This year I lost 50 pounds and got down to around 12 percent body fat.
There’s one exercise that helped most to reduce my belly fat and help me keep it off.
Below, I’ll share:
- the number one exercise for losing fat
- the fundamentals on how you can start losing belly fat
- and the two most underrated exercises that can help you lose fat faster (including one that nobody seems to talk about on the internet)
Since I respect your time and attention, the number one exercise for losing fat is resistance training.
- It burns a decent number of calories compared to endurance training, especially when done circuit style.
- It increases your resting metabolic rate by about 5 percent after the first few years of training because you have more metabolically active tissue (muscle) on your body.
- It might have a slightly better appetite suppressing effect than most traditional forms of cardio.
- On top of all that, it forces your body to give up more fat for every pound of body weight you lose because you’re not losing as much muscle along the way.
But here’s the rub:
If losing belly fat as simple as showing up and lifting weights in the gym a few days per week…
Then how come there are so many guys at my gym with bulging mid sections who show up consistently?
Some of them have even been at it for a couple years.
And why are you struggling to shrink your waistline despite dabbling in some weight training yourself?
Before we dive into that…
If you struggle to:
– Lose stubborn fat around your belly and lower back
– Get into a consistent routine with food and workouts
– See visible changes, no matter how much you hit the gym
Check out Four Point Fat Loss – it will help you shrink your waistline over the next 45 days by focusing on your protein, calories, steps, and body weight.
Let’s talk about the first big elephant in the room ↓
You’ll never lose the fat you want if you don’t get your nutrition in check
Seriously.
When it comes to how much fat you’re carrying, your body doesn’t care how hard you train or how frequently you do it.
If you are unable to lose weight, you are not going to see a significant reduction in the girth of your waistline.
And we all know how important girth is.
You can eat back the calories burned in a one hour workout in just two minutes.
This was a lesson that I learned the hard way.
It’s sad to admit that I was always the chubby kid in my family growing up.
I never really seemed to grow out of the moon face or the pudgy waistline that I had as a kid.
It got worse as I got older:
- I got a stressful job
- I started drinking beers after work
- I picked up a smoking habit
- I saw an all-time high on the scale
- My clothes weren’t fitting and feeling quite right
- I was unhappy with the way my body looked
I tried running, and I tried keto, but nothing seemed to stick.
Running just felt like it beat the crap out of my body at that weight.
It wasn’t until I figured out that a calorie deficit was the most effective way to burn body fat that I actually made some real progress.
I lost 50 pounds, and I saw my belly shrink for real.
So, what is a calorie deficit? And how do you know if you’re doing it right?
When you’re burning more energy than you’re feeding your body each day, your body has to look for that energy from somewhere.
That’s how it knows to tap into your fat stores to energy.
Take a look at this water bottle.
The calories coming into your body are represented by the water coming in through the tap.
The water escaping the bottle through the hole at the bottom represents the calories you burn from exercise each day.
Putting more calories in than you’re burning?
You’ll gain weight over time.
Burning more calories than you’re putting in?
You’ll lose weight.
But in real life, it’s so much harder to burn calories than it is to consume them.
Trying to just drain more water out of the bottle without controlling the tap does not work.
It would require unbelievable amounts of exercise.
How to know if you’re in a calorie deficit
Keep a notepad on top of the toilet.
Step on the scale first thing in the morning after using the bathroom.
Before food and water.
Do this for the next seven days.
Write down your morning weight in that notepad.
Then look at the average of your first seven weigh-ins.
Repeat the process for seven days after that and compare the two averages.
If your average weight is moving down over the next two weeks, then you’re losing weight.
You’re in a calorie deficit.
Your body is going to start tapping into your fat stores around your midsection.
It has to find energy from somewhere.
If you don’t want to use the notepad on the toilet…
Grab my free weight loss calculator.
It’ll give you a nice tidy spreadsheet where you can track all your weight loss progress in one place.
Burning calories for fat loss
Now you’ve probably heard of a million different ways to burn more calories:
- biking
- rowing
- sprinting
Everyone online is wondering how they can burn calories faster.
But everyone seems to still be struggling to lose the weight.
Maybe they’re looking for the wrong thing.
Before we get into my favorite exercise to burn more calories…
What if there was an exercise that helped you eat fewer calories?
There is.
The most underrated exercise for this is mindfulness meditation.
This meta-analysis of 14 studies looked at mindfulness meditation and found it effective at two main things.
They found mixed results for mindfulness meditation on weight loss, but that was likely because it was the primary intervention, meaning they weren’t asking people to exercise or eat less.
Stress makes you less likely to exercise, and it leads to worse decision making around your food choices.
And having consistently elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol might even lead to excess fat storage in the abdominal area.
If you know that stress is a big part of the reason why you haven’t been eating healthy or working out lately:
A daily 10 minute session of deep breathing with your eyes closed to chill the fuck out might be a big deal for you.
Sadly, just getting zen alone probably won’t be enough to make you lean.
Once you’ve gotten into lifting weights, you’ve gotten your food in order, and you’ve taken a fuckin chill pill, it might be time to accelerate your fat loss efforts with some extra exercise.
But what is the best exercise to accelerate your fat loss?
About 70 percent of the energy you burn doesn’t even come from exercise at all.
All that energy gets burned just keeping your brain alive, keeping your heart pumping, and turning over your cells.
You can see how much energy it takes, on the left.
Of that remaining 30 percent of energy you burn each day, the majority of it doesn’t even come from your workouts.
This energy gets burned through all the other activity you do through the day.
Brushing your teeth, doing the laundry, jerking off, and whatever else you do in your spare time.
Now you can see that exercise is really just icing on the cake when it comes to weight loss.
The calories you burn are represented by that tiny stack of cards on the far right.
But that doesn’t mean it’s useless.
If you can consistently burn more calories every day…
You get to lose weight while eating more food.
Or you get to lose more weight while eating the same amount of food.
Which, for most people, is just so much easier.
Would you rather diet on 1700 calories per day, or 2000 calories per day and just be a little bit more active?
The best exercise to burn more calories and aid fat loss is:
It generates a very low amount of fatigue
It makes you live longer
Blood sugar control
Walking also seems to have a positive effect on your ability to control your blood sugar levels.
Especially when walking is done directly after meals.
Improved mood
People tend to score higher on mood questionnaires after brisk walking.
That lines up with my personal experience.
Increased gastric motility
That just means getting things moving through your digestive system.
Which lead to less bloating and indigestion.
There’s a woman who’s very popular on social media right now.
Her and her husband go for “fart walks” after dinner because they eat a high fiber diet.
They just go for a little walk to get all the gas out.
That’s hilarious.
Better sleeps
You’ll also notice that when you start walking more, that your sleep quality might improve.
I find that after a very active day, I fall asleep just the second my head hits the pillow.
Improving your sleep quality is a massive deal.
You’ll be happier, you’ll be more productive, and you’ll have more energy throughout the day.
You’ll also carry more more muscle and burn more fat.
In this paper by Wang and colleagues, they dieted 36 individuals for 8 weeks, and they split the groups in half.
In group 1, they had them just sleep normally.
And in group 2, they restricted their sleep by reducing it 1 hour per night, 5 days per week.
The well rested group lost 83 percent of their weight as fat mass.
The sleep restricted group lost 85 percent of their weight as lean mass.
Yeah, the diet was short, and it’s not a ton of participants, but still, it’s impressive.
Better ideas
It’s crazy to me how 98 percent of fitness content on the internet right now just assumes that the only thing you want in your life is to lose fat and build muscle.
Man, I got into this fitness thing to improve the quality of my life.
And better ideas lead to a better life.
If you want to get nerdy about this, go Google default mode network.
It’s basically the reason why your brain gives you such great and creative ideas while you’re in the shower.
The same thing happens when you go for routine walks.
How to start walking more and actually stick to it
There are 3 main tactics I use to walk more each week, and help my clients do the same:
1) Brain breaks
Anyone can do this in 10 minutes.
Right before or after your meals, you stand up.
Go to your front door, put your shoes on, and walk briskly away from your house for five minutes.
Turn around and come back.
That’s it.
It’s literally just a brisk 10 minute walk that burns an extra 50 to 100 calories, depending on how big you are.
It freshens up your mind, and you can slot this in during times where you’d normally be mindlessly scrolling on your phone.
2) Daily step goal
I standardize my activity levels by setting a daily goal.
It keeps me active even if I’ve had a busier work day.
Even if that means getting up off the couch in the evening to go do laundry or clean up my room when I realize that I have a few thousand steps left to go.
Get a knockoff Fitbit off Amazon for 20 bucks or enable step tracking on your phone.
A daily step goal is the most underrated tactic for losing body fat.
That’s why I include it in The Four Point Fat Loss Framework that I teach.
Steps, calories, protein, and body weight.
If you get these four under control, you can shrink your waistline without hours of cardio or BS diets.
And that’s exactly what I’ll teach you to do in Four Point Fat Loss, which is my brand new program launching June 29th.
3) Longer walks
Mornings, evenings, and weekends, I go for longer walks.
I’ll bring earphones with me so I can listen to podcasts or audiobooks and jot down good ideas that come to me.
Or I can listen to music.
Or just listen to nature.
Or I can call my friends and family and tell them that I appreciate them.
Now, maybe you’re looking for a special exercise that’s going to melt your belly fat overnight, but here’s the truth:
You can dramatically transform your body over the next three to six months with just one hour per day of focused effort.
Find a method that’s worked for someone else and give it an honest go for 30 days.
Document your process and your progress so you know what’s working.
At the end of the 30 days, you can ditch the parts you don’t like and double down on what’s working.
You don’t need to come up with a new idea on how to lose weight.
You just need to find one that works for you.
Maybe that ends up being this mosaic of different methods that you’ve tried over time.
Make yourself the project.
Be your own coach.
You can’t fuck this up.
Hope you have an excellent weekend.
-Matteo
PS: If you want to become your own weight loss coach, and lose a solid chunk of fat over the next 45 days, check out Four Point Fat Loss – you’ll learn how to get lean without BS diets or hours of cardio.
