3 Ways To Losing Fat
1 – Know when to mix your carbs and high volume workouts
Lifting heavy and lifting often is a given if muscle building is your goal, but if you know you need to lose fat and don't have those good genetics like the 150-pound scrawny kid then here is a different approach. High-volume training that keeps your heart rate elevated is perfect for guys (and girls) who lean more toward the endomorph somatotype.
Thankfully, heavy resistance training sensitizes muscle tissues to carbohydrates. After a heavy weight training session, your muscle cells are scrambling to soak up carbs to promote recovery. That means the higher your daily workout volume, the better you'll be sensitized to carbs.
In other words, you want to improve insulin sensitivity, which is pretty much a theme for endomorphs.
Take home message: Train with progressively higher volume as many times per week as your recovery allows, while incorporating metabolic techniques such as drop sets, supersets, complexes and interval cardio to maximize fat burning.
Eating carbs before and after a high volume workout will get you the best results!
2 – Carb Down When Inactive
Eliminating carbs entirely – otherwise known as a horrible diet – has negative connotations, and for good reason. The word "diet" alone suggests deprivation, bouts of starvation, and resisting temptation. Any diet that restricts things for too long is bound to fail.
But in general terms, those seeking fat loss need to keep insulin at bay during inactive times of the day. Sure, insulin is a potent inducer of amino acid uptake and protein synthesis, which makes it key to a muscular physique, but it's a double-edged sword.
Insulin is effective at driving carbs into muscle and liver tissue (good), but it's also equally good at directing carbs into fat tissue (bad).
To get the best of both worlds, skip the carbs at breakfast and during the early part of your workday. Instead, opt to replace carbs with healthy fats and keep your protein intake constant.
This means something like a three-egg omelet with spinach instead of a heavy carb-laden breakfast of pancakes and waffles (you can maybe eat those later in the day – see below).
That said, we don't want to catabolize muscle entirely and end up looking like a dude fresh off Weight Watchers. When your workout comes around, introduce carbs to maximize recovery.
This isn't particularly new info, but one study found that 50 grams of pure carbohydrates in a workout drink consumed during a resistance training session completely eliminated cortisol elevations compared to a control drink.
Subjects within this study with the lowest cortisol – and the greatest muscle gains – were entirely from the group who drank the carb drink, whereas subjects tested with the highest cortisol showed the least gains. One placebo participant on the control drink even lost muscle size during the study!
3 – Heat That Body Up!
Heat therapy, the sauna being one example, improves insulin sensitivity by suppressing inflammation. You'll notice a theme here – insulin sensitivity is a common thread to fat loss and everything you can do to improve it should be a priority.
Soaking in a hot bath or sauna causes an increase in core body temperature that turns on the cellular "heat shock" response. This increases insulin sensitivity by suppressing inflammation and increasing blood flow to working muscles.
You can get similar effects from cold showers or cryotherapy on the opposite end of the spectrum, but I think most would make the choice to relax in a sauna over an ice bath.
Hitting the sauna a few times a week when you're off from the gym may be just what's needed to maintain heat-shock protein levels, which aren't activated during sedentary activities. Theoretically, this should help to maintain insulin sensitivity at or near training levels.