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How do I Lose Body Fat?

Henry Gaudet
Henry Gaudet

If you want to lose body fat, the calories you burn must exceed the calories you take in. Your body stores fat as an energy reserve, and this energy must be spent to reduce body fat. The process might not be easy, but it is simple: eat less, move more.

As you go through your day, your body requires energy. You draw this energy, measured in calories, from the carbohydrates you eat and from fat, whether found in your diet or in your fat cells. The body constantly draws energy from both of these sources but in different ratios, depending on the intensity and duration of your activity.

A person with a small amount of belly fat.
A person with a small amount of belly fat.

Your body stores fat as a survival mechanism, to help you survive harsh conditions when food is scarce. In the modern industrialized world, though, food is plentiful, cheap and rich in calories. Additionally, sedentary lifestyles and labor-saving devices reduce the body’s energy requirements, resulting in a calorie surplus, creating a fat reserve that is never depleted and making it that much more difficult to lose body fat.

Abdominal exercises can build muscle, but do not have much affect on fat content.
Abdominal exercises can build muscle, but do not have much affect on fat content.

A combination of a healthy diet and exercise is the best way for you to lose body fat. It is important to increase your level of daily activity and reduce your calorie intake while still giving your body all of the nutrients that it needs. Fasting — though effective in dramatically reducing calorie intake — starves your body of critical minerals, vitamins, proteins and other nutrients, puts your health at risk and is not recommended as a way to lose body fat over the long term.

Being overweight and having too much body fat can cause a variety of health issues.
Being overweight and having too much body fat can cause a variety of health issues.

Some exercise plans suggest that low-intensity workouts burn more fat, but this is somewhat misleading. The body constantly burns both carbohydrates and fat for fuel, and during low-intensity exercise, the body uses more fat than carbohydrates. High-intensity exercise, however, uses more total calories, and even though a lower ratio of fat to carbohydrates is burned, you will still burn more fat with more effort, and 20 minutes of running will burn more fat than 20 minutes of walking.

Taking an exercise class at a local gym can help a person burn bodyfat.
Taking an exercise class at a local gym can help a person burn bodyfat.

You might expect to lose body fat in a particular problem area by exercising that portion of the body, such as targeting a pot belly with sit-ups or crunches. This strategy might improve muscle tone in the area, but fat cannot be targeted this way. Your body draws energy from all available fat cells and cannot draw from one local source. Exercise will certainly help you to lose body fat, but no exercise, diet or supplement is able to draw fat away from one particular part of the body and not other areas.

Discussion Comments

KoiwiGal

@pleonasm - Extreme weight loss can be very bad for you though. A lot of the problems they used to link with being overweight seem to actually be linked to yo-yo dieting and stress. I know my father ended up having a heart attack when he was pushing himself too hard to lose weight.

I know the all-or-nothing approach seems very appealing when you have a problem, but when it comes to your health I don't think it's a great solution.

pleonasm

@bythewell - In theory I think everyone should just try to be healthy and shouldn't worry too much about what they eat. But unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who eat terrible diets and are shortening their lives.

Sometimes the fastest way to lose body fat is the best way, simply because people need to see the results and become motivated by them. They did a study that compared motivation levels over the long term of people who lost weight quickly and people who lost it slowly and the ones who lost it quickly tended to stick to the method for longer.

bythewell

I think the mistake a lot of people make is to take temporary measures that they will never be able to keep up. You say to yourself, I'm going to eat this salad instead of that doughnut and it's going to make me skinny... and then in a few months I'll be able to have donuts again.

And you will lose body fat that way, but you'll often also lose muscle tone which means it's that much easier to gain the weight back when you go back to old habits.

The best thing to do is to come up with a way that you can live, happily and easily and still be healthy. The thing is, it might end up with you not losing as much weight as you would prefer. Maybe you will only add vegetables into your diet rather than taking anything out of it. But the goal should be health rather than image.

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    • A person with a small amount of belly fat.
      By: Sandor Kacso
      A person with a small amount of belly fat.
    • Abdominal exercises can build muscle, but do not have much affect on fat content.
      By: Halfpoint
      Abdominal exercises can build muscle, but do not have much affect on fat content.
    • Being overweight and having too much body fat can cause a variety of health issues.
      By: vpardi
      Being overweight and having too much body fat can cause a variety of health issues.
    • Taking an exercise class at a local gym can help a person burn bodyfat.
      By: WavebreakMediaMicro
      Taking an exercise class at a local gym can help a person burn bodyfat.