5 Advanced Fat Burning Strategies
In today’s society, we have an epidemic of obesity. With this there is also a growing trend of people who are tired of living a suboptimal life and are looking for ways to be healthy. Considering excess body fat is a risk factor for many of America’s top chronic diseases, using these fat burning strategies to slim down is a great place to start turning your life around.
Addititionally, these strategies will help you build muscle and rev up your metabolism so that you can keep fat off for good. In addition to eliminating sugar and grains from the diet, and in general following a low-carb high-fat diet, there are five fat burning strategies that come to mind to help burn fat faster than ever before (1).
What Is Causing Our Obesity Epidemic?
Today it seems like everybody with excess weight to lose has trouble actually getting it off. Unfortunately, there is an explosion of companies trying to capitalize on this trend by selling get-skinny-quick schemes that often times straight up don’t work.
When it comes down to it, there could be an infinite number of factors that are contributing to the obesity epidemic we are seeing. We consume way too much sugar, we have environmental toxins that throw off our hormones, we are living increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and many of us just don’t know what we’re doing to our bodies.
While it is important to learn about these factors in detail to make smarter choices for your health, there are foundational factors and fat burning strategies that will help put you on the right track.
Where Is The Best Place To Start?
While the fat burning strategies in this article are important, there are some foundational principles that help make this fat loss more sustainable.
While exercise plays a large role in burning fat, I find that most people are just going about it the wrong way. You may have heard this before but the majority of fat loss happens in the kitchen. This is why I recommend a low-carb, high-fat diet to almost every single one of my patients.
Eating this way helps balance blood sugar, lower inflammation, balance hormones, and as a side benefit, fat seems to melt off (2). I also like to emphasize that meats on this diet come from pasture-raised or wild caught sources, produce comes from organic sources, and water you are drinking is properly filtered.
Following these principles help to ensure that you are limiting your exposure to environmental toxins while maximizing nutrition, both of which can contribute to a healthy weight. To dive deeper into these principles check out my article on steps to following a Healing Diet.
Advanced Fat Burning Strategies
Now that we understand the foundation for sustainable weight loss, your five strategies that I use every day to help increase fat burning potential in my own body. These strategies are designed to rev up your metabolism and help keep you in a ketogenic state so that fat burning comes naturally.
Super Hydration
Typically, I will fast throughout the morning, consuming my first meal around noon. During this time, I make it a priority to super hydrate my body by drinking close to a gallon of water before I take my first bite of food.
This helps to give my cells the water they need to produce energy, helps to move my bowels, and promotes the release of toxins out of my body. This means that when I do consume my first meal I’m not stressing an already stressed system. Instead, I feel great, I’m full of energy, and I have likely begun to produce ketones.
Getting your body to produce ketones endogenously is one of the keys to burning excess body fat quickly (3).
Super Hydration Strategies
When I tell people how much water they should be drinking, they sometimes look at me like I’m crazy. Most people simply are not drinking enough water and wind up chronically dehydrated. I will agree that water isn’t really the greatest tasting beverage in the world and there are ways you can spice it up.
Some Of My Favorite Ways To Hydrate Are:
Diluted Organic Broths: These help provide sodium and minerals for nervous system health. If you drink bone broth, you will also get tons of extra benefits for your gut.
Organic Mold-Tested Coffee: Although it contains fat, I find that drinking a Tumeric Fat-Burning coffee can help keep me full and focused throughout the morning, especially on my demanding days. The medium chain triglycerides in this help me produce ketones and rev up my fat burning potential. If you don’t like or cannot do coffee, you can try our Keto Matcha Green Tea or Coconut Dandelion Coffee.
Water With Lemon or Apple Cider Vinegar: Combining a Tbsp of either lemon juice or apple cider vinegar provides the body with beneficial acids and enzymes to promote gut health and fat-burning. This is one of the rarely known fat burning strategies.
Apple Cider Vinegar Tonic: They make bottled varieties of these today but here is my favorite. Steep a spiced tea such as Chai, cinnamon, or ginger, add a splash of apple cider vinegar and a bit of stevia or monk fruit to make a delicious keto-friendly spiced apple cider. Try out a few of my favorite recipes below!
Intermittent Fasting
Fasting is simply an amount of time where you do not consume any calories. As I mentioned, I perform an intermittent fast every day and typically don’t consume my first meal until noon or later. During this time, I feel absolutely full of energy, clear minded, and have laser focus.
Fasting mimicks a state of starvation. Although this might sound unpleasant, most people experience a ton of benefits when they practice this on a regular basis. In addition to being one of the best fat burning strategies, it is one of the most powerful strategies for overall health and longevity.
The Top Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting Include:
Improved State Of Ketosis (Increased Fat Burning)
Boosted Immunity (4)
Improved Gut Health
Recycling and Removal Of Old Damaged Cells
Increased Repair of DNA Damage
Lowered Inflammation (5)
Improved Insulin Sensitivity
Intermittent Fasting Tips
Fasting can be implemented in several ways. I usually recommend starting with a simple fast of 12 hours. For example, if you finish eating dinner at 6PM at night you should not consume any more calories until 6AM the next morning. Most people will have no problem with this unless they have severe blood sugar dysregulation.
Once you feel good following a simple fast for 1-2 weeks, you can bump it up to 14 hours, then 16, and so on. Most people, including myself, respond very well in the range of 16-18 hours. Men tend to be able to fast longer than women so listen your body and settle where you feel your best.
If you find that you are having trouble with hunger and poor energy, consuming a high-fat beverage with no carbs or protein during the morning can be very helpful. I often recommend our Turmeric Fat Burning Coffee or Keto Matcha Green Tea.
I must stress again that during this time it is important to drink plenty of water and other hydrating beverages such as broths and herbal teas to help clear out toxins and supply minerals to the body. This is very important in order to get the best results with these fat burning strategies.
Fasted Workouts
Working out while fasted will burn up your glucose stores and help shift your body into a deeper fat burning state. This is especially true if you have trained your body to burn fat for fuel with a ketogenic diet. At the same time, once your body has adapted to burning fat as its primary fuel, your body becomes more efficient at building lean muscle.
Getting into a state of ketosis is key for making fasted workouts work for you. This is when you will start to see an improvement in both muscle building as well as fat burning. Follow these tips to ensure you maximize the benefits of your fasted workouts.
Short Duration, High Intensity Workouts
Timing your exercise and firing up the intensity is one of the key fat burning strategies. Working out fasted can be great but can easily become harmful to the body if you do not follow this principle.
Workouts should be high intensity, strength oriented, and no longer than 10-30 minutes. This kind of exercise has been shown to optimize sex hormones, boost endogenous antioxidant systems in the body, and keep your body in an anabolic state (muscle building) (6).
Working out too strenuously for too long will cause a sharp increase in cortisol which will increase blood sugar and increase the likelihood of catabolism (break down of muscle).
High Intensity Workout Tips
I have found that I respond the best to high intensity strength workouts of 20-30 minutes, 4 times per week. What I do is the same as I recommend to most of my patients as it is scientifically proven to help burn fat and balance hormones.
My weekly workout routine is a simple split as follows:
Upper Body Push & Pull Exercises (2 times per week): On these days, I will perform exercises such as bench press, rows, pull-ups, dips, and overhead presses.
Lower Body (2 times per week): On these days, I will perform compound movements such as squats and deadlifts. Full body movements that implement the core, such as burpees or mountain climbers, are a great finishing exercise to get your metabolism fired up. You may also be interested in specific exercises for wider hips that you can do at home to create more core stability and improve lower body strength.
Essential & Branched Chain Amino Acids
Typically, when people are not in an optimal metabolic state, they respond in one of two ways. They either put on fat, or they lose muscle mass. When performing extended fasts in addition to high intensity strength exercise, some individuals can struggle with putting on muscle.
I usually fast until around noon, hit the gym for a strength workout, and continue fasting for another 1-3 hours. To ensure that I remain in a fat-burning state while also building muscle, I supplement with an essential amino acid complex that contains specific ratios of branched-chain amino acids.
These amino acids provided in specific, scientifically studied ratios, make me feel strong and help ensure that I remain in a deep fat-burning state without sacrificing muscle tissue in the process (7).
Using Amino Acids To Build Muscle
Up until recently I wouldn’t use amino acids because everything that was available either contained chemical sweeteners or just tasted terrible. I set out to find a better product and ended up with my own formulation called Amino Strong.
It contains specific amounts of essential amino acids, including branch chain amino acids, shown to support the development of muscle mass in scientific studies. On top of that, it tastes like fruit punch and is sweetened with stevia.
I would recommend using this product, or something similar, before and after your workouts while in a fasted state to support muscle development without sacrificing fat-burning potential. This is one of the fat burning strategies most people are unaware of.
Exogenous Ketones
One of the best ways to get your body fat or keto adapted quickly is through the use of exogenous ketones. Exogenous ketones are a supplemental form of ketones that are identical to the ketone bodies (Beta-hydroxybutyrate or BHB) that our body makes.
Our body needs some time to get used to ketones being elevated in the blood stream to begin using them effectively and efficiently for cellular energy. By consuming an exogenous ketone supplement, you get the body adapted to ketones faster and using them as an energy source before the body has built the metabolic machinery to produce its own ketones effectively.
I formulated KetoEdge with performance and optimal health in mind. Not only does it contain exogenous ketones, but it also features:
- Key electrolytes such as magnesium, potassium, sodium and calcium
- American ginseng which is a powerful adaptogen that improves brain health, energy, endurance and immune function.
If you are following a ketogenic diet for its therapeutic benefits, KetoEdge is comprehensive support to maximize your success.
Sources For This Article Include:
1. Raygan, F., Bahmani, F., Kouchaki, E., Aghadavod, E., Sharifi, S., Akbari, E., . . . Asemi, Z. (2016). Comparative effects of carbohydrate versus fat restriction on metabolic profiles, biomarkers of inflammation and oxidative stress in overweight patients with Type 2 diabetic and coronary heart disease: A randomized clinical trial. PMID: 28607566
2. Bosma-den Boer, M. M., van Wetten, M.-L., & Pruimboom, L. (2012). Chronic inflammatory diseases are stimulated by current lifestyle: how diet, stress levels and medication prevent our body from recovering. Nutrition & Metabolism, 9(1), 32. PMID: 22510431
3. Partsalaki, I., Karvela, A., & Spiliotis, B. E. (2012). Metabolic impact of a ketogenic diet compared to a hypocaloric diet in obese children and adolescents. Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism, 25(7–8), 697–704. PMID: 23155696
4. Faris MA, Kacimi S, Al-Kurd RA, Fararjeh MA, Bustanji YK, Mohammad MK, Sale ML. Intermittent fasting during Ramadan attenuates proinflammatory cytokines and immune cells in healthy subjects. Nutr Res. 2012 Dec;32(12):947-55. PMID: 23244540
5. Varady KA, Hellerstein MK. Alternate-day fasting and chronic disease prevention: a review of human and animal trials. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Jul;86(1):7-13. PMID: 17616757
6. Godfrey RJ, Madgwick Z, Whyte GP. The exercise-induced growth hormone response in athletes. Sports Med. 2003;33(8):599-613. PMID: 12797841
7. Matsumoto K, Koba T, Hamada K, et al. Branched-chain amino acid supplementation attenuates muscle soreness, muscle damage and inflammation during an intensive training program. J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2009 Dec;49(4):424-31. PMID: 20087302
