Everybody wants to lose weight, but what you actually want is to lose fat. The scale shows you every thing in your body in relation to how much it weighs. It doesn't care if that means it's fat, muscle, or your organs - it measures it all. When people come to me saying they want to lose weight, they really just want to lose the fat around their muscles so they look lean. In this blog I am going to give you 5 secrets to fat loss. If you do these 5, you'll see progress.

They aren't really secrets, because you're going to read them and be like 'that's it?' But do these for 2 months and come back and tell me I'm wrong...cause you can't.

Fat loss is simple but it's not easy.

#1 - Eat protein

Yes, especially you girls. You should be aiming to eat ~1 gram of protein per pound of goal bodyweight every single day. So for me, I eat around 150 grams of protein every single day.

By eating this much protein, you are allowing your body to keep its muscle as you lose the fat surrounding it, giving you that toned look everybody wants. Adequate protein intake also helps you recover from workouts, is the most satiating macronutrient (so it keeps you full), and helps build and sustain muscle mass.

It's going to be hard at first, but once you do it for a while, it gets a lot easier! I have a whole blog on how to hit your protein intake here!

#2 - Resistance train heavy!!

I was so guilty of doing hours of cardio hoping to shed off 10 pounds. Unfortunately I never saw the progress I truly wanted. When we do lots of cardio, we are creating more of a deficit for weight loss to occur, but the problem here is when we do cardio, we're not actively building our muscles so you end up just being a flatter version of the body you have now without any body recomposition.

When you resistance train though, your body is building muscle. The more muscle you have on your body, the more calories you burn outside of your workouts. So when we resistance train, not only are we changing how our body looks, but we are also setting ourselves up to have a better metabolism.

When you go in to train, make sure you're challenging yourself with weights, not spending too much time between sets, and that you are progressively overloading and not changing up your workouts every single week!

#3 - Be in a slight deficit.

Calories in vs calories out consistently is proven in the literature that it matters most when it comes to fat loss. You have to be eating less than your body is burning in a day in order to lose weight.

This gets tricky because your apple watch is not good at knowing this exact numbers. As your body regulates to what you're doing, your hormones, body processes, and the exercise and food you eat all will play a factor in how you burn/store macros.

If you don't know if you're in a deficit right now, I would simply start tracking what you're doing (without changing it) and then assess if you're maintaining, losing weight, or gaining weight and adjust. Take or add in 50 calories or so weekly and keep monitoring progress.

#4 - Reduce stress

Stress in our life or through our workouts/nutrition makes a huge impact on how our body looks. The more stressed (or the prolonging of it) tells our bodies hormones (specifically cortisol) to raise. When this cortisol is raised, it creates a domino effect of processes in our body. We will start to look or feel 'puffier' because our body becomes inflammed, we may not be recovering as well from our workouts, it may be harder to fall or stay asleep - all compounding into us feeling frustrated that our body isn't losing weight.

Cortisol is a natural response that we need in our body, the problem comes when it stays elevated for too long.

#5 - Drink your water and get your sleep.

Obvious but necessary ones. When our body is properly fueled and we are resting and recovering, it starts to look and feel better. You'll notice your skin looking clearer, you have more natural energy, you are more motivated to check off tasks you need to do.

There are a lot of factors when it comes to individualizing programs for fat loss. Everybody responds differently and needs specific protocols for their body type, history, and lifestyle in order to make long lasting and sustainable progress. If you're interested in a custom program, apply here and let's chat on how I can help you reach your fat loss goals!