Be Fit Fitness Blog

By Kim Lyons

How long you should you work out and at what intensity level to achieve the best fat loss results? This is a question many people have when it comes to working out and losing weight. I know that you want to maximize your time and effort to achieve the best results, so I thought I’d share my answer with you.

For the past decade, dieters and fitness enthusiasts have been mislead into thinking that lower intensity exercise is the best way to burn fat. This is likely because exercise at lower intensities primarily uses fat as the “fuel” source while higher intensity exercise uses carbohydrates as fuel.

However, the most important factor in losing fat with exercise is the total number of calories burned and not whether the calories burned are from fat or carbohydrates.

I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve trained who have refused to work hard because they were afraid it would take them out of their “fat burning zone.”

Research and our Fast Track to Fat Loss program success stories have proven, time and time again, that exercising at a low intensity to stay in the “fat burning zone” is incorrect. At lower intensities, you burn more calories from fat but you burn fewer total calories. Remember, in order to lose fat, you must create a caloric deficit. That is, you need to expend (burn) more calories than you consume. There are no exceptions to this rule.

So, whether your cardio sessions are 15, 20, 30 or 45 minutes long, the higher the intensity, the more total calories you will burn. And the more total calories that you burn, the more fat you burn.

In addition, higher intensity exercise not only burns more calories, it also elevates your metabolism more (and longer) after the workout is over. That’s right, with higher intensity exercise, you can actually condition your metabolism to work more efficiently throughout the day! Of course, be sure to exercise at a safe range for your fitness level.

I hope I’ve cleared up the confusion on exercise intensities and burning fat and I hope to see you at my weekly Live Chat.

Protein plays an important role in our body functions including primarily building and repairing muscle tissue, but it also plays an important role in fat loss. There are many sources of foods with high protein content including many cereals these days, so be sure to check the packaging and the protein content of the types of foods that you are eating.

This short article by Kim Lyons of Fast Track to Fat Loss will briefly explain how protein can aid in weight loss or the potential to gain weight. It’s very important to balance all meals and snacks with carbohydrate-rich and protein-rich foods together. A meal with carbohydrates alone is problematic because glucose levels shoot up and then crash down. This can leave you feeling tired, hungry and weak and it gives your body an easy opportunity to convert that meal to fat.

When protein is included, however, you will not only stay full longer, but glucose levels will stay more consistent, your metabolism will work more efficiently and you will feel energized for a longer period.

Carbohydrates are digested in about two hours, but proteins take much longer to digest. When the two are eaten together, protein slows down the digestion of the carbohydrates and the energy from carbs is released more slowly.

In addition, eating carbohydrates with protein means that more carbohydrates will now be used as energy, sparing the protein which can be used for their primary function to build and repair muscle tissues.

So, for maximum fat loss, make sure that you include a complete protein source at each snack and meal. All of these reasons above are exactly the Protein Freeze product was created. It contains 22 grams of very high quality protein with only 2 grams of fat and sugar! It tastes absolutely amazing and goes so well with oatmeal, fruit and a variety of other healthy carbohydrate foods.

The V-bar pullup is a compound exercise that targets your lats as well as your biceps, middle back and shoulders. You build strength on each muscle as you pull yourself up and down the pull-up bar.

Before beginning this exercise, make sure that you have done your stretches and warm-up.

How to perform this exercise…

Place a V-bar at the middle of a pull-up bar. If your pull-up bar already has neutral grip handles, there is no need to do so. The V-bar should be secure prior to execution of the exercise. Hold the bar with both palms facing each other. Stick out your chest and slightly incline your back backwards so to concentrate the action on your lats. Let your body hang with your knees bent at a 90 degree angle and your ankles crossed. This is your starting position.

Exhale as you pull your torso up as you incline your head slightly to the right to avoid getting bumped at the chin-up bar. Keep the motion in your lats and continue lifting until your chest is almost in contact with the V-bar. Hold the position for a second, maintaining the contraction in your torso, and then inhale as you slowly lower your body back to starting position. Maintain the tension in your torso at all times throughout the exercise and do not just drop your body. You will only injure your muscles as you do so. Do the same procedure again this time with your head leaning slightly to the left.

Repeat with the recommended alternating number of repetitions and sets. If you do not have the strength to perform this exercise, you can use a pull-up assist machine or have a spotter lift your legs. If you want a more challenging workout, use a weight belt to hold a few extra weights.

Written by Daniel Lee from Extreme Home Workout, your top site to Get Insanity by Shaun T.

I am going to discuss how often you should eat by looking at why eating 4 to 6 smaller meals more frequently (about 2.5 to 3 hours apart) is better than 3 large meals and why eating fewer calories at night is ideal.

Eating a large meal increases the opportunity for fat cells to extract fat from the blood and therefore, grow bigger. Fat cells can actually adapt to a pattern of large, infrequent meals by becoming more efficient at storing fat.

In addition, a 2 to 3 meal-a-day pattern causes the body to face long stretches without food. By the time lunch or dinner rolls around, you’re so hungry that you’re more likely to make unwise food choices and overeat. Eating smaller meals more frequently throughout the day, not only prevents you from making unwise food choices, it helps you to feel more energized and satisfied and it keeps your metabolism revved up throughout the day.

I understand though that from time-to-time you might have a sweet tooth, and in this case we have the perfect solution – our product is called the “Protein Freeze.” It has a taste and texture similar to ice cream (it’s so good!), yet 5 times as much protein and very little fat, sugar and calories. It’s an amazing product and you can learn more about it at Protein Freeze.

Besides eating smaller meals more frequently, try to plan so that you don’t eat your largest meal late at night. The body’s metabolic rate has a natural cycle of highs and lows, peaking late in the day and dropping to its lowest level during sleep.

So it makes sense to avoid putting a large meal into your system 2 to 3 hours before bedtime when your metabolic rate is beginning to slow down. If you do feel hungry after this time, you don’t need to go to bed hungry, just eat something very low in calories and in a small portion. Protein and fibrous carbohydrates (vegetables) are the very best types of food to eat at night because they’re so low in calories and have almost no adverse affect on blood sugar levels.

It’s important to note, just because you eat at night, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll gain fat. If you’re still in a caloric deficit, whether you eat at night or not, you’ll still likely lose fat but eating less at night is an easy way to keep calories under control, especially since these extra calories aren’t needed at night before you go to bed because you’ll be inactive while you’re sleeping. Make sense?

Okay to summarize, here are my key points to remember:

1. Eat small, frequent meals (4 to 6 meals/day) about 2.5 to 3 hours apart.

2. Try to eat fewer calories later in the day which can easily be accomplished by focusing on protein and/or vegetables.

By Kim Lyons – Fast Track to Fat Loss, BS, CPT

By Kim Lyons

I want to spend a little time explaining how you can enjoy what I like to call ‘cheat meals’ without sabotaging your progress. I’ll be discussing caloric deficit, caloric intake, calorie balance, caloric budget with respect to eating and losing weight.

Junk food doesn’t automatically make you fat. It’s the extra calories in these junk foods that make you gain fat. For example, many people think eating pizza or a cheeseburger or chocolate equals getting fat. It doesn’t. There’s not a cause and effect relationship where ‘junk food’ automatically turns into fat. Eating too many calories equals gaining fat and because junk food is very high in calories it often leads to fat gain, but that’s the only correlation.

We suggest that you limit these types of high calorie foods, or at least make healthier changes to them such as asking the waiter to go light on the cheese or hold the mayo and substitute a salad for fries because they’re very high calorie foods and they make creating that ‘caloric deficit’ (burning more than you eat) a challenge.

But to say that when you eat one of these foods they’ll cause you to automatically gain fat or even prevent you from losing fat, that just isn’t true! The bottom line is that depriving yourself completely of your favorite foods is a great way to make yourself miserable and certainly cause you to fall off your diet progress very quickly.

And this is the reason so many diets fail. They don’t teach you how to strike a balance. We feel that you can allow yourself your favorite foods as long as you acknowledge that calories do count and you must obey the law of ‘calorie balance’ (calories in vs. calories out) and plan accordingly to consistently create this calorie deficit.

This means that if you really want to go out and have a cheese-burger with your friends, for example, then you should follow these 4 easy steps:

1. Take account for that in the rest of your meals that day and make a conscious effort to eat a little smaller portions and/or eat foods lower in calories, such as lean complete proteins and fibrous carbohydrates (veggies).

2. Be a little more active throughout the day as well. Whether it’s an extra 10 minutes of cardio or simply playing with your kids, the more calories you burn throughout the day, the better.

3. Make some simple changes to that meal so that you can still enjoy it, but don’t go so overboard that you sabotage your progress. An example of making simple changes to a traditionally high calorie meal is as follows: ordering a burger with no cheese and mayo, having a salad instead of fries, drinking water or diet soda instead of regular soda, and asking the waiter to box up half in advance. (We have lots of ideas like this for you at Fast Track to Fat Loss)

4. Get right back on track after that meal, right away. Allowing yourself a ‘cheat meal’ doesn’t mean that you can go crazy the rest of the weekend and then just start over on Monday.

Now, because you ate a few less calories than you normally do throughout the day and were a little more active … and because you made some simple, yet wise choices to your burger meal you may have ended up eating no more calories than you normally do.

So did that burger out with friends cause you to gain fat? Absolutely not because you planned wisely in advance and made wise choices to stay within your ‘caloric budget’ for the day. If you plan ahead and follow the above simple steps, you will achieve your weight loss goals, yet still enjoy yourself in life.

Speaking of cheating, did you know that your average glass of beer, wine or cocktail has more than 200 calories? That’s just one glass! You could eat 20 large bags of spinach and not consume that many calories!

Learn more about nutrition and effective weight loss at
Fast Track to Fat Loss.