Can you lose body fat without losing your curves?

This is something I’ve struggled with since the beginning of my fitness journey and I know a lot of females can relate, so I thought to share my experience and explain how the process works.

So can you lose body fat without losing your curves? My answer is yes and no.

The thing is you cannot determine where you lose fat from. If you do cardio, you can’t only burn the fat off your waist area and keep it on your bum and thighs. Trust me I wish you could but it just doesn’t work like that.

Please bare in mind that your body does burn fat all over, it’s just that sometimes it can burn fat more in specific areas. For example, my fat burns quickly around my chest area (hence my lack of boobs lol) and although I still have a bum and thighs, I have still lost body fat in those areas.

Everyone has stubborn fat cells in specific areas. For me, I’d say my stubborn areas are my bum, thighs and waist, which isn't a bad thing except the waist area- but this, is not within my control. The only way I focused on those stubborn fat cells in my waist was to keep up the cardio until it finally responded and disappeared (it still hasn’t gone yet but its slowly getting there), although I did suffer the risk of losing my curves. So what do I do?

Well I know how my body works and I know it’s a lot easier for me to put on weight than it is for me to lose weight. So I took the risk (and still am taking the risk) in order to give my body the best possible chance of stripping down my body fat. I haven’t lost too much mass in the process as my cardio mainly consists of high intensity workouts (refer to previous blogpost) which has in some way retained my muscle.

But inevitably I was bound to lose fat from my bum, thighs and hips so I also weight trained those specific areas on days where I wasn’t doing cardio. I’ve now incorporated more leg days in my fitness regime focusing more on exercises which target my glutes, thighs and hips (squats, lunges, leg raises, glute bridges etc) in order to compensate for the fat burned in those areas.

I still haven’t replaced all the missing fat from those areas YET but just know I won’t stop until I do. Personally, I'm yet to see the gains of my work because I know this process will probably take a year to master effectively and my body doesn’t respond to muscle training as fast as I would like it to. But everyone’s body is different so it might not even take you that long.

There are two ways to do this, you can either lose the fat first then weight train or do both at the same time. I’ve chosen to do both at the same time because when combined with a good balanced diet, adding muscle mass will increase your metabolism and help burn off any excess body fat, so it’s a win win situation.

The only thing is that muscle takes a lot longer to build than fat takes to burn so this process requires the most amount of patience. My advice to anyone embarking on this part of their journey is to be patient and accept that slow progress is better than no progress.

Remember Rome wasn’t built in a day…and neither are your muscles.

G

Marathon vs Sprinter

The way you exercise is important because it determines the shape your body eventually moulds into. Here we have a marathon runner (left) and a sprinter (right). Can you spot the difference in their physiques?

Although both are runners, the difference in their training is important. Cardio is the most effective way to burn fat and calories. However, it can also burn muscle. Whilst doing long periods of cardio, the body has to find its largest resources of calories, which more often tends to be from the muscles. When your cardio is maintained for long periods of time at low/moderate intensity level, a hormone called Cortisol is released which leads to muscle burning.

However, short intense cardio utilises and uses up your bodies stored sugars more (needed for short bursts of high intensity) and has a greater after burn effect. Cortisol is again released by the body but this is also released alongside growth hormones and testosterone, which enhances fat burning and leads to a higher muscle building state.

You tend to burn more fat during high intensity workouts rather than low/moderate intensity workouts because high intensity has an after burn effect. This is basically where your metabolism has been kicked into overdrive and the body continues to burn off calories after your workout. 



Education is key and to be honest as I was reading this I surprised myself with the knowledge that I did know. Sometimes doing your own research and asking fitness experts in the industry is the only way to truly understand how the body responds to different exercises. This way you will always be pointing your body in the right direction as you’ll know exactly what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

My current goal is to shed body fat without losing too much mass, whilst still maintaining my curves. Although the majority of my training involves high intensity cardio anyway, I will still embark on a few low/moderate intensity workouts to help target my stubborn fat. I will also combat any risk of muscle loss here by ensuring I maintain my weight sessions in the gym.



So next time you decide to do cardio, think about your goals and what you are trying to achieve. If your aim is to achieve lean muscle and get that ‘tight look’ as opposed to just weight loss, think about doing intervals or simply running that much faster so you reduce your time…remember it is NOT about duration, it is about intensity.

G

R.E.S.T

 

So it’s ‘wellbeing’ month at work and my company have quite a few seminars and workshops going on. This week I completed something called a ‘Boomerang Life Balance Questionnaire’ which measures your mental and physical health. I scored highest on my diet and exercise and lowest on my body, sleep and relaxation.

You would think that my lifestyle would mean that I am taking good care of my body, and to be fair I am, but the one thing I am really neglecting is recovery and sleep- which is paramount when it comes to exercise as this is the ONLY opportunity where your body is at complete rest and is able to fully recover and repair itself.

R-ecover E-nergise S-leep T-rain

Recover - Allow your body to adequately refresh itself in order to deliver the same output (if not more) for its required use.

Energise: You will see a MAJOR difference in your physical and mental wellbeing. A renewed energy will allow you to avoid burning out and should help maintain your enthusiasm and fitness goals.

Sleep: Sleep aids recovery and can enhance exercise performance.  Taking at least one day to catch up on sleep will benefit your training more than pushing your body for another workout with a lack of sleep. The majority of your Growth Hormone, which is a highly anabolic substance, is released during sleep. Getting enough sleep provides you with the energy and focus you need to see you through an intense workout. It also provides the optimum anabolic environment for your muscles to recover and grow.

Train: Training is what we all strive for so why not prep your body to train at its best, by simply giving it what it demands...REST!!!

 

So I’m going to take my own advice and get some more rest and I suggest you do too.

G

Just Geens Funday Footage

Check out some of the highlights from Just Geens Funday  

Enjoy x

#MonthsOfShredding

 

So we had #MonthOfMadness and now we have #MonthsOfShredding. I say months because I don’t know realistically how long it will take, but I’m aiming for the end of the year to see some sort of difference.

As usual, me and my squad @bigboatstrainingroom and @jan885 are trying to see how much body fat we can lose in the next couple months  .

Fitness wise, I know I’ve got that area covered. I won’t be making many changes to my regime. I currently do constant steady runs and interval training. The constant steady run helps me stay in my fat burning zone, and the interval training shocks my body and prevents my cardio from being boring. For those that don’t know what interval training is, it is the best and fastest way to lose weight. It’s more about intensity rather than duration. With interval training you alternate periods of high-intensity exercises with low-intensity recovery periods and this increases fitness and burns more calories over a short period of time. I’ll still be doing my constant steady runs alongside my interval training to help me stay in my fat burning zone.

For example of interval training if you’re running outside or on a treadmill is:

• 30 seconds sprint/30 seconds recover

• 1 minute sprint/1 minute recover

• 2 minutes fast jog sprint/2 minutes recover

To make it harder you could make your recovery time lower:

• 30 seconds sprint/20 seconds recover

• 1 minute sprint/30 seconds recover

• 2 minutes fast jog sprint/1 minute recover

This can be done with any type of cardio –even with swimming. There is no hard and fast rule about how long your workout and recovery time should be. However, I always make my recover time less because it makes it that much harder. There are loads of other ways to do interval training and this is just one of them, but either way I hope you get the jist.

My main focus these next couple of months is nutrition! There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to my eating. I'm aiming to reduce my daily calorie intake and before you get the wrong idea, this does not mean that I will be starving myself and eating less food. It just means that I'm going to be eating the same amount but I’ll be opting for lower calorie foods.

How am I going to do this? Well I'm going to increase my fruit and veg intake, but i'm going to be focusing on increasing my veg more than my fruit. This is because fruits tend to be higher in sugar and too much sugar can turn into fat-which is the opposite of what i'm trying to achieve. 

By opting for lower calorie foods I will be eating the same amount and saving myself some calories- and this is without even changing the quantity of food I've eaten.

Here's a list of some low calorie foods I will be looking to eat more of :

• Asparagus

• Broccoli

• Carrots

• Celery

• Spinach

• Kale

• Mushrooms

• Grapefruit

• Kiwi

• Cabbage

• Olives

• Apple

• Blueberries

• Goji berries

I haven’t set a target of how much body fat I want to lose but i’ll keep you posted every month.

See you in four weeks

G