EndurElite Chief Endurance Officer Matt Mosman discusses the right and wrong ways for runners, cyclists, and other endurance athletes to lose body fat.
Video Transcription:
What's The Fastest Way To Lose Body Fat?
Good morning endurance friends and welcome to Busting the Bullcrap, the game show that dispels nutrition supplement and training myths. I'm your host and endurance guru Matt Mosman. And today we're gonna answer the question, what is the fastest way to lose weight and body fat? Is the answer, A. Through fat burning supplements, B. Through working out on an empty stomach, C. What would C be? Let's see, through adhering to the latest fad diet, or D. none of the above? If you answered anything but D, you lose. But as a consolation prize you get a swift kick in the ass. Oh, God help us all.
Wrong Way To Lose Body
Fat Burning Supplements
All right. So I received a question from my friend up in Canada the other day, Claudia. And she asked me, you know, my clients always ask me, what's the fastest way to lose weight and or body fat? So let's go back and explore some of those answers I just mentioned and then we're going to tell you the right way to lose body weight and fat. So the first one, fat burning supplements. For the most part they do not work at all. So usually what fat burning supplements will do, they'll be packed full of stimulants and supposed appetite suppressants like garcinia cambogia, and what they do, is they might raise resting metabolic rate a little bit but probably only enough to burn that tic-tac you just ate about five minutes ago. And then not to mention a lot of those ingredients in fat burning pills like garcinia cambogia, have very weak research behind them. So that is why fat burning supplements don't work. Now, I know people, like, want a quick fix for a lot of their problems and, you know, fat burners look really appealing but avoid them.
Exercising On An Empty Stomach
All right. So that's the first answer to kind of dispel then throw it out the window. The second one is...and why this doesn't really work is working out on an empty stomach or fasted cardio to lose weight and/or body fat faster. But if you've watched previous videos, we know that fasted cardio it does not work for weight or fat loss compared to eating before cardio. This was demonstrated in a research study by Schoenfeld. So that's number, answer number two out of the way.
Following A Fad Diet
Answer number three and why it's wrong is adhering to the latest fad diet. And I'm going to tell you why this doesn't work and this is kind of funny here actually. There's a great infographic that came out, I don't know, maybe it was about three months ago, when they have a list of all the diets, how they work and basically what are the accomplishes and it said like, you know, ketogenic diet works by reducing carbs and increasing fat. You lose weight by creating calorie restriction then it has some like paleo. And it says, how does it work? By eliminating dairy and sugar. How do you lose weight on it? By creating a calorie deficit? And it goes on and on down the list. But the whole thing is like, each every single diet works by creating a calorie deficit. There is absolutely nothing magical about any certain diet.
The Best Way To Burn Body Fat
So now that we got those three out of the way, what's the best way to fastly lose weight and/or body fat? But before we do that, you've got to get rid of the word fast in front of that. I mean, you can do it by not eating or doing a whole bunch of other things. But more than likely you're not gonna be able to stick to it and you're gonna pack on the pounds you lost plus much, much, more.
Diet
So the best way just to regularly lose body weight and fat and I'm gonna say this one time, is one, you create a calorie deficit through diet and exercise. So what does this mean? This basically means that you're burning off more calories than you're taking in on a daily basis. Now, if you want to create a calorie deficit I would start by reducing calories by about 500 calories a day, again through diet and exercise. Do that for a couple weeks and see what kind of results you get and then adjust as necessary. But you know if you could do like a whole crash diet and cut calories by, you know, significantly more. But at that point when you cut that many calories, you know, you might lose the fat but you might lose some lean muscle tissue along with that as well, which we really, really want to avoid.
Exercise
The second thing is, you know, get on a good exercise regimen. I mean, I wouldn't look at, like, the numbers, like, how many pounds of you know fat I'm losing a week or how many pounds in general I'm losing the week. I would focus more on, you know, these are the workouts I need to accomplish on this week and then just follow that. And then more than likely, the weight is gonna come off if you're doing that along with the same thing with your diet, you find a diet that you can stick to, and you can create that calorie deficit, and find an exercise program that you can stick to, and create that calorie deficit, hey, you're gonna lose the weight.
So that is about all I have for our little game show and the answers today as far as the fastest way to lose weight and fat. There's an excellent, excellent article on the EndurElite blog that discusses how to basically adjust or calculate your daily caloric requirements and then make adjustments to it if you want to lose weight or fat. So definitely check that out, www.endurelite.com. And until next time my endurance friends. Stay fueled, stay focused, and stay fast.
