The Key Ways to Reduce Body Fat Fast

Losing body fat is one of the most common reasons that anyone hits the gym. Although it’s not always easy, losing weight and reducing body fat doesn’t have to be complicated. 

When trying to lose weight, we want to target body fat for reduction while maintaining our muscle mass. Generally, weight loss comes down to simple maths — burning more calories (through exercise) than we’re eating. This article will present some of the key methods for losing body fat fast, focusing on fat loss nutrition and training for reducing body fat.

In this article, you’ll find:

Nutrition

When it comes to losing body fat, nutrition is the most important component. It’s much easier to sabotage your fat loss by overeating, and it becomes much harder to compensate by working harder at the gym. The most important part of fat loss is creating a negative energy balance - where your energy expenditure is greater than your energy intake. It’s harder to create a calorie deficit if your energy intake is high. 

Although there are many schools of thought about the best diet for weight loss, they all have one thing in common — calorie reduction.  

This can take many different forms. You may want to cut out empty carbohydrates and follow a high-fat keto diet. Or you might reduce your intake of fatty foods and follow a simple low-calorie diet or try intermittent fasting. The key to fat loss is to find a plan you can follow and stick to it for the long term.  

However, fad diets and macro considerations aside, it’s essential to choose healthy foods you’re fueling your body with.  

You should always consult your physician or a registered dietician for a personalized diet plan. However, following basic guidelines like these can help you to stick to a healthy diet that will lead to fat loss.  

You should also consider all three macronutrients — carbohydrates, proteins, and fat and bear in mind the calorie content for each is not the same. Carbohydrates and proteins both contain 4kcals per gram whereas fat contains 9kcals per gram. Therefore, reducing your fat intake can make it easier to reduce your overall calorie intake. For example reducing your daily intake of fat by 10g would double the amount of calories lost than reducing carbohydrates or protein down by 10g.  

1. Consume more protein

With protein, choose lean options over fatty meats, opt for fish a few meals per week, and focus on plant-based proteins when possible. Another key aspect of protein is the effect is has on satiety. Consuming more protein will help you feel fuller for longer and potentially reduce the amount of snacking needed. This will help to reduce your overall daily calorie intake. 

When you’re cooking, use heart-healthy oils like olive oil and limit saturated animal fats like butter or lard. Choose dietary fats from fatty fish, avocados, nuts, and seeds instead of deep-fried foods and animal-based fat sources.  

Try cutting out added sugar found in sweetened beverages and desserts. 

Throughout a weight loss journey when we want to try burn fat specifically, it’s essential to take in adequate amounts of protein to protect our muscle mass.1 Research shows that higher levels of protein during weight loss make it more likely to keep the weight off and help to target fat loss.1 

Based on your level of exercise, you might need to supplement with extra protein (like Impact Whey Protein) to help keep your muscle mass while you burn fat. 

2. Get enough fiber

Another helpful consideration when losing weight is fiber. Getting adequate soluble fiber from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains will help you feel more satisfied and improve your digestion.  

If you don’t think you get enough soluble fiber in your diet, you can consider a supplement. Research has shown links between soluble fiber and successful fat loss.1 

It sounds like a lot to think about, but really following a healthy balanced diet doesn’t need to be complicated. When you’re trying to lose weight, you want to make sure that you feel satisfied — being hungry all the time isn’t essential for burning fat. Choosing satisfying, whole foods and using supplements when you need them can be easy and sustainable to help you meet your fat loss goals. 

3. Volumize your meals 

Increasing the volume of your meals can also help to reduce your daily calorie intake. By getting the composition of your meals right i.e. plenty of fibrous vegetables, lean protein and wholegrain carbohydrates, it will help you to feel full and satisfied after each meal whilst staying within your fat-loss macros.

Exercise 

Looking back to the basic fat loss equation, you need to be burning calories — that’s where exercise comes in. We all burn a different number of calories even when we aren’t exercising (known as our resting metabolic rate) based on our body size and composition.  

While it’s difficult to measure this number precisely — even in a laboratory setting — some equations can help you estimate how many calories you burn at rest.  

If you’re interested, check out the Harris-Benedict equation.

1. Do anaerobic exercise

Individuals with more lean mass (muscle) burn more calories at rest than those with more fat mass. Think of muscle as active, calorie-burning tissue, while fat is there for storage purposes without burning as much energy.  

This is one of the reasons many people exercise — to optimize the ratio of muscle mass to fat mass, which burns more calories in the long term. We can boost this lean muscle mass through weightlifting, or anaerobic exercise. Lean muscle mass contributes to your resting metabolic rate and the more lean muscle mass you have the higher your resting energy expenditure. Essentially the more muscle mass the more calories you’ll burn at rest. However, it’s worth noting that it will take a significant increase in lean muscle mass to have a meaningful impact on energy expenditure. 

One strategy of weightlifting is called “drop sets”. This means lifting your heaviest weights for a designated number of sets and reps, and then doing the same exercise with lighter weights until your muscles fatigue. It trains your muscles to work harder and see optimal results. Another strategy is to use “super sets”, where you work two opposing muscle groups immediately one after the other without taking a break to recover.  

Talk to a personal trainer if you’re interested in incorporating either of these strategies into your workouts. 

2. Up your cardio (aerobic exercise)

The other key part of exercise for losing fat is aerobic activity. “Aerobic” doesn’t have to mean the stereotypical ’90’s step aerobics class with leg warmers and sweatbands (unless you want it to), but it can be any form of heart-pumping activity, from speed-walking to high-intensity interval training (HIIT).  

In fact, both types of cardio, or aerobic exercise, have key benefits and should be incorporated into your weekly routine. 

3. LISS– Low-intensity steady state 

LISS cardio is your basic ‘jog-in-the-park-style’ cardio workout when you’re working at a low or moderate pace for a more extended period.  

This might be running, cycling, swimming, or using an elliptical machine at the gym. Low-intensity steady state cardio is appropriate for almost all fitness levels. It targets your heart rate in the “fat burning zone” for a longer period of time.  

Read up a bit more on LISS with our article below.