how to reduce body fat

How to Reduce Body Fat

If you’re like me, reducing your body fat percentage is probably one of your number one fitness goals and will continue to be a good challenge to overcome.

Over the years, I’ve offered up a lot of tips and guidelines for burning excess body fat and toning up. But I thought I’d do things a little different this time by telling you what I’ve done over the years to reduce body fat.

Remember, everyone’s body responds differently, and you need to do experiment, challenge yourself and find what works best for you. I’m hoping these tips might offer you some new insights into your own battle against body fat.

Ready for this? This is a completely unedited look at what has worked best for me when it comes to reducing body fat, toning up, and getting ripped.

Let’s get to it…

Steps to Reducing Body Fat

1. Implement Resistance Training with Weights

Without a doubt, the most significant transformation I’ve made in my own life to reduce body fat has been weight lifting. Whether you’re a man or a woman, lifting weights and building lean muscle mass is one of the most effective methods of weight loss. This is because the more lean muscle mass you have, the more calories and fat your body burns on a daily basis, but also your confidence increases, your energy levels increase and it causes a cataclysmic chain of positive events in your life.

To reach my own fitness goals, hitting the gym at least 4 days a week was necessary. I started out with a basic split of upper and lower body every other day, and eventually moved to splitting up muscle groups. For example, you could follow a rotation of back/biceps, chest/triceps, legs, and abs/core. This has worked best for me and although I add lots of variety I tend to come back to this group set.

I also found that it was necessary to really educate myself and learn how to lift weights properly. This is an important tip that should not be overlooked! Proper form can make a huge difference when it comes to reaching your goals. When going through the workouts on this site pay special attention to the body positions in the images provided for the exercises. My other biggest tip, is don’t be afraid to look in the mirror at the gym, they are there to help you watch your form (contrary to what some may believe!).

2. Eat to Support Your Own Goals

I know, you hear about healthy eating all the time. But I’m going to put a bit of a spin on this old tip: Eat in a way that supports your own fitness and weight loss goals! For me, given that I was working out and lifting weights 4-5 times a week, it was necessary that I eat frequently and get a lot of extra protein in my diet.

Aside from that, the basic rules applied. The more I learned about healthy eating, the more I implemented in my daily living and hence why I started this blog so I could pass on that info to you guys. I cut out white flour and white rice as much as possible, cut back on sugar and sodium, and overall ate more whole foods versus processed foods. Take it slow, and make small changes over time!

Once you get into the momentum of eating healthy you will realize how good your body feels receiving all these nutrients and your view of junk foods will change because they won’t have the same satisfaction after eating health foods.

3. Take the Right Supplements

This one gets a lot of controversy, and I have to admit I was a bit hesitant about supplements when I first started my own fat burning and toning efforts. But I quickly learned that they were extremely helpful if I wanted significant results in a short period of time. I also learned that they could be healthy if taken correctly and in the right combination. These are the supplements that have worked well for me over the years:

  • A tasty, satisfying whey protein supplement to support muscle growth. You can’t pack on muscle without more protein and why protein is pure protein without the extra calories. My two favorite are Gaspari Nutrition Myofusion (before workouts) & Optimum 100% Natural Casein (after workouts).
  • A pre-workout booster for energy and endurance, to help you get that extra pump. My new favorite is Muscle Pharm Assault but one that I also fall back to is USPlabs Jack3d.
  • An intra-workout supplement for improving muscle endurance and recovery. This one hands down is the best of the best amino acid supplement: Scivation Extend.
  • A glutamine supplement to preserve muscle mass and maximize your results. Try Optimum Glutamine.

Have any questions or feedback about how to reduce body fat? Please leave a comment below…