My Top 10 Ultimate Fat Burning Tips

Lose Weight. Build Muscle. Burn Fat.

See original published version here.

In the course of 9 months, I went from size 14/16 to size 3/4. It's been over a year now, and I'm getting leaner, while I'm building muscle. I'm 42 years old, so it was important to me to not look like a deflated version of myself. I'm a voracious reader and researcher and put in to practice what I've learned. Here's my best, top 10 ultimate fat burning tips for losing fat, getting strong, and staying fit.

1. Lower your stress. Lower your cortisol.
Cortisol cannibalizes muscle, which lowers our metabolism. It increases fat, particularly belly fat, promotes atherosclerosis, and is the hormone that prepares our bodies to die. It's naturally occurring and helpful when it's at normal, non-freaky levels. Nutritional stress, work stress, relationship stress, financial stress, and so on increases cortisol levels, let's do something about this first!

Natural ways of lowering stress and lowering cortisol:

1,000 mg of Vitamin C a day has been shown to dramatically decrease stress. If you take it in an isolate (as a vitamin), get a time released version. A diet rich in fresh citrus fruit and raw, dark veggies is very high in Vitamin C. Read the article at Psychologytoday.com

Other ways of lowering stress:

• Natural GABA (Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid). GABA is a naturally occurring amino acid that we make. It has been shown to have a calming effect. Apparently people with anxiety, sleep disorders, epilepsy, clinical depression, and so forth do not make enough GABA. Pharmaceuticals help increase GABA, but have their own side effects. You can take additional GABA grown in Lactobacillus hilgardii (a bacteria to ferment vegetables. Read more about GABA in the "Mood Cure" by Julia Ross. Read up, don't just take my word for anything!
• Regular exercise, such as walking, releases serotonin, which is the hormone that makes us feel good.
• Lower or eliminate caffeine. Caffeine combined with stress is cortisol's pal and fat's best friend.
• Reduce nutritional stress and make your food choices clean and whole foods based. In this "Fast Food Nation" we are overfed and undernourished. Go as green and colorful as possible with your food choices.
• Prayer. For me, this is first, because without God, I'd be a bumbling idiot. I pray to Trust His Will and that helps lower my stress. Stress is a form of worry, and worry is a form of lack of trust in Him.
• Other stress lowering tips: love, compassion, empathy, laughter, meditation, dancing, gratitude, and more...

2. Progress, not perfection.
Why stress yourself out doing too much too soon? Do what you can, but do it consistently and put your heart into it. I wrote a rather long article entitled "Motivation and Inspiration for Weight / Fat Loss". It's essentially about my mantras for staying motivated and inspired. Read it for the long version of this tip.

3. Join a forum of like-minded people.
It's always nice to have a pal on your journey. There's plenty of folks online. As a vegan, I joined VeganBodyBuilding. Two forums I recommend are: Transformation and 3fatchicks. My favorite sections are the before and after photos.

4. Eat whole, nutrient dense foods.
If the food has one ingredient, dark red kidney beans for example, then that's a whole food. An apple is a whole food. If it's a "Little Doodad" snack cake with 50 ingredients in 4 point type, that is not a whole food. Combine your whole food with other whole foods, like beans with kale, spices, carrots, celery, broccoli and more to make a nutrient dense one pot wonder! I choose the foods with the highest in protein (one cup of lentils is 18 grams of protein for example), the lowest in saturated fat, and highest in fiber to carb ratio. I don't usually add oil (except in dressings and sparingly). I eat nuts or avocado for my fat and add ground flax on top of my oatmeal for my essential fatty acids. Basically, I eat a vegan version of Tosca Reno's "The Eat Clean Diet" (which is very easily modified to be vegetarian or vegan) and a higher vegan protein version of Dr. Ornish and Dr. McDougal's wonderful plant based nutrition books on reversing heart disease and losing weight.

A salad topped with nuts, beans, and/or some other kind of protein doesn't taste as good without a decent dressing. Choose super light and clean. Newman's Own Light Asian fits the bill for me. Balsamic vinegar is even better.

5. Eat more often.
Eat smaller meals through the day. Slow down and chew your food. Eat until you're not hungry, not until you're full.

What you eat — the macronutrients and the micronutrients — the calories, and the frequency of eating all contribute to increasing your metabolism, nourishing your tissues and helping you build muscle and burn fat. Never skip breakfast or starve yourself during the day. Eating small meals and healthy snacks every three hours is best. Skipping meals works against you because you go in to fat storing mode, even if you are exercising heavily. Your metabolism is higher if you eat every three hours. Eat clean food with protein and complex carbs in each meal. If you work out hard, then you need enough protein to build muscle, so read up on this topic. Usually the recommendation is 20-30% of your caloric needs from protein. Much more than you need to be healthy, this is specifically for building lean mass.

6. Spice it up with ginger and cinnamon.
Ginger expands the blood vessels and increases body heat and metabolism.

Just a 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon helps you metabolize sugar up to 20 times faster. I have (or had) something called PCOS, Poly Cycstic Ovary Syndrome. My current level of fitness has eliminated the effects of this syndrome. One of the common issues with PCOS is dark, hard skin in the armpits and groin. I started taking a lot of cinnamon and in two months the dark patches went away. The dark patches are caused by pools of insulin in the skin.

7. Lift heavy with compound movements.
Why bother with bicep curls when you can build those muscles and your core, shoulders and back by working up to pull ups. Lifting your own body weight is far more useful. My favorite book on fitness is: "Lift Like a Man, Look Like a Goddess: The New Rules of Lifting for Women." (There's also a men's version, which my brother loves, called "The New Rules of Lifting for Men".) This book puts to bed the the idea that lifting heavy will make women bulky. It does exactly as the title implies, you get curvy and shed fat faster than aerobic exercise. Too much aerobic exercise eats muscle too, so you don't get fitter, you ruin your metabolism. As much as I love these books, I totally disagree on the nutritional advice as it is heavily meat/whey based, read more about this below.

8. High intensity interval training (HIIT).
Aerobic exercise has its place to keep your heart in good shape. The best form of cardio is high intensity intervals. But this is not for complete beginners, first get yourself in good enough shape by doing steady pace cardio. Then work up to doing HIIT. For beginners do no more than 6-14 minutes of alternating between 30 seconds of fast, peddle to the metal cardio, then 60 seconds of steady pace. There's a lot of information on the benefits of intervals in "The New Rules of Lifting" and various online sources. For conditioned beginners, even if you do just 80% of "peddle to the meddle", it works wonders for shedding fat.

9. Avoid diet drinks and man-made sweeteners.
Use stevia and low glycemic index sweeteners like agave nectar. I had some artificially sweetened stuff this past year and my insulin levels went through the roof. I had to sleep, my eyes rolled back in my head, it was horrible. I googled and found a lot of information that confirmed my suspicions about the man made sweeteners. Read SplendaExposed.com and SweetPoison.com to learn more about the health hazards of artificial sweeteners.

10. Relax.
It took time to get fat. It will take time to get fit. However, it comes off much faster than it went on.

Bonus tips:

11. Women: Looking to get fit and curvy? Re-think your contraceptive.
Chang-Woock Lee and Steven Riechman of Texas A&M University and Mark Newman of the University of Pittsburgh did a study to confirm what a lot of fitness savvy women already know: the hormones in the pill cause a significant decrease in muscle. These two researchers showed how two groups of women on the same moderately higher protein, strength training diet faired after 10 weeks. The women not taking the oral contraception had a 60% increase in lean mass. In addition the women who took the oral contraception had higher cortisol levels.

12. Hydrate your body.
Drinking water (herbal teas work) fills your tummy and hydrates your tissues. Sip all day. Lots of salad, fruit, vegetables and beans will also contribute to your hydration. Protein is harder on your kidneys, but there is some research to suggest that animal protein is the culprit for taxing the kidneys, and plant protein does not have this affect. I found some information at the American Association of Kidney Patients web site which indicates just that:

Historically, vegetarianism has been met with skepticism in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients. However, we now know that with careful planning vegetarianism, or even part-time vegetarian eating is not only safe, but also beneficial to CKD management.1,2 Research shows eating vegetarian proteins can actually slow down the progression of kidney disease and other complications associated with this disease.1,2 Read more...

13. Protein tips.
If you eat a lot of protein from non-vegan sources, be sure to eat a lot of dark leafy greens in your diet so that you do not make your blood acidic and leach calcium from your bones. Take a calcium supplement, do not rely on dairy to do it for you. Read the China Study to learn how diets high in dairy and animal sourced protein, have the highest incidents of osteoporosis and other diseases of affluence. Weight bearing activities, vegetable sources of calcium along with vitamin D will help protect your bones. This is a whole other topic, so please read up on it. I found some rather interesting research online about how higher animal protein to plant protein increased the rate of bone loss at the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition web site.

This research at Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism (European Journal of Nutrition, Metabolic Diseases and Dietetics) explains it best:

Conclusion: High consumption of protein from animal origin may be unfavourable, whereas a higher vegetable protein intake may be beneficial for bone health. Our results strengthen the hypothesis that high calcium intake combined with adequate protein intake based on a high ratio of vegetable to animal protein may be protective against osteoporosis. Read more.

If you're scratching your head about whether or not vegans get enough protein to build muscles, check out my friends at VeganBodybuilding.com. vegan protein sources, such as rice protein, hemp protein, pea protein, nutritional yeast, tempeh, beans, whole grains, and some faux meat are wonderful heart, kidney, bone, and colon healthy alternatives to whey, egg, dairy, and meat (cows, pigs, birds, fish, and so on). Plus all vegan food is completely cholesterol free.

Disclaimer: Consult a health care provider before embarking on a fitness plan or diet. Get in the habit of reading labels. Watch the movie "Food, Inc." Read and think for yourself!