Do you do the same workout day after day? Has your fat loss stalled or are you not seeing the results you want? You need a change and you need it fast.
Your body is smart. It looks for every avenue it can to adapt to how you are eating and exercising to conserve fat. The body forgets we are not cavemen fearing a huge famine. The body’s main goal is to keep you alive, so it works double time trying to outsmart your fancy weight loss programs and exercise habits.
How do you fool your body? There are many ways to keep things off balance. Here are a few tricks and tips you can incorporate to keep your body burning fat:
1. Vary your cardio workouts. If you do the same cardio routines each week (classes, videos, machines) change them out often. For example: you take three spin classes and run twice a week, drop one spin class and add in kickboxing or the stairmaster. Each week try a new class or a different machine. The goal is to avoid repeating your cardio too often.
2. Vary the intensity of your workouts. If you are slugging out one hour of running or elliptical five times a week it’s time to add in interval training. Drop two of those long sessions for 30-40 minutes of high powered intervals. I have loads of good workouts like this in my Cardio Book (see bottom of page).
3. Change your daily calories. Often I advise my clients to switch up their eating patterns. If you are eating the same calories every day, spike a high day where you eat at a maintenance level of calories for one or two days a week.
4. Change the foods you eat. Too many times we get in a rut of eating the same foods day after day. Try to have a different menu you follow each week of the month. For example: if you eat brown rice with your chicken every night, the next week have a sweet potato instead of the rice. The following week eat turkey instead of chicken. Look for one thing you can interchange on your typical menu and switch it out often.
5. Change your food ratios. Most people start with a diet of 50% carbs, 30% protein, and 20% fat. Sometimes you need to change this up for a week or two. You can do heavier carb weeks, heavier fat weeks, etc. Change up the numbers each time your fat loss stalls.
Use this to help keep your body off balance and burning up the fat.