The Key Ways To Reduce Body Fat Fast

Burning body fat or losing weight are two of the most common reasons that anyone hits the gym. Although it’s not always easy, losing weight and reducing body fat doesn’t have to be complicated.

When trying to lose weight, we want to target body fat for reduction while maintaining our muscle mass. Generally, weight loss comes down to simple maths — burning more calories (through exercise) than we’re eating.

In this article, you'll find:

• Fat loss nutrition

• Exercise for fat loss

• Anaerobic exercise for fat loss

• Aerobic exercise for fat loss

• LISS for fat loss

• HIIT for fat loss

• Best ways to reduce belly fat

• Biggest mistakes when trying to lose body fat

• What is the recommended body fat percentage?

• What are the best ways to measure body fat?

Nutrition

When it comes to losing body fat, nutrition is the most important component. It’s much easier to sabotage your fat loss by overeating, and it becomes much harder to compensate by working harder at the gym. 

Although there are many schools of thought about the best diet for weight loss, they all have one thing in common — calorie reduction. 

This can take many different forms. You may want to cut out empty carbohydrates and follow a high-fat keto diet. Or you might reduce your intake of fatty foods and follow a simple low-calorie diet or try intermittent fasting. The key is to find a plan you can follow and stick to it for the long term. 

However, fad diets and macro considerations aside, it’s essential to choose healthy foods you’re fuelling your body with. 

You should always consult your physician or a registered dietician for a personalised diet plan. However, following basic guidelines like these can help you to stick to a healthy diet that will lead to fat loss. 

You should also consider all three macronutrients — carbohydrates, proteins, and fat.

 

1. Consume more protein

With protein, choose lean options over fatty meats, opt for fish a few meals per week, and focus on plant-based proteins when possible. 

When you’re cooking, use heart-healthy oils and limit saturated animal fats like butter or lard. Choose dietary fats from fatty fish, avocados, nuts, and seeds instead of deep-fried foods and animal-based fat sources. 

Try cutting out added sugar found in sweetened beverages and desserts.

Throughout a weight loss journey when we want to try burn fat specifically, it’s essential to take in adequate amounts of protein to protect our muscle mass. Research shows that higher levels of protein during weight loss make it more likely to keep the weight off and help to target fat loss. 

Based on your level of exercise, you might need to supplement with extra protein (like Impact Whey Protein) to help keep your muscle mass while you burn fat. 

2. Get enough fibre

Another helpful consideration when losing weight is fibre. Getting adequate soluble fibre from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains will help you feel more satisfied and improve your digestion. 

If you don’t think you get enough soluble fibre in your diet, you can consider a supplement. Research has shown links between soluble fibre and successful fat loss.

It sounds like a lot to think about, but really following a healthy balanced diet doesn’t need to be complicated. When you’re trying to lose weight, you want to make sure that you feel satisfied — being hungry all the time isn’t essential for burning fat. Choosing satisfying, whole foods and using supplements when you need them can be easy and sustainable to help you meet your fat loss goals.

 

Exercise

Looking back to the basic fat loss equation, you need to be burning calories — that’s where exercise comes in. We all burn a different number of calories even when we aren’t exercising (known as our resting metabolic rate) based on our body size and composition. 

While it’s difficult to measure this number precisely — even in a laboratory setting — some equations can help you estimate how many calories you burn at rest. 

If you’re interested, check out the Harris-Benedict equation. 

 

3. Do Anaerobic Exercise

Individuals with more lean mass (muscle) burn more calories at rest than those with more fat mass. Think of muscle as active, calorie-burning tissue, while fat is hanging out there for storage purposes without burning as much energy. 

This is one of the reasons many people exercise — to optimise the ratio of muscle mass to fat mass, which burns more calories in the long term. We can boost this lean muscle mass through weightlifting, or anaerobic exercise. 

One strategy of weightlifting is called “drop sets”. This means lifting your heaviest weights for a designated number of sets and reps, and then doing the same exercise with lighter weights until your muscles fatigue. It trains your muscles to work harder and see optimal results. Another strategy is to use “supersets”, where you work two opposing muscle groups immediately one after the other without taking a break to recover. 

Talk to a personal trainer if you’re interested in incorporating either of these strategies into your workouts.

 

4. Up your cardio (Aerobic Exercise)

The other key part of exercise for losing fat is aerobic activity. “Aerobic” doesn’t have to mean the stereotypical ’90’s step aerobics class with leg warmers and sweatbands (unless you want it to), but it can be any form of heart-pumping activity, from speed-walking to high-intensity interval training (HIIT). 

In fact, both types of cardio, or aerobic exercise, have key benefits and should be incorporated into your weekly routine. 

LISS – Low-intensity steady-state

LISS cardio is your basic ‘jog-in-the-park-style’ cardio workout when you’re working at a low or moderate pace for a more extended period. 

This might be running, cycling, swimming, or using an elliptical machine at the gym. Low-intensity steady-state cardio is appropriate for almost all fitness levels. It targets your heart rate in the “fat-burning zone” for a longer period of time. 

Read up a bit more on LISS with our article below.