Fat Loss Challenge - Tips To Help Burn Fat & Lose Weight

As a way to inspire people to get over the slump of the New Year festivities and newly found extra pounds, I started a friendly challenge among a few online forum goers to help re-motivate them into some further fitness achievements.

Since many of these individuals are aiming for fat loss I decided to present this as the goal for the month for those wishing to join in and setting a 1-10 lb weight loss goal which keeps it real.

The next thing was to log your name, weight and goal weight, reflecting the pound loss needed. The last piece of the puzzle was to give some type of detail or summary of the planned diet and training that will get them to their goal. I figured if they could put an effort into it by writing it down, I will create commitment and also encourage follow up journaling. So far 2 weeks into the game there have been some ‘challengers’ showing number changes for the better and one in particular whom the same in weight remained but we still are only a few weeks into the month with an end date of March 31st and this one person has had a roller coaster ride with her health so her efforts are twice noticed!!

My point here is that for those of you needing that extra boost, you may want to present this type of friendly challenge to friends or family and choose a month ahead so that you can prepare.

For those subjects who joined in on the challenge for this month, I made sure to give some feedback to help them along even if it were just encouragement rather than corrections.

By getting on things sooner than later, those of you who did not jump on the January ‘get fit’ band wagon, now is your chance. You still have time to get ahead of the game since summer is still a season off! Summer is ultimately a common goal for when people desire to look at their best in order to wear that fun summer clothing which usually means bikinis and shorts.

Some of my suggestions would be to aim for compound exercises since they hit more than one large muscle group in turn exerting more effort into the movement and enticing more fat burning!

Examples for this would be leg exercises such as squats, leg presses, leg curls and calve raises. Chest exercises such as barbell chest presses, back exercises such as pullups and tbar rows plus shoulder presses as well.

Keep the weight on the lighter side so that you can lift for higher reps or time segments such as 30-60 seconds and again you tap into those fat stores.

For diet I would suggest first and foremost DARK LEAFY GREENS! These are your fillers and are nutrient dense. Next go for proteins, lean ones. As for carbs, you have your greens but need a small amount of starches for energy replenishment and thinking brain functions on it! Choice starches would include yams, ancient grains such as quinoa and millet, oats and brown/black/red rice.

Include a couple liters of water per day to really flush out the fats and toxins while helping to stay optimally hydrated.

Try this challenge out, it’s a short commitment but may boost you into consistency and some positive fitness gains over a short time period making the results tangible!

By Linda Cusmano