So you want to burn fat but you don’t have a lot of time to do it and the problem that you’re running into is a lot of the fat burning strategies out there are designed to have you lose fat slowly over time. Burning fat slowly over time is by no means a bad strategy in fact for long-term sustainable fat loss going slower is probably the best strategy out there. However, there are certain situations that justify a faster approach to fat loss. First, it’s very important to realize that more of an aggressive fat loss strategy is not appropriate in all situations. For example, if you’re a hundred twenty pounds and you want to lose 10 pounds in the next week by dieting and then keep it off forever even after going off the diet… that is probably not realistic and it’s not an appropriate circumstance 4 faster weight loss. So what exactly would be an appropriate situation? One example would be if you have some kind of an event that you have to look lean for and it’s coming up very soon like in 2 weeks. And you’re kind of caught off guard by this. In this example, it’s important to recognize that if you diet perfectly and get into great shape for this event you won’t be able to maintain that shape by going back to eating however you want after the event. You won’t need to restrict calories as intensely as you would to lose the weight fast but some form of calorie restriction would have to be in place to maintain your new weight. Another example would be if you are very heavy and you have a lot of body fat to lose. Here you probably have plenty of stored body fat and you have enough room to kick start your fat loss at a faster rate. Doing this can help you experience a lot of success in the beginning which can help really motivate you to follow through and achieve your longer-term fat loss goals. Whether you have a lot of fat to lose or not as much fat to lose, burning fat at a faster rate is generally a shorter-term fat loss strategy. This means that you’re not going to be doing this forever. Sure everyone would like to burn fat at a super fast pace all the time, but due to what’s required for the faster fat loss it makes it unsustainable in the long run. Just to clarify I’m not saying that you can’t keep the results you get from burning fat fast I’m saying that you can’t continue burning more & more fat at a fast pace forever.

Your body prefers to get its energy from the food that you consume. And the only time that it’ll really pull from fat stores is when it absolutely has to. this means that the only time that you’re going to be burning a substantial amount of body fat is when you’re not getting enough energy from the food that you eat. Normally to burn fat at a relatively quick pace you would reduce your calories by 25% from maintenance. However, if you have to lose a bunch of fat in a short amount of time then a 25% reduction may not do the trick. In this situation, we would want to aim for a 40 to 45% reduction in calories. Now, this is quite a large reduction which is why it is not a sustainable long-term strategy. Again this is for the short-term, very few people will be able to keep their calories that low for extended periods of time and it definitely wouldn’t be best for you to keep your calories that low for extended periods of time. By reducing your caloric intake by 40 to 45% from maintenance your body will now have to find those calories somewhere else AKA your fat stores. And this is the exact process that leads to faster fat loss.

Now we don’t want to just be concerned about calories because certain calories will help our body composition more than others. For example due to the thermogenic effect of foods roughly 30% of the calories you get from protein will be used just to digest that protein source. Also, protein and the amino acids that makeup protein are responsible 4 repairing and building muscle. By having more muscle on your body your metabolism increases which could help you create a larger deficit. Protein is also very filling which could help curb your food cravings while maintaining a large calorie deficit. For these reasons and much more, we want to keep protein consumption somewhere between 30 to 40% of our total daily caloric intake. Then the other 60 to 70% of your calories will come from fats and carbs. 20 to 30% of your calories coming from fat is a good place to start

Check out my client Chelsea’s transformation where he lost a whole bunch of fat.