When doing cardio early in the morning on an empty stomach you are burning fat from the first minute, making it the most efficient time of the day for cardio. If you have not tried it yet, we recommend you give it a shot for at least a couple of weeks. Start with low duration and then build it up.

But what is the best cardio exercise you can do to get rid of your fatty acids? Well, it depends. We cannot say which one is the best, you need to find out for yourself. The most important thing is to make you feel good, to be safe to do and to help you reach your “target zone”. Your target zone is the heart rate you need to sustain while doing cardio in order to lose fatty tissue. Ok, but how to calculate our target zone?

The formula is:

220 – your age = number

That number is multiplied by 0.6 as well as by 0.75

Example:

If your age is 30, you get:

220 – 30= 190

190x 0.6= 114 (that is your lower range)

190x 0.75= 142.5 (that is your upper range)

You need to keep your heart rate between 114 and 142.5 because when you are in this target zone on an empty stomach the fuel that your body uses are the fatty acids. So let’s put it simply – you are losing fat and nothing else.

If you already do this – great! You can share with us your progress and experience. But if you are still considering it, we encourage you to try it out for at least a couple of weeks and then the results will keep you motivated to continue.

The summer is near, so let’s get to work! 🙂

Please share if this article was helpful.

Hierarchy of fat loss

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of fat loss? Diet and exercise, right? Yes, these are undoubtedly important but when your fat loss efforts come to a standstill, it is good to remember that there are other factors that play a role in the process. We have arranged them by importance in a Hierarchy of fat loss. These are: diet, sleep, stress, physical activity and training.

1.      Diet – no training can overturn a bad diet.  In order to lose weight, you have to create calorific deficit. High intensity training increases appetite, which makes some consume more food. Therefore it is important to combine intense training with balanced diet. Make healthy choices when you shop and if necessary use diet and weight loss supplements to get a boost. Chronic overeating and overtraining can lead to insulin resistance.  If your weight loss comes to a halt, try reducing the amount of training you do and food you consume by a little.

2.      Sleep – Have you noticed that when you have not had enough sleep, your cravings for carbs increase? This is no coincidence. When you are in a state of chronic sleep deficiency, your body needs a fast energy source. This is why sweet things look so attractive when you are tired – a double blow to your dieting efforts. Sleep is a milestone for optimum health and when not sufficient, it affects everything – mood, hormones, stress levels, appetite, willpower, energy, ability for quality training and recovery. If your body receives less than 7 hours sleep very often, this is likely to be a barrier on your fat loss path. Try this: in the next few weeks make a daily plan which includes more sleep at night time. Forget about staying late on social medias or watching TV.

3.      Stress – Every one experiences stress at some point in their daily life. Stress can affect your eating habits (emotional eating) or affect your sleep. Even intensive training is perceived as stress by the body and it releases more cortisone – the stress hormone. This in turn has negative impact on muscle recovery and what is more under stress the body tries to store additional fat to use as energy source. Try this: make a list of things that make you calm – a 15 min walk in the park, 20 min in the bath, breathing exercises, listening to music etc. They can reduce your stress levels and will help you sleep better and avoid emotional eating.

4.      Physical Activity – it may sound surprising to you that even people who train 4-5times a week also can be classed as having a sedentary lifestyle. If you are sitting for 8 hours behind a desk, this makes you inactive and you should try and stand up and move about more often. That gives you the opportunity to break the sitting in one and the same position and will help avoid the imbalance in the musculoskeletal system. Additionally you will burn more energy. If you are already training- this is good, but try and increase your body movement as much as possible. It is easy – use the stairs instead of the lift, park further, run with your children or dog, park or get off one stop further from your destination.

5.       Training – last in this hierarchy of fat loss is the training. It plays a vital role in the muscle creation or preservation, regulates imbalances in the body, boosts confidence, improves bone density; it supports healthy heart and so on. What is more, larger muscle mass means burning more calories when resting bringing you closer to your fat loss goal. Without the first 4 steps in the fat loss ladder though, training can be ineffective for weight loss. For the ladies looking to get into shape we recommend power training with multi-joint exercises 3-4 times a week, 2 cardio sessions of 30 min each and 1-2 a week high intensity interval training.

Be S.M.A.R.T. about your goal and consistent, the results will follow soon.

Setting fitness goals are important, they give us a target to work towards and every step forward gives us a brilliant sense of accomplishment when we achieve them.

If you set yourself unrealistic and unachievable goals, when you find yourself not on track it can make you feel down and could cause injury if you strain your body too much to maintain progress. That’s why we’re going to look at how to make realistic, achievable goals to help you on your fitness journey.

SMART Targets

SMART targets are a great way to set your targets, it stands for Specific, Measureable, Assignable, Realistic & Time-bound. An example of this is if I was a male who weighed 15st exactly, my target would be: I want to Lose two stone by consistently losing 0.14st per week for 14 weeks.

This goal sets the SMART targets guidelines because it is specific in the amount of weight loss you would want to lose, it is measurable because that would equate to 0.14st/2lbs/0.9kg per week. It is assignable because you are the one who is doing the weight loss, and realistic & time-bound, because it is the recommended that 0.14st is the amount of healthy weight loss per week and losing 0.14st every week, equates to 2 stone over 14 weeks.

Tips & Tricks

Whilst calories out vs. calories out is the most simple, effective & recommended way to lose, gain or maintain weight – there are a few things you can do to your diet to get more and less in your calorie intake.

Sugary Drinks

Whilst Jamie Oliver’s sugar-tax levy that was introduced in 2018 saw a lot of soft drink brand reformulate their drinks to make them less sugary to avoid the tax, it has also been shown that is has had the effect on people that fizzy drinks are now healthy – which is untrue.

100ml of Pepsi is 41kcal, which means if you enjoy a 500ml bottle with your tea every night (because diets do need to be balanced and you shouldn’t get rid of everything that gives you pleasure), that means it’s an extra 204kcal per day, which equates to around 10% of your daily calories goal.

The best fluid to have with food is water, as it contains no calories whatsoever, however, if you love fizzy pop that much, all the major soft drinks have low calorie and zero-cal options.

Food

When losing weight, you ultimately need to watch what you need. A lot of people underestimate how many calories are in certain foods, so you need to be careful to read the nutritional information on the packaging.

Even when you read the packaging, labels can be deceitful, make sure you read how many calories are in their recommended serving size. Some brands label their serving size so small, for example, 1/2 of a Chicken Kiev, so they do not look that bad in terms of their nutritional information – so always be on the lookout for that.

Eathis.com compiled a list of some of the foods that are higher in calories than you think, here’s just a few we think are important to know, check their article for the full list.

• Certain Smoothies: While smoothies can be extremely beneficial, don’t fall into the trap of thinking all smoothies are healthy. Whilst they may have good benefits for your body, some of them can be almost 1000kcal, 50% of the daily recommended calorie intake.
• Salad Dressing: When you first think of the best ways to lose weight, eating salads is one of the first things that come to mind. Whilst it’s true that they are very low calories, the salad dressing contains a lot of calories which all add up. We’ve also written an article about the impact sauces & condiments can have on your diet.
• Avocadoes: There are plenty of benefits of eating Avocados, they’re healthy for your heart and full of potassium. However, a full Avocado can contain up to 400 kcal, which would be 1/4 of your daily recommend daily goal. We recommend everything in moderation, especially with Avocados. Not only are they tasty, but they also fend off hunger, boost our nutrient absorption and lower our cholesterol.

Calories Burned During Exercise

When you exercise, you obviously burn calories. You can lose weight by reducing the number of calories you consume per day, but that is also coupled a lot of the time with exercise.

Using Bupa’s online calorie calculator, we figured out that our 15 stone male would lose, 598kcal if he were to undergo 30 minutes of vigorous weightlifting and running at 6 miles an hour for 20 minutes. It has been shown that 1 pound of belly fat is equal to 3,500kcal, so if you lost 0.14st per week from food, you could lose another 0.07st from exercise on top of that – but that is heavily not recommended. If our 15 stone male was to lose an extra 598kcal a day, that would his body would be missing 28% of its daily fuel source.

Jillianmichaels.com says that “It is absolutely 100 per cent essential to eat enough calories! If you don’t, it will destroy your metabolism. It’s like telling your body that you’re starving. If your body thinks it’s starving, your metabolism will shut down.

Not eating enough calories will also force the body to cannibalize muscle and hold on to fat. The body considers muscle to be expendable during periods of starvation, and it considers fat to be necessary to insulate your organs for survival.”

Whilst the above quote is only in the extreme circumstances, you could start to feel very mild side effects of not consuming enough calories of what’s listed above.

Therefore, it’s essential to get your body back up to the recommended calorie level for that day. Protein shakes are especially good because they also give you the proteins to repair your muscles as well as the calories to fuel your body, check out our range here.

Times To Eat

Intermittent fasting has been shown to be a good way to reduce weight loss. If your body can cope with that, great. But there is no definitive time to eat. You should be having every meal, in a balanced way. Skipping breakfast, dinner or tea can lead to overeating later on. Having meals at regular intervals throughout the day makes it less likely to overeat when you get home.

Helpful Apps

The app that we would recommend for using, is Under Armour’s ‘myfitnesspal’ it is the one-stop app for tracking your calorie intake, updating your goals and providing you with data such as which food groups you eat too much of or not enough of. We also compiled another article full of the best apps for your fitness journey, check it out here.