Weight Loss for Your Body Type
If your primary goal is to lose weight, then one thing you must follow is a proper exercise and diet program for your specific body type. If your body primarily stores fat in your mid-section, then you would need a different weight loss program when compared to someone who stores fat in their buttocks, hips, and thighs.
To keep things simple I’m only going to focus this article on an apple shaped body type and I’ll explain the types of exercises you should be doing and the different types of foods you should be eating for optimal weight loss results.
The first body type is apple shape.
If you have this body type you’re not alone as this shape is very popular among women and men. You’ll tend to carry most of your weight around your waist, upper chest, and back. Most apple shapes will have skinny legs and arms when compared to the rest of their body. Although it can vary from person to person.
If your primary goal is weight loss and to change the shape of your body, then you have some work to do regarding diet and exercise. Genetically speaking, you’re more prone to gain fat in those so-called problem areas, but even though some people will disagree, you can change the shape of your body.
While it is true that if you weigh 175 pounds and you’re an apple shape body type, if you do the wrong types of exercise and you don’t eat properly, even though you may lose 30 pounds you would still be an apple shape, but at 145 pounds.
So, what is the key to achieve your weight loss goals and change the shape of your body to something you are happy with?
Let’s start with the basics and something I always recommend to all my clients. An insulin blood test to check and see how sensitive your body is to insulin or how much resistance it has to insulin. The more sensitive you are to insulin, the faster you will see results. If your insulin levels are above 4, then we need to do a variety of different exercises and change your meal plan a bit to bring them down otherwise we’ll be beating against a wall when it comes to optimal weight loss.
Stay tuned for an upcoming article on how insulin plays a role in your weight loss success.
For now, we’ll assume your insulin levels are less than 4 and you are otherwise healthy. For the sake of writing this article, I will also assume you have not exercised in a few months or so and your diet consists of a wide variety of not so healthy foods.
The first thing we need to do if you are to see good weight loss results is slowly cut back on any food or drink that contains sugar. I say slowly cut back because we don’t want to shock your body and cut everything out all at once. If we cut things too fast, your cortisol levels could spike and that would hinder your progress.
White carbohydrate foods will hinder your weight loss goals!
The next thing we will need to do is slowly cut back on any white food that doesn’t consist of primarily protein. For example, for optimal fat loss you must not eat breads, pastas, potato and rice. That goes for any breads, even whole wheat, whole grain, or any other breads that are portrayed as being healthy. Wheat products of any kind are highly inflammatory, not to mention they will kill your weight loss progress.
The next thing we’ll need to do regarding your diet is to slowly implement good fats. I say slowly because if you have a sluggish liver or you normally don’t eat enough good fats, then we could strain your liver and gall bladder. Take it slow starting out to let your body adjust. Maybe add one teaspoon of olive oil or one teaspoon of macadamia nut oil once per day with your lunch. You can even take 1-2 teaspoons of organic whole flax seed, grind it with a coffee grinder, and add it to your protein shakes or fresh juices.
If you find yourself having some gas, it would most likely point to a sluggish liver and gallbladder because of the added fats. In this case you would need to increase your intake of celery and carrots. You could eat them raw or juiced, but doing this will definitely increase the flow of bile and help with the digestion of fats.
Your body needs good dietary fats so it can utilize and convert its stored fat back to glucose so it can be used for energy, or to be stored as muscle or liver glycogen instead.
The whole idea is to get your body to release its stored fat and prevent it from taking any glucose and converting it to fatty acids which would then be stored as body fat. The more insulin sensitive your body is, the easier it is to prevent fat storage and the easier it is to achieve your weight loss goals. More on this here shortly.
The next thing you will need to add to your diet for optimal weight loss is an organic plant based protein with added BCAAs, branched chain amino acids. If you can find a plant based protein that has a complete amino acid profile that would be great, and you wouldn’t need to add the BCAAs to the protein.
Protein is needed for so many things by the body and it really helps your body burn fat. To keep it simple, sugars cause your body to store fat and protein helps your body burn fat. Follow this simple rule whenever you eat and you’ll see optimal weight loss results no matter what your body type may be.
The next thing you’ll want to do is make sure you are drinking plenty of water throughout the day. The recommended intake is ½ ounce per pound of body weight, but this could vary depending on how much you sweat, how hot it is, and so on. A good rule of thumb is to go by the color of your urine. It should have a pale yellow tinge to it, and not be totally clear. If it’s clear, you are either drinking too much too fast or simply drinking too much. No more than about 16 ounces per hour is a good starting point unless you are really working up a sweat in which case you can have a maximum of 32 ounces within an hour while working out. Even then this would most likely be too much and all you should be doing is sipping on water during your workout session as too much water can cause nausea.
What kind of water? Preferably a glass bottled water or at the very least, water in a BPA free plastic bottle. The less estrogens you are exposed to the better. You’ll also need to add mineral drops to your water. Something like Trace Minerals is a good choice and you can add 5-10 drops to every 16 ounces of water. This will prevent what I call a mineral wash-out. Drinking excessive amounts of water will deplete your mineral stores over time and you’ll start having muscle cramps at best and heart palpitations at worst. This is important so don’t skip it.
So, to recap follow these steps regarding diet for optimal weight loss for your body type.
1. Cut back on white carbohydrate foods and anything that contains sugar.
2. Add good fats like extra virgin olive oil, macadamia nut oil, whole organic ground flax seed (not flaxseed oil).
3. Add in 25-50 grams of protein from an organic plant based protein with added BCAAs or add the BCAAs to the shake if you are unable to find a protein with a complete amino acid profile.
4. Drink plenty of clean filtered water and add minerals to every glass to prevent mineral depletion.
Okay, the next thing is exercise. What type of exercise should you do for your particular body type so you can achieve weight loss you’ll be happy with?
Since it would take over 1000 pages to explain everything in detail about every single body type, I’m going to go over the very basics.
Let’s assume you’re an apple shape with most of your weight around your waist, upper chest, and back. In this case we will start out slow by either riding a stationary bike or walking a treadmill at a normal paced walk. This is assuming you weigh between 130 pounds to maybe 200 pounds at most and you’re able to walk without having joint pains, etc.
Start out at a comfortable pace and work your way up until you are walking or peddling at a moderate pace. At this pace you should feel yourself breathing, but not to the point you are gasping for air. It should actually be fairly easy. Do this for 10-20 minutes depending on whether or not you’ve ever exercised before, or if it’s been a long time since you’ve exercised, and you are way out of shape physically.
The key is to start out slow and do this 3-5 days per week. Once you feel comfortable enough you can slowly increase the speed on a daily basis. I recommend wearing a heart rate monitor with a chest strap and never let your heart rate get above 60% of it’s maximum. For calculations you can use your age minus 220 and then divide it by 60%. For example, if you are 30 years of age, your heart rate should never exceed 114 beats per minute.
Remember, we are doing this with a purpose in mind and that’s to prevent shocking your body too fast which could result in your body spiking the steroid hormone called cortisol. We don’t want this to happen because it would hinder your weight loss results, so we must start out slow until your body slowly adapts. Every person is different, but it could take on average of 1-2 weeks or so before we are able to proceed to the next level. Once you are in fairly good physical condition it’s time to start the high intensity interval training also known as a HIIT workout.
The next step in addition to cardio is to add in resistance training for optimal weight loss results and we do this to make your body more efficient at burning glucose, increase your strength, stamina, and to build strong bones or to even reverse bone loss.
Now the fun part. Every professional I know says it’s impossible to spot reduce certain areas of the body, and while they are technically correct, I’ve developed a special form of resistance training that I have perfected so it will prevent more fat storage in the parts of your body that you’re trying to shrink down.
In other words, we can prevent more fat from being stored in those problem areas, so technically we are spot reducing, but not in a way most professionals think. As long as our deposits of fat are less than our withdrawals, then weight loss in the form of fat in our so-called problem areas will be the end result and you’ll be a happy camper.
I’ve done this with thousands of clients with great success for nearly three decades so be ready to see your problem areas melt away!
I’m in the process of completing the article on how this all works, so sign up now to receive my newsletter and I will send you an email once I have it completed in the next few days.