You can’t “target” belly fat by doing crunches or special types of exercise, but you can do a handful of things that will accelerate total fat loss and, in some cases, help specifically with mobilizing and burning the “stubborn” fat stores around your waist.
Let’s look at 3 science-based ways to do this.
1. Fasted Training:
People usually think “fasted training” means “training on an empty stomach,” but it’s a bit different.
Fasted training means training in a “fasted state,” and this has to do with insulin levels in your blood.
You see, when you eat food, it gets broken down into various molecules that your cells can use, and these molecules are released into your blood. Insulin is released as well, and its job is to shuttle these molecules into cells.
Now, depending on how much you eat, your plasma (blood) insulin levels can remain elevated for several hours (anywhere from 3 – 6+). Why is this important? Because insulin blocks lipolysis (fat “mobilization’).
When your body is in this “fed” state–when its insulin levels are elevated and its absorbing nutrients you’ve eaten–little-to-no fat burning occurs.
Your body enters a “fasted” state when it has finished absorbing all nutrients from the food you’ve eaten and insulin levels return to their normal, low “baseline” levels. When you exercise your body in this state, fat loss is accelerated (and weighlifting in a fasted state is particularly effective).
So, as you can see, just feeling like you have an “empty stomach” doesn’t necessarily mean your insulin levels have returned to baseline.
The easiest way to work fasted training into your routine is to work out first thing in the morning, before you eat breakfast. This has an added benefit, as well: fasting for longer than 6 hours increases your body’s ability to burn fat.
There is a downside to fasted training, however.
When you exercise in a fasted state, muscle breakdown is increased.
This is bad simply because too much muscle breakdown impairs total muscle growth over time. You can prevent this by supplementing with a supplement known as HMB, though.
β-Hydroxy β-Methylbutyrate (also known as HMB) is a substance formed when your body metabolizes the amino acid leucine, which is an amino acid that directly stimulates protein synthesis.
HMB is often sold as a muscle-building aid but the research purported to demonstrate these benefits is shaky at best, hindered most by design flaws. Thus, I’m not comfortable making anyclaims about muscle growth.
There is one benefit of HMB that’s well established, however: it’s an extremely effective anti-catabolic agent.
That is, it’s very good at preventing muscle breakdown, which means you will recover faster from your workouts and experience less muscle soreness (and the free acid form shows the most promise in this regard).
It also has no effect whatsoever on insulin levels, which means it can’t break your fasted state.
This makes HMB perfect for use with fasted training. Its powerful anti-catabolic effects and non-existent insulin effects means you reap all the fat loss benefits of training fasted without any of the problems relating to muscle loss or insulin secretion.
It’s also worth noting that HMB is superior to leucine in suppressing muscle breakdown becauseit’s more anti-catabolic than its “parent” amino acid.
This means it’s also more effective than branched-chain amino acid supplements because they rely on leucine for their anti-catabolic effects (isoleucine and valine are very weak in this regard).
Clinically effective dosages of HMB range between 2 and 3 grams, and that’s what you’ll find in my pre-workout fat burner FORGE.
FORGE is a fat burner made specifically for use with fasted training. It helps you lose fat–and “stubborn” fat in particular–faster, preserve muscle, and maintain training intensity and mental sharpness.
2. High-Intensity Interval Cardio:
In case you’re not familiar with “high-intensity interval training” or “HIIT,” it’s very simple: you start your workout with a warm-up, and then alternate between bouts of all-out exertion and low-intensity “cooldown.”
For example, you might warm up and then do 30 seconds of sprinting on a bicycle, followed by 45 – 60 seconds of slower pedaling, and you would repeat these intervals for 20 – 25 minutes.
Now, why do this form of cardio instead of the traditional steady-state type?
Well, studies such as those conducted by Laval University, East Tennessee State University, Baylor College of Medicine, and the University of New South Wales have conclusively proven that shorter sessions of high-intensity cardio result in greater fat loss over time than longer, low-intensity sessions.
In fact, a study conducted by The University of Western Ontario showed that doing just 4 – 6 30-second sprints burns more fat over time than 60 minutes of incline treadmill walking (one of the staples of “bodybuilding cardio”).
Furthermore, keeping your cardio sessions shorter means you better preserve your muscle and strength, which is vitally important when it comes to building a physique.
My Favorite Type of HIIT Cardio
I do all of my HIIT cardio on the recumbent bike for several reasons.
I like the stable position, which allows me to bring my iPad and read or watch a movie or show, but cycling also has particular benefits to usweightlifters.
You see, a study conducted by Stephen F Austin State University showed that different types of cardio affect your ability to build muscle and strength differently. The study subjects that ran and walked gained significantly less strength and size than those that cycled.
Why is this?
Well, the researchers believed that the main benefit of cycling was that the movement itself imitates weightlifting exercises that grow your legs, like squats and lunges. So if you can, hop on the bike for your HIIT cardio sessions.
My second and tertiary exercises of choice for HIIT would be rowing and sprinting because they too mimic hypertrophy movements.
Will HIIT Cardio Place Too Much Stress on the Body?
The idea that doing HIIT while dieting for weight loss is a bad idea because it places too much stress on the body has been kicking around for years. But it’s completely anecdotal–I’ve yet to see any clinical research that supports such a position.
I’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of people of all ages and fitness levels, and I can’t actually think of one person that burned out on 3 – 5 weightlifting sesions and 3 – 4 HIIT sessions per week (which is what I recommend in my books).
That said, if you do start to feel overtrained within a week weeks of following my recommendations, start replacing HIIT cardio sessions with LISS (low-intensity steady-state) and see if that helps.
Start by replacing one HIIT session with LISS and see how you feel that week. If you’re still having issues, replace another and see if that does it. Continue this until you’re feeling better or all HIIT sessions are now LISS.
3. Heavy Weightlifting:
The common recommendation to really “shred up” is to pump light weights for high amounts of reps…but this is the exact opposite of what you want to actually be doing.
You see, when you restrict your calories to induce fat loss, your body becomes “primed” for muscle loss due to the calorie deficit. When your body is in this state and you focus on muscle endurance in your workouts (by working in higher rep ranges), you set yourself up for rapid strength loss, which comes with muscle loss as well.
Thus, what you want to focus on is preserving your strength, and you do this by lifting heavy weights, and by continuing to progressively overload your muscles.
While you may not be able to build muscle while losing fat (you can if you’re overweight and new to a proper weightlifting routine, however), you can most definitely maintain your strength and lose little-to-no muscle.
There’s another reason why you want to lift heavy weights while dieting to lose fat, and it relates to your metabolic rate (how many calories your body burns every day).
Research has shown that training with heavy weights (80-85% of 1RM) increases metabolic rates over the following several days, burning hundreds more calories over this time than workouts performed with lighter weights (45-65% of 1RM).
Furthermore, compound lifts like squats and deadlifts are especially effective in this regard because these types of lifts burn the most post-workout calories.
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