I’ll just come right out and say it: Fat loss is easy.
Well, it is a straightforward proposition anyway. The complexity only comes in because of various health gurus and marketing agencies trying to overburden you into a learned helplessness.
I’m not in love with the idea of the calories-in / calories-out model of fat loss, but it does a good job of at least getting people to begin thinking about their food consumption and activity level.
Almost everyone that trains with us loses some fat, even if as a bi-product of their training for an athletic endeavor. Client’s whose goal is directly fat loss are no exception. This is because in the act of training to build your athleticism (your inner athlete), fat is burned in a hurry.
Explosive movements like overhead med ball slams, kettlebell work, sprint work, and more where velocity is part of the equation are exceptional at creating fat loss because of the intense requirements placed upon the central nervous system. Even beyond these lifts, where a client may not yet be capable of moving quickly (don’t worry, we build you up to it slowly and safely), fat loss is super straightforward.
We’re not in the business of ‘burning calories’ at the gym. This is time wasted that could be achieving fat loss more efficiently while also building up other capacities that you would likely want, but may not yet know that you can even achieve with your workout. Benefits like mood improvement, posture correction, increased libido, and reduction in the onset of age-related diseases like osteoporosis, arthritis, and even dementia come to mind.
Now here’s the ‘secret’…
Rather than just trying to ‘burn calories’ we are trying to build muscle. Muscle obviously helps from a postural perspective, which makes your joints healthier, but guess what else muscle does?
Muscle burns calories.
At rest, a pound of muscle will burn about an additional 50 calories per day. When engaged in exercise that number can jump to an extra 100 calories per day.
I’m not one of doing math here but say you gain an additional 5 pounds of muscle. At 50 calories per day, per pound, that’s 250 extra calories per day. Multiply that by just a month’s time and you’re talking 7,500 extra calories per month–and these are just the calories burned at rest, not to mention the energy expenditures incurred during the workout itself.
So rather than simply try to achieve fat loss by plodding along on a treadmill, a better, more efficient use of your time would be to build your body into a more athletic and energetic version of yourself.
The fat loss is easy as long as you’re willing to put in the work.
–John