By Marwan Killu
Author of "The Fat Loss Blueprint"
Mistake #1: Using Too Much Volume
One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they're trying to cut fat is use too much volume.
This is because in every area of life the more you do the better you get. The more hours you work the more pay you get at the end of the month.
The harder you work the better chances of you going somewhere in life and the more you practice the better you become at a skill.
Except when you are trying to lose fat it becomes a matter of balancing your hormones and a lot of this has to do with the hormone cortisol.
When you train in the gym you release cortisol in response to a physical stress on the body.
Cortisol increases during training and during physical stress the body needs to mobilise energy to fuel the muscles so that they can fight or flight so when cortisol is overly elevated it will affect protein synthesis by directly impacting mTor and the myostatin gene.
Cortisol is a catabolic hormone so will stop protein synthesis when it is overly elevated therefore it can reverse your gains and make you lose muscle since glycogen availability directly impacts protein synthesis, when you don’t have a lot of glycogen reserves the body cannot make protein synthesis.
The fuel you need when training is glycogen and the more glycogen you use the more cortisol you’ll produce and by doing more volume you will only use up more valuable glycogen stores which won’t make a difference to your overall fat loss.
And given that you are already in a calorie deficit glycogen reserves will be low.
So to avoid excess cortisol release and maximise protein synthesis you need to compensate for this by training harder for fewer sets and cutting down on volume.
You have to train more frequently to trigger protein synthesis and by doing more volume you can’t train the muscle more often because you will be under recovered.
There is an Inverse relationship between - Intensity, Volume and Duration.
If intensity is high, duration and therefore volume will be less.
Mistake #2: Using Too Many Exercises
The last thing you should be working on during a cut is your weak body parts or symmetry because it adds to the overall volume that you are already doing and won’t help burn off the fat.
Not only that but since you are in a deficit anyway you will not build any muscle and all you will do is get a bit of a pump and use up valuable glycogen.
Mistake #3: Not Training for Strength
If you are not giving the body a reason to hold on to muscle by doing heavy weights, why should it?
Having muscle is calorie intensive for the body to maintain.
Train as though you are lifting to build muscle, rep ranges in the 5-7 reps using your 8-10 rep max.
Mistake 4: Using a Split Routine Instead of Whole Body
Full body workouts are superior to bodypart splits for weight loss because
- Use more muscle mass
- Greater hormonal response
- Greater number of calories burned
- Greater after burn
- Training every muscle group in one workout
There are a couple of factors within the full body workout that are mainly responsible for this:
- Mostly compound exercises are used
- Legs are trained each day
Mistake #5: Doing Too Much Cardio
Steady state cardio is evil, will waste away your muscles by jacking up cortisol, doesn’t burn much fat and is boring AF.
High Intensity Intervals will get you a lot leaner, will not raise cortisol and are awesome right?
Not so fast.
The main claimed benefit of HIIT is related to EPOC, which comes with an increase in caloric expenditure even after the session has concluded. “Your body remains a fat burning machine for hours” is what some people will claim.
No, it doesn’t.
In the best-case scenario, EPOC will account for 6-15% of the energy burned during the session itself.
So, if your workout “burned” 400 calories, you get an extra 24-60 calories after your workout.
Considering that a pound of fat is 3600 calories, we can’t really say that it is significant. And that is the best-case scenario.
The fact is that few people actually perform their intervals with enough intensity to get that much of a benefit
The average sedentary and overstressed human is a bad “fat mobilizer”, good at storing fat and more efficient at using glucose for fuel.
What we want is to improve the capacity to mobilize and use fat for fuel. The more you train the body to use glycogen for fuel, the more efficient that system becomes and the less stored fat you will use as fuel since that system becomes less efficient by comparison.
That’s why steady state cardio is useful (walking outside) not because it “burns” calories, but because it can improve the efficacy of fat mobilization via the upregulation of several enzymes, as well as optimize the fat oxidation capacity of the mitochondria.
What this basically means is that you program your body to be more efficient at mobilizing and burning fat.
But too much cardio makes you efficient at storing fat! I am being serious!! Efficiency is the last thing you want when trying to lose fat.
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Editors Note:
If you're interested in learning more about Marwan's program, it's called "The Fat Loss Blueprint" and it's PACKED with excellent information on how to get lean FAST, while maintaining optimal hormone levels.
On that page, you'll learn how Marwan took himself from an overfat, stressed-out dad, and got himself RIPPED.
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