In my experience, controlling what you eat is the easiest way to lose body fat. Throughout my time as a competitive bodybuilder and powerlifter, where I had to look either super lean or make a certain weight category, I have experimented with a bunch of different ways to lose excess fat. These three rules have served me well time and again and now feature in my current regime to get lean for my holiday!

Rule 1: Cut out starchy carbohydrates

The first thing I do is cut out starchy carbohydrates, such as all rice, all pasta, white potatoes and bread. We want to keep our insulin levels in check and improve our insulin sensitivity. By reducing these types of carbs, our body’s blood sugar levels will be a lot more balanced, instead of having the continuous ups and downs of high and low blood sugar.

If you are continuously eating carbs throughout the day, your blood sugar levels will go up and your body will release insulin to help bring your blood sugar levels back down to normal. Insulin will then buffer the carbohydrates and store them in 1 of 3 places, the liver, as liver glycogen, the muscles, as muscle glycogen, or as body fat.

Most of the time, the insulin will buffer the carbohydrates into the body’s fat stores. This is unless you have been sleeping over night or have been training or exercising. Then the insulin will buffer the carbohydrates into the depleted muscle glycogen stores. 

As a general rule, I suggest eating porridge oats, sweet potatoes and quinoa (and variations of these) as your carbohydrate intake. Try and consume these earlier in the day.

Bread - A starchy carbohydrate that you should aim to eliminate from your diet whilst on a fat loss plan.

 Rule 2: Increase your protein intake

As you drop your carbs down, you should increase your protein intake. There are a few reasons I do this. The first is to make me fuller. With the absence of carbs, I will eat more meat or fish at a meal. Protein based foods are harder to breakdown for the body and require more energy to do so, which means you will burn more calories.

Protein will also help protect the body’s muscles stores from being broken down and used as an energy source. The higher protein intake will allow the body to metabolise that rather than your muscle. This will keep your metabolic rate higher and in doing so, you will burn more body fat.

Aim to eat a whole source of protein such as eggs, fish or lean meat at every meal.

Lean red meat - a great source of protein.

Rule 3: Increase you healthy fat intake

You may be quite confused with this 3^rdrule, but by actually increasing certain fats in your diet, it can help burn more body fat. One compound, which has been used for fat loss for years, is conjugated linoleic acid or CLA. CLA can be found in high levels in grass fed meats, such as grass fed beef.

Studies on CLA have shown that CLA can help reduce body fat while preserving muscle tissue and may also increase your metabolic rate, which means you will burn more calories at rest.

Olive oil is a great fat to add too. Not just any type of olive oil, extra virgin olive oil is the best. Studies have shown that olive oil promotes better fat metabolism via the mitochondria in cells by helping to release energy as heat.

Through chemical reactions in the body, uncoupling proteins increase caloric burn and make the body burn off calories at an increased rate, rather than storing them as body fat.

I tend to eat a lot of salads when I lean down. A typical salad would be lots of vegetables, fish or meat and then 1-2 desert spoons of extra virgin olive oil mixed in. I tend to have about a desert spoon of olive oil in around 4 of my 6 meals a day.

So in summary, increase protein and fat intake whilst reducing starchy carbs and you will be well on the way to a leaner figure. This is not a revolutionary approach but has consistently given great gains for both myself and my clients.

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