Eat the cookie.

How To Lose Body Fat from Home without Losing Yourself

First things first, remove the negative stigma from the word “fat.” Your body needs fat. That’s a fact. It’s crucial for your health and longevity. “It’s an energy store for the body that protects your organs, cushions joints, regulates body temperature and is responsible for the secretion of certain hormones. In short, it helps to keep you alive,” says Nicola Addison, personal trainer and wellbeing expert for Healthspan.

You might be thinking: “is losing body fat during a lockdown impossible?” The answer is NO. I know that daily excursions that would have normally got you moving have been nixed faster than you can say ‘10,000 steps’ and the stress of not knowing what the future holds is real, but we can still maintain a sense of control during this time. Stress can cause your body to hold onto stubborn fat – making it more difficult to lose. Losing fat is not a simple a=b equation. Let’s make healthy choices where we can and remember it’s not just one factor that contributes to fat loss success. It’s a combined effort of physical and mental fitness, sleep, stress, and proper hormone function.

1. Structure your eating habits. Restrictive eating windows help people. People need structure in their life. You’re either going to do that with counting calories or giving yourself a specific time frame – what’s easier? Obviously the timeframe! Trial and error this process to see what works best for you – but remember WHAT you eat is just as important as WHEN you eat it.

My personal strategy is not to worry about “breaking the fast”. After my early morning sweat, I have a super clean juice and a protein shake. I then don’t eat again until 4:00 or 5:00. There is no cookie cutter way to do things. I can’t stress this enough: FIND WHAT WORKS BEST FOR YOU OR IT WON’T WORK. 

Prep yourself = help yourself. Stock your fridge with nutritional foods so it’s your only option when you’re grabbing that in-between Zoom calls snack or making dinner for your family now that you have more time at home.

2. Burst Training. This is a great time (because you have the time) to take things up a notch. High interval training. Scorch those calories. My personal favorite: SPRINTS. Go all out in 30 second bursts. You can do anything for 30 seconds!! 

Try this sweat today:

BURST TRAINING

3. Eat the cookie. Or the donut. Or the birthday cake. Continual restriction from and fear of the foods that bring us joy (what’s up Duck Donuts – I see you on my counter) is what demolishes our relationship with what we want, and could ultimately promote a binge cycle.

This is one of my favorite things about flexible dieting. You can eat the donut and move on. I’m not “cheating” on anything. The vegetables I ate with dinner don’t hold a grudge against me for eating this.

Cut yourself some slack and instead of aiming for “perfection” – aim for balance. Balance cannot exist when you’re fighting daily battles against food and punishing yourself for something you ate just because “it had added sugar in it”. Food isn’t GOOD or BAD. Food is FOOD.

Additional Resources:

BURST TRAINING workout

Burn Boot Camp: Fat Blasting Cardio Workout

The Devan Kline Show podcast episode: The top 5 ways to lose FAT