Train 2 Xcel Nine Tips for Fat Loss in 2022!

It’s January so that means it’s time for New Year’s Resolutions.

Each year many people start the new year trying to improve their health and fitness. In fact, more than 50% of all New Year’s Resolutions will center around fat loss. The problem is that 80-90% of the fat loss resolutions will fail within the first month.

This is mainly due to a lack of planning and making things way too complicated.  It’s very easy to feel overwhelmed, see little progress at first, get frustrated, and then quit.

We don’t want that to be you in 2022!

To get you headed in the right direction here are our Nine Most Effective Tips for Fat Loss in the new year.

#1- Track Your Food and Calories

By tracking what you are eating, you naturally become more mindful of what and how much you are consuming.

There are numerous studies showing that people consistently underestimate the amount of food they are consuming, especially on weekends.

We know we need to have a caloric deficit each week to have sustained fat loss.  This means eating less than the number of calories required to maintain your current weight.

Keeping a food journal is a proven method to keep calories in check and increase dieting success.

#2 - Prioritize Protein and Vegetables

Proteins are essential in building and maintaining lean body mass, but they also play a major role helping us feel full and satisfied while in a caloric deficit.  When trying to change your body, protein is the number one nutrient to focus on.

Vegetables are awesome at providing us with health-boosting nutrients.  Like protein, they also help keep us full and feeling like we are eating more by adding volume to meals.  This is a critical component of staying in a caloric deficit.

Protein and Veggies are a winning combination for fat loss!

#3 - Build a Consistent Workout Schedule

A key component of fat loss is exercise consistency.  One of the best ways to improve your consistency is to plan your workouts in advance.

This means not only planning what you will do during the workout, but also the time and place that the workout will take place.

Plan your workouts just like you would any other meeting or task.  Put it on your daily calendar and try to plan a month's worth of workouts in advance.

#4 - Increase Your Activity Levels

Exercising for many hours day after day is a recipe for disaster.  It’s not sustainable.  However, we can increase our activity levels by creating habits that require us to move more.

Park further away from the store, take the stairs when you can go for walks throughout the day.  All these can help increase our NEAT (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis is the energy expended for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating or sports-like exercise)

All these activities add up and help with fat loss.

#5 - Use Strength Training to stimulate muscle growth/retention

When trying to lose body fat the primary role of exercise is to maintain muscle mass, not to burn calories (we use our diet to do that).

That means full-body strength training is going to be our main form of exercise.  It must be challenging enough that the last few reps of each set are getting close to your limit.  This sends a signal to your body that your muscle mass is important and must be maintained.

Focus primarily on multi-joint compound exercises when strength training.  These types of exercises use large amounts of muscle and when paired correctly lead to more efficient use of your time.

Combined with a higher protein intake, this type of training builds a protective barrier around your muscles.

Strength train 3 times per week.  If you have more time to devote to exercise, you can add in heart rate-based conditioning sessions depending on your fitness level.

Pounding your body into submission with multiple exhaustive Metabolic Conditioning or HIIT classes is not a recipe for success.  While high intensity interval training can play a part in training for fat loss, it must be dosed correctly and sparingly.

Strength training is the primary form of exercise for fat loss, cardio is a distant second.

#6 - Prioritize Your Sleep

Sleep plays important roles in the recovery of the mind and body.  Increased stress and inflammation levels due to poor sleep can sabotage fat loss and muscle building.

Aim to get 6-8 hours of sleep every night to allow your body to fully recover and prime it for building muscle and losing fat.

#7 - Aim for Consistency, Not Perfection

Striving for perfection with exercise and nutrition often leads to over restriction and overtraining which can lead to burn out, frustration and injury.

Fat loss is achieved by eating well and exercising throughout the week and being able to repeat this week after week.  To do this, you need to be eating in a way that is sustainable for YOU.

There are no magic diets or ways of eating.  Success can be had by following basic principles consistently over and over.

#8 - Be Patient

Results don’t happen overnight.  Create healthy sustainable habits and work your plan. Fat loss takes time. There are no quick fixes or magic pills.

To see long-term results, we must put in consistent effort.  That said, we don’t want to be in a caloric deficit for longer than 12 weeks without doing a maintenance phase where we try to maintain the weight we’ve lost for a few months.

This will help ensure the negative adaptations from dieting are minimized and give us a higher chance to keep the weight off permanently.   Maintenance phases also help prime our bodies for another fat loss phase.

It takes discipline to follow this plan of diet phase/maintenance phase/diet phase/maintenance phase, but this is how you create lasting change.

#9 - Hire a Coach

Everyone needs a coach (even fitness pros!).  The hardest person to coach will always be yourself.  By hiring a coach, you immediately increase your chance for long-term success.

A coach helps keep you accountable and helps guide you in the right direction by looking objectively at your situation and helping you solve problems.

Investing in a coach is investing in yourself and that is always money well spent.

The most effective way to use these tips is not to try to do them all at once.  Start with the one or two that seem easiest for you to do consistently and after you master them, add another one.  This is how you build successful habits for the long term.

The coaches at Train 2 Xcel can help you simplify your fat loss efforts and become fit and healthy in 2022!

Whenever you’re ready, here are a few ways to work with us at Train 2 Xcel:

  1. Talk to us on the phone. Want to see if we’re the right fit for you? Want to talk to someone that cares about your success and can point you in the right direction toward it? We can help.

Just email us at train2xcel@outlook.com with “CALL” in the subject line, leave us your contact information and one of our personal trainers will get back to you.

  1. Book a free strategy session. We are not just a gym. We care about our members. We’ll sit with you and talk about your goals, experience with exercise, current nutrition program and any things that may be preventing you from getting in the best shape of your life. From there, you’ll get our expert advice on how to achieve your goals and leave the meeting with a clear plan for success.

Just email us at train2xcel@outlook.com with “STRATEGY SESSION” in the subject and we’ll get right back to you.

  1. Risk-free 14-Day Jumpstart. If you’ve simply seen enough of our members experience incredible results and you’re ready to get started with us, the 14-Day Jumpstart is the perfect fit.  You’ll get the full Train 2 Xcel Experience that’s designed to get you on the path to a longer, healthier and happier life. We’re ready to help you!

Just fill out this FORM to get started.

Train 2 Xcel: Best personal training gym in Ridgefield CT.

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Submitted by Ridgefield, CT

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