There are so many benefits to exercise, many of which you would be familiar with. As it relates to fat loss – here are my 2 favourite ones:

1. It helps increase your cells ability to open and receive glucose (this is how we use carbohydrates for energy) and
2. secondly it can stimulate the right growth and recovery hormones which is the healthiest way to lose weight.

In this article I will address the second one. I’ll teach you the role that exercise plays in fat loss and how your nutrition can either make or break that result.

Before I begin, lets preframe a little bit. If you’ve been following my blog for a while you should be aware that excess body fat is purely a symptom. Of what? An unhealthy gland(s) (or organs), potentially caused by your genetics but a whopping 80% of it is caused by your lifestyle.

Remember fat accumulates in certain areas relative to the gland that is being overworked and become sluggish. Note – sluggish does not mean underactive or necessarily damaged it just means sluggish.

There are many ways to lose weight of course, however the best way to lose, is one that addresses the reason for your gain in the first place. There’s no point in losing it if it’s going to come back.

So the bottom line is – the maintenance of your weight is really down to getting your gland(s) back to good health.

Keeping this in mind, I want to introduce this concept.

Fat loss is a process of recovery.

Did you know a whopping 98% of your fat is burned at rest or recovery? And you do your biggest resting and most recovering when you sleep.

To optimise this process of recovery (fat loss) you must eat correctly. You must eat in a way that stimulates fat burning hormones (also known as growth and recovery hormones).

One of the keys to exercise is progression. Which means you’re far better off beginning from wherever you are currently at, not where you used to be.

As you progress with exercise it’s also crucial that your food is progressing.

Many times I see people who highly value exercise, who train daily, sometimes multiple times a day but eat the same amount and frequency of food as they were before.

The result of this approach is a continual fight against hunger and sugar cravings which is not exactly the most enjoyable place to be.

On a level that I believe is not always a conscious one, there is still this perception that calorie counting is important.

Although calories are still relevant in terms of getting too many or not enough. The issue is more to do with the speed of your metabolism, which comes down to the health of your thyroid gland.

Nothing damages the thyroid more than skipping meals and calorie restriction. This is the surest way to sabotage your results.

Your body needs X amount of calories in a day. And it will get it. In what forms will depend entirely on how much of your food has nutrients.

Here is a scenario.

Sue trains 6 days per week. 4 of her sessions are a combination of weight training and classes.

Sue eats 5-6 x per day, 3 main meals and 2 small snacks. Sue has a new goal to reach 22% body fat.

Sue is a machine, she’s hitting personal bests on her squats, bench pressing more than ½ her body weight, completing 10km runs in the week, she is on fire. But she cannot seem to get her appetite under control. It does not matter how much protein she has at breakfast lunch and dinner she finds it a battle when she gets to 3pm because fatigue followed by the nervous urge to eat something sweet is all she can focus on. Regardless of the fact that she only ate her almonds and fruit snack 20mins earlier!

But determination followed by a trip to the break room to have a coffee assures her that success with her training goals are worth it, and so is the new skirt that she can now slip her little hiney into. In fact she’s noticing that for the first time her butt may look better with her skirt off than it does on!

Sue has also been doing a lot of reading because she loves nutrition and exercise; and flax seeds, kale and macca powder mixed with a protein shake have amazing nutrient benefits and are less than 200cal plus she’ll be able to get more protein in which’ll surely help! So starting next week she’ll add that as her afternoon snack and add 15-20 mins of cardio after each weights session next week as well.

This is often the approach I see my clients taking before they come and see me. Do you take tit bits of info here and there and add it into your regime with no real consideration of the bigger picture? I’ve found this to be an incredibly frustrating and time consuming way of going about goal achievement. Trust me, I’ve been there so I should know.

The intention with training in the first place, should be to cause enough stress to break the body down, so when you sleep it lets the body know that more of the growth and recovery hormones are needed. At the same time you must give your body enough food and enough nutrients as these are the building blocks for recovery.

If you’ve eaten properly, listened to your hunger cues and trained at enough of an intensity to cause just enough stress in your body, then while you sleep your body will choose to use your stored fat as the fuel for recover, rather than your stored sugar.

If you are fighting hunger, fighting sugar cravings, progressing your training and not your food, feeling tired at 3 pm and can’t get through a day of no coffee without killing somebody. Then you are doing it wrong, regardless of how clean you may be eating.

Key points

– Fat burning is a process of recovery. Recovery happens at rest.

– The way you eat stimulates or suppresses fat burning hormones.

– Daily calories are the amount of nutrients your body requires in the forms of carbs, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals and your body is always striving to achieve the required amount.

– If you are craving, or fighting hunger its your body trying to communicate to you that you are doing it wrong.

– If you are aiming to achieve optimal health and fitness, you must be progressing your food at the same rate that you are progressing your exercise.

To kick off this whole process you first need to determine which of your glands are sluggish. I’ve developed an online questionnaire called a body type quiz. You can take that here. It’ll give you an instant result in terms of which gland(s) need to be addressed.

Once that’s done you’ll be offered a 45 minute consultation for free. And if you wish to work with me I would really love that opportunity.

In my next article I’ll talk about CARBS.

Should you cut them out after a certain time of day? When is the  best time to eat them? How is it that some people can eat carbs all day long and I only have to look at them and I gain weight?

Yours in Health

Tarryn Thompson