Top 5 Unexpected Fat Loss Tips

Exercise may be the single most effective intervention for increasing not just fat loss, but health, quality of life, and functionality. A “diet” is simply the types of foods that you habitually eat and there are many different diets that will promote fat loss. There are fewer though that will promote fat loss, performance, and overall health and, although we can go deep into different aspects of diet that can make your fat loss journey easier, this article is about the Top 5 Unexpected Fat Loss Tips. This article is for those who have heard a million times about diet and exercise and just can’t seem to move the needle. Each aspect of our lifestyle has enormous effects on the other parts of our lifestyle. When one thing is off, it compounds as it makes the others more difficult. We hope that these top 5 unexpected fat loss tips can not only help you lose body fat, but also make any additional fat loss strategies you’re interested in easier to tackle.

1. Prioritize a Pre-Sleep Routine

Sleep is vital. If it wasn’t, it would probably be the dumbest thing any animal did as when we are sleeping we cannot feed, mate, or protect ourselves from danger. There are so many health benefits of sleeping that we don’t have room in this short article to even list them all, so are just going to touch on a few of effects that a lack of sleep has on a fat loss journey:

Pre-Diabetic - Being underslept can temporarily mess up your metabolism in a way that makes your body act like it is pre-diabetic. The short effect of this is that your body does not use insulin in healthy amounts to regulate blood sugar which has all sorts of health impacts, but, again sticking to fat loss, the increase of insulin increases fat storage.
Hunger/Full Hormones Flip - Leptin is a hormone released by fat cells in amounts correlated with how much fat is in the cell telling the brain how much body fat you have. When your brain registers a level for which it wants to maintain, it will make you feel full and when it registers an amount lower, it makes you feel hungry and triggers your body to store more in your fat cells. When you are underslept, leptin and ghrelin (makes you feel hungry), get out of balance in a way that makes your brain misread hormones making you feel hungry when you are not. Trying to eat reasonable amounts of food while underslept becomes a game of willpower. A game that no one should want to play all the time.
Motivation/Depression - Those who are underslept, even by tens of minutes, not only report feeling more lonely and depressed, but those observing the underslept report experiencing them as less attractive and less likely to want to hang out with them. Not only will we not feel our best, but others are not experiencing an accurate reflection of us either.

Again, we could turn this section into an entire book, but we just wanted to touch on a few things that make sleep extremely important. Now, what do to about it? Our body has systems in place to help us get quality sleep, so our job is just helping our brains know what time of day it is. There are thousands of internal clocks in our body that our brain uses for one master clock, so our eyes and organs can work for us or against us through bright lights, temperature, and food timing, among other things. Our simply strategy is to help your body know it’s evening:

Plan what time you need to be in bed to get quality sleep and therefore what time you need to start getting ready for bed and prioritize making it happen.
Dim your household lights with sunset to limit your brain thinking it’s still daytime.
Lower your home temperature with sunset to mimic the naturally occuring cooler nighttime temperatures, signaling your brain that it is nighttime.
Wear blue light blocking glasses with sunset. It’s not just screens, even reading lamps give off blue light!
Consume all your calories within a consistent 6-8 hour window (more info below).

If you want to dive in deeper, check out our article: The Benefits of a Synched Circadian Rhythm

2. Consume all of your Calories within a Consistent 6-8 Hour Window

Referred to as Time-restricted Eating, but also sometimes as 16/8 Intermittent Fasting, by consuming all of our calories within a shortened window, we not only help limit total daily calorie intake, but our body responds better to our food when we are eating and the lengthened period we have not eating helps our body recover and restore itself. There are sets of genes that are turned on and off when we are fasted and a different set for when we are in a fed state. Having the right amount of time in each of these states each day is optimal. This allows for cellular repair, insulin sensitivity, balanced hormones, and the list goes on and on. If you want to dive deeper, check out our article: The Benefits of Fasting

Tips:
- Water has no calories, does not trigger a fed state, and is perfectly fine to have at any time.
- Something that is almost no calorie, like Black coffee, is not ideal as it will turn on some fed genes, but is still OK. If you are going to drink something like coffee in the morning, keep it black and keep the end of your 6-8 hour eating window within 12 hours of your first sip of coffee. As soon as our body needs to metabolize something, parts of our fed clock start to tick. We would like a 6-8 hour food window and at most a 12 hour coffee window.
- Shoot for a 6 hour eating window. Most people leak a little earlier and later on some days, so a 6 hour window will likely be more like a 7-8 or hour window realistically.
- Don’t snack. If you are hungry, go ahead and eat a full meal or wait until your next full meal. This adds to the effectiveness of an eating window because there’s just not that much time to eat full meals. Additionally, not snacking help you learn that the hunger feeling is just hormones and it actually goes away if you don’t eat. It will come back, but you’ll cycle feeling hungry and not, so you can wait for your next full meal (it gets easier and easier to do).
- If you miss eating your last meal of the day on time, it’s OK….you’ll eat tomorrow. You may feel hungry, but your body has plenty of stored energy to be perfectly fine. Everything is an experience you’ll learn from. Stick to your window.
- While you wait for your window to start or if you’re ending your window early, expect the first week or two to use some willpower as you fight what your body is used to. Once your body gets used to it, eating within your window will feel natural and easy…just survive the first two weeks.
Example of Coach Kyle’s Eating Window
- Black Coffee Starts at 8 AM or later
- First Meal between 11 AM and 12 PM
- Last Meal around 6 PM

3. Take a 10 Minute Walk After Every Meal

This one is simple, but has an impact on a couple of levels:

1) Walking reduces blood sugar while using less insulin. Walking helps blood sugar get taken in by the muscles without the need of insulin, so our body doesn’t need to release as much to regulate our blood sugar post-meal. Insulin resistance is a snowballing issue that plagues many Americans and can be a root cause of many chronic diseases.

2) Leaving where you ate, breaks the addictive mindset. If you eat and stay, your brain will stay focused on food and what else you can eat causing you to eat more or fight cravings. Instead, if you go for a walk, you’ll snap yourself out of the eat food mode and when you get back will have a completely different perspective on your hunger and cravings.

If you want to dive deeper, check out our article: The Benefits of Walking

Want to boost your walks? Add a Ruck (a Weighted Backpack)!

4. Create a Morning Health Routine

Blood flow, metabolism, but even burning off the hormones leftover from sleep that make us tired can increase activity throughout the day. These aspects of a morning routine add up over time not just for weight loss, but for overall health and mental wellness.

Cold Exposure, i.e. cold shower or cold plunge (The Benefits of Cold Exposure)
10-Minute Walk with Exposure to Sunlight
10 minutes of Yoga / Mobility Every Morning (Mobility Guides and 10-Minute Follow-along Sessions)
Delay Caffeine by 1-2 hours (The Benefits of a Synched Circadian Rhythm)

5. Get Out and Go Play!!!

As adults, it is easy to get caught up taking life too seriously and thinking that the only way to unwind is wine nights, poker nights, and happy hours. Go dancing or pick up a new or old sport!

Great activities to pick-up at any age and fitness level:

Pickleball
Dancing
Don’t just watch your kids play, be goofy, run around, and play with them!

But, be careful! If you have not had a lot of play in your life in the last few years, overuse injuries are incredibly common. Make sure you ease your way into a new activity. The larger your base of functional fitness, the more prepared you are for anything you may become interested in!

Everything is Inter-Related!

When we are rested, it is much easier to have the willpower to stick to our nutrition strategies, go for walks, workout, and be motivated to play. The more of these activities we do, the more sleep pressure we build up and the better sleep we get. This is a positive feedback loop that can also snowball the other direction. Integrate these things into your daily routines, and over time, the benefits of these will be obvious to you! Enjoy!!!