Eliminating body fat whether it be on your belly, thighs, back, or all over, the process on paper is rather straightforward. Even when people do manage to meet their weight loss goals, they can have trouble keeping it off for long periods of time afterwards. Fad or crash diets can often be the culprit in these situations because they are sustainable and just downright unpleasant to get through. These fad, crash, or borderline starvation diets too many times reduce muscle mass and shed water weight along with the fat.. If you eliminate muscle your metabolism slows and consequently becomes increasingly more difficult to remove fat; but also it becomes increasingly easy to accumulate more fat. Plus, the water weight will return with time and people tend to balloon right back up.
The most productive method for fat loss includes: a nutritious diet while in a caloric deficit, cardio exercise in a support role to help burn through extra body fat, and strength training to preserve muscle mass and shape the body for the desired effect. Basically, if you combine these three aspects, you create an environment in which your body torches the fat and you can still enjoy the foods you love eating, within reason.
To improve one’s diet immediately you can start eating more fruits and vegetables, more grains and legumes, eliminate beverages that contain calories and start drinking only water, eat lean cuts of meat like chicken and some beef, or fish which generally is loaded with healthier fats. This doesn’t have to be some bland and tasteless affair or some weird juice cleanse diet or snacking on rice cakes. Eating healthier and within your daily caloric allotment is quite easy once you do some basic planning and adjusting from there isn’t painful at all.
Cardio doesn’t have to be complicated either. It can simply be walking (remember you need to be in a caloric deficit to lose fat, so low intensity cardio will leave you with less wiggle room as it doesn’t burn as many calories). Ellipticals, sprinting, cycling, or even playing basketball a few times per week can all count towards cardio output. Just get organized to make it 2 to 3 times a week, for a minimum of 30 minutes at an intensity that is not excessive, but if challenging for you according to how good of a shape you are in now. You don’t have to damn near kill yourself running, you just have to put in enough effort to maintain the caloric deficit.
Everything mentioned above is what you need to lose fat in a healthy way, which is also the most sustainable in the long run. It may not be as fast as you want, in fact, you will never find a way to lose weight overnight unless you want to hurt your health and gain it all back afterwards. This is the most straightforward and effective path to lose body fat and not just drop random weight which could be muscle or water.
Sometimes it is very easy to lose perspective when trying to lose fat and achieve a certain aesthetic look, we are doing this to ultimately be healthy and live a good life. There’s no point of abusing your body in order to lose weight, as it will just come back to bit you later with illness and injury stemming from poor nutrition and lifestyle.