5 Tips for Easier Fat Loss

Do a Google search for "how to lose fat." I dare you.

You will find thousands upon thousands of different sources, with tons of different answers. If you took the time to compare and contrast all of those different answers, you'd find tons of similarities, and tons of differences. The problem is...

Since you have other important things to do, I'd like to make your life a bit easier. Below is a list of 5 things you should be doing to lose fat easier. If you turn these items into habits, the fat will stay off easier, too.

LIFT WEIGHTS

Lifting weights is going to be one of the best things you can do for your health and fitness no matter what your goal is. I don't care if your goal is fat loss, muscle building, or getting out of your car without groaning. You should be lifting weights.

When we introduce something to our body, it sends a signal telling our body to adapt. If you perform endurance running, your body will receive a signal telling it to adapt by improving its energy efficiency (your metabolism will slow down). If you perform mobility and stretching consistently, your body will receive a signal telling it to adapt my improving the muscles' ability to lengthen and create stability in those lengthened positions. The same concept applies for resistance training. When you lift weights, you send a signal to your body telling it to gain strength and build muscle. As a result, you will become stronger, and carry more lean tissue. This is beneficial for fat loss for one major reason. Resistance training promotes a faster metabolism, as well as muscle building. Muscle takes a lot of energy to maintain, so your metabolism will increase as a result of your increased muscle mass as well. In short, you'll build a fast metabolism, and as you know, fat loss is much easier with a faster metabolism.

Before I move on, I want to clarify something. When I say building muscle, I specifically mean adding ANY amount of lean muscle to your body. This applies for women wanting to increase tone and definition, as well as men wanting to get jacked. Any sort of increase in lean tissue (even if it's a small increase) will lead to a faster metabolism. You'll also look great, too. So that's nice.

TRACK YOUR FOOD

Tracking your food intake is something I believe EVERYONE should do. It is the best way you can get an extremely good idea of how food affects your internal health as well as fat loss. Tracking gives you an opportunity to know what and how much you're currently intaking, and also allows you to see what tweaks you need to make in order to lose more fat. We've been trained to mindlessly eat since we were kids. You'll be astonished by what you discover when you finally decide to keep a log of your food.

Here's the thing. Fat loss and finances are similar in many ways. If you want to know how to save money, you're going to want to track your spending and create a budget in order to save more money. Similarly, if you want to lose fat, you're going to want to track your eating and create a "budget" in order to burn more energy than you consume in a day. In both scenarios, playing the guessing game is dangerous and will most likely put you in a bigger hole than you're in now. Take responsibility, get determined, and take note of what you do so you can make accurate and beneficial changes.

BOOST YOUR METABOLISM

I briefly discussed this before, but I'll go over it in more detail.

In the context of modern life, speeding up your metabolism is one of the best things you can do. It will make getting lean and staying lean much easier. Why? For starters, we are more sedentary than ever. In addition, food is more readily available than ever before. Simply put, we are moving less and eating more. So, having a faster metabolism will make it easier for you to burn more calories without sacrificing your lifestyle.

Two things you can do to boost your metabolism include eating more food and performing resistance training. If you do things the right way, you'll see your body's ability to burn through calories increase like crazy. While performing your resistance training program, slowly add volume to your workouts once your body begins to adapt. Increases in volume have been proven to enhance strength and muscle mass, which are going to help your metabolism. You can add volume to your training by adding weight, sets, reps, or a combination of the three. While tracking your nutrition, make sure you're eating enough protein, carbs, and fat for your desired outcome. The goal is to maintain your current weight week after week as you eat more food and add volume to your training.

STAY CONSISTENT

This one is simple. If you're consistent, you'll see positive change. If you're inconsistent, you won't. It is better to be 90% consistent consistently than to be 100% consistent inconsistently. Don't stress too much about the BEST workout ever. Don't stress too much about the BEST nutrition protocol ever. Instead, focus on eating well 80% of the time, and getting all your workouts in. Even if that's too much, find ONE simple change in your training and ONE simple change in your nutrition that you can be consistent with. Once those changes have turned into habits, build from there.

HAVE YOUR EYES SET ON THE LONG TERM

Can you lose 20 pounds in two weeks? Yup. But you don't want to go down that road. Short-term, get fit quick routes will lead you to hole that will take years and years to dig yourself out of. If you want to build a lean body and be able to easily maintain it down the road, have your eyes set on the long term. If you want that kind of change, you need to accept the fact that you are going to make a lifestyle change. Lifestyle changes are no joke, and they take time. Once you have your long term goal and you've accepted the fact that you're making a lifestyle change, break things down a bit. Make daily, weekly, and monthly goals. Also, it may be a good idea to create behavior-based short-term goals for your outcome-based goals. Let's say your outcome-based goal is losing 50 pounds of body fat in a healthy way over the course of the next 2 years. Your behavior-based goals can be things like getting all your workouts in, meeting your macronutrient goals each day, and getting your body composition tested every month. Whatever you choose to do, create some behavior change. Outcome-based goals are achieved far more often when there are detailed behavior-based goals to go along with them.

THE TAKEAWAY

If you want to lose fat and keep it off, make sure you implement these five things into your life.

1. Lift weights

2. Track your food

3. Boost your metabolism

4. Stay consistent

5. Have your eyes set on the long term

If you do these things (even on a small scale) and slowly build, you will see great change in your health and fitness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam is a fitness professional, baseball fan, and cookie fanatic based in Fort Collins, Colorado. After hanging up the cleats, he found a strong interest in the human body and how it performs. Since then, Adam has been transforming lives through fitness in a fun and encouraging atmosphere. As an ACE CPT and Fitness Nutrition Specialist, he is constantly moved to help people improve in all walks of life. If you’re interested in hiring Adam as your coach, fill out an application here.

Setting Yourself Up For Success: Trust the Process

It's time for some serious honesty. Being a fitness coach with integrity is really hard sometimes. Do I ever consider sacrificing my integrity in my profession? Absolutely not. But is it hard to keep my integrity and make a big splash in fitness within the first year or so? You freaking bet. 

Although it's difficult, I have to trust the process. I have to understand that doing the right things now will pay off later on. There are so many options out there that could make instant money and recognition for me. I could easily photoshop pictures of myself and post them on Instagram saying that my program will get people ripped in 6 weeks or less. I could pay random individuals for pictures of transformations they completed on their own, say that I did that for them, and create a library of false testimonials in no time. I'd make a killing.

But that's just not what sets fire for me. Relationships do. Educating, encouraging, and building community with my clients is what sparks a fire inside of me. I just have to understand that if I want to pursue what gives me purpose inside of an industry like fitness, patience is a must. 

I have to understand that choosing the integrity route is going to cost more time, effort, and energy with minimal reward now, but in the end it'll pay off more than anything else would.

The same goes for your fat loss journey.

You can take diuretics, eat nothing but bananas, and take all sorts of pills but if you choose to go that route, you have to understand that your progress is going to die quicker than a middle schooler's self-esteem after his first taste of rejection.

Understand That It's a Process

I talk about state of mind a lot. I did so in my last article about how to crush your resolutions. In that article I talked about how coming to a place of understanding is one of the best things you can do if you want to achieve a goal. This is especially true when it comes to fat loss. 

If you hear anyone or anything tell you that fat loss is quick, easy, or simple, they're lying to your face. Or are they? I guess technically, they're right. You could wake up tomorrow and eat nothing but bananas and you'll probably lose weight. But is that the fat loss you're truly after?

Didn't think so.

The fat loss that you're after is long-term, sustainable fat loss that will enable you to stay leaner year-round. I mean, I guess you could choose to lose 10 pounds, put on 20, lose another 15, and put on 30, continuously gaining more and more fat over the course of your life, but hey. It's your life, not mine. Personally, I think that method is freaking miserable and it makes "health" and "fitness" become two bad words that I'd never want to say again.

Anyway, achieving long-term sustainable fat loss is similar to my story of making a splash in the lives of thousands. It's a looong process. Why? Because it involves doing things the right way. It involves taking the time to build lean muscle tissue that will support a faster metabolism. It involves prioritizing your sleep schedule so your body can rest, recover, and support it's hormone levels. It also involves knowing your body well and learning how it processes and digests certain foods. It's much more than just working out more and eating less. Does that say that it's extremely difficult and nearly impossible? 

Of course not.

 It just takes more time than you might expect. But if you go into it understanding that:

1. it's going to take some time
and
2. it's going to be more beneficial for you in the long run,

losing fat and staying lean won't bring any negative thoughts to your mind. In fact, you'll go into it with so many more positive feelings because you've already accepted the fact that you're sacrificing the easy way out for a process that is going to benefit your health and body composition for the rest of your life.

Trusting the Process

Understanding the fact that something worthwhile takes time is one thing, but completely surrendering to it and trusting it is a completely different animal. 

We can sit here all day long and talk about the different definitions we all have for trust and what it means to us on a deep level. But let's not. Let's keep it simple.

To me, trusting the process involves being educated in the process. It's too difficult to trust something that I know nothing about.

What's easier, fully placing trust in the person you're closest to, or placing your trust in the person you picked off the side of the road? The former, I'd hope. 

Perhaps you've never trusted your fat loss journey because you've never fully understood it. What does it mean to build lean muscle tissue? Why does that have an effect on your metabolism? How could sleep possibly play a role in you losing fat? Ask yourself questions like these, and if you don't know the answers, find them. 

I believe knowledge builds trust in things. 

For me, knowing why it takes time to make a make an impact in the lives of thousands helps me get up in the morning with a fire under my butt to GSD (get sh*t done). If I went into this expecting maximum rewards from minimal effort, I'd be pretty discouraged.

Same thing goes for you. Educating yourself on the requirements of long-term sustainable fat loss will make hitting your goals so much easier. You'll be more motivated, and the chances of you giving up half-way through will be much lower.

So figure out what that looks like for you. Maybe you need to learn more from a coach. Maybe you know quite a bit and you just need to remind yourself of that. Whatever it is, find someone or something to help you build trust. 

Then, GSD and crush your goals.

Thanks For Reading!

Thank you for taking time out of your day to hear what I have to say. I truly appreciate it. No matter where you're at along your health and fitness journey, remember that you've got a guy. I'm here to help you take that next step, regardless of what that might look like. From a simple note of encouragement to completely tailored coaching, I'm here for ya. God bless.

About the Author

Adam is a fitness professional, Chipotle fanatic, and cookie enthusiast based in Fort Collins, CO. After hanging up the baseball cleats, he found a strong interest in the human body and how it performs. Since then, Adam has been transforming lives through fitness in a fun and encouraging atmosphere. 

As an ACE CPT and Fitness Nutrition Specialist, he's constantly moved to helped people improve in all walks of life. If you're interested in hiring Adam as your coach, fill out an application here.

PROS & CONS: Your Guide to Online Coaching & Personal Training

Since I branched out to start Poehlmann Fitness, I've consistently been asked what online coaching is and how it works.

"Adam, what the heck do you do now? I know you're in fitness, but.."
"So are you like, a personal trainer? Or..."
"So do you train people over Skype? That's what online training is, correct? You watch them workout on the computer, right?"

Since Poehlmann Fitness hit its one year mark this summer, those questions come up a little less often, but I still want to break things down. The purpose of this article is twofold. I want to:

1. Provide you clarity and insight on the major differences between online coaching and personal training. 

2. Help you understand which option will be best for you whenever you decide you want to hire a coach/trainer. 

Before I get into the details, I want you to read the following sentence closely:

I am BOTH an online coach as well as a personal trainer. I LOVE both, and this article is written from an unbiased point of view.

This article is made purely to inform and educate you, so you can find the best fit for your health.

Anyway, into personal training we go. 

Personal training is something that most everyone is familiar with. It's been around since most of us can remember. Most of you may be familiar with the general process but we'll run through it anyway. Here's how it works:

You're part of a local gym, and you decide that there is something you'd like to accomplish. With most other things in life, you may not need major assistance from another individual to achieve your goal. However, this goal that relates to your health requires knowledge and experience from an individual who is well-immersed in things like health, fitness, nutrition, etc. 

You seek out a trainer/coach and the gym and hire this individual. You begin training with them for the most amount of sessions per week that you can afford, because you're paying for their time, and that's it. Depending on the trainer/coach, he/she may have you also sign up for other things like a training program to do on your own, nutrition coaching, wellness coaching, etc. 

At each session, you get undivided attention (if you've hired a great coach) as well as professional eyes on everything that you're doing. On the flipside, this means they have no clue what you're doing outside of those 1-on-1 sessions. 

Once you and the trainer/coach reach your goal and/or run out of sessions, you discuss and assess your time with each other thus far and move forward if needed and desired. 

This is a very general and brief description of the process. There are other details that can change the process, such as training styles, experience, personality, etc.
Most of which come from the coach/trainer you hire. 

Now that we have a refresher on personal training, let's go over online coaching. 

Online coaching is a whole different animal. To get as much detail in this brief description as possible, let's go back to the beginning of the process.

You've decided that there is something you want to learn or achieve in your fitness journey. Whether it's improving general health, building muscle, losing fat, whatever it is, you want to accomplish something. This something - similar to the goal with personal training - requires the advice and attention of someone who is well-versed in that field. 

You get on the computer, and do some research on all of the online coaches that you can possibly find. You contact a few and apply to be coached by them. After narrowing it down and making a decision, you move forward with that one specific coach. Depending on the coach's systems and business structure, you pay a fee of some sort. For the sake of this scenario we'll just say that it's $200/mo. for their services (FYI, coaches range from ~ $200-500/mo.).

Unlike personal training, there are more services included for the fee that you are paying. Some of these services are nutrition coaching, custom training programs, weekly check-ins, 24/7 messaging support, etc. 

An online coach is more so a health (fitness, nutrition, wellness included) coach rather than just a personal trainer with an online platform. 

Depending on how the coach's services work, you'll be set up with a training program with exercise video demos, a nutrition protocol, and a platform that this is in. Poehlmann Fitness clients are set up on an app called Trainerize. 

As you go through the process, you check in with the coach on a regular basis and update them on how things are going.

Am I right?

Once you reach your goal or your membership/subscription expires, you and your coach discuss thoughts on moving forward. 

That's a quick summary of what online coaching entails.

Now that we've gone over both personal training and online coaching, it's time to examine the pros and cons of each. In order to do this more specifically, I'll break things down into different categories. Those will be:

1. Coach/Trainer Selection
2. Cost
3. Value
4. Accountability

1. Coach/Trainer Selection

Personal Training

Pros: Quality in-person training sessions require a trainer that can communicate well, carry great conversation, and make you laugh/entertain you. After all, you're with them for an hour. How awkward would it be if no words were exchanged?
Most big box gyms that I know of do some sort of introductory/complimentary session with a trainer. This face-to-face contact is a great opportunity to see what their personality is like. 

Cons: Gyms only have so many personal trainers. There might be situations where you might have to pick the best of the worst in regards to personality match, etc. 

Online Coaching

Pros: Online coaching gives you access to any coach in the world. You can research your tail of to make sure you find the best coach for you. You can learn about their credentials, experience, testimonials, cost, services, etc. in just a few clicks.

Cons: Everyone can call themselves an online coach or personal trainer nowadays. It's really easy to see through the BS in person. It's a little more difficult to do that on the internet. Everyone can make themselves look like a different version of themselves on the world wide web. Here's some advice on that. Ask to do some sort of phone or skype/facetime consultation before moving forward that way you can ensure transparency between the both of you.

2. Cost

Personal Training

Pros: I honestly can't think of one. Personal training is pricey but there are cases in which it's well worth it. Continue reading and I'll explain.

Cons: In-person training in big box gyms can cost anywhere from $60-$100/hr. depending on the experience and demand of the trainer. Let's that means you can be paying $240-$400/mo. if you have one session per week, and as much as $720-1200/mo. if you have three sessions per week. 

Online Coaching

Pros: Online coaching is inexpensive when compared to in-person training. I'll explain more of this as we move along.

Cons: No cons here. 

3. Value

Personal Training

Pros: When comparing online coaching and in-person training in terms of value, a lot of people look down in-person training but I find there are a few really big pros. One of these pros is face-to-face contact. When the trainer is right there with you, he/she can see and should correct any thing they see in how you are performing on the gym floor. Whether that means correcting your rowing form, or reminding you to breathe properly while performing a squat, your trainer can see everything.
In-person training is great for athletes, too. There are so many intricate movements when it comes to sports performance, and an online coach simply isn't there to see that. For example, I train all of my athletes in person because the tiniest correction in their running form could mean seconds shaved off their 90-yard dash that they run for the scouts. 

Cons: The pros are great for in-person training in regards to attention to detail during performance, but that's all that in-person training offers. The fee that you pay is for the hour that you are with the trainer and nothing more. There are some cases in which the trainer may give you things to do at home, but if he/she does, it may not be as detailed and customized as a full program from an online coach. Remember, the trainer is only getting paid for the time you're with them, so they may not give as much attention to your "other" workouts. It's not because they don't care, it's because they need to put food on the table, and filling their schedule clients is how they do it. 

Online Coaching

Pros: The value of online coaching is tremendous. Unlike in-person training, there is much more included in the monthly subscription that you have with your coach. With most coaches and subscription plans, services include a fully customized training program that is tailored to fit your history, goals, current state of health, and lifestyle. Not only is the training plan fully customized, but most coaches also include nutrition coaching in their subscription along with weekly check-ins, 24/7 email access, as well as access to a support group of other clients. Online coaches can also play a big role in listening, giving advice, and allowing health and fitness to play a role in your life that consists of a ton of other priorities. Online coaches aren't life coaches by any means, but it's much more inclusive than just in-person training. 

Cons: The coach isn't there to see what you're doing in the gym in regards to your movement. Although they can offer you a ton of services to benefit your health and save you money, it's not a great option if you are new to exercise and need someone there to make sure your form is on point. 

4. Accountability

Personal Training

Pros: Since you have a commitment made with another individual, it's a lot harder to skip a training session. Your trainer is waiting for you, and that makes it way easier to show up. Not only that, but it's a lot harder to slack off when the person you've hired to get you into shape is hovering over you. 

Cons: They're only there with you for the hour that you've paid for. During the rest of their time, they're training other individuals.

Online Coaching

Pros: They key with online coaching is utilizing what you've paid for. If your membership includes weekly check-ins and email support, abuse it. You've hired them to be at your fingertips whenever you need. Have a question about fitness when you're out with your friends? Email them right then and there. That's the plus of online coaching. Although I have training sessions in-person, most of my time is spent coaching my clients online and there is a lot of time in my daily schedule dedicated to supporting them and answering their questions. If you're completely honest and transparent with what you're doing each day, the accountability can't be matched with online coaching. He/she can see your food intake from sugar consumed to the greens in your delicious kale smoothie (barf). They're also able to see what you did in the gym including weights, sets, reps, and more. 

Cons: If you're dishonest or just don't record in any of your activity, your coach will be stripped of their ability to keep you accountable so it's important that you're as transparent and diligent as you can possibly be. 

The Takeaway

There is a lot of good in both in-person training as well as online coaching. Question is, what's right for you? Here's what I can say about that in a few sentences:

If you are a just beginning to make physical activity a part of your life, in-person training may be best. That way your trainer can show you proper form and etiquette on the gym floor. In-person training may also be best if you are an athlete seeking to improve your speed and agility which can require complex drills and extreme attention to detail.

If you have experience working out, you're comfortable in a gym, and you're confident in your form, online coaching may be a great way for you to get tailored plans to improve your heath, fitness, and nutrition without completely sacrificing your lifestyle. And remember, if you're ever unsure about your form or have questions regarding your plans, you can send in videos or questions about the movement and your coach can help you through it. The use of technology is a huge plus. 

If you're still stuck and don't know which path to take, or you know exactly what you need and want to talk to a professional about getting started, feel free to contact me via email at adam@poehlmannfitness.com or send me a message on social media.

Thanks for reading!

Much love,
Adam