.
That’s why the workouts should be based around two giant sets of four moves. Taking very little rest between each individual exercise keeps your heart rate high and does the maximum amount of damage to your muscles, so it’s vital you stick rigidly to the rest periods detailed in each workout table. The longer you rest between the exercises, the less effective the workout will be and the less likely you are to get the incredible results you want.
THE LAST WORD
Even if you do everything right in the gym and perform the workouts perfectly, you’ll still fall short of making positive changes to the way you look if you don’t stick to this programme’s eating plan. It may be an old fitness cliché, but like all clichés it’s based on more than a little truth: you can’t out-train a bad diet.
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