The following article is presented by my friend, Frank Pastorelli, from www.genesis-health-fitness.com in Central Florida. Frank is one of the most passionate, and by far the hardest working fitness expert I know.

When attempting to hit your fat loss goals there are five major components that one needs to focus on. They work in conjunction with one another and all play a crucial role in your success. They are all of equal importance, and if one is left out your success will be hindered. These five components are food intake, cardio respiratory training, supplementation, resistive training, and personal assistance. Concentrating on these five points will hasten your results with the least amount of effort.

Food Intake

Food intake, or diet rather, is the component that will either make you or brake you as far as fat loss goes. The only way that the human body drops body fat is by being in what is called a calorie deficit. The human body works on what is called the LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. This law states that if you eat more calories in a day than you burn you will gain fat, if you burn more calories in a day than you eat you will lose fat, and if you eat the same amount of calories in a day as you burn you will remain constant. This is a law!!!! It is as true as the law of gravity and it is how the body works. Knowing this, it is simple. If you want to lose fat you need to adjust you daily calorie intake so that you are into a calorie deficit. You need to get your calorie count low enough to begin fat loss, but at the same time keeping it high enough to remain healthy. The second step to optimizing you food intake is by spreading your food out evenly throughout the day. Ideally, you want to be on a five meal plan. By spreading your calories evenly through five small meals your metabolism works its best for you. When you constantly give your body food with small meals your body does not feel the need to store fat. On the contrary when eating large, infrequent meals your body feels the need to store some food as fat for it is unsure as to when it will be fed again. Get on a scheduled meal plan that your body will respond to. Five meals a day, approximately three hours apart, works great.

One of the easiest ways I've found to ensure I'm eating the right foods and with the right frequency is to use Meal Plans 101 - a program created by 2 of the top Registered Dieticians in the country. Their program takes all the guess work out of what and how much to eat so you lose excess body fat.

Cardio Respiratory Training

Cardio respiratory training is the component that gives you all your health benefits. It lowers the risk of heart attack, blood pressure, cholesterol, all that good stuff. There are many benefits to cardio training. As far as your fat loss goal, this is where you are going to simply burn calories to increase the deficit that you create through you diet which will make you lose fat faster. (Now, I’m going to make a general recommendation. Note, medical conditions are not factored in so if any are present consult your physician.) When doing cardio exercise there are four points that need to be considered, Frequency, Intensity, Time, and Type.

Recommendations:

Frequency- 3-4 times per week

Intensity- moderate (brisk walk)

Time- 30 -45 minutes

Type- (Vary modalities from walking, biking, swimming, etc.)

As far as the type of cardio you are doing it is best to switch it up. The reason being is that the human body adapts to every stress that it is under and that holds true to exercise as well. So imagine you are walking at 3.5 mph for thirty minutes and you burn 300 calories. Three months later you are doing that same walk 3.5 mph for thirty minutes, well your body has become so used to the movement that it no longer expends that much energy to perform the task, so now you are only burning half the amount of calories. This will slow down your results and lead to frustration. Mix up your cardio. Walk, bike, cross train, swim, whatever. Just don’t allow your body to become accustom to one movement.

Supplementation

Without knowing you as an individual there is only one supplement recommendation that I will make. TAKE A QUALITY MULTIVITAMIN!!! It will make a night and day difference in your weight loss success. I’m sure you know all the health benefits to taking a multi, but let me explain how it affects your fat loss goals. Say your nutrient level needs to be at 100% for you to function optimally. Well you get your nutrients from food and if you are trying to lose fat you cut back on food which means you also cut back on nutrients. So now your nutrient level is at 50%. Add in exercise, both cardio and weight training which requires more nutrients. You are now at 25%. Well, your body stores its nutrients inside your muscle tissue. So image you’re working out and your body is craving nutrients and you are only at 25%. Your body will go right into that muscle tissue and pull out the nutrients; which will mean that while you are working out you will end up burning muscle instead of fat. That is the exact opposite of your goal. If you are on a quality multi it will keep your levels up high and you will feed off of it. This will help you preserve your muscle and burn off the fat. Get set up on a two a day multi. One a day multivitamins are ineffective. You want your levels high all the time not just in the morning. There are many other supplements that can help as well. Please contact me for a free consultation.

Resistive Training

Resistive training or weight training, believe it or not, is a very important factor in dropping fat. Weight training is the component that helps your body build muscle. I know the term “muscle burns fat” has been floating around for years. Well, it is true! I’ll explain how. For your body to carry a pound of fat throughout a day, your body will burn anywhere from 8-10 calories for holding that fat. Not much right. Now for your body to carry a pound of muscle for a day, you will burn anywhere from 80-90 calories. Ten times the amount burned from fat. This is because muscle is a much leaner, energy efficient tissue. Now imagine you lose ten pounds of fat and gain two pounds of muscle. Well, those two pounds of muscle that you gain will help your body burn more calories over the course of a day. This will help you burn more fat off at a faster rate. Hence the term muscle burns fat.

Personal Assistance

Personal assistance is the educational component. Get assistance from a fitness professional/personal trainer to make sure that you are doing all the above correctly. There are a lot of factors involved in the other four components and if you do not have your food plan, cardio respiratory training, supplementation, and weight training regimens adjusted to your specific goal, physical status, and medical history you could injury yourself or hinder your results. Make sure you are doing everything right, there is no need for guess work. If you live in the Cincinnati area, there is no better team of fitness professions than Brian Calkins' staff at HealthStyle Fitness.

Remember, each component is as important as the other. I know people who follow a couple of them and struggle to get minimal results. Follow through with these five components and it will give you the straightest line possible to your results.

Resources to Help with Fat Loss:

1. Meal Plans 101 - An easy to follow software designed by 2 of the top Registered Dieticians in the country to help you easily create your own meals that allow you to lose excess body fat.

2. PurFoods Fitness - 100% healthy, gourmet food prepared by a chef and delivered to your door.

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