A lot of beginners may find that there is a lot of confusion surrounding what you need to do, to lose body fat. Some will begin by simply increasing the amount of exercise that they do, while others will begin to cut back on their food intake. Both methods can be effective for promoting fat loss, but a combination of both is what’s best. For optimal fat loss, you have to make sure that you are doing the right type of exercise and cutting back on the correct foods. Otherwise, you could end up losing muscle tissue, which is certainly not what you want if your goal is fat loss.

Luckily for beginners, you are more likely to see results from just a few small changes. It shouldn’t be a great deal of work for you to start losing fat.

Unfortunately, as you progress on your fat loss journey you’ll likely find that the initial fat loss begins to slow. This is where you must start to make adjustments in order to keep yourself progressing towards your goal. Here are some of the main points that you should keep in mind.

Fat Loss Principals

Use The Plate Division Rule:

The optimal way to ensure that fat loss continues with regards to nutrition is to count calories. This can be quite a painful task at first but you’ll find that it gets easier, the more you do it.

One tip is to divide your plate up into quarters. On one quarter, you place a serving of lean protein (chicken/turkey breast, lean steak, fish), on another quarter you place a serving of starchy carbohydrates (potatoes, brown rice, etc), and on the other half of the plate you will fill it up with vegetables (preferable leafy green vegetables…asparagus, broccoli etc).

When it comes to lowering your calories, make the portion of starchy carbohydrates smaller. You’ll want to maintain your protein intake to help support your muscle tissue.

Aim To Walk More:

Making big changes to your workout routines all of a sudden can backfire, leaving you feeling overwhelmed, tired and sore. Instead, just increase your cardio training by adding in more walking throughout the day. This alone will help burn more calories each day, increasing the results that you see.

Exercise does not need to be intense in order for you to see results. Every little bit adds up over time, so simply making an effort to be more active throughout the day will help a great deal towards reaching your goal. Simple tasks like taking the stairs instead of the elevator/escalator or parking further away from the store when you go shopping can all help.

Start Lifting Weights:

In addition to cardio training, if you haven’t been regularly lifting weights then now is the time to start. Not only can lifting weights help to boost your metabolic rate, increasing the amount of calories that you burn daily, it also helps to maintain your muscle tissue.

This is essential because the more muscle tissue that you have, the easier it is to burn fat and also keep it off permanently. Plus, it’s also going to help give your muscles that toned appearance that you’re aiming for.

Make sure that you are consuming both protein and carbohydrates before and after your weight training workouts, as this is an important factor for recovery. Too many beginners think that skipping meals around training will lead to a greater rate of fat loss, but this is not the case.

If You’re Hungry Eat More Protein-Based Snacks:

Whilst you are working towards your goal of better body composition, chances are that you will feel hungry between meals and fancy a snack. Common snacks that most people turn to are unfortunately high in carbohydrates, sugar or fat. This makes them less than ideal for fat loss results.

For example, a popular snack for people that are dieting is a cereal bar. It may be small, convenient to carry around with you and low in calories but it is made up primarily of carbohydrates. Eating them alone, is not only imperfect, it can lead to you wanting more food (this is due to insulin but I won’t go into that as this is directed at beginners).

A better option is to choose protein-based snacks. These will keep your hunger satisfied much longer. Protein also has the extra advantage of causing the greatest increase to your metabolic rate, further benefiting your fat loss attempts.

Be Sure Your Sleep Is Adequate:

Finally, you will want to make sure that you are getting enough sleep each night. When you don’t get enough sleep, there are quite a few drawbacks.

You may find that your appetite gets out of control making you more likely to eat more food than you’re planning to eat that day. It may even lead to you binging on foods that you didn’t intend to eat, but this will be down to your individual will power.

It can also lead to you feeling more fatigued throughout the day and impair your recovery from previous workouts. When you feel fatigued, you’re more likely to put less effort into your workouts and therefore see decreased results from them.