Is there a consistently proven effective strategy to burn up to 40% body fat in anyone within a specific time period?
Diet and exercise. But you know that.
If you're at 40% body fat, then don't worry about trying to run a marathon or become a Crossfit champion yet-- Your success will be mostly related to diet until you start approaching 20%. There are many paths to your goal, and I don't know much about you, but here's some advice to get you started:
1) Clean up your diet
Without going into calorie count and macros and stuff, the very first thing to address is food choices. The reason food choices are important is that if you choose 'good,' nutrient rich food, you'll feel fuller for longer, and with fewer calories. Good food choices also kill cravings by giving you a wide range of nutrients. When we choose 'bad' foods, we quickly feel hungry again and even have cravings because of nutrient imbalances.
WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING ELSE, choosing better foods (nearly) every day for 6 months could get you to 20%. That's why we're focusing on food choice right now.
Green food is good. Meat is good. Eggs are good (even the yolks). Fruit is okay. Bread isn't evil, but it's not helping you. Sugar is bad.
You can't go wrong with broccoli, spinach, chicken, fish, eggs, and anything else that's green... Eat as much of those things as you can-- You'll feel full eating these foods long before you've eaten too many calories. Pretty much all other meat and vegetables are fine, too-- If you like steak and bacon, then eat it! Again, it's hard to over-eat with those foods.
Food like rice, bread, potatoes, yams and other carb-heavy items don't contribute much to your diet other than calories. They aren't inherently bad (you might even need them when you start getting lean and want to build muscle) but for our goals, they aren't doing us any favors, so let's try to reduce them.
Sugar? Don't need it. Get rid of it. I understand that sometimes the only thing to eat is a donut, or you really feel like a can of Coke or something-- That happens to me too-- but as much as possible, cut sugar out completely. I'm always a little reluctant to label foods as 'bad' foods, but sugar is pretty much never the right choice.
Okay, here's what I'm gonna do: There's tons to share with you and I don't want to overload you with information (especially if you don't end up using it!) so I'll stop writing here. Your homework is to see how you can make better food choices over the next week or so. Share your questions, thoughts and progress in the comments, and once we've addressed food choices, I'll fill in the sections below with edits. Good luck!
2) Get your calories right
3) Tune up your macronutrient ratios
Skipping #2 for now, because I think talking about macronutrients will help you view your food choices through a different lens. If some of this is review for you, feel free to skim through it. It's alot to take in.
Nutrition geeks: Please correct me if I'm wrong and feel free to elaborate in the comments-- But understand that I'm trying to stay simple for the purpose of brevity... For example, I don't feel that I need to explain essential and non-essential amino acids to illustrate how and why one should eat lots of protein. If you think I missed something important, feel free to comment or write your own answer, I won't be offended :)
I'll start at the end and then explain: Eat ample protein and lots of fats; stop eating carbs. If you're a numbers person, shoot for something like 60% fats, 30% protein and 10% carbs. If you're not a numbers person, don't worry about it.
There are three (well, four) macronutrients in the foods you eat. Here's what they are and what they do:
Carbohydrates:
1g = 4 calories
The first thing to know is that your body (usually) prefers to burn carbs before burning anything else. Including fat. This is because carbs are convenient and quick. If your company paid for your commute to work, you might say "I'll always take a taxi to work if I can, but if there are no taxis, I'll take the bus." Carbs are the taxi, fats are the bus.
The second thing to remember is that you can live without carbs. Your body prefers them because they are an efficient fuel source, but you don't need them.
There's more to know about carbs (simple vs. complex, etc.) but those are the key points for now.
One note: Fiber is a carb, but you aren't a cow so you can't digest it. We count fiber as 0 calories. Eat as much fiber as you want.
Protein:
1g = 4 calories
Protein is great. Unless a doctor tells you to, never reduce your protein intake. Why? Because protein is what your body uses to build things. Not just muscles, but organs, enzymes, hormones, hair, fingernails, and more.
You can use protein for energy, but I've never heard of someone getting fat from too much protein. You absolutely need protein to live and be healthy!
Fats:
1g = 9 calories
Fats are a sort of "space-optimized energy storage," meaning that they've got alot more calories per gram than carbs or protein. It's very efficient-- As a comparison, 1g of gasoline has about 10 calories. For this reason, it's kind of like your caloric "savings account." We'll talk more about that in a moment.
The other thing that many don't realize is that fats are essential. Cell walls, neural sheaths, hormones... All made from fats. If you completely eliminated fats from your diet, you would get quite sick.
Key Takeaway: You NEED protein and fats to live healthfully. You can live fine without carbs.
Why You Should Eat Fats (But not carbs)
Back to the "savings account" analogy.
If you're responsible with your personal finances, then you know that you should avoid spending from your savings account unless you really need to. Carbs are like cash in your wallet-- Fats are in the bank. You'd feel pretty silly if you lost your job (food source) and didn't have any savings (stored fat) to see you through until you found a new one!
If you're at 40% body fat, you have a pretty big savings account. Your body is very fiscally responsible. It loves to take the cash it receives and put it in the bank. It hates pulling out the debit card to spend money from your savings. So how do you encourage spending from the savings account?
Going back to nutrition terms, your body is reluctant to burn fat when it has access to carbs. The best way to encourage it to burn fat? Stop giving it carbs.
Back To Food Choices
Carbs aren't "bad." I'm good friends with many carbs. But while your goal is to lose weight, my advice is to avoid eating carbs.
Custom ketogenic diet plan . It's good. I've never lost more weight (from fat) than when I was on a ketogenic diet for a few months. If you think you want to do it, read up on it first. Lyle McDonald is the guy to look for on the topic.
If you're still thinking about it, here are some things to know about eatin' keto:
Pros:
You can eat lots of "bad" (but tasty) foods: Cheese, bacon, avocados.
You never feel very hungry.
It burns alot of fat without forcing you to reduce your calories too much.
Cons:
It requires alot of discipline, because:
There are ALOT of foods you can't eat. It will blow your mind how much stuff has carbs in it.
It takes some time to adjust to... About 2 weeks, they say.
If you do eat carbs, you're "kicked out of ketosis," and it will take several days to get back into that fat burning state.
If you're not ready for that...
That's fine. As I said above, there are many paths to your goals. But for the reasons above, my next recommended step is to reduce or eliminate carbs from your diet. For now, you'll be better off replacing the potatoes, rice and pasta with other stuff and to avoid much fruit. You can easily look up the macronutrient content of a food just by Googling "______ nutrition data."
Remember that fiber is a carb but we can't digest it-- So eat as much broccoli, spinach, celery, lettuce, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower etc. as you want. Plants like tomatoes, aubergine and mushrooms are a little carby, but they're fair game too.
Unless you're doing a full-on ketogenic diet, you don't need to STOP eating carbs entirely... But make the choice to make/buy low-carb meals as much as possible.
Oh, you might be wondering why I said "There are three (well, four) macronutrients," above. What's the fourth?
Alcohol:
1g = 8 calories
This works differently than protein, carbs and fat. Your body will burn alcohol preferentially: Even before carbs. Alcohol also cannot be converted into anything that can be stored. For that reason (and also a more complicated one), alcohol can't directly make you fat, but it does prevent you from losing fat. If you want to enjoy some wine or a few pints one evening, feel free-- But realize that you're flipping the "off" switch on your fat burning Crazy while it's in your system
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