Secrets of Fat Loss

I wanted to share a couple of tools that I’ve used that can be very helpful to you in measuring your fat loss progress.  Over the course of 12 weeks, I lost 16 pounds, and gained muscle mass. And within another 2 months I lost another 4 pounds. How did I do it? I did it using the methods that we talk about on this site: I calculated my ideal body mass, created a plan for daily caloric intake and exercise and started monitoring my diet and exercise. There are many tools available to help you measure your progress, so let’s talk about the tools I used.

First, I used a calorie meter for measuring the calories I exerted during exercise. The device I purchased was close to $100 but you can get them starting around $69.  And if you’re serious about fat loss, this is an extremely useful tool.  The monitor I purchased has an elastic strap that fits around your chest, with a sensor that sits right at the bottom of your ribcage.  The device also comes with a wristwatch and the two devices communicate wireless-ly.  As you exercise you can see you heart rate and calories burned in real time.  Let me tell you, when I first started engaging in interval training, I was amazed to see how many calories I was able to burn in an hour. (And by the way, you also get to see first-hand how the calorie burn continues after you leave the gym!). Very exciting (for me anyway!)

But let’s move on to measuring caloric intake. If you’re involved in similar types of fat loss activities, you know there is a lot to keep track of! Calories from Fat, carbs and protein; nutrients like iron, an potassium, and sooooo many other things. So the question is what’s the best way to do it? Let me tell you what worked real well for me: a free tool called MyFitnessPal.

MyFitnessPal is an app on the iPhone and iPod and is now available on the iPad too. Here are some of the things MyFitnessPal allows you to do:

Monitor your Caloric Intake:

• At mealtime (or any convenient time) can enter the foods you eat in the app and it automatically tells you how much fat, carbs and protein are in the serving size you consumed. You can look up each component of the meal you’re eating from a database of over 1 Million foods! That includes brand name foods, raw foods (like 1/2 cup chopped celery) and even meals you get at restaurants.
• You can program in your daily caloric targets and even the breakdown of protein, carbs and fat that you’re targeting.  Then as you progress through the day, you can visually see how you’re doing with respect to the targets. If you go a little over on one meal you can make adjustments to the next one.
• Create own favorite foods and meals. At one point I was drinking a homemade fruit and protein smoothie every morning. It consisted of frozen fruit, fresh banana, Acai concentrate, orange juice and protein powder.  Instead of trying to construct the shake every day in the software, I was able to create a standard “Morning Shake” entry that contained the typical .  That way I could log the shake easily. If you have some meals or dishes that you eat frequently, this feature of MyFitnessPal is a real time saver

Monitor your Exercise:

• Choosing from around 350 built-in types of exercise, log the exercise you do daily.  This can range from walking, climbing stairs, jumping rope, dozens of weightlifting exercises and many many more. Enter the number of reps, the time you exercised and other key information and it’ll put in the calories you burned.
• You can also create your own exercises and estimate the calories from that exercise. (And of course if you’re using a calorie meter, you can enter exactly how many calories that exercise required).

Monitor your Success:

• When you start using MyFitnessPal the first time, you can enter your current weight and weight goals.  Then daily, or however frequently you weight yourself you can enter your weight.  The software makes a graph for you. And it is soooo rewarding to see that chart change over the weeks – believe me!
• You can also enter other parameters like body fat percentage etc and log those.

Share your progress:

• I believe it is important to have friends or fellow fat-loss-buddies that you keep in touch with and share your progress. This is important in so many ways, but as a minimum you can each build off each other’s success. That way, if you lose your own motiviation for a few days, you can rely on your friends to keep you going.  MyFitnessPal allows you to share your progress with other users of the software as well as on Facebook and Twitter if you choose. (But you can also keep your progress private if you prefer.)

Hopefully you can see how valuable these tools can be. I have to say MyFitnessPal has helped me keep my motivation up, even when I had periods of time with few measurable results, I could still remind myself how well I was maintaining my diet and exercise plan, and I could monitor the calorie deficit I was creating.  As far as using MyFitnessPal, I’m sure there are many similar apps out there, so I encourage you to find one that you like and share your findings below.

Next time: We’ll take a look at caloric deficit.