The Hierarchy of Fat Loss
1. Correct Nutrition
There is pretty much nothing that can be done to out-train a crappy diet. You quite simply have to create a caloric deficit, while eating enough protein and essential fats. There is no way around this.
2. See Number 1
Yep. It really is that important. Several trainers have espoused that the only difference between training for muscle gain and training for fat loss is your diet. I think that's a massive oversimplification but it does reinforce how important and effective correct nutrition is toward your ultimate goal.
3. Activities that burn calories, maintain/promote muscle mass and elevate metabolism
I think it's fairly obvious that the bulk of calories burned are determined by our resting metabolic rate or RMR. The amount of calories burned outside of our resting metabolism (through exercise, thermic effect of feeding etc) is a smaller contributor to overall calories burned per day.
We can also accept that RMR is largely a function of how much muscle you have on your body -- and how hard it works.
Therefore -- adding activities that promote or maintain muscle mass, will make that muscle mass work harder and elevate the metabolic rate. This will become our number one training priority when developing fat loss programs.
4. Activities that burn calories and elevate metabolism
The next level of fat loss programming would be a similar activity. We're still looking at activities that eat up calories and increase EPOC.
EPOC (Exercise Post Oxygen Consumption) is defined scientifically as the "recovery of metabolic rate back to pre-exercise levels" and "can require several minutes for light exercise and several hours for hard intervals."
Essentially we are looking for activities that keep us burning more calories after the exercise session.
5. Activities that burn calories but don't necessarily maintain muscle or elevate metabolism
This is the "icing on the cake" -- adding in activities that will burn up some more calories but don't necessarily contribute to increasing metabolism. This is the least effective tool in your arsenal (as it doesn't burn much outside of the primary exercise session)
Let's put this fat loss continuum together in terms of our progressive training hierarchy.
Five Factors for Fat Loss Training
1. Metabolic resistance training
Basically we are using resistance training as the cornerstone of our fat loss programming. Our goal is to work every muscle group hard, frequently and with an intensity that creates a massive "metabolic disturbance" -- or "Afterburn" that leaves the metabolism elevated for several hours post workout.
A couple of studies to support this:
Schuenke MD, Mikat RP, McBride JM.
Effect of an acute period of resistance exercise on excess post-exercise oxygen consumption: implications for body mass management.
Eur J Appl Physiol. 2002 Mar;86(5):411-7. Epub 2002 Jan 29.
This study used a circuit training protocol of 12 sets in 31 mins.
EPOC was elevated significantly for 38 hours post workout.
38 hours is a pretty significant time frame for metabolism to be elevated. If you trained at 9am until 10 am on Monday morning -- you're still burning more calories (without training) at midnight on Tuesday.
Can we compound this with additional training within that 38 hours? No research has been done -- but I have enough case studies to believe that you can.
Another:
Kramer, Volek et al.
Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men.
Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 31, No. 9, pp. 1320-1329, 1999.
Overweight Subjects were assigned to three groups:
Diet Only, Diet plus aerobics, Diet plus aerobics plus weights
Diet group lost 14.6 lbs of fat in 12 weeks.
Aerobic group lost only one more pound (15.6lb) than the diet group (training was 3 times a week starting at 30 mins and progressing to 50 minutes over the 12 weeks).
The Weight Training group lost 21.1lbs of fat (44% and 35% more than diet and aerobic only groups respectively).
Basically the addition of aerobic training did not result in any REAL WORLD significant fat loss over dieting alone. 36 sessions of up to 50 mins is a lot fo work for one additional pound of fat loss. However the addition of resistance training greatly accelerated the fat loss results.
One more:
Bryner RW, Ullrich IH, Sauers J, Donley D, Hornsby G, Kolar M, Yeater R.
Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate.
J Am Coll Nutr. 1999 Apr;18(2):115-21.
Aerobic group: 4 hours per week
Resistance training group: 2-4 sets of 8-15 reps. 10 exercises, three times per week.
V02 max increased equally in both groups.
Both groups lost weight, the resistance training group lost significantly more fat and did not lose ANY LBM, even at only 800 calories per day. (the reason the calories were so low was to really take any dietary variables completely out of the equation and compare the effects of the exercise regime on LBM and metabolism).
The resistance training group actually increased metabolism compared to the aerobic group which decreased metabolism. It seems that resistance training is a more significant stress to the body than a starvation diet.
In my experience, full body training in a superset, tri-set or circuit format (with non competing exercises) in a rep range that generates lactic acid (and pushing the lactic acid threshold or LAT) seems to create the biggest metabolic demand. It makes sense -- training legs, back and chest will burn more calories and elevate metabolism more than an isolated approach training one of them.
The rep range that seems to work best is the 8-12 hypertrophy range, although going higher will work just as well with a less trained population.
For a powerlifter or an advanced bodybuilder -- doing one max effort exercise or heavy, low rep lift is more than enough to maintain your current strength levels.
e.g.
Powerlifting
Exercise One:
Max Effort Squat -- work up to a 3rm
Transitioning into metabolic work.
Bodybuilder
Exercise Sequence:
1a: Bench press 2-3 sets of 4-6 reps
1b: Row 2-3 sets of 4-6 reps
Transitioning into metabolic work.
2. High Intensity Anaerobic Interval training
The second key "ingredient" in fat loss programming is high intensity interval training. I think the readers of t-nation will be well aware of the benefits of interval work -- it burns more calories than steady state and elevates metabolism significantly more than other forms of cardio. The downside is that it flat out sucks to do.
The landmark study in interval training was from Tremblay:
Tremblay A, Simoneau JA, Bouchard C.
Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism.
Metabolism. 1994 Jul;43(7):814-8
20 weeks endurance training vs 15 weeks Interval training
Energy cost of Endurance Training = 28661 calories. Interval Training = 13614 calories (less than half)
The interval training group showed a NINE TIMES greater loss in subcutaneous fat than the endurance group (when corrected for energy cost).
Read that again. Calorie for calorie - the Interval training group lost nine times more fat overall. Why? Maybe it's EPOC, an upregulation of fat burning enzyme activity, or straight --up G-Flux. I don't care. I'm a real world guy. If the interval training group had lost THE SAME fat as the endurance group -- we'd get the same results in less time -- that means it's a better tool in your fat loss arsenal.
4. High Intensity Aerobic Interval Training
The next tool we pull out is essentially a lower intensity interval method where we use aerobic intervals.
Talanian, Galloway et al
Two weeks of High-Intensity Aerobic Interval Training increases the capacity for fat oxidation during exercise in women.
J Appl Physiol (December 14, 2006). doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.01098.2006
This study looked at high intensity AEROBIC intervals and its influence on fat oxidation. In summary, seven sessions of HIIT over two weeks induced marked increases in whole body and skeletal muscle capacity for fatty acid oxidation during exercise in moderately active women.
In laymans' terms the interval work appeared to "upregulate" fat burning enzymes.
Basically this means that we can burn more fat in other activites as a result of this inclusion -- in other words -- we get some more bang for our buck. A quick disclaimer though -- my colleague Alan Aragon once said -- "Caring about how much fat is burned during exercise is equivalent to worrying about how much muscle is built during exercise". In other words -- substrate utilization during exercise is not really an important variable in the big picture of fat loss -- total calories burned overall is.
5. Steady State High Intensity Aerobic Training
Tool number four is just hard cardio work. This time we are burning calories -- we aren't working hard enough to increase EPOC significantly or to do anything beyond the session itself. But calories count -- burning another 300 or so calories per day will add up.
6. Steady State Low Intensity Aerobic Training
This is just activity. Going for a walk in the park etc. It won't burn a lot of calories, it won't increase muscle or EPOC. There actually isn't very much research showing that low intensity aerobic training actually results in very much additional fat loss (particularly in a real world significance). But you're going to have to really work to convince me that moving more is going to hurt you when you're in fat attack mode.
Putting it all together -- Time Management
You'll notice that this is perhaps the opposite recommendations from what you typically read in the mainstream media (not here of course). Usually fat loss recommendations start with low intensity aerobics, progress to high intensity aerobics, then intervals. Finally when you're "in shape" they recommend resistance training.
My approach to massive fat loss is attacking from the complete opposite of the norm. If you are professional bodybuilder -- then you typically have extra time to add in cardio -- and do extra work to get lean. A "real world" client with a job or school, and a family can rarely afford additional time -- therefore we need to look at our training in a more efficient manner and focus on our time available first -- and then design our programming based on that.
If I have only 3 hours per week I'll only use # 1 -- metabolic resistance training.
This can be 3 one hour training sessions, or four 45 minute training sessions -- it doesn't seem to matter. However -- once you are getting three hours per week of total body resistance training, in my experience I haven't see an additional effect in terms of fat loss by doing more. My guess is that, at that point, recovery starts to become a concern and intensity is impaired.
This type of training involves barbell complexes, supersets, tri-sets, circuits, EDT work, kettlebell combos etc.
If I have 3-5 hours I'll use #1 and # 2 --weight training plus high intensity interval work
At this point any additional work is usually in the form of high intensity interval training. I'm looking to burn up more calories and continue to elevate EPOC. Interval training is like putting your savings into a high return investment account. Low intensity aerobics is like hiding it under your mattress. Both will work -- but the return you get is radically different.
If I have 5-6 hours available I'll add # 3 -- aerobic interval training
Aerobic intervals wins out at this point because it's still higher intensity overall than steady state work so it burns more calories. There appears to be a fat oxidation benefit and will still be easier to recover from than additional anaerobic work.
If I have 6-8 hours available I'll add #4
If you're not losing a LOT of fat with 6 hours of training already -- then I'd be taking a very close look at your diet. If everything is in place, but we just need to ramp up fat loss some more (e.g. for a special event -- a photo shoot, high school reunion etc) then we will add in some hard cardio -- a long run, or bike ride without heart rate at 75% of max or higher.
Why not do as much of this as possible then? -- Well - the goal is to burn as many calories as we can without negatively impacting the intensity of our higher priority activities.
If I have more than that -- I'll add # 5
I think I'm getting into fairy tale land at this point -- I don't think most of us have more than 8 hours training time available per week -- but if we do -- this is when any additional activity will help to burn up calories - which is never a bad thing.
A lot of fighters have used this activity to help make weight. This works because it burns up calories -- but doesn't leave you tired for your strength training, sparring or technical work. That is the key with the addition of this activity : just to move, get your body moving, burn up some additional calories -- but not to work too hard that it inhibits recovery and negatively affects our other training. The research and the real world don't really show massive changes from the inclusion of this type of activity -- however I think everything has it's place.
Remember -- this is a hierarchy of training and this is fifth on the list for a reason.
Smart guys call this NEAT -- Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. I call it moving a wee bit more than normal.
Summary
Ok before the usual replies start -- please realize that all I have said here is "harder training works better than easier training". It really is that simple.
To conclude - I agree with Dan John (who wouldn't -- the guy is a legend in this field). ATTACK body fat with a passion and a single minded goal. The best way to do this is with an all-out assault implementing the hierarchy I described above.
Summer is here. Shirts are coming off whether you're ready or not. Attack your body fat with a massive action plan for the next eight weeks.
http://www.purepayne.ca/content/hierachry-fat-loss-alwyn-cosgrove
