How To Speed Up Fat Loss WITHOUT doing MORE!

So when we find that our fat loss progress is slow or even non-existent regardless of how much we try, unfortunately one of the things that we tend to do most is just try to do more. We'll try to cut back on the calories even more, try to increase our exercise even more, and so on. And the catch is what many of us find is, well, this doesn't work. It's like, well, I was doing the basics, that wasn't working, so then I tried to do more and more of the basics or more of all the fancy things that are out there and again, I'm still not getting results. It's just not working for some reason. Every single week I jump on the scale, I don't seem to be losing any weight. What the fuck's going on? Now, what many of us don't realize is our physiology doesn't really care what we look like. It only cares about keeping us alive. Survival is the baseline instinct that our physiology has, and that's the baseline goal— keep the organism alive. So it doesn't care what we look like, it just cares that we survive. Now, that of course is a good thing. We want to be alive. But for those of us that are trying to burn body fat and to have a better body, well, that doesn't really help. It's like, well, yeah, okay, cool, thanks for keeping me alive, mate, but I want to look better. I want to get rid of this excess body fat so that I can actually feel good about myself, have more confidence, have more energy, and so on. So we need to understand that, okay, well, I've been trying the things and that's not leading to a result. What's going on. Now, for most of us, what we have to realize and even remember sometimes is that many of us, if not most of us these days, are chronically stressed out. Like, our lifestyles operate at a capacity beyond what we're currently able to cope with, and much of the time that's because we're not actually looking after ourselves enough in the first place. So therefore, our capacity to adapt to our lifestyle, it gets reduced, and then as a result of that, the body starts to take its toll. We start to gain weight, we start to become ill, lethargic, tired, and all those types of things. And eventually, if this is followed through for a long enough period of time, we end up diseased. But hopefully you're not that far yet, and hopefully we've, we've got plenty of time to do something about it. So because of the fact that the body is often overly stressed out, what happens is we then come along and go, all right, well, I want to lose body weight now. So we start doing the things that are allegedly required to lose body weight and body fat, and we find we're not losing weight. And the reason for that is because when the body is stressed out, it will preferentially burn sugar and not fat. Now, when I say sugar, I of course mean glucose in the bloodstream, et cetera. So it will burn sugar or glucose as its preferred energy source rather than body fat because it's a quicker source of energy. And of course, anytime the body is stressed out or in what we call a fight or flight response, its natural tendency is to want to burn that because it's a quicker source of energy that is designed to prepare you to fight or flight. Now, on the flip, of course, we want to burn body fat. Well, burning of body fat tends to take place more so on the other side of the nervous system. So when the body is chilled out, relaxed, you're going for a nice steady walk and so on, and stress is to a minimum, then your body will preferentially burn fat. Now, of course, what that means is ultimately most of the time when we go to the gym, if we're training or exercising hard during that workout, our body is actually going to be preferentially burning sugar if it's at a high enough intensity. Now, that's not a bad thing, don't worry, because if we're training hard, what that does is causes a lot of metabolic damage, which then needs to be repaired. So our metabolism remains elevated for an extended period of time after the session, anywhere between 2 and 48 hours on average, depending how hard we've worked, depending how much metabolic damage we've done. And because of that, over time, we actually burn more calories than we would have in the workout. So don't think, oh well, now all my workouts need to be light and easy. But what we have to understand is, well, if I'm chronically stressed out and it's been going on for a long period of time, maybe my body is currently in a state where it's not able to preferentially burn fat because it's too busy trying to keep me alive and to keep me adapting to this stressful lifestyle. So one of the things that we sometimes need to do before we can actually get results is heal the body first. So we need to heal before we can reveal the body that we want. Now, one of the best ways to do that, of course, is to reduce the overall stress load going on. Now, the catch for many of us in this situation is we often think of or perceive stress as in, I've had a bad day, my boss has pissed me off, I've just had an argument with my partner, and things like that, which are, of course, forms of stress, but they're not the only forms of stress. We also need to look at, well, am I getting enough sleep? Because if I'm not getting enough sleep, that's a form of stress. If I'm eating too much junk food, that's a form of stress. If I have too many periods of time between meals that are too long, that's a form of stress. Now, we're not talking about fasting here. That's a different thing. But if I have an irregular eating pattern, that is a form of stress to my body as well. It doesn't mean I have to eat the same exact time every single day, but the body loves repeated rhythms and routines. So the more chaotic and stressful our lifestyle is, the more of a disruption this has on our body and the physiology. Now, the reason for that is because ultimately any change in our inner or outer environment is technically a stressor. So any change in our inner or outer environment is stress. Now, that doesn't mean that stress is bad, because without stress we'd actually be dead. We need stress in our lifestyles to give the body something to adapt to. It's that repeated exposure to stresses plus the recovery required to adapt to it, that enables the body to get stronger. The catch is, for most of us, we overexpose our body to the stresses, but don't provide the nurture and the time required for the body to actually go through its adaptive processes. And therefore, that stressful lifestyle actually ends up breaking us down rather than building us up, which of course is not ideal, especially when we want to be healthy, feel vital, have lots of energy, have lots of confidence, and of course a body to match that. So what we need to do is reduce the stress. So we need to look at our entire lifestyle, what's going on right now that I can maybe remove, certain things I might be doing too much of. So what can I reduce? We also maybe actually want to increase our calorie intake, or if not increase the calorie intake, increase the quantity of high-quality foods that we're eating. So ideally healthy whole foods, look at anywhere we are currently eating junk and crap that we know we shouldn't be eating, and we would replace that because we want foods that are going to nurture the body, not stress it and actually take life force away. So that's our first thing. It's a case of reduce the stress load. Now, what we would then also want to do as another way to kind of reduce the stress load but also improve the body's ability to adapt is switch up some of our training from high intensity and high pressure, high, high volume. We might want to cut that back and do what we actually call work in. So rather than go to the gym to work out, which means to get rid of energy, we would go there to work in, which actually means to cultivate energy. The idea is to build energy in the body through the use of exercise, but we would keep our weights around 50 to maybe 60% at max. And we wouldn't push ourselves to burn out and to fatigue and all the rest of it. We'd work at a level that pumps the body and gets blood flow moving and actually uses the muscles, the joints, etc., but doesn't overburden them. And what we would want to do with every single repetition is keep it slow and controlled, and it's dictated by our breathing pace. So, for example, you might be moving at 3 seconds in, 3 seconds out, or if you're very good at controlling breath, maybe even 5 or 6 seconds in, 5, 6 seconds out. So, you could still do your conventional exercise, oh, I deadlift, I squat, I bench press, and all those different things if you wanted, but you would do them in a work-in manner. So, it's more like a movement-based meditation that has some resistance to it, but not to a point where it's actually going to be detrimental to the system. Now, another way you can do it if you don't just want to use conventional exercise is things like yoga, tai chi, stretching, breathwork, and so on. There are lots of different methods you can use, even just slow, steady walking in nature and things like that. They're all going to be things that help nurture the body so that it can actually heal enough to start burning the fat that you actually want to get rid of. And often what we find is that adding in the work-in stuff will kickstart the fat loss a lot quicker than just trying to go to the gym and beat it off you when the body is already stressed. And then you add this high-intensity workouts, which then of course stress the body even more. It doesn't mean that the workouts are bad and that you should never do them. It just means that right now, perhaps your body and your physiology doesn't have the capacity to deal with it. So we need to respect that for a brief period of time, give the body enough time to heal to the level at which it can actually start burning fat because it's no longer concerned about your survival. So I hope that helps people. If you're struggling to burn fat, it's probably just that your body is too stressed out at present. It's not that, oh, my habits are not good enough, I'm not restricting calories enough, or I need to do more exercise. It's probably just that you need to nurture the body for long enough for it to heal. For most people, you can start getting results within 4 to 8 weeks as long as you give your body that time to rest and recover. And of course, let's face it, depending how far you've gone, you may have to give it longer than that. But for the average person who's not got some kind of chronic disease, illness, metabolic disruption, and so on, such as diabetes, high cholesterol, and cancer and things like that, if you don't have anything too extreme, What you will likely find is when within 4 to 8 weeks of giving your body the time it needs to recover, you will then suddenly find, oh, hang on, my body seems to be getting leaner now. It's starting to burn fat. I feel more energetic. And then at that point, you can gradually start to increase the intensity of your workouts until you are training properly and no longer just working in. You might want to keep some, but you can now be training properly, pushing yourself a little bit more. But remember, we have to continue to eat well because we want to supply the body with high nutrition, especially when we're training hard. And then we want to rest and recover hard so that when we are doing these, um, more intense workouts, the body is getting plenty of time to rest so that we can repeat that without it pushing the body backwards. So any questions on this, guys, drop them in the comments below. If you want to find out more about what we do, check us out at strongerthanlife.com. And if you have any questions, let me know. And if not, I'll see you in my next video. Take it easy, people.